Author Archive
New York City Mayor Eric Adams says he is bringing back a controversial police unit to investigate gun violence. The previous unit was disbanded in 2020 after years of complaints over excessive force and racial profiling.
Seth Wenig/AP
Seth Wenig/AP
An 11-month-old girl was struck by a stray bullet that hit the parked car she was in on a street in the Bronx Wednesday. Last night, two police officers were shot, one fatally, as they checked out a domestic dispute call in Harlem. The suspected gunman also was killed.
These cases, and those of hundreds of others over the past year, have frustrated residents and police alike. They want the gun violence to stop.
New York City mayor and former cop, Eric Adams, has vowed to put an end to it. Among his strategies: reinstating the controversial plainclothes police unit. It’s special anti-crime street unit with officers dressed as civilians.
“The plainclothes anti-gun unit is going to zero in on guns and gangs. We’re going to use precision policing to identify the gang members, the crews,” he said. “We’re going to target them.”
For many New Yorkers, this is a welcome response to the shootings which, feel out of control.
But plainclothes police are also a sensitive subject here. The unit was dismantled in 2020, after its tactics being declared unconstitutional. Residents and civil rights advocates had complained for years that the unit used excessive force and that it targeted people of color who it found “suspicious.”
“The anti-crime unit was primarily tasked with doing these stops. And they would do them violently,” says Jenn Borchetta, a managing director at the legal non-profit Bronx Defenders. “They would throw people against walls. I mean, we have one client who is 13 years old who was thrown against the hood of a car. Just for crossing the street.”
The peak of the “stop-and-frisk” era, as it was known, was 2011. NYPD stopped over 680,000 people. Only 9% of them were white. The vast majority, an estimated 88%, hadn’t committed any crimes.
Not just civilians and advocates felt “stop-and-frisk” was problematic
For many communities, it created a sense of living in constant danger, Borchetta says. “It was Black and brown people who every time they left their homes, they felt they were going to get jumped.”
NYPD’s use of stop-and-frisk was later ruled unconstitutional.
It wasn’t just civilians and advocates who felt it was a problematic practice.
“I think most patrol officers who worked then, if they’re going to be honest, they’re going to say, they felt that pressure,” says Professor Keith Ross, at John Jay college. Ross is a former NYPD plainclothes officer.
“I think in the early inception of these programs, police did feel empowered because they felt like they were making a difference in the communities that they worked with,” he says. “But eventually, well, you don’t really feel like you’re helping people.”
Ross blames an excessive emphasis on productivity, on constantly making arrests. “You have productivity goals,” he recalls “and if you don’t meet those goals, eventually you’re going to be disciplined.” Which, he says, led to people who shouldn’t have been targeted, suddenly getting picked up for misdemeanors.
One big question about these policies is: Did they work?
According to the New York Civil Liberties Union, or NYCLU, of the nearly 700,000 NYPD stops in 2011, 780 guns were seized.
A study by NYU and Columbia found there was a small reduction in crime.
That leads to another question: What was the cost?
Amadou Diallo’s murder became symbolic of the NYPD plainclothes excesses.
Courtesy of the Diallo Family.
Courtesy of the Diallo Family.
Several high-profile killings in NYC over the years involved plainclothes police
Many point to the case of Amadou Diallo.
Diallo was a 23-year-old Guinean immigrant living in the U.S. In 1999, he was stopped by plainclothes police. They said he fit the description of a rapist in the area.
Officers fired 41 shots. He was shot 19 times and killed.
Officers said he was reaching for a gun.
He was reaching for his wallet. He didn’t have a gun.
All officers involved in the shooting were later acquitted at trial.
The Diallo case resonated with many in New York who wanted the unit shut down. But there would be other high profile killings over the years involving plainclothes police: Eric Garner, Sean Bell, and Saheed Vassell.
NEW YORK, UNITED STATES: Kadiadou Diallo, the mother of Amadou Diallo.
Henny Ray Abrams/AFP via Getty Images
Henny Ray Abrams/AFP via Getty Images
Shawn Williams stands next to a picture of his son, Antonio. He was shot at 15 times and killed by plainclothes officers in the Bronx in 2019
Jasmine Garsd/NPR/Jasmine Garsd/NPR
Jasmine Garsd/NPR/Jasmine Garsd/NPR
“Bringing back the plainclothes unit is wrong”
In 2020, the unit was disbanded, amidst widespread protests locally and nationally over police brutality.
Kadiatou Diallo, Amadou’s mother, says bringing the unit back now, is wrong. She’s skeptical the force can change.
“You cannot just change, rebrand, and retrain people who have been doing something not good,” she says.
She wants the mayor “to be a son, to be a father, to understand” the grief of families who have lost loved ones to gun violence and to encounters with police.
The mayor, Adams, says he is thinking, precisely, of those families. And he’s emphasized that when he was in the NYPD, he spoke out against police brutality.
NYC mayor says the plainclothes police unit will work differently this time around
His administration has not yet given specifics about how officers in the unit will work, but he’s promised that this time around it will be a different.
They will wear body cameras.
They will focus on criminals.
There will be consequences for police who overstep.
Accountability is something Shawn Williams is eager to see. In 2019, his son, Antonio Williams, was shot and killed by plainclothes officers. He was waiting for a taxi when police approached him. They were investigating illegal guns in the area. He ran, and police say during the struggle he was shot eight times. A plainclothes policeman also was killed during the arrest, shot by another officer.
Williams was 27. He was armed but police say he did not shoot his weapon. He had prior convictions, one in 2011 and another in 2018, both for nonviolent offenses. His family has accused police of releasing the information to distract from their own behavior.
Shawn William says in order for there to be any sense of trust in the police, “They need to start holding cops accountable for their actions. Not a smack on the wrist, not ‘you’re on suspension, you still get your salary.’ ”
It’s been more than two years since his son was killed. The Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB), the agency that investigates and mediates complaints against the NYPD, opened an investigation just a few months ago.
Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh arrives for a great chanting ceremony at Vinh Nghiem Pagoda in Ho Chi Minh City in 2007. Nhat Hanh, who helped pioneer the concept of mindfulness in the West, died at age 95 on Saturday.
AP file photo
AP file photo
HANOI, Vietnam — Thich Nhat Hanh, the revered Zen Buddhist monk who helped pioneer the concept of mindfulness in the West and socially engaged Buddhism in the East, has died. He was 95.
A post on the monk’s verified Twitter page attributed to The International Plum Village Community of Engaged Buddhism said that Nhat Hanh, known as Thay to his followers, died at Tu Hieu Temple in Hue, Vietnam.
The International Plum Village Community of Engaged Buddhism announces that our beloved teacher Thich Nhat Hanh passed away peacefully at Từ Hiếu Temple in Huế, Vietnam, at 00:00hrs on 22nd January, 2022, at the age of 95. #thichnhathanh #Buddhism
— Thich Nhat Hanh (@thichnhathanh) January 21, 2022
“We invite our beloved global spiritual family to take a few moments to be still, to come back to our mindful breathing, as we together hold Thay in our hearts,” a follow-up post read.
Born as Nguyen Xuan Bao in 1926 and ordained at age 16, Nhat Hanh distilled Buddhist teachings on compassion and suffering into easily grasped guidance over a lifetime dedicated to working for peace. In 1961 he went to the United States to study, teaching comparative religion for a time at Princeton and Columbia universities.
For most of the remainder of his life, he lived in exile at Plum Village, a retreat center he founded in southern France.
There and in talks and retreats around the world, he introduced Zen Buddhism, at its essence, as peace through compassionate listening. Still and steadfast in his brown robes, he exuded an air of watchful, amused calm, sometimes sharing a stage with the somewhat livelier Tibetan Buddhist leader Dalai Lama.
“The peace we seek cannot be our personal possession. We need to find an inner peace which makes it possible for us to become one with those who suffer, and to do something to help our brothers and sisters, which is to say, ourselves,” Nhat Hanh wrote in one of his dozens of books, “The Sun My Heart.”
Surviving a stroke in 2014 that left him unable to speak, he returned to Vietnam in October 2018, spending his final years at the Tu Hieu Pagoda, the monastery where he was ordained nearly 80 years earlier.
Nhat Hanh plunged into anti-war activism after his return to his homeland in 1964 as the Vietnam War was escalating. There, he founded the Order of Inter-being, which espouses “engaged Buddhism” dedicated to nonviolence, mindfulness and social service.
In 1966, he met the U.S. civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in what was a remarkable encounter for both. Nhat Hanh told King he was a “Bodhisattva,” or enlightened being, for his efforts to promote social justice.
The monk’s efforts to promote reconciliation between the U.S.-backed South and communist North Vietnam so impressed King that a year later he nominated Nhat Hanh for the Nobel Peace Prize.
We celebrate the life and global, humane influence of #ThichNhatHanh, an ally of Dr. King’s, who died Saturday.
Here’s a photo of the two at a news conference in Chicago in 1966. #MLK nominated Thich Nhat Hanh for a Nobel Peace Prize the next year.
?: Edward Kitch/AP pic.twitter.com/CJTJ7zHKv2
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center (@TheKingCenter) January 21, 2022
In his exchanges with King, Nhat Hanh explained one of the rare controversies in his long life of advocating for peace — over the immolations of some Vietnamese monks and nuns to protest the war.
“I said this was not suicide, because in a difficult situation like Vietnam, to make your voice heard is difficult. So sometimes we have to burn ourselves alive in order for our voice to be heard so that is an act of compassion that you do that, the act of love and not of despair,” he said in an interview with U.S. talk show host Oprah Winfrey. “Jesus Christ died in the same spirit.”
Sulak Sivaraksa, a Thai academic who embraced Nhat Hanh’s idea of socially engaged Buddhism, said the Zen master had “suffered more than most monks and had been involved more for social justice.”
“In Vietnam in the 1950s and 1960s, he was very exposed to young people, and his society was in turmoil, in crisis. He was really in a difficult position, between the devil and the deep blue sea — the Communists on the one hand, the CIA on the other hand. In such a situation, he has been very honest — as an activist, as a contemplative monk, as a poet, and as a clear writer,” Sivaraksa was quoted as saying.
According to Nhat Hanh, “Buddhism means to be awake — mindful of what is happening in one’s body, feelings, mind and in the world. If you are awake, you cannot do otherwise than act compassionately to help relieve suffering you see around you. So Buddhism must be engaged in the world. If it is not engaged, it is not Buddhism.”
Both North and South Vietnam barred Nhat Hanh from returning home after he went abroad in 1966 to campaign against the war, leaving him, he said, “like a bee without a beehive.”
He was only allowed back into the country in 2005, when the communist-ruled government welcomed him back in the first of several visits. Nhat Hanh remained based in southern France.
The dramatic homecoming seemed to signal an easing of controls on religion. Nhat Hanh’s followers were invited by the abbot of Bat Nha to settle at his mountain monastery, where they remained for several years until relations with the authorities began to sour over Nhat Hanh’s calls for an end to government control over religion.
By late 2009 to early 2010, Nhat Hanh’s followers were evicted from the monastery and from another temple where they had taken refuge.
Over nearly eight decades, Nhat Hanh’s teachings were refined into concepts accessible to all.
To weather the storms of life and realize happiness, he counseled always a mindful “return to the breath,” even while doing routine chores like sweeping and washing dishes.
“I try to live every moment like that, relaxed, dwelling peacefully in the present moment and respond to events with compassion,” he told Winfrey.
Nhat Hanh moved to Thailand in late 2016 and then returned to Vietnam in late 2018, where he was receiving traditional medicine treatments for the after-effects of his stroke and enjoyed “strolls” around the temple grounds in his wheelchair, according to the Buddhist online newsletter LionsRoar.com.
It was a quiet, simple end to an extraordinary life, one entirely in keeping with his love for taking joy from the humblest aspects of life. “No mud, no lotus,” says one of his many brief sayings.
People walk past the Sol Tribe tattoo shop where two women were shot and killed and a man injured on Dec. 27 in Denver, Colo. It was the first in a series of shootings that claimed five lives across the area.
Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images
Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images
Attorney General Merrick Garland on Friday said the federal government wants to create a “comprehensive” response to the scourge of gun crime that involves working more with cities and states.
“At the Justice Department, we stand shoulder to shoulder with you in the fight against violent crime and we will use every tool at our disposal to protect our communities,” Garland said in remarks to the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Washington on Friday.
The number of murders in the U.S. jumped by nearly 30% in 2020 from 2019, according to the FBI, the largest single-year increase ever recorded.
The Council on Criminal Justice think tank reported earlier this month that murders rose 7% last year, based on police data from large cities, with Indianapolis, Philadelphia, Portland and at least 10 other municipalities still seeing record numbers of homicides.
Looking beyond officers on the street
State and local police are on the front lines in the battle against gun violence, homicide and assault, and Quinton Lucas, mayor of Kansas City, Missouri, said that communities need a variety of help from the federal government.
“The challenge of the last few years is that too much of the debate has been either-or,” said Lucas, who chairs the mayors conference’s Criminal and Social Justice Committee. “It is either law enforcement — police officers on the street and funding them — or you invest in programs in your community, violence interruption, cure violence models, etc.”
Kansas City saw 182 homicides in 2021, the second deadliest year in its history. Lucas said the Justice Department under former President Donald Trump flooded many cities with federal agents. Now Lucas wants another kind of flood.
“Resources that help us fund more of our social work programs, particularly our work with young people, that’s the sort of change we need from this administration,” he said. “And I think mayors are waiting to see when that will happen because, Lord knows, the problem isn’t easing up in any of our cities.”
Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas addresses demonstrators with a bullhorn during a protest at the Country Club Plaza on May 31, 2020 in Kansas City, Missouri.
Jamie Squire/Getty Images
Jamie Squire/Getty Images
The Justice Department under President Joe Biden has already launched five strike forces to disrupt illegal firearms traffic and share intelligence. Garland also has been using executive action: proposing new rules to curb the spread of ghost guns that lack serial numbers to and promote the safe storage of firearms so those weapons stay out of the wrong hands.
Last year the Justice Department handed out $139 million to spur the hiring of more cops on the street. But the Attorney General said on Friday that the department also wants to invest in social workers, community violence interrupters, and programs to help people with mental illness.
There’s a need for more enforcement of laws already on the books, and a new leader for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said Kris Brown, president of Brady United Against Gun Violence. The Biden administration’s first choice for that job, David Chipman, withdrew his candidacy last September after opposition in the Senate and among gun rights groups.
The parents of Valentina Orellana-Peralta, the 14-year-old girl killed by a stray bullet fired by an LAPD officer at a North Hollywood clothing store last week, and their attorneys held a news conference Dec. 28, 2021.
Ringo H.W. Chiu/AP
Ringo H.W. Chiu/AP
The ATF inspects only a small fraction of gun stores each year and less than one percent of federally licensed gun dealers have their licenses revoked even after serious infractions, Brown said. Her group had to sue for access to information about which gun dealers are responsible for many firearms used in crimes.
“We need this administration to put a director forward who understands the agency and make it work exactly the way it should,” Brown said.
The new threat: aggression toward election officials
The Justice Department is grappling with multiple challenges, including some 850 reports of threats to officials overseeing elections in states across the country.
On Friday, federal prosecutors brought their first criminal case against a Texas man who threatened officials in Georgia.
Chad Stark, 54, allegedly wrote it was time to “put a bullet” in one election official and pay a visit to another election worker and her family. The indictment cited a post to Craigslist dated Jan. 5, 2021, in which Stark said, “we will find you oathbreakers and we’re going to pay your family to visit your mom your dad your brothers and sisters your children your wife… we’re going to make examples of traitors to our country… death to you and all you communist friends.”
“Today’s charges are a milestone for the election threats task force I announced just last summer,” said Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, in an exclusive interview with NPR. “It wasn’t just that we had seen a surge in threats but also frankly the alarmingly personal and violent and aggressive nature of the threats.”
U.S. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco speaks during a news conference with other federal law enforcement officials at the Robert F. Kennedy Main Justice Building on Nov. 08, 2021 in Washington, DC.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Monaco said election workers are protecting democracy–and the Justice Department will protect them.
“Today’s charges are the first but they will not be the last,” Monaco said.
Justice Department officials said there are dozens of open investigations into election threats.
After performing six nights a week for nearly four decades, Los Angeles musician Marty Roberts has died. He was half of the husband-and-wife duo Marty & Elayne.
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
The jazz and lounge music world has lost one of its most iconic personalities. Marty Roberts, one half of the married lounge act Marty & Elayne, died last week at 89.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
For decades, the duo performed five or six nights a week, Marty on drums and vocals, Elayne on piano and flute.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “SWINGERS”)
MARTY AND ELAYNE: (Singing) You can tell by the way I use my walk I’m a woman’s man – no time to talk.
KELLY: They were fixtures at the Los Angeles bar and restaurant the Dresden Room, where they played an eclectic mix of jazz standards, original numbers and their own twists on pop hits.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “SWINGERS”)
MARTY AND ELAYNE: (Singing) Staying alive – ah, ah, ah, ah, staying alive.
CHANG: That rendition of “Stayin’ Alive,” a cameo in the 1996 movie “Swingers,” shot them into pop culture stardom. Their daughter, Hali Gillin, says the duo often drew standing-room-only crowds.
HALI GILLIN: They have fans in probably every country. And they would come to America, and that would be one of the stops that they needed to make.
CHANG: And though they may have come for the music, the fans would get plenty of personality, too.
GILLIN: If you were rude and talked a lot while my mom was playing certain songs, she would turn up the synthesizer and teach you that’s not polite (laughter). And my dad – if you talked too much, he would literally get on the mic and say, hey; you don’t have a speaking part in this.
KELLY: Gillin says that frankness was on full display when her mother first met Roberts back in 1970.
GILLIN: My dad – he was a hairdresser before. And so he looked at my mom and basically said, like, I need to trim your hair. Like, you got some split ends (laughter). My mom was like, how rude. But eventually they got past it. And my mom said she knew right when she met him that she was going to marry him.
KELLY: And she did. They married just four months later.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “COME FLY WITH ME”)
MARTY AND ELAYNE: (Singing) Come on and fly with me. Let’s fly. Let’s fly away.
CHANG: Through the decades, the pair has had their share of famous fans. When Frank Sinatra showed up to see them play, Roberts serenaded Sinatra with one of the legend’s own tunes.
KELLY: Marty & Elayne continued to record together until just about a month ago. Marty Roberts died of cancer last Thursday. He was 89 years old.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “COME FLY WITH ME”)
MARTY AND ELAYNE: (Singing) Come fly with me. Let’s fly. Let’s fly away. (Scatting).
Copyright © 2022 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
Brian Blauser/Mountain Stage
Blessed with a soaring, church-built vocal range that’s often compared to Ray Charles, Chris Pierce has been all over the scene for the past 15 years. Discovered by Seal while attending USC, the indie, folk and blues singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist has kept the rubber hot, touring 150 days a year while sharing the stage with such artists as Jill Scott, Al Green, Robert Cray, and Toots and the Maytals.
Making his first Mountain Stage appearance, recorded at the Culture Center Theater in Charleston, S.C., Pierce shared power-packed songs from a new, critically acclaimed album titled American Silence.
Accompanied by acoustic guitar and vocals, Pierce carved the words of that album’s title track into the bones, singing of the American posture – complacency – in addressing and dealing with race issues: “Can we sing a song for you? / Will music move your heart and mind? / Will our song arrest you? / American silence is a crime.”
Concluding the tune on a fierce note, Pierce tells the crowd the origin story of the next: “I started to get a lot of calls from family and friends, and I come from a very diverse family … they all wanted to hear about what it felt like to be a Black man in America. I wanted the chorus to be a summary about racism, ‘Shame it, face it, damn it all to hell.’ This is ‘Sound All The Bells.’ “
Pierce closes the set with “Young Black and Beautiful,” a song of hope and resilience he wrote as a love letter to young Black kids everywhere – and to his former self, a 15-year-old who went deaf before eventually regaining most of the hearing in his right ear.
“Keep walking on against the wind / When you fall down get up again / You may be pushed, shoved and tossed / Know in your heart it is their loss.”
Set list:
- “American Silence”
- “Sound All the Bells”
- “Chain Gang Fourth of July”
- “It’s Been Burning For A While”
- “Young, Black And Beautiful”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken greets Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov before their meeting on Friday in Geneva.
Alex Brandon/AP
Alex Brandon/AP
No breakthroughs, but an agreement to keep talking.
That’s the upshot from a meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his Kremlin counterpart in Switzerland — the latest in a series of high-level talks that the Biden administration hopes will stave off a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine.
At a news conference following his 1.5-hour-long face-to-face with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Geneva, Blinken described the discussion as “frank and substantive,” saying, “We didn’t expect any major breakthroughs to happen today, but I believe we are now on a clear path in terms of understanding each other’s concerns and each other’s positions.”
Blinken said he’d made clear the position of the U.S. and its allies, which is to “stand firmly with Ukraine in support of its sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
Russia, with an estimated 100,000 troops poised for a possible move across the border into Ukraine, is demanding written guarantees that Kyiv will never be allowed to join NATO. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied that it has any plans to invade.
The U.S. has been equally adamant that Ukraine should make its own decision on whether to join the alliance formed in 1949, originally as a bulwark against Soviet expansion in Western Europe.
“If any Russian military forces move across Ukraine’s border, that’s a renewed invasion,” Blinken said in an apparent reference to the Kremlin’s 2014 occupation and annexation of Crimea. Military action would “be met with swift, severe, and a united response from the United States and our partners and allies,” he added.
The U.S. envoy also acknowledged that Russian provocations short of invasion, including cyberattacks and paramilitary tactics, would also be met with a “decisive, calibrated, and again, united response.”
The door is open for more talks
Even so, Blinken left the door open to addressing Russia’s “security concerns” and said that he and Lavrov “also talked about the way forward.”
“I told him that following the consultations that we’ll have in the coming days with allies and partners, we anticipate that we will be able to share with Russia our concerns and ideas in more detail and in writing next week,” Blinken said. “And we agreed to further discussions after that. We agreed as well that further diplomatic discussions would be the preferable way forward, but again, it is really up to Russia to decide which path it will pursue.”
Lavrov said the two diplomats “ended up with an agreement that we will receive written responses to all our proposals next week.”
Blinken and Lavrov started Friday’s discussion with a handshake before sitting down to talks at the Hotel President Wilson in Geneva, with both parties acknowledging that a breakthrough was unlikely.
The U.S. envoy arrived in Switzerland after meetings in Berlin with several NATO allies to try to shore up support for sanctions and present a united front against Russia. In his remarks in Germany, Blinken said that Russian President Vladimir Putin faced a simple but stark choice: “dialogue and diplomacy on the one hand; conflict and consequences on the other hand.”
Biden’s “minor incursion” remark muddies the waters
Blinken’s efforts follow remarks by President Biden earlier this week that have muddied the waters. Speaking on Wednesday, Biden said he thought the Kremlin “will move” against Ukraine resulting in a “disaster for Russia.” But he also suggested that anything short of a full invasion would leave the U.S. and its European allies in a quandary as to how to respond.
“I think what you’re going to see is that Russia will be held accountable if it invades,” Biden said. “And it depends on what it does. It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion and then we end up having a fight about what to do and not do.”
The White House has spent the last few days trying to clean up Biden’s remarks. While the dilemma they reflect is obvious, stating that dilemma publicly could send the wrong signal to Moscow. In any case, Biden’s comments sparked a response from Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who in a tweet on Thursday said: “We want to remind the great powers that there are no minor incursions and small nations.”
On Wednesday, the U.S. announced that it was providing $200 million in additional military aid to Ukraine that had been approved in December to help the country defend itself against a possible invasion.
Since 2014, when Russia occupied and annexed Crimea and began providing material support to separatists in Ukraine’s east, the U.S. has stepped up military aid to Kyiv.
Russia would likely have an upper hand in conflict against Ukraine
Ukraine’s military is considered formidable, with considerable battlefield experience in the separatist eastern Donbass region, where at least 14,000 people have been killed in nearly eight years of fighting, according to Kyiv.
A Russian tank T-72B3 fires as troops take part in drills at the Kadamovskiy firing range in the Rostov region in southern Russia earlier this month.
AP
AP
However, Russia’s much larger and more modern army would likely have the upper hand in any military scenario. Its troops at the border are also likely to be backed by heavy artillery and an updated version of Russia’s venerable T-72 tank.
The Russian advantage in armor has made Kyiv especially keen to get its hands on U.S.-made Javelin anti-tank missiles — a request that Washington has obliged.
In 2018, Ukraine’s request for the Javelin missiles figured prominently in a telephone call between Zelenskyy and then-President Donald Trump that led to Trump’s first impeachment.
A man inspects the wreckage of a building after it was damaged in Saudi-led coalition airstrikes, in Sanaa, Yemen, Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2022.
Hani Mohammed/AP
Hani Mohammed/AP
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Yemen lost its connection to the internet nationwide early Friday after Saudi-led airstrikes targeted a site in the contested city of Hodeida, an advocacy group said, plunging the war-torn nation offline.
NetBlocks said the disruption began around 1 a.m. local and affected TeleYemen, the state-owned monopoly that controls internet access in the country. TeleYemen is now run by the Houthi rebels who have held Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, since late 2014.
Yemen was “in the midst of a nation-scale internet blackout following airstrike on (a) telecom building,” NetBlocks said, without immediately elaborating.
The San Diego-based Center for Applied Internet Data Analysis and San Francisco-based internet firm CloudFlare also noted a nationwide outage affecting Yemen beginning around the same time.
The Houthi’s Al-Masirah satellite news channel said the strike on the telecommunications building had killed and wounded people. It released chaotic footage of people digging through rubble for a body as gunshots could be heard. Aid workers assisted bloodied survivors.
The Saudi-led coalition battling the Houthi rebels acknowledged carrying out “accurate airstrikes to destroy the capabilities of the militia” around Hodeida’s port. It did not immediately acknowledge striking a telecommunication target as NetBlocks described, but instead called Hodeida a hub for piracy and Iranian arms smuggling to back the Houthis.
The undersea FALCON cable carries internet into Yemen through the Hodeida port along the Red Sea for TeleYemen. The FALCON cable has another landing in Yemen’s far eastern port of Ghaydah as well, but the majority of Yemen’s population lives in its west along the Red Sea.
A cut to the FALCON cable in 2020 caused by a ship’s anchor also caused widespread internet outages in Yemen. Land cables to Saudi Arabia have been cut since the start of Yemen’s civil war, while connections to two other undersea cables have yet to be made amid the conflict, TeleYemen previously said.
A Saudi-led coalition entered Yemen’s war in 2015 to back its ousted government. The war has turned into the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with international criticism of Saudi airstrikes killing civilians and targeting the country’s infrastructure. The Houthis meanwhile have used child soldiers and indiscriminately laid landmines across the country.
The war reached into the United Arab Emirates, a Saudi ally, on Monday when the Houthis claimed a drone and missile attack on Abu Dhabi, killing three and wounding six.
___
Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.
Adele performs at Genting Arena in March 2016 in Birmingham, England. The British singer and songwriter announced that her Las Vegas residency has been postponed due to COVID-19 issues.
Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images
Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images
British singer Adele announced Thursday the postponement of her Las Vegas residency due to COVID-related issues — just one day before it was slated to begin.
“I’m so sorry, but my show ain’t ready. We’ve tried absolutely everything that we can to put it together in time, and for it to be good enough for you, but we’ve been absolutely destroyed by delivery delays and COVID,” the award-winning singer and songwriter said in a video posted to her social media.
“Half my crew, half my team are down with COVID. They still are. And it’s been impossible to finish the show. And I can’t give you what I have right now,” she continued.
Her residency, titled “Weekends With Adele,” was scheduled to begin this Friday at the Colosseum of Las Vegas’ Caesars Palace Hotel. The residency was expected to run through the middle of April, featuring her most recent album, “30,” which was released last November.
“It’s been impossible to finish the show,” Adele says, as she tears up in the video. “And I’m so upset, and I’m really embarrassed, and I’m so sorry to everyone that traveled again. I’m really, really sorry.”
New dates for Adele’s residency have yet not been announced. However, the singer wrote in the video caption that more information will be “coming soon.”
Following her Las Vegas residency dates, Adele is slated to perform at London’s Hyde Park in July. She did not say in the video whether her July concert was also subject to change.
Brazilian singer Elza Soares performs at the Rock in Rio music festival in Rio de Janeiro in 2019. Soares died on Thursday.
Leo Correa/AP
Leo Correa/AP
RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazilian samba singer Elza Soares died in her Rio de Janeiro home on Thursday afternoon, family members said on the artist’s official Instagram account. She was 91.
The singer “moved the world with her voice, her strength and her determination,” they said, adding she “will forever be in the history of music and in our hearts and the thousands of fans around the world.”
The family said Soares died of ”natural causes” and did not provide further detail.
Soares in 1970 in Rome.
Gianni Foggia/AP
Gianni Foggia/AP
Elza Gomes da Conceição was born in June 1930, in a modest Rio de Janeiro household. She became famous singing samba in the early 1960s, before diversifying to other genres, winning her the title of “singer of the millennium” in a BBC London competition in 1999.
Last month, she featured in a documentary series paying tribute to Black women singers who paved the way for other artists.
“Just like Elza Soares wanted, she sang until the end,” family members said in a statement Thursday.
President Biden planned to talk about infrastructure on the anniversary of his inauguration. But first, he had to clean up some comments he had made about Russia and Ukraine.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
President Biden and his White House on Thursday tried to clean up comments he made about Russia during a lengthy news conference the previous day.
On Wednesday, Biden had predicted Russia would invade Ukraine, but suggested there was a split among NATO members about how to respond if Moscow took action that stopped short of sending its troops across the border — something Biden referred to as a “minor incursion.” He said:
“I think what you’re going to see is that Russia will be held accountable if it invades. And it depends on what it does. It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion and then we end up having a fight about what to do and not do.”
The president’s unusually frank comments came at a delicate time. U.S. and European officials are working to find a diplomatic way to end tensions after months of Russian troop movements around the Russia-Ukraine border.
They immediately raised alarms at home — and overseas. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Twitter that there was no such thing as “minor incursions.”
The uproar left White House officials spending the one-year anniversary of Biden’s time in office doing a lot of damage control.
We want to remind the great powers that there are no minor incursions and small nations. Just as there are no minor casualties and little grief from the loss of loved ones. I say this as the President of a great power ??
— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) January 20, 2022
The White House quickly issued a walk-back
Shortly after Biden wrapped up his press conference, his press secretary Jen Psaki issued a statement trying to explain what he meant:
“If any Russian military forces move across the Ukrainian border, that’s a renewed invasion, and it will be met with a swift, severe, and united response from the United States and our allies.”
She said that “aggression short of military action” like cyberattacks and paramilitary hits “will be met with a decisive, reciprocal, and united response.”
Then Biden offered his own clarification
On Thursday morning, the president began an unrelated infrastructure event seeking to fix the fallout and clarify his stance.
“If any — any — assembled Russian units move across the Ukrainian border, that is an invasion,” Biden said, adding that it would result in a “severe and coordinated economic response” that he has discussed with allies.
“Let there be no doubt at all that if [Russian President Vladimir] Putin makes this choice, Russia will pay a heavy price,” the president said. But he also said the United States needed to be prepared for other scenarios beyond overt military tactics, such as paramilitary operations or cyber attacks.
White House officials talked to Ukraine and others
Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Berlin, meeting with allies. He plans to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday.
Bernd Von Jturczenka/Pool/AFP via Getty Images
Bernd Von Jturczenka/Pool/AFP via Getty Images
Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan spoke about the situation with top officials from nine allies on NATO’s eastern flank, and his counterpart in Japan, the White House said.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Antony Blinken — who is slated to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday — spoke with allies in Berlin.
“We have been in touch at a high level with Ukrainian officials and leaders,” Psaki told reporters at the White House on Thursday.
She also spent time explaining Biden’s comments on major U.S. television networks.
It’s not clear how the U.S. would respond to a paramilitary or cyber hit
Psaki confirmed during Thursday’s press briefing that paramilitary and cyber attacks would be considered “minor incursions” and said “we need to be prepared for a range of scenarios, and we have a range of tools and tactics at our disposal.”
She insisted the White House’s intention was not to diminish the efforts of previous administrations to treat cyberwarfare as a threat that is as dangerous as physical military invasions — though she would not say what kind of response a Russian cyber hit would receive.
Psaki downplayed the specter of a NATO split:
“On NATO, what he was conveying is that we have been focused in ensuring that we remain united with NATO. Now united doesn’t mean that everything will be identical — it means we’re united in taking action should they decide to invade.”
Will Biden talk to Putin again?
During his press conference, Biden was asked whether he was considering another summit with Putin to find a diplomatic solution. “Yes,” Biden replied. “I think that is a possibility.”
Washington has repeatedly warned Russia not to invade Ukraine. Biden spoke with Putin twice last month in the hopes of deescalating the situation.
Psaki said she had nothing to predict about further calls or meetings. “I expect when Secretary Blinken comes back, they’ll discuss with the national security team what the right next steps are,” she said.
AdSense
New York City Mayor Eric Adams says he is bringing back a controversial police unit to investigate gun violence. The previous unit was disbanded in 2020 after years of complaints over excessive force and racial profiling.
Seth Wenig/AP
Seth Wenig/AP
An 11-month-old girl was struck by a stray bullet that hit the parked car she was in on a street in the Bronx Wednesday. Last night, two police officers were shot, one fatally, as they checked out a domestic dispute call in Harlem. The suspected gunman also was killed.
These cases, and those of hundreds of others over the past year, have frustrated residents and police alike. They want the gun violence to stop.
New York City mayor and former cop, Eric Adams, has vowed to put an end to it. Among his strategies: reinstating the controversial plainclothes police unit. It’s special anti-crime street unit with officers dressed as civilians.
“The plainclothes anti-gun unit is going to zero in on guns and gangs. We’re going to use precision policing to identify the gang members, the crews,” he said. “We’re going to target them.”
For many New Yorkers, this is a welcome response to the shootings which, feel out of control.
But plainclothes police are also a sensitive subject here. The unit was dismantled in 2020, after its tactics being declared unconstitutional. Residents and civil rights advocates had complained for years that the unit used excessive force and that it targeted people of color who it found “suspicious.”
“The anti-crime unit was primarily tasked with doing these stops. And they would do them violently,” says Jenn Borchetta, a managing director at the legal non-profit Bronx Defenders. “They would throw people against walls. I mean, we have one client who is 13 years old who was thrown against the hood of a car. Just for crossing the street.”
The peak of the “stop-and-frisk” era, as it was known, was 2011. NYPD stopped over 680,000 people. Only 9% of them were white. The vast majority, an estimated 88%, hadn’t committed any crimes.
Not just civilians and advocates felt “stop-and-frisk” was problematic
For many communities, it created a sense of living in constant danger, Borchetta says. “It was Black and brown people who every time they left their homes, they felt they were going to get jumped.”
NYPD’s use of stop-and-frisk was later ruled unconstitutional.
It wasn’t just civilians and advocates who felt it was a problematic practice.
“I think most patrol officers who worked then, if they’re going to be honest, they’re going to say, they felt that pressure,” says Professor Keith Ross, at John Jay college. Ross is a former NYPD plainclothes officer.
“I think in the early inception of these programs, police did feel empowered because they felt like they were making a difference in the communities that they worked with,” he says. “But eventually, well, you don’t really feel like you’re helping people.”
Ross blames an excessive emphasis on productivity, on constantly making arrests. “You have productivity goals,” he recalls “and if you don’t meet those goals, eventually you’re going to be disciplined.” Which, he says, led to people who shouldn’t have been targeted, suddenly getting picked up for misdemeanors.
One big question about these policies is: Did they work?
According to the New York Civil Liberties Union, or NYCLU, of the nearly 700,000 NYPD stops in 2011, 780 guns were seized.
A study by NYU and Columbia found there was a small reduction in crime.
That leads to another question: What was the cost?
Amadou Diallo’s murder became symbolic of the NYPD plainclothes excesses.
Courtesy of the Diallo Family.
Courtesy of the Diallo Family.
Several high-profile killings in NYC over the years involved plainclothes police
Many point to the case of Amadou Diallo.
Diallo was a 23-year-old Guinean immigrant living in the U.S. In 1999, he was stopped by plainclothes police. They said he fit the description of a rapist in the area.
Officers fired 41 shots. He was shot 19 times and killed.
Officers said he was reaching for a gun.
He was reaching for his wallet. He didn’t have a gun.
All officers involved in the shooting were later acquitted at trial.
The Diallo case resonated with many in New York who wanted the unit shut down. But there would be other high profile killings over the years involving plainclothes police: Eric Garner, Sean Bell, and Saheed Vassell.
NEW YORK, UNITED STATES: Kadiadou Diallo, the mother of Amadou Diallo.
Henny Ray Abrams/AFP via Getty Images
Henny Ray Abrams/AFP via Getty Images
Shawn Williams stands next to a picture of his son, Antonio. He was shot at 15 times and killed by plainclothes officers in the Bronx in 2019
Jasmine Garsd/NPR/Jasmine Garsd/NPR
Jasmine Garsd/NPR/Jasmine Garsd/NPR
“Bringing back the plainclothes unit is wrong”
In 2020, the unit was disbanded, amidst widespread protests locally and nationally over police brutality.
Kadiatou Diallo, Amadou’s mother, says bringing the unit back now, is wrong. She’s skeptical the force can change.
“You cannot just change, rebrand, and retrain people who have been doing something not good,” she says.
She wants the mayor “to be a son, to be a father, to understand” the grief of families who have lost loved ones to gun violence and to encounters with police.
The mayor, Adams, says he is thinking, precisely, of those families. And he’s emphasized that when he was in the NYPD, he spoke out against police brutality.
NYC mayor says the plainclothes police unit will work differently this time around
His administration has not yet given specifics about how officers in the unit will work, but he’s promised that this time around it will be a different.
They will wear body cameras.
They will focus on criminals.
There will be consequences for police who overstep.
Accountability is something Shawn Williams is eager to see. In 2019, his son, Antonio Williams, was shot and killed by plainclothes officers. He was waiting for a taxi when police approached him. They were investigating illegal guns in the area. He ran, and police say during the struggle he was shot eight times. A plainclothes policeman also was killed during the arrest, shot by another officer.
Williams was 27. He was armed but police say he did not shoot his weapon. He had prior convictions, one in 2011 and another in 2018, both for nonviolent offenses. His family has accused police of releasing the information to distract from their own behavior.
Shawn William says in order for there to be any sense of trust in the police, “They need to start holding cops accountable for their actions. Not a smack on the wrist, not ‘you’re on suspension, you still get your salary.’ ”
It’s been more than two years since his son was killed. The Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB), the agency that investigates and mediates complaints against the NYPD, opened an investigation just a few months ago.
Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh arrives for a great chanting ceremony at Vinh Nghiem Pagoda in Ho Chi Minh City in 2007. Nhat Hanh, who helped pioneer the concept of mindfulness in the West, died at age 95 on Saturday.
AP file photo
AP file photo
HANOI, Vietnam — Thich Nhat Hanh, the revered Zen Buddhist monk who helped pioneer the concept of mindfulness in the West and socially engaged Buddhism in the East, has died. He was 95.
A post on the monk’s verified Twitter page attributed to The International Plum Village Community of Engaged Buddhism said that Nhat Hanh, known as Thay to his followers, died at Tu Hieu Temple in Hue, Vietnam.
The International Plum Village Community of Engaged Buddhism announces that our beloved teacher Thich Nhat Hanh passed away peacefully at Từ Hiếu Temple in Huế, Vietnam, at 00:00hrs on 22nd January, 2022, at the age of 95. #thichnhathanh #Buddhism
— Thich Nhat Hanh (@thichnhathanh) January 21, 2022
“We invite our beloved global spiritual family to take a few moments to be still, to come back to our mindful breathing, as we together hold Thay in our hearts,” a follow-up post read.
Born as Nguyen Xuan Bao in 1926 and ordained at age 16, Nhat Hanh distilled Buddhist teachings on compassion and suffering into easily grasped guidance over a lifetime dedicated to working for peace. In 1961 he went to the United States to study, teaching comparative religion for a time at Princeton and Columbia universities.
For most of the remainder of his life, he lived in exile at Plum Village, a retreat center he founded in southern France.
There and in talks and retreats around the world, he introduced Zen Buddhism, at its essence, as peace through compassionate listening. Still and steadfast in his brown robes, he exuded an air of watchful, amused calm, sometimes sharing a stage with the somewhat livelier Tibetan Buddhist leader Dalai Lama.
“The peace we seek cannot be our personal possession. We need to find an inner peace which makes it possible for us to become one with those who suffer, and to do something to help our brothers and sisters, which is to say, ourselves,” Nhat Hanh wrote in one of his dozens of books, “The Sun My Heart.”
Surviving a stroke in 2014 that left him unable to speak, he returned to Vietnam in October 2018, spending his final years at the Tu Hieu Pagoda, the monastery where he was ordained nearly 80 years earlier.
Nhat Hanh plunged into anti-war activism after his return to his homeland in 1964 as the Vietnam War was escalating. There, he founded the Order of Inter-being, which espouses “engaged Buddhism” dedicated to nonviolence, mindfulness and social service.
In 1966, he met the U.S. civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in what was a remarkable encounter for both. Nhat Hanh told King he was a “Bodhisattva,” or enlightened being, for his efforts to promote social justice.
The monk’s efforts to promote reconciliation between the U.S.-backed South and communist North Vietnam so impressed King that a year later he nominated Nhat Hanh for the Nobel Peace Prize.
We celebrate the life and global, humane influence of #ThichNhatHanh, an ally of Dr. King’s, who died Saturday.
Here’s a photo of the two at a news conference in Chicago in 1966. #MLK nominated Thich Nhat Hanh for a Nobel Peace Prize the next year.
?: Edward Kitch/AP pic.twitter.com/CJTJ7zHKv2
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center (@TheKingCenter) January 21, 2022
In his exchanges with King, Nhat Hanh explained one of the rare controversies in his long life of advocating for peace — over the immolations of some Vietnamese monks and nuns to protest the war.
“I said this was not suicide, because in a difficult situation like Vietnam, to make your voice heard is difficult. So sometimes we have to burn ourselves alive in order for our voice to be heard so that is an act of compassion that you do that, the act of love and not of despair,” he said in an interview with U.S. talk show host Oprah Winfrey. “Jesus Christ died in the same spirit.”
Sulak Sivaraksa, a Thai academic who embraced Nhat Hanh’s idea of socially engaged Buddhism, said the Zen master had “suffered more than most monks and had been involved more for social justice.”
“In Vietnam in the 1950s and 1960s, he was very exposed to young people, and his society was in turmoil, in crisis. He was really in a difficult position, between the devil and the deep blue sea — the Communists on the one hand, the CIA on the other hand. In such a situation, he has been very honest — as an activist, as a contemplative monk, as a poet, and as a clear writer,” Sivaraksa was quoted as saying.
According to Nhat Hanh, “Buddhism means to be awake — mindful of what is happening in one’s body, feelings, mind and in the world. If you are awake, you cannot do otherwise than act compassionately to help relieve suffering you see around you. So Buddhism must be engaged in the world. If it is not engaged, it is not Buddhism.”
Both North and South Vietnam barred Nhat Hanh from returning home after he went abroad in 1966 to campaign against the war, leaving him, he said, “like a bee without a beehive.”
He was only allowed back into the country in 2005, when the communist-ruled government welcomed him back in the first of several visits. Nhat Hanh remained based in southern France.
The dramatic homecoming seemed to signal an easing of controls on religion. Nhat Hanh’s followers were invited by the abbot of Bat Nha to settle at his mountain monastery, where they remained for several years until relations with the authorities began to sour over Nhat Hanh’s calls for an end to government control over religion.
By late 2009 to early 2010, Nhat Hanh’s followers were evicted from the monastery and from another temple where they had taken refuge.
Over nearly eight decades, Nhat Hanh’s teachings were refined into concepts accessible to all.
To weather the storms of life and realize happiness, he counseled always a mindful “return to the breath,” even while doing routine chores like sweeping and washing dishes.
“I try to live every moment like that, relaxed, dwelling peacefully in the present moment and respond to events with compassion,” he told Winfrey.
Nhat Hanh moved to Thailand in late 2016 and then returned to Vietnam in late 2018, where he was receiving traditional medicine treatments for the after-effects of his stroke and enjoyed “strolls” around the temple grounds in his wheelchair, according to the Buddhist online newsletter LionsRoar.com.
It was a quiet, simple end to an extraordinary life, one entirely in keeping with his love for taking joy from the humblest aspects of life. “No mud, no lotus,” says one of his many brief sayings.
People walk past the Sol Tribe tattoo shop where two women were shot and killed and a man injured on Dec. 27 in Denver, Colo. It was the first in a series of shootings that claimed five lives across the area.
Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images
Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images
Attorney General Merrick Garland on Friday said the federal government wants to create a “comprehensive” response to the scourge of gun crime that involves working more with cities and states.
“At the Justice Department, we stand shoulder to shoulder with you in the fight against violent crime and we will use every tool at our disposal to protect our communities,” Garland said in remarks to the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Washington on Friday.
The number of murders in the U.S. jumped by nearly 30% in 2020 from 2019, according to the FBI, the largest single-year increase ever recorded.
The Council on Criminal Justice think tank reported earlier this month that murders rose 7% last year, based on police data from large cities, with Indianapolis, Philadelphia, Portland and at least 10 other municipalities still seeing record numbers of homicides.
Looking beyond officers on the street
State and local police are on the front lines in the battle against gun violence, homicide and assault, and Quinton Lucas, mayor of Kansas City, Missouri, said that communities need a variety of help from the federal government.
“The challenge of the last few years is that too much of the debate has been either-or,” said Lucas, who chairs the mayors conference’s Criminal and Social Justice Committee. “It is either law enforcement — police officers on the street and funding them — or you invest in programs in your community, violence interruption, cure violence models, etc.”
Kansas City saw 182 homicides in 2021, the second deadliest year in its history. Lucas said the Justice Department under former President Donald Trump flooded many cities with federal agents. Now Lucas wants another kind of flood.
“Resources that help us fund more of our social work programs, particularly our work with young people, that’s the sort of change we need from this administration,” he said. “And I think mayors are waiting to see when that will happen because, Lord knows, the problem isn’t easing up in any of our cities.”
Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas addresses demonstrators with a bullhorn during a protest at the Country Club Plaza on May 31, 2020 in Kansas City, Missouri.
Jamie Squire/Getty Images
Jamie Squire/Getty Images
The Justice Department under President Joe Biden has already launched five strike forces to disrupt illegal firearms traffic and share intelligence. Garland also has been using executive action: proposing new rules to curb the spread of ghost guns that lack serial numbers to and promote the safe storage of firearms so those weapons stay out of the wrong hands.
Last year the Justice Department handed out $139 million to spur the hiring of more cops on the street. But the Attorney General said on Friday that the department also wants to invest in social workers, community violence interrupters, and programs to help people with mental illness.
There’s a need for more enforcement of laws already on the books, and a new leader for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said Kris Brown, president of Brady United Against Gun Violence. The Biden administration’s first choice for that job, David Chipman, withdrew his candidacy last September after opposition in the Senate and among gun rights groups.
The parents of Valentina Orellana-Peralta, the 14-year-old girl killed by a stray bullet fired by an LAPD officer at a North Hollywood clothing store last week, and their attorneys held a news conference Dec. 28, 2021.
Ringo H.W. Chiu/AP
Ringo H.W. Chiu/AP
The ATF inspects only a small fraction of gun stores each year and less than one percent of federally licensed gun dealers have their licenses revoked even after serious infractions, Brown said. Her group had to sue for access to information about which gun dealers are responsible for many firearms used in crimes.
“We need this administration to put a director forward who understands the agency and make it work exactly the way it should,” Brown said.
The new threat: aggression toward election officials
The Justice Department is grappling with multiple challenges, including some 850 reports of threats to officials overseeing elections in states across the country.
On Friday, federal prosecutors brought their first criminal case against a Texas man who threatened officials in Georgia.
Chad Stark, 54, allegedly wrote it was time to “put a bullet” in one election official and pay a visit to another election worker and her family. The indictment cited a post to Craigslist dated Jan. 5, 2021, in which Stark said, “we will find you oathbreakers and we’re going to pay your family to visit your mom your dad your brothers and sisters your children your wife… we’re going to make examples of traitors to our country… death to you and all you communist friends.”
“Today’s charges are a milestone for the election threats task force I announced just last summer,” said Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, in an exclusive interview with NPR. “It wasn’t just that we had seen a surge in threats but also frankly the alarmingly personal and violent and aggressive nature of the threats.”
U.S. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco speaks during a news conference with other federal law enforcement officials at the Robert F. Kennedy Main Justice Building on Nov. 08, 2021 in Washington, DC.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Monaco said election workers are protecting democracy–and the Justice Department will protect them.
“Today’s charges are the first but they will not be the last,” Monaco said.
Justice Department officials said there are dozens of open investigations into election threats.
After performing six nights a week for nearly four decades, Los Angeles musician Marty Roberts has died. He was half of the husband-and-wife duo Marty & Elayne.
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
The jazz and lounge music world has lost one of its most iconic personalities. Marty Roberts, one half of the married lounge act Marty & Elayne, died last week at 89.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
For decades, the duo performed five or six nights a week, Marty on drums and vocals, Elayne on piano and flute.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “SWINGERS”)
MARTY AND ELAYNE: (Singing) You can tell by the way I use my walk I’m a woman’s man – no time to talk.
KELLY: They were fixtures at the Los Angeles bar and restaurant the Dresden Room, where they played an eclectic mix of jazz standards, original numbers and their own twists on pop hits.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “SWINGERS”)
MARTY AND ELAYNE: (Singing) Staying alive – ah, ah, ah, ah, staying alive.
CHANG: That rendition of “Stayin’ Alive,” a cameo in the 1996 movie “Swingers,” shot them into pop culture stardom. Their daughter, Hali Gillin, says the duo often drew standing-room-only crowds.
HALI GILLIN: They have fans in probably every country. And they would come to America, and that would be one of the stops that they needed to make.
CHANG: And though they may have come for the music, the fans would get plenty of personality, too.
GILLIN: If you were rude and talked a lot while my mom was playing certain songs, she would turn up the synthesizer and teach you that’s not polite (laughter). And my dad – if you talked too much, he would literally get on the mic and say, hey; you don’t have a speaking part in this.
KELLY: Gillin says that frankness was on full display when her mother first met Roberts back in 1970.
GILLIN: My dad – he was a hairdresser before. And so he looked at my mom and basically said, like, I need to trim your hair. Like, you got some split ends (laughter). My mom was like, how rude. But eventually they got past it. And my mom said she knew right when she met him that she was going to marry him.
KELLY: And she did. They married just four months later.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “COME FLY WITH ME”)
MARTY AND ELAYNE: (Singing) Come on and fly with me. Let’s fly. Let’s fly away.
CHANG: Through the decades, the pair has had their share of famous fans. When Frank Sinatra showed up to see them play, Roberts serenaded Sinatra with one of the legend’s own tunes.
KELLY: Marty & Elayne continued to record together until just about a month ago. Marty Roberts died of cancer last Thursday. He was 89 years old.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “COME FLY WITH ME”)
MARTY AND ELAYNE: (Singing) Come fly with me. Let’s fly. Let’s fly away. (Scatting).
Copyright © 2022 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
Brian Blauser/Mountain Stage
Blessed with a soaring, church-built vocal range that’s often compared to Ray Charles, Chris Pierce has been all over the scene for the past 15 years. Discovered by Seal while attending USC, the indie, folk and blues singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist has kept the rubber hot, touring 150 days a year while sharing the stage with such artists as Jill Scott, Al Green, Robert Cray, and Toots and the Maytals.
Making his first Mountain Stage appearance, recorded at the Culture Center Theater in Charleston, S.C., Pierce shared power-packed songs from a new, critically acclaimed album titled American Silence.
Accompanied by acoustic guitar and vocals, Pierce carved the words of that album’s title track into the bones, singing of the American posture – complacency – in addressing and dealing with race issues: “Can we sing a song for you? / Will music move your heart and mind? / Will our song arrest you? / American silence is a crime.”
Concluding the tune on a fierce note, Pierce tells the crowd the origin story of the next: “I started to get a lot of calls from family and friends, and I come from a very diverse family … they all wanted to hear about what it felt like to be a Black man in America. I wanted the chorus to be a summary about racism, ‘Shame it, face it, damn it all to hell.’ This is ‘Sound All The Bells.’ “
Pierce closes the set with “Young Black and Beautiful,” a song of hope and resilience he wrote as a love letter to young Black kids everywhere – and to his former self, a 15-year-old who went deaf before eventually regaining most of the hearing in his right ear.
“Keep walking on against the wind / When you fall down get up again / You may be pushed, shoved and tossed / Know in your heart it is their loss.”
Set list:
- “American Silence”
- “Sound All the Bells”
- “Chain Gang Fourth of July”
- “It’s Been Burning For A While”
- “Young, Black And Beautiful”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken greets Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov before their meeting on Friday in Geneva.
Alex Brandon/AP
Alex Brandon/AP
No breakthroughs, but an agreement to keep talking.
That’s the upshot from a meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his Kremlin counterpart in Switzerland — the latest in a series of high-level talks that the Biden administration hopes will stave off a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine.
At a news conference following his 1.5-hour-long face-to-face with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Geneva, Blinken described the discussion as “frank and substantive,” saying, “We didn’t expect any major breakthroughs to happen today, but I believe we are now on a clear path in terms of understanding each other’s concerns and each other’s positions.”
Blinken said he’d made clear the position of the U.S. and its allies, which is to “stand firmly with Ukraine in support of its sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
Russia, with an estimated 100,000 troops poised for a possible move across the border into Ukraine, is demanding written guarantees that Kyiv will never be allowed to join NATO. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied that it has any plans to invade.
The U.S. has been equally adamant that Ukraine should make its own decision on whether to join the alliance formed in 1949, originally as a bulwark against Soviet expansion in Western Europe.
“If any Russian military forces move across Ukraine’s border, that’s a renewed invasion,” Blinken said in an apparent reference to the Kremlin’s 2014 occupation and annexation of Crimea. Military action would “be met with swift, severe, and a united response from the United States and our partners and allies,” he added.
The U.S. envoy also acknowledged that Russian provocations short of invasion, including cyberattacks and paramilitary tactics, would also be met with a “decisive, calibrated, and again, united response.”
The door is open for more talks
Even so, Blinken left the door open to addressing Russia’s “security concerns” and said that he and Lavrov “also talked about the way forward.”
“I told him that following the consultations that we’ll have in the coming days with allies and partners, we anticipate that we will be able to share with Russia our concerns and ideas in more detail and in writing next week,” Blinken said. “And we agreed to further discussions after that. We agreed as well that further diplomatic discussions would be the preferable way forward, but again, it is really up to Russia to decide which path it will pursue.”
Lavrov said the two diplomats “ended up with an agreement that we will receive written responses to all our proposals next week.”
Blinken and Lavrov started Friday’s discussion with a handshake before sitting down to talks at the Hotel President Wilson in Geneva, with both parties acknowledging that a breakthrough was unlikely.
The U.S. envoy arrived in Switzerland after meetings in Berlin with several NATO allies to try to shore up support for sanctions and present a united front against Russia. In his remarks in Germany, Blinken said that Russian President Vladimir Putin faced a simple but stark choice: “dialogue and diplomacy on the one hand; conflict and consequences on the other hand.”
Biden’s “minor incursion” remark muddies the waters
Blinken’s efforts follow remarks by President Biden earlier this week that have muddied the waters. Speaking on Wednesday, Biden said he thought the Kremlin “will move” against Ukraine resulting in a “disaster for Russia.” But he also suggested that anything short of a full invasion would leave the U.S. and its European allies in a quandary as to how to respond.
“I think what you’re going to see is that Russia will be held accountable if it invades,” Biden said. “And it depends on what it does. It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion and then we end up having a fight about what to do and not do.”
The White House has spent the last few days trying to clean up Biden’s remarks. While the dilemma they reflect is obvious, stating that dilemma publicly could send the wrong signal to Moscow. In any case, Biden’s comments sparked a response from Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who in a tweet on Thursday said: “We want to remind the great powers that there are no minor incursions and small nations.”
On Wednesday, the U.S. announced that it was providing $200 million in additional military aid to Ukraine that had been approved in December to help the country defend itself against a possible invasion.
Since 2014, when Russia occupied and annexed Crimea and began providing material support to separatists in Ukraine’s east, the U.S. has stepped up military aid to Kyiv.
Russia would likely have an upper hand in conflict against Ukraine
Ukraine’s military is considered formidable, with considerable battlefield experience in the separatist eastern Donbass region, where at least 14,000 people have been killed in nearly eight years of fighting, according to Kyiv.
A Russian tank T-72B3 fires as troops take part in drills at the Kadamovskiy firing range in the Rostov region in southern Russia earlier this month.
AP
AP
However, Russia’s much larger and more modern army would likely have the upper hand in any military scenario. Its troops at the border are also likely to be backed by heavy artillery and an updated version of Russia’s venerable T-72 tank.
The Russian advantage in armor has made Kyiv especially keen to get its hands on U.S.-made Javelin anti-tank missiles — a request that Washington has obliged.
In 2018, Ukraine’s request for the Javelin missiles figured prominently in a telephone call between Zelenskyy and then-President Donald Trump that led to Trump’s first impeachment.
A man inspects the wreckage of a building after it was damaged in Saudi-led coalition airstrikes, in Sanaa, Yemen, Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2022.
Hani Mohammed/AP
Hani Mohammed/AP
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Yemen lost its connection to the internet nationwide early Friday after Saudi-led airstrikes targeted a site in the contested city of Hodeida, an advocacy group said, plunging the war-torn nation offline.
NetBlocks said the disruption began around 1 a.m. local and affected TeleYemen, the state-owned monopoly that controls internet access in the country. TeleYemen is now run by the Houthi rebels who have held Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, since late 2014.
Yemen was “in the midst of a nation-scale internet blackout following airstrike on (a) telecom building,” NetBlocks said, without immediately elaborating.
The San Diego-based Center for Applied Internet Data Analysis and San Francisco-based internet firm CloudFlare also noted a nationwide outage affecting Yemen beginning around the same time.
The Houthi’s Al-Masirah satellite news channel said the strike on the telecommunications building had killed and wounded people. It released chaotic footage of people digging through rubble for a body as gunshots could be heard. Aid workers assisted bloodied survivors.
The Saudi-led coalition battling the Houthi rebels acknowledged carrying out “accurate airstrikes to destroy the capabilities of the militia” around Hodeida’s port. It did not immediately acknowledge striking a telecommunication target as NetBlocks described, but instead called Hodeida a hub for piracy and Iranian arms smuggling to back the Houthis.
The undersea FALCON cable carries internet into Yemen through the Hodeida port along the Red Sea for TeleYemen. The FALCON cable has another landing in Yemen’s far eastern port of Ghaydah as well, but the majority of Yemen’s population lives in its west along the Red Sea.
A cut to the FALCON cable in 2020 caused by a ship’s anchor also caused widespread internet outages in Yemen. Land cables to Saudi Arabia have been cut since the start of Yemen’s civil war, while connections to two other undersea cables have yet to be made amid the conflict, TeleYemen previously said.
A Saudi-led coalition entered Yemen’s war in 2015 to back its ousted government. The war has turned into the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with international criticism of Saudi airstrikes killing civilians and targeting the country’s infrastructure. The Houthis meanwhile have used child soldiers and indiscriminately laid landmines across the country.
The war reached into the United Arab Emirates, a Saudi ally, on Monday when the Houthis claimed a drone and missile attack on Abu Dhabi, killing three and wounding six.
___
Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.
Adele performs at Genting Arena in March 2016 in Birmingham, England. The British singer and songwriter announced that her Las Vegas residency has been postponed due to COVID-19 issues.
Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images
Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images
British singer Adele announced Thursday the postponement of her Las Vegas residency due to COVID-related issues — just one day before it was slated to begin.
“I’m so sorry, but my show ain’t ready. We’ve tried absolutely everything that we can to put it together in time, and for it to be good enough for you, but we’ve been absolutely destroyed by delivery delays and COVID,” the award-winning singer and songwriter said in a video posted to her social media.
“Half my crew, half my team are down with COVID. They still are. And it’s been impossible to finish the show. And I can’t give you what I have right now,” she continued.
Her residency, titled “Weekends With Adele,” was scheduled to begin this Friday at the Colosseum of Las Vegas’ Caesars Palace Hotel. The residency was expected to run through the middle of April, featuring her most recent album, “30,” which was released last November.
“It’s been impossible to finish the show,” Adele says, as she tears up in the video. “And I’m so upset, and I’m really embarrassed, and I’m so sorry to everyone that traveled again. I’m really, really sorry.”
New dates for Adele’s residency have yet not been announced. However, the singer wrote in the video caption that more information will be “coming soon.”
Following her Las Vegas residency dates, Adele is slated to perform at London’s Hyde Park in July. She did not say in the video whether her July concert was also subject to change.
Brazilian singer Elza Soares performs at the Rock in Rio music festival in Rio de Janeiro in 2019. Soares died on Thursday.
Leo Correa/AP
Leo Correa/AP
RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazilian samba singer Elza Soares died in her Rio de Janeiro home on Thursday afternoon, family members said on the artist’s official Instagram account. She was 91.
The singer “moved the world with her voice, her strength and her determination,” they said, adding she “will forever be in the history of music and in our hearts and the thousands of fans around the world.”
The family said Soares died of ”natural causes” and did not provide further detail.
Soares in 1970 in Rome.
Gianni Foggia/AP
Gianni Foggia/AP
Elza Gomes da Conceição was born in June 1930, in a modest Rio de Janeiro household. She became famous singing samba in the early 1960s, before diversifying to other genres, winning her the title of “singer of the millennium” in a BBC London competition in 1999.
Last month, she featured in a documentary series paying tribute to Black women singers who paved the way for other artists.
“Just like Elza Soares wanted, she sang until the end,” family members said in a statement Thursday.
President Biden planned to talk about infrastructure on the anniversary of his inauguration. But first, he had to clean up some comments he had made about Russia and Ukraine.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
President Biden and his White House on Thursday tried to clean up comments he made about Russia during a lengthy news conference the previous day.
On Wednesday, Biden had predicted Russia would invade Ukraine, but suggested there was a split among NATO members about how to respond if Moscow took action that stopped short of sending its troops across the border — something Biden referred to as a “minor incursion.” He said:
“I think what you’re going to see is that Russia will be held accountable if it invades. And it depends on what it does. It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion and then we end up having a fight about what to do and not do.”
The president’s unusually frank comments came at a delicate time. U.S. and European officials are working to find a diplomatic way to end tensions after months of Russian troop movements around the Russia-Ukraine border.
They immediately raised alarms at home — and overseas. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Twitter that there was no such thing as “minor incursions.”
The uproar left White House officials spending the one-year anniversary of Biden’s time in office doing a lot of damage control.
We want to remind the great powers that there are no minor incursions and small nations. Just as there are no minor casualties and little grief from the loss of loved ones. I say this as the President of a great power ??
— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) January 20, 2022
The White House quickly issued a walk-back
Shortly after Biden wrapped up his press conference, his press secretary Jen Psaki issued a statement trying to explain what he meant:
“If any Russian military forces move across the Ukrainian border, that’s a renewed invasion, and it will be met with a swift, severe, and united response from the United States and our allies.”
She said that “aggression short of military action” like cyberattacks and paramilitary hits “will be met with a decisive, reciprocal, and united response.”
Then Biden offered his own clarification
On Thursday morning, the president began an unrelated infrastructure event seeking to fix the fallout and clarify his stance.
“If any — any — assembled Russian units move across the Ukrainian border, that is an invasion,” Biden said, adding that it would result in a “severe and coordinated economic response” that he has discussed with allies.
“Let there be no doubt at all that if [Russian President Vladimir] Putin makes this choice, Russia will pay a heavy price,” the president said. But he also said the United States needed to be prepared for other scenarios beyond overt military tactics, such as paramilitary operations or cyber attacks.
White House officials talked to Ukraine and others
Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Berlin, meeting with allies. He plans to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday.
Bernd Von Jturczenka/Pool/AFP via Getty Images
Bernd Von Jturczenka/Pool/AFP via Getty Images
Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan spoke about the situation with top officials from nine allies on NATO’s eastern flank, and his counterpart in Japan, the White House said.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Antony Blinken — who is slated to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday — spoke with allies in Berlin.
“We have been in touch at a high level with Ukrainian officials and leaders,” Psaki told reporters at the White House on Thursday.
She also spent time explaining Biden’s comments on major U.S. television networks.
It’s not clear how the U.S. would respond to a paramilitary or cyber hit
Psaki confirmed during Thursday’s press briefing that paramilitary and cyber attacks would be considered “minor incursions” and said “we need to be prepared for a range of scenarios, and we have a range of tools and tactics at our disposal.”
She insisted the White House’s intention was not to diminish the efforts of previous administrations to treat cyberwarfare as a threat that is as dangerous as physical military invasions — though she would not say what kind of response a Russian cyber hit would receive.
Psaki downplayed the specter of a NATO split:
“On NATO, what he was conveying is that we have been focused in ensuring that we remain united with NATO. Now united doesn’t mean that everything will be identical — it means we’re united in taking action should they decide to invade.”
Will Biden talk to Putin again?
During his press conference, Biden was asked whether he was considering another summit with Putin to find a diplomatic solution. “Yes,” Biden replied. “I think that is a possibility.”
Washington has repeatedly warned Russia not to invade Ukraine. Biden spoke with Putin twice last month in the hopes of deescalating the situation.
Psaki said she had nothing to predict about further calls or meetings. “I expect when Secretary Blinken comes back, they’ll discuss with the national security team what the right next steps are,” she said.
