The World and Everything in It - July 6, 2022

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

President Biden’s NATO summit wrapped up last week. What did it accomplish?

NICK EICHER, HOST: That’s ahead on Washington Wednesday.

Also today, World Tour.

Plus another in our occasional series, Destinations: This time, a landmark from the American Industrial Revolution.

And the importance of conversations in cars with our kids.

REICHARD: It’s Wednesday, July 6th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

REICHARD: Time for news. Here’s Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Chicago shooting update » The man suspected of opening fire on a 4th of July parade near Chicago is behind bars. And if prosecutors have their way, he’ll be there the rest of his life.

Eric Rinehart is Lake County state's attorney.

RINEHART: These seven counts of first-degree murder will lead to a mandatory life sentence should he be convicted, without the possibility of parole.

A seventh victim died Tuesday from gunshot wounds.

InviDeputy chief of the Lake County Sheriff’s Office, Christopher Covelli told reporters …

COVELLI: Investigators have been really tirelessly working trying to determine a motive. At this point, there is no definitive motive that he had.

Investigators say Robert E. Crimo III had a history of disturbing behavior and planned this shooting for weeks.

Sweden, Finland » Sweden and Finland are one step closer to becoming members of NATO.

Member nations have signed off on accession protocols.

Secretary general Jens Stoltenberg …

STOLTENBERG: This is a good day for Finland and Sweden and a good day for NATO. With 32 nations around the table, we will be even stronger and our people will be even safer.

But the Nordic nations are not members yet. All 30 existing member nations must ratify the treaty within their own governments. That’s a process that could take up to a year.

And despite a recent agreement between the two nations and Turkey, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is warning that he could still block the countries from joining.

He wants them to agree to extradite people Turkey suspects of terrorism. Finland and Sweden say that was not part of the deal.

Ukraine - Russian advance » In Ukraine, the governor of the eastern Donetsk province has ordered hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes as Russian troops close in. WORLD’s Josh Schumacher reports.

JOSH SCHUMACHER, REPORTER: Russian artillery shells began shaking the ground in the town of Sloviansk in Donetsk this week. The town is one of Russia’s next targets as Moscow's forces aim to conquer all of the Donbas region.

Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko has ordered the roughly 350,000 people remaining in the province to evacuate.

He said the evacuation is necessary to save lives and to clear the way for Ukrainian troops to engage the enemy without fear of civilian casualties.

The governor’s evacuation order came a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin declared victory over the neighboring Luhansk province.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

Biden awards Medal of Honor to vets » President Biden awarded four Army soldiers the Medal of Honor on Tuesday for their bravery in the Vietnam War.

BIDEN: Not every service member has received the recognition they deserve, today we’re setting the record straight.

Spc. Five Dwight Birdwell, helped his unit even with severe injuries.

Spc. Five Dennis Fujii treated the wounded and directed airstrikes.

Retired Maj. John Duffy led troops to fend off an attack and evacuate the wounded after their commander was killed.

BIDEN: 50 years since the jungles of Vietnam, where as young men, these soldiers first proved their mettle.

The fourth recipient was honored posthumously. Staff Sgt. Edward Kaneshiro—died in combat in 1967.

Sydney floods update » The rain keeps falling in Australia where floodwaters have forced some 50,000 people to flee from parts of Sydney. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin has more.

KRISTEN FLAVIN, REPORTER: Emergency response teams responded to roughly 100 calls for help in the overnight hours. That as the New South Wales state government declared a disaster across 23 local jurisdictions.

As of last night, officials had not reported any deaths or serious injuries, though the damage will be catastrophic. Rain levels dropped from 40 or 50 inches on Sunday, to about 8 inches on Monday.

The storm has triggered the fourth flood emergency for the city in the last 18 months.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

Flight delays, cancellations » Chaotic U.S. airports packed throughout the July 4th weekend are beginning to quiet just a bit.

Travelers flying to and from holiday getaways have faced frustrating delays. After travel picked up on Thursday, airlines canceled nearly 3,000 flights.

Tuesday was better, though. Airlines had cancelled fewer than 600 flights as of last night.

More than 9 million flyers flocked to U.S. airports between Thursday and Sunday, peaking at roughly 2.5 million. That’s a new high for the pandemic era. 

I’m Kent Covington. This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 6th of July, 2022.

You’re listening to World Radio and we’re glad you’ve joined us today! Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. It’s time for Washington Wednesday.

First up: Sending a message to Russia.

President Biden recently returned from Madrid, where he joined allies at this year’s NATO summit. While in Spain, he announced that the United States is stepping up its military presence in Europe.

He said the U.S. military will establish a permanent garrison in Poland, and...

BIDEN: We are going to send two additional F-35 squadrons to the UK and station additional air defense and other capabilities in Germany and in Italy.

REICHARD: The president is also sending two warships to Spain. And the United States is preparing to keep—as the president says for the “foreseeable future”—100,000 troops in Europe. That’s a 25-percent increase over U.S. troop levels before Russia invaded Ukraine. 

EICHER: Other NATO allies are also moving to bolster the eastern flank of the alliance.

And President Biden recently announced another $800 million in military aid to Ukraine.

Here now to talk about what it all means is Bradley Bowman. He has served as a top national security adviser to members of the U.S. Senate.

REICHARD: Bradley, good morning.

BRADLEY BOWMAN, GUEST: Good morning to you! Thank you for the opportunity.

REICHARD: What do you believe President Biden and other NATO leaders accomplished during the summit last week in Madrid?

BOWMAN: I think at root what the president accomplished working with our North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies is that they assessed the change to security environment in Europe and globally. And they've made initial announcements to adjust the capabilities of the Alliance to respond accordingly. And I think that's exactly the way strategy should be conducted, right? We don't field forces based on what we feel like or what we think, right? You identify your core interest, you identify the most dangerous and most likely threats to those interests. And then you adjust the resources and posture, military posture that you have accordingly. And so there were some very important announcements here that I think are closing the gap between the military posture we need, the military capabilities we need, and that capability and posture that we have. But a lot of these efforts will not be quick. And will require sustained political and financial support both in Washington but also in capitals in Europe.

REICHARD: Well, as we mentioned, President Biden announced that the U.S. is shifting more troops, fighter jets, and other capabilities to eastern Europe to deter any potential Russian aggression. How significant are these moves in your view?

BOWMAN: I think they’re very significant. I tried to call balls and strikes with respect to the administration, and I was critical that the administration was too slow in providing weapons to Ukraine before the invasion. We knew that something big was coming early last year, and Secretary Blinken was warning in November that some sort of Russian attack was coming. And yet we lost valuable weeks in November, December, and January. But since the February 24th invasion, I do give the administration great credit for really moving heaven and earth to get extraordinary amounts of equipment to Ukraine. I mean, the Biden administration has committed $7.6 billion in security assistance to Ukraine. Now, $6.9 of that has come since the invasion, but they really have done a great job in reinforcing and sending weapons to Ukraine and also reinforcing NATO's eastern flank, right? Because we didn't want Vladimir Putin to see what he perceived to be as a weak response, and then proceed with pushing the invasion further, and even attacking a NATO member, which would have been of course invoke Article Five, and bring the U.S. into the mixm something that we've been able to avoid since 1949, when NATO was established.

REICHARD: President Trump often complained that certain NATO members were not pulling their weight in terms of paying for their own defense and that of the alliance. Is that still an issue?

BOWMAN: So it is, honestly. So in addition to the summit this week and the new strategic concept that was released, NATO also released its annual report on defense expenditures. And there's good news in that report and there's bad news. The good news is that it is non-U.S., so in other words, the other 29 members continue to increase on an annual basis their expenditures on defense. Translated, that means they're carrying more and more of the security burden themselves, which is great. Now, most of that increase started, honestly, not because of anything President Trump did. But because of the 2014 Crimea invasion. That's the good news that there has been growth in non-U.S. NATO defense spending. The bad news, as demonstrated in this NATO report released last week, is that 20 of the 30 NATO Allies still are not meeting the NATO guideline for spending 2% of gross domestic product on defense. And so what that means to me is that if these countries are already struggling to meet their current commitments to pay the current bill, if you will, and so we just at this summit said, we're going to do all these additional things. Well, are they going to have the political will over the long term to pay that more expensive bill? I don't know. I hope the answer is yes. But when you still have 20 or 30 not meeting the existing commitment, I honestly do have some concerns. Maybe President Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine have shifted the politics enough in those countries where they will be able to put their money where their mouth is, but I think it remains to be seen.

REICHARD: President Biden now is asking Congress to approve the bids of Finland and Sweden to join NATO. This is part of the final step of the process. Assuming this goes off without a hitch and both countries join, what is the significance of adding those countries to the alliance?

BOWMAN: It would be incredibly significant on multiple levels. It would be incredibly significant on multiple levels. Finland and Sweden do not have very large militaries, but they're very capable militaries. And they bring capability in a whole number of areas that would be valuable to the alliance and the United States and our European NATO allies have had a long standing relationship with both Finland and Sweden. So I'm not suggesting that we would be working together for that with them for the first time. But once they're in the Alliance—should all go well and they join the Alliance—then you can actually write them into the war plans and make assumptions and that is very, very helpful. But I would just add that you know, this is not over yet. I hope they do become members, because I think it's good from an American perspective. But we've had all 30 nations sign the accession protocols necessary for Finland and Sweden to join the alliance. But as some of your listeners may know, now their application needs to be approved by all 30 governments. And that means legislatures and parliaments approving them. And one country in particular to watch as Turkey, as some of your listeners may know, President Erdogan struck an 11th hour agreement with Finland and Sweden, which permitted him or enabled him to lift to his hold, if you will, on their application. But it remains to be seen whether the parliament in Turkey will back that move. And so this will take some time when you're talking about 30 different sovereign governments ratifying what was agreed to at the summit.

REICHARD: Let’s talk about U.S. policy with regard to Ukraine now. What more could or should the United States do to support Ukraine that it is not currently doing?

BOWMAN: You know, the United States, as I said earlier, has done a lot and we're doing more than any other country in the world. But, you know, this is unfortunately not going to be something that ends anytime soon, as far as I can tell. And there's a couple of dilemmas that are percolating that I think people need to be aware of. One is that we've basically sent most of the Russian or Soviet origin equipment that was available in Eastern Europe to Ukraine in the early stages of the war. And then when those options were exploited, then we started to send them Western equipment, American equipment, European equipment, and training them on that. And we've also done what's called drawdown authority. Whenever your listeners hear that word drawdown, what that means is we're using or taking equipment, U.S. reserves, reserves designed for our U.S. forces and sending them to Ukraine, I support doing that. But at some point, you run out of those reserves, or it becomes dangerous to keep sending that in terms of having what we need for our own contingencies. And so what that means is going forward, we're going to have to contract for additional weapons systems that we're sending. And that means months or years. And so one area of research here at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies that we've been looking at is where else in the world among non-NATO countries—outside Europe—can you find Russian origin and Soviet origin equipment that we can potentially get our hands on and send directly or indirectly to Ukraine. And our research tells us there are several countries that have both the weapons and potentially the political willingness to do that. So that's, I think, an area that we're gonna have to look at as well as we simultaneously try to over time transition Ukrainian forces to NATO equipment, which we'll be able to sustain and maintain more readily, and frankly, in most cases is more capable than the Russian equipment they're already using.

REICHARD: Bradley Bowman is senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Bradley, thank you so much. Appreciate your time.

BOWMAN: Thank you.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: World Tour with our reporter in Africa, Onize Ohikere.

Hong Kong anniversary—We begin today in Hong Kong.

AUDIO: [Celebration music]

Hong Kong marked the 25th anniversary of its handover from Britain without the usual freedom rallies and protests. Instead, Chinese authorities tightened security ahead of the day and warned the few remaining opposition groups in the territory against protesting.

This year’s anniversary marks the mid-way point of the 50-year agreement approved by China and Britain that created the “two systems, one country” policy..

China’s President Xi Jinping attended the two-day celebration in his first visit off the mainland since the pandemic began.

XI: [Speaking in Mandarin]

Xi said Hong Kong has emerged victorious from the fire of its recent challenges.

He also inaugurated the city’s new government led by John Lee. Lee formerly served as a security chief who oversaw the police response to the territory’s protests in 2019.

Flooding threat in Sydney—Next, to Australia, where heavy rainfall in Sydney has prompted evacuations.

AUDIO: [Ongoing rescue efforts]

Authorities have asked more than 50,000 residents in the Sydney suburbs to evacuate. Days of heavy rainfall caused dams to overflow and waterways to spill over their banks. Strong winds also toppled trees and blocked road access in some areas.

Dominic Perrottet is the New South Wales Premier.

PERROTTET: To see what we're seeing right across Sydney, there's no doubt these events are becoming more common and governments need to respond and adjust to the changing conditions we find ourselves in.

The latest rainfall marks the fourth, and possibly worst, round of flooding in Sydney in less than a year and a half.

U.S.-Africa military exercises wrap up—We head over to Africa, where the United States and a dozen other countries wrapped up a military operation in the southern Moroccan desert.

AUDIO: [Tank explosion]

More than 7,500 service members took part in the second annual “African Lion” war games. It included operations in Ghana, Senegal, and Tunisia. Israel joined the partner countries for the first time.

General Stephen J. Townsend, who leads the U.S. Africa Command, said this year’s training comes as violent extremism rises across Western Africa. He also pointed at the growing presence of malign actors, such as the Russian mercenary group known as Wagner.

AUDIO: [Music playing at ECOWAS summit]

Meanwhile, West African leaders on Sunday also called for stronger action against the growing insurgency in the region.

Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo is also chair of the Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS.

AKUFO-ADDO: These terrorist attacks are now not only focusing on the Sahel but also expanding to coastal states in our region.

Sierra Leone seeks to decriminalize abortion— Finally, we end today in Sierra Leone.

AUDIO: [Crowd cheering]

The government has approved a draft law that would see the small West African nation decriminalize abortion.

President Julius Maada Bio made the announcement during the 10th Africa Conference on Sexual Health and Rights in the capital city of Freetown.

BIO: My government has unanimously approved the safe motherhood bill. This bill will include a range of critical provisions to ensure the health and dignity of all girls and women of reproductive age in this country.

Parliament will still debate and vote on the bill.

Sierra Leone’s abortion law dates back to pre-independence in 1861 and bans the procedure unless the mother’s life is at risk. The country also has one of the world’s highest maternal mortality rates.

That’s it for this week’s World Tour. Reporting for WORLD, I’m Onize Ohikere in Abuja, Nigeria.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Officials in Wilmington, Delaware were blown away by what they found hiding behind a wall inside a shopping mall.

It was like stepping inside a time capsule. Totally out-of-date design that included parquet floors, fake potted plants, and walls stained with ketchup.

County Executive Matt Meyer was surprised to stumble upon it.

MEYER: This is probably the oldest still intact, Burger King restaurant in the world.

That’s right. A vintage Burger King, still in operation 13 years ago.

Some locals remembered it'd been there, but they didn’t think it was still there, hiding behind that wall.

The mall’s hoping to rent the place out. Probably after they clean it up a bit.

MEYER: Looks like they left us, uhh, some fries here.

Lost the old appetite.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Wednesday, July 6th.

This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported World Radio. Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Coming next: Preserving history!

It’s not every day that you get to touch and feel a relic from the past while people who used that relic tell you about it! WORLD’s Myrna Brown did that and she came away with a story about people in one southern city who made their mark on the American Industrial Revolution.

AUDIO: [TRAIN]

MYRNA BROWN CORRESPONDENT: Standing at least 115 feet high, two brownish-red furnaces dominate the skyline. Connected to them, 15 acres of pipes and machinery. As I pull into the long driveway that parallels this massive mound of steel and brick, familiar sounds from the nearby railroad bring to mind an era gone by.

TY MALUGANI: This is the only museum like it in the country where they took a furnace site like this in the 20th century and turned the site into a museum.

Ty Malugani is the keeper of this national historic landmark. Malugani leads tours and answers questions from students, families and curious reporters about producing iron—found in everything from railroads and stoves to your grandmother’s cast iron skillet.

MYRNA TO MALUGANI: So, what I’m pointing at right now is the furnace? No. That’s the furnace.

The original cylinder-like furnaces were built in 1882, under the leadership of Colonel James Withers Sloss. After the Civil war, Sloss and other land developers began exploring a region called Jones Valley, present day Birmingham, Alabama.

MALUGANI: Birmingham wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the rocks found in this area. The main rocks are iron/ore, limestone and coal. And these are the three main ingredients you need to make iron.

Northern states, like Pennsylvania, had already been producing iron, taking the lead in the American Industrial Revolution. In the South, cotton was king, until others discovered the ingredients necessary for producing iron here.

MALUGANI: It’s really one of the only places in the world where they’re all found this close together. They were able to own their own iron/ore, their own limestone, their own coal. They didn’t have to pay another company to get those things out.

Instead, Colonel Sloss simply started his own company. Within two decades, Sloss Furnaces became the world’s largest manufacturer of pig iron, a nick-name for crude iron produced in the blast furnaces that still stand today.

MALUGANI: And so what’s behind me are the boilers, which would create steam to power the machines throughout the site. I’m standing next to the hot blast stoves, tall, silo-looking things that are heating up air to be pumped into the furnaces to make them more efficient.

Often the furnaces would reach temperatures up to 3,800 degrees, which made summers at Sloss dangerous.

MALUGANI: All the staircases have metal handrails. They said with these machines running, sometimes the metal would get so hot, they couldn’t use them because the metal would burn their hands.

The site ran 365 days a year, 24 hours a day for 88 years.

MALUGANI: How brilliant these men were at their jobs. That they were able to keep the site running with very little training is a very important part of this story.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham captured a part of that story in 1984 through oral histories of the men who worked the furnace.

INTERVIEWER: Testing for sound, testing for sound. Would you start by giving me your full name…David Allen Sr. and I was born in Andalusia, Alabama in 1909. Frank Campbell Jr….Joel Ben Brooks…

These are the voices of former Sloss Furnaces workers. A then 75-year-old David Allen Sr. was a father of six and a man of faith who worked as a fireman in the furnace.

ALLEN: The furnace burns you up. I got marks on me now. But God do it. He meets your needs. I searched the Bible and I can’t see no where it says he meets your wants.

Mississippi-born Ulysses Anderson worked at Sloss for 15 years as a laborer.

ANDERSON: Whew, my foot got so hot. Now, I wanted to quit. When you are trying to be a man, you don’t call it hard work. When you got children. I had one child and I was trying to make a way for her.

Along with the physical demands, Frank Campbell, a painter and carpenter, described other limitations forced on the company's black workers.

CAMPBELL: They had a white job over there and a colored job. Some of ’em treat you fair. Some of ’em didn’t. But that was the rules and regulations. And nobody didn’t say much about it, but if you got to be disagreeable, they’d run you away from here.

Despite the segregated spaces at Sloss that mirrored the culture of that era, many of the men interviewed recalled the unspoken brotherhood that existed and even eclipsed skin color. Here’s David Allen Sr. again and veteran stove tender, John Cherneski.

CHERNESKI: If the furnace blew up, you’d reach in there. You wouldn’t think about your own life. You can’t explain it. You have to work on a blast furnace to know that. I didn’t care if he was black and he didn’t care if I was white. If I was in trouble, he automatically helped me and brought me out of there.

ALLEN: There’s a devil in that furnace and ya’ll got to keep it going. You better get together. And who gonna pick you up when you fall out?

Back at the site and nearing the end of my tour, Ty Malugani says that same solidarity helped save Sloss Furnaces when it closed in 1971.

MALUGANI: The market for pig iron was dying so you have plastics and other materials starting to replace cast iron products.

Unsure about what to do next, the city began planning for the site’s demolition.

MANUGANI: When the people of Birmingham heard about this plan, they got very upset. They formed the Sloss Furnaces Association and the people are what saved this site.

Sloss Furnaces became a museum in 1983, a decade after long-time boiler maker and foreman,V. W. Johnson put away his goggles and steel toe boots for the last time.

V.W. JOHNSON: Driving by when I come down First Avenue there, I mean, I just look and I can just live everything that happened while we was working in here. All them memories. I don’t reckon they’ll ever leave you.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Myrna Brown in Birmingham, Alabama.

EICHER: If you’d like to see what a blast furnace looks like, you can check out Myrna’s companion piece she produced for WORLD Watch, our video news program for students. We’ll post a link in today’s transcript.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, July 6th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Coming up next, WORLD’s Kelsey Reed, our news coach for families with young students.

She has this encouragement for families doing road trips this summer.

KELSEY REED, NEWS COACH: I love car rides with my kids. I find they provide space and time for discipleship. Don’t get me wrong: we work on good conversations and good manners around the dinner table. We talk after movies or while reading books. But the best conversations often happen in the car: everyone buckled in…nowhere else to go.

My parents were missionaries and church planters. I traveled a ton as a kid. When I was young, we didn’t have the tech of this generation. So, we found other ways to pass the time. The long journey slowed us down. A trip was a chance for thinking instead of doing.

More importantly, it was a time for relationship. A time for exploration and curiosity. In the car, my parents were as much a captive audience as we were. They observed the world with us. They welcomed our questions and asked their own. This modeled a conversational method I learned to prize…and later apply.

Now with my own family, we try to push back the pacifier of technology. This can be particularly difficult on the road - yet so worthwhile.

AUDIO: [Car convo]

The road-trip conversations we’ve had with our children are as wide-ranging as our destinations. Their responses to a podcast. Our discussion of a favorite audiobook. Even analysis of the music we choose. “What do the words mean? When was it written? What made it so popular?”

As we talk, my daughters are developing their curiosity about the world. At the same time, they are developing their worldview. As they grow, their questions mature as well.

AUDIO: [Car convo]

At God’s WORLD News we use three key words to describe our discipleship materials: discovery, exploration, and discernment. We want to encourage a child’s natural curiosity. To delight in their questions.

When we ask questions and cultivate question-asking, we promote not only curiosity but critical thinking. We want to discover and discern—not merely absorb. What is true? What is good? What is lovely? How do we know?

In a journalistic enterprise, question-asking is at the heart of our process. They help us build a complete story. They provide self-examination for the story-teller. They are the tools we need to discern the story behind the stories.

As my family hits the road. The rhythm of the highway soothes us. The melody of conversation washes over us. We reiterate foundational truths. We reinforce the bond. Together we engage the stories of the world, and revel in the beauty of His story—all from the seats of our mobile classroom—the family car.

I’m Kelsey Reed.

MUSIC: [LIFE IS A HIGHWAY by RASCAL FLATTS]

REICHARD: To find out more about our God’s WORLD News publications for children and to read more from Kelsey, visit gwnews.com.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: The fallout from a decision by the Christian Reformed Church to insist on Biblical standards among its churches on issues of human sexuality. One congregation is challenging those standards and sticking by its ordination of a deacon in a same-sex union.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio.

WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

Jesus said: Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. (Matt. 7:7-8 ESV)

Go now in grace and peace.

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