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«Також слідчі розпочали кримінальне провадження за наругу над державними символами»
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WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, vowed Tuesday to foster a “warrior culture” at the Pentagon, portraying himself as a “change agent” during a testy Senate confirmation hearing that drew protesters but also veterans in support. 

Hegseth did not initially address the allegations of sexual assault, excessive drinking or his derisive views on women in combat and minorities, as senators determine whether the veteran and TV news show host is fit to lead the U.S. military. Instead, he focused on his combat experience in the Army National Guard. 

“It’s time to give someone with dust on his boots the helm. A change agent,” Hegseth said in his opening remarks. 

“This is not academic,” he declared, wearing an American flag pocket square on his suit coat. “This is my life.” 

Asked directly about the sexual assault allegation, Hegseth dismissed it as a “smear campaign” and unfair attack. But he did not specifically address any of the accusations, or tell the senators that he did not drink or womanize. 

Senators immediately began drilling down on the questions surrounding Hegseth, with the Republican chairman of the Armed Services Committee acknowledging the “unconventional” choice and the top Democrat warning of “extremely alarming” allegations against him. 

Senator Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican, the chairman, compared Hegseth to Trump himself, dismissed the various allegations against him as unfounded and said he will “bring energy and fresh ideas to shake up the bureaucracy.” 

But Senator Jack Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island, said flatly: “I do not believe that you are qualified to meet the overwhelming demands of this job.” 

Hegseth, 44, comes from a new generation of veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and his military experience is widely viewed as an asset. But he also brings a jarring record of past actions and statements, including about women, minorities and “woke” generals. He has vowed not to drink alcohol if he is confirmed to lead the Pentagon. 

Trump backed his pick, saying Hegseth has “my Complete and Total support” in a morning post. 

The hearing at the Senate Armed Services Committee is the start of a weeklong marathon as senators begin scrutinizing Trump’s choices for more than a dozen top administrative positions. 

Hegseth is among the most endangered of Trump’s Cabinet choices, but GOP allies are determined to turn him into a cause célèbre for Trump’s governing approach amid the nation’s culture wars. Outside groups, including those aligned with the Heritage Foundation, are running costly campaigns to prop up Hegseth’s bid. 

In the audience were cadres of men wearing clothing expressing support for veterans or service in the military, but also protesters who momentarily disrupted proceedings but were removed from the room. 

The Republican-led Senate is rushing to have some of Trump’s picks ready to be confirmed as soon as Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, despite potential opposition to some from both sides of the aisle. With a narrow GOP majority, they need almost all Republicans to support Trump’s pick if Democrats oppose. 

Hegseth faces perhaps the most difficult path to confirmation. He was forced to confront allegations of sexual assault, which he has denied, and his own comments that are far from the military mainstream. 

Pressed on his opposition to diversity initiatives in the military and women serving in combat roles, Hegseth agreed that the military “was a forerunner in courageous racial integration.” But he argued that modern diversity and inclusion policies “divide” current troops and don’t prioritize “meritocracy.” 

And Hegseth had to answer for his comments that women should “straight up” not be in combat roles in the military, a view he has softened following recent meetings with senators. 

In one fiery exchange, Senator Kristen Gillibrand, a New York Democrat, told Hegseth: “You will have to change how you see women to do this job.” 

Gillibrand said of Hegseth’s comments: “They are brutal, and they’re mean, and they disrespect men and women” who fight for this country. 

Hegseth was combative at times, and scoffed as Reed asked him to explain what a “jagoff” was. Only after further pressure from Reed did Hegseth say it was a military lawyer, a JAG officer, who “put their own priorities in front of the warfighters.” 

Many senators have not yet met with Hegseth and most do not have access to his FBI background check, as only committee leaders were briefed on its findings. Reed said the background check on Hegseth was “insufficient.” It did not probe or produce new information beyond what’s already in the public realm about him, according to a person familiar with the situation who insisted on anonymity to discuss it. 

In many ways, the Hegseth hearing was following the template set during Trump’s first term, when one of his choices for Supreme Court justice, Brett Kavanaugh, came under intense scrutiny over allegations of sexual assault but turned the tables on his critics and recouped to win confirmation to the high court. 

“He will be ripped. He will be demeaned. He will be talked about,” said Senator Tommy Tuberville, a Republican from Alabama, at an event with former Navy SEALs, Army special forces and Marines supporting the nominee. “But we’re going to get him across the finish line.” 

Hegseth was largely unknown on Capitol Hill when Trump tapped him for the top Pentagon job. 

A co-host of Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends Weekend, he had been a contributor with the network since 2014 and apparently caught the eye of the president-elect, who is an avid consumer of television and the news channel, in particular. 

Hegseth attended Princeton University and served in the Army National Guard from 2002 to 2021, deploying to Iraq in 2005 and Afghanistan in 2011 and earning two Bronze Stars. But he lacks senior military and national security experience. 

In 2017, a woman told police that Hegseth sexually assaulted her, according to a detailed investigative report recently made public. Hegseth has denied any wrongdoing and told police at the time that the encounter at a Republican women’s event in California was consensual. He later paid the woman a confidential settlement to head off a potential lawsuit. 

If confirmed, Hegseth would take over a military juggling an array of crises on the global stage and domestic challenges in military recruitment, retention and ongoing funding. 

Besides being a key national security adviser to the president, the defense secretary oversees a massive organization, with nearly 2.1 million service members, about 780,000 civilians and a budget of roughly $850 billion. 

The secretary is responsible for tens of thousands of U.S. troops deployed overseas and at sea, including in combat zones where they face attacks, such as in Syria and Iraq and in the waters around Yemen. The secretary makes all final recommendations to the president on what units are deployed, where they go and how long they stay. 

The secretary’s main job is to make sure the U.S. military is ready, trained and equipped to meet any call to duty. But the secretary also must ensure that American troops are safe and secure at home, with proper housing, health care, pay and support for programs dealing with suicide, sexual assault and financial scams. 

Pentagon chiefs also routinely travel across the world, meeting with international leaders on a vast range of security issues including U.S. military aid, counterterrorism support, troop presence and global coalition building. And they play a key role at NATO as a critical partner to allies across the region.
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У відомтстві очікують, що ці зміни вирішать складнощі, що виникали через 72-годинну паузу між завершенням попереднього терміну бронювання та оформленням нового
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Як повідомляє прокуратура, цьому ж експосадовцю торік повідомили про підозру в спробі розкрадання 1,5 мільярда гривень на закупівлі снарядів
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Предcтaвники Сухопутних військ вкотре спробувaли пояснити прaвa тa обов’язки мобілізовaних і прaцівників ТЦК
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На церемонію покладання квітів, організовану Молодіжною радою Дніпра вранці, прийшло кілька десятків людей
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DES MOINES, Iowa — More than 150 recipients of the Nobel and World Food prizes released an open letter Tuesday calling for a dramatic increase in research and a commitment to new food distribution efforts with a goal of producing more crops and avoiding a global hunger crisis in coming decades.

The letter notes that an estimated 700 million people now are “food insecure and desperately poor” but that without a “moonshot” effort to grow more and different kinds of food, far more people will be in dire need of food because of climate change and population growth.

“As difficult and as uncomfortable as it might be to imagine, humanity is headed towards an even more food insecure, unstable world by mid-century than exists today, worsened by a vicious cycle of conflict and food insecurity,” states the letter, signed by 153 recipients of the two prizes. “Climate change is projected to decrease the productivity of most major staples when substantial increases are needed to feed a world which will add another 1.5 billion people to its population by 2050.”

Corn production in Africa is expected to decline and much of the world could see more soil degradation and water shortages, the letter says.

“We are not on track to meet future food needs. Not even close,” it adds.

The letter grew from a meeting of food accessibility experts last fall. Despite the potential gloom, it holds out hope for an optimistic vision of the future if people take needed actions. The letter says that a dramatic increase in research funding coupled with more effective ways to share information and distribute food could prevent a hunger crisis.

Brian Schmidt, who won the Nobel Prize in physics in 2011, said the need to dramatically increase food production in the coming decades is a huge challenge. He calls it a “destination with destiny,” but one that can be achieved with proper funding to enhance existing knowledge as well as global leadership.

“It is an imminently solvable problem. It is a problem that will affect billions of people in 25 years. It is a problem that to solve it, there are no losers, only winners,” Schmidt said in an interview. “All we have to do is do it.”

Schmidt said he hopes governments in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere can commit to solving the problem, but he thinks private groups like the Gates Foundation may need to take the lead in funding initial steps that will draw attention and prompt action by politicians.

The letter calls for “transformational efforts” such as enhancing photosynthesis in essential crops such as wheat and rice, developing crops that are not as reliant on chemical fertilizers and lengthening the shelf life of fruits and vegetables.

Cynthia Rosenzweig, a climate research scientist at NASA who won the World Food Prize in 2022, said in an interview that researchers are already making progress toward breakthroughs, but their work needs to be turbocharged with more funding and emphasis from world leaders.

“It’s not that we have to dream up new solutions,” Rosenzweig said. “The solutions are very much being tested but in order to actually take them from the lab out into the agriculture regions of the world, we really do need the moonshot approach.”

The term moonshot refers to an unprecedented effort, stemming from President John F. Kennedy’s call in 1962 for Americans to rocket to the Moon. Rosenzweig, noting she works for NASA, said meeting the food needs of a growing population will take the kind of commitment the U.S. made in achieving Kennedy’s goal of reaching the Moon.

“Look at how the scientists had to come together. The engineers had to be part of it. The funding had to come together as well as the general public,” she said. “That base of support has to be there as well.”
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Збиті дрони завдали збитків на Сумщині, Київщині, Житомирщині Харківщині та Черкащині. Є поранені, за попередніми даними – без загиблих
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In a report to Congress released early Tuesday, special counsel Jack Smith said his office had sufficient evidence to “obtain and sustain” a trial conviction of President-elect Donald Trump for efforts to overturn Trump’s loss to President Joe Biden in the 2020 election.

Smith said Trump “resorted to a series of criminal efforts to retain power” after it became clear that he had lost and that legal ways to challenge the results had failed.

“This included attempts to induce state officials to ignore true vote counts; to manufacture fraudulent slates of presidential electors in seven states that he had lost; to force Justice Department officials and his own Vice President, Michael R. Pence, to act in contravention of their oaths and to instead advance Mr. Trump’s personal interests; and, on January 6 , 2021, to direct an angry mob to the United States Capitol to obstruct the congressional certification of the presidential election and then leverage rioters,” Smith said in his report.

Smith said Trump acted both in his private capacity as an election candidate, as well as with the help of multiple co-conspirators, and that Trump tried to use “the power and authority of the United States Government in furtherance of his scheme.”

The report further says that Trump’s false claims, such as votes being cast by large numbers of dead people or ineligible voters, or that voting machines had changed votes for Trump into votes for Biden, were “demonstrably and, in many cases, obviously false.”

Trump has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and attacked the special counsel’s work as politically motivated.

He responded to the report’s release early Tuesday with a post on his Truth Social platform calling Smith “a lamebrain prosecutor.”

“Deranged Jack Smith was unable to successfully prosecute the Political Opponent of his ‘boss,’ Crooked Joe Biden, so he ends up writing yet another ‘Report’ based on information that the Unselect Committee of Political Hacks and Thugs ILLEGALLY DESTROYED AND DELETED, because it showed how totally innocent I was, and how completely guilty Nancy Pelosi, and others, were,” Trump said.

Trump is set to be inaugurated for a new term next week after defeating Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. During the 2024 campaign, Trump denied he lost the 2020 vote, including in a September debate with Harris. 

Tuesday’s report release came a day after U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon cleared the Justice Department to make public the portion of Smith’s report that dealt with Trump’s efforts to cling to power.

Judge Cannon, who was appointed by Trump, had earlier blocked the release of Smith’s full report, which also includes an unreleased section about accusations that Trump illegally retained classified documents after he left office.

Smith sought to prosecute Trump on both matters, while Trump denied wrongdoing.

Judge Cannon dismissed the classified documents case in July, ruling that Smith was illegally appointed.

The Supreme Court also ruled in July that presidents have broad immunity from prosecution for official acts, which blunted Smith’s efforts in the election interference case.

After Trump defeated Harris, the Justice Department dropped both cases against Trump, citing longstanding policy against prosecuting a sitting U.S. leader.

Some information for this story was provided by The Associated Press and Reuters
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За оцінкою аналітиків, російські сили, ймовірно, захопили решту Солоного (на південний захід від Покровська) у рамках цього наступу
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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday turned back a push by the state of Utah to wrest control of vast areas of public land from the federal government, marking a small victory for land conservation advocates who worry that similar efforts may escalate in a Republican-controlled Washington.

The high court refused to let the GOP-controlled state file a lawsuit seeking to bring the land and its resources under state control. The decision came in a brief order in which the court did not explain its reasoning, as is typical. It marks the latest roadblock for states in a running feud with the U.S. government over who should control huge swaths of the West and the enormous oil and gas, timber, and other resources they contain.

Utah’s top state leaders said they have not ruled out taking their lawsuit to a lower court.

In the Western state known for its rugged mountains popular with skiers and red-rock vistas that draw throngs of tourists, federal agencies control almost 70% of the land. Utah argues that local control would be more responsive and allow the state access to revenue from taxes and development projects.

The complaint sought control of about half of federal land, which still amounts to an area nearly as large as South Carolina. The parcels are used for things like energy production, grazing, mining and recreation. Utah’s world-famous national parks and national monuments would have stayed in federal hands.

Monday’s decision by the high court comes as the newly Republican-controlled Congress adopted a rules package that includes language allowing lawmakers to more easily transfer or sell off public lands managed by federal agencies. The rules consider public lands to have no monetary value, meaning lawmakers will no longer need to account for lost revenue if they decide to give parcels to states or extractive industries.

While conservationists applauded the court’s rejection of what they called a land-grab lawsuit, many remained worried that the efforts will continue.

Public lands under state control could be vulnerable to privatization, degradation and oil drilling, said Steve Bloch, legal director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.

“If successful, Utah’s lawsuit would result in the sale of millions of acres of public lands in red-rock country to the highest bidder, an end to America’s system of federal public lands and the dismantling of the American West as we know it,” Bloch said.

Utah’s Republican Sens. Mike Lee and John Curtis criticized the court’s decision and promised legislative action. Curtis, who campaigned on being a climate-conscious Republican, said the people of Utah should be entrusted to manage the land they have lived on for generations.

“Building roads, moving cattle and cleaning up campgrounds all require navigating a behemothic bureaucracy that’s stacked up against the average Utahn,” Curtis said.

In a joint statement with Utah’s Republican legislative leaders and attorney general, Gov. Spencer Cox said he was disappointed in the court’s decision to turn away the lawsuit.

“Utah remains able and willing to challenge any BLM land management decisions that harm Utah,” state leaders said. “We are also heartened to know the incoming administration shares our commitments to the principle of ‘multiple use’ for these federal lands and is committed to working with us to improve land management.”

While lawsuits typically start in federal district courts and eventually work their way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, disputes involving states can start at the nation’s highest court if the justices agree to hear them.

Utah leaders noted that the high court did not comment on the merits of their arguments or prevent them from filing the lawsuit in a federal district court. Conservation groups say they’ll remain ready to challenge any future lawsuits.

“This lawsuit is an assault on the country’s long-standing and successful history of safeguarding valuable and vulnerable landscapes in trust for all Americans,” said Chris Hill, who leads the Conservation Lands Foundation. “And while the Supreme Court’s decision to not hear the case is a reprieve, we fully expect this small group of anti-public lands politicians to continue to waste taxpayer dollars and shop their bad ideas.”

The federal Bureau of Land Management declined to comment.
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President Joe Biden laid out his foreign policy doctrine Monday in a sweeping speech just a week before he leaves office. He laid out his argument for staying the course just days before the return of President-elect Donald Trump, who has vowed to steer the ship in a different direction. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from the White House.
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Рада є постійно діючим колегіальним консультативно-дорадчим органом Міністерства оборони, утвореним для участі громадськості у забезпеченні оцінки корупційних ризиків у відомстві
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WASHINGTON — Despite failing to deliver his promise for broad student loan forgiveness, President Joe Biden has now overseen the cancellation of student loans for more than 5 million Americans — more than any other president in U.S. history.

In a last-minute action on Monday, the Education Department canceled loans for 150,000 borrowers through programs that existed before Biden took office. His administration expanded those programs and used them to their fullest extent, pressing on with cancellation even after the Supreme Court rejected Biden’s plan for a new forgiveness policy.

“My Administration has taken historic action to reduce the burden of student debt, hold bad actors accountable, and fight on behalf of students across the country,” Biden said in a written statement.

In total, the administration says it has waived $183.6 billion in student loans.

The wave of cancellations could dry up when President-elect Donald Trump takes office. Trump hasn’t detailed his student loan policies but previously called cancellation “vile” and illegal. Republicans have fought relentlessly against Biden’s plans, saying cancellation is ultimately shouldered by taxpayers who never attended college or already repaid their loans.

Biden loosened rules for debt forgiveness

The latest round of relief mostly comes through a program known as borrower defense, which allows students to get their loans canceled if they’re cheated or misled by their colleges. It was created in 1994 but rarely used until a wave of high-profile for-profit college scandals during the Obama administration.

A smaller share of the relief came through a program for borrowers with disabilities and through Public Service Loan Forgiveness, which was created in 2007 and offers to erase all remaining debt for borrowers in a government or nonprofit job who make 10 years of monthly payments.

Most of Monday’s borrower defense cancellations were for students who attended several defunct colleges owned by Center for Excellence in Higher Education, including CollegeAmerica, Stevens-Henager College, and Independence University. They are based on past findings that the schools lied to prospective students about their employment prospects and the terms of private loans.

Before Biden took office, those programs were criticized by advocates who said complex rules made it difficult for borrowers to get relief. The Biden administration loosened some of the rules using its regulatory power, a maneuver that expanded eligibility without going through Congress.

As an example, just 7,000 borrowers had gotten their loans canceled through Public Service Loan Forgiveness before the Biden administration took office. Widespread confusion about eligibility, along with errors by loan servicers, resulted in a 99% rejection rate for applicants.

Huge numbers of borrowers made years of payments only to find out they were in an ineligible repayment plan. Some were improperly put into forbearance — a pause on payments — by their loan servicers. Those periods didn’t end up counting toward the 10 years of payments needed for cancellation.

The Biden administration temporarily relaxed the eligibility rules during the pandemic and then made it more permanent in 2023. As a result, more than 1 million public servants have now had their balances zeroed out through the program.

All those rule changes were meant to be a companion to Biden’s marquee policy for student debt, which proposed up to $20,000 in relief for more than 40 million Americans.

But after the Supreme Court blocked the move, the Biden administration shifted its focus to maximizing relief through existing mechanisms.

Republicans have called for a different approach

Announcements of new cancellation became routine, even as conservatives in Congress accused Biden of overstepping his power. Republican states fought off Biden’s later attempts at mass forgiveness, but the smaller batches of relief continued without any major legal challenge.

As Republicans take hold of both chambers of Congress and the White House, Biden’s changes could be targeted for a rollback. But it’s unclear how far the next administration will go to tighten the cancellation spigot.

Trump proposed eliminating PSLF during his first term in office, but Congress rejected the idea. Project 2025, a blueprint created by the Heritage Foundation for a second Trump term, proposes ending PSLF, and narrowing borrower defense and making repayment plans less generous than existing ones.
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Elon Musk said a third person has received an implant from his brain-computer interface company Neuralink, one of many groups working to connect the nervous system to machines.

“We’ve got … three humans with Neuralinks and all are working well,” he said during a recent wide-ranging interview at a Las Vegas event streamed on his social media platform X.

Since the first brain implant about a year ago, Musk said the company has upgraded the devices with more electrodes, higher bandwidth and longer battery life. Musk also said Neuralink hopes to implant the experimental devices in 20 to 30 more people this year.

Musk didn’t provide any details about the latest patient, but there are updates on the previous ones.

The second recipient — who has a spinal cord injury and got the implant last summer — was playing video games with the help of the device and learning how to use computer-aided design software to create 3-D objects. The first patient, also paralyzed after a spinal cord injury, described how it helped him play video games and chess.

But while such developments at Neuralink often attract notice, many other companies and research groups are working on similar projects. Two studies last year in the New England Journal of Medicine described how brain-computer interfaces, or BCIs, helped people with ALS communicate better.

Who’s working on brain-computer interface technology?

More than 45 trials involving brain-computer interfaces are underway, according to a U.S. database of studies. The efforts are aimed at helping treat brain disorders, overcoming brain injuries and other uses.

Many research labs have already shown that humans can accurately control computer cursors using BCIs, said Rajesh Rao, co-director of the Center for Neurotechnology at the University of Washington.

Rao said Neuralink may be unique in two ways: The surgery to implant the device is the first time a robot has been used to implant flexible electrode threads into a human brain to record neural activity and control devices. And those threads may record from more neurons than other interfaces.

Still, he said, the advantages of Neuralink’s approach have yet to be shown, and some competitors have eclipsed the company in other ways. For example, Rao said companies such as Synchron, Blackrock Neurotech and Onward Medical are already conducting BCI trials on people “using either less invasive methods or more versatile approaches” that combine neural recording with stimulation.

What are the benefits of BCIs?

Marco Baptista, chief scientific officer of the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation, called BCI technology “very exciting” with potential benefits to people with paralysis.

Through clinical trials, “we’ll be able to see what’s going to be the winning approach,” he said. “It’s a little early to know.”

Baptista said his foundation generally tries to support research teams financially and with expert help – though it hasn’t given any money to Neuralink.

“We need to really support high-risk, high-reward endeavors. This is clearly high-risk, high-reward. We don’t know how safe it’s going to be. We don’t know how feasible it’s going to be,” he said.

How are BCIs tested and regulated?

Neuralink announced in 2023 that it had gotten permission from U.S. regulators to begin testing its device in people.

While most medical devices go on the market without clinical studies, high-risk ones that undergo pre-market approval need what’s called an “investigational device exemption” from the Food and Drug Administration, said Dr. Rita Redberg, a cardiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who studies high-risk devices.

Neuralink says it has this exemption, but the FDA said it can’t confirm or disclose information about a particular study.

Redberg said the FDA tends to be involved in all steps from recruiting patients to testing devices to analyzing data. She said this regulatory process prioritizes safety.

She also pointed to another layer of protection: All research involving people needs an institutional review board, or IRB. It can also be known as an ethical review board or an independent ethics committee. Members must include at least one non-scientist as well as someone not affiliated with the institution or organization forming the board.

The role of such boards “is to assume there is reasonable risk and reasonable chance of benefit and that patients are informed of those before they enroll,” said Redberg.
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