The U.S. is tracking a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that has been spotted over U.S. airspace for a couple days, but the Pentagon decided not to shoot it down because of the risk it could harm people on the ground, officials said Thursday.

A senior defense official told Pentagon reporters that the U.S. has “very high confidence” it is a Chinese high-altitude balloon flying over sensitive sites to collect information. One of the places the balloon was spotted was Montana, which is home to one of the nation’s three nuclear missile silo fields at Malmstrom Air Force Base. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.

Brigadier General Patrick Ryder, Pentagon press secretary, provided a brief statement on the issue, saying the government continues to track the balloon. He said it is “currently traveling at an altitude well above commercial air traffic and does not present a military or physical threat to people on the ground.”

He said similar balloon activity has been seen in the past several years. He added that the U.S. took steps to ensure it did not collect sensitive information.

The defense official said the U.S. has “engaged” Chinese officials through multiple channels and communicated the seriousness of the matter.

The Pentagon announcement comes days before Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to travel to China. It’s not clear if this will affect his travel plans, which the State Department has not formally announced.
…

A U.S. appeals court on Thursday declared unconstitutional a federal law making it a crime for people under domestic violence restraining orders to own firearms.

The decision by a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is the latest victory for gun rights advocates since a Supreme Court decision last June granting a broad right for people to carry firearms outside the home.

That decision, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, announced a new test for assessing firearms laws, saying restrictions must be “consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation,” and not simply advance an important government interest.

In Thursday’s decision, U.S. Circuit Judge Cory Wilson said banning people under domestic violence restraining orders from owning firearms “embodies salutary policy goals meant to protect vulnerable people in our society.”

But the judge, appointed by Donald Trump, said Bruen made such a consideration irrelevant, and that from a historical perspective the ban was “an outlier that our ancestors would never have accepted.”

Prison sentence thrown out

The court threw out the guilty plea and six-year prison sentence for Zackey Rahimi, who admitted to possessing guns found in his Kennedale, Texas, home after prosecutors said he participated in five shootings in December 2020 and January 2021.

Rahimi had been under a restraining order since February 2020, following his alleged assault of a former girlfriend.

The office of U.S. Attorney Leigha Simonton in Dallas, which prosecuted Rahimi, had no immediate comment.

A federal public defender representing Rahimi did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Ruling affects three states

The 5th Circuit is based in New Orleans, and its decision applies in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.

It had upheld the federal law last June 8, just over two weeks before the Bruen decision, but withdrew its opinion and ordered additional briefing.

In a concurrence, U.S. Circuit Judge James Ho, also a Trump appointee, said the nation’s founders “firmly believed” in the government’s role in protecting people from violence and the right of individuals to bear arms, and that these principles “are not inconsistent but entirely compatible with one another.”
…

Aviation history was made this week when U.S. aerospace company Boeing delivered the last of its iconic 747 airliners. Natasha Mozgovaya has our story from Washington state. Video editing by Bakhtiyar Zamanov and Jason Godman.
…

The United States and the Philippines announced an agreement Thursday that will give the U.S. military access to four new Philippine military sites. 

In a joint statement, the two countries did not give specific locations, saying they were in “strategic areas of the country.” 

The expansion is part of the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, which includes five existing sites. 

“The addition of these new EDCA locations will allow more rapid support for humanitarian and climate-related disasters in the Philippines, and respond to other shared challenges,” the statement said. 

The new agreement comes as the two longtime allies seek to counter China’s increasing assertiveness toward Taiwan and its actions in the South China Sea. 

Ahead of the announcement, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. that the U.S. goal is to strengthen the relationship with the Philippines “in every way possible,” and to boost the Philippines’ military capabilities. 

Marcos said the future of the Philippines and the Asia-Pacific region “will always have to involve the United States simply because those partnership are so strong.” 

VOA’s National Security Correspondent Jeff Seldin contributed to this report. 

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse. 
…

Vice President Kamala Harris paid her respects Wednesday at the funeral of Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man who died last month after a brutal beating by Memphis police officers. Activists say more needs to be done to strengthen laws to prevent police brutality, which disproportionately affects people of color. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from the White House.
…

Vice President Kamala Harris paid her respects Wednesday at the funeral of Tyre Nichols, a young Black man who died last month after a brutal beating by Memphis police officers, and demanded that Congress pass stalled legislation aimed at holding police accountable after a high-profile police killing in 2020 sparked protests in the U.S. and around the world.

“As vice president of the United States, we demand that Congress pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act — Joe Biden will sign it,” Harris said, referring to President Biden while speaking at Nichols’ funeral in Memphis, Tennessee. “And we should not delay, and we will not be denied. It is non-negotiable.”

On Wednesday, the family of Nichols, 29, remembered him as a loving father, keen photographer and an eager skateboarder – the kind of guy, his brother said, who “never lifted a finger to nobody.”

But after his brutal beating on January 7 by five Black police officers, captured on video, America remembers him differently: as another young Black man felled by what some see as an epidemic of violent racism in American policing. All five officers involved in the beating of Nichols, who died on January 10, have been charged with murder.

Black Americans are 12% of the population but accounted for 26% of victims killed by police in 2022, according to monitoring group Mapping Police Violence. And statistics show that Black people are three times more likely to die during police encounters than their white counterparts.

Harris said Nichols’ death was counterproductive.

“This violent act was not in pursuit of public safety,” she said. “It was not in the interest of keeping the public safe because one must ask, was not it in the interest of keeping the public safe that Tyre Nichols would be with us here today?”

But activists want more than words. They want legal change, and for police officers to be held legally accountable through a federal law, like the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which did not pass when it was proposed in 2021.

“It has to be federal law,” longtime civil rights activist the Reverend Al Sharpton said ahead of Nichols’ funeral. “Let me tell you, until police know they have skin in the game, which is why you heard them say about the George Floyd bill, you heard the sister say about the legislation here, you must get rid of qualified immunity. Where police know that they can lose their house, their car and everything else.”

But some activists, like Leslie Mac, communications director for the Frontline, an advocacy group, want the government to send resources elsewhere. She spoke to VOA via Zoom.

“President Biden just last week was talking about needing to fund the police, and I would push back and just let him know that taking funds away from violent enterprises and putting them into the hands of services that actually meet the needs of communities is not just smart, from a federal level, but it’s a smart play for us as human beings in this society,” Mac said.

VOA asked White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre what the administration is doing to combat perceptions that systemic racism is a problem in America.

“The president has made it a priority in his administration to make sure that it looks like America, to make sure that we see the diversity in this administration and throughout different committees,” she said. “And you see that over and over again, when you look at the different agencies, when you look to the White House. And this is … historically the most diverse administration in history. And that matters.”

The Congressional Black Caucus has invited Nichols’ parents to attend Biden’s State of the Union address next week, where he is expected to address a range of topics, including police reform.

Last year, during that address before a joint session of Congress, Biden said, “The answer is not to defund the police. The answer is to fund the police with the resources and training they need to protect our communities.”
…

President Joe Biden’s administration said on Wednesday it would support a scaled-back version of ConocoPhillips’ planned $6 billion Willow oil and gas drilling project in Alaska but has not yet made a final decision on the contentious proposal.

The Willow project’s fate is being closely watched by both the oil and gas industry and environmental groups as Biden seeks to balance his goal of fighting climate change with calls to increase domestic fuel supplies to keep prices down.

The Willow project area holds an estimated 600 million barrels of oil, or more than the amount currently held in the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the country’s emergency supply. The project is important to Alaska’s elected officials, who are hoping it will help offset oil production declines in a state whose economy relies heavily on the drilling industry.

Meanwhile, extreme weather across the globe has intensified calls from activists to move rapidly away from burning fossil fuels because of their contribution to warming the planet. Biden vowed during his 2020 election campaign to end federal oil and gas drilling as part of a pledge to decarbonize the U.S. economy by 2050. But that plan faced lawsuits from drilling states and pressure to boost production as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused a spike in energy prices.’

‘A viable path forward’

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management published the project’s final environmental review, selecting a “preferred alternative” that would include three drill sites and less surface infrastructure than originally proposed. ConocoPhillips had initially wanted to build up to five drill sites, dozens of kilometers of roads, seven bridges and pipelines.

According to BLM’s analysis, the design it endorsed would reduce the project’s impact on habitats for species like polar bears and yellow-billed loons. Alaska officials and ConocoPhillips backed that option in letters submitted to the agency in recent months.

In a statement, ConocoPhillips said the design represented “a viable path forward” for Willow and said it was ready to begin construction immediately upon approval. The company said the project would deliver up to $17 billion in revenue for federal and state governments and local Alaska communities.

The release of the document comes after a string of actions by the administration in recent weeks to protect wilderness areas from development, including Alaska’s Tongass National Forest and Bristol Bay, and the Boundary Waters area in Minnesota.

‘Closer to the edge’

Environmental groups criticized the analysis and called on Biden to reject the project.

“Our window to act is rapidly closing to avert catastrophic climate change, and this plan only takes us one giant step closer to the edge,” Kristen Miller, executive director of Alaska Wilderness League, said in a statement.

BLM’s parent agency, the Interior Department, said in a statement that the selection of the preferred alternative was not a final decision on approval of the project, adding that it had “substantial concerns” about Willow’s impact on greenhouse gas emissions and wildlife.

A final decision will be made no sooner than 30 days after the review’s publication, the department said.

Willow would be located inside the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, a 93 million-hectare area on the state’s North Slope that is the largest tract of undisturbed public land in the United States.

It was initially approved by the Trump administration, but a federal judge in Alaska in 2021 reversed that decision, saying the environmental analysis was flawed.
…

For years, David Leung’s grandfather and father worked each night at Wo Hop restaurant. Considered a New York City institution by some, the Chinese restaurant opened in 1938 and is said to be the second oldest in Manhattan’s Chinatown. But Leung’s appreciation for Wo Hop didn’t develop until much later, when he realized the extent of his family’s involvement. Tina Trinh reports.
…

President Joe Biden is meeting with Speaker Kevin McCarthy at the White House on Wednesday afternoon, the first in-person sit-down between the two leaders since Republicans assumed control of the House of Representatives following the November midterm elections. 

The pair is set to discuss a range of issues including the urgent need to raise the nation’s debt ceiling, the amount of money authorized by Congress for the government to borrow to meet existing spending obligations. 

The United States hit the $31.4 trillion ceiling on January 19. Without an agreement, the country will for the first time go into default, potentially plunging the economy into a crisis.

Expectations of a breakthrough are low. The White House has drawn a hard line on negotiations, maintaining that debt ceilings should be lifted without conditions. The ceiling has been raised 78 times since 1960, including 49 times under Republican presidents and 29 times under Democratic presidents.

In a memo released earlier this week, National Economic Council Director Brian Deese and Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young said that in the meeting with McCarthy, Biden will “seek a clear commitment” that defaulting on the nation’s debt is off the table. They called on Republicans to present a detailed budget proposal specifying the spending cuts they target.

McCarthy and House Republicans say they are aiming to slash “wasteful spending in Washington” as part of a deal to raise the debt ceiling but have not formally identified the programs they want cut. Republicans broadly say they are aiming to slash domestic programs and reduce some defense spending while avoiding cuts to two social programs that voters from both sides of the aisle want protected: Medicare, the health insurance program for seniors, and Social Security, which provides payments to retirees and the disabled.

Under pressure 

McCarthy is under pressure from members of the ultraconservative Republican Freedom Caucus who want to drastically limit the size, scope and reach of the federal government and budget, and reform Congress to make it easier to do so. Twenty lawmakers, most of whom are members of the caucus, withheld their votes for McCarthy’s speakership through all or most of 15 ballot rounds earlier in January until he pledged to fulfil their procedural and policy demands, including enabling just one member to call for a vote seeking his ouster. 

For many in Washington, the debt brinkmanship feels familiar. Republicans in Congress voted against increasing the ceiling under Democratic President Barack Obama in 2011 and 2013 but raised it three times under Republican President Donald Trump.

The government is expected to be able to keep operating until at least early June but it’s not clear how long the Treasury Department can avoid defaulting on the debt. A default could lead to a global economic crisis, as many companies and foreign governments hold their capital reserves in U.S. Treasury notes. 

In 2011, the threat of default downgraded the U.S. government’s credit worthiness and led to major stock market crashes around the world. 
…

FBI agents on Wednesday searched for classified documents at U.S. President Joe Biden’s vacation retreat in the city of Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, as part of its investigation into Biden’s handling of government security materials after he left the vice presidency in 2017, his personal lawyer said.

In a statement, the lawyer, Bob Bauer, said the search at the blue-and-white, three-story home was “planned” and being conducted with Biden’s “full support and cooperation.”

Bauer said under the Department of Justice’s “standard procedures, in the interests of operational security and integrity, it sought to do this work without advance public notice, and we agreed to cooperate. The search [Wednesday] is a further step in a thorough and timely DOJ process we will continue to fully support and facilitate. We will have further information at the conclusion of today’s search.”

The search at the home near the Atlantic Ocean follows earlier ones in which Biden aides late last year found a collection of documents with classified markings at a Washington research organization, the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, where Biden occasionally worked after his vice presidential term ended, and at his primary private residence in Wilmington, Delaware.  

The White House said at the time that no more classified documents were found at the Rehoboth Beach home.  

The FBI’s search of the vacation property comes after an intensive, 13-hour search on January 20 at the Wilmington residence, where agents found documents with classified markings and took possession of some of Biden’s handwritten notes.

Altogether, some 20 or more classified documents have been recovered by Biden’s lawyers or the FBI agents at the Washington office and Wilmington home.   

The January search came after U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland named a career prosecutor, Robert Hur, to investigate Biden’s handling of the classified material, months after naming another prosecutor, Jack Smith, to investigate about 320 documents with classified markings found at Mar-a-Lago, former President Donald Trump’s Atlantic Ocean retreat in Florida.

Last month, Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, said some classified material was found at his home in Indiana.

Under U.S. law, all three officials were required to turn over the documents to the National Archives and Records Administration when their terms in office ended.

Biden and his lawyers have sought to downplay the probe, suggesting that a small number of documents was retained inadvertently.

Trump only reluctantly turned over dozens of documents after taking them to Mar-a-Lago when he left office two years ago, eventually forcing the government to secure a warrant for a court-approved search because it suspected Trump had not turned over all the materials in his possession. Agents recovered about 100 more in a search last August.

 
…

Tom Brady, who won a record seven Super Bowls for New England and Tampa, has announced his retirement from the U.S. National Football League.

Brady — the most successful quarterback in NFL history, and one of the greatest athletes in team sports — posted the announcement on social media Wednesday morning, a brief video lasting just under one minute.

“Good morning guys. I’ll get to the point right away,” Brady says as the message begins. “I’m retiring. For good.”

He briefly retired after the 2021 season, but wound up coming back for one more year with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He retires at age 45, the owner of numerous passing records in an unprecedented 23-year career.

A year ago when he retired, it was in the form of a long Instagram post. But about six weeks later, he decided to come back for one more run. The Buccaneers — with whom he won a Super Bowl two seasons ago — made the playoffs again this season, losing in their playoff opener. And at the time, it begged the question about whether Brady would play again.

Only a couple weeks later, he has given the answer.

“I know the process was a pretty big deal last time, so when I woke up this morning, I figured I’d just press record and let you guys know first,” Brady says in the video. “I won’t be long-winded. You only get one super emotional retirement essay and I used mine up last year.

“I really thank you guys so much, to every single one of you for supporting me. My family, my friends, teammates, my competitors. I could go on forever. There’s too many. Thank you guys for allowing me to live my absolute dream. I wouldn’t change a thing. Love you all.”

Brady is the NFL’s career leader in yards passing (89,214) and touchdowns (649). He’s the only player to win more than five Super Bowls and has been MVP of the game five times.

Brady has won three NFL MVP awards, been a first-team All-Pro three times and selected to the Pro Bowl 15 times.

Brady and supermodel Gisele Bündchen finalized their divorce this past fall, during the Bucs’ season. It ended a 13-year marriage between two superstars who respectively reached the pinnacles of football and fashion.

It was announced last year that when Brady retires from playing, he would join Fox Sports as a television analyst in a 10-year, $375 million deal.
…

The nomination of the U.S. special envoy for human rights in North Korea, along with new legislation, has revived hopes for Korean Americans who want to see family in North Korea whom they have not seen since their separation during the Korean War.

President Joe Biden nominated Julie Turner, a long-time State Department official, as the U.S. special envoy for human rights in North Korea on January 23. The position has been vacant for the past six years.

The Divided Families Reunification Act authorizes the special envoy to consult regularly with Korean Americans to make “efforts to reunite” them with their families in North Korea.

The Reunification Act was included in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2023, which Biden signed into law on December 23. The envoy is to create “potential opportunities” for reunions including video meetings.

“This bill is our last hope because most of the divided family members are in their late 80s and 90s, and probably this is our last chance for the reunion,” said Chahee Lee Stanfield, executive director of the National Coalition for the Divided Families (DFUSA).

Stanfield, 82, has not seen her father and brother in North Korea for more than 70 years. She began a grassroots effort in America in the mid-1990s to help Korean families living in the U.S. reunite with loved ones in North Korea.

“Every day counts for us, and we are hoping that the special envoy will prioritize our issue and seek the reunion process including the video reunion as soon as possible,” Stanfield said.

No travel after war

The Korean War, which began in June 1950, separated more than 10 million individuals from their families. The fighting ended in July 1953 with the signing of the Armistice Agreement ordering a temporary cease-fire and the division of the peninsula between North and South Korea.

Since their separation, families divided by the 38th parallel have been unable to travel to see each other due to the differences between the democratic Republic of Korea (ROK), as South Korea is known, and socialist North Korea, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).

From 1985 to 2018, the governments of the North and South authorized 21 family reunion programs. These allowed more than 24,500 divided families in both countries to meet either in person in Seoul, Pyongyang and Mount Kumgang or virtually.

However people like Stanfield, who moved from South Korea to America and became U.S. citizens, were unable to participate in the programs because diplomatic ties between Washington and Pyongyang do not exist.

There are more than 1.7 million people of Korean descent living in the U.S. As many as 10,000 Korean Americans were separated from their families in North Korea during the war, according to Wonseok Song, executive director of Korean American Grassroots Conference (KAGC).

“Unfortunately, there is no reported information of the exact number of divided families residing in the United States,” Song said. “There are no mechanisms in the United States that formally track these families, and no terms that clearly define who may be considered family either.”

California Republican Representative Young Kim, who cosponsored the bipartisan Reunification Act, is pushing for a system of identifying Korean Americans divided from their families in North Korea.

“I want the special envoy … to identify the Korean Americans, some 10,000 of those still living in the United States, to coordinate better with our U.S. State Department and the South Korean government to include them in the next round of family reunification,” said Kim during an interview with the VOA Korean Service this week.

The number is shrinking yearly due to deaths among the aging population who have now waited much of their lives to see their families in North Korea. About 3,000 elderly South Koreans with family ties to North Korea die each year, according to the Reunification Act.

A lifetime of hoping

Even though inter-Korean family reunion programs were temporary and held under strict surveillance by North Korean officials, Korean Americans have long hoped that similar programs would unite them with their families in the North.

Some, like Song Yoonchae, a white-haired 90-year-old in Los Angeles, thought he would return home when he boarded the SS Meredith Victory. He thought he was taking a brief voyage to escape the ravages of the war.

He recalled leaving behind his sister and two brothers to board the U.S. merchant freighter turned rescue vessel docked at the port of Hungnam in North Korea in December 1950.

“My family and I were told we just need to stay on the ship for three days,” said Song, who was 17 years old at the time, in “The Three Days Is a Lifetime,” a documentary produced by the VOA Korean Service. It captures the wrenching stories of Korean Americans yearning to meet their families in the North.

The ship carried tens of thousands of densely packed refugees to Port Jangseungpo on Geoje Island off the southern tip of South Korea. The rescue operation became known as “the Miracle of Christmas” as the ship unloaded the refugees on Christmas Eve.

Displaced by the war, Yoonchae began a new life in the South before moving to the U.S.

“I consider the issue of bringing divided Korean American families together to be a human rights issue,” said Robert King, who served as the U.S. special envoy for North Korea’s human rights under the Obama administration. He was the last person to serve in the position.

“The first step will be to get North Korea to talk with the United States,” King continued.

An opening for dialog

Dialogue between Washington and Pyongyang has remained stalled since October 2019. Even though the Biden administration said efforts were made to engage in talks, North Korea has refused.

Evans Revere, a former State Department official with extensive experience negotiating with North Korea, said, “In the absence of any dialogue with North Korea, with tensions rising on the Korean Peninsula because of Pyongyang’s pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and with U.S.-DPRK and ROK-DPRK relations in a bad state, it is hard to imagine that there is any real prospect for progress in this important area.”

Revere continued, “Nevertheless, the existence of this legislation keeps open a potential area for U.S.-ROK-DPRK dialogue and cooperation if and when circumstances allow in the future.”

North Korea launched more than 90 ballistic and cruise missiles last year while dismissing any prospects for talks with the U.S.

Wonseok Song of the KAGC said, “While tensions do remain unfavorable between the two countries” of the U.S. and North Korea, “we at KAGC are hopeful” that talks focusing on reunions will open. He added, “The issue is dire to an aging population eager to make peace with their estranged loved ones.”

Joeun Lee contributed to this report.
…

Winter weather warnings and advisories were in effect across a string of U.S. states from Texas to Maryland on Wednesday with forecasters expecting freezing rain and sleet to affect many areas. 

The storm was blamed for at least two deaths on slick roads in Texas on Tuesday as authorities reported numerous crashes. 

The weather also forced the cancelation of hundreds of flights and knocked out power to thousands of homes. 

As the storm moved to the east, watches and warnings were in effect in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia and Maryland. 

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

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and civil rights leader the Rev. Al Sharpton will be among the mourners Wednesday at the funeral of Tyre Nichols, whose death earlier this month after being beaten by police once again focused attention on police brutality. 

Nichols’ mother and stepfather, RowVaughn Wells and Rodney Wells, invited Harris to attend the service at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church in Memphis, Tennessee. She expressed her condolences in a phone call with the family on Tuesday. 

“The persistent issue of police misconduct and use of excessive force in America must end now,” Harris said in a statement Friday, the same day police released video of the January 7 traffic stop and beating that led to his death. 

Sharpton is set to give the eulogy at Wednesday’s funeral. He gathered with family members late Tuesday at the Mason Temple Church of God in Christ in Memphis, where the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his final speech the night before he was assassinated in 1968. 

“This is holy ground. And this family now is ours and they’re in the hands of history,” Sharpton said. 

Also expected to attend Wednesday were Tamika Palmer, the mother of Breonna Taylor, and Philonise Floyd, the brother of George Floyd. The deaths of Taylor and Floyd at the hands of police in 2020 sparked widespread protests in the United States about racial injustice. 

Five Black officers have been fired and charged in connection with the death of Nichols, who was also Black. Two other officers have been disciplined, while three emergency responders have been fired. 

The Memphis Police Department also disbanded a special unit that targeted violent criminals in high-crime areas that included six of the officers involved. 

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters. 
…

Boeing bid farewell to an icon on Tuesday, delivering its final 747 jumbo jet as thousands of workers who helped build the planes over the past 55 years looked on. 

Since its first flight in 1969, the giant yet graceful 747 has served as a cargo plane, a commercial aircraft capable of carrying nearly 500 passengers, a transport for NASA’s space shuttles, and the Air Force One presidential aircraft. It revolutionized travel, connecting international cities that had never before had direct routes and helping democratize passenger flight. 

But over about the past 15 years, Boeing and its European rival Airbus have introduced more profitable and fuel efficient wide-body planes, with only two engines to maintain instead of the 747’s four. The final plane is the 1,574th built by Boeing in the Puget Sound region of Washington state. 

Thousands of workers joined Boeing and other industry executives from around the world — as well as actor and pilot John Travolta, who has flown 747s — Tuesday for a ceremony in the company’s massive factory north of Seattle, marking the delivery of the last one to cargo carrier Atlas Air. 

“If you love this business, you’ve been dreading this moment,” said longtime aviation analyst Richard Aboulafia. “Nobody wants a four-engine airliner anymore, but that doesn’t erase the tremendous contribution the aircraft made to the development of the industry or its remarkable legacy.” 

Boeing set out to build the 747 after losing a contract for a huge military transport, the C-5A. The idea was to take advantage of the new engines developed for the transport — high-bypass turbofan engines, which burned less fuel by passing air around the engine core, enabling a farther flight range — and to use them for a newly imagined civilian aircraft. 

It took more than 50,000 Boeing workers less than 16 months to churn out the first 747 — a Herculean effort that earned them the nickname “The Incredibles.” The jumbo jet’s production required the construction of a massive factory in Everett, north of Seattle — the world’s largest building by volume. The factory wasn’t even completed when the first planes were finished. 

Among those in attendance was Desi Evans, 92, who joined Boeing at its factory in Renton, south of Seattle, in 1957 and went on to spend 38 years at the company before retiring. One day in 1967, his boss told him he’d be joining the 747 program in Everett — the next morning. 

“They told me, ‘Wear rubber boots, a hard hat and dress warm, because it’s a sea of mud,'” Evans recalled. “And it was — they were getting ready for the erection of the factory.” 

He was assigned as a supervisor to help figure out how the interior of the passenger cabin would be installed and later oversaw crews that worked on sealing and painting the planes. 

“When that very first 747 rolled out, it was an incredible time,” he said as he stood before the last plane, parked outside the factory. “You felt elated — like you’re making history. You’re part of something big, and it’s still big, even if this is the last one.” 

The plane’s fuselage was 225 feet (68.5 meters) long and the tail stood as tall as a six-story building. The plane’s design included a second deck extending from the cockpit back over the first third of the plane, giving it a distinctive hump and inspiring a nickname, the Whale. More romantically, the 747 became known as the Queen of the Skies. 

Some airlines turned the second deck into a first-class cocktail lounge, while even the lower deck sometimes featured lounges or even a piano bar. One decommissioned 747, originally built for Singapore Airlines in 1976, has been converted into a 33-room hotel near the airport in Stockholm. 

“It was the first big carrier, the first widebody, so it set a new standard for airlines to figure out what to do with it, and how to fill it,” said Guillaume de Syon, a history professor at Pennsylvania’s Albright College who specializes in aviation and mobility. “It became the essence of mass air travel: You couldn’t fill it with people paying full price, so you need to lower prices to get people onboard. It contributed to what happened in the late 1970s with the deregulation of air travel.” 

The first 747 entered service in 1970 on Pan Am’s New York-London route, and its timing was terrible, Aboulafia said. It debuted shortly before the oil crisis of 1973, amid a recession that saw Boeing’s employment fall from 100,800 employees in 1967 to a low of 38,690 in April 1971. The “Boeing bust” was infamously marked by a billboard near the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport that read, “Will the last person leaving SEATTLE — Turn out the lights.” 

An updated model — the 747-400 series — arrived in the late 1980s and had much better timing, coinciding with the Asian economic boom of the early 1990s, Aboulafia said. He took a Cathay Pacific 747 from Los Angeles to Hong Kong as a twentysomething backpacker in 1991. 

“Even people like me could go see Asia,” Aboulafia said. “Before, you had to stop for fuel in Alaska or Hawaii and it cost a lot more. This was a straight shot — and reasonably priced.” 

Delta was the last U.S. airline to use the 747 for passenger flights, which ended in 2017, although some other international carriers continue to fly it, including the German airline Lufthansa. 

Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr recalled traveling in a 747 as a young exchange student and said that when he realized he’d be traveling to the West Coast of the U.S. for Tuesday’s event, there was only one way to go: riding first-class in the nose of a Lufthansa 747 from Frankfurt to San Francisco. He promised the crowd Lufthansa would keep flying the 747 for many years to come. 

“We just love the airplane,” he said. 

Atlas Air ordered four 747-8 freighters early last year, with the final one — emblazoned with an image of Joe Sutter, the engineer who oversaw the 747’s original design team — delivered Tuesday. Atlas CEO John Dietrich called the 747 the greatest air freighter, thanks in part to its unique capacity to load through the nose cone. 
…

The United States on Tuesday put new trade restrictions on seven Iranian entities for producing drones that Russia has used to attack Ukraine, the U.S. Department of Commerce said. 

The firms and other organizations were added to a U.S. export control list for those engaged in activities contrary to U.S. national security and foreign policy interests. 

The additions to the Commerce Department’s “entities list” were posted in a preliminary filing in the U.S. Federal Register, the government’s daily journal, and will be officially published on Wednesday. 

Since Russia launched its war against Ukraine in February 2022, the United States and more than 30 other countries have sought to degrade its military and defense industrial base by using export controls to restrict its access to technology. 

The Iranian entities are Design and Manufacturing of Aircraft Engines, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Aerospace Force, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Research and Self-Sufficiency Jihad Organization, Oje Parvaz Mado Nafar Company, Paravar Pars Company, Qods Aviation Industry and Shahed Aviation Industries. 

Any suppliers to the entities are required to have licenses to ship goods and technology, but these are expected to be denied, apart from those for food and medicine. The licenses will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. 

Iran’s mission to the United Nations in New York said: “Sanctions have no effect on Iran’s drone production capacity because its drones are all produced domestically. This is a strong indication that the drones shot down in Ukraine and using parts made by Western countries don’t belong to Iran.” 

In January, Canada announced it would buy a U.S.-made National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAMS) for Ukraine. NASAMS is a short- to medium-range ground-based air defense system that protects against drone, missile and aircraft attacks. The United States has provided two NASAMS to Ukraine, and more are on the way. 

Other ground-based air defense systems such as Raytheon Technology Corp.’s Patriot have been pledged to Ukraine by the United Kingdom, the United States and the Netherlands as allies hope to stave off further power disruptions. 
…

Anti-corruption efforts in seemingly “clean” advanced economies have stalled even as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has brought to the fore that nation’s role in fostering kleptocracy in recent decades, Transparency International said in a report on Tuesday.

While painting a grim picture of the global fight against corruption, the Berlin-based watchdog put the spotlight on countries that have historically scored high, meaning favorably, on its annual Corruption Perceptions Index.

Those countries remain among the “cleanest” in the world. But from Germany to France to Switzerland, most saw their CPI scores drop or stagnate last year.

Five traditionally top-scoring countries — Australia, Austria, Canada, Luxembourg and the United Kingdom — saw a significant decline in their assessments, Transparency International said.

The U.S. scored 69, a “negligible” increase of 2 points, but a Transparency International expert called the rating “troubling.”

Even Denmark, ranked No. 1, was relegated to the “little or no enforcement” category in the fight against foreign bribery.

Cross-border corruption takes many forms, from countries allowing corrupt foreign actors to launder stolen funds through their economies to governments failing to punish companies that bribe foreign officials.

In recent years, investigators have uncovered myriad instances of corrupt money finding its way into Western economies, from nearly $2 billion worth of U.K. property owned by Russians accused of financial crime or with links to the Kremlin, to tens of billions of dollars laundered into Canada each year. 

Transparency International said that while its Corruption Perceptions Index does not capture transnational graft, that form of corruption remains the advanced economies’ “biggest weaknesses.”

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “made it painfully apparent how inaction on transnational corruption can have catastrophic consequences,” the report says. “Not only have advanced economies helped to perpetuate corruption elsewhere, but they have also enabled kleptocracies to consolidate, threatening global peace and security.”

Gary Kalman, executive director of Transparency International U.S., said the U.S., thanks to the sheer size of its economy and financial secrecy rules, remains a “major facilitator of corruption internationally.”

“If you take a bribe for a thousand dollars, you put that in your pocket. If you’re trying to steal millions or billions, you need to find, as they say, ‘a more sophisticated investment strategy,’ and hiding it in an economy that’s over 20 trillion dollars makes it a little bit easier to hide,” Kalman said.

Transparency International is not the first organization to call out Western nations for aiding kleptocracy.

Last year, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the United States was arguably “the best place to hide and launder ill-gotten gains.”

“And that’s because of the way we allow people to establish shell companies,” Yellen said. 

Transparency International said there are signs that the U.S. and other nations are taking the problem seriously but more needs to be done.

In 2021, the U.S. Congress enacted the Corporate Transparency Act, which aims to end the use of anonymously owned companies for money laundering.

Facilitating the transnational corruption, Kalman said, are financial service providers who are not currently subject to anti-money laundering reporting obligations.

“These are the lawyers, the accountants, the money managers, the corporate formation agents, those that create trusts for wealthy people, investment advisers who are currently not covered by any anti-money laundering responsibilities,” Kalman said.

To close the loophole, he said Congress should pass the Enablers Act, which was approved by the House of Representatives last year but fell short in the Senate.

A Justice Department task force created to seize Russian assets following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is increasingly targeting enablers and facilitators of sanctions evasions.

Earlier this month, the Justice Department announced criminal charges against two businessmen, one of them Russian and the other British, for facilitating the ownership and operation of a luxury yacht owned by a sanctioned Russian oligarch.

The $90 million, 255-foot yacht, owned by Viktor Vekselberg, was previously seized by Spanish authorities at the request of the U.S.

The U.S. is also a member of the multinational Russian Elites, Proxies, and Oligarchs (REPO) Task Force, which has seized billions of dollars in Russian assets.

“While some governments appear to have finally woken up to the problem that they had helped create, ending top-scoring countries’ complicity in cross-border corruption —originating from Russia and beyond — requires a long-term, concerted effort,” Transparency International said.
…

The U.S. accused Russia on Tuesday of violating the nuclear arms control START treaty, contending that Moscow was refusing to allow inspection activities inside Russia.

The treaty, the last major pillar of post-Cold War nuclear arms control efforts, took effect in 2011 and was extended in 2021 for five more years. It sets a limit on the number of strategic nuclear warheads that the United States and Russia can deploy and the deployment of land- and submarine-based missiles and bombers to deliver them.

Together, the two countries still account for about 90% of the world’s nuclear warheads.

Washington has been trying to preserve the treaty, but ties with Moscow are the worst they have been in decades, the result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine nearly a year ago. The U.S. has led Western allies in supplying munitions to Ukraine to help fend off the Russian attack.

“Russia’s refusal to facilitate inspection activities prevents the United States from exercising important rights under the treaty and threatens the viability of U.S.-Russian nuclear arms control,” the State Department said.

In August, Moscow suspended cooperation with inspections under the treaty. It blamed travel restrictions imposed by Washington and its allies after Russia invaded Ukraine but said it was still committed to complying with the provisions of the treaty.

The State Department said Russia had a “clear path” to comply with the treaty by permitting inspections to continue.

On Monday, Russia told the United States that the treaty could expire in 2026 without a replacement, claiming that Washington was trying to inflict “strategic defeat” on Moscow in Ukraine.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told the RIA state news agency that it “is quite a possible scenario” there will be no nuclear arms control treaty after 2026.
…

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s upcoming trip to Beijing does not mean the United States is heading toward a substantial change in its relationship with the People’s Republic of China, according to U.S. analysts.

Blinken would be the first top U.S. diplomat to visit Beijing since 2018.

Meanwhile, officials from the two countries are preparing for another in-person and pull-aside meeting between their leaders this year, according to a U.S. official who spoke to VOA on the condition of anonymity.

But expectations are low that Blinken’s meetings with senior PRC leaders would result in large deliverables or reset the fraught relationship between the two countries.

“I don’t think there should be many expectations that we’re going to see anything significant breakthroughs for the trip,” said Jude Blanchette, the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

“I also don’t think that’s a bad thing, given how far the relationship has deteriorated over the last five years,” Blanchette told reporters during a telephone briefing on Monday evening.

This month, Blinken told an audience at University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics that open lines of communication can put guardrails on U.S.-China ties amid rising tensions, adding temperature has been lowered after then-Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August of 2022.

President Joe Biden last met with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the margins of the G-20 Summit in Bali last November.

India will host this year’s G-20 Summit in New Delhi from September 9-10. The U.S. will host this year’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Leaders’ Summit in San Francisco in November.

Russia’s Ukraine invasion

February 24 of this year will mark one year since Russia invaded Ukraine. The United States said it has been very clear to PRC about the implications of providing security and material support to Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Last Thursday, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned a Chinese company — Changsha Tianyi Space Science and Technology Research Institute Co. LTD, also known as Spacety China — for providing satellite imagery of Ukraine to support the Kremlin-linked mercenary Wagner Group’s combat operations for Russia.

Spacety China’s Luxembourg-based subsidiary also was sanctioned.

U.S. officials and China watchers have said Russia’s war on Ukraine would be on the agenda during Blinken’s meetings in Beijing.

“The debate over China’s policy toward Russia and Ukraine within China is one of the most contentious issues that I encountered when I was there,” said Scott Kennedy, a senior adviser and Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics at CSIS, who spent six weeks in China last fall. “A lot of people inside China in the expert community think that the Chinese made a strategic blunder.”

But in public, PRC officials stick with Beijing’s policy position and narrative.

“The U.S. is the one who started the Ukraine crisis and the biggest factor fueling it,” said Mao Ning, a spokesperson from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday.

PRC visas 

The Beijing government has suspended all 10-year multiple entry visas for Americans issued before March 26, 2020, when Beijing stopped issuing visas because of the coronavirus pandemic.

This runs counter to a reciprocal agreement that China made with former President Barack Obama’s administration, according to Dennis Wilder, professor of Asian Studies at Georgetown University.  Wilder served from 2009 to 2015 as senior editor of the U.S. president’s Daily Brief.

Wilder told VOA that Blinken likely will press PRC officials to have the suspension lifted because it affects many Chinese Americans, as well as business and educational exchanges.

While Americans can apply for new PRC visas, the extensive private information required in the visa application could be used against applicants or to pressure overseas dissent, said experts.

The current PRC visa application requires private information of applicants’ spouse, parents (even deceased) and children, such as their date of birth, country of birth, nationality, address and occupation. It also asks if applicants’ parents are in China.

In comparison, information of an applicant’s family members is optional in the previous four-page visa form.

There also is additional requirement for visa applicants who were born in Taiwan or Hong Kong to provide documents with their original names in Chinese characters, such as for their birth certificates.

PRC authorities are “looking for vulnerabilities” of overseas Chinese Americans, because such information can be used as a leverage to pressure applicants’ families living in China, said Wilder, citing examples of several Chinese American reporters who left the mainland China because of this type of pressures.

“I would be worried filling out all that information,” Bonny Lin, director of China Power Project at CSIS, told VOA.

“It would not be uncharacteristic of what we’ve seen in terms of the overall trend in China, in which China wants to have better control and increased surveillance on all activities within its border,” she said.

Asked if such private information provided by U.S. officials traveling to China can be used as a form of political intelligence, Lin agreed.

“Definitely yes, because they are collecting that information for use,” she said.

For PRC nationals applying for U.S. non-immigrant visas, while applicants are required to provide their family information, the requirement is not as extensive. Also, the U.S. does not ask for specific and private information about visa applicants’ children.    

A U.S. State Department spokesperson declined to provide comments to VOA.
…

U.S. Representative George Santos, who has admitted to fabricating much of his resume, told fellow Republican lawmakers on Tuesday he would not serve on committees for now, lawmakers said.

House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy said the freshman lawmaker asked if he could recuse himself from his committee assignments while he works to clear up an ethics cloud. McCarthy called it an “appropriate decision.”

“The voters have elected him,” McCarthy told reporters. “He’ll have a voice here in Congress. And until he answers all those (ethics) questions, then at that time, he’ll be able to be seated on committees.”  

The embattled congressman has faced calls from fellow New York Republicans to step down over fabrications about his career and history.

Santos, who announced his decision in a closed-door meeting with fellow Republican lawmakers, has rebuffed calls for his resignation, saying he would vacate his seat only if he loses the next election.

“He just said he recused himself for a while and then he’ll come back,” Representative Don Bacon told reporters.
…

Jill Biden’s inaugural outfits have a new home at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington. These inaugural dresses have always been about much more than looking great, as the first lady and the fashion designers explain. Maxim Moskalkov has the story. Camera: Dmytri Shakhov
…

The United States and South Korea will increase the pace and scope of joint military exercises, and expand intelligence sharing, in response to repeated and more frequent missile tests by North Korea.   

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and South Korean Defense Minister Lee Jong-sup promised a more resolute response to what they described as Pyongyang’s unprecedented level of provocations over the past year.   

During a joint news conference following an hour-long meeting at the Ministry of National Defense in Seoul, Austin assured South Korean officials that Washington’s resolve remains firm, and that the Pentagon will use “the full range of U.S. defense capabilities, including our conventional, nuclear, and missile-defense capabilities” to defend its long-time ally.   

Austin and Lee also said the two countries would move ahead with new table-top exercises next month, as well as additional exercises and training.   

Prior to the meeting, U.S. officials had promised a resumption of joint, live-fire exercises later this year.   

Austin said South Korea could also expect more support along the lines of recent U.S. deployments, which included the deployment of F-22 and F-35 fighter jets, and a visit by the Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group.   

The United States currently has about 28,500 troops stationed in South Korea. But Pyongyang’s bellicose behavior has stoked growing concern in South Korea, prompting President Yoon Suk Yeol to suggest earlier this month that Washington might need to redeploy nuclear weapons to the peninsula while saying Seoul could also begin to develop its own nuclear arsenal.   

Austin met with Yoon Tuesday, following his meeting with Lee, though neither spoke to the media.    

Lee, though, seemed satisfied with Austin’s assurances.   

“Even if they [North Korea] do use their nuclear capabilities, the Republic of Korea and the United States have the capability to deter their efforts,” Lee said, speaking through a translator.   

“The United States has the will to deter other uses of nuclear weapons, as well,” he added. “This goes on to demonstrate that we have the capability to deter any additional provocation by North Korea.”   

“As things continue to evolve, our alliance continues to strengthen,” Austin added. “And we look for ways to strengthen that extended deterrence.”   

This is Austin’s third trip to South Korea and his fourth meeting with Lee.   

In a joint statement following their meeting, the two also committed to working with Japan to improve and facilitate the sharing of missile warning data due to the North Korean threat.   

Support for Ukraine   

Austin’s visit to Seoul Tuesday followed a visit Monday by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.   

Stoltenberg urged South Korea, which has mostly provided humanitarian aid to Ukraine, to increase its military support for Kyiv.   

When asked Tuesday whether that could happen, South Korea’s Lee seemed to leave open the possibility.   

Lee said he and Stoltenberg “shared a sentiment on the need for the international effort in overcoming this crisis” in Ukraine.   

“Regarding our weapons support, our Republic of Korea weapons support, I’ll just say that I like to leave my answer that we are directing our close attention to the situation in Ukraine,” Lee said. 
…

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is due to meet Tuesday with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as part of a visit to the region in which Blinken has urged Israelis and Palestinians to ease tensions amid the bloodiest violence between them in years. 

The U.S. State Department said Blinken would discuss with senior Palestinian officials the importance of a two-state solution as well as political reforms. 

Ahead of his visit to the West Bank, Blinken met Tuesday with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in Jerusalem, saying at the start of their talks that U.S. commitment to Israel’s security “remains ironclad.” 

Blinken said Monday after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the United States remains committed to “Palestinians and Israelis enjoying equal measures of freedom, security, opportunity, justice, and dignity.” 

“We’re urging all sides now to take urgent steps to restore calm, to de-escalate,” Blinken said. “We want to make sure that there’s an environment in which we can, I hope, at some point create the conditions where we can start to restore a sense of security for Israelis and Palestinians alike, which of course is sorely lacking.” 

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

A grand jury is hearing evidence in New York over former President Donald Trump’s role in hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels during his 2016 presidential campaign, two sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters. 

A grand jury could lay the groundwork for possible criminal charges against the former president by the Manhattan district attorney’s office. 

Former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker testified before the grand jury, one source told Reuters. Pecker was seen entering the lower Manhattan building where the grand jury is empaneled, according to the New York Times, which first reported on the grand jury on Monday. Pecker could not immediately be reached for comment. 

The publisher had offered to help Trump by buying rights to unflattering stories and never publishing them. 

The moves are an indication that the district attorney, Alvin Bragg, is closer to a decision on whether to charge Trump. 

Bragg’s office declined to comment on the Times report. 

Daniels said she had a sexual liaison with Trump and received $130,000 before the 2016 presidential election in exchange for not discussing her encounter with Trump, who denies it happened and in 2018 told reporters he knew nothing about a payment to Daniels. 

Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, was sentenced to three years in prison in federal court in New York for orchestrating hush payments to Daniels and another woman, former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who said she had a months-long affair with Trump before he took office. 

McDougal has said she sold her story for $150,000 to American Media Inc., but it was never published. The incident involved a practice known as “catch and kill” to prevent a potentially damaging article from being published. 

Pecker, AMI’s former chief executive officer and a longtime friend of Trump and Cohen, told prosecutors of their hush-money deals with McDougal and Daniels before the 2016 U.S. election won by Trump, the Wall Street Journal reported in 2018. 
…