Month: January 2023

Chinatown in Los Angeles held the 124th historical Golden Dragon Parade in celebration of the Lunar New Year Saturday. The event wasn’t canceled despite the attack on a ballroom dance hall just over a week ago in Monterey Park, where a gunman killed 11 people. Genia Dulot reports.
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Barrett Strong, one of Motown’s founding artists and most gifted songwriters who sang lead on the company’s breakthrough single “Money (That’s What I Want)” and later collaborated with Norman Whitfield on such classics as “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” “War” and “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone,” has died. He was 81.     

His death was announced Sunday on social media by the Motown Museum, which did not immediately provide further details.     

“Barrett was not only a great singer and piano player, but he, along with his writing partner Norman Whitfield, created an incredible body of work,” Motown founder Berry Gordy said in a statement.     

Strong had yet to turn 20 when he agreed to let his friend Gordy, in the early days of building a recording empire in Detroit, manage him and release his music. Within a year, he was a part of history as the piano player and vocalist for “Money,” a million-seller released early in 1960 and Motown’s first major hit. Strong never again approached the success of “Money” on his own, and decades later fought for acknowledgement that he helped write it. But, with Whitfield, he formed a productive and eclectic songwriting team.     

While Gordy’s “Sound of Young America” was criticized for being too slick and repetitive, the Whitfield-Strong team turned out hard-hitting and topical works, along with such timeless ballads as “I Wish It Would Rain” and “Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me).” With “I Heard it Through the Grapevine,” they provided an up-tempo, call-and-response hit for Gladys Knight and the Pips and a dark, hypnotic ballad for Marvin Gaye, his 1968 version one of Motown’s all-time sellers.      

As Motown became more politically conscious late in the decade, Barrett-Whitfield turned out “Cloud Nine” and “Psychedelic Shack” for the Temptations and for Edwin Starr the protest anthem “War” and its widely quoted refrain, “War! What is it good for? Absolutely … nothing!”     

“With `War,’ I had a cousin who was a paratrooper that got hurt pretty bad in Vietnam,” Strong told LA Weekly in 1999. “I also knew a guy who used to sing with (Motown songwriter) Lamont Dozier that got hit by shrapnel and was crippled for life. You talk about these things with your families when you’re sitting at home, and it inspires you to say something about it.”     

Whitfield-Strong’s other hits, mostly for the Temptations, included “I Can’t Get Next to You,” “That’s the Way Love Is” and the Grammy-winning chart-topper “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone” (Sometimes spelled “Papa Was a Rolling Stone”). Artists covering their songs ranged from the Rolling Stones (“Just My Imagination”) and Aretha Franklin (“I Wish It Would Rain”) to Bruce Springsteen (“War”) and Al Green (“I Can’t Get Next to You”).    

Strong spent part of the 1960s recording for other labels, left Motown again in the early 1970s and made a handful of solo albums, including “Stronghold” and “Love is You.” In 2004, he was voted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, which cited him as “a pivotal figure in Motown’s formative years.”      

Whitfield died in 2008.     

The music of Strong and other Motown writers was later featured in the Broadway hit “Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations.”    

Strong was born in West Point, Mississippi and moved to Detroit a few years later. He was a self-taught musician who learned piano without needing lessons and, with his sisters, formed a local gospel group, the Strong Singers. In his teens, he got to know such artists as Franklin, Smokey Robinson and Gordy, who was impressed with his writing and piano playing. “Money”’ with its opening shout, “The best things in life are free/But you can give them to the birds and bees,” would, ironically, lead to a fight — over money.      

Strong was initially listed among the writers and he often spoke of coming up with the pounding piano riff while jamming on Ray Charles’ “What’d I Say” in the studio. But only decades later would he learn that Motown had since removed his name from the credits, costing him royalties for a popular standard covered by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and many others and a keepsake on John Lennon’s home jukebox. Strong’s legal argument was weakened because he had taken so long to ask for his name to be reinstated. (Gordy is one of the song’s credited writers, and his lawyers contended Strong’s name only appeared because of a clerical error).      

“Songs outlive people,” Strong told The New York Times in 2013. “The real reason Motown worked was the publishing. The records were just a vehicle to get the songs out there to the public. The real money is in the publishing, and if you have publishing, then hang on to it. That’s what it’s all about. If you give it away, you’re giving away your life, your legacy. Once you’re gone, those songs will still be playing.” 
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The Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs will meet in the upcoming U.S. National Football League’s Super Bowl championship game.

The Eagles trounced the visiting San Francisco 49ers 31-7 Sunday in the National Football Conference title game. San Francisco’s offense suffered a key injury early in the game when rookie quarterback Brock Purdy suffered a serious elbow injury. Backup Josh Johnson filled in for Purdy until he was forced out in the third quarter when he suffered a concussion. With the 49ers out of quarterbacks, Purdy, who spent most of the season as the team’s third-string quarterback, returned to the game but was unable to throw deep passes.

Philadelphia quarterback Jalen Hurts, the favorite for the league’s Most Valuable Player award, ended the game with 121 passing yards and one of the Eagles’ four running touchdowns. The Eagles are heading back to the Super Bowl five years after beating the New England Patriots and their then-star quarterback Tom Brady.

Hours later, the Chiefs edged the visiting Cincinnati Bengals 23-20 to win the American Football Conference championship. Kansas City placekicker Harrison Butker made a 3-point field goal with just seconds left in regulation to send the franchise to its third Super Bowl appearance in four years. The Chiefs won the 2020 game 31-20 over the 49ers, but sustained a 31-9 rout one year later to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, led by none other than Tom Brady.

The Bengals were trying to beat the Chiefs in the AFC Championship Game for the second consecutive season.

The 57th edition of the Super Bowl will be held on February 12 in Glendale, Arizona, home of the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals franchise. The game started as a matchup between the old National Football League and its rival American Football League. The two leagues merged in 1970 under the NFL banner, and the Super Bowl has since become one of the sports world’s biggest championship events.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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The pastor at the Memphis church where Tyre Nichols’ family spoke from the pulpit urging peace after his brutal killing reiterated the call for calm Sunday following the release of video showing the fatal beating by police. 

Cities nationwide have braced for protests after body camera footage was released Friday showing Memphis officers beating 29-year-old Nichols, who died of his injuries three days after the January 7 attack. However, protests in Memphis, New York City, Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon, have been scattered and nonviolent. 

“We’ve had calm so far, which is what we have been praying for,” Pastor Kenneth Thomas said before the service began at Mt. Olive Cathedral Church. “And, of course, we hope that continues.” 

Thomas also offered a prayer for Nichols’ family, asking God to “shower them with your blessings.” 

Later, more than a dozen sign-carrying protesters marched to a Memphis police station not far from the beating, pounding on the door and demanding to be let in. Getting no response, they made their way to a nearby gate, guarded by three officers. 

Some protesters taunted the officers with vulgarity, and all chanted: “Quit your job!” But the protest remained peaceful. 

The protesters then observed a three-minute silence, designed to match how long Nichols was beaten. 

When it concluded, protester Jennifer Cain yelled: “Say his name!” And the group responded: “Tyre Nichols!” 

“Now, just imagine being beat by people that’s over 1,000 pounds on you and you’re only less than 150 pounds,” Cain said. “That’s three minutes of beating, screaming and yelling for his mom.” 

“When does it stop?” she asked. “When does it end? Are we going to continue to let it happen?” 

The loss is “still very emotional” for the family, a lawyer representing them said Sunday, but they are using all their energy to advocate for reforms both in Memphis and on the federal level. 

“His mother is having problems sleeping but she continues to pray with the understanding, as she believes in her heart, that Tyre was sent here for an assignment, and that there will be a greater good that comes from this tragedy,” Attorney Ben Crump said on ABC’s “This Week.” 

Crump welcomed disbanding the city’s so-called Scorpion unit, which Police Director Cerelyn “CJ” Davis announced Saturday, citing a “cloud of dishonor” from the newly released video. 

Davis acted a day after the harrowing video was released, saying she listened to Nichols’ relatives, community leaders and uninvolved officers in making the decision. Her announcement came as the nation and the city struggled to come to grips with the violence of the officers, who, like Nichols, are Black. The video renewed outrage over repeated fatal encounters with law enforcement despite nationwide demands for change. 

Crump told “This Week” that Nichols’ case points to a systemic problem in how people of color are treated regardless of whether officers are white, Black or any other race. 

The “implicit, biased police” culture that exists in America is just as responsible for Nichols’ death as the five Black officers who killed him, Crump said. 

“I believe it’s part of the institutionalized police culture that makes it somehow allowed that they can use this type of excessive force and brutality against people of color,” Crump said. “It is not the race of the police officer that is the determinant factor whether they’re going to engage in excessive use of force, but it is the race of the citizen.” 

He alleged other members of the Memphis community have been assaulted by the now-shuttered Scorpion unit, which was composed of about 30 officers whose stated aim was to target violent offenders in high-crime areas. The unit had been inactive since Nichols’ January 7 arrest. 

Scorpion stands for Street Crimes Operations to Restore Peace In Our Neighborhoods. 

The officers involved in Nichols’ beating — Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Desmond Mills Jr., Emmitt Martin III and Justin Smith — have been fired and charged with murder and other crimes in Nichols’ death. They face up to 60 years in prison if convicted of second-degree murder. 

Video showed the officers savagely beating Nichols, a FedEx worker, for three minutes while screaming profanities at him. Nichols called out for his mother before his limp body was propped against a squad car and the officers exchange fist-bumps. 

Brenda Goss Andrews, president of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, told The Associated Press she was struck by the immediate aggression from officers as soon as they got out of the car. “It just went to 100. … This was never a matter of de-escalation,” she said, adding, “The young man never had a chance.” 

On a phone call with U.S. President Joe Biden, Crump and Nichols’ parents discussed the need for federal reform like the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which would prohibit racial profiling, ban chokeholds and no-knock warrants, limit the transfer of military equipment to police departments, and make it easier to bring charges against offending officers. 

Biden said he told Nichols’ mother he would be “making a case” to Congress to pass the Floyd Act “to get this under control.” 

Memphis Police had already implemented reforms after Floyd’s killing, including a requirement to de-escalate or intervene if they saw others using excessive force. 

Speaking on “This Week,” Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, said Congress can pass additional measures like “screening, training, accreditation, to up the game so that the people who have this responsibility to keep us safe really are stable and approaching this in a professional manner.” 

The fact that law enforcement is primarily a state and local responsibility “does not absolve us. Under the federal Constitution we have standards, due process standards and others, that we are responsible for,” Durbin said. 

“What we saw on the streets of Memphis was just inhumane and horrible,” he said. “I don’t know what created this — this rage in these police officers that they would congratulate themselves for beating a man to death. But that is literally what happened.” 
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The National Prayer Breakfast, one of the most visible and long-standing events that brings religion and politics together in Washington, is splitting from the private religious group that had overseen it for decades, due to concerns the gathering had become too divisive.

The organizer and host for this year’s breakfast, scheduled for Thursday, will be the National Prayer Breakfast Foundation, headed by former Sen. Mark Pryor, a Democrat from Arkansas.

Sen. Chris Coons, a regular participant and chairman of the Senate ethics committee, said the move was prompted in part by concerns in recent years that members of Congress did not know important details about the larger multiday gathering.

Coons, a Delaware Democrat, said that in the past, he and Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, the committee’s vice chairman, had questions about who was invited and how money was being raised.

The annual event “went on several days, had thousands of people attending, and a very large and somewhat complex organization,” Coons said in an interview. “Some questions had been raised about our ability as members of Congress to say that we knew exactly how it was being organized, who was being invited, how it was being funded. Many of us who’d been in leadership roles really couldn’t answer those questions.”

That led to lawmakers deciding to take over organizing the prayer breakfast itself.

Pryor, president of the new foundation, said the COVID-19 shutdown gave members a chance to “reset” the breakfast and return it to its origins — a change he said had been discussed for years.

“The whole reason the House and Senate wanted to do this was to return it to its roots, when House members and Senate members can come together and pray for the president, pray for his family and administration, pray for our government, the world,” Pryor said.

Pryor said members of Congress, the president, vice president and other administration officials and their guests are invited to Thursday’s prayer breakfast, which will be held at the visitors’ center at the Capitol. He anticipated between 200 and 300 people would attend.

Pryor said he hoped the smaller event will regain the intimacy that is similar to the weekly nondenominational prayer gatherings on Capitol Hill. Groups of senators and representatives have long held unofficial meetings for fellowship and to temporarily set aside political differences.

The prayer breakfast addressed by the president has been the highlight of a multiday event for 70 years. Dwight D. Eisenhower was the first president to attend, in February 1953, and every president since has spoken at the gathering.

The larger event, put on by a private religious group called the International Foundation, has always been centered on “the person and principles of Jesus, with a focus on praying for leaders of our nation and from around the world,” the group’s spokesman, A. Larry Ross, said in an email.

More than 1,400 people are registered for the two-day event, with one-third of those from outside the United States.

President Joe Biden, who has spoken at the breakfast the past two years, is set to do so again. In 2021, he made remarks from the White House during a virtual breakfast the month after the building was attacked by supporters of former President Donald Trump intent on trying to stop the certification of the 2020 election.

At last year’s address from the Capitol, Biden talked about the need for members of Congress to know one another more personally.

“It’s hard to really dislike someone when you know what they’re going through is the same thing you’re going through,” he said.

In recent years, questions about the International Foundation, its funding and attendees led some to reconsider the involvement of Congress.

Sen. Tim Kaine, a Democrat from Virginia, stopped coming in 2016 because the event “had become an entertainment and lobbying extravaganza rather than an opportunity for spiritual reflection,” a Kaine spokesperson wrote in an emailed response to questions. Kaine will attend Thursday.

The gathering came under heightened criticism in 2018 when Maria Butina, a Russian operative, pleaded guilty in 2018 to conspiring to infiltrate conservative U.S. political groups with the aim of advancing Russian interests. According to court documents, she attended two breakfasts in hopes of setting up unofficial connections between Russian and U.S. officials.

It took on political undertones with Trump shattering the custom of the address being a respite from partisan bickering. He used his 2020 speech to criticize his first impeachment and attack political opponents, including Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney, and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat from California.

Earlier this month, the Freedom From Religion Foundation sent a letter signed by 30 groups to the White House and members of Congress asking them to boycott the event because of questions about the International Foundation.

The organization’s co-president, Annie Laurie Gaylor, said the foundation’s basic concerns with the breakfast remain despite the split with the larger religious gathering.

“For decades, FFRF has protested the appearance of the National Prayer Breakfast being a quasi-governmental gathering, which pressures the president and Congress to put on a display of piety that sends a message that the United States is a Christian nation,” she wrote.
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A key U.S. congressional leader called Sunday for a national conversation on policing in America in the aftermath of the brutal beating of a Memphis, Tennessee, man at the hands of five police officers who stand accused of murdering him after a traffic stop.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin told ABC’s “This Week” show, “We’ve got to do better.”

Durbin called for better screening and training, so that police officers who are hired “really are stable.”

Durbin said he did not know how a situation could exist, as shown on videos of the pummeling of Tyre Nichols, where police are “literally congratulating each other in beating a man to death.”

Nichols, a Black, 29-year-old FedEx worker, died earlier this month, three days after crying to see his mother as police beat and kicked him while he was on the ground after the officers captured him when he attempted to flee on foot after the traffic stop.

While many contentious street confrontations with U.S. police have involved white officers shown abusing Black suspects, in this instance the officers are also Black. They were fired as details of the Nichols case first became known and then last week they were charged with second-degree murder and other offenses.

Civil rights lawyer Ben Crump, representing the Nichols family, told CNN’s “State of the Union” show, that “a culture” exists in U.S. policing, no matter the ethnicity of the police officers involved, in which “somehow it’s allowed to trample on the rights” of suspects.

“How many of these cases do we have to see on video to say, ‘We have a problem America,’” Crump said. “This video is a watershed moment. What are our leaders going to do?”

He called again, as other civil rights activists have, for congressional passage of a police reform measure named after George Floyd, a Black man who died in police custody. In that incident, in 2020, officer Derek Chauvin pinned Floyd down with a knee to Floyd’s neck on a street in Minneapolis, Minnesota for several minutes. Floyd was pronounced dead at a hospital. Chauvin was later convicted on two counts of murder and one count of manslaughter and sentenced to more than 20 years in prison. 

Three other officers involved in the incident also were fired and later convicted and are now imprisoned for three years or more.

The legislation addresses a wide range of policing practices and law enforcement accountability and would restrict some police activity, such as no-knock raids, chokeholds and carotid holds. The then-Democratic-controlled House of Representatives approved it in 2021, but it later collapsed in the Senate over Republican opposition.

Its current chances for approval would appear slim, with Republicans now controlling the House and the makeup of the Senate little changed.

In the aftermath of the death of Nichols, Memphis Police Director Cerelyn (CJ) Davis on Saturday disbanded the police unit the accused officers were part of that targeted illegal activities in high-crime neighborhoods. It was called a SCORPION unit, an acronym for Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods.
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CAIRO, Jan 29 (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in the Middle East on Sunday, beginning a three-day visit as violence flares between Israelis and Palestinians, and with Iran and the war in Ukraine high on the agenda.

After a stop in Cairo Blinken will head on Monday to Jerusalem, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new right-wing government has stirred concern at home and abroad over the future of Israel’s secular values, frayed ethnic relations and stalled peace talks with the Palestinians.

There has also been a spate of deadly violence in recent days, heightening fears that already spiralling violence will further escalate.

A Palestinian gunman killed seven people in an attack outside a Jerusalem synagogue on Friday. It was worst such attack on Israelis in the Jerusalem area since 2008 and followed a fatal Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin on Thursday, the deadliest there in years.

In talks with the new Israeli administration, which includes ultra-nationalist parties that want to expand West Bank settlements, Blinken will repeat U.S. calls for calm and emphasize Washington’s support for a two-state solution, although U.S. officials admit longer-term peace talks are not likely in the near future.

Blinken will also travel to Ramallah to meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, other Palestinian officials, and members of civil society.

Netanyahu’s government has proposed a sweeping overhaul of the judiciary that would strengthen political control over the appointment of judges while weakening the Supreme Court’s ability to overturn legislation or rule against government action. The proposals have triggered big street demonstrations against what protesters see as the potential undermining of judicial independence.

“It’s clearly a measure of the vibrancy of the democracy that this has been contested so clearly up and down across segments of Israeli society,” said Barbara Leaf, the top State Department official for the Middle East, who briefed reporters ahead of the trip. Blinken will hear from people inside and outside of government on the reforms, she added.

Leaf said the visit would also build on earlier efforts to restore relations between Israel and Arab nations. The process known as the Negev Forum does not include Palestinians and involves officials from regional nations, including Egypt, discussing areas like economic cooperation and tourism.

Ukraine, Iran on agenda 

Russia’s 11-month-old war in Ukraine will also be on the agenda. Ukraine, which has received great quantities of military equipment from the United States and Europe, has asked Israel to provide systems to shoot down drones, including those supplied by Israel’s regional adversary Iran.

Israel has rebuffed those requests. While it has condemned the Russian invasion, Israel has limited its assistance to humanitarian aid and protective gear, citing a desire for continued cooperation with Moscow over war-ravaged neighbor Syria and to ensure the wellbeing of Russia’s Jews.

The diplomats will also discuss Iran’s nuclear program, with the Biden administration’s efforts to revive the 2015 nuclear deal stalled and no Plan B to prevent Iran developing a weapon.

In Cairo, Blinken will meet President Abdel Fattah El-Sissi and Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry to strengthen Washington’s “strategic partnership” with Egypt and boost cooperation on regional issues like Sudan’s transition and elections in Libya, Leaf said.

Blinken will also be under pressure to raise human rights concerns.

The Biden administration has withheld millions of dollars in military aid to Egypt over its failure to meet human rights conditions, although advocacy groups have pushed for more to be withheld, alleging widespread abuses including torture and enforced disappearances.

Most of the $1.3 billion in foreign military aid that Washington sends to Egypt each year remains intact and the United States has credited Sisi’s government with progress on political detentions.

Sissi, who became president in 2014, has said Egypt holds no political prisoners, and argues that security is paramount and that the government is promoting human rights by working to provide basic needs like jobs and housing.
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Boeing’s BA.N 747, the original and arguably most aesthetic “Jumbo Jet”, revolutionized air travel only to see its more than five-decade reign as “Queen of the Skies” ended by more efficient twinjet planes.

The last commercial Boeing jumbo will be delivered to Atlas Air AAWW.O in the surviving freighter version on Tuesday, 53 years after the 747’s instantly recognizable humped silhouette grabbed global attention as a Pan Am passenger jet.

“On the ground it’s stately, it’s imposing,” said Bruce Dickinson, the lead singer of Iron Maiden who piloted a specially liveried 747 nicknamed “Ed Force One” during the British heavy metal band’s tour in 2016.

“And in the air it’s surprisingly agile. For this massive airplane, you can really chuck it around if you have to.”

Designed in the late 1960s to meet demand for mass travel, the world’s first twin-aisle wide body jetliner’s nose and upper deck became the world’s most luxurious club above the clouds.

But it was in the seemingly endless rows at the back of the new jumbo that the 747 transformed travel.

“This was THE airplane that introduced flying for the middle class in the U.S.,” said Air France-KLM CEO Ben Smith.

“Prior to the 747 your average family couldn’t fly from the U.S. to Europe affordably,” Smith told Reuters.

The jumbo also made its mark on global affairs, symbolizing war and peace, from America’s “Doomsday Plane” nuclear command post to papal visits on chartered 747s nicknamed Shepherd One.

Now, two previously delivered 747s are being fitted to replace U.S. presidential jets known globally as Air Force One.

As a Pan Am flight attendant, Linda Freier served passengers ranging from Michael Jackson to Mother Teresa.

“It was an incredible diversity of passengers. People who were well dressed and people who had very little and spent everything they had on that ticket,” Freier said.

Transformational 

When the first 747 took off from New York on Jan 22, 1970, after a delay due to an engine glitch, it more than doubled plane capacity to 350-400 seats, in turn reshaping airport design.

“It was the aircraft for the people, the one that really delivered the capability to be a mass market,” aviation historian Max Kingsley-Jones said.

“It was transformational across all aspects of the industry,” the senior consultant at Ascend by Cirium added.

Its birth become the stuff of aviation myth.

Pan Am founder Juan Trippe sought to cut costs by increasing the number of seats. On a fishing trip, he challenged Boeing President William Allen to make something dwarfing the 707.

Allen put legendary engineer Joe Sutter in charge. It took only 28 months for Sutter’s team known as “the Incredibles” to develop the 747 before the first flight on Feb. 9, 1969.

Although it eventually became a cash cow, the 747’s initial years were riddled with problems and the $1-billion development costs almost bankrupted Boeing, which believed the future of air travel lay in supersonic jets.

After a slump during the 1970s oil crisis, the plane’s heyday arrived in 1989 when Boeing introduced the 747-400 with new engines and lighter materials, making it a perfect fit to meet growing demand for trans-Pacific flights.

“The 747 is the most beautiful and easy plane to land … It’s just like landing an armchair,” said Dickinson, who also chairs aviation maintenance firm Caerdav.

Age of economics 

The same swell of innovation that got the 747 off the ground has spelled its end, as advances made it possible for dual-engine jets to replicate its range and capacity at lower cost.

Yet the 777X, set to take the 747’s place at the top of the jet market, will not be ready until at least 2025 after delays.

“In terms of impressive technology, great capacity, great economics… [the 777X] does sadly make the 747 look obsolete,” AeroDynamic Advisory managing director Richard Aboulafia said.

Nevertheless, the latest 747-8 version is set to grace the skies for years, chiefly as a freighter, having outlasted European Airbus’ AIR.PA double-decker A380 passenger jet in production.

This week’s final 747 delivery leaves questions over the future of the mammoth but now under-used Everett widebody production plant outside Seattle, while Boeing is also struggling after the COVID pandemic and a 737 MAX safety crisis.

Chief Executive Dave Calhoun has said Boeing may not design a new airliner for at least a decade.

“It was one of the wonders of the modern industrial age,” said Aboulafia, “But this isn’t an age of wonders, it’s an age of economics.”
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Across the U.S., there’s a silent frustration brewing about an age-old practice that many say is getting out of hand: tipping.

Some fed-up consumers are posting rants on social media complaining about tip requests at drive-thrus, while others say they’re tired of being asked to leave a gratuity for a muffin or a simple cup of coffee at their neighborhood bakery. What’s next, they wonder — are we going to be tipping our doctors and dentists, too?

As more businesses adopt digital payment methods, customers are automatically being prompted to leave a gratuity — many times as high as 30% — at places they normally wouldn’t. And some say it has become more frustrating as the price of items has skyrocketed due to inflation, which eased to 6.5% in December but still remains painfully high.

“Suddenly, these screens are at every establishment we encounter. They’re popping up online as well for online orders. And I fear that there is no end,” said etiquette expert Thomas Farley, who considers the whole thing somewhat of “an invasion.”

Unlike tip jars that shoppers can easily ignore if they don’t have spare change, experts say the digital requests can produce social pressure and are more difficult to bypass. And your generosity, or lack thereof, can be laid bare for anyone close enough to glance at the screen — including the workers themselves.

Dylan Schenker is one of them. The 38-year-old earns about $400 a month in tips, which provides a helpful supplement to his $15 hourly wage as a barista at Philadelphia café located inside a restaurant. Most of those tips come from consumers who order coffee drinks or interact with the café for other things, such as carryout orders. The gratuity helps cover his monthly rent and eases some of his burdens while he attends graduate school and juggles his job.

Schenker says it’s hard to sympathize with consumers who are able to afford pricey coffee drinks but complain about tipping. And he often feels demoralized when people don’t leave behind anything extra — especially if they’re regulars.

“Tipping is about making sure the people who are performing that service for you are getting paid what they’re owed,” said Schenker, who’s been working in the service industry for roughly 18 years.

Traditionally, consumers have taken pride in being good tippers at places like restaurants, which typically pay their workers lower than the minimum wage in expectation they’ll make up the difference in tips. But academics who study the topic say many consumers are now feeling irritated by automatic tip requests at coffee shops and other counter service eateries where tipping has not typically been expected, workers make at least the minimum wage and service is usually limited.

“People do not like unsolicited advice,” said Ismail Karabas, a marketing professor at Murray State University who studies tipping. “They don’t like to be asked for things, especially at the wrong time.”

Some of the requests can also come from odd places. Clarissa Moore, a 35-year-old who works as a supervisor at a utility company in Pennsylvania, said even her mortgage company has been asking for tips lately. Typically, she’s happy to leave a gratuity at restaurants, and sometimes at coffee shops and other fast-food places when the service is good. But, Moore said she believes consumers shouldn’t be asked to tip nearly everywhere they go — and it shouldn’t be something that’s expected of them.

“It makes you feel bad. You feel like you have to do it because they’re asking you to do it,” she said. “But then you have to think about the position that puts people in. They’re paying for something that they really don’t want to pay for, or they’re tipping when they really don’t want to tip — or can’t afford to tip — because they don’t want to feel bad.”

In the book “Emily Post’s Etiquette,” authors Lizzie Post and Daniel Post Senning advise consumers to tip on ride-shares, like Uber and Lyft, as well as food and beverages, including alcohol. But they also write that it’s up to each person to choose how much to tip at a café or a take-out food service, and that consumers shouldn’t feel embarrassed about choosing the lowest suggested tip amount, and don’t have to explain themselves if they don’t tip.

Digital payment methods have been around for a number of years, though experts say the pandemic has accelerated the trend towards more tipping. Michael Lynn, a consumer behavior professor at Cornell University, said consumers were more generous with tips during the early days of the pandemic in an effort to show support for restaurants and other businesses that were hard hit by COVID-19. Many people genuinely wanted to help out and felt sympathetic to workers who held jobs that put them more at risk of catching the virus, Lynn said.

Tips at full-service restaurants grew by 25.3% in the third quarter of 2022, while gratuities at quick or counter service restaurants went up 16.7% compared to the same time in 2021, according to Square, one of the biggest companies operating digital payment methods. Data provided by the company shows continuous growth for the same period since 2019.

As tip requests have become more common, some businesses are advertising it in their job postings to lure in more workers even though the extra money isn’t always guaranteed.

In December, Starbucks rolled out a new tipping option on credit and debit card transactions at its stores, something a group organizing the company’s hourly workers had called for. Since then, a Starbucks spokesperson said nearly half of credit and debit card transactions have included a gratuity, which – along with tips received through cash and the Starbucks app – are distributed based on the number of hours a barista worked on the days the tips were received.

Karabas, the Murray State professor, says some customers, like those who’ve worked in the service industry in the past, want to tip workers at quick service businesses and wouldn’t be irritated by the automatic requests. But for others, research shows they might be less likely to come back to a particular business if they are feeling irritated by the requests, he said.

The final tab might also impact how customers react. Karabas said in the research he did with other academics, they manipulated the payment amounts and found that when the check was high, consumers no longer felt as irritated by the tip requests. That suggests the best time for a coffee shop to ask for that 20% tip, for example, might be on four or five orders of coffee, not a small cup that costs $4.

Some consumers might continue to shrug off the tip requests regardless of the amount.

“If you work for a company, it’s that company’s job to pay you for doing work for them,” said Mike Janavey, a footwear and clothing designer who lives in New York City. “They’re not supposed to be juicing consumers that are already spending money there to pay their employees.”

Schenker, the Philadelphia barista, agrees — to a certain extent.

“The onus should absolutely be on the owners, but that doesn’t change overnight,” he said. “And this is the best thing we have right now.”
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For New York teacher Michael Flanagan, the pandemic was a crash course in new technology — rushing out laptops to stay-at-home students and shifting hectic school life online.

Students are long back at school, but the technology has lived on, and with it has come a new generation of apps that monitor the pupils online, sometimes round the clock and even on down days shared with family and friends at home.

The programs scan students’ online activity, social media posts and more — aiming to keep them focused, detect mental health problems and flag up any potential for violence.

“You can’t unring the bell,” said Flanagan, who teaches social studies and economics. “Everybody has a device.”

The new trend for tracking, however, has raised fears that some of the apps may target minority pupils, while others have outed LGBT+ students without their consent, and many are used to instill discipline as much as deliver care.

So Flanagan has parted ways with many of his colleagues and won’t use such apps to monitor his students online.

He recalled seeing a demo of one such program, GoGuardian, in which a teacher showed — in real time — what one student was doing on his computer. The child was at home, on a day off.

Such scrutiny raised a big red flag for Flanagan.

“I have a school-issued device, and I know that there’s no expectation of privacy. But I’m a grown man — these kids don’t know that,” he said.

A New York City Department of Education spokesperson said that the use of GoGuardian Teacher “is only for teachers to see what’s on the student’s screen in the moment, provide refocusing prompts, and limit access to inappropriate content.”

Valued at more than $1 billion, GoGuardian — one of a handful of high-profile apps in the market — is now monitoring more than 22 million students, including in the New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles public systems.

Globally, the education technology sector is expected to grow by $133 billion from 2021 to 2026, market researcher Technavio said last year.

Parents expect schools to keep children safe in classrooms or on field trips, and schools also “have a responsibility to keep students safe in digital spaces and on school-issued devices,” GoGuardian said in a statement.

The company says it “provides educators with the ability to protect students from harmful or explicit content”.

Nowadays, online monitoring “is just part of the school environment,” said Jamie Gorosh, policy counsel with the Future of Privacy Forum, a watchdog group.

And even as schools move beyond the pandemic, “it doesn’t look like we’re going back,” she said.

Guns and depression

A key priority for monitoring is to keep students engaged in their academic work, but it also taps into fast-rising concerns over school violence and children’s mental health, which medical groups in 2021 termed a national emergency.

According to federal data released this month, 82% of schools now train staff on how to spot mental health problems, up from 60% in 2018; 65% have confidential threat-reporting systems, up 15% in the same period.

In a survey last year by the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), 89% of teachers reported their schools were monitoring student online activity.

Yet it is not clear that the software creates safer schools.

Gorosh cited May’s shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that left 21 dead in a school that had invested heavily in monitoring tech.

Some worry the tracking apps could actively cause harm.

The CDT report, for instance, found that while administrators overwhelmingly say the purpose of monitoring software is student safety, “it’s being used far more commonly for disciplinary purposes … and we’re seeing a discrepancy falling along racial lines,” said Elizabeth Laird, director of CDT’s Equity in Civic Technology program.

The programs’ use of artificial intelligence to scan for keywords has also outed LGBT+ students without their consent, she said, noting that 29% of students who identify as LGBT+ said they or someone they knew had experienced this.

And more than a third of teachers said their schools send alerts automatically to law enforcement outside school hours.

“The stated purpose is to keep students safe, and here we have set up a system that is routinizing law enforcement access to this information and finding reasons for them to go into students’ homes,” Laird said.

‘Preyed upon’

A report by federal lawmakers last year into four companies making student monitoring software found that none had made efforts to see if the programs disproportionately targeted marginalized students.

“Students should not be surveilled on the same platforms they use for their schooling,” Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts, one of the report’s co-authors, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a statement.

“As school districts work to incorporate technology in the classroom, we must ensure children and teenagers are not preyed upon by a web of targeted advertising or intrusive monitoring of any kind.”

The Department of Education has committed to releasing guidelines around the use of AI early this year.

A spokesperson said the agency was “committed to protecting the civil rights of all students.”

Aside from the ethical questions around spying on children, many parents are frustrated by the lack of transparency.

“We need more clarity on whether data is being collected, especially sensitive data. You should have at least notification, and probably consent,” said Cassie Creswell, head of Illinois Families for Public Schools, an advocacy group.

Creswell, who has a daughter in a Chicago public school, said several parents have been sent alerts about their children’s online searches, despite not having been asked or told about the monitoring in the first place.

Another child had faced repeated warnings not to play a particular game — even though the student was playing it at home on the family computer, she said.

Creswell and others acknowledge that the issues monitoring aims to address — bullying, depression, violence — are real and need tackling, but question whether technology is the answer.

“If we’re talking about self-harm monitoring, is this the best way to approach the issue?” said Gorosh.

Pointing to evidence suggesting AI is imperfect in capturing the warning signs, she said increased funding for school counselors could be more narrowly tailored to the problem.

“There are huge concerns,” she said. “But maybe technology isn’t the first step to answer some of those issues.”
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In the months he was held in detention in Texas during his legal fight to remain in the United States, Afghan soldier Abdul Wasi Safi thought he would eventually be returned to his home country and likely meet death at the hands of the Taliban because of his work with the U.S. military.

But Friday, he stood a free man, filled with hope that the help he provided the U.S. military will ultimately help him secure asylum in the U.S.

Amid hugs from his brother and lawyers, Wasi Safi proudly smiled as he received an award from one of his supporters — Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democrat from Houston, Texas — that honored his military service to the U.S. He said he hoped that would be a harbinger of things to come for him in his new life in the U.S.

“I am hopeful about the next step in this process and one day being able to live the American dream,” Wasi Safi said at a news conference in Houston.

A long trek

For the past few months, Wasi Safi, 27, had been jailed by federal authorities after being arrested while crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in September near Eagle Pass, Texas.

An intelligence officer for the Afghan National Security Forces, he had fled Afghanistan following the withdrawal of U.S. forces in August 2021, fearing reprisals from the Taliban. After making his way last year to Brazil, he started a monthslong journey to the U.S. in summer 2022, crossing 10 countries on his treacherous trek.

Wasi Safi had been facing a federal immigrant charge. But a judge on Monday dropped the count at the request of prosecutors. He was freed from a detention center in Eden, Texas, Wednesday and reunited with his brother, Sami-ullah Safi, 29, who goes by Sami and lives in Houston.

“Today a wrong has been made right, and I would like to thank those who have worked tirelessly to secure justice for my brother,” said Sami Safi, who had been employed in Afghanistan by the U.S. military as a translator before he moved to the U.S.

A promise kept

The lawyers, bipartisan lawmakers and military organizations that have been working to free Wasi Safi say his case highlights how America’s chaotic military withdrawal from Afghanistan continues to harm Afghan citizens who helped the U.S. but were left behind.

Jackson Lee said being able to free Wasi Safi from detention and provide him help and resources as he applies for asylum is part of the promise the U.S. has long made to those such as Afghan soldiers who have helped the country’s military in its efforts to preserve democracy.

“America made a promise. Today we emphasize America kept her promise,” Jackson Lee said.

Wasi Safi, whose case was first reported by The Texas Tribune, had suffered serious injuries from beatings during his journey to the U.S., including damaged front teeth and hearing loss in his right ear. Sami Safi said as his brother’s asylum claim is reviewed, he will help him heal and get acclimated to living in the U.S.

Wasi Safi said part of what he hopes his American dream includes is being able to work and support those members of his family who remain in Afghanistan, including his parents, six sisters and two other brothers. He hopes that one day, they can all be reunited.

‘This is not the last person’

Nearly 76,000 Afghans who worked with American soldiers since 2001 as translators, interpreters and partners arrived in the U.S. on military planes after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. But their immigration status remains unclear after Congress failed to pass a proposed law, the Afghan Adjustment Act, that would have solidified their legal residency status.

“Please do not forget that there are people who are still left behind. This is not the last person,” said Nisar Momand, a former interpreter for the U.S. government who left Afghanistan and now lives in Houston. “This is the first page of the book. Please raise your voice. There are hundreds of people. There are thousands of people that are every day being targeted.”
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A farmworker charged with killing seven people at two Half Moon Bay mushroom farms reportedly told investigators he was spurred to carry out the shootings after his supervisor demanded he pay $100 to repair a forklift damaged at work.

San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe confirmed to the Bay Area News Group on Friday that Chunli Zhao was enraged by the equipment bill, saying that a coworker was to blame for the collision between his forklift and the coworker’s bulldozer.

KNTV-TV, the NBC affiliate in the San Francisco Bay Area, was first to report the development.

Authorities say Zhao, 66, shot and killed four workers and wounded a fifth employee Monday at California Terra Garden. He then went to nearby Concord Farms, where he had worked previously, and fatally shot three former coworkers.

Zhao told KNTV-TV in a courthouse interview Thursday that he was bullied and worked long hours on the farms and his complaints were ignored, the station reported.

On Monday, Zhao vented to his supervisor about the bill, but the supervisor insisted he needed to pay. Zhao then allegedly shot the supervisor and the coworker, the news outlets reported.

Speaking in Mandarin, Zhao told the television station from a county jail in Redwood City that he has been in the U.S. for 11 years and has a green card. He said he has a 40-year-old daughter in China and lived with his wife in Half Moon Bay.
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The Memphis police chief on Saturday disbanded the unit whose officers are charged with beating to death Tyre Nichols as the nation and the city struggled to come to grips with video showing police pummeling the Black motorist.

Police Director Cerelyn “CJ” Davis said she listened to Nichols’ relatives, community leaders and uninvolved officers in making the decision.

“It is in the best interest of all to permanently deactivate the Scorpion unit,” she said in a statement. She said the officers currently assigned to the unit “agree unreservedly” with the step.

The footage released Friday left many unanswered questions about the traffic stop involving the Black motorist and about other law enforcement officers who stood by as he lay motionless on the pavement.

The five disgraced former Memphis Police Department officers, who are also Black, were been fired and charged with murder and other crimes in Nichols’ death three days after the arrest.

The recording shows police savagely beating Nichols, a 29-year-old FedEx worker, for three minutes while screaming profanities at him in an assault that the Nichols family legal team has likened to the infamous 1991 police beating of Los Angeles motorist Rodney King. Nichols calls out for his mother before his limp body is propped against a squad car and the officers exchange fist-bumps.

The five officers — Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Desmond Mills Jr., Emmitt Martin III and Justin Smith — face up to 60 years in prison if convicted of second-degree murder.

Davis has said other officers are under investigation, and Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner said two deputies have been relieved of duty without pay while their conduct is investigated.

Rodney Wells, Nichols’ stepfather, said the family would “continue to seek justice” and noted that several other officers failed to render aid, making them “just as culpable as the officers who threw the blows.”

A Memphis police spokesperson declined to comment on the role played by other officers who showed up at the scene.

Cities nationwide had braced for demonstrations, but the protests were scattered and nonviolent. Several dozen demonstrators in Memphis blocked the Interstate 55 bridge that carries traffic over the Mississippi River toward Arkansas. Protesters also blocked traffic in New York City, Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon.

The Scorpion unit had three teams of about 30 street officers who target violent offenders in areas beset by high crime, Davis said.

Davis acknowledged that the police department has a supervisor shortage and said the lack of a supervisor in the arrest was a “major problem.” City officials have pledged to provide more of them.
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