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Tag: military weapons

  • Pakistan summons US ambassador after Biden calls country ‘dangerous’ for having nuclear weapons | CNN Politics

    Pakistan summons US ambassador after Biden calls country ‘dangerous’ for having nuclear weapons | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Pakistani officials said Saturday they had summoned the US ambassador to the country following recent comments made by President Joe Biden that doubted the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.

    Speaking at a Democratic Party fundraiser in Los Angeles on Thursday, Biden said Pakistan was “one of the most dangerous nations in the world” because it has “nuclear weapons without any cohesion,” according to a transcript of the speech released by the White House.

    Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif shot back Saturday at Biden’s comments. “Pakistan is a responsible nuclear state and we are proud that our nuclear assets have the best safeguards as per IAEA requirements,” Sharif tweeted, referring to the International Atomic Energy Agency. “We take these safety measures with the utmost seriousness. Let no one have any doubts.”

    Pakistan’s foreign minister, Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, said that he was surprised by Biden’s remarks and that, after speaking with Sharif, they summoned Ambassador Donald Blome to the Foreign Office of Pakistan.

    A US official confirmed to CNN that Blome was summoned by Pakistan’s foreign ministry following Biden’s remarks. Those remarks frustrated US diplomats in the region, the US official said.

    Speaking to reporters Saturday at a news conference in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, Bhutto-Zardari echoed Sharif on his country’s atomic safety record. “We meet all, each and every international standard in accordance with the IAEA,” Bhutto-Zardari said.

    Bhutto-Zardari blamed Biden’s comments on a misunderstanding: “I believe this is exactly the sort of misunderstanding that is created when there is a lack of engagement and luckily, we have embarked on a journey of engagement,” he said.

    CNN has reached out to the US State Department for comment.

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  • BTS reunite for free concert to support South Korea’s World Expo bid | CNN

    BTS reunite for free concert to support South Korea’s World Expo bid | CNN

    K-pop boy band BTS reunited on Saturday for a concert in Busan in support of South Korea’s bid to host the World Expo 2030 in the southern port city.

    The free concert – titled “BTS Yet To Come in Busan” – drew an audience of about 52,000 people to a stadium, according to the Yonhap News Agency.

    A total of 100,000 were expected to visit the stadium and other areas, according to Busan Metropolitan City authorities, with some fans watching the event live on large screens set up at several places around Busan.

    The concert followed the seven-member band’s announcement of a break in June from group musical activities to pursue solo projects, raising questions about the band’s future.

    With BTS’ oldest member, Jin, who is turning 30 next year, facing South Korea’s mandatory military service, the country’s defense minister said in August that BTS might still be able to perform overseas while serving in the military.

    Under a 2019 revision of the law, globally recognized K-pop stars were allowed to put off their service until 30. Military service is hugely controversial in South Korea where all able-bodied men aged between 18 and 28 must fulfill their duties as part of efforts to defend against nuclear-armed North Korea.

    “If the seven BTS members feel the same way and if you guys have faith in us, we will overcome whatever happens to us in the future and we will perform with you guys and make music. Please have faith in us,” BTS leader RM told fans during the concert, without elaborating further.

    Four countries – South Korea, Italy, Ukraine and Saudi Arabia – have submitted competing candidatures to organize World Expo 2030, according to the expo organizing body Bureau International des Expositions (BIE). The host country of the World Expo 2030 is expected to be elected next year.

    In July, BTS were made official ambassadors for the World Expo 2030 in Busan, over 300 km (190 miles) southeast of capital Seoul.

    BTS made their debut in June 2013 and became a worldwide sensation with its upbeat hits and social campaigns aimed at empowering young people.

    Last year, BTS became the first Asian band to win artist of the year at the American Music Awards. The group met US President Joe Biden at the White House in May to discuss hate crimes targeting Asians.

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  • US State Department says Iran nuclear deal ‘not our focus right now’ | CNN Politics

    US State Department says Iran nuclear deal ‘not our focus right now’ | CNN Politics


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    The Iran nuclear deal is “not our focus right now,” US State Department spokesperson Ned Price said Wednesday, noting the administration was instead focusing on supporting the protesters in Iran as efforts to restore the nuclear deal have hit yet another impasse.

    “The Iranians have made very clear that this is not a deal that they have been prepared to make, a deal certainly does not appear imminent,” Price said at a department briefing.

    “Iran’s demands are unrealistic. They go well beyond the scope of the JCPOA,” he said, using the acronym for the formal name of the deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

    “Nothing we’ve heard in recent weeks suggests they have changed their position,” Price added.

    The spokesperson said the administration’s current focus “is on the remarkable bravery and courage that the Iranian people are exhibiting through their peaceful demonstrations, through their exercise of their universal right to freedom of assembly and to freedom of expression.”

    “And our focus right now is on shining a spotlight on what they’re doing and supporting them in the ways we can,” Price said.

    US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in late September that he did not “see any prospects in the very near term” to bring about a return to the Iran nuclear deal.

    In an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes,” Blinken said that “Iran has continued to try to add extraneous issues to the negotiation that we’re simply not going to say yes to.”

    “We will not accept a bad deal, the response that they’ve given to the last proposals put forward by our European partners have been a very significant step backwards,” he said.

    A senior State Department official said at that time that “we’ve hit a wall” because of Tehran’s “unreasonable” demands.

    Speaking to reporters during the UN General Assembly, the official said the UN nuclear watchdog’s probe into unexplained traces of uranium found at undisclosed Iranian sites remained the key sticking point.

    “At the same time as Iran is standing against its people on the street, it’s standing in the way of the kind of economic relief that a nuclear deal would provide. So I think they have to explain that to their own people why, on the verge of the deal, they would choose this issue and jeopardize at this point the possibility of the deal,” the official said in late September.

    Amid the standstill on the JCPOA, the Biden administration has unveiled a series of measures aimed at punishing the regime for its repression of the Iranian people and to try to support the protesters.

    In late September, the US announced sanctions on Iran’s Morality Police following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in their custody.

    In a statement, the US Treasury Department said it was sanctioning the morality police “for abuse and violence against Iranian women and the violation of the rights of peaceful Iranian protestors.”

    Shortly thereafter, amid internet shutdowns by the Iranian government in the face of widespread protests over Amini’s death, the US government took a step meant to allow technology firms to help the people of Iran access information online.

    Last week, the US issued additional sanctions on seven senior Iranian officials for the government shutdown of internet access and the violence against protesters, targeting Iran’s Minister of the Interior, Ahmad Vahidi, who oversees all Law Enforcement Forces that have been used to suppress protests, as well as its Minister of Communications.

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  • Biden sends a careful but chilling new nuclear message to Putin in CNN interview | CNN Politics

    Biden sends a careful but chilling new nuclear message to Putin in CNN interview | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    It’s never going to feel normal to hear a president discussing the danger of “Armageddon” – especially now, on camera.

    But Joe Biden used an exclusive CNN interview on Tuesday to send another careful, yet clear and chilling message to Russian President Vladimir Putin about the disastrous consequences of using nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine.

    The first president since the 1980s to really have to game out calculations about nuclear arsenals and deterrence, Biden was asked by Jake Tapper whether he thought that Putin – who has warned he is prepared to use every option in Russia’s arsenal – might consider detonating one of the world’s most heinous weapons as an act of desperation in a losing war.

    Biden replied: “I don’t think he will.”

    But the President, who first touched on this subject at an off-camera fundraiser in New York last week, made crystal clear he was sending a public message to Putin about the dangers of thinking that using a lower yield, tactical nuclear bomb would be an isolated event.

    “What I am talking about, I am talking to Putin. He, in fact, cannot continue with impunity to talk about the use of a tactical nuclear weapon as if that’s a rational thing to do,” Biden said, before warning of dangerous consequences of such a move.

    “The mistakes get made, the miscalculation could occur, no one could be sure what would happen and it could end in Armageddon,” he said, again stressing that a nuclear blast that kills thousands of people could lead to events barreling way out of control.

    Biden is stating the fear of some strategists who warn about a ladder of escalation that could occur if a nuclear bomb is used and triggers reprisals by the West – even though any initial US response would certainly go no further than conventional military action.

    He also appears to be trying to create a narrative of deterrence around the specific situation in Ukraine. The logic of the US and Russia’s long-range strategic nuclear arsenals is that the use of them is deterred because a conflict would be suicidal for both sides. That equation does not exist in Ukraine, since the country has no nuclear arsenal and it’s hard to conclude that it represents a vital national interest that would lead Washington to respond in kind to Putin going nuclear. By stressing that even a tactical device – which could be small enough to destroy an airbase or large enough to reduce a city to ruins – could lead to something worse, Biden seems to be almost seeking to create a new chain of calculations in Putin’s mind.

    Two moments in Tapper’s interview brought home the burden now borne by the man who is followed everywhere he goes by a military officer carrying the nation’s nuclear codes.

    First the CNN anchor asked the President to state the US red line for the US and NATO in Ukraine and what Washington would do if Putin bombed a nuclear plant in Ukraine or set off a tactical nuclear weapon.

    “It would be irresponsible for me to talk about what we would or wouldn’t do,” Biden said.

    Then, Tapper prodded the President over whether the Pentagon had gamed out scenarios. Biden soberly replied: “The Pentagon didn’t have to be asked.”

    Watch the full exclusive interview with President Joe Biden

    Most experts and strategists estimate that there are many reasons why Putin would stop short of using a nuclear weapon – among them the possible risk of radioactive fallout crossing into Russia or the fact that the use of a tactical nuclear weapon may not actually be a sensible strategic option in the war.

    But the fact he’s pushed himself into a corner, along with his obliviousness to civilian loss of life underscored again by his callous assaults on Ukrainian cities this week, suggests that a humanitarian impulse is unlikely to be part of his calculation. And Biden himself said in the interview that while he believed Putin was a “rational actor,” he had made significant miscalculations and his objectives were not rational. That leaves open the possibility of even more decisions that appear irrational to the West but may seem reasonable in Putin’s warped logic.

    That is why Biden and experts who have dedicated their careers to staving off a nuclear apocalypse say the possibility that Putin may go nuclear must be taken so seriously – even if the chances remain very low and the US would likely be able to detect well ahead of time if Russia’s atomic devices were on the move.

    “It’s not a probable event. It’s not even likely,” said Joseph Cirincione, a nuclear non-proliferation expert and former president of the Plowshares Fund, said on CNN’s “Newsroom” on Tuesday.

    “But this is a low probability, high consequence event. If he uses even one nuclear weapon, he’s bringing us into a whole new world. He’s causing massive damage. And he’s running the risk of escalation with exchanges from the West that could lead to further exchanges, et cetera.”

    Cirincione explained that even if Putin’s saber rattling represented a political threat designed to scare the West, it cannot be discounted.

    “He has the means. He has the doctrine that allows him to use it. And he has the motive. He is losing this war. He has to do something to try to turn the tide of battle in desperation. He might turn to a nuclear weapon.”

    While some critics have faulted the President for mentioning words like “Armageddon” and comparing his rhetoric to that of Putin, the motivations of the two men are very different. At a minimum, the Russian leader is boasting about nuclear weapons to scare the world. Biden is speaking publicly to stave off the possibility of disaster.

    One reason the war in Ukraine is so dangerous is that nearly eight months in, there remains no prospect of any genuine diplomatic process that could defuse it. Ukraine’s forces, using US and allied weapons systems, are making remarkable progress on the battlefield and are determined to repel an unprovoked invasion that has caused carnage and extensive destruction. Putin has thrown so much personal prestige and Russian blood into the war he can hardly afford any outcome he cannot spin as a win, despite his autocratic grip on Russia.

    Biden signaled in the Tapper interview that he saw no real rationale to meet Putin when both leaders are expected to be at the G20 summit in Indonesia next month. But he did leave one intriguing door open to the Russian leader, saying he’d sit down with Putin if he were willing to discuss the fate of US basketball star Brittney Griner, who was sentenced in August to nine years in prison after pleading guilty to drugs smuggling. The US says Griner and another American, former US Marine Paul Whelan, have been wrongfully detained. Washington has offered to swap jailed Russian arms trafficker Viktor Bout for the two Americans.

    “Look, I have no intention of meeting with him, but look, if he came to me at the G20 and said, ‘I want to talk about the release of Griner,’ I would meet with him, but that would depend,” Biden said.

    The President also downplayed the idea that more generally there was anything to talk about.

    “He’s acted brutally, I think he’s committed war crimes, and so I don’t… see any rationale to meet with him now.”

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  • A failed truce renewal in Yemen could further complicate US-Saudi relations | CNN

    A failed truce renewal in Yemen could further complicate US-Saudi relations | CNN

    Editor’s Note: A version of this story first appeared in CNN’s Meanwhile in the Middle East newsletter, a three-times-a-week look inside the region’s biggest stories. Sign up here.


    Abu Dhabi, UAE
    CNN
     — 

    After a rare six months of relative calm, Yemen’s warring sides last week failed to renew a truce deal, with calls from the United Nations for an extension falling on deaf ears.

    With one side backed by Iran and the other by Saudi Arabia, it remains to be seen whether the US will support its Middle Eastern ally after last week’s whopping oil cut – seen as a snub from the oil-rich kingdom to the Biden administration ahead of the US midterm elections.

    The country’s Iran-backed Houthis and their rival Saudi-led coalition had agreed on a nationwide truce in April, the first since 2016. The two-month truce was renewed twice but came to an end last week over eleventh-hour demands put forward by the Houthis with regards to public sector wages.

    At the last minute, the Houthis imposed “maximalist and impossible demands that the parties simply could not reach, certainly in the time that was available,” said US Special Envoy for Yemen Tim Lenderking in a statement, adding that diplomatic efforts by the US and the UN continue.

    “The unannounced reasons [for not renewing the truce] are speculated to be that the Iranians asked the Houthis, directly, to help escalate things in the region,” said Maged Almadhaji, director of the Sanaa Center for Strategic Studies.

    “Iranians and Houthis are in a difficult political position,” Almadhaji told CNN, adding that Iranians are under immense pressure amid raging protests at home and might be trying to keep Gulf rivals at bay by keeping them occupied with Yemen’s conflict.

    The few months of ceasefire were a breath of fresh air for millions of Yemenis who, in the last seven years of conflict, were driven to “acute need,” the UN said. The peace period saw the monthly rate of people displaced internally dip by 76%, and the number of civilians killed or injured by fighting lowered by 54%, said the UN last week.

    Yemen has been described by the UN as the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis.

    Lenderking said that some aspects of the initial truce are still being upheld, such as relatively low violence, continued fuel shipments that can still offload into the Houthi-held Hodeidah port as well as resumed civilian-commercial flights from Sanaa airport. But the risks are very high.

    The Houthis have already warned investors to steer clear of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates as they are “fraught with risks” – a message seen as a direct threat that the Iran-backed group is ready to strike once again.

    “With the Houthis, it is always risky not to take their threats seriously,” Peter Salisbury, consultant at International Crisis Group, told CNN.

    Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis have previously launched attacks on the oil-rich countries, mainly targeting oil fields and key airports. In March, Houthis claimed responsibility for an attack on an Aramco oil storage facility in Jeddah. And in January, they said they were behind a drone strike on fuel trucks near the airport in Abu Dhabi.

    Saudi Arabia has previously sounded alarms to its powerful US security ally over these attacks, criticizing the Biden administration over what it perceived as waning US security presence in the volatile Middle East.

    Security agitation among Gulf monarchies was exacerbated by US nuclear talks with Iran earlier this year, where the possibility of lifted economic sanctions posed the risk of an emboldened Tehran that, it was feared, would, in turn, further empower and arm its regional proxies – predominantly the Houthis.

    But the Houthis are already arguably emboldened, said Gregory Johnsen, a former member of the United Nations’ Panel of Experts on Yemen.

    “I think Iran would like nothing better than to leave the Houthis in Sanaa on Saudi’s border as check against future Saudi behavior,” Johnsen told CNN.

    Saudi Arabia’s strongest security ally has been the US, and traditionally the two countries’ unwritten agreement has been oil in exchange for security – namely against Iranian hostility.

    But now, as Saudi Arabia defies the US with its latest OPEC oil cut, the two countries’ friendship is under increased strain. And with already existing reluctance in congressional politics to increase military support to Saudi Arabia, it remains unclear whether the US will respond with swift support to its Middle Eastern ally should violence flare, said Salisbury.

    A number of US Democratic politicians have accused Saudi Arabia of siding with Russia, saying the oil cut should be seen as a “hostile act” against the US.

    The threats made by certain US senators against Saudi Arabia after Wednesday’s OPEC oil cut – some of whom have called on US President Joe Biden to “retaliate” – are not credible, said Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a political science professor in the UAE, adding that the response from the Biden administration “has been more restrained.”

    It is in America’s interest to protect Middle Eastern oil producers, Abdulla told CNN, especially as supply tightens amid the Ukraine war and stalled nuclear talks with Iran.

    “At this moment in history, America needs Saudi Arabia, needs the UAE, just as much as we need them for security purposes,” Abdulla said.

    US policy toward Yemen has in recent years been in disarray, analysts say. The Obama administration first backed the Saudi-led coalition in 2016, but levels of support later changed as evidence emerged of civilian casualties in the Saudi-led air campaign.

    Saudi Arabia enjoyed extensive support for its Yemen policy during the Trump administration. In late 2019, Biden promised to make the kingdom a pariah and, a little over a year later, he slashed US support for Saudi Arabia’s offensive operations in Yemen, “including relevant arms sales.”

    The US continues, however, to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia through the loophole of “defense.”

    The Biden administration last August approved and notified Congress of possible multibillion-dollar weapons sales to both Saudi Arabia and the UAE, citing defense against Houthi attacks as a legitimate cause for concern.

    “Now, the US is frustrated with Saudi Arabia and the UAE, while it has no leverage with the Houthis,” said Johnsen. “The US has been lost at sea for the past year and a half when it comes to a Yemen policy,” he added, labelling it a situation largely “of its own making.”

    While there is pressure within the US to sternly react to Saudi Arabia’s energy policies, it is yet to be seen how the US will respond to the developments in Yemen, where some say Washington would be wise to uphold its security guarantees.

    “I don’t think it is in the best interest of America to reduce their military assistance to Saudi Arabia,” said Abdulla. “If they do, it will backfire on America more than many of these senators would imagine.”

    At least 185 people, including at least 19 children, have been killed in nationwide protests across Iran since September, said Iran Human Rights (IHR), an Iran-focused human rights group based in Norway, on Saturday.

    CNN cannot independently verify death toll claims. Human Rights Watch said that, as of September 30, Iranian state-affiliated media placed the number of deaths at 60.

    Now in their third week, protests have swept across Iranian cities following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who died after being arrested by morality police and taken to a “re-education center” for not abiding by the country’s conservative dress code.

    Here is the latest on this developing story:

    • Iranian police on Sunday dispersed high school girls who gathered to protest in southwestern Tehran. Meanwhile, an eyewitness told CNN that in the southeastern part of the city, girls took to the street shouting “woman, life, freedom” and “death to the dictator.”
    • The death toll from the crackdown on Saturday’s protests in Iran’s Kurdish city of Sanandaj has increased to at least four, according to the Iranian human rights group Hengaw on Sunday.
    • Iran’s state broadcaster IRINN (Islamic Republic of Iran News Network) was allegedly hacked during its nightly news program on Saturday, according to the pro-reform IranWire outlet, which shared a clip of the hacking. Iran’s semi-official Tasnim News Agency reported on the hacking, saying that IRIB/IRINN’s 9 p.m. newscast was hacked for a few moments by anti-revolutionary elements.
    • The internet connectivity monitoring service NetBlocks on Saturday said that Iran had shut off the internet in the Kurdish city of Sanandaj in an attempt to curb a growing protest movement amid reports of new killings.

    Violent weekend as four Palestinians killed in West Bank, Israeli soldier killed in Jerusalem shooting

    An Israeli soldier has died following a rare shooting at a military checkpoint in East Jerusalem on Saturday, the Israel Defense Forces said. The attack comes after a violent two days in the occupied West Bank where Israeli forces killed four Palestinians, Palestinian authorities said.

    • Background: The shooting happened at a checkpoint of the normally quiet area near the Shuafat Refugee Camp in northeast Jerusalem, an area considered occupied territory by most of the international community. Video of the incident shows a man coming up to a group of soldiers and shooting them point blank before running away. Noa Lazar, an 18-year-old female soldier, was killed, and a 30-year-old guard was critically injured. In a statement, Prime Minister Yair Lapid called the attacker a “vile terrorist” and said Israel will “not rest until we bring these heinous murderers to justice.” Prior to the checkpoint attack, Israeli forces killed four Palestinians in the occupied West Bank over two days, according to Palestinian authorities. Two were killed in the Jenin Refugee Camp on Saturday when, the IDF said, clashes broke out as they came to arrest an “Islamic Jihad operative” that the IDF claimed was “involved in terrorist activities, planning and carrying out shooting attacks towards IDF soldiers in the area.” Another two, including a 14-year-old boy, were killed in separate incidents elsewhere in the territories. The occupied West Bank, especially the areas of Jenin and Nablus, is in an increasingly volatile and dangerous situation, as near-daily clashes take place between the Israeli military and increasingly armed Palestinians.
    • Why it matters: More than 105 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces so far this year, making it the deadliest year for Palestinians in the occupied territories since 2015, according to Palestinian health authorities. Israel says most Palestinians killed were engaging violently with soldiers during military operations, although dozens of unarmed civilians have been killed as well, human rights groups including B’Tselem have said. Some 21 civilians and soldiers have been killed so far this year in attacks targeting Israelis.

    US says a failed rocket attack targeted US and partnered forces in Syria

    One rocket was launched at a base housing US and coalition troops in Syria on Saturday night, according to US Central Command. No US or coalition forces were injured in the attack, and no facilities or equipment were damaged, CENTCOM said in a statement.

    • Background: The rocket was a 107mm rocket, and additional rockets were found at the launch site, CENTCOM said. The attack is under investigation. On September 18, a similar rocket attack using 107mm rockets was launched against Green Village in Syria, a base housing US troops. Three 107mm rockets were launched and a fourth was found at the launch site.
    • Why it matters: The attack comes two days after US forces killed two top ISIS leaders in an airstrike in northern Syria, and three days after a US raid killed an ISIS smuggler. Although there is no attribution for the attack, such rocket launches are frequently used by Iranian-backed militias in Syria.

    UAE president to meet with Putin during visit to Russia on Tuesday

    UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin during a visit to Russia on Tuesday, UAE state-run news agency WAM said.

    • Background: “During his visit, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed will discuss with President Putin the friendly relations between the UAE and Russia along with a number of regional and international issues and developments of common interest,” WAM said.
    • Why it matters: The visit comes less than a week after OPEC+, the international cartel of oil producers, announced a significant cut to output in an effort to raise oil prices. The UAE is a member of the organization led by Saudi Arabia and Russia. CNN has reached out to the UAE government for comment.

    Before clicking enter on your Google search today, take a minute to check out today’s ‘Google Doodle.’ Standing by a library and a lighthouse is prominent Egyptian historian Mostafa El-Abbadi, who would have turned 94 today.

    Hailed as “champion of Alexandria’s Resurrected Library” by the New York Times, he was the key player in resurrecting the Great Library of Alexandria.

    The son of the founder of the College of Letters and Arts at the University of Alexandria, El-Abbadi’s love for academia came at a very young age.

    The intellectual went on to graduate from the University of Cambridge and returned home as a professor of Greco-Roman studies at the University of Alexandria, where his love for the Library of Alexandria grew.

    El-Abbadi sought to restore the glory of the “Great Library” which disappeared between 270 and 250 A.D. – and he succeeded.

    Combined efforts by the Egyptian government, UNESCO, and other organizations led to the opening of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina on October 16, 2002.

    Despite being the main driver of the project, El-Abbadi was not invited to the ceremony after he became a critic of how the scheme was handled by the authorities.

    “It became the project of the presidents, of the people who cut the rope, the people who stood on the front stage, and not of Mostafa El-Abbadi,” said Prof. Mona Haggag, a former student of El-Abbadi and head of the department of Greek and Roman archaeology at the University of Alexandria, according to the New York Times.

    By Mohammed Abdelbary

    Models present creations by Italy's iconic fashion house Stefano Ricci at the temple of the ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Hatshepsut on the west bank of the Nile river, off Egypt's southern city of Luxor, on October 9.

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  • Treasures to trash: The personal belongings Hurricane Ian turned into debris | CNN

    Treasures to trash: The personal belongings Hurricane Ian turned into debris | CNN

    Erica Lee/CNN

    Charlie Whitehead, 64, lives on San Carlos Island, across the Fort Myers Beach isle, and has spent most days since the storm trying to salvage family photos. This one depicts him and his wife, Debbie, when they were younger.

    Nearly two weeks since Hurricane Ian slammed into Florida’s southwestern coast, battered communities are slowly beginning to sort through the damage the storm left. Families that were chin-deep in water in their homes have found there is little left to salvage: the furniture that floated around has dried but is now beginning to mold, wood chests and drawers bear signs of the water damage, electronics are now useless and few cars survived the flooding. Debris that piles high in every driveway offers a glimpse into what the homes behind them used to look like and what families held dear but are now forced to throw out. The trash piles include mementos too deformed to save, treasured photographs, rugs, kitchen tables, dining chairs, mirrors, clothes — most of everything covered in mud.

    “The big trash trucks with the claws, they just come in, they pick that stuff up like it’s nothing. Seventeen years’ worth of hard work gone in a matter of five minutes,” says Miguel Romero, 26, who lives in the Linda Loma neighborhood, near the beach. Romero, his partner and their 1-year-old daughter, along with his parents, went into the attic of their ground-floor home to survive. Almost everything in the house was ruined. But at the end, like many others here, stuff is stuff, he says, and he’s thankful his family is alive.

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  • North Korea says missile tests are practice for ‘tactical nuclear strikes’ on South Korea | CNN

    North Korea says missile tests are practice for ‘tactical nuclear strikes’ on South Korea | CNN


    Seoul, South Korea
    CNN
     — 

    North Korean state media has broken its silence over the country’s recent spate of missile tests, claiming they were part of a series of simulated procedures intended to demonstrate its readiness to fire tactical nuclear warheads at potential targets in South Korea.

    The Kim regime has tested ballistic missiles seven times since September 25, the latest of 25 launch events of ballistic and cruise missiles this year, according to a CNN count, raising tensions to their highest level since 2017.

    Quoting leader Kim Jong Un, who oversaw the drills, the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said the tests, which coincided with nearby military drills between the United States, South Korea and Japan, showed Pyongyang was ready to respond to regional tensions with by involving its “huge armed forces.”

    KCNA said the series of seven drills of North Korea’s “tactical nuclear operation units” showed that its “nuclear combat forces” are “fully ready to hit and wipe out the set objects at the intended places in the set time.”

    Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program and professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, said North Korea’s announcements Monday indicated potential progress in its missile program.

    “What I find notable is that these launches are not framed as tests of the missiles themselves, but rather of the units that launch them. That suggests these systems are deployed,” Lewis said on Twitter.

    KCNA said on September 25, North Korea workers took part in exercises within a silo under a reservoir to practice what it described as loading tactical nuclear warheads to check the swift and safe transportation of nuclear weapons.

    Three days later, they simulated the loading of a tactical nuclear warhead on a missile that in the event of war that would be used in “neutralizing airports in South Korea’s operation zones.”

    On October 6, North Korea practiced procedures that could initiate a tactical nuclear strike on “the enemies’ main military command facilities” and, on Sunday, enemy ports, Pyongyang’s state media said.

    Among the key military installations in South Korea is the US Army’s Camp Humphreys, the largest US military installation outside of the United States with a population of more than 36,000 US servicemembers, civilian workers, contractors and family members.

    A North Korean missile launch is seen in a photo released by state media on Monday.

    Experts say that North Korea has likely manufactured some nuclear warheads – “20 to 30 warheads for delivery primarily by medium-range ballistic missiles,” Hans Kristensen and Matt Korda of Nuclear Information Project with the Federation of American Scientists, wrote in September.

    But its ability to detonate them accurately on the battlefield is unproven.

    A photo from North Korean state media released Monday shows a missile launch.

    Analysts noted that with Monday’s reports, North Korea broke six months of silence on its testing program. Before that, an announcement and images of the tests were usually made available the next day.

    Leif-Eric Easley, associate professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, said Pyongyang had “multiple motivations” for making an announcement Monday.

    Besides providing a “patriotic headline” for domestic consumption on the 77th anniversary of its ruling party, “it is making explicit the nuclear threat behind its recent missile launches,” Easley said.

    “The KCNA report may also be harbinger of a forthcoming nuclear test for the kind of tactical warhead that would arm the units Kim visited in the field,” he said.

    South Korean and US officials have been warning since May that North Korea may be preparing for its first nuclear test since 2017, with satellite imagery showing activity at its underground nuclear test site.

    The KCNA report said the recent drills, from September 25 to October 9, were designed to send a “strong military reaction warning to the enemies” and to verify and improve the country’s fighting capabilities.

    Kim Jong Un watches a missile launch in a photo released by North Korean state media on Monday.

    In the report, Kim called South Korea and the United States “the enemies” and said North Korea doesn’t need to hold talks with them.

    Kim further emphasized that Pyongyang will thoroughly monitor enemies’ military movements and “strongly take all military countermeasures” if needed, KCNA stated.

    The United States, South Korea and Japan have all been active with military exercises during the North’s recent wave of drills.

    North Korean leader Kim Jong Un observes a military drill on October 8 in photo from North Korean state media.

    A US Navy aircraft carrier strike group participated in several days of bilateral and trilateral exercises with South Korean and Japanese units that ended Saturday, a statement from the US Navy’s Task Force 70 said.

    “Our commitment to regional security and the defense of our allies and partners is demonstrated by our flexibility and adaptability to move this strike group to where it is needed,” said Rear Adm. Michael Donnelly, commander of Task Force 70/Carrier Strike Group 5.

    South Korea’s National Security Council on Sunday “strongly condemned” North Korea’s recent ballistic missile launches, and it said the South Korean military will further bolster its combined defense posture and deterrence through joint military drills with the US and trilateral security cooperation involving Japan.

    Japan’s Joint Staff said the security environment around Japan was becoming “increasingly severe” and that drills with the US Navy were strengthening the alliance’s capability to respond to threats.

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  • Opinion: Biden’s eye-opening warning | CNN

    Opinion: Biden’s eye-opening warning | CNN

    Editor’s Note: Sign up to get this weekly column as a newsletter. We’re looking back at the strongest, smartest opinion takes of the week from CNN and other outlets.



    CNN
     — 

    “Can you tell me where we’re headin’?” Bob Dylan asks in his 1978 song “Señor.”

    Is it “Lincoln County Road or Armageddon? Seems like I been down this way before. Is there any truth in that, señor?”

    Yes, we’ve been here before, at least if you take President Joe Biden at his word. At a fundraiser in New York City Thursday, Biden said, “First time since the Cuban missile crisis, we have a direct threat of the use (of a) nuclear weapon if in fact things continue down the path they are going.” Referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threat to go nuclear in his war with Ukraine, the President observed, “I don’t think there’s any such thing as the ability to easily (use) a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon.”

    As historian Julian Zelizer wrote, “Those were unsettling words for a nation to hear from the commander in chief.” Biden referred to “the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962, when the world seemed to teeter on the brink of nuclear war as the US and the Soviet Union faced off over missiles in Cuba.”

    “Some planned escape routes from major cities while others stocked up on transistor radios, bottled water and radiation kits for their families. Although nobody knew it at the time, the danger was even greater than most thought as the leaders didn’t have full control of the situation. In the end, diplomacy won out, a deal was reached and disaster was averted.”

    Nick Anderson/Tribune Content Agency

    But the prospect of annihilating humanity in a nuclear exchange is so great that such brinksmanship should never be allowed to happen again. Surely Presidents Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev were right when they agreed in 1985 that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”

    US national security officials privately said there was no new intelligence to indicate that Putin is moving to carry out his threat and couldn’t explain why Biden made the extraordinary statement. But its implications were clear, Zelizer argued. “This historic moment in the war between Russia and Ukraine is an important reminder that the US has let nuclear arms control fall from the agenda, and the consequences are dangerous.”

    Putin’s back is against the wall as Ukraine continues to retake territory from the Russians. Peter Bergen wrote that Putin is “facing growing criticism from Russians on both the left and the right, who are taking considerable risks given the draconian penalties they can face for speaking out against his ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine.”

    “With even his allies expressing concern, and hundreds of thousands of citizens fleeing partial mobilization, an increasingly isolated Putin has once again taken to making rambling speeches offering his distorted view of history.”

    One lesson of history is that military defeat endangers dictatorial leaders. “Putin’s gamble may lead to a third dissolution of the Russian empire, which happened first in 1917 as the First World War wound down, and again in 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union,” Bergen noted. “It could unfold once more as Putin’s dream of seizing Ukraine seems to be coming to an inglorious end.”

    It’s striking to recall, as Frida Ghitis did, that “seven months ago, some viewed Putin as something of a genius. That myth has turned to dust. The man who helped suppress uprisings, entered wars and tried to manipulate elections across the planet now looks cornered.”

    In Ukraine, “Russia’s trajectory looks like a trail of war crimes, with hundreds of bombed hospitals, schools, civilian convoys, and mass graves filled with Ukrainians. And still Ukraine is pushing ahead, is doing very well in fact, and very possibly winning this war,” wrote Ghitis.

    06 opinion column 1008

    Lisa Benson/GoComics.com

    Biden took heat this summer for deciding to meet Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and walking away with little commitment from the Saudis to expand oil production. And then last week, the Saudi regime was instrumental in OPEC+’s decision to actually cut oil production in a move that benefits it and other oil-producing states including Russia.

    “So much for cozying up to the Saudis – President Joe Biden’s much-hyped fist bump with Mohammed bin Salman during a trip to the Middle East back in July has turned into something of a slap across the face from the crown prince,” wrote David A. Andelman.

    In the US, gasoline prices have started rising after weeks of declines, adding to the burdens Democrats face in trying to hold onto control of Congress in the midterm elections a month from now.

    07 opinion column 1008

    Clay Jones

    “The OPEC production cutbacks could – indeed, should – backfire for Saudi Arabia and its complicit partners,” wrote Andelman. “There is growing sentiment in Congress to reevaluate America’s wider relationship with Saudi Arabia and especially the vast arms sales to the kingdom.”

    Higher oil prices come on top of Europe’s emerging energy crisis, with Russia sharply reducing its export of natural gas to the continent. As a result, Germany is among the nations that have instituted tough new curbs on energy use, wrote Paul Hockenos.

    “Step into my Berlin office today and you’ll find everybody is wearing sweaters – I wear two, with wool socks and occasionally a scarf. … At home, my little family has sworn off baths (swift showers please), and lights are on only in the rooms we’re occupying. We’ve invested in a wool curtain inside our apartment’s front door to keep out the draft.”

    “My friend Bill … hasn’t turned his heating on yet this year – no one I know has – and wears a sweater at home. He also has a new method of showering: one minute under warm water, turns it off, lathers up, and then rinses off.”

    “Timing is everything,” said Garrett Hedlund in the 2011 song of that name.

    “When the stars line up

    And you catch a break

    People think you’re lucky

    But you know it’s grace…”

    It works in reverse too. Just ask Linda Stewart, a New Mexico educator in her 60s who decided to retire one year into the pandemic lockdown. “Finances would be a little tight for a while, but some outside projects would supplement my income, so I felt confident I would be able to handle it,” she wrote in a new CNN Opinion series, “America’s Future Starts Now,” which explores the key issues in the midterm campaigns.

    But, Stewart added, “by the end of the second year of lockdown, inflation started taking a toll and money was getting uncomfortably tight. Soon I was in the red each month, just trying to keep up. The usual suspects were groceries and gas, which meant cutting back on some of the more expensive food items and cooking meals at home.”

    “I stopped driving for anything other than essentials. And with the continuing drought here in the Southwest, utility bills went through the ceiling. I cut back on watering my garden and turned the furnace down a few degrees in the winter and the air conditioning up a few in the summer. I switched to washing clothes mostly in cold water and only running the dishwasher once a week.”

    The economy is the issue Americans are most concerned about, and there are no quick, easy solutions to the inflation spike. The second part of CNN Opinion’s new series was a roundup of views on how to help people cope with higher costs.

    03 opinion column 1008

    Scott Stantis/Tribune Content Agency

    The Federal Reserve Bank is raising interest rates at a rapid pace to conquer inflation. The “tight labor market – and the rapid wage growth it has spurred – is causing inflation to become more entrenched,” wrote economist Gad Levanon for CNN Business Perspectives. To curb the rise in prices, “the Federal Reserve is likely to drive the economy into a recession in 2023, crushing continued job growth.”

    05 opinion column 1008

    Dana Summers/Tribune Content Agency

    At least 131 people have died due to Hurricane Ian. Why was it so deadly?

    The storm’s course veered south as it approached Florida and rapidly intensified, Cara Cuite and Rebecca Morss noted. “Emergency managers typically need at least 48 hours to successfully evacuate areas of southwest Florida. However, voluntary evacuation orders for Lee County were issued less than 48 hours prior to landfall, and for some areas were made mandatory just 24 hours before the storm came ashore. This was less than the amount of time outlined in Lee County’s own emergency management plan.”

    “While the lack of sufficient time to evacuate was cited by some as a reason why they stayed behind, there are other factors that may also have suppressed evacuations in some of the hardest hit areas.” Few people are aware of their evacuation zone, and some websites carrying that information crashed in the leadup to the storm’s arrival, Cuite and Morss wrote.

    “People need time to decide what to do, pack belongings, find a place to go and arrange how to get there, often in the midst of heavy traffic and other complications and obstacles.” Other factors: “In addition to a false sense of security from prior near-misses among some residents, others who were in the areas of Florida hardest hit by Hurricane Ian may not have had any personal experience with such powerful storms. This is likely true for the millions of people who have moved to Florida over the past few decades…”

    For more:

    Adam H. Sobel: Where the hurricane risk is growing

    Geoff Duncan, a Republican and the current lieutenant governor of Georgia, is unsure about Herschel Walker’s prospects in the upcoming election. The Republican Senate candidate has denied reports alleging he paid for a girlfriend’s abortion in 2009.

    “The October surprise,” Duncan wrote, “has upended the political landscape, throwing one of the nation’s closest midterm races into turmoil five weeks before Election Day, but it never had to be this way. Just as there should not be two Democrats representing a center-right state like Georgia in the US Senate, the Republican Party should not have found its chance of regaining a Senate majority hanging on an untested and unproven first-time candidate.”

    “Walker won his Senate primary not because of his political chops or policy proposals. He trounced his opponents because of his performance on the football field 40 years ago and his friendship with former President Donald Trump – neither of which are guaranteed tickets to victory anymore.”

    02 opinion column 1008

    Drew Sheneman/Tribune Content Agency

    For more on politics:

    SE Cupp: Herschel Walker’s ‘October Surprise’ won’t matter

    Tim Kane: What the Biden administration is getting wrong on immigration

    Nicole Hemmer: The Onion is right about the future of democracy

    Dean Obeidallah: The single-minded goal of Trump-loving Republicans

    Organic chemistry is a famously difficult course and a traditional prerequisite for students who want to go on to medical school. Maitland Jones Jr., a master of the field and textbook author, taught the course at NYU – until 82 of the 350 students taking it “signed a petition because, they said, their low scores demonstrated that his class was too hard,” Jill Filipovic noted.

    Then the university fired him.

    An NYU spokesman “told the (New York) Times in defense of their decision to terminate Jones’s contract that the professor had been the target of complaints about ‘dismissiveness, unresponsiveness, condescension and opacity about grading.’ It’s worth noting that according to the Times, students expressed surprise that Jones was fired, which their petition did not call for.”

    Some of the student complaints may have been valid, noted Filipovic, but she added that the case “raises important questions, chief among them how much power students, who universities seem to increasingly think of as consumers (and some of whom think of themselves that way), should have in the hiring, retention and firing of professors…”

    “There are real consequences … to making higher education primarily palatable to those paying tuition bills – particularly when it comes to courses like organic chemistry, which are intended to be difficult. Future medical students do in fact need a rigorous science background in order to be successful doctors someday. Whether or not Jones was an effective teacher for aspiring medical students is up for debate, but in firing him, NYU is effectively dodging questions about the line between academic rigor and student well-being with potentially life-and-death matters at stake.”

    Kim Kardashian 0924

    Alessandro Garofalo/Reuters

    The Securities and Exchange Commission fined Kim Kardashian nearly $1.3 million for failing to disclose she was paid to promote a crypto asset, EthereumMax, noted Emily Parker.

    “This case reflects a much larger problem in the crypto industry: Celebrities are using their influence to promote cryptocurrencies, a notoriously complex and risky asset class, which can lead people to invest in coins or projects that they may not understand,” Parker observed.

    “New coins and projects are constantly popping up, sometimes without sufficient warnings about the risks of investing … In such a fast-changing and confusing market, how do you distinguish winners from losers? It’s easy to imagine how a confident tweet by a celebrity could have a significant impact on a new investor.”

    In agreeing to the fine, Kardashian “did a favor for the cryptocurrency industry. Such a high-profile example could cause other celebrities to think twice before shilling a token on social media.”

    04 opinion column 1008

    Bill Bramhall/Tribune Content Agency

    Alejandro Mayorkas: The security risk Congress needs to take seriously

    Danae Wolfe: Stomping alone won’t wipe out the spotted lanternfly

    Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza: Inside the prison where sunlight ceases to exist

    Jeremi Suri and William Inboden: A generation of the world’s best leaders has died

    Sara Stewart: ‘Dahmer’ debate is finally saying the quiet part about true crime out loud

    Elisa Massimino: It’s time to shut down Guantanamo

    Pete Brown: What ‘fancy a pint?’ really means

    AND…

    01 Trevor Noah file

    Rich Fury/Getty Images/FILE`

    Until recently, the late-night television formula ruled, as Bill Carter noted. “On the air after 11 p.m. with a charismatic host, some comedy, a desk, a guest or two, maybe a band and then ‘Good night, everybody!’” Late-night shows seemed to be holding their own despite the rise of cord-cutting and the move to streaming.

    But that’s changing, as Trevor Noah’s decision to give up hosting “The Daily Show” suggested. Carter wrote, “What many people watch now is not television: It’s whatever-vision, entertainment by any means on any device. What’s on late night is now often seen on subscriptions – and not late at night.”

    Noah is leaving on a high note “after a seven-year run, marked by an impressive body of comedy work and growing acclaim,” Carter observed. In succeeding Jon Stewart as the show’s host, Noah “had a different beat in his head from the start. He wanted to refashion the show with a wider comedy vision, one looking more out at the world, instead of purely in at the United States, all informed by Noah’s South African-born global perspective.”

    “It was a wise choice. Following Stewart was always going to be a potentially crippling challenge. Noah took it on and remade the show to his own specifications. One major sign of that was how strikingly diverse the show became.”

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  • North Korea fires two ballistic missiles, South Korea and Japan say | CNN

    North Korea fires two ballistic missiles, South Korea and Japan say | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles from the Munchon area of Kangwon Province to the waters off the peninsula’s eastern coast, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff told reporters on Sunday.

    The missiles were launched between 1:47 a.m. and 1:53 a.m. local time Sunday, according to Japan’s State Minister of Defense Toshiro Ino.

    Both missiles fell outside Japan’s Exclusive Economic Zone, Ino added.

    The first missile is estimated to have flown about 350 kilometers, or 217 miles, at a maximum altitude of approximately 100 kilometers, or 62 miles, according to Ino. The second traveled about the same distance.

    Ino noted there were no reports of damages to vessels at sea, but the defense ministry is still analyzing the details and investigating what kind of missiles were launched, including the possibility they were submarine-launched ballistic missiles.

    South Korea’s military has strengthened its surveillance and vigilance and maintaining a full readiness posture while closely cooperating with the US, the country’s joint chiefs of staff said.

    This is the 25th missile launch this year, according to CNN’s count, which includes both ballistic and cruise missiles. The last launch occurred Thursday when North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles, the latest in a spate of launches in the past two weeks.

    Japan’s Coast Guard instructed vessels to pay attention to information and to not approach any objects which have fallen in the sea. It also asked vessels to report any relevant information.

    On Tuesday, North Korea fired another missile, without warning, which flew over and past Japan, causing Japan to warn its citizens to take shelter.

    The missile Tuesday traveled over northern Japan early in the morning, and is believed to have landed in the Pacific Ocean. The last time North Korea fired a ballistic missile over Japan was in 2017.

    US Indo-Pacific Command said Saturday the latest launches do “not pose an immediate threat to US personnel or territory, or to our allies.”

    “We are aware of the two ballistic missile launches and are consulting closely with our allies and partners,” the command said in a statement. “The missile launch highlights the destabilizing impact of the DPRK’s unlawful WMD and ballistic missile programs. The US commitments to the defense of the Republic of Korea and Japan remain ironclad.”

    US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned if North Korea continues “down this road” of provocation following its ballistic missile launch Tuesday, “it will only increase the condemnation, increase the isolation and increase the steps that are taken in response to their actions.”

    The US imposed new sanctions Friday, following North Korean recent ballistic missile tests, the US Treasury and State Department said.

    North Korea usually fires its missiles into waters off the coast of the Korean Peninsula, making Tuesday’s flight over Japan considerably more provocative.

    The aggressive acceleration in weapons testing has sparked alarm in the region, with the US, South Korea and Japan responding with missile launches and joint military exercises. The US has also redeployed an aircraft carrier into waters near the peninsula, a move South Korean authorities called “very unusual.”

    Japan issued a strong protest against North Korea through its embassy in Beijing, Ino said.

    On Thursday, US, South Korean and Japanese warships performed a missile defense exercise in the Sea of Japan, the US-Indo Pacific Command said in a statement.

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  • Biden offers stark ‘Armageddon’ warning on the dangers of Putin’s nuclear threats | CNN Politics

    Biden offers stark ‘Armageddon’ warning on the dangers of Putin’s nuclear threats | CNN Politics


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden on Thursday delivered a stark warning about the dangers behind Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nuclear threats as Moscow continues to face military setbacks in Ukraine.

    “First time since the Cuban missile crisis, we have a direct threat of the use (of a) nuclear weapon if in fact things continue down the path they are going,” Biden warned during remarks at a Democratic fundraiser in New York where he was introduced by James Murdoch, the youngest son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, according to the pool report.

    He added: “I don’t think there’s any such thing as the ability to easily (use) a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon.”

    It’s striking for the President to speak so candidly and invoke Armageddon, particularly at a fundraiser, while his aides from the National Security Council to the State Department to the Pentagon have spoken in much more measured terms, saying they take the threats seriously but don’t see movement on them from the Kremlin.

    “I’m trying to figure out what is Putin’s off ramp?” Biden said during the event, “Where does he find a way out? Where does he find himself in a position that he does not not only lose face but lose significant power within Russia?”

    His comments come as the US considers how to respond to a range of potential scenarios, including fears that Russians could use tactical nuclear weapons, according to three sources briefed on the latest intelligence and previously reported by CNN.

    Ex-US defense secretary says in unlikely event that Putin resorts to nukes, he could use this weapon

    Officials have cautioned as recently as Thursday that the US has not detected preparations for a nuclear strike. However, experts view them as potential options the US must prepare for as Russia’s invasion falters and as Moscow annexes more Ukrainian territory.

    “This nuclear saber rattling is reckless and irresponsible,” Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said earlier Thursday. “As I’ve mentioned before, at this stage, we do not have any information to cause us to change our strategic deterrence posture, and we don’t assess that President Putin has made a decision to use nuclear weapons at this time.”

    Following Biden’s remarks, officials emphasized to CNN Thursday night that they had not seen any changes to Russia’s nuclear stance.

    A US official said that despite Biden’s warning that the world is the closest it has been to a nuclear crisis since the 1960s, they have not seen a change to Russia’s nuclear posture as of now. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s Tuesday statement that there has been no indication of a change in Russia’s posture and therefore no change in the US posture still stands, the official said.

    A senior US government official expressed surprise at the President’s remarks, saying there were no obvious signs of an escalating threat from Russia.

    While there is no question Russia’s nuclear posture is being taken seriously, this official said the President’s language at a fundraiser tonight caught other officials across the government off guard.

    “Nothing was detected today that reflected an escalation,” the official said, who went on to defend Biden’s remarks because of the ongoing gravity of the matter.

    At the fundraiser, Biden was speaking clearly about the threat officials believe Russia poses, a person familiar with his thinking told CNN.

    Still, US officials have taken somber note of the Russian President’s repeated public threats to use nuclear weapons. In a televised address late last month, Putin said, “If the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will without doubt use all available means to protect Russia and our people. This is not a bluff.”

    Last Friday, at a ceremony in which he announced the illegal annexation of four Ukrainian regions, Putin said Russia would use “all available means” to defend the areas, adding that the US had “created a precedent” for nuclear attacks in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II.

    “We’ve got a guy I know fairly well,” Biden said of Putin Thursday. “He’s not joking when he talks about potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons because his military is, you might say, significantly under-performing.”

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • US and South Korea test-fire missiles in continued response after North Korea launch | CNN

    US and South Korea test-fire missiles in continued response after North Korea launch | CNN


    Seoul, South Korea
    CNN
     — 

    The United States and South Korea launched four missiles off the east coast of the Korean Peninsula on Wednesday morning local time, according to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.

    The test was the allies’ second exercise in under 24 hours, following a provocative test-launch Tuesday morning by neighboring North Korea, which fired a ballistic missile without warning over Japan in a significant escalation of its weapons testing program.

    The US and South Korea initially responded to the provocation with a precision bombing exercise on Tuesday, which involved a South Korean F-15K fighter jet firing two air-to-surface munitions at a virtual target in a firing range west of the Korean Peninsula, per the South Korean Joint Chiefs.

    The allies typically respond to missile tests by North Korea with military exercises.

    Wednesday’s launch included four ATACMS missiles, the statement by the South Korean Joint Chiefs said. Also known as Army Tactical Missile Systems, such weapons are surface-to-surface missiles that can fly around 200 miles (320 kilometers).

    According to John Kirby, the National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications, the launch was designed to demonstrate that the US and its allies have “the military capabilities at the ready to respond to provocations by the North.”

    “This is not the first time we’ve done this in response to provocations by the North to make sure that we can demonstrate our own capabilities,” Kirby told CNN’s Pamela Brown on the “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.”

    “We want to see the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, (North Korean leader Kim Jong Un) hasn’t shown an inclination to move in that direction, quite frankly he’s moving in the opposite direction by continuing to conduct these missile tests which are violations of security council resolutions,” he added.

    On Tuesday, the US and Japan also conducted a joint response to the North Korean launch, with US Marine Corps and Japan Air Self-Defense Force fighter jets flying over the Sea of Japan, also known as the East Sea.

    Following a 25-minute phone call with US President Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said North Korea’s latest launch posed “a grave challenge to peace and the stability of Japan, the region and the international community” and that Biden shared this view completely.

    Analysts say there’s little the US and its allies can do to stop Kim’s relentless weapons buildup.

    “The North Koreans are in no mood to talk. They’re in the mood of testing and blowing things off,” said Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Project at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.

    Failed US-North Korea summits during the Trump administration have led Kim to believe he can gain nothing from talks, Lewis said.

    Since 2019 negotiations with former US President Donald Trump were cut short with no agreement, the North Korean leader has laid out a program to develop missiles with nuclear capability – and he’s following that timetable, Lewis added.

    “North Korea is going to keep conducting missile tests until the current round of modernization is done. I don’t think a nuclear (test) explosion is far behind,” Lewis said.

    Kirby, the National Security Council spokesperson, said North Korea is making progress.

    Every time the Kim regime launches a weapon, “They learn, they get better, they get more capable,” he said in an interview with Fox News on Tuesday.

    Ankit Panda, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said North Korea appeared set on a course to develop nuclear weapons.

    “Denuclearization is now I think in the dustbin of history as a failed policy,” he said.

    “There is simply no practical plan at this point, especially in the short term, to bring North Korea to the negotiating table and to pursue denuclearization.”

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  • Japan issues rare alert as North Korea fires missile without warning over main island | CNN

    Japan issues rare alert as North Korea fires missile without warning over main island | CNN


    Seoul, South Korea
    CNN
     — 

    Japan urged residents to take shelter early Tuesday morning after North Korea fired a ballistic missile without warning over the country for the first time in five years, in a major and potentially dangerous escalation of recent weapons tests by the Kim Jong Un regime.

    The launch, which prompted immediate backlash from Tokyo and Seoul, comes amid a spate of missile tests, with five launches in the past 10 days, and follows renewed military drills between the United States and its regional allies.

    The intermediate-range missile was launched from Mupyong-ri near North Korea’s central border with China at around 7:23 a.m. local time, according to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). It flew about 4,600 kilometers (2,858 miles) for 20 minutes at an estimated maximum altitude of 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) over Japan’s Tohoku region on the main island of Honshu before falling into the Pacific Ocean, some 3,000 kilometers (1,864 miles) from the country’s shore, Japanese officials said.

    Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida strongly condemned the launch and called North Korea’s recent ballistic missile launches “outrageous” in comments to reporters at his official residence.

    Tuesday’s launch is the country’s 23rd such missile test this year, including both ballistic and cruise missiles.

    There were no reports of damage to aircraft or vessels near the missile trajectory, according to Japanese authorities, but the unannounced missile triggered a rare J-alert, a system designed to inform the public of emergencies and threats in Japan.

    In such emergencies, alerts are sent out via sirens, through community radio stations and to individual smartphone users. On Tuesday, alerts were sent out at around 7:30 a.m. local time to people in Aomori prefecture, Hokkaido and Tokyo’s Izu and Ogasawara islands, according to Japanese officials.

    A tweet posted by Japan’s Prime Minister’s office urged residents to take shelter in buildings and to “not approach anything suspicious that is found and to immediately contact the police or fire department.”

    Other governments were quick to decry the launch, with South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol branding it a “reckless” provocation, adding that North Korea will face a decisive response from the South Korean military and its allies.

    The White House also “strongly condemned” the test, with National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson calling it a “destabilizing” action that shows North Korea’s “blatant disregard for United Nations Security Council resolutions and international safety norms.”

    Kim Seung-kyum, chief of South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), and Paul LaCamera, the United States Forces Korea commander, held a meeting after the launch and reaffirmed the combined defense posture will be further strengthened against any threats and provocations from North Korea, the JCS said.

    The US Indo-Pacific Command also released a statement saying American commitments to the defense of Japan and South Korea “remain ironclad.”

    Ankit Panda, a senior fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said regular missile testing was was part of North Korea’s plan to maintain its nuclear forces.

    “It is quite possible that the United States, South Korea and Japan will take away a message from this missile test that North Korea is continuing to assert itself to show that it has the ability to deliver nuclear weapons to targets including the US territory of Guam,” he said, adding that “risk reduction” to stop a crisis from escalating should be the current priority.

    “If such a crisis were to play out, it would play out under a significantly more advanced North Korean nuclear capability, which I think would significantly limit the options that the United States and South Korea would have, potentially to retaliate or manage escalation with North Korea,” he said.

    Tuesday’s launch could herald an intensification of provocations by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, experts told CNN.

    “Pyongyang is still in the middle of a provocation and testing cycle and is likely waiting until after China’s mid-October Communist Party Congress to conduct an even more significant test,” said Leif-Eric Easley, associate professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul.

    “The Kim regime is developing weapons such as tactical nuclear warheads and submarine-launched ballistic missiles as part of a long-term strategy to outrun South Korea in an arms race and drive wedges among US allies.”

    Four previous missile launches occurred in the space of a week in late September and early October, around the same time US Vice President Kamala Harris made an official visit to Japan and South Korea, and as US, Japanese and South Korean navies held joint exercises.

    North Korea’s tests also come as international attention remains firmly focused on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – and as both Moscow and Beijing appear reluctant to side with the West to further censure Pyongyang.

    In May, Russia and China vetoed a US-drafted United Nations Security Council resolution to strengthen sanctions on North Korea for its weapons testing, in a vote the US said was likely to fuel Pyongyang’s program to develop nuclear-capable missile systems.

    Washington and the International Atomic Energy Agency have both warned this year that North Korea may be preparing for a nuclear test, which would be its first since 2017.

    Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute, drew a connection between the missile tests and a potential nuclear test.

    “North Korea is going to keep conducting missile tests until the current round of modernization is done. I don’t think a nuclear (test) explosion is far behind,” he told CNN.

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  • Opinion: A piece of paradise lost | CNN

    Opinion: A piece of paradise lost | CNN

    Editor’s Note: Sign up to get this weekly column as a newsletter. We’re looking back at the strongest, smartest opinion takes of the week from CNN and other outlets.



    CNN
     — 

    “Buy land,” the saying goes, “they’re not making it anymore.”

    Variously attributed to Mark Twain and Will Rogers, the advice fits well with the national fixation on real estate, home values and location, location, location. The scarcity of land that can be developed – and surging demand for desirable locations – drove US median home prices over $400,000 for the first time last quarter before interest rate hikes started cooling the market.

    In Florida, a warm climate, expansive coastline and low taxes helped fuel a long-term boom, making it the third most populous state. As Hurricane Ian carved an awful path of destruction through the center of the state last week, the damage to people and property was severe. At least 66 people died, homes and businesses were destroyed and for many people, power may be out for weeks.

    Florida tightened its building standards after the devastation wrought by Hurricane Andrew in 1992 but even with stronger structures, there’s little chance of avoiding catastrophic damage when 150 mph winds, torrential rain and steep storm surges hit a populated area.

    “The simple fact is that when more people are exposed to a natural hazard such as a hurricane,” wrote Stephen Strader, an associate professor of geography and the environment at Villanova University, “the odds for a major disaster to occur are greater. As our population and built environment grows and expands, we are more readily placing ourselves in harm’s way. The wetlands and mangroves that once acted as natural ‘buffers’ to the rising waters and waves that come with hurricanes are now shrinking or gone. They have been replaced by subdivisions.”

    Strader traces Florida’s boom back to the early 1910s, when “a man named Carl Fisher (best known as the automobile magnate responsible for building the Indianapolis Motor Speedway) decided to take a vacation on what is now known as Miami Beach.”

    “He quickly realized the moneymaking opportunity at hand, buying, clearing and filling in thousands of acres of swamps and mangroves to make way for new waterfront property where investors would line up for the foreseeable future to build homes and hotels for those seeking a piece of paradise,” wrote Strader.

    Clay Jones/CNN

    “There are very few things that test political leaders like natural disasters,” Julian Zelizer pointed out. “When mother nature wreaks havoc, presidents, governors, and legislators are forced to deploy resources to address the dire needs of those affected….”

    “At the federal level, President Joe Biden needs to demonstrate he has the leadership and rigorous governing skills that are necessary to help Florida out of this mess,” Zelizer added. “At the state level, Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is billed as a potential Republican presidential nominee for 2024, needs to show that he can achieve more than political stunts like the one he orchestrated earlier this month when he sent migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard.”

    As Jack Shafer, writing for Politico, noted, DeSantis sounded a different tone this week, promising to work with the Biden administration to help his battered state recover. “In throttling back on the vitriol, DeSantis proves himself a wiser politician than (former President Donald) Trump, the man who reset politics in 2016 to establish senseless fight-picking and name-calling as part of the normal political arsenal and allowing somebody like DeSantis to rise. Trump, unlike DeSantis, never figured out how to turn off the meshugana theatrics, even when it could have benefited him. Imagine if, for example, Trump had approached the Covid crisis with the reassuring cool of Barack Obama instead of roasting the issue in a bonfire every time he called a presser. He might still be president today.”

    Puerto Rico is still recovering from Hurricane Fiona, which was cited as a factor in at least 25 deaths, according to the island’s health department.

    “Nearly five years to the day since Maria slammed our island, on September 18 of this year, Hurricane Fiona delivered yet another knockout punch,” wrote Brenda Rivera-García, senior director of Latin America and Caribbean programs for Americares.

    “With Maria, we thought we experienced a 100-year flood. But, after only a half-decade later, it seems another century of water has enveloped us: Maria dumped more than three dozen inches of rain in some parts of the island over two days and last week Hurricane Fiona drowned us with 31 inches in a 72-hour period. A week after the storm, nearly 20% of the island was still without potable water, and nearly 60% still had no power, according to Puerto Rico’s government data. Once again, our air is filled with a familiar lullaby — the hum of generators.”

    “More and more,” Rivera-Garcia added, “I hear from family, friends, neighbors and people on the street saying, ‘I’m tired. It’s one crisis after another. I can’t take it anymore.’ With multiple generations often living together, family members have always been each other’s rock. But what happens when that rock is shattered?”

    05 opinion column 1001

    Drew Sheneman/Tribune Content Agency

    06 opinion column 1001

    Lisa Benson/GoComics.com

    After conducting a series of votes widely viewed as a sham, Russia is moving to annex regions of eastern Ukraine, and President Vladimir Putin is warning that attacks on these territories would be viewed as an assault on Russia itself. He’s raised the fearsome prospect that tactical nuclear weapons could be used to defend what he now claims is part of the homeland.

    That poses the huge question of how NATO should react. Hamish De Bretton-Gordon, former commander of the UK & NATO Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) Forces, said that “the West must make it absolutely clear to Putin that any use of nuclear, or chemical or biological weapons is a real redline issue. That said, I don’t think all-out nuclear war is at all likely.”

    “NATO must direct that it will take out Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons if they move out of their current locations to a position where they could threaten Ukraine, and must also make clear that any deliberate attacks on nuclear power stations will exact an equal and greater response from NATO.”

    “This is the time to call Putin’s bluff. He’s hanging on by his fingertips, and we must give him no chances to regain his hold. Russia’s forces are now so degraded that they are no match for NATO and we should now negotiate, with this in mind, from this position of strength.”

    The UK’s new prime minister, Liz Truss, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng played starring roles in a week of market turmoil around the globe.

    As Frida Ghitis observed, “In the midst of a wave of inflation that is battering the world and prompting central banks to raise interest rates in hopes of cooling inflationary pressures, Truss’ plan to slash taxes, especially for the wealthiest, amounted to opening a firehose filled with gasoline into that raging economic fire.” The pound tumbled, nearly reaching parity with the dollar, and the Bank of England had to announce it would buy bonds to restore confidence.

    “Economists and politicians left and right largely agreed that, if not the policy itself, the abrupt rollout and the timing could not have been worse…”

    “They came at a moment when the world – and the West – stands on a knife’s edge, with Russian President Vladimir Putin annexing large pieces of Ukraine and hinting at using nuclear weapons as his invasion falters. With mysterious explosions causing leaks in the Nordstream pipeline applying further anxiety just ahead of a dreaded winter with gas supply shortages across Europe, all of this is happening when democracy finds itself under pressure the world over.”

    The prime minister’s policy is far from the only thing unsettling investors, as central banks around the world aim to tame inflation with rising interest rates, a strategy that risks choking off economic growth.

    02 opinion column 1001

    Bill Bramhall/Tribune Content Agency

    Bill Carter has a confession to make: he has not read all the books about Donald Trump.

    “I can’t even remember all the books about Donald Trump,” he wrote.

    “I know Bob Woodward has written three. So has Michael Wolff. Sean Spicer wrote one (or was it two?). “Mooch” – that is, Anthony Scaramucci, Trump’s White House communications director ever so briefly – wrote one. So did Omarosa, for heaven’s sake.”

    “This week marks the release of yet another: New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman’s ‘Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America.’” Carter cited a New York Times reference to an analysis by NPD BookScan, which found more than 1,200 titles about Trump were released over four years – not including the avalanche of books published since the 2020 election.

    “The robust sales for many of these books attest to the hunger among readers to hear every gobsmacking detail about a real-life character who is beyond the imagination of most fever-dreaming fiction writers.”

    “But even ravenous levels of hunger can be sated – eventually. After seven or eight – or 12 – courses, a bit of bloat is likely to set in … Every book seems to contain a sufficient number of ‘bombshell revelations’ to drum up media coverage, along with some combination of amusing, enraging or revolting personal details (previously unreported, of course, and almost always disputed by the former president)…”

    But do they have an impact anymore? A “defining aspect of the collected works on Trump,” Carter concluded, “is that virtually nothing in any of them – none of the ‘bombshells’ or details about his character – seems to have substantially changed people’s minds about him. That may be because Trump acolytes don’t tend to read critical accounts about him – and his opponents aren’t likely to read the hagiographies.”

    SE Cupp noted a Vanity Fair report that lifted the curtain on the rivalry between DeSantis and Trump, which included this description of Trump attributed to the governor: “A TV personality and a moron, who has no business running for president.”

    “The love loss seems to go both ways. According to reporting by Maggie Haberman, Trump has called DeSantis ‘fat,’ ‘phony,’ and ‘whiny.’”

    “As is often the case,” Cupp observed, “the courage to criticize Trump – even among Republicans who might want to run against him – is almost always reserved for private conversations. When will DeSantis get the spine to attack Trump frontally?”

    As the Supreme Court begins its new term Monday, the reverberations of its June decision on abortion are still playing out. As Fareed Zakaria wrote, “The Court has been growing more ideologically predictable – that is, politically partisan – in recent years. Judges appointed by Republicans now almost always rule in ways that Republicans want them to. Ditto for judges appointed by Democrats. It is all part of the hyper-polarization of American life.”

    “But it is also partly because of the strange way in which America’s highest court is structured,” observed Zakaria, who noted that “no other major democracy gives members of its highest court life tenure.”

    The court “has moved in a direction that has weakened its own legitimacy. It might be an occasion to begin a national conversation about what reforms could be put in place to make it less partisan, less divisive and more trusted by the vast majority of citizens. After all, that is the only way its rulings will be truly accepted in a diverse democracy of more than 330 million people.” (Watch Fareed Zakaria’s special report Sunday at 8 p.m. ET and PT: “Supreme Power: Inside the Highest Court in the Land.”)

    For more:

    Jill Filipovic: This Texas Republican in full sprint is a metaphor for the GOP’s stance on abortion

    Steve Vladeck: America’s most powerful court owes the public an explanation

    dusa eric adams

    One morning in 2016, Eric Adams, a former police officer turned politician – and now New York’s mayor – couldn’t see the numbers on his alarm clock.

    “I went to the doctor, who diagnosed me with Type 2 diabetes. He told me I might have my driver’s license revoked due to vision loss, and I might have permanent nerve damage in my fingers and toes.”

    After googling “reversing diabetes,” he connected with “Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn at the Cleveland Clinic, who told me I could treat my diabetes with lifestyle changes, including overhauling my diet and exercising.

    “I was skeptical at first. But reducing meat and dairy consumption in favor of fresh produce and grains made an immediate difference in my health … Within three months, I lost significant weight, lowered my cholesterol, restored my vision and reversed my diabetes.” But not everyone has the resources to get expert medical advice and turn their health around so dramatically.

    “The disproportionate effect of Covid-19 on Black and brown communities was tragically compounded by existing diet-driven health disparities. While higher-income neighborhoods have overwhelming options when it comes to fresh fruits and vegetables, low-income communities of color often live in nutritional deserts with fewer grocery stores and a higher concentration of processed foods, sugary drinks, and shelf-stable products…”

    “Now is the time for our country to make the shift from treatment to prevention, from feeding the illness to giving people the tools to build sustainable lifestyles and healthier, stronger communities.”

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    Dana Summers/Tribune Content Agency

    Michael Fanone: What my January 6 assailant deserves

    Ruth Ben Ghiat: Casting doubt on Brazil’s election, Bolsonaro follows Trump’s lead

    Matthew Bossons: My 5-year-old just confirmed our decision to leave China

    Peter Bergen: The British Empire – A legacy of violence?

    AND…

    01 opinion column 1001

    Bill Bramhall/Tribune Content Agency

    To fans of the New York Yankees, there’s an almost mystical connection uniting the team’s pantheon of heroes – including Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris and Derek Jeter. And now by hitting 61 homers in a single season – tying Maris, who bested Ruth’s record of 60 home runs – Aaron Judge has arguably joined those ranks.

    As Billy Crystal’s 2001 movie, “61*” made clear, though, those ties have long been frayed – Mantle and DiMaggio had a frosty relationship and there were tensions between Mantle and Maris. But if you widen the lens beyond the Yankees and look at the entire history of Major League Baseball, as Jeff Pearlman wrote, the picture surrounding Judge’s achievement is even more clouded.

    “By allowing rampant steroid and human growth hormone usage throughout the 1990s and early 2000s,” Pearlman observed, “Major League Baseball ruined and disgraced its own record book, and Judge’s shot merely (yawn) tied the American League home run mark.”

    “When, in 2001, San Francisco’s Barry Bonds broke (Mark) McGwire’s record with 73 homers, we all knew it was nonsense. Not some of us – all of us. Here was a man, at age 36, with muscles growing atop muscles and a skull size that – as I reported in my Bonds biography, “Love Me Hate Me” – had actually increased in recent years (this is physically impossible without the help of HGH). I was in San Francisco the night Bonds passed McGwire, and it was…stupid. Just so damn stupid. The local fans stood and cheered, but it felt flat and meaningless and a bit embarrassing. Like spotting a magician’s fake thumb.”

    “All the while, Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association did … nothing. Home runs were great business, so team owners shrugged off PED suspicions while the union made clear it would refuse to have its players be tested in any sort of methodical, impactful manner. The result was temporary long ball excitement, followed by the quiet-yet-crushing realization (by most involved in the game) that the record book had been rendered meaningless.” Eventually, baseball woke up and instituted testing for performance enhancing drugs.

    As for Aaron Judge, according to Pearlman, “the 30-year-old slugger has had a season for the ages – he’s all but locked up the AL MVP award, and at this moment is in line to become the Yankees’ first triple crown winner since Mickey Mantle in 1956.

    “This should be an historic time for baseball.

    “This should be an historic time for Aaron Judge.

    “Instead, greed destroyed baseball – and took its history with it.”

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  • Russian forces retreat from strategic Donetsk city a day after Moscow’s annexation of the region | CNN

    Russian forces retreat from strategic Donetsk city a day after Moscow’s annexation of the region | CNN


    Kyiv, Ukraine
    CNN
     — 

    Russian forces retreated from Lyman, a strategic city for its operations in the east, the Russian defense ministry said Saturday, just a day after Moscow’s annexation of the region that’s been declared illegal by the West.

    “In connection with the creation of a threat of encirclement, allied troops were withdrawn from the settlement of Krasny Liman to more advantageous lines,” the ministry said on Telegram, using the Russian name for the town of Lyman.

    Russian state media Russia-24 reported that the reason for Russia’s withdrawal was because “the enemy used both Western-made artillery and intelligence from North Atlantic alliance countries.”

    The retreat marks Ukraine’s most significant gain since its successful counteroffensive in the northeastern Kharkiv region last month.

    Russia’s announcement comes just hours after Ukrainian forces said they had encircled Russian troops in the city, which is located in the Kramatorsk district of Donetsk.

    Ukrainian forces said earlier Saturday that they had entered Stavky, a village neighboring Lyman, according to Serhii Cherevatyi, the military spokesperson for the eastern grouping of Ukrainian forces.

    “The Russian group in the area of Lyman is surrounded. The settlements of Yampil, Novoselivka, Shandryholove, Drobysheve, and Stavky are liberated. Stabilization measures are ongoing there,” Cherevatyi said in a televised press conference on Saturday morning.

    “[The liberation] of Lyman is important, because it is another step towards the liberation of the Ukrainian Donbas. This is an opportunity to go further to Kreminna and Severodonetsk. Therefore, in turn, it is psychologically very important,” he said.

    Cherevatyi said the Ukrainian troops actions are setting the tone to “break the course of these hostilities.”

    He added that there had been “many killed and wounded,” but could not provide any further details.

    The head of Luhansk regional military administration Serhiy Hayday also revealed Saturday further details of the Lyman offensive, suggesting Russian forces had offered to retreat, but to no avail from the Ukrainian side.

    “Occupiers asked [their command] for possibility to retreat, and they have been refused. Accordingly, they have two options. No, they actually have three options. Try to break through, surrender, or everyone there will die,” Hayday said.

    “There are several thousand of them. Yes, about 5,000. There is no exact number yet. Five thousand is still a colossal grouping. There has never been such a large group in the encirclement before. All routes for the supply of ammunition or the retreat of the group are all completely blocked,” he added.

    Yurii Mysiagin, Ukrainian member of Parliament and deputy head of the parliament’s committee on national security, referenced the move into Stavky on Saturday by publishing a video on Telegram showing a Ukrainian tank moving up the road with a clear sign indicating the region of Stavky. CNN could not independently verify the original source or the date.

    A video posted on social media, and shared by President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff, shows two Ukrainian soldiers standing on a military vehicle attaching the flag with tape to a large sign with the word “Lyman.”

    “We are unfurling our country’s flag and planting it on our land. On Lyman. Everything will be Ukraine,” one of the soldiers says to the camera.

    Meanwhile, pressure appears to be growing on Russian President Vladimir Putin to use nuclear weapons on the battlefield.

    Ramzan Kadyrov, leader of the Chechen republic, in an angry statement slamming Russian generals in the wake of the withdrawal from Lyman, said it was time for the Kremlin to make use of every weapon at his disposal.

    “In my personal opinion we need to take more drastic measures, including declaring martial law in the border territories and using low-yield nuclear weapons,” Kadyrov said on his Telegram channel. “There is no need to make every decision with the Western American community in mind.”

    Earlier this week, Dmitry Medvedev, who served as Russia’s President between 2008 and 2012, discussed nuclear weapons use on his Telegram channel, saying it was permitted if the existence of the Russian state was threatened by an attack even by conventional forces.

    “If the threat to Russia exceeds our established threat limit, we will have to respond … this is certainly not a bluff,” he wrote.

    Concerns have risen sharply that Moscow could resort to nuclear weapons use after Putin’s proclamation on Friday that Russia would seize nearly a fifth of Ukraine, declaring that the millions of people living there would be Russian citizens “forever.”

    The announcement was dismissed as illegal by the United States and many other countries, but the fear is the Kremlin might argue that attacks on those territories now constitute attacks on Russia.

    In his speech in the Kremlin, the Russian leader made only passing reference to nuclear weapons, noting the United States was the only country to have used them on the battlefield.

    “By the way, they created a precedent,” he added.

    Also on Saturday, the director-general of Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant was detained by a Russian patrol, according to the president of state nuclear company Energoatom.

    Director-General Ihor Murashov was in his vehicle on his way from the plant when he was “stopped … taken out of the car, and with his eyes blindfolded he was driven in an unknown direction. For the time being there is no information on his fate,” Energoatom’s Petro Kotin said in a statement.

    “Murashov is a licensed person and bears main and exclusive responsibility for the nuclear and radiation safety of the Zaporizhzhya NPP,” Kotin said, adding, that his detention “jeopardizes the safety of operation of Ukraine and Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.”

    Kotin called for Murashov’s release, and urged the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to “take all possible immediate actions to urgently free” him.

    Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs “strongly” condemned Murashov’s “illegal detention,” calling it a “another manifestation of state terrorism from the side of Russia and a gross violation of international law.”

    “We call on the international community, in particular the UN, the IAEA and the G7, to also take decisive measures to this end,” the ministry said in a statement.

    Overnight, Russia hit Zaporizhzhia with four S300 missiles, according to the head of the regional administration Oleksandr Starukh.

    And in Kharkiv, the Regional Prosecutor’s Office said Saturday that the bodies of 22 civilians, including 10 children, were found following Russian shelling on a convoy of cars near the eastern town of Kupiansk.

    The cars were shot by the Russian army on September 25 “when civilians were trying to evacuate,” it said in a Telegram post, adding that an investigation was ongoing.

    Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) and police had “discovered a convoy of seven cars that had been shot dead near the village of Kurylivka, Kupiansk district,” on Friday, Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor’s Office said.

    The SBU confirmed on Telegram they would be investigating a “war crime” where at least 20 people died in “a brutal attack.”

    CNN could not independently verify the allegations. There has been no official Russian response to the claims made.

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  • US and Europe condemn ‘sabotage’ as suspicion mounts that Russia was behind pipeline leaks | CNN Politics

    US and Europe condemn ‘sabotage’ as suspicion mounts that Russia was behind pipeline leaks | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    The US and Europe are closing ranks, signaling to Moscow their unity over the war in Ukraine won’t be shattered by what they say is the “sabotage” of dual undersea gas pipelines that could represent a possible new front in energy warfare.

    The transatlantic allies have yet to directly blame Russia for what they say are leaks in the pipelines from Russia to Germany that followed underwater explosions. European security officials on Monday and Tuesday observed Russian Navy support ships in the vicinity of the leaks, CNN reported Wednesday, citing two Western intelligence officials and one other source familiar with the matter. But it remains unclear, according to these sources, whether the ships were connected to the explosions, and three US officials said that the US has no thorough explanation yet for what happened, CNN’s Katie Bo Lillis, Natasha Bertrand and Kylie Atwood reported. On Thursday, Germany’s ambassador to the United Kingdom said a fourth leak was discovered and that there was a “very strong indication” these were acts of sabotage.

    The leaks have raised suspicions that Russian President Vladimir Putin is moving up to the next notch on his escalatory scale to hike pain on his foes for their support of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. If confirmed, Russian attacks on external pipelines would deepen fears that Putin is ready to widen operations outside Ukraine at a time when he is also seeking to scare Western publics with his nuclear rhetoric.

    And while Russia has denied involvement in the pipeline leaks, the leaks could emphasize Moscow’s leverage over natural gas markets and raise new fears of shortages and fast rising prices in Europe over the winter as it seeks to fracture Western resolve and support for Ukraine.

    The leaks did not immediately cause a crisis since neither pipeline was actually in use. One pipeline, Nord Stream 2, never went online because of sanctions over the war in Ukraine and Nord Stream 1 had been shut down for weeks. Given the conditions at sea, it may take time to assess the damage as gas bubbles to the surface and it could be complicated to ascribe blame.

    But if nothing else, the pipeline leaks are a metaphorical severing of an era of post-Cold War US and European energy relations, which left the continent overly reliant on Russian gas exports and prone to geopolitical blackmail. A long estrangement now appears certain at least as long as Putin is in power, which will bring reminders of the Warsaw Pact’s decades-long standoff with the West.

    But perhaps to Putin’s disappointment, there was no immediate sign of weakening European resolve. In a fresh sign of solidarity that has surprised some observers, the US and Europe quickly issued similar statements over the pipeline breaches, vowing to investigate and to lessen reliance on Russian energy.

    The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said the leaks appeared to be a “deliberate act,” comments that were echoed by the Danish and Swedish prime ministers. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen referred to “sabotage action” in a tweet. US national security adviser Jake Sullivan called the leaks “apparent sabotage” in a tweet on Tuesday night, and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said there was no sign the leaks would weaken Europe’s energy resistance and that sabotage would be “clearly in no one’s interest.”

    Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the idea that the Russia might have deliberately sabotaged the pipelines as “predictably stupid,” and Moscow promised its own investigation.

    European officials earlier said the leaks were discovered on Monday and that initial investigations showed that powerful underwater explosions occurred before the pipelines burst. CNN reported on Wednesday that the US warned several allies over the summer, including Germany, that the pipelines could be attacked.

    The warnings were based on US intelligence assessments, but were vague and did not say who might carry out such action.

    The drama over the pipelines came as the war of words between the West and Moscow took another hostile lurch, with Western leaders slamming what they regard as sham referendums in captured Ukrainian territory that Moscow reported resulted in majorities voting to join Russia. It also follows strong warnings from Washington over the weekend that any use by Putin of nuclear weapons in Ukraine would be “catastrophic” for Russia.

    Peskov upped the rhetoric from the Russian side, warning that the US was getting “closer to becoming a party” to the conflict in Ukraine. The US has sent billions of dollars in support to Kyiv’s forces with weapons that have caused carnage among Russia’s poorly performing military. But the White House hit back by saying it would not be deterred from supporting Ukraine, announcing a new $1.1 billion package of weapons – including 18 new High-Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems and hundreds of armored vehicles, radars and counter-drone systems.

    In another sign of deepening crisis, the United States warned Americans that Russia might try to conscript dual US-Russian citizens for service in Putin’s partial mobilization, which has caused tens of thousands of young men to try to flee the country to avoid being used as cannon fodder in his disastrous war.

    Political reverberations are growing from Putin’s warnings last week that he was not bluffing over the possible use of nuclear weapons to defend Russian territory – a threat that caused anxiety given the referendums that could soon lead to the annexation of Ukrainian territory, which could then could come under attack from Kyiv’s forces and potentially trigger the Kremlin.

    Some analysts see the warnings as an example of Putin trying to scramble support for Ukraine among the West and to warn the US and its NATO allies off of more strident support for the country. Using a tactical battlefield nuclear weapon would cross a dangerous threshold and mark the first use of an atomic device in warfare since the US dropped two on Japan at the end of World War II. A tactical nuclear weapon has a far smaller footprint than the strategic warheads that Russia and the United States have previously lined up against each other and that could cause a nuclear Armageddon if World War III erupted. But a tactical weapon could still cause major destruction on a scale not seen since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, wiping out large parts of the Ukrainian armed forces and causing nuclear contamination.

    The US has no seen indication so far that Russia is moving nuclear weapons around, CNN’s Bertrand and Lillis reported Wednesday. But one theory among some observers is that Putin might use a nuclear blast as a last resort in order to stave off a defeat that could result in his toppling from power in Moscow. Such a battlefield loss has appeared more likely after stunning Ukrainian offensives in recent weeks.

    There are many reasons why the use of such weapons might give Putin pause, including the possibility that it could further cement Russia’s isolation from nations like China and India, which have been prepared to defy US attempts to box Putin in economically. The idea that what Putin initially sold to the Russian people as a limited “special operation” in Ukraine could culminate in a nuclear detonation would also raise new questions about his capacity to stave off backlashes inside and outside the Kremlin.

    Still, officials are sufficiently worried that Putin has invested so much personal capital in the war that he could not survive a humiliating defeat and might turn to weapons of mass destruction in an attempt to save himself.

    And there has been speculation over whether his strategic sense is decaying. French President Emmanuel Macron, for instance, told CNN’s Jake Tapper last week that long periods of isolation during the Covid-19 pandemic might have changed the Russian leader. CIA Director Bill Burns said in an interview with CBS News on Tuesday that Washington was not taking the issue lightly. “We have to take very seriously his kind of threats given everything that is at stake,” Burns said.

    Sullivan indicated over the weekend that Washington had sent stern messages through private channels to Moscow warning against the use of nuclear weapons. The administration has not said how it would respond. But it appears to be trying to develop some level of deterrence, and there is speculation that Russia crossing such a threshold would raise pressure for a direct NATO military response and risk the kind of clash and wider escalation of the war that President Joe Biden has painstakingly tried to avoid.

    Western officials have spent the 22 years that Putin has been in power seeking to understand his motives and decision making. But no one can read his mind, or know fully how a leader who has built his ruthless rule on an image of strength would react to the possibility of looking weak and having to admit defeat.

    That is why Putin is likely to use all of his remaining leverage – from nuclear rhetoric to the possibility of attacks on critical energy infrastructure – and it underscores that the worse the war inside Ukraine goes for him, the more the possibility of escalation grows.

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  • Fact check: Biden makes 5 false claims about guns, plus some about other subjects | CNN Politics

    Fact check: Biden makes 5 false claims about guns, plus some about other subjects | CNN Politics


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden made false claims about a variety of topics, notably including gun policy, during a series of official speeches and campaign remarks over the last two weeks.

    He made at least five false claims related to guns, a subject on which he has repeatedly been inaccurate during his presidency. He also made a false claim about the extent of his support from environmental groups. And he used incorrect figures about the population of Africa, his own travel history and how much renewable energy Texas uses.

    Here is a fact check of these claims, plus a fact check on a Biden exaggeration about guns. The White House declined to comment on Tuesday.

    Beau Biden and red flag laws

    In a Friday speech at the National Safer Communities Summit in Connecticut, Biden spoke of how a gun control law he signed in 2022 has provided federal funding for states to expand the use of gun control tools like “red flag” laws, which allow the courts to temporarily seize the guns of people who are deemed to be a danger to themselves or others. After mentioning red flag laws, Biden invoked his late son Beau Biden, who served as attorney general of Delaware, and said: “As my son was the first to enforce when he was attorney general.”

    Facts First: Biden’s claim is false. Delaware did not have a red flag law when Beau Biden was state attorney general from 2007 to 2015. The legislation that created Delaware’s red flag program was named the Beau Biden Gun Violence Prevention Act, but it was passed in 2018, three years after Beau Biden died of brain cancer. (In 2013, Beau Biden had pushed for a similar bill, but it was rejected by the state Senate.) The president has previously said, correctly, that a Delaware red flag law was named after his son.

    Delaware was far from the first state to enact a red flag law. Connecticut passed the first such state law in the country in 1999.

    Stabilizing braces

    In the same speech, the president spoke confusingly of his administration’s effort to make it more difficult for Americans to purchase stabilizing braces, devices that are attached to the rear of pistols, most commonly AR-15-style pistols, and make it easier to fire them one-handed.

    “Put a pistol on a brace, and it…turns into a gun,” Biden said. “Makes them where you can have a higher-caliber weapon – a higher-caliber bullet – coming out of that gun. It’s essentially turning it into a short-barreled rifle, which has been a weapon of choice by a number of mass shooters.”

    Facts First: Biden’s claims that a stabilizing brace turns a pistol into a gun and increases the caliber of a gun or bullet are false. A pistol is, obviously, already a gun, and “a pistol brace does not have any effect on the caliber of ammunition that a gun fires or anything about the basic functioning of the gun itself,” said Stephen Gutowski, a CNN contributor who is the founder of the gun policy and politics website The Reload.

    Biden’s assertion that the addition of a stabilizing brace can “essentially” turn a pistol into a short-barreled rifle is subjective; it’s the same argument his administration’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has made in support of its attempt to subject the braces to new controls. The administration’s regulatory effort is being challenged in the courts by gun rights advocates.

    Gun manufacturers and lawsuits

    Repeating a claim he made in his 2022 State of the Union address and on other occasions, Biden said at a campaign fundraiser in California on Monday: “The only industry in America you can’t sue is the – is the gun manufacturers.”

    Facts First: Biden’s claim is false, as CNN and other fact-checkers have previously noted. Gun manufacturers are not entirely exempt from being sued, nor are they the only industry with some liability protections. Notably, there are significant liability protections for vaccine manufacturers and, at present, for people and entities involved in making, distributing or administering Covid-19 countermeasures such as vaccines, tests and treatments.

    Under the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, gun manufacturers cannot be held liable for the use of their products in crimes. However, gun manufacturers can still be held liable for (and thus sued for) a range of things, including negligence, breach of contract regarding the purchase of a gun or certain damages from defects in the design of a gun.

    In 2019, the Supreme Court allowed a lawsuit against gun manufacturer Remington Arms Co. to continue. The plaintiffs, a survivor and the families of nine other victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting, wanted to hold the company – which manufactured the semi-automatic rifle that was used in the 2012 killing – partly responsible by targeting the company’s marketing practices, another area where gun manufacturers can be held liable. In 2022, those families reached a $73 million settlement with the company and its four insurers.

    There are also more recent lawsuits against gun manufacturers. For example, the parents of some of the victims and survivors of the 2022 massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, have sued over the marketing practices of the company that made the gun used by the killer. Another suit, filed by the government of Buffalo, New York, in December over gun violence in the city, alleges that the actions of several gun manufacturers and distributors have endangered public health and safety. It is unclear how those lawsuits will fare in the courts.

    – Holmes Lybrand contributed to this item.

    The NRA and lawsuits

    At a campaign fundraiser in California on Tuesday, Biden said the National Rifle Association, the prominent gun rights advocacy organization, itself cannot be sued.

    “And the fact that the NRA has such overwhelming power – you know, the NRA is the only outfit in the nation that we cannot sue as an institution,” Biden said. “They got – they – before this – I became president, they passed legislation saying you can’t sue them. Imagine had that been the case with tobacco companies.”

    Facts First: Biden’s claim is false. While gun manufacturers have liability protections, no law was ever passed to forbid lawsuits against the NRA. The NRA has faced a variety of lawsuits in recent years.

    Machine guns

    At the same Tuesday fundraiser in California, Biden said that he taught the Second Amendment in law school, “And guess what? It doesn’t say that you can own any weapon you want. It says there are certain weapons that you just can’t own.” One example Biden cited was this: “You can’t own a machine gun.”

    Facts First: Biden’s claim is false. The Second Amendment does not explicitly say people cannot own certain weapons – and the courts have not interpreted it to forbid machine guns. In fact, with some exceptions, people in more than two-thirds of states are allowed to own and buy fully automatic machine guns as long as those guns were legally registered and possessed prior to May 19, 1986, the day President Ronald Reagan signed a major gun law. There were more than 700,000 legally registered machine guns in the US as of May 2021, according to official federal data.

    Federal law imposes significant national restrictions on machine gun purchases, and the fact that there is a limited pool of pre-May 19, 1986 machine guns means that buying these guns tends to be expensive – regularly into the tens of thousands of dollars. But for Americans in most of the country, Biden’s claim that you simply “can’t” own a machine gun, period, is not true.

    “It’s not easy to obtain a fully automatic machine gun today, I don’t want to give that impression – but it is certainly legal. And it’s always been legal,” Gutowski said in March, when Biden previously made this claim about machine guns.

    California, where Biden made this remark on Tuesday, has strict laws restricting machine guns, but there is a legal process even there to apply for a state permit to possess one.

    The ‘boyfriend loophole’

    In the Friday speech to the National Safer Communities Summit, Biden said “we fought like hell to close the so-called boyfriend loophole” that had allowed people convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence to buy and possess guns if the victim was not someone they were married to, living with or had a child with. Biden then said that now “we finally can say that those convicted of domestic violence abuse against their girlfriend or boyfriend cannot buy a firearm, period.”

    Facts First: Biden’s categorical claim that such offenders now “cannot buy a firearm, period” is an exaggeration, though Biden did sign a law in 2022 that made significant progress in closing the “boyfriend loophole.” That 2022 law added “dating” partners to the list of misdemeanor domestic violence offenders who are generally prohibited from gun purchases – but in a concession demanded by Republicans, the law says these offenders can buy a gun five years after their first conviction or completion of their sentence, whichever comes later, if they do not reoffend in the interim.

    It’s also worth noting that the law’s new restriction on dating partners applies only to people who committed the domestic violence against a someone with whom they were in or “recently” had been in a “continuing” and “serious” romantic or intimate relationship. In other words, it omits people whose offense was against partners from their past or someone they dated casually.

    Marium Durrani, vice president of policy at the National Domestic Violence Hotline, said there are “definitely some gaps” in the law, “so it’s not a blanket end-all be-all,” but she said it is “really a step in the right direction.”

    Biden said at a campaign rally in Philadelphia on Saturday: “Let me just say one thing very seriously. You know, I think this is the first time – and I’ve been around, as I said, a while – in history where, last week, every single environmental organization endorsed me.”

    Facts First: It’s not true that every single environmental organization had endorsed Biden. Four major environmental organizations did endorse him the week prior, the first time they had issued a joint endorsement, but other well-known environmental organizations have not yet endorsed in the presidential election.

    The four groups that endorsed Biden together in mid-June were the Sierra Club, NextGen PAC, and the campaign arms of the League of Conservation Voters and the Natural Resources Defense Council. That is not a complete list of every single environmental group in the country. For example, Environmental Defense Fund, The Nature Conservancy, the National Audubon Society, Earthjustice and Greenpeace, in addition to some lesser-known groups, have not issued presidential endorsements to date.

    Biden’s claim of an endorsement from every environmental group comes amid frustration from some activists over his recent approvals of fossil fuel projects.

    In official speeches last Tuesday and last Wednesday and at a press conference the week prior, Biden claimed that Africa’s population would soon reach 1 billion. “You know, soon – soon, Africa will have 1 billion people,” he said last Wednesday.

    Facts First: This is false. Africa’s population exceeded 1 billion in 2009, according to United Nations figures; it is now more than 1.4 billion. Sub-Saharan Africa alone has a population of more than 1.1 billion.

    At a campaign fundraiser in Connecticut on Friday, Biden spoke about reading recent news articles about the use of renewable energy sources in Texas. He said, “I think it’s 70% of all their energy produced by solar and wind because it is significantly cheaper. Cheaper. Cheaper.”

    Facts First: Biden’s “70%” figure is not close to correct. The federal Energy Information Administration projected late last year that Texas would meet 37% of its electricity demand in 2023 with wind and solar power, up from 30% in 2022.

    Texas has indeed been a leader in renewable energy, particularly wind power, but the state is far from getting more than two-thirds of its energy from wind and solar alone. The organization that provides electricity to 90% of the state has a web page where you can see its current energy mix in real time; when we looked on Wednesday afternoon, during a heat wave, the mix included 15.8% solar, 10.2% wind and 6.6% nuclear, while 67.1% was natural gas or coal and lignite.

    In his Friday speech at the National Safer Communities Summit, Biden made a muddled claim about his past visits to Afghanistan and Iraq – saying that “you know, I spent a lot of time as president, and I spent 30-some times – visits – many more days in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

    Facts First: Biden’s claim that he has visited Afghanistan and Iraq “30-some times” is false – the latest in a long-running series of exaggerations about his visits to the two countries. His presidential campaign said in 2019 that he made 21 visits to these countries, but he has since continued to put the figure in the 30s. And he has not visited either country “as president.”

    At another campaign fundraiser in California on Monday, Biden reprised a familiar claim about his travels with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who is, like him, a former vice president.

    “It wasn’t appropriate for Barack to be able to spend a lot of time getting to know him, so it was an assignment I was given. And I traveled 17,000 miles with him, usually one on one,” Biden said.

    Facts First: Biden’s “17,000 miles” claim remains false. Biden has not traveled anywhere close to 17,000 miles with Xi, though they have indeed spent lots of time together. This is one of Biden’s most common false claims as president, a figure he has repeated over and over in speeches despite numerous fact checks.

    Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler noted in 2021 that Biden and Xi often did not even travel parallel routes to their gatherings, let alone physically travel together. The only apparent way to get Biden’s mileage past 17,000, Kessler found, is to add the length of Biden’s flight journeys between Washington and Beijing, during which Xi was not with him.

    A White House official told CNN in early 2021 that Biden was adding up his “total travel back and forth” for meetings with Xi. But that is very different than traveling “with him” as Biden keeps saying, especially in the context of his boasts about how well he knows Xi. Biden has had more than enough time to make his language more precise.

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  • A top House Republican backs Biden’s decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine, while a prominent Democrat disagrees | CNN Politics

    A top House Republican backs Biden’s decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine, while a prominent Democrat disagrees | CNN Politics


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    A top House Republican said Sunday he agreed with the Biden administration’s contentious decision to supply cluster munitions to Ukraine as part of a new military aid package, while a prominent progressive Democrat said the US risks “losing our moral leadership” over the move.

    House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican, and Rep. Barbara Lee, a California Democrat, made their remarks in separate interviews with CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”

    McCaul said the weapons “would be a game-changer” in the war in Ukraine, noting that “Russia is dropping with impunity cluster bombs” on Ukrainian territory.

    “All the Ukrainians and (President Volodymyr) Zelensky are asking for is to give them the same weapons the Russians have to use in their own country against Russians who are in their own country,” he said. “They do not want these to be used in Russia.”

    ‘That’s crossing a line’: Democrat responds to Biden’s decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine

    The munitions, also known as cluster bombs, spread shrapnel that is designed to kill troops or take out armored vehicles such as tanks, but they also scatter “bomblets” across large areas that can fail to explode on impact and can pose a long-term risk to anyone who encounters them, similar to landmines.

    Over 100 countries, including the UK, France and Germany, have outlawed the munitions under the Convention on Cluster Munitions, but the US and Ukraine are not signatories to the ban – a point that McCaul emphasized on Sunday.

    CNN previously reported that President Joe Biden mulled over the decision before approving the weapons transfer on Friday.

    Biden said in an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria that it was a “difficult decision” but he was ultimately convinced to send the controversial weapons because Kyiv needs ammunition in its counteroffensive against Russia.

    US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told ABC on Sunday that the administration was “mindful of the concerns about civilian casualties” but reiterated that Ukrainian forces plan to use the cluster munitions to “defend their own territory, hitting Russian positions.”

    National security adviser Jake Sullivan sought Sunday to downplay any concern that Biden’s decision would present any “fracture” with allied countries that oppose the use of such weapons ahead of the president’s high-stakes trip to Europe.

    “We have heard nothing from people saying this cast doubt on our commitment, this cast doubt on coalition unity or this cast doubt on our belief that the United States is playing a vital and positive role as leader of this coalition in Ukraine,” he told reporters traveling with Biden en route to London.

    Lee, however, told CNN that cluster bombs “should never be used. That’s crossing a line.”

    “They don’t always immediately explode. Children can step on them,” she said. “The president’s been doing a good job managing this war, this Putin aggressive war against Ukraine. But I think that this should not happen.”

    Asked by Tapper if the US could be engaging in war crimes by providing the weaponry, Lee said, “What I think is that we … would risk losing our moral leadership because, when you look at the fact that over 120 countries have signed the convention on cluster munitions saying that they should never be used, they should never be used.”

    The remarks underscore the sensitivity surrounding cluster munitions, which US forces began phasing out in 2016 because of the danger they pose to civilians.

    Another Democrat, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, said Sunday he appreciated that the Biden administration “grappled with the risk and reached agreements with the Ukrainian military” about the use of the munitions but he has “real qualms” about the decision.

    “There is an international prohibition. And the US says, ‘But here is a good reason to do something different.’ It could give a green light to other nations to do something different as well,” Kaine said.

    Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, the No. 3 Republican in the Senate, welcomed the sending of cluster munitions to Ukraine but said the US was taking “too long” to supply weapons to the country.

    “The best thing we can do now is to step up,” Barrasso told Fox News. “It just does seem to me there is so much delay in the activity of this administration and ultimately getting to Ukraine what they need.”

    Lee and McCaul also diverged Sunday on the chaotic 2021 US withdrawal from Afghanistan, which has reemerged as a topic after the recent release of a State Department report that found that both the Trump and Biden administrations’ decisions to pull all US troops from Afghanistan had detrimental consequences.

    “I don’t believe the (Biden) administration deserves any blame for this,” Lee said.

    “We have to remember that Donald Trump made this agreement with the Taliban. Secondly, the Trump administration literally gutted our State Department and our diplomatic corps. I believe that the State Department and those who were involved in the end of the Afghanistan war, which should have happened before then, I believe, did the best they could,” Lee said.

    McCaul called the report “damaging” and said the entire ordeal was a “huge foreign policy blunder.”

    The report was publicly released on June 30, more than a year after the 90-day review of the evacuation was completed and includes findings around the tumultuous final weeks of the US presence in Afghanistan, as well as several recommendations for improvement moving forward.

    The Biden administration’s frenzied withdrawal after 20 years of US involvement has come under immense scrutiny by predominantly Republican lawmakers. However, accusations about who was responsible for the chaotic final weeks have fallen largely along party lines, with Republicans pointing fingers at the Biden administration and Democrats, including the White House, casting blame on the Trump administration for the deal that set the US withdrawal into motion.

    Asked on June 30 about the report and whether he admitted there were “mistakes during the withdrawal,” Biden noted that he had vowed that al Qaeda “wouldn’t be there.”

    “I said we’d get help from the Taliban,” the president said. “I was right.”

    McCaul on Sunday said the president’s response was “devoid of reality.”

    “It’s a little bit eerie that a president of the United States would … be so disillusioned about what’s happening on the ground in Afghanistan, the idea that al Qaeda is gone,” the Texas Republican said. “He just really wants to sweep Afghanistan under the rug.”

    Since retaking control of Afghanistan, the Taliban has rolled back decades of progress on human rights.

    According to a recent report by United Nations experts, the Taliban has committed “egregious systematic violations of women’s rights,” by restricting their access to education and employment and their ability to move freely in society.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Russia’s jamming of US-provided rocket systems complicates Ukraine’s war effort | CNN Politics

    Russia’s jamming of US-provided rocket systems complicates Ukraine’s war effort | CNN Politics


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Russia has been thwarting US-made mobile rocket systems in Ukraine more frequently in recent months, using electronic jammers to throw off its GPS guided targeting system to cause rockets to miss their targets, multiple people briefed on the matter told CNN.

    Ukrainian military officials, with the US’ help, have had to come up with a variety of different workarounds as it continues to use the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) which has been perhaps the most revered and feared piece of weaponry in Ukraine’s fight.

    The medium-range rocket systems were hailed as a game changer in the conflict and have played a key role since the moment they arrived in Ukraine last summer, including in last year’s offensive that allowed Ukraine to take back significant swaths of territory from Russia.

    But in recent months, the systems have been rendered increasingly less effective by the Russians’ intensive blocking, five US, British and Ukrainian sources tell CNN, forcing US and Ukrainian officials to find ways to tweak the HIMARS’ software to counter the evolving Russian jamming efforts.

    “It is a constant cat-and-mouse game” of finding a countermeasure to the jamming, a Pentagon official said, only to then have the Russians counteract that countermeasure. And it is not clear how sustainable that game is in the long term.

    With a major Ukrainian counteroffensive expected to start very soon and Ukraine’s reliance on HIMARS, solutions are even more of a priority so that Ukrainian troops can make significant headway.

    “It’s one thing to be able to hold the Russians off where they are right now. It’s another thing to drive them out,” retired US Army Brig. Gen. Steven Anderson told CNN. “They’re dug in, they’ve been there for a year.”

    HIMARS “have been extremely important,” he added. “They have to be able to keep those HIMARS in the game and keep using them to be able to make effective deep strikes.”

    Ukraine has received 18 American HIMARS to date and the US has committed to sending 20 more. Other NATO allies have donated 10 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems, according to the State Department.

    The routine announcements from the Biden administration of hundreds of millions of dollars of military aid for Ukraine, including one on Wednesday, regularly include HIMARS munitions, called GMLRs, as a top item, though notably the exact number is not revealed.

    The US has also helped the Ukrainians locate the Russian jammers and destroy them – a “high priority” effort, according to a secret Pentagon document that was part of a trove allegedly leaked by Airman Jack Teixeira.

    “We will continue to advocate/recommend that those jammers are disrupted/destroyed,” the document says, “to the maximum extent possible.”

    GPS jamming can affect other “smart” US munitions like the precision-guided Excalibur artillery shells fired from Howitzers and air-dropped bombs called JDAMs. The leaked Pentagon document described the JDAMS as being particularly susceptible to the disruption.

    A US official confirmed that the US has been advising the Ukrainians on how to identify and destroy Russian jammers since there are a limited number of ways to modify HIMARS and their rockets.

    A senior Pentagon official downplayed the impact of the interference, telling CNN that on Monday Ukrainian forces fired 18 rockets without issue, about the daily rate of the past few weeks. The official declined to comment on the broader impact of the jamming. HIMARS are manufactured by Lockheed Martin, which deferred questions on jamming to the US government.

    Electronic warfare is carried out by both sides, up and down the front line where there is heavy drone activity used for surveillance and in partnership with artillery targeting. The hardware can also be mounted on or around whatever might be targeted.

    Depending on the location and strength of the jamming, a rocket can still launch and result in a successful strike with significant damage. In addition to GPS guidance, the rockets have inertial navigation systems that are not susceptible and remain accurate, though not as precise as when guided by GPS coordinates.

    Widespread Russian jamming can have drawbacks for their own forces as well, impacting their ability to communicate and operate.

    But even when they do function, the HIMARS have increasingly been missing targets, said one Ukrainian source briefed by drone operators on the frontlines.

    One drone pilot on the Eastern front described the jamming of the mobile HIMARS as “significant,” according to the source, something he hadn’t seen in his area before last November, several months after the HIMARS first arrived in Ukraine at the beginning of the summer.

    Another drone operator in the southern Kherson region claimed to the source that the effectiveness of HIMARS was down dramatically while cautioning that they’re still very necessary and relied on but no longer as dominant as they once were.

    For nearly a year, the HIMARS system has been the longest-range rocket system Ukraine has, allowing troops to fire up to six rockets in quick succession at Russian positions as far as 50 miles away. With an accuracy of around 10 feet, the 200-pound warheads have taken out logistics hubs, ammunition depots, command posts and communication nodes, among other targets.

    They were also instrumental in helping Ukraine retake significant amounts of territory in the south and northeast last fall, and as of February, Ukraine had expended approximately 9,500 HIMARS rockets, according to a daily update from the time reviewed by CNN.

    A US official familiar with the workarounds said they include updates to the software on both the targeting system software as well the rockets.

    The senior Pentagon official described it as: “constant tweaking to get them to stay effective,” adding that updates had been made as recently as this week.

    “If their jamming gets more sophisticated, then your countermeasures have to get more sophisticated,” a British official agreed.

    Russia’s use of electronic warfare has not been nearly as widespread as expected when Russia first invaded but they have made use of it since the beginning of the war. It’s a routine part of modern warfare that can be cheap and easy to implement. It’s expected, so the focus is on ways to “dilute” the impact, the official said.

    But with Russian units largely stalled on the Ukrainian frontlines and stuck in defensive positions, Russian forces have made increasing use of their jamming systems to counteract the HIMARS, sources said.

    A separate but related problem for Ukraine is that the Russians have been moving some of their equipment further back and out of reach of the HIMARS systems, which have a range of about 50 miles.

    While the rocket systems are capable of firing longer-range missiles called ATACMS – which can reach targets over 185 miles away – the US has resisted providing them to Ukraine both because the missiles are in limited supply and because the US is worried Russia would see them as too provocative.

    The British official acknowledged that since HIMARS were first introduced, the requirements, the training and supplementary equipment has changed as Russia’s electronic interference has evolved.

    “Jamming is like the weather or the terrain, it’s something that happens that you have to deal with,” the official said. Still, he added, HIMARS remains a “highly useful piece of kit.”

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  • Donald Trump Fast Facts | CNN Politics

    Donald Trump Fast Facts | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Here’s a look at the life of Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States.

    Birth date: June 14, 1946

    Birth place: New York, New York

    Birth name: Donald John Trump

    Father: Fred Trump, real estate developer

    Mother: Mary (Macleod) Trump

    Marriages: Melania (Knauss) Trump (January 22, 2005-present); Marla (Maples) Trump (December 1993-June 1999, divorced); Ivana (Zelnicek) Trump (1977-1990, divorced)

    Children: with Melania Trump: Barron, March 20, 2006; with Marla Maples: Tiffany, October 13, 1993; with Ivana Trump: Eric, 1984; Ivanka, October 30, 1981; Donald Jr., December 31, 1977

    Education: Attended Fordham University; University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School of Finance, B.S. in Economics, 1968

    As Trump evolved from real estate developer to reality television star, he turned his name into a brand. Licensed Trump products have included board games, steaks, cologne, vodka, furniture and menswear.

    He has portrayed himself in cameo appearances in movies and on television, including “Zoolander,” “Sex and the City” and “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.”

    Trump’s slogan, “Make America Great Again,” was first used by Ronald Reagan while he was running against President Jimmy Carter.

    For details on investigations into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election, visit 2016 Presidential Election Investigation Fast Facts.

    1970s – After college, works with his father on apartment complexes in Queens and Brooklyn.

    1973 – Trump and his father are named in a Justice Department lawsuit alleging Trump property managers violated the Fair Housing Act by turning away potential African American tenants. The Trumps deny the company discriminates and file a $100 million countersuit, which is later dismissed. The case is settled in 1975, and the Trumps agree to provide weekly lists of vacancies to Black community organizations.

    1976 – Trump and his father partner with the Hyatt Corporation, purchasing the Commodore Hotel, an aging midtown Manhattan property. The building is revamped and opens four years later as the Grand Hyatt Hotel. The project kickstarts Trump’s career as a Manhattan developer.

    1983-1990 – He builds/purchases multiple properties in New York City, including Trump Tower and the Plaza Hotel, and also opens casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey, including the Trump Taj Mahal and the Trump Plaza. Trump buys the New Jersey Generals football team, part of the United States Football League, which folds after three seasons.

    1985 – Purchases Mar-a-Lago, an oceanfront estate in Palm Beach, Florida. It is renovated and opens as a private club in 1995.

    1987 – Trump’s first book, “Trump: The Art of the Deal,” is published, and becomes a bestseller. The Donald J. Trump Foundation is established in order to donate a portion of profits from book sales to charities.

    1990 – Nearly $1 billion in personal debt, Trump reaches an agreement with bankers allowing him to avoid declaring personal bankruptcy.

    1991 – The Trump Taj Mahal files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

    1992 – The Trump Plaza and the Trump Castle casinos file for bankruptcy.

    1996 – Buys out and becomes executive producer of the Miss Universe, Miss USA and Miss Teen USA pageants.

    October 7, 1999 – Tells CNN’s Larry King that he is going to form a presidential exploratory committee and wants to challenge Pat Buchanan for the Reform Party nomination.

    February 14, 2000 – Says that he is abandoning his bid for the presidency, blaming discord within the Reform Party.

    January 2004 – “The Apprentice,” a reality show featuring aspiring entrepreneurs competing for Trump’s approval, premieres on NBC.

    November 21, 2004 – Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts Inc. files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

    2005 – Establishes Trump University, which offers seminars in real estate investment.

    February 13, 2009 – Announces his resignation from his position as chairman of Trump Entertainment Resorts. Days later, the company files for bankruptcy protection.

    March 17, 2011 – During an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Trump questions whether President Barack Obama was born in the United States.

    June 16, 2015 – Announces that he is running for president during a speech at Trump Tower. He pledges to implement policies that will boost the economy and says he will get tough on immigration. “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best…They’re sending people who have lots of problems,” Trump says. “They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists, and some, I assume, are good people.”

    June 28, 2015 – Says he’s giving up the TV show “The Apprentice” to run for president.

    June 29, 2015 – NBCUniversal says it is cutting its business ties to Trump and won’t air the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants because of “derogatory statements by Donald Trump regarding immigrants.”

    July 8, 2015 – In an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Trump says he “can’t guarantee” all of his employees have legal status in the United States. This is in response to questions about a Washington Post report about undocumented immigrants working at the Old Post Office construction site in Washington, DC, which Trump is converting into a hotel.

    July 22, 2015 – Trump’s financial disclosure report is made public by the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

    August 6, 2015 – During the first 2016 Republican debate, Trump is questioned about a third party candidacy, his attitude towards women and his history of donating money to Democratic politicians. He tells moderator Megyn Kelly of Fox News he feels he is being mistreated. The following day, Trump tells CNN’s Don Lemon that Kelly was singling him out for attack, “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.”

    September 11, 2015 – Trump announces he has purchased NBC’s half of the Miss Universe Organization, which organizes the annual Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants.

    December 7, 2015 – Trump’s campaign puts out a press release calling for a “complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”

    May 26, 2016 – Secures enough delegates to clinch the Republican Party nomination.

    July 16, 2016 – Introduces Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his running mate.

    July 19, 2016 – Becomes the Republican Party nominee for president.

    September 13, 2016 – During an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman says his office is investigating Trump’s charitable foundation “to make sure it’s complying with the laws governing charities in New York.”

    October 1, 2016 – The New York Times reports Trump declared a $916 million loss in 1995 which could have allowed him to legally skip paying federal income taxes for years. The report is based on a financial document mailed to the newspaper by an anonymous source.

    October 7, 2016 – Unaired footage from 2005 surfaces of Trump talking about trying to have sex with a married woman and being able to grope women. In footage obtained by The Washington Post, Trump is heard off-camera discussing women in vulgar terms during the taping of a segment for “Access Hollywood.” In a taped response, Trump declares, “I said it, I was wrong and I apologize.”

    October 9, 2016 – During the second presidential debate, CNN’s Cooper asks Trump about his descriptions of groping and kissing women without their consent in the “Access Hollywood” footage. Trump denies that he has ever engaged in such behavior and declares the comments were “locker room talk.” After the debate, 11 women step forward to claim that they were sexually harassed or sexually assaulted by the real estate developer. Trump says the stories aren’t true.

    November 8, 2016 – Elected president of the United States. Trump will be the first president who has never held elected office, a top government post or a military rank.

    November 18, 2016 – Trump agrees to pay $25 million to settle three lawsuits against Trump University. About 6,000 former students are covered by the settlement.

    December 24, 2016 – Trump says he will dissolve the Donald J. Trump Foundation “to avoid even the appearance of any conflict with my role as President.” A spokeswoman for the New York Attorney General’s Office says that the foundation cannot legally close until investigators conclude their probe of the charity.

    January 10, 2017 – CNN reports that intelligence officials briefed Trump on a dossier that contains allegations about his campaign’s ties to Russia and unverified claims about his personal life. The author of the dossier is a former British spy who was hired by a research firm that had been funded by both political parties to conduct opposition research on Trump.

    January 20, 2017 – Takes the oath of office from Chief Justice John Roberts during an inauguration ceremony at the Capitol.

    January 23, 2017 – Trump signs an executive action withdrawing the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation trade deal negotiated by the Obama administration and awaiting congressional approval.

    January 27, 2017 – Trump signs an executive order halting all refugee arrivals for 120 days and banning travel to the United States from seven Muslim-majority countries for 90 days. Additionally, refugees from Syria are barred indefinitely from entering the United States. The order is challenged in court.

    February 13, 2017 – Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Flynn, resigns amid accusations he lied about his communications with Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak. Flynn later pleads guilty to lying to the FBI.

    May 3, 2017 – FBI Director James Comey confirms that there is an ongoing investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia during a hearing on Capitol Hill. Less than a week later, Trump fires Comey, citing a DOJ memo critical of the way he handled the investigation into Clinton’s emails.

    May 2017 – Shortly after Trump fires Comey, the FBI opens an investigation into whether Trump “had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests,” citing former law enforcement officials and others the paper said were familiar with the probe.

    May 17, 2017 – Former FBI Director Robert Mueller is appointed as special counsel to lead the probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, including potential collusion between Trump campaign associates and Russian officials. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein makes the appointment because Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from investigations into Trump’s campaign.

    May 19, 2017 – Departs on his first foreign trip as president. The nine-day, five-country trip includes stops in Saudi Arabia, Israel, the Vatican, a NATO summit in Brussels and a G7 summit in Sicily.

    June 1, 2017 – Trump proclaims that the United States is withdrawing from the Paris climate accord but adds that he is open to renegotiating aspects of the environmental agreement, which was signed by 175 countries in 2016.

    July 7, 2017 – Meets Russian President Vladimir Putin in person for the first time, on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Hamburg, Germany.

    August 8, 2017 – In response to nuclear threats from North Korea, Trump warns that Pyongyang will “face fire and fury like the world has never seen.” Soon after Trump’s comments, North Korea issues a statement saying it is “examining the operational plan” to strike areas around the US territory of Guam.

    August 15, 2017 – After a violent clash between neo-Nazi activists and counterprotesters leaves one dead in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump holds an impromptu press conference in the lobby of Trump Tower and declares that there were “fine people” on both sides.

    August 25, 2017 – Trump’s first pardon is granted to former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was convicted of criminal contempt for disregarding a court order in a racial-profiling case. Trump did not consult with lawyers at the Justice Department before announcing his decision.

    September 5, 2017 – The Trump administration announces that it is ending the DACA program, introduced by Obama to protect nearly 800,000 undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children. Trump calls on Congress to introduce legislation that will prevent DACA recipients from being deported. Multiple lawsuits are filed opposing the policy in federal courts and judges delay the end of the program, asking the government to submit filings justifying the cancellation of DACA.

    September 19, 2017 – In a speech at the United Nations General Assembly, Trump refers to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as “Rocket Man” and warns that the United States will “totally destroy North Korea” if forced to defend itself or its allies.

    September 24, 2017 – The Trump administration unveils a third version of the travel ban, placing restrictions on travel by certain foreigners from Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen. (Chad is later removed after meeting security requirements.) One day before the revised ban is set to take effect, it is blocked nationwide by a federal judge in Hawaii. A judge in Maryland issues a similar ruling.

    December 4, 2017 – The Supreme Court rules that the revised travel ban can take effect pending appeals.

    December 6, 2017 – Trump recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and announces plans to relocate the US Embassy there.

    January 11, 2018 – During a White House meeting on immigration reform, Trump reportedly refers to Haiti and African nations as “shithole countries.”

    January 12, 2018 – The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump allegedly had an affair with a porn star named Stephanie Clifford, aka Stormy Daniels. The newspaper states that Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, arranged a $130,000 payment for a nondisclosure agreement weeks before Election Day in 2016. Trump denies the affair occurred. In March, Clifford sues Trump seeking to be released from the NDA. In response, Trump and his legal team agree outside of court not to sue or otherwise enforce the NDA. The suit is dismissed. A California Superior Court judge orders Trump to pay $44,100 to Clifford, to reimburse her attorneys’ fees in the legal battle surrounding her nondisclosure agreement.

    March 13, 2018 – Trump announces in a tweet that he has fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and will nominate CIA Director Mike Pompeo as Tillerson’s replacement.

    March 20, 2018 – A New York Supreme Court judge rules that a defamation lawsuit against Trump can move forward, ruling against a July 2017 motion to dismiss filed by Trump’s lawyers. The lawsuit, filed by Summer Zervos, a former “Apprentice” contestant, is related to sexual assault allegations. In November 2021, attorneys for Zervos announce she is dropping the lawsuit.

    March 23, 2018 – The White House announces that it is adopting a policy, first proposed by Trump via tweet in July 2017, banning most transgender individuals from serving in the military.

    April 9, 2018 – The FBI raids Cohen’s office, home and a hotel room where he’d been staying while his house was renovated. The raid is related to a federal investigation of possible fraud and campaign finance violations.

    April 13, 2018 – Trump authorizes joint military strikes in Syria with the UK and France after reports the government used chemical weapons on civilians in Douma.

    May 7, 2018 – The Trump administration announces a “zero tolerance” policy for illegal border crossings. Sessions says that individuals who violate immigration law will be criminally prosecuted and warns that parents could be separated from children.

    May 8, 2018 – Trump announces that the United States is withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal.

    May 31, 2018 – The Trump administration announces it is imposing tariffs on steel and aluminum imported from allies Canada, Mexico and the European Union.

    June 8-9, 2018 – Before leaving for the G7 summit in Quebec City, Trump tells reporters that Russia should be reinstated in the group. The annexation of Crimea in 2014 led to Russia’s suspension. After leaving the summit, Trump tweets that he will not endorse the traditional G7 communique issued at the end of the meeting. The President singles out Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for making “false statements” at a news conference.

    June 12, 2018 – Trump meets Kim in person for the first time during a summit in Singapore. They sign a four-point statement that broadly outlines the countries’ commitment to a peace process. The statement contains a pledge by North Korea to “work towards” complete denuclearization but the agreement does not detail how the international community will verify that Kim is ending his nuclear program.

    June 14, 2018 – The New York attorney general sues the Trump Foundation, alleging that the nonprofit run by Trump and his three eldest children violated state and federal charity law.

    June 26, 2018 – The Supreme Court upholds the Trump administration’s travel ban in a 5-4 ruling along party lines.

    July 16, 2018 – During a joint news conference with Putin in Helsinki, Trump declines to endorse the US government’s assessment that Russia interfered in the election, saying he doesn’t “see any reason why” Russia would be responsible. The next day, Trump clarifies his remark, “The sentence should have been, ‘I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be Russia.” He says he accepts the intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia meddled in the election but adds, “It could be other people also.”

    August 21, 2018 – Cohen pleads guilty to eight federal charges, including two campaign finance violations. In court, he says that he orchestrated payments to silence women “in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office.” On the same day, Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort is convicted on eight counts of federal financial crimes. On December 12, Cohen is sentenced to three years in prison.

    October 2, 2018 – The New York Times details numerous tax avoidance schemes allegedly carried out by Trump and his siblings. In a tweet, Trump dismisses the article as a “very old, boring and often told hit piece.”

    November 20, 2018 – Releases a statement backing Saudi Arabia in the wake of the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a Virginia resident, killed in October at a Saudi consulate in Turkey. Khashoggi was a frequent critic of the Saudi regime. The Saudis initially denied any knowledge of his death, but then later said a group of rogue operators were responsible for his killing. US officials have speculated that such a mission, including the 15 men sent from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to murder him, could not have been carried out without the authorization of Saudi leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. In the statement, Trump writes, “Our intelligence agencies continue to assess all information, but it could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event, maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!”

    December 18, 2018 – The Donald J. Trump Foundation agrees to dissolve according to a document filed in Manhattan Supreme Court. The agreement allows the New York attorney general’s office to review the recipients of the charity’s assets.

    December 22, 2018 – The longest partial government shutdown in US history begins after Trump demands lawmakers allocate $5.7 billion in funding for a border wall before agreeing to sign a federal funding package.

    January 16, 2019 – After nearly two years of Trump administration officials denying that anyone involved in his campaign colluded with the Russians to help his candidacy, Trump lawyer and former New York City mayor, Rudy Giuliani, says “I never said there was no collusion between the campaign, or people in the campaign. I said the President of the United States.”

    January 25, 2019 – The government shutdown ends when Trump signs a short-term spending measure, providing three weeks of stopgap funding while lawmakers work on a border security compromise. The bill does not include any wall funding.

    February 15, 2019 – Trump declares a national emergency to allocate funds to build a wall on the border with Mexico. During the announcement, the President says he expects the declaration to be challenged in court. The same day, Trump signs a border security measure negotiated by Congress, with $1.375 billion set aside for barriers, averting another government shutdown.

    February 18, 2019 – Attorneys general from 16 states file a lawsuit in federal court challenging Trump’s emergency declaration.

    March 22, 2019 – Mueller ends his investigation and delivers his report to Attorney General William Barr. A senior Justice Department official tells CNN that there will be no further indictments.

    March 24, 2019 – Barr releases a letter summarizing the principal conclusions from Mueller’s investigation. According to Barr’s four-page letter, the evidence was not sufficient to establish that members Trump’s campaign tacitly engaged in a criminal conspiracy with the Russian government to interfere with the election.

    April 18, 2019 – A redacted version of the Mueller report is released. The first part of the 448-page document details the evidence gathered by Mueller’s team on potential conspiracy crimes and explains their decisions not to charge individuals associated with the campaign. The second part of the report outlines ten episodes involving possible obstruction of justice by the President. According to the report, Mueller’s decision not to charge Trump was rooted in Justice Department guidelines prohibiting the indictment of a sitting president. Mueller writes that he would have cleared Trump if the evidence warranted exoneration.

    May 1, 2019 – The New York Times publishes a report that details how Giuliani, in his role as Trump’s personal attorney, is investigating allegations related to former Vice President Joe Biden, a potential Trump opponent in the 2020 presidential race. Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, served on the board of a Ukrainian energy company called Burisma Holdings. In 2016, the elder Biden pressured Ukraine to oust a prosecutor who had investigated Burisma for corruption. Giuliani suggests that Biden’s move was motivated by a desire to protect his son from criminal charges. Giuliani’s claims are undermined after Bloomberg reports that the Burisma investigation was “dormant” when Biden pressed the prosecutor to resign.

    June 12, 2019 – Trump says he may be willing to accept information about political rivals from a foreign government during an interview on ABC News, declaring that he’s willing to listen and wouldn’t necessarily call the FBI.

    June 16, 2019 – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unveils a sign at the proposed site of a Golan Heights settlement to be named Trump Heights.

    June 18, 2019 – Trump holds a rally in Orlando to publicize the formal launch of his reelection campaign.

    June 28, 2019 – During a breakfast meeting at the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman reportedly discuss tensions with Iran, trade and human rights.

    June 30, 2019 – Trump becomes the first sitting US president to enter North Korea. He takes 20 steps beyond the border and shakes hands with Kim.

    July 14, 2019 – Via Twitter, Trump tells Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Illhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley to “go back” to their home countries. Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib and Pressley are natural-born US citizens; Omar was born in Somalia, immigrated to the United States and became a citizen.

    July 16, 2019 – The House votes, 240-187, to condemn the racist language Trump used in his tweets about Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib, Omar and Pressley.

    July 24, 2019 – Mueller testifies before the House Judiciary Committee and the House Intelligence Committee.

    July 25, 2019 – Trump speaks on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Trump asks Zelensky for a “favor,” encouraging him to speak with Giuliani about investigating Biden. In the days before the call, Trump blocked nearly $400 million in military and security aid to Ukraine.

    August 12, 2019 – A whistleblower files a complaint pertaining to Trump’s conduct on the Zelensky call.

    September 11, 2019 – The Trump administration lifts its hold on military aid for Ukraine.

    September 24, 2019 – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announces the beginning of an impeachment inquiry related to the whistleblower complaint.

    September 25, 2019 – The White House releases notes from the July 25 call between Trump and Zelensky. The readout contains multiple references to Giuliani and Barr. In response, the Justice Department issues a statement that says Barr didn’t know about Trump’s conversation until weeks after the call. Further, the attorney general didn’t talk to the President about having Ukraine investigate the Bidens, according to the Justice Department. On the same day as the notes are released, Trump and Zelensky meet in person for the first time on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. During a joint press conference after the meeting, both men deny that Trump pressured Zelensky to investigate Biden in exchange for aid.

    September 26, 2019 – The House releases a declassified version of the whistleblower complaint. According to the complaint, officials at the White House tried to “lock down” records of Trump’s phone conversation with Zelensky. The complaint also alleges that Barr played a role in the campaign to convince Zelensky that Biden should be investigated. Trump describes the complaint as “fake news” and “a witch hunt” on Twitter.

    September 27, 2019 – Pompeo is subpoenaed by House committees over his failure to provide documents related to Ukraine. Kurt Volker, US special envoy to Ukraine, resigns. He was named in the whistleblower complaint as one of the State Department officials who helped Giuliani connect with sources in Ukraine.

    October 3, 2019 – Speaking to reporters outside the White House, Trump says both Ukraine and China should investigate alleged corruption involving Biden and his son. CNN reports that the President had brought up Biden and his family during a June phone call with Xi Jinping. In that call, Trump discussed the political prospects of Biden as well as Elizabeth Warren. He also told Xi that he would remain quiet on the matter of Hong Kong protests. Notes documenting the conversation were placed on a highly secured server where the transcript from the Ukraine call was also stored.

    October 6, 2019 – After Trump speaks on the phone with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the White House announces that US troops will move out of northern Syria to make way for a planned Turkish military operation. The move marks a major shift in American foreign policy and effectively gives Turkey the green light to attack US-backed Kurdish forces, a partner in the fight against ISIS.

    October 9, 2019 – Turkey launches a military offensive in northern Syria.

    October 31, 2019 – Trump says via Twitter that he is changing his legal residency from New York to Florida, explaining that he feels he is treated badly by political leaders from the city and state.

    November 7, 2019 – A judge orders Trump to pay $2 million to settle a lawsuit against his charity filed by the New York state attorney general. According to the suit, Trump breached his fiduciary duty by allowing his presidential campaign to direct the distribution of donations. In a statement, Trump accuses the attorney general of mischaracterizing the settlement for political purposes.

    November 13, 2019 – Public impeachment hearings begin and Trump meets Erdogan at the White House.

    November 20, 2019 – During a public hearing, US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland says he worked with Giuliani on matters related to Ukraine at the “express direction of the President of the United States” and he says “everyone was in the loop.” Sondland recounts several conversations between himself and Trump about Ukraine opening two investigations: one into Burisma and another into conspiracies about Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 US election.

    December 10, 2019 – House Democrats unveil two articles of impeachment, one for abuse of power and one for obstruction of Congress.

    December 11, 2019 – Trump signs an executive order to include discrimination against Jewish people as a violation of law in certain cases, with an eye toward fighting antisemitism on college campuses.

    December 13, 2019 – The House Judiciary Committee approves the two articles of impeachment in a party line vote.

    December 18, 2019 – The House of Representatives votes to impeach Trump, charging a president with high crimes and misdemeanors for just the third time in American history.

    January 3, 2020 – Speaking at Mar-a-Lago, Trump announces that a US airstrike in Iraq has killed Qasem Soleimani, the leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force.

    January 8, 2020 – Iran fires a number of missiles at two Iraqi bases housing US troops in retaliation for the American strike that killed Soleimani. No US or Iraqi lives are reported lost, but the Pentagon later releases a statement confirming that 109 US service members had been diagnosed with mild traumatic brain injuries in the wake of the attack.

    January 24, 2020 – Makes history as the first President to attend the annual March for Life rally in Washington, DC, since it began nearly a half-century ago. Trump reiterates his support for tighter abortion restrictions.

    January 29, 2020 – Trump signs the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement into law, which replaces the North American Free Trade Agreement.

    January 31, 2020 – The Trump administration announces an expansion of the travel ban to include six new countries. Immigration restrictions will be imposed on: Nigeria, Eritrea, Tanzania, Sudan, Kyrgyzstan and Myanmar (known as Burma), with exceptions for immigrants who have helped the United States.

    February 5, 2020 – The Senate votes to acquit Trump on two articles of impeachment. Sen. Mitt Romney is the sole Republican to vote to convict on the charge of abuse of power, joining with all Senate Democrats in a 52-48 not guilty vote. On the obstruction of Congress charge, the vote falls along straight party lines, 53-47 for acquittal.

    May 29, 2020 – Trump announces that the United States will terminate its relationship with the World Health Organization.

    July 10, 2020 – Trump commutes the prison sentence of his longtime friend Roger Stone, who was convicted of crimes that included lying to Congress in part, prosecutors said, to protect the President. The announcement came just days before Stone was set to report to a federal prison in Georgia.

    October 2, 2020 – Trump announces that he has tested positive for coronavirus. Later in the day, Trump is transferred to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, and returns to the White House on October 5.

    November 7, 2020 – Days after the presidential election on November 3, CNN projects Trump loses his bid for reelection to Biden.

    November 25, 2020 – Trump announces in a tweet that he has granted Michael Flynn a “full pardon,” wiping away the guilty plea of the intelligence official for lying to the FBI.

    December 23, 2020 – Announces 26 new pardons, including for Stone, Manafort and son-in-law Jared Kushner’s father, Charles.

    January 6, 2021 – Following Trump’s rally and speech at the White House Ellipse, pro-Trump rioters storm the US Capitol as members of Congress meet to certify the Electoral College results of the 2020 presidential election. A total of five people die, including a Capitol Police officer the next day.

    January 7-8, 2021 – Instagram and Facebook place a ban on Trump’s account from posting through the remainder of his presidency and perhaps “indefinitely.” Twitter permanently bans Trump from the platform, explaining that “after close review of recent Tweets…and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”

    January 13, 2021 – The House votes to impeach Trump for “incitement of insurrection.” He is the only president to be impeached twice.

    January 20, 2021 – Trump issues a total of 143 pardons and commutations that include his onetime political strategist, Steve Bannon, a former top fundraiser and two well-known rappers but not himself or his family. He then receives a military-style send-off from Joint Base Andrews on Inauguration morning, before heading home to Florida.

    February 13, 2021 – The US Senate acquits Trump in his second impeachment trial, voting that Trump is not guilty of inciting the deadly January 6 riots at the US Capitol. The vote is 43 not guilty to 57 guilty, short of the 67 guilty votes needed to convict.

    May 5, 2021 – Facebook’s Oversight Board upholds Trump’s suspension from using its platform. The decision also applies to Facebook-owned Instagram.

    June 4, 2021 – Facebook announces Trump will be suspended from its platform until at least January 7th, 2023 – two years from when he was initially suspended.

    July 1, 2021 – New York prosecutors charge the Trump Organization and Trump Payroll Corporation with 10 felony counts and Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg with 15 felony counts in connection with an alleged tax scheme stretching back to 2005. Trump himself is not charged. On December 6, 2022, both companies are found guilty on all charges.

    February 14, 2022 – Accounting firm Mazars announces it will no longer act as Trump’s accountant, citing a conflict of interest. In a letter to the Trump Organization chief legal officer, the firm informs the Trump Organization to no longer rely on financial statements ending June 2011 through June 2020.

    May 3, 2022 – The Trump Organization and the Presidential Inaugural Committee agree to pay a total of $750,000 to settle with the Washington, DC, attorney general’s office over allegations they misspent money raised for former President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

    June 9-July 21, 2022 – The House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol holds eight hearings, where it hears from witnesses including top ex-Trump officials, election workers, those who took part in the attack and many others. Through live testimony, video depositions, and never-before-seen material, the committee attempts to paint the picture of the former president’s plan to stay in power and the role he played on January 6.

    August 8, 2022 – The FBI executes a search warrant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, as part of an investigation into the handling of presidential documents, including classified documents, that may have been brought there.

    August 12, 2022 – A federal judge unseals the search warrant and property receipt from the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago. The unsealed documents indicate the FBI recovered 11 sets of classified documents from its search, including some materials marked as “top secret/SCI” – one of the highest levels of classification, and identify three federal crimes that the Justice Department is looking at as part of its investigation: violations of the Espionage Act, obstruction of justice and criminal handling of government records.

    September 21, 2022 – The New York state attorney general files a lawsuit against Trump, three of his adult children and the Trump Organization, alleging they were involved in an expansive fraud lasting over a decade that the former President used to enrich himself. According to the lawsuit, the Trump Organization deceived lenders, insurers and tax authorities by inflating the value of his properties using misleading appraisals.

    October 3, 2022 – Trump files a lawsuit against CNN for defamation, seeking $475 million in punitive damages.

    November 15, 2022 – Announces that he will seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.

    November 19, 2022 – Trump’s Twitter account, which was banned following the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, is reinstated after users respond to an online poll posted by Twitter CEO and new owner Elon Musk.

    December 19, 2022 – The Jan. 6 insurrection committee votes to refer Trump to the Department of Justice on at least four criminal charges. Four days later the panel releases its final report recommending Trump be barred from holding office again.

    February 9, 2023 – Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts are restored following a two-year ban in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, a Meta spokesperson confirms to CNN. On March 17, 2023, YouTube restores Trump’s channel.

    March 30, 2023 – A grand jury in New York votes to indict Trump, the first time in American history that a current or former president has faced criminal charges.

    April 4, 2023 – Surrenders and is placed under arrest before pleading not guilty to 34 felony criminal charges of falsifying business records in Manhattan criminal court. Prosecutors allege that Trump sought to undermine the integrity of the 2016 election through a hush money scheme with payments made to women who claimed they had extramarital affairs with Trump. He has denied the affairs. Hours after his arraignment, Trump rails against the Manhattan district attorney and the indictment during a speech at his Florida resort at Mar-a-Lago.

    May 9, 2023 – A Manhattan federal jury finds Trump sexually abused former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll in a luxury department store dressing room in the spring of 1996 and awards her $5 million for battery and defamation.

    May 15, 2023 – A report by special counsel John Durham is released. In it he concludes that the FBI should never have launched a full investigation into connections between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia during the 2016 election. The report does not recommend any new charges against individuals or “wholesale changes” about how the FBI handles politically charged investigations, despite strongly criticizing the agency’s behavior.

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  • Best drip coffee maker in 2023 | CNN Underscored

    Best drip coffee maker in 2023 | CNN Underscored

    There are so many brewing methods to choose from (French press, the currently trendy dalgona whipped, pour-over), but many coffee lovers still rely on the classic, automatic drip for their daily fix. That’s why we tested the best-rated drip coffee makers using a wide range of criteria (outlined below) over the course of several weeks. Bags upon bags of dark roast, light roast and medium roast coffee beans were ground and brewed. We made full carafes, half carafes and single cups. And we tasted the results black, with cow’s milk, almond milk, sweetened condensed milk, cold-brew strength over ice — you name it.

    Many, many pots of coffee later, we settled on four standout drip coffee machines.

    Best drip coffee maker overall

    The Braun KF6050WH BrewSense Drip Coffee Maker produced consistently delicious, hot cups of coffee, brewed efficiently and cleanly, from sleek, relatively compact hardware that is turnkey to operate, and all for a reasonable price.

    Runner-up with a modern bent

    CNN Underscored_drip coffee makers_cuisinart product card

    This was, to our eye, the most handsome and minimally designed of the straightforward auto-brewers, delivering a clean, tasty cup. It lost first place only because the touchscreen may not be for every consumer, and brew time is significantly longer than the other machines we tried out.

    Luxury pick for the design-obsessed

    CNN Underscored_drip coffee makers_moccamaster product card

    In just near five minutes, the Technivorm Moccamaster 59636 KBG Coffee Brewer turns out a whole pot of pretty perfectly brewed coffee, and the process is as entrancing as a targeted Netflix trailer.

    Best affordable drip coffee maker

    CNN Underscored_drip coffee makers_mr coffee product card

    One of the cheapest options we tested, the Mr. Coffee 12-cup brewer is compact, simple to operate and yields a very competitive cup. ​

    CNN Underscored_drip coffee makers_braun body

    We brewed countless pots of coffee with the BrewSense, ranging from light to dark roast, and each one yielded a strong, delicious cup with no sediment, thanks to the gold tone filter, designed to remove the bitterness from coffee as well reduce single-use paper-filter waste. The machine we tested was white — a nice option for those with a more modern kitchen design — but it also comes in black, and it’s compact enough to fit under the cabinets in a smaller space compared to some of the more cumbersome machines we tested.

    The BrewSense is straightforward to operate: It’s designed like a traditional automatic drip machine with manual operating buttons, but with a sleek, modern upgrade. The hardware is a sophisticated combination of brushed metal and plastic, with a glass carafe that feels comfortable in the hand.

    The BrewSense doesn’t have a lot of bells and whistles compared to some of the machines we tested, and that functional ease helped elevate it to the top of our list. You could unbox this machine, flush it through with water once, and be drinking a freshly brewed cup within 15 minutes, all without reading the manual. Brewing is also a nearly silent process, which can be pleasing on early mornings. Some consumers may want a machine loaded with special features, but for those who just want delicious, hot coffee every morning, without spending over a hundred bucks, this is your best bet.

    The BrewSense isn’t perfect: It’s not the fastest we tested — to brew a full pot of 12 cups took upwards of 11 minutes. And we found an annoying error in the instruction manual around how to program the clock (call us rigid, but we insisted on programming the time before using each of the machines!); the directions read to press and hold CLOCK and then SET, but that didn’t work. We had to simply press and hold the CLOCK button and then sort of trial and error our way through the hours and minutes. Meanwhile, the auto-program setup is not as obvious as we’d have liked; though once we got it, it worked like a dream. But otherwise, we found this machine intuitive and easy to operate even without the instruction manual.

    Cleanup could at times be a little messier than some of our other machines. The hot water comes up through the filter basket and spreads the grounds up to the top of the cone, and during one brewing, a tiny bit rose up outside the cone so the top of the brew apparatus needed a little wipedown. Overall, though, for less than $80, this machine delivers the best bang for your buck of anything on the market.

    CNN Underscored_drip coffee makers_cuisinart body

    Coming in just a few points behind the Braun BrewSense was one of the three Cuisinart automatic drip machines we tested: the Touchscreen 14-Cup Programmable.

    We rated all three Cuisinarts highly, but the Touchscreen ranked highest for its combination of progressive design and everyday efficacy. All the Cuisinart products we encountered were well designed, but this one feels special, like when you unbox a brand-new Apple product: Its all-black, shiny surfaces and touchscreen control panel look and feel next-level for an everyday coffee maker (and the price, $235 at Macy’s, more than three times that of the Braun, reflects that).

    But this isn’t just a fancy, aesthetically pleasing machine: It brewed strong, delicious coffee that tasted cleanly filtered but rich. It’s also relatively easy to program and use, given its tech-centric platform. The touchscreen panel features cute little icons signifying one-touch commands to help customize your brew: If you like your coffee bolder, you can select the BOLD feature; if you’re brewing less than half a pot, select the 1 to 4 cups feature for a slower brew with the proper extraction time; adjust the hot plate temperature to low, medium or high; turn the audible brew-cycle-finished tone on or off.

    That tech-centric design is also one of the reasons this didn’t come in at number one, however. As exciting and different as it felt, we did feel that this machine — the only touchscreen model we tested — would feel less intuitive and more laborious than some consumers would want as part of their morning coffee routine. The touchscreen goes dark during the brew process, which yes, is nice-looking, but also feels a bit jarring, like you’re literally in the dark, asking yourself, “What’s going on? Is coffee brewing?” The settings and operating buttons are clear enough when illuminated, but it did take us a few times brewing to get used to how much pressure you need to apply with your fingertip to the touchscreen. We could easily think of people in our own lives who would be flummoxed by this machine if left alone with it and a bag of coffee — and for that, it lost a few points in functionality.

    Also, like its Cuisinart cousins we tested, this one’s a slower brewer. We clocked 11 minutes for eight cups, and if you’re watching your coffee maker brew like, well, a watched pot, it seems like it … takes forever. We understand the appeal of a slower brewing process (pour-over and Chemex fans, we hear you!), but 12 to 14 minutes for a full pot of coffee seems like a long time to wait when you’re thirsty for your morning Joe and you’re not doing it by hand. Finally, not everyone will want to spend more than $200 on a coffee maker. But many may.

    While some consumers might be flummoxed by the technology of this higher-end product, others will embrace it and make it a centerpiece of their kitchen, and rightly so. Form plus function equals morning happiness here.

    CNN Underscored_drip coffee makers_moccamaster body

    We had heard about the Technivorm Moccaster, a machine beloved for its innovative and old-school industrial design, handmade and tested in the Netherlands since 1968, even before we received it for this story. Multiple friends reached out upon hearing that we were testing a Moccamaster, singing the brand’s praises, and one declared it superlative via Instagram DM: “Moccamaster? Test over!” And the Moccamaster arrives with its own best PR too. Its user manual applauds buyers: “Congratulations on your purchase of the World’s Finest Coffee Brewer!” (If you’re spending more than $300 on a coffee maker, perhaps the enthusiasm feels validating.)

    Once we got the apparatus set up — which takes a little focus and time, to be honest — it really did pay off, with possibly the most delicious, hot, fresh cup of coffee we have ever tasted from a home-brewed machine. What’s more, you barely have time to peruse the morning news headlines before the process is done. The Moccamaster brewed 10 cups in less than six minutes, and, on a second trial, six cups in under four minutes. The brew function is almost jarringly fast: Once you turn on the machine, the brewing starts immediately. Then, seeing the water heat in the tank and bubble up through the water transfer tube into the brewer was a throwback to middle-school science experiments in the most pleasing way, like if a lava lamp produced fresh hot coffee after a few mesmerizing undulations.

    We discovered much to love about the Moccamaster, but there also were elements we didn’t adore. Perhaps ironically, they’re about the design. Some love a more hands-on coffee-making process, but some might find that there are just too many moving parts here, literally. We needed to read the directions pretty closely to assemble the parts. Once assembled, and once we digested what was happening brew-process-wise, the machine became fairly easy to operate.

    But each time you use this machine, you have to take the brew basket apart to add a new paper filter (yes, it requires a paper filter, if that makes a difference to you) and coffee grounds, and that basket removal sometimes disrupts the outlet arm and the reservoir lid — not a huge deal, but it could feel like you have to put your coffee maker back together from scratch every morning. Also, the basket lid and outlet arm, through which the hot water travels from the tube to the brew basket, get very hot during the process. It’s fine if you’re aware and cautious, but you wouldn’t want someone to wander up and unknowingly touch the hot part of the brewer.

    And finally, perhaps our most significant beef with this model: When you return the glass carafe to hotplate in between pours, the glass scrapes the warmer in a slightly cringey way.

    The coffee that this striking machine yields, though, may diminish other distractions — we found ourselves moving this maker back to the kitchen counter time and again, because the brew process and its results were superior. If you, like us, are a fan of the Moccamaster, you’re likely to be one for many years to come, which will amortize the steep price tag accordingly.

    CNN Underscored_drip coffee makers_mr coffee body

    We won’t go on and on about the Mr. Coffee 12-Cup, but it brewed a very workable 12 cups, in both taste and temperature, in just nine minutes. The machine came packaged in some pretty intense plastic and cardboard — the unboxing took a full five minutes and a pair of scissors — but once separated from its packaging, this machine’s a breeze to put together. The hardware is very easy to use (and to program to brew at a specific time), even without reading the directions. It’s compact — one of the best small drip coffee makers we tested — and durable, and the lid, brew basket, carafe and removable top half are all dishwasher safe, which wasn’t common among the machines we tested.

    The testing process for these coffee makers was intensive, lasting more than a month. We evaluated each machine based on what would be most important to the user — namely, functionality, durability and design. We tested each machine at least twice (but four to eight times for some) with both dark and light roast freshly ground beans, did a programmed/timed brew when available, and tested the additional functions of the more specialty machines (single-cup, cold brew, tea, milk frothing). We jotted notes about every machine’s unboxing, read every instruction manual, handled and rehandled the hardware, timed the brew of each machine, noted the temperature of the resulting coffee, and tasted and had others taste and weigh in on user experience. We tried to get as acquainted as possible with each of these machines, became fond of a good many of them — and as a result, we drank way too much coffee over the month in question.

    Read on for the categories and their breakdowns.

    Brew function

    • Optimal temperature: We didn’t take the actual temperature of the coffee from each machine, because we don’t think that’s how the average coffee drinker evaluates home brewing — experts recommend that coffee be brewed at between 195 and 205 degrees Fahrenheit, and served immediately, at 180 to 185 degrees — but we scored the perceived temp of each brew against all the others. We tasted each cup immediately after brewing, black, and then with added cold milk, and recorded the results.
    • Taste: The taste of coffee is, obviously, subjective. Two people could spend a lifetime tasting the different coffee varietals and never agree on one. That being said, we tested each machine with both a dark roast and a light roast, keeping the amount of grounds consistent to the machine’s directions. As a result, some machines that recommended using more grounds yielded stronger brews — in those instances, we retested those with less grounds accordingly.
    • Time to brew: For each carafe brewed, we timed the process on an iPhone timer, both for a full carafe and half. For those machines that made single cups, we timed that process as well.
    • Heat retention: We noted whether the machine brewed into a glass or a thermal carafe, and how hot the coffee remained a half hour to an hour after brewing.
    • User-friendliness: We did an initial scan of each machine, evaluating whether a new customer would be able to brew coffee without reading the instruction manual. We then assessed whether the design of each machine is immediately intuitive, and on a more micro level, assessed the settings and buttons on the face of the machine, the markings on the water tank and carafe, how easy the carafe is to fill, and the design of the brew basket.
    • Volume yield: We noted how many ounces each machine can brew.
    • Programmability: We recorded whether you can program the machine to brew at a set time.

    Durability

    • Everyday durability: For this category, we assessed how the machine responded to being handled during setup, filling the water tank, adding the grounds, removing and replacing carafe to serve, cleanup, and how durable the hardware felt.
    • Build quality: We noted what materials the machine is built from, e.g., plastic, metal, brushed metal, glass, and the tangible feel of each machine in a user’s hands.
    • Serviceability: We noted the ease of opening and taking apart the removable parts of each machine, in the case it would need to be serviced.

    Setup and breakdown

    • Ease of assembly: We observed how long it took to unbox the machine, put it together, and do an initial water flush before the product could be used.
    • Size of machine: We assessed how much counter space each machine took up, and how easy it is to move and store.
    • Ease of clean: After each brewing, we took note of how easy it was to clean the brew basket, the carafe, and the surrounding hardware.

    Aesthetic

    • First impression: We observed our first impression of each machine, noting details of design, color, size, feel — whether this machine looked attractive on our counter.
    • Color options: We researched if the machine came in any colors besides black.

    Warranty

    • We checked the number of years of warranty of each machine.

    Ninja Hot and Cold Brewed System

    We tested two Ninja machines, both of which have some very appealing features. The hot and cold brew system brewed an excellent pot of hot coffee in less than five minutes, as well as a very tasty single cup (in multiple sizes), a less easy feat to perfect. It also brews coffee intended to be served directly over ice, an option that lots of consumers will like. We love the cool, minimalist glass carafe, though the lid features a big hole in the middle for pouring, which can lead to some splashing.

    This machine, though prolific in function, lost points because the water tank — plastic with prominent ridges — feels cheap and devolves the user experience a bit (with this machine, thankfully, the plastic tank is in the back, hidden from view, but does need to be handled every time you add water). Another problem with this machine: The water tank doesn’t have marking measurements, only half carafe, and full carafe, and two sizes of single cup. Without ounce or cup markings, how does one know how much water to add versus amount of coffee grounds? The Ninja machines come with a special-sized coffee scoop, different amounts on each end of the scoop, but it was bothersome that the water and the coffee amounts couldn’t be more standardized without relying only on the provided removable accessories (which, for the record, are cute — there’s a removable frothing wand). A lot of performance features with this machine also means a busy control panel that also feels a bit high-maintenance.

    The Ninja Specialty is similar to the hot and cold brewed one, with one major difference: The water tank is adjacent to the brew basket, and visible to the eye. This one also brews a very nice cup of hot fresh coffee, and has nifty added functions, too, like myriad sizes of individual cups, half and full carafes, and an over-ice option. The placement of the water tank front and center here, though, makes this one less appealing than the hot and cold option; the tank, similarly, feels flimsy and cheap, a factor that’s difficult to overlook in user experience. For those who like the Ninja brand products (they make blenders and other items), though, there’s a lot of function for your buck here.

    The most basic of the Cuisinart options we tested, this one brewed a nearly perfect cup at, for this reviewer, a perfectly hot temp (even after adding significant cold milk, we still had a steaming hot cup), thanks to an adjustable carafe temp. This machine is solid and well-designed, with one downside (for us): Brewing time was 14 minutes for eight cups, nearly double the time of some of the other brewers we tested.

    Cuisinart Coffee Center 10-Cup Thermal Coffee Maker and Single Serve Brewer

    Our third Cuisinart brews only 10 cups into a thermal carafe, but has the handy bonus feature of a single-serve brew — with an attachment to use prepackaged coffee pods, or an adorable mini filter to use fresh grounds. (Note: The mini filter is a bit of a chore to clean because it is so small.) Like its Cuisinart siblings above, this machine makes good coffee, but the single-serve brewer does make the whole of the hardware more cumbersome. One annoying design issue: There’s an on/off switch on the side of the machine, whose placement feels not intuitive.

    The De’Longhi TrueBrew is a superautomatic machine, meaning it incorporates a grinder so you can start with whole beans and have it do the rest for you. At the touch of a button, it can produce a single cup or a whole pot of coffee. The TrueBrew is incredibly convenient, but it’s quite expensive, and despite its wide range of options in our testing we got better tasting coffee from dedicated pour-over coffee and espresso setups. Unless you really want the ease of use of a pod machine along with the ability to use fresh whole beans it may not be for you.

    The most affordable automatic drip machine we tested, the Black & Decker 12-cup, is also a solid choice. It brewed eight tasty cups in eight short minutes — overall a good user experience. Hardware-wise, it felt a bit less durable than its closest rival, the Mr. Coffee, but it’s programmable and super easy for near the cost of two lattes with an extra shot.

    The Bonavita Connoisseur has its fans, but we had multiple issues with the machine. This pleasingly retro-looking apparatus brews a nice cup quickly and at a good temperature, but the user experience leaves much to be desired. Simply put, the design feels flawed. The lid of the carafe needs to be removed before brewing, so the coffee just brews directly into a wide-open carafe — this was so counterintuitive to us, even after three or four brew tries, that it diminished the experience of the brew process. The brewer also gets very hot during brewing — so hot that we wondered if it might actually be a safety issue. Lastly, after brewing, we screwed the carafe lid back on and tried to return the carafe to underneath the brewer — sure, maybe we were still sleepy, maybe not enough caffeine yet — but the carafe doesn’t fit under the brewer with the lid on; the entire top of the machine popped off. This affects storage of the machine, too; because the carafe lid and the brew basket don’t both fit into the hardware at the same time, there’s always one piece loose.

    We were giddy upon opening this fancy brewer with much to offer: standard brew, fast, gold (what even is that, I wondered at first glance!), cold brew, single cup (with a sold separately attachment), and a customizable to your preferences setting. The options are exciting, but also overwhelming. The user is prompted to enter the consistency of their water, on a hard to soft scale — do all home coffee drinkers know the texture of their tap water? Also, does the average coffee drinker know what Gold Cup certification is? These feel like niche details for an automatic drip machine.

    Big picture, the Breville brewed a good pot of coffee, quite quickly, but we didn’t find it hot enough. The whole apparatus is beautifully designed, with sleek brushed metal and a lightweight, handsome carafe lovely enough to join a brunch table. But digging in further, we found this machine just to be… well, just a little too much. Too much hardware — it doesn’t fit easily under our cabinets. Too many options — we needed to read up on a bunch of coffee wisdom before we could even set up the machine to our preferences. There are lots of users who would find this machine the sweet spot of function and sophistication, and enjoy exploring all of its specialties, but for those looking for turnkey coffee-making, this is a little extra.

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