The World and Everything in It - May 26, 2021

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

American tax dollars flow by the billions to Central America. It’s an attempt to solve problems at the source. But has it worked?

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

Also World Tour.

Plus a reason to be encouraged about the future of journalism.

REICHARD: It’s Wednesday, May 26th. 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: Up next, Kent Covington has the news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR:  Biden, Putin to meet face to face next month » President Biden and Russia's Vladimir Putin have agreed to meet next month, face to face, in Geneva.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki explained that the president will meet with allies and adversaries alike.

PSAKI: It’s actually important to meet with leaders when we have a range of disagreements, as we do with Russian leader. So we don’t regard the meeting with the Russian president as a reward. We regard it as a vital part of defending America’s interests.

The White House hopes the in-person meeting will help bring some predictability to a dicey relationship that's only worsened in the first months of the Biden administration.

President Biden is expected to raise concerns over matters like Russia’s aggression toward Ukraine.They’ll also likely discuss issues like the continued global response to the pandemic and this week’s forced diversion of a Lithuania-bound flight by Russia-ally Belarus.

The June 16th summit will come at the end of Biden's first international trip as president. He'll also visit Britain for a meeting of G-7 world leaders and attend a NATO summit in Brussels.

U.S. to reopen Jerusalem consulate, upgrading Palestinian ties » The United States will reopen its consulate in Jerusalem. The move will restore ties with Palestinians. The consulate long served as an autonomous office in charge of diplomatic relations with the Palestinians. But former President Donald Trump downgraded its operations when he moved the embassy to Jerusalem.

Secretary of State Tony Blinken announced the move Tuesday as he met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank.

BLINKEN: It’s, I think, important to have that platform to be able to more effectively engage not just the Palestinian authority, but Palestinians from different walks of life, the NGO community, the business community, and others.

Blinken did not give a precise date for reopening the consulate.

He’s in the region to help shore up the cease-fire adopted last week that ended a devastating 11-day war between Israel and Gaza's Hamas rulers.

The secretary promised to “rally international support” to help Gaza in the wake of the war. He later announced nearly $40 million in aid to the Palestinians, including $5.5 million in emergency assistance for Gaza.

Blinken underscores Biden admin. Commitment to reviving Iran deal » Also on Tuesday, Secretary Blinken said the administration is still committed to reviving the Iran nuclear deal.

Blinken noted that Iran has enriched uranium faster since the U.S. pullout from the deal under President Trump.

BLINKEN: I think that only underscores the importance, and indeed urgency, in seeing if we can get Iran back into compliance with the agreement.

Critics of Iran nuclear deal say rejoining it would only give Iran more cash to fund terrorism and would not stop the country from developing nuclear weapons.

World powers just opened a fifth round of talks with Iran aimed at bringing the United States back into the agreement.

Washington is not directly involved in the talks, but an American delegation headed by U.S. envoy for Iran, Rob Malley, has been in the Austrian capital. Representatives from the other powers are facilitating indirect talks.

Moderna says its COVID-19 shot works in kids as young as 12 » Moderna said Tuesday its COVID-19 vaccine strongly protects kids as young as 12. That could mean that adolescents will have a second vaccine option in the near future. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin reports.

KRISTEN FLAVIN, REPORTER: Earlier this month, U.S. and Canadian health officials authorized the Pfizer vaccine for children aged 12 and up.

And Moderna appears to be next in line, saying it will submit its teen data to the FDA next month.

The company studied more than 3,700 kids, aged 12 to 17. Early findings suggest the vaccine triggers the same signs of immune protection in kids as it does in adults and the same kind of temporary side effects such as sore arms, headache and fatigue.

The company said the vaccine appeared 93 percent effective two weeks after the first dose.

Both Pfizer and Moderna have begun testing in even younger children, from age 11 down to 6-month-old babies. This testing is more complex: Teens receive the same dose as adults, but researchers are testing smaller doses in younger children. Experts hope to see some results in the fall.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

Mali raises fears of another coup » Soldiers in Mali arrested the West African country's transitional president and prime minister on Monday, raising fears of another military coup.

In a joint statement, the African Union and the United Nations called for the release of President Bah N’Daw and Prime Minister Moctar Ouane.

The arrests came about an hour after the government announced a new Cabinet that excluded two members of the junta that took power in August.

Nine months ago, the military overthrew former President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, and faced global pressure to hand power over to a civilian government. A month later, Moctar Ouane and Bah N’Daw assumed office.

The country is scheduled to hold new elections next February.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: the U.S. effort to stop immigration before it starts. 

Plus, Janie B. Cheaney on the gap between liberal and orthodox Christianity.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST:  It’s Tuesday, the 26th of May, 2021.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. First up: another attempt to solve the surge at the border south of the border.

Last month, the White House announced more than $300 million in aid to the so-called Northern Triangle countries in Central America. That would be Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.

REICHARD: And this is just step one. President Biden has proposed $4 billion in aid to those countries and he’ll spread that out over four years. The aim is to address why people are willing to take such a dangerous trip to the U.S. border. Likely reasons include poverty, violence, and government corruption.

EICHER: The newly announced aid is a return to the approach of the Obama administration. It had allocated more than one-and-a-half billion dollars for Central America as part of what it called the “Alliance for Prosperity” plan.

But what about those efforts? And what about these new efforts? Will they work?

REICHARD: Well, joining us to tackle those questions is WORLD’s national editor, Jamie Dean. Good morning, Jamie!

DEAN: Good morning!

REICHARD: You started your report by describing a particularly interesting statue in Guatemala. Talk about that statue and what it tells us about what’s happening in the region.

DEAN: If you ever visit the town of Salcaja in the western highlands of Guatemala, it would be hard to miss this particular statue. It stands at the entrance of the town on a large platform, and it’s a 40-foot tall depiction of a man in simple clothing carrying a backpack and waving north—toward the southern border of the U.S.

It’s called the Homage to the Migrant. And it’s this town’s way of paying tribute to migrants who have made the long trek to the U.S. and sent millions of dollars in remittances back to the region over decades.

Remittances from the U.S. have become a major source of income in Central America. Guatemalans living in the U.S. sent about $10.5 billion back to Guatemala in 2019—that’s about 13 percent of the country’s GDP.

So that tells us that countries in Central America with high rates of poverty and a low supply of jobs that pay a decent amount have become reliant on the wages that migrants can send back to help families who stay behind.

REICHARD: You wrote a bit about the families who stay behind. We don’t always hear as much about them.

DEAN: That’s right. I spoke with a missionary who lives and works in western Guatemala, and he described the hardship for families who say goodbye to a father or husband or other family members who head north. Even when those migrants are able to send money back and help improve life for their family in Guatemala, those families still suffer from losing the physical presence of a loved one. This missionary told me that he’s met young men who have said: I had what I needed materially while I was growing up, but I didn’t have a dad.

And I think this shows how complicated this picture can become: You can relieve at least some material poverty, but then see families suffering a kind of relational poverty. So there’s a lot going on when we talk about the starting point for migration.

REICHARD: There’s a lot of discussion right now about how the U.S. could help Central American countries improve their situation so that more people might be willing to stay in their home countries. But that’s not new, right?

DEAN: No, it’s not. You can trace discussions of foreign aid to Central America at least as far back as Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, and those efforts have continued over the last five or six decades.

As I was researching this story, I came across a U.S. government report outlining some of the problems in Central America driving migration. Those included “armed conflicts, economic hardships, human rights violations, natural disasters, and political instability.” Those all sound familiar, right? But when I looked at the date of that report it was written in 1989.

So these are long-standing challenges— and we should say that U.S. involvement in the region is a long, complex story as well—but it’s certainly a complicated history that doesn’t yield simple solutions.

REICHARD: Give us a quick review of how U.S. aid to the region works.

DEAN: The U.S. government aims to disperse most aid to nongovernmental organizations and civil service groups in the receiving nations. The idea is to try to avoid giving money directly to corrupt governments.

Congress appropriates the funds and then taps U.S. agencies to disperse the money. For example, United States Agency for International Development focuses on poverty alleviation, and the U.S. State Department focuses on initiatives related to security and violence.

REICHARD: What has been the outcome for those projects? Has the aid worked?

DEAN: It depends on who you ask, but the U.S. Government Accountability Office issued a report in 2019 that said U.S. government agencies had allocated $2.4 billion for projects in the Northern Triangle from 2013 to 2018. (The Northern Triangle is Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras.)

And the conclusion of the report was pretty inconclusive. It said: “Limited information is available about how U.S. assistance improved prosperity, governance, and security in the Northern Triangle.”

REICHARD: So what’s the biggest problem here: Poverty or violence?

DEAN: I’d say both. Not everyone in the Northern Triangle is living in imminent danger all the time, but there are plenty of places where it’s hard to separate the issue of poverty from the issue of security.

I’ll give you an example: A 2015 report by an investigative group called Insight Crime described a tightly managed extortion racket run by infamous gangs like Barrio 18 and MS-13 in Honduras.

On a small scale, these gangs will target corner markets and sometimes street vendors. A gang will demand a supposedly one-time fee from a business owner to operate safely in the neighborhood, but then that turns into weekly payments that can become difficult for a street vendor to afford.

On a bigger scale, this report described gang members operating wide-scale extortion of taxi and bus fleets in the capital city. A leader of an organized group of 80 buses said he was paying four different gangs for the supposed right to operate in the city without facing violence. An initial demand for payment can range from $3,000 to $13,000, and then that’s followed by weekly demands for payments of $300 to $700. The locals call this a war tax.

So you can see how maintaining a simple business or job could be difficult for at least a segment of Hondurans who sometimes decide it would be safer and more sustainable to flee.

REICHARD: Have there been any successes?

DEAN: There have been, and some of them have been notable. A couple of years ago I visited an organization in Honduras called Association for a More Just Society. That’s a Christian group that has received U.S. aid in the past for some of its projects.

A couple of their staff members joined a presidential commission in 2016 that was aimed at confronting massive corruption in the country’s police force. And they managed to eject 5,000 out of 13,000 officers from the ranks, including six out of nine generals. That’s a notable success, and it trickles down to neighborhoods where citizens are more willing to trust the police to help them, and where police can have more success in combating crime.

This organization has also worked to pair crime victims with attorneys who walk them through the process of testifying against gang members and other criminals who might otherwise expect impunity from terrified victims. This helps lower violence in targeted areas.

These are examples of real results, but they do take time and a lot of effort to have an effect on a larger scale.

REICHARD: What are the next steps with a new round of aid to the Northern Triangle?

DEAN: President Biden has proposed a $4 billion aid package for the region. That’s certainly going to push back from Republicans, but I think the president is going to face some challenges from Democrats as well. Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Democratic senator from Vermont, recently said: We have a long history of sending aid to this region without seeing long-lasting results.

So I think it’s going to be interesting to see how far the president’s own party is going to be willing to go to work on a problem that seems to have no real end in sight.

REICHARD: Jamie Dean is World’s national editor. Jamie, as always, thank you.

DEAN: You’re welcome.

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

ONIZE OHIKERE, REPORTER: Volcano erupts in Congo—We start today here in Africa.

AUDIO: [Sounds of crashing, yelling]

The continent’s most active volcano erupted on Saturday in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Nyiragongo volcano spewed red-hot molten lava that swallowed entire communities.

Officials said 17 villages around the outer limits of the city of Goma suffered major damage.

AUDIO: [Man speaking French]

Thousands of people fled the city when the volcano started to rumble on Saturday evening. Aftershocks caused by magma moving inside the mountain continue to rock the area.

At least seven people died as a direct result of the eruption. Another 13 died in related incidents. The volcano killed nearly 100 people the last time it erupted, in 2002.

Taliban inches closer to Kabul—Next we go to the Middle East.

AUDIO: [Sounds of shooting, yelling]

Afghan forces clashed with Taliban fighters in a provincial capital just 75 miles from Kabul on Sunday.

Military officials claimed at least 50 Taliban fighters died in the firefight. But a Taliban spokesman said its fighters captured dozens of security checkpoints on the outskirts of the city. Neither claim could be independently verified.

AUDIO: [Man speaking Pushto]

This man who fled the fighting said residents are trying to leave the area but don’t know where to go.

The Taliban has made a push to capture new territory in the last month. Its fighters recently seized two districts and a province also close to the nation’s capital.

Security analysts speculate the Islamic militant group is setting the stage for an all-out assault on Afghan cities as soon as the last U.S. troops leave. Its fighters used a similar strategy in the 1990s after the Soviet army’s withdrawal. With key routes to Kabul cut off, the government eventually collapsed.

Suu Kyi makes first court appearance in Myanmar—Next we go to Southeast Asia.

AUDIO: [Woman speaking Burmese]

Aung San Suu Kyi made her first public appearance in almost four months during a court hearing on Monday. The deposed leader of Myanmar is on trial for a string of offenses, including violating coronavirus restrictions. The charges are widely discredited as politically motivated.

The military ousted her government and put her under house arrest in February. But she struck a defiant tone in the courtroom. She vowed efforts to disband her political party would fail.

AUDIO: [Sounds of protesters]

A heavy military presence filled the capital on Monday. But protesters gathered elsewhere to demand a return to democracy.

Suu Kyi’s supporters have organized protests nearly every day since the Feb. 1 coup. According to a local monitoring group, the military has killed more than 800 civilians in its crackdown on dissent.

Remembering the father of hybrid rice—And finally, we end today in China.

Not many plant scientists can claim to be household names. But Yuan Longping was.

The Chinese scientist who developed higher-yield varieties of rice died Saturday at the age of 90.

AUDIO: [Man speaking Mandarin]

This man said he remembered learning in school about how Yuan solved the problem of famine in China and other countries.

The hybrid rice varieties Yuan developed in the 1970s had an annual yield about 20 percent higher than existing varieties. One-fifth of all rice now comes from species created based on his research.

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

NICK EICHER, HOST: In New Jersey some kind-hearted sanitation workers recently spent two hours digging through a landfill. 

They were looking for a couple of items that Ruth Watson’s 10-year-old accidentally threw away.

It happened just as these things tend to happen: She tossed the valuables into a grocery bag. Awhile later her son was rounding up the trash, he happened to grab that bag and before she knew it, it was on the curb.

Watson realized what had happened just after the truck came by. She spoke with television station WCAU.

WATSON: You can’t replace it. I immediately called the trash company.

A short time later, four sanitation workers, including this one drove the truck to a landfill, emptied its contents, and began sifting.

QUILES: It was like a needle in a haystack. It was very overwhelming.

But eventually, they spotted the yellow plastic Dollar General bag. Inside it was Ruth Watson’s wallet. And inside the wallet was her wedding ring.

QUILES: And at the end I was happy because I did a good deed for someone who was looking for something valuable. 

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Wednesday, May 26th.

This is WORLD Radio, and we thank you for turning to us to start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

I’m on campus at Dordt University in Sioux Center, Iowa, here for the 21st World Journalism Institute. More about that in a moment.

If this month you became a first-time donor, thank you. As we’ve said, some families stepped up and provided money to triple match all first-time gifts of support this month up to $40,000.

And guess what? You really stepped up and used up all of that match already. So you met, and exceeded, the goal we’d set out with five days to spare. If you were part of that, again, thank you so much.

That gives us good momentum going into the month of June. That’s when we will ask those who give regularly to support our end-of-fiscal-year giving drive. And nothing’s more encouraging than to hear about new supporters coming alongside to help make WORLD’s journalism possible. That’s why we ask, that’s why you give.

Every dollar goes to programming, to journalism, and even helps make journalism training possible. That’s what we’re doing this week, now in Week 2 of our World Journalism Institute.

You heard students handle Culture Friday questioning last week and we’ll do that again this week. But today, we want you to hear from some of our students in the broadcast track. We’re training both for radio and for television and we have several of our WORLD Watch team working alongside the students. Brian Basham is here, Benjamin Owen. Myrna Brown, too. She’s on the WORLD Watch team and, of course, our radio team. Paul Butler is here with me. Sarah Schweinsberg last week.

But Paul lined up several students to talk a bit about their experience here. Let’s listen to some of that. I think you’ll be encouraged as you hear them.

CALEB BAILEY: My name is Caleb Bailey. And I am from Camarillo, California. I spoke to my parents on Saturday, and told them that I'm pretty sure in the seven days that I've been at WJI I've quite near learned more than I have in four years at college. And part of that is due to the fact that I'm getting hands-on experience.

I've also really enjoyed just being able to tell people's stories, whether they're in town or fellow students. Being able to tell their stories is something that's impactful and has helped me grow and understand the Lord better.

RACHEL MCCLAMROCK: I am Rachel McClamrock. I'm from Greensboro, North Carolina. My senior year, I didn't do as much reporting. And then I graduated in September. And so a large part of why I applied to WJI was that I felt I'm so out of practice. So it was really cool to come here and kind of relearn, like, “Oh, this is how you go up and interview people on the street” that “oh, this is how you put a video together.” And this time learning it from people who are currently in the field was really cool. And a really big confidence booster.

NEVA PIOMBINO: I'm Neva Piombino. I just graduated from Liberty University. And I live in Columbus, Georgia. We've learned a lot about the Christian worldview, and how it impacts our work as journalists, and just as professionals in general. Specifically, we have been learning from Marvin Olasky, about his work in reforming journalism. And he shared a lot of things with us about how we can approach our work in a godly mindset, how we can interact with the culture around us, and just also professional ethics that we can apply as journalists.

MIKAELA WEGNER: I'm Mikaela Wegner from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. I'd say I've both enjoyed the most and the least just how hard I've been pushed. I've really enjoyed all the things that I've learned and how difficult it's been, but at the same time, yeah, it has been hard. But through that I've been able to learn a ton and be encouraged both in my faith and what I'm doing.  

KATHERINE FUTCH: I'm Katherine Futch from Peachtree City, Georgia. I think one of the most beneficial things for me, I've been at WJI is definitely learning how to pursue a story with a Christian worldview. I come from a public university, and it's definitely very refreshing to look at journalism and in a whole other aspect of like looking at it through the Bible. And I think that's also been one of the things that I've enjoyed most is just having instructors that also care about your work but also about your spiritual life. Just whenever we first got here, I mean, Lee Pitts would pray with all of us. And that's something that I haven't got a lot of in my college experience. And it was just so refreshing, even like before we go to lunch, and everything Marvin takes time to pray with us. And I think also Marvin Olasky talks about reforming journalism has been so helpful and learning how to pursue a story and show compassion to whoever you're interviewing, show compassion whenever you're writing about maybe a difficult subject or a controversial subject. I think that's been really helpful.

LILLIAN HAMMOND: I’m Lillian Hammond from Rome, Georgia. Well, we have a couple classical pianists that love to play for us, which is really cool. I think I've enjoyed the most the fellowship with people from all kinds of different backgrounds and Christian upbringings. I think it's been really refreshing. And sometimes we'll stay up and have theological talks, which is really fun. 

ABBI-RAE DE LA ROSA: My name is Abbi-Rae De La Rosa. And I'm from San Antonio, Texas. Since I've gotten here at WJI, I think the most that I've really enjoyed is the friendships I've developed as well as the hands-on experience. And learning how a journalist’s life goes from morning to night. And the least that I've enjoyed is the lack of sleep. But that hands-on experience has really, really helped me come to reality what life is going to be like in the future, and I look forward to it now.

REICHARD: It’s useful to hear these young people tell what World’s journalism training is doing for them. It mirrors what I learned at the mid-career course: our unique approach to reporting, along with like-minded people, who understand we’re aren’t only bodies and minds, but spirit filled, too. And I’ll add- a dose of reality about the long hours of broadcast journalists. It’s a fact of life.

EICHER: Exactly. They’re working on real-world projects that we may be able to use on this program and on WORLD Watch. That’s the goal.

We are in the thick of working on individual projects. Other students are busy writing daily news. The managing editor for our daily news online—that’s Lynde Langdon. She’s working directly with students. Lee Pitts—formerly with WORLD, now a professor here at Dordt—is also working with those students, as is WORLD editor Michael Reneau. Marvin and Susan Olasky are working with a half dozen students on more-involved feature stories, the kind you’d read in WORLD magazine

Last week, we introduced all the students to broadcast. All of them did brief television pieces after our friends at Alliance Defending Freedom put on a mock press conference for the students at which they learned about an important case at the Supreme Court.

Then they had to turn around all that material and produce and edit their own video story. So it’s been—and it continues to be—a great experience.

REICHARD: Love to hear that they’ve worked on the legal beat! There’s so much more we could be doing in that realm. I say, come on in, the water’s fine!

EICHER: Again, a few very long days ahead, but I expect to leave this year as I always do: exhausted but encouraged about the future of Christian journalism.

You can be discouraged or encouraged by the state of higher education today. But the caliber of students who sign up for this and endure all the work we throw at them. I have to say, that’s encouraging.

So do pray for these students. And, one more time, thank you for supporting our work financially and allowing so many of us to invest in them, drag up all our gear, and teach and work and keep it all going.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, May 26th. 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. Here now is World commentator Janie B. Cheaney.

JANIE B. CHEANEY, COMMENTATOR: My liberal Christian friend checks all the progressive boxes on same-sex marriage, reproductive rights, and educational and poverty issues. But she can also talk over disagreements rationally. That’s why we’re still friends.

During one of our back-and-forth emails, she put “religious liberty” in scare quotes. To her mind, Christianity has been privileged in America, to the detriment of other faith traditions. And though she’s too polite to say, she probably thinks I’m getting Christianity wrong.

She sees the Bible as quite clear on the second greatest commandment but open to interpretation about the first. She is certain about how society should help the poor and relieve the oppressed, but uncertain—even suspicious—of core theology. For her, dogma means oppression.

For me, the Bible is clear about who God is and what He requires. But there’s more than one way to love our neighbor, and some ways might be better than others.

Mine is the minority view. A January editorial in The New York Times bore this headline: “In Biden’s Catholic Faith, an Ascendant Liberal Christianity.” The author cited Rev. Kevin O’Brien’s homily at a pre-Inaugural Mass for the Biden family. Quote, “[T]o help and protect people and to advance justice and reconciliation, especially for those who are too often looked over and left behind … This is the divine summons for us all.”

That divine summons is so imperative that dissent amounts to apostasy. That may be why the administration fired Sharon Gustafson from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in February. Though an arm of the executive branch, the EEOC is supposed to be independent. To give an unceremonious boot to a key figure raises questions the administration didn’t answer.

Maybe it had something to do with a series of listening sessions late last year. In her capacity as general counsel, Gustafson had given believers of all stripes an opportunity to discuss religious discrimination in the workplace. The report about intimidation and hostility that she posted online was scrubbed from the EEOC website, along with all references to religious liberty.

In a podcast last year, columnist Ross Douthat speculated on what progressives and conservatives might learn from each other. The former could acknowledge that they had underestimated the importance of stable two-parent families. The latter might admit that they could have been more proactive in constructively helping the poor. This is still true, though the two sides might have drifted too far apart for rapprochement.

For now, liberal Christianity is becoming as dogmatic as any medieval Catholic bishop or New England Puritan. I don’t think we can bridge this gap, or not in public. Privately, or one-on-one, perhaps—not by compromising on God’s commands, but by living them out. “To visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”

I’m Janie B. Cheaney.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: peace in Israel. We’ll find out whether fighting in Gaza strained peaceful new relations with Arab nations.

Plus, preparing for natural disasters. It’s not just for humans! We'll talk to folks whose job is to keep livestock safe.

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.

For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only don’t use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.

Go now in grace and peace.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.