The nation and the city of Memphis, Tennessee, struggled to come to grips Saturday with video showing police pummeling Tyre Nichols — footage that left many unanswered questions about the traffic stop involving the Black motorist and about other law enforcement officers who stood by as he lay motionless on the pavement.

The five disgraced Memphis Police Department officers, who are also Black, have been fired and charged with second-degree murder and other crimes in Nichols’ death three days after the arrest. The video released Friday renewed questions about how fatal encounters with law enforcement continue even after repeated calls for change.

A Memphis police spokeswoman declined to comment on the role played by other officers who showed up at the scene.

Memphis Police Director Cerelyn “CJ” Davis has said that other officers are under investigation, and Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner said two deputies have been relieved of duty without pay while their conduct is investigated.

Rodney Wells, Nichols’ stepfather, said the family would “continue to seek justice and get some more officers arrested.” He said several others failed to render aid, making them “just as culpable as the officers who threw the blows.”

Nonviolent protests

Cities nationwide had braced for demonstrations, but the protests were scattered and nonviolent. In Memphis, several dozen demonstrators blocked the Interstate 55 bridge that carries traffic over the Mississippi River toward Arkansas. Semitrucks were backed up for a distance.

Demonstrators at times blocked traffic while chanting slogans and marching through the streets of New York City, Los Angeles, California, and Portland, Oregon. In Washington, protesters gathered across the street from the White House and near Black Lives Matter Plaza.

Memphis remained on edge. Ahead of the protests, some downtown Memphis businesses boarded up windows, and the school system canceled after-school activities. Memphis-Shelby County Schools, which has about 100,000 students, postponed athletics and extracurricular activities on Saturday.

“I cried,” said protestor Christopher Taylor, a Memphis native who said the officers appeared to be laughing as they stood around after the beating.

Blake Ballin, the lawyer for fired officer Desmond Mills, told The Associated Press in a statement Saturday that while the videos “have produced as many questions as they have answers,” the question of whether the city would stay peaceful “has been answered.”

Some of the other questions will focus on what Mills “knew and what he was able to see when he arrived late to the scene” and whether his actions “crossed the lines that were crossed by other officers during this incident,” Ballin said.

‘Lack of supervision’ called ‘major problem’

The arrest was made by the so-called Scorpion unit, which has three teams of about 30 street officers who target violent offenders in areas beset by high crime, Davis said.

In an AP interview Friday, she said she would not shut down a unit if a few officers commit “some egregious act” and because she needs that unit to continue to work.

“The whole idea that the Scorpion unit is a bad unit, I just have a problem with that,” she said.

A few hours later, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said the unit has been inactive since the January 7 arrest.

The city was “initiating an outside, independent review of the training, policies and operations of our specialized units,” Strickland said in a statement.

Davis, the police director, acknowledged that the police department has a supervisor shortage and said city officials have pledged to provide more of them.

“The lack of supervision in this incident was a major problem,” Davis said.

‘Stop, I’m not doing anything!’

The recording shows police savagely beating Nichols, a 29-year-old FedEx worker, for three minutes while screaming profanities at him throughout the attack. The Nichols family legal team has likened the assault to the infamous 1991 police beating of Los Angeles motorist Rodney King.

Questions swirled around what led to the traffic stop in the first place. One officer can be heard saying that Nichols wouldn’t stop and then swerved as though he intended to hit the officer’s car. The officer said that when Nichols pulled up to a red light, the officers jumped out of the car.

“We tried to get him to stop,” the officer said. “He didn’t stop.”

But Davis said the department cannot substantiate the reason for the stop.

“We don’t know what happened,” she said, adding, “All we know is the amount of force that was applied in this situation was over the top.”

On the video, officers can be seen holding Nichols down and repeatedly striking him with their fists, boots and batons as the Black motorist screamed for his mother.

The video is filled with violent moments showing the officers chasing Nichols and leaving him on the pavement propped against a squad car as they fist-bump and celebrate their actions.

After the first officer roughly pulls Nichols out of a car, Nichols can be heard saying, “I didn’t do anything,” as a group of officers begins to wrestle him to the ground.

One officer is heard yelling, “Tase him! Tase him!”

Nichols calmly says, “OK, I’m on the ground.”

“You guys are really doing a lot right now,” Nichols says. “I’m just trying to go home.”

“Stop, I’m not doing anything!” he yells moments later.

Nichols can then be seen running as an officer fires a Taser at him. His mother’s home, where he lived, was only a few houses away from the scene of the beating, and his family said he was trying to get there. The officers then start chasing Nichols.

Other officers are called, and a search ensues before Nichols is caught at another intersection. The officers beat him with a baton, and kick and punch him.

Security camera footage shows three officers surrounding Nichols as he lies in the street cornered between police cars, with a fourth officer nearby.

Two officers hold Nichols to the ground as he moves about, and then the third appears to kick him in the head. Nichols slumps more fully onto the pavement with all three officers surrounding him. The same officer kicks him again.

The fourth officer then walks over, draws a baton and holds it up at shoulder level as two officers hold Nichols upright, as if he were sitting.

“I’m going to baton the f— out you,” one officer can be heard saying. His body camera shows him raise his baton while at least one other officer holds Nichols. The officer strikes Nichols on the back with the baton three times in a row.

The other officers then appear to hoist Nichols to his feet, with him flopping like a doll, barely able to stay upright.

An officer then punches him in the face, as the officer with the baton continues to menace him. Nichols stumbles and turns, still held up by two officers. The officer who punched him then walks around to Nichols’ front and punches him four more times. Then Nichols collapses.

Two officers can then be seen atop Nichols on the ground, with a third nearby, for about 40 seconds. Three more officers then run up, and one can be seen kicking Nichols on the ground.

As Nichols is slumped up against a car, not one of the officers renders aid. The body camera footage shows a first-person view of one of them reaching down and tying his shoe.

It takes more than 20 minutes after Nichols is beaten and on the pavement before any sort of medical attention is provided, even though two fire department officers arrived on the scene with medical equipment within 10 minutes.

Throughout the videos, officers make claims about Nichols’ behavior that are not supported by the footage or that the district attorney and other officials have said did not happen. In one of the videos, an officer claims that during the initial traffic stop Nichols reached for the officer’s gun before fleeing and almost had his hand on the handle, which is not shown in the video.

After Nichols is in handcuffs and leaning against a police car, several officers say that he must have been high. Later an officer says no drugs were found in his car, and another officer immediately counters that Nichols must have ditched something while he was running away.

Authorities have not released an autopsy report, but they have said nothing of note was found in the car.

Court records showed that all five former officers — Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Desmond Mills Jr., Emmitt Martin III and Justin Smith — were taken into custody.

Second-degree murder is punishable by 15 to 60 years in prison under Tennessee law.
…

One of the lowest points in recent Sino-American relations came in July 2021 when U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, on a visit to Beijing, was scolded by her Chinese interlocutor and handed a “List of U.S. Wrongdoings that Must Stop.”

Sherman was also warned during the strained encounter about what the Chinese described as the Biden administration’s “highly misguided mindset” and handed a second “List of Key Individual Cases that China Has Concerns With.”

The man who delivered those messages, Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng, is now widely expected in diplomatic circles to be named as the next Chinese ambassador to Washington, taking up the post recently vacated by current Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang.

China has noticeably softened its anti-American rhetoric since a Nov. 14 meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Bali, Indonesia, and policy analysts in Washington are waiting to see whether Xie’s expected appointment portends a continuation of that trend or a return to the “wolf warrior” diplomacy of recent years.

The uncertainly is heightened by the fact that, despite a stint at the Chinese embassy in Washington earlier in his career, Xie remains largely a cipher even to people who make a living knowing who’s who in China, such as June Teufel Dreyer, the author of China’s Political System, now in its 10th edition.

“I don’t really know much about him,” acknowledged Dreyer, a political science professor at the University of Miami. “My attitude towards the incoming Chinese ambassador is ‘wait and see’ – let’s see what he does,” she told VOA in a phone interview.

Born in 1964, Xie was promoted to his current position of vice minister of foreign affairs in February 2021 after serving as the ministry’s special envoy in Hong Kong for a little over three years. In that time, he was noticed and appreciated by higher ups for daring to engage with antagonists, local media reported at the time Xie was leaving Hong Kong for Beijing.

He had been just a few months in his current post at the time of the widely reported encounter with Sherman. In that same meeting with the American diplomat and her delegation, he delivered a strongly worded rebuttal to U.S. calls for the world to adhere to a “rules-based order.”

“The U.S. side’s so-called ‘rules-based international order’ is an effort by the United States and a few other Western countries to frame their own rules as international rules and impose them on other countries,” Xie told a visiting American delegation, according to the Chinese foreign ministry and state media.

By demanding adherence to a rules-based order, Xie was quoted as saying, the United States and its Western allies “resort to the tactic of changing the rules to make life easy for itself and hard for others, and to introduce ‘the law of the jungle’ where might is right and the big bully the small.”

Xie also told the delegation that the declared American approach to China – based on competition, cooperation where possible, and contest “where we must” – is in fact aimed at deception.

The core of the policy is “confrontation,” he said, according to reports published on the foreign ministry’s website. “Cooperation” is mere stopgap and “competition” is a rhetorical trap; all America wanted was “one-sided absolute gains while having done everything bad imaginable,” Xie was quoted as saying.

Dreyer, in the telephone interview, acknowledged the perceived softening of Chinese rhetoric in more recent months, but said she was reserving judgment. The Chinese “say they want to be friends, but we need to see some concrete action, not just words, but deeds,” she said.

“I would also remind you that people who say nice words will often stab you in the back; in other words, being nice and having nice, polite manners is one thing, but being truly nice is another. People who speak kind words [their doing so] often masks sinister intentions.”

The author also stressed that Chinese policy will be made in Beijing, not at the embassy in Washington.

“Ambassadors — our ambassadors and their ambassadors — are essentially window-dressing,” she said. “They give cocktail parties; they give interviews where they say largely meaningless things. There’s not much he can do unless the party tells him to do it. In this case he’s the mouthpiece of the party.”

The same point was made by Xia Ming, a political science professor at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center, who cited volatility in Chinese domestic politics as a reason to reserve judgment on what to expect from the new envoy.

“The 20th Party Congress showed the world that Chinese politics is anything but staid or stable,” he told VOA in a phone interview.

Even greater skepticism was expressed by Republican Congressman Chris Smith, the chairman of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China and a prominent promoter of human rights around the world.

“Unless the Chinese Communist Party’s promise to soften its rhetoric is matched with a radical change in behavior and deeds, their words still mean absolutely nothing,” said Smith, who has been sanctioned by China for calling out human rights violations that China describes as baseless.

“The CCP’s long-term strategic objective — to assert global dominance and spread its malign system abroad — is being pursued as aggressively as always. The United States must continue to combat Xi Jinping’s brutal dictatorship and hold the CCP to account for its atrocious human rights abuses,” he said in a written response to questions from VOA.
…

A comet is streaking back our way after 50,000 years. 

The dirty snowball last visited during Neanderthal times, according to NASA. It will come within 42 million kilometers (26 million miles) of Earth on Wednesday before speeding away again, unlikely to return for millions of years. 

Discovered less than a year ago, this harmless green comet already is visible in the northern night sky with binoculars and small telescopes, and possibly the naked eye in the darkest corners of the Northern Hemisphere. It’s expected to brighten as it draws closer and rises higher over the horizon through the end of January, best seen in the predawn hours. By February 10, it will be near Mars, a good landmark. 

Skygazers in the Southern Hemisphere will have to wait until next month for a glimpse. 

Bigger, brighter, closer

While plenty of comets have graced the sky over the past year, “this one seems probably a little bit bigger and therefore a little bit brighter and it’s coming a little bit closer to the Earth’s orbit,” said NASA’s comet and asteroid-tracking guru, Paul Chodas. 

Green from all the carbon in the gas cloud, or coma, surrounding the nucleus, this long-period comet was discovered last March by astronomers using the Zwicky Transient Facility, a wide field camera at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory. That explains its official, cumbersome name: comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF). 

On Wednesday, it will hurtle between the orbits of Earth and Mars at a relative speed of 207,000 kph (128,500 mph). Its nucleus is thought to be about 1.6 kilometers (1 mile) across, with its tails extending millions of kilometers (miles). 

The comet isn’t expected to be nearly as bright as Neowise in 2020, or Hale-Bopp and Hyakutake in the mid- to late 1990s. 

But “it will be bright by virtue of its close Earth passage … which allows scientists to do more experiments and the public to be able to see a beautiful comet,” University of Hawaii astronomer Karen Meech said in an email. 

Scientists are confident in their orbital calculations, putting the comet’s last swing through the solar system’s planetary neighborhood at 50,000 years ago. But they don’t know how close it came to Earth or whether it was even visible to the Neanderthals, said Chodas, director of the Center for Near Earth Object Studies at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. 

When it will return, though, is tougher to judge. 

Every time the comet skirts the sun and planets, their gravitational tugs alter the iceball’s path ever so slightly, leading to major course changes over time. Another wild card: jets of dust and gas streaming off the comet as it heats up near the sun. 

“We don’t really know exactly how much they are pushing this comet around,” Chodas said. 

A moving time capsule

The comet — a time capsule from the emerging solar system 4.5 billion years ago — came from what’s known as the Oort Cloud, well beyond Pluto. This deep-freeze haven for comets is believed to stretch more than one-quarter of the way to the next star. 

While this comet originated in our solar system, we can’t be sure it will stay there, Chodas said. If it gets booted out of the solar system, it will never return, he added. 

Don’t fret if you miss it. 

“In the comet business, you just wait for the next one because there are dozens of these,” Chodas said. “And the next one might be bigger, might be brighter, might be closer.” 
…

A celebration turned into a violent tragedy when 11 people were killed in a mass shooting at a Southern California dance studio on Lunar New Year’s Eve. One man describes how he left the studio just minutes before the massacre started.
…

The stepfather of Tyre Nichols, the 29-year-old man beaten to death following a traffic stop earlier this month, called for peace Friday, ahead of the release later in the day of the police bodycam and surveillance video of the violence.

Memphis and other U.S. cities reportedly were preparing for possible protests following the release of video.

Memphis police said Nichols, an African American, was stopped for alleged reckless driving on January 7. He was assaulted after the stop, and he died from his injuries three days later.

Five Memphis police officers, all of them African American, were charged Thursday with second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping, official misconduct and official oppression in the incident. All the officers have been fired.

During a news conference Friday at a Memphis church, Nichols’ stepfather, Rodney Wells, said the family was very satisfied with the legal process so far, and he urged people, if they needed to protest, to do so peacefully.

“We want peace. We do not want any type of uproar. We do not want any type of disturbance. We want peaceful protest,” he said. “The family is very satisfied with the process, with the police chief, with the D.A. [district attorney].”

Also speaking at the news conference, lawyers for the family, Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci, applauded the district attorney for the swiftness with which the charges were brought against the officers.

Romanucci said the officers were members of a “SCORPION” unit – an acronym for Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods. He said such units are known as “suppression” units and contended they act with impunity and are more likely to use force than other members of a police force.

He called on the Memphis police department to disband the unit immediately.

The call for peace by Nichols’ stepfather came after President Joe Biden issued a similar call Thursday. In a statement, the president said, “Outrage is understandable, but violence is never acceptable.”

“Tyre’s death is a painful reminder that we must do more to ensure that our criminal justice system lives up to the promise of fair and impartial justice, equal treatment, and dignity for all,” Biden said.

Federal law enforcement officials said they were prepared for any unrest.

Speaking at a news conference Friday in Washington, FBI Director Christopher Wray said the bureau had alerted all of its field offices around the country to work with state and local law enforcement “in the event of something getting out of hand.”

Wray said he had seen the video of Tyre’s beating and was “appalled” by its content.

“I’m struggling to find a stronger word, but I’d just say I was appalled,” Wray noted.

But Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland joined calls by other officials to keep any protests against police peaceful.

“I do want to say, and I want to repeat what the family has said, that expressions of concern when people see this video, we urge that they be peaceful and nonviolent,” Garland said at the press conference. “That’s what the family has urged, and that of course is what the Justice Department urges as well.”

The Justice Department has opened a civil rights investigation into the case.

VOA’s Masood Farivar contributed to this report. Some information came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
…

Three members of an Eastern European criminal gang with ties to Iran have been indicted in connection with plotting to murder Iranian-American human rights activist and VOA Persian host Masih Alinejad, the Justice Department announced on Friday.

Rafat Amirov, 43, of Iran, Polad Omarov, 38, of the Czech Republic, and Khalid Mehdiyev, 24, of Yonkers, New York, are all in custody and face charges of murder for hire and money laundering, Attorney General Merrick Garland said at a press conference.

“In the United States of America, our system of laws protects our citizens in the peaceful exercise of their constitutional and civil rights,” Garland said. “The Department of Justice will not tolerate attempts by an authoritarian regime to undermine those protections and the rule of law upon which our democracy is based.”

Amirov, the alleged ringleader of the plot, was “lawfully arrested” outside the United States and arrived in New York on Thursday, Garland said. Amirov was to be arraigned before a federal magistrate judge later Friday.

Mehdiyev, a New York-based member of the group, was arrested on July 29 and will make his first court appearance next week.

Omarov was detained in the Czech Republic on January 4, and U.S. officials said they will seek his extradition on charges in the indictment.

Mehdiev was arrested after police found him with an assault rifle and about 66 rounds of ammunition near Alinejad’s home in Brooklyn.

Alinejad, the host of “Tablet,” a weekly TV program for VOA Persian covering news developments in Iran and featuring videos shared by people living there, has been the target of several Iranian-sponsored assassination attempts.

In 2021, federal prosecutors charged an Iranian intelligence officer and three Iranian intelligence assets with plotting to kidnap the journalist for rendition to Iran and possible execution.

“The government of Iran has continued to target the victim since then,” Garland said.

Following news of the indictments, Alinejad said in a video published on Twitter that she has no plans to stop what she is doing, and she called on authorities to pay more attention to the situation facing people in Iran.

“I’m not scared for my life,” she said. “I knew that killing, assassinating, hanging, torturing, raping is in the DNA of the Islamic Republic. That’s why I came to the United States of America, to practice my right, my freedom of expression to be voice to the brave people of Iran who say ‘no’ to the Islamic Republic.”

The Eastern European gang’s alleged involvement in the plot to kill Alinejad goes back to at least July 2022.

According to a superseding indictment unsealed on Friday, Amirov, a leader of the Eastern European gang, was initially tasked with undertaking the plot.

Amirov then directed Omarov, another leader of the group based in Eastern Europe, who in turn directed Mehdiev, described as a member of the gang, to murder Alinejad.

According to court documents, the Thieves-in-Law gang engages in murders, kidnappings, assaults and extortions. Its members typically identify themselves with tattoos and other displays of eight-pointed stars.
…

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday proposed revisions to its guidelines to make it easier for gay and bisexual men to donate blood, eliminating a three-month abstinence period before donations.

The restrictions were implemented years ago to prevent the spread of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

In a release posted to the agency’s website, the FDA said under the draft proposals, all donors — regardless of sexual orientation — would be given a questionnaire regarding new partners, sexual history, and certain types of sexual activities.

Any prospective donors who do not report having new or multiple sexual partners and have not engaged in certain practices, such as anal sex, in the previous three months, may be eligible to donate, provided all other eligibility criteria are met.

The proposed new guidelines would allow gay and bisexual men in monogamous, long-term relationships to more easily give blood.

The FDA said the draft proposals were developed after reviewing available information, including data from Britain and Canada, countries with similar HIV epidemiology that have implemented the “gender-inclusive, individual risk-based approach for assessing donor eligibility.”

In the statement, FDA Commissioner Robert Califf said, “Maintaining a safe and adequate supply of blood and blood products in the U.S. is paramount for the FDA,” and these proposals will allow the agency to do so.

Under the plan, the donor deferral time periods would stay in place for other HIV risk factors, including for those who have exchanged sex for money or drugs, or have a history of non-prescription injection drug use. 

Any individual who has ever had a positive test for HIV or who has taken any medication to treat HIV infection would continue to be deferred permanently.

The proposed guideline changes released Friday will be open for public comment for 60 days. The agency will then review and consider all comments before finalizing the changes.

Some information for this report was provided by the Associated Press.  
…

Asian Americans in California, already on edge over a wave of hate crimes against their communities, are taking small comfort from the fact that the suspected perpetrators of the past week’s two mass shootings were Asian Americans themselves.

“Simply because this person happens to be Asian American from Monterey Park, doesn’t mean he wasn’t also targeting community members,” said community advocate Manjusha Kulkarni in reference to the man accused of fatally gunning down 11 people at a dance hall on Saturday night.

“He knew that there was a large Lunar New Year celebration, and he came armed,” continued Kulkarni, executive director of the Los Angeles-based AAPI Equity Alliance, in an interview with VOA.

Monterey Park Councilman Henry Lo agreed that his community will take time to get over the shock of that mass killing and another two days later near San Francisco.

“We will need everyone’s support as we begin the long road to recovery from this awful trauma,” he told VOA’s Mandarin Service.

The first shooting happened at a dance hall in Monterey Park, a largely Asian American suburb east of Los Angeles. All 11 victims were Asian Americans. The suspect shot and killed himself.

The second shooting was hundreds of miles north in Half Moon Bay, an idyllic small coastal town with nurseries and restaurants.

Seven people, five Chinese citizens and two Latinos, were killed at two Northern California mushroom farms. Police have identified the suspect as a worker at one of the nurseries.

The two tragic events took place during the Lunar New Year season, which is normally a time of rebirth, says state assemblyman Phil Ting, whose district includes part of San Francisco.

It’s a time “looking towards prosperity and good fortune,” he said. “To have these incidents that are impacting Asian American farmworkers here and then 11 Asian Americans down in Los Angeles is really just the worst kind of news we can ever have.”

About one in six Californians are Asian Americans. In recent years, many of them feel like they’re under threat, said California Governor Gavin Newsom at a recent press conference in Half Moon Bay.

“I’m also mindful that we saw hate crimes go up 177% against Asians last year,” he said. “We have to do more.”

The most recent shootings are different from the anti-Asian crimes committed by non-Asians. The two suspects in the mass shootings are themselves Asian Americans.

While the suspects’ motives are still under investigation, some believe mental health could be a factor. Asian American advocates highlight the fact that life in the U.S. for an immigrant can be challenging.

“The social and linguistic isolation they may have, the lack of mental health and community support that they need,” said Russell Jeung, a professor of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University. “The easy availability of assault weapons. These trends demonstrate that Asian Americans face a lot of issues as minorities.”

James Zarsadiaz, an associate professor of history at University of San Francisco, grew up in East Los Angeles.

Filipino and Chinese, Zarsadiaz says he wants to celebrate the Year of the Rabbit.

“It’s hard to really feel fully present and enjoy the festivity when you know that tragedy has hurt and has impacted the community,” he said. “And even though it’s one place, it does impact pretty much all of Asia America because, again, these are very familiar and intimate spaces and during a very personal and family-oriented time.”

Organizers of the San Francisco Lunar New Year parade, scheduled for February 4, said this week they would meet with city leaders and police to implement additional safety measures. The parade attracts thousands of spectators.

Calla Yu with the Mandarin Service contributed to this story. Some information for this report came from Agence France-Presse.
…

WASHINGTON (AP) — The second consecutive quarter of economic growth that the government reported Thursday underscored that the nation isn’t in a recession despite high inflation and the Federal Reserve’s fastest pace of interest rate hikes in four decades.

Yet the U.S. economy is hardly in the clear. The solid growth in the October-December quarter will do little to alter the widespread view of economists that a recession is very likely sometime this year.

For now, the economy expanded at a 2.9% annual rate in the fourth quarter, though some of the underlying figures weren’t as healthy. Consumer spending, for example, grew at a slower pace than in the previous quarter, and business investment was weak. Last quarter’s growth was fueled by factors that won’t likely last. These include companies’ restocking of inventories and a drop in imports, which meant that more spending went to U.S.-made goods.

Increased borrowing rates and still-high inflation are expected to steadily weaken consumer and business spending. Businesses will likely pare expenses in response, which could lead to layoffs and higher unemployment. And a likely recession in the United Kingdom and slower growth in China will erode the revenue and profits of American corporations. Such trends are expected to cause a U.S. recession sometime in the coming months.

Still, there are reasons to expect that a recession, if it does come, will prove to be a comparatively mild one. Many employers, having struggled to hire after huge layoffs during the pandemic, may decide to retain most of their workforces even in a shrinking economy.

Six months of economic decline is a long-held informal definition of a recession. Yet nothing is simple in a post-pandemic economy in which growth was negative in the first half of last year but the job market remained robust, with ultra-low unemployment and healthy levels of hiring. The economy’s direction has confounded the Fed’s policymakers and many private economists ever since growth screeched to a halt in March 2020, when COVID-19 struck and 22 million Americans were suddenly thrown out of work.

Inflation, the economy’s biggest threat last year, is now showing signs of steadily declining. Used and new cars are becoming less expensive. Price increases for furniture, clothes and other physical goods are slowing.

Last year, the Fed raised its benchmark interest rate seven times, from zero to a range of 4.25% to 4.5%. The Fed’s policymakers have projected that they will keep raising their key rate until it tops 5%, which would be the highest level in 15 years. As borrowing costs swell, fewer Americans can afford a mortgage or an auto loan. Higher rates, combined with inflated prices, could deprive the economy of its main engine — healthy consumer spending.

Fed officials have made clear that they’re willing to tip the economy into a recession if necessary to defeat high inflation, and most economists believe them. Many analysts envision a recession beginning as early as the April-June quarter this year.

So what is the likelihood of a recession? Here are some questions and answers:

Why do many economists foresee a recession?

They expect the Fed’s aggressive rate hikes and high inflation to overwhelm consumers and businesses, forcing them to slow their spending and investment. Businesses will likely also have to cut jobs, causing spending to fall further.

Consumers have so far proved remarkably resilient in the face of higher rates and rising prices. Still, there are signs that their sturdiness is starting to crack.

Retail sales have dropped for two months in a row. The Fed’s so-called beige book, a collection of anecdotal reports from businesses around the country, shows that retailers are increasingly seeing consumers resist higher prices.

Credit card debt is also rising — evidence that Americans are having to borrow more to maintain their spending levels, a trend that probably isn’t sustainable.

More than half the economists surveyed by the National Association for Business Economics say the likelihood of a recession this year is above 50%.

What are some signs that a recession may have begun?

The clearest signal would be a steady rise in job losses and a surge in unemployment. Claudia Sahm, an economist and former Fed staff member, has noted that since World War II, an increase in the unemployment rate of a half-percentage point over several months has always signaled a recession has begun.

Many economists monitor the number of people who seek unemployment benefits each week, a gauge that indicates whether layoffs are worsening. Weekly applications for jobless aid actually dropped last week to a historically low 190,000. Employers continue to add many jobs, causing the unemployment rate to fall in December to 3.5%, a half-century low, from 3.7%.

Any other signals to watch for?

Economists monitor changes in the interest payments, or yields, on different bonds for a recession signal known as an “inverted yield curve.” This occurs when the yield on the 10-year Treasury falls below the yield on a short-term Treasury, such as the three-month T-bill. That is unusual. Normally, longer-term bonds pay investors a richer yield in exchange for tying up their money for a longer period.

Inverted yield curves generally mean that investors foresee a recession that will compel the Fed to slash rates. Inverted curves often predate recessions. Still, it can take 18 to 24 months for a downturn to arrive after the yield curve inverts.

Ever since July, the yield on the two-year Treasury note has exceeded the 10-year yield, suggesting that markets expect a recession soon. And the three-month yield has also risen far above the 10-year, an inversion that has an even better track record at predicting recessions.

Who decides when a recession has started?

Recessions are officially declared by the obscure-sounding National Bureau of Economic Research, a group of economists whose Business Cycle Dating Committee defines a recession as “a significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and lasts more than a few months.”

The committee considers trends in hiring. It also assesses many other data points, including gauges of income, employment, inflation-adjusted spending, retail sales and factory output. It puts heavy weight on a measure of inflation-adjusted income that excludes government support payments like Social Security.

Yet the NBER typically doesn’t declare a recession until well after one has begun, sometimes for up to a year.

Does high inflation typically lead to a recession?

Not always. Inflation reached 4.7% in 2006, at that point the highest in 15 years, without causing a downturn. (The 2008-2009 recession that followed was caused by the bursting of the housing bubble).

But when it gets as high as it did last year — it reached a 40-year peak of 9.1% in June — a downturn becomes increasingly likely.

That’s for two reasons: First, the Fed will sharply raise borrowing costs when inflation gets that high. Higher rates then drag down the economy as consumers are less able to afford homes, cars and other major purchases.

High inflation also distorts the economy on its own. Consumer spending, adjusted for inflation, weakens. And businesses grow uncertain about the future economic outlook. Many of them pull back on their expansion plans and stop hiring. This can lead to higher unemployment as some people choose to leave jobs and aren’t replaced.
…

South Korean concerns about the U.S. nuclear umbrella are expected to be a major focus of U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s upcoming trip to Seoul.

Austin, who arrives in the South Korean capital on Monday, is expected to meet President Yoon Suk Yeol, according to South Korean media.

Earlier this month, Yoon made headlines when he said South Korea could demand the redeployment of U.S. nuclear weapons, or even develop its own nuclear arms, if its security situation with North Korea worsens.

Yoon later walked back those comments. However, the situation underscores growing South Korean worries over North Korea’s quickly expanding nuclear arsenal, as well as questions about the long-term defense commitment of its ally, the United States.

Deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh told a briefing Thursday that Austin’s trip will highlight “our commitment to the region,” saying the U.S. commitment to South Korea remains “rock solid.”

Austin’s visit will be closely watched to see whether he addresses Yoon’s comments about nuclear weapons.

“He might make some rhetorical gesture indicating gently in public, and certainly much more strongly behind the scenes, that it would be undesirable for South Korea to have its own nuclear deterrent,” said Mason Richey, an associate professor at South Korea’s Hankuk University of Foreign Studies.

“But I think he would do so in a way that would not be intended to publicly irritate South Korea or to call into question South Korea’s sovereignty or autonomy,” Richey said.

Instead, Austin may highlight U.S.-South Korean efforts to expand defense cooperation, he added.

In recent months, Washington and Seoul have increased joint military drills and agreed to the more frequent deployment of U.S. strategic assets, such as nuclear-capable bombers and aircraft carriers, to the region around the Korean Peninsula.

But Yoon, a conservative who embraces a more aggressive approach to North Korea, thinks more should be done to keep up with North Korean nuclear advancements.

As a presidential candidate, he briefly embraced the possibility of the United States returning tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea.

The United States removed its nuclear weapons from South Korea in the early 1990s. Instead, South Korea is protected by the U.S. nuclear umbrella, under which Washington vows to use all its capabilities, including nuclear weapons, to defend its ally.

Yoon last month suggested such ideas are outdated and that South Korea needs a bigger role in its own defense. As an alternative, Yoon said he envisioned new levels of nuclear cooperation that would have the same effect as nuclear sharing.

North Korea advancements

South Korea’s concerns are driven in large part by North Korea’s rapid expansion of its nuclear weapons program.

In 2022, North Korea launched more than 90 missiles, including short-range weapons designed to evade South Korea’s missile defense systems and long-range weapons that could hit the U.S. mainland.

In a year-end speech, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un vowed to “exponentially” increase production of nuclear warheads and to develop yet another new intercontinental ballistic missile.

U.S. and South Korean officials have also warned for months that North Korea has finished preparations for another nuclear test.

The developments have rattled many in Seoul, who fear the United States may not come to the defense of South Korea if North Korea has the ability to destroy U.S. cities.

Possible steps

A growing number of Washington-based analysts agree that the United States should shore up its defense commitment to South Korea.

In a report last week, the Center for Strategic and International Studies said the allies should consider “tabletop planning exercises for the possible redeployment of U.S. nuclear weapons to South Korea.”

While the CSIS report said the United States should not under current circumstances deploy tactical nuclear weapons, it suggested other steps, including the creation of a “framework for joint nuclear planning,” similar to a U.S. arrangement with NATO.

The report mentioned the possibility of “the continuous presence in the region of either U.S. submarines equipped with nuclear cruise missiles or strategic bombers. It also said South Korea could acquire dual-capable aircraft, which can conduct nuclear or conventional missions.

It is not clear whether U.S. and South Korean officials are discussing any of those proposals.

But Sydney Seiler, the national intelligence officer for North Korea at the U.S. National Intelligence Council, on Thursday praised the CSIS report as “excellent,” saying it laid out a “very persuasive case … on how to maintain deterrence in this environment.”

“It was compelling,” Seiler said during an online forum hosted by CSIS. “And we go back to [the fact that] deterrence has worked for seven decades,” he said. “Why would deterrence not work going forward?” 
…

U.S. President Joe Biden called for calm Thursday, a day before the police department of Memphis, Tennessee, was scheduled to release the bodycam footage of a brutal beating of Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old African American motorist, by five police officers.

“Outrage is understandable, but violence is never acceptable,” Biden said in a statement. “Tyre’s death is a painful reminder that we must do more to ensure that our criminal justice system lives up to the promise of fair and impartial justice, equal treatment, and dignity for all,” he said.

Memphis and other U.S. cities are reported to be preparing for possible protests.

Nichols died three days after his encounter with the officers earlier this month.

The officers, all of them Black, have been charged with second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping, official misconduct and official oppression.  All of the officers have been fired.

“While each of the five individuals played a different role in the incident in question, the actions of all of them resulted in the death of Tyre Nichols. And they are all responsible,” David Rausch, director of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations told a news conference Thursday.

Rausch, who has seen the video, said he found the officers’ behavior “absolutely appalling.”

The police officers say they stopped Nichols for reckless driving.

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

The Biden administration on Thursday granted a two-year stay of deportation for Hong Kongers in the U.S. who left amid what the administration calls a “significant erosion of human rights and fundamental freedoms” as Beijing tightens its control over the special administrative region.

“The United States is committed to a foreign policy that unites our democratic values with our foreign policy goals, which is centered on the defense of democracy and the promotion of human rights around the world,” read the memorandum signed by President Joe Biden.

“Offering safe haven for Hong Kong residents who have been deprived of their guaranteed freedoms in Hong Kong furthers United States interests in the region. The United States will continue to stand firm in our support of the people in Hong Kong.”

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security estimated that more than 3,800 people were eligible for the program when it was introduced in mid-2021. The original order was set to expire in February.

Human Rights Watch says the National Security Law imposed on Hong Kong in mid-2020 has had “devastating consequences for human rights.”

The White House noted in its Thursday memorandum that over 10,000 people have been arrested on other charges related to anti-government protests, and the Washington-based Hong Kong Democracy Council says there are at least 1,300 political prisoners currently in Hong Kong.

‘Another cycle’

Anna Kwok, HKDC’s executive director, welcomed the extension and the broadening of the program to include newer arrivals.

But, she said, for many in the program, “another cycle begins afresh.”

“The two-year lifeline is essential, but it remains true that we can only plan our lives so far ahead at once,” she said. “Without longer-term solutions that offer humanitarian pathways, a U.S.-based movement for the cause of freedom and democracy in Hong Kong against Beijing’s transnational repression isn’t sustainable.”

In addition, Kwok told VOA, the group hopes Secretary of State Antony Blinken will raise the issue of political prisoners when he travels next month to China.

“Secretary Blinken should not shy away from taking a consistent stance for the Biden administration,” she said. “Given the [more than] 1,300 American companies in Hong Kong, an independent judiciary system is a rightful demand from the U.S. to an ‘international financial center.’”

Human rights campaigners also welcomed the news, and echoed the concerns about the short timeline. Maya Wang, acting China director for Human Rights Watch, told VOA, “The extension is a welcome relief, but they shouldn’t have to endure this roller coaster of an extension every two years, which leaves them with uncertainty, their lives in limbo.”

“Human Rights Watch has called on the Biden administration to respect the right to seek asylum for all people and families, and create a new and orderly process for responding to migrants’ various rights-based rationales for seeking to enter the country,” Wang said. “That includes people seeking asylum from persecution, adapting to the effects of climate change, returning to places in the U.S. where noncitizens may have resided for many years, or reuniting with family members.”

Chinese authorities strongly reject Washington’s contention that the former British colony, which saw unprecedented pro-democracy protests in 2019, is backsliding. Britain returned the 1,000-square-kilometer area, which includes two large islands and a peninsula, to China in 1997.

“In the 25 years since Hong Kong’s return to the motherland, the Chinese Central Government has stayed committed to fully, accurately and resolutely implementing the policies of ‘one country, two systems’ and ‘Hong Kong people administering Hong Kong with a high degree of autonomy,’ and strongly protected lawful rights and freedoms enjoyed by Hong Kong residents,” read a statement issued Thursday by the Commissioner’s Office of the Chinese Foreign Ministry in Hong Kong.

“It has been globally recognized that the practice of ‘one country, two systems’ in Hong Kong is a great success,” the office said. “At present, Hong Kong is in a new period moving from chaos to stability and prosperity.”

The extension now lasts through January 2025.
…

Former U.S. President Donald Trump will be allowed to use Facebook and Instagram again soon. Meta, the platforms’ parent company, said Wednesday that it would lift bans imposed two years ago after Trump used both services to publish false claims about the 2020 election and to help rally the crowd that assaulted the U.S Capitol on January 6, 2021.

The company said that its decision to ban Trump was made out of concern that he represented a “serious risk to public safety.” However, Meta said, it has since concluded that that risk “has sufficiently receded” to allow his return, and that his accounts would be restored “in the coming weeks.”

Because of Trump’s prominent role in U.S. politics, it is important that the public hears what he has to say, Meta said. But because of his history with both services, his conduct on the platforms will be monitored.

“In light of his violations, he now also faces heightened penalties for repeat offenses — penalties which will apply to other public figures whose accounts are reinstated from suspensions related to civil unrest under our updated protocol,” Meta said in a statement. “In the event that Mr. Trump posts further violating content, the content will be removed and he will be suspended for between one month and two years, depending on the severity of the violation.”

Trump reacts

Having been banned from almost all major social media platforms until recently, Trump has been posting his statements on Truth Social, a platform that he helped found and his company owns.

In response to Meta’s announcement, Trump posted on Truth Social, using his usual idiosyncratic punctuation and capitalization.

“FACEBOOK, which has lost Billions of Dollars in value since ‘deplatforming’ your favorite President, me, has just announced that they are reinstating my account,” he wrote. “Such a thing should never again happen to a sitting President, or anybody else who is not deserving of retribution! THANK YOU TO TRUTH SOCIAL FOR DOING SUCH AN INCREDIBLE JOB. YOUR GROWTH IS OUTSTANDING, AND FUTURE UNLIMITED!!!”

Trump has approximately 34 million followers on Facebook and more than 23 million followers on Instagram.

Controversial decision

“Like it or not, President Trump is one of the country’s leading political figures and the public has a strong interest in hearing his speech,” Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement.

“The biggest social media companies are central actors when it comes to our collective ability to speak — and hear the speech of others — online,” Romero said. “They should err on the side of allowing a wide range of political speech, even when it offends.”

The Anti-Defamation League, an organization that combats hate speech and other forms of extremism, took a different view. Its CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, said in a statement that “former President Trump should not be given a platform to amplify his hateful and violent rhetoric on mainstream social media.”

“During his presidency Trump used social media platforms such as Facebook to spread hate and incite violence,” Greenblatt continued. “There is no reason to believe the former president will behave differently now that the platform has reversed his ban. This isn’t a matter of free speech; there are ample services that Trump can use to spread his message. This is a business decision to platform bigotry and divisiveness to drive clicks and engagement, plain and simple.”

Broad reassessment

Meta’s reinstatement of Trump comes amid a broad reassessment of how social media should be moderated in the U.S. and worldwide. In October, billionaire Elon Musk purchased Twitter and restored access to many previously banned accounts, including Trump’s. The former president, who has nearly 88 million followers on the platform, has not used it.

Experts said that the new ways major social media companies are handling controversial speech are part of a larger debate about how society should organize itself in an age of extreme interconnectedness.

“We’re now debating how we regulate the public square in the 21st century,” said Gene Policinski, senior fellow for the First Amendment at the Freedom Forum, a nonpartisan educational foundation. “These are places where we now gather to talk about public issues.”

“We’re now at this inflection point where clearly social media has gone from a toy to a tool, to a ubiquitous need,” Policinski told VOA. “When it becomes that essential to the way our society functions, there may be an argument to offer some sort of safety net for the kinds of speech that people might find repugnant, but which does not pose an imminent threat of violence or some other criminal conduct.”

Court case pending

Later this year, the U.S. Supreme Court will consider the future of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The law has been interpreted as absolving social media companies from legal responsibility for third-party content published on their platforms while allowing them to bar content largely at will.

In the U.S., many conservatives believe that when the major social media firms do exercise the right to bar content, they do so in a way that disadvantages the political right. They would like the Supreme Court to curtail companies’ ability to stifle some speech.

Many on the left, by contrast, would like to see social media firms shoulder more legal responsibility for the material they host, claiming that abusive, hateful content frequently remains on the platforms even after it has been identified as such.

International concern

The debate extends beyond U.S. politics. Earlier this month, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights issued a statement attributed to dozens of international human rights experts.

The statement, aimed at the leaders of the major social media platforms, urged them “to center human rights, racial justice, accountability, transparency, corporate social responsibility and ethics in their business model” and reminded them that “corporate accountability for racial justice and human rights is a core social responsibility.”

Rocky road

As social media platforms reassess policies, some bumps in the road seem inevitable.

To date, not all of the reinstatements have gone well. For example, Twitter restored the account of well-known Holocaust-denying white nationalist Nick Fuentes on Tuesday. Fuentes was recently in the news for accompanying Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, to a dinner with Trump at the former president’s Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago.

Once his account was restored, Fuentes immediately began posting material that referred to antisemitic comments made by Ye. Then, in a livestreamed Twitter Spaces event, he made other antisemitic comments.

Fuentes’ account was suspended again, less than 24 hours after its reinstatement.
…

With the U.S. now joining Germany and Britain in promising to send battle tanks to Ukraine, what are the capabilities and differences among the three types of tanks that will join the fight? VOA’s Steve Redisch takes their measure.
…

President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden are hosting a Lunar New Year reception at the White House on Thursday, as Americans mourn over recent mass shootings in the state of California that included Asian American victims and perpetrators.

“Our hearts are with the people of California. They’ve been a rough, rough couple of days,” Biden said Tuesday. “You see what’s happened in California and what’s happened to the Asian American community. It’s been devastating.”

On Saturday in Monterey Park, a 72-year-old Asian American man is suspected of killing 11 people of Asian descent. Two days later in Half Moon Bay, a 66-year-old Asian American man allegedly killed seven people, including Chinese and Latino farm workers. Motives are still being sought.

On Wednesday, Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to Monterey Park to meet with victims’ families and call for action on gun control.

“We will always, as a compassionate nation, mourn for the loss and pray for those who survive and are recovering,” Harris said. “But we must also require that leaders in our nation, who have the ability and the power and the responsibility to do something, that they act.”

Outreach

The Lunar New Year event is part of White House outreach efforts to the Asian American community and is “an important symbol of access and inclusion during a time of shock and sadness,” said Janelle Wong, professor of American studies and government and politics at the University of Maryland in College Park.

“The Biden administration has also recognized Diwali and the start of Ramadan, and all of these receptions are shared beyond those who attend, through print and social media,” she told VOA.

Twenty-two million people in the U.S., or 7% of the population, identify as “Asian” alone or in combination with another racial or ethnic category, and trace their roots to more than 20 countries in East and Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent, according to the Pew Research Center.

They are also a key demographic for Biden. Asian Americans are the fastest-growing group of eligible voters. Over the past two decades they have become much more likely to vote for Democrats than for Republicans, supporting traditionally Democratic agendas, including stricter gun laws.

In his remarks, Biden highlighted his administration’s national agenda aimed at addressing the range of disparities that Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities face, through action plans prepared by 32 federal agencies.

Beginning this month, the administration is launching a series of summits to advance economic equity in the AAPI community, aiming to connect them with critical resources and opportunities.
…

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced Thursday a series of sanctions targeting individuals associated with Russia’s paramilitary Wagner Group, including its leader and associated front companies, for waging war in Ukraine, including battlefield activities and the targeting of civilians.

In a statement, Blinken said the sanctions will target five entities and one individual linked to the Wagner Group and its head, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, as well as several other individuals and entities, for their status as government officials and for being part of Russia’s military industrial complex.

Blinken’s statement said the State Department also is designating three individuals for their roles as heads of the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service, which has been reported to facilitate the recruitment of Russian prisoners into the Wagner Group, and subsequently sent to the front lines to fight in the conflict in Ukraine.

Additionally, the top U.S. diplomat said the U.S. Treasury Department is designating the Wagner Group a “significant transnational criminal organization” for actions taken in Africa.

The statement said the “group’s pattern of serious criminal behavior includes violent harassment of journalists, aid workers, and members of minority groups and harassment, obstruction, and intimidation of U.N. peacekeepers in the Central African Republic, as well as rape and killings in Mali.”

In the statement Thursday, Blinken noted, “The United States is steadfast in our resolve against Russia’s aggression and other destabilizing behavior worldwide. [Thursday’s] designations will further impede the Kremlin’s ability to arm its war-machine that is engaged in a war of aggression against Ukraine, and which has caused unconscionable death and destruction.”
…

The U.S. economy cooled only slightly at the end of last year, advancing at an annualized 2.9% rate, the Department of Commerce reported Thursday, even as forecasters are suggesting a recession is possible later in 2023.

The growth in the October-to-December quarter dropped from a 3.2% advance in the third quarter, following a half year when the world’s biggest economy shrank.

For all of 2022, the economy grew by a solid, if unspectacular 2.1%, down from a robust 5.7% growth rate in 2021 when the recovery from the coronavirus pandemic was in full force.

Last year saw contrasting themes, including the fastest growth in consumer prices in four decades, pinching the wallets of Americans at all income levels.

Yet the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years was recorded, with hundreds of thousands of new jobs being added to payrolls every month. Separately, borrowing costs for businesses and consumer loans and home mortgages rose sharply as the country’s central bank, the Federal Reserve, increased its benchmark interest rate seven times, an effort aimed at slowing economic growth and curbing inflation.

By the end of the year and into January, there were signs the economy was slowing, with some forecasters predicting a recession — meaning two straight quarters of economic decline in the coming months.

With higher interest rates, home buying and retail sales have dropped, while manufacturing output fell in November and December. The hiring of temporary workers is weakening, and major companies, especially in technology and media, are laying off thousands of workers. 

While the inflation rate in consumer prices has dropped, it remains high by historical standards — now at a 6.5% annualized rate, well above the 2% rate sought by Federal Reserve policymakers. It is likely to stay high through much of 2023.

The Fed is also planning more interest rate increases, albeit not likely as big as the ones it imposed in 2022. It is another factor that could curtail U.S. economic growth.

The White House and the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives are facing contentious negotiations over increasing the limit on the national debt, now at $31.4 trillion. The U.S. could reach the spending limit by early June.

If an agreement is not reached, the ensuing turmoil would roil world financial markets and the U.S. government’s credit rating could be cut, as occurred in 2011, the last time Congress and the White House quarreled significantly over increasing the debt limit. 
…

President Joe Biden has announced the United States will send 31 Abrams battle tanks to Ukraine, just hours after Germany announced it is sending 14 Leopard 2 tanks, in a united effort to help Kyiv defend itself against invading Russian forces. VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
…

South Korea, with a world-class arms industry, is facing mounting pressure to find a way to get needed arms and munitions to Ukraine without unduly angering Russia, which has hinted that it could resume military cooperation with North Korea.

Experts interviewed by VOA say the most likely solution under consideration in Seoul is for the nation’s commercial arms manufacturers to make private sales to the United States, allowing the U.S to ship more of its own armaments to Ukraine without depleting its stockpiles.

A spokesperson for the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs told VOA Korean Service on Wednesday that the administration in Seoul “has been providing humanitarian support to the people of Ukraine” but “there has not been a change” in its position that it “will not send lethal weapons to Ukraine.”

Depleted stockpiles

Since the Russian invasion, Washington’s military aid to Kyiv has depleted U.S. weapons stockpiles.

The Ukraine Defense Contact Group, a U.S.-led coalition of about 50 countries, has been sending Kyiv weaponry ranging from High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) to howitzers. The U.S. and Germany announced Wednesday that they will send 31 M1 Abrams tanks and 14 Leopard 2 tanks, respectively. Additional tanks have been promised by other NATO countries.

Ukraine is using about 90,000 artillery rounds per month while the U.S. and European countries are producing only half that amount among them, according to The New York Times, citing U.S. and Western officials.

The U.S. has asked the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) to route some of its equipment stockpiled in South Korea to Ukraine, USFK spokesperson Isaac Taylor told the VOA Korean Service on Jan. 19.

And Washington “has been in discussion about potential sales of ammunition” from South Korea’s “non-government industrial defense base,” said Pentagon spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Martin Meiners to the VOA Korean Service on Jan. 18.

“The Republic of Korea has a world-class defense industry which regularly sells to allies and partners, including the United States,” Meiners added. South Korea’s official name is the Republic of Korea (ROK).

South Korea’s arms sales

Experts said arms sales from South Korea’s private defense companies to the U.S. could elevate South Korea’s standing as “a global pivotal state,” a stated foreign policy aspiration of President Yoon Suk Yeol since he took office in May.

Yoon said in August that South Korea’s goal is to become one of the top four global arms sellers. He reiterated the goal of boosting weapons sales in November.

South Korea was the world’s eighth-largest exporter of weapons in 2017-21 according to a 2022 report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) which said the United States, Russia, France, China and Germany are the top five sellers.

“President Yoon has called South Korea a global pivotal state,” David Maxwell, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said. “… Providing support to Ukraine directly or indirectly is an example of that.”

Putin’s warning

Experts said that by allowing the private arms sales to proceed, South Korea could shore up its alliances with Western powers and help to demonstrate to authoritarian neighbors like China and North Korea that the kind of aggression launched by Russia in Ukraine will not succeed.

But the move will likely come at the cost of further deterioration in Seoul’s relations with Moscow, which are already fraying over South Korea’s support of the sanctions the U.S. imposed on Russia after it invaded Ukraine.

“South Korea has the same interest about peace, stability, territorial sovereignty, protecting [against] states that are invading through outright aggression,” said Terence Roehrig, a professor of national security and Korea expert at the U.S. Naval War College.

“It is about South Korea making the decision that it needs to stand with the West on those issues with some degree of hedging by being reluctant to send direct military assistance to Ukraine,” he added.

“You will not see South Korea directly contributing arms to Ukraine. It will only be about backfilling other states who might be doing that.” That, he said, is because of concerns that Russia could “play a role on North Korea” through potential technology transfers and weapons development.

In October, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned South Korea that sending ammunition to Ukraine would ruin their relations.

“We have learned that the Republic of Korea has made a decision to supply weapons and ammunition to Ukraine. This will destroy our relations,” said Putin as reported by Russian state-owned Tass. “How would the Republic of Korea react if we resumed cooperation with North Korea in that sphere?”

Until it collapsed in 1991, the Soviet Union provided military support to North Korea. The Ukraine war has drawn Russia and North Korea closer together. On Friday, the U.S. released a photo of what it said was evidence of North Korea sending weapons to the Wagner Group, a Russian private military organization, via trains to Russia.

VOA Korea contacted the Russian embassy in Washington and Foreign Ministry in Moscow for comment, but they did not respond.

Andrew Yeo, the SK-Korea Foundation chair at Brookings Institution, said the proposed private weapons sales to the U.S. “would suggest greater support for the Ukrainian cause and further sour relations with Moscow, although Moscow has already placed Seoul on its list of hostile countries.”

In March, Russia placed South Korea on a list of countries that commit “unfriendly actions,” according to Tass. According to the Tass report, countries on the list imposed or joined the sanctions imposed on Russia after it invaded Ukraine.

“Seoul is eager to preserve a workable relationship with Moscow, so in some way drawing down U.S. weapons in [its bases in South] Korea is more palatable than selling them directly,” said Patrick Cronin, the Asia-Pacific security chair at Hudson Institute.

“But South Korea also has an abiding interest in ensuring that Russian aggression in Ukraine cannot prevail,” he added. “That would be a bad precedent for South Korea’s neighbors.”
…

Lloyd Morrisett, the co-creator of the beloved children’s education TV series Sesame Street, which uses empathy and fuzzy monsters like Abby Cadabby, Elmo and Cookie Monster to charm and teach generations around the world, has died. He was 93.

Morrisett’s death was announced Monday by Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit he helped establish under the name the Children’s Television Workshop. No cause of death was given.

In a statement, Sesame Workshop hailed Morrisett as a “wise, thoughtful, and above all kind leader” who was “constantly thinking about new ways” to educate.

Morrisett and Joan Ganz Cooney worked with Harvard University developmental psychologist Gerald Lesser to build the show’s unique approach to teaching that now reaches 120 million children. Legendary puppeteer Jim Henson supplied the critters.

“Without Lloyd Morrisett, there would be no Sesame Street. It was he who first came up with the notion of using television to teach preschoolers basic skills, such as letters and numbers,” Cooney said in a statement. “He was a trusted partner and loyal friend to me for over 50 years, and he will be sorely missed.”

Sesame Street is shown in more than 150 countries, has won 216 Emmys, 11 Grammys and in 2019 received the Kennedy Center Honor for lifetime artistic achievement, the first time a television program got the award (Big Bird strolled down the aisle and basically sat in Tom Hanks’ lap).

Born in 1929 in Oklahoma City, Morrisett initially trained to be a teacher with a background in psychology. He became an experimental educator, looking for new ways to educate children from less advantaged backgrounds. Morrisett received his bachelor’s at Oberlin College, did graduate work in psychology at UCLA, and earned his doctorate in experimental psychology at Yale University. He was an Oberlin trustee for many years and was chair of the board from 1975-81.

The seed of Sesame Street was sown over a dinner party in 1966, where he met Cooney.

“I said, ‘Joan, do you think television could be used to teach young children?’ Her answer was, ‘I don’t know, but I’d like to talk about it,’” he recalled to The Guardian in 2004.

The first episode of Sesame Street, sponsored by the letters W, S and E and the numbers 2 and 3, aired in the fall of 1969. It was a turbulent time in America, rocked by the Vietnam War and raw from the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. the year before.

Children’s programming at the time was made up of shows like Captain Kangaroo, Romper Room and the often-violent cartoon skirmishes between Tom & Jerry. Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood was mostly teaching social skills.

Sesame Street was designed by education professionals and child psychologists with one goal: to help low-income and minority students aged 2-5 overcome some of the deficiencies they had when entering school. Social scientists had long noted kids who were white and from higher-income families were often better prepared.

The show was set on an urban street with a multicultural cast. Diversity and inclusion were baked into the show. Monsters, humans and animals all lived together peacefully.

It became the first children’s program to feature someone with Down syndrome. It’s had puppets with HIV and in foster care, invited children in wheelchairs, dealt with topics like jailed parents, homelessness, women’s rights, military families and even girls singing about loving their hair.

It introduced the bilingual Rosita, the first Latina Muppet, in 1991. Julia, a 4-year-old Muppet with autism, came in 2017 and the show has since offered help for kids whose parents are dealing with addiction and recovery, and children suffering as a result of the Syrian civil war. To help kids after 9/11, Elmo was left traumatized by a fire at Hooper’s store but was soothingly told that firefighters were there to help.

The company said upon the news of his death that Lloyd left “an outsized and indelible legacy among generations of children the world over, with Sesame Street only the most visible tribute to a lifetime of good work and lasting impact.”

He is survived by his wife, Mary; daughters Julie and Sarah; and granddaughters Frances and Clara.
…

Top Chinese, Russian and American officials are visiting Africa, the world’s fastest-growing continent, this month. Several U.S. officials are in Africa, walking a fine line between their desire for Africa’s support against Russian aggression and Chinese ambitions, and their promise to do work that benefits the continent. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from Washington.
…

An asteroid the size of a delivery truck will whip past Earth on Thursday night, one of the closest such encounters ever recorded.

NASA said it will be a near miss with no chance of the asteroid hitting Earth.

NASA said Wednesday that the newly discovered asteroid will zoom 3,600 kilometers above the southern tip of South America. That’s 10 times closer than the bevy of communication satellites circling overhead.

The closest approach will occur at 7:27 p.m. EST (9:27 p.m. local.)

Even if the space rock came a lot closer, scientists said most of it would burn up in the atmosphere, with some of the bigger pieces possibly falling as meteorites.

NASA’s impact hazard assessment system, called Scout, quickly ruled out a strike, said its developer, Davide Farnocchia, an engineer at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

“Despite the very few observations, it was nonetheless able to predict that the asteroid would make an extraordinarily close approach with Earth,” Farnocchia said in a statement. “In fact, this is one of the closest approaches by a known near-Earth object ever recorded.”

2023 BU

Discovered Saturday, the asteroid known as 2023 BU is believed to be between 3.5 meters and 8.5 meters feet across. It was first spotted by the same amateur astronomer in Crimea, Gennadiy Borisov, who discovered an interstellar comet in 2019. Within a few days, dozens of observations were made by astronomers around the world, allowing them to refine the asteroid’s orbit.

Earth’s gravity will alter the path of the asteroid once it zips by. Instead of circling the sun every 359 days, the rock will move into an oval orbit lasting 425 days, according to NASA.
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An Afghan soldier seeking U.S. asylum who was detained for months after being arrested while trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border has been freed from immigration detention and reunited with his brother, his attorney said Wednesday. 

Abdul Wasi Safi’s release from custody in Eden, Texas, came after a judge dropped an immigration charge against him at the request of federal prosecutors. 

Wasi Safi fled Afghanistan following the withdrawal of U.S. forces in August 2021, fearing reprisals from the Taliban because he had provided U.S. forces with information on terrorists while working as an intelligence officer for the Afghan National Security Forces. In the summer of 2022, he began a treacherous journey from Brazil to the U.S.-Mexico border, where he was arrested in September near Eagle Pass, Texas. He had hoped to eventually be reunited with his brother, who lives in Houston. 

On Monday, a federal judge in Del Rio, Texas, dismissed the federal immigration charge after prosecutors had filed a motion asking her to do so “in the interest of justice.” 

Zachary Fertitta, one of his criminal defense attorneys, said Wednesday that Wasi Safi was receiving medical care at an undisclosed location but that he planned to speak at a news conference on Friday in Houston. 

Fertitta said Wasi Safi and his brother “are overjoyed to be reunited.” 

‘Not a danger’

Jennifer Cervantes, another of Wasi Safi’s immigration attorneys, said earlier Wednesday that she expected him to be transferred from U.S. Customs and Border Protection custody to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She said ICE would likely interview him but had no reason to keep him in custody. 

“He’s certainly not a danger to the United States. He’s done a lot of good service for the United States,” Cervantes said. 

U.S. Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, a Houston Democrat, belongs to a bipartisan group of lawmakers that had been working to free Wasi Safi. She said in a statement Tuesday night that she expected him to arrive in her hometown by Friday. 

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Customs and Border Protection and ICE, has not responded to an email seeking comment Wednesday. 

Sami-ullah Safi, Wasi Safi’s brother, was employed by the U.S. military for several years as a translator. Sami Safi said he was pleased the criminal case had been dropped but that he remained frustrated about how his sibling was treated in light of his family’s support for the U.S in Afghanistan. 

“If we categorize my brother’s service, how many lives he has saved because of his service, and how many lives I have saved because of my service being a combat translator?” Sami Safi said. 

Wasi Safi’s case was first reported by The Texas Tribune.

‘Serious’ health problems 

On his journey from Brazil to the U.S., Wasi Safi suffered serious injuries from beatings, including damaged front teeth and hearing loss in his right ear. 

“We are now working on his health condition, which has turned serious after months of neglect,” Zachary Fertitta, one of his criminal defense attorneys, said in an email Wednesday. 

The lawyers, lawmakers and military organizations that have been working to free Wasi Safi said his case highlights how America’s chaotic military withdrawal continues to harm Afghan citizens who helped the U.S. but were left behind. 

Nearly 76,000 Afghans who worked with American soldiers since 2001 as translators, interpreters and partners arrived in the U.S. on military planes after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. But their immigration status remains unclear after Congress failed to pass a proposed law, the Afghan Adjustment Act, that would have solidified their legal residency status. 

Cervantes said Wasi Safi’s case is not unique and that other Afghans seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border have also faced difficulty getting their cases properly reviewed. She said she hoped her work “sheds some light on that and [helps] these guys get what I think is the right thing to do, what I think is fair for them.” 
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The United States is “actively seeking to reengage” China on counternarcotics, including stopping the flow of illicit synthetic drugs like fentanyl into the U.S., said the State Department ahead of Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Beijing in early February.

U.S. officials admit engagement between the two countries on these issues “has been limited in recent months.”

“We don’t have any recent meetings to read out or to preview,” a State Department spokesperson told VOA on Tuesday, when asked if talks to combat fentanyl have been resumed after Beijing suspended collaboration with Washington on the issue in protest of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan last August.

“Though its past action has helped counter illicit synthetic drug flows, we do hope to see additional action from the PRC (People’s Republic of China) – meaningful, concrete action – to curb the diversion of precursor chemicals and equipment used by criminals to manufacture fentanyl and other synthetic drugs,” State Department spokesperson Ned Price told VOA this week.

In 2019, China added fentanyl-related substances to the list of controlled narcotic drugs.

While Beijing is no longer a major source of the synthetic opioid flowing to the United States, U.S. officials said Washington continues to see Chinese-origin precursor chemicals being used in illicit fentanyl production and other illicit synthetic drugs.

Bipartisan congressional majorities have approved legislation to prioritize U.S. efforts to combat international trafficking of covered synthetic drugs.

The FENTANYL Results Act was signed into law by U.S. President Joe Biden through the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023 at the end of last year.

Fentanyl is the leading killer of Americans between the ages of 18 and 49.

The FENTANYL Results Act would authorize programs through the State Department to build foreign law enforcement capacity to detect synthetic drugs and carry out an international exchange program for drug demand reduction experts, according to Democratic Representative David Trone and Republican Representative Michael McCaul, who co-authored the bill.

Trone said his nephew died of a fentanyl overdose alone in a hotel room.

A recent report by the U.S. Justice Department’s Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) underlined growing threats of an animal sedative called xylazine (often known as “tranq”) mixed with illicit fentanyl. The risk of overdose multiplies when xylazine is combined with fentanyl.

“A kilogram of xylazine powder can be purchased online from Chinese suppliers with common prices ranging from $6-$20 U.S. dollars per kilogram. At this low price, its use as an adulterant may increase the profit for illicit drug traffickers,” the DEA said in a report late last year.

On Dec. 15, 2021, the State Department announced a $5 million reward for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of Chuen Fat Yip, a Chinese national charged in a five-count federal indictment, including manufacturing and distributing a controlled substance knowing it will be unlawfully imported into the United States.

“We have no updates on Chuen Fat Yip,” a spokesperson told VOA when asked if the Chinese government is cooperating on his case.

Yihua Lee from VOA Mandarin contributed to this report.
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