“Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says he had a call with Elon Musk, despite their differences — because sometimes, it’s just better to get on the horn with someone and clear things up.
On Friday, Buttigieg refuted a series of claims made by the Tesla and SpaceX CEO. Musk had in an X post accused the government of closing the airspace in Asheville, North Carolina, to block recovery efforts.
Musk also blamed the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the government’s disaster relief group, and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
Buttigieg responded to Musk, writing: “No one is shutting down the airspace and FAA doesn’t block legitimate rescue and recovery flights. If you’re encountering a problem give me a call.”
The two men then had a chat via phone call, Buttigieg confirmed in an interview with MSNBC’s Jen Psaki released on Sunday.
“He called,” Buttigieg told Psaki. “We had a conversation.”
Buttigieg told MSNBC that some of the confusion on X stemmed from Temporary Flight Restrictions (TFRs), a move by the Federal Aviation Administration to ensure safety for aircraft conducting Hurricane Helene rescue and recovery activities.
Buttigieg said, however, he and Musk managed to get to the bottom of what was happening, and sort out problems for pilots helping to get Starlink equipment to disaster-hit areas.
“We were able to take care of it,” Buttigieg said. “And, I think, to me it’s an example of how often the best thing to do is just to pick up the phone.”
Later on Friday, Musk had a more positive tone while replying to a post from Buttigieg on X about the government delivering additional emergency relief to South Carolina.
Musk said, “Thanks for expediting approval for support flights. Just wanted to note that Sec Buttigieg is on the ball.”
Buttigieg replied, writing: “Glad we could address — thanks for engaging.”
Musk and Buttigieg have had public disagreements over everything from tax credits for electric vehicles to the safety of driverless cars.”
Russia’s nuclear doctrine change makes their use of nuclear weapons more likely, but the factors that make nuclear use a poor choice still exist, so their use is still unlikely.
“Previous research on teacher strikes in Argentina, Canada, and Belgium, where work stoppages lasted much longer, found large negative effects on student achievement from teacher strikes. (In the Argentina study, the average student lost 88 school days.)
In contrast, the researchers find no evidence that US teacher strikes, which are much shorter, affected reading or math achievement for students in the year of the strike, or in the five years after. While US strikes lasting two or more weeks negatively affected math achievement in both the year of the strike and the year after, scores rebounded for students after that.
In fact, Lyon said they could not rule out that the brief teacher strikes actually boosted student learning over time, given the increased school spending associated with them. A recent influential meta-analysis on school finance found that increasing operational spending by $1,000 per student for four years helped student learning.
It’s possible higher wages could reduce teacher burnout, or the need to work second jobs, leading to improved performance in the classroom. Still, Lyon explained, it’s also possible that increased spending on teachers would not lead to higher student test scores, if wage gains went primarily to more experienced teachers, or to pensions, or if teachers were already maximizing their effort before the strike.”
“Russia under the czars and in the era of the Soviet Union imposed its language, symbols and cultural institutions on Belarus. But with the demise of the USSR in 1991, the country began to assert its identity, and Belarusian briefly became the official language, with the white-red-white national flag replacing a version of the red hammer and sickle.
But all that changed in 1994, after Alexander Lukashenko, a former Soviet collective farm official, came to power. The authoritarian leader made Russian an official language, alongside Belarusian, and did away with the nationalist symbols.
Now, with Lukashenko in control of the country for over three decades, he has allowed Russia to dominate all aspects of life in Belarus, a country of 9.5 million people. Belarusian, which like Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet, is hardly heard on the streets of Minsk and other large cities anymore.
Official business is conducted in Russian, which dominates the majority of the media. Lukashenko speaks only Russian, and government officials often don’t use their native tongue.
The country depends on Russian loans and cheap energy and has created a political and military alliance with Moscow, allowing President Vladimir Putin to deploy troops and missiles on its soil, which was used as a staging area for the war in Ukraine.
“I understand that our Belarus is occupied. … And who is the president there? Not Lukashenko. The president is Putin,” said Svetlana Alexievich, who won the 2015 Nobel Prize for literature and lives in Germany in effective exile. “The nation has been humiliated and it will be very difficult for Belarusians to recover from this.”
Belarusian cultural figures have been persecuted and hundreds of its nationalist organizations have been closed. Experts say Moscow is seeking to implement in Belarus what the Kremlin intended to do in neighboring Ukraine when the war there began in 2022.
“It is obvious that our children are being deliberately deprived of their native language, history and Belarusian identity, but parents have been strongly advised not to ask questions about Russification,” said Mikalay’s father, Anatoly, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition his last name not be used, for fear of retribution.”