washington — The maiden liftoff of a new American rocket called Vulcan Centaur has been delayed from December 24 to January 8, the company that developed it said Thursday.

The postponement stems from last-minute technical snags, but United Launch Alliance CEO Tory Bruno said on X, formerly Twitter, that a recent dress rehearsal on the launch pad went well.

The rocket will carry a private lunar lander, developed by the startup Astrobotic, which could become the first such private craft to touch down on the moon and the first American robot to land on the surface since the Apollo program ended in 1972.

“This is sort of, in a way, the first giant step in the campaign for the U.S., and for all of our friends, to go back to the moon, eventually with people,” Bruno told AFP in an interview last week.

“It’s a pretty big deal to have a payload at all, let alone one that goes to the surface of the moon,” he added.

“We wanted to do something really important, and we have a lot of confidence, obviously, in the design of our rocket,” Bruno said.

Liftoff for this mission called Cert-1 will take place at the U.S. Space Force launch base at Cape Canaveral, Florida.

In dress rehearsals in recent days, some “routine” issues emerged in the ground system so a Christmas Eve flight is now out, and the new window opens January 8, Bruno wrote on X.

Besides the lunar lander, this rocket will carry the cremated remains of several people associated with the original “Star Trek” series, including creator Gene Roddenberry and cast member Nichelle Nichols, who played the character Uhura. Roddenberry’s ashes have been launched into orbit previously.

A sample of Bruno’s own DNA will also be taken into space. “Who wouldn’t want to go to space with five ‘Star Trek’ people?” he mused in the interview with AFP.

Vulcan Centaur is meant to replace ULA’s Atlas V and Delta IV rockets and is designed to carry a payload of up to 27.2 metric tons into low orbit, comparable to what the SpaceX Falcon 9 can do.
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Washington — U.S. lawmakers passed the massive annual defense spending bill Thursday, approving the $886 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) by a vote of 310-118 to be signed into law by President Joe Biden. The bill setting policy and spending priorities for the Department of Defense for 2024 is $28 billion larger than last year’s spending bill, an increase of around three percent.

“The NDAA is one of the most consequential bills Congress considers,” said Rep. Mike Rogers, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. “Passage of this bill each year sends an important signal to the men and women defending our freedom that Congress can function and will prioritize their needs. Above all else, enacting the NDAA has never been more vital than today. America and our allies face unprecedented and rapidly evolving threats from China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and terrorist organizations throughout the world.”  

The bill authorizes a 5.2 percent pay raise for US service members, extends the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative through 2027 and provides funding for security cooperation among the US, United Kingdom and Australia. 

The U.S. Senate passed the NDAA late Wednesday by a vote of 87-13.  

“We’ll strengthen our resources in the Indo-Pacific, to deter aggression by the Chinese government, and give resources for the military in Taiwan. We’ll give DOD more resources to deploy and develop AI, protect against foreign cyber threats, increase the transparency of Unidentified Areal Phenomena,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor Wednesday night after passage. 

Earlier Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell also praised the NDAA on the Senate floor, saying the legislation, “recognizes the need to strengthen America’s position in strategic competition with China through targeted improvements to critical capabilities – from long-range fires and anti-ship weapons to modernizing our nuclear triad. It’ll authorize further investments in the defense industrial base and expand efficiency and accountability of the lethal assistance degrading Russia’s military in Ukraine. It’ll turbo-charge cooperation with Israel on future missile defense technologies and ensure our closest ally in the Middle East can access the U.S. capabilities it needs, when it needs them.” 

Earlier this year, the Republican-majority U.S. House passed a more conservative version of the NDAA that would have eliminated many progressive policies providing access to abortion and transgender care. Those amendments were not in the final version of the legislation that passed Thursday.  

A joint Senate-House Conference committee worked out the compromise legislation that was passed by both chambers this week.  

Rogers described the bill passed Thursday as a good compromise, saying on the House floor Thursday, “It goes a long way toward ending woke policies being forced on our service members by left wing bureaucrats. It includes provisions that ban critical race theory and require promotions based on merit. It includes several provisions that require accountability from the administration like in its Special Inspector General for Ukraine, Ukraine aid and the deadline for the DOD to finally pass an audit.”  

Rep. Adam Smith, the ranking member on the House Armed Services Committee said Thursday the NDAA “solidifies our alliances with our European allies, with our allies in Asia and with Israel and our allies in the Middle East to meet the threats that we face. You cannot oppose this bill and claim that you support the national security of this country.”  

Forty-five Democrats and seventy-three Republicans voted against the NDAA Thursday, with many conservative Republicans objecting to the extension of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The controversial intelligence program allows the US government to collect the communications of foreign nationals without a warrant. Conservatives allege the program has been misused to violate the privacy of Americans.    

“What’s being stated is it is impossible to oppose the National Defense Authorization Act because we put a pay raise in it or because we put something in there that is seemingly so important that we have to ignore the critical destruction of our civil liberties by adding FISA extension – without doing the reforms necessary to protect the American people,” Republican Rep. Chip Roy said Thursday.  

Smith acknowledged that FISA authorizations are in need of reform.  

“There’s no question about that. Nobody I know of, however, says that it should completely go away. If we don’t do it on this bill, it completely goes away on January 1, which is a huge national security threat to this country – universally agree.”  

U.S. lawmakers are still negotiating the White House’s $106 billion national security supplemental request that includes $60 billion in military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine as well as nearly $14 billion to assist Israel in the conflict with Hamas.

 
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MOSCOW — A Moscow court on Thursday upheld a ruling to hold in detention until January 30 U.S. reporter Evan Gershkovich, arrested in Russia earlier this year on espionage charges.

The 32-year-old Wall Street Journal correspondent in Moscow, his employer and the U.S. government have all rejected the spying allegations.

“Evan Gershkovich will remain in custody until January 30, 2024,” the Moscow city court said in a statement on social media, turning down an appeal lodged late last month.

A video released by the court showed Gershkovich, who previously worked for Agence France-Presse, standing in a cage for defendants during Thursday’s hearing, smiling and wearing a dark-colored sweater.

Gershkovich was arrested during a reporting trip at the end of March in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg, becoming the first Western reporter to be held on spying charges in Russia since the Soviet era.

He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

Russia this month also brought fresh charges against U.S.-Russian dual citizen Alsu Kurmasheva, arrested in the central city of Kazan in October and charged with failing to register as a “foreign agent.”

Her employer, Radio Free Europe/Liberty (RFE/RL), this week denounced the fresh charges filed against her after reports she has also been accused of violating rules against Ukraine war criticism.
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State Department — The United States and Taiwan are exploring ways to expand Taiwan’s participation in the United Nations system and other international forums, as well as addressing a range of global challenges, including public health, aviation safety and climate change.

The most recent routine consultation between the U.S. and Taiwan took place Wednesday, days after the Chinese delegation at COP28 opposed calls to include Taiwan in the United Nations climate talks in Dubai.

All participants in the latest U.S.-Taiwan talks “recognized the importance of working closely with likeminded partners who share our concerns regarding attempts to exclude Taiwan from the international community,” according to the U.S. State Department in a statement.

Taiwan Relations Act

Senior American officials have said Washington’s “One China” policy is “distinct” from Beijing’s “One China” principle. The U.S. policy is guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, the Three Joint Communiques and the Six Assurances. China has objected to the Taiwan Relations Act and deemed it as invalid.

The Taiwan Relations Act has stated that “nothing in this Act may be construed as a basis for supporting the exclusion or expulsion of Taiwan from continued membership in any international financial institution or any other international organization.”

The Chinese Communist Party has never ruled Taiwan but claims sovereignty over the island, which became home to the Chinese Nationalist government after its defeat in 1949. During the U.N. climate talks held in the United Arab Emirates, Chinese officials lodged a protest after calls to include Taiwan’s participation in the climate summit by other countries.

“China has noted that during the meeting a handful of countries ignore the fact that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China and make noises about the participation by the Taiwan authorities in the COP,” a member of the Chinese delegation said via a translator in the plenary hall in Dubai.

Wednesday, officials from the State Department and Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs discussed near-term opportunities to support Taiwan’s participation in the World Health Assembly (WHA) and other global public health bodies, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), as well as Taiwan’s meaningful participation in other multilateral organizations.

World Health Organization and International Civil Aviation Organization

The Beijing government has been blocking Taiwan’s representation at WHA meetings after the self-ruled democracy elected Tsai Ing-wen, a China skeptic, as president in 2016.

China has also blocked Taiwan’s participation in ICAO assemblies since 2013.

Since the U.S. switched its diplomatic recognition from the government of Taipei to Beijing in 1979, Washington has insisted that the two sides should resolve their political disputes peacefully.

Tuesday, U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns said “fundamental differences” over Taiwan persist in Washington’s relationship with Beijing.

The top U.S. diplomat on China said the United States will continue to implement the Taiwan Relations Act and help Taiwan with its defense needs, renewing the U.S. commitment to maintain peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.

In recent months, China has been increasing its military activities near the strait.  The United States has voiced concerns about any Chinese interference through military coercion, as Taiwan prepares for a presidential election in January 2024.

“I think what we can do is to insist that the people in Taiwan have an opportunity to vote freely on January 13,” Burns told an audience during a seminar hosted by the U.S.-based Council on Foreign Relations.

In Beijing, Chinese officials said the election in Taiwan “is purely China’s internal affair.”

“Taiwan independence” means war and “Taiwan independence” is a dead end, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said during a recent briefing.

In a recent interview with VOA, U.S. Senior Official for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Matt Murray said, “We certainly want to make sure there are opportunities for engagement” between the U.S. and Taiwan in international economic forums, as Taiwan is one of the top trading partners and investors in the United States.

Morris Chang, founder of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, represented Taiwan during the APEC summit in San Francisco in mid-November, where he held talks with U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris.

The two discussed the U.S.-Taiwan “relationship on the economy and technology,” Harris said in a social media post on X, formerly Twitter. Chang also had a pull-aside meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken during the APEC meetings, according to Murray.

The last U.S.-Taiwan working group meeting on international organizations took place in April.
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The Republican-majority U.S. House of Representatives narrowly voted Wednesday to authorize a formal impeachment inquiry into U.S. President Joe Biden, a step forward in the investigation into any involvement by the president in his son’s business dealings. As VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson reports, the White House denies any wrongdoing.
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The Biden administration’s support of Israel in the war against Hamas has drawn sharp criticism both from Americans protesting Palestinian civilian deaths and from State Department staff calling for a cease-fire. Meanwhile, President Joe Biden has been signaling to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he needs to change course or risk international standing. VOA Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
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What should young people be taught about the Israeli-Palestinian crisis? It’s a question one California school district has struggled with, even before the war in Gaza. Genia Dulot has our story
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Washington — The Biden administration has notified Congress that it intends to spend nearly $700 million to buy a former Dublin hotel, demolish it and construct new buildings to turn the site into the new U.S. Embassy in Ireland. The State Department also announced that it had broken ground on a new embassy complex in Saudi Arabia as part of a revamp of its diplomatic facilities in the Gulf.

The department informed lawmakers late Monday that it plans to buy the former Jury’s Hotel in Dublin’s upscale Ballsbridge neighborhood for $171 million. Associated costs, including the design and construction of the new chancery and furnishing it, will bring the total to $688.8 million, according to a notice sent to Congress.

The 4.2 acre (1.7 hectare) property is located just a block from the existing U.S. embassy in the Irish capital, which dates to the 1960s and the State Department said “is well beyond its useful life, is too small for our operational needs, and is not functional in its layout.”

The new compound will include the embassy, a residence for Marine guards, support facilities and parking, the notice said. It did not give an estimate for when the project would be completed but estimated that there would be 189 employees at the new embassy in 2028, at least 109 of whom would require office space.

The U.S. has been planning to relocate its embassy in Dublin for more than a decade and the Ballsbridge site had been the expected site after Irish authorities approved zoning and other changes for it last year.

On Tuesday, the department announced that it had broken ground on construction of a new U.S. embassy on a 27.5-acre (11.1-hectare) site in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, that it acquired in early 2020. That cost, along with the construction of a new U.S. consulate in Jeddah and planning for a new consulate in Dhahran, was more than $1 billion. 
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U.S. lawmakers called for a tougher stance against Iran Tuesday as the conflict between Israel and Hamas threatens to expand across the Middle East. Iranian proxies have launched more than 90 attacks against U.S. forces since October 17th, 10 days after the Hamas terror attack on Israel. Some Republican lawmakers are demanding that the Biden administration impose stricter sanctions on the Islamic Republic. VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson has more.
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Ukraine’s president, alongside President Joe Biden, pleaded with U.S. lawmakers Tuesday to approve $61 billion in aid for the country as it continues to fight off Russia’s invasion. Without those funds, they say, a cold, grim winter looms. White House Correspondent Anita Powell reports.
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In a sign that the United States is getting increasingly concerned over the number of civilian casualties from Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, President Joe Biden delivered a public rebuke to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even as he maintains staunch support for Israel. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has this report.
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WASHINGTON — U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo vowed Monday to take the “strongest action possible” in response to a semiconductor chip-making breakthrough in China that a House Foreign Affairs Committee said “almost certainly required the use of U.S. origin technology and should be an export control violation.”

In an interview with Bloomberg News, Raimondo called Huawei Technology’s advanced processor in its Mate Pro 60 smartphone released in August “deeply concerning” and said the Commerce Department investigates such things vigorously.

The United States has banned chip sales to Huawei, which reportedly used chips from China chip giant Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., or SMIC, in the phone that are 7 nanometers, a technology China has not been known as able to produce.

Raimondo said the U.S. was also looking into the specifics of three new artificial intelligence accelerator chips that California-based Nvidia Corp. is developing for China. “We look at every spec of every new chip, obviously, to make sure it doesn’t violate the export controls,” she said.

Nvidia came under U.S. scrutiny for designing China-specific chips that were just under new Commerce Department requirements announced in October for tighter export controls on advanced AI chips for civilian use that could have military applications.

China’s Foreign Ministry responded to Raimondo’s comments Tuesday, saying the U.S. was “undermining the rights of Chinese companies” and contradicting the principles of a market economy.

‘Almost certainly required US origin technology’

The U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee in a December 7 report criticized the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, or BIS, the regulatory body for regulating dual-use export controls.

The report said Chinese chip giant “SMIC is producing 7 nanometer chips — advanced technology for semiconductors that had been only capable of development by TSMC, Intel and Samsung.”

“Despite this breakthrough by SMIC, which almost certainly required the use of U.S. origin technology and should be an export control violation, BIS has not acted,” the 66-page report said. “We can no longer afford to avoid the truth: the unimpeded transfer of U.S. technology to China is one of the single-largest contributors to China’s emergence as one of the world’s premier scientific and technological powers.”

Excessive approvals alleged

Committee Chairman Michael McCaul said BIS had an excessive rate of approval for controlled technology transfers and lacked checks on end-use, raising serious questions about the current U.S. export control mechanism.

“U.S. export control officials should adopt a presumption that all [Chinese] entities will divert technology to military or surveillance uses,” said McCaul’s report, but “currently, the overwhelming approval rates for licenses or exceptions for dual-use technology transfers to China indicate that licensing officials at BIS are likely presuming that items will be used only for their intended purposes.”

According to BIS’s website, a key in determining whether an export license is needed from the Department of Commerce is knowing whether the item one intends to export has a specific Export Control Classification Number, or ECCN. All ECCNs are listed in the Commerce Control List, or CCL, which is divided into ten broad categories.

The committee’s report said that “in 2020, nearly 98% of CCL items export to China went without a license,” and “in 2021, BIS approved nearly 90% of applications for the export of CCL items to China.”

The report said that between 2016 and 2021, “the United States government’s two export control officers in China conducted on average only 55 end-user checks per year of the roughly 4,000 active licenses in China. Put another way, BIS likely verified less than 0.01% of all licenses, which represent less than 1% of all trade with China.”

China skilled in avoiding controls

But China is also skilled at avoiding U.S. export controls, analysts said.

William Yu, an economist at UCLA Anderson Forecast, told VOA Mandarin in a phone interview that China can get banned chips through a third country. “For example, some countries in the Middle East set up a company in that country to buy these high-level chips from the United States. From there, one is transferred back to China,” Yu said.

Thomas Duesterberg, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, told VOA Mandarin in a phone interview that the Commerce Department’s BIS has a hard job.

“If you forbid technology from going to one company in China, the Chinese are experts at creating another company or just moving the company to a new address and disguising its name to try to evade the controls. China is a big country and there’s a lot of technology that is at stake here,” he said.

“It’s true on the one hand that BIS has been successful in some areas, such as advanced semiconductors in conjunction with denial of Chinese ability to buy American technology companies,” said Duesterberg. “But it’s also true as the [House Foreign Affairs Committee] report emphasizes that a lot of activities that policymakers would like to restrict is not being done.”

Insufficient resources or political will?

Despite its huge responsibility to ensure that the United States stays ahead in the escalating U.S.-China science and technology competition, the Commerce Department’s BIS is small, employing just over 300 people.

At the annual Reagan National Defense Forum on December 2, Secretary Raimondo lamented that BIS “has the same budget today as it did a decade ago” despite the increasing challenges and workload, reported Breaking Defense, a New York-based online publication on global defense and politics.

U.S. Representatives Elise Stefanik, Mike Gallagher, who is chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, and McCaul released a joint response to Raimondo’s call for additional funds for the BIS, saying resources alone would not resolve export control shortcomings.

Raimondo also warned chip companies that the U.S. would further tighten controls to prevent cutting edge AI technology from going to Beijing.

“The threat from China is large and growing,” she said in an interview to CNBC at the December 2 forum. “China wants access to our most sophisticated semiconductors, and we can’t afford to give them that access. We’re not just going to deny a single company in China, we’re going to deny the whole country access to our cutting-edge semiconductors.”
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Washington — Newly declassified U.S. intelligence indicates Russia has suffered from some staggering losses as a result of its nearly two-year-old invasion of Ukraine, including major setbacks during its latest offensive.

The assessment, parts of which were shared with VOA, estimates more than 13,000 Russian forces have been killed or wounded since Moscow launched its October offensive along the Avdiivka-Novopavlivka axis in eastern Ukraine.

U.S. intelligence also believes Ukraine’s military has destroyed or immobilized more than 220 Russian combat vehicles, the equivalent of six battalions’ worth of vehicles.

“Russia’s attempt at an offensive has resulted in no strategic gains,” National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson told VOA in a statement, describing the Russian losses as “severe.” 

“But Russia is determined to press forward,” she added. “Russia seems to believe that a military deadlock through the winter will drain Western support for Ukraine and ultimately give Russia the advantage despite Russian losses and persistent shortages of trained personnel, munitions, and equipment.”

The decision to declassify the latest intelligence Tuesday comes as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is in Washington, visiting with U.S. lawmakers and with U.S. President Joe Biden.

During a speech at the National Defense University in Washington on Monday, Zelenskyy pleaded with U.S. lawmakers “not to betray” Ukraine’s forces and provide more weapons and support, warning Moscow sees Ukraine as “just a stepping-stone.”

“We know what to do,” he said. “You can count on Ukraine, and we hope just as much to be able to count on you.”

The White House has been pushing U.S. lawmakers to approve more than $61 billion in supplemental funding for Kyiv before the end of the year.

But some lawmakers have balked, with some Republicans insisting any deal to provide more money to Ukraine must also include provisions to strengthen U.S. immigration policies and security along the U.S. southern border with Mexico.

White House officials, however, point to the latest declassified intelligence to argue that funding for Ukraine simply cannot wait.

“This shows how Ukraine is having success stopping Russian forces, but Putin is continuing to order his troops forward,” a senior administration official told VOA, speaking on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the intelligence and the political negotiations.

“It’s critical we continue to support Ukraine and make sure they have what they need to defend themselves,” the official added.

Top U.S. military and intelligence officials have previously said Russia’s losses in Ukraine have set its military back by as much as five to ten years.

Still, the Pentagon warned Monday a failure to back Ukraine will send Russian President Vladimir Putin the wrong message.

“Despite his isolation, Putin still believes that he can outlast Ukraine, and that he can outlast America,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Monday, speaking with Zelenskyy at the National Defense University.  “If we do not stand up to the Kremlin’s aggression today, if we do not deter other would-be aggressors, we will only invite more aggression, more bloodshed, and more chaos.”

Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report.
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CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Harvard President Claudine Gay will remain leader of the prestigious Ivy League school following her comments last week at a congressional hearing on antisemitism, the university’s highest governing body announced Tuesday. 

“Our extensive deliberations affirm our confidence that President Gay is the right leader to help our community heal and to address the very serious societal issues we are facing,” the Harvard Corporation said in a statement following its meeting Monday night. 

Only months into her leadership, Gay came under intense scrutiny following the hearing in which she and two of her peers struggled to answer questions about campus antisemitism. Their academic responses provoked a backlash from Republican opponents, along with alumni and donors who say the university leaders are failing to stand up for Jewish students on their campuses. 

Some lawmakers and donors to the university called for Gay to step down, following the resignation of Liz Magill as president of the University of Pennsylvania on Saturday. 

The Harvard Crimson student newspaper first reported Tuesday that Gay, who became Harvard’s first Black president in July, will remain in office with the support of the Harvard Corporation following the conclusion of the board’s meeting. It cited an unnamed source familiar with the decision. 

A petition signed by more than 600 faculty members asked the school’s governing body to keep Gay in charge. 

“So many people have suffered tremendous damage and pain because of Hamas’s brutal terrorist attack, and the university’s initial statement should have been an immediate, direct, and unequivocal condemnation,” the corporation’s statement said. “Calls for genocide are despicable and contrary to fundamental human values. President Gay has apologized for how she handled her congressional testimony and has committed to redoubling the university’s fight against antisemitism.” 

In an interview with The Crimson last week, Gay said she got caught up in a heated exchange at the House committee hearing and failed to properly denounce threats of violence against Jewish students. 

“What I should have had the presence of mind to do in that moment was return to my guiding truth, which is that calls for violence against our Jewish community — threats to our Jewish students — have no place at Harvard, and will never go unchallenged,” Gay said. 

Testimony from Gay and Magill drew intense national backlash, as have similar responses from the president of MIT, who also testified before the Republican-led House Education and Workforce Committee. 

The corporation also addressed allegations of plagiarism against Gay, saying that Harvard became aware of them in late October regarding three articles she had written. It initiated an independent review at Gay’s request. 

The corporation reviewed the results on Saturday, “which revealed a few instances of inadequate citation” and found no violation of Harvard’s standards for research misconduct, it said.
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LAHAINA — The heart of Lahaina, the historic town on the Hawaiian island of Maui that burned in a deadly wildfire that killed at least 100 people, reopened Monday to residents and business owners holding day passes.

The renewed access marks an important emotional milestone for victims of the Aug. 8 fire, but much work remains to be done to safely clear properties of burned debris and rebuild.

The reopened areas include Banyan Tree Park, home to a 150-year-old tree that burned in the fire but that is now sprouting new leaves, Lahaina’s public library, an elementary school and popular restaurants.

An oceanfront section of Front Street, where the fire ripped through a traffic jam of cars trying to escape town, reopened Friday.

Authorities are continuing to recommend that people entering scorched lots wear protective gear to shield them from hazards.

On Sunday, the state Department of Health released test results confirming the ash and dust left by the fire is toxic and that arsenic is the biggest concern. Arsenic is a heavy metal that adheres to wildfire dust and ash, the department said.

The tests examined ash samples collected Nov. 7-8 from 100 properties built from the 1900s to the 2000s. Samples also showed high levels of lead, which was used to paint houses built before 1978.

The clean up is still in its early stages. For the past few months, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been removing batteries, propane tanks, pesticides and other hazards from the town’s more than 2,000 destroyed buildings.

Residents and business owners have been able to visit their properties after the EPA has finished clearing their lots. In some cases, residents — often wearing white full-body suits, masks and gloves — have found family heirlooms and mementos after sifting through the charred rubble of their homes.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will begin hauling away the remaining debris and take it to a landfill after it gets permission from property owners.

The EPA and the state’s health department have installed 53 air monitors in Lahaina and Upcountry Maui, where a separate fire burned homes in early August. The department is urging people to avoid outdoor activity when monitor levels show elevated air pollution and to close windows and doors. 
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Holocaust survivors from around the globe will mark the start of the fifth day of Hanukkah together with a virtual ceremony as Jews worldwide worry about the Israel-Hamas war and a spike of antisemitism in Europe, the United States and elsewhere.

Survivors can join an online ceremony of a menorah lighting Monday night to pay tribute to the 6 million European Jews killed by the Nazis in the Holocaust.

Several dozen survivors were also expected to gather in-person for a menorah lighting at Jerusalem’s Western Wall — the holiest place where Jews can pray.

“Holocaust survivors somehow overcame the depravity of concentration camps, death camps and killing centers, among other horrors, to become our living exemplars, providing a roadmap on how light can overcome darkness,” Greg Schneider, the executive vice president of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, said in remarks released to The Associated Press ahead of the ceremony.

The New York-based conference is organizing the event in observance of International Holocaust Survivors Night.

“Their resilience, their strength and their fortitude leave a truly indelible light in this world,” Schneider added.

Hanukkah, also known as Judaism’s festival of lights, marks the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem in the 2nd century B.C., after a small group of Jewish fighters known as the Maccabees liberated it from occupying Syrian forces.

This year’s holiday comes as many Jews feel traumatized by Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people and in which the militants took some 240 as hostages. Israel responded with a bombing campaign and a ground offensive that has so far killed more than 18,000 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory’s Health Ministry. The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths.

Several celebrities and world leaders spoke about the attack in messages that were to be shown at the ceremony. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said “Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel has affected us all deeply. Something of abyssal evil broke free that day,” according to comments released to the AP.

“The perpetrators’ motive is clear: They wanted to hit Israel,” the chancellor added. “They wanted to murder Jews. In its repugnant brutality and abhorrence, however, the terror is also directed against humanity itself.”

Scholz, addressing Holocaust survivors, said he tries “to imagine how much the images from Israel, how much antisemitic hatred on the internet and on the streets around the world must be hitting you, of all people right in the heart.”

“This … pains me a lot,” he said.

The virtual event, which starts at 8 p.m. Monday in Germany, will also include musical performances, celebrity guests and messages from Holocaust survivors from around the globe.

Leon Weintraub, a Holocaust survivor from Sweden, who was in Israel during the Hamas attack, recounted what he experienced that day.

“On Oct. 7, I woke up from the sirens in the center of Tel Aviv. All at once I was again in September 1939 when the Nazis invaded Poland,” he said. “A terrible feeling, a shiver, a feeling of dread to be again in a war.”

“We celebrate Chanukah now, the festival of lights. I hope that the light will also bring the people enlightenment,” Weintraub added. “That people will rethink and look at us people of Jewish descent as normal, equal. Human beings.”

American comedian Billy Crystal, actress Jamie Lee Curtis and actor Jason Alexander will also speak at the event, and there will also be a by a musical performance from Grammy and Tony Award-winning singer Barry Manilow, as well as the cast of Harmony.
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Harvard University’s governing board faced mounting pressure on Monday to publicly declare support for or oust the university president after remarks she made last week at a congressional hearing on antisemitism.

The Harvard Corporation, the university’s governing body, has not yet addressed the public backlash Harvard President Claudine Gay received after her testimony. 

Prominent alumni and members of Congress have called for her to resign as her fellow Ivy League leader at University of Pennsylvania, who also testified to Congress last week, did on Saturday. But many faculty and other alumni have rushed to defend Gay and asked the governing body to do the same.

The 13-member governing body was due to hold a regular meeting on Monday, according to media reports. A representative for Harvard did not respond to a request for comment. 

Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, who has donated millions to Harvard, wrote in an open letter to Harvard’s board on Sunday that Gay had “quelched speech she disfavors while defending and thereby amplifying vile and threatening hate speech.” 

A petition urging her removal claimed over 1,100 alumni signatures as of midday Monday.

But the Harvard Alumni Association Executive Committee on Monday asked the Harvard Corporation to back Gay, the Harvard Crimson reported. Nearly 700 faculty members signed a petition supporting Gay as of Monday afternoon, while Black alumni and allies said on social media that they had gathered nearly 800 signatures on another petition supporting the president. 

At a hearing before a U.S. House of Representatives committee on Tuesday, three university presidents — Gay, Liz Magill of Penn and Sally Kornbluth of Massachusetts Institute of Technology — declined to answer “yes” or “no” when asked if calling for the genocide of Jews would violate school codes of conduct regarding bullying and harassment.

The trio said they had to take free speech into consideration. Gay on Thursday apologized for her remarks at the hearing in an interview with Harvard’s student newspaper. 

The hearing increased public outcry over how U.S. colleges are handling campus protests since Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel. Jewish communities have claimed universities are tolerating antisemitism. Pro-Palestinian groups have accused the schools of being neutral or antagonistic toward their cause.

On Friday, 74 members of Congress, in a letter to the boards of all three schools, called for leadership changes. 

Magill and the University of Pennsylvania Board of Trustees chair Scott Bok resigned from their posts on Saturday. The Executive Committee of the MIT Corporation said in a statement after Kornbluth’s testimony that she still had its full support.

Free speech debate

Many on the political right have accused the university presidents of hypocrisy, saying they defended free speech at the congressional hearing but police speech when it offends causes they prefer. 

At the hearing, Republican lawmakers grilled the presidents over their schools’ diversity efforts and accused them of being inhospitable to conservative viewpoints.

Ackman also called for closing Harvard’s office of diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging, and alleged that the committee that appointed Gay, a Black woman, to the presidency had discriminated against “non-DEI eligible candidates.”

Civil rights activist Reverend Al Sharpton said Ackman’s letter was a further assault on efforts to expand inclusion months after the Supreme Court, in a case that involved Harvard, struck down race-conscious college admissions programs.

At other U.S. universities, teachers have been suspended or banned from campus as the debate over violence in the Middle East roils. The University of Arizona on Dec. 1 reinstated two educators who were suspended in November.

The University of Southern California on Dec. 2 lifted restrictions on an economics professor who last month was directed to teach online. 

 
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U.S. special counsel Jack Smith asked the Supreme Court on Monday to quickly consider whether former President Donald Trump has any immunity from charges accusing him of illegally conspiring to upend his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden.

In an effort to keep Trump’s scheduled March 4 trial date in Washington on track, Smith asked the country’s highest court to uphold U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan’s ruling that the case can go forward, and bypass Trump’s appeal of her ruling to the federal appellate court in Washington, a process that could take months.

“The United States recognizes that this is an extraordinary request,” Smith told the Supreme Court. “This is an extraordinary case.”

By asking the Supreme Court for direct consideration of whether Trump is immune from prosecution for actions he took while still in office in the waning days of his presidency in late 2020 and early 2021, Smith is trying to avert having the trial delayed until after next November’s presidential election.

Trump is the overwhelming favorite for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination even as he faces an unprecedented four criminal indictments accusing him of 91 offenses, all of which he has denied.

If he were to win the White House again and any federal trials had yet to occur, he could direct his attorney general to drop two cases brought by Smith — the election conspiracy case and another in the Southern state of Florida set for May accusing him of mishandling classified documents as he left office.

Trump appointed three of the nine sitting Supreme Court justices during his four years in office. But the former president does not have a winning track record at the high court.

The justices rejected requests from Trump and his supporters to get involved in challenges to the 2020 election results. They also ruled against his claims that the presidency protected him from investigation and turned back his efforts to block release of his financial records.

In asking the Supreme Court to rule on whether Trump is immune from prosecution, prosecutors wrote, “This case presents a fundamental question at the heart of our democracy: whether a former president is absolutely immune from federal prosecution for crimes committed while in office or is constitutionally protected from federal prosecution when he has been impeached but not convicted before the criminal proceedings begin.”

The court could consider the appeal on January 5, the date of the justices’ next scheduled private conference.

The prosecutors emphasized the urgency of the matter to the Supreme Court, saying, “It is of imperative public importance that [Trump’s] claims of immunity be resolved by this court and that [his] trial proceed as promptly as possible if his claim of immunity is rejected.”

The prosecutors told the high court that Trump’s immunity claims “are profoundly mistaken, as the district court held. But only this court can definitively resolve them.”

Chutkan, the trial judge in the case, rejected arguments by Trump’s attorneys that he was immune from federal prosecution. In her order, she wrote that the office of the president “does not confer a lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass.”

“Former presidents enjoy no special conditions on their federal criminal liability,” Chutkan wrote. “Defendant may be subject to federal investigation, indictment, prosecution, conviction and punishment for any criminal acts undertaken while in office.”

Trump, a Republican, is accused in a four-count indictment in Washington of conspiring to upend the results of the 2020 election he lost to Biden, a Democrat who is running for reelection next year.

The indictment alleged that Trump sought “to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election by using knowingly false claims of election fraud to obstruct the federal government function by which those results are collected, counted and certified.”

On January 6, 2021, as Congress met to officially certify the results of the Electoral College showing Biden had won, Trump urged supporters to march to the U.S. Capitol and “fight like hell” to disrupt the proceeding. In the ensuing mayhem, about 2,000 Trump supporters stormed into the Capitol, clashed with police and rampaged through some congressional offices.

More than 1,100 protesters were arrested and more than 600 have been convicted of an array of offenses.

After hours of delay, Congress ratified Biden’s victory in the early hours of January 7, and he became the country’s president on January 20, 2021.
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