US Business

US President Joe Biden on Friday led a pledge by 20 nations in the Americas to work together on migration, seeking to step up action on a growing political priority at a summit beset by disputes.

The weeklong Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles wound down with promises by Biden to do more, and a joint declaration on migration that largely formalized existing arrangements rather than setting new policy.

The declaration called for “safety and dignity of all migrants” but also greater cooperation by law enforcement.

Biden — who has promised a more humane approach than his predecessor Donald Trump — announced a $65 million effort to support documented seasonal work on US farms.

“But we need to halt the dangerous and unlawful ways people are migrating,” Biden said with regional leaders by his side.

“Unlawful migration is not acceptable and we will secure our borders including through innovative, coordinated actions with our regional partners.”

The effort was met by praise by the top diplomat of Mexico, the critical US partner on migration due to the 3,145-kilometer (1,954-mile) shared border, even though Mexico’s president conspicuously boycotted the summit.

Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said the summit’s results were “very positive,” including Biden’s calls for economic cooperation and the “regional approach on migration.”

Extreme poverty, rising violence and natural disasters worsened by climate change have triggered a sharp rise in Central Americans and Haitians seeking to enter the United States.

Trump’s Republican Party has seized on the issue ahead of congressional elections, denouncing migrants from developing countries and accusing Biden of failing to act effectively.

The State Department announced that the United States would resettle 20,000 verified refugees from the Americas over the next two years — a threefold increase but a far cry from the 100,000 Ukrainian refugees that Biden, mostly with Republican support, has pledged to take in.

The United States also announced $314 million in new funding to support some of the more than six million Venezuelans who have fled their country, whose economy has been in freefall.

– Discord over attendance –

Biden called the summit in the face of rising Chinese influence in a region that the United States has long considered its home turf.

The summit was marked from the start by discord, largely over Biden’s refusal to invite the leftist leaders of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela on the grounds that they are authoritarians.

The row was why Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador refused to attend and several leaders directly challenged Biden.

The prime minister of tiny Belize also pointedly questioned if Biden would follow up on lofty promises, noting the $40 billion package from the United States to support Ukraine in its war.

“We know that money is not the problem,” Prime Minister John Briceno told him Thursday.

At a concluding news conference, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the summit — which also discussed cooperation on health care, climate change and job creation — addressed the “practical needs” of the hemisphere.

“It’s hard to do that with governments that reject the basic principle that they’re accountable to their people and repress their citizens’ rights to speak up about the challenges they face,” Blinken said.

– Movement on Venezuela, Brazil –

Blinken voiced hope for progress in Venezuela, saying he understood that talks would resume between the government and opposition — which was not invited to Los Angeles despite US support.

He held out the prospect of easing sanctions on President Nicolas Maduro, whom Washington considers illegitimate, if he compromises in the talks in Mexico.

“Sanctions are not an end in themselves. They are an effort to incentivize those who are on the receiving end to engage in different conduct,” Blinken said. 

Biden at the summit met for the first time with Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, who has questioned not only the legitimacy of upcoming elections at home but also of the US polls in which Biden defeated Trump.

Bolsonaro, who was one of Trump’s closest international allies, told the summit that his meeting with Biden was “simply fantastic.”

He also said he believed he could support agribusiness without destroying the Amazon, a long source of contention due to the rainforest’s vital role in mopping up carbon emissions.

Blinken called the meeting “constructive” and said that Biden offered to help on forest preservation, acknowledging the US historical responsibility for climate change.

A rare Stradivarius violin that belonged to a Russian-American virtuoso and was used in the “Wizard of Oz” soundtrack sold at auction in New York Thursday for $15.3 million, just below the record for such an instrument, according to auction house Tarisio.

The violin, made in 1714 by master craftsman Antonio Stradivari, belonged to virtuoso Toscha Seidel, who not only used it on the score for the 1939 Hollywood classic, but also no doubt while teaching his famous student Albert Einstein.

“This violin has set side by side with the great mathematician scientist as they played quartets in Albert’s home in Princeton, New Jersey,” said Jason Price, founder of Tarisio, which specializes in stringed instruments.

Seidel, who immigrated to the United States in the 1930s, and Einstein, who fled the Nazi regime in Europe, participated in a New York concert in 1933 in support of fleeing German Jewish scientists.

Of the thousands of instruments made by Stradivari, there are still around 600 known today.

“Of those, many are in museums, many are in foundations and are in situations where they won’t be sold,” Price said.

“There’s a select few which are known as the Golden Period examples, which is approximately between 1710 and 1720,” he said.

“And these, for the most part, are those which are most desired and most highly valued.”

The violin had previously belonged to the Munetsugu collection in Japan. Tarisio did not reveal who the buyer was.

The record for a Stradivarius at auction was set in 2011, when a violin baptized “Lady Blunt,” said to have belonged to Lady Anne Blunt, granddaughter of the poet Lord Byron, was sold for $15.9 in London. 

In 2014, another Stradivarius whose auction price was set at a minimum of $45 million did not sell.

Liz Cheney’s dogged pursuit of Donald Trump over last year’s riot at the US Capitol has cemented her status as the sole Republican to gamble her career as she breaks ranks with her party in the fight for US democracy.

The 55-year-old congresswoman from Wyoming, a daughter of former vice president Dick Cheney, was once seen as the tax-cutting, God-fearing, small-government apotheosis of American conservatism.

But her refusal to accept Trump’s false claims of a stolen 2020 election set her on a collision course with the Trump-dominated modern Republican Party, which booted her out of the leadership and disowned her at home in the “Cowboy State.”   

Cheney was one of just 10 Republicans in the House of Representatives to vote to impeach the former president for inciting the January 6, 2021 insurrection by his supporters.

“Tonight, I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain,” she said Thursday in her role as the vice-chair of the House committee investigating Trump over the insurrection. 

Cheney and her colleagues on the panel maintain that the president and his inner circle were part of a criminal conspiracy to overturn his 2020 election defeat to Joe Biden that culminated in the violence of January 6, 2021.

“In our country, we don’t swear an oath to an individual, or a political party,” Cheney said. “We take our oath to defend the United States Constitution. And that oath must mean something.”

– ‘Evasion and deflection’ –

Critics of the Republican leadership argue that it is an oath that the party largely abandoned in its unswerving fealty to its wayward leader, and the populist “America First” sentiment that swept him to power.

A year and a half after being defeated by Biden, Trump retains an iron grip on the Republican Party, which in February adopted as part of its official policy platform the falsehood that the mayhem at the Capitol constituted “legitimate political discourse.” 

“The parts of the conservative elite that still have some self-knowledge know Liz Cheney is right,” conservative commentator Bill Kristol tweeted on Friday.

“But they can’t take a stand against the new (Trumpist) establishment of which they desperately want to be a part. So it’s all evasion and deflection.”

Only one other Republican, Adam Kinzinger, has joined Cheney’s rebellion — but the stakes are lower for the Illinois congressman as he retires anyway in January.  

Both have been tarred as “RINOs” — “Republicans in name only” — by colleagues with far less conservative voting records.

Other Republican lawmakers have tried to walk a fine line between condemning Trump’s role in whipping up the crowd that stormed the Capitol and staying in his good graces.

Not Cheney.

“The president of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack,” she said as she explained why Trump deserved blame for the insurrection — reprising word-for-word a withering assessment she first deployed during Trump’s second impeachment.    

– Wyoming political royalty –

Cheney, the elder of Dick Cheney’s two daughters, comes from a family that is the equivalent of political royalty in staunchly conservative Wyoming.

From 1979 to 1989, her now 81-year-old father held the House seat that she now occupies.

Dick Cheney resigned from Congress to become defense secretary under president George H.W. Bush and went on to serve for eight years as vice president under president George W. Bush.

After graduating from University of Chicago law school, Liz Cheney worked for the International Finance Corporation and served in various State Department posts.

She made an abortive bid for a US Senate seat from Wyoming in 2014 before winning election to the House in 2016.

She easily won re-election in 2018 and 2020, defeating her Democratic opponents by more than 40 points each time.

But the self-described “proud rodeo mom” of five children may have a tougher time around when she faces re-election in November.

Republican candidates are already lining up to challenge Cheney in the party primaries — and Harriet Hageman, who has the backing of Trump, appears to have built up a substantial lead.

Cheney, Hageman alleged in a statement on Friday, is doing “nothing to fight for the people who are suffering, instead playing a central role in the illegitimate January 6 committee designed to distract people from the miserable record of President Biden.”

Justin Bieber on Friday told fans in a video posted to Instagram that he’s been diagnosed with Ramsay Hunt Syndrome, which is causing him partial facial paralysis.

The 28-year-old pop singer recently announced he was pausing his Justice World Tour due to illness, hours before his first slated concert in Toronto.

Ramsay Hunt Syndrome is a complication of shingles that occurs when an outbreak impacts the facial nerve near one ear. In addition to facial paralysis, it can cause hearing loss.

“As you can see, this eye is not blinking, I can’t smile on this side of my face, this nostril will not move,” Bieber explained in a video.

“So, there’s full paralysis on this side of my face. So for those who are frustrated by my cancellations of the next shows, I’m just physically, obviously, not capable of doing them. This is pretty serious, as you can see.”

The “Peaches” singer said he was doing facial exercises and taking time to “rest and relax and get back to 100 percent so I can do what I was born to do.”

He did not give an estimated timeline for his recovery.

It’s the third instance Bieber’s tour has been postponed, the first two due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

US health experts said Friday that cases of monkeypox that are being detected at the moment do not necessarily display the usual symptoms, making the disease more difficult to diagnose.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stressed that identifying cases was crucial to curbing the spread of the disease.

“We have seen presentations of monkeypox that are mild and sometimes only limited areas of the body, which differs from the classic presentation seen in endemic countries in Western Central Africa,” said Rochelle Walensky, head of the CDC.

“This has prompted concern that some cases may go unrecognized or undiagnosed,” she added, urging increased vigilance among members of the medical profession and the public in general.

Current cases do not always present flu-like symptoms, such as fever, body aches and swollen glands that typically precede the appearance of the rash characteristic of the disease. 

Additionally, while these rashes typically appear all over the body, many current cases are limited to certain areas. 

“It’s important to be aware that monkeypox cases may present similar to some sexually transmitted infections,” such as herpes, “and could be mistaken for other diagnoses,” Walensky said.

The United States has now recorded 45 cases, she added, twice as many as last week. No deaths have been reported. 

As of June 9, around 1,300 cases had been identified worldwide, she said. 

Transmission requires close and prolonged contact between two people. The United States is counting in particular on the vaccination of contact cases to stem the epidemic. 

The country has 100 million doses of the vaccine ACAM2000, but is in the process of getting doses of another more modern vaccine, Jynneos, she said. 

At the end of May, the United States had only 1,000 doses of the newer drug, compared to 72,000 today, said Dawn O’Connell of the Department of Health on Friday. 

Another 300,000 doses are expected to arrive in the coming weeks, she added.