After months of building pressure from Congress, the State Department will provide House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) and Ranking Member Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) access to an internal cable about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were involved in a "near catastrophic car chase" with photographers on Tuesday evening, a royal biographer said Wednesday citing the prince's spokesperson.
Driving the news: The chase involved a "ring of highly aggressive paparazzi," the spokesperson said, and took place after the couple attended an awards ceremony held in New York City.
The fight for transgender rights in Europe has made significant gains in recent years compared to the U.S., but those advances remain at risk due to anti-trans backlash.
BEIRUT — In last week’s escalationbetween Gaza and Israel, the shots were called by leaders of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group based in Lebanon — now a strategic center of operations for multiple Palestinian armed groups.
The big picture: As the Arab world normalizes relations with Israel, the leaders of the PIJ and Gaza’s largest militant group, Hamas, have found support from Iran and its militant proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will attend Friday's Arab League leaders summit on Friday, his country's foreign minister announced on Wednesday.
Why it matters: It will be the first time Assad has attended the summit since 2010. Saudi Arabia invited Assad to the gathering after the Arab League agreed to readmit Syria to the organization earlier this month following a nearly 12-year suspension.
The Biden administration proposed to Israel a few weeks ago the idea of engaging in joint military planning concerning Iran, three U.S. and Israeli officials told Axios.
Why it matters: U.S. officials say the proposal is unprecedented and could significantly upgrade U.S.-Israeli military cooperation.
The White House wants to make a diplomatic push for a Saudi-Israeli peace deal in the next six to seven months before the presidential election campaign consumes President Biden’s agenda, two U.S. officials with knowledge of the issue told Axios.
Why it matters: Any normalization agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel brokered by the U.S. will likely include an upgrade in U.S.-Saudi relations and a package of tangible deliverables from the U.S. government.
The Republican governors of Florida and Idaho are sending law enforcement officers and other assistance to the U.S.-Mexico border, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) announced Tuesday.
Driving the news: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he'll send resources and over 1,100 to Texas — including 800 state National Guard members, 200 law enforcement officers in teams of 40 and five aircrafts.
The Department of Justice announced Tuesday five criminal cases involving people accused of stealing or illegally transferring U.S. technology to businesses and governments in China, Russia and Iran.
Why it matters: The cases, and four arrests associated with them, were the first enforcement actions taken by a new DOJ team meant to prevent nation-state adversaries from stealing critical U.S. technologies.
The big picture: About 10% of students in K-12 public schools are English learners, meaning they are learning English for the first time. These students often struggle academically and were severely affected by pandemic school closures, according to data.
Researchers saythey could benefit from enrolling in what are known as two-way dual language immersion programs where half the students are native English speakers looking to learn, say, Spanish, and the other half are native Spanish speakers.
Instead, English learners are increasingly left out of dual language immersion programs as these schools expand into wealthier and less accessible neighborhoods, says researcher Conor P. Williams, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation.
Details: Williams and otherresearchers examined 1,600 dual-language immersion programs in 13 states and Washington, D.C., and found that the share of English learners in a majority of programs in several cities declined over the past five years, while the share of white native-English speakers increased.
Several studies have found that English learners do better in bilingual programs instead of in English-only programs.
Native English speakers also benefit from being in school with non-English speakers. That's when utility comes into play — students who have little choice but to learn each others' languages, Williams says.
Between the lines: Programs for English learners have always been underfunded and some states have particularly troubling policies, Amalia Chamorro, director of the education policy project at UnidosUS, tells Axios Latino.
For example, even though some Arizona public schools have dual language immersion programs, English learners are effectively barred from participating in them. Instead, they are required under law to be in English immersion programs.
"Leaning into bilingualism, multilingualism, multiculturalism is an asset," Chamorro says, but the needs of English learners should be considered, too.
UnidosUS and 162 other organizations are asking Congress to fund English learner programs to the tune of $2 billion for the upcoming fiscal year.
The budget was $890 million in the 2023 budget year, which amounts to only $174 per English learner, according to UnidosUS.
What they're saying: Education leaders should consider establishing programs in neighborhoods with a high percentage of non-native English speakers to ensure equity among the student body, the researchers of the new study say.
They also recommend thatstate and federal governments create competitive grants for schools interested in establishing their dual language programs.
Finally, the researchers say education leaders should address the bilingual teacher shortage by creating a pipeline and establishing provisional teacher licenses for adults with college degrees who are proficient in the non-English languages being taught in dual immersion programs.
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Arfiya Eri, who last month became the first Japanese person of Uyghur heritage to be elected to the country's National Diet, hopes to show the world that while Uyghurs face genocide in China, elsewhere they are succeeding in politics, business and other fields, she told Axios in an interview.
What she's saying: "We are of course victims of genocide. But we are so much more than that. We also deserve to succeed and we deserve to thrive, and that's something I hope to model through my work," Eri told Axios.
A U.S. Department of Justice case against a U.S. citizen accused of working with Chinese government and party officials to surveil local residents could help provide new details about how the Chinese Communist Party allegedly operates in the United States.
The big picture: The Chinese government has long sought to silence global dissent by surveilling, harassing and threatening its critics abroad, and in some cases forcibly bringing them back to China, as part of a phenomenon known as transnational repression.
As the race toward global EV adoption heats up, many Latin American countries with bountiful lithium reserves areadopting a cautious approach to mining the metal.
Why it matters: The world's largest known deposits of the material used for electric vehicle batteries are in Bolivia, Argentina and Chile, known as the lithium triangle.
