U.S. ESTA Travel Pass News

The White House is scheduled to announce an executive order related to artificial intelligence (AI) next week, and it is reported that it may include contents such as easing immigration barriers for personnel in the AI field.

The Washington Post (WP) reported on the 25th, citing multiple sources, that the White House is expected to announce such an executive order on the 30th.

There is a possibility of easing immigration barriers for high-skilled workers to advance technology in the AI sector in the United States.

As the U.S. tech industry continues to call for easing immigration barriers for engineers and high-skilled workers, the Department of Homeland Security announced on the 23rd that it is proposing changes to the related visa (H-1B) program.

One source said the State Department is also planning to roll out a new visa program targeting AI talent, and government agencies are expected to assess the current AI workforce size. The executive order is also expected to include language that would allow the federal government to use its position as a major consumer to evaluate advanced AI models before federal government employees use them.

The evaluation of large language models (LLMs) purchased by the federal government is expected to be led by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which announced a system for AI risk management this year.

In addition, it may include requests to federal government agencies such as the Department of Defense, Department of Energy, and intelligence agencies to evaluate how to use AI technology to strengthen cyber defense.

The executive order is expected to be based on the voluntary commitments of 15 companies, including Open AI, Google, Adobe, and NVIDIA. The agreement, concluded last month, includes a request to develop technology that can identify AI-generated images and to share safety-related data with the government and academia.

As the infamous homeless tent villages across LA are being demolished one after another, it is being evaluated that LA Mayor Karen Bass’s homeless measures are gradually becoming effective.
A homeless tent village that had been located on Venice Boulevard near the 405 Freeway in the Mavistar area for over 10 years was demolished on the 24th.

Some of the homeless tent villages in this area belong to the city of LA, while others are divided into Culver City City Council areas, so it has been difficult to remove the tent villages. Therefore, in this area, incidents such as drug abuse by homeless people, drug dealing, and fires continued to occur, causing damage to residents.

However, as part of the LA city government’s ‘Inside Safe’ program, this camp was eventually demolished, and about 50 homeless people received housing support.

The ‘Inside Safe’ program is one of the measures to respond to the homeless crisis that began in December last year and aims to immediately move homeless people in LA to hotels and motels. Additionally, this program is designed to prevent homeless people from dying on the streets, provide mental health treatment for the homeless, eliminate tent cities, provide long-term housing for the homeless, and improve the hygiene of homes for all LA residents.

Previously, on the 11th of this month, the city of Los Angeles demolished a homeless tent village near Virgil Middle School located in Koreatown.

Texas, which has conflicted with the Joe Biden administration over the issue of illegal immigrants crossing the southern U.S. border, is controversial as it is pushing legislation that would allow illegal immigrants to be detained ex officio and sent back to Mexico.

According to the Texas Legislature on the 26th, three bills to strengthen border security were passed in the state House of Representatives this morning.

Among these, the most controversial issue during the voting process was a bill that would allow state police to arrest immigrants who crossed the border illegally and return them to Mexico across the border.

Under the bill, first-time offenders could face up to 180 days in jail for a misdemeanor and repeat offenders could face up to two years in jail for a felony.

The Texas State Legislature has a Republican majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, and Republican House members attempted to pass this bill quickly. However, the Texas Tribune, a local newspaper, reported that due to strong opposition from Democratic lawmakers, discussions and adjournments continued all night long from the previous evening.

According to this newspaper, Rep. Spiller argued that the bill he sponsored did not exceed federal law and that “it is not unfair to order someone who entered the country illegally to return to where they came from.”

But Democratic state Rep. Victoria Neve Criado said she was concerned that officers could mistakenly arrest U.S. citizens living near the border if they do not have identification. She also pointed out that Mexican authorities will not accept non-Mexican immigrants returning from Texas.

In the end, this bill was passed with 84 votes in favor and 60 against.

The U.S. media predicted that this bill would be approved by the Texas Senate, which has taken a hard-line stance on border security issues, and then signed by Governor Greg Abbott.

Governor Abbott, a Republican, has been taking a strong stance against the illegal immigration issue by strengthening border security for several years under the name of ‘Operation Lone Star’.

The other two bills passed by the House of Representatives on this day are a bill to allocate an additional $1.5 billion (approximately 2 trillion won) to the construction of a border wall being promoted by Governor Abbott and a bill to strengthen punishment for those who promote illegal immigration.

The New York Times (NYT) reported on the state of Texas’ legislative progress on this day and pointed out, “A bill that allows local police to arrest illegal immigrants poses a direct challenge to the federal government’s authority over border security.”

The NYT pointed out that this bill makes no exceptions for asylum seekers allowed by federal law among illegal immigrants.

As the war between Israel and Hamas intensified, concerns about the safety of civilians in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and the humanitarian crisis deepened, the United States began to deploy diplomatic power in earnest in response.

On the 15th, President Joe Biden introduced the phone call he had with Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas the previous day on the social media platform ‘ “We are working with local partners to do this,” he said.

President Biden also said to the families of missing Americans in Israel, “We promise not to leave them (missing Americans).”

In response, White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan introduced, “Addressing humanitarian issues in the Middle East, including efforts to provide urgently needed humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people, especially the people of the Gaza Strip, is President Biden’s top priority.”

The State Department announced that U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken, who visited the Middle East during the war between Israel and the Palestinian armed faction Hamas, will revisit Israel on the 16^th.

According to AFP, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters in Cairo, Egypt, a stopover for Secretary Blinken’s Middle East trip, on the 15th, saying, “Secretary Blinken will return to Israel tomorrow for further consultations with Israeli leaders.”

Minister Blinken was dispatched to Israel on the 12th and met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, then traveled through Jordan and Saudi Arabia and arrived in Egypt on the 15th.

It appears that the reason Secretary Blinken is visiting Israel again is because the local situation is becoming urgent.

Along with speculation that Israel, which has been attacked by the Palestinian armed political faction Hamas, will soon enter a ground war against the Gaza Strip, Hamas’ stronghold, concerns have also grown about the worsening humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip.

During his trip to the Middle East, Secretary Blinken met with the leaders or people in power of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Qatar, and Jordan, and met with Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas.

Following the surprise attack on Israel by the Palestinian armed faction Hamas, which even targeted civilians, security agencies in major U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, are strengthening security in preparation for possible attacks on Jewish and Muslim religious facilities in the area.

According to CNN, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Homeland Security are known to be sending a ‘Public Safety Concern’ bulletin to each state and local law enforcement authorities to pay attention and check the impact of this incident on the situation in the United States.

LASD has begun to increase patrol manpower. “We are deploying additional patrol personnel in our jurisdiction while also working closely with federal and local law enforcement agencies to monitor the situation,” LASD headquarters said in a statement via X. The Santa Monica Police Department, where many Jews live, has begun regular inspections to prepare for emergencies, including increasing the number of patrol vehicles.

Local politicians, including LA Mayor Karen Bass, strongly condemned Hamas’ attacks. “Los Angeles has the second-largest Jewish population outside of Israel, and many families are anxiously watching to see how the situation unfolds,” Mayor Bath said in his statement. “My heart is with them.”

The U.S. foreign policy is also being put to the test due to the armed conflict between the two sides that began with the attack on Israel by the Palestinian armed political faction Hamas.

First, the Biden administration’s Middle East policy itself is in a difficult situation.

After completely ending the Afghanistan and Iraq wars that began in the 21st century with the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan two years ago, the United States focused on ‘diplomatic stabilization’ instead of direct intervention in the Arab world.

The core of that strategy was to arrange for improved relations between Israel, an ally in the Middle East, and its neighbors.

In 2020, before the inauguration of the Biden administration, under the chairmanship of then-President Donald Trump, Israel and Arab countries such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, and Morocco signed the ‘Abraham Accords’ to establish formal diplomatic relations, and President Joe Biden signed an agreement with Israel. and Saudi Arabia have accelerated the normalization of diplomatic relations.

The general analysis of experts was that the diplomatic goal was to simultaneously check Iran, the largest anti-American power in the Middle East, and China, which is gradually seeking to expand its influence in the Middle East after the United States left.

Therefore, the consensus is that the attack on Israel, the axis of U.S. policy toward the Middle East, is bound to be a significant blow to the driving force of the policy of stabilizing the Middle East through diplomacy.

If the situation escalates and anti-Israel and anti-American forces in the Middle East unite, it is expected that the Biden administration’s policy toward the Middle East will inevitably be shaken.

Politico, an American political media outlet, introduced that the United States has also involved the Palestinian side in the process of normalizing diplomatic relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, and wrote that it is highly likely that the participants will be personnel from the Palestinian Authority, a rival of Hamas.

Even if efforts to normalize diplomatic relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia do not run aground immediately, it is unlikely that diplomatic negotiations involving the Palestinian Authority will progress while the armed conflict between Israel and Hamas intensifies.

We cannot rule out the possibility that this incident will act as a variable in support for Daewoo Ukraine, which is already showing growing fatigue among Americans.

President Biden requested $24 billion (about 32 trillion won) from Congress in July to support Ukraine, but many Republican lawmakers in the House of Representatives are opposed to it.

In this situation, he failed to reflect the amount of support to Ukraine in the 45-day temporary budget passed on the 30th of last month.

Moreover, as former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who led the passage of the interim budget bill through Congress, failed due to a few hard-line right-wingers in the Republican Party pushing for a resolution to dismiss him, it has become difficult to guarantee when the House of Representatives, which holds the key to supporting Daewoo Krai, including the election of the next House Speaker, will return to normal.

Therefore, as this incident occurs, there is a high possibility that support for Daewoo Ukraine will fall behind support for Israel, which is bipartisanly supported by U.S. politicians, in terms of priority.

Moreover, unlike Ukraine, which is not a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Europe, Israel is an ally of the United States.

Observers believe that if this armed conflict, which Israel has defined as a ‘war’, shows signs of an ‘escalation’ and the United States needs to rapidly increase its support for Israel, the possibility of the Daewoo Ukraine support plan drifting may increase.

In the end, President Biden’s plan to promote stable external relations as an achievement of the regime by increasing the number of ‘fronts’ (Ukraine and the Middle East) that do not directly deploy troops but are indirectly involved (Ukraine and the Middle East) with about a year before the US presidential election in November next year is not possible. We are facing a difficult situation.

In this situation, there is also talk of the possibility that the Biden administration will deploy behind-the-scenes diplomatic power to prevent this conflict from spreading into a ‘Middle East war’.

With President Biden immediately expressing his support and willingness to support Israel, there is no doubt that the United States will come forward to support Israel.

However, there are observations that the expansion of the front line outside the Gaza Strip will not lead to a situation where Iran intervenes militarily or where Middle Eastern countries that are non-hostile to the United States, such as Saudi Arabia, end up sympathizing with or supporting Palestine.

Some media outlets are already raising suspicions that Iran was involved in Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel. However, the U.S. government is extremely cautious about this assessment.

Previously, Secretary of State Tony Blinken stated cautiously in an interview with NBC the previous day that he had no evidence of Iran’s involvement in the planning and execution of Hamas’s attack on Israel, which is seen as reflecting the complex intentions of the United States.

As professional thieves and gang robberies targeting high-end retail stores and shopping malls are on the rise throughout LA and Southern California, ‘Grove Mall’ near Koreatown, which is popular among LA residents and travelers, is a target of crime, which has increased significantly this year. ‘Crosstown’, a crime analysis site, analyzed that this is happening.

According to ‘Crosstown’, 45 crime incidents occurred at ‘Grove Mall’ in August alone this year, the highest number this year. Previously, 42 criminal incidents occurred in July.

From 2017 to November 2022, when the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) began analyzing statistical incidents at ‘Grove Mall,’ there were never more than 27 crime incidents that occurred in ‘Grove Mall’ in a single month. However, this year, there were a total of seven months in which the number of crime incidents that occurred in a month exceeded 27.

According to Crosstown, a total of 278 crime incidents were reported at ‘Grove Mall’ during the eight months from January 1 to August 31 of this year. The number of crimes that have occurred as of August of this year has already exceeded the total number of crimes in one year in 2022, which is 175.

Of the 278 crimes that occurred this year, 203, or more than half, were store thefts, of which 165 were thefts in which items worth less than $950 were stolen, and 38 were thefts in which items worth more than $950 were stolen. There were also 27 incidents of general theft, and 9 cases of pickpocketing were reported.

The background to the rapid increase in robberies at ‘Grove Mall’ this year is the problem of deteriorating security in the LA area. The number of smash-and-grab theft incidents occurring at department stores across LA reached an all-time high in 2023.

According to LAPD statistics, as of August this year, 3,361 crimes were reported at department stores in the LA area alone.

Accordingly, the LAPD and various agencies collaborated to form a theft crime task force last August, and this organization reportedly arrested 40 theft suspects as of September 19.

As the federal government took a breather from the crisis of shutdown (temporary business suspension), U.S. Treasury bond yields soared.

According to foreign media such as Reuters on the 2nd, the yield on 10-year maturity U.S. Treasury bonds rose to 4.703% at one point on the day and closed at 4.683%.

The intraday rate of 4.703% is the highest since 2007.

As the shutdown crisis was averted, demand for U.S. Treasury bonds, a safe asset, decreased and Treasury yields rose.

The U.S. Congress passed a 45-day temporary budget to avoid a shutdown on the 30th of last month, which was the deadline for processing next year’s budget.

Stronger-than-expected U.S. economic indicators also pushed up government bond yields.

The September manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) compiled by the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) was 49.0, exceeding the market expectation of 47.7.

The fact that high-ranking officials of the Federal Reserve, including Chairman Jerome Powell, Vice Chairman Michael Barr, and Federal Reserve Board member Michelle Bowman, have successively emphasized curbing inflation has also had an impact on the decline in government bond prices (increasing yields).

 

There are also predictions that U.S. long-term government bond interest rates will rise further and exceed 5%.

Bill Ackman, chairman of Pershing Square Capital, a giant in the hedge fund industry, predicted in an interview with CNBC that day, “The interest rate on 30-year government bonds will be in the mid-5% range, and the interest rate on 10-year bonds will be close to 5%.”

California is enacting legislation to further strengthen regulations, including imposing additional taxes on the firearms industry.

California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, signed a bill on the 26th that aims to impose an 11% tax on gun and ammunition sales on local gun manufacturers and distributors.

Accordingly, gun manufacturers and sellers in California will have to pay an additional tax imposed by the state in addition to the existing tax (10-11% of sales amount) imposed by the federal government.

The taxes paid by gun manufacturers have doubled.

The Associated Press cited an analysis by ‘Brady’, a gun control advocacy group, and reported that such gun taxation at the state level is the only measure in the United States. Previously, Tennessee imposed a 10-cent tax on shotgun shells but abolished it in 2019, and Pennsylvania collects an additional fee of $3 on gun sales to cover the cost of background checks.

The state of California already charges a fee of about $37 to gun buyers, and most of this money is used for background checks, the AP reported. Existing taxes collected by the federal government from the firearms industry are used to protect wildlife and operate hunter safety programs.

The state of California announced that it plans to use taxes collected from the gun industry to support various gun safety measures, including school safety, gun violence prevention measures, and confiscation of guns from domestic violence offenders.

“This law is based on the simple premise that we must put the safety of our children ahead of the interests of the gun industry,” said state Rep. Jesse Gabriel, who sponsored the bill. However, gun advocacy groups immediately protested.

The California Rifle and Pistol Association told the AP that it plans to file a lawsuit against the state.

“This law does not make us safer,” said Chuck Michel, the group’s president. “We are responding with retaliation,” he said. He added, “The moment this bill was signed, the clock started ticking toward a ruling that would strike them down.”

On this day, Governor Newsom announced a bill to strengthen regulations by raising the right to possess firearms in public places to 21 years or older and to require unique identification numbers on handgun cartridges to track firearms used in crimes starting in 2028. He also signed a bill that would prevent potentially dangerous people from possessing guns through extensive background checks.

Governor Newsom emphasized, “The gun death rate in California has decreased significantly over the past few years as the state has shown leadership on gun issues,” and added, “Ultimately, we will need to establish a national framework to solve this problem.”

According to 2021 data from the U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the number of annual firearm deaths in California was 3,576, but the firearm death rate compared to the population was relatively low.

With 9 deaths per 100,000 people, it ranked 43rd among all 50 states.