Far above accidents or injuries, travelers are concerned about civil unrest and terrorism while traveling, according to Global Rescue’s Winter 2024 Traveler Sentiment and Safety Survey.
The survey, which asked over 1,500 current and former Global Rescue members about their travel concerns in late January, revealed that 36% of travelers are most concerned with civil unrest and terrorism, a three-fold increase from spring 2023.
One quarter of respondents are most concerned with having an accident or getting sick during their trip, a decrease from the spring 2023 survey, in which 50% of travelers reported this as their biggest concern.
Seven to 9% of travelers reported trip cancellations, robbery or theft were their biggest concerns, while 5% each feared testing positive for COVID-19 and increasing natural disasters.
Additionally, 34% of respondents noted that recent global crises such as the wars in Ukraine and Gaza are more likely to encourage them to purchase extra travel protection that involves security extraction or other conflict-specific protections.
“We’re seeing an understandable increase in traveler concern worldwide. Nevertheless, international trip takers continue to travel anyway despite the rising threats of civil unrest, war, and terrorism,” said Dan Richards, CEO of The Global Rescue Companies, the world’s leading provider of medical, security, evacuation and travel risk management services, and a member of the U.S. Travel and Tourism Advisory Board at the U.S. Department of Commerce.
“Traveler uncertainty generally increases traveler demand for emergency medical and security services,” Richards said. “Last year, traveler purchases of security and extraction services increased by 36%, and we expect that will continue in 2024. We’ve seen this traveler behavior since the war in Ukraine, and we’re seeing it continue following the attacks on Israel.”
By ERIC TUCKER, ALANNA DURKIN RICHER and CHRIS MEGERIAN (Associated Press)
WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s a now-familiar ritual in Washington: a federal prosecutor being summoned to Capitol Hill to discuss the findings of a politically explosive investigation.
Tuesday’s hearing with special counsel Robert Hur, who investigated President Joe Biden’s handling of classified information, broke little new legal or political ground. But it delivered plenty of talk about the president’s memory — faulty, in Hur’s assessment — about the laws surrounding classified material and, of course, lots of talk about Donald Trump.
Here are a half dozen notable moments from Hur’s testimony, the questioning surrounding it and the newly released transcript of Biden’s fall interview with the investigator:
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Democrats sought to use Hur’s Republican bona fides to paint him as a political partisan who set out to smear Biden to hurt the president’s reelection campaign.
Though Hur concluded Biden should not face criminal charges, the special counsel also impugned Biden’s age and competence, saying in his report that the president would probably come across to jurors as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
In one of the most contentious exchanges of the hearing, Rep. Hank Johnson, a Democrat from Georgia, walked through Hur’s career, including his time as a law clerk for conservative Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist and his service as a top official in the Trump Justice Department.
Johnson accused Hur of slamming Biden to try to boost Trump’s campaign, saying Hur knew his characterization of the president’s age and memory “would play into the Republicans’ narrative that the president is unfit for office because he’s senile.”
Hur acknowledged that he is a registered Republican, leading to a smattering of clapping in the crowd. But Hur insisted that politics had nothing to do with his investigation. And he rejected Johnson’s suggestion that he was trying to get Trump elected because he wants to become a federal judge or return to the Justice Department.
“I can tell you that partisan politics had no place whatsoever in my work,” Hur said. “It had no place in the investigative steps that I took, it had no place in the decision that I made. And it had no place in a single word of my report.”
Trump, the former president and Biden’s expected opponent in this year’s election, was nowhere in the committee room and the prosecutor who investigated him, Jack Smith, wasn’t on the committee witness list.
But that didn’t stop Trump from being a central character in Tuesday’s hearing. Democrats time and again invoked the criminal case charging the ex-president with illegally hoarding classified documents and refusing to give them back as a way to a distinguish his behavior from that of Biden.
Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York asked rhetorically why Trump was charged but Biden was not.
“Not because of some vast conspiracy, not because the so-called ‘deep state’ was out to get him, but because former President Trump was fundamentally incapable of taking advantage of even one of the many, many chances he was given to avoid those charges,” Nadler said.
Indeed, both Hur and Smith have taken great pains to illuminate the factual and legal differences between the two investigations.
Biden’s team returned the documents after they were discovered, and the president cooperated with the investigation by voluntarily sitting for an interview and consenting to searches of his homes.
Trump, by contrast, is accused of knowingly storing classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate, obstructing FBI efforts to get them back, soliciting the help of aides to conceal the documents from the government and seeking to have incriminating evidence destroyed.
The hearing, just like the report, featured substantial discussion of the ins and outs of the criminal statutes governing the mishandling of classified information.
Republican lawmakers appeared repeatedly aghast that Hur could have recommended against prosecution, particularly given the haphazard storage of classified documents in a home garage as well as a recorded conversation in which Biden can be heard telling his ghostwriter that he had “just found all the classified stuff downstairs.”
But Hur repeatedly reminded committee members that the most relevant statute at issue in the investigation requires that the unlawful retention of national defense information be willful — in other words, that it’s done with criminal intent. It’s a high standard that investigators in some other prominent probes have not met, such as in the Hillary Clinton email inquiry.
Hur did say in his report that he had uncovered evidence to support the idea of willful retention, but repeatedly noted he had not found enough to establish proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican, said Hur had found the elements of a criminal violation but had given the president a pass because Biden was “senile.” Hur objected to that characterization.
“I need to disagree with at least one thing that you said, which is that I found that all of the elements were met,” Hur said. “One of the elements of the relevant mishandling statute is the intent element. And what my report reflects is my judgment that based on the evidence, I would not be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury that that intent element had been met.”
The release of the transcript of Biden’s interview with Hur and the special counsel’s hours of testimony on Tuesday were unlikely to change anyone’s preconceived notions on the 81-year-old president’s mental stamina and fitness for office.
Biden repeatedly demonstrated a fuzzy recollection of some dates in his interviews with Hur, including the year of his son’s death and the years of his service as vice president. But he also demonstrated his ability to provide detailed accounts of both significant and mundane parts of his life.
Biden gave Hur a “photographic” overview of his home, long discourses on his political life and humorous asides about his sports car.
The interview transcript showed that Hur never asked Biden about the timing of his son Beau’s death, as the president had angrily accused him of doing. But it also suggests Hur’s exchange with Biden about his son was less revealing about the president’s memory than the special counsel had indicated when he cited the episode as an example of the president’s confusion.
Already the country’s oldest president, Biden is seeking another term that if served out would have him at age 86 when he left office.
Biden has a stable of well-worn stories from his life and career that he uses when he speaks publicly. Turns out, he uses them when he’s talking privately, too.
The transcript of his interviews with the special counsel shows how Biden revisited some of his most oft-told tales with the investigators who questioned him.
There’s the one about how he decided to run for president following the violence at the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017. “And then a young woman got killed, and I spoke to her mom,” Biden said. “And that’s when I decided that I’ve got to run. I’ve got to be involved, because I thought, presumptuous of me, that I was the antithesis of everything that this guy stood for, and I could beat him.”
Later, he told investigators the story of his trip to Mongolia when he was vice president, where he got handed a bow and arrow during a demonstration of an invasion of yore. “Pure luck, I hit the goddam target.”
And there was the story of his son Beau’s death, which helped propel Biden back into public life and inspired the title of his memoir, “Promise Me, Dad.” As Beau Biden was dying of brain cancer, he asked for a minute of his father’s time, Biden recalled.
And that’s when Beau said, according to the president: “’Promise me, dad. You have to stay engaged, promise me.”
Anyone expecting a sober discussion of the finer points of classified document handling would have been disappointed. Instead, Democrats and Republicans used the hearing as a vehicle to attack the other party’s presidential candidate.
The strategy was clear from the opening moments. Rep. Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican, played a lengthy clip of a Biden press conference where he responded to Hur’s report but accidentally referred to Egypt’s leader as “the president of Mexico.”
Nadler responded with a sizzle reel of Trump struggling to remember things or messing up names.
Other Democrats also saw an opportunity to bring up Trump’s legal troubles beyond those involving classified documents. Rep. Ted Lieu, a California Democrat, asked Hur whether he uncovered evidence that Biden paid hush money to a porn actress or former Playboy model. (“No,” Hur replied.)
It’s unlikely that either side landed a knockout blow, even after hours of testimony. Voters’ views of Trump and Biden are deeply entrenched after years in the public eye.
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AP writer Colleen Long contributed to this report.
With the 2024 Oscars in the books, some cinephiles might be ready to move on to new films, but others may want to catch up with the winners they have yet to see. Fortunately, many of the winningest films from Hollywood’s biggest night are available to stream, so it’s easy to watch (or rewatch) the best films of 2023.
The big winners of the night were Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” about the making — and political fallout — of the atomic bomb, and “Poor Things,” Yorgos Lanthimos’ fantastical and outré odyssey of a woman on a journey through the world to find herself.
Both films picked up several craft awards as well as acting prizes, though “Oppenheimer” walked away with the Academy’s top honors, for best director and best picture. Adapted from the book “American Prometheus” by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, the bombastic cinematic experience stars Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer, and follows his life as a young student and professor, through the development of the atomic bomb, and the Senate hearings years later stripping him of his security clearance. Robert Downey Jr. won best supporting actor for his performance as Lewis Strauss, and Murphy won best actor. The film also won for best editing for Jennifer Lame, best cinematography for Hoyte van Hoytema, and best score for Ludwig Goransson. Stream “Oppenheimer” on Peacock or rent it on other digital platforms.
“Poor Things” started the night with a run of craft awards, taking home the Oscars for best costumes, makeup and hairstyling, and production design for the artisans who crafted the inventive, colorful and heightened Victorian world of the film. At the end of the night, Emma Stone’s win for best actress was a surprise upset over Lily Gladstone in “Killers of the Flower Moon,” though the race was neck-and-neck, as the two actresses traded top prizes back and forth all season. “Poor Things” is available to stream on Hulu, or for purchase on other digital platforms.
The incredible “Killers of the Flower Moon” may have gone home empty-handed, despite 10 nominations, but the film is a monumental achievement by an American master, Martin Scorsese. Gladstone, Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro (also nominated for supporting actor) do jaw-dropping work in this film that reckons with the genocide of indigenous people in the United States and the ways in which we tell those stories. It finds the 80-year-old Scorsese making films just as vibrant and vital as anything he did in his youth. Stream it on Apple TV+ or purchase it on other digital platforms.
Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest,” which was also nominated for best director and best picture, won the best international film and best sound Oscars. This piercing Holocaust drama imagines the domestic life of Rudolph Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz, and his wife, Hedwig, and their children. The sound design of the film, by Johnnie Burn, creates the dramatic dissonance between their home life and the atrocities of the Holocaust happening just on the other side of the wall. Purchase “The Zone of Interest” on all digital platforms (it is not yet available to rent).
Partnered writing team Justine Triet and Arthur Harari won the award for best original screenplay for their “Anatomy of a Fall,” which Triet directed. The French film stars German actress Sandra Hüller as a woman accused of murdering her husband, and the courtroom drama that ensues is an exploration of partnership, jealousy, gender roles, and the ethics of creative professionalism. It’s a fascinating dissertation on these topics wrapped up in a dishy “Snapped”-style narrative. Rent “Anatomy of a Fall” on all digital platforms.
First-time feature writer/director Cord Jefferson won the adapted screenplay award for his literary satire “American Fiction,” based on Percival Everett’s book “Erasure.” Jeffrey Wright and Sterling K. Brown were also nominated for their performances, and the film was nominated for best picture and best score. Jefferson’s speech became one of the big moments of the night, as he implored Hollywood to greenlight more mid-budget features instead of expensive blockbusters. Stream “American Fiction” on MGM+ or rent it on other digital platforms.
In more big moments of the night, “Barbie” won best song — “What Was I Made For?” — for Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell, and Ryan Gosling rocked the Dolby Theater with a cavalcade of Kens for an “I’m Just Ken” performance. Stream “Barbie” on Max.
Finally, the powerful documentary “20 Days in Mariupol” won best documentary — the first Ukrainian film to win an Oscar — with director Mstyslav Chernov delivering an impassioned, grief-filled speech about the ongoing invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Stream it on PBS Frontline or rent it on all platforms.
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(Katie Walsh is the Tribune News Service film critic and co-host of the “Miami Nice” podcast.)
Sgt. Bill Harrell was one of five Washington County Sheriff’s Office sergeants who volunteered in February to keep a recently donated fire-suppression tool in his squad car.
Four days after receiving the device, Harrell was called to the scene of a fire in St. Paul Park and used the device to help contain a kitchen fire in a two-story house. After locating the source of the Feb. 19 fire, Harrell pulled the device’s two pins and threw it in a side door that had been pried open.
The device sprays an aerosol mixture that helps suffocate the flames. “You have eight seconds before it detonates,” he said. “I pulled the pins, threw it in the room and shut the door. You have to seal up the room so no oxygen gets in.”
The device helped “slow the fire down quite a bit and kept it from getting worse,” St. Paul Park Fire Chief Michael Kramer said at a news conference on Tuesday morning.
It is believed to be the first time one of the devices has been used at a fire in Minnesota, Washington County Sheriff Dan Starry said Tuesday.
Harrell, who is stationed in Newport, beat the city’s volunteer on-call fire department to the scene in the 1100 block of Dayton Avenue.
“I’ve been to numerous house fires and structure fires through the years where I haven’t been able to do much,” he said. “We have fire extinguishers in our cars, but they have limited capabilities. It was gratifying to go to a fire and actually be able to do something productive – and really feel like I was making a difference.”
Donated by Masonic Lodge
The device – donated by St. John’s Masonic Lodge No. 1 of Stillwater – releases nontoxic aerosols into the air that can knock down a fire up to approximately 5,300 square feet and can “lower the temperature of a fire by about 1,000 degrees in less than a minute,” said Matthew Stepaniak, a member of the St. John’s Masonic Lodge.
The devices, which cost about $1,000 each, can dramatically reduce fire and water damage in structures, Stepaniak said. In addition, the aerosols that are released are safe for humans and pets, and can be easily cleaned up after a fire.
The owners of the house, Mark and Lin Gisselquist, said the device helped save the “shell” of their house. “They are going to have to take it all the way down to the studs and start over,” Lin Gisselquist said. “They will save what they can.”
St. Paul Park Firefighter Ron Hall, left, and Police Officer Steven Quinones-Narvaez leave the scene of the fire with Kota, a golden Lab rescued from the home. (Courtesy of Mike Zenner)
When fire officials arrived on the scene, they were able to get into the house and rescue the two dogs – Kota and Cooper – that were in the house. Kota, a yellow Lab, belongs to the Gisselquists; Cooper, a Golden Doodle, belongs to friends who were on vacation. Both dogs had to be treated at an animal emergency clinic in Oakdale; the family’s goldfish, Bacon and Eggs, perished in the fire, she said.
Mark Gisselquist, who works across the street at Pullman Elementary School, was the one to initially spot the smoke coming from the roof of their house. Gisselquist, who works as the school’s day foreman, was pre-soaking the school’s entryway mats and getting the carpet cleaner ready “when I just happened to look out the front doors,” he said.
“I always do that. I’m always watching the neighborhood and my house. I looked at my house like I normally do, and I just happened to see some dark smoke out of the wind turbine on the roof.”
Gisselquist at first thought that a next-door neighbor might be having a bonfire “because he sometimes does that,” he said.
“But then he thought, ‘Wait, it’s February, and it’s 9 in the morning,’” Lin Gisselquist said. “It just didn’t make sense to him.”
Gisselquist called 911 as he ran across the street. “I ran out without my sweatshirt and without my keys,” he said. “My adrenaline was pumping.”
Fortunately, Lin Gisselquist and the couple’s daughter, Kate, 14, were at a dentist appointment and a hair appointment in Eagan that morning.
An official cause of the fire has not yet been determined, but Mark Gisselquist believes a light switch in the kitchen that “either came loose or was faulty” is to blame.
‘Overwhelmed by kindness’
The Gisselquists, who have lived in the two-bedroom house since 1996, stayed at two different Marriott hotels in Woodbury before moving into a rental unit in Woodbury on Monday. Cleaners are determining what, if anything, can be salvaged from the house, Lin Gisselquist said.
The couple has insurance, but it does not cover everything, Lin Gisselquist said. “There are the emergency veterinarian bills and several other large and unexpected expenses during this process,” she said.
MN Senate advances school resource officers bill, but more work remains
The Gisselquists’ church, Newport Lutheran Church, is holding a pancake breakfast after church on Palm Sunday as a fundraiser. A family member also plans to set up a GoFundMe online fundraiser. Donations also can be left for the Gisselquists at City and County Credit Union in Woodbury.
“To be honest with you, we are overwhelmed by the kindness and love we’ve been shown since this incident,” Lin Gisselquist said. “We are used to being the helpers and the givers, not the receivers. Our pastor told us, ‘If it were somebody else, you would be the first in line to help. Now it’s your turn.’ She made me cry. I hate when she does that.”
Part of the money raised will be used to donate a fire-suppression system – like the one used on their house – to the sheriff’s office, she said.
“Farmers Insurance will only reimburse up to $500 for any equipment used by the fire department,” she said. “Once we have our basic needs, we want to make sure another family has an opportunity to use this device … so they have something to go back to.”
‘Everything worked’
In a letter to Harrell after the fire, Kramer thanked him for his assistance. “Without the donated device and your quick thinking, we may have had a different outcome that morning,” Kramer wrote.
The device slowed the progression of the fire and “kept it to the room of source … allowing us to rescue the two pet dogs from the basement,” he wrote.
“Everything worked,” Kramer said in an interview last week. “It got called in at the right time. If there were already flames coming out of the structure, it would have slowed it down some, but it still would have been probably quite a bit of loss.”
Kramer said the more first responders who have equipment like fire-suppression devices in their vehicles, the better.
A Fire Suppression Tool like the ones donated to Washington County first responders in January 2024 by St. John’s Lodge Masonic Lodge #1 of Stillwater. The portable device deploys a nontoxic aerosol to suppress fires, reducing fire and water damage. (Courtesy of St. John’s Masonic Lodge #1)
A deployed Fire Suppression Tool helped contain a fire at a family’s house in St. Paul Park on Feb. 19, 2024. (Courtesy of the Washington County Sheriff’s Office)
“It helps,” he said. “We’re all in the same business. If you want to put a simple term to it, it’s customer service. If they can get in there and save some property and slow things down, yeah, without harming themselves or putting themselves in danger, it really helps.”
St. John’s Masonic Lodge No. 1, which was founded in 1854, is “committed to ensuring that we make our community a better and safer place now and in the future,” Stepaniak said. “Hopefully this will be one more thing (first responders) can use to keep our neighbors safe here in Washington County.”
The devices, which have a 15-year shelf life, can sustain temperatures down to 55 degrees below zero. They are manufactured by Fireball Suppression Solutions in Slinger, Wis.
The lodge has donated 24 devices to public-safety departments in Washington County, including 14 with the Washington County Sheriff’s Office; three with the Stillwater Police Department; three with the Oak Park Heights Police Department; two with the Bayport Police Department; one with the Stillwater Fire Department and one with the Bayport Fire Department.
That number includes replacing the one that was deployed on Feb. 19, Stepaniak said.
Township elections are usually ho-hum affairs. Not this month in Washington County.
The devices were paid for by donations from members of the St. John’s Masonic Lodge and Macalester Masonic Lodge in St. Paul and by a grant from the Stillwater Sunrise Rotary Club, along with matching grants provided through the Minnesota Masonic Charities and Grand Lodge of Minnesota, Stepaniak said.
The Masons plan to donate 80 to 100 of the devices to public-safety departments in the county by the end of the year, he said.
The Masons, which have donated more than 115 of the devices around the state, are using the devices to help spread the word about their organization, said Dayton Berg, the Masons’ Grand Master of Minnesota.
“I thought it would be a good way to introduce the Masons back in Minnesota,” Berg said. “We want to recruit new members.”
