Суспільство

A collision between a passenger jet and U.S. Army helicopter near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport late Wednesday marked the first time in more than 15 years that there had been a mass fatality event in U.S. airspace related to commercial aviation.

The accident, which killed a reported 67 people, took place while American Airlines Flight 5342 was making its final approach to the runway. The Bombardier CRJ700 regional jet and the Sikorsky H-60, commonly known as a Black Hawk, collided only a few hundred meters above the ground, officials said.

The plane was carrying 60 passengers and four crew members. There were three service members aboard the military helicopter, including the pilot. Both aircraft crashed into the icy waters of the Potomac River, and authorities said Thursday that they didn’t believe there were any survivors.

The accident took place in darkness at 8:47 p.m., and no significant weather problems were reported. As of Thursday, authorities had not identified the cause of the accident.

However, The New York Times on Thursday, citing an “internal preliminary Federal Aviation Administration safety report” it reviewed, reported that staffing at the airport’s air traffic control tower was “not normal” Wednesday night. The newspaper said a single air traffic controller was directing incoming and outgoing plane traffic as well as helicopter traffic in the area. Those jobs are usually split between two controllers.

Experts consider crash an anomaly

Aviation experts said as tragic as the accident was, it should be considered an anomaly in an air traffic system that has been notably free of major disasters for many years.

“Some of it was luck. Some of it is technology. And mostly it was the tremendous job that the pilots and air traffic controllers do,” former United Airlines pilot Captain Ross “Rusty” Aimer told VOA.

“They literally perform miracles every day because our system is extremely congested everywhere you go. … And Washington National Airport is, perhaps in my 60 years in aviation, one of the most demanding and busiest airports in the world.”

It is necessary to look back to 2009 to find a comparable commercial disaster in U.S. airspace. At that time, a Colgan Air jet en route from New Jersey to Buffalo, New York, stalled during its approach and crashed into a house, killing 49 passengers and crew, as well as one individual in the house.

In 2013, an Asiana Airlines jet crashed while landing in San Francisco, California. Two passengers who were not wearing seat belts were killed when they were thrown from the plane, and another person died after being struck by an emergency response vehicle on the tarmac. There were 187 other people who suffered injuries, many serious, but no other fatalities.

While there have been a number of other high-profile incidents involving U.S. airlines recently, none involved mass casualties. Last year, for example, a door plug blew out of an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max in midflight, but the plane landed safely, though some passengers suffered minor injuries.

Experts stressed that such events occur in only a tiny fraction of the millions of flights that take place in the U.S. every year.

Robert W. Mann Jr., an airline industry analyst and former senior airline executive, told VOA that the U.S. commercial aviation industry experiences an extremely low level of safety incidents and “an even lower level of fatality accidents.”

“That’s not luck, that’s effort,” he said. “We’re thankful to have so many professionals in the operating environment. In the oversight environment, focus on safety is the number one priority.”

Crash occurs in crowded airspace

The accident took place in one of the most crowded — and highly regulated — sectors of airspace in the United States. The Washington region has three major airports, 11 regional airports and dozens of heliports — not counting the multiple military installations in the region with aviation operations.

Keith M. Cianfrani, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel who served as a flight instructor and an accident investigator, told VOA he flew helicopters in the area where the accident took place while on active duty and later as a commercial pilot.

“It’s congested,” said Cianfrani, who now works as an aviation safety consultant and adjunct professor at Embry‑Riddle Aeronautical University. “So, it’s not unusual to cross the path of an incoming [plane] as long as there is traffic separation.”

Traffic separation refers to the distance, in time and space, between aircraft in the same area.

But because of the congestion, there are very clear rules about where aircraft are allowed to be and when they can be there, Cianfrani said. Helicopters are required to follow specific routes when passing through the region, he said, calling it “very uncommon” to see something like Wednesday’s crash take place.

“As a whole, the general aviation industry in the United States is outstanding,” he said. “They all have to adhere to what we call SMS — safety management systems. On a regular basis, they get audited. They have an internal audit program, and they’re constantly being looked at by people like myself going in and auditing their safety program. So, it’s outstanding.”

Turnover in federal aviation oversight

Wednesday’s accident took place at a time when leadership of the federal agencies in charge of flight safety is being overhauled by the new administration of President Donald Trump.

The day after his inauguration, Trump dismissed Transportation Security Administration Administrator David Pekoske and disbanded the Aviation Security Advisory Committee, which provides the federal government with recommendations for aviation safety. He also initiated a hiring freeze, preventing the hiring of new air traffic controllers.

Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, who oversees the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), was sworn in the day before the crash.

Michael Whitaker, who served as administrator of the FAA in former President Joe Biden’s administration, announced in December that he would resign his post on January 20, the day Trump took office.

The new president has not yet nominated a permanent replacement for Whitaker, but on Thursday he named Chris Rocheleau, a former Air Force officer who has spent more than 20 years at the FAA, as interim administrator.

Trump spreads blame

With recovery teams still searching for bodies in the Potomac River on Thursday, Trump held a press conference and attempted to pin blame for the accident on the previous presidential administration. He asserted, with no proof or evidence, that the Biden administration had lowered hiring standards for air traffic controllers as part of its “diversity, equity, and inclusion” efforts.

Trump took particular aim at former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, saying he had driven the agency “right into the ground with his diversity.”

Buttigieg responded with a post on the social media platform X.

“Despicable,” Buttigieg wrote. “As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying. We put safety first, drove down close calls, grew Air Traffic Control, and had zero commercial airline crash fatalities out of millions of flights on our watch.

“President Trump now oversees the military and the FAA,” he added. “One of his first acts was to fire and suspend some of the key personnel who helped keep our skies safe. Time for the President to show actual leadership and explain what he will do to prevent this from happening again.”

Kim Lewis contributed to this report.
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washington — The White House says President Donald Trump is going to pursue the denuclearization of North Korea, although analysts say that is easier said than done.

White House National Security Council spokesperson Brian Hughes told VOA Korean via email this week that “President Trump had a good relationship with [North Korean leader] Kim Jong Un,” and that Trump’s “mix of toughness and diplomacy led to the first-ever leader-level commitment to complete denuclearization.”

Trump and Kim met three times in 2018-19, in Singapore, Hanoi and over the inter-Korean border at Panmunjom.

Trump, who has recently called North Korea “a nuclear power,” said in an interview with Fox News last week that he would reach out to Kim again, adding, “He liked me, and I got along with him.”

Commitment to denuclearization

Former U.S. government officials say there is no doubt that Trump is serious about resuming talks with Kim.

Susan Thornton, a former senior U.S. diplomat for Asian affairs, told VOA Korean on Wednesday via email it “seems clear that President Trump plans to pick up where he left off with Kim Jong Un in his first administration.” 

Thornton, who was acting assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs during the first Trump administration, said Trump would “like to hold Kim and North Korea to the 2018 Singapore joint statement that included Kim’s commitment to the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”  

However, “much has changed since then, and Kim’s hand is stronger, so it won’t be easy,” Thornton said, referring to Pyongyang’s development of more advanced weapons.

The state-run Korean Central News Agency, or KCNA, reported Wednesday that Kim said it was “indispensable” to bolster nuclear forces, as North Korea continues to face “confrontations with the most vicious, hostile countries.”

Last Saturday, the North test-fired what it said were sea-to-surface strategic cruise-guided missiles. Kim, who inspected the test launch, said the country’s war deterrence means are “being perfected more thoroughly,” according to KCNA.

Evans Revere, former acting secretary for East Asia and Pacific affairs during the George W. Bush administration, told VOA Korean on the phone Wednesday that Kim would agree to come back to the table if he believed reengaging with Washington “could help him attain any of his own goals with respect to his nuclear and missile programs and relations with the United States.”

Revere is skeptical that any of Kim’s goals would include his regime’s denuclearization.

“The North Koreans might dangle the possibility of a discussion about denuclearization to attract the United States into a dialogue, but it would not be a serious proposal,” he said. “Quite frankly, they are determined to keep their weapons, keep their capabilities, which they regard as essential to their own existence.”

Daunting task

Frank Aum, a senior expert on North Korea at the U.S. Institute of Peace who worked at the Department of Defense from 2010 to 2017, said denuclearization is not a realistic goal to achieve in the near or medium term. 

“The best thing Trump can do to increase the odds of North Korea’s engagement is to resolve Russia’s war in Ukraine, which would decrease North Korea’s leverage and signal that a U.S. offer better than the one in Hanoi might be on the table,” Aum said in an email to VOA Korean.

North Korea has sent about 10,000 troops to Russia to help Moscow in its war against Ukraine. In return, North Korea has received military or financial assistance, according to U.S. and South Korean officials.

The February 2019 talks, in which Trump and Kim met for the second time, collapsed after Kim asked for full lifting of sanctions in exchange for the dismantling of the country’s main nuclear complex in Yongbyon, about 100 kilometers north of Pyongyang. Trump demanded more should be done on Kim’s end.

Aum said Kim would likely not have budged from his position then. 

“Trump may probe to see if he can get Kim to accept partial sanctions relief instead, like he tried at Hanoi, or offer more for Yongbyon,” Aum said. “It seems clear that Kim will not offer any more security concessions than Yongbyon.”

Sydney Seiler, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told VOA Korean via email on Wednesday that “for now, it is unlikely any meeting, if it takes place, will reasonably be related to denuclearization.”

“Trump will likely seek to keep the ultimate goal of denuclearization alive while exploring ways in which to reduce the threat,” Seiler said.

Referring to recent comments by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the failure of sanctions to halt the North Korean nuclear program, Seiler speculated that sanctions relief may be offered for significant steps in the new talks between Washington and Pyongyang.

Seiler added that military exercises and extended deterrence may also be reduced in terms of their frequency, volume and scale, in exchange for a halt or slowing of Kim’s long-range missile launches and nuclear tests.

In June 2018, Trump decided to suspend major military exercises with South Korea in an apparent gesture of good faith, right after his first meeting with Kim in Singapore. It raised some fears among South Koreans that such a move could weaken defense against the North.
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Від початку доби на фронті, за даними командування, відбулося 125 бойових зіткнень
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Russian forces continue to attack Ukraine even as the Trump administration works to bring both sides to the negotiating table. While Ukraine is ready for peace talks, analysts see little evidence that Moscow is prepared to end the war. Elizabeth Cherneff narrates this report from former Moscow correspondent Ricardo Marquina.
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As Los Angeles recovers from its devastating wildfires, environmental engineers, urban planners and natural disaster experts are casting forward with visions of what could come next for neighborhoods that have been reduced to ash and rubble.

Apartment buildings could spring up where strip malls and parking lots once stood, with locals walking to ground-floor shops, offices and cafes, European-style.

The city could “infill” vertically to add affordable housing in safer downtown areas, rather than outwards with more single-family homes on fire-prone hills.

Some blocks could be turned into buffer zones, where no building was allowed. And the city’s trademark palm trees, which burn like Roman candles, could be replaced with fire-resistant native trees.

These are some of the bold ideas academics have for Los Angeles as it recovers from the Eaton and Palisades fires, which killed 28 people and damaged or destroyed nearly 16,000 structures. Together, the blazes charred 152 square kilometers — an area larger than Paris.

The city is far from rebuilding, with many people only now being allowed back to their burned neighborhoods. When construction does begin, few of the dozen experts Reuters spoke to expected their dream plans to be adopted, citing factors ranging from lack of future insurance coverage to political pressure to rebuild as before.

Nonetheless, experts in urban development, climate change and housing said Los Angeles has a chance to think outside the box. Many also said there should be no rush to rebuild. Instead, residents of Pacific Palisades and Altadena should be afforded time to decide what their future communities should look like and dream big.

“The biggest thing is how do we promote infill development in safer areas,” said Emily Schlickman, assistant professor of landscape architecture and environmental design at the University of California, Davis, who suggests retreating from fire-prone peripheries.

Model cities

Los Angeles could learn from cities like Kobe, Japan, decimated by a 1995 earthquake, where officials imposed a two-month building moratorium, said Columbia University’s Jeffrey Schlegelmilch.

“One of the most important things is to give yourself time to come up with a robust solution,” said Schlegelmilch, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at the university’s climate school.

Then there are Houston’s Harris County and the city of San Antonio, Texas, which bought up homes and properties to reduce future flood risk. In the case of Harris County, authorities offered willing sellers pre-flood market values for homes flooded during Hurricane Harvey in 2017 then demolished them.

Char Miller, a professor of environmental analysis and history at Pomona College in Claremont, California, is among those who point to Texas’ experience. While buying up properties in Pacific Palisades and Altadena would be costly, Miller said, it would be possible with the financial support of the city, county, state and possibly insurers.

Burned-out lots could be turned into what he envisions as fire buffer zones. While disruptive to residents, Miller believes many would be willing to use the money to relocate.

“People go, ‘Yeah, I don’t want to be in danger, and you’re buying me out. Yeah, thank you,'” said Miller.

He despairs at city and state efforts to fast-track redevelopment in areas that burned at a similar housing density.

“They just pulled the plug on the moonshot,” Miller said.

Alice Hill, a senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank, wants to see more green spaces like playing fields and bike paths between fire-risk areas and homes.

“It simply is unsafe to rebuild communities where they were, and retreating may be the wisest approach,” Hill wrote in a Jan. 14 essay.

A little more panache

Other experts advocate rebuilding the communities but in a way that will resist fire.

“The only way to do this impactfully is to do it communitywide so if the fire gets in, it has a hard time moving on,” said Michael Gollner, a professor of mechanical engineering at University of California, Berkeley.

Gollner tests prototype houses to see how they handle flames. Homes can be made more fire-resistant by moving a wooden fence back five feet (1.5 meters), surrounding a house with gravel and putting mesh over attic vents to stop embers, he said.

Then there is landscaping, a contentious subject for some homeowners.

“Who wants to cut down their juniper? But come a wildfire, your juniper is a torch,” said Gollner.

Ecologists suggest Los Angelenos replace palms, junipers and eucalyptus with trees that evolved to survive fire, such as California oaks. The species has thick bark that resists flames and leathery leaves that burn slowly.

“There are lots of people who are working to plant oaks, and I think there’s some effort in giving them more panache,” said Alexandra Syphard, a San Diego-based wildfire ecologist at the Conservation Biology Institute.

For Hussam Mahmoud, a professor in civil and environmental engineering at Colorado State University, the key is predicting the path of future fires.

He has developed a model that calculates which buildings will burn, allowing a community to fire-harden “super spreader” structures, rather than fully adapt every house to resist wildfires.

Hardening a home begins with using metal or concrete for a roof and fire-retardant materials on the sides. Multipane windows are less likely to break from the heat and cause a home to burn from within.

“When the fires hit L.A., it’s clear that nobody knew what was going to happen, which buildings were more likely to burn,” said Mahmoud.
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Russian disinformation narratives about illicit organ harvesting and biological experiments in Ukraine have no basis in fact. Russia intentionally distorts Ukrainian law intended to support vital medical procedures.
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У майбутньому це дозволить подавати позови для відшкодування збитків проти Росії, заявив представник інспекції
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У справі фігуруть генерал-лейтенант Росії Валерій Солодчук, генерал-полковник Олександр Лапін і троє його підлеглих
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Washington — Kash Patel, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, portrayed himself Thursday as the right leader of a law enforcement agency he said had lost public trust and told senators he would commit himself to “due process and transparency” if confirmed as director.

At his confirmation hearing, Patel braced for deeply skeptical questioning from Senate Democrats about his loyalty to the president and stated desire to overhaul the bureau. He is a Trump loyalist who, before being nominated to lead the FBI, railed against the bureau over its investigations into the president and said that Jan. 6 rioters were mistreated by the Justice Department.

Sen. Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the FBI is critical in keeping America safe from terrorism, violent crime and other threats, and the nation “needs an FBI director who understands the gravity of this mission and is ready on day one, not someone who is consumed by his own personal political grievances.”

Patel was picked in November to replace Christopher Wray, who led the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency for more than seven years but was forced out of the job Trump had appointed him to after being seen as insufficiently loyal to him.

A former aide to the House Intelligence Committee and an ex-federal prosecutor who served in Trump’s first administration, Patel has alarmed critics with rhetoric — in dozens of podcasts and books he has authored — in which he has demonstrated fealty to Trump and assailed the decision-making of the agency he’s now been asked to lead.

He’s also identified by name officials he believes should be investigated.

In one such podcast interview last year, he said that if he oversaw the FBI, he would “shut down” the bureau’s headquarters building on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington and “reopen it the next day as a museum of the ‘deep state.’”

“And I’d take the 7,000 employees that work in that building and send them across America to go chase down criminals. Go be cops,” he added.

In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece published Wednesday night, Patel did not address some of his more incendiary comments or criticism of the FBI, except to say that his time as a House staffer investigating flaws in the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation had shown him how “the FBI’s immense powers can be abused.”

“I spearheaded the investigation that found the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — a tool I had previously used to hunt down terrorists — had been unlawfully used to spy on political opponents,” he wrote. “Such misconduct is unacceptable and undermines public trust.”

Patel pledged to be transparent if confirmed as director and said he would keep the FBI out of prosecutorial decisions, keeping them instead with Justice Department lawyers.

“First, let good cops be cops,” Patel wrote in outlining his priorities. “Leadership means supporting agents in their mission to apprehend criminals and protect our citizens. If confirmed, I will focus on streamlining operations at headquarters while bolstering the presence of field agents across the nation. Collaboration with local law enforcement is crucial to fulfilling the FBI’s mission.”

Patel found common cause with Trump over their shared skepticism of government surveillance and the “deep state” — a pejorative catchall used by Trump to refer to government bureaucracy.

He was part of a small group of supporters during Trump’s recent criminal trial in New York who accompanied him to the courthouse, where he told reporters that Trump was the victim of an “unconstitutional circus.”

That close bond would depart from the modern-day precedent of FBI directors looking to keep presidents at arm’s length.

Several Democratic senators on the Judiciary Committee who have met with Patel, including Durbin of Illinois, have issued statements sounding the alarm and signaling their opposition to the pick. The lawmakers foreshadowed their interest in Patel by directing numerous questions about him to Pam Bondi, Trump’s pick for attorney general, when she had her own confirmation hearing this month.

Republican allies of Trump, who share the president’s belief that the FBI has become politicized, have rallied around Patel and pledged to support him, seeing him as someone who can shake up the bureau and provide needed change.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Republican chairman of the committee, sought to blunt attacks on Patel preemptively by focusing on the need to reform an FBI that he said had become weaponized.

The FBI in recent years has become entangled in numerous politically explosive investigations, including not just the two federal inquiries into Trump that resulted in indictments but also probes of President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.

“It’s no surprise that public trust has declined in an institution that has been plagued by abuse, a lack of transparency, and the weaponization of law enforcement,” Grassley said. “Nevertheless, the FBI remains an important, even indispensable institution for law and order in our country.” 

He later added: “Mr. Patel, should you be confirmed, you will take charge of an FBI that is in crisis.”
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GENEVA — The U.N. human rights chief appealed on Thursday for $500 million in funding for 2025 to support its work, such as investigating human rights abuses around the world from Syria to Sudan, warning that lives hang in the balance.

The U.N. human rights office has been grappling with chronic funding shortages that some worry could be exacerbated by cuts to U.S. foreign aid by President Donald Trump. The annual appeal is for funds beyond the allocated U.N. funds from member states’ fees, which make up just a fraction of the office’s needs.

“In 2025, we expect no let-up in major challenges to human rights,” High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk told member states in a speech at the U.N. in Geneva.

“I am very concerned that if we do not reach our funding targets in 2025, we will leave people … to struggle and possibly fail, without adequate support,” he said.

He said any shortfall would mean more people remain in illegal detention; that governments are allowed to continue with discriminatory policies; violations may go undocumented; and human rights defenders could lose protection.

“In short, lives are at stake,” Turk said.

The human rights office gets about 5% of the regular U.N. budget, but the majority of its funding comes voluntarily in response to its annual appeal announced on Thursday.

Western states give the most, with the United States donating $35 million last year or about 15% of the total received in 2024, followed by the European Commission, U.N. data showed. Still, the office received only about half of the $500 million it sought last year.  
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Україна посідає четверте місце за чисельністю Праведників народів світу після Польщі, Нідерландів, Франції
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President Donald Trump is widely expected to impose tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada as early as February 1 as part of a plan he says will boost the U.S. economy. But with much about the specifics still unknown, economists, business owners and everyday consumers are still trying to understand how it could impact them. Johny Fernandez reports from New York City. (Produced by: Bakhtiyar Zamanov)
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Days after Chinese upstart DeepSeek revealed a breakthrough in cheap AI computing that shook the U.S. technology industry, the chief executives of Microsoft and Meta defended massive spending that they said was key to staying competitive in the new field.

DeepSeek’s quick progress has stirred doubts about the lead America has in AI with models that it claims can match or even outperform Western rivals at a fraction of the cost, but the U.S. executives said on Wednesday that building huge computer networks was necessary to serve growing corporate needs.

“Investing ‘very heavily’ in capital expenditure and infrastructure is going to be a strategic advantage over time,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on a post-earnings call.

Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, said the spending was needed to overcome the capacity constraints that have hampered the technology giant’s ability to capitalize on AI.

“As AI becomes more efficient and accessible, we will see exponentially more demand,” he said on a call with analysts.

Microsoft has earmarked $80 billion for AI in its current fiscal year, while Meta has pledged as much as $65 billion towards the technology.

That is a far cry from the roughly $6 million DeepSeek said it has spent to develop its AI model. U.S. tech executives and Wall Street analysts say that reflects the amount spent on computing power, rather than all development costs.

Still, some investors seem to be losing patience with the hefty spending and lack of big payoffs.

Shares of Microsoft — widely seen as a front runner in the AI race because of its tie to industry leader OpenAI – were down 5% in extended trading after the company said that growth in its Azure cloud business in the current quarter would fall short of estimates.

“We really want to start to see a clear road map to what that monetization model looks like for all of the capital that’s been invested,” said Brian Mulberry, portfolio manager at Zacks Investment Management, which holds shares in Microsoft.

Meta, meanwhile, sent mixed signals about how its bets on AI-powered tools were paying off, with a strong fourth quarter but a lackluster sales forecast for the current period.

“With these huge expenses, they need to turn the spigot on in terms of revenue generated, but I think this week was a wake-up call for the U.S.” said Futurum Group analyst Daniel Newman.

“For AI right now, there’s too much capital expenditure, not enough consumption.”

There are some signs though that executives are moving to change that.

Microsoft CFO Amy Hood said the company’s capital spending in the current quarter and the next would remain around the $22.6 billion level seen in the second quarter.

“In fiscal 2026, we expect to continue to invest against strong demand signals. However, the growth rate will be lower than fiscal 2025 (which ends in June),” she said. 
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A small Chinese company sent shockwaves around the tech world this week with news that it has created a high-performing artificial intelligence system with less computing power and at a lower cost than ones made by U.S. tech giants. Michelle Quinn reports.
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The Russian lawmaker attributed to Trump a quote from a deepfake video created by Ukrainian bloggers and shared on the Telegram messaging platform.
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