U.S. first lady Jill Biden made a high-profile visit to a tiny Kenyan community to draw attention to the severe drought that has gripped East Africa and created an unprecedented food insecurity crisis in Kenya.

The United States has provided the lion’s share of humanitarian aid to East Africa after rains failed here for a third straight year, causing unprecedented hunger that stretches from Somalia to this dusty Maasai village just three hours from Kenya’s capital, Nairobi.

The U.N. chief for Kenya told VOA that 6 million people are on the brink of extreme hunger this year and that the situation is exacerbated by the food-supply crisis caused by the conflict in Ukraine.

But the world’s richest nation can’t walk this road alone, Biden said after her visit to the Maasai village which is suffering the worst drought seen in this area in seven generations. The trip came at the end of a five-day visit that took her to Kenya and the Southwest African nation of Namibia.

“The United States is providing 70% of the budget, the money, that’s coming into this region. But we cannot be the only ones,” she told reporters after her 90-minute visit. “We need to have other countries join us in this global effort to help these people of the region.”

To get there, Biden made a three-hour journey to remote southern Kenya, near the border with Tanzania. The drive took her large motorcade through villages with emaciated cows, dried-up creek beds and packed churches on a hot, bright Sunday morning — all the way to a remote church that serves as an humanitarian assistance station.

In Lositeti, Biden was greeted by thousands of residents of the largely Maasai community — many who had walked from within a 40-kilometer radius to reach the area’s only water point. A group of residents sang and danced as they draped Biden in a bright red shuka, the traditional robe worn by the pastoralist people who are famed for their skill as warriors and hunters.

Biden sat with a small group of women under a lone tree and for 30 minutes, asked them questions, with the help of an interpreter, about their experience of this crisis, which the United Nations’ resident coordinator in Kenya, Stephen Jackson, said is driven by climate change and exacerbated by the global food supply crisis.

Biden did not ask the women about the multiple drivers of their predicament.

“How does this compare to previous droughts in your lifetime?” she asked a woman who said she was a grandmother.

How do you find work now? she asked a woman who said her cattle had died.

How many of your children cannot go to school? she asked another.

How old is your baby? she asked a woman — who was breastfeeding her eager 7-month-old son — while speaking softly to the group of White House and U.S. aid officials, watched by several thousand community members and a dozen Kenyan and American journalists.

The women Biden questioned responded quietly, many in the Maa language. Afterward, Biden shared what they said with the gathered press.

“They talked about how their livestock are dying,” she said. “Obviously, you can see the drought here, how bad it is. The one source of water here feeds 12 villages, and each village has approximately a thousand to 1,200 people.”

Brenda Kariuki, the World Food Program’s Nairobi-based head of advocacy and communication, told VOA that the need across the East African region — which includes Somalia and Ethiopia — is vast.

“We require $6.5 billion in 2023 alone to continue feeding the people that need it,” she told VOA. “WFP is aiming to reach 45 million people. That’s a significant task, and we can’t do it on our own. So, we look to our donors, our partners, our governments to really step up and make sure no one goes to bed without food.”

U.S. Ambassador to Kenya Meg Whitman said the country needs more than a short-term fix.

“I would just underscore what Dr. Biden said, is that everyone needs to help as best we can,” she told journalists. “Because this is going to continue for the foreseeable future. And this is very personal, and thank you for shining a light on the world so you’re an extension of their voices.”

Kariuki said a high-profile visit to a crisis area can make a big difference.

“The presence of the first lady of the U.S. in the region, especially at a time when we have a food insecurity crisis, is a significant moment,” she said. “And I think she brings attention to a challenge that the region will have to address … which is with food assistance and ensuring that people are not dying and going to bed hungry every night, but also to bring their attention to the world.”

Amos Wangwa contributed to this report.
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A majority of the nation’s business economists expect a U.S. recession to begin later this year than they had previously forecast, after a series of reports have pointed to a surprisingly resilient economy despite steadily higher interest rates.

Fifty-eight percent of 48 economists who responded to a survey by the National Association for Business Economics envision a recession sometime this year, the same proportion who said so in the NABE’s survey in December. But only a quarter think a recession will have begun by the end of March, only half the proportion who had thought so in December.

The findings, reflecting a survey of economists from businesses, trade associations and academia, were released Monday.

A third of the economists who responded to the survey now expect a recession to begin in the April-June quarter. One-fifth think it will start in the July-September quarter.

The delay in the economists’ expectations of when a downturn will begin follows a series of government reports that have pointed to a still-robust economy even after the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates eight times in a strenuous effort to slow growth and curb high inflation.

In January, employers added more than a half-million jobs, and the unemployment rate reached 3.4%, the lowest level since 1969.

And sales at retail stores and restaurants jumped 3% in January, the sharpest monthly gain in nearly two years. That suggested that consumers as a whole, who drive most of the economy’s growth, still feel financially healthy and willing to spend.

At the same time, several government releases also showed that inflation shot back up in January after weakening for several months, fanning fears that the Fed will raise its benchmark rate even higher than was previously expected. When the Fed lifts its key rate, it typically leads to more expensive mortgages, auto loans and credit card borrowing. Interest rates on business loans also rise.

Tighter credit can then weaken the economy and even cause a recession. Economic research released Friday found that the Fed has never managed to reduce inflation from the high levels it has recently reached without causing a recession.
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Twitter Inc has laid off at least 200 employees, or about 10% of its workforce, the New York Times reported late on Sunday, in its latest round of job cuts since Elon Musk took over the micro-blogging site last October. 

The layoffs on Saturday night impacted product managers, data scientists and engineers who worked on machine learning and site reliability, which helps keep Twitter’s various features online, the NYT report said, citing people familiar with the matter. 

Twitter did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. 

The company has a headcount of about 2,300 active employees, according to Musk last month. 

The latest job cuts follow a mass layoff in early November, when Twitter laid off about 3,700 employees in a cost-cutting measure by Musk, who had acquired the company for $44 billion. 

Musk said in November that the service was experiencing a “massive drop in revenue” as advertisers pulled spending amid concerns about content moderation. 

Twitter recently started sharing revenue from advertisements with some of its content creators. 

Earlier in the day, The Information reported that the social media platform laid off dozens of employees on Saturday, aiming to offset a plunge in revenue. 
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U.S. intelligence shows that China’s President Xi Jinping has instructed his country’s military to “be ready by 2027″ to invade Taiwan though he may be currently harboring doubts about his ability to do so given Russia’s experience in its war with Ukraine, CIA Director William Burns said.

Burns, in a television interview that aired Sunday, stressed that the United States must take “very seriously” Xi’s desire to ultimately control Taiwan even if military conflict is not inevitable.

“We do know, as has been made public, that President Xi has instructed the PLA, the Chinese military leadership, to be ready by 2027 to invade Taiwan, but that doesn’t mean that he’s decided to invade in 2027 or any other year as well,” Burns told CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

“I think our judgment at least is that President Xi and his military leadership have doubts today about whether they could accomplish that invasion,” he said.

Taiwan and China split in 1949 after a civil war that ended with the Communist Party in control of the mainland. The self-governing island acts like a sovereign nation yet is not recognized by the United Nations or any major country. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter formally recognized the government in Beijing and cut nation-to-nation ties with Taiwan. In response, Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act, creating a benchmark for a continuing relationship.

Taiwan has received numerous displays of official American support for the island democracy in the face of growing shows of force by Beijing, which claims Taiwan as part of its territory. President Joe Biden has said that American forces would defend Taiwan if China tried to invade. The White House says U.S. policy has not changed in making clear that Washington wants to see Taiwan’s status resolved peacefully. It is silent as to whether U.S. forces might be sent in response to a Chinese attack.

In Sunday’s interview, Burns said the support from the U.S. and European allies for Ukraine following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of that country may be acting as a potential deterrent to Chinese officials for now but said the risks of a possible attack on Taiwan will only grow stronger.

“I think, as they’ve looked at Putin’s experience in Ukraine, that’s probably reinforced some of those doubts,” Burns said. “So, all I would say is that I think the risks of, you know, a potential use of force probably grow the further into this decade you get and beyond it, into the following decade as well.

“So that’s something obviously, that we watch very, very carefully,” he said.
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Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX was set to launch early Monday the International Space Station’s next long-duration team into orbit, with an astronaut from the United Arab Emirates and a Russian cosmonaut joining two NASA crewmates for the flight.

The SpaceX launch vehicle, consisting of a Falcon 9 rocket topped with an autonomously operated Crew Dragon capsule called Endeavour, was set for liftoff at 1:45 a.m. EST (0645 GMT) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The four-member crew should reach the International Space Station (ISS) about 25 hours later, Tuesday morning, to begin a six-month mission in microgravity aboard the orbiting laboratory some 250 miles (420 km) above Earth.

Designated Crew 6, the mission marks the sixth long-term ISS team that NASA has flown aboard SpaceX since the private rocket venture founded by Musk – billionaire CEO of electric car maker Tesla and social media platform Twitter – began sending American astronauts to orbit in May 2020.

NASA said the mission’s launch readiness review was completed Saturday, and that the flight was given a “go” to proceed to liftoff as planned.

“All systems and weather are looking good for launch,” Musk wrote on Twitter Sunday.

The latest ISS crew is led by mission commander Stephen Bowen, 59, a onetime U.S. Navy submarine officer who has logged more than 40 days in orbit as a veteran of three space shuttle flights and seven spacewalks.

Fellow NASA astronaut Warren “Woody” Hoburg, 37, an engineer and commercial aviator designated as the Crew 6 pilot, will be making his first spaceflight.

The Crew 6 mission also is notable for its inclusion of UAE astronaut Sultan Alneyadi, 41, only the second person from his country to fly to space and the first to launch from U.S. soil as part of a long-duration space station team. UAE’s first-ever astronaut launched to orbit in 2019 aboard a Russian spacecraft.

Rounding out the four-man Crew 6 is Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, 41, who like Alneyadi is an engineer and spaceflight rookie designated as a mission specialist for the team.

Fedyaev is the latest cosmonaut to fly aboard an American spacecraft under a ride-sharing deal signed in July by NASA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos, despite heightened tensions between Washington and Moscow over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Crew 6 team will be welcomed aboard the space station by seven current ISS occupants – three U.S. NASA crew members, including commander Nicole Aunapu Mann, the first Native American woman to fly to space, along with three Russians and a Japanese astronaut.

The ISS, about the length of a football field and the largest artificial object in space, has been continuously operated by a U.S.-Russian-led consortium that includes Canada, Japan and 11 European countries.

The outpost was conceived in part as a venture to improve relations between Washington and Moscow following the Soviet Union’s collapse and the end of Cold War rivalries that gave rise to the original U.S.-Soviet space race in the 1950s and 1960s.

NASA-Roscosmos cooperation has been tested as never before since Russia invaded Ukraine a year ago, leading the United States to impose sweeping sanctions against Moscow while steadily increasing military aid to the Ukrainian government.

The Crew 6 mission also follows two recent mishaps in which Russian spacecraft docked to the orbiting laboratory sprang coolant leaks apparently caused micrometeoroids, tiny grains of space rock, streaking through space and striking the craft at high velocity.

One of the affected Russian vehicles was a Soyuz crew capsule that had carried two cosmonauts and an astronaut to the space station in September for a six-month mission now set to end in March. An empty replacement Soyuz to bring them home blasted off Friday and arrived at the space station Saturday.
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Last year, the top winners at the Screen Actors Guild Awards all corresponded exactly with the Academy Awards winners. Will Sunday’s SAGs offer the same preview?

The 29th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards will begin at 8 p.m. EST Sunday and be streamed live on Netflix’s YouTube page. After the awards, presented by the film and television acting guild SAG-AFRTA, lost their broadcast home at TNT/TBS, Netflix signed on to stream the ceremony. Though future editions will be streamed live directly on Netflix, this year’s show, at Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles, will be on the streaming service’s YouTube page and its social media channels.

“Everything Everywhere All at Once” and “The Banshees of Inisherin” come in with a co-leading five nominations. Each film is up for the Guild’s top award, best ensemble, along with “Babylon,” “The Fabelmans” and “Women Talking.”

The SAG Awards are considered one of the most reliable Oscar bellwethers. Actors make up the biggest percentage of the film academy, so their choices have the largest sway. Last year, “CODA” triumphed at SAG before winning best picture at the Oscars, while Ariana DeBose, Will Smith, Jessica Chastain and Troy Kotsur all won both a SAG Award and an Academy Award.

With both supporting categories seemingly sown up by Angela Bassett (“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”) and Ke Huy Quan (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”), Sunday’s SAG Award could offer the most clarity in the lead acting awards.

Best actress could go to either Michelle Yeoh (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”) or Cate Blanchett (“Tár”). While Andrea Riseborough’s much-debated campaign led to an Academy Awards nomination, some of the most notable Oscar snubs are up for best actress. Though nominated by the actors’ guild, Danielle Deadwyler (“Till”) and Viola Davis (“The Woman King”) were overlooked by the academy, prompting some to decry racial bias in Hollywood. Ana de Armas (“Blonde”) is also nominated.

In the best actor category, Austin Butler (“Elvis”), Brendan Fraser (“The Whale”) and Colin Farrell (“The Banshees of Inisherin”) all are considered contenders with a realistic shot of winning. The Guild also nominated Adam Sandler (“Hustle”) and Bill Nighy (“Living”).

On the TV side, nominated for best ensemble in a drama series are: “Better Call Saul,” “The Crown,” “Ozark,” “Severance” and “The White Lotus.” Up for best comedy series ensemble are the casts of “Abbott Elementary,” “Barry,” “The Bear,” “Hacks” and “Only Murders in the Building.”

Presenters on Sunday include Zendaya (who scored her first SAG nomination for her leading performance in “Euphoria,” Aubrey Plaza, Jenna Ortega, Adam Scott, Chastain and Jeff Bridges. Sally Field is to receive the SAG lifetime achievement award, an honor to be presented to her by Andrew Garfield.
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 A powerful winter storm that swept down the West Coast with flooding and frigid temperatures shifted its focus to southern California on Saturday, swelling rivers to dangerous levels and dropping snow in even low-lying areas around Los Angeles.

The National Weather Service said it was one of the strongest storms to ever hit southwest California and even as the volume of wind and rain dropped, it continued to have significant impact including snowfall down to elevations as low as 1,000 feet (305 meters). Hills around suburban Santa Clarita, north of Los Angeles, were blanketed in white, and snow also surprised inland suburbs to the east.

Rare blizzard warnings for the mountains and widespread flood watches were ending late in the day as the storm tapered off in the region. Forecasters said there would be a one-day respite before the next storm arrives on Monday.

After days of fierce winds, toppled trees and downed wires, more than 120,000 California utility customers remained without electricity, according to PowerOutage.us. And Interstate 5, the West Coast’s major north-south highway, remained closed due to heavy snow and ice in Tejon Pass through the mountains north of Los Angeles.

Multiday precipitation totals as of Saturday morning included a staggering 81 inches (205 centimeters) of snow at the Mountain High resort in the San Gabriel Mountains northeast of Los Angeles and up to 64 inches (160 centimeters) farther east at Snow Valley in the San Bernardino Mountains.

Rainfall totals as of late Saturday morning were equally stunning, including nearly 15 inches (38.1 centimeters) at Los Angeles County’s Cogswell Dam and nearly 10.5 inches (26.6 cm) in the Woodland Hills section of Los Angeles.

“Quite a remarkable storm the last few days with historic amounts of precip and snow down to elevations that rarely see snow,” the LA-area weather office wrote.

The Los Angeles River and other waterways that normally flow at a trickle or are dry most of the year were raging with runoff Saturday. The Los Angeles Fire Department used a helicopter to rescue four homeless people who were stranded in the river’s major flood control basin. Two were taken to a hospital with hypothermia, said spokesperson Brian Humphrey.

In the Valencia area of north Los Angeles County, the roiling Santa Clara River carried away three motorhomes early Saturday after carving into an embankment where an RV park is located. No one was hurt, KCAL-TV reported, but one resident described the scene as devastating.

The storm, fueled by low pressure rotating off the coast, did not depart quietly. Lightning strikes shut down LA County beaches and scattered bursts of snow, showers and thunderstorms persisted.

Derek Maiden, 57, who lives in a tent in LA’s Echo Park neighborhood, collected cans in the rain to take to a recycling center. He said this winter has been wetter than usual. “It’s miserable when you’re outside in the elements,” he said.

Meanwhile, people farther east were struggling to deal with the fallout from storms earlier this week.

More than 350,000 customers were without power in Michigan as of early Saturday afternoon, according to reports from the two main utilities in the state, DTE and Consumers Energy. Both said they hope to have the lights back on for most of their customers by Sunday night.

Brian Wheeler, a spokesman for Consumers Energy, said half an inch (1.27 centimeters) of ice weighed down some power lines — equivalent to the weight of a baby grand piano.

“People are not just angry but struggling,” said Em Perry, environmental justice director for Michigan United, a group that advocates for economic and racial justice. “People are huddling under blankets for warmth.”

She said the group will demand that utilities reimburse residents for the cost to purchase generators or replace spoiled groceries.

In Kalamazoo, Michigan, Allison Rinker was using a borrowed generator to keep her 150-year-old house warm Saturday after two nights in the cold and dark.

“We were all surviving, but spirits were low on the second day,” she said. “As soon as the heat came back and we were able to have one or two lights running, it was like a complete flip in attitude.”

After driving to a relative’s home to store food, Rinker, 27, compared the destruction of trees to tornado damage.

“The ice that was falling off the trees as it was melting was hitting our windshield so hard, I was afraid it was going to crack,” she said. “There’s just tree limbs everywhere, half of the trees just falling down. The destruction is insane.”

Back in California, the Weather Prediction Center of the National Weather Service forecast heavy snow over the Cascade Mountains and the Sierra Nevada through the weekend.

The low-pressure system was also expected to bring widespread rain and snow in southern Nevada by Saturday afternoon and across northwest Arizona Saturday night and Sunday morning, the National Weather Service office in Las Vegas said.

An avalanche warning was issued for the Sierra Nevada backcountry around Lake Tahoe, which straddles the California-Nevada border. Nearly 2 feet (61 cm) of new snow had fallen by Friday and up to another 5 feet (1.5 meters) was expected when another storm moves in with the potential for gale-force winds and high-intensity flurries Sunday, the weather service said.

In Arizona, the heaviest snow was expected late Saturday through midday Sunday, with up to a foot of new snow possible in Flagstaff, forecasters said.

Weekend snow also was forecast for parts of the upper Midwest to the Northeast, with pockets of freezing rain over some areas of the central Appalachians. The storm was expected to reach the central high Plains by Sunday evening.

At least three people have died in the coast-to-coast storms. A Michigan firefighter died Wednesday after coming into contact with a downed power line, while in Rochester, Minnesota, a pedestrian died after being hit by a city-operated snowplow. Authorities in Portland, Oregon, said a person died of hypothermia.

Much of Portland was shut down with icy roads after the city’s second-heaviest snowfall on record this week: nearly 11 inches (28 centimeters). While the city saw sunny skies and temperatures approaching 40 degrees Saturday afternoon, the reprieve — and thaw — was short-lived. More snow was expected overnight and Sunday.
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