- Kim Jong Un tours Putin’s war arsenal, sparks concern over budding alliance— but top US general downplays potential threat New York Post
- North Korean arms for Russia probably wouldn’t make a big difference in the Ukraine war, Milley says The Associated Press
- North Korea’s Kim Visits Pacific Fleet Frigate | VOA News Voice of America
- Kim Jong-un ‘Checks Out’ MiG-31, Kinzhal Hypersonic Missile As Moscow, Pyongyang Cement Ties EurAsian Times
- North Korea’s Kim inspects Russian nuclear-capable bombers, hypersonic missiles Reuters
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Tag Archives: Downplays
Pac-12 Media Day 2023: George Kliavkoff stands firm on media rights timeline, downplays realignment concerns – CBS Sports
- Pac-12 Media Day 2023: George Kliavkoff stands firm on media rights timeline, downplays realignment concerns CBS Sports
- Sam Bradshaw: Colorado Has Lost Close to $70 MIllion Since Joining the Pac 12 | Pac 12 Media Deal Baylor Athletics on SicEm365
- Pac-12 football media day – Five questions for 2023 – ESPN ESPN
- 2023 Pac-12 Football Media Day: Lincoln Riley Press Conference USCAthletics
- Mailbag: Pac-12 presidential tumult (and what it means), imagining the ADs in charge, current TV dollars, the survival line and more The Mercury News
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“Give Me 8 Weeks, I’m Going To Beat Jon Jones” – Belal Muhammad Downplays Short-Notice UFC 288 Prep – MMA News
- “Give Me 8 Weeks, I’m Going To Beat Jon Jones” – Belal Muhammad Downplays Short-Notice UFC 288 Prep MMA News
- Muhammad vs Burns – The Moment of Truth | UFC 288 UFC – Ultimate Fighting Championship
- ‘Colby ain’t getting s***’: Jorge Masvidal weighs in on UFC 288 stakes for Gilbert Burns and Belal Muhammad MMA Fighting
- UFC 288: Belal Muhammad plans to make believers of UFC brass, fan base with win over Gilbert Burns Yahoo Sports
- Gilbert Burns Explains How He’s Able To Fight Belal Muhammad So Soon After Last Fight | TMZ Sports TMZSports
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NASA Downplays Launch Pad Damage Caused by SLS Rocket
A scorched platform, fried cameras, broken pipes, and a busted elevator are among the casualties of last week’s launch of NASA’s SLS rocket. Mobile Launcher 1 and Launch Complex 39B at Kennedy Space Center will require repairs, but NASA says they’ll be ready for the next Artemis mission.
Space Launch System, or SLS, blasted off during the early hours of Wednesday, November 16, sending the Orion capsule on a 25.5-day journey to the Moon and back. It was a picture-perfect launch, and NASA has said as much. Preliminary data from the Artemis 1 flight indicates that SLS performed as well as or even exceeded expectations, Mike Sarafin, Artemis 1 mission manager, told reporters yesterday.
SLS’s performance deviations were less than 0.3% across the board, and the rocket missed NASA’s target orbital insertion by just 3 nautical miles, according to Sarafin. He reminded reporters that SLS exerted 8.8 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, and the fact that SLS deviated by 7 feet each second is still “remarkable” in terms of precision. “The results were eye-watering,” he added.
Photojournalists at Kennedy Space Center have been told to not take photos of Launch Complex 39B for security reasons (i.e., ITAR restrictions; NASA says photos of the now-exposed umbilical plates would represent a security violation), and possibly because NASA doesn’t want to promote the fact that its launch tower was damaged.
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During a press briefing on Friday, Sarafin admitted that the mobile launch tower did incur some damage as a result of the launch, which produced temperatures in excess of 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. “We expected to find damage at the pad, and we are finding damage at the pad,” Sarafin said.
At a press briefing held yesterday, the mission management team offered further details and some visuals that detailed the scope of the damage. In addition to new scorch marks on the tower and missing paint on its deck, a number of pad cameras got burned, and some nitrogen and helium supply lines incurred minor damage. Sarafin said blast doors on the tower’s elevators were torn away by the rocket’s shock wave, so “right now the elevators are inoperable and we need to get those back into service.” All said, the damage “that we did see pertains to really, just a couple of areas,” he said, adding that SLS is largely a “very clean system.”
At the same time, the deluge system “did a great job” and the tail mast service umbilicals were “clean inside,” Sarafin explained. He added that repairs are required, but he’s confident everything will be ready for the crewed Artemis 2 mission in 2024. That might seem like plenty of time, but stacking operations for the sequel mission will likely need to start next year.
The mission management team seemed largely unfazed, and it’s entirely possible that the damage is indeed minimal or at least manageable. It might also be true that NASA is doing its best to downplay any damage induced by its new pride-and-joy. Opinions posted to Twitter varied, with some saying the damage is much worse than NASA is willing to admit, with others saying the damage isn’t a big deal and it’s all part of the engineering process. Indeed, surprises should be expected when launching the world’s most powerful rocket, but if the damage is worse than NASA is leading us to believe, then they should admit it.
Back at the lunar ranch, the uncrewed Orion capsule continues to do its thing. The spacecraft performed a close flyby of the Moon yesterday as it steadily works its way into a distant retrograde orbit around the Moon. Orion will conclude its 25.5-day mission on December 11, when it attempts an atmospheric reentry at Earth and a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. Artemis 1 is the first of what NASA hopes will be a series of missions to establish a permanent human presence in the lunar environment.
More: What’s Next for the Orion Spacecraft as It Cruises Toward the Moon
Sen. Ron Johnson downplays Jan. 6 as ‘not what an armed insurrection would look like’
“The ‘armed insurrectionists’ stayed within the rope lines in the Rotunda,” Johnson added, making air-quote gestures with his fingers. “I’m sorry — that’s not what an armed insurrection would look like. I don’t think they’d be able to reopen Congress about six hours later and complete the counting of electoral votes if there literally had been an ‘armed insurrection.’ So again, I realize that term has been used to inflame the situation.”
Johnson did not mention that many rioters went beyond the rope lines, ransacking congressional offices, damaging sculptures and art, and causing about $1.5 million worth of damage. At the insistence of top lawmakers, Congress reconvened about six hours after the attack, despite there still being shattered glass, broken furniture and what a spokesperson for the Committee on House Administration called “corrosive gas agent residue.” Rep. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) said there was “garbage and debris everywhere.”
The attack on the Capitol also left five people dead, including a police officer and a woman shot by police. Two other officers who were on duty that day later died by suicide.
Johnson’s comments Tuesday were swiftly condemned by several Democratic lawmakers and at least one member of the Biden administration.
“Ron Johnson continues to downplay the violence of Jan 6, glossing over how the mob seriously wounded police officers,” tweeted Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.). “January 6 was a deadly attempt to overturn the election. To call it anything else is a disservice to the brave men & women who protected our democracy that day.”
“To call what happened on Jan. 6 an ‘armed insurrection,” I just think is inaccurate,” Sen. Ron Johnson says at Milwaukee Rotary Club just now.
Johnson argued few weapons were confiscated but protesters “did teach us how you can use a flag pole” pic.twitter.com/28E3W7G3eg
— Natasha Korecki (@natashakorecki) October 4, 2022
“It WAS an armed insurrection,” tweeted former Republican congressman Joe Walsh, who has since left the GOP. “@RonJohnsonWI is wrong. And in November, the people of Wisconsin should tell him he’s wrong.”
Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes (D), who is running for Senate against Johnson, tweeted that his opponent is “still covering for the Jan. 6 insurrectionists.”
“This is NOT who we are or what we stand for in Wisconsin,” Barnes tweeted. “It’s time to vote him out.”
Johnson also said Tuesday that “protesters did teach us all how you can use flagpoles, that kind of stuff, as weapons.” In video of the Jan. 6 attack, law enforcement officers outside the Capitol were shown being harassed, beaten and sprayed with gas substances by members of the mob. One of the Capitol Police officers who responded that day, Caroline Edwards, said she was struck in the head with a bike rack. She later described the scene as “carnage,” recalling how officers were on the ground, bleeding and throwing up. In one video from the attack, a rioter can be seen bashing a fallen police officer with a pole flying the American flag.
“You mean the January 6th attackers ‘did teach us how you can use a flag pole’ to brutally beat police officers, @SenRonJohnson?” deputy White House press secretary Andrew Bates tweeted Tuesday in response to Johnson’s remarks.
In a statement, Johnson’s office claimed that the senator had said “summer protesters,” not “some of the protesters,” and that he had been referring to people protesting the killing of George Floyd in the summer of 2020.
“This clip is completely and deceptively taken out of context to push a political narrative,” Johnson spokeswoman Alexa Henning said in an email. “He acknowledges the left-wing rioters know how to use flagpoles and other metal objects and water bottles as weapons. But there is a distinction between that and an armed insurrection.”
Johnson was “in no way condoning this action,” Henning added.
This is not the first time Johnson has downplayed the severity of the Jan. 6 attack. Several Democrats last year called on Johnson to step down after he said on a conservative radio show that the Capitol rioters hadn’t scared him — but that they might have had they been Black Lives Matter protesters. On Tuesday, Johnson reiterated part of those sentiments.
“I did say I was never afraid on Jan. 6 because it’s true,” Johnson said. “I was in the Senate chamber. They closed the doors. My assumption was that a couple of crazy people got by security. … About five, 10 minutes later they opened up the door and said go back to your office. And I went back to my office and then I saw the violence.”
Johnson’s comments came as a trial began this week for several members of the extremist Oath Keepers group who allegedly traveled to Washington and staged firearms near the Capitol before forcing entry through the Capitol Rotunda doors in combat and tactical gear in the Jan. 6 attack. Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes and four co-defendants face seditious conspiracy and other charges; they have pleaded not guilty to felony charges alleging that they conspired for weeks after the 2020 presidential election to unleash political violence to oppose the lawful transfer of power to Biden.
Spencer S. Hsu, Tom Jackman and Rachel Weiner contributed to this report.
Lamar Jackson downplays absence from OTAs
On the question of Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson’s absence from OTAs, coach John Harbaugh said as to Jackson, “It’s up to him to speak for himself.”
He has. Sort of.
Reacting to a snippet from our recent discussion of the situation on PFT Live, during which Chris Simms made the case that if Jackson aspires to be this generation’s Tom Brady he should be there, Jackson said this: “Lamar wants to be Lamar Chris. This part of OTAs is Voluntary my Guy I will be there, just not on your watch it’s probably other QBs not attending Voluntary OTAs either but since it’s Lamar it’s a huge deal. Find something else to talk about.”
We’ve discussed every starting quarterback who is absent from OTAs. Some are absent for business reasons. The two-time reigning MVP, Aaron Rodgers, is absent for no reason. (Rodgers was called out fairly aggressively on Friday’s PFT Live for not assisting with the effort to get the new-look receiving corps up to speed.)
With Jackson, the problem is less that he isn’t there and more that this is just the latest chapter in the mystery that Jackson has either deliberately or accidentally created. By persistently refusing to engage with a team that wants to make him one of the highest-paid players in NFL history, Jackson has confused many league insiders and observers. And if Jackson isn’t engaging with the team because he’s so committed to his craft, why isn’t he present for the offseason practices during which much of the offensive playbook for the coming season is installed?
It’s unconventional to the point of unprecedented. The Ravens want to pay him. He won’t talk to him about it. In so doing, he’s willingly accepting the risk that injury or ineffectiveness will make him less attractive to the Ravens or another team.
He insists he doesn’t want out. His actions suggest otherwise.
It’s great if he’s working with a personal mechanics coach. But these practices represent a handful of opportunities to work with the offense, which will be proceeding without Hollywood Brown in 2022, under the supervision and direction of the coaching staff. Lamar can, frankly, do both.
Finally, as to his request/demand that we “find something else to talk about,” we must respectfully decline his editorial advice. Lamar is a former MVP. He’s one of the most important players in the NFL. When he chooses not to show up for offseason practice, it’s newsworthy.
The comments Chris made about Jackson represent fair criticism, not trolling. Fair criticism is part of being a high-profile athlete in a high-profile sport.
It goes with the territory. Territory that will give generational wealth to Jackson. If he’ll simply reach in and grab it before the window closes, without warning.
New York Jets’ brass downplays unfamiliar praise for NFL draft class
FLORHAM PARK, N.J. — The New York Jets, who haven’t done too many things right over the past decade, found themselves in an unusual position at the conclusion of the NFL draft on Saturday.
On the receiving end of universal praise.
Instead of taking a bow, coach Robert Saleh shrugged it off.
“I’ve also been in places where we were universally mocked,” said Saleh, recalling his time as a Seattle Seahawks assistant coach in 2012. “We took Bruce Irvin, Bobby Wagner and Russell Wilson in the first three rounds and we got a D grade, if I remember right.
“It doesn’t matter. We’ve got to develop these young men. They have to come in and they have to perform. We’ll know in about three years.”
The Jets walked away with seven players, including four of the top 36 picks. They used their original first-round picks on Cincinnati cornerback Ahmad “Sauce” Gardner and Ohio State wide receiver Garrett Wilson, and they traded into the bottom of the first round to select Florida State defensive end Jermaine Johnson II. They traded up in the second round for Iowa State running back Breece Hall.
Gardner, Wilson and Hall were regarded by many draft analysts as the best players at their respective positions.
General manager Joe Douglas accumulated extra draft capital by trading safety Jamal Adams and quarterback Sam Darnold in 2020 and 2021, respectively. Going into the draft, he said the Jets had an opportunity to do “something special.”
Douglas didn’t want to call it that when it was over, but he was clearly satisfied.
“A few things have bounced our way in terms of the draft, but we also made the most of our opportunities in adding quality players,” said Douglas, who completed his third draft as the GM. “Ultimately, we’ll see how it plays out in the next couple of years.
“Nothing ever goes perfectly with the draft, but I feel like the last two years, things have gone our way and we’re making the most of our opportunities.”
The Jets needed an influx of talent after finishing 4-13, their 11th straight season out of the playoffs — the league’s longest active drought.
After the top four picks, the Jets added tight end Jeremy Ruckert in the third round, capping the draft with a pair of fourth-round picks — tackle Max Mitchell and defensive end Micheal Clemons. They started with nine picks but were left with a total of seven selections after trades that allowed them to move up for Johnson and Hall.
One question that remains is the status of 2020 first-round pick Mekhi Becton, who is coming off knee surgery and isn’t participating in the offseason program. Speculation about him has been swirling for months. Saleh publicly lobbied Becton, who has dealt with weight issues, to rejoin the team.
“You want all your guys to be here,” Saleh said of the offensive tackle. “It’s voluntary, but I know he’s working his tail off in Dallas. We have tabs on him. We know exactly what he’s doing and we know where he is in his rehab.”
Glancing at a TV camera, Saleh, smiling, said, “We would love to have you back here, buddy. We’ll take care of you.”
Saleh put Becton on notice at the end of the season, saying he would have to compete with George Fant to win back the left tackle job. On Saturday, he was evasive when asked about Becton’s role, hinting there’s a chance they could move him to right tackle.
Chris Ballard downplays Colts’ interest in drafting a QB, says stories are leaked by agents
Colts General Manager Chris Ballard says not to read anything into the pre-draft work he has done on some of the top quarterback prospects.
Although the Colts had visits with Liberty’s Malik Willis, North Carolina’s Sam Howell and Cincinnati’s Desmond Ridder, Ballard said there is no doubt about the Colts’ commitment to quarterback Matt Ryan.
So why visit with the top quarterbacks? Ballard said it’s simply part of the Colts’ fact finding before every draft that they try to learn what they can about the best players at the sport’s most important position.
“Normal,” Ballard said, via the Indianapolis Star. “We’ve done it every year. Agents do a good job making sure they leak whenever we do.”
The Colts have 2021 sixth-round pick Sam Ehlinger as the No. 2 quarterback behind Ryan, and James Morgan, who has never played in an NFL game, is the only other quarterback on the roster. So it wouldn’t be surprising if the Colts add another quarterback before training camp, but Ballard’s comments suggest it will be in the late rounds.
The Colts’ traded away their first-round pick to get Carson Wentz last year. The Colts’ first pick is No. 42, which is the Commanders’ second-round pick, sent to the Colts when they traded Wentz away after one year.
WHO downplays new IHU COVID-19 variant discovered in France
The seriousness of a stagnant COVID-19 variant identified in France in November was downplayed by global health officials, who said they were still watching it closely on Tuesday.
The variant, nicknamed IHU after the research hospital it was discovered in, “probably” originated in Cameroon, scientists said last week. It was identified in 12 patients in the Southern Alps around the same time the highly transmissible Omicron variant was surging in South Africa, officials said.
The variant “has been on our radar,” Abdi Mahamud, a WHO incident manager on COVID, said at a press briefing in Geneva on Tuesday, according to Bloomberg. “That virus had a lot of chances to pick up.”
The news came as France saw its average daily caseload more than double in a week, with a record 271,686 COVID-19 cases recorded there Tuesday.
IHU’s patient zero had just returned from Africa when scientists at IHU Méditerranée Infection in Marseilles discovered he was infected with an atypical mutation of the virus. The vaccinated man “developed mild respiratory symptoms the day before diagnosis,” researchers wrote in their non-peer-reviewed article published in medRxiv.
“It is too early to speculate on virological, epidemiological or clinical features of this IHU variant based on these 12 cases,” they said on Dec. 29.
The WHO had not yet declared the new mutations a “variant of interest” or a “variant of concern,” according to its website.
IHU Director Didier Raoult previously said the hospital’s infectious disease experts found seven coronavirus variants over the summer. Some scientists disputed the claims because the microbiologist had endorsed hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 cure. After an emergency use authorization in the first months of the pandemic, the FDA ruled there was no evidence that the drug was effective, and said its risks outweighed any potential benefits.
With AP wires
Facebook Downplays Internal Research Released on Eve of Hearing
Facebook on Wednesday published two internal research reports about its photo-sharing app, Instagram, and downplayed their conclusions, as the company prepared for two congressional hearings in the next week that are focused on its products’ effects on children’s mental health.
The reports — “Teen Mental Health Deep Dive,” published internally in October 2019, and “Hard Life Moments,” published in November 2019 — were accompanied by annotations from Facebook that sought to contextualize the limitations of the research and chastised its own researchers for using imprecise language.
In one slide, with a title that said “one in five teens say that Instagram makes them feel worse about themselves, with UK girls the most negative,” Facebook wrote in its annotation that the research had not been intended to suggest a causal link between the app and well-being. The company said the headline emphasized negative effects but could have been written “to note the positive or neutral effect of Instagram on users.”
Facebook published the research as it grapples anew with questions about whether it is inherently harmful as a service. Articles published by The Wall Street Journal this month showed that the social network knew about many of the ills it was causing, including Instagram’s leading teenage girls to feel worse about their bodies and to increased rates of anxiety and depression.
That has led to calls by lawmakers and regulators for more regulation of the social network. After the renewed wave of criticism, Facebook said on Monday that it had paused development of an Instagram Kids service, which would be tailored for children 13 or younger.
Facebook said it provided the internal research reports to Congress on Wednesday. On Thursday, Antigone Davis, Facebook’s global head of safety, will testify at a Senate subcommittee hearing on mental health and social media. Next week, a Facebook whistle-blower, who has not been publicly identified, will also testify to lawmakers about Facebook’s and Instagram’s effects on young users.
In opening remarks for Thursday’s hearing, which were released late Wednesday, Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee argued that Facebook, despite knowing the mental health risks, “was scheming to bring even younger users into their fold.”
“Facebook knows that its services are actively harming their young users,” Ms. Blackburn, the ranking Republican on the subcommittee, said in the prepared remarks. “In 2019 and 2020, Facebook’s in-house analysts performed a series of deep dives into teen use of Instagram that revealed ‘aspects of Instagram exacerbate each other to create a perfect storm.’”
Facebook has aggressively tried to reshape its image this year, including using its News Feed to promote some pro-Facebook stories; distancing Mark Zuckerberg, its chief executive, from scandals; and reducing outsiders’ access to internal data. The company has also decided to apologize less, people with knowledge of the shift have said.
Since The Journal’s articles were published, Facebook has also gone on the offensive, releasing several blog posts that argued that the pieces lacked context or were incomplete. On Sunday, the company published one slide and said, “It is simply not accurate that this research demonstrates Instagram is ‘toxic’ for teen girls.”
The selective publishing fueled further calls from researchers and lawmakers for the company to release the full reports. On Wednesday, Facebook did so with the annotations.
“We added annotations to each slide that give more context because this type of research is designed to inform internal conversations and the documents were created for and used by people who understood the limitations of the research,” said Liza Crenshaw, a spokeswoman for Instagram.
In the reports, one slide was titled “But, we make body image issues worse for 1 in 3 teen girls.” Facebook’s annotation said the methodology was “not fit to provide statistical estimates” and noted that the title of the slide was “myopic.” The company said the findings were meant only to represent the feelings of the survey takers and “not the teenage population of Instagram users in general.”
On the 66-slide “Teen Mental Health Deep Dive” presentation, which relied on in-person qualitative questioning of 40 teenagers and online surveys of more than 2,500 teenagers in the United States and Britain, one annotation called into question the definition of “mental health” in the presentation.
“‘Mental health’ should not be mistaken for a clinical, formal or academic definition,” the company wrote.
Another slide’s title said that “teens who struggle with mental health say Instagram makes it worse.”
In response, Facebook’s annotation said, “The headline should be clarified to be: ‘Teens who have lower life satisfaction more likely to say Instagram makes their mental health or the way they feel about themselves worse than teens who are satisfied with their lives.’”