NEW YORK — President Trump’s daughter-in-law was taken to the hospital Monday after opening an envelope containing a “suspicious” substance addressed to her husband Donald Trump Jr. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said initial tests did not indicate the powder was harmful but they are continuing to test the substance.
Vanessa Trump and two others, including her mother, were taken to a nearby hospital as a precaution. The NYPD said officers and Secret Service agents responded to the couple’s apartment in midtown Manhattan on Monday morning around 10 a.m.
CBS News senior investigative producer Pat Milton reports that Vanessa Trump, 40, has not been hospitalized but is being tested at the hospital out of an abundance of caution.
Donald Trump Jr. later tweeted he was thankful his wife and children were safe.
Thankful that Vanessa my children are safe and unharmed after the incredibly scary situation that occurred this morning. Truly disgusting that certain individuals choose to express their opposing views with such disturbing behavior.
Vanessa Trump’s mother, Bonnie Haydon, handed her the envelope, which Vanessa then opened, CBS New York reports. The identity of the third individual taken to the hospital was not immediately clear.
The Secret Service said it is “investigating a suspicious package addressed to one of our protectees received today.”
Ivanka Trump addressed the incident on Twitter saying she wished she was by her sister-in-law’s side.
In March 2016, law enforcement officials investigated a threatening letter addressed to Donald Trump Jr.’s brother, Eric. The letter also contained a suspicious white powder that turned out to be harmless.
Donald Trump Jr. with his wife, Vanessa Trump, at the Republican National Convention on July 21, 2016.
Mr. Trump’s plan could easily result in much larger federal deficits.
The administration made its calculations using assumptions about the nation’s economic trajectory that are more optimistic than the consensus among private-sector forecasters, or the assumptions used by other parts of the government.
The forecasts in Monday’s plan are also significantly more optimistic than the Trump administration itself used in its budget calculations last year.
There is a similar gap in the projections of long-term growth. If the less optimistic forecasts were correct, the government would collect significantly less revenue. By its own estimates, the result would be another $3 trillion in federal debt.
The administration attributed the difference to the expectation that the president’s policies would significantly increase productivity growth.
Jason Furman, the former chairman of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, calculated that productivity growth would have to reach the highest level in any decade since the immediate aftermath of the World War II. Productivity growth was 1.1 percent over the last decade; it would have to reach 2.5 percent.
“It is hard to understand where this growth would be coming from,” Mr. Furman tweeted.
—Jim Tankersley
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A 5% Reduction for the Department of Education
Mr. Trump’s 2019 budget proposal requests $63.2 billion in discretionary spending at the Education Department, a reduction of $3.6 billion, or 5 percent, from 2017 spending levels.
The proposal calls for a $1.5 billion “school choice” program, which includes taxpayer-funded scholarships for private schools and a vast expansion of charter schools. However, the budget would eliminate or cut 39 programs including two staple programs in public schools that provide teacher training and after-school programs to low-income children.
The Department’s budget also funds initiatives that Mr. Trump has given lip service to in the last year, calling for $43 million in “School Climate Transformation” grants to help fight the opioid epidemic in schools, and $200 million in new grants to improve science, technology, engineering and mathematics education.
—Erica A. Green
A Hint at the Special Counsel’s Timeline
The proposal indicates that the work of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, could last another year and a half. It allocates $10 million to his office from October 2018 through the end of September 2019.
But that does not mean the Russia investigation itself will last that long. The office would also oversee a trial of Paul Manafort, the president’s former campaign chairman, who has pleaded not guilty to charges he laundered millions of dollars through overseas shell companies. No trial date has been set, but the judge in the case has indicated it would not start before the fall.
Documents released last year by the special counsel’s office, which is part of the Justice Department, provided a view into its expenses. Those documents showed that between the time the office was opened in May and the end of September it racked up $3.2 million in costs. The largest portion of that money — $1.7 million — went to personnel, compensation and benefits. The second highest cost was for the “acquisition of equipment” at $733,969.
The Justice Department’s $28 billion proposed budget overall is relatively flat from last year, with notable increases in spending to combat violent crime and drug use as well as house more prisoners. The department wants to increase its immigration enforcement efforts and add 75 immigration judges and support staff. The department counts more than 117,000 employees.
To offset the spending increases, the Justice Department plans to close two of its six Bureau of Prisons regional administrative offices and two of its seven minimum security prisons.
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—Katie Benner
Targets Planned Parenthood
The president’s budget singles out abortion providers and would prohibit Health and Human Services funding, including money used for family planning, from going to any clinic or health care facility that also offers abortion services.
Though the language is broadly written, its intended target is Planned Parenthood, which relies on government funding to offer a variety of services to women other than abortion. The budget would help achieve the longstanding goal of social conservatives to cut off Planned Parenthood from federal assistance.
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—Jeremy W. Peters
Big Changes for Food Stamps
The White House is proposing a significant change for a low-income food program known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP. The White House proposes to cut funding for the program by about $213 billion — or 30 percent — over a decade. It also wants to change how SNAP recipients get their food, replacing a portion of the benefits that allow SNAP recipients to go to a grocery store to purchase food with a package of “nutritious” American-grown food delivered to SNAP households.
The White House says the proposal is “a bold new approach” to administering SNAP that combines traditional benefits with “100-percent American grown foods provided directly to households.”
More for Immigration Enforcement and a Border Wall
The Department of Homeland Security would receive $46 billion, a $3.4 billion increase over the enacted 2017 budget, all part of the administration’s efforts to crack down on illegal immigration and build a wall on the border with Mexico. The request calls for $18 billion for border security, including $1.6 billion to build about 65 miles of the wall in South Texas. The request also calls for the department to hire 2,000 new Immigration and Customs Enforcement and 750 Border Patrol agents.
While most of the budget increases focus on illegal immigration and border security, the administration also requested funding to hire 450 new agents for the chronically-short staffed Secret Service, $1 billion for the department’s cybersecurity efforts and $71 million for new scanning technology for the Transportation Security Administration. The new budget request would provide $1.9 billion for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s grant program to state and local communities, $800 million less than the $2.7 billion funded in 2017.
—Ron Nixon
Deep Cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency
Mr. Trump’s second federal spending plan proposes steep cuts for the Environmental Protection Agency, despite Congress’ rejection of a similar plan last year to dramatically shrink the agency’s budget.
The fiscal 2019 budget blueprint would pare the E.P.A. by $2.8 billion or 34 percent from its current level, while eliminating virtually all climate change-related programs. It also would cut the agency’s Office of Science and Technology nearly in half, to $489 million from its current $762 million.
In outlining the budget, the administration said the E.P.A. is refocusing on what it called “core activities” and eliminating “lower priority programs.” That list includes a program to promote partnerships with the private sector to tackle climate change; environmental education training; and an effort to protect marine estuaries.
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The White House estimated cutting those programs and others will save taxpayers $600 million compared to 2017 levels.
—Lisa Friedman
Another Call to Repeal the Affordable Care Act
Mr. Trump’s budget proposes once again to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act and to eliminate the law’s expansion of Medicaid. More than 30 states have expanded Medicaid under the law. Republican efforts to dismantle the law failed in Congress last year.
As a presidential candidate, Mr. Trump said there would be “no cuts” to Medicare or Medicaid if he won the election. But his 2019 budget request is full of proposals to squeeze savings out of the two programs, which together provide health insurance for more than 100 million Americans.
Proposed savings in Medicare total more than $490 billion over 10 years, or about 5 percent of Medicare spending expected under current law.
The budget would cut $69.5 billion over 10 years in projected Medicare payments to hospitals for “uncompensated care.” It would cut more than $95 billion over 10 years from nursing homes and home health agencies, and $22 billion from Medicare Advantage plans, which manage care for about one-third of Medicare beneficiaries.
In addition, the budget would cut $48 billion over 10 years in Medicare payments to teaching hospitals for graduate medical education,
The budget includes several proposals intended to reduce out-of-pocket drug costs for Medicare beneficiaries by requiring insurers and pharmacy benefit managers to share at least one-third of the discounts and price concessions they receive from drug manufacturers. The budget would also establish a limit on beneficiaries’ out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs covered by Medicare.
—Robert Pear
Paring Back a Dodd-Frank Watchdog
The Treasury Department plan calls for continuing to cut the budget of the Office of Financial Research, which was set up in the wake of the financial crisis to help federal agencies stay ahead of financial risks. The office, which provides analysis and research to the Financial Stability Oversight Council, has previously been targeted for both funding and personnel cuts. “The Budget reflects continued reductions in O.F.R. spending commensurate with the renewed fiscal discipline being applied across the Federal Government.”
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Changing the Role of the A.T.F.
The budget would allocate $28 billion to the Justice Department — a 1.2 percent decrease from the department’s 2017 budget. That budget funds agencies like the F.B.I., the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and Drug Enforcement Administration. The budget proposal would take tobacco and alcohol enforcement authority away from the A.T.F. and move those authorities to the Treasury Department.
The D.E.A. would receive an addition $41 million to specifically combat the opioid crisis, and the agency would also take over the High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas program, which is currently run by the White House drug czar’s office.
—Ali Watkins
State Department Gets Less Funding
At the State Department and USAID, the president’s budget proposes a base budget of $25.8 billion, a $9 billion decrease in funding from the 2017 enacted budget. This is a 26 percent decrease in funding, similar to the president’s budgetary intentions last year.
Notably, the president’s new budget aims to shift $12 billion from Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) funding to the base budget. The OCO is traditionally used for United States presence in turbulent regions like Syria and Iraq.
The addendum provides an additional $1 billion to USAID’s International Disaster Assistance account for use in humanitarian crises as well as an additional $400 million for the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).
But Mr. Pence drew the greatest reaction for where he did not appear: most pointedly, at a dinner Mr. Moon hosted before the opening ceremony. That meant that he avoided spending much time with the North Korean delegation, including Kim Yong-nam, the country’s ceremonial head of state.
And while the unified Korean Olympic team received a standing ovation as they marched into the stadium Friday night, Mr. Pence remained seated, which critics said was disrespectful of the athletes and his host, Mr. Moon.
Mr. Pence is playing “right into North Korea’s hands by making it look like the U.S. is straying from its ally and actively undermining efforts for inter-Korean relations,” said Mintaro Oba, a former diplomat at the State Department specializing in the Koreas, who now works as a speechwriter in Washington.
Ms. Kim, on the other hand, “is a very effective tip of the spear for the North Korean charm offensive,” Mr. Oba said.
Analysts of Korean affairs said that Mr. Pence had missed an opportunity.
“I think it would have been really helpful to the conversation of denuclearization for the Pences to have appreciated the effort put into bringing team unified Korea into the stadium,” said Alexis Dudden, a professor of history at the University of Connecticut. “And it wouldn’t have lessened the American position.”
She added, “The fact that he and Mrs. Pence didn’t stand when the unified team came in was a new low in a bullying type of American diplomacy.”
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In a pool report filed from Mr. Pence’s flight to Alaska from Pyeongchang on Saturday night, a senior administration official said that the vice president had not been trying to avoid the North Koreans so much as he was trying to ignore them.
PhotoThe unified Korean team during the opening ceremony. Credit
Doug Mills/The New York Times
For Mr. Pence’s supporters, “I think the hard-line wing of the United States thinks he did a fine job,” said David C. Kang, director of the Korean Studies Institute at the University of Southern California.
And while Mr. Moon could not miss the chance to “lower the temperature in the room” by engaging with Ms. Kim during her visit for the Olympics, her public relations blitz could subject the South Korean president to criticism that “he fell for a charm offensive,” Mr. Kang said.
At a protest on Sunday in central Seoul, where a few hundred anti-North Korea demonstrators waving South Korean and American flags gathered and shouted slogans denouncing Kim Jong-un, Yang Sun-woo, 55, said, “I’m afraid a lot of Koreans have been fooled by Kim Yo-jong’s visit.”
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“It’s very unfortunate that the Pyeongchang Olympics are becoming the Pyongyang Olympics when South and North Korea are still at odds with each other over ideologies,” added Mr. Yang, who carried a foam head depicting a bloodied face of the North Korean leader.
Ms. Kim, who is believed to be 30, was a natural choice for the trip to South Korea. Her clout, because of her shared bloodline, is unmistakable.
At home, she is mindful of the need to keep the spotlight on her brother. When senior officials cluster around him, reverentially taking notes, she lingers in the background. When her brother speaks in public, she hides behind a pillar, occasionally peeking out as if to make sure that all is going well.
As the first immediate member of the North’s ruling family to visit South Korea, Ms. Kim was swarmed by the local news media. Even before she touched down in her brother’s private jet at Incheon airport, west of Seoul, the approach of the plane drew news exhaustive coverage.
Commentators analyzed her no-nonsense hairstyle and dress, her low-key makeup and the sprinkle of freckles on her cheeks. After she attended a luncheon at the presidential palace on Saturday, it released photographs of her message of hope that “Pyongyang and Seoul get closer in our people’s hearts.” Social media promptly lit up with analysis of her peculiar handwriting.
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Her quietly friendly approach while in South Korea — photographers repeatedly captured her smiling — seemed to endear her to some observers.
Waiting to enter the concert in Seoul on Sunday night, where Ms. Kim sat next to Mr. Moon, Lee Hwa-ik, 61, president of the Galleries Association of Korea, said that Ms. Kim “seems like someone we can become closer to on a personal level and on a human-to-human level.”
Others said they were horrified by the notion that Ms. Kim could lull South Koreans, or anyone else, into forgetting the repression and human rights abuses of her brother’s regime.
“That’s the face of the Kim family, which wouldn’t even flinch when tens of thousands of people died for it,” one Twitter user wrote. “I see the arrogance and ruthlessness that one cannot find in people who grew up in a free society.”
A group of university students who had come to cheer on the Korean women’s hockey team Saturday night (the Koreans lost to Switzerland, 8-0), said that they were excited about the historic moment and having the chance to see women from the two countries play together.
But they drew a sharp line between the athletes and citizens of North Korea, on one hand, and the dignitaries sitting in the stands representing Kim Jong-un’s regime on the other.
“I think Kim Jong-un is really a bad person and a villain,” said Park Keon-ho, 24, a computer science student at Korea University of Technology and Education. “But I love North Koreans. I think North Koreans and South Koreans were all together as one family, and we come from the same root.”
MOSCOW — A Russian passenger plane crashed near Moscow shortly after taking off from one of the city’s airports Sunday. The country’s transportation minister said all 71 people on board were killed in the crash.
The Saratov Airlines regional jet disappeared from radar screens a few minutes after departing from Domodedovo Airport en route to Orsk, a city some 1,500 kilometers, about 1,000 miles, southeast of Moscow.
Fragments from the Antonov An-148 airliner were found in the Ramenskoye area, about 40 kilometers, about 25 miles, from the airport. Footage on state television showed them strewn across a snowy field with no buildings nearby. No on the ground casualties were reported.
Investigators said debris and human remains were spread across 1 kilometer at the crash site, Reuters news agency reports.
Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov said Sunday afternoon that “judging by everything, no one has survived this crash.” He did not give the number of people on board, but Russian news reports said the plane carried 65 passengers and six crew members.
Russia’s Investigative Committee said all possible causes were being explored.
Russian President Vladimir Putin put off a planned trip to Sochi in order to closely monitor the investigation. Putin was to meet Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas on Monday in the Black Sea resort, where the president has an official residence.
Instead, Abbas will meet with Putin in Moscow in the latter part of Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian news agencies.
The An-148 was developed by Ukraine’s Antonov company in the early 2000s and manufactured in both Ukraine and Russia. Russian state news agency Tass said the plane that crashed had been flying since 2010, with a two-year break because of a shortage of parts.
The plane was ordered by Rossiya Airlines, a subsidiary of Aeroflot, but was put into storage during 2015-2017 because of the parts shortage. Tass reported that it re-entered service for Saratov Airlines in February 2017.
In this screen grab provided by the Life.ru, the wreckage of a AN-148 plane is seen in Stepanovskoye village, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the Domodedovo airport, Russia, Sunday, Feb. 11, 2018.
Shabby equipment and poor supervision had plagued Russian civil aviation for years after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, but its safety record has improved markedly in recent years.
The last large-scale crash in Russia occurred on Dec. 25, 2016, when a Tu-154 operated by the Russian Defense Ministry on its way to Syria crashed into the Black Sea minutes after takeoff from the southern Russian city of Sochi. All 92 people on board were killed.
In March 2016, a Boeing 737-800 flown by FlyDubai crashed while landing at Rostov-on-Don, killing all 62 people aboard.
An onboard bomb destroyed a Russian Metrojet airliner soon after taking off from Egypt’s Sharm al-Sheikh resort, killing 224 people in October 2015.
Emergency services work at the scene where a short-haul regional Antonov AN-148 plane crashed after taking off from Moscow’s Domodedovo airport, outside Moscow, Russia February 11, 2018.
Senior White House aides insisted Sunday that President Trump remains confident in Chief of Staff John F. Kelly amid staff turmoil and said the president is not looking to replace the retired four-star general hired six months ago with a mandate to corral chaos.
“I spoke with the president last night about this very issue, and he wanted me to reemphasize to everyone, including this morning, that he has full confidence in his current chief of staff, Gen. John Kelly, and that he is not actively looking for replacements,” White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said in an interview on ABC’s “This Week.”
She added that Trump also remains confident in communications director Hope Hicks, a long-serving aide under scrutiny for her role in the White House response to spousal abuse allegations against former staff secretary Rob Porter, with whom she had a romantic relationship.
Porter resigned or was fired Wednesday, a day after Kelly had defended him as “a man of of true integrity and honor” in a statement in which Hicks apparently had a hand.
Kelly did not offer his resignation over criticism of his handling of the Porter case, White House legislative director Marc Short said in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Numerous news reports had said Kelly offered to quit or was ready to do so Friday, but the chief of staff had denied in a separate NBC interview Friday that he had ever offered his resignation.
President Trump sits next to White House chief of staff John F. Kelly during a White House briefing in October. (Yuri Gripas/Reuters)
“John Kelly knows that he serves at the pleasure of the president,” Short said. “And he will step aside anytime the president doesn’t want him to be there. But John Kelly has not offered his resignation. John Kelly is doing an outstanding job.”
On CNN’s “State of the Union,” Conway defended Trump’s response Friday to the accusations against Porter, in which the president praised Porter’s work and said “we wish him well” in his career. Trump had also stressed to reporters that Porter denies the allegations from his two former wives that he was physically and emotionally abusive. Trump did not mention the women or address the substance of their claims in those remarks or in a tweet Saturday that decried how “lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation.”
Trump, Conway said, “is sympathetic to women and men that are victims of domestic violence.”
On ABC, Conway elaborated that Trump believes “you have to consider all sides. He has said this in the past about incidents that relate to him as well.”
That was a reference to allegations by more than a dozen women that Trump had sexually abused or harassed them. Trump denies the allegations and has said they were fabricated to sunder his political career.
“I have no reason not to believe the women” who accuse Porter of abuse, Conway said. “And a week ago, I had no reason to believe that that had ever happened.”
“We do give people the benefit of the doubt,” she continued. “I don’t walk around the White House wondering, ‘Who is this person really?’ And we work in very close quarters together, and we’re trying, as just small pieces of this, to do good for the country.”
Conway was asked on CNN whether Kelly and White House counsel Donald McGahn had known about the abuse allegations for several months.
“Well, there is no way for me to know what those two men knew, because I’m not in that line, and nor should I be,” she replied.
CHICAGO — A winter storm pounding the Midwest caused at least two deaths Friday, authorities said, while closing schools and forcing the cancellation of hundreds of flights.
Snow-related crashed snarled highways across southern Michigan, with one person killed when a semitrailer struck the rear of a car stopped in traffic on U.S. 23 near Flint, police said.
A Michigan State Police trooper was hospitalized after a pickup truck lost control and slammed into his stopped squad on Interstate 94 northeast of Detroit. A pileup on the same highway just east of Kalamazoo in southwestern Michigan of collected 38 vehicle including 16 semitrailers in eastbound lanes Friday afternoon, causing only minor injuries.
In Naperville, Illinois, just west of Chicago, a man in his 60s died after suffering a heart attack while shoveling snow Friday morning, Edward Hospital spokesman Keith Hartenberger told the Chicago Tribune.
The National Weather Service reported 10 inches of snow on the ground Friday afternoon in suburban Chicago and 11 inches near South Bend, Indiana. Chicago was forecast to receive as much as 14 inches of snow with Detroit expecting up to 9 inches.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said the city was gearing up for three more rounds of snow through the weekend.
“The good news is we’re tried and tested here,” he said. “We’re up to it.”
Three northern Indiana counties posted travel watches, recommending only essential travel
More than 1,000 flights were canceled at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport and more than 300 were canceled at Midway, the Chicago Department of Aviation reported Friday afternoon. More than 260 flights were canceled at Detroit Metropolitan Airport in Romulus, Michigan.
A worker sweeps snow from a doorway on a commuter train.AP
Hank Stawasz was out shoveling his driveway by hand, clearing a path for the retiree to exit his home in the Detroit suburb of Livonia.
“It’s part of living in Michigan,” a smiling Stawasz said from underneath his Detroit Red Wings winter hat. “I saw the plows come by, so I figured I’d get a jump on it so I wouldn’t have to shovel it when it’s 4 feet high.”
Thousands of children got a rare snow day off school after school districts in Chicago, Detroit and Milwaukee canceled classes. Schools across Nebraska and Iowa also closed or delayed the start of classes.
It made for a great day for kids to go sledding, make snow angels and play with pets outside instead of reading, writing and arithmetic. Angela Lekkas took her children sledding in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood.
“The kids couldn’t wait to get out today,” she said. “This is the first true snowfall of the season.”
The Indiana Department of Transportation resorted to sending teams of as many as four plows simultaneously to clear some highways. Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation Commissioner John Tully said 300 salt-spreading plows hit the streets late Thursday and would continue their work through the weekend.
The Syrian war has seen no shortage of twists already this year, but this weekend, it saw on of its most consequential. On Saturday, Israel’s military announced that it had carried out a “large-scale” aerial attack inside Syria, after a back-and-forth clashes overnight in which an Iranian drone was shot down in Syrian territory and an Israeli F-16 was downed by Syrian antiaircraft fire.
Despite its proximity, Israel has largely stood on the sidelines of the Syrian conflict over the past seven years. Saturday’s airstrikes, however, suggest that it may soon end up sucked into a conflict that is looking increasingly chaotic after the military defeat of the Islamic State. If Israel does become more engaged in the fighting next door, it could have serious consequences for the war in Syria war — and for the region as a whole.
What has Israel’s involvement in the Syrian war been so far?
Israel shares a contentious border with Syria — the Golan Heights — and it has long had openly adversarial relations with not only Bashar al-Assad’s government but with Syria’s allies Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia. However, Israel also had little reason to support the Islamic State or al-Qaeda-aligned Islamists groups that became the Syrian government’s primary rivals.
Still, Israel has conducted dozens of covert airstrikes against Hezbollah weapons convoys in Syria. These interventions generally were not announced publicly and were small in scale. Syrian government forces and their allies have generally refrained from responding, wary of opening up yet another front in an already chaotic conflict.
Things began to change over the past year, however, as the Islamic State lost territory and Assad’s forces and their allies regained control of the conflict.
Last year, Israel pushed back against a partial cease-fire brokered by the United States and Russia, arguing that it allowed Iranian expansion near Israel’s borders. Many in Israel feared not only that Iran and its allies would entrench themselves near the Israeli border but that Hezbollah had been using the Syrian fighting as a training and that Iran might help the militia upgrade to the use of precision-guided missiles.
“We will not allow that regime to entrench itself militarily in Syria, as it seeks to do, for the express purpose of eradicating our state,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said during a visit to Washington in December.
Why is what happened Saturday different from previous Israeli strikes?
Israel has carried out a number of significant attacks in Syria in recent months, but Saturday’s incident is different. Israel says the episode began with an Iranian drone crossing into its territory from Syria in the early hours of Saturday. The Israeli military later released footage that it said showed the drone being brought down by an attack helicopter.
Iran has denied this, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahran Qasemi calling the claim “ridiculous.” If it is true, however, it would appear to mark a significant provocation from Tehran and perhaps even an attempt to bait Israel into a reaction.
Israel soon sent fighter jets into Syria to attack the T4 military base near the Syrian city of Palmyra, from which the drone supposedly was launched. Syrian forces in turn responded with what the Israeli military called “substantial Syrian antiaircraft fire,” which appears to have caused the crash of an Israeli fighter jet after its two-member crew ejected.
The crew members were taken to hospital; one is reported to be in a serious condition. “This is the first such incident in the last 30 years,” Israeli military journalist Amos Harel wrote Saturday, adding that Syria’s willingness to retaliate to Israeli airstrikes showed “the regime’s newfound sense of power.”
In a statement, Hezbollah said that the downing of the Israeli F-16 marked a “new strategic phase” in the conflict. “Today’s developments mean the old equations have categorically ended,” the group said in a statement.
After the downing of the fighter jet, the Israeli military struck again, targeting 12 military sites in Syria — eight Syrian and four that it says were Iranian — marking Israel’s most significant strikes in Syria in decades. Brig. Gen. Tomer Bar, second -n-command of Israel’s air force, told Haaretz newspaper that these strikes were “the biggest and most significant attack the air force has conducted against Syrian air defenses” since the 1982 Lebanon War.
If Israel became more militarily involved in the conflict, what would it mean for the Syrian war — and the wider region?
Open conflict across the Syrian border is unlikely to be in the interest of either Israel or Iran-aligned forces at the moment. But the tit-for-tat fighting shows that neither side is willing to back down. If the conflict escalates, it could end up adding a dangerous angle to the ongoing Syrian conflict — and one that could wind up involving other powers in the region and beyond.
The T4 military base struck by Israel on Saturday houses not only Syrian soldiers but Russian military officers, too. Some Israeli observers have said it is hard to imagine that the Russians there would not have known about the Iranian drone or the subsequent antiaircraft fire. Awkwardly, late last month, Netanyahu visited Moscow to push Russia to rein in its Iranian allies in Syria.
The United States, a key Israeli ally, is already involved in the Syrian conflict, backing Syrian rebels, and at times has found itself at odds with Russia. This past week, U.S. warplanes bombed pro-government forces after they allegedly advanced on U.S.-backed forces in the eastern province of Deir al-Zour. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has said it is unclear whether Russian contractors were among those involved in that advance.
The U.S.- and Russian-backed forces had a common enemy in the Islamic State, but as the fight against ISIS forces is winding down, new conflicts seem to be rising in Syria. Turkey, for example, recently launched its own offensive against Kurdish fighters in Syria’s north, placing it in de facto opposition to the United States, which had allied itself with some Kurdish forces to defeat Islamic State forces.
An open conflict between Israel and Iranian-backed forces would add to the entanglements and chaos in Syria. It would also risk pulling neighboring Lebanon or other Arab states into a new war, too.
WESTERVILLE, Ohio — Two police officers were fatally shot in Ohio on Saturday afternoon, authorities said. The shooting suspect was wounded in the incident and taken to a nearby hospital.
One officer was killed during the shooting and another died in surgery at Ohio State University Medical Center, a Westerville Police Department spokesperson told CBS News.
The shooting took place around 11:30 a.m. Saturday on Crosswind Drive. Officers were responding to a 911 call at the address, and were fired upon when they arrived at the scene.
CBS Columbus affiliate WBNS posted images that showed multiple police cruisers at the scene. Westerville is located 15 miles north of Columbus.
“We are deeply saddened to report that one of our officers has been killed in the line of duty,” the City of Westerville tweeted Saturday. “Please continue to follow back for more information.”
Sen. Kevin Bacon, R-Minerva Park, issued a statement offering condolences to the officers’ families.
“Our hearts and prayers are with the Westerville officers, their friends, families and the Westerville Police Department at this difficult time,” Bacon said. “Now is one of those times and we — as a community — must rally behind the families and fellow officers.”
WBNS images show the scene where two officers were shot in Westerville, Ohio.
12:32 p.m.: Multiple agencies, including the Henry County Sheriff’s Office, the GBI and the Locust Grove and Henry County police departments, are investigating. An agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is also on the scene in the 1200 block of St. Francis Court in Locust Grove.
