The Federal Reserve raised interest rates by half a percentage point on Wednesday and projected at least an additional 75 basis points of increases in borrowing costs by the end of 2023 as well as a rise in unemployment and a near stalling of economic growth. 

The U.S. central bank’s projection of the target federal funds rate rising to 5.1% in 2023 is slightly higher than investors expected heading into this week’s two-day policy meeting and appeared biased if anything to move higher. 

Only two of 19 Fed officials saw the benchmark overnight interest rate staying below 5% next year, a signal they still feel the need to lean into their battle against inflation that has been running at 40-year highs. 

“The (Federal Open Market) Committee is highly attentive to inflation risks … Ongoing increases in the target range will be appropriate in order to attain a stance of monetary policy that is sufficiently restrictive to return inflation to 2% over time,” the Fed said in a statement nearly identical to the one it issued at its November meeting. 

The new statement, approved unanimously, was released after a meeting at which officials scaled back from the three-quarters-of-a-percentage-point rate increases that were delivered at the last four gatherings. The Fed’s policy rate, which began the year at the near-zero level, is now in a target range of 4.25% to 4.50%, the highest since late 2007. 

Fed Chair Jerome Powell is scheduled to hold a news conference at 2:30 p.m. EST (1930 GMT) to provide further details on the policy meeting, which was the last of 2022. 

The new rate outlook, a rough estimate of where officials feel they can pause their current rate-hike cycle, was issued along with economic projections showing an extended battle with inflation still to come, and with near recessionary conditions developing over the year. 

Inflation, based on the Fed’s preferred measure, is seen remaining above the central bank’s 2% target at least until the end of 2025, and will still be above 3% by the end of next year. 

The median projected unemployment rate is seen rising to 4.6% over the next year from the current 3.7%, an increase that exceeds the level historically associated with a recession. 

Gross domestic product is seen growing by just 0.5% next year, the same as estimated for 2022, before rising to 1.6% in 2024 and 1.8% in 2025, a level considered to be the economy’s long-run potential. 

 
…

Tolerance for Native American-themed sports mascots is wearing thin across the United States. New York is the latest state to ban them from public schools. Activists say conversations about the mascots — and respect and equality are long overdue. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias reports. Cecily Hilleary and Lynn Davis contributed to this report.
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A massive storm blowing across the country spawned tornadoes that wrecked homes and injured a handful of people in parts of Oklahoma and Texas, including the Dallas-Fort Worth area, as much of the central United States from the Rocky Mountains to the Midwest braced Tuesday for blizzard-like conditions.

An area stretching from Montana into western Nebraska and Colorado was under blizzard warnings, and the National Weather Service said as much as 61 centimeters of snow was possible in some areas of western South Dakota and northwestern Nebraska. Ice and sleet were expected in the eastern Great Plains.

Forecasters expect the storm system to hobble the upper Midwest with ice, rain and snow for days, as well as move into the Northeast and central Appalachians. Residents from West Virginia to Vermont were told to watch out for a possible significant mix of snow, ice and sleet, and the National Weather Service issued a winter storm watch from Wednesday night through Friday afternoon, depending on the timing of the storm.

The severe weather threat also continues into Wednesday for Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle, according to the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma.

In the South, a line of thunderstorms brought tornadoes, damaging winds, hail and heavy rain across North Texas and Oklahoma in the early morning hours, said National Weather Service meteorologist Tom Bradshaw. Authorities on Tuesday reported dozens of damaged homes and businesses and several people injured in the suburbs and counties stretching north of the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

The weather service examined about a dozen different areas across North Texas to determine if Tuesday’s damage was caused by high winds or tornadoes.

A tornado warning prompted the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport to issue a “shelter in place” order Tuesday morning, asking passengers to move away from windows, the airport announced via Twitter.

More than 1,000 flights into and out of area airports were delayed, and upwards of 100 were canceled, according to the tracking service FlightAware.

In the Fort Worth suburbs, about 20 local homes and businesses were damaged, according to the North Richland Hills police department.

In nearby Grapevine, police spokesperson Amanda McNew reported five confirmed injuries.

“The main thing is that we’ve got everyone in a safe place,” McNew said just after noon. “We’re starting the process of going through the city looking at damage to property, to businesses, homes and then roads.”

A possible tornado blew the roof off the city’s service center — a municipal facility — and left pieces of the roof hanging from powerlines, said Trent Kelley, deputy director of Grapevine Parks and Recreation. Tuesday was also trash day, so the storm picked up and scattered garbage all over, he said.

Photos sent by the city showed downed power lines on rain-soaked streets, as well as toppled trees, damaged buildings and a semitrailer that appeared to have been tossed around a parking lot.

Meanwhile, a tornado damaged the Oklahoma town of Wayne shortly after 5 a.m. Tuesday. There was widespread damage but no deaths or injuries, McClain County Sheriff’s Capt. Bryan Murrell said.

“We’ve got multiple family structures with significant damage … barns, power lines down,” Murrell said. The town is about 72 kilometers south of Oklahoma City.

National Weather Service meteorologist Doug Speheger said wind speeds reached 111-135 mph (179-211 kph) and the tornado was rated EF-2. It was likely on the ground for about two to four minutes, according to the weather service.

In parts of Iowa, Minnesota and South Dakota, the National Weather Service warned that up to about 2.5 centimeters of ice could form and winds could gust up to 72 kph. Power outages, tree damage, falling branches and hazardous travel conditions threatened the region.

All of western Nebraska was under a blizzard warning from Tuesday through Thursday, and the National Weather Service said up to 51 centimeters of snow was expected in the northwest. Winds of more than 80 kph at times will make it impossible to see outdoors, officials said.

The Nebraska Department of Transportation closed stretches of Interstate 80 and Interstate 76 as heavy snow and high winds made travel dangerous. The Nebraska State Patrol, which was called to deal with several crashes and jackknifed semitrailers overnight, urged people to stay off the roads.

“There’s essentially no one traveling right now,” said Justin McCallum, a manager at the Flying J truck stop at Ogallala, Nebraska.

In Colorado, all roads were closed in the northeast quadrant of the state. The severe weather in the ranching region could also threaten livestock. Extreme winds can push livestock through fences as they follow the gale’s direction, said Jim Santomaso, a northeast representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association.

“If this keeps up,” said Santomaso, “cattle could drift miles.”

In western South Dakota, a 418-kilometer stretch of Interstate 90 was closed Tuesday morning due to “freezing rain, heavy snow, and high winds,” the state’s Department of Transportation said. Interstate 29 was also expected to close and secondary highways will likely become “impassable,” the department said.

Xcel Energy, one of the region’s largest electric providers, had boosted staff in anticipation of power outages.

A blizzard warning has been issued on Minnesota’s north shore, as some areas are expecting up to 61 centimeters of snow and wind gusts up to 65 kph. And in the south of the state, winds gusting up to 80 kph had reduced visibility.

National Weather Service meteorologist Melissa Dye in the Twin Cities said this is a “long duration event” with snow, ice and rain through Friday night. Minnesota was expecting a lull Wednesday, followed by a second round of snow.

Wet roadways are just as dangerous when temperatures hover around freezing, Dye said.

The same weather system dumped heavy snow in the Sierra Nevada and western U.S. in recent days.
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A stopgap spending bill to avoid a partial shutdown of the U.S. federal government began moving through the House of Representatives on Tuesday, as Congress scampered to meet a midnight Friday deadline when existing funds expire.

The one-week, government-wide funding bill is designed to give lawmakers additional time to finish negotiations on a year-long “omnibus” spending bill that would expire on September 30, 2023, the end of the current fiscal year.

A first, procedural vote on the legislation was set for Wednesday.

The larger of the two bills is expected to appropriate more than $1.5 trillion for the U.S. military and a range of non-military programs. The measure is also expected to contain new emergency funds to aid Ukraine in its battle against Russian forces.

Ukraine could get billions more, after Biden asked Congress last month for $37 billion.

The House was expected to pass the one-week “continuing resolution” on Wednesday or Thursday, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a Democrat, told reporters.

“We have no intention of shutting down the government of the United States, which is costly and harmful in almost every respect,” he said.

Once passed by the House, it would be sent quickly to the Senate for passage no later than Friday, in time for President Joe Biden to sign it into law.

Then, all attention would shift to the omnibus bill next week. Besides containing the aid to Ukraine, it also is expected to fold in an unrelated bill reforming the way Congress certifies U.S. presidential elections.

The latter is aimed at avoiding a repeat of the deadly turmoil of January 6, 2021, when supporters of then-President Donald Trump tried to stop the certification of Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election.

Negotiations continued on other parts of the large spending bill, including increases to non-military spending that Democrats, who narrowly control Congress, want in the face of Republican opposition.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell warned his Republicans want work on the omnibus bill wrapped up by December 22. “We intend to be on the road going home on the 23rd,” he told reporters.

Failure to reach agreement by then, he added, would mean that another temporary funding bill, going into early next year, would be necessary.

That is a result Democrats — and some Republicans — want to avoid as the negotiations on the funding bill would get more complicated next year, when Republicans take majority control of the House.

Conservative Republicans have been clamoring for deep domestic spending cuts Democrats want to avoid.

“There’s a lot of work left to do,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat said. “But we’re optimistic that if we preserve the good faith we’ve seen so far, we will get there.”
…

U.S. prosecutors announced criminal charges on Tuesday against five Russians and two Americans, disrupting what they described as a network used to obtain military technology and ammunition for Russia’s military.

The group is accused of conspiring to obtain military grade and dual-use technologies from American companies for Russia’s defense industry, and to smuggle ammunition for sniper rifles, in violation of new U.S. sanctions, the Justice Department said in a statement.

The accused were allegedly affiliated with two Moscow-based companies linked to Russian intelligence that were sanctioned following Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine, according to the 16-count indictment.

The investigation into the scheme was coordinated by Task Force KleptoCapture, an interagency law enforcement initiative launched in March in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“We will continue the steady pace of seizures, indictments and arrests, while the Kremlin is shopping for spare parts in North Korea,” Andrew Adams, director of Task Force KleptoCapture, said in a statement.

The five Russian defendants were identified as Yevgeniy Grinin, 44, Aleksey Ippolitov, 57, and Boris Livshits, 52, Svetlana Skvortsova, 41, and Vadim Konoshchenok, 48.

The two American defendants are Alexey Brayman, 35, of New Hampshire and Vadim Yermolenko, 41, of New Jersey.

Yermolenko was arrested in New Jersey, and Brayman surrendered to the FBI earlier on Tuesday.

Konoshchenok was detained by Estonian authorities last week at the request of the United States and is awaiting extradition, the Justice Department said.

The other defendants remain at large.

According to the indictment, the defendants were affiliated with Serniya Engineering and Sertal LLC, both of which operate under the direction of Russian intelligence services to obtain advanced technologies for the country’s military sector.

Serniya, Sertal and several companies suspected in the conspiracy were sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury and Commerce Department following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“The Department of Justice and our international partners will not tolerate criminal schemes to bolster the Russian military’s war efforts,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement. “With three of the defendants now in custody, we have disrupted the procurement network allegedly used by the defendants and Russian intelligence services to smuggle sniper rifle ammunition and sensitive electronic components into Russia.”

The defendants face charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States related to the enforcement of export controls and economic sanctions; conspiracy to violate the Export Control Reform Act (ECRA); smuggling; and failure to comply with the Automated Export System relating to the transportation of electronics.

If convicted of bank fraud or bank fraud conspiracy, the defendants face a maximum of 30 years in prison.
…

The U.S. Department of Energy announced Tuesday that its scientists have been able to engineer a nuclear fusion reaction that produced more energy than it consumed, a landmark achievement in a decades-long search for a way to generate clean and waste-free nuclear power.

The experiment was held at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

“This is a landmark achievement for the researchers and staff at the National Ignition Facility who have dedicated their careers to seeing fusion ignition become a reality, and this milestone will undoubtedly spark even more discovery,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a statement

The announcement comes at a time when the Biden administration has directed renewed effort and funding to the development of clean power generation, with a particular emphasis on fusion energy. The recently passed Inflation Reduction Act contained significant funding for research in the field.

Just because scientists have been able to engineer an energy-positive fusion reaction does not mean that any meaningful changes to the way humans generate power are on the horizon. Experts said that while the work is important, daunting technological barriers remain in the way of systems that could deploy fusion energy at scale.

A long journey

Scientists have long known that when two atoms are fused together to form a new element, large amounts of energy are released. The sun, for example, is essentially an enormous fusion reactor in which superheated particles come together with tremendous force, forming new particles and releasing excess energy as heat.

As long ago as the 1940s, scientists began experimenting with fusion reactors. While they have long been able to generate fusion reactions, until now, those reactions have always required inputs of energy that exceeded the amount they ultimately produced.

The reason a net-positive fusion reaction has been so elusive is in large part because scientists have to generate extreme conditions in the laboratory in order to make the reactions occur. Typically, enormous lasers are used to heat isotopes of hydrogen to temperatures in the millions of degrees Celsius. The resulting plasma is then confined under extremely high pressure, causing the isotopes to come together with enough force that they fuse into a different element, releasing energy as heat when they do.

Enormous engineering challenges

Maintaining equipment that can tolerate such extreme temperatures is extraordinarily difficult, and finding a way to create reactors that can tolerate the stresses involved in the process for long periods of time is one of the many challenges facing researchers in the field.

Ian H. Hutchinson, a professor of nuclear science and engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology said that it was important not to read too much into preliminary reports, noting that prior to the official announcement few details of what, precisely, the scientists at the NIF have achieved was known.

“It seems an important scientific confirmation of inertial fusion ignition, but I would hesitate to call it a ‘breakthrough,’” Hutchinson said in an email exchange with VOA. “The NIF program is not aimed at fusion energy production but at understanding fusion explosions. Useful energy production from miniature fusion explosions still faces enormous engineering challenges, and we don’t know if those challenges can be overcome.”

The NIF is most closely associated with the United States’ nuclear weapons program, and its primary purpose is to recreate nuclear explosions on a small and controllable scale, allowing for the maintenance of the country’s nuclear arsenal without the need for destructive full-scale testing.

Benefits of fusion

There are several reasons why scientists have spent so many years in search of a means of making fusion reactors viable sources of energy.

If fusion reactors were to replace fossil fuels as an energy source, it would dramatically reduce the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere, reducing one source of global warming.  

Unlike fission reactors, which use highly enriched radioactive materials like uranium and plutonium as fuel, fusion reactors can theoretically be fueled by hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe, meaning that the fuel supply for a fusion reactor is essentially infinite.

Also, unlike fission reactors, fusion reactors do not produce highly radioactive waste, eliminating the need to safely store materials that will continue to be dangerous, in some cases, for thousands of years.

Finally, despite the extreme conditions under which fusion occurs, fusion reactors are considered to be safer to operate than fission reactors, which must be constantly monitored in order to avoid conditions leading to destabilization and explosion. In the two worst nuclear disasters in history, explosions at nuclear facilities at Chernobyl in the Soviet Union in 1986 and at Fukushima in Japan in 2011 forced the evacuation of thousands of people and rendered vast expanses of both countries uninhabitable.
…

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has charged the former CEO of failed cryptocurrency firm FTX with orchestrating a scheme to defraud investors.

An SEC complaint filed Tuesday alleges that Sam Bankman-Fried raised more than $1.8 billion from equity investors since May 2019 by promoting FTX as a safe, responsible platform for trading crypto assets.

The civil complaint says Bankman-Fried diverted customer funds to Alameda Research LLC, his privately-held crypto fund, without telling them. The complaint also says Bankman-Fried commingled FTX customers’ funds at Alameda to make undisclosed venture investments, lavish real estate purchases, and large political donations.

“Bankman-Fried placed billions of dollars of FTX customer funds into Alameda. He then used Alameda as his personal piggy bank to buy luxury condominiums, support political campaigns, and make private investments, among other uses,” the complaint reads. “None of this was disclosed to FTX equity investors or to the platform’s trading customers.”

Alameda did not segregate FTX investor funds and Alameda investments, the SEC said, using that money to “indiscriminately fund its trading operations,” as well as other ventures of Bankman-Fried.

“We allege that Sam Bankman-Fried built a house of cards on a foundation of deception while telling investors that it was one of the safest buildings in crypto,” said SEC Chair Gary Gensler. “The alleged fraud committed by Mr. Bankman-Fried is a clarion call to crypto platforms that they need to come into compliance with our laws.”

Bankman-Fried was arrested Monday in the Bahamas at the request of the U.S. government, U.S. and Bahamian authorities said.

The arrest was made after the U.S. filed criminal charges that are expected to be unsealed Tuesday, according to U.S. Attorney Damian Williams. Bankman-Fried had been under criminal investigation by U.S. and Bahamian authorities following the collapse last month of FTX, which filed for bankruptcy on Nov. 11, when it ran out of money after the cryptocurrency equivalent of a bank run.

The SEC charges are separate from the criminal charges expected to be unsealed later Tuesday.

A spokesman for Bankman-Fried had no comment Monday evening. Bankman-Fried has a right to contest his extradition, which could delay but not likely stop his transfer to the U.S.

Bankman-Fried’s arrest comes just a day before he was due to testify in front of the House Financial Services Committee. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., chairwoman of the committee, said she was “disappointed” that the American public, and FTX’s customers, would not get to see Bankman-Fried testify under oath.

That hearing, however, will be held Tuesday despite the arrest of Bankman-Fried.

Bankman-Fried was one of the world’s wealthiest people on paper, with an estimated net worth of $32 billion. He was a prominent personality in Washington, donating millions of dollars toward mostly left-leaning political causes and Democratic political campaigns. FTX grew to become the second-largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world.

That all unraveled quickly last month, when reports called into question the strength of FTX’s balance sheet. Customers moved to withdraw billions of dollars, but FTX could not meet all the requests because it apparently used its customers deposits to cover bad bets at Bankman-Fried’s investment arm, Alameda Research.

Bankman-Fried said recently that he did not “knowingly” misuse customers’ funds, and said he believes his millions of angry customers will eventually be made whole.

The SEC challenged that assertion Tuesday in its complaint.

“FTX operated behind a veneer of legitimacy Mr. Bankman-Fried created by, among other things, touting its best-in-class controls, including a proprietary ‘risk engine,’ and FTX’s adherence to specific investor protection principles and detailed terms of service. But as we allege in our complaint, that veneer wasn’t just thin, it was fraudulent,” said Gurbir Grewal, director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. “FTX’s collapse highlights the very real risks that unregistered crypto asset trading platforms can pose for investors and customers alike.”
…

Abigail Kinoiki Kekaulike Kawananakoa, the so-called last Hawaiian princess whose lineage included the royal family that once ruled the islands and an Irish businessman who became one of Hawaii’s largest landowners, died on Sunday. She was 96.

Her death was announced Monday morning at ‘Iolani Palace, America’s only royal residence where the Hawaiian monarchy dwelled but now serves mostly as a museum. The announcement came from Paula Akana, executive director of Iolani Palace, and Hailama Farden of Hale O Na Ali’i O Hawaii, a royal Hawaiian society.

No cause of death was given.

She held no formal title but was a living reminder of Hawaii’s monarchy and a symbol of Hawaiian national identity that endured after the kingdom was overthrown by American businessmen in 1893.

“She was always called princess among Hawaiians because Hawaiians have acknowledged that lineage,” Kimo Alama Keaulana, assistant professor of Hawaiian language and studies at Honolulu Community College, said in a 2018 interview. “Hawaiians hold dear to genealogy. And so genealogically speaking, she is of high royal blood.”

He called her “the last of our alii,” using the Hawaiian word for royalty: “She epitomizes what Hawaiian royalty is – in all its dignity and intelligence and art.”

James Campbell, her great-grandfather, was an Irish businessman who made his fortune as a sugar plantation owner and one of Hawaii’s largest landowners.

He married Abigail Kuaihelani Maipinepine Bright. Their daughter, Abigail Campbell Kawananakoa, married Prince David Kawananakoa, who was named an heir to the throne.

After the prince died, his widow adopted young Abigail, which strengthened her claim to a princess title. She acknowledged in an interview with Honolulu Magazine in 2021 that had the monarchy survived, her cousin Edward Kawananakoa would be in line to be the ruler, not her.

“Of course, I would be the power behind the throne, there’s no question about that,” she joked.

As an only child of an only child, Kawananakoa received more Campbell money than anyone else and amassed a trust valued at about $215 million.

She funded various causes over the years, including scholarships for Native Hawaiian students, opposing Honolulu’s rail transit project, supporting protests against a giant telescope, donating items owned by King Kalakaua and Queen Kapi’olani for public display, including a 14-carat diamond from the king’s pinky ring, and maintaining Iolani Palace.

Critics have said because there are other remaining descendants of the royal family who don’t claim any titles, Kawananakoa was held up as the last Hawaiian princess simply because of her wealth and honorific title.

Hawaiian activist Walter Ritte said many Hawaiians aren’t interested in whether she was a princess and that her impact on Indigenous culture was minimal.

“We didn’t quite understand what her role was and how she could help us,” Ritte said.

Many Hawaiians couldn’t relate to her, he said. “We call it the high maka-maks,” he said using a Hawaii Pidgin term that can mean upper class.

Born in Honolulu, Kawananakoa was educated at Punahou, a prestigious prep school. She also attended an American school in Shanghai and graduated from the all-female Notre Dame High School in Belmont, California, where she was a boarding student.

She was engaged briefly to a man, but most of her long-term relationships were with women.

“She was always curious about what people would do for money,” said Jim Wright, who was her personal attorney since 1998 until she fired him in 2017 during a bitter court battle over control of her trust.

He recalled a time when the bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Honolulu asked for a $100,000 gift to mark the canonization of St. Marianne. She told him she would give the church the money only if she could get a photo of Pope Benedict XVI accepting her check, Wright said.

When the bishop agreed, Kawananakoa was disappointed. “She was really hoping they would tell her to buzz off,” Wright said.

Meanwhile, she found the Dalai Lama’s refusal to accept her monetary gifts in 2012 pleasing, Wright said: “She was so pleased that somebody actually had some integrity.”

One of her passions was breeding racehorses.

She was inducted into the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame in 2018, with the American Quarter Horse Association noting she was the industry’s “all-time leading female breeder at the reins of an operation that has produced the earners of more than $10 million.”

One of her horses, A Classic Dash, won $1 million in 1993 in New Mexico’s All-American Futurity.

Aside from drawing attention with her racehorses, Kawananakoa gained notoriety when she sat on an Iolani Palace throne for a Life magazine photo shoot in 1998. She damaged some of its fragile threads.

The uproar led to her ouster as president of Friends of Iolani Palace, a position she had held for more than 25 years.

The battle over control of her trust began when a judge approved Wright as a trustee after she suffered a stroke. She claimed she wasn’t impaired, fired Wright and married Veronica Gail Worth, her partner of 20 years.

Court filings in the case alleged the wife physically abused Kawananakoa. Attorneys for the couple disputed the claims.

In 2018, Kawananakoa attempted to amend her trust to ensure that her wife would receive $40 million and all her personal property, according to court records.

In 2020, a judge ruled that Kawananakoa was unable to manage her property and business affairs because she was impaired.

For hearings in the case, her wife would drive them to a handicapped stall near the back entrance of a downtown Honolulu courthouse in a black Rolls Royce.

“My wife? Oh, wifey,” she said in a video interview her publicist released in 2019 to respond to allegations raised in the court case, including how her wife was treating her. “If it wasn’t for Gail, I wouldn’t be as normal as you see me now,” she said in the video showing her coiffed hair, made-up face and red manicure.

It was “heartbreaking,” she said, to be unable to fulfill her obligation to the Hawaiian people amid legal wrangling over her trust.

“My heritage dictates that I must take care of the Hawaiian people,” she said during one court hearing.
…

Veteran federal prosecutor Andrew Adams is the director of the Justice Department’s Task Force KleptoCapture, an interagency initiative launched in March to enforce sweeping sanctions that the United States and its allies imposed in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

On Thursday, Adams, during a visit to Washington, sat down with VOA Justice Correspondent Masood Farivar to discuss the task force’s investigations and asset seizures, the challenges it faces, and the unprecedented level of cooperation between law enforcement agencies.

The following transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

VOA: It’s been more than nine months since the attorney general [Merrick Garland] launched the Task Force KleptoCapture and appointed you as director. Can you give us an update on the task force’s activities to date and how the asset seizure process is going?

Andrew Adams: In the early days of the task force, we locked down, we seized a few mega yachts, one in Spain, one in Fiji. We took some action against bank accounts and financial institution accounts here in the U.S. and abroad. And we were engaged heavily in providing information to our foreign partners so that they, too, could take similar kinds of steps.

Since then, we have seen essentially an escalating series of seizures. It has included real estate, it has included airplanes and other luxury assets. And at the same time, you’re beginning to see the fruits of a secondary focus, which has been on facilitation. Separate and apart from people who are on the sanctions list or entities that are on the sanctions list, what we have been looking at from the jump has been money laundering and sanctions evasion committed by people who are not on those lists but professional money launderers.

In the last several weeks, what you’re seeing are the fruits of that effort in the form of criminal indictments against people like [British businessman] Graham Bonham-Carter with respect to Mr. [Oleg] Deripaska and others who are essentially professional money movers engaged in poking holes in the sanctions regime.

VOA: And who else falls under that category of facilitator? Is it banks, is it brokers, who are they?

Adams: What we look at are really any kind of gatekeepers to the otherwise legitimate financial system. So you’re right, we look at banks, but we look at financial institutions more broadly. We look at family funds, hedge funds, venture capital funds. We look at cryptocurrency and more novel fintech institutions where there may be opportunities to move money. We look at real estate brokers, dealers, security brokers, dealers. Truly across the spectrum of the financial sector.

VOA: The last number on seized elite Russian assets was roughly $39 billion to $40 billion. Do you have a more up-to-date figure?

Adams: In some ways, it is hard to encapsulate the number, especially when you’re looking internationally. And I think the number that you’re citing is an international …

VOA: U.S. and international …

Adams: That’s right. So it can be difficult in some ways, in part because there are different kinds of powers at play here – differences, for example, between our seizure power which has targeted hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of assets, including yachts, including real estate, and freezing power, which is short of a seizure, but in some ways is as effective, certainly can be as effective.

VOA: And how much of the assets have been seized by the U.S. versus U.S. partners? Do you have a breakdown?

Adams: With respect to seizure and forfeiture, the U.S. has, I think, taken a leading role in that respect. Globally, in terms of freezing and holding assets in place under the powers that look a lot like our Treasury’s blocking powers, that’s certainly been a focus for us…but it is the case that most assets that are targeted in the world are outside of the United States. And that figure, I think, is relatively large within the EU and globally. And what I would emphasize on that, again, is the power of that freezing is potentially just as powerful in terms of blocking the Russian military from arming itself, the Russian state from conducting its otherwise illegal business.

VOA: Now some of the seized assets have been transferred to the U.S., such as the superyacht that was sailed from Fiji to San Diego a few months ago. What is the status of that yacht and other assets that have been moved to the U.S.?

Adams: So the process for fully forfeiting an asset, a yacht for example, includes both the seizure, the transport of it to the U.S. and ultimately the filing of a civil forfeiture complaint if there is going to be litigation over the disposition of the asset.

I expect that assuming that we go all the way down the line with no agreements, we would have to file a civil forfeiture complaint. And we do that relatively expeditiously, a matter of months in some cases, and during that process, the investigation continues.

VOA: Have any of these lawsuits been fully adjudicated?

Adams: Nothing that has been seized has been fully adjudicated as yet. We have recently filed some civil forfeiture complaints targeting some bank accounts most recently tied to [Russian billionaire and close Putin ally] Konstantin Malofeev, and so that you’ll begin to see movement on the civil side there. And actually, just yesterday [December 7], we filed a civil complaint through the Eastern District of New York targeting two real properties, townhomes in Los Angeles tied to Andrii Derkach [a Ukrainian businessman and former member of Ukraine’s parliament who was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2020].

VOA: Do you expect any legal challenges from the owners of these assets? Could that complicate the process of selling off the assets?

Adams: We certainly expect challenges. I expect challenges from not just the owners of the assets, but from people who are paid to pretend that they are the owners of the assets. … I fully expect that they will be well-financed. And it’s a challenge that we’re ready to meet.

VOA: Has anyone filed a challenge to date?

Adams: Publicly, no one has filed a challenge on any of the publicly filed complaints. We have had outreach from people prefiling and we’re dealing with that in due course.

VOA: I have a question about the maintenance of the assets. I take it the DOJ currently maintains assets that have been transferred to the U.S. What is the cost of their maintenance cost?

Adams: When we take possession, when we seize an asset, that’s correct, we do undertake to maintain the asset. The reason for that is twofold. First, it’s because it maintains the resale value of the asset. … The second is it’s really a question of due process. When we take the seizure, we are at least temporarily divorcing that asset from someone who claims to be the rightful owner. And it’s our obligation to undertake the asset and to make sure that it doesn’t effectively disappear before we have a chance and before potential claimants have a chance to put in their claims and to test the government and in court, if need be. That due process commitment is one that I think is vitally important to the entire program that we are undertaking here and distinguishes us from authoritarian regimes where straight confiscation without due process of law is a matter of course.

VOA: The Justice Department has in the past asked Congress for statutory authority to transfer the proceeds of these confiscated assets to [pay] for Ukraine’s reconstruction.

There’s bipartisan support for that measure in Congress, but Congress hasn’t acted. Do you expect to receive that authority and eventually transfer the funds to Ukraine?

Adams: The request for that authority to streamline and to clarify our ability to make these assets ultimately available for Ukrainian reconstruction is a priority for the department. It really undergirds the entire program here. The point of these asset seizures is to make the assets available. And it is the case today that there are certain restrictions on how we can dispose of forfeited assets. That requires some legislative fix to fully implement what we hope to be able to do. I’ve seen a lot of activity on the Hill, in Congress and with our Office of Legislative Affairs. I’m optimistic that we’ll continue to press this forward. It’s clearly a priority and deeply felt priority for people across the spectrum here in the U.S.

VOA: And as soon as you receive the authority, you can start transferring funds to Ukraine. How soon could that happen?

Adams: With that authority in place, hypothetically, we would be able to transfer fully forfeited assets to Ukraine. The notion here is not to have a shortcut around due process. The idea here is to ensure that we have a mechanism in place under the law to get dollars from point A to point B, after a full due process is undertaken.

VOA: But you don’t have any assets that have been fully forfeited.

Adams: That’s right. In the first few months of the task force, seizures have occurred, filings have occurred, but this is a process that can take longer.

VOA: Help our audience understand how you go about doing your work, identifying assets to seize. The Treasury Department has published lists of sanctioned entities and individuals, and I believe there’s over a hundred of them. Do you work off of those lists? Are those entities and individuals being investigated by your task force?

Adams: We’ve taken a two-pronged approach. The first is to think about our priority targets based on entities and individuals who are on OFAC [Office of Foreign Assets Control] Sanctions List and on the Commerce Department Entity List. … Beyond that, we are looking at facilitators, people who are not necessarily on that list, but who are potential gateways for sanctions evasion, potential gateways for money laundering and targets of opportunity.

VOA: How do you identify those facilitators?

Adams: A number of ways. I mean, we take an approach that we take to really any organized crime task force here. We are looking at confidential sources. We talk to witnesses. We talk to whistleblowers. We talked to the private sector all the time to get indications of red flags and problems. And we use all the tools available in any good, organized crime investigation. We’re talking about search warrants. We’re collecting data through subpoenas. We’re collecting data through intelligence methods, for example, truly any tool to bear is being brought to bear to build these cases.

VOA: Given the very large number of entities and individuals that have been sanctioned, you must have a lot of investigations often interconnected and perhaps overlapping going on at the same time. Can you give me a sense of how many investigations you have ongoing?

Adams: Oh, dozens, dozens of investigations at any given moment. The task force, it is important to note, builds off DOJ’s [Department of Justice] long-standing commitment to fighting kleptocracy. So there are and have been cases where people who fall within our ambit have been on the radar for some time. And those cases are in some in some cases quite mature. … So prosecutors around the country, hundreds of prosecutors who have thought about this problem for years, are now being focused, channeled and having resources devoted to their efforts, and meeting with international cooperation to a truly unprecedented degree. But what that means is the dozens of cases that have existed are now complemented by dozens, truly dozens of cases that have arisen since the initiation of the task force and are now seeing essentially a springboard in resources and international mirroring.

VOA: Financial crime investigations, organized crime investigations are notoriously time-consuming. Do you have the resources to speed up the process to actually produce results while the war is going on?

Adams: We do today, and in large part that’s because we have international cooperation and international buy-in in an unprecedented degree. The world one year ago looked very different than it does today, in terms of our laws as compared to the laws of our European partners, our partners in the United Kingdom, our partners across the globe. Today, the existence of sanctions regimes in those foreign partners that look like ours gives us the ability to bring a request for a search, bring a request for an arrest, bring a request for a seizure to a foreign partner and have it recognized instantly as valid and something that can be enacted under their own laws. That greatly speeds up our process both for investigation and for taking action, and it’s the reason that in the short time period that the task force has existed, we’ve seen some real successes across the globe.

VOA: Do any U.S. allies or other countries, particularly stand out in terms of their robust sanctions enforcement and the level of cooperation and coordination that they have engaged in?

Adams: I’d say two things on that: There are certainly long-standing partners who continue to be linchpins in this effort. In the United Kingdom and in the EU and EU member states, we see cooperation, truly every day in any number of cases across the department. But with a particular focus today on this problem set and that’s only strengthened over the last 10 months that we’ve been doing this. It’s also the case that we find partnership sometimes more, more quiet partnership in pockets of the world that I think have historically been viewed as more difficult to operate in as U.S. law enforcement, more opaque from investigation. But where we are seeing indications of cooperation and sometimes sharing of information that makes our makes our seizures and makes our, our investigations more streamlined and, in some cases, possible.

One thing that the task force has undertaken to do is to bring cases where we see cases and to speak as publicly as possible and as quickly as possible about our investigations where we see a problem. So we’ve unsealed affidavits in situations that are more aggressive than the typical DOJ policy for unsealing affidavits. And the point there is to give a clear picture and a clear roadmap for our investigations so the people in the private sector, at banks and insurance companies at maritime services companies, aviation services companies, can see our work, see how we have built this case, see the names of entities and shell companies’ structures, straw men and cutouts, and take their own action to cut those people and those entities out of the legitimate financial sector, even if we can’t find cooperation in a particular jurisdiction.

VOA: In terms of the targets of your investigation, it’s not just the Russian elite, Russian oligarchs with ties to the Kremlin that you’re investigating. Ukraine has its own share of corrupt oligarchs, as does Belarus, a Russian ally. Just yesterday [December 7] the Justice Department announced the indictment of Ukrainian oligarch Andrii Derkach. Can you talk about those cases? To what extent is your task force focused on non-Russian oligarchs that have assisted the Kremlin?

Adams: The focus I would say is on the political regime in the Kremlin. It’s not a nationality specific program here. And it’s the case that there are Americans, there are U.K. citizens who have been targeted and arrested in this, in this effort. The problem is global in that respect.

And the other point that I would make on this is that oligarchs are among, I think, the most prominent targets and certainly the ones that we talk about publicly the most. But it is not coextensive with the full set of targets here. People who are on the OFAC sanctions list go well beyond rich oligarchs. In some cases, we’re talking about particular companies that are critical to the Russian military and Russian intelligence services. In some cases, we’re talking about politically well-connected people within the Kremlin sphere of influence who may not be the billionaires that we think of when we talk about oligarchs.

VOA: Derkach can’t possibly be the only Ukrainian or Russian oligarch with illicit assets in violation of U.S. sanctions in the U.S. I know you can’t talk about ongoing investigations, but are you looking at those types of people in the U.S.? How many of those cases are you investigating?

Adams: Yes, we’re looking at both people and assets who are in the U.S., both in terms of oligarchs who may have assets in the United States that represent the proceeds of a sanctions violation. And you’ve seen now the Derkach case just yesterday, the Deripaska indictment has publicly listed certain assets, real estate and, in some cases, very extravagant real estate in the criminal indictment, as forfeitable property. So we are looking at that in the United States. But the other point that I think is worth keeping in mind for understanding the international scope of what we’re trying to do, the United States has had a robust sanctions regime targeting Russian oligarchs, targeting the Russian war machine since late 2014 at the, at the very latest, and that was in response to the original Crimea invasion.

Since that time this has been a focus of different pockets of the DOJ. … And as a result, the United States has for the better part of a decade, not been a friendly jurisdiction for Russian sanctioned oligarchs to park their money or to park their real estate. We see it and we see efforts to evade those U.S. sanctions because the United States is an attractive place to keep extremely nice real estate and to keep your bank accounts in a steady economy. But it has been the case for almost a decade that this has been a target set. And as a result … many of these assets are more likely to be held abroad and that our actions, even under U.S. law, will require us to work internationally.

VOA: You’ve been active in this space for a number of years, investigating financial crimes and bad actors connected to the Kremlin. Critics say the problem should have been confronted head-on a long time ago and that it took Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for the U.S. and its allies to really focus on this problem. How do you respond to that?

Adams: Well, I know certainly within DOJ that there have been people dedicated to the problem for, for years. At the money laundering unit within the Southern District, this has been a priority. At DOJ, there’s been a kleptocracy unit with a particular expertise in Ukraine for a decade now, with some significant success. The difference between now, from my perspective, and a year ago, is the international ability to operate. Watching other countries enact their own sanctions, enact their own criminalization of sanctions evasion is a game-changer for the United States.

Also, we may be able to investigate and have many of these cases essentially ready to go without an opportunity to take action abroad or to take critical investigative steps abroad, unless our laws are mirrored to some extent abroad.

And in the last several months, we’ve seen that mirroring happening to an unprecedented degree. And a logjam really being broken in that respect. With that realignment in an unprecedented way, you’re seeing an unprecedented number of arrests and seizures.

VOA: What’s been the role of the Ukrainian government in all of this?

Adams: So my interaction with the Ukrainian government has been entirely impressive from my perspective.

Since taking this role, I’ve been in contact with counterparts in Ukraine at the Ministry of Justice and their prosecutor general’s office. And it is hard to overstate the effort and the commitment that those men and women have had over these months, working from bomb shelters, working remotely from points of exile and then returning to Kyiv to continue this effort. They are working in horribly dire straits. But what they are doing from at least as it intersects with my work, is continuing to drive investigations of an overlapping set of targets, looking at oligarchs, looking at sanctioned individuals. And facilitating our investigations by collecting information, providing information where it’s useful and getting the United States in a position to take whatever action we can to assist Ukraine. And at the same time, what we are looking to do, is to make available information and make available opportunities for Ukraine to meet its own success under its own laws, if and when they see opportunities to act there.

VOA: The task force has been a key part of the Biden administration’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. What impact do you think you’ve had on Russia’s warfighting capabilities?

Adams: I think we certainly see a decrease in economic activity writ large. We see people from Western countries divesting from [Russia] quickly, part of that is out of a moral and ethical responsibility. Part of that, I think, is because they see the sanctions as essentially insurmountable from a financial perspective. The other aspect that I think has been particularly impactful has been not on the economic sanctions but on export controls: the Commerce Department powers to shut down the importation of semiconductors, the importation of dual-use technology that can go into the creation of high-tech weaponry and to shut down even the transportation of lower-tech munitions and ammunition. That I think has a real impact on the Russian military, and essentially, every time that we stop a semiconductor from transiting the border, every time we stop a bullet from crossing over the Russian border is a life saved.

VOA: Finally, moving forward, what role do you see for the task force in the post-war period?

Adams: Our focus is truly and squarely on this particular emergency at this particular time. I think that we have lessons learned in terms of how to construct an emergency response to a truly multilateral sanctions enforcement effort that may be useful in other contexts. But our focus has been squarely on Russia and will continue to be so.
…

The body and possessions of soccer journalist Grant Wahl were repatriated to the United States on Monday after his death last week while covering the World Cup in Qatar, a senior State Department official said.

The official said Wahl’s remains and his belongings arrived at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport around 8:30 a.m. ET. They were accompanied by a consular official from the U.S. Embassy in Doha who had had custody of Wahl’s remains since shortly after he collapsed during Friday’s match between Argentina and the Netherlands and later died.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of privacy concerns, had no additional details but said the embassy in Qatar had been working with Wahl’s family to ensure the repatriation went smoothly.

Wahl, an American journalist who helped grow the popularity of soccer in the United States and reported on some of the biggest stories in the sport, was 49.

Tributes to Wahl have poured in since his death and on Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken added his voice to the chorus of appreciation.

“I so appreciated Grant Wahl, whose writing captured not only the essence of the beautiful game but also the world around it,” Blinken wrote on Twitter about an hour after the repatriation was complete.

“I send my deepest condolences to his family, and thank our embassy team and Qatari partners who worked together so effectively to fulfill their wishes,” Blinken wrote.

Wahl, who had complained of respiratory problems earlier in the week and had been treated for a possible case of bronchitis, fell back in his seat in a section of Lusail Stadium reserved for journalists during extra time of the game, and reporters adjacent to him called for assistance.

Emergency services workers responded very quickly, treated him for 20 or 30 minutes on site and then took him out on a stretcher. The World Cup organizing committee said he was taken to Doha’s Hamad General Hospital, but it did not state a cause of death.

Wahl wrote for Sports Illustrated for more than two decades and then started his own website. He was a major voice informing an American public of soccer during a time of increased interest after the United States hosted the 1994 World Cup.

He also brought a critical eye to the international organizing bodies of the sport.
…

The FBI said on Monday that the number of U.S. police departments reporting hate crimes plummeted last year as it shifted to a new crime reporting system, but participating agencies continued to report an overall increase in hate crimes.

In its closely watched annual hate crime report, the FBI said about 4,000 of the nation’s more than 18,000 law enforcement agencies did not report any hate crime last year, lowering police departments’ rate of participation in the FBI’s data collection to nearly 65% from 93% the previous year.

The FBI’s annual report is widely used as a broad measure of hate crimes in America. The sharp drop in the number of police agencies reporting data to the agency makes it difficult to tell whether hate crimes rose or fell last year even as other data indicate an overall upward trend.

Asked whether the report renders any year-on-year data comparisons meaningless, an FBI official said, “Until we see an increased participation for the law enforcement agencies and recognizing this is a transition year, that would be correct.”

The new FBI report shows there were 7,262 hate crime incidents in the United States in 2021. By comparison, 2020 saw 8,263 incidents.

But comparing the two figures is inexact because they are based on different datasets.

“When we’re seeing decades-old records being broken in major cities and numerous states, having one-third of agencies not participating at all in the FBI report means we simply do not have an accurate official picture of what is actually happening nationally,” said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.

Any increase in hate crime was “erased by a lack of participation,” Levin said.

The FBI said that despite a drop in police agency participation in its new system, participating law enforcement agencies continued to report an overall increase in hate crime.

“Although the hate crime statistics reported to us are lower in 2021, hate crime statistics overall are not decreasing, meaning of the agencies that are reporting to us, they are reporting an increase in hate crime,” an FBI official said during a press call ahead of the report’s release.

The FBI’s new crime reporting system, called the National Incident-Based Reporting System, or NIBRS, offers more granular details and context about crime, which the bureau says will allow police agencies to better fight crime.

But the downside is a lower participation rate by police agencies struggling to make the switch. FBI and Justice Department officials said they’re working to improve participation through training and other initiatives.

The low level of hate crime reporting echoes a similarly low rate of participation in the FBI’s report on overall crime released in October.

In that report, the FBI said 63% of all law enforcement agencies reported crime data for 2021, the lowest level of participation in more than four decades.

The FBI defines hate crime as a criminal offense “motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender’s bias(es) against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity.”

Hate crimes have been on an upward trend in recent years.

Last year, the FBI reported that hate crimes rose to their highest level since 2001 when the September 11 terrorist attacks fueled a surge in attacks against Muslims and others perceived as Muslims.
…

A bunch of Santa lookalikes took to the ski slopes to spread some seasonal cheer on Sunday. 

More than 300 jolly ol’ elves — all dressed in red — dashed together down a mountain with white beards and Santa hats flapping in the breeze at the Sunday River ski resort in Maine. A skiing Grinch and a skiing Christmas tree joined the party. 

It wasn’t exactly a winter wonderland — there was little natural snow. The snow-making machines at Sunday River produced enough of the fluffy stuff for the annual tradition.  

Santa Sunday has grown in popularity over more than two decades, raising $7,500 this year for a local charity. 
…

The U.S. Department of Energy said Sunday it would announce a “major scientific breakthrough” this week, after media reported a federal laboratory had recently achieved a major milestone in nuclear fusion research.

The Financial Times reported Sunday that scientists in the California-based Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) had achieved a “net energy gain” from an experimental fusion reactor.

That would represent the first time that researchers have successfully produced more energy in a fusion reaction — the same type that powers the Sun — than was consumed during the process, a potentially major step in the pursuit of zero-carbon power.

Energy Department and LLNL spokespeople told AFP they could not comment or provide confirmation regarding the FT report, but said US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm would “announce a major scientific breakthrough” on Tuesday.

The LLNL spokesperson added that their “analysis is still ongoing.”

“We look forward to sharing more on Tuesday when that process is complete,” she said.

The fusion reaction that produced a 120 percent net energy gain occurred in the past two weeks, the FT said, citing three people with knowledge of the preliminary results.

The Washington Post later reported two people familiar with the research confirmed the development, with a senior fusion scientist telling the newspaper, “To most of us, this was only a matter of time.”

Nuclear fusion is considered by some scientists to be a potential energy of the future, particularly as it produces little waste and no greenhouse gases.

“If this fusion energy breakthrough is true, it could be a game changer for the world,” tweeted Ted Lieu, a member of Congress from California.

Fusion differs from fission, the technique currently used in nuclear power plants, by fusing two atomic nuclei instead of splitting one.

The LLNL fusion facility consists of almost 200 lasers the size of three football fields, which bombard a tiny spot with high levels of energy to initiate a fusion reaction.
…

Work to relocate Richmond’s final city-owned Confederate monument should start this week after a judge refused a request to delay the removal of the statue of Gen. A.P. Hill from its prominent spot in Virginia’s capital, an official said. 

Richmond Circuit Court Judge David Eugene Cheek Sr. last week rejected a motion from four indirect descendants of Hill, who was killed in the final days of the Civil War, to stop the city’s removal plans. 

Though the process of removing the monument from a busy intersection should start Monday, it’s unclear if it would be removed entirely by the end of the week, city deputy chief administrative officer Robert Steidel told WRIC-TV. 

The city, a onetime capital of the Confederacy, began removing its many other Confederate monuments more than two years ago amid the racial justice protests that followed George Floyd’s murder. Among the notable monuments removed was an imposing statue of Gen. Stonewall Jackson, which was taken down from a concrete pedestal in 2020 along Richmond, Virginia’s famed Monument Avenue. 

Richmond officials decided to convey the monuments to the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia. But efforts to remove the Hill statue have been complicated because the general’s remains were buried beneath the monument in 1891. 

The indirect descendants and the city have agreed that Richmond’s plan to move Hill’s remains to a cemetery in Culpeper should be allowed to move forward. But these descendants contend they have control over the statue and want it relocated to Cedar Mountain Battlefield, near the cemetery, instead of to the museum. Cheek ruled against them in October. 

In the most recent hearing, Cheek denied their motion to stay the removal of the Hill monument while the descendants press an appeal with the Virginia Court of Appeals. 

The city has spent at least $1.8 million removing other city-owned monuments, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported. Cheek determined that delaying the removal would result in additional cost and retain a potential traffic hazard. 

The monument will be kept in storage while the case goes through the expected appeal process, Steidel said in court last week. 

Many Confederate statues in Virginia were erected decades after the Civil War, during the Jim Crow era, when states imposed new segregation laws, and during the “Lost Cause” movement, when historians and others tried to depict the South’s rebellion as a fight to defend states’ rights, not slavery. 

Those seeking removal of the statues, particularly in Richmond — the onetime capital of the Confederacy — said that would service notice that the city is no longer a place with symbols of oppression and white supremacy. 
…

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Sunday forecast a substantial reduction in U.S. inflation in 2023, barring an unexpected shock.

“I believe by the end of next year you will see much lower inflation if there’s not … an unanticipated shock,” she told CBS’ ’60 Minutes’ in an interview released Sunday.

Asked about the likelihood of recession, the former Federal Reserve chair said, “There’s a risk of a recession. But … it certainly isn’t, in my view, something that is necessary to bring inflation down.”

Yellen’s comment came days before the Fed is expected to slow the aggressive pace of interest rate increases it has pursued this year. Fed Chair Jerome Powell has telegraphed a smaller, half-of-a-percentage point increase in the policy rate, to a range of 4.25%-4.5%, after four 75-basis point hikes this year.

Yellen told CBS that economic growth was slowing substantially, inflation was easing and she remained hopeful that the labor market would remain healthy.

She said she hoped the spike in inflation seen this year would be short-lived and said the U.S. government had learned “a lotta lessons” about the need to curtail inflation after high prices seen in the 1970s.

Shipping costs had come down and long delivery lags had eased, while gasoline prices at the pump were “way down.”

“I think we’ll see a substantial reduction in inflation in the year ahead,” she said.
…

Officials in Washington are continuing to react after the United States and Russia last week finalized a prisoner swap exchanging WNBA standout Brittney Griner for convicted Russian arms dealer, Viktor Bout. Griner spent nearly 300 days behind bars for cannabis possession while Bout served more than 14 years for funneling weapons to some of the world’s bloodiest conflicts. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has more.
…

WNBA star Brittney Griner didn’t want any alone time as soon as she boarded a U.S. government plane that would bring her home.

“I’ve been in prison for 10 months, listening to the Russians. I want to talk,” Griner said, according to Roger Carstens, the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, who helped secure the basketball star’s release and bring her back to the U.S. last week.

She walked throughout the plane, introducing herself to every member of the flight crew, shaking their hands, and “making a personal connection with them,” Carstens recalled.

Ultimately, Griner spent about 12 hours of an 18-hour flight talking with others on the plane, Carstens said. The two-time Olympic gold medalist and Phoenix Mercury pro basketball star spoke about her time in the Russian penal colony and her months in captivity, Carstens recalled, although he declined to go into specific details.

“I was left with the impression this is an intelligent, passionate, compassionate, humble, interesting person, a patriotic person,” Carstens said. “But above all, authentic. I hate the fact that I had to meet her in this manner, but I actually felt blessed having had a chance to get to know her.”

Although Griner is undergoing a full medical and mental evaluation, Carstens said she appeared “full of energy, looked fantastic.”

Griner, who also played pro basketball in Russia, was arrested at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport in February after Russian authorities said she was carrying vape canisters with cannabis oil. The U.S. State Department declared Griner to be “wrongfully detained” — a charge that Russia has sharply rejected.

Carstens spoke on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
…

Scientists lowered the alert level for the Mauna Loa volcano on Hawaii’s Big Island from a warning to a watch on Saturday and said the mountain’s first eruption in nearly 40 years may soon end.

The U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory said in a bulletin that the eruption on the mountain’s northeast rift zone was continuing, but lava output and volcanic gas emissions were “greatly reduced.”

“High eruption rates will not resume based on past eruptive behavior and current behavior suggests that the eruption may end soon,” the observatory said. “However, an inflationary trend of Mauna Loa’s summit is accompanying the decreased activity and there is a small possibility that the eruption could continue at very low eruptive rates.”

Meanwhile, it said, a lava flow front had “stagnated” nearly 2 miles from Saddle Road, the vital highway that residents and tourists alike use to travel between the city of Hilo on the east side of the island and coastal resorts to the west. 

Scientists said earlier this week that the road was no longer under imminent threat from the lava, allaying fears previously that it could be cut off.

Mauna Loa began spewing molten rock Nov. 27 after being quiet for 38 years, drawing onlookers to take in the incandescent spectacle and setting some nerves on edge early on among people who’ve lived through destructive eruptions. For many Native Hawaiians, the phenomenon has a deep yet very personal cultural significance.

The observatory said its scientists were continuing to monitor the volcano closely, and flight restrictions remained in place in the area up to 1,500 feet (457 meters) above ground level.
…

After making a close pass at the moon and venturing further into space than any previous habitable spacecraft, NASA’s Orion capsule is due to splash down Sunday in the final test of a high-stakes mission called Artemis.

As it hurtles into Earth’s atmosphere at a speed of 40,000 kph, the gumdrop-shaped traveler will have to withstand a temperature of 2,800 degrees Celsius — about half that of the surface of the sun.

Splashdown in the Pacific off the Mexican island of Guadalupe is scheduled for 1739 GMT (9:39 am local time).

Achieving success in this mission of just over 25 days is key for NASA, which has invested tens of billions of dollars in the Artemis program due to take people back to the moon and prepare for an onward trip, someday, to Mars.

So far, the first test of this uncrewed spacecraft has gone very well.

But it is only in the final minutes of this voyage that the true challenge comes: seeing if Orion’s heat shield, the biggest ever built, actually holds up.

“It is a safety-critical piece of equipment. It is designed to protect the spacecraft and the passengers, the astronauts on board. So the heat shield needs to work,” said Artemis mission manager Mike Sarafin.

A first test of the capsule was carried out in 2014 but that time the capsule stayed in Earth’s orbit, so it came back into the atmosphere at a slower speed of around 32,000 kph.

Choppers, divers and boats

A U.S. Navy ship, the USS Portland, has been positioned in the Pacific to recover the Orion capsule in an exercise that NASA has been rehearsing for years. Helicopters and inflatable boats will also be deployed for this task.

The falling spacecraft will be slowed first by the Earth’s atmosphere and then a web of 11 parachutes until it eases to a speed of 30 kph when it finally hits the Pacific.

Once it is there, NASA will let Orion float for two hours — a lot longer than if astronauts were inside — to collect data.

“We’ll see how the heat soaks back into the crew module and how that affects the temperature inside,” said Jim Geffre, NASA’s Orion vehicle integration manager.

Divers will then attach cables to Orion to hoist it onto the USS Portland, which is an amphibious transport dock vessel, the rear of which will be partly submerged. This water will be pumped out slowly so the spacecraft can rest on a platform designed to hold it.

This should all take about four to six hours from the time the vessel first splashes down.

The Navy ship will then head for San Diego, California, where the spacecraft will be unloaded a few days later.

When it returns to Earth, the spacecraft will have traveled more than 2 million kilometers since it took off Nov. 16 with the help of a monstrous rocket called SLS.

At its nearest point to the moon, it flew less than 130 kilometers from the surface. And it broke the distance record for a habitable capsule, venturing 432,000 kilometers from our planet.

Artemis 2 and 3

Recovering the spacecraft will allow NASA to gather data that is crucial for future missions.

This includes information on the condition of the vessel after its flight, data from monitors that measure acceleration and vibration, and the performance of a special vest put on a mannequin in the capsule to test how to protect people from radiation while flying through space.

Some components of the capsule should be good for reuse in the Artemis 2 mission, which is already in advanced stages of planning.

This next mission planned for 2024 will take a crew toward the moon but still without landing on it. NASA is expected to name the astronauts selected for this trip soon.

Artemis 3, scheduled for 2025, will see a spacecraft land for the first time on the south pole of the moon, which features water in the form of ice.

Only 12 people — all of them white men — have set foot on the moon. They did this during the Apollo missions, the last of which was in 1972.

Artemis is scheduled to send a woman and a person of color to the moon for the first time.

NASA’s goal is to establish a lasting human presence on the moon, through a base on its surface and a space station circling around it. Having people learn to live on the moon should help engineers develop technologies for a years-long trip to Mars, maybe in the late 2030s.
…

The U.S. is closely monitoring Chinese activities that potentially threaten American assets in space as debris rapidly accumulates in low Earth orbit, the head of United States military operations in space said Friday.

Commander of U.S. Space Command Army Gen. James Dickinson also cheered the overwhelming passage in the United Nations of a resolution that countries not conduct direct-ascent antisatellite tests that create vast fields of space debris, which endanger satellites and space stations.

Of the four countries that have conducted such ASAT tests, the United States was the only one that voted in favor, while China and Russia voted no and India abstained.

“We can’t continue to contribute to the debris that we find in the space domain,” Dickinson said in a telephone news conference with reporters in Asia. Most of that debris lies in crucial low Earth orbit, which has become “congested, competitive and contested,” he said.

Even tiny shards of metal can pose a danger and the number of objects is growing rampantly. Space Command is now tracking more than 48,000 in near Earth orbit, including satellites, telescopes, space stations and pieces of debris of all sizes, up from 25,000 just three years ago, Dickinson said.

China in 2003 became the third government to send an astronaut into orbit on its own after the former Soviet Union and the United States. Its program has advanced steadily since.

The Chinese space program drew rare international criticism after it conducted an unannounced test in 2007 in which it used a missile to blow up a defunct Chinese satellite, creating debris that continues to pose a hazard.

Beijing believes that “space is a very important piece to not only their economic or the global economic environment, but also the military environment, so we continue to watch that very closely as they continue to increase capabilities,” Dickinson said.

The secretive Chinese program is run by the ruling Communist Party’s military wing, the People’s Liberation Army, precluding it from participating in the International Space Station or engaging in most forms of cooperation with NASA.

Proceeding with little outside help, China last month launched the last of three modules for its own space station, which briefly hosted six Chinese astronauts in space during a turnover of the three-person crew. It also has rovers on the moon and Mars and is planning a crewed lunar mission sometime in the future.

With U.S.-China tensions high over Taiwan, the South China Sea, trade and technology, space is increasingly becoming a potential flash point. In addition, the Pentagon last week released an annual China security report that warned Beijing would likely have 1,500 nuclear warheads by 2035, and that it has provided no clarity on how it plans to use them.

China continues to “build capabilities that, really quite frankly, hold most of our assets at risk in the space domain,” Dickinson said.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has further showed space to be a “contested domain that must be protected. It’s a role that we at U.S. Space Command take very seriously,” he said.

“I’m seriously focused on our pacing challenge, China,” Dickinson said, using a description of Beijing that has become standard in the Pentagon. “The unified stance of our allies and partners is critical in countering the coercion and subversion that threatens the international rules-based order here in the Indo-Pacific and beyond,” Dickinson said.
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Though the weather outside was frightful, schoolchildren in the northern Alaska Inupiac community of Nuiqsut were so delighted for a visit by Santa that they braved wind chills of 25 degrees below zero just to see him land on a snow-covered airstrip.

Once again, it was time for Operation Santa Claus in Alaska. And here in Nuiqsut, a roadless village of about 460 residents on Alaska’s oil-rich North Slope, the temperatures may have been plunging but the children were warming quickly.

Never mind that Santa left Rudolph at home to catch a ride on an Alaska Air National Guard cargo plane to Nuiqsut, just 50 frosty kilometers (30 miles) south of the Arctic Ocean. Here, just a reindeer skip and a hop from the North Pole, the students were abuzz with good cheer.

“Some of them were out on the deck and they were jumping up and down, excited to see the plane coming in,” said Principal Lee Karasiewicz of the Trapper School, as he kept watch over pupils from the 160-student K-12 facility privileged to get a pre-Christmas visit from the jolly, fat one.

“They knew right away by the size of the plane, who was on that plane,” Karasiewicz said of the students.

When Santa and Mrs. Claus stepped off the hulking cargo plane, some of the children rushed to greet him with hugs, their beaming parents snapping photos on their phones.

Year after year across the decades the Alaska National Guard has delivered gifts, supplies and often Christmas itself to a few tiny rural Alaska communities, trying in particular to make things merry in villages hit by recent hardships.

Operation Santa Claus began back in 1956 when the residents of one community, St. Mary’s, found themselves without money to buy gifts. Townsfolk stung by flooding and then a drought that wiped out their subsistence hunting and fishing opportunities were forced to spend Christmas money on food instead. That’s when the guard stepped in, bringing them donated gifts and supplies.

For Nuiqsut, the adversity came last spring when an oil production facility about 7 miles (11 kilometers) from town sprang a natural gas leak. Though oil workers evacuated, there was no mandatory evacuation in Nuiqsut even though the community was put on alert, said Rosemary Ahtuangaruak, the town’s mayor.

Subsequently, she said, some people began experiencing symptoms related to gas exposure, such as headaches or trouble breathing. About 20 families, including some with pregnant women or elders and others with special medical conditions, decided to self-evacuate.

Long accustomed to helping out in disasters, the guard sent its tribal liaison official to the town after the leak was contained. The official spoke with community members and relayed their concerns back to guard leadership.

The Santa event held the last Tuesday in November was “a wonderful opportunity” to show children the guard in a different light — not always coming around just when there’s trouble, Ahtuangaruak said.

“It’s about bringing in the National Guard in a non-stressful event so the kids could see them doing good work that’s not during a scary event,” she said.

While there were a few puzzled faces of children sitting on Santa’s lap for the first time, there was nothing frightening about the visit — and certainly no lists of who was naughty or nice.

Once all had gathered in the school gym, each child had the opportunity for a short visit with Santa and Mrs. Claus, and each received a backpack brimming with snacks and books, hygiene supplies and a gift.

Qannik Amy Alice Woods, a second grader, didn’t want to open her backpack just yet. This was her first experience with Santa Claus, but he won her over like every other child in the world.

“He’s cool,” she said, flashing two thumbs up before heading to the bleachers to enjoy a fresh banana, a hard-to-find item above the Arctic Circle. Children also got a more location-appropriate treat: ice cream sundaes.

Fourth grader Mallory Lampe also had her first direct meeting with Santa but didn’t wait to open her backpack. “I got this kind of toy,” she exclaimed with joy, holding up an interactive creature whose eyes light up when you press its nose.

The Alaska National Guard delivered more than 1,400 pounds (635 kilograms) of gifts for the children of Nuiqsut. For the last 53 years, the program has been conducted in conjunction with the Salvation Army.

The two other villages served this year were Scammon Bay, which experienced fuel and food delivery problems last year, and Minto, chosen because it had never had a visit in the program’s history, said Dana Rosso, a spokesperson for the Alaska National Guard.

About 650 pounds (295 kilograms) of gifts were delivered to Minto for about 65 children, and nearly 1,800 pounds (816 kilograms) of gifts for the 325 or so children in Scammon Bay.

During a mission briefing before the plane left Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage for Nuiqsut, Santa gave the volunteer elves an important tip.

In Alaska Native culture, it’s considered rude to refuse a request or a gift offered by someone, even taking part in a dance.

That’s why near the end of the program in Nuiqsut, Santa and Mrs. Claus were on the school gym floor with uniformed guard members and scores of others performing a traditional Alaska Native dance. It started when a local drum and dance group performed to honor their guests, and it quickly turned into an impromptu hootenanny.

At the end of the last song, a beaming Mrs. Claus grabbed one of the dancers and hugged her tightly to show her gratitude.

“We can’t go to all of our villages, but when we have a village celebrate this opportunity, it’s a celebration that transfers through the tundra drums across our state,” Mayor Ahtuangaruak said. “We all get to share in the joy.”
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Viktor Bout, the arms dealer freed in a prisoner swap for U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner, said he wished her good luck on the tarmac in Abu Dhabi where they were exchanged.

Bout, who spent 14 years in U.S. jail for arms trafficking, money laundering and conspiring to kill Americans, was swapped Thursday for the basketball star, jailed this year for bringing cannabis vape oil when arriving to play for a Russian team.

Russia’s FSB security service released images of the two being led past each other on the tarmac at the airport in Abu Dhabi during the swap, although the video cuts away as they pass and there was no footage showing them interacting.

“I wished her luck, she even sort of reached out her hand to me,” Bout said Saturday in an interview with Russian state-controlled broadcaster RT.

“Again, it’s our tradition. You should wish everyone good fortune and happiness,” he said, adding that he believed Griner “was positively inclined” toward him.

Speaking to Maria Butina, who herself spent 14 months in U.S. prison for acting as an unregistered Russian agent and is now a lawmaker and RT presenter, Bout praised President Vladimir Putin, whose portrait he said he had hung on his cell wall.

Asked about Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine, Bout said he wished that Moscow had been able to launch it sooner.

“If I had the chance and the required skills, I’d join up as a volunteer,” he said.

Griner has not yet spoken publicly. Her wife, Cherelle Griner, said Thursday their family was now “whole,” and the couple would work to help secure the release of other Americans held abroad, including former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, jailed in Russia on spying charges he denies.
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A ruptured pipe dumped enough oil this week into a northeastern Kansas creek to nearly fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool, becoming the largest onshore crude pipeline spill in nine years and surpassing all the previous ones on the same pipeline system combined, according to federal data.

The Keystone pipeline spill in a creek running through rural pastureland in Washington County, Kansas, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) northwest of Kansas City, also was the biggest in the system’s history, according to U.S. Department of Transportation data. The operator, Canada-based TC Energy, said the pipeline that runs from Canada to Oklahoma lost about 14,000 barrels, or 588,000 gallons.

The spill raised questions for environmentalists and safety advocates about whether TC Energy should keep a federal government permit that has allowed the pressure inside parts of its Keystone system — including the stretch through Kansas — to exceed the typical maximum permitted levels. With Congress facing a potential debate on reauthorizing regulatory programs, the chair of a House subcommittee on pipeline safety took note of the spill Friday.

A U.S. Government Accountability Office report last year said there had been 22 previous spills along the Keystone system since it began operating in 2010, most of them on TC Energy property and fewer than 20 barrels. The total from those 22 events was a little less than 12,000 barrels, the report said.

“I’m watching this situation closely to learn more about this latest oil leak and inform ways to prevent future releases and protect public safety and the environment,” Democratic U.S. Rep. Donald Payne Jr., of New Jersey, tweeted.

TC Energy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said the spill has been contained. The EPA said the company built an earthen dam across the creek about 4 miles downstream from the pipeline rupture to prevent the oil from moving into larger waterways.

Randy Hubbard, the county’s emergency management director, said the oil traveled only about a quarter mile and there didn’t appear to be any wildlife deaths.

The company said it is doing around-the-clock air-quality checks and other environmental monitoring. It also was using multiple trucks that amount to giant wet vacuums to suck up the oil.

Past Keystone spills have led to outages that lasted about two weeks, and the company said it still is evaluating when it can reopen the system.

The EPA said no drinking water wells were affected and oil-removal efforts will continue into next week. No one was evacuated, but the Kansas Department of Health and Environment warned people not to go into the creek or allow animals to wade in.

“At the time of the incident, the pipeline was operating within its design and regulatory approval requirements,” the company said in a statement.

The nearly 2,700-mile (4345-kilometer) Keystone pipeline carries thick, Canadian tar-sands oil to refineries in Illinois, Oklahoma and Texas, with about 600,000 barrels moving per day from Canada to Cushing, Oklahoma. Concerns about spills fouling water helped spur opposition to a new 1,200-mile (1,900 kilometers) Keystone XL pipeline, and the company pulled the plug last year after President Joe Biden canceled a permit for it.

Environmentalists said the heavier tar-sands oil is not only more toxic than lighter crude but can sink in water instead of floating on top. Bill Caram, executive director of the advocacy Pipeline Safety Trust, said cleanup even sometimes can include scrubbing individual rocks in a creek bed.

“This is going to be months, maybe even years before we get the full handle on this disaster and know the extent of the damage and get it all cleaned up,” said Zack Pistora, a lobbyist for the Sierra Club at the Kansas Statehouse.

Pipelines often are considered safer than shipping oil by railcar or truck, but large spills can create significant environmental damage. The American Petroleum Institute said Friday that companies have robust monitoring to detect leaks, cracks, corrosion and other problems, not only through control centers but with employees who walk alongside pipelines.

Still, in September 2013, a Tesoro Corp. pipeline in North Dakota ruptured and spilled 20,600 barrels, according to U.S. Department of Transportation data.

A more expensive spill happened in July 2010, when an Enbridge Inc. pipeline in Michigan ruptured and spilled more than 20,000 barrels into Talmadge Creek and the Kalamazoo River. Hundreds of homes and businesses were evacuated.

The Keystone pipeline’s previous largest spill came in 2017, when more than 6,500 barrels spilled near Amherst, South Dakota, according to a U.S. Government Accountability Office report released last year. The second largest, 4,515 barrels, was in 2019 near Edinburg, North Dakota.

The Petroleum Institute said pipelines go through tests before opening using pressures that exceed the company’s planned levels and are designed to account for what they’ll carry and changes in the ground they cover. An arm of the U.S. Department of Transportation oversees pipeline safety and permitted TC Energy to have greater pressures on the Keystone system because the company used pipe made from better steel.

But Caram said: “When we see multiple failures like this of such large size and a relatively short amount of time after that pressure has increased, I think it’s time to question that.”

In its report last year to Congress, the GAO said Keystone’s accident history was similar to other oil pipelines, but spills have gotten larger in recent years. Investigations ordered by regulators found that the four worst spills were caused by flaws in design or pipe manufacturing during construction.

TC Energy’s permit included more than 50 special conditions, mostly for its design, construction and operation, the GAO report said. The company said in response to the 2021 report that it took “decisive action” in recent years to improve safety, including developing new technology for detecting cracks and an independent review of its pipeline integrity program.

The company said Friday that it would conduct a full investigation into the causes of the spill.

The spill caused a brief surge in crude prices Thursday. Benchmark U.S. oil was up more modestly — about 1% — Friday morning as fears of a supply disruption were overshadowed by bigger concerns about an economic downturn in the U.S. and other major countries that would reduce demand for oil.

The pipeline runs through Chris and Bill Pannbacker’s family farm. Bill Pannbacker, a farmer and stockman, said the company told him that the issues with the pipeline there probably will not be resolved until after the Christmas and New Year’s holidays.

The hill where the breach happened was a landmark to locals and used to be a popular destination for hayrides, Pannbacker said.
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Saturday, December 10, is Human Rights Day. 

It is also the 75th anniversary of the United Nations General Assembly’s adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 

The U.N. says, “The UDHR is a milestone document, which proclaims the inalienable rights that everyone is entitled to as a human being – regardless of race, color, religion, sex, language, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.”

This year the U.N. is embarking on a yearlong campaign to promote and recognize the declaration, which the international body says is “a global blueprint for international, national, and local laws and policies.”

“The promise of the UDHR, of dignity and equality in rights, has been under a sustained assault in recent years,” the U.N. said.   “As the world faces challenges new and ongoing – pandemics, conflicts, exploding inequalities, morally bankrupt global financial system, racism, climate change – the values, and rights enshrined in the UDHR provide guideposts for our collective actions that do not leave anyone behind.”
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