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US President Joe Biden heads Wednesday to a Latin America summit on a mission to woo back the region as his administration pledged greater economic cooperation, investment and a program to train half a million health workers.

Biden is hoping to cement ties with a region long seen by Washington as its turf but where China has quickly emerged as a leading investor, although the administration has focused on modest progress rather than sweeping proposals.

“We need to demonstrate,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday at the weeklong summit, “that democracies can really effectively deliver for their citizens.”

Hours before Biden was to arrive, the White House announced a new Americas Health Corps that aims to improve the skills of 500,000 health workers across the region, building on the lessons from Covid-19, which hit the Western Hemisphere especially hard.

The health training will cost $100 million, although the United States will not contribute it all and will seek to raise funds, including through the Pan American Health Organization, an administration official said.

China has stepped up its role in Latin America during the pandemic, moving early to supply vaccines, and US nemesis Cuba has long exported its state-employed doctors. 

Biden will separately announce plans for a hemisphere-wide “economic partnership,” although there were few concrete commitments as part of it.

The announcements comes a day after Vice President Kamala Harris detailed $1.9 billion in private-sector investment in impoverished and violence-ravaged El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

The troubles in the so-called Northern Triangle, as well as Haiti, have generated a soaring number of migrants to the United States, setting off a domestic furor as Donald Trump’s Republican Party demands efforts to stop them.

– Trade deals lite –

The Summit of the Americas is the first in the United States since the inaugural edition in 1994 was held in Miami under Bill Clinton, who proposed a free-trade zone that would span the hemisphere other than communist Cuba.

The White House billed Biden’s summit as an update to Clinton’s vision. But the US political mood has since dramatically soured on free trade, with Biden’s predecessor Trump rising to power denouncing liberalization as harmful to US workers. 

The Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity, to be announced by Biden, will look at coordinating on standards and supply chains but will not offer new market access — a key incentive offered to the region by China, with its billion-plus consumer market.

Stronger supply chains will help “our hemisphere reduce overdependence and concentration on certain countries,” another administration official said.

Biden last month similarly unveiled an Asian partnership on setting economic standards as he visited Tokyo.

But unlike in Asia, the United States already has free-trade deals with a number of major Latin American nations including Mexico, Chile, Colombia and Peru.

The official said the new partnership would start with “like-minded countries,” without naming them.

While hesitant on free trade, Biden has stood firm on another core principle of the original Summit of the Americas — democracy — even as he considers going next month to Saudi Arabia, a critical oil supplier.

Draining US diplomatic energy ahead of the summit, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador refused to attend as he insisted that Biden invite the leftist leaders of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, shunned on the grounds that they are autocrats.

Biden is separately expected to meet President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, Latin America’s most populous nation, despite rising fears that the Trump ally will not accept the legitimacy of upcoming elections.

– ‘Nearshoring’ –

Mauricio Claver-Carone, the president of the Inter-American Development Bank, said that Latin America can increasingly be seen as a “sea of peace” for investors amid the global turbulence from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and rising risks associated with China.

The head of the bank, which provides development funding in Latin America, said he saw a rise of “nearshoring,” with businesses moving closer to markets instead of to China.

Since the first Summit of the Americas, “each dollar that went to China was one dollar, one investment, one job less for Latin America and the Caribbean,” he told AFP in an interview in Los Angeles.

In Latin America, “whether they are governments of the left or the right, they all want foreign investment, they all want nearshoring, they all want economic growth,” he said.

UN chief Antonio Guterres said Wednesday that the consequences for the world of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are worsening, with 1.6 billion people likely to be affect.

“The war’s impact on food security, energy and finance is systemic, severe, and speeding up,” the Secretary-General said, presenting the UN’s second report into the repercussions of the conflict.

He added that “for people around the world, the war is threatening to unleash an unprecedented wave of hunger and destitution, leaving social and economic chaos in its wake.”

Guterres said that while this year’s food crisis is “about lack of access,” next year’s “could be about lack of food.”

“There is only one way to stop this gathering storm: the Russian invasion of Ukraine must end,” he pleaded in a speech.

The head of the world body said he had asked colleagues to help find “a package deal that allows for the safe and secure export of Ukrainian-produced food through the Black Sea, and unimpeded access to global markets for Russian food and fertilizers.”

“This deal is essential for hundreds of millions of people in developing countries, including in sub-Saharan Africa,” said Guterres.

The UN report, led by diplomat Rebeca Grynspan, says that an estimated 94 countries, home to around 1.6 billion people, are “severely exposed to at least one dimension of the crisis and unable to cope with it.”

“Out of the 1.6 billion, 1.2 billion or three quarters live in ‘perfect-storm’ countries that are severely exposed and vulnerable to all three dimensions of finance, food, and energy, simultaneously,” it adds.

The report says that the war may increase the number of food-insecure people by 47 million people in 2022, bringing it to 323 million by the end of the year.

It is estimated that up to 58 million more Africans may fall into poverty this year, the document adds.

Extreme poverty in the Middle East and North Africa could increase by 2.8 million people in 2022, while in South Asia 500 million people are at risk, according to the report.

“Concrete efforts should be made to ensure critical supplies of food and energy reach the most vulnerable,” the report says.

Simone Biles, Aly Raisman and other star US gymnasts filed a $1 billion claim against the FBI on Wednesday for mishandling of the investigation into sexual abuse by predatory former team doctor Larry Nassar.

Nassar, 58, is serving a life sentence after pleading guilty in late 2017 and early 2018 to sexually assaulting athletes while working as a sports medicine doctor at USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University.

Hundreds of women — including Olympic gold medalists Biles, Raisman and McKayla Maroney — have accused Nassar of sexually abusing them during his more than two-decade career.

Biles, Raisman and Maroney are among the more than 90 women who have filed the federal tort claim against the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the law firms handling the case said in a joint statement.

“The majority of claimants consists of over 90 young women and girls who were abused after 2015 due to the FBI’s failure to take required steps to protect them,” they said.

The claim against the FBI comes just days after the Department of Justice announced it was not bringing any charges against two now retired FBI special agents who mishandled the Nassar investigation.

“My fellow survivors and I were betrayed by every institution that was supposed to protect us — the US Olympic Committee, USA Gymnastics, the FBI and now the Department of Justice,” Maroney said in a statement. 

“I had some hope that they would keep their word and hold the FBI accountable,” she said. “It is clear that the only path to justice and healing is through the legal process.”

– ‘Grossly derelict’ –

The law firms said the FBI received credible complaints in July 2015 of Nassar’s sexual assaults and was “then able to immediately end Nassar’s predation.”

“However, the FBI was grossly derelict in their duties by declining to interview gymnasts who were willing to talk about the abuse,” they said.

“As a result, Nassar continued his predatory behavior, sexually assaulting approximately 90 young women and children between July 28, 2015, and September 12, 2016,” they added.

An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment on the legal claim but pointed reporters to testimony before a Senate committee in September 2021 by FBI director Christopher Wray.

Addressing Nassar’s victims, Wray said: “I’m especially sorry that there were people at the FBI who had their own chance to stop this monster back in in 2015 and failed.”

“That’s inexcusable,” the FBI director said. “It never should have happened. And we’re doing everything in our power to make sure it never happens again.”

Nassar’s victims reached a $380 million settlement with USA Gymnastics last year, one of the largest ever recorded for victims of sex abuse.

USA Gymnastics filed for bankruptcy in 2018 after a tidal wave of allegations against Nassar swamped the organization.

Michigan State University reached a $500 million settlement with hundreds of Nassar’s victims in 2018.

Kyiv’s forces may have to retreat from the eastern city of Severodonetsk, a senior Ukrainian official conceded on Wednesday, as diplomatic efforts intensified to unblock grain stuck in Ukraine’s ports.

The strategic city has become the focus of Russia’s offensive as it seeks to seize an eastern swathe of Ukraine, after being repelled from other parts of the country. 

Moscow claimed on Tuesday they had full control of residential areas while Kyiv was still holding the industrial zone and surrounding settlements, but Ukrainian officials insisted the Russians were not in control of the city.

On Wednesday, Sergiy Gaiday — governor of the Lugansk region, which includes the city — said Ukraine’s forces might have to pull back as Severodonetsk is being shelled by Russian troops “24 hours a day”.

“It is possible that we will have to retreat” to better fortified positions, he said in an interview on the TV channel 1+1. 

Russia’s offensive is now targeting the Donbas region, which includes Lugansk and Donetsk, after its forces were pushed back from Kyiv and other areas following the February invasion.

The cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, which are separated by a river, are the last areas still under Ukrainian control in Lugansk.

As concerns mounted over grain trapped at Ukrainian ports, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow was ready to ensure the safe passage of ships from Ukraine.

“We are ready to do this in cooperation with our Turkish colleagues,” Lavrov told reporters in Ankara amid stark warnings of shortages worldwide partly blamed on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

His Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu called Russian demands for an end to sanctions to help grain onto the world market “legitimate”.

“If we need to open up the international market to Ukrainian grain, we see the removal of obstacles standing in the way of Russia’s exports as a legitimate demand,” he said.

However Kyiv, which was not represented at the Ankara talks, pushed back against claims that Western sanctions on Moscow had sent prices soaring.

“We have been actively communicating, the president and myself, about the true cause of this crisis: it is Russian aggression, not sanctions,” Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said. 

Moscow’s campaign in the pro-Western country has not only devastated crops and farming, but also disrupted crucial deliveries from Ukraine — one of the world’s main grain producers.

– ‘Millions’ could die –

Ukraine said on Wednesday it would not demine waters around the Black Sea port of Odessa to allow grain exports, citing the threat of Russian attacks on the city.

At the request of the United Nations, Turkey has offered its services to escort maritime convoys from Ukrainian ports, despite the presence of mines — some of which have been detected near the Turkish coast.

Both sides accuse one another of destroying agricultural areas, which could worsen global food shortages.

As he hosted Mediterranean ministers on the global food crisis, Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio warned “millions” could die unless Russia unblocked Ukraine’s ports.

But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected suggestions that grain stuck in Ukrainian ports was fuelling a global food crisis.

“As far as we know, there is much less grain than the Ukrainians say. There is no need to exaggerate the importance of these grain reserves,” he told reporters.

The war’s economic impact continued to reverberate, with the World Bank cutting its global growth estimate to 2.9 percent — 1.2 percentage points below the January forecast — due largely to the invasion.

The toxic combination of weak growth and rising prices could trigger widespread suffering in dozens of poorer countries still struggling to recover from the upheaval of the Covid-19 pandemic, the bank said.

“The risk from stagflation is considerable with potentially destabilising consequences for low- and middle-income economies,” World Bank President David Malpass told reporters.

“For many countries recession will be hard to avoid,” Malpass said.

The bank additionally announced $1.5 billion more in aid for Ukraine, bringing the total planned support package to more than $4 billion.

The OECD also warned the world economy would pay a “hefty price” for the Russian invasion as it slashed its 2022 growth forecast and projected higher inflation.

– ‘Bombings every day’ –

Severodonetsk appeared close to being captured just days ago but Ukrainian forces launched counterattacks and managed to hold out, despite warnings they were outnumbered by superior forces.

“Severodonetsk is where the fiercest battles are raging,” Ukrainian defence ministry spokesman Olexandr Motuzianyk said, adding that its troops were mounting counterassaults where possible. 

Lanny Davis, a US lawyer for Ukraine tycoon Dmytro Firtash, said 800 civilians had taken refuge in the bunkers inside his huge Azot chemical plant in the city.

The situation was also increasingly desperate in Lysychansk.

“Every day there are bombings and every day something burns. A house, a flat… And there is nobody to help me,” 70-year-old Yuriy Krasnikov told AFP.

“I tried to go to the city authorities, but nobody’s there, everyone has run away.”

Ivan Sosnin was among those residents who decided to stay despite the war.

“This is our home, that’s all we know. We grew up here, where else should we go?” said the 19-year-old.

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An 11-year-old who smeared herself with her murdered friend’s blood to play dead during last month’s school shooting in the US state of Texas relived the horror of her ordeal before a panel of lawmakers on Wednesday.

Miah Cerrillo, a fourth grader at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, recounted in terrifying detail the moments when 19 of her schoolmates and two teachers were killed by an 18-year-old gunman.

She recalled how her class had been watching a movie and scrambled behind their teacher’s desk and their backpacks when the shooter burst in.

“He… told my teacher ‘goodnight’ and then shot her in the head. And then he shot some of my classmates and the white board,” Miah said in a brief but gut-wrenching pre-recorded interview.  

“When I went to the backpacks, he shot my friend who was next to me and I thought he was going to come back into the room so I grabbed a little blood and put it all over me.”

Miah recalled how she kept completely silent, before grabbing her dead teacher’s cell phone when the moment came and dialing 911.

“I told her that we need help — and to see the police in our classroom,” she said.

Police in Uvalde have come under intense scrutiny after it emerged that more than a dozen officers waited outside the door of Miah’s class and did nothing as the children lay dead or dying.

Miah was asked what she wanted to see happen in the wake of the attack.

“To have security,” she said, confirming that she feared a mass shooter could target her school again.

“I don’t want it to happen again,” she said.

– ‘Pulverized by bullets’ –

Miah is experiencing nightmares and still healing from bullet fragments in her back as she wrestles with trauma, her father, Miguel Cerrillo, told USA Today.

“She’s not the same little girl I used to play with,” he told the committee.

Miah’s testimony comes with Congress facing mounting pressure to respond to out-of-control gun violence — and particularly mass shootings — across the country.

Massacres at Miah’s school and days earlier at a supermarket in Buffalo, in upstate New York, have convulsed the nation, reigniting urgent calls for gun safety reforms.

The House Oversight and Reform Committee also heard from relatives of victims in recent mass shootings, including Zeneta Everhart, the mother of a 21-year-old survivor of the racist killing spree that left 10 Black people dead in Buffalo.

“My son Zaire has a hole in the right side of his neck, two on his back and another on his left leg, caused by an exploding bullet from an AR-15,” Everhart told lawmakers. 

“As I clean his wounds, I can feel pieces of that bullet in his back. Shrapnel will be left inside of his body for the rest of his life. Now I want you to picture that exact scenario for one of your children.”

Roy Guerrero, a pediatrician who attended to several victims in Uvalde, spoke of encountering “two children whose bodies had been pulverized by bullets fired at them, decapitated, whose flesh had been ripped apart.”

– ‘Elected to protect us’ –

A cross-party group of senators is working on a narrow collection of controls that could develop into their first serious attempt at gun regulation reform in decades.

The package would boost funding for mental health services and school security, narrowly expand background checks, and incentivize states to institute so-called “red flag laws” enabling authorities to confiscate weapons from individuals considered a threat. 

Crucially, the package does not include an assault weapons ban or universal background checks, meaning it will fall short of the expectations of President Joe Biden, progressive Democrats, and anti-gun violence activists.

But even this compromise deal has to run the gauntlet of an evenly divided Senate and earn the votes of at least 10 Republicans, most of whom are against significant regulatory reform.

On the other side of the Capitol, House Democrats are set to pass the much broader package of proposals later Wednesday that includes raising the purchasing age for semi-automatic rifles from 18 to 21.

The proposals are going nowhere — they do not have the 60 votes they would need to advance in the Senate — but Democratic leadership has been keen to act after the spate of recent mass shootings.

Garnell Whitfield Jr, the son of Buffalo massacre victim Ruth Whitfield, who was 86, testified Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee on white supremacist violence.

“You expect us to continue to forgive and forget over and over again? And what are you doing? You were elected to protect us and protect our way of life,” the retired fire commissioner said in an emotional appeal to senators. 

The United States will phase out single-use plastics in national parks and other public lands over the next decade, President Joe Biden’s administration announced Wednesday as part of actions on World Oceans Day.

This will include the sale and distribution of plastic bags and bottles as well as food wrappers, beverage cups and other tableware, according to an order by the interior secretary Deb Haaland.

Government departments have one year to develop plans to switch over to alternatives, such as biodegradable and compostable materials, and then have until 2032 to complete the transition.

“As the steward of the nation’s public lands, including national parks and national wildlife refuges, and as the agency responsible for the conservation and management of fish, wildlife, plants and their habitats, we are uniquely positioned to do better for our Earth,” Haaland said in a statement.

Plastic waste is devastating for fish and other wildlife, with oceans bearing the brunt of the impact since they are downstream of all pollution sources.

Of the more than 300 million tons of plastic produced every year, at least 14 million tons end up in the ocean, the interior department said.

While the plastics industry has attempted to portray the problem as something that can be overcome through recycling, only nine percent of all the plastic the world has ever made has been recycled, and recycling rates are stagnant.

Christy Leavitt, plastics campaign director for non-profit Oceana, welcomed the administration’s announcement.

“The Biden administration is taking a big step to protecting our oceans from single use plastic,” Leavitt told AFP.

Oceana and 300 other nonprofits, organizations, and businesses had sought the action in a letter to the Biden administration last year.

The order will cover the nation’s 423 national parks but also wildlife refuges and other lands and waters managed by the interior department: in total 20 percent of the United States’ land, which hosts some 400 million visitors annually.

“Ten years is a long time, but we are hopeful that they will take steps along the way to reach that end goal,” said Leavitt.

A number of larger national parks have already moved toward eating areas with reusable tableware and refillable water stations, she added.

“We are hopeful that ultimately not just our national parks and other public lands but cities and counties and states around the country can move towards those reusable and refillable systems.”

The White House also announced a new national marine sanctuary to preserve the Hudson Canyon, an ecological hotspot located approximately 100 miles off the coast of New York and reaches depths of 2.5 miles, as well as the start of efforts to create an Ocean Climate Action Plan.

US police arrested an armed man who made threats against Brett Kavanaugh near the conservative Supreme Court justice’s home, the court said Wednesday.

“At approximately 1:50 AM today, a man was arrested near Justice Kavanaugh’s residence. The man was armed and made threats against Justice Kavanaugh,” court spokeswoman Patricia McCabe said in a statement.

The arrest came as the court prepares to release potentially landmark judgements on politically charged cases on gun rights and abortion.

The Washington Post, citing anonymous officials, said the man was arrested not far from Kavanaugh’s house in Chevy Chase, Maryland, just outside of Washington, carrying a weapon and burglary tools.

He told officers that he wanted to kill the justice, the Post said.

The report said investigators understood from initial evidence that the man, in his 20s, was angry about a leaked draft opinion that indicated the court could be poised to overturn federal protections for abortion rights, which will likely allow many states to ban the procedure outright.

After the draft opinion, written by conservative Justice Samuel Alito, was leaked at the beginning of May, supporters of abortion rights protested at the homes of several justices, including Kavanaugh.

The final opinion of the court is due to be released by the end of June, and it remains unknown if it will in fact overturn the five-decade-old Roe v Wade ruling that said women had a constitutional right to obtain abortions.

The man was also angry about the recent spate of mass shootings, the investigators told the Post.

The court is also expected to rule before the end of the month on a New York firearms case that could see it effectively loosen gun control laws.

Kavanaugh is one of six justices in the court’s conservative wing, against three progressives.