Month: June 2021

Federal law enforcement agencies secretly seek the data of Microsoft customers thousands of times a year, according to congressional testimony Wednesday by a senior executive at the technology company.Tom Burt, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for customer security and trust, told members of the House Judiciary Committee that federal law enforcement in recent years has been presenting the company with between 2,400 to 3,500 secrecy orders a year, or about seven to 10 a day.”Most shocking is just how routine secrecy orders have become when law enforcement targets an American’s email, text messages or other sensitive data stored in the cloud,” said Burt, describing the widespread clandestine surveillance as a major shift from historical norms.The relationship between law enforcement and Big Tech has attracted fresh scrutiny in recent weeks with the revelation that Trump-era Justice Department prosecutors obtained as part of leak investigations phone records belonging not only to journalists but also to members of Congress and their staffers. Microsoft, for instance, was among the companies that turned over records under a court order, and because of a gag order, had to then wait more than two years before disclosing it.Since then, Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president, called for an end to the overuse of secret gag orders, arguing in a Washington Post opinion piece that “prosecutors too often are exploiting technology to abuse our fundamental freedoms.” Attorney General Merrick Garland, meanwhile, has said the Justice Department will abandon its practice of seizing reporter records and will formalize that stance soon.Burt is among the witnesses at a Judiciary Committee hearing about potential legislative solutions to intrusive leak investigations.  House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler said in opening remarks Wednesday that the Justice Department took advantage of outdated policies on digital data searches to target journalists and others in leak investigations. The New York Democrat said that reforms are needed now to guard against future overreach by federal prosecutors — an idea also expressed by Republicans on the committee.”We cannot trust the department to police itself,” Nadler said.Burt said that while the revelation that federal prosecutors had sought data about journalists and political figures was shocking to many Americans, the scope of surveillance is much broader. He criticized prosecutors for reflexively seeking secrecy through boilerplate requests that “enable law enforcement to just simply assert a conclusion that a secrecy order is necessary.”Burt said that while Microsoft Corp. does cooperate with law enforcement on a broad range of criminal and national security investigations, it often challenges surveillance that it sees as unnecessary, resulting at times in advance notice to the account being targeted.Among the organizations weighing in at the hearing was The Associated Press, which called on Congress to act to protect journalists’ ability to promise confidentiality to their sources. Reporters must have prior notice and the ability to challenge a prosecutor’s efforts to seize data, said a statement submitted by Karen Kaiser, AP’s general counsel.”It is essential that reporters be able to credibly promise confidentially to ensure the public has the information needed to hold its government accountable and to help government agencies and officials function more effectively and with integrity,” Kaiser said.  As possible solutions, Burt said, the government should end indefinite secrecy orders and should also be required to notify the target of the data demand once the secrecy order has expired.Just this week, he said, prosecutors sought a blanket gag order affecting the government of a major U.S. city for a Microsoft data request targeting a single employee there.”Without reform, abuses will continue to occur and they will occur in the dark,” Burt said.
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A former CIA operative known for his exploits everywhere from Miami to Nicaragua to Afghanistan has a book deal. Enrique “Ric” Prado’s “Black Ops: The Life of a CIA Shadow Warrior” will come out next March.  “A lot has been said about the CIA over the years,” Prado said in a statement Wednesday. “And a lot of it has been (expletive). I wrote ‘Black Ops’ to clear the name of my agency. I know the untold sacrifices that have been made for this country by devoted men and women who have served anonymously, as quiet heroes. I’m eager to share those stories now.” His book, subject to government review, was announced by St. Martin’s Press, a division of Macmillan.  Prado spent 24 years in the CIA before retiring in 2004. His assignments ranged from fighting with the Contras in Nicaragua in the 1980s — even after Congress had cut off U.S. support for the Contras — as they tried to overthrow the Sandinista government, to helping lead the hunt for Osama bin Laden, to overseeing SEAL Team Six missions into Afghanistan. Investigative reports in The Nation and a book by reporter Evan Wright have alleged that Prado has ties to organized crime and drug traffickers in Miami and to shell companies for the private contractor Blackwater. According to St. Martin’s, he is writing the book “to set the record straight about himself, his career and the men and women of his agency.” “In ‘Black Ops,’ Prado shares a harrowing true story of life in the deadly world of assassins, terrorists, spies and revolutionaries and reveals how he and his fellow CIA officers devoted their lives to operating in the shadows to fight a little-seen and virtually unknown war to keep the United States safe from those who would do it harm,” the publisher announced. 
 
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The drought-plagued city of Los Angeles announced that a fireworks buyback program would be held Wednesday ahead of the U.S. July 4 holiday, hoping to rein in the explosives’ illegal use in a setup similar to gun buyback programs.
 
The initiative will make it possible to anonymously hand in fireworks — whose sale and use are banned in the city — to the police in exchange for baseball tickets and other gifts.
 
The majority of California is under extreme drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, creating parched vegetation and conditions ripe for wildfires.
 
“Last year with the pandemic and the necessity of canceling public-sanctioned fireworks shows, we saw a 72% increase in calls” concerning illegal fireworks, Los Angeles Police Department chief Michel Moore said.
 
In total, more than 6,000 calls were received, and more than four tons of fireworks were seized, he said.
 
The buyback program is targeting the San Fernando Valley, north of Los Angeles, in particular, an arid area susceptible to fires.
 
In addition to increased risk of fire and injury, fireworks launched by individuals also aggravate air pollution. According to air quality control authorities, the concentration of fine particles in the air on the night on July 4, 2020, was 70% higher than in previous years.
 
Moore warned that police would act against retailers and manufacturers who sell the products illegally.
 
Last week, the Los Angeles city attorney ordered major internet platforms, including Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist, to remove posts selling fireworks within Los Angeles or face legal action.
 
The city of Pomona, east of Los Angeles, is offering a $500 reward for information leading to the arrest of people selling or storing fireworks illegally.
 
In neighboring Ontario, two people died last March when a large stock of fireworks exploded in the house they were in.
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Last week, a 12-story apartment building suddenly collapsed in a Miami, Florida, suburb, killing at least 11 people and leaving some 150 others missing. While the cause of the disaster is unclear, rising sea levels that flood parts of the Miami area with salt water and regularly left standing water in the underground garage of the Champlain Towers suggest that climate change played a role.   Meanwhile, more than 4,000 kilometers away, residents of Seattle, Portland, and the rest of the U.S. Pacific Northwest endured a fourth consecutive day of a record-setting heatwave.While Portland reached a record temperature of over 110 degrees, June 27, 2021 people gathered at Salmon Street Springs water fountain in Portland to cool off. (Mark Graves/The Oregonian via AP)Roadways are buckling as asphalt melts and separates from the ground, making them impassable. Rubberized coatings that protect electrical wiring on mass transit systems are melting, forcing authorities to shut them down until repairs are made.   In the United States, people generally take it for granted that buildings will maintain their structural integrity, roadways don’t turn to molten sludge and mass transit systems keep functioning. For many, recent events may shake those assumptions.   Nobody is ready It is becoming increasingly clear that how Americans expect society to function within different ecosystems is changing — sometimes dramatically. In the Northeastern U.S., what used to be considered “100-yearFILE – Residents of the Crescent at Lakeshore apartment complex are rescued by Homewood Fire and Rescue as severe weather produced torrential rainfall flooding several apartment buildings, May 4, 2021 in Homewood, Ala. (AP Photo/Butch Dill)Is the nation adequately prepared for precipitous and increasingly calamitous change? People who make it their business to peer into the future say, unequivocally, America and humanity more broadly are not.  “Nobody is, probably, least of all the U.S. because of prevalent mindsets,” said Richard Hames, executive director of the Centre for the Future, a global organization that “identifies and redesigns life-critical system that are collapsing under the weight of a population now exceeding seven billion people, that are no longer relevant, or that do not yet exist but will be needed for a future we cannot yet comprehend.”   A dystopian vision? The picture Hames paints of humanity’s near-future is not a pretty one.   “Scientists are now saying that things are beyond the worst-case scenario, we’re heading fast to irreversible tipping points, simply because of everything that’s locked in already,” he told VOA.   FILE – Clouds gather but produce no rain as cracks are seen in the dried up municipal dam in drought-stricken Graaff-Reinet, South Africa, Nov. 14, 2019.In terms of the climate crisis, Hames said, “there is nothing in human experience” on which we can draw. The entire Holocene Period — the age of the earth in which human civilization arose and flourished — has been marked by a climate that existed in a stable state of conditions conducive to human thriving.   “Now we’re in a state of exponential change, which, again, nobody really gets, nobody understands. And know that there’s nothing in human experience to [help us] cope with what we’re in for.”   Is my home safe? If humanity is to cope with exponentially increasing effects of climate change, some experts say the first step will have to be truly internalizing the seriousness of the species’ perilous position. That, for example, tragedies like the South Florida building collapse might accelerate.   Bruce Turkel, an author, speaker, and founder of The Strategic Forum in South Florida, was born and raised in Miami. As someone who makes a living helping businesses look into the future of their brands, he says the Champlain Towers collapse is the sort of event that makes people challenge long-held assumptions.   The eastern part of Miami Beach, he notes, is called the “concrete canyon” by locals for the high-rise apartment buildings that line its roads for kilometers of beachfront property.   FILE – Clouds loom over the Miami skyline May 14, 2020, the early signs of what would become Tropical Storm Arthur.“Imagine how many buildings there are; multiply that by the number of apartments; multiply that by the average occupancy of each apartment,” Turkel said. “How many people now are wondering, ‘Oh, my God, is my building safe?’”   Virtually all of those people knew, on some level, that climate change was a problem, he said. But far fewer of them perceived it as an existential threat on a personal level.   “If, in fact, climate change affected this building’s integrity, we didn’t have any perception or understanding that that was an issue,” he said. “What are the unexpected consequences? And how do we deal with those? That’s the big, social, and also socio-economic and geopolitical issue. As people start to say, ‘Oh, my goodness, I never thought of that. Oh, my goodness, I didn’t know that would happen.’ Where does that lead us?”   Change is coming, but from where? While few experts doubt that widespread change as a result of the climate crisis is coming, how it will be received — with chaotic reaction or concerted activities to mitigate its impact — is currently unknowable.   “If you look at the history of human change, it happens for two reasons,” said Turkel. Change, he added, comes either as a reaction to “a cataclysmic event that causes all of us to move either because of lack of food, lack of water, lack of something” or as a response to leadership that arises, typically, from outside established systems.   The latter is preferable to the former, and Hames of the Centre for the Future agrees that if humanity is to be led out of the current crisis, it won’t be by the planet’s current generation of leaders.   “Incumbent leaders don’t have the courage or the impulse to do what needs to be done,” he said. “Their interest is to go back to what was their ‘normality’ — not realizing that a lot of the problems we’re facing were caused by that so-called normality.”   Cause for hope   Hames said that while many people see his writing and public speaking as a reflection of a dystopian vision of the planet’s future, he’s convinced that people, by taking certain concrete actions, can preserve a future for humanity on this planet. “They can live more simply: we don’t need to buy as much stuff as is produced and then throw it away,” he said. “We can have more plant-based nutritional food, rather than eat so much meat. In terms of farms, we can move away from industrial agriculture to more organic, ecologically sensible agriculture, so that we’re not adding to desertification. The little things that we can do will make an awful lot of difference.”   But, he added, the leadership needed to guide those steps are more likely to come from those with the most at stake in that future — today’s youth.   “I’ve got nine kids and 16 grandchildren,” Hames said. “I’m both optimistic and pessimistic. I’m pessimistic that we’re heading so fast towards stepping over planetary boundaries … we’re like lemmings to the cliff. It’s just extraordinary. … My optimism is in human ingenuity and the resolve of youth in particular, who don’t want to inherit the legacy we’re busy creating for them.”   A change of outlook   Hames said that if and when change comes, it will involve an overhauling of the “occidental” worldview driven by the rationalism of the Enlightenment and the culture of individualism prevalent in the West, in favor of a more collective understanding of the costs and benefits of modern life.   FILE – Protesters demanding action on climate change gather at Te Ngakau Civic Square in Wellington, New Zealand, March 15, 2019.“I believe the brunt of the leadership we need will come from the grassroots, it will come initially from activism and protest, but then it will move to much more positive ways of changing lives locally, and it starts at the local level,” he said.   Again, he added, he expects the prime movers in this struggle to be today’s youth.   “They want to know that they will have a viable life on this planet, not have to leave what is essentially a terrestrial form of life to go off to the moon or Mars or some crazy idea like that,” he said. “They want the quality of life here that, at the moment, is being taken from them.” 
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U.S. President Joe Biden is holding talks Wednesday with a group of governors from eight Western states about wildfire preparedness as much of the region deals with drought. Biden and other administration officials will be speaking from the White House with the governors joining by video. White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters last week the meeting will “focus on how the federal government can improve wildfire preparedness and response efforts, protect public safety, and deliver assistance to our people in times of urgent need.” Those attending include Democratic governors Gavin Newsom of California, Jared Polis of Colorado, Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico, Steve Sisolak of Nevada, Kate Brown of Oregon and Jay Inslee of Washington, along with Republican governors Spencer Cox of Utah and Mark Gordon of Wyoming. Not among the group are three other Republican governors from the region: Doug Ducey of Arizona, Brad Little of Idaho and Greg Gianforte of Montana. Gianforte tweeted Friday that he was “disappointed to learn in news stories” that the president “didn’t offer a seat at the table to Montana and other states facing a severe wildfire season.” The National Interagency Fire Center, which coordinates the mobilization of resources to battle wildfires in the United States, has warned that many Western states are facing a greater than usual likelihood that significant wildfires will occur in the next few months. The U.S. Drought Monitor reports wide areas of Arizona, California, New Mexico, Nevada and Utah are experiencing extreme or exceptional drought. 
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Search-and-rescue crews have confirmed a 12th death in the partial collapse of an apartment building in Surfside, Florida. Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava told reporters late Tuesday the crews are “continuing to make headway,” while 149 people remained unaccounted for. About half of the 12-floor, 136-unit Champlain Towers South collapsed last Thursday, and since then rescue workers have slowly picked their way through the rubble using cranes, infrared scanners and dogs. Levine Cava said the rescue crews were continuing “the brave and very, very difficult task, putting themselves in danger.” “They have been working non-stop for nearly six days,” she said. U.S. President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden are scheduled to visit Surfside on Thursday. White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters the Bidens want to thank those who have been “working tirelessly around the clock,” and meet with the families who have had to endure the difficult process of waiting for news about their loved ones.  Psaki said the president will also talk with state and local officials to ensure they have the resources they need. Levine Cava, in a statement Tuesday, welcomed the president’s upcoming visit and the efforts of federal and state agencies in response to what she called the “largest non-hurricane emergency operation” in Florida’s history. Miami-Dade Office of Emergency Management Division Director Charles Cyrille told reporters late Tuesday more than 50 agencies were operating at the collapse site, including more than 900 personnel. 
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Sandy Weyer is the latest Trump supporter to be arrested in connection with the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.The Pennsylvania woman is accused of breaching the Capitol and filming an assault on a New York Times photographer inside the building while encouraging the attackers to spray the journalist with Chemical Mace.”Get her out! Mace her!” she can be heard yelling in the video recording of the assault, one of several she posted on Facebook, according to a criminal complaint federal authorities filed against her on Friday.Weyer was arrested early Monday in her hometown of Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, and charged with three misdemeanor counts and one felony count of obstructing Congress’ certification of the November presidential election results. The New York Times photographer was not identified in the complaint, but details of the incident matched an account by Times photographer Erin Schaff published on January 7.Weyer’s arrest exemplifies the doggedness with which the FBI is pursuing virtually every person who took part in what officials have decried as an unprecedented assault on American democracy. The attack left five people dead, including a Capitol police officer, and more than 100 other officers injured. Prosecutors say the hours long rampage also caused at least $1.5 million in damage to the historic building.In recent days, the FBI has made at least a half dozen arrests in connection with the attack. Among them: an employee of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services, a Pennsylvania conspiracy theory podcast host, and a Florida couple featured in a recent HBO documentary about QAnon.Attorney General Merrick Garland departs after speaking at the Justice Department in Washington, June 15, 2021.Last week, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that total arrests had topped 500, highlighting the 100th arrest of a defendant on charges of assaulting a federal law enforcement officer and the first arrest on charges of attacking a journalist.”I assure the American people that the Department of Justice will continue to follow the facts in this case and charge what the evidence supports to hold all January 6th perpetrators accountable,” Garland said in a statement.What’s more, with “hundreds” of additional investigations still ongoing, prosecutors will bring more serious charges against some defendants who have already been charged, according to FBI Director Christopher Wray.FBI Director Christopher Wray speaks during a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing about worldwide threats, on Capitol Hill in Washington, April 14, 2021.”So this is far from over,” Wray told members of the Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday. “And with each arrest and each case we bring, not only are we driving toward accountability for the attack but we’re also learning more about what was out there beforehand so we can use that to get better moving forward.”The charges against the 500-plus suspects arrested to date fall into three broad categories. At one end of the spectrum are more than 200 defendants accused of illegally entering the Capitol but not engaging in any violence. They face misdemeanor charges such as trespassing and disorderly conduct, both of which carry little to no jail time.At the other end are some three dozen members of three far-right groups — the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters and the Proud Boys — who, according to prosecutors, planned and coordinated their attack on the Capitol months in advance. They face multiple felony charges of conspiracy and other offenses.More serious charges are comingThe rest of the defendants face a combination of lesser misdemeanor charges and more serious felony charges of destruction of property and assaulting police officers.While an overwhelming majority of criminal defendants in the United States enter into plea agreements with prosecutors, to date only eight defendants in the Capitol attack have pleaded out. In April, Jon Schaffer, an alleged member of the Oath Keepers, became the first to plead guilty to charges related to January 6. In early June, Paul Hodgkins, a Florida man who took a selfie inside the Senate chamber during the Capitol siege, became the second defendant to plead out. And last week, in a significant development in the investigation, Graydon Young, one of 16 members of the Oath Keepers charged with conspiracy to storm the Capitol, pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.”This is a very emotional case. It is a politically charged case. When you marry those two things, it is far more difficult for clients to make rational and intelligent decisions about what is best for them legally,” said Randy Zelin, the head of the criminal practice group at the Wilk Auslander law firm in New York and an adjunct professor at Cornell Law School.More plea agreements in future?However, the Justice Department is likely to authorize more plea agreements in the coming weeks, added David Haas, a former federal prosecutor who is now a criminal defense attorney in Orlando, Florida.”You’ll probably see those that were charged at the beginning start to receive their plea agreements faster than the more recent defendants indicted,” Haas said.Only one defendant has so far been sentenced. Last week, Anna Morgan-Lloyd, an Indiana woman who described January 6 on Facebook as “the best day ever,” was sentenced to three years of probation after pleading guilty to one misdemeanor count and accepting responsibility.While acknowledging that he was giving Morgan-Lloyd a “break,” federal Judge Royce Lamberth cautioned that he didn’t want to “create the impression that probation is the automatic outcome here, because it’s not going to be.” 
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The United States and its Western allies are being forced to confront a grim reality in Africa where years of work to blunt the spread of terrorism, whether inspired by al-Qaida, the Islamic State or local groups, has fallen short, and could soon be eclipsed by the need to focus on adversaries like China and Russia.”Despite all of our best efforts this terrorism continues to spread,” the commander of U.S. forces in Africa, General Stephen Townsend, told a virtual defense forum Tuesday.“The spread of terrorism has continued relatively unabated,” Townsend added, noting the fate of future efforts could depend on the U.S. Defense Department’s ongoing force posture review, which will determine whether his command will get more troops or resources or be asked to find ways to do more with less.FILE – In this Feb. 8, 2017 file photo, U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend takes a tour of an area north of Baghdad, Iraq. (U.S. Africa Command photo)This is not the first time Townsend has called attention to Washington’s struggles to prevent the expansion of terrorist groups and ideologies across Africa.The U.S. general sounded the alarm last year, telling lawmakers, “Western and international and African efforts there are not getting the job done … ISIS and al-Qaida are on the march.” Around the same time, U.S. Africa Command began changing its language when talking about terror groups in Africa, speaking of “containing” rather than “degrading” them.This past November, the Pentagon’s inspector general was equally blunt in its final report on U.S. counterterrorism operations in Africa, warning that key terror groups, like the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab in Somalia and various affiliates of the Islamic State terror group, also known as ISIS or IS, were maintaining their strength if not growing. However, Townsend’s latest assessment comes just a day after the 83-member Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS announced its intent to form an Africa task force to push back against the terror group’s expansion on the continent. It also comes as U.S. military leaders wait for the results of a force posture review, initiated by the administration of President Joe Biden, to determine how Washington can best allocate troops and resources as it focuses more on the dangers posed by the growing great power competition with China and Russia.Earlier this month, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told lawmakers he would not predict when the review would be complete, but he assured them that the focus “will be to make sure that whether it’s in Somalia or some other place in the world, that terrorists don’t have the ability to threaten our homeland.”Ongoing US force posture review-“I won’t predict when we’ll complete that work” per @SecDef Austin”The focus will be to make sure that whether its in #Somalia or some other place in the world that terrorists don’t have the ability to threaten our homeland” he adds— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) June 17, 2021SomaliaSomalia-based al-Shabab, which boasts as many as 10,000 fighters, has been a particular concern.Al-Shabab is “the world’s largest, best financed, most kinetically active arm of al-Qaida,” Townsend warned Tuesday, noting that, left alone, the group could eventually pose a risk not just to the region but to the United States itself.”We see threats there to African stability. We see threats in #Somalia to regional stability. We even see potential threats there to the US homeland” per @USAfricaCommand’s Gen Townsend re #alShabaab— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) June 29, 2021 And he warned efforts to contain the terror group were not helped by former President Donald Trump’s decision to pull all U.S. troops from the country this past December.”There’s really no denying our fairly sudden repositioning out of Somalia earlier this year has introduced new layers of risk and complexity,” he said.”The best way to engage with partners is side-by-side and face-to-face,” Townsend said. “We have limited opportunities to do that when we fly in and fly out to do training and advising.”Concerns have only grown, with senior Somali military officials telling VOA additional U.S. restrictions on airstrikes in Somalia — there has not been a single U.S. airstrike since January 20 — have only further emboldened al-Shabab, an assessment supported by intelligence from United Nation member states.US footprintIt remains to be seen how much that will change after the U.S. completes its force posture review, with top officials repeatedly stressing the need to confront China as the biggest “pacing challenge” while also emphasizing the existential threat posed by Russia’s military.“We’ve given our recommendations to our civilian leaders and we’re waiting on them to make their judgments,” Townsend said.Washington’s European allies, however, are hoping the U.S. at least finds a way to continue support for the Somali government.”We are welcomed there and invited by the Somalian government,” Vice Admiral Hervé Bléjean, director-general of the European Union Military Staff, said Tuesday, speaking at the same virtual forum as Africa Command’s Townsend.“The war is far from over and they need some help,” Bléjean said. “You can really feel the atmosphere of the insecurity there.”Central African RepublicBléjean and other European officials also see a need for the U.S. to stay involved beyond Somalia, especially in response to Russia, which has sent mercenaries from the Kremlin-linked Wagner Group to Libya and the Central African Republic.”I was in Central African Republic last week. I saw Wagner … they are everywhere,” he said. “They bring nothing to the country except immediate security answers, maybe, at the price of committing a lot of … violations of human rights and atrocities.”#Russia’s #Wagner mercenaries are “dragging Central African forces with them in those wrong behaviors” per @DGEUMS— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) June 29, 2021 “[The Russians] are very happy that they are destabilizing [the situation],” Bléjean added.The way forwardOther officials and experts worry that whether due to Russian mercenaries, climate change or terrorism, the threat from Africa is only poised to grow, and that it will be worse without help from Washington.“We’re finding an enormous arc of instability,” said Portuguese Minister of National Defense João Gomes Cravinho. “As the U.S. shifts its focus to the Indo-Pacific, it is very important that through engagement with the European Union, the U.S. should remain a relevant partner.”Former African security officials, like Samira Gaid, who served as a senior adviser to former Somali Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire, also see a need for the U.S. to stay.“The support provided by the U.S. is tangible … towards defeating the insurgency,” she said, expressing hope Washington might take on “more of a leadership role in the security sector among [Somalia’s] partners.”Critics of the U.S. approach to counterterrorism in Africa, though, caution that terrorism and instability will just spread if Washington continues to engage in the same way it has for the past several years.“The U.S. is losing the war,” said Jennifer Cafarella, research director at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War.“We have marshaled a considerable effort over the last two decades against various [terror] elements,” she said, noting there have been short-term victories. “But all of this activity has not actually prevented these groups from adapting and evolving.”Harun Maruf contributed to this report.    
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Search-and-rescue operations entered day six Tuesday in the rubble of the partially collapsed apartment building in Surfside, Florida.
 
“We have people waiting and waiting and waiting for news,” Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava told reporters, according to the Associated Press. “We have them coping with the news that they might not have their loved ones come out alive and still hope against hope that they will. They’re learning that some of their loved ones will come out as body parts. This is the kind of information that is just excruciating for everyone.”
 
So far, 11 people are confirmed to have died, with another 150 still reported as missing in what authorities are still calling a search-and-rescue operation despite no one being found alive since just hours after the 12-floor, 156-unit tower collapsed last Thursday.
 
The White House announced Tuesday that President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden will visit the scene Thursday.
 
Rescue teams reportedly were working around the clock, slowly picking through the rubble and twisted metal using dog teams, cranes and infrared scanners.
 
Asked why the process is going so slowly, Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Assistant Ray Jadallah said searching the wreckage is not simply a matter of moving large slabs of material but of going through pulverized concrete. He said much of the search is conducted by hand, and every time material is moved, other material falls into its place.
 
Jadallah said the process is also dangerous, saying a search and rescue worker Sunday tumbled 7 meters into an opening in the rubble. The crews have now been on the scene for more than 100 consecutive hours.
 
The mayor said the pace of the search process is the main question she gets from families of the missing. She said family members and loved ones have been brought to the scene to observe the process. Workers continued to use rescue dogs and sonar to find possible survivors who were living in the south building of the Champlain Towers condominium complex.
 
Published reports have indicated that there had been warnings regarding the structural integrity of the building long before the collapse. Local, state and federal officials at the news briefing all promised a thorough investigation into the cause of the building’s structural failure.
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U.S. President Joe Biden heads to the midwestern state of Wisconsin Tuesday, making a pitch for congressional passage of a bipartisan $1.2 trillion infrastructure package to repair the country’s crumbling roads and bridges, and at the same time boost blue-collar employment.
 
Biden is visiting the small city of La Crosse, population 52,000, and will tour its public transit center before speaking about what he sees as the merits of the infrastructure package he negotiated last week with a group of 10 centrist U.S. senators, five Republicans and five Democrats.  WATCH LIVE at 2:00pm
 He told a group of Democratic donors Monday night the spending package “signals to the world that we can function, we can deliver. We can do significant things and show that America is back.”
 
The measure focuses on fixing deteriorating roads and bridges that Americans encounter every day. But Biden emphasized it also would greatly expand high-speed internet in the U.S. in rural communities, replace lead pipes that imperil drinking water systems, install electric vehicle charging stations and invest in public transit systems.A White House memo said the construction package is four times the size of the infrastructure investment adopted after the Great Recession of 2008-2009 and the biggest since the Depression of the 1930s spawned President Franklin Roosevelt’s massive New Deal spending.
 
The package includes the largest investment in passenger rail services since the creation of the country’s Amtrak system. In Wisconsin alone, the White House said, the measure would help repair 979 bridges and more than 3,100 kilometers of highways in poor condition.
 
The White House emphasized that 90% of the jobs generated by the infrastructure spending could go to workers without college degrees.
 
“This is a blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America,” the memo says.
 Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 8 MB480p | 12 MB540p | 16 MB720p | 35 MB1080p | 65 MBOriginal | 74 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioBiden’s push for adoption of the infrastructure package got off to a rocky start last week.
 
He announced it jointly with the bipartisan group of lawmakers, only to shortly later tell reporters he would reject it if Congress did not also approve trillions of dollars in new social spending legislation that he wants to aid families and advance clean energy but that most Republicans adamantly oppose.
 
On Saturday, Biden said that his comments “created the impression that I was issuing a veto threat on the very plan I had just agreed to, which was certainly not my intent.”  Key Republican ‘Trusts’ Biden on Infrastructure Deal  Mitt Romney says he believes the US leader still stands by the roads-and-bridges repair package he negotiated with a centrist group of senators  
Biden walked back the infrastructure veto threat and said he wholeheartedly supports it and the still-developing social spending legislation, while recognizing that Republicans would try to defeat the so-called “human infrastructure” legislation. If Congress eventually approves the social safety legislation, it could be that only Democratic lawmakers vote for it.  
 
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday that Biden is “eager” for Congress to approve both bills and that the president is going to “work his heart out” to make it happen.
 
“The president intends to sign both pieces of legislation into law,” Psaki said.
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The U.N. World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Tuesday called the heatwave hitting the Pacific Northwest corner of the United States “exceptional and dangerous,” and says it could last at least another five days. Speaking to reporters from Geneva, a WMO spokeswoman said while records have fallen in the U.S. states of Oregon and Washington, western Canada has seen extreme heat as well. Extreme #heat hits Northwest USA and Western Canada, which saw new record temperature of 47.9°C
Many parts of northern hemisphere have seen exceptionally high temperatures#Climatechange ➡️more frequent and intense heatwaves
Roundup is here https://t.co/qI0ncloKpd
Graphic @ecmwfpic.twitter.com/fposUALIMU
— World Meteorological Organization (@WMO) People look for ways to cool off at Willow’s Beach during the ‘heat dome,’ currently hovering over British Columbia and Alberta as record-setting breaking temperatures scorch the province and in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, June 28, 2021.The WMO said the extreme heat is caused by “an atmospheric blocking pattern,” which has led to a “heat dome” — a large area of high pressure — trapped by low pressure on either side. The organization said the temperatures would likely peak early this week on the coast and by the middle of the week in the interior of British Columbia; afterward, the baking heat is expected to move east toward Alberta. The U.S. National Weather Service in Portland, Oregon, on its Twitter account late Monday, reported cooler air was already in the region along the coastline. In a tweet Sunday, the Oregon Climate Service said the climate system is no longer in a balanced state, and such heat events “are becoming more frequent and intense, a trend projected to continue.”
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The coronavirus pandemic, climate change and food security are on the agenda Tuesday as foreign ministers from the G-20 group of nations meet in Italy.  The talks in the city of Matera represent the first time the ministers are gathering in person since 2019.  “To bring the pandemic to an end, we must get more vaccine to more places,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in his opening remarks. “Multilateral cooperation will be key to stop this global health crisis.” Blinken also highlighted U.S. contributions to the COVAX dose-sharing facility to get supply of COVID-19 vaccines to low- and middle-income countries and praised Italy for making the pandemic a focus of Tuesday’s meetings.  U.S. State Department officials said Blinken would stress the importance of working together to address such global challenges, a common theme in recent months as he and President Joe Biden set a foreign policy path heavily focused on boosting ties with allies.  “To address the climate crisis, Secretary Blinken will encourage G-20 members to work together toward ambitious outcomes, including a recognition of the need to keep a 1.5 degree Celsius of warming threshold within reach, the importance of actions this decade that are aligned with that goal, and taking other steps like committing to end public finance for overseas unabated coal,” Susannah Cooper, director of the Office of Monetary Affairs in the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs, told reporters ahead of the meetings.European Council President Charles Michel, left, waits for the start of a virtual G20 meeting, hosted by Saudi Arabia, at the European Council building in Brussels, Saturday, Nov. 21, 2020.Cooper said Blinken would advocate for “building a sustainable and inclusive economic recovery,” including an equitable global tax system with a minimum corporate tax rate.  Finance ministers from G-7 nations, all of which are part of the G-20, agreed in principle in early June to the creation of a global minimum tax on corporations that would force companies that shift profits to subsidiaries in low- or no-tax jurisdictions to pay as much as 15% in taxes on that income to the country where they are headquartered.     Tuesday’s meetings are also set to consider economic development issues in Africa, including gender equity and opportunities for young people, as well as humanitarian efforts and human rights.  Italy is the last stop on a European trip for Blinken that included a conference on Libya in Germany, meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris and an audience with Pope Francis at the Vatican.  On Monday he was in Rome, where ministers from a global coalition to fight Islamic State terrorists said 8 million people have been freed from the militants’ control in Iraq and Syria, but that the threat from Islamic State fighters remains there and in Africa.    The ministers met face-to-face for the first time in two years, pledging to maintain watch against a resurgence of the insurgents.     The resumption in ISIS “activities and its ability to rebuild its networks and capabilities to target security forces and civilians in areas in Iraq and Syria where the coalition is not active, requires strong vigilance and coordinated action,” the diplomats said in a concluding communique. 
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The coronavirus, climate change and food security are on the agenda Tuesday as foreign ministers from the G-20 group of nations meet in Italy. The talks in the city of Matera represent the first time the ministers are gathering in person since 2019. U.S. State Department officials said Secretary of State Antony Blinken would stress the importance of working together to address such global challenges, a common theme in recent months as he and President Joe Biden set a foreign policy path heavily focused on boosting ties with allies. “To address the climate crisis, Secretary Blinken will encourage G-20 members to work together toward ambitious outcomes, including a recognition of the need to keep a 1.5 degree Celsius of warming threshold within reach, the importance of actions this decade that are aligned with that goal, and taking other steps like committing to end public finance for overseas unabated coal,” Susannah Cooper, director of the Office of Monetary Affairs in the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs, told reporters ahead of the meetings. Cooper said Blinken would advocate for “building a sustainable and inclusive economic recovery,” including an equitable global tax system with a minimum corporate tax rate. Finance ministers from G-7 nations, all of which are part of the G-20, agreed in principle in early June to the creation of a global minimum tax on corporations that would force companies that shift profits to subsidiaries in low- or no-tax jurisdictions to pay as much as 15% in taxes on that income to the country where they are headquartered. Protestors wearing giant heads portraying G7 leaders pose after a demonstration on a beach outside the G7 meeting in St. Ives, Cornwall, England, June 13, 2021.Tuesday’s meetings are also set to consider economic development issues in Africa, including gender equity and opportunities for young people, as well as humanitarian efforts and human rights. Italy is the last stop on a European trip for Blinken that included a conference on Libya in Germany, meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris and an audience with Pope Francis at the Vatican. On Monday he was in Rome, where ministers from a global coalition to fight Islamic State terrorists said 8 million people have been freed from the militants’ control in Iraq and Syria, but that the threat from Islamic State fighters remains there and in Africa. The ministers met face-to-face for the first time in two years, pledging to maintain watch against a resurgence of the insurgents.  The resumption in ISIS “activities and its ability to rebuild its networks and capabilities to target security forces and civilians in areas in Iraq and Syria where the coalition is not active, requires strong vigilance and coordinated action,” the diplomats said in a concluding communique.  The coalition said it needed “both to address the drivers that make communities vulnerable to recruitment by Daesh/ISIS and related violent ideological groups, as well as to provide support to liberated areas to safeguard our collective security interests.”  The group “noted with grave concern that Daesh/ISIS affiliates and networks in sub-Saharan Africa threaten security and stability, namely in the Sahel Region and in East Africa/Mozambique.” The coalition said it would work with any country that requested help in fighting ISIS.  Daesh is the Arabic acronym for Islamic State.  “We’ve made great progress because we’ve been working together, so we hope you’ll keep an eye on the fight, keep up the fight against this terrorist organization until it is decisively defeated,” Blinken said at the start of the meeting. Blinken noted that 10,000 Islamic State militants are being detained by Syrian Democratic Forces, calling the situation “simply untenable” and calling on governments to repatriate their citizens for rehabilitation or prosecution.  The top U.S. diplomat announced $436 million in additional humanitarian aid for Syrians and communities in surrounding countries that have been hosting Syrian refugees. He said the money would go toward providing food, water, shelter, health care, education and protection.  The United States launched a coalition effort, now involving 83 members, aimed at defeating the Islamic State group in 2014 after the militants seized control of a large area across northern Syria and Iraq, and in 2019 declared the militants had been ousted from their last remaining territory.    Another meeting Monday in Italy focused specifically on Syria, where in addition to issues related to the Islamic State group, Blinken, Italian Foreign Minister Luigi De Maio and other ministers called for renewed efforts to bring an end to the decade-long conflict that began in 2011.    Humanitarian access, in particular the ability for the United Nations to deliver cross-border aid, were among the issues that Blinken highlighted, the State Department said.    He also expressed U.S. support for an immediate cease-fire in Syria. 
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The U.S. Pacific Northwest baked under record-breaking temperatures again Monday as the region endures a dangerous heat wave that has placed at least portions of six states under excessive heat warnings from the National Weather Service.Portland, Oregon, hit 46 Celsius (115 Fahrenheit), an all-time high, by late afternoon. Seattle, Washington, a city known for its normally cool and rainy climate, also broke records: 41.6 C (107 F) at the National Weather Service Seattle station and 41 C (106 F) at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.Temperatures are expected to fall starting Tuesday with highs in the low 90s.The two cities broke all-time heat records over the weekend, as Portland reached 44 C (111 F) on Sunday, setting a new record from the day before when the mercury climbed to 42 C (108 F).Seattle’s temperature rose to a record of 40 C (104 F) on Sunday.Portland and Seattle rank among the three least air-conditioned cities in the nation, according to a study by The Seattle Times, compounding the impacts of the heat wave for residents.Numerous other records broke on Sunday in Washington, Oregon and California, including the record for the highest temperature ever recorded during the month of June in Washington state.According to heat alerts published by the National Weather Service, the extreme temperatures “significantly increase the potential for heat-related illnesses,” such as heat stroke and in some cases, death.A man visiting California died last week after spending an hour in the sun, during which he reached an internal body temperature of nearly 41 C (105.8).Heat kills more Americans in an average year than any other weather event, though it rarely receives the same amount of attention as more visibly destructive natural disasters such as hurricanes or tornadoes.Though heat-related deaths are rare, the soaring temperatures pose health risks, prompting cities like Portland and Seattle to open public cooling centers, where they offer food, water and air conditioning.Officials even delayed the Olympic trials in Eugene, Oregon, for several hours Sunday, citing health concerns for the athletes and spectators.The excessive heat levels are a result of a “heat dome,” which happens when high atmospheric pressures interact with cold winds coming from the Pacific Ocean and create a “dome,” which traps heat under it.According to The Washington Post, this specific heat dome is so strong that it statistically occurs only once every several thousand years.
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Western powers are promising recent successes by the Islamic State across Africa will not go unanswered, backing plans for a task force to focus on the terror group’s spread from Iraq and Syria to the African continent.The announcement Monday following a meeting in Rome by the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS comes a day before the seventh anniversary of the terror group’s proclamation of its self-declared caliphate in Iraq and Syria, and two years since the caliphate’s territorial defeat in Syria.But despite constant pressure from the U.S. military and other coalition members, Western counterterrorism officials warn that IS, or Daesh as the group is also known, has found ways not just to survive but to spread, increasingly focusing the group’s propaganda on the exploits of its African affiliates.“We are fearing the expansion and spread of Daesh in Africa,” Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio told reporters Monday, citing what he described as a “cry for help” from communities in countries such as Niger and Mali.”We know that many villages have fallen in the hands of terrorists,” Di Maio said through an interpreter, adding the threat is pressing ever closer.“We’re now seeing that a number of terrorist cells are proliferating in regions such as the Sahel, where obviously the main migration routes are present, the routes of those who come to Europe,” he said.#ISIS-#Africa: “In my recent missions to #Niger & #Mali, I witnessed the cry for help from those communities” per #Italy FM Di Maio (via translator)”We know that many villages have fallen in the hands of terrorists…” Di Maio says, noting need for “holistic approach”— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) June 28, 2021Di Maio did not share details about how the new African task force will work to combat IS, though he noted the need for a “holistic approach,” which considered factors such as climate change and poverty that might drive some people toward extremism.“We must step up the action undertaken by the coalition, not by shifting our focus but by increasing the areas in which we can operate … [in] the Sahel, Mozambique and the Horn of Africa,” he said.Speaking alongside Di Maio Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken backed the call for the task force to push back against IS gains in Africa.”We strongly support Italy’s initiative to make sure that the coalition against Daesh focuses its expertise on Africa while keeping our eyes closely on Syria and Iraq,” Blinken said. “We heard a strong consensus.”In a communique issued after the meeting, ministers from the 83-coalition countries noted three of the coalition’s newest members — the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Mauritania — are from Africa.Three other African nations — Burkina Faso, Mozambique and Ghana — attended as observers, officials said.As if to underscore the growing threat from IS affiliates in Africa, IS’s West Africa Province circulated a video last Friday allegedly showing fighters from the Boko Haram terror group switching sides to join with their former rivals.”We have now joined with our Ikhwan (brothers),” a former Boko Haram fighter said in the video obtained by SITE Intelligence Group.“We should not relent in our effort to fight the kuffar (infidels),” the speaker added, according to a copy obtained by Reuters.The video comes less than a month after IS-West Africa first issued claims that longtime Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau died after being captured by its fighters..@HumAngle_@Reuters have reported #ISIS-West #Africa leader Abu Musab al-Barnawi confirmed #BokoHaram’s Shekau death last month in a recent audio recordinghttps://t.co/o69685Q6TL— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) June 7, 2021U.S. officials have yet to confirm Shekau’s death, though they tell VOA the sourcing for such reports appear to be more credible than previous claims of his demise.Yet while U.S. officials and experts say Shekau’s death would be a positive development, they caution that the danger from terror groups like IS-West Africa are far from gone.“The Islamic State’s presence in Africa has been clear and steadily growing, even as IS Central’s power has waned,” said Jason Warner, lead Africa researcher at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center.“The sheer number of IS African provinces and wings with clear staying power has arguably created an even more intractable threat from IS than we’ve seen in the past,” he added, noting the threat in Africa “is arguably at its pinnacle right now.”Yet, other experts worry that the Defeat ISIS coalition’s focus on Africa, first suggested by U.S. officials in late 2019, may be a case of too little, too late.“We agreed at the working level that West #Africa & the #Sahel would be a preferred, initial area of focus for the Coalition outside of the #ISIS core space –& w/good reason” per @SecPompeo “ISIS is outpacing the ability of regional gvts and int’l partners to address the threat”— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) November 14, 2019 “While it is good that the coalition is talking about Africa and bringing relevant countries into the discussion, any coordination seems to be still in the early stages, while the conditions on the ground are deteriorating very fast,” Emily Estelle, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told VOA.“The proposed task force should focus its energy on backing up military success with governance success,” she added. “This is the gap that lets IS and other groups keep coming back after military losses.”But there are questions about how much military might the coalition will be able to muster across Africa.France this month announced it would end its counterterrorism operation in the Sahel, and the U.S. military is still in the process of a posture review that could see more of its troops leave Africa.U.S. military officials have previously noted that the removal of U.S. forces from Somalia, ordered by former U.S. President Donald Trump, “has introduced new layers of complexity and risk.”And a report from the Pentagon’s inspector general late last year warned the terrorist threat across Africa was expanding, despite U.S. efforts to contain it.In a separate but related move Monday, the U.S. designated Ousmane Illiassou Djibo, a top official with IS in the Greater Sahara, as a specially designated global terrorist, describing him as the architect of a network to kidnap or kill westerners in Niger and surrounding areas.US designates a top #ISIS in the Greater Sahara (ISIS-GS) official as a Specially Designated Global TerroristPer @StateDept, Ousmane Illiassou Djibo –aka Petit Chapori – is a close collaborator/key lieutenant of ISIS-GS leader, Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi pic.twitter.com/ii9XEWXNB2— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) June 28, 2021IS in SyriaDespite the focus on IS in Africa, U.S. officials have been warning of the ongoing threat from the terror group’s core leadership in Iraq and especially in Syria, where IS has been able to revive its fortunes in areas nominally controlled by the Syrian government and its Russian allies.There have also been persistent concerns about the 10,000 IS fighters, including 2,000 foreign fighters, being held by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, a situation Blinken described as untenable.“There is some urgency,” he told reporters. “There is a need for countries to take action to repatriate foreign fighters that come from those countries, to prosecute them where appropriate, to rehabilitate and reintegrate where appropriate.”AfghanistanThe Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS also expressed concerns about the terror group’s fortunes in Afghanistan, praising efforts by Kabul to counter the so-called Khorasan province.Earlier this month, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told lawmakers there was a “medium” risk of groups like IS-Khorasan regenerating the ability to threaten the West.Intelligence assessments from the U.S. and from United Nation member states have also warned of the affiliate’s ability to threaten both Afghanistan and the wider region.Cindy Saine, Chris Hannas contributed to this report 
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