The aircraft is not one of Boeing’s 737 MAX 9 planes which have been in the spotlight after Alaska Airlines blowout.
A domestic flight of Japan’s All Nippon Airways (ANA) has returned to its departure airport after a crack was found on the cockpit window of the Boeing 737-800 aircraft midair.
Flight 1182 was headed to Toyama airport in Japan but headed back to the Sapporo-New Chitose airport after the crack was found on the outermost of four layers of windows surrounding the cockpit, a spokesperson for the airline said on Saturday.
There were no injuries reported among the 59 passengers and six crew, the airline added.
“The crack was not something that affected the flight’s control or pressurisation,” the ANA spokesperson said.
This is the second incident involving a Boeing aircraft in a week.
The ANA plane, also a 737 model aircraft, is however not one of Boeing’s 737 MAX 9 aeroplanes which have been in the spotlight since an Alaska Airlines flight suffered a blowout that left a gaping hole in the side of the fuselage last Saturday.
While the Alaska flight also landed safely with all 174 passengers and six crew members, flight data showed the plane climbed to 16,000 feet (4,876 metres) before returning to Portland International Airport.
Alaska Airlines has said it was grounding its fleet of 737-9 aircraft.
Planes ‘grounded’
On Friday, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said that all 737 MAX 9 planes would remain grounded until Boeing provides further data following the near-catastrophic Alaska Airlines incident.
“For the safety of American travellers the FAA will keep the Boeing 737-9 MAX grounded until extensive inspection and maintenance is conducted and data from inspections is reviewed,” the FAA said in a statement.
The regulator has also launched a safety probe into the incident, the first major in-flight safety issue on a Boeing plane since fatal 2018 and 2019 737 MAX crashes that led to a lengthy grounding of the aircraft.
“We are working to make sure nothing like this happens again,” FAA administrator Mike Whitaker said.
“Our only concern is the safety of American travellers and the Boeing 737-9 MAX will not return to the skies until we are entirely satisfied it is safe.”
In a statement on Friday, Boeing welcomed the FAA’s announcement and said the company would “cooperate fully and transparently”.
“We support all actions that strengthen quality and safety and we are taking actions across our production system.”
Boeing 737 Max jets have been grounded worldwide in the past. In October 2018 they were not let to fly for almost two years after a crash in Indonesia killed 189 people, and another in Ethiopia five months later, which killed 157 people.
The aircraft was cleared to fly again after Boeing revamped its automated flight-control system that had activated erroneously in both crashes.
Last week, an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft was forced to make an emergency landing in Portland, the United States, when a cabin panel blew off in midair leaving a gaping hole in the aircraft’s fuselage. Just days before, a Japan Airways Airbus collided with a smaller coastguard plane, resulting in the Airbus catching fire.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has ordered an inquiry into the incident and several passengers filed a class action lawsuit against Boeing in Washington state on Thursday.
So, is it really safe to travel by air? Here is what we know about the Alaska Airlines incident and the general safety of aviation:
What happened to the Alaska Airlines flight?
On January 5, just moments after takeoff, a cabin door panel blew off in midair during an Alaska Airlines flight from Portland to Ontario, leaving one side of the aircraft’s body with a gaping hole, reducing cabin pressure and prompting an emergency landing. The blown-out door panel was later discovered by a Portland teacher, in his garden.
Federal officials in the US ordered the temporary grounding of all Boeing 737 Max 9 jetliners until they can be inspected.
The cabin panel that flew out was a “door plug” installed over an extra emergency exit door, which had been removed.
(Al Jazeera)
Thankfully, no one was seated next to the gaping hole. Additionally, the plane was only 16,000 feet (4,876 metres) above the ground. Planes typically fly more than 31,000 feet (9,448 metres) when they are at their highest. Had the aircraft been much higher, the pressure difference could have become large enough to suck passengers out of the aircraft, former FAA accident investigator Jeff Guzzetti told The Washington Post.
The aircraft, which had departed from Oregon and was heading for California, landed safely in Portland with all 174 passengers and six crew members mostly unharmed. Some passengers sustained minor injuries.
The aircraft is a new Boeing 737 Max 9 which had been delivered to Alaska Airlines in late October and certified as safe by the FAA in early November. It had been in service for just eight weeks.
London-based independent aviation expert John Strickland told Al Jazeera that the panel which flew off is supposed to be a secure part of the aircraft’s structure. “That’s why it’s more surprising and a matter of concern that this blowout happened,” he said.
London-based aviation analyst and consultant Alex Macheras agreed: “This should not be downplayed, that’s for sure. Because in modern commercial aviation, we do not see sections of an aircraft body, of fuselage, becoming separated from the rest of the aircraft, certainly not mid-flight.”
Has Boeing taken responsibility?
As more than 170 planes remained grounded last week, Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun acknowledged errors made by Boeing and provided reassurance. He told staff that the company would ensure an incident like the Alaska Airlines blowout could never happen again. It has not been confirmed what the actual fault in the aircraft was, although experts told Al Jazeera it is most likely down to a manufacturing flaw rather than a design flaw. There has also been speculation about parts coming loose after both Alaska Airlines and United Airlines reported incidents of needing to tighten loose hardware last Monday.
Earlier, the US chief accident investigator, The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), said it had received reports that warning lights had been triggered on brand-new Boeing 737 Max 9 crafts on three flights. Two of these alerts happened on consecutive days before the Alaska Airlines blowout.
Richard Aboulafia, aviation industry analyst and managing director of Washington-based AeroDynamic Advisory, told Al Jazeera that the warning lights were likely the result of a technical glitch. “They ignored it because, strangely, the pressure differential came on while it was on the ground, which means it was a glitch. There’s no pressure differential while you’re on the ground,” he explained. The cabin pressure can only vary when the aircraft is in the air, which is why it was acceptable to ignore the warning and fly the plane over land, he said.
The company stopped flying the aircraft over the Pacific Ocean to Hawaii due to the warnings, yet kept it flying over land, the NTSB said.
Who checks the safety of an aircraft?
Aboulafia explained that the FAA typically certifies an aircraft, approving its operations and production.
However, since the Boeing 737 Max has had safety issues before, the FAA announced that it would inspect every single aircraft in the Max series under these unusual circumstances. The details about the exact checks that were carried out are not public.
Once the aircraft is in use by an airline, regular maintenance checks called A, B, C and D checks are carried out, Aboulafia explained. While an A check is typically a cursory investigation of a plane’s moving parts, exterior wear and tear and of oil and fuel, a D-check is rigorous and involves a teardown and detailed inspection of the aircraft.
These checks are carried out at dedicated intervals based on the number of years an aircraft has been in service or its number of flight hours. Some airlines have their own in-house capabilities to carry out these checks and while many airlines are able to do A or B checks, only certain airlines are able to do C or D checks themselves. Others use third-party services.
“This is an unprecedented production ramp and, clearly, there needs to be more resources provided for it, whether it’s at the manufacturing level or the inspections level,” Aboulafia added, referring to how aeroplanes are now manufactured in large numbers. He called for a greater number of people to be assigned more time for inspections.
Aboulafia added that it is imperative to identify where and how the Alaska aircraft passed its safety checks, and whether it was Boeing, Spirit Aerosystems or the FAA that cleared the jetliner without detailed inspection. There is no information about the level of detail of inspection that took place before the plane was cleared for flying.
At some or at multiple stages in the process, there needed to be more time allowed for workers or inspectors to “do their job”, however, Aboulafia said, adding: “We don’t know yet, but clearly, there was a gap in how things should have been done.”
A Portland resident found the blown-out door plug from Alaska Air Flight 1282 in his garden [Handout/NTSB via Reuters]
Have Boeing 737 aircraft had problems before?
Yes. The jets were grounded worldwide for about two years after a crash killed 189 people in Indonesia in October 2018 and another killed 157 in Ethiopia five months later.
In both instances, a design flaw was found in the automated flight control software, which activated erroneously. Boeing 737s were cleared to fly again once the aircraft had been revamped with an improved flight control system.
Aboulafia said the crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia had been caused by design defects in the flight control system, while the recent incident was a defect in manufacturing, with loose hardware on aircraft, however.
United Airlines and Alaska Airlines have both reported loose hardware that needed additional tightening on multiple grounded Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft on Monday, raising new concerns among industry experts about the manufacturing process.
If a design issue occurs, the design defect must be fixed on the aircraft before the plane model is cleared to fly again, he explained.
For manufacturing defects, “you have to identify where the mistakes were made, and then it’s an easy inspection, especially since it’s structural rather than software or anything like that”, he added.
Why is turbulence on the rise?
A June 2023 study by the UK’s Reading University showed that severe air turbulence had increased by 55 percent at an average point over the North Atlantic between 1979 and 2020.
The study concluded that turbulence will become worse with climate change, and the calculated rise is consistent with the expected effects of changes in climate. Hence, the rise in turbulence is not due to poor design or the manufacturing of aircraft.
Is air travel still the safest mode of transportation?
Harvard University research has found that the odds of being in a plane crash are one in 1.2 million, while the odds of dying in such a crash are one in 11 million. Meanwhile, the odds of dying in a car accident are significantly higher at one in 5,000.
“Is any form of transport always safe? No, but if you choose not to fly and instead take a car, that’s a far more dangerous way of travelling,” said Aboulafia.
Des Moines, Iowa – National media, political pundits and United States presidential hopefuls all converged on the state capital of Des Moines this week, as it played host to the final Republican debate before the Iowa caucuses.
But just miles down the road from where Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis traded barbs on Wednesday night, local businessman Mohamed Ali was unfazed.
“Honestly, we don’t care about them,” Ali told Al Jazeera, blowing smoke from his hookah pipe in a packed cafe outside Des Moines. “With all the debates, they all fight and compete over who supports Israel more.”
While indifferent towards the race for the Republican nomination, the 46-year-old Palestinian American father of three said one thing was certain: He would not back Democratic President Joe Biden for a second term in November.
Israel’s war in Gaza had been a turning point for Ali, who previously supported Biden in 2020.
Dressed in a white button-up shirt with a light blue blazer over it, he alternated between anger and stoicism — voicing rage over Biden’s support of Israel and apathy towards the 2024 elections.
“The Arab and the Muslim community, they are not voting for Biden. I did not talk to a single person who said he’s going to vote for Biden,” Ali told Al Jazeera, as Arabic pop music blared in the background of the cafe.
He added that even the prospect of Donald Trump’s return to the White House was not enough to spur Arab Americans to vote Democrat in the presidential race.
Des Moines-area businessman Mohamed Ali says it is too late for President Joe Biden to win the votes of Arab Americans in Iowa [Ali Harb/Al Jazeera]
Ali was born in Lebanon to Palestinian refugee parents. He studied in Tunisia before moving to New York and ending up in Iowa — the rural, sparsely populated state where the first Republican primary contest will take place on Monday.
But Ali, like many Arab and Muslim Americans, has found himself disillusioned with mainstream US politics as the war in Gaza unfolds. Biden has articulated “unwavering” support for Israel, and his rivals in the Republican field have all tried to outdo each other with their advocacy for the US ally.
All the while, international outcry has mounted over the rising death toll in Gaza, where an Israeli military campaign has killed over 23,700 Palestinians. Israel itself faced genocide accusations this week before the International Court of Justice.
So in Iowa, as the election approaches, many Arab Americans feel stuck between Biden and a hard place.
For now, many are spending their energy on local activism for Gaza. Ali himself has organised several Palestine solidarity protests, drawing hundreds of people in Des Moines.
‘Litmus test’
Although overwhelmingly white, Iowa is home to sizable Arab and Muslim communities: One grassroots project estimated Iowa’s Arab American population to include upwards of 17,700 people, in a state of 3.2 million.
One of the nation’s oldest mosques is in the eastern Iowa city of Cedar Rapids, an area that elected its first Arab American state legislator in 2022.
South of Cedar Rapids, in the college town of Iowa City, there is also a growing Sudanese American community. In Des Moines, meanwhile, there are clusters of Arab and Muslim Americans from the Middle East, South Asia and Bosnia.
While US Arabs and Muslims are no monolith, more than a dozen activists interviewed by Al Jazeera echoed the same sentiment: They feel alienated by Republicans, but they will not vote for Biden.
Ending the war in Gaza is now the central issue for many of Iowa’s politically active Arab Americans. They have organised protests, met with representatives and pushed ceasefire resolutions at the local level to make their voices heard.
“I find it very difficult to stomach anybody who can’t call for a ceasefire at this point, no matter what party they’re in,” said Maria Reveiz, a Lebanese American yoga instructor who owns a jazz club in Des Moines.
“I’ve left the Democratic Party. I have no affiliation. Palestine from here on out is my litmus test for anybody to get my support ever again.”
That sense of disenfranchisement among Arab and Muslim Americans in Iowa has been amplified by a lack of outreach from campaigns during this year’s presidential race.
While Democrats made headlines in 2020 for organising caucuses in Iowa mosques, Republican candidates have not reached out specifically to Arab and Muslim Americans, adding to those communities’ lack of concern with Monday’s race.
Reveiz, a curly-haired mother of three, campaigned for Bernie Sanders during the 2020 Democratic caucuses, but she has since covered a sticker of a mittened Sanders on her laptop with a Palestinian flag.
Sanders has not called for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.
When she spoke to Al Jazeera, Reveiz’s house looked like a shrine for Palestine: a keffiyeh above the fireplace, a painting by a Palestinian artist on the wall, a scarf with the colours of the Palestinian flag on a shelf. Reveiz herself wore a pendant that said “Palestine” in Arabic around her neck.
Even a Buddha statue in the corner of her living room was draped with a Palestinian flag.
Reveiz had visited Gaza several times in the past years with an aid group to lead yoga classes designed to help address trauma. Israeli shelling has since killed one of her friends in the Palestinian territory.
“Ahmad Ismail,” Reveiz said, whispering his name but stopping short of crying. “Wonderful human.”
With Israel restricting access to food, medicine and water in Gaza, Ismail had been on his roof collecting rainwater when he was hit by shelling in Deir el-Balah.
Reveiz said she has now contacted the offices of her representatives in Congress so often that staffers recognise her. She has also written to the White House demanding a ceasefire. But she has not heard any positive responses to her requests. “It’s futile,” Reveiz told Al Jazeera.
Sami Scheetz stands outside the Iowa state capitol in Des Moines [Ali Harb/Al Jazeera]
Iowa City resolution
About two hours east of Des Moines, ceasefire activists in Iowa City turned their attention to their city council to advance their cause.
On January 2, the Iowa City city council adopted a resolution calling for a ceasefire in a 4-3 vote. Although municipalities have little power over foreign policy, Deema Totah, a Palestinian American professor at the University of Iowa, said the measure was important.
“We need some sort of mechanism for democracy, for our voices to be heard. And in this large country, this mechanism is through local government,” Totah told Al Jazeera.
“Local government has the ability to amplify these voices, has the ability to be on the right side of history, has the ability to put on the record that there were citizens against this — that this wasn’t the view of the United States to fund the military campaign that Israel is engaging in.
“We want future history books to say that this was a unilateral decision by a government whose people did not agree with them.”
Tarweeh Osman, a Sudanese American community organiser who advocated for the resolution, said she felt recognised after the measure passed.
Still, she said, as an Arab American, she feels “unheard” and “alienated” by both Biden and the Republican presidential candidates vying for victory in Iowa.
She noted that politicians’ staunch support for Israel is translating into efforts to crack down on pro-Palestinian advocacy in the US. By way of example, she pointed to DeSantis, one of the Republican hopefuls competing in this year’s Iowa caucuses: As governor of Florida, he ordered a ban on a Palestinian rights student group at state universities.
“It’s terrifying that we’re seeing legitimate political dissent that’s protected by the First Amendment being systematically delegitimised by our political representatives to appease pro-Israel interest groups,” Osman told Al Jazeera.
But she added that another four years of Biden could also prove detrimental for Palestinian rights supporters, given the president’s unconditional backing of Israel.
For her part, Totah said she feels “erased and discarded” by rhetoric that dehumanises Palestinians from both major parties.
In October, Biden questioned the war’s Palestinian death toll, dismissing the killing of civilians as the “price of waging a war”.
“I have voted Democrat in the past. But this year, I cannot vote for Biden. And I’m looking at third-party candidates right now,” Totah told Al Jazeera.
Ceasefire calls
Sami Scheetz, a Democrat who represents neighbouring Cedar Rapids in the Iowa State Legislature, spoke in favour of the Iowa City ceasefire resolution when it was being debated earlier this month.
Scheetz said his election as the state House’s first Arab American member in 2022 reflects the “strength and diversity” of the community.
While he has not faced direct discrimination, Scheetz added that advocating for the rights of Arabs and Palestinians “during the war in Gaza has come at a political cost”.
Across the country, politicians critical of Israeli policies have faced pushback by pro-Israel groups. For example, the pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC is preparing to spend more than $100m in the next election to defeat progressives calling for a ceasefire in Congress, according to several US media reports.
But Scheetz said his advocacy was fuelled by the “alarming reality” on the ground in Gaza.
“It’s essential to stand against injustice and prioritise human rights, even when faced with these consequences,” Scheetz told Al Jazeera.
“This catastrophic devastation unequivocally demands an immediate reassessment of the current strategy, as the relentless military campaign is not only devoid of justice but also stands as a formidable obstacle to any prospect of lasting peace in the region.”
Scheetz’s Republican colleagues in the Iowa State House are preparing a resolution that fails to mention Palestinians and instead backs Israel’s “right to act decisively and unilaterally in self-defense” through its military actions in Gaza.
But the state’s Democratic Party has also strained relations with Palestinian rights advocates.
Last year, Iowa Democratic Party Chair Rita Hart condemned a Democratic student group for issuing a statement that read in part, “May every Palestinian live long and free, from the river to the sea“.
Newman Abuissa, the Arab American Caucus chair for the Iowa Democratic Party, has pushed back against Hart and called on her to apologise.
Abuissa told Al Jazeera that Arab Americans are trying to make themselves heard within the party, stressing that there is a gap between the Democratic leadership and the majority of voters who back a ceasefire in Gaza.
Asked about Arab Americans’ interest in the Republican caucuses, he said, “We have been busy working on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for the last three months.”
The Mother Mosque of America is one of the oldest standing mosques in the US [Ali Harb/Al Jazeera]
A landmark mosque
North of Iowa City, Cedar Rapids has a site steeped in symbolism for Muslim Americans: one of the country’s oldest mosques.
The Mother Mosque of America was built in 1934 by Lebanese and Syrian immigrants. Situated in a residential neighbourhood, its white building would blend with the snow-blanketed lawns that surround it, if not for its bright green dome and awning.
When Al Jazeera visited the mosque this week, Ahmed Abdoney — a US Air Force veteran — was there looking at photos of his family attending early congregations.
One photo features Abdoney when he was about 10 years old. He said his maternal grandfather was one of the founders of the mosque.
His father, meanwhile, arrived at New York’s Ellis Island in the 1930s and moved westward, working as a travelling merchant until he settled in Ohio, then moved to Iowa.
Abdoney said the Arab community in Cedar Rapids grew over the years, but people there are private, not as visible as Arab communities in other parts of the country.
“They have been very successful in small businesses, having jobs,” Abdoney said. “They help each other out. They’re always there for each other.”
Ahmed Abdoney points to a photo of himself as a child inside the Iowa Islamic Heritage Mother Mosque of America [Ali Harb/Al Jazeera]
Imam Taha Tawil said the mosque shows the long history of Islam in the US, adding there are plans to expand the building to include a visitors’ centre.
Tawil stressed that the mosque is an apolitical space. Still, in 2016, he made national headlines when he invited Trump to visit the mosque after the then-candidate proposed banning Muslims from entering the US.
The imam said the invitation still stands, but he does not think the former president will take him up on it, given that he did not respond to the original one eight years ago.
“The American way is to sit down and argue and try to convince me to vote for you — not attack us then ask us to vote for you,” Tawil told Al Jazeera.
Trump ignited further controversy during his term as president by moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, a move that was seen as rejecting Palestinians’ internationally recognised claims to the holy city.
But despite Arab and Muslim Americans’ tense history with Trump, some in the community are not entirely ruling out backing the former president, who appears set to win Iowa and run away with the Republican nomination.
“If, by some miracle, Trump comes up with something that really shows he changed his views on Palestine, and we think he has some positive ideas, then he could be a choice for us,” said Ali, the Palestinian American businessman.
For months, top United States officials have repeatedly said that President Joe Biden does not want to see Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip escalate into a wider conflict in the Middle East.
That was the central message US Secretary of State Antony Blinken conveyed this week as he made his fourth visit to the region since the war began. His trip came in the shadow of Israeli attacks in Lebanon and attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels on vessels in the Red Sea.
“The Red Sea — we want to avoid escalation there,” Blinken said in Cairo on Thursday, when asked about his efforts to prevent the conflict from spiralling.
But only hours later, the US confirmed it had collaborated with the United Kingdom to launch “strikes against a number of targets in Yemen used by Houthi rebels”, in coordination with a handful of other countries.
Experts and rights advocates warn that the attacks clash with the Biden administration’s stated goals of de-escalation and fail to address the root cause of the soaring tensions in the region: Israel’s military assault on Gaza.
“It does run contrary to what the administration has been saying, but it was also inevitable,” said Hassan El-Tayyab, legislative director for Middle East policy at Friends Committee on National Legislation, a Quaker advocacy group in Washington, DC.
“Everybody watching this situation knew that it was a matter of time before the war in Gaza spilled out across the region. And we’re seeing that not only in the Red Sea, but we’re also seeing it in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq,” he told Al Jazeera.
“Without that ceasefire in Gaza, it’s hard to see how this gets better. And I think the simmering pot is now boiling over, and it’s just going to get worse and worse as time goes on. It’s really a very dangerous moment.”
Red Sea attacks
On Friday, a senior US official told the Reuters news agency that more than 150 munitions had been used to hit nearly 30 locations linked to the Houthi armed group in Yemen.
The Iran-aligned Houthis control large swaths of Yemen including the western coast overlooking the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, which leads to the Red Sea. The group began firing missiles at Israel and attacking commercial ships shortly after the war on Gaza began in October.
The group has said it is targeting Israel-linked vessels as part of an effort to pressure the Israeli government to end its Gaza bombardment and allow more humanitarian aid deliveries into the coastal Palestinian enclave.
The attacks in the Red Sea — a key commercial thoroughfare through which about 12 percent of global trade transits — led shipping companies to suspend operations in the area and drew condemnation from the US and its allies.
In mid-December, Washington launched a multinational force aimed at defending “freedom of navigation” in the Red Sea, and at the end of the month, US forces sank three Houthi boats, killing 10 fighters.
During a news conference from Egypt’s capital on Thursday, Blinken condemned the Houthis and noted that the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution a day earlier urging the group to end its attacks.
“We have a number of countries that have made clear that, if it doesn’t stop, there’ll have to be consequences, and unfortunately, it hasn’t stopped. But we want to make sure that it does, and we’re prepared to do that,” the top US diplomat said.
Brian Finucane, a senior US programme adviser at the International Crisis Group think tank, said it was widely expected that the US would launch attacks against the Houthis in Yemen amid the escalating Red Sea confrontations.
But Finucane — who previously worked at the US State Department, advising on the use of military force — told Al Jazeera that the Yemen strikes show that the Biden administration “has adopted a posture of self-deception and a self-defeating policy”.
“On the one hand, they repeat in this mantra-like fashion their desire to avoid a wider regional war. On the other hand, we already have that wider regional war and the underlying cause … is the conflict in Gaza, which the US is fuelling through unconditional military support [for Israel],” he said.
‘Arsonist and firefighter’
Biden, who confirmed the strikes on Thursday, said his administration was sending “a clear message that the United States and our partners will not tolerate attacks on our personnel or allow hostile actors to imperil freedom of navigation in one of the world’s most critical commercial routes”.
“I will not hesitate to direct further measures to protect our people and the free flow of international commerce as necessary,” the US president said in a statement, which did not mention the Israeli war in Gaza.
Earlier this month, a senior administration official also rejected the Houthis’ claim that their attacks in the Red Sea are tied to Gaza, calling that rationale “illegitimate”.
The war in Gaza has killed more than 23,700 Palestinians since October 7, prompting widespread international outcry and raising questions about the risk of genocide.
According to Finucane, the US’s failure to “acknowledge reality” — that the Gaza war lies at the heart of current regional tensions — “will make it very difficult to craft effective policy”.
And while the US said its overnight Yemen strikes were “intended to disrupt and degrade the Houthis’ capabilities”, Finucane questioned whether they would really stem the Red Sea attacks.
The Houthis in Yemen have already withstood years of bombings in a war led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The group is currently in talks with Riyadh over a lasting ceasefire.
“I think it’s really important to recognise that the US is simultaneously playing the role of arsonist and firefighter in the Middle East,” Finucane said.
“It is pouring fuel on the fire in Gaza, while at the same time trying to tamp down the flare-ups elsewhere in the region — flare-ups that endanger US service members.”
Gaza ceasefire key
Shireen Al-Adeimi, a Yemeni American assistant professor at Michigan State University, said she was disheartened but not surprised to see the Biden administration launch attacks on Yemen.
“It’s not surprising because we’ve seen evidence over and over again [that] US policy in the Middle East, and Yemen more specifically, has been one that is reactive, one that leads with violence,” she told Al Jazeera. “Air strikes seem to be the go-to for whichever administration has been in power [over] the past couple of decades.”
She added that, if the Biden administration really wanted to de-escalate regional tensions, it would be pushing for a ceasefire in Gaza. “Their words don’t align with their actions.”
The Biden administration has provided Israel with military and diplomatic support since the Gaza war began, without drawing “red lines” for how those resources can be used. It has also blocked UN resolutions urging a ceasefire and rejected a case at the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide.
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a think tank in Washington, DC, also told Al Jazeera in a television interview on Thursday that the Yemen attacks highlight a failure on the part of the US and UK to push Israel to end its war in Gaza.
“The question that has to be asked is, ‘Why is it that the British and American governments prefer to escalate and go to war essentially in order to prevent the Houthis from attacking ships, rather than actually [taking] the path of a ceasefire in Gaza?’” he said.
A ceasefire, Parsi explained, would end the killings of Palestinians, help secure the release of Israeli captives held in Gaza, and stem attacks on US and allied forces in Iraq and Syria, which have also escalated since early October.
“The strategy of the Biden administration has been to try to achieve de-escalation by escalating,” he said. “And it doesn’t seem to work in the long run, clearly, because the Houthis are likely not going to back off.”
That was echoed by El-Tayyab, who told Al Jazeera that “more war has not, and has never been, the answer”.
“They should try to end the war in Gaza for its own sake because there’s a massive humanitarian crisis,” he said, noting the mass displacement of Palestinians and warnings of famine in Gaza.
“But a ceasefire in Gaza would also have a knock-on effect of really ratcheting down escalation and violence in the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, in Lebanon, [to] secure all peoples in the region — Arabs and Israelis — and secure American interests abroad.”
El-Tayyab added, “Really, the only way out of this mess is diplomacy, diplomacy, diplomacy.”
Payton Gendron murdered 10 Black people at a supermarket in New York state in 2022.
Federal prosecutors in the United States will seek the death penalty against Payton Gendron, a white supremacist who murdered 10 Black people during a livestreamed supermarket rampage in New York state.
Gendron, 20, is already serving a life sentence in prison with no chance of parole, after he pleaded guilty to state charges of murder and hate-motivated domestic terrorism in the 2022 attack in Buffalo.
In a notice announcing the decision to seek the death penalty, Trini Ross, US attorney for western New York, wrote that Gendron had selected the supermarket “in order to maximise the number of Black victims”.
The notice cited a range of factors for the decision, including the substantial planning leading to the shooting and the decision to target at least one victim who was “particularly vulnerable due to old age and infirmity”.
On May 14, 2022, the then-18-year-old Gendron, had driven from his hometown of Conklin, more than 322km (200 miles) away, wearing heavy body armour and wielding an AR-15 assault rifle.
According to prosecutors, he shot four people in the parking lot, three of them fatally, before entering the grocery store. Gendron also wore a helmet with a video camera attached and livestreamed the two-minute attack on the platform Twitch.
The dead, who ranged in age from 32 to 86, included eight customers, the store security guard and a church deacon who drove shoppers to and from the store with their groceries. Three people were wounded but survived.
On Friday, after a hearing with the federal prosecutors, relatives of the victims expressed mixed views on whether they thought the prosecutors should pursue the death penalty.
“I’m not necessarily disappointed in the decision … It would have satisfied me more knowing he would have spent the rest of his life in prison being surrounded by the population of people he tried to kill,” Mark Talley, whose 63-year-old mother Geraldine Talley was killed by Gendron, told The Associated Press.
“I would prefer he spend the rest of his life in prison suffering every day,” he added.
Several other family members of the victims left without speaking.
Death penalties in the US
Since US President Joe Biden came to power four years ago, the Department of Justice has made federal death penalty cases a rarity.
Biden, a Democrat, pledged during his campaign to support legislation to end the death penalty.
Thereafter, under Attorney General Merrick Garland, the Justice Department has permitted the continuation of two capital prosecutions and withdrawn from pursuing death in more than two dozen cases. Garland also instituted a moratorium on federal executions in 2021 pending a review of procedures.
Though the moratorium does not prevent prosecutors from seeking death sentences, the Justice Department has done so sparingly.
It successfully sought the death penalty for an anti-semitic gunman who murdered 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue, which had been authorised as a death penalty case before Garland became attorney general.
Last year, it went ahead with an effort to get the death sentence against a man who killed eight people on a New York City bike path, though a lack of a unanimous jury meant that prosecution resulted in a life sentence.
But the Justice Department has declined to pursue the death penalty in other mass killings.
Gen Z is redefining what we know today about the workplace as this generation has been rejecting hustle culture.
Modern workplace dynamics have changed globally since the COVID-19 pandemic. But recent reports have labelled Gen Z as the most difficult generation to work with, branding them as entitled, lazy, quiet quitters. However, emerging trends on and off social media suggest a different narrative.
From the “lazy girl job” trend to advocating for a four-day workweek, Gen Z is disrupting traditional workplace norms, advocating for work-life balance, and challenging traditional notions of success and productivity.
Trump’s remarks come on final day of a trial over allegations that he habitually exaggerated his wealth.
Former US President Donald Trump has used closing arguments in his civil fraud trial to attack New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Trump had sought to deliver Thursday’s full closing arguments, but permission was denied when he failed to sign off on restrictions stopping him from using the courtroom as an electioneering platform.
The former president is the current frontrunner for the Republican nomination to go against the current president, Joe Biden, in the November election.
Judge Arthur Engoron, who is ruling on what penalties to impose on Trump after an earlier decision that he and his company had manipulated property values fraudulently, allowed Trump to make brief additional comments after his lawyer had spoken.
Trump quickly took the chance to attack the New York state attorney general, saying, “They want to make sure I never win again. The [attorney general] hates Trump … and if I can’t talk about that it’s a disservice.”
Former US President Donald Trump attends the closing arguments in the Trump Organisation civil fraud trial at New York State Supreme Court in the Manhattan borough of New York City [Shannon Stapleton/Reuters]
James brought the case and is looking for a nearly $370m ruling and a lifetime ban on Trump from the state’s real estate industry.
“We have a situation where I am an innocent man,” Trump said, adding, “I’m being persecuted by someone running for office and I think you have to go outside the bounds.”
But Engoron attempted to interrupt Trump with a warning to wrap up his comments, to which the former president responded, “You have your own agenda, you can’t listen for more than one minute”.
The judge told Trump’s lawyer, Christopher Kise, to “control your client” in response to Trump’s statement.
The trial is one of multiple criminal and civil cases Trump faces as he seeks to return to the White House, ranging from a rape allegation to conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election.
On the final day of the trial, Engoron was sceptical of Kise’s argument that Trump should not be penalised for allegedly manipulating the value of his properties because lenders and insurance still turned a profit.
Engoron said there does not have to be any “evidence of harm”.
Throughout the trial, the state’s lawyers have looked to prove that Trump consistently overvalued many of the towers, golf clubs, and other assets that he had before he entered politics.
In November last year, Trump admitted to providing inaccurate property valuations.
“The myriad deceptive schemes they employed to inflate asset values and conceal facts were so outrageous that they belie innocent explanation,” James’s office said in a filing.
In one example heard at the court, James’s team argued that Trump valued his Mar-a-Lago Florida club by “asking prices” rather than actual sales prices.
“From 2011-2015 defendants added a 30 percent premium because the property was a ‘completed [commercial] facility,’” the filing said.
But Trump’s lawyer, Kise, argued that while there could be errors in Trump’s corporate financial statements, they do not “lead to the conclusion there was fraud”.
Trump is also scheduled to go on trial in Washington in March for conspiring to overturn the 2020 elections and in May for taking troves of highly classified documents in his belongings after he left the presidency.
The former president and 2024 contender suggested he might have decided on his vice presidential pick — but didn’t name anyone.
Boycotting the presidential debate for the fifth consecutive time, former United States president and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump instead attended a town hall in Iowa.
The event, streamed by Fox News, ran parallel to the fifth primary debate across town on Wednesday night where aspiring presidential contenders Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley faced off on issues such as US support for Israel and abortion laws in the country.
Trump is a frontrunner for the elections scheduled to take place in November 2024 and has repeatedly skipped presidential debates, saying that the party should focus on the general elections instead. Critics also see this as a strategy to draw viewers away from his rivals’ events.
Fox News held town halls with Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley in the past week. But Trump demanded that his town hall air at the same time as the presidential debate.
Here are three key takeaways from Trump’s town hall.
Trump on his opponents
Trump attempted to seem unbothered by his opponents in the political world while also criticising Haley.
In his campaign over recent weeks, Trump has spoken of “retribution” for his political enemies if he returns to power. Asked about it on Wednesday, Trump said, “The ultimate retribution is success.”
He mocked former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s exit from the race just before the debate between Haley and DeSantis.
“Nobody cared too much about that,” Trump said about Christie’s importance in the run.
He did, however, endorse Christie’s criticism of Haley. In what appears to have been a hot mic moment, Christie was heard saying that Haley would “get smoked” in the race.
“I know her very well, and I happen to believe that Chris Christie is right”, Trump said. “One of the few things he’s been right about”, he added, as the crowd laughed.
Abortion acccess
Trump boasted about his role in ending Roe v Wade, the Supreme Court ruling that had legalised abortion nationally until it was overturned in June 2022, but said that he was in favour of exceptions to the ban on abortion.
Trump explained that such a “concession” would be necessary to win elections.
“You have to win elections,” Trump also said. “Otherwise, you’re going to be back where you were, and you can’t let that ever happen again. You got to win elections.”
Trump did not specify what such concessions would entail but listed exceptions such as cases of rape, incest and when the life of the mother is at stake.
Trump hints at his vice president choice
When asked about his selection of a vice presidential running mate, Trump “I know who it’s going to be,” but declined to provide any name.
His senior campaign advisers Chris LaCivita and Jason Miller told reporters after the town hall that they have not discussed the selection in great detail, but that Trump had talked about the qualities he wants in his vice president.
The two said that names had not been explicitly discussed in those talks and they did not elaborate on what those qualities were.
“I’m sure when that time comes, everybody will know who it is,” said LaCivita.
Resolution backed by 11 members also calls for the immediate release of the seized Galaxy Leader’s multinational crew.
The UN Security Council has passed a resolution demanding Yemen’s Houthis end attacks on ships in the Red Sea and free the Japanese-operated Galaxy Leader that was seized last year.
Eleven members of the council voted on Wednesday for the measure calling on the Iran-aligned Houthis to “immediately cease all attacks, which impede global commerce and navigational rights and freedoms as well as regional peace”.
Four members – Algeria, China, Mozambique and Russia – abstained. None voted against. As permanent members of the council, China and Russia have vetoes but chose not to use them.
“The world’s message to the Houthis today was clear: Cease these attacks immediately,” Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the United States’ ambassador to the United Nations, said in a statement after the vote. The US sponsored the resolution alongside Japan.
“With this resolution, the Council has lived up to its responsibility to help ensure the free flow of lawful transit through the Red Sea continues unimpeded,” Thomas-Greenfield added.
The US says the Iran-backed Houthis have carried out 26 attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea since commandeering the Galaxy Leader and its 25-strong multinational crew on November 19.
The Houthis claim they are targeting Israeli-linked or Israel-bound vessels in protest against the ongoing war on Gaza, but many of the ships have had no discernible link with the country, and many lines have begun to avoid the area altogether.
The key provision of the resolution noted the right of United Nations member states, in accordance with international law, “to defend their vessels from attack, including those that undermine navigational rights and freedoms”.
The provision amounts to an implicit endorsement of Operation Prosperity Guardian, a US-led multinational naval task force, including the United Kingdom and Norway, that was established in December to defend commercial shipping from Houthi attacks.
Earlier on Wednesday, the US military said that it had shot down 21 Houthi missiles and drones that were part of a “complex attack” on southern Red Sea shipping lanes. The UK, which worked with the US to thwart the Houthi attack, said it was the largest in the area so far.
The US accuses Iran of providing critical support for the Houthi attacks, including advanced missiles and drones, in violation of UN Security Council resolutions. Tehran denies the allegations.
Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, the head of Yemen’s Houthi supreme revolutionary committee in Yemen, dismissed the UN resolution as a “political game” and claimed the US was the one violating international law.
The Red Sea links the Middle East and Asia to Europe via the Suez Canal and its narrow Bab al-Mandeb Strait. Nearly 10 percent of all oil trade and an estimated $1 trillion in goods pass through the strait every year.
At the time of its hijack, the Galaxy Leader – although ultimately owned by a firm linked to an Israeli businessman – was being operated by a Japanese shipping line with a crew from Bulgaria, Mexico, the Philippines, Romania and Ukraine.
The Houthis have been engaged in a civil war with Yemen’s internationally recognised government since 2014.
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