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.
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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.
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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
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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. 
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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. 
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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. 
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Haitians in the United States are facing enormous pressure to help family and friends under a U.S. migration program announced this month that may help some people escape Haiti’s escalating violence but is also putting strain on the nation’s diaspora.   

Giubert St Fort, a South Florida resident from Haiti, said he was inundated with calls almost immediately after the Biden administration said on January 5 that it was opening a new legal pathway for migrants from four countries, including Haiti, who had U.S. sponsors.   

“Things are very tense because everyone is expecting a call from someone,” said St Fort, 59, a social worker who is already sponsoring members of his family.   

“Many people unfortunately are not in a position to sponsor family members or friends back home, but they are receiving calls nonstop.”   

Haitians living in the United States, many of whom are struggling to make ends meet, say they are being sought out by everyone from immediate family members to distant acquaintances or neighbors they haven’t spoken with in years, community advocates and immigration lawyers said.   

Desperation to leave has grown in Haiti amid a political crisis and a spike in violence that most recently has included a wave of killings of police, triggering protests by angry officers who attacked the residence of interim Prime Minister Ariel Henry.   

U.S. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, has struggled with a record number of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, including the arrival of more than 10,000 Haitians to southern Texas in September 2021. Many of the asylum seekers were deported back to Haiti or rapidly expelled, despite objections from human rights groups and a U.S. career diplomat who said doing so was “inhumane.”   

In response, Biden expanded pandemic-era restrictions put in place by his Republican predecessor, former President Donald Trump, to rapidly expel migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to Mexico. At the same time, Biden’s administration opened up the possibility for up to 30,000 migrants from those same countries to enter via air each month by applying for humanitarian “parole.”   

‘Undue stress’   

The parole program is aimed at encouraging migrants to safely travel to the United States instead of braving boats or grueling land journeys through Central America to the border. U.S. officials say illegal crossings by the four nationalities have already dropped dramatically.   

A senior administration official said last week that about 1,700 people from Cuba, Haiti and Nicaragua have arrived in the United States through the program in recent weeks, with thousands more approved for travel.   

But finding willing sponsors is proving difficult for many Haitians as many immigrants already in the United States are concerned they won’t be able to provide for others with the rising cost of living and soaring rents, advocates and attorneys said.   

Tammy Rae, an American lawyer who works in Haiti, described the humanitarian parole program in a radio interview and was later flooded by calls from people seeking a sponsor.   

She said her clients have described being expected to sponsor entire extended families and in some cases face threats.   

“It’s true that this is a program that will unite families,” Rae said. “I would say it’s also a program that will place undue stress on families and cause family divisions.”   

The Department of Homeland Security, which administers the program, did not respond to a request for comment.   

Guerline Jozef, executive director of the nonprofit immigration advocacy group Haitian Bridge Alliance, which is helping Haitians find sponsors, described the dilemma.   

“People will say ‘I have more than one cousin I would like to sponsor, I’m only able to sponsor one of them,'” Jozef said. “And that creates a major issue because how do you choose which one to sponsor?” She is also opposed to the expulsions of Haitians and other migrants arriving at the southwest border, many of whom are seeking U.S. asylum.   

Jozef said immigrant advocates have long fought for measures such as humanitarian parole but said the program should not be attached to systematic deportation or expulsion of immigrants seeking asylum.   

“Unfortunately, it is attached to a lot of bad policies. It is being used to literally deter people from seeking protection at the U.S-Mexico border.” 
…

A controversial memo from a U.S. Air Force general predicting war with China in 2025 may reflect a growing disconnect between the way the United States’ civilian and military leadership view the relationship between the world’s two largest economic powers.

In the memo, which began circulating online over the weekend, General Michael Minihan opens with the stark statement, “I hope I am wrong. My gut tells me we will fight in 2025.”

Minihan, in charge of the Air Force’s Air Mobility Command (AMC), a 5,000-person unit focused on logistics, offers no evidence for his prediction of war between the U.S. and China other than a vague assertion that upcoming elections in the U.S. and Taiwan will create an opportunity for Beijing to attempt reunifying the self-governing island with the mainland. China has long claimed that Taiwan is part of Chinese territory.

‘Aim for the head’

The general’s memo orders units under his command to step up their training and readiness to be prepared “to deter, and if required, to defeat China.”

In addition to broad directives about the AMC’s logistical readiness, Minihan adds several specific orders, including the directive that “All AMC aligned personnel with weapons qualification will fire a clip into a 7-meter target with the full understanding that unrepentant lethality matters most. Aim for the head.”

A former C-130 pilot, Minihan has served in other senior roles in the U.S. military, including deputy commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command from September 2019 to August 2021, so he has a deep understanding of the Chinese military.

Civilian-military split

Minihan’s comments appear to contradict statements by senior officials in the Biden administration, including Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Earlier this month, Austin told reporters that the U.S. has noted increasingly aggressive behavior by China toward Taiwan but downplayed the possibility of a near-term attack.

“We believe that they endeavor to establish a new normal, but whether or not that means that an invasion is imminent, I seriously doubt that,” he said.

In a statement sent to VOA, Pentagon press secretary Air Force Brigadier General Patrick Ryder said, “The National Defense Strategy makes clear that China is the pacing challenge for the Department of Defense and our focus remains on working alongside allies and partners to preserve a peaceful, free and open Indo-Pacific.”

Asked about the Minihan memo specifically, the Pentagon forwarded a statement attributed to an unnamed Defense Department official saying, “These comments are not representative of the department’s view on China.”

Other warnings from top brass

However, Minihan is not the first senior officer to warn of looming conflict with China in recent months. In October, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Mike Gilday suggested that U.S. forces need to be prepared for potential conflict with China as soon as this year.

“I can’t rule that out,” Gilday said. “I don’t mean at all to be [an] alarmist by saying that, it’s just that we can’t wish that away.”

During his confirmation hearings in 2021, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command head Admiral John Aquilino was asked about a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan. He replied, “My opinion is this problem is much closer to us than most think.”

In December, he said that people who were surprised by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year should consider the possibility of a similar attack by China on Taiwan.

“This could happen in the Pacific region,” he said in an appearance at the Reagan National Defense Forum. “We shouldn’t be surprised that it can happen.”

‘Very unwise’

Michael O’Hanlon, director of research in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, told VOA that he believes that the Minihan memo was a serious error, and one that ought to have been more sternly rebuked by the Department of Defense.

“It conflates the importance of deterrence with the likelihood of war in a way that is, I think, very unwise, and potentially dangerous because of the potential [for creating] a self-fulfilling prophecy,” he said. “It’s at odds with U.S. government policy, which does not call China a looming enemy. It calls China a ‘pacing challenge,’ or ‘our most consequential strategic competitor.’ Those words were carefully chosen to say that we need to think about the possibility of war with China, with an eye towards deterring it. But we don’t need to think about its imminence.”

O’Hanlon expressed concern that Minihan’s attitude toward China is gaining currency in the U.S., creating the possibility that some small future crisis, otherwise containable, might serve as the spark for a broader conflict.

“I worry that he’s just a blunter version of an attitude that’s becoming more prevalent,” O’Hanlon said. “I see this in a lot of the strategic community in the United States. There is an appropriate vigilance about China, and that’s all to the good, but we have to avoid demonizing them. We have to avoid thinking that the first crisis is just sort of the beginning of the inevitable fights and that we should get after it while we still are in the dominant position. That kind of attitude is a little bit too prevalent for my taste.”

No evidence of imminent threat

“There’s no evidence to support the assertion that China is seriously contemplating an attack on Taiwan in the next few years. No evidence,” Timothy R. Heath, a senior international defense researcher at the RAND Corporation, told VOA.

However, Heath said he sees a significant divide between the way senior military officers regard China and the attitude of the United States government.

“There is a surprising disconnect between the assessments being put out by senior political leaders and the statements by top military leaders, which express a much higher level of alarm and fear that an attack is coming or looming,” he said.

Heath said a combination of factors appear to have led to that disconnect. Political leaders, he said, tend to look at China as a strategic threat, but also as a trading partner and a potential collaborator in the fight against climate change. They see a country trapped in a major economic and demographic crisis, both of which have a higher priority in Beijing than reunification with Taiwan.

Military leaders, Heath said, tend to focus more closely on the undisputed fact that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army has grown more sophisticated and dangerous in recent years. They also have concerns closer to home.

“There is a political angle here, with Congress thinking about slashing the defense budget,” Heath said. “These generals – I hate to say it – they have an incentive to remind leaders of a potential major security threat that would require a strong defense.”

Chinese Foreign Ministry comments

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning was asked to address the general’s comments in a news conference Monday.

“Taiwan is part of China,” she said. “Resolving the Taiwan question is a matter for the Chinese. The real cause of the new round of tensions across the Taiwan Strait is the [Taiwanese] authorities’ continued act of soliciting U.S. support for ‘Taiwan independence’ and the agenda among some people in the U.S. to use Taiwan to contain China.”

She added, “We urge the U.S. to abide by the one-China principle and the three China-U.S. joint communiqués, deliver on U.S. leaders’ commitment of not supporting ‘Taiwan independence,’ stop meddling in the Taiwan question, stop military contact with Taiwan and stop creating new factors that could lead to tensions in the Taiwan Strait.”
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The U.S. Embassy in Turkey warned Americans on Monday of possible attacks against churches, synagogues and diplomatic missions in Istanbul, marking its second such notice in four days, following Quran-burning incidents in Europe.

In an updated security alert, the U.S. Embassy said “possible imminent retaliatory attacks by terrorists” could take place in areas frequented by Westerners, especially the city’s Beyoglu, Galata, Taksim, and Istiklal neighborhoods.

Turkish authorities are investigating the matter, it added.

On Friday, several embassies in Ankara, including those of the United States, Germany, France and Italy, issued security alerts over possible retaliatory attacks against places of worship, following separate incidents in which the Muslim holy book, the Quran, was burned in Sweden, Netherlands and Denmark.

On Saturday, Turkey warned its citizens against “possible Islamophobic, xenophobic and racist attacks” in the United States and Europe. 
…

Police in the southern U.S. city of Memphis, Tennessee, have disciplined a sixth officer for his role in the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, following a traffic stop.

Officer Preston Hemphill was fired from his job on the police force but has not been charged with any crimes. Memphis police did not disclose Hemphill’s role in the arrest and beating of Nichols.

Five other officers have been charged with second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping, official misconduct and official oppression. The five officers, all Black, were also fired.

Police released video footage Friday showing the five officers brutally beating Nichols earlier this month after stopping him for alleged reckless driving. Nichols died from his injuries three days later.

The graphic video showed several policemen holding Nichols down while other officers kicked, punched and struck him with a baton. In one clip of the video footage, Nichols can be heard crying out for his mother.

The video footage, which was taken from police bodycam and surveillance video, also showed other officers at the scene of the beating.

Family members of Nichols, as well as protesters who have carried out demonstrations since the video’s release, have called for more police officers to be fired or charged.

The Associated Press reported two Shelby County sheriff’s deputies have been relieved of duty without pay while their conduct is investigated. It said two Memphis Fire Department workers have also been removed from duty.

On Saturday, the Memphis Police Department disbanded the police unit that the five charged officers were part of. The so-called Scorpion unit targeted violent criminals in certain areas. Lawyers for the Nichols’ family argued they were “suppression” units that acted with impunity and were more likely to use force than other members of the police force.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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TikTok Chief Executive Shou Zi Chew will appear before the U.S. Energy and Commerce Committee in March, as lawmakers scrutinize the Chinese-owned video-sharing app.

Chew will testify before the committee on March 23, which will be his first appearance before a congressional committee, said Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the Republican chair of the panel, in a statement on Monday.

The news comes as the House Foreign Affairs Committee plans to hold a vote next month on a bill aimed at blocking the use of TikTok in the United States over national security concerns.

“ByteDance-owned TikTok has knowingly allowed the ability for the Chinese Communist Party to access American user data,” McMorris Rodgers said, adding that Americans deserve to know how these actions impact their privacy and data security.

TikTok confirmed on Monday Chew will testify.

TikTok said on Friday “calls for total bans of TikTok take a piecemeal approach to national security and a piecemeal approach to broad industry issues like data security, privacy, and online harms”.

McMorris Rodgers and other Republican lawmakers have demanded more information from TikTok. They want to know its impact on young people amid concerns about harmful content, and they want additional details on potential sexual exploitation of minors on the platform, the statement said.

For three years, TikTok – which has more than 100 million U.S. users – has been seeking to assure Washington that the personal data of U.S. citizens cannot be accessed and its content cannot be manipulated by China’s Communist Party or anyone else under Beijing’s influence.

The U.S. government’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), a powerful national security body, in 2020 ordered ByteDance to divest TikTok because of fears that U.S. user data could be passed onto China’s government.

CFIUS and TikTok have been in talks for more than two years aiming to reach a national security agreement to protect the data of U.S. TikTok users.

U.S. House panel to vote next month on possible TikTok ban
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New York City is known for many things and now is breaking some weather records.

Dubbed the city that never sleeps or the big apple, New York has broken a 50-year record — set on January 29, 1973 — for its latest-ever measurable winter snowfall.

Snow is highly unlikely Monday with temperatures expected to reach 10.5 degrees Celsius with mostly sunny conditions expected.

A few days later, the city could also break another record — 332 days without measurable snow, a record set on December 15, 2020.

The fallout from climate change? Probably.

But the snow may come yet. February is a notoriously unpredictable weather month and like the American musician Prince’s well known song goes… sometimes it snows in April.
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Less than a week after helping secure billions of dollars in additional military assistance for Ukraine in its fight against Russia, including U.S.- and German-made battle tanks, top U.S. defense officials are shifting their focus to the Indo-Pacific and growing threats from China and North Korea. 

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is making his sixth official visit to the region, starting late Monday with high-level meetings in Seoul, followed by a visit to the Philippines to meet with recently elected President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. and his new national security leadership team. 

“The security environment in the Indo-Pacific is growing more complex, which we see day to day,” said a senior U.S. defense official, citing ever more aggressive behavior by both China and North Korea.   

Specifically, the official, who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the Pentagon, cited a “a sharp uptick in destabilizing PRC [People’s Republic of China] operational behavior,” including what was described as “dangerous air-to-air intercepts” and Beijing’s use of “swarms of maritime militia vessels” in the South China Sea. 

U.S. defense officials also emphasized their concern about North Korea’s growing nuclear arsenal and its ongoing ballistic missile tests, calling the number of test launches unprecedented. 

Pyongyang’s bellicose behavior has stoked growing fears in South Korea, where President Yoon Suk Yeol earlier this month suggested that Washington might need to redeploy nuclear weapons to the peninsula or that Seoul could begin developing its own nuclear arsenal. 

Austin will use meetings Tuesday with Yoon and South Korean Defense Minister Lee Jong-sup to highlight Washington’s “ironclad extended deterrence commitment,” a second senior U.S. defense official said. 

But the official cautioned the deployment of U.S. nuclear weapons to South Korea will not be on the table. 

“We are committed to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” the official said. “Our focus is emphasizing the importance of extended deterrence … that includes the full range of U.S. capabilities, including certainly our nuclear abilities, our conventional capabilities, as well as our missile defense.” 

It also includes increased cooperation and additional training, including a resumption later this year of U.S.-South Korean joint live-fire exercises on the peninsula following a hiatus of several years. 

“We are committed to doing more,” the official added.   

U.S. defense officials also expect to discuss Seoul’s support for Ukraine and ways the U.S. can deepen its cooperation with South Korea’s defense industry, which the officials praised as a world leader in advanced weaponry. 

Following his meetings in South Korea. Austin will fly to the Philippines, where he will meet with U.S. troops working with their Philippine counterparts in Zamboanga before looking to further cement ties with Manila over shared concerns about China.   

“We’ll be actively talking about what we can do together to address what has been a pretty notable period of harassment and coercion recently in the South China Sea,” said a third senior U.S. defense official, who like the others spoke on the condition of anonymity.   

After several years of tense discourse between Manila and Washington, the official said the Pentagon is seeing “a very positive upswing in the trajectory of the relationship.”   

According to U.S. officials, the Pentagon sees the Philippines as a crucial part of a growing alliance of countries across the Indo-Pacific aimed at pushing back against Beijing, both with and without U.S. help.   

And at the Pentagon, there is hope Austin’s visit will enable both countries to build upon previous defense agreements, including 2014’s Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, and help Manila modernize its forces and pivot from its ongoing counterterrorism mission so it can better confront Beijing.   

“[Austin] will reiterate publicly what we have been very clear about, which is that our treaty commitments do apply in the South China Sea and that an armed attack on Philippine forces or vessels or aircraft in the South China Sea would be relevant to the defense treaty commitments that we have,” the official said.   

Already, the Philippines is one of a handful of countries that gets critical maritime information and intelligence through a new U.S. initiative. And U.S. officials are also hoping to expand cooperation in Manila in the areas of space and cyberspace. 
…

The Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs will meet in the upcoming U.S. National Football League’s Super Bowl championship game.

The Eagles trounced the visiting San Francisco 49ers 31-7 Sunday in the National Football Conference title game. San Francisco’s offense suffered a key injury early in the game when rookie quarterback Brock Purdy suffered a serious elbow injury. Backup Josh Johnson filled in for Purdy until he was forced out in the third quarter when he suffered a concussion. With the 49ers out of quarterbacks, Purdy, who spent most of the season as the team’s third-string quarterback, returned to the game but was unable to throw deep passes.

Philadelphia quarterback Jalen Hurts, the favorite for the league’s Most Valuable Player award, ended the game with 121 passing yards and one of the Eagles’ four running touchdowns. The Eagles are heading back to the Super Bowl five years after beating the New England Patriots and their then-star quarterback Tom Brady.

Hours later, the Chiefs edged the visiting Cincinnati Bengals 23-20 to win the American Football Conference championship. Kansas City placekicker Harrison Butker made a 3-point field goal with just seconds left in regulation to send the franchise to its third Super Bowl appearance in four years. The Chiefs won the 2020 game 31-20 over the 49ers, but sustained a 31-9 rout one year later to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, led by none other than Tom Brady.

The Bengals were trying to beat the Chiefs in the AFC Championship Game for the second consecutive season.

The 57th edition of the Super Bowl will be held on February 12 in Glendale, Arizona, home of the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals franchise. The game started as a matchup between the old National Football League and its rival American Football League. The two leagues merged in 1970 under the NFL banner, and the Super Bowl has since become one of the sports world’s biggest championship events.

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

Barrett Strong, one of Motown’s founding artists and most gifted songwriters who sang lead on the company’s breakthrough single “Money (That’s What I Want)” and later collaborated with Norman Whitfield on such classics as “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” “War” and “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone,” has died. He was 81.     

His death was announced Sunday on social media by the Motown Museum, which did not immediately provide further details.     

“Barrett was not only a great singer and piano player, but he, along with his writing partner Norman Whitfield, created an incredible body of work,” Motown founder Berry Gordy said in a statement.     

Strong had yet to turn 20 when he agreed to let his friend Gordy, in the early days of building a recording empire in Detroit, manage him and release his music. Within a year, he was a part of history as the piano player and vocalist for “Money,” a million-seller released early in 1960 and Motown’s first major hit. Strong never again approached the success of “Money” on his own, and decades later fought for acknowledgement that he helped write it. But, with Whitfield, he formed a productive and eclectic songwriting team.     

While Gordy’s “Sound of Young America” was criticized for being too slick and repetitive, the Whitfield-Strong team turned out hard-hitting and topical works, along with such timeless ballads as “I Wish It Would Rain” and “Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me).” With “I Heard it Through the Grapevine,” they provided an up-tempo, call-and-response hit for Gladys Knight and the Pips and a dark, hypnotic ballad for Marvin Gaye, his 1968 version one of Motown’s all-time sellers.      

As Motown became more politically conscious late in the decade, Barrett-Whitfield turned out “Cloud Nine” and “Psychedelic Shack” for the Temptations and for Edwin Starr the protest anthem “War” and its widely quoted refrain, “War! What is it good for? Absolutely … nothing!”     

“With `War,’ I had a cousin who was a paratrooper that got hurt pretty bad in Vietnam,” Strong told LA Weekly in 1999. “I also knew a guy who used to sing with (Motown songwriter) Lamont Dozier that got hit by shrapnel and was crippled for life. You talk about these things with your families when you’re sitting at home, and it inspires you to say something about it.”     

Whitfield-Strong’s other hits, mostly for the Temptations, included “I Can’t Get Next to You,” “That’s the Way Love Is” and the Grammy-winning chart-topper “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone” (Sometimes spelled “Papa Was a Rolling Stone”). Artists covering their songs ranged from the Rolling Stones (“Just My Imagination”) and Aretha Franklin (“I Wish It Would Rain”) to Bruce Springsteen (“War”) and Al Green (“I Can’t Get Next to You”).    

Strong spent part of the 1960s recording for other labels, left Motown again in the early 1970s and made a handful of solo albums, including “Stronghold” and “Love is You.” In 2004, he was voted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, which cited him as “a pivotal figure in Motown’s formative years.”      

Whitfield died in 2008.     

The music of Strong and other Motown writers was later featured in the Broadway hit “Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations.”    

Strong was born in West Point, Mississippi and moved to Detroit a few years later. He was a self-taught musician who learned piano without needing lessons and, with his sisters, formed a local gospel group, the Strong Singers. In his teens, he got to know such artists as Franklin, Smokey Robinson and Gordy, who was impressed with his writing and piano playing. “Money”’ with its opening shout, “The best things in life are free/But you can give them to the birds and bees,” would, ironically, lead to a fight — over money.      

Strong was initially listed among the writers and he often spoke of coming up with the pounding piano riff while jamming on Ray Charles’ “What’d I Say” in the studio. But only decades later would he learn that Motown had since removed his name from the credits, costing him royalties for a popular standard covered by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and many others and a keepsake on John Lennon’s home jukebox. Strong’s legal argument was weakened because he had taken so long to ask for his name to be reinstated. (Gordy is one of the song’s credited writers, and his lawyers contended Strong’s name only appeared because of a clerical error).      

“Songs outlive people,” Strong told The New York Times in 2013. “The real reason Motown worked was the publishing. The records were just a vehicle to get the songs out there to the public. The real money is in the publishing, and if you have publishing, then hang on to it. That’s what it’s all about. If you give it away, you’re giving away your life, your legacy. Once you’re gone, those songs will still be playing.” 
…

The pastor at the Memphis church where Tyre Nichols’ family spoke from the pulpit urging peace after his brutal killing reiterated the call for calm Sunday following the release of video showing the fatal beating by police. 

Cities nationwide have braced for protests after body camera footage was released Friday showing Memphis officers beating 29-year-old Nichols, who died of his injuries three days after the January 7 attack. However, protests in Memphis, New York City, Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon, have been scattered and nonviolent. 

“We’ve had calm so far, which is what we have been praying for,” Pastor Kenneth Thomas said before the service began at Mt. Olive Cathedral Church. “And, of course, we hope that continues.” 

Thomas also offered a prayer for Nichols’ family, asking God to “shower them with your blessings.” 

Later, more than a dozen sign-carrying protesters marched to a Memphis police station not far from the beating, pounding on the door and demanding to be let in. Getting no response, they made their way to a nearby gate, guarded by three officers. 

Some protesters taunted the officers with vulgarity, and all chanted: “Quit your job!” But the protest remained peaceful. 

The protesters then observed a three-minute silence, designed to match how long Nichols was beaten. 

When it concluded, protester Jennifer Cain yelled: “Say his name!” And the group responded: “Tyre Nichols!” 

“Now, just imagine being beat by people that’s over 1,000 pounds on you and you’re only less than 150 pounds,” Cain said. “That’s three minutes of beating, screaming and yelling for his mom.” 

“When does it stop?” she asked. “When does it end? Are we going to continue to let it happen?” 

The loss is “still very emotional” for the family, a lawyer representing them said Sunday, but they are using all their energy to advocate for reforms both in Memphis and on the federal level. 

“His mother is having problems sleeping but she continues to pray with the understanding, as she believes in her heart, that Tyre was sent here for an assignment, and that there will be a greater good that comes from this tragedy,” Attorney Ben Crump said on ABC’s “This Week.” 

Crump welcomed disbanding the city’s so-called Scorpion unit, which Police Director Cerelyn “CJ” Davis announced Saturday, citing a “cloud of dishonor” from the newly released video. 

Davis acted a day after the harrowing video was released, saying she listened to Nichols’ relatives, community leaders and uninvolved officers in making the decision. Her announcement came as the nation and the city struggled to come to grips with the violence of the officers, who, like Nichols, are Black. The video renewed outrage over repeated fatal encounters with law enforcement despite nationwide demands for change. 

Crump told “This Week” that Nichols’ case points to a systemic problem in how people of color are treated regardless of whether officers are white, Black or any other race. 

The “implicit, biased police” culture that exists in America is just as responsible for Nichols’ death as the five Black officers who killed him, Crump said. 

“I believe it’s part of the institutionalized police culture that makes it somehow allowed that they can use this type of excessive force and brutality against people of color,” Crump said. “It is not the race of the police officer that is the determinant factor whether they’re going to engage in excessive use of force, but it is the race of the citizen.” 

He alleged other members of the Memphis community have been assaulted by the now-shuttered Scorpion unit, which was composed of about 30 officers whose stated aim was to target violent offenders in high-crime areas. The unit had been inactive since Nichols’ January 7 arrest. 

Scorpion stands for Street Crimes Operations to Restore Peace In Our Neighborhoods. 

The officers involved in Nichols’ beating — Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Desmond Mills Jr., Emmitt Martin III and Justin Smith — have been fired and charged with murder and other crimes in Nichols’ death. They face up to 60 years in prison if convicted of second-degree murder. 

Video showed the officers savagely beating Nichols, a FedEx worker, for three minutes while screaming profanities at him. Nichols called out for his mother before his limp body was propped against a squad car and the officers exchange fist-bumps. 

Brenda Goss Andrews, president of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, told The Associated Press she was struck by the immediate aggression from officers as soon as they got out of the car. “It just went to 100. … This was never a matter of de-escalation,” she said, adding, “The young man never had a chance.” 

On a phone call with U.S. President Joe Biden, Crump and Nichols’ parents discussed the need for federal reform like the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which would prohibit racial profiling, ban chokeholds and no-knock warrants, limit the transfer of military equipment to police departments, and make it easier to bring charges against offending officers. 

Biden said he told Nichols’ mother he would be “making a case” to Congress to pass the Floyd Act “to get this under control.” 

Memphis Police had already implemented reforms after Floyd’s killing, including a requirement to de-escalate or intervene if they saw others using excessive force. 

Speaking on “This Week,” Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, said Congress can pass additional measures like “screening, training, accreditation, to up the game so that the people who have this responsibility to keep us safe really are stable and approaching this in a professional manner.” 

The fact that law enforcement is primarily a state and local responsibility “does not absolve us. Under the federal Constitution we have standards, due process standards and others, that we are responsible for,” Durbin said. 

“What we saw on the streets of Memphis was just inhumane and horrible,” he said. “I don’t know what created this — this rage in these police officers that they would congratulate themselves for beating a man to death. But that is literally what happened.” 
…

…

U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy promised Sunday the United States would not default on its national debts as the country approaches its $31.4 trillion spending limit in June but said the government cannot continue to annually spend more than it collects in taxes.

McCarthy, leader of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, told CBS’s “Face the Nation” show that he will meet with Democratic President Joe Biden on Wednesday, the first discussions in what could be protracted debt ceiling talks over several months.

The U.S. must raise its debt ceiling before it runs out of money to pay bills it has already incurred. Biden and Democrats want a “clean” approval to raise the debt ceiling not tied to future spending, while Republicans have called for limits on new spending to curb yearly deficits, chronic overspending that often totals more than $1 trillion annually.

“We’re not going to default,” McCarthy said.

The U.S. has never defaulted on its debts, such as on Treasury notes sold to China, Japan and individual Americans, but its credit rating was downgraded in 2011 when Democratic President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans sparred at length over the country’s spending before eventually reaching a 10-year agreement.

Now, McCarthy said, the country’s debt totals 120% of its national economic output, with the debt significantly added to in recent years for two main reasons, the national tax cuts Republicans approved under former President Donald Trump and unfunded coronavirus aid relief approved under both Trump and Biden.

“We haven’t been in this place to debt since World War II,” McCarthy said. “So, we can’t continue down this path. And I don’t think there’s anyone in America who doesn’t agree that there’s some wasteful Washington spending that we can eliminate.”

“So, I want to sit down together, work out an agreement that we can move forward, to put us on a path to balance — at the same time, not put any — any of our debt in jeopardy at the same time,” he said. “We shouldn’t just print more money; we should balance our budget. So, I want to look at every single department. Where can we become more efficient, more effective, and more accountable?”

McCarthy, like Biden, ruled out cuts to two of the most popular government programs, pensions and health care for older Americans, respectively known as Social Security and Medicare.

But he added, “I want to look at every single dollar we’re spending, no matter where it’s being spent. I want to eliminate waste wherever it is.”

He compared government spending to an American family’s budget, saying, “Every family does this. What is – what has happened with the debt limit is you reached your credit card limit. Should we just continue to raise the limit? Or should we look at what we’re spending?”
…

The National Prayer Breakfast, one of the most visible and long-standing events that brings religion and politics together in Washington, is splitting from the private religious group that had overseen it for decades, due to concerns the gathering had become too divisive.

The organizer and host for this year’s breakfast, scheduled for Thursday, will be the National Prayer Breakfast Foundation, headed by former Sen. Mark Pryor, a Democrat from Arkansas.

Sen. Chris Coons, a regular participant and chairman of the Senate ethics committee, said the move was prompted in part by concerns in recent years that members of Congress did not know important details about the larger multiday gathering.

Coons, a Delaware Democrat, said that in the past, he and Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, the committee’s vice chairman, had questions about who was invited and how money was being raised.

The annual event “went on several days, had thousands of people attending, and a very large and somewhat complex organization,” Coons said in an interview. “Some questions had been raised about our ability as members of Congress to say that we knew exactly how it was being organized, who was being invited, how it was being funded. Many of us who’d been in leadership roles really couldn’t answer those questions.”

That led to lawmakers deciding to take over organizing the prayer breakfast itself.

Pryor, president of the new foundation, said the COVID-19 shutdown gave members a chance to “reset” the breakfast and return it to its origins — a change he said had been discussed for years.

“The whole reason the House and Senate wanted to do this was to return it to its roots, when House members and Senate members can come together and pray for the president, pray for his family and administration, pray for our government, the world,” Pryor said.

Pryor said members of Congress, the president, vice president and other administration officials and their guests are invited to Thursday’s prayer breakfast, which will be held at the visitors’ center at the Capitol. He anticipated between 200 and 300 people would attend.

Pryor said he hoped the smaller event will regain the intimacy that is similar to the weekly nondenominational prayer gatherings on Capitol Hill. Groups of senators and representatives have long held unofficial meetings for fellowship and to temporarily set aside political differences.

The prayer breakfast addressed by the president has been the highlight of a multiday event for 70 years. Dwight D. Eisenhower was the first president to attend, in February 1953, and every president since has spoken at the gathering.

The larger event, put on by a private religious group called the International Foundation, has always been centered on “the person and principles of Jesus, with a focus on praying for leaders of our nation and from around the world,” the group’s spokesman, A. Larry Ross, said in an email.

More than 1,400 people are registered for the two-day event, with one-third of those from outside the United States.

President Joe Biden, who has spoken at the breakfast the past two years, is set to do so again. In 2021, he made remarks from the White House during a virtual breakfast the month after the building was attacked by supporters of former President Donald Trump intent on trying to stop the certification of the 2020 election.

At last year’s address from the Capitol, Biden talked about the need for members of Congress to know one another more personally.

“It’s hard to really dislike someone when you know what they’re going through is the same thing you’re going through,” he said.

In recent years, questions about the International Foundation, its funding and attendees led some to reconsider the involvement of Congress.

Sen. Tim Kaine, a Democrat from Virginia, stopped coming in 2016 because the event “had become an entertainment and lobbying extravaganza rather than an opportunity for spiritual reflection,” a Kaine spokesperson wrote in an emailed response to questions. Kaine will attend Thursday.

The gathering came under heightened criticism in 2018 when Maria Butina, a Russian operative, pleaded guilty in 2018 to conspiring to infiltrate conservative U.S. political groups with the aim of advancing Russian interests. According to court documents, she attended two breakfasts in hopes of setting up unofficial connections between Russian and U.S. officials.

It took on political undertones with Trump shattering the custom of the address being a respite from partisan bickering. He used his 2020 speech to criticize his first impeachment and attack political opponents, including Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney, and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat from California.

Earlier this month, the Freedom From Religion Foundation sent a letter signed by 30 groups to the White House and members of Congress asking them to boycott the event because of questions about the International Foundation.

The organization’s co-president, Annie Laurie Gaylor, said the foundation’s basic concerns with the breakfast remain despite the split with the larger religious gathering.

“For decades, FFRF has protested the appearance of the National Prayer Breakfast being a quasi-governmental gathering, which pressures the president and Congress to put on a display of piety that sends a message that the United States is a Christian nation,” she wrote.
…

Boeing’s BA.N 747, the original and arguably most aesthetic “Jumbo Jet”, revolutionized air travel only to see its more than five-decade reign as “Queen of the Skies” ended by more efficient twinjet planes.

The last commercial Boeing jumbo will be delivered to Atlas Air AAWW.O in the surviving freighter version on Tuesday, 53 years after the 747’s instantly recognizable humped silhouette grabbed global attention as a Pan Am passenger jet.

“On the ground it’s stately, it’s imposing,” said Bruce Dickinson, the lead singer of Iron Maiden who piloted a specially liveried 747 nicknamed “Ed Force One” during the British heavy metal band’s tour in 2016.

“And in the air it’s surprisingly agile. For this massive airplane, you can really chuck it around if you have to.”

Designed in the late 1960s to meet demand for mass travel, the world’s first twin-aisle wide body jetliner’s nose and upper deck became the world’s most luxurious club above the clouds.

But it was in the seemingly endless rows at the back of the new jumbo that the 747 transformed travel.

“This was THE airplane that introduced flying for the middle class in the U.S.,” said Air France-KLM CEO Ben Smith.

“Prior to the 747 your average family couldn’t fly from the U.S. to Europe affordably,” Smith told Reuters.

The jumbo also made its mark on global affairs, symbolizing war and peace, from America’s “Doomsday Plane” nuclear command post to papal visits on chartered 747s nicknamed Shepherd One.

Now, two previously delivered 747s are being fitted to replace U.S. presidential jets known globally as Air Force One.

As a Pan Am flight attendant, Linda Freier served passengers ranging from Michael Jackson to Mother Teresa.

“It was an incredible diversity of passengers. People who were well dressed and people who had very little and spent everything they had on that ticket,” Freier said.

Transformational 

When the first 747 took off from New York on Jan 22, 1970, after a delay due to an engine glitch, it more than doubled plane capacity to 350-400 seats, in turn reshaping airport design.

“It was the aircraft for the people, the one that really delivered the capability to be a mass market,” aviation historian Max Kingsley-Jones said.

“It was transformational across all aspects of the industry,” the senior consultant at Ascend by Cirium added.

Its birth become the stuff of aviation myth.

Pan Am founder Juan Trippe sought to cut costs by increasing the number of seats. On a fishing trip, he challenged Boeing President William Allen to make something dwarfing the 707.

Allen put legendary engineer Joe Sutter in charge. It took only 28 months for Sutter’s team known as “the Incredibles” to develop the 747 before the first flight on Feb. 9, 1969.

Although it eventually became a cash cow, the 747’s initial years were riddled with problems and the $1-billion development costs almost bankrupted Boeing, which believed the future of air travel lay in supersonic jets.

After a slump during the 1970s oil crisis, the plane’s heyday arrived in 1989 when Boeing introduced the 747-400 with new engines and lighter materials, making it a perfect fit to meet growing demand for trans-Pacific flights.

“The 747 is the most beautiful and easy plane to land … It’s just like landing an armchair,” said Dickinson, who also chairs aviation maintenance firm Caerdav.

Age of economics 

The same swell of innovation that got the 747 off the ground has spelled its end, as advances made it possible for dual-engine jets to replicate its range and capacity at lower cost.

Yet the 777X, set to take the 747’s place at the top of the jet market, will not be ready until at least 2025 after delays.

“In terms of impressive technology, great capacity, great economics… [the 777X] does sadly make the 747 look obsolete,” AeroDynamic Advisory managing director Richard Aboulafia said.

Nevertheless, the latest 747-8 version is set to grace the skies for years, chiefly as a freighter, having outlasted European Airbus’ AIR.PA double-decker A380 passenger jet in production.

This week’s final 747 delivery leaves questions over the future of the mammoth but now under-used Everett widebody production plant outside Seattle, while Boeing is also struggling after the COVID pandemic and a 737 MAX safety crisis.

Chief Executive Dave Calhoun has said Boeing may not design a new airliner for at least a decade.

“It was one of the wonders of the modern industrial age,” said Aboulafia, “But this isn’t an age of wonders, it’s an age of economics.”
…

CAIRO, Jan 29 (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in the Middle East on Sunday, beginning a three-day visit as violence flares between Israelis and Palestinians, and with Iran and the war in Ukraine high on the agenda.

After a stop in Cairo Blinken will head on Monday to Jerusalem, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new right-wing government has stirred concern at home and abroad over the future of Israel’s secular values, frayed ethnic relations and stalled peace talks with the Palestinians.

There has also been a spate of deadly violence in recent days, heightening fears that already spiralling violence will further escalate.

A Palestinian gunman killed seven people in an attack outside a Jerusalem synagogue on Friday. It was worst such attack on Israelis in the Jerusalem area since 2008 and followed a fatal Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin on Thursday, the deadliest there in years.

In talks with the new Israeli administration, which includes ultra-nationalist parties that want to expand West Bank settlements, Blinken will repeat U.S. calls for calm and emphasize Washington’s support for a two-state solution, although U.S. officials admit longer-term peace talks are not likely in the near future.

Blinken will also travel to Ramallah to meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, other Palestinian officials, and members of civil society.

Netanyahu’s government has proposed a sweeping overhaul of the judiciary that would strengthen political control over the appointment of judges while weakening the Supreme Court’s ability to overturn legislation or rule against government action. The proposals have triggered big street demonstrations against what protesters see as the potential undermining of judicial independence.

“It’s clearly a measure of the vibrancy of the democracy that this has been contested so clearly up and down across segments of Israeli society,” said Barbara Leaf, the top State Department official for the Middle East, who briefed reporters ahead of the trip. Blinken will hear from people inside and outside of government on the reforms, she added.

Leaf said the visit would also build on earlier efforts to restore relations between Israel and Arab nations. The process known as the Negev Forum does not include Palestinians and involves officials from regional nations, including Egypt, discussing areas like economic cooperation and tourism.

Ukraine, Iran on agenda 

Russia’s 11-month-old war in Ukraine will also be on the agenda. Ukraine, which has received great quantities of military equipment from the United States and Europe, has asked Israel to provide systems to shoot down drones, including those supplied by Israel’s regional adversary Iran.

Israel has rebuffed those requests. While it has condemned the Russian invasion, Israel has limited its assistance to humanitarian aid and protective gear, citing a desire for continued cooperation with Moscow over war-ravaged neighbor Syria and to ensure the wellbeing of Russia’s Jews.

The diplomats will also discuss Iran’s nuclear program, with the Biden administration’s efforts to revive the 2015 nuclear deal stalled and no Plan B to prevent Iran developing a weapon.

In Cairo, Blinken will meet President Abdel Fattah El-Sissi and Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry to strengthen Washington’s “strategic partnership” with Egypt and boost cooperation on regional issues like Sudan’s transition and elections in Libya, Leaf said.

Blinken will also be under pressure to raise human rights concerns.

The Biden administration has withheld millions of dollars in military aid to Egypt over its failure to meet human rights conditions, although advocacy groups have pushed for more to be withheld, alleging widespread abuses including torture and enforced disappearances.

Most of the $1.3 billion in foreign military aid that Washington sends to Egypt each year remains intact and the United States has credited Sisi’s government with progress on political detentions.

Sissi, who became president in 2014, has said Egypt holds no political prisoners, and argues that security is paramount and that the government is promoting human rights by working to provide basic needs like jobs and housing.
…

Across the U.S., there’s a silent frustration brewing about an age-old practice that many say is getting out of hand: tipping.

Some fed-up consumers are posting rants on social media complaining about tip requests at drive-thrus, while others say they’re tired of being asked to leave a gratuity for a muffin or a simple cup of coffee at their neighborhood bakery. What’s next, they wonder — are we going to be tipping our doctors and dentists, too?

As more businesses adopt digital payment methods, customers are automatically being prompted to leave a gratuity — many times as high as 30% — at places they normally wouldn’t. And some say it has become more frustrating as the price of items has skyrocketed due to inflation, which eased to 6.5% in December but still remains painfully high.

“Suddenly, these screens are at every establishment we encounter. They’re popping up online as well for online orders. And I fear that there is no end,” said etiquette expert Thomas Farley, who considers the whole thing somewhat of “an invasion.”

Unlike tip jars that shoppers can easily ignore if they don’t have spare change, experts say the digital requests can produce social pressure and are more difficult to bypass. And your generosity, or lack thereof, can be laid bare for anyone close enough to glance at the screen — including the workers themselves.

Dylan Schenker is one of them. The 38-year-old earns about $400 a month in tips, which provides a helpful supplement to his $15 hourly wage as a barista at Philadelphia café located inside a restaurant. Most of those tips come from consumers who order coffee drinks or interact with the café for other things, such as carryout orders. The gratuity helps cover his monthly rent and eases some of his burdens while he attends graduate school and juggles his job.

Schenker says it’s hard to sympathize with consumers who are able to afford pricey coffee drinks but complain about tipping. And he often feels demoralized when people don’t leave behind anything extra — especially if they’re regulars.

“Tipping is about making sure the people who are performing that service for you are getting paid what they’re owed,” said Schenker, who’s been working in the service industry for roughly 18 years.

Traditionally, consumers have taken pride in being good tippers at places like restaurants, which typically pay their workers lower than the minimum wage in expectation they’ll make up the difference in tips. But academics who study the topic say many consumers are now feeling irritated by automatic tip requests at coffee shops and other counter service eateries where tipping has not typically been expected, workers make at least the minimum wage and service is usually limited.

“People do not like unsolicited advice,” said Ismail Karabas, a marketing professor at Murray State University who studies tipping. “They don’t like to be asked for things, especially at the wrong time.”

Some of the requests can also come from odd places. Clarissa Moore, a 35-year-old who works as a supervisor at a utility company in Pennsylvania, said even her mortgage company has been asking for tips lately. Typically, she’s happy to leave a gratuity at restaurants, and sometimes at coffee shops and other fast-food places when the service is good. But, Moore said she believes consumers shouldn’t be asked to tip nearly everywhere they go — and it shouldn’t be something that’s expected of them.

“It makes you feel bad. You feel like you have to do it because they’re asking you to do it,” she said. “But then you have to think about the position that puts people in. They’re paying for something that they really don’t want to pay for, or they’re tipping when they really don’t want to tip — or can’t afford to tip — because they don’t want to feel bad.”

In the book “Emily Post’s Etiquette,” authors Lizzie Post and Daniel Post Senning advise consumers to tip on ride-shares, like Uber and Lyft, as well as food and beverages, including alcohol. But they also write that it’s up to each person to choose how much to tip at a café or a take-out food service, and that consumers shouldn’t feel embarrassed about choosing the lowest suggested tip amount, and don’t have to explain themselves if they don’t tip.

Digital payment methods have been around for a number of years, though experts say the pandemic has accelerated the trend towards more tipping. Michael Lynn, a consumer behavior professor at Cornell University, said consumers were more generous with tips during the early days of the pandemic in an effort to show support for restaurants and other businesses that were hard hit by COVID-19. Many people genuinely wanted to help out and felt sympathetic to workers who held jobs that put them more at risk of catching the virus, Lynn said.

Tips at full-service restaurants grew by 25.3% in the third quarter of 2022, while gratuities at quick or counter service restaurants went up 16.7% compared to the same time in 2021, according to Square, one of the biggest companies operating digital payment methods. Data provided by the company shows continuous growth for the same period since 2019.

As tip requests have become more common, some businesses are advertising it in their job postings to lure in more workers even though the extra money isn’t always guaranteed.

In December, Starbucks rolled out a new tipping option on credit and debit card transactions at its stores, something a group organizing the company’s hourly workers had called for. Since then, a Starbucks spokesperson said nearly half of credit and debit card transactions have included a gratuity, which – along with tips received through cash and the Starbucks app – are distributed based on the number of hours a barista worked on the days the tips were received.

Karabas, the Murray State professor, says some customers, like those who’ve worked in the service industry in the past, want to tip workers at quick service businesses and wouldn’t be irritated by the automatic requests. But for others, research shows they might be less likely to come back to a particular business if they are feeling irritated by the requests, he said.

The final tab might also impact how customers react. Karabas said in the research he did with other academics, they manipulated the payment amounts and found that when the check was high, consumers no longer felt as irritated by the tip requests. That suggests the best time for a coffee shop to ask for that 20% tip, for example, might be on four or five orders of coffee, not a small cup that costs $4.

Some consumers might continue to shrug off the tip requests regardless of the amount.

“If you work for a company, it’s that company’s job to pay you for doing work for them,” said Mike Janavey, a footwear and clothing designer who lives in New York City. “They’re not supposed to be juicing consumers that are already spending money there to pay their employees.”

Schenker, the Philadelphia barista, agrees — to a certain extent.

“The onus should absolutely be on the owners, but that doesn’t change overnight,” he said. “And this is the best thing we have right now.”
…

For New York teacher Michael Flanagan, the pandemic was a crash course in new technology — rushing out laptops to stay-at-home students and shifting hectic school life online.

Students are long back at school, but the technology has lived on, and with it has come a new generation of apps that monitor the pupils online, sometimes round the clock and even on down days shared with family and friends at home.

The programs scan students’ online activity, social media posts and more — aiming to keep them focused, detect mental health problems and flag up any potential for violence.

“You can’t unring the bell,” said Flanagan, who teaches social studies and economics. “Everybody has a device.”

The new trend for tracking, however, has raised fears that some of the apps may target minority pupils, while others have outed LGBT+ students without their consent, and many are used to instill discipline as much as deliver care.

So Flanagan has parted ways with many of his colleagues and won’t use such apps to monitor his students online.

He recalled seeing a demo of one such program, GoGuardian, in which a teacher showed — in real time — what one student was doing on his computer. The child was at home, on a day off.

Such scrutiny raised a big red flag for Flanagan.

“I have a school-issued device, and I know that there’s no expectation of privacy. But I’m a grown man — these kids don’t know that,” he said.

A New York City Department of Education spokesperson said that the use of GoGuardian Teacher “is only for teachers to see what’s on the student’s screen in the moment, provide refocusing prompts, and limit access to inappropriate content.”

Valued at more than $1 billion, GoGuardian — one of a handful of high-profile apps in the market — is now monitoring more than 22 million students, including in the New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles public systems.

Globally, the education technology sector is expected to grow by $133 billion from 2021 to 2026, market researcher Technavio said last year.

Parents expect schools to keep children safe in classrooms or on field trips, and schools also “have a responsibility to keep students safe in digital spaces and on school-issued devices,” GoGuardian said in a statement.

The company says it “provides educators with the ability to protect students from harmful or explicit content”.

Nowadays, online monitoring “is just part of the school environment,” said Jamie Gorosh, policy counsel with the Future of Privacy Forum, a watchdog group.

And even as schools move beyond the pandemic, “it doesn’t look like we’re going back,” she said.

Guns and depression

A key priority for monitoring is to keep students engaged in their academic work, but it also taps into fast-rising concerns over school violence and children’s mental health, which medical groups in 2021 termed a national emergency.

According to federal data released this month, 82% of schools now train staff on how to spot mental health problems, up from 60% in 2018; 65% have confidential threat-reporting systems, up 15% in the same period.

In a survey last year by the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), 89% of teachers reported their schools were monitoring student online activity.

Yet it is not clear that the software creates safer schools.

Gorosh cited May’s shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that left 21 dead in a school that had invested heavily in monitoring tech.

Some worry the tracking apps could actively cause harm.

The CDT report, for instance, found that while administrators overwhelmingly say the purpose of monitoring software is student safety, “it’s being used far more commonly for disciplinary purposes … and we’re seeing a discrepancy falling along racial lines,” said Elizabeth Laird, director of CDT’s Equity in Civic Technology program.

The programs’ use of artificial intelligence to scan for keywords has also outed LGBT+ students without their consent, she said, noting that 29% of students who identify as LGBT+ said they or someone they knew had experienced this.

And more than a third of teachers said their schools send alerts automatically to law enforcement outside school hours.

“The stated purpose is to keep students safe, and here we have set up a system that is routinizing law enforcement access to this information and finding reasons for them to go into students’ homes,” Laird said.

‘Preyed upon’

A report by federal lawmakers last year into four companies making student monitoring software found that none had made efforts to see if the programs disproportionately targeted marginalized students.

“Students should not be surveilled on the same platforms they use for their schooling,” Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts, one of the report’s co-authors, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a statement.

“As school districts work to incorporate technology in the classroom, we must ensure children and teenagers are not preyed upon by a web of targeted advertising or intrusive monitoring of any kind.”

The Department of Education has committed to releasing guidelines around the use of AI early this year.

A spokesperson said the agency was “committed to protecting the civil rights of all students.”

Aside from the ethical questions around spying on children, many parents are frustrated by the lack of transparency.

“We need more clarity on whether data is being collected, especially sensitive data. You should have at least notification, and probably consent,” said Cassie Creswell, head of Illinois Families for Public Schools, an advocacy group.

Creswell, who has a daughter in a Chicago public school, said several parents have been sent alerts about their children’s online searches, despite not having been asked or told about the monitoring in the first place.

Another child had faced repeated warnings not to play a particular game — even though the student was playing it at home on the family computer, she said.

Creswell and others acknowledge that the issues monitoring aims to address — bullying, depression, violence — are real and need tackling, but question whether technology is the answer.

“If we’re talking about self-harm monitoring, is this the best way to approach the issue?” said Gorosh.

Pointing to evidence suggesting AI is imperfect in capturing the warning signs, she said increased funding for school counselors could be more narrowly tailored to the problem.

“There are huge concerns,” she said. “But maybe technology isn’t the first step to answer some of those issues.”
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Screenwriter Gregory Allen Howard, who skillfully adapted stories of historical Black figures in “Remember the Titans” starring Denzel Washington, “Ali” with Will Smith and “Harriet” with Cynthia Erivo, has died. He was 70.
Howard died Friday at his home in Miami after a brief illness, according to a statement from publicist Jeff Sanderson.

Howard was the first Black screenwriter to write a drama that made $100 million at the box office when “Titans” crossed that milestone in 2000. It was about a real-life Black coach coming into a newly segregated Virginia school and helping lead their football team to victory. It had the iconic line: “I don’t care if you like each other or not. But you will respect each other.”

Howard said he shopped the story around Hollywood with no success. So, he took a chance and wrote the screenplay himself. ″They didn’t expect it to make much money, but it became a monster, making $100 million,” he said. “It made my career,” he told the Times-Herald of Vallejo, California, in 2009. The film made The Associated Press’ list of the best 25 sports movies ever made.

Howard followed up “Remember the Titans” with “Ali,” the 2002 Michael Mann-directed biopic of Muhammad Ali. Smith famously bulked up to play Ali and was nominated for a best actor Oscar.

Howard also produced and co-wrote 2019′s “Harriet,” about abolitionist Harriet Tubman. Erivo led a cast, that included Leslie Odom Jr., Clarke Peters and Joe Alwyn.

“I got into this business to write about the complexity of the Black man. I wanted to write about Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Marcus Harvey. I think it takes a Black man to write about Black men,” he told the Times-Herald.

Born in Virginia, his family moved often due to his stepfather’s career in the Navy. After attending Princeton University, graduating with a degree in American history, Howard briefly worked at Merrill Lynch on Wall Street before moving to Los Angeles in his mid-20s to pursue a writing career.

He wrote for TV and penned the play “Tinseltown Trilogy,” which focused on three men in Los Angeles over Christmastime as their stories interconnect and inform each other.

Howard also wrote “The Harlem Renaissance,” a limited series for HBO, “Misty,” the story of prima ballerina Misty Copeland and “This Little Light,” the Fannie Lou Hamer story. Most recently, he wrote the civil rights project “Power to the People” for producer Ben Affleck and Paramount Pictures.

He is survived by a sister, Lynette Henley; a brother, Michael Henley; two nieces and a nephew.
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