ЦІКАВЕ

RENO, NEV. — The room was packed with Native American leaders from across the United States, all invited to Washington to hear from federal officials about President Joe Biden’s accomplishments and new policy directives aimed at improving relationships and protecting sacred sites.

Arlan Melendez was not among them.

The longtime chairman of the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony convened his own meeting 4,023 kilometers away. He wanted to show his community would find another way to fight the U.S. government’s approval of a massive lithium mine at the site where more than two dozen of their Paiute and Shoshone ancestors were massacred in 1865.

Opposed by government lawyers at every legal turn, Melendez said another arduous appeal would not save sacred sites from being desecrated.

“We’re not giving up the fight, but we are changing our strategy,” Melendez said.

That shift for the Nevada tribe comes as Biden and other top federal officials double down on their vows to do a better job of working with Native American leaders on everything from making federal funding more accessible to incorporating tribal voices into land preservation efforts and resource management planning.

The administration also has touted more spending on infrastructure and health care across Indian Country.

Many tribes have benefited, including those who led campaigns to establish new national monuments in Utah and Arizona. In New Mexico, pueblos have succeeded in getting the Interior Department to ban new oil and natural gas development on hundreds of square miles of federal land for 20 years to protect culturally significant areas.

But the colony in Reno and others like the Tohono O’odham Nation in Arizona say promises of more cooperation ring hollow when it comes to high-stakes battles over multibillion-dollar “green energy” projects. Some tribal leaders have said consultation resulted in little more than listening sessions, with federal officials not incorporating tribal comments into the decision making.

Rather than pursue its claims in court that the federal government failed to engage in meaningful consultation regarding the lithium mine at Thacker Pass, the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony will focus on organizing a broad coalition to build public support for sacred places.

Tribal members are concerned other culturally significant areas will end up in the path of a modern-day Gold Rush that has companies scouting for lithium and other materials needed to meet Biden’s clean energy agenda.

Melendez was among those thrilled when Biden appointed Deb Haaland to lead the Interior Department. A member of Laguna Pueblo, Haaland is the first Native American to serve as a Cabinet secretary.

Melendez, a former member of the U.S. Human Rights Commission who has led his colony for 32 years, said he understands the difficulty of navigating the electoral landscape in a western swing state where the mining industry’s political clout is second only to the power wielded by casinos.

Still, he was disappointed Haaland declined an invitation to visit the massacre site.

“The largest lithium project in the United States and they don’t even have the time to come out here and meet with the tribal nations in the state of Nevada,” he said.

The tribe’s lawyer, Will Falk, urged other tribes to resist “tricking ourselves into believing that just because the first Native American secretary of Interior is in office that she actually cares about protecting sacred sites.”

Interior Department spokeswoman Melissa Schwartz didn’t respond directly to that criticism but said in an email to The Associated Press that there has been “significant communications and partnership with tribes in Nevada.”

The federal government in early December published new guidance for dealing with sacred sites. While Falk and others are skeptical, they acknowledged the document speaks to concerns tribes have raised for decades.

Among other things, the guidance says federal agencies should involve tribes as early as possible when planning projects to identify potential impacts to sacred sites and to determine whether mitigation measures can allay concerns. Agencies also should consult with tribes that attach significance to the project area, regardless of where they are located.

It also suggests Indigenous knowledge should be on equal footing with other sciences and incorporated into the federal decision-making process. That knowledge can consist of practices, cultural beliefs and oral and written histories that tribes have developed over many generations.

Justin C. Ahasteen, executive director of the Navajo Nation Washington (D.C.) Office, said the new guidance appears to have incorporated some of the recommendations made by tribal leaders but that it could have gone further.

“If this guidebook increases transparency in the consultation process, we will take it as a win,” Ahasteen said. “But ultimately the thing we all seek is for the federal government to acknowledge the necessity of tribal consent before changing rules that affect tribes.”

The problem, Falk said, is none of it is legally binding.

“These kinds of documents function more as pacifying propaganda,” he said.

Western Shoshone Defense Project Director Fermina Stevens said the changes were “more ‘lip service’ for the government to deal with the ‘Indian problem’ in this new day and age of mineral extraction.”

Morgan Rodman, executive director of the White House Council on Native American Affairs, disagrees. He said the guidance is intended to serve as a springboard to improve engagement with tribes and that the administration will be aggressive with training to make sure employees have an understanding of what sacred sites are.

“While change certainly doesn’t happen overnight, it’s part of a continuum of important policy statements — part of the momentum we’ve been building the last three years,” he said in an interview.

Rodman made clear he wasn’t referencing Thacker Pass, but some directives he highlighted have been key points of contention in that case.

U.S. Judge Miranda Du in Reno twice ruled the tribe failed to prove the massacre occurred on the specific grounds of the mining project, or that far-flung tribes had a legal stake in the fight. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld her earlier ruling in July.

The tribe says the government has ignored evidence that the land they consider sacred isn’t limited to a specific site where the U.S. Calvary first attacked men, women and children as they slept.

They cited newspaper accounts, diaries and a government surveyor’s report documenting human skulls discovered along a miles-long escape route crossing the mine site where troops killed and scalped those who tried to flee.

Tribal historic preservation officer Michon Eben said the whole stretch is an unmarked burial ground.

Melendez said he’s pleased Biden has promised to enhance consultation.

But if federal agencies don’t follow through, he said, “Well, it’s just words that really don’t mean anything to us.”
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BOSTON — When Ernseau Admettre decided to leave Haiti and head north with his young family in tow, very little was guaranteed.

But the situation in his homeland, beset by poverty and gang violence, had grown so dire that a risky passage to and then across the United States’ Southern border offered a kind of hope he said he could never find by staying put.

Admettre discovered Boston through the internet and set his sights on Massachusetts. The trip took the family through several countries including the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Mexico.

“We’re going through a very tragic moment in our country. We have no safety. We cannot definitely have all our needs met in Haiti,” Admettre said through a translator Friday. “Leaving Haiti was the best solution to survive.”

The Admettres — Ernseau, 43; his wife, Jimene, 36: and their children Elionai, 6, and Gabyana, 2 months — eventually arrived at the Boston International Airport right as winter temperatures were settling in.

Ernseau Admettre said he was lucky to be discovered by volunteers working to fill gaps in the shelter system as his family was being kicked out of the airport. He viewed those volunteers as angels sent by God.

“I don’t have any family who lives in the United States,” he said. “We didn’t expect to receive this welcome or experience because we have no family ties here.”

The family is now one of eight that have found shelter at a rectory building at the Bethel AME Church in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood. The families — which include 13 children ranging from infants to a 15-year-old — total 28 individuals, according to Geralde Gabeau, executive director of the Immigrant Family Services Institute in Boston, which is helping provide services.

Admettre said he has received a work authorization and hopes to start bringing in money so his family can move out of the shelter and into an apartment. He said he has studied business administration and computer sciences and is also a tailor.

Gabeau said the migrants are determined to work hard to find their way in the country. She said they are focused first on getting authorized to work. The organization hopes to bring in employers in January to help those living in the rectory find a way to jobs and more permanent homes.

For now, they live and cook together and take English and computer classes.

“They live as a community,” Gabeau said, pointing to big pots of vegetables and meat and Haitian rice on the kitchen stove.

Demand for shelter has increased as the state struggles to find newly arriving migrants places to stay after hitting a state-imposed limit of 7,500 families in its emergency homeless shelter system last month.

As of Thursday, there were more than 350 families on the state waiting list hoping to find a spot in the system. The state planned to open a former courthouse in Cambridge as an overnight overflow site to accommodate some of them.

The space can fit up to 70 families with cots and limited amenities and will only be used in the evening and overnight hours, according to Scott Rice, director general of Massachusetts Emergency Assistance. The site is only open to families who have been assessed at a state intake site and determined to be eligible for emergency assistance.

Rice said the facility will give eligible families a warm, safe place to sleep until a shelter unit becomes available.

“We encourage community organizations to reach out to us with any daytime programs and resources they are able to provide to families in need,” Rice said in a statement.
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WASHINGTON — Fadi Sckak has lost his father to the violence in Gaza. He wants to help his mother escape that fate.

“I just want to see my mother again, that’s the goal,” said Sckak, a university student in Sunnyvale, California. The 25-year-old is one of the Palestinian couple’s three American sons, including an active-duty U.S. soldier serving in South Korea. “Being able to hold her again. I can’t bear to lose her.”

His mother, Zahra Sckak, 44, was holed up Saturday with an older, ailing American relative in a Gaza City building along with 100 others. She is among what the U.S. State Department says are 300 American citizens, permanent legal residents or their parents and young children trapped by the fighting between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza.

Relatives in the United States and other advocates are pleading for the Biden administration and Congress to help them flee.

Gaza’s Health Ministry has reported more than 20,000 deaths in the fighting and more than 53,600 wounded. According to the United Nations, more than a half-million people are starving in Gaza because of the war.

Fadi Sckak’s mother was on her sixth day with only water from the sewers to drink and with little or no food and rescue hopes waning, he said. His father, Abedalla, was shot and wounded last month, after a bombing forced the family to flee the building where they had been sheltering, and died days later without treatment, he said.

Their son had listened over the phone as his mother begged for help after the shooting. He could hear his 56-year-old father, who had diabetes and corresponding health problems, in the background, crying out in pain.

“He didn’t deserve a painful experience like that. To die, with no help, no one even trying to help,” Sckak said.

Some stranded, some trapped

Some U.S. citizens and legal residents and their immediate family are stranded near Gaza’s Rafah crossing into Egypt, desperately waiting for placement on a list of U.S.-government-provided names that would authorize them to leave Gaza.

Others, like Zahra Schkak, are trapped by fighting, and some are too ill or wounded to reach the crossing. They tell their families in voice messages and sporadic phone calls and texts of danger, hunger and fear.

“This is the part of the missile that fall down on our heads yesterday,” American citizen Borak Alagha, 18, texted his cousin, Yasmeen Elagha, a law student in Chicago, sending a photo of him holding a jagged chunk of metal.

“This is the hole next to the place we are living now,” Alagha said in another text. It showed a deep bomb crater next to their building near Khan Younis, where the family of 10 fled after Israeli officials identified the area as a safe place for civilians.

‘Leaving them for dead’

Yasmeen Elagha has reached out to State Department officials and members of a special task force. She has sued to force the U.S. government to do more after hearing from American officials that there is nothing they can do at the moment.

“They are fully leaving them for dead,” she said.

The State Department said Friday it has helped more than 1,300 people who were eligible for U.S. assistance — American citizens, green-card holders and their immediate family members — make it through the Rafah crossing to Egypt. The department is tracking 300 more still seeking U.S. help to escape; that includes what it says are fewer than 50 U.S. citizens.

“U.S. citizens and their families will make their own decisions and adjust their plans as this difficult situation changes,” the department said in a statement.

The case of Sckak’s family in Gaza has gotten more attention in Washington, given 24-year-old Ragi Sckak’s Army duty in South Korea.

Representative Ro Khanna said he has pushed the administration to get Americans out of Gaza.

“I know this is a top priority for the administration,” he said in a statement, adding that U.S. officials would “exhaust every option.”

Maria Kari is an immigration lawyer in Houston working on behalf of the stranded American citizens and legal residents. She points to the air and sea charters that the U.S. helped arrange to bring out more than 1,000 Americans and others from Israel after the Hamas attacks on October 7 that started the war.

She has filed a lawsuit accusing the U.S. government of failing to protect Americans in danger abroad and unconstitutionally denying Palestinian Americans the kind of assistance it gave Israeli Americans.

“We’re not asking them to do anything political here,” she said. “We’re simply saying the State Department has a job. And it’s not doing that job, for one class of citizens.”
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PORTLAND, Maine — Unfounded claims about offshore wind threatening whales have surfaced as a flashpoint in the fight over the future of renewable energy.

In recent months, conservatives including former President Donald Trump have claimed construction of offshore wind turbines is killing the giant animals.

Scientists say there is no credible evidence linking offshore wind farms to whale deaths. But that hasn’t stopped conservative groups and ad hoc “not in my back yard”-style anti-development groups from making the connection.

The Associated Press sorts fact from fiction when it comes to whales and wind power as the rare North Atlantic right whale’s migration season gets under way:

Where are US offshore wind projects?

To date, two commercial offshore wind farms are under construction in the United States. Danish wind energy developer Ørsted and the utility Eversource are building South Fork Wind, located 56 kilometers east of Montauk Point, New York. Ørsted announced December 7 that the first of its 12 turbines there is now sending electricity onto the grid. Vineyard Wind is building a 62-turbine wind farm 24 kilometers off Massachusetts. Both plan to open by early next year, and other large offshore wind projects are obtaining permits.

There are also two pilot projects — five turbines off Rhode Island and two off Virginia. The Biden administration aims to power 10 million homes with offshore wind by 2030 — a key piece of its climate goals.

Lawsuits from community groups delayed Ørsted’s two large offshore wind projects in New Jersey, and the company recently announced it’s canceling those projects. That decision was based on their economic viability and had nothing to do with offshore wind opposition in New Jersey, said David Hardy, group executive vice president and CEO Americas at Ørsted.

Are US wind farms causing whale deaths?

Experts say there’s no evidence that limited wind farm construction on the Atlantic Coast has directly resulted in any whale deaths, despite politically motivated statements suggesting a link.

Rumors began to swirl after 2016, when an unusual number of whales started to be found dead or stranded on New England beaches — a trend that predates major offshore wind farm construction that began this year.

“With whale strandings along the Northeast earlier this year in places like New Jersey, the reality is that it’s not from offshore wind,” said Aaron Rice, a marine biologist at Cornell University.

In answering questions about whale strandings earlier this year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that around 40% of recovered whale carcasses showed evidence of death from fishing gear entanglement or vessel strikes. The others could not be linked to a specific cause.

In Europe, where offshore wind has been developed for more than three decades, national agencies also have not found causal links between wind farms and whale deaths.

Meanwhile, U.S. scientists are collecting data near offshore wind farms to monitor any possible impacts short of fatality, such as altered behavior or changes to migration routes. This research is still in preliminary stages, said Doug Nowacek, a marine biologist at Duke University who helped put trackers on whales this summer off Massachusetts as part of a five-year federally-funded study.

What real dangers do whales face?

While the exact causes of recent whale strandings along the East Coast mostly are not known, whales do face dangers from human activities.

The biggest threats are shipping collisions and entanglement in fishing gear, according to scientists and federal authorities. Underwater noise pollution is another concern, they say.

Some advocates for protecting whales have characterized the push against offshore wind power as a distraction from real issues. “It seems that this is being used in an opportunistic way by anti-wind interests,” said Gib Brogan, fisheries campaign director at the environmental group Oceana.

Since 2016, humpback whales have been dying at an advanced rate — one the federal government terms an “unusual mortality event.” The much rarer North Atlantic right whale with fewer than 360 on Earth is also experiencing an unusual mortality event.

NOAA reports 83 whales have died off the East Coast since December 1, 2022. Roughly half were humpbacks between Massachusetts and North Carolina, and two were critically-endangered right whales in North Carolina and Virginia.

What’s being done to protect whales near wind farms?

Federal law sets limits on human-generated sound underwater for continuous noise and short sudden bursts.

Marine construction projects can reduce possible impact on marine mammals, including by pausing construction during migration seasons, using “bubble curtains” to contain sound from pile-driving and stationing trained observers with binoculars on ships to look for marine mammals.

Offshore wind developers are taking steps required by regulators, but also are voluntarily adopting measures to ensure marine mammals are not harmed. Ørsted won’t drive piles between December 1 and April 30, when whales are on the move. It uses additional lookout vehicles, encircles monopiles for turbines with bubble curtains and does underwater acoustic monitoring.

Equinor plans to use acoustic monitoring and infrared cameras to detect whales when it starts developing two lease areas off Long Island with its partner bp. The company says it will limit pile driving to months when right whales are least likely to be present.

Why are some people alleging wind farms cause whale deaths?

One vocal opponent of offshore wind is the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. Diana Furchtgott-Roth, director of the foundation’s center for energy, climate and environment, wrote in November that Ørsted’s scrapped New Jersey wind project was “unsightly” and a threat to wildlife.

“Whales and birds … stand to gain if offshore wind abandons the Garden State,” Furchtgott-Roth wrote.

Ørsted’s Hardy said claims about wind farms killing whales are “not scientific” but “very much politically-driven misinformation.”

The Heartland Institute, another conservative public policy group, has also pushed back at offshore wind projects. H. Sterling Burnett, director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at the institute, said the wind projects are subject to unfairly lax regulatory restrictions compared to fossil fuel projects.

“We think it should be held to the same standard that any oil and gas project would be,” Burnett said.

Smaller anti-wind groups have also organized in coastal communities to oppose projects they feel jeopardize water views, coastal industries and recreation.

What’s the impact of misinformation?

Offshore wind opponents are using unsupported claims about harm to whales to try to stop projects, with some of the loudest opposition centered in New Jersey.

Misinformation can cause angst in coastal communities where developers need to build shoreside infrastructure to operate a wind farm.

Republican politicians have taken opposition from shore towns and community groups seriously. GOP congressmen from New Jersey, Maryland and Arizona got the U.S. Government Accountability Office to open an investigation into the offshore wind industry’s impacts on commercial fishing and marine life and want a moratorium on projects.

New Jersey’s Democrat-controlled Legislature remains steadfastly behind the industry.

Are whales affected by climate change?

One reason whale advocates push for renewable energy is that they say climate change is harming the animals — and less reliance on fossil fuels would help solve that problem.

Scientists say global warming has caused the right whale’s preferred food — tiny crustaceans — to move as waters have warmed.

That means the whales have strayed from protected areas of ocean in search of food, leaving them vulnerable to ship strikes and entanglements. Large whales play a vitally important role in the ecosystem by storing carbon, so some scientists say they are also part of the solution to climate change.
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AUSTIN, Texas/WASHINGTON — Students and faculty alike at universities in Florida are still unsure about the impact of a new state law restricting cooperation between the institutions and their counterparts in China and a handful of other countries six months after it went into effect.

“Some people only found out about this after seeing news reported in China, and no one knew how the law would actually be implemented,” said Zhang, a graduate who told VOA the law has caused anxiety and uneasiness among Chinese students she knows.

Zhang, who earned a Ph.D. from the University of Florida two years ago, asked that VOA not reveal her full name for fear of retaliation from the Chinese government.

She said she knows two students who are still studying at the university but worry whether they can continue to work as teaching assistants for an annual income of $20,000 to $30,000.

The law, known as the Agreements of Educational Entities with Foreign Entities Act, or SB 864, bars state colleges and universities in Florida and their employees and representatives from accepting any gifts “in their official capacities from a college or university” based in any of seven “countries of concern”: China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela and Syria.

Twelve state colleges and universities are also prohibited from accepting any grant from or participating in any agreement or partnership with any college or university based in any of the seven countries unless the partnership is authorized by the Florida Board of Governors or the State Board of Education, according to a May news release from the governor’s office.

“Florida is taking action to stand against the United States’ greatest geopolitical threat — the Chinese Communist Party [CCP],” Governor Ron DeSantis said in the statement, adding that the purpose of the bill is to stop CCP influence in the state’s education system from grade school to grad school.

In a letter to its faculty on December 15, the Department of Physics at the University of Florida interpreted the law as saying “that for the 2024-25 academic year, we are not able to offer ’employment’ — meaning any form of assistantship or fellowship support — to students in those countries.”

“Although the law may potentially allow us to admit self-funded students, that question is not yet clearly answered. In any case, [the Department of] Physics always offers financial support to its admitted grad students. Therefore, for all practical purposes, we will not be able to offer admission to students applying from those countries.”

The school may be able to offer admission and assistantship to students who originate from the seven countries but who are already living and studying in the U.S. But “these cases will have to be individually reviewed and approved by the [University of Florida] administration before any offer is made.”

The letter also pointed out that the “already in the U.S.” exception cannot be a back door for recruiting students from the seven countries by bringing them into the U.S. by some other means, and then offering them a graduate assistantship once they are here.

The letter noted that faculty hired under an H-1B visa are not affected.

VOA reached out to the governor’s office and State Senator Bryan Avila’s office seeking comments on how the state’s competitiveness in education might be affected, the potential for discrimination against Chinese Americans, and any plans the state has to protect Chinese Americans from such discrimination. By the time of publication, VOA had received no response from either office.

“Not all Chinese students serve the Communist Party,” Zhang told VOA. “Many of them left because they didn’t like China.”

When she was an undergraduate student in Beijing, Zhang said, she was disgusted by the political and ideological courses related to Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping and Marxism-Leninism. She hated the patriotic slogans and student activities that promoted the Communist Party.

She also followed politically sensitive topics including the Tiananmen Massacre, she said, adding that she wanted to leave China even when she was still a freshman.

Zhang believes many Chinese students come to the U.S. because they want a freer and more open academic environment than that in China, and they want to live and work in — as well as contribute to — the U.S. She said these students should not be seen as a threat to the security of the U.S. just because of their nationality.

Li Chenglong, a professor at the College of Pharmacy at the University of Florida, told VOA that Chinese students are an important part of the doctoral student body there. “Because of this bad policy right now damaging the UF reputation, I am speculating that maybe in future years, maybe there will be less [Chinese] applications to UF,” he said.

Richard Woodard, professor of physics at the University of Florida, told VOA, “The law saddens me because the Chinese used to comprise a third of our graduate students, and they were the best.”

According to 2020 data, the University of Florida had 344 undergraduates and 1,110 graduate and doctoral students from China, more than from any other foreign country. In 2023, the data show, the university’s optical engineering and computer science departments alone had 508 Chinese graduate students and doctoral students.

Woodard thinks the concern about threats from China is valid, “but I do wish we could have found some other way of addressing security concerns.”

He said, “It takes years of dedicated study to pursue a career in physics. I don’t think it would be easy for a Chinese spy to fake that, so I believe we could probably separate the potential security risks from the much larger pool of people who love physics and have the talent and training to contribute to it.

“So many American universities are under the same pressure that we might be able to create a vetting service in cooperation with American intelligence agencies.”

Jon Taylor, chair of the Department of Political Science and Geography at the University of Texas at San Antonio, also acknowledged that China has tried in the past to exploit America’s open education system. But he too thinks the new law is overly broad.

“There are concerns about spying and intellectual property issues, those things happen, we know they happen,” he said. “And everybody has to do their due diligence, but I think what Florida is doing goes beyond due diligence.”

He called the Florida bill “shooting itself in the foot” as China’s state media have used it as a tool to criticize the U.S. 
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Coral Springs, florida — Joyce Loaiza lives alone, but when she returns to her apartment at a Florida senior community, the retired office worker often has a chat with a friendly female voice that asks about her day.

A few miles away, the same voice comforted Deanna Dezern, 83, when her friend died. In central New York, it plays games and music for Marie Broadbent, 92, who is blind and in hospice, and in Washington state, it helps Jan Worrell, 83, make new friends.

The women are some of the first in the country to receive the robot ElliQ, whose creators, Intuition Robotics, and senior assistance officials say is the only device using artificial intelligence specifically designed to alleviate the loneliness and isolation experienced by many older Americans.

“It’s entertaining. You can actually talk to her,” said Loaiza, 81, whose ElliQ in suburban Fort Lauderdale nicknamed her “Jellybean” for no particular reason. “She’ll make comments like, ‘I would go outside if I had hands, but I can’t hold an umbrella.'”

The device, which looks like a small table lamp, lights up and swivels. It remembers each user’s interests and their conversations, helping tailor future chats, which can be as deep as the meaning of life or as light as a horoscope.

ElliQ tells jokes, plays music and provides inspirational quotes. On an accompanying video screen, it provides tours of cities and museums. The device leads exercises, asks about the owner’s health and gives reminders to take medications and drink water. It can also host video calls and contact relatives, friends or doctors in an emergency.

Intuition Robotics says none of the conversations are heard by the company, with the information staying on each owner’s device.

Inspired by grandfather’s needs

Intuition Robotics CEO Dor Skuler said the idea for ElliQ came before he launched his Israeli company eight years ago. His widowed grandfather needed an aide, but the first one didn’t work out. The replacement, though, understood his grandfather’s love of classical music and his “quirky sense of humor.”

The average user interacts with ElliQ more than 30 times daily, even six months after receiving it, and more than 90% report lower levels of loneliness, he said.

The robots are mostly distributed by assistance agencies in New York, Florida, Michigan, Nevada and Washington state, but can also be purchased individually for $600 a year and a $250 installation fee. Skuler wouldn’t say how many ElliQs have been distributed so far, but the goal is to have more than 100,000 out within five years.

That worries Brigham Young University psychology professor Julianne Holt-Lunstad, who studies the detrimental effects loneliness has on health and mortality.

Although a device like ElliQ might have short-term benefits, it could make people less likely to seek human contact, she said.

“It is not clear whether AI is actually fulfilling any kind of need or just dampening the signal,” Holt-Lunstad said.

Skuler and agency heads distributing ElliQ agreed it isn’t a substitute for human contact, but not all seniors have social networks. Some are housebound, and even seniors with strong ties are often alone.

Skuler said ElliQ was purposely designed so it wouldn’t fully imitate humans. He said his company wants “to make sure that ElliQ always genuinely presents herself as an AI and doesn’t pretend to be human.”

But some of the seniors using ElliQ say they sometimes need to remember the robot isn’t a living being. They find the device easy to set up and use, but if they have one complaint it’s that ElliQ is sometimes too chatty. There are settings that can tone that down.

‘It was so what I needed’

Dezern said she felt alone and sad when she told her ElliQ about her friend’s death. It replied it would give her a hug if it had arms. Dezern broke into tears.

“It was so what I needed,” the retired collections consultant said. “I can say things to Elli that I won’t say to my grandchildren or to my own daughters. I can just open the floodgates. I can cry. I can giggle. I can act silly. I’ve been asked: Doesn’t it feel like you’re talking to yourself? No, because it gives an answer.”

Worrell lives in a small town on Washington’s coast. Widowed, she said ElliQ’s companionship made her change her mind about moving to an assisted living facility, and she uses it as an icebreaker when she meets someone new to town.

“I say, ‘Would you like to come over and visit with my robot?’ And they say, ‘A vacuum?’ No, a robot. She’s my roommate,” she said and laughed.

Broadbent, like the other women, says she gets plenty of human contact, even though she is blind and ill. She plays organ at two churches in the South New Berlin, New York, area and gets daily visitors. Still, the widow misses having a voice to talk with when they leave. ElliQ fills that void with her games, tours, books and music.
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WASHINGTON — U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday signed into law the U.S. defense policy bill that authorizes a record $886 billion in annual military spending and policies such as aid for Ukraine and push-back against China in the Indo-Pacific.

The National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, passed Congress last week. The Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate approved the legislation with a strong bipartisan majority of 87-13 while the House of Representatives voted in favor 310-118.

The bill, one of the few major pieces of legislation Congress passes every year, governs everything from pay raises for service members and purchases of ships and aircraft to policies such as support for foreign partners such as Taiwan.

The act, nearly 3,100 pages long, called for a 5.2% pay raise for service members and increased the nation’s total national security budget by about 3% to $886 billion. It also lists certain Chinese battery companies that it says are ineligible for Defense Department procurement.

The fiscal 2024 NDAA also includes a four-month extension of a disputed domestic surveillance authority, giving lawmakers more time to either reform or keep the program, known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

That provision faced objections in both the Senate and House, but not enough to derail the bill.

The bill extends one measure to help Ukraine, the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, through the end of 2026, authorizing $300 million for the program in the fiscal year ending September 30, 2024, and the next one.

However, that figure is small compared to the $61 billion that Biden had asked Congress to approve to help Kyiv combat a Russian invasion that began in February 2022. Republicans had refused to approve assistance for Ukraine without Democrats agreeing to a significant toughening of immigration law.
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washington — The Supreme Court said Friday that it would not immediately take up a plea by special counsel Jack Smith to rule on whether former President Donald Trump can be prosecuted for his actions to overturn the 2020 election results. 

The ruling is a win for Trump and his lawyers, who have sought repeatedly to delay this and other criminal cases against him as he seeks to reclaim the White House in 2024. It averts a swift ruling from the nation’s highest court that could have definitively turned aside his claims of immunity and pushed the case toward a trial scheduled to start on March 4. 

The issue will now be decided by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which has signaled it will act quickly to decide the case. Smith had cautioned that even a rapid appellate decision might not get to the Supreme Court in time for review and final word before the court’s traditional summer break. 

Smith had pressed the Supreme Court to intervene, citing significant public interest in a speedy resolution to the case. The request to leapfrog the appeals court, which Smith himself acknowledged was extraordinary, underscored prosecutors’ concerns that the legal fight over the issue could delay the start of Trump’s trial beyond next year’s presidential election. 

The court turned down the request for swift action in a single-sentence order released Friday afternoon. As is the court’s custom, the justices gave no explanation for the decision. The Justice Department declined to comment. 

With the justices remaining out of the dispute for now, more appeals are likely that could delay the case. If the appeals court, which is set to hear arguments on January 9, turns down Trump’s immunity claims, the former president could then ask for the Supreme Court to get involved and for the case to be paused while the matter is pending. 

The high court still could act quickly once the appeals court issues its decision. A Supreme Court case usually lasts several months, but on rare occasions, the justices shift into high gear. 

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan has put the case on hold while Trump pursues his claim that he is immune from prosecution. Chutkan has raised the possibility of keeping the March date if the case promptly returns to her court. 

She has rejected the Trump team’s arguments that an ex-president could not be prosecuted over acts that fall within the official duties of the job. 

“Former presidents enjoy no special conditions on their federal criminal liability,” Chutkan wrote in her December 1 ruling. “Defendant may be subject to federal investigation, indictment, prosecution, conviction and punishment for any criminal acts undertaken while in office.” 

Trump’s lawyers have for months signaled that they would ultimately ask the Supreme Court to take up the immunity question. But this week, they urged the justices to stand down for now. 

“Importance does not automatically necessitate speed. If anything, the opposite is usually true. Novel, complex, sensitive and historic issues — such as the existence of presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts — call for more careful deliberation, not less,” Trump’s lawyers wrote. 

There are still more Trump-related cases that the court — which includes three justices appointed by him — is poised to grapple with in the months ahead. 

Trump’s lawyers plan to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a decision Tuesday by the Colorado Supreme Court barring him from that state’s ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which prohibits anyone who swore an oath to support the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection” against it from holding office. 

And the high court separately has agreed to hear a case over the charge of obstruction of an official proceeding that has been brought against Trump as well as more than 300 of his supporters who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021. 
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During his November visit to Ukraine, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin warned that if Russia succeeds in Ukraine, the next Kremlin threat will extend to the Baltics. VOA’s Eastern Europe chief visited the Estonian military base where U.S. and Estonian troops have developed their capabilities to confront potential aggressors. VOA footage by Daniil Batushchak.
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