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FORT LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA - MAY 19: Michael Howson joins with McDonald’s workers and labor activists to protest against the restaurant chain on May 19, 2021 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. McDonald’s workers in 15 cities across the country held the protests on the day before the company’s annual shareholder meeting to demand McDonald’s pay at least $15/hr. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images) (Photographer: Joe Raedle/Getty Images North America)
Apparently unhappy with the current pace of business migration out of their state, California’s legislators have come up with a good way to accelerate it. They voted recently to create a council of political appointees to set wages in the fast-food industry. The so-called FAST Recovery Act awaits Governor Gavin Newsom’s signature. He can’t squash this ill-conceived initiative quickly enough.
California already has a minimum wage of $15 an hour. The new measure envisages raising this to as much as $22, with inflation-linked increases to follow — but only for those who work for big fast-food chains. Why this group should be singled out for special protection isn’t entirely clear. Yes, the bill’s proponents believe that market-determined wages are inherently predatory, and that the franchise business model compounds this underlying problem. Even so, the fast-food industry seems a strangely narrow target.
Then again, this is just a start. With luck, the bill’s advocates believe, this approach will eventually be applied to other industries as well, and other states will follow California’s lead. In due course, micro-managed wage-fixing will apply to many more low-wage workers in many more industries. How hard could it be?
Labor markets aren’t perfect. Even now, with unemployment low and wages trending higher, they don’t guarantee well-paid jobs for workers without skills in demand. Policy makers certainly need to address this — but must be careful not to make life harder for the intended beneficiaries. Moderate minimum wages attuned to local conditions, subsidies (such as the earned-income tax credit) that boost demand for workers, and programs to expand relevant vocational training and apprenticeships are all eminently desirable. Creating unaccountable bureaucracies to set wages industry by industry is not.
A statewide minimum wage for a subset of workers would arbitrarily fragment California’s labor market, raise prices for consumers, and depress investment across the industry. The incentive to hire would fall and the return to automation would rise. As these effects became apparent, the bill’s supporters would doubtless see the need for further rounds of regulatory repair. Once you start to dismantle markets, it’s hard to stop.
California’s legislators see their state as the vanguard for enlightened economic regulation. In some cases, such as environmental policy, they’ve on occasion set examples that the rest of the country would indeed be wise to follow. Zeal to cripple the market for labor, however, doesn’t serve the state’s interests. It might be good news for Texas and Florida, as further confirmation that California is no friend to business. But if this isn’t the message Newsom wants to send, he should veto the bill — and say why.
• Life Is Good in America, Even by European Standards: Tyler Cowen
• California’s Later School Start Times Are a Promising Experiment: The Editors
• Marc Andreessen’s Housing NIMBYism Is Losing Ground: Virginia Postrel | 2022-09-05T14:30:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | California’s Plan to Get Fast Food Workers Fired - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/californias-plan-to-get-fast-food-workers-fired/2022/09/05/81f55c36-2d1b-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/californias-plan-to-get-fast-food-workers-fired/2022/09/05/81f55c36-2d1b-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html |
‘Longtermism’ lures philanthropists away from current human needs
(Matt Chinworth for The Washington Post)
In a not-quite-throwaway line in a recent New Yorker magazine profile, Oxford philosopher and “effective altruism” figurehead William MacAskill described meeting billionaire Tesla founder Elon Musk in 2015: “I tried to talk to him for five minutes about global poverty and got little interest.”
Recently, though, their interests seem to have converged. In August, Musk tweeted an endorsement of MacAskill’s new book “What We Owe the Future,” remarking “This is a close match for my philosophy.”
“What We Owe the Future” is a case for “longtermism,” which MacAskill defines as “the idea that positively influencing the future is a key moral priority of our time.” It’s compelling at first blush, but as a value system, its practical implications are worrisome.
First, some background. Since its beginnings in the late 2000s, the effective altruism movement (“EA” for short) has been obsessed with “doing good better” — using reason and evidence to optimize charitable giving to better alleviate suffering for the greatest number of people.
In the movement’s early days, that involved promoting high-impact, basic-needs interventions in global health and poverty, such as distributing mosquito netting in the developing world — a distinctive break from the regular philanthropic practices of donating to one’s alma mater or favorite museum. Today, though, those EA priorities are giving way to a new and questionable fascination.
Longtermism relies on the theory that humans have evolved fairly recently, and thus we can expect our species to grow long into the future. The world’s current population is really a blip; if all goes well, a huge number of humans will come after us. Thus, if we’re reasoning rationally and impartially (as EAs pride themselves on doing), we should tilt heavily toward paying attention to this larger future population’s concerns — not the concerns of people living right now.
Depending on how you crunch the numbers, making even the minutest progress on avoiding existential risk can be seen as more worthwhile than saving millions of people alive today. In the big picture, “neartermist” problems such as poverty and global health don’t affect enough people to be worth worrying about — what we should really be obsessing over is the chance of a sci-fi apocalypse.
In practice, this looks similar to a shift toward preventing existential threats to humanity as the most valuable philanthropic cause. The future population’s greatest threats are things like a rogue super-intelligent AI, a nuclear catastrophe or an unexpectedly virulent pathogen, and there is a heavy emphasis on tech-driven research and solutions.
It’s hard to argue against taking the long view. People tend to be shortsighted, and we talk constantly about leaving a better world for future generations.
But while that can make this newest obsession of effective altruists appear nearly irrefutable, abandoning what would most help people on Earth today isn’t exactly ethically sound.
As much as the effective altruist community prides itself on evidence, reason and morality, there’s more than a whiff of selective rigor here. The turn to longtermism appears to be a projection of a hubris common to those in tech and finance, based on an unwarranted confidence in its adherents’ ability to predict the future and shape it to their liking. It suggests that playing games with probability (what is the expected value calculus of taming a speculative robot overlord?) is more important than helping those in the here-and-now, and that top-down solutions trump collective systems that respond to real people’s preferences.
Conveniently, focusing on the future means that longtermists don’t have to dirty their hands by dealing with actual living humans in need, or implicate themselves by critiquing the morally questionable systems that have allowed them to thrive. A not-yet-extant population can’t complain or criticize or interfere, which makes the future a much more pleasant sandbox in which to pursue your interests — be they AI or bioengineering — than an existing community which might push back or try to steer things for itself.
To be even more cynical: Longtermism seems tailor-made to allow tech, finance and philosophy elites to indulge their anti-humanistic tendencies while patting themselves on the back for their intelligence and superior IQs. The future becomes a clean slate onto which longtermists can project their moral certitude and pursue their techno-utopian fantasies, while flattering themselves that they are still “doing good.”
As such, it’s unsurprising that someone such as Musk — whose most memorable philanthropic moments include tweeting that he would donate $6 billion to the Nobel-winning World Food Program if it could convince him of its efficacy, then never following up when its executive director responded in detail — finds the proposition compelling.
Despite its flaws, longtermism might be the future of the effective altruist movement. The new focus is backed by funding: Open Philanthropy, GiveWell’s spending arm, has distributed more than $480 million to longtermist causes since 2015, while the FTX Future Fund, founded by cryptocurrency billionaire and effective altruist Sam Bankman-Fried, has chipped in about $132 million. Meanwhile, EA’s funding base continues to grow, and its newest reigning philosophy is set to have a major impact.
Sure, donating to theorize about AI risk is probably still a better philanthropic cause than, say, paying to put your name on a gallery at the Met. But is it really doing the most good? I wouldn’t be so sure. | 2022-09-05T14:31:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | 'Longtermism' lures philanthropists away from human needs right now - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/05/longtermism-philanthropy-altruism-risks/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/05/longtermism-philanthropy-altruism-risks/ |
Colin Farrell poses for photographers at the photo call for the film ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’ during the 79th edition of the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, Monday, Sept. 5, 2022. (Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP)
VENICE, Italy — Martin McDonagh has returned to the Venice International Film Festival with “The Banshees of Inisherin,” which is having its world premiere Monday night in competition. | 2022-09-05T14:31:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Farrell and Gleeson reunite with Martin McDonagh in Venice - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/farrell-and-gleeson-reunite-with-martin-mcdonagh-in-venice/2022/09/05/e32f4364-2d1f-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/farrell-and-gleeson-reunite-with-martin-mcdonagh-in-venice/2022/09/05/e32f4364-2d1f-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html |
Russia jails investigative reporter for 22 years for ‘treason’
Ivan Safronov, a former journalist, accused of state treason, stands inside a defendants' cage as he attends a court hearing in Moscow, Sept. 5, 2022. (Moscow City Court/Via Reuters)
RIGA, Latvia — A Russian court sentenced former investigative journalist Ivan Safronov to 22 years in prison on charges of treason, a grim resolution of one of the most high-profile prosecutions of a journalist in Russia in years.
The harsh sentence is only the latest episode in Russia’s crackdown on media and free expression that has shuttered nearly all independent media outlets in the country and involves harsh regulations on reporting the ongoing conflict in neighboring Ukraine.
Safronov was arrested in July 2020 and has been held in pretrial detention ever since. Investigators with the FSB, Russia’s domestic intelligence service, accused him of passing on state secrets to German and Czech agents between 2015 and 2017, during his tenure as a reporter covering military and space for business daily Kommersant. The trial was held behind closed doors and the evidence was not made public.
Fleeing Putin’s wartime crackdown, Russian journalists build media hubs in exile
Safronov’s supporters say the FSB drummed up the charges in retaliation for his journalistic work that focused on secretive Russian arms trade dealings and disclosed the mishaps of the country’s Defense Ministry.
In a clip from the courtroom, published by the TV Rain channel, Safronov’s supporters clapped and chanted “Freedom!” after the verdict was handed down. “I love you,” Safronov replied before he was led out of the courtroom cage.
A leaked indictment, published by the Russian investigative outlet Proekt, suggests that the materials Safronov allegedly obtained from “people with access to state secrets” and passed on to Western intelligence were in the public domain.
According to Proekt, Safronov agreed to contribute to a publication that employed his friend, Czech national Martin Larysh, and later for political analyst Dmitry Voronin who worked for a German-Swiss consulting company. The analytical pieces Safronov sent to Larysh and Voronin, whom the FSB accuses of being Czech and German agents, respectively, were the basis for the indictment against him.
Proekt says that the information contained in Safronov’s pieces was already available in Kommersant, a number of Russian and international outlets, state news agency RIA Novosti, and the Russian Defense Ministry website.
The report also notes that during the pretrial investigation, Safronov unsuccessfully requested that prosecutors allow him to access a computer so he could pull up the purportedly classified information from online sources.
“It is clear to us that the reason for Ivan Safronov’s persecution is not ‘treason,’ that is not supported by anything, but it is his journalistic work and articles he published without taking into account the opinion of the Ministry of Defense and the Russian authorities,” Russian investigative outlet Kholod, said in a letter calling on Russian authorities to release the journalist.
Russia’s independent media, long under siege, teeters under new Putin crackdown
The prosecution initially requested 24 years in prison, just one year short of maximum punishment. Safronov’s lawyer, Yevgeny Smirnov, said last week that moments before announcing their sentencing request, the prosecutor turned to the journalist and offered him a deal: if he pleaded guilty, the term would be slashed in half. Safronov refused.
Safronov’s career in Kommersant spanned a decade. He first joined the paper as an intern but quickly rose through the ranks and became one of the most high-profile Russian correspondents covering the defense and space industries. His father, also named Ivan, worked for the same paper covering military affairs and died under mysterious circumstances after falling from a window of his Moscow apartment building.
Friends and family of Safronov told Proekt that he regularly received job offers from the ministries and state companies — often the very same ones he covered — but turned them down to stick to journalism.
In 2019, Safronov left Kommersant after a scoop about the upcoming resignation of Russia’s speaker of the parliament, an apparent leak that angered officials who then pressured the paper to fire the reporter. Safronov then worked as an adviser to the head of the Russian space corporation Roscosmos for a few months before his arrest.
State treason cases are rare in Russia, but they are increasingly seen as a way for the security services to pressure journalists, scientists and other individuals researching sensitive government matters. The trials are always held behind closed doors and the reasons for the prosecutions are rarely made public.
Ivan Pavlov, who was representing Safronov until the Russian authorities charged him with disclosing details from a preliminary investigation and forced him to flee the country, once specialized in defending espionage and treason cases.
In a 2018 report, he wrote: “There are more and more ‘spy’ cases in Russia each year, but very little is known about them, and when information does come out, it raises significant doubts.”
“[Charges] intended for punishing foreign intelligence officers are applied to housewives, saleswomen, scientists and pensioners,” Pavlov said at the time. “Such cases are investigated and considered under a veil of secrecy, which makes it easy for law enforcement officers to violate the rights of the accused and generally invent cases out of the blue, for show. We tried to lift that veil.”
Another of Safronov’s lawyers, Dmitry Talantov, who took over from Pavlov, was detained on charges under Russia’s “fake news laws” and is facing up to 10 years in prison.
In another grim milestone for Russian media, one of the last independent Russian news outlets, Novaya Gazeta, was officially stripped of its media license on Monday, making it impossible for the newspaper to legally operate inside the country.
Novaya Gazeta, a key investigative outlet established in 1993 and edited by Nobel Prize winner Dmitry Muratov, ceased operations in March soon after the start of the war in Ukraine after getting warnings from Russia’s tech and communications regulator.
Part of its staff left Russia to launch a new publication, Novaya Gazeta Europe, but the regulator has also banned its website in Russia. | 2022-09-05T15:09:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Journalist Ivan Safronov receives 22 years in Russian prison for treason - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/05/russia-ivan-safronov-treason-trial-verdict/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/05/russia-ivan-safronov-treason-trial-verdict/ |
Israel says its forces likely shot American journalist, but by accident
In this file photo taken on July 6, 2022, a woman walks past a mural depicting slain Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed while covering an Israeli army raid in Jenin in May, drawn along Israel's controversial separation barrier in the biblical city of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank. (Ahmad Gharabli/AFP via Getty Images)
TEL AVIV — The final results of an Israeli military inquiry has concluded that it was “highly likely” that Palestinian American reporter Shireen Abu Akleh was killed by Israeli fire, in the first full reversal of an earlier position that contended that the fatal bullet was probably from a Palestinian.
Abu Akleh, a veteran correspondent who had covered the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades for al-Jazeera, was shot and killed on May 11 while covering an overnight Israeli military raid in the West Bank city of Jenin. She was wearing clearly marked press gear and was in a relatively quiet area, far from any Palestinian gunmen, according to eyewitnesses and fellow journalists interviewed by the Post.
“There is a high possibility that Ms. Abu Akleh was accidentally hit by IDF gunfire that was fired toward suspects identified as armed Palestinian gunmen, during an exchange of fire in which life-risking, widespread and indiscriminate shots were fired toward IDF soldiers,” a military statement said on Monday, referring to the Israeli Defense Forces.
“IDF gunfire was fired with the intent of neutralizing the terrorists who shot at IDF soldiers, also from the area in which Ms. Shireen Abu Akleh was present,” it said. The statement did not provide evidence supporting the conclusion and did not address footage showing that the area where she was stationed seemed isolated and quiet prior to the shooting.
It also reiterated its two initial claims: the possibility that “Ms. Abu Akleh was hit by bullets fired by armed Palestinian gunmen” and that it was still “not possible to unequivocally determine the source of the gunfire which hit Ms. Abu Akleh.”
Israel has repeatedly said that the Israeli military has been intensively involved in “counterterrorism” activity in the area around Jenin, a historic hotbed of Palestinian armed movement and the hometown of a number of the assailants who carried out a string of Palestinian terror attacks in Israel last spring.
The Israeli military will not charge or investigate any soldiers involved in the Abu Akleh shooting since there is no suspicion of a criminal offense, military officials said.
Investigations by the Washington Post, along with the New York Times, the Associated Press, CNN, the investigative group Bellingcat, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, and other organizations found that the bullet that killed Abu Akleh likely originated from an Israeli soldier.
In July, U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said that a U.S.-led assessment of the investigations and the evidence concluded that Abu Akleh was most likely, although unintentionally, shot by an Israeli soldier.
Abu Akleh’s killing has sparked outrage among critics and international human rights organizations which accused Israel of trying to cover up the incident and absolve itself of responsibility. The criticism spiked again when Israeli police used batons to beat mourners, nearly causing pallbearers to drop the coffin, at Abu Akleh’s funeral in Jerusalem on May 14. An Israeli police investigation found wrongdoing but said that no police officers or supervisors would be penalized as a result.
The incident has shone an international spotlight on what Palestinians and human rights activists have for decades called a policy of impunity in Israel’s military.
“This policy claims more and more victims while the whitewash continues undisturbed,” said B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization that monitors the treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank.
Abu Akleh’s family has accused Israel of intentionally killing Shireen, and has been lobbying the American government and the International Criminal Court to conduct their own independent investigations.
“It’s obvious to anyone that Israeli war criminals cannot investigate their own crimes,” said a statement by the family. “We will continue to demand that the US government follow through with its stated commitments to accountability. Accountability requires action.” | 2022-09-05T15:35:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Israel's military investigation concludes that Palestinian American journalist Shirine Abu Akleh was likely shot by one of its soldiers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/05/israel-shireen-abu-akleh-investigation-jazeera/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/05/israel-shireen-abu-akleh-investigation-jazeera/ |
Canada stabbing suspects still at large after 10 people killed
Investigators discuss a mass stabbing in Weldon, Saskatchewan, Canada, on Sept. 4. (Heywood Yu/AP)
An expansive search continued in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan on Monday for the two men suspected of Sunday’s stabbing rampage that killed 10 people and injured at least 15, one of the deadliest cases of mass violence in recent years.
The suspects, identified by police as Damien Sanderson, 31, and Myles Sanderson, 30, remained at large Monday morning, more than 24 hours after authorities received the first reports about 5:40 a.m. local time Sunday of people being stabbed at the James Smith Cree Nation and in the nearby village of Weldon.
“Unfortunately the two males are still at large, this despite ongoing, relentless efforts through the night by both the RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] and the Regina Police Service to locate these two individuals,” Evan Bray, the provincial capital’s police chief, said in a video Monday morning.
Bray urged the public to come forward with information about the suspects, saying authorities “are confident that someone out there knows the whereabouts of these two.” He added that the communities where the killings occurred are suffering from “grief and anxiety.”
On Sunday, authorities sent a dangerous-persons alert at about 7:12 a.m., urging people in the area to seek shelter and warning that the two men were “armed and dangerous.” The alert was later expanded to the provinces of Manitoba and Alberta.
The men were believed t0 be traveling in a black Nissan Rogue crossover SUV after being spotted in Regina, about 200 miles to the south, shortly before midday Sunday, authorities said. They later said that the men may have changed their vehicle, and that their direction of travel was unknown.
Bray, the Regina police chief, said Sunday that the men “are likely” in that city, and he reassured residents that the police were focusing on finding the suspects.
The attacks have stunned the nation’s leaders, where incidents of mass violence are relatively uncommon. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described the attacks as “horrific and heartbreaking.”
In a Twitter thread, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe thanked police for their efforts.
The Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations, which represents 74 First Nations in the Saskatchewan province, offered condolences to the families of the victims in a statement Sunday.
“The FSIN Executive sends our deepest condolences and offers a message of solidarity with the people of James Smith Cree Nation after the unspeakable violence that claimed the lives of innocent people. Our hearts break for all those impacted,” the statement said.
As authorities scrambled to locate the suspects Monday, questions remained unanswered about the motivations for the assaults.
Rhonda Blackmore, assistant commissioner of the Saskatchewan Royal Canadian Mounted Police, said Sunday evening that it appeared that some of the victims at 13 crime scenes “may have been targeted and some may be random.”
“So to speak to a motive would be extremely difficult at this time,” she said at a news conference.
Police said on Sept. 4 that a rash of stabbings left at least 10 people dead and 15 injured in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. (Video: The Washington Post)
By Monday morning, authorities had yet to release the names of those killed in the attack.
This is a developing story that will update. | 2022-09-05T15:44:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Canada stabbings: Police hunt for two men after 10 people were killed - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/05/saskatchewan-stabbings-canada-manhunt/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/05/saskatchewan-stabbings-canada-manhunt/ |
This grandma filled a dream and opened a new crab restaurant — she’s 84
Molly Ruppert and her husband, Raymond “Cappy” Ruppert, opened Cappy's, a restaurant on the Chesapeake Bay, last year. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)
The young waiter — nervous, fidgeting, turning a little red under his peach fuzz — twice returned after taking our order: “Sorry, we’re out of that beer.” Then, “sorry, we’re out of burgers.”
No problem. The view over Rockhold Creek, with boats cruising by and a Great Blue Heron swooping overhead had us happy.
The third time, it was the cook who came to the table. The waiter couldn’t face us again.
“Sorry, we’re out of the meatloaf,” she said, gray hair held up with maybe a dozen pins. She showed her waiter mercy because he’s also one of her 18 grandkids.
Line cook Molly Ruppert is 84.
And in an extraordinary act of love for her family, a determination to fill all her dreams and the absolute inability to sit still, she and her husband opened a restaurant on the Western shore of the Chesapeake Bay last year that is staffed almost entirely by generations of their offspring.
“We start with the youngest ones in the morning, they come in and set the tables, set everything up,” said Jim Lober, a civil engineer who married into a weekend job tending bar and doing maintenance.
“Then the older ones come in, and they’re the wait staff, the cooks.”
Caroline Lober, 12, graduated to the late crew this summer.
“I’m on the fryer. Chicken, zucchini fritters and fries,” she explained. When she returns to school next week, she’ll have one of the fattest bankrolls in eighth grade. “That part is nice.”
The part she hates? “Smelling like the fryer,” she said. She does not want to go into food service when she grows up.
At least this summer, she was relieved of “mess” duty. Now a younger cousin is the one who has to “clean up every mess, no matter who made it.”
The grandkids are getting the precious lessons that a gig in food service reliably provide: grit, stamina, multitasking and public interaction.
And their teachers aren’t just doting grandparents with a crazy idea. They’re sort of a big deal.
How a mother-and-son duo shaped Washington's art and food scenes
“How a mother-and-son duo shaped Washington’s art and food scenes,” said the headline of a Washington Post magazine story.
Molly and her son Paul Ruppert were the forefront of D.C.’s current culinary and artistic blossoming in the 1990s — opening a “foodie” restaurant, establishing avant-garde theaters and pop-up art shows that launched scores of careers. The chef they hired was named one of Food & Wine magazine’s best new chefs in America in 1997.
“And he supported all of it,” Molly said, poking at her husband, Raymond “Cappy” Ruppert, who makes it clear that he’s still 85 and will not turn 86 until next week.
Cappy — a name he inherited from his family as a kid, but suited him nicely as captain of their little weekend boat on the Chesapeake — always ran businesses in D.C.
The Historical Society of Washington honored the Rupperts as a Washington Legacy Family, honoring six generations of Ruppert influence in the city, beginning with Henry Ruppert’s emigration from Germany to D.C. in 1856.
One of Henry’s sons, Frank, opened a hardware store in the 1000 block Seventh Street NW in 1889. That later became a real estate management company in 1936, where Paul and Cappy worked for years.
“Then she made me move upstairs,” Cappy said, poking Molly back, explaining that he moved the real estate business upstairs so Molly and Paul could open that restaurant.
Molly married into this, but her family is fourth-generation Brookland born.
When it came time to leave the D.C. businesses and their lives in the city — they finally sold the Seventh Street property after 120 years — they didn’t retire quietly to the little house on the Chesapeake Bay where their kids ran barefoot, learned to catch crabs and helmed their 20-foot runabout.
Whenever they boated up Rockhold Creek, they saw the remains of the old crab shack that had been there years ago, but fell apart, piece by piece, into the water.
“We know lots of people were saying: ‘Someone’s going to pull that restaurant out of the deep,’ ” Molly said, in a break between the lunch and dinner rush on their last day of the season. “Why not us?”
When I first met her — the meatloafless night in June — and she told me a little about her story, my mouth gaped open, thinking of the quiet life my 76-year-old mother prefers.
“I can’t stop,” she said. “I get bored. I can’t sit still.”
Did any of the kids try to stop her?
Meet two amazing women who are still working at 102. Yes, 102 years old.
“They may have said something between themselves, but not to us,” she said. “And my parents are dead, so I didn’t have anyone telling me this is a stupid idea.”
So they bought the property, then spent three years in planning and zoning purgatory to make their dream come true.
It’s a stylish, modern place, with ample dockage for boats and expansive deck seating. Instead of the crusty fish nets and plastic crustaceans that haunt too many seafood joints, it’s bright and airy with huge art pieces that Molly loves to talk about.
She keeps the menu tight. They’re known for the fat crabs they get from a local crabber, meatloaf, summer cookout salads like beet and corn and for Molly’s insane fried chicken. “It’s some kind of complex recipe,” Cappy explained.
Cappy is at the bar, deft in all the drinks he’s learned to pour.
Nora Lober is an engineer most of the year. But during the summer, she, husband Jim and their kids work at Cappy’s.
“Nora won’t talk to you,” Molly said. “But she really runs the place.”
They haven’t made money yet, in the two seasons they’ve been open. But they’re okay with that, they planned for it.
“We’re only open Friday, Saturday and Sunday,” Molly explained, laughing. “Because we need the other four days to recover.”
And Sunday was their last day open this year. A chunk of the staff went off to college, the rest have sports, rehearsals and homework that gobbles up their weekends.
That’s one of the problems, when the staff is family. And it explained that funny first weekend in June when we met the waiter who couldn’t stomach serving up another “no” to our table.
“It’s our first weekend. We had to open later this summer because of all the graduations,” Molly explained to us that day. “And we’re just not all the way there yet.”
They worked out those opening-weekend kinks, we learned on a return visit in August. The grandsons working the floor were all deft and confident, darting between tables with plates of food and drink refills.
Molly didn’t love closing for the season on Labor Day weekend, but hopes that next year, they can add some distant cousins, or maybe some non-Rupperts to work so they can stay open all year.
She wanted to make Monday their last. But the small union that is her offspring rebelled.
“They said: ‘We want one day of fun, come on!’ ” she said.
So she agreed to their demands and they got Labor Day off, after signaling the end of the summer with a family bonfire on the shore of the bay.
Monkeypox-fueled hate echoes the HIV/AIDS era, even in rainbow cities
There’s no shortage of teachers. We’ve just driven them out of schools. | 2022-09-05T15:44:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Molly Ruppert, after retiring from the DC art scene, opened a restaurant. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/05/molly-ruppert-dc-cappys/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/05/molly-ruppert-dc-cappys/ |
Sarah Palin and Mary Peltola, right, winner of the special election for Alaska's only U.S. House seat, onstage at a candidate forum Aug. 31 in Anchorage. (Marc Lester/Anchorage Daily News via AP)
It’s not the fault of ranked-choice voting that a majority of Alaskans didn’t want Sarah Palin to represent them in Congress. Yet Ms. Palin and other prominent Republicans are unfairly blaming this new system, approved by statewide ballot initiative in 2020, for allowing Democrat Mary Peltola to prevail this week in a special election to complete the term of the late Don Young (R). In fact, ranked-choice voting isn’t a partisan tool; it’s a valuable way to ensure that the outcome accurately reflects voters’ preferences.
Ms. Peltola received 40 percent to Ms. Palin’s 31 percent in the first round of what’s also called an instant runoff process. Under that system, Ms. Palin’s fellow Republican Nick Begich III, who received 29 percent, was eliminated from contention, and his voters had their next choices tabulated. The result: Ms. Peltola beat Ms. Palin, 52 percent to 49 percent. The same three candidates will face off again in November for a full term.
Generally, ranked-choice voting won’t benefit Democrats more than Republicans. If implemented in a state like Nevada, for example, it would probably work more often to the GOP’s advantage, because third-party candidates there tend to divert more conservative votes. The big winner of ranked-choice is lower-case-D democracy, for this simple reason: The system elevates candidates who are more broadly acceptable. Letting voters rank their preferences in open primaries will tend to elevate pragmatists over ideologues. It makes it harder for candidates with a fervent but narrow base of support and gives voice to the disaffected middle.
That’s what happened in Alaska. Ms. Palin, the 2008 GOP nominee for vice president, quit midway through her single term as governor to pursue reality television and other lucrative ventures. She was so focused on her national brand that she announced no public events in Alaska between a July 9 rally that former president Donald Trump headlined for her in Anchorage and the Aug. 16 special election. Meanwhile, Ms. Peltola, an Alaska Native and former state legislator, focused relentlessly on local issues.
It’s no coincidence that the only congressional Republicans on the ballot this year who have survived having voted to impeach Mr. Trump have been those from states with open primaries in which the top finishers advance to the general election: Washington Rep. Dan Newhouse, California Rep. David G. Valadao and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski. Ms. Murkowski finished first in her August primary, and she’s favored this fall over a Trump-backed challenger because of ranked-choice voting.
A common argument against ranked-choice voting is that it’s too complicated. Yet polling by Alaskans for Better Elections, an advocacy group for ranked-choice voting, shows 85 percent of voters in this election said the process was simple. Still, jurisdictions that adopt this system need to figure out how to count ballots faster, even if the delays are unrelated. That gives time for election deniers to sow doubts and peddle conspiracy theories.
Looking ahead, we wish that both Montgomery County, Md., and the District would choose their leaders via ranked-choice voting. Because Democrats are so dominant in both jurisdictions, whoever gets the most votes in the primary becomes a shoo-in for the general. That’s how Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich essentially secured another term after winning 39 percent in the Democratic primary, edging out David Blair by fewer than three dozen votes. There’s plenty of time to change the system before 2026. | 2022-09-05T16:02:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Ranked-choice voting isn't why Sarah Palin lost in Alaska - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/05/sarah-palin-alaska-ranked-choice-works/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/05/sarah-palin-alaska-ranked-choice-works/ |
FILE - U.N. Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Myanmar Noeleen Heyzer attends a press conference at the Parliament House in Kuala Lumpur, July 26, 2022. The United Nations special envoy on Myanmar declared Monday,Sept. 5, 2022, that she will not make another visit aimed at helping restore peace and stability in the Southeast Asia nation unless its military government allows her to meet with ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi. (Malaysia’s Department of Information via AP, File) (Uncredited/Malaysia’s Department of Information) | 2022-09-05T16:02:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | UN envoy says won't visit Myanmar if she can't see Suu Kyi - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/un-envoy-says-wont-visit-myanmar-if-she-cant-see-suu-kyi/2022/09/05/3420ebb2-2d28-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/un-envoy-says-wont-visit-myanmar-if-she-cant-see-suu-kyi/2022/09/05/3420ebb2-2d28-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html |
Anthony Edwards has a chance to follow up a breakout season with the Minnesota Timberwolves with an all-star selection in 2023. (David Zalubowski/AP)
Evan Mobley, Cleveland Cavaliers
Cade Cunningham, Detroit Pistons
Desmond Bane (Memphis Grizzlies)
Salt Lake City won’t host the NBA All-Star Game until February, but start bracing now for what will be an epic roster crunch.
Consider this star-studded 12-man roster of players who missed out last season due to injuries, other absences or slow starts: Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, James Harden, Anthony Davis, Kawhi Leonard, Paul George, Klay Thompson, Damian Lillard, Jaylen Brown, Zion Williamson, Bradley Beal and Pascal Siakam. On paper, Team Absentees looks as good or better than Team LeBron, which prevailed in Cleveland thanks to Stephen Curry’s 50-point explosion to win MVP. All 12 guys should be candidates in 2023.
Then, there are the seven first-time all-stars who made the cut for Cleveland: Ja Morant, Andrew Wiggins, Darius Garland, Fred VanVleet, Jarrett Allen, LaMelo Ball and Dejounte Murray. With the exception of Morant, whose meteoric rise has made him one of the league’s most popular figures, this group could have its hands full earning a return trip.
These countervailing forces — big names seeking to reclaim their spots from 2022 newcomers who are trying to hold on — will squeeze a third group: talented youngsters trying to make their all-star debuts. With that in mind, here’s a look at five players hoping to crash the party in Salt Lake City, plus the hurdles they must overcome to get there.
Much like Morant, Edwards has the athleticism and charisma to be a potential face of the league. The 2020 No. 1 overall pick is a leading candidate to win Most Improved Player honors, as he could mimic Morant’s third-year leap for the improved Timberwolves, who went all-in by pairing Karl-Anthony Towns with Rudy Gobert this summer. Edwards, 21, averaged 21.3 points on improved efficiency in his second season, and he could top 25 points per game this year if he learns how to better translate his explosiveness on the ball into more free throw attempts.
This bullet train faces two potential hang-ups. First, Edwards must crack the deep pool of backcourt talent in the Western Conference that includes Curry, Lillard, Morant, Luka Doncic, Chris Paul and Devin Booker, among others. There’s no shame in getting snubbed from that group, but Edwards could enjoy a little extra wiggle room after the Cleveland Cavaliers traded for Donovan Mitchell.
Second, Edwards will probably be competing with his own teammates. It’s hard to imagine Minnesota landing three selections unless it somehow sits atop the West standings, and both Towns and Gobert are three-time all-stars who should be strong candidates again this season. The league’s coaches, who vote on the reserves, could reward Edwards if he emerges as the Timberwolves’ leading scorer and then pick one of Minnesota’s twin towers.
Mobley, the 2021 No. 3 pick and the 2022 Rookie of the Year runner-up, was one of three Cavaliers who deserved serious all-star consideration last year. Ultimately, he lost out to Garland and Allen, his more experienced teammates. That’s just how it goes, given that Blake Griffin and Yao Ming have been the only rookie all-stars since 2000.
Though Mobley’s game is predicated on defensive versatility rather than eye-popping scoring, his impact on winning has already earned him plenty of respect within the league. The 21-year-old big man should mature into a Defensive Player of the Year candidate, and he has a chance to compete this year with the likes of Siakam, Khris Middleton and Jimmy Butler for an Eastern Conference frontcourt reserve spot.
Domantas Sabonis, a two-time East selection in 2020 and 2021, changed conferences at last year’s trade deadline, which could help. Still, Cleveland will probably find it much harder to land two all-stars in 2023, and both Garland and Allen remain viable candidates. The blueprint for Mobley (15 PPG, 8.3 RPG) is Davis, who raised his scoring average from 13.5 points per game as a rookie to 20.8 points per game as a sophomore all-star.
It’s easy to overlook Murray, who hasn’t played since April 2021 due to an ACL injury that sidelined him for the Denver Nuggets’ last two postseasons. But the last time the 25-year-old guard was on the playoff stage, he averaged a whopping 26.5 points, 4.8 rebounds and 6.6 assists per game as Denver reached the 2020 Western Conference finals.
To fight through the West’s backcourt logjam, Murray will need to quickly reestablish himself as a three-point shooting threat and a coldblooded closer. While Nikola Jokic kept the Nuggets afloat with back-to-back MVP campaigns, Murray’s patient approach to his recovery should pay dividends on a reworked roster that pairs offensive firepower with improved defensive chops.
Denver could challenge for the West’s top seed, which would set up Jokic for a starting all-star spot and Murray as a reserve. As points of comparison, Utah landed three all-stars in 2021 and Phoenix landed two in 2022 thanks to their excellent early season records.
Although Cunningham finished third behind Scottie Barnes and Mobley in Rookie of the Year voting, the 2022 No. 1 pick might enjoy the clearest path to Salt Lake City. Barnes must compete with VanVleet and Siakam to be Toronto’s representative. Mobley, as mentioned, is in the same predicament with Garland and Allen. But Cunningham, 20, is the Detroit Pistons’ clear-cut centerpiece, and he enters his second season with momentum after averaging 21.1 points, 5.7 rebounds and 6.5 assists after the all-star break.
Cunningham will have all the touches and shots he can handle on a Pistons team that is still in the early stages of rebuilding around him. Jerami Grant, last year’s leading scorer, was traded to the Portland Trail Blazers, further opening the door for Cunningham to score and play-make to his heart’s desire.
The Pistons would love to climb into the play-in mix, but even if they falter Cunningham could claim an all-star spot with massive second-year numbers like Trae Young in 2020. There are plenty of other rising candidates to consider in the East backcourt — including Young, Murray, Garland and Ball — but Cunningham projects to be as polished and complete as any of them.
Bane doesn’t boast the high-lottery pick hype enjoyed by the other four members of this list, but he proved to be a critical driver of the Grizzlies’ breakthrough last season. The 24-year-old guard is an analytics darling thanks to his knockdown three-point shooting, efficient scoring and physical defense. Although he was overshadowed by Morant, Bane averaged 18.2 points, 4.4 rebounds and 2.7 assists per game in his second year, numbers that put him in the same ballpark as recent all-stars like Middleton and Victor Oladipo.
With Jaren Jackson Jr. sidelined early in the season, Bane’s offensive role could expand to the point that his production matches a player like Thompson, who earned five straight all-star selections for the Warriors. If the Grizzlies can follow up their 56-win campaign with another sensational regular season, Bane would be the natural pick to be the team’s second selection. For that reason, he might find it easier to grab a spot than Mikal Bridges, who must battle with Paul and Booker in Phoenix, or Tyrese Maxey, who follows Joel Embiid and Harden in Philadelphia.
Honorable Mention: Scottie Barnes (Toronto Raptors), Mikal Bridges (Phoenix Suns), De’Aaron Fox (Sacramento Kings), Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (Oklahoma City Thunder) and Tyrese Maxey (Philadelphia 76ers) | 2022-09-05T16:10:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Five fast-risers who could make All-Star Game debuts in 2023 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/05/anthony-edwards-first-time-all-stars/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/05/anthony-edwards-first-time-all-stars/ |
Prince George’s County executive announces curfew for juveniles
The announcement comes after three people were fatally shot Labor Day weekend, including a 15-year-old.
Prince George's County Executive Angela Alsobrooks listens at right to Prince George's County Police Chief Malik Aziz during a news conference. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
Prince George’s County will impose a curfew on residents 17 and younger, Executive Angela Alsobrooks announced Monday. The curfew, which starts Friday at midnight and is scheduled to last 30 days, comes after gun violence took the lives of at least three people in the county over Labor Day weekend. Among the victims was a 15-year-old D.C. resident. A 1-year-old was also shot, but was listed in stable condition. | 2022-09-05T17:20:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Prince George’s County executive announces curfew for juveniles - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/05/prince-georges-curfew/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/05/prince-georges-curfew/ |
When the pandemic hit in 2020, U.S. schools went into lockdown. For more than a year, students were separated from their teachers, isolated from their peers and required to attend class remotely. It was abundantly clear that this was not a good way to learn, and that learning loss was a real risk. The only question was how much. The release of national test scores last week provided the answer: worse — much worse — than feared. Now the question confronting the nation’s schools is what to do about it.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), commonly known as the nation’s report card, on Thursday released results of tests taken from January to March 2022 by 9-year-olds across the United States, and compared them with scores from before the pandemic in 2020. “These results are sobering,” said Peggy G. Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the tests. Math scores dropped seven points, the first-ever decline since the test began in the early 1970s; reading scores dropped five points, the largest decline in 30 years. Two decades of academic progress have been erased.
The day after the NAEP scores came out, D.C. education officials released results from the spring 2022 administration of the PARCC exam, the statewide test given to students in grades three through eight and high school, and the results were equally grim. Reading and math proficiency declined substantially across all grades, and the already troubling achievement gap separating White students from non-White students widened. On both the NAEP and PARCC, there were declines among all income levels and races, but low-income and minority students fared worst. That came as no surprise to those who had warned that the pandemic's hardships were only exacerbating inequities that already existed in the educational system.
Release of the NAEP results prompted some finger-pointing about who was to blame for the prolonged closure of the schools. The Wall Street Journal editorial page faulted teachers unions for using their clout to keep schools shut even as schools opened in Europe without serious incident. Such an assessment overlooks the fear and uncertainty that surrounded the pandemic and the understandable desire by many to be extra-cautious. More important, however, there is little value in looking back; what is needed is an action plan that gives students the help they need to catch up. As Janice Jackson, former Chicago Public Schools superintendent now with Chiefs for Change, said, “Everybody should be treating this like the crisis that it is.” Sadly, the teachers union in Los Angeles seems not have gotten that message. It announced plans to boycott the first of four planned voluntary school days aimed at giving extra help to students struggling academically.
Extra instructional time — whether tutoring, additional school days, extended school days or summer school — is key to helping students catch up. Congress has allocated $190 billion to schools to deal with student learning loss; those funds should be spent with extra teaching time in mind. D.C. officials assure us that is their emphasis. Now would also be a good time for schools to jettison an outdated school calendar built around giving children summers off to work on the family farm and replace that with year-round schooling. Reversing the educational damage wrought by the pandemic and ensuing lockdown is essential, as quickly as possible. | 2022-09-05T17:33:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Student test scores plummeted during the pandemic. What can schools do? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/05/national-school-test-scores-covid-lost-progress/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/05/national-school-test-scores-covid-lost-progress/ |
Gainesville, after a yearlong simmer, gets its first varsity victory
Gainesville football team poses following the first win in school history Thursday. (Jason Eldredge)
Gainesville did little to stand out in the final moments of its game Thursday. The starters got in victory formation, sophomore quarterback Josh Barido knelt and the Tigers left the field hoping to display the exact amount of commotion that would convey they had been there before.
Even if they hadn’t been there before. The 54-28 victory over Osbourn Park, two weeks into Gainesville’s inaugural varsity season, was the first win in the Prince William County school’s history.
“Of course, I was happy as can be,” Bairdo said. “But we do need to focus on the next week and the long-term goals. After the game, I spoke to the team in the huddle and said, ‘Hey, the greatest teams can win like this and they won’t fall off. They’ll go right into the next week and play even better.’ ”
Gainesville’s coaches preach fundamentals, especially necessary considering just two of the program’s 130 players entered the season with varsity football experience.
“I told them last year, ‘If you’re hungry right now, I get it, you want to put your Hot Pocket in the microwave for two minutes and eat it; but if you want some good quality food, you put that beef stew in the crockpot and let it simmer all day,’ ” Coach Daniel Bruton said. “We’re beef stew. We’re going to trust the process.”
Gainesville opened last fall and featured a freshman and junior varsity program, which Bruton coached. The Tigers’ first varsity game this year was a 42-7 loss to Handley, but Thursday proved they are indeed ready for this level.
Sophomore Koven Smith finished wit 320 all-purpose yards and four touchdowns, including one on a kickoff return.
“That first kick return, that’s definitely going to stay with me forever,” Smith said. “That just lifted a lot of weight off my shoulders. After that, I was rocking and rolling.”
Georgetown Prep inspired by Serena
Entering the week of his team’s season-opener, Georgetown Prep Coach Dan Paro assigned his players homework: Watch tennis star Serena Williams.
Paro wanted the Little Hoyas to mimic the competitiveness of Williams, one of the sport’s greatest athletes, who may have played her final tournament last week at the U.S. Open.
“Find that fire in yourselves,” Paro told his players, “that competitive spirit and adrenaline flow.”
Prep’s players released their adrenaline to beat Pallotti, 16-14, and run around their North Bethesda field in celebration.
“All coaches in the area, we’re trying to find our kids’ competitive spirit,” Paro said. “Truthfully, I think that's the most important thing. There's some years where you might not have it. I just saw it from our kids a little bit earlier than normal.”
Last September, Pallotti beat Prep, 28-14. The Little Hoyas started 1-3 before finishing on a five-game winning streak and claiming their third consecutive Interstate Athletic Conference championship.
After learning the despair of losing last season, Prep went ahead early in the fourth quarter Friday when safety Lee Bruner returned a kickoff 90 yards for his second touchdown. Pallotti (0-1) missed a field goal as time expired.
pic.twitter.com/l6M3u4KauZ
— Christian David (@christiantdavid) September 3, 2022
While Williams’s career might have ended with a third-round loss Friday in New York, Prep’s season began with elation.
“The kids are so excited,” Paro said. “I mean, everyone understood what it meant. And that was the fun part.”
Evan Taylor, RB, Poolesville: The senior rushed for 188 yards and a touchdown as the Falcons earned an overtime win against Bethesda-Chevy Chase.
QB Camren Boykin, Potomac School. The sophomore completed 14 of 20 passes for 236 yards and two touchdowns. He added a rushing score in the Panthers’ 32-28 win over Norfolk Academy.
Jeff Overton, RB, Freedom (Woodbridge): The sophomore ran for 132 yards and added four touchdowns on the ground in a 74-0 drubbing of Fredericksburg opponent Riverbend.
Demiko Suggs, QB, Bell: The senior threw for 174 yards and three touchdowns and added two rushing touchdowns as Bell pounded Eastern, 51-0.
Theodore Roosevelt at Gonzaga, Friday, 6 p.m.
Quince Orchard at Paint Branch, Friday, 6:30
Patriot at Forest Park, Friday, 7 p.m.
Rock Creek Christian at St. Mary’s Ryken, Friday, 7 p.m.
Young Northwest gets a lesson in losing
When three hours of battling was over Friday night, a few Northwest Jaguars stopped and stared at the celebration being held by their opponent, Damascus. That was until Coach Travis Hawkins barked at them to get to the 50-yard line for handshakes. This game was over, no sense dwelling on the pain.
The dramatic 33-28 loss was a learning experience for a Northwest program that doesn’t often lose. The Jaguars went 11-2 last fall, a dominant campaign that was foiled only by eventual state champion and nearby rival Quince Orchard. But the spring brought plenty of attrition, as the program graduated 30 seniors, 12 of whom are now playing collegiately. In addition, the Jaguars saw presumed starting quarterback Patrick Doyle transfer to DeMatha. This year’s squad has 12 total seniors.
As a result, the team is not only young but also feels as though it has something to prove. That feeling doesn’t stop at the sideline either, as Northwest employs one of the younger coaching staffs in the state. Hawkins, 31, said his oldest assistant is 33 and his youngest is 23.
“We feel like we have a young and hungry program this year,” Hawkins said.
Hawkins said the biggest issue with a young team is getting it to communicate. High school boys are not always the first people to ask questions or give orders.
“They may know the scheme, but they’re hesitant to speak up to others because they’re afraid they may be wrong,” Hawkins said. “We tell them ‘You can yell out the wrong thing, and that’s okay because [the coaches] will correct you. But at least you’re yelling.”
High Point’s coach takes unconventional route
When a nearby pro day was canceled in 2020 because of the pandemic, it extinguished any last hopes Kal-El Statham had of playing football professionally. The linebacker had played at Florida Atlantic and Charleston and was counting on one final shot to make a name for himself.
“Through all the ups and downs, football has been the pillar in my life that kept me on the right track,” Statham said. “So losing football for an entire year, with no clear sight of ever playing again, put me in a dark place.”
Statham would eventually take the field again — as the coach of High Point High in Beltsville — but his path here was unconventional.
Initially, after accepting his playing career was finished, he combined his love for football and his background in graphic design to create high school football highlights for area schools.
“Ironically, High Point was the first team I covered in Maryland with video highlights against C.H. Flowers in 2021,” Statham said.
While watching the lopsided game, the idea of coaching crept into his mind. Statham had also become a long-term substitute for Prince George’s County public schools, and spending time with students further intrigued him.
So at age 25, Statham pounced when the High Point head coaching job became available.
“It was almost like God was guiding me to High Point to create something special,” Statham said
Creating something special at High Point will be a tough task, as the Eagles haven’t finished a season above .500 since the late 1990s. They have started this season 1-1 and host C.H. Flowers on Saturday. | 2022-09-05T17:33:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Gainesville, after a yearlong simmer, gets its first varsity victory - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/05/gainesville-after-yearlong-simmer-gets-its-first-varsity-victory/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/05/gainesville-after-yearlong-simmer-gets-its-first-varsity-victory/ |
A federal judge in Florida has ruled in favor of former president Donald Trump’s request for a special master to review documents seized from his Mar-a-Lago home as part of a probe into his handling of sensitive government records. At issue is whether he can block prosecutors from making use of documents he says should be protected by some form of legal privilege. The Justice Department had opposed the request. US District Judge Aileen Cannon, nominated to the bench by Trump, also temporarily barred the government from using the trove to develop its criminal investigation into the former president while the review takes place.
Trump contends that at least some of the documents seized by the FBI during the Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago are privileged, meaning they’re covered by legal protections that make them off-limits to federal prosecutors. Trump has cited attorney-client privilege, which covers communications between lawyers and their clients, and executive privilege, a doctrine that is meant to protect a president’s ability to communicate freely with close advisers. Trump has referenced both of those privileges in accusing federal investigators of abusing their power and seizing documents that they weren’t authorized to take under the search warrant. He asked Cannon to appoint a special master to review the documents and to block DOJ from looking at them in the meantime.
Defendants who don’t want the government in charge of the privilege review can ask a judge to bring in a special master. That happened during the criminal investigation into ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. The judge in that case explained that he had “faith” that prosecutors’ integrity was “unimpeachable,” but that bringing in a special master would help with the “perception of fairness” given the unique circumstances at play. Citing the Cohen case, prosecutors in New York made a preemptive request to a judge to appoint a special master after seizing materials from two other Trump lawyers, Rudy Giuliani and Victoria Toensing. Trump highlighted those cases in his pitch for a special master in the records case.
5. Was Trump’s request unusual?
A request for a special master isn’t unusual, but a couple of things set Trump’s situation apart. Very few criminal investigations potentially implicate executive privilege, so bringing in a special master to consider that question would be a rarity. There’s also the timing: Cohen went to court to try to stop the government from looking at his documents almost immediately after the search. DOJ went to court a few days after the Giuliani and Toensing searches, and government lawyers made clear that they hadn’t started looking at seized materials. Legal experts also questioned why Trump didn’t lodge his special master request with the federal magistrate judge who had signed off on the warrant and was already presiding over a case related to the release of warrant materials; filing a new case meant Trump landed before a different, randomly-assigned judge on the Florida bench. DOJ was against using a special master at all, but argued that if the judge goes that route, it should be someone with top secret security clearance, another unusual element.
6. What did the government say?
7. What did the judge say?
Cannon ruled that the special master could review the seized materials for both attorney-client privilege and executive privilege, saying that the Supreme Court had not settled the question of whether a former president could assert executive privilege against the administration of the sitting president. Cannon also questioned the Justice Department’s contention that Trump has no property interest in any of the presidential records seized from his residence because they belong to the government -- not him. “That position calls for an ultimate judgment on the merits as to those documents and their designations,” Cannon said, adding that the government had already conceded that the search had resulted in the seizure of more than 500 pages of documents potentially covered by attorney-client privilege. The judge said in her Sept. 5 ruling that the government could continue to access the documents -- many of them bearing the nation’s highest classification markings -- for the limited purposes of conducting a national-security review that’s already underway.
Cannon’s suggestion that the Supreme Court may need to decide the issue points to the possibility of significant delay in the case. That could prove a major setback to the Justice Department, which argued in court that the investigation was urgent and time-sensitive. Cannon in the ruling said the exact details of the review process will be decided after both sides submit proposals. She asked the Justice Department and Trump’s lawyers to submit candidates for special master by Sept. 9. A special master advises a judge, but doesn’t make the final call. They typically submit a report to the judge with recommendations -- in a case like Trump’s, laying out what they think should happen to disputed documents -- and the parties could then get a chance to weigh in before the judge rules. | 2022-09-05T19:04:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Everything You Need to Know About Trump’s Push for a ‘Special Master’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/everything-you-need-to-knowabout-trumps-push-for-a-special-master/2022/09/05/c6e3cafa-2d46-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/everything-you-need-to-knowabout-trumps-push-for-a-special-master/2022/09/05/c6e3cafa-2d46-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html |
After a grindlingly long race, Liz Truss has finally been named Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s successor. The new leader of the Conservative Party now has the unenviable task of steering the UK through a tough winter and beyond. Will she be able to hold the Tories together and keep the lights on? Bloomberg Opinion columnists Therese Raphael, Adrian Wooldridge and Marcus Ashworth discussed her prospects with Bobby Ghosh live on Twitter Spaces. Here’s a transcript, edited for clarity and length.
How did Liz Truss defeat the establishment’s favorite, former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, to the job?
Adrian Wooldridge: Indeed, Rishi Sunak was the person who got the most votes amongst MPs. But from the beginning, Liz Truss did better in the race for the votes of the roughly 170,000 Conservative Party members who determine who finally wins. She did this by focusing relentlessly, but extremely successfully, on the sentiments of voters in the party membership.
She played on their prejudices: They want tax cuts; they didn’t like the degree of state expansion that went on during the COVID crisis; they like Boris Johnson. But while she won, she didn’t win overwhelmingly. She only got 57% of the vote and you have to see that in the context of the fact that Boris Johnson won by a higher percentage and Theresa May won even more resoundingly. So the party is divided and she has to try and put it back together.
Can Truss follow through on the promises of smaller government and lower taxes that she made during her campaign?
Therese Raphael: Let’s say first that her promises were very vague and delivered in very sweeping terms. The party is not in a position to have yet another leadership challenge before the next general election in a couple of years time. So she can face some grumbling from the backbenchers. Initially, she’s going to get fairly significant support because the party will be soon focused on ensuring that Labour leader Keir Starmer doesn’t make it into Number 10 at the next general election. To do that, they cannot afford another two years of in-fighting, but that’s not to say there wouldn’t be opposition to her.
Truss will face very early on a choice that will highlight some of the divisions within the party — the debate over the Northern Ireland Protocol, for example. Plus there’s a general public which doesn’t think very highly of her.
How have the markets reacted and what do they expect from Truss?
Marcus Ashworth: Markets are expecting a lot and it will have to be within the next week and a really clear, aggressive plan. Basically, what Liz Truss is going to do is unwind everything that Rishi Sunak did. It’s going to be about 4% of GDP — about 100 billion pounds ($115 billion) of stimulus phased over a few months.
She’s going to be, as she said in her acceptance speech, “conservative.” That means aggressively following the manifesto. The key is can she provide the means with which to do so if she’s going to cut taxes, provide support and cap energy prices all at the same time? She does have a great advantage that people haven’t really picked up on: There’s a lot of pent-up cash waiting for the moment to reinvest. There is a natural shortage of gilts actually caused by Sunak, who canceled about 100 billion pounds worth of issuance last October which the market’s never really recovered from.
AW: I would reemphasize the fact that this is an exceptionally fragile economy at the moment. People and the markets are very questioning about her abilities and overall policies. She needs to have some sort of momentum and as soon as she’s seen to falter, there could be very difficult consequences.
It seems like Truss is bringing back a kind of Reaganite or Thatcherite approach to the economy. She’s made it very clear that she sees three jobs: She wants to cut taxes, control inflation, and she wants a growth strategy. How does the sequencing of that work?
AW: The timing is absolutely vital and very strange because I could see how a policy of really igniting growth might make a certain amount of sense, but not in the middle of an energy crisis. There are two things that really confront the country at the moment. One is surging inflation and the other is the fact that many people, particularly many poorer people, won’t be able to afford their bills. Her policy of tax cuts and igniting growth, whatever the merits of that is in the long term, is not going to address those problems and may well make the problem of inflation worse. I wouldn’t call it Thatcherite at all. Thatcher raised taxes and was very concerned with balanced budgets. It’s Reaganite without all of the advantages of a giant economy with the reserve currency.
MA: I would agree with Adrian that it’s an early-Reaganite approach. However, I’m going to disagree with him on the economic effect. She said on Sunday that she’s not going to look through the lens of redistribution on everything, she needs to go for growth. I think she’s going to go at everything as hard as she possibly can. I also don’t think she will leave behind the poorest, far from it — we’re not just talking families here but businesses as well. She’s going to try and throw as big a blanket over this as she possibly can. We won’t necessarily see either recession or indeed inflation optically going on much higher than it is now.
The question is, at some point something has got to give and that’s going to be borrowing. There’s enough room, as long as the markets don’t take fright. Sterling is priced very cheap, the gold market’s already moved. There is a way through this, but it will be fraught.
The majority of MPs voted didn’t vote for her. Will they now be hostile or faithful to the party?
AW: We have two years until the next election and the Conservative Party has a habit of trying very hard to win elections. It’d look very odd to try and destabilize your third prime minister in a row. However, she is, by temperament and not just by ideology, an extremist. She likes extreme solutions to problems and she takes the fact that she puts people’s back up as a source of pride rather than a warning. When she was a Liberal Democrat, as she was when she was an undergraduate student, she wanted to abolish the monarchy, for example.
We haven’t seen her cabinet announced, but the leaks so far suggest that she will have a very robust showing of right-wingers, including Suella Braverman as home secretary and Kwasi Kwarteng is set to be chancellor. Iain Duncan Smith may be coming back in a prominent role, probably running the House of Commons. Jacob Reese-Mogg might be business secretary. These are people who, with the exception of Kwarteng, one wouldn’t even imagine in the cabinet a few years ago because of the combination of their ideology and lack of personal qualities. I see this moment as the Corbynization of the Conservative party. Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn didn’t win a majority of MPs, but he did win votes from party members. So whether the majority of the Conservative party can put up with that in parliament for two more years I’d be very interested to see.
What can we expect from her in foreign policy terms?
TR: The simple answer to that is continuity. She was pretty decent as foreign secretary. She was strong on supporting the government of Volodymyr Zelenskiy. After the Russian invasion, she has stood up to Vladimir Putin quite publicly. She is also advocating an increase in defense spending to 3% of GDP.
But what we need to keep in mind is that the Ukraine coalition very much needs to be a coalition. It relies on a close relationship with Washington and on building and maintaining consensus with the European Union. Both of those things risk being undermined by the standoff in Northern Ireland. There is something very existential for the West about the war in Ukraine and so I don’t think anything is going to stop Europe, Britain and the US talking on that. But her credibility internationally will depend in part on how she handles these early challenges and particularly on Northern Ireland.
For the final word, what’s your take on Boris Johnson’s legacy as prime minister?
MA: Boris Johnson cuts both ways. He’s clearly an accomplished performer and has an ability to change the dynamic, as we saw through the Brexit campaign and the ability to get a Brexit deal done with Europe. He won an election and then proceeded to essentially fail at the statecraft and ability to run a competent administration with very poor choice of advisors. That lost him the confidence of his colleagues.
That’s why Liz Truss is going to approach the political side of it quite differently. The media may find itself starved of the drama they’ve been able to enjoy so much under the Boris Johnson administration. Boris has got some strong points — he got the big things right — but he very much got the little things wrong.TR: He’s certainly occupied a great deal of my journalistic time over the last three years. It’s interesting that the latest YouGov poll shows that 55% of Britons think that Johnson was either poor or terrible, which is really damning public judgment at this point. But within his party, there is a very different view of him, among many. He reopened the question of what is conservatism for the country. He attracted Labour voters in the North and he stitched together a whopping electoral majority in 2019.
So now we have to see what happens, but I think one legacy in terms of vision that ought to be acknowledged is that Johnson identified the rebalancing of the UK economy — what he called “levelling up” — as the core deliverable for the Tories. That was the right policy to focus on and the government delivered a very interesting serious white paper setting out how that should be done. Unfortunately, things fell apart and he didn’t get very far in delivering it. There’s a lot left for Truss to do.AW: Boris Johnson is, unfortunately for the Conservative party, a British version of Donald Trump. He’s too toxic really to win over the country again, but he’s too big and popular with the party base to disappear. So he’ll be there all the time. He’ll probably get a column in which he will comment on a weekly basis on how his successor is doing. His loyal supporters within the Conservative party will be banging the table with enthusiasm about what he says.
Rishi Sunak is too good a person to disappear from the Conservative party, but he won’t have a role in Liz Truss’s cabinet. He’ll be there sitting as a very prominent and important back bencher. And if, as many of us suspect, the Truss experiment falls apart, there are two alternatives already there. The party will either go back to Rishi Sunak and his calm managerialism, or back for mad music and stronger wine to Boris Johnson. Both of them are a standing challenge to Liz Truss.
• Can Liz Truss Exceed Low Expectations? Thatcher Did: Therese Raphael
• The Stink of Britain’s Sewage: Therese Raphael
• As Gas Prices Soar, the UK Needs a Real Energy Plan: The Editors | 2022-09-05T19:04:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Welcome to the Liz Truss Era. Here’s What to Expect. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/welcome-to-the-liz-truss-era-heres-what-to-expect/2022/09/05/7c667ba4-2d40-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/welcome-to-the-liz-truss-era-heres-what-to-expect/2022/09/05/7c667ba4-2d40-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html |
He was credited with bringing transformative change to his city as mayor in the 1970s and was the patriarch of a Democratic dynasty
Mayor Moon Landrieu of New Orleans in 1973. (John Duricka/AP)
Moon Landrieu, who faced down segregationists as a young Louisiana state legislator in the 1960s, integrated the New Orleans city government during his transformative years as mayor in the ’70s, and was the patriarch of a Democratic political dynasty, died Sept. 5 at 8:30 a.m. at his family home in New Orleans. He was 92.
Mr. Landrieu was the father of Mary Landrieu, a former three-term U.S. senator from Louisiana, and Mitch Landrieu, a former New Orleans mayor currently serving under President Biden as senior adviser for the implementation of last year’s $1.2 trillion legislation to upgrade the nation’s infrastructure.
Mr. Landrieu first held elective office as a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives, where he was elected in 1960 amid roiling racial tensions. Six years earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court had outlawed racial segregation in public schools with its landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Many White parents and politicians intensely resisted the ruling, however, and schools across the South remained unintegrated.
Although he was one of the most junior members of the legislature — he was 29 when he took office — Mr. Landrieu challenged efforts by Gov. Jimmie H. Davis (D) and his segregationist supporters to thwart the integration of the New Orleans public schools. On at least one occasion, Mr. Landrieu was the sole legislator to vote against the governor. He was said to have received death threats.
After a court ordered that integration proceed, federal marshals were dispatched to escort 6-year-old Ruby Bridges to first grade at the city’s William Frantz Public School on Nov. 14, 1960, as she became one of the first Black students to integrate an elementary school in the South. She endured jeers and threats as she made her way to school in a scene depicted in Norman Rockwell’s painting “The Problem We All Live With.”
Lucille Bridges, who stood by daughter Ruby through school desegregation, dies at 86
In 1970, with a reported 90 percent of the Black vote as well as the support of many liberal Whites, Mr. Landrieu was elected New Orleans mayor. One of his chief campaign pledges had been to bring more African Americans into the local government and civil service.
“The people who were Black who worked in City Hall were workers on the mop and broom level,” said Norman C. Francis, a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom who served for nearly five decades as president of Xavier University of Louisiana, the only historically Black and Catholic university in the United States. “Moon let it be known that we were going to change that.”
“He showed great political courage, moral vision [and] great fortitude in pushing back against those who were against the future,” Lawrence N. Powell, a professor emeritus of Southern history and race relations at Tulane University in New Orleans, said in an interview.
By his account, Mr. Landrieu did not do enough to bring African Americans into the “mainstream of economic life,” although he sought to award more government contracts to minority-owned businesses.
His tenure was not without controversy. The Superdome, the stadium that remade the skyline of New Orleans, opened under his leadership in 1975 at a cost of more than $160 million and amid a cloud of questions about its financing, management and construction.
New Orleans mayor: Why I’m taking down my city’s Confederate monuments
“These monuments purposefully celebrate a fictional, sanitized Confederacy,” Mitch Landrieu declared, “ignoring the death, ignoring the enslavement, and the terror that it actually stood for.”
He later described the speech as “the culmination of not only my work but my father’s work.”
He was a gifted athlete and pitched for the baseball team at Loyola University in New Orleans, where he received a bachelor’s degree in business administration in 1952 and a law degree in 1954.
He served in the Army before establishing a law practice in 1957. He found an early political mentor in New Orleans Mayor deLesseps S. “Chep” Morrison.
In the years after he left public office, Louisiana has turned increasingly Republican. Mary Landrieu, who rose to national prominence as a spokeswoman for her state in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, was defeated by U.S. Rep. Bill Cassidy (R) in a runoff in 2014.
Survivors include his wife of nearly seven decades, the former Verna Marie Satterlee of New Orleans; nine children, Mary Landrieu of New Orleans and Washington, Mitch Landrieu, Mark Landrieu, Michelle “Shelley” Landrieu, Madeleine Landrieu, Martin Landrieu and Maurice Landrieu Jr., all of New Orleans, Melanie Cook of Mandeville, La., and Melinda Seiter of Mobile, Ala.; 37 grandchildren; and 15 great-grandchildren. | 2022-09-05T19:05:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Moon Landrieu dies; New Orleans mayor led on civil rights - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/09/05/moon-landrieu-new-orleans-mayor-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/09/05/moon-landrieu-new-orleans-mayor-dead/ |
Making a mockery of therapy animals
An American alligator. (iStock)
The Aug. 30 Style article “Finding warm support from a cold-blooded companion,” about a man and his “emotional support” alligator convoluted the purpose of therapy animals and did a grave disservice to millions of people who rely on them to experience life to its fullest potential. Alligators are extremely dangerous, wild animals that do not meet the rigorous standards of a therapy animal. As framed, this story ignored the serious nature of therapy-animal protocol and, worse, undermined the merits of the treatment modality by pushing the idea that this program simply means acquiring a pet.
American Humane advocates the adherence to a therapeutic animal-assisted protocol that conforms to infection control, risk management and other safety guidelines as outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Veterinary Medical Association and the facility in which the service is provided. Participating animal handlers should be trained, certified and have the established right to use the animal in a therapy setting. Participating animals must be domesticated, and they must be humanely trained and treated.
Animal-assisted therapy programs save countless lives and provide people with a sense of hope and resilience that they once thought was lost. Much like the trained animals themselves, this program should be treated with the respect it so desperately deserves.
Robin Ganzert, Washington
The writer is president and chief executive of American Humane. | 2022-09-05T19:05:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Making a mockery of therapy animals - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/05/making-mockery-therapy-animals/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/05/making-mockery-therapy-animals/ |
The triad of the free world
Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev talks with reporters on June 24, 1996, on the bank of the Volga River in the town of Samara. (Lucian Perkins/The Washington Post)
George F. Will’s Aug. 31 op-ed, “Gorbachev’s reputation rests on amnesia,” provided much-needed historical perspective. As Mr. Will suggested, most of the pundits magnify Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms, which were not intended to democratize Russia nor to bring about the fall of the Soviet Union and its empire. And as they glorify the Soviet leader, they fail to give credit, or even to mention, President Ronald Reagan’s comprehensive strategy designed not only to contain but also to undermine and roll back the Soviet bloc.
Outlined in three ultrasecret National Security Decision Directives — No. 32 of May 20, 1982,; No. 66 of Nov. 29, 1982; and No. 75 of Jan. 17, 1983 — the adopted measures exerted extraordinary economic, political, psychological and military pressure, forcing Mr. Gorbachev to withdraw Soviet troops from Afghanistan and deterring him from sending in military support to quash the dissident movements in Poland, the Baltics and other countries.
So, while giving his due to Mr. Gorbachev for what he did or didn’t do under pressure, we should not forget the courageous dissidents in Russia and satellite countries, and the triumphant triad of the Free World: Reagan, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II, who fostered freedom and helped to end the Cold War without firing a shot.
Néstor T. Carbonell, Greenwich, Conn. | 2022-09-05T19:05:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The triad of the free world - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/05/triad-free-world/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/05/triad-free-world/ |
Ryan Kerrigan has joined the Commanders’ coaching staff as assistant defensive line coach. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
Ryan Kerrigan never really left the game after he announced his retirement from football in late July.
On Monday, the Washington Commanders’ all-time sack leader was appointed assistant defensive line coach, giving the front five a familiar and respected face alongside Jeff Zgonina, who was recently promoted to defensive line coach.
The role is a seamless fit, despite Kerrigan’s lack of coaching experience. Roughly 48 hours after signing a one-day contract to end his 10-year playing career with Washington, Kerrigan was back on the field in Ashburn sporting Commanders apparel and voluntarily helping with the line. It quickly become obvious where his career was headed.
“I didn’t anticipate an opportunity would come so quick because of the timing of it, being that it was right in late July,” said Kerrigan, who admitted in his retirement news conference he hoped to parlay his playing days into coaching. “But I’m really thankful Coach [Ron] Rivera gave me this opportunity, and I’m just hoping to prove him right.”
Football isn’t Jeff Zgonina’s only passion. He’s also partial to dog shows.
In early August, Washington fired its previous defensive line coach, Sam Mills III, and elevated Zgonina. Brent Vieselmeyer, the assistant defensive backs/nickel coach, was tabbed to help out with the line, but his title never changed and Kerrigan quickly assumed the unofficial role as Zgonina’s assistant.
“As he shadowed the coaches, and I watched him with that, you could see how much fun he was having and how much respect he had garnered from the defensive ends,” Rivera said. “Those guys seem to gravitate to him. But also he took to it very well, very quickly. So having this opportunity to do that was, really, honestly, a no-brainer.”
Washington drafted Kerrigan with the 16th pick in 2011, beginning his decade-long run with the team before he capped his career with one season in Philadelphia. Revered for his work ethic and attention to detail, Kerrigan became a natural mentor to many of his younger teammates, even those who would eventually take his job late in his career.
A polished pass rusher whose production often belied his size (6-4, 265), Kerrigan notched 95.5 career sacks and, this past weekend, was added to Washington’s Greatest Players list.
“He’s a guy who’s been there and done that at a very high level. He’s really detailed, too,” defensive end James Smith-Williams said. “We played together my rookie year, and R.K. has been the same exact guy. He hasn’t changed a bit. Even then I was going to R.K. my rookie year, asking: ‘What do you see? What do you think?’ He was telling me that stuff three years ago, so him being coach won’t change anything.”
Yet Kerrigan’s transition from the field to the sidelines has required some adjustments. For one, his days are longer, with meetings that have no finite end. And his instinct to mentor others can go even further as he delves deeper into his evaluations of players he used to work alongside on the line.
“From my vantage point, having played with these guys a couple years ago to now working with them as a coach, I think it’s an awesome situation for me personally because I really want these guys to succeed,” he said.
Kam Curl is questionable
Washington safety Kam Curl said Monday he had surgery to repair his right thumb and is hopeful, though not certain, he’ll play in the team’s season opener Sunday against the Jacksonville Jaguars.
“It’s just a little slight thumb injury,” he added. “I want to play every game, you know? My job is to play football, and that’s what I want to do.”
Wearing a small black cast over his wrist and thumb, Curl described the injury, which he suffered during Washington’s second preseason game against the Kansas City Chiefs, as a “freak accident.”
Curl said he could play with the cast if it came to that, but per NFL rules, the cast would have to be covered entirely with foam rubber or a similar soft material. The extra padding and the immobility of his wrist may make it too difficult for Curl, a versatile defensive back who is often asked to blitz, drop down in the box and fall back in deep coverage.
“I’m just trying to be careful with it,” Curl said. “Any injury is frustrating. I’m trying to play football, so it’s a little frustrating. Just being patient with it.”
Should Curl be unable to go Sunday against the Jaguars, the Commanders could turn to a rotation of players to fill the void, with Darrick Forrest and rookie Percy Butler likely to be in the mix.
Tight end Logan Thomas continues to work his way back from an extensive knee injury he suffered late last season. He was activated from the physically unable to perform list Aug. 22, but is still unsure whether he’ll play Week 1.
Thomas indicated Monday he would return either in Week 1 or Week 2, but the decision is up to the coaching and medical staffs. Among the things they could be looking for are whether Thomas can make the cuts he needs, whether his knee can withstand the pressure of blocking and how it continues to respond after practices.
He assured, however, that there is no doubt or lacking confidence in his repaired knee. Had there been any, he wouldn’t have practiced the past two weeks.
“All things to this point have gone well,” Thomas said, “but obviously there’s no simulation for a game.”
Fellow tight end Cole Turner said he expects to be available for Week 1 after recovering from a hamstring injury suffered in training camp. The rookie out of Nevada could play a significant role in the offense, given his wide catch radius and size and the system’s emphasis on the position.
Turner said Monday he participated in team drills without limitations for the first time in weeks and now feels confident he’ll suit up against the Jaguars. | 2022-09-05T19:30:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Commanders name Ryan Kerrigan assistant defensive line coach - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/05/ryan-kerrigan-commanders-coaching-staff/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/05/ryan-kerrigan-commanders-coaching-staff/ |
U.N. says famine is 'at the door' amid drought
A formal famine declaration is rare and a warning that too little help has come too late. At least 1 million people in Somalia have been displaced by the harshest drought in decades, driven by climate change, that also affects the wider Horn of Africa including Ethiopia and Kenya.
Famine is the extreme lack of food and a significant death rate from outright starvation or malnutrition combined with diseases such as cholera. A declaration means data shows more than a fifth of households have extreme food gaps, more than 30 percent of children are acutely malnourished and over 2 people out of 10,000 are dying every day.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been described as a disaster for Somalia, which has suffered from a shortage of humanitarian aid as international donors focus on Europe. Somalia sourced at least 90 percent of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine before the war and has been hit hard by scarcity and the sharp rise in food prices.
Terrorism court starts trial of 8 in Nice attack
During the planned three-plus months of court proceedings in Paris, survivors and those mourning loved ones will recount the horrors inflicted along the beachfront of Nice on the night of July 14, 2016.
Shortly after the end of a fireworks display, the truck careered through the crowds for more than a mile, like a snowplow. The final death toll included 15 children and adolescents, while 450 other people were injured. Of the dead, 33 were foreign nationals.
Dozens die in China earthquake: At least 46 people were reported killed and 16 missing in a 6.8-magnitude earthquake that shook China's southwestern province of Sichuan on Monday, triggering landslides and shaking buildings in the provincial capital of Chengdu, whose 21 million residents are under a coronavirus lockdown. The quake struck a mountainous area in Luding county shortly after noon, the China Earthquake Networks Center said.
Iran sentences LGBT activists to death: Two women have been sentenced to death in Iran on charges of "corruption on earth" and human trafficking over the past few days, Iran's official IRNA news agency reported on Monday. Advocates and rights group took to social media to share pictures of the two women, saying they are LGBT rights activists and are innocent. The pictures could not be verified by Reuters. "Contrary to news published online, the sentenced have deceived and trafficked young women and girls out of the country by promising them educational and work opportunities, thus leading to the suicide of several of their victims," IRNA said. | 2022-09-05T20:36:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | World Digest: Sept. 5, 2022 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/world-digest-sept-5-2022/2022/09/05/67e259e4-2d1a-11ed-8006-1313fa23d529_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/world-digest-sept-5-2022/2022/09/05/67e259e4-2d1a-11ed-8006-1313fa23d529_story.html |
Mallory Pugh takes charge against Nigeria's Michelle Alozie in friendly Saturday in Kansas City, Kan. (Tim Vizer/AFP/Getty Images)
Early in the second half Saturday, with the U.S. women’s national soccer team already leading Nigeria by three goals in Kansas City, Kan., Mallory Pugh collected the ball from Emily Fox near the sideline.
The space and angle was right to make a run, but if there were any doubt whether Pugh should take on defender Nicole Payne, Megan Rapinoe obliterated it.
“Go at her! Go at her!” Rapinoe shouted from outside the field of play, where the reserves were warming up.
“I was like, ‘You’re right,’” Pugh recalled Sunday. “That gave me the extra bit of boost that I needed. So credit to Pinoe, too.”
Pugh charged at Payne, infiltrated the box, then cut left, drawing upper-body contact and a penalty kick, which Alex Morgan converted to cap a 4-0 victory.
USWNT roster features heavy D.C. presence for Audi Field friendly
Last year and maybe the year before, Pugh might not have had the confidence and technical polish to create the opportunity. Once a can’t-miss talent who bypassed NCAA soccer to turn pro and join the Washington Spirit in 2017, she admits to losing her way, culminating with her omission from the 2020-21 Olympic squad.
This year, still just 24, Pugh has experienced a rebirth of sorts with the world’s top-ranked program. Heading into Tuesday’s rematch with Nigeria at Audi Field, she is second on the squad in goals with six and leads in assists with seven.
If she scores again before April 29, she’ll become the sixth player in U.S. women’s history with 25 goals and 25 assists before age 25. The others are in the National Hall of Fame (Mia Hamm, Cindy Parlow Cone, Kristine Lilly and Tiffany Milbrett) or destined for it (Morgan).
Combined with her production for the Chicago Red Stars in the National Women’s Soccer League, the left-sided attacker has posted 18 goals and 12 assists in 28 appearances this year.
“She is now what a lot of people expected her to be when she was 16 and 17 and 18,” U.S. Coach Vlatko Andonovski said.
Pugh is Andonovski’s top choice at left wing, ahead of Rapinoe, who, at 37, remains influential but in smaller bites.
More than half the U.S. squad in Washington is between ages 22 and 26. From that group, only Pugh has gone to a World Cup (2019) or an Olympics (2016). Her 79 international matches are tied for sixth on the current roster; her 24 goals are behind only Morgan, Rapinoe and Lindsey Horan.
There was a considerable pause in Pugh’s career, though. After becoming the youngest U.S. Olympic scorer and bursting onto the pro scene, she struggled.
“I feel like I was just a little lost,” she said. “It’s been an evolution finding my game. I feel like early on, you’d see little glimpses of it. But now I feel like it’s the confidence, the clarity that has come together to find who I am on the field.”
Injuries played a big part in Pugh’s stunted development. Every time she tried to raise her level, a hamstring or hip ailment, among other things, would set her back. Unable to perform at a high level, and falling short of elevated expectations since her teenage breakthrough, she was traded twice in the NWSL and fell on the national team depth chart.
“Mal went through some tough times in her career and, as tough as it looks now, looking back, it was actually a good time for her — a good moment for her to regroup, to reset and to grow as a player and as an individual,” Andonovski said. “When she came back, she’s mentally stronger and she has evolved.”
Expectations weighed on Pugh as well.
“I don’t know if at the time I felt it, but now moving on, there are little things that did affect me,” she said of her early jump to the NWSL and national team. “It would affect anyone at that age. You have all these eyes on you. I started well but then expectations are so high all the time.”
The low point was when Andonovski told her she wouldn’t be on the Olympic squad in Tokyo.
“It was completely fair,” Pugh said. “That’s the [high] standard of this team. But they never gave up on me, either. There was regular communication, which gave me a little bit of confidence because it wasn’t like, ‘Oh, I’m completely done with the national team.’ Everyone just realized I wasn’t performing well. I could earn another chance.”
The chance came after a strong finish to the 2021 NWSL season, in which Pugh finished second in MVP voting to OL Reign’s Jess Fishlock and helped the Red Stars to the championship game. This year, Pugh is tied for fourth in the league in goals (eight) and tied for first in assists (five).
“Playing with her is probably what I prefer versus playing against her,” said Fox, from Ashburn, Va., who plays left back for the U.S. team and NWSL’s Racing Louisville. “I mean, she’s been killing it.”
Pugh attributes her turnaround in part to her mental coach, Armando Gonzalez, who came recommended by her fiance, Atlanta Braves shortstop Dansby Swanson. For the past two years, she has engaged in regular sessions with Gonzalez, usually via video call.
“I felt my whole identity was wrapped up in soccer,” she said. “Working with [Gonzalez], it allowed me to take a deep breath and find my way instead of being so hard on myself.”
Pugh says her life is more well-rounded now. With a wide array of athletes among the some 260 invited guests, she and Swanson will get married in Georgia in December, the offseason for both.
In-season, with their sports overlapping, they find small gaps in the schedule to see one another. This weekend, their travel calendars align in Seattle.
Next summer, barring injury or a drop in Pugh’s performance, the couple will be far apart for several weeks when the World Cup takes place in Australia and New Zealand.
“I haven’t even looked that far ahead,” she said. “Bit by bit helps me because I’ve learned looking too far in the future stresses me out a little. When I am focused on what’s right in front of me, it’s a different sense of confidence. Now I understand that I fully get what I do and how I am special on the field.” | 2022-09-05T20:40:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mallory Pugh lives up to expectations for the U.S. women's national team - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/05/mallory-pugh-uswnt/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/05/mallory-pugh-uswnt/ |
Sue Bird is trying to extend her career as the Settle Storm face the Las Vegas Aces in the WNBA semifinals. (Steph Chambers/Getty Images)
SEATTLE — Last week, after Sue Bird watched Serena Williams confront a similar, looming finality, she thought about authenticity. From white hair beads as a teenager to diamond-encrusted Nikes as a 40-year-old mother, Williams has always been original and comfortable. Bird is in awe of Williams. It took Bird decades to grow into herself.
There is no textbook way to handle celebrity. However, there is only one path to healthy fame — your own — and discovering it challenges people not to lose themselves in the expectations of the crowd. When Williams made her “I’m just Serena” declaration at the U.S. Open, it was more mission statement than mic drop.
And after the past five years, since Bird came out as gay and started using her influence to amplify every social issue on her mind, she can say now she’s just Sue.
On Tuesday night, she and the Seattle Storm will try to extend her distinguished basketball career. They trail the Las Vegas Aces 2-1 in a thrilling best-of-five WNBA semifinal series, bringing Bird one loss from retirement. The past 2½ months have been full of celebration and nostalgia, but today she feels the same urgency Williams felt in what was likely her tennis farewell. Even if this is it for Bird, appreciation will outlast the closure.
Her enduring star power cannot be measured just through accumulation, all the trophies and statistics and accolades. You must look at what she shedded, too. Long gone is any fear, any mask, any submission to perception. She is celebrated for her athleticism, her audacity and her empathy. As Bird grew, the greatest point guard in women’s basketball history, known for dishing to others, figured out how to give herself an assist.
“There’s power in who I am,” Bird said. “It’s just for me personally. I forget everybody else. I feel good about that. I go to bed at night feeling good about that.”
The arc of Bird’s life so far embodies the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson: “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” She knew she was gay during college at Connecticut, but she already had been painted as the girl next door, with the trademark ponytail and a natural, mesmerizing charm. So she smiled for the cameras and maintained privacy.
No one who has known Bird, at any point in her life, would consider her fake; she’s too warm and personable. But she was guarded. She rarely said anything controversial. When she did, she made amends quickly. In 2003, during her second season with the Storm, Bird agreed to a bet with a male sports radio host about her assist-to-turnover ratio: If it was high enough, the host would buy season tickets. If it wasn’t, she would get spanked. It caused an uproar. Bird called off the bet, apologized and expressed embarrassment. She remained insightful and accommodating with the media, but she perfected the ability to hold back while still seeming open.
“It was interesting to have a public persona in terms of what people saw on the court and who I was as a player and maybe a glimpse of who I am as a person, but know that I was also hiding something within myself,” Bird said. “I was hiding my sexuality, not really showing that side of myself. And that’s a big part of who you are, because it’s who you love and it’s who you’re going to spend your time and your life with. So for me, I was growing up as a basketball player and feeling in the early stages that I wasn’t really being my authentic self. Then I had that moment where it was time to do that.”
Bird advanced from her 20s into her 30s. She won and won and won. Two collegiate titles with Connecticut. Four championships with the Storm. Five Olympic gold medals. She also fell in love with soccer superstar Megan Rapinoe, now her fiancee. In 2017, she let the world know she was gay. By 2020, she was helping her WNBA colleagues revolt against former Atlanta Dream co-owner Kelly Loeffler by supporting the candidacy of the Rev. Raphael G. Warnock for a Georgia Senate seat. Warnock ended up winning. Loeffler, who was at odds with WNBA players over their decision to protest police lethality, later sold the Dream.
The league had found its voice and realized its power. Bird was a vanguard in this shift, a White woman supporting an effort most personal to Black women. In men’s sports, the Black athlete continues to wait for more White stars to abandon their privilege and stand with them. But the women who play these games — who combat constant sexism and marginalization — understand the need for synergy. Bird came into her own at a good time. The point guard, who has been around for 21 of the WNBA’s 26 seasons, grew with the sport.
“We’re a league that’s like, ‘This is who we are,’ ” Bird said. “We finally have embraced that. We were just trying so hard. We were throwing things up against the wall, trying to survive, to see what would stick. We were trying to do that in a society where we thought: ‘Oh, we’ve got to put the feminine side forward. Oh, we’ve got to be cuter, maybe more fans will get into it.’ And then it just became, nah, you’ve just got to be yourself. And people are really going to love you or hate you. But at least it’s real.”
A few weeks ago, after her final regular season game in Seattle, Bird addressed a record crowd of 18,100 at the new Climate Pledge Arena. It was the most intimate five-minute conversation a person could have with the masses. During her remarks, she mentioned Wildrose, a 37-year-old lesbian bar in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, among the oldest of its kind on the West Coast. Bird first visited the Rose, as regulars call it, early in her career. A Storm fan approached her that night and wondered if she was in the right place. Bird feigned naivete, but she knew where she was. She was home.
In referencing Wildrose, Bird could sense “about 10,000” people were cheering. She told the story to emphasize the impact Seattle has had on her. She grew up in Syosset, N.Y., went to high school at Christ the King in Queens and stayed close for college at U-Conn. But she has become a Seattle sports institution. She grew with a league, a city and a bar still kicking despite struggles during the pandemic.
“There was a sense of acceptance,” Bird said. “Also, a sense of protection.”
Martha Manning, a Wildrose co-owner, was visiting family on the East Coast and missed Bird’s regular season finale. Her phone pinged with text messages all afternoon.
“We just love Sue,” Manning said. “Whenever she visits, I’ve never seen her turn anybody away. She’s accessible almost to a fault. Sometimes, we don’t know if we should go and run interference, but she never seems bothered.”
Bird notices everything. Her vision extends far beyond the basketball court. You can walk past her on the street, share the briefest interaction, and she will mention it several days later. You can ask a meandering question, and she listens so well she can pinpoint exactly what you want to know. Former Storm coach Brian Agler, who won a championship with Bird in 2010, likes to tell the story of a practice interaction with the point guard. She told him she wasn’t feeling right.
“I think I’m a pound or two heavy,” Bird told Agler.
The coach was amazed. He laughed and asked, “You know when you’re a pound or two heavy?”
With that kind of self-awareness, imagine how she felt knowing she had more of herself to share. It took almost 36 years for her to fully trust, not just the public but herself, too. She’s 41 now, and though that makes her an old athlete, the remainder of her life is full of possibilities: basketball coach, general manager, television personality, entrepreneur, activist, motivational speaker, life coach. But what she does won’t matter as much as who she is.
“I wish I would’ve done it sooner,” Bird said of being herself. “The timing wasn’t right. And that’s okay, too. I feel like, if you’re somebody who’s in maybe a similar situation, the timing has to be right for you. But the lesson to be learned is the sooner, the better. The sooner you are your authentic self, things just feel better.”
Bird adapted to fame, and then she made fame adapt to her. She collected more than two decades’ worth of hardware, but as she attempts to keep winning and playing, she doesn’t need to worry about how she will be remembered. She’s just Sue. That title, invaluable and robust, is enough. | 2022-09-05T21:15:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | As Sue Bird’s career nears its end, her true impact comes into focus - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/05/sue-bird-retirement-storm/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/05/sue-bird-retirement-storm/ |
Fumio Kishida, Japan’s prime minister, arrives on the opening day of the Group of Seven (G-7) leaders summit at the Schloss Elmau luxury hotel in Elmau, Germany, on Sunday, June 26, 2022. Issues on Sunday’s formal agenda include the global economy, infrastructure and investment and foreign and security policy, while a number of bilateral meetings are also planned. (Bloomberg)
His poll numbers are tanking at every major outlet. In a JNN survey published Sunday, 48.3% said they disapproved of Kishida’s cabinet, slightly more than those who said they backed it. His approval figures are the worst since he took office.
The problems are mounting. Inflation is at its highest in a generation, with wage growth still anemic. August’s cabinet reshuffle has failed to deliver the expected boost despite elevating publicly popular figures such as Digital Minister Taro Kono. And opposition is growing to Kishida’s plans for a state funeral for Shinzo Abe, with majorities saying they oppose the event, which is unusual in Japan. It’s too late to back down now, so the prime minister has pledged to explain the rationale for the occasion, which may cost taxpayers $2 million.
But the top issue dragging Kishida down has almost nothing to do with him. Abe’s killing has raised the issue of links between ruling Liberal Democratic Party politicians and the Unification Church, more commonly known as the Moonies. The suspect in Abe’s murder has told police he targeted the former leader, who once appeared in a video message for a church-connected event, because of a grudge he bore against the group.
Abe’s connections to the church seem relatively tenuous; Kishida’s are non-existent. Most of the links touted in the media between the church and LDP members seem little more than the standard business of politicians — sending congratulatory messages and pressing flesh with voters at events. The Moonies’ fund-raising methods may be unpleasant, but the organization is not illegal.
Nonetheless, with its vague allegations of impropriety, the affair is infinite grist for the mill of the “wide shows,” the afternoon gossip-loving news programs that have a deep influence on Japanese public opinion. Kishida’s belated pledge to tackle the issue by cutting ties between the LDP and the Moonies risks running afoul of constitutionally-guaranteed rights to freedom of religion, and could keep the story in the headlines instead.
The issue will likely continue to rumble in the background, perhaps periodically spiking just as long-running cronyism scandals did during Abe’s time in office. But Abe was able to push those affairs off the front pages by taking control of political narratives through policy. Kishida has few such accomplishments to fall back on.
More than a year since he declared he would challenge Yoshihide Suga for leadership of the LDP, it’s hard to name a single significant domestic legislative achievement. Taking on Suga at the time was a bold move, but it’s perhaps the last daring step he’s made outside of foreign policy.
Kishida’s signature economic strategy of “New Capitalism” is laden with internal contradictions, with more grand rhetorical flourishes than concrete policies. He’s played defensive on Covid, moving slowly to restart suspended tourism campaigns and support hard-hit small businesses. One of the reasons Abe’s state funeral is attracting so much attention is that it’s hard to identify Kishida’s fingerprints on anything else.
To make matters worse, he’s attracting a reputation of being a flip-flopper. The latest reversal has been on nuclear power. No sooner had Kishida unexpectedly and bravely backed the building of new nuclear reactors in a major departure for post-Fukushima energy policy, than he seemed to back away from that stance, declaring instead that he’d continue to reduce dependence on atomic power.
It makes little sense for a country facing an energy crunch, and is reminiscent of a back-and-forth in his first few months in office on increasing capital gains taxes, while also encouraging citizens to invest in the market. Kishida seems sincere when he says he’s a good listener who wants to hear from all sides, but in trying to appeal to everyone he instead appeals to no one.
Japan’s voters tend to reward premiers with bold policies — from Junichiro Koizumi’s postal privatization to Abe’s drastic measures to defeat deflation. Even Kishida’s short-lived predecessor Suga moved fast, leaving office with far more legislative feats that Kishida has managed so far, even as he juggled vaccination campaigns and the Olympics.
It’s much too early to write Kishida off. It’s normal for polling numbers to fall from a high start — indeed, in Kishida’s case the only mystery has been why it hasn’t happened already. Challenges won’t mount from within the LDP unless his ratings fall into the 30% “danger zone,” and with Abe gone his faction, the party’s largest, is in disarray. The Unification Church story may run out of steam after the state funeral later this month.
But Kishida needs points on the board — that means bold policies. Kishida may be a good listener; now is the time for him to speak up.
• A Short-Term Prime Minister’s Long-Lasting Legacy: Gearoid Reidy
• Japan Should Look at Links Between Church and State: Ian Buruma
• Japan’s Blurred Vision for Where Capitalism Goes: Gearoid Reidy | 2022-09-05T22:07:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Japan’s Play-It-Safe Prime Minister Is Living Dangerously - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/japans-play-it-safe-prime-minister-isliving-dangerously/2022/09/05/3470051a-2d66-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/japans-play-it-safe-prime-minister-isliving-dangerously/2022/09/05/3470051a-2d66-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html |
He was killed by police in his bed. His partner’s grief has just begun.
By Joanna Slater
Lucia Walinchus
Donovan Lewis and LaTonya Lewis. Donovan, 20, died after being shot by police during a nighttime raid last week. (LaTonya Lewis)
From the moment they met at a gas station last January, Donovan Lewis and LaTonya Lewis were inseparable. They made each other laugh, starting with the coincidence of their shared last name.
Both dreamed of moving on to better things: She wanted to start a catering business, and he aspired to become famous through his music. In May, they moved in together and soon learned they were expecting a child.
Donovan was usually loving and affectionate, LaTonya said. But this summer, the couple began having heated arguments. Donovan shoved LaTonya out of a chair at a park in August, she said, so she fled and called police.
The call set off a devastating chain of events that culminated last week, when Donovan, 20, was shot and killed by police at 2:30 a.m. in the bed the couple shared. LaTonya was at work. The shooting is the latest high-profile incident to rekindle anger over police tactics toward Black people, particularly the use of nighttime raids.
Police shooting of unarmed Black man in bed renews anguish in Ohio
Police had arrived at Donovan’s apartment with warrants for his arrest. They were acting on misdemeanor charges of domestic violence and assault stemming from LaTonya’s call in August, along with a year-old felony charge for improper handling of a firearm in a vehicle.
For Donovan’s family, it is a time of mourning for a young man they describe as funny and caring, adored by his siblings and teachers even as he struggled with mental health issues. He loved playing basketball and football, eating oxtail stew and making music videos.
For LaTonya, there is no end to the anguish — the loss of the man she loved, the prospect of raising a baby without its father and the knowledge that her call to the police last month may have inadvertently led to Donovan’s death.
The night Donovan was killed, LaTonya was working the 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. shift at Tropical Nut and Fruit, a food company in nearby Grove City. A neighbor called to tell her that Donovan had been shot and was unresponsive.
Now her days are a blur of tears and what-ifs. “He was a really good person,” said LaTonya, 30, who spoke exclusively with The Post. “I never wanted him to get in trouble. I wanted him to figure out his life. I’ll never understand this.”
“What me and him went through, it had nothing to do with killing him out of his sleep,” LaTonya said as she wept. “You killed him because he woke up.”
In body-camera footage of the shooting released by authorities, an officer handling a police dog opens the door to the room where Donovan slept. A bright light illuminates Donovan starting to sit up, and the officer immediately fires his weapon. Donovan was unarmed.
The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigations has launched a probe into the killing. The officer who shot Donovan was Ricky Anderson, a 30-year veteran of the force assigned to the canine unit. He was placed on administrative leave per department policy.
Mark Collins, a lawyer for Anderson, said the officer saw an object in Donovan’s hand that he believed was a gun. After Donovan was shot, body-camera footage shows a vape pen lying on the bed.
David Harris, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh who is an expert on criminal procedure and police conduct, said that the swift release of the body-camera footage was a first step toward accountability. Given the public attention to the case, Harris said he expects the investigation to conclude within weeks.
Rebecca Duran, Donovan’s mother, said she planned to speak more extensively about her son’s life in the coming days. “This has been a terrible time for all of us,” she said. “He was so much more than anything that has been released about him” by authorities.
Donovan was raised in a culturally diverse family of seven brothers and sisters, some of whom are Latino. Growing up in Columbus, he played basketball at a nearby mosque, and people used to ask if the gangly, 6’2” youth was East African, his mother recalled.
After a teenager pulled a gun on Donovan’s younger brother, the family moved to a suburb of Columbus. Donovan started his junior year at Westerville Central High School and began playing for the football team.
In a journal he kept for an English class his senior year, he described feeling like an outcast among his suburban classmates. “Even the kids of color were confused about the comments I would make and did not know true struggle,” Donovan wrote. He felt like kids tried to “instigate stuff with me to feel cool, and sometimes it worked.”
He didn’t want to be defined by the stereotypes or expectations of others. “I want to be known as someone who is passionate about music, someone who likes sports, is smart and has a good sense of humor,” Donovan wrote. “That is who I am and will always be.”
A former teacher shared the journal with The Post with the permission of Donovan’s family. In it, he responds to a series of questions about “The Hate You Give,” the best-selling novel by Angie Thomas later made into a film. It tells the story of a police shooting: the protagonist’s best friend is killed by an officer who mistakes a hairbrush for a gun.
Two years before his life would take a similar turn, Donovan reflected on questions of police bias and brutality toward people who looked like him. Black people deserve “the same treatment as white people and the same consequences, not to be judged more harshly or unfairly,” he wrote.
Kt Cress, a teacher at Westerville who taught Donovan for two years, remembered his enormous smile and said he was unusually insightful and kind. When Cress’s toddler was hospitalized with a serious infection the summer after Donovan’s graduation from high school in 2020, he texted her messages of support, and they remained in touch.
During his senior year, Donovan spent several months in foster homes, a situation his mother described as the outcome of mental health issues and an attempt to get him additional help. In 2021, she called police after he arrived at her home in the middle of the night and punched her in the arm during an argument, according to a police affidavit.
The month before, police had stopped a car where Donovan was sitting in the passenger seat and found a loaded gun on the floor in front of him, a police complaint stated. He was charged with improper handling of a firearm in a vehicle, a felony. The accusations were never tested in court.
At the start of this year, Donovan was spending some nights at a homeless shelter, LaTonya said. The staff there helped him find his own apartment. He worked most recently at a factory making aluminum pans. When he found out that he was going to be a father, he was ecstatic.
On July 15, Lewis posted a photo on Instagram of two positive pregnancy tests and said how much he loved LaTonya. “Even though we be going through it that’s my forever queen,” he wrote. On his YouTube page, he posted a song he wrote for her.
A post shared by Don‼️ (@02babydon)
Last month, he brought LaTonya a card, flowers and a pineapple — her favorite fruit — on her birthday. But while they were sitting at a park, the couple began to argue, and Donovan grew angry. He pushed her out of a chair and onto the ground, she said.
LaTonya ran to a nearby KFC and called police. It wasn’t the first time he had assaulted her, she told them, according to a police affidavit. LaTonya told The Post that Donovan had pushed her once before the incident in the park, causing bruising to her face. A warrant was issued for Donovan’s arrest. Nearly three weeks later, police would serve the warrant at Donovan’s apartment in the wee hours of August 30.
Meanwhile, the couple reconciled, LaTonya said. She spent a few days elsewhere but soon returned to the apartment. She made Donovan one of her homemade favorites, pasta with Alfredo sauce topped with blackened chicken.
Now she regrets calling the police in the first place. The authorities are “trying to paint a bad picture, but there’s no picture to paint,” LaTonya told The Post. “They took everything from me.”
On August 30, she received a call from a police officer at 2:30 a.m. He repeatedly asked her whether she was at the apartment. She said no and asked what was happening, but the officer did not provide any information. She began to panic. After hanging up, she said she called Donovan eight times. There was no answer.
Less than 10 minutes later, there was a call from a downstairs neighbor: Donovan had been shot and was in critical condition. A spokesman for the Columbus police did not immediately respond to questions about the officer’s interaction with LaTonya.
At a protest outside the Columbus police headquarters Friday evening, Duran, Donovan’s mother, trembled with grief and could not bring herself to speak. On the inside of her right wrist is a small tattoo showing how to say “I love you” in sign language, a gesture she repeated with each of her kids from before they could talk.
“She wants you to know that she isn’t against all police, but she is against racist police,” said a protester speaking on her behalf as Duran nodded vigorously. “She is against warrants in the middle of the night when people are sleeping! She wants to see real change in her son’s name.”
Daryl Lewis, Donovan’s father, talked about his kind heart and his love for his siblings. “I remember him saying like, ‘Got up this morning, I made them some eggs. I put the cinnamon and honey in it, Dad, just like you,’” Lewis recalled. “He was always looking out for other people.”
LaTonya is due to give birth in March and says she is sure her baby is a boy. She knows what she will name him: Donovan Latrell Lewis, Jr. | 2022-09-05T22:07:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In Columbus, police shot and killed Donovan Lewis in his bed - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/05/ohio-shooting-donovan-lewis/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/05/ohio-shooting-donovan-lewis/ |
A lawyer for the victim’s family says the shooting was not justified
Jaiden Malik Carter, 19, seen with his grandmother, was shot Thursday during what police said was an exchange of gunfire near Woodbridge, Va. He died on Sunday. (Family photo)
A 19-year-old from Woodbridge, Va., who police said was shot during an undercover drug operation last week died Sunday, Prince William County police said.
Jaiden Malik Carter was one of two men who police said were shot Thursday during an exchange of gunfire connected with an operation to investigate the potential distribution of fentanyl, an opioid.
A lawyer for Carter’s family released a video from a neighbor’s Ring camera that he said showed the shooting was unwarranted.
“It’s another example of unnecessary police brutality,” said the lawyer, Joshua Wilson. “I don’t believe there was an immediate threat to the police officers, yet they still felt the necessity to shoot into a vehicle that was backing up into an area that had no exit.”
Wilson said Carter was in the front passenger seat when an officer shot into the windshield and struck him.
“The police killed my Unarmed nephew with a head shot no questions asked!!!!” his aunt Mirza Avalos said in an instant message. The family is organizing a protest and candlelight vigil Saturday in Prince William’s Cloverdale Park.
The Arlington County Police Department is leading a criminal investigation into the shooting as part of a regional incident response team, and the police said the agencies involved in the shooting are not part of the investigation.
“We understand the family has emotions as to what happened and over the loss of their loved one,” said 1st Sgt. Jonathan Perok, a Prince William police spokesman. “We have said from the beginning there was exchange of gunfire, as to who was armed and fired specifically; the investigation will need to run its course to confirm details.”
Four detectives, two with the Prince William County Police Department and two with the City of Manassas Police Department, fired their weapons, police said. A 30-year-old man was also shot during the incident and is expected to live, according to police. The man and Carter “were the subject of the operation,” Prince William police said in an earlier statement.
Police said agents with the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were part of the narcotics task force behind the operation. | 2022-09-05T22:59:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Teenager shot by police in Prince William County dies - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/05/prince-william-police-shooting-carter/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/05/prince-william-police-shooting-carter/ |
César Hernández, Lane Thomas and Josh Palacios come together after a 6-0 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals at Busch Stadium on Monday. (Joe Puetz/Getty Images)
ST. LOUIS — In the top of the sixth, in the ballpark he once called home, against the team that traded him to the Washington Nationals about 13 months ago, Lane Thomas found the rally in his hands. And after battling reliever Andre Pallante for 10 pitches — fouling off two sliders and a 98-mph fastball, among other survival tactics — Thomas worked a bases-loaded walk, his contribution to a four-run inning in the Nationals’ 6-0 win over the St. Louis Cardinals.
“I think I hit well with two strikes,” Thomas said, fully acknowledging that he wanted to excel against his old team. “I don’t know if it’s just like the approach aspect to it. I know I’m quick enough to get to a lot of fastballs. So it kind of gives you a little bit of relief to know that you can anticipate some of the sliders and curveballs and stuff, knowing that you can still hit a fastball the other way.”
Before Thomas faced Pallante, César Hernández, Josh Palacios and CJ Abrams singled, with Abrams logging his second hit on a tapper down the third base line. After Thomas walked, Luis García scored Palacios with a high chopper, Joey Meneses scored Abrams with a single to left, then Luke Voit, another former Cardinal, scored Thomas with a sac fly. Earlier in the afternoon, Thomas brought in Abrams when his double bounced in the right field corner and to a flower bed by the foul pole at Busch Stadium.
As has often been the case in recent games, as the Nationals have played some of their best baseball of the season, Thomas was in the middle of things. Abrams was, too, collecting four hits and his first career triple. So was Keibert Ruiz, who walked twice, singled and crushed a solo homer off James Naile in the eighth. And so was Meneses, who remained on fire with three more singles.
The Nationals (48-87) finished with 14 hits to the Cardinals’ three. They have won three in a row and six of their past eight.
“Look, I love what I’m seeing right now,” Manager Dave Martinez said. “And it’s been a lot fun working with these guys. They’re starting to get it. As you can see, they’re starting to get what we’re trying to do.”
Batting leadoff against righty Jack Flaherty, Thomas reached on that double in the third, then again when Flaherty plunked him in the fifth, once more on the well-earned walk in the sixth and finally on another walk in the seventh. He also used his speed to beat a decent throw from Lars Nootbaar on Voit’s sacrifice fly. Like last September, he should get another extended chance this month and started in favor of Victor Robles again Monday.
With Flaherty, who returned from a shoulder issue that landed him on the 60-day injured list, the Cardinals (79-56) are seeing if they have another reliable arm for the stretch run and postseason. The Nationals, on the other hand, are evaluating on a far different scale, fixing two eyes on a hazy future.
Thomas, 27 and first-time arbitration-eligible this coming winter, could play his way into that. Since the Nationals acquired him for veteran starter Jon Lester in July 2021, he has looked like a fourth outfielder on a contending roster, should Washington eventually yield one. Thomas is the fastest player on the team. Over the weekend, when the Nationals took two of three from the New York Mets, he hit his 15th homer of the season, trailing only Juan Soto for the club lead for 2022.
Recent success aside, Thomas is not having a stellar year, nor is he expected to be a make-or-break piece for Washington in the coming seasons. His on-base-plus-slugging percentage, .724 after Monday’s win, spiked to just average. He still strikes out too much, perhaps a product of being too choosy in early counts. But if the Nationals land even an above-average bench player from the Lester deal — a trade that made General Manager Mike Rizzo seem like a bandit, no matter if the Cardinals were set to cut Thomas loose — that’s a big little victory.
And those count.
A rewind for Sánchez? Well, it wasn’t quite the 7⅔ scoreless — and near no-hitter — Sánchez threw in his last outing at Busch Stadium, a gem that pushed Washington to a 1-0 lead in the National League Championship Series in 2019. But after throwing 16 balls to 11 strikes in a rocky first inning Monday, Sánchez retired 12 straight batters. He even twice retired 42-year-old Albert Pujols, including with the bases juiced in the first, keeping Pujols one swing from tying Alex Rodriguez at 696 on the all-time home run list.
From the second on, he recorded 12 outs on 54 pitches, ultimately blanking the Cardinals for five frames. Sánchez has been rock solid in his past four starts, holding opponents to two runs and eight hits in 21⅓ innings. Behind him in the series opener, Hunter Harvey pitched a clean sixth and Mason Thompson recorded the final nine outs. That accounted for Thompson’s first career save. After he recorded it, Sánchez told reporters he intends to pitch next season.
“I know that I can do games like today,” said Sánchez, who missed three and a half months with a nerve impingement in his neck. “I know that I needed time, especially because I was out last year. But I’m here and I need to work every day and prepare as hard as I can to show that I can still pitch at this level.”
Has Meneses cooled off? Not nearly. With singles in the first, fifth and sixth, Meneses has 40 hits in his first 29 games, the most ever for a Nationals rookie in that number of contests. He has been rewriting that statistic for weeks, repeatedly edging out Anthony Rendon. Meneses now has a .339 batting average and on-base-plus slugging percentage of .939. | 2022-09-06T00:35:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nationals' Lane Thomas is in middle of 6-0 win over Cardinals - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/05/nationals-cardinals-lane-thomas/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/05/nationals-cardinals-lane-thomas/ |
Frances Tiafoe played a well-rounded match to upset Rafael Nadal, 6-4, 4-6, 6-4, 6-3, in the U.S. Open round of 16 on Monday in Flushing Meadows. (Kena Betancur/AFP/Getty Images)
NEW YORK — Frances Tiafoe metabolizes a crowd’s energy the way other players rely on protein bars.
Tiafoe, the son of immigrants from Sierra Leone who learned to play at College Park’s Junior Tennis Champions Center, is one of the game’s best young showmen. He has the talent and charisma to stir a crowd into a frenzy, the athleticism and shot-making to draw oohs and aahs. His performances in front of the rowdy crowd of the U.S. Open can feel more like wrestling matches than tennis matches.
But Monday, with a smart, 6-4, 4-6, 6-4, 6-3 win over Rafael Nadal, he displayed a tactician’s discipline in ousting the 22-time Grand Slam champion. He is through to his first U.S. Open quarterfinal — and the second major quarterfinal of his career — thanks to a master class in energy management and taking one’s chances when they come.
When he clinched it by forcing a backhand error from Nadal, he chucked his racket toward his chair and placed his hands around his head. Those in his player box, including his father, who worked as a maintenance manager at the JTCC, his mother, and his favorite NBA player, the Wizards’ Bradley Beal, leapt to their feet, hands in the air.
Men’s tennis now has what is perhaps the most wide-open Grand Slam draw since Roger Federer’s reign began in 2003.
Should 33-year-old Marin Cilic defeat 19-year-old Carlos Alcaraz on Monday night, he will be the only quarterfinalist to have won a major title (U.S. Open, 2014) and the only one older than 28.
Tiafoe’s victory denied Nadal the chance to expand his lead over Novak Djokovic (21) and Federer (20) in Grand Slam wins. He was the first man to beat Nadal at a major this year, with the Spaniard having won the Australian Open and the French Open. (Nadal withdrew from Wimbledon before a semifinal match with Nick Kyrgios due to an abdominal injury.)
Nadal, who won the U.S. Open the last time he contested it in 2019, arrived at Flushing Meadows having played two matches in the previous 50 days. He had been practicing with a high level of intensity ahead of the tournament but couldn’t serve with the same ferocity because scar tissue on his abdomen limited his movement.
Nadal’s lack of preparation showed Monday. He had nine double faults to nine aces, while Tiafoe crushed 18 aces to four double faults.
Yet even in less-than ideal circumstances, the 36-year-old powered through three opponents this tournament, including two ATP Tour veterans.
Tiafoe, 24, offered far more of a physical challenge.
Tiafoe is among the fastest players on tour and has dedicated much of his time since the start of the pandemic to getting fitter. His physical improvement has led to a steady rise through the rankings, where he reached a career-high No. 24 last month (he currently sits 26th).
But opponents need to possess more than Olympic fitness to beat Nadal.
They must mentally outlast the most unrelenting competitor in tennis. They must be brave enough to make Nadal pay when he is performing below average, and they must leap on opportunities when presented.
Tiafoe checked every box, keeping up with Nadal in part by not wasting one iota of energy with his usual celebrations or crowd engagement. He remained utterly focused for 3 hours 34 minutes.
“I was not able to hold a high level of tennis for a long time, I was not enough quick on my movements and he was able to take the ball too many times very early,” Nadal said. “So I was not able to push him back. Tennis is a sport of position a lot of times, no? If not, you need to be very, very quick, and very young. And I am not in that moment anymore.”
After trading the first two sets, Tiafoe broke Nadal to take a 4-3 lead in the third then scampered immediately to his chair, staring straight ahead and letting the crowd shower him in applause — one of his first plays to the crowd all day. He won the set with two shots down the line to give himself double set point then closed with an ace and a conservative couple of fist pumps.
In Nadal’s nature, the Spaniard raced out to a 3-1 lead in the fourth set in an attempt to stanch Tiafoe’s momentum.
But in the next game, Nadal served two double faults and Tiafoe didn’t let the chance slip through his fingers. He broke Nadal then came back from 15-40 down to even the match at 3-3 even after trailing 15-40. He cruised through three straight games after that.
“My legs were like cement [after breaking Nadal for a 4-3 lead],” Tiafoe said from the court after the match. “I was like, ‘Just get out of this game, just get out of this game, and pray you don’t have to serve for it.’ ”
He didn’t, and that made Tiafoe the second American on Monday to reach a U.S. Open quarterfinal.
On the women’s side, eighth-seeded Jessica Pegula coolly dismissed two-time Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova, 6-3, 6-2, to make her third major quarterfinal this year.
Pegula, whose parents own the NFL’s Buffalo Bills and NHL’s Buffalo Sabres, offered little of the suspense present in Tiafoe and Nadal’s matchup. Drama isn’t her style; in an era of women’s tennis defined by constant churn, Pegula has been a constant.
Plagued by injuries early in her career, Pegula broke through relatively late in life by winning her first WTA title at Washington’s Citi Open in 2019. She rose from 76th in the world at the end of that year to a career-high seventh this season after teaming up with David Witt, Venus Williams’s former longtime coach, and dedicating more time to the professional side of professional tennis: eating right, preparing thoroughly and taking care of her body.
Her tennis flourished. In singles, she has reached the quarterfinals in three majors this year to pad a 23-7 record at Grand Slams since the start of 2021.
Pegula will face her steepest challenge yet when she plays world No. 1 Iga Swiatek on Wednesday. The match will likely be on Arthur Ashe Stadium — where upsets seem to be in the air this year. | 2022-09-06T00:35:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Frances Tiafoe beats Rafael Nadal to reach the U.S. Open quarterfinals - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/05/tiafoe-nadal-us-open/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/05/tiafoe-nadal-us-open/ |
Search ends for nine in floatplane crash
The body of a 10th person, an unidentified female, was recovered by a good Samaritan on Sunday after the crash was reported at 3:11 p.m., Scott Giard, director of the U.S. Coast Guard’s search and rescue for the Pacific Northwest, said at a news conference.
Just after noon on Monday, the Coast Guard said it was suspending the search for survivors after “saturating an area” of more than 2,100 square nautical miles — or nearly 2,800 square miles.
The Northwest Seaplanes flight left Friday Harbor, a popular tourist destination in the San Juan Islands, and was headed to Renton Municipal Airport, the company’s base, Coast Guard spokesperson William Colclough said.
Northwest Seaplanes is a family owned business founded by Clyde Carlson, according to the company’s website. It has 24-years of “accident and incident free flying,” its website said.
Governor signs law for fast-food workers
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) on Monday signed a nation-leading measure giving more than a half-million fast food workers more power and protections, despite the objections of restaurant owners who warned it would drive up consumers’ costs.
The law caps minimum wage increases for fast food workers at chains with more than 100 restaurants at $22 an hour next year, compared to the statewide minimum of $15.50 an hour, with cost-of-living increases thereafter.
The International Franchise Association called it a “fork in the eye” of people who run restaurant franchises and said it could raise consumer prices as much as 20 percent.
Officer kills man walking on interstate
Authorities were responding to reports of a man walking on Interstate 25 and nearly getting hit by a vehicle in Thornton, a Denver suburb, at about 7:30 a.m. on Monday, the Thornton Police Department said.
3 killed, 2 wounded in St. Paul shooting
Three people were killed and two others were wounded in a shooting at a home in St. Paul, police said.
The shooting occurred about 4:30 p.m. Sunday in the Payne-Phalen neighborhood of the state’s capital city, police said.
Three people inside the house were pronounced dead at the scene. The two other victims were taken to a hospital. Police said Monday that the victims were in stable condition. | 2022-09-06T01:10:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Search ends for nine in floatplane crash - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2022/09/05/dc891be2-2b36-11ed-806e-f01a46624ddb_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2022/09/05/dc891be2-2b36-11ed-806e-f01a46624ddb_story.html |
By Karla Adam | Sep 6, 2022
Queen Elizabeth II plays an important constitutional role in the transition of power. On Tuesday, she will invite Liz Truss to form the next British government. Truss will be the queen’s 15th prime minister; her first was Winston Churchill, who was born in 1874.
During her 70-year reign, the queen has met with her prime ministers for weekly private “audiences.” Still, snippets from their meetings leak out, in conversations, biographies and embarrassing hot-mic moments.
Here are her 15 prime ministers.
Queen Elizabeth II arrives in London on Feb. 7, 1952.
Elizabeth became queen in 1952, at just 25 years old. When she stepped off the plane from Kenya following the death of her father, Winston Churchill was waiting on the tarmac to greet her. Historians say Churchill, who was a great admirer of the queen’s father, initially thought Elizabeth was too inexperienced for the role. But they would become very fond of each other.
Princess Elizabeth greets Churchill at a Guildhall reception on March 23, 1950, in London.
Churchill once remarked, “All the film people in the world, if they had scoured the globe, could not have found anyone so suited to the part.”
The queen sent him a handwritten letter after he retired saying how much she would miss him and how no successor “will ever be able to hold the place of my first prime minister.”
British Prime Minister Anthony Eden welcomes the queen upon her arrival at Guildhall on May 15, 1956.
The queen’s early meetings with Anthony Eden were dominated by the possible marriage of the queen’s sister, Princess Margaret, to Group Captain Peter Townsend, a divorcée, meaning it was complicated and could involve the state. In the end, Margaret decided not to marry Townsend. Eden was also the leader during the 1956 Suez crisis. There was much speculation at the time about how much he confided in the queen about plans to reclaim the canal.
The queen and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan visit St. Catherine’s College in November 1960.
Express Newspapers/AP
The queen and her third prime minister did not initially hit it off. “He was unsure whether the Prime Minister’s annual visit to Balmoral was a social occasion, with ‘talking shop’ relegated to the margins, or a Highlands version of his weekly audiences at Buckingham Palace,” according to a government blog post. But the two were soon “on the same wavelength,” and the queen came to rely on his counsel.
The queen meets former prime minister Alec Douglas-Home and his wife, Elizabeth, in London on Nov. 11, 1964.
Alec Douglas-Home’s predecessor famously described him to the queen as “steel painted as wood.” Not that he needed an introduction. He was a fellow Scottish landowner — and a childhood friend of the queen’s mother. He helped the queen name royal horses over the years.
The queen talks with Prime Minister Harold Wilson, third from right, and other officials at Windsor Castle on April 30, 1974.
AP/Rider
Wilson was the queen’s first Labour prime minister. At the outset, it seemed as if Wilson, a leader with socialist leanings, may not have much in common with the British . But the two, only a decade apart in age, got on famously. In his book, “The Queen: Elizabeth II and the Monarchy,” Ben Pimlott wrote that Wilson “behaved towards her — unexpectedly — as an equal, and talked to her as if she were a member of his Cabinet.”
Queen Elizabeth II with British Prime Minister Edward Heath on Jan. 28, 1974.
The queen’s relationship with Edward Heath was not the smoothest. Heath is probably best remembered as the leader who took Britain into Europe; the queen, however, took great pride in her role as head of the Commonwealth. “She was never comfortable with him,” a former courtier told Pimlott, a royal biographer. Though he was “correct in his behavior” toward the queen, the closeness under Wilson was gone.
British Prime Minister James Callaghan and the queen at Windsor Castle on Dec. 12, 1977.
James Callaghan, a devoted monarchist, established a good rapport with the queen, who he said was “able to see the funny side of life.” He found the queen to be a good listener. Their conversations, he said, “could roam anywhere over a wide range of social as well as political and international topics.”
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the queen on Aug. 1, 1979, in Lusaka, Zambia.
Margaret Thatcher said the reported frostiness between her and the queen was hyped and sexist. “… I always found the Queen’s attitude towards the work of the Government absolutely correct,” Thatcher wrote in her memoir, “Margaret Thatcher: The Autobiography.” “Of course, stories of clashes between ‘two powerful women’ were just too good not to make up.”
Thatcher and the queen on Oct. 13, 2005, in London.
Max Nash/AP
Although there was mutual respect between the women, who were only six months apart in age, there was no great warmth. Most notably, the two clashed over how to handle apartheid in South Africa. But there was admiration. After Thatcher stepped down, the queen appointed her to the Order of the Merit, one of the highest honors in the United Kingdom.
The queen presents an award to former prime minister John Major in 1999.
Pool/Corbis/Getty Images
John Major was the first prime minister who was younger than the queen. He was leader in 1992, the year the queen dubbed her annus horribilis or “horrible year.” It was during that year that Major gave a statement to Parliament announcing that Prince Charles and Princess Diana would be separating. Major also oversaw a new financial arrangement that saw the queen pay taxes. In an interview with Sky News, Major said the queen, whom he described as “shrewd,” was someone with whom premiers could talk freely. “In many ways it’s cathartic,” he said.
Prime Minister Tony Blair greets the queen at Buckingham Palace on May 6, 2005.
Tony Blair, the Labour leader who governed for 10 years, was not thought to have had a particularly warm relationship with the queen, with whom he didn’t have many shared interests or hobbies. Blair also thought of himself as a “modernizer,” the buzzword at the time, whereas the queen represented stability and continuity.
In his book “A Journey,” Blair describes his first audience with the queen, where he said he noticed two things. “She was quite shy, strangely so for someone of her experience and position; and at the same time, direct.”
The queen shares a laugh with Prime Minister Gordon Brown before the opening of the new St. Pancras International Station in London on Nov. 6, 2007.
Kirsty Wigglesworth/Pool/AFP/Getty Images
In his book, “My Life, Our Times,” Gordon Brown describes his first audience with the queen, saying they had a “congenial and businesslike conversation about the work that lay ahead.” But along with Tony Blair, he was not on the guest list for Prince William and Kate Middleton’s 2011 wedding. The omission didn’t go unnoticed.
The queen greets David Cameron at Buckingham Palace on May 11, 2010.
The queen is said to have got on well with David Cameron, who is a distant relative of hers. But he nonetheless ruffled feathers when he disclosed a private conversation about the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. Cameron was caught on television, still wearing a live microphone, talking to New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg about the results of the vote. He can be heard saying: “The definition of relief is being the prime minister of the United Kingdom and ringing the queen and saying ‘It’s all right, it’s okay.’ That was something. She purred down the line.”
Cameron would later apologize publicly — telling the BBC that he felt “extremely sorry and very embarrassed” — and probably privately, too.
British Prime Minister Theresa May and the queen attend the opening of a meeting of Commonwealth leaders in London on April 19, 2018.
Theresa May was the queen’s second female prime minister. It’s thought they got on well. May has said that the queen greets all of her prime ministers with “charm and consideration, and with an impressive knowledge and understanding of the issues of the day.”
The queen welcomes Boris Johnson during an audience on July 24, 2019, where she invited him to become prime minister.
Boris Johnson, a norm-busting prime minister, broke royal protocol minutes after he became leader. He revealed that the queen told him in their private meeting, “I don’t know why anyone would want the job.”
According to British media reports, Johnson apologized to the queen on more than one occasion. He is said to have apologized after the Supreme Court ruled that Johnson’s decision to ask the queen to suspend Parliament was “unlawful, void and of no effect.” He also publicly admitted to apologizing to the queen after revelations that parties were held at Downing Street during the coronavirus lockdown and on the eve of the queen’s husband’s funeral.
Liz Truss, incoming prime minister of Britain, departs from the Conservative Party's headquarters in London on Sept. 5.
Hollie Adams/ Bloomberg
It remains to be seen how the queen and her third female prime minister will get on. Liz Truss is a shapeshifting politician who has pivoted on several issues, including on the British monarchy. When she was a teenager, and a Liberal Democrat, she argued to abolish the monarchy. “We do not believe people are born to rule,” she said. Truss, now a Conservative, has since described the royal family as “essential” to the U.K.
Editing and production by Reem akkad and Morgan Coates. | 2022-09-06T01:53:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The queen and her 15 prime ministers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2022/queen-prime-ministers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2022/queen-prime-ministers/ |
Dear Carolyn: How do you deal with folks who talk fast and never seem interested in listening? They interrupt nonstop. I can’t even get an entire sentence out. These are all people who are valuable to me, have a lot of advice and wisdom, and care about my happiness.
— Interrupted
Interrupted: A few options:
1. For interruptions: [Whoa gesture] “Wait, I wasn’t finished.”
2. Let them finish their interruption, then say: “I was speaking. May I finish?”
3. [Whoa gesture] “I’m sorry, I can’t keep up. You’re talking too fast for me.”
4. Go quiet until the person notices. When you see your moment to jump into the conversation, don’t take it. If they ask why you’re silent, say, “I can’t keep up,” or, “You were rolling, so I just let you go.” If they never ask or even notice, then pretend you’re at story time and enjoy the rest.
Each option is most effective without rancor. These are people you value and want in your life. You’re trying to fix it, not blow it up.
Quiet assertiveness is hard and feels awkward until you get into the habit. And it can feel weaker than shoving yourself into the dynamic with force but, counterintuitively, it’s stronger to hold your own tone and pace under pressure.
Last thing: Be realistic about your relationships with your interrupters. If you’re connected for the quality of their companionship, then it might be time to rethink. But if you’re in it for more transactional reasons — this is a mentor, an older relative, a cooperative neighbor, etc. — then you can decide upfront to put up with, forgive, ignore or write off more of their bad habits than you might otherwise, because you’re not in it for the easy rapport.
Thoughts from readers:
I have a relative who frequently interrupts me. For the past few years, I have been saying: “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt you.” This is always met with silence, every single time, then they say, “No, go on.” Win-win.
My mother-in-law is a constant interrupter. My mom just continues telling her story or finishing her thought, only pausing once she is done. After a few words, my mother-in-law stops her interruption and seems to notice her error.
People with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder often interrupt because we’re trying to show that we are paying attention by interjecting with a, “Me, too!” example, then sometimes we get carried away and can’t shut up. We can also be so afraid that we’re going to forget what we want to say that we have to say it right now, or else it will be gone forever.
For everyone who gets upset by “interrupters,” please make sure you’re giving people an opportunity to speak. I find that a lot of people who don’t like to be interrupted are people who won’t let others get a word in edgewise. If an “interrupter” is your friend, truly your friend, have some compassion for their conversational style.
I’m afflicted with this. I will not make excuses for it. I know it’s wrong, and I wish I didn’t do it. I am working on it. I’ve been practicing counting to three when I think someone is finished speaking to be sure I’m not cutting them off. My plea: Please don’t assume malice. Many of us are excited or passionate or maybe struggle with social anxiety. | 2022-09-06T04:13:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Carolyn Hax: How to handle fast talkers who never listen - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/09/06/carolyn-hax-fast-talkers-do-not-listen/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/09/06/carolyn-hax-fast-talkers-do-not-listen/ |
Dear Miss Manners: How do I courteously ask for time off work in an hourly position? I’ve been trying to move from “I’m sorry. I can’t come in, because (insert formal reason here)” to “I’m sorry. I have a prior engagement,” or “I’m sorry. I can’t come in because of unforeseen circumstances.”
One of the reasons I’m trying to make this change is that a couple times in my previous job (which I left in good standing), I called in sick even though I wasn’t.
You seem to have missed the fact that it is dishonest to use sick leave to go to your nephew’s birthday party. And if you are paid only for the hours that you actually work, it is unnecessarily devious.
Yes, I really am Mrs. Manners. When I introduce myself, I frequently get the response, “Do you write a column?” or, “You must be really nice!”
Truthfully, I married into the name, but I’ve always been interested in fostering common courtesy. I’m interviewing for new positions, and I don’t want to make other people feel awkward. But after 25-plus years of hearing this “joke,” my inner voice wants to say, “Gee, that’s funny. I’ve never heard that one before!”
Oh, dear. Miss Manners is sorry that you have to endure this.
A high school mathematics teacher told Miss Manners that social acquaintances often greet her with “I hated math.” A police officer reported that he can’t go to parties without someone saying, “Cheese it, the cops are here!” And there isn’t a lawyer joke that every lawyer has not heard.
The object is to change the subject immediately. Miss Manners recommends a weak smile (the mouth turns up but the eyes remain staring) followed by “But tell me about yourself.” | 2022-09-06T04:13:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Miss Manners: How do I ask for time off work in an hourly position? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/09/06/miss-manners-/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/09/06/miss-manners-/ |
Sterling Lord, literary agent who shepherded ‘On the Road,’ dies at 102
His vast roster of clients included Jack Kerouac, true-crime writer Joe McGinniss, novelist Ken Kesey and journalist Jimmy Breslin
Sterling Lord in 2013. (Mary Altaffer/AP)
Sterling Lord, the literary agent who worked for years to find a publisher for Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” and over the following decades arranged deals for a roster of clients that ranged from true-crime writer Joe McGinniss to the creators of the Berenstain Bears, died Sept. 3 at a nursing home in Ocala, Fla., on his 102nd birthday.
His daughter, Rebecca Lord, confirmed the death but did not provide a specific cause.
Mr. Lord, who started his own agency in 1952 and later merged with rival Literistic to form Sterling Lord Literistic, was a failed magazine publisher who became, almost surely, the longest-serving agent in the book business. He stayed with the company he founded until he was nearly 100 — and then decided to launch a new one.
He was alert to new trends and an early ambassador for a revolutionary cultural movement: the Beats. With rare persistence, he endured the initial unwillingness of publishers to take on Kerouac’s unorthodox narrative, and he later was the longtime agent for poet and playwright Amiri Baraka, novelist Ken Kesey, and poet and City Lights bookstore owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
Thanks to his friendship with Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, Lord helped launch Stan and Jan Berenstain’s multimillion-selling books about an anthropomorphic bear family. He negotiated terms between McGinniss and accused killer Jeffrey MacDonald, later convicted, for the true-crime classic “Fatal Vision.” He found a publisher for Nicholas Pileggi’s mob story “Wiseguy” and helped arrange the deal for its celebrated film adaptation, “Goodfellas.”
In the early 1960s, Viking had asked Mr. Lord to get a blurb from Kerouac for “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” Kesey’s first and best-known novel. Kerouac declined, but Mr. Lord was so impressed by the book that he ended up representing Kesey for his next work, “Sometimes a Great Notion.”
He represented former U.S. defense secretary Robert McNamara and Judge John Sirica of Watergate fame, and he often worked with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis during her time as an editor with Doubleday and Viking. Some of the great sports books of the 20th century, from “North Dallas Forty” to “Secretariat,” were written by his clients.
“A number of things about this business have really caught me and made it a compelling interest,” Mr. Lord told the AP in 2013. “First, I’m interested in good writing. Second, I am interested in new and good ideas. And third, I’ve been able to meet some extraordinarily interesting people.”
Mr. Lord spoke proudly of a project he declined: Lyndon B. Johnson’s memoir. Representatives for the former president informed Lord in the late 1960s that Johnson wanted $1 million for the book and that Mr. Lord should accept less than his usual commission for the honor of working with him. Mr. Lord turned them down, much to their surprise and anger.
Johnson’s “The Vantage Point,” ultimately published in 1971, was dismissed by critics as bland and uninformative. Mr. Lord instead found a deal for “Quotations from Chairman LBJ,” a best-selling parody.
Books and tennis were lifelong passions for Mr. Lord, who was born in Burlington, Iowa, on Sept. 3, 1920. He edited his high school newspaper and was a sports stringer around the same time for the Des Moines Register. He also became a tennis star at Grinnell College in Iowa and later was a good enough player to compete against Don Budge, among others.
His upbringing, he later wrote, was the kind of “pleasant, orderly” world “the Beats were trampling on in the fifties and sixties.”
After serving in the Army Air Forces during World War II, Mr. Lord co-owned the Germany-based magazine Weekend, which soon folded. Back in the United States, he served as an editor at True and Cosmopolitan, from which he was fired, before founding the Sterling Lord Literary Agency.
Mr. Lord had met many agents during his magazine years and believed they failed to understand that the American public was becoming more urban and sophisticated. He also prided himself on his sympathy for writers who lived far more wildly than he did.
His first marriage, he would acknowledge, helped inspire him to go into business for himself. “Frankly, I didn’t want to deal with the situation at home,” he told the Des Moines Register in 2015. (He was married four times in all and had one child, Rebecca.)
Mr. Lord had quick success by selling film rights to two popular sports books, Rocky Graziano’s “Somebody Up There Likes Me” (ghostwritten by Rowland Barber) and Jimmy Piersall’s “Fear Strikes Out” (ghostwritten by Al Hirshberg). But Mr. Lord’s “On the Road” quest would prove bumpier.
In his 2013 memoir, “Lord of Publishing,” Mr. Lord remembered meeting Kerouac in 1952. Kerouac had completed a conventional novel, “The Town and the City,” but he had no agent and surely needed one for his next book: “On the Road” was typed, as Mr. Lord was among the first to know, “on a 120-foot scroll of architectural tracing paper.”
Mr. Lord believed that Kerouac had “a fresh, distinctive voice that should be heard.” But the industry was not in the mood. Even younger editors who may have related to Kerouac’s jazzy celebration of youth and personal freedom turned him down. One editor wrote to Mr. Lord: “Kerouac does have enormous talent of a very special kind. But this is not a well-made novel, nor a salable one nor even, I think, a good one.”
By 1955, Kerouac was ready to give up — but Mr. Lord was not. The agent eventually sold excerpts to the Paris Review and the periodical New World Writing. An editor from Viking Press contacted Mr. Lord, offering an advance of $900. Mr. Lord held out for $1,000. In 1957, the book was released, the New York Times raved, and “On the Road” soon entered the American canon.
But Kerouac was a shy and fragile man, Mr. Lord wrote. Fame magnified a drinking problem that killed him by 1969. Mr. Lord even recruited a doctor who unsuccessfully attempted to get Kerouac to clean up, but the businessman eventually backed away since he was his “literary agent, not his life agent.”
Mr. Lord attended Kerouac’s funeral, sharing a limousine ride with his client Jimmy Breslin and standing by the grave alongside poet Allen Ginsberg.
Mr. Lord oversaw Kerouac’s numerous posthumous releases even as he battled the author’s family for control of the estate. After years of failed attempts, a filmed version of “On the Road” was released in 2012. But Mr. Lord had little involvement in the project, starring Sam Riley. He didn’t bother to attend a special screening, citing mixed early reviews, and didn’t show up for a private party for the film. | 2022-09-06T04:13:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Sterling Lord, literary agent who shepherded ‘On the Road,’ dies at 102 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/09/05/sterling-lord-literary-agent-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/09/05/sterling-lord-literary-agent-dead/ |
Liz Truss, an unpopular leader for a troubled Britain
On Tuesday, Liz Truss heads to a Scottish castle to call on Queen Elizabeth II and “kiss” the royal hand. The current British foreign secretary will thus become her country’s next prime minister. With Truss’s appointment, the queen will have presided over this traditional rite 15 times in her many decades as sovereign. It’s possible, no matter reports of her ailing health, that she may do it all over again soon.
Truss comes to power not via general election but after winning the majority of votes in a Conservative Party leadership election decided by fewer than 200,000 dues-paying Tory activists. Her main rival, former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, was more popular among sitting Conservative lawmakers in Parliament. Broader public opinion polls show the opposition Labour Party with its strongest lead in a decade. A majority of Britons, meanwhile, believe Truss will make a “poor” or “terrible” prime minister, and only a quarter consider her an improvement from Boris Johnson, her controversial and polarizing predecessor.
Truss will struggle to muster Johnson’s irrepressible — or delusional, critics would contend — optimism. Darkened skies already hang low over her nascent premiership. “In addition to the war in Ukraine and the fallout of Brexit, the new prime minister will inherit a vast range of economic and political problems,” my colleagues explained. “The Bank of England predicts Britain will suffer through protracted recession, beginning as early as October. Inflation already stands at 10 percent, with economists warning that 15 percent is possible.”
There’s an impending cascade of woes: A mammoth cost-of-living crisis is driving a historic drop in living standards. According to some estimates, two-thirds of British households may face “fuel poverty” by the end of the year, struggling to pay for the surging costs of heating their homes. Across various sectors of the economy, industrial action is picking up, with strikes shutting down train services, garbage collection and the operation of ports.
The country that Truss will now lead is unquestionably diminished. Most analyses of the impact of Brexit find that Britain’s departure from the European Union has dented its economy, added to its supply chain headaches and hurt its trading prospects. An analysis published last month by Saxo Bank warned investors that Britain is “more and more looking like an emerging market country” and won’t have the ability to manage “an easy escape” from a deep recession.
Truss campaigned for her party’s leadership on a platform pandering to the Tory’s hard core. She sees a path out of Britain’s problems by slashing taxes and boosting fracking and nuclear energy. “We will break with the same old tax and spend approach by focusing on growth and investment,” she wrote for the Telegraph. While likely welcomed by many Tories who internally elected her, such rhetoric is less convincing to the general public that has seen the Conservatives in power for 12 years.
“Truss’s Britain will be governed by policies lifted from cliched Daily Mail headlines,” wrote leftist commentator Owen Jones in the Guardian. “All the bêtes noires of saloon-bar reactionaries from the past 20 years will be slaughtered, and the resulting anguish from those effete metropolitan lefties obsessed with mere trivialities such as avoiding mass impoverishment and the destruction of the planet will give the Tory faithful their kicks.”
“Economists … have been skeptical about her confidence that all it will take is a few tax cuts to put a tiger back in the national tank,” noted Sam Leith in the right-leaning Spectator that wondered whether she would be a “Tory Jeremy Corbyn,” a nod to the former left-wing Labour leader whose radical politics swept him to the top role in his party but ultimately hurt Labour on the national stage.
The House of Lords is a bloated relic. Boris Johnson could make it bigger.
It seems Truss’s defining attribute may be a certain brand of political opportunism. “She is a shapeshifting politician,” my colleagues wrote. “She was a centrist Liberal Democrat in her youth before joining the Conservative Party, she argued for abolishing the monarchy before affirming her support for it, and she voted for Britain to remain in the European Union before becoming a hardcore Brexiteer.”
Now fears over her recent hard-line ideological stances are stoking new tensions. Her animus against Scottish independence efforts — and mooted plans to push new legislation that would thwart the possibility of a successful pro-Scottish independence referendum — may set the stage for a clash with Edinburgh.
On Monday, Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney warned Truss against provoking a new trade war between Britain and the E.U. if she proceeds with proposed plans to override the post-Brexit agreement known as the Northern Ireland “protocol.” Guided by the desire to preserve the free flow of goods and people between Ireland and Northern Ireland, the protocol mandated checks on goods arriving from the British mainland to Northern Ireland, much to the chagrin of Tories who feel it undermines Britain’s territorial and political integrity.
This week, at least, the governing wisdom appears to be that Truss will adopt a more pragmatic approach once she has taken up residence in 10 Downing Street. But she has a steep hill to climb.
“There is no money, a potential crisis of confidence in the U.K. economy and a fractious and rebellious party to control. Truss will struggle to be the mistress of her own destiny,” wrote Robert Shrimsley of the Financial Times. “She is going to have to be one of the great premiers just to be a merely good one.” | 2022-09-06T04:13:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Liz Truss elected as U.K. prime minister, takes over a troubled Britain - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/06/liz-truss-troubled-britain-leader/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/06/liz-truss-troubled-britain-leader/ |
Heavy waves battered the coast and damaged roads along the shore in Ulsan, South Korea, early Tuesday. (AP)
SEOUL — Thousands of people were evacuated and 66,000 homes were left without electricity in South Korea after Typhoon Hinnamnor slammed through the country’s south on Tuesday.
The storm made landfall about 4:50 a.m. local time, unleashing powerful winds and heavy rain that flooded facilities, caused landslides and damaged roads, before it headed back out to sea a couple of hours later, the Korea Meteorological Administration said. The storm weakened before its arrival, but still delivered maximum sustained winds of over 90 mph.
Some 3,500 people, mostly in the country’s south, were evacuated from their homes, according to the Ministry of the Interior and Safety. One person died in Pohang after being swept away by floodwaters, officials said. Authorities were searching for two others who went missing in the storm’s aftermath.
The typhoon disrupted industries across the country, forcing some to suspend operations. Fires broke out at a steel plant in Pohang, and its operator, POSCO, was investigating whether the typhoon was the cause. Floods in Pohang also washed away a vacation property, local media reported. The Kori nuclear power plant near the city of Busan partially suspended operations because of a typhoon-induced “abnormality,” Busan Ilbo newspaper reported.
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol urged residents not to lower their guard even as the most critical threat appeared to have passed. Timely evacuation had prevented a more serious situation, he said.
The typhoon also affected North Korea, dumping more than 4 inches of rainfall across dozens of regions in the country over the past two days, the Korea Central News Agency said on Tuesday.
In an apparent response to the downpour, North Korea released water from a dam near its southern border, South Korea’s military said. North Korean authorities did not notify the South about the dam opening despite repeated requests from Seoul.
The North’s official Rodong Sinmun newspaper called for a “maximum preparedness” as the storm approached, especially in the agricultural sector. “If we fail to prevent typhoon damages, we will lose the precious crops for which have been toiling all spring and summer seasons,” it said. The autumn harvest yield in the country, however, is likely to be affected because of adverse weather this year, North Korea watchers said.
A deepening food shortage and widespread malnutrition in the isolated nation could worsen the chronic humanitarian situation. Since North Korea slammed its borders shut at the beginning of the pandemic, almost all international trade has been suspended and external aid, including coronavirus vaccines, has largely failed to reach the country.
Typhoons regularly churn across the Pacific between June and November each year. But climate scientists have warned that extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and damaging as a result of global warming. | 2022-09-06T04:13:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Typhoon Hinnamnor hits South Korea, causing flooding, damage - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/06/south-korea-typhoon-hinnamnor-storm/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/06/south-korea-typhoon-hinnamnor-storm/ |
FILE - This combination of images shown during a press conference at the Royal Canadian Mounted Police “F” Division headquarters in Regina, Saskatchewan, on Sunday, Sept. 4, 2022, shows Damien Sanderson, left, and his brother Myles Sanderson. Canadian police said Monday, Sept. 5 Damien Sanderson, one of the suspects in the killing of multiple people in a series of stabbings has been found dead, and his injuries are not self inflicted. They said his brother, also a suspect, may be injured and remains on the run. (Royal Canadian Mounted Police via AP, File) (Uncredited/Royal Canadian Mounted Police) | 2022-09-06T04:14:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Canada police hunt remaining suspect in stabbing attacks - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/canada-police-hunt-remaining-suspect-in-stabbing-attacks/2022/09/06/92d5a790-2d98-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/canada-police-hunt-remaining-suspect-in-stabbing-attacks/2022/09/06/92d5a790-2d98-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html |
Liz Truss Can’t Escape Boris Johnson’s Legacy
Even if Johnson never leads his party again, few doubt that he will cast a long shadow from the sidelines. And that has made his legacy contested territory — because it’s essential for defining the Tory Party, and conservatism, in the post-Johnson era.
To his followers (and Johnson doesn’t have supporters so much as acolytes), he is the savior who delivered Brexit and the Houdini who conjured up a whole new electoral coalition from swathes of the country that had voted Labour for 70 years. To his detractors, he was the reckless driver who crashed out of the EU. His election became the source of a toothache, maybe even wider decay in his party and public debate.
His supporters may rue the messy personal life, the chaotic way of working, the propensity to say whatever is convenient. But they see in him a unique political mind — instinctively charismatic, competitive, creative — and a politician who, wiser from three years as prime minister, could be capable of a comeback or at least of have a say in the party’s future. They argue that he got the big things right, but failed to surround himself with the right people and allowed a pile-up of mistakes, including tax hikes, to throw him off course.
The polls, however, suggest the broader public have come to a very different conclusion. To most Brits, he’s been a let-down. Only 22% of Brits in the latest YouGov poll think he was either great or good; 55% think he was poor or terrible.
That’s a long way from where he started. Johnson got early credit for completing Britain’s departure from the European Union and was rewarded with a massive majority in the 2019 elections. He reshaped the conservative voter base by speaking to the frustrations of working-class people who were tired of stagnating wages, in the same way that Donald Trump reshaped the Republican Party.
But he wasted no time in spending that credit. Sweeping pledges were too often followed by drama, the distraction of various scandals and problems with implementing policy. Serious issues, from a creaking National Health Service and unfunded social care to policing problems and public-sector strikes, festered without serious engagement.
Brexit, and the politics it unleashed, represent such a historic pivot that it must be at the center of Johnson’s legacy. The early impact has been largely one of added costs and frictions. Relations with Europe are at a low point. Those who argue that Brexit will provide long-term opportunities say wait for it. Their hopes are placed partly in the coming bonfire of regulations that Liz Truss has promised in order to unleash growth and innovation.
In other areas, there was some vision to note. The government policy paper published in February was a serious effort to redress the underlying causes of disparities in income and opportunity. But like Johnson’s pledge to redress the Covid gap in education or his net-zero pledge, his levelling up promises were never given the resources needed to become reality.
Where he did deliver was for Ukraine. Johnson’s instinctive understanding of the geopolitical stakes in Ukraine’s self-defense and his all-in support for Kyiv — from military aid to training Ukrainian soldiers and his own diplomatic efforts — revealed a keen sense of the geopolitical moment. This steady leadership deserves to sit on the positive side of the legacy ledger.
One wild card is the pending House of Commons privilege committee investigation into whether he knowingly misled parliament over Partygate. The Committee decides whether he has committed a contempt of parliament and it can recommend sanctions, including whether to end Johnson’s parliamentary career. The entire House would then vote, thrusting his future and legacy, into the center of political debate again.
Last week, the government released legal advice by David Pannick, a prominent barrister, arguing that the committee’s review is fundamentally flawed and would “paralyze democracy.” The pressure is on Tories to go easy. Still, the government’s clumsy attempt to override the privilege committee’s sanction on the former MP Owen Paterson ended in his resignation and an embarrassment for Johnson — a lesson that will be fresh in Truss’s mind.
For one thing, he’s nurturing a grievance. Johnson has been clear he thinks he was thrown under the bus. And he’s always found an audience impossible to resist. He will certainly find it easy to send out bat signals to his substantial follower base. Every (highly remunerated) speech and newspaper column will be parsed by the media; a witty well-aimed line could be devastating for a particular Truss policy or might prove powerful in an election.
In the meantime, the Tories will keep debating Johnson’s legacy, some hoping to use it to bury him and others to resurrect a stronger version from the ashes of failure. Liz Truss rode to power on his coattails, but she’ll be nervously looking over her shoulder at what he does next. | 2022-09-06T05:44:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Liz Truss Can’t Escape Boris Johnson’s Legacy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/liz-truss-cant-escape-boris-johnsons-legacy/2022/09/06/e7497902-2da0-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/liz-truss-cant-escape-boris-johnsons-legacy/2022/09/06/e7497902-2da0-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html |
Some Israelis Are More Scared of Netanyahu Than Iran
JERUSALEM, ISRAEL - MARCH 24: Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu speaks in the Likud party after vote event on March 24, 2021 in Jerusalem, Israel. In this election, the fourth in a two-year period, Yair Lapid emerged as the principal anti-Netanyahu figure. One potential outcome of today’s vote is that neither Lapid nor Netanyahu can form a government, leading to yet another election. (Photo by Amir Levy/Getty Images) (Photographer: Amir Levy/Getty Images Europe)
In 1992, a young member of Knesset, Benjamin Netanyahu, startled the Israeli public with a warning that Iran — a dictatorship pledged to the destruction of the Jewish state — was “three to five years” from attaining a nuclear weapon. He left to the public imagination what disaster would follow. It was an opportunity for him to present himself as a savior, the man who saw the future and wasn’t afraid to face it.
Today, 30 years later, Netanyahu is still recycling updated versions of his warning. It will almost certainly be the theme of his campaign in the upcoming Israeli election, where he hopes to return to power as head of the right-wing Likud party. This week he accused Prime Minister Yair Lapid and Defense Minister Benny Gantz, his main opponents, of “falling asleep on their watch, and allowing Iran to reach an agreement that endangers our future.”
The agreement in question is the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the deal Iran struck in 2015 with world powers to restrict Tehran’s nuclear program. Former President Donald Trump withdrew the US from the pact, but the Biden administration is seeking to revive the deal, opening a path for Iran to become a threshold nuclear state within a few years.
Yet stoking Israeli fears of a direct Iranian attack no longer looks like a dependable path for Netanyahu and his allies on the right.
Once, Israel dreamt of wiping out the Iranian nuclear program with military strikes, just as the country had destroyed nuclear sites in Iraq in 1981 and in Syria in 2007. In 2010, Bibi, as Netanyahu is widely known in Israel, and his hawkish defense minister Ehud Barak began seriously planning such a strike against Iran. Their plan was shelved after the army’s senior command informed them success couldn’t be fully assured.
Today, any such plan would be absurd. Iran’s nuclear program is scattered throughout the country and buried underground. Unlike the Iraqis and the Syrians, Iran has the scientific and technological ability to rebuild. And the entire world, including the US, would condemn such a move as destabilizing. Iran has oil, and these days oil talks.
There is a segment of the Israeli public that still believes Netanyahu has a magic ability to wipe out the Iranian nuclear project. Bibi knows it isn’t true, but he encourages the delusion.
He is all too willing to whip up voters with apocalyptic “never again” scenarios. It isn’t too hard for Israelis, who have experienced conventional missile attacks by Iranian proxies in Gaza and Lebanon, to imagine what Iran’s leaders might do with a nuke. This fear is ingrained in some people and Netanyahu knows how to activate it.
But not everyone is susceptible to Bibi’s rhetoric. His decades of warnings of Iranian menace have desensitized some people to his message. Netanyahu’s opponents won’t hesitate to assert that Bibi’s unbending us-against-the-world hardline is out of touch with reality.
This opposition case was on display in a recent televised roundtable discussion on post-JCPOA Iran. Two of the participants were former military chiefs of staff who had served under Netanyahu. Two were ex-ministers of defense in Bibi governments. One, Gantz, had held both jobs. None was a Bibi supporter, a point they readily acknowledged (Gantz is the head of a centrist plank in the November election).
The five participants were in accord: None liked the JCOPA (“it’s full of holes,” said Gantz) but all agreed that it was destined to be a regional fact of life that Israel would have to deal with. They shared a high degree of confidence that the military could cope with whatever threats nuclear Iran presented.
To bolster the point, Gantz invoked President Joe Biden’s pledge, made in July during his visit to Israel, that he would use force against Iran “in the last resort.” This amounted to a departure from Israel’s historic defense doctrine that it will fight its own battles without outside intervention. Surprisingly, none of the generals disagreed.
There was also a surprising consensus that Iran shouldn’t be at the top of Israel’s defense priorities. A bigger concern, according to the panel, was the polarized state of the nation. One by one, without mentioning any names, the participants pointed to the lack of solidarity and the decline they perceive in social resilience and patriotism under Netanyahu’s long and divisive reign.
Former Prime Minister Barak summed it up: “All living chiefs of staff, almost all living heads of the Mossad and all living Shin Bet chiefs would agree, all the people who are, or were, at the head of the security apparatus, understand today that there is a more serious threat to the future of the State of Israel than from Iran, Hezbollah or Hamas.” That threat, Barak clearly intimated, with nods from his fellow panelists, would be the return of Bibi Netanyahu and his polarizing, man-of-destiny brand of leadership, to the prime minister’s office.
The Race for Missiles in Asia’s Danger Zone: Gearoid Reidy
China, Russia and Iran Are Slowly Ganging Up on the US: Hal Brands
Putin Is Now Russia’s Deluder-in-Chief: Leonid Bershidsky | 2022-09-06T05:44:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Some Israelis Are More Scared of Netanyahu Than Iran - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/some-israelis-are-more-scared-of-netanyahu-than-iran/2022/09/06/e6a54aee-2da0-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/some-israelis-are-more-scared-of-netanyahu-than-iran/2022/09/06/e6a54aee-2da0-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html |
In this photo released by Xinhua News Agency, rescuers transfer survivors across a river following Monday's earthquake in Moxi Town of Luding County, China's Sichuan province. (Cheng Xueli/AP)
BEIJING — An earthquake in southwestern China killed at least 65 people this week and sparked criticism about orders for residents to stay put in coronavirus lockdown instead of fleeing to safety.
The 6.8-magnitude earthquake is the latest challenge for Sichuan province, which has been beset this year by floods, drought, power shortages and onerous pandemic controls. The quake, whose epicenter was in rural Luding county, has also prompted outcry about authorities’ continued prioritization of coronavirus prevention over other emergencies.
“Everyone, you may not go down the stairs!!” the building manager wrote. “You may not run!!!!”
The screenshot and other similar reports triggered a flood of public criticism, even drawing attention in state media. The official People’s Daily newspaper’s health news platform said that one of its reporters had called the building manager involved in the Chengdu incident, who said that, “No matter how severe the earthquake is, it can’t be that severe. It’s safest to stay at home.”
Chengdu’s health commission responded to the controversy Monday night, saying that people’s lives and safety should be prioritized in the case of earthquakes, fires and floods, over pandemic rules.
China’s leader Xi Jinping gave orders on Monday for rescue efforts to be given top priority in Sichuan. State media reported that more than 50,000 people had been relocated as of Tuesday morning, with more than 1,900 police officers and soldiers dispatched to the scene.
Most of the deaths took place in the Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, an area of Sichuan province encompassing Luding county, where most of the population is ethnic Tibetan. Some of the worst damage occurred in small towns, where buildings were leveled and roads rendered impassible by rubble.
One video in Chengdu showed a crowd of residents at the gate of their apartment complex, arguing to be let out. Employees on the other side refused to open it, with one yelling through a speakerphone that the buildings hadn’t collapsed. In another video, a man shakes the handle of a locked door, as he and other residents tried to leave their apartment building.
China’s southwest is often hit by earthquakes. In 2008, tens of thousands were killed when a powerful quake struck Sichuan province. In the aftermath, residents in the affected areas complained of an inadequate official response.
There have been safety concerns surrounding China’s inflexible coronavirus lockdowns since the earliest days of the pandemic, when the residents of Wuhan were confined to their homes for more than two months. Videos circulated of Wuhan pandemic staffers welding shut doors in apartment buildings, raising alarms over what could happen in the case of a fire or other emergency.
Shanghai's covid siege: Food shortages, talking robots, starving animals
At the national level, Chinese officials have been seeking to ease some pandemic restrictions in recent months, as the economy shows signs of distress. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has begun appearing in photo-ops meeting with local officials and the public without a mask, in a symbol of return to normal life. State media has encouraged families to travel for holidays over the summer.
Chengdu began its lockdown Thursday evening, telling residents to stay at home through Sunday, with just one member of a household allowed to venture out each day to buy groceries. Authorities said Monday the lockdown would continue at least through Wednesday, as new cases continued to emerge.
Officials nationwide have been on edge ahead of a crucial Chinese Communist Party congress next month, where leader Xi Jinping is expected to break precedent by staying on for a third five-year term. Pandemic restrictions, and other social controls more broadly, are expected to remain tight until after the meeting. Xi has declared the nation will continue its “zero covid” policy to control all outbreaks with lockdowns for the foreseeable future.
Vic Chiang and Pei-Lin Wu in Taipei, and Lyric Li in Seoul contributed to this report. | 2022-09-06T06:28:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Earthquake in China’s Sichuan sparks outcry over covid lockdown - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/06/china-sichuan-earthquake-covid-lockdown/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/06/china-sichuan-earthquake-covid-lockdown/ |
Two slain, youth critically wounded in D.C. attacks
Gunfire erupts in city over Labor Day weekend
At least two people were slain, a teenager was critically wounded and several other people were shot in Labor Day weekend attacks in the District, according to police.
One of the slayings occurred Sunday afternoon in an area a few blocks from the eastern edge of the Capitol Hill neighborhood, police said.
The victim was attacked a few minutes before 4 p.m. in the 1700 block of East Capitol Street NE, according to a police account.
An initial report indicated that the slaying occurred at or near a school. It was not immediately clear what kind of weapon was used.
On Friday, the eve of the holiday weekend, Jermaine Brown, 43, whose address was not known, was fatally shot in the 1600 block of 18th Street SE, police said.
The shooting of the teenager occurred about 10 p.m. Monday in the heart of the Shaw area of Northwest, according to police.
He was taken to a hospital, where he was reported early Tuesday to be unconscious, but able to breathe, police said. They said he had been struck once in the head in the 1700 block of Seventh Street NW.
During the incident, a woman was grazed by a shot, according to police.
A man was shot and wounded Friday afternoon about a block north of the scene of the Monday night attack, police said. That shooting occurred about 2:45 p.m. in the 1800 block of Seventh Street NW.
In another of the weekend’s attacks, police said three people were shot and wounded Sunday night at Fifth and Kennedy streets NW in the Brightwood Park area. One of the victims was a man, and the other was a 17-year old female, said Alaina Gertz, a police spokeswoman. No description of the third victim was available.
Late Saturday, a man was shot in a business in the 1900 block of 14th Street NW, police said. An arrest was made, they said. The location was near the U Street corridor, a lively restaurant, tavern and entertainment area.
Several other shootings and stabbings were reported, according to the police. | 2022-09-06T07:11:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Two slain, youth critically wounded in D.C. attacks - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/06/youth-shot-shaw-attacks-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/06/youth-shot-shaw-attacks-dc/ |
ATLANTA — DJ Uiagalelei threw for one touchdown and ran for another, overcoming a sluggish start in the season opener as No. 4 Clemson pulled away for a 41-10 victory over Georgia Tech.
NEW YORK — Aaron Judge hit his major league-leading 54th home run, connecting for the third straight day and sending the New York Yankees over the Minnesota Twins 5-2.
BALTIMORE — Bo Bichette hit a career-high three home runs in the second game of a doubleheader, and the Toronto Blue Jays defeated the Baltimore Orioles 8-4 to complete a sweep and widen their lead in the AL wild-card race.
RECIFE, Brazil — Norris Cole scored 17 points, Craig Sword added 11 and the U.S. got its first win of this year’s AmeriCup by rolling past Panama 88-58.
FRISCO, Texas — Four years ago, Jason Peters saw the Dallas Cowboys as arrogant. Now that the two-time All-Pro with the Philadelphia Eagles has joined the Cowboys, Peters calls it “swagger.” | 2022-09-06T07:16:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Monday's Sports In Brief - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mondays-sports-in-brief/2022/09/06/41f8b85e-2db0-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mondays-sports-in-brief/2022/09/06/41f8b85e-2db0-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html |
Liz Truss’s cabinet may be U.K’s first without a White man in high office
Incoming U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss with Kwasi Kwarteng, whom she is set to name her top finance minister. (Leon Neal/Getty Images)
Liz Truss, who won a terse battle to succeed Boris Johnson as British prime minister, is set to preside over a historic moment: for the first time, there is unlikely to be a White man holding one of Britain’s four top seats of political power.
Truss is set to name James Cleverly as foreign secretary, Suella Braverman — whose parents came to Britain in the 1960s from Kenya and Mauritius — as home secretary, and Kwasi Kwarteng as the country’s first Black chancellor of the exchequer, or finance chief, U.K. media reported.
Cleverly, whose mother hails from Sierra Leone — his father is from Wiltshire, about 90 miles outside London — has spoken publicly about being bullied as a mixed-race child and given talks at Conservative Party conferences about how the party can win support from Black voters. Kwarteng, whose parents migrated to Britain from Ghana, wrote a book examining the British Empire’s rule in the former colonies of Iraq, Kashmir, Myanmar, Sudan, Nigeria, and Hong Kong.
The diversity of Truss’s ministerial appointments won praise from some quarters, in a nation where Conservative Party members — about 0.3 percent of the U.K. population — are generally older, wealthier, 95 percent White and more to the right than the Britain as a whole. (Nearly 85 percent of people living in England and Wales identify as White, government data show.)
“The new cabinet is another reminder that people from all backgrounds can go far within the Tory party,” Samuel Kasumu, a former race affairs adviser to Johnson, told the Guardian newspaper.
Not everyone appeared convinced. A headline in Britain’s right-wing Daily Mail tabloid declared ruefully: Liz Truss puts finishing touches to diverse new government: No place for white men in great offices of state.
To all who hoped Liz Truss's government would finally be "anti woke"... there will be "no place for white men in great offices of state"
It's almost like white, male privilege was a lie all along? pic.twitter.com/4D2dMjF80s
— Martin Daubney 🇬🇧 (@MartinDaubney) September 5, 2022
Her predecessor, Johnson, also had a fairly diverse senior ministerial lineup. Home Secretary Priti Patel was the first British member of parliament of Indian origin to take up that appointment, while the three chancellors during his premiership included two men of South Asian origin and one of Kurdish background. Truss was his foreign secretary.
Some pointed out that although ethnically diverse, Truss’s probable top appointees stem from the party’s right wing. Kwarteng had pushed for Britain to quickly leave the European Union while Braverman has said that schools may be able to legally ignore the preferred pronouns of gender nonconforming and transgender pupils.
The 47-year-old Truss promises to slash taxes and bolster borrowing to fund spending, even as inflation soars past 10 percent and the Bank of England forecasts a protracted recession by year’s end. Truss has also vowed to make reducing illegal migration a key priority, ensuring the continuation of a controversial policy to deport to Rwanda asylum seekers who entering the U.K. on small boats.
The left-of-center opposition Labour Party has a more ethnically and gender diverse group of elected lawmakers, but they occupy a smaller proportion of the party’s highest posts.
Labour politician Shaista Aziz said on Twitter in response to news of Truss’s potential appointees that it is “not enough to be a Black or ethnic minority politician in this country or a cabinet member. That’s not what representation is about. That’s actually tokenism.”
In the run-up to the leadership vote, Aziz wrote an article panning the Conservatives for failing to represent the concerns of ordinary people.
“Despite all the talk of diversity and inclusion, the Tory candidates of colour and all those who entered the race support the party’s right-wing immigration policies, which include removing asylum seekers from the UK and flying them to Rwanda while their asylum applications are processed,” she wrote last month.
Labour lawmaker Marsha de Cordova said that although Truss’s cabinet is expected to be diverse “it will be the most right-wing in living memory, embracing a political agenda that will attack the rights of working people, especially minorities.”
William Booth and Karla Adam contributed to this report. | 2022-09-06T07:16:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Liz Truss’s cabinet may be first without a White man in high office - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/06/uk-liz-truss-offices-of-state-women-poc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/06/uk-liz-truss-offices-of-state-women-poc/ |
Cars lined up in the drive-through at a McDonald’s restaurant in San Francisco on Aug. 25. (Jeff Chiu/AP)
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) on Monday signed a bill that increases protections for fast-food workers in the state, creating a council to set an industry-wide minimum wage and workplace standards.
The bill passed the state legislature last week against opposition from trade groups, which said it unfairly targeted the fast-food industry and would cause prices to rise at a time when the U.S. inflation rate is among the highest in decades.
Newsom said in a Labor Day video message that California, which is the size of the world’s fifth-largest economy, had long had a “formula for success around growth and inclusion.” But the fast-food industry was one in which the state had fallen “a bit short” on improving wages and working conditions, he added.
“For years, the fast food sector has been rife with abuse, low pay, few benefits, and minimal job security,” the bill’s authors wrote. The law provides for the creation of a “Fast Food Council” made up of 10 members to “establish sectorwide minimum standards on wages, working hours, and other working conditions related to the health, safety, and welfare of, and supplying the necessary cost of proper living to, fast food restaurant workers.”
The council will include fast-food employees, worker advocates, franchisees and government representatives.
The legislation caps the 2023 fast-food minimum wage at $22. The state minimum wage is $15 for businesses with 26 employees or more. After Jan. 1, 2024, the sector’s minimum wage will be adjusted for inflation, capped at 3.5 percent annually.
The law also enhances protections for workers against retaliation by their employers.
The Service Employees International Union, which represents 2 million workers nationwide, called the bill’s passage a “watershed moment in the nation’s labor history, giving more than half a million low-wage workers in the fast-food industry a meaningful voice on the job.”
Fast-food customers are back, but workers are not. It’s triggering major change.
The California law is widely seen as a step toward sectoral bargaining, which involves industry-wide negotiations, rather than talks between individual unions and employers. Sectoral bargaining is difficult under U.S. labor laws, and traditional collective bargaining is often challenging in the fast-food industry, according to the left-leaning Center for American Progress Action Fund.
The International Franchise Association (IFA), which represents the industry, said the legislation was “a fork in the eye to franchise owners and customers at a time when it hurts most.” The group said it had heard from franchisees that they “do not know how they will be able to make it once this bill goes into effect.”
The bill’s author, Assemblymember Chris Holden (D), said in a statement last week that, “as a former franchisee, I am aware that time is of the essence” to increase wages and protections for fast-food workers. (Holden was a Subway franchise owner in the early 1990s.)
IFA said the legislation could cause fast-food prices to increase by as much as 20 percent in California, citing an analysis by the University of California at Riverside. That analysis found that a 60 percent increase in worker compensation could cause a 20.4 percent increase in prices.
If the minimum wage for the fast-food industry rose to the maximum $22 per hour under the new legislation, it would be a 46.7 percent increase in compensation from the state’s current $15 minimum wage. Such an increase could cause prices to rise between 13.6 and 17 percent, according to the UC Riverside analysis. | 2022-09-06T08:38:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | California fast-food bill could bump minimum wage to $22 an hour - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/06/california-fast-food-bill-minimum-wage-newsom/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/06/california-fast-food-bill-minimum-wage-newsom/ |
The Pentagon, as seen from an airplane. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)
At the same time, the U.S. military has ended wars in Iraq and Afghanistan “without all the goals satisfactorily accomplished” and is preparing for “more daunting competition” with other nations, the leaders write.
The signatories also include earlier defense secretaries from both Republican and Democratic administrations and each of the Pentagon’s retired top officers since October 2001: Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey and Marine Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr.
“We realized that there was a need for a restatement of what civilian control means, and how it applies,” Feaver said. “It was striking that as General Dempsey reached out to them to get them involved, to a person they said, ‘Oh, yeah. That’s important. We need to do that.’ ”
“There was a desire to make sure that this document was not partisan and did not sound like a partisan critique of any single individual,” Feaver said.
The signatories said they are concerned about “irresponsible” and “heated” political attacks on U.S. institutions as the midterm elections loom, said Chuck Hagel, a former Republican senator who served as a defense secretary in the Obama administration.
Continued false allegations that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent have prompted many Americans to question their government’s credibility, and Republican lawmakers are now warning that if they take back the House, they will target Justice Department leaders who have investigated potential wrongdoing by Trump, Hagel noted.
The letter states that democracy requires “civilian and military leaders — and the rank-and-file they lead — to embrace and implement effective civilian control” of the U.S. military. The letter also says that civilian control of the military can be exercised by the judicial branch when an administration’s decisions are challenged, and that a court ruling is decisive because military leaders are obligated by law and professional ethics to refuse to carry out illegal or unconstitutional orders.
Military officials are required to carry out legal orders, even if they doubt their wisdom, but civilian officials should “provide the military ample opportunity to express their doubts in appropriate venues,” the letter adds. Military officials can raise questions about second- and third-order effects and propose alternative ideas, the leaders note.
The letter also notes that there are “significant limits on the public role of military personnel in partisan politics,” and that military and civilian leaders both “must be diligent about keeping the military separate from partisan political activity.”
The letter comes as Trump continues to weigh another run for president. Officials advising Trump in 2020 openly floated the idea of having the military intervene in voting disputes, prompting senior Army officials to say there is “no role for the U.S. military in determining the outcome of an American election.” | 2022-09-06T08:47:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Past Pentagon leaders warn of strains on civilian-military relations - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/06/pentagon-civilian-military-relations/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/06/pentagon-civilian-military-relations/ |
Meredith Whittaker, the former Google manager, is Signal’s first president. She is out to convince users to pay for the free app.
Meredith Whittaker, the former Google manager who is now president at Signal. (Florian Hetz for The Washington Post)
Signal has hired Meredith Whittaker, a former Google manager who has been outspoken about the harms of Big Tech, as its first president, adding to the roster of tech critics leading the encrypted messaging app.
In the crowded market for messaging apps, Signal stands apart. It’s committed to encryption in an industry built on collecting personal data. It’s run by a nonprofit, but competes against WhatsApp and iMessage, backed by some of the richest companies in the world, Facebook parent Meta and Apple.
As president, Whittaker will help guide strategy, communications and policy. In an interview, she said she plans to focus on sustaining Signal, which depends on donations from users. Signal announced her new role on Monday at an event in Berlin.
“It costs tens of millions of dollars per year to develop and maintain an app like Signal,” she said.
The only way to escape technology that makes money off your data is by paying for products that don’t, Whittaker says. An alternative to data collection only exists if the community of people who rely on it “kick in a little bit,” she said.
How to keep your intimate, embarrassing or damaging text messages as private as possible
Signal is one of the few successful tech products, like the Firefox browser, led by vociferous critics of Big Tech. The app offers end-to-end encryption on text, voice, and video chat and does not store backups of your data on its servers — a viable alternative to relentless data gathering at the center of tech industry critiques.
Whittaker, who has been a member of Signal’s board since 2020, rose to prominence in tech circles for worker activism at Google before she was ousted from the company — and for the research center she co-founded to raise awareness about the social implications of artificial intelligence, called AI Now Institute. Most recently, Federal Trade Commissioner Lina Khan tapped Whittaker as a senior adviser on AI.
Signal was released in 2014 by encryption evangelist Moxie Marlinspike, the former head of security for Twitter, and it expanded in 2018 thanks to a $50 million interest-free loan from Brian Acton, the WhatsApp co-founder who has called out Facebook for privacy violations. Whittaker first met Marlinspike when they were both part of an open source software community exploring privacy protecting tech.
Whittaker’s arrival comes at an inflection point for the company. Marlinspike stepped down as CEO in January, after roughly a decade at the helm, and Acton took over in an interim capacity. (Signal’s three-person board is Marlinspike, Acton, and Whittaker.) The company is still searching for a new chief. “It’s got to be the right person,” said Whittaker. “We have the luxury to take our time.”
Ask Help Desk: Your private messenger may not be so secure after all
The app experienced a massive spike in downloads last year during a privacy backlash after WhatsApp changed its policy on data collection on user interactions with businesses. Signal currently has 140.9 million downloads across the App Store and Google Play, with India and the United States each having about 16 percent of its users, according to Sensor Tower, a mobile analytics company. That compares with WhatsApp, which passed 2 billion downloads in 2019, Telegram, which passed 1 billion downloads in 2021, and iMessage, which comes pre-installed on iPhones.
Whittaker differentiated Signal’s strategy from the fast growth mantra of most Silicon Valley tech companies. Signal is not interested in increasing profit or attention on ads, but rather creating a network effect of encrypted communication, she said.
“The more people who use Signal, the more people we can talk to on Signal, that’s more people whose communication is private and encrypted,” she said. “We do have growth goals, but they are driven by our mission, not by a desire for profit.”
There has been a greater focus on encrypted messaging in recent years because of crackdowns against dissidents around the globe, political upheaval, and growing awareness of how easily private chats can be shared without consent. Signal’s protections stand out from even privacy-minded competitors like WhatsApp and Telegram, experts say. Signal has default end-to-end encryption, unlike Telegram, which uses cloud backups. WhatsApp, which has backups turned off by default and began offering end-to-end encrypted backups last year, shares metadata with its parent company Meta.
“Providing secure end-to-end encrypted messaging for the world is the bedrock of WhatsApp,” said WhatsApp spokesperson Carl Woog. He added that WhatsApp does not share user contacts, location or chats with Meta. Apple and Telegram did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In fact, to provide end-to-end encryption, WhatsApp and many other services use Signal Protocol, an open source technology developed by the same group behind Signal.
Regardless, few consumers put privacy first, said Jamie MacEwan, senior media analyst at Enders Analysis, a firm that analyses new technologies and media.
“About 10 percent of people say they have reported companies to data authorities or asked them to delete data. About half of people take smaller-scale action like changing their privacy settings,” MacEwan said.
Signal has cultural clout that is surprising for its size, however. The app is popular with techies and journalists, and crossed over to White House aides, Black Lives Matters protesters, sports stars, as well as Oath Keepers. It had a cameo on the HBO teen drama Euphoria in 2019.
Meta’s encryption plan has human rights benefits, report says
During her time at Google, Whittaker led product and engineering teams in Google Research and Google Cloud. She emerged as a tech critic when she helped draft a petition in 2018 against Project Maven, Google’s contract to help the Pentagon improve computer vision for drones, which said that Google should not be in the business of war. She later became known for helping to organize a companywide walkout to protest Google’s mishandling of sexual harassment claims.
Although it may seem removed from Signal’s mission, Whittaker sees a through-line in her work on challenging the business model behind AI.
The dominant trend in AI is building large-scale systems that require inordinate amounts of data, including personal data on internet users. “These are the resources that are concentrated in the hands of the Big Tech companies,” Whittaker explained. These AI models are a way to “expand the profitability of surveillance data and grow the reach of the companies that produce it.”
Whittaker is bringing more transparency to the costs of operation, such as experts in maintaining code for iOS, Android and desktop, and registration and hosting. Signal offers users an option to make one time donations or earn different badges for monthly donations of $5, $10, or $20 a month, and gift a badge to others.
Telegram, which raised $1.7 billion through a cryptocurrency scheme called an initial coin offering, launched a premium subscription this summer, charging users $5.99 per month for access to exclusive features, faster downloads, and other perks. WhatsApp at one point charged some users 99 cents a year, but dropped that after Facebook bought the app for $16 billion.
Nearly half of Telegram’s Holocaust content contains denial, distortion
But don’t expect a Wikipedia-esque monthly banner on Signal. “We are definitely hoping to get the word out now and we also don’t want to hit people over the head with it,” Whittaker said. “You get on Signal because you want to answer that group text or you want to contact someone, not because you want to read Signal’s text about itself.” | 2022-09-06T10:18:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Messaging app Signal hires former Google organizer Meredith Whittaker - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/09/06/signal-meredith-whittaker/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/09/06/signal-meredith-whittaker/ |
Should mom withdraw from her IRA to fund daughter’s home remodeling?
Withdrawing $300,000 from a tax-deferred account to fund a home renovation would likely trigger a big tax bill. (iStock)
Q: I read your articles regularly. I would love your opinion on options for financing an addition on my daughter’s house.
Once her renovation is done, we will live with her. We currently own our own home and have no mortgage. We hold title to the house in our living trust. All of our money is tied up in our IRAs, and we have little in savings. I withdraw monthly from the IRA to supplement our Social Security payments for day-to-day living expenses.
Withdrawing approximately $300,000 from my IRA to help her pay for the addition would cause us to owe a huge tax bill. My house would probably sell for around $650,000, but my daughter and her family are living with us until their house is done.
My plan is to get a mortgage on our current home to help them pay for the addition and pay the loan off when I sell our house. I estimate it will take a year to complete their addition before we can all move into the home.
Do you have any recommendations on which type of loan to pursue? Can my daughter take out a second mortgage to assist her with financing the home? In any case, I would pay off the loan or mortgage when I sell my house.
A: Here’s the good news: You’ve got a number of options to move forward.
That said, we’re glad you’ve eliminated the first: withdrawing funds from your IRA. As you correctly note, withdrawing that much money from a tax-deferred account would likely trigger a big tax bill. You’d have to pay income tax on those funds. And $300,000 is a large enough amount that it would probably push you into a higher tax bracket. Also, you didn’t mention your age, but if you are under 59 1/2, you might owe penalties on top of the taxes.
There are other ways to finance this renovation.
First, as long as your home is not currently listed for sale, you can do a cash-out refinance of your property. Lenders should allow you to borrow up to 70 percent or even 80 percent of the value of your home today. If your home is worth $650,000, 70 percent of that would allow you to net $455,000 in cash.
Interest rates are a lot higher today than they were a year ago, so this move will cost you. As we write this, you’d pay around 5 percent for a $455,000 30-year fixed-rate refinance mortgage. You could expect to pay 1.5 percent in upfront fees, and the monthly payment would be around $2,400. These numbers assume that your credit scores are at least 740. Note that some lenders will require you to have a 760 credit score, or higher, to access their best programs.
You could also consider a home equity line of credit. While you won’t get as much money from a home equity line of credit, the closing costs on this type of loan are significantly lower than on permanent mortgages. You would need to weigh the higher interest rate on a home equity line of credit vs. the closing costs on a cash-out mortgage on your home.
Since you plan to pay off the loan in a year, the overall cost would be limited, and far less than the tax bill associated with liquidating an IRA.
Your daughter could also do a cash-out refinance. But if she has a solid interest rate, she may be better off taking out a home equity loan or line of credit. Currently, fewer lenders offer home equity lines of credit (HELOCs). Interest rates on HELOCs are higher than for fixed-rate mortgages, so she might have to pay over 5 percent interest (or even as much as 7 percent) on whatever funds she borrows.
When it comes to home improvement projects, Sam’s favorite question is “What’s the budget?” If you can cover the amount with a cash-out refinance on your existing home, making sure you’ve set aside enough to cover the cost of the funds, this might be the best move. You can then, as you indicated, pay off the mortgage when you sell your home. You’ll pocket whatever is left after closing costs and fees.
The elephant in the room is whether you and your husband plan to “buy into” your daughter’s home. You’re going to sell your house and move into hers. But, if she sells it, your cash is tied up with that property. Do you get your cash back? What if the improvements double the value of the home? Will you get double your money?
There are other scenarios that bring up the same issue. What happens if your daughter unexpectedly dies before you? What if she has children or a spouse who dislikes you and they don’t allow you to live in the property going forward? What if you or your husband face an unexpected medical issue and you need some of the cash you invested in the renovation?
You and your daughter should talk about ownership of the property going forward and whether that should be shared. If you have more than sufficient funds for the rest of your life, then the conversation is a bit different. But often parents invest funds in their children’s homes and then can’t get at that money if the need arises.
Once you and your daughter have talked through these issues, you can consult with an estate attorney who can make recommendations as to how you might resolve some of the lingering issues surrounding ownership of the property. Options might include placing the property in a trust and naming you, your daughter and your spouse as beneficiaries. Or, you and your spouse might get a life estate. There are other options as well, and each comes with a variety of pros and cons to sort through. | 2022-09-06T10:18:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Should mom withdraw from her IRA to fund daughter’s home remodeling? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/05/should-mom-withdraw-her-ira-fund-daughters-home-remodeling/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/05/should-mom-withdraw-her-ira-fund-daughters-home-remodeling/ |
Ralph Hamers, chief executive officer of UBS Group AG, during a Bloomberg Television interview on day two of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday, May 24, 2022. The annual Davos gathering of political leaders, top executives and celebrities runs from May 22 to 26. (Bloomberg)
When UBS Group AG ditched its biggest acquisition in more than two decades with no explanation after markets closed on the Friday of Labor Day weekend, investors and everyone else were left to guess what happened.
Wall Street analysts have presumed that $1.4 billion is now just too much to pay for Wealthfront, a US digital investment adviser that won’t make profits for years. Vertigo-inducing fintech valuations have returned rapidly to earth since the deal was struck in January, exemplified by Klarna AB. The Swedish Buy Now Pay Later company raised funds this summer at less than one-fifth of its valuation just 12 months earlier.
But price isn’t a sufficient explanation – UBS never attempted to justify the valuation, nor is it suddenly in need of conserving cash. Abandoning the deal likely signals that Colm Kelleher, who took over as chairman in April, may have a different view from Chief Executive Officer Ralph Hamers about how UBS should grow its US business and improve its technology.
The bank gave no reckoning on the purchase price for Wealthfront when it struck the deal. Analysts viewed it as a high valuation at the time, equivalent to more than 5% of assets under management when similar businesses traded at closer to 3% of assets last year, according to data from Houlihan Lokey. UBS also never disclosed financial expectations nor targets for the deal. In fact, Hamers told investors it would be counterproductive to try and make it profitable too soon. “If you expect [profits] to come from a business like that in the first five years, basically, you’re setting it up for failure,” he said when discussing the purchase during February’s full-year earnings call.
The CEO wanted to protect it from pressures to produce quick returns, preferring to let it pursue growth among younger, tech-savvy US clients who are wealthy but not among UBS’s main super-rich clientele. But Hamers also sold it as an acquisition of the engineering talent and innovative culture of Wealthfront: UBS was buying the people who could improve its technology elsewhere.
Hamers had a technology-led focus on growth first and profits later in his previous role as CEO of ING Groep NV. The Dutch bank has long had a good reputation for innovation and digital banking in Europe but that didn’t translate into strong stock performance over the last two years of his leadership. Steven van Rijswijk, his successor as CEO, swiftly refocused ING on profitability, pulling out of markets like the Czech Republic, abandoning a costly and ambitious IT project and shutting down a payments company it had acquired in 2018.
Kelleher came from a long career at Morgan Stanley, which is UBS’s closest peer on Wall Street in strategy and business mix. Its US wealth and asset management units have grown significantly over the past decade through acquisitions like Smith Barney in 2012 and, more recently, E*Trade and Eaton Vance. These added immediate scale to Morgan Stanley’s assets and took the share of profits from those units to nearly 50% from one quarter previously. Kelleher wasn’t responsible for these deals, but he helped set corporate strategy and was a close confidant of CEO James Gorman. It wouldn’t be unusual for Kelleher to put his mark on UBS’s strategy: In Switzerland, the chairman is legally responsible for company strategy and the CEO for implementing it.
UBS didn’t need to abandon Wealthfront to save money. Sure, having an extra $1.4 billion in capital will be helpful with markets and economies looking volatile, but UBS has enough funds to be comfortably buying back $5 billion worth of shares this year even before canning this deal.
Putting the Wealthfront cash straight into a bigger buyback plan would be better for shareholder returns in the near term, according to Flora Bocahut, analyst at Jefferies Financial Group Inc. Investors, however, greeted the scrapping of the takeover with a shrug, suggesting they were unconvinced. UBS’s share price slipped 1%, almost exactly in line with the Stoxx 600 index of European banking stocks. What will be much more interesting for investors is how the strategy and leadership of UBS develops from here.
• UBS Knows This Trading Boom Won’t Last Forever: Paul J. Davies
• Fund Giant Shows M&A Isn’t the Only Path to Growth: Mark Gilbert | 2022-09-06T10:19:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | UBS’s Ditched $1.4 Billion Deal Isn’t All About The Money - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/ubss-ditched-14-billion-deal-isnt-all-about-the-money/2022/09/06/cd581e52-2dca-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/ubss-ditched-14-billion-deal-isnt-all-about-the-money/2022/09/06/cd581e52-2dca-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html |
Homaera Tokhi holds her daughter Tayyaba, who was born in the United States three months ago, during breakfast in their apartment in Landover Hills, Md. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)
Ahmad Jawed Tokhi watched quietly last Monday morning as the Landover Hills street around him thrummed with excitement on the first day of school.
His daughter, Bibi Hawa, 7, hugged his leg, and he fussed over her quietly. Her blue shoes looked too small. He should buy her new ones, he murmured, furrowing his brow as he pulled four index cards from his pockets — one for each of his enrolled children — that detailed the buses they’d take to school. He shuffled them slowly as he checked and rechecked the route numbers.
It all felt a little surreal. In Kabul, he’d paid drivers to ferry his children from home to school and keep them off the streets, praying they’d avoid the next bomb attack, he said. Now, they’d be whisked away by a bright yellow school bus.
In houses and apartments across Maryland and Virginia, families that evacuated from Kabul a year ago are celebrating this quiet milestone. As they waited for housing and searched for footing in a new country and culture, few could give their children a normal year. Now, like any other kids in the country, they were off to school.
“In America, life is like this,” Tokhi said, cracking a brief smile as the buses roared out of sight.
Tokhi, 42, was already thinking about tomorrow as he walked back to his apartment: a doctor’s appointment, another trip to Walmart for school supplies, a mental note to ask his kids for their school menus so he’d know when to pack them halal lunches. There was so much more to do.
More than 6,000 refugees from Afghanistan have resettled in Maryland and Virginia since Kabul fell in August 2021, according to the U.S. State Department. They fled in a panic as the Taliban closed in, and the desperate evacuation that captured the world’s attention last summer slowly unspooled into a year of waiting and uncertainty.
For Tokhi, who worked with coalition forces as a technician at the since-renamed Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, the journey to Maryland was an odyssey. He fled for America with his wife, Homaera, and five children in August 2021, not knowing how long it would take or how many places he’d have to stop along the way.
Tokhi speaks slowly — but with growing confidence — in English as he recounts his family’s journey, aided by a patchwork of photos and videos on his phone.
Months of travel scroll by as Tokhi flicks between photos. A 12-day stop at a military base in Qatar; a few months at the U.S. Air Force’s Ramstein Air Base in Germany; his family looking out of a bus window as forests of pine trees stream past; Tokhi, uncharacteristically sullen, standing between hangars on a German airstrip. Ramstein hadn’t been a good time. They slept in cots and waited in long lines for breakfasts of juice and bread as the base quickly took in thousands of evacuated Afghans waiting to enter the U.S.
Finally, Tokhi’s family was sent to Holloman Air Force Base, where a tent city welcomed refugee families to the base’s grounds on the white sands of the New Mexico desert.
Inch by inch, the Tokhis reclaimed their lives. They took English classes at Holloman and provided Sobhannull, now 5, with donated stuffed animals. The soldiers held parties for the refugees where they danced to Afghan music and American hip-hop. Tokhi’s children enjoyed watching, but he wasn’t good enough, Tokhi said, to join in the dancing.
Still, they didn’t know where they’d finally settle. Tokhi, who’d received a Special Immigrant Visa, was able to submit preferences and picked three states where he knew a friend or family member lived: Washington, Maryland and Missouri. Finally, in January 2022 — nearly half a year after he’d left Kabul — he received an answer.
If Tokhi’s referral to Maryland felt like a slow crawl, he wasn’t alone. The influx of families to the D.C. metro area swamped local resettlement agencies, whose numbers had been slashed by the administration of former president Donald Trump. Handling the surge in refugees felt “more like a disaster response than resettlement,” said Kristyn Peck, CEO of the Lutheran Social Services of the National Capital Area, one of several groups serving the region. “Sometimes people would leave the bases and just come to us directly because they were tired of waiting.”
Schooling, obviously, had been impossible in Qatar and Germany, where the Tokhis never knew how long they’d stay. It was well into the second half of the school year in Prince George’s County when Tokhi got settled in Landover Hills, and there were still several hurdles to clear before he could get his children back into a classroom, including a laundry list of documentation and makeup vaccinations that took another two weeks to complete. It didn’t help that all the forms were online. Tokhi is an electrician, but that didn’t prepare him for the challenge of navigating QR codes and web portals in English.
“Almost everything is online,” Tokhi said in Dari, through an interpreter. “I’m slow on technology, but we’ll get there.”
Prince George’s County Public Schools officials said that enrolling refugees was, at times, complicated by missing documents or school records. Some Afghan birth certificates don’t include the mother’s name, for example, so families had to send an additional letter to authorize mothers to pick up their schoolchildren. The district tried to enroll 50 students per day, said Pat Chiancone, an international student specialist at PGCPS. The county and school district received the majority of the Afghan families that arrived in Maryland over the past year because of the relative availability of affordable housing, she said.
“We always want to do better,” Chiancone said. “I almost don’t want to say anything because it’s such an unusual [situation] … But I always hope that we could do things more quickly.”
Thrown into new classes near the end of the school year, Tokhi’s children faced their own growing pains. A school assistant called Tokhi, concerned after Bibi Hawa refused to eat at lunchtime in kindergarten. Abdul Rahman, now 13, bonded with friends in sixth grade over soccer but struggled to understand his classmates’ conversations.
“I would just pass my messages to them somehow,” Abdul Rahman said in Dari, through an interpreter. “Either by sign language, or a bit of English.”
A bit of English was all Tokhi’s kids picked up last school year, he said. After the long enrollment process, they were in classes for just over a month before summer holidays began.
“Of course it was difficult,” Tokhi said before the start of the school year. “I wish next year will be a much better experience for them.”
Teachers from Prince George’s County Public Schools echoed that sentiment. They spent much of last year making up ground for talented students grappling with English.
“I had some kids who had some really strong interests in science and social studies,” said Stephanie Abraham-Middleton, an ESL teacher at Templeton Elementary School in Riverdale. “Now that they’re able to read some of the academic language in those areas, I’m excited to see what they’re going to be able to do.”
On Saturday, Tokhi and his family — Homaera and their children Abdul Rahman, Ayasha, Khadija, Bibi Hawa, Sobhannull and three-month old Tayyaba, who was born in May — caught up over a simple breakfast of flatbread, cheese and honey, the same as they’d eat back home in Kabul.
After the first week of school, it was a rare window where the eight of them could be together. Tokhi hopes to find work as an electrician soon, but in the meantime is working long hours at a restaurant and ice cream shop in Georgetown. He proudly showed off a photo of a chocolate sundae in a plastic cup he’d made.
For now, Tokhi finds time in the evenings to catch up about school with his children — “I can learn a bit of English from them as well,” he said — and watches excitedly as they grow into their new surroundings.
He has applied for a green card and says he’s waiting to hear back from immigration officials.
“It’s a new life, you know,” Tokhi said as his kids bunched together on the sofa behind him. “Going to another home that’s different, you try little by little.”
They’re getting there. Abdul Rahman has already scored his first goal in soccer at recess. Bibi Hawa, starting first grade, is always smiling in class. And now, Tokhi can scroll forward on his camera roll, past the airstrips and bus rides, to photos of newborn Tayyaba and a video of Sobhannull, laughing on a parking lot median as he scampers across the grass. | 2022-09-06T10:19:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Start of school a quiet milestone for Afghan family working to rebuild - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/06/maryland-afghan-refugees-school/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/06/maryland-afghan-refugees-school/ |
Lt. Col. James “Maggie” Megellas, legendary WWII hero, is laid to rest
Lt. Col. James Megellas receives military funeral honors at Arlington National Cemetery on Friday. (Astrid Riecken for The Washington Post)
Lt. Col. James “Maggie” Megellas, a paratrooper who took part in several daring World War II operations and became one of the 82nd Airborne Division’s most celebrated and decorated soldiers, was buried Friday at Arlington National Cemetery in a ceremony attended by the nation’s highest-ranking officers.
Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, came to pay his respects to a soldier who had single-handedly knocked out a German tank, rowed across a Dutch river in a flimsy boat under enemy fire and often said the “Greatest Generation” would be the one that put an end to war.
Gen. James C. McConville, who is Army Chief of Staff, and Maj. Gen. Christopher C. LaNeve, who commands the 82nd Airborne Division, were also on hand, along with more than 50 mourners, including family who traveled from Megellas’ home in Colleyville, Texas. All had come to honor a man who has been nominated — so far unsuccessfully — for a Medal of Honor.
Anna Salton Eisen, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, came, too.
Her father, George L. Salton, had been a teenager near death when Megellas and other paratroopers appeared outside the barbed-wire fence of his Nazi concentration camp in the last days of World War II. He later recalled inching forward to touch the paratroopers’ boots to make sure the soldiers were real, that he wasn’t dreaming, that his nightmare as a slave laborer in Hitler’s death camps might soon be over.
Eisen said she felt compelled to attend Megellas’ funeral because her father, having died in March 2016 at 88, could not.
“I knew if my father was alive, I know this is what he would do and what he would want me to do — to pay my respects,” Eisen, of Westlake, Texas, said.
Megellas was known for being fearless, tenacious and calm under fire. He earned two Silver Stars, two Bronze Stars, the Distinguished Service Cross, two Purple Hearts and other commendations that made him one of the 82nd Airborne’s most decorated soldiers, division spokesman Capt. Darren M. Cinatl said.
“He was the paratrooper’s paratrooper,” Cinatl said.
Megellas [pronounced ma-JELL-is] was born March 11, 1917, in Fond du Lac, Wis., one of seven children of Greek immigrants. He learned to sail and fish on nearby Lake Winnebago, a love that would remain for the rest of his life, his family said. To help support his family during the Great Depression, he went to work with the Civilian Conservation Corps and later entered Ripon College and its ROTC program.
From the archive: Soldiers from the sky
Megellas received a commission as a 2nd lieutenant in May 1942 and volunteered for the 82nd Airborne, whose lightly armed infantry parachuted into hot zones or behind enemy lines. They carried at least 80 pounds of gear and bailed out from about 500 feet above the ground, often under fire and at a rate of descent nearly twice as fast as parachutists today, Cinatl said. Their transports were often shot up with flak and sometimes downed.
Lt. Col. James Megellas, a highly decorated WWII veteran, was laid to rest Sept. 2 with full military honors at a funeral attended by several senior officials. (Video: Frederick Kunkle/The Washington Post)
Megellas — who led H Company of the 3rd battalion of 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment — first saw action in Italy, where he was wounded twice, Cinatl said. The 504th became known as the “Devils in Baggy Pants,” a nickname taken from a German soldier’s diary describing the troops that seemed to pop out of nowhere, determined to fight.
His first parachute combat mission came with Operation Market Garden, the largest airborne assault in history, Cinatl said. The ill-fated plan, which aimed to sweep around heavy German defenses by cutting through the Low Countries, required Allied airborne forces to seize several key bridges behind enemy lines and hold them until armor could advance.
Megellas took part in the Waal River crossing — a desperate effort to outflank an SS Panzer division holding an important bridge in Nijmegen, Cinatl said. The paratroopers, using canvas-sided, wooden boats, crossed in daylight under heavy fire.
Megellas also fought during the Battle of the Bulge and its aftermath. On Jan. 28, 1945, he was leading his platoon into the Belgian town of Herresbach following a 10-mile march through heavy snow when the unit encountered a Mark V German Panther tank taking aim, Cinati said.
Megellas, armed with only a Thompson submachine gun and grenades, ran toward the tank under enemy fire, halted it with a grenade, climbed onto its turret and pitched another grenade inside, knocking out the Panzer and leaving his men in awe.
“I saw a figure run up to the tank and heard an explosion and saw a flash of light,” George Heib told the Milwaukee Journal years later. “I said, ‘Who the hell is that crazy [expletive]?’”
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Megellas then led an assault on German forces in the town. For his heroism, he was nominated for a Medal of Honor, but received a Silver Star instead because of omissions in the original paperwork submitted for commendation, according to a 2013 report in the Pioneer Press.
On May 2, 1945, Megellas and several paratroopers entered Wöbbelin, a satellite of the Neuengamme concentration camp near Ludwigslust, and wasn’t even sure what he had found when he encountered skeletal prisoners like Salton, who was then 17 years old and all of 75 pounds.
Salton — who had been born Lucjan Salzman, with the nickname “Lucek,” in the small town of Tyczyn — had been separated from his family three years earlier after German forces invaded Poland and started rounding up Jews.
“We didn’t know about concentration camps,” Megellas told the Fort Worth Star Telegram. “We’d been in combat two years, and we’d seen a lot of men killed in battle. But this was a horror you’d never forget — men weighing 50 or 60 pounds.”
That first meeting between the paratrooper and the prisoner in May 1945 would eventually lead to others, including a face-to-face reunion 60 years later in Texas.
“In you, I see living proof of what we fought for in World War II,” Megellas was quoted as saying by a local newspaper when the two men met again in 2005.
Each had gone on after the war on to marry, raise children and build successful careers in the government and private sectors. Each documented his wartime experience in memoirs, documentaries, and speaking engagements. Each embodied in different ways the harrowing victory of the human spirit in a time of unimaginable darkness.
Salton served in the U.S. Army, worked for the Defense Department and published a memoir — “The 23rd Psalm,” co-authored with Anna — in 2002. He lectured at schools nationwide and contributed his testimony to the U.S. Holocaust Museum.
Megellas served on his hometown’s city council, ran unsuccessfully for Congress, worked overseas for the U.S. Agency for International Development and wrote an autobiography, “All the Way to Berlin: A Paratrooper at War in Europe,” in 2003. His military exploits also were recounted in the documentary “Maggie’s War.” John Ratzenberger, of “Cheers” fame, played him in the 1977 Hollywood movie, “A Bridge Too Far.”
Well into in his 90s, Megellas even embarked on a book tour of sorts in Afghanistan, signing copies of his memoir and rousing the spirits of U.S. military personnel stationed there.
A few years before his death, Megellas told family that his mission wasn’t over because he should be doing more to make the world a saner, more just and peaceful place. He died April 2, 2020, at 103.
“It’s such a loss for me that he’s gone because he was so incredible,” his son James A. Megellas, 59, of Colleyville, Texas, said in a telephone interview Saturday.
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About 3:15 p.m. Friday, Megellas’ funeral procession approached his final resting place, led by the slow, muffled cadence of a drum.
Several of the nation’s highest military officers, including Milley — smartly attired in blue dress uniforms, their white-gloved hands snapping to salute and their medals flashing — lined the pavement.
Across from them stood a scruffy line of about 20 members of the Patriot Guard, a motorcycle group of veterans in black leather vests, T-shirts and jeans. They saluted, too, as the flag-draped caisson, drawn by six gray horses, drew forward.
A soldier, gingerly, with almost mechanical precision, removed the silver urn containing Megellas’ cremated remains from the caisson and carried it to the gravesite. Nearby stood a military band, an 82nd Airborne color guard and a firing party, its seven soldiers arrayed in line.
“Paratroopers never truly die — they just slip away,” Chaplain Michael Krog, of the 82nd Airborne’s 1st Brigade, told mourners during the service.
Three volleys of gunfire sounded, and a bugler played taps. Soldiers folded the flag until it was only a triangle of stars.
Then LaNeve, the 82nd Airborne’s commanding general, went down on one knee to present the flag to Megellas’ 25-year-old grandson, J. Trace Megellas, as a symbol of the nation’s thanks.
“I said to General Milley when we left, ‘You guys lost a great soldier, and I lost a great father,’” Jim Megellas said afterward. “But, honestly, the world lost a great man.” | 2022-09-06T10:19:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | James "Maggie" Megellas, among 82nd Airborne's most decorated soldiers, is laid to rest - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/06/megellas-82nd-airborne-funeral/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/06/megellas-82nd-airborne-funeral/ |
An empty hallway at New York City's Yung Wing School in 2020. (Michael Loccisano/Getty Images)
In January, a Gallup poll found that Americans’ belief in grade-school teachers’ honesty had dropped to an all-time low, with 64 percent of adults reporting they believe those instructors are truthful and have ethical standards, down from a high of 75 percent in 2020, during the tensest days of the pandemic. In July, another Gallup poll found that just 28 percent of Americans have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in public schools — the second-lowest this figure has been since Gallup began asking this question in 1973. Both polls found divisions along party lines, with Republicans more likely than Democrats to distrust teachers and schools. Seventy-three percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning individuals gave high honesty and ethics ratings to grade-school teachers, but 54 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning individuals did (a steep drop from pre-pandemic times, when 70 percent of Republicans said they trusted teachers). And a mere 13 percent of Republicans said they had confidence in public schools, compared with 43 percent of Democrats.
Meanwhile, a historically small slice of U.S. adults — 37 percent — say they want their children to become teachers, according to the 54th annual PDK-Gallup poll, marking the slimmest recorded percentage since the poll launched in 1969. Albert Chen, acting CEO of PDK, a global association of education professionals, called the number “depressing.”
The stakes, experts said, are high. If Americans do not trust teachers, those with resources may pull their children into private schools, endangering public-school funding, which is tied to enrollment. And Chen fears what might happen if families urge their children not to become teachers: The pipeline of educators — already shrinking for the past decade — may dry up past repairing. All this comes at a moment when the nation is facing a catastrophic teacher shortage.
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Alfred DuBois, a 65-year-old father in Clifton, N.J., is among those who no longer believe teachers. DuBois said that, in the past year or so, he became suspicious of his school district’s mask mandates — which led to questions about what books are available in the library and, later, concerns about how teachers are teaching history.
“When I talk to them personally, they seem okay, but … I asked to go to the library to look at the books, and they won’t allow me in the library,” DuBois said. “That to me is — you’re hiding something. And from what I pick up from my kids, they spoke very negatively about [Christopher] Columbus, [George] Washington and [Abraham] Lincoln.”
Second, right-leaning politicians and pundits found it could be politically advantageous to blast teachers. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) swept into office by campaigning to eradicate certain ways of talking about race and American history from the state’s schools. One of his earliest acts as governor was to set up a tip line allowing parents to report teachers for inappropriate behavior. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has scored political points, and support for a presidential run, by passing a host of laws restricting how teachers can talk about race, racism, history and LGBTQ issues.
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Finally, parents of all political watched as stressed and often underpaid teachers struggled with virtual, then hybrid schooling — and later campus reopenings complicated by fights over safety precautions. At first, this led to a spike in appreciation. But it didn’t last, said Heather Hill, a Harvard professor who studies teachers and teaching.
“No one was happy,” Hill said. “Parents who wanted schools open weren’t happy, parents who wanted more safety precautions weren’t happy either. … I think that wound up eroding some of the trust as well.”
The climate is also rendering the profession less attractive to prospective teachers still in school, Spar said. In the PDK poll, 29 percent of parents said they do not want their children to become teachers due to poor pay, while a separate 26 percent cited the “difficulties, demands and stress” of the job. Another 23 percent pointed to “a lack of respect or [teachers] being valued” as the reason.
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“What does that mean? It means what happened to my daughter last year, when her science teacher came back from winter break and said, ‘I’m not willing to continue teaching,'” Spar said. “They could not find another science teacher for the rest of the year, and my daughter was just getting worksheets every day. That’s not an education. Kids are not getting an education.”
Asked about Spar’s criticisms, DeSantis’s press secretary Bryan Griffin wrote in a lengthy statement that the governor “has celebrated teachers” by signing a state budget in March that will spend $800 million to lift starting teacher salaries to at least $47,000. He said the governor’s goal is for “teachers to be well compensated and to allow them to focus on what they do best — teaching students the fundamentals of education, like reading, writing, and math,” while ensuring parents are “fully informed about and … able to guide a child’s education and upbringing.”
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These “sound innocuous enough on their face; but, in reality, have been something of a Trojan Horse for a wide variety of policies and instructional narratives with potentially harmful effects,” the study states. “For example, based on the narrative that differences in suspension rates among students of different races can only be the result of racism in school discipline policies, schools around Wisconsin and the nation have dramatically reduced suspension rates … [T]hese lenient policies lead to students and teachers feeling less safe in the classroom — a necessary prerequisite for learning to take place.”
New critical race theory laws have teachers scared, confused and self-censoring
She said most teacher preparation programs, including hers, emphasize technical classroom skills. “That’s where a lot of teacher prep programs have headed in the past 10 years,” she said. Hill added that schools do explain how prospective teachers can relate to students — hoping to ensure they can reach students from different communities. The goal is simply to “understand the background of kids or of their parents. … But being the woke police? Absolutely not.”
So far, not a lot of parents seem to be paying attention to the budding debate about university education schools. They’re more likely to be busy observing teachers at their children’s schools, listening to pundits and lawmakers — or, said Hess of the American Enterprise Institute, scrolling on social media, which has rendered potentially concerning teacher behavior “more evident and transparent.”
New transparency bills would force teachers to post instructional materials
In ‘social-emotional learning,’ right sees more critical race theory | 2022-09-06T10:19:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trust in teachers is plunging amid a culture war in education - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/09/06/teachers-trust-history-lgbtq-culture-war/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/09/06/teachers-trust-history-lgbtq-culture-war/ |
Unionizing the minor leagues could reshape baseball
Minor league players have always received paltry wages. Unionization could change that.
Perspective by Gwendolyn Lockman
Gwendolyn Lockman is a PhD candidate in history at the University of Texas at Austin studying labor and leisure in 19th and 20th century America. She is an affiliate of the UT Austin Center for Sports Communication and Media.
Tampa Tarpons players pose in the dugout before a minor league baseball game against the Lakeland Flying Tigers in Lakeland, Fla., on April 8. The Major League Baseball Players Association is attempting to unionize minor leaguers, reversing decades of opposition. (Phelan M. Ebenhack/AP)
The Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA), the union representing MLB players, sent authorization cards to minor league baseball players on Aug. 28 — a move with the potential to remake the sport. If 30 percent of players file the authorization cards, then a union election begins. If the election results in unionization, MLB must recognize the collective bargaining unit as required by the National Labor Relations Board.
Virtually every MLB player starts in the minors. Indeed, fewer than 25 players since 1965, the year of the first MLB draft, have appeared on a Major League team in their first professional game. But while the MLBPA has represented MLB players since 1968 — when they established the first collective bargaining agreement — minor league players have never been included in the union’s membership. That has meant poor wages, and often bad working conditions too. A unionization vote has the potential to upend this decades-old system.
Minor league baseball dates to 1883, when the Northwestern League offered players lower salaries than the National League and the American Association (the modern-day American League), and agreed to honor the NL’s and AA’s reserve agreements — which bound players to teams. The minors formalized in December 1901 with the establishment of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, with play beginning in 1902.
The 1901 Professional Baseball Agreement enumerated how the minors would work. Essentially, they functioned as independent circuits where major league teams could seek out talent. There were four levels: Class A, Class B, Class C and Class D. For Class A ball — the most advanced level — the maximum team payroll was $1,800, with individual players’ salaries limited to $175. The Class D team maximum was $700 and $70 for an individual. Major League teams had to pay National Association teams to draft players to the majors. The teams could protect their players from getting drafted, but it cost them a fee.
This system lasted until 1921, when manager Branch Rickey — best known for later bringing Jackie Robinson to the big leagues with the Brooklyn Dodgers — saw a business opportunity in his quest to acquire talent for the St. Louis Cardinals. The club began investing money in minor league teams, creating a “farm system,” which allowed the Cardinals to control player development throughout a player’s career. Other teams soon followed, and the farm system structure became the norm for all of MLB.
The height of minor league baseball came immediately after World War II. By 1949 minor league baseball included a whopping 437 teams in 59 leagues — not all of which were affiliated with MLB.
However, three factors in the 1950s and 1960s precipitated a steep drop-off in minor league teams. The advent of television — and televised baseball — meant people no longer needed to go to the ballpark to see baseball, let alone watch their local minor league teams. Plus, major league teams were on the move, with five clubs relocating between 1953 and 1958. The ’60s saw further relocations and new expansion teams, particularly in the west. Relocated franchises often displaced or outcompeted preexisting local minor league teams. Last but not least, minor league stadiums, many of them built by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s under the New Deal, were deteriorating and there was little incentive or support for significant improvements.
By 1960, there were only 145 teams in 20 leagues in the minors. The minor leagues reorganized in 1962, reducing the number of teams and altering the class structure to Triple-A, Double-A and Single-A. The 1962 reorganization included a new Player Development Plan, which promised major league money to 134 minor league affiliates for equipment and player salaries.
But even though many teams were now affiliated with major league clubs, pay for minor leaguers remained abysmal. In his memoir “The Way It Is,” published in 1971 during his ongoing lawsuit against baseball, Curt Flood recalled making $4,000 as a minor leaguer in 1957. The median family income in the United States that year was $5,000. The low pay took an emotional toll. Every year brought low pay, no job security and an annual speech from a manager about the club’s financial troubles. And teams weren’t inclined to spend more on minor league clubs, because the minor leagues continued to decline in number, popularity and attendance.
It’s not clear why when Marvin Miller organized the MLBPA in 1966 and it became the official bargaining unit for MLB players in 1968, it didn’t include minor league players. But without the protection of a union, over time, the already low minor league salaries did not come close to keeping up with inflation. Adjusted for inflation, Flood’s income would be about $42,100 in 2022 dollars. By contrast, most minor league players today take home between $5,000 and $14,000 per year. The poverty line in the United States is $13,590 for an individual. Players must piece together income, some playing winter ball in addition to the minor league season, and others taking on gig work or other jobs in the offseason — all of which detracts from their ability to focus on honing their craft.
Over the past eight years, minor league players have begun fighting back. In 2014, they filed a class-action lawsuit, Senne v. MLB, seeking unpaid minimum wage and overtime for their services rendered during spring training and the regular season.
Against this backdrop, MLB announced a huge shake-up for minor league baseball in 2020 — during a year in which the minors played no games due to covid-19. The basic structure of the minors hadn’t changed since the 1960s and the Professional Baseball Agreement that governed them had been in place since 1901 — though it was subject to regular renegotiations. At the end of the 2020 season MLB let the PBA expire, ending a 119-year arrangement. Major League teams wanted to end biennial negotiations with their affiliates, while gaining better control over them. MLB ultimately eliminated 40 minor league teams — cutting the Rookie League level of the minors. Rookie League teams which lost their MLB affiliations now operate as independent teams.
For players, reorganization resulted in higher wages, housing support, reduced travel and more days off, but also cut the total number of players. In 2022, MLB settled the Senne lawsuit with minor leaguers, with the league owing players $185 million.
On the one hand, it makes sense that minor league players are not unionized. The aim of a minor league baseball player is to advance to the majors as quickly as possible. Minor league players have historically had everything to lose if they agitated too much — the shot at making dreams a reality by reaching the majors. Historically, gains for minor leaguers came as secondary goals accomplished through negotiations where the priority was the MLB relationship with MLB players. After all, any concession gained for minor leaguers required their major league brethren giving MLB something.
On the other hand, it is surprising that the minor leagues have not yet unionized, because they so often function as the laboratory for Major League Baseball’s experiments. Most minor league players do not make the majors and they need to make ends meet. Without protections, conditions have declined relative to the financial circumstances of a minor league player 60 years ago, even as the demands on them in terms of physical training and competition for MLB roster spots have increased.
But the MLBPA campaign for a minor league player union vote signals that a rare window is open. With Senne settled, MLB and the MLBPA reaching a new collective bargaining agreement in March after a lockout, MLB’s recent commitment to pay for minor league player housing and public approval of unions in the United States on the rise, it seems like an ideal moment to integrate minor league players into the MLBPA. | 2022-09-06T10:20:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Unionizing the minor leagues could reshape baseball - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/09/06/unionizing-minor-leagues-could-reshape-baseball/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/09/06/unionizing-minor-leagues-could-reshape-baseball/ |
What the ‘naked dress’ exposes
How a specific revealing red carpet look empowers women.
Perspective by Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell
Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell is a fashion historian. Her most recent book is "Skirts: Fashioning Modern Femininity in the Twentieth Century" (St. Martin’s Press, 2022).
Taylor Swift arrives at the MTV Video Music Awards adorned in chains and a backless Oscar de la Renta dress. (Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
Now you see it, now you don’t? After ruling the red carpet for more than a decade, the naked dress may be on its last legs. The barely-there dresses were barely there at the recent MTV Video Music Awards. Instead, the carpet — black, not red — was obscured by trains, capes, feathers, flounces and other fruits of fashion’s post-pandemic maximalist turn. Even one of the show’s skimpiest looks, Taylor Swift’s backless Oscar de la Renta, somehow managed to be minimalist and maximalist at the same time, substituting bedazzled chains for fabric. There might have been plenty of skin on display, but it wasn’t highlighted by transparent or flesh-colored fabrics.
A naked dress is a bit like Justice Potter Stewart’s aphorism about pornography: you know it when you see it — or don’t see it. “Naked dress” may be an oxymoron, but it’s an apt description for garments that reveal as much as they conceal, because they’re sheer, skin-toned, skintight or all of the above. Though they’ve often been dismissed as attention-seeking (and attention-getting) “thirst traps,” these naked dresses have often served as powerful instruments of female sexual agency across fashion history.
In more buttoned-up times, the phrase signified strapless dresses, not sheer ones. When the couturier Mainbocher introduced the gravity-defying gowns in 1934, awestruck journalists marveled that they seemed “to stay in place only by a miracle,” as New York World-Telegram fashion editor Gertrude Bailey noted.
A similar sartorial sleight-of-hand produced “illusion gowns,” closely resembling the naked dress as we know it. First worn by burlesque artists and showgirls, they migrated to movie studios, adorning early silver screen sirens like Theda Bara, Mae West and Marlene Dietrich. The style went mainstream when Marilyn Monroe was sewn into an illusion gown made by Hollywood costumer Jean Louis to sing “Happy Birthday” to President John F. Kennedy at a 1962 Democratic Party fundraiser at Madison Square Garden. The rhinestone-studded silk soufflé, dyed to match Monroe’s skin tone, disappeared under the stage lights; to the audience, it looked like she was clad in nothing but rhinestones.
Near-sheer dresses graced runways and red carpets on and off throughout the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. But they weren’t called “naked dresses” until 1998, when an early episode of “Sex in the City” recoined the term. Carrie Bradshaw wore what her prim friend Charlotte disapprovingly called a “naked dress” on a date with Mr. Big. Carrie’s dress wasn’t a showgirl-style evening gown, however, or even what we could call a “naked dress” today. Instead, it was a backless slip dress — short but not transparent. More importantly, the matte putty color didn’t match the glowing rose-gold of actress Sarah Jessica Parker’s skin, so there was no illusion of nudity.
Nevertheless, “naked dress” resonated with the stripped-down minimalism of 1990s fashion, which Museum at FIT curator Colleen Hill has called a reaction to the more-is-more aesthetic of the 1980s and the resulting recession. Like Botticelli’s Venus, the naked dress emerged out of the era’s neutral shades and sleek, unembellished silhouettes that exposed fresh areas of the female anatomy: midriffs, hipbones, bum cleavage. The term “side-boob” was coined in 1994 (by actor Mike Myers, per the Oxford English Dictionary) to describe an entirely new erogenous zone showcased by the revealing styles; Liz Hurley stepped out in Versace’s black safety-pin gown the same year.
By the early 2000s, side-boob was the new cleavage, the subject of think pieces in Salon and the New York Times. “Part of its appeal is that it hints at revealing something … while also keeping its wearer covered up,” Salon explained. Similarly, naked dresses offered the illusion of nudity rather than the reality; instead of baring any single body part, they forced the eye to rove, taking in the whole silhouette.
The naked dress trend was directly responsible for one of the major innovations to come out of the dot-com boom: Google Images. When Jennifer Lopez attended the 2000 Grammy Awards in a plunging, sheer silk Versace gown held together by nothing more than a citrine brooch and double-sided tape, she broke the internet. “At the time, it was the most popular search query we had ever seen,” former Google CEO Eric Schmidt remembered. “But we had no surefire way of getting users exactly what they wanted: JLo wearing that dress.”
Search results produced simple pages of text with links; Google realized it needed an image search tool, and developed one, introduced in 2001. The dress that launched Google Images raised the bar for red-carpet style and — more than a decade before Instagram — prefigured the role of social media in setting fashion trends (and sharing NSFW photos).
It’s a look guaranteed to make people look twice, so it’s no wonder that the naked dress became a red-carpet mainstay in the digital age. With so many fashion designers clamoring for free publicity — and so many photographers and journalists eager to give it to them — celebrities went to ever-greater lengths to get noticed. Thanks to the backdrop of the step-and-repeat — a temporary wall plastered with sponsor logos — as well as instantaneous uploading to social media, the red carpet became a digital billboard. With its audacity and trompe l’oeil visual appeal, the naked dress was the perfect clickbait. Walking a fine line between exposure and overexposure, it required only one accessory: confidence.
Naked dresses are fashion statements in more ways than one. At the 2002 Academy Awards, Halle Berry’s burgundy Elie Saab gown with a sweeping satin skirt and a sheer bodice decorated with strategically placed bands of floral embroidery raised eyebrows. Though Berry had one of the most famous bodies in Hollywood, the bombshell look was at odds with the dramatic role for which she was nominated, in the feel-bad film “Monster’s Ball.” But later that night, when Berry became the first (and, to date, only) Black woman to win the Best Actress Oscar, it suddenly seemed fitting that she’d proudly shown her skin on a red carpet that had not always been welcoming to women of color.
The move epitomized how naked dresses empower women who might be overlooked due to stereotypes or bigotry. As a fashion and makeup entrepreneur, Barbados-born singer/actress Rihanna has been outspoken about offering options for a wide range of sizes and skin tones, so it’s fitting that she has repeatedly demonstrated that she’s comfortable in her own skin (and not much else) on the red carpet. Canadian model Winnie Harlow has the skin condition vitiligo, which causes uneven, patchy pigmentation. When she wears a naked dress, she’s baring more than her figure; she’s baring her unique skin, knowing it will make some people uncomfortable. Video Music Awards honoree and body positivity icon Lizzo celebrated her plus-size figure by wearing a purple naked dress to rapper Cardi B.’s most recent birthday party. These women of color use fashion — what it conceals and reveals — to challenge expectations about beauty, race and the female body, presenting themselves as works of art.
Given the storied history of naked dresses, it is a shame that their days may well be numbered. Along with covid, blame Kim Kardashian’s controversial choice to attend May’s Met Gala wearing Marilyn Monroe’s iconic Jean Louis gown. The stunt wasn’t just a slap in the face to the historic costume preservation the event supports, but a futile attempt to replicate the original “illusion” of nudity the gown created. Despite a last-minute crash diet, the gown didn’t fit Kardashian’s figure or match her complexion. It didn’t look “naked”; indeed, it was hardly even recognizable as the same dress, serving up Carrie Bradshaw’s bland beige slip rather than “Happy Birthday, Mr. President.” In the glare of the spotlight, the archetypal naked dress became the emperor’s new clothes. | 2022-09-06T10:20:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What the ‘naked dress’ exposes - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/09/06/what-naked-dress-exposes/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/09/06/what-naked-dress-exposes/ |
Mathias Döpfner has global ambitions for what he calls a more ‘nonpartisan’ kind of journalism — even as his own politics are hard to pin down
By Sarah Ellison
“We want to be the leading digital publisher in democracies around the world,” says Mathias Döpfner, shown here on the rooftop of Axel Springer's headquarters in Berlin. (Verena Brüning for The Washington Post)
BERLIN — Months after his company bought Politico, Mathias Döpfner stood atop Axel Springer’s 19-story headquarters, gazing out at the double row of cobblestones that mark the outline of the demolished Berlin Wall, and explained his global ambitions. “We want to be the leading digital publisher in democracies around the world,” he said.
How exactly Döpfner, Axel Springer’s CEO, hopes to define nonpartisan journalism at an especially fragmented time for American politics is a question of intense interest as he aims to leave his mark on American media. His own politics have remained something of a mystery, too. But weeks before the 2020 U.S. presidential election, he sent a surprising message to his closest executives, obtained by The Washington Post:
“Do we all want to get together for an hour in the morning on November 3 and pray that Donald Trump will again become President of the United States of America?”
Axel Springer’s resolutely anti-communist founder — Axel C. Springer himself — placed his headquarters here on the dividing line between West and East Berlin six decades ago as a taunt to the authoritarian regime on the other side. East German officials erected high-rises to block sightlines of it, for fear the publisher would install a news ticker to beam the headlines of a free press to its citizens behind the wall.
As Döpfner attempts to move into the U.S. market and beyond, he says that he, too, hopes to reach across dividing lines — the ones forming within our democracies.
“More and more journalistic brands are putting themselves into predictable political camps,” he said, adding later that when publishers find success by “basically amplifying the worldview and the prejudice of its readership … it is a very dangerous seduction to continue in that direction.”
He’s 6-foot-7, often seen in black V-necks and skinny suits that strike a continental pose among the self-styled thought leaders in the power corridors of Davos, Bilderberg and Sun Valley. From an unlikely entry into journalism as a PhD-holding music critic, the charismatic editor ascended rapidly, gaining the trust of Springer’s widow to the extent she essentially made him the heir to the company. While other new billionaires invest in yachts, Döpfner built an art museum to house his collection of female nudes by female artists, said to be the world’s largest.
Mostly, though, he’s investing in digital news.
Döpfner’s global expansionist impulses started with print acquisitions; not all were successful. He tried and failed to buy Britain’s conservative Daily Telegraph in 2005; a decade later, his bid for the Financial Times also fell short. By then, his strategy had turned entirely digital — selling off Axel Springer’s regional German newspapers to build a cash reserve that allowed it to buy a $343 million majority share of Insider, the sleek New York-based business news site that caters increasingly to a young general-interest audience; minority stakes in U.S. digital media start-ups Thrillist and NowThis News; and, in 2020, a majority share of the popular daily business newsletter Morning Brew.
If Döpfner’s ambitions are viewed with suspicion in left-of-center circles, though, it has a lot to do with the 70-year-old ink-stained product at the heart of his empire — the pugnacious, right-leaning tabloid Bild.
Axel Springer’s jewel in the crown may be Die Welt, a cosmopolitan and right-of-center national daily newspaper. But it’s Bild, the best-selling newspaper in all of Europe, that paid the bills for many years. Inspired by racy British tabloids like the Daily Mirror and Rupert Murdoch’s Sun, Bild showcased topless women in its pages until 2018 and has been known to hype inflammatory and spurious stories, such as the later-debunked one about a supposed North African sex mob in Frankfurt, and others that raged against “Woke jargon” or other culture-war causes. Its aggressive reporting tactics are regularly censured by the local press regulator. But its journalism carries influence, and its reporting on corruption allegations helped spur a former German president’s resignation in 2012.
“What makes Bild so influential is that everyone thinks Bild is channeling the common man, so all the politicians read it,” said Stefan Niggemeier, who founded a Bild watchdog site and wrote a book about its role in German culture. “There is not a newsroom in Germany that doesn’t start the day by looking at what stories Bild has.”
Despite his 2020 email to colleagues, which he describes as flippant, Döpfner insists he has never been a supporter of Trump. In an interview with The Post, he describes his own views as eclectic, calling himself a “non-Jewish Zionist” with “small-L liberal” tendencies, deeply concerned about racism and homophobia. He also worries about what he sees as cancel culture, and in private conversations, friends say, he gripes about identity politics. One of his sons works as the chief of staff to Peter Thiel, the conservative-libertarian tech billionaire turned MAGA kingmaker, but Döpfner has only met him a few times and says they are not close. He does profess a fondness for “contrarians,” though, and called provocateur Tesla founder Elon Musk, currently embroiled in litigation over his noisy attempt to take over Twitter and upend its moderation policies, “one of the most inspiring people I’ve ever met.”
The Murdochs and Trump aligned for mutual benefit. That may be changing.
“These values are like a constitution,” he told the Wall Street Journal last year.
Döpfner responded sharply in a staff video call: “I’m being very frank with you: A person who has an issue with an Israeli flag being raised for one week here, after antisemitic demonstrations, should look for a new job.”
Conservative pundits swooned in admiration of what they saw as a rebuke of liberal pieties. “All it takes to stop the madness is an adult willing to say: no,” tweeted former New York Times columnist Bari Weiss. But Döpfner put it in simpler terms when asked about it later by Politico staffers: After the Holocaust, how could a German company stand for anything less than the right of Israel to exist?
Döpfner was the editor of the second-biggest local newspaper in Germany’s second-most populous city, Hamburg, when he met Friede Springer, the fifth and final wife of Axel Springer, at a dinner party in 1996. Two years later, at her urging, the company’s supervisory board hired him as editor in chief of Die Welt.
It’s tempting to assume that Springer saw something of her late husband — a vigorous and dapper man who sparred avidly with left-wing activists during Germany’s tumultuous 1960s and ’70s and dreamed of reunification with the east — in the swaggering young journalist.
Instead, she says, she saw a fellow outsider. The corporate brass had underestimated her, too — the much-younger nanny who married the boss and who was certainly not expected to take a leading role in the company after his death in 1985. When the company struggled to survive a period of rapid C-suite turnover, she looked to Döpfner.
“[They] said he’s much too young, and he’s a music critic, and he has no idea about business,” she recalled of the reaction to her decision to elevate Döpfner. “I said, ‘I want him.’ And I had the majority [of shares],’ ” She appointed him CEO in 2002. “After a year, they all said to me, ‘What a good idea!’ ” She chuckled softly.
Early on, Döpfner sent Springer a copy of former Washington Post owner and publisher Katharine Graham’s autobiography, which chronicled her close working relationship with legendary editor Ben Bradlee. “Perhaps this is a good role model for our corporation,” Döpfner told her.
But Döpfner craved more than steady newspaper work with a supportive publisher. His father, a financially “unsuccessful architect, but a free man,” had urged Döpfner to become his own boss. So in 2007, Döpfner tried to make the leap.
Craving “the restless sleep of the entrepreneur,” he says, he scrambled to buy shares in Axel Springer, eager to profit from the company’s wins but also shoulder “the pressure of the potential downside.” He borrowed enough to buy 2 percent of the company, brushing off his wife Ulrike’s concerns: This would be a safe investment, he reassured her, under any conditions short of a global financial crisis.
The following year, the market crashed. “It was quite a nightmare,” Döpfner said. Eventually the share price recovered, but he remained wary of the fickle public markets and in 2019 engaged the New York investment company KKR to take Axel Springer private to speed its digital transformation. Meanwhile, Friede Springer established her succession plan: She sold Döpfner a 4.1 percent stake in the company and gave him another 15 percent — and then transferred voting rights for her remaining 22 percent to him.
The journalist had become a bona fide mogul, a role for which Döpfner had long been rehearsing. In 2013 he had traveled with his executives to soak up Silicon Valley culture, documenting the trip with a fawning video; later, he put himself in rooms with the titans of the tech world by initiating the Axel Springer Awards in 2016 to recognize “outstanding entrepreneurial personalities” — among them Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and owner of The Washington Post. But he also put himself on the map as a business leader to contend with when he penned a fiery open letter in 2014 to then-Google CEO Eric Schmidt, blasting the company as a monopoly and the entire industry for a disregard for privacy he said rivaled the East German Stasi.
Döpfner distinguished himself from other media CEOs by “just being early” to embrace digital experimentation, said Evan Spiegel, the founder of Snapchat, yet “he’s not willing to compromise on his values around journalism in pursuit of innovation.” On Spiegel’s last trip to Berlin, they discussed the future of augmented reality. (And Döpfner “gifted me a pretty heavy piece of the Berlin Wall.”)
When Europe resisted, Uber launched a charm offensive that began with Axel Springer
But Döpfner — now a billionaire and the individual who controls Axel Springer’s largest voting bloc — is still not without bosses.
KKR executives make up much of his advisory board, and there’s constant speculation in German media that the terms of their deal with Axel Springer have left Döpfner racing to generate enough cash flow to buy them out of the media properties. (Axel Springer has a large, profitable classified business that is considered ripe for spinning off.)
The company did a brisk cleanup job. After a roughly two-week suspension and investigation, Axel Springer issued a mistakes-were-made statement that nonetheless maintained it had found “no evidence whatsoever of sexual harassment or coercion.” Reichelt was allowed to keep his job with an incremental demotion, assigned to work alongside a co-editor in chief.
Döpfner, meanwhile, carried on with his U.S. quest. Hoping to establish a paid model for journalism, he was drawn to Politico’s profitable subscription service Politico Pro, which covers in-depth political and regulatory machinations for a specialty audience of inside-the-Beltway and business readers. Döpfner’s previous overtures to buy the company had been rebuffed. It wasn’t until the summer of 2021 when owner Robert Allbritton learned that Axel Springer was also courting Axios — a Politico rival started by Politico defectors — that he agreed to sell.
But as the deal moved to its closing in October, Axel Springer officials learned that the New York Times was preparing a story about the Reichelt matter. Among the damning disclosures was a statement that one of the editor’s young affair partners gave to the company-hired investigators: “That’s how it always goes at Bild,” she said. “Those who sleep with the boss get a better job.”
Döpfner went into crisis-management mode. He was convinced that rivals who loathed Reichelt’s conservative politics had engineered the scandal and urged his senior executives to promote this theory, thus undermining the women’s stories. “The only important thing is that it becomes clear: a few men have a goal,” he wrote in an email obtained by The Post. “The picture here is the evil men. Since the picture is now that of noble defenders of women — the picture must get cracks.”
Crisis-PR consultants advised a more direct strategy. “The goal for this week will be to change the narrative from this story to the deal close and forward motion of the business,” one wrote on Oct. 18, a day after the Times story published.
This time, Reichelt was fired — on that very day — because the company said he had “failed to maintain a clear boundary between private and professional matters.”
In a rare public statement, Reichelt told The Post that Döpfner “invited me to his home to read me the final report” of the original March 2021 investigation, adding that it “did not find any proof for the allegations against me. The reason for that is that those allegations were lies from the beginning.” (A person close to Axel Springer’s deliberations says Dopfner only read Reichelt “the appropriate redacted excerpts.”)
Döpfner told The Post that Reichelt “gave me his word that his behavior had stopped. But it turned out that he repeatedly lied to executives and me.”
A day after Reichelt’s firing, Axel Springer completed its purchase of Politico. But the saga was clearly still eating at Döpfner — who, despite the advice of the communications pros, posted a selfie video on YouTube railing against the unspecified men that he claimed had conspired to ruin his editor.
By then, he had overseen a few major moves at Politico, including the hiring of a new CEO, Goli Sheikholeslami, from New York Public Radio, and a new executive editor, Dafna Linzer, formerly of NBC (both previously worked at The Washington Post), after a national search that had felt out an array of political journalism stars from The Post and New York Times. Behind the scenes, Axel Springer had vowed to more than double Politico’s annual revenue by 2026; and according to two people close to the specific planning process, Politico will add reporters in California, New York and overseas while expanding their teams covering the courts and the environment.
Though Döpfner is a regular at various elite big-think conferences, he had never before attended the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. He made up for lost time, frequenting five parties a day through the weekend and scoring an hour-long meeting with Antony Blinken. It was a close-enough confab that, days later, Döpfner merited a phone call when the secretary of state tested positive for covid. (Döpfner tested negative.)
Amid the festivities, Matthew Kaminski, Politico’s editor in chief, pulled Döpfner aside. His reporters had obtained a Supreme Court draft opinion, written by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., signaling that the court had voted to strike down the landmark Roe v. Wade decision.
Supreme Court leaks were almost unheard of; Sheikholeslami and John Harris, the paper’s co-founding editor and advisory board chairman, wanted Döpfner to understand the seismic nature of the story — Politico’s biggest in its 15-year existence, but also one posing legal peril if the company was forced to protect its source.
On the afternoon of Monday, May 2, Linzer and Kaminski prepared the story for publication with their reporters while Harris and Sheikholeslami got Döpfner and his number-two executive, Jan Bayer, on the phone. Bayer wanted to know how much it might cost if Politico was sued. Döpfner, playing devil’s advocate, asked why it was important to divulge a draft opinion, given that it was likely to become official within weeks, according to three people familiar with the discussions, who requested anonymity to disclose sensitive deliberations.
Harris explained the obvious news value of the draft opinion, and the reputational hit Politico would take if it passed up a legitimate scoop of this size. The call lasted barely 10 minutes. According to one of the people familiar with the call, Döpfner told them that if they were confident about the validity of their reporting, “you have to run it and you have our support.” Politico published the story that night.
“I was immediately convinced that that was done with highest professional seriousness and that this is a story of historic importance,” Döpfner recalled later. “Honestly, it was not for a second a real question to not run the story.”
Patrick Soon-Shiong is still trying to save the Los Angeles Times. Some hope he’ll do more than that.
Barely a week later, Döpfner had to make a similar decision on a story by Insider, which had just won its first Pulitzer for an illustrated report chronicling an escape from a Chinese internment camp. Now they were poised to break a major story about sexual harassment allegations against one of Döpfner’s business-world heroes: Elon Musk.
The story was held together by an element of triangulation: Insider did not have an on-the-record interview with the SpaceX flight attendant whom it reported received a $250,000 settlement from the Musk-founded company; but Insider’s reporter had reviewed details of the incident in a signed declaration from one of her friends, written to support the woman’s account that Musk exposed himself and propositioned her for sex. Musk told Insider there was “a lot more to this story,” which he called “a politically motivated hit piece.” (Later, he said the “wild” allegations were “utterly untrue.”)
He told The Post later that it’s essential to grant journalists independence. He bristles when critics refer to Bild as the German equivalent of Fox News or suggest that he’s the German Rupert Murdoch.
“That’s pretty much the opposite of what we want and what we are,” he said. “If media are in one camp or the other, I think that’s conceptually wrong.”
He may aspire to a “nonpartisan” niche but he sees no way for media to claim pure neutrality; that’s why Axel Springer lays bare the principles it expects employees to stand for, he said. “But within that rarefied framework, we empower free decisions” — even a story that alienates the boss’s friends or contradicts the boss’s views.
“I worked hard in this company,” he added, “that not every journalist writes what I think is right.” | 2022-09-06T10:20:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mathias Dopfner has a 'contrarian' plan for Politico and global media - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/09/06/mathias-dopfner-trump-email-axel-springer-politico/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/09/06/mathias-dopfner-trump-email-axel-springer-politico/ |
A GOP candidate for governor backed by Donald Trump is vying against a more centrist rival in the Republican primary, while Democrats are picking a nominee for state attorney general in a race that has divided the state’s two U.S. senators
Republican gubernatorial candidate Geoff Diehl speaks to reporters in Boston on March 21. (Steven Senne/AP)
The Bay State is the only place in the country holding primaries the day after Labor Day, and voting there marks the beginning of the end of the primary season. With intraparty contests in all but a handful of states complete, both parties have begun campaigning across the country with an eye on November, clashing over inflation, crime, abortion rights and the records of President Biden and his predecessor.
In heavily Democratic Massachusetts, the gubernatorial contest is one of Democrats’ best opportunities to flip a GOP-held seat. Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican and Trump critic, declined to seek a third term in office.
On the Democratic side, Maura Healey, the state’s attorney general who has sued the Trump administration nearly 100 times, according to a tally by the Boston Globe, is effectively running for the Democratic nomination uncontested after state Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz suspended her campaign.
Republicans are expected to have a difficult path to holding the governorship. Their gubernatorial primary is shaping up to be another in a long succession of intraparty contests this year featuring a candidate backed by the 45th president. The contenders include Geoff Diehl, a former state legislator who has echoed Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was “rigged” after initially acknowledging that Biden won.
“Geoff is a proven fighter who successfully pushes back on the ultraliberal extremists,” Trump said on behalf of Diehl during the tele-rally. “He’ll rule your state with an iron fist, and he’ll do what has to be done.”
On Tuesday, Diehl is squaring off against businessman Chris Doughty, a Harvard Business School graduate who is trying to appeal to what he calls the state’s “exhausted middle.” His backing comes from more traditional Republicans such as New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, who is arguing that Doughty has the best chance in November.
With none of the state’s all-Democratic congressional delegation facing primary challengers, much of the focus Tuesday is on state races. Another closely watched contest is the Democratic primary for state attorney general, a position that frequently produces candidates for higher office.
In that contest, Warren, along with Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and former Boston acting mayor Kim Janey endorsed labor lawyer Shannon Liss-Riordan. She’s running on a long legal career that includes pushing for gig workers to have access to employee protections.
Liss-Riordan — once dubbed “Sledgehammer Shannon” by a party she beat in a legal battle and “an avenging angel for workers” by the Boston Globe — helped advise Warren’s 2020 presidential campaign on labor issues and is a longtime donor to the senator.
She’s vying against Andrea Campbell, who was the first Black woman to be president of the Boston City Council. Campbell has other prominent names in her corner, including Sen. Edward J. Markey (D) and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D), who served with her on the council, and Healey, who appears with her frequently on the campaign trail.
Campbell is emphasizing her personal story on the stump, saying she knows how to turn “pain into purpose.” She grew up in public housing, and her twin brother died while incarcerated.
Longtime Democratic Secretary of State William Galvin faces a primary challenge from Boston NAACP President Tanisha Sullivan. The winner will face Rayla Campbell, who calls herself a “rule-of-law Republican.”
In the race for lieutenant governor, three Democratic candidates are facing off, including Salem Mayor Kim Driscoll, who is favored among many state elected officials and activists. State Rep. Tami Gouveia, the co-leader of the Massachusetts Chapter of the Women’s March, is running on a more liberal platform. Rounding out the ballot is state Sen. Eric Lesser, a onetime low-level aide to President Barack Obama. | 2022-09-06T10:20:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mass. primaries divide state and national figures - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/06/massachusetts-primary-governor-attorney-general/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/06/massachusetts-primary-governor-attorney-general/ |
(Video: Yoshi Sodeoka for The Washington Post)
If boxing icon Floyd Mayweather ever fights again, maybe Jeff Umali will place a bet. And maybe when a huge sporting event rolls around, like the Super Bowl, the 39-year-old will wager a few bucks.
But that’s it.
“I’ve learned my lesson,” he said.
Umali’s lesson came a few years ago, when he started placing a daily bet on an online poker game. It seemed like a relatively harmless pastime — for a short while.
“It was $50, $100, $150,” he says. “Then one night I sat at home and added it up. I lost 10 grand in three months.”
Looking back, Umali is still alarmed at how fast he was hooked. He says he felt addicted within a week.
“You see it’s legal, you try it, and then boom, you’re addicted.”
This is the outcome many addiction experts are now fearing. In the wake of the landmark 2018 Supreme Court decision that made legal wagering on games a state-by-state decision, sports gambling has gone mainstream — with professional leagues and state legislatures embracing it as a revenue source, and betting advertisements and discussion becoming a regular part of the fan experience. Combined with the boom of sports betting apps, which eliminate much of the friction that once slowed the gambling process, it has raised concerns over the potential for new gamblers to become hooked.
“All these types of betting didn’t exist before,” said Timothy Fong, co-director of the UCLA Gambling Studies Program. “What are they going to do to the betting landscape?”
We are about to find out. More than half of U.S. states currently allow some form of online sports betting (some only allow in-person options), and others appear likely to follow in the next few years. The normalization of a practice that was considered taboo less than a decade ago — combined with addiction risks that are unique to gambling on sports — may have created a combustible climate.
Along with it has come a movement to fight the risk of problem gambling. That movement includes not only the organizations you would expect, but some you may not. The NFL, for example, has poured $6 million into the National Council of Problem Gambling (NCPG) — the group’s biggest donation ever. Some states have delegated funds as well — $3 million in the Michigan 2023 budget, for example. And the operators themselves — DraftKings, FanDuel and the like — have devoted roles and resources to helping those in need.
Is it a useful countermeasure? Or merely a quiet alarm bell drowned out by the promotional clamor? Lives and livelihoods may depend on the answer. One report in the United Kingdom — where sports betting has been more liberalized for a while — found 55,000 “problem” gamblers between ages 11 and 16.
Responsible gambling expert Brianne Doura-Schawohl said in an interview that “the public crisis is already here” in the United States and “just bubbling under the surface.”
“We basically have poured kerosene on it by legalizing without giving it significant attention,” she said. “It’s only going to become more prominent, and more severe in its presentation.”
‘Illusion of control’
While gambling has been part of American society from the start, the study of sports betting and the problems it causes is just beginning. A 2019 report in the Journal of Gambling Studies is, according to the authors, “first to our knowledge to examine risk factors for gambling problems specifically related to sports betting, rather than gambling in general.”
And what experts have found is that sports betting may create problems worse than the traditional casino-and-cards. People who bet on sports often believe they have an edge because they follow the teams. The random bounce of the football or blown referee call doesn’t tend to factor into a bettor’s belief system.
“Psychologically, it’s a little different,” Fong said. “You’re not necessarily betting to make money; you’re betting to make yourself look smarter.”
That can bring more problems when a bet goes awry. According to one study in Addictive Behaviors journal, “Sports betting, relative to non-sports betting, has been more strongly linked to gambling problems and cognitive distortions related to illusion of control, probability control and interpretive control.”
The “illusion of control” may be enhanced even further by the rapidity of the technology in the bet-by-5G era. There’s no extra step of physically withdrawing cash from an ATM, driving to the casino or even waiting for a blackjack table dealer.
The rapid advance of this technology has allowed gambling operators to figure out a lot about customers — when they bet, how much they bet, whom they bet on — and addiction experts maintain that the companies have a responsibility to use that data to help keep bettors from becoming addicts.
“It’s our belief that in the U.S., gambling operators have the enormous opportunity and obligation to spot markers of harm collecting on their players,” said Keith Whyte, executive director of the NCPG. “We know they’re using that data on everything else.”
Chrissy Thurmond, who manages the responsible gambling division at DraftKings, said the company is developing a “significant and robust” program to educate and help customers. Her group is “just beginning to collect metrics on responsible gaming messaging,” Thurmond said, adding that the response rate on the site is showing a willingness by bettors to at least consider guidance.
Some states have taken steps to address betting addiction, as well. Michigan offers a self-exclusion option that allows bettors to essentially ban themselves from being able to place bets online for a certain amount of time. Then, when the self-exclusion ends, counseling resources are offered.
It’s advantageous for the sports betting operators — and the states — to offer help. A gambler who can control his or her worst impulses is more likely to be a customer for a longer time. But by design, the odds are stacked against anyone who chooses to bet regularly — and there are limitations to what the sportsbooks can do to stop someone who has developed a problem.
“You can play as fast as you want, as quick as you want. The technology makes it so fast and so easy,” said Jim Maney, executive director of the New York Council on Problem Gambling. “All of a sudden, how much money are we spending? Before you know it, you’re going down the rabbit hole.”
There is an argument to be made that legalization may lessen the stigma around sports betting and lead to healthier conversations about it. But there’s a flip side to that, too. Umali said he never had any kind of addiction before he started playing online poker, and that he would never have begun playing had it not been legal.
‘It’s so hard to stop’
There are several obstacles to rehabilitation that could be unique to sports betting. While many Americans grow up hearing that a casino is a place of temptation, sporting events have a different reputation. Parents rarely worry about their children watching too much sports, and now there are gambling prompts wired into most broadcasts. There are even gambling shows on ESPN.
“Sports for Americans are like a religion,” Doura-Schawohl said. “We use it to define who we are. The allure is of much more significance. [Bettors] will not only underestimate how much they’re spending, they will minimize the harm that may be possible because it’s linked to sports.”
Some experts are concerned that even though there is funding put toward helping people, the resources either come too late or not at all.
“I’m worried,” Fong said. “The issues in our field go beyond too much gambling. We don’t have the research funding.”
The rollout of gambling options largely preceded the rollout of the risk-prevention resources. Some states have taken some important steps, but some have simply collected the enormous windfall of new tax revenue. Meanwhile, on the individual level, operators have enough funds to offer tempting cash bonuses for placing initial bets from new accounts. You certainly don’t see that kind of offer for, say, new smokers.
“Think about the ads,” Maney said. “Every one of these kids is seeing them — Facebook, Instagram, every game you watch. If you’re a 12-, 14-year-old — the backdrop is DraftKings. Why wouldn’t they gamble?”
Until recently, every generation has grown up with some form of delayed gratification as it pertains to placing legal bets. Now, depending on where you live, you can bet on a game quicker than you can cross the room to get a glass of water.
“We don’t know what it’s doing to a new generation under the age of 21,” Fong said. “Before, you couldn’t even talk about gambling without someone saying ‘you can’t talk about gambling.’ This generation is growing up with gambling on their TVs. All we can say is that it is a critical issue: The earlier you start gambling — and gambling regularly — that’s the biggest risk factor for addiction.”
The gambling addiction rate in America is roughly 1 percent of adults, according to the National Center for Responsible Gaming. It’s been fairly stable. But any notable uptick could affect millions — not just the gamblers, but the people who depend on the gamblers as fathers, mothers, co-workers and friends.
“One of the teams in every game is going to win,” Maney said. “That’s why it’s intoxicating. It’s so hard to stop.” | 2022-09-06T10:21:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rise of legal sports betting has addiction experts worried - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/06/sports-gambling-addiction/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/06/sports-gambling-addiction/ |
Pakistan’s biggest lake bursts its banks threatening further floods
Victims of unprecedented flooding from monsoon rains use a cot to salvage belongings from their nearby flooded home, in Jaffarabad, Pakistan, Sept. 5. (Fareed Khan/AP)
SEVHAN, Pakistan — The retaining wall of Pakistan’s largest lake burst on Tuesday after months of heavy rains, threatening hundreds more villages downstream and forcing thousands more from their homes.
The Pakistani government engineered two intentional breaches of Lake Manchar’s retaining wall over the weekend in an effort to release pressure on the structure, but an irrigation official told The Washington Post that the wall began to crack Tuesday as water levels continued to rise.
A local agricultural department official confirmed the break, but said it was unclear if it occurred due to water pressure or if residents of a nearby town damaged the wall to divert floodwaters from their area.
Both officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
“It’s not possible to fix the wall now,” the irrigation official said. He said the government is unable to protect villages in the flood path and estimated families will have four to five hours to evacuate.
Minister of Irrigation Jam Khan Shoro confirmed to The Washington Post about the new breach in the lake but maintained that no further evacuations would be necessary because all the downstream settlements had already been emptied.
The Pakistani government is already struggling to respond to what has been described as a “catastrophic” crisis and the Manchar lake breach is likely to further frustrate access to those in need. Anger is growing among Pakistanis displaced, hundreds of villages remain underwater and those who have made it to dry land are struggling to find shelter and relief.
Waters from the lake could be seen leaping over highways and overflowing drainage canals just north of Sehvan, threatening to cut off a key supply route to some of the country’s hardest hit villages in Dadu and beyond. Roads leading south were lined with farmers moving their livestock to safety.
The agriculture official said the government must act fast to divert the water escaping Manchar lake by creating additional breaches along the lake or building more canals. If the water isn’t diverted, the official warned over 100,000 more people could be displaced.
The unprecedented flooding in Pakistan has already killed more than 1,300 people since it began in June and affected some 33 million. Government relief efforts are overwhelmed, though international supplies are starting to enter the country.
The two months of flooding in Sindh province has already far outstripped the devastating rains of 2010 — hitting twice as many districts — and has been described as the worst in the country’s history. Officials are ascribing the unusually heavy downpour to climate change.
The flooding has also come as the country’s vast agricultural regions were getting ready for the harvest and cash crops of rice, cotton and vegetables have been swept away, which will cause untold hardship for the farmers that rely on them for income. | 2022-09-06T11:02:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pakistan's Lake Manchar bursts its banks as flooding worsens - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/06/pakistan-flooding-manchar-lake/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/06/pakistan-flooding-manchar-lake/ |
Virginia man charged after fatally shooting his wife, police say
A husband fatally shot his wife before shooting himself at the couple's home in Alexandria, police said. (iStock)
A husband fatally shot his wife before shooting himself Sunday morning at a home in Alexandria, police said.
The incident happened just after 3 a.m. Sunday at a home in the 7900 block of Central Park Circle. Fairfax County police said they responded for a report of a shooting and that when officers arrived, they heard a gunshot and went into the home.
Once inside, they found the wife, Daphne Saunders-Johnson, 59, and her husband, James Johnson, 62, suffering from gunshot wounds. They were taken to a hospital with life-threatening injuries, and she died. Johnson is in critical but stable condition, police said.
An initial investigation found that he shot his wife, police said, before shooting himself. A gun was found inside the home. He has been charged with second-degree murder and the use of a firearm in the commission of a felony.
Police in Fairfax County said it is the 15th homicide this year in that area, compared with 17 in 2021. | 2022-09-06T11:06:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Virginia man charged after fatally shooting his wife, police say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/06/man-fatally-shot-his-wife-in-virginia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/06/man-fatally-shot-his-wife-in-virginia/ |
Post Politics Now Eyeing midterms, Biden to hit a third battleground state this week
On our radar: Massachusetts primaries divide state and national figures
The lastest: Democratic candidates tread gingerly as Biden celebrates Labor Day
The latest: Judge to appoint special master to review Trump’s Mar-a-Lago documents
On our radar: Newsom signs law with sweeping protections for California fast-food workers
President Biden arrives on the South Lawn of the White House after attending Labor Day events in Milwaukee and Pittsburgh on Monday. (Oliver Contreras/For The Washington Post)
Today, President Biden is convening a Cabinet meeting at the White House following a pair of Labor Day events in two crucial battleground states, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Later this week, he is scheduled to head to Ohio, another state with a key Senate race on the ballot in November, to tout a new law that aims to boost the nation’s semiconductor industry. Biden’s week also includes an appearance at a Democratic National Committee event as he increasingly focuses on his party’s prospects in the midterm elections.
Meanwhile, Massachusetts is holding primaries on Tuesday, and the Senate returns to Washington. (The House will be back next week.) On Wednesday, former president Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, return to the White House for portrait unveilings.
Noon Eastern time: White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre briefs reporters. Watch live here.
1:15 p.m. Eastern: President Biden holds a Cabinet meeting at the White House.
8 p.m. Eastern: Polls close in Massachusetts.
Former president Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, are scheduled to return to the White House this week or the unveiling of their White House portraits, a tradition that went on hiatus during the Trump years.
President Biden and first lady Jill Biden will instead welcome the Obamas at a ceremony on Wednesday.
It will be the former president’s second trip back to the White House since leaving office. Obama joined Biden in April to mark the 12th anniversary of the signing of the Affordable Care Act. It will be Michelle Obama’s first time back since leaving the White House in early 2017.
Voters head to the polls Tuesday in Massachusetts, where a candidate for governor backed by Donald Trump is vying against a more centrist rival in the Republican primary and Democrats are picking a nominee for state attorney general in a race that has divided the two U.S. senators and other party leaders in the deep-blue state.
The Post’s Annie Linskey reports that the Bay State is the only place in the country holding primaries the day after Labor Day, and voting there marks the beginning of the end of the primary season. Per Annie:
President Biden touted the labor movement Monday in two crucial battleground states, showcasing his role as a helpful ally — if not enthusiastically celebrated leader — to Democrats facing competitive elections in November.
The Post’s Patrick Marley and Ashley Parker report that at his first stop, in Milwaukee, Biden appeared alongside Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers (D), while the state’s Democratic candidate for Senate, Mandela Barnes, steered clear of a president struggling with a weak approval rating. Per our colleagues:
The Post’s Perry Stein reports that in a ruling that could slow down and complicate the government’s ongoing criminal probe, U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon wrote that the Justice Department cannot continue reviewing the materials taken from Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8, or use them in its investigation, until the special master concludes his or her examination. Perry writes:
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, among the Democrats who could make a White House bid down the road, signed a bill Monday that increases protections for fast-food workers in the state and creates a council to set an industry-wide minimum wage and workplace standards.
The Post’s Bryan Pietsch reports that the bill passed the state legislature last week against opposition from trade groups, which said it unfairly targeted the fast-food industry and would cause prices to rise at a time when the U.S. inflation rate is among the highest in decades. Per Bryan: | 2022-09-06T11:11:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Now: Eyeing November midterms, Biden to hit a third battleground state this week - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/06/biden-midterms-cabinet-meeting-massachusetts/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/06/biden-midterms-cabinet-meeting-massachusetts/ |
Analysis by Matthew A. Winkler | Bloomberg
Why is the first-term governor of Florida the most visible opponent of Wall Street’s fastest-growing and best-performing business? If you’re 43-year-old, Yale University and Harvard Law School-educated Navy veteran Ron DeSantis, getting everyone’s attention makes perfect political sense, if only to bolster your position as the preferred Republican successor to Donald Trump.
Revoking Walt Disney Co.’s special tax and self-governing privileges when the state’s largest private employer criticized the DeSantis law prohibiting classroom instruction about sexual orientation was just his first provocation this year. That was followed by his redrawing of a congressional map diminishing Black representation, suspending the elected state prosecutor of Tampa for refusing to enforce the state’s 15-week abortion ban and announcing new election police pressing criminal charges against 20 people for mistakenly voting in 2020 in a dubious crackdown on insignificant voter fraud.
The latest salvo from DeSantis assails the giants of money management for opposing fossil fuel, voter suppression and the criminalizing of reproductive rights (policies the governor champions) while embracing investment strategies furthering sustainability or meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. Asset allocation based on environmental, social and governance –- ESG -- criteria is at least a $35 trillion industry, a figure 53% greater than the US economy in 2021, according to the Global Sustainable Investment Alliance. DeSantis would have us believe that the third most-populous state will have no part of ESG in Florida’s $240 billion portfolio of more than 30 pension and disaster funds.
But DeSantis is less than meets the eye in the newfangled investment web he created. By excluding ESG, Florida violates its own initiatives, which “require SBA fund managers to only consider maximizing the return on investment on behalf of Florida’s retirees.” Prohibiting sustainability from consideration results in inferior performance over any period during the past decade, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Whatever the flaws of ESG investing, many of which were recently documented by Bloomberg News, there are few signs that the most rewarding trend for money managers worldwide is abating.
“The tectonic shift towards sustainable investing is accelerating,” Larry Fink, the chairman, chief executive officer and co-founder of BlackRock Inc., whose $10 trillion in assets makes it the largest money manager, wrote in his annual letter to CEOs. “This is just the beginning” because “stakeholder capitalism is not about politics,” Fink wrote. “It’s not a social or ideological agenda. It is not `woke.’ It is capitalism, driven by mutually beneficial relationships between you and the employees, customers, suppliers, and communities your company relies on to prosper. This is the power of capitalism.”
Sure enough, the largest exchange-traded fund investing in ESG, the iShares ESG Aware MSCI USA ETF, increased its assets 4,700 times to $24 billion since its inception in 2016 and 80 times the past three years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Investor appetite for ESG, measured by flows of funds into sustainability ETFs, increased 56 times during the past three years, a time when the largest –- the SPDR S&P 500 ETF -- saw 2% growth; the biggest technology ETF, Invesco QQQ Trust, grew 42%; and the No. 1 energy ETF, Energy Select Sector SPDR Fund, expanded two-and-a-half times.
The aggregated ETFs in clean energy, part of the “E” in ESG, saw net inflows increase to more than $7 billion in 2021 from an average $456 million yearly prior to 2019. Traditional industry-focused ETFs were little changed when fossil fuel ETFs experienced a $1.4 billion outflow this year and clean energy ETFs attracted $1 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
A big reason why ESG is attracting so much investment is because it’s crushing the traditional investment benchmarks. Firms committed to environmental, social and governance responsibilities helped the Bloomberg SASB Large Cap ESG Select Index produce a total return (income plus appreciation) of 150% since its inception in 2014. The Russell 3000 gained 136% in the same period. The ESG index appreciated 74% during the past five years, outperforming the rest of the stock market by five percentage points.
Florida and other states, such as Texas and West Virginia, that vilify money managers for favoring ESG over fossil fuel, will need to reconcile their preference for unnecessary risk when they punish the ESG crowd. ESG produces higher returns with less volatility than traditional stock market benchmarks since 2020, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The total return of the Bloomberg ESG Index is more than six times greater than the largest ETF investing in traditional energy since 2014. Over five years, ESG gained 73% when fossil fuel shares appreciated 57%.
While the past 12 months are the exception to the trend, when ESG lost 11% and traditional energy gained 72%, the risk profile of fossil fuel dwarfs ESG as measured by 200-day price fluctuations. Fossil fuel volatility was 77% greater than ESG in 2020 and remains consistently elevated compared to ESG, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Stability is especially relevant for state pension funds in the bond market, where the specific needs of retirees need to be matched with consistent income payments and where ESG-related debt in its infancy already outperforms the broader corporate debt market. Sustainability, as measured by the Bloomberg MSCI US Corporate ESG Weighted Total Return Index, provided more than 50 basis points of additional income and appreciation than the Bloomberg US Corporate Bond Index over one, five and 10 years with 4% less volatility.
“ESG is increasingly driven by market forces and international momentum,” said Shari Friedman, managing director for climate and sustainability at Eurasia Group. “While we might see corrections and detours along the way, the long-term trend of ESG as a growing asset class and increasingly important factor for access to capital will continue.”
All of which should make us wonder why the Ivy League-educated governor of Florida is proud to be ignorant.
Matthew A. Winkler, editor in chief emeritus of Bloomberg News, writes about markets. | 2022-09-06T11:50:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | DeSantis Attack on ESG Repudiates Its Superior Returns - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/desantis-attack-on-esg-repudiates-its-superior-returns/2022/09/06/de1fd668-2dd3-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/desantis-attack-on-esg-repudiates-its-superior-returns/2022/09/06/de1fd668-2dd3-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html |
A news anchor slurred her words on-air. It was the ‘beginnings of a stroke.’
KJRH anchor Julie Chin says doctors believe she had experienced the “beginnings of a stroke” during a newscast on Saturday. (KJRH)
Tulsa anchor Julie Chin was in the middle of a live broadcast on Saturday morning when she said she suddenly lost partial vision in one eye. Then one of her arms started to feel numb. And, when it was her turn to speak, the right words did not come.
“I’m sorry,” she said, smiling into the camera. “Something is going on with me this morning, and I apologize to everybody.”
Wendy Williams fainted on live TV, and it was terrifying
Her co-workers at the NBC affiliate immediately called 911, she said.
After the ordeal, Chin said she learned that it may not be obvious when someone is experiencing a stroke, but fast action could save a life. She shared an acronym for recognizing symptoms and remembering to act. “B.E.F.A.S.T.” stands for a loss of balance, changes in eyesight, facial drooping, arm weakness and speech difficulty, with the final letter meaning time to call 911, Chin wrote. | 2022-09-06T11:51:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Oklahoma news anchor experiences 'beginnings of a stroke' on live TV - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/06/tulsa-news-anchor-stroke/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/06/tulsa-news-anchor-stroke/ |
State Department is offering big rewards for info on hackers, to uncertain ends
Welcome back to The Cybersecurity 202! We missed you like these celebrities missed on their ceremonial first pitches.
Below: Under pressure, Cloudflare drops Kiwi Farms, and encrypted messaging app Signal has a new president. First:
Behind the curtains of a State Department program offering millions of dollars for tips
In the past two months alone, a State Department program has offered tens of millions of dollars for information on Conti ransomware gang members and alleged Russian election meddlers.
And that State Department “Rewards for Justice” initiative is set to advertise new targets between now and the 2022 midterm elections, officials told me, speaking on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of their work.
Rewards for Justice, which is housed within the Diplomatic Security Service and has for decades focused primarily on countering terrorism, expanded in 2020 to start going after election interference and hacking of U.S. critical infrastructure.
But Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) officials wouldn’t say whether anyone has cashed in on those post-2020 rewards, citing the need to protect sources. One Capitol Hill aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they aren’t authorized to speak publicly, told me that they’re “not aware of any major success stories” related to hacking and election security.
That might just be a matter of lag time. It can take months or even years, DSS officials said, to reap the best tips. And while some doubt the program’s ability to help chase down hackers or election meddlers, many still think Rewards for Justice can help in other ways.
“The way to judge it isn't how many people we catch,” James Lewis, a cybersecurity expert at the Center for Security and International Studies who once served at the State Department, told me. “It's how much we get the message out there. … As part of a larger U.S. effort to finally begin to impose consequences, it's a good thing.”
The State Department says that Rewards for Justice has paid out $250 million to more than 125 people since its inception in 1984 and has highlighted a select few success stories on its website. Congress has, in recent years, authorized the program to move into election security and cybersecurity. (It’s not the only program to offer rewards for information about illicit hacking, or even the only program in the State Department to do so.)
But the program hasn’t always proven successful. It had trouble getting tips on al-Qaeda in the early 2000s, as The Post reported in 2008.
Two DSS officials spoke with me about the inner workings of the program. Analysts evaluate tips for useful information, possibly contacting the source for clarification, then pass good tips along to others in U.S. intelligence, security and law enforcement agencies to handle the cases. Approximately 90 percent of the tips are “unusable trash,” and just 2 to 4 percent of what comes in “may be useful,” one official said. It won’t say much about the tipsters otherwise.
“Foreign governments … can be very dangerous to the tipster, so we don't like to talk about what comes in,” the official said.
Since 2008, the program has improved its outreach with technology, one of the officials told me. What once was just a 1-800 line, an email address and an online form has expanded to include tip lines on the dark web, Signal, WhatsApp and more.
“We've seen quite an uptick in the quality of things coming in because we make it easier and more secure,” the official said.
While the officials said there’s been a learning curve about how they market the program to get tips on hackers and election meddlers, they’ve embraced the power and reach of social media.
The August reward offer for Conti was the first time the U.S. government publicized a picture of a suspected Conti hacker, and the Rewards for Justice Twitter account playfully mocked them.
The U.S. Government reveals the face of a Conti associate for the first time! We’re trying to put a name with the face!
To the guy in the photo: Imagine how many cool hats you could buy with $10 million dollars!
Write to us via our Tor-based tip line: https://t.co/WvkI416g4W pic.twitter.com/28BgYXYRy2
— Rewards for Justice (@RFJ_USA) August 11, 2022
July’s offer focused on Yevgeniy Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch and confidant to Russian President Vladimir Putin who the United States accused of funding a troll farm that tried to interfere in U.S. elections. Prigozhin mocked the reward online, leading to more social media jousting.
Mr. Prigozhin, thank you for your interest below in RFJ's reward offer for information on election interference! Eligibility for a reward depends on the information provided.
$10,000,000 is about 612,500,000 RUB and relocation may be possible. 😎 Chat soon via the Dark Web! https://t.co/Qbox942RKd
— Rewards for Justice (@RFJ_USA) August 3, 2022
Rewards for Justice announced the Conti reward at Def Con, a hacker conference in Las Vegas. They’ve also been offering to pay the rewards with cryptocurrency. So far they’ve also used the program to offer rewards for information on North Korean hackers and the hackers behind last summer’s Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack, among others.
The Capitol Hill aide who said they weren’t aware of any major success stories added, “That's not disqualifying.”
“By soliciting information, maybe someone provides a tip that isn't itself extraordinary, but that when combined with all the other information that we're receiving and trying to piece together, may be very helpful in that sense,” the aide said.
Still, there are some difficulties with using the program for cyberspace targets.
“You’re tapping into a reservoir of people who may have no special love for the terrorists but also are maybe familiar with who the terrorists are, whereas cybercriminals are, generally speaking, not as notorious,” the aide said. “On top of that, they’re much better able to protect their identities.”
In a world where some hackers are making hundreds of millions of dollars at a time, there’s also the question of who would turn them in at all. That said, it’s not unheard of for hackers to turn on each other, Andrew Lohn, a senior fellow at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, told me.
Said one of the DSS officials: “Maybe the key leaders within that group earn hundreds of millions of dollars, but there could be friends and associates around them who aren't earning that money or are jealous of the people earning the big dollars, and $10 million might be a good incentive for them.”
Twitter has lacked resources for combatting disinformation
Signal hires Big Tech critic who aims to focus on sustaining the app through donations
Meredith Whittaker, a former Google manager, will be the first president of the encrypted messaging app, Nitasha Tiku reports. Whittaker, who has been outspoken about the harms of Big Tech, will help guide strategy, communications and policy in the role.
Whittaker aims to focus on sustaining the app, which hopes to support itself through millions of users’ small donations.
“It costs tens of millions of dollars per year to develop and maintain an app like Signal,” Whittaker said, arguing that the only way for people to escape technology profiting off user data is to pay for products that don’t.
Signal, which was released in 2014, offers the ability for people to send messages, voice calls and video calls that are encrypted so only the sender and recipient can see them. Signal creator Moxie Marlinspike stepped down as its chief executive in January, and WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton, who sits on its board alongside Whittaker and Marlinspike, is leading the company in an interim capacity. It’s still looking for a new chief executive. “It’s got to be the right person,” Whittaker said. “We have the luxury to take our time.”
China says U.S. hacked aeronautics, space research university (Bloomberg)
The chips are down: Putin scrambles for high-tech parts as his arsenal goes up in smoke (Politico)
TikTok denies reports that it’s been hacked (The Verge)
National Cyber Director’s office elevates key personnel (FCW)
Dünyanın en iyi videosunu izledim az önce pic.twitter.com/NesKoTKgfL
— nehir (@rivierepx) August 1, 2022 | 2022-09-06T11:51:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | State Department is offering big rewards for info on hackers, to uncertain ends - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/06/state-department-is-offering-big-rewards-info-hackers-uncertain-ends/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/06/state-department-is-offering-big-rewards-info-hackers-uncertain-ends/ |
Advice by Michael Errigo
News aide
As football season gets underway, many fans are diving headfirst into the world of sports betting. But not everyone knows how to bet like a pro. Here are some of the most common betting mistakes out there, as described by experts in the field:
Chasing losses
Anybody who has bet on sports for an extended period will tell you that losing streaks happen. A common response to bad luck is a desperate attempt to reverse those fortunes. That is where you can get into trouble.
“If you’re betting the NFL and you do poorly in the 1 p.m. slate and poorly in the 4 p.m. slate, there are a lot of people who can’t resist making an even bigger bet on the Sunday night game to try and get it back,” said Drew Dinsick, lead analyst for NBC Sports EDGE. “In reality, by the time that game starts, there is no advantage bet to be made. You are truly flipping a coin.”
If the losses are piling up, usually the best option is to stop, recalibrate and wait for another day. Holes can be dug quickly in the world of sports betting.
“I always tell people that [betting] is great fun but, like everything else, do it in moderation,” said Michael Jenkins, co-host of “The Daily Tip,” a betting podcast from BetMGM. “It’s like having a beer while you’re watching a game. You want to sit back, enjoy the game, and have a couple to enhance the experience. But you don’t want to do so much that it becomes a problem or takes away from the spirit of enjoying the action.”
Betting on your favorite team
When it comes to sports betting, plenty of people rely on the “eye test” — essentially, they make wagers based on what they believe will happen from having watched certain teams play. And it’s true that most professional bettors encourage others to stay away from sports they don’t watch. However, recreational bettors can fall victim to feeling overconfident in their assessments of a team’s performance — particularly as it relates to their favorite teams.
“I would encourage people to bet on teams they think they know well, yes,” said Rob Pizzola, a professional bettor and the co-owner of bet tracking company betstamp. “With that said, sports betting is a math problem. And it’s much less appealing to people when you put it that way. … When you bet on your favorite teams, people start to think in terms of [emotion].”
Nothing feels worse than watching your favorite team fall while also losing money at the same time. But one that might come close is betting against your favorite team and then watching it prove you wrong. Jenkins, a Texas alum, remembers a time he chose to bet against his Longhorns and then had to watch them upset hated rival Oklahoma.
“Afterward I remember thinking, ‘I feel disgusting right now,’ ” he said. “ ‘I never want to do this again.’ ”
Being tempted by parlays
At this point, you’ve likely seen a social media post or a news story about a fan who bet $10 on a complex, multigame wager and walked away with a small fortune. Those huge, unlikely wins are a scintillating part of sports betting and are heavily promoted in the field’s marketing.
But parlay bets, in which you link together two or more bets to try to win a large sum, are widely seen as a mistake.
“It’s definitely the biggest temptation there is,” Jenkins said. “We’ve all done it. And usually if you do it long enough, you’ll win a parlay or two. But there’s a reason why the sportsbooks themselves are promoting these huge viral wins. Every now and then you may want to take a shot, but if you try it on a regular basis, it’s a guaranteed loser.”
The sportsbook’s hold is generally much greater on parlay bets than single game wagers. That means the house keeps a higher percentage of every dollar wagered. When it comes to parlays, sportsbooks hold a significant edge.
“If somebody wants to bet for fun and is excited by the possibility of a big payout, fine. Who am I to tell them not to do that?” Pizzola said. “But it’s about understanding that, as you start to parlay games, the sportsbook’s edge becomes greater. It’s exactly what they want you to do.”
Sticking to one sportsbook
This is a mistake often made because of a lack of time or effort. Many bettors stick with one sportsbook, meaning they are at the mercy of the lines set by that outlet. By considering multiple sportsbooks, you can ensure you’re getting the best odds available.
“By opening up multiple sportsbook accounts, you can start line-shopping, which I think is the single most important aspect of this for winning bettors,” Pizzola said. “By finding the best price available to them and betting it, they have a much better chance to win in the long run.”
Think of line-shopping the same way as looking for the best price on any other product, and the strategy becomes even clearer.
“It’s just price sensitivity,” Pizzola said. “People are price sensitive in their day-to-day lives anyway. … If you could go to a gas station that’s selling gas for much cheaper and it’s the exact same product, they would do that. But for some reason or another, that hasn’t transpired in sports betting enough.”
Similarly, many experts — including The Post’s Neil Greenberg — say most recreational bettors simply wait too long. If you don’t place your bet until game day, “you’re betting into a number that the sportsbook is extremely confident in,” Pizzola noted. Betting earlier in the week, before the sportsbook has sharpened its lines, is a better strategy.
Having the wrong mind-set
Bettors often approach the whole venture in the wrong frame of mind. Too many fans get into betting with the hopes of turning their passion and knowledge into quick and easy cash. That will only set you up for disappointment.
“There are a lot of people who enter the space looking to get rich doing this,” Dinsick said. “The mind-set of people who think they’re going to get into this and it’s really going to impact their lives to the good financially is a pretty common mistake.”
Keep in mind that anything above a 55 percent success rate on your bets is considered highly profitable — and that kind of number is rare and hard-earned.
“Every single person I know who is making money doing this went through an extended period of losing. You almost have to pay that toll,” Dinsick said. “As is true in many fields, you’re not going to learn how to do this by reading about it. You have to put money at stake and lose and learn the hard way to truly grow as a sports bettor.” | 2022-09-06T11:51:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Common mistakes every sports gambler should avoid - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/06/sports-betting-mistakes/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/06/sports-betting-mistakes/ |
Surveillance footage shows Jeffrey Lenberg, left, and Doug Logan of Cyber Ninjas, entering the Coffee County, Ga., election offices on Jan. 18, 2021. (Obtained by The Washington Post)
Surveillance video reviewed by The Washington Post shows that the consultants, Doug Logan and Jeffrey Lenberg, made two visits in January 2021 to the elections office in Coffee County, about 200 miles south of Atlanta. Lenberg made an additional five visits on his own that same month. The two men are under investigation for separate alleged breaches of voting machines in Michigan.
The footage also shows that earlier in January, Cathy Latham, a teacher and then-chairwoman of the county Republican Party, was at the elections office and greeted the outsiders when they arrived shortly before noon to copy the data. Latham has said in sworn testimony that she taught a full day of school that day and visited the elections office briefly after classes ended. She was one of 16 Republicans who signed certificates declaring Trump the rightful winner of the 2020 election as part of the “fake elector” scheme now under investigation by federal and state prosecutors.
The Post reported last month that a data forensics firm hired by the pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell copied software and data from the Dominion Voting Systems machines Coffee County uses to manage elections and tally ballots. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation has said it is investigating the matter.
Latham “would not and has not knowingly been involved in any impropriety in any election,” said Robert D. Cheeley, her lawyer, in a statement to The Post. She “did not authorize or participate in any ballot scanning efforts, computer imaging or any similar activity in Coffee County in January 2021.”
The new surveillance footage shows three SullivanStrickler employees arriving at the Coffee elections office on at 11:42 a.m. on Jan. 7. Latham had arrived five minutes earlier, the footage shows. She greeted the SullivanStrickler team and led them inside.
Coffee County GOP chairwoman Cathy Latham is seen in surveillance video with three employees of SullivanStrickler entering the county's election headquarters. (Video: The Washington Post)
The SullivanStrickler team brought a hard-shell rolling suitcase and a packed duffle bag into the office, the footage shows. Shortly before 1 p.m., a fourth employee arrived to join them. Latham left the office for about two and a half hours during the afternoon before returning and then finally departing after 6 p.m., the footage shows. The building has a side door that is not shown in the footage.
The SullivanStrickler team left the building at 7:43 p.m., more than two and a half hours after the office’s regular closing time, the footage shows. Hampton immediately followed.
Lenberg, 66, lives in Tijeras, N.M., and previously worked in technical roles at a private laboratory operated for the National Nuclear Security Administration. A resume for Lenberg filed in the Antrim court case stated that he has held high-level security clearances and that his past work included “developing ways to break in (if possible) to what were considered to be secure systems.”
When the pair arrived at the Coffee County elections office on Jan. 18, both were carrying backpacks, and Lenberg brought snacks and energy drinks. Hampton and the two consultants were recorded leaving the building nearly four hours later. Logan and Lenberg returned to the elections office shortly before 9 a.m. the next morning, the footage shows, and exited after 6 p.m.
A spokesman for Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) did not directly address questions from The Post about the agency’s response to Barnes’s concern or say whether the agency sought the security-camera footage at the time. Raffensperger has said publicly that after the election his staff devoted time to pursuing every tip of alleged voter fraud. Raffensperger’s office has told the court that it began investigating the Coffee County matter in February of this year, when allegations of the breach first became an issue in the long-running lawsuit. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation has been working with Raffensperger’s office and opened the criminal case on Aug. 15.
“We will hold all who acted in bad faith and broke the law to account,” said Gabriel Sterling, a spokesman for the secretary of state’s office.
Matthew Brown, Amy Gardner and Peter Stevenson contributed to this report. | 2022-09-06T12:07:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Video shows election deniers at Coffee County, Ga., election office - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2022/09/06/coffee-county-georgia-breach-logan/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2022/09/06/coffee-county-georgia-breach-logan/ |
A robot expert says the squishy dough and many steps involved make the task difficult.
Researchers are working on creating a robot that could handle the many functions of making pizza. (iStock)
Researchers at a university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, are working on creating a pizza-making robot. Although humans may not find it too difficult to roll out dough, slice toppings and pull it all together, it’s not as easy for a robot.
“Robots are basically preprogrammed to repeat the same actions over and over,” says David Held, a robot expert from Carnegie Mellon University, and one of the members of a pizza-making team.
Also, pizza-making requires many steps — such as rolling, cutting and gathering — and several tools, including a rolling pin, knife and spatula. There are companies that have developed robotic systems that can make pizza using specialized hardware for each step, but using a standard robot arm and common tools to handle all the functions is trickier. What order should the steps be done in? Which utensil should you pick, and when? “If you need to do a cooking task, there are multiple levels that you have to reason about,” Held says.
However, don’t expect to see a pizza-making robot in your school cafeteria anytime soon. Held and a couple of other researchers took what they learned from the simulation and used it to program a robot that already exists, called Sawyer. They then had Sawyer try to roll actual pizza dough into a little circle, which it didn’t quite manage to do.
“We got a little bit closer to the right circular shape than the previous methods,” Held says. “But there’s still a lot of room for improvement.”
For now, people will continue to make pizza the old-fashioned way: with their own hands. Still, a pizza-making robot is a good goal. In a facility for senior citizens, for example, Held says staff eventually could spend less time in the kitchen and more time interacting with residents. And if a robot could deal with squishy dough, it could also work with other objects that can change shape, such as laundry. | 2022-09-06T12:46:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Can robots make pizza? Scientists are working on it. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/09/06/can-robots-make-pizza-scientists-are-working-it/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/09/06/can-robots-make-pizza-scientists-are-working-it/ |
New Commanders quarterback Carson Wentz warms up before a preseason game with the Chiefs. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
3. “You talk about a guy not being experienced — I believe in the guys. I believe in ’em. And I’ve been doing this for a long time. And I put my reputation on these guys that they can play.”
“The one thing — I have heard it but to see it — he is very resilient,” Coach Ron Rivera said. “A lot of things kind of just go off his back. He is very hard on himself. He pushes himself, and you can see it. In meetings, you can see it. This is a young man who is very serious about his craft. I think he is a guy that is driven. It has been fun watching him. Every now and then, it is neat to watch him and see something positive and you go, ‘Okay, he’s got that.’ He takes a little bit of pride in those things.” | 2022-09-06T12:46:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Can Carson Wentz end Washington's quarterback nightmare? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/06/carson-wentz-commanders-qb-carousel/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/06/carson-wentz-commanders-qb-carousel/ |
Juvenile dies in house fire in Falls Church
Authorities said a juvenile is dead and another person has critical injuries after a house fire in Falls Church, Va.
Few details were immediately available.
Firefighters were alerted to the blaze just before 2 a.m. Tuesday at a single-family home in the 6600 block of Barrett Road near Sleepy Hollow Road. Two people and a dog were removed from the home, according to a post on Twitter from Fairfax County fire officials.
One of the people was a juvenile who died at a hospital, and the other person is in critical condition, authorities said. The dog also died. | 2022-09-06T12:55:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Juvenile dead, another person critically hurt after house fire in Virginia - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/06/juvenile-dead-fire-virginia-falls-church/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/06/juvenile-dead-fire-virginia-falls-church/ |
A Raise for Seniors Won’t Do Inflation Fight Any Favors
The US Social Security Administration is set to dole out perhaps its biggest cost-of-living adjustment in four decades next year. That’s a welcome development for the 70 million beneficiaries of the Social Security and Supplemental Security Income programs, but it also adds another subtle element of support to inflation and underscores the problem with high and volatile prices: Even the remedies set up to protect the most vulnerable can prolong the problem.
Let’s start with the bad news, or perhaps the good news, depending on whether you’re a cash-strapped senior or an inflation-fighting central banker. The latest downswing in the highly capricious energy market is likely to prevent the adjustment from reaching double digits, which seemed possible before gasoline prices began to plummet a couple months ago.
Under Social Security amendments dating to 1972, the SSA bases the automatic cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, on the average third-quarter level of the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers as compared with the period a year earlier. So far, energy prices have prevented the overall index from rising almost at all in July (and probably August). But the third-quarter comparison with 2021 means that Social Security and SSI recipients should still get around an 8.9% COLA for next year, even assuming optimistically that month-on-month inflation will remain near zero through September.
So what will that mean for seniors and the economy? First, seniors are clearly struggling from the rapid increase in prices. About half of older Americans said they had to spend emergency savings in the past 12 months, and an increasing number are turning to food pantries or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, according to a May survey of 3,056 people from the Senior Citizens League. Among other issues, seniors spend a larger portion of their incomes on medical care, as Mary Johnson, a Social Security and Medicare policy analyst with the Senior Citizens League, told me by phone on Wednesday.
Their premiums for Medicare Part B — the optional Medicare benefit that helps pay for doctors’ services and outpatient care not covered by the basic version — jumped 14.5% for the most recent year. They should recoup those costs next year when the new COLA kicks in and the Medicare premiums are expected to steady, but 2022 has been a slog for many. Bank of America Institute data published last month show baby boomers’ savings and checking account balances are starting to decline from their 2022 highs. The drop-off hasn’t been as drastic as it has been for younger cohorts, but boomers’ savings didn’t spike as much as theirs did in 2020 and 2021.
The latest developments also come after a long stretch of rising costs that may have been undercompensated by previous COLAs. There’s much unsettled debate about how best to measure the unique costs that seniors incur, but critics generally agree that the current way — treating older adults the same as every other consumer — is inadequate. There’s growing support for switching the COLA to an alternative index such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ experimental CPI, or CPI-E, for Americans who are 62 and older. For next year in particular, it’s not clear that the CPI-E would have helped seniors, but data from a longer period hint that Social Security’s purchasing power may not be what it was four decades ago.(1)
Separately, there’s the macroeconomic impact to consider. Social Security and SSI benefits total about $106.3 billion a month, which annualizes to around $1.28 trillion, so the catch-up increase will conceivably add about $113 billion a year to household cash flows. In other words, the increase could amount to about a half a percentage point bump in overall personal income — small, but nevertheless relevant when the Federal Reserve is trying to douse the worst inflation since the early 1980s. Will it drastically alter the outlook for Fed Chair Jerome Powell? Absolutely not, but it’s another in a series of little factors that can eventually add up. Politicians must recognize that fact as they consider relief in the form of subsidies or, for instance, the student debt relief package unveiled recently by the Biden administration.
It’s noteworthy, of course, that the COLA mechanism itself is a creature of the 1970s, when high inflation last reared its ugly head. This kind of price volatility can be unbearable for seniors without significant other kinds of savings. All told, the COLA for next year — which will be officially announced in October — will be a welcome and critically important development for the beneficiaries. But it also offers important lessons about why sticky high inflation is a lose-lose for society. Even the protections put in place for the most vulnerable can help prolong the problem, which is yet another reason Powell is likely to bring the hammer down on inflation, which could push the economy into recession. Americans, and seniors especially, should brace for a difficult period ahead.
• Banks Need to Heed Inflation as Much as Job Data: Paul J. Davies
(1) To be sure, CPI-E is a highly imperfect measure of the complex question of senior expenses. Its weights come from data on a relatively small number of older households. Moreover, the urban areas in the sample aren’t necessarily representative of where seniors live, and it could be subject to larger sampling errors than the official CPI, as the BLS acknowledges. It may also understate use of senior discounts. | 2022-09-06T13:21:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A Raise for Seniors Won’t Do Inflation Fight Any Favors - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/a-raise-for-seniors-wont-do-inflation-fight-any-favors/2022/09/06/95f65ecc-2ddb-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/a-raise-for-seniors-wont-do-inflation-fight-any-favors/2022/09/06/95f65ecc-2ddb-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html |
The climate is changing, and so are the incentives. (Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg)
Republican elected officials seem to think they’ve three new evil letters to pair with their favorite bugaboo, CRT, or critical race theory. This one is called ESG, which refers to investment strategies that consider environmental, social and governance issues. Critics call it “woke capitalism.” There’s just one problem: They don’t seem to understand capitalism. And flogging ESG is not only a terrible economic mistake. It will be a political loser, too.
The fact is: Climate risk is financial risk. Costs from climate-related weather events now exceed $100 billion annually — and that is only counting insured losses. Accounting for these and other losses isn’t social policy. It’s smart investing. And refusing to allow firms to do it comes with a big cost to taxpayers. | 2022-09-06T13:21:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | On Climate Change, Republicans Need a Crash Course in Capitalism - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/on-climate-change-republicans-need-a-crash-course-in-capitalism/2022/09/06/f0d699d0-2de3-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/on-climate-change-republicans-need-a-crash-course-in-capitalism/2022/09/06/f0d699d0-2de3-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html |
Political families are on the wane. (Photographer: Pool/Getty Images North America)
The slow fade-out of dynastic politics in the US is continuing in 2022. Just in the last few weeks, Nick Begich III was defeated for the Alaska House seat his grandfather once held; his uncle was also a senator from Alaska. And in New York, State Senator Alessandra Biaggi, whose grandfather served in the US House, failed to win a House seat.
This follows the 2020 defeat of Joe Kennedy III, the grandson of former Senator Robert F. Kennedy, in a Massachusetts Senate primary, potentially ending the storied family’s reign in politics. Two years ago, there was a Cuomo as governor of New York and a Cheney in the House leadership. Not anymore. Nancy Pelsoi, whose father was mayor of Baltimore, is still speaker of the House and remains the most prominent legacy politician in the US, but she probably won’t hold that position for too much longer.
Biden Can’t See Why America Is in Trouble: Clive Crook
(1) In other words, she’s the most successful modern speaker. The modern position was created by a string of reforms from the late 1950s through the early 1970s that transformed the House and the speaker’s job. The House changed from a chamber run by largely independent committees and their powerful committee chairs to a body that is run by the majority party - which made the speaker, as the leader of the majority party, a much more important figure than pre-reform speakers. | 2022-09-06T13:22:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | US Political Dynasties Are in Decline. That’s Something to Celebrate. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/us-political-dynasties-are-in-decline-thats-something-to-celebrate/2022/09/06/c02542e0-2ddf-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/us-political-dynasties-are-in-decline-thats-something-to-celebrate/2022/09/06/c02542e0-2ddf-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html |
Loop Sessions DMV: Serving the needs of the area’s beatmakers
Magassy “Mags” M’bow, left, is the founder of the DMV chapter of Loop Sessions. (Sylvan "Sly" Thompson )
Beatsmiths spend hours searching record store bins for raw materials to sample, isolating and reworking musical moments and crafting a creation of their own. But is the final product a beat for a rapper or a singer? It is intended to be played on its own, in a club or a coffeehouse? If a beat drops in the forest, does it make a sound?
For more than a year and a half, Loop Sessions DMV has attempted to answer these questions and serve the needs of the area’s beatmaking community, both online and in-person, by bringing together producers, giving them time to sample a chosen piece of music and make a beat out of it, and showcasing the results before opening the floor to a gab session.
Loop Sessions DMV is a local offshoot of the mother ship branch in Montreal, which was founded in 2016 and was itself inspired by an event the founders attended in São Paulo, Brazil. One of the participants at those Montreal sessions was Magassy “Mags” M’bow, a Silver Spring-born artist who had moved to the city for school.
Mags’s return to the D.C. area in 2018 put the kibosh on her Loop Session participation, until the pandemic shifted the event — like many others — from IRL to URL. By this time, she had found a local community of like-minded musicians who had embraced the virtual Loop Sessions. One friend wished there was a local chapter.
“Hold up,” Mags remembers saying. “Low key, what’s stopping us? Because now no one’s outside — I could do this if I wanted to.”
With the blessing of the founders of the original Loop Sessions, Mags launched the DMV chapter in February 2021. After a few virtual editions, Loop Sessions DMV held its first in-person event that June, with people traveling from up and down the East Coast to have the kind of organic exchange that can only happen in-person.
“It felt like a mini convention,” Mags says. “You make online friends, and you exchange and collaborate on stuff only online, but then you guys finally meet and you’re like, ‘Oh, my God, you’re much taller in person,’ or stuff like that.”
Even though public health concerns have forced Loop Sessions back online, the community aspect is still a focus of the chapter, especially for LGBTQ musicians who don’t always feel represented in hip-hop beatmaking circles. Overall, Mags hopes online connections foster real-world ones, as well.
“A lot of artists are so close to each other, but don’t know each other at all,” she says. The best part remains “being able to break that door open [to show] you all make amazing stuff.”
Sept. 9 at 8 p.m. on Instagram Live @loopsessionsdmv. | 2022-09-06T13:22:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Loop Sessions DMV: Serving the needs of the area's beatmaking community - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/09/06/wk-loop-sessions-dmv/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/09/06/wk-loop-sessions-dmv/ |
In loaded Anne Arundel County, Crofton field hockey is ready to emerge
Junior Kylie Corcoran is excited to see whether Crofton can compete with the best in Anne Arundel County this year. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
When Kylie Corcoran played for Crofton’s recreational field hockey program, players planned to split off and attend South River or Arundel High. But then Crofton High opened in 2020, meaning they were all going to be on the same side of the pitch.
“I was so excited, just because I knew everyone that was coming in was on the team that we had in rec,” said Corcoran, a junior. “It was so fun and competitive in rec, and we were going to have that same atmosphere in high school.”
Crofton’s group of seniors will be its first graduating class in school history. This is the first year the Cardinals have players from all four grade levels — and they’re looking to make a splash, especially against nearby schools.
“They get pumped to play the teams where they came from,” Coach Amy Skrickus said. “It’s just a big sense of pride, a big sense of community — everyone kind of feels it and it’s such a unique experience.”
The Cardinals finished last year’s regular season — their first as a varsity program — with a 9-3 record, including victories over traditional powers Broadneck and Chesapeake. With every one of its players back this fall, including senior forward Emma Beyer, sophomore goalkeeper Ryleigh Osborne and Corcoran, the Cardinals could take another step in loaded Anne Arundel County.
“We have a lot of talent, and also we’re going against a lot of talent in the county,” Corcoran said. “Everyone in the county is going to be so good — it’s so fun to play against all these talented teams.”
Last season was a special one for Northwestern. A senior-led roster found a perfect form at just the right time, surging through the postseason and earning the program’s first Maryland state championship since 1995.
Nine months later, the Wildcats are young and looking to capitalize on that magical run. The team returns just three starters, but the presence of last year’s team remains strong in that the goal this fall is to prove success can be sustained.
“We want to get to that level of other schools where you’re consistently playing for a state semi or every three or four years you’re winning a state title,” Coach Victor Ramirez said. “We went to the promised land, and now the question is how we stay there.”
The foundation of anything Northwestern builds this year will come from local play in Prince George’s County. Prince George’s has plenty of soccer talent, but success there also requires something a little extra.
“It gets physical [in Prince George’s County]. That’s the biggest difference from when we leave the county. It’s still physical out there, but not as much so,” Ramirez said. “It will take a while to adjust to that. As Mike Tyson says ‘Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.’ ”
In January, Carrie Helfrich was invited to the U.S. under-15 women’s national team training camp in Chula Vista, Calif. Before testing herself against the country’s other top players, Helfrich, now a sophomore at Stone Ridge, confronted another challenge: Flying alone for the first time.
After navigating Dulles International Airport security, Helfrich shined in California and played with the team in Europe in June. In July, Helfrich sat on her couch in McLean, refreshing her email until the news she desired arrived. The forward was one of 18 players selected for the U.S. team in the Concacaf U-15 tournament in Tampa.
Last month, Helfrich started three of five matches — all wins — and assisted the opening goal in a 4-1 championship victory over Canada.
“It has always been a dream,” said Helfrich, 15. “Everyone who plays soccer always looks up to everyone who’s on the national team. It was kind of surreal being able to do it at such a young age.”
Helfrich began playing soccer as a child after learning the sport from her father, Dan, who competed at Georgetown between 1994 and 1997. She developed into a star as a 7-year-old with her club team, Virginia Union FC, where she still plays.
Entering a season in which Stone Ridge could contend in the Independent School League AA division, Helfrich feels more confident.
“I knew I was good, but getting to that level and feeling like I fit in was nice,” she said. “I was really hard-working the whole time and persevered, even if it was hard being away from family or just being in a different environment.”
Supriya Ramanujam, a Maret senior, had the chance to watch Serena Williams practice before what was likely the superstar’s final match on Friday at the U.S. Open in New York. A longtime fan, Ramanujam says seeing her up close was a reminder of the impact Williams has had on her own tennis career.
“For me, Serena exemplifies grit; she’s always working so hard, and she’s never giving up,” Ramanujam said. “She’s an inspiration for me in that way. And both she and Venus paved the way … for so many female athletes of color to follow in their footsteps.”
As high school girls’ tennis gets underway this fall and Maret prepares to compete for the Independent School League title, Ramanujam says having players such as Williams to look up to helps her define her work ethic.
“In whatever I do, like whether it’s tennis or schoolwork, I always try to do my best, and here are some of the greatest athletes of all time setting the example,” Ramanujam said. “I’ll really miss watching her, but I’m sure she’ll be around. She’s a great inspiration for me as a tennis player and a woman of color.”
Every year, West Springfield visits a cabin in West Virginia, using the trip to build chemistry and improve cardiovascular fitness. The pivotal moment of each trip comes on a run to the lake, when the girls’ team climbs atop a boulder.
“Every state-winning team from West Springfield has taken a picture on that rock,” senior Riley Sucato said. After finishing in third place last season, the Spartans will aim for a first-place finish at the Class 6 state championship meet in November. “So we wanted to take it to fully set our goal for this season.”
Everything went blurry after the climb for Sucato, who broke her arm after slipping and falling into the creek. She admits that fall may have done more for team chemistry than anything else on the trip, and she has a positive attitude on the experience; she’s already back to running on a track.
“[Coach Chris] Pellegrini said this was the biggest unintentional team bonding exercise because we had to work together to get her out of the creek,” junior Chloe Miller said. “We found a floaty from nearby and floated her out … It was just a team effort getting her out of the water.”
Georgetown Day’s 2021 season ended in a way that both frustrates and inspires. The Grasshoppers lost a thrilling five-set match to Wilson (now Jackson-Reed) in the D.C. State Athletic Association championship game to close a 21-3 season.
Despite the bitter finish, it showed them how far they had come in recent years (in 2017, Georgetown Day lost a set 25-1 against St. John’s in a playoff game).
“We felt we had something more to prove,” said Coach Brandon Wiest, who also wants to help prove that Georgetown Day can be an athletic powerhouse.
The Grasshoppers graduated seven seniors but still boast strong pin hitters. Jada Aksu, a left-handed hitter and a sophomore, is a force on the right side, especially when paired with a set from junior Clara Yu, a Sidwell Friends transfer. Aksu and Yu have known each other since middle school and have developed strong chemistry on the court.
Senior captain Izzy Evers and outside hitters Zoe Ryu and Aaliyah Howell complete the core at Georgetown Day. | 2022-09-06T13:22:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In loaded Anne Arundel County, Crofton field hockey is ready to emerge - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/06/loaded-anne-arundel-county-crofton-field-hockey-is-ready-emerge/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/06/loaded-anne-arundel-county-crofton-field-hockey-is-ready-emerge/ |
Wildewood Landing offers new townhouses in St. Mary’s County, Md.
The community, part of the Wildewood master-planned neighborhood, is near where the Patuxent River meets the Chesapeake Bay
Wildewood Landing, part of the Wildewood master-planned neighborhood in St. Mary’s County, Md., has 67 townhouses. Prices start at $350,000 for the Bradford model. Prices start in the low-to-mid $300,000s for the Bernard model. (Benjamin C Tankersley/For The Washington Post)
For six years, Andrew Colon and his wife lived in a Stanley Martin townhouse in the Wildewood neighborhood in St. Mary’s County, Md. Now they live in another. While watching the development of Wildewood Landing, a new section of the master-planned community, they decided that one of its townhouses might be for them.
They visited a few, pondered the prices and decided to move forward.
“I like the somewhat small-town vibe,” Colon, 36, said. “It’s a heavily wooded area with lots of trees.”
Situated on 10 acres near where the Patuxent River meets the Chesapeake Bay, Wildewood Landing has 67 townhouses. The community is near the Patuxent Naval Air Base and about an hour from Washington, 75 minutes from Annapolis and 90 minutes from Baltimore.
Wildewood Landing townhouses come in two models: the Bradford and the Bernard. Forty-six are Bradfords and 21 are Bernards. Of the 40 units still available to buy, 33 are Bradfords and seven are Bernards.
Both types of townhouse have three levels, and the base models have three bedrooms, two full bathrooms and a powder room (half-bath). The Bradford, at 2,053 square feet, is all above ground. It is 22 feet wide and has a two-vehicle garage. Prices start at $350,000.
The Bernard, at 2,344 square feet, has an in-ground basement and two levels above ground. It is 20 feet wide and has no garage. A driveway can accommodate two vehicles. Prices start in the low-to-mid $300,000s.
On the first (entry) level, the Bradford base model comes with a finished recreation room and the two-vehicle garage. The open-plan main level has a great room, a kitchen, a dining room, a powder room and an attached deck. The upper level has three bedrooms and two full bathrooms. The owner’s bedroom has a large walk-in closet and an en suite bathroom with a double sink and an enclosed commode.
The Bernard base model has a lower-level recreation room. The open-plan main level has a great room, kitchen, powder room and attached deck. The upper level has three bedrooms and two full bathrooms, including an en suite owner’s bathroom with a double sink and a large shower.
The Colons chose the Bradford. Andrew Colon said they liked the Bradford’s dedicated dining room, tw0-car garage and larger deck.
Tashia C. Mack-Moye, general sales manager for Stanley Martin Homes, said what attracts buyers are “the price point and the feel” of the townhouses.
Exterior and interior colors vary. Units come with oak stairs and with luxury vinyl plank (looks like hardwood) floors, except in the bedrooms, which are carpeted.
The Stanley Martin design team selects a package of design features for some Bernard and Bradford townhouses, called Smart Selected homes. There is a set price for the design package, rather than a cost determined by buyers’ separate design choices. The move-in timeline for Smart Selected homes tends to be shorter, typically 60 to 90 days.
Amenities include community pools, miles of hiking and biking trails, baseball and soccer fields, tennis courts and playgrounds. The $130 monthly homeowners association fee includes access to amenities, lawn care, snow removal in common areas, and trash removal. The Wildewood Community Association Lodge is a meeting space that owners can rent for private events.
Schools: Evergreen Elementary, Esperanza Middle, Leonardtown High
Transit: This vehicle-oriented community is connected to the D.C. area by way of state routes 235 and 5, I-495 and I-95, among other highways.
Nearby: For shopping and dining, Wildewood Center, St. Mary’s Marketplace and First Colony Shopping Center are a few minutes away. And the area is served by a variety of grocery stores, including ALDI, Giant Food, Harris Teeter, Target Grocery and Walmart Supercenter. Historic St. Mary’s City is about 30 minutes away. Solomons Island, a popular weekend getaway, is about 10 minutes away. St. Mary’s State Park is a little more than 10 minutes from Wildewood, as is the member-supported, privately funded Patuxent River Naval Air Museum, which presents the history of naval aviation.
Wildewood Landing
44566 Nolani Way, California, Md.
Of the 40 townhouses still available to buy, 33 are Bradfords and seven are Bernards. Prices start at $350,000 for a Bradford, in the low to middle $300,000s for a Bernard.
Builder: Stanley Martin Homes
Features: Units have oak stairs. They have luxury vinyl plank floors, except in the bedrooms, which are carpeted. A 10-foot island seats six in the kitchen. A four-burner gas stove can be upgraded to five burners. The owner’s suite bathroom has two sinks.
Bedrooms/bathrooms: 3/2.5 (base models).
Square-footage: Bernard base model 2,344; Bradford base model 2,053.
View model: By appointment
Sales: 240-258-2012, maryland@stanleymartin.com | 2022-09-06T13:23:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Wildewood Landing offers new townhouses in St. Mary’s County, Md. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/06/buying-new-wildewood-landing/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/06/buying-new-wildewood-landing/ |
The therapy is the latest to raise questions about how the agency assesses drugs for devastating diseases, such as ALS and Alzheimer’s.
Steve Kowalski, center, who has ALS, poses with friends and family who participated in the 2018 Ride to Defeat ALS in Massachusetts. (Jarvis Chen)
Steven Kowalski is just 58 but feels decades older. He falls frequently, walks haltingly with leg braces and a cane and has lost most of his muscle mass. “I don’t even recognize my body in the mirror anymore,” he said.
Yet Kowalski, who has ALS, feels fortunate he has not declined more swiftly — something the Boston resident attributes to a do-it-yourself drug regimen using components of an experimental treatment dreamed up by Brown University undergraduates almost a decade ago.
Today, those former students run the Cambridge-based biotech company Amylyx that is seeking Food and Drug Administration approval for the treatment, known as AMX0035. And Kowalski and other ALS patients are flooding the federal agency with thousands of emails and personal testimonials pleading for its blessing for the drug.
The debate over the therapy is about to take center stage in the often-agonizing world of ALS, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a fatal illness that destroys nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. The degenerative disease typically paralyzes patients, robbing them of their ability to walk, talk and eventually breathe, often killing them within two to five years of diagnosis.
On Wednesday, the FDA is holding a rare, second meeting with a panel of independent experts to discuss the treatment, and is expected to make a decision on approval by Sept. 29. The agency has expressed skepticism about the drug and its single small clinical trial, as have those same advisers who voted narrowly against recommending approval in late March. On Friday, the FDA repeated many of its earlier concerns about the drug’s effectiveness, saying additional analyses submitted by the company were flawed and included no new information.
Nevertheless, ALS advocates hold out hope that the FDA will clear the treatment in the face of intense pressure from patients and their families. About 30,000 people in the United States have ALS, sometimes called “Lou Gehrig’s disease.” Another 6,000 are diagnosed every year. There are two FDA-approved therapies on the market but they have limited effectiveness. The last one was approved five years ago.
Skeptics of the drug warn that if the FDA approves AMX0035, it would be repeating the same mistake it made last year when it cleared a controversial Alzheimer’s drug that critics said had little data showing it worked. They say the agency should wait to approve the ALS drug until the manufacturer completes a larger trial with 600 patients in late 2023 or early 2024.
AMX0035 is the latest drug to land at the center of an intense debate over how the agency should handle potential therapies for devastating diseases, such as ALS and Alzheimer’s, that lack effective treatments. Faced with newly assertive patient communities with allies in Congress, the FDA has promised to be flexible in dealing with “unmet medical needs.”
But flexibility is hard to define, and the agency increasingly finds itself embroiled in highly charged debates that pit patients demanding access to drugs that might slow an implacable disease against the FDA’s mission to determine medicine’s safety and effectiveness. Often, the evidence is far from clear-cut.
“We don’t want the FDA to approve just anything, we don’t want to drink bleach,” said Brian Wallach, a former staffer in the Obama White House who was diagnosed with ALS five years ago at 37. Relying on an aide to “translate” his severely affected speech, he added, “We have done our homework and we know that this drug can help us.”
Wallach said that AMX0035, while not a cure, could slow the disease while serving as a building block for the kind of combination therapies used for cancer and HIV. That could give him more time to spend with his wife and two daughters, the youngest of whom was a week old when he was diagnosed, he said.
In 2019, Wallach and his wife, who met on the first presidential campaign of Barack Obama, founded I Am ALS, a politically connected advocacy organization that has pushed hard for more funding for ALS research and the approval of AMX0035.
Aduhelm’s shadow
The debate over AMX0035 recalls the FDA controversy over the Alzheimer’s drug, called Aduhelm. The agency approved the drug amid intense pressure from patients and their families, provoking a fierce backlash from critics. Medicare refused to cover the medicine for most patients and the drug collapsed in the marketplace.
Now, many ALS advocates and physicians worry that debacle could hurt AMX0035′s chances.
Jinsy Andrews, director of neuromuscular clinical trials at Columbia University and an investigator in the 600-patient Amylyx study, said there is plenty of evidence enabling the FDA to approve AMX0035 now. And she argues there are big differences between Aduhelm and AMX0035.
While many Alzheimer’s specialists opposed the approval of Aduhelm, the Amylyx drug has strong support from ALS physicians, she said. In addition, Aduhelm posed significant safety issues and its trials were ended prematurely because of a lack of efficacy, while AMX0035 is considered safe and reached its primary goal of slowing the decline of everyday functions, she said.
Those opposed to approval of AMX0035 now fear the FDA will clear another drug prematurely because of pressure from the ALS community. “Yes, people are suffering,” Michael Abrams, senior health researcher at Public Citizen, acknowledged. “But it doesn’t make it any better to give them crappy medications.”
Reshma Ramachandran, an assistant professor of medicine and health services researcher at Yale University, agreed. “I want the FDA to say, ‘Unless there is something very compelling, we are going to wait’ ” for the results of the larger study, she said.
The ALS medicine, the brainchild of Amylyx co-founders Joshua Cohen and Justin Klee, is made up of two components — an expensive prescription drug called sodium phenylbutyrate that is used to treat rare liver disorders and a nutritional supplement called taurursodiol — designed to protect neurons from destruction. The treatment comes in a powder that is dissolved in room-temperature water and drunk. It can also be administered through a feeding tube.
The development of AMX0035 was partly financed by the ALS Association, which put up $2.2 million from its “Ice Bucket Challenge.” Amylyx has agreed to use sales proceeds of the drug to repay the organization 150 percent of its investment, the ALS Association said.
Because sodium phenylbutyrate is already approved, doctors may prescribe it off label to ALS patients. That’s how Kowalski, the Boston ALS patient, gets it. He buys taurursodiol, also called TUDCA, on Amazon, in addition to taking the two ALS medications already approved by the FDA. Kowalski believes the combination is slowing his disease, though he acknowledges the illness affects different people in different ways.
Other ALS patients are pursuing similar DIY regimes. Wallach takes taurursodiol, which he imports from Italy. Both men said they want the FDA to approve the drug to provide access to everyone, and to ensure quality and insurance coverage.
The FDA declined to discuss AMX0035, saying it does not comment on drug applications. Amylyx said in a statement it is looking forward to Wednesday’s meeting of FDA advisers, adding, “We believe AMX0035 is an important potential new treatment in the fight against ALS, and we are working against the ALS clock and the ALS community does not have time to wait.”
Waiting is ‘a death sentence’
In 2017, Amylyx launched a 24-week clinical trial of AMX0035 involving 137 patients — with two-thirds getting the medication, and the rest receiving a placebo — at more than two dozen medical sites. The goal was to test the drug’s safety and its ability to slow a decline in essential functions such as walking, talking and cutting food.
Investigators concluded in fall 2020 that the drug was safe and slowed a worsening of the disease by 25 percent. A follow-on open-label study, in which all participants were offered the drug, showed that patients who received the treatment from the start of the trial lived a median of more than six months longer than those who did not.
Typically, the FDA expects drugmakers to submit “substantial evidence of effectiveness” provided by two well-designed clinical investigations. But the agency says a single trial may suffice if the study demonstrates a “clinically meaningful and statistically very persuasive effect” on extending survival or some other aspect of the disease. The agency also says it has the authority to be flexible in expediting treatments for life-threatening and severely debilitating illnesses.
In the spring of 2021, federal regulators told Amylyx it should not apply for approval until it completed the 600-patient study, sparking an outcry among ALS advocates. Five months later, the FDA changed its mind, giving Amylyx the green light to submit its application, which the company did last November. The FDA scheduled a meeting of its outside advisers on the application for late March of this year.
A few days before that session, the FDA issued a strikingly negative memo for its advisers. The AMX0035 data, it said, was “not exceptionally persuasive and there were analytical and interpretive issues,” including an inadequate accounting for deaths during the study. “The data may not be adequate to serve as a single study capable of providing substantial evidence of effectiveness,” the FDA said, urging Amylyx to keep moving ahead with its larger study.
During the March advisory committee meeting, ALS patients and their families pleaded for the drug’s approval. But the independent experts agreed with the FDA that the evidence of effectiveness was insufficient, voting 6 to 4 against recommending approval.
ALS doctors disputed criticisms of the trial and said many of their patients would be dead by the time the larger study was completed.
“Waiting two to three years for results of a second study is essentially a death sentence,” Merit E. Cudkowicz, chief of neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital, and Jeremy M. Shefner, a neurologist at the Barrow Neurological Institute, wrote in an editorial in April that sought to rebut the FDA’s arguments. The scientists were involved in the AMX0035 trials.
In May, Amylyx published new analyses of its data that concluded AMX0035 extended median survival several months longer than originally thought, delayed first hospitalizations and reduced severe complications.
In early June, the FDA postponed its deadline for deciding on AMX0035 to Sept. 29, saying it needed more time to evaluate the new analyses. Soon afterward, Canada cleared the drug on a conditional basis, meaning the medication can be sold, but the manufacturer will be required to confirm the treatment is beneficial based on the results from the 600-patient trial.
The FDA does not have a conditional approval process that is identical to Canada’s.
In July, the FDA decided to convene a second advisory committee meeting on the drug — the one scheduled for Wednesday — heartening the ALS community. But the mood darkened on Friday after the agency posted its latest memo for its advisers, expressing doubts about the new analyses and restating its concerns about the adequacy of the clinical trial.
On Twitter, Wallach urged his followers to send members of the advisory committee the editorial by Cudkowicz and Shefner and the FDA’s 2019 guidance on ALS drugs that talks about the importance of flexibility and patient input.
And in the interview, Wallach said it is time to change the dynamic of ALS. Over and over, he said, newly diagnosed patients hear the same thing: “ ‘There is no treatment, there is no cure.’ If this drug is approved, doctors will be able to say, ‘I don’t have a cure but I am starting to have treatments, and they are safe.’ ” | 2022-09-06T13:23:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Showdown over experimental ALS drug expected Wednesday before FDA advisers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/09/06/experimental-als-drug-amx0035-fda/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/09/06/experimental-als-drug-amx0035-fda/ |
Hillary Clinton greets a crowd at the official launch of her presidential campaign at a rally in New York on June 13, 2015. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
“All of a sudden, the White House gets alerted to these billboards that show me sitting down with, I thought, my legs together, but the way it’s shot, it’s sort of suggestive,” Clinton told CBS Evening News of the 1995 trip.
A Brazilian ad agency, having seen a press photo of Clinton sitting on a couch and wearing a skirt during her visit to the country, had used the picture in a lingerie campaign. “In this case, we want to say that daring women don’t mind letting their panties be seen,” Silvio Matos, the ad agency’s director, said at the time.
Clinton did mind. The former secretary of state and U.S. senator revealed in the interview broadcast on Sunday that her unintentional starring role in that ad led to perhaps her biggest sartorial decision — she started wearing pantsuits. And for the next 27 years, she kept wearing them, inextricably tying her public image to the outfit.
She and her supporters have come to embrace it. Her 2016 presidential campaign sold “The Everyday Pantsuit Tee,” a riff on the tuxedo T-shirt. On the back of the $30 shirt: “Pantsuit up.”
The description might have disappointed shoppers looking to re-create Clinton’s entire look: “Pantsuit bottoms not included.”
In early October 2016, about month before the presidential election in which Clinton would lose to Donald Trump, two women organized 170 dancers to stage a #Pantsuitpower flashmob at New York’s Union Square as a way of bringing “some kind of humanity to her campaign, because I think humanity and love and humor tend to get lost when we’re in the heat of all of this,” choreographer Celia Rowlson-Hall told The Post at the time.
‘Pantsuit Power’ flashmob video for Hillary Clinton: Two women, 170 dancers and no police
A couple weeks later, Clinton fan Libby Chamberlain launched a Facebook group “Pantsuit Nation” as a way to get other supporters to wear pantsuits when they voted. More than 1.9 million people joined the invite-only group in its first 2½ weeks of existence. Some of the older women in the group posted about having to push social boundaries earlier in their careers to even wear pantsuits at work instead of skirts, The Post reported at the time.
Not everyone was a fan of Clinton’s fashion. In 2011, Tim Gunn criticized her look, suggesting Clinton dressed like “she’s confused about her gender.” Gunn, a fashion consultant known for his role mentoring designers on “Project Runway,” said that, while he had great respect for Clinton’s intellect, he wished, as the nation’s chief diplomat, “she could send a stronger message about American fashion.”
That comment led one of Clinton’s top aides at the State Department, Cheryl Mills, to fire off an email with the subject line “Tim Gunn, talking smack …” In the body, Mills included a ThinkProgress article with the headline “Tim Gunn May Know Style, But He Doesn’t Know Hillary Clinton, Diplomacy, Or Apparently, Much About Sexism.”
Clinton’s choices have influenced fashion, according to a 2020 Marie Claire article “The Enduring Legacy of Hillary Clinton’s Style.” Nanette Burstein, director of the 2020 documentary “Hillary,” called her switch to pantsuits “a cultural shift.”
“Yes, she’s not the first woman to wear a pantsuit in politics, or any sort of professional setting, but she was the first to really embrace it in a way as ‘her uniform,’ ” Burstein said.
Clinton alluded to that decision in the CBS interview. The October 1995 trip came in the middle of her husband’s first term when she “began to have the experience of having photographers [around] all the time.” She was going up onstage. She was climbing stairs. And they were below her, snapping away. She decided to make it easy.
“I just couldn’t deal with it,” Clinton said, “so I started wearing pants.” | 2022-09-06T13:23:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hillary Clinton reveals why she started wearing her now-famous pantsuits - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/06/hillary-clinton-pantsuit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/06/hillary-clinton-pantsuit/ |
Ukraine live briefing: U.N. inspectors to issue nuclear plant report; E.U....
Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un pose for a photo during their meeting in Vladivostok, Russia, April 25, 2019. (Pool/Reuters)
As the war in Ukraine lurches toward the 200-day mark, Russia is turning to global pariah state North Korea to purchase Soviet-era weapons, according to a newly declassified U.S. intelligence report.
Moscow is preparing to buy “millions of rockets and artillery shells” from Pyongyang, a U.S. official told The Washington Post on Tuesday, speaking on the condition of anonymity about the declassified intelligence, which was first reported by the New York Times.
The move by Russia’s Defense Ministry indicates that “the Russian military continues to suffer from severe supply shortages in Ukraine, due in part to export controls and sanctions,” the official said. “We expect Russia could try to purchase additional North Korean military equipment going forward.”
In a protracted artillery war, finding ways to degrade Russia’s larger arsenal of rockets and missiles is also critical for Ukraine’s smaller army.
Both Russia and Ukraine are struggling to source artillery shells for Soviet-era weapons, with North Korea among the few places that still has a supply.
Russian state news agency Tass has previously reported that relations between Moscow and Pyongyang “are entering a golden age.” It cited a statement from the North Korean Foreign Ministry earlier this year, saying that the two nations were reaching “new strategic heights” and that North Korea “stands in solidarity with the Russian leadership’s fair actions aimed at eliminating political and military threats and blackmail by hostile powers.”
In July, North Korea was among a handful of countries, including Syria, to officially recognize as independent the Russian-backed breakaway Ukrainian states of Donetsk and Luhansk — a move denounced by Kyiv.
At the time, North Korean state media reported that its foreign minister had sent letters to the two eastern regions to express a “will to develop the state-to-state relations with those countries in the idea of independence, peace and friendship.” The Russian Embassy in North Korea also welcomed the move and support for what Moscow calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine. There have also been unconfirmed media reports that North Korea may send laborers to work in the breakaway regions.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Vladivostok, Russia, in 2019. Putin also visited Pyongyang in 2000, meeting with Kim’s father, Kim Jong Il. Since the war in Ukraine began in February, Pyongyang has been a vocal supporter and has drawn closer to Moscow, lambasting the United States and European Union.
A report published by North Korea this week accused the United States of being “hell-bent” on containing Russia and China. It charged that the United States is working with its ally South Korea to realize its strategy of “hegemony” in the region “by force of arms,” if necessary.
Moscow’s purchase of munitions “reveals Russia’s military plight” and a “relationship of increased convenience” between North Korea and Russia, Cliff Kupchan, chairman of the Eurasia Group think tank, told The Washington Post on Tuesday. It illustrates how “isolated” Russia is by turning to outlier states for “low-tech” weapons, he added.
Both Ukraine and Russia have “run down their stock of Soviet-era weapons, but Ukraine would not deal with North Korea,” Kupchan said.
“This is good for North Korea. Pyongyang is looking to diversify a bit away from China. They recognize their overdependence,” he said.
“The Chinese have been a complete no-show as far as the Russians are concerned,” he added, noting that the lack of military support from Beijing for the Ukraine war has pushed the Kremlin to look to Iran and North Korea for equipment.
Ukrainian forces may be looking on closely at the potential purchase by Russia and seeking to accelerate their shift away from older Soviet weapons and ammunition toward newer weapons supplied and manufactured by the United States and its allies.
Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said Tuesday that its Soviet-era weapons have “exhausted their potential” and that the country would be “switching to NATO standards.”
In a swipe at the Kremlin, it tweeted: “Those who are unable to transform to NATO standards, switch to North Korean standards: be it weapons, politics, standard of living.”
Biden pledges $3 billion in long-term military aid for Ukraine
In August, President Biden unveiled a $2.98 billion military package, on Ukraine’s Independence Day, in a signal of Washington’s long-term backing of its defense against the Russian invasion. The package includes more artillery, drones, radar and air defenses and commits six additional surface-to-air missile systems and hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition for the howitzers and mortars in use on the battlefield. Counter-drone weapons known as Vampires will also be provided for the first time.
“The United States of America is committed to supporting the people of Ukraine as they continue the fight to defend their sovereignty,” Biden said in a statement.
“I don’t think that it’s unusual that they are cooperating with each other,” he said, “but it is unusual that Russia has to resort to buying weapons from North Korea. That means their supplies are really constrained.” He also suggested that this could be because Moscow has struggled to get the weapons it needs from elsewhere.
“It seems to me that it’s an option of last resort, like the recent report of Iranian drones,” said Pardo, a professor of international relations at King’s College London, referring to Russia’s apparent weapons purchase from Iran.
North Korea has been among a handful of nations to support Russia diplomatically over its invasion, with little to fear for repercussions, as “it’s already very heavily sanctioned,” he added.
The revelations about North Korea come weeks after Russian cargo planes collected at least two types of Iranian-made combat drones, U.S. officials said last month, underscoring deepening ties between Moscow and Tehran and highlighting Russia’s struggles to supply its overstretched military.
The initial delivery of the Mohajer-6 and Shahed-series drones to Moscow in August is believed to be the first installment of a planned transfer of hundreds of Iranian unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) of various types, Biden administration officials said.
“In the face of combat losses, it is likely that Russia is struggling to maintain stocks of UAVs, exacerbated by component shortages resulting from international sanctions,” Britain’s Defense Ministry said Tuesday in a daily intelligence update on the war. “The limited availability of reconnaissance UAVs is likely degrading commanders’ tactical situational awareness and increasingly hampering Russian operations,” it added.
Amar Nadhir contributed to this report. | 2022-09-06T14:05:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Russia buying weapons from North Korea, United States intelligence says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/06/north-korea-russia-weapons-ukraine/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/06/north-korea-russia-weapons-ukraine/ |
Jeanine Kunkel, with her father, Troy Kunkel, at home in Sioux city, Iowa. (Terry A. Ratzlaff/for The Washington Post)
Parents aren’t adequately warned about the risks of cronobacter, say food safety experts. ‘I fed my daughter like I was supposed to,' said Megan Surber, whose child is now disabled.
The newborn had developed an infection — caused, her doctors said, by ingesting formula tainted with the bacteria Cronobacter sakazakii. The infection led to a severe case of meningitis that caused irreparable brain damage. Jeanine’s family sued the formula maker, Abbott Laboratories, arguing the company was responsible for her illness, but a jury found the company not liable. The company’s lawyers dredged up incidents from the family’s past and argued that the bacteria could have come from anywhere, including the family kitchen.
Jeanine’s situation is rare, but not isolated. Federal regulators and food safety experts have long been troubled by powdered formula’s ability to harbor cronobacter — a bacteria that is harmless for most but can be debilitating or deadly for newborns and others with weak immune systems. The Food and Drug Administration requires formula makers to inspect for cronobacter and have urged neonatal intensive care units to avoid powdered formula.
But information about the risk of cronobacter infections is not trickling down to parents of healthy, full-term babies, who remain vulnerable to infection until about 2 or 3 months, according to experts. New parents are often sent home from the hospital with free samples of powdered formula — and they are rarely urged toward what food safety experts say is a safer and widely available alternative: sterile, ready-to-drink formula sealed at the factory.
“The FDA, CDC and companies know the [powdered] product is not sterile, but moms and dads do not,” said Bill Marler, an attorney who specializes in foodborne illness outbreaks. They “are putting the burden of making this product safe on the consumer before it is fed to their baby.”
How corporate consolidation and deadly bacteria led to the formula shortage
After the incident, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed its website to warn in conspicuous blue highlighting that “powdered formula is not sterile and might have germs in it. Powdered infant formula can be contaminated in homes or in processing facilities that make it.” The agency said in a statement the adjustment was made in part “to emphasize to parents and caregivers the risks associated with powdered infant formula. We also wanted to raise awareness of the different ways powdered infant formula can become contaminated, and reinforce that infants at highest risk of cronobacter infection might benefit from receiving liquid formula, which is sterile.”
In statements to The Washington Post, the three main U.S. formula makers said they rigorously test for cronobacter before their products leave the factory, often exceeding FDA regulations. The companies — Abbott Nutrition, Reckitt’s Mead Johnson and Nestlé’s Gerber, which together control the majority of the market — voluntarily add warnings to cans of powdered formula noting the product is not sterile and urging guidance from a doctor.
“My life is her. I was pushed into that life,” her mother, Megan Surber, said in an interview from her home in Sioux City, Iowa.
Surber said she is sometimes haunted by the suggestion that her daughter’s illness was a result of the lack of cleanliness in her kitchen, or neglect in safely preparing the formula.
“It completely changed me to where I question everything now. Am I good enough? Is this right? Is this wrong?" she said. “I know I did right. I know I did everything. I fed my daughter like I was supposed to. I made it the way I was supposed to.”
Rare but dangerous
Asked about the Kunkel case and that of Slade Sisk, who was also sickened by formula as an infant in 2004, Abbott said it sympathized with the families. “We know that cronobacter is ubiquitous in the environment, including in peoples’ homes,” spokesman John Koval said in a statement. “In both of these cases, after a complete trial in which evidence related to those unfortunate instances was heard, these juries found us not responsible — and they did so based on the facts: that the pathogen came from some other source that wasn’t our product.”
Cronobacter infections are rare, and the vast majority of exposed children will never become ill. Since 2002, the CDC has received 76 reports of cronobacter cases in infants, the agency said. This is likely an undercount, food safety experts say, because health-care providers aren’t required to report cases to the government, as they are with salmonella.
Whistleblower report on baby formula didn’t reach top FDA food safety official
“Because cronobacter is not a nationally notifiable disease, the number of cronobacter infections in the U.S. is not fully known,” said Robert Tauxe, director the CDC’s foodborne, waterborne and environmental diseases division.
While federal regulators have enacted policies aimed at protecting preemies and other babies in intensive care, less is done to warn parents of other newborns. All babies under 2 months are at risk because of their underdeveloped immune systems, said Russell Merritt, director of the intestinal rehabilitation program at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and a former Abbott Nutrition medical director.
“Infants are born with an immature immune system,” he said. “In the first couple of months of life, we’re still looking at a baby who does not have a totally competent immune system.”
“They are very good or even excellent at surviving at low water activity,” he said.
The bacteria can also make its way into formula at any point of preparation, including in home and day care kitchens, which makes it difficult to track the source or hold people or companies accountable for outbreaks.
U.S. officials began to reconsider the safety of powdered formula after the United States’ first known cronobacter outbreak, in 2001, when eight babies were sickened and another died at a Tennessee hospital after being fed formula prepared from a powder made by Mead Johnson, according to the CDC. Infant formula producers were not checking for the bacteria in their factories at the time, the FDA said. A subsequent FDA investigation found that nearly a quarter of the powdered formulas available on American store shelves and in health-care settings contained cronobacter.
During a 2003 meeting at U.S. Department of Agriculture offices in Riverdale, Md., an Abbott representative acknowledged to FDA and CDC officials that cronobacter had proven to be “a little bit more ubiquitous” in the powdered formula production process than previously thought, according to a transcript obtained by The Post. Representatives of all three major companies said there was no way to sterilize the powder. The discussion led to an FDA requirement that every batch of powdered infant formula be tested for cronobacter and salmonella, an FDA spokeswoman said.
At the time, most mothers were permitted by their states to buy only powdered formula, rather than the sterile liquid. Agency scientists proposed that the federal WIC program expand the number of “neonates,” or newborns, allowed to use benefits to purchase sterile liquid formula. But the proposal did not advance, largely because liquid formula is more expensive and it would drive up the cost for state WIC programs and families, said one scientist present.
“Everyone was concerned about infants’ safety, but the cost was a real factor. There was also a little concern about the potential stigmatization of powdered formula,” the scientist recently told The Post on the condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak publicly on the subject.
Many parents don’t know to ask for sterile liquid formula, the scientist said, because medical professionals don’t push it.
“I’m a pediatrician and in medical school got extremely little education about formula and how to prepare it and the risks and benefits,” the scientist said. “I believe there is a very large gap across pediatric and obstetric education, and in talking to mothers about how to feed their infants.”
WIC recipients purchase the majority of the nation’s supply of baby formula, according to USDA estimates. The program had 6.2 million women and children in the program last year, including 1.5 million infants. Many state WIC programs require a doctor’s note or special permission from a WIC agent to get sterile liquid formula.
Inconsistent warnings
The United States is one of the few nations that has not signed on to the World Health Organization’s Code of Marketing Breast-Milk Substitutes. The code calls for a prohibition of free formula samples at hospitals, among other marketing limits. It also says the water used to reconstitute powdered formula should be heated to 158 degrees Fahrenheit (70 degrees Celsius), about the temperature of very hot coffee, to kill pathogens like cronobacter.
The FDA requires powdered U.S. formula labels to contain warning language such as “the health of your infant depends on carefully following the directions for preparation and use,” though most manufacturers go further than that.
“Many manufacturers’ labels voluntarily note that infant formula is not sterile and should not be used by premature infants or infants suffering from immune problems unless directed to do so by a physician,” the Infant Nutrition Council of America, a formula industry lobbying group, said in a statement.
Minnesota is the only state where cronobacter is a reportable pathogen — meaning when it is identified by doctors or laboratories, it must be reported to the state, which must then notify the CDC. Minnesota officials discovered the first infection of the 2021 cluster and reported it to the FDA. That led the CDC, clinicians and state and local health departments to exchange information to turn up other cases in Texas and Ohio.
Since Minnesota started keeping track in 2003, the state has logged one to three cronobacter cases per year, compared with about 800 cases of salmonella, according to the state Department of Health — a relatively tiny number that Wiertzema of Post Consumer Brands said has dampened efforts in other states to require reporting.
“More and more we’re now seeing these little outbreaks, and you shouldn’t even say little outbreaks,” he said. “Food scientists, microbiologists, we don’t even want one death.”
A disease or pathogen becomes “nationally notifiable” when CDC, state officials and the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists, a nonprofit organization, jointly determine it should be added to the list of roughly 120 others. The CSTE said it is not considering any formal proposals to make cronobacter reportable, despite a push by advocacy groups including Stop Foodborne Illness, Consumer Reports and Environmental Working Group.
“We need to do a better job on the easy part — warning consumers what could make them sick,” said Teresa Murray, consumer watchdog director for the Public Interest Research Group.
Gerber and Mead Johnson did not respond to questions about whether they support cronobacter reportability. In a statement, Abbott said, depending on the details of the proposal, “we support increased awareness around cronobacter as a notifiable disease.”
Devastated families
The elusive quality of the bacteria can also make it difficult to pin down the source of an infection, leaving families to bear the blame for their children’s illnesses in court.
In 2012, Abbott lawyers deposed Megan Surber for seven hours, asking how she prepared Jeanine’s formula and about the cleanliness of her kitchen. They also asked about a past shoplifting offense and outstanding debt. And they asked her husband about his past substance abuse and his arrest record from a troubled youth.
“I was so tired,” Surber recalled of her deposition. “The questions kept coming and coming, and it didn’t have nothing to do with [my daughter]. And every question was twisted into the same question over and over again, waiting for me to change my story, waiting for me to screw up.”
After Abbott won the case, Abbott’s attorney sought $28,468.88 in attorneys’ fees and trial costs from Surber and her family. The judge ordered Abbott to pay for its own expenses.
Kimberly Sisk’s 18-year-old son Slade contracted spinal meningitis from cronobacter when he was 3 weeks old, leaving him with spastic quadriplegia, a severe type of cerebral palsy, and epilepsy. Sisk sued Abbott for negligence in 2014 in federal court in Asheville, N.C.
“On the stand they asked me all kinds of questions: Did I live near a farm? Had anyone in my household had the flu? Did I clean my bottles well enough?” Sisk said.
The jury found for Abbott, concluding that it was not negligent in the manufacture of the infant formula Slade consumed. But to this day, Sisk is convinced the pathogen wasn’t introduced in her home.
“I have OCD. I clean houses for a living,” she said. “I was meticulous about preparing those bottles.” | 2022-09-06T14:14:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The fight to keep cronobacter out of powdered baby formula - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/06/cronobacter-sakazakii-bacteria-baby-formula/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/06/cronobacter-sakazakii-bacteria-baby-formula/ |
Cronobacter infections are rare, but there are ways to minimize the risk further.
Olivia Godden prepares a bottle of baby formula for her infant son, Jaiden, Friday, May 13, 2022, at her home in San Antonio. Godden has reached out to family and friends as well as other moms through social media in efforts to locate needed baby formula which is in short supply. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
Millions of babies around the world get 100 percent of their daily nutrition from reconstituted powdered formula. Yet, experts differ on what level of precaution is necessary to prepare it safely.
To kill pathogens such as Cronobacter sakazakii, the World Health Organization says to boil water, cool it to no less than 158 degrees Fahrenheit (70 Celsius) in a sterilized feeding cup or bottle, then add the exact amount of formula as instructed on the formula label. The American Association of Pediatrics says to boil and cool the water for about 5 minutes before mixing with formula when feeding it to babies under 3 months, those born prematurely and others with weak immune systems. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says formula “does not need to be warmed before feeding” but suggests boiling and cooling water if contamination is a concern for infants with weak immune systems or those under 2 months.
The reason for these discrepancies, said David Berger, medical director of Wholistic Pediatrics & Family Care in Tampa and an American Association of Pediatrics member, is often a matter of geography.
The fight to keep a little-known bacteria out of baby formula
“Part of this conversation is that the WHO and UNICEF are taking care of people in developing countries where there aren’t always safe water supplies,” he said. In the United States, pediatricians and feeding experts are more worried about scalding accidents or boiling water destroying some of the nutrient value of a formula’s probiotics or added vitamins.
But cronobacter in formula has occasionally sickened and killed babies in the United States. As a result, many pediatricians and food safety experts say the safest options for young and vulnerable babies is breastfeeding or giving them sterile liquid formula that comes in pre-sealed, ready-to-feed bottles from the factory.
If using powdered formula, “the key issue is this: For infants under 3 months of age, those who were born prematurely and those who have a weakened immune system, hot water should be used to prepare formula to kill any microbes,” said Steven Abrams, a doctor and professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Dell Medical School at University of Texas at Austin.
“Some groups, including the WHO, tend to choose to keep the water still hot rather than cooling. This helps kill any bacteria, like cronobacter, in the powder, but both the Food and Drug Administration and the CDC do not see this as necessary routinely, and allow the water to cool so as to decrease the risk of burns,” Abrams said.
Parents trying to find baby formula are getting scammed
Experts agree on other best practices for keeping formula — and any product fed to babies — safe.
Wash your hands before preparing a bottle, said Melissa Glassman, medical director of New York Presbyterian’s Newborn Clinic and its Outpatient Breastfeeding Support Program. She suggests washing bottles and nipples with hot soapy water every single time, leaving them on the counter to air-dry upside down in a clean space or a dedicated drying rack just for the infant feeding items, making sure that water doesn’t pool at the bottom of bottles.
She says for vulnerable babies, extra precautions can be taken and bottles and equipment can be boiled on top of the stove or run through the dishwasher in the top rack.
The Mayo Clinic says you can use any type of clean water — tap or bottled. If you’re concerned about the purity of your water supply or the condition of your pipes, many public water systems will test drinking water upon request. If you use well water, the Mayo Clinic suggests boiling it for about one minute and cooling it to body temperature (that’s 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit or 37 degrees Celsius).
Glassman said that parents are sometimes confused and think that bottled water eliminates the possibility of pathogens such as cronobacter.
What to do if you can’t find baby formula
“Parents think it’s the water, not a potential pathogen in the formula itself, so that if they use bottled water they think they’re good,” she said.
The Mayo Clinic says discard remaining formula at the end of each feeding if it has been more than an hour from the start of a feeding. Resist the urge to refrigerate a bottle once you have fed your baby from it, since bacteria from your baby’s mouth can still multiply in the refrigerator.
On the other hand, said Berger, freshly prepared bottles are good in the refrigerator for 24 hours.
“Don’t be mixing up your bottles at 3 a.m.,” he said, when caregivers might be addled and more prone to making mistakes. “You can make up eight bottles at once and keep them refrigerated, then let each one come up to room temperature.” One way to gently heat the prepared bottle is to place it into a cup or saucer of hot water.
Store unopened infant formula containers in a cool, dry, indoor place — not in vehicles, garages, or outdoors, according to the CDC. Do not store it in the refrigerator or anyplace that has significant fluctuations in temperature, like near a window or on top of a microwave, Berger said.
Most infant formulas need to be used within one month of opening the container, though caregivers should check the label. The CDC suggests that when you first open a new container, write the date on the lid to help you remember. | 2022-09-06T14:14:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Experts weigh in on how to safety prepare powdered infant formula - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/06/infant-formula-safety-cronobacter/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/06/infant-formula-safety-cronobacter/ |
Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus (519-430 B.C.), a Roman aristocrat who was mythologized as a model of civic virtue, is depicted in a woodcut engraving heading back to Rome from his farm. (ZU_09/Getty Images)
LONDON — “Like Cincinnatus, I am returning to my plow,” Boris Johnson said Tuesday from a lectern outside Number 10 Downing Street during his final speech as Britain’s prime minister before traveling to Scotland to tender his resignation to the queen.
The comparison elicited much confusion on social media, with Google searches for “Cincinnatus” immediately spiking around 7:34 a.m. local time, in the middle of Johnson’s speech, before returning to a level more commonly expected for a Roman statesman from over 2,500 years ago.
So, who is Cincinnatus, and why is Johnson, a 21st-century politician and student of classics, comparing himself to him?
In the 5th century B.C., the Roman Republic was in conflict with the Aequi tribe of Italy. Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus was a former Roman consul, a kind of temporary elected leader, who had turned to farming after his time in politics.
In “History of Rome,” the historian Livy writes that the leaders of Rome approached Cincinnatus and begged him to save the city from invasion. The legend goes that he stopped plowing his field, put on a toga, and returned to the city. He was appointed sole dictator of Rome in 458 B.C. — a rare position with emergency powers — and led an effort to save Roman soldiers trapped by the forces of Aequi on Mount Algidus.
He defeated the forces of Aequi, then gave up power after just 15 days and returned to his farm. For this reason, he is held up as a model of political restraint and virtue. George Washington was compared to Cincinnatus because he also answered the call to serve, and defeated the British, before voluntarily giving up power after two terms as president.
The city of Cincinnati in Ohio is — indirectly — named after Cincinnatus. In 1790, the governor of the region that includes modern-day Ohio named the city after the Society of the Cincinnati, formed by officers from the Continental Army to commemorate the war for American independence. The society’s members called themselves “Cincinnati,” the plural form of Cincinnatus.
While details of the Cincinnatus story are disputed by historians and classicists, many argue that it is the message that is important — good leaders are prepared to give up power for the good of the republic.
How many lockdown parties did Boris Johnson and staff attend? Here’s a guide.
Johnson has referred to Cincinnatus more than once over the course of his political career. In 2009, when he was mayor of London, Johnson said in an interview that he could not “foresee the circumstances” under which he would be called on to become prime minister. (He became prime minister 10 years later.) But, he said at the time, “if, like Cincinnatus, I were to be called from my plough, then obviously it would be wrong of me not to help out.”
Leaving aside the question of whether Johnson’s time at Number 10 — which has been marred by numerous scandals and official investigations — earns him a spot on the same leadership bench as Washington, Cincinnatus “is a supremely bad example for Boris to have chosen” in that 2009 interview, argued Charlotte Higgins, the Guardian’s chief culture writer, in a piece at the time.
“The point of Cincinnatus is that he is not a career politician charming his way around the dinner parties of Rome by night and cutting deals with the great and the good by day,” Higgins wrote. “He is a practical man with an honest, backbreaking job outside politics who just gets on with the task in hand with minimum fuss.”
The statesman’s story doesn’t end with his victory over the Aequi and subsequent resignation. Cincinnatus is said to have returned to Rome in 439 B.C., when he was asked to serve as dictator for a second time to address concerns that the wealthy Roman Spurius Maelius was laying the groundwork to become king by hoarding wheat to secure the support of the plebeians, or common people. While historians largely believe this is the stuff of legends, some political observers interpreted Johnson’s reference to Cincinnatus in his farewell speech as a sign that he would one day be back.
“This is not the speech of a departing prime minister who necessarily thinks he’s going away forever. And he’s enough of a classics scholar to know, in comparing himself with Cincinnatus leaving for his farm, that when the call came Cincinnatus returned to Rome,” Scottish journalist Andrew Neil tweeted.
On social media, some highlighted a less rosy aspect of Cincinnatus’ story — his opposition to expanded rights for plebeians.
“One thing you have to know about Cincinnatus is that he was a well-known enemy of the people,” Mary Beard, a professor of classics at the University of Cambridge, told Times Radio Tuesday. “He did not wish to give people their due rights. He was an absolute elitist Roman patrician — in our terms, he was dead right-wing.”
“That’s where I wonder how far Johnson had thought through all the implications of the story of Cincinnatus,” Beard added. | 2022-09-06T14:22:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Who is Cincinnatus from Boris Johnson's last speech as prime minister? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/06/cincinnatus-boris-johnson-roman-statesman/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/06/cincinnatus-boris-johnson-roman-statesman/ |
Textile Museum showcases Korean fashion, old and new
‘From Royal Court to Runway’ features traditional garb and streetwear at George Washington University
Installation view of the exhibition "Korean Fashion: From Royal Court to Runway" at the George Washington University Museum and the Textile Museum, including examples of traditional high-cropped women’s jackets. (William Atkins/George Washington University) (Photo by William Atkins/the George Washington University)
There’s a reason the examples of 15th-century clothing look so glamorous in “Korean Fashion: From Royal Court to Runway,” at the George Washington University Museum and the Textile Museum. The sleekly tailored and gold-embellished outfits are actually costumes from the 2011 hit South Korean TV series “The Princess’s Man,” a period romance that took some liberties with traditional Korean garb. The actual historical items in the show are subtler, but no less interesting.
Those dubiously accurate get-ups aside, “Korean Fashion” covers a little more than a century of the nation’s apparel. The oldest items are royal and aristocratic garments that were exhibited at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. (Like many objects shown at that event, they then entered the collection of the institution that became the Field Museum.) It was the first time that Korea, known from 1392 to 1897 as “the hermit kingdom,” participated in a world’s fair.
At the time, Korea upheld the strict proprieties of neo-Confucianism, so extravagant clothing and self-expressive fashion were not acceptable. Korean clothing, known as hanbok, denoted social status, but did so discreetly. Colors were muted and adornment was rare. More prominent people distinguished themselves with the sumptuous quality and elegant detailing of their hand-woven and hand-assembled attire.
Although Korea is culturally very close to neighboring China and Japan, hanbok is singular. Its distinctive items include billowing skirts, black stovepipe hats and women’s jackets cropped so high that they’re little more than sleeves. Of the 19th-century apparel in this selection, the pieces that look most like the clothing of Korea’s neighbors are ornate bridal robes embroidered with images of flowers.
If the 1893 expo was the first time Korea displayed hanbok to the world, it was also something of a last stand for the nation’s traditional clothing. In 1895, the country’s officials switched to Western garb, and hanbok became reserved for special occasions, as the show’s curator, Lee Talbot, notes. (A more wrenching transition came in 1905, when Korea began the transition into being a colony of imperial Japan, which imposed its culture and language.)
The top floor of this two-story exhibition is devoted to the modern era, notable for hallyu, the “Korean wave” of entertainment and fashion that surged beyond South Korea’s borders. Two video screens document recent K-pop performers and today’s youthful streetwear, respectively, while a third offers a quick-cut history of South Korean fashion from the end of the Korean War to the 1990s. This includes photos of an official police crackdown on long hair for men and short skirts for women during the 1970s.
Among the more recent objects are 1980s hanbok-style togs for children — made in bright hues, because such colors are supposed to protect kids from evil — and hanbok-inspired contemporary school uniforms. There’s a quilted jacket designed by Julie Lee, an American woman who in 1959 married one of Korea’s last crown princes, and sleek dresses by Nora Noh, South Korea’s first major postwar woman designer.
Another dress on display was devised in the 1990s by the designer known as Icinoo (a phonetic contraction of Lee Shin-woo), one of the first South Koreans to present a collection in Paris. It’s traditional not in outline but in material: hanji, or handmade Korean paper.
Also on exhibit are examples of bojagi, which is made of colorfully decorated fabric but not meant for wearing. The decorated wrapping cloths, which have been produced in Korea for at least 600 years, are used to package gifts and for various other ritual purposes. The show includes some examples of updated recent bojagi, as well as a bojagi-inspired dress crafted in 2016 by the German designer Karl Lagerfeld, longtime creative director of Chanel. That striking gown represents Korea’s long journey from hermit kingdom to global fashion trendsetter.
Korean Fashion: From Royal Court to Runway
George Washington University Museum and Textile Museum, 701 21st St. NW. museum.gwu.edu. | 2022-09-06T14:49:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | GWU's Textile Museum showcases Korean fashion, old and new - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/09/13/textile-museum-korean-fashion/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/09/13/textile-museum-korean-fashion/ |
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA - AUGUST 25: Vassiliadis Elementary School fourth grader Dustin Wiener, 9, takes an online reading class on the first week of distance learning for the Clark County School District amid the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) on August 25, 2020 in Las Vegas, Nevada. CCSD, the fifth-largest school district in the United States with more than 315,000 students, decided to start the school year with a full-time distance education instructional model as part of its Reopening Our Schools Plan due to health and safety concerns over the pandemic. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images) (Photographer: Ethan Miller/Getty Images North America)
True, during the 1918 flu pandemic, early closures of schools and helped reduce the rate of spread. But those shutdowns typically lasted two to eight weeks.(1)
True, contrary to some reports early in the pandemic, small children can spread the disease to adults, most likely due to our understandable tendency to cuddle our toddlers when they’re sick. But at least among adults under 65 who live with children, the increased risk of hospitalization is small, and there is no increase in the likelihood of Covid-related death.(2)
I’m not saying that no closures were necessary; I’m saying that we never had a thoughtful public debate over how much and how long. Kamenetz notes that the US was “the only wealthy country that in no way prioritized its schools for reopening, losing more cumulative learning days than any other” — a fact of which we should be ashamed. In a series of vignettes, she catalogues the harms suffered by young people as a result of our wrong choices. If blaming someone is important, pick your favorite villain: Donald Trump, the CDC, the teachers unions, the news media, the reds or the blues. And when we’re done with that exercise, we can concentrate on what actually matters: How to avoid making the same mistakes again.
• Online Schooling Is a Bad Idea That Refuses to Die: Andrea Gabor
• Remote Learning Can Be a Lot Better: The Editors
• Remote Schooling’s Perverse Social Divide: Justin Fox
• Stop the Cruel Experiments With Kids’ Education: Andreas Kluth
(1) Late closures had little or no effect.
(2) For those over 65 who live with small children, the data are more equivocal. | 2022-09-06T14:49:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Closing Schools Should Be the Last Option in a Pandemic - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/closing-schools-should-be-the-last-option-in-a-pandemic/2022/09/06/2f4202dc-2de8-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/closing-schools-should-be-the-last-option-in-a-pandemic/2022/09/06/2f4202dc-2de8-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html |
California’s inland and valley regions are seeing unprecedented September temperatures over 110 degrees, while the state’s power grid is near the brink
Amid 112 degree heat, Angel Martinez uses her remaining water to cool off at her encampment with Jerry Fullington along in Santa Rosa, Calif. Monday. (Kent Porter/AP)
California’s Independent System Operator (ISO) says the state’s electric grid is under heavy strain and that rotating outages could occur unless consumers reduce their energy use even more than they have since the heat wave began a week ago.
“This is an extraordinary heat event we are experiencing, and the efforts by consumers to lean in and reduce their energy use after 4 p.m. are absolutely essential,” said Elliot Mainzer, California ISO’s president and CEO, in a news release. The agency, which declared an energy emergency alert, is predicting an all-time historic high demand of 51,033 Megawatts Tuesday afternoon, surpassing their previous record of 50,270 Megawatts on July 24, 2004.
The ISO is urging residents to “pre-cool” their homes to 72 degrees Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, and then turning the thermostat to 78 degrees during peak demand hours between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. It has called for such reductions on seven straight days.
The heat is historic for both its duration and intensity, evidenced by long-standing monthly and all-time records that continue to be toppled. In Sacramento, the downtown district got to 113 degrees Monday, just a degree below an all-time record set on July 17, 1975 and four degrees hotter than the previous September record. Records there date back to 1877.
On Tuesday afternoon, Sacramento is expected to jump to 115 degrees, which would be both a monthly and all-time record as well as only the 11th time in the past 145 years that the city made it to 112 degrees or higher. Fairfield, Calif., on the northeast side of the Bay Area, set an all-time record Monday of 117 degrees.
Maximiliano Herrera, a world weather historian, called this the “worst September heat wave in Western USA history” on Twitter over the weekend.
Red flag warnings — connoting dangerous fire weather — encapsulate the entirety of Montana in addition to Idaho’s Columbia River Basin, much of Oregon and northern and eastern Washington.
A number of large wildfires have erupted over the last week in California, Oregon, Idaho and Montana. The fast-moving Mill Fire, which erupted on Friday in northern California, killed two people and injured three.
Hottest weather yet possible for some on Tuesday
The heat will reach a blistering crescendo into Tuesday as a stagnant high pressure “heat dome” crests overhead. It’s been fending off clouds and rain and diverting the jet stream north into Canada. Beneath it, sinking air and unrelenting sunshine are delivering some of the hottest weather ever observed in the Golden State.
Outside of deserts, the worst of it has been focused in California’s Central Valley. The National Weather Service is explicitly forecasting Sacramento to reach an all-time record high of 115 degrees on Tuesday. In addition to being an all-time record, it would also obliterate what until Monday had been Sacramento’s monthly record for September of 109 degrees.
Some places in the Central Valley could approach 118 degrees.
“Still looking like the ongoing record-setting heat wave will peak today, but dangerous heat will likely persist through the end of the week,” wrote the Weather Service office in Sacramento Tuesday.
The heat traces the spine of California down to the Bay Area and southern California too. San Francisco is expected to hit 99 degrees on Tuesday. While staggeringly hot, Sept. 6, 2020 was hotter by three degrees. Regardless, it’s still two dozen degrees hotter than the average of 75.
Los Angeles will spend the next few days in the mid to upper 80s, but should peak around 90 on Friday. Keep in mind that’s at the airport though — just a few miles inland, highs will hover around 100 to 105 degrees.
Death Valley, Calif. has hit 124 degrees three times in the past five days. It could flirt with 126 on Tuesday, which would tie a world record for September.
The heat has been spilling east too, bringing toasty weather to Denver with record highs in the upper 90s to near 100 projected through Thursday. Salt Lake City — which has set a September record of 104 on Monday — will continue to hover in the low 100s.
The heat will begin to gradually ease on Thursday. Temperatures closer to average will return to much of California over the weekend, although temperatures will remain somewhat above normal over the Pacific Northwest and Northern Rockies.
Climate change connection
While extreme heat events are not caused by climate change, human influence on our atmosphere is making them more frequent, intense and prolonged. It propels already high-end outlier events into record territory.
Breaking records by large margins, the heat wave bears shades of the unprecedented events that torched the Pacific Northwest in June of 2021 and the United Kingdom in July, both of which scientists concluded would have been virtually impossible with human-caused climate change.
Stateside, over the past week, more than 1,141 warm weather records have been set in the U.S. compared to just 36 cold records. If climate change wasn’t a factor, these extremes would roughly balance out.
From California to Montana, hundreds of heat records have been set since Aug. 30, and dozens more are in jeopardy over the coming days.
In addition to calendar day records, multiple locations have set monthly records and even all-time records (the warmest temperature observed in any month). We highlight some of the of most significant here:
Downtown Sacramento set a September record high of 113 Monday, just one degree shy of its all-time high of 114 from July 17, 1925. Stockton (112), Vacaville (115) and Marysville (113) also set September record highs in California’s Central Valley.
Fairfield, Calif., about 40 miles northeast of San Francisco, set an all-time high of 117 degrees Monday — three degrees above the previous record. Livermore set an all-time high of 116.
Salt Lake City has broken its previous September record high three times over the past week. It hit 104 on Monday, 103 Saturday and 102 Thursday. The previous monthly record was 100. It has hit at least 100 five times this month. Before 2022, it had only done so three times during September dating to 1928.
Reno, Nev. set a September record high of 104 on Sunday, after tying the previous monthly record of 102 on Friday.
Burbank, Calif. matched its all-time warmest low temperature on Sunday, only dropping to 82 degrees. Last Wednesday, it set an August record high temperature of 112.
Casper, Wyo. set a September record high of 100 Sunday.
On Saturday, the low temperature in Death Valley of 102 degrees tied the highest minimum temperature ever recorded worldwide during September. Death Valley has topped 120 degrees on seven straight days, setting calendar day records of 123 on Wednesday, 124 on Thursday, 124 on Friday, 122 on Saturday, and 124 on Sunday. It has established a new September record for most days reaching at least 120.
On Saturday many locations in Mountain West set September record highs, including Great Falls (102), Bozeman (10o) and Butte (96) in Montana and Pocatello (102) and Idaho Falls (99) in Idaho. | 2022-09-06T14:49:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Historic, unforgiving western heat wave is peaking and crushing records - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/06/western-heatwave-california-records-climate/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/06/western-heatwave-california-records-climate/ |
FILE - NBA basketball player Stephen Curry, of the Golden State Warriors, arrives at the ESPY Awards in Los Angeles on July 20, 2022. Curry has a new children’s book “I Have a Superpower.” (Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)
NEW YORK — On nearly every basketball court around the world —from NBA arenas to elementary school gyms — you’ll see players of all sizes regularly attempting long three-point shots. There’s one man largely credited with transforming basketball from a must-see above the rim game to box office-long range shooting: Stephen Curry. | 2022-09-06T14:49:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Steph Curry aims to inspire with 'I Have a Superpower' book - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/steph-curry-aims-to-inspire-with-i-have-a-superpower-book/2022/09/06/4f306108-2df0-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/steph-curry-aims-to-inspire-with-i-have-a-superpower-book/2022/09/06/4f306108-2df0-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html |
I wrote my job, my life, into existence. What’s next?
I didn’t sweat it too much when I got laid off from Duquesne University in June 2009. I knew it wasn’t a forever-type job. (It was a program through the school of business that connected high school students to volunteer mentors.) It was the most money I’d ever made, sure: 35k a year was a come-up from the 90 bucks a day I made as a substitute English teacher. But I had three months’ severance, and I assumed I’d find a new gig by August. I even bought a new suit a week after the layoff. I should have been more frugal, but the girl working at Benetton was cute and I wanted to stunt.
August came and left. I blinked and 2010 came too. By then, my severance had long dried, my savings had long depleted, and my only income was the unemployment benefits extended because of the recession. My ambition, from the time I graduated from college, was to find a way to write for a living. Every job I held felt like an existential placeholder. But then it was less an ambition and more a dream. Maybe even less a dream and more a wish. Because dreams at least have some grounding in reality. And having a life where I was able to sustain myself through writing felt as realistic then for me — an unemployed, 31-year-old, Pittsburgher untethered without a placeholder — as building a time machine.
Today, at 43, I’m the author of an award-winning memoir and signed to a multi-book deal at a “Big Five” house. I have two weekly columns in The Washington Post, and I’ve been a contributing opinion writer at the New York Times and a columnist at GQ. I’ve written for a TV show, I have a podcast that revolves around my parade of neuroses, I negotiated a deal to sell my blog to a network, and I’m regularly invited places to speak — a still surreal phenomenon where people pay me money to talk about the things I’ve written. I haven’t just surpassed those ambitions from 2010. I’ve lapped them, twice, and I’m running backward.
And so — and this is a question I’ve had since roughly 2017 — what happens now? What do you do after you dreamed a thing, and then the thing that happened was better?
I’ve wondered if this just means that I wasn’t ambitious enough. I’m sure some will agree. (“Your dream wasn’t to walk on the moon or cure cancer or even just to invent a calorie-less milkshake but to … write a column?”) But you have to know that economic stability is something I never had, and something I began to doubt I’d ever get. I just wanted to be comfortable. Which is something that probably needs context here too, because comfort means different things to different people. For me, comfort meant that I’d be able to pay my bills and have enough left over to buy an occasional sneaker or two. Homeownership wasn’t even a goal. Buying a home felt like wanting to buy the color blue. Or the sun. I just wanted to live somewhere I wasn’t ashamed of, and I wanted my writing to provide that. Breathing seems unambitious too. But not to a man stuck under a boulder.
There’s also dread. I can’t think about dreams without thinking about dread. About losing everything, everyone. Which is something that could happen, at any time, to anyone, true. But the more successful I am, the farther my ambitions are in my rearview, the worse, in my head, the calamity that finds, cripples and kills me will be. And sometimes I think that me not knowing what to do next is just a product of me not wanting to think about what to do next because thinking about what to do next means also thinking about all the ways I’m inviting and inventing cataclysm. Sometimes I feel like my life is testing fate. And with each success, each accomplishment, each validation, the test becomes more like a tease. And then more like a taunt.
The more successful I am, the worse the calamity that finds me will be.
There’s another thought circulating too — the question of whether I’ve peaked, and this is it. That maybe what’s next is sustainability. Which would be fine, I think. I’m in a good place. But I also think that the peaking thought is connected in a way to the dread, so I can’t quite trust it. I’m just not in the right space to assess whether that’s fear talking to me.
I think — well, I hope — what’s next is a mission to locate a different type of comfort. Where I can finally exist in the now, and just be, instead of this ceaseless toggle between the trauma of the recent past and the angst of an unpromised future. Maybe once I get there, if I get there, I’ll be able to reconfigure my ambitions. Today, though, I think I’m going to buy some new shoes. | 2022-09-06T14:50:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Damon Young: I wrote my job, my life, into existence. What’s next? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/09/06/damon-young-i-wrote-my-job-my-life-into-existence-whats-next/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/09/06/damon-young-i-wrote-my-job-my-life-into-existence-whats-next/ |
St. John the Baptist Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Northwest Washington. (Maansi Srivastava/The Washington Post)
Inside a Moscow-affiliated church located at the center of American democracy
By Mariya Manzhos
On Feb. 24, Archpriest Victor Potapov, the rector of St. John the Baptist Russian Orthodox Cathedral in D.C., emerged through the ornate doors of the sanctuary and stood in front of parishioners scattered throughout the church. A moleben, or special prayer service, had been quickly assembled in response to that morning’s news about Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Clothed in an embroidered golden vestment, a piece of paper in hand, Potapov addressed his parishioners. He spoke in English, then translated each sentence into flawless Russian.
“Dear brothers and sisters, I’m sure that this morning when you all woke up it was very troubling to hear the news that a war has broken out in the region of Ukraine,” he said, steering clear of naming Russia as the aggressor. He then suggested that Russia, Ukraine and the United States were all at fault: “It is not my place to analyze what happened, who is to blame. I’m sure that there is blame on all sides and even on the side of our country.” He invited parishioners to “pray for peace in the entire world.”
When I spoke to Potapov several months later, he explained his decision not to take sides. “Our policy is not to discuss politics in church, because we have people of different views, and I know that,” he told me. “I always stress that we come to church to pray and not to politicize.”
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At a church where nearly 35 percent of believers are Ukrainian, and most of the rest are Russians and American converts, Potapov was in a difficult spot. And his opaque response to the war seemed like a wise decision to some parishioners. “We have church members who have family members in the Russian military, and those with family members in the Ukrainian military,” says William Wilson, 35, who serves on the 10-member parish council. “It’s important to be sensitive to people and their views.”
The parish council, which works in partnership with Potapov, brainstormed ideas on how to support Ukraine without stirring political debates. “Some people suggested a big sign — ‘war is bad’ — and have that on the front of the church,” Wilson recalls. He proposed inviting local Ukrainian churches to pray to relics of saints from a medieval monastery complex in Kyiv that are now housed at St. John’s. “A joint prayer service for peace would be a very powerful witness,” says Wilson. “And you wouldn’t have to talk about whose fault it is. There is a thing we all agree on: that this war should not be happening.”
Ultimately the parish, which consists of about 500 families, channeled its efforts toward tangible humanitarian aid, primarily funds and supplies for Ukrainian refugees. “I know that there are many people who have strong thoughts about which side is right, but part of Christianity frankly is realizing that nobody’s heart is really pure,” says Wilson, a former atheist who converted to Orthodoxy a few years after a friend suggested he check out St. John’s — where he was stunned by the liturgy, choir and church interior. He hopes the war ends quickly, “with as little additional death and destruction as possible,” he says. “I don’t know very much about foreign policy, but I pray for the intercession of the saints of the Kyiv caves to bring peace to their land.”
Others in the parish, however, thought the church should have taken a tougher stance. Lena, 46, began attending St. John’s 20 years ago when she first came from Russia. (She did not want her last name published to protect her family in Russia.) When the war began in February, she couldn’t bring herself to come to church. “I kind of lost the connection with God,” she says. “There was no definite position stated, and I don’t know how you can justify this war.” Yet she missed the worship, the liturgy. So, she came back and focused on charity and volunteering, still holding out hope that a more concrete position would be expressed. The clergy’s authority — there are eight members, including Potapov as the head priest — has waned in her eyes. “But then I think: They’re human too,” she says quietly.
Across the globe, the war has cracked open deep fissures within the Orthodox world. Many parishes, including in the D.C. area, have denounced the Russian assault. Others have broken ties with the Russian Orthodox Church, whose leader, Patriarch Kirill, has approved and even blessed Vladimir Putin’s invasion. But St. John the Baptist, a Moscow-affiliated parish located at the center of American democracy, has chosen a different path — seeking out an apolitical middle ground on an issue where, many would argue, steadfast neutrality is morally impossible.
The gilded onion domes and three-barred crosses of St. John’s tower over the quiet residential neighborhood of Crestwood, just three miles north of the White House. A plaque at the church’s entrance lists the required worship attire: knee-length skirt or dress, no bare shoulders, a head covering for women, no shorts for men. Inside the dimly lit chapel, centuries-old golden icons and murals adorn the surroundings from floor to ceiling.
I visited St. John’s on a muggy weekend this summer. Being at a Russian Orthodox church felt both familiar and heavy. Growing up in Kyiv, I wore a silver cross on my chest, a symbol of my Orthodox baptism as a baby, but in the early 1990s my father converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (I continue to be a practicing member of the LDS Church, which has itself been tepid in its stance on the war.) Since childhood, I have been an occasional visitor at Orthodox churches. Meanwhile, I am very far from a neutral observer of the war — not only because I’m Ukrainian but because the Russian invasion sent my parents fleeing, first to Poland and then to Boston to live with me.
At the service, people secured their standing spots throughout the nave after entering the church. Prominently positioned at the center of the church were the Kyiv Lavra relics.
Since its founding in 1949 by Saint John Maximovitch, the parish has been a home to political emigres and refugees, mostly ethnic Russians. But following an initial influx of Russian immigrants, other groups from the Soviet Union trickled in. At St. John’s, they could all practice their faith in Church Slavonic, the traditional liturgical language, and commune with compatriots as they were building a new life in a foreign land.
St. John’s is one of nearly 400 parishes that make up the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR), an offshoot of the Russian Orthodox Church formed by a group of bishops who fled the Bolshevik Revolution. Through a 1920 decree from the Moscow Patriarch, Orthodox Christians in exile were allowed to govern themselves independently from Moscow while the mother church was essentially a hostage of the Soviets. A few years later, ROCOR cut ties completely with the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow, which declared its loyalty to the atheist Soviet government and was infiltrated by KGB agents.
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 promised a religious revival in Russia and opened the doors for the restoration of the pre-revolutionary unity between the Moscow Church and the ROCOR communities abroad. But the path back to reconciliation with Moscow was long and fraught with disagreements. “It was very controversial because some people still thought these guys worked for the KGB,” says Lena Zezulin, an attorney and former St. John’s parishioner, who has written about ROCOR. Potapov himself has been critical of the Moscow Patriarchate, as he explained in a 2021 interview, yet he also maintained a charitable perspective. “I never shared the view that the Moscow Patriarchate was without grace,” he said.
It was not until 2007, after nearly nine decades of estrangement, that ROCOR reunited with the Moscow Church in a grandiose ceremony. “It was a very happy period, when people felt the Church had achieved its post-revolutionary reunification,” Zezulin explains. “Ethnic comfort and pride were very much a factor in the reunification process.”
The reunion with the Moscow Patriarchate had mostly administrative effects on day-to-day affairs at St. John’s — except now the parish publicly acknowledges Patriarch Kirill of Moscow as its spiritual head. And that is no small detail because of the stance taken by Kirill during the war. On March 6, he described the war in Donbas — the region of Ukraine where Russia has long sponsored breakaway efforts — as a defense against liberal values. “For eight years,” he said, “there have been attempts to destroy what exists in the Donbas. And in the Donbas there is rejection, a fundamental rejection of the so-called values that are offered today by those who claim world power. Today there is a test for the loyalty to this new world order, a kind of pass to that ‘happy’ world, the world of excess consumption, the world of false ‘freedom.’ Do you know what this test is? The test is very simple and at the same time terrible — it is the Gay Pride parade.”
Gay rights, for Kirill, seems to have become a stand-in for a larger contest between East and West, Russia and NATO, Christianity and cosmopolitanism. In that same speech, he laid out a spiritual backing not only for the war in Donbas but for the broader invasion of Ukraine. “What is happening today in the sphere of international relations has not only political significance,” he said. “We are talking about something different and much more important than politics. We are talking about human salvation, about where humanity will end up.”
This narrative of the “godless West” has found receptivity in many ROCOR churches, according to Zezulin. “There has been a great deal of active measures undertaken by the Russian Orthodox Church to position itself, with respect to the Catholic Church and to European conservatives, as ‘We are the last bulwark of the traditional family, we are the true conservatives,’ ” she explains. St. John’s wasn’t an exception. After the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision creating a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, Potapov called it an “earthquake of sorts that is … changing the order established by God.” He added, “It is terrible that we are encroaching on the will of God.”
Potapov, who has a salt-and-pepper beard and tired eyes, was not at church the day I attended. He had covid-19 for the first time, and parishioners were worried about him. During the service, two women whispered in Russian about his health: “Father Victor was at the hospital,” one said. “Didn’t you get the newsletter?”
I spoke to Potapov over Zoom a week later while he was still recovering at home. At 73, he speaks slowly and carefully, his deep voice projecting the gravity of wisdom and stability. A son of a Russian father and Ukrainian mother, he grew up in Cleveland during the Cold War, eager to assimilate to American life. Once, accompanying his grandmother to a vigil service, he was deeply moved by the liturgy, even though he didn’t understand Russian all that well. This spiritual awakening set him on a path of regularly attending church and studying theology.
As a young priest in Connecticut, he took a train to Manhattan to work at Bedford Publishing, a Russian-language publishing house that purchased and printed the works of authors like George Orwell and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn so they could be brought to the Soviet Union. “It was mostly a smuggling operation,” he said. As part of his job, he interviewed Soviet emigres, many of them Russian Jews, about the literature they wanted to see in the Soviet Union. Eventually, he was placed in charge of distributing Russian religious books in the U.S.S.R. Two years into the job, his boss called Potapov to his office and told him he’d been working for the CIA. “It didn’t bother me at all, because I thought it was a good way of spending taxpayer dollars on buying forbidden literature and sending it to the Soviet Union,” he told me.
After the program shut down, Potapov applied for a job at Voice of America, and in 1977 moved to D.C. to begin his 27-year career in broadcast journalism. But his day job unfolded in close interaction with his spiritual calling. He hosted the program “Religion in Our Lives” while serving as the rector of St. John’s parish. For four decades, he’s been leading a community that sits at a theological and political crossroads: an authentically Russian church in the heart of the allegedly decadent West that Putin and Kirill claim they are fighting.
During our interview, Potapov touted the substantial support St. John’s has provided for Ukrainians: $35,000 raised by parishioners for Ukrainian refugees (an additional $10,000 went to Taganrog in southern Russia, where nearly a million Ukrainians were forcibly deported), several tons of humanitarian aid sent every month, and consistent prayers to the Kyiv Lavra relics. But Potapov also echoed talking points promoted by the Russian government. Despite well-documented evidence that the Donbas war, begun in 2014, was an act of Russian aggression, Potapov says that it was “the Kyiv regime” that started bombing Donetsk and Luhansk. Kyiv, he told me, didn’t want the “federalization of the country” — the term used by Putin and throughout Russian news — and therefore carried out the war at the cost of 14,000 lives. “So what happened on February 24 was in actuality a continuation of the civil war, but the only difference is now that Russia is heavily involved,” he told me.
Photos: The human toll of the Russia-Ukraine conflict since 2014
He believes the United States too bears responsibility for the invasion — one of the key narratives of the pro-Kremlin media that has also found traction among some U.S. commentators. “For Russia, having NATO on its doorstep is not acceptable,” he said. The weapons the United States is supplying to Ukraine — which have enabled the Ukrainian military to defend the country from Russia’s assault, averting more sweeping destruction and more deaths — in Potapov’s view have been escalating the war: “It seems to me that this country is interested in fighting this war until the last Ukrainian, which is mind-boggling to me. Where is our diplomacy?” The U.S.-funded bioweapons labs, he said, are another questionable interference of the West in Ukraine. “What in the world are these biolabs doing in Ukraine? What are we hiding?” he asked. (The State Department has explained that the labs were Ukrainian-owned biodefense research facilities and, in fact, worked to prevent the development of bioweapons.)
Potapov did express grief over continued fighting: “It’s heartbreaking,” he said, noting that he talks about the war with his matushka, the priest’s wife, who is also half Ukrainian, every day. “It’s a big deal for us.” And several people I spoke with who had known Potapov for years said they had a lot of respect for him, even though some didn’t agree with his views. Nevertheless, I thought it was a bit puzzling that an anti-Soviet priest who promoted democratic ideas and religious freedom in Soviet Russia was now reluctant to call out the war crimes and human rights violations being inflicted on Ukraine.
Following the English service — St. John’s hosts two services every Sunday, one in English and one in Church Slavonic — dozens of parishioners poured into the parish hall adjacent to the church for a brunch prepared by volunteers: oatmeal, pastries, fruit, watermelon salad. A mix of Russian and English resounded in the room.
When I broached the topic of the war, some declined to discuss it, citing their mistrust of Western media. Others defended Potapov’s ambiguity in talking about the war. “There are a lot of people who might feel like a stronger language would be a good idea. But ultimately, geopolitics is not something we can change or influence, so what’s the point of getting worked up about it, boycotting church and harming yourself spiritually?” said Tim Andrews, 39, who grew up in Australia. His great-grandfather served as an officer in Russia’s White Army and, after losing the civil war to the Bolsheviks, walked across Siberia with his family. Andrews believes parishioners’ opinions about Patriarch Kirill should have no effect on one’s spiritual life. “The church is going to services and having Communion,” he said, bobbing his blond toddler on his knee. “You can disagree with the bishop on politics, but that should have no impact on the church.” Plus, he says, even bishops can make mistakes.
“I feel an unbearable pain over everything from the side of Russia,” says one St. John’s parishioner. “But I try to leave that pain when I come here.”
I joined a group of younger English-speaking parishioners at a table. Katya Healy Daily grew up in the D.C. area; being Russian wasn’t popular in the United States during her childhood, she recalled. “Just because things are not going well politically and it’s a complicated situation, we’re still proud to be Russian, and that’s not going to change,” she said. St. John’s has been a cultural home for generations of her Russian family: Her parents, aunt and uncle were all married at St. John’s; it’s where her grandfather was buried; she was baptized and married there too. “Every single significant event in my life happened here,” she said. While Orthodoxy and Russianness are deeply intertwined, she explained, she has decided that religion is more important to her than culture. “I believe that I’m an Orthodox Christian first, and the rest is next,” she said.
For Elena Mathews, St. John’s has been a spiritual home since she came to the United States in 2012. She grew up in Simferopol in Crimea, going to an Orthodox church with her gymnastics coach. “I’ve always loved Russia, but these events have impacted how I feel now,” said Mathews, who has received a Russian passport. “I’m drawn to Ukraine. My relatives are in Ukraine. For me it’s not a military operation but a full-on war.” She was heartbroken to watch Patriarch Kirill bless the war with an icon, yet she has guarded her faith from political influences. “I feel an unbearable pain over everything from the side of Russia,” she told me. “But I try to leave that pain when I come here. I try not to let the hatred in.”
While St. John’s and Potapov have attempted to stay neutral on the war, others in the Orthodox community have not. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church cut its ties with the Moscow Patriarchate in May; some Orthodox parishes across Europe stopped commemorating Kirill’s name during liturgies. Nearly 300 Russian Orthodox priests wrote an open letter calling for an end to the invasion. A group of 400 Ukrainian priests filed a petition to declare Kirill’s endorsement of Putin’s war as heresy. The Russian Orthodox church in Amsterdam and a church in Udine, Italy, announced that they would migrate to the Patriarchate of Constantinople, a rival to the Moscow Patriarchate since a schism in 2018.
D.C. has also seen a range of Orthodox sentiment. Near the Russian Embassy, three miles southwest of St. John’s, sits St. Nicholas Orthodox Cathedral, which is part of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA), an Eastern Orthodox jurisdiction that is separate from ROCOR and, since 1970, has had complete independence from the Moscow Church. Shortly after the war started, OCA issued a mild statement, asking for “hostilities [to] be ceased” and inviting prayers for “brothers and sisters who are enduring this tragic moment.” Soon, however, the organization followed up with a more direct statement — calling the fighting a “war of aggression waged by the Russian Federation against Ukraine” and arguing that “no Christian can remain impartial or lukewarm in the face of the suffering or remain silent when confronted with such evils as are being perpetrated.”
In May commencement remarks at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in New York, OCA’s primate, Metropolitan Tikhon, expanded on his church’s position: “When anyone attempts to justify the Russian invasion of Ukraine by pointing to Western decadence, they are only proving their own moral irrelevance. This and any similar justifications are hard to understand as anything but unacceptable for Orthodox Christians in face of the brutality of this war.”
OCA leaders in D.C. have been similarly blunt. In a letter to the OCA Holy Synod, Archpriest Denis Bradley, one of the clergy at St. Nicholas and a professor emeritus at Georgetown University, wrote that “Russian President Putin bears primary responsibility for the morally unjustifiable Russian invasion and continuing barbaric attacks on Ukraine”; he added that “Moscow Patriarch Kirill willingly defends the viciously aggressive and repressive Putin regime.” At a June vespers service that I attended, Father George Kokhno — a priest at St. Nicholas who is Ukrainian — called the war a “genocide” against the Ukrainian people.
For Irene Burwell, a 66-year-old St. Nicholas parishioner of 25 years, staying silent is not acceptable for a church. Her uncle, she told me, died in March in the Kyiv metro from heart attack complications; the ambulance was on its way but was stalled by an airstrike siren and didn’t get there in time to save him. “One thing is to oppose the war, and another thing is to condemn it,” says Burwell, who is half Ukrainian and half Russian, but spent much of her life in Ukraine. “If we don’t condemn it, we can’t eradicate the hatred in our hearts.” Neutrality is not an option, she says, even for a church. “We have to yell about what’s happening. It’s a crime to be silent,” she argues. “To speak out against atrocities — that’s the whole essence of the church.”
The way we talk about the war matters, says Father Volodymyr Steliac, the priest of St. Andrew Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral in Silver Spring, Md., a church under Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople. Steliac told me that he doesn’t discuss politics at his church, but he’s publicly called the war “diabolical and unprovoked.” Equating the aggressor and the victim is fundamentally offensive to Ukrainians, he notes: “The Ukrainian people are not in the same situation as the Russian people, and they should never be compared.”
Meanwhile, at ROCOR churches, the war has forced some parishioners to weigh the difficult decision of whether to stay or leave. Lena Zezulin — who has worked on legal reform in over 30 countries, including Russia and Ukraine — grew up attending a ROCOR church in Long Island. While living in D.C. on and off for 40 years, she attended St. John’s frequently, but she moved back to Long Island in 2020.
Since the invasion, “I have found it very hard to walk into a ROCOR church that commemorates Patriarch Kirill,” says Zezulin, who isn’t attending her home parish for the time being. She helped draft a letter rallying Russians in the United States to denounce the war and also invited ROCOR priests to sign a petition asking Metropolitan Mark of Berlin and Germany — ROCOR’s temporary leader — to break ties with Moscow. “We ask that you review the appropriateness of the further subordination of our Church to the Moscow Patriarchate and the commemoration of Patriarch Kirill,” the petition implored. “We are inspired by the courageous example of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.” Potapov declined to sign the petition.
She notes the imperial implications of Patriarch Kirill’s doctrine of the “Russian World,” which envisions restoration of Russia’s historical and spiritual unity. “I am, like so many people, part Ukrainian, part Russian, part Belorussian,” she says. “But still, you can’t say they are one people, and you cannot say that one country has not invaded another.”
And yet, her 91-year-old Russian mother, who also opposes and condemns the war, continues to attend their home parish in Sea Cliff, N.Y. “She still goes there because my father built it,” Zezulin explains. “She can’t go anywhere else.”
When I asked Lena, a current parishioner at St. John’s, if she has considered leaving the parish, she responded: “Where would I go?” Socially, she has distanced herself from the parish community, where many, she says, justify Russia’s attack. “Consciously, I don’t want to know [their position], because it’s going to be even harder,” she says. As she’s wrestled to reconcile her personal faith with her leaders’ ambivalence over who is responsible for the war, she’s tried to disentangle one from the other. “For me right now, faith and church are separate,” she explains. While she continues to attend, “it’s very hard for me,” she says. “All I have left is my prayer to God.”
Mariya Manzhos is a journalist in Boston. | 2022-09-06T14:50:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How the Ukraine War Is Causing Fissures in D.C.’s Russian Orthodox Community - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/09/06/dc-russian-orthodox-community-responding-war-ukraine/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/09/06/dc-russian-orthodox-community-responding-war-ukraine/ |
By Graham Vyse
Illustration by Madison Ketcham/for The Washington Post (Madison Ketcham/For The Washington Post)
I’ve never been more devoted to a drink than I am to Honest Tea. I’ve been drinking the “just a tad sweet” organic bottled tea, made with fair-trade ingredients, since I moved to Washington 15 years ago — initially Peach White, which was tragically discontinued, and later other peach flavors.
By the end of the year, all flavors will be gone — and D.C. will be losing a homegrown, beloved product. Honest Tea was started in Bethesda in 1998, founded by socially conscious entrepreneur Seth Goldman and his former business professor Barry Nalebuff. “We’ve always been disproportionately committed to building our brand here,” Goldman says of the D.C. region.
Coca-Cola, which purchased Honest Tea in 2011, says its decision to end the product was a matter of profits. I was devastated, as was Goldman, who described the decision to me as a “gut punch.” Coke said in a statement that it was focusing on its Gold Peak and Peace Tea products — part of a wider effort to prioritize “fewer, bigger brands with the greatest potential for scale and profitable growth.” (It said the “quickly growing” Honest Kids juices will remain on sale.) The company added that Honest Tea had “been negatively impacted by a drop in immediate consumption sales and limited glass supplies.”
Goldman, who remained “TeaEO” of Honest Tea until 2015 and then an involved “TeaEO emeritus” until 2019, is wasting no time looking back. When I spoke to him last month, he was already at work on a new brand of organic, fair-trade tea he’s putting onto shelves this fall: Just Ice Tea, produced by his business Eat the Change. (As “Honest Tea” sounded like “honesty,” “Just Ice” is meant to look like “justice.”) Many of the same people who were behind Honest Tea are now behind this new brand.
“As soon as we said we were doing this, literally every part of the supply chain stepped up,” Goldman told me. “Retailers said they wanted it. Distributors said they wanted it. Bottling plants and glass suppliers said they wanted to be part of it.” Those kinds of commitments are a testament to Honest Tea’s decades of innovation — during which the brand carved out a distinct commercial niche and became a notable part of the cultural zeitgeist of the Obama era, with a fervent fan base that included the president of the United States.
As Obama was running for the White House in 2008, the New York Times reported that his body man kept a supply of Honest Tea’s Black Forest Berry variety, which the paper called “a hard-to-find organic brew.” (The only thing Goldman didn’t like about the Times coverage was the phrase “hard-to-find.”) Obama has since talked publicly about how the tea is critical to his writing process: “Just like I write on a yellow legal pad with a particular uni-ball fine-point pen, I also need Honest Teas, which give me a little bit of a buzz but don’t get me too amped up. Green Dragon Tea is probably my preferred flavor.”
For a brief moment, Obama’s Honest Tea consumption became political fodder for his opponents — part of a conservative tradition of denigrating so-called elite liberals for their habits and preferences, what the linguist Geoff Nunberg once jokingly referred to as “seditious taste in cheese and beverages.” “Only celebrities like Barack Obama go to the gym three times a day, demand ‘MET-RX chocolate roasted-peanut protein bars and bottles of a hard-to-find organic brew — Black Forest Berry Honest Tea’ and worry about the price of arugula,” McCain campaign manager Rick Davis wrote in a memo sent to reporters.
The catalyst for Honest Tea came in 1997, when Goldman — then working for Bethesda’s Calvert Investments but looking to do something more entrepreneurial — went for a run in New York City during a business trip. “I was thirsty,” he explained to me, “so I went to a beverage cooler at a bodega and was struck that all the drinks there had different names and different packaging but were almost all the same in terms of their sweetness.”
That experience prompted him to reach out to Nalebuff, with whom he’d previously shared an enthusiasm for the idea of selling a beverage that wasn’t water but was less sweet than sodas. Nalebuff, who had just been in India studying the tea industry, came up with the name “Honest Tea,” and the pair launched the company the following year.
Goldman and Nalebuff were right about the market opportunity they sensed. “This was the era of Snapple and Arizona teas,” says Duane Stanford, the editor and publisher of the Beverage Digest newsletter. “Honest Tea saw a segment of consumers who wanted less sugar in their diets and were looking for beverages to accommodate that. … It was one of the early brands that ushered in what has been more than 20 years of growth in health-and-wellness-focused beverages.”
Stores like Whole Foods (which is now owned by Amazon, whose founder, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post) and Mom’s Organic Market provided critical early exposure. After Coke bought the company, Goldman says, “we went from being in about 15,000 stores to over 150,000 stores. We got our product launched at all these places we’d dreamed about — McDonald’s, Subway, Wendy’s and Chick-fil-A.” Even knowing how things ended, he doesn’t regret selling to Coke in an effort to “democratize” organic drinks.
Goldman — who studied government at Harvard, met his wife working on Michael Dukakis’s presidential campaign, and subsequently served as a deputy press secretary for Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Tex.) — notes that the tea is nonpolitical. In fact, he says, many prominent Republicans drink Honest Tea. He’s also quick to emphasize that while he cares about advancing his values in the business world — addressing climate change and promoting equal access to economic opportunity — he does not think about them as partisan commitments. “I have deliberately not politicized the business,” he told me.
Ultimately, Coke’s choice reflects the fact that companies, not just consumers, decide what lives and dies in the marketplace. Goldman — and observers like Stanford — see an obvious opportunity for Just Ice Tea to enter the market Coke is vacating. “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes, and Just Ice Tea will rhyme with Honest Tea,” Goldman told me. “We’re not using the phrase ‘Just a Tad Sweet,’ which is trademarked, but we’re using the phrase ‘Just Sweet Enough.’ ” As long as they always have a good peach flavor, count me in.
Graham Vyse is an associate editor at the Signal. | 2022-09-06T14:50:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Coca-Cola discontinues Honest Tea, citing a lack of profitability - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/09/06/honest-tea-discontinued/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/09/06/honest-tea-discontinued/ |
Bruce Allen to testify in House committee’s Washington NFL probe
Bruce Allen, right, speaks to Daniel Snyder before a September 2019 game in Philadelphia. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
Bruce Allen, the former team president of Washington’s NFL franchise, is scheduled to give a deposition remotely Tuesday to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform.
The committee is conducting an ongoing investigation of allegations of widespread sexual harassment within the organization, now known as the Washington Commanders, including accusations made against team owner Daniel Snyder. Snyder has denied all allegations made against him.
“The Committee is continuing to investigate the decades-long workplace misconduct at the Washington Commanders and the NFL’s failure to address it,” a spokesperson for the committee said in a written statement. “Mr. Allen served in senior roles under team owner Dan Snyder for many years, so his testimony is important for the Committee to fully understand these serious issues and advance reforms to protect workers in the future.”
Allen was subpoenaed by the committee for the deposition, according to the spokesperson.
Daniel Snyder conducted ‘shadow investigation’ of accusers, panel finds
The deposition was to be conducted privately. Such depositions typically are conducted by committee lawyers and staff members.
Allen was not immediately available to comment. His attorney did not immediately respond to a request to comment. He was scheduled to testify beginning at 11:30 a.m. Eastern time, according to a deposition notice.
Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), the committee’s chairwoman, wrote to fellow committee members in a 29-page memo in June that the panel’s investigation had found evidence that Snyder and members of his legal team conducted a “shadow investigation” and compiled a “dossier” targeting former team employees, their attorneys and journalists in an attempt to discredit his accusers and shift blame.
According to Maloney’s memo in June, the committee’s investigation found evidence that Snyder and his attorneys sent private investigators to the homes of former team cheerleaders seeking derogatory information about Allen and combed through more than 400,000 emails on Allen’s inactive team account in an effort to convince the NFL that Allen was “responsible for the team’s toxic work culture.”
Snyder fired Allen in December 2019 after Allen spent a decade as the team’s president.
Lawyers representing Snyder provided attorney Beth Wilkinson, who was overseeing a league investigation into the team’s workplace, and the NFL with the Allen emails, according to the evidence found by the committee’s investigation.
An attorney for Snyder “identified the specific inappropriate Bruce Allen emails in attempting to demonstrate that Bruce Allen had created a toxic environment at the Washington Commanders,” Maloney’s June memo said.
Daniel Snyder faces House committee under oath for more than 10 hours
Several of those emails later appeared in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, including some in which Jon Gruden, then the coach of the Las Vegas Raiders, used racist, homophobic and misogynistic language over approximately seven years of correspondence with Allen and others while Gruden worked for ESPN.
Gruden resigned from the Raiders in October after the emails were revealed. He filed a lawsuit against the NFL in November, accusing the league and Commissioner Roger Goodell of using leaked emails to “publicly sabotage Gruden’s career” and pressure him into resigning. The NFL has said that it did not leak Gruden’s emails.
Tanya Snyder, Daniel Snyder’s wife and the team’s co-CEO, told fellow NFL franchise owners at a league meeting in New York in October that neither she nor her husband was responsible for the leaked emails, multiple people present at that meeting said at the time.
The NFL said in a filing to a Nevada court last month that Jon Gruden continued to send “derogatory emails consistently” while serving as the Raiders’ coach.
Daniel Snyder gave a voluntary deposition under oath to the committee remotely for more than 10 hours remotely in late July. Goodell testified remotely to the committee during a June 22 hearing on Capitol Hill.
In April, the committee detailed allegations of financial improprieties by Snyder and the team in a letter to the Federal Trade Commission. The attorneys general for D.C., Democrat Karl A. Racine, and Virginia, Republican Jason S. Miyares, announced they would investigate. The team has denied committing any financial improprieties.
The NFL is conducting an ongoing investigation being led by Mary Jo White, a former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and former chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Following Wilkinson’s investigation, the NFL announced in July 2021 that the team had been fined $10 million and that Tanya Snyder would assume responsibility for the franchise’s daily operations for an unspecified period.
The Washington Post reported in June details of a then-employee’s claim that Snyder sexually assaulted her during a flight on his private plane in April 2009. Later that year, the team agreed to pay the female employee, whom it fired, $1.6 million in a confidential settlement. In a 2020 court filing, Snyder called the woman’s claims “meritless.” | 2022-09-06T15:54:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bruce Allen, former Washington NFL president, to testify in House probe - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/06/bruce-allen-house-oversight-committee-washington-nfl/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/06/bruce-allen-house-oversight-committee-washington-nfl/ |
Real-life examples of chutzpah in action
Not sure what exactly the word “chutzpah” means? The late author Leo Rosten gave us the perfect definition in his book “The Joys of Yiddish”: “Chutzpah is that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan.”
Now that takes chutzpah. I asked readers to share their own examples.
Several years ago, Randi Weil of Bethesda was at the Miami airport, on her way back to Washington from a cruise.
“The security line I was on was extremely long and barely moving when I noticed a man cut the line a few people ahead of me,” she wrote. “As if that wasn’t irritating enough, five minutes later the ‘line cutter’ asked the man in back of him to save his place and that he would be back in a few minutes!”
Deborah K. Lichter’s 40-year career as a meeting planner for a professional association based in the District gave her plenty of opportunity to witness chutzpah in action.
“It is common practice for exhibitors at trade shows and the like to offer small tchotchkes to folks who visit their booths,” wrote Deborah, of Silver Spring. “During the trade shows held by my former employer, one of our regular attendees visited all the booths which offered pens.”
For three straight days, he grabbed handfuls of free pens at a time.
Wrote Deborah: “After watching this behavior for years, one of our staff finally had the courage to ask why he needed so many pens.”
His response: “Oh, I don’t use them. I send them off to my son to use in his real estate office so that they don’t have to buy pens.”
Michael J. Maloney of Fairfax had a colleague who used to do something similar when their work group ate lunch at the Olive Garden in Falls Church.
“He would order pizza,” Michael wrote. “While waiting for the pizza he would eat the free salad and the breadsticks. Then he would ask the waitress for more salad and breadsticks. Once his pizza arrived, he would let it sit. I suggested he eat it since we had to get back to the office. He asked the waitress to wrap the untouched, uneaten pizza. He would take the pizza home and have it for dinner. He would have two meals for the price of one. He seemed totally unfazed.”
My earlier column about chutzpah happened to center on an incident involving eggs — at a Catskills resort hotel, as it happens. Here’s another chicken-fruit anecdote, from Tracy Thompson of Bowie, Md.
Tracy was in the cashier’s line at Giant, behind a woman with a ton of groceries. This lady had balanced a carton of eggs very precariously on the edge of the conveyor belt.
“The cashier couldn’t even see them over the pile,” Tracy wrote. “I was wondering how long it would take her to realize she had put her eggs in a precarious spot when the conveyor belt moved and, sure enough, the whole carton fell off.
“The woman looked accusingly at the cashier and said, ‘YOU broke my eggs.’
Wrote Tracy: “My mouth literally fell open, but Giant obligingly got her another carton — and then cleaned up the mess she had made.”
Betsey Hurwitz-Schwab of Cumberland, Md., was the vice president for human resources at a large apparel company. The company had a policy of trying to promote from within, and one day Betsey was interviewing a man from the shipping department for a position in the accounting department.
It was clear this applicant didn’t have the skills for accounting, but Betsey went through the interview, saving her favorite question for last: “Describe for me your ideal job.”
Wrote Betsey: “He leaned back in his chair, looked at me and said, ‘I want your job because all you do all day is push papers.’
“Clearly he did not get the promotion.”
In the early 1980s, Alexandria’s John Neer was visiting his brother in New York City. Every morning, the brothers had to walk a seedy stretch in the neighborhood.
“I noticed a few of the parked cars had handwritten signs on the dashboard saying, ‘No tape player in here,’ ” John wrote. “It was the owner’s attempt to thwart break-ins. My brother told me about coming upon one such car that had been parked in the same spot for over a week. Someone had broken the window and scrawled ‘Get one’ on the note.”
Wrote John: “Not sure if you’d call that chutzpah but I always thought it was pretty funny for a common thief.”
An uncommon thief, you might say. | 2022-09-06T16:11:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What is chutzpah? These examples give you a good idea. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/06/chutzpah-in-action/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/06/chutzpah-in-action/ |
Teenager killed and 10 others injured in Florida Keys boat crash
A boat crash Sunday near Boca Chita Key, Fla., left 17-year-old Lucy Fernandez dead and 10 others injured. (Miami-Dade Fire Rescue/AP)
Lucy Fernandez, 17, was on a vessel with 13 other people when the boat crashed at about 6:45 p.m. near Boca Chita Key, an island about a mile west of Key West, Miami-Dade Fire Rescue officials said. Eleven people, including Fernandez, were hurt. Four suffered traumatic injuries and were airlifted to a hospital.
Fernandez, a student at Our Lady of Lourdes Academy in Miami, died of her injuries, the school said Monday.
“Known for her smile, larger than life personality and signature laugh, Lucy was a joy to all who knew her and a shining light at our school,” the all-girls, Catholic high school wrote on Facebook. “The hundreds of people who joined us in the grotto this evening, to pray for the repose of her soul, are a testament to her beautiful legacy of faith, love and sisterhood.”
The U.S. Coast Guard said the boat capsized after hitting a channel marker, the Miami Herald reported.
Miami-Dade Police arrived at the crash site first and pulled people — some critically injured — out of the water, Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Capt. Juan Garrandes said in a video provided by the fire rescue agency. Police brought them to the island of Elliott Key, where some were airlifted. Fire rescue workers then helped police pull other people out of the water, evaluated them and transported some to hospitals, Garrandes said.
The status of the 10 injured people was unclear Tuesday. Sister Carmen T. Fernández, Our Lady of Lourdes president, wrote in a letter to community members Monday that two of the injured were also seniors at the school, the Herald reported.
Students from Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart in Miami were also hurt, Miami-based television station WSVN reported. That school held a rosary prayer service Monday evening.
As the sun rose Tuesday, dozens of Lourdes students, dressed in their school uniforms, gathered along the shore to pay tribute to Fernandez, according to WSVN. Students from Lourdes and other local schools also gathered Monday evening for a vigil.
“For Lucy, her faith was a foundation, and so I think in a time with so much heartbreak and so much confusion and so much loss, I think the only thing that we know how to do or what to do is to come together in prayer,” Lourdes theology teacher Alexandra Diaz told WSVN. | 2022-09-06T16:20:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Teenager killed and 10 others injured in Florida Keys boat crash - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/06/florida-boat-crash-teenager-killed/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/06/florida-boat-crash-teenager-killed/ |
‘1982’: A child’s-eye view of the confusion and helplessness of war
Oualid Mouaness’s drama revolves around children living in Lebanon during the 1982 invasion
Mohamad Dalli, left, and Gia Madi in “1982.” (Tricycle Logic)
It’s a warm June day at Cedar High School, where 11-year-old Wissam’s only worries are passing a note to Joanna, the girl he has a crush on, and upcoming grammar and math exams. The skies are blue, and save for a car that swerves perilously close to Wissam’s school bus, it’s just another day in the life of a fifth-grader with little more than love and grades on his mind.
Except that this is “1982,” a movie set in Lebanon at the outset of Israel’s invasion of that country, which was a nexus point for regional conflicts involving Syria, the Palestine Liberation Organization and internal sectarian forces. Written and directed by Oualid Mouaness and derived in large part from his own memories of growing up in Lebanon at that time, “1982” isn’t about the war as much as it’s suffused with the anxiety, confusion and helplessness war engenders: In the tradition of “Jojo Rabbit” and “Belfast,” albeit on a far more modest scale, this is a child’s-eye view of an idea that starts out as abstract, only to assume increasingly terrifying concreteness as it gets too close to ignore.
For Wissam, played with soulful, solemn-eyed focus by Mohamad Dalli, that concreteness takes the form of the fighter planes whose vapor trails he watches warily from the school playground, where he shoots marbles with his best friend Majid (Ghassan Maalouf) and stares balefully at his beloved Joanna (Gia Madi). The children’s teacher, Yasmine (Nadine Labaki), watches the skies as well: Her brother Georges is a member of a militia and has decided to go south to fight; as the distant thunder becomes too loud to ignore — as the jeeps rattle down a nearby road and a flock of pigeons inexplicably shows up on the school’s windowsills — the teachers and students grow more uneasy and unsure what to do. Stay or go? Risk the checkpoints of traveling through Beirut or stay in their bubble of safety? Finish the math test or run for cover?
Mouaness refers obliquely to different sides and factions in “1982,” but he never explains the substance of what the war was about; when Yasmine and her colleague Joseph (Rodrigue Sleiman) argue about who’s right and who’s wrong, the specifics of the debate will probably go over the heads of anyone not intimately familiar with Middle East history and politics. The filmmaker is far more interested in capturing the mood and atmosphere of an environment — in this case, a Quaker school dedicated to pluralism and liberal-mindedness — that is being forced to confront the brutal realities from which it has served as a refuge. Mouaness has assembled a stellar ensemble to reflect the growing unease of a day that the audience knows will change the characters’ lives forever: Labaki is as compelling a screen presence as ever, and is ably supported by a group of young actors whose expressiveness lies in their self-possession rather than histrionics or obvious emoting.
Part of what makes “1982” so subtly effective is its contemplative silences; Mouaness frequently pulls the camera back simply to regard the quietude and natural beauty of the scene, manipulating the sound design to evoke almost preternatural peacefulness and, eventually, chaos. He also adds dashes of magical realism and animation, which fit awkwardly into the naturalistic rhythms of a story that feels like it’s unfolding in real time. Eventually, misunderstandings escalate into disagreements and all-out fighting in Wissam’s world, a microcosm of what will soon loom over his young life. With “1982,” Mouaness gives viewers an immersive, ineffable sense of what it feels like to have the world shift under your feet before you even know it.
Unrated. At Landmark’s E Street Cinema. Contains some adult themes. In Arabic and English with subtitles. 100 minutes. | 2022-09-06T16:20:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ‘1982’: A child’s-eye view of the confusion and helplessness of war - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/09/06/1982-movie-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/09/06/1982-movie-review/ |
Analysis by Kelsey Butler and Patricia Hurtado | Bloomberg
Personhood -- the concept of granting legal rights to the unborn at conception or a couple of months after -- is shaping into the next battleground in the fight over abortion rights in the US. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s June decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion, old state rules recognizing fetuses as people have new potency, and conservative state legislatures are pushing for powerful new statutes. Critics of these so-called personhood laws worry they will be used not only to criminalize abortion but also miscarriages, the termination of pregnancies that threaten the mother’s life, and some types of contraception.
1. How do personhood laws differ from abortion bans?
Abortion bans clamp down on the practice, while personhood laws regulate pregnancy much more broadly. The latter grant a fetus, the developmental stage that begins eight weeks after conception, or a zygote or embryo, the two earlier stages, the same legal rights as a person, including the right to life.
2. Are these laws something new?
Not entirely. Even before the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade, at least 11 states already had broad personhood language in their constitutions, laws or policies that could be read to affect all state civil and criminal laws, according to the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, a non-profit organization that backs abortion rights. For instance, Alabama adopted a constitutional amendment in 2018 ensuring “the protection of the rights of the unborn,” while Missouri since 1986 has had a law that defines life as beginning at conception. An additional five states -- Kentucky, Louisiana, Ohio, South Dakota and Texas -- had defined “person” as including a fetus throughout the state criminal code, according to the group.
3. What’s changed?
Until the Supreme Court’s ruling in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, this kind of language was largely symbolic because Roe v. Wade had guaranteed a right to abortion throughout the country. Now that states have the latitude to make their own rules on abortion, personhood laws and policies have the potential to carry real weight. Georgia is a case in point. Its 2019 personhood law had been blocked by a court as unconstitutional, but after the Dobbs hearing, an appeals court cleared it to take effect in July. The statute, the most expansive of its type in the country, prohibits abortion after six weeks, explicitly recognizes the fetus at that point as a person, and could provide a blueprint for other conservative states as it essentially extends criminal and civil law to cover fetuses. The law provides expectant mothers a $3,000 tax credit per fetus and allows them to file for child support during pregnancy; it also instructs state officials to include fetuses in population counts.
4. Where’s the legislative push?
Ohio lawmakers proposed a law in July that would ban abortions at conception instead of at the six-week mark as the current law provides. In Oklahoma, where a total abortion ban has been in place since May, a bill “equating rights of unborn persons to rights of born persons” has passed one chamber of the legislature. An Arizona law grants personhood to fertilized eggs, embryos and fetuses, but in July a court blocked it from being used to criminalize providers of abortion, which will be prohibited in the state after 15 weeks under a law due to take effect in late September. Other personhood statutes have been introduced in statehouses in Iowa, Vermont, South Carolina and West Virginia, according to the Guttmacher Institute, an advocacy organization that supports abortion rights. A federal personhood law was introduced last year in both houses of Congress and attracted 166 cosponsors in the House of Representatives, out of 435 total members. It specified that the right to life “is vested in each human being at all stages of life, including the moment of fertilization.”
5. What are possible implications of personhood laws?
• Because personhood laws grant a zygote, embryo or fetus rights equal to those of the pregnant woman, the latter may be held criminally liable for harm that comes to the former. Those who obtain an abortion could be charged with murder. The laws could make it more likely that those who miscarry are investigated for negligently or intentionally ending their pregnancies, with some of them prosecuted. Even without these laws, some women’s rights advocates say that feticide and child endangerment laws -- originally passed to protect pregnant women as well as the unborn -- are increasingly being used to prosecute women for crimes such as assault or murder after miscarriages and stillbirths. About 1,300 women were arrested or charged in the US from 2006 to 2020 for their actions during pregnancy, three times the number for the 33 years prior, according to the National Advocates for Pregnant Women.
• Depending on their wording, personhood laws could make it illegal for a doctor to terminate a pregnancy even when there is a life-threatening complication, such as when a fertilized egg implants ectopically, that is, outside the uterus where it can’t survive. Georgia’s law explicitly excludes terminating ectopic pregnancies, whereas the Arizona law was unacceptably vague on this point, according to the judge who blocked it.
• Critics worry that personhood laws could take away the rights of patients to decide what to do with embryos created through in vitro fertilization, although some of the proposed statutes make exceptions for this case. Georgia’s law applies only to an “unborn child” who is “carried in the womb.”
• There are also concerns the laws could criminalize the use of two birth control methods, the morning-after pill and the intrauterine device (IUD). Both work by preventing fertilization, but some anti-abortion activists incorrectly argue that they can stop implantation of a fertilized egg.
6. What has the Supreme Court said about personhood?
When the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade in 1973, it rejected the argument that a fetus was a person with all the protections, including the right to life, of the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees all citizens “equal protection of the laws.” Justice Harry Blackmun, in the majority opinion, concluded that in the context of the Fourteenth Amendment, a “person” did “not include the unborn.” A fetus, he said, is not a person but “potential life.” Writing for the majority in the Dobbs decision, Justice Samuel Alito concluded that Roe was “egregiously wrong” in supporting a constitutional right to abortion, but his ruling explicitly dodged the question of “when prenatal life is entitled to any of the rights enjoyed after birth.” | 2022-09-06T16:24:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Is a Fetus a Person? The Next Big Abortion Fight Centers on Fetal Rights - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/is-a-fetus-a-person-the-next-big-abortion-fight-centers-on-fetal-rights/2022/09/06/0f910862-2df6-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/is-a-fetus-a-person-the-next-big-abortion-fight-centers-on-fetal-rights/2022/09/06/0f910862-2df6-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html |
Jake Bennett was drafted by the Nationals this summer. (C. Morgan Engel/NCAA Photos via Getty Images)
When Cade Cavalli was a junior at Bixby High School in Oklahoma in 2016, he noticed a left-handed freshman at one of the first varsity practices. The pitcher was tall, sure, but Cavalli thought he had a “soft body” and kind of looked like a “big immature kid.” Then Cavalli saw Jake Bennett throw.
“I got home that night and I remember telling my dad, ‘We got this freshman on the team who I think is going to be really good,’ ” Cavalli recalled at Busch Stadium this week. “I was drawn to how smooth his arm action was and how the ball came out of his hand. With Jake, you could see it right away.”
Three years later, the Washington Nationals picked Bennett in the 39th round, but he opted to join Cavalli at the University of Oklahoma. And some four years after that, Bennett was drafted by the Nationals again this summer, this time in the second round, staying on Cavalli’s exact path.
Cavalli, who recently turned 24, made his major league debut in late August and is recovering from shoulder inflammation. Bennett, who turns 22 in December, is shut down for the season after taking a heavy workload as a senior for the Sooners. He pitched 117 innings, attracting Washington with sharp command, a plus change-up and a low-to-mid 90s fastball out of a three-quarters slot. His slider needs improvement, something he and the Nationals’ top scouts acknowledge after he was selected in mid-July. Baseball America called him a “mature arm who’s made the proper adjustments during his time in college.”
As a boy, Cade Cavalli jotted down his goals. Now his dreams are becoming reality.
No matter how advanced he is, it is unfair to expect Bennett to race up Washington’s system like Cavalli did in the past two seasons. But if he eventually joins Cavalli at the highest level, completing the mirror image of his friend’s journey, the Nationals could have another piece of their rebuilding puzzle.
“I don’t think in the game of baseball you can clone guys,” said Clay Overcash, Oklahoma’s pitching coach. “I think you got to let those guys have some freedom to find their delivery and those type things. But you do have similar timing and balance points through the delivery, and as long as they’re getting to those …
“You got Cade, who’s right-handed obviously, 6-foot-4. And you got Bennett, who’s 6-foot-7 and left-handed. And so you got two completely different body types, and you take those things into account when they come to us with success. You just build upon tightening the screws, if you will.”
In recent years, the Nationals have trusted that Oklahoma does that as well as any program. Skip Johnson, the Sooners’ head coach, is the biggest reason beyond how the individual pitchers grade.
Johnson, 55, is widely credited with helping a young Clayton Kershaw figure it out. And while his staffs have long churned out draft picks, including 11 this July alone, Washington has been particularly attracted to Johnson’s pitchers. First it was Jake Irvin, a fourth-round pick in 2018. Then it was Cavalli, a first-rounder in 2020, then Bennett, the second-rounder this year after they selected outfielder Elijah Green.
But as for when the organization initially saw Cavalli and Bennett — and if they stumbled upon one while scouting the other — the details are fuzzy. Kris Kline, Washington’s assistant general manager for amateur scouting, figured they were on Bennett before Cavalli, even though he’s two years behind. Cavalli was a two-way player until he focused on pitching as a junior at Oklahoma. When he was drafted out of Bixby in 2017, a few teams were split on whether he was a shortstop or future starter. Bennett, by contrast, was a surefire pitcher who only moonlighted as a first baseman. Pete Hughes is the expert on their origin stories.
“You hear about them independently, but it was kind of nice because I could go watch Jake pitch and then check on the progress of Cade his senior year,” said Hughes, who recruited both pitchers for Oklahoma and is now the head coach at Kansas State. “When you’re that good, honestly, you don’t bump into that kind of talent. Those guys, their name and their ability, they’re out there. It was just convenient that … it helped us in our recruiting process that Cade had committed to Oklahoma. It helped us out with Jake cause he looked up to Cade.”
Some things never change, then.
Bennett’s professional career will begin with instructs at the Nationals’ facility in West Palm Beach, Fla. Cavalli’s took off during the first year of the coronavirus pandemic, so he went to the alternate site in Fredericksburg, Va., and faced the same hitters on a loop. Asked Monday for his advice to Bennett, whom he has texted but not seen since the draft, Cavalli’s eyes grew wide. When he was promoted late last month, he became a player who could steer others toward the ultimate dream.
“You have to be grounded in who you are as a pitcher, while at the same time knowing there is always something to get better at,” Cavalli said. “You have to find that balance and not lose yourself. There are going to be a lot of people, and I’m not talking about in this organization, but just in general, like when you go home in the offseason, who want to tell you how to do this, how to do that. But who you are and the vision of what pitcher you want to be, no one should take that away.” | 2022-09-06T16:29:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jake Bennett, Cade Cavalli follow similar paths with OU, Nats - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/06/jake-bennett-cade-cavalli-oklahoma-nationals/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/06/jake-bennett-cade-cavalli-oklahoma-nationals/ |
Elk once roamed the eastern part of the United States in the 1600s but were nearly wiped out by over-hunting
A bachelor group of male elk, called bulls, stands on reclaimed coal mine land in Buchanan County, Va. (Mike Roberts)
Centuries ago, herds of elk roamed the United States, but their population was decimated due to over-hunting and destruction of their habitat.
Now — a decade after wildlife officials reintroduced them in southwest Virginia — there’s a herd of more than 250 elk in the region.
“It’s a wildlife success story for this species,” said Jackie Rosenberger, elk project leader for the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources. “A lot of folks think elk are just a species that’s found in the Western part of the U.S., but that’s not the case. That’s not their history, and through a large restoration effort we’ve managed to bring them back.”
Aggressive wild turkey vanishes after months of attacks on D.C. trail
Starting from late August to October is the best — and most interesting — time to see elk, experts said. They start their mating season around the early fall, and male elk, called bulls, let out a unique “bellowing call” when trying to attract a female.
“When you hear that bugling, it’s the most wild sound ever,” Rosenberger said. “It defines nature.”
She said the bulls also make the bugle sound to “warn other males that ‘I’m big and bad. Stay away from me.’ ”
In the fall, she said, it’s a good time to see — and hear — the elks because they’re so focused on breeding that they care less about people being around: “They’re only focused on one thing.”
For those who want to make the trip, there are three viewing spots in Virginia’s Buchanan County, about six hours from D.C. and west of Blacksburg. There are also several options for guided tours.
Elk are large animals and require shade to keep their body temperature regulated, so experts advise the best time for seeing them is early mornings after sunrise and evenings at dusk.
Rarely are they seen during the middle of the day, especially in warmer weather. They tend to bed down in forested areas or dense vegetation. As the daytime temperatures get cooler, they’re likely to come out and roam more, looking for food, experts said. If lucky, a viewer can see 50 elk in a herd together.
Officials with Virginia’s wildlife agency recently launched an elk webcam that allows viewers to watch the herd. For the past few years, the webcam has attracted about 50,000 views per year, officials said. The camera typically runs until late December and allows viewers a unique chance to see female elk, or cows as they’re called, come back from their “calving areas” with their young to more open fields.
Elk were once common before the 1600s across eastern North America, and in Virginia they were found mainly west of the Blue Ridge Mountains. But they were over-hunted and their habitats were destroyed by the late 1800s. The last known elk to be harvested in Virginia was in 1855, according to Virginia wildlife authorities.
As with a lot of other species, there was no regulated hunting, “so it was just ‘willy-nilly’ on harvesting elk,” Rosenberger said. “People were just hunting with no limits.”
She said people also drastically altered the elk habitats, further contributing to their near demise.
In 2012, an effort was launched — involving more than a half-dozen partners, including the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Southwest Virginia Sportsmen and landowners in Buchanan County — to bring elk back in Virginia. Seventy-one adult elks and four calves were brought from nearby southeastern Kentucky to the Buchanan County area.
Elk need forested areas to protect themselves from heat and people, as well as nearby access to fields of grass and plants to eat.
So experts in Virginia worked to clean and restore about 2,600 acres previously used for coal mines to create a good habitat for the herd. Elk are on reclaimed mine land in other parts of the country as well, including in West Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and parts of Tennessee.
Strip mining for coal involves clearing a mountaintop of trees and vegetation. Experts said there are strict rules in place for making sure mining companies follow regulations after they’re done mining in an area for it to be cleaned and reused for other purposes. The mining, or mountaintop removal as it is commonly called, “involves removing earth to expose the coal beds and later putting the earth back where it was,” said Rosenberger. She said the land, once reclaimed, is safe for elk and other wildlife to inhabit.
“Mining doesn’t look pretty when it’s actively occurring but after it’s reclaimed,” she said, “it has made for some excellent early successional habitat.”
In Virginia, the rehabilitated land, with partly wooded areas, has provided an ideal spot for wildlife — including white-tailed deer, birds, wild turkeys, insects and black bears — and the elk herd, which roams more than 10,000 acres, stretching across Buchanan, Dickenson and Wise counties.
New species of bloodsucking leech with three jaws and 59 teeth found outside Washington | 2022-09-06T17:08:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Elk were nearly wiped out in Virginia but now a herd is thriving - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/06/elk-mating-season-southwest-virginia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/06/elk-mating-season-southwest-virginia/ |
Details of Canada stabbing victims emerge as manhunt continues
Flowers sit outside the home of a stabbing victim in Weldon, Saskatchewan, on Tuesday. (Lars Hagberg/AFP/Getty Images)
TORONTO — Police continued to search for a man accused in the deadly stabbing spree in Saskatchewan on Tuesday as the small communities at the center of the carnage mourned the 10 victims.
They include a mother, an army veteran, a man whom residents viewed as not just a neighbor but as an “uncle,” and a crisis worker who died assisting others in an emergency.
Authorities continued to comb through 13 separate crime scenes, many of them on the James Smith Cree Nation reserve and the nearby village of Weldon, where brothers Damien and Myles Sanderson are accused of having carried out Sunday’s massacre in a country where mass killings are relatively rare compared to in the United States.
Police said Monday that Damien Sanderson’s body was found in a “heavily grassed area” at the James Smith Cree Nation, some 300 miles north of the U.S.-Canada border, with injuries that did not appear to have been self-inflicted. He was 31. They continued to search for Myles Sanderson, 30, who they said Monday has an “extensive and lengthy criminal record” and might be injured.
At least 10 dead, 15 injured in Saskatchewan stabbings; 2 suspects at large
Myles Sanderson was charged Monday with three counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder. Damien Sanderson was charged with one count of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder before his body was found. Both were charged with breaking and entering, and the RCMP said more charges are likely.
Authorities have provided few details about the victims. Rhonda Blackmore, the assistant commissioner of the Saskatchewan RCMP, said some appeared to have been targeted and others were attacked at random. She said they include men and women with a “wide span of ages.” The youngest was born in 1999.
Gloria Burns, a 62-year-old addictions counselor at the James Smith Cree Nation, was identified by her brothers as one of the victims. They told local media that she responded to an emergency call during the killing spree and died alongside other victims.
“For her to go into a situation like this where [she was] helping people, even though it cost her life … that’s who she was,” her brother Darryl Burns told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.
The Saskatchewan First Nations Veterans Association identified Earl Burns, who served in Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry regiment of the Canadian Army, as another victim.
Lana Head, a mother, was identified as a victim by Michael Brett Burns, her former partner, according to local media. In a Facebook post on the day before the attack, she wrote of “So many good memories to cherish.” Her page included photos of her dog Daisy sipping Tim Hortons and advised friends about deals at a local grocery store.
“I’m already missing her voice,” friend Melodie Whitecap wrote in a Facebook post. “She was a sweet, gentle soul, she wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
Weldon residents identified Wes Petterson, a 77-year-old who kept a close eye on the community and was the “sweetest” guy, as another victim. Ruby Works told Global News that she had known him since she was a little girl and he was like an uncle to her.
“When I found out that my friend was killed, I just hit the ground,” she said. “Why would you come in and kill an innocent person who didn’t do anything? He didn’t deserve this.” | 2022-09-06T17:08:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Canada stabbings: Victim details emerge as police manhunt continues - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/06/canada-stabbing-victims-saskatchewan/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/06/canada-stabbing-victims-saskatchewan/ |
A guiding idea of the U.S. legal system is that justice is blind. That Americans can and should have confidence that judges will reach decisions based on facts and colored as little as possible by their own political inclinations. When criticism of a decision is accompanied by a mention of the president that appointed the judge, there’s often scolding that follows: the implicit suggestion that politics played a role is an erosion in confidence in the system.
Then we have the case of U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon.
On Monday, Cannon appointed a “special master” to review material seized from former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort last month. Cannon had telegraphed her intent to do so a week prior, even before the Justice Department had offered its argument against doing so.
A special master — often a former judge — is often appointed by a court to review material to which investigators shouldn’t have access, such as material privileged under attorney-client confidentiality. Cannon’s order, though, included various unusual stipulations, such as preventing the Justice Department from including seized material in its investigation until the special master’s review was concluded. She also tasked the special master with evaluating Trump’s claims of executive privilege, though of course the Justice Department is part of the executive branch.
When legal experts weren’t baffled by Cannon’s stipulations, they were often critical. For Trump, though, the decision was a sweeping victory, introducing a robust roadblock between the government investigation into his behavior and the evidence it collected in the search of his Florida event venue.
As you might have gathered, Cannon is a Trump appointee. She was one of four nominees made by Trump on May 21, 2020, as Trump was highlighting the number of conservative judges he had seen confirmed to federal courts. (Republicans, he tweeted two weeks earlier, “should LOVE our 280 new Judges,” which is an overestimate of the actual number.) Of the four, Cannon was the only one evaluated as “qualified” by the American Bar Association; the other three were evaluated as “well qualified.”
But she was young — she’s in her early 40s — and therefore could serve on the bench for a long time.
“As of this point,” the legal blog the Vetting Room wrote at the time, “the Trump Administration has made an art form of finding attorneys who barely squeeze in under the twelve year practice requirement that the American Bar Association seeks for judges.”
The blog figured that Cannon would nonetheless be confirmed, as she was — nine days after Trump lost his reelection bid. A number of Democrats joined the majority, though most of the party’s senators opposed her.
Among those supporting her confirmation was Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). In written questions, Feinstein had challenged Cannon on her membership in the conservative Federalist Society, an organization that Trump at one point said would be the primary source of recommendations for his Supreme Court nominations. Asked by Feinstein how the Federalist Society planned to “reorder priorities within the legal system,” as its website had argued, Cannon (understandably) indicated she wasn’t familiar with the statement.
All of this is (and has been) grist for skepticism about her decision Monday. But perhaps the best signifier that Trump might find her to be sympathetic is how eagerly his attorneys sought her out.
In a thorough review of Cannon’s background, the Daily Beast’s Jose Pagliery notes that Trump’s failed, baseless effort to sue Hillary Clinton for the Russia investigation this year was similarly filed with the apparent hope that Cannon would assess the case.
Pagliery wrote that “when his attorneys formally filed the paperwork, they selected a tiny courthouse in the sprawling federal court district’s furthest northeast corner — a satellite location that’s 70 miles from Mar-a-Lago. They ignored the West Palm Beach federal courthouse that’s a 12-minute drive away.”
That being Cannon’s courtroom.
The judge who actually got that case, however, was appointed by President Bill Clinton, and he commented on the transparent ploy after Trump’s attorneys tried to argue that he was biased: “when Plaintiff is a litigant before a judge that he himself appointed, he does not tend to advance these same sorts of bias concerns.”
It’s certainly not uncommon for attorneys to seek out favorable judges or venues. But that these cases involved a president’s team evaluating judges that the president himself had appointed? That is. So why did Trump’s team think that Cannon would view his case so favorably? There are multiple other judges in the same district whom Trump had nominated, after all. How should we view this?
The pattern, in other words, went like this: Trump,working with then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), pushed hard to fill vacancies on the bench (often ones held open by McConnell). He campaigned on filling those seats with ideological allies and often offered up nominees who checked two boxes: young and conservative. Then, out of office and finding himself in need of a judge’s favorable opinion, he sought out Cannon in particular. On Monday, that paid off — leaving legal observers perplexed (or worse).
Again, the system depends on Americans having confidence in the impartiality of the judiciary, just as it depends on our having confidence in the objectivity of institutions like federal law enforcement. Trump’s worked hard to undercut that confidence (in both cases). But even those who are now Trump supporters have grown increasingly skeptical of institutions such as the Supreme Court — particularly in the wake of the court’s clear shift to the right.
We’re asked to rest easy that Cannon’s decision is uncoupled from her path to the bench, to be confident that her opinion was based on the evidence at hand (despite her indicating before that evidence was available that she was likely to end up where she did). If you’re inclined to think she might have been unusually sympathetic to the former president, though, you do appear to have some company: Trump’s own attorneys. | 2022-09-06T17:12:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why did Trump want Judge Cannon for his Mar-a-Lago challenge? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/06/trump-fbi-search-judge-special-master/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/06/trump-fbi-search-judge-special-master/ |
Police have identified a body found Monday as that of 34-year-old Eliza Fletcher, who was abducted and forced into a vehicle while jogging. (Memphis Police Department/AP)
A body found Monday has been identified as that of a kindergarten teacher who was abducted during an early-morning jog last week in Memphis, authorities announced Tuesday.
Eliza Fletcher, 34, was last seen jogging in a pink top and purple shorts near the University of Memphis campus around 4:20 a.m. Friday. Surveillance footage captured the mother of two being forced into a black SUV, and as they searched for her over Labor Day weekend, Memphis police said they feared she had suffered “serious injury.”
Investigators found Fletcher’s body Monday behind a duplex several miles from where she was abducted. The discovery came a day after the arrest of a suspect, 38-year-old Cleotha Abston. He will face murder charges on top of the kidnapping charges initially filed against him, police said.
“While the outcome of this investigation is not what we hoped for, we are nonetheless pleased to remove this dangerous predator off the streets of Memphis,” the city’s police chief, Cerelyn “C.J.” Davis, said during a news conference.
Authorities released few details, saying it was too early to determine where or how Fletcher was killed. They stressed that the investigation is ongoing. Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy said there was “no reason to think this was anything other than an isolated attack by a stranger.”
DNA on a pair of sandals found near the site of Fletcher’s disappearance linked Abston to the incident, police said. Investigators also tracked Abston’s cellphone number and location history, which placed him in the vicinity at about the same time the abduction happened.
They found him Saturday evening outside his last-known address, an apartment complex in front of which the SUV in question was parked. Abston tried to flee but was detained by a team of U.S. marshals.
He was charged with first-degree murder and first-degree murder in perpetration of a kidnapping, along with earlier charges of “especially aggravated kidnapping and tampering with evidence,” police said.
Fletcher, who went by Liza, was a granddaughter of the late billionaire Joseph Orgill III, who ran Orgill, a large distributor of hardware and home-improvement supplies. She taught at the all-girls St. Mary’s Episcopal School, which described her in a statement as a “beloved” junior kindergarten teacher.
“To lose someone so young and so vital is a tragedy in and of itself, but to have it happen this way with the senseless act of violence, it’s unimaginable,” Mulroy said. | 2022-09-06T17:47:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Body of abducted Memphis jogger Eliza Fletcher identified - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/06/eliza-fletcher-memphis-jogger-abducted/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/06/eliza-fletcher-memphis-jogger-abducted/ |
A nuclear plant is valuable war booty. The complex would cost more than $40 billion to build today. Though power is still flowing to Ukrainian consumers, according to grid operator Ukrenergo, Russian engineers have been laying plans to connect the plant to Russia’s power grid and to charge the Ukraine government for whatever output would remain for Ukraine. In addition, European intelligence officials have said that Russia is likely using the plant to shield troops and equipment, anticipating that the facility’s sensitivity protects it from major attacks. After visiting the plant, inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency issued a report Sept. 6 that detailed the presence of Russian military vehicles there.
IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi, a member of the inspection team, said it was “obvious that the plant and the physical integrity of the plant has been violated several times.” In their report, the team said that back-up generators and safety systems remained intact and that radiation levels were normal. But it might not have turned out that way, they said, writing: “Shelling could have impacted safety related structures, systems and components, and could have caused safety significant impacts, loss of lives and personnel injuries.”
4. What’s the source of the risks?
Zaporizhzhia “can take a decent amount of abuse,” says Suriya Jayanti, a former US State Department official who advised policy makers on Ukraine’s energy supply. Unlike the reactors at Chernobyl -- one of which exploded, contaminating some 150,000 square kilometers in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine with radioactive fallout -- those at Zaporizhzhia are surrounded by concrete and steel containment structures designed to stop the release of radiation. There are still dangers, however:
• Keeping the reactors cool requires a constant flow of electricity; if a plant is left without power, it could trigger a so-called meltdown, where, in the worse case, the reactor’s fuel gets so hot it breaches containment walls and is released to the outer environment. This is what happened at the Fukushima nuclear facility in Japan in 2011 after a tsunami damaged the plant’s backup generators.
• Another risk comes from spent fuel ponds, which Zaporizhzhia has in abundance. Were a storage tank to be hit with a bomb or shell, fuel exposed to the air could react and release radioactive particles -- with severity depending on the age of the fuel. During two days of shelling around the facility in early August, shells landed near spent nuclear fuel that was in storage and wounded a Zaporizhzhia worker, according to Energoatom. Ukraine and Russia blamed each other for the shelling, which prompted Grossi to say there was a “very real risk of a nuclear disaster.”
After their initial inspection, two IAEA inspectors stayed on at the plant. They’ll remain as neutral observers who can provide assessments of potential risks caused by the war. | 2022-09-06T17:56:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why Ukraine’s Big Nuclear Plant Raises Worries Again - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/why-ukraines-big-nuclear-plant-raises-worries-again/2022/09/06/1e8de302-2e06-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/why-ukraines-big-nuclear-plant-raises-worries-again/2022/09/06/1e8de302-2e06-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html |
‘Loving Highsmith’: A documentary portrait of the enigmatic author
Filmmaker Eva Vitija explores the life and career of Patricia Highsmith, author of ‘Strangers on a Train’ and ‘The Talented Mr. Ripley’
Author Patricia Highsmith is the subject of the documentary “Loving Highsmith.” (Family archives/Kino Lorber)
In “Loving Highsmith,” filmmaker Eva Vitija explores the life and career of author Patricia Highsmith through the lens of her love life, a form of psychobiography that fitfully brings the subject into focus, only to render her elusive in the end.
Highsmith, best known for writing “Strangers on a Train” and the “Ripley” novels, was the misfit child of a rodeo and ranching family in Texas, abandoned by her mother as a youngster before being moved to New York to join her mother and stepfather. “Loving Highsmith” suggests that Patricia’s problematic and unresolved relationship with her mother — and what the author herself would refer to as her search for her father — informed the “creepy ideas” that began to fly into her imagination when she was a teenager. She was also a closeted lesbian in 1950s Manhattan, an experience that shaped the contours of another well-known novel, “The Price of Salt” (later republished as “Carol”).
Using clips from the movies adapted from Highsmith’s books, with Gwendoline Christie reading from her journals and manuscripts, Vitija creates an aesthetic portrait similar to the one that animates “The Last Movie Stars,” Ethan Hawke’s absorbing chronicle of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward’s filmic collaborations. Vitija also interviews three of Highsmith’s lovers from over the years: Marijane Meaker, Monique Buffet and Tabea Blumenschein, each of whom relays vivid memories that somehow don’t add up to a complete picture. We get some details about their relationships, but not always what sustained them or why they ended (in Meaker’s case, it was Highsmith’s drinking). What’s more, Vitija is light on details like dates and time frames, leaving the audience disoriented and unmoored as to when certain pivotal events or moves occurred. A third-act revelation regarding a married lover in London feels more like a shrug than a bombshell.
Ultimately, “Loving Highsmith” provides a valuable addition to the larger record of the author’s enigmatic life, rather than a comprehensive chronicle itself. Which might be altogether fitting for a woman who always seemed to prefer to remain just out of reach.
Unrated. At Landmark’s E Street Cinema. Contains some adult themes. In English, French and German with subtitles. 83 minutes. | 2022-09-06T17:56:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'Loving Highsmith': A documentary portrait of author Patricia Highsmith - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/09/06/loving-highsmith-movie-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/09/06/loving-highsmith-movie-review/ |
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Aug. 23 at political rally in Hialeah. (Bloomberg/Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomber)
As Republican activists waved signs saying “My Vote Counts,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) stood in a Broward County courtroom last month to tout the first deliverables from the state’s controversial election police squad. “They did not go through any process. They did not get their rights restored, and yet they went ahead and voted anyways. ... And now they’re gonna pay the price, ” he said of the 20 people arrested and charged with voting illegally in the 2020 elections. Mr. DeSantis revealed little about the individual cases — and no wonder. Many of those charged had no idea they were unable to vote; some had even received official government notifications that they were eligible. None of that seemed to matter to Mr. DeSantis, whose crackdown on voter fraud isn’t about a real threat to election integrity but rather his desire to score political points as he runs for reelection and considers a possible 2024 presidential bid.
Since Mr. DeSantis’s stage-managed news conference on Aug. 18, details about the people caught up in his cynical campaign have emerged. Many, as Politico reported, have little education and few financial resources and believed, based on interactions with election or other officials, that they were allowed to vote. Romona Oliver, newly released from prison after serving a 20-year murder sentence, went to the Hillsborough tax collector’s office to register to vote. She admitted to having a felony conviction when asked, but an official helping her submit an application, and she soon received a voter card in the mail. Peter Washington, nearing the end of his 10-year sentence for attempted sexual battery, was enrolled in a class to ease his reentry into society when a probation officer told him his civil rights would be automatically restored upon his release from prison. Once home, he received a voter registration form in the mail, filled it out and received a voter card from the Orange County supervisor of elections.
Florida voters passed a state constitutional amendment permitting felons to regain their voting rights, but it doesn’t apply to those convicted of murder or sex crimes. Ignorance or confusion about the law doesn’t mean it was permissible for these people to vote. But it is a gross overreaction for them to be dragged from their homes in handcuffs at the crack of dawn, thrown into jail and publicly vilified. They face up to $5,000 in fines and up to five years in prison.
Instead of spending $1.1 million on a special police unit to root out a problem that doesn’t exist — the 20 votes of those arrested last month account for 0.00018 percent of the 11 million ballots cast in Florida in 2020 — the state would be better off using its money to create a system that can easily verify whether someone has the right to vote after serving time for a felony conviction. Yet Mr. DeSantis, who tried to thwart passage of the Florida constitutional amendment restoring many felons’ voting rights, clearly is not interested in making it easier for these people to vote. He would rather scare them away. | 2022-09-06T17:57:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Ron DeSantis's voter fraud crackdown is a gross overreaction - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/06/ron-desantis-voter-fraud-police-details/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/06/ron-desantis-voter-fraud-police-details/ |
Encouraging a necessary name change at Arlington House
By Lee Crittenberger Hart
Visitors at "Arlington House, The Robert E. Lee Memorial," on June 8, 2021. (Andrew Harnik/AP)
Lee Crittenberger Hart and Stephen Hammond are descendants of the Lee and Syphax families.
The Robert E. Lee Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery needs a name change — a title more inclusive of the people and history of the property. After being on divergent trajectories for multiple generations, the living descendants of those who lived or were enslaved at Arlington House Plantation are coming together to take action to make the name change a reality.
The Branhams, Custises, Grays, Henrys, Lees, Parks and Syphaxes are a mix of families whose ancestors were both enslaved and free. Our families realize that the name “The Robert E. Lee Memorial” focuses solely on one side of those who lived at Arlington House and excludes and diminishes the lives and history of those who were enslaved. Therefore, through our work with the Glisson Group, a nonprofit specializing in meaningful exchange, we are putting our collective voice into action to help make this significant name change a reality.
Additionally, we encourage visiting the Arlington House to learn about the forgotten stories of those who lived there. The National Park Service’s recent renovations to Arlington House restored the mansion and added as much information as possible about those enslaved there, for which we are grateful. However, there is still work to be done to remember those forgotten stories. As a first step, we need to acknowledge the intertwinement of the lives of those who lived at Arlington House and those who were enslaved there, and we believe renaming the site to be more inclusive is a step in the right direction. For example, George Washington Parke Custis, George Washington’s stepson and original owner of Arlington House, fathered a daughter, Maria Carter, with an enslaved woman, Arianna Carter. Maria Carter would go on to marry Charles Syphax, an enslaved person who worked in the home, and Maria’s half sister Mary Anna Randolph Custis married Robert E. Lee. This one example highlights how much history is omitted under the current name, which is one of the reasons we support the name-change legislation. A new name would emphasize all stories and voices.
Therefore, we fully support the joint resolution recently introduced by Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) and Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) to rename what is currently known as “Arlington House, the Robert E. Lee Memorial” to the “Arlington House National Historic Site.” There are important aspects of the Arlington House history that, until recently, have been either understated or omitted from the overall interpretation at the site. It is time to include all sides of the history of Arlington House, and we believe that this new name will bring light and recognition to all who lived there. We respectfully urge and encourage members of the House and the Senate on both sides of the aisle to support this important legislation.
The Arlington House National Historic Site can and should become a vital focal point for education, awareness and healing within our country. By telling the stories of our free and enslaved ancestors, we can have an effect on how this land and its spaces are perceived, while honoring the complete history of the times past and present. We encourage the public to visit the site, whether it is for the first time or a repeat visit. There is something new for everyone and so much more to learn about Arlington House and all the people who lived there. | 2022-09-06T18:17:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Encouraging a necessary name change at Arlington House - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/06/arlington-house-robert-e-lee-name-change/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/06/arlington-house-robert-e-lee-name-change/ |
The French military didn’t fail in Mali
France's Operation Barkhane began in August 2014 in Africa's Sahel region. (Jerome Delay/AP)
I take exception to William Drozdiak’s belief that the French military failed in Mali, as he wrote in his Aug. 30 Tuesday Opinion commentary, “The French just gave us another lesson in how not to fight terrorism.” The French military has more experience in fighting insurgencies than most Western militaries. It fought against insurgencies in Indochina and Algeria in the 1950s.
As Mr. Drozdiak correctly wrote, “Defeating Islamist extremists (an insurgency) can only be achieved by providing local populations with hope for a better life” — i.e., to win the hearts and minds of the people. Unless the military rulers of Mali are willing to give power to the civilians, as France demands, there is no hope of defeating the Islamist extremists. The French recognized the futility of the effort given the present situation and decided not to further risk French lives for a losing situation. It took the United States 20 years to recognize that in Afghanistan. Better to let the Russian Wagner Group mercenaries lose their lives in a failing effort.
Jerome T. Paull, Arlington | 2022-09-06T18:52:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The French military didn’t fail in Mali - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/06/french-military-didnt-fail-mali/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/06/french-military-didnt-fail-mali/ |
Limiting access to guns can decrease gun violence
Heath Middle School, then Heath High School, was the scene of a school shooting in 1997 in West Paducah, Ky. (Julia Rendleman for The Washington Post)
Working in public health, I hear stories every day of the lifelong trauma that survivors of gun violence, and frankly entire communities, endure. My heart breaks for all those impacted by the 1997 West Paducah, Ky., school shooting, as described in the Aug. 29 front-page article “New cracks for a long-shattered Kentucky town.”
Though the details of this incident are complicated, it’s worth highlighting that the guns and ammunition used by the shooter were stolen from a neighbor’s garage. Unfortunately, this is not uncommon. In fact, according to U.S. government data, 76 percent of school shootings are facilitated by children having access to unsecured and/or unsupervised guns at home or at the home of a close relative.
As we consider ways to prevent school shootings, let’s remember that responsible gun ownership includes storing firearms locked, unloaded and separate from ammunition.
Colleen Creighton, Washington
The writer is director of End Family Fire, a partnership between Brady and the Ad Council. | 2022-09-06T18:52:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Limiting access to guns can decrease gun violence - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/06/limiting-access-guns-can-decrease-gun-violence/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/06/limiting-access-guns-can-decrease-gun-violence/ |
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