Month: March 2021

A man suspected of assaulting an Asian woman in New York has been arrested after surveillance video of the attack drew condemnation.
Police said Brandon Elliot, 38, is the man in the video assaulting the woman in midtown Manhattan on Monday. They said Elliot was living at a hotel that doubles as a homeless shelter a few blocks from the scene of the attack.
Elliot was convicted in 2002 of stabbing his mother to death in the Bronx when he was 19 years old. He was released in 2019 and is now on lifetime parole.  
 
According to police, Elliot now faces charges of assault as a hate crime, attempted assault as a hate crime, assault and attempted assault in Monday’s attack.
The victim in the video has been identified as Vilma Kari, a 65-year-old woman who immigrated from the Philippines.
Kari was walking to church in midtown Manhattan Monday when police said a man kicked her in the stomach, knocked her to the ground, stomped on her face, shouted anti-Asian slurs and told her, “you don’t belong here” before walking away.
 
Monday’s attack is the latest in a national wave of suspected anti-Asian hate crimes , including a mass shooting in Atlanta that left eight dead, six of whom were women of Asian descent.  
 
The recent surge of anti-Asian violence has been linked in part to misplaced blame for the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. 
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Faced with the challenge of caring for thousands of migrant children who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is asking workers from other federal agencies to volunteer to go to the border region on temporary assignments.During deployments of between 30 and 120 days, the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement wants the volunteers to help with tasks such as supervising children and collecting contact information for their relatives inside the United States so that they can be handed to over to their family’s care while they go through immigration proceedings.Children who are taken into custody by U.S. Customs and Border Protection are transferred to HHS facilities until they can be placed with a sponsor.  Health and Human Services says in more than 80 percent of cases, a child has a family member in the United States, and that about half of those are a parent or legal guardian.There are currently about 18,000 children in custody, including at HHS facilities located in convention centers in Dallas, Texas, and San Diego, California.While authorities expel most adults who cross the U.S.-Mexico border under a public health order that former President Donald Trump issued in response to the coronavirus pandemic, President Joe Biden’s administration has not reinstated expulsions of unaccompanied migrant children.  Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 11 MB480p | 15 MB540p | 20 MB720p | 45 MB1080p | 79 MBOriginal | 241 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioChanges to US Immigration Policy Triggers Migrant InflowAdam Fernandez, vice president of policy and strategic engagement at Lawyers for Good Government, said that divided policy, often referred to as Title 42, “keeps people from entering the U.S. as a family, and it leads to an effective family separation.”Fernandez told VOA the background for the current effort to recruit volunteers to help with HHS operations at the border is a 1997 agreement that calls for unaccompanied migrant children to be quickly placed with a sponsor.“They’re trying to abide by that and to try to get them out of immigrant detention,” Fernandez said.  “But if you really want to solve the problem, you need to get rid of Title 42 to keep families together, and allow them to apply for asylum together.”The Department of Health and Human Services says its preference is for volunteers to be federal workers who are proficient in Spanish or familiar with indigenous dialects spoken in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras or El Salvador.  They will also have to undergo child care background checks. VP Harris, Guatemala’s Giammattei Discuss ImmigrationPresident Joe Biden has named Harris to lead U.S. efforts with Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador to try to stem the flow of migration, which has climbed sharply in recent weeksMiriam Abaya, senior director for immigration and children’s rights at First Focus on Children, said there are federal workers who have specific expertise, such as experience working with children or having gone through the immigration themselves, that is important to have as the government works to ensure the children are properly cared for.“Absolutely I think language skills are important. I think that people who have prior experience working with children, who have an understanding of child development, of childhood trauma, of child medical care and mental health services,” Abaya told VOA.  “I think all of that experience is important to bring to bear and to make sure that those who are caring for children see these children as children first and are able to meet their specific needs.”During the Trump administration, there were several initiatives involving sending more people to the southern border as the president declared a national emergency existed there.Those efforts involved the Defense Department sending up to 4,000 personnel, mostly National Guard troops, to support Department of Homeland Security operations.  Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told reporters Tuesday that there has been no additional request for assistance.Two years ago, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen asked for federal workers at her agency and others who were not involved in operations at the border to volunteer to help with border security.Employees at the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees Voice of America, were among those who received the memo issued last week seeking volunteers for the current border effort.  Yolanda López, VOA’s acting director, said in a note to staff members Tuesday that in order to avoid any conflicts of interest, VOA journalists are not eligible to participate.Carla Babb and Chris Hannas contributed to this report.
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U.S. President Joe Biden is traveling Wednesday to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to promote a $2 trillion infrastructure plan that includes addressing roads, bridges, drinking water, electricity and transit systems. A senior administration official told reporters late Tuesday the projects would be targeted to take place over the span of about eight years. FILE – Work proceeds on an Interstate Highway 75 project in Hazel Park, Mich., April 20, 2020.“These are high-value investments, the investments that experts across the board have identified as contributing to addressing deficiencies, improving economic efficiency,” the official said.  “And we think that these are investments that, as a country, we cannot afford not to make.” Biden is proposing paying for it all through changes to taxes on corporations, including raising the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%. Wealthy Americans Dodge $175 Billion in Taxes Each Year As Biden administration plans tax hikes, enforcement remains lax White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday the administration is open to different ideas about how to fund the package, but that concerns about the condition of the nation’s infrastructure are shared by people across the political spectrum. Republicans in Congress have expressed their opposition to Biden’s plan to raise taxes, saying that would hurt American workers, slow economic growth and make U.S. companies less competitive in the world market. The senior administration official who previewed the plan ahead of Biden’s speech said one focus of the proposal is “making our infrastructure of the future more resilient to climate change,” with initiatives such as helping bus fleets shift to electric vehicles and making electric cars more affordable for drivers. The official also said Biden wants to eliminate all lead pipes in the drinking water system and to make affordable broadband internet access available to everyone. Another part of the plan is aimed at research and development in sectors such as batteries and semiconductors, along with job training for those industries. 
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The Biden administration is planning to fund most of a massive investment in U.S. infrastructure and jobs by raising tax rates on the wealthy and on businesses. But a new study shows that wealthy individuals are already holding back about $175 billion in taxes every year through complex tax evasion schemes. Further, experts warn that higher rates could lead to even less compliance with tax laws.   It has never been a secret that every year the United States faces a “tax gap” — the difference between taxes owed and taxes paid. But when researchers from the Internal Revenue Service teamed up with three academic economists to measure the amount of income that wealthy Americans conceal from the IRS each year, their estimates far exceeded previous calculations.   Their paper, published this month by the National Bureau for Economic Research,  used comprehensive data from IRS records to demonstrate that individuals in the top 1% of U.S. income earners under-report their income by an average of 20% every year.   Sophisticated tax evasion “There is substantial, sophisticated tax evasion at the top of the income distribution,” said one of the authors, Daniel Reck of the London School of Economics. “In particular, because sophisticated tax evasion is often not detected by random audits used to measure the tax gap, we can see that there was even more tax evasion than conventional estimates would have suggested.”   Most of the unreported income, the authors found, is either hidden in offshore accounts or the result of under-reporting income from “pass-through” businesses, where profits are taxed as an owner’s ordinary income. A key reason why so much tax evasion goes undetected is that the IRS has been chronically underfunded for the past decade, leading to a sharp decline in the number of audits it can conduct, particularly of high-income individuals with complex financial holdings.    There are also numerous gray areas where wealthy taxpayers can blur the line between legal tax avoidance strategies and illegal tax evasion. Conservation easements, for example, allow landowners who relinquish their right to develop qualifying properties to deduct a portion of the value from their taxes over a period of 16 years.   Reck said that determining the legality of some easements can involve years-long court battles that make the IRS leery of committing resources to challenge them.    Congress debates The revelation that an unexpectedly large amount of money goes uncollected by the IRS every year comes as Congress begins debating whether and how to implement the tax increases that the Biden administration has proposed. FILE – Democratic Presidential Candidate Joe Biden speaks during a voter mobilization event in Atlanta, on Oct. 27, 2020.President Biden campaigned on a promise to raise the taxes of the highest-earning Americans, while assuring taxpayers who make less than $400,000 per year that they would not face higher rates. He also vowed to raise the corporate income tax to 28% from 21% and to impose a minimum tax rate that corporations would have to pay every year, regardless of deductions. There are multiple possible changes affecting high-income earners and the wealthy. Biden has proposed raising the top income tax bracket to 39.6% from 37%. Income over $400,000 would be subject to 12.4% Social Security tax, split between the taxpayer and the employer. For those with income over $1 million, dividends and capital gains would be taxed at the top marginal tax rate of 39.6%.Early estimates of the Biden plan predicted that it would raise roughly $3.3 trillion over ten years.    In a hearing of the Senate Budget Committee on March 25, lawmakers heard very different assessments of the claim, often repeated by the president, that the wealthy do not pay their fair share of taxes in the U.S.    Wealthy Americans pay 40% of all income tax Scott A. Hodge, president of the Tax Foundation, a conservative-leaning think tank, testified that wealthy Americans currently account for a larger share of the federal government’s tax income than any time since 1980.  “According to the latest IRS data for 2018… the top 1% of taxpayers paid $616 billion in income taxes,” Hodge said. That, he said, “amounts to 40% of all income taxes paid, the highest share since 1980, and a larger share of the tax burden than is borne by the bottom 90% of taxpayers combined.”   “Similarly, in 2018, the top 0.1% of taxpayers paid $311 billion in income taxes,” Hodge said. “That amounted to 20% of all income taxes paid, the highest level since 2001, as far back as the IRS data allows us to measure. The top 0.1% of taxpayers in 2018 paid a greater share of the income tax burden than the bottom 75% of taxpayers combined.”   ‘Stop whining’ Testifying at the same hearing was Abigail Disney, whose grandfather, Roy Disney, helped found the Walt Disney Company. A filmmaker herself, Disney is also part of a vocal movement of wealthy Americans who believe they should pay more in taxes.   FILE – Abigail Disney, granddaughter of Walt Disney Co. co-founder Roy Disney, speaks with reporters at the Capitol in Sacramento, Calif., Jan. 15, 2020.“I was born to one of the most famous families on earth, a family that went from dirt poor to embarrassingly wealthy in just two generations,” she said.    Disney said that the extreme concentration of wealth at the very top of the income distribution in the U.S. has made it essential that taxes on the wealthy be increased.   “The bottom line is that wealthy people need to pay their fair share,” she said. “They need to stop whining and recognize taxes not as a punishment but as a responsibility. Any mother will tell you the difference is often lost on children. I am sure the men and women who profit so heavily off of the American economy can find a way to understand the distinction.”   Unintended consequences? In a 2011 paper, a team of economists led by Henrik Jacobsen Kleven showed that raising marginal tax rates tends to increase the amount of tax evasion engaged in by wealthy taxpayers, which could blunt the impact of the tax increases being proposed by the Biden administration.    But Reck, of the London School of Economics, warned that it would be overly simplistic to think of efforts to increase tax revenues as limited to raising rates or strengthening enforcement.   “I don’t really think that’s an either-or proposition,” he said. “I think the best thing to do would be to do both of these things: improve enforcement and raise the rates. And a third tool that would be useful would be to shut down a number of channels for legally ambiguous tax avoidance.”   That, of course, would be an even greater challenge for the Biden administration than simply raising tax rates and hoping for a net positive effect on the Treasury Department’s bottom line. 
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U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei spoke by phone on Tuesday and agreed to work together to address the root causes of migration to the United States, the White House said in a statement.   “They agreed to explore innovative opportunities to create jobs and to improve the conditions for all people in Guatemala and the region, including by promoting transparency and combating crime,” the statement said.   President Joe Biden has named Harris to lead U.S. efforts with Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador to try to stem the flow of migration, which has climbed sharply in recent weeks.   Harris thanked Giammattei for his efforts to secure Guatemala’s southern border, the White House said.Guatemala’s president, Alejandro Giammattei, speaks during February 2020 news conference in Guatemala City, March 31, 2021.Guatemala’s government, in a statement, said that during the call Giammattei underlined his interest in Guatemalan citizens living in the United States being granted temporary protected status.   Temporary protected status allows nationals of certain countries, often facing armed conflict or major natural disasters, who are already in the United States to remain and work there.Harris also accepted an invitation by Giammattei to visit the Central American country at a future date, Guatemala said.   Several hundred Hondurans set off on Tuesday for the Guatemalan border, seeking to reach the United States, according to local media and a Reuters witness. But by afternoon they had largely dispersed. Other recent caravans have been broken up by Guatemalan authorities and this relatively small one appeared to dissolve before reaching the Guatemala border.   The group was the second large caravan to set out from Honduras this year, following catastrophic flooding in November from two hurricanes that battered an already struggling economy. 
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White House press secretary Jen Psaki speaks during a press briefing at the White House, March 18, 2021, in Washington.“In the coming weeks, the administration will meet with AAPI leaders to hear their input in how we can play the most constructive role possible in the community,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Tuesday. “And the president raised — because he felt it was imperative to elevate — the continuing threats, the hate speech, and the violence against the Asian American community in his speech he gave during a primetime address a week ago.”The White House was surprised recently to find itself facing criticism from prominent Asian American lawmakers in the president’s own party for a lack of representation. The comments followed a pair of shootings by the same gunman in Atlanta, Georgia, in which six Asian American women were among those killed. The attacks on three day spas prompted community protests there and in other U.S. cities.The administration thought it had secured credibility among Asian Americans with Biden’s selection of Kamala Harris, whose mother emigrated from India, as his running mate and now vice president.“The folks in the administration actually brought up her name and said, ‘Well, you have Kamala, you don’t need really any other Asians in the cabinet,’” Senator Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., asks a question on Capitol Hill, Oct. 29, 2019, during a Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation hearing.Duckworth, of Illinois, and Mazie Hirono of Hawaii — both Democrats — have been the most vocal members of Congress expressing concern about the lack ethnic Asian representation in the Biden administration at a time of a rising number of attacks reported on members of the AAPI community.The two senators had vowed to oppose further Biden nominees until a significant plan was unveiled to address Asian American issues.The threat was dropped after Duckworth said the White House last week made a commitment to appoint a senior White House official focused on Asian American issues.The community will be closely watching to see if the person appointed by Biden has the clout and experience — and is given resources — to adequately address its concerns, Le, of the Truman National Security Project, told VOA on Tuesday.“I would say there’s sort of a palpable fear in the air and this is reaching an existential crisis for many communities across the country,” said Le, who was a deputy cabinet secretary to former California Governor Jerry Brown.The crime wave against Asian Americans is continuing with two brutal new assaults in New York City, which were recorded on video. Police say they are investigating the attacks as hate crimes.In one of the attacks, in which a lone assailant kicked in the stomach a 65-year-old Asian woman, bystanders failed to intervene.FILE – Mayor Bill de Blasio, left, holds a press conference in New York, Feb. 26, 2020.The video revealed an act that was “absolutely disgusting and outrageous,” said New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio who called it “absolutely unacceptable” that witnesses did not try to help the woman. “If you see someone being attacked, do whatever you can.”A nonprofit organization connecting Asian Americans to digital organizing, 18 Million Rising, said while it is “glad to see the Biden administration acknowledge and condemn the rise in anti-Asian violence” it disagrees “with some of the proposed responses shared in today’s statement” by the White House.The group, in a statement to VOA, expressed concern that “anti-Asian violence and xenophobia are being met with increased funding for law enforcement by the Biden administration,” pointing out that numerous progressive Asian American organizations are “demanding community-centered solutions instead of increased funding and training for the FBI and other law enforcement.”One in four Asian Americans has experienced a hate incident, while more than two-thirds have been asked “where they’re really from,” according to a poll from Survey Monkey and AAPI Data published Tuesday.“I don’t think people are going to just take it anymore,” said Le. “You’re seeing that sort of awakening, partly from the recent election cycles, but also an acknowledgement it’s no longer okay to just to be happy with what you’re offered, it’s that you really have to fight to be at the table and that goes not just politically but also just in your day-to-day living.”There are about 20 million Asian Americans in the United States — nearly 6% of the total population.One encouraging sign for the AAPI community is the inclusion of several Asian Americans among federal judicial nominees announced Tuesday by the White House.“Two were previously nominated in the Obama administration, and we believe that they would contribute immediately to the federal bench,” John Yang, president and executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice, said in statement to VOA.“At the same time, we continue to press the Biden administration to ensure that Asian Americans are represented in the senior-most levels of the federal government.”
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The State Department released its annual country report on human rights on Tuesday. The report examines how nations treat their citizens from the voting booth to the workplace. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports. Produced by: Arash Arabasadi 
 
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Firefighters on Tuesday began to gain control of wildfires in the Black Hills of South Dakota that have forced the evacuation of more than 400 homes and closed the Mount Rushmore National Memorial. Three separate wildfires were burning near Rapid City, with the largest near Schroeder Road in the Nemo area. That fire has burned nearly 8.1 square kilometers (3.3 square miles). But officials said they expected to contain about half of the fire by the end of the day. “It’s not over yet, but we’re in a pretty good spot,” said Governor Kristi Noem, who traveled to Rapid City to help oversee the fire response. But the Republican governor acknowledged that fire danger had not passed, declaring a state of emergency until June. She cited “widespread drought conditions, low humidity, high wind and high temperatures that create serious peril for our state.” The order allows state agencies to assist in tackling the wildfires. The Schroeder Road fire has crossed into two neighborhoods near Rapid City, the Pennington County Sheriff’s Office said Tuesday. At least one home has been destroyed, as well as several other structures. No injuries have been reported. “There was quite a firefight last night,” said Rob Powell, the firefighting official overseeing the response. As winds died down throughout the day, firefighting crews worked on the ground and from aircraft to contain the fire. Two smaller blazes were burning southwest of Rapid City, including one inside the grounds of Mount Rushmore National Memorial. The monument, as well as surrounding roads, were closed through at least Wednesday. One fire has burned an estimated 47 hectares (117 acres) and is 30% contained. The other is about 4 hectares (9 acres), and officials hoped to have it 50% contained by the end of the day. The fire near Mount Rushmore threatened 15 structures, including park facilities and private homes, but none have been destroyed, according to Great Plains Fire Public Information Officer Travis Mason-Bushman. He said the fire was near main access roads to the monument but wasn’t close to the visitor center. “The challenge is that it’s burning in some pretty steep and rugged terrain,” he said. “We need to bring in hand crews.” About 60 firefighters responded to the fire, as well as a South Dakota National Guard Black Hawk helicopter that was dumping water. On Monday, multiple fires burst up across the region as winds in some places reached as high as 130 kph (81 mph). Firefighters initially responding to the Schroeder fire found “a fast-moving ground fire in extreme fire danger condition,” officials reported. They immediately called for assistance from firefighters around the region, with about 250 responding. The governor noted that it was “really early” in the year for wildfires and that battling them had taxed nearly all available resources. Officials said they do not have the firefighters to tackle more large blazes and were instead trying to snuff out smaller ones quickly. “We’re probably one of the first in the nation for 2021 facing this kind of a situation,” Noem said. Rapid City officials said they would not open up evacuated neighborhoods on Tuesday but hoped to allow people to return to their homes early Wednesday. Pennington County Sheriff Kevin Thom said his family was among those who were evacuated. “I watched a neighbor’s house go up in flames, so, it touches all of us,” Thom said Monday. 
 
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Four Republican U.S. lawmakers requested on Tuesday that Facebook Inc., Twitter, and Alphabet Inc.’s Google turn over any studies they have done on how their services affect children’s mental health.The request follows a joint hearing last week of two House Energy and Commerce subcommittees at which the companies’ chief executives discussed their content moderation practices in the wake of the siege on the Capitol in January.Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the committee’s ranking Republican, asked the CEOs at the hearing whether their companies had conducted internal research concerning children’s mental health.Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg said he believed the company had, while Twitter’s Jack Dorsey said he did not believe so. Google’s Sundar Pichai said the company consulted with outside experts and invested “a lot of time and effort in these areas.”In letters to the companies on Tuesday, McMorris Rodgers asked for copies of any relevant research or internal communications, as well as information on any contractors and partners involved. They also requested any research the companies had done about how competitors’ products affect mental wellness of people under 18 years old.The requests also cover Google’s YouTube Kids service and Facebook’s Instagram, which is developing a version for people under 13 years old.The other lawmakers who signed the letter were ranking Republicans on various subcommittees, including Robert Latta, Gus Bilirakis and Morgan Griffith.They asked for the companies to respond by April 16. 
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Athletes competing in the U.S. Olympic trials can protest, the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC) said Tuesday, including kneeling or raising a clenched fist on the podium or at the start line during the national anthem. In a detailed document, the USOPC outlined a wide range of ways athletes can advocate for racial and social justice but drew the line at what will be unacceptable, including wearing a hat or face mask with a hate symbol or hate speech on it. In an open letter sent to Team USA athletes, USOPC CEO Sarah Hirshland said the organization “values the voices of athletes and believes that their right to advocate for racial and social justice as a positive force for change aligns with the fundamental values of equality that define Team USA and the Olympic and Paralympic movements.” FILE – United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee CEO Sarah Hirshland listens during a briefing with the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee and Los Angeles 2028 organizers in Beverly Hills, Calif., Feb. 18, 2020.The USOPC made it clear that the guidelines are only meant for the U.S. Olympic trials and not the Tokyo Olympics, which are scheduled to open on July 23. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has its own guidelines with Rule 50 prohibiting protests and demonstrations. The USOPC said guidance for the Tokyo Games will be published separately in the coming months once the IOC issues its updated policies. Current IOC rules say, “No kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas.” The relaxing of rules is an about face for the USOPC which sanctioned two athletes for protesting police brutality and racial injustice during medal presentations at the 2019 Pan Am Games in Lima. Fencer Race Imboden knelt during the national anthem while hammer thrower Gwen Berry raised her fist. The USOPC later placed both athletes on 12-month probations. Under new guidelines, these demonstrations will be acceptable. Athletes will also be allowed to wear a hat or mask with messages such as “Black Lives Matter” or “equality” or “justice” and use their voices outside trials venues in other forums such as social media and the press. 
 
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An Asian American woman was attacked by a man who repeatedly kicked her in front of witnesses who seemingly stood by, according to surveillance footage released by the New York City Police Department.
The 65-year-old woman was walking in midtown Manhattan on Monday afternoon when a man came up to her and kicked her in the stomach, knocking her to the ground, the NYPD said.  
The man then stomped on the woman’s face several times while hurling anti-Asian sentiments at her, police said. He later casually walked away, the footage shows.  
The woman was hospitalized with serious injuries.  
According to video footage, a man inside a building lobby seemingly stopped what he was doing to watch the assault. Later, two more men wearing blazers walked into the frame and one of them closed the door as the woman was on the ground.  
The property developer and manager of the building, Bordsky Organization, wrote on Instagram  that it was aware of the assault and the staff who witnessed it were suspended pending an investigation.
The NYPD’s Hate Crime Task Force is investigating the attack and has asked anyone with information to contact the department.  
NYPD says there have been 33 hate crimes with an Asian victim so far this year, news outlets reported.  
Police Commissioner Dermot Shea previously said the agency would increase their outreach and patrols in predominantly Asian communities amid  a national spike of anti-Asian hate crimes.  
According to a report from Stop AAPI Hate over 3,795 incidents were reported to the organization from March 19, 2020, to February 28, 2021. The organization said that number is “only a fraction of the number of hate incidents that actually occur.”
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Elon Musk’s SpaceX suffered another setback Tuesday when one of its experimental rockets malfunctioned during a test flight at the company’s Texas facility.
 
The incident occurred as the Starship SN11 prototype was attempting to land after what the company called a normal ascent to roughly 12 kilometers in altitude.
 
Heavy fog obscured observers from seeing exactly what happened, but an explosion seems most likely, as there were reports of fire and debris.
 
“At least the crater is in the right place!” Musk tweeted.
 
This is the third time the experimental rocket has crash-landed or exploded.
 
John Insprucker, a SpaceX engineer, said all was going well when data feeds and the on-board cameras stopped working as the vehicle entered a thick layer of fog while trying to land.  
 
The company said it will provide more information as it gets it but added it does not expect to be able to recover video footage.
 
Starship SN11 is the vehicle Musk hopes will carry the first humans to Mars.  
 
The company wants to send it into orbit by the end of the year. NASA has also awarded SpaceX a $135 million contract to potentially use the Starship SN11 to take astronauts to the moon.
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The Biden administration is moving to sharply increase offshore wind energy along the East Coast, saying Monday it is taking initial steps toward approving a huge wind farm off the New Jersey coast as part of an effort to generate electricity for more than 10 million homes nationwide by 2030. Meeting the target could mean jobs for more than 44,000 workers and for 33,000 others in related employment, the White House said. The effort also would help avoid 78 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year, a key step in the administration’s fight to slow global warming. FILE – National Climate Adviser Gina McCarthy speaks during a press briefing at the White House in Washington, Jan. 27, 2021.President Joe Biden “believes we have an enormous opportunity in front of us to not only address the threats of climate change but use it as a chance to create millions of good-paying, union jobs that will fuel America’s economic recovery,” White House climate adviser Gina McCarthy said. “Nowhere is the scale of that opportunity clearer than for offshore wind.” The administration’s commitment to the still untapped industry “will create pathways to the middle class for people from all backgrounds and communities,” she added. “We are ready to rock and roll.” The administration said it intends to prepare a formal environmental analysis for the Ocean Wind project off New Jersey. That would move Ocean Wind toward becoming the third commercial-scale offshore wind project in the United States.  The Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said it is targeting offshore wind projects in shallow waters between Long Island and the New Jersey coast. A recent study shows the area can support up to 25,000 development and construction jobs by 2030, Interior said. The ocean energy bureau said it will push to sell commercial leases in the area in late 2021 or early 2022. The administration also pledged to invest $230 million to upgrade U.S. ports and provide up to $3 billion in loan guarantees for offshore wind projects through the Energy Department’s recently revived clean-energy loan program. FILE – Jennifer Granholm speaks during a hearing to examine her nomination to be Secretary of Energy on Capitol Hill in Washington, Jan. 27, 2021.”It is going to be a full-force gale of good-paying, union jobs that lift people up,” said Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm.  Ocean Wind, 15 miles off the coast of southern New Jersey, is projected to produce about 1,100 megawatts a year, enough to power 500,000 homes, once it becomes operational in 2024. The Interior Department has previously announced environmental reviews for Vineyard Wind in Massachusetts and South Fork wind farm about 35 miles east of Montauk Point in Long Island, New York. Vineyard Wind is expected to produce about 800 megawatts of power, and South Fork about 132 megawatts. Biden has vowed to double offshore wind production by 2030 as part of his effort to slow climate change. The likely approval of the Atlantic Coast projects — the leading edge of at least 16 offshore wind projects along the East Coast — marks a sharp turnaround from the Trump administration, which stymied wind power both onshore and in the ocean.  As president, Donald Trump frequently derided wind power as an expensive, bird-slaughtering way to make electricity, and his administration resisted or opposed wind projects nationwide, including Vineyard Wind. The developer of the Massachusetts project temporarily withdrew its application late last year in a bid to stave off possible rejection by the Trump administration. Biden provided a fresh opening for the project after taking office in January. FILE – Rep. Deb Haaland, D-NM, looks on during a hearing on her nomination to be Interior Secretary on Capitol Hill in Washington, Feb. 23, 2021.”For generations, we’ve put off the transition to clean energy, and now we’re facing a climate crisis,” said Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, whose department oversees offshore wind. “As our country faces the interlocking challenges of a global pandemic, economic downturn, racial injustice and the climate crisis, we have to transition to a brighter future for everyone,” Haaland said. Vineyard Wind is slated to become operational in 2023, with Ocean Wind following a year later. Despite the enthusiasm, offshore wind development is still in its infancy in the U.S., far behind progress made in Europe. A small wind farm operates near Block Island in waters controlled by the state of Rhode Island, and another small wind farm operates off the coast of Virginia. The three major projects under development are all owned by European companies or subsidiaries. Vineyard Wind is a joint project of a Danish company and a U.S. subsidiary of the Spanish energy giant, Iberdrola. Ocean Wind and South Fork are led by the Danish company, Orsted.  The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Monday it is signing an agreement with Orsted to share data about U.S. waters where the company holds leases. The data should aid NOAA’s ocean-mapping efforts and help it advance climate adaptation and mitigation efforts, the agency said. NOAA also will spend $1 million to study the impacts of offshore wind operations on fishing operators and coastal communities. Wind developers are poised to create tens of thousands of jobs and generate more than $100 billion in new investment by 2030, “but the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management must first open the door to new leasing,” said Erik Milito, president of the National Ocean Industries Association. Not everyone is cheering the rise of offshore wind. Fishing groups from Maine to Florida have expressed fear that large offshore wind projects could render huge swaths of the ocean off-limits to their catch. 
 
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Graphic video gripped the courtroom as the trial began in Minneapolis on Monday of a white former police officer, Derek Chauvin, who is accused of murdering a Black man, George Floyd, last May. As Mike O’Sullivan reports, the case revolves around the question of Floyd’s cause of death as Chauvin knelt on his neck for nearly nine-and-a-half minutes while arresting him.
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A study released Monday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) shows mRNA vaccines produced by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna are highly effective at preventing COVID-19 in “real world” conditions.
The study was conducted among nearly 4,000 health care workers, first responders, and other essential workers in six states between December 14 and March 13. The results showed the risk of infection was reduced by 80 percent after one dose and 90 percent after two doses.
Speaking during a White House COVID-19 response team briefing, CDC Director Rochell Walensky said the study showed the two vaccines can be effective not only in symptomatic infections but asymptomatic infections as well. She called it “tremendously encouraging,” and said it complements other recent studies in the New England Journal of Medicine and elsewhere.  
But Walensky said that good news was tempered by the lasted virus figures from around the United States.  She said the daily average for infections rose by ten percent over the past week, to nearly 70,000 per day. Hospitalizations were up by more than four percent and deaths by almost three percent.
The CDC chief said the U.S. looks similar to Europe just a few weeks ago, which is now going through another wave of infections.  
She issued a dire warning of a sense of “impending doom” in the U.S. amid an increase in in coronavirus infections and hospitalizations.  She urged people to hang on just a bit longer and continue practicing social distancing and other safety measures.
She said the national vaccination efforts are working. As of Sunday, more than 93 million people received at least one dose of vaccine and more than 51million people have been fully vaccinated in the United States. 
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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday urged the U.N. Security Council to authorize more border crossings for the delivery of humanitarian aid into Syria, where an estimated 13.4 million people require assistance.“The Security Council takes up so many challenges that are complicated, this is not one of them,” Blinken told council members. “The lives of people in Syria depend on getting urgent help. We have to do everything in our power to create ways for that aid to get to them — to open pathways, not to close them.”The United States is president of the Security Council this month, and Blinken chaired the monthly discussion of the humanitarian situation in Syria, which entered its second decade of civil war this month.In July, the 15-nation council will have to decide whether to renew or close the last remaining crossing point from Turkey into Syria for the transfer of humanitarian supplies. The one thousand aid-filled trucks which cross monthly through Bab al-Hawa, provide a lifeline to four million people in northwest Syria, which is outside of government control.FILE – In this Jan. 29, 2020 file photo, Syrians flee the advance of government forces towards the Turkish border, in Idlib province, Syria.In the past 14 months, the United Nations has lost three of the four border crossings it used to bring humanitarian assistance into Syria from neighboring countries. Due to objections and obstruction from Russia and China on behalf of President Bashar al-Assad’s government at the Security Council, authorizations for those crossings were not renewed.Russia has already signaled that it is not interested in renewing the Bab al-Hawa crossing, instead supporting the Assad regime’s demand for all aid to be distributed from Damascus across conflicts lines. But the U.N .and its aid partners say deliveries that go across internal conflict lines have been insufficient and open the door to regime interference on where the aid goes.“The current approach is unjustified, ineffective, indefensible. It is directly resulting in the increased suffering of the Syrian people,” Blinken said. “So, let me propose a different approach, let’s reauthorize both border crossings that have been closed, and reauthorize the one border crossing that remains open. Let’s give ourselves more pathways, rather than fewer pathways, to deliver food and medicine to the Syrian people.”The United Nations has also appealed to keep the cross-border operation running. In the past year, it says that needs in Syria have grown 20% due conflict, a currency crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic.On Tuesday, the United Nations and the European Union will co-host a pledging conference for Syria, seeking to raise over $10 billion dollars for humanitarian efforts.That includes at least $4.2 billion for assistance inside Syria and $5.8 billion to support refugees and host communities in the region. Last year, the international community pledged $5.5 billion to assist needy Syrians.The United States is the largest single contributor of humanitarian assistance in Syria. 
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