Author: CNN

CNN
 — 

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday announced $100 million in disaster relief aid for Turkey and Syria as the countries grapple with the aftermath of a powerful 7.8 magnitude earthquake that has killed at least 46,000 people.

The top US diplomat, who took a helicopter tour Sunday of some of the hardest-hit areas alongside Turkish foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, later told reporters at Incirlik Air Base that it was “really hard to put into words” the devastation he saw during the tour but said, “We are here to stand with the people of Turkey and Syria.”

The new round of funding includes $50 million under the Emergency Refugee and Migration Assistance Funds for emergency response efforts and an additional $50 million in humanitarian assistance through the State Department and USAID, according to the State Department.

The latest funding brings the total American assistance to $185 million. Private US nongovernmental organizations have already contributed another $66 million to response efforts thus far, according to a fact sheet provided by the State Department.

“Immediately after the earthquake hit, the United States and other countries jumped in,” Blinken said.

Efforts to retrieve survivors have been hampered by a cold winter spell across quake-stricken regions, while authorities grapple with the logistical challenges of transporting aid into northwestern Syria amid an acute humanitarian crisis compounded by years of political strife.

Blinken acknowledged that relief efforts in Syria were “very, very challenging” but vowed, “We’ll do everything we can, including making sure, for example, there’s absolutely no doubt that whatever sanctions against Syria do not affect the provision of humanitarian assistance.”

“They never have, but we’re going to make sure that we clear up any doubts about that so that anyone who’s able to can make sure they’re helping out in getting the aid to the folks who need it in Syria,” he said.

Blinken also met Sunday with representatives of the Syria Civil Defense volunteer organization, known as the White Helmets, in southern Turkey and committed US support to the group and other organizations “providing life-saving aid in response to this tragedy,” he said in a tweet.

The White Helmets have been doing the heavy lifting in the search, rescue and recovery operations in the rebel-controlled areas in north and northwestern Syria.

The group tweeted Sunday that members briefed Blinken on the response to the earthquake and the current situation in northwestern Syria, along with “the humanitarian situation, ways to support affected civilians, and mechanisms for achieving early recovery.”

Turkey’s disaster management authority said Sunday it had ended most search and rescue operations nearly two weeks after the earthquake struck as experts say the chances of survival for people trapped in the rubble this far into the disaster are unlikely.

Some efforts remain in the provinces of Kahramanmaraş and Hatay. On Saturday, a couple and their 12-year-old child were rescued in Hatay, 296 hours after the earthquake, state news agency Anadolu reported.

Blinken told reporters at Incirlik Air Base that it was “going to take a massive effort to rebuild, but we’re committed to supporting Turkey in that effort.”

“The most important thing right now is to get assistance to people who need it to get them through the winter and get them back on their feet,” he added.

Washington, DC
CNN
 — 

Home prices are going up across the country — in aggregate. Looking at individual markets, however, some are showing prices have fallen from a year ago.

Single-family median home prices increased 4% in the fourth quarter from a year ago to $378,700. Prices were strongest in the Northeast in the last quarter, up 5.3%; followed by the South, up 4.9%; the Midwest, up 4% and the West, up 2.6%, according to the National Association of Realtors.

But drill down to the market level and it’s clear that prices in some areas are declining from the prior year. The positive regional numbers mask that about 11% of individual housing markets tracked by NAR — 20 of 186 cities — experienced home price declines in the fourth quarter of last year.

“A few markets may see double-digit price drops, especially some of the more expensive parts of the country, which have also seen weaker employment and higher instances of residents moving to other areas,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist.

Nearly all of the most expensive places to buy are in the West and half of the 10 most expensive cities are in California. Several of those places are seeing prices fall the most.

San Jose, California, was the most expensive place to purchase a home in the United States in the fourth quarter. But that median price of $1,577,500 is actually down 5.8% from a year ago — and prices there have already dropped 17% from the peak $1,900,000 median price in the second quarter of last year, according to NAR.

San Francisco had the biggest price drop in the country, year over year, last quarter, with the median price of $1,230,000 — down 6.1% from a year ago. Prices for San Francisco homes are already down 21% in the fourth quarter from the peak median price of $1,550,000 in the second quarter.

Among the most expensive cities that saw prices falling are Anaheim, California, with the median price of $1,132,000, down 1.6% from a year ago; Los Angeles, with the median price of $829,100, down 1.3%; and Boulder, Colorado, with the median price of $759,500, down 2.0%.

Other places with falling prices saw the big price increases during the frenzied home buying market of the past few years. They also tend to be appealing lifestyle destinations where people moved to as remote work provided more flexibility. These include Boise, Idaho, where prices fell 3.4% from a year ago and Austin, Texas, where prices are down 1.3%.

The good news for buyers looking for price relief is that the 4% median price hike in the fourth quarter is less than the 8.6% increase in the third quarter. In addition, the price increases are smaller, with far fewer markets experiencing double-digit price gains in the fourth quarter.

“A slowdown in home prices is underway and welcomed, particularly as the typical home price has risen 42% in the past three years,” said Yun, noting these cost increases have far surpassed wage increases and consumer price inflation since 2019.

Throughout much of the pandemic, home prices across the country moved in a single direction: up. Some hotspots like Austin and Boise saw prices skyrocket. Other areas — particularly in the Midwest — saw prices go up more moderately. Yet, because mortgage rates were near historic lows, buyers came out in droves.

That story changed last year, when mortgage rates spiked as a result of the Federal Reserve’s historic campaign to rein in inflation. Homebuying fell off a cliff. By the end of 2022, sales of existing homes were down nearly 18% from 2021 as would-be homebuyers left the market, according to NAR.

Typically, a drop in demand to buy would mean excess supply and ultimately lead to prices coming down. But that’s not happening, broadly speaking, in the housing market.

Instead, prices for single-family homes climbed in nearly 90% of metro areas tracked by NAR in the fourth quarter: 166 markets out of 186 saw prices still going up. The national median price of a single-family home increased 4% last quarter from one year ago to $378,700.

How can this be?

One main driver of this phenomenon is that there is a shortage of inventory due to chronic underbuilding of affordable homes in the United States, along with homeowners who don’t want to part with the ultra-low mortgage rate they secured over the past few years.

“Even with a projected reduction in home sales this year, prices are expected to remain stable in the vast majority of the markets due to extremely limited supply,” said Yun.

There are still places where home prices continue to climb at double-digit rates. The top 10 cities with the largest year-over-year price increases all recorded gains of at least 14.5%, with seven of those markets in Florida and the Carolinas, according to NAR.

Farmington, New Mexico, saw the biggest price increase in the fourth quarter, up 20.3% from a year ago. It was followed by Sarasota, Florida, up 19.5%; Naples, Florida, up 17.2%; Greensboro, North Carolina, up 17.0%; Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, up 16.2%; Oshkosh, Wisconsin, up 16.0%; Winston-Salem, North Carolina, up 15.7%; El Paso, Texas, up 15.2%; Punta Gorda, Florida, up 15.2%; and Daytona Beach, Florida, up 14.5%.

In the last quarter of 2022 a family needed a qualifying income of at least $100,000 to afford a 10% down payment mortgage in 71 markets, up from 59 in the prior quarter, according to NAR.

Yet there were 16 markets where a family needed a qualifying income of less than $50,000 to afford a home, although that was down from 17 the previous quarter. Some of those included Peoria, Illinois, where a family can qualify for a loan with an income of $33,660; Waterloo, Iowa, with an income of $40,639; and Montgomery, Alabama, with an income of $48,172.

Nationally, the monthly mortgage payment on a typical existing single-family home with a 20% down payment was $1,969 in the fourth quarter according to NAR. That’s a 7% increase from the third quarter of last year, when the monthly payment was $1,838, but a major surge of 58% — or a $720 monthly increase — from one year ago.

This made the affordability picture even harder for many home buyers. Families typically spent 26.2% of their income on mortgage payments, which was up from 25% in the prior quarter and 17.5% one year ago.

First-time buyers were evidently pushed to a breaking point on affordability. They typically spent 39.5% of their family income on mortgage payments, up from 37.8% in the previous quarter. A mortgage is considered unaffordable if the monthly payment, including principal and interest, amounts to more than 25% of the family’s income. Generally, a common financial rule of thumb is to not spend more than 30% of your income on housing costs.

Editor’s Note: Sign up to get this weekly column as a newsletter. We’re looking back at the strongest, smartest opinion takes of the week from CNN and other outlets.

CNN
 — 

When Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, dictator Joseph Stalin was too shocked to speak in public for nearly two weeks.

On July 3, he finally gave a radio speech, trying to reassure his nation — already suffering serious battlefield losses to the German blitzkrieg — with the words, “History shows that there are no invincible armies.”

Germany’s “Operation Barbarossa” involved more than 3 million troops, about 3,000 tanks and 2,500 aircraft — one of the largest invasion forces in history. Expecting to conquer Moscow within weeks, Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler thought the Soviet regime would quickly disintegrate. Over the next four years though, Hitler’s armies proved to be anything but invincible.

One year ago, Stalin’s heir in the Kremlin, Russian President Vladimir Putin, launched an army — one that he likely thought was invincible — into Ukraine, aiming to quickly decapitate its leadership and seize Kyiv. His hopes were frustrated by Ukraine’s spirited defense under President Volodymyr Zelensky, and the two nations continue to be locked in a savage conflict.

Contrary to what most people expected before the war, it’s a stalemate, observed retired US General David Petraeus, in a Q&A with CNN National Security Analyst Peter Bergen. So how does the Russian leader look a year after his decision?

“Putin has earned a failing grade to date,” said Petraeus, who commanded the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. “Let’s recall that the first and most important task of a strategic leader is to ‘get the big ideas right’ — that is, to get the overall strategy and fundamental decisions right. Putin clearly has failed abysmally in that task, resulting in a war that has made him and his country a pariah, set back the Russian economy by a decade or more (losing many of Russia’s best and brightest, and prompting over 1,200 western companies to leave Russia or reduce operations there), done catastrophic damage to the Russian military and its reputation and put his legacy in serious jeopardy.”

Still, it would be a mistake to underestimate Russia, Petraeus noted, citing a maxim often attributed, perhaps wrongly, to Stalin: “Quantity has a quality of its own.”

During World War II, the Soviet Union’s ability to call on vast reserves and sustain enormous casualties, despite having inferior tanks and planes, helped it to defeat Germany.

Today, Russia’s population is more than three times the size of Ukraine’s and it can afford to send more soldiers into the fight. But in Ukraine’s case there’s an intangible factor. “Ukrainians know what they are fighting for,” Petraeus noted, “while it is not clear that the same is true of many of the Russian soldiers, a disproportionate number of whom are from ethnic and sectarian minorities in the Russian Federation.”

On February 23, 2022, Diliara Didenko, went to bed in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, “thinking that I would celebrate my husband’s birthday the next day. Our life was getting better. My husband was running his own business. Our daughter had started school and made friends there. We were lucky to have arranged support services and found a special needs nursery for our son. I finally had time to work. I felt happy.”

She had no inkling that the outbreak of war would force her to restart her life in the Czech Republic within 22 days.

“Completely exhausted, crushed and scared, we had to brace ourselves and come to terms with our forced displacement. I will be forever grateful to all those who helped us come to Prague and adjust to a new life in a foreign land.” Didenko’s is one story among the tens of millions of lives displaced, disrupted or cut short by the war.

For more:

Frida Ghitis: Break up the Xi Jinping-Vladimir Putin partnership

Cristian Gherasim: Moldova isn’t on the front page, but it could be in Putin’s crosshairs

Growing up near Michigan State University’s campus “was the stuff of childhood dreams,” recalled CNN Opinion’s Kirsi Goldynia. On quiet summer evenings, she would “sit outside the MSU Dairy Store licking an ice cream cone … I was safe in this community where we looked out for one another. I had space to run and play, to grow and imagine and learn.”

“Since moving away from home, those childhood memories have moored me to the place where I grew up, where life felt simple and the world felt kind,” she observed. “On Monday night, when news broke that there was an active shooter on Michigan State’s campus, I clung to those memories.”

Goldynia’s mother was among those locked down for hours when a shooter killed three people and injured five more. The news alarmed those on campus and rippled out to the enormous alumni network of MSU, which has about 50,000 current students.

“I think about the words Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer spoke on Tuesday morning — ‘Our Spartan community is reeling today’ — and I wonder if the ‘reeling’ ever ends and, if it does, what comes afterward,” Goldynia wrote.

In the Detroit Free Press, Jemele Hill, who graduated from MSU, wrote, “What happened … is a reminder that the regularity of these acts is bringing violence even closer to all of us. Some of the students whom Americans saw struggling to process what happened had already lived through another mass shooting — in Oxford, or Newtown, Conn. Many of the students who fled certain buildings on campus the night of the shooting were just following the protocols they’d been taught prior to coming to Michigan State, because teaching children and young adults how not to be killed in mass shootings is now a staple of America’s egregious routine.”

For more on guns:

Jens Ludwig and Chico Tillmon: There’s no safety net to catch the young men at highest risk of gun violence

Now there’s more than one. For months, former President Donald Trump was the only candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. This week, Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and US ambassador to the UN, entered the fray, saying, “We are more than ready for a new generation to lead us into the future.”

As SE Cupp noted, Haley called for going beyond the “faded names of the past” and argued for term limits for members of Congress and “mandatory mental competency tests for politicians over 75 years old.” Trump is 76 and President Joe Biden is 80.

But the real question, in Cupp’s view, is this: “Will Haley also bring substantively different views that appeal to younger generations?”

“Will she break with the election denialism, grievance politics, white nationalism and conspiracy theories that Trumpism allowed?” And, Cupp added, where will Haley stand on immigration, gun control, climate change, abortion and other issues that particularly resonate with younger voters?

For more:

Gavin Smith: Nikki Haley is an excellent 2024 GOP candidate

Issac Bailey: Nikki Haley is a poor 2024 GOP candidate

A report Thursday from a special grand jury in Georgia offered a fresh refutation of Trump’s already discredited claim of massive fraud in the 2020 election. As Jill Filipovic pointed out, the jurors, who likely included some Trump voters, “were asked to assess whether it’s possible that a former president and his allies had leveraged an attack on American democracy, or whether that president was telling the truth when he said the election was stolen.”

In a unanimous conclusion, “they found that, contrary to the former president’s claims, there was no evidence of widespread fraud undermining the results of the election, and that at least some criminal charges should be brought.”

“If average people selected for a special grand jury can complete this task with honesty and integrity, surely it’s not asking too much for Republican officeholders to approach their roles with similar gravity: To declare that the election was free and fair, and to ask that those who may have broken the law or lied be held accountable,” wrote Filipovic.

A court filing the same day in the libel lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News revealed more damning information. Writing in CNN’s Reliable Sources newsletter, Oliver Darcy observed, “Despite what the right-wing talk channel peddled to its millions of loyal viewers in the immediate aftermath of the 2020 election, behind the scenes its most prominent stars and highest-ranking executives privately trashed claims of election fraud.”

The derailment that left 20 cars of hazardous materials in the village of East Palestine, Ohio, more than two weeks ago is still a huge concern for residents seeking answers.

Judith A. Lennington, a factory worker turned book author and a longtime resident, saw the effects of the disaster from her farm three miles away.

“The cloud that went up in the sky was like nothing I’ve ever seen in my life,” she told CNN Opinion’s Stephanie Griffith. “It looked like a huge black cloud with a tornado coming down from it. It was just awful. After the accident, we put quilts over the doors and over the windows, sealed the cracks and just stayed inside.”

“I can still smell it outside. Luckily the fumes are not strong here — the wind blows in the other direction — but I can, still, if I go from the house to the garage, I can feel my eyes burning. And I lose my voice after a while…”

“So I don’t know what’s going to happen. Is it safe to let your children go out and walk in that grass? Is it safe to let your pets go to the bathroom on the grass and then come back in your house? If your water is safe, what about those ponds where the train wreck is?”

The newly elected Sen. John Fetterman checked himself into Walter Reed National Military Medical Center Thursday for treatment of “clinical depression,” his chief of staff announced. Fetterman, recovering from a stroke during his campaign last year, deserves credit for seeking help and being open about it, wrote psychologist Peggy Drexler.

“We’re right to want to know about the health issues facing our leaders and the steps they’re taking to get the help they need, but it’s important to remember that millions of Americans battle depression and lead highly productive, successful lives. … We’re living in tough times, and almost everybody hurts; if our leaders are meant to represent us, how can we possibly fault them for being, in fact, just like us?”

The episode of the Chinese balloon was followed by an even stranger one: US fighter jets shot down three more objects of so-far unknown origin over the US and Canada. President Biden spoke about the shootdowns for the first time on Thursday, saying that there was no indication the last three were connected to the balloon from China, which US officials said was intended for surveillance.

In January, as Peter Bergen noted, the US intelligence community reported that “the number of UFO sightings significantly increased between March 2021 and August 2022, during which time 247 new sightings were reported, mostly by US Navy and Air Force pilots and personnel. That’s almost double the 144 UFO sightings reported in the 17-year period between 2004 to 2021.” Could the spate of unexplained aircraft have any relation to the ones that were shot down?

“Congress should convene hearings to get to the bottom of this,” Bergen wrote. “The public has a right to understand why objects are flying around in American airspace that the Pentagon and the US intelligence community can’t identify.”

For more:

Julian Zelizer: Biden’s ‘no apologies’ speech should silence his critics.

Svetlana was Joseph Stalin’s “beloved daughter,” Rosemary Sullivan wrote. “Stalin called her his little hostess, little fly, little sparrow. She was the only one who could stop his rages against her mother by wrapping her arms around his Cossack boots.”

But when a considerably older Soviet filmmaker wooed the 16-year-old Svetlana, her father’s reaction was fierce: he sent him to the Gulag for 10 years. “This was when Svetlana began to understand who her father was. Her status as beloved was conditional.”

Her story has new resonance now that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un appears to be “grooming his daughter to carry on his dynasty. North Korea just released a new postage stamp carrying photos of the dictator and his ‘beloved daughter’ standing together watching the test-firing of the Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile,” Sullivan noted.

“Will she, like Svetlana, inherit her father’s will but reject his murderous legacy? Or will she prove a well-trained apprentice and possibly become more dangerous than her father?”

The last thing Euny Hong expected to be doing was panicking about getting tickets to an art exhibit. But then she read what she called the “sadistic” headline a “sadistic” friend posted on Facebook:

“There will never be a Vermeer exhibit as great as this one.”

“In the entire world, there are only 35 known paintings by the 17th-century Dutch master, whose legendary use of texture and light, particularly in the portrayal of women in their everyday lives, positions him among the greatest painters of all time,” Hong wrote. The much-anticipated exhibit at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum features “28 of his works, including ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring,’ which, by the way, is only on display through March.”

“It was the words ‘there will never be’ that sent me into a frenzy of obsessively refreshing the museum’s web page like a lab rat pushing a heroin lever. The site alternated between crashing and displaying a message that they were ‘temporarily’ suspending ticket sales. And here I thought my lack of Taylor Swift fandom would save me from such indignities!”

Happy ending: Hong landed the tickets.

Sophia A. Nelson: Who will care for the caregivers?

Pratika Katiyar: I’m a GenZ student journalist. We won’t be silenced

Jill FIlipovic: A violent attack with dog feces raises questions all women confront

Raed Al Saleh: It was one of the world’s deadliest catastrophes. Where was the UN?

Gene Seymour: The Super Bowl’s best ad also holds the best advice

Heather Ann Thompson: A university’s sinister move is unfortunately part of a familiar story

Dean Obeidallah: The GOP can’t ignore the blockbuster report on Trump, Kushner and Saudi funds

Peter Svarzbein: The US southern border is not a threat –— it’s an opportunity

Khalil Gibran Muhammad and Erica Licht: Ron DeSantis’s latest salvo against diversity

AND…

Baseball may be considered America’s “national pastime,” but the MLB has been losing fans for years to faster-paced sports leagues like the NBA and NFL. So when spring training games begin later this week, there will be one revolutionary change: a time clock to force pitchers to spend less time between throws.

“For more than 150 years, the lack of a clock on the field has distinguished baseball from other major US team sports, and some baseball purists are sure to object to adding one,” wrote Frederic J. Frommer.

There’s a precedent of sorts. In the early 1950s, interest in professional basketball was declining, prompting the league to introduce a shot clock. “The impact was immediate: average team scoring per game increased from 79 points to 93. That figure rose to 106 by 1958, and not coincidentally, attendance soared by 40%.”

“People don’t come to games to watch guys stand around and do nothing — whether it’s on a basketball court or a baseball diamond,” Frommer observed. “A clock won’t have the same dramatic effect on baseball that it had on the NBA. But for Americans with limitless entertainment options and limited time, it will help attract fans with more exciting (and faster) baseball games than we’ve seen in years.”

CNN
 — 

Four people were injured in a shooting Sunday morning near an Indianapolis gas station, the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department said.

Authorities initially reported five people had been injured in the shooting near East 42nd Street and North Franklin Road, but the department revised that number down to four in a news release Sunday, citing “(f)urther investigation.”

Three victims were found inside a vehicle while the fourth was found inside a business a short distance away, the news release said. Among the victims are two women and two men.

“One male is in serious but stable condition and the other three victims are in stable condition,” police said.

The investigation into the shooting is ongoing.

New York
CNN
 — 

Meta is testing a subscription service which will allow Instagram and Facebook users to pay to get verified, Mark Zuckerberg announced on Instagram Sunday.

“Meta Verified” will start at $11.99 a month on the web or $14.99 a month on iOS, and the company will begin releasing it in Australia and New Zealand this week and “more countries soon.”

The service also comes with other perks: extra protection from impersonation accounts and direct access to customer support.

To avoid fake accounts, customers who want to get the blue badge would need to provide a government ID which matches their profile name and picture. Users must also be above 18 to be eligible.

“This new feature is about increasing authenticity and security across our services,” Zuckerberg wrote in an Instagram broadcast channel.

In a statement, Meta clarified there will be no changes to accounts that are already verified. Verification was previously for users who are “authentic and notable.”

“We are evolving the meaning of the blue badge to focus on authenticity so we can expand verification access to more people,” a Meta spokesperson said. “We will display follower count in more places so people can distinguish which accounts are notable public figures among accounts that share the same name.”

Meta joins other platforms, like Discord, Reddit and YouTube, who have their own subscription-based models.

Twitter relaunched its own verification subscription service, Twitter Blue, in December, after an onset of fake “verified” accounts forced it to pull the feature. The check mark options now have different colors to differentiate between accounts: gold checks for companies, gray checks for government entities and other organizations, and blue checks for individuals, whether or not they are celebrities.

Twitter Blue costs $11 a month for iOS and Android subscribers, part of owner Elon Musk’s attempt to raise its subscriptions business after buying the platform for $44 billion.

Hong Kong
CNN
 — 

A new online shopping platform linked to one of China’s top retailers has quickly become the most downloaded app in the United States, surpassing Amazon and Walmart. Now it’s looking to capitalize from an appearance on America’s biggest stage.

Temu, a Boston-based online retailer that shares the same owner as Chinese social commerce giant Pinduoduo, made its Super Bowl debut on Sunday.

Temu, which runs an online superstore for virtually everything — from home goods to apparel to electronics — unveiled a commercial during the game that encouraged consumers to “shop like a billionaire.”

The pitch? You don’t have to be one.

“Through the largest stage possible, we want to share with our consumers that they can shop with a sense of freedom because of the price we offer,” a Temu spokesperson told CNN in a statement.

The 30-second spot shows the company’s proposition to users: Feel like you’re splurging by buying lots of stuff cheaply. A woman’s swimsuit on Temu costs just $6.50, while a pair of wireless earphones is priced at $8.50. An eyebrow trimmer costs 90 cents.

These surprisingly low prices — by Western standards, at least — have drawn comparisons to Shein, the Chinese fast fashion upstart that also offers a wide selection of inexpensive clothing and home goods, and has made significant inroads into markets including the United States.

Shein is considered one of Temu’s competitors, along with US-based discount retailer Wish and Alibaba’s AliExpress, according to Coresight Research.

Temu, pronounced “tee-moo,” was launched last year by PDD, its US-listed parent company formerly known as Pinduoduo. The company officially changed its name just this month.

PDD’s subsidiary Pinduoduo is one of China’s most popular e-commerce platforms with approximately 900 million users. It made its name with a group-buying business model, allowing people to save money by enlisting friends to buy the same item in bulk.

On its website, Temu says it uses its parent company’s “vast and deep network … built over the years to offer a wide range of affordable quality products.”

Since its rollout in September, the application has been downloaded 24 million times, racking up more than 11 million monthly active users, according to Sensor Tower.

In the fourth quarter of last year, US app installations for Temu exceeded those for Amazon

(AMZN), Walmart

(WMT) and Target

(TGT), according to Abe Yousef, a senior insights analyst at the analytics firm Sensor Tower.

Amazon’s customer satisfaction is going down. Here’s why

“Temu soared to the top of both US app store charts in November, where the app still holds the top position now,” he told CNN, referring to iOS and Android mobile app stores.

Yousef said the company had been particularly successful at acquiring new users by offering extremely low prices and in-app flash deals, such as 89% off certain items.

The firm is already eyeing new territory. This month, Temu said on Twitter that it plans to expand to Canada.

Michael Felice, an associate partner at management consulting firm Kearney, said Temu stood out simply by selling products without high markups.

“Temu might be exposing a white space in the market wherein brands have been producing at extreme low cost, and along the value chain there’s been so much bloated cost passed on for margin,” he told CNN.

“That said, American consumers might not even be ready to accept some of these price points … There’s always the question, ‘is it too cheap to be good?’”

Deborah Weinswig, CEO of Coresight Research, has cautioned that it may be too early to tell whether Temu will be able to maintain those extremely low prices, free shipping and other perks.

“Temu aims to continue to experiment in marketing and offerings, which is possible thanks to its resource-rich parent company,” she wrote in a report.

Its launch, she said, “comes at an opportune moment, as consumers search for value amid still-elevated inflation and a degree of economic uncertainty.”

CNN
 — 

A defense attorney who represented the former girlfriend of Rep. Matt Gaetz says that prosecutors made the right decision not to charge the Florida Republican after a yearslong federal sex trafficking investigation.

Attorney Tim Jansen told CNN on Saturday that Justice Department prosecutors were aggressive with his client. She was initially approached as a possible target in the sex-trafficking investigation but eventually agreed to cooperate and testified before an Orlando grand jury hearing evidence in the case last year.

The ex-girlfriend, whom CNN has not named, is not the underage woman at the center of the sex-trafficking investigation.

Jansen, who said the DOJ thoroughly pursued leads against Gaetz, disputed the notion that the congressman was cleared because he was in a powerful position, arguing that the evidence against Gaetz simply wasn’t credible and couldn’t hold up in court.

“They turned over every stone. And I think they ultimately made a decision that they didn’t have evidence to prove a crime,” Jansen said. “And I know critics think that the congressman somehow bought it off or somehow used his power, but I found (federal prosecutor) Todd (Gee) very responsible. He was very organized. He had evidence that he believed that he was following, and they made a determination that they weren’t going to charge.”

CNN has reached out to the Justice Department for comment.

CNN first reported this week that the Justice Department had informed lawyers for Gaetz and several witnesses that it would not prosecute the GOP lawmaker.

Last fall, investigators working on the case recommended not bringing charges amid concerns that the central witnesses in the case would not be perceived as credible, including Joel Greenberg, a former Seminole County, Florida, tax collector who pleaded guilty to six federal crimes, including sex trafficking, and agreed to cooperate with the government.

The DOJ’s formal decision not to charge Gaetz, who has been serving in Congress since 2017, marks the end of a long-running investigation into allegations that the congressman violated federal law by transporting underage girls across state lines for sex.

Gaetz has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

Jansen told CNN that his client was initially threatened with prosecution by federal investigators as part of the investigation. Her phone was seized, and she was told she could be a target in the investigation. She ultimately became a witness, Jansen said.

But Jansen said the problems with Greenberg’s credibility and the inconsistencies in the testimony of the women ultimately prompted Gee, a deputy chief of the Justice Department’s public integrity section, not to charge Gaetz.

“In order to prosecute a case, you have to have credible evidence, either tangible witnesses, and in this case, there was no credible evidence of any wrongdoing,” Jansen said. “Joel Greenberg was somebody who (you) couldn’t put on the witness stand, as a prosecutor. I believe these women; none of them believed they were victims of any crime.”

CNN
 — 

The US military and Syrian Democratic Forces conducted a helicopter raid in eastern Syria early Saturday, capturing an ISIS official, according to a statement from US Central Command.

Batar, “an ISIS Syria Province Official involved in planning attacks on SDF-guarded detention centers and manufacturing improvised explosive devices,” was captured in the raid, CENTCOM said in the statement.

The US did not provide any additional information or evidence regarding its claims about Batar.

No civilians, SDF or US forces were killed or injured in the raid, according to CENTCOM.

The development comes on the heels of an earlier helicopter raid in Syria on Thursday night that the US military said killed Hamza al-Homsi, a senior ISIS leader, as well as wounded four US troops and a working dog.

Officials told CNN that US forces were “close to” al-Homsi when an explosion occurred, killing al-Homsi and wounding the US service members. It is unclear at this point if the explosion was the result of a suicide vest, a booby trap or something else, two officials said.

Separately, US Central Command said in a statement Saturday evening that two rockets had landed near a coalition base in northeast Syria.

No US or coalition troops were injured and no damage to equipment or infrastructure occurred during the rocket attack that targeted Green Village, a coalition base in northeast Syria.

US forces are investigating the incident.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

Editor’s Note: Lynda Lin Grigsby is a journalist and editor who has written for a number of national news outlets. She is a former editor of the Pacific Citizen, a national Asian American newspaper. The views expressed here are her own. Read more opinion at CNN.

CNN
 — 

February 19, 1942 changed everything for Japanese Americans.

The curves and flourishes of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s signature that day on Executive Order 9066 precipitated the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, sealing the fate of over 125,000 people. Their mass incarceration, often referred to as one of our nation’s most shameful chapters, is remembered every February 19th as the “Day of Remembrance.”

In the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack, Americans of Japanese ancestry were singled out in bold, all-cap font, and ordered to leave their homes and businesses on the West Coast under the pretext of national security. Entire families were incarcerated in horse stalls at racetracks and austere government-run barracks behind barbed wire fences, held as human collateral of wartime hysteria.

This year, on the 81st anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 9066, Japanese American community groups will mark the Day of Remembrance with somber events, and politicians will issue statements filled with aphorisms about how learning about the painful parts of our history can prevent us from repeating it.

That’s all great, but perhaps not nearly enough.

Remembrance is an important foundation to understanding, but its limitation is outlined in its name. The act of remembering keeps us rooted in the past and could foster a belief that events like these could only happen in the black-and-white photographs.

But the same legal framework used to justify the WWII incarceration of Japanese Americans still exists today, so it can happen again to any group of people. The Non-Detention Act of 1971 prohibits the military detention of US citizens, except by an act of Congress. Presumably, this was a step forward from 1942 when the decision was made solely by the president, but the power of our federal government to order the military to detain American citizens en masse remains authorized by an existing law.

So, on a day set aside to remember the plight of Japanese Americans during WWII, how do we meaningfully acknowledge what happened and ensure that something like this does not happen again? The answer may lie in a bill that has failed to pass since 2017.

The Korematsu-Takai Civil Liberties Protection Act, would establish clear legal prohibition against incarcerating Americans based not only on race, religion, and nationality but also sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, ethnicity or disability. The bill seems like a slam dunk – a way to speak truth to power when we say, “Never again.”

The bill is named after Fred Korematsu, a civil rights icon who challenged the constitutionality of the mass incarceration all the way to the Supreme Court, and Rep. Mark Takai of Hawaii. Both men have died since the measure was first introduced.

It takes the lessons of this historic event and extends it to protect additional marginalized groups. Isn’t that what it means to prevent history from repeating itself? To repair our country’s wounds, we must go beyond remembrance and take meaningful action with the lessons of the past.

“It’s a more forward-looking commitment,” Eric Muller, a law professor at the University of North Carolina, told me when we discussed the legislation recently. “It’s an opportunity to take this tragic historical example and have it be something more than just a tragic historical example. We could have it be something that actually leads to a more just world for current and future generations.”

This is a sentiment that I hear often from survivors and descendants of the WWII camps. For years, I bore witness to their stories as an editor of a national Asian American newspaper. The internalized message of the government’s action against the Issei and Nisei (first- and second-generation Japanese Americans) sublimated trauma.

Often, the effects of the mass incarceration quietly span over generations, bubbling to the surface in fits of tears, anger, or resolve in the grown children and grandchildren of the camps.

In 1942, Yetsuko Saguchi and her twin sister Kaz Tanaka were 3 years old when their family was forced by government order to abandon their farm and home in Artesia, California. When Japanese Americans were instructed to bring only what they could carry, their mother, Shizuko Hamamoto, only carried belongings for her daughters. First, they lived in the horse stalls at the Santa Anita racetrack, and then in the skeletal barracks in Rohwer, Arkansas.

“I’m not bitter,” Saguchi, 83, told me recently during an interview. “This happened, but my concern is that it never happens to another group.”

She has good reason to worry: In the days after the September 11, 2001 attacks, US government officials rounded up South Asian and Arab men for questionable detention. In this news, Saguchi heard echoes of her past, so she started talking about her family history to anyone who would listen. “It’s unjust, and it’s just wrong,” said Saguchi. “You can’t treat your fellow humans that way.”

For this reason, the Korematsu-Takai bill should be a no-brainer, because it is based on a historic event that many agree was unjust. After the passage of the Civil Liberties Act in 1988, the US government officially apologized and paid reparations for its wartime actions against Japanese Americans.

The need for our leaders to prevent future mass detentions based on race and other marginalized identities is one of the imperative lessons of our past. The bill’s passage seems far more meaningful than symbolic gestures or commemorative events. Instead of just saying we should learn from our history, we can turn words into action. But we must ask ourselves first if we are ready to look forward.

New York
CNN
 — 

Twitter Blue subscribers will be the platform’s only users able to use text messages as a two-factor authentication method, Twitter announced Friday.

The change will take place on March 20. Twitter users will have two other ways to authenticate their Twitter log-ins at no cost: an authentication mobile app and a security key.

Two factor authentication, or 2FA, requires users to type in their password and then enter a code or security key to access their accounts. It is one of the primary methods for users to keep their Twitter account secure.

“While historically a popular form of 2FA, unfortunately we have seen phone-number based 2FA be used – and abused – by bad actors,” the company said in a blog post Friday. “So starting today, we will no longer allow accounts to enroll in the text message/SMS method of 2FA unless they are Twitter Blue subscribers.”

Twitter Blue, which costs $11 a month for iOS and Android subscribers, adds a blue checkmark to the account of anyone willing to pay for one.

As of 2021, only 2.6% of Twitter users had a 2FA method enabled – and of those, 74.4% used SMS authentication, a Twitter account security report said.

Twitter said non-subscribers will have 30 days to disable the text method and enroll in another way to sign in using 2FA. Disabling text message 2FA won’t automatically disassociate the user’s phone number from their account, Twitter said.

Musk responded “Yup” to a tweet claiming a telecommunications company used bot accounts “to Pump 2FA SMS” and that Twitter was losing $60 million a year “on scam SMS.”