Biden voices support for humanitarian 'pause' in Israel-Hamas war

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden, when responding to a heckler at a Minnesota campaign event Wednesday night, said he thinks there should be a humanitarian "pause" in the Israeli-Hamas war to get "prisoners" out of Gaza.

The 80-year-old Democrat was delivering remarks to some 200 supporters in the northern US state when a member of the audience shouted out to him.

"As a rabbi, I need you to call for a ceasefire right now," she said, referring to the deadly conflict between Israel and Hamas.

The president responded: "I think we need a pause. A pause means giving time to get the prisoners out."

Asked about his remarks, the White House later clarified that by "prisoners" the president was referring to hostages held by Hamas.

Biden engaged further with the woman, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by the nickname Bibi.

"I'm the guy that convinced Bibi to call for a ceasefire to let the prisoners out. I'm the guy that talked to (Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-)Sisi to convince him to open the door" along Gaza's border with Egypt to allow freed hostages to leave.

Biden indicated that he was discussing the recent release of two US hostages formerly held by the Palestinian Islamist group.

The White House has previously called for "humanitarian pauses" to allow aid to be delivered into Gaza or to carry out evacuations, but has so far refused to discuss a ceasefire, believing it would exclusively play into the hands of Hamas.

The war between Israel and Hamas entered its 26th day on Wednesday.

In retaliation for the bloody attack by Hamas on October 7, the Israeli army has relentlessly bombed the Gaza Strip, and has launched an increasingly extensive ground operation into the territory.

Agence France-Presse

US says China balloon 'fleet' is global as NATO joins concern

WASHINGTON - The United States said Wednesday that suspected Chinese spy balloons like the one it shot down were part of a "fleet" that has spanned five continents, as NATO joined in voicing concern.

Pointing to global ramifications of the incident that has animated the United States, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States was giving data to allies as it assesses the recovered debris.

"We already shared information with dozens of countries around the world, both from Washington and through our embassies," Blinken said.

"We're doing so because the United States was not the only target of this broader program, which has violated the sovereignty of countries across five continents," he told a joint news conference with NATO's visiting chief.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, speaking separately to reporters on Air Force One, described the balloons as part of a "fleet" and said they had been spotted around the world for several years.

A huge white balloon carrying sophisticated equipment traversed the continental United States last week before President Joe Biden ordered the military to shoot it down just off the east coast in the Atlantic.

China insists that the balloon was merely conducting weather research, but the Pentagon described it as a high-tech spying operation. The balloon floated at an altitude far higher than most airplanes and crossed directly over at least one sensitive US military site.

'PATTERN BY CHINA'

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, whose visit to Washington followed a trip to Japan and South Korea, said the balloon showed the need for countries across the alliance to protect themselves.

"The Chinese balloon over the United States confirms a pattern of Chinese behavior where we see that China over the last years has invested heavily in new military capabilities," Stoltenberg said.

"We've also seen increased Chinese intelligence activities in Europe. They use satellites, they use cyber and, as we've seen over the United States, also balloons. So we just have to be vigilant," he said.

Stoltenberg also issued a new warning that China was drawing lessons from the war in Ukraine, which NATO countries have been supporting as it fights back Russian invaders.

"What happens in Europe today could happen in Asia tomorrow," Stoltenberg said, pointing to China's pressure on Taiwan, the self-governing democracy claimed by Beijing.

The Washington Post, quoting US officials, reported that the Chinese surveillance program has been run partly out of the southern island of Hainan.

Updating old technology, the balloons have been used to monitor the military assets of nearby rivals such as Japan, India and Taiwan, the newspaper said.

Biden, in his State of the Union address on Tuesday, said that his orders to shoot down the balloon showed that the United States would not hesitate to act when needed.

But he also stressed that the United States did not want conflict with China. The balloon episode led Blinken to postpone a trip to China in which he had hoped to work at easing tensions.

China, which voiced regret about the air intrusion but later denounced the US decision to down it, responded to Biden that it would also "firmly defend" its interests.

US officials said they took measures to prevent the balloon's instruments from collecting confidential information during its flight.

They say that the decision to wait until the balloon reached water was the only way to ensure the safety of people on the ground.

Biden's Republican rivals say he should have ordered the balloon to be destroyed as soon as it was identified.

Agence France-Presse

Night of devastating tornadoes likely killed more than 100 in Kentucky

MAYFIELD, Kentucky - At least 100 people were feared dead in Kentucky after a swarm of tornadoes tore a 200-mile path through the U.S. Midwest and South, demolishing homes, levelling businesses and setting off a scramble to find survivors beneath the rubble, officials said Saturday.

The powerful twisters, which weather forecasters say are unusual in cooler months, destroyed a candle factory and the fire and police stations in a small town in Kentucky, ripped through a nursing home in neighboring Missouri, and killed at least six workers at an Amazon warehouse in Illinois.

Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear said the collection of tornadoes was the most destructive in the state's history. He said about 40 workers had been rescued at the candle factory in the city of Mayfield, which had about 110 people inside when it was reduced to a pile of rubble. It would be a "miracle" to find anyone else alive under the debris, Beshear said.

"The devastation is unlike anything I have seen in my life and I have trouble putting it into words," Beshear said at a press conference. "It's very likely going to be over 100 people lost here in Kentucky."

Beshear said 189 National Guard personnel have been deployed to assist with the recovery. The rescue efforts will focus in large part on Mayfield, home to some 10,000 people in the southwestern corner of the state where it converges with Illinois, Missouri and Arkansas.

Video and photos posted on social media showed brick buildings in downtown Mayfield flattened, with parked cars nearly buried under debris. The steeple on the historic Graves County courthouse was toppled and the nearby First United Methodist Church partially collapsed.

Mayfield Fire Chief Jeremy Creason, whose own station was destroyed, said the candle factory was diminished to a "pile of bent metal and steel and machinery" and that responders had to at times "crawl over casualties to get to live victims."

Paige Tingle said she drove four hours to the site in the hope of finding her 52-year-old mother, Jill Monroe, who was working at the factory and was last heard from at 9:30 p.m.

"We don't know how to feel, we are just trying to find her," she said. "It's a disaster here."

The genesis of the tornado outbreak was a series of overnight thunderstorms, including a super cell storm that formed in northeast Arkansas. That storm moved from Arkansas and Missouri and into Tennessee and Kentucky.

Unusually high temperatures and humidity created the environment for such an extreme weather event at this time of year, said Victor Gensini, a professor in geographic and atmospheric sciences at Northern Illinois University.

"This is an historic, if not generational event," Gensini said.

Saying the disaster was likely one of the largest tornado outbreaks in U.S. history, President Joe Biden on Saturday approved an emergency declaration for Kentucky.

He told reporters he would be asking the Environmental Protection Agency to examine what role climate change may have played in fuelling the storms, and he raised questions about the tornado warning systems.

"What warning was there? And was it strong enough and was it heeded?" Biden said.

'LIKE A BIG BOMB'

About 130 miles east of Mayfield in Bowling Green, Kentucky, Justin Shepherd said his coffee shop was spared the worst of the storm, which struck other businesses hard on the busy commercial strip just off the bypass to U.S. Highway 31 West.

"We've got some siding and roof damage here, but just across the road there's a brewery that half of it is gone. It's just totally gone, like a big bomb exploded or something."

One person was killed and five seriously injured when a tornado tore through a nursing home with 90 beds in Monette, Arkansas, a small community near the border with Missouri, according to Craighead County Judge Marvin Day.

"We were very blessed that more people weren't killed or injured in that. It could have been a whole lot worse," Day told Reuters.

A few miles away in Leachville, Arkansas, a tornado destroyed a Dollar General Store, killing one person, and laid waste to much of the city's downtown, said Lt. Chuck Brown of the Mississippi County Sheriff's Office in Arkansas.

"It really sounded like a train roaring through town."

In Illinois, at least six workers were confirmed killed after an Amazon.com Inc. warehouse collapsed in the town of Edwardsville, when the winds ripped off the roof and reduced a wall longer than a football field to rubble.

Amazon truck driver Emily Epperson, 23, said she was anxiously waiting for information on the whereabouts of her workmate Austin McEwan late Saturday afternoon to relay to his girlfriend and parents.

"We're so worried because we believe that, you know, he would have been found by now," she told Reuters.

In Tennessee, the severe weather killed at least three people, said Dean Flener, spokesperson for the state's Emergency Management Agency. And two people, including a young child, were killed in their homes in Missouri, Governor Mike Parson said in a statement.

The National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center said it received 36 reports of tornadoes touching down in Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas, and Mississippi.

The weather forecast was broadly clear for Saturday night, but temperatures were expected to drop and thousands of residents lack power and water after the storm. As of Saturday afternoon, nearly 99,000 customers in Kentucky and more than 71,000 in Tennessee were without power, according to PowerOutage.US, a website tracking power outages.

Kentucky officials called on residents to stay off the roads and to donate blood, as responders rushed to rescue survivors and account for people in communities that had lost communications.

"We've got Guardsmen who are out doing door knocks and checking up on folks because there's no other communication with some of these people," said Brigadier General Haldane Lamberton of the Kentucky National Guard.

(Reporting by Cheney Orr; Additional reporting by Njuwa Maina, Brendan O'Brien, Rich McKay, Vishal Vivek, Makini Brice, Valerie Volcovici, Maria Caspani and Steve Gorman; Writing by Nathan Layne and Alexandra Ulmer; Editing by Frances Kerry and Daniel Wallis)

-reuters

US transgender woman wins Democratic nod for governor in Vermont

Washington, United States — Christine Hallquist won the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in the US state of Vermont on Tuesday, moving a step closer to becoming the nation’s first transgender governor, US media reported.

But she still faces an uphill battle in the general election, when she is projected to face Republican incumbent Phil Scott, who has been in office since 2016.

“HISTORY MADE! @christineforvt just became the first trans/non-binary gubernatorial candidate from a major political party in American history!” tweeted the Victory Fund, an organization that supports LGBTQ candidates.


Hallquist transitioned while heading the Vermont Electricity Coop, several years before launching her gubernatorial bid.

In 2015, “Christine made the decision, after years of holding it inside, to come out as her true self, a transgender woman, becoming the first business leader in the country to transition while in office,” according to her campaign’s website.

“Working to ensure that Vermont remains the special, inclusive and progressive place that it has always been… is what motivates Christine to seek the honor and opportunity to serve the people of Vermont as its next governor,” it says.

Hallquist beat out James Ehlers, a Navy veteran and environmentalist, and Brenda Siegel, the executive director of a dance festival, to win the Democratic nomination.

Also among the primary candidates was 14-year-old schoolboy Ethan Sonneborn, who took advantage of a quirk in the constitution of the bucolic northeastern state that imposes no age limit on running for governor.

His website proclaims him a champion for middle- and working-class families, with “the right ideas” on healthcare reform, economic development and education — never mind that he’s still years from graduating high school.

But despite praise for Sonneborn’s “maturity” and political awareness, his campaign attracted calls for Vermont lawmakers to close the loophole.

“I think we should probably take a look at that to be perfectly honest,” Governor Scott told reporters when asked if he thought 14-year-olds should be eligible to run.


“I think you should at least be able to get your driver’s license at the time that you become governor.” /kga

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

US confirms economy grew 3% in Q4

WASHINGTON — The US economy grew at an annual rate of 3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011, the Commerce Department said in its final estimate Thursday.

The department’s third estimate for gross domestic product growth in the period was unrevised from its prior estimate and capped a year of steadily accelerating growth. GDP grew 1.8 percent in the third quarter.

The Commerce Department said the fourth-quarter pick-up was in part thanks to an uptick in private inventory investment and stronger consumer spending that were partially offset by a decline in federal government spending and slowing exports.

The world’s biggest economy also saw an increase in imports, a factor that subtracts from GDP growth calculations.

For all of 2011, the economy grew 1.7 percent, compared with 3 percent in 2010.

Recent data indicates GDP growth slackened in the first quarter.

Scott Hoyt at Moody’s Analytics said the seeds of the slowdown were sown in the fourth quarter as businesses rapidly built up inventories, a pace that would not be maintained.

Other factors that will drag on growth, he said, are reduced government spending and trade “as the recession in Europe undermines exports.”

Nonetheless, Hoyt said, the economy “appears increasingly solid.”

“Looking beyond temporary factors such as the warm winter, GDP appears to be expanding at an annual rate near 2.5 percent,” he said.

“While hardly a boom pace, this is strong enough to expand employment and reduce joblessness in coming months.”

source: http://business.inquirer.net/51761/us-confirms-economy-grew-3-in-q4