U.S. officials said on Thursday that a Chinese “surveillance balloon” has been flying over the United States for several days.

Using high-altitude balloons for spying and other military missions is a practice that dates to the middle of the last century. Here is what is known about how they operate and what they can be used for:

* During World War 2, the Japanese military tried to loft incendiary bombs into U.S. territory using balloons designed to float in jet stream air currents. No military targets were damaged, but several civilians were killed when one of the balloons crashed in an Oregon forest.

* Just after World War 2, the U.S. military started exploring the use of high-altitude spy balloons, which led to a large-scale series of missions called Project Genet. The project flew photographic balloons over Soviet bloc territory in the 1950s, according to government documents.

* Such balloons typically operate at 80,000-120,000 feet (24,000-37,000m), well above where commercial air traffic flies – airliners almost never fly higher than 40,000 feet. The highest-performing fighter aircraft typically do not operate above 65,000 feet, although spy planes such as the U-2 have a service ceiling of 80,000 feet or more.

* The advantages of balloons over satellites include the ability to scan wide swathes of territory from closer in, and to be able to spend more time over a target area, according to a 2009 report to the U.S. Air Force’s Air Command and Staff College.

* Unlike satellites, which require space launchers that cost hundreds of millions of dollars, balloons can be launched cheaply.

* The balloons are not directly steered, but can be roughly guided to a target area by changing altitudes to catch different wind currents, according to a 2005 study for the Air Force’s Airpower Research Institute.

* The U.S. military has tracked other spy balloons in recent years, including before President Joe Biden’s administration, according to a senior U.S. defense official.

Politicians in Washington can play games all they want, but they had better not do anything to harm our economy, which is already precariously hanging on. They can play partisan politics as much as they like, but when they start threatening veterans, retirees, and the population in general, they had better think about whether or not they want to remain in Washington. As CNN reported, Kevin McCarthy finally won the speakership by caving to the far-right members of his party. One issue about which they were most clear is their unwillingness to raise the debt ceiling. Now, McCarthy has to balance his debt to those members of his party who didn’t want him with the desires of the American public. Now is the time for both parties to learn to work together for the good of the country.

Life has been hard on Americans for the last few years. We suffered through the worst pandemic in a century, which disrupted everyday life in many negative ways. We lost over one million of our fellow citizens, many of which can rightfully be blamed on Donald Trump and his lies and deception. Even as we continue to crawl out of that hole, there are a few bright spots. Job growth is steady, fears of inflation have flattened out (for the time being), and the stock market is up. This is all despite the Covid crisis. Joe Biden took office, pledging to do battle with Covid, and he kept his promise, as that was one of his major fights. Unlike President Biden, McCarthy has something to prove.

McCarthy wants to shake the notion that he is a weak leader, though everything about him proves that notion true. He bent, cajoled, and contorted himself into the speakership, and anything that makes his cronies unhappy could prove to be his downfall. After all, he did allow to pass the rule that one person could move to take away the speakership. He is seen as nothing more than a puppet of Donald Trump. He has not done one thing in office to prove otherwise, and it continues to boggle the mind how he gets reelected. Regardless, both sides must be ready to listen. According to Politico, both sides agreed that the first meeting “could have gone worse.” Speaking to reporters, McCarthy said: “No agreements, no promises, except that we would continue this conversation.” There will be additional conversations, though Politico also reported that President Biden “made clear that it is their shared duty not to allow an unprecedented and economically catastrophic default. It is not negotiable or conditional.”

Republicans, of course, want to use the opportunity to get things they want, but McCarthy shared that he believes they “can eventually strike a potential two-year funding deal.” That would suffice for now. Hopefully, at the end of two years, Republicans will no longer be in power, and a speaker will be in place who wants to do what is necessary for the people. The only thing that will save these talks is for everyone to check their egos, roll up their sleeves, and get this done for the sake of the American people.

The post Kevin McCarthy is in over his head when it comes to Joe Biden appeared first on Palmer Report.

This article originally appeared on J. The Jewish News of Northern California and was reprinted here with permission.

A man fired blanks from a handgun at a Jewish center in San Francisco Wednesday, shocking a group gathered for a study session in a community space serving mainly Russian-speaking Jews.

The man entered the Schneerson Center around 7:20 p.m. in the middle of a session on the life of the Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, according to Rabbi Bentzion Pil, who leads the community.

The man said in accented Russian that he was from Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, and that he was going to start shooting.

“I thought he was joking,” Pil told J. on Thursday. “He looked like a Russian Jew.”

Located in a Richmond District neighborhood near what’s often called “Little Russia,” the Schneerson Center is a node of Jewish life for immigrants from the former Soviet Union in the Bay Area, where FSU households number between 15,000 and 20,000, according to Rabbi Shimon Margolin, who leads a local nonprofit serving Russian-speaking Jews.

After the man entered, Pil said he first asked whether he wanted to join their session. It soon became clear that was not his intention.

A jarring video of the incident captured on a security camera shows a man wearing a baseball cap, jacket and sneakers enter the room and gesture animatedly with his arms while speaking to those seated around a table. After about 15 seconds, he reaches into his jacket pocket and reveals a handgun. He appears to struggle to cock the weapon, while an elderly man makes a phone call and starts walking toward him. As the elderly man approaches, the suspect starts firing his weapon, and the elderly man crouches down. He fires in a direction away from those seated around the table, then proceeds to fire around the room while some people clutch their ears and duck. In total the suspect fires between six and eight shots. Then he leaves.

CCTV footage of man firing blanks from a handgun at a Russian Jewish center in San Francisco yesterday, shocking a group gathered for a study session.

Read the full story by @jnewsgabe:https://t.co/pvGYr4WDmb pic.twitter.com/GtnvT1mP2e

— J. The Jewish News of Northern California (@jewishsf) February 3, 2023

“Everyone was stunned and shocked,” Pil said.

The video shows little movement from a dozen or so people around the table — many of whom are in their 60s or older, shul members said.

Pil said the group was perplexed. “It was so unexpected from him,” he said.

The fact that the man was clearly not a “Nazi” nor a Muslim terrorist indicated to the group that their lives were probably not in danger, he added. One person in the group said he might have seen the suspect before. Still, after the shooting started, Pil said he went into the kitchen to grab a knife, but by the time he got back the man was gone.

After the man left, those gathered deliberated about whether to call the police, Pil said.

“I still believe it was just a crazy guy,” he said. “He didn’t scream any antisemitic words or expressions.”

Ultimately they decided it wasn’t worth contacting the police because they were unhurt and they doubted the man would be kept in detention for long if he was caught.

Only the next day was law enforcement contacted after some of the younger community members heard about what had happened.

“I was shaken,” said Alon Chanukov, who viewed the incident on security footage. He said he reached the San Francisco Police Department Thursday morning and was told the matter would be referred to the investigations unit. The SFPD did not respond to a J. request for information in time for this article.

Chanukov said the video disturbed him greatly.

“There is a man, with a gun, who was in my shul. And I see elderly people cowering as he is firing his gun,” he said.

“This is a terrorist attack. The point of this was to cause terror,” Chanukov said. “Not to kill people. But to literally terrify Jews, as best as I can see.”

According to statistics compiled by the California attorney general’s office, hate crimes targeting Jews have been on an upward trend over the past 10 years. Jews are the most frequent target of religiously motivated hate crimes, numbers that accord with national figures.

In an interview with J., the rebbetzin Mattie Pil, Rabbi Bentzion Pil’s wife, lent another interpretation as to why the mostly senior Jews from the former Soviet Union did not contact police.

“They still feel like they’re in the Soviet Union,” she said. “There, when something happens, it’s always the fault of the Jews. If you called police, it would be your fault. So they didn’t want to make any waves.”

The post Shooting rattles Jewish center in San Francisco appeared first on The Forward.

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• South Dakota is seeking to restrict gender-affirming care for trans youth. 
• A state representative quoted Martin Luther King, Jr. while qualifying her vote to the chamber.
• The quote had nothing to do with gender-affirming care.

On the second day of Black History Month, South Dakota State Representative used a Martin Luther King, Jr. quote without context to support a bill that would restrict health care for trans youth.

“I do support this bill and I think it is necessary in this time and place we live and in the time and place in history that we are in. And as other issues from the East Coast and West Coast crawl into our state, I think this is a good piece of legislation to protect our children,” Rep. Brandei Schaefbauer said Thursday.

Schaefbauer is a Republican representing the state’s third district.

She then went on to quote Dr. King’s 1966 speech at Illinois Wesleyan University where he pushed for racial equality. He argued that the solution doesn’t come with time, but with legislation. 

The portion Schaefbauer quoted is as follows: “It may be true that you can’t legislate integration, but you can legislate desegregation. It may be true that morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. It may be true that the law cannot change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless. It may be true that the law can’t make a man love me, but it can restrain him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important also. So while the law may not change the hearts of men, it does change the habits of men. And when you change the habits of men, pretty soon the attitudes and the hearts will be changed. And so there is a need for strong legislation constantly to grapple with the problems we face.”

—Katelyn Burns (@transscribe) February 2, 2023

After quoting the speech and joining a long list of Republicans who have quoted MLK while advocating for issues that marginalize people of color and/or the LGBTQ community, Schaefbauer added, “And as we look around our nation, this is a problem we will be facing in South Dakota. So I believe this bill will protect our children into the future.”

The bill, House Bill 1080, would prevent transgender youth from access to gender-affirming care. South Dakota is a notably conservative state.

Last year, South Dakota limited the teaching of Critical Race Theory in schools by restricting “inherently divisive concepts” such as discussing how a person can be “racist, sexist or oppressive,” CNN reported. 

Schaefbauer did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.

YouTube; Rachel Mendelson/Insider

• YouTube Shorts now sees more than 50 billion daily views, up from 30 billion the year prior. 
• The short-form video format was launched in 2021 as a response to TikTok. 
• Beginning February 1, YouTube enabled creators to generate ad revenue from their Shorts videos.

YouTube Shorts has surpassed 50 billion daily views, up from 30 billion a year ago, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said during its fourth quarter earnings call on Thursday.

Shorts’ growth was a rare bright spot for a quarter where Alphabet saw declining revenue in segments like Search, YouTube, and advertising. YouTube in particular saw its second quarter in a row of declining revenue from this time the previous year as it faces fierce competition from TikTok

YouTube generated just under $8 billion in revenue, down from $8.6 billion in revenue this time last year. Like other tech giants suffering from slumping ad revenue, Alphabet attributed the decline to a pullback in spend from advertisers over concerns of a looming recession.

The announcement of strong Shorts viewership comes just a day after YouTube enabled creators to share advertising revenue from short-form videos with the company. Once accepted into the YouTube Partner Program, users will receive a cut of revenue from the ads that appear against both long and now short-form videos. Some creators are already contemplating moving more of their content over to YouTube Shorts because of this. 

This provides potential for YouTube Shorts if the company can draw people away from TikTok. TikTok is privately owned, and it’s unclear exactly how many views it sees per day. TikTok said in September 2021 that it had one billion monthly users. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew had said the app was on-track to generate $10 billion in revenue in 2022. 

It’s “early days” for Shorts, Google chief business officer Philipp Schindler said on the call. Still, YouTube has long been considered the gold standard for video creators when it comes to making money as they can take a direct cut from advertising revenue.

Schindler described YouTube as “the only destination where creators can produce all forms of content across multiple formats, across multiple screens, and really, with multiple ways to make a living.” He added that Alphabet’s goal is to “make YouTube the best place for Shorts and creators.”

Other apps like Snapchat and TikTok have rolled out creator funds, but those are essentially the companies creating pools of money and distributing it out based on factors like overall views. Creators have complained that these programs are opaque and barely pay anything at all. 

Meta is contemplating the possibility of sharing ad revenue with creators after years of resistance, The Information reported. Instagram, which Meta owns, has its own short-form video product called Reels. 

Ukraine’s military said its forces repelled an attack in the area of Blahodatne in the eastern part of the Donetsk region, while Russia’s Wagner private military group said it took control of the village.

* Russia accused the Ukrainian military of deliberately striking a hospital in a Russian-held area of eastern Ukraine on Saturday in what it said was a war crime that killed 14 people and wounded 24 patients and medical staff. There was no immediate response to the allegations from Ukraine. Reuters was not able to independently verify the report.

* Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy described the situation at the front as “extremely acute“, especially in the eastern Donetsk region where Russia is stepping up an offensive.

* Tearful mourners in Kyiv commemorated a British volunteer aid worker, Andrew Bagshaw, killed while attempting a rescue mission from the eastern Ukrainian town of Soledar.

* Russian President Vladimir Putin is open to contacts with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz though has no phone call scheduled with him, a Kremlin spokesman said. Scholz, who last week approved providing Leopard 2 battle tanks to Ukrainian forces, was quoted in a published interview as saying he would speak to Putin again but the onus was on the Russian leader to withdraw troops from Ukraine “to end this horrendous, senseless war…”

* Russia’s deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov will hold a meeting with Lynne Tracy, the new U.S. ambassador, early next week, RIA news agency reported.

* Zelenskiy condemned the idea of neutrality in sports at a time when his country’s athletes fight and die in war, while their Russian counterparts might be allowed to compete.

* Russia said it will not hold annual talks with Japan on renewing a pact that allows Japanese fishermen to operate near disputed islands, saying Japan had taken anti-Russian measures.

* Expedited talks are under way among Ukraine and its allies about its requests for long-range missiles that it says are needed to prevent Russia from destroying its cities, a top aide to President Zelenskiy said.

* German arms-maker Rheinmetall is ready to greatly boost output of tank and artillery munitions to satisfy strong demand in Ukraine and the West, and may start producing HIMARS multiple rocket launchers in Germany, CEO Armin Papperger told Reuters.

* Ukraine has been promised 321 heavy tanks by several countries, its ambassador to France said.

* Poland will send an additional 60 tanks to Ukraine on top of 14 German-made Leopard 2 tanks it has pledged, the Polish prime minister said in an interview with Canadian television.

* Ukraine imposed sanctions on 182 Russian and Belarusian companies, and three individuals, in the latest of a series of steps by Zelenskiy to block their links to his country.

* On a trip to Turkey and the Middle East this week, the U.S. Treasury Department’s top sanctions official will warn countries and businesses that they could lose U.S. market access if they do business with entities subject to U.S. curbs as Washington cracks down on Russian attempts to evade sanctions.

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(JTA) — A forecasted low of -16 degrees in the Twin Cities on Thursday has the stage set perfectly for two frozen Jewish firsts — a Klezmer on Ice festival and a synagogue-run skating rink.

Such is life in Minnesota, where bone-chilling temperatures are no match for Jewish festivities.

“It kind of shows us the Minnesota-style of thinking about the winter where just because it’s freezing cold outside, you don’t have to stop doing everything,” said Marcus Rubenstein, rabbi at Temple of Aaron in St. Paul.

“I used to be a rabbi in New York. They said you couldn’t schedule any big events in the winter because no one would come in case it snowed,” Rubenstein said. “But [here] sometimes it will snow 6, 7 inches and be -5, -10 degrees, and you’ll have everybody come out. I mean people in their 80s, 90s to little kids. And they just put on their coats and go out and have fun.”

Temple of Aaron, a Conservative congregation of about 700 families, is inviting families to bundle up and have fun on what Rubenstein believes is the first-ever skating rink on a synagogue property. The rink, which can accommodate about 30 people at a time, was built and is being maintained by “Ice Captains” — synagogue members who clear it of snow and shovel off any extra ice that forms.

On Thursday, skaters at the rink heard the kickoff performance of the klezmer festival, featuring Jewbalaya, a hybrid klezmer and New Orleans jazz band in which Rubenstein plays the trumpet.

But the music will be piped in from inside the synagogue — a concession, Rubenstein and others associated with the festival said, to the cold.

Last week, musicians promoting Klezmer on Ice with a pre-festival performance alongside Lake Harriett, the (usually frozen-over) body of water at the heart of Minneapolis, ran into some technical challenges. Anticipating frigid temperatures, the musicians planned to play from a lakeside booth decorated like a boom box as part of a pop-art initiative called Art Shanty. But there was a wrinkle.

“We were supposed to have a sousaphone player who by the time they got their heavy big brass instrument into the box, the valves were frozen so they couldn’t play,” said Josh Rosard, an organizer of Klezmer on Ice. The performance went on without the sousaphone.

It’s not just brass instruments that are vulnerable to cold snaps. Strings and woodwinds can quickly go out of tune in the cold, as metal contracts and wood begins to warp. Clarinets and violins, staples of the Eastern European Jewish music genre, just can’t take it.

That’s why most of the Klezmer on Ice events will take place indoors — including but not only at Temple of Aaron. On the schedule for the weekend-long festival are local and national performers Sarina Partridge, Tzipporah Johnson, Izzy Buckner, the Klezmommies and the band Midwood. There will also be a cabaret variety show; klezmer-infused Shabbat services; and a luminary Havdalah ceremony.

Rosard said he saw the event as a breakout moment for the Twin Cities’ klezmer scene and, given the strong track record of longstanding klezmer festivals at spawning new acts, an opportunity.

“I’m really excited for what players in the community are going to take out of the workshops in particular and excited to see what may come out of it in the future,” said Rosard, who grew up casually playing the accordion but got more seriously involved in the klezmer world during the pandemic. He met his Klezmer on Ice co-organizer, Jewish musician and folklorist Sarah Larsson, with whom he attended KlezCanada and the Portland Klezmer Festival.

Still, he acknowledged, “It’s a little bit tongue in cheek to do something like this in the middle of February in Minnesota.”

Rubenstein said his congregants are up for it. Temple of Aaron’s new ice rink will be open not only during the klezmer festival’s opening night but for skating sessions most Saturdays after Shabbat morning services and Hebrew school classes finish.

If the activity isn’t exactly standard after-synagogue fare, it’s perfectly permitted under the Conservative movement’s interpretation of Jewish law. The movement, of which Temple of Aaron is a part, permits non-competitive ice skating on Shabbat, so long as no Shabbat rules are violated (such as driving to or from a rink or paying to rent skates), and the skating takes place within the boundaries of an eruv, or Jewish legal enclosure inside which certain objects can be carried on Shabbat.

Rubenstein said he was thinking about the activity in different terms — as it relates to making Temple of Aaron a centerpiece of a St. Paul Shabbat.

“The kids are ice skating anyway,” he added. “So why not ice skate at shul and come do it together with their Jewish friends, and build community that way?”

Temperatures are supposed to rise over the course of the weekend, but the high on Friday should be in the low single-digits. So for the klezmer performance that is supposed to take place at Lake Harriet, Rosard says, a plan is in place to avoid last weekend’s snafus.

“We’ll have the sousaphone player drive up as close as possible, then run-slash-briskly walk straight into the performance shelter,” he said. “We didn’t quite have the urgency last time.”

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The post A Minnesota synagogue built an ice rink — and is inaugurating it with a klezmer skate appeared first on The Forward.

The past always has a pesky little habit of reaching its tentacles into the present and tampering with it. As much as some people run from their pasts, there are few ways of escape — the ghosts of the past maybe murky, but they are not still, and they ALWAYS come rearing their heads at some point. For Donald Trump, that time is now.

Palmer Report warned that as indictments drew near, Trump would start to cave in on himself even more than he already has. We warned of his lunacy which would be lit aflame all over again as the ghosts of Trump’s past rose to embrace, with grizzly precision, the present day.

And on truth social, Trump shared a post clothed in dark, unlit violence, from another user. It shows where Trump’s head is at — it is in the past, locked in time, on January 6. Here are parts of what this wretched post said:

“People my age will physically fight for him this time.”

“What we got to lose?”

“I’ll donate the rest of my time here on this planet to do it.”

“They got my 6, and we are Locked and LOADED.”

Trump, of course, would share a post like that. It’s violent, it’s unhinged, and it shows darkness. There is nothing for Trump not to like in that post. All of this is happening because of Trump’s coming indictments. And I use the plural form intentionally. I believe there will be more than one. I think they will be any day now. Do I know this as a fact? No. But it is what I firmly believe, as do most people.

The ghosts of the past have risen; their hands are reaching out for Trump; he is in despair, he is trapped by these ghosts, and he can’t get free. These next few weeks will be electrifying to watch, and watch we will. So will trump because he’s helpless — helpless as the ghosts of the past march toward him with steady precision.

The post The ghosts of Donald Trump’s past are coming for him appeared first on Palmer Report.