Fresh off his dramatic visit to Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, U.S. President Joe Biden was in Poland Tuesday to deliver a highly anticipated speech from Warsaw’s historic Royal Castle, marking the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion by highlighting how the United States has unified NATO and the West in support of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s effort to defend his country.

Jake Sullivan, the White House National Security Advisor, said the speech would build on Biden’s remarks in the same location in March last year and would answer fundamental questions about NATO and U.S. support for Ukraine.

“One year later he believes that we have answered those questions about our unity and resolve, about our commitment to fundamental principles,” he told reporters in a briefing Tuesday.

The speech was also to highlight the contest between “aggressors who are trying to destroy fundamental principles and those democracies were pulling together to try to uphold it,” Sullivan said.

Before delivering remarks, Biden began his second trip to Poland in a year by meeting with President Andrzej Duda. The U.S. leader was set underscore Washington’s commitment to the principle of collective defense in Article 5 of the NATO charter and assure Duda that the alliance will respond if Russia expands its war beyond Ukraine and launches an attack on Poland.

Poland has been an unwavering ally of its neighbor, providing billions of dollars in weapons and humanitarian assistance to Zelenskyy’s government, welcoming Ukrainian refugees and providing a critical logistics hub for military assistance for Kyiv.

Later Tuesday, Biden was to deliver his arguments for support to Ukraine “for as long as it takes,” including an additional $460 million military aid package that he announced in Kyiv Monday, that brings the total U.S. military, economic and humanitarian support delivered to Ukraine since the Russian invasion to over $40 billion.

In a statement released by the White House Monday, Biden said his speech would focus on “how the United States will continue to rally the world to support the people of Ukraine and the core values of human rights and dignity in the UN Charter that unite us worldwide.”

He also noted his administration will soon announce another new wave of sanctions against individuals and companies “that are trying to evade or backfill Russia’s war machine.”  

Geopolitical symbolism

A speech in Warsaw delivered by an American president to mark the war anniversary carries significant geopolitical symbolism. Poland had been locked behind the Iron Curtain as a signee of the Warsaw Pact, a military treaty established in 1955 by the Soviet Union and several Eastern European countries to counterbalance the Western military alliance. The pact was dissolved on July 1,1991.

The backdrop of Biden’s speech is Warsaw’s Royal Castle, whose construction began in the 1300s and has witnessed many notable events in Poland’s history, including the drafting of the first constitution of a European state in 1791. Now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the castle was destroyed by Nazi Germany during World War II and later rebuilt.

Warsaw is an appropriate place to reiterate U.S. commitment to European security, said Ian Lesser, vice president of the German Marshall Fund. 

“Poland is very much on the front line and will remain so whatever the course of the war in Ukraine.  The country occupies a critical position in allied deterrence and defense and is the key logistical hub for assistance headed to Ukraine,” he told VOA. “The fact that the president’s speech takes place in the Cold War birthplace of the Warsaw Pact will not be lost on observers, not least Russians.”

A few hours before Biden’s speech, President Vladimir Putin delivered remarks to Russia’s Federal Assembly in which he blamed Western countries for provoking conflict.  He also said Western economic sanctions against Russia had not “achieved anything and will not achieve anything.”

Before returning to Washington on Wednesday, Biden will meet with NATO leaders from the so-called Bucharest Nine (B-9), the countries on NATO’s easternmost flank, which include Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. These countries feel the Russian threat most acutely and are pushing for a more robust military response to Moscow.
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As the only current U.S. senator to have visited space, Mark Kelly knows something about unexplained objects in the skies. 

Back in his aviator days, Kelly saw Mylar party balloons fly by his cockpit. And once when he was piloting a NASA aircraft, he spotted an object at roughly 45,000 feet (13,700 meters) — much higher than commercial airplanes fly — that he couldn’t identify by sight. 

He’s not sure he would want to see American missiles flying at those objects, either. 

“I don’t think we want to get into the business of launching AIM-9Xs — at $400,000 a pop — at weather balloons,” Kelly told The Associated Press, referring to the heat-seeking, air-to-air missiles used in recent weeks to shoot down a series of aerial objects, including a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon. 

The Biden administration’s unprecedented peacetime downing of the Chinese balloon and three other objects has raised new and troubling questions about the security of American airspace, alarming lawmakers who fear the episode has exposed a vulnerability that could be exploited by other foreign adversaries. 

While the House and the Senate both voted unanimously to condemn China’s ruling political party for the incursion and largely supported the Biden administration’s decision to shoot down the balloon, they have questions about what’s next. 

Sen. Jon Tester, a Montana Democrat who has been tasked with heading up an investigation into how the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon was allowed to pass over crucial U.S. missile sites, said that he would ensure the Defense Department has funds for a protocol to assess the threat of unidentified flying objects. 

“We’re going to get to the bottom of what happened and make sure we have a plan going forward to detect and then find out what potential problems this balloon may cause and then a way to bring it down that doesn’t cost us a $400,000 missile,” Tester, who chairs the Defense subcommittee on appropriations, told Fox News Channel. 

Concerns over China, which has criticized the U.S. for “an obvious overreaction,” and worries about interference with civilian aircraft are shared by members of both political parties, creating the potential in Congress to mount a robust bipartisan response. But lawmakers are also mindful of adding yet more military costs — the U.S. already spends more than $800 billion yearly on defense programs — and are wary of expensive shooting sprees for every random object that appears in America’s skies. 

Kelly, an Arizona Democrat, is working on legislation that would require weather balloons to carry transponders that could communicate with air traffic control systems to separate research balloons from mysterious objects where “we don’t know what that is. We don’t know where it came from.” 

“It would really help the Defense Department to be able to sort out what is civilian science payload, what’s a weather balloon, what’s a NASA balloon, what’s a private company in the United States doing, what might be even a U.S. military [project],” said Kelly, who logged 54 days in space as an astronaut before jumping into politics. 

Other lawmakers have launched a flurry of proposals aimed at the skies including a comprehensive examination of encounters with unidentified aerial objects as well as an investigation into how the military is tracking objects floating over the country. 

President Joe Biden has said the military is developing “sharper rules” to track, monitor and potentially shoot down unknown aerial objects. He has justified the take downs by saying the objects presented a remote risk to civilian planes. 

But the four missile attacks were the first known peacetime shootdowns of unauthorized objects in U.S. airspace. Officials now say the three later objects shot down likely had a “benign purpose” and were detected after the U.S. military set its radar systems to detect slow-moving balloons. 

China’s alleged practice of using balloons for surveillance exploits a potential oversight in air traffic control systems, Kelly said. The systems aren’t designed to track the thousands of objects that move in on high-altitude winds. 

The National Weather Service alone launches roughly 60,000 balloons every year to monitor extreme weather. Universities, government organizations and even ham radio hobbyists send up thousands of others. 

“This is about whether an adversary has developed a capability that they know we’re not looking for because our systems are set up to see missiles and airplanes. They’re not set up to see smaller objects at lower altitudes,” said Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, the top Republican on the Intelligence Committee, who is pushing for the recent encounters to be included in a wider government study of “unidentified aerial phenomena” — better known as UFOs, short for unidentified flying objects. 

Rubio, along with Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, also jumped on the opportunity to renew a proposal to create the Space National Guard. 

“China has fused its commercial, military and technological applications in ways no other nation ever has,” Rubio told reporters. “So, it’s a multifaceted challenge and one that will require a comprehensive, long term and committed response.” 

But the bills face uncertain paths to becoming law. 

As senators were advised on the natures and origins of the objects shot down this month, some appeared ready to move on. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, quipped about aliens and said, “there’s just a bunch of junk up there.”  
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Even though Buffalo, New York, native Suzanne Taylor was aware that 98-year-old former U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s health was failing, the news that he was entering hospice care at his Plains, Georgia, home still came as a shock.

“I have to admit that I cried at breakfast,” she told VOA during a Skype interview. “That was a little bit of a wake-up call for me, that we are going to lose him at some point.” 

Between 2006 and 2019, Taylor was among hundreds of volunteers who worked alongside Carter and his wife Rosalynn on their annual Habitat for Humanity Work Project, building homes around the world for those in need.

“So many people really appreciate him,” she said. “He’s had such an impact, and it’s going to be so hard to close that chapter.”

Author Jonathan Alter agrees.

“It was sad because he has led such an epic American life,” he said.

Alter spent five years writing a biography about Jimmy Carter titled “His Very Best” that allowed him to interview and observe the former president before his health declined.

“When you take stock of his life, he won at life. Ninety-eight years — longest-lived president — married for close to 77 years — happily,” Alter explained to VOA during a recent Skype interview. 

“I think that it is fitting that Jimmy Carter is ending his journey on his own terms. He was the first American president ever born in the hospital, but he doesn’t want to die in the hospital. So, he is going home to the home that he and Rosalynn built in 1961 that has an assessed valuation of about $160,000. And that gives you some sense of his modesty, in which he built most of the furniture. He is preparing to die in the town of 660 people in which he was born. There is a kind of circularity to that.”

After Carter, a Democrat, lost the presidency in a resounding defeat in 1980 to Republican Ronald Reagan, Alter said Carter’s increased popularity came through his volunteerism with Habitat for Humanity, his efforts to promote peace and fight neglected tropical diseases through the programs of the Carter Center, and as the voice of a seasoned politician and elder statesman.

“Historians and people who want a fuller picture need to look at how a president changed the world, changed people’s lives, and that’s a different kind of assessment that takes longer and is not really directly connected to his popularity as president,” said Alter.

“This is a guy, even though he was in business and thought about the bottom line plenty in the years before he was president, spent most of his life thinking about what could he do to improve the lives of other people. And that’s still extraordinarily rare.”

Carter’s popularity was also boosted in the decades after he left the White House by traveling the country autographing and promoting the dozens of books he wrote. And by hosting crowds and taking pictures with scores of visitors to his small church in Plains, Georgia, during his semi-regular Sunday School lessons, where one day after the announcement of his decision to enter hospice care, Carter’s niece Kim Fuller led the congregation in prayer.

“I think at this time in all of our lives, and in the lives of those we love very much who are going through this today and will be going through it, that maybe if we think about it, maybe it’s time to pass the baton,” Fuller told those attending in person, and others watching the church’s live feed on Facebook. “Who will pick it up, I have no clue, because this baton is going to be a really big one,” she said. 

Taylor joined thousands more around the globe sharing messages of support for the 39th U.S. president and his family in the wake of his health announcement. 

“I am hearing from so many people who have met him, who went to his Sunday School, who went to the Carter Center events. … Both Rosalynn and Jimmy are accessible and gracious, and people feel like they really got to know him,” said Taylor, which is why she believes the news of his deteriorating health is that much harder for many to accept.

“I think his accessibility has created a bond with a lot of Americans that most presidents don’t have. I think that is why it’s more difficult to let him go, that people feel more connected to him in a different way,” she said. 
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When COVID-19 hit in 2020, Ghenya Grondin of Waltham, Massachusetts, was a postpartum doula – a person charged with helping young couples navigate the first weeks of their newborn child’s life at home.

Grondin, now aged 44, was infected with SARS-CoV-2 in mid-March of that year – before there were tests, before social distancing or masks, and many months before the medical community recognized long COVID as a complication of COVID-19.

She is part of a community of first-wave long-haulers who faced a new disease without a roadmap or support from the medical establishment.

Three years later, at least 65 million people worldwide are estimated to have long COVID, according to an evidence review published last month in Nature Reviews Microbiology. More than 200 symptoms have been linked to the syndrome – including extreme fatigue, difficulty thinking, headaches, dizziness when standing, sleep problems, chest pain, blood clots, immune dysregulation, and even diabetes.

There are no proven treatments but research is underway.

People infected later in the pandemic had the benefit of vaccination, which “protects at least to some degree” from long COVID, said Dr. Bruce Levy, a Harvard pulmonologist and a co-principal investigator of the National Institute of Health’s $1.15 billion U.S. RECOVER trial, which aims to characterize and find cures for the disease.

“The initial variant of the virus caused a more severe illness than we’re seeing currently in most patients,” he said.

According to the University of Washington’s Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation, in the first two years of the pandemic women were twice as likely as men to develop long COVID, and 15% of all of those affected at three months continued to experience symptoms beyond 12 months.

An analysis of thousands of health records by the RECOVER trial found that non-Hispanic white women in wealthier areas were more likely than others to have a long COVID diagnosis. Researchers said that likely reflected disparities in access to health care, and suggests that many cases of long COVID among people of color are not being diagnosed.

Grondin grew concerned when she continued to have symptoms three months after her initial infection – but there was no name for it then.

“I just kept saying to my husband, something isn’t right,” she said.

Like her fellow long-haulers, she has experienced a host of symptoms, including fatigue, sleep apnea, pain, cognitive dysfunction, and in her case, a brain aneurysm. She described a frightening moment when she was driving a car with her toddler in the back and had a seizure that left her in the path of oncoming traffic.

She has since been diagnosed with long COVID and can no longer work.

“It just feels like a constant punch in the face,” said Grondin.

Scientists are still working out why some people infected with COVID develop long-term symptoms, but syndromes like this are not new. Other infections such as Lyme disease can result in long-term symptoms, many of which overlap with long COVID.

Leading theories of the root causes of long COVID include the virus or viral proteins remaining in the tissues of some individuals; the infection causing an autoimmune response; or the virus reactivating latent viruses, leading to inflammation that damages tissue.

Kate Porter, 38, of Beverly, Massachusetts, a project manager for a financial services company, believes she was infected on a flight back from Florida in late March of 2020.

She had daily fevers for seven months, muscle weakness, shortness of breath, and excruciating nerve pain.

“I don’t think people realize how brutal physically everything was,” she said. In one of her darker moments, Porter recalled, “I cried on the floor begging for something to take me peacefully. I’ve never been like that.”

Frustrated by the lack of answers from a list of 10 specialists she has seen, Porter has explored alternative medicine. “It has opened me up to other remedies,” she said.

Although her health is much improved now, she still suffers from near daily migraines and neck pain she fears may never go away.

Genie Stevens, 65, a director of climate education, got infected while traveling from her home in Santa Fe to Cape Cod in late March 2020 to visit her mother, and never left. “It completely upended my life,” she said.

She went to an emergency department seeking tests and was told there were none – the typical answer in the spring of 2020, when scientists were scrambling to understand the nature of the virus and tests were being rationed. She was sent home to manage on her own.

A lifelong practitioner of meditation, Stevens took solace there, finding it eased her symptoms.

Confined to her bed that spring, she focused on an ancient crabapple tree outside her room. “I watched every bud unfurl.”

Although largely recovered, Stevens still has flare-ups of brain fog, exhaustion and high-pitched ringing in her ears when she pushes too hard. “This is the astoundingly maddening part of the illness. I feel totally fine, and then bam.”
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The woman flying out of Philadelphia’s airport last year remembered to pack snacks, prescription medicine and a cellphone in her handbag. But what was more important was what she forgot to unpack: a loaded .380-caliber handgun in a black holster.

The weapon was one of the 6,542 guns the Transportation Security Administration intercepted last year at airport checkpoints across the country. The number — roughly 18 per day — was an all-time high for guns intercepted at U.S. airports, and is sparking concern at a time when more Americans are armed.

“What we see in our checkpoints really reflects what we’re seeing in society, and in society there are more people carrying firearms nowadays,” TSA administrator David Pekoske said.

With the exception of pandemic-disrupted 2020, the number of weapons intercepted at airport checkpoints has climbed every year since 2010. Experts don’t think this is an epidemic of would-be hijackers — nearly everyone caught claims to have forgotten they had a gun with them — but they emphasize the danger even one gun can pose in the wrong hands on a plane or at a checkpoint.

Guns have been intercepted literally from Burbank, California, to Bangor, Maine. But it tends to happen more at bigger airports in areas with laws more friendly to carrying a gun, Pekoske said. The top 10 list for gun interceptions in 2022 includes Dallas, Austin and Houston in Texas; three airports in Florida; Nashville, Tennessee; Atlanta; Phoenix; and Denver.

Pekoske isn’t sure the “I forgot” excuse is always true or whether it’s a natural reaction to getting caught. Regardless, he said, it’s a problem that must stop.

When TSA staffers see what they believe to be a weapon on the X-ray machine, they usually stop the belt so the bag stays inside the machine and the passenger can’t get to it. Then they call in local police.

Repercussions vary depending on local and state laws. The person may be arrested and have the gun confiscated. But sometimes they’re allowed to give the gun to a companion not flying with them and continue on their way. Unloaded guns can also be placed in checked bags assuming they follow proper procedures. The woman in Philadelphia saw her gun confiscated and was slated to be fined.

Those federal fines are the TSA’s tool to punish those who bring a gun to a checkpoint. Last year TSA raised the maximum fine to $14,950 as a deterrent. Passengers also lose their PreCheck status — it allows them to bypass some types of screening — for five years. It used to be three years, but about a year ago the agency increased the time and changed the rules. Passengers may also miss their flight as well as lose their gun. If federal officials can prove the person intended to bring the gun past the checkpoint into what’s called the airport’s sterile area, it’s a federal offense.

Retired TSA official Keith Jeffries said gun interceptions can also slow other passengers in line.

“It’s disruptive no matter what,” Jeffries said. “It’s a dangerous, prohibited item and, let’s face it, you should know where your gun is at, for crying out loud.”

Experts and officials say the rise in gun interceptions simply reflects that more Americans are carrying guns.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation, an industry trade group, tracks FBI data about background checks completed for a firearm sale. The numbers were a little over 7 million in 2000 and about 16.4 million last year. They went even higher during the coronavirus pandemic.

For the TSA officers searching for prohibited items, it can be jarring.

In Atlanta, Janecia Howard was monitoring the X-ray machine when she realized she was looking at a gun in a passenger’s laptop bag. She immediately flagged it as a “high-threat” item and police were notified.

Howard said it felt like her heart dropped, and she was worried the passenger might try to get the gun. It turns out the passenger was a very apologetic businessman who said he simply forgot. Howard says she understands travel can be stressful but that people have to take care when they’re getting ready for a flight.

“You have to be alert and pay attention,” she said. “It’s your property.”

Atlanta’s airport, one of the world’s busiest with roughly 85,000 people going through checkpoints on a busy day, had the most guns intercepted in 2022 — 448 — but that number was actually lower than the year before. Robert Spinden, the TSA’s top official in Atlanta, says the agency and the airport made a big effort in 2021 to try to address the large number of guns being intercepted at checkpoints.

An incident in November 2021 reinforced the need for their efforts. A TSA officer noticed a suspected gun in a passenger’s bag. When the officer opened the suitcase the man reached for the gun, and it went off. People ran for the exits, and the airport was shut down for 2 1/2 hours, the airport’s general manager Balram Bheodari said during a congressional hearing last year.

Officials put in new signage to catch the attention of gun owners. A hologram over a checkpoint shows the image of a revolving blue gun with a red circle over the gun with a line through it. Numerous 70-inch television screens flash rotating messages that guns are not allowed.

“There’s signage all over the airport. There is announcements, holograms, TVs. There’s quite a bit of information that is sort of flashing before your eyes to just try to remind you as a last ditch effort that if you do own a firearm, do you know where it’s at?” Spinden said.

Miami’s airport also worked to get gunowners’ attention. The airport’s director told Congress last year that after setting a gun interception record in 2021 they installed high-visibility signage and worked with airlines to warn passengers. He said the number of firearms intercepted declined sharply.

Pekoske said signage is only part of the solution. Travelers face a barrage of signs or announcements already and don’t always pay attention. He also supports gradually raising penalties to grab people’s attention.

But Aidan Johnston, from the gun advocacy group Gun Owners of America, said he’d like to see the fines lessened, saying they’re not a deterrent. While he’d like to see more education for new gun owners, he also doesn’t think of this as a “major heinous crime.”

“These are not bad people that are in dire need of punishment,” he said. “These are people who made a mistake.”

Officials believe they’re catching the vast majority, but with 730 million passengers screened last year even a miniscule percentage getting through is a concern.

Last month, musician Cliff Waddell was traveling from Nashville, Tennessee, to Raleigh, North Carolina, when he was stopped at the checkpoint. A TSA officer had seen a gun in his bag. Waddell was so shocked he initially said it couldn’t be his because he’d just flown the day before with the same bag. It turned out the gun had been in his bag but missed at the screening. TSA acknowledged the miss, and Pekoske says they’re investigating.

When trying to figure out how the gun he keeps locked in his glove compartment got in his bookbag, Waddell realized he’d taken it out when he took the vehicle in for repairs. Waddell said he recognizes it’s his responsibility to know where his firearm is but worries about how TSA could have missed something so significant.

“That was a shock to me,” he said.
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