US accepts jet from Qatar for use as Air Force One
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth accepted the $US400 million ($A621 million) Boeing-made jet for use as US President Donald Trump's official plane, the Pentagon said.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the Defense Department "will work to ensure proper security measures and functional-mission requirements are considered".
He added that the plane was accepted "in accordance with all federal rules and regulations".
Legal experts have questioned the scope of laws relating to gifts from foreign governments that aim to thwart corruption and improper influence.
Democrats have also sought to block the handover.
Qatar has dismissed concerns about the aircraft deal.
Trump has also shrugged off ethical concerns, saying it would be "stupid" not to accept the jet.
He has defended it as a way to save tax dollars.
"Why should our military, and therefore our taxpayers, be forced to pay hundreds of millions of dollars when they can get it for FREE," Trump posted on his social media site.
Retrofitting the luxury plane offered by Qatar's royal family will require significant security upgrades, communications improvements to prevent spies from listening in and the ability to fend off incoming missiles, experts say.
That could cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
The precise costs were not known but could be significant given the cost for Boeing's current effort to build two new Air Force One planes is more than $US5 billion.
The Air Force One program has faced chronic delays over the last decade, with the delivery of two new 747-8s slated for 2027, three years behind the previous schedule.
Boeing in 2018 received a $US3.9 billion contract to build the two planes for use as Air Force One although costs have since risen.
Boeing has also posted $US2.4 billion in charges from the project.
with AP
The United States has accepted a 747 jetliner as a gift from Qatar and the air force has been asked to find a way to rapidly upgrade it for use as a new Air Force One, the Pentagon says.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth accepted the $US400 million ($A621 million) Boeing-made jet for use as US President Donald Trump's official plane, the Pentagon said.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the Defense Department "will work to ensure proper security measures and functional-mission requirements are considered".
He added that the plane was accepted "in accordance with all federal rules and regulations".
Legal experts have questioned the scope of laws relating to gifts from foreign governments that aim to thwart corruption and improper influence.
Democrats have also sought to block the handover.
Qatar has dismissed concerns about the aircraft deal.
Trump has also shrugged off ethical concerns, saying it would be "stupid" not to accept the jet.
He has defended it as a way to save tax dollars.
"Why should our military, and therefore our taxpayers, be forced to pay hundreds of millions of dollars when they can get it for FREE," Trump posted on his social media site.
Retrofitting the luxury plane offered by Qatar's royal family will require significant security upgrades, communications improvements to prevent spies from listening in and the ability to fend off incoming missiles, experts say.
That could cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
The precise costs were not known but could be significant given the cost for Boeing's current effort to build two new Air Force One planes is more than $US5 billion.
The Air Force One program has faced chronic delays over the last decade, with the delivery of two new 747-8s slated for 2027, three years behind the previous schedule.
Boeing in 2018 received a $US3.9 billion contract to build the two planes for use as Air Force One although costs have since risen.
Boeing has also posted $US2.4 billion in charges from the project.
with AP
The United States has accepted a 747 jetliner as a gift from Qatar and the air force has been asked to find a way to rapidly upgrade it for use as a new Air Force One, the Pentagon says.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth accepted the $US400 million ($A621 million) Boeing-made jet for use as US President Donald Trump's official plane, the Pentagon said.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the Defense Department "will work to ensure proper security measures and functional-mission requirements are considered".
He added that the plane was accepted "in accordance with all federal rules and regulations".
Legal experts have questioned the scope of laws relating to gifts from foreign governments that aim to thwart corruption and improper influence.
Democrats have also sought to block the handover.
Qatar has dismissed concerns about the aircraft deal.
Trump has also shrugged off ethical concerns, saying it would be "stupid" not to accept the jet.
He has defended it as a way to save tax dollars.
"Why should our military, and therefore our taxpayers, be forced to pay hundreds of millions of dollars when they can get it for FREE," Trump posted on his social media site.
Retrofitting the luxury plane offered by Qatar's royal family will require significant security upgrades, communications improvements to prevent spies from listening in and the ability to fend off incoming missiles, experts say.
That could cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
The precise costs were not known but could be significant given the cost for Boeing's current effort to build two new Air Force One planes is more than $US5 billion.
The Air Force One program has faced chronic delays over the last decade, with the delivery of two new 747-8s slated for 2027, three years behind the previous schedule.
Boeing in 2018 received a $US3.9 billion contract to build the two planes for use as Air Force One although costs have since risen.
Boeing has also posted $US2.4 billion in charges from the project.
with AP
The United States has accepted a 747 jetliner as a gift from Qatar and the air force has been asked to find a way to rapidly upgrade it for use as a new Air Force One, the Pentagon says.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth accepted the $US400 million ($A621 million) Boeing-made jet for use as US President Donald Trump's official plane, the Pentagon said.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the Defense Department "will work to ensure proper security measures and functional-mission requirements are considered".
He added that the plane was accepted "in accordance with all federal rules and regulations".
Legal experts have questioned the scope of laws relating to gifts from foreign governments that aim to thwart corruption and improper influence.
Democrats have also sought to block the handover.
Qatar has dismissed concerns about the aircraft deal.
Trump has also shrugged off ethical concerns, saying it would be "stupid" not to accept the jet.
He has defended it as a way to save tax dollars.
"Why should our military, and therefore our taxpayers, be forced to pay hundreds of millions of dollars when they can get it for FREE," Trump posted on his social media site.
Retrofitting the luxury plane offered by Qatar's royal family will require significant security upgrades, communications improvements to prevent spies from listening in and the ability to fend off incoming missiles, experts say.
That could cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
The precise costs were not known but could be significant given the cost for Boeing's current effort to build two new Air Force One planes is more than $US5 billion.
The Air Force One program has faced chronic delays over the last decade, with the delivery of two new 747-8s slated for 2027, three years behind the previous schedule.
Boeing in 2018 received a $US3.9 billion contract to build the two planes for use as Air Force One although costs have since risen.
Boeing has also posted $US2.4 billion in charges from the project.
with AP
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What I've learned from teaching ‘The Handmaid's Tale': American exceptionalism versus Australian acceptionalism - ABC Religion & Ethics
I read a report recently that US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth shared a CNN video featuring two Christian nationalist pastors, Douglas Wilson and Toby Sumpter, in which they expressed their desire for the United States to become a 'Christian nation' and floated the idea that women shouldn't have their own vote. As Sumpter put it: In my ideal society, we would vote as households. I would ordinarily be the one to cast the vote, but I would cast the vote having discussed it with my household. Excitedly, the following morning, I showed the report to my English class. They immediately understood why. We are currently studying Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale , a dystopian novel recounting the establishing of the Republic of Gilead through the eyes of the narrator, a woman named 'Offred' — a name that suggests both possession (she is 'of' or belongs to 'Fred') and sacrifice (as in 'offered'). 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One of my rules was that I would not put any events into the book that had not already happened in what James Joyce called the 'nightmare' of history, nor any technology not already available. No imaginary gizmos, no imaginary laws, no imaginary atrocities. Atwood wrote the novel in 1984 while she was living in West Berlin. It's a part of Europe that knows just how easily liberal democracy can slide into tyranny. But she wanted to convince North American readers who insist such a slide 'can't happen here' that it can, by constructing the Republic of Gilead 'on a foundation of the 17th-century Puritan roots that have always lain beneath the modern-day America we thought we knew'. In a recent interview, Atwood reiterates this point: that American politics tends to swing like a pendulum between fundamentalist theocracy and egalitarian democracy. Even those Puritans who fled religious persecution and established a new colony in Massachusetts — where The Handmaid's Tale is set — 'did it to get religious freedom for themselves, but not for anyone else. One of the next things they did was to persecute Quakers.' The idea of a Christian nation — that is, a nation with not only a divine purpose but a divine mandate — undergirds the notion of American exceptionalism. That's why religion is always lurking in the background of US politics, and religious texts like the Bible are so co-opted in the interests of political power. US President Donald Trump poses with a Bible outside St John's Episcopal Church in Washington, DC, on Monday, 1 June 2020. (Photograph by Shawn Thew / EPA / Bloomberg via Getty Images) As one of my students pointed out, Atwood's novel is not anti-religion; she just doesn't like this kind of religion. 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