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Tag: north america

  • South Dakota is set to ban nearly all forms of gender-affirming care for minors | CNN

    South Dakota is set to ban nearly all forms of gender-affirming care for minors | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    South Dakota is set to prohibit nearly all forms of gender-affirming treatment for transgender minors after a proposed law gained sweeping approval through its state legislature.

    The state Senate passed a House bill banning surgical and non-surgical gender-affirming treatment for minors on Thursday in a 30-4 vote, advancing the legislation to Gov. Kristi Noem’s desk. Noem will sign the bill into law, a spokesperson for the Republican governor told CNN on Friday.

    The legislation bars puberty blocking medication in patients under the age of 18, as well as sex hormones and surgery related to gender transition.

    Opponents of the measure say it would be harmful to transgender children and is an intrusion by the government into medical decisions.

    “Surgeries-gone-wrong are simply not happening in South Dakota,” said Democratic state Sen. Liz Larson while announcing her opposition. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t need the state Legislature when I’m in the doctor’s office.”

    Susan Williams, who heads of the transgender advocacy group Transformation Project Advocacy Network in South Dakota, decried the measure.

    “Our community is sad. Our community is angry. Worst of all, our community is scared,” Williams wrote in a post on her group’s Facebook page. “I feel betrayed by the elected officials who are supposed to protect my family that just voted against us.”

    State Sen. Tim Reed, a Republican, offered an amendment that would have removed the ban on puberty blockers, arguing some minors need them for reasons other than gender transition. But his amendment failed on a voice vote.

    “Puberty blockers can calm a child’s anxiety so that counseling can begin,” Reed said. “Blockers have a place helping families navigate through an extremely difficult situation.”

    Supporters of the legislation say treatment for minors should be limited strictly to mental health counseling. Republican state Sen. Al Novstrup, a sponsor of the legislation, said, “We care deeply about children who are struggling with their identities and want to provide them with true meaningful help, not permanent physical damage.”

    South Dakota is among several Republican-led states that have been proposing – and advancing – anti-trans measures in recent years. Last February, South Dakota became the first state to disallow transgender women and girls from competing on sports teams consistent with their gender at accredited schools and colleges.

    More recently, Utah passed a law last month that bans hormone treatment and surgical procedures for minors seeking gender-affirming care.

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  • California state agencies investigating conditions at the two sites of the Half Moon Bay mass killing | CNN

    California state agencies investigating conditions at the two sites of the Half Moon Bay mass killing | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    Two California state agencies are investigating whether there were potential labor and workplace safety and health violations at the two Half Moon Bay, California, farms where seven people were fatally shot last month.

    The California Division of Occupational Safety and Health and the state’s Labor Commissioner’s Office “want to ensure that employees are being afforded all the protections of California labor laws,” a state official told CNN in an emailed statement.

    The statement did not offer further details about the probe, saying neither agency comments on ongoing investigations.

    The suspect worked on one of the mushroom farms where he is suspected of fatally shooting four of his coworkers. The site, owned by California Terra Garden, is a mushroom farm where the suspected gunman worked and lived on for at least seven years, according to officials and a spokesperson for that company. A California Terra Garden spokesperson has said there were several mobile homes and trailers for employees on the property.

    The suspect was also a former employee of another nearby farm where he’s accused of killing three former colleagues, San Mateo County Sheriff Christina Corpus previously said.

    In a news conference the day after the massacre, California Gov. Gavin Newsom highlighted the living conditions the farm workers faced.

    “Some of you should see where these folks are living, the conditions they’re in. Living in shipping containers,” the governor said. “Folks getting nine bucks an hour … no healthcare, no support, no services, but taking care of our health, providing a service to each and every one of us every single day.”

    And in a statement several days later, the governor’s office called the workers’ living conditions “deplorable.”

    “California is investigating the farms involved in the Half Moon Bay shooting to ensure workers are treated fairly and with the compassion they deserve,” according to a January 26 statement posted on Twitter by Daniel Villaseñor, the governor’s deputy press secretary.

    At the time, a California Terra Garden spokesperson responded to the accusations, saying the governor’s comments did not reflect the living conditions of farm workers.

    “The salary of all employees range from $16.50 to $24,” the spokesperson said, adding that workers receive “vacation days, company-sponsored health insurance, life/disability insurance, workman’s compensation insurance, and access to a 401(k) plan.” CNN has reached out to California Terra Garden for further details on how its employees are paid and for comment on the state agencies’ investigations.

    The spokesperson said last month that the eight families who lived on the property lived in “mobile homes and large recreational vehicles” equipped with kitchens, bathrooms, showers and “standard living amenities.”

    “No one lives in anything like shipping containers or tents as was erroneously reported. The families pay approximately $300 a month to rent these living spaces, well below market rate,” the company spokesperson said.

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  • One month before Tyre Nichols arrest, activists made city council presentation over fears of violent traffic stops in Memphis | CNN

    One month before Tyre Nichols arrest, activists made city council presentation over fears of violent traffic stops in Memphis | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    A month before Tyre Nichols arrest and death, activists and organizers gave a presentation at the Memphis City Council public safety committee hearing to highlight their concern about violent pretextual traffic stops in the city they say led to the death or injury of five people since 2013, video from the committee hearing shows.

    Activists with Decarcerate Memphis made their presentation on December 6, almost exactly one month to the day Nichols was brutally beaten during a traffic stop by members of the now disbanded Scorpion unit.

    There was no specific reference to the Scorpion unit during the presentation, a review by CNN found.

    Among those at the committee hearing were Police Chief Cerelyn Davis and council members JB Smiley, Dr. Jeff Warren, Worth Morgan, Michalyn Easter-Thomas and Chase Carlisle.

    To highlight some of the danger of police stops, activists listed some of the people who had been harmed, including Anjustine Hunter, who was killed by police in 2013 after being pulled over for vehicle registration; Darrius Stewart, who was killed in 2015 after being pulled over for a headlight issue, and D’Mario Perkins, who died in 2018 after being pulled over for vehicle registration. According to CNN affiliate WMC, the Shelby county prosecutor in 2019 declined to file charges in Perkins’ death after the medical examiner ruled his shooting a suicide. According to investigators, two officers opened fire at the traffic stop after Perkins fired his weapon, the station reported.

    Two others were reported to be wounded during traffic stops in 2018, and 2021, respectively.

    According to the group’s analysis of traffic stops in Memphis using police data, Black male drivers in the city were disproportionately stopped by Memphis police officers, being cited 3.4 times more than White male drivers, while Black women were cited 4.7 times as often as White women in the city. The group said Black Memphians under 30 were cited six times as often as White Memphians under 30, also according to its analysis of police data

    The group argued that the action of pretextual stops were “discriminatory,” “counterproductive” and “dangerous” to residents of the city.

    “For a city that has the kind of traffic problems that we have, traffic enforcement is important. However, we do not want to enforce traffic from a standpoint of profiling any particular community, any particular group,” the pollce chief said at the committee hearing in response to the data presented. “We do live in a city that’s predominately African American. We do live in a city that has problems in our African American community.”

    “We need to really look at how do we extract data and be very transparent about the activity of our officers on the road,” Davis said.

    Unlike some other cities, Memphis does not publicize traffic enforcement data. Decarcerate Memphis said it collected its data from five years of tickets obtained from the department through public records requests.

    Five Black officers involved in Nichols’ arrest are due to be arraigned February 17 after they were fired January 20, then indicted on seven counts each, including second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping and official misconduct. A sixth officer, who is White, was fired and disciplined for violating policies in the Nichols case, while a seventh officer who has not been publicly identified is on administrative leave and under investigation.

    The SCORPION unit was created to tackle rising crime in the city. It was disbanded amid national outcry following Nichols’ death, the department has said.

    Defense attorneys in Memphis are going through their cases, trying to see whether any of their clients had run-ins with members of the unit, according to lawyer Mike Working. The hope is that whatever legal jeopardy their clients faced or faces will crumble, just as the credibility of the unit has.

    City officials have not released any roster of the specialized unit so attorneys are searching charging documents for mentions of the team’s involvement.

    “The tactics of the Scorpion unit were so brazen, and so many people have come forward that the entire unit is in question. And defense attorneys will ask for the chance to really review everything,” Working said.

    Charges will not automatically be dismissed, but the presence of the unit now means that defense attorneys will be able to see discovery, like body cameras or dash cameras, as much as six months earlier than usual, he said. The ability to wade through evidence sooner could mean attorneys could find something to get their client’s case thrown out, he added.

    “Scorpion, by its name, means there’s probably something there for the defense to investigate that must be disclosed,” Working said.

    It’s unclear how many criminal cases currently involve Scorpion unit officers, but after Tyre Nichols, it will be that much more difficult for prosecutors to build and maintain a case through trial, Working said.

    “They worked in teams, most officers on the team participated in an arrest,” he said. “So if all the people are going to be on a Scorpion team, I think it could be hard for the [district attorney] to piece that case back together once it’s been tainted by the Scorpion [unit].”

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  • Texas Attorney General Paxton agrees to $3.3 million settlement with whistleblowers who accused him of abuse of office and bribery | CNN Politics

    Texas Attorney General Paxton agrees to $3.3 million settlement with whistleblowers who accused him of abuse of office and bribery | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has agreed to a $3.3 million settlement and an apology as part of a tentative settlement with four whistleblowers who publicly accused Paxton of abuse of office, bribery and other criminal offenses in 2020.

    The former high-level aides – who also reported their allegations to the FBI – were fired within a month of their denouncement of Paxton, a Republican. They filed a lawsuit seeking reinstatement to their former positions or equivalent positions, as well as reinstatement of lost fringe benefits and seniority rights.

    In a filing on Friday, both parties asked the Texas Supreme Court to defer consideration on the case to allow the parties to finalize and fund a settlement agreement.

    The filing included the mediated agreement which says that Paxton’s office will pay $3.3 million and that the final settlement will say Paxton accepts that the former aides were acting in a manner they thought was right and apologizes for referring to them as “rogue employees.”

    Paxton also agreed to remove the 2020 press release from his office’s website in which he described his aides as “rogue.” The press release has already been removed, and the filing says the settlement is contingent on all necessary approvals for funding.

    Despite the apology, the formal settlement agreement does not contain an admission of liability or fault by any party.

    In a statement on Friday, Paxton acknowledged the settlement, explaining why he agreed to “put this issue to rest” but did not mention the apology portion of the agreement.

    “After over two years of litigating with four ex-staffers who accused me in October 2020 of ‘potential’ wrongdoing, I have reached a settlement agreement to put this issue to rest. I have chosen this path to save taxpayer dollars and ensure my third term as Attorney General is unburdened by unnecessary distractions. This settlement achieves these goals. I look forward to serving the People of Texas for the next four years free from this unfortunate sideshow.”

    Lawyers for three of the plaintiffs also issued a statement to CNN, saying: “Our clients have spent more than two years fighting for what is right. We believe the terms of the settlement speak for themselves.”

    Former Texas deputy attorneys general James Blake Brickman, Mark Penley, and Ryan Vassar – along with former director of law enforcement David Maxwell – were the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

    CNN has previously reported that Paxton is facing an FBI investigation for abuse of office. He is also under indictment for securities fraud in a separate, unrelated case. Paxton has denied all charges and allegations.

    The former senior staff members largely stayed out of the limelight after filing the suit, but they broke their silence early last year ahead of the GOP primary, when Paxton was seeking the Republican nomination to be reelected as attorney general. They issued a statement responding to public comments that Paxton had made about the lawsuit during his reelection campaign.

    Paxton was reelected as attorney general in November.

    This headline has been updated.

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  • Biden ordered US military to ‘down’ a ‘high-altitude object’ over Alaska, White House says | CNN Politics

    Biden ordered US military to ‘down’ a ‘high-altitude object’ over Alaska, White House says | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    The White House announced Friday that President Joe Biden ordered the military to down what it described as a “high-altitude object” hovering over Alaska earlier in the day.

    “The Department of Defense was tracking a high-altitude object over Alaska airspace in the last 24 hours,” National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby told reporters when asked about rumors of another suspected Chinese surveillance balloon.

    The high-altitude object, Kirby said, was flying at an altitude of 40,000 feet and “posed a reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight.”

    He continued, “Out of an abundance of caution and at the recommendation of the Pentagon, President Biden ordered the military to down the object, and they did. And it came inside our territorial waters – and those waters right now are frozen – but inside territorial airspace and over territorial waters. Fighter aircraft assigned to US Northern Command took down the object within last hour.”

    It’s the second time in a little less than a week that US fighter jets have shot down an object flying over American airspace. The Biden administration has faced questions over its handling of a suspected Chinese spy balloon that floated across the nation last week before being shot down in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of the Carolinas on Saturday/

    While the president has stood by how he and his administration handled that balloon, he has faced criticism from Republicans for allowing the suspected spy balloon to float over much of the country before shooting it down.

    The new object, Kirby added, was taken down with US Northern Command fighter aircraft “near the Canadian border” on water that is frozen in the Arctic Ocean.

    “The general area would be just off the very, very northeastern part of Alaska near the Canadian border,” Kirby said of the location.

    The object first came to the attention of the US government “last evening.” Kirby told reporters that the US assessed the “object” to be unmanned before it was eventually shot down.

    “We were able to get some fighter aircrafts up and around it before the order to shoot it down, and the pilots assessment was this was not manned,” Kirby said.

    Kirby also offered some nomenclature guidance on the object, which the US is not referring to as a balloon and has yet to attribute to China or any other entity.

    “We’re calling this an object because that’s the best description we have right now. We don’t know who owns it – whether it’s state-owned or corporate-owned or privately owned, we just don’t know,” Kirby said.

    He added: “We don’t have any information that would confirm a stated purpose for this object. We do expect to be able to recover the debris since it fell not only within our territorial space, but on what we what believe is frozen water. So a recovery effort will be made and we’re hopeful that it will be successful and then we can learn a little bit more about it.”

    The object was “much, much smaller” than the Chinese suspected spy balloon, Kirby said, comparing it to “roughly the size of a small car.” The balloon downed last Saturday was described by US officials as approximately the size of three buses.

    Biden “absolutely was involved in this decision” and ordered it at the recommendation of Pentagon leaders, Kirby said.

    This story is breaking and will be updated.

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  • DeSantis push for more control of Disney special district gets approval from Florida legislature | CNN Politics

    DeSantis push for more control of Disney special district gets approval from Florida legislature | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Florida lawmakers on Friday gave final approval to a proposal to give Gov. Ron DeSantis more control over the future of Disney’s Orlando-area theme parks, the latest escalation in the Republican leader’s feud with the entertainment giant.

    The GOP-led state Senate voted 26-9 Friday on a bill to let the state take over the Reedy Creek Improvement District, the government body that has given Disney unique powers in Central Florida for more than half a century. Under the bill, the district’s existing board will be replaced by a five-member board hand-picked by DeSantis.

    The measure passed the Republican-controlled House on an 82-31 vote Thursday. It now heads to the desk of DeSantis, who is expected to sign it.

    The latest move against Disney comes a year after the company spoke out against a bill to restrict certain classroom instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity. The legislation drew a forceful rebuke from Democrats and LGBTQ advocates, who feared the bill would marginalize LGBTQ students and teachers and make them feel less safe in schools. In March of last year, as outrage against the legislation spread nationwide, Disney released a statement vowing to help get the law repealed or struck down by the courts and saying the company was “dedicated to standing up for the rights and safety of LGBTQ+ members of the Disney family, as well as the LGBTQ+ community in Florida and across the country.”

    After signing the bill into law, DeSantis then set his sights on punishing Disney. He called on lawmakers to strip the company of its special governing powers, which they did in a special session last year, voting to dissolve the Reedy Creek Improvement District at the end of May 2023.

    Lawmakers, though, changed course this week and instead voted on a new future for Reedy Creek, one that puts DeSantis appointees in charge of the district’s long-standing powers to tax, build and borrow money for projects around Disney’s vast footprint in Orange and Osceola counties. It also renames Reedy Creek as the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District.

    Proponents say the changes ensure that there will not be a disruption to the district’s existing debt or contracts. The final page of the 189-page bill states: “The Reedy Creek Improvement District is not dissolved as of June 1, 2023, but continues in full force and effect under its new name.”

    The changes seemed to satisfy some concerns that the district’s outstanding debt, reported at about $1 billion, would fall on Florida taxpayers. Fitch Ratings, which put Reedy Creek Improvement District’s debt on watch for a negative bond rating, told CNN in a statement that the proposed legislation “appears to address key uncertainties.”

    In a statement to CNN earlier this week, Jeff Vahle, the president of Walt Disney World Resort, said the company is “monitoring the progression of the draft legislation, which is complex given the long history of the Reedy Creek Improvement District.”

    “Disney works under a number of different models and jurisdictions around the world, and regardless of the outcome, we remain committed to providing the highest quality experience for the millions of guests who visit each year,” Vahle said.

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  • The dark side of the sports betting boom | CNN Business

    The dark side of the sports betting boom | CNN Business


    New York
    CNN
     — 

    The sports gambling gold rush is coming at a high cost.

    In 2018, the Supreme Court struck down a federal ban on commercial sports betting in most of the country. Thirty-three states have made sports gambling legal in the wake of the decision. Now, on Super Bowl Sunday, a record 50.4 million US adults are expected to bet on the game.

    The booming sports betting industry, lawmakers and even the professional sports leagues themselves are making it easier, faster and more tempting for people to bet on games — and develop gambling problems, say gambling researchers and addiction specialists.

    A flood of advertising, technology that allows for one-click betting at home, and nearly unlimited betting options during games have collided. There’s been a spike in inquiries to state gambling-addiction hotlines, states say.

    In the past five years, there has been an explosion of online sports betting apps from companies like DraftKings, FanDuel and Caesars. These apps are often replacing illegal betting venues. At the same time, they also attract an influx of new gamblers who had never set foot in a casino or would have known how to place a bet with a bookie.

    During the Super Bowl, there will be an onslaught of advertisements — most starring celebrity sponsors and athletes — meant to encourage new sign-ups and grab market share. DraftKings will air a commercial featuring Kevin Hart and David Ortiz, while Rob Gronkowski will attempt a field goal kick live in a FanDuel ad. (Any customer who places a Super Bowl bet of five dollars or more on FanDuel will win a share of $10 million in “free bets” if Gronkowski makes it.)

    Hear why FanDuel CEO thinks this Super Bowl will be biggest day in company’s history

    Sports teams and leagues were once fiercely opposed to gambling on the games. Now, they’ve partnered with sportsbooks.

    These days, gamblers can also do much more than wager on the outcome of a game. There are options to bet in-game on every quarter, player, and event.

    Resources for gambling addiction programs have long been thin in the United States and have been stretched further by the current wave of sports betting. In 2020, there were 5.7 million Americans with a gambling disorder, according to a nationwide survey by the National Association of Administrators for Disordered Gambling Services.

    Focus on gambling disorders has historically been minimal in the United States, said Timothy Fong, a psychiatrist and the co-director of the UCLA Gambling Studies Program.

    This is in part because people with gambling disorders have been viewed as foolish or lacking willpower, he said. “We equate the ability to hold onto money and win money with success and equate losing with greed.”

    There is also sparse federal oversight of the gambling industry, and there are currently no federal funds designated for problem gambling treatment or research, unlike federal funding for alcohol, tobacco and drug addiction programs.

    DraftKings is one of the most popular sports betting apps.

    A patchwork of state legislation, lack of robust consumer protections in many states, and limited advertising restrictions are adding to the problems.

    “Many states naively or some other way went about legalizing sports betting without adequately estimating the costs on problem gambling resources,” said John Holden, an associate professor of management at Oklahoma State University who studies sports gambling regulation.

    “There is more that state lawmakers can do within the confines of commercial speech restrictions,” including authorizing extra funding to go after false and misleading advertising, Holden said.

    Betting on sports can be a way for some people to develop, maintain or accelerate gambling disorders.

    There are several features of sports betting that make it different from other forms of gambling and can lead to addictive behavior.

    Many sports bettors tend to perceive their wages on games are safer and more informed by their own expertise and skills than luck, researchers say. This may give them a false illusion of control.

    Additionally, live betting within games reduces the delay between risk and reward, and it’s increasing the speed and frequency of wagers, experts say.

    “I got caught up in a lot of the live betting,” said one 24-year-old man with a gambling disorder who spoke to CNN on the condition of anonymity. He started betting on sports seven years ago through a bookie, but upped his wagers once he started using apps.

    During football games, he would bet on the outcome of drives and which team would score the next touchdown. As he lost more during a game, he would try again to to win it back on the next play.

    “You see the way the game is going and you think you know,” he said. “It’s not like back in the day with a bookie betting on who wins.”

    He said he lost $100,000 on sports gambling, including money from student loans. He’s currently in recovery at Beit T’Shuvah, in Los Angeles, which provides inpatient and outpatient services for people struggling with gambling disorders.

    Casey Clark, the senior vice president at the American Gaming Association, a trade group for the gambling industry, said that the legalization of sports betting has moved the black market of sports gambling into regulated marketplaces, benefiting states.

    The gambling industry and sports betting operators work with regulators, professional sports leagues, media companies and advocates to set standards, provide gambling education for consumers and fund recovery efforts for people seeking treatment, Clark said.

    “We’ve had a really fast escalation and movement towards giving American consumers access to the legal market that they clearly want. And so we have to continue to evolve that marketplace,” he said.

    Advocates for people with gambling disorders say demand for help and treatment services has grown alongside the rapid expansion of legalized sports betting.

    Inquires to the Council on Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey’s help hotline about sports gambling have increased 60% since it became legal in the state in 2018, said Felicia Grondin, the organization’s executive director.

    Grondin feels helpless against the constant barrage of advertising encouraging betting on games.

    An advertisement for DraftKings is shown on the scoreboard during the game between the Boston Red Sox and the Detroit Tigers at Comerica Park on July 7, 2019 in Detroit, Michigan.

    “We consider it to be predatory advertising because it’s incessant and it glamorizes gambling,” she said.

    Clark from the American Gaming Association said the group has created a responsible marketing code to set industry-wide advertising standards.

    But self-enforcement by the industry cannot make up for robust oversight from regulators, said Keith Whyte, the executive director of the National Council on Problem Gambling.

    “Self-regulation tends to dumb itself down to the lowest common denominator, not the highest,” he said. “Some operators are definitely taking advantage of weak regulatory environments in some states.”

    Every state where gambling is legal has a regulatory body that oversees it.

    But few have “really done more than the minimal amount to increase funding of problem gambling treatment,” said Holden. The sports gambling industry is most similar to financial markets, he said, but financial markets are much more regulated than banks.

    Most states require that sports betting ads disclose the minimum legal age to gamble and responsible gambling messages, such as problem gambling hotlines. Those messages are brief and usually run at the very end.

    DraftKings' Super Bowl ad with Kevin Hart, David Ortiz and Emmitt Smith.

    Regulators are wary of how tightly they can curtail messages in gambling advertising without running afoul of First Amendment protections on commercial speech.

    “A lot of state regulators have big First Amendment fears,” Holden said. “No one wants to fund litigation or lose a Supreme Court case over gambling.”

    In most states, the legal age for sports betting is 21 years old. But ads during games, in stadiums, and with star athlete sponsors normalizes sports betting for kids and teenagers, critics say. The United Kingdom last year banned top athletes and celebrities from appearing in ads endorsing or promoting gambling to try to curb underage gambling. That’s unlikely to happen in the United States.

    Additionally, researchers are troubled by the incentives and promotions some sports betting apps often provide to users, such as sign-up and referral bonuses, promo codes and bonus bets. One 2017 study of people with gambling addictions found that messages with an offer of risk-free kind of bonuses had a high impact.

    The Ohio Casino Control Commission in January fined DraftKings, Caesars and BetMGM $150,000 each for advertising promotions or bonuses as “free” or “risk-free” when, in fact, users were required to lose money or risk their own money to obtain the promotion.

    “I got more incentive to gamble with these apps that give you free play and match your deposit,” said the former sports bettor in Los Angeles currently in recovery. He enlisted friends to sign up to get referral fees, and looked at these enticements as free money. “I’d have to be an idiot to pass this up.”

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  • GE’s Larry Culp Has a Message for Investors

    GE’s Larry Culp Has a Message for Investors

    This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers visit http://www.djreprints.com.

    https://www.barrons.com/articles/ge-larry-culp-investors-annual-letter-83f4e20b

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  • Washington forges rare political unity in condemning China over balloon drama | CNN Politics

    Washington forges rare political unity in condemning China over balloon drama | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    China’s audacious spy balloon flight across North America has spectacularly backfired by enshrining rare bipartisan unity in Washington.

    The coming together of Republicans and Democrats is certain to stiffen future US strategic, economic and military resolve in the Pacific region and further damage buckled relations with Beijing.

    The fierce congressional reaction to the balloon and the US government’s disclosure of intelligence about it and China’s balloon espionage program, meanwhile, threatened to further damage the world’s most crucial diplomatic relationship – especially after China hit back by accusing the US of being the world’s most gratuitous spy state.

    The unanimity of American anger toward China was exemplified by a House resolution condemning China that passed by a stunning 419-0 margin. It followed a growing realization in Washington, and more broadly across the country, that a long-predicted geopolitical confrontation may now be a reality.

    But despite the united political front in Washington, fury is boiling in both parties over the failure to down the balloon before it traversed the continent amid rising questions about the implications of China’s breach of US airspace. Administration officials faced a gauntlet of criticism from lawmakers during a classified briefing on the issue on Thursday. And Republicans stepped up efforts to brand President Joe Biden as weak over the incursion despite his warning to President Xi Jinping in his State of the Union address earlier this week that he would vigorously defend US sovereignty.

    This growing discord threatens to so politicize China policy that it will drain any efforts to defuse an escalating Cold War. The Biden administration wants to pursue those efforts despite the tensions caused by the balloon crisis.

    There’s also a risk that Republican efforts to leverage the drama for domestic political gain could bust unity over policy toward America’s giant Pacific rival. Such a partisan split would ironically deliver a greater payoff for China’s communist rulers than any information picked up by the balloon over the US.

    The unanimous House vote on the incident had not been assured. It required Republican leaders to omit language critical of Biden and followed unusual bipartisan cooperation fostered by Texas Rep. Mike McCaul, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and the top Democrat on the panel, New York Rep. Gregory Meeks. The resolution describes the balloon flight as a brazen violation of US sovereignty. McCaul said the bipartisan nature of the vote was critical and called on everyone to stand together against a “common enemy.”

    “We wanted it to be America against China – not internal fighting, because China would see that as a moment of weakness, that we’re divided on party lines, and we didn’t want to project that,” McCaul told CNN.

    This strong signal sent to Beijing raises the possibility that the spy balloon mission has demonstrably hurt China’s interests – especially if it results in a bipartisan zeal to increase defense spending, the size of US arms and equipment packages to allow Taiwan to defend against a possible Chinese attack and more resources to US allies.

    While there is agreement on the challenge now posed by China, there was mystification and some anger elsewhere in Congress on Thursday, even as officials held classified briefings and the FBI pushed forward on its effort to evaluate intelligence from the remains of the balloon salvaged from the Atlantic after it was shot down on Saturday.

    In a Senate hearing, Democrats as well as Republicans, criticized Defense Department officials and questioned why they did not tell Americans more once the balloon was spotted.

    “You guys have to help me understand why this baby wasn’t taken out long before,” said Sen. Jon Tester, a Montana Democrat who could be facing a tough reelection next year. The balloon floated above his state, which hosts US missile installations. Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski was furious that the Chinese balloon crossed her state. “As an Alaskan, I am so angry,” Murkowski said. “If you’re going to have Russia coming at you, if you’re going to have China coming at you, we know exactly how they come. They come up and they go over Alaska.”

    Sen. Brian Schatz, a Democrat from Hawaii, said he understood why the White House might have kept China’s balloon program classified but added, “We all understand that some of the desire to keep things classified, it has to do with not wanting to disclose to the public things that might be inconvenient politically for the department.” The White House has previously explained that it waited until the balloon was off the Carolinas to shoot it down based on Pentagon advice that doing so before could endanger lives and property on the ground. Officials also said they took steps to ensure it was not an intelligence threat as it wafted across the country.

    But some Republicans are accusing the White House of a cover-up that they think exposes Biden as feckless and unfit to be commander-in-chief as he eyes reelection, despite his strong role in standing up to Russia over Ukraine.

    “I think the public, and Congress, would never have known about this if the Billings, Montana, paper hadn’t published a picture that showed the balloon and US assets tracking the balloon. I think their plan was clearly to keep this a secret,” Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley told CNN after a classified briefing.

    “The United States was grossly unprepared, this administration was grossly unprepared, and frankly I think it was a huge mistake for them not to take down the balloon before it entered the continental United States,” Hawley added.

    While the House vote on the resolution condemning China was unanimous, many Republicans used the debate before the resolution passed to lacerate the Biden administration.

    “We watched in real time from our backyards and workplaces as a foreign aircraft equipped with spyware navigated over our neighborhoods, our military installations and our vital infrastructure,” said Missouri GOP Rep. Ann Wagner, the vice chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

    “The administration again showed the dictatorship in Beijing that they could again be bullied. President Biden’s weakness and indecision sends a dangerous signal to our adversaries like Iran and Russia and North Korea.”

    Still, Utah Sen. Mitt Romney said he came away from the classified briefing more confident in the administration.

    “I believe that the administration, the president, our military and intelligence agencies, acted skillfully and with care,” Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, said.

    Besides the classified briefings, Biden administration officials divulged new information about the balloon to the public Thursday, some of it gleaned by flybys by U-2 spy planes before it was downed. A senior State Department official said the balloon had been capable of conducting signals intelligence collection – or intelligence gathered by electronic means – and was part of a fleet that had flown over “more than 40 countries across five continents.”

    Beijing is likely to be irked by more details being made public about its balloon program, as evidenced by comments by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning in a briefing Thursday.

    “I am not aware of any ‘fleet of balloons,’” Mao said. “That narrative is probably part of the information and public opinion warfare the US has waged on China. As to who is the world’s number one country of spying, eavesdropping and surveillance, that is plainly visible to the international community,” she added.

    Lawmakers were told Thursday that the order to send the balloon was dispatched without Xi’s knowledge, sources familiar with Hill briefings said. But the idea Xi was unaware of balloon “is the working theory and an ongoing intelligence gap,” a source briefed on the matter said.

    Intelligence experts in the United States have been perplexed at the political furor stoked by a mere balloon – a comparatively unsophisticated asset that pales in significance compared to multi-pronged Chinese intelligence operations against the United States including economic, cyber and traditional espionage. Indeed, the US mounts a similarly broad collection mission against China, which was exposed when a Chinese jet fighter collided with a US spy plane in international airspace over the South China Sea in 2001.

    But the balloon flight, over US territory, has had a symbolic impact greater than that so far generated amid years of building tensions with China, including over Taiwan.

    “I would never have imagined that my Saturday afternoon would have been disrupted due to a Chinese spy balloon not – only that floated across most of South Carolina, it floated across the entire continental United States,” said freshman Republican Rep. Russell Fry whose South Carolina district contains coastal areas where the balloon was shot down.

    “It does – if you watch it, and you were there on the ground – sound like it was straight out of a sci-fi movie,” he said on the House floor, blasting the Biden administration for negligence and bemoaning an international incident that unfolded off the shores of Myrtle Beach.

    In the Senate, the dramatic events of the past week have caused a reassessment of years of US-China policy, which has seen efforts by the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations to try to usher China peacefully into the global economy degenerate into a brewing confrontation in the Trump and Biden administrations.

    Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said at a hearing that the Biden administration did not “see another Cold War, but we do ask everyone to play by the same set of rules.”

    The problem, however, is that China interprets such US calls as an attempt to thwart what it sees as its rightful rise as a regional and global superpower. Sherman argued that US policy in the 21st century designed to head off confrontation had not failed, but that conditions in China had changed.

    “Xi Jinping is not the Xi Jinping of the 1990’s that we all thought we knew,” Sherman told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. She added that China under Xi was “the only country that wants to change that rules-based order, that can successfully do so and are trying to make that happen.”

    “It is true that our way of life, our democracy, our belief in our values, in the rules-based international order is being challenged,” she continued. “And we have to meet that challenge.”

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  • California county to pay $4.5 million settlement in death of man shocked by deputies’ Tasers | CNN

    California county to pay $4.5 million settlement in death of man shocked by deputies’ Tasers | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    The family of a 36-year-old Black man who died after sheriff’s deputies shocked him with Tasers in California’s San Mateo County in 2018 has reached a $4.5 million settlement with the county, the family’s attorneys announced.

    The settlement between Chinedu Okobi’s family and the Northern California county was reached in August but has just become public, a release from law firm Pointer and Buelna LLP, which is representing the family, said Thursday.

    CNN has sought comment from San Mateo County and the county sheriff’s office.

    The sheriff’s office said deputies in October 2018 confronted Okobi because he was running in and out of traffic, and that he subsequently assaulted one of them. In trying to subdue Okobi, deputies deployed Tasers several times, authorities said.

    Okobi died of cardiac arrest after physical exertion, restraint and electro-muscular disruption, a pathology report from the coroner’s office said.

    No deputies were charged in his death.

    Okobi’s family and their attorneys had viewed a 25-30 minute composite video – made up of witness cell phone video, surveillance footage and deputies’ dashcam footage, San Mateo County District Attorney Stephen Wagstaffe told CNN in 2018. The footage was released to the public in 2019.

    Okobi’s sister said after viewing footage of the incident in 2018 that her brother was “getting tortured to death in broad daylight.”

    In the family’s news release Thursday, an attorney said “the destiny of an unarmed Black man having a mental health crisis shouldn’t be death at the hands of police.”

    “This happens far too easily and far too often and police officers should be regularly trained on de-escalation strategies for non-violent incidents, and not handed potentially lethal weapons with little training and no outside oversight,” Adanté Pointer, an attorney for Okobi’s mother, said.

    Okobi was a Morehouse College graduate, a poet and a father to a young daughter, who was 12 years old at the time of his death, his family said.

    The family is calling for reform in Taser use by law enforcement, saying the devices “kill hundreds of people like Chinedu every year,” the release said.

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  • US officials disclosed new details about the balloon’s capabilities. Here’s what we know | CNN Politics

    US officials disclosed new details about the balloon’s capabilities. Here’s what we know | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Biden administration officials disclosed new information Thursday about the capabilities of the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that traversed the United States last week and what they are learning as the FBI begins analyzing the recovered parts after the balloon was shot down Saturday.

    US officials also detailed what they’ve discovered about the broader spying operation they say the Chinese government has undertaken using a fleet of high-altitude surveillance balloons across the globe.

    But senior Biden officials faced pointed questions on Capitol Hill from lawmakers in public hearings and classified briefings as Congress is demanding more information about why the balloon wasn’t shot down sooner.

    A senior State Department official said Thursday that the balloon “was capable of conducting signals intelligence collection operations” and was part of a fleet that had flown over “more than 40 countries across five continents.”

    The Biden administration has determined that the Chinese balloon was operating with electronic surveillance technology capable of monitoring US communications, according to the official.

    “We know the PRC used these balloons for surveillance,” the official said. “High-resolution imagery from U-2 flybys revealed that the high-altitude balloon was capable of conducting signals intelligence collection operations.”

    Signals intelligence refers to information that is gathered by electronic means – things like communications and radars.

    Lawmakers were told Thursday that the order to send the balloon was dispatched without Chinese President Xi Jinping’s knowledge, sources familiar with the briefing said.

    The FBI has started its initial stages of evaluating the pieces of the balloon that were recovered and brought to the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia for analysis, senior FBI officials said Thursday.

    Only evidence that was on the surface of the ocean has been delivered to FBI analysts so far, one official said, which includes the “canopy itself, the wiring, and then a very small amount of electronics.” The official said analysts have not yet seen the “payload,” which is where you would expect to see the “lion’s share” of electronics.

    The officials added that understanding the components of the balloon is vital intelligence and could be “important pieces of evidence for future criminal charges that could be brought.”

    Despite the latest revelations about the capabilities of the spy balloon, the Pentagon has insisted since the vessel was first acknowledged publicly that it does not give China capabilities above and beyond what they already have from spy satellites or other means.

    “We did not assess that it presented a significant collection hazard beyond what already exists in actionable technical means from the Chinese,” said Gen. Glenn VanHerck, the commander of US Northern Command and NORAD, on Monday.

    Administration officials from the Pentagon, State Department and intelligence community briefed lawmakers on Capitol Hill Thursday on the balloon, which has prompted criticism from Republicans over allowing it to float across the US before it was shot down off the Atlantic coast.

    The officials told lawmakers that the US has assessed that little new intelligence was gleaned by the Chinese balloon operation because the Chinese appeared to stop transmitting information once the US learned of the balloon, in addition to US measures to protect sensitive intelligence from China’s spying operations, according to the sources.

    The US also believes what they have recovered from the shot-down balloon is beneficial to US intelligence, the sources said.

    Another source familiar with the briefings said officials said the balloon would give the Chinese better photos and signals collection than satellites, as well as a better ability to steer and hover longer over collection targets.

    The Biden officials told Congress that it’s still unclear what the motivation was for the flight of the balloon across the US, which prompted Secretary of State Antony Blinken to postpone his trip to China. One of the sources said that the US believes senior leadership of the People’s Liberation Army and Chinese Communist Party including Xi were also unaware, and the US believes the Chinese are still trying to figure out how this happened.

    In the classified congressional briefings, the administration officials argued that the US didn’t move earlier to shoot down the balloon in part over fears it could provoke an escalation of military tensions with China or even a military conflict. Biden gave the order to shoot down the balloon whenever the Pentagon felt it was safe to do so, the sources said, so the Pentagon ultimately made the call on when to shoot it down.

    The officials told lawmakers one of the reasons the balloon was not first shot down when it entered Alaskan airspace is that the waters there are cold and deep, making it less likely they could have recovered the balloon, according to the sources.

    The House briefing Thursday morning was tense, the sources said, with several Republicans railing against the administration, including GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who said that the Pentagon made the president – whom she noted she doesn’t like – look weak by their actions.

    In response, the briefers tried to lay out a detailed timeline of the actions, the sources said.

    “The Pentagon was telling us they were able to mitigate in real-time as this was taking place and I believe that’s accurate,” Rep. Mike Quigley, an Illinois Democrat, told CNN.”I believe the preeminent concern they had, as they expressed in real time, was the safety of US citizens.”

    After the briefing, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said it was wrong for the Biden administration to wait to shoot down the balloon.

    “They should have never let it into our sovereignty, they should have taken it another time,” McCarthy told CNN.

    But Republican Sen. Mitt Romney told CNN he believes the US made right decision to wait before shooting it down.

    “I believe that the administration, the president, our military and intelligence agencies, acted skillfully and with care. At the same time, their capabilities are extraordinarily impressive. Was everything done 100% correctly? I can’t imagine that would be the case of almost anything we do. But I came away more confident,” Romney said Thursday.

    Senators pushed defense officials at an Appropriations Committee hearing on Thursday over the military’s assessment of the Chinese surveillance, with Democratic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana telling officials that he did not know how they could unequivocally say it was not a military threat.

    “You guys have to help me understand why this baby wasn’t taken out long before and because I am telling you that that this ain’t the last time. We’ve [seen] brief incursions, now we’ve seen a long incursion, what happens next?,” said Tester, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee.

    “We don’t understand because quite frankly, we have been briefed in his committee over and over and over again, about the risks that China poses, both economically and militarily,” he said. “China tends to push the envelope all the time until a line is set down.”“

    Pentagon officials said at the hearing that the Defense Department was not concerned about the balloon gathering intelligence over Alaska as it was not near sensitive sites.

    The balloon first crossed into US airspace over Alaska on January 28, Melissa Dalton, assistant secretary of defense for Homeland Defense and Hemispheric Affairs, said during the hearing. When the balloon was spotted, it was not determined to have “hostile intent,” Sims said, and officials did not believe it would impact aviation routes or present a significant intelligence gathering ability. That changed when the balloon began drifting over the lower 48 states, but while it was over Alaska, officials determined it was not over critical infrastructure.

    The House on Thursday passed a symbolic resolution condemning China’s surveillance balloon with a vote of 419 to zero.

    The FBI investigation into recovered balloon is the first of its kind in the bureau’s history, senior FBI officials familiar with the operation said Thursday as they described the initial stages and what’s been recovered so far.

    The officials said that this is the first time the FBI has investigated a spy balloon of this nature and assisted with the processing of such a scene. The officials added that understanding the components of the balloon is vital intelligence and could be “important pieces of evidence for future criminal charges that could be brought.”

    The parts of the balloon recovered on the surface of the ocean have been delivered so far, while recovering additional pieces of the balloon that sunk has been complicated by bad weather, officials said.

    It’s not yet clear where the balloon’s parts were manufactured, the officials said, including whether any of the pieces were made in America. Because analysts have yet to look at the bulk of the equipment on the balloon, the officials said that there has not been a determination as to everything the device was capable of doing and its specific intent.

    Of the small portion they have examined, analysts have not identified any sort of explosive or “offensive material” that would pose a danger to the American public.

    The FBI was alerted to the balloon on February 1, the officials said, because the intelligence community had determined that the balloon had an electronic element to it. By late Sunday – the day after the balloon was shot down – agents had arrived at the scene, and the first pieces of recovered evidence arrived at the FBI lab in Quantico on Monday.

    There was English writing on parts of the balloon that were found, one of the sources familiar with the congressional briefings said, though they were not high-tech components. The source declined to provide detail on what specific parts of the balloon contained English writing.

    Bloomberg News first reported that components of the balloon had English writing on them.

    The State Department official said the balloon was part of a Chinese fleet developed to conduct surveillance operations” with a manufacturer tied to China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the official added.

    The official suggested that the US is eyeing sanctions for the presence of the balloon in US airspace – which US officials have repeatedly called a violation of US sovereignty and international law – noting the US “will also explore taking action against PRC entities linked to the PLA that supported the balloon’s incursion into US airspace.”

    A recovery operation to secure debris from the balloon is ongoing with analysis continuing at an FBI laboratory in Virginia, but the officials’ remarks suggest the US has already established the balloon was operating with electronic surveillance technology.

    However, the US has said it has been able to prevent the balloon from intercepting US communications.

    “The high-altitude balloons’ equipment was clearly for intelligence surveillance and inconsistent with the equipment onboard weather balloons. It had multiple antennas to include an array likely capable of collecting and geo-locating communications. It was equipped with solar panels large enough to produce the requisite power to operate multiple active intelligence collection sensors,” the official added.

    “We could track the exact path of the balloon and ensure no activities or sensitive unencrypted comms would be conducted in its vicinity,” a senior administration official said this week. “The US military took immediate steps to protect against the balloon’s collection of sensitive information, mitigating any intelligence value to the PRC.”

    President Joe Biden suggested Wednesday that bilateral relations with China had not been affected by the balloon fallout, but China reacted angrily to the shootdown, refusing a call with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken canceled a high-stakes trip to Beijing on Friday. New sanctions in response to the balloon would likely further inflame tensions.

    “We know these balloons are all part of a PRC fleet of balloons developed to conduct surveillance operations. These kinds of activities are often undertaken at the direction of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA),” the senior State Department official added.

    China “has overflown these surveillance balloons over more than 40 countries across five continents,” the State Department official said, noting that “the Biden Administration is reaching out to countries directly about the scope of this program and answer any questions.”

    The official said that based on China’s “messaging and public comments, it’s clear that they have been scrambling to explain why they violated US sovereignty and still have no plausible explanation – and have found themselves on their heels.”

    “As we saw with the second balloon over Central and South America that they just acknowledged, they also have no explanation for why they violated the airspace of Central and South American countries,” the official said. “The PRC’s program will only continue to be exposed, making it harder for the PRC to use this program.”

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  • Rick Scott: From embattled health care executive to Biden’s top foil | CNN Politics

    Rick Scott: From embattled health care executive to Biden’s top foil | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Florida Sen. Rick Scott has emerged as Joe Biden’s top Republican foil in the days since the president’s State of the Union address, with the White House seizing on a year-old Scott proposal that even GOP leaders recognized at the time as politically toxic.

    As a spending fight looms in Washington and Biden moves toward his 2024 reelection bid, the White House is attempting to make Scott the poster child for the president’s accusations that Republicans are seeking to cut entitlement programs, including Social Security and Medicare.

    Scott has responded by accusing Biden of lying, airing a misleading ad that alleges Biden cut Medicare and lambasting the president in a barrage of television interviews.

    Biden traveled Thursday to Florida – where Scott was a health care executive and two-term governor – on the latest leg of his post-State of the Union tour.

    The trip was designed in part to stoke a fight with Scott after Biden in his speech Tuesday night seized on the first-term senator’s proposal to sunset all federal programs – including Social Security and Medicare – every five years unless Congress extends those programs.

    Biden’s assertion that some Republicans are seeking to change entitlement programs was met with jeers from Republican lawmakers, who have said spending cuts should be part of any proposal to raise the debt ceiling.

    The president continued pressing that message Wednesday in Wisconsin, telling union workers, “A lot of Republicans, their dream is to cut Social Security and Medicare.” He waved a pamphlet with Scott’s proposal as he spoke.

    Ahead of Biden’s speech Thursday in Tampa, White House aides placed copies of Scott’s proposal on every seat.

    In an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Thursday, Scott said Biden has misrepresented the proposal he put forward ahead of the 2022 midterm elections while serving as head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the campaign arm of the Senate GOP.

    “Nobody believes that I want to cut Medicare or Social Security. I’ve never said it,” Scott said.

    Scott said his proposal is intended to eliminate wasteful spending and help ensure the government can “figure out how to start living within our means.”

    “I want to make sure we balance our budget and preserve Medicare and Social Security, and I’ve been clear all along. So what I want to do is get rid of wasteful programs that we never review up here,” he said.

    But Scott’s proposal would sunset all federal legislation – including the two entitlement programs – every five years and require Congress to pass them again.

    Long before he was a US senator, Scott had first-hand experience dealing with America’s federal health care programs – and it became the source of much criticism as he entered the political arena.

    In the 1980s, Scott founded Columbia Hospital Corporation by purchasing a pair of distressed Texas hospitals. He later merged his company with Hospital Corporation of America to create Columbia/HCA, becoming the largest for-profit hospital chain at the time and gaining notoriety on Wall Street for what appeared like cost-cutting in an industry with ballooning expenses.

    In 1997, federal agents unveiled a sweeping investigation into Columbia/HCA that would roil the company for years. On the day the FBI swooped in to seize records from 35 of its hospitals across six states, Scott shrugged off the probe. “It’s not a fun day, but … government investigations are a matter of fact today in health care,” he said on CNN.

    The investigation would unearth what the US Department of Justice later called the “largest health care fraud case in U.S. history.” According to a press release, Columbia/HCA schemed to defraud Medicare, Medicaid and TRICARE, the military’s health care program, of hundreds of millions of dollars. The company pleaded guilty to criminal conduct, including charges related to fraudulent Medicare billing and paying kickbacks to doctors, and it ultimately agreed to pay $1.7 billion in fines, damages and penalties.

    Scott was pushed out as CEO amid the turmoil. He was never charged with a crime, though much of the alleged financial abuses took place during his watch. His time in the corporate world made Scott a wealthy individual, which he would lean on in 2010 when he decided to kickstart a political career by entering the race for Florida governor.

    Scott’s time at the helm of Columbia/HCA was the subject of negative ads from both Republicans and Democrats, but he fended them off with a self-funded campaign that flooded the airwaves with a jobs-focused message. He told the St. Petersburg Times that “mistakes were made” at his former company and that he had “learned hard lessons,” but he also said during a debate that he was “proud of the company I built.” Regardless of the controversy, the little-known Scott defeated a GOP favorite for his party’s nomination, and Floridians narrowly elected him governor that fall.

    During his eight years leading Florida, Scott fought off attempts to extend safety net benefits to Floridians. He frequently challenged the Obama administration over the Affordable Care Act and blocked expansion of Medicaid in Florida. In his first year as governor, he signed a bill to cut unemployment payments and tied benefits to the state’s unemployment rate.

    Democrats continued to make Scott’s time at Columbia/HCA an issue, to no avail. Scott eked out a reelection victory in 2014. He then narrowly unseated longtime Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson in 2018 after spending more than $70 million of his own money on his campaign.

    Marching to the beat of his own drum, Scott declined to be sworn in with his class in January 2019. Instead, he waited until his term as governor had ended and flew to Washington for a separate ceremony. For a time, it made him the country’s most junior senator, but he nevertheless soon found himself in party leadership.

    Scott and other Republicans are aggressively pushing back against Biden’s assertions that the GOP is seeking to cut spending on entitlement programs.

    However, Republican leaders have long recognized Scott’s proposal to sunset all federal programs after five years as rocky political terrain.

    The tense relationship between Scott and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell burst into public view during the 2022 election cycle as Republicans sought to retake the Senate.

    Scott, as NRSC chairman, released a platform called “Rescue America,” which would have subjected all federally elected officials to a term limit of 12 years and closed the Department of Education, amid a slew of other initiatives. It would also have required millions of low-income and middle-class Americans to pay income taxes, which was later dropped in a revised version of the plan.

    And, in what Democrats immediately recognized as an opening to accuse Republicans of attempting to undercut popular programs, Scott’s plan proposed sunsetting all federal legislation in five years – unless Congress extended it.

    McConnell quickly disavowed Scott’s plan, seeking to make clear that the Florida senator did not speak for Senate Republicans.

    “Let me tell you what would not be a part of our agenda,” McConnell said at a news conference last March. “We will not have as part of our agenda a bill that raises taxes on half the American people, and sunsets Social Security and Medicare within five years.”

    Their frosty relationship did not improve as the 2022 election cycle continued, as the two battled over which candidates to support in primaries and in the general election, and Republicans ultimately fell short of winning a majority.

    After the election, Scott challenged McConnell for the top Senate Republican post but lost.

    The Florida senator said last week that he saw McConnell’s decision to remove him from the Senate Commerce Committee as retribution.

    “He didn’t like that I opposed him because I believe we have to have ideas – fight over ideas,” Scott said on “CNN This Morning.”

    When pressed Thursday by CNN’s Collins about why his proposal left open the opportunity for the government to cut funding for Social Security and Medicare, Scott repeatedly referenced a policy proposal from then-Sen. Biden in 1975 to sunset federal legislation periodically.

    Scott said Biden’s old proposal does less to protect entitlements for seniors than the senator’s plan from last year because “he proposed it year after year after year to reduce Medicare and Social Security. Year after year. I’ve never done that. I don’t believe in that.”

    Asked Thursday about the 1975 proposal mentioned by Scott, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, “A bill from the 1970s is not part of the president’s agenda.”

    “The president ran on protecting Medicare and Social Security from cuts. And he reiterated that in the State of the Union,” she said.

    A new ad from Scott released this week in advance of the president’s visit to Florida says that “Joe Biden just cut $280 billion from Medicare” – a claim that was previously debunked when Scott and the NRSC made it in 2022.

    Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act is expected to reduce Medicare prescription drug spending by the federal government by $237 billion, according to the most recent Congressional Budget Office estimate, because the law allows the government to spend less money to buy drugs from pharmaceutical companies and not because it cuts benefits to seniors enrolled in Medicare. The law makes Medicare’s prescription drug program substantially more generous to seniors while also saving them money.

    Scott, in his interview with Collins, also defended his recent call for Biden to resign, labeling him “a complete failure.” He said his resignation calls did not specifically stem from Biden’s use of his proposal as an avenue to attack Republicans but expressed his displeasure with the president’s repeated references to his plan.

    “He lies about what I want to get done, and I don’t appreciate it,” Scott said.

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  • North Korean hackers extorted health care organizations to fund further cyberattacks, US and South Korea say | CNN Politics

    North Korean hackers extorted health care organizations to fund further cyberattacks, US and South Korea say | CNN Politics


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    North Korean government-backed hackers have conducted ransomware attacks on health care providers and other key sectors in the US and South Korea and used the proceeds to fund further cyberattacks on government agencies in Washington and Seoul, US and South Korean officials warned Thursday.

    Some of those follow-on hacks have specifically targeted Pentagon networks and US defense contractors, according to the advisory from US and South Korean intelligence and security agencies.

    It’s the latest in a drumbeat of warnings from US officials that North Korea is adopting cybercriminal tactics to fund dictator Kim Jong Un’s ambitions, including the regime’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.

    The statement from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, US National Security Agency, South Korean National Intelligence Service and others does not mention Kim’s weapons programs, but US officials have previously warned that a portion of the money Pyongyang steals through hacking can go to weapons development.

    North Korea’s use of stolen cryptocurrency to fund its weapons programs is part of the regular set of intelligence products presented to President Joe Biden, a senior administration official told CNN this week.

    “They need money, so they’re going to keep being creative,” the official said. “I don’t think the North Koreans are ever going to stop looking for illicit ways to glean funds because it’s an authoritarian regime … under heavy sanctions.”

    The news comes as North Korea displayed nearly a dozen advanced intercontinental ballistic missiles at a nighttime military parade on Wednesday.

    The new US-South Korea advisory did not identify hospitals that the North Korean hackers had allegedly victimized. The Justice Department has previously accused Pyongyang-backed hackers of hitting a medical center in Kansas in 2021, encrypting computer systems the facility relied on to operate key equipment, and another medical provider in Colorado.

    The advisory follows a similar warning from US agencies in July that North Korean hackers had used ransomware to disrupt services at health organizations for “prolonged periods.”

    In the statement released Thursday, US and South Korean officials accused North Korean hackers of taking pains to try to hide their identities – even posing as a notorious Russian ransomware gang. The North Koreans are also emulating non-state criminals in dumping online the private data of victims who do not pay, officials said.

    The hackers have used a popular software used in small and medium-sized hospitals in South Korea to spread their malicious code with the aim of locking up computers, according to the advisory.

    In addition to hacking, suspected North Koreans have posed as other nationalities to apply for work at IT firms and send money back to Pyongyang, US agencies have publicly warned. A CNN investigation found at least one cryptocurrency entrepreneur who unwittingly paid a North Korean tech worker tens of thousands of dollars.

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  • Supreme Court under fresh pressure to adopt code of ethics | CNN Politics

    Supreme Court under fresh pressure to adopt code of ethics | CNN Politics


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    For decades, Supreme Court justices have dodged questions related to conflicts of interest by saying essentially “Trust us” or “We’re different.” They’ve refused to be bound by an official ethics code and grievance procedures that cover other federal judges.

    But mounting public pressure may finally spur changes. Court sources have told CNN that internal discussions, which date back at least to 2019, have been revived. The timing of any public resolution is uncertain, however, and it appears some justices have been more hopeful than others about reaching consensus.

    This week, in an action that demonstrates the intensifying national concern over the justices’ behavior, the American Bar Association’s House of Delegates approved a resolution urging the high court to adopt a binding code of ethics “comparable” to the code in place for lower-court US judges.

    Unlike liberal groups that have been pounding on the justices to establish ethics rules, neither the ABA nor its policy-making House of Delegates is known for criticizing the high court. The 591-member House of Delegates is more associated with establishment positions than flamethrowing advocacy.

    Separately, members of Congress on Thursday re-introduced legislation that would lead to a code of ethics for Supreme Court justices. A similar bill failed last year, but lawmakers say the increasing public criticism could give the legislation more traction.

    The current accelerated scrutiny of the justices’ extracurricular behavior arises against a backdrop of rulings that have broken norms. The conservative majority has been more willing than prior courts to jettison decades of precedent, most startlingly in last June’s decision reversing the 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion rights landmark. More recently, the court’s stature has been undermined by the early leak of the Dobbs opinion that overturned Roe and other security lapses.

    Together, the substance of cases and refusal to address ethics issues evoke an unaccountable court that will rule as it wishes and act as it wants, without regard for public concern.

    New York University law professor Stephen Gillers believes the court’s standing has been diminished by its reluctance to address ethical concerns.

    “There’s almost no willingness to engage with the repeated call from various venues, and now the ABA,” Gillers said, calling the court’s lack of response “incredible, tone-deaf,” and adding, “I think that has hurt the court’s reputation.”

    Growing criticism of America’s top court, including from members of Congress seeking accountability, could cause the justices to finally act. They previously worked behind the scenes to formalize ethics rules, but the effort stalled. In 2019, Justice Elena Kagan, commenting publicly on the negotiations over a code of ethics, told a US House committee that discussions were underway. “It’s something that is being thought very seriously about,” Kagan said.

    Court sources told CNN that internal discussions have continued and that some justices hope a code might be crafted in due course.

    The justices rarely address recusal, that is, why they decide to sit out a case or are hearing one that critics say could pose a conflict. Their disclosure filings include limited information about their finances, those of their spouses and various reimbursements for travel.

    Activities of spouses have spurred more questions regarding recusals, particularly related to Justice Clarence Thomas. He resolved cases with his colleagues arising from former President Donald Trump’s failed 2020 reelection bid, as his wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, worked with White House allies to challenge Joe Biden’s victory.

    Neither Justice Thomas nor Chief Justice John Roberts responded to press inquiries about potential conflicts when information about Ginni Thomas’ activities became public through the US House investigation into the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol.

    Ginni Thomas’ lawyer, Mark Paoletta, suggested in testimony last year before a US House subcommittee that the Supreme Court could continue with the current practice of consulting with, rather than formally following, existing code that covers lower-court judges. During an April 2022 hearing titled “Building Confidence in the Supreme Court through ethics and Recusal reforms,” Paoletta said: “There is nothing wrong with ethics and recusals at the Supreme Court. The justices are ethical and honorable public servants. Moreover, to support any reform legislation right now would be to validate this vicious political attack on the Supreme Court.”

    The Supreme Court’s public information office declined to comment Thursday.

    NYU’s Gillers, who focuses on legal and judicial ethics, traces some of today’s criticism of the court’s ethics to America’s enduring abortion wars and the June decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

    “It’s hard for a lot of people to understand why Roe could be overturned simply because the composition of the court changed,” he said. “Why now, after nearly 49 years of Republicans and Democrats supporting Roe?”

    The reversal, indeed, followed the addition of the new Trump appointees to the court.

    Yet Gillers said the justices’ off-bench behavior and their enduring lack of a formal code of ethics are rightfully being scrutinized and affect the court’s stature.

    The court’s legitimacy has been increasingly debated, even publicly among the justices, since the Dobbs ruling.

    When the ABA House of Delegates voted on its resolution in New Orleans on Monday, an accompanying report said, “The absence of a clearly articulated, binding code of ethics for the justices of the Court imperils the legitimacy of the Court. More than that, this absence potentially imperils the legitimacy of all American courts and the American judicial system, given the Court’s central role enshrined in our federal republic.”

    The nine justices are covered by a federal law dictating that jurists disqualify themselves from a case when their “impartiality might reasonably be questioned,” but they are exempted from the federal judicial channels for resolving complaints and lack a specific ethics code governing their activities.

    So, for example in 2018, more than 80 complaints filed against US appeals court Judge Brett Kavanaugh, arising from his tumultuous Supreme Court nomination hearings, were summarily dismissed after the Senate confirmed him as a justice.

    US appeals court Judge Timothy Tymkovich, who wrote the judicial council’s dismissal of those complaints, referred to the 1980 judicial conduct law that excludes the nine justices.

    “The allegations contained in the complaints are serious,” he said, “but the Judicial Council is obligated to adhere to the Act. Lacking statutory authority to do anything more, the complaints must be dismissed because an intervening event – Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court – has made the complaints no longer appropriate for consideration under the Act.”

    As he introduced new legislation Thursday, Sen. Dick Durbin, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement that “the Supreme Court of the Unites States ought to be the embodiment of objectivity.”

    “Congress must close the inexcusable ‘Supreme Court loophole’ in federal judicial ethics rules by creating and enforcing a code of ethics for Supreme Court Justices,” the Illinois Democrat said.

    Among the provisions in the proposed “Supreme Court Ethics Act” are those that would require the Judicial Conference of the United States, a policy-making arm of the federal judiciary, to craft a code that would apply to the justices and, separately, would direct the Supreme Court itself to appoint an ethics investigations counsel to handle public complaints about potentially unethical conduct by the justices.

    In 2011, Roberts explained some of the factors that allowed the high court to be shielded from strictures related to recusals.

    “Lower court judges can freely substitute for one another,” Roberts wrote in an annual year-end report. “If an appeals court or district court judge withdraws from a case, there is another federal judge who can serve in that recused judge’s place. But the Supreme Court consists of nine Members who always sit together, and if a Justice withdraws from a case, the Court must sit without its full membership. A Justice accordingly cannot withdraw from a case as a matter of convenience or simply to avoid controversy.”

    He also said that the Supreme Court “does not sit in judgment of one of its own Members’ decision whether to recuse in the course of deciding a case.”

    At the time of Roberts’ 2011 statement, outside critics were questioning whether Thomas and Kagan should sit on the first major dispute over the Affordable Care Act – Thomas because of his wife’s opposition to the 2010 health care law and Kagan because of her prior work in the Obama administration.

    Without addressing those justices directly, Roberts wrote, “I have complete confidence in the capability of my colleagues to determine when recusal is warranted. They are jurists of exceptional integrity and experience whose character and fitness have been examined through a rigorous appointment and confirmation process.”

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • Lucid Offers $7,500 ‘EV Credit’ and the Stock Drops. It’s No Longer Beating Tesla Shares.

    Lucid Offers $7,500 ‘EV Credit’ and the Stock Drops. It’s No Longer Beating Tesla Shares.

    Electric vehicle maker


    Lucid


    was shut out of the government’s new purchase tax credits for consumers buying an EV. The company decided to do something about that.

    Investors aren’t so sure they like it. They are taking some profits after a run that had


    Lucid


    (ticker:LCID) stock outperforming


    Tesla


    (TSLA) shares.

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  • What travelers to Turkey need to know | CNN

    What travelers to Turkey need to know | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    After a devastating earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria on Monday, claiming the lives of thousands of people and injuring many more, there will be questions for those who had been planning to travel to region in coming days and weeks.

    Turkey is a major tourism destination, attracting 44.6 million foreign arrivals in 2022, according to Turkish government statistics, and many would-be visitors will have travel booked to key resorts and cities, particularly in popular coastal winter sun destinations.

    The 7.8-magnitude quake hit near to the town of Gaziantep in southeast Turkey, close to the Syrian border, at around 4.17 a.m. local time, and was followed by a number of aftershocks.

    Thousands of buildings have collapsed as a result.

    So far, US travelers have been advised to “avoid travel to areas affected by the earthquake,” while the UK Foreign Office is instructing citizens to “avoid the immediate vicinity” of the incident.

    For the most part, travel to the leading tourism destinations – mostly far from the quake-hit areas – remain unaffected, however there will inevitably be some impact in a country that is now in a three-month state of national emergency.

    Here’s what we know so far:

    Approximately 10 Turkish provinces have been impacted by the quake, which was one of the strongest to hit the region in more than a century – Adana, Adiyaman, Diyarbakir, Gaziantep, Hatay, Kahramanmaras, Kilis, Malatya, Osmaniye and Sanliurfa.

    The ancient Gaziantep Castle, one of the Turkish city’s most renowned landmarks, was severely damaged due to the earthquake.

    “Some of the bastions in the east, south and southeast parts of the historical Gaziantep Castle in the central Şahinbey district were destroyed by the earthquake, the debris was scattered on the road,” reported Turkish state-run news agency Anadolu.

    The city of Aleppo, already ravaged by 11 years of civil war, was among the most affected areas of northwestern Syria, where more than four million people were already relying on humanitarian assistance.

    At the time of writing, international airlines were still operating flights to and from Turkey.

    However, Turkish Airlines, the national flag carrier airline of Turkey, has canceled hundreds of flights over the last few days.

    Turkey’s Adana Airport is closed until further notice, according to Turkish news agency Demirören News Agency, while the nearby Hatay Airport (HTY) has also been shut due to a damaged runway.

    Istanbul Airport, Turkey’s main international airport, is operating as normal.

    Travelers due to fly into to any of the impacted airports should contact the airline for the latest information.

    Gaziantep is located a relatively far distance from some of the country’s main tourist hubs such as Antalya, which is around 594 kilometers (369 miles) away by air, and Istanbul, about 850 kilometers (528 miles), so those headed to these destinations are unlikely to be severely impacted.

    However, the possibility of further aftershocks remains a concern.

    The tremors from the quake were felt as far away as Greenland, according to the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.

    “The large earthquakes in Turkey were clearly registered on the seismographs in Denmark and Greenland,” seismologist Tine Larsen told AFP.

    Meanwhile, tourist Julia Miernik, who tweeted that she was on vacation in Larnaka, Cyprus, took to the social media platform to reveal that her hotel was “floating.”

    “Bed is shaking on the ground and everybody is screaming,” she posted on Twitter on Monday. “Then I see the news in #Turkey First day on my holidays and #earthquake?”

    CNN has contacted several airlines and holiday operators serving Turkey to clarify whether there are likely to be cancellations as a result of the earthquake. So far there’s no indication that any travel to major tourism destinations has been disrupted.

    US travelers due to travel to Turkey in the coming days and weeks have been warned to avoid the areas impacted by the earthquake.

    A statement issued by the US Embassy on Monday advised that “large aftershocks continue and are likely through the coming days.”

    Neither the US nor UK authorities have told their citizens to stay away from unaffected areas in Turkey.

    Top image: Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque in Istanbul (murattellioglu/Adobe Stock).

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  • PepsiCo Beats Earnings Estimates, Hikes Dividend

    PepsiCo Beats Earnings Estimates, Hikes Dividend



    PepsiCo


    beat earnings and revenue estimates in the fourth quarter, driven by higher prices. It increased its annual dividend, sending the stock higher in premarket trading Thursday.

    The beverages and snacks giant (ticker:PEP) reported adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of $1.67 on sales of $28 billion. Analysts were expecting EPS of $1.65 on sales of $26.8 billion.

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  • China wants to dominate the ‘near space’ battlefield. Balloons are a key asset | CNN

    China wants to dominate the ‘near space’ battlefield. Balloons are a key asset | CNN


    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    In China’s eyes, the newest superpower battlefield sits between 12 and 60 miles above the Earth’s surface in a thin-aired layer of the atmosphere it calls “near space.”

    Lying above the flightpaths of most commercial and military jets and below satellites, near space is an in-between area for spaceflight to pass through – but it is also a domain where hypersonic weapons transit and ballistic missiles cross.

    China has paid close attention to other countries’ developments in this region, which has been hailed by Chinese military experts as “a new front for militarization” and “an important field of competition among the world’s military powers.”

    In addition to developing high-tech vessels such as solar-powered drones and hypersonic vehicles, China is also reviving a decades-old technology to utilize this area of the atmosphere – lighter-than-air vehicles. They include stratospheric airships and high-altitude balloons – similar to the one identified over the continental United States and shot down on Saturday.

    China maintains the balloon is a civilian research airship, despite claims by US officials that the device was part of an extensive Chinese surveillance program.

    While questions remain about that incident, an examination of Chinese state media reports and scientific papers reveal the country’s growing interest in these lighter-than-air vehicles, which Chinese military experts have touted for use toward a wide range of purposes, from communication relay, reconnaissance and surveillance to electronic countermeasures.

    Chinese research on the high-altitude balloons dates back to the late 1970s, but over the past decade there’s been renewed focus on using older technology equipped with new hardware as major powers around the world have bulked up their capabilities in the sky.

    “With the rapid development of modern technology, the space for information confrontation is no longer limited to land, sea, and the low altitude. Near space has also become a new battlefield in modern warfare and an important part of the national security system,” read a 2018 article in the PLA Daily, the official newspaper of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

    And a range of “near-space flight vehicles” will play a vital role in future joint combat operations that integrate outer space and the Earth’s atmosphere, the article said.

    Chinese leader Xi Jinping has urged the PLA Air Force to “speed up air and space integration and sharpen their offensive and defensive capabilities” as early as 2014, and military experts have designated “near space” as a crucial link in the integration.

    Searches on CNKI, China’s largest online academic database, show Chinese researchers, both military and civilian, have published more than 1,000 papers and reports on “near space,” many of which focus on the development of “near space flight vehicles.” China has also set up a research center to design and develop high-altitude balloons and stratospheric airships, or dirigibles, under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a top government think tank.

    One particular area of interest is surveillance. While China already deploys a sprawling satellite network for sophisticated long-range surveillance, Chinese military experts have highlighted the advantages of lighter-than-air vehicles.

    Unlike rotating satellites or traveling aircraft, stratospheric airships and high-altitude balloons “can hover over a fixed location for a long period of time” and are not easily detected by radar, wrote Shi Hong, the executive editor of Shipborne Weapons, a prominent military magazine published by a PLA-linked institute, in an article published in state media in 2022.

    In a 2021 video segment run by state news agency Xinhua, a military expert explains how near-space lighter-than-air vehicles can surveil and take higher resolution photos and videos at a much lower cost compared to satellites.

    In the video, Cheng Wanmin, an expert at the National University of Defense Technology, highlighted the progress by the US, Russia and Israel in developing these vehicles, adding China has also made its own “breakthroughs.”

    An example of advances China has made in this domain is the reported flight of a 100-meter-long (328 feet) unmanned dirigible-like airship known as “Cloud Chaser.” In a 2019 interview with the Southern Metropolis Daily newspaper, Wu Zhe, a professor at Beihang University, said the vehicle had transited across Asia, Africa and North America in an around-the-world flight at 20,000 meters (65, 616 feet) above the Earth.

    Another scientist on the team told the newspaper that compared with satellites, stratospheric airships are better for “long-term observation” and have a range of purposes from disaster warning and environmental research to wireless network construction and aerial reconnaissance.

    Cheng Wanmin, an expert at the National University of Defense Technology, discusses the development of lighter-than-air vehicles in a video segment run by state news agency Xinhua in 2021.

    It’s also clear that China is not alone in seeing new uses for a technology that’s been leveraged for military reconnaissance as far back as the late 18th century, when French forces employed a balloon corps.

    The US has also been bolstering its capacity to use lighter-than-air vehicles. In 2021, the US Department of Defense contracted an American aerospace firm to work on using their stratospheric balloons as a means “to develop a more complete operating picture and apply effects to the battlefield,” according to a statement from the firm, Raven Aerostar, at the time.

    “This isn’t just a China thing. The US, and other nations as well, have been working on and developing high-altitude aerostats, balloons and similar vehicles,” said Brendan Mulvaney, director of the China Aerospace Studies Institute (CASI), a research center serving the US Air Force.

    “They are cheap, provide long-term persistent stare for collection of imagery, communications and other information – including weather,” said Mulvaney, who authored a 2020 paper that detailed China’s interest in using lighter-than-air vehicles for “near-space reconnaissance.”

    China also appears acutely aware of the potential for other countries to use balloons to spy.

    In 2019, a documentary series on China’s border defense forces produced by a state-owned television channel featured an incident where the PLA Air Force spotted and shot down a suspected high-altitude surveillance balloon that “threatened (China’s) air defense safety.”

    The documentary did not provide further detail about the time and location of the incident, but a paper published last April by researchers in a PLA institute noted air-drift balloons were spotted over China in 1997 and 2017.

    Other experts have pointed to the potential use of balloons in data collection that can aid China’s development of hypersonic weapons that transit through near space.

    “Understanding the atmospheric conditions up there is critical to programming the guidance software” for ballistic and hypersonic missiles, according to Hawaii-based analyst Carl Schuster, a former director of operations at the US Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center.

    Chinese state media reports show China has also used balloons to test advanced hypersonic vehicles. In 2019, state broadcaster CCTV’s military channel showed footage of a balloon lifting off for what it described as maiden testing of three miniaturized models of “wide-range aircraft,” which according to Chinese media reports, can fly at a wide range of speeds, up to five times the speed of sound.

    A 2019 report broadcast by state broadcaster CCTV's military channel showed footage of a balloon lifting off for what it described as maiden testing of three miniaturized models of

    US intelligence officials believe the Chinese balloon identified over the US in recent days is part of an extensive, Chinese military-run surveillance program involving a fleet of balloons that has conducted at least two dozen missions over at least five continents in recent years, CNN reported on Tuesday.

    Beijing on Thursday said the assessment was “likely part of the US’ information and public opinion warfare” against China. It has maintained that the device identified over the US is civilian in nature, and linked it to “companies,” though it declined to provide more information on which entity manufactured the balloons.

    Both the self-governing island of Taiwan and Japan have acknowledged past, similar sightings, though it is not clear if they are related to the US incident.

    A US military commander on Monday acknowledged that the US has a “domain awareness gap” that allowed three other suspected Chinese spy balloons to transit the continental US undetected during the previous administration.

    An FBI team is working on understanding more about the equipment reclaimed from the balloon shot down over the sea – including what kind of data it could collect and whether it could transmit that in real time.

    CASI’s Mulvaney said that whether the balloon itself is characterized as “dual use” or “state-owned,” data collected would have gone back to China, which is now receiving another kind of information from the incident.

    “At the end of the day responses and (tactics, techniques, and procedures) from the US and other countries on how they react, or fail to – all of that has value to China and the PLA.”

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  • Philadelphia high school students disciplined after video shows one using black spray paint on another’s face while saying racist comments | CNN

    Philadelphia high school students disciplined after video shows one using black spray paint on another’s face while saying racist comments | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    At least two Philadelphia high school students are facing disciplinary action after a racist video recorded outside of school surfaced on social media showing one girl spraying black paint on another girl’s face as they made racist comments a week into Black History Month.

    Two of the girls in the video that began circulating online on Tuesday attend Saint Hubert Catholic High School for Girls, according to Kenneth A. Gavin, the chief communications officer for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. A third girl in the video is not a student there, he said.

    “We will not disclose finite details of individual disciplinary actions but the level of behavior calls for a minimum of suspension and counseling and a maximum of expulsion,” Gavin told CNN in an email Wednesday.

    In a statement released Wednesday, Franklin Towne Charter High School said the former student who participated in the video or any other students who exhibit such conduct “have no place at our school.”

    “The content of this video does not reflect the values and culture of our Towne family,” the school said on it website. It’s unclear whether the former student was enrolled at the time of the video recording.

    A Black parent whose daughter attends the Catholic school told CNN the video was sent directly to his daughter and niece as well as other Black students.

    When asked whether the video was initially sent to Black students at the school, Gavin told CNN, “At this time it is unknown as to the exact distribution. My understanding is that it was posted and shared on social media.”

    Saint Hubert Catholic High School serves roughly 500 students grades 9 through 12 while nearly 1,300 students attend Franklin Towne Charter High School, their respective data shows. Both schools are majority white, the data shows.

    The video began circulating on social media a week into Black History Month.

    In the video, a girl is seen using black spray paint to color the face of another girl as she says, “You’re a Black girl! You know your roots! It’s February! You’re nothing but a slave… and after this she’s doing my laundry.”

    People in the video can be heard laughing as this occurs. One person is seen filming the incident on her phone. The girl who had her face painted black says, “I’m Black and I’m proud.”

    The video was taken outside of school and after school hours, a Wednesday statement provided to CNN by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia said.

    “We recognize and understand that the actions of these students have reopened societal wounds in a deeply painful way. Those allegedly responsible are not present in school and are being disciplined appropriately,” the archdiocese said.

    The archdiocese added the school and the Office of Catholic Education are conducting a review into the incident. “Should that process determine involvement by any other students, they will also face disciplinary action,” the statement said.

    Footage shot by CNN affiliate KYW showed parents and activists protesting outside Saint Hubert Catholic High School for Girls on Wednesday holding signs that read, “No More Racism” and “Hate Hurts.”

    Catherine Hicks, president of the Philadelphia branch of the NAACP, expressed in a statement Wednesday her strong disappointment in the video and called on the school to “ensure action takes place immediately.”

    “It is extremely disheartening to have to address this, especially during the observance of Black History Month, that honors the accomplishments and rich history of black people,” the statement said.

    “The video showing the egregious acts of Philadelphia Archdiocese white female students spray painting a young lady’s face black is totally unacceptable,” the statement continued. To say the act was done in jest “is not only appalling but shows us the continued cycle of racism that we are constantly fighting against.”

    In its statement, the archdiocese said: “We take this opportunity to be abundantly clear that there is no place for hate, racism, or bigotry at Saint Hubert’s or in any Catholic school. It is not acceptable under any circumstances or at any time. The use of any racial epithet is inconsistent with our values to treat all people with charity, decency, and respect.”

    The archdiocese noted that the students’ behavior violates the code of conduct and the policy on technology use, which applies to students inside and outside the school.

    According to the statement, general threats were made Tuesday afternoon against the school community after the video surfaced on social media.

    The threats were reported to law enforcement, and no extracurricular activities will be held at the school for the remainder of the week, according to the statement.

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  • Man who allegedly fired replica gun inside San Francisco synagogue faces hate crime enhancement over public comments | CNN

    Man who allegedly fired replica gun inside San Francisco synagogue faces hate crime enhancement over public comments | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    A man arrested after allegedly firing a replica gun several times in a San Francisco synagogue now faces a hate crime enhancement, the city’s district attorney said Wednesday.

    The hate crime allegation against 51-year-old Dmitri Mishin is tied to statements he made during the incident as well as social media posts he made involving “several postings of an individual in Nazi-type clothing,” San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said in a news conference.

    While officials did not share what Mishin said while inside the synagogue, prosecutors believe he “harbored antisemitic views and that was the motivation for his actions,” Jenkins said. The hate crime allegation will enhance punishment guidelines if he is convicted, she added.

    Mishin was arrested Friday, days after he allegedly stepped inside a synagogue in the Richmond District during a gathering and “made a verbal statement,” pulled out what appeared to be a firearm and shot several times inside the building, police have said.

    Police recovered expended shell casings at the scene and at the time said they believed he had been firing blanks.

    Mishin was charged Wednesday morning with two felony counts of “making threats obstructing exercise of religion,” and six misdemeanor counts of disturbing a religious meeting and brandishing a replica firearm, the district attorney’s office announced.

    He faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of all charges, according to Jenkins. CNN has been unable to identify an attorney for Mishin.

    “It is clear that antisemitism is still active and strong even here in San Francisco, in such a diverse place, and it’s something that will not be tolerated by this office or by myself,” Jenkins said.

    Mishin was originally scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday but will now be arraigned Thursday, Jenkins said. Her office will request he be detained without bail, she added.

    “Anyone who would walk into a synagogue of that sort, and make the statements that he did and displayed what appeared to be a firearm, is somebody who poses a public safety risk,” Jenkins said.

    The incident at the San Francisco synagogue came just days after a man allegedly threw a Molotov cocktail at a New Jersey synagogue amid a backdrop of recent incendiary antisemitic incidents, including tweets from Kanye West, signs over a major Los Angeles bridge and messages projected on buildings in Florida.

    The Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism, which has tracked incidents of US antisemitic harassment, vandalism and assault since 1979, found 2,717 incidents of antisemitism in the US in 2021, up a significant 34% from the previous year.

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