“Real families were counting on that money, because the QueensWay is desperately needed in our community. It would provide a green space for kids in 28 schools—many of which, like the school where I work, have very little outdoor space, and most of it covered in asphalt.”

City officials announcing funding for the QueensWay proposal in 2022. (Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)

Have you ever made a promise to a child and taken it back? How about 100,000 children?

That’s exactly what the federal government has done in Queens. They made a promise to fund the new QueensWay, a project to transform 47 forgotten acres—a railway that hasn’t been used in 60 years, a public eyesore and dumping ground—into a lush greenway running through the middle of Queens.

The QueensWay would serve 245,000 people, a vibrant system of parks and trails that would make it safer for kids to get to school and easier for adults to get to work. It would create jobs and expand tourism dollars in Queens, and would provide desperately needed green space for tens of thousands of children.

The U.S. Department of Transportation awarded the city $117 million to make this dream project into a reality. And then Congress took it back.

I’m a community school director at a public school here in Queens, which means I work to connect students, parents and teachers with community groups and government agencies to give our kids the resources they need for the best possible chance of success.

The QueensWay project came about in exactly the same way: 20 years of local advocacy, hundreds of meetings with community stakeholders, and a decade of thoughtful design and planning to create a greenway that will best serve the people of Queens: Our quality of life. Our health. Our economy.

Twenty years of hard work paid off. But using the so-called “clawback” provisions of President Donald Trump’s new spending bill, Congress rescinded the funding this past summer, leaving Queens in the lurch.

Real families were counting on that money, because the QueensWay is desperately needed in our community. It would provide a green space for kids in 28 schools—many of which, like the school where I work, have very little outdoor space, and most of it covered in asphalt.

This is no coincidence: Public schools in Queens lack resources that schools in other boroughs have, because Queens gets the least public investment per child of any borough in New York City. In Queens, our kids grow up with fewer safe parks, hotter asphalt schoolyards, and riskier walks to green space—while children in other boroughs benefit from billions more in new amenities and safer access.

I’m a mom of two young children, so this funding clawback affects my kids too. I don’t want my children to have to walk across a highway to get to a park, or be forced to play in areas that feel unsafe. I work hard every day to help my own children and the kids at my school have their most basic needs met, like food, dental care, and eye exams. These kids need and deserve a beautiful place to play, just as parents like me need and deserve a safe place to bring our kids.

Here’s the good news: New Yorkers know how to fight, and our battle for the QueensWay is far from over. If Queens were its own city, it would be the fifth largest in America, and there’s a lot of power in numbers. Just as we fought to win this grant in the first place, now we must fight to win back the funding that was promised.

So if you’re reading this, send an email to Mayor Eric Adams—and your city councilperson, your state representatives, your members of Congress, and Gov. Kathy Hochul while you’re at it. Tell them that we care about the QueensWay, and we need our leaders to fight for our kids just as hard as we do.

Because here in Queens, we keep our promises. And we demand that the government keep its promise to us.

Amy Kui is Forest Hills resident and and Community School Director (CSD) for United Community Schools at PS65Q The Raymond York Elementary School.

The post Opinion: Fighting for the QueensWay We Were Promised appeared first on City Limits.

By RUSS BYNUM, Associated Press

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — Two months after 300 South Korean nationals were detained and left the U.S. following in an immigration raid at Hyundai’s electric vehicle manufacturing site in Georgia, some of those workers have returned to America to resume those jobs, their employer said Thursday.

The September raid shut down work on a battery plant under construction at the sprawling site near Savannah where Hyundai Motor Group began producing electric vehicles last year. Most of the 475 workers detained were South Korean nationals. U.S. immigration officials said they entered the U.S. with visas that had expired or with visa waivers that prohibited them from working.

The battery plant’s operator, HL-GA Battery Co., said in a statement Thursday that construction has resumed with a mix of new and returning workers. The company thanked the U.S. and South Korean governments, as well as Georgia officials, “for their collaboration in supporting a smooth and timely return.”

FILE – The Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America is seen, March 26, 2025, in Ellabell, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart, File)

“We remain on track to start production in the first half of next year and continue to actively hire local positions to operate the facility,” the battery company’s statement said.

An HL-GA Battery spokesperson, Mary Beth Kennedy, confirmed to The Associated Press that some of the returning workers were among the South Korean nationals detained in September. Kennedy said she did not know how many.

More than 300 South Korean workers were detained in an immigration raid Sept. 4 at the sprawling site where the Hyundai Motor Group produces electric vehicles near Savannah. The workers spent a week at a Georgia detention center before the South Korean government negotiated their release and flew them home.

The roundup by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which released video showing some of the detained workers shackled in chains, sparked outrage and feelings of betrayal in South Korea, a key U.S. ally that has pledged hundreds of billions of dollars in American investments.

The Georgia raid targeted one of the state’s largest and most high-profile manufacturing sites, where Hyundai produces electric vehicles at a $7.6 billion plant. The 475 people detained all worked at the battery plant, which will produce batteries to power Hyundai EVs. It is operated by HL-GA Battery, a joint venture by Hyundai and LG Energy Solution.

The South Korean nationals detained in Georgia were largely engineers and other highly skilled workers who came to the U.S. temporarily to install equipment and perform other specialized work to get the battery plant up and running.

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It is unclear how many of the formerly detained workers are coming back. Jongwon Lee, an attorney in metro Atlanta, said he has firsthand knowledge of two Korean nationals who plan to return after the U.S. State Department confirmed that their B-1 business visitor visas were still valid.

But Kihwan Kim, president of the Federation of Korean Associations for the Southeast U.S., said some of the workers snared in the raid are hesitant to return to the U.S.

“They don’t have to come to the United States to work after that kind of humiliation,” Kim said. “They can go to other countries.”

South Korea’s government demanded improvements to the U.S. visa system for skilled Korean workers. Last month, the South Korean Foreign Ministry announced that U.S. officials had agreed to allow South Korean workers on short-term visas or a visa waiver program to help build industrial sites in America

President Donald Trump initially defended the immigration raid in Georgia, saying in September that the detained workers “were here illegally,” When asked about those workers again during an October visit to Seoul, Trump said: “I was opposed to getting them out.”

New Twins manager Derek Shelton, in Las Vegas this week for baseball’s general managers meetings, is adding to his coaching staff, according to reports from multiple outlets.

A source with knowledge of the process has confirmed that former all-star outfielder Grady Sizemore will join the staff as the first base coach and work with the outfielders and baserunners.

Several of the coaches on Rocco Baldelli’s staff have been retained by Shelton, including pitching coach Pete Maki, pitching coach and assistant hitting coaches Rayden Sierra and Luis Ramirez.

Ramon Borrego,who served as first base coach last season, will stay and become the third base coach. The Athletic has reported that Baldelli’s third base coach, Tommy Watkins, is taking a job with the Atlanta Braves.

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By MARCIA DUNN, Associated Press

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Blue Origin launched its huge New Glenn rocket Thursday with a pair of NASA spacecraft destined for Mars.

It was only the second flight of the rocket that Jeff Bezos’ company and NASA are counting on to get people and supplies to the moon.

The 321-foot New Glenn blasted into the afternoon sky from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, sending NASA’s twin Mars orbiters on a drawn-out journey to the red planet. Liftoff was stalled four days by lousy local weather as well as solar storms strong enough to paint the skies with auroras as far south as Florida.

A Blue Origin New Glenn rocket stands ready on Launch Complex 36 a few minutes before the launch was scrubbed at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Sunday, Nov. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/John Raoux)

New Glenn’s inaugural test flight in January delivered a prototype satellite to orbit, but failed to land the booster on a barge in the Atlantic.

Blue Origin hoped to recover the booster this time following its separation from the upper stage and the Mars orbiters, an essential step to recycle and slash costs similar to SpaceX.

The identical Mars orbiters, named Escapade, will spend a year hanging out near Earth, stationing themselves 1 million miles away. Once Earth and Mars are properly aligned next fall, the duo will get a gravity assist from Earth to head to the red planet, arriving in 2027.

In this image provided by NASA, the agency’s identical Mars orbiters, named Escapade (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) are inspected and processed at the Astrotech Space Operations Facility near the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Thursday, Aug. 22, 2025. (Kim Shiflett/NASA via AP)

Once around Mars, the spacecraft will map the planet’s upper atmosphere and scattered magnetic fields, studying how these realms interact with the solar wind. The observations should shed light on the processes behind the escaping Martian atmosphere, helping to explain how the planet went from wet and warm to dry and dusty. Scientists will also learn how best to protect astronauts against Mars’ harsh radiation environment.

“We really, really want to understand the interaction of the solar wind with Mars better than we do now,” Escapade’s lead scientist, Rob Lillis of the University of California, Berkeley, said ahead of the launch. “Escapade is going to bring an unprecedented stereo viewpoint because we’re going to have two spacecraft at the same time.”

It’s a relatively low-budget mission, coming in under $80 million, that’s managed and operated by UC Berkeley. NASA saved money by signing up for one of New Glenn’s early flights. The Mars orbiters should have blasted off last fall, but NASA passed up that ideal launch window — Earth and Mars line up for a quick transit just every two years — because of feared delays with Blue Origin’s brand-new rocket.

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Named after John Glenn, the first American to orbit the world, New Glenn is five times bigger than the New Shepard rockets sending wealthy clients to the edge of space from West Texas. Blue Origin plans to launch a prototype Blue Moon lunar lander on a demo mission in the coming months aboard New Glenn.

Created in 2000 by Bezos, Amazon’s founder, Blue Origin already holds a NASA contract for the third moon landing by astronauts under the Artemis program. Elon Musk’s SpaceX beat out Blue Origin for the first and second crew landings, using Starships, nearly 100 feet taller than Bezos’ New Glenn.

But last month NASA Acting Administrator Sean Duffy reopened the contract for the first crewed moon landing, citing concern over the pace of Starship’s progress in flight tests from Texas. Blue Origin as well as SpaceX have presented accelerated landing plans.

NASA is on track to send astronauts around the moon early next year using its own Space Launch System, or SLS, rocket. The next Artemis crew would attempt to land; the space agency is pressing to get astronauts back on the lunar surface by decade’s end in order to beat China.

Twelve astronauts walked on the moon more than a half-century ago during NASA’s Apollo program.

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