At a strip mall in Maryland, a miniature landscape extends across a table between Dash Krempel and his friend as a war game unfolds. But their hobby is becoming more expensive as US tariffs take a toll.Krempel, 29, told AFP the cost of models for tabletop games have surged from inflation, and continued rising since US President Donald Trump imposed sweeping tariffs on trading partners this year.UK-made figurines that cost $60 around three years ago now go for $94.50, he said.”Prices have gotten bigger,” he added. “It’s a very expensive hobby to begin with, so it’s maybe pricing a lot of people out.”Instead of buying more products, he now tries to support retailer Game Kastle College Park by renting tables to play in-store.For the shop’s owner, Boyd Stephenson, stocking new board games, paints and hobby supplies has only become more challenging.To avoid the harshest of Trump’s tariffs, some suppliers had to delay shipments or postpone new releases.As they raised their suggested retail prices, so has Stephenson at Game Kastle.About a fifth of his store’s products have seen cost hikes, with increases ranging from 5 percent to 20 percent.”If we see higher prices or higher tariffs, I’m going to see higher wholesale prices, and then I have to raise my prices accordingly,” he said.Asked what percentage of his store relies on imports, Stephenson replied: “Almost all of it.”- No capacity -Stephenson estimates some 7,000 board games were released last year from 5,000 different companies.”You’re really looking at 5,000 different approaches (to tariffs),” he said.”Some producers are saying, ‘We’re going to eat the cost.’ Some producers are saying, ‘We’re passing the cost through all the way.’ And other producers are doing some sort of mix of that.”Like other US retailers, Stephenson could face more cost pressures come August 1, when steeper tariffs are set to hit dozens of economies like the European Union and India.The elevated rates mark an increase from the 10 percent levy Trump imposed on goods from most economies in April.While China — a crucial manufacturing hub for games — is temporarily spared, Trump has separately imposed fresh 30 percent tariffs on products from the world’s second biggest economy this year.US tariffs on Chinese products could return to higher levels from August 12 if officials fail to extend their truce.Yet, there is no quick fix to return manufacturing to the United States.”US manufacturers just don’t have the capacity to do that anymore,” said Stephenson, showing an intricate board game figurine.”Really, the people that are good at that, that’s China,” he said. “The best modeling paints come from Spain.””So if you see tariffs get put up on the EU, then all of a sudden I’m going to have to pay higher prices on modeling paint when I bring it into the country,” he added.Trump has threatened the bloc with a 30 percent tariff.- ‘Universally bad’ -Stephenson tries to absorb some cost hikes, but said: “I have to be able to pay the staff, pay the electric company, pay the landlord.”Trump’s on-again, off-again approach to duties has also made suppliers’ price changes more unpredictable.”What is always universally bad for business is uncertainty,” Stephenson said.He usually stocks up on inventory ahead of the year-end holiday season, but expects to be more strategic with purchases this year to avoid unwelcome surprises.Many companies are delaying merchandise imports as they lack certainty, said Jonathan Gold, vice president of supply chain and customs policy at the National Retail Federation.”When the product is brought into the country and entered into commerce, you have 15 days to pay your tariff bill,” he said.This causes problems when tariff rates change and businesses lack funds to pay for orders.Some businesses, and industry group the Game Manufacturers Association, have mounted legal challenges against Trump’s blanket tariffs hitting various countries, noting nearly 80 percent of tabletop games sold in the US are made abroad.But such complaints are an uphill battle.”The damage, especially for small retailers, has been significant,” Gold said.

At least 11 people were injured in a stabbing at a Walmart store in the Midwestern state of Michigan on Saturday, with police saying it appeared to be a random attack.A 42-year-old male suspect was in custody, Grand Traverse County Sheriff Michael Shea told a press conference. “Based on the information that we have at this time, it appears they were random acts,” Shea said of the attack in Traverse City, Michigan.”The victims were not predetermined,” Shea said, adding that the suspect, a Michigan resident, apparently acted alone and used a “folding knife.”Six victims were in critical condition late Saturday, and five were in serious condition, Munson Healthcare said in a statement.At least three of the victims were undergoing surgery, according to Shea. The victims included six men and five women.Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer said she was in touch with law enforcement regarding the “horrible news.””Our thoughts are with the victims and the community reeling from this brutal act of violence,” Whitmer said in an X post.Eyewitness Julia Martell told The New York Times she heard screaming and saw a man with a knife running through the store’s pharmacy section.Martell said she saw the man shoving and stabbing people as he moved through the store.The 30-year-old witness described seeing three people with stab wounds and “blood everywhere.”Shea said the stabbing spree initially started near the checkout area of the store.”It is very uncommon for our area,” he said of the violence, adding that citizens in the Walmart “assisted” in apprehending the suspect.Traverse City is a popular tourist destination located on the shore of Lake Michigan.FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino said agents were providing “any necessary support to the Grand Traverse County Sheriff’s Office in their investigation of the attacks at the Walmart.”

Comic-Con attendees got their first glimpse Saturday at the new sci-fi space thriller “Project Hail Mary,” starring Ryan Gosling, ahead of its arrival in US theaters in March 2026.Gosling was joined on a convention panel by directing duo Christopher Miller and Phil Lord, as well as screenwriter Drew Goddard and book author Andy Weir — whose previous novel “The Martian” was also turned into an Oscar-nominated film starring Matt Damon.Based on Weir’s 2021 book of the same title, “Project Hail Mary” follows astronaut Ryland Grace (Gosling), a science teacher waking up to learn he was recruited for a space mission to save Earth from an existential solar threat.Gosling described his character as “a scared guy who has to do something impossible.””I knew it would be brilliant, because it’s Andy [Weir],” Gosling told the crowd.”It took me places I’ve never been. It showed me things I had never seen. It was as heartbreaking as it was funny and I was… not just blown away, but also overwhelmed.”Weir for his part said it was “so cool” to see his book come to life and complimented Gosling for giving “many layers to this character I made up.”Lord and Miller, the Oscar-winning duo behind the “Spider-Verse” Spider-Man animated films, talked about the challenges of shooting a “crazy ambitious” film which takes place inside a spaceship for the most part.”We had to build an entire spaceship in two modes of gravity, and then we built this entire massive tunnel at scale,” Miller said.”This is insane, to build a tunnel that was like 100 feet (30 meters) long, filled up an entire stage.”The event also showcased various clips from the film, receiving a positive response from fans, who noted the bond formed between Gosling’s character and an alien named Rocky.”The relationship between these two characters is the heart of the movie,” Miller said.”I loved it,” attendee April Rodriguez, who also read the book, gushed about the film.”I just never, like, envisioned it that way. So that was pretty cool.”- Star Trek -Comic-Con, which bring some 130,000 fans for the convention in San Diego, California, welcomed the Star Trek universe to the main stage earlier in the day Saturday to showcase its upcoming releases.Thousands of fans filled the hall to watch exclusive footage from the fourth season of “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” before it premieres on Paramount+.One clip showed Captain Christopher Pike played by Anson Mount in an entire episode where the cast is depicted like puppets from Jim Henson’s Creature Shop.Fans were also offered a first look of a new Star Trek series, dubbed “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy” starring Holly Hunter.Hunter plays Nahla Ake, the academy’s chancellor and captain of the USS Athena, who in a clip shown at Comic-Con welcomes a new class of cadets.”It was really interesting to get the offer to be the captain, but then also to combine that with being the chancellor,” Hunter said.”The captain is there to analyze in emergency situations, and then to delegate. And the chancellor is there to guide, to collaborate and to have tremendous empathy.”It was just a wonderful combination of things,” she added.Comic-Con continues on Sunday for its final day of events.

Lisa Tate, whose family has been farming in Ventura County since 1876, cannot recall a threat to crops like the one emanating from Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant onslaught.Tate fears that the crackdown on illegal workers, far from addressing the problems of this vital agricultural region north of Los Angeles, could “dismantle the whole economy” and put the country’s food security at risk.”I began to get really concerned when we saw a group of border control agents come up to the Central Valley and just start going onto farms and just kind of trying to chase people down, evading the property owner,” the 46-year-old farmer, who grows avocados, citrus and coffee, told AFP in an interview.”That’s not something we’re used to happening in agriculture,” she added.The impact goes beyond harvesters, she said. “There’s a whole food chain involved,” from field workers to truck drivers to people working in packing houses and in sales.”It’s just, everybody’s scared,” she said — even a multi-generational American like her. “I’m nervous and I’m scared, because we’re feeling like we’re being attacked.”Other farmers contacted by AFP declined to speak to the media, saying they feared potential reprisals from the Trump administration. – Worker shortages -The agricultural sector has for years been trying to find permanent solutions for its perennial labor shortages, beyond issuing temporary permits for migrant workers.”Some of the work we have is seasonal. But really, around here, we need workers that are year-round,” Tate says.The number of government certified positions for temporary agricultural workers practically tripled between 2014 and 2024, Department of Labor statistics show, underlining just how much American agriculture depends on foreign workers.On top of that, some 42 percent of farm workers are not authorized to work in the United States, according to a 2022 study by the Department of Agriculture.Those numbers line up with the struggles many farmers go through to find labor. They say US citizens are not interested in the physically demanding work, with its long days under extreme temperatures, rain and sun.Against that backdrop, Tate warns that removing people who are actually doing the work will cause immeasurable damage. Not only will it harm farms and ranches, which could take years to recover, it will also send food prices soaring, and even endanger US food security, possibly requiring the country to start importing provisions that may previously have been grown at home, she says. “What we really need is some legislation that has the type of program that we need, and that works for both the workers, that ensures their safety, it ensures a fair playing field when it comes to international trade, as well as as domestic needs,” Tate said.- “Everyone loses” -Some farmworkers agreed to speak to AFP on condition of not being fully identified, for fear of being arrested.”All we do is work,” a worker named Silvia told AFP. She saw several friends arrested in a raid in in Oxnard, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) west of Ventura.The 32-year-old Mexican lives in constant fear that she will be the next one picked up and, in the end, separated from her two US-born daughters.”We’re between a rock and a hard place. If we don’t work, how will we pay our bills? And if we go out, we run the risk of running into them,” she said, referring to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.”The way the goverment is working right now, everybody loses,” said Miguel, who has been working in the fields of southern California for three decades. The 54-year-old said that workers are losing jobs, farm owners are losing their labor, and as a result, the United States is losing its food.  Miguel has worked in various different agriculture sector jobs, including during the Covid-19 pandemic. All of them were “very hard jobs,” he said.Now he feels like he has a target on his back.”They should do a little research so they understand. The food they eat comes from the fields, right?” he said. “So it would be good if they were more aware, and gave us an opportunity to contribute positively, and not send us into hiding.”

Mervin Yamarte left Venezuela with his younger brother, hoping for a better life. But after a perilous jungle march, US detention, and long months in a Salvadoran jail surviving riots, beatings and fear, he has returned home a wounded and changed man.On entering the sweltering Caribbean port of Maracaibo, the first thing Yamarte did after hugging his mother and six-year-old daughter was to burn the baggy white prison shorts he wore during four months of “hell.””The suffering is over now,” said the 29-year-old, enjoying a longed-for moment of catharsis.Yamarte was one of 252 Venezuelans detained in US President Donald Trump’s March immigration crackdown, accused without evidence of gang activity, and deported to El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center, known as CECOT.According to four ex-detainees interviewed by AFP, the months were marked by abuse, violence, spoiled food and legal limbo.”You are going to die here!” heavily armed guards taunted them on arrival to the maximum security facility east of the capital San Salvador. “Welcome to hell!”The men had their heads shaved and were issued with prison clothes: a T-shirt, shorts, socks, and white plastic clogs.Yamarte said a small tuft of hair was left at the nape of his neck, which the guards tugged at.The Venezuelans were held separately from the local prison population in “Pavilion 8” — a building with 32 cells, each measuring about 100 square meters (1,076 square feet).Each cell — roughly the size of an average two-bedroom apartment — was designed to hold 80 prisoners.- ‘Carried out unconscious’ -Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele built the prison to house the country’s most dangerous gang members in deliberately brutal conditions, drawing constant criticism from rights groups.Trump’s administration paid Bukele $6 million to keep the Venezuelans behind bars.AFP has unsuccessfully requested a tour of the facility and interviews with CECOT authorities.Another prisoner, 37-year-old Maikel Olivera, recounted there were “beatings 24 hours a day” and sadistic guards who warned, “You are going to rot here, you’re going to be in jail for 300 years.””I thought I would never return to Venezuela,” he said.For four months, the prisoners had no access to the internet, phone calls, visits from loved ones, or even lawyers.At least one said he was sexually abused.The men said they slept mostly on metal cots, with no mattresses to provide comfort.There were several small, poorly-ventilated cells where prisoners would be locked up for 24 hours at a time for transgressions — real or imagined.”There were fellow detainees who couldn’t endure even two hours and were carried out unconscious,” Yamarte recounted. The men never saw sunlight and were allowed one shower a day at 4:00 am. If they showered out of turn, they were beaten.Andy Perozo, 30, told AFP of guards firing rubber bullets and tear gas into the cells.For a week after one of two riots that were brutally suppressed, “they shot me every morning. It was hell for me. Every time I went to the doctor, they beat me,” he said. Edwuar Hernandez, 23, also told of being beaten at the infirmary.”They would kick you… kicks everywhere,” he said. “Look at the marks; I have marks, I’m all marked.”The detainees killed time playing games with dice made from bits of tortilla dough.They counted the passing days with notches on a bar of soap.- ‘Out of hell’ -An estimated eight million Venezuelans have fled the political and economic chaos of their homeland to try to find a job in the United States that would allow them to send money home.Yamarte left in September 2023, making the weeks-long journey on foot through the Darien Gap that separates Colombia from Panama.It is unforgiving terrain that has claimed the lives of countless migrants who must brave predatory criminal gangs and wild animals.Yamarte was arrested in Dallas in March and deported three days later, without a court hearing.All 252 detainees were suddenly, and unexpectedly, freed on July 18 in a prisoner exchange deal between Caracas and Washington.Now, many are contemplating legal action.Many of the men believe they were arrested in the United States simply for sporting tattoos wrongly interpreted as proof of association with the feared Tren de Aragua gang.Yamarte has one that reads: “Strong like Mom.””I am clean. I can prove it to anyone,” he said indignantly, hurt at being falsely accused of being a criminal.”We went… to seek a better future for our families; we didn’t go there to steal or kill.”Yamarte, Perozo, and Hernandez are from the same poor neighborhood of Maracaibo, where their loved ones decorated homes with balloons and banners once news broke of their release.Yamarte’s mom, 46-year-old Mercedes, had prepared a special lunch of steak, mashed potatoes, and fried green plantain. At her house on Tuesday, the phone rang shortly after Yamarte’s arrival.It was his brother Juan, who works in the United States without papers and moves from place to place to evade Trump’s migrant dragnet.Juan told AFP he just wants to stay long enough to earn the $1,700 he needs to pay off the house he had bought for his wife and child in Venezuela.”Every day we thought of you, every day,” Juan told his brother. “I always had you in my mind, always, always.” “The suffering is over now,” replied Mervin. “We’ve come out of hell.”

Donald Trump’s promise to carry out the largest deportation operation in US history has appalled some Americans. But others are cashing in on the boom in demand for private detention centers.Migrants captured by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents need to be temporarily housed in places like the facility being readied in California City, prior to deportation.”When you talk to the majority of residents here, they have a favorable perspective on it,” said Marquette Hawkins, mayor of the hardscrabble settlement of 15,000 people, 100 miles (160 kilometres) north of Los Angeles.”They look at the economic impact, right?”California City is to be home to a sprawling detention center that will be operated by CoreCivic, one of the largest companies in the private detention sector.The company, which declined AFP requests for an interview, says the facility would generate around 500 jobs, and funnel $2 million in tax revenue to the city.”Many of our residents have already been hired out there to work in that facility,” Hawkins told AFP.”Any revenue source that is going to assist the town in rebuilding itself, rebranding itself, is going to be seen as a plus,” he said.- Boom -Trump’s ramped-up immigration arrests, like those that provoked protests in Los Angeles, saw a record 60,000 people in detention in June, according to ICE figures.Those same figures show the vast majority have no conviction, despite the president’s election campaign promises to go after hardened criminals.More than 80 percent of detainees are in facilities run by the private sector, according to the TRAC project at Syracuse University. And with Washington’s directive to triple the number of daily arrests — and $45 billion earmarked for new detention centers — the sector is looking at an unprecedented boom. “Never in our 42-year company history have we had so much activity and demand for our services as we are seeing right now,” Damon Hininger, executive director of CoreCivic, said in a May call with investors.When Trump took office in January, some 107 centers were operating. The number now hovers around 200. For Democratic politicians, this proliferation is intentional.”Private prison companies are profiting from human suffering, and Republicans are allowing them to get away with it,” Congresswoman Norma Torres told reporters outside a detention center in the southern California city of Adelanto.At the start of the year, there were three people detained there; there are now hundreds, each one of them attracting a daily stipend of taxpayer cash for the operator. Torres was refused permission to visit the facility, run by the privately owned GEO Group, because she had not given seven days’ notice, she said.”Denying members of Congress access to private detention facilities like Adelanto isn’t just disrespectful, it is dangerous, it is illegal, and it is a desperate attempt to hide the abuse happening behind these walls,” she said.”We’ve heard the horrifying stories of detainees being violently arrested, denied basic medical care, isolated for days, and left injured without treatment,” she added.Kristen Hunsberger, a staff attorney at the Law Center for Immigrant Advocates, said one client complained of having to wait “six or seven hours to get clean water.”It is “not sanitary and certainly not… in compliance with just basic human rights.”Hunsberger, who spends hours on the road going from one center to another to locate her clients, says many have been denied access to legal counsel, a constitutional right in the United States. Both GEO and ICE have denied allegations of mistreatment at the detention centers.”Claims there is overcrowding or subprime conditions in ICE facilities are categorically FALSE,” said Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security.”All detainees are provided with proper meals, medical treatment and have opportunities to communicate with their family members and lawyers.” – ‘Strategy’ -But some relatives of detainees tell a different story.Alejandra Morales, an American citizen, said her undocumented husband was detained incommunicado for five days in Los Angeles before being transferred to Adelanto. In the Los Angeles facility, “they don’t even let them brush their teeth, they don’t let them bathe, nothing. They have them all sleeping on the floor, in a cell, all together,” she said. Hunsberger said that for detainees and their relatives, the treatment appears to be deliberate.”They’re starting to feel that this is a strategy to wear people down, to have them in these inhumane conditions, and then pressure them to sign something where they could then agree to being deported,” she said.