USA
Ukraine in mind, US frantic to avert Mideast showdown at UN
The Biden administration is scrambling to avert a diplomatic crisis over Israeli settlement activity this week at the United Nations that threatens to overshadow and perhaps derail what the U.S. hopes will be a solid five days of focus on condemning Russia’s war with Ukraine.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken made two emergency calls on Saturday from the Munich Security Conference, which he is attending in an as-yet unsuccessful bid to avoid or forestall such a showdown. It remained unclear whether another last-minute intervention might salvage the situation, according to diplomats familiar with the ongoing discussions who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
Without giving details, the State Department said in nearly identical statements that Blinken had spoken to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from Munich to “reaffirm the U.S. commitment to a negotiated two-state solution and opposition to policies that endanger its viability.”
“The secretary underscored the urgent need for Israelis and Palestinians to take steps that restore calm and our strong opposition to unilateral measures that would further escalate tensions,” the statements said.
Neither statement mentioned the proposed U.N. Security Council resolution demanding an immediate halt to Israeli settlements. The Palestinians want to bring that resolution to a vote on Monday. And neither statement gave any indication as to how the calls ended.
But diplomats familiar with the conversations said that in his call to Abbas, Blinken reiterated an offer to the Palestinians for a U.S. package of incentives to entice them to drop or at least delay the resolution.
Those incentives included a White House meeting for Abbas with President Joe Biden, movement on reopening the American consulate in Jerusalem, and a significant aid package, the diplomats said.
Abbas was noncommittal, the diplomats said, but also suggested he would not be amenable unless the Israelis agreed to a six-month freeze on settlement expansion on land the Palestinians claim for a future state.
Blinken then called Netanyahu, who, according to the diplomats, was similarly noncommittal about the six-month settlement freeze. Netanyahu also repeated Israeli opposition to reopening the consulate, which was closed during President Donald Trump's administration, they said.
The U.S. and others were hoping to resolve the deadlock on Sunday, but the diplomats said it was unclear if that was possible,
The drama arose just ahead of the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which will be the subject of special U.N. General Assembly and Security Council sessions on Thursday and Friday.
The U.S. opposes the Palestinian resolution and is almost certain to veto it. Not vetoing would carry considerable domestic political risk for Biden on the cusp of the 2024 presidential race and top House Republicans have already warned against it.
But the administration also fears that using its veto to protect Israel risks losing support at the world body for measures condemning Russia's war in Ukraine.
Senior officials from the White House, the State Department and the U.S. Mission to the U.N. have already engaged frantic but fruitless diplomacy to try to persuade the Palestinians to back down. The dire nature of the situation prompted Blinken's calls on Saturday, the diplomats said.
The Biden administration has already said publicly that it does not support the resolution, calling it “unhelpful." But it has also said the same about recent Israeli settlement expansion announcements.
U.N. diplomats say the U.S wants to replace the Palestinian resolution, which would be legally binding, with a weaker presidential statement, or at least delay a vote on the resolution until after the Ukraine war anniversary.
The Palestinian push comes as Israel’s new right-wing government has reaffirmed its commitment to construct new settlements in the West Bank and expand its authority on land the Palestinians seek for a future state.
Israel captured the West Bank, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Mideast war. The United Nations and most of the international community consider Israeli settlements illegal and an obstacle to ending the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Some 700,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank and Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem.
Ultranationalists who oppose Palestinian statehood comprise a majority of Israel’s new government, which has declared settlement construction a top priority.
The draft resolution, circulated by the United Arab Emirates, the Arab representative on the council, would reaffirm the Security Council’s “unwavering commitment” to a two-state solution with Israel and Palestine living side-by-side in peace as democratic states.
It would also reaffirm the U.N. Charter’s provision against acquiring territory by force and reaffirm that any such acquisition is illegal.
Last Tuesday, Blinken and the top diplomats from Britain, France, Germany and Italy condemned Israel’s plans to build 10,000 new homes in existing settlements in the West Bank and retroactively legalize nine outposts. Netanyahu’s Cabinet had announced the measure two days earlier, following a surge in violence in Jerusalem.
In December 2016, the Security Council demanded that Israel “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.” It stressed that halting settlement activities “is essential for salvaging the two-state solution.”
That resolution was adopted after President Barack Obama’s administration abstained in the vote, a reversal of the United States’ longstanding practice of protecting its close ally Israel from action at the United Nations, including by vetoing Arab-supported resolutions.
The draft resolution before the council now is much shorter than the 2016 document, though it reiterates its key points and much of what the U.S. and Europeans already said last week.
Complicating the matter for the U.S., the Security Council resolution was introduced and is supported by the UAE, an Arab partner of the United States that has also normalized relations with Israel, even as it has taken a tepid stance on opposing Russia’s attack on Ukraine.
The U.S. will be looking to the UAE and other council members sympathetic to the Palestinians to vote in favor of resolutions condemning Russia for invading Ukraine and calling for a cessation of hostilities and the immediate withdrawal of all Russian forces.
Iran International moves shows to Washington, citing threats
A Farsi-language satellite news channel based in London long critical of Iran’s theocractic government said Saturday it had moved its broadcasts to Washington “to protect the safety of its journalists” after reportedly being targeted by Tehran.
The alleged targeting of Iran International comes as Tehran also has long harassed members of the BBC’s Persian service for their work reporting on the country. However, the threats against Farsi-language networks broadcasting abroad have exponentially grown as they cover the nationwide protests that have rocked Iran since September — providing information otherwise unheard across the Islamic Republic’s state-controlled television and radio networks.
Iran International described making the decision after London’s Metropolitan Police told it “about the existence of serious and immediate threats to the safety of Iranian journalists” working there.
Reached for comment, Iran International referred to a statement saying that “threats had grown to the point that it was felt it was no longer possible to protect the channel’s staff” or the public around its studio in London.
“A foreign state has caused such a significant threat to the British public on British soil that we have to move. Let’s be clear this is not just a threat to our TV station but the British public at large,” the channel’s general manager Mahmood Enayat said. “Even more this is an assault on the values of sovereignty, security and free speech that the U.K. has always held dear.”
Enayat added: “We refuse to be silenced by these cowardly threats. We will continue to broadcast. We are undeterred.”
Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Iran International tied its decision to London police days earlier announcing the arrest and charging of Austrian national Magomed-Husejn Dovtaev, 30, with allegedly “collecting information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.”
Police say they arrested Dovtaev a week ago at London’s Chiswick Business Park, home to the offices of Volant Media UK Ltd., the owner of Iran International. However, police did not directly tie Dovtaev to a threat against the channel. Police reportedly placed armed officers around the channel in November over threats against it.
It wasn’t immediately clear if Dovtaev had a lawyer.
Voltant Media, once majority-owned by a Saudi national, also broadcasts another channel called Afghanistan International.
Iran International has focused intensely on the nationwide protests that have swept Iran since the September death of Mahsa Amini, an Iranian-Kurdish woman earlier detained by the country’s morality police. Iran’s Intelligence Ministry describes the channel as a “terrorist organization.”
“Its operatives and affiliates will be pursued by the Ministry of Intelligence,” Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib said in November. “And from now on, any kind of connection with this terrorist organization will be considered to be tantamount to entering into terrorism and a threat to the national security of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
That same month, the broadcaster said the Metropolitan Police warned that two of its British-Iranian journalists faced threats from Iran that “represent an imminent, credible and significant risk to their lives and those of their families.” Meanwhile, another outspoken critic of Iran’s government living in the U.S. has faced multiple alleged plots by Tehran targeting her.
The BBC in February filed a separate complaint to the United Nations saying there were “increased security concerns for BBC News Persian journalists in the light of extraterritorial threats.”
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Associated Press writer Danica Kirka in London contributed to this report.
Turmoil in courts on gun laws in wake of justices’ ruling
A landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision on the Second Amendment is upending gun laws across the country, dividing judges and sowing confusion over what firearm restrictions can remain on the books.
The high court's ruling that set new standards for evaluating gun laws left open many questions, experts say, resulting in an increasing number of conflicting decisions as lower court judges struggle to figure out how to apply it.
The Supreme Court’s so-called Bruen decision changed the test that lower courts had long used for evaluating challenges to firearm restrictions. Judges should no longer consider whether the law serves public interests like enhancing public safety, the justices said.
Under the Supreme Court's new test, the government that wants to uphold a gun restriction must look back into history to show it is consistent with the country’s “historical tradition of firearm regulation."
Courts in recent months have declared unconstitutional federal laws designed to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers,felony defendants and people who use marijuana. Judges have shot down a federal ban on possessing guns with serial numbers removed and gun restrictions for young adults in Texas and have blocked the enforcement of Delaware's ban on the possession of homemade “ghost guns."
In several instances, judges looking at the same laws have come down on opposite sides on whether they are constitutional in the wake of the conservative Supreme Court majority's ruling. The legal turmoil caused by the first major gun ruling in a decade will likely force the Supreme Court to step in again soon to provide more guidance for judges.
"There’s confusion and disarray in the lower courts because not only are they not reaching the same conclusions, they’re just applying different methods or applying Bruen's method differently," said Jacob Charles, a professor at Pepperdine University's law school who focuses on firearms law.
“What it means is that not only are new laws being struck down ... but also laws that have been on the books for over 60 years, 40 years in some cases, those are being struck down — where prior to Bruen — courts were unanimous that those were constitutional," he said.
The legal wrangling is playing out as mass shootings continue to plague the country awash in guns and as law enforcement officials across the U.S. work to combat an uptick in violent crime.
This week, six people were fatally shot at multiple locations in a small town in rural Mississippi and a gunman killed three students and critically wounded five others at Michigan State University before killing himself.
Dozens of people have died in mass shootings so far in 2023, including in California, where 11 people were killed as they welcomed the Lunar New Year at a dance hall popular with older Asian Americans. Last year, more than 600 mass shootings occurred in the U.S. in which at least four people were killed or wounded, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
The decision opened the door to a wave of legal challenges from gun-rights activists who saw an opportunity to undo laws on everything from age limits to AR-15-style semi-automatic weapons. For gun rights supporters, the Bruen decision was a welcome development that removed what they see as unconstitutional restraints on Second Amendment rights.
“It’s a true reading of what the Constitution and the Bill of Rights tells us,” said Mark Oliva, a spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation. “It absolutely does provide clarity to the lower courts on how the constitution should be applied when it comes to our fundamental rights."
Gun control groups are raising alarm after a federal appeals court this month said that under the Supreme Court's new standards, the government can’t stop people who have domestic violence restraining orders against them from owning guns.
The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals acknowledged that the law “embodies salutary policy goals meant to protect vulnerable people in our society." But the judges concluded that the government failed to point to a precursor from early American history that is comparable enough to the modern law. Attorney General Merrick Garland has said the government will seek further review of that decision.
Gun control activists have decried the Supreme Court's historical test, but say they remain confident that many gun restrictions will survive challenges. Since the decision, for example, judges have consistently upheld the federal ban on convicted felons from possessing guns.
The Supreme Court noted that cases dealing with “unprecedented societal concerns or dramatic technological changes may require a more nuanced approach.” And the justices clearly emphasized that the right to bear arms is limited to law-abiding citizens, said Shira Feldman, litigation counsel for Brady, the gun control group.
The Supreme Court's test has raised questions about whether judges are suited to be poring over history and whether it makes sense to judge modern laws based on regulations — or a lack thereof— from the past.
“We are not experts in what white, wealthy, and male property owners thought about firearms regulation in 1791. Yet we are now expected to play historian in the name of constitutional adjudication,” wrote Mississippi U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves, who was appointed by President Barack Obama.
Some judges are “really parsing the history very closely and saying ‘these laws aren’t analogous because the historical law worked in a slightly different fashion than the modern law’,” said Andrew Willinger, executive director of the Duke Center for Firearms Law.
Others, he said, "have done a much more flexible inquiry and are trying to say ‘look, what is the purpose of this historical law as best I can understand it?'"
Firearm rights and gun control groups are closely watching many pending cases, including several challenging state laws banning certain semi-automatic weapons and high-capacity magazines. Already, some gun laws passed in the wake of the Supreme Court decision have been shot down.
A judge declared multiple portions of New York’s new gun law unconstitutional, including rules that restrict carrying firearms in public parks and places of worship. An appeals court later put that ruling on hold while it considers the case. And the Supreme Court has allowed New York to enforce the law for now.
Some judges have upheld a law banning people under indictment for felonies from buying guns while others have declared it unconstitutional.
A federal judge issued an order barring Delaware from enforcing provisions of a new law outlawing the manufacture and possession of so-called “ghost guns" that don't have serial numbers and can be nearly impossible for law enforcement officials to trace. But another judge rejected a challenge to California's “ghost gun" regulations.
In the California case, U.S. District Judge George Wu, who was nominated by President George W. Bush, appeared to take a dig at how other judges are interpreting the Supreme Court's guidance.
The company that brought the challenge —“and apparently certain other courts" — would like to treat the Supreme Court’s decision “as a ‘word salad,’ choosing an ingredient from one side of the ‘plate’ and an entirely-separate ingredient from the other, until there is nothing left whatsoever other than an entirely-bulletproof and unrestrained Second Amendment,” Wu wrote in his ruling.
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Richer reported from Boston.
US holds drills in South China Sea amid tensions with China
The United States Navy and Marine Corps are holding joint exercises in the South China Sea at a time of heightened tensions with Beijing over the shooting down of a suspected Chinese spy balloon.
The 7th Fleet based in Japan said Sunday that the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier strike group and the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit have been conducting “integrated expeditionary strike force operations” in the South China Sea.
It said exercises involving ships, ground forces and aircraft took place Saturday but gave no details on when the began or whether they had ended.
China claims virtually the entire South China Sea and strongly objects to military activity by other nations in the contested waterway through which $5 trillion in goods are shipped every year.
The U.S. takes no official position on sovereignty in the South China Sea, but maintains that freedom of navigation and overflight must be preserved. Several times a year, it sends ships sailing past fortified Chinese outposts in the Spratly Islands, prompting protests from Beijing.
The U.S. has also been strengthening its defense alliance with the Philippines, which has faced encroachment on islands and fisheries by the Chinese coast guard and nominally civilian but government-backed fleets.
The U.S. military exercises were planned in advance. They come as already tense relations between Washington and Beijing have been exacerbated by a diplomatic row sparked by the balloon, which was shot down last weekend in U.S. airspace off the coast of South Carolina.
The U.S. said the unmanned balloon was equipped to detect and collect intelligence signals, but Beijing insists it was a weather research airship that had accidently blown off course.
The balloon prompted Secretary of State Antony Blinken to abruptly cancel a high-stakes trip to Beijing aimed at easing tensions.
After first issuing a highly rare expression of regret over the balloon, China has toughened its rhetoric, calling the U.S. shootdown an overreaction and a violation of international norms. China's defense minister refused to take a phone call from U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to discuss the matter.
The United States has since blacklisted six Chinese entities it said were linked to Beijing’s aerospace programs as part of its response to the incident. The House of Representatives also voted unanimously to condemn China for a “brazen violation” of U.S. sovereignty and efforts to “deceive the international community through false claims about its intelligence collection campaigns.”
The balloon was part of a large surveillance program that China has been conducting for several years, the Pentagon said. The U.S. says Chinese balloons have flown over dozens of countries across five continents in recent years, and it learned more about the balloon program after closely monitoring the one shot down near South Carolina.
In its news release, the 7th Fleet said the joint operation had “established a powerful presence in the region, which supports peace and stability."
“As a ready response force, we underpin a broad spectrum of missions including landing Marines ashore, humanitarian disaster relief, and deterring potential adversaries through visible and present combat power," the release said.
US jets down 4 objects in 8 days, unprecedented in peacetime
A U.S. fighter jet shot down an “unidentified object” over Lake Huron on Sunday on orders from President Joe Biden. It was the fourth such downing in eight days and the latest military strike in an extraordinary chain of events over U.S. airspace that Pentagon officials believe has no peacetime precedent.
Part of the reason for the repeated shootdowns is a “heightened alert” following a spy balloon from China that emerged over U.S. airspace in late January, Gen. Glen VanHerck, head of NORAD and U.S. Northern Command, said in a briefing with reporters.
Since then, fighter jets last week also shot down objects over Canada and Alaska. Pentagon officials said they posed no security threats, but so little was known about them that Pentagon officials were ruling nothing out — not even UFOs.
“We have been more closely scrutinizing our airspace at these altitudes, including enhancing our radar, which may at least partly explain the increase,” said Melissa Dalton, assistant defense secretary for homeland defense.
U.S. authorities have made clear that they constantly monitor for unknown radar blips, and it is not unusual to shut down airspace as a precaution to evaluate them. But the unusually assertive response was raising questions about whether such use of force was warranted, particularly as administration officials said the objects were not of great national security concern and the downings were just out of caution.
ALso read: Trudeau: US fighter shot down object over northern Canada
VanHerck said the U.S. adjusted its radar so it could track slower objects. “With some adjustments, we’ve been able to get a better categorization of radar tracks now," he said, "and that’s why I think you’re seeing these, plus there’s a heightened alert to look for this information."
He added: “I believe this is the first time within United States or American airspace that NORAD or United States Northern Command has taken kinetic action against an airborne object."
Asked if officials have ruled out extraterrestrials, VanHerck said, “I haven’t ruled out anything at this point.”
The Pentagon officials said they were still trying to determine what exactly the objects were and said they had considered using the jets' guns instead of missiles, but it proved to be too difficult. They drew a strong distinction between the three shot down over this weekend and the balloon from China.
The extraordinary air defense activity began in late January, when a white orb the officials said was from China appeared over the U.S. and hovered above the nation for days before fighter jets downed it off the coast of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. That event played out over livestream. Many Americans have been captivated by the drama playing out in the skies as fighter jets scramble to shoot down objects.
The latest brought down was first detected on Saturday evening over Montana, but it was initially thought to be an anomaly. Radar picked it up again Sunday hovering over the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and it was going over Lake Huron, Pentagon officials said Sunday.
U.S. and Canadian authorities had restricted some airspace over the lake earlier Sunday as planes were scrambled to intercept and try to identify the object. According to a senior administration official, the object was octagonal, with strings hanging off, but had no discernable payload. It was flying low at about 20,000 feet, said the official who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
Meanwhile, U.S. officials were still trying to precisely identify two other objects shot down by F-22 fighter jets, and were working to determine whether China was responsible as concerns escalated about what Washington said was Beijing's large-scale aerial surveillance program.
An object shot down Saturday over Canada's Yukon was described by U.S. officials as a balloon significantly smaller than the balloon — the size of three school buses — hit by a missile Feb. 4. A flying object brought down over the remote northern coast of Alaska on Friday was more cylindrical and described as a type of airship.
Both were believed to have a payload, either attached or suspended from them, according to the officials who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation. Officials were not able to say who launched the objects and were seeking to figure out their origin.
The three objects were much smaller in size, different in appearance and flew at lower altitudes than the suspected spy balloon that fell into the Atlantic Ocean after the U.S. missile strike.
The officials said the other three objects were not consistent with the fleet of Chinese aerial surveillance balloons that targeted more than 40 countries, stretching back at least into the Trump administration.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told ABC’s “This Week” that U.S. officials were working quickly to recover debris. Using shorthand to describe the objects as balloons, he said U.S military and intelligence officials were “focused like a laser” on gathering and accumulating the information, then compiling a comprehensive analysis.
“The bottom line is until a few months ago we didn’t know about these balloons,” Schumer, D-N.Y., said of the spy program that the administration has linked to the People’s Liberation Army, China’s military. “It is wild that we didn’t know.”
Eight days ago, F-22 jets downed the large white balloon that had wafted over the U.S. for days at an altitude of about 60,000 feet. U.S. officials immediately blamed China, saying the balloon was equipped to detect and collect intelligence signals and could maneuver itself. White House officials said improved surveillance capabilities helped detect it.
China's Foreign Ministry said the unmanned balloon was a civilian meteorological airship that had blown off course. Beijing said the U.S. had “overreacted” by shooting it down.
Then, on Friday, North American Aerospace Defense Command, the combined U.S.-Canada organization that provides shared defense of airspace over the two nations, detected and shot down an object near sparsely populated Deadhorse, Alaska.
Later that evening, NORAD detected a second object, flying at a high altitude over Alaska, U.S. officials said. It crossed into Canadian airspace on Saturday and was over the Yukon, a remote territory, when it was ordered shot down by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
In both of those incidents, the objects were flying at roughly 40,000 feet. The object on Sunday was flying at 20,000 feet.
The cases have increased diplomatic tensions between the United States and China, raised questions about the extent of Beijing’s American surveillance, and prompted days of criticism from Republican lawmakers about the administration’s response.
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Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani, Michael Balsamo, Ellen Knickmeyer and Tara Copp contributed to this report.
Frustrated Texans endure winter storm with no power, heat
Thousands of frustrated Texans shivered in homes without power for a second day Thursday, most of them around booming Austin, and fading hopes of a quick fix stirred grim memories of a deadly 2021 blackout after an icy winter storm across the southern U.S.
The freeze has been blamed for at least 10 traffic deaths on slick roads this week in Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma. And even as Texas finally began thawing Thursday, a new Artic front from Canada was headed toward the northern U.S. and threatening New England with potentially the coldest weather in decades. Wind chills could dive below minus 50 (minus 45 Celsius).
In Austin, city officials compared the damage from fallen trees and iced-over power lines to tornadoes as they came under mounting criticism for slow repairs and shifting timelines to restore power.
“We had hoped to make more progress today,“ said Jackie Sargent, general manager of Austin Energy. ”And that simply has not happened."
Across Texas more than 280,000 customers were without power Thursday night, down from 430,000 earlier in the day, according to PowerOutage.us. The failures were most widespread in Austin, where impatience was rising among 150,000 customers nearly two days after the electricity first went out, which for many also means no heat. Power failures have affected about 30% of customers in the city of nearly a million at any given time since Wednesday.
By Thursday night, Austin officials backtracked on early estimates that power would be fully restored by Friday evening, saying the extent of the damage was worse than originally calculated and that they could no longer predict when all the lights may come back on.
Allison Rizzolo, who lost power in Austin, told KEYE-TV that she wished there were more clarity from the city on what to do or expect.
“I get that there’s a fine line between preparedness and panic, but I wish they’d been more aggressive in their communications,” Rizzolo said.
For many Texans, it was the second time in three years that a February freeze — temperatures were in the 30s Thursday with wind chills below freezing — caused prolonged outages and uncertainty over when the lights would come back on.
Unlike the 2021 blackouts in Texas, when hundreds of people died after the state’s grid was pushed to the brink of total failure because of a lack of generation, the outages in Austin this time were largely the result of frozen equipment and ice-burdened trees and limbs falling on power lines. But the differences were little comfort to Austin residents and businesses that also lost power for days two years ago.
Read more: Flights canceled, at least 2 dead as ice storm freezes US
Among those still without power Thursday was the Central Texas Food Bank, according to Travis County Judge Andy Brown, the county's top elected official.
“They have 21 counties to serve. They've been down for at least three days now. There's a lot of need that they have,” Brown said.
School systems in the Dallas and Austin area, plus many in Oklahoma, Arkansas and Memphis, Tennessee, closed Thursday as snow, sleet and freezing rain continued to push through. In Austin, schools will not open until next week at the earliest.
Hundreds more flights were canceled again in Texas, although not as many as in previous days.
Airport crews battled ice to keep runways open. By Thursday morning, airlines had canceled more than 500 flights at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport — more than a quarter of all flights scheduled for the day. Still, that was down from about 1,300 cancellations on Wednesday and more than 1,000 on Tuesday, according to FlightAware.com.
Dozens more flights were canceled at Dallas Love Field and Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.
Another wave of frigid weather in the U.S. is on the horizon, with an Arctic cold front expected to move from Canada into the northern Plains and Upper Midwest and sweep into the Northeast by Friday.
In a briefing Thursday with the federal Weather Prediction Center, New Englanders were warned that wind chills — the combined effect of wind and cold air on exposed skin — in the minus 50s “could be the coldest felt in decades.”
The strong winds and cold air will create wind chills “rarely seen in northern and eastern Maine,” according to an advisory from the National Weather Service office in Caribou, Maine.
Jay Broccolo, director of weather operations at an observatory on New Hampshire’s Mount Washington — which for decades held the world record for the fastest wind gust — said Thursday that wind speeds could top 100 mph (160 kph).
“We take safety really seriously in the higher summits," Broccolo said, “and this weekend’s forecast is looking pretty gnarly, even for our standards.”
Leaked docs suggest US, UK oil and gas field contractors made profits in Myanmar after coup: Guardian report
According to tax records obtained by The Guardian, in the two years following a ruthless junta’s takeover of Myanmar, some of the largest oil and gas service companies in the world have continued to profit handsomely from projects that have supported the military government.
The United Nations’ special rapporteur on Myanmar said that since the military took over in February 2021, it is “committing war crimes and crimes against humanity daily.”
According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, more than 2,940 individuals have been slain, including children, pro-democracy activists, and other civilians, The Guardian report adds.
In the midst of this unrest, it appears that US, UK, and Irish oil and gas field contractors – who offer vital drilling and other services to Myanmar’s gas field operators – continued to make millions of dollars in profit in the nation after the coup. This information comes from leaked Myanmar tax records and other reports.
Investigative journalism organization Finance Uncovered, The Guardian, and the Myanmar advocacy group Justice for Myanmar all conducted analyses of the records after they were obtained by the transparency non-profit Distributed Denial of Secrets.
The documents indicate that, in some cases, the subsidiaries of major US gas field service companies continued to operate in Myanmar despite the US State Department’s warning that there were significant risks associated with doing business there in January of last year. This included working with state-owned companies that financially support the junta, like the national oil and gas company Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE).
Read More: International community urged to support all efforts to hold Myanmar military responsible for HR violations, abuses
More Myanmar-related sanctions were issued by the US, UK, Australia, and Canada on Tuesday, including those affecting the managing director and deputy managing director of MOGE. However, they refrained from sanctioning MOGE specifically.
In view of the “intensifying human rights violations in Myanmar” and the “substantial resources” MOGE offers the junta, the European Union was the first region to issue penalties against MOGE itself in February.
European businesses are unable to participate in oil and gas field development projects in Myanmar due to EU sanctions. However, such regulations have not yet been implemented by the US or the UK, and such work, which may involve transactions with MOGE directly or indirectly, is not forbidden, The Guardian reports.
According to The Guardian, tax documents that were leaked reveal:
-- The Singapore-based company of US oil services firm Halliburton, Myanmar Energy Services, recorded pre-tax earnings of $6.3 million in Myanmar for the year ending in September 2021, which included eight months when the junta was in power.
-- In the six months leading up to March 2022, Baker Hughes, an oil services business with headquarters in Houston, recorded pre-tax profits of $2.64 million in Myanmar.
-- In the fiscal year that ended in September 2021, the US company Diamond Offshore Drilling recorded $37 million in fees, followed by another $24.2 million from October 2021 to March 2022.
The involvement of western gas field contractors in Myanmar's gas and oil business after the coup, according to activists, renders them complicit in the junta's aggressive campaign.
Both US-based Chevron and France’s Total, which have long been criticized for running gas projects there, announced last January that they were leaving Myanmar.
The US has imposed sanctions on Myanmar’s state-owned gems, pearl, and timber sectors, but Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise, a key in the junta’s main source of foreign income, is still unaffected, according to The Guardian report.
IMF approves $4.7 billion loan for Bangladesh
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has approved a loan of $4.7 billion for Bangladesh, the global lender has said in a statement.
The loan request was approved at the IMF Executive Board meeting in Washington, USA on Monday night.
Bangladesh has welcomed the IMF’s move.
According to the IMF, Bangladesh will get this loan in seven instalments over the next 42 months. The average interest on the loan will be 2.2 percent.
Of the total amount, $3.3 billion will be available from the IMF’s ‘Enhanced Credit Support’ while $1.4 billion will come under the ‘Resilience and Sensibility Facility’.
The IMF said in the statement that the loan will help stabilise Bangladesh's macroeconomy, implement necessary reforms to build capacity for social and development spending, strengthen the financial sector, modernise policy frameworks and address climate change.
The lending agency said that Bangladesh’s robust economic recovery from the pandemic has been interrupted by Russia’s war in Ukraine, leading to a sharp widening of Bangladesh’s current account deficit, depreciation of the Taka and a decline in foreign exchange reserves.
It further said that the authorities have taken on a comprehensive set of measures to deal with these latest economic disruptions.
Read more: IMF now expects world economy to grow 2.9% in 2023
The authorities recognise that in addition to tackling these immediate challenges, long-standing structural issues and vulnerabilities related to climate change will also need to be addressed to accelerate growth, attract private investment, enhance productivity, and build climate resilience, the IMF statement clarified.
Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal in a statement thanked the IMF for the loan approval.
In a statement, the finance minister said, "Many had doubts that the IMF might not give us this loan."
"They thought that the fundamental areas of our macroeconomy were weak, so the IMF would refrain from lending, but (it) took the right decision evaluating Bangladesh’s economy,” he said.
This loan approval also proves that the fundamental areas of Bangladesh macroeconomy are standing in a strong position, which is better than many other countries, Kamal said.
DNCC partners with Detroit to exchange ideas in civic management
A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was inked between Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) and Detroit city in the state of Michigan in the USA to exchange knowledge and experience to build a better city.
Under the deal, the Detroit City will provide the DNCC with any kinds of cooperation while the Bangladeshi city corporation will share better activities with their counterpart, a DNCC press release, signed by its Public Relations Officer Mukbul Hossain, said.
DNCC Mayor Md Atiqul Islam and Detroit City Mayor Michael E Duggan signed the deal on behalf of their respective organisations in the USA on Thursday (local time).
Detroit City Deputy Mayor Todda A Batison, DNCC Secretary Mohammed Masud Alam Siddique and Bangladesh American Public Affairs Committee Chairman Ehsan Takbim among others were present during the signing ceremony.
Mayor Atiqul said the relationship between the USA and Dhaka will be strengthened through cooperation by the Detroit City on several issues including cleanliness, traffic management, drainage system and urban development as per the deal.
Read more: DNCC to launch school bus services
He said the DNCC will be turned into a sister city—refers to a city which will be developed by exchanging all good sides with another city like the Detroit City.
Terming the bilateral relations between the countries as healthy, he said a new history was made through signing the MoU between the cities.
Mayor Atiqul said his counterpart wanted to know about handling the densely populated city as the density of their population is also very high.
Addressing the need for rearranging the traffic management in Dhaka, he said they will use the strategy applied by Detroit to bring discipline in the traffic system.
The DNCC mayor confirmed his counterpart Michael E Duggan’s visit to Bangladesh in February next year.
Polar bear emerged unseen from snowstorm to kill mom, son
Summer Myomick bundled her baby against the freezing winds whipping off the Bering Sea and stepped outside into a blur of blowing snow. It was a short walk from the school where she had visited relatives to the health clinic about 150 yards (137 meters) away, but the young mother could hardly have seen where she was going — or the terror that was approaching.
Myomick, 24, and her son, 1-year-old Clyde Ongtowasruk, made it just beyond the front of the Kingikmiut School in Wales, Alaska, just below the Arctic Circle, when a polar bear emerged from the impenetrable snow squall and mauled them Tuesday. It was the first fatal polar bear attack in 30 years in Alaska, the only U.S. state that is home to the animals.
As the attack unfolded, the principal ordered a lockdown and closed the blinds so the children couldn’t see what was happening outside the entrance. Several employees and community members left the safety of the building and tried to scare away the bear with shovels.
The mauling stopped temporarily, but only when the animal turned on them, and they rushed back inside. Principal Dawn Hendrickson slammed the door in the face of the charging bear, possibly saving lives, according to Susan Nedza, chief administrator of the Bering Strait School District.
Read more: Canadian polar bears near 'bear capital' dying at fast rate
“The polar bear was chasing them and tried to get in as well,” said Nedza, who received frantic calls about the attack in Unalakleet, about 250 miles (400 kilometers) away. “Just horrific. ... Something you never think you would ever experience.”
There is no law enforcement in Wales, so with the bear still outside, a call went out to community members for help. A person who has not been identified showed up with a gun and killed the bear as it continued to maul Myomick and her son.
It appears the mother and toddler had no idea what was coming because of low visibility, Alaska State Troopers spokesperson Austin McDaniel told The Associated Press on Thursday.
The immediate family was living at the school temporarily while they were fixing electrical issues in their home, according to a post on a GoFundMe fundraising site established to help the family “in the face of unfathomable tragedy and heartbreak.”
“We ask that you respect their privacy in this period of immense grief,” the post read.
Wales, a whaling community, is the westernmost point on the North American mainland — just 50 miles (80 kilometers) from Russia across the Bering Strait — and is home to about 150 people, almost all of them Inupiat. It's accessible by plane and boat, including barges that deliver household goods. Winter trails provide snowmobile access to other communities and subsistence hunting grounds.
Kingikmiut School, like other schools in many rural Alaska Native communities, doubles as a community center. The view from its front, where the attack occurred, is an endless expanse of frozen snow and ice to the horizon.
Nedza, the school district chief administrator, said she received a call from a distraught Hendrickson just after 2 p.m. Tuesday. She said the students were locked down and safe.
Read more: Alaska scientists say polar bear encounters to increase
The snowstorm that camouflaged the bear, along with a lack of runway lights at Wales’ gravel air strip, prevented Alaska State Troopers from flying in an officer and a state wildlife official from Nome to investigate until Wednesday.
It's not known what prompted the attack. However, polar bears see humans as prey, said Geoff York, the senior director of conservation at Polar Bear International.
Samples from the bear were taken for the state veterinarian, and the bodies of Myomick and her son were flown to Nome for eventual transport to the State Medical Examiner’s Office in Anchorage.
School was cancelled Wednesday so students could be with their families, and the school district flew counselors to Wales. The school planned soft openings Thursday and Friday with no classes but opportunities for students to meet with counselors, get a meal or play a game, Nedza said.
Alaska scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey in 2019 found changes in sea ice habitat had coincided with evidence that polar bears’ use of land was increasing and that the chances of a polar bear encounter had risen.
Polar bears are the largest bear species, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Males typically weigh 600 to 1,200 pounds (270 to 540 kilograms) but can reach more than 1,700 pounds (770 kilograms) and as many as 10 feet (3 meters) in length. Females weigh 400 to 700 pounds (180 to 320 kilograms). Polar bears generally feed on seals, but also walruses and beluga whales.
They were listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 2008 and are also protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Both laws prohibit harming the animals without authorization, unless necessary for human safety.