World's largest wealth fund, in Norway, earned 'historic' returns in 2019

HEY KENNEY HOW'S OUR HERITAGE TRUST FUND DOING


Norway's Johan Sverdrup oil platform is seen in the North Sea on January 7. Norway's wealth fund, established decades ago to invest in oil wealth, reported "historic" earnings for 2019. File Photo by Carina Johansen/EPA-EFE

Feb. 27 (UPI) -- The largest wealth fund in the world said Thursday it achieved "historic" earnings last year that surpassed $180 million.

Norway's sovereign wealth fund said in a report it earned a 20 percent return on investments during 2019 -- the greatest single-year return in its history. Officials said 2019 also saw the second-best return measured as a percentage.

Formally known as the Norges Bank Investment Management, the fund was founded by Norway's central bank in 1990 to invest in the nation's oil wealth.

Oystein Olsen, Norges Bank's chairman of the board, said last year saw the value of its investments surge by $195 billion to a total of almost $1.1 trillion. Investment manager Yngve Slyngstad said the growth was driven by "positive equity returns in all the fund's principal markets."

Fund managers notched a 26 percent return on equity investments, real estate ventures returned almost 7 percent and fixed income investments yielded 7.6 percent.

The wealth fund's total return was 0.23 percentage points higher than the return on the benchmark index.

Democrats in Congress unveil environmental justice bill


Rep. Raul M. Grijalva, D-Ariz., attends a committee hearing in Washington, D.C. on February 12, 2019. Grijalva was among House Democrats who introduced an environmental justice bill Thursday. Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI | License Photo

Feb. 27 (UPI) -- Congressional Democrats introduced an environmental justice bill Thursday to take on pollution and climate change issues in low-income and marginalized communities.

House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., and Rep. Donald McEachin, D-Va., led the Capitol Hill news conference, saying the bill was an effort to make sure environmental efforts bring a positive change for everyone and that minorities have a voice in those changes.

"For far too long, communities of color, low-income communities and tribal and indigenous communities have not been a meaningful voice in the decision-making process impacting their well-being," McEachin said in the news conference. "Not with this bill."

The bill would create a fund with a new fee on oil, gas and coal companies to support communities and workers transitioning from greenhouse gas-dependent economies. The bill would expand legal rights for marginalized communities and create new federal grants and program authority to address environmental racism.

Grijalva said he thought the bill has a chance to pass the Republican-controlled Senate even though it imposes new demands on the oil industry.

"I think it's going to be very difficult for people to turn their back on this issue," he said.

Martin Hayden, vice president of policy and legislation at Earthjustice, said the bill was built from comments from those living in communities affected by pollution and climate change.

"We cannot confront the legacy of environmental racism in the United States unless we listen to the voices of the people most harmed by it," Hayden said in a statement. "We commend chairman Grijalva and McEachin for the proposal they released today and the landmark process they used to create it. It represents a bold and necessary shift in the way we create federal environmental policy."

Indian women protest citizenship laws, joining global feminist movement

By Alka Kurian, University of Washington, Bothell

Indian women shout slogans during a protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act in Guwahati, India, on December 21. File Photo by EPA-EFE

Feb. 25 (UPI) -- Women are among the strongest opponents of two new laws in India that threaten the citizenship rights of vulnerable groups like Muslims, poor women, oppressed castes and LGBTQ people.

The Citizenship Amendment Act, passed in December 2019, fast-tracks Indian citizenship for undocumented refugees from Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan -- but only those who are non-Muslim. Another law -- the National Register of Citizens -- will require all residents in India to furnish extensive legal documentation to prove their citizenship as soon as 2021.

Critics see the two laws as part of the government's efforts to redefine the meaning of belonging in India and make this constitutionally secular country a Hindu nation.

Since Dec. 4, Indians of all ages, ethnicities and religions have been protesting the new citizenship initiatives in scattered but complementary nationwide demonstrations. The uprisings have persisted through weeks of arrests, beatings and even killings across India by the police.

But the most enduring pocket of resistance is an around-the-clock sit-in of mostly hijab-wearing women in a working-class Delhi neighborhood called Shaheen Bagh.

Women take charge

Since Dec. 15, women of all ages -- from students to 90-year-old grandmothers -- have abandoned their daily duties and braved near-freezing temperatures to block a major highway in the Indian capital.

This is a striking act of resistance in a patriarchal country where women -- but particularly Muslim women -- have historically had their rights denied.

The Shaheen Bagh protests are as novel in their methods as they are in their makeup. Protesters are using artwork, book readings, lectures, poetry recitals, songs, interfaith prayers and communal cooking to explain their resistance to citizenship laws that, they say, will discriminate against not just Muslims but also women, who usually don't have state or property papers in their own names.

On Jan. 11, women in the Indian city of Kolkata performed a Bengali-language version of a Chilean feminist anthem called The Rapist is You. This choreographed public flash dance, first staged in Santiago, Chile in November, calls out the police, judiciary and government for violating women's human rights.

Dangerous place for women

India is the world's most dangerous country for women, according to the Thompson Reuters Foundation. One-third of married women are physically abused. Two-thirds of rapes go unpunished.

Gender discrimination is so pervasive that around 1 million female fetuses are aborted each year. In some parts of India, there are 126 men for every 100 women.

Indian women have come together in protest before, to speak out against these and other issues. But most prior women's protests were limited in scope and geography. The 2012 gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old Delhi woman -- which sparked nationwide protests -- was a watershed moment. All at once, the country witnessed the power of women's rage.

The current women-led anti-citizenship law demonstrations are even greater in number and power. Beyond Shaheen Bagh, Indian women across caste, religion and ethnicity are putting their bodies and reputations on the line.

Female students are intervening to shield fellow students from police violence at campus protests. Actresses from Bollywood, India's film industry, are speaking out against gender violence, too.

Women's secular agenda

With their non-violent tactics and inclusive strategy, the Shaheen Bagh women are proving to be effective critics of the government's Hindu-centric agenda. Their leaderless epicenter of resistance raises up national symbols like the Indian flag, the national anthem and the Indian Constitution as reminders that India is secular and plural -- a place where people can be both Muslim and Indian.

The Shaheen Bagh movement's novel and enduring strategy has triggered activism elsewhere in the country.

Thousands of women in the northern Indian city of Lucknow started their own sit-in in late January. Similar "Shaheen Baghs" have sprung up since, in the cities of Patna and even Chennai, which is located 1,500 miles from Delhi.

Global women's spring

India's Shaheen Bagh protests form part of a broader global trend in women's movements. Worldwide, female activists are combining attention to women's issues with a wider call for social justice across gender, class and geographic borders.

In January 2019 alone, women in nearly 90 countries took to the streets demanding equal pay, reproductive rights and the end of violence. Young women were also at the forefront of the 2019 pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, Lebanon, Sudan, Brazil and Colombia.

As I write in my 2017 book, such inclusive activism is the defining characteristic of what's called "fourth wave feminism."

There isn't a common definition of the first three feminist waves. In the United States, they generally refer to the early 20th century suffragette movement, the radical women's movement of the 1960s and 1970s and the more mainstream feminism of the 1990s and early 2000s.

Fourth wave feminism appears to be more universal. Today's activists fully embrace the idea that women's freedom means little if other groups are still oppressed. With its economic critique, disavowal of caste oppression and solidarity across religious divides, India's Shaheen Bagh sit-in shares attributes with the women's uprisings in Chile, Lebanon, Hong Kong and beyond.

The last time women came together in such numbers worldwide was the #MeToo movement, a campaign against sexual harassment, which emerged on social media in the United States in 2017 and quickly spread across the globe.

Shaheen Bagh and similarly far-reaching women's uprisings underway in other countries take #MeToo to the next level, moving from a purely feminist agenda to a wider call for social justice. Women protesters want rights -- not just for themselves, but human rights for all.

Alka Kurian is a senior lecturer in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington, Bothell. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Death toll from Delhi riots climbs to 38; violence begins to subside

A riot police officer stands among debris at a damaged area in East Delhi that was affected by deadly clashes in Delhi on Thursday. Photo by EPA-EFE

Feb. 27 (UPI) -- The death toll from violence in Delhi's northeast district climbed to 38 Thursday, though officials there said rioting began to subside.

Religious clashes began Sunday over India's controversial citizenship law, which offers amnesty to refugees from multiple neighboring nations as long as they aren't Muslim.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party have consistently supported the law, but opponents say it violates the secular principles of the Indian Constitution.

Opponents rallied against the measure and demanded its withdrawal, but government officials say they won't pull it or amend it. Some activists have clashed with swords, stones and other weapons, and homes, vehicles and other property have been burned across the capital.

A senior Delhi Health Department official told the Press Trust of India that 11 more deaths were reported Thursday. Some 200 people have been injured in the violence.

It's unclear how many people have been arrested amid the arson, looting and bloodshed.

Some witnesses told The New York Times that police forces loyal to Bharatiya Janata Party have declined to intervene as Hindu mobs kill Muslim civilians.

Special Commissioner S N Shrivastava said, though, the violence has subsided in some areas.

"The situation is returning to normal. We are here to reassure people that we are with them," he said.

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=HINDUISM 

IS FASCISM, CASTISM AND RACISM

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=INDIA

ABOLISH THE DEATH PENALTY
Oklahoma inmates seek to re-open suit on state's lethal injection protocol

Feb. 27 (UPI) -- A group of Oklahoma death row inmates on Thursday filed a motion to reopen their lawsuit against the state's lethal injection protocol, weeks after officials announced a plan to resume executions.

The group challenged the state's plan, saying its new protocol is incomplete. The motion also alleges that a grand jury investigation into the state's methods of execution haven't been completed.

Those shortcomings, the court document said, threaten the inmates' First, Eighth and 14th Amendment rights.

The state announced Feb. 13 that it plans to resume executions, nearly six years after the use of an incorrect drug led to the botched execution of a convicted murderer.

RELATED Colorado House votes to abolish death penalty; Gov. Polis to sign

Gov. Kevin Stitt said that after mulling the option of using nitrogen gas to cary out executions, the state has now found a "reliable supply of drugs" to resume lethal injections.

Oklahoma's lethal injection protocol came under scrutiny in 2014 when Clayton Lockett died of a heart attack amid complications during his execution.

Autopsy reports released a year later indicated Oklahoma corrections officials used the wrong drug -- potassium acetate instead of potassium chloride -- during the process. Lockett complained of a burning sensation and attempted to raise his head and speak after doctors declared he was unconscious.

RELATED Supreme Court denies new hearing in Arizona death penalty case

The same incorrect drug was delivered to corrections officials for use in the planned 2015 execution of Richard Glossip. Former Gov. Mary Ballin called off Glossip's execution with a last-minute, indefinite stay after she learned of the discrepancy.

Oklahoma has carried out only one other execution since Lockett's, that of Charles Warner in January 2015. He received a nine-month stay due to the previous botched lethal injection.

Since then, the state had an unofficial moratorium on executions as it attempted to secure a supply of lethal injection drugs. Oklahoma uses a three-drug cocktail of midazolam, vecuronium bromide and potassium chloride.

RELATED Texas appeals court lifts stay for death row inmate

Executions in the United States have undergone changes in recent years after states started running out of the essential lethal injection drug pentobarbital. The European Union in 2011 voted to prohibit the sale of the drug and seven other barbiturates to the United States for use in torture or executions. Other pharmaceutical companies have refused to sell drugs for lethal injection purposes outright, and some will only sell if their name is kept confidential.

Now states are being forced to use new drug cocktails, scramble to restock their stores of drugs and review their lethal injection policies.

In 2018, Oklahoma's attorney general's office announced it would use nitrogen gas inhalation as its primary method of execution. Officials, though, had difficulty finding a manufacturer to sell a method for administering the gas for an execution. Additionally, state law says nitrogen hypoxia may be used for executions only if drugs for lethal injections are unavailable.

RELATED Alabama death row inmate of 30 years dies of natural causes

Forty-seven people currently sit on death row in Oklahoma, including 30 who have exhausted the appeals process and are eligible for execution dates.

Twenty-one inmates were named in the lawsuit when it was filed in 2014: James Coddington, Benjamin Cole, Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez, Nicholas Davis, Richard Fairchild, John Grant, Wendell Grissom, Marlon Harmon, Raymond Johnson, Emmanuel Littlejohn, James Pavatt, Kendrick Simpson, Kevin Underwood, Brenda Andrew, Glossip, Shelton Jackson, Phillip Hancock, Julius Jones, Alfred Mitchell and Termane Wood. Warner, who was executed in 2015, also was named.

FOR FULL PDF CLICK HERE 







THE RIGHT TO LIFE END THE DEATH PENALTY

Film 'Welcome Strangers' explores immigrants stranded by ICE

ByJean Lotus

A still shot from the film "Welcome Strangers" shows recently released immigrants in Colorado arriving at Casa de Paz, a hospitality house where they can temporarily stay before traveling to family. Photo courtesy of "Welcome Strangers"





DENVER, Feb. 28 (UPI) -- The plight of immigrants stranded far from home after being released from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention near Denver is the focus of a new independent film that shows how volunteers come to their aid.

Welcome Strangers, a short that premiered this month at Montana's Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, explores immigrants' vulnerabilities when they leave an ICE detention center with little other than the clothes on their backs and a bag of paperwork.

The film focuses on volunteers at Casa de Paz, a Denver-area organization that helps immigrants who just have been been released from the 1,800-bed privately run GEO Group facility in Aurora, Colo.

"Immigrants are released out the back door of the detention center at night, with no identification, food or money," said Garret Savage, the film's producer. "Volunteers and citizens have recognized this problem and show up every night to pick them up."

RELATED Homeland Security: Tensions rising in crowded migrant detention facilities

Released detainees can stay at the Casa de Paz house in Aurora for up to three days while they contact family members, eat home-cooked meals, take hot showers and arrange transportation to their ultimate destination, founder Sarah Jackson said. Jackson owns and lives in the house.

"You could be overjoyed you're finally free, and yet you are frozen in fear because you just don't know what to do," Jackson told UPI. "It just boils down to the fact that immigrants are released from detention, and it's nobody's responsibility to make sure the person gets to where they need to go."

The GEO Group detention center is situated in an industrial park. The film shows volunteers approaching detainees standing in the dark, asking them if they need help.

RELATED Nationwide protests demand closure of migrant detention centers

Many of the immigrants do need help, although ICE contends that detainees have resources to make plans for after they're released.

"The [GEO Group] lobby is open 24/7 and people will choose to wait there when it's cold," Alethea Smock, public affairs officer in the Denver ICE office, said in an email. Detainees have access to phones to call their home consulates, she said.

But volunteers say detainees are released in the clothes in which they were arrested, sometimes even pajamas.

RELATED ICE deports survivor of New Orleans hotel collapse

"They're shoved out the back door at night after their attorney's office is closed, with paperwork and left to figure out their next move," said Carmen Mireles, who coordinates immigrant cases for a Longmont, Colo., law firm.

"Thank God for Casa de Paz, because they send a volunteer to the detention center every night without fail," Mireles said.

U.S. Rep. Jason Crow, D-Aurora, battled for access to the GEO Group facility last year. His staffers now tour it twice a month.

"ICE officers will give a heads up to Casa about how many people are being released, and the detainees know to look our for Casa volunteers either at the facility or a gas station nearby," said Anne Feldman, Crow's local spokeswoman.

Casa de Paz director Jackson, who works during the day at a software company, coordinates hundreds of volunteers, who donate clothing, toiletries and frequent flyer miles and prepare hot meals. They also visit detainees and accompany them to the airport.




"Sarah is my angel," volunteer Oliver, a Cameroon native, said in the 21-minute film. Oliver spent six months in detention until he was granted political asylum and was released from GEO Group -- knowing nothing about Colorado, he said. The film shows the reunification of Oliver with his daughter and wife, who had been held in California.

Another immigrant, Javier, released on an asylum petition, makes a phone call to his wife and son in Mexico in the film. He told U.S. officials he had been beaten by gangs in Mexico.

"To the men who beat me, I am a dead man," he said in the documentary.

But Javier worried that his remaining family members were in danger. He had been in detention for three months without speaking to family.

In the past eight years, 2,903 visitors have stayed at Casa de Paz. These include immigrants seeking asylum, those who have been released on bail and detainees' family members. They came from 73 countries, including those in Central America, Cameroon, Fiji, Haiti, India, Italy, Mexico, Nepal, Sudan and Vietnam.

"What we're doing is quite simple and basic, giving things that are not difficult like a meal, a ride to the airport," Jackson said.

Shuffling detained immigrants between facilities across the country makes it harder to comply with court orders in their home states, advocates say.

"It's a logistical nightmare," Denver area immigration attorney Tiago Guevara said. "The government relocates you hundreds of miles from where you live, detaining you for several months so you can't work, and then releases you essentially homeless."

In Colorado, ICE also confiscates passports and IDs, making it difficult for detainees to pass through Transportation Security Administration checkpoints at the airport when trying to get home in time to meet court dates, he said.

Jackson said the environment for immigrants is more difficult than it was a year ago. Some guests are so anxious they won't even take a walk around the block, fearing they will picked up again by ICE, she said.

"It's just continually getting harder and harder to deal with the reality that our country is increasingly becoming more fearful of the 'other,'" she added.

"For a lot of the guests who come to the Casa, they fled trauma, persecution, death and other horrors. And then our government welcomes them with more terror to put them through -- it's just not necessary," Jackson added.

Jackson and Casa de Paz also created an interactive traveling exhibit that was displayed at a 2019 Denver-area TEDx event called Julia's Journey. The exhibit depicts the path of an asylum-seeking mother who stayed at Casa de Paz with her child after being held at the privately run GEO Group center.

"Immigrant detention has become a money-making business, and you can feel pretty depressed about it," Jackson said.

Capturing the human emotions of both immigrants released from detention and the volunteers who help them was the goal of filmmakers, Savage said.

Filmmakers plan grass-roots screenings near other U.S. detention centers.

"We want to show the film to people who may have one idea of what an immigrant looks like in their head," Savage said.

"They might have an idea that an immigrant is a lawbreaker who should not be helped, but not everyone is in detention because they committed a crime. Many are seeking asylum and escaping from trauma in their own countries."

Casa de Paz's mission has also opened the eyes and hearts of hundreds of volunteers, Jackson said.

"You don't need a lot of resources, but if we all give a bit, we can make a big difference. It gives us an experience of seeing our humanity through the eyes of a stranger."

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY FEB 28

FBI ATF RAID BRANCH DRAVIDIAN CULT 

IN WACO TEXAS

Special counsel and former U.S. Sen. John C. Danforth points to where shell casings were found at the Branch Davidian compound, in Waco, Texas, during a news conference July 21, 2000.

On February 28, 1993, federal agents attempting to serve warrants on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, were met with gunfire that left five dead. File Photo by Bill Greenblatt/UPI | License Photo

In 2019, it was announced that a Caravaggio painting discovered after being hidden in an attic for 400 years would go to auction. It was snapped up by a foreign buyer for an undisclosed sum before the auction could happen, though.

In 1885, the American Telephone and Telegraph Co. was incorporated in New York as a subsidiary of American Bell Telephone.

In 1935, nylon was invented by DuPont researcher Wallace Carothers.

In 1986, Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was assassinated on a street in Stockholm.

CLINTON'S HUMANITARIAN WAR APPROVED BY THE UN FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE THE KOREAN WAR 

In 1994, NATO was involved in combat for the first time in its 45-year history when four U.S. fighter planes operating under NATO auspices shot down four Serb planes that had violated the U.N. no-fly zone in central Bosnia.

VIETNAM ERA ANTI WAR TV SERIES ABOUT THE KOREAN WAR 

In 1983, the concluding episode of the long-running television series M*A*S*H drew what was then the largest TV audience in U.S. history.

UPI File Photo

US Federal court blocks "Remain in Mexico" immigration policy

Migrants are held for processing in El Paso, Texas. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked President Donald Trump's Migrant Protection Protocols, calling for immigrants seeking asylum to remain in Mexico, on Friday. File Photo by Justin Hamel/UPI 

Feb. 28 (UPI) -- The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily halted the Trump administration's "Remain in Mexico" policy Friday.

The San Francisco-based court upheld a lower court injunction, stopping the Migrant Protection Protocols by which tens of thousands of asylum seekers remain in Mexico to await their U.S. hearings. The policy is an effort to limit access by migrants to U.S. soil and reduce a surge of migration by families from Central America. In 2019, more than 470,000 people crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in search of asylum, and most were allowed to remain in the United States await court hearings.

The administration of President Donald Trump credits the program, meant to prevent families from entering the United States and then foregoing hearings that could deport them, for the decline in border crossings from record highs in the summer of 2019. Families now await their hearings in Mexico.

The two-to-one ruling on Friday said the MPP "should be enjoined in its entirety," calling it "invalid in its entirety due to its inconsistency with" federal law. In a 70-page opinion, the judges -- Richard A. Paez and William Fletcher, appointed by President Bill Clinton, who upheld the injunction, and Ferdinand F. Fernandez, an appointee of President George H.W. Bush, who disagreed -- said the program likely violates "non-refoulment" obligations under international law. Those laws prevent the U.S. government from returning immigrants to countries where they could face persecution.

The Trump administration has reduced its reliance on the MPP program in recent months, instead relying on relatively quick deportation hearings which transfer asylum seekers to Guatemala to seek asylum there. The number of those in Mexico awaiting hearings has declined.

The court also upheld an injunction Friday blocking any presidential proclamation disqualifying an immigrant illegally crossing the border to the United States.

Mick Mulvaney 

blames media for 'huge panic' over COVID-19

Feb. 28 (UPI) -- White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney on Friday said media coverage of the COVID-19 outbreak is to blame for the plunging stock markets.

Speaking at the Conservative Action Conference near Washington, D.C., he said there's been a panic over the novel coronavirus, which has sickened more than 84,000 people globally, including 60 in the United States. More than 2,800 people have died worldwide.

"We sit there and watch the markets and there's this huge panic and it's like, why isn't there this huge panic every single year over flu," Mulvaney asked.

When asked what he might do to settle the markets, Mulvaney said, "really what I might do today [to] calm the markets is tell people turn their television off for 24 hours."

The major U.S. stock indexes continued their slide Friday morning, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down another 1,000 points at 10 a.m., the S&P 500 down 4 percent and the Nasdaq down 3 percent.

Mulvaney suggested media outlets are stoking fears over the coronavirus to hurt President Donald Trump politically.

"The reason you're seeing so much attention to [the coronavirus] today is that they think this is going to be what brings down the president," he said.

"Are you going to see some schools shut down? Probably. May you see impacts on public transportation? Sure," he added.

"But we do this, we know how to handle this."

Trump made the same argument Thursday night on Twitter.

"So, the Coronavirus, which started in China and spread to various countries throughout the world, but very slowly in the U.S. because President Trump closed our border, and ended flights, VERY EARLY, is now being blamed, by the Do Nothing Democrats, to be the fault of 'Trump,'" he tweeted.

In front of protesters, Pompeo testifies Iran drone strike was a deterrent 

LIKE HIS BOSS POMPEO LIES
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks with committee 

Chairman Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., Friday before testifying before

 the House foreign affairs committee on Capitol Hill in

 Washington, D.C. Photo by Tasos Katopodis/UPI | 

License Photo

Feb. 28 (UPI) -- Secretary of State Mike Pompeo testified in Congress Friday and told lawmakers the U.S. drone strike that killed a top Iranian military commander last month was a smart move that reduced the risk to American troops in the Middle East.

Pompeo told the House foreign affairs committee that he supported President Donald Trump's order for the Jan. 3 strike to kill Qassem Soleimani in Iraq, as did other advisers. Iran retaliated with missile strikes against two U.S. positions in Iraq, which injured dozens of U.S. troops.

"It was my judgment that this reduced risk to America to take this strike," Pompeo told the panel Friday. "I think the team all presented that to the president. He made the final decision that was right, that we would reduce risk both in the short-term, medium-term and in the long-term to American interests."

Pompeo said the drone attack that killed Soleimani deterred Iranian aggression and weakened Tehran's military capabilities.

"I can say in an unclassified setting [Iran] recognizes the seriousness with which America acted to take the strike," Pompeo said. "I think they appreciate the seriousness with which President Trump and the administration are taking, our obligation to defend America and our partners. It clearly demonstrated our preparedness to continue to deter Iran's behavior and [Trump] thinks they have taken that seriously."

Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., chided Pompeo for waiting more than a month to appear before the committee to field questions about Solemani's death. Pompeo answered that Congress had been briefed 70 times since the strike was carried out.

Sherman also accused the Trump administration of trivializing the 110 soldiers who received brain injuries in the Iranian counterattack.

RELATED Over 20 GOP lawmakers seek assurances on U.S.-Taliban deal

Pompeo's appearance Friday was met by a significant throng of protesters who advocate for peaceful relations with Iran. The activists carried signs in the committee room and wore shirts that read, "Peace with Iran."
The secretary of state also defended the Trump administration's response to the coronavirus outbreak.

"I commit to you, as we need resources, if we find out there aren't sufficient resources to address the problem where we can create value and reduce risk, we will come to you," Pompeo said. "We will execute that and we will deliver for the American people."

Pompeo will be a keynote speaker Friday night at the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Md., which will finish with a speech by Trump on Saturday.