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Feb 16, 2023 (The Expresswire) -- "Network Security Appliance Market" Research Insights Report 2023 | TOP 3 KEY PLAYERS in Network Security Appliance Market Include [ Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, Palo Alto Networks, McAfee ]. The [ Information Technology ] Sector is Expected to Dominate During the Forecast Period 2023 2029. Market Growth Report Has Segmented The Global Network Security Appliance market report based on Type [ Firewall, Unified Threat Management (UTM), Intrusion Detection and Prevention (IDP), Content Management (Web and Messaging), Virtual Private Network (VPN) ], Application [ Government Organizations, SMEs, Large Organization ]. Effective business strategies can help a company to increase its market sales and gain a competitive advantage. Some common business strategies include market segmentation, product differentiation, cost leadership, and diversification.

The MarketWatch News Department was not involved in the creation of this content.

The MarketWatch News Department was not involved in the creation of this content.

Dec 30, 2022 (Reportmines via Comtex) -- Network security appliances (NSAs) are purpose-built devices that help protect network assets by detecting and preventing malicious activity. NSAs can be used in a variety of settings, including the enterprise, public sector, and education sectors.One popular use for NSAs is content delivery network (CDN) security. CDNs are systems that deliver web content from a centralized location to users who request it. The popularity of CDNs has made them a target for attackers who want to distribute malware or other illicit content.By using an NSA to detect malicious activity associated with CDNs, organizations can ensure that their customers receive the content they expect and that the content is not distributed in an unauthorized or harmful way. Another common use for NSAs is intrusion detection and prevention (IDP). IDP systems monitor networks for signs of intrusion and take appropriate action, such as sending alerts to administrators. By using an NSA to monitor traffic flowing through a network, an organization can detect signs of suspicious activity and take appropriate action before any damage is done. NSAs are also used in protection against cyberattacks. By monitoring network traffic for signs of attacks, an NSA can help prevent them from happening in the first place. Overall, NSAs play an important role in protecting networks from malicious activity and cyberattacks. By using one, organizations can ensure that their data is safe and their networks are protected from attack.

A summary of the company's industrial analysis from the years 2022 to 2028 as well as anticipated annual revenue numbers, are included in ReportMines' most recent study on the “Network Security Appliance Market”. This market research report on Network Security Appliance offers precise, up-to-date market statistics and forecasts for the whole world market. On the basis of Product Type, Technology, Application Type, End User, and Region, the Network Security Appliance market is further segmented. The market size and growth expectations for the Network Security Appliance company are also covered in the research. The complete report is 149 pages long.

The global Network Security Appliance market size is projected to reach multi million by 2028, in comparision to 2021, at unexpected CAGR during 2022-2028 (Ask for sample Report).

This report on Network Security Appliance market helps to Quickly diagnose its exposure to external risks and identify problems on the horizon - critical tasks whether to sell into that industry, invest in it, or provide a business valuation or consulting services. The market is further classified based on the applications like Government Organizations,SMEs,Large Organisation which is further segmented into various types like Firewall,Unified Threat Management (UTM),Intrusion Detection and Prevention (IDP),Content Management (Web and Messaging),Virtual Private Network (VPN). It classifies the market and its trends based on various regions like North America: United States, Canada, Europe: GermanyFrance, U.K., Italy, Russia,Asia-Pacific: China, Japan, South, India, Australia, China, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Latin America:Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Middle East & Africa:Turkey, Saudi, Arabia, UAE, Korea. The research report has an analysis of the key market players like Check Point Software Technologies,Fortinet,Jupiter Network,Hewlett-Packard Enterprise,Siemens,Cisco,Palo Alto Networks,Samsung Techwin,McAfee.

Get a sample PDF of Network Security Appliance Market Analysis https://www.predictivemarketresearch.com/enquiry/request-sample/1710299

Market Segmentation

This Network Security Appliance Market is further classified into Overview, Deployment, Application, and Region.

In terms of Components, Network Security Appliance Market is segmented into:

• Check Point Software Technologies
• Fortinet
• Jupiter Network
• Hewlett-Packard Enterprise
• Siemens
• Cisco
• Palo Alto Networks
• Samsung Techwin
• McAfee

The Network Security Appliance Market Analysis by types is segmented into:

• Firewall
• Unified Threat Management (UTM)
• Intrusion Detection and Prevention (IDP)
• Content Management (Web and Messaging)
• Virtual Private Network (VPN)

The Network Security Appliance Market Industry Research by Application is segmented into:

• Government Organizations
• SMEs
• Large Organisation

In terms of Region, the Network Security Appliance Market Players available by Region are:

• North America:
• Europe:
  • Germany
  • France
  • U.K.
  • Italy
  • Russia
• Asia-Pacific:
  • China
  • Japan
  • South Korea
  • India
  • Australia
  • China Taiwan
  • Indonesia
  • Thailand
  • Malaysia
• Latin America:
  • Mexico
  • Brazil
  • Argentina Korea
  • Colombia
• Middle East & Africa:
  • Turkey
  • Saudi
  • Arabia
  • UAE
  • Korea

Inquire or Share Your Questions If Any Before Purchasing This Report https://www.predictivemarketresearch.com/enquiry/pre-order-enquiry/1710299

Key Benefits For Industry Participants And Stakeholders:

• This report provides a distinctive and in-depth market analysis that speeds up business progress.
• The goal of this study is to help readers make informed and prudent business decisions. For business accuracy, the Network Security Appliance organization relies on reliable, legitimate sources.
• The Network Security Appliance research demonstrates how a marketing team may set a business apart from its competitors by looking at how they are positioned in the market.
• The rules of the industry as they currently stand are summarised, together with any recent changes and improvements. The report also includes critical financial information, comparisons, and player profiles.

The Network Security Appliance market research report contains the following TOC:

• Report Overview
• Global Growth Trends
• Competition Landscape by Key Players
• Data by Type
• Data by Application
• North America Market Analysis
• Europe Market Analysis
• Asia-Pacific Market Analysis
• Latin America Market Analysis
• Middle East & Africa Market Analysis
• Key Players Profiles Market Analysis
• Analysts Viewpoints/Conclusions
• Appendix

Get a sample of TOC https://www.predictivemarketresearch.com/toc/1710299#tableofcontents

Sections In Network Security Appliance Market Research Report

• Section 1 emphasizes giving a general overview of the Network Security Appliance market while highlighting the major trends and market definitions.
• Section 2 provides a more thorough look at the market strategies, sales management, and different development factors that the Network Security Appliance market adheres to.
• Section 3 lists the major market players along with information about their histories, product profiles, market performance, SWOT analysis, and growth factors.
• Section 4 focuses on the business's present situation and potential for the future.
• Section 5 extensively examines how the Network Security Appliance industry has affected growth under competitive and ambitious conditions.
• Section 6 offers a request operation that is used to Boost the client experience and learn more about how visitors behave, among other things. The majority of requests for data by operation come from businesses that offer software products and services to manage and analyze data.
• Section 7 details the various types of data that can be used to create request reports. Data types like request size, client base position, and functional effectiveness are frequently used.
• Section 8 details the marketing strategies used by the Network Security Appliance company, which are an effective way to market and promote a product.
• Section 9 provides information on the world's recent escalating trends. This significant result was made possible by the ongoing expansion of emerging market economies.
• Section 10 gives a summary of all the sections, as well as the data and information used to produce this report.

Highlights of The Network Security Appliance Market Report

The Network Security Appliance Market Industry Research Report contains:

• This Network Security Appliance market research includes up-to-date information on market prospects and investment possibilities, noteworthy developments and trends, industry-specific regulations and challenges, as well as other factors that will influence this market's demand in the years to come.
• The market research study on the course includes crucial information including shareholding patterns, revenue mix, plant location, and financial summaries of the major companies.
• By concentrating on a variety of factors that will affect the growth of product consumption in India, product import-export markets, market size, and industry outlook, the report's graphical representation and predictions of key data indicators help in the analysis of market potential.
• This report on Network Security Appliance delivers relevant patent analysis with significant patent data allocations throughout each important category.

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COVID-19 Impact Analysis:

Lockdowns enacted by countries in response to Covid-19 have had an influence on global supply chains and production procedures. The Network Security Appliance market has a contradictory impact because of changes in demand from several end-user industries. As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak, travel worldwide declined. The use of the company's outdoor products was constrained, which harmed the transportation and logistics industry. However, end customers have witnessed an increase in demand for COVID-19 precautions-related items, as has the healthcare sector.

Get Covid-19 Impact Analysis for Network Security Appliance Market research report https://www.predictivemarketresearch.com/enquiry/request-covid19/1710299

Network Security Appliance Market Size and Industry Challenges

The Network Security Appliance market research study offers a better and more thorough understanding of the market and its component elements. Without a question, the entry of new competitors has put the Network Security Appliance market through many challenging tests. The paper offers a quick summary of the several plans and programs the government has launched for the industry. The Network Security Appliance study also highlights a wide range of predictions and suggestions that promote enhancing market functionality and judgment.

Reasons to Purchase the Network Security Appliance Market Research Report:

• Demand, application details, pricing information, historical market data, and company shares of the Network Security Appliance market by geography are all included in the market study.
• The study report on the Network Security Appliance company's marketing strategies, corporate growth, and overall structure and organization are summarised.
• This analysis of the Network Security Appliance market provides data on the market size to assist in planning and strategic decision-making.
• It offers a deeper comprehension of market dynamics, industry competition, and supply chain dynamics.
• The Network Security Appliance market study analyses significant operational and performance statistics so that users can contrast them with their own businesses, those of their clients, or those of their rivals.

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COMTEX_421591821/2788/2022-12-30T11:06:34

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Editor’s Note: This is the third story in a multipart series by The War Horse, an award-winning nonprofit news organization educating the public on military service. Read the first and second stories. Subscribe to its newsletter.

Veterans or service members experiencing a mental health emergency can contact the Veteran Crisis Line at 988 or at 1-800-273-8255 and select option 1 for a VA staffer. Veterans, troops or their family members can also text 838255 or visit VeteransCrisisLine.net for assistance.

A few weeks after Staff Sgt. Chris DeLano met Col. Tom Stewart in a brewery to tell him he had throat cancer, DeLano reached back out with what seemed to be good news: His cancer treatment appeared to be working.

DeLano — the quiet soldier who had worked to help his guys when they were in danger in Afghanistan, as well as when the suicide deaths began after they returned home to Massachusetts after their deployment — seemed to have hope.

“[Doctors have] started me on [an estrogen blocker] to couple with radiation treatments,” DeLano texted Stewart. “The original mass has been shrinking but found another one on my vocal cords. Go back in two weeks to see if that one is shrinking also.”

Stewart shot back with a Bee Gees joke.

“They’ve [doctors] been optimistic the whole time,” DeLano wrote.

“That’s good to hear,” Stewart replied.

“Yes, sir,” DeLano wrote, “it is.”

It was December 2020 — just a few months after DeLano told his superiors at his National Guard unit about his diagnosis.

DeLano closed out the text conversation by saying he was headed to the airport to drop off his stepdaughter.

Stewart left it at that. It seemed like a bit of good news for soldiers once in a unit, the 182nd Infantry Regiment, that had seen too much in the decade that followed their return from a 2011 deployment to Afghanistan.

Except, DeLano didn’t have cancer.

Stewart could not have known that, and friends DeLano told didn’t question it either. DeLano told his friends he was going through a difficult time — they chalked it up to cancer and a difficult divorce.

DeLano’s platoon had lost four soldiers to suicide in the first year back from Afghanistan, including a charismatic squad leader and DeLano’s hero, Staff Sgt. Kevin O’Boyle. Understanding the need for connection, DeLano started a nonprofit after O’Boyle died. He called it The Battle Starts at Home, and it was meant to help veterans who struggled with the transition from deployment to home. DeLano married, and he offered help during the COVID crisis. When he struggled, he sought mental health care.

When he struggled, he sought mental health care.

But old negative coping skills took hold, tightening their grip and spiraling him into extreme stories he couldn’t quite work his way out of. The stories helped him detach from reality. Mental health is complex like that: Invisible wounds manifest in ways many don’t understand.

Resilience — or the ability to make positive adjustments in the face of difficult situations — relies on the connections service members make both on and off the battlefield. It requires trust as they encourage each other through hard times. But as the 182nd returned from Afghanistan, they went back to their civilian jobs and their civilian homes, far from each other and from people who understood the experience. Even those who worked to build strength in others struggled to adapt.

As the active duty military, with its daily interactions and monstrous budget, fought to find a path for service members as they returned home, National Guard and reserve service members faced an entirely different, unblazed trail. They didn’t see each other in barracks and formations and on the way to the dining facility each workday. The National Guard didn’t have the money to throw at programs, people, and research. And the guardsmen already had limited time, with the soldiers coming in for only two days a month to train and to prepare for the next potential deployment.

Building and maintaining resilience has proven to be just as complex as the multitude of stressors service members have lived through. Some bring childhood trauma or an internalized negative mindset with them into service. Others may be working through a moral injury — either participating in or witnessing an atrocity that defies personal values. Some endure an identity crisis as they transition out of the military and struggle to define who they are without it. Some experience a combination of some or all.

Even as the guardsmen came up with their own solutions, they couldn’t figure out how to help those who didn’t show any obvious signs of problems — or who refused treatment.

Stewart and DeLano closed out 2020 on a positive note, but they would enter a year where 101 soldiers in the U.S. Army National Guard would die by suicide. Seeing his soldiers attend one funeral after another in their first year home confirmed to Stewart what he had sensed when he visited platoon members in Afghanistan’s Paktika province following their only combat casualty:

“They’re stronger when they’re together, mutually supportive of one another,” he says. “They’re weak when they’re apart.”

DeLano’s last lonely act would serve as bitter proof.

‘Those traumatic events could lead to suicidal ideation’

O’Boyle’s death became the gut punch that convinced Sgt. 1st Class Hercules Lobo to seek care, he says. Lobo, a hardened infantryman, first served in the Cape Verdean Armed Forces before joining the U.S. Army. He was no stranger to the crucibles of combat and the devastations of war. He was born to be a soldier, he says. Yet he grappled with moral injury following Afghanistan and briefly sought cognitive behavioral therapy.

“I had my wife and my kids, and I started doing long-distance walking and running,” he says. “I created my own mechanisms to fight the phantoms, to fight the feelings of guilt.”

But within the unit, as soldiers continued to die by suicide, wakes and funeral services became points of intervention for the service members who attended, says Ret. Col. John Rodolico, a psychologist who served as deputy commander for the Massachusetts National Guard Medical Command.

He and behavioral health officers provided “critical incident stress management,” a short-term response tactic to the immediate event, he says. They went to every funeral because they knew other struggling soldiers would attend.

“We would wait for them to come to us, or, if no one’s coming to us, we would start at the top,” Rodolico says. “Maybe a commander or first sergeant would say, ‘I’m thinking about so and so, that’s that guy over there.’ And we would go over and talk to him a little bit, and then keep our eye on them.”

Rodolico likened the experience to critical event debriefings that happen in theater, where medical teams go to units after a traumatic event to help them process their experience.

“The intervention needs to occur once that traumatic event occurs,” Rodolico says. “The whole idea of that is to have someone process the traumatic event as much as possible days after the event, and then supply education around what’s normal, what’s not normal.”

They needed to catch it early.

“If that kind of cognitive processing doesn’t happen, those traumatic events could lead to suicidal ideations, in some way,” he says.

As with the Massachusetts National Guard, suicide has plagued nearly every state’s reserve component. The rate of suicide deaths in the Army National Guard in 2021 was 30 per every 100,000 soldiers, according to a report from the Department of Defense.

In March 2022, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced a newly formed Suicide Prevention and Response Independent Review Committee, to look at the military’s efforts to address and prevent suicide. While the committee planned to look at nine installations, only one of those, North Carolina, included National Guard soldiers.

And a coalition of regional nonprofit organizations meets quarterly to discuss readiness among Massachusetts National Guard members, including suicide risk and prevention. But because of the pandemic, the coalition didn’t meet between 2019 and May 2022.

“[The Guard] only has them one weekend a month — the community has them the rest of the 28 days, so that’s where they need to get help and resources,” says Command Sgt. Maj. William Davidson, who now serves as director of veteran outreach and peer support at Home Base.

After Davidson returned from Afghanistan in 2012, the Guard hired him to lead the agency’s Resilience, Risk Reduction, and Suicide Prevention Task Force. As much as 5% of the force has identifiable behavioral health issues, including PTSD and TBI, Davidson says.

“After all the suicides, I think that’s when the Guard started utilizing outside resources to say that, ‘Hey, we can’t handle this on our own,’” he says.

‘We’re blurring out a lot of detail’

After three of his platoonmates killed themselves, DeLano worked to build a stronger network. In 2015, he received the Guard’s Seven Seals volunteer service award for his nonprofit organization, The Battle Starts at Home. He got married and inherited a stepdaughter he considered his own.

He seemed to be building the connections required for resiliency: He had engaged in altruistic work. He had strong social relationships. He was surrounded by people who cared about his well-being. He had access to care.

But it’s not that simple.

The concept of resilience has perplexed the public, puzzled military leadership, and inspired scientific research for more than a century: Why is it that people with similar painful experiences have different outcomes? How early in someone’s life can we accurately identify their risk for suicide and successfully intervene? And how can we replicate resiliency so it extends to all?

Building resilience means more than interacting with a battle buddy. Soldiers were told resilience meant “bouncing back” — but some of them enlisted to avoid going back to wherever they had been in their lives before basic training, they told The War Horse.

Behavioral health experts have pushed the Guard to incorporate clinical care with the same level of rigor as they do equipment accountability: A weapon lost puts the whole armory on lockdown. They know clinical care must be included to build resilient troops.

But soldiers experience things differently, and one soldier’s resilience level can’t be compared to another’s, says Kenneth Pitts, the 182nd’s deployment’s operations sergeant major, who is now a research psychologist at the Army Research Institute for Behavioral Scientists at Fort Benning in Georgia. He studies biological responses to war-induced traumatic stress.

When people think about trauma, they “tend to oversimplify the problem and its explanation: ‘Someone is just “tough enough,” or is able, and others are not,’” Pitts says. “In order to think like that, we’re blurring out a lot of detail.”

Resilience is not numbness to an experience, or the ability to ignore feelings related to an event; it’s being proficient in deeply feeling and processing that experience. Resilience is not the ability to hack it when others can’t — it’s not a comparative state, where one has more of it because someone else has less. Resilience is not even about the ability to bounce back. It’s better measured by the ability to adapt in any given environment — a concept psychologists know as “contextual sensitivity.”

While prolonged, high-intensity situations — like combat — change everyone to some degree, what happens within a deployment is not a self-contained measure of a person’s resilience.

“A lot of what’s happening at home, the environment around that individual, a lot of their history, things they’ve been exposed to leading up to that [traumatic event], have parts to play,” Pitts says.

‘I don’t have my guys every day of the year’

After O’Boyle’s death, Stewart worked with the nonprofit group Project New Hope to organize a weekend-long deployment reunion at a Massachusetts retreat center. The reunion, first held in October 2013, was a novel concept. The deployment mission had ended, the unit leadership had changed, and there was no formal assistance from the Guard.

“Just because we have a change of command and I passed the flag to [a] new guy doesn’t mean that I’m just going to let go of all my cares of all the 684 guys that deployed with me,” Stewart says.

Far fewer than 684 service members have appeared at any of the reunions, but those who do have come from as far as Florida for the opportunity to reconnect.

“We’re going to keep doing it for as long as they come,” Stewart says.

Back in the armory, Lobo leads mandatory resilience briefings for the soldiers in his unit. He’s part of the Guard’s initiative for soldiers to learn from leaders about suicide awareness and prevention. But it’s difficult for service members to connect during their formal training in a way that they can recognize if someone may be in need of help, Lobo says.

“I don’t have my guys every day throughout the year,” Lobo says. In the National Guard, service members spend two weeks during the summer in training, and then drill just one weekend a month for the rest of the year. A few have full-time jobs with the National Guard, but the majority also work civilian jobs. During drill weekends, the soldiers perform skills training, maintain their equipment, handle any administrative tasks, and then work to fit in briefings about how to get mental health care, recognize the symptoms of post-traumatic stress, and rebuild relationships with friends and family.

“The time [together] is so minimum,” Lobo says. “The drill weekends become a nightmarish situation because there is so much tasks we have to fulfill that is unrealistic.”

Service members drive home from drill on Sunday, and many check back into their civilian job first thing Monday morning — or even that evening for an overnight shift, Lobo says.

‘Nowadays, there’s more and more hope’

DeLano would deploy once more, this time to the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, which borders the Gaza Strip of Palestine. At his send-off party at the Weymouth-Braintree Lodge of Elks in Massachusetts in February 2017, it seemed he would deploy from a different place in his life. The typically introverted DeLano seemed to have found a new purpose: He was married. He owned a home. Dozens attended the get-together — the air at the send-off party felt more like a homecoming.

But while the Sinai was not a combat mission like Afghanistan, DeLano’s return home proved more tumultuous. The Battle Starts at Home — the organization he had founded — had already fallen apart before he deployed, and, after the deployment, so did his marriage. He grew estranged from his immediate family.

Stewart remained a steadfast link. He invited DeLano to football watch parties and bonfires with friends. In 2019, when Stewart learned that DeLano did not have a place to go for Christmas, he brought him to his family’s Christmas gathering at his mother’s house.

The two hardly knew each other in the leadup to their unit’s deployment to Afghanistan, and they didn’t speak once to each other in theater. But after they returned home, nearly a decade of difficulty within their battalion kept them, and many others, together.

“When you go to war with people, it doesn’t go away just because you come home and you’re not their commander anymore,” Stewart says. “They need you and you need to be that one.

“That’s the way I felt and I would always feel that way still about any of these guys that we were deployed with,” Stewart says. “So, I don’t know, he kept reaching out to me and I was all right with that.”

‘I can’t believe this person’s falling apart’

When he was young, DeLano and his father liked to swim together on family trips to see DeLano’s grandparents, and his father taught DeLano how to renovate houses. On vacations when he was growing up, the family visited New Hampshire, where DeLano’s love of the outdoors, as well as motorsports, grew under his dad’s influence. DeLano’s world changed at age 15 when his father died of colon cancer.

“He was still young,” says his sister, Tauna Holland. She was seven years older than him. “He was the youngest of us four.”

DeLano carried the loss with him. He kept a few of his father’s possessions, including a vintage yellow metal chest his father built. He moved it in with him to our place. He took pride in how well it was built. It weighed more than 45 pounds when empty and collected dust in the garage, but it served its purpose. Put a cold can of anything in it with some ice and it would stay that way.

Once, a major flood swept through the town after torrential rain. The water carried away a refrigerator and left other appliances in our home unusable, and our damaged belongings filled more than two dumpster bags. But the chest in the garage remained where he left it, undamaged. Despite being submerged for hours, it was dry inside. It withstood time.

Trauma, too, can withstand time.

Adverse childhood experiences is one of the clearest indicators of risk, says Rodolico, who is now the director of military and veteran consultation services at McLean Hospital in Massachusetts.

“When you get people who are more developmentally vulnerable to suicide, then you put them into a traumatic environment like a combat zone, they are more likely to be less resilient, but also more likely to have some behavioral health issues,” Rodolico says. Not all people who have experienced childhood trauma are destined for a negative outcome, he added.

But even though some service members bring some risk factors with them, suicide prevention efforts focus on the immediate risk factors a Guard member encounters while in service.

“The reasons [for suicide] are as varied as the soldiers that make up our force,” says Maj. Katherine Murphy, director of warrior resilience and fitness with the Massachusetts National Guard. “Everyone comes in with their own lived life experiences and their own struggles and personal resilience.”

Divorced service members, or those separated from their partners, are at higher risk for suicide compared to those who are married, studies suggest. Alcoholism, heavy or binge drinking — identified as a growing public health concern among Guard members — is also associated with suicide risk. Storing firearms unsafely while experiencing a heightened sense of feeling “on guard” may also contribute to risk, some studies suggest. Signs of risk can seep into professional life with frequent absences from work and financial difficulties.

Watching a friend who remained resilient while deployed die by suicide later can be confusing to other soldiers, Rodolico says.

“If someone has always been squared away the whole time, and then they come home, and all of a sudden, they’re not able to cope with transition. …” Rodolico says. “You’re scratching your head, saying this person — I can’t believe this person’s falling apart.

“I think transitions are difficult for people,” he says. “You really don’t know.”

‘It’s about us’

Months after DeLano’s 2017 deployment to the Sinai, his sister drove him to the front door of a therapy program at a VA clinic and watched to make sure he went inside, she says. Holland and other family members had struggled to convince him to get help — telling him he needed consistent care.

She learned later that he didn’t go to his appointments.

As DeLano and others in the military returned from their deployments, they ticked off boxes on a checklist. This happened as all they thought about were hugs from family members, that first steak dinner, or showers with consistently hot water. If they answered yes to a mental health question, all of that would be delayed.

“If you ask somebody if they have any mental health challenges on the way out — when everybody goes on block leave, they go on medical hold and they don’t get to go with their families,” says Retired Brig. Gen. Jack Hammond, who oversaw the 181st and 182nd’s Afghanistan deployment as brigade commander of the 26th Yankee Division. “Systematically, we’re not doing it right.”

But many former and current Massachusetts Guard members working in suicide prevention say much has changed since the 182nd’s return from Afghanistan in 2012. The Guard has adopted a more holistic view of suicide prevention, Murphy says.

The Guard has trained more suicide prevention officers in each unit to help service members build resilience and detect those at risk, Murphy says. The Guard also trains their executive leaders — ”everyone from a two-star teaching to a corporal team leader” — to talk to soldiers directly under their command about suicide, Murphy says.

As early as 2013, the Guard implemented Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training workshops, which include mandatory briefings for all Guard members during every drill.

The Army also requires National Guard soldiers to undergo Master Resilience Training at least once every other month to develop psychological and behavioral skills to cope with stress. Some noncommissioned officers, like Lobo, complete a two-week certification course and then lead briefings for their unit.

One study analyzed the survey responses of 87 Florida Army National Guard members on the first and last day of the two-week training and found service members believed they were more resilient and had better tools to handle reintegration after taking the course. It’s unclear how long the perception lasts.

But some of the training material and lessons are obviously geared for civilians, rather than soldiers, and don’t always resonate, Lobo says. They’re unrealistic — and sometimes, they’re a little too touchy-feely. One lesson teaches soldiers to focus on the positive, or to “hunt the good stuff.”

“Sometimes we have to be adamant and tell soldiers, ‘You have a problem, and you need to seek help,” Lobo says. “You can’t focus on the positive if you’re not stable.”

But the resiliency programs have empowered soldiers to talk about how they’re doing with others, says Massachusetts resilience coordinator Sgt. 1st Class Joseph Levesque.

The Guard also asks team leaders to check on their soldiers to identify issues before they come up on the formal surveys. Team leaders are expected to show that “not only do you care about your soldiers, but you take an interest in their lives,” Levesque says.

“The reality of caring for somebody is calling them and talking to them to see what’s going on,” Levesque says. “They learn about their families, they learn about their job situations.”

If they’re already tapped into each other’s lives, it’s easier to have tough conversations because the trust and courage to speak up are already in place, he says. “It’s asking the tough questions of, ‘Hey, are you thinking about suicide?’” Levesque says. “That’s one of the toughest things you could ever ask another soldier.”

And they’ve been trained to know what to do if the answer is yes, Murphy says.

“I think that that’s a big paradigm shift from 15 to 20 years ago, where people just wouldn’t ask the question, because they were afraid of what the answer might be,” Murphy says.

Murphy says she has seen the number of suicide deaths in the Massachusetts National Guard “trend down” since she was hired into her full-time position in 2014, and cited the Department of Defense Suicide Event Report for the number of suicides in the state’s Guard. But the yearly reports do not parse the numbers of suicide deaths by state, and the Massachusetts National Guard did not respond to multiple requests for data on the annual number of suicide deaths among its airmen and soldiers to confirm her statement. Across the nation, Army National Guard suicide numbers went down by three from 2020 to 2021 — from 105 to 102. From 2019 to 2020, they went up by 29.

Stewart says the solutions are about community and reaching out to each other — and not ticking all the training boxes during drill weekends.

“This isn’t something you can buy your way out of, or fund your way out of,” Stewart says. “Not the Army, not DOD, not the government, not the president.”

“This has to do with people connecting,” he says. “It’s about us.”

‘I don’t know what the hell is that’

In the fall of 2020 — less than a year into the OOVID-19 pandemic — Lobo met DeLano at the Boston armory where DeLano worked: He was now a part of the 181st Infantry Regiment. DeLano gave him boxes of Meals Ready to Eat, hand sanitizer, and medical gloves. That was DeLano’s way of helping out a friend during uncertain times.

DeLano told Lobo he was going through a hard time but was spending time outdoors to work through it, Lobo recalls.

“He told me he was diagnosed with some kind of terminal illness,” Lobo says. “But he was fighting it. He was fighting it.”

DeLano left Lobo with the impression that he would come out the other side of it. He still cracked jokes — like calling the hardened infantryman “cupcake.” And he still had the “million-dollar smile,” Lobo says.

But Lobo did not know that it wasn’t cancer he was fighting.

“At no point did I realize he was in a state of mind with depression,” Lobo says.

He also did not know DeLano’s story was unraveling in other ways.

DeLano had told his unit he needed to be closer to home, as well as that he needed time off to go to medical appointments. The Guard required documentation to accommodate DeLano’s altered work schedule. But for three months, he didn’t supply it.

DeLano’s superiors suspected he was lying and dialed up the pressure for him to produce documents that could confirm his diagnosis and stated medical appointments, sources close to the incident told The War Horse.

Lobo knew each soldier dealt differently with the stress he faced. They might respond with excessive anger to seemingly minor mistakes. They might avoid the crowds at football games. They might spend massive amounts of time online, avoiding real human contact.

Or an old habit, an old way of dealing with life’s major changes, might resurface.

He also knew that he couldn’t always know what else was going on in a soldier’s life.

RAND Corporation recently looked at the service members most at-risk for suicide and found the suicide rates in Veterans Health Administration patients were highest in veterans who have opioid use disorder or bipolar disorder — and are also higher for veterans with schizophrenia and other substance abuse disorders. Veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and head injuries are also at higher risk.

The same report states that evidence appears to show that screening all VA patients for suicide risk could save lives. In 2017, the VA created a tool, REACH VET, that uses algorithms to look for people at the highest risk of dying by suicide.

For the same reason — service members have different levels of risk — blanket suicide prevention training may simply drain time and resources for an already time- and resource-strapped component, says Hammond, who became the executive director of the Massachusetts-based veterans’ clinical program, Home Base, which provides care for veterans and their families, after he returned home.. Researchers at Home Base and Harvard University are working with the founders of RallyPoint, a social network for service members, to apply machine learning to more accurately predict suicide risk among service members.

“So rather than spending billions of dollars trying to train people that are fully resilient and have absolutely no problem at all,” Hammond says, “if they improved on the existing data collection tools, and use everything that’s out there already, they could develop the best predictive model for the Army for suicide.”

Other researchers also use machine learning to predict everything from suicide risk to whether certain treatments will work for a specific service member.

Clinicians, especially those who are not experienced with caring for service members, may benefit from the group’s research, Hammond says.

“They could then develop a clinical decision support tool for the providers,” Hammond says, “so that they don’t have to use inference and Kentucky windage to figure out what to do when they see somebody.”

But there also needs to be a culture shift, the soldiers say. If service members would treat their bodies and minds the way they treat training and equipment, those who need help will feel more comfortable getting it.

“Getting people to get help is really the key mission,” Rodolico says. “That’s not to say that just because they get help that you’re going to prevent a suicide, but the probability is lower.”

For now, seeking help is hard, Lobo says. The culture of silence among service members is so strong, it yields “victims, not victors,” Lobo says.

“I don’t believe in this notion of the alpha type that has to be this stone wall,” he says. “I don’t know what the hell is that.”

‘The most honest thing’

On Jan. 29, 2021, DeLano published a note on Facebook. It was the “most honest thing” he could say, he wrote.

“Don’t supply so much of yourself to others that you have nothing left to hold onto for yourself.”

His fellow soldiers recognized the language. There was often a call out, a last-minute plea for help. They went to his house, hoping to find him still thinking about it or sleeping it off. They would — will — always check on a battle buddy.

This time, they arrived too late.

DeLano had hung himself in his garage.

Those soldiers, who still had no reason not to believe DeLano’s stories, told responding police officers he had been taking medications for cancer.

But police could not find any such medications in his home.

In fact, the medication DeLano told Stewart he had been prescribed — anastrozole — isn’t used to treat throat cancer. There is no circumstance where a doctor would prescribe it for that diagnosis, multiple oncologists confirmed to The War Horse. Doctors use the medication to treat breast cancer, primarily in postmenopausal women.

As the Guard investigated his death, soldiers found no record of visits to a specialist, before or after he had told coworkers he had been diagnosed. Investigators could find no documents or doctors that could verify DeLano was undergoing treatment, the Guard’s report states.

“He told his superiors my dad died of throat cancer, so he was afraid he’d go the same,” Holland, his sister, says. “Our dad died of colon cancer.”

Holland believes her brother may have killed himself because he anticipated potential disciplinary action, she says, but other factors contributed to his death: the inability to seek help for himself, the devastation of losing his father when he was young, the destruction he saw in Afghanistan, and the inability to connect with others — or himself — in an honest way.

After DeLano died, Maureen O’Boyle learned that a set of her son’s dog tags — the one she had loaned DeLano on the hope-filled day of his wedding — had been found hanging on a lamp next to his bed. She didn’t press to have it returned.

Now acutely aware of the signs of suicide, Maureen O’Boyle sees patterns similar to those she saw at the end of her son’s life playing out among soldiers she knows. She continues to lean into the lives of soldiers who served with her son, speaking with and seeing some of them regularly.

“I worry about them,” she says. “I know some of them are still struggling.”

‘This is not the way’

On Memorial Day, Lobo ruck-marches 70 miles with others from Boston to Massachusetts National Cemetery in Bourne.

“It’s a way to cope,” Lobo says. “We spend long moments talking about a lot of different things, just walking.”

He holds a plaque with O’Boyle’s name. He visits DeLano and others he knows who lie there.

The battalion has endured at least one more suicide since DeLano’s death — a soldier who had deployed in the battalion’s Charlie Company.

The soldiers DeLano left behind keep reaching out, keep connecting, keep working — as DeLano did — to save the lives of those who need some extra help. It could be just a moment. A painful anniversary and too many beers. Or it could be months of moments. A depression that doesn’t lift, as they walk the blurred line of citizen and soldier — of being too much of one thing and not enough of another. It could be a lifetime, interlaced with treatment, friends, and an acceptance of a normal that’s different from a prewar life.

The first week we spoke, Lobo was headed to a fundraiser for the family of another Massachusetts service member who survived a suicide attempt.

Lobo, who is preparing for his fifth deployment, still doesn’t see himself as stronger or sounder than forces he feels but can’t see, he says.

“There’s nothing in the world bigger than you,” Lobo says, “but in order to help others, you have to be stable psychologically and physically.”

Resilience often parades as physical strength and emotional toughness. But so many like Lobo have contended with their own vulnerability and have accepted they can’t go through it alone, and they know: Hardiness takes humility.

“We’re not special,” he says. “Not a single one of us is special.”

Earlier this year, Lobo got a call about a fellow Guard member in distress.

Lobo has been trained to intervene, but he didn’t pull from it to figure out what to say and how to say it, he says.

“Most of those bonds, those connections, you only have with the guys you deployed together with,” he says.

The distressed infantry soldier had also deployed with the 182nd’s Delta Company during the 2011 deployment, and he specifically asked that Lobo come find him.

“I took my time off, and I went to go look for him, and I found him,” Lobo says. “We had a frank and direct conversation.”

“I said, ‘This is not the way.’”

Three service members in the Massachusetts Army National Guard died by suicide while this story was written.

This War Horse investigation was reported by Lara Salahi, edited by Kelly Kennedy, fact-checked by Ben Kalin, and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar. Headlines are by Abbie Bennett. Maria Wilson contributed to this report.

Lara Salahi is an award-winning health journalist, author, and associate professor of journalism at Endicott College in Massachusetts. Salahi was selected as a 2021-2022 Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism fellow to report on suicide and the science of resilience in the National Guard. She is the spouse of a soldier who serves in the Army National Guard.

Here is a fact check of some of the claims from Biden and the Republican response by Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders:

Biden claimed his administration cut the federal deficit by "more than $1.7 trillion."

© Provided by Business Insider The impact on roads and traffic of was about $1.5 billion worth of damage in 2020. By 2050, it could be as high as $37 billion. Daniel A. Varela/Miami Herald/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

• Sea levels along the US coastline could rise 10 to 12 inches over the next 30 years. 
• Damages on roads were about $1.5 billion in 2020 and could be as high as $37 billion in 2050. 
• A massive coastal barrier off the coast of Texas is an example of what could Boost resiliency. 

Chris Hamilton is a bike enthusiast. Almost every day, he rides around his hometown of Key West, Florida, where he moved from Washington D.C. 7 years ago. Each time, he sees new houses being built, rising higher with every construction.

"In the Keys, if you redo your house, you have to mitigate it for sea level rise," he told Insider. "And so, up and down the streets, all of a sudden you'll see a house that's three or four feet higher, or six or seven or eight feet higher. In some places all the new houses begin at 15 feet," above sea level. 

The postcard-famous Florida Keys are a chain of islands connected to Miami by a 165 miles stretch of US Highway 1 known as the Overseas Highway thanks to its extensive network of bridges. The islands are particularly exposed to rising sea levels. In 2019, some of its roads and neighborhoods were flooded for 82 days straight.

Across the country, more than 60,000 miles of roads and bridges near coastal areas are facing a similar fate, experts say. Rising sea levels and more extreme flooding brought on by climate change threaten billions of dollars of economic consequences and have experts urging officials to find speedy solutions to ensure resilience.

© AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee, FIle Flooding caused by hurricanes and storms is still the most common. But high tide flooding — the water levels rise above the usual high tide mark because of rising sea levels and other factors, such as winds and currents — is getting more frequent and can happen even on a sunny day. AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee, FIle

Roadways are the lifeline

Smaller, coastal communities like Key West are at the forefront of the sea level rise, but the main arteries of the vast US road network are just a few miles behind. 

"Roadways are increasingly going to become exposed to high tides and storm surge," William Sweet, an oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told Insider. "Because they're on the ground and there's not much we can do about that without taking some serious preventative action."

Across the country, you can expect coastlines to rise an average of 10 to 12 inches over the next 30 years, according NOAA's Sea Level Rise Viewer, which lets you adjust sea level rise and visualize how in trouble your house or your commute might be. 

The team Sweet is part of, which studies the impact on roads and traffic of high tide flooding, the kind that can happen on a sunny day even without big storms, estimates there was about $1.5 billion worth of damage in 2020. By 2050, they say it'll be as high as $37 billion.

The costs include a number of direct and indirect consequences of frequent flooding. 

"You have places that will be flooded out, so physically you can't leave or you can't get there," Katy Serafin, a coastal scientist at the University of Florida, said. "But then you can also have delays and traffic in places that are really far away from the flood zones, as people have to take alternative routes."

NOAA's Sweet recommends departments of transportation across the country start identifying and prioritizing the most critical parts of their road network, the ones that connect ports, cities, and railroads and are critical to the economics of an area. 

© Joe Raedle/Getty Images Frequent flooding has direct and indirect consequences on roads and traffic: while some roads flood and become impracticable, others see traffic clogs and delays as drivers take alternative routes. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

'We're not too late' 

Chris Hamilton, who worked for the Department of Transportation in Virginia before his early retirement in Key West, said he wasn't optimistic about the Florida's resiliency up until a few months ago. 

Then, he started doing what NOAA recommends, memorizing about sea level rise and the plans that individual communities are studying to increase their own resiliency. 

Monroe County, for example, where the Keys are located, projects a sea level rise of 5.5 feet in 78 years — not great considering the islands have an average elevation of 3.2 feet.  

The county is studying a plan to progressively raise roads to make them less vulnerable, among other things, a project that may cost nearly $2 billion. 

Similar plans, projects and studies are being developed all over the US' coastal communities. Miami is working to rise the surface of some of its roads, for example, while New York is Preparing to build a sea barrier.

© Joe Raedle/Getty Images The Florida Keys are a chain of islands connected to Miami by the Overseas Highway. The islands are particularly exposed to rising sea levels. In 2019, some of its roads and neighborhoods were flooded for 82 days straight. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The Dutch are onto something

If there's a country that knows a thing or two about floods, it's the Netherlands. Almost a third of it is below the sea level, after all. 

For years, the Dutch have raised sea barriers across their rivers' estuaries and built levees. In the Netherlands Delta Program, which was introduced in 2010, the unpredictable nature of climate change and rising sea levels — we know they're rising, but it's hard to know how fast —  is taken into account from the very beginning. 

It's not a matter of how the situation is going to be in 50 or 100 years anymore, and how to fix that now — it's hard to raise the surface of all the coastal roads in the US at the same time — but how to have a long term plan that includes a number of smaller, more achievable steps. 

"So you're not trying to predict the future anymore," Lewis E. Link, a senior research engineer at University of Maryland "You're not trying to say 'what it's going to be in 2050, or 2100?' But you're understanding how sensitive you are to different levels of change. And now you have some idea of where your Achilles heel is with regard to flood protection, you can do an incremental adaptation." 

© Courtesy of Gulf Coast Protection District The Coastal Texas Program, a resiliency strategy that addresses “a wide array of immediate and long-term” needs across the coast of Texas, takes a similar approach. The program plans to build “multiple lines of defense” against hurricanes, storms, and rising sea levels, and the Federal Government gave the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ the green light to start implementing it in December of 2022. Part of it is the Galveston Coastal Barrier — nicknamed the “Ike Dike” after the 2008 Hurricane Ike, which caused a deadly storm surge on Galveston Island and Bolivar Peninsula and is considered one of the costliest US hurricanes. The project could cost up to $34 billion. Courtesy of Gulf Coast Protection District

The Coastal Texas Program, a resiliency strategy that addresses "a wide array of immediate and long-term" needs across the coast of Texas, takes a similar approach. The program plans to build "multiple lines of defense" against hurricanes, storms, and rising sea levels, and the Federal Government gave the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' the green light to start implementing it in December of 2022.

Part of it is the Galveston Coastal Barrier — nicknamed the "Ike Dike" after the 2008 Hurricane Ike, which caused a deadly storm surge on Galveston Island and Bolivar Peninsula and is considered one of the costliest US hurricanes. 

The project could cost up to $34 billion. 

"The initial design allows for a step A, a step B, and a step C if changes have to be made," Link pointed out. 

By understanding how to adapt incrementally, and starting to act as soon as possible, the US can learn how to adapt to rising sea levels. 

"We're not too late," NOAA's Sweet said. "But now's the time to be aware and repair."

PR Newswire

TAIPEI, Jan. 10, 2023

TAIPEI, Jan. 10, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- AEWIN is glad to announce our latest High-Performance Network Appliance featuring the latest AMD Zen 4 Genoa CPUs (EPYC 9004), SCB-1946 series. It is a series of flagship products powered by dual AMD SP5 Genoa CPU with 5nm production technology to support 16 channels DDR5 and 160 PCIe lanes with dual CPUs that each has up to 96 cores (~50% increased) and TDP 400W (~28% increased). Furthermore, SCB-1946 series will support dual AMD Bergamo CPUs with Zen 4c architecture which have up to 128 cores per CPU to enable the extreme computing power pursued in the market.

There are five SKU of SCB-1946 series, each one features the great computing power of the dual Genoa CPU and 4x PCIe5 slots with higher transmission speed to accomplish workloads of innovative use cases. For 2U rackmount systems, SCB-1946A is with additional 4x PCIe x8 slots for AEWIN self-design NICs with wide range of 1-100G copper/fiber interfaces with/without bypass function or other accelerators. SCB-1946B is with additional 2x PCIe x16 slots for standard PCIe form factor which can install off-the-shelf add-on card for additional function required. It can support 400G high throughput with two 200G NIC cards installed such as Mellanox PCIe 5.0 NIC.

As for SCB-1946C, it supports dual-width PCIe slots for GPU/FPGA cards and dual Genoa CPUs of up to 300W each with short-depth chassis design for easy deployment. Tasks required AI workloads can be handled effortlessly at the edge for time-critical use cases which make it suitable for diverse intelligent applications including Smart Medical, Smart Manufacturing, Smart City, and more. Also, AEWIN offers SCB-1946E to support the most powerful CPUs of Genoa up to 400W each to perform extreme high performance to work with GPU to achieve complex training tasks.

Regarding 4U Network Appliance, SCB-1946D makes fully use of the rich resources of high speed I/O from Genoa CPU to support total 16x PCIe expansion slots to delivers high throughput and low latency for compute intensive workloads. Featuring enlarged flexibility, scalability, and short-depth design, it is perfect for MEC, 5G Open RAN, vRAN, NGFW, UTM, ADC, and diverse performant edge computing applications.

Regarding cybersecurity, SCB-1946 series is integrated with Trusted Platform Module (TPM2.0) which allows authentication of hardware devices to ensure the integrity of the hardware platform. It also supports AEWIN OT006B, TSB V2 (Trust Secure Boot) module, for secure boot and firmware recovery. Furthermore, the SCB-1946 is with 12x native SATA for storage applications. The SCB-1946 series is a multi-functional computing platform that leverages extraordinary computing performance and high-frequency features of the AMD EPYC 9004 Genoa CPUs.

To know more about AEWIN or our latest products, please don't hesitate to contact our friendly sales!

Product details of SCB-1946 Series:

• SCSB-1946A: 2U Network Appliance with dual AMD EPYC 9004 (Zen4), total 8x PCIe slots (4x PCIe Gen5 x8 slots and 4x PCIe Gen 4 x8 slots for NICs, Accelerators & NVMe SSDs)
• SCB-1946B: 2U Network Appliance with dual AMD EPYC 9004 (Zen4), 2x standard Gen 4 x16 PCIe slots, 4x PCIe Gen5 x8 slots for NICs, Accelerators & NVMe SSDs
• SCB1946C/E: SCB-1946B: 2U Edge Server with dual AMD EPYC 9004 (Zen4), 2x dual slot Gen 4 x16 FHFL GPU cards, 4x PCIe Gen5 x8 slots for NICs, Accelerators & NVMe SSDs
• SCB-1946D: 4U Network Appliance with dual AMD EPYC 9004 (Zen4), total 16x PCIe slots (4x PCIe Gen5 x8 slots and 12x PCIe Gen 4 x8 slots for NICs, Accelerators & NVMe SSDs)

For more information, please visit: https://www.aewin.com/ or contact us.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/aewiin-flagship-performant-network-appliance-powered-by-amd-genoa-301715260.html

SOURCE AEWIN Tech.

Angela Raynor visits wood recycler

Labour deputy leader Angela Raynor visited Enva’s wood recycling facility in Droylsden, Greater Manchester, this week.

The Ashton-under-Lyme MP’s visit, included a tour of the company’s ‘easichick’ biosecure manufacturing facility, which Enva says has manufactured a third of a million tonnes of poultry bedding.

“It was great to visit the site and meet the team to hear about what they do and their plans for the future,” said Raynor.

Enva managing director Tim Price said the UK biomass market was at a crossroads: “We must ensure the continued fiscal support for waste wood when the UK biomass strategy is published.

“Its omission would result in us losing the environmental value of this material when used to generate sustainable energy and miss the opportunity to support the UK in its journey to net zero by 2050.”

Press release

Argyll and Bute Council launch school uniform recycling scheme

Every child in Argyll will have access to free school uniforms thanks to a local reuse and recycling scheme in the Highlands.

The scheme is already operating in South Kintyre, Helensburgh and Lomond, Bute and Cowal, and Oban and Lorn, with plans underway to launch it in Mid Argyll, North Kintyre, Islay, Mull and Tiree.

Councillor Ross Moreland said: “Many items of school clothing contain polyester, which is a petroleum-based material. Manufacturing this clothing in industrial units sends fumes into the atmosphere that damages our climate.

“By reusing uniforms that children have outgrown, it reduces this toxic process and helps to save our planet.”

Press release

Vanden invests in testing technology

Plastic recycler Vanden Recycling has invested in advanced testing technology to ensure the quality of its feedstock.

This includes a new laboratory in Turkey and scanning equipment for its Australian, European and UK operations. The company says this will allow it to qualify material samples faster, identifying things such as plastic type, contamination, density and melt flow rate.

“The investment decision to expand technical capabilities globally is based on our goal to support end users who need certainty around feedstock quality,” said chief executive Damien van Leuven.

“Correct identification of material quality at source and the subsequent control through the production process is the main factor affecting the success of the plastic re-entering the supply chain.”

Press release

‘Day of action’ in Lancashire sees two dozen site inspections

Multiple enforcement agencies combined in Lancaster and Morecombe this week in a co-ordinated crackdown on waste sites.

Thirteen Environment Agency officers, working with Network Rail, the British Transport Police and Lancashire Fire and Rescue visited 24 sites, with four found to have been breaching permits and 75% given advice and guidance.

A number of the sites were found to have fallen behind on permit fee payments and were issued with debt letters. All were checked for compliance with waste regulations, fire risk management and metal theft prevention.

Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service station manager Kiery Horne said: “This type of partnership working is key to gaining an insight into the conditions at waste sites in the Lancaster area.”

Lancaster Guardian

Currys widens sales of refurbished electricals

Retailer Currys is experimenting with online sales of refurbished technology.

It said growing environmental awareness among the public and cost-of-living pressures had seen increased demand for cheaper, pre-owned mobiles, laptops and other devices.

Mandeep Gobindpuri, Currys’ head of development – circular economy, said: “In the UK we produce the second highest amount of e-waste per capita in the world. As much as we all love brand-new tech, we need to address this challenge."

Currys said that since the trial began in November, 80% of the refurbished product lines sold out within their first week, with refurbished laptops in particularly high demand.

Customers can now buy cheaper goods rated as ‘very good’ and ‘fair’ conditions to supplement second-hand goods already available in the ‘excellent’ category.

Press release

Cornish cyclist lands in bin lorry

A cyclist has somersaulted into the back of a moving bin lorry in Newlyn, Cornwall, after losing control down a steep hill, the Sun has reported.

Onboard footage from the recycling lorry showed the rider gathering pace as he followed the truck down a hill but was unable to stop as it braked, going over his handlebars into the back of the truck and landing amid refuse bags. He was reported to be uninjured.

The Sun

Europe 'lagging behind' on green steel

European recycling industry body EuRIC has said in a position paper that Europe is lagging behind on green steel in contrast to the United States and Turkey, which “have opted for the greenest route to produce steel”.

EuRIC said some 60% of EU steel is made via the energy- and CO2-intensive blast furnace process, and only 40% from recycled steel scrap in electric arc furnaces.

It said deficiencies in the EU emissions trading system, which failed to adequately reward the CO2 savings stemming from the substitution of iron ore with recycled steel scrap, had delayed investment to transform steelmaking in Europe.

Press release

Three recycled bridges for path network

Aberdeenshire Council is to instal three recycled plastic pedestrian bridges as part of improvements at the Huntly Meadows woodland path network. It said the bridges would match others installed last year 

Work will be undertaken internally by Aberdeenshire Council’s construction team with completion anticipated by the end of March.

Press release

Water companies launch ‘Bin the Wipe’ campaign

Water UK is leading a national campaign to tackle the improper disposal of wet wipes after research showed 22% of people admitted to flushing them down the toilet.

However, the survey of 2,320 UK adults found that 88% were aware this harmed the environment, with the campaign saying that 75% of blocked drains were caused by wet wipes.

Heidi Mottram, chief executive of Northumbrian Water, said: “Bin the Wipe is a really important message and asks for such a really simple change to people’s habits. It’s so easy to do and makes a massive difference.”

Wet wipes are also the primary cause of ‘fatbergs’, said the campaign, with the survey finding that men and young people aged between 18 and 24 were the worst culprits, with 27% and 44% respectively admitting to flushing wipes.

Press release

H&M and Remondis create circular textiles joint venture

Clothing company H&M has joined with the waste management firm Remondis to create the Looper Textile Co. to collect, sort and sell used and unwanted garments.

Looper aims to become a feedstock provider for textiles recycling and reuse companies and plans to extend the use of approximately 40 million garments in 2023.

“We are convinced that the textile loop, due to its very high complexity, can only be closed with trusting, innovative and like-minded partners along the value chain and are pleased to have found the synergy between H&M Group and Remondis,” said Marc Schubert, Looper’s chief operating officer.

The company – owned 50% by each partner - plans to test new collection schemes and implementing automated sorting technologies.

Press release

Westminster trials AI CCTV in fly-tipping hotspots

Westminster City Council are trialling the use of artificial intelligence and CCTV in areas commonly used for fly-tipping.

More than 1,700 incidents were reported in 2022-23, with one area alone receiving 192 offences. White goods, furniture and kitchen sinks were among the dumped items.

The cameras will use AI to detect fly-tipping incidents to be reviewed by city inspectors, with driver details then requested from the DVLA leading to fixed penalty notices or criminal proceedings.

“This ingenious technology will catch people out red handed to ensure they don’t do it again,” said councillor Paul Dimoldenberg, cabinet member for city management and air quality.

Press release

Essex survey shows strong opposition to recycling centre changes

Essex residents had shown resounding disapproval of the county council’s plans to introduce a booking system for household waste recycling centres.

Local political party Residents for Uttlesford launched the survey, arguing the proposed changes were unnecessary, receiving more than 2,200 respondents, over 99% of whom rejected the plans.

Councillor for Saffron Walden, Paul Gadd, said: "This gives us the big evidence-backed mandate to challenge this flawed plan by the Conservative administration at [Exeter City Council] ECC. We thank every single resident who has responded.”

Saffron Walden Liberal Democrats also oppose the changes, launching their own petition and arguing that the changes will increase fly-tipping and reduce recycling, though council leaders say it will ease congestion at the sites.

Saffron Walden Reporter

Penalty notices 'last resort' for bin overflows

Flintshire Council has confirmed that fixed penalty notices will be a 'last resort’ for bin lids that cannot be fully closed due to excess rubbish bags. The council has faced public criticism over a ’bin tax’.

Katie Wilby, Flintshire’s chief officer for streetscene and transportation, said: “Flintshire County Council has enforced against excess residual waste (black sack waste) that is presented outside of the black bin since 2018.

"Side waste is classified as additional, unsorted waste placed at the side of or on top of the black wheeled bin or additional black bins placed out for collection.”

She said Flintshire had to maximise recycling to meet Welsh Government statutory targets and would face increased costs were it to fail.

The Leader

Schools urged not to 'design for landfill'

Design and technology pupils should be focusing on designing solutions to global challenges rather than creating products which often end up in landfill, Pearson - which runs the Edexcel test board - has suggested.

Pearson called for a new curriculum would change the focus to help pupils create sustainable responses to issues like climate change.

Sharon Hague, Pearson’s senior vice president of UK Schools, said: “While making will still be a key part of design education, our proposed new curriculum would also put a focus on designing for the planet, with learners challenged to help create sustainable solutions to key global issues like climate change and creating fewer products that could end up in landfill.”

Telegraph & Argus

Waste fire found at fire HQ

A crate full of waste caught fire at the Hampshire Fire headquarters at the weekend, the Daily Echo has reported.

It said plumes of black smoke were seen across Eastleigh on Sunday afternoon after a blaze at the building involved a crate containing waste - which then spread to a nearby van. Firefighters were called just before 1pm and the fire was put out.

Daily Echo

Council may act on tyre site

Rochdale Council has warned it could take action over an ‘eyesore’ tyre recycling site in Castleton.

The Manchester Evening News has reported the council understands the firm concerned is properly licensed, but lacks permission for a change of use at the site. 

John Blundell, cabinet member for economy and regeneration, said: “The council’s planning enforcement team is aware that a tyre business is operating from the former car showroom on Manchester Road in Castleton.

“Enquiries are ongoing to investigate the potential breach of planning control and determine the appropriate course of action going forward.”

Manchester Evening News

Second fire in weeks hits Suffolk site

Suffolk Fire & Rescue Service has said it called upon 26 appliances at the height of the second blaze within a few weeks at Sackers’ recycling site in Great Blakenham.

Incident commander Ian Mallet said this was later reduced to six fire engines being left at the site to close the incident, and thanked Sackers staff for their help. 

He said the service also worked with Network Rail to reopen the adjacent rail line between Ipswich and Needham Market. Last month some 300 tonnes of metals found on fire at the same site.

Press release

Veolia in London borough win

Veolia has won a nine and three-quarter year contract with Hammersmith & Fulham Council for kerbside recycling and waste collections, bulky waste and street cleansing. It will also expand the food waste recycling scheme to cover the whole borough.

A new education, communication and outreach team will engage with residents and community groups to introduce initiatives to increase recycling.

Veolia will develop electric vehicles and charging infrastructure and support the council’s target to achieve net zero by 2030.

Press release

O'Donovan sponsors Irish archive

O’Donovan Waste Disposal has sponsored a London Irish Centre archive ‘From Clare to Here: Memories of the Men Who Built Britain,’ by historian, Ultan Cowley.

It tells the stories of mid-20^th century emigrants who contributed to the rebuilding of post-war Britain. 

Managing director Jacqueline O’Donovan said: "As an Irish family in London and a business with strong Irish roots, the preservation of this archive is extremely important."

Press release

'Dirty Vegan' backs food recycling

Celebrity chef and athlete Matt Pritchard  - who uses the name The Dirty Vegan - has backed a call by the 'Be Mighty' campaign for people in Wales to recycle more food waste.

Around a quarter of all general rubbish has been found to contain food waste, meaning 100,000 tonnes of food waste was not recycled, Pritchard said.

He explained: “Being a chef, I care about how food gets to my plate, but the journey it has afterwards is equally as important.” Pritchard said that while 95% of Welsh citizens are regular recyclers, this drops to 78% for food.

News From Wales

Circular space junk economy is viable, say researchers

Researchers at the University of Southampton have developed a method to estimate the value of space junk, making the case for a circular economy of orbital debris.

Research by Ian Williams, professor of applied environmental science, and applied GIS and remote sensing master's graduate Ryan Leonard, estimate that reuse of objects floating around the earth could have a net value of between $570 billion and $1.2 trillion.

"If the financial value of retrieving space debris is high enough, investment into the technology to do so is justified," said Williams.

Mission debris and defunct satellites are a form of pollution and pose a threat to future space exploration, with the US Space Surveillance Network reporting 21,901 artificial objects in orbit around Earth, including almost 4,500 functioning satellites.

Phys.org

Tesco and Olio save 30 million meals

Tesco says that tens of thousands of ‘food waste heroes’ have stopped more than 30 million meals going to waste thanks to its partnership with free sharing app Olio.

After partnering in August 2020, volunteers have taken surplus food from supermarkets before listing it on the app for sharing. Tesco says that this compliments its Fareshare scheme, which distributes parcels to those facing food insecurity.

Kené Umeasiegbu, campaigns director at Tesco, said: “”We are working hard to make sure that no food fit for human consumption goes to waste. That’s why our partnerships with organisations like Olio and Fareshare are so important, helping us to divert surplus food to people in our communities.”

Press release

National Trust puts recycled clothes on display

Reused and recycled clothing will go on display this weekend at Killerton House in Devon, exploring circular fashion from the 18^th century to the present day.

The ‘Thirsty for Fashion’ exhibition will also feature work from contemporary designers, showcasing modern techniques for sustainable clothing.

“Recycling and reusing clothing has been commonplace throughout history,” Shelley Tobin, the costume curator at Killerton, told the Guardian. “This exhibition asks the question: can we learn lessons from these past practices and reapply forgotten skills to look after our clothes and make them more sustainable?”

Items on show include a sleeved waistcoat handed down through generations for centuries and a ‘transformation dress’ from 1870 which was made to be be matched with multiple outfits.

The Guardian

Waste wood fuel linked to arsenic in air

The finding of arsenic particles in the air by scientists from Imperial College has raised fears people are burning waste wood from construction sites in their homes.

Data from an air research station in south London brought increased concerns that people are burning wood treated with arsenic-based preservatives in household wood-burners. A Defra survey in 2018-19 found 9% of people were doing this, while more recent studies have found log burners were causing urban pollution hotspots.

Dr James Allan, who operates Manchester University’s air research site, told the Guardian: “We see arsenic in Manchester as well, associated with cold weather and the black carbon that you get from wood-burning.”

The Guardian

Council finds drains blocked by building waste

Brighton & Hove City Council has urged construction workers and residents not to dump building waste down drains and gullies.

It said highways staff had seen an increase in the amount of cement, concrete, plaster and other construction materials in drains, which had resulted in flooded roads and pavements. Anyone found doing this could face a £400 fixed penalty notice.

Council leader Phélim Mac Cafferty said: “A small minority of households and businesses are blocking drains with construction waste. This increases the likelihood of further street flooding during heavy rainfall, never mind the real risk to people’s homes.”

Press release

MP seeks disposable vapes ban

Conservative MP Caroline Johnson has tabled a Bill in Parliament to prohibit the sale of disposable electronic cigarettes.

She said: “Beyond the health effects of the disposable vapes is significant environmental harm. Disposable vapes have become part of the national embarrassment that we see everywhere, every day, littering our streets, our parks and our rivers like confetti.”

Such Bills introduced by backbench MPs are used to raise awareness of issues but rarely become law.

Press release

Explosion leads to recycling campaign

Wiltshire Council has launched an awareness campaign to provide information about what can and cannot be recycled using its kerbside collection services, and how to correctly dispose of potentially hazardous items.

The campaign, called 'Recycling - Let's Sort It!' aims to Boost recycling rates and reduce contamination after an increase in residual items found in kerbside recycling collections.

It also covers appropriate disposal of potentially hazardous items following a recent explosion at a waste facility caused by a partially-full aerosol can placed in a recycling bin.

From 20 February, crews will  attach an amber hanger to contaminated bins and from 6 March will reject more heavily contaminated bins, attaching a red hanger to explain why it has not been emptied.

Press release

CIWM hopeful on new Whitehall structure

The Chartered Institution of Wastes Management (CIWM) has said the reorganisation of Whitehall departments this week by prime minister Rishi Sunak could help focus attention on net zero measures.

Lee Marshall, policy and external affairs director, said: “CIWM is encouraged by the UK government’s announcement there will be a new Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.”

He added: “Policies that support the move to a circular economy will be key for the new Department, in conjunction with the Department for Business and Trade and the new Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.”

Press release

Serial fly-tipper sentenced in Leeds

A serial fly-tipper has received a 39-week suspended sentence after a number of offences across Yorkshire.

The sentence was handed down by Kirklees Magistrates Court after the prosecution was pursued by Leeds City Council’s serious environmental crime team (SECT).

Working alongside Wakefield Council, SECT officers traced huge piles of household waste residents who said they had paid a private company to dispose of it. The company was found to be linked to the defendant, who could not produce a waste carriers license.

The man’s sentence was suspended for 18 months and he was also ordered to carry out 300 hours of unpaid work. His vehicles, used to dump the waste, have also been forfeited.

Leeds Live

Glasgow recycling centre fire causes road closures

Roads in the east end of Glasgow were closed after a fire broke out at a recycling plant in the early hours of this morning (8 February).

Thirty fire fighters attended the scene after receiving a call about the blaze at the Nuneaton Road site. The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service reported no injuries.

"Five appliances currently remain on scene with crews working to extinguish a well-developed fire," a spokesperson told the BBC.

The site is operated by the NWH group.

BBC

First Quantafuel site gains permission

Quantafuel ASA has gained planning consent for a site at Sunderland, which is intended to begin a national chain of plastic recycling plants.

The facility will take 100,000 tonnes a year of mixed plastic waste from across the north of England that would otherwise have been incinerated or landfilled, and recycle it using pyrolysis. It is expected to open in 2025.

Director Winifred Patricia Johansen said: “We’re hoping to open similar plants across the UK but chose Sunderland as our first development as the port provides an ideal location, and the city has a good, skilled workforce to draw on.”

Press release

Exeter fans collect cans for charity

Football fans in Exeter have helped raise more than £10,000 for charity by taking part in a recycling initiative for drinks cans

Exeter City Football Club and Exeter City Council supported Cans4City, which encouraged people to recycle used drink cans and raised more than £10,000 for local charities.

More than 12.5 tonnes of aluminium packaging – equivalent to 700,000 cans – were collected through some 20 aluminium recycling points operated by 100 volunteers.

Press release

New Forest keeps on HGV premium

A national shortage of HGV drivers has prompted New Forest District Council to keep paying them more for a further year, the New Milton Advertiser has reported.

In 2021 the council agreed to apply an extra 7.5% to its HGV driver salaries, which expires in March.

A cabinet report noted the shortage of HGV drivers still continued and responses to job advertisements were very low although NFDC salaries were just above the average of £27,900. Three drivers and three loaders would be recruited from April to September, at a cost of £95,000.

New Milton Advertiser

Protests may save Keighley recycling site

A recycling centre in Keighley may be saved from closure after 800 residents and groups objected, the BBC has reported.

Bradford Council planned to close the facility to save money but has now asked officers to look for options allowing  it to continue. Aire Rivers Trust claimed closure could lead to an increase in fly-tipping,

BBC

Nappies turned to signs at Asda

Asda has worked with baby products brand Pura to produce the UK’s first in-store signage using recycled nappies.

The signs, which will be used on shelving selling Pura products in 320 stores, replaces plastic.

Asda said some 7,220 used nappies were recycled to make the signage. Once shredded, washed and dried, they are processed into pellets and then combined with other materials and pressed into boards, which are made from 56% recycled nappy fibre and 44% cellulose fibre.

Press release

Recycling trial delayed by bankruptcy

The trial of Yorkshire recycling firm owner Laura Hepburn has been delayed by a  year because she faces bankruptcy proceedings, the Yorkshire Post has reported.

Teeside Crown Court heard Hepburn is out of work, relies on sickness benefits, and has been unable to fund a specialist environmental solicitor.

Hepburn and co-accused Jonathan Guy Brudenell have been charged with waste disposal offences that allegedly came to light following an investigation into the fire at Greenology (Liverton) Ltd in Redcar in 2020.

The court heard she later became the director of a separate business called Greenology (Teesside) Ltd, but left in September 2022 with “nominal consideration for the sale of her shares” and a bankruptcy petition was brought in December for around £400,000.

Yorkshire Post

Report finds plastic pollution worsens

Minderoo Foundation’s Plastic Waste Makers Index 2023 report has shown the planet’s plastic pollution problem is worsening and contributes to the climate crisis.

The report found that despite rising consumer awareness, corporate attention, and regulation, there was an additional six million metric tonnes generated in 2021, compared to 2019 and this plastic was still almost entirely made from fossil fuels.

It said recycling was failing to scale fast enough and remains a marginal activity for the plastics sector and that growth in single-use plastics made from fossil fuels was 15 times that made from recycled plastics. 

Chair Andrew Forrest said: “We need a fundamentally different approach that turns the tap off on new plastic production. We need a ‘polymer premium’ on every kilogram of plastic polymer made from fossil fuel. We need financial incentives that encourage re-use and recycling and the build of new, critical infrastructure. .

Press release

Firm fined for fly-tip at 'no fly-tip' signs

An unnamed business has been fined £1,400 for fly-tipping in a Sainsbury’s car park in Royal Wootton Bassett.

The BBC has reported that the offending company, which could not be named for legal reasons, dumped waste next to recycling bins and directly under signs warning against fly-tipping.

It was issued with two £400 fixed penalty notices for fly-tipping, a £300 fine for transporting waste without a licence and a £300 fine for failing to produce waste transfer notes.

BBC

Aldi extends surplus food scheme nationally

Supermarket chain Aldi has extended its partnership with surplus food platform Too Good To Go to all 990 UK stores.

It will offer ‘magic bags’ that contain grocery products approaching their sell-by or use-by dates at less than one third of the usual price. Shoppers can use the free Too Good To Go app and reserve a bag to collect from a store.

Aldi said extending the scheme nationally would save a further 4,000 tonnes of food from going to waste annually.

Its stores will continue to donate surplus food to local causes, and Aldi said it had donated more than 30m meals since 2019.

Press release

Council defends Suez over criticism

Calderdale Council has defended its waste contractor Suez against claims from the public that waste and recycling has been left obstructing roads and pavements.

Andrew Pitts, assistant director for neighbourhoods, said: “All Suez crews receive training and reminders on collecting and returning recycling containers correctly.”

Pitts said collection crews had special processes for streets and homes that cannot be easily accessed because of parked cars or uneven road surfaces, when a central collection point at the end of a road might be needed.

Press release

'Infrastructure challenges' hit Portsmouth recycling

Portsmouth residents want to further reduce their single-use plastic waste and to recycle more, but are prevented by “infrastructure challenges and accessibility barriers”, research by the city’s university has found.

Researchers from its Revolution Plastics initiative found 65% of people did not know how or where to recycle plastic items.

They noted that Portsmouth is a densely populated island whose proximity to the ocean carries pollution risks, including the erosion of historic landfill sites and beach litter, and that its recycling rate is 24.7% - well below the national average of 46.2%.

Press release

Light railway reuses rails

The West Lancashire Light Railway has been able to make use of surplus rails and two carriages from the former Southport Pier railway.

After the pier service ended in 2015, unwanted rails were removed and replaced by decking. The first of the excess rails have arrived with the West Lancashire Light Railway and most of those remaining on the pier are expected to be rm loved as the decking is extended.

Rail Advent

LGA says penalties must deter fly-tipping

Local Government Association environment spokesperson David Renard has called for greater penalties for fly-tippers, following the release of the latest fly-tipping statistics by Defra.

He said: "Penalties handed down from prosecution fail to match the severity of the offence committed. We continue to urge the Government to review sentencing guidelines for fly-tipping so that offenders are given bigger fines for more serious offences to act as a deterrent.

“Manufacturers should also contribute to the costs to councils of clear up, by providing more take-back services so people can hand in sofas, old furniture and mattresses when they buy new ones.”

Press release

Inhaler return scheme success

More than 20,000 asthma inhalers across Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland were posted back via a 12-month pilot recycling scheme involving community pharmacies.

The ‘Take Action for Inhaler Recycling’ scheme has saved the equivalent of an estimated 119.3 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions from entering the atmosphere.

Researchers said the results demonstrated the “feasibility and effectiveness” of a postal inhaler recovery and recycling scheme, which could be used as a foundation to build future initiatives.

Pharmaceutical Journal

Skip firm secures £1m from bank to expand

Surrey-based Weybridge Skip Hire has invested in a recycling plant as part of a new facility in Weybridge after securing a £1m funding package HSBC UK.

The 31,500 sq ft MRF, manufactured by Kiverco, will increase the company's processing capacity by up to 40%.

This would allow up to 100,000 tonnes of waste to be recycled a year and diverted from landfill.

Insider Media

Plastic pollution turned into electrodes

Fragments of plastic that pollute water sources across the world and are thought to be harmful to our health could be recycled to make electrodes for lithium-ion batteries.

Jinsub Choi at Inha University in South Korea and his colleagues have found a way to extract microplastics made of polyethylene from contaminated water and turn them into electrodes for lithium-ion batteries.

New Scientist

© Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post President Biden and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva walk to the Oval Office on Friday.

Today, President Biden is hosting the nation’s governors and Brazil’s president in separate meetings on a very busy day at the White House. Officials announced that Biden would travel to Poland on Feb. 20 ahead of the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and that the military, on Biden’s orders, had shot down another “high-altitude object” above Alaskan airspace that was much smaller than the Chinese spy balloon that crossed the United States last week.

In Indiana, the FBI found one additional document with classified markings Friday during a five-hour search of former vice president Mike Pence’s home, according to a Pence adviser. Separately, The Post is reporting that Pence has now received a subpoena from the special counsel investigating key aspects of the Jan. 6 attack and President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.

7:23 PM: On our radar: Bidens to host governors at a black-tie dinner

© Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post President Biden meets with Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil's president, on a busy Friday at the White House. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)

President Biden hosted the nation’s governors at the White House on Friday, where he continued to tout his administration’s successes in the wake of his State of the Union address. The governors will stick around in D.C. for a little longer for their annual winter meeting. Here’s what we’ll be watching over the weekend:

• On Saturday, Biden and the first lady will welcome the governors and their spouses to the White House for a black-tie dinner. Vice President Harris and the second gentleman also will be there.
• The governors hear from a Microsoft executive and business leaders on Saturday. They’re expected to discuss workforce challenges. The addition of Microsoft leaders is notable, given that the company laid off 10,000 employees last month as part of a restructuring intended to brace the company for a potential economic downturn.
• The first lady — a huge Philadelphia sports fan — will fly to Arizona and attend the Super Bowl. The president noted during his speech to a joint session of Congress Tuesday that he’ll watch the game between his wife’s beloved Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs on TV.

5:25 PM: The latest: Sen. Fetterman discharged from hospital

© Win McNamee/Getty Images WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 07: Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) arrives to the House Chambers for U.S. President Joe Biden's State of the Union address in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol on February 07, 2023 in Washington, DC. The speech marks Biden's first address to the new Republican-controlled House. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) has been discharged from the hospital, his office announced Friday. He expects to return to the Senate on Monday.

Fetterman was admitted Wednesday at George Washington University Hospital in Washington after suffering from lightheadedness, said his spokesman Joe Calvello. On Thursday, Fetterman’s doctors ruled out that he’d suffered a second stroke. Fetterman, 53, had a stroke in May, when he was Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor and running for the Senate.

“In addition to the CT, CTA, and MRI tests ruling out a stroke, his EEG test results came back normal, with no evidence of seizures,” Calvello said in a statement Friday. “John is looking forward to spending some time with his family and returning to the Senate on Monday.”

Fetterman was attending a retreat for Democratic senators on Wednesday when he began to feel “lightheaded.” He left the event and called staffers, who took him to the hospital, Calvello said in a statement to reporters early Thursday.

5:00 PM: The latest: Rep. Craig says she’s lucky to not have been ‘more injured’ in assault

© Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.) was attacked Thursday at her Washington apartment building.

Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.) said she’s lucky to not have been injured more severely Thursday when a stranger attacked her in the elevator of her D.C. apartment building.

“My morning coffee really saved the day yesterday, but not exactly how I expected it to,” Craig said in a statement Friday. “On a serious note, I will also say that I was very, very lucky that I was not more injured — and I’ll have more to say about that soon.”

After Craig walked into her building about 7:15 a.m. Thursday, a man followed her onto the elevator and began to do push-ups before punching her with a closed fist on the chin and grabbing her by the neck.

The lawmaker defended herself by tossing her hot coffee at him.

The incident, her office said Thursday, does not appear to be politically motivated.

Police described the man as acting erratically, as if he was “under the influence” of a drug or other substance.

Police said Thursday night that they arrested Kendrick Hamlin, 26, also known as Hamlin Khalil Hamlin, and charged him with simple assault. Police said the man has no fixed address. Hamlin appeared in D.C. Superior Court on Friday, where a judge ordered him detained in the D.C. jail.

In her statement Friday, Craig said she and her family are thankful for the outpouring of support and for law enforcement officers’ quick response.

“I feel very fortunate to have escaped following the attack and be home in Minnesota today recovering,” said Craig, who turns 51 next week.

4:45 PM: The latest: Biden, Lula note their shared history with attacks on democracy

© Jonathan Ernst/Reuters President Biden meets with Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva Friday at the White House.

President Biden, as he welcomed Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to the White House on Friday, noted that “both of our democracies have been tested of late.”

He was referring to the eerily similar insurrections that occurred — two years apart — in the United States and Brazil on Jan. 6, 2021, and Jan. 8, 2023, respectively.

“Democracy prevailed” in both nations, Biden said, adding that Brazil and the United States — the two largest democracies in the Western Hemisphere — “reject political violence.”

The two leaders were communicating through interpreters. Lula, in Portuguese, told Biden that Brazil “isolated from the world itself for four years” under the leadership of his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro. It was Bolsonaro’s supporters who stormed and ransacked Brazil’s National Congress, its Supreme Court and the president’s palace last month.

Lula said his predecessor consumed “fake news morning, afternoon and night.”

Per the White House pool reporter, Biden responded with a joke: “Sounds familiar.”

He was likely referring to his own predecessor, former president Donald Trump, who popularized the term “fake news” and whose supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol to stop the certification of Biden’s electoral victory.

Lula said both acts of violence and insurrection can never be allowed to be repeated.

4:13 PM: Analysis from Mariana Alfaro, Reporter on the breaking political news team

Asked about news that the military shot down a “high-altitude object” over Alaska, President Biden said the effort “was a success.”

The president — who was heading to a meeting with Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva — did not elaborate.

3:11 PM: The latest: FBI finds one additional document with classified markings at Pence home

© Scott McIntyre/For The Washington Post Former vice president Mike Pence answers questions from the press during a visit to Florida International University in Miami on Jan. 27.

The FBI found one additional document with classified markings Friday during a five-hour search of former vice president Mike Pence’s Indiana home, according to an adviser to Pence.

The Post’s Perry Stein and Josh Dawsey report that Devin O’Malley, the adviser, said law enforcement officials also removed six additional pages that did not have classified markings. The search was anticipated, and federal law enforcement and Pence’s legal team had coordinated the timing of it. Per our colleagues:

A Justice Department official confirmed that a search occurred Friday.

Law enforcement was in Indiana examining the property for any additional classified materials that may be stored there, according to an individual familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak frankly about a sensitive matter.

Pence, who is contemplating a 2024 presidential bid, was traveling to visit newborn grandchildren on the West Coast, but a lawyer for the former vice president was present at the Carmel, Ind., home while the search was underway.

You can read the full story here.

2:56 PM: This just in: ‘High-altitude object’ shot down by military over Alaska, White House confirms

© Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post National Security Council spokesman John Kirby and White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre appear at a news briefing at the White House on Friday.

The U.S. military shot down another “high-altitude object” above Alaskan airspace that was much smaller than the Chinese spy balloon that crossed the country before being shot down last weekend, officials said.

The Post’s Justine McDaniel reports that President Biden ordered the military to take down the object on the recommendation of the Pentagon, primarily over concerns that its 40,000-foot altitude could pose “a reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters Friday at the White House. Per Justine:

Kirby said the United States did not know who owned the object or what its purpose was. It did not appear to have the ability to move around the way the confirmed Chinese balloon did, he said.

He said he did not know of any outreach to the Chinese government on Friday afternoon about the new object.

The military downed the object over frozen territorial waters near the northeastern part of Alaska, close to the Canadian border, approximately within the hour after 1:30 p.m. Eastern time, Kirby said, and expects to recover the debris. The spokesman said the object was the size of a small car, much smaller than the surveillance balloon, which was the size of two or three buses.

You can read more on this developing story here.

2:25 PM: This just in: Biden to visit Poland ahead of anniversary of Russian invasion of Ukraine

President Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky walk down the Colonnade as they make their way to the Oval Office at the White House on Dec. 21 in Washington, D.C. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

President Biden will travel to Poland from Feb. 20 to Feb. 22, the White House announced Friday.

The president is expected to deliver remarks ahead of the first anniversary of Russia’s “brutal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.

Jean-Pierre said Biden will meet with Polish President Andrzej Duda to “discuss our bilateral cooperation, as well as our collective efforts to support Ukraine and bolster NATO’s deterrence.” He also will meet with leaders of the Bucharest Nine, a group of nations including Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Estonia, that was created following the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014. With those leaders, Biden will “reaffirm the United States’ unwavering support for the security of the alliance,” Jean-Pierre said.

John Kirby, the National Security Council strategic communications coordinator, told reporters that he didn’t have “any other additional stops to speak to.”

“Wouldn’t it be great if the president didn’t have to make a trip around a one-year anniversary of a war that never should have started? Sadly, that’s where we are,” Kirby said. “And he wants to make sure that he’s sending that strong message not only of the United States’ resolve, but the international community’s resolve.”

Biden, Kirby added, will in his remarks “make it very clear that the United States will continue to stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes.”

“He will certainly make clear that additional security assistance, additional financial assistance, additional help for Ukraine will be coming from the United States,” Kirby said.

2:00 PM: This just in: IRS answering nearly 90 percent of taxpayer phone calls

© AP (Patrick Semansky/AP)

During the opening stretch of tax season, the Internal Revenue Service is answering nearly 90 percent of taxpayers’ phone calls, a dramatic improvement that officials say is linked to an agency funding boost included in the landmark Inflation Reduction Act.

The IRS answered 88.6 percent of its phone calls, a Treasury Department official told The Washington Post on Friday, up from the 13 percent of calls answered during the 2022 tax season and 11 percent the year before.

Factoring in callers who reached automated phone and chat support, 93.3 percent of taxpayers were able to reach IRS resources since the start of tax filing season Jan. 23, through Feb. 4. The treasury official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the internal data.

The Inflation Reduction Act, President Biden and congressional Democrats’ climate, health-care and tax law, provided the IRS $80 billion over 10 years to Boost taxpayer services and tax enforcement for high income earners and corporations.

The tax agency hired 5,000 workers to staff the phones based on funding from that law, the official said, and made improvements to technology capabilities. The IRS recently introduced new tools to allow taxpayers to electronically check the status of their amended returns and file non-wage earnings, such as money from gig work.

By: Jacob Bogage

1:45 PM: Noted: Biden administration proposes new energy standards for washers, refrigerators and freezers

© Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm appears during a press briefing at the White House on Jan. 23.

The Biden administration on Friday proposed tougher energy standards for household washing machines, refrigerators and freezers — rules aimed at reducing emissions while also saving consumers money.

The Post’s Steven Mufson reports that the Energy Department said the new regulations, which have not been updated in over a decade, would save Americans about $3.5 billion a year on energy and water bills while reducing emissions of harmful greenhouse gases. Per Steven:

Homeowners would save an average of $295 over the 14-year life of a new clothes washer and $130 over the life of a new refrigerator.

“With today’s proposals, we’re building on a decades-long effort with industry to ensure tomorrow’s appliances work more efficiently and save Americans money,” said Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm. “Over the last 40 years, at the direction of Congress, DOE has worked to promote innovation, Boost consumers’ options, and raise efficiency standards for household appliances without sacrificing the reliability and performance that Americans have come to expect.”

You can read the full story here.

1:31 PM: This just in: White House and Fox Corp. at odds over Biden Super Bowl interview

The White House appeared to be at odds with Fox Corporation, the parent company of Fox News, over whether President Biden would sit for the traditional pre-Super Bowl interview with the broadcaster of the big game.

As Jeremy Barr writes, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claimed Friday morning that Fox Corporation had canceled a previously unreported interview of Biden by Fox Soul, a lesser-known streaming channel within the conglomerate, which targets a Black audience.

“The President was looking forward to an interview with Fox Soul to discuss the Super Bowl, the State of the Union, and critical issues impacting the everyday lives of Black Americans,” Jean-Pierre wrote. “We’ve been informed that Fox Corp has asked for the interview to be canceled.”

Fox Corporation and Fox News Channel have not commented on Jean-Pierre’s tweet, which seemed to take some corners of the company by surprise.

Per Jeremy:

With just days to go, there was still no formal confirmation of an interview by Friday, and Fox News officials had begun to assume that Biden would take a pass. The game this year is airing on Fox’s broadcast channel, and by standard practice, the interview would be conducted by the company’s news division. …

“We offered an interview with our top news anchors with no strings attached,” a Fox News executive familiar with the discussions told The Washington Post. “They walked away from a huge audience, and it’s a major missed opportunity.”

Prominent Democrats have been split on whether Biden should take Fox News up on the offer, with some arguing that Fox’s broadcast of the game provides a massive potential audience for the president (the game averaged 99.2 million viewers on NBC last year), while others felt that giving an interview to a Fox News journalist would open the president to unfair questioning. ...

Biden had granted Super Bowl interviews for the first two years of his presidency, sitting with “CBS Evening News” anchor Norah O’Donnell in 2021 and “NBC Nightly News” anchor Lester Holt last year.

In 2018, then-President Trump opted against sitting for an interview with Holt, despite NBC broadcasting the game.

Read more on this here.

1:25 PM: Noted: White House aides asked Elon Musk for help with Biden climate goal

© Ntb/via REUTERS Elon Musk at a meeting in Stavanger, Norway on Aug. 29.

Senior White House officials asked Elon Musk during a private meeting last month for Tesla to make its extensive charging network available for use by other electric vehicles, seeking to enlist the bombastic billionaire in their efforts to push along a clean energy revolution, according to two people with knowledge of the meeting.

The Post’s Tyler Pager and Jeff Stein report that John Podesta and Mitch Landrieu, two top aides tasked with implementing the sprawling clean energy packages approved by Congress earlier in President Biden’s term, met with Musk and other Tesla officials at the company’s D.C. office on Jan. 27. Per our colleagues:

Tesla officials expressed openness toward working with the administration on doing more to open its charging networks but made no firm commitments, the people said.

White House National Economic Council Director Brian Deese also joined the meeting virtually, according to an administration official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation.

The meeting put administration officials in the potentially uncomfortable position of asking Musk — who has repeatedly sparred with Biden and other top Democrats, and whose rocket business, SpaceX, is a major contractor with NASA — for help making progress on its goal of building a national network of 500,000 electric vehicle chargers.

You can read the full story here.

1:15 PM: Analysis: Why would McConnell do that to Rick Scott?

Ever since President Biden delivered the moment Republicans perhaps feared in his State of the Union address Tuesday — seizing on Sen. Rick Scott’s plan to sunset all federal programs, which would include Social Security and Medicare — Scott (R-Fla.) and others have worked hard to cast it as a lie.

It wasn’t a lie, though, as Aaron Blake notes. And now Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has undercut Scott’s entire effort, delivering a rebuke that’s remarkable for a number of reasons.

Per Aaron:

On a local Kentucky radio show with host Terry Meiners on Thursday, McConnell was asked specifically about whether Republicans want to sunset Social Security and Medicare, and McConnell pinned that idea to Scott.

“Well, unfortunately, that’s the Scott plan,” McConnell said. “That’s not a Republican plan; that was the Rick Scott plan.”

... McConnell wasn’t letting it go. He said he and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) had pledged no entitlement cuts and added that they were “more authoritative” than “any single senator.”

... Meiners asked McConnell whether there was still bad blood over Scott’s recent failed challenge to McConnell for GOP leader after the 2022 election.

“This doesn’t have anything to do with that,” McConnell said, before moving on to Scott’s 2024 reelection bid. “I mean it’s just a bad idea. I think it will be a challenge for him to deal with this in his own reelection in Florida, a state with more elderly people than any other state in America.”

To put that in context: McConnell, who has a very good shot at becoming majority leader again after the 2024 election and has built a reputation for a win-at-all-costs mentality, is spotlighting one of the biggest supposed liabilities of one of the GOP’s most important candidates. ...

As Aaron notes, McConnell didn’t have to say any of this. It’s abundantly clear there’s some pent-up frustration with what Scott has saddled the Republican Party with. Read more from Aaron here.

12:51 PM: Noted: DeSantis wanted to ban guns at event, but emails show he didn’t want the blame

© Marco Bello/Reuters Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wanted weapons banned from his victory party in Tampa, but he wanted the city officials to say it was their call, emails show.

As Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis prepared for an election night party in downtown Tampa last year, city officials received a surprising — and politically sensitive — request.

The Republican governor’s campaign wanted weapons banned from his victory celebration at the city-run Tampa Convention Center, a city official said in emails obtained by The Washington Post. As Beth Reinhard reports, the campaign suggested that the city take responsibility for the firearms ban, the official said — not the governor, a vocal supporter of gun rights.

“DeSantis/his campaign will not tell their attendees they are not permitted to carry because of the political optics,” Chase Finch, the convention center’s safety and security manager, said in an Oct. 28 email to other city officials about the request, which was conveyed by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, a state police agency led by a DeSantis appointee.

Finch further explained that because of “Republicans largely being in support of 2A,” referring to the Second Amendment, “Basically it sounds like they want us to say it’s our policy to disallow firearms within the event space if anyone asks.”

Per Beth:

Tampa Convention Center officials ultimately rejected the request from the DeSantis campaign to ban weapons. State law allows concealed firearms to be brought inside the public facility unless the renter insists on a gun-free event. On election night, the campaign did require guests to pass through metal detectors, Finch said.

The previously unreported request to Tampa officials illuminates a touchy issue for DeSantis as he weighs a potential bid for the Republican presidential nomination. Even as DeSantis has earned the highest rating from the National Rifle Association’s political arm, gun owners are balking at his recent appearances at events where firearms were prohibited, according to interviews and online posts...

In response to questions from The Post about gun bans at DeSantis events, the governor’s deputy press secretary, Jeremy Redfern, said in an email, “We do not comment on speculation and hearsay. The Governor is strongly in support of individuals’ constitutional right to bear arms.”

Read more on the governor’s campaign’s request here.

12:39 PM: This just in: FBI searches Pence’s Indiana home for classified documents

© Michael Conroy/AP Carmel, Ind. police secure the entrance to the neighborhood of former vice president Mike Pence's Indiana home in Carmel, Ind., on Friday.

The FBI is conducting a search of former vice president Mike Pence’s Indiana home, examining the property for any additional classified materials that may be stored there, according to a Justice Department official.

The Post’s Perry Stein and Josh Dawsey report that the Friday search was anticipated and that federal law enforcement and Pence’s legal team had coordinated the precise timing. Per our colleagues:

It is expected to conclude in the afternoon, said a person familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid about a sensitive matter.

Pence, who is contemplating a 2024 presidential bid, is in California, but an attorney for the former vice president has been present at the Carmel, Ind., home during the search.

The search follows revelations last month that Pence had turned over to the FBI “a small number” of documents bearing classified markings that his attorneys discovered at his home.

You can read the full story here.

12:30 PM: Take a look: New lawmakers’ advice for those who want to run for office

New members of Congress have some advice on how young people can get involved in politics. Take a look:

12:21 PM: The latest: Amish country farmers say George Santos took puppies, left bad checks

A lawyer consulted by Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) after police came looking for him gave The Washington Post copies of nine canceled checks from a “George A. Santos” bank account, six of which mentioned “puppies” or “puppy” in the memo line.

It was after dark when George A. Santos approached the farmer in Pennsylvania’s Amish country looking to buy at least eight puppies.

He promised a wire transfer of more than $5,000 but it never appeared, the farmer said in an interview. He said Santos ended up writing a smaller check — and driving off with four golden retrievers.

“Something inside me said I just cannot trust him,” the farmer told The Washington Post, speaking on the condition of anonymity to protect his privacy.

The check bounced, The Post’s Jonathan O’Connell, Emma Brown and Shayna Jacobs report. Per our colleagues:

The farmer, who has not previously spoken to the media, said he called police following the encounter in 2017. It took nearly two years for the authorities to locate Santos back home in New York, but he was eventually charged with theft by deception, according to a brief mention in The Star, a local newspaper in York County.

In May 2021, the paper reported, the case was dismissed under a provision of Pennsylvania law that allows misdemeanor charges to be dropped when a prosecutor consents and “satisfaction has been made to the aggrieved person.”

You can read the full story here.

12:08 PM: The latest: Biden touts bipartisanship in remarks to governors from both parties

© Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post President Biden greets attendees at a White House meeting with members of the National Governors Association on Friday.

Addressing governors from both political parties at the White House on Friday, President Biden touted the bipartisan support of several of his major legislative successes of the past two years, including a law pumping money into infrastructure projects across the country and another that is boosting the U.S. semiconductor industry.

“Seventy-five percent of what we did would not have happened without that bipartisanship,” Biden said at a meeting in the East Room that was part of an annual National Governors Association gathering in Washington.

He said that much work remains to fully implement the legislation and that he hoped he could work with governors of both parties to do that.

“I just think that one of the things we have a chance to do this year is disprove that we’re just a broken system, that we’re divided just based on extremes in both parties and we can’t get anything done.”

The meeting with governors represented Biden’s latest opportunity to press the case for his economic agenda since Tuesday’s State of the Union address. He said Friday, as he did then, that there are many areas in which he wants to “finish the job,” including on lowering health-care costs.

12:02 PM: The latest: Harris says ‘the theme of this year’ is momentum

Vice President Harris attends a meeting with state governors from across the country at the White House, Feb. 10, 2023. (REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)

The nation’s governors have gathered in Washington for an annual meeting with President Biden, where Vice President Harris said states should build on the “good and important” work they did during the covid-19 pandemic now that the United States is “through the height of the crisis.”

“I think that the theme of this year should be for all of us momentum,” Harris told governors at the White House for the annual convening in Washington of the National Governors Association.

Harris talked about issues including climate change, infrastructure and small businesses, citing efforts to establish community banks in North Carolina, remove lead pipes in Pennsylvania and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Minnesota.

She touted the administration’s investment in efforts to combat climate change, saying that about $1 trillion in total is slated to “hit the streets of America to address this pressing issue.”

“We do think of this moment as being a moment in the history of our nation where it is not about incrementalism. It is truly about jumping to a new plateau,” she said, and she urged governors to help “make our policies and our vision real.”

By: Justine McDaniel

11:47 AM: Noted: Mullin becomes fifth GOP senator to back Trump in 2024

© Al Drago/Bloomberg News Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) leaves a closed-door intelligence briefing Feb. 9 on the Chinese surveillance balloon on Capitol Hill in Washington.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) on Friday endorsed the 2024 White House bid of former president Donald Trump, saying in a statement that Trump is “exactly the president we need to lead this country through the tough road ahead.”

With the endorsement from Mullin, Trump has now secured the support of five of the 49 Republicans in the Senate since announcing his bid Nov. 15.

Others backing Trump include Sens. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) and Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.).

Mullin, a former congressman, was among those who voted to challenge some of the 2020 presidential election results. He has also authored legislation to expunge both impeachments of Trump approved by the House.

Trump endorsed Mullin’s bid for Senate last year, calling him “an America First Warrior.”

11:15 AM: The latest: Durbin, Graham unveil immigration legislation at an urgent time for dreamers

© Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) appear during a Senate Judiciary meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington on Feb. 9.

With the future of a program that protects young undocumented immigrants from deportation in limbo, senators on Friday introduced legislation to supply them a path to legal residency.

The Post’s Justine McDaniel writes that it marks the formal start of the push in this Congress to enact protections for those known as dreamers, people who came to the United States as children. The legislation, introduced by Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), has been proposed year after year without success. Per Justine:

The Dream Act, as the bill is known, would allow people who were brought to the United States as children and have a high school education and college enrollment, employment or military service to earn residency and, eventually, citizenship.

The effort is urgent for hundreds of thousands of young adults whose future is in question as a challenge to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that now protects them moves through the courts.

But any immigration legislation faces a steep climb in a split Congress. It has been more than two decades since Durbin first introduced the act; in the last session of Congress, a version was passed in the House in 2021 but was unsuccessful in the Senate.

You can read Justine’s full story here.

10:48 AM: Noted: Senate prison system inquiry reveals ‘national disgrace,’ Ossoff says

© Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) speaks on the phone on Capitol Hill on July 13, 2021.

The Senate’s extensive yet largely overlooked investigations into the abuse suffered by federally incarcerated people was sparked when 16-year-old Jon Ossoff asked a civil rights crusader for a job.

Now a 35-year-old first-term Democratic U.S. senator from Georgia, Ossoff uses lessons from Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), his former boss and mentor, to expose disgraceful conditions in the nation’s prisons and detention facilities, writes The Post’s Joe Davidson. Per our colleague:

Ossoff’s lessons from his internship with Lewis propelled four Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations hearings Ossoff chaired over recent months into Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) incarceration practices that should be un-American.

“I’m appalled by the disgraceful conditions in prisons and jails at all levels across our country,” Ossoff said last week in his Russell Senate Office Building suite, sitting in front of a prominent picture of Lewis, who died in 2020. “It is a national disgrace and a betrayal of a founding principle embedded in our Bill of Rights, the prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.”

Describing Lewis’s ability to “radiate” empathy, Ossoff said, “I try to remain grounded in his values as I serve, and I know that he viewed as a moral failure the conditions of incarceration in the United States.”

You can read Joe’s full piece here.

10:21 AM: The latest: Santos says Sinema offered him words of encouragement. Sinema’s office says they never spoke.

© Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) claps during President Biden’s State of the Union address on Tuesday.

Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) claimed in a television interview Thursday that Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) offered him words of encouragement shortly after he was rebuked by Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) for seeking out a prominent place on the House floor ahead of President Biden’s State of the Union address on Tuesday.

On Friday, a spokeswoman for Sinema said the episode never happened.

“I know this is *shocking* but he is lying,” Sinema spokeswoman Hannah Hurley said in an email. “Kyrsten did not speak to him.”

Appearing on Newsmax on Thursday, Santos, who has admitted to fabricating key parts of his biography and is facing multiple investigations, recounted the alleged interaction in detail.

Around the time Romney reportedly said, “You don’t belong here,” Sinema passed by him, Santos claimed.

“She said something to the effects of, ‘Hang in there, buddy,’ or something like that,” Santos said. “I said, ‘Thank you, thank you, Madam Senator.’ She was very polite, very kindhearted as I’ve learned to see her. She’s a good person, unlike Mr. Romney, who thinks he’s above it all and is an all-mighty white horse trying to talk to us down on morality.”

Romney told reporters Tuesday after his interaction with Santos that the freshman lawmaker “shouldn’t be in Congress.”

“They are going to go through the process and hopefully get him out,” Romney said. “But he shouldn’t be there, and, if he had any shame at all, he wouldn’t be there.”

10:10 AM: This just in: Obama veteran Ben LaBolt to become White House communications director

© Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post White House Director of Communications Kate Bedingfield, seen here during a briefing in March 2022, is leaving the White House.

Ben LaBolt, a former adviser to Barack Obama who has worked on specific projects for President Biden, will replace White House communications director Kate Bedingfield next month when she leaves the administration for an expected role in the president’s reelection campaign as a consultant, Biden advisers said Friday.

The Post’s Michael Scherer reports that LaBolt, a partner at the Democratic firm Bully Pulpit Interactive in San Francisco, is set to become the first openly gay person to hold the job of White House communications director, a role that traditionally oversees all aspects of the president’s public relations strategy. Per Michael:

LaBolt worked for the Biden team during its transition effort after the 2020 election, and again as the head of communications for Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation effort. His appointment was first reported by NBC News.

Bedingfield, who has worked for Biden since his days as vice president, is the latest in a series of White House officials who have announced they are leaving after two grueling years, following Chief of Staff Ron Klain and top economic adviser Brian Deese.

She previously worked as a deputy campaign manager on Biden’s 2020 campaign and is expected to remain involved in the reelection effort once it is announced later this year, said a Biden adviser who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the planning.

You can read the full story here.

9:55 AM: Noted: Trump plays catch-up with GOP rivals on fights over race and gender in schools

When Donald Trump hit the campaign trail for the first time this year, he vowed to cut federal funding to schools promoting “left-wing” ideas about gender and race. After the former president suggested that parents should be able to vote out school principals, one woman pumped her fist from the balcony of the South Carolina State House and cheered so loudly that her voice cracked.

The Post’s Hannah Knowles and Laura Meckler write that in that moment, Trump was leaning into the issues animating the conservative base most fervently — and his aides took note of the enthusiastic response he received on his trip. Per our colleagues:

With schools at the center of GOP complaints about the way Americans discuss race and gender, the debate over these subjects is expected to be a focal point of the 2024 presidential primary, according to party activists and strategists.

But some conservatives said they see Trump as a latecomer on this front, where state-level leaders wield more power and his record as president was thinner by comparison.

They point to potential rivals such as Ron DeSantis, who as governor of Florida has used executive actions and legislation to limit discussion of race and gender in schools; made it easier to remove books that parents find objectionable from school libraries; and announced plans to block diversity and inclusion programs at state colleges. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, another possible presidential candidate, has drawn national GOP attention for a similar, if less sweeping, agenda.

You can read the full story here.

9:31 AM: The latest: Rep. Lee plans to launch Senate run in Calif. this month, as rivals ramp up

© Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) plans to launch a bid soon for U.S. Senate, a person with knowledge of the plans tells The Washington Post.

Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee is planning to formally launch her campaign for U.S. Senate in California by the end of February, according to a person with knowledge of the plans who said Lee is timing her announcement to coincide with Black History Month.

Reporting from Los Angeles, The Post’s Dylan Wells writes that Lee is poised to become the first Black woman to enter a race that two of her House Democratic colleagues, Reps. Katie Porter and Adam B. Schiff, have entered. Per our colleague:

Lee is seen at the outset by many Democrats as an underdog contender against them. In a statement to The Washington Post, Lee emphasized the absence of a Black woman in the upper chamber since Vice President Harris gave up her seat as California’s junior senator to join the Biden administration.

“Currently, there are no Black Women in the U.S. Senate, and there have only been two in our almost 250-year history. Our voices are sorely missed in the Senate,” Lee said in the statement, referring to Harris and former senator Carol Moseley Braun (D-Ill.). She added: “My lived experience as a Black woman making true progressive change for Californians will supply a voice in the U.S. to those who are currently voiceless.”

You can read Dylan’s full story here.

9:05 AM: The latest: Sen. Johnson stands by his description of Social Security as a ‘Ponzi scheme’

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) is standing by his description of Social Security as a “Ponzi scheme” in the wake of attacks by President Biden — and Democrats are seizing on the moment.

During a radio interview Thursday, Johnson reiterated his contention that Social Security and Medicare should be eliminated as federal entitlement programs and that the programs should instead be considered by Congress annually as discretionary spending.

“We’ve got to put everything on-budget so we’re forced to prioritize spending,” Johnson told WISN-AM in Milwaukee. “That doesn’t mean putting it on the chopping block. That doesn’t mean cutting Social Security. But it does mean prioritizing.”

Johnson argued during the interview that the current structure of Social Security is unsustainable.

“It’s a legal Ponzi scheme,” Johnson said, echoing an argument he has made for years.

In a speech in Wisconsin on Wednesday, Biden cited Johnson as one of several Republicans whose views he sees as a threat to Social Security and Medicare.

On Friday, congressional Democrats were seizing anew on the term “Ponzi scheme,” which is a type of fraud.

“The Extreme MAGA Republican crowd claims Social Security is a Ponzi scheme,” tweeted House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.). “More evidence they want to destroy it. Dems must stop them.”

In another tweet, Rep Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) cited Johnson’s use of the term, as well as a proposal by Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) to require votes by Congress every five years to reauthorize even popular programs such as Medicare and Social Security.

“When people show you who they are, believe them,” Lieu wrote.

8:46 AM: Analysis: Climate, Amazon deforestation on the agenda for Biden, Brazil’s president

© Ricardo Stuckert/AFP/Getty Images Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his wife, Rosângela Lula da Silva, arrive in Washington on Thursday.

When President Biden meets his Brazilian counterpart, Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, at the White House on Friday, the two leaders are expected to tout their shared commitment to protecting the Amazon rainforest.

Indeed, both men have pledged to preserve the Amazon, a vital tool in the fight against climate change that saw record deforestation under Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, The Post’s Maxine Joselow writes in The Climate 202. Per Maxine:

Biden’s pledge butts up against an uncomfortable reality: Americans’ love of beef is helping to destroy the Amazon, as cattle ranching pushes the forest toward a dangerous tipping point.

Environmentalists say the United States should be doing more to protect the world’s largest rainforest — and they’re using the high-profile meeting to press the issue.

“Lula demonstrates will and action to end deforestation, but his budgets are tight,” Toerris Jaeger, executive director of Rainforest Foundation Norway, said in a statement. “Biden now has a golden opportunity to facilitate real change.”

You can read the full analysis here.

8:21 AM: Analysis: The Medicare finger-pointing is accelerating

© Patrick Semansky/AP President Biden speaks about his administration's plans to protect Social Security and Medicare and lower health-care costs on Thursday in Tampa.

The partisan feud over cuts to Medicare and Social Security is escalating.

Writing in The Health 202, The Post’s Rachel Roubein notes that President Biden used a trip to Florida to hit Republicans on the popular entitlements and accuse Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) of seeking to gut the programs many people in his state benefit from. Per Rachel:

Both sides are pushing back hard against those characterizations, as the days-long back-and-forth underscores just how politically treacherous it has become to even marginally discuss changes to entitlement programs, which are considered the third rail of American politics.

The effort from Biden to elevate the idea of Republican cuts to the programs — which we expect he will continue to do— indicates how potent an issue he believes it could be during a potential reelection bid.

“I know that a lot of Republicans, their dream is to cut Social Security and Medicare,” Biden said in Tampa. “Well, let me say this: If that’s your dream, I’m your nightmare.”

You can read the full analysis here.

8:04 AM: Analysis: A bipartisan group of senators is examining changes to Social Security

© Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) is part of a Senate working group on Social Security. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

It’s clear: Changes to Social Security and Medicare are off the table as part of the upcoming debt limit showdown.

President Biden’s assertion during his State of the Union address on Tuesday that Republicans want to make cuts to both programs was met with jeers from GOP lawmakers who have spent the rest of the week insisting they don’t want to touch either program, a shift from the party’s past stance during budget negotiations.

But not everyone in the Capitol believes that proposing changes to Social Security should be forbidden, The Post’s Theodoric Meyer and Leigh Ann Caldwell write in The Early 202. Per our colleagues:

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) told Leigh Ann on Thursday during a Washington Post Live event that something needs to be done to “ensure the longevity of the system.” (Social Security benefits for 60 million people will be cut by 20 percent starting in 2035, according to the latest federal report on the matter, unless Congress acts to fix its finances.)

Sinema said she is part of a working group with Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Angus King (I-Maine) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.) that is currently working to “shore up and protect the system so that there is a dependent, reliable system in place for when people our age or younger retire.”

To be clear, Sinema said this should not be part of the discussions to lift the debt limit. She wants a clean debt limit vote separate from discussions to address government spending. Still, changing anything about Social Security has been a third rail of politics that neither party has been willing to touch.

You can read The Early 202 in full here.

7:40 AM: Analysis: After Trump and Bolsonaro, can Biden and Lula have their own bromance?

© Douglas Magno/AFP/Getty Images Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and President Biden.

President Biden hosts his Brazilian counterpart at the White House on Friday. The visit of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to Washington marks a meeting of the leaders of the Western hemisphere’s two biggest economies and democracies. And it’s being framed as a chance for a fresh start after the chaos left behind by both of these presidents’ predecessors — tenures marked by polarization, political tumult and the ideological convergence of hard-right nationalists in both countries.

Writing in The Post’s WorldView newsletter, Ishaan Tharoor notes that Lula arrived in Washington a month after supporters of defeated former president Jair Bolsonaro stormed key institutions of the federal state in the capital, Brasília, in a failed bid to oust the leftist leader and his new administration. Per our colleague:

In the weeks since, Brazilian officials have stressed that Biden’s swift and strong backing of both Lula and Brazil’s democratic institutions, as well as the solidarity of many other countries elsewhere, proved crucial during a fraught moment for Brazil’s still-young democracy.

Lula’s visit also comes a week after Bolsonaro, who has yet to formally accept his defeat in last year’s election and is in the middle of an extended sojourn in Florida, spoke at an event hosted at a hotel owned by former president Donald Trump. “Brazil was doing very well,” Bolsonaro lamented before a sympathetic crowd. “I cannot understand the reasons why [the election] decided to go to the left.”

You can read the full analysis here.

7:18 AM: Analysis: Democratic governors eye red-state victories

© John Minchillo/AP New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) speaks ahead of President Biden's arrival during a news conference at the construction site of the Hudson Tunnel Project in New York on Jan. 31.

The Post’s Theodoric Meyer and Leigh Ann Caldwell, our colleagues at The Early 202, chatted with New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, chairman of the Democratic Governors Association and the National Governors Association, while he’s in town for the NGA’s winter meeting. Here are some highlights:

• On how Democratic gubernatorial candidates can win in red states next year: “We’ve got three what would appear to be away games for us: Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi. Job No. 1 is to defend and reelect Andy Beshear in Kentucky. John Bel Edwards in Louisiana is likewise a great governor — really one of our best — but he’s term-limited. So we’ve got to figure out who’s going to step into his shoes, and then how do we win in Louisiana? And I think Mississippi is the sleeper. You’ve got a very unpopular governor who’s left a lot of the state behind. … And we’ve got a really credible, popular, high-name-recognition candidate in Brandon Presley, who happens to be Elvis’s cousin.”
• On Presley’s path to victory over Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves (R): “I think it’s what issues you focus on, and Brandon’s going to focus on the stuff that matters in Mississippi. Secondly, it’ll be turnout and people believing that we can win. You start with a very high percentage — I believe it’s the highest percentage of any American state — of African Americans in Mississippi. And you call out the record of the Reeves administration. Add all that together with a hefty participation by the DGA — I think that could add up to a win.”

You can read The Early 202 in full here.

7:00 AM: On our radar: Biden, Lula set to meet after Jan. 6-like Brazil insurrection

© Mauro Pimentel/AFP/Getty Images Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva delivers a speech Monday in Rio de Janeiro.

President Biden and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva might have more in common than they would like.

The Post’s Yasmeen Abutaleb and Amanda Coletta note that each is his country’s oldest president — Biden is 80, while Lula is 77 — and that they previously served at the highest levels of government. Per our colleagues:

More starkly, they came to power amid disturbing political turmoil only two years apart. They both campaigned on promises to return their countries to normalcy after four years of sometimes-chaotic rule by populist-style leaders. And they defeated incumbent presidents who refused to recognize the election results as legitimate, leading to insurrections in both their nations’ capitals — one on Jan. 6, 2021, and the other on Jan. 8, 2023.

On Friday, Biden and Lula will meet at the White House in what is intended as an important signal that their democracies are resilient.

You can read the full story here.

6:45 AM: The latest: McConnell knocks Scott for his sunset proposal affecting Medicare, Social Security

In recent days, President Biden has been hammering Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) for his plan that would require Congress to reauthorize even popular programs such as Social Security and Medicare every five years to keep them on the books.

On Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) joined in the criticism, suggesting that provisions in Scott’s plan could hurt him in his bid for reelection next year in Florida, a state with the greatest share of seniors in the nation.

“That’s not a Republican plan. That was the Rick Scott plan,” McConnell told longtime Kentucky radio host Terry Meiners when asked about the provision calling for the sunsetting of Social Security and Medicare every five years.

“The Republican plan, as I pointed out last fall, if we were to [become] the majority, there were no plans to raise taxes on half the American people or to sunset Medicare or Social Security,” McConnell said. “So it’s clearly the Rick Scott plan. It is not the Republican plan. And that’s the view of the speaker of the House as well.”

McConnell was alluding to another provision in Scott’s broader 12-point plan that would require all Americans to “pay some income tax to have skin in the game.” As Scott noted, about half of Americans currently pay no federal income tax. That proposal was dropped from a revised version of Scott’s plan.

McConnell sought to distance himself from Scott’s plan as soon as it was released last year, recognizing the political peril it presented for Republicans

Scott, who presided over the National Republican Senatorial Committee during a disappointing midterm cycle for his party last year, subsequently sought to challenge McConnell for minority leader in the Senate and fell well short.

Asked Thursday if Scott’s leadership bid had anything to do with his views of Scott’s sunset plan, McConnell said that it “doesn’t have anything to do with that.”

“I mean, it’s just a bad idea,” McConnell said. “I think it will be a challenge for [Scott] to deal with this in his own reelection in Florida, a state with more elderly people than any state in America.”

6:30 AM: The latest: Pence receives subpoena from prosecutors examining Trump’s Jan. 6 role

© Scott McIntyre/For The Washington Post Former vice president Mike Pence answers questions from reporters during a visit to Florida International University in Miami on Jan. 27.

Former vice president Mike Pence received a subpoena from the special counsel investigating key aspects of the sprawling probe into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and former president Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The Post’s Josh Dawsey and Perry Stein report that Jack Smith — the special counsel appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to lead the investigation — is also heading a separate criminal probe into Trump’s possible mishandling of classified documents at his Florida home. Per our colleagues:

The Pence subpoena is related to Jan. 6, according to the person familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly. The subpoena comes after months of negotiations between the Justice Department and Pence.

ABC News first reported news of the subpoena. A spokesman for the special counsel declined to comment. A spokesman for Pence also declined to comment.

Pence becomes the highest-level person in Trump’s orbit publicly known to be subpoenaed as part of the investigation, and the move is the latest indication that the extensive probe is pushing forward. It could pit two potential presidential candidates against each other; Trump has launched his campaign for the 2024 Republican nomination, and Pence is considered a potential challenger.

You can read the full story here.

6:15 AM: Noted: The making of Anna Paulina Luna

© Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) is seen before President Biden’s State of the Union address on Feb. 7. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Twelve years before she was elected as the first Mexican American woman to represent Florida in Congress, Anna Paulina Luna was serving at Whiteman Air Force Base in Warrensburg, Mo., where friends said she described herself as alternately Middle Eastern, Jewish or Eastern European. Known then by her given last name of Mayerhofer, Luna sported designer clothing and expressed support for then-President Barack Obama.

The Post’s Jacqueline Alemany and Alice Crites report that by the time she ran for Congress as a Republican, she had changed her last name to Luna in what she said was an homage to her mother’s family. Per our colleagues:

A staunch advocate for gun rights, she cited on the campaign trail a harrowing childhood that left her “battle hardened.” She said she and her mother had little extended family as she grew up in “low-income” neighborhoods in Southern California with a father in and out of incarceration. She said she experienced a traumatizing “home invasion” when she was serving in the Air Force in Missouri.

Luna’s sharp turn to the right, her account of an isolated and impoverished childhood, and her embrace of her Hispanic heritage have come as a surprise to some friends and family who knew her before her ascent to the U.S. House this year.

A cousin who grew up with Luna said she was regularly included in family gatherings. Her roommate in Missouri had no recollection of the “home invasion” Luna detailed, describing instead a break-in at their shared apartment when they were not home, an incident confirmed by police records.

You can read the full story here.

6:13 AM: Noted: The Grammys omitted Spanish captions. A congressman wants improvements.

© Sara Guerrero/Sara Guerrero Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), center, criticized CBS for failing to display Spanish-language closed captioning during the Grammys.

When Bad Bunny opened the Grammys on Sunday with a mash-up of his songs, fans and other singers stood and danced at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles.

But at many homes worldwide, viewers didn’t understand what the Puerto Rican artist was singing. While Bad Bunny performed in Spanish, CBS displayed captions stating he was speaking and singing in “NON-ENGLISH.”

The Post’s Kyle Melnick reports that Spanish speakers across social media knocked the program’s absence of Spanish-language closed captioning, and Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) joined the uproar Wednesday, criticizing CBS and its chief executive, George Cheeks, in a public letter. Per Kyle:

“For too many Spanish-Speaking Americans, it felt disrespectful of our place in our shared society, and of our contributions to our shared culture,” wrote Garcia, who immigrated from Peru to California as a child. “For the hearing impaired community, this failure was hurtful.”

Bad Bunny, whose real name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, began Sunday’s show by singing a mash-up of “El Apagón” and “Después de la Playa” — a performance that sent Taylor Swift anong others to the dance floor. Later on, Bad Bunny’s album “Un Verano Sin Ti,” which was the first all-Spanish album to finish atop Billboard’s yearly chart, won the Grammy for best Latin urban album.

You can read the full story here.