Toronto's COVID-19 bike lane expansion boosted access to jobs, retail

A study by University of Toronto Engineering researchers found Toronto's temporary cycling infrastructure increased low-stress road access to jobs and food stores by between 10 and 20 per cent, and access to parks by 6.3 per cent.

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO FACULTY OF APPLIED SCIENCE & ENGINEERING

Research News

 

IMAGE: A MAP OF TORONTO'S BIKEWAY NETWORK WITH COLOURS REPRESENTING THE ROUTE'S LEVEL OF STRESS. view more 

CREDIT: IMAGE COURTESY OF BO LIN / UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO ENGINEERING

With COVID-19 making it vital for people to keep their distance from one another, the city of Toronto undertook the largest one-year expansion of its cycling network in 2020, adding about 25 kilometres of temporary bikeways.

Yet, the benefits of helping people get around on two wheels go far beyond facilitating physical distancing, according to a recent study by three University of Toronto researchers that was published in the journal Transport Findings.

University of Toronto Engineering PhD candidate Bo Lin, as well as professors Shoshanna Saxe and Timothy Chan used city and survey data to map Toronto's entire cycling network - including the new routes - and found that additional bike infrastructure increased low-stress road access to jobs and food stores by between 10 and 20 per cent, while boosting access to parks by an average of 6.3 per cent.

"What surprised me the most was how big an impact we found from what was just built last summer," says Saxe, an assistant professor in the department of civil and mineral engineering.

"We found sometimes increases in access to 100,000 jobs or a 20 per cent increase. That's massive."

The impact of bikeways added during COVID-19 were greatest in areas of the city where the new lanes were grafted onto an existing cycling network near a large concentration of stores and jobs, such as the downtown core. Although there were new routes installed to the north and east of the city, "these areas remain early on the S-Curve of accessibility given the limited links with pre-existing cycling infrastructure," the study says.

In these areas, the new infrastructure can be the beginning of a future network as each new lane multiplies the impact of ones already built, Saxe says.

As for the study's findings about increasing access to jobs, Saxe says they are not only a measure of access to employment but also a proxy for places you would want to travel to: restaurants, movie theatres, music venues and so on.

The researchers used information from Open Data Toronto and the Transportation Tomorrow 2016 survey, among other sources. Where there were discrepancies, Lin, a PhD student and the study's lead author, gathered the data himself by navigating the city's streets (as a bonus, it helped him get to know Toronto after moving here from Waterloo, Ont.).

"There were some days I did nothing but go around the city using Google Maps," he says.

For Lin, the research has opened up new avenues of investigation into cycling networks, including how bottlenecks can have a ripple effect through the system.

The study, like some of Saxe's past work on cycling routes, makes a distinction between low- and high-stress bikeways to get a more accurate reading of how they affect access to opportunities. At the lowest end of the scale are roads where a child could cycle safely; on the other end are busy thoroughfares for "strong and fearless cyclists" - Avenue Road north of Bloor Street, for example.

"It's legal to cycle on most roads, but too many roads feel very uncomfortable to bike on," Saxe says.

For Saxe, the impact of the new cycling routes shows how a little bike infrastructure can go a long way.

"Think about how long it would have taken us to build 20 kilometres of a metro project - and we need to do these big, long projects - but we also have to do short-term, fast, effective things."

Chan, a professor of industrial engineering in the department of mechanical and industrial engineering, says the tools they used to measure the impact of the new bikeways in Toronto will be useful in evaluating future expansions of the network, as well as those found in other cities.

"You hear lots of debates about bike lanes that are based on anecdotal evidence," he says. "But here we have a quantitative framework that we can use to rigorously evaluate and compare different cycling infrastructure projects.

"What gets me excited is that, using these tools, we can generate insights that can influence decision-making."

The University of Toronto team's research, which was supported by funding from the City of Toronto, may come in handy sooner rather than later. Toronto's city council is slated to review the COVID-19 cycling infrastructure this year.

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New research shows unpredictable work schedules impact restaurant revenue

Nearly a 5% drop in checks handled by servers asked to stay longer

INSTITUTE FOR OPERATIONS RESEARCH AND THE MANAGEMENT SCIENCES

Research News

 

INFORMS Journal Management Science Study Key Takeaways:

• Changing an employee's hours during their shift, typically by having them stay longer, hurts restaurant revenue.
• Checks for parties handled by servers who'd been asked to stay longer during their shift dropped by 4.4%, on average.
• Servers asked to stay longer reduced the effort spent on upselling and cross-selling additional menu items.

CATONSVILLE, MD, February 25, 2021 - Short notice versus no advance notice makes a huge difference when it comes to employee scheduling in the restaurant industry. New research in the INFORMS journal Management Science finds checks for parties handled by servers who were asked (with no advance notice) to stay longer than their scheduled shift dropped by 4.4%, on average.

The study, "Call to Duty: Just-in-Time Scheduling in a Restaurant Chain," conducted by Masoud Kamalahmadi of the University of Miami, Qiuping Yu of the Georgia Institute of Technology, and Yong-Pin Zhou of the University of Washington analyzed 1.5 million transactions from 25 restaurants in 2016 to look at the impact that unpredictable work schedules have on server sales efforts and restaurant revenue.

The research finds giving an employee a couple of days' notice (short-notice scheduling) doesn't affect sales efforts, however, real-time scheduling (changing people's hours during their shift, typically by having them stay longer) hurts revenue.

"Our analysis indicates that this occurred because servers reduced the effort spent on upselling and cross-selling additional menu items," said Kamalahmadi, an assistant professor of management science. Employee fatigue is controlled for in the study.

"We also show that the reduction in server's sales effort is more profound among less-skilled workers, during the weekend or non-rush hours," continued Yu, an assistant professor of operations management and business analytics at the Scheller College of Business at Georgia Tech.

The researchers found that stepping away from the heavy use of real-time schedules not only creates more predictable work schedules, but also improves the expected profit by up to 1%.

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About INFORMS and Management Science

Management Science is a premier peer-reviewed scholarly journal focused on research using quantitative approaches to study all aspects of management in companies and organizations. It is published by INFORMS, the leading international association for operations research and analytics professionals. More information is available at http://www.informs.org or @informs.

European unions' support varies for precarious workers

CORNELL UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

ITHACA, N.Y. - In many cases, unions in Europe have helped nonunionized workers whose jobs are precarious, according to new Cornell University research.

In "Dualism or Solidarity? Conditions for Union Success in Regulating Precarious Work," published in December in the European Journal of Industrial Relations, the researchers surveyed academic articles to see how often they would find evidence of unions helping nonunionized workers or helping only their own members, and which conditions were associated with each outcome.

The paper was co-authored by Laura Carver, M.S. 20, and Virginia Doellgast, associate professor of international and comparative labor in the ILR School.

Unions respond to growing worker insecurity in different ways, Carver said.

In some cases, unions work with management to protect their own members while allowing management to cut pay or otherwise increase insecurity for nonunionized workers, she said. This is called dualism, because it creates a dual labor market where unionized insiders are still paid relatively well and have some job security, and nonunionized outsiders are subjected to increasing insecurity.

Unions also can act in solidarity with nonunion workers by proactively extending union protections and increasing security for precarious workers. Examples of union support include the Unite union support of the "Justice for Cleaners" protests in the United Kingdom and support by the French union CGT for the "sans papiers" movement for undocumented immigrant workers in France.

A third union response is described as "failed solidarity" by Carver and Doellgast.

"Unions' attempts at inclusivity are not always successful - in other words, attempts to stand in solidarity with nonunion workers sometimes do not actually reduce their experiences of precarity," Carver said.

After surveying 56 case study-based articles published between 2008 and 2019, they found that:

• In 46% of cases, solidarity was practiced when unions improved working conditions for the peripheral workforce. This includes cases in which the union simultaneously improved conditions for the core workforce, as well as those in which the conditions for the core workforce remained stable or even declined.
• In 26% of cases, the unions practiced dualism by maintaining or improving working conditions for the core, unionized workforce, with either no attempt to address precarity for peripheral workers or increased precarity for these workers.
• In 12% of the cases, solidarity failed - there was no reduction in precarity in spite of union attempts to regulate or improve conditions for peripheral workers.
• In 16% of cases, there were no clear outcomes of dualism, solidarity or failed solidarity.

"The fact that successful solidarity was the most common outcome is notable," Carver said. "This suggests there is cause for optimism, or that increased precarity is not the inevitable outcome."

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Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accu

Top Facebook execs silenced an enemy of Turkey US SYRIAN ALLIES THE KURDS

By Jack Gillum & Justin Elliott, ProPublica

Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer for Facebook, testifies before the Senate intelligence committee examining social media companies' responses to foreign influence operations in 2018. File Photo by Pat Benic/UPI | License Photo

Feb. 24 (UPI) -- As Turkey launched a military offensive against Kurdish minorities in neighboring Syria in early 2018, Facebook's top executives faced a political dilemma.

Turkey was demanding the social media giant block Facebook posts from the People's Protection Units, a mostly Kurdish militia group the Turkish government had targeted. Should Facebook ignore the request, as it has done elsewhere, and risk losing access to tens of millions of users in Turkey? Or should it silence the group, known as the YPG, even if doing so added to the perception that the company too often bends to the wishes of authoritarian governments?





It wasn't a particularly close call for the company's leadership, newly disclosed emails show.

"I am fine with this," wrote Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's No. 2 executive, in a one-sentence message to a team that reviewed the page. Three years later, YPG's photos and updates about the Turkish military's brutal attacks on the Kurdish minority in Syria still can't be viewed by Facebook users inside Turkey.

The conversations, among other internal emails obtained by ProPublica, provide an unusually direct look into how tech giants like Facebook handle censorship requests made by governments that routinely limit what can be said publicly. When the Turkish government attacked the Kurds in the Afrin District of northern Syria, Turkey also arrested hundreds of its own residents for criticizing the operation.

Publicly, Facebook has underscored that it cherishes free speech: "We believe freedom of expression is a fundamental human right, and we work hard to protect and defend these values around the world," the company wrote in a blog post last month about a new Turkish law requiring that social media firms have a legal presence in the country. "More than half of the people in Turkey rely on Facebook to stay in touch with their friends and family, to express their opinions and grow their businesses."

But behind the scenes in 2018, amid Turkey's military campaign, Facebook ultimately sided with the government's demands. Deliberations, the emails show, were centered on keeping the platform operational, not on human rights. "The page caused us a few PR fires in the past," one Facebook manager warned of the YPG material.

The Turkish government's lobbying on Afrin-related content included a call from the chairman of the BTK, Turkey's telecommunications regulator. He reminded Facebook "to be cautious about the material being posted, especially photos of wounded people," wrote Mark Smith, a U.K.-based policy manager, to Joel Kaplan, Facebook's vice president of global public policy. "He also highlighted that the government may ask us to block entire pages and profiles if they become a focal point for sharing illegal content."

(Turkey considers the YPG a terrorist organization, although neither the United States nor Facebook do.) 

FREEDOM FIGHTERS FOR AN AUTONOMOUS KURDISTAN

The company's eventual solution was to "geo-block," or selectively ban users in a geographic area from viewing certain content, should the threats from Turkish officials escalate. Facebook had previously avoided the practice, even though it has become increasingly popular among governments that want to hide posts from within their borders.

Facebook confirmed to ProPublica that it made the decision to restrict the page in Turkey following a legal order from the Turkish government -- and after it became clear that failing to do so would have led to its services in the country being completely shut down. The company said it had been blocked before in Turkey, including a half-dozen times in 2016.

The content that Turkey deemed offensive, according to internal emails, included photos on Facebook-owned Instagram of "wounded YPG fighters, Turkish soldiers and possibly civilians." At the time, the YPG slammed what it understood to be Facebook's censorship of such material. "Silencing the voice of democracy: In light of the Afrin invasion, YPG experience severe cyberattacks." The group has published graphic images, including photos of mortally wounded fighters; "this is the way NATO ally Turkey secures its borders," YPG wrote in one post.

Facebook spokesman Andy Stone provided a written statement in response to questions from ProPublica.

"We strive to preserve voice for the greatest number of people," the statement said. "There are, however, times when we restrict content based on local law even if it does not violate our community standards. In this case, we made the decision based on our policies concerning government requests to restrict content and our international human rights commitments. We disclose the content we restrict in our twice yearly transparency reports and are evaluated by independent experts on our international human rights commitments every two years."

The Turkish Embassy in Washington said it contends the YPG is the "Syrian offshoot" of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, which the U.S. government considers to be a terrorist organization.

Facebook has considered the YPG page politically sensitive since at least 2015, emails show, when officials discovered the page was inaccurately marked as verified with a blue check mark. In turn, "that created negative coverage on Turkish pro-government media," one executive wrote. When Facebook removed the check mark, it in turn "created negative coverage [in] English language media, including on Huffington Post."

In 2018, the review team, which included global policy chief Monika Bickert, laid out the consequences of a ban. The company could set a bad example for future cases and take flak for its decision. "Geo-blocking the YPG is not without risk -- activists outside of Turkey will likely notice our actions, and our decision may draw unwanted attention to our overall geo-blocking policy," said one email in late January.

But this time, the team members said, the parties were embroiled in an armed conflict and Facebook officials worried their platform could be shut down entirely in Turkey. "We are in favor of geo-blocking the YPG content," they wrote, "if the prospects of a full-service blockage are great." They prepared a "reactive" press statement: "We received a valid court order from the authorities in Turkey requiring us to restrict access to certain content. Following careful review, we have complied with the order," it said.

In a nine-page ruling by Ankara's 2nd Criminal Judgeship of Peace, government officials listed YPG's Facebook page among several hundred social media URLs they considered problematic. The court wrote that the sites should be blocked to "protect the right to life or security of life and property, ensure national security, protect public order, prevent crimes or protect public health," according to a copy of the order obtained by ProPublica.

Kaplan, in a Jan. 26, 2018, email to Sandberg and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, confirmed that the company had received a Turkish government order demanding that the page be censored, although it wasn't immediately clear if officials were referring to the Ankara court ruling. Kaplan advised the company to "immediately geo-block the page" should Turkey threaten to block all access to Facebook.

Sandberg, in a reply to Kaplan, Zuckerberg and others, agreed. (She had been at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, touting Facebook's role in assisting victims of natural disasters.)

In a statement to ProPublica, the YPG said censorship by Facebook and other social media platforms "is on an extreme level."

"YPG has actively been using social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and others since its foundation," the group said. "YPG uses social media to promote its struggle against jihadists and other extremists who attacked and are attacking Syrian Kurdistan and northern Syria. Those platform[s] have a crucial role in building a public presence and easily reaching communities across the world. However, we have faced many challenges on social media during these years."

Cutting off revenue from Turkey could harm Facebook financially, regulatory filings suggest. Facebook includes revenue from Turkey and Russia in the figure it gives for Europe overall and the company reported a 34% increase for the continent in annual revenue per user, according to its 2019 annual report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Yaman Akdeniz, a founder of the Turkish Freedom of Expression Association, said the YPG block was "not an easy case because Turkey sees the YPG as a terror organization and wants their accounts to be blocked from Turkey. But it just confirms that Facebook doesn't want to challenge these requests, and it was prepared to act."

"Facebook has a transparency problem," he said.

In fact, Facebook doesn't reveal to users that the YPG page is explicitly banned. When ProPublica tried to access YPG's Facebook page using a Turkish VPN -- to simulate browsing the Internet from inside the country -- a notice read: "The link may be broken, or the page may have been removed." The page is still available on Facebook to people who view the site through U.S. Internet providers.

PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY
U.S., China lead world as military spending increases globally

An aerial photo of the U.S. Department of Defense in Washington, D.C., also known as the Pentagon. Photo by Shutterstock.com

Feb. 25 (UPI) -- Global defense spending reached a new high point in 2020, with the United States spending more than any other country and China pulling in second, according to data released by The International Institute for Strategic Studies this week.

The IISS analyzed numbers from the Military Balance Plus database and found that global defense spending increased in 2020 to reach $1.83 trillion -- a 3.9% increase over 2019 figures.

The United States, which spent $738 billion on defense in 2020, accounted for 40.3% of total global defense spending, the IISS said.

China's defense spending did not increase as sharply in 2020 as it did in 2019, but the country still spent $193.3 billion on defense in 2020 -- $12 billion more than the year before.

Overall global defense spending grew by 3.9%, the report said.

IISS noted that defense spending rose inversely with overall global economic activity, which contracted last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The report also said European defense spending grew by 2% in 2020.

That's a smaller rate of growth than the 4.1% increase from 2019 -- but part of an upward trend, with overall defense spending by NATO members being up 20% from 2014.

FAA orders inspections for 777 engines like one that failed over Denver


Federal investigators examine a United Airlines Boeing 777 in Denver, Colo., after the plane made an emergency landing on its way to Hawaii due to engine failure. Photo courtesy NTSB/Flickr

Feb. 24 (UPI) -- The Federal Aviation Administration has ordered mandatory inspections for fan blades on some Boeing 777s after an engine failed in mid-air on a flight to Hawaii last weekend.

The FAA's order late Tuesday covers Pratt & Whitney engines on 777s in the United Airlines fleet after the carrier had already grounded 24 of the planes.

The engine that failed last weekend spread broken parts into yards and a soccer field on the ground before the plane made an emergency landing near Denver.

A Japan Airlines 777 had a similar engine failure in December that also forced the plane to return for an emergency landing. Japan and South Korea have taken the model out of service.

Boeing on Monday recommended suspending 69 in-service and 59 in-storage 777s powered by Pratt & Whitney 4000-112 engines until the FAA identified inspection protocol.

"The FAA is issuing this [Emergency Airworthiness Directive] because the agency has determined the unsafe condition described previously is likely to exist or develop in other products of the same type design," the FAA said in its order.

Monday, the National Transportation Safety Board said its investigation has found that the engine's inlet and cowling separated and two fan blades broke, one near the root and the other about mid-span.

Chinese officials charged after gold mine accident that killed workers


An official investigation into an accident in January at a Chinese gold mine in Shandong Province concluded that neglect and safety violations led to the explosion that killed at least 10 workers. File photo by Chen Hao/Xinhua/EPA-EFE

Feb. 24 (UPI) -- Senior Chinese officials are being held responsible for an accident at a mine in January that led to the death of at least 10 miners.

Authorities in China's Shandong Province said Wednesday they have charged 45 people with neglect, including a city mayor and a municipal party secretary, that led to the gold mine accident that trapped 22 miners underground for two weeks, Xinhua news agency reported.


Yao Xiuxia, the municipal party secretary of the city of Qixia, and Zhu Tao, Qixia's mayor, have been fired and are under probe for delays in reporting the accident, according to Sixth Tone. An official report said Yao believed the "trapped people would likely be rescued."

On Jan. 10, an explosion at a gold mine in Qixia trapped 22 miners. Two weeks after the incident, 11 workers were rescued, 10 people were found dead and one miner remains missing.

RELATED Reports: China's military training Hong Kong police on marching style

According to the official investigation, detonators, cords and explosives that were bunched together in an underground storage facility set off the explosion, which occurred after an accidental fire in the area.

Total damages are estimated to be about 68.47 million yuan, or about $10.6 million, authorities said.

Authorities said the mining company, Shandong Wucailong Investment Co. Ltd., stored explosives in a manner that violated local laws.

RELATED Hong Kong considers ban on 'insults' to police, authority figures

During mining operations, the company also allowed the use of blowtorches and firearms in hazardous mining zones, authorities said, according to Xinhua. Fifteen 15 mining executives also are being charged with neglect and concealing the accident for 30 hours.

The rescue operation began after a crew noticed a pull on a rope Jan. 17. Survivors trapped underground also sent a note to the rescue team by rope. On Jan. 24, 10 miners from a group of 11 were rescued, and on Jan. 25, rescuers recovered nine bodies.

Trump's approach to South Korea hurt alliance, analysts say


Former U.S. President Donald Trump (L) and South Korean President Moon Jae-in (R) appeared to agree publicly but the two sides struggled to reconcile differences amid Trump’s defense-cost demands.

 File Photo by Jim Lo Scalzo/UPI | License Photo


NEW YORK, Feb. 25 (UPI) -- The Trump administration's policies toward the two Koreas damaged the alliance with Seoul, according to U.S. and South Korean analysts.

The administration of South Korean President Moon Jae-in also falls short on North Korea human rights, and Seoul remains a passive observer amid new U.S. efforts, the South's lawmakers and analysts said during the International Forum on One Korea's Congressional Roundtable and Forum on Wednesday.

Victor Cha, Korea chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former candidate for U.S. ambassador to Seoul, said former President Donald Trump's approach to alliances created unprecedented problems in the relationship with Seoul.

"We saw a [U.S.-South Korea] alliance that was not functioning normally," Cha said. "We had a [U.S.] administration that saw the alliance in transactional terms, evaluating alliances as power liabilities, and not power assets."

Outward appearances told a different story. Trump first visited the South in 2017, delivering a speech at Seoul's National Assembly that local officials said improved relations. In 2018, Trump agreed to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un after visits from Moon's aides to the White House. After a historic first summit in Singapore, Trump said Kim was a "great leader" and "friend," while Moon praised the former U.S. president for his "huge contribution" to inter-Korean relations.

According to Cha, the United States and South Korea "looked unified on the surface," but the two sides disagreed for four years on defense burden sharing. The two leaders also had different priorities. South Korea's policy is "largely designed to avoid a war," while Trump was trying to win the Nobel Peace Prize, Cha said.Cancellation of key meetings

Kim Hong-kyun, a former South Korean special representative for Korean Peninsula Peace and Security, said the Biden administration offers a new opportunity to revitalize a shaken alliance. During the Trump years, not once did the former U.S. administration convene a "2+2" meeting of the U.S. secretary of state, secretary of defense and their South Korean counterparts, Kim said. The high-level meetings did take place during the terms of former President Barack Obama and South Korea's Park Geun-hye.

Kim, a veteran South Korean diplomat, also described Moon's approach to U.S. policies in the Indo-Pacific as deficient. Seoul "faced no consequences" for its "lukewarm" response to the Trump administration's coordination with Japan, Australia and India in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or the Quad. Under Biden, an experienced policymaker, South Korea "will not have the luxury of sitting on the fence."

"Strategic clarity is needed, not strategic ambiguity," Kim said, referring to Seoul. The United States should invite South Korea to the partnership and make it a "quint," he added.

Moon's policies have been defined by a friendlier approach to North Korea than some of his predecessors, but lawmakers in Seoul are wary of the tactic, which has yielded zero dialogue after 2019.

Cho Tae-yong, a South Korean lawmaker with the main opposition People Power Party, said at the forum on Wednesday it would be "unacceptable" to "only listen to the Kim family," or the North Korean leadership. Earlier in the week in Seoul, Cho had held a discussion on the South's anti-leafleting law that bans activists from launching balloons at the border. The ban was enforced after Kim Yo Jong, the North Korean leader's sister, complained about defectors and their activism.

Biden has yet to publicly address North Korea. A key question between Washington and Seoul is North Korea sanctions. Last week, U.S. federal prosecutors indicted three North Koreans for cybercrimes. Other sanctions against Pyongyang's elite remain in place. Influential voices in Seoul, including Moon's special adviser for foreign affairs Moon Chung-in, are calling for sanctions relief, however.

Kim Hong-kyun said lifting sanctions would not support negotiations with North Korea. Sanctions provide the "only leverage" in talks with Pyongyang, Kim said.

"Sanctions are not for the purpose of pressuring North Korea for no reason," Cha said. "Lifting sanctions is always a possibility once those [violations] causing sanctions are rectified. "

International Forum on One Korea and the Global Peace Foundation are affiliated with the ultimate holding company that owns United Press International.

U.S. conducts airstrikes in Syria targeting 

Iran-backed groups

JUST LIKE TRUMP DID FIRST MONTH 

IN OFFICE


President Joe Biden on Thursday directed the military to conduct an airstrike targeting Iranian-backed groups in Syria. Pool Photo by Doug Mills/UPI | License Photo

Feb. 25 (UPI) -- The U.S. military has conducted airstrikes targeting Iran-backed military groups in eastern Syria on Thursday evening, the Pentagon said, stating it was in response to a deadly rocket attack against U.S. and Coalition forces in Iraq last week.

The assault was directed by President Joe Biden, Defense Department Press Secretary John Kirby said in a statement, making it the first disclosed military operation conducted under the new White House.

Kirby said facilities located at an unnamed border control point used by Kait'ib Hezbollah and Kait'ib Sayyid al-Shuhada, among other Iran-backed groups, were destroyed in the attack.

"These strikes were authorized in response to recent attacks against American and Coalition personnel in Iraq, and to ongoing threats to those personnel," Kirby said. "The operation sends an unambiguous message: President Biden will act to protect American and Coalition personnel."
The move was also pursued with "aims to de-escalate the overall situation in both eastern Syria and Iraq," he said.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the department is confident in the result.

"We know what we hit. We're confident that the target was being used by the same Shia militia that conducted the strikes," he said, referring to a Feb. 15 rocket barrage on a U.S. base at the Erbil airport complex in northern Iraq.

More than a dozen rockets last week were fired at the base near the southeastern Syrian border, killing a contractor and injuring eight others. Four American contractors and a U.S. service member were among those injured in the shelling.

The little-known group Awliya al-Dam, or the Guardians of the Blood, claimed credit for the attack but U.S. officials had repeatedly stated they were working on attribution though vowing to hold those responsible to account and that Iran is responsible for the acts of its proxies.

Austin told reporters while returning to Washington, D.C., from a California trip that he had recommended the airstrike to Biden, stating Iraq investigations into the Feb. 15 attack "was very helpful to us in refining the target."

State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters during a regular press briefing earlier this week that Iranian-made and -supplied rockets have been used in many such attacks but wouldn't say if rockets from Tehran were involved in the Erbil attack, stating they will await the conclusions of Iraq's investigation before attributing blame.

Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, told reporters on Wednesday that the United States will respond but reserves the right do so in a time and manner of its choosing.

"We will respond in a way that's calculated, on our timetable and using a mix of tools seen and unseen," she said. "What we will not do -- and what we've seen in the past -- is lash out and risk an escalation that plays into the hands of Iran by further destabilizing Iraq."

Michael McCaul, the lead Republican of the House foreign affairs committee, commended the Biden administration for following through on the attack.

"Responses like this are a necessary deterrent and remind Iran, its proxies and our adversaries around the world that attacks on U.S. interests will not be tolerated," he said in a statement.

Marco Rubio, R-Fla., described it as "targeted, proportional and necessary."

The extend of the damage or the number of casualties from the Thursday airstrike were unknown.

German court convicts exiled fugitive of Syria regime in landmark ruling

Demonstrators protest against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Al-drbaseh, Northern Syria, on February 14, 2012. 

UPI Photo/File | License Photo

Feb. 24 (UPI) -- A Syrian man accused of aiding in the torture of dozens of people early during the country's civil war was found guilty in a historic verdict on Wednesday and sent to prison.

The man, Eyad al-Gharib, was convicted and sentenced by a regional court in Koblenz in Germany. The court gave him four and a half years in prison.

The verdict is the first of its kind for a court outside of Syria related to accusations of crimes against humanity against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

Al-Gharib, 44, was a member of Assad's General Intelligence Directorate and prosecutors said he facilitated the tortures of at least 30 Syrian dissidents, beginning in 2011. He ultimately fled to Germany, where he was arrested in 2019.

The crimes against al-Gharib occurred early in Syria's civil war when Assad began to crack down on dissident demonstrations.

Authorities were able to try al-Gharib by using a legal provision that allowed them jurisdiction to prosecute serious crimes involving defendants physically inside Germany.

Another landmark verdict in the case is expected this year for Anwar Raslan, a member of Assad's government who's accused directly in the deaths of dozens of people and the tortures of thousands more.