WORLD Radio Rewind

LEIGH JONES: This is WORLD Radio Rewind: a 10-minute review of some of our news coverage and features from the past week on WORLD Radio. I’m managing editor Leigh Jones.

First up, Haiti. On Tuesday’s program, Mary Reichard talked to WORLD’s Jamie Dean about the kidnapped missionaries and the country’s deteriorating security situation.

REICHARD: It’s certainly good news that more of the missionary hostages in Port-au-Prince have been released this week. But you say kidnappings are an everyday reality in Haiti. Tell us about that.

DEAN: Sadly, that’s true. Abductions aren’t new in Haiti, but they’ve definitely surged in recent months. A human rights group based in Port-au-Prince reported that criminal gangs kidnapped at least 119 people in the first half of October alone. Just two weeks before the missionary kidnappings, criminals abducted 20 people on a single day in Port-au-Prince.

REICHARD: And it sounds like almost anyone could be a target.

DEAN: That’s right. That’s one of the things that has been especially frightening for many Haitians over the last year or so. I recently spoke with a missionary couple working outside of Port-au-Prince who said it’s not unheard of for a gang member to pluck a child off the road while he walks to school, and then demand whatever ransom the family can afford. So these gangs aren’t just after big bucks anymore. They’ll take smaller amounts, even if it’s all the money a family has saved. A UNICEF report in October said that the kidnapping of children has been a lucrative business in Haiti. So, essentially, no one is off limits.

REICHARD: Jamie Dean is WORLD’s national editor. You can read more of her work at WNG.org. Thanks, Jamie!

DEAN: You're welcome, Mary.

LJ: Next up, student homelessness. On Tuesday’s program, Lauren Dunn reported on the decrease in the number of students without stable housing during the pandemic.

LAUREN DUNN, REPORTER: Barbara Duffield began working with homeless students three decades ago. She’s advocated for changes in housing and income policy. But her passion has always been education.

In 2016, she co-founded the Washington, D.C.-based SchoolHouse Connection. She’s now its executive director. The group’s work relies heavily on a federal law adopted in 1987 called the McKinney-Vento Act.

DUFFIELD: It sets out broad protections for children and youth who are experiencing homelessness. And one of the things that does is require every school district to designate a liaison for students experiencing homelessness. And those liaisons form really the bulk of our network as a national organization.

The liaisons Duffield’s group works with have reported a drop in the number of homeless students. But that’s mainly because they’re having trouble finding them.

DUFFIELD: When schools turned to virtual instruction, and when there was no more in person classes, at least for a spell, the numbers went down. But you know, the eyes and the ears of the school system, all the ways a school might typically know whether it's rerouting a bus, or a change of address, or a conversation that happens in the hallway. All of that went away for a while, and families were very mobile, and they were moving around.

In November 2020, SchoolHouse Connection reported that districts across the nation flagged 400,000 fewer students as homeless that semester. Duffield says school is often “an oasis of stability” for homeless students.

DUFFIELD: That one place that doesn't change, even if they don't know where they're going to sleep, they know they're to come to school, same adults, same peers, and can have that stability and normalcy and get transportation. But again, if we don't have this, if we don't know who's experiencing homelessness, then that piece isn't there.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Lauren Dunn.

LJ: Next, trade policy. On Wednesday’s program, Mary Reichard talked to analyst Tori Smith about how the Biden administration’s approach to trade differs from his predecessors.

REICHARD: What’s changed with trade and let’s start in North America.

SMITH: Well, the three leaders actually, you know, they got together to discuss not just trade under the agreement, but overall the trilateral relationship, which has to do with cross-border goods and services, but also with things like energy and mutual security interests, mutual foreign policy interests, the immigration and migration issues amongst the three countries.

REICHARD: Some are concerned that part of President Biden’s plans for spending the infrastructure funds that just passed risk alienating Mexico and Canada. What’s the concern with that?

SMITH: Yes, this is a very major issue between the three countries. And it's a bit complicated. The first part of it is on the issue of tax credits for electric vehicles. Electric vehicles are a newer technology that's still actively being being developed. And some of the efforts by the Biden administration to allow these tax credits is seen as being trade distorting by our North American neighbors. So that it would potentially incentivize American automakers over Canadian or Mexican automakers, and give them an advantage that these other companies might not have, and make the playing field a little un-level. The same thing can be said for issues on infrastructure, which was a major topic of discussion between the three leaders, because the infrastructure bill that was just passed includes what's called domestic content requirements or Buy America requirements, so that when these contracts go out, when this money is spent, it can only be spent on American-made products, which makes it so that Canadian and Mexican businesses can’t bid on these projects. And, again, leads to a competition issue that our partners see as unfair.

REICHARD: Tori Smith is Senior Policy Analyst in Trade Policy at the Heritage Foundation. Tori, thanks so much!

SMITH: Thank you.

LJ: And finally, mail delivery delays. On Thursday’s program, Josh Schumacher reported on the U.S. Postal Service’s new plan for slower delivery.

JOSH SCHUMACHER, REPORTER: Earlier this year, the Postal Service released a new 10-year operating plan. It included a controversial strategy to control costs that began on October 1st: slowing down mail deliveries. According to the plan, the Postal Service hasn’t been able to meet its standards for mail delivery for the past eight years. It called the lower standards more achievable.

But it’s not just the time it takes to deliver mail that’s changing. The cost of mail delivery is also going up, at least temporarily.

Kevin Kosar is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who studies the U.S. Postal Service. He says all these changes are a matter of economics.

KOSAR: Paper mail is down 40 percent over the last decade, and paper mail was for the longest time, the vast majority of everything that the Postal Service carried, like 99 percent of its volume was paper mail. Well, that's going down. And as that goes down, that means less revenue. Meanwhile, parcels, boxes are skyrocketing.

Kosar says 15 years ago, just over 10 percent of the Postal Service’s revenue came from shipping parcels. Now, boxes make up about 40 percent of its revenue. And that’s a problem because the Postal Service wasn’t designed to handle bulky items.

KOSAR: The entire Postal Service logistics network was built to deliver paper, and now they're being clobbered with tons of boxes. And so they're having to swap out everything they do in order to be able to handle the volume. And last holiday season, they weren't ready and they got crushed.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher in Leesburg, Virginia.

LJ: That’s it for this edition of WORLD Radio Rewind.

We’ve posted links to each of the stories we highlighted today in our transcript. You can find that on our website.

Next week, we’ll take a trip to space, as NASA prepares to launch a new telescope. And we’ll tell you about a feature coming to all new vehicles that’s designed to prevent drunk driving.

For the latest news, features, and commentary from WORLD News Group, visit wng.org. For WORLD Radio, I’m Managing Editor Leigh Jones.

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.