The handprints of military children pressed onto paper hearts are decorating a corner inside the White House and the lawn as first lady Jill Biden celebrates Valentine’s Day. 

Three large hearts, one with the message, “Reach Out with Open Hearts and Helping Hands this Valentine’s Day,” and two others featuring handprints are on display on the north lawn in view of television cameras where White House correspondents stand for their live reports.

Cut-outs of dog Commander and cat Willow are also part of the display.

The theme continues inside the executive mansion as a corner of the East Wing entrance is decorated with three more large hearts, all printed with “Love,” and replicas of the dog and cat. Hearts bearing the children’s handprints have been strung together and hung in a window for visitors taking public tours to see.

The first lady and the children worked on the “heart” projects when she visited the U.S. Army Garrison Fort Drum, New York, home of the 10th Mountain Division, on Jan. 30. The 3- to 5-year-old children are enrolled at Fort Drum South Riva Ridge Child Development Center.

The visit was part of her Joining Forces initiative to support military and veteran families and their caregivers.

Valentine’s Day is one of the first lady’s favorite holidays. She also displayed Valentine’s Day messages at the White House in 2021 and 2022.
…

The United States said Monday it does not know the origin of the three high-altitude objects it shot down over the past few days as they drifted in the winds over North America.

The government said it does not believe the objects were surveillance aircraft, though it is leaving open the possibility that they may be.

“They didn’t have propulsion,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters at the White House. “They were not being maneuvered. They didn’t have surveillance [capability], but we couldn’t rule it out.”

“We’re sort of in uncharted territory here,” Kirby said.

He said parts of all three objects fell “in remote, difficult places to reach” — ice off the coast of the far northwestern U.S. state of Alaska, the Yukon territory of northwestern Canada and the depths of Lake Huron on the U.S.-Canada border.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said U.S. personnel have not yet recovered any debris from the three objects.

Austin told reporters Monday in Brussels, where he is scheduled to meet with NATO defense ministers this week, that weather is hampering recovery efforts in Alaska while the remote terrain in Canada is affecting the search there.

He said the priority for the Pentagon is “debris recovery so that we can get a better sense of what these objects are.”

Kirby declined to refer to any of the three airborne objects as balloons.

“We don’t know who owns them,” he said, in contrast to the Chinese spy balloon the U.S. shot down February 4 over the Atlantic Ocean just off the coast of the southern state of South Carolina after it traversed the U.S. mainland for eight days.

China is continuing to claim the balloon was an errant weather-monitoring aircraft that drifted off course. But U.S. officials say the parts they have recovered from the ocean floor show the balloon was on a surveillance mission.

The U.S. military’s Northern Command said in a statement Monday that crews had recovered “significant debris from the site, including all of the priority sensor and electronics pieces identified as well as large sections of the structure.”

Kirby said President Joe Biden “has made this a very top priority,” to determine the ownership and origin of the three objects downed by U.S. fighter pilots, either on his orders, or in the case of the one that landed in the Yukon, in consultation with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The spokesperson said the three objects were shot down because they posed a “very real” threat to civilian aviation, with the objects near Alaska and over the Yukon territory drifting about 12,000 meters above the Earth and the one over Lake Huron at half that height.

After the Chinese balloon was discovered, Kirby said U.S. radar has been recalibrated to look for more objects.

“One of the reasons we’re seeing more is we’re looking for more,” he said.

Earlier, Kirby vehemently rejected Beijing’s accusation Monday that the U.S. had flown more than 10 high-altitude balloons over China.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin, at a daily briefing, said, “It is also common for U.S. balloons to illegally enter the airspace of other countries. Since last year, U.S. high-altitude balloons have illegally flown over China’s airspace more than 10 times without the approval of Chinese authorities.”

He said the United States should “first reflect on itself and change course rather than smear and instigate a confrontation.”

“Not true. Not doing it. Just absolutely not true,” Kirby told the U.S.-based cable news network MSNBC. “We’re not flying balloons over China.”

Both countries deploy spy satellites, but after Wang accused the United States of flying balloons over China, he offered no details about how they had been dealt with or whether they had alleged links to the U.S. government.

The United States said Monday it has also spotted Chinese balloons flying through the Middle East. But Lieutenant General Alexus Grynkewich, commander of the U.S. Air Forces Central Command, said, “They’ve not been a threat. They’ve flown through a few times since I’ve been in command but nothing that I would be concerned about in any way.”

Following the balloon incident, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken canceled a visit to Beijing that potentially could have eased relations between the two countries and disagreements over Taiwan, trade, human rights and Chinese actions in the disputed South China Sea.

VOA national security correspondent Jeff Seldin and Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb contributed to this report.
…

A series of shootings late Monday at Michigan State University left at least three people dead and five others injured.      

Chris Rozman, interim deputy chief of the campus police department, told reporters early Tuesday the injured were all hospitalized in critical condition.    

Rozman said the suspected shooter was a 43-year-old male who was later found dead outside of the campus with a self-inflicted gunshot wound, and that he had been “confronted by law enforcement.” 

Rozman said the suspect was not affiliated in any way with the university. 

“We have no idea why he came to campus to do this tonight.  That is part of our ongoing investigation,” he said.    

The shootings began at an academic building and continued a short time later with more shots fired at the nearby student union, prompting authorities to order those on campus to shelter in place. 

“Our campus grieves,” Teresa Woodruff, the university’s interim president, told reporters. “We will all grieve, and we will change over time. We cannot allow this to continue to happen again.”    

The university canceled all campus activities for 48 hours.      

Michigan State has about 50,000 students at its campus in East Lansing, located 145 kilometers northwest of Detroit.       

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
…

Police at Michigan State University searched Monday for a suspect in a series of shootings at the school’s campus. 

University police tweeted that shots were fired near the Berkey Hall academic building and the IM East athletic facility. 

Authorities said there were multiple reported injuries and issued orders for people to shelter in place. 

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
…

Less than a week after the U.S. downed what officials say was a Chinese surveillance balloon, the U.S. military shot down three more flying objects of unknown origin. Chinese officials say they can’t say whether the newly downed objects are theirs but say the U.S. is overreacting. As Washington searches for answers, one thing is clear: China-U.S. relations have taken a hit. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from the White House.
…

Report says Brett Blandon misused his government vehicle and misrepresented himself as a law enforcement official
…

A Georgia judge on Monday ordered the partial release later this week of a special grand jury report into efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn his 2020 election loss.

The report’s introduction and conclusion, as well as a section in which the grand jurors expressed concerns that some witnesses may have lied under oath, will be released on Thursday, said Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney.

Any recommendations on who should or should not be prosecuted will remain secret for now to protect their due process rights, McBurney wrote.

McBurney’s order came three weeks after hearing arguments from prosecutors, who urged the report be kept secret until they decide on charges, and a coalition of media organizations, which pressed for its release.

The release is a significant development in one of several cases that threaten legal jeopardy for the former president as he ramps up a 2024 White House campaign. The special grand jury spent about seven months hearing testimony from witnesses including high-profile Trump allies, such as attorney Rudy Giuliani and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and high-ranking Georgia officials, such as Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Gov. Brian Kemp.

McBurney wrote that the report includes recommendations for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, including “a roster of who should [or should not] be indicted, and for what, in relation to the conduct [and aftermath] of the 2020 general election in Georgia.” The special grand jury did not have the power to issue indictments, and it will ultimately be up to Willis to decide whether to seek indictments from a regular grand jury.

The special grand jury’s final report was requested by Willis and is meant to inform her investigative decision-making process, McBurney wrote, adding that the panel’s investigation was largely controlled by the district attorney and her team and was “a one-sided exploration.”

There was “very limited due process” for people for whom the grand jurors recommended charges, McBurney wrote. Some may not have had the opportunity to appear before the panel, and those who did appear did not have the right to have their lawyers present or to offer any rebuttal.

For that reason, the judge concluded, it is not appropriate to release the full report at this time.

It is not clear if or when Willis will present the case to a regular grand jury with the purpose of getting one or more indictments. At a Jan. 24 hearing, she said decisions are “imminent” but did not elaborate.

Trump told The Associated Press last month that he did “absolutely nothing wrong.” He said he felt “very confident” that he wouldn’t be indicted.

At the January hearing, Willis had argued against the immediate release of the report, saying it could violate the rights of potential defendants and negatively affect the ability to prosecute those who may be charged with crimes.

“We want to make sure that everyone is treated fairly and we think for future defendants to be treated fairly, it is not appropriate at this time to have this report released,” Willis said during the hearing.

A group of news organizations, including the AP, argued in favor of releasing the report immediately in full, saying that public interest in the report is “extraordinary.”

“The discomfort of the prosecuting authority in disclosing court records isn’t enough to make them sealed,” said attorney Tom Clyde, representing the media. “It has to be significant, identifiable evidence that’s going to cause a problem.”

Willis said in an emailed statement Monday that she believes McBurney’s order is “legally sound and consistent with my request” and that she has no plans to appeal. Clyde declined to comment.

Willis and her team began investigating two years ago, shortly after the release of a recording of a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. In that conversation, the then-president suggested that Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, could “find” the votes needed to overturn Trump’s narrow election loss in the state to Biden, a Democrat.

“All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump said on the call.

Since then, the investigation’s scope has broadened considerably. The special grand jury operated behind closed doors, as required by law, but public court filings and hearings related to its work provided a window into some of the topics Willis was exploring. Those included:

— Phone calls by Trump and others to Georgia officials in the wake of the 2020 election.

— A group of 16 Georgia Republicans who signed a certificate in December 2020 falsely stating that Trump had won the state and that they were the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors.

— False allegations of election fraud made during meetings of state legislators at the Georgia Capitol in December 2020.

— The copying of data and software from election equipment in rural Coffee County by a computer forensics team hired by Trump allies.

— Alleged attempts to pressure Fulton County elections worker Ruby Freeman into falsely confessing to election fraud.

— The abrupt resignation of the U.S. attorney in Atlanta in January 2021.
…

Police in New York said Monday a man drove a small U-Haul rental truck onto a sidewalk in Brooklyn, striking multiple people before he was taken into custody.

A police official told The Associated Press that at least eight pedestrians were injured, and two are in critical condition.

Police pursued the truck on a chase through the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn, stopping it 5 kilometers away before the vehicle entered a tunnel to Manhattan. Video from news helicopters over the scene showed the truck pinned next to a building, its path blocked by a police cruiser.

New York City councilmember Justin Brannan tweeted, “We have no idea of motives at this time, but this wasn’t an accident.”

He told WABC-TV in New York that “police approached this driver and tried to get him to pull over, and at that time, he said something to the effect of, ‘I want to die,’ and then proceeded to start driving on the sidewalks in Bay Ridge.”

The station reported that police called in a bomb squad to search for explosives in the vehicle but found nothing suspicious.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
…

The Biden administration says it’s working with the governments of Mexico, Colombia and Ecuador to combat a documented rise in the availability and lethality of illegal drugs containing fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that can be up to 100 times stronger than morphine.

According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, the potency of pills is rising — in 2022, six out of 10 pills contained a potentially lethal dose of the narcotic.

President Joe Biden mentioned the deadly drug in his recent State of the Union address, in which he spoke of “a record number of personnel working to secure the border, arresting 8,000 human smugglers, seizing over 23,000 pounds of fentanyl in just the last several months.”

And Biden outlined his administration’s plan to tackle the epidemic in different ways, including funding screening measures, checking packages and “expanding access to evidence-based prevention, harm reduction, treatment and recovery.”

VOA’s Jorge Agobian spoke to Dr. Rahul Gupta, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, to find out how the U.S. is battling the overdose epidemic both inside and beyond its borders.

“The problem of fentanyl and synthetic drugs is not limited exclusively to the United States or Mexico,” Gupta said. “It’s a global problem. And secondly, the supply chain is also global. So whether it’s precursor chemicals that are converted into fentanyl, coming from China into Mexico or North America, or the synthesis of these drugs, we need to be making sure that we’re monitoring all of it, and we’re addressing specific choke points in this supply chain.”

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

VOA: A key component of President Biden’s State of the Union address was the fentanyl crisis. What next steps will the administration take on this issue?

Dr. Rahul Gupta: Fentanyl is killing 70,000 Americans a year overall as part of the overdose crisis. It is a top priority for President Biden to address that. It’s important for us to make sure we have an education campaign, especially for children, to be aware and understand that they have the power to not only be aware about this deadly threat, but also maybe carry Naloxone, the antidote for it so they can help their friends and others.

Also, what we can do is to ensure that we have the treatment available to everybody who needs it. We know that far too many Americans today aren’t able to get the treatment. So along with the antidote, we’ve got to get more people into treatment, and he talked about how he had challenged Congress the year before about removing barriers to doctors to prescribing, and he worked in a bipartisan manner with both sides of Congress to get that to happen. And he signed that into law.

He also talked about how there’s controlling of the fentanyl-related substances already, but it’s temporary we need to make that permanent.

President Biden highlighted how we have through the highest levels of fentanyl seizures at the border — twice as much as 2020 and four times as much in 2019. Why? Because we’ve implemented technology to be able to detect more, but the problem doesn’t begin or end at the border. We have to work with Mexico.

VOA: What in this strategy is the role of Mexico cooperating with the United States? And how much does the United States rely on Mexico to prosecute?

Gupta: People in Mexico are dying from overdoses and poisoning from fentanyl just like in America. So it’s very important that we work with a shared sense of responsibility, to make sure that we’re working to secure our country to make sure that we’re going after the bad guys who are intending harming Americans as well as Mexicans at the same time, we’re working on enhancing public health treatment, and the antidote Naloxone or Narcan and make it available to anyone who needs it.

We have made sure that we’re providing as much assistance to Mexico in partnership as a key player in helping us, but we also want to make sure that we’re holding traffickers, manufacturers and others accountable for their actions by preying on vulnerable people. It’s important because we want to make sure that they’re not making profits off the back of unsuspecting people who are dying and being poisoned. So it’s important whether it is in the United States or across the border, that our governments hold bad actors accountable in a forceful way.

VOA: Does the White House believe that the war on drugs is ‘a failed campaign,’ as the president of Colombia has called it?

Gupta: When President (Gustavo) Petro was inaugurated in Colombia early last year, I went, as the first delegation from the United States. We had a long and good conversation, and I said to him, “Look, we recognize that not all policies have been proven to be successful of the United States. But the important part is that we have a problem where an American is dying every 5 minutes around the clock. You have a problem where the economy is dependent, a lot, on cocaine production. We need to work with our 200-year relationship productively to see how we can secure a future both for the American people and the Colombian people.’”

And we need to see the way forward which is humane, which is protective of the environment.

And we need to figure out how to get people gainful employment, give hope, and the ability to have economic development as a way to address this. And that’s exactly some of the things that we’re going to be working with countries like Colombia.

VOA: What about the other countries in the Western Hemisphere?

Gupta: We know that these profits and the drugs don’t only kill Americans, but the profits go back to cause more destabilization, more crime and corruption and violence. It’s very important for us as a global leader to continue to work as good partners with other countries across Latin America. And there’s a history of us working with them, but to make sure that we’re doing in a way that yields us results, mutual respect and mutual cooperation. So we can hold the bad actors accountable, while ensuring that people everywhere have a chance to live safely, securely and healthy.

VOA: And finally, what about Venezuela? There is no cooperation between the two governments, of course, but Venezuela is still a key player in all these industries.

Gupta: We’re going to continue to focus with our partners in Colombia, and as well as Ecuador, to make sure that people there are getting the support when it comes to both the people coming in from Venezuela as well as resources. And then that work will continue, you know, as far as so I don’t have anything new to report on that at this point, from a policy perspective.

Anita Powell contributed to this report.

FOR HELP:

The World Health Organization says there are three common signs and symptoms of an overdose: pinpoint pupils, unconsciousness and difficulties with breathing.

Learn more about overdoses in the WHO’s fact sheet.

For the unfamiliar, fentanyl goes by several nicknames. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration lists several commonly used in the U.S.: Apache, China Girl, China Town, Dance Fever, Friend, Goodfellas, Great Bear, He-Man, Jackpot, King Ivory, Murder 8, and Tango & Cash.

Check the DEA’s website for details.
…

The Kansas City Chiefs kicked a field goal with eight seconds remaining to claim a 38-35 victory over the Philadelphia Eagles in the National Football League’s Super Bowl. 

Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes threw for three touchdowns in the game to earn the Most Valuable Player award. 

Two of those touchdowns came in the fourth quarter as Kansas City rallied from a 24-14 halftime deficit by scoring on all of their second-half possessions. 

The Eagles managed to tie the game 35-35 with just over five minutes remaining as their quarterback, Jalen Hurts, ran in both a touchdown and a two-point conversion. 

But Kansas City was able to use nearly all of the game’s remaining time as it drove 66 yards down the field to set up for the winning field goal. Philadelphia was left with only enough time for one desperate pass attempt that fell short. 

For the Chiefs, the Super Bowl win was their second in four years, following a victory in 2020. 

Hurts finished the game with 304 passing yards and one passing touchdown in addition to his three rushing touchdowns. 
…

Rihanna made her long-awaited return to the stage at the Super Bowl with a career-spanning medley of pop bangers, but it was her baby bump that dominated the conversation.   

The megastar appeared in the stadium midair on a floating stage, donning a clingy, all-red ensemble featuring a molded bustier — and a belt below what many viewers deduced was another mini RiRi in the making.   

Representatives for the singer confirmed the speculation to trade magazines Rolling Stone and The Hollywood Reporter: Rihanna is pregnant with her second child.   

The 34-year-old welcomed her first child, a son, with rapper A$AP Rocky in May.   

Musically speaking, fans who hoped for some fresh tracks were disappointed: Rihanna’s night on the world’s biggest stage offered a nostalgia tour of hits from the past. 

She delivered her club smashes including “Where Have You Been” to “Only Girl (In the World)” and the time-tested “We Found Love.”   

“Rude Boy,” “Work” and “All of the Lights” were also on the setlist, as a sea of dancers performed stunning acrobatics.   

“Wild Thoughts,” “Run This Town” and, of course, “Umbrella” and “Diamonds” rounded out the show.   

She did not, as many stars do, bring out any guest artists, commanding the stage all on her own.   

The evening marked a reversal after Rihanna had previously turned down the gig in protest of the National Football League’s handling of race issues.   

But in accepting the coveted slot this time around, the Barbados-born singer said it was “important for representation.”   

“It’s important for my son to see this,” she said.   

Since releasing “Anti” in early 2016, Robyn Rihanna Fenty has taken a break from recording but has by no means taken it easy: she’s become a billionaire, parlaying her music achievements into successful makeup, lingerie and high-fashion brands.   

Since her last album Rihanna has performed occasional features and more recently recorded music for the “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” soundtrack. 
…

U.S. fighter jets shot downed two more objects flying over the United States and Canadian territories over the weekend. Although a comprehensive analysis of the debris will be needed, a top Democratic senator said they are now believed to be balloons similar to a Chinese one downed a week ago. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias reports.
…

The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps are holding joint exercises in the South China Sea at a time of heightened tensions with Beijing over the shooting down of a suspected Chinese spy balloon.  

The 7th Fleet based in Japan said Sunday that the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier strike group and the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit have been conducting “integrated expeditionary strike force operations” in the South China Sea.

It said exercises involving ships, ground forces and aircraft took place Saturday but gave no details on when they began or whether they had ended.

China claims virtually the entire South China Sea and strongly objects to military activity by other nations in the contested waterway through which $5 trillion in goods are shipped every year.

The U.S. takes no official position on sovereignty in the South China Sea but maintains that freedom of navigation and overflight must be preserved. Several times a year, it sends ships sailing past fortified Chinese outposts in the Spratly Islands, prompting furious protests from Beijing.

The U.S. has also been strengthening its defense alliance with the Philippines, which has faced encroachment on islands and fisheries by the Chinese coast guard and nominally civilian but government-backed fleets.

The U.S. military exercises were planned in advance. They come as already tense relations between Washington and Beijing have been exacerbated by a diplomatic row sparked by the balloon, which was shot down last weekend in U.S. airspace off the coast of South Carolina.

The U.S. said the unmanned balloon was equipped to detect and collect intelligence signals, but Beijing insists it was a weather research airship that had accidently blown off course.

The incident prompted Secretary of State Antony Blinken to abruptly cancel a high-stakes trip to Beijing last weekend aimed at easing tensions.

After first issuing a highly rare expression of regret over the incident, China has toughened its rhetoric, calling the U.S. move an overreaction and a violation of international norms. China’s defense minister refused to take a phone call from U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to discuss the matter.

The United States has since blacklisted six Chinese entities it said were linked to Beijing’s aerospace programs as part of its response to the incident. The House of Representatives also voted unanimously to condemn China for a “brazen violation” of U.S. sovereignty and efforts to “deceive the international community through false claims about its intelligence collection campaigns.”

The balloon was part of a large surveillance program that China has been conducting for several years, the Pentagon said. The U.S. says Chinese balloons have flown over dozens of countries across five continents in recent years, and it learned more about the balloon program after closely monitoring the one shot down near South Carolina.

In its news release, the 7th Fleet said the joint operation had “established a powerful presence in the region, which supports peace and stability.”

“As a ready response force, we underpin a broad spectrum of missions including landing Marines ashore, humanitarian disaster relief, and deterring potential adversaries through visible and present combat power,” the release said.
…

U.S. national security officials say they believe the latest two high-altitude objects shot down over the northern reaches of the United States and Canada were balloons, but much smaller than a Chinese spy balloon shot down over the Atlantic Ocean more than a week ago, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Sunday.

Schumer told ABC’s “This Week” show that he had been briefed Saturday night by President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, about the initial findings about the objects, one shot down over frozen waters near the state of Alaska on Friday and a second one Saturday over Canada’s Yukon region.

Schumer did not say where the balloons originated. But he said both were shot down by U.S. fighter jets, the second on authorization from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, after both were spotted on radar at about 12,000 meters (40,000 feet) above the Earth and were considered a threat to commercial aircraft that fly at a similar altitude.

“You can be sure that if any American interests where people are at risk, they’ll take appropriate action,” he said.

With the three balloon shootdowns in an eight-day period, U.S. authorities are trying to learn how they, until now, missed at least three balloon sightings during the White House tenure of former President Donald Trump and another earlier in Biden’s presidency, all believed to be part of a Chinese spy program conducted by Beijing’s People’s Liberation Army.

“I think our military, our intelligence are doing a great job, present and future,” Schumer said. “I feel a lot of confidence in what they’re doing. But why — why as far back as the Trump administration did no one know about this?”

“It is wild that we didn’t know,” Schumer said. “Now they are learning a lot more. And the military and the intelligence are focused like a laser on, first, gathering and accumulating the information, then coming up with a comprehensive analysis of what went on before, what’s going on now, and what could go on in the future.”

China has acknowledged launching the first balloon, the one shot down February 4 off the coast of the southern state of South Carolina, but claimed it was a weather balloon that drifted off course, a contention that the U.S. has rejected. The U.S. concluded the balloon was a surveillance aircraft that could be maneuvered over key military installations as it drifted across the U.S. mainland.

Schumer said, “We got enormous intelligence information from surveilling the balloon as it went over the United States,” although both Republican and Democratic lawmakers have questioned why the U.S. did not shoot it down sooner than it did before the Chinese flew it over military bases. Biden ordered the U.S. military to shoot it down as soon as it was safe to do so without endangering Americans on the ground, which the military decided was only after it moved offshore.  

The U.S. said this past week it had taken steps to jam information being sent from the balloon.

Now, Schumer said that with Navy divers collecting parts of the balloon’s payload from the seabed for forensic analysis by FBI experts at a laboratory outside Washington, “We’re going to probably be able to piece together this whole … surveillance balloon and know exactly what’s going on. So that’s a huge coup for the United States.”

“I think the Chinese were humiliated,” Schumer said. “I think the Chinese were caught lying. And I think it’s a real — it’s a real step back for them.”

He predicted that Beijing is “probably going to have to get rid of [the balloon surveillance program] or do something, because they look really bad. And they’re not just doing [it over] the United States. This is a crew of balloons; we saw one in South America. They’ve probably been all over the world.”

Despite the U.S. conclusion about China’s balloon spying, Schumer said, “We can’t just have a Cold War with them. We have to have a relationship with them. But China has taken advantage of us over and over and over again.”
…

A halftime show that Rihanna promises will be “jam-packed” will sit at the center of the celebrity supplements to Super Bowl 57. 

But the 13-minute mini-extravaganza, her first live event in seven years, is only one part of the entertainment sideshow surrounding Sunday’s big game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. 

Chris Stapleton, who has dominated country music awards in recent years, will take on the challenge, and scrutiny, of singing the national anthem. 

“The national anthem’s not an easy song for singers. It’s one that can go horribly wrong as we’ve seen many times in the past,” Stapleton said at a media event during the leadup to the game. “But if you’re gonna do it, this is the place to do it. I’m gonna go out there and play. And play it like I play it.” 

The length of the anthem has become one of the countless game elements up for betting. Oddsmakers have put the over-under on Stapleton’s “Star Spangled Banner” at 2 minutes, 5 seconds. 

This being the Super Bowl, one anthem is not enough. R&B legend Babyface will perform “America the Beautiful.” 

And “Abbot Elementary” star Sheryl Lee Ralph will sing what’s been dubbed the Black national anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” 

Famous faces are bound to be seen throughout the stands. Some will care more about the outcome than others. The Eagles count Kevin Hart and “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” star Rob McElhenney among their biggest fans. Paul Rudd and Jason Sudeikis pull hard for the Chiefs. 

Many stars have made the scene at Super Bowl week parties. 

And many others, including John Travolta and Alicia Silverstone, will show up in the big game’s big commercials. 
…

U.S. President Joe Biden has called for wide agreement to be reached in Israel on sweeping changes to the judiciary pushed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-right government which have sparked nationwide protests.

Israel’s parliament may on Monday begin the legislation process of the judicial overhaul, which would increase the government’s sway in selecting judges while weakening Supreme Court power to strike down laws or rule against the executive. 

The push has prompted nationwide protests and calls on the government to slow down and reach a broad agreement on its judicial plan, which polls have shown has relatively little support as it presently stands.

In a response to a query by The New York Times, published on Sunday, Biden said: 

“The genius of American democracy and Israeli democracy is that they are both built on strong institutions, on checks and balances, on an independent judiciary. Building consensus for fundamental changes is really important to ensure that the people buy into them so they can be sustained.”

Netanyahu, who is on trial for corruption that he denies, has said the changes are needed in order to restore balance between the government, the Knesset and the judiciary, which some in his coalition accuse of elitism and overreaching its powers to interfere in the political sphere.

Critics say the changes would deal a fatal blow to Israel’s democracy because they would politicize the bench and undermine judicial independence, which could make corruption easier and endanger human rights and civil liberties.

Aggravating the already fiery debate on Sunday, one of the main players pushing for the changes, Justice Minister Yariv Levin, said a judiciary coup by leftists who refuse to accept the right-wing’s Nov. 1 election victory was underway, with help from Supreme Court judges and civil servants.

He was referring to a Supreme Court ruling on Friday instructing Netanyahu and his government to submit a response to a petition demanding the premier be declared incapacitated over his legal situation.

Many legal experts, economists and former security and economic officials, who include Netanyahu confidants and appointments, have come out against the government’s judicial plans.

Israel’s central bank chief has urged lawmakers to safeguard the independence of Israel’s institutions and the opposition is calling on Israelis to join a general strike on Monday. 
…

As legal sports gambling proliferates, the number of Americans betting on the Super Bowl and the total amount they’re wagering is surging — although most of the action is still off the books. 

An estimated 1 in 5 American adults will make some sort of bet, laying out a whopping $16 billion, or twice as much as last year, according to an industry trade group. 

Even as legal gambling has spread to two-thirds of U.S. states, independent analysts say only about $1 billion of the total being wagered on Sunday’s game will happen through casinos, racetracks or companies such as FanDuel and DraftKings, whose ads have become ubiquitous during sporting events. 

The vast majority of people, in other words, are still betting with friends and family, participating in office pools or taking their chances with a bookie. 

More than 50 million American adults are expected to bet on the national championship game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs, according to the American Gaming Association, whose estimates are based on a nationwide online survey of 2,199 adults. That’s an increase of 61% from last year. 

Experts in addiction say aggressive advertising is contributing to a rise in problem gambling. 

“As sports betting expands, the risk of gambling problems expands,” said Keith Whyte, executive director of the National Council on Problem Gambling. 

Thirty-three states, plus Washington, D.C., now offer legal sports betting, and more than half of all American adults live in one of those markets. 

“Every year, the Super Bowl serves to highlight the benefits of legal sports betting,” said Bill Miller, the gambling association’s president and CEO. “Bettors are transitioning to the protections of the regulated market … and legal operators are driving needed tax revenue to states across the country.” 

But legal sports betting still represents just a small piece of the pie. 

Eilers & Krejcik Gaming Research, an independent analytics firm in California, estimates that just over $1 billion of this year’s Super Bowl bets will be made legally. The leading states are: Nevada ($155 million); New York ($111 million); Pennsylvania ($91 million); Ohio ($85 million) and New Jersey ($84 million). 

The research firm estimates 10% to 15% of that total would be wagered live after the game begins. Another 15% to 20% would come in the form of same-game parlays, or a combination of bets involving the same game, such as betting on the winner, the total points scored and how many passing yards Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts will accumulate. 

As legal sports betting grows, so too has concern about its effect on people with gambling problems.

The National Council on Problem Gambling has conducted nationwide surveys since 2018, when New Jersey won a U.S. Supreme Court case clearing the way for all 50 states to offer legal sports betting. They ask questions like, “Do you ever borrow money to gamble?”

Between 2018 and 2021, the number of people whose answers indicated they were at risk of a gambling problem increased by 30%, said Whyte, the council’s executive director. 

He added that the Super Bowl presents an opportunity to see how well responsible gambling messaging and campaigns by sports books and professional sports leagues are working. 

On Tuesday, New Jersey gambling regulators unveiled new requirements for sports books to analyze the data they collect about their customers to look for evidence of problem gambling, and to take various steps to intervene with these customers when warranted. 

“It is no coincidence that our announcement comes just a week ahead of one of the biggest days in sports wagering, serving as a reminder of how devastating a gambling addiction can be,” New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin said.
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A relative of Emmett Till is suing to try to make a Mississippi sheriff serve a 1955 arrest warrant on a white woman in the kidnapping that led to the Black teenager’s brutal lynching.

The torture and killing of Till in the Mississippi Delta became a catalyst for the civil rights movement after his mother insisted on an open-casket funeral in Chicago and Jet magazine published photos of his mutilated body.

In June, a team doing research at the courthouse in Leflore County, Mississippi, found an unserved 1955 arrest warrant for Carolyn Bryant, listed on that document as “Mrs. Roy Bryant.”

Till’s cousin Patricia Sterling of Jackson, Mississippi, filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against the current Leflore County sheriff, Ricky Banks. The suit seeks to compel Banks to serve the warrant on Carolyn Bryant, who has since remarried and is named Carolyn Bryant Donham.

“We are using the available means at our disposal to try to achieve justice on behalf of the Till family,” Sterling’s attorney Trent Walker told The Associated Press on Friday.

The AP left a phone message for Banks on Friday, seeking comment. The sheriff did not immediately respond. Court records showed that the lawsuit had not been served on him by Friday.

Till, who was 14, had traveled south from Chicago to visit relatives in Mississippi in August 1955. Donham accused him of making improper advances on her at a grocery store in the small community of Money. A cousin of Till’s who was there has said Till whistled at the woman, an act that flew in the face of Mississippi’s racist social codes of the era.

Evidence indicates a woman, possibly Donham, identified Till to the men who later killed him. The arrest warrant against Donham was publicized in 1955, but the Leflore County sheriff at the time told reporters that he did not want to “bother” the woman since she was raising two young children.

Weeks after Till’s body was found in a river, her husband Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam were tried for murder and acquitted by an all-white jury. Months later, the men confessed in a paid interview with Look magazine.

Now in her late 80s, Donham has lived in North Carolina and Kentucky in recent years. She has not commented publicly on calls for her prosecution.

The U.S. Justice Department announced in December 2021 that it had ended its latest investigation into the lynching of Till, without bringing charges against anyone.

After researchers found the arrest warrant last June, the office of Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch said in July there was no new evidence to try to pursue a criminal case against Donham. In August, a district attorney said a Leflore County grand jury had declined to indict Donham.

Walker, the attorney for Till’s cousin, said Friday that the South has a history of cases of violence that were not brought to justice until decades later — including the 1963 assassination of Mississippi NAACP leader Medgar Evers, for which white supremacist Byron de la Beckwith was convicted of murder in 1994.

“But for Carolyn Bryant falsely claiming to her husband that Emmett Till assaulted her, Emmett would not have been murdered,” Sterling’s lawsuit says. “It was Carolyn Bryant’s lie that sent Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam into a rage, which resulted in the mutilation of Emmett Till’s body into (an) unrecognizable condition.”
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She’d be a senior right now, preparing for graduation in a few months, probably leading her school’s modern dance troupe and taking art classes.

Instead, Kailani Taylor-Cribb hasn’t taken a single class in what used to be her high school since the height of the coronavirus pandemic. She vanished from Cambridge, Massachusetts’ public school roll in 2021 and has been, from an administrative standpoint, unaccounted for since then.

She is among hundreds of thousands of students around the country who disappeared from public schools during the pandemic and didn’t resume their studies elsewhere.

An analysis by The Associated Press, Stanford University’s Big Local News project and Stanford education professor Thomas Dee found an estimated 240,000 students in 21 states whose absences could not be accounted for. These students didn’t move out of state, and they didn’t sign up for private school or home-school, according to publicly available data.

In short, they’re missing.

“Missing” students received crisis-level attention in 2020 after the pandemic closed schools nationwide. In the years since, they have become largely a budgeting problem. School leaders and some state officials worried aloud about the fiscal challenges their districts faced if these students didn’t come back. Each student represents money from the city, state and federal governments.

Gone is the urgency to find the students who left — those eligible for free public education but who are not receiving any schooling at all. Early in the pandemic, school staff went door-to-door to reach and reengage kids. Most such efforts have ended.

“Everyone is talking about declining enrollment, but no one is talking about who’s leaving the system and why,” said Tom Sheppard, a New York City parent and representative on the city’s Panel for Educational Policy.

“No one,” he said, “is forthcoming.”

A problem not discussed

The missing kids identified by AP and Stanford represent far more than a number. The analysis highlights thousands of students who may have dropped out of school or missed out on the basics of reading and school routines in kindergarten and first grade.

That’s thousands of students who matter to someone. Thousands of students who need help re-entering school, work and everyday life.

“That’s the stuff that no one wants to talk about,” said Sonja Santelises, the chief executive officer of Baltimore’s public schools, speaking about her fellow superintendents.

“We want to say it’s outside stuff” that’s keeping kids from returning to school, she said, such as caring for younger siblings or the need to work. But she worries teens sometimes lack caring adults at school who can discuss their concerns about life.

“That’s really scary,” Santelises said.

Discussion of children’s recovery from the pandemic has focused largely on test scores and performance. But Dee says the data suggests a need to understand more about children who aren’t in school and how that will affect their development.

“This is leading evidence that tells us we need to be looking more carefully at the kids who are no longer in public schools,” he said.

Over months of reporting, the AP learned of students and families avoiding school for a range of reasons. Some are still afraid of COVID-19, are homeless or have left the country. Some students couldn’t study online and found jobs instead. Some slid into depression.

During the prolonged online learning, some students fell so far behind developmentally and academically that they no longer knew how to behave or learn at school. Many of these students, while largely absent from class, are still officially on school rosters. That makes it harder to truly count the number of missing students. The real tally of young people not receiving an education is likely far greater than the 240,000 figure calculated by the AP and Stanford.

In some cases, this wasn’t sudden. Many students were struggling well before the pandemic descended.

Kailani, for one, had begun to feel alienated at her school. In ninth grade, a few months before the pandemic hit, she was unhappy at home and had been moved to a different math class because of poor grades.

Kailani has ADHD and says the white teaching assistant assigned to help her focus in her new class targeted her because she was Black, blaming Kailani when classmates acted up. She also didn’t allow Kailani to use her headphones while working independently in class, something Kailani says was permitted in her special education plan to help her focus.

After that, Kailani stopped attending math. Instead, she cruised the hallways or read in the library.

Ultimately, the pandemic and at-home education relieved the anxiety Kailani felt from being in the school building. Kailani preferred online school because she could turn off her camera and engage as she chose. Her grades improved.

When the school reopened, she never returned.

A Cambridge schools spokesperson looked into Kailani’s complaints. “Several individuals demonstrated great concern and compassion towards her and the challenges she was facing outside of school,” Sujata Wycoff said. She said the district has a “reputation of being deeply dedicated to the education and well-being of our students.”

Losing the physical connection

To assess just how many students have gone missing, AP and Big Local News canvassed every state in the nation to find the most recently available data on both public and non-public schools, as well as census estimates for the school-age population.

Overall, public school enrollment fell by 710,000 students between the 2019-20 and 2021-22 school years in the 21 states plus Washington, D.C., that provided the necessary data.

Those states saw private-school enrollment grow by over 100,000 students. Home-schooling grew even more, surging by more than 180,000.

But the data showed 240,000 students who were neither in private school nor registered for home-school. Their absences could not be explained by population loss, either — such as falling birth rates or families who moved out of state.

States where kindergarten is optional were more likely to have larger numbers of unaccounted-for students, suggesting the missing also include many young learners kept home instead of starting school.

California alone showed over 150,000 missing students in the data, and New York had nearly 60,000. Census estimates are imperfect. So AP and Stanford ran a similar analysis for pre-pandemic years in those two states. It found almost no missing students at all, confirming something out of the ordinary occurred during the pandemic.

The true number of missing students is likely much higher. The analysis doesn’t include data from 29 states, including Texas and Illinois, or the unknown numbers of ghost students who are technically enrolled but rarely make it to class.

For some students, it was impossible to overcome losing the physical connection with school and teachers during the pandemic’s school closures.

José Escobar, an immigrant from El Salvador, had only recently enrolled in the 10th grade in Boston Public Schools when the campus shut down in March 2020. His school-issued laptop didn’t work, and because of bureaucratic hurdles, the district didn’t issue a new one for several weeks. His father stopped paying their phone bills after losing his restaurant job. Without any working technology for months, he never logged into remote classes.

When instruction resumed online that fall, he decided to walk away and find work as a prep cook. “I can’t learn that way,” he said in Spanish. At 21, he’s still eligible for school in Boston, but says he’s too old for high school and needs to work to help his family.

Another Boston student became severely depressed during online learning and was hospitalized for months. Back home, he refuses to attend school or leave his room despite visits from at least one teacher. When his mother asked him about speaking to a reporter, he cursed her out.

These are all students who have formally left school and have likely been erased from enrollment databases. Many others who are enrolled are not receiving an education.

In Los Angeles last year, nearly half of students were chronically absent, meaning they missed more than 10% of the school year. For students with disabilities, the numbers are even higher: According to district data, 55% missed at least 18 school days. It’s not clear how many students were absent more than that. The city’s Unified School District did not respond to requests for this data.

When schools don’t come through

Los Angeles officials have spoken openly about attempts to find unschooled students and help remove obstacles that are preventing them from coming to school. Laundry services have been offered, as has help with housing. But for some students and their parents, the problem sits within a school system they say has routinely failed their children.

“Parents are bereft,” said Allison Hertog, who represents around three dozen families whose children missed significant learning when California’s physical classrooms closed for more than a year during the early pandemic.

Ezekiel West, 10, is in fourth grade but reads at a first grade level. Before the pandemic shutdowns, he was shuffled from school to school when educators couldn’t address his impulsive behavior.

During online learning, his mother couldn’t get home internet and struggled with the WiFi hotspots provided by the school. She worked as a home health aide and couldn’t monitor Ezekiel online.

When he returned to school in fall 2021 as a third grader, he was frustrated that his classmates had made more progress as the years passed.

“I did not feel prepared,” he said in a recent phone interview. “I couldn’t really learn as fast as the other kids, and that kind of made me upset.”

An administrative judge ruled Los Angeles’ schools had violated Ezekiel’s rights and ordered the district to give him a spot at a new school, with a special plan to ease him back into learning and trusting teachers. The school didn’t follow the plan, so his mother stopped sending him in October.

“I can’t trust them,” Miesha Clarke said. Los Angeles school officials did not respond to requests for comment on Ezekiel’s case.

Last month, Ezekiel signed up for a public online school for California students. To enroll him, his mother agreed to give up his special education plan. His attorney, Hertog, worries the program won’t work for someone with Ezekiel’s needs and is looking for yet another option with more flexibility.

At least three of the students Hertog has represented, including Ezekiel, have disappeared from school for long periods since in-person instruction resumed. Their situations were avoidable, she said: “It’s pretty disgraceful that the school systems allowed this to go on for so long.”

When Kailani stopped logging into her virtual classes during the spring of her sophomore year, she received several emails from the school telling her she’d been truant. Between two to four weeks after she disappeared from Zoom school, her homeroom advisor and Spanish teacher each wrote to her, asking where she was. And the school’s dean of students called her great-grandmother, her legal guardian, to inform her about Kailani’s disappearance from school.

They didn’t communicate further, according to Kailani. She went to work at Chipotle, ringing up orders in Boston’s financial district.

In December, Kailani moved to North Carolina to make a new start. She teaches dance to elementary school kids now. Last month, she passed her high school equivalency exams. She wants to take choreography classes.

But she knows, looking back, that things could have been different. While she has no regrets about leaving high school, she says she might have changed her mind if someone at school had shown more interest and attention to her needs and support for her as a Black student.

“All they had to do was take action,” Kailani said. “There were so many times they could have done something. And they did nothing.”
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President Joe Biden ordered the Pentagon to shoot down an unidentified object over Alaska on Friday, less than a week after a U.S. fighter jet fired a missile to take down a Chinese surveillance balloon over the Atlantic Ocean.

John Kirby, National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications, confirmed the Alaska incident in answer to VOA’s question during the White House news briefing Friday.

While the U.S. still does not know details about the object’s “capabilities, purpose or origin,” according to officials, the unidentified high-altitude object again brought into focus the frayed relationship between Washington and Beijing following the Chinese surveillance balloon revelation.

Earlier Friday, VOA Mandarin White House Correspondent Paris Huang spoke with Kirby on U.S.-China relations, as well as the latest developments in Russia’s war on Ukraine.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.

VOA: China still denies the balloon is for spying. How do you read China’s handling of the whole situation?

John Kirby, National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications: I don’t think that we’re particularly surprised necessarily by Chinese denials. Look, we had time to collect information about this, to survey this device. We’re confident in what we’ve been saying – that it was in fact a surveillance balloon, that it is not uncommon for the PLA [People’s Liberation Army] to contract out for these kinds of capabilities. We know that they have flown them over 40 to 50 other countries, we’re reaching out to those countries as we speak, and now we’re going to recover the remains, the debris that’s on the bottom of the, off the coast of the Carolinas, and we’ll learn even more.

VOA: Will the U.S. advise countries to shoot down the balloons that show up in their territories?

Kirby: We’re spending time and energy notifying these countries of the forensic work that we have done and what we know this particular spy balloon program by the PLA is up to, that’s the focus of those conversations.

VOA: During the State of the Union, President Biden said, ‘Name me a global leader who would change places with Xi Jinping.’ What does he mean by it?

Kirby: His point is that the PRC [People’s Republic of China] is not 10 feet tall. That this is a country, large and vast though it is, it’s having struggles economically, he’s got domestic problems as well at home. They haven’t been totally transparent about COVID, but they’re still in the throes of some of the pandemic’s aftereffects. And I think the president’s point was, in this strategic competition of ours, the United States is uniquely poised to succeed.

VOA: The Wagner Group claims to have stopped recruiting Russian convicts for the war in Ukraine. Can U.S. intelligence confirm this?

Kirby: I’ll let Mr. [Yevgeny] Prigozhin speak for his recruiting tactics. Perhaps one of the reasons he’s not, maybe not recruiting out of prisons is because he’s already emptied all of them. We know that he’s been throwing a lot of convicts into this fight. And that he has a personal stake here in trying to upstage the defense ministry, and probably has a personal stake in some of the economic gains.

The larger point is that Mr. [Vladimir] Putin, after repeatedly failing to achieve any strategic objectives inside Ukraine, is now increasingly relying on others to prop up his effort. He’s going into Iran to buy drones. He’s venturing out to North Korea to get artillery shells, and now he’s using a guy like Mr. Prigozhin, a private military contractor, to actually conduct military operations on the battlefield. I think that says a lot about how much Mr. Putin realizes his own military has been failing.

VOA: Ukraine said it had intercepted plans by Russia to destroy Moldova. Can you confirm?

Kirby: I’m not able to confirm that reporting.

VOA: Russia launched a fresh wave of missile attacks across Ukraine today. What can the U.S. do to help Ukraine defend its skies more effectively?

Kirby: We’ve prioritized air defense in many of the recent security assistance packages that we’ve been giving Ukraine. As you know, we also announced that we’re going to be providing a whole Patriot battery. In fact, the training for Ukrainian soldiers to use that Patriot battery is going on right now in Oklahoma. We’ve prioritized air defense, whether it’s short-, medium-, or long-range for much of the last few weeks and months, and we’re going to continue to do that going forward.

VOA: Moscow announced Chinese President Xi Jinping will be visiting Russia, probably at the anniversary of the invasion. Your reaction?

Kirby: I’ll just say this, without confirming this trip or what Russia’s motivations for speaking to it are. Mr. Putin is isolated; he has made his country even more of a pariah than it already was after they invaded Ukraine the first time in 2014. And he’s desperate for assistance, because the exports and export controls and the sanctions have taken a big bite out of his defense industrial progress. He’s having trouble supplying microelectronics for cruise missiles. He’s reaching out to Iran for drones, reaching out to North Korea for ammunition, and he’s relying on private military contractors. This is a man who does not have a lot of friends in the world.

VOA: How much goodwill is left between the U.S. and China, and how confident are you that it can be rebuilt?

Kirby: We don’t seek conflict with China. And we do want to keep the lines of communication open, especially at a time like this. But we do seek a strategic competition that the president believes that the United States is well poised to come out on top.

Now’s not the appropriate time for the secretary of state to go to Beijing. When it is the appropriate time, we’ll be willing to have those discussions with Beijing.

The whole world is expecting that these two countries are going to manage this most consequential of bilateral relationships in a responsible, forthright, prudent manner. That is where President Biden still is. That’s where he wants to take it. And his ability to do that is not helped by this egregious violation of our airspace.
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VOA Mandarin White House Correspondent Paris Huang speaks with John Kirby, National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications, on U.S.-China relations, as well as the latest developments in Russia’s war on Ukraine. Camera – David Krupin, Mino Dargakis
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Editor’s note: Here is a fast take on what the international community has been up to this past week, as seen from the United Nations perch.

More Than 22,000 Dead in Earthquakes 

Two devastating earthquakes, one a 7.8 magnitude and the other a 7.5 magnitude, struck parts of Turkey and Syria in the early hours of Monday, as many families slept. The tremors were felt in the region and as far away as Greenland. Four days after the earthquakes, hope was fading for finding many survivors. The United Nations was focused on the relief response, particularly to Syria, where millions in the war-torn country were already in need before the disaster. 

First UN Aid Convoy Reaches Quake-hit Northern Syria 

Guterres Bleak on State of World

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned Monday that the world needed to wake up and take urgent action to change the trajectory of conflicts and geopolitical divisions, the climate crisis and economic inequality. He told the General Assembly, “We need a course correction,” as he laid out his priorities for the year. 

UN Chief: World Needs ‘Wake-Up Call’

Somalia Still at Risk of Famine

The U.N. resident coordinator for Somalia said there was still a “strong possibility” of famine in Somalia this year if the spring rains underperformed. The organization appealed for $2.6 billion this year to assist 7.6 million of the most vulnerable Somalis who are facing acute hunger from conflict, high food prices and unprecedented drought.

UN Appeals for $2.6 Billion to Ease Hunger Crisis in Somalia 

US Antisemitism Campaign Comes to UN

Second gentleman Doug Emhoff urged the international community Thursday to speak out against antisemitism and called out those who do not, saying silence is not an option. “This moment requires bold collective action and urgency, not just concepts,” Emhoff, the husband of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, told a gathering at the United Nations.

US Second Gentleman Calls for ‘Bold Collective Action’ to Curb Antisemitism 

In Brief

—  U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said 17.6 million people needed humanitarian assistance in Ukraine — nearly 40% of the population. Griffiths told the Security Council on Monday that the U.N. and its agencies had provided 15.8 million people with assistance, including more than 1.3 million people in areas outside Kyiv’s control. But he called for better and more frequent access, especially to areas under Russia’s military control, where he said it had become increasingly unpredictable and impeded.

— The U.N. children’s agency estimated that 1 million children were out of school in Haiti because of social unrest, insecurity, the high costs of education and lack of educational services. UNICEF said Thursday that armed violence against schools, including shooting, ransacking, looting and kidnappings, was nine times higher than in the past year. Gangs control more than a third of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and are terrorizing the population. In October, the government requested that the U.N. Security Council authorize the immediate deployment of an international specialized armed force to help stop the armed groups, but the raising of the troops and leadership for the mission has been slow. Haiti’s gangs are seeking to exploit the political vacuum left by the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise.

— The World Health Organization said Thursday that Africa was witnessing a rapid rise in cholera as cases surge globally. They noted that cases recorded on the continent in January alone had already risen by more than 30% of the total cases in 2022. WHO said an estimated 26,000 cases and 660 deaths had been reported as of the end of January in 10 countries.

—  On Sunday, a helicopter that was part of the peacekeeping mission in eastern DR Congo was shot down while traveling in North Kivu province. One South African peacekeeper was killed, and another was severely injured. The crew managed to land the helicopter in Goma. The incident was under investigation.

— The U.N. condemned last weekend’s decision by Mali’s junta to declare the U.N. human rights representative, Guillaume Ngefa, persona non grata and ordered him to leave the country within 48 hours. A U.N. spokesperson said the doctrine of “persona non grata” was not applicable to U.N. personnel and Mali’s move violated its obligations under the U.N. Charter regarding the privileges and immunities of the U.N. and its personnel.

Quote of Note

“It’s a crisis on top of a crisis.” – U.N. resident coordinator for Syria El-Mostafa Benlamlih, briefing reporters on Wednesday, speaking of the 10.9 million Syrians affected by Monday’s earthquakes in a country where 15.3 million already needed humanitarian assistance because of more than a decade of civil war.

Next Week

As the devastation from Monday’s earthquakes becomes clearer, the U.N. will be focused on working to gain access to victims in parts of Syria beyond government control. If the Damascus government refuses, the Security Council will likely take up the issue. 
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Since its release in late 2022, an artificial intelligence-powered writing tool called ChatGPT has won instant acclaim but has also raised concerns, especially on school campuses.

High school senior Galvin Fickes recently demonstrated how entering a short command can generate a summary of Jane Eyre, a book she was assigned to read.

“I think it did a pretty good job, honestly,” said Fickes, who has used the software to help with studying.

Across the U.S., school districts are choosing to restrict access to ChatGPT on their computers and networks.

Developed by San Francisco-based OpenAI, ChatGPT is trained on a vast amount of language data from the internet. When prompted, the AI generates a response using the most likely sequence of words, creating original text that mimics human thought.

Some teachers like LuPaulette Taylor are concerned that the freely available tool could be used by students to do their homework and undermine learning. She listed the skills she worries will be affected by students having access to AI programs like ChatGPT.

“The critical thinking that we all need as human beings, and the creativity, and also the benefit of having done something yourself and saying, ‘I did that,’” said Taylor, who teaches high school English at an Oakland, California, public school.

Annie Chechitelli, who is chief product officer for Turnitin, an academic integrity service used by educators in 140 countries, said AI plagiarism presents a new challenge.

“There’s no, what we call, ‘source document,’ right?” she said. “Or a smoking gun to look to, to say, ‘Yes, this looks like it was lifted from that.’”

Turnitin’s anti-plagiarism software checks the authenticity of a student paper by scanning the internet for possible matches. But when AI writes text, each line is novel and unique, making it hard to detect cheating.

There is, however, one distinguishing feature of AI writing, said Eric Wang, vice president for AI at Turnitin.

“They tend to write in a very, very average way,” he said. “Humans all have idiosyncrasies. We all deviate from average one way or another. So, we’re able to build detectors that look for cases where an entire document or entire passage is uncannily average.”

Turnitin’s ChatGPT detector is due out later this year. Wang said keeping up with AI tools will be an ongoing challenge that will transform education.

“A lot of things that we hold as norms and as status quo are going to have to shift as a result of this technology,” he said.

AI may become acceptable for some uses in the classroom, just as calculators eventually did.

Computer science teacher Steve Wright said he was impressed when his student used ChatGPT to create a study guide for her calculus class.

“You know, if ChatGPT can make us throw up our hands and say, ‘No longer can I ask a student to regurgitate a process, but now I’m going to have to actually dig in and watch them think, to know if they’re learning’ — that’s fantastic,” said Wright.

In schools and elsewhere, it seems clear that AI will have a role in writing the future.
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Migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border seeking legal entry into the U.S. must now request processing appointments through a Customs and Border Protection mobile application called CBP One. But amid overwhelming demand, some complain the app doesn’t work. Victor Hugo Castillo reports from McAllen, Texas.
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