The World and Everything in It: October 6, 2022

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning!

As the situation at the southern border worsens, Texas and Arizona are busing thousands of asylum seekers across the country. We’ll learn how they’re doing in one sanctuary city: Washington D.C.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: Also today, remembering the missionary pioneer known as “God's Smuggler.”

Plus, we’ll meet a woman who hopes to make childbirth possible for others.

And Cal Thomas on the troubling rise of antisemitism.

BROWN: It’s Thursday, October 6th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

BUTLER: And I’m Paul Butler. Good morning!

BROWN: Up next, Kristen Flavin with today’s news.

KRISTEN FLAVIN, NEWS ANCHOR: Biden in FL » President Biden visited Florida yesterday to view damage from Hurricane Ian. He said it could take years to cleanup—and he promised long-term federal aid.

BIDEN: You got to start from scratch and move again. And it's going to take a lot, a lot of time, not weeks or months. It's going to take years for everything to get squared away in the state of Florida.

The president saw the damage himself this afternoon when he took a tour of Florida from the air.

He met with residents, business owners, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

DESANTIS: So, I'm just thankful that everyone's banded together. We've got a lot of work to do here, but I'll tell you, the spirit of the people of this state in southwest Florida has been phenomenal.

DeSantis said the White House got help on the ground faster by approving an emergency declaration… before Hurricane Ian made landfall.

South Korea Missile » Just a day after North Korea conducted its longest ballistic missile test, South Korea botched a missile test of its own.

AUDIO: [Missile test]

During a live-fire drill with the United States, a South Korean ballistic missile plowed into the ground, scaring residents in the nearby city of Gangneung.

South Korean officials said the explosion did not kill or injure anyone and the warhead did not explode. Burning rocket fuel caused a fire.

The United States and South Korea have been conducting military exercises in response to increased missile tests by North Korea. The exercises are intended to demonstrate the two countries’ ability to deter a North Korean invasion.

Nobel Prizes » ELLEGREN - The Royal Swedish Academy of Science has this morning decided award the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry in equal shares to… 

The three scientists—Carolyn R. Bertozzi, K. Barry Sharpless and Morten Meldal—received the award yesterday for their work on “click” chemistry.

RAMSTROM - So this year's award is, as Johan just mentioned here, is about making connections, making connections between molecules in a very straightforward, selective and robust way.

The scientists developed ways of snapping molecules together to make new molecules that can be used to make cancer drugs, map DNA, and create specialty materials.

BERTOZZI: Thank you so much, all of you. I'm absolutely stunned. I'm sitting here. I can hardly breathe.

The award caps off the Nobel Prizes for science.

Monday’s award for medicine went to Svante Paabo for his work tracing the history of the genomes of humans and Neanderthals. Tuesday’s award for physics went to three physicists—Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser, and Anton Zeilinger—for their work studying quantum entanglement.

Trump Mar-a-Lago case » Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court to intervene in his legal battle with the Justice Department. WORLD’s Mary Muncy has more.

MARY MUNCY, REPORTER: Trump’s lawyers asked the Supreme Court yesterday to overturn the decision by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. That decision gave the Justice Department access to documents marked as classified when they were seized from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon initially told the Justice Department they had to stop using the documents until special master Raymond Dearie reviewed them. But the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that decision last month.

Trump’s lawyers say a special master needs to review the documents to determine if they are indeed classified and whether they are personal records or presidential records.

The Justice Department is still investigating how Trump and his aides handled presidential records when he left office.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy.

OPEC » President Joe Biden said today that he’s disappointed by OPEC-plus’ decision to cut its oil production target.

OPEC and its allies are cutting production by 2 million barrels a day starting in November.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

PIERRE: OPEC’s decision to cut production’s quotas is short-sighted while the global economy is dealing with the continued negative impact of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

But the U.S. government says the countries were already underproducing by nearly 3.6 million barrels a day. So the change might just align the target with production.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

BLINKEN: We are working to the best of our ability to ensure that energy supply from wherever is actually meeting demand.

OPEC-plus said it cut the total because of uncertainty in the global economy and oil markets.

Iran » AUDIO: [Protests]

Protests have sprung up in at least 80 cities in Iran in the past two weeks, some of them ending in violent crackdowns.

Protesters say the police beat a 22-year-old woman to death while she was in their custody. They had detained her for not following rules about head coverings.

The police said she died of “sudden heart failure.”

Girls across the country have been burning their head coverings in protests and it sparked a global movement.

The Norway-based group Iran Human Rights said security forces have killed at least 133 people so far in the crackdown.

I’m Kristen Flavin. Straight ahead: how immigrants are faring after being bussed to Washington DC.

Plus, a life-giving transplant.

This is The World and Everything in It.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: It’s Thursday the 6th of October, 2022.

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

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. First up on The World and Everything in It. Immigration.

The governors of Arizona and Texas have bused thousands of asylum-seekers to Washington, New York, and Chicago. The governors say the current influx of migrants at the U.S. Southern border is overwhelming their states. So they are sending them to cities better equipped to help them and to lobby the federal government for aid.

BUTLER: WORLD Washington reporter Leo Briceno interviewed some of those migrants to see how they are doing. He also reports on the next steps in their immigration journey.

LEO BRICENO, REPORTER: Sarai Landaeta lives in a Day’s Inn hotel room in North-Western Washington D.C. As a recent immigrant from Venezuela, she doesn’t speak English and doesn’t know where that is.

She asked if I could draw a map of the city.

AUDIO: [HOTEL CHATTER]

The hotel has become home to a community of immigrants. Dozens of women, children, and men like Landeata all crossed over into the United States from the Southern Border. But they didn’t get here to Washington, D.C. on their own; they had a little help from the State of Texas.

ABBOTT: Sending them to cities on the east coast…

Like thousands of others, shortly after crossing the southern border, an exhausted Landaeta accepted a free bus ride from the State of Texas without a clear idea of where it was going or why.

I interviewed Landaeta and two other women about why they accepted a bus ride into the heart of a country they don’t know. They said they had left Venezuela to escape deteriorating social and economic conditions. Work was hard to find. The time between meals was growing longer. They wanted to come to the U.S. where they knew they would find safety.

Landaeta made the journey with her husband. She is six months pregnant with her first child. They traveled on foot through countries like Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, and Mexico to escape worsening social and economic conditions in Venezuela.

AUDIO: “What was the hardest part?” - “The jungle”

All three of the women agreed. The hardest part of that journey was their time in the jungle.

One of the women, Natasha Guterres, told me she saw a bit of everything. Discarded clothes, people left behind, and bodies of those who had died along the way.

AUDIO: “There you see dead people…”

By day, the women had to struggle against exhaustion, dehydration, hunger, and the dangers of fellow travelers. By night, the struggle was keeping warm and finding a safe place to sleep in the brush.

AUDIO: "When night fell it was dark. You could hear lions and monkeys screaming in the night…”

Guterres said she remembers hearing things in the night, calls of animals.

Landaeta remembers seeing a man die as he was crossing the river into the U.S. He suffered so much only to have his journey end right on the verge of his goal.

AUDIO: "How old are you?”

I asked how old she is.

AUDIO: “I’m 19 years old”

Nineteen she tells me. She was 18 when she started the trip.

As brutal as the road has been, the journey isn’t over. The next leg of the journey will take place in immigration court as she applies for political asylum.

FULKS: “Can take 2 - 10 years.”

That’s Scott Andrew Fulks, an immigration attorney for Deckert Law Firm in Minnesota. The process starts with the application. And that is something that trips up immigrants on a regular basis.

It begins when border-crossers are taken into custody by immigration services. They undergo a “credible fear” test to determine whether they have a plausible reason for remaining in the U.S. … as opposed to being turned away. The bar is usually fairly low—fear of general safety, for example, or fear of lack of resources. If they pass, they may enter the United States with a set of instructions for how to start the asylum process.

FULKS: “What’s incredibly important is that anyone who is desirous of applying for asylum must do so within one year of having entered the country. More than 80-90% of new clients have never been told this or have never understood this.” 

The busing situation may add a level of difficulty to that undertaking. Specifically, Fulks says that if Landaeta and other immigrants began their legal journey in Texas, they have to take the necessary steps to make sure that it continues in Washington, D.C., New York, or elsewhere.

FULKS: “As a part of their processing they're given a packet of information. Part of that packet is a change of address form called EOIR-33/IC, [Immigrants should] file that form with the court and also a motion to change venue.”

Due to backed up asylum requests, scheduling difficulties, a lack of proper representation, and other factors, starting an application for asylum can take months. That means that immigrants have less of a window before they run up against their one-year deadline, which can quickly shrink their chances of a successful bid.

Landaeta knows she is here for asylum, but she doesn’t have a clear idea of how she’s going to achieve it. Right now she’s focused on her pregnancy.

The three women are grateful that they’re at least in the U.S.

AUDIO: “I never imagined I would be in a country like this… thank God I’m in a country like this.”

Guterres says she’s just thankful to be in a country like this.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Leo Briceno.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: remembering a missionary pioneer.

Last week, the missionary known as Brother Andrew died at his home in the Netherlands. Brother Andrew carried Bibles into Communist countries during the Cold War, earning him the nickname “God’s Smuggler.” WORLD’s Mary Muncy has his story.

MARY MUNCY, REPORTER: Brother Andrew was born in 1928 to a poor family in northern Holland. Despite their poverty, his mother gave away what little they had.

Here’s Brother Andrew in an interview with Net For God.

ANDREW: My mother already had a heart for the lost. For beggars, homeless people, people wondering the streets. And she would take them in and give them something to eat—which me and my brothers were not too happy with.

They thought that every time she gave something away, they got less.

AUDIO: [Dutch song about going into army]

When Brother Andrew turned 20, he joined the Dutch army and shipped out to Indonesia.

He thought it was a grand adventure until the shooting started. He said he participated in a massacre in a village—killing everyone.

After that he started wearing a big straw hat—hoping to attract bullets. And he did.

In 1948, a bullet smashed his ankle and he was sent to convalesce among nuns.

He laid in a bed with nothing to focus on except a spoiled running career and a ruined ankle.

So he started reading and made it through the whole Bible while he laid in bed.

Then, he went home and during a storm, he told God he would go wherever he sent him.

ANDREW: But I had every reason not to accept the call. I was invalid, I was badly injured in the war, I was uneducated, had never been to school, had no diplomas. But God kept saying, But you-you should be a missionary.

He kept telling God that he couldn’t even walk, how could he be a missionary?

ANDREW: But I remember one day walking on the Dike, I said Yes, and you know, the next day—the very next day, something happened to my old wounds. They broke open and stuff came out and I was healed.

He didn’t have any more excuses. So he started missionary school.

Then in 1955 after he finished school, he took a government-controlled tour of Poland.

He sat on a bench in Warsaw watching members of the Young Communist League parade past him—yelling about how God was dead, Communism ruled.

The parade was big, loud, and oppressive. And Brother Andrew put his Bible to his chest.

ANDREW: And then I heard another word. Every knee shall bow, every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Then I looked and I thought your knees too will one day bow before my Jesus.

He snuck away to visit the churches there and saw that no one had any Bibles—not even the priests. So he promised to take every Bible he laid hands on to them.

He smuggled his first Bibles into Yugoslavia. He packed them into his Volkswagen Beetle and disappeared behind the Iron Curtain.

He drove thousands of miles to give Bibles to anyone he could reach.

He also started Open Doors in 1955. It’s a group that helps persecuted Christians around the world.

ANDREW: People were so willing, and I was so surprised why are we not aware of the situation in the world today where there are people that need Jesus and want Jesus.

But the doors to Communist countries closed in 1968 when Brother Andrew published his autobiography, titled God’s Smuggler. The book made him too well-known to operate anonymously.

That’s when he started going by Brother Andrew, instead of his given name Andrew van der Bijl.

ANDREW: So when the book came out in 1968, I almost when straight to the Muslim world.

He spent the rest of his life trying to get Bibles into the hands of Muslims.

The first time Brother Andrew met with Taliban members, he spoke to boys who were about to graduate, 90 percent of whom would go straight into Al-Qaeda or the Taliban.

This is him at a news conference,

ANDREW: I took out my little pocket testament—it was this one actually—and I said this is the only book that tells you how you can get saved. In my travels I don’t have to criticize Islam, as long as I magnify my Lord Jesus Christ.

He continued going back there even after two major heart attacks.

ANDREW: You say Andrew, ‘I know a door that you cannot get go through.’ Tell me—tell me publicly and I can tell you how you can get in there, providing you don’t insist on coming back.

Brother Andrew died last week in his home in the Netherlands. He was 94 and he’s survived by five children and 11 grandchildren.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: Well Myrna, do you know what time of year it is?

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: For everything pumpkin spice?

BUTLER: Close. Pumpkin farmers around the country are harvesting their gargantuan gourds and seeing how they measure up with the competition.

AUDIO: [PUMPKIN WEIGHT]

This east-coast farmer has set a new record for the heaviest pumpkin in New York state’s history. 2,554 pounds.

BROWN: Whoa. That’s one big pumpkin.

BUTLER: Yes it is. Turns out that the giant squash is also the new American record holder—beating a 2018 pumpkin from New Hampshire by 26 pounds.

Scott Andrusz, age 63, says it took months of hard work to grow the grand champion. Shading new growth, selective pruning, and regular pest prevention treatments. But the hardest part was keeping critters away from it—especially his farm cats. To them, it was a 25-hundred pound scratching post.

But perhaps they were just trying to get in on the fun, setting a new world record of their own. You see, if Andrusz—or his cats—cut a face into the great pumpkin, they could hang another certificate on their wall: for world’s biggest Jack o’ Lantern—which currently stands at only 2,350 pounds.

BROWN: Seems like you’d need a pretty big candle to light that thing up.

BUTLER: It’s The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, October 6th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: And I’m Paul Butler. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: life-giving transplants.

And when we say life-giving, we mean life at the very start. According to a recent story in the Journal of the American Medical Association Surgery, one out of every 500 women is unable to carry a child because of an absent or abnormal uterus. For some, this can mean a lifetime of longing. But now, there’s hope.

BROWN: In 2017, Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, Texas, celebrated a first: The first baby to be born in the United States to a mother with a transplanted uterus.

AUDIO: [First baby to be born post-uterus transplant, crying/c-section/operating room noise]

Baylor is now the world’s largest uterus transplant program: 23 transplants and 15 delivered babies.

BUTLER: The organs come from both deceased and living donors. WORLD Correspondent Whitney Williams sat down with the most recent living donor in the United States, donor number 21. Here’s her story.

AUDIO: [Snow family fawning over 3rd baby]

WHITNEY WILLIAMS, CORRESPONDENT: When Stephanie Snow and her husband, Rob, brought their third child home from the birthing center, they felt their family was finally complete. House full, hearts full, and pockets, well, definitely not as full as they used to be. The Snows decided they were done having children.

So when Stephanie heard about an opportunity to donate her uterus to a woman born without one, she jumped at the chance…

SNOW: I think babies being born is one of the ways that we see that the Lord is still at work in our world.

Though Snow admits her decision to donate wasn’t purely altruistic at first.

SNOW: One of the surgeons in our pre op interviews, he just asked me what was my reason for donating. And I told him, man, I don't want to have any more children biologically. I would love to be done having a period. He said, ‘that's not a good enough reason,’

The surgeon told Snow that donating her uterus wasn’t something to take lightly. It was a massive, irreversible life choice. And it would be costly. Not so much from a financial standpoint—the recipient would be covering her medical expenses—but physically. This is a fairly new procedure, so there isn’t a large body of research concerning the potential side-effects and complications associated with donation. And the transplant might not even go anywhere. In the US, there have been just 37 successful transplants. Only 80 worldwide.

The Snows prayed, sought wise counsel, and continued forward…deciding to let God shut the door if it wasn’t right. He didn’t.

SNOW: You do a lot of imaging, CAT scan, MRI, chest X ray, they just want to see the inside of your body and make sure your blood vessels are right. And lots of other things are correct. So I went in for the imaging really just thinking Lord, either You made my body able to donate or you didn't…So it all looked good.

Snow’s surgery wasn’t nearly as intense as what the recipient would endure, but still …

SNOW: It was 12 hours long, which is very long.

In addition to removing Snow’s uterus, the surgeon also removed the vessels that supply blood to the uterus, Snow’s fallopian tubes, her cervix, and the vaginal cuff.

SNOW: They just have to be very precise when they're trying to take something out to reuse it somewhere else.

Complications for Snow included lasting heel pain, most likely due to her feet being in stirrups, motionless for such a long period of time.

SNOW: And I think that I ended up with some just kind of minor nerve damage around my bladder, that I kind of had to relearn how to pee.

Snow admits the recovery was frustrating at times, but she didn’t stay frustrated.

SNOW: I just remember thinking, especially after the surgery, and I'm struggling with a catheter and just annoyed that like my body wasn't doing what I wanted it to that the woman who received my uterus. I imagine that she's cried lots of tears about not being able to have a baby. And I didn't have to worry about ‘Can I get pregnant? Will I get pregnant? How's this gonna go?’ And that was a good perspective to think ‘I can do this small thing, and it might have helped someone who is struggling.’

Snow knows the decision to donate a uterus isn’t for everyone. For instance, some Christians have convictions about permanently ending one’s ability to have a child, while others have ethical concerns about in vitro fertilization—the recipient cannot get pregnant naturally, so it’s either IVF or embryo adoption.

Snow struggled through those concerns herself. But she hopes that her decision to make child birth possible for someone else honors the Lord

SNOW: I think that the advances of modern medicine can be a great gift, and a way for us to connect with people in a way for the Lord to overcome some of the effects of sin in our broken world. And we have a God that cares for the vulnerable, that seeks to ease suffering…and uses all sorts of people in all sorts of places to do that.

But Snow knows it’s not a done deal for her recipient. Even today, two years post donation, all she knows is that the transplant was successful and that the woman is still in the process of trying to achieve pregnancy.

SNOW: I just spent a lot of time praying and asking the Lord like, what happens If the answer is still no for this woman?

Snow has to leave it in God’s hands …

SNOW: I really just settled on: I know that however it ends up, God is good and loving, and that he cares for that woman way more than I ever could. And he has a plan for how her life will go. And it's one that will hopefully reveal himself to her through whatever road that looks like.

Snow hopes to one day meet her recipient, give her a hug, and use their special connection as a way to share the love of Christ with her if she doesn’t already know him. But even if that doesn’t happen, Snow feels grateful to be part of such an exciting medical breakthrough.

SNOW: It just feels like a miracle. All organ transplantation feels insanely miraculous. And a song that the Lord brought to mind, I don't even know all of the words to it. But one line of it says, And I’ll probably cry. (pause, tearful) You turn (pause, tearful) ‘You turn graves into gardens.’ Just think that the Lord could take a place where no growth or no life could happen. And make it into a place where new life can begin is incredible.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Whitney Williams in Waxahachie, Texas.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, October 6th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: And I’m Paul Butler. Antisemitism is on the rise–in America and around the world. Commentator Cal Thomas says a recent conflict at UC Berkeley reveals growing animosity toward Jews on campus and should stir us not to repeat the sins of our past.

CAL THOMAS, COMMENTATOR: The University of California, Berkeley is known for many things, some good and some very bad, even outrageous.

In 1964, a ban on campus political and religious activities launched what was called the free speech and academic freedom movement that quickly spread to other campuses.

Whatever one’s view of the unrest at the time – liberals loved it and conservatives like Ronald Reagan vowed to stop it – what is happening now at Berkeley ought to shame especially those who believe in free speech and oppose discrimination.

Nine law student groups at the law school have managed to amend the university’s bylaws to ban any speakers who support Israel or Zionism.

These are not groups that “represent only a small percentage of the student population,” according to the Jewish Journal. They include Women of Berkeley Law, Asian Pacific American Law Students Association, Middle Eastern and North African Law Students Association, Law Students of African Descent and the Queer Caucus.

Berkeley Law’s dean, Erwin Chemerinsky, a progressive Zionist, has observed that he would be banned under this standard, as would 90 percent of his Jewish students.

Writing in the Jewish Journal, Kenneth L. Marcus, a former assistant U.S. secretary of Education for Civil Rights and an alumnus of U-C Berkeley Law School, notes: “Berkeley law students are not the first to exclude Zionists. At the State University of New York at New Paltz, activists drove two sexual assault victims out of a survivor group for being Zionists. At the University of Southern California, they drove Jewish student government vice president Rose Ritch out of office, threatening to ‘impeach [her] … At Tufts, they tried to oust student judiciary committee member Max Price from the student government judiciary committee because of his support for Israel.”

Despite his statement that he would be silenced under the change in bylaws, Dean Chemerensky responded to Marcus, claiming that not all student groups have banned pro-Israel and Zionist speakers. This prompted Marcus to counter: “Would it be okay for only 5 percent or 10 percent of the campus to be segregated? What percentage of the Berkeley campus should be open to all? Shouldn’t it be 100 percent?”

The question answers – or should answer – itself.

Marcus further rebuts Chemerensky’s assertion of a campus that does not discriminate: “Chemerinsky misses the point when he insists that all clubs admit Jewish students as members. No one denies this. Nevertheless, an unmistakable signal is sent to those same students when they are told that they would be barred from appearing as invited speakers. This sends a clear signal: Jews are not welcome, unless they deny their support for Israel which, for many, is an integral element of Jewish identity.”

What do students have to fear from hearing arguments on all sides of an issue? If a university does not protect free speech, it becomes an agent of censorship, even propaganda.

As anti-Semitism again rises in Europe and the United States, educational institutions should be teaching its history, not allowing a new strain to be promoted.

That’s especially relevant considering America’s history during World War II when the Roosevelt administration limited the number of Jews desperately fleeing Nazi Germany to enter this country. Berkeley and other students should be more welcoming to Jews, protect their free speech, and not silence them.

I’m Cal Thomas.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: Tomorrow: Culture Friday with WORLD Opinions Managing Editor Andrew Walker.

And, Collin Garbarino reviews a new children’s film about a singing crocodile in New York City.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Paul Butler.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

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

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

The Bible says “I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” (Philippians 1:6 ESV)

Go now in grace and peace.

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