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US shootings, 2 deaths and 3 injuries, all victims under age

On the evening of the 17th local time, a shooting incident occurred inside and outside an apartment building in the southwest of Atlanta, Georgia, USA, killing five minors, two of whom died.

The local police said in a statement issued in the evening that the police received the alarm at 17:00 and found several victims of gunfire after arriving at the scene. Police officer Charles Hampton said that a group of armed people came to the apartment where the crime was committed and the dispute occurred. Another group of people with the same weapons opened fire first, and the conflict then moved to the outside. Police found two people dead outside the apartment and three injured inside.

Hampton said the two dead were boys, aged 14 and 16 respectively. Two other boys, aged 11 and 15, and a girl, aged 15, were hospitalized. At least two of the victims were students of the Atlanta Public School.

The Associated Press quoted Hampton as saying that the gunfight was escalated by “some kind of controversy” on social media. At present, the number of gunmen is not clear, but the police believe that many people shot.

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Feature: Why did the US State Council set up the “China Group”?

The State Council recently established the “China Affairs Coordination Office” (“China Group”), which means that the newly established department will ensure that the United States can “responsibly manage” its competition with Beijing, and promote its vision of an open and inclusive international system. Experts analyzed that the “China Group” was established to strengthen the coordination of work with China between different departments of the Biden government.

When presiding over the launching ceremony of the newly established “China Group”, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the agency would bring together experts from the US State Department and from outside the State Department on China issues, who would work side by side with colleagues from the US State Department in other regions of the world, as well as experts in international security, economy, technology, multilateral diplomacy and strategic communication.

CNN reported that the “China Group” was headed by Rick Waters, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian Affairs of the State Council.

In fact, before that, several government departments in the United States had set up special departments for China. In 2020, McCarthy, the Republican leader of the US House of Representatives, announced the establishment of the Republican “China Task Force”. In July 2020, the US Department of Homeland Security under Trump established the “China Working Group”. In March 2021, the “China Working Group” set up by the US Defense Secretary Austin began to operate. In October 2021, CIA Director Burns said that he would establish a high-level working group on China, namely the “China Task Center”.

In May this year, when Antony Blinken delivered a speech on the US government’s policy towards China, he claimed that China posed “the most serious long-term challenge” to the so-called “international order”. On the other hand, he also stressed his determination to avoid a “new cold war” with China.

Why does the US State Department set up the “China Group” at this time? In this regard, Li Mingjiang, an associate professor of the Rajaratnam School of International Relations at Nanyang Technological University of Singapore, said in an interview with the China News Agency in Hong Kong on the 19th that it is clear that the US government now wants to deal with China through this department and strengthen coordination between their different departments. The main purpose is to adapt to the competition with big countries like China, but there are also aspects of cooperation with China. Its essence is a manifestation of the institutionalization of government departments, which makes the US work with China more effective.

It is also commented that the “China Group” is aimed at optimizing the functions of the State Council itself. In order to improve the efficiency of the US House of State in obtaining information and listening to the opinions of other departments, the final coordinating department for China policy should be the US National Security Council.

It is also analyzed that the relationship between the “China Groups” set up by different departments in the United States is full of competition and in step. Competition means that different departments in the government compete for the dominant power of the policy agenda on China related issues to gain political benefits; Coordination means that each department implements the US strategic competition policy towards China from their respective areas of competence, so as to continuously strengthen the policy system of sustained and intensive cross sectoral competition against China. Among them, the National Security Council is more prominent because of its special relationship with the President. It usually coordinates some major actions between different government departments.

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US defense chief says China muscling neighbors, plundering resources in Pacific

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin speaks at the Shangri-La Dialogue summit in Singapore on June 11, 2022.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin speaks at the Shangri-La Dialogue summit in Singapore on June 11, 2022.

Singapore (CNN)US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin called out China on Saturday for a series of coercive, aggressive and dangerous actions that threaten stability around Asia and vowed the United States would stand by partners to resist any pressure.

“Indo-Pacific countries shouldn’t face political intimidation, economic coercion, or harassment by maritime militias,” Austin said in a keynote speech to the Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s premier defense conference.
“The PRC’s moves threaten to undermine security, and stability, and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific,” Austin said, using the acronym to refer to the country by its official name, the People’s Republic of China.
He listed a series of areas where he said China is muscling its neighbors, including sending large numbers of warplanes into the skies near Taiwan, dangerously intercepting the patrol planes of US allies, and illegal fishing operations that “plunder the region’s provisions.”
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US military confirms an interstellar meteor collided with Earth

One meteor traveled quite a long way from home to visit Earth.

Researchers discovered the first known interstellar meteor to ever hit Earth, according to a recently released United States Space Command document. An interstellar meteor is a space rock that originates from outside our solar system — a rare occurrence.
This one is known as CNEOS 2014-01-08, and it crash-landed along the northeast coast of Papua New Guinea on January 8, 2014.
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The finding came as a surprise to Amir Siraj, who identified the object as an interstellar meteor in a 2019 study he coauthored while an undergraduate at Harvard University.
Siraj was investigating ʻOumuamua, the first known interstellar object in our solar system that was found in 2017, with Abraham Loeb, professor of science at Harvard University.
Siraj decided to go through NASA’s Center for swarovski jewelry Near Earth Object Studies database to find other interstellar objects and found what he believed to be an interstellar meteor within days.
The meteor’s high velocity is what initially caught Siraj’s eye.
The meteor was moving at a high speed of about 28 miles per second (45 kilometers per second) relative to Earth, which is moving at around 18.6 miles per second (30 kilometers per second) around the sun. Because researchers measured how fast the meteor was moving while on a moving planet, the 45 kilometers per second was not actually how fast it was going.
The heliocentric speed is defined as the meteor’s speed relative to the sun, which is a more accurate way to determine an object’s orbit. It’s calculated based on the angle at which a meteor hits the Earth. The planet moves in one direction around the sun, so the meteor could have hit Earth head-on, meaning opposite the direction the planet is moving, or from behind, in the same direction the Earth is moving.
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Since the meteor hit the Earth from behind, Siraj’s calculations said the meteor was actually traveling at about 37.3 miles per second (60 kilometers per second) relative to the sun.
He then mapped out the trajectory of the meteor and found it was in an unbound orbit, unlike the closed orbit of other meteors. This means that rather than circling around the sun like other meteors, it came from outside the solar system.
“Presumably, it was produced by another star, got kicked out of that star’s planetary system and just so happened to make its way to our solar system and collide with Earth,” Siraj said.
Loeb and Siraj have been unable to get their findings published in a journal because their data came from NASA’s CNEOS database, which doesn’t divulge information such as how accurate the readings are.
After years of trying to obtain the additional information needed, they received official confirmation that it was, in fact, an interstellar meteor, from John Shaw, deputy commander of the US Space Command. The command is a part of the US Department of Defense and is responsible for military operations in outer space.
The night sky is changing before our eyes
“Dr. Joel Mozer, the Chief Scientist of Space Operations Command, the United States Space Force service component of U.S. Space Command, reviewed analysis of additional data available to the Department of Defense related to this finding. Dr. Mozer confirmed that the velocity estimate reported to NASA is sufficiently accurate to indicate an interstellar trajectory,” wrote Shaw in the letter.
Siraj had moved onto other research and almost forgotten about his discovery, so the document came as a shock.
“I thought that we would never learn the true nature of this meteor, that it was just blocked somewhere in the government after our many tries, and so actually seeing coach outlet that letter from the Department of Defense with my eyes was a really incredible moment,” Siraj said.
Since receiving the confirmation, Siraj said his team is working to resubmit their findings for publication in a scientific journal.
Siraj would also like to put a team together to try and retrieve part of the meteor that landed in the Pacific Ocean but admitted it would be an unlikely possibility due to the sheer size of the project.
If researchers were able to get their hands on the “holy grail of interstellar objects,” Siraj said it would be scientifically groundbreaking in helping scientists discover more about the world beyond our solar system.
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Madeleine Albright, first female US secretary of state, dies

Madeleine Albright, the first female US secretary of state and who helped steer Western foreign policy in the aftermath of the Cold War, has died. She was 84 years old.

The cause was cancer, Albright’s family said in a statement Wednesday.
Albright was a central figure in President Bill Clinton’s administration, first serving as US ambassador to the United Nations before becoming the nation’s top diplomat in his second term. She championed the expansion of NATO, pushed for the alliance to intervene in the Balkans to stop genocide and ethnic cleansing, sought to reduce the spread of nuclear weapons, and championed human rights and democracy across the globe.
President Joe Biden paid tribute to Albright in a lengthy statement Wednesday, calling her a “force” and saying working with her during the 1990s while he was on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was among the highlights of his Senate career.
“When I think of Madeleine, I will always remember her fervent faith that ‘America is the indispensable nation,'” said Biden, who ordered flags at the White House and all federal buildings to be flown at half-staff in Albright’s honor.
“Few leaders have been so perfectly suited for the times in which they served,” Clinton red wing shoes said in a statement. “As a child in war-torn Europe, Madeleine and her family were twice forced to flee their home. When the end of the Cold War ushered in a new era of global interdependence, she became America’s voice at the UN, then took the helm at the State Department, where she was a passionate force for freedom, democracy, and human rights.”
Clinton later told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that he had recently spoken with his former top diplomat.
She “spent the entire conversation talking about how Ukraine had to be defended and that we had put a lot of those who said we had made a mistake to expand NATO — she said (Russia’s) not going after NATO yet,” Clinton said on “The Situation Room.”
“She just wanted to support whatever we could do to back Ukraine. And that’s all she wanted to talk about. She was happy. She was upbeat,” he added. “And she didn’t want to venture into her health challenges. She said, ‘I’m being treated, I’m doing the best I can. The main thing we can all do now is to think about the world we want to leave for our kids.'”
Albright was a face of US foreign policy in the decade between the end of the Cold War and the war on terror triggered by the September 11, 2001, attacks, an era heralded by President George H.W. Bush as a “new world order.” The US, particularly in Iraq and the Balkans, built international coalitions and occasionally intervened militarily to roll back autocratic regimes, and Albright — a self-identified “pragmatic idealist” who coined the term “assertive multilateralism” to describe the Clinton administration’s foreign policy — drew from her experience growing up in a family that fled the Nazis and communists in mid-20th century Europe to shape her worldview.
She saw the US as the “indispensable nation” when it came to using diplomacy backed by the use of force to defend democratic values around the world.
“We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us,” she told NBC in 1998. “I know that the American men and women in uniform are always prepared to sacrifice for freedom, democracy and the American way of life.”
Perhaps most notable were her efforts to bring about an end to violence in the Balkans, and she was crucial in pushing Clinton to intervene in Kosovo in 1999 to prevent a genocide against ethnic Muslims by former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic. She was haunted by the earlier failure of the Clinton administration to end the genocide in Bosnia.
The breakup of communist Yugoslavia into several independent states, including Serbia and Montenegro, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia, in the 1990s generated savage bloodshed unseen on the continent since World War II. The term “ethnic cleansing” became synonymous with Bosnia, where Serb forces loyal to Milosevic tried to carve out a separate state by forcing out the non-Serb civilian population.
The Clinton administration did not intervene until the massacre at Srebrenica in 1995, when Serbs killed 8,000 thorogood boots Muslim men and boys, which led to the US-brokered Dayton Peace Plan. But when Milosevic then tried to move his ethno-nationalist plan to Kosovo, the Clinton administration gathered a coalition to stop him doing there what he had gotten away with in Bosnia.
Albright accused Milosevic of creating “a horror of biblical proportions” in his “desire to exterminate a group of people” — Kosovo’s Muslim majority. She came under heated criticism in Washington at the time, with some calling the NATO airstrikes “Albright’s War” while others accused her of misjudging Milosevic’s resolve. To that end, Albright said in 1999, “I take full responsibility along with my colleagues for believing that it was essential for us not to stand by and watch what Milosevic was planning to do,” adding that “we cannot watch crimes against humanity.”
Ultimately, the US-led coalition did stop Serbian aggression, and Kosovo declared independence in 2008.
Madeleine Albright, seen here in 1997, was the first woman to serve as US secretary of state.
Albright, center, works on the newspaper staff at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. She graduated in 1959 and later received a master's degree and a Ph.D from Columbia University.
The effort contrasted with the Clinton administration’s opposition to international action to stop the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. At the time that Albright was representing the US at the United Nations, the Clinton administration, haunted by the military fiasco in Somalia a year earlier, argued for withdrawing the majority of UN troops from the country in the early days of the genocide. The ensuing planned slaughter of primarily ethnic Tutsis, as well as some moderate Hutus by Hutu extremists, would leave at least 800,000 dead.
Years later, Albright would call it her “greatest regret from that time.”
Late in Clinton’s second term, Albright also participated in unsuccessful talks to foster peace between the Israelis and Palestinians, which were followed by a second explosion of violence in the region. She was also part of the effort to coax North Korea to abandon its nuclear program by engaging with Kim Jong Il, an effort that was abandoned by George W. Bush.
Albright’s tenure as secretary of state also saw the al-Qaeda bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 224 people. She called the attack the “toughest day” of her tenure but would reject criticism that it should have prompted tougher US action against the terror group that would later carry out the 9/11 terror attacks.
“It would have been very hard, pre-9/11, to have persuaded anybody that an invasion of Afghanistan was appropriate,” Albright told the 9/11 Commission in 2004. “I think it did take the megashock, unfortunately, of 9/11, to make people understand the considerable threat.”
When pressed by the commission about the argument that the Clinton administration lacked actionable intelligence, Albright said “we used every single tool we had in terms of trying to figure out what the right targets would be and how to go about dealing with what we knew.”
But she also expressed frustration about the reluctance to push ahead with military force against al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.
“From my perspective, the Pentagon did not come forward with viable options in response to what the president was asking for,” Albright said.

Lifelong opponent of totalitarianism

Born Marie Jana Korbelova, the daughter of a Czechoslovakian diplomat, in Prague in 1937, Albright escaped then-Czechoslovakia with her family 10 days after the Nazi invasion. Her experience growing up in communist Yugoslavia and then fleeing to the US made her a lifelong opponent of totalitarianism and fascism. She was raised Roman Catholic, though she later converted to Episcopalian, and learned later in life about her family’s Jewish heritage.
Albright graduated from Wellesley College in 1959 and was married to Joseph Albright from 1959 until 1983, when they divorced. They had three children, twins Anne and Alice in 1961 and Katharine in 1967. She attended Columbia University for her master’s degree and Ph.D., which she completed in 1976 before launching on a decades-long career in government service and foreign affairs work under different Democratic politicians and causes.
Albright was aware of her role as a trailblazer and often spoke of the challenges of being the first woman to lead the State Department.
“I think that there were real oofos shoes questions as to … whether a woman could be secretary of state. And not just in terms of dealing with the issues, but in terms of dealing with the people, especially in hierarchical societies. … I found, actually, that I could do that,” she told CNN in 2005. “And people, I think, now can understand that is perfectly possible for a woman to be secretary of state, and I am delighted that there is second one,” a reference to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Throughout her career, Albright was known for wearing brooches or decorative pins to convey her foreign policy messages. When she found out that the Russians had bugged the State Department, she wore a large bug pin when she next met with them. When Saddam Hussein referred to Albright as a snake, she took to wearing a gold snake pin; when she was called a witch, she proudly brandished a miniature broom. When she slammed as “completely un-American” acting Director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services Ken Cuccinelli’s suggestion that only immigrants who can “stand on their own two feet” are welcome in the United States, Albright wore a Statue of Liberty pin.
Following her tenure as secretary of state, Albright served as chairwoman of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs in Washington from 2001 to her death, and she taught at Georgetown University. She was also a prolific author, penning several books, including a memoir in 2003 entitled “Madam Secretary.” She also worked in the private sector for a time.
In 2012, Albright received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama, who said her “toughness helped bring peace to the Balkans and paved the way for progress in some of the most unstable corners of the world.”

A forceful voice on foreign policy in retirement

Throughout her retirement, Albright continued working for democracy around the world and speaking about US policy, leveling particularly harsh criticism toward President Donald Trump, whom she called “the most undemocratic president in modern American history.”
In a New York Times op-ed written last month just before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Albright argued that Russian leader Vladimir Putin would be making “a historic error” and warned of devastating costs to his country.
“Instead of paving Russia’s path to greatness, invading Ukraine would ensure Mr. Putin’s infamy by leaving his country diplomatically isolated, economically crippled and strategically vulnerable in the face of a stronger, more united Western alliance,” Albright wrote.
Asked by USA Today in August 2020 how she defined courage, Albright replied, “it’s when you stand up for what you believe in when it’s not always easy and you get criticized for it.”
“It took me a long time to find my voice. But having found it, I’m not going to shut up,” Albright said. “I’m going to use it to the best of my ability in terms of making sure that democracy is our form of government and that those around the world that want to live in a democracy have a possibility to do so.”
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03/24
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Russia has requested military and economic assistance from China, US officials say

National security adviser Jake Sullivan talks to reporters at the White House on December 7, 2021, in Washington, DC.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan talks to reporters at the White House on December 7, 2021, in Washington, DC.

Russia has asked China for military support, including drones, as well as economic assistance for its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, according to conversations CNN had with two US officials.

The requests came after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, one of the officials said. That official declined to detail the Chinese reaction but indicated that the Chinese had responded.
Potential assistance from the Chinese would be a significant development in Russia’s invasion. It could upend the hold Ukrainian forces still have in the country as well as provide a counterweight to the harsh sanctions imposed on Russia’s economy.
When asked by CNN about red wing shoes the reporting of Russia’s request for military aid, Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in the US, said in a statement, “I’ve never heard of that.”
Liu expressed concern for “the Ukraine situation” — calling it “indeed disconcerting” — and said China has and will continue to provide humanitarian assistance to Ukraine.
Liu said: “The high priority now is to prevent the tense situation from escalating or even getting out of control. … China calls for exercising utmost restraint and preventing a massive humanitarian crisis.”
The Russian embassy in the US did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.
News of Russia’s request comes before White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan will meet with his Chinese counterpart, Yang Jiechi, in Rome on Monday as part of a follow-up conversation to President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s virtual meeting last November, according to National Security Council spokesperson Emily Horne.
Sullivan told Dana Bash on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that China providing Russia with support is a “concern.”
“We also are watching closely to see the extent to which China actually does provide any form of support, material support or economic support, to Russia. It is a concern of ours. And we have communicated to Beijing that we will not stand by and allow any country to compensate Russia for its losses from the economic sanctions,” Sullivan said.
Russia expanded its offensive to western Ukraine on Sunday, firing missiles near the city of Lviv and hitting a large military base close to the Polish border, reportedly swarovski jewelry killing dozens of people as the war draws closer to NATO’s territory.
Local authorities say 35 people were killed and 134 injured at the military base, in what Ukraine’s Minister of Defence Oleksii Reznikov described as a “terrorist attack” on peace and security “near the EU-NATO border.”
US officials, including White House press secretary Jen Psaki, have been increasingly critical of Beijing’s response to Russia’s war in Ukraine. While Beijing has seemingly tried to strike a neutral tone on the international stage, Chinese domestic media coverage has promoted Russian disinformation campaigns and described the war as a “special military operation.” Psaki also tweeted Wednesday that Beijing “has seemingly endorsed” false Russian claims that the US is developing chemical weapons in Ukraine.
“Our assessment right now is that (China is) abiding by the requirements that have been put in place, but we would continue to encourage any country to think a lot about what place they want to — what role they want to play — in history as we all look back,” Psaki said during a news conference Wednesday.
Sullivan told Bash on Sunday that the US has made it clear to Beijing that there will “absolutely be consequences” for “large-scale” efforts to give the Kremlin a workaround to US sanctions.
“We will not allow that to go forward and allow there to be a lifeline to Russia from these economic sanctions from any country anywhere in the world,” he said.
Still, Sullivan said that while the US believes “China, in fact, was aware before the invasion took place that Vladimir Putin was planning something, they may not have understood the full extent of it.”
“Because it’s very possible that Putin lied to them the same way that he lied to Europeans and others,” Sullivan told Bash.
Biden warns Russia will pay a 'severe price' if it uses chemical weapons in Ukraine
While US officials have made note that China has been abiding by the sanctions the US and its allies have imposed against Russia, Biden said recently he was not prepared to discuss his efforts to pressure China to help isolate Russia over the Kremlin’s bloody war.
“I’m not prepared to comment on that at the moment,” Biden told reporters at the White House in February.
Biden has often talked about his conversations with Xi, frequently recalling the dozens of hours the two leaders spent with each other when they were serving as their country’s vice presidents. In his speeches, Biden often likes to recall dining with Xi on the Tibetan Plateau and describing the United States in one word: “possibilities.”
During the face-to-face meeting in Rome, Sullivan and Yang will also discuss issues that Biden and Xi went over during their virtual call last year, sources familiar with the matter say. The sources added that this meeting has been in the works for some time, and they don’t expect any concrete outcomes from it.
Since taking office, Biden has stressed he believes the US is at an inflection point in its history and must show the world democracies can compete with autocratic regimes like China’s.
“To compete for the best jobs of the future, we also need to level the playing field with China and other competitors,” Biden said at his first State of the Union address earlier this month.
During the three-hour summit with coach outlet his Chinese counterpart roughly four months ago, Biden raised concerns about human rights, Chinese aggression toward Taiwan and trade issues. The Biden administration has been clear managing competition with China is a long-term national security and economic priority of the United States.
“How the United States, Europe, and Asia work together to secure the peace and defend our shared values and advance our prosperity across the Pacific will be among the most consequential efforts we undertake,” Biden said at the Munich security conference last year.
While in Rome, Sullivan is also expected to meet with Luigi Mattiolo, diplomatic adviser to the Italian Prime Minister; the two men will discuss ongoing efforts to respond to the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine, according to Horne’s statement.

Nuclear escalation threat

Meanwhile, Sullivan told CNN on Sunday that while the Biden administration is “concerned about the possibility of escalation,” with respect to Putin’s nuclear posture, “we have not seen anything that would require us to change our nuclear posture at this time.”
“We are watching this extremely closely, and obviously, the escalation risk with a nuclear power is severe, and it is a different kind of conflict than other conflicts the American people have seen over the years,” he said on “State of the Union.”
Still, Sullivan stood by the administration’s decision to reject a Polish offer to transfer fighter jets to Ukraine through the United States and a German air base.
“The President listened to the assessment of his intelligence community, he listened to the advice of his military commanders, he consulted his NATO allies, and he ultimately determined that the risk-benefit analysis of flying planes from NATO bases into contested airspace over Ukraine did not make sense, was not something that he would authorize,” he said, adding the US is focused on providing “other anti-air systems that could help the Ukrainians make progress in terms of dealing with the threat that is coming from the air from the Russian side.”
The national security adviser also reiterated comments from Biden earlier this week that Russia “would pay a severe price” if they chose to use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine, adding that Russia’s accusations against Ukraine preparing to deploy chemical weapons “is a tell, a tell that they themselves may be preparing to do so and then trying to pin the blame on someone else– that’s a classic page out of the Russian playbook.”
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It’ll be ‘very difficult’ to get detained US basketball star Brittney Griner out of Russia, lawmaker says

For days, family and friends have been clamoring for the release of two-time Olympic champion Brittney Griner after she was detained in Russia on drug charges.

Now, hundreds of strangers have joined the effort as US-Russian tensions escalate amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Griner, 31, is a championship-winning oofos shoes player with the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury and spends her offseasons playing for the Russian team UMMC Ekaterinburg.
The Russian Federal Customs Service said an American at Sheremetyevo Airport was carrying hash oil. Russia’s Interfax News Agency quoted a statement from the Customs Service, which did not identify the traveler by name:
“As a US citizen was passing through the green channel at Sheremetyevo Airport upon arriving from New York, a working dog from the Sheremetyevo customs canine department detected the possible presence of narcotic substances in the accompanying luggage,” the statement said.
“The customs inspection of the hand luggage being carried by the US citizen confirmed the presence of vapes with specifically smelling liquid, and an expert determined that the liquid was cannabis oil (hash oil), which is a narcotic substance.”
The customs agency said the arrest happened in February, but the exact date was not given. The New York Times was first to report Griner’s arrest. Her whereabouts since her arrest also remain uncertain.
Griner’s ordeal comes as the Russian invasion of Ukraine is in its second week. President Vladimir Putin issued a series of threats Saturday against Ukraine and Western powers, saying the sanctions introduced on his country are “equivalent of a declaration of war.”
A member of the US House Armed Services Committee said “it’s going to be very difficult” to get Griner out of Russia.
“Our diplomatic relationships with Russia are nonexistent at the moment,” Democratic Rep. John Garamendi of California told CNN on Monday.
“Perhaps during the various negotiations coach outlet that may take place, she might be able to be one of the solutions. I don’t know.”
He also noted that “Russia has some very, very strict LGBT rules and laws” — though it’s not clear whether those rules and laws might impact Griner’s case.
But the Biden administration is working on trying to get Griner out of Russia, members of the Congressional Black Caucus said after meeting with President Joe Biden on Monday.
“The best news we got today was that they know about it and that she’s on the agenda,” Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, who represents Griner’s hometown of Houston, Texas, told reporters.
Noting a potential 10-year-sentence for Griner, Jackson Lee added: “We know about Britney Griner, and we know that we have to move on her situation.”

Hundreds petition for Griner’s release

More than 1,000 people have signed the “Secure Brittney Griner’s Swift and Safe Return to the U.S.” petition on Change.org.
Journalist Tamryn Spruill, who covers women’s basketball, started the online petition Saturday.
“Griner is a beloved global citizen who has used her platform since her entry into the WNBA to help others,” Spruill wrote on the petition’s web page.
“Griner was in Russia for work: playing for UMMC Ekaterinburg, where in 2021 she helped the team win its fifth EuroLeague Women championship.”
Spruill explained why many female professional basketball players in the US work overseas. “Like many athletes competing in the WNBA, Griner plays abroad during the WNBA offseason because her salary is exponentially higher in other countries,” Spruill wrote.
“For WNBA players, that means playing abroad, while NBA rookies who haven’t played a professional game yet are handed salaries many-times higher that what title-winning, All-Star designated WNBA veterans could ever hope for,” the petition says.
“These realities are not the fault of the players. They simply want to be paid their worth like their male counterparts, and they do not deserve to be entangled in geopolitical turmoil for doing so.”

‘There are no words to express this pain’

Griner’s wife described the agony of waiting in an Instagram post on Monday.
“People say ‘stay busy.’ Yet, there’s not a task in this world that could keep any of us from worrying about you. My heart, our hearts, are all skipping beats everyday that swarovski jewelry goes by.” Cherelle Griner wrote.
“There are no words to express this pain. I’m hurting, we’re hurting.”
On Saturday, she thanked supporters in a post and asked for privacy.
“I understand that many of you have grown to love BG over the years and have concerns and want details,” Cherelle Griner wrote. “Please honor our privacy as we continue to work on getting my wife home safely.”
But Griner’s fate remains unclear.
A criminal case has been opened against the US citizen arrested, Interfax reported, citing Russia’s customs service.
A spokesperson for the US State Department said the agency is “aware of reports of a US citizen arrested in Moscow.”
“Whenever a US citizen is arrested overseas, we stand ready to provide all appropriate consular services,” the spokesperson told CNN on Saturday.
CNN has reached out to Griner’s representative for comment.
Her high school basketball coach, Debbie Jackson, remembers Griner as an athlete with determination and grit.
But Jackson told CNN she worries Griner’s case will be used for political purposes.
“My biggest fear is that … she will become a political pawn,” Jackson said.

Playing in Russia for years

Griner has played with Russia’s UMMC Ekaterinburg since 2015 during the WNBA offseason. In five games this season, she has averaged 13.2 points and 4.2 rebounds per game.
The star player, who won the WNBA championship with the Mercury in 2014, averaged 20.5 points and 9.5 rebounds per game last season with Phoenix.
Griner is also a two-time medalist at the FIBA Women’s Basketball World Championship with Team USA.
USA Basketball, the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA), the Mercury and the WNBA players’ union publicly shared their concerns for Griner.
USA Basketball, the governing body for sport in the United States, said it is “aware of and closely monitoring the legal situation facing Brittney Griner in Russia. Brittney has always handled herself with the utmost professionalism during her long tenure with USA Basketball and her safety and wellbeing are our primary concerns.”
The WNBA said Griner has its “full support,” adding its main priority is “her swift and safe return to the United States.”
The Women’s National Basketball Players Association said it is “aware of the situation in Russia concerning one of our members, Brittney Griner.”
“Our utmost concern is BG’s safety and well-being,” the WNBPA said. “We will continue to closely monitor and look forward to her return to the US.”
The Phoenix Mercury said it is “closely monitoring the situation with Brittney Griner in Russia” as they remain in “constant contact with her family, her representation, the WNBA and NBA. We love and support Brittney and at this time our main concern is her safety, physical and mental health, and her safe return home.”
2022
03/08
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US Navy recovers wreckage of jet that crashed into aircraft carrier from South China Sea

US Navy service members recover the wreckage of a military aircraft from the bottom of the South China Sea on March 2.

US Navy service members recover the wreckage of a military aircraft from the bottom of the South China Sea on March 2.

The US Navy on Wednesday recovered from the bottom of the South China Sea the wreckage of a US military stealth fighter jet that crashed into the deck of a US aircraft carrier in January, the US Navy’s 7th Fleet announced in a news release Thursday.

The F-35C crashed into the ocean after failing to make a successful landing on the USS Carl Vinson, while conducting “routine flight operations” on January 24, the release said.
In order to retrieve the wreckage of the military aircraft from “approximately 12,400 feet” deep, a team of US Navy red wing shoes service members used a “remotely-operated vehicle” called the CURV-21 to attach “specialized rigging and lift lines to the aircraft” at the bottom of the ocean, the release said.
After attaching the rigging and lift lines, the crane on the diving support construction vessel used to recover the aircraft “lowered to the seafloor and connected to the rigging.” Once attached, the team lifted the aircraft to the ocean’s surface and put it on the vessel to transport it, the release said.
“The aircraft will be delivered to a nearby military installation to aid in the ongoing investigation and evaluated for potential transport to the United States,” the release said.
It took the team 37 days to recover the wreckage. It included members of the US 7th Fleet Task Force 75 and the Naval Sea Systems Command’s Supervisor of Salvage and Diving. They used “the diving support construction vessel Picasso” to retrieve the wreckage.
Newly leaked video shows F-35 crashing in flames on aircraft carrier
Seven people were injured, including the pilot, who ejected from the plane, and six others aboard the carrier during the incident in January when the jet crashed. The $100 million fighter jet is the newest in the Navy fleet.
After the crash, the US Navy said it planned to retrieve any remnants of the aircraft from the ocean. The F-35C contains some of the Navy’s most advanced technology, and the analysts said Washington would want to keep it out of Beijing’s hands.
However, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said it was aware that a US Navy stealth fighter had crashed in the South China Sea but “had no interests in their plane.”
“We advise [the US] to contribute more to regional peace and stability, rather than flexing force at every turn in [the South China Sea],” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said.
Videos of the crash emerged shortly after it happened, showing the aircraft bursting into flames as it struck the flight deck of the USS Carl Vinson.
Shortly after the crash, Navy officials described the damage to the Carl Vinson as superficial and said it quickly resumed normal operations.
2022
03/04
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US intelligence agencies make understanding Vladimir Putin’s state of mind a top priority

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a news conference with his Belarusian counterpart following their talks at the Kremlin in Moscow on February 18, 2022.

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a news conference with his Belarusian counterpart following their talks at the Kremlin in Moscow on February 18, 2022.

The US intelligence community has made evaluating Russian President Vladimir Putin’s state of mind a top priority in recent days as it seeks to establish how that is affecting his handling of the rapidly escalating Ukraine crisis, according to two sources familiar with the effort.

The efforts come as longtime Putin-watchers have publicly speculated that his behavior has become increasingly erratic and irrational. Since he launched Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last Wednesday, senior US officials have asked intelligence agencies to gather any red wing shoes new information they can on how the Russian leader is faring and how his mindset has been impacted by the unexpectedly unified and tough response from European neighbors and allies around the world.
The US intelligence community has spent decades decoding the former KGB officer, who has effectively ruled Russia since 1999. But while the United States has tremendous institutional knowledge of the man, it has a notoriously poor view into his day-to-day decision-making. The Kremlin remains what intelligence officials call a “hard target” — incredibly difficult to penetrate through traditional espionage.
There has not been any new comprehensive assessment that indicates a particular change to Putin’s overall health, said one US official. And officials have been on guard for the possibility that Putin’s strategy may well be to project instability, in an attempt to push the US and allies to give him what he wants for fear that he could do worse.
Biden hoped to spark a political reset at home with his first State of the Union address. A war in Europe changed those plans.
But the sudden burst of interest reflects a sense among some intelligence officials that Putin’s decision-making in Ukraine has been out of character — perhaps due to what some previous intelligence reports suggest has been protracted isolation during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Everything US has [is] in [the] realm of conjecture because Putin’s decisions and statements don’t seem to be making sense,” said one source familiar with recent intelligence reporting on the topic. “For years, decades Putin has acted according to a pretty specific
In a classified briefing for lawmakers on Monday evening, Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, said the US intelligence community does not have good insight into Putin’s state of mind, according to a lawmaker who was present.
Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who attended the Senate briefing, confirmed that Putin’s state of mind had come up, but he declined to elaborate on what had been shared.
He did say, however, that regardless of the briefing, he personally is worried about Putin’s mindset.

Scores of raw intelligence reports

The intelligence community has produced scores of raw intelligence reports from sources as information pours in about the war. One such report that has circulated to more than a dozen agencies cites a source who has relayed that Putin’s behavior has become “highly concerning and unpredictable” over just the last two days, thorogood boots according to a copy obtained by CNN.
But in an indication of how difficult this information is to obtain directly, the description came secondhand to the FBI from a source who had talked to another, unknown source “with excellent access.” The report notes that this person had in the past provided information that intelligence agencies were able to independently corroborate.
The source behind the report told the FBI that Putin “expressed extreme anger” over Western sanctions put in place in response to his attack on Ukraine and “felt that the sanctions had escalated the situation faster than he expected and beyond what he considered to be appropriate.” Precisely which sanctions so infuriated Putin is unknown; that portion of the report is redacted.
What does Putin want in Ukraine? The conflict explained
The report also notes that the circulation of accurate information about the war has been extremely limited within Russia, even at the highest levels of society.
For example, many people and well-connected individuals with the means to leave Russia before airports and borders were closed have remained in the country, according to the report — suggesting that they had not known about the closures in advance.
The report, which originated from the FBI, comes with some caveats: It acknowledges that the source who provided the information to the FBI “may have provided the information to influence and inform” US decision-making — in other words, that it might be an information operation designed to manipulate the United States.
And officials caution that raw intelligence should not be taken as fact. It has not been evaluated for reliability or analyzed for its implications.
But the report has nevertheless caused other agencies inside the Biden administration to ask the FBI to follow up with its source for additional information.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the CIA and the FBI declined to comment.

A long history

Speculation about Putin’s mental health began after he gave a speech on Thursday laying out a warped, revisionist history that purported to justify his intervention in Ukraine. Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, tweeted on Friday that Putin “has always been a killer, but his problem now is different & significant” — and suggested he was basing his assessment on intelligence briefings given to him as the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
“I wish I could share more,but for now I can say it’s pretty obvious to many that something is off with #Putin,” Rubio wrote. “It would be a mistake to assume this Putin would react the same way he would have 5 years ago.”
For some, the boldness of Putin’s decision to invade — as well as his implied threat to use nuclear weapons — is a break with the carefully calculated and far more limited military campaigns he has launched in the past. Video footage of the Russian President seated dozens of feet away from his senior military advisers during meetings and gleefully dressing down one of his spy chiefs on television have only underscored the image of an isolated leader, acting on his own counsel alone.
US officials fear the worst is yet to come for Kyiv
By Sunday, the floodgates had opened. Former Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul tweeted that Putin had “changed,” and sounded “completely disconnected from reality” and “unhinged.” Former Director of National Intelligence Jim Clapper, who is a national security analyst at CNN, also called Putin “unhinged” and warned, “I worry about his acuity and balance.”
Other longtime Putin watchers argue that the Russian President’s recent actions are relatively consistent with the man US intelligence has fixated on for decades, noting that he has long demonstrated a willingness to risk military oofos shoes defeat in operations that the United States thought offered no chance of success — including ordering a second invasion of Chechnya in 1999, just three years after the Russian military had already been defeated there once.
“This is not different than anything he’s said before, he’s just saying it all at once in a very stark way. And he’s willing to do unspeakable things — but he’s always been willing to do unspeakable things,” said Beth Sanner, a former briefer to then-President Donald Trump and a CNN national security analyst.
Putin isn’t “insane or unhinged,” Sanner said. Rather, she said, he is “highly emotional right now because of what he was about to embark upon … and he has been very, very isolated, which adds to that emotional sense. But I don’t think he’s crazy.”
One US official echoed that assessment to CNN, arguing that Putin is acting in a way that he has long signaled he was capable of. Rather than a change in his mental acuity, this person said, officials believe he’s simply become enraged — making it impossible for his senior advisers to give him frank assessments.
Russia faces financial meltdown as sanctions slam its economy
Even his command to put Russia’s nuclear deterrent forces on high alert Sunday isn’t unprecedented. In 2014, when Putin annexed Crimea, he also raised the possibility he might put his nuclear forces on high alert, which then as now raised the specter of nuclear weapons being introduced into the conflict.
Russia’s nuclear doctrine, published in 2020, also includes a first-use nuclear policy. The Kremlin “reserves the right to use nuclear weapons,” including “for the prevention of an escalation of military actions and their termination on conditions that are acceptable for the Russian Federation and/or its allies.”
Still, a source familiar with recent intelligence reporting on the topic said, it is “difficult to achieve conclusion of any confidence regarding Putin’s state of mind. Would need SIGINT of phone call/video of leader losing it on his cabinet or something like that.”
SIGINT, or “signals intelligence,” is an intelligence community term that refers to intercepted communications.
“Real-time communication between Russian cabinet leaders,” this person said, is a “very hard target.”
Ultimately, this official and others say, understanding Putin’s recent behavior is a matter of analysis — not intelligence. It’s possible, officials say, that they may never have an answer.
2022
03/02
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Guns overtake car crashes as leading cause of US trauma-related deaths, study says

The study found that suicides accounted for most of the deaths by firearms.

The study found that suicides accounted for most of the deaths by firearms.

Firearm deaths have overtaken car crashes are the leading cause of death by trauma in the US, according to a new study.

In 2017, there were 1.44 million years of potential life lost due to firearm deaths, edging out that of motor vehicle crashes (1.37 million years), according to the study published Tuesday in the journal Trauma Surgery and Acute Care Open. And that trend continued in 2018.
Those numbers are based on data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention between 2009 and 2018, the most recent year for which data was available.
Researchers used the CDC standard formula to calculate coach outlet years of potential life lost by subtracting the age of death from the standard age of 80, to represent the average US life expectancy of 78.7 years and then added the differences.
“The main argument is that the right to bear arms to prevent injury or to defend against aggressors may result in a small number of preventable deaths is a plausible theory, however, the data reveal that the resulting access to firearms has equated to magnitudes of death due to firearm suicides in the same individuals demanding access to firearms,” the researchers wrote.
The number of suicides by firearm rose from fewer than 19,000 in 2009 to over 24,000 in 2018. Across the 10 years studied, White men made up the majority of suicide-related firearm deaths, with 4.95 million years of potential life lost.
Meanwhile, the majority of homicide-related firearm deaths were among Black men, with 3.2 million years of potential life lost, the study found.
People who die in homicides tend to be younger — meaning that for each death, on average, a Black man who is a victim of homicide lost 50.5 years, whereas a White man who died by suicide lost 29.1 years. Overall, Black people make up 13.4% of the US population.
And among women, firearm homicides rose almost 10% over the 10 years, and firearm suicides rose over 31%.
“Previous studies have shown that firearm ownership, mass shootings, injuries and death are more of a problem in the USA as compared with other developed countries,” the researchers wrote. “The demand for total freedom and the second amendment have resulted in high access to firearms in this country and this is undisputable.”
A study released in January from the non-profit Everytown for Gun Safety indicates there is a direct correlation between weaker gun laws and higher rates of gun deaths, including homicides, suicides and accidental killings.
The group found that California had the strongest gun laws, with a score of 84.5 out of 100, with a low rate of 8.5 gun swarovski jewelry deaths per 100,000 residents, and below the national average of 13.6.
And Hawaii has the lowest rate of gun deaths in the country, with the second strongest gun law score. It also has the lowest rate of gun ownership, with firearms in 9% of households, the data shows.
On the other end of the spectrum lies Mississippi, which has the weakest gun laws with a score of 3 out of 100 and has a rate of 28.6 gun deaths per 100,000 residents — the highest of all states, the nonprofit research shows.
Regionally, the researchers for the study published by Trauma Surgery and Acute Care Open found that the South had the most years of potential life lost due to firearms, followed by the Midwest, West and Northeast.
2022
02/24
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