DRULAP

Trump Can Be Sued for January 6 Riot Injuries, Justice Department Says

Former President Donald Trump can be sued by injured Capitol Police officers and Democratic lawmakers over the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, the Justice Department said Thursday in a federal court case testing Trump’s legal vulnerability and the limits of executive power.

Although a president enjoys broad legal latitude to communicate to the public on matters of concern, the department wrote that “no part of a President’s official responsibilities includes the incitement of imminent private violence. By definition, such conduct plainly falls outside the President’s constitutional and statutory duties.”

The brief was filed by lawyers of the Justice Department’s Civil Division and has no bearing on a separate criminal investigation by a department special counsel into whether Trump can be criminally charged over efforts to undo President Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election ahead of the Capitol riot.

In fact, the lawyers note that they are not taking a position with respect to potential criminal liability for Trump or anyone else.

The Justice Department lawyers also wrote that they take no view on a lower court judge’s conclusion that those who sued Trump have “plausibly” alleged that his speech caused the riot.

Nevertheless, the department wrote that an appeals court should reject Trump’s claim of absolute immunity.

An email seeking comment was sent to an attorney for Trump on Thursday. Trump’s lawyers have argued he was acting within his official rights and had no intention to spark violence when he called on thousands of supporters to “march to the Capitol” and “fight like hell” before the riot erupted.

The case is among many legal woes facing Trump as he mounts another bid for the White House in 2024.

A prosecutor in Georgia has been investigating whether Trump and his allies broke the law as they tried to overturn his election defeat in that state. Trump is also under federal criminal investigation over top secret documents found at his Florida estate.

In the separate investigation into Trump and his allies’ efforts to overturn the election results, special counsel Jack Smith has subpoenaed former Vice President Mike Pence, who has said he will fight the subpoena.

Trump is appealing a decision by a federal judge in Washington, who last year rejected efforts by the former president to toss out the conspiracy civil lawsuits filed by lawmakers and two Capitol police officers. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Trump’s words during a rally before the violent storming of the U.S. Capitol were likely “words of incitement not protected by the First Amendment.”

The lawsuits, filed by Representative Eric Swalwell, officers James Blassingame and Sidney Hemby, and later joined by other House Democrats, argue that Trump and others made “false and incendiary allegations of fraud and theft, and in direct response to the Defendant’s express calls for violence at the rally, a violent mob attacked the U.S. Capitol.”

The suits cite a federal civil rights law that was enacted to counter the Ku Klux Klan’s intimidation of officials. They describe in detail how Trump and others spread baseless claims of election fraud, both before and after the 2020 presidential election was declared, and charge that they helped to rile up the thousands of rioters before they stormed the Capitol.

The lawsuits seek damages for the physical and emotional injuries the plaintiffs sustained during the insurrection.

In its filing, the Justice Department cautioned that the “court must take care not to adopt rules that would unduly chill legitimate presidential communication” or saddle a president with meritless lawsuits.

“In exercising their traditional communicative functions, Presidents routinely address controversial issues that are the subject of passionate feelings,” the department wrote. “Presidents may at times use strong rhetoric. And some who hear that rhetoric may overreact, or even respond with violence.”
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Myanmar Diaspora in US Calling for No-Fly Zone Over Myanmar

Burmese ethnic groups in the United States urged the Biden government to establish a no-fly zone over Myanmar and to impose jet fuel sanctions on the country’s military junta.

A group consisting of several different ethnic groups, Buddhist monks, and young activists from different states across the U.S. came to Washington recently to participate in a march on the White House. Activists demanded an end to the Myanmar junta’s airstrikes on its own citizens.

“We’re saying to the American people, and particularly to President [Joe] Biden, that the people of Burma [Myanmar] need help because every single day, the junta in Burma is killing our people through airstrikes,” said Peter Thawnghmung, president of the Chin Community of Indiana, a non-profit group based in Indianapolis.

Thawnghmung said the U.S. can help by urging Myanmar’s southeast Asia neighbors to establish a no-fly zone over the country.

“We’re here to plead with the government,” said Thawnghmung. “Please don’t ignore us. Help us. We need your help right away. Also, we ask you to influence other organizations like the U.N. to help impose a no-fly zone in the area. The U.S. is the country that can most help us to make this happen.”

Junta airstrikes

Myanmar Witness, a human rights group, recently reported the Myanmar military was increasing the air attacks with deadly results to try to crush stiff-armed resistance two years after it seized power.

According to the report, the number of airstrikes has been increasing since September, with 135 “airway incidents” from July to mid-December.

The rights group said, “As the Myanmar military struggles to exert control over areas of resistance, airstrikes have become a key part of their offensive.”

In a February press statement, Forces of Renewal for Southeast Asia — also known as FORSEA — said, “The Myanmar coup leader Senior-General Min Aung Hlaing’s use of violent attacks from the air perfectly fits the definition of “domestic terrorism” developed by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).”

FORSEA is a non-profit organization and was formed by Southeast Asian democrats and rights campaigners. The group also said, “The Myanmar junta has been deploying its Air Force fighter jets and gunship helicopters to deliberately strike ‘soft targets’ in the conflict regions of the country” after a February 2021 coup saw the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.

A BBC analysis of data collected by ACLED, a non-governmental organization that monitors conflicts, shows at least 600 air attacks by the junta from February 2021 to January 2023.

Dilemma for the US

In a January interview with VOA, Derek Chollet, a senior adviser to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, said no-fly zones are “not something we are considering now. What we’re trying to find is a way that we can peacefully resolve the situation inside Burma.”

M Tu Aung, a leader of the American-Kachin community in the Washington metropolitan area, said protesters can put pressure on the U.S. to work with its allies.

“We have been asking the U.S. government and the international community including the U.N. for no-fly zones over Myanmar since 2021. There is still no pressure from the U.S. government side. Although it is unlikely to happen with China, but if the U.S. put pressure and cooperated with its close allies such as Thailand, Bangladesh and India, it would be much more effective,” M Tu Aung told VOA.

Solidarity with Myanmar people

The “multi-ethnic march” on February 25 was aimed at showing “the role of the ethnic groups who have been fighting for decades against the military dictatorship, and achieving a federal democratic system is very important. Also, it is to prove that all ethnic groups [in Myanmar] are united in this fight,” he said.

After gathering in front of the State Department and marching to the White House, the protesters then demonstrated in front of the military attache of the Myanmar junta on February 25. The crowd shouted, “End deadly air strikes in Myanmar,” and they sang revolutionary songs.

The protesters came from eight U.S. states, including neighboring Maryland and Virginia. Khin La May, a Burmese activist from Kentucky, told VOA, “We need to fulfill our duty to overthrow the military dictator in Myanmar. No matter how far away it is from my state, we were determined to participate in this important march here in D.C.”

She noted her appreciation for the inclusion of the Burma Act to the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, saying she asked her U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell for its support.

The Burma Act, part of the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, broadens the U.S. government’s authority to impose sanctions against the post-coup regime and to aid Myanmar opposition and resistance groups, including ethnic armed groups. The authorized aid does not include arms.

Fifty-four organizations representing multiple ethnicities in Myanmar from around the U.S. recently wrote an open letter to the Biden administration asking it to impose sanctions on the Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise, a state-owned company that serves as one of the junta’s main sources of income.
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Robert Kennedy’s Assassin Gets Parole Rejected for 16th Time

A California parole board has denied parole to Sirhan Sirhan, who was found guilty of killing U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy in 1968.

It was the 17th parole hearing and 16th rejection for the 78-year-old Sirhan. While his lawyers argued he is no longer a threat to the public, the parole board Wednesday ruled he still was not suitable for release.

In 2021, a parole board approved his parole, but the decision was overturned by California Governor Gavin Newsom, who argued Sirhan was not yet rehabilitated. His lawyers sued, saying the governor’s decision was illegal. The case is still pending.

Kennedy, the former U.S. attorney general in his brother John F. Kennedy’s administration, had just finished a speech at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles in which he claimed victory in the California presidential primary. As he and his entourage were leaving, Sirhan, an Israeli-born Palestinian who emigrated to the United States from Jordan, shot him. He was arrested at the scene.

Sirhan later said he was angry at Kennedy for his support of Israel. Robert Kennedy’s death came five years after JFK’s.

Surviving members of his family are divided on parole for Sirhan. Kennedy’s widow, 94-year-old Ethel Kennedy, and six of their children oppose it, but two sons support the release.

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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California Names First Asian American Poet Laureate

California has a new poet laureate. And for the first time, that state poet is Asian American. For VOA, Genia Dulot traveled to Fresno, California, to hear from Lee Herrick about his roots and his poetry
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Blinken, Lavrov Meet Briefly as US-Russia Tensions Soar

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov talked briefly Thursday at a meeting of top diplomats from the Group of 20 nations in the first high-level meeting in months between the two countries.

U.S. officials said Blinken and Lavrov chatted for roughly 10 minutes on the sidelines of the G-20 conference in New Delhi. The short encounter came as relations between Washington and Moscow have plummeted while tensions over Russia’s war with Ukraine have soared.

A senior U.S. official said Blinken used the discussion to make three points to Lavrov: that the U.S. would support Ukraine in the conflict for as long as it takes to bring the war to an end, that Russia should reverse its decision to suspend participation in the New START nuclear treaty and that Moscow should release detained American Paul Whelan.

The official, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity to discuss the private conversation, said Blinken had “disabused” Lavrov of any idea they might have that U.S. support for Ukraine is wavering.

The official declined to characterize Lavrov’s response but said Blinken did not get the impression that there would be any change in Russia’s behavior in the near term.

Russia had no immediate comment on the substance of the conversation, but Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Blinken had asked to speak to Lavrov.

It was their first contact since last summer, when Blinken called Lavrov by phone about a U.S. proposal for Russia to release Whelan and formerly detained WNBA star Brittney Griner. Griner was later released in a swap for imprisoned Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout but Whelan remains detained in Russia after being accused of spying.

The last time Blinken and Lavrov met in person was in Geneva, Switzerland, in January 2022 on the eve of Russia’s invasion. At that meeting, Blinken warned Lavrov about consequences Russia would face if it went ahead with its planned military operation but also sought to address some complaints that Russian President Vladimir Putin had made about the U.S. and NATO.

Those talks proved to be inconclusive as Russia moved ahead with its plans to invade and Blinken then canceled a scheduled followup meeting with Lavrov that was set for just two days before Moscow eventually invaded on Feb. 24, 2022.

The two men have attended several international conferences together since the war began, notably the last G-20 foreign ministers’ meeting in Bali, Indonesia, last year, but had not come face-to-face until Thursday.
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SpaceX Launches Latest Space Station Crew to Orbit for NASA

Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX launched a four-person crew on a trip to the International Space Station early Thursday, with a Russian cosmonaut and United Arab Emirates astronaut joining two NASA crewmates on the flight.

The SpaceX launch vehicle, consisting of a Falcon 9 rocket topped with an autonomously operated Crew Dragon capsule called Endeavour, lifted off at 12:34 a.m. EST (0534 GMT) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

A live NASA webcast showed the 25-story-tall spacecraft ascending from the launch tower as its nine Merlin engines roared to life in billowing clouds of vapor and a reddish fireball that lit up the predawn sky.

The launch was expected to accelerate the Crew Dragon to an orbital velocity of 28,164 kph, more than 22 times the speed of sound.

The flight came 72 hours after an initial launch attempt was scrubbed in the final minutes of countdown early on Monday due to a clog in the flow of engine-ignition fluid. NASA said the problem was fixed by replacing a clogged filter and purging the system.

The trip to the International Space Station (ISS), a laboratory orbiting some 420 kilometers above Earth, was expected to take nearly 25 hours, with rendezvous planned for about 1:15 a.m. EST (0615 GMT) Friday as the crew begins a six-month science mission in microgravity.

Designated Crew 6, the mission marks the sixth long-term ISS team that NASA has flown aboard SpaceX since the private rocket venture founded by Musk — billionaire CEO of electric car maker Tesla and social media platform Twitter — began sending American astronauts to orbit in May 2020.

The latest ISS crew was led by mission commander Stephen Bowen, 59, a onetime U.S. Navy submarine officer who has logged more than 40 days in orbit as a veteran of three space shuttle flights and seven spacewalks.

Fellow NASA astronaut Warren “Woody” Hoburg, 37, an engineer and commercial aviator designated as the Crew 6 pilot, was making his first spaceflight.

The Crew 6 mission also is notable for its inclusion of UAE astronaut Sultan Alneyadi, 41, only the second person from his country to fly to space and the first to launch from U.S. soil as part of a long-duration space station team. UAE’s first-ever astronaut launched to orbit in 2019 aboard a Russian spacecraft.

Rounding out the four-man Crew 6 was Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, 42, who like Alneyadi is an engineer and spaceflight rookie designated as a mission specialist for the team.

Fedyaev is the second cosmonaut to fly aboard an American spacecraft under a renewed ride-sharing deal signed in July by NASA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos, despite heightened tensions between Washington and Moscow over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Crew 6 team will be welcomed aboard the space station by seven current ISS occupants — three U.S. NASA crew members, including commander Nicole Aunapu Mann, the first Native American woman to fly to space, along with three Russians and a Japanese astronaut.

The ISS, about the length of a football field, has been continuously operated for more than two decades years by a U.S.-Russian-led consortium that includes Canada, Japan and 11 European countries.

The Crew 6 mission follows two recent mishaps in which Russian spacecraft docked to the orbiting laboratory sprang coolant leaks apparently caused micrometeoroids, tiny grains of space rock, streaking through space and striking the craft at high velocity.

One of the affected Russian vehicles was a Soyuz crew capsule that had carried two cosmonauts and an astronaut to the space station in September for a six-month mission now set to end in March. An empty replacement Soyuz to bring them home arrived at the space station Saturday.
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A Inside Look at US–NATO Interoperability Lab

NATO is made up of 30 members and each country’s military has its own technical systems on the battlefield. Some work together better than others. At the US Army’s easternmost European headquarters in Poznan, Poland, soldiers are working to integrate NATO systems. VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb is there.
Camera: Mary Cieslak Video editor: Mary Cieslak
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US ‘Stands with Caribbean’ in Climate Change Fight, Navy Secretary Says

U.S. Navy Secretary Carlos del Toro on Wednesday reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to Caribbean nations in their fight against what he called the “existential threat” of climate change.

“The United States stands by you, with you, combatting this threat,” Del Toro said during a meeting with officials, students, and professors at Nassau’s University of the Bahamas. “Time is not on our side. We are in a critical decade to make meaningful progress so we can avoid the worst climate scenarios. We must act now. We view the climate crisis the same way we view damage control on a sinking ship: All hands on deck.”

The second Hispanic to head of the U.S. Department of the Navy, Del Toro said he traveled to the Bahamas to listen to the region’s climate emergency “challenges and stories,” acknowledging that “the increasing severity of those consequences are already being felt in the Caribbean and also in the United States” as he pointed to the dozen devastating storms that have pummeled the region in the last decade.

‘No one can fight climate change alone’

In the Caribbean, climate change has caused sea levels to rise, islands to be devastated by flooding and extreme temperatures while the salinization of farmland endangers ecosystems and makes it harder for residents to make a living in an area mainly sustained by tourism.

The Navy secretary said the U.S. is cooperating on several projects with universities and governments in the region, including a multimillion-dollar fund for disaster relief infrastructure, as well as aid to cope with health emergencies and epidemic outbreaks.

Del Toro added that work is also under way on energy-efficiency programs to lower carbon emissions at U.S. bases and on ships, and financing scientific research on soil and marine life, especially on the Caribbean’s coral reefs.

“No one can fight climate change alone,” he said. “We want to share and trade information, resources and expertise with allies, governments, and NGOs. Everywhere from Vietnam, Ghana, or right here in the Caribbean, we are collaborating on projects and enabling best practices.”

The Cuban-born Del Toro, who said the Navy launched the 2030 Climate Action Plan last May, said he still feels a part of the Caribbean community and has made the “threat of climate change a priority,” since taking office 18 months ago.

“To remain the world’s dominant maritime force, the Department of the Navy must adapt to climate change: We must build resilience and reduce the threat,” he said.

‘We want to help’

Del Toro also highlighted the Biden administration’s support for efforts to reduce the effects of climate change, reflected in the U.S.-Caribbean Partnership to Address the Climate Crisis 2030 (PACC 2030), introduced by Vice President Kamala Harris in June.

U.S. climate envoy John Kerry also recently visited the Bahamas, and Del Toro said he would convey details of this meeting to Kerry at the Our Oceans Conference in Panama, March 2-3.

Secretary Del Toro said that in April, the United States, Caribbean and Central American countries would participate in the Ninth Inter-American Specialized Conference on Science, Technology and Innovation to be held in Orlando, Florida. The event will focus on the use of scientific innovation to address climate change and marine pollution.

“We recognize that the resilience of our friends and neighbors in this region is of critical importance to our own security,” asserted Del Toro. “And like I have said, and I will continue to say, we want to help.”
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Lilly Plans to Slash Some Insulin Prices, Expand Cost Cap

Eli Lilly will cut prices for some older insulins later this year and immediately give more patients access to a cap on the costs they pay to fill prescriptions.

The moves announced Wednesday promise critical relief to some people with diabetes who can face thousands of dollars in annual costs for insulin they need in order to live. Lilly’s changes also come as lawmakers and patient advocates pressure drugmakers to do something about soaring prices.

Lilly said it will cut the list prices for its most commonly prescribed insulin, Humalog, and for another insulin, Humulin, by 70% or more in the fourth quarter, which starts in October.

List prices are what a drugmaker initially sets for a product and what people who have no insurance or plans with high deductibles are sometimes stuck paying.

A Lilly spokeswoman said the current list price for a 10-milliliter vial of the fast-acting, mealtime insulin Humalog is $274.70. That will fall to $66.40.

Likewise, she said the same amount of Humulin currently lists at $148.70. That will change to $44.61.

Lilly CEO David Ricks said Wednesday that his company was making the changes to address issues that affect the price patients ultimately pay for its insulins.

He noted that discounts Lilly offers from its list prices often don’t reach patients through insurers or pharmacy benefit managers. High-deductible coverage can lead to big bills at the pharmacy counter, particularly at the start of the year when the deductibles renew.

“We know the current U.S. health care system has gaps,” he said. “This makes a tough disease like diabetes even harder to manage.”

Patient advocates have long called for insulin price cuts to help uninsured people who would not be affected by price caps tied to insurance coverage.

Lilly’s planned cuts “could actually provide some substantial price relief,” said Stacie Dusetzina, a health policy professor at Vanderbilt University who studies drug costs.

She noted that the moves likely won’t affect Lilly much financially because the insulins are older, and some already face competition.

Lilly also said Wednesday that it will cut the price of its authorized generic version of Humalog to $25 a vial starting in May.

Lilly also is launching in April a biosimilar insulin to compete with Sanofi’s Lantus.

Ricks said that it will take time for insurers and the pharmacy system to implement its price cuts, so the drugmaker will immediately cap monthly out-of-pocket costs at $35 for people who are not covered by Medicare’s prescription drug program.

The drugmaker said the cap applies to people with commercial coverage and at most retail pharmacies.

Lilly said people without insurance can find savings cards to receive insulin for the same amount at its InsulinAffordability.com website.

The federal government in January started applying that cap to patients with coverage through its Medicare program for people 65 and older or those who have certain disabilities or illnesses.

President Joe Biden brought up that cost cap during his annual State of the Union address last month. He called for insulin costs for everyone to be capped at $35.

Biden said in a statement Wednesday that Lilly responded to his call.

“It’s a big deal, and it’s time for other manufacturers to follow,” Biden said.

Aside from Eli Lilly and the French drugmaker Sanofi, other insulin makers include the Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk.

Representatives for both Sanofi and Novo Nordisk said their companies offer several programs that limit costs for people with and without coverage.
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US Imposes Fresh Sanctions to Restrict North Korea’s Revenues

The U.S. Treasury Department on Wednesday imposed sanctions on individuals and companies that it accused of illicitly generating revenue for the government of North Korea.

The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, sanctioned Chilsong Trading Corporation, which it says is used by North Korea to earn foreign currency and collect intelligence; and Korea Paekho Trading Corporation, which is accused of generating funds for the North Korean government since the 1980s by conducting art and construction projects throughout the Middle East and Africa.

OFAC also sanctioned two individuals — Hwang Kil Su and Pak Hwa Song — for helping the North Korean government generate revenue, the Treasury Department said in a statement.

The department said the individuals established a company named Congo Aconde SARL in the Democratic Republic of Congo to earn revenue from construction and statue-building projects with local governments.

Last week, state media said North Korea test-fired four strategic cruise missiles during a drill designed to demonstrate its ability to conduct a nuclear counterattack against what it calls hostile forces.

North Korea’s “unlawful weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs threaten international security and regional stability,” Brian Nelson, Treasury’s top sanctions official, said Wednesday.

“The United States remains committed to targeting the regime’s global illicit networks that generate revenue for these destabilizing activities,” he added.

Last month, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, standing alongside his South Korean and Japanese counterparts, urged countries to step up enforcement of sanctions against North Korea in response to its latest ballistic missile launch.

North Korea has forged ahead in developing and mass-producing new missiles, despite sanctions imposed by United Nations Security Council resolutions that ban the nuclear-armed country’s missile activities.

U.S. and South Korean officials recently took part in a tabletop, or simulated, exercise that focused on the possibility of North Korea using a nuclear weapon.
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Blinken Casts Doubt on Seriousness of Russian, Chinese Commitment to Ukraine Peace

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed doubt Wednesday about how serious Russia and China are about achieving peace in Ukraine, citing a lack of substantive steps by either to back up statements showing support for a peace effort.

Speaking during a visit to Uzbekistan, Blinken told reporters that if Russia were genuinely prepared to engage in meaningful diplomacy to end its aggression, then the United States would be quick to engage in that effort. But he said Russia’s actions, including President Vladimir Putin’s demands that Ukraine recognize Russia’s control over parts of Ukrainian territory, show Russia is not interested in that path.

“The real question is whether Russia will get to a point where it is genuinely prepared to end its aggression and do so in a way that is consistent with the United Nations charter and its very principles.”

“No one wants peace more urgently than the people of Ukraine. They are the victims every single day of Russia’s aggression,” Blinken said. “We all know the simple truth that the war could end tomorrow, it could end today, if President Putin so decided. He started it, he could stop it.”

Blinken said a peace proposal put forward by China does contain some positive elements, including some found in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s own peace plan.

But Blinken said if China were serious about its call for the sovereignty of all nations to be upheld, then it would have spent the past year working in support of Ukraine’s full sovereignty in the face of Russia’s invasion.

He said China has done the opposite, including advancing Russian propaganda about the war, blocking for Russia at international organizations and contemplating sending lethal military assistance for Russian forces to use in Ukraine.

Bakhmut fighting

Ukrainian officials described fighting Tuesday around the eastern city of Bakhmut as intense, although little territory has changed hands between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s forces.

“The most difficult situation is still Bakhmut and the battles that are important for the defense of the city,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly address Tuesday. “Russia does not count people at all, sending them to constantly storm our positions. The intensity of fighting is only increasing.”

Zelenskyy said the Ukrainian commander in charge of defending Bakhmut, Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi, reported 800 Russian troops have been killed in the area since Thursday.

Earlier Tuesday, Syrskyi said on social media, “Despite taking significant losses, the enemy has dispatched its best-trained Wagner assault units to try to break through the defenses of our troops and surround the city.”

He was referring to the Wagner Group, the Russian paramilitary unit fighting alongside Russian troops.

Russia has been intensifying its attacks on several areas in eastern Ukraine, including Bakhmut, the ruined city where 75,000 people once lived.

Fighting for months has focused on towns and villages around Bakhmut, with Moscow attempting to surround the city to cut off Ukrainian supply routes, although some fighting has occurred within the city itself.

After failing a year ago to quickly take Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, in the earliest days of the war, Russia has concentrated its fight in the eastern Donbas region. Both sides have sustained heavy casualties in the warfare.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based research organization, said in a new report Tuesday that 60,000 to 70,000 Russian troops have been killed in the last year, more combat deaths than Moscow sustained in all the conflicts it has fought since World War II combined, including in Chechnya and Afghanistan.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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New US House Committee Focuses on Strategic Competition with China

U.S. lawmakers began a wide-ranging two-year investigation into U.S. strategic competition with China Tuesday night, with testimony from Chinese human rights activists and former U.S. national security advisers.

The start of the probe came two weeks after the United States shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon off the South Carolina coast.

“This is an existential struggle over what life will look like in the 21st century. And the most fundamental freedoms are at stake,” said Republican Congressman Mike Gallagher, chair of the 24-member House Select Committee on Strategic Competition with China. “The CCP [Chinese Communist Party] is laser-focused on its vision for the future, a world crowded with techno totalitarian surveillance states where human rights are subordinate to the whims of the party.”

Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi, the top Democrat on the committee, highlighted the need for bipartisan cooperation.

“We must recognize that the CCP wants us to be fractious, partisan and prejudiced,” Krishnamoorthi said. “In fact, the CCP hopes for it. But what they don’t get is that the diversity of our viewpoints and backgrounds is not a bug in America’s operating system. It is our defining feature and strength.”

Former national security advisers who served during the administration of President Donald Trump warned lawmakers at the hearing Tuesday that the United States must make up ground with China.

“United States and other nations across the free world underwrote the erosion of their competitive advantages through the transfer of capital and technology to a strategic competitor,” H.R. McMaster told the committee.

President Joe Biden said earlier this year that the United States is in competition with China, not in conflict. But witnesses told the panel that China sees the relationship differently.

“There’s really no excuse anymore for being fooled about Beijing’s intentions,” former deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger said. “And the canon of Chairman Xi’s publicly available statements is too voluminous, and the accumulated actions of his regime to brazen, to be misunderstood this late hour.”

The committee’s wide-ranging exploration will allow for new perspectives on security threats. Republican Congressman Dan Newhouse told VOA he is concerned about Chinese land purchases in agricultural areas of the United States.

“Can you imagine anything more precarious than having our food supply — perhaps only a link in that food supply chain — being compromised in a potential conflict with someone that is not our friend?” said Newhouse, who is co-sponsoring legislation on the matter.

Members of the committee also told VOA that China’s surveillance balloon is only a small part of the security threat.

“It’s literally every day on the phones of Americans, and that the threat doesn’t end there — China is a massive military threat,” Republican Congressman Dusty Johnson said. “Their navy is larger, and many argue more powerful, than America’s. They have more intercontinental ballistic missile launchers than the United States does. Their capabilities and things like hypersonics far outstrip where America is today.”

While the first hearing focused on security concerns, the committee’s work is expected to address a wide range of issues in the relationship – from economic and agricultural competition to the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The committee is considering hearings outside Capitol Hill for a firsthand look at possible threats to critical infrastructure.
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US Lawmakers Launch 2-Year Investigation of US-China Relationship

U.S. lawmakers launched a wide-ranging two-year investigation into U.S. strategic competition with China on Tuesday night, hearing from Chinese human rights activists and former national security advisers. VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson spoke to several members of the committee about the issues they want investigated moving forward. Videographer: Mary Cieslak
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Chicago’s Incumbent Mayor Lightfoot Loses Re-Election Bid

Chicago’s incumbent Mayor Lori Lightfoot lost her re-election bid on Tuesday, with vote totals showing that two of her rivals will face each other in an April runoff ballot.

Paul Vallas, the former public schools chief in Chicago and Philadelphia who ran unsuccessfully for Chicago mayor in 2019, secured the top spot, taking 34.9% of the vote with 91% of precincts reporting, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Brandon Johnson, a Cook County commissioner and an organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union, secured the other spot in the runoff race, taking 20.2% of votes. Lightfoot had 16.4% of vote totals, and there were not enough votes outstanding for her to make up the ground between her and Johnson.

Polls showed public safety is by far the top concern among residents of the third-largest U.S. city.

The campaign has tested Democratic messaging on policing in the U.S., three years after widespread protests following the police murder of George Floyd and months after Republicans sought to bludgeon Democrats over the issue in the 2022 midterm elections.

The Chicago race is technically non-partisan, but every candidate identifies as a Democrat in the heavily left-leaning city.

Lightfoot, the first Black woman and first openly gay person to serve as the city’s mayor, is bidding for a second four-year term. She emerged as a surprise victor in 2019, campaigning as an outsider who would end corruption.

But her handling of a series of crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic, racial justice protests, a protracted teachers’ strike and a spike in crime, sapped her popular support.

There were more than 800 murders in Chicago in 2021, the most in a quarter-century. The homicide rate dropped 14% in 2022 but remained nearly 40% higher than in 2019.

Lightfoot has said the 2022 drop in murders and shootings shows that her strategies, such as hiring more officers and focusing on illegal guns, are having an impact.

Natalie Pauls, 53, a healthcare worker who voted in downtown Chicago and declined to say who she cast her ballot for, reflected the sentiment of many voters when she said that crime was a top concern, but she did not think any single candidate really stood out for her.

“I want someone who is going to manage the police in a way where we are not seeing African Americans mistreated,” she said.

Lost support

Lightfoot has clashed with the police and teachers unions.

The police are backing Vallas, and the teachers endorsed Johnson. Vallas is running to Lightfoot’s right, while Johnson is courting the progressive vote.

Vallas’ campaign website asserts the city has been “surrendered” to criminals, and he has vowed to hire more officers and increase community patrols.

His focus on safety has put him at the top of most polls, though Lightfoot has attacked him for telling an interviewer in 2009 that he was “more of a Republican than a Democrat.”

In a recent advertisement, Lightfoot accused Johnson of wanting to “defund the police.” The ad cited a 2020 appearance in which he described the slogan as a “real political goal” in the wake of the Floyd protests.

As a mayoral candidate, Johnson has responded by saying he wants to spend more resources on programs such as mental health treatment but does not intend to cut the police budget.
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Congress Debates Military Aid Sent to Ukraine

The U.S. House Armed Services Committee held a hearing Tuesday with top Pentagon officials to discuss the tens of billions of dollars the United States has spent on security assistance to Ukraine. Opinions remain split within parties on everything from continuing assistance to the type of training and equipment that needs to be provided next. VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb has more.
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Biden Administration Urges Renewal of Congressional Surveillance Program

U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration urged Congress on Tuesday to reauthorize a controversial surveillance program that officials say has become a vital tool of protecting the United States from all manner of threats, from foreign terrorist attacks to Chinese efforts to steal U.S. technology.

The program, established in 2008 under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), allows U.S. spy agencies to collect the online communications of foreigners for intelligence purposes but can also result in “incidental collection” of U.S. citizens’ messages.

Although Congress has reauthorized the program twice in the past, the bipartisan support that it once enjoyed has ebbed in recent years, leaving officials worried about the specter of losing a powerful weapon in the national security arsenal.

“What keeps me up at night is thinking about what could happen if we do not renew section 702 of FISA,” said Matt Olsen, assistant attorney general for national security, speaking at the Brookings Institution.

Olsen’s appearance at the influential Washington think tank was part of what he called an “all-out effort” by the Biden administration to ensure Congress reauthorizes the law before it lapses at the end of the year.

In a joint letter to top congressional Republicans and Democrats, Attorney General Merrick Garland and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said the surveillance program’s renewal was a “top legislative priority” for the Biden administration.

“Over the last 15 years, Section 702 has proven invaluable again and again in protecting American lives and U.S. national security,” the two officials wrote.

Intelligence information obtained under Section 702 has been used to identify threats from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, they said, adding that it “contributed” to the success of a drone strike that killed al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri last summer.

“It has become clear that there is no way to replicate Section 702’s speed, reliability, specificity, and insight,” Garland and Haines wrote, urging Congress to “promptly reauthorize” the law.

In a statement, national security adviser Jake Sullivan added his voice to the administration’s call.

“This authority is an invaluable tool that continues to protect Americans every day and is crucial to ensuring that U.S. defense, intelligence and law enforcement agencies can respond to threats from the People’s Republic of China, Russia, nefarious cyber actors, terrorists and those who seek to harm our critical infrastructure,” Sullivan said.

Although the law faces a December 31 expiration date, Olsen urged Congress to act as far in advance of the deadline as possible.

Garland is expected to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, while Haines will appear before both the Senate and the House intelligence committees next week. Both officials will likely face tough questions from lawmakers about the surveillance program.

Opposition to the program is even stiffer in the House where newly empowered Republicans, upset over the wiretapping of a Trump campaign aide in 2016 and other alleged abuses, have formed a “select subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government” against conservatives.

Congressional Republicans opposed to renewing the program have found an improbable group of allies: civil liberties and privacy rights advocates.

Among the program’s most vociferous critics is the American Civil Liberties Union.

Patrick Toomey, deputy project director of the ACLU’s National Security Project, said the program has become a “spying tool” for the FBI.

“The government claims to be targeting people overseas, but it’s clearer than ever that agents are using this surveillance as a backdoor into Americans’ private emails and messages,” Toomey said in a statement to VOA.

In what the ACLU and other critics deride as a “backdoor search loophole,” FBI analysts are allowed to search the data collected through the program by running queries using Americans’ personally identifying information.

“The FBI is amassing huge quantities of protected communications and then searching through them millions of times each year without a warrant,” Toomey said.

Olsen acknowledged past “mistakes” and “improper conduct” on the part of FBI analysts but said the Justice Department instituted a series of changes designed to address concerns about the program.

In their letter, Garland and Haines noted that the surveillance authority under Section 702 “may not be directed against Americans at home or abroad, or any person regardless of nationality, known to be located in the United States.”

But Toomey said the Biden administration is seeking reauthorization of the program “without significant reforms that will protect Americans.”
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Biden Administration Grilled Over $23B in Licenses for Blacklisted Chinese Firms

The Biden administration approved more than $23 billion worth of licenses for companies to ship U.S. goods and technology to blacklisted Chinese companies in the first quarter of 2022, a Republican lawmaker said Tuesday.

The data comes amid growing pressure on the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden to further expand a broad crackdown on shipments of sensitive U.S. technology to China from Republican lawmakers, who now control the House of Representatives.

“Overwhelmingly, [the Commerce Department] continues to grant licenses that allow critical U.S. technology to be sold to our adversaries,” Republican Representative Michael McCaul, chair of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, said at a hearing on combating the generational challenge of Chinese aggression, as he grilled U.S. officials for allowing the licenses to be approved.

“How does this align with your statement that ‘we’re doing everything within [the Commerce Department’s] power to prevent sensitive U.S. technologies from getting in the hands of [Chinese] military, intelligence services or other parties?’”

McCaul said the Commerce Department, which oversees export controls, denied only 8% of license requests to sell to companies on the U.S. trade blacklist during the January to March period last year.

Commerce Department official Alan Estevez, who oversees U.S. export policy, told the hearing that a Trump-era policy that allows China’s blacklisted telecommunications equipment maker Huawei to receive some U.S. technology below the “5G level” is “under assessment.”

Estevez also described TikTok as a “threat,” noting that a powerful committee that reviews foreign investments in the United States was dealing with how to handle the popular Chinese-owned social media app.

TikTok said in a statement the company has been working with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States “for over two years on a plan to address national security concerns about TikTok in the U.S.”

Democratic Congressman Gregory Meeks cautioned against reading too much into the licensing numbers, noting that the approval and denial data provides no information about the transactions.

The data comes a week after the Biden administration added new Chinese companies to the trade blacklist for aiding Russia’s military and months after announcing a sweeping new policy aimed at dramatically curbing shipments of chips and chipmaking tools to China.

Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. was added to a trade blacklist known as the entity list by former Republican President Donald Trump in 2019, amid allegations of sanctions violations, spying capabilities, and intellectual property theft.

Suppliers of most companies added to the entity list see their requests to ship to the targeted firms denied, but the Trump administration implemented a special policy for Huawei, pledging to deny it access to some things like 5G chips but allow it to receive other items, such as 4G chips.
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Pentagon: Iran a ‘Global Challenge’ Due to Alliance with Russia

The United States and its allies are moving to treat Iran as a global threat, warning that its growing alliance with Russia — and cooperation in the war on Ukraine — mean Tehran’s destabilizing activities will pose a greater danger than ever before.

“We are now at a point where Iranian threats are no longer specific to the Middle East, but a global challenge,” Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Dana Stroul told reporters during a media call Tuesday.

Stroul pointed to the enhanced military cooperation between Tehran and Moscow and specifically to Iran’s provision of one-way drones to the Russian military, calling for “a global coalition to push back on the malign cooperation between Iran and Russia.”

“It is reasonable to expect that the tactics, techniques and procedures that the Iranians are learning and perfecting in Ukraine will one day come back to our partners in the Middle East, which is why we are increasing cooperation now, intelligence sharing, understanding these networks and increasing our collective defensive capabilities so that we are prepared to counter these threats in the region,” she said.

Stroul is the latest high ranking U.S. official to sound the alarm about Iran’s alliance with Russia.

This past Sunday, CIA Director William Burns called the growing relationship “disturbing.”

“It’s moving at a pretty fast clip in a very dangerous direction right now,” Burns said during an interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

“We know that the Iranians have already provided hundreds or armed drones to the Russians. … We know that they’ve provided ammunition for artillery and for tanks, as well,” he said, adding there are signs Moscow could give Iran Russian-made fighter jets and even help Tehran with its ballistic missile program.

Iran denies it has provided drones to Russia.

The description of Iran as a “global challenge” appears to be a departure from language used by the U.S. intelligence community just last year.

“Iran will remain a regional menace with broader malign influence activities,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in its annual Worldwide Threats Assessment report.

“The Iranian regime sees itself as locked in an existential struggle with the United States and its regional allies, while it pursues its longstanding ambitions for regional leadership,” the report noted, adding Iran’s leadership would seek to “entrench its influence and project power in neighboring states.”

The State Department’s just-released report, Country Reports on Terrorism 2021, called Iran “the leading state sponsor of terrorism, facilitating a wide range of terrorist and other illicit activities around the world.”

The report further warns that Tehran maintains “a near-global procurement network,” to acquire cutting-edge technology for its military and its various proxies, like Hezbollah.
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Supreme Court Weighs Biden Student Loan Plan Worth Billions

The Supreme Court has begun hearing arguments in a partisan legal fight over President Joe Biden’s plan to wipe away or reduce student loans held by millions of Americans.

The high court, with its 6-3 conservative majority, heard arguments on Tuesday on two challenges to the plan, which has so far been blocked by Republican-appointed judges on lower courts.

Arguments were scheduled to last two hours but were likely to go much longer. The public can listen in on an outside link or the court’s website.

Twenty-six million people have applied, and 16 million have been approved to have up to $20,000 in federal student loans forgiven, the Biden administration says. The program is estimated to cost $400 billion over 30 years.

“I’m confident the legal authority to carry that plan is there,” Biden said Monday, at an event to mark Black History Month.

The president, who once doubted his own authority to broadly cancel student debt, first announced the program in August. Legal challenges quickly followed.

Republican-led states and lawmakers in Congress, as well as conservative legal interests, are lined up against the plan as a clear violation of Biden’s executive authority. Democratic-led states and liberal interest groups are backing the Democratic administration in urging the court to allow the plan to take effect.

Without it, loan defaults would dramatically increase when the pause on loan payments ends no later than this summer, the administration says. Payments were halted in 2020 as part of the response to the coronavirus pandemic.

The administration says a 2003 law, commonly known as the HEROES Act, allows the secretary of education to waive or modify the terms of federal student loans in connection with a national emergency. The law was primarily intended to keep service members from being worse off financially while they fought in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Nebraska and other states that sued say the plan is not necessary to keep the rate of defaults roughly where it was before the pandemic. The 20 million borrowers who have their entire loans erased would get a “windfall” that will leave them better off than they were before the pandemic, the states say.

Dozens of borrowers came from across the country to camp out near the court on a soggy Monday evening in hopes of getting a seat for the arguments. Among them was Sinyetta Hill, who said that Biden’s plan would erase all but about $500 of the $20,000 or so she has in student loans.

“I was 18 when I signed up for college. I didn’t know it was going to be this big of a burden. No student should have to deal with this. No person should have to deal with this,” said Hill, 22, who plans to study law after she graduates from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in May.

Biden’s plan could meet a frosty reception in the courtroom. The court’s conservatives have been skeptical of other Biden initiatives related to the pandemic, including vaccine requirements and pauses on evictions. Those were billed largely as public health measures intended to slow the spread of COVID-19.

The loan forgiveness plan, by contrast, is aimed at countering the economic effects of the pandemic.

The national emergency is expected to end May 11, but the administration says the economic consequences will persist, despite historically low unemployment and other signs of economic strength.

In addition to the debate over the authority to forgive student debt, the court also will confront whether the states and two individuals whose challenge also is before the justices have the legal right, or standing, to sue.

Parties generally have to show that they would suffer financial harm and benefit from a court ruling in their favor. A federal judge initially found that the states would not be harmed and dismissed their lawsuit before an appellate panel said the case could proceed.

Of the two individuals who sued in Texas, one has student loans that are commercially held and the other is eligible for $10,000 in debt relief, not the $20,000 maximum. They would get nothing if they win their case.

A decision is expected by late June.
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Father of Cellphone Sees Dark Side but Also Hope in New Tech

Holding the bulky brick cellphone he’s credited with inventing 50 years ago, Martin Cooper thinks about the future.

Little did he know when he made the first call on a New York City street from a thick gray prototype that our world — and our information — would come to be encapsulated on a sleek glass sheath where we search, connect, like and buy.

He’s optimistic that future advances in mobile technology can transform human lives but is also worried about risks smartphones pose to privacy and young people.

“My most negative opinion is we don’t have any privacy anymore because everything about us is now recorded someplace and accessible to somebody who has enough intense desire to get it,” the 94-year-old told The Associated Press at MWC, or Mobile World Congress, the world’s biggest wireless trade show where he was getting a lifetime award this week in Barcelona.

Besides worrying about the erosion of privacy, Cooper also acknowledged the negative side effects that come with smartphones and social media, such as internet addiction and making it easy for children to access harmful content.

But Cooper, describing himself as a dreamer and an optimist, said he’s hopeful that advances in cellphone technology have the potential to revolutionize areas like education and health care.

“Between the cellphone and medical technology and the Internet, we are going to conquer disease,” he said.

It’s a long way from where he started.

Cooper made the first public call from a handheld portable telephone on a Manhattan street on April 3, 1973, using a prototype device that his team at Motorola had started designing only five months earlier.

Cooper used the Dyna-TAC phone to famously call his rival at Bell Labs, owned by AT&T. It was, literally, the world’s first brick phone, weighing 2.5 pounds and measuring 11 inches. Cooper spent the best part of the next decade working to bring a commercial version of the device to market.

The call help kick-start the cellphone revolution, but looking back on that moment 50 years later, “we had no way of knowing this was the historic moment,” Cooper said.

“The only thing that I was worried about: ‘Is this thing going to work?’ And it did,” he said Monday.

While blazing a trial for the wireless communications industry, he hoped that cellphone technology was just getting started.

Cooper said he’s “not crazy” about the shape of modern smartphones, blocks of plastic, metal and glass. He thinks phones will evolve so that they will be “distributed on your body,” perhaps as sensors “measuring your health at all times.”

Batteries could even be replaced by human energy.

“The human body is the charging station, right? You ingest food, you create energy. Why not have this receiver for your ear embedded under your skin, powered by your body?” he imagined.

Cooper also acknowledged there’s a dark side to advances — the risk to privacy and to children.

Regulators in Europe, where there are strict data privacy rules, and elsewhere are concerned about apps and digital ads that track user activity, allowing tech and digital ad companies to build up rich profiles of users.

“It’s going to get resolved, but not easily,” Cooper said. “There are people now that can justify measuring where you are, where you’re making your phone calls, who you’re calling, what you access on the Internet.”

Smartphone use by children is another area that needs limits, Cooper said. One idea is to have “various internets curated for different audiences.”

Five-year-olds should be able to use the internet to help them learn, but “we don’t want them to have access to pornography and to things that they don’t understand,” he said.

The inspiration for Cooper’s cellphone idea was not the personal communicators on Star Trek, but comic strip detective Dick Tracy’s radio wristwatch. As for his own phone use, Cooper says he checks email and does online searches for information to settle dinner table arguments.

However, “there are many things that I have not yet learned,” he said. “I still don’t know what TikTok is.”
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Snowstorms Flank US, with Northeast, California Digging Out

Heavy snow bookended the United States on Tuesday, with a late-season storm bringing a messy morning commute to the Northeast and California residents digging out, or in some cases simply stranded, after yet another storm.

While not a blockbuster storm by regional standards, the Northeast felt what could end up being the most significant snowfall of what has so far been a mild winter. The brunt of the storm hit Boston as the Tuesday morning commute commenced.

A winter storm warning covered parts of the Northeast, including Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Rhode Island, with heavy snow forecast through Tuesday afternoon.

Most of the nation’s flight cancellations or delays were concentrated in the Northeast early Tuesday. There were about 450 flight cancellations in the U.S. and over 500 delays, according to FlightAware.com.

Boston could get 5 inches (13 centimeters), according to the weather service. As much as 10 inches (25 centimeters) were forecast in western Massachusetts and parts of Connecticut and Vermont.

Dozens of school districts in Massachusetts closed or delayed opening, WCVB-TV reported. Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey directed all nonemergency state employees in the executive branch to stay home Tuesday, her office said.

By early Tuesday, parts of New York City saw an inch or so of snow — some of the first snow to stick to the ground this season. The worst was over before sunrise, and a mix of snow and rain was expected Tuesday morning in the city, making for a slippery commute, NY1 reported.

At the other end of the country, California dug out yet again.

San Bernardino County, east of Los Angeles, declared a state of emergency amid the latest snow event after many mountain residents were trapped in their homes over the weekend. Heavy snow stranded hundreds of motorists at higher elevations, KTLA-TV reported.

Dozens of elementary school children were stranded at a science camp in Crestline for nearly a week, but buses escorted by the state highway patrol eventually evacuated them, the TV station reported. The county fire department used “specialized snow vehicles” to reach people who need critical medical care.

The new series of storms arrived even as parts of California were still digging out from last week’s powerful storm, which added to a massive snowpack left by a siege of “atmospheric rivers” in December and January.

A cold weather alert was declared for valley and mountain areas north of Los Angeles as overnight temperatures were expected to plunge below freezing for much of the week. Shelters were opened for residents without access to warmth.

While the mountainous areas around Los Angeles tried to dig out, rain fell on lower elevations of California, near the Pacific Coast. Storms were to continue moving through the state until the end of Wednesday. Blizzard warnings were in effect in the Sierra Nevada range in California and Nevada.

An avalanche warning was issued for the backcountry around Lake Tahoe, where up to 6 feet (1.8 meters) of snow was expected over the next two days in the upper elevations and gale-force winds could create waves up to 5 feet (1.5 meters) high on the lake, the National Weather Service said.

State offices across northern Nevada, and the Nevada Legislature in Carson City, shut down.

The northbound side of Interstate 5, the West Coast’s major north-south highway, closed amid the weather and was littered with disabled vehicles about 90 miles (145 kilometers) south of the Oregon line. Interstate 80 was closed due to blizzard conditions.

While not expecting a blockbuster storm by regional standards, southern New England felt what could end up being the most significant snowfall of what has so far been a mild winter. The brunt of the storm was hitting just as the Tuesday morning commute commenced.

A winter storm warning covered parts of the Northeast, including Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Rhode Island, with heavy snow forecast through Tuesday afternoon.

Boston could get 5 inches (13 cm), according to the weather service. As much as 10 inches (25 cm) could fall in western Massachusetts, northwest Connecticut and southern Vermont.

Dozens of school districts and organizations closed or delayed opening, WCVB-TV reported. Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey directed all non-emergency state employees in the executive branch to stay home Tuesday, her office said.
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