________
________
________
from Military Times
and Air Force Times, Army Times, Marine Corps Times, and Navy Times
US F-16s head to Poland to strengthen NATO air policing mission
from Military Times
and Air Force Times, Army Times, Marine Corps Times, and Navy Times
US F-16s head to Poland to strengthen NATO air policing mission
U.S. F-16 fighter jets from Spangdahlem Air Base in Germany made their way to Poland Jan. 4 to work with Polish and Belgian F-16s on air policing missions, a NATO press release shared. F-16 pilots from the three countries will practice advanced airborne maneuvers in Lask, Poland, while working closely with a Combined Air Operations Center in Uedem, Germany, to strengthen command and control procedures. ... President Joe Biden has previously said that no U.S. troops would be deployed to Ukraine should Russia invade. However, U.S. military forces would likely reinforce their presence in NATO countries in the region and provide additional defensive capabilities to Ukrainian military leaders. As for the Jan. 4 deployment of F-16s to Poland, “the supplemental U.S. fighters will provide improved capabilities in the region and demonstrate a seamless integration into the long standing Baltic and enhanced Air Policing missions,” Deputy Chief of Staff Operations at NATO Headquarters Allied Air Command Brig. Gen. Joel Carey, said in the press release.
________
from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington
Allegiant Air said Wednesday that it will buy 50 Boeing 737 Max jets and take options for 50 more, giving Chicago-based Boeing a major foothold in the discount airline’s all-Airbus fleet. ... Allegiant announced last year that it was adding the flights between Spokane International Airport and Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport beginning Nov. 22. Earlier in 2021, Allegiant Air launched two direct flights from Spokane to Las Vegas and Orange County. Allegiant said it will take delivery of the planes from 2023 through 2025.
Allegiant Air said Wednesday it will buy 50 Boeing 737 Max jets and take options for 50 more, giving Chicago-based Boeing a major foothold in the discount airline’s all-Airbus fleet. Financial terms were not released. The 737 Max 7 and Max 8 models selected by Allegiant list for $99.7 million and $121.6 million apiece, but airlines routinely receive deep discounts.
ExxonMobil said Wednesday that it made two additional oil discoveries off the coast of Guyana as the South American country prepares to become the world’s newest major oil producer. The discoveries occurred in an area where officials believe they can extract at least 10 billion oil-equivalent barrels. The company said a vessel that arrived in Guyana late last year is expected to start production in upcoming months with a target of up to 220,000 barrels of oil a day. Officials said another vessel will start production in 2024.
The U.S. is urging that everyone 12 and older get a COVID-19 booster as soon as they’re eligible, to help fight back the hugely contagious omicron variant that’s ripping through the country. Boosters already were encouraged for all Americans 16 and older, but Wednesday the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention endorsed an extra Pfizer shot for younger teens – those 12 to 15 – and strengthened its recommendation that 16- and 17-year-olds get it, too.
Attorney General Merrick Garland on Wednesday vowed to hold accountable anyone who was responsible for last year’s insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, whether they were physically there or not. In a speech to Justice Department employees, Garland said prosecutors remained “committed to holding all January 6th perpetrators, at any level, accountable under law.”
The United States and Germany said Wednesday that Russia’s military buildup near Ukraine’s border poses an “immediate and urgent challenge” to European security and that any intervention will draw severe consequences. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock presented a unified front on Russia after a meeting in Washington, but still would not detail what the consequences might be. The severity of any response to a Russian invasion of Ukraine hinges largely on Germany, Europe’s biggest economy and a diplomatic heavyweight within the 27-nation European Union.
Hospitals across the U.S. are feeling the wrath of the omicron variant and getting thrown into disarray that is different from earlier COVID-19 surges. This time, they are dealing with serious staff shortages because so many health care workers are getting sick with the fast-spreading variant. People are showing up at emergency rooms in large numbers in hopes of getting tested for COVID-19, putting more strain on the system. And a surprising share of patients — two-thirds in some places — are testing positive for the virus while in the hospital for other reasons. At the same time, hospitals say the patients aren’t as sick as those who came in during the last surge. Intensive care units aren’t as full, and ventilators aren’t needed as much as they were before. The pressures are neverthless prompting hospitals to scale back non-emergency surgeries and close wards, while National Guard troops have been sent in in several states to help out at medical centers and testing sites. Nearly two years into the pandemic, frustration and exhaustion are running high among health care workers.
Louisiana’s governor on Wednesday posthumously pardoned Homer Plessy, the Black man whose arrest for refusing to leave a whites-only railroad car in 1892 led to the Supreme Court ruling that cemented “separate but equal” into U.S. law for half a century. The state Board of Pardons in November recommended the pardon for Plessy, who boarded the rail car as a member of a small civil rights group hoping to overturn a state law segregating trains. Instead, the protest led to the 1896 ruling known as Plessy v. Ferguson, which solidified whites-only spaces in public accommodations such as transportation, hotels and schools for decades.
A year after the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, the new chief of the U.S. Capitol Police said Wednesday he is making progress in resolving “critical deficiencies” despite major staffing shortages and thousands of new threats to members of Congress. “We’re going to get tested again” and will be prepared, declared Chief J. Thomas Manger. Changes include improving the agency’s ability to gather, analyze and share intelligence with other federal and state law enforcement forces, Manger said. That failing contributed to a lack of defensive forces at the violent Capitol insurrection as rioters fought past outmanned police, leaving more than 100 of them injured. Manger is dealing with recommendations from an internal watchdog to move the agency from a traditional police department to a protective force.
Fire tore through a duplex home early Wednesday in Philadelphia, killing 13 people, including seven children, fire officials said. At least two people were sent to hospitals, and officials warned the toll could grow as firefighters searched the rowhome, where 26 people had been staying. The four smoke alarms in the building, which was public housing, do not appear to have been working, fire officials said. The blaze’s cause was not determined, but officials shaken by the death toll – apparently the highest in a single fire in the city in at least a century – vowed to get to the bottom of it.
A late-season wildfire pushed by hurricane-force winds tore through two densely populated Denver suburbs and seemed destined to leave a trail of deaths. Yet, only two people were unaccounted for out of some 35,000 forced from their homes. It’s a remarkably low number of possible casualties, according to disaster experts and authorities, all the more so because a public alert system did not reach everyone and the wintertime blaze caught many people off-guard.
A Russia-led military alliance said Thursday it will dispatch peacekeeping forces to Kazakhstan after the country’s president asked for help in controlling protests that escalated into violence, including the seizure and setting afire of government buildings. Protesters in Kazakhstan’s largest city stormed the presidential residence and the mayor’s office Wednesday and set both on fire, according to news reports, as demonstrations sparked by a rise in fuel prices escalated sharply in the Central Asian nation. ... Hours after thousands of demonstrators gathered outside the presidential residence in Almaty, Tass reported that it was on fire and that protesters, some wielding firearms, were trying to break in. Police fled from the residence after shooting at demonstrators, according to the report, which was filed from Kazakhstan.
Beneath a pale winter light and the glare of television cameras, it seemed hard not to see the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot for what it was. The violent storming of the Capitol by Donald Trump supporters bent on upending the election of Joe Biden was as clear as day: democracy under siege, live-streamed in real time. Yet a year later, when it comes to a where-were-you moment in U.S. history, there is far from national consensus.
Long after most other lawmakers had been rushed to safety, they were on the hard marble floor, ducking for cover. Trapped in the gallery of the House, occupying balcony seats off-limits to the public because of COVID-19, roughly three dozen House Democrats were the last ones to leave the chamber on Jan. 6, bearing witness as the certification of a presidential election gave way to a violent insurrection.
The suspect was covered from head to toe, skulking through the dark streets of the nation’s capital before methodically placing two explosives outside the offices of the Republican and Democratic national committees. Only 17 hours later — and just before the U.S. Capitol was stormed by a sea of pro-Trump rioters — were the pipe bombs discovered. It quickly became one of the highest-priority investigations for the FBI and the Justice Department.
Germany’s antitrust watchdog paved the way Wednesday for extra scrutiny of Google by designating it a company of “paramount significance,” the first to get that label since regulators got more power to curb abusive practices by big digital companies. The Bundeskartellamt said its decision comes after rules were introduced last year that allow it “to intervene earlier and more effectively” to ban companies from using anti-competitive practices. The regulator’s decision, which lasts five years, gives it extended powers to supervise Google for “abuse control.”
Hundreds of people have filled the homeless shelter the city hastily threw together at the convention center to prevent people from dying on the streets in the latest deep freeze. And, inside at City Hall, the mayor has budgeted money to build a new shelter. So how, one wonders, can the Woodward administration repeatedly assert there are sufficient beds available in the shelter system?
It’s been nearly 50 years since a group of researchers in Chicago reported an extraordinary finding: They’d created a vaccine against drug addiction, and an early test showed it might work. The scientists provided a rhesus monkey with heroin and cocaine; it became addicted. But when they injected the monkey with a compound they’d developed – one designed to coax the immune system into fighting addictive drugs as if they were pathogenic invaders – the animal stopped seeking drugs. Their finding, published in the top scientific journal Nature in 1974, heralded a new frontier in treating addiction. But despite millions of dollars in research – and decades’ worth of studies, including a high-profile but failed attempt at a nicotine vaccine – there’s still no Food and Drug Administration-approved shot against any addictive substance. Scientists at a new University of Washington research center hope that will soon change.
The Bureau of Reclamation and the Bonneville Power Administration recently announced a long-running overhaul of three generators at the Grand Coulee Dam was completed in September 2021, according to a news release from both agencies. “All of these facilities were built between the late 1930s and the 1970s, so being that the newest of them were built 50 or so years ago, the system is aging. We have to systematically, in accordance with our strategic asset management plan, work with – in this situation – the Bureau of Reclamation and in other situations, the Army Corps of Engineers to determine which of these units we need to work on, which need to be maintained and on what schedule. It’s all to ensure that we can provide quality, carbon-free energy to those public utilities in the Northwest that rely on us to do so,” said Doug Johnson, spokesman for the Bonneville Power Administration.
Mayor Dana Ralph said Tuesday night that she has asked for the resignation of Assistant Police Chief Derek Kammerzell for posting Nazi insignia on his office door, embracing the rank of a high official in Adolf Hitler’s dreaded paramilitary Schutzstaffel, or SS, and joking about the Holocaust. Ralph made the announcement at a City Council meeting at which she was sworn in for a new term as mayor. She said the decision came after public outcry and her unhappiness with the punishment imposed on Kammerzell by Chief Rafael Padilla last summer – two weeks off without pay, with the option of taking vacation pay during that time, and sensitivity training.
At a crucial moment during the 2020 racial justice protests, Seattle police exchanged a detailed series of fake radio transmissions about a nonexistent group of menacing right-wing extremists. The radio chatter about members of the Proud Boys marching around downtown Seattle, some possibly carrying guns, and then heading to confront protesters on Capitol Hill was an improper “ruse,” or dishonest ploy, that exacerbated a volatile situation, according to findings released Wednesday by the city’s Office of Police Accountability.
A proposed Spokane city law aims to protect tenants who have at least applied for rental assistance. The law would prohibit landlords from ousting a tenant for unpaid rent – as long as that tenant has met a number of conditions. The goal of the ordinance, which is set for a vote on Monday, is to prevent the eviction of tenants who are waiting on a rental assistance check. The law would not protect tenants who face eviction for reasons other than unpaid rent, such as posing a health and safety risk or damaging property. The protections would expire at the end of 2022. Council President Breean Beggs introduced the bill last year and was met with swift resistance from landlords.
For the second year in a row, the Washington Legislature will be mostly virtual. As the number of COVID-19 cases spikes across the state, the state House and Senate have both modified their plans for the 60-day session set to start Monday. A Senate committee voted Tuesday to modify their session plan, suspending all in-person meetings and only allowing 15 members on the floor at once. It’s a change from the plan agreed upon in November that allowed all members on the floor, assuming they tested negative for COVID-19.
________
No comments:
Post a Comment