Nation & World Glance
US: Russia has committed crimes against humanity in Ukraine
MUNICH – The United States has determined that Russia has committed crimes against humanity in Ukraine, Vice President Kamala Harris said Saturday, insisting that “justice must be served” to the perpetrators.
Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, Harris said the international community has both a moral and a strategic interest in pursuing those crimes, pointing to a danger of other authoritarian governments taking advantage if international rules are undermined.
“Russian forces have pursued a widespread and systemic attack against a civilian population – gruesome acts of murder, torture, rape, and deportation,” Harris said. She also cited “execution-style killings, beatings, and electrocution.”
The Biden administration formally determined last March that Russian troops had committed war crimes in Ukraine and said it would work with others to prosecute offenders. A determination of crimes against humanity goes a step further, indicating that attacks against civilians are being carried out in a widespread and systematic manner.
“Russian authorities have forcibly deported hundreds of thousands of people, from Ukraine to Russia, including children,” Harris said. “They have cruelly separated children from their families.”
Dominion voting case exposes post-election fear at Fox News
NEW YORK – A court filing in a lawsuit against Fox News lays bare a panic at the network that it had alienated its viewers and damaged its brand by not lining up with President Donald Trump’s false claims that he had won the 2020 presidential election.
That worry – a real one, judging by Fox’s ratings in the election’s aftermath – played a key role in Fox not setting the record straight about unfounded fraud claims, the network’s accuser contends.
“It’s remarkable how weak ratings make good journalists do bad things,” the filing quotes Fox Washington news executive Bill Sammon as saying.
The details were included in a trove of private communications unearthed by lawyers and contained in a redacted brief filed Thursday by Dominion Voting Systems. Dominion claims in a $1.6 billion lawsuit that Fox aired allegations that Dominion had doctored the vote against Trump, even as it knew that was untrue. Fox says it was doing its job as journalists by airing the accusations made by Trump and his allies.
Fox’s internal troubles began with a correct call: Declaring on election night 2020 that Democrat Joe Biden had beaten Trump in Arizona. The declaration, coming ahead of other news organizations, infuriated the president and his fans.
Blinken: China’s balloon incursion ‘must never happen again’
MUNICH – The top diplomats from the United States and China met on Saturday in the first high-level contact between their countries since the U.S. shot down an alleged Chinese spy balloon two weeks ago, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken sending the message that Beijing’s surveillance program had been “exposed to the world.”
Blinken and Wang Yi, the Chinese Communist Party’s most senior foreign policy official, held the hourlong talks in Munich, where they were attending an international security conference, according to the U.S. State Department.
“I made very clear to him that China sending its surveillance balloon over the United States in violation of our sovereignty, in violation of international law, was unacceptable and must never happen again,” Blinken said Saturday in an interview for CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
His spokesman, Ned Price, said in a statement that Blinken also told the Chinese official that his nation’s “high-altitude surveillance balloon program – which has intruded into the airspace of over 40 countries across five continents – has been exposed to the world.”
Blinken had canceled a trip to Beijing earlier this month due to the balloon incident, which has become a major issue of contention between the two countries. A meeting at the conference in Germany had been widely anticipated.
Tesla driver killed after plowing into firetruck on freeway
WALNUT CREEK, Calif. — A Tesla driver was killed and a passenger was critically injured Saturday when the car plowed into a fire truck that was parked on a Northern California freeway to shield a crew clearing another accident, fire officials said.
Four firefighters who were in the truck when it was struck on Interstate 680 were treated for minor injuries, said Tracie Dutter, assistant chief of the Contra Costa County Fire Protection District.
The driver was declared dead at the scene, Dutter said. The car needed to be cut open to remove the passenger, who was taken to the hospital.
Photos showed the front end of the car was crushed and the $1.4 million ladder truck was damaged.
California Highway Patrol Officer Adam Lane said it was not clear whether the driver may have been intoxicated or whether the Tesla Model S was operating with automation or driving assistance features.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating how Tesla’s Autopilot system detects and responds to emergency vehicles parked on highways. At least 14 Teslas have crashed into emergency vehicles while using the system.
Dutter said the truck had its lights on and was parked diagonally on northbound lanes of the freeway to protect responders to an earlier accident that did not result in injuries. The fatal accident occurred around 4 a.m., and it took several hours to clear the freeway. The firetruck had to be towed away.
North Korea fires missile as US, S. Korea prepare for drills
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea on Saturday fired a long-range missile from its capital into the sea off Japan, according to its neighbors, a day after it threatened to take strong measures against South Korea and the U.S. over their joint military exercises.
According to the South Korean and Japanese militaries, the missile was fired on a high angle, apparently to avoid reaching the neighbors’ territories, and traveled about 900 kilometers (560 miles) at a maximum altitude of 5,700 kilometers (3,500 miles) during an hourlong flight.
The details were similar to North Korea’s Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile test flight in November, which experts said demonstrated potential to reach the U.S. mainland if fired on a normal trajectory.
Japanese government spokesperson Hirokazu Matsuno said no damage was reported from the missile, which landed within Japan’s exclusive economic zone, about 200 kilometers (125 miles) west of Oshima island. Oshima lies off the western coast of the northernmost main island of Hokkaido.
North Korea’s Foreign Ministry on Friday threatened with “unprecedently” strong action against its rivals, after South Korea announced a series of military exercises with the United States aimed at sharpening their response to the North’s growing threats.
While the U.S. Indo-pacific Command said the launch did not pose an immediate threat to U.S. personnel, territory, or its allies, the White House National Security Council said it needlessly raises tensions and risks destabilizing the security situation in the region.