By MARCIA DUNN

NASA’s new boss blasted Boeing and the space agency Thursday for Starliner’s botched flight that left two astronauts stuck for months at the International Space Station.

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Administrator Jared Isaacman said poor leadership and decision-making at Boeing led to Starliner’s troubles. He also blamed NASA managers for failing to intervene and get Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams back more quickly.

The two test pilots, now retired from NASA, spent more than nine months at the station before catching a lift back with SpaceX last March.

Isaacman said Starliner’s problems must be better understood and fixed before any more astronauts strap in.

In a sweeping and emphatic move, Isaacman upgraded the seriousness of Starliner’s troubled astronaut debut, declaring it a “Type A mishap,” something that could endanger a crew. Both the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters also involved cultural and leadership missteps. It is a mistake that Starliner was not designated a serious mishap right from the start, Isaacman said, citing internal pressure to keep Boeing on board and flights on track.

“This is just about doing the right thing,” he said. “This is about getting the record straight.”

Thruster failures and other problems almost prevented Wilmore and Williams from reaching the space station following liftoff in 2024. The thruster analyses continue by Boeing.

“We almost did have a really terrible day,” said NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya, referring to a potential loss of life.

NASA issued its 312-page Starliner report while conducting a second fueling test of its moon rocket at Kennedy Space Center. Hydrogen fuel leaks spoiled the first dress rehearsal earlier this month and stalled astronauts’ first flight to the moon since 1972.

Boeing said the findings will help the company move forward in ensuring crew safety, and stressed that the Starliner program would continue. Time is running out as NASA proceeds toward decommissioning the space station in 2030, although Isaacman, a self-financed space traveler, foresees “endless demand” for multiple pathways to orbit once private outposts are booming.

There is no timeline for when Boeing can launch Starliner on a supply run, essentially another test flight to prove its safety before astronaut flights. The grounding leaves SpaceX as the only U.S. taxi service for astronauts.

“Boeing has made substantial progress on corrective actions for technical challenges we encountered and driven significant cultural changes across the team,” Boeing said in a statement.

Even before the troubled astronaut flight, Boeing was struggling with Starliner issues. The first test flight in 2019, without anyone on board, ended up in the wrong orbit and forced a repeat mission, which had its own difficulties.

NASA hired Boeing and SpaceX in 2014, in the wake of the space shuttles’ retirement, to ferry astronauts to and from the orbiting lab. Their contracts are worth billions. SpaceX just delivered its 13th crew to the space station for NASA since 2020.

Kshatriya said the space agency must do better moving forward.

“We have to own our part of this,” he said. As for Wilmore and Williams, “We failed them.”

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

By SOPHIA TAREEN

CHICAGO (AP) — Memorial services honoring the life of the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. will be expanded beyond Chicago with events in Washington, D.C., and South Carolina, the late civil rights leader’s organization announced Thursday.

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Jackson, a protégé of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and two-time presidential candidate, died earlier this week at age 84 after battling a rare neurological disorder that affected his ability to move and talk.

Jackson will still lie in repose next week at the Chicago headquarters of his Rainbow PUSH Coalition with a public celebration of life and homegoing services to follow, though dates for Chicago events have been changed. Formal services were added, scheduled from March 1 to March 4 in Washington, D.C., and South Carolina, where Jackson was born and raised.

Rainbow PUSH did not offer further details.

Jackson’s adult children gathered outside the family home in Chicago on Wednesday, saying the funeral services would be large gatherings where everyone would be welcomed. They also vowed to continue his decades of advocacy.

“Although his body is absent from us, his spirit suffuses and infuses us, and it charges us to continue with the work,” said Santita Jackson, his eldest child.

In Chicago, a public celebration of life will be held at House of Hope, a 10,000-seat church, on March 6, followed by private homegoing services the next day at Rainbow PUSH, which will be livestreamed.

Jackson rose to prominence six decades ago as a protégé of King, joining the voting rights march King led from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. King later dispatched Jackson to Chicago to launch Operation Breadbasket, a Southern Christian Leadership Conference effort to pressure companies to hire Black workers. Jackson was with King on April 4, 1968, when the civil rights leader was killed.

By REGINA GARCIA CANO, Associated Press

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuela’s legislature on Thursday approved an amnesty bill that could lead to the release of politicians, activists, lawyers and many others, effectively acknowledging that the government has held hundreds of people in prison for political motivations.

The approval marks a stark turn for the South American nation, where authorities have for decades denied holding any political prisoners. It is the latest policy reversal following the stunning U.S. military raid in the country’s capital, Caracas, to capture then-President Nicolás Maduro.

Acting President Delcy Rodríguez, who proposed the bill late last month, is expected to sign the measure.

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The bill could benefit opposition members, activists, human rights defenders, journalists and many others who were targeted by the ruling party over the past 27 years. The debate was suspended last week after lawmakers were unable to agree on some issues, including whether people who left the country to avoid detention can be granted amnesty, and laid bare the resistance from some ruling-party loyalists to see opposition members be granted relief.

Rodríguez proposed the bill weeks after the U.S. military captured Maduro on Jan. 3 in Caracas and took him to New York to face drug trafficking charges.

Venezuela’s government has been quick to comply with orders from the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, including last month’s overhaul of the country’s oil

As presented last week, the bill’s purpose is to grant people “a general and full amnesty for crimes or offenses committed” during specific periods since 1999 that were marked by politically-driven conflicts in Venezuela, including “acts of politically motivated violence” in the context of the 2024 presidential election. The aftermath of that election led to protests and the arrest of more than 2,000 people, including minors.

Lawmakers voted in favor of the measure’s purpose, but they paused the debate over disagreements on who it would cover, such as people whom the government has accused of various offenses but have evaded trial by hiding in Venezuela or seeking exile abroad. Ruling party lawmakers, including Maduro’s son, insisted during last week’s debate that those individuals should appear before the justice system first to qualify for amnesty as Venezuela’s law does not allow people to be tried in absentia.

“When one sins, I don’t absolve myself at home; I must go to church, I will go to confession (and say), ’Father, I confess that I have sinned,” Nicolás Maduro Guerra said, comparing the church with Venezuela’s justice system. “Therefore, the ritual of saying, ‘I came to the rule of law, and I acknowledge that we are under the law, under strong institutions that have endured and upheld the republic’ … is important.”

His statement, however, ignores that many of the accused, including people currently in prison, often face trumped up charges, are denied attorneys and lack access to any evidence against them. It also overlooks that cases are overseen by rubber-stamping, ruling-party faithful judges.

General amnesty has long been a central demand of Venezuela’s opposition and human rights organizations, but they have viewed the proposal with cautious optimism and raised several concerns about eligibility and implementation.

Venezuela-based prisoners’ rights group Foro Penal estimates more than 600 people are in custody for political reasons.

In the days after Maduro’s capture, Rodríguez’s government announced it would release a significant number of prisoners. But relatives and human rights watchdogs have criticized the slow pace of releases. Foro Penal has tallied 448.

Families hoping for the release of their loved ones have spent days outside detention facilities. A few began a hunger strike on Saturday.

Days into Minnesota’s 2026 legislative session, there are already signs that action on top issues at the Capitol faces questionable prospects in a closely divided state government.

Republican proposals intended to combat fraud in state government and DFL-backed bills aimed at protecting residents from abuses by federal immigration officials already face headwinds in a year where lawmakers technically don’t have to pass any legislation.

On Thursday and Wednesday, bills relating to both issues stalled after party-line votes in House committees, where control is evenly split between DFL and Republican representatives.

Oversight office

A proposal to create a new oversight office for state government agencies — something that passed last year with bipartisan support in the Minnesota Senate — stalled in the House State Government Finance Committee.

Democrats had attempted to amend the bill to remove language that would have created an independent law enforcement division at the proposed Office of Inspector General. The effort failed on a party-line vote as Republicans objected to an overhaul of the bill.

While Republicans have a slate of proposals aimed at fighting fraud, including creating criminal penalties for state employees who falsify paperwork during audits, the inspector general bill has the strongest bipartisan backing.

It passed in the DFL-majority Senate last year, though it didn’t get a vote in the tied House, where bills need both parties’ support.

Senate version

But as of the first week of the 2026 session, the fraud measure with the strongest support is in no better shape to reach DFL Gov. Tim Walz’s desk than it was in May.

Still, Sen. Michael Kreun, R-Blaine, who is carrying the Senate version with DFL Sen. Heather Gustafson of Vadnais Heights, told reporters Thursday that he remained optimistic, despite what he called House DFL efforts to “gut” the bill.

“It’s stalled, but it’s not dead. We still have time in this legislative session, and as I’ve said before, I’m willing to roll up my sleeves and do work on this bill, and to do some common sense amendments to tweak it here, to tweak it there,” he said. “But we’re not going to move backwards.”

House inspector general bill author Rep. Matt Norris, DFL-Blaine, said eliminating the independent law enforcement division from the inspector general would “avoid duplication of work” with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension’s financial crimes division.

Immigration enforcement

Just like fraud bills, any bills on federal immigration enforcement face dimmer prospects in the 67-67 House than they do in the Senate, where the DFL has 34 seats to the GOP’s 33.

Meanwhile, a DFL-backed bill to ban warrantless entry of publicly accessible areas of schools by immigration agents stalled on a tied vote in the Education Policy Committee on Wednesday.

That’s just one of the many proposals Democrats are advancing this session in the wake of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota.

“Operation Metro Surge” brought more than 3,000 federal agents to Minnesota in what the White House claimed was an effort to arrest the “worst of the worst.” Critics said it led to the fatal shooting of two U.S. citizens, major civil rights violations and abuse of power by militarized immigration agencies.

To protect the state from similar abuses in the future, DFLers are introducing legislation, including a bill to give Minnesotans more power to sue federal agents for constitutional violations, a ban on face masks for law enforcement agents, and restrictions on immigration enforcement in spaces besides schools — such as hospitals.

Local law enforcement

Republicans have advocated for changing state law to compel local law enforcement to cooperate more closely with federal authorities, something they argue would eliminate the drive for immigration agents to operate near or in schools.

One such proposal received a hearing in the House last year. The GOP-backed bill would ban cities from restricting cooperation with ICE and other federal agencies and require local authorities to notify federal authorities when a person unlawfully in the U.S. is arrested for a violent crime.

Asked by reporters Thursday if he believed any of the DFL proposals on immigration had a chance of gaining Republican support in a closely divided Legislature, Senate Judiciary and Public Safety Committee Chair Ron Latz, DFL-St. Louis Park, said the session was “just getting started.”

“I personally haven’t had those conversations yet but I intend to, and I’ll tell you why: This isn’t a debate, in my mind, about immigration policy. This is a debate about enforcement tactics,” he said. “We should all be able to find common ground, that the Constitution needs to be followed, that there are certain boundaries across which we are not allowed to go.”

State lawmakers passed a $66 billion two-year budget last year, meaning they could technically adjourn in May without passing any major legislation. That happened in 2022, another session with divided government ahead of a November gubernatorial election. Then, the DFL controlled the governor’s office and the House, but Republicans controlled the Senate.

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