ReportWire

Tag: government organizations – us

  • Why Silicon Valley Bank collapsed and what it could mean | CNN Business

    Why Silicon Valley Bank collapsed and what it could mean | CNN Business

    [ad_1]


    London
    CNN
     — 

    Silicon Valley Bank collapsed with astounding speed on Friday. Investors are now on edge about whether its demise could spark a broader banking meltdown.

    The US federal government has stepped in to guarantee customer deposits, but SVB’s downfall continues to reverberate across global financial markets. The government has also shut down Signature Bank, a regional bank that was teetering on the brink of collapse, and guaranteed its deposits.

    In a sign of how seriously officials are taking the SVB failure, US President Joe Biden told Americans Monday that they “can rest assured that our banking system is safe,” adding: “We will do whatever is needed on top of all this.”

    Here’s what you need to know about the biggest US bank failure since the global financial crisis.

    Established in 1983, Silicon Valley Bank was, just before collapsing, America’s 16th largest commercial bank. It provided banking services to nearly half of all US venture-backed technology and life science companies.

    It also has operations in Canada, China, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

    SVB benefited hugely from the tech sector’s explosive growth in recent years, fueled by ultra-low borrowing costs and a pandemic-induced boom in demand for digital services.

    The bank’s assets, which include loans, more than tripled from $71 billion at the end of 2019 to a peak of $220 billion at the end of March 2022, according to financial statements. Deposits ballooned from $62 billion to $198 billion over that period, as thousands of tech startups parked their cash at the lender. Its global headcount more than doubled.

    SVB’s collapse came suddenly, following a frenetic 48 hours during which customers yanked deposits from the lender in a classic run on the bank.

    But the root of its demise goes back several years. Like many other banks, SVB ploughed billions into US government bonds during the era of near-zero interest rates.

    What seemed like a safe bet quickly came unstuck, as the Federal Reserve hiked interest rates aggressively to tame inflation.

    When interest rates rise, bond prices fall, so the jump in rates eroded the value of SVB’s bond portfolio. The portfolio was yielding an average 1.79% return last week, far below the 10-year Treasury yield of around 3.9%, Reuters reported.

    At the same time, the Fed’s hiking spree sent borrowing costs higher, meaning tech startups had to channel more cash towards repaying debt. At the same time, they were struggling to raise new venture capital funding.

    That forced companies to draw down on deposits held by SVB to fund their operations and growth.

    While SVB’s problems can be traced back to its earlier investment decisions, the run on the bank was triggered Wednesday when the lender announced that it had sold a bunch of securities at a loss and would sell $2.25 billion in new shares to plug the hole in its finances.

    That set off panic among customers, who withdrew their money in large numbers.

    The bank’s stock plummeted 60% Thursday and dragged other bank shares down with it as investors began to fear a repeat of the global financial crisis a decade and a half ago.

    By Friday morning, trading in SVB shares was halted and it had abandoned efforts to raise capital or find a buyer. California regulators intervened, shutting the bank down and placing it in receivership under the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which typically means liquidating the bank’s assets to pay back depositors and creditors.

    US regulators said Sunday that they would guarantee all SVB customers’ deposits. The move is aimed at preventing more bank runs and helping tech companies to continue paying staff and funding their operations.

    The intervention does not amount to a 2008-style bailout, however, which means investors in the company’s stock and bonds will not be protected.

    “Let me be clear that during the financial crisis, there were investors and owners of systemic large banks that were bailed out … and the reforms that have been put in place mean that we’re not going to do that again,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told CBS in an interview Sunday.

    “But we are concerned about depositors and are focused on trying to meet their needs.”

    There are already some signs of stress at other banks. Trading in First Republic Bank

    (FRC)     and PacWest Bancorp

    (PACW)     was temporarily halted Monday after the shares plunged 65% and 52% respectively. Charles Schwab

    (SCHW)     stock was down 7% at 11.30 a.m. ET Monday.

    In Europe, the benchmark Stoxx Europe 600 Banks index, which tracks 42 big EU and UK banks, fell 5.6% in morning trade — notching its biggest fall since last March. Shares in embattled Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse were down 9%.

    SVB isn’t the only financial institution whose investments into government bonds and other assets have fallen dramatically in value.

    At the end of 2022, US banks were sitting on $620 billion in unrealized losses — assets that have decreased in price but haven’t been sold yet, according to the FDIC.

    In a sign that regulators have concerns about wider financial chaos, the Fed said Sunday that it would make additional funding available for eligible financial institutions to prevent the next SVB from collapsing.

    Most analysts point out that US and European banks have much stronger financial buffers now than during the global financial crisis. They also highlight that SVB had very heavy exposure to the tech sector, which has been particularly hard hit by rising interest rates.

    “While SVB is a major failure, [it] and other niche players like Signature are quite unique in the broader banking world,” research analysts David Covey, Adrian Cighi and Jaimin Shah at M&G Investments commented in a blog post on Monday. “So unique, in our view, that it is unlikely to create material problems for any of the large diversified banks in the US or Europe from a credit point of view.”

    HSBC stepped in Monday to buy SVB UK for £1 ($1.2), securing the deposits of thousands of British tech companies that hold money at the lender.

    Had a buyer not been found, SVB UK would have been placed into insolvency by the Bank of England, leaving customers with only deposits worth up to £85,000 ($100,000) — or £170,000 ($200,000) for joint accounts — guaranteed.

    The HSBC rescue is “fantastic news” for the UK startup ecosystem, said Piotr Pisarz, the CEO of Uncapped, a financial tech startup that lends to other startups. “I think we can all relax a bit today,” he told CNN.

    In a statement, HSBC CEO Noel Quinn said the acquisition “strengthens our commercial banking franchise and enhances our ability to serve innovative and fast-growing firms, including in the technology and life science sectors, in the UK and internationally.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • From Wile E. Coyote to edibles: Recession forecasts are getting weird | CNN Business

    From Wile E. Coyote to edibles: Recession forecasts are getting weird | CNN Business

    [ad_1]

    A version of this story first appeared in CNN Business’ Before the Bell newsletter. Not a subscriber? You can sign up right here. You can listen to an audio version of the newsletter by clicking the same link.


    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Understanding the economy is a complicated task, and even the experts are struggling to answer seemingly simple questions like “Are we on the brink of a recession?” or “Why isn’t inflation falling faster?”

    Many have resorted to the use of metaphor to convey the current complexity of the economy.

    It’s a communications tactic that some Federal Reserve officials have long favored. In the early 1980s, Nancy Teeters, the first woman appointed to the Federal Reserve Board, came up with an apt metaphor to explain why she disagreed with steep rate hikes implemented by then-Fed Chairman Paul Volcker.

    Her colleagues were “pulling the financial fabric of this country so tight that it’s going to rip,” she said. “Once you tear a piece of fabric, it’s very difficult, almost impossible, to put it back together again,” she added, before remarking that “none of these guys has ever sewn anything in his life.”

    These days, economists and analysts are turning to increasingly outlandish metaphors to help translate their thoughts.

    Here are some of the most interesting descriptors used recently and what they mean:

    Wile E. Coyote

    If you think back to Saturday morning cartoons, you may remember the never-ending, and mostly futile, chase between Wile E. Coyote and his nemesis, Road Runner. That pursuit often ended with Wile E. running off a cliff and into mid-air.

    The toons were fun sources of entertainment in our salad years, but former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers says they now double as a case study for the Fed and the economy.

    “The [Federal Reserve’s] process of bringing down inflation will bring on a recession at some stage, as it almost always has in the past,” Summers told CNN last week.

    And for the US economy, it could likely mean a “Wile E. Coyote moment,” Summers said — if we run off the cliff, gravity will eventually win out.

    “The economy could hit an air pocket in a few months,” he said.

    Antibiotics

    When describing the state of the economy, Summers doesn’t just rely on Looney Tunes. He also borrows from the medical community.

    While describing why the Fed can’t end its rate hike regimen when inflation shows signs of showing, Summers has compared higher interest rates to medicine for a country sick with high inflation. The entire dose must be taken for the treatment to fully work, he says.

    “We’ve all had the experience of taking a course of drugs and giving up, stopping the drugs, before the course was exhausted, simply because we felt better. And then, whatever infection we had came back and it was harder to fight the second time,” Summers told Boston’s NPR news station WBUR in February.

    For what it’s worth, Before the Bell is also guilty of using this one.

    Fog report

    We may be driving in the fog, landing a plane in the fog or even just walking in it.

    What’s important in this oft-used scenario is that it’s hard to see and we’re doing something that typically requires clear visibility.

    Clients “facing the fog of uncertainty in financial markets, economic growth and geopolitics,” should “avoid unnecessary lane changes,” and “allow extra time to reach your destination,” advised Goldman Sachs analysts earlier this year.

    It’s essentially a fancy way of saying that no one really knows what’s going on in this economy. Instead of attempting to find a way out of the chaos, investors should slow down, stay the course and wait for recovery.

    Edibles

    Late last year, investment analyst Peter Boockvar used a semi-illicit metaphor to explain why he thought the Fed might be over-tightening the economy into recession. He compared the Fed to an inexperienced consumer of weed gummies, which can take a long time to kick in.

    During that waiting period, an eager consumer may think the drugs aren’t working and eat more before the effects of the first dose even set in. They then inevitably find themselves way too stoned and feeling not-so-great.

    Boockvar was careful to note that he himself does not indulge in this practice, by the way.

    Storm chasing

    JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon should receive an honorary degree in meteorology for his recessionary weather predictions.

    The Big Bank exec has repeatedly referred to economic recession as a storm gathering on the horizon — occasionally he’ll update the public on how far away and how bad that storm is.

    Last summer Dimon spooked markets when he compared a possible upcoming recession to a “hurricane.” In November, he downgraded it to a “storm.”

    By January, his forecast was simply “storm clouds,” adding that he probably should never have used the term “hurricane.”

    Polyurethane

    Rick Rieder, BlackRock’s Chief Investment Officer of Global Fixed Income, has likened the economy to a bendable piece of plastic. Much like the economy, he wrote, polyurethane, “displays flexibility and adaptability, but also durability and strength.”

    He added that “the material’s ability to be stretched, bent, stressed and flexed without breaking, while in fact returning to its original condition, is what makes it so chemically unique. In recent years the US economy has displayed a remarkable resilience to stresses and an extraordinary ability to adapt to changing conditions.”

    Last week Senator Elizabeth Warren grilled Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell about American job losses being potential casualties of the central bank’s battle against high inflation.

    Warren, a frequent critic of the Fed’s leader, noted that an additional 2 million people would have to lose their jobs if the unemployment rate rises from its current 3.6% rate to reach the Fed’s projections of 4.6% by the end of the year.

    “If you could speak directly to the two million hardworking people who have decent jobs today, who you’re planning to get fired over the next year, what would you say to them?” Warren asked.

    Powell argued that all Americans, not just two million, are suffering under high inflation.

    “Will working people be better off if we just walk away from our jobs and inflation remains 5% or 6%?” Powell replied.

    Warren cautioned Powell that he was “gambling with people’s lives.”

    The discussion was part of a larger cost-benefit conversation that keeps popping up around the jobs market: Which is worse — widespread job loss or elevated inflation?

    CNN spoke with two top economic analysts with different perspectives to gain a deeper understanding of the debate.

    Below is our interview with Johns Hopkins economist Laurence Ball.

    Yesterday we published our interview with Roosevelt Institute director Michael Konczal, you can read that here.

    This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

    Before the Bell: Is it necessary to increase the unemployment rate to successfully fight inflation?

    Laurence Ball: There’s a trade off between inflation and unemployment. When the economy is very strong and unemployment is pushed down, inflation tends to be higher. Right now there are almost two job openings per unemployed worker, the supply of workers looking for jobs and the demand for firms to hire is out of whack. That’s leading to faster wage increases, which sounds good except that gets passed through to faster price increases and more inflation. So somehow the labor market has to be brought back towards a normal balance of workers and jobs and that means slowing down the economy, and that probably means raising unemployment.

    Can you explain the cost-benefit analysis of two million jobs lost to get down to 2% inflation?

    If we assume we have to get inflation down to 2%, then it’s just an unhappy fact of life that that’s going to require higher unemployment. But a lot of people, including me, think that if the Fed gets it down to 4% or 3%, that’s the time to declare victory or say, ‘close enough for government work.’

    It gets more and more expensive in terms of how much unemployment it costs to go from 3% to 2% inflation. Those last few points will have disproportionately large costs, and it’s very dubious if that’s really worth it.

    Now, the Fed has the political problem that they’ve been insisting on a 2% target rate for years. If they say right at this moment that 3% or 4% is okay that would be seen as surrendering or moving the goalposts. I think a likely outcome is that inflation gets down to 3% or 4% and the Fed continues to say their target is a 2% inflation rate but never does what has to be done to get it there.

    If you examine Fed history you see that 5% appears to be a magic number. When inflation is above 5% it becomes this big political issue. When it goes below 5% it disappears from the headlines.

    What do you think is important for our readers to know about this back-and-forth between Powell and Warren?

    Behind all of this, in a market economy there’s sort of a basic glitch. We have this thing called unemployment, we sort of chronically have not enough jobs for everybody and that’s a big problem. The problem can be reduced somewhat in the short run if you get the economy going very fast. But then that leads to inflation. Accepting that unemployment has to go back up is just recognizing that there’s this glitch in the market economy or capitalism. It’s not clear how we can get around that.

    CNN Business’ David Goldman reports: 

    In an extraordinary action to restore confidence in America’s banking system, the Biden administration on Sunday guaranteed that customers of the failed Silicon Valley Bank will have access to all their money starting Monday.

    In a related action, the government shut down Signature Bank, a regional bank that was teetering on the brink of collapse in recent days. Signature’s customers will receive a similar deal, ensuring that even uninsured deposits will be returned to them Monday.

    SVB collapse: live updates

    In a joint statement Sunday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chairman Martin J. Gruenberg said the FDIC will make SVB and Signature’s customers whole. By guaranteeing all deposits — even the uninsured money that customers kept with the failed banks — the government aimed to prevent more bank runs and to help companies that deposited large sums with the banks to continue to make payroll and fund their operations.

    The Fed will also make additional funding available for eligible financial institutions to prevent runs on similar banks in the future.

    Wall Street investors were relieved that the government intervened as stock futures rebounded on Sunday evening, although the rally is fading Monday morning. Markets had tumbled more than 3% Thursday and Friday as investors feared more bank failures and systemic risk for the tech sector.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Pence says ‘history will hold Donald Trump accountable’ for January 6 | CNN Politics

    Pence says ‘history will hold Donald Trump accountable’ for January 6 | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Former Vice President Mike Pence made his most blistering comments yet about former President Donald Trump’s role in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol during remarks Saturday evening at the annual Gridiron Club Dinner in Washington, DC.

    Pence began his remarks at the dinner, which traditionally features politicians making jokes about notable Washington figures, with lighthearted comments about Trump, President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and several Republicans expected to run for president in 2024, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley.

    He then took a serious tone, noting the attack on the Capitol was “one thing I haven’t joked about” and calling January 6 “a tragic day.”

    Pence rebuked Trump for his role in the January 6, 2021 attack, saying he was “wrong” for claiming Pence had the authority to overturn the results of the 2020 election in his role presiding over Congress that day, saying “history will hold Donald Trump accountable.”

    “President Trump was wrong. I had no right to overturn the election and his reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day, and I know that history will hold Donald Trump accountable,” Pence said.

    Pence scolded those who have downplayed the people who entered the Capitol on January 6 as tourists.

    “Tourists don’t injure 140 police officers by sightseeing,” Pence said. “Tourists don’t break down doors to get to the Speaker of the House or voice threats against public officials.”

    Pence chastised Republicans who minimized the insurrection, days after Fox News host Tucker Carlson aired new security footage from inside the Capitol on January 6 in an attempt to defend the mob.

    “Make no mistake about it, what happened that day was a disgrace, and it mocks decency to portray it in any other way,” Pence said at the dinner.

    Pence also said people “have a right to know what took place” during the insurrection, days after he asked a judge to block a subpoena for his testimony to the special counsel investigating the insurrection.

    “The American people have a right to know what took place at the Capitol on January 6, and I expect members of the fourth estate to continue to do their job,” Pence said at the dinner.

    The comments come after attorneys for Pence filed a motion last week asking a judge to block a federal grand jury subpoena for his testimony related to January 6. Pence had publicly signaled that he planned to resist the subpoena, arguing it was “unconstitutional and unprecedented.”

    Former Trump chief economic adviser Gary Cohn said Sunday he agreed with Pence’s comments about the January 6 attack.

    “Look, that was a shocking day in the history of this country. We continue to be reminded about January 6, and I think we will all live with it and all live with the memories of what happened on January 6. I agree – I agree with him,” Cohn said in an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on “State of the Union.”

    Republican Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas similarly told CBS News Sunday that Pence “exercised moral clarity and judgment that day by doing his constitutional responsibility” and helped avoid “a major constitutional crisis that day.”

    “History will judge everyone by what they did that day,” McCaul said, noting that he voted to certify the 2020 election results.

    During his remarks Saturday evening, Pence repeatedly praised the media’s coverage of the January 6 attack at the dinner, which traditionally includes members of the Washington press corps among its attendees, and said he was able to carry out his role in certifying the election “in part” because of the media’s real-time coverage of the insurrection.

    “We were able to stay at our post, in part, because you stayed at your post. The American people know what happened that day because you never stopped reporting,” Pence said.

    “For what you do to preserve and strengthen this great democracy, you have my heartfelt thanks and I know the thanks of a grateful nation. Thanks for what you do to preserve freedom,” Pence continued.

    The former Vice President also pledged to “never, ever” downplay the violence that law enforcement officers suffered at the hands of rioters at the Capitol.

    “For as long as I live I will never, ever diminish the injuries sustained, the lives lost, or the heroism of law enforcement on that tragic day,” Pence said.

    Pence also made jokes at the expense of the former President at the dinner, which traditionally features politicians taking the opportunity to make light of Washington figures from both parties. Pence said during one of his jokes, “I think (Trump) and I are on very good terms.”

    “I mean, he’s never called me a low-energy moron. Not yet,” he continued.

    He also poked fun at Trump’s various legal troubles, saying “Honestly, I learned a lot working beside Donald Trump, like about subpoenas for instance.”

    This story has been updated with additional information Sunday.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Another atmospheric river is coming for California, where neighborhoods are still flooded and hundreds of evacuated residents are in shelters | CNN

    Another atmospheric river is coming for California, where neighborhoods are still flooded and hundreds of evacuated residents are in shelters | CNN

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Still reeling from storms that inundated neighborhoods, forced rescues and damaged roads, storm-battered California is bracing for another atmospheric river that threatens even more flooding Monday.

    More than 17 million people remained under flood watches across California and Nevada early Monday morning as the storm made its menacing approach – the 11th atmospheric river to hit the West this winter season.

    The new storm, arriving on the heels of another atmospheric river, could exacerbate the flooding and damage in some areas. Already, those in the central and northern parts of California are crowding into shelters and contending with flooded neighborhoods, mudslides, dangerous rushing rivers, collapsed bridges and unusable roads.

    At least two people have died as a result of the storms, officials said.

    This atmospheric river event will first bring rain and snow to much of Oregon and Washington before sinking south into California Monday. Rainfall totals up to 8 inches are possible across parts of northern and central California.

    The approaching atmospheric river is already complicating efforts to repair a levee breach that happened around midnight Friday on the swollen Pajaro River in Monterey County, one of the hardest hit areas in the state.

    Water rushed uncontrollably through the more than 120-foot break and into nearby Pajaro, forcing thousands to flee as crews performed high-water rescues in the flooded area.

    There have already been close to 200 rescues due to flooding in the area, Monterey Sheriff Tina Nieto said.

    Many Pajaro residents are farm workers who may not only lose property, but also the ability to earn a living for some time if the continued flooding impacts agriculture, said Luis Alejo, chair of the Monterey County board of supervisors.

    “These are the folks who can least afford this type of hardship,” he said.

    With more rain on the way, Monterey County officials are now looking into expanding evacuation orders in and around the Pajaro River, where more than 5,000 residents already have been impacted by evacuation warnings and orders.

    More than 480 people are at 30 shelters across 12 counties, the majority in hard-hit Santa Cruz County, just north of the Monterey area, according to a Sunday update from the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services.

    President Joe Biden has approved a state of emergency declaration requested by Gov. Gavin Newsom. The move frees funds for the millions of residents who have been hit with severe weather since the beginning of the year.

    Newsom on Sunday expanded the declaration to include six additional counties, including Calaveras, Del Norte, Glenn, Kings, San Benito and San Joaquin.

    Images from throughout the state show neighborhoods that look like lakes from the severe rainfall that pummeled California over the past few days and sent rivers and creeks overflowing.

    The Salinas River is already rising as it moves through the Salinas Valley and Monterey County officials warn it will feel the impacts of our next atmospheric river storm event.”

    California Highway Patrol used a helicopter to help rescue someone who was trapped in the Salinas River in King City, the agency said in a Facebook post.

    “The rising river washed a driver and his car away but the driver was able to escape the vehicle and get to an island in the middle of the flooded Salinas River,” the post said.

    Similar rescues have played out throughout the state, with California National Guard troops also responding with highwater vehicles to help people stuck in floodwaters.

    In parts of Kern County – where several evacuation orders remain – the flooding was so bad that one resident described seeing a shed, a hot tub, and several full-size trees with their root balls floating down the Kern River in Kernville.

    “The river is now surrounding some RVs and mobile homes. It’s really unbelievable,” said Danny Housh, who has been working in Kernville for 17 years and said he’s never seen anything like this before.

    To the north, as Friday’s heavy rains pummeled Santa Cruz County, about 700 residents in Soquel got trapped after a pipe failure collapsed the only road linking the community to the rest of the region, said Steve Wiesner, the county’s assistant public works director.

    “We are now an island,” resident Molly Watson told CNN.

    Another hard hit area was Tulare County, where video from Springville showed devastating damage after Friday’s severe flooding.

    “It’s quite heartbreaking,” Hatti Shepard told CNN. “Many hard-working people displaced with losses of home and possessions.”

    Mammoth Lakes Fire Department firefighters respond to a propane heater leak and small fire at a shuttered restaurant surrounded by snowbanks on March 12, 2023 in Mammoth Lakes, California.

    The recent atmospheric rivers are the latest to inundate the state after a barrage of similar storms in December and January also resulted in deadly flooding and widespread damage.

    Atmospheric rivers are long, narrow bands of moisture that can carry saturated air thousands of miles like a fire hose.

    This new wave of storms is bearing down on areas already buried by heavy snowfall from the past two weeks. Melting snowpack will also play a role in prolonging flooding over the upcoming days, forecasters say.

    Despite uncertainty on the timing of this system, forecasters know it’ll bring yet another round of heavy precipitation, as well as heavy snowfall for the higher elevations of the Sierra Nevada.

    The National Weather Service’s prediction center issued a Level 3 out of 4 risk for excessive rain across northern California on Monday and across portions of the central California coast and Sierra Nevada on Tuesday.

    The rain is expected to start intensifying late Monday and the heavy rainfall, combined with the snowmelt, is forecast to fuel more flooding from Tuesday into Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service.

    The National Weather Service warned of “considerable flooding impacts” below 5000-foot elevations across large portions of central California into Tuesday.

    “In addition, heavy rain and snowmelt may lead to renewed (more widespread) flooding from Monday to Tuesday, particularly in low elevations and shallow and warming snowpack areas,” the National Weather Service said.

    Creeks and streams, already overflowing, are expected to continue to be vulnerable to flooding from additional rain and snowmelt.

    In Southern California, peak rain rates of up to an inch per hour are expected over the mountains and foothills.

    The weather service office in Los Angeles said residents could expect shallow mud and debris flows in recent burn areas, downed trees and powerlines and travel delays due to flooded road and mudslides.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • TikTok could be a valuable tool for China if it invades Taiwan, FBI director says | CNN Business

    TikTok could be a valuable tool for China if it invades Taiwan, FBI director says | CNN Business

    [ad_1]


    New York
    CNN
     — 

    The Chinese government could use TikTok to control data on millions of people and harness the short-form video app to shape public opinion should China invade Taiwan, FBI Director Christopher Wray told the Senate Intelligence Committee Wednesday.

    Wray responded affirmatively to questions from Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, the panel’s ranking member, on whether TikTok would allow Beijing widespread control over data and a valuable influence tool in the event of war in the Taiwan Strait.

    “The most fundamental piece that cuts across every one of those risks and threats that you mentioned that I think Americans need to understand is that something that’s very sacred in our country —the difference between the private sector and public sector — that’s a line that is nonexistent in the way that the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] operates,” Wray told Rubio in the hearing.

    Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate panel, argued that TikTok presents “a substantial national security threat for the country of a kind that we didn’t face in the past.”

    Wray’s comments come a day after Gen. Paul Nakasone, head of the US National Security Agency, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he worried TikTok could censor videos to shape public opinion in a way that threatens US national security interests.

    It’s the latest in a full-court press from US officials to sound the alarm about TikTok’s alleged security risks as Congress weighs giving the Biden administration more authority to address the alleged threat posed by the platform, up to and including banning the app in the United States

    TikTok CEO Shou Chew said this week that the Chinese government has “never asked us for US user data” and the company would not provide it if the government did ask. Chew also said that “misinformation and propaganda has no place on our platform, and our users do not expect that.”

    The company has taken voluntary steps to wall off US user data from the rest of its global organization, including by hosting that data on servers operated by the US tech giant Oracle. The company is also negotiating a possible agreement with the Biden administration that could allow TikTok to continue operating in the United States under certain conditions.

    In a statement this week, a TikTok spokesperson said a US government ban would stifle American speech and would be “a ban on the export of American culture and values to the billion-plus people who use our service worldwide.”

    – CNN’s Brian Fung and Catherine Thorbecke contributed to this report.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Mississippi man sentenced to more than 3 years in prison for burning a cross to intimidate Black family | CNN

    Mississippi man sentenced to more than 3 years in prison for burning a cross to intimidate Black family | CNN

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    A Mississippi man has been sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison for burning a cross in his front yard to intimidate a Black family, according to a news release from the US Justice Department.

    Axel Cox, 24, was sentenced to 42 months in connection to the cross burning, which happened in December 2020 and violated the Fair Housing Act, the release said, adding Cox “admitted that he lit the cross on fire because the victims were Black and that he intended to scare them into moving out of the neighborhood.”

    Justice Department leaders condemned Cox’s actions, with Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division calling them “an abhorrent act that used a traditional symbol of hatred and violence to stoke fear and drive a Black family out of their home.”

    According to the Justice Department, Cox “wedged two pieces of wood together to form a cross, placed it in clear view of the victims’ residence,” following a dispute with the victims and “doused it in oil and set it alight. During this incident, Cox yelled threats and racial slurs toward the occupants of the house.”

    In September 2022, a federal grand jury indicted Cox for interfering with the victims’ housing rights and using fire to commit a federal felony. An attorney for Cox, who did not immediately response to a request for comment Sunday, filed a notice of intent to change his plea in November 2022, and court documents indicate Cox pleaded guilty to the first count.

    Cox’s prison term is set to be followed by three years of supervised release, per the Justice Department. He was also ordered to pay $7,810 in restitution.

    “While one might think cross-burnings and white supremacist threats and violence are things of the past, the unfortunate reality is that these incidents continue today,” Clarke said.

    “This sentence demonstrates the importance of holding people accountable for threatening the safety and security of Black people in their homes because of the color of their skin or where they are from.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • What’s going on with all the runway close calls | CNN Politics

    What’s going on with all the runway close calls | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]

    A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    There have been six close calls on US runways this year, which has led to a fair amount of news coverage, some alarm among the flying public and a lot of calls for answers – including from the acting head of the Federal Aviation Administration Billy Nolen, who testified on Capitol Hill this week.

    Unable to explain the spike, Nolen told lawmakers the agency wants to get to the bottom of things at a safety summit planned for next week. There are also specific investigations into each incident in Boston; Burbank, California; Austin, Texas; Honolulu; New York; and Sarasota, Florida.

    I talked to CNN’s Pete Muntean, who not only covers aviation but is also a pilot and flight instructor, for his perspective on what the heck is going on.

    Our conversation, conducted by phone, is below. Stick with it for an interesting bonus story on how low-flying planes are used to find poachers in Africa.

    WOLF: Six close calls in recent weeks. Are these all distinct events? Or should we view them as one larger issue?

    MUNTEAN: There’s definitely a constant theme because they’re the same type of event, which is officially known as a runway incursion. It is where two airplanes essentially get in the way of one another on or near the runway.

    These types of events can range from really minor to more egregious. What we saw at JFK in New York in January, that had to be one of the more egregious ones. The air traffic controller had to swoop in and stop a flight that was barreling down the runway toward a crossing, taxiing (Boeing) triple seven from taking off.

    That is a more extreme, severe example. There have been some examples where the airplanes get within a few hundred feet of one another, maybe as close as 100 feet. One of the cases like in Austin.

    But they’re not really caused, necessarily, by the same thing. That’s, of course, something that investigators will look at.

    (On Wednesday) the acting head of the FAA on Capitol Hill said that if there are dots to connect, they’ll connect them in this safety summit next week, although it doesn’t seem like there was any real common trigger. No common cause.

    RELATED: FAA to conduct sweeping safety review after multiple incidents

    WOLF: Who is supposed to keep these from happening? Is it the air traffic controllers? Is it the pilots? How is it supposed to work?

    MUNTEAN: There are multiple different layers of safeguards in place in the air traffic system, especially at these busy airports where there are a lot of airliners coming in and out in a lot of varying conditions, a lot of different times of day.

    Some of the responsibility falls on air traffic control. Of course, it’s their job to keep airplanes from running into one another. Some of the responsibility falls on the flight crew to keep it so that they follow the instructions of air traffic control, that they remain vigilant all the time, if they’re taxiing across runways or taking off from a runway that’s crisscrossing with another one as they’re about to land.

    The good news is that in commercial aviation in the US – which has a stellar track record, by the way – there are two trained pilots at all times. And there are a lot of eyeballs essentially making it so that these things don’t happen.

    The pilots can intercede at any point, and in some cases they have. They’ve just essentially called their own go-arounds to make it so that they don’t come in contact with an airplane. In some cases, the air traffic controllers will call it. The onus is on a few different layers here.

    I’m a pilot, but I just did a demonstration with a former NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) investigator at a busy airport, Dulles (in Virginia), and it begs pointing out that some of the safeguards are as simple as paint on the runway and taxiways to remind pilots not to taxi too close to the runway. Some of it is in the phraseology that’s used on the radio. Some of it is in the procedures and training the pilots get.

    I think every pilot that’s out there now – and if you talk to professional pilots this is something that weighs on them – this has been a chronic problem for aviation for a while. But now, because of these headlines, it’s especially top of mind for pilots and air traffic controllers and regulators and safety advocates.

    WOLF: You said it’s a chronic problem. Is there any indication or any data to suggest this is happening more often? Or are we in the media just paying attention to it?

    MUNTEAN: I think these events are getting more attention. No doubt that these six that we have seen so far this year are extreme. Usually they don’t happen with such severity, with such frequency.

    But the FAA, at every layer of aviation from commercial aviation on down to small airplanes and private airports, they’re always trying to remind pilots to remain vigilant. Something that pilots really train for in their first flying lesson is how to behave in and respect the environment around an airport.

    In some ways, it’s like flying with a loaded gun. You have to be really, really careful.

    The reason why these are happening, one pilot told me – who’s the representative for a large union of airline pilots and a major airline – he said the system is just under so much pressure right now. There’s a lot of corporate pressure for airlines to get back on their feet after the pandemic.

    There’s a lot of new pilots flying right now, who may have matriculated from regional airlines to larger airlines. A lot of the old guard have retired. Pilots have left just because they were given voluntary leave packages as a result of the downturn of the pandemic.

    There are a ton of different factors at play.

    The fact that we’re sort of paying attention to these more just sort of highlights that nobody can ever let their guard down.

    WOLF: Is the current air traffic system that we’re using technologically up to snuff?

    MUNTEAN: I think it is. And I think the FAA would say that it is, because they have added in so many layers of technology to make it so that these incidents are avoided.

    They have technology that can sense, at some larger airports, whether or not a pilot is lined up with the wrong thing, if they were aiming for a runway but instead aimed for a taxiway to land on – which has happened before.

    They have more lighting on the pavement that warns pilots, essentially like a stoplight, to make it so they don’t go rolling across a runway as they are taxiing across one.

    There are even systems that make it so that they can sense, using radar and other technologies, where airplanes are on the ground and not just in the air. Some of these runway incursions are caused simply by airplanes being in the wrong place as they are taxiing and not necessarily in the air.

    I think the system is up to snuff. I think the FAA would say the system is up to snuff. But they’re also using this as a moment to sort of reinspect and have some introspection on the matter and whether or not they could be doing more to make it so that these problems can be avoided.

    WOLF: You already pointed out that commercial aviation in the US is incredibly safe.

    MUNTEAN: The last time there was a fatality was 2018, which was kind of a freak accident, where a person got hit on a Southwest flight by a fan blade that broke up in a jet engine.

    We’re reporting on crashes that don’t happen. These are close calls, sure, but nobody’s been hurt. Nobody’s been killed. So it kind of shows, in a way, how safe the system is.

    WOLF: Is there a spot in the system that is particularly weak? Is it takeoff or landing? What is the thing that makes pilots most nervous?

    MUNTEAN: The common theme is having so many airplanes close together. That’s sort of the inherent flaw of an airport, right? You bring in airplanes and take off and land. You may be using multiple different runways at the same time. There’s a lot of demand in the air traffic right now.

    Every airport is different, right?

    Some airports may have a lot of runways that are parallel and a lot of taxiways that are parallel to one another, like at Dulles the other day, where we went. There are three runways lined up: one left, one center and one right. They’re all headed the same direction to the north. You have to be really careful that you’re lined up with the right one.

    There are a few different things that you can do in the airplane to mitigate that and make sure that you have a safeguard of your own. But I think it really varies by the airport. In some places, there are intersecting runways. There are taxiways that have confusing turns.

    The FAA does granular looks at things like this, where they say something like this taxiway design isn’t all that great, there may be a blind spot here, as you’re taxiing you may approach this at a 45-degree angle or it could be a 90-degree angle where somebody in the cockpit can see more.

    Also when conditions are changing – we saw in the Austin incident the weather was abysmal at that time. It was very low cloud ceilings and very low visibility where the pilots were able to get an indication that there was somebody on the runway, an approaching FedEx flight and a Southwest flight that was still on the runway that hadn’t taken off yet.

    They weren’t necessarily able to see that (Southwest flight), so far as we know, by their eyeball.

    There are a lot of things at play. You can’t just say it’s any one different thing. And remember, these pilots are often going in and out of different places multiple times a day. The responsibility is on everybody.

    WOLF: Do pilots face the same sort of difficult lifestyle we’ve been hearing about for train operators?

    MUNTEAN: There’s a ton of regulation that protects pilots. We see that occasionally getting better. Even flight attendants have gotten longer rest rules recently, where they’re able to rest between trips for a longer period of time.

    There’s always friction between organized labor, work groups and the companies that they work for. A lot of times it comes down to regulators and what they are able to do for workers. Pretty much every major airline right now – their pilot groups, as well as a lot of major flight attendant groups – are going through contract negotiations with their companies.

    Some of the safety and protection, unions would say, comes from a good deal that protects not only their ability to work but also keeps pilots and passengers safe. Organized labor and unions have a lot to say about this, and they want to make sure that they are treated fairly to make it so that these incidents don’t happen.

    I just talked to Dennis Tajer, who’s the representative of the Allied Pilots Association, which represents all the American Airlines pilots, and he said this is something that we’ve kind of been pounding our fists on the podium about, we’ve said for about a year that the air traffic system and the aviation system and the airline system are just under too much pressure, and now you’re seeing the result of that.

    It’s on not only regulators like the FAA, the Department of Transportation but also companies to make sure that these major airlines – which are huge corporations – to make sure that their pilots are safe and doing the job properly with the proper amount of rest, with the proper amount of resources.

    WOLF: Right. It’s in nobody’s interest for there to be an incident.

    MUNTEAN: Everyone says safety is a top priority, of course.

    But depending on your viewpoint, safety can have a lot of different meanings.

    WOLF: It’s always been my sense that air traffic is one of the most, if not the most, government-regulated systems in the country. Unlike other areas where there might be a move toward deregulation, this is something the government controls and is going to continue to control.

    MUNTEAN: It’s super regulated because a lot of the rules are, frankly, written in blood.

    When you talk about this runway incursion issue, the landmark case is the Tenerife accident (in 1977), where KLM and Pan Am 747s that both diverted to Tenerife, an island near Spain, ran into one another and killed a bunch of people. There were some survivors, but it was a classic runway incursion incident.

    One of the airplanes was back taxiing down the runway, as the KLM crew essentially blasted off without regard for where the other airplane was. They couldn’t see it because the weather was poor.

    These regulations are often born out of horrible disasters. And I think the thing to point out here is that we have avoided disaster in these six cases, but in some cases came pretty close. It underscores why things were so regulated and also why the regulators are taking this so seriously.

    WOLF: What are you looking out for?

    MUNTEAN: I would point out these things are still under investigation. And the National Transportation Safety Board has tried to shed a lot of light on this issue. I asked Jennifer Homendy, the chair of the NTSB, why do you think these things are happening more?

    She said, well, it’s possible that these things are happening more. It’s also possible that these things are getting more attention. It doesn’t matter; it’s good that these things are being brought to the spotlight.

    That could ultimately have a huge impact on safety. Aviation is not waiting for another Tenerife. They’re taking these one-off scares and really trying to learn from them.

    WOLF: You sound very passionate about all of this.

    MUNTEAN: I love flying more than anything. The cool part of my job is I get to talk about aviation for a living, and it’s something I’m so passionate about.

    I also instruct and teach people. I just came back from this incredible trip in Kenya where I got to instruct for the Kenya Wildlife Service Airwing, flying with essentially rangers, who are also pilots, with an anti-poaching air force.

    And that was just incredibly cool, but the focus is safety. Maybe I’m a little biased, but aviation is just like something I always geek out on. It’s fun to talk about. …

    I was invited with a group of instructors to go there, and we were in a national park south of Nairobi, called Tsavo West. We flew with 19 different pilots. Three instructors from the States essentially go down and audit their flying ability and safety.

    They’re very, very good pilots. Because they fly at a few hundred feet, guarding against poachers and spotting wildlife, they don’t have a ton of margin for error. We did a lot of brush-up things with them, and they were all very appreciative, and it was a very cool and rewarding experience flying smaller airplanes.

    Those are the type of airplanes that are best suited for that mission, because they can fly low and slow and have a lot of visibility. You can’t do that in a jet.

    It’s sort of like flying into Jurassic Park, because you see elephants all the time, and we saw rhinos and more zebras than I can ever count, and giraffes. But these pilots do a really important job, and (it) was really cool to be a part of it.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • NSA chief warns TikTok could censor videos as part of Chinese influence operations | CNN Business

    NSA chief warns TikTok could censor videos as part of Chinese influence operations | CNN Business

    [ad_1]


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    US national security officials are concerned that TikTok could use its vast global reach to shape public opinion by either suppressing certain videos or promoting others, the head of the National Security Agency and US Cyber Command told lawmakers on Tuesday.

    “It’s not only the fact that you can influence something, but you can also turn off the message as well when you have such a large population of listeners,” Gen. Paul Nakasone said in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

    TikTok’s collection of data and its control over the algorithm that serves user content are also concerning, Nakasone said.

    Nakasone’s comments follow a directive from the White House that gives US federal agencies 30 days to remove TikTok from government-issued devices. And they come amid a major policy debate in Washington about what to do about one of the most popular apps among American youth.

    US officials have for years accused TikTok – and its Chinese parent firm ByteDance – of collecting data that could enable surveillance by the Chinese government. TikTok denies the allegations and has called on the Biden administration to finalize a national security deal that would allow TikTok to continue operating in the US in exchange for greater US government visibility into how it collects and stores data on Americans.

    A TikTok spokesperson said that the company has been working with the US government to address national security concerns.

    “Our status has been debated in public in a way that is divorced from the facts of that agreement and what we’ve achieved already. We will continue to do our part to deliver a comprehensive national security plan for the American people,” Brooke Oberwetter from TikTok said in statement.

    Some House lawmakers have pushed legislation that could effectively force the Biden administration to impose an outright ban on TikTok, but the prospects of that bill becoming law are slim.

    A bipartisan Senate bill that Virginia Democrat Mark Warner and South Dakota Republican John Thune are expected to unveil on Tuesday would give the Commerce Department authority to develop “mitigation measures,” up to and including a ban, to meet the risk posed by foreign-linked technologies.

    Like the US government push to ban hardware and other gear made by Huawei, another Chinese technology giant, US officials are often short on specifics when asked to show public proof of collusion between the Chinese government and ByteDance.

    “People are always looking for the smoking gun in these technologies,” NSA Cybersecurity Director Rob Joyce told reporters in December. “I characterize it much more as a loaded gun.”

    “I would not expect individualized targeting through [TikTok] to do malicious things,” Joyce said. “Where I’m concerned is the overall ability to do large-scale influence.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Astronaut crew heads home after five-month stay on the International Space Station | CNN

    Astronaut crew heads home after five-month stay on the International Space Station | CNN

    [ad_1]

    Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.



    CNN
     — 

    The four astronauts who make up the Crew-5 team aboard the International Space Station began their return trip home Saturday morning, marking the end of a five-month stay in space.

    The SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule disembarked from the space station at 2:20 am ET, beginning the final leg of the astronauts’ journey. The spacecraft is set to splash down off Florida at around 9:02 p.m. ET Saturday.

    Rescue ships will be awaiting the team’s arrival, ready to haul the capsule out of the ocean and allow the crew to disembark, giving the astronauts their first breath of fresh air in nearly 160 days. Shortly afterward, the crew will depart for NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston.

    The four crew members — NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, astronaut Koichi Wakata of JAXA, or Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and cosmonaut Anna Kikina of the Russian space agency Roscosmos — launched to the space station aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule this past October. They’ve spent the past few months carrying out research experiments and keeping up with maintenance of the two-decade-old orbiting laboratory.

    And for the past few days, the four have been handing off operations to the Crew-6 team of astronauts who arrived at the space station on March 3.

    Mann, a registered member of the Wailacki tribe of the Round Valley reservation, became the first Native American woman to travel into orbit. Like the other astronauts, she devoted time on her journey to public outreach, some of which focused on inspiring Indigenous children. During one outreach event in November 2022, Mann showed off a dream catcher — a traditional totem for Native Americans meant to ward off bad dreams — that she took with her to the space station.

    “I am very proud to represent Native Americans and my heritage,” Mann told reporters before launch. “I think it’s important to celebrate our diversity and also realize how important it is when we collaborate and unite, the incredible accomplishments that we can have.”

    Kikina’s participation in this flight came as part of a ride-sharing agreement by NASA and Roscosmos in July 2022. Despite geopolitical tensions between the United States and Russia as the war in Ukraine has escalated, NASA has repeatedly said its partnership with Roscosmos is vital to continuing the space station’s operations and the valuable scientific research carried out on board.

    The journey marked the first trip to space for Mann, Cassada and Kikina.

    Wakata previously flew on NASA’s space shuttle flights and Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft. This trip was the Japanese astronaut’s fifth spaceflight mission.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Snap stock surges as Congress renews efforts to ban TikTok | CNN Business

    Snap stock surges as Congress renews efforts to ban TikTok | CNN Business

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Investors are betting that Washington’s mounting scrutiny on TikTok could be good news for rival Snapchat.

    Shares of Snapchat’s parent company surged nearly 10% on Monday and another 5% in early trading Tuesday following news that US senators are planning to introduce legislation that could make it easier to ban rival app TikTok.

    Virginia Democratic Sen. Mark Warner is expected to unveil bipartisan legislation Tuesday afternoon that expands President Joe Biden’s authority to ban TikTok and other suspected information technology risks from the United States, a person familiar with the matter told CNN. The bill is expected to have nearly a dozen co-sponsors from both sides of the aisle.

    The stock surge suggests some on Wall Street are taking the possibility of a TikTok ban more seriously, after years of chatter in the nation’s capital about cracking down on the short-form video app due to security concerns related to its Chinese parent company.

    It also highlights how lawmakers’ efforts to address the perceived threat of TikTok could ultimately benefit large US tech platforms, including dominant companies that some in Washington also want to rein in for other reasons.

    Angelo Zino, senior equity analyst CFRA Research, wrote in a note Monday that the “biggest beneficiaries of a TikTok ban” would be Snapchat, Facebook-parent Meta, and YouTube.

    “TikTok’s emphasis on short-form videos has increased engagement/time spent by consumers and has upended the entire industry, creating a headwind for META/SNAP,” Zino wrote. “Given TikTok’s growing engagement/user growth, it has been taking an increasing portion of the digital ad dollars pie from other social media players.”

    In recent years, TikTok’s popularity has led a number of major US apps to imitate some of its features, including the launch of Instagram’s Reels and YouTube’s Shorts.

    Shares of YouTube’s parent company Alphabet were essentially flat on Tuesday. Meta, which is up 50% so far this year thanks to its commitment to “efficiency,” was up slightly in early trading Tuesday, likely because of a report claiming it’s planning more layoffs.

    A TikTok ban, or the possibility of it, may just be one more positive for Meta’s stock this year.

    – CNN’s Brian Fung contributed to this report.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Parents of sailor who died by suicide urge Pentagon to implement mental health measure named in his honor that became law over a year ago | CNN Politics

    Parents of sailor who died by suicide urge Pentagon to implement mental health measure named in his honor that became law over a year ago | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    More than a year after Congress signed into law a bill meant to help service members struggling with severe mental health problems, the Pentagon still has not issued guidance to the services to put the bill into practice.

    “We hear the rhetoric all the time, but we need action,” said Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton, who co-sponsored the Brandon Act. “They’ve been sitting on their hands and more Americans die every day as a result.”

    The Brandon Act is named after Brandon Caserta, a young sailor whose parents described him as a “very charismatic and upbeat young man” who “always helped everyone he could.”

    But in June 2018, Caserta took his own life at Naval Air Station Norfolk, Virginia. In letters to his parents and to his friends, Caserta said he was constantly hazed and bullied in the Navy, and he saw no other way out.

    He notified his commanders he was depressed but they took no action and showed no sympathy, according to Brandon Caserta’s father Patrick, who served 22 years in the Navy.

    “They said, ‘Suck it up and get back to work,’” Patrick Caserta told CNN. “You can’t have that. That’s now how you deal with it.”

    The Brandon Act was included in the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act. If a service member seeks mental health services or self-reports a problem, the Act requires a mental health evaluation. It also allows service members to seek confidential help outside the chain of command.

    “His letter led us to this,” Teri Caserta, Brandon’s mother, told CNN. “He wanted us to do something about suicide and the toxicity that happens in our military system. That’s why we created the Brandon Act.”

    But 15 months after it was passed the law has not been implemented and the Defense Department hasn’t followed through its requirements and issued guidance for the military. Therefore, the mental health evaluations and the confidential reporting required by the law are still not available to service members.

    In 2021, the latest year for which numbers are available, 519 US service members died by suicide. Though a slight decrease from the previous year’s 582 suicides, the trend over the last decade and more has been increasing.

    Last year, three sailors assigned to the USS George Washington died by suicide in a single week. Then, in December, four sailors at a faculty in Norfolk, Virginia died by suicide in one month.

    “DoD needs to do this,” said Moulton bluntly. “Active-duty service members don’t have a way to report mental health issues outside the chain of command because DoD just hasn’t gotten out of their own bureaucratic way to implement this act. It just requires the Secretary of Defense and his department to do their job.”

    The issue of military suicides has plagued the Department of Defense for decades. According to a 2021 study from Brown University, more than 30,000 active-duty personnel and veterans died by suicide during the 20-year War on Terror, which is more than four times the number of combat deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

    The Defense Department is currently working on implementing the requirements of the Brandon Act, according to a spokesperson.

    “Due to the complexity of the requirement, publication of policy to establish self-initiated referrals for a mental health evaluation via a commander or supervisor is currently in development,” said Cmdr. Nicole Schwegman, who stressed that there are mental health services available for members of the military seeking help or an evaluation.

    “A full continuum of mental health and wellness support is available worldwide to ensure access to care,” Schwegman said, including specialty and primary care clinics, as well as virtual health platforms.

    Last month, the Pentagon’s Suicide Prevention and Response Independent Review Committee unveiled 127 recommendations to combat military suicides, including a waiting period for gun purchases on base and raising the minimum age for buying firearms on base.

    The Pentagon said it would review the recommendations closely.

    “Even one suicide is too many, and we will exhaust every effort to promote the wellness, health, and morale of our total force,” said Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder after the release of the recommendations.

    But for the parents of Brandon Caserta, the committee’s recommendations and the Pentagon’s promises to review its report smack of more waiting and less action.

    “As painful as this has been, had someone else done this before us, our son would still be alive,” said Patrick Caserta. “We want to be that person that saves lives later on.”

    Editor’s Note: If you or a loved one have contemplated suicide, call The National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988 or 1-800-273-TALK (8255) to connect with a trained counselor.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Takeaways from the February jobs report | CNN Business

    Takeaways from the February jobs report | CNN Business

    [ad_1]


    Minneapolis
    CNN
     — 

    February’s jobs report had a little something for everyone.

    For workers, there were jobs; for employers, there were workers filling shortfalls caused by the pandemic; for the Federal Reserve, there were indications that the labor market was loosening and wage pressures were easing.

    Then again, the total of 311,000 net jobs added was significantly higher than expectations of 205,000, and the unemployment rate surprisingly grew to 3.6%.

    The report was a “mixed bag” at a time when the Fed — which this week signaled a more hawkish approach after a strong batch of recent economic data — is weighing to go lighter or heavier on rate hikes.

    Here are some takeaways from Friday’s report:

    Economists were anticipating that January’s blockbuster 504,000 net job gain was an anomaly due to a combination of factors such as annual data adjustments, warm weather and employers hoarding workers.

    But the US labor market in February showed that, overall, it remained fairly resistant to the Fed’s yearlong barrage of interest rate hikes. The latest employment snapshot from the Bureau of Labor Statistics also showed only a slight downward revision to the January jobs total.

    “This report, it’s not about the Federal Reserve, it’s not about inflation, it’s about you; it’s about how workers are doing,” said Claudia Sahm, founder of Sahm Consulting and a former Fed economist. “And once again, we had a month in which we were adding jobs on net, and this is really good for workers.”

    There are also encouraging signs for employers, she said, noting some of the biggest gains were in industries that have been suffering from the deepest shortages since the pandemic.

    The leisure and hospitality industry added 105,000 jobs in February, accounting for 34% of the entire month’s total gains and putting the sector that much closer to matching its pre-pandemic levels. As of February, the leisure and hospitality industry was 410,000 jobs, or 2.42%, shy of February 2020 employment levels, a CNN analysis of BLS data shows.

    “Right now, we’re still in a phase of getting back to normal in terms of not having labor shortages, not having the costs of serving customers rise and rise,” Sahm said. “I would much rather see us get back to normal by workers coming back as opposed to customers going away.”

    Despite the Fed hammering out a succession of rate hikes during the past year, construction employment hasn’t yet faltered. In February, the construction industry added 24,000 jobs, marking 12 consecutive months of employment growth.

    “Contractors are continuing to work through existing backlogs that have grown over the past two years as new opportunities arose and supply chain issues extended construction timelines,” wrote Nick Grandy, construction and real estate senior analyst at RSM US.

    Notable sectors that recorded job losses during the month were in information, which was down another 25,000 jobs (-0.8%); transportation and warehousing, which was down 21,500 jobs (0.3%); and manufacturing, which was down 4,000 positions.

    While the headline job figure and relatively minimal losses show overall strength, there is an indication of a pullback across industries. The BLS’ employment diffusion index, which shows the percentage of 250 industries that added jobs, fell to 56, which is the lowest reading since April 2020.

    “That indicates that the impact of high interest rates is spilling over to more industries,” said Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter.

    The labor market has remained extremely tight and fairly out of whack for the past three years. Friday’s report showed that “a modicum of slack crept back into the jobs market,” wrote Wells Fargo economists Sarah House and Michael Pugliese.

    The unemployment rate moved to 3.6% from its 53-year-low of 3.4%. That increase was in part due to more people reentering the workforce and joining the ranks of the unemployed, which the BLS classifies as people without jobs actively searching for work.

    February’s employment report showed a 0.1 percentage point increase in the labor force participation rate to 62.5% — the highest it’s been since April 2020.

    The average workweek ticked down to 34.5 hours from a revised 34.6 hours, signaling a “significant overall drop” in labor demand, said Brad McMillan, chief investment officer for Commonwealth Financial Network.

    Still, with the prime-age employment to population ratio increasing to 80.5% — on par with early 2020 levels — there may be little space left for sustained labor supply gains, according to Matt Colyar, a Moody’s Analytics economist.

    “February’s figure, apart from early 2020 readings, is higher than any rate during the previous decade-long expansion,” Colyar noted. “Even in corners of the economy where demand has slumped, businesses have shown little appetite to lay off workers en masse. As other sectors continue to hire rapidly, an acceleration in wage growth will remain a looming threat.”

    A softening in average hourly earnings is helping fuel hopes for a soft landing.

    At 0.2% on the month, wage growth was below expectations and measured 4.6% year over year.

    “There were signs in today’s report that progress on inflation can be made without torpedoing employment,” the Wells Fargo economists noted.

    As of February, the annualized rate of wage growth during the past three months is slightly under 3.6%, a pace seen when inflation was below the Fed’s target, said economist Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

    “Perhaps most important from the Fed’s perspective is the slowdown in wage growth,” Baker wrote in a statement. “The 3.6% annual rate over the last three months can hardly be seen as posing a serious threat of inflation. This slowing in the average hourly wage, coupled with the 4% rate reported in the fourth quarter Employment Cost Index, should provide solid evidence that wage growth has slowed sharply.”

    A hot batch of January economic data helped to send the Fed into a more hawkish turn. Fed Chair Jerome Powell told members of Congress this week that the Fed is prepared to increase the pace of its rate hikes if warranted.

    “The latest economic data have come in stronger than expected, which suggests that the ultimate level of interest rates is likely to be higher than previously anticipated,” Powell told lawmakers.

    There’s still more data to come before the Fed meets for its two-day policymaking meeting on March 21-22, notably the Consumer Price Index, Producer Price Index and the Commerce Department’s retail sales report. However, Friday’s jobs report likely won’t spur a more dovish turn from the Fed, said Sean Snaith, an economist and director of the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Economic Forecasting.

    “We didn’t go from a four-alarm fire to a five-alarm fire with this data report, but the inflation flames aren’t out either,” he wrote in a note Friday. “And nothing today indicates that the Fed needs to change its more aggressive approach to raising interest rates.”

    Still, economist Gregory Daco cautioned that the Fed shouldn’t fall into the trap of confirmation bias by letting the stronger-than-expected economic data influence the analysis of Friday’s jobs report and next week’s CPI report.

    The Fed may see the low unemployment rate and the robust job gains as fueling wage growth, said Daco, chief economist at EY Parthenon.

    “Our view, however, is slower job growth in the goods sector, easing hours worked and moderating sequential wage growth momentum and a rise in the labor force participation rate indicate a welcome easing of labor market tightness,” Daco noted. “While we acknowledge this report was by no means a weak one, we also observe that some of the job gains were in sectors where there has been a structural employment shortfall — health care and education in particular. Employment strength in those sectors may not be indicative of cyclical wage pressures, but rather easing structural constraints.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • When China shot down five U-2 spy planes at the height of the Cold War | CNN

    When China shot down five U-2 spy planes at the height of the Cold War | CNN

    [ad_1]


    Seoul, South Korea
    CNN
     — 

    When a Chinese high-altitude balloon suspected of spying was spotted over the United States recently, the US Air Force responded by sending up a high-flying espionage asset of its own: the U-2 reconnaissance jet.

    It was the Cold-War era spy plane that took the high-resolution photographs – not to mention its pilot’s selfie – that reportedly convinced Washington the Chinese balloon was gathering intelligence and not, as Beijing continues to insist, studying the weather.

    In doing so, the plane played a key role in an event that sent tensions between the world’s two largest economies soaring, and shone an international spotlight on the methods the two governments use to keep tabs on each other.

    Until now, most of the media’s focus has been on the balloon – specifically, how a vessel popularly seen as a relic of a bygone era of espionage could possibly remain relevant in the modern spy’s playbook. Yet to many military historians, it is the involvement of that other symbol of a bygone time, the U-2, that is far more telling.

    The U-2 has a long and storied history when it comes to espionage battles between the US and China. In the 1960s and 1970s, at least five of them were shot down while on surveillance missions over China.

    Those losses haven’t been as widely reported as might be expected – and for good reason. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which was responsible for all of America’s U-2s at the time the planes were shot down, has never officially explained what they were doing there.

    Adding to the mystery was that the planes were being flown not by US pilots nor under a US flag, but by pilots from Taiwan who, in a striking parallel to today’s balloon saga, claimed to be involved in a weather research initiative.

    That the CIA would be tight-lipped over what these American-built spy planes were doing is hardly surprising.

    But the agency’s continued silence more than 50 years later – it did not respond to a CNN request for comment on this article – speaks volumes about just how sensitive the issue was both at the time and remains today.

    The US government has a general rule of 25 years for automatic declassification of sensitive material. However, one of its often-cited reasons for ignoring this rule is in those cases where revealing the information would “cause serious harm to relations between the US and a foreign government, or to ongoing diplomatic activities of the US.”

    Contemporary accounts of what the planes were doing – by the Taiwan pilots who were shot down, retired US Air Force officers and military historians among them – leave little doubt as to why it would have caused a stir.

    The planes – according to accounts by the pilots in a Taiwan-made documentary film and histories published on US government websites – had been transferred to Taiwan as part of a top-secret mission to snoop on Communist China’s growing military capabilities, including its nascent nuclear program, which was receiving help from the Soviet Union.

    The newly developed U-2, nicknamed the Dragon Lady, appeared to offer the perfect vessel. The US had already used it to spy on the Soviet’s domestic nuclear program as its high-altitude capabilities – it was designed in the 1950s to reach “a staggering and unprecedented altitude of 70,000 feet,” in the words of its developer Lockheed – put it out of the range of antiaircraft missiles.

    Or so the US had thought. In 1960, the Soviets shot down a CIA-operated U-2 and put its pilot Gary Powers on trial. Washington was forced to abandon its cover story (that Powers had been on a weather reconnaissance mission and had drifted into Soviet airspace after blacking out from oxygen depletion), admit the spy plane program, and barter for Powers to be returned in a prisoner swap.

    “Since America didn’t want to have its own pilots shot down in a U-2 the way Gary Powers had been over the Soviet Union in 1960, which caused a major diplomatic incident, they turned to Taiwan, and Taiwan was all too willing to allow its pilots to be trained and to do a long series of overflights over mainland China,” Chris Pocock, author of “50 Years of the U-2,” explained in the 2018 documentary film “Lost Black Cats 35th Squadron.”

    A mobile chase car pursues a U-2 Dragon Lady as it prepares to land at Beale Air Force Base in California in June 2015.

    Like the U-2, Taiwan – also known as the Republic of China (ROC) – seemed a perfect choice for the mission. The self-governing island to the east of the Chinese mainland was at odds with the Communist leadership in Beijing – as it remains today – and at that time in history had a mutual defense treaty with Washington.

    That treaty has long since lapsed, but Taiwan remains a point of major tensions between China and the United States, with Chinese leader Xi Jinping vowing to bring it under the Communist Party’s control and Washington still obligated to provide it with the means to defend itself.

    Today, the US sells F-16 fighter jets to Taiwan as part of that obligation. In the 1960s, Taiwan got the US-made U-2s.

    The island’s military set up a squadron that would officially be known as the “Weather Reconnaissance and Research Section.”

    But its members – pilots from Taiwan who had been trained in the US to fly U-2s – knew it by a different name: the “Black Cats.”

    The author Pocock and Gary Powers Jr., the son of the pilot shot down by the Soviets and the co-founder of the Cold War Museum in Washington, DC, explained the thinking behind the squadron and its mission in the 2018 documentary film.

    The other CIA unit in Taiwan

  • Coinciding with the Black Cat Squadron, the Black Bat Squadron was formed under the cooperation of the Central Intelligence Agency and Taiwan’s air force, according to a Taiwan Defense Ministry website.
  • While the Black Cats were in charge of high-altitude reconnaissance missions, the Black Bats conducted low-altitude reconnaissance and electronic intelligence gathering missions over mainland China from May 1956. It also operated in Vietnam in tandem with the US during the Vietnam War.
  • Between 1952 to 1972, the Black Bats lost 15 aircraft and 148 lives, according to the website.

“The Black Cats program was implemented because the American government needed to find out information over mainland China – what were their strengths and weaknesses, where were their military installations located, where were their submarine bases, what type of aircraft were they developing,” said Powers Jr.

Lloyd Leavitt, a retired US Air Force lieutenant general, described the mission as “a joint intelligence operation by the United States and the Republic of China.”

“American U-2s were painted with ROC insignia, ROC pilots were under the command of a ROC (Air Force) colonel, overflight missions were planned by Washington, and both countries were recipients of the intelligence gathered over the mainland,” Leavitt wrote in a 2010 personal history of the Cold War published by the Air Force Research Institute in Alabama.

One of the first men to fly the U-2 for Taiwan was Mike Hua, who was there when the first of the planes arrived at Taoyuan Air Base in Taiwan in early 1961.

“The cover story was that the ROC (air force) had purchased the aircraft, that bore the (Taiwanese) national insignia. … To avoid being confused with other air force organizations stationed in Taoyuan, the section became the 35th Squadron with the Black Cat as its insignia,” Hua wrote in a 2002 history of the unit for the magazine Air Force Historical Foundation.

At the Taiwan airbase, Americans worked with the Taiwan pilots, helping to maintain the aircraft and process the information. They were know as Detachment H, according to Hua.

“All US personnel were ostensibly employees of the Lockheed Aircraft Company,” Hua wrote.

The ROC air force and US representatives inked an agreement on the operation, giving it the code name “Razor,” Hua wrote.

He described the intelligence gained by the flights as “tremendous” and said it was shared between Taipei and Washington.

“The missions covered the vast interior of the Chinese mainland, where almost no aerial photographs had ever been taken,” he wrote. “Each mission brought back an aerial photographic map of roughly 100 miles wide by 2,000 miles long, which revealed not only the precise location of a target, but also the activities on the ground.”

Other sensors on the spy planes gathered information on Chinese radar capabilities and more, he said.

Between January 1962 and May 1974, according to a history on Taiwan’s Defense Ministry’s website, the Black Cats flew 220 reconnaissance missions covering “more than 10 million square kilometers over 30 provinces in the Chinese mainland.”

When asked for further comment on the Black Cats, the ministry referred CNN to the published materials.

“The idea was that black cats go out at night, and the U-2 would usually launch in the darkness. Their cameras were the eyes, and it was very stealthy, quiet, and hard to get. And so combining the two stories, they became known as the Black Cats,” the author Pocock said in the documentary.

The squadron even had its own patch, reputedly drawn by one of its members, Lt. Col. Chen Huai-sheng, and inspired by a local establishment frequented by the pilots.

But the Black Cats, like Powers Sr. two years before, were about to find out their U-2s were not impervious to antiaircraft fire.

On September 9, 1962, Chen became the first U-2 pilot to be shot down by a People’s Liberation Army antiaircraft missile. His plane went down while on a mission over Nanchang, China.

Sailors assigned to Explosive Ordnance Disposal Group 2 recover a high-altitude surveillance balloon off the coast of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Feb. 5, 2023. (U.S. Navy Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Tyler Thompson)

See photos showing US Navy recovering spy balloon from water

In the following years, three more Black Cat U-2 pilots were killed on missions over China as the PLA figured out how to counter the U-2 missions.

“The mainland Chinese learned from their radars where these flights were going, what their targets were, and they began to build sites for the missiles but move them around,” Pocock said.

“So they would build a site here, occupy that site for a while but if they thought the next flight would be going over here, they would move the missiles. It was a cat-and-mouse game, literally a black cat and mouse game between the routines from the flights from Taiwan and those air defense troops of the (Chinese) mainland, working out where the next flight would go.”

In July 1964, Lt. Col. Lee Nan-ping’s U-2 was shot down by a PLA SA-2 missile over Chenghai, China. According to the Taiwan Defense Ministry he was flying out of a US naval air station in the Philippines and trying to gain information on China’s supply routes to North Vietnam.

In September 1967, a PLA missile hit the U-2 being flown by Capt. Hwang Rung-pei over Jiaxin, China, and in May 1969, Maj. Chang Hsieh suffered a “flight control failure” over the Yellow Sea while reconnoitering the coast of Hebei province, China. No trace of his U-2 was ever found, according to Taiwan’s Defense Ministry.

A U-2 Dragon Lady, from Beale Air Force Base, lands at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, in 2017.

Two other Taiwanese U-2 pilots were shot down but survived, only to spend years in Communist captivity.

Maj. Robin Yeh was shot down in November 1963 over Jiujiang, Jiangxi province.

“The plane lost control when the explosion of the missile took out part of the left wing. The plane spiraled down. Lots of shrapnel flew into the plane and hit both of my legs,” Yeh, who died in 2016, recalled in “The Brave in the Upper Air: An Oral History of The Black Cat Squadron” published by Taiwan’s Defense Ministry.

He said that following his capture Chinese doctors removed 59 pieces of shrapnel from his legs, but couldn’t take it all out.

“It didn’t really affect my daily life, but during winter my legs would hurt, which affected my mobility. I guess this would be my lifelong memory,” Yeh said.

Maj. Jack Chang’s U-2 was hit by a missile over Inner Mongolia in 1965. He, too, suffered dozens of shrapnel injuries and bailed out, landing on a snowy landscape.

“It was dark at the time, preventing me from seeking help anyway, so I had to wrap myself up tightly with the parachute to keep myself warm … After ten hours when dawn broke, I saw a village of yurts afar, so I dragged myself and sought help there. I collapsed as soon as I reached a bed,” he recalled in the oral history.

Neither Yeh nor Chang, who were assumed killed in action, would see Taiwan again for decades. The pilots were eventually released in 1982 into Hong Kong, which at the time was still a British colony.

However, the world into which they emerged had changed greatly in the intervening years. The US no longer had a mutual defense treaty with Taiwan and had formally switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing.

Though the Cold War US-Taiwan alliance was no longer, the CIA brought the two pilots to the US to live until they were finally allowed to return to Taiwan in 1990.

Members of the 5th Reconnaissance Squadron

Indeed, by the time of their release CIA control of the U-2 program had long since ceased. It had turned the planes over to the US Air Force in 1974, according to a US Air Force history.

Two years later, the Air Force’s 99th Strategic Reconnaissance Squadron and its U-2s moved into Osan Air Base in South Korea. Commander Lt. Col. David Young gave the location the “Black Cat” moniker.

Today, the unit is known as the 5th Reconnaissance Squadron.

But US U-2s continue to be involved in what might be characterized as “cat-and-mouse” activities and their activities continue to make waves occasionally in China. In 2020, Beijing accused the US of sending a U-2 into a no-fly zone to “trespass” on live-fire exercises being conducted by China below.

The US Pacific Air Forces confirmed to CNN at the time that the flight had taken place, but said it did not violate any rules.

Meanwhile, for those involved in the original Black Cats, there are few regrets – even for those who were captured.

Yeh told the documentary makers he had fond memories of life at 70,000 feet.

“We were literally up in the air. The view we had was also different; we had the bird’s eye view. Everything we saw was vast,” he said.

Chang too felt no bitterness.

“I love flying,” he said. “I didn’t die, so I have no regrets.”

[ad_2]

Source link

  • Court rejects DOJ bid to transfer Texas immigration lawsuit because of alleged ‘judge shopping’ | CNN Politics

    Court rejects DOJ bid to transfer Texas immigration lawsuit because of alleged ‘judge shopping’ | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    A federal judge on Friday rejected a Justice Department bid to push back against alleged “judge-shopping” in a case brought by Texas and other Republican states against a Biden administration immigration policy.

    US District Judge Drew Tipton denied a request from the DOJ that he transfer the lawsuit to a court other than his own.

    The judge said he was unconvinced that Texas’ choice of filing the case in his in division – the Southern District of Texas, Victoria division, where Tipton is assigned every civil lawsuit that is brought there – was creating a public perception of unfairness.

    Tipton, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, pointed to comments a DOJ attorney made during a hearing last month about the request, in which the attorney confirmed that he believed the judge would be impartial in the case.

    “In light of the Federal Defendants’ repeated and genuine expressions of confidence in the impartiality and fairness of this Court, it is difficult to accept their argument that ‘public perception’ – if such a concept could be beheld singularly – is meaningfully different than the Defendants,” Tipton said in Friday’s opinion, which called the Biden administration’s public perception claims “speculation.”

    “The Court does not believe it is appropriate to transfer a case that is in the proper venue due to a speculative public perception of bias that conflicts with the Federal Defendants’ own statements,” he wrote.

    The judge went on to assert that “transferring the case because of a public concern that a judge in a single-judge division is biased may well legitimize that concern.”

    The Justice Department’s motion to transfer the case pointed out that at least seven Texas lawsuits against the Biden administration have been filed in the Victoria Division, all but guaranteeing Tipton will hear the cases.

    Texas has a tendency of funneling its lawsuits against the Biden administration into divisions where most or all cases are assigned to an individual judge. In filings, the DOJ argued that Texas can “circumvent the random assignment system by never filing in Divisions where they have a non-trivial chance of not knowing what judge they are likely to be assigned.”

    Tipton did not weigh in directly on Texas’ broader pattern of where it files cases. Tipton said there was the limited 5th Circuit case law on when a case should be transferred because of judge-shopping concerns, and after quoting one such case, he wrote that it is “no well-kept secret that litigation involves strategy.”

    The Justice Department made similar requests to Judge James Wesley Hendrix and Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, in cases filed in their courthouses challenging, respectively, Biden regulations for investors and the annual spending bill the president signed last year.

    Like Tipton, Hendrix and Kacsmaryk are viewed as conservative judges and all three have ruled against the administration in previous cases brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and other Republican state attorneys general.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Biden and Trump agree on one big thing | CNN Politics

    Biden and Trump agree on one big thing | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Joe Biden and Donald Trump are bizarrely on the same page on the top issue so far in the 2024 White House race, as they aim huge, possibly campaign-defining swings at Republicans who they claim will shred retirement benefits.

    The current and former presidents – bitter rivals who agree on little else – are both forcing their foes into political retreats and attempts to whitewash past support for changes that could cut Medicare and Social Security payouts.

    Their strategy is reinforcing a truism of presidential election campaigns that candidates who even entertain the notion of “reforming” these cherished entitlement programs for seniors are playing with fire.

    With typical bluntness, Trump has blasted his potential top rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, as a “wheelchair over the cliff kind of guy” after he voted, as a member of the US House, for non-binding resolutions that would have raised the age at which most seniors can collect their benefits to 70. As a 2012 congressional candidate, he supported privatizing Social Security, CNN’s KFile has reported. But trying to ease his vulnerability on the issue, DeSantis insisted in a Fox News interview last week: “We’re not going to mess with Social Security.”

    Despite his own proposed cuts to these programs as president, Trump has kept up the attacks. “We’re not going back to people that want to destroy our great Social Security system – even some in our own party; I wonder who that might be – who want to raise the minimum age of Social Security to 70, 75 or even 80 in some cases, and who are out to cut Medicare to a level that will be unrecognizable,” he said at the Conservative Political Action Conference last Saturday.

    A few days later, another Republican hopeful gave both Biden and Trump a new opening to exploit.

    Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley was forced to make clear Thursday that her striking and unspecific call the day before for raising the retirement age was only supposed to refer to Americans currently in their 20s, who are in effect a half century away from drawing their pensions. But her clarification won’t protect the former ambassador to the United Nations from Trump, who is splitting his party down the middle, yet again, by pouncing on competitors who have voiced traditional conservative orthodoxy on cutting or changing the programs. Biden is sure to also highlight Haley’s remarks as he claims only he can thwart a secret GOP agenda to kill off the vital programs.

    “I guarantee you, I will protect Social Security and Medicare without any change. Guaranteed,” the president vowed in Philadelphia on Thursday. “I won’t allow it to be gutted or eliminated as MAGA Republicans have threatened to do.”

    Biden browbeat Republicans during his “State of the Union” address last month to confirm on camera that they support shoring up Social Security and Medicare. And he’s anchoring his likely reelection bid on the most forceful campaign by a Democratic candidate in years on the issue. Some of his attacks are fair; others take statements by GOP leaders out of context. But they’re still potent – since both he and Trump know that when conservatives are explaining that they don’t plan to cut Medicare or retirement benefits, they are usually trying to dig out of a losing position.

    And Biden has public opinion on his side. A Fox News poll last month, for instance, showed that Democrats are preferred over Republicans to better handle Medicare (by 23 points) and Social Security (by 16 points). No wonder Biden seems to relish this particular political battlefield.

    The odd confluence of approaches – from a former president who sought to overturn an election and a successor who sees his administration as vital to saving democracy – says so much about each man’s political instincts, backgrounds and campaign strategy. It is also reflects the shifting character of the Republican Party, which Trump has torn from its corporate, ideologically pure conservative roots to build a new coalition that includes working class voters, often in the Midwest, that Biden is battling hard to win back.

    In one sense, possibly the most thorny domestic issue of the years to come should, of course, have a place in a presidential campaign. But when candidates use it to inflame their political bases, it only makes it harder to address in government. This is especially the case with entitlements since they cut into the DNA of each party and have defined the dividing lines between them for decades – at least until Trump came along and took over the GOP.

    Ever since the New Deal reforms of Franklin Roosevelt, who was president from 1933 to 1945, Democrats – through presidents Lyndon Johnson, Barack Obama and Biden, especially – have sought to use government power to secure the living standards and health care of less well-off and elderly Americans. Republicans, from 1980s President Ronald Reagan onwards, have increasingly sought to find ways to shift the burden of some of this care to the private sector and to reduce or eliminate government’s role in an attempt to whittle away the New Deal reforms of FDR and the Great Society program of LBJ, who was president in the 1960s. They have often paid a heavy price. Republican President George W. Bush’s failed attempt to partially privatize Social Security contributed to a disastrous second term. And Trump still rails against former House Speaker Paul Ryan, who promoted a similar plan.

    While raising the alarm about threats to social programs for seniors might be a shrewd political tactic – especially in mobilizing older voters more likely to show up at the polls – it usually does nothing to address the program’s increasingly dire solvency challenges.

    The latest Congressional Budget Office projection found that Social Security’s retirement trust fund could be exhausted by 2032. At that point, with fewer workers paying into the program and with a rapidly aging population, benefits could be cut by at least 20%, CNN’s Tami Luhby reported. Medicare is even more precarious since its hospital insurance trust fund, known as Part A, will only be able to fully pay scheduled benefits until 2028, its trustees said in their most recent forecast.

    Biden, who released a new budget on Thursday that will help shape the message of his likely reelection bid, has proposed a plan to raise taxes on people earning more than $400,000 a year to shore up the program and would expand the range of drugs for which its managers can negotiate prices. He says the move would keep Medicare solvent until 2050 and would involve no cuts in benefits. The president also wants to target those who earn more than $400,000 with increasing payroll taxes to secure Social Security for the future. There is an infinitesimal chance, however, that the Republican-led House will agree to tax increases, so Biden’s plan represents more a device to deliver a political message than a viable plan.

    Despite warning his fellow Republicans to avoid cutting these programs, it’s unclear how Trump would save them if he wins back the White House – and doing nothing isn’t an option. And while other Republicans insist they don’t want to cut benefits or raise taxes, it’s unclear how they can square the circle.

    Florida Sen. Rick Scott has now excluded Social Security and Medicare from his proposal for all spending programs to be reviewed every five years. His original plan, released when he was leading the Senate GOP’s campaign arm, sparked the ire of his Republican Senate colleagues, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who quickly identified it as a political liability. That hasn’t stopped Biden from repeatedly claiming that it represents Republican policy.

    House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has, meanwhile, said that cuts to Social Security and Medicare are “completely off the table” in what he insists must be negotiations with Biden over raising the government’s borrowing limit later this year. But that position has put him in a bind because it means that in order for the GOP to honor their pledge to slash spending, they will probably have to take aim at other social programs that could also prove unpopular with voters.

    America is not the only country staring down a crisis.

    French President Emmanuel Macron sparked nationwide strikes and protests with his plan to raise the retirement age to 64 from 62. Even China’s Communist Party is struggling as a falling birthrate threatens to inflict severe costs on the world’s most dynamic emerging economy.

    Back in the US, whoever wins the 2024 elections for the White House and Congress, there seems no easily identifiable solution to safeguard these vital programs on which millions of Americans depend. And time is running out.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • The US economy added 311,000 jobs in February, outpacing expectations | CNN Business

    The US economy added 311,000 jobs in February, outpacing expectations | CNN Business

    [ad_1]


    Minneapolis
    CNN
     — 

    The US economy added 311,000 jobs in February, according to the latest monthly employment snapshot from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, released Friday.

    That’s a pullback from the blockbuster January jobs report, when a revised 504,000 positions were added, but shows the labor market is still emitting plenty of heat.

    The unemployment rate ticked up to 3.6% from 3.4%.

    February’s net job gains surpassed economists’ estimates for a more modest month, with only 205,000 to be added. Separately, downward revisions to December’s and January’s totals weren’t that drastic.

    While Friday’s report is a strong one, that’s actually bad news in the broader context of the Federal Reserve’s campaign to curb high inflation, said PNC Financial Services chief economist Gus Faucher.

    “It’s much hotter than the economy can run, and so this means the Fed is going to have to continue to hike interest rates,” he told CNN. “And that makes a recession more likely.”

    Barring a surprisingly low Consumer Price Index inflation report next week, Faucher said he expects the Fed to go forward with a half-point rate hike at its March 21-22 meeting, which would be a higher pace than the recent, more moderate quarter-point increase.

    The Fed has been battling for almost a year to slow the economy and crush the highest inflation in 40 years, but the labor market continues to defy those efforts.

    “Coming up on the one-year anniversary of the Fed’s first rate hike, we never thought we would see the economy churning out 311,000 more jobs this month,” said Chris Rupkey, chief economist of FwdBonds, in a statement. “The party is on and the labor market is having a blast. The economy clearly is not landing, it is soaring.”

    The monthly job gains remain well above pre-pandemic norms, when roughly 180,000 jobs were added per month between 2010 and 2019, BLS data shows. However, the labor market remains tight and imbalances continue to persist in the ongoing recovery efforts from the devastating pandemic.

    Labor turnover data released earlier this week for January showed that there were 1.9 job openings for every person looking for one. Fed Chair Jerome Powell has frequently highlighted how the labor market remains short of pre-pandemic growth projections by more than 3 million people.

    The pandemic accelerated expected demographic trends (the aging out of the massive Baby Boom generation) with increased retirements; people also dropped out of the workforce for care-related needs and health concerns such as long Covid; and there were hundreds of thousands of workers who died from Covid.

    February’s employment report showed a 0.1 percentage point increase in the labor force participation rate to 62.5% — the highest its been since April 2020. However, it remains below pre-pandemic levels of 63.4%.

    Additionally, there was some upward movement in the jobless rate, which increased 0.2 percentage points to 3.6%.

    “Contributing to upward pressure here, there were more people looking for work,”said Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst at Bankrate.

    Industries with notable job gains included leisure and hospitality, retail trade, government and health care. After being crushed during the pandemic, the leisure and hospitality has been steadily adding back employees and trying to meet increased demand from consumers shifting their spending from goods to services.

    Average hourly earnings — a closely watched metric as the Fed seeks to evaluate the impact of rising wages on inflation — grew 0.2% month-on-month and were up 4.6% over the year before.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Rain rates in California during newest storm may reach 1 inch per hour | CNN

    Rain rates in California during newest storm may reach 1 inch per hour | CNN

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Millions of Californians already hammered by ferocious snowfall were hit Thursday by a new storm, with torrential rain threatening to cause dangerous flooding and the Weather Prediction Center increasing its excessive rainfall outlook for parts of the state to a level 4 of 4.

    “If you have feet of snow on your roof, all of a sudden that’s going to get very, very heavy. That snow is going to absorb the rainfall,” CNN Meteorologist Chad Myers warned Thursday.

    “And then in the higher elevations, it will wash away some of that snowfall. So, rain on snow will begin to fill up parts of the San Joaquin Valley.”

    About 16.7 million people are under flood watches in California and slices of Nevada. Hourly rainfall rates will steadily increase in intensity across California from Thursday overnight through Friday morning, potentially reaching 1 inch per hour.

    The level 4 excessive rainfall warning is targeted to two sections in central California – the coast from Salinas southward to San Luis Obispo and areas in the foothills of the Sierras near Fresno – Thursday overnight into Friday. The last time the Bay Area and Central Coast were in “high risk” was in 2010, the National Weather Service office in San Francisco said.

    Much of the state is under some risk of excessive rainfall Thursday and Friday.

    “An atmospheric river will bring anomalous moisture to California Thursday and Friday. The combination of heavy precipitation and rapid snow melt below 5,000 feet will result in flooding,” the prediction center said Wednesday, adding that “numerous” floods are likely for millions.

    The most vulnerable areas for flooding from rain and snowmelt are creeks and streams in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, the prediction center said.

    Higher elevations will see heavy, wet snow. “This will lead to difficult travel, and combined with an already deep snowpack, may lead to increasing impacts from the depth and weight of the snow,” the prediction center said.

    The bleak forecast spurred officials across central and Northern California to urge residents to prepare, with residents in one area advised to stock up on essentials for two weeks. Others were asked to use sandbags to protect their properties and clear their waterways to lessen any flooding impacts.

    “We are asking people to watch their news, stay informed, have a full tank of gas in case they need to evacuate, get snow off of their roof if they can, if it’s safe,” Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis told CNN on Thursday. “And just be very vigilant and prepared, because we are in the era of extreme weather, and that’s what we are seeing this week.”

    Here’s what the storm could bring:

    • Heavy rainfall: The National Weather Service in San Francisco forecasts rainfall totals through Sunday morning will be from 1.5-3 inches for most urban areas with 3-6 inches in some hilly areas. As many as 8 inches could fall on the Santa Cruz Mountains and locally up to 12 inches over some peaks and higher terrain of the Santa Lucia Mountains. The National Weather Service in Los Angeles is forecasting 2-4 inches across Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties, with some areas in the latter receiving as many as 10 inches through late Friday night. The Weather Prediction Center said: “The abnormally warm and wet conditions moving in are expected to cause rapid snowmelt.”

    • Ferocious winds: More than 15 million people across central and Northern California, northern Nevada and southwestern Idaho are under high wind alerts. Wind gusts could reach up to 55 mph across lower elevations and up to 70 mph across peaks and mountains. Strong winds could knock down power lines and trees – exacerbating thousands of existing power outages from previous storms that dumped heavy snow, particularly in higher elevations.

    • More intense snow: Parts of the Sierra Nevada above 8,000 feet could get hit with 8 feet of snow. And some higher elevations across southern Oregon and the Rocky Mountains in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming could get pounded by 2 feet of snowfall between Thursday and Friday.

    Already, 34 of California’s 58 counties are under a state of emergency issued by the governor’s office due to previous storms and this week’s severe weather. The state activated its flood operations center Thursday morning.

    The forecast also led some ski resorts to announce closings. Kirkwood Mountain Resort said it would not open Friday, as did the Northstar California resort and the Heavenly resort in South Lake Tahoe, on Nevada’s border with California.

    Meanwhile, the Eastern Sierra Avalanche Center issued a backcountry avalanche warning for sections of Mono County, according to the National Weather Service in Reno, Nevada.

    Many of the areas preparing for Thursday’s storm have not had a chance to recover from the multiple rounds of fierce snow that buried some neighborhoods and made roads inaccessible as residents ran low on essential supplies.

    In hard-hit San Bernardino County, one of the recent storms claimed the life of a resident in a car crash, the sheriff’s department told CNN on Wednesday.

    video thumbnail california snowbank 81year-old

    Grandson reveals 81-year-old’s reaction after surviving in snowbank for a week

    As the storm hits central California, some urban flooding along with flooding from the smaller creeks and streams is likely. Eventually, more roads are expected to flood as the main rivers rise, said Katrina Hand, a meteorologist at the weather service’s Sacramento office.

    San Francisco officials urged small businesses to clear storm drains, stock up on inventory, use sandbags and ensure equipment is properly stored. They also suggested employers consider adjusting their work schedules for workers’ safety.

    In Merced, crews tried to clear storm drains and fortify creek banks ahead of the storm.

    City officials said flooding from previous, deadly rounds of atmospheric rivers that battered much of the state in January has made the city’s water ways unsafe.

    Atmospheric rivers are long, narrow bands of moisture in the atmosphere that carry warm air and water vapor from the tropics.

    “The city urges all residents to avoid these waterways and walking paths,” Merced officials said. “Because of ground saturation and erosion from prior storms, expect to see more debris in creek flows.”

    In San Luis Obispo, city officials on Wednesday said residents should be informed on flood insurance policies and be prepared to protect their homes. On Thursday, they issued an evacuation order for residents south of the Arroyo Grande Creek Levee.

    Evacuation warnings were also issued for residents in low-lying areas of Santa Cruz County and for people in Tulare County.

    In the Big Sur area, officials urged residents to have enough food and other essentials for at least two weeks. The Big Sur area, a roughly 90-mile stretch of California’s central coast, is one of the area’s renowned tourist attractions with rugged cliffs, mountains and hidden beaches along the Pacific Coast Highway.

    In Kern County, home to Bakersfield, fire officials urged residents to create emergency kits and to be aware of escape routes and safe areas to seek shelter if needed. Officials also encouraged the use of sandbags to protect properties.

    And in Sacramento, city officials said they intend to open overnight warming centers beginning Friday in preparation for the expected heavy rainfall and low temperatures.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Oklahoma GOP senator tells union leader ‘shut your mouth’ in heated exchange over union intimidation | CNN Politics

    Oklahoma GOP senator tells union leader ‘shut your mouth’ in heated exchange over union intimidation | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma told a witness to “shut your mouth” during a heated exchange at a Senate hearing on Wednesday.

    The witness, general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Sean O’Brien, went toe-to-toe with Mullin at the hearing before the Senate Health, Labor, Education and Pensions Committee. The panel’s chairman, Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, had to intervene multiple times to get the questioning back on track.

    “I want to make it very clear. I’m not against unions. I’m not at all. Some of my very good friends work for unions, they work hard, and they do a good job,” Mullin said. “Please don’t make an assumption that I’m anti-union, but I also want to set the record straight.”

    Mullin then criticized the panel for not discussing allegations of unions intimidating workers who do not want to join their organizations, and pointed to his own experience where he alleges unions tried to intimidate him and his employees.

    “I’m not afraid of physical confrontation, in fact sometimes I look forward to it. That’s not my problem,” he said. Mullin is a former mixed martial arts fighter.

    He asked O’Brien his salary. “Well, I’m glad you asked that question,” began O’Brien, before Mullin cut him off by reading off his 2019 annual income. O’Brien and Mullin went back and forth on what UPS drivers make, with O’Brien saying Mullin’s numbers were “inaccurate.”

    O’Brien told Mullin that his line of questioning was “out of line,” at which point Mullin replied, “Sir, you need to shut your mouth.”

    “You’re gonna tell me to shut my mouth?” O’Brien fired back. “Tough guy. ‘I’m not afraid of physical confrontation.’”

    Sanders banged his gavel and told Mullin to let O’Brien answer the questions.

    “It was rhetorical,” Mullin said.

    “You ask a question, he has a right to answer that,” Sanders told him.

    Sanders repeatedly had to stop the witness and senator from criticizing each other, as Mullin said this was showing how union leaders behave.

    “No, this shows your behavior,” Sanders ordered. “Stay on the issue, please.”

    Mullin’s time expired without O’Brien answering another question.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Capitol Hill data breach more ‘extensive’ than previously known | CNN Politics

    Capitol Hill data breach more ‘extensive’ than previously known | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    A sweeping cybersecurity breach of congressional members’ private information was more extensive than previously known and affects not only House lawmakers and their staff but also Senate employees.

    The Senate sergeant-at-arms alerted Senate staff about the breach Thursday in an email obtained by CNN.

    The compromised data is “extensive,” and includes sensitive data such as Social Security numbers, home addresses and information on Senate employees’ health insurance plans, the sergeant-at-arms said in the email, which urged Senate staff to freeze their family credit to guard against fraud.

    Law enforcement gave the sergeant-at-arms a list of Senate employees whose data was stolen, the email said, and the sergeant-at-arms was contacting those employees so they could protect themselves from fraud.

    Hundreds of US House members and staff also had their personally identifiable information stolen in the breach, which affected a DC health insurance service, CNN reported Wednesday.

    Punchbowl News first reported on the sergeant-at-arms’ email.

    The revelation that Senate staff also had their data stolen will only increase pressure from Capitol Hill on DC Health Link, the affected insurance service, to provide a full accounting of how the breach occurred.

    DC Health Link said Wednesday it had “initiated a comprehensive investigation” of the incident and is working with law enforcement. The FBI is involved in the investigation, the bureau said.

    It’s unclear how the data was accessed or who was responsible for the breach, but it immediately raised concerns among lawmakers that they could become the victims of identity theft, as many other Americans have in recent years.

    House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries have written a letter to DC Health Link expressing their concern over the breach, McCarthy previously told CNN.

    Others were less alarmed.

    “I can’t get all that worked up about this, honestly,” a Senate staffer told CNN Thursday night.

    China “got all my data already in the OPM hack,” the staffer added, referring to the 2014-2015 breach of the Office of Personnel Management that compromised millions of US government personnel records. US officials have blamed Chinese hackers for the breach, a charge Beijing denied.

    On a popular cybercrime forum this week, someone claimed to have sold the data belonging to DC Health Link. The advertisement for the stolen data, which CNN reviewed, claimed the leak affected 170,000 people and included Social Security numbers.

    CNN was unable to independently verify those claims.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • US military leaders push back at Republican assertions force is being politicized in congressional hearing | CNN Politics

    US military leaders push back at Republican assertions force is being politicized in congressional hearing | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Senior enlisted US military leaders pushed back against Republican lawmakers’ assertions on Thursday that the force is being politicized by what Republicans called “woke” initiatives that the lawmakers claim are hurting recruitment and distracting from the military’s mission.

    In response to questioning at a congressional hearing from Republican Rep. Mike Waltz, an Army National Guard officer, Sgt. Maj. of the Army Michael Grinston said Waltz’s comments about politicizing the military were, in a way, contributing to the politicization.

    He added that the Army is there to “support and defend the nation and the Constitution of everybody … That’s what good soldiers do. That’s what we swore, that we would defend the Constitution of America.”

    Several Republican lawmakers have taken issue with the military’s efforts to increase inclusion and diversity in the force over the last couple of years, while military leaders have said those efforts help ensure that the US has the best fighting force possible. Lawmakers have pointed to a Pentagon directive in 2021 for leaders to discuss extremism in the ranks with their troops as an example of politicizing the military, as well as recruiting campaigns launched by the Army that sought to highlight its diverse force.

    The issue has boiled over in other congressional hearings, leading to tense exchanges between military leaders and lawmakers. In one such moment during a House Armed Services hearing in 2021, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said it was “offensive” that troops were being called “quote, ‘woke’ or something else, because we’re studying some theories that are out there.”

    The issue came up multiple times during Thursday’s hearing. In one moment, Republican Rep. Cory Mills pressed leaders on “pronoun training” in the services and criticized what he called “woke ideology” as impacting the military’s recruitment.

    “I’m curious as to, when I talk to people and say, ‘Well, why aren’t you looking to join the military?’ A lot of them say, ‘Well, the military has been over-politicized. Well, the military has gone woke.’ … We’re saying that this new focus, this new shift, this new kind of woke ideology is not impacting recruitment and not impacting our readiness and lethality? I have a hard time believing that,” Mills said.

    Air Force Chief Master Sgt. JoAnne Bass responded that the Air Force “does not have pronoun training. And … where we could use your help is by sharing that message that your services are not focused on any of those such training more than we are on warfighting.”

    “That is a fact,” she added, “I can assure you of that.”

    Other leaders also chimed in, explaining their stance in disagreement with Mills’ characterization of what was occurring in the services.

    “When I looked at it, there is one hour of equal opportunity training in basic training, and 92 hours of rifle marksmanship training,” Grinston told Mills. “And if you go to [One Station Unit Training], there is 165 hours of rifle marksmanship training and still only one hour of equal opportunity training.”

    Sgt. Maj. of the Marine Corps Troy Black told Mills that the Marine Corps was not lowering standards and would not in the future. He also addressed some of the “words” being used in the hearing regarding politicization of the military.

    “We’re talking about words – there’s a word that the ranking member used that I haven’t heard yet except from him. It’s called ‘patriotism’ …. So if we want to focus on words, we should probably focus on words like patriotism,” Black said. “Some of the words we’ve used here are not words that we regularly use.”

    Democratic Ranking Member of the Committee Rep. Andy Kim recognized that the issue of politicization was repeatedly surfacing in the discussion and asked the panel of leaders if they had “any reason to believe that [diversity and inclusion] initiatives are negatively impacting our recruitment, our retention, or lethality of the force?”

    Each leader agreed it was not.

    Grinston referenced a survey the Army did on barriers to service among potential recruits, saying diversity and inclusion efforts were “not the number one, two, three, four, five reasons” young Americans were not joining.

    “I think the narrative that we are focused on that more than warfighting is what’s perhaps hurting us,” Bass said.

    [ad_2]

    Source link