@jamescb0,
I don't know if this will help you but you can set some basic shipping charges from inside your PayPal account. It allows you to set flat rate shipping based on order value and % shipping based on order value.
It's not perfect but maybe it's better to get some shipping charged rather than none. Two of my three affected sites are flat rate shipping so this works well.
Only thing to watch is that when they fix it you'll need to undo the change quickly to avoid charging shipping twice, once from your website and once by PayPal.
I just received this back from PayPal - they responded very quickly to my emailed problem report.
"We are aware of an issue affecting the variable handling_charge not working at the moment and we are working towards resolving it as soon as possible.
So before fixing this issue , As a temporary workaround you could replace the parameter “handling_cart” with another parameter “handling_1” or adding shipping profiles to your PayPal account. It does not apply in all cases as it can only be used in case of a single fee across the board."