ЦІКАВЕ

WASHINGTON — U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has been hospitalized since Monday for an unspecified medical matter, the Pentagon said late Friday, without detailing why he was being treated or why it kept his hospital stay secret all week. 

Austin, who is 70, sits just below President Joe Biden at the top of the chain of command of the U.S. military, and his duties require him being available at a moment’s notice to respond to any manner of national security crises.

The Pentagon did not say whether Austin ever lost consciousness before or after he was admitted to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Jan. 1, or the extent to which his duties were assumed by his deputy, Kathleen Hicks.

Those duties include being ready and available to respond to an incoming nuclear attack.

The Pentagon said Austin suffered “complications following a recent elective medical procedure,” but declined to say what that procedure was or what complications he suffered.

“He is recovering well and is expecting to resume his full duties today,” Air Force Major General Patrick Ryder, the top Pentagon spokesperson, said in a statement Friday.

Just a day earlier, Ryder held a televised news briefing that conveyed the sense of business as usual at the Pentagon, offering Austin’s condolences to ally Japan following its New Year’s Day earthquake, for example.

But the past week has been anything but normal for the Pentagon, with U.S. troops in the Middle East wrestling with the regional fallout from the unfolding Israel-Hamas war and carrying out a U.S. retaliatory strike in Baghdad on Thursday.

The Pentagon Press Association, in a letter to Pentagon officials, criticized the Defense Department’s secrecy, saying that Austin was a public figure who had no claim to medical privacy in such a situation.

“At a time when there are growing threats to U.S. military service members in the Middle East and the U.S. is playing key national security roles in the wars in Israel and Ukraine, it is particularly critical for the American public to be informed about the health status and decision-making ability of its top defense leader,” it wrote.

Reuters correspondent Phil Stewart is a member of the association’s board of directors.

The Pentagon Press Association letter noted that even U.S. presidents disclose when they must delegate duties due to medical procedures.

The way the Defense Department handled Austin’s hospitalization stands in contrast to how the State Department dealt with then-Secretary of State Colin Powell’s prostate surgery on Dec. 15, 2003.

The State Department spokesperson at that time issued a statement in the morning making public that Powell, a retired four-star general and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was in surgery at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and would remain there for several days before returning home.

It also said Powell would be on a reduced schedule while he recovered from the operation. The State Department’s spokesperson at the time, Richard Boucher, then offered details on Powell’s surgery in his daily briefing.

Boucher, contacted by Reuters on Friday, said the key question regarding public disclosure was whether Austin was under anesthesia or was incapacitated.

“Was there any moment in the process where he could not function as secretary of defense?” he asked. “If you are up and walking around and have your information and you have your aides in the next room and you can make split-second decisions . . . then there is probably not a public necessity to disclose.

“The only necessity is if you are going to be conked out,” he added.

The Pentagon has not yet answered that question.
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NEW YORK — New York state lawyers increased their request for penalties to over $370 million Friday in Donald Trump’s civil business fraud trial. He retorted: “They should pay me.”

The exchange came as lawyers for both sides filed papers highlighting their takeaways from the trial in court filings ahead of closing arguments, set for next Thursday. Trump is expected to attend, though plans could change.

It will be the final chance for state and defense lawyers to make their cases. The civil lawsuit, which accuses the leading Republican presidential hopeful of deceiving banks and insurers by vastly inflating his net worth, is consequential for him even while he fights four criminal cases in various courts.

The New York civil case could end up barring him from doing business in the state where he built his real estate empire. On top of that, state Attorney General Letitia James is seeking the $370 million penalty, plus interest — up from a pretrial figure of $250 million, nudged to over $300 million during the proceedings.

The state says the new sum reflects windfalls from wrongdoing, chiefly $199 million in profits from property sales and $169 million in savings on interest rates, as calculated by an investment banking expert hired by James’ office.

Trump bristled at the proposed penalty in an all-caps post on his Truth Social platform, insisting anew that “there was no victim, no default, no damages.”

He complained that the attorney general was seeking $370 million and instead “should pay me,” asserting that businesses are fleeing New York.

According to the state Labor Department, the number of private sector jobs in New York increased 1% in the year that ended this past November, compared to 1.6% nationally.

James’ office argued in a filing Friday that Trump, his company and executives clearly intended to defraud people.

“The myriad deceptive schemes they employed to inflate asset values and conceal facts were so outrageous that they belie innocent explanation,” state lawyer Kevin Wallace wrote.

The state alleges Trump and his company ginned up exorbitant values for golf courses, hotels, and more, including Trump’s former home in his namesake tower in New York and his current home at the Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida. The numbers were listed on personal financial statements that netted him attractive rates on loans and insurance, leaving him money to invest in other projects and even his 2016 presidential campaign, James’ office says.

The defendants, including Trump’s sons Donald Jr. and Eric, deny any wrongdoing. The former president has painted the case as a political maneuver by James, Judge Arthur Engoron and other Democrats, saying they’re abusing the legal system to try to cut off his chances of winning back the White House this year.

He asserts that his financial statements came in billions of dollars low, and that any overestimations — such as valuing his Trump Tower penthouse at nearly three times its actual size — were mere mistakes and made no difference in the overall picture of his fortune.

He also says the documents are essentially legally bulletproof because they said the numbers weren’t audited, among other caveats. Recipients understood them as simply starting points for their own analyses, the defense says.

None of Trump’s lenders testified that they wouldn’t have made the loans or would have charged more interest if his financial statements had shown different numbers, and 10-plus weeks of testimony produced “no factual evidence from any witness that the gains were ill-gotten,” attorneys Michael Madaio and Christopher Kise wrote in a filing Friday. Nor, they said, was there proof that insurers were ripped off.

Separately, defense lawyers argued that claims against Executive Vice Presidents Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. should be dismissed because they never had “anything more than a peripheral knowledge or involvement in the creation, preparation, or use of” their father’s financial statements.

The sons relied on the work of other Trump Organization executives and an outside accounting firm that prepared those documents, attorneys Clifford Robert and Michael Farina said, echoing the scions’ own testimony.

Their father also took the stand, disputing the allegations, decrying the case as political and criticizing the judge and the attorney general. James’ office argued in its filing Friday that Trump was “not a credible witness.”

“He was evasive, gave irrelevant speeches and was incapable of answering questions in a direct and credible manner,” Wallace wrote.

The verdict is up to the judge because James brought the case under a state law that doesn’t allow for a jury. Engoron has said he hopes to decide by the end of this month.

He will weigh claims of conspiracy, insurance fraud and falsifying business records. But he ruled before trial on the lawsuit’s top claim, finding that Trump and other defendants engaged in fraud for years. With that ruling, the judge ordered that a receiver take control of some of the ex-president’s properties, but an appeals court has frozen that order for now.

During the trial, Engoron fined Trump a total of $15,000 after finding that he violated a gag order that barred all trial participants from commenting publicly on the judge’s staff. The order was imposed after Trump maligned the judge’s principal law clerk.

Trump’s lawyers are appealing the gag order.
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WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has been hospitalized since Monday, due to complications following a minor elective medical procedure, Air Force Major General Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, said Friday. It was the department’s first acknowledgement that Austin had been admitted — five days earlier — to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

Ryder said Friday that it’s not clear when Austin will be released from the hospital but that the secretary is “recovering well and is expecting to resume his full duties today.”

The Pentagon’s failure to disclose Austin’s hospitalization is counter to normal practice with other senior U.S. and Cabinet officials, including the president. The Pentagon Press Association, which represents media members who cover the Defense Department, sent a letter of protest to Ryder and Chris Meagher, who is the assistant defense secretary for public affairs.

“The fact that he has been at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for four days and the Pentagon is only now alerting the public late on a Friday evening is an outrage,” the PPA said in its letter. “At a time when there are growing threats to U.S. military service members in the Middle East and the U.S. is playing key national security roles in the wars in Israel and Ukraine, it is particularly critical for the American public to be informed about the health status and decision-making ability of its top defense leader.”

Ryder said that this has been an “evolving situation,” and due to privacy and medical issues the department did not make Austin’s absence public. He declined to provide any other details about Austin’s medical procedure or health.

In a statement, Ryder said that at all times, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks “was prepared to act for and exercise the powers of the Secretary, if required.”

Austin, 70, spent 41 years in the military, retiring as a four-star Army general in 2016.
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WASHINGTON — Vietnamese General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong has hailed improved relations with the U.S. and China as significant gains in the country’s “bamboo” diplomatic strategy of balancing ties with superpowers.

Last year, Vietnam hosted U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping little more than three months apart, moving closer in relationships with the top two powers — both of which want to court Vietnam, according to experts interviewed by VOA.

Between these two moves, Vietnam elevated Japan to one of its six comprehensive strategic partners, along with the U.S. and China.

When addressing the 32nd National Diplomatic Conference on December 19 in Hanoi, Trong said Vietnam’s diplomatic tradition is deeply ingrained with the essence of Vietnamese bamboo, which has “firm roots” and “flexible branches,” reported VCCI News.

Vietnamese diplomacy, according to the party leader, should be adaptive and flexible, aligning with the core tenets of “firm in objectives, flexible in strategies and tactics.”

“Flexible” for balancing

The idea of “bamboo diplomacy” was first coined by Trong in 2016 following his reelection to lead Vietnam’s Communist Party for the second time. Vietnam has actively pursued this diplomatic approach to navigate rising global tensions since 2021.

The policy is exemplified by Vietnam’s careful balancing act. It shares concerns with the U.S. over Beijing’s growing assertiveness in the disputed South China Sea, but it has significant economic links with China.

Following an unprecedented double upgrade of its relationship with the U.S. in September, Vietnam committed to developing a “shared future” with China in December.

“In a world where great powers are constantly competing, and in a world with an uncertain future, it is evident that Vietnam has created certain successes, especially in maintaining and keeping the balance between two great powers who are competing so fiercely,” Hoang Viet, a Ho Chi Minh City Law University lecturer and international dispute expert, told VOA.

Lawyer Dang Dinh Manh, who is following Vietnamese politics while living in exile in the U.S., said that after their upgrades with Hanoi, the U.S. and Japan “are reassured that Vietnam is not too inclined toward China, while the Chinese side is affirmed that Vietnam continues to be in the orbit in the name of friendship with big brother China.”

Hoang Viet, also an expert on China’s South China Sea expansion, said Vietnam had to accept participation in a “community of shared future” with China so as not to upset Beijing and maintain the diplomatic space to establish deeper cooperation with the U.S., Japan and other Western countries for economic development purposes.

“Vietnam was most afraid of adverse reactions from China when it comes to upgrading relations with the U.S. and Japan,” said Hoang Viet. “The U.S. had pushed Vietnam for the relationship elevation for a long time, and Vietnam had to choose a right time for it. Otherwise, it will face anger from China.”

During Xi’s visit, Hanoi and Beijing signed 36 cooperation documents in areas such as infrastructure, trade and security. They also published a joint declaration outlining broad pledges.

Carl Thayer, a professor at the University of New South Wales, branded the declaration as “window dressing,” saying Vietnam is “giving lip service” to Chinese ideas like its Belt and Road Initiative and its “Community of Shared Future.”

“It doesn’t cost [Vietnam] anything,” Thayer, an expert on Vietnam, told VOA. “They are not making a firm stand, and they’re giving the impression that they are supporting, or at least not opposing.”

Trade is an important part of Vietnam’s balancing strategy. The United States, a former enemy of Vietnam, has become its greatest export market for goods, while China is its largest import market.

Following the establishment of new relations with the U.S. and China, Vietnam, as an increasingly strategic player in global supply chains, is projected to see a large influx of foreign capital.

Jensen Huang, CEO of chipmaker Nvidia, visited Hanoi last month and told domestic media that he aimed to set up a base in Vietnam. Meanwhile, the Southeast Asian country is seeing a wave of Chinese firms arriving.

Neutral in a polarized world

Although bamboo diplomacy has served Vietnam well in the face of superpowers’ competition for influence and investment, analysts have warned of limits to Vietnam’s neutral approach.

“Bamboo diplomacy is really about Vietnam maintaining its autonomy and independence and not becoming aligned,” said Thayer. “But now the world is more polarized than ever, and it’s going to make it more and more difficult, I think, to stay out of it.”

Vietnam’s White Paper 2019 stated that the country is pursuing a nonaligned policy known as “Four No,” which means no military alliances; no siding with one country against another; no foreign military bases; and no use of force or threat to use force in international relations.

Vietnam chose to refrain from condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and voted against suspending Russia, Hanoi’s largest arms supplier and longtime ally, from the U.N. Human Rights Council.

“Vietnam, in the sense, will lose some credibility by not speaking out on human rights issues,” Thayer said, adding that “the case of Russia and Ukraine was a prime example.”

According to Alexander Vuving, a professor at the Hawaii-based Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies, the growing chasm between the West on the one hand and China and Russia on the other, will make this approach ever trickier for Vietnam.

“‘Bamboo diplomacy’ won’t provide a sustainable way for Vietnam to cope with the vagaries of Cold War 2,” Vuving told VOA, adding that Vietnam needs “a new ‘safety net’ suitable for the new conditions of the times.”

Similarly, Vu Duc Khanh, a law professor at the University of Ottawa who follows Vietnamese politics, questioned whether Vietnam could retain neutrality in the face of increasingly fierce competition between superpowers.

“The war in Ukraine has changed the entire strategy of countries like Finland, Sweden and Denmark,” Khanh said.

Finland and Sweden applied to join NATO in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, while Denmark, a founding member of NATO, signed a defense basing agreement with the U.S. last month.

On the same note, Thayer said he believed “Vietnam is going to find it’s hard” if the wars in Ukraine and Gaza intensify the competition between the U.S. and China.

Other potential stumbling blocks

“The Biden administration could be replaced by Trump’s. Or the American Congress might get angry with Vietnam on particular issues. Or Vietnam’s position will be an impediment to improving bilateral relations with the United States,” said Thayer.

According to Hoang Viet, Vietnam is watching to learn these lessons against the backdrop of its confrontation in the South China Sea with China.

“For now, Vietnam, as well as Southeast Asian countries, are trying not to take sides as long as it’s possible for them,” said Hoang Viet. “Vietnam will maintain this policy until they cannot do it anymore.”

Last month, General Secretary Trong anticipated that global and regional dynamics would be “complex and unpredictable.”

He warned that “in a multipolar, multicentered world, strategic competition among major nations is inevitable, with heightened risks of conflict and confrontation posing significant challenges for developing countries.”

He urged Vietnamese diplomats to keep a careful eye on the situation to make accurate forecasts and “be persistent yet flexible” in diplomacy.
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NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA — The January 8 inauguration of Jeff Landry as Louisiana governor consolidates Republican Party control of statehouses in America’s Deep South and the region’s shift to more conservative governance.

Nearly 60% of Louisiana voters chose Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.

Republicans are ready for change at the statehouse in Baton Rouge.

As a candidate and as the state’s attorney general, Landry backed banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender youths, expanding rights for gun owners and enacting a near-total abortion ban without exceptions for rape and incest.

“I’m tired of the government doing everything for everybody, because it makes people lazy,” said retired firefighter Robert Caretto. “I believe in peace through military strength, I believe we shouldn’t make decisions that hurt children with gender changes based on what a small percentage of gay or trans people want, and I believe in strict borders that protect Americans.

“I want to leave this country better for my grandkids, so I want a government that shares my values,” he told VOA. “I’m excited because I think this incoming Louisiana government is a step in the right direction.”

New Orleans event coordinator and Democratic voter Tana Velen sees the new governor as a step backward.

“I’m so worried, especially as a woman, about the direction we’re heading,” she told VOA. “I’m afraid women will lose their lives and their ability to have children because of these decisions being made by politicians instead of doctors, I’m afraid the trans community will no longer have access to gender-affirming care, and I’m afraid his policies will cause Louisiana’s public schools to fall even further behind the rest of the country.”

Outgoing Governor John Bel Edwards “governed for the last eight years as a conservative on most issues even though he was a Democrat,” said Barry Erwin, CEO of the public policy group Council for a Better Louisiana. “When it came to abortion, the right to bear arms and even most fiscal issues, he often sided with Republicans.”

With a legislative supermajority, Erwin said, Republican lawmakers “were able to get most of what they wanted anyway. What they couldn’t do, they’ll be able to do now with Landry as governor. But after they get a few of those higher profile things done in the first year or two, I don’t think things will feel too different.”

 

Shifting Louisiana follows a shifting South

Shifting from a Democratic governor to a Republican governor is part of a decadeslong trend in states across the Deep South. Dillard University professor of Urban Studies and Public Policy Robert Collins said it is partly because past political nuances in the region are gone.

“In America today, politics are more nationalized,” he told VOA. “Democrats are liberal, and Republicans are conservative. You basically either support Trump or you don’t. And everyone basically fits into one of those two categories.

“But from before the Civil War in the 1860s until after the civil rights battles of the 1960s, you had more factions. Rival Democrats could be liberal or conservative, and the GOP was split into liberal and conservative camps, as well.”

There were very few Republicans in the pre-Civil War South because the party’s policies were considered anti-slavery. The economies of southern states, including Louisiana, depended largely on slavery, so voters in the state — who were all white because slaves didn’t have the right to vote — were largely conservative Democrats.

That was mostly unchanged until the Civil Rights Act of 1965, which struck down the discriminatory voting practices adopted in many southern states after the Civil War and finally made it possible for Black Americans at large to vote.

“You would have expected Black voters to align with the Republican Party because they were the party seen to abolish slavery during the Civil War,” Collins said, “but there was no Republican Party in the South in the 1960s. If you wanted your vote to count for something, you had to vote Democrat. So Black southerners became Democrats along with the pro-racism whites — white people were conservative Democrats while Black people were liberal.”

Republicans focused on white, southern Democrats, many of whom were fearful that Black voters were becoming too powerful and were disenchanted with their party for helping pass civil rights laws.

“Republican leaders like Barry Goldwater and future President Richard Nixon saw this disenchantment and offered the Republican Party as an alternative via what is called the ‘Southern Strategy,’” Collins said. “It took decades, but slowly, the conservative Democrats of southern states like Louisiana became Republicans.”

National politics take over

Since Edwards first took office as governor in 2016, Democrats’ share of seats in the Louisiana House of Representatives fell from 41 to 32 out of 105. And within the Republican Party, moderates are losing to more conservative challengers, pushing Louisiana governance further to the right. 

“The other states in the Deep South had already transitioned away from the nuance of local politics,” Collins said, “and with the election of Jeff Landry as governor, it seems Louisiana has finally fully transitioned to the duality of national politics, as well.”

“How do I feel about the direction of our state?” asked Larisa Diephuis, a New Orleans Democrat. “Well, we’re leaving.”
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This week the United States Department of Justice unsealed formerly confidential documents pertaining to convicted sexual offender Jeffrey Epstein. Some of the documents mention big names, including former U.S. Presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, Britain’s Prince Andrew and others. Aron Ranen reports on the story from New York City.
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NEW YORK — Glynis Johns, a Tony Award-winning stage and screen star who played the mother opposite Julie Andrews in the classic movie Mary Poppins and introduced the world to the bittersweet standard-to-be Send in the Clowns by Stephen Sondheim, has died. She was 100.

Mitch Clem, her manager, said she died Thursday at an assisted living home in Los Angeles of natural causes. “Today’s a sad day for Hollywood,” Clem said. “She is the last of the last of old Hollywood.”

Johns was known to be a perfectionist about her profession — precise, analytical and opinionated. The roles she took had to be multifaceted. Anything less was giving less than her all.

“As far as I’m concerned, I’m not interested in playing the role on only one level,” she told The Associated Press in 1990. “The whole point of first-class acting is to make a reality of it.  To be real. And I have to make sense of it in my own mind in order to be real.”

Johns’ greatest triumph was playing Desiree Armfeldt in A Little Night Music, for which she won a Tony in 1973. Sondheim wrote the show’s hit song Send in the Clowns to suit her distinctive husky voice, but she lost the part in the 1977 film version to Elizabeth Taylor.

“I’ve had other songs written for me, but nothing like that,” Johns told the AP in 1990. “It’s the greatest gift I’ve ever been given in the theater.”

Others who followed Johns in singing Sondheim’s most popular song include Frank Sinatra, Judy Collins, Barbra Streisand, Sarah Vaughan and Olivia Newton-John. It also appeared in season two of Yellowjackets in 2023, sung by Elijah Wood. 

Back when it was being conceived, A Little Night Music had gone into rehearsal with some of the book and score unfinished, including a solo song for Johns. Director Hal Prince suggested she and co-star Len Cariou improvise a scene or two to give book writer Hugh Wheeler some ideas. 

“Hal said ‘Why don’t you just say what you feel,'” she recalled to the AP. “When Len and I did that, Hal got on the phone to Steve Sondheim and said, ‘I think you’d better get in a cab and get round here and watch what they’re doing because you are going to get the idea for Glynis’ solo.'”

Johns was the fourth generation of an English theatrical family. Her father, Mervyn Johns, had a long career as a character actor, and her mother was a pianist. She was born in Pretoria, South Africa, because her parents were visiting the area on tour at the time of her birth.

Johns was a dancer at 12 and an actor at 14 in London’s West End. Her breakthrough role was as the amorous mermaid in the title of the 1948 hit comedy Miranda.

“I was quite an athlete, my muscles were strong from dancing, so the tail was just fine; I swam like a porpoise,” she told Newsday in 1998. In 1960’s The Sundowners, with Deborah Kerr and Robert Mitchum, she was nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar. (She lost out to Shirley Jones in Elmer Gantry.)

Other highlights include playing the mother in Mary Poppins, the movie that introduced Julie Andrews and where she sang the rousing tune Sister Suffragette. She also starred in the 1989 Broadway revival of The Circle, W. Somerset Maugham’s romantic comedy about love, marriage and fidelity, opposite Rex Harrison and Stewart Granger.

“I’ve retired many times. My personal life has come before my work. The theater is just part of my life. It probably uses my highest sense of intelligence, so therefore I have to come back to it, to realize that I’ve got the talent. I’m not as good doing anything else,” she told the AP.

To prepare for A Coffin in Egypt, Horton Foote’s 1998 play about a grand dame reminiscing about her life on and off a ranch on the Texas prairie, she asked the Texas-born Foote to record a short tape of himself reading some lines and used it as her coach.

In a 1991 revival of A Little Night Music in Los Angeles, she played Madame Armfeldt, the mother of Desiree, the part she had created. In 1963, she starred in her own TV sitcom, Glynis. 

Johns lived all around the world and had four husbands. The first was the father of her only child, the late Gareth Forwood, an actor who died in 2007.
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NEW YORK — It’s small in stature, big on activity and known for a “smile,” and it’s ready to compete with 200 other dog breeds.

Say hello to the Lancashire heeler, the latest breed recognized by the American Kennel Club. The organization announced Wednesday that the rare herding breed is now eligible for thousands of U.S. dog shows, including the prominent Westminster Kennel Club show.

With long bodies and short coats that are often black and tan, the solidly built dogs are shaped a bit like a downsized corgi, standing around 30 centimeters at the shoulder and weighing up to about 7.7 kilograms. Historically, they were farm helpers that could both drive cattle and rout rats, and today they participate in an array of canine sports and pursuits.

“They’re gritty little dogs, and they’re very intelligent little dogs,” says Patricia Blankenship of Flora, Mississippi, who has bred them for over a decade. “It’s an enjoyable little breed to be around.”

Their official description — or breed standard, in dog-world parlance — calls for them to be “courageous, happy, affectionate to owner,” and owners say contented heelers sometimes pull back their lips in a “smile.”

They’re “extremely versatile,” participating in everything from scent work to dock diving contests, says United States Lancashire Heeler Club President Sheryl Bradbury. But she advises that a Lancashire heeler “has to have a job,” whether it’s an organized dog sport or simply walks and fetch with its owners.

The dogs benefit from meeting various different people and canines, added Bradbury, who breeds them in Plattsmouth, Nebraska.

Lancashire heelers go back centuries in the United Kingdom, where they’re now deemed a “vulnerable native breed” at risk of dying out in their homeland. Britain’s Kennel Club has added an average of just 121 Lancashire heelers annually to its registry in recent years, and the American Kennel Club says only about 5,000 exist worldwide.

Founded in 1884, the AKC is the United States’ oldest purebred dog registry and functions like a league for many canine competitions, including sports open to mixed-breeds and purebreds. But only the 201 recognized breeds vie for the traditional “best in show” trophies at Westminster and elsewhere.

To get recognized, a breed must count at least 300 pedigreed dogs, distributed through at least 20 states, and fanciers must agree on a breed standard. Recognition is voluntary, and some breeds’ aficionados approach other kennel clubs or none at all.

Adding breeds, or even perpetuating them, bothers animal rights activists. They argue that dog breeding powers puppy mills, reduces pet adoptions and accentuates canine health problems by compressing genetic diversity.

The AKC says it promotes responsibly “breeding for type and function” to produce dogs with special skills, such as tracking lost people, as well as pets with characteristics that owners can somewhat predict and prepare for. The club has given over $32 million since 1995 to a foundation that underwrites canine health research.
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