Month: October 2022

The suspect who attacked Paul Pelosi, House speaker’s husband, specifically targeted their San Francisco home, people familiar with the matter said Friday.

Pelosi was attacked and severely beaten by an assailant with a hammer. Pelosi, 82, suffered blunt force trauma to his head and body, according to the two people with knowledge of the investigation into the attack who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing probe. He was being treated by doctors for bruising, severe swelling and other injuries. Pelosi’s spokesman Drew Hammill said he was expected to make a full recovery.

The assailant is in custody, and the motivation for the attack is under investigation, the spokesman said.

“The Speaker and her family are grateful to the first responders and medical professionals involved, and request privacy at this time,” Hammill said in a statement.

While the circumstances of the attack are unclear, the attack raises questions about the safety of members of Congress and their families as threats to lawmakers are at an all-time high almost two years after the deadly Capitol insurrection. The attack also comes just 11 days ahead of midterm elections in which crime and public safety have emerged as top concerns among Americans.

In 2021, Capitol Police investigated around 9,600 threats made against members of Congress, and members have been violently attacked in recent years. Former Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, was shot in the head at an event outside a Tucson grocery store in 2011, and Republican Rep. Steve Scalise, was severely injured when a gunman opened fire on a Republican congressional baseball team practice in 2017.

Members of Congress have received additional dollars for security at their homes, but some have pushed for more protection as people have shown up at their homes and as members have received an increasing number of threatening communications.

Capitol Police, tasked with protecting congressional leaders, said Nancy Pelosi was with her protective detail in Washington at the time her husband was attacked. She’d just returned this week from a security conference in Europe and is due to keynote an advocacy event Saturday evening with Vice President Kamala Harris.

Capitol Police said the FBI and San Francisco police were also investigating. The suspect is in the custody of the San Francisco police.

Often at Nancy Pelosi’s side during formal events in Washington, Paul Pelosi is a wealthy investor who largely remains on the West Coast. They have five adult children and many grandchildren. The two have been married 59 years.

Earlier this year, Paul Pelosi pleaded guilty to misdemeanor driving under the influence charges related to a May crash in California’s wine country and was sentenced to five days in jail and three years of probation.

Lawmakers from both parties reacted to the assault with shock and expressed their well wishes to the Pelosi family.

“What happened to Paul Pelosi was a dastardly act,” said Senate Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. “I spoke with Speaker Pelosi earlier this morning and conveyed my deepest concern and heartfelt wishes to her husband and their family, and I wish him a speedy recovery.”

“We have been to many events with the Pelosis over the last 2 decades and we’ve had lots of occasions to talk about both of our families and the challenges of being part of a political family. Thinking about the Pelosi family today,” tweeted Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that President Joe Biden has also been in contact with Nancy Pelosi.

“The President is praying for Paul Pelosi and for Speaker Pelosi’s whole family,” Jean-Pierre said. “This morning he called Speaker Pelosi to express his support after this horrible attack. He is also very glad that a full recovery is expected. The president continues to condemn all violence, and he asks that the family’s desire for privacy be respected.”
…

According to the LGBTQ Victory Fund, more than 1,000 LGBTQ people are running for local and federal offices around the U.S. this year. Maxim Moskalkov has the story. VOA footage by Aleksandr Bergan.
…

The COVID-19 pandemic devastated poor children’s well-being, not just by closing their schools, but also by taking away their parents’ jobs, sickening their families and teachers, and adding chaos and fear to their daily lives.

The scale of the disruption to American kids’ education is evident in a district-by-district analysis of test scores shared exclusively with The Associated Press. The data provide the most comprehensive look yet at how much schoolchildren have fallen behind academically.

The analysis found the average student lost more than half a school year of learning in math and nearly a quarter of a school year in reading – with some district averages slipping by more than double those amounts, or worse. 

Online learning played a major role, but students lost significant ground even where they returned quickly to schoolhouses, especially in math scores in low-income communities.

“When you have a massive crisis, the worst effects end up being felt by the people with the least resources,” said Stanford education professor Sean Reardon, who compiled and analyzed the data along with Harvard economist Thomas Kane. 

Some educators have objected to the very idea of measuring learning loss after a crisis that has killed more than 1 million Americans. Reading and math scores don’t tell the entire story about what’s happening with a child, but they’re one of the only aspects of children’s development reliably measured nationwide.

“Test scores aren’t the only thing, or the most important thing,” Reardon said. “But they serve as an indicator for how kids are doing.”

And kids aren’t doing well, especially those who were at highest risk before the pandemic. The data show many children need significant intervention, and advocates and researchers say the U.S. isn’t doing enough.

Together, Reardon and Kane created a map showing how many years of learning the average student in each district has lost since 2019. Their project, the Education Recovery Scorecard, compared results from a test known as the “nation’s report card” with local standardized test scores from 29 states and Washington, D.C.

In Memphis, Tennessee, where nearly 80% of students are poor, students lost the equivalent of 70% of a school year in reading and more than a year in math, according to the analysis. The district’s Black students lost a year-and-one-third in math and two-thirds of a year in reading. 

For church pastor Charles Lampkin, who is Black, it was the effects on his sons’ reading that grabbed his attention. He was studying the Bible with them one night this fall when he noticed his sixth and seventh graders were struggling with their “junior” Bible editions written for a fifth grade reading level. “They couldn’t get through it,” Lampkin said.

Lampkin blames the year and a half his sons were away from school buildings from March 2020 until the fall of 2021. 

“They weren’t engaged at all. It was all tomfoolery,” he said.

Officials with the local district, Shelby County Public Schools, did not respond to multiple phone calls and emails requesting comment. According to district presentations, Shelby County schools last year offered tutoring to the lowest-performing students. Most students who received tutoring focused on English language arts, but not math. Lampkin said his sons have not been offered the extra help. 

The amount of learning that students lost – or gained, in rare cases – over the last three years varied widely. Poverty and time spent in remote learning affected learning loss, and learning losses were greater in districts that remained online longer, according to Kane and Reardon’s analysis. But neither was a perfect predictor of declines in reading and math.

In some districts, students lost more than two years of math learning, according to the data. Hopewell, Virginia, a school system of 4,000 students who are mostly low-income and 60% Black, showed an average loss of 2.29 years of school.

“This is not anywhere near what we wanted to see,” Deputy Superintendent Jay McClain said.

The district began offering in-person learning in March 2021, but three-quarters of students remained home. “There was so much fear of the effects of COVID,” he said. “Families here were just hunkered down.”

When schools resumed in the fall, the virus swept through Hopewell, and half of all students stayed home either sick or in quarantine, McClain said. A full 40% of students were chronically absent, meaning they missed 18 days or more.

The pandemic brought other challenges unrelated to remote learning. 

In Rochester, New Hampshire, students lost nearly two years in reading even though schools offered in-person learning most of the 2020-2021 school year. It was the largest literacy decline among all the districts in the analysis. 

The 4,000-student district, where most are white and nearly half live in poverty, had to close schools in November 2020 when too few teachers could report for work, Superintendent Kyle Repucci said. Students studied online until March 2021, and when schools reopened, many chose to stay with remote learning, Repucci said.

“Students here were exposed to things they should never have been exposed to until much later,” Repucci said. “Death. Severe illness. Working to feed their families.”

In Los Angeles, school leaders shuttered classrooms for the entire 2020-2021 academic year, yet students held their ground in reading.

It’s hard to tell what explains the vastly different outcomes in some states. In California, where students on average stayed steady or only marginally declined, it could suggest that educators there were better at teaching over Zoom or the state made effective investments in technology, Reardon said.

But the differences could also be explained by what happened outside of school. “I think a lot more of the variation has to do with things that were outside of a school’s control,” Reardon said.

Now, the onus is on America’s adults to work toward kids’ recovery. For the federal government and individual states, advocates hope the recent releases of test data could inspire more urgency to direct funding to the students who suffered the largest setbacks, whether it’s academic or other support. 

School systems are still spending the nearly $190 billion in federal relief money allocated for recovery, a sum experts have said fails to address the extent of learning loss in schools. Nearly 70% of students live in districts where federal relief money is likely inadequate to address the magnitude of their learning loss, according to Kane and Reardon’s analysis.

The implications for kids’ futures are alarming: Lower test scores are predictors of lower wages, plus higher rates of incarceration and teen pregnancy, Kane said.

It doesn’t take Harvard research to convince parents whose children are struggling to read or learn algebra that something needs to be done. 

At his church in Memphis, Lampkin started his own tutoring program three nights a week. Adults from his congregation, some of them teachers, help around 50 students with their homework, reinforcing skills and teaching new ones.

“We shouldn’t have had to do this,” Lampkin said. “But sometimes you have to lead by example.”
…

Hawaii officials are warning residents of the Big Island that the world’s largest active volcano, Mauna Loa, is sending signals that it may erupt.

Scientists say an eruption isn’t imminent, but they are on alert because of a recent spike in earthquakes at the volcano’s summit. Experts say it would take just a few hours for lava to reach homes closest to vents on the volcano, which last erupted in 1984.

Hawaii’s civil defense agency is holding meetings across the island to educate residents about how to prepare for a possible emergency. They recommend having a “go” bag with food, identifying a place to stay once they leave home and making a plan for reuniting with family members.

“Not to panic everybody, but they have to be aware of that you live on the slopes of Mauna Loa. There’s a potential for some kind of lava disaster,” said Talmadge Magno, the administrator for Hawaii County Civil Defense.

The volcano makes up 51% of the Hawaii Island landmass, so a large portion of the island has the potential to be affected by an eruption, Magno said.

There’s been a surge of development on the Big Island in recent decades — its population has more than doubled to 200,000 today from 92,000 in 1980 — and many newer residents weren’t around when Mauna Loa last erupted 38 years ago. All the more reason why Magno said officials are spreading the word about the science of the volcano and urging people to be prepared.

Mauna Loa, rising 13,679 feet (4,169 meters) above sea level, is the much larger neighbor to Kilauea volcano, which erupted in a residential neighborhood and destroyed 700 homes in 2018. Some of its slopes are much steeper than Kilauea’s so when it erupts, its lava can flow much faster.

During a 1950 eruption, the mountain’s lava traveled 15 miles (24 kilometers) to the ocean in less than three hours.

The Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, which is part of the U.S. Geological Survey, said Mauna Loa has been in a state of “heightened unrest” since the middle of last month when the number of summit earthquakes jumped from 10 to 20 per day to 40 to 50 per day.

Scientists believe more earthquakes are occurring because more magma is flowing into Mauna Loa’s summit reservoir system from the hot spot under the earth’s surface that feeds molten rock to Hawaii’s volcanoes.

The temblors have declined in frequency in recent days but could rise again.

More than 220 people attended a community meeting last weekend that county civil defense officials held in Ocean View, a neighborhood that lava could reach in hours if molten rock erupts through vents on Mauna Loa’s southwest flank.

Bob Werner, an Ocean View resident who didn’t attend the meeting, said it’s wise to be aware of a possible eruption but not to fear it. He’s not concerned that the neighborhood would be completely cut off, if lava flows across the only road connecting it to the bigger towns of Kailua-Kona and Hilo, where many people do their shopping.

The “greater concern is it will be extremely annoying to drive an extra hour or two hours to get the same stuff,” he said.

Ryan Williams, the owner of the Margarita Village bar in Hilo, said the volcanic unrest wasn’t worrying customers who are used to warnings.

There could still be a heightened sense of urgency since officials have been holding town hall meetings, urging people to prepare.

“But everything I’ve read or heard, they trying to kind of assure people that conditions have not changed,” Williams said. “There’s no imminent eruption, but just to be alert.”

Magno said his agency is talking to residents now because communities closest to vents likely wouldn’t have enough time to learn how to respond and prepare once the observatory raises its alert level to “watch,” which means an eruption is imminent.

The current alert level is “advisory” meaning the volcano is showing signs of unrest yet there’s no indication an eruption is likely or certain.

Residents in other parts of the island would have more time to react.

Lava from Mauna Loa’s northeast flank could take days or weeks to reach residential communities. That’s because the mountain’s slopes on that side are relatively gentle and because towns are farther from volcanic vents.

Frank Trusdell, research geologist at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, said all of Mauna Loa’s eruptions in recorded history have started in its summit crater. About half of them stayed there, while the other half later spewed lava from vents lower down the mountain.

Lava erupting from the summit generally doesn’t travel far enough to reach residential areas.

Mauna Loa has erupted 33 times since 1843. It last erupted in 1984 when lava flowed down its eastern flank only to stop 4.5 miles (7.2 kilometers) short of Hilo, the Big Island’s most populous town.

Mauna Loa also has a history of disgorging huge volumes of lava.

In the 1950 eruption, which lasted for 23 days, Mauna Loa released 1,000 cubic meters (1,307 cubic yards) of lava per second. In contrast, Kilauea released 300 cubic meters (392 cubic yards) per second in 2018.

The earthquakes could continue for a while before any eruption: increased seismic activity lasted for a year before a 1975 eruption and a year-and-a-half before the 1984 one. Alternatively, the temblors could subside and Mauna Loa may not erupt this time.

Trusdell said residents should look at his agency’s maps and learn how quickly lava may show up in their neighborhood. He also urged people living in one of the short-notice areas to pay attention if the summit turns red.

“All you got to do is look up there and see the glow. You grab your stuff, throw it in the car and drive. Go!” he said.

They can always go home after if the lava ultimately doesn’t flow into their neighborhood, he said.
…

The Biden administration’s approval of oil leases in a corner of New Mexico that has become a battleground over increased development and preservation of Native American sites has prompted a legal challenge.

Environmental groups are suing the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland. They contend in a complaint filed Wednesday that the federal government is going back on its word by clearing the way for oil and gas development on federal lands near Chaco Culture National Historical Park.

At issue are leases that span more than 70 square miles (180 square kilometers) in northwestern New Mexico. The groups say the federal government agreed in April to reconsider the Trump-era leases given their proximity to homes and an area held sacred by Navajos.

“We are disappointed that the Bureau of Land Management decided to double down on fracking and ignore the cumulative impacts, inequities and injustices of oil and gas leasing and drilling in the Greater Chaco [area],” Ally Beasley with the Western Environmental Law Center said in a statement.

Outside buffer zone

The Bureau of Land Management said Thursday that the parcels in question are outside an informal 10-mile (16-kilometer) buffer zone around Chaco park that the agency has observed for years.

Under an initiative by Haaland, that buffer would be in effect for the next 20 years, prohibiting oil and gas development on federal land within that area.

Federal land managers are currently assessing the proposal, although Navajo Nation officials have argued for a smaller area to be protected because the tribe and its citizens benefit economically from oil and gas development.

Environmentalists have argued that the Bureau of Land Management has failed to consider the cumulative impacts of drilling in the area. Archaeologists and leaders of New Mexico pueblos with ancestral ties to the Chaco area also have concerns about damaging culturally significant sites that are outside the park’s boundaries and the buffer zone.

A World Heritage site, Chaco park is thought to be the center of what was once a hub of Indigenous civilization, with many Southwest tribes tracing their roots to the high desert outpost. Archaeologists have found evidence of great roads that stretched from Chaco across what are now New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado.

Haaland, who is from Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico, has talked about her own tribe’s connection to the area. She visited last November and announced her agency’s intentions to develop a landscape-level plan to protect the region’s cultural values.

The Bureau of Land Management, which is overseen by Haaland’s agency, on Thursday reiterated its commitment to updating the environmental analysis that governs leasing in the area and promised that there would be more opportunities for public comment.
…

On Oct. 4, Elon Musk reversed himself and offered to honor his original proposal to buy Twitter for $44 billion — a deal he had spent the previous several months trying to wriggle out of. He posted a video of himself arriving at Twitter headquarters Wednesday, and Thursday evening new outlets announced the deal had been completed and Musk had fired at least two top Twitter executives.

If the case has your head spinning, here’s a quick guide to the major events in the saga featuring the billionaire Tesla CEO and the social platform.

January 31: Musk starts buying shares of Twitter in near-daily installments, amassing a 5% stake in the company by mid-March.

March 26: Musk, who has tens of millions of Twitter followers and is active on the site, says he is giving “serious thought” to building an alternative to Twitter, questioning the platform’s commitment to “free speech” and whether Twitter is undermining democracy. He also privately reaches out to Twitter board members including his friend and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey.

March 27: After privately informing Twitter of his growing stake in the company, Musk starts conversations with its CEO and board members about potentially joining the board. Musk also mentions taking Twitter private or starting a competitor, according to later regulatory filings.

April 4: A regulatory filing reveals that Musk has rapidly become the largest shareholder of Twitter after acquiring a 9% stake, or 73.5 million shares, worth about $3 billion.

April 5: Musk is offered a seat on Twitter’s board on the condition he amass no more than 14.9% of the company’s stock. CEO Parag Agrawal said in a tweet that “it became clear to us that he would bring great value to our Board.”

April 9: After exchanging pleasantries and bonding by text message over their love of engineering, a short-lived relationship between Agrawal and Musk sours after Musk publicly tweets “Is Twitter dying?” and gets a message from Agrawal calling the criticism unhelpful. Musk tersely responds: “This is a waste of time. Will make an offer to take Twitter private.”

April 11: Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal announces Musk will not be joining the board after all.

April 14: Twitter reveals in a securities filing that Musk has offered to buy the company outright for about $44 billion.

April 15: Twitter’s board unanimously adopts a “poison pill” defense in response to Musk’s proposed offer, attempting to thwart a hostile takeover.

April 21: Musk lines up $46.5 billion in financing to buy Twitter. Twitter board is under pressure to negotiate.

April 25: Musk reaches a deal to buy Twitter for $44 billion and take the company private. The outspoken billionaire has said he wanted to own and privatize Twitter because he thinks it’s not living up to its potential as a platform for free speech.

April 29: Musk sells roughly $8.5 billion worth of shares in Tesla to help fund the purchase of Twitter, according to regulatory filings.

May 5: Musk strengthens his offer to buy Twitter with commitments of more than $7 billion from a diverse group of investors including Silicon Valley heavy hitters like Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison.

May 10: In a hint at how he would change Twitter, Musk says he’d reverse Twitter’s ban of former President Donald Trump following the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, calling the ban a “morally bad decision” and “foolish in the extreme.”

May 13: Musk declares his plan to buy Twitter “temporarily on hold.” Musk says he needs to pinpoint the number of spam and fake accounts on the social media platform. Shares of Twitter tumble, while those of Tesla rebound sharply.

June 6: Musk threatens to end his $44 billion agreement to buy Twitter, accusing the company of refusing to give him information he requested about its spam bot accounts.

July 8: Musk says he will abandon his offer to buy Twitter after the company failed to provide enough information about the number of fake accounts.

July 12: Twitter sues Musk to force him to complete the deal. Musk soon countersues.

July 19: A Delaware judge says the Musk-Twitter legal dispute will go to trial in October.

August 23: A former head of security at Twitter alleges the company misled regulators about its poor cybersecurity defenses and its negligence in attempting to root out fake accounts that spread misinformation. Musk eventually cites the whistleblower as a new reason to scuttle his Twitter deal.

October 5: Musk offers to go through with his original proposal to buy Twitter for $44 billion. Twitter says it intends to close the transaction after receiving Musk’s offer.

October 6: Delaware judge delays Oct. 17 trial until November and gives both sides until Oct. 28 to reach agreement to close the deal.

October 20: The Washington Post reports that Musk told prospective Twitter investors that he plans to lay off 75% of the company’s 7,500 employees.

October 26: Musk posts a video of himself entering Twitter headquarters carrying a kitchen sink, indicating that the deal is set to go through.

October 27: In a message to advertisers, Musk says Twitter won’t become a “free-for-all hellscape.”  News organizations report the deal to buy Twitter has been completed.
…

Elon Musk became Twitter Inc’s new owner on Thursday, firing top executives he had accused of misleading him and providing little clarity over how he will achieve the lofty ambitions he has outlined for the influential social media platform.

The CEO of electric car maker Tesla Inc TSLA.O has said he wants to “defeat” spam bots on Twitter, make the algorithms that determine how content is presented to its users publicly available, and prevent the platform from becoming an echo chamber for hate and division, even as he limits censorship.

Yet Musk has not offered details on how he will achieve all this and who will run the company. He has said he plans to cut jobs, leaving Twitter’s approximately 7,500 employees fretting about their future. He also said on Thursday he did not buy Twitter to make more money but “to try to help humanity, whom I love.”

Musk terminated Twitter Chief Executive Parag Agrawal, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal and legal affairs and policy chief Vijaya Gadde, according to people familiar with the matter. He had accused them of misleading him and Twitter investors over the number of fake accounts on the social media platform.

Agrawal and Segal were in Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters when the deal closed and were escorted out, the sources added.

Twitter, Musk and the executives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The $44-billion acquisition is the culmination of a remarkable saga, full of twists and turns, that sowed doubt over whether Musk would complete the deal. It began on April 4, when Musk disclosed a 9.2% stake in the San Francisco company, making him its largest shareholder.

The world’s richest person then agreed to join Twitter’s board, only to balk at the last minute and offer to buy the company instead for $54.20 per share, an offer that Twitter was unsure whether to interpret as another of Musk’s cannabis jokes.

Musk’s offer was real, and over the course of just one weekend later in April, the two sides reached a deal at the price he suggested. This happened without Musk carrying out any due diligence on the company’s confidential information, as is customary in an acquisition.

In the weeks that followed, Musk had second thoughts. He complained publicly that he believed Twitter’s spam accounts were significantly higher than Twitter’s estimate, published in regulatory filings, of less than 5% of its monetizable daily active users. His lawyers then accused Twitter of not complying with his requests for information on the subject.

The acrimony resulted in Musk giving notice to Twitter on July 8 that he was terminating their deal on the grounds that Twitter misled him on the bots and did not cooperate with him. Four days later, Twitter sued Musk in Delaware, where the company is incorporated, to force him to complete the deal.

By then, shares of social media companies and the broader stock market had plunged on concerns that the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes, as it seeks to fight inflation, will push the U.S. economy into recession. Twitter accused Musk of buyer’s remorse, arguing he wanted to get out of the deal because he thought he overpaid.

Most legal analysts said Twitter had the strongest arguments and would likely prevail in court. Their view did not change even after Twitter’s former security chief Peiter Zatko stepped forward as a whistleblower in August to allege that the company failed to disclose weaknesses in its security and data privacy.

On Oct. 4, just as Musk was set to be deposed by Twitter’s lawyers ahead of the start of their trial later in the month, he performed another u-turn and offered to complete the deal as promised. The Delaware judge gave him an Oct. 28 deadline to close the transaction and avoid the trial.

‘Chief Twit’

Since then, Musk has indulged the deal hype. He walked into Twitter’s headquarters on Wednesday with a big grin and carrying a porcelain sink, subsequently tweeting “let that sink in.” He changed his description in his Twitter profile to “Chief Twit.”

He also tried to calm fears among employees that major layoffs are coming and assured advertisers that his past criticism of Twitter’s content moderation rules would not harm its appeal.

“Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences!” Musk said in an open letter to advertisers on Thursday.

Musk has indicated he sees Twitter as a foundation for creating a “super app” that offers everything from money transfers to shopping and ride hailing.

“The long-term potential for Twitter in my view is an order of magnitude greater than its current value,” Musk said on Tesla’s call with analysts on Oct 19.

But Twitter is struggling to engage its most active users who are vital to the business. These “heavy tweeters” account for less than 10% of monthly overall users but generate 90% of all tweets and half of global revenue.

Musk said in May he would reverse the ban on Donald Trump, who was removed after the attack on the U.S. Capitol, although the former U.S. President Donald Trump has said he won’t return on the platform. He has instead launched his own social media app, Truth Social.
…

The United States is trying to make it easier for companies and organizations to bolster their cybersecurity in the face of growing attacks aimed at crippling their operations, stealing their data or demanding ransom payments.

Officials with the Department of Homeland Security and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) rolled out their new Cybersecurity Performance Goals on Thursday, describing them as a critical but voluntary resource that will help companies and organizations make better decisions.

“Really what these cybersecurity performance goals present is a menu of options to advance one’s cybersecurity,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters, describing the rollout as a “watershed moment” for cybersecurity.

“They are accessible, they are easy to understand, and they are identified according to the cost that each would entail, the complexity to implement the goal, as well as the magnitude of the impact that the goal’s implementation would have,” he added.

For months, U.S. officials have been warning of an ever more complex and dangerous threat environment in cyberspace, pushing the government’s “Shields Up” awareness campaign, driven in part by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine earlier this year.

They have also called attention to cyberattacks by Iran and North Korea, while warning that both nation states and non-state actors have increasingly been scanning and targeting U.S. critical infrastructure, from water and electric companies to airports, which were struck by a series of denial-of-service attacks earlier in October.

Private cybersecurity companies have likewise warned of a growing number of attacks against health care companies and education and research organizations.

While some bigger U.S. companies and organizations have been able to devote time, money and other resources to confront the growing dangers, U.S. officials are concerned that others have not.

In particular, CISA has worried about small to mid-sized businesses, along with hospitals and school systems, often described by officials as target rich but resource poor because they do not have the money or resources to defend systems and data from hackers.

Officials said the new guidelines, which focus on key areas like account security, training, incident reporting, and response and recovery, and come with checklists, are designed to ease the burden. The officials also said they anticipate the goals will change and evolve along with the threat.

The newly unveiled goals “were developed to really represent a minimum baseline of cyber security measures that if implemented, will reduce not only risk to critical infrastructure but also to national security, economic security and public health and safety,” said CISA Director Jen Easterly, calling them a “quick start guide.”

“[It’s] really a place to start to drive prioritized investment toward the most critical practices,” she said.

According to CISA, many of the new goals are already resonating, including with state and local officials running U.S. elections.

“We’ve been working with them to implement several of these best practices, as well as ensuring that they have the tools and resources and the capabilities to ensure the security and resilience of election infrastructure,” Easterly told reporters Thursday. “I’ve met with election officials even just over the past few days … and they all expressed confidence in particular in the cybersecurity across all of their systems.”

CISA also said Thursday that U.S. states and territories needing more help can take advantage of $1 billion in grants that are being made available over the next four years.

The grants, designed specifically to help protect U.S. critical infrastructure, were first announced last month.
…

The United States said Thursday it would give an additional $30 million in humanitarian aid to Pakistan to support victims of recent catastrophic flooding in the South Asian nation. It brings the total disaster-related assistance from Washington to Islamabad this year to $97 million. 

U.S. Ambassador Donald Blome announced the new funding during a trip to southern Sindh province, one of the country’s worst-hit regions.  

“We have been here for the people of Pakistan since the beginning, supporting the most vulnerable communities. With these new funds, the United States will expand upon its existing response, enabling USAID to reach more than 1.8 million people in Pakistan,” Blome said. 

Pakistani and United Nations officials say torrential seasonal rainfall, made worse by global climate change, has triggered floods across Pakistan, affecting 33 million people and killing more than 1,700 others since June. Floodwaters destroyed or damaged 2.1 million houses, killed 1.2 million livestock, damaged 13,000 kilometers of roads, displaced 8 million people, including 644,000 living in relief camps, and drenched one-third of the country at one point.  

A U.S. Embassy statement said the new funding would provide lifesaving food, nutrition, shelter supplies, winterization kits, and health assistance to mitigate increased food insecurity and malnutrition resulting from the impact of the floods. It will also support efforts aimed at curbing the rise of diseases resulting from stagnant flood waters, it said. 

The United Nations said Thursday that 7% of the land in Pakistan is still inundated, warning health perils are changing with a rise in respiratory diseases. 

“Water is receding, but now there’s not enough water for [operating] rescue boats. This is increasing the number of areas which are inaccessible. People are returning to nothing,” noted a U.N. statement. It lamented that people in hundreds of villages are surviving on fish from the water they drink, cook with, clean in, and defecate in. 

The U.N. earlier this month increased its international humanitarian aid appeal to $816 million from $160 million for Pakistan after reviewing the scale of the disaster and fearing a surge in water-borne diseases, as well as growing food insecurity, could pose new challenges for the impoverished country.   

The U.N. statement noted Thursday that 23%, or $110 million, has been committed to the appeal.  

“Funding for food assistance may finish by the end of the year if more funds are not received. An estimated 14.6 million people require emergency food assistance from December through March 2023,” the statement said. Almost 10 million children require immediate lifesaving support, while nearly 4 million lack access to health services, it added. “The shelter is becoming more and more important as people return home and winter sets in.”  

Nearly 2,000 health facilities have been damaged or destroyed in calamity-hit districts where more than 8 million people need health assistance. About 650,000 pregnant women in flood-affected areas face challenges in getting access to maternal services. 

Pakistan officials have estimated damage from the flooding at about $40 billion, urging the global community to do more to provide financial aid to the country of about 220 million people.  

Pakistan maintains that it produces less than 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions, but it is listed among the top 10 countries vulnerable to climate change-driven disasters. 
…

Elon Musk is telling Twitter advertisers he is buying the platform to “help humanity” and doesn’t want it to become a “free-for-all hellscape” where anything can be said with no consequences.

The message to advertisers posted Thursday on Twitter came a day before Musk’s deadline for closing his $44 billion deal to buy the social-media company and take it private.

“The reason I acquired Twitter is because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence,” Musk wrote, in an unusually-long message for the billionaire Tesla CEO who typically projects his thoughts in one-line tweets

He continued: “There is currently great danger that social media will splinter into far right wing and far left wing echo chambers that generate more hate and divide our society.”

The message reflects concerns among advertisers — Twitter’s chief source of revenue  that Musk’s plans to promote free speech by cutting back on moderating content will open the floodgates to more online toxicity and drive away users.

Friday’s deadline to close the deal was ordered by the Delaware Chancery Court in early October. It is the latest step in an epic battle during which Musk signed an April deal to acquire Twitter, then tried to back out of it, leading Twitter to sue the Tesla CEO to force him to conclude the deal. If the two sides don’t meet the Friday deadline, the next step could be a November trial that would likely lead to a judge forcing Musk to complete the deal.

But Musk has been signaling that the deal is going through by Friday, paying a visit to Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters Wednesday and changing his Twitter profile to “Chief Twit.”
…

If opposition Republicans capture both the House and Senate in the November 8 midterm election, the legislative agenda of President Joe Biden, a Democrat, will be derailed. A key open Senate seat in Pennsylvania has been one of the tightest and most closely watched contests of the year. VOA’s chief national correspondent Steve Herman reports from Pittsburgh. VOA footage by Daymon Long.
…

If opposition Republicans capture both the U.S. House and Senate in the November 8 midterm election, the legislative agenda of President Joe Biden, a Democrat, will be derailed. One of the most closely watched and tightest races is for an open Senate seat in Pennsylvania. It features Republican Party nominee Mehmet Oz against Democratic Party nominee John Fetterman, who is the state’s lieutenant governor.

Fetterman’s campaign has issued social media memes mocking Oz’s apparent lack of knowledge about Pennsylvania, portraying him as a wealthy, out-of-touch carpetbagger from over the border, in New Jersey.

Oz, a physician and political novice, has sought to cast doubts among Pennsylvania’s voters about Fetterman’s fitness to serve as a senator since he suffered an ischemic stroke in May, shortly after capturing the Democratic Party nomination. The condition has left him with auditory processing difficulties.

During Tuesday’s televised debate with Oz, Fetterman was allowed to use a closed captioning device.

“I might miss some words during this debate, mush some words together. But it [the stroke] knocked me down. But I’m going to keep coming back up,” Fetterman said near the start of the hourlong encounter, which took place in Harrisburg, the state capital, without a studio audience.

Fetterman did have difficulty during the debate, as he predicted. When the moderators quizzed him about his changing positions on fracking, a controversial process to extract gas and oil, the candidate was visibly flummoxed.

“I do support fracking. And I don’t, I don’t, I support fracking. And I stand and I do support fracking,” he responded.

Oz faces scrutiny for some of the products he endorsed during his 15 years on his nationally televised talk program, with critics saying the supplements had dubious health benefits, at best, and might have been dangerous.

During the debate, Oz brushed off such concerns and focused on his treatment of patients.

“I can make the difficult decisions as you do in the operating room as a surgeon. I’ll make them cutting our budget as well, to make sure we don’t have to raise taxes on a population already desperately in pain from the high inflation rate,” he said.

Oz has sought to portray Fetterman as soft on crime during his time as mayor of a small town and while he held the state’s second-highest elected office.

“These radical positions extend beyond crime, to one thing to legalize all drugs, to open the border, to raising our taxes,” said Oz during the debate.

Fetterman, on the campaign trail, drew a distinct line between himself and Oz on the highly-charged issue of abortion.

“If you believe that the choice for abortion belongs between you and your doctor, that’s what I fight for,” he said during the debate, defending the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision struck down by the high court this year.

Oz said the federal government should not be involved in abortion legislation.

“I want women, doctors, local political leaders letting the democracy that always allowed our nation to thrive, to put the best ideas forward so state can decide for themselves,” he said on the debate stage.

The economy is also expected to be a significant matter in the decision of many midterm voters across the United States and especially in some parts of Pennsylvania.

“On the outskirts of Pittsburgh, people are struggling, just to keep up with rent just to keep up with paying their bills and getting groceries and so that’s a major issue,” according to associate professor Gerald Dickinson of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.

Dickinson cautioned that whatever the stances of Fetterman and Oz, their positions might not be the ultimate factor influencing voters’ decisions when they cast their ballots.

“It’s a very, very close race and, as a result of that, what I do think is going to happen is that the personalities of these candidates are going to end up swaying this election,” Dickinson said.

Fetterman, with tattooed arms and usually clad in short pants, promotes his Everyman persona even though he towers over most voters at a height of 2.03 meters.

Oz, the heart surgeon, is more polished, and a relaxed figure in front of the camera.

“It shows in the way that he’s been able to campaign, the way that he’s been able to communicate his issues to his audience,” said Dickinson, a former Democratic Party primary candidate for Congress.

Both candidates enjoy high-profile backers. Biden, a Pennsylvania native, has been campaigning for Fetterman, while Oz is supported by former President Donald Trump, who encouraged Oz to enter politics.

If elected, Oz, who is a dual citizen of the United States and Turkey, would become the first Muslim in the Senate.

Some of those viewing the hourlong debate at a nonpartisan watch party in Pittsburgh — a city evenly split between Republicans and Democrats — told VOA they did not see the encounter swaying the minds of many voters, even though Oz came across as more fluent than Fetterman.

“I think they both stuck to, primarily, what their party is saying. I think Fetterman had a disadvantage. He had to read before he responded and that comes across as if he’s unsure or thinking,” said Richard Covington.

“It was very much a performance, certainly by Dr. Oz — that’s what he’s used to doing. I think for John Fetterman it felt like a struggle. It was just very difficult. The whole thing was kind of painful to watch, frankly,” said Alma Wisniewski.

“When he’s pressured his speech becomes a little more challenging,” said Albert Moore, who expressed support for Fetterman, describing the Democrat as someone who was “not a real articulate guy” even before the stroke, but managed to get things done as a mayor and lieutenant governor.

Fetterman “deserves credit not ridicule” for taking the debate stage while recovering from the stroke, the Philadelphia Inquirer opined Wednesday, after the event.

“If elected to the U.S. Senate, Fetterman could become a role model in helping the nation better understand that a person’s struggles can also be a source of strength,” the newspaper said.

Fetterman appeared at a Pittsburgh rally on Wednesday evening with musician Dave Matthews.

“I may not get every word the right way,” Fetterman told the crowd. “I have a lot of good days. And every now and then I’ll have a bad day. But every day I will always fight just for you.”

More than 686,000 early ballots had been submitted by Wednesday, according to the Pennsylvania Department of State, so any assessment by those voters of the candidates’ debate performance will not make a difference.

In addition, neither candidate can take traditional party support for granted. Pennsylvania’s historical working-class areas, once reliably Democratic, have trended Republican, while many previously solid Republican suburbs now have Democratic Party majorities.

In a CNN poll, conducted by SSRS, a survey and market research firm, in mid-October and released the day prior to the debate, 51% of likely voters said they supported Fetterman while 45% of respondents backed Oz. Other recent surveys have shown the race closer, within the polls’ margins of error.
…

U.S. President Joe Biden and Israeli President Isaac Herzog discussed the Iranian threat during their meeting Wednesday at the White House, including Tehran’s support of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Israel has declined Kyiv’s request to provide air defense systems to protect them from Iranian-supplied drones targeting Ukrainians. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara takes a closer look at why.
…

The United States’ newest aircraft carrier has set sail on its first deployment around the North Atlantic. VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb takes us aboard the USS Gerald R. Ford to show us what its new and improved design might mean against potential foes. Camera: Saqib Islam
…