Category: Aktualności

One of the U.S. military’s largest exercises in Africa has been significantly scaled down due to the threat of the coronavirus. 
  
The massive, U.S.-led African Lion exercises in Morocco, Tunisia and Senegal were supposed to involve 9,300 troops from eight nations. The troops would use the exercises to improve military readiness and integration, while preparing to combat transregional threats. But there was one threat African Lion organizers weren’t prepared for: the coronavirus.
  
Gen. Stephen Townsend, commander of U.S. Africa Command, first told VOA and The Wall Street Journal about the change after testifying Tuesday on Capitol Hill.
  
“African Lion has been significantly reduced in scale and scope based on concerns that we all have about the safety of our troops and those of our partners,” he said.
  
Exercises with troops being housed in close quarters have been cut. Townsend says the change mostly effects the Army component of the exercises, because the soldiers’ drills involve close contact.
 
“We’re going to continue on with some training events that require less interaction between large troop formations like air activity, naval activity, and maybe some special operations activity,” he said.
  
Some of the U.S. troops who had deployed ahead of the official March 23 start date will be able to finish their tasks, including the academic portion of the drills which had already started. But many African Lion organizers are shifting their focus to the next set of drills in 2021.
 
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The 2020 census is off and running for much of America now.The U.S. Census Bureau made a soft launch of the 2020 census website on Monday, making its form available online. On Thursday, the Census Bureau will begin mailing out notices far and wide.For the bureau, the once-a-decade head count is akin to running a sprint and marathon at the same time. It takes awhile, but there’s plenty of action throughout.“It is that intense …. counting up to 330 million people in a very diverse, very mobile population, and over 140 million housing units,” Stephen Buckner, a senior Census Bureau executive, said during a recent visit to Miami.The bureau had an official in-person launch in January in Toksook Bay, Alaska. Mail service is spotty and internet connectivity is unreliable in remote Alaska, making door-to-door canvassing the best way to gather responses. The Alaska villages get a head start over the rest of the nation because many residents scatter each spring to subsistence hunting and fishing grounds.There has been a U.S. census every decade since 1790. The results determine how many congressional seats each state gets and how $1.5 trillion in federal spending is distributed.The 2020 census is the first in which most people are being encouraged to answer the questions online, though people can still answer the questionnaire by telephone or by mailing back a paper form if they prefer.The notices mailed out starting this week will include a census ID that matches addresses. People filling out the form via the internet are encouraged to use the ID, but those who answer the questions online before getting their IDs still will be counted.“The best user experience is provided with a Census ID,” the bureau said in a statement Monday evening.About 80% of households receiving mailings will get notices about how to answer the questions online, and about 20% of households automatically will receive a paper ballot if there are large numbers of seniors in their neighborhood or levels of internet connectivity are low.Census workers won’t begin going door-to-door in earnest until May, when they’ll approach homes that haven’t responded and ask the questions in person. Bureau officials are monitoring the spread of the novel coronavirus, which could disrupt the door-to-door phase. If there is a major disaster, such as an epidemic, census workers instead can drop off the questionnaires at homes, with the hope that people will respond on their own, according to the bureau’s operational plan.This week also poses the first true test of the Census Bureau’s new IT systems for capturing online responses. For the past three years, the Government Accountability Office has placed the census on its list of high-risk programs, mainly because it is relying on technology that has not been used before. Last month, the bureau decided to use a backup data-collection system for handling the online responses after officials grew concerned that the primary system would not be able to handle excessive traffic.The online approach to answering the 2020 census questions causes Democratic U.S. Rep. Karen Bass of California, to worry it will lead to an undercount of blacks and other minorities in hard-to-count communities.“Having the census online can be a way of continuously undercounting the black population,” Bass said last week.Perhaps the most attention given the 2020 census over the past several years has been to the failed effort by the Trump administration to put a citizenship question on the form. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected those efforts, but some worry that lingering unease may scare off some Hispanics and immigrants from participating.“It’s a challenge every 10 years to get any American to fill out the census. Some people feel you’re invading their privacy, as though it’s intrusive. Some people are fearful of giving the government more information,” said U.S. Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas. “But every 10 years, that challenge has been especially tough in minority communities, who sometimes are more disconnected from government than other communities.”
 
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The Justice Department must give Congress secret grand jury testimony from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday, giving the House a significant win in a separation-of-powers clash with the Trump administration.The three-judge panel said in a 2-1 opinion that the House Judiciary Committee’s need for the material in its investigations of President Donald Trump outweighed the Justice Department’s interests in keeping the testimony secret. The opinion authorizes access to information that Democrats have sought since the conclusion of Mueller’s investigation, giving lawmakers previously-undisclosed details from the two-year Russia probe.Writing for the majority, Judge Judith Rogers said that because Mueller himself “stopped short” of reaching conclusions about Trump’s conduct to avoid stepping on the House’s impeachment power, the committee had established that it could not make a final determination about Trump’s conduct without access to the underlying grand jury material.“The Committee’s request for the grand jury materials in the Mueller Report is directly linked to its need to evaluate the conclusions reached and not reached by the Special Counsel,” wrote Rogers, a Clinton appointee.Judge Thomas Griffith issued a separate concurring opinion. Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee, dissented, suggesting that the need for the testimony could have waned after Trump’s acquittal at a Senate impeachment trial last month.“After all, the Committee sought these materials preliminary to an impeachment proceeding and the Senate impeachment trial has concluded. Why is this controversy not moot?” Rao wrote.It is unclear when the materials might actually be turned over. The Trump administration can ask the full appeals court to rehear the case, and can appeal to the Supreme Court.The ruling softens the blow of a loss the House endured two weeks ago when judges on the same court said they would not force former White House counsel Don McGahn to testify before Congress. The split decisions leave neither the administration nor Congress with a clear upper hand in an ongoing inter-branch dispute.The ruling is a major win for Democrats who have fought the Justice Department for nearly a year, but it’s unclear what the House will actually do with the material. Lawyers for the Democrats have said the grand jury material could potentially be used for additional articles of impeachment, though the Senate impeachment trial over the president’s interactions with Ukraine ended weeks ago in an acquittal.The case is one of several disputes between the Trump administration and Congress that courts have grappled with in recent months.The two sides had been similarly at odds on the question of whether McGahn could be forced to testify about Trump’s behavior during the Russia investigation. The appeals court ruled in a recent 2-1 decision that judges had no role to play in that dispute and dismissed the case.Mueller issued a 448-page report last April that detailed multiple interactions between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia and that examined several episodes involving the president for potential obstruction of justice. Mueller said his team did not find sufficient evidence to establish a criminal conspiracy between the campaign and the Kremlin to tip the election, though pointedly noted that he could exonerate the president for obstruction.Portions of the report were blacked out, including grand jury testimony and material that Mueller said could harm ongoing investigations or infringe on the privacy of third parties.Grand jury testimony is typically treated as secret, in part to protect the privacy of people who are not charged or are considered peripheral to a criminal investigation. But several exceptions allow for the material to be turned over, including if it is in connection with a judicial proceeding.The House argued that the impeachment inquiry met that definition, and it sought copies of testimony referenced in Mueller’s report. Chief U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell sided with the House last October in ordering that the material be turned over.The Justice Department appealed that decision, with lawyers arguing that the material sought by the House had no relevance to the impeachment inquiry and that the House already had ample information about the investigation.Several dozen witnesses appeared before Mueller’s grand jury, including former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.   
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Coronavirus is most dangerous to the elderly and those with weakened immune systems. Since the first fatalities in the US originated from a nursing facility in the state of Washington, there is deep concern among health experts, patients and their families that eldercare facilities are especially vulnerable.  VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
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Airlines are slashing flights and freezing hiring as they experience a sharp drop in bookings and a rise in cancellations in the face of the spreading coronavirus.Delta Air Lines said Tuesday that travel demand has fallen so badly in the past week that it expects one-third of seats to be empty this month on flights within the United States — previously the market most immune to virus fallout.Business travelers are grounded as meetings and conferences are being canceled. Leisure travelers are scared.Normally airlines try to lure reluctant customers by discounting fares, but that won’t work in the face of the COVID-19 outbreak.“If you are scared of flying, you are probably scared at any price,” said Delta President Glen Hauenstein.Delta, the world’s biggest airline by revenue, said it will cut international flights by 20% to 25% and reduce U.S. flying by 10% to 15%, roughly matching cuts previously announced by United Airlines. CEO Ed Bastian said the airline is “prepared to do more” if the outbreak grows.A Delta Air Lines plane is taking off at Reagan Washington National Airport outside Washington, D.C. (Photo by Diaa Bekheet)The airline is cutting spending, including putting a freeze on hiring, delaying voluntary pension contributions and suspending share buybacks.American Airlines announced it will cut international flying by 10% this summer and reduce U.S. flying by 7.5% in April. It has delayed training of new pilots and flight attendants.United said it has arranged $2 billion in additional bank borrowing to preserve financial flexibility — raising liquidity from $6 billion to $8 billion.The airlines are also evaluating their assets — planes, engines, spare parts and other items — to determine what could be used as collateral for more borrowing, if that is needed.The demand drop-off that began in Asia picked up steam in the U.S. about two weeks ago, when the virus spread outside Asia, notably to Italy. It has been felt equally among business and leisure travelers.Hauenstein said demand has fallen more sharply on the West Coast — Washington state and California have suffered larger outbreaks — than on the East Coast. He said younger people have been more willing to keep flying; people over 55 less willing.The virus appears to be most dangerous among older people. The Associated Press reported this week that the White House overruled a plan by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to recommend that older and physically weak Americans be advised not to fly on commercial airlines because of the new virus, according to a federal official.American’s CEO, Doug Parker, said the largest decline has been in tickets within seven days of departure, which are often bought by business travelers.“That is absolutely driven by U.S. corporations putting in place travel advisories and travel restrictions and canceling travel,” he said. “Once we get to the point where corporate America is ready to travel again, that will come back.”Airlines have been waiving change fees and touting stepped-up cleaning of airplane cabins to make passengers feel more comfortable about flying.Delta, United, American and most international carriers have suspended flights to China, where the outbreak began and has infected the most people.U.S. airline officials have expressed steadfast confidence that they can manage their way through the outbreak.Airline stocks have been among the hardest hit during the market sell-off of the last few weeks.Since mid-February, shares of American have lost more than half their value, United’s stock has fallen more than 40% and Delta and Southwest Airlines more than 25%. They rallied slightly in trading Tuesday morning.
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President Donald Trump is meeting with congressional leaders on Tuesday to discuss a payroll tax cut as part of efforts to provide “substantial relief” to  businesses and individuals who suffer financially as a result of the coronavirus outbreak.”We’re also going to be talking about hourly wage earners getting help so that they can be in a position where they’re not could ever miss a paycheck to be working with companies and small companies, large companies, a lot of companies so that they don’t get penalized for something that’s not their fault,” Trump told reporters on Monday evening in the White House briefing room.With stock prices plunging Monday amid an oil price war and the coronavirus crisis, Trump met with his economic advisers, including Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who presented him with policy options to counter the quickly emerging threats to the economy.   “The economy will be in very good shape a year from now,” predicted Mnuchin, who took questions from reporters, alongside Vice President Mike Pence, after a brief appearance by Trump in the press briefing room.Trump announced a news conference would be held at the White House on Tuesday that will focus on economic measures.The U.S. travel industry, which annually generates more than $1.6 trillion in economic output and is expected to suffer substantially because of the coronavirus outbreak, is one key area of the administration’s relief efforts.”We’re also working with the industries including the airline industry, the cruise ship industry, which obviously will be hit,” said Trump.   The United States “will use all our tools” to fight the effects of the coronavirus, said Mnuchin, who announced that the White House will hold a meeting later in the week with bank officials.As the Dow Jones Industrial Average dived more than 2,000 points during Monday morning trading, Trump, via Twitter, blamed the market drop on Saudi Arabia and Russia arguing over the price and flow of oil.”That, and the Fake News, is the reason for the market drop,” he wrote.  Saudi Arabia and Russia are arguing over the price and flow of oil. That, and the Fake News, is the reason for the market drop!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 9, 2020But, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the president’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. is causing the uncertainty in the markets.”I think that what is happening there is a reflection of lack of confidence, and so we would hope that what is coming out of the White House will be more consistent with what the health advisers are putting forth,” Pelosi said.  “We would hope that rather than name-calling, (Trump) would be again joining with his health care professionals who are advising him and the rest of us in a well-coordinated government agenda.”Pence, at the briefing, did not directly answer a reporter’s question as to whether the fall in stock prices in any way resulted from a perception that the White House’s response to the coronavirus crisis lacked leadership and foresight. “I really do believe that the American people can see that this president is putting the health of the American people first,” said the vice president.  The Dow closed off nearly 7.8%, recording its largest-ever single-day point drop of 2,013.76.The number of confirmed U.S. cases of coronavirus, which originated in China, is more than 650, including at least 26 deaths.      
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U.S. President Donald Trump will not be coming to Moscow for Victory Day celebrations on May 9, the Kremlin said Tuesday.
Russia has repeatedly invited Trump to visit Moscow on the 75th anniversary of victory in World War II — the nation’s most important holiday. Trump said last year he appreciated the invitation, but wasn’t sure if he could go as the celebration falls “right in the middle of political season.”
 “Via diplomatic channels, we have received information that the [U.S.] president will not be coming,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Tuesday, adding that it remains unclear who will represent the U.S. on the Victory Day in Moscow.
Peskov didn’t give a reason for Trump’s refusal to come.
In an interview with the state-run Tass news agency, a part of which was released Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said it would be “a mistake” for world leaders not to attend the Victory Day celebrations this year.
“I think that, concerning former members of the anti-Hitler alliance, the right thing to do would be to attend [our event], from both a domestic political stance and a moral one,” Putin said. “We look forward to seeing them and we will be glad if they come. If not, well, that’s their choice. But I think that would be a mistake for them.”  
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The U.S. Secret Service is warning Americans to be on the lookout for coronavirus-linked scams saying that “any major news event can become an opportunity for groups or individuals with malicious intentions.”In a statement Monday, the Secret Service said criminals have already begun to use the fears surrounding the coronavirus outbreak to play on people’s emotions.The agency said in one instance that victims received an e-mail purporting to be from a health organization containing supposedly important information about the virus. An attachment, when opened, prompted victims to enter e-mail login credentials that were then stolen or unleashed malware on the computer.It said other schemes used social media sites to get people to donate to phony charitable causes related to the outbreak, while others used advertisements for in-demand medical supplies to get people to pay for items that were never sent.”Fear can cause normally scrupulous individuals to let their guard down and fall victim to social engineering scams, phishing scams, non-delivery scams, and auction fraud scams,” the Secret Service said.The agency urged people to be on heightened alert and said more of these incidents are expected.Last week, police in Britain said victims in that country had lost more than $1 million to coronavirus-linked scams. It said many of those involved scams over face masks, with one victim paying nearly $20,000 for masks that were never delivered.
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U.S. President Donald Trump sought to play down the plunging price of oil and the global spread of the new coronavirus as markets plunged on Monday. Meanwhile his advisers presented him with a list of policy recommendations they hope will mitigate the economic fallout of the outbreak. White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has the story.
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The pace of U.S. military strikes against al-Qaida affiliate al-Shabab in Somalia this year is nearly on par with the number of strikes against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.The U.S. has carried out 25 strikes against al-Shabab to date in 2020, including one Monday in the vicinity of Janaale, Somalia, that U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) said killed four terrorists.Data released to VOA by a U.S. defense official show the U.S. carried out 29 airstrikes against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria from January 1 to March 1, the latest date in which strike data was available. A full strike report from Operation Inherent Resolve is expected later this week.Strikes in Iraq and Syria have significantly tapered off since the territorial defeat of the so-called Islamic State caliphate last March.In 2019, there were more than 2,000 airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, with at least 1,600 of those carried out in the first couple of months. U.S. Central Command has decreased troop numbers in Syria, where thousands of IS fighters are estimated to remain, but increased troop numbers elsewhere in the Middle East in an effort to counter the threat of Iran.FILE – Al-Shabab fighters march during military exercises in the Lafofe area, some 18 kilometers (11 miles) south of Mogadishu, Somalia, Feb. 17, 2011.Meanwhile, AFRICOM conducted a record 63 strikes in Somalia last year. Most were against al-Qaida affiliate al-Shabab, which has an estimated 6,000 militants in Somalia, with a handful of strikes against Islamic State. There were 47 U.S. military strikes in Somalia in 2018.”Airstrikes are preventative measures to ensure al-Shabab does not increase in size and strength,” AFRICOM spokesman Maj. Karl Weiss told VOA on Monday. “That said, airstrikes and kinetic operations are not the command’s primary effort in Somalia; our core activity is the training of Somali security forces.”Despite the ramped up strike numbers in Somalia, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper has appeared averse to adding more U.S. troops to Africa, where Islamic extremists have plagued the continent from Somalia to the Sahel.FILE – Defense Secretary Mark Esper speaks during a briefing at the Pentagon in Washington, March 2, 2020.The Pentagon is in the middle of a review of AFRICOM that could reduce the number of U.S. troops on the continent. The first troop change in Africa under Esper’s leadership withdrew conventional troops and replaced them with specialized military trainers.Esper has said the move would leave “roughly the same number of troops on the continent,” while giving U.S. commanders the capability to bolster partner forces.Members of Congress have pushed back against any potential troop cuts, saying a decrease could provide an opening for strategic competitors Russia and China. Republican Senators Lindsey Graham and Jim Inhofe, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, have even called for an increase in the number of U.S. troops deployed to Africa.Esper is trying to follow a shift started by his predecessor, Jim Mattis, away from counterterrorism toward strategic competition with China and Russia. During Mattis’ time as defense secretary, the U.S. pulled 100 to 200 troops from West Africa and was preparing for further cuts.Defense officials said extremist groups in West Africa did not appear to pose a threat to the U.S. homeland, but they have since continued to pummel U.S. allies, especially in countries like Burkina Faso. A top general in U.S. Africa Command admitted to VOA at the time of the troop pullout that the U.S. and its allies were “not winning” the counterterror war for the Sahel.AFRICOM Commander Gen. Stephen Townsend has said al-Shabab is the “largest and most violent” of al-Qaida’s branches worldwide. Defense officials have stressed that while al-Shabab does not possess the capability to strike the U.S. homeland, the group has the intent to do so.”It is important to impact their ability to threaten peace and security in East Africa and prevent their threats against the U.S. from being a reality,” Townsend said in a press release last month.Townsend and CENTCOM Commander Gen. Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie testify together in front of the House Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.
 
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In 2016, Michigan gave Sen. Bernie Sanders one of the most surprising primary wins in U.S. political history.In 2020, the self-described democratic socialist will need another boost from Michigan to revive his campaign to secure the Democratic presidential nomination over his lone remaining major rival, former Vice President Joe Biden.  With 125 delegates, Michigan is the biggest prize up for grabs among the six states holding primaries Tuesday. Sanders signaled the importance of Michigan to his campaign, abandoning a planned rally in Mississippi to hold five campaign events in the state over the weekend, including one in Dearborn, where the nation’s largest Muslim community strongly supports him.Dearborn was one of the areas that helped Sanders secure his 2016 victory in the Michigan primary over eventual Democratic party nominee Hillary Clinton by a narrow margin of 49.8% to 48.3%. After trailing Clinton significantly in the polls, Sanders won by just 17,000 votes.   Sanders aims to improve on that narrow margin of victory in 2020, even though in some states to date, he has struggled to turn out voters in the same numbers he did in 2016. A Detroit Free Press poll released Monday does not look promising for him. The survey of 400 Michigan voters shows Biden outpacing Sanders by a significant margin — 51% to 27%.”If Bernie doesn’t score a big victory in Michigan, you’re really starting to see the end of the possibility of his candidacy,” said Jim Kessler, a senior vice president at public policy think tank Third Way, and former legislative director for then-Congressman Charles Schumer.Watch: Michigan Primary Looms as Showdown for Biden and Sanders  Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders greets supporters after speaking during a rally in St Louis, Missouri, March 9, 2020.African American voteSanders’ weakness with African American voters could be the blow that kills his chances in Michigan.  Democratic delegate math in Michigan is anything but straightforward. Democrats allocate their delegates according to the statewide vote and the vote by congressional districts. Because of this weighting system, winning boils down to securing large population areas such as the predominantly African American city of Detroit. Sanders failed to win the city in 2016, and his poor 2020 performances in southern states with African American electorates does not bode well for his chances in the Motor City.  Hutchings said African Americans make up about 15% of the Michigan electorate overall, and an even larger share of the Democratic voters controlling the results Tuesday. “I would be very surprised, extremely surprised, if Sanders were to win the black vote in the state. And because that vote typically votes in the bloc fashion, that means that it’s going to be difficult, not impossible, but difficult. If that remains the case, it’s going to be difficult for Sanders to win,” said Hutchings.Meanwhile, Biden heads into the primary with major endorsements from two former African American presidential candidates, senators Cory Booker and Kamala Harris, who were campaigning with him Monday in Detroit.The impact of endorsements  In addition to the Harris and Booker endorsements, Biden also gained the support of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Sanders endorsed Whitmer’s progressive Democratic challenger, Abdul El-Sayed, in 2018, but campaigned for her in the general election.  Analysts differ on the impact of endorsements. Conventional political wisdom holds that endorsements usually do not dramatically alter political races. That appears to have been upended this election cycle with the boost Biden received from Congressman James Clyburn, a Democrat from South Carolina who gave the former vice president his stamp of approval just days before the do-or-die primary in his home state, which Biden won handily.Biden had pinned his hopes on his ability to mobilize the African American vote in South Carolina after severely disappointing showings in Iowa and New Hampshire, two smaller states that do not reflect the demographic diversity of the United States.  Both Dulio and Hutchings said Whitmer’s endorsement of Biden in Michigan was significant.“It certainly is a highly visible endorsement for the Biden campaign, and it can’t hurt him,” Hutchings said. “It probably helped him increase the (vote) margins.”  Trade warsSanders’ campaign does have a strength that is uniquely suited to Michigan: outreach to blue-collar factory workers, which has been a central point of his presidential campaigns in 2016 and 2020. Nowhere is that more important than in Michigan, the center of the auto industry.  Sanders has been savaging Biden’s record on trade, citing his support for NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) on the campaign trail and in numerous advertisements airing locally, according to Dulio.  He said that argument could resonate with the all-important suburban women demographic, swinging some of their votes to Sanders. “Michigan is a unique place, because so many people are tied to the auto industry. Whether it’s in a place like Macomb County, where you’re talking about folks who work in manufacturing and do the manufacturing at Ford, GM and Chrysler plants, or part of the auto manufacturers supply chain, or if you’re talking about folks in, say, Oakland County right next door, who are part of the white-collar contingent of auto company employees,” said Dulio.If Sanders can convince those key voters their livelihoods are at stake in this election, his campaign may be able to survive past Michigan. 
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With stock prices plunging amid an oil price war and the coronavirus crisis, U.S. President Donald Trump met Monday afternoon with his economic advisers, including Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who presented him with policy options to counter the quickly emerging threats to the economy.     White House sources say the options included paid sick leave and emergency help for small businesses.  The meeting was convened after Trump returned to the White House from Florida, where he attended a fundraising luncheon at the home of a wealthy donor.  The president did not speak to reporters after he strode from the Marine One helicopter to the South Portico.As the Dow Jones Industrial Average dived more than 2,000 points during Monday morning trading, Trump, via Twitter, blamed the market drop on Saudi Arabia and Russia arguing over the price and flow of oil.”That, and the Fake News, is the reason for the market drop,” he wrote.  Saudi Arabia and Russia are arguing over the price and flow of oil. That, and the Fake News, is the reason for the market drop!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 9, 2020Trump said the big decline for oil prices will be good for the consumer, as gasoline will cost less.  The Dow closed off nearly 7.8%, recording its largest-ever single-day point drop of 2,013.76.Trump also downplayed Americans’ fears about the novel coronavirus.  The president said the number of deaths in the United States from the new disease is a tiny fraction compared to the tens of thousands who succumb annually to seasonal influenza.”Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on,” tweeted Trump.  So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 9, 2020The number of confirmed U.S. cases of coronavirus, which originated in China, is 566, including 22 deaths, according to state public health authorities and Johns Hopkins University.Left unsaid in Trump’s messaging was that people can be immunized against the flu strains, while there is no vaccine yet to protect against COVID-19, which health experts predict will have a higher mortality rate than influenza.”The markets have obviously been very active today,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar of the historic sell-off on Wall Street.”President Trump has delivered a historically strong economy,” and the economic fundamentals remain strong, stated Azar, a member of the White House’s coronavirus task force. “The public health and protecting the American people is the No. 1 priority for all of us.”Briefly speaking on the White House North Lawn driveway, the Cabinet official declined to answer any questions from a group of reporters who had been waiting while he conducted interviews on Fox News and Fox Business channels, friendly media outlets for the Trump administration.  Vice President Mike Pence and others on the task force are scheduled to speak to reporters at a briefing later in the day.  The White House is denying reports that it has issued formal guidelines to staff instructing them to limit in-person interactions and meetings.”While we have asked all Americans to exercise common-sense hygiene measures, we are conducting business as usual. I want to remind the media once again to be responsible with all reporting,” White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a statement.
 
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Relatives of victims in last year’s Ethiopian Airlines crash have arrived in Addis Ababa to commemorate the anniversary of the tragedy and to get answers.  An airline industry final report on what caused the Boeing 737 MAX to crash is expected this week. Families of the 157 victims on board Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 are holding memorials in Addis Ababa Monday before traveling Tuesday to the crash site, about 45 kilometers outside the capital, for a private ceremony.  A monument for the victims of the Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET302 Boeing 737 Max plane crash is seen during a memorial ceremony at the French Embassy in Addis Ababa, March 9, 2020.At a small gathering at the French Embassy Monday, relatives of the 10 French citizens killed in the March 10 crash commemorated their lost loved ones.   There were no survivors when the nearly new Boeing 737 MAX crashed, just minutes after takeoff.   Virginie Fricaudet is president of the victim’s association ET302 Solidarity Justice.  She lost her 38-year-old brother Xavier, a teacher at the French School in Nairobi.
“I would say that we have created a community between all families — the French families on one side and the other global families on the other side.  It’s a big and huge moment of being all together because we are linked by the same tragedy and destiny.  It’s a moment that we should live like a big family,” she said.Surviving relatives have asked for Boeing not to be involved in the anniversary memorials and have filed lawsuits against the company to seek compensation.Their visit to Ethiopia comes as air safety investigators are expected to release an interim report on the roles played by Boeing, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and Ethiopian Airlines.  The report found that pilots on the 737 MAX were not provided with adequate training by the aircraft’s manufacturer. It also determined that Boeing’s MCAS, or Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, which aggressively pushed down the nose of the plane, was “vulnerable to undesired activation.”A woman draws a cross with oil on the forehead of another woman during a memorial ceremony at the crash site of the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 airplane accident in Tulu Fara, Ethiopia, on March 8, 2020.Relatives and friends of victims are still waiting for answers and remain critical of how the aftermath of the crash was handled.  Yeshiwas Zeggeye was president of Arline Pilot’s Association of Ethiopia at the time of the crash.“What’s quite interesting up to this point is that the company did not have a consultation with pilots and cabin crews at all after the crash.  That is not something that I would have expected.  I would expect the company would engage more with its pilots, especially those who flew on the Boeing 737 MAX at the time,” he said.Zeggeye also criticized Ethiopian Airlines for not acting after the Lion Air crash in Indonesia, also a 737 MAX, that took place months earlier.   Relatives of the Ethiopian Airlines crash victims agree the 737 Max should have been grounded soon after the Lion Air crash.  FILE – A United Airlines Boeing 737 Max airplane takes off in the rain at Renton Municipal Airport in Renton, Wash., Dec. 11, 2019,Aviation engineer and vice president of ET302 Solidarity Justice Matthieu Willm says Boeing needs to explain why the 737 MAX aircraft were allowed to continue flying.A U.S. congressional report last week into the crash accused Boeing of concealing crucial information from the FAA, making faulty assumptions about critical technologies, and production pressures that jeopardized aviation safety.
Boeing did not immediately reply to a request for comment.But in public statements, the company has said it will review the report, continue to cooperate with investigators, and that its thoughts and prayers are with the relatives who lost loved ones.Boeing last year set aside $100 million to assist the families of victims and communities impacted by the crashes, which killed 346 people in total.The funds are not part of any compensation the aircraft maker might have to pay to those who are suing the company for damages.Boeing has said it is strengthening safety measures and estimates it will be able to re-certify the Boeing 737 MAX aircraft for use around the middle of this year. 
    
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Two American soldiers were killed by “enemy forces” in Iraq Monday, a statement by the military said.The service members were killed “while advising and accompanying Iraqi Security Forces during a mission to eliminate an ISIS terrorist stronghold in a mountainous area of north central Iraq,” said a statement by Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF- OIR) —  the headquarters responsible for overseeing U.S. and coalition efforts against Islamic State.The military has not yet released the names of the victims pending notification of next of kin.The United States maintains more than 5,000 troops in Iraq to train and support Iraqi forces in the fight against Islamic State. 
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Western High School opened in Baltimore, Maryland on November 1, 1844 – four years before the first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls in New York. It is the oldest all-girls school in the country and is very proud of its traditions. Karina Bafradzhian visited the unique school and talked to students and teachers.
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Some of Virginia’s scores of Confederate monuments could soon be removed under legislation state lawmakers approved Sunday.The Democratic-led House and Senate passed measures that would undo an existing state law that protects the monuments and instead lets local governments decide their fate. The bill’s passage marks the latest turn in Virginia’s long-running debate over how its history should be told in public spaces.The legislation now heads to Gov. Ralph Northam, who has said he supports giving localities — several of which have already declared their intent to remove statues — control over the issue.After white supremacists descended on Charlottesville in 2017, in part to protest the city’s attempt to move a statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee, many places across the country quickly started taking Confederate monuments down. But Virginia localities that wanted to remove monuments were hamstrung by the existing law.In the two legislative sessions that followed the rally, Republican lawmakers defeated bills like the one that passed Sunday. But Democrats recently took full control of the statehouse for the first time in a generation.One of the bill’s sponsors, Del. Delores McQuinn of Richmond, said she feels great about letting local leaders decide what’s right for their community. But she said she thought many places would opt to keep the monuments.“I think more of them are going to be interested in contextualizing, you know, making sure that there is a sense of truth told and shared with the public,” she said.As for Charlottesville, city spokesman Brian Wheeler said staff would review the new legislation and determine the steps needed to carry out previous City Council votes to remove the Lee statue and another of Stonewall Jackson from its public parks.Virginia, a state that prides itself on its pivotal role in America’s early history, is home to more than 220 public memorials to the Confederacy, according to state officials. Among those are some of the nation’s most prominent — a collection of five monuments along Richmond’s Monument Avenue, a National Historic Landmark.Critics say the monuments are offensive to African Americans because they romanticize the Confederacy and ignore its defense of slavery.“My family has lived with the trauma of slavery for generations. … I hope that you understand that this is a situation that’s so much deeper than a simple vote on simple war memorials,” Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, who presides over the Senate, said earlier in the week.Others say removing the monuments is tantamount to erasing history.Republican Amanda Chase said during the same Senate debate that slavery was evil.“But it doesn’t mean that we take all of these monuments down,” she continued. “We remember our past, and we learn from it.”The House and Senate initially passed different legislation, with disagreements about what hurdles a locality must clear before taking down a statue. A conference committee hashed out the differences.The compromise measure says a locality must hold a public hearing before voting to remove or otherwise alter a monument. If it decides to remove one, it must be offered to “any museum, historical society, government or military battlefield,” although the governing body ultimately gets the say on the “final disposition.”The measure, which passed largely but not entirely along party lines, wouldn’t apply cemeteries or the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, which has a prominent statue of Jackson.Northam, who last year was embroiled in a scandal over a racist photo that appeared in his medical school yearbook, announced at the start of the legislative session what he called a historic justice agenda aimed at telling the accurate and complete story of Virginia’s past.In addition to the monuments bill, lawmakers also have advanced bills removing old racist laws that were technically still on the books, substituting the state’s holiday honoring Lee and Jackson for one on Election Day and creating a commission to recommend a replacement for a Lee statue Virginia contributed to the U.S. Capitol. They have also passed legislation that provides protections and funding for historic African American cemeteries.Another bill introduced this year took aim at a controversial statue on Capitol Square, one of Harry F. Byrd Sr., a former Virginia governor and U.S. senator who’s considered the architect of the state’s “massive resistance” policy to public school integration.Republican Del. Wendell Walker introduced the bill that would have removed the bronze figure with the aim of needling Democrats on the larger monuments issue, saying “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.” Byrd, a Democrat, led a political machine that dominated Virginia politics for decades.But when met with some agreement from across the aisle on removing the statue, Walker asked that the bill be killed.
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From Miami to Seattle, nursing homes and other facilities for the elderly are stockpiling masks and thermometers, preparing for staff shortages and screening visitors to protect a particularly vulnerable population from the coronavirus.In China, where the outbreak began, the disease has been substantially deadlier for the elderly. In Italy, the epicenter of the virus outbreak in Europe, the more than 100 people who died were either elderly, sick with other complications, or both.Of the 21 deaths across the U.S. as of Sunday, at least 16 had been linked to a Seattle-area nursing home, along with many other infections among residents, staff and family members. The Seattle Times reported that a second nursing home and a retirement community in the area had each reported one case of the virus.That has put other facilities in the U.S. on high alert, especially in states with large populations of older residents, such as Florida and California. About 2.5 million people live in long-term care facilities in the United States.“For people over the age of 80 … the mortality rate could be as high as 15 percent,” said Mark Parkinson, president of the nursing home trade group American Health Care Association.The federal government is now focusing all nursing home inspections on infection control, singling out facilities in cities with confirmed cases and those previously cited for not following protocol.Federal rules already require the homes to have an infection prevention specialist on staff, and many have long had measures in place to deal with seasonal flus and other ailments that pose a higher risk to the elderly.Even so, facilities’ response to the coronavirus has varied across the country.In Florida, where about 160,000 seniors live in nursing homes and assisted-living facilities, mandatory visitor screening is not in place “because we’re not at that stage,” said Kristen Knapp, a spokeswoman for the Florida Health Care Association.But elder care centers are posting signs urging visitors to stay away if they have symptoms, and are looking into alternate ways for families to connect, such as through video chats, Knapp said.Concierges in the 14 Florida nursing homes run by the Palm Gardens corporation are now giving all visitors a short questionnaire asking about symptoms, recent travel and contact with others, said company Vice President Luke Neumann.Neumann said the nursing homes also have purchased extra thermometers in case they need to check visitors’ temperatures and stockpiled preventive supplies, including medical masks, protective eyewear and gowns. In the laundry rooms, they are making sure to use enough bleach and heat to kill any lingering virus germs, he said.At the South Shore Rehabilitation and Skilled Care Center south of Boston, patient Leo Marchand keeps a container of disinfecting wipes on a shelf by his bed that he uses several times a day. The 71-year-old Vietnam veteran and retired truck driver has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease that makes it difficult for him to breathe. The possibility of contracting the coronavirus scares him.“It’s a concern,” Marchand said. “It really is.”Many facilities across the country have said they were having trouble getting medical masks and gowns because of shortages.More intensive screening of visitors, meanwhile, is not sitting well with some.“Some of the visitors have been quite reluctant to comply, and that has been stressful,” said Janet Snipes, executive director of Holly Heights Nursing Center in Denver.Under federal regulations, nursing homes are considered a patient’s residence, and the facilities want to keep them connected with family, especially when they are near death.“I don’t think you can flat-out prevent visitors,” said Dr. David A. Nace, director of long-term care and flu programs at the University of Pittsburgh Department of Medicine. He oversees 300 facilities in Pennsylvania.For now, facilities in most states are stressing basic precautions, including hand washing and coughing etiquette.Centers throughout the country are also trying to prepare their staffs for the worst.An adult day care center in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood bought long-lasting prepared meals in preparation for possible shortages. The Hebrew Home in Riverdale, New York, is running nursing staff through drills to see how they will handle situations at the 750-bed facility if the virus progresses. Their IT department is setting up infrastructure for staff to work remotely if they become sick.“If one of our sites has an outbreak, we quickly will deplete the staff in that location,” said Randy Bury, CEO of The Good Samaritan Society, one of the largest not-for-profit providers of senior care services in the country, with 19,000 employees in 24 states.Some families are considering pulling their loved ones out of facilities.Kathleen Churchyard said her family has decided to move her 80-year-old mother out of her retirement community near Jacksonville, Florida, and into her sister’s home nearby if the virus is confirmed in the area.Churchyard, who lives in Concord, North Carolina, worries her mother is not taking it seriously, and is particularly worried about her dining hall.“I tried to get her to buy some stuff to prepare. … She said, ‘No. If (the virus) takes me, it takes me,’” Churchyard said.
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Lawmakers from both parties told Pentagon leaders on Wednesday that the Defense Department is undermining its own efforts to get military money by diverting billions of dollars for the construction of President Donald Trump’s U.S.-Mexico border wall.
    
The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and the committee’s top Republican warned Defense Secretary Mark Esper that overturning congressional funding decisions to shift money for the wall is an enormous problem that will have consequences.
    
The plan to shift money has triggered rare Republican opposition to one of Trump’s priorities.
    
Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, said the result may be that Congress will place greater restrictions on the Pentagon’s ability to move money around to meet military needs. The chairman, Democratic Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, said the money transfer is “very, very damaging to the Pentagon.”
    
“The message it sends is the Pentagon has plenty of money,” said Smith, adding that it “undercuts any arguments for any need for resources.”
    
The Pentagon announced this month that it was slashing billions of dollars in funding for Navy and Air Force aircraft and other military programs to free up money for the construction of the wall.
    
Esper approved the $3.8 billion border wall request from the Department of Homeland Security, and the Pentagon acknowledged that more cuts could be coming to provide additional dollars for the wall. Trump has repeatedly claimed that Mexico is paying for his promised “big beautiful wall,” but that has never happened.
    
The Pentagon’s decision, announced in “reprogramming” documents provided to lawmakers, stripped money from major aircraft and procurement programs that touch Republican and Democratic districts and states.
    
Despite congressional opposition, Trump faced no consequences when making similar transfers last year, when the Pentagon canceled dozens of military construction projects to free up $3.6 billion and transferred $2.5 billion in counterdrug money.
    
Altogether, Trump has obtained just over $3 billion for border barrier construction by working through regular congressional channels, subject to limitations imposed by lawmakers. He has used various transfer and emergency authorities to shift almost $7 billion more from the emergency declaration, from a forfeiture fund containing money seized by law enforcement and from funding for military counterdrug activities.
    
Specifically, the plan targets money for more than a dozen aircraft, including two F-35 fighters sought by Texas Rep. Kay Granger, the top Republican on the House Appropriations Committee, and other members of the Texas congressional delegation.
    
It also cuts money for eight Reaper drones, four Air Force C-130 transport aircraft, two Marine V-22 Osprey helicopters and also for amphibious ships, National Guard equipment and Army trucks. 
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Antebellum Southern plantations were built on the backs of enslaved people, and many of those plantations hold places of honor on the National Register of Historic Places — but don’t look for many mentions of slavery in the government’s official record of places with historic significance.The register’s written entries on the plantations tend to say almost nothing about the enslaved people who picked the cotton and tobacco or cut the sugar cane that paid for ornate homes that today serve as wedding venues, bed-and-breakfast inns, tourist attractions and private homes — some of which tout their inclusion on the National Register like a gold star.The National Register of Historic Places lists more than 95,000 sites that are important to the story of the United States. From some of the most famous places — such as George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate — to scores of lesser-known plantation homes in the rural South, register entries often ignore the topic of slavery or mention it only in passing, an Associated Press review found.FILE – The home of the first U.S. president, George Washington, in Mount Vernon, Va., April 23, 2018.Experts blame a generational lack of concern for the stories of black people and, in many cases, a shortage of records. While some narratives have been updated to include information about enslavement, such changes aren’t mandatory.The National Register’s entry for Mount Vernon, approved in 1977, doesn’t use the word “slave,” although more than 300 enslaved black people worked the first president’s fields, cooked his food and cleaned the house where tourists now roam.The entry for Thomas Jefferson’s mountaintop home, Monticello, notes that the third president owned as many as 200 slaves. Yet it generally avoids discussing them or the details of their ownership by the author of the Declaration of Independence.The same is true for plantation after plantation across the former Confederate states.Those omissions likely contributed to the loss of slave housing and other structures linked to the economy of enslavement because no one deemed them important, preservationist Ashley Rogers said.”The problem is, the damage has been done,” said Rogers, executive director of the Whitney Plantation Museum near New Orleans.FILE – Visitors walk through the Whitney Plantation in Edgard, La., July 14, 2017.The Whitney, which documents slavery at a pre-Civil War plantation near New Orleans, draws tens of thousands of visitors annually and is known for discussing topics that other tourist plantations ignore. Yet even its entry in the National Register, completed in 1992 before the current owner purchased it, doesn’t mention the slaves who toiled there.Similarly, visitors to Mount Vernon or Monticello in Virginia can now hear stories and see exhibits about slave life — but those features were added long after the landmarks became some of the first sites listed in the National Register.The National Register’s incomplete stories reflect the way the public ignores the topic of enslaved people, said Hasan Kwame Jeffries, an associate professor at Ohio State University who specializes in areas including African American history.”It’s telling us what we have been valuing as a society and how we understand slavery,” Jeffries said.Congress established the National Register of Historic Places under a 1966 historic preservation act aimed at coordinating preservation work and highlighting the nation’s most historic sites.Along with bragging rights, a listing on the National Register can help property owners financially. More than $160 billion has been invested in preserving 44,000 historic places nationwide under a tax credit program approved in 1976, according to the National Park Service, which oversees the program.Property owners, local groups and government agencies nominate sites for inclusion on the National Register, noting architectural features, historic significance and other information. State preservation offices review the nominations and submit them to the Park Service for a final decision.Those nomination forms, available on government websites, make up the bulk of information that’s publicly available about places listed on the register, the Park Service said. And they often ignore the enslaved people who provided the labor on antebellum plantations.FILE – Magnolia Grove, an antebellum plantation house in Greensboro, Ala., is seen Jan. 30, 2020.Magnolia Grove, a state-owned antebellum plantation home dating to 1835 in Greensboro, Alabama, has a slave cabin that tourists can visit, plus displays about enslaved people, yet its 1972 entry on the National Register doesn’t mention slaves.The state-operated Kingsley Plantation near Jacksonville, Florida, was home to slaves, yet its National Register entry doesn’t say who they were or how they were forced to work in the Southern heat. Instead, it describes tabby — a kind of concrete made of oyster shells — and the “colorful” slave trader Zephaniah Kingsley, who gets credit for having “carefully trained” enslaved people to farm his cotton.A historian who has researched the antebellum South, Clifton Ellis, said many National Register entries reflect a time when neither African American history nor the cultural importance of buildings were emphasized.”You might see that there’s a relation between lack of information and when they were written,” said Ellis, of Texas Tech University. “It was only during the ’70s that historians were beginning to look at slavery more closely. That took time to work its way through the academy.”Many plantation owners also kept poor records of slave life and did little to preserve reminders of it — another reason for the information void.The civil rights movement drew attention to the need for inclusive history, Ellis said, and nominations have improved with time. Property owners and historical groups are allowed to update National Register entries with new information. Some have done so with information about slaves.Today, any new nomination of an antebellum site that doesn’t discuss its ties to slavery would be rejected for more work, said Sarah David, who oversees the National Register program for North Carolina.”You can’t talk about something that was built before the Civil War without talking about enslaved people,” she said. “They were just in it. They may have built it.”The historical blindness about slavery and enslaved people isn’t limited to plantations in the National Register.The entry for Alabama’s white-domed Capitol details its role as the place where delegates established the Confederate States of America in 1861, but doesn’t cite slavery’s role in the rebellion or Horace King, a onetime slave credited with building the elegant, curved stairways in the building’s main entrance.FILE – Joe McGill, who works with the National Trust For Historic Preservation, sits outside one of the slave cabins at McLeod Plantation in Charleston, S.C., Aug. 14, 2013.Joe McGill routinely sleeps in old slave homes as part of The Slave Dwelling Project, which seeks to tell the forgotten stories of enslaved people. Sketchy accounts of slavery are a product of a decades-long period when white male historians primarily told the stories of white males, he said.”It needs to be corrected because it coincides with an incomplete narrative,” said McGill, who has slept in about 150 slave dwellings in 25 states in the South and the North.But updating all that outdated history would be daunting, historians said.With hundreds of old plantations listed on the National Register and many preservationists focused on saving endangered sites rather than updating information about existing ones, rounding out the history of antebellum farms could take years.”It would take a massive effort,” said Ellis.
 
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U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, the highest-ranking black member of Congress and the kingmaker of South Carolina’s Democratic political orbit, on Wednesday endorsed Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. The backing could provide a much-needed boost for the former vice president heading into South Carolina’s primary.
   
“I can think of no one better suited, better prepared, I can think of no one with the integrity, no one more committed to the fundamental principles that make this country what it is than my good friend,” said Clyburn, appearing with Biden at an event in North Charleston.
   
He called on the people of South Carolina to “stand with”  Biden.
   
It had long been expected that Clyburn, the House majority whip, would support Biden. The men were in Congress together for more than a decade, with Clyburn also working closely with the Obama administration in his House leadership roles. Biden was among the presidential hopefuls and other political notables who attended two days of funeral and homegoing services last year for Clyburn’s wife, Emily.
   
The support could help Biden avoid limping across the finish line in Saturday’s balloting in South Carolina, where he has long led in polling, particularly among the black voters, who comprise most of the Democratic electorate. But that lead has tightened in recent months, in part because of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ momentum after success in other early state contests. Another factor is the focus of candidates including California billionaire Tom Steyer, who has spent millions of dollars on ads in the state and worked to build relationships with black voters.
   
Biden, taking the podium from Clyburn on Wednesday, thanked his longtime friend but then quickly slipped into an opaque reference to Sanders.
   
“Today, people are talking about a revolution,” Biden said. “But what the country’s looking for are results. What they’re looking for is security. What they’re looking for is being able to sustain and maintain their dignity.”
   
Biden went on to note Clyburn’s role in securing the Democratic votes for the 2010 health insurance overhaul that ranks as President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement. Biden said his proposal for a “public option” insurance plan to expand coverage under Obamacare would build on Clyburn’s work rather than “start from scratch” with single-payer government insurance that Sanders proposes.
   
“What people are looking for is some hope, some reassurance, some notion that ‘I can take care of my family,’” Biden said.
   
Following poor finishes in Iowa and in New Hampshire, Biden notched a second-place finish in the Nevada caucuses, a status he said positioned him to do well in South Carolina, a state that can be a bellwether for other Southern states and has been referred to as Biden’s “firewall” of support.
   
Earlier this month, Clyburn gave some insight into his thinking when he said that he was watching efforts by several campaigns aiming to cut into Biden’s support in South Carolina. Clyburn noted that Steyer, in particular, is doing “an incredible job.”
   
Clyburn also said former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg “is doing very good.” Clyburn has previously said Buttigieg may struggle among older black voters because he is gay. Clyburn’s grandson is working for Buttigieg’s South Carolina campaign.
   
Asked directly if South Carolina is Biden’s “firewall,” where success or failure could make or break his campaign in the states that follow, Clyburn said, “Well, I don’t know. We will see.”
   
Clyburn hosted Biden and nearly two dozen other Democratic hopefuls last summer at his fish fry, which began in 1992 in a parking deck near the South Carolina Statehouse as a way to thank volunteers who helped him, secure his first congressional victory. Through the years, the fish fry has blossomed into a showpiece event for Democratic politicians in the state and as a must-stop event for the party’s presidential contenders aiming to build support in the state.
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Ethiopia will skip the latest round of U.S.-brokered talks this week on a disputed Nile dam project with Egypt and Sudan, the country’s water ministry announced Wednesday.A final deal on the massive Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam had been expected this month, but U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in his Ethiopia visit last week that an agreement now might take months as “a great deal of work remains.”The dispute over what will be Africa’s largest hydroelectric dam pits Ethiopia’s desire to pull millions out of poverty against Egypt’s concerns over a critical water supply.Ethiopia will skip the talks in Washington on Thursday and Friday “because the country’s delegation hasn’t concluded its consultation with relevant stakeholders,” the ministry of water, irrigation and energy said on its Facebook page. “The decision has been communicated with the U.S. Treasury secretary.”The announcement came amid widespread concerns in Ethiopia that its delegation has been pressured by the U.S. to reach a deal on $4.6 billion dam that is nearing completion. The U.S. became involved in the talks after Egypt’s invitation.“Ethiopia will never sign on an agreement that will surrender its right to use the Nile River,” the Ethiopian ambassador to the U.S., Fitsum Arega, said on Twitter.Responding to Ethiopia’s decision to sit out this week’s meeting, Egypt’s foreign ministry spokesman, Ahmed Hafez, asserted that Egypt remained “committed to the negotiation track … according to what was agreed upon by the three countries.” He said the Egyptian irrigation minister would attend the talks.Egypt wants the dam to be filled more slowly to reduce restrictions on the flow of the Nile.Ethiopia says the dam is needed to provide electricity for development. In January it announced that it will start filling the dam, now more than 70% complete, in July at the start of the rainy season.“There was lots of discomfort recently due to the behavior and changing role of the U.S. among policy makers in Ethiopia,” political analyst Abel Abate Demissie told The Associated Press.
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A U.S. soldier has tested positive for the coronavirus, U.S. military officials in South Korea said Wednesday – the first confirmed infection of a U.S. service member.The patient, a 23-year-old male, has been placed in self-quarantine at his off-base residence, U.S. Forces Korea said in a statement.The soldier was stationed at Camp Carroll, a U.S. Army base in the southeastern part of the country, but also visited Camp Walker.”Health professionals are actively conducting contact tracing to determine whether any others may have been exposed,” the USFK statement said.Both military bases are near the epicenter of the South Korea coronavirus outbreak, which has put the country on edge over the past week.South Korean officials reported 169 new virus cases Wednesday, bringing the total number of confirmed infections to 1,146. Just last week, that number was only 30.Twelve coronavirus patients in South Korea have died.Most of the South Korean infections are in and around Daegu, the country’s fourth-largest city. The U.S. military has thousands of service members in the region.On Tuesday, U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said upcoming annual joint military exercises with South Korea could be scaled back because of virus concerns.Dangerous new componentThe spread of the virus within military ranks would represent a dangerous new component of the outbreak, since many service members live within close quarters and share common meals.At some bases nearest the outbreak, U.S. soldiers have been prevented from non-essential off-base travel. Many visitors are also prevented from visiting some bases. Some on-base restaurants and entertainment venues have been closed. Department of Defense schools in Korea have also been shuttered.Earlier this week, the U.S. military in South Korea raised its risk level to “high” after reporting that a 61-year-old woman with the coronavirus visited a store at Camp Walker. The woman was the widow of a retired soldier.At least 18 members of the South Korean military have also been infected the virus. Over 9,000 South Korean service members have been quarantined at their bases, the Yonhap news agency reported.Highly contagiousThe coronavirus causes a respiratory illness known as Covid-19. The disease currently has a mortality rate of around 2 percent. But it is highly contagious, in part because those with Covid-19 can spread the disease before showing symptoms.Over 80,000 people worldwide have contracted the virus. Almost 2,800 people have died. Most the cases have been in China, where the virus originated.But over the past week, countries including Iran, Italy, and South Korea have reported a surge in confirmed cases. World health officials are now worried the outbreak could turn into a global pandemic.
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Pressure appears to be building on the White House and U.S. intelligence agencies to declassify some information and brief the public on possible Russian attempts to meddle in the upcoming presidential election.Much of the push is coming from former U.S. intelligence and security officials upset at a series of leaks that led to reports Russia was trying to bolster the campaigns of both President Donald Trump and one of his Democratic challengers, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.  But some of the pressure is also coming from lawmakers who want see the American public get what they describe as an untainted assessment of what Russia is and is not doing, rather than see the allegations used for domestic political gain.Congressional officials say, so far, lawmakers have not made any official requests to the intelligence agencies for any sort of public briefing or official statement on possible Russian meddling, due to concerns about protecting intelligence sources and methods.Still, the officials note some sort of public disclosure is in line with the recommendations of a But on Friday, Sanders confirmed U.S. intelligence had, in fact, warned him about the Russian meddling. He later warned Moscow to stay out of U.S. politics.It is those contradicting narratives that have former intelligence and security officials calling for some sort of public disclosure. “I would certainly encourage it…no matter what it says,” former acting CIA Director John McLaughlin told VOA. “We don’t know the whole story yet.”Other longtime intelligence officials agree. “Indications and warnings of threats to our democratic process are not like fine wine, getting better with age,” Daniel Hoffman, a former CIA chief of station, said. “We learned from 2016, we need a coordinated assessment based on the facts rather than innuendo and poor analysis tinged with confirmation bias.”At least one White House official has indicated an openness to sharing some of the existing intelligence with the public. “I’d have no problem with that,” U.S. National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday. “If there’s intelligence that we can declassify, that we can get out there — all the better — because, again, we weren’t in office in 2016 when the last election meddling took place and the administration did very little about it.”However, some of those who were in office in 2016 accuse the Trump administration of doing even less. “It is vital that the Trump administration declassify what we know so it can be described by our intelligence community publicly, so the voters are armed with this information,” Jeh Johnson, who served as Homeland Security secretary under former President Barack Obama, said during a forum in Detroit Monday.  “That’s what we did in the prior administration,” he added, referring to a statement he and other top officials issued in October 2016 blaming Russia for hacking and then leaking emails from the Democratic National Committee.Some Democratic lawmakers have also seized upon the president’s handling of the latest allegations of Russian meddling. “What does the president do in response to that information? He fires the head of the intelligence community,” Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen said on the floor of the Senate late Tuesday, arguing for the passage of election security legislation.  “He fires them because he doesn’t want them to tell Congress what the Russians are doing,” he said.Trump administration officials have consistently pushed back, arguing the president has made it clear that interference by Russia or anyone else will not be tolerated.  “Meddling in our elections is unacceptable,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters Tuesday. “Should Russia or any foreign actor take steps to undermine our democratic processes, we will take action in response.”Some former intelligence officials caution that President Trump’s long-contentious relationship with U.S. intelligence agencies, dating back to their 2017 assessment that Russia did seek to help Trump win the election, is hurting the administration’s credibility. “One doesn’t get a warm and fuzzy feeling,” said Larry Pfeiffer, a former CIA chief of staff and former senior director of the White House Situation Room, who has been critical of Trump in the past. “The congressional intelligence committees should demand open hearings in order to assure the American people, and closed hearings in order to conduct appropriate oversight of the activities to assess that threat.”Katherine Gypson contributed to this report.
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White supremacist mass murderer Dylann Roof staged a hunger strike this month while on federal death row, alleging in letters to The Associated Press that he’s been “targeted by staff,” “verbally harassed and abused without cause” and “treated disproportionately harsh.”The 25-year-old Roof, who killed nine black church members during a Bible study in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, told the AP in a letter dated Feb. 13 that the staff at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, feel justified in their conduct “since I am hated by the general public.”FILE – Dylann Roof enters the court room at the Charleston County Judicial Center to enter his guilty plea on murder charges in Charleston, S.C., April 10, 2017.A person familiar with the matter said Roof had been on a hunger strike but was no longer on one, as of this week. The person couldn’t immediately provide specific details about the length of the hunger strike or whether medical staff needed to intervene. The person wasn’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.Roof wrote in his letter to the AP that he went on the hunger strike to protest the treatment he received from a Bureau of Prisons disciplinary hearing officer over earlier complaints that he was refused access to the law library and access to a copy machine to file legal papers.Roof’s Feb. 13 letter indicated he was already “several days” into a hunger strike, and he wrote in a follow-up letter that the protest ended a day later after corrections officers forcibly tried to take his blood and insert an IV into his arm, causing him to briefly pass out.”I feel confident I could have gone much, much longer without food,” Roof wrote in the Feb. 16 follow-up letter. “It’s just not worth being murdered over.”The allegations could not immediately be verified and a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Prisons said the agency had no comment on Roof’s allegations, citing privacy concerns.Roof’s lawyers said in a statement that they were “working with BOP to resolve the issues addressed in the letters.”‘Tainted’ sentencingRoof’s lawyers filed an appeal to his federal convictions and death sentence last month, arguing that he was mentally ill when he represented himself at his capital trial.In a 321-page legal brief, Roof’s lawyers asked a federal appeals court in Richmond, Virginia, to review 20 issues, including errors they say were made by the judge and prosecutors that “tainted” his sentencing. One of their main arguments is that U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel should not have allowed Roof to represent himself during the penalty phase of his trial because he was a 22-year-old ninth-grade dropout “who believed his sentence didn’t matter because white nationalists would free him from prison after an impending race war.”Roof is the first person to be ordered executed for a federal hate crime. Attorney General William Barr announced in July that the government would resume executions and scheduled five executions — though Roof is not included among that group — ending an informal moratorium on federal capital punishment as the issue receded from the public domain. The Supreme Court has temporarily halted the executions after some of the chosen inmates challenged the new execution procedures in court.
 
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U.S. senators are urging stronger sanctions enforcement amid a prolonged stalemate in denuclearization talks with North Korea.Republican Senator Cory Gardner of Colorado, chairman of the East Asia, the Pacific and International Cybersecurity Policy subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called for the return to the “maximum pressure policy.”FILE – Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., Feb. 20, 2020″The successful policy of maximum pressure that was adopted early in the Trump administration, but since abandoned in earnest effort of diplomatic engagement with Pyongyang. … We must immediately enforce sanctions against Pyongyang and its enablers,” Gardner said.However, he said the Trump administration must double down on diplomacy to isolate Pyongyang internationally.The subcommittee held the hearing Tuesday, which marked the one-year anniversary of the second summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Hanoi, Vietnam. But the hearing was sparsely attended.Trump and Kim first met in Singapore in June 2018, signing a broad agreement on the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, but they failed to agree on how to implement that deal when they met again in Vietnam. Except for a brief working-level meeting in Stockholm, Sweden, last October, North Korea has been refusing serious talks with the U.S.Pursuing diplomatic solutionsDemocratic Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts, ranking member of the subcommittee, also called on the Trump administration to tighten sanctions enforcement on North Korea.FILE – U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., Feb. 18, 2020Senators Gardner and Markey introduced sanctions legislation, called Leverage to Enhance Effective Diplomacy (LEED) Act, expanding U.S. sanctions against North Korea and its enablers, including those engaged in illegal oil transfers to North Korea. So far, they have no other co-sponsors.Markey, while stressing that his sanctions legislation would strengthen Washington’s negotiating position over Pyongyang, also underscored the importance of pursuing diplomatic solutions.”We must not return to the charged rhetoric of ‘fire and fury,’ a war, much less a nuclear war, will lead to unfathomable loss of life,” he said. “Threats are not an alternative to a negotiated agreement.”Markey said he would reintroduce legislation, the “No Unconstitutional War against North Korea Act,” in the coming weeks in an effort to speak out against Trump taking actions against North Korea that mirror the removal of a top Iranian commander, Qassem Soleimani.Promoting human rightsTestifying before the subcommittee, Robert King, former special envoy for North Korea, said the U.S. should not lose sight of human rights in policy toward North Korea.”Since the collapse of the Hanoi summit, sincere efforts by the U.S. to resume dialogue with the North on denuclearization have not been reciprocated. Abandoning our principles on human rights, did not lead to progress on the nuclear issue,” King said.He said the U.S. has backed away in the United Nations from pressing North Korea on its dismal human rights record. Last December, the Trump administration refused to support a U.N. Security Council discussion on North Korea’s human rights situation, effectively blocking the meeting for the second straight year.King said the “United States should be a shining example on the hill, a beacon of hope on human rights, unfortunately we’ve hidden our light under a bushel.”
 
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Most Americans say they are likely to participate in the 2020 census, but some doubt that the U.S. Census Bureau will keep their personal information confidential, a new poll shows.
   
The poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds 7 in 10 Americans say it’s extremely or very likely they will participate in the census this year by filling out a questionnaire. Another 2 in 10 say it’s somewhat likely.
   
That’s higher than what the Census Bureau predicts _ a self-response rate of 6 in 10 people. But the bureau’s past research shows that people say they are going to participate in the census at a higher rate than they actually do.
   
“People respond to a survey question as they think they are expected to behave,” Kenneth Prewitt, a former Census Bureau director in the Clinton administration, said in an email.
   
The poll shows that older, white and highly educated adults express greater certainty that they will participate than younger adults, black and Hispanic Americans and those without college degrees.
   
It also shows that the more partisan people are, the more likely they are to participate. At least 7 in 10 Democrats and Republicans are very likely to answer, compared with about half of Americans who don’t identify with or lean toward either party.
   
“It might be that they understand the importance of the census in distributing political representation and want to make sure they get their fair share,” John Thompson, a former director of the U.S. Census Bureau in the Obama administration, said in an email.
    
The 2020 census will help determine how $1.5 trillion in federal spending is distributed. It will also determine how many congressional seats each state gets, as well as the makeup of legislative districts in a process known as redistricting.
   
People can start answering the questions in mid-March, either online, by telephone or by mailing in a paper form.
   
“I think it’s important. It’s a civic duty,” said Quintin Sharpe, a 21-year-old college student, who’s studying business at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.
   
Compared with the share saying they’ll participate, 57%, say it’s highly important to them to be counted in the census. About a quarter say it’s moderately important.
   
The poll shows about a third of Americans are very or extremely confident that the U.S. Census Bureau will keep their personal information confidential, while roughly the same share say they are moderately confident. About another third have little to no confidence in the agency to keep private information private, even though the bureau is legally required to do so.
   
About a quarter of Americans report a great deal of confidence in the people running the U.S. Census Bureau, and roughly two-thirds say they have some confidence.
   
Joe Domas, a 57-year-old carpenter in Paris, Tennessee, said he plans to fill out the census form but won’t answer every question. The questionnaire asks how many people live in a household; whether their home is owned or rented; the age, race and sex of every person living in the home; and how they are related.
   
“I don’t divulge a lot of personal information. I just give them a head count, pretty much,“ Domas said. “I’m not into government intrusion, and the way the internet is, people leak information.”
 
 A majority say they have heard or read about the count of every person living in the U.S., the largest peacetime operation the federal government undertakes, but just 2 in 10 say they know “a lot.” About a third say they have heard or read little or nothing at all.
   
That will likely change after the Census Bureau expanded its advertising campaign last week. The goal of the $500 million education and outreach effort is to reach 99% of the 140 million U.S. households with messages about the importance of participating in the 2020 census.
   
Many of those who say they will take the survey this year think they will complete it online. Close to half say that’s their likely format, with another 2 in 10 saying they expect to fill out and mail in a paper questionnaire. Just 4% say they prefer phone, but 30% say they don’t know yet how they will respond. This is the first decennial census in which most participants are being encouraged to fill out the form online.
   
Gil Parks, a 60-year-old retired financial planner from Stephenville, Texas, said he still hasn’t decided if he will answer questions online or use the paper form. Parks and his wife often drive to a ranch they own an hour south of where they live to keep tabs on building projects and baby calves.
   
“If we have a paper form, my wife could fill it out while we are driving down there and driving back,” Parks said.
   
Majorities across racial and ethnic groups say they are highly likely to participate, but about half of white Americans are “extremely” likely, compared with about 3 in 10 black and Hispanic Americans.
   
About 8 in 10 college-educated Americans, but just about two-thirds of those without a degree, say they are highly likely to participate.
   
Similarly, roughly 8 in 10 adults older than 45 say they are very likely to complete a census questionnaire, compared with just over half of younger adults.
   
There’s also a significant age gap in the preferred form of answering the questions. Just about a quarter of adults ages 60 and older who will participate say they will take the survey online, compared with more than half of those who are younger. Older adults are also somewhat more likely than younger adults to express high confidence in the Census Bureau to keep their information private, 37% among those 45 and older and 25% among younger adults.
   
“Getting accurate data is important,” said Parks, who also is chair of the local Republican Party. “We need to know who is here, and what not.”
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