The European Union has drawn up a plan to boost the production of electric cars and renewable energy projects.
The International Energy Agency estimates the global market for mass-produced clean energy will triple to around $650bn a year by 2030.
The world’s biggest economies want a slice of that growing industry.
The United States Congress recently passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes billions of dollars in grants and loans to boost financing and deployment of clean energy projects. But it has sparked a trade dispute with allies in Europe.
Now the European Union has set out its own plan to compete with the US as a production hub for green products.
Elsewhere, we look at why Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is threatening the central bank’s autonomy.
United States President Joe Biden has pitched himself as a defender of retirement and healthcare programmes during a speech in the southern state of Florida, promising to protect Medicare and Social Security against any proposed cuts by Republicans.
Speaking in the city of Tampa, Biden, a Democrat, leaned into statements he had previously made that the rival party could not be trusted to safeguard government benefits.
“Look, I know that a lot of Republicans, their dream is to cut Social Security, Medicare. Well, let me say this. If that’s your dream, I’m your nightmare,” he told the audience at the University of Tampa.
Biden is widely speculated to be preparing for a reelection bid in 2024. In his remarks on Wednesday, he appealed to older Americans, noting that Florida has the highest percentage of senior citizens in the US, along with Maine.
In the US, Medicare is a federal health insurance programme for people ages 65 and up that is also available to certain younger people with disabilities. Social Security, meanwhile, provides benefits for retirement, disability and dependents whose family members pass away.
Biden also reiterated on Wednesday his previous pledge to lower the prices of prescription drugs like insulin, a medication used to treat diabetes. Biden has proposed limiting out-of-pocket costs for insulin to $35 a month.
“Bringing down prescription drug costs doesn’t just save seniors money. It would cut the federal budget by hundreds of billions of dollars. Not a joke,” he said to applause.
The proposal builds on prescription drug reform included in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which placed caps on some drug prices. In Wednesday’s speech, Biden touted that law and other accomplishments from his first two years in office.
“Folks on fixed incomes rely on Social Security and Medicare to get by. They deserve a greater sense of security and dignity and that’s what my plan offers,” said Biden.
“I signed the Inflation Reduction Act and took on the most powerful interest we’ve been fighting for years, pharma, to bring down healthcare costs so you can have a better night’s sleep.”
The Tampa speech comes as Biden travels to key swing states in the wake of the annual State of the Union address, held before the US Congress on Tuesday.
During the State of the Union, Biden hammered home the message that he would defend popular government programmes that benefit elderly and low-income people. He also accused “some Republicans” of trying to “sunset” Medicare and Social Security, an assertion that provoked boos from conservative members in the audience.
Biden revisited that moment in his Tampa speech, saying: “We saw on Tuesday night Republicans don’t like being called out on this.”
The event in Florida comes amid questions of whether Biden’s Democratic Party remains competitive in the southern swing state, which tilted in favour of Republican candidate Donald Trump in the last two presidential elections.
Biden has said that the state’s large population of elderly retirees could see their benefits cut by Republican legislators, a claim the GOP has disputed.
Rick Scott, one of Florida’s two representatives in the US Senate, had previously proposed that, every five years, federal legislation should “sunset” or expire. “If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again,” Scott said in a statement on Wednesday.
Critics of Scott’s proposal fear it would affect programmes like Medicare and Social Security. But Scott has called such claims untrue, saying he is “not for cutting Social Security or Medicare”.
Before his time in office, Scott accumulated substantial wealth as the head of a hospital conglomerate that was later made to pay $1.7bn to settle federal charges that the company had enriched itself by defrauding Medicare and Medicaid. Scott has denied that he was aware of any wrongdoing during his tenure.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters that Republican legislators “have continuously said over the years, and especially the last several months, that they want to cut those two key benefits”.
Speaking in the state of Wisconsin on Wednesday, the day after the State of the Union address, Biden promised not to enact cuts to the programmes.
“These benefits belong to you, the American worker,” said Biden. “You earned it. And I will not allow anyone to cut them. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever, period.”
Release welcomed as ‘excellent’ news amid Nicaraguan government’s crackdown on opposition figures and critics.
Nicaragua has released 222 inmates, many of whom were considered to be political prisoners of longtime Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega’s government, and they are on their way to the United States, a senior US official has said.
“Some of these individuals have spent years in prison, many of them for exercising their fundamental freedoms, in awful conditions and with no access to due process,” the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said in a statement on Thursday.
The Nicaraguan government did not immediately confirm the release.
The New York Times reported that the US government sent a plane to the Nicaraguan capital of Managua to fly the freed prisoners to Washington, DC. The flight is expected to arrive around noon local time (17:00 GMT).
Ortega has maintained that his imprisoned opponents and others were behind 2018 protests that he says were part of a plot to overthrow him.
Tens of thousands of people have fled into exile – most notably to neighbouring Costa Rica – since Nicaraguan security forces cracked down on those anti-government demonstrations.
More recently, the US and European Union have accused Ortega of launching a fresh campaign of unjustified arrests in the lead-up to 2021 elections, as dozens of opposition leaders and presidential hopefuls were detained.
US President Joe Biden’s administration denounced the vote, which saw Ortega win a fourth consecutive term, as a “sham” – and Washington and its allies have heaped fresh sanctions on the government in Managua.
Many of those arrested have been sentenced to lengthy prison terms, often on charges of “conspiracy to undermine national integrity”.
In June of last year, the United Nations’ then-human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, said the situation in Nicaragua was deteriorating amid arbitrary detentions, harsh prison conditions, a lack of due process, increased state control over academic institutions and non-profit organisations, and curbs to freedom of association.
“I strongly urge the government of Nicaragua to uphold – not move further away from – its human rights obligations. I call on authorities to immediately cease policies which are today only serving to isolate the country and its people from the regional and international communities,” she said.
On Thursday, the senior Biden administration official said the US facilitated the transportation of the freed individuals to the country, where they will be paroled for humanitarian reasons into the country for a period of two years.
The official said the US government considered the mass release a positive step by Nicaragua, adding that all of those who left the Central American country did so voluntarily and are to receive medical and legal assistance upon arrival in the US.
Arturo McFields, the former Nicaraguan envoy to the Organization of American States, who resigned from his post last year over the Ortega government’s human rights record, welcomed the release of the prisoners as “excellent” news.
“Hallelujah, glory to God,” McFields said in a video posted on Twitter.
Family members of some of those released confirmed that their loved ones were flying to Washington, DC.
Berta Valle, the wife of opposition leader Felix Maradiaga, said the State Department told her that her husband was on the plane, as reported by The Associated Press news agency.
Georgiana Aguirre-Sacasa, the daughter of Nicaragua’s former foreign minister Francisco Aguirre-Sacasa, also told The Guardian newspaper that her father was among those freed.
“This is huge,” she said. “This has been a very long slog for us and I just can’t believe it.”
It was not immediately clear which other prisoners were released.
The fallout from the alleged Chinese “spy” balloon that flew over the United States has cemented a near bipartisan consensus in Washington over the need to “stand up” to Beijing, as competition between the two countries intensifies.
While US officials stress they remain open to dialogue with China despite the renewed tensions, many politicians in Washington are invoking the incident to call for tougher policies.
US President Joe Biden himself warned China against threatening US sovereignty during his annual State of the Union speech, seen by an estimated 23.4 million TV viewers on Tuesday evening.
“The Biden administration has shown that it is very concerned with attacks particularly from the right, from Republican critics, that they are being too soft on China,” said Tobita Chow, director of Justice Is Global, a project that advocates for a more sustainable international economy.
“And because of that pressure coming in from the right, I think we often see them leaning further in the direction of confrontational politics.”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken postponed a previously scheduled trip to Beijing over the balloon incident, which the Biden administration has called an “unacceptable” violation of American sovereignty.
The US military shot down the balloon on Saturday as it flew over the Atlantic Ocean, after days of debate and congressional calls to bring it down.
In his State of the Union speech, Biden said the US is not seeking confrontation in its competition with China but warned that Washington will stand up for its interests against Beijing.
“As we made clear last week, if China threatens our sovereignty, we will act to protect our country — and we did,” he said.
What do we know about the balloon?
Little is publicly known about the Chinese balloon or what it was doing in US airspace. Nonetheless, its presence caused a significant political stir and produced countless news headlines and wall-to-wall coverage.
China initially expressed regret for the incident, describing the balloon as a civilian airship used for meteorological research that “deviated far from its planned course”. Beijing later condemned the US hit to bring down the aircraft.
But the Pentagon insisted it was a “high-altitude surveillance balloon”, although US defence officials said the balloon did not pose a “military or physical threat”.
Still, some Republican lawmakers kept describing the aircraft as a risk to national security.
Republican Senator Tom Cotton denounced the Biden administration for allowing the balloon to traverse the continental US for days before shooting it down.
Cotton told Fox News earlier this week that he felt the delay in Biden’s response was “dangerous for the American people”. He also accused the administration of pushing to salvage Blinken’s visit to Beijing, which he described as “already ill-advised”.
US officials had previously said that, if the balloon were brought down over land, falling debris could “potentially cause civilian injuries or deaths or significant property damage”.
Christopher Heurlin, an associate professor of government and Asian studies at Bowdoin College in the US state of Maine, said while the balloon may not have been a direct threat to Americans, it created a “shock” in the country.
“We like to think in the United States that we live in North America and we’re oceans away from any kind of competitors — and in that sense, not very vulnerable,” Heurlin told Al Jazeera.
“Whereas having the spy balloon flying overhead, I think, does create some kind of visceral sense of vulnerability in the collective psyche.”
China has condemned the US hit on the balloon [Chad Fish via AP Photo]
As for Blinken’s trip, Heurlin said “political considerations” played a role in the decision to postpone it.
“I’m not sure that politically Biden would have been able to get away with sending Secretary of State Blinken to China under these circumstances,” he told Al Jazeera.
Chow, the director of Justice Is Global, agreed that the “panic” over the balloon likely led to postponing the visit.
“I think the Biden administration correctly judged that the balloon was not really that big of a deal,” Chow told Al Jazeera. “But they felt overwhelmed by this wave of media coverage and this very extreme freakout from the right.”
How we got here
The balloon incident came against the backdrop of growing animosity between Washington and Beijing.
Last year, the White House released a national security strategy that described China as the “most consequential geopolitical challenge” for the US. The Pentagon also prioritised competition with Beijing in its defence strategy.
Both assessments primarily focused on China, not Russia, despite the latter’s invasion of Ukraine, which has disrupted global supply chains for vital goods like food and energy and ushered in the most intense violence in Europe since World War II.
Ties between Beijing and Washington have soured over numerous points of tension in recent years, including trade issues, the status of Taiwan, China’s claims in the South China Sea and an ongoing US push against growing Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific.
As Washington’s so-called “war on terror” — initiated during the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks — began to wind down, the US turned its focus to competing with China, whose economic power and push for global influence has been growing.
Chow said the root of the tensions is “neoliberal free-trade globalisation”. That economic framework, he explained, has been experiencing deeper systemic problems since the 2008 financial crisis and has led to “zero-sum competition, which then became the breeding ground for dangerous nationalist politics”.
Heurlin, the professor, linked the current state of affairs between the two countries to economics as well. He said that, with the loss of manufacturing jobs to outsourcing, the anger of many in the US has shifted to China.
He added that since the rise of President Xi Jinping in 2012, Beijing has pursued an assertive foreign policy that includes a “vocal defence of Chinese interests”.
“That is something that they’ve been doing really to appeal to Chinese nationalists back home,” Heurlin told Al Jazeera.
“So I think on both sides, this is something that’s been happening for a while. And then especially once Donald Trump comes to the American presidency and starts the trade war with China, that’s when relations really start to bottom out.”
Ultimately, Heurlin said, the US government’s goal is to “maintain its status quo position as the most militarily and economically powerful country in the world”.
What’s next for US-China relations?
Despite the deteriorating relationship, officials in both countries continue to call for cooperation on shared global challenges — namely combatting climate change and the COVID pandemic — as well as warn against confrontation.
But for the foreseeable future, the tensions show no sign of subsiding.
“What we should anticipate is that conflict between the US and China is going to continue and build and escalate over time,” Chow said. “And if things don’t change, then yes, this is going to be a long-term great power conflict that is going to have enormous consequences for people in the US and China and around the world.”
Heurlin echoed that prediction but said he hopes that, with China ending its “zero COVID” policies, more people-to-people interactions between US and Chinese citizens would soften public opinion in both countries.
“It’s getting harder and harder to manage the US-China relationship from the perspective of both Beijing and Washington and I don’t think there really is any kind of magical solution,” he said.
US President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night was quite upbeat. It was long on domestic affairs and short on foreign policy. It skimmed through the challenges posed by Russia and China and skipped the rest of the world altogether.
It is a first for a US president to reduce the United States’ global role to an afterthought, no less a president who considers himself an authority on foreign policy, or for a commander-in-chief, who has spent so much time, effort and political capital confronting Russia in Ukraine and containing China in Asia. This, therefore, begs the question: Why has Biden chosen to ignore entire continents and countless hot spots where America is directly involved?
According to one theory, Americans are not terribly interested in the rest of the world and foreign policy is an unaffordable luxury at a time of economic hardships and culture wars. Even the elites with greater overseas interests realise that costly investment in foreign policy is becoming a hard sell for the public in the absence of direct national security threats.
Biden understands that, which is why when he first took office, he vowed to end the “forever wars” and promised a “foreign policy for the middle class” – one that serves Americans at large.
But that has proven easier said than done, as Washington has channelled billions of dollars to Ukraine to fight a war that may last years amid warnings from populist Republicans about high inflation, the high cost of living, and high national debt.
Hence the president, who seems keen on pursuing a second term, dialled down the costly global bravado in his speech and instead focused on “made in America” growth and prosperity. His call on Congress to tax billionaires and big corporations and lower the costs of drugs – aligning him with the “progressive left” led by Senator Bernie Sanders – may prove more popular among working and middle-class families than, say, restoring Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
According to another theory, however, there is not much to celebrate in US foreign policy, which is why the president decided to skip the subject altogether. The two theories are not mutually exclusive.
Biden may have embraced Senator Sanders’ prescriptions on the economic malaise, but do not expect him to take his approach on foreign policy, no less in the Middle East, where the US has failed miserably. And disgracefully.
The president rejects Sanders’s stance on the Israeli occupation and the racism of its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Worse, he embraces the populist right-wing premier as his best friend, and continues to support his government of fascists and fanatics.
But Israel is only one of several failures.
There has not been a single foreign policy accomplishment anywhere in the greater Middle East, unless one considers the humiliating and disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan in favour of the Taliban a success, after 20 years of horrific war.
Truth be told, the Biden administration has helped reach ceasefires or maintain stalemates and status quos from Sudan to Syria, through Iraq, Libya, Palestine and Yemen. But that’s hardly a good thing; in fact, it’s a terrible normalisation of a dreadful situation.
Biden, who promised to put human rights at the centre of his foreign policy, has ignored US clients’ human rights violations and has been supporting strongmen who rule with an iron fist, while the region teeters under violent sectarian and authoritarian regimes.
Washington cannot in good conscience claim to confront Russia and China in the name of democracy, human rights and the preservation of sovereignty, while appeasing colonialism and dictatorship in the Middle East or elsewhere.
It is hypocritical and it is counterproductive.
Half a century after young Senator Biden first visited the Middle East in 1973, the older President Biden seems to view the region through the same prisms he did back then: Israel, oil, and the Cold War with Moscow. But as one exhausted 19th-century saying goes: history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.
It is indeed laughable that despite 50 years of costly strategic, diplomatic and military interventions, the US is back to square one, appeasing misbehaving regional clients in the name of a global democracy crusade and getting rejected and humiliated in the process.
Biden began and ended his State of the Union speech with the lofty idea that America is the land of possibilities. It is a nice and catchy slogan, one that allowed the country to dream big and to reach the moon, literally.
America is indeed a mighty nation, but it is not almighty. It must stop its evangelical approach to world affairs as if it is ordained to shape it, police it, and lead it. It is not.
US is carrying out an extensive operation to gather all the pieces of the device, which was shot down at the weekend.
The United States Navy has released the first official images of its effort to recover what Washington says was a Chinese “surveillance balloon”, which was shot down over the Atlantic Ocean after being spotted in US airspace last week.
The photos published on Tuesday showed US Navy members from an explosive ordnance group leaning over a rigid hull inflatable boat and pulling in broad swathes of the balloon’s white outer fabric and shell structure.
Using underwater drones, warships and inflatable vessels, the Navy is carrying out an extensive operation to gather all of the pieces of the device, which spent several days flying over North America last week before being shot down on Saturday off the coast of South Carolina.
The balloon measured approximately 60m (200 feet) tall and was carrying a long sensor package underneath, which the head of US Northern Command, General Glen VanHerck, said earlier this week was about the size of a small, regional jet.
While Beijing has said the balloon was an “unmanned civilian airship” that was primarily gathering weather data and had blown off course, Washington denounced its presence in US airspace as an “unacceptable” violation of the country’s sovereignty.
VanHerck said on Monday that the teams involved in the balloon recovery efforts were taking precautions to safeguard against the chance any part of the balloon was rigged with explosives.
The Navy is also using ships to map and scan the sea floor for all remaining parts of the balloon, so US analysts can get a full picture of what types of sensors were used and to better understand how the balloon was able to manoeuver.
The incident has fuelled fresh tensions between the two countries, prompting US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to postpone a planned visit to the Chinese capital that had been expected to begin on Sunday.
China said the decision to shoot down the device “seriously impacted and damaged” its relationship with the US, but White House national security spokesman John Kirby on Monday said Washington was not seeking confrontation.
Kirby dismissed China’s contention that the balloon was for meteorological purposes, however, saying “it strains credulity … that this was some kind of weather balloon that was floating on the winds”.
On Tuesday, US Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer told reporters that “the [Biden] administration is looking at other actions that can be taken” in response to the balloon, though he did not provide further details.
While the top Democratic lawmaker acknowledged that US-China relations were “tense”, Schumer defended the Biden administration amid criticism from Republicans, saying its actions were “calm, calculated and effective”.
“This is one area where we don’t need politics. So we need Democrats and Republicans to come together,” Schumer said.
This image provided by the US Navy shows sailors recovering the balloon off the coast of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, February 5, 2023 [US Navy via AP Photo]
Members of the Republican Party have accused the administration of failing to bring down the balloon quickly enough and taking a “weak” stance towards China.
A Pentagon spokesman said on Tuesday that China declined a US request for a phone call between US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe.
The Pentagon submitted the request for a secure call on Saturday, immediately after shooting down the balloon, Brigadier General Patrick Ryder said in a statement.
“Unfortunately, [China] has declined our request. Our commitment to open lines of communication will continue,” Ryder said.
Relations between the two powers have been strained in recent years by a number of issues, from disputes over technology and trade to the status of the self-ruled island of Taiwan, which Beijing sees as part of its territory.
Cooperation between the US and China, the first and second largest economies in the world, respectively, is critical to tackle global issues such as climate change.
Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping – who held in-person talks on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia in November – have previously stressed that they are not looking for confrontation or a new Cold War.
Speaking to reporters on Friday, an official with the US State Department told reporters that lines of communication would remain open, and that the US and China would seek to “responsibly manage” their differences.
The United States has said it is “committed” to helping residents “on both sides” of the Turkey-Syria border devastated by deadly earthquakes, but Washington ruled out dealing directly with the Syrian government.
State Department spokesperson Ned Price told reporters on Monday that the US will deliver aid to Syria through nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) without engaging with the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, which it does not recognise as legitimate.
“It would be quite ironic — if not even counterproductive — for us to reach out to a government that has brutalised its people over the course of a dozen years now,” Price said.
“Instead, we have humanitarian partners on the ground who can provide the type of assistance in the aftermath of these tragic earthquakes.”
Two earthquakes, followed by powerful aftershocks, hit southeastern Turkey and northern Syria early on Monday, causing widespread destruction and trapping thousands under the rubble.
More than 3,600 people have been killed in Turkey and Syria, according to the most recent estimates, and that number is expected to rise.
Price said on Monday that the US has already mobilised assistance to help those affected in both countries.
But the disaster appears to have done little to soften Washington’s stance towards Damascus. The US government called on Assad to step down in 2011 as a popular uprising turned into a protracted civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people in Syria.
Although some US allies in the Middle East have mended ties with Damascus in recent years, Washington has said it would not change its opposition to Assad without an inclusive political settlement to the conflict.
The Syrian government remains under heavy US sanctions aimed at isolating the country economically in response to widely documented human rights violations.
On Monday, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), a US-based advocacy group, called for the “immediate” lifting of US sanctions to facilitate the delivery of aid to Syria.
“We commend and are thankful to existing organizations on the ground providing immediate humanitarian aid and relief to those in Syria, Turkey, and across the region. The reality is more aid and relief is needed, and time is of the essence,” ADC executive director Abed Ayoub said in a statement.
“Lifting of the sanctions will open the doors for additional and supplemental aid that will provide immediate relief to those in need.”
But Price said Washington will not change its policy of working with nongovernmental partners to help Syrians. “This is a regime that has never shown any inclination to put the welfare, the well-being, the interests of its people first,” he told reporters.
“Now that its people are suffering even more, we’re going to continue doing what has proven effective over the course of the past dozen years or so — providing significant amounts of humanitarian assistance to partners on the ground.”
Price also said the process of delivering aid to Syria and Turkey was different, but the US wants to help people in both countries.
“In Turkey, we have a partner in the government. In Syria, we have a partner in the form of NGOs on the ground who are providing humanitarian support,” he said.
Price added that Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu earlier on Monday to offer condolences and convey that Washington is willing to provide “anything” that Ankara needs.
“We stand ready … to help our ally in a time of need,” said Price, adding that the same position extends to Syrian NGOs in “their efforts to alleviate the suffering of the Syrian people“.
Early on Monday, President Joe Biden said he ordered top US officials to reach out to their Turkish counterparts to coordinate “any and all needed assistance” for Turkey, a NATO partner.
“Today, our hearts and our deepest condolences are with all those who have lost precious loved ones, those who are injured, and those who saw their homes and businesses destroyed,” Biden said in a statement.
The Recording Academy, which organises the Grammy’s, has been trying to diversify its membership amid criticism.
Pop superstar Beyonce has broken the record for most career wins at the Grammy Awards even as she was pipped to the post for the night’s top prizes, including the coveted Best Album, which went to British singer Harry Styles.
Beyonce picked up four Grammys, including the Best Dance/Electronic Album for Renaissance, bringing her career total to 32, surpassing the 31 prizes won by the late classical conductor Georg Solti.
“I am trying not to be too emotional. I am trying just to receive this night,” Beyonce said at the ceremony on Sunday. “I want to thank God for protecting me. Thank you, God.”
The 41-year-old paid special tribute to the queer community, who she credited with inventing the genre she celebrated in her historically-layered record that pays homage to pioneers of funk, soul, rap, house and disco.
Harry Styles performed his single As It Was at the 65th annual Grammy Awards before taking home the prestigious Best Album award [Chris Pizzello/AP Photo]
Styles, who made his name with boyband One Direction, won the Grammy for his third album Harry’s House which also secured him the Best Pop Vocal Album.
“This doesn’t happen to people like me very often, and this is so nice,” he said as he collected the Grammy. He performed his single As It Was during the ceremony, decked head to toe in silver lame.
Lizzo took home the Grammy for Record of the Year – the award honouring overall performance of a song – for her single About Damn Time, beating out a crowded field that included Beyonce and Adele.
“We are good inherently,” she said through tears in a speech that brought the audience to its feet. “And anybody at home who feels misunderstood or on the outside looking in, like I did, just stay true to yourself.”
“I promise you, you will find people, you will attract people in your life who believe in you and support you.”
Lizzo’s song About Damn Time was named Record of the Year [Chris Pizzello/AP Photo]
The show was broadcast live on the CBS network and streaming service Paramount+.
Honourees were chosen by about 11,000 members of the Recording Academy, which has faced complaints that it has not given Black talent proper recognition.
The organisation has been working to diversify its membership in recent years.
Washington, DC – In one of his first moves since becoming speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy is leading an effort to block Congresswoman Ilhan Omar from serving on the chamber’s Foreign Affairs Committee over her past criticism of Israel.
On Wednesday, the Republican majority in the House advanced a resolution to remove Omar from the panel. Democrats opposed the move, accusing McCarthy of bigotry for targeting the politician – a former refugee of Somali descent who is one of only two Muslim women serving in the US Congress.
A few Republicans initially opposed McCarthy’s effort, casting doubt over his ability to pass the resolution against Omar, given the GOP’s narrow majority.
But on Wednesday, all 218 House Republicans present voted to move forward with the measure, as Democrats remained united in support of Omar with 209 votes. A final vote is expected on Thursday as progressives rally around Omar.
The Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) defended Omar, calling her an “esteemed and invaluable” legislator.
“You cannot remove a Member of Congress from a committee simply because you do not agree with their views. This is both ludicrous and dangerous,” CPC Chair Pramila Jayapal said in a statement on Monday.
.@IlhanMN is the first African-born congressmember and the only House Foreign Affairs Committee member who’s lived in a refugee camp. It’s shameful that Republicans are trying to remove her after smearing her for years. We need her voice, values, and expertise on the Committee. https://t.co/e1M5ajM0T4
The resolution aimed at Omar, introduced by Ohio Republican Max Miller on Tuesday, cites numerous controversies involving the congresswoman’s criticism of Israel and US foreign policy.
“Congresswoman Omar clearly cannot be an objective decision-maker on the Foreign Affairs Committee given her biases against Israel and against the Jewish people,” Miller said in a statement.
Omar retorted by saying there was nothing “objectively true” about the resolution, adding that “if not being objective is a reason to not serve on committees, no one would be on committees”.
While the Republican resolution accuses Omar of anti-Semitism, it only invokes remarks relating to Israel, not the Jewish people.
For example, the measure calls out the congresswoman for describing Israel as an “apartheid state”, although leading human rights groups – including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch – have also accused Israel of imposing a system of apartheid on Palestinians.
Early in her congressional career in 2019, Omar faced a firestorm of criticism when she suggested that political donations from pro-Israel lobby groups – including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) – drive support for Israel in Washington.
Omar later apologised for that remark but Palestinian rights advocates say accusations of anti-Semitism against Israel’s critics aim to stifle the debate around Israeli government policies.
In the past two years, AIPAC and other pro-Israel organisations spent millions of dollars in congressional elections to defeat progressives who support Palestinian human rights, including Michigan’s Andy Levin, a left-leaning, Jewish former House member.
‘Different standards’
Although the Democratic Party is standing behind Omar now, the Republican resolution prominently features previous criticism against the congresswoman by top Democrats.
Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, an advocacy and research group, said Republicans are trying to validate their talking points against Omar by using the statements and actions of Democrats.
“They own this,” she said of Democrats who previously attacked Omar. “They made a decision in the last few years to jump on board and score political points at Ilhan’s expense … And that decision is now the basis for the resolution that is being used to throw her off the committee.”
Friedman added that Omar and her fellow Muslim-American Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib are held to “different standards” when it comes to addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Both legislators were the subject of racist attacks by former President Donald Trump who in 2019 tweeted that they, along with other progressive congresswomen of colour, “should go back to the broken and crime-infested places from which they came”.
Omar in particular became a frequent target of Trump’s anti-refugee rhetoric in the lead-up to the 2020 elections. At one rally in 2019, Trump failed to intervene as his supporters chanted “send her back” in reference to Omar.
Friedman said attacks on Omar appeal to the Republican base and play well for the party politically.
“It’s a really handy way to embarrass and corner Democrats because when Democrats vote against this tomorrow, the Republican argument is going to be: ‘I don’t get it. You said all these things [against Omar]. Why are you not holding her accountable?’ Politically, this is just fantastic for them.”
For her part, Omar has remained defiant, calling McCarthy’s effort to remove her from the committee, against initial opposition from his own caucus, “pathetic”.
Rep. @Ilhan is a dedicated member of Congress, a refugee, a fierce fighter for human rights, and she has earned her spot on the Foreign Affairs Committee. Stop the bigotry and seat Rep. Omar.
Yasmine Taeb, legislative and political director at MPower Change Action Fund, a Muslim-American advocacy group, praised Omar’s commitment to a “human rights-centered foreign policy”.
“Rep. Omar speaks truth to power – a rarity in Congress. And House Republican leadership would rather waste time by attacking a progressive Black Muslim woman and pushing a far-right agenda than working on addressing the needs of the American people,” Taeb told Al Jazeera in an email.
Omar has been a vocal proponent of human rights and diplomacy in Congress. While her comments about Israel often make headlines, she criticises other countries too – including those in the Middle East – for human rights violations.
Still, critics accuse her of perpetuating anti-Semitic tropes in her criticism of Israel and even allies have described some of her comments as “sloppy”, if not malicious.
On Thursday, Win Without War, a group that promotes diplomacy in US foreign policy, decried the Republican push against Omar as an attempt to strip the House Foreign Affairs Committee of a “progressive champion and skilled legislator who challenges the political status quo”.
“Rep. Omar has helped raise the bar for progressive foreign policy in Congress. She has steadfastly advocated for cuts to the Pentagon budget, held US allies accountable for human rights abuses, and confronted the racism and Islamophobia present in US foreign policy,” Win Without War executive director Sara Haghdoosti said in a statement.
Committee wars
Congressional committees serve as specialised microcosms of Congress. The panels advance legislation, conduct oversight and hold immense power over the legislative process.
Usually, the party in power appoints the chairs and majority members of committees, while the opposition party names its own legislators to the panels.
But back in 2021, Democrats voted to remove Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene from her assigned committees for past conspiratorial, anti-Semitic and Islamophobic comments.
That same year, the Democratic House majority also formally rebuked Paul Gosar, another far-right Republican, for sharing an animated video that depicted him killing Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Now, Greene is an outspoken proponent of removing Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee.
“No one should be on that committee with that stance towards Israel,” Greene said earlier this week. “In my opinion, I think it’s the wrong stance for any member of Congress of the United States – having that type of attitude towards our great ally, Israel.”
After Greene was stripped of her committee assignments, McCarthy had openly promised payback against the Democrats if they became the minority in the House, an event that came to pass in the 2022 midterm elections.
“You’ll regret this. And you may regret this a lot sooner than you think,” McCarthy said at that time.
The newly elected speaker has also blocked Democrats Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell from joining the intelligence committee. Schiff was the former chair of the panel.
Meanwhile, Republican Congressman George Santos, who is facing calls to step down for lying about his heritage and professional and personal history, “temporarily recused” himself from committee assignments as he is being investigated over his campaign conduct.
Mass shootings were once again top news last week in the United States. Monterey Park, Half Moon Bay, Oakland, Beverly Crest – one after the other, communities across California experienced mass shootings, joining what survivors of these tragedies often refer to as the club that no one wants to belong to.
In their coverage of California’s recent tragedies, media organisations were quick to draw attention to the increasing prevalence of mass shootings in the country. Using data from the Gun Violence Archive, they reported that the US has already experienced nearly 50 mass shootings in the first month of the year. However, these reports, alarming as they have been, fail to capture the full extent of gun violence in the country.
Some – though not all – mass shootings garner considerable media attention, making many people believe they are the most prominent and the deadliest symptom of America’s gun violence problem. However, mass shootings, defined by the Gun Violence Archive as an incident in which at least four people are hit by gunfire, are actually rare. In fact, mass shootings are one of the rarest forms of gun violence and crime in general in the country. Homicides make up less than one percent of all crimes known to law enforcement, and mass shootings account for less than one percent of all homicides and all firearm-related fatalities.
The loss of even one life to gun violence is one too many, and every mass shooting is undoubtedly a tragedy. But if we are to truly understand and address America’s gun problem, we need to be able to look beyond mass shootings that make headlines and recognise the many more lives that are being lost to gun violence in contexts outside of these tragedies.
According to data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, firearm-related deaths in the US are increasing at alarming rates. In 2020, the most recent year data has been compiled, there were 45,222 firearm-related deaths in the US. This was an increase of nearly 14 percent over 2019. Perhaps even more alarming was that firearm-related deaths among children and adolescents (defined as individuals aged one to 19) increased nearly 30 percent from 2019 to 2020, becoming the leading cause of death for the age group, ahead of car accidents.
In 2020, firearm homicides accounted for 79 percent of all homicides in the US. This meant 19,384 people fell victim to a firearm homicide in the country in the span of a single year. Yet most deaths by firearms were not homicides – they were suicides. In 2020, more than half the nearly 46,000 people who died by suicide in the US used a firearm. In fact, firearm suicide was more common than suicide by suffocation, poisoning or any other means combined.
Beyond the disproportionate emphasis on deadly mass shootings, the media’s coverage of gun violence in America also fails to communicate to the public who actually suffers the most from this problem. Despite what media reports underlining the prevalence of mass shootings and gun deaths may make you believe, firearm violence does not impact all Americans equally.
Like most societal ills, gun violence impacts America’s marginalised and underprivileged communities the most. While the mass shootings in middle or working class neighbourhoods that are expected to be “safe” grab the most media attention, in many of America’s lowest income communities, firearm violence is an almost daily occurrence. Compared to counties with the lowest poverty levels, high-poverty counties have firearm homicide and suicide rates that are 4.5 and 1.3 times as high, respectively.
Communities of colour, which suffer from systemic discrimination and racism as well as higher poverty rates, also experience more harm from guns – in all its forms – than the general population. In 2020, the number of Black males aged 10 to 24 who fell victim to firearm homicides was 21 times higher than that of their white counterparts. That same year, American Indian and Alaska Native people accounted for the largest proportion of firearm suicides.
When it comes to gun violence, the US is an outlier among high-income nations. Its firearm homicide rate has long been the highest among its developed peers. In 2019, it was 22 times greater than that of the European Union. It also has the second highest firearm suicide rate in the world after Greenland.
The tragic events that unfolded this month in California underlined yet again the urgency of addressing gun violence in America. As argued in countless think pieces since last week, it is indeed time that we work to understand what paves the way for so many mass shootings in the country. It is time we figure out what exactly causes so many perpetrators to pick up firearms and take the lives of others in large numbers, and it is time to take meaningful action to prevent such tragedies in the future.
As we mourn those we have lost and chart a path forward, however, we should not lose sight of the forest for the trees. Mass shootings are just one aspect of pervasive gun violence in our country. If we are to stop American lives being needlessly lost to gun violence, we should try to understand all the nuances and context of this complex issue and take action to prevent all harms from guns, not just those that grab news headlines.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warns of a US default by early June if Congress fails to raise debt ceiling.
The national debt of the United States is now six times what it was at the start of this century. Despite its growing liabilities, the country has never defaulted on its payments.
However, the US has hit its $31.4 trillion borrowing limit. This means the government could run out of cash to pay its bills in less than five months. It also puts Congress on the clock – to raise or suspend the debt ceiling.
But getting lawmakers to agree on what action to take is expected to be a tough battle.
Elsewhere, Britain’s National Health Service is at a breaking point. Can it be reformed?
The 23-year-old alleged attacker is charged with killing 10 people in a Colorado supermarket in March 2021.
A man charged with killing 10 people at a Colorado supermarket nearly two years ago remains mentally incompetent to stand trial, a judge in the United States has announced.
Court proceedings against Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, 23, have been paused for more than a year since Judge Ingrid Bakke first found him to be mentally incompetent in December 2021 and sent him to the state mental health hospital for treatment.
During a brief hearing on Friday in the city of Boulder, Bakke said a new report from the hospital reached the same conclusion. Doctors added in the report that they still think Alissa has a “reasonable likelihood” of reaching competency, Bakke said.
She did not elaborate on the report, which is not publicly available. Concerns about Alissa’s mental health were raised by his defence immediately after the March 2021 shooting, but details have not been made public.
Court documents addressing one of his evaluations in 2021 said he was provisionally diagnosed with an unspecified mental health condition limiting his ability to “meaningfully converse with others”.
Alissa was not in the courtroom on Friday. He is charged with murder and multiple attempted murder counts for endangering the lives of 26 other people. He has not been asked yet to enter a plea and his lawyers have not commented about the allegations.
These brief hearings are held periodically to check in on whether doctors believe Alissa can understand legal proceedings and work with his lawyers to defend himself.
In the US, competency is a different legal issue than a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, which involves the assertion that someone’s mental health prevented them from understanding right from wrong when a crime was committed.
Alissa is accused of opening fire outside and inside a King Soopers store in the college town of Boulder, killing customers, workers, and a police officer who rushed in to try to stop the attack. Alissa, who lived in the nearby suburb of Arvada, surrendered after another officer shot and wounded him, authorities said.
Investigators have not revealed a possible motive. They said Alissa passed a background check to legally buy a Ruger AR-556 pistol six days before the shooting.
Officers beat motorist Tyre Nichols for three minutes leading to his death, family says after seeing video of incident.
Civil rights activists have called for “accountability and justice” after they say a motorist was beaten to death by law enforcement officers in Tennessee, in the latest instance of police violence to embroil the United States.
Tyre Nichols died after a traffic stop in Memphis, Tennessee earlier this month. On Tuesday, civil rights lawyer Ben Crump, who represents Nichols’s family, said police had taken the 29-year-old away from his relatives, his community and his four-year-old son.
“Accountability and justice are the only way forward,” Crump wrote on Twitter.
Crump’s statement comes after Nichols’s family and lawyers were allowed to see body camera footage of the incident on Monday, leading to outrage. The footage has not been released to the public, but lawyers said the video shows that he was beaten for three minutes in what they called a “savage” encounter.
“He was defenceless the entire time. He was a human piñata for those police officers,” Antonio Romanucci, Crump’s co-counsel, told reporters on Monday.
“It was an unadulterated, unabashed, nonstop beating of this young boy for three minutes. That is what we saw in that video.”
The lawyers said the authorities promised to release the video within the next two weeks. Multiple local, state and federal agencies are investigating the incident.
Police said that they had attempted to arrest Nichols, a Black man, on January 10 for reckless driving, but that a “confrontation occurred” as he tried to flee the scene on foot. Nichols was taken to a local hospital where he died three days later.
The police announced on Friday that five officers involved in the arrest were terminated after an administrative investigation determined that they used excessive force or failed to intervene and render aid to Nichols.
“The Memphis Police Department is committed to protecting and defending the rights of every citizen in our city,” Memphis police Director Cerelyn “CJ” Davis said in a statement. “The egregious nature of this incident is not a reflection of the good work that our officers perform, with integrity, every day.”
All five officers are Black, but Crump said that was irrelevant, stressing that Black and brown motorists often face discrimination regardless of the officers’ race and that the pain of Nichols’s death “is just the same”.
Crump compared the Nichols case to the infamous 1991 police beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles, which sparked violent protests and was the catalyst for calls for police reforms.
“Regrettably, it reminded us of [the] Rodney King video,” said Crump. “Regrettably, unlike Rodney King, Tyre didn’t survive.”
Nichols’s mother, RowVaughn Wells, said her son was “murdered” by the officers. “My son didn’t do no drugs. He didn’t carry no guns. He didn’t like confrontation. None of that. That’s why this is so hard,” she said.
Nichols’s death comes more than two years after nationwide protests for racial justice and an end to police brutality following the killing of George Floyd by a police officer in Minnesota who kneeled on his neck.
The US Congress has struggled to pass major police reforms to address questions of excessive force despite growing calls from activists.
Veteran Korean-speaking diplomat Julie Turner will take on a position that has been vacant since 2017.
United States President Joe Biden has named a special envoy for human rights in North Korea, a position that was vacant throughout the presidency of his predecessor Donald Trump.
Biden nominated Julie Turner, a Korean-speaking career diplomat who now heads the Asia section of the State Department’s human rights bureau, the White House said in a statement on Monday.
Turner previously worked on North Korean human rights as a special assistant in the envoy’s office, the statement added.
The appointment needs confirmation from the Senate, but little opposition is expected.
The ambassador-level position was mandated by Congress under a 2004 law that sought to draw attention not only to security but also to rights concerns in North Korea, one of the world’s most repressive countries.
The position has been vacant since January 2017, when the envoy under Barack Obama, Robert King, stepped down as part of the presidential transition.
Trump’s first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, sought to get rid of the post as part of a corporate-style restructuring.
His successor, Mike Pompeo, did not fill the position as Trump pursued diplomacy with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, with three high-profile summits that have made little lasting impact.
Some activists said that as the US tried to bring Pyongyang to the negotiating table over its banned nuclear weapons programme, human rights had been shunted aside.
Biden has promised time and again since taking office in 2021 that human rights would be at the centre of his foreign policy, but failed to appoint anyone to the position.
North Korea has repeatedly rejected accusations of human rights abuses and blames sanctions that were imposed in 2006 over its missile programme for the dire humanitarian situation in the country. It accuses Washington and Seoul of using the issue as a political tool to smear its reputation.
A landmark 2014 United Nations report on North Korean human rights concluded that North Korean security chiefs — and possibly leader Kim Jong Un himself — should face justice for overseeing a state-controlled system of Nazi-style atrocities prompting fury in Pyongyang.
Since then, North Korea’s coronavirus curbs have aggravated human rights abuses according to UN investigators, citing additional restrictions on access to information, tighter border security and heightened digital surveillance.
The US State Department in its last global report on human rights wrote of widespread abuses in North Korea, including strict bans on any kind of dissent, public executions and mass incarceration camps in which prisoners are subjected to forced labour and starvation.
On January 18, Time magazine published revelations that alarmed if not necessarily surprised many who work in Artificial Intelligence. The news concerned ChatGPT, an advanced AI chatbot that is both hailed as one of the most intelligent AI systems built to date and feared as a new frontier in potential plagiarism and the erosion of craft in writing.
Many had wondered how ChatGPT, which stands for Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer, had improved upon earlier versions of this technology that would quickly descend into hate speech. The answer came in the Time magazine piece: dozens of Kenyan workers were paid less than $2 per hour to process an endless amount of violent and hateful content in order to make a system primarily marketed to Western users safer.
It should be clear to anyone paying attention that our current paradigm of digitalisation has a labour problem. We have and are pivoting away from the ideal of an open internet built around communities of shared interests to one that is dominated by the commercial prerogatives of a handful of companies located in specific geographies.
In this model, large companies maximise extraction and accumulation for their owners at the expense not just of their workers but also of the users. Users are sold the lie that they are participating in a community, but the more dominant these corporations become, the more egregious the unequal power between the owners and the users is.
“Community” increasingly means that ordinary people absorb the moral and the social costs of the unchecked growth of these companies, while their owners absorb the profit and the acclaim. And a critical mass of underpaid labour is contracted under the most tenuous conditions that are legally possible to sustain the illusion of a better internet.
ChatGPT is only the latest innovation to embody this.
Much has been written about Facebook, YouTube and the model of content moderation that actually provided the blueprint for the ChatGPT outsourcing. Content moderators are tasked with consuming a constant stream of the worst things that people put on these platforms and flagging it for takedown or further actions. Very often these are posts about sexual and other kinds of violence.
Nationals of the countries where the companies are located have sued for the psychological toll that the work has taken on them. In 2020, Facebook, for example, was forced to pay $52m to US employees for the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) they experienced after working as content moderators.
While there is increasing general awareness of secondary trauma and the toll that witnessing violence causes people, we still don’t fully understand what being exposed to this kind of content for a full workweek does to the human body.
We know that journalists and aid workers, for example, often return from conflict zones with serious symptoms of PTSD, and that even reading reports emerging from these conflict zones can have a psychological effect. Similar studies on the impact of content moderation work on people are harder to complete because of the non-disclosure agreements that these moderators are often asked to sign before they take the job.
We also know, through the testimony provided by Facebook whistle-blower Frances Haugen, that its decision to underinvest in proper content moderation was an economic one. Twitter, under Elon Musk, has also moved to slash costs by firing a large number of content moderators.
The failure to provide proper content moderation has resulted in social networking platforms carrying a growing amount of toxicity. The harms that arise from that have had major implications in the analogue world.
In Myanmar, Facebook has been accused of enabling genocide; in Ethiopia and the United States, of allowing incitement to violence.
Indeed, the field of content moderation and the problems it is fraught with are a good illustration of what is wrong with the current digitalisation model.
The decision to use a Kenyan company to teach a US chatbot not to be hateful must be understood in the context of a deliberate decision to accelerate the accumulation of profit at the expense of meaningful guardrails for users.
These companies promise that the human element is only a stopgap response before the AI system is advanced enough to do the work alone. But this claim does nothing for the employees who are being exploited today. Nor does it address the fact that people – the languages they speak and the meaning they ascribe to contexts or situations – are highly malleable and dynamic, which means content moderation will not die out.
So what will be done for the moderators who are being harmed today, and how will the business practice change fundamentally to protect the moderators who will definitely be needed tomorrow?
If this is all starting to sound like sweatshops are making the digital age work, it should – because they are. A model of digitalisation led by an instinct to protect the interests of those who profit the most from the system instead of those who actually make it work leaves billions of people vulnerable to myriad forms of social and economic exploitation, the impact of which we still do not fully understand.
It’s time to lay to rest the myth that digitalisation led by corporate interests is somehow going to eschew all the past excesses of mercantilism and greed simply because the people who own these companies wear T-shirts and promise to do no evil.
History is replete with examples of how, left to their own devices, those who have interest and opportunity to accumulate will do so and lay waste to the rights that we need to protect the most vulnerable amongst us.
We have to return to the basics of why we needed to fight for and articulate labour rights in the last century. Labour rights are human rights, and this latest scandal is a timely reminder that we stand to lose a great deal when we stop paying attention to them because we are distracted by the latest shiny new thing.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
Los Angeles police had repeatedly Tasered the cousin of a Black Lives Matter co-founder in the hours before his death.
Lawyers for the five-year-old son of a man who died in the United States after Los Angeles police repeatedly shocked him with a stun gun have filed a $50m claim for damages against the city.
The claim is required before Keenan Anderson’s son can sue the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) for civil rights violations after officers Tasered his father six times in less than a minute to subdue him on January 3.
“He was a flower just beginning to bloom, but the LAPD unfortunately was a hammer,” the family’s lawyer, Carl Douglas, said at a news conference announcing the case. “They treated that flower like it was a nail.”
The claim was filed on Friday on behalf of Anderson’s son, Syncere Kai Anderson, who stood with his mother, Gabrielle Hansell, alongside their lawyers.
Anderson – a 31-year-old high school English teacher in Washington, DC, and cousin of Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement – was a suspect in a hit-and-run traffic collision in Venice, California, on the US west coast. Police said he ran from officers and resisted arrest.
Anderson screamed for help after he was pinned to the street by officers, according to a video released by the LAPD.
“They’re trying to kill me,” Anderson yelled.
Footage showed an officer pressing his forearm onto Anderson’s chest and an elbow into his neck.
“They’re trying to George Floyd me,” Anderson said in reference to the Black man killed by officers in Minnesota.
Police Chief Michel Moore said Anderson initially complied with officers as they investigated whether he was under the influence of drugs or alcohol. But he was subdued after he ran into the middle of the street and resisted arrest.
An LAPD toxicology test found cocaine and cannabis in Anderson’s body, although those results are separate from the coroner’s independent report, the chief said.
The officers involved have not been named yet but their union issued a statement saying the family and its lawyers were “trying to shamelessly profit” from a “tragic incident”.
After he was subdued, Anderson went into cardiac arrest and died at a hospital about four hours later.
The attack on al-Tanf, where US troops are based, injures two allied Syrian opposition fighters, the coalition says.
A drone attack hit a US-led coalition base in southern Syria, the US military’s Central Command has said.
“Three one-way attack drones attacked the al-Tanf Garrison in Syria,” a CENTCOM statement said on Friday.
Two of the drones were shot down by the coalition, but the third hit the compound, wounding two allied Syrian opposition fighters who received treatment, the statement added.
“Attacks of this kind are unacceptable,” CENTCOM spokesperson Joe Buccino said, without specifying who carried it out.
“They place our troops and our partners at risk and jeopardise the fight against ISIL.”
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.
Iran-backed forces are deployed in close proximity to al-Tanf, a desert garrison on the strategically important Baghdad-Damascus highway, near the border with Iraq and Jordan.
Iran is a key ally of the Syrian government and the coalition has disrupted similar attacks on al-Tanf in the past.
Sleeper cells of the armed ISIL (ISIS) group are also active in the area.
The coalition set up the base in 2016 to train Syrian fighters for the war against ISIL.
It retained the facility even after the fighters’ last Syrian outpost was overrun by Kurdish-led forces in March 2019.
Roughly 900 US troops remain at al-Tanf and other bases in the Kurdish-controlled northeast as part of the coalition’s continuing campaign against ISIL remnants.
The US has previously carried out attacks targeting what it says were infrastructure facilities used by groups affiliated with Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
The raids, it said, were in response to attacks allegedly launched by Iranian-backed fighters targeting al-Tanf.
The Syrian government has constantly expressed its opposition to the US role in Syria, and demanded that US forces withdraw.
As the west coast of the United States withstands its ninth major storm in three weeks, California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed a new executive order to “further bolster the emergency response” as his state contends with widespread flooding and mudslides.
In a statement on Monday, Newsom’s office said that the onslaught of atmospheric rivers — relatively intense, narrow bands of moisture that can bring heavy precipitation and strong gusts — “resulted in at least 20 fatalities and forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of residents”.
The latest executive order comes two days after US President Joe Biden declared the situation in California “a major disaster” and ordered additional federal aid for the waterlogged state.
Cleanup efforts are underway as California continues to endure the effects of the storms, with flood warnings and evacuation orders still in effect for areas including Monterey County, a region famous for its rugged coastline and scenic, cliff-hugging highways.
Lingering showers are expected “through midweek”, according to the governor’s office.
“Even 6 inches [15cm] of fast-moving flood water can knock you off your feet,” the National Weather Service warned on Monday. “And a depth of 2 feet [60cm] will float your car.”
Powerful storms over the weekend flipped a big-rig truck travelling across San Francisco’s iconic Golden Gate Bridge on Saturday and led to roads buckling and crumbling across the state.
Happening now – @SDLifeguards and copter 2 searching for victims in the SD River near 4700 Pacific Hwy. So far 5 victims out of the water with two more possibly still in. #rescuespic.twitter.com/TAonVkTND1
In San Diego County, close to the state’s border with Mexico, the Los Angeles Times reported that at least nine people were rescued from fast-moving water resulting from the continuous rainfall.
And even as precipitation tapered off on Monday in some parts of the state, loose soil — brittle from a years-long drought and saturated from three straight weeks of rain — continues to pose a threat.
Mudslides forced 10 homes in Berkeley Hills in northern California to be evacuated on Monday morning. And in southern California, more rock, mud and debris poured onto state highways in Los Angeles and Ventura counties, forcing further delays in areas already stalled by collapsing hillsides over the weekend.
Floodwaters from the Russian River rise up around buildings in Guerneville, California, on January 15, 2023 [Fred Greaves/Reuters]
High in the Sierra Nevada mountains that form the state’s eastern rim, the Central Sierra Snow Lab run by the University of California, Berkeley, reports that its research station has received 126cm (49.6 inches) of snow since Friday, with more falling on Monday.
The lab had previously documented that the snowpack around its research centre was approximately 3 metres (10 feet) deep as of Saturday.
The National Weather Service has issued a “winter storm warning” for the mountains through Tuesday, predicting most of the snowfall will happen on Monday.
“Travel will be extremely difficult or impossible. If you plan to travel, consider alternate strategies,” the agency’s bureau in Hanford tweeted.
White-out conditions in the mountains had previously forced the closure of Interstate 80, a major east-west artery, over the weekend. But traffic over the Sierra Nevada resumed on Monday, with cars required to use tyre chains to navigate the snow and ice.
Other roadways remain closed “due to heavy snow [and] avalanche control”, the state transportation authority Caltrans tweeted.
While nearby Santa Cruz and Monterey counties continued to face flood warnings, the city of San Francisco and other municipalities in the north and east of the San Francisco Bay Area started to see drier conditions on Monday after a soggy morning.
The overnight rainfall in San Francisco pushed the total precipitation since October to 516mm (20.3 inches), surpassing the yearly average in a matter of months, according to the National Weather Service.
Federal disaster relief is available for hard-hit counties like Santa Cruz, Sacramento and Merced, where the small agricultural town of Planada was largely submerged by floodwaters.
“All of this was underwater,” local activist Alicia Rodriguez told the Merced Sun-Star newspaper as she made visits to a residential neighbourhood last week. “A resident was telling me it was 4 feet [1.2 metres] in some places.”
Water from the San Diego River submerges a vehicle in San Diego, California, on Monday [Mike Blake/Reuters]
Monday’s executive order from the governor’s office has called for state agencies to waive their fees for residents seeking to replace vital records, like birth certificates, and it provides resources for health care facilities to remain open during the severe weather.
The California National Guard reported on Sunday that its 649th Engineer Company had removed 1,800 cubic yards (1376 cubic metres) of debris from San Ysidro Creek alone, “enough to cover an entire football field in 12 inches [30cm] of debris”.
“And they’re just getting started,” the National Guard said in a tweet.
Meteorologists continue to monitor a developing storm over the Pacific Ocean to see if it will become a 10th atmospheric river. It is expected to make landfall on Wednesday.
