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(Mustafa Hussain for The Washington Post)
Mayflies are among nature’s best environmental sentinels — and their current message to us is grim
By Robert O'Harrow Jr.
One morning in April, I waded into a cold mountain stream in Virginia called the Hazel River. I was there to fish for brook trout but found myself looking more than casting. The sun coming through the trees had gathered into a soft haze above the pool I was in. Hovering in the illumination was a cinnamon-colored insect.
It moved slowly up and down with what seemed to be the rhythm of a gentle song, its long body and tails hanging below the wings. I was reminded of something I couldn’t quite recall. UFOs came to mind. Then ballet dancers. And finally sprites. I had seen mayflies plenty of times over the years — trout love to eat mayflies, and I love to catch trout — but this one was enchanting.
In the spirit of the moment, I tried to summon what I knew about them. This mayfly had lived for a year or so underwater as a nymph with gills and an outer skeleton of armor. It had probably emerged into the terrestrial world that morning with new wings. It was in search of a mate and didn’t have a moment to lose: In a day or two it would be dead.
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When we think about the environment, we tend to think big. As in air, ocean, rainforest and the globe itself. The same holds true about species in peril. Whales, elephants, California condors and other large animals get a lot of press. But insects? Unless they’re the darlings of the bug world — think honeybees and monarch butterflies — they’re pests to be avoided. “It’s really hard to get people to care about an insect,” says Richard Knecht, a paleobiologist at Harvard University’s Museum of Comparative Zoology. “People say, ‘Well, what’s that got to do with me?’ ”
When it comes to the mayfly, I have learned that the answer is: more than you might imagine. Mayflies are a mainstay of the world’s many food chains. The nymphs consume algae, plant matter and decaying leaves. The nutrients and energy gained as a nymph are passed on to other animals when they are eaten by such predators as trout, bass, spiders, frogs, lizards, birds, bats and myriad other animals. Even some people eat mayflies.
Mayflies require relatively cool, clean water to live, which makes them among nature’s best ecological sentinels. For those who know how to look, their bodies hold precise clues about the state of the water and land around them. Some scientists call them “biosensors.” Overly warm water, pesticides, silty runoff from development and other pollution will wipe them out or force them to move to cleaner environs.
In other words, these little-known creatures are invaluable narrators of environmental change. They are also, unfortunately, victims of the very trends they can identify — and they are now fading at a disturbing pace from freshwater streams, rivers and lakes around the world.
(Video: The Washington Post/Mikroman6/Getty Images)
Mayflies are the oldest surviving winged insects on the planet. Knecht discovered a mayfly impression from some 300 million years ago in rock behind a strip mall in Massachusetts. The bug’s short-lived elegance has inspired wonder and rumination by artists and poets since the first reference to them in the Epic of Gilgamesh, a Mesopotamian poem and one of the world’s oldest pieces of literature. In an allusion to its brief life span, Aristotle dubbed the insect ephemeron. The Chinese scholar and poet Su Shih used the idea as a metaphor. “We exist no longer than mayflies between Heaven and Earth,” he wrote in 1082. Near the peak of the Renaissance, Albrecht Dürer made an engraving called “The Holy Family With the Mayfly.” The insect is sitting at the feet of the Virgin Mary.
Today, more than 3,700 species live worldwide in freshwater creeks, rivers, ponds and lakes. That includes hundreds of species from Maine to Louisiana to Washington state. I’d heard that a species of tiny mayfly inhabits a creek near my home in Arlington County, Va. I wanted to see for myself. The creek, Pimmit Run, is part of a storm-water drainage network with natural-looking stretches punctuated by concrete tunnels. I arranged my visit at the end of April to coincide with an effort by local citizen-science volunteers to help the county assess the stream’s water quality. The continued presence of mayflies would be a good sign.
Under the direction of a county water specialist, Lily Whitesell, the volunteers worked in pairs, walking in the creek, kicking up rocks and sifting the water with hand nets. Whitesell suggested I look at one of the nymphs they had captured through a field microscope set up on a card table near the creek. I laughed out loud when it came into focus: It was horrific-looking, a veritable sci-fi movie monster with claws, bulging eyes and long, thrashing tails. “Isn’t that cool?” Whitesell said.
Some of the biggest hatches involve Hexagenia, a genus of large mayflies that burrow in silt and mud and in summer erupt from big lakes like Erie and rivers such as the upper Mississippi, Ohio and Illinois. Billions of bugs have emerged in a single day, enough to feed tens of millions of birds. So many Hexagenia have fallen dead in some hatches that municipalities have used snowplows to clear them off roads.
In recent years, however, scientists and conservationists have been troubled by anecdotal reports that Hexagenia hatches were tailing off again. Roadways did not need plowing as often. And car windshields — an informal measure of upper Midwestern bug life — regularly appeared to be less splattered.
No one had enough data to say for sure what was going on, and there were not enough funds or biologists to test all the water where Hexagenia live. But a few scientists had a clever idea: Perhaps they could use weather radar to see if Hexagenia clouds showed up. The technology had been used to track migrating birds. Why not Hexagenia? When they ran tests of the radar at night, the researchers realized they could see and record images of Hexagenia. They also could use the method to examine how the images of hatches now compare to those previously recorded by weather radar. “The real beauty of it is you can look at patterns through time to see if there have been changes in the timing and the amount of those clouds of insects,” Sally Entrekin, an entomologist at Virginia Tech and one of the researchers, told me.
Some scientists contend that the Hexagenia decline may be part of a natural cycle that has been occurring for thousands of years. In any event, they say there are not enough long-term data to make sweeping pronouncements. But Entrekin and her colleagues argue that the evidence points to something ominous. “[P]ersistent environmental changes could threaten to once more extirpate Hexagenia mayflies from North America’s largest waterways, making this ephemeral spectacle — and its vital ecological functions — a thing of the past,” their paper said.
The evidence compiled by the researchers suggests the main culprits behind the Hexagenia decline are humans: our pesticides; the way we treat our sewage; the fertilizers we use on crops and lawns; how we build and spread. The byproducts of so much of what we do leaches into freshwater and fouls it. “There’s no doubt,” Entrekin told me, “that we’re losing the habitat that supports a lot of species that have very narrow environmental requirements.”
In the United Kingdom, for instance, a nonprofit group called WildFish Conservation examined chalk streams from 2015 to 2017, and again last year. Such streams can be some of the purest waterways on the planet. They are fed by cool springs that bubble up from aquifers through a form of limestone called chalk, and they’re often home for pollution- and temperature-sensitive insects and fish such as trout. WildFish estimates that the diversity of mayfly species in the streams has declined by as much as 44 percent since 1998. The researchers believe that sewage runoff, silt and a “poisonous cocktail” of pesticides and other chemicals are disrupting these once pristine habitats.
“Mayflies are reliable ‘canaries in the coal mines’ for freshwater systems,” says biologist David Wagner. “And their future prospects, especially in areas that are drying or warming, are bleak.”
I reached out to David Wagner, a biologist and lepidopterist at the University of Connecticut, for context, thinking that perhaps the problems were isolated or overblown. He has studied insects for decades and reviewed numerous scientific studies about them from around the globe. He did not provide much comfort. There’s a growing body of research suggesting that the world is in the midst of its sixth mass extinction, he said. The losses of all kinds of creatures appear to be driven by climate change, habitat degradation, pollution and other ecological stressors.
In a paper for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last year, “Insect Decline in the Anthropocene: Death by a Thousand Cuts,” Wagner and several other scientists delivered a stark warning about the disappearance of insects. The report did not focus on mayflies, but Wagner told me they are among the most vulnerable of the world’s insects because of their need for clean, well-oxygenated water. “Mayflies are reliable ‘canaries in the coal mines’ for freshwater systems,” he explained. “And their future prospects, especially in areas that are drying or warming, are bleak.”
I found him near a parking lot on Purdue’s campus, a little more than an hour northwest of Indianapolis. He took me to a basement warren in one of the science buildings and then into a room with concrete floors, painted cinder-block walls and rows of tall metal file cabinets. This was the modest home to a great treasure trove, perhaps the world’s largest collection of mayflies. Jacobus opened some of the cabinets. They were filled with clip-top canning jars. In the jars were vials, and in the vials were mayflies pickled in ethanol, nearly 700,000 of them. “Most of the world’s diversity is here,” he said.
The specimens hold untold secrets about the environment, world ecology and aquatic life. But because there likely will never be enough biologists to study them properly, many of those secrets will never be revealed. Mayflies and fieldwork are going out of fashion for young scientists, who are focusing more on genetics and molecular biology, Jacobus said. Many of those who know how to look beneath the surface sheen of water, who understand the aquatic habitats, anatomy and taxonomy of these tiny creatures, are retiring or dying. “I’m one of the last of my kind,” he explained.
His zeal for the bug was triggered in the winter of his freshman year at Purdue, when he was required to collect an aquatic insect for a biology class. On a lark, he looked in a drainage ditch on his parents’ Indiana farm. He had seen the water many times without paying attention. It was a revelation. “It’s amazing to me that there is so much life and so many interesting things that are in plain sight that we never notice,” he said. “I wound up falling in love with mayflies.” One measure of his devotion: Jacobus and his wife went on a mayfly collection tour for their honeymoon.
Indiana is home to one of the most diverse arrays of mayfly species west of the Appalachian Mountains, about 160 identified so far. According to state records, nearly a quarter of those are threatened, endangered or gone. In some streams in the state and across North America, mayfly populations are so depleted that they may not be able to reproduce in sufficient numbers for much longer. Jacobus calls these bugs “the living dead.”
The next morning, he retrieved me in his pickup truck, and we hustled toward the confluence of the East and West Forks of the White River, about 120 miles southwest of Indianapolis. The target of our field trip was Maccaffertium meririvulanum, also known as the fresh flat-headed mayfly. It was one of those thought to be endangered. Jacobus had received a small research grant to see if he could determine the fate of the species and several others on a state list of missing and endangered species.
As we passed by scrubby fields and small towns, Jacobus riffed on and on about mayflies. He explained that they are so evolved for mating that they don’t eat after they enter the terrestrial world. Their adult mouths don’t even work. He also told me there was no way to understand their fate without a grasp of ecology, the study of how organisms relate to one another and their physical environments.
There’s no global explanation for the disappearance of mayfly populations. The reasons are usually connected to the area around particular streams and lakes — and may include agriculture, construction, suburban runoff, and rising air and water temperatures. But more and more, such environmental stressors appear to be having broader impacts.
He believes that some mayflies will survive, no matter what insults come their way. The heartiest, and, in an evolutionary sense, luckiest, will probably live on after humans are long gone. But he admits that a decline in the variety of species would be a gloomy prospect. When mayflies go missing, he said, it’s a clear indication that yet another place in the world is out of balance.
Jacobus turned the truck into a grassy area near the river. As he gathered his net from the truck’s bed and tucked collection vials into his vest, a man in a pickup truck drove up rapidly. The man lowered his window and said we were on private property and needed to leave. Jacobus was calm. He explained who he was and why we were there. The driver grinned and gave us a why-didn’t-you-say-so look.
He got out of the truck and offered his hand. His name was Lowell. He described himself as a disabled former farmer. It turns out that he was enraptured by bugs. “I’ve been collecting insects since my daughter was born, and she’s 18,” he said. “You can look at God’s personality by looking at the bugs.”
The role of the mayfly in fly-fishing fits what scientists term “cultural services.” That’s the aesthetic, spiritual and recreational value that various organisms provide to the well-being of people.
Jacobus and I walked through some trees and sidestepped down a steep bank to the river. He plunged a canvas-and-mesh pouch on a long pole into the water and muck below. It came out with a splash. He put the mesh bottom close to his face and murmured at the minute bugs wiggling in the reddish silt. Then he scrunched his eyes, as though perplexed. Jacobus said a few of them could be the ones he was looking for. It would take time in the lab, looking at them under his microscope, to be sure. Jacobus was hopeful they would turn out to be the right species — partly for personal reasons but mainly, he said, because he wanted to establish with scientific precision the species that are, and are not, disappearing from Indiana waters.
On the drive home, Jacobus became philosophical. “Mayflies are the oldest group of winged insects still alive on our planet, and they’ve got stories to tell,” he said. “I’m trying to help tell those stories.”
We met on a rocky stretch of the lower Provo River, in a Wasatch Mountains canyon east of Salt Lake. Baetis, sometimes called blue-winged olives, or BWOs, are treasured by anglers because they are so common and, like other mayflies, often entice trout to feed on the surface. They live in most streams where there are trout — and in many like Pimmit Run that are too degraded for the fish but healthy enough to support some aquatic invertebrates. They can emerge so prolifically that trout will eat them with abandon while ignoring the fake flies that anglers offer.
With our waders on, we strung up our rods and tied on tiny barbed fake BWOs that were about half the length of a pinkie fingernail. Schmidt had a task for us before the fishing began. He unfurled a large homemade seine net made of mesh attached to four-foot-long dowel rods. He told me to press the rods into the bottom of the stream while he shuffled toward me, kicking up silt and rocks and the aquatic insects among them.
The haul showed the lower Provo was very healthy. Other rivers in Utah — and across the West — are not. Drought, rising temperatures and wildfires, coupled with pesticide runoff and silt, have diminished or destroyed freshwater streams here and across the country in recent years. Schmidt believes the populations of mayflies, stoneflies, caddis flies and other aquatic species beloved by anglers are hitting a “tipping point” in many places. And it’s happening at a time when there are more anglers than ever before — in part because so many people thought of fly-fishing as a safe outside activity during the pandemic. “We used to see caddis flies to the extent in the evening you’d get vertigo,” he said of one nearby river. “There were so many flying upstream in this continuous wave that if you didn’t stop looking at them, literally, they would give you the heebie-jeebies.” Schmidt paused. Now, he said, “they’re all but gone.”
The role of the mayfly in fly-fishing fits what Jacobus and other scientists term “cultural services.” That’s the aesthetic, spiritual and recreational value that various organisms provide to the well-being of people. The more I looked, the deeper the current of mayfly culture went. Consider the British musician Paul Weller, founder of bands the Jam and the Style Council, who wrote a wistful song titled “Mayfly” not long ago: Oh, endless sleep / Perchance to dream / As a mayfly.
An angler and photographer named Ted Fauceglia told me he shot some 25,000 close-up film photographs of the bugs over two decades. He can’t explain exactly why. “I wanted to get the essence of mayflies,” said Fauceglia, who eventually published some of the mayfly photos in fishing magazines and as a coffee-table book. “But they’re a mystery, and I couldn’t put it into words.”
And there’s the Midwestern artist, printmaker and poet Gaylord Schanilec, who spent four years studying mayflies from Wisconsin waters and making wood engravings of them. His devotion to mayflies began one afternoon while fishing. When he saw one rise from the stream, he followed it and grabbed it with his hand. He examined it under a magnifier he uses for engraving. “I was amazed by what I saw: the hues vivid and fresh, the patterns evolving and converging — here was the perfect subject for a color wood engraving,” he wrote later.
Garry said the project gave him a chance to put his love of science to use in the cause of art. He’s alarmed by what the disappearance of mayflies and other aquatic insects may be telling us. “We’re taking bits and pieces away from the natural world that we may never be able to replace,” he said. “As ecologists like to say: How many rivets can you take out of an airplane before it finally can’t fly?”
In late July the biennial meeting of the International Conference on Ephemeroptera was held virtually for the first time. The conference was convened jointly with the International Symposium on Plecoptera, a group devoted to stoneflies and, as far as I could tell, every bit as committed in its efforts to understand that bug’s place in the world’s troubled environment. Mayflies and stoneflies often coexist in freshwater habitats, and the fate of the two seem entwined.
While most presentations explored aspects of the biology of mayflies and stoneflies, some sounded alarms about places where the bugs were disappearing. Conference organizer Ed DeWalt and another scientist from the University of Illinois, through work with computer models, concluded that certain species could disappear in the Midwest because of development, pesticide runoff and the region’s changing climate. Apparently, Illinois has already lost more than 1 of 4 native stonefly species. Meanwhile, a scientist from India said deforestation, development and climate change in the Western Ghats mountains are imperiling dozens of mayfly species and the freshwater they inhabit.
One study in the conference concerned the upland summer mayfly in the United Kingdom. Craig Macadam of Buglife, a conservation nonprofit at the University of Stirling in Scotland, has studied the bug for years. It’s the only Arctic mountain mayfly in the British Isles. A decade ago, he predicted it would be forced to move north because of rising water temperatures. And now it’s happening. Upland summer mayflies are moving to smaller, colder streams higher in the hills. The species no longer inhabits 4 out of 5 sites where Macadam found them in the past. The outlook for them is grim.
Macadam and several other scientists met with me in a session arranged by DeWalt. Macadam described a citizen-science project that documented a sharp decline of all insects, including mayflies, in recent decades. Volunteers working with his group photographed their license plates before and after trips. The plates serve as a standardized way to measure the number of splattered bugs of all kinds in particular times and places. Macadam said there’s been a 59 percent drop in insect splats measured since 2004.
But it’s his research on the upland summer mayfly that troubles him most. “The species I’ve been studying for over a decade now is disappearing,” he said. “And that makes me incredibly sad.”
Jacobus, the Indiana biologist, was on the video call. In an email exchange later, I asked for his impressions. He was uneasy. “We are losing mayflies and other things that support life as we know it and that make life worth living,” he said. “Nature’s foundations are buckling under global change. The world has always been changing, and it always will, but now it’s changing fast.”
Robert O’Harrow Jr. is a Washington Post contributing writer. | 2022-09-19T14:59:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The world’s oldest winged insect is in trouble. How frightened should we be? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/09/19/mayfly-decline/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/09/19/mayfly-decline/ |
If Garland sincerely believes in the rule of law, Trump is in deep trouble
Attorney General Merrick Garland attends a naturalization service on Ellis Island on Sept. 17. (Alex Kent/AFP/Getty Images)
Attorney General Merrick Garland, at a naturalization ceremony at Ellis Island on Saturday, recalled the flight of his grandmother and mother-in-law from Nazi Germany to ensure they could “live without fear of persecution.” That is the essence of the rule of law, he said. “The rule of law means that the same laws apply to all of us, regardless of whether we are this country’s newest citizens or whether our [families] have been here for generations.”
One cannot help think that his message was directed at the wider audience of Americans, some of whom think defeated former president Donald Trump is a “victim” because he is being investigated for squirreling away top-secret documents at his Mar-a-Lago club.
Garland’s remarks came just hours after the Justice Department appealed the atrocious ruling of U.S. District Court Judge Aileen M. Cannon, which made hash out of executive privilege and expressly declared that Trump’s status as a former president merited special consideration.
The court’s attempt to give deference to the former president flew in the face of the rule of law and the court’s own constrained power. As the government argued to the U.S. Court of Appeals, “Neither Plaintiff nor the court has cited any authority suggesting that a former president could successfully invoke executive privilege to prevent the executive branch from reviewing its own records. Any possible assertion of executive privilege over these records would be especially untenable and would be overcome by the government’s ‘demonstrated, specific need’ for them … because they are central to its ongoing investigation.”
Even more pointedly, an amicus brief filed on behalf of former Republican officials, including those who held high-ranking Justice Department posts, argues: “The district court’s analysis, which gave greater weight to the reputation of a former president than to the reputation of any other citizen, and greater weight to that personal reputation than to national security concerns, is fundamentally inconsistent with the basic tenets of U.S. law.” The brief added, “Under the court’s reasoning, its analysis would be different if the plaintiff were not the former president but a school teacher, police officer, or veteran who had taken classified information from a U.S. government facility and stored it in their home.”
In short, the court cannot come up with a rule simply for Trump. That is what the rule of law is meant to prevent. As former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann remarked, “I think what [Cannon’s] doing is affording [Trump] more than any of us would get in court. I think that was the most outrageous statement, it is a violation of a judge’s oath of office to treat every individual the same.”
Garland’s speech on Saturday echoed the government’s appeal to the 11th Circuit. He declared, “The rule of law means that the law treats each of us alike: there is not one rule for friends, another for foes; one rule for the powerful, another for the powerless; a rule for the rich, another for the poor; or different rules, depending upon one’s race or ethnicity or country of origin.” He added, “The rule of law means that we are all protected in the exercise of our civil rights; in our freedom to worship and think as we please; and in the peaceful expression of our opinions, our beliefs, and our ideas.”
Given these and other recent statements, it seems increasingly unlikely Garland would allow a former president to avoid prosecution simply because he is a former president. If, as Garland said, “the responsibility to ensure the rule of law is and has been the duty of every generation in our country’s history,” then it falls not only on the newest immigrants but on the 11th Circuit and the Justice Department to protect it. Hopefully, the 11th Circuit is listening.
Opinion|Republicans are wearing cruelty as a badge of honor
Opinion|What ‘House of the Dragon’ says about sex, pregnancy and power | 2022-09-19T14:59:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | If Garland believes in the rule of law, Trump is in deep trouble - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/19/garland-trump-cannon-ruling-appeal/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/19/garland-trump-cannon-ruling-appeal/ |
Micki Witthoeft, the mother of Ashli Babbitt, and Steve Girard demonstrate outside of a jail where a group of defendants charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol are held in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 14. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
They have a nightly ritual by now, as the summer comes to a close.
“We light the candles, we do the songs, the prayers, the Pledge of Allegiance,” said Caroline Birk, who told me she never imagined she’d be standing outside an American jail, demanding better conditions for inmates — nutritious food, cleaner cells, kinder guards, more liberal visitation.
The scene has the feel of a hippie peace rally. Yet the participants are hardcore Trump supporters, gathering nightly to support those jailed for their parts in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. Sometimes, former president Donald Trump himself calls them.
The group — in focusing on its brethren — is asking for the same human dignity that advocates for the incarcerated have been demanding for decades, cloaking itself in patriotism for resisting oppression only now that it feels it has landed on its doorstep. Put another way, the political spectrum may not be a line, but rather a circle. Go far right enough, you’re left.
Every night, the inmates call in to talk to those at the vigil.
“Here’s my guy, he’s on!” said Nicole Reffitt, as she hit the speaker button on her phone and broadcast the voice of her incarcerated husband over a loudspeaker and across the Capitol Hill neighborhood. Residents five blocks away say they can hear it every night.
Nicole Reffitt: “How’s prison?”
Guy Reffitt: “It’s definitely interesting … Not fun.”
The crowd: “We love you, patriot!”
Then it’s time for the inmate with a DJ Wolfman Jack voice. “Hello from the D.C., Guuuuuulaaaag!” he growls, then reports on the food they had that day, the upcoming trials of Oath Keepers, Proud Boys and other inmates.
Sometimes they have guest callers. Like Trump.
“It’s a terrible thing that has happened to a lot of people that are being treated very, very unfairly,” he told the inmates and the crowd as his familiar voice once again filled a part of Capitol Hill.
Trump is talking about the Jan. 6 detainees, of course. His motorcade never stopped at the D.C. jail to offer support to the inmates before the insurrection. Now, the D.C. inmates who heeded his call to come for a “wild” time on Jan. 6 have become a small industry, spinning off blogs and live streams, fundraisers that have generated more than a million dollars.
Trump phoned the group’s matriarch, Micki Witthoeft, last Tuesday. She’s the mother of Ashli Babbitt, the 35-year-old Trump supporter who was shot by a police officer as she was trying to get into the U.S. Capitol and later died in hospital.
“He calls me,” Witthoeft told me, petting her 19-year-old big-eyed, tiny dog named Fuggles, “every so often.”
Did you see the way law enforcement prepared for the Jan. 6 riot? This is what White privilege looks like.
After the calls, the announcements and songs, the group closes out at 9 p.m. with a singing of the national anthem and a solemn reading of the inmates’ names and their days behind bars, punctuated by the tink of a tambourine beat:
“Shane Jenkins, 558 days.” Tink.
“Darryl Johnson, 460 days.” Tink.
“Cody Mattis, 342 days.” Tink.
The detainees respond by flicking their unit’s lights on and off in a dark-light-dark version of applause.
This vigil-protest, right-wing variety show has been happening every night since the beginning of August in this corner of Capitol Hill, where D.C.’s long-troubled jail, historic Congressional Cemetery and renovated townhouses selling for north of $1 million form a triangle of clashing worlds.
They have no permit, but D.C. police keep a heavy presence there every night, “monitoring and assessing the activities and planning accordingly with our federal and local law enforcement partners,” said public information officer Sean Hickman.
The protesters say they’re not looking to cause trouble. They’re just asking for basic, human rights for people, no matter their criminal charges.
“I always thought the system worked,” said Birk, who drove across the country from Mt. Shasta, Calif., and is camping around the D.C. region so she can come to the nightly protests. “But it’s not working here.”
Some of the inmates — like many across the nation whose trials have been delayed by a covid backlog — haven’t had a trial. Some have been convicted and are awaiting appeal.
Reffitt, with her helmet of Texas blonde hair, Colgate smile and pastel cardigan, left her life in a Dallas suburb so she could be in this tiny pocket of Capitol Hill at 7 p.m., on the dot.
“It’s really hard being this close to him,” Reffitt said. “I’m hoping he gets a glimpse of me. The best I get is a flickering light.
“It’s really awful in there,” she said.
She’s an unlikely voice for change in a detention facility that is 93 percent Black and poor, according to the D.C. Department of Corrections.
“The J6 people are predominantly White and middle class. This is very different from the way they’re used to being treated,” said Tammy Seltzer, who has been fighting for better treatment of inmates with mental health issues in D.C. jail for more than a decade as the director of the DC Jail and Prison Advocacy Project at University Legal Services.
“Very sadly, people of color, poor people are used to being mistreated,” she said. “If the conditions are a shock to the J6 detainees it’s because they haven’t been paying attention.”
While some advocates for prison reform are quietly pretty stoked about all this, it’s probably not easy supporting folks like the Reffitts.
Reffitt was convicted by a D.C. jury in March of five felonies, including transporting and carrying a firearm on Capitol grounds, interfering with U.S. Capitol Police and obstructing an official proceeding.
Guy Reffitt's Jan. 6 sentence is the longest yet
Three Capitol Police officers testified that they failed to stop Reffitt from entering the building with rubber bullets and chemical spray. He was carrying an AR-15 and plastic flex-cuffs. He was wearing body armor and a motorcycle helmet mounted with a camera.
While the demonstrators on Capitol Hill tell him “We love you, patriot!” a Capitol Police officer who faced off with the armed Reffitt on Jan. 6 had something else to say.
“His actions weren’t the actions of a patriot,” said Officer Shauni Kerkhof, when she testified at his trial. “They were actions of a domestic terrorist.”
When he returned home from Washington after Jan. 6, Reffitt told his kids not to turn him in. “Traitors get shot,” he said.
They also get locked up.
If Jan. 6 had been a movie, the cops would've been the heroes
Inside, the Trump supporters are beginning to find solidarity with others behind bars.
Jonathan Mellis is still awaiting trial after police body-camera footage captured him thrusting a big stick at officers on Jan. 6, aiming for the place on their necks between their helmets and body armor.
He started a Christmas fundraiser for the children of inmates outside the jail’s “Patriot Pod” because “we know how horrible the conditions are here,” he wrote in a letter. “So we have quite the soft spot for our brothers in general population. These inhumane conditions are only one aspect to the nightmare this city puts our brothers through. They grew up in DC, went to school here, got their first job here, and have children here. The opportunities and safety this city offered them are slim to none. Now as a result of that they are in this disgusting and inhumane DC jail with us. Who is supposed to supply a joyful Holiday season to their children if they are trapped in here because of a system that doesn’t care?”
It’s strange for human rights advocates to hear their causes championed by such unlikely allies, as that political circle meets at common goals.
“We and other activists, family members, people formerly incarcerated have been complaining and beseeching the D.C. government, whether it’s the Council or the Department of Corrections to fix these problems,” Seltzer said. “Now we have the January 6 people complaining about the same things.”
We talked on the phone, but I imagine that Seltzer shrugged at that point.
“Wrong messenger,” she said. “But right message.” | 2022-09-19T15:08:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The D.C. Jail protest that Donald Trump supports - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/19/protest-dc-jail-trump-j6/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/19/protest-dc-jail-trump-j6/ |
Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin is transported to Westminster Abbey on the day of her funeral. (James Forde for The Washington Post)
The funeral of Queen Elizabeth II was full of pageantry and pathos as Britain laid its longest-reigning monarch to rest on Monday. Family members reunited, world leaders paid their respects, Britons turned out in droves to bid farewell and choirs sang mournful hymns.
Marching at a precise 75 steps per minute — a pace reserved for funerals — soldiers and family members escorted the queen’s coffin to Westminster Abbey for the state funeral.
King Charles III led the family procession, flanked by his siblings and children. Princes Harry and Andrew were not wearing military uniforms since they are no longer working royals.
Queen Elizabeth II's coffin traveled from Westminster Hall to Westminster Abbey for her funeral on Sept. 19. (Video: The Washington Post)
The service in Westminster Abbey was attended by world leaders, dignitaries and other royal families. The hymns drew on moments from the queen’s long life. One hymn, The Lord’s My Shepherd, was sung at her wedding in 1947. Musicians performed an anthem composed for her coronation in 1953.
The bouquet atop the coffin was cut from the gardens of Buckingham Palace, and from the residences of William and Charles. It also included myrtle, which the queen carried in her wedding bouquet.
Young heirs
The queen’s great-grandchildren George and Charlotte sang hymns during the religious service held for her on Sept. 19 in Westminster Abbey. (Video: The Washington Post)
Prince George, 9, and Princess Charlotte, 7, joined the procession, following the coffin of their great-grandmother through the abbey. It was reminiscent of a more traumatic death, when their father William and his brother Harry walked behind their mother Diana’s coffin after she died in a car crash in Paris at 36.
George is second in line to the throne, after his father.
Charlotte wore a horseshoe brooch, a gift from her great-grandmother who loved horses. She is third in line to the throne.
Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral came to an end at Westminster Abbey with the congregation singing the national anthem, “God Save the King,” on Sept. 19. (Video: Reuters)
At the conclusion of the Westminster Abbey ceremony the crowd sang Britain’s national anthem, now “God Save the King,” swapping queen for king to mark a new royal era.
Pipe Major Paul Burns of the Royal Regiment of Scotland then played a traditional lament called “Sleep, dearie, sleep.” Burns would play beneath the queen’s window for 15 minutes every morning at 9 a.m. whenever she was staying at Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, Holyrood House or Balmoral Castle.
The procession continued to Wellington Arch, led by four horses from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Harry and William, in another echo of Diana’s funeral, trailed their grandmother’s coffin side-by-side. It was one of their few public appearances together since Harry chose to leave royal life and move to California, causing a rift in the family.
Queen Elizabeth II's coffin is escorted from Westminster Abbey to Wellington Arch by a military procession on Sept. 19. (Video: The Washington Post)
The final departure from London
From Wellington Arch, the queen left London for the last time. Her family saluted the hearse as it began the drive to Windsor, where the queen will be buried.
Ruby Mellen reported from Washington, D.C. William Booth, Karla Adam, Annabelle Timsit and Libby Casey contributed to this report.
Queen Elizabeth II funeral live updates: Procession arrives at Windsor
Here’s how to watch the queen's funeral | 2022-09-19T15:12:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Queen Elizabeth II's funeral: memorable moments in photos and videos - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/19/queen-elizabeth-funeral-key-photos-videos/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/19/queen-elizabeth-funeral-key-photos-videos/ |
Analysis by Trevon Logan | Bloomberg
Imagine traveling to a large city and finding that no hotel will allow you to stay the night, or needing to bring toilet paper on a road trip because no gas station will allow you to use the restroom. Such discrimination was the norm for Black Americans before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 barred racial discrimination in public accommodations. Historian Mia Bay finds that more than 90% of US hotels in the 1950s refused service to Black people. From the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama to the lunch counter sit-ins in the early 1960s, Black protests were concentrated on how businesses and public services denied them equal access.
In recent years, historians have used novel methods to better understand this neglected part of America’s past. One valuable resource: the “Green Book” travel guides published from 1936 to 1966 by Harlem postal worker Victor Green, listing hotels, businesses, restaurants and other businesses that served Black customers. These and other guides were used by millions of Black Americans, who knew that being in the wrong place could have dire consequences.
Such discrimination was an affront to America’s free-market principles. For decades, conservative economists held that government intervention was not needed: The market would drive bigots out of business — just as it would punish an employer who rejected Black workers, allowing competitors to underpay for Black labor. Yet their logic ignored what happens when consumers value discrimination. This was the concern of businesses during the years of lunch-counter sit-ins and other protests: If one decided to serve Black customers, its predominantly White customers would go to the competition. In North Carolina, for example, business owners worried that if they served all races equally, they would “lose a sufficient percentage of their present patronage” to go from profit to loss.
In other words, the market penalized fairness. As a result, many businesses (some begrudgingly) supported non-discrimination ordinances, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964: Such mandates forced both them and their competitors to treat all customers equally, eliminating anyone’s ability to profit from racial discrimination. This helps explain why non-discrimination is enforced under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, not the equal protections under the 14th Amendment. It’s also relevant today in deciding how to protect the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people, who commonly face discrimination but do not enjoy the same federal protections.
The ability to access businesses is a critical part of economic citizenship. When the free market cannot deliver such freedom, the government must intervene. If policy makers get the history right, they can learn to put the market, and freedom, in their appropriate places.
More From This and Other Writers at Bloomberg Opinion:
• Slavery Was Never an American Economic Engine: Trevon Logan
• The California Boomtown That Racism Destroyed: Dean and Logan
• Got a Labor Shortage? Make It Easier to Work: Kathryn Edwards
Trevon Logan is a professor of economics at the Ohio State University and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. | 2022-09-19T15:21:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Free Market Doesn’t Guarantee Freedom for Everyone - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-free-market-doesnt-guarantee-freedom-for-everyone/2022/09/19/8c40f8c8-382c-11ed-b8af-0a04e5dc3db6_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-free-market-doesnt-guarantee-freedom-for-everyone/2022/09/19/8c40f8c8-382c-11ed-b8af-0a04e5dc3db6_story.html |
Bermudians gather early Monday to watch the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II at an event organized by the Bermuda Musical and Dramatic Society in Hamilton. (Amanda Coletta/TWP)
HAMILTON, Bermuda — The Bermuda Musical and Dramatic Society has screened royal weddings. The community theater here in the capital of Britain’s oldest overseas territory has celebrated Queen Elizabeth II’s jubilees, including her Platinum Jubilee in June, marking her 70 years on the throne.
And so on Monday, about two dozen of its members convened before sunrise over bacon sandwiches and mimosas, around a bar in the Daylesford Theater kitted out with Union Jack flags, to toast “To Her Majesty” on the more somber occasion of her funeral.
“We feel an affinity toward her,” said Alan Brooks, 67, a retail manager in Bermuda who served in the Royal Navy. “Whenever there have been any special occasions in her life that we felt we needed to mark, we’ve marked them …
“And sadly, we’re now marking the last event in her life.”
Those gathered at the theater watched in mostly pin-drop silence. Some sang, softly, or hummed the hymns. Everyone stood for “God Save the King.”
Bermuda’s governor declared Monday a public holiday here, and many bars, restaurants and shops were closed. Governor Rena Lalgie and Premier David Burt were in London for the funeral. Tanya Davis, Lalgie’s private secretary, said officials anticipated most Bermudians would watch the funeral at home. They were planning a service at the Cathedral of the Most Holy Trinity on Sept. 24.
Elizabeth came to Bermuda several times. Her first visit was with Prince Philip in 1953, during her six-month tour of the Commonwealth after her coronation.
Kim Day, the president of the Bermuda Musical and Dramatic Society’s executive committee, has fond memories of a visit in 1994, when the queen had a little conversation with local Cub Scouts. Her son was one of them.
“I was about 2 feet away from her,” Day recalled. “It was back in the time before cellphones, so nobody took a real close picture, which is a real shame.”
The Bermuda Musical and Dramatic Society, an amateur theater set up in 1945, planned the funeral screening late last week. Jennifer Campbell, a Canadian who has lived in Bermuda since 2001, said some of its members are like her: Expats from Commonwealth realms, countries where the British monarch is head of state.
She said she was “in awe” of Elizabeth.
“She made a vow to serve her entire life when she became queen and she did it,” said Campbell, who was dressed in a shirt with a sequined Union Jack flag. “She never, ever floundered. Her commitment was to the monarchy, and she never swayed from that. … I know a lot of people have different feelings about the monarchy itself.”
Including in Bermuda. Burt said last week that Elizabeth’s “life and the constancy of her service meant that whether we warmed to the idea of monarchy or not, ‘The Queen’ was the single most immovable feature on the world stage.”
Bermuda has a Crown-appointed governor, who represents the British monarch, and a parliament of elected lawmakers. As in other overseas territories, Britain is responsible for defense, security and foreign policy.
The islands were named after Juan de Bermúdez, the Spanish navigator who discovered them uninhabited in 1505. A century later, Sir George Somers, a British admiral, was sailing the merchant ship Sea Venture to Jamestown with a group of colonists when they were caught in a treacherous storm and shipwrecked here. (The wreck is believed to have inspired Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.”)
In 1612, King James issued a charter to the investors of the Virginia Company of London that extended the boundary of their colony to Bermuda. Several dozen British colonists arrived and established a settlement in St. George, one of the oldest in the Western Hemisphere.
The Crown took over administration of the colony in 1684. Not long after settlement, Colonists brought enslaved people to Bermuda, many of them transported through the Middle Passage from Africa. Slavery was abolished here in the 19th century, but Black people continued to be subjected to segregation for more than a century after.
Talk of independence here has long ebbed and flowed. In a 1995 referendum, around 73 percent of voters rejected a break with the Crown.
Citizens Uprooting Racism in Bermuda described independence as a “natural progression” for a modern democracy, but “the death of the monarch should not in itself be a trigger for Bermudians to pursue independence.”
“We have been settled since 1612, we have our own constitution, laws, traditions, currency and culture, and frankly it is very difficult to see how being a colony or overseas territory benefits Bermuda in any tangible way,” the group told the Royal Gazette newspaper.
Sandy Amott, 64, was born and raised in Bermuda to parents from England. She admired the queen for her seven decades of service and was emotional when she learned of her death.
“In a way, I’m very sorry to be here today,” said Amott, a secretary. “I just thought that she would live forever, and I’m very sad. But rest in peace, Elizabeth, and long live the king.” | 2022-09-19T15:22:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bermuda, Britain's oldest overseas territory, watches queen's funeral - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/19/bermuda-queen-elizabeth-funeral/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/19/bermuda-queen-elizabeth-funeral/ |
A note rests atop a flower arrangement on the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II as it is carried out of Westminster Abbey during her state funeral in central London, Monday, Sept. 19, 2022. (Pool/Reuters)
As Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin made its way from Westminster Abbey to St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle on Monday, a white note could be seen nestled amid crown jewels and a richly symbolic floral spray.
The note showed that Charles has begun to use “R” for “Rex” — Latin for “king” — the initial typically used by the sovereign when signing off correspondence. Queen Elizabeth signed off as “Elizabeth R.” for “Regina,” or queen.
For her mother, the queen penned her goodbye message on the same Buckingham Palace stationery bearing the Great Seal of the Realm as Charles did for her Monday funeral procession. For her husband of 74 years, she reportedly used her personal stationary. In both notes, the queen signed off her messages not as “Regina” but the more familiar “Lillibet,” her girlhood name.
Parting notes have not been exchanged exclusively between members of the royal family: When Queen Elizabeth’s father, King George VI, died in 1952, Prime Minister Winston Churchill left a note in the floral tribute for the king that read, “For Valour,” the same words inscribed on the Victoria Cross, the highest honor awarded to members of the British armed forces.
The foliage includes rosemary, which symbolizes remembrance; English oak, which symbolizes the strength of love; and myrtle, a plant that symbolizes a happy marriage and which was grown from a sprig of myrtle in Elizabeth’s 1947 wedding bouquet. At the king’s request, the wreath is made in an environmentally sustainable way, the palace said.
Queen Elizabeth II funeral live updates: Service held at Windsor | 2022-09-19T16:43:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | King Charles left a personal note on Queen Elizabeth's coffin - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/19/king-charles-note/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/19/king-charles-note/ |
Typhoon Nanmadol slams into Japan, killing at least two
Extremely heavy rainfall in southern Japan caused several rivers to spill their banks
Japanese Self-Defense Forces troops conduct a search-and-rescue operation at the site of a landslide caused by Typhoon Nanmadol in Mimata, on Japan's southernmost main island of Kyushu. (Kyodo/Reuters)
Since making landfall in southern Japan as the equivalent of a strong Category 2 hurricane, the deadly Typhoon Nanmadol has weakened — though it was still packing a punch on Monday, bringing heavy rainfall and gusty winds to a vast swath of Japan’s islands.
The storm has killed at least two people since it hit Japan’s Kagoshima prefecture, according to reporting from Reuters. One man was found dead in a car on a flooded-out farm, while another man died when his cottage was hit by a landslide.
At least one person is missing, and dozens of other storm-related injuries have been reported, according to Reuters.
The storm made landfall with a central pressure of 935 millibars, making it the fourth-strongest typhoon on record to make landfall in Japan, with historical records dating back to 1951. It hit land with winds around 110 miles per hour.
As Nanmadol approached the Japanese coast, photographers caught intense shots of massive waves crashing ashore. In advance of the storm, more than 8 million people in southern and western Japan were asked to evacuate their homes. Experts warned that the storm could end up being one of the most destructive typhoons in decades to strike Japan.
While a worst-case scenario for damage and storm surge may have been avoided, the storm still dumped a massive amount of precipitation in Japan, with plenty of rainfall still to come in some spots.
The heaviest rainfall totals were reserved for the southern main island of Kyushu, where observations showed five separate weather stations picked up over a half-meter (19.69 inches) of rain in 24 hours on Sunday, according to reporting from weather blog Eye on the Storm.
According to Japanese broadcaster NHK, about 1,000 millimeters of rainfall — more than 39 inches — have fallen since Thursday in Misato Town, Miyazaki prefecture, which is more than twice the town’s average in the month of September.
The widespread heavy rainfall spilled into rivers and roadways, spawning landslides and making for dangerous travel.
Some videos of flooding shared on social media show dramatic scenes of residential streets turned into raging muddy rivers. Another intense video shows the typically pristine Miyagawa River nearly overflowing its banks, with water rushing violently downstream.
Military bases in southern Japan that are run by the United States appeared to have escaped significant damage. At Sasebo Naval Base in Nagasaki prefecture, wind speeds topped out around 64 mph and more than 6 inches of rain fell, but no significant damage was reported, according to reporting from Stars and Stripes.
“We have concluded our damage reports and it’s the usual downed trees, some bent fence posts, just some minor damage to the base,” Sasebo spokesman Aki Nichols told the military newspaper. “Nothing that is mission critical.”
The wind gusts from the storm had widespread impact, with more than 300,000 homes losing power in the storm, according to reporting from CNN. Japan’s weather agency said the typhoon was carrying wind gusts of up to 168 mph near the remote island of Minami Daito, southeast of Okinawa.
The wind and rain made for a disastrous travel day in Japan, with hundreds of flights canceled and bullet train services suspended in affected parts of the country, according to the Japan Times.
Heavy rainfall warnings and advisories remain in effect for much of Japan, with several inches to several feet of rain in spots expected to cause additional landslides and flooding. Storm surge warnings also remain in effect for several Japanese prefectures along the Sea of Japan, also known as the East Sea, including Ishikawa and Hyogo.
In Tokyo, the worst of the storm is expected to arrive Tuesday. Rainfall rates of roughly 2 inches an hour are possible, with up to about 6 inches of rain forecast by the time the storm exits the region.
The Japanese Meteorological Agency’s latest forecast shows the storm swirling just offshore Tottori prefecture in the Sea of Japan. Nanmadol’s sustained winds have fallen to 63 mph. The storm is not expected to strengthen again before making another landfall as an even weaker storm in mainland Japan — though heavy rainfall is still expected.
After making its final landfall in Niigata prefecture, the storm is forecast to exit the Japanese mainland and cross into the Pacific Ocean late Tuesday morning.
Nanmadol is the 14th typhoon of the season in the Pacific. Japan is in the midst of its typhoon season, which routinely brings more than a dozen storms a year to the country. Storms can form at all times of the year, but storm formation peaks from July to October. | 2022-09-19T16:52:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Typhoon Nanmadol slams into Japan - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/19/typhoon-nanmadol-japan-flooding/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/19/typhoon-nanmadol-japan-flooding/ |
Rommy Hunt Revson, who popularized scrunchie, dies at 78
The ruffled hair tie was described as ‘the most successful hair accessory in the world’
By Olesia Plokhii
Rommy Hunt Revson (Rommy Hunt Revson Estate)
Rommy Hunt Revson, a struggling New York City singer who made a fortune when she created the scrunchie, one of the most ubiquitous hair accessories ever invented, died Sept. 7 in Rochester, Minn. She was 78.
The cause was a ruptured aorta, said Alan Rothfeld, Ms. Revson’s estate lawyer. He said Ms. Revson, who had been in poor health for years, died while receiving testing and treatment at Rochester’s Mayo Clinic for Cushing’s syndrome, a hormonal disorder, and Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, genetic disorders relating to the body’s connective tissues.
Ms. Revson, who first tried to make a career out of singing in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, created the fabric hair tie in 1986 out of necessity, needing to tie back her fraying hair in a gentle way.
Recently divorced from Revlon cosmetics heir John Revson, she was jobless and suffering from hair breakage caused by a particularly damaging bleach job.
"I was so stressed out my hair was thinning," Ms. Revson told The Washington Post in 1995.
Inspired by the fabric and elastic waistband of her pajama pants, she decided to emulate the design for her hair. She would cover a rubber band in fabric and use that to hold her hair in place, either in a bun or ponytail, without damaging her hair.
“I don’t know why, but I became somewhat determined to figure out an invention that used fabric instead of plastic for the hair,” Ms. Revson told Arkansas website Talk Business & Politics in 2016. “My friends tried to get me to put that down and go with them to the beach as summer was about to end, but something told me to keep working on this hair accessory.”
With a $50 used sewing machine, she made the first prototype — an “ugly” black and gold scrunchie with navy blue thread, she said.
In 1987, Ms. Revson patented her design, and after a marketing campaign that saw fashion retailers such as Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s place large orders for the product, the hair accessory caught on. Female consumers seemed to admire it for fashion and function. Copycat retailers were soon selling their own versions of the product. (Some accounts point to a man named Philip Meyers as the inventor of the scrunchie in 1963, but it didn’t find its market.)
Thanks to Ms. Revson, the ruffled hair tie has adorned the heads of millions of women, including Hillary Clinton, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Madonna and Britney Spears. It had been the topic of discussion in episodes of “Seinfeld,” “Friends” and “Sex and the City” — and even traveled to space, after American astronaut Pamela Melroy wore a navy blue one to the International Space Station in 2000 and 2002.
“The scrunchie was the most successful hair accessory in the world,” said Lewis Hendler, whose company, L&N Sales and Marketing, was the exclusive licensee of the product from 1989 to 2001, when Ms. Revson’s patent expired. During that time, Mr. Hendler’s company paid Ms. Revson about $1 million in royalties annually.
The scrunchie, which originally sold for $1 as a single hair accessory, now sells in multipacks and in every color, pattern and fabric imaginable — velvet, leather, silk, lace, fur, encrusted with pearls. (High-end retailers, such as Balenciaga, market their versions for $250.)
Ms. Revson predicted the ubiquity of the accessory early on and spent much of her life staking a claim — most often in courts — to the ruffled hair tie.
“I thought I would be a bag lady 10 years from now saying, ‘Hey, I invented those,’ ” Ms. Revson told The Post in 1995.
Rommy Kolb was born in White Plains, N.Y., on Feb. 15, 1944. As a young woman, she was a singer, songwriter and piano teacher, and she also performed in Manhattan nightclubs under the name Rommy Hunt.
Reviewing her 1979 performance at Reno Sweeney, a cabaret club in Greenwich Village, New York Times music critic John S. Wilson complimented the “fine sense of shading,” adding that she “projects strongly and on a variety of levels” as a performer. She once opened for Frank Sinatra, but the performer lifestyle soon wore thin, a family member told the Palm Beach Post, and Ms. Revson moved on from singing.
According to businessman and designer Leathem Stearn, Ms. Revson sought Stearn out at a Manhattan party in 1986 in an attempt to secure his help with turning the scrunchie idea into a profitable business. Stearn said he helped her improve the design of the hair piece.
The bootlegging was rampant because Ms. Revson’s patent was hard to enforce, said Hendler of L&N Sales and Marketing. First, because it was poorly illustrated, he said, and second, because design patents only protect the look of products, and not their function, which is the work of utility patents.
To combat the bootlegging, his team chose to persuade major retailers to buy scrunchies from them rather than seek damages through litigation. It worked. Soon, most major retailers were buying scrunchies from Hendler’s company, and Ms. Revson was reaping millions of dollars in royalties.
But Hendler said Ms. Revson became dissatisfied with that strategy and was persuaded by other advisers to seek damages from retailers — so she took her own licensee to court. She became entangled in litigation and arbitration with Hendler’s company until her patent expired in 2001, after which anyone could legally make a scrunchie.
Her four marriages ended in divorce. Survivors include a son, Nathaniel Hunt of New York City.
In 1997, Ms. Revson moved to Wellington, Fla. She rode horses, cooked and entertained for a large circle of friends — often wearing a scrunchie in her hair or on her wrist, and ensuring her guests left with one, too.
“She always gave them away as table favors when she would have luncheons or dinners,” Kathleen Stallone, a friend of Ms. Revson’s told the Palm Beach Post. “You always knew you were going to get a scrunchie." | 2022-09-19T16:53:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rommy Hunt Revson, who popularized scrunchie, dies at 78 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/09/19/rommy-hunt-revson-scrunchie-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/09/19/rommy-hunt-revson-scrunchie-dead/ |
Weekend sports betting takeaways
Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa isn't the No. 1 MVP contender, but he's entered the conversation. (Julio Cortez/AP)
The NFL’s Most Valuable Player award isn’t particularly difficult to handicap. You just need to identify the top-performing quarterbacks on good teams.
The last nine winners of the award have been quarterbacks, and since 2001, only three non-quarterbacks have won it. Heck, Cooper Kupp had a record-setting season in 2021 — he earned the receiving triple crown, becoming the first player since 2005 to lead the league in receptions, receiving yards and receiving touchdowns — and still finished third in the voting behind two quarterbacks, Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady. That makes wagering on the award fairly straightforward.
This season, the easy pick is Josh Allen of the Buffalo Bills. The No. 7 pick in the 2018 draft has been at the top of the MVP odds since markets opened, and his price has only gone down from there, declining from +600 odds at opening — in which a $100 wager would win $600 — to around +400 or lower on Monday morning. But there are more lucrative, if riskier, choices below Allen. In fact, you only need to scan the team in front of the Bills in the AFC East standings to find one such option: Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa.
Tagovailoa — whose MVP odds were 60-1 just two weeks ago — set career highs with 469 passing yards and six touchdowns in a comeback win Sunday over the Baltimore Ravens. He’s the 11th player in the last decade to toss for more than 400 yards with five touchdowns in a game. More importantly, the comeback puts Miami at 2-0, a record matched in the AFC by only the Kansas City Chiefs, although the Bills could join them with a win on Monday night.
Is Tagovailoa’s performance enough to unseat Allen as the favorite, or even put him in the top tier? Clearly not. But his odds — which ranged Monday morning from +1800 to +2500 at some online sportsbooks — are tantalizing, and not likely to last another strong performance, especially if it comes against Allen and the Bills or Joe Burrow and the Cincinnati Bengals, Miami’s next two opponents.
At the very least, Tagovailoa should be thought of in the same tier as Tom Brady, Burrow and Jalen Hurts, whose odds are each less than Tagovailoa’s, at least at some books. The Dolphins quarterback is ahead of every quarterback but Allen in ESPN’s Total Quarterback Rating, a measure of how valuable each quarterback is in relation to the league at-large.
The Bengals were a sure thing (until they weren’t)
The Cincinnati Bengals opened as a 1½ underdog to the Dallas Cowboys on the Week 2 look-ahead line, before an injury to Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott made the Bengals a seven-point favorite. As you would expect, bettors lined up to take advantage of this development and used the Bengals in a variety of wagers, such as parlays and teasers (in which the Bengals would merely need to win, or win by a smaller number of points, for the bet to pay off. According to Dave Mason of Betonline, the Bengals-Cowboys meeting was the biggest teased game of the day. Action Network estimated 81 percent of the tickets on the game’s point spread were for Cincinnati, as were 95 percent of the tickets on the money line.
It didn’t go well for that majority. The Bengals fell in a 14-3 deficit by the end of the first quarter and were looking at a 17-3 scoreboard as they headed into the locker room at halftime. Cincinnati would outscore Dallas in the second half, 14-3 but the reigning AFC champions couldn’t stop Dallas backup quarterback Cooper Rush from orchestrating a game-winning drive. Dallas kicker Brett Maher hit a 50-yard field goal to win it as time expired.
Via the Elias Sports Bureau: The Bengals are the first team in the Super Bowl era (since 1966) to lose each of their first two games of a season on the final play of the game (go-ahead points as time expired).
Don’t rip up those tickets
If anyone still needed to be sold on the NFL as an entertainment and gambling product, Sunday’s results did the job. For the first time in 30 years, according to NFL Research, three teams came back from fourth-quarter deficits of at least 13 points to win — and all three teams were sizable underdogs.
The Cardinals and Dolphins each faced 20-point deficits at halftime and came back to win.
It's the first time in NFL history that multiple teams have overcome a 20-point halftime deficit on the same day.
h/t @EliasSports pic.twitter.com/idsxSikLMr
Cardinals 29, Raiders 23 (OT): Down 23-7 entering the fourth quarter, Arizona (a 5.5-point underdog) got two touchdowns and two two-point conversions to force overtime and then won it on a 59-yard fumble return for a touchdown.
Arizona quarterback Kyler Murray somehow scrambled 85.69 yards to get into the end zone on the first of those conversions.
The Raiders’ win probability early in the fourth quarter? 97.8 percent, according to ESPN.
Dolphins 42, Ravens 38: Holding a 28-7 halftime lead and a 35-14 lead with less than 13 minutes remaining, Baltimore looked to be on its way to an easy win — and a cover as a 7.5-point favorite. But Tagovailoa threw four-fourth quarter touchdown passes, the last one to Jaylen Waddle with 14 seconds left to cap a ludicrous comeback.
With just less than eight minutes remaining, the Ravens had a 97.8 percent chance of victory (per ESPN). But on the very next play, Tagovailoa threw a 48-yard touchdown pass to Tyreek Hill.
Jets 31, Browns 30: Cleveland led by 13 points with only 1:55 left, but a missed Browns extra point, a quick New York touchdown drive, a successful onside kick and Joe Flacco’s 15-yard touchdown pass to Garrett Wilson with 22 seconds left gave the Jets (a 6.5-point underdog) an absurd victory.
The fourth-quarter and overtime theatrics in the Cardinals-Raiders game helped disguise a fairly awful beat for anyone holding an under-52 ticket on the game’s scoring total.
The teams had combined to score only 30 points midway through the fourth quarter, but the Cardinals woke up from their game-long slumber, driving 54 yards over nine plays to cut their deficit to 23-15 with 8 minutes 17 seconds left and then forcing the Raiders to punt. What followed was a long, cruel march to the end zone for under bettors, 18 plays over 73 yards that included three fourth-down conversions and two defensive-holding penalties by the Raiders. Murray’s three-yard touchdown scramble and the ensuing two-point conversion at the final gun knotted things up at 23.
The under still had a chance in overtime, as the Cardinals’ opening drive petered out in Las Vegas territory. All the Raiders (and under bettors) needed was a field goal. Instead, this happened:
Byron Murphy Jr.'s 59-yard fumble return for a touchdown in overtime gave the Cardinals a 29-23 win and under-52 gamblers the cruelest of pushes.
At least under bettors in the Cardinals-Raiders game got their money back. Anyone who had under 59.5 in Saturday’s Syracuse-Purdue game wasn’t so lucky.
Through three quarters, the Orange and Boilermakers had combined to score only 19 points, but the fourth quarter featured 349 combined yards, 15 first downs and, sadly for anyone who had the over, 42 points. Syracuse would win, 32-29, on Garrett Schrader’s 25-yard touchdown pass to Oronde Gadsden II with seven seconds left.
The Boilermakers kind of did this to themselves. After taking a 29-25 lead late in the fourth quarter, they somehow committed seven penalties over the final 51 seconds of the game.
Western Kentucky led Indiana, 24-19, entering the fourth quarter on Saturday, and the Hilltoppers had first and goal from the Hoosiers’ 3-yard-line on their first drive of the final stanza. But after a one-yard pass, an incompletion and a run for no gain, Western Kentucky decided to take the three points and a 27-19 lead. This would not be the last time kicking would come into play.
The teams exchanged field goals, and Western Kentucky was up 30-22 when Indiana took over with 3:46 remaining. Abetted by three Hilltoppers defensive penalties, Connor Bazelak eventually found Cam Camper for a four-yard touchdown pass, and the successful two-point conversion knotted the score at 30.
With only 47 seconds left, Western Kentucky quickly marched down the field to give kicker Brayden Narveson the chance to win it, but his 44-yard attempt went wide right. Then, in overtime, the Hoosiers did this:
HOOSIERS BLOCK THE FIELD GOAL. 😱 pic.twitter.com/9SCO6vYgap
Charles Campbell’s 51-yard field goal on Indiana’s ensuring overtime possession won it, breaking the hearts of anyone hoping for a Western Kentucky upset (the Hilltoppers still covered the 6.5-point spread, though). Per ESPN’s Bill Connelly, it was Saturday’s most unlikely result:
Indiana > WKU 11%
BGSU > Marshall 14%
Syracuse > Purdue 20%
Wake Forest > Liberty 37%
Arizona > NDSU 39%
All PGWE data here:https://t.co/ghS73jM2DT | 2022-09-19T16:53:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tua Tagovailoa's MVP odds are spiking for the 2-0 Dolphins - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/19/nfl-mvp-odds-tua-tagovailoa/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/19/nfl-mvp-odds-tua-tagovailoa/ |
South Carolina Coach Shane Beamer said his outburst was not directed at female athletes honoring Title IX. (Curtis Compton/Atlanta Journal-Constitution/AP)
South Carolina football coach Shane Beamer apologized Sunday for shouting “get off the field” at female athletes who were honored during the game Saturday at Williams-Brice Stadium.
The school had invited all female athletes to participate in a ceremony honoring the 50th anniversary of Title IX during a TV timeout between the first and second quarters of the game against Georgia. The group did not quickly leave the Gamecocks’ end zone, and ESPN’s broadcast caught Beamer’s outburst.
Beamer said he had not been informed about the ceremony and was told by officials to have players ready to go when the TV timeout was over. South Carolina had decided to try to convert on fourth and nine on the ensuing play.
The defending national champion Bulldogs went on to win, 48-7, but led only 14-0 at the time and Beamer said he was “worried about what was going on in our own offensive huddle. I apologize to anyone that I offended. That was just my initial reaction.”
The Gamecocks turned the ball over on the play, and the clip of Beamer’s response drew viral attention when Jyllissa Harris, a member of the soccer team, tweeted about it.
“All female student-athletes were ~asked~ to come to the game to recognize 50 years of Title IX,” she tweeted. “We were on the field for maybe 15 seconds, then screamed at to get off. If you want to honor female student-athletes, then do that, not this.”
However, she was not critical of Beamer, tweeting Sunday evening that he “was coaching in the heat of the game and has been nothing but supportive of female sports.”
The 45-year-old coach pointed out that he is a supporter of women’s sports.
“I hope people know me well enough to know what an advocate I am for women’s sports,” Beamer said. “I’ve got two daughters of my own that play sports. I’m at as many women’s athletic events here at Carolina as I possibly can be because I believe in them and support them. Anyone who thinks otherwise surely doesn’t know me.” | 2022-09-19T16:53:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Shane Beamer apologizes for reaction to Title IX ceremony - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/19/shane-beamer-south-carolina-title-ix/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/19/shane-beamer-south-carolina-title-ix/ |
Deaths on U.S. roads see quarterly decline; first time since 2020
The number of fatalities is still up for the first half of the year compared with 2021, as the death rate remains elevated during the pandemic
Vehicles move slowly in rush-hour traffic on the U.S. 101 freeway in the Los Angeles area. (Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg)
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released projections Monday showing the first quarterly decline in crash deaths since the earliest days of the pandemic.
The numbers are hopeful news after record increases in the number of people killed on roads in recent years. And yet, officials say, the picture remains grim.
An estimated 10,590 people were killed in crashes between April and June. That is less than the 11,135 people killed during the same period last year.
But by the standards of the past decade, the death rate on the nation’s roads remains high and the improvement this spring disappears when the entire year is taken into account.
NHTSA estimates that 20,175 people died in the first six months of 2022. That’s slightly more than the same period in 2021 and the most for the first half of a year since 2006, according to the new data.
Ann Carlson, the acting head of NHTSA, said the figures for the second quarter were “heartening,” but that “the number of people dying on roads in this country remains a crisis.”
As the pandemic took hold, crash deaths dipped during the second quarter of 2020, only to soar that summer — a phenomenon initially attributed to high-speed driving on emptied roads. But as traffic levels have climbed back to pre-pandemic levels, fatalities have remained at their worst levels in years, which experts say has defied easy explanation. Officials point to more dangerous behavior like drunken driving or people not wearing seat belts, while some have cited a combination of changing traffic patterns and unsafe road designs as a likely reason.
“Traffic deaths appear to be declining for the first time since 2020, but they are still at high levels that call for urgent and sustained action,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a statement. “These deaths are preventable, not inevitable, and we should act accordingly.”
Buttigieg recently laid out a roadway safety strategy, while the infrastructure law includes new funding for safety efforts. Officials renewed calls for states and cities to use those resources to tackle the crisis.
The figures released Monday are statistical projections and don’t include detailed information about the types of crashes or whether the victims were drivers, passengers, pedestrians or cyclists. | 2022-09-19T16:54:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | NHTSA says quarterly crash deaths down for first time since 2020 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/09/19/road-crash-deaths-decline/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/09/19/road-crash-deaths-decline/ |
‘Return to Monkey Island’ is a swansong for golden age adventure games
(Washington Post Illustration; Devolver Digital)
Available On: PC, Mac, Nintendo Switch
Developer: Terrible Toybox | Publisher: Devolver Digital, Lucasfilm Games
Release: Sept.19, 2022
“Return to Monkey Island” is the fulfillment of a promise made over 30 years ago. Since the release of “The Secret of Monkey Island” in 1990, the series has been held up as a paragon of the adventure game genre. When enthusiasts are fondly reminiscing about the golden age of adventure games, Monkey Island is typically referenced as the go-to example that defined the 90s point-and-click zeitgeist, even when stacked against other powerhouse hits from the era such as “Full Throttle,” “Grim Fandango,” and “Beneath a Steel Sky.” The swashbuckling franchise featuring Guybrush Threepwood, self-proclaimed mighty pirate, has been widely beloved by fans and praised by game designers (Naughty Dog co-president Neil Druckmann is a noted superfan).
That nostalgic backstory is why “Return to Monkey Island” is such a big deal. It’s a return not only of the series but also for its creator Ron Gilbert, who left the series after 1991’s “Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge''. The game finally answers the question that fans have speculated about for decades: what is the Secret of Monkey Island? Other designers after Gilbert have provided their own answers in sequels. “Return to Monkey Island” reveals the secret straight from the original creator himself and in definitive fashion.
“Return to Monkey Island” didn’t quite live up to 30 years of pent-up fan theorizing, forum debates and hype from hardcore fans whose tastes are still locked inside a 90s adventure game time capsule, however. Not because it’s a bad game (on the contrary, it’s quite delightful) but because Monkey Island is a humble series that’s been unfairly saddled with an unfeasibly epic expectation. The series has always been about a silly pirate going on zany adventures and “Return to Monkey Island” is very self-aware about this position, and the game’s most impressive achievement is how deftly it navigated that conundrum by tapping into the joyful energy of Monkey Island’s earliest games while tempering the nostalgic angst for a time that can’t be recaptured.
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For the uninitiated, “Return to Monkey Island” stars the series protagonist Threepwood, a quippy and remarkably likable pirate sailing the Caribbean during an anachronistic version of the Golden Age of Piracy. Guybrush’s world is a Saturday morning cartoon version of piracy, where sword fights are determined by the 1700s equivalent of “yo momma” jokes, ship captains grumble about corporate red tape and zombies are extremely vulnerable to root beer. Since the game is a sequel (specifically to “Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge” in the series’ timeline), you’ll also need some background information before playing.
To that end, “Return to Monkey Island” has a digital scrapbook with Guybrush himself narrating through the major plot points of the previous titles to catch you up. Most of those plot points involve Guybrush’s archnemesis, the undead buccaneer LeChuck. LeChuck is also seeking the Secret of Monkey Island and is also in love with Elaine Marley (governor of the fictional Tri-Island Area and Guybrush’s wife).
“Return to Monkey Island” can be widely enjoyed by everyone, whether you are an adventure game veteran or a total newbie. The game is designed as a classic point-and-click title crafted with a modern sensibility: simple UI, puzzles encouraging unconventional thinking and punchy dialogue coupled with a vibrant Cubist art style and highly adaptable difficulty settings. There’s the Casual mode for players who want to enjoy the game’s story with minimal puzzling and a Hard mode for those who want a more cerebral challenge.
My favorite feature was the Hint Book, an in-game inventory item that provides spoiler-free tips on how to solve a puzzle or progress a quest. Not only does the Hint Book save you from alt-tabbing to a browser for help, it’s also scalable: you can rely on it as little or as much as you want. The first few hints for a quest are just nudges towards the right direction but you can also go through an entire entry to get everything spelled out for you. As someone who enjoyed playing the game on Hard but required the occasional nudge, the Hint Book was a godsend. There’s also a key (or button for controllers) for highlighting all the interactable items in an area.
But even with all these new dressings and increased accessibility, “Return to Monkey Island” is very much a title made for lifetime fans. It’s rife with self-referential throwbacks, inside jokes and cameos from characters introduced in other Monkey Island games. The game’s humor is dry, absurdist and often breaks the fourth wall — all of which compromise Gilbert’s auteur mark. To Monkey Island fans, the opening title sequence from “Return to Monkey Island” showing Mêlée Island at night with the game’s theme music playing is as iconic as the opening crawl in “Star Wars."
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“Return to Monkey Island” is everything that the developers purported it to be. It’s a wonderful, heartfelt adventure game that made me laugh all the way through. The only wonky thing to note is the pacing. The game opens at a steady tempo and then hits a sudden and massive spike. I went from having a clear, focused mission for a specific area to suddenly being saddled with a dozen objectives that sent me frantically traveling back and forth between multiple islands.
Still, the payoff of the game’s final act — and the entire journey that leads up to it — makes “Return to Monkey Island” a game well worth your time. Monkey Island is a series that has been surprisingly resistant to the sequel escalation that affects other long-running video games franchises. Other than “Tales of Monkey Island,” which featured a zombie plague outbreak in the Caribbean, the series has consistently focused on the personal. Monkey Island isn’t about saving the world. It’s about the adventures of the kind and wide-eyed Guybrush Threepwood — his dream of becoming a renowned pirate, marrying the love of his life and finding the Secret of Monkey Island. His is the type of life that would be celebrated by raised mugs in a dockside tavern, not trumpeted in a cathedral with kings and queens in attendance. But over time, Guybrush and Monkey Island have become lionized by his fans into something they aren’t.
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In June, Gilbert announced he would stop talking about “Return to Monkey Island” and closed comments on his personal blog after angry posters wrote abusive comments in response to the game’s art direction. Some of the commenters demanded that Gilbert rework or outright cancel “Return to Monkey Island” because it wasn’t made in the pixel art style of the first two Monkey Island games. They defended the harassment by saying it comes from a place of passion, having been deeply shaped by the Monkey Island series since their youth.
Those people were yearning for a Monkey Island that can’t possibly be recreated. After 30 years, the original developers behind Monkey Island are different people now. They’ve grown up and Guybrush had to grow up alongside them. As I was playing “Return to Monkey Island,” I got the distinct sense that this was a game about revisiting the past, not reliving it. During my moody tween years, Monkey Island taught me that being goofy and laughing at dumb jokes is way more fun than being a judgmental moper. After I finished the game, I felt like I had said goodbye to a part of my childhood.
By officially revealing the Secret and bringing the series full circle, “Return to Monkey Island” is deliberately closing a chapter in the franchise’s life. It’s not the end of Guybrush Threepwood or Monkey Island, but it’s a swansong for the bygone era that birthed them. | 2022-09-19T16:54:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'Return to Monkey Island' review: A swansong for a golden age of games - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/09/19/return-monkey-island-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/09/19/return-monkey-island-review/ |
(Washington Post illustration; Lance Skundrich, Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games)
ISTANBUL — On Saturday evening in Turkey, Jaccob “yay” Whiteaker was riding a high. The esports athlete — whose performances have earned him the nickname “El Diablo” and frequent incredulous invocations of his eye-watering stats by live stream broadcast talent — had just led his team, OpTic Gaming, to victory over the South Korean team DRX in the 2022 Valorant Champions Tour. In the match, Whiteaker had achieved the most kills of anyone on either team, and he suffered the fewest deaths.
According to VLR.gg, a “Valorant” news and statistics tracking website, OpTic is North America’s best roster. The team has also enjoyed podium finishes in every international event in 2022, including second place in the “Valorant” world championship in Istanbul on Sunday. Whiteaker is a big part of that success. Still, fans and analysts have wondered whether the 2023 season, which will bring a dramatically different league structure to “Valorant” esports, may spell change for the celebrated OpTic roster — or even wholesale dissolution.
In a brief huddle outside of the Volkswagen Arena press room Saturday, The Washington Post spoke with Whiteaker about his status as the world’s best “Valorant” player and his hopes and expectations for 2023.
Launcher: Every time somebody asks a question like this, players answer with the caveat of, ‘I’m supported by my team, I wouldn’t be able to do this without my team.’ Statistically, though, you’re the best player at this event. Can you tell me a bit about how that feels, and how you think about that — if you think about it at all?
Jaccob “yay” Whiteaker: So, I mean, you’re right. From a statistical standpoint, I’m definitely the best player. But in terms of how I feel about that, I don’t know. I don’t know if I feel a lot. What I’ve learned is that everyone has differing opinions on who is the best; it doesn’t matter what you achieve or what you do or whatever your stats are. So I really don’t think about that too much. All I want to do is try to inspire other people. I worked really hard to try and achieve my dream, and I’m hoping that whatever other dreams people have, I can inspire them to achieve them as well.
I feel like that’s a level of humility not every athlete — and not every esports athlete — has. A big part of the performance of athleticism is ‘I’m the best.’ Can you tell me a bit about how you fostered that attitude, where that comes from?
Whiteaker: Like I said, I just think it’s almost superficial, that whole mentality. Yeah, you should be confident in yourself, and if you want to be the best, you should obviously strive to put the work in. But when it comes to how you treat other people or how you act, I don’t think you should have an ego about it.
While I’m the best player in “Valorant” … it’s just “Valorant.” It’s a video game. There are so many other talented people in so many different professions and walks of life, be it other esports, traditional sports or being a doctor, so on and so forth. I’m the best in a very specific area, but there are so many other people with incredible ability and talent as well.
The scuttlebutt among journalists is that organizations know stuff about roster moves and partnership status around 2023, while players are kept almost completely in the dark. I’m curious whether that rings true to you.
Whiteaker: I mean, sometimes. I definitely do think some orgs have a little bit more knowledge than other ones — I can think of a few in particular, ones that knew some stuff way earlier than other orgs. But in terms of what players know, it’s kept pretty tight. We don’t really know what the future holds. I guess we’ll find out pretty soon.
From a personal perspective, where would you like to see yourself next year?
Whiteaker: It depends a lot on franchising because obviously if there’s a situation in which we aren’t accepted — and even if we want to stick together, there’s a chance that buyouts might not work out — we may end up splitting up. That would suck, but sometimes that’s just how life is.
In terms of where I see myself, I hope to be with the same guys because we’ve found so much success and I feel like we’re continuing to improve and grow as a team. I’d really like to stay with the guys, but sometimes circumstances can cause some issues, unfortunately.
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Pro players often talk about striking a balance between professional play and content creation for their esports career to be sustainable in the long term. I’m curious if that’s something you’re thinking about right now, or if you’re solely focused on competing?
Whiteaker: I think I’ve found a little bit of a balance. I’m not going to lie, though, it is a really rough balance to strike, because I play so much. One of the reasons I’m able to maintain this level of consistency is that I’m constantly able to play. I do agree with you, though. I think a lot of people go through [their professional careers] and realize ‘Hey, I should have done more content creation,’ which is something I recognize. It’s why I’ve started to stream a little bit more, and I’m trying to build a YouTube channel and stuff like that. But more than anything, I think my priority as a player is trying to be the best version of myself that I can be; that’s what makes me happy, ultimately. As much as I love Twitch chat, the main thing that makes me truly happy and satisfied in this life is competing. There’s nothing else like it. | 2022-09-19T17:57:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | OpTic yay on Valorant franchising: OpTic 'may end up splitting up' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/esports/2022/09/19/yay-valorant-optic/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/esports/2022/09/19/yay-valorant-optic/ |
Biden is right on Taiwan. Now he needs a staff that won’t undercut him.
President Biden at the White House on June 16. (Evan Vucci/AP)
President Biden, in a “60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday, once again committed the United States to Taiwan’s defense. And once again shortly after, White House staff attempted to walk back his clear statement.
This ritual is damaging the country’s standing overseas. Who is in charge? The elected president or his unelected staff? Biden should put an end to this game by decisively rejecting his staff’s mischaracterization of his policy.
The U.S. relationship to Taiwan’s defense has long been intentionally ambiguous. The two nations once had a mutual defense pact, but President Jimmy Carter canceled that treaty when he established diplomatic relations with Communist China in 1979. Since then, the United States has sold arms to Taiwan while officially proclaiming that there is one official China and that the eventual resolution of Chinese-Taiwanese relations should be done peacefully. As a result, it was purposefully unclear whether the United States would come to the island nation’s aid if China decided to invade.
Biden has now clearly stated multiple times that this ambiguity is over. He has given the same answer to multiple questions on whether the United States would defend Taiwan if the latter were invaded: Yes, it would.
Some critics contend this is unwise — that it unnecessarily commits the United States to a conflict with a rising, powerful nation. But there’s method to Biden’s purported madness. Making the U.S. position clear gives Beijing something to think about. If it knows that any invasion of Taiwan would meet with a U.S. military response, it might be deterred from attacking the nation in the first place.
That’s why the staff’s repeated walk-backs are so harmful. The elected president clearly wants to change U.S. policy. Subsequently saying there is no change to that policy does not put the genie back in the bottle. Instead, it undermines Biden by implicitly suggesting he is not in charge of his own administration. That implication is more damaging than any change in policy could ever be.
Both friends and foes benefit from clarity about U.S. decision-making. Clarity helps friends know what they can and cannot expect from the Unites States. It also gives foes clear guidance over what they can and cannot do without triggering a military response. For example, successive presidents have indicated that Russia can exert influence in Central Asia without triggering military reprisal. Clarity both promises war in select cases and avoids war in others.
The staff’s walk-backs replace clarity with damaging opaqueness. No one seriously doubts that Biden wants to defend Taiwan sovereignty if it is attacked. But they now have reason to wonder whether Biden’s will alone determines U.S. policy.
China now has an incentive to find potential allies within the U.S. chain of command, which could easily lead to serious miscalculations. If Chinese officials believe that ambiguous words from, say, the secretary of state or the chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff imply the United States might hold off on retaliatory measures, that could encourage them to do something they might otherwise refrain from doing. That increases the chance of war.
Biden is right to commit the United States to Taiwan’s defense. China’s growing military power is upsetting our web of alliances in the Pacific. Our allies know that any Chinese move would likely first come against Taiwan. Our allies also do not believe that China would stop at Taiwan if an invasion succeeded. Stopping an aggressor at the first point of conflict is the only sure way to stop subsequent violence. Biden’s statements show he understands this, and that reassures our allies.
Biden can stop his staff from undercutting him in one of two ways. One way is to hold a news conference in which he definitively states that U.S. policy has changed. If he chooses this route, he should do so with all the relevant decision-makers behind him, such as Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. That would put an end to the walk-backs and instill clarity about U.S. intentions.
The other way is to deploy U.S. military units to Taiwan itself. The United States does not station any military units in Taiwanese territory, and has fewer than 40 military personnel unofficially within the country. Biden could negotiate an agreement with the Taiwanese government to place U.S. Air Force, Army or Marine units there on a permanent basis. Chinese officials would howl, but they would know that any invasion would automatically entail a U.S. response, both from the troops on the island and elsewhere.
China clearly is building its capability to invade Taiwan sometime in the near future. That effort will succeed unless the United States stands firmly behind the island’s rulers. Biden is right to put us in that position, and he should act firmly now to end the uncertainty his aides are sowing. | 2022-09-19T18:24:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Biden is right on Taiwan. He needs a staff that won’t undercut him. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/19/biden-taiwan-staff-undercutting-messaging/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/19/biden-taiwan-staff-undercutting-messaging/ |
This still included in Ken Burns's documentary "The U.S. and the Holocaust" shows a Nazi Party political rally. (National Archives and Records Administration)
The Jewish Democratic Council of America briefly touched on the issue in 2020 when it ran an ad making a clear comparison between the MAGA movement and Nazism:
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported at the time, “In swift and strong rebukes, the anti-Semitism watchdogs condemned the ad as offensive. One came from the Anti-Defamation League, which has been anything but shy in calling out a range of Trump’s statements and actions.”
But Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt (later named President Biden’s special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism) disagreed at the time. JTA reported:
Lipstadt, who endorsed Barack Obama twice but has been tapped by administrations of both parties for her Holocaust-related expertise, also stressed that the ad made use of images of Nazi Germany but not of the Holocaust itself.
“I would say in the attacks we’re seeing on the press, the courts, academic institutions, elected officials and even, and most chillingly, the electoral process, that this deserves comparison,” she said in a videoconference hosted Tuesday by the Jewish Democratic Council. “It’s again showing how the public’s hatred can be whipped up against Jews. Had the ad contained imagery of the Shoah, I wouldn’t be here today.” ...
But in the current era, Lipstadt said, the key to acceptable Holocaust comparisons is precision and nuance. Is it the Holocaust? No. But does the current era presage an authoritarian takeover? Maybe.
“People ask me, is this Kristallnacht?” she said. “Is this the beginning of pogroms, etc.? I don’t think those comparisons are correct. However, I do think certain comparisons are fitting … it’s certainly not 1938,” when Nazis led the Kristallnacht pogroms throughout Germany. “It’s not even September 1935, and the Nuremberg Laws” institutionalizing racist policies.
“What it well might be is December 1932, Hitler comes to power on Jan. 30, 1933 — it might be Jan. 15, 1933.”
Lipstadt’s remarks ring true, especially after one watches the first installment of “The U.S. and the Holocaust,” the latest documentary from filmmaker Ken Burns. The film strikes disturbingly close to home: the use of street thugs, the false claims of victimhood by a group persecuting others, the abhorrence of democracy, the repression of media in favor of state propaganda, the elimination of independent institutions, the slow and methodical scheme to turn one people into pariahs. The film also detailed the utterly inadequate response of the United States, which has its own troubled history with racism and antisemitism.
Less than 24 hours before the documentary’s first installment aired, Trump appeared at rally in Ohio, where his “big lie” about the 2020 election and conspiratorial-ridden venom induced the crowd to join in a QAnon-associated salute that was horrifyingly similar to the Nazi salute. And just last week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) launched a stunt to ship migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, daring residents there to share in his disdain at the immigrants’ arrival. For many familiar with 20th-century history, the tactic echoed “reverse freedom rides” of the Jim Crow era, when Southern White citizens’ councils bused Black Americans to Northern communities.
It was all enough to make one’s stomach clench. Are we once again sleepwalking toward a dark, dangerous place?
Lipstadt appears in Burns’s documentary, as does historian Timothy Snyder, who has written some of the most insightful warnings about the rise of authoritarianism. Last year he wrote for The New York Times, “Post-truth is pre-fascism, and Trump has been our post-truth president. When we give up on truth, we concede power to those with the wealth and charisma to create spectacle in its place.” He continued, “Without agreement about some basic facts, citizens cannot form the civil society that would allow them to defend themselves. If we lose the institutions that produce facts that are pertinent to us, then we tend to wallow in attractive abstractions and fictions.”
He went further:
Like historical fascist leaders, Trump has presented himself as the single source of truth. His use of the term “fake news” echoed the Nazi smear Lügenpresse (“lying press”); like the Nazis, he referred to reporters as “enemies of the people.” Like Adolf Hitler, he came to power at a moment when the conventional press had taken a beating; the financial crisis of 2008 did to American newspapers what the Great Depression did to German ones. The Nazis thought that they could use radio to replace the old pluralism of the newspaper; Trump tried to do the same with Twitter.
Yet Trump is not Hitler. His aim is to become an authoritarian strongman, not to commit genocide. His followers might be White Christian nationalists bent on substituting their religious views for constitutional principles, but mass murder is not on the agenda.
So the challenge is doing justice to the Holocaust while raising the red flag to warn of a movement that bears many of the markings of fascist movements and leaders from history.
Biden’s use of “semi-fascism” to describe MAGA Republicans during a recent speech in Rockville, Md., was entirely reasonable. The term denotes a movement that reflects many of the same characteristics of fascist ideology (e.g., use of violence, demonization of an outside group, conspiracy-mongering) but does not constitute full-blown fascism engaged in crimes against humanity. Another strategy is to identify the fascist behaviors of the MAGA movement and to point out when its imagery and rhetoric clearly draw on a violent, dangerous past.
From my vantage point, “Nazi” is reserved for a specific expression of fascism from a specific time and place. “Neo-Nazis” are the modern variant dressed in Nazi garb and using Nazi insignia. Identifying the MAGA movement as “fascist” or “semi-fascist,” on the other hand, is not to accuse it of planning genocide, but rather to point to its playbook as reminiscent of those that authoritarian movements and leaders have deployed across the globe.
Moreover, the bracing term “fascism” reminds us not to take buffoonish characters lightly. We cannot normalize abhorrent conduct or discount the insidious nature of notions such as “replacement theory.” And we cannot to ignore the threats to a democratic, pluralistic society. That’s the lesson of Trump and of Burns’s spellbinding documentary. | 2022-09-19T18:24:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Ken Burns’s Holocaust film revives the quandary about Nazi analogies - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/19/ken-burns-holocaust-nazi-analogies-trump/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/19/ken-burns-holocaust-nazi-analogies-trump/ |
Jennell Black, mother of Anton Black, looks at a collection of her son's belongings at her home in Greensboro, Md., on Jan. 28, 2019. (Patrick Semansky/AP)
The family of Anton Black was stymied when they tried to find out details about his death in police custody on Sept. 15, 2018. Three police officers on Maryland’s Eastern Shore had restrained the 19-year-old Black man, but local authorities quickly closed the case and cleared all the officers. Because Maryland law considered complaints against police to be part of an officer’s personnel record, and therefore sealed, the family’s questions went unanswered. Their predicament — and the national fallout from the police killing of George Floyd two years later — spurred Maryland lawmakers to adopt "Anton’s Law," which allows internal affairs records to be made public.
The legislation was hailed as groundbreaking, but as its one-year anniversary approaches, there are serious questions about how well Maryland authorities are implementing it. A Maryland, Delaware, D.C. Press Association investigation in March by Miranda S. Spivack revealed wide disparities in how police agencies handled requests for documents. Some police departments charge nominal fees while others impose astronomical ones; still others outright refuse to release records.
Montgomery County recently came under criticism after The Post’s Steve Thompson reported on a seemingly unusual arrangement that allows the police union to first inspect personnel files and object to their release before a member of the public can view them. Freedom of information advocates raised concerns the procedure would result in unnecessary delays and cede too much control to the union.
Montgomery officials pushed back, arguing that the union hasn’t been given a veto over releasing documents but is involved only as a backstop, to ensure personal information is properly redacted and to guard against mistakes. They noted that County Executive Marc Elrich (D) testified in favor of Anton’s Law and that more than $300,000 was added to the budget to implement it. And it appears that — with the exception of one case — the county has been releasing information. In response to a request from The Post, for example, the department provided a 19-page summary of its probe into officers who berated a five-year-old in a high-profile incident.
It’s too soon to reach a final verdict on Montgomery County’s arrangement, but there is a clear need for continued scrutiny to determine if Montgomery is living up to the law’s intent. By the same token, state lawmakers would do well to examine how the law is working statewide. Were local jurisdictions given too much latitude in interpreting how the law should be implemented? Is there a need for additional funds to help departments that lack the staff or resources to fulfill complicated document requests?
That complaints against police were kept hidden meant a lack of accountability, and that helped enable bad behavior. It is in everyone’s interests — most particularly the good officers who account for the majority of police — that Anton’s Law live up to its promise.
The Editorial Board on Maryland
Opinion|Dan Cox’s now-deleted Gab-fest shows why he’s unfit to lead Maryland
Opinion|Marc Elrich must do better in his second term | 2022-09-19T18:24:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Maryland police transparency still a work in progress with Anton's Law - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/19/maryland-police-transparency-anton-black-law/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/19/maryland-police-transparency-anton-black-law/ |
Pubgoers in D.C. gather for queen’s funeral, with pints and breakfast
Dozens gather early Monday to watch a live stream of Queen Elizabeth’s funeral at The Queen Vic, a pub in Washington. (Karina Tsui/The Washington Post)
Before sunrise, dozens of D.C. pubgoers gathered over steaming plates of baked beans, eggs and ham at the Queen Vic, a cozy, English pub on H Street in Northeast Washington, to watch a live viewing of Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral.
Owners and partners Ryan Gordon and Roneeka Bhagotra welcomed customers at 5:30 a.m., just shortly after the procession began in Westminster Hall. The two have hosted celebrations of Kate and William’s wedding, the World Cup and various other major football matches. This time, however, they say they wanted to provide a safe space for people to grieve.
“For as long as I’ve been alive, the queen has been around — she’s an iconic figure we’ve seen for so many years,” Gordon said, standing outside the 12-year-old bar as he greeted visitors.
Inside, the mood was unlike most occasions at the Queen Vic: somber. Several people were dressed in black — some are British, or part of the commonwealth; many are Anglophiles. Waiters circled around them balancing plates of fish and chips and traditional Sunday roast — what Gordon and Bhagotra say are special dishes for the occasion.
On the pub’s second floor, friends Erica Miller and Karen Szala sat at the edge of the bar eating full English breakfasts while watching the royal family enter Westminster Abbey.
“I remember doing a book report of Queen Elizabeth in second grade — that was 1988,” Szala said. “Ever since, I’ve followed her life very closely.”
Miller, who spent most of her childhood in the Ramstein Air Base in Germany, said growing up in Europe played a large part in her interest in the royal family. “I remember watching Princess Diana’s wedding at the time,” she said. “You feel closer to the monarchy and have the chance to visit all the places they’ve been to.”
“The queen was ultimately a woman who led a country with grace and kindness,” Miller added. “We knew this was coming — but also thought maybe she would live forever.” | 2022-09-19T18:25:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | DC pubgoers gather for queen's funeral, with pints and breakfast - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/19/dc-pub-elizabeth-ii-funeral/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/19/dc-pub-elizabeth-ii-funeral/ |
(Catherine McQueen/Getty Images)
Always on the lookout for a bathroom? Bladder leakage can interfere with your well-being, and people — especially women — are more likely to experience it with age. Just 3 percent of women under 35 experience incontinence, compared with 38 to 70 percent of women older than 60, according to Wolters Kluwer’s UpToDate, a tool for doctors.
Many factors that weaken the pelvic floor muscles — including childbirth, menopause, obesity and constipation — can raise the risk of bladder leakage. Neurological disorders such as multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease can interfere with bladder function, too, says Arthur Louis Burnett, professor of urology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore. Conditions that affect the prostate can also lead to incontinence.
But leakage is not a normal part of getting older. “There’s always something that can be done,” says Jason M. Kim, clinical assistant professor of urology at the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University in New York.
You might be hesitant to broach the topic, but speaking up can improve your quality of life. Here’s what you need to know to find a fix that will work for you.
Understand your symptoms
Before recommending a treatment, your health-care provider will determine the type of incontinence you’re experiencing. The most common form is stress urinary incontinence, or leaking when you sneeze, cough or laugh. “Anything that adds abdominal pressure can force the bladder to lose urine,” says Brian J. Linder, a urogynecologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
What is the pelvic floor and how pandemic life could be harming yours
Overactive bladder, or urgency incontinence, causes people to feel like they have a pressing and frequent need to use the bathroom — and that if they don’t make it in time, they may have an accident. “Some people need to go every 20 minutes, which limits what they can do,” Kim says.
Evidence-based treatments for urinary incontinence range from lifestyle tweaks to surgery, and your provider should start with the least invasive options. If your regular doctor doesn’t present you with a variety of strategies to try, a specialist such as a urologist or a urogynecologist can help you find what works. “You don’t have to deal with this just because you’ve learned to live with it,” Kim says.
Lifestyle modifications are typically the first line of treatment. If you’re overweight, losing a few pounds can take pressure off your bladder. Easing constipation with dietary changes such as increasing your fiber intake, or with medication, if needed, can have the same effect. Alcohol and caffeine can irritate the bladder and promote leakage, so limiting usage of those can also help.
Pelvic floor physical therapy, which helps strengthen the muscles involved in urination, is another noninvasive treatment. Known as kegel exercises, these exercises can help with both stress incontinence and overactive bladder. They can take several sessions to work, Kim says, and you can practice at home.
Medication might be the next option, Linder says. Anticholinergic drugs such as oxybutynin (Ditropan and Ditropan XL) can help calm an overactive bladder, but research has linked them to dementia symptoms in older adults, especially in higher doses. A beta-3 agonist such as mirabegron (Myrbetriq) could offer some of the same effects without the cognitive risks, Kim says.
More invasive procedures are often a last resort. Among these, the gold standard for stress incontinence, Kim says, is a sling procedure, which generally uses mesh to help support the urethra and prevent leakage. Most people find that this operation eases their symptoms, but complications can sometimes be serious. Doctors can also inject bulking agents into the bladder. That is less invasive, but there’s little long-term data, according to guidelines from the American Urological Association. For overactive bladder, Botox injections into the bladder muscle may help. “It will last about six months,” Linder says, so repeat treatments are needed — and some side effects can be severe. | 2022-09-19T18:25:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Finding solutions to bladder problems that often come with age - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/09/19/bladder-issues-recovery/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/09/19/bladder-issues-recovery/ |
Little Amal travels to New York to share a refugee story
The 12-foot-tall puppet represents a Syrian girl who has fled her home because of war.
Little Amal, a 12-foot-tall puppet of a Syrian refugee girl, arrives at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City on Wednesday. Amal will visit all five boroughs of the city over 17 days and take part in musical and theatrical events to raise awareness of the child refugee situation. (Abigail Montes/The Walk Productions/St. Ann's Warehouse)
On the bright, clear morning of September 14, a 10-year-old girl flew to New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. Like the millions of travelers who arrive at JFK every year, this one appeared tired and anxious as she peered around the arrivals board and made her way through the terminal. Unlike other travelers, she was 12 feet tall and controlled by four puppeteers.
The puppet is Little Amal, a larger-than-life representation of a young refugee from Syria, a Middle Eastern country on the Mediterranean Sea between Turkey and Lebanon. Syria’s civil war has been going on for nearly 12 years, causing many people to flee for their safety. Amal is meant to represent refugees from her country and so many others, many of whom are children.
Amal walked for the first time in 2021, across 12 countries. Now she is visiting all five boroughs of New York City during a 17-day tour. It’s a collaboration that includes the Walk Productions and a local performance space, St. Ann’s Warehouse.
At JFK, her walk was accompanied by a haunting and somber excerpt from the opera “Satyagraha,” by composer Philip Glass. The music was played by the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and sung by 23 members of its children’s chorus.
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Metropolitan’s music director, conducted the piece. He says he chose it because it reflects “the feeling of loneliness and rejection of wandering around the world.” But he says the piece also offers a sense of hope, which he wanted to be conveyed by Amal’s peers in the chorus.
Members of the chorus said they were aware of Amal before the day’s event as well as some of the struggles that refugees endure.
Marcus Agrippa, a ninth-grader at Brooklyn Friends School who uses they/them pronouns, said they had learned about the plight of refugees in class. “We talked about people having to flee or hide from all the stuff that’s happening around them, and I thought it was really cool that they decided to [show] it in puppet form.”
Jesse Rambler, 11, spoke about how unfair it is for kids to have to leave their homes.
“It’s just really unfortunate … because they’re forced to do it and it’s not their fault,” said Jesse, a sixth-grader at Special Music School in New York. “It happens because of wars or some other event that happened in their home country. ... They’re just unlucky and they have to separate from their family when they shouldn’t.”
Umayma Ben Agrippa, 11, speaks Arabic — Syria’s official language — and feels a special connection to Amal.
“I know her name means ‘Little Hope,’ ” she said. Umayma learned of the puppet on the Walk With Amal website (walkwithamal.org) and about another Syrian refugee family in the book “Other Words for Home,” by Jasmine Warga.
The sixth-grader at the German International School New York said Amal helps people understand “how hard it is to flee from their country, and to lose their family and friends.” She was also shocked at how tall Amal is.
Andrea Wang, a sophomore at Stuyvesant High School, was impressed with the performance of the puppeteers — each arm controlled by a different person; a third puppeteer inside her body, controlling the rest of her movements; and a fourth directs them through earpieces. “They made it real. I could see they captured a child’s innocence and her curiosity,” she said.
Chorus members said they were looking forward to following the rest of Amal’s journey, which will include events at city landmarks and community gathering places. They were also happy to be part of her first moments in New York.
“I just want to raise awareness of these people that are suffering and have to go through these hard times,” Andrea said. | 2022-09-19T18:25:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Giant puppet Little Amal visits NYC to draws attention to refugee story - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/09/19/little-amal-puppet-visits-new-york/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/09/19/little-amal-puppet-visits-new-york/ |
Biden tries once again to suggest victory over the coronavirus
Physician Mayank Amin draws the Moderna coronavirus vaccine at Skippack Pharmacy in Schwenksville, Pa. (Hannah Beier/Reuters)
The political end of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States appears to have come not from a formal White House statement but, instead, in response to a reporter’s question.
“Is the pandemic over?” CBS News’s Scott Pelley asked President Biden in an interview conducted last week for “60 Minutes.”
“The pandemic is over,” Biden replied flatly. “We still have a problem with covid. We’re still doing a lot of work on it. But the pandemic is over. If you notice, no one’s wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape. And so I think it’s changing.”
It’s clear why Biden wants to say this. He’s been champing at the bit to declare victory over the pandemic since early in his administration. During an Independence Day speech in 2021, for example, he announced that the country was “closer than ever to declaring our independence from a deadly virus.” That speech came about 16 months from the first widespread closures linked to the emergence of the virus. That speech was also about 14 months ago.
“Don’t get me wrong, covid-19 has not been vanquished,” Biden said then. “We all know powerful variants have emerged, like the Delta variant, but the best defense against these variants is to get vaccinated.”
This would prove to be the most accurate assessment of the pandemic. Delta soon ripped through the southern United States, killing tens of thousands. It did so, in part, because many Americans opted not to get vaccinated, often as an expression of their political, not medical beliefs. Biden’s approval rating began to crater as new cases surged and the second year of the pandemic was deadlier than the first one.
Biden’s new declaration about the state of the pandemic is curious for several reasons. One is the timing. The government recently approved an updated booster aimed at better containing the spread of the highly contagious omicron variant of the virus. The approval was well-timed; officials are worried about another fall-winter surge in infections, driven by people moving inside during colder weather. And then here comes the government’s chief executive suggesting that the corner had been turned.
Of course, there’s another looming concern for Biden: the midterms. He and his team certainly understand the link between views of the incumbent party and electoral outcomes. Declaring victory over the virus, then, is in part aimed at presenting an argument about competence that’s intended as a bank shot for the Democratic Party.
Unlike his speech in 2021, the change in the status of the country’s approach to the virus isn’t really about what the government is doing. It’s in part about the decreased lethality of the omicron variant. It’s also in part about a political consensus around loosening precautions. “If you notice, no one’s wearing masks,” Biden said — a development that is in part because politicians scaled back mask recommendations in the face of vocal opposition.
Technically, the pandemic isn’t over. The World Health Organization meets regularly to evaluate whether that designation can be revoked; it hasn’t yet done so. But even setting aside the global picture, it’s useful to remember that the effects of covid-19 in the United States have merely leveled off, rather than disappeared.
Consider just deaths from the disease. In the early summer of 2021, as Biden was giving his speech, the rolling 7-day average of deaths hit a low that we haven’t seen since. Over the past several months, the national average has actually risen fairly steadily. At this point, the country is seeing about 400 deaths per day. That’s about 150,000 per year — higher than the death toll for diabetes or Alzheimer’s. It’s 50 percent higher than the death toll from opioids reported last year.
The recent plateau is more obvious if we just look at monthly totals. The most recent Washington Post data ends on Sept. 18, 2022, so the data below looks at the period from the 19th of the prior month to the 18th of the following one, back to the Jan. 19, 2020, to Feb. 18, 2020, period. The most recent period is the second highest of the past five months, generally in line with where things have been since the first surge in omicron cases faded.
If we apply the same monthly periods to the states, we see similar plateaus: the number of population-adjusted deaths over a 30-day period is holding steady rather than declining.
Another way to look at it is how the current state of the pandemic compares to the past. If we consider the current population-adjusted death toll with the worst month-long period on record, we see that nearly half of states are seeing deaths at least 10 percent of the state’s peak. In seven states, the number of deaths over the past 31 days has been at least a fifth of the state’s peak since the pandemic began.
This doesn’t look like a disease threat that’s over. It looks like one that’s holding fairly steady in a lot of places.
Perhaps deaths will decline as treatments improve and because Americans choose to get another vaccine booster, despite the shrugs of officialdom. But death isn’t the only risk, of course: The illness will result in millions of lost workdays and, for an unlucky portion of those infected, long-term symptoms that we’re still trying to understand.
For most Americans this is, indeed, mostly incidental. Most people aren’t wearing masks; the vast majority of people who contract the virus experience little more than a cold. Just as there is an obvious reason for Biden to urge ongoing caution moving into the winter, there’s certainly reason to recognize that we’re in a different position than we were even last year.
Biden’s new effort to push the pandemic into the past may also be recognizing an obvious truth: His ability to shape how people approach the virus has largely reached its limit. He tried to push Americans to close the book on the pandemic in July 2021 and saw his efforts rejected by his political opponents. The calculus now seems to be that if most Americans are going to view the pandemic as something in the past, it behooves him and his party to go with the current rather than against it. | 2022-09-19T18:25:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden tries once again to suggest victory over covid - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/19/coronavirus-biden-pandemic/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/19/coronavirus-biden-pandemic/ |
The International Women’s Media Foundation’s 2022 Courage in Journalism Awards Hosted by Norah O’Donnell
November 9, 2022 at 5:30 p.m. EST
Register for the 2022 Courage in Journalism Awards here.
For 32 years, the Courage in Journalism Awards have honored brave women journalists who refuse to step aside or be silenced in their pursuit of the truth. The 2022 Awards take place amid heightened global tensions, from Russia’s war on Ukraine to the consequences of the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan and numerous other authoritarian crackdowns and human rights abuses in countries around the world. Join us to recognize the women journalists at the frontlines of these challenges who are intrepid in their commitment to reporting.
Sign up for The Washington Post Press Freedom Partnership newsletter to stay up-to-date on the latest issues affecting press freedom worldwide through updates from IWMF and The Post’s press freedom partners, and commentary and analysis from Post columnists, delivered monthly.
Norah O’Donnell
Norah O'Donnell is the anchor and managing editor of the "CBS Evening News," anchor of CBS News Election Specials, including primary, debate and election nights, and a "60 Minutes" contributing correspondent. O'Donnell is a multiple Emmy Award-winning journalist with more than two decades of experience covering the biggest stories in the world and conducting impactful, newsmaking interviews. She has covered six presidential elections and traveled around the globe to interview some of the world's most important leaders, including six U.S. presidents.
A firm believer in empowering women, O'Donnell sits on the board of directors of the International Women's Media Foundation. At the "CBS Evening News," O'Donnell also created and led a series of original reports called "Women and the Pandemic," which offered an in-depth look at COVID-19's long-lasting and disproportionate effect on women.
Born into a military family, O’Donnell grew up in San Antonio, Texas; Landstuhl, Germany; Seoul, South Korea and Washington, D.C. She is a graduate of Georgetown University and received a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy as well as a Master of Arts in liberal studies. She is married to Geoff Tracy, a restaurateur in Washington, D.C. They have three children.
Kathryn Murdoch
Kathryn Murdoch is the Co-founder and President of the Quadrivium Foundation, which supports powerful, evidence-based solutions for critical societal problems. Kathryn serves on the boards of Unite America, the Climate Leadership Council, Climate Central, and the Environmental Defense Fund. She is a founding board member of SciLine, which provides scientific expertise and context for journalists. Quadrivium has also funded important work by code.org, the Center for New American Security, and the Anti-Defamation League.
As Co-Chair of the board of Unite America, Kathryn supports a movement of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents who are working to bridge the partisan divide. She champions political reforms that put voters first, aiming for a more representative and functional government.
Previously, she served on the advisory board of the Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford University and the Board of Trustees at Rockefeller University.
As a Visiting Fellow at Oxford University and the Director of ReSource 2012, she convened scientists, academics, investment professionals, and entrepreneurs to promote the judicious use of natural resources.
From 2007 to 2011 Kathryn served as Director of Strategy and Communications for the Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI), where she managed the CCI ‘s partnership with Microsoft to develop software to track global greenhouse gas emissions. She was Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees for the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew from 2009 to 2012. Previously, Kathryn was a marketing and communications executive in New York and Hong Kong and an owner of the clothing and accessories brand Thakoon, until its sale in 2015.
She lives in New York with her family.
Elisa Lees Muñoz
Elisa Lees Muñoz is the Executive Director of the International Women’s Media Foundation, a role she has held since 2013. Elisa leads the organization to achieve its mission to support women journalists and develop their careers by providing training, tools and assistance. She is charged with growing the IWMF by expanding its programs into new geographies; introducing new initiatives; partnering with peer organizations; securing diverse organizational funding; and, driving communications and outreach to core constituents.
Elisa’s nearly two decades at the IWMF have made her a leading expert on the intersections between gender equity and press freedom. She is a relentless advocate for women journalists, striving to prioritize their voices in all press freedom conversations. Elisa knows progress stands still when gender diverse perspectives are excluded – and that often it takes a woman-led, woman-focused organization to drive the industry forward.
Elisa currently oversees a team of more than 15 individuals dedicated to supporting gender diverse journalists. This growing capacity enables the IWMF to respond with immediacy to the issues women and nonbinary journalists face in today’s world, meeting the moment with adaptability and urgency. Elisa also recognizes that gender equity cannot be achieved in a vacuum, reinforcing the IWMF’s commitment to uplifting journalists at all intersections of their identities.
Elisa has been a human rights activist since graduating from the University of Maryland with an MA degree in International Relations. With more than 15 years of nonprofit management experience, she is an expert in philanthropy, coalition building, fundraising and organizational development. Off the clock, her passions include spending time with her family, biking DC’s many trails, and all things España, her country of origin.
“It is a privilege to lead an organization as unique as the IWMF. Supported by our Board; leaders in journalism, media and communications; we have the opportunity to improve the skills, security and lives of women journalists around the world. And, by doing so, enable their voices and those of whom they cover to be heard.”
Lynsey Addario is an American photojournalist, who has been covering conflict, humanitarian crises, and women’s issues around the Middle East and Africa on assignment for The New York Times for more than two decades. Since September 11, 2001, Addario has covered conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, Darfur, South Sudan, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Yemen, Syria, and ongoing war in Ukraine.
In 2015, American Photo Magazine named Lynsey as one of five most influential photographers of the past 25 years, saying she changed the way we saw the world’s conflicts. Addario is the recipient of numerous awards, including a MacArthur fellowship. She was part of The New York Times team to win a Pulitzer prize for overseas reporting out of Afghanistan and Pakistan, an Overseas Press Club Olivier Rebbot Award, and two Emmy nominations.
She holds three Honorary Doctorate Degrees for her professional accomplishments from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Bates College in Maine, and the University of York in England. In 2015, Addario wrote a New York Times best-selling memoir, “It’s What I Do,” which chronicles her personal and professional life as a photojournalist coming of age in the post-9/11 world. In 2018, she released her first solo collection of photography, “Of Love and War,” published by Penguin Press.
Cerise Castle
Los Angeles, California-based freelance journalist Cerise Castle specializes in arts & culture, civil rights, crime, and human interest stories. She’s produced and hosted segments for the Emmy-award winning nightly news program, VICE News Tonight, NPR, and several podcasts. Her reporting and commentary have been featured in publications like Knock LA, the Daily Beast, the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Magazine, and MTV.
Castle wrote “A Tradition of Violence,” the first history of deputy gangs inside the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the largest local law enforcement agency in the United States. The investigation was published as a 15-part reporting series for Knock LA exposing 18 gangs, 19 documented murders (all of whom were people of color), and over $100 million dollars in lawsuits paid for by the people of Los Angeles. The podcast of the same name and subject matter is due out in October 2022.
Victoria Roshchyna
Victoria Roshchyna is a Ukrainian freelance journalist reporting for Ukrayinska Pravda, Hromadske and Radio Free Europe. Throughout her 6+ years in journalism, Roshchyna has primarily covered complex and dangerous topics – including crime, courts, human rights and war – to bring power to account.
Roshchyna has been reporting exclusively on the war in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion began in February 2022. In March 2022, Roshchyna was captured twice by Russian forces in the eastern regions of Ukraine, the second time held for 10 days in Berdyansk.
Xueqin (Sophia) Huang
Chinese journalist Xueqin (Sophia) Huang disappeared on September 19, one day before she was scheduled to board a plane to the United Kingdom to study at the University of Sussex. On September 27, the U.S.-Congress funded Radio Free Asia reported that Huang was being held in extrajudicial detention by government agents.
Huang is a freelance journalist who has covered social issues on her personal blog since 2018. She previously worked as an investigative reporter for Chinese-language outlets Xinquaibao and Southern Metropolis Weekly, according to news reports. | 2022-09-19T18:26:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The International Women’s Media Foundation’s 2022 Courage in Journalism Awards Hosted by Norah O’Donnell - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/11/09/international-womens-media-foundations-2022-courage-journalism-awards-hosted-by-norah-odonnell/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/11/09/international-womens-media-foundations-2022-courage-journalism-awards-hosted-by-norah-odonnell/ |
The coffin of Queen Elizabeth II is seen leaving Westminster Abbey on the day of her funeral. (James Forde for The Washington Post)
LONDON — After Big Ben gonged, one peal from the Great Bell for each of her 96 years on earth, the body of Queen Elizabeth II passed for the last time through Westminster Abbey — scene of her 1947 wedding and 1953 coronation — for a state funeral attended by 90 world leaders and hundreds of dignitaries, including emperors and sultans, and Harry and Meghan, too.
London was fully given over to the event, which was invested with all the pomp, circumstance and showmanship that the monarchy, military and state could put on display for a global broadcast audience of millions.
The new king declared Monday a national holiday, and so hundreds of thousands were able to pour into the capital to say goodbye — some tossing flowers, others shouting “God bless the queen!” — in the most complex security challenge the capital has faced since World War II, far bigger than the 2012 Summer Olympics.
By late afternoon, no significant police incidents had been reported.
The quiet, the solemnity, that is what people remarked upon — especially the two minutes of silence that brought the country and a city of 9 million to a full stop.
Even the air traffic into Heathrow International Airport was paused. News helicopters were barred during the service.
The day began when the last members of the public were shooed at dawn from Westminster Hall, the parliamentary building where the queen’s lying-in-state took place over the previous four days, a vigil that saw an amazing 24/7 queue stretching for miles and miles, an outpouring that stunned planners.
The queen’s coffin, draped in a royal banner, traveled the short walk from Westminster Hall to Westminster Abbey atop the Royal Navy’s State Gun Carriage, a conveyance not drawn by horses, but people.
The tradition began after the horses pulling Queen Victoria’s coffin in 1901 were spooked, nearly toppling the coffin into the streets. To prevent a repeat, 90 sailors pull the carriage, while 40 march behind to act as a brake.
The abbey opened early to welcome dignitaries — who came by shuttle bus and armored car — to the 13th century church whose floors and walls are covered with memorials to those who were buried or honored here: Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton, Geoffrey Chaucer, Laurence Olivier, Charles Dickens, Stephen Hawking, Rudyard Kipling and Queen Elizabeth I.
About 2,000 guests attended — among them representatives from dozens of royal families and members of the House of Windsor, including the queen’s great-grandchildren George and Charlotte, ages 9 and 7, both dressed in black, and well-behaved on camera. (Restless 4-year-old Louis wasn’t there.)
Britain’s last state funeral had been in 1965 for wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
Writing about that day in the Observer newspaper in 1965, journalist Patrick O’Donovan proclaimed, “This was the last time that such a thing could happen. This was the last time that London would be the capital of the world. This was an act of mourning for the imperial past. This marked the final act in Britain’s greatness. This was a great gesture of self-pity and after this the coldness of reality and the status of Scandinavia.”
It’s true that the British Empire shrank over the course of Elizabeth’s reign, with territories asserting independence. Some of the remaining realms are now reassessing their relationship with the crown. Meanwhile, Brexit has diminished the United Kingdom in many minds to “Little England.”
But Churchill’s passing was not a final act. Britain remains one of the world’s biggest economies. The United Kingdom, London and the monarchy have all proven flexible enough, resilient enough to regenerate.
The mourners on Monday included President Biden and first lady Jill Biden; European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Emperor Naruhito of Japan, and Canadian American actress Sandra Oh.
Also in attendance: prime ministers Anthony Albanese of Australia, Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand and Justin Trudeau of Canada, along with Presidents Emmanuel Macron of France, Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, Sergio Mattarella of Italy and Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany.
No Vladimir Putin, no Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. China’s Xi Jinping sent his vice president, while Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan delegated his foreign minister, after being told he couldn’t arrive in his own presidential car.
The coffin was followed into the abbey by the queen’s four children: the new king, Charles III; the ever-present Princess Anne; former TV producer Princes Edward; and ex-working royal Prince Andrew, dressed in civilian clothes and not military attire, after being pushed into semi-exile by his association with the Jeffrey Epstein sex-trafficking scandal.
William and Catherine, with their new titles of Prince and Princess of Wales, were next in the procession, accompanied by their two eldest children.
Prince Harry was there with Meghan, too. He was also not wearing his military uniform — much to the anger of fans on social media who called it “deplorable” that the prince, who saw action during two tours in Afghanistan, was denied the honor, because the couple gave up their royal responsibilities and moved to California.
The publicly-funded BBC fulfilled a role that it’s adopted since the queen’s death, as champion of the monarchy. Commentators called the funeral “a brilliant blend of ancient and modern.” Also: “This is greatness in our time.” And “There was a timelessness to it.” Finally: “Extraordinary how the new king has been welcomed.”
Atop the queen’s coffin were the symbols of power: the orb, scepter and, resting on a purple pillow, the Imperial Crown, made from gold and studded with almost 3,000 diamonds, 17 sapphires, 11 emeralds, 269 pearls and four rubies.
There was a wreath of flowers, too, cut from the gardens of what are now all among the king’s homes: Buckingham Palace, Highgrove House and Clarence House. Each leaf was invested with meaning: rosemary for remembrance, myrtle, the ancient symbol of a happy marriage, the Palace noted, adding: “At His Majesty’s request, the wreath is made in a totally sustainable way, in a nest of English moss and oak branches, and without the use of floral foam.”
Some on social media had fun with the appearance of a spider, hitchhiking a ride on the wreath. Charles as prince was known to lobby government ministers with what came to be known as “black spider memos.”
For his mother, Charles penned a handwritten note that could be seen on wreath, which read: “In loving and devoted memory. Charles R.” The “R” refers to “Rex,” Latin for king.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, gave the sermon. He spoke of the queen’s lifelong devotion, not only to earthly duty, but to following Jesus Christ.
“The pattern for many leaders is to be exalted in life and forgotten after death,” Welby told the congregation. “People of loving service are rare in any walk of life. Leaders of loving service are still rarer.”
The archbishop recalled how upon Elizabeth’s coronation in 1953, she began with a silent prayer at the high altar in Westminster Abbey. “Her allegiance to God was given before anyone gave allegiance to her,” Welby said.
At the closing of the one-hour service, the congregation sang the national anthem, after seven decades reverted to “God Save the King.” Then there came a last piece of music, “Sleep, dearie, sleep,” a lament commemorating death, played by a lone musician on a bagpipe.
Pipe Major Paul Burns of the Royal Regiment of Scotland had also been responsible for rousing the queen, playing beneath her window for 15 minutes every morning.
As the sound of the pipes faded, the queen’s coffin was carried out into the streets, from Westminster Abbey to Wellington Arch. The procession included 4,500 people — possibly the largest military parade of its kind in living memory.
The backdrop — the monuments of London — was full of pathos for Britain’s glory days past. The military marchers and carriage rounded the Queen Victoria Memorial in front of Buckingham Palace, referencing an era when the sun never set on the British Empire.
The London procession ended at Wellington Arch, whose namesake — the Duke of Wellington — is celebrated for stopping Napoleon’s ambition at the 1815 Battle of Waterloo.
From there the coffin was taken in a custom Jaguar-Land Rover hearse to Windsor Castle, the weekend place the queen much preferred to her city digs at Buckingham Palace.
In Windsor, the procession was still grand, the streets were still packed, the church was once again full. But in a relative sense, it was smaller, more intimate. There were fewer VIPs among the guests and many more people who had worked for the queen.
The queen will be buried in a crypt in St. George’s Chapel, alongside the remains of her parents, sister and husband, Prince Philip.
As the crowds dispersed in London, Jillian Martin, 51, an educator with the National Trust in Northern Ireland, looked for someone who might want her pillow and blanket. Barely used. She’d spent two nights camping with friends to claim a spot along the procession route. But there was no sleep. “How am I? Apart from been absolutely wrecked? Great. I met so many people. We won’t see the likes of what just happened ever again.”
Soon the rubbish brigades moved in. “We can’t let anyone see this eyesore,” said Sandra Stran, 57, who volunteered to help the cleanup team near Buckingham Palace. “I don’t want this mess. It look like a stadium after a heckuva football match.” | 2022-09-19T19:07:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Queen Elizabeth II's funeral: Top moments from the historic event - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/19/queen-elizabeth-funeral/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/19/queen-elizabeth-funeral/ |
Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral draws world leaders, thousands of mourners
Britain hosts grand ceremonies to honor its longest-reigning monarch.
Mourners watch the car carrying Britain's Queen Elizabeth II as it nears St. George's Chapel in Windsor on Monday after traveling from London, where a state funeral included about 2,000 people. The queen died on September 8 at age 96. (Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)
Britain and the world said a final goodbye to Queen Elizabeth II at a state funeral Monday that drew presidents and kings, princes and prime ministers — and crowds who lined the streets of London to honor a monarch whose 70-year reign defined an age.
In a country known for public celebrations, the first state funeral since Winston Churchill’s was filled with spectacle: Ahead of the service, a bell tolled 96 times — once a minute for each year of Elizabeth’s life. Then, 142 Royal Navy sailors used ropes to draw the gun carriage carrying her flag-draped coffin to Westminster Abbey before pallbearers carried it inside the church. About 2,000 people, including President Joe Biden and other world leaders, gathered to mourn her.
The funeral included many symbols of the monarchy: The coffin was draped with the flag called the Royal Standard and atop it sat the Imperial State Crown, sparkling with almost 3,000 diamonds, and the sovereign’s orb and scepter.
But it was also personal: The coffin was followed into the church by generations of Elizabeth’s descendants, including King Charles III, heir to the throne Prince William and 9-year-old George, who is second in line. On a wreath atop the coffin, a handwritten note read, “In loving and devoted memory,” and was signed Charles R — for Rex, or king.
Monday was declared a public holiday in honor of Elizabeth, who died September 8 — and hundreds of thousands of people descended on central London to take part in the historic moment. They jammed the sidewalks to watch the coffin make its way through the streets of the capital after the service.
Mark Elliott, a 53-year-old who traveled to London from northern England with his wife and two children to watch the procession, got up at 1:30 a.m. to get a good viewing location near the palace.
More people lined the route the procession took from the capital to Windsor Castle, and many threw flowers at the convoy as it passed. Millions more people tuned into the funeral live on television, and crowds flocked to parks and public spaces across the United Kingdom to watch it on screens.
Later, family, friends and those who worked for the queen gathered for a committal ceremony in St. George’s Chapel on the grounds of Windsor Castle. Her coffin was then lowered into the royal vault through an opening in the chapel’s floor. She will later be laid to rest with her husband, father, mother and sister at a private family service. | 2022-09-19T19:33:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral draws world leaders, thousands of mourners - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/09/19/queen-elizabeth-funeral/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/09/19/queen-elizabeth-funeral/ |
Memorabilia at an shop in Falls Church bear images of Queen Elizabeth II and other members of the British royal family. (Jill Collins)
Within just two and a half hours of the announcement of the death of Queen Elizabeth II, more than $700 worth of royal collectibles were snapped up from the Falls Church Antique Annex. These were mugs, plates, ceramic dinner bells and the like, all adorned with likenesses of various British royals.
“Two or three people came in and bought it,” said Matthew Quinn, son of the shop’s owner, Paul Quinn, and the head of nearby Quinns Auction Galleries. “I don’t know if they were going to put it on eBay or wanted to get it before anybody else got it.”
We may not be able to own a diamond-encrusted tiara or a robe trimmed in ermine, but we can get an Elizabeth letter opener or a Prince Charles and Princess Diana egg cup. As for why we’d want to, Quinn has a few theories.
There’s a certain kitsch quotient for some collectors, but he thinks more people who collect royal souvenirs are drawn to the fairy tale connotations of princesses and princes, of queens and kings. The neighborhoods around Buckingham Palace are full of shops catering to royalty-besotted tourists.
“Americans have been going and buying over the last century,” Quinn said.
That stuff arrives in the United States in our luggage, like an invasive beetle. Eventually, much of it winds up at antique shops, thrift stores, garage sales and auction houses such as Quinns, where it always finds buyers.
“We imported from England for years,” Quinn said. “Every time we’d go over, we’d make more money with the royal collectibles packed in a suitcase than from a box full of English furniture.”
There’s something for almost any budget. The Falls Church Antique Annex on West Broad Street has royal mugs starting around $20. Or you can pay $675 for a stoneware mug made in 1902 for the coronation of King Edward VII.
“High-end pieces, like Royal Doulton, go from the middle hundreds to the low thousands,” Quinn said. “So many different makers make coronation stuff and jubilee stuff. The better makers command better prices and are less kitschy. The older stuff, it does have more value, in part because there’s less of it.”
The store has such oddball items as queen horse brasses, or buckle-like metal rings meant to hold the leather straps of a horse’s bridle, and a television tray adorned with a photo of Elizabeth and Prince Philip, perfect for eating off while watching “The Crown.”
“It’s amazing what they put stuff on,” said Quinn. Of course, we put our own version of royalty on souvenirs. A whole display case at Falls Church Antique Annex is full of American political memorabilia.
“A pen with Barack Obama’s picture on it doesn’t look altogether different from what we’re seeing there” in the United Kingdom, Quinn said. “But I don’t think we do it to the same degree.”
Aside from royal collectibles, and a few categories such as comic books and baseball cards, people aren’t collecting to the same degree they once did, Quinn said. The interest in, and value of, Hummel and Lladró figurines have plummeted. The same with collectible plates.
“We can’t sell china cabinets these days,” Quinn said. “Nobody wants to buy them.” China cabinets are big pieces of furniture designed to be crammed full of fussy things. They’re anathema to people raised in the age of minimalism and Marie Kondo.
Quinn, 47, is younger than the generation that prized china cabinets, a generation that devoted time and money to completing their sets of stamps, coins or Franklin Mint tchotchkes. He said he and his wife don’t collect any one type of thing in bulk, preferring to buy interesting single objects that speak to them. Young people prefer experiences over material items, he said.
“At my house, we’ll serve the bread with dinner in some awesome, funky bowl and drink a great old bottle of wine,” he said. “We’d rather spend money that way than line the top of the dining room wall with Bing & Grøndahl collectible plates.”
But a plate with a royal on it? People still seem to want it. And you can just imagine what is already hitting the shops in England and will eventually be worming its way into America: King Charles III, coming soon to a mug near you. | 2022-09-19T19:42:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | British royal family has inspired souvenir collectors for decades - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/19/royal-collectibles-queen-elizabeth/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/19/royal-collectibles-queen-elizabeth/ |
In India, the queen’s funeral evokes some sadness — and much apathy
Anant Gupta
A framed photo of a young Queen Elizabeth II is displayed in a retirement home in New Delhi that was built during British rule. (Niha Masih/The Washington Post)
NEW DELHI — Jennifer Cooke was in middle school when her choir sang for Queen Elizabeth II during the monarch’s first visit to India in 1961.
“She came in a carriage. We had to stand in a straight line and couldn’t turn our eyes,” said Cooke, who performed at St. Paul’s Cathedral in what was then Calcutta, the onetime capital of British India. “I don’t remember much else, but she read from the Bible.”
The 70-year-old retiree spent Monday in front of a television in the New Delhi retirement home where she now lives, watching with a touch of wistfulness as the queen was transported a final time during a traditions-laden funeral and procession.
In Mumbai, Sarvar Irani watched the ceremony furtively on her smartphone during her workday as a mall administrative officer. At home she has dozens of rare books, stamps and other memorabilia, collected over decades, highlighting Elizabeth and Princess Diana.
“Something about [the queen’s] eyes and her smile told me she must be a kind and nice person,” said Irani, 61. “That sparkle is gone forever now.”
But most Indians, particularly young people, felt little nostalgia. The queen’s death has sparked a complicated conversation here over colonial legacy, and so even as world leaders and heads of state gathered in London for the service, there was no profuse expression of sorrow in the country that once was a crucial corner of the British realm. Unlike many of his counterparts, Prime Minister Narendra Modi stayed home.
Mumbai activist Yash Marwah, 27, called the funeral not a “big deal” and didn’t watch it. His first thought on hearing of the queen’s death on Sept. 8 was that it would overshadow more important events.
“I thought of all the news that won’t make it to the news,” he said.
Though India attained independence before Elizabeth was crowned queen, many people feel she could have at least apologized for the violence and plunder that marked British rule in the subcontinent and led to the partition of India and Pakistan.
“There is a need and demand for an apology,” said historian Jyoti Atwal, who teaches at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University.
The closest the queen came to that was in her third and last trip to India in 1997. Before a visit to Jallianwala Bagh, a site in the north where British troops in 1919 had fired on a gathering of unarmed Indian protesters and killed hundreds, the queen obliquely acknowledged the bloody past.
“It is no secret that there have been some difficult episodes in our past,” she said. “Jallianwala Bagh, which I shall visit tomorrow, is a distressing example.”
Yet she went no further, saying “history cannot be rewritten, however much we might sometimes wish otherwise. It has its moments of sadness, as well as gladness. We must learn from the sadness and build on the gladness.”
Atwal said the queen played an important role in outreach to former colonies and that the new king must decide what to do next. “She laid the foundation for this kind of renegotiation and recasting the role between the crown and colonies,” she said. “This is the changed scenario in which Charles has to function.”
On social media, memes and posts have demanded a return of the Kohinoor, a 105.6-carat diamond originally from India that adorns the queen’s crown. “Reminder that Queen Elizabeth is not a remnant of colonial times,” one tweet noted. “She was an active participant in colonialism.”
And just last week, Modi renamed a stretch of road in the heart of Delhi that had been called Kingsway or Rajpath. He described it as a “symbol of slavery.”
“Today, we are filling the picture of tomorrow with new colours, leaving behind the past,” he said. | 2022-09-19T19:46:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In India, Queen Elizabeth's funeral is contested by colonial legacy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/19/india-queen-elizabeth-funeral/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/19/india-queen-elizabeth-funeral/ |
How many ants are crawling the Earth? Nearly 20 quadrillion, scientists say.
A new estimate for the sheer number of ants on Earth comes to an “unimaginable” sum, one researcher said
Scientists see declines in many insect populations, but they aren't sure yet if ants' numbers are decreasing too. (iStock)
Put another way: If all the ants were plucked from the ground and put on a scale, they would outweigh all the wild birds and mammals put together.
“It’s unimaginable,” said Patrick Schultheiss, a lead author on the study who is now a researcher at the University of Würzburg in Germany, in a Zoom interview. “We simply cannot imagine 20 quadrillion ants in one pile, for example. It just doesn’t work.”
To tally insects as abundant as ants, there are two ways to do it: Get down on the ground to sample leaf litter — or set tiny pitfall traps (often just a plastic cup) and wait for the ants to slip in. Researchers have gotten their boots dirty with surveys in nearly every corner of the world, though some spots in much of Africa and in Central Asia lack data.
Entomologists are seeing troubling declines in insect populations beyond ants in Germany, Puerto Rico and elsewhere. Habitat destruction, pesticides and climate change contribute to this potential but still debated “bugpocalypse.” Over 40 percent of insect species may go extinct, according to a 2019 study, with butterflies, bees and beetles facing the greatest threat.
That’s the next research question the team wants to answer. “We did not yet attempt to show this temporal shift in abundance,” Sabine Nooten, an insect ecologist and another co-lead author of the study, said by Zoom. “That would be something that would come next.”
“In the case of E.O. Wilson, he was simply a very smart man,” Schultheiss said. “He knew a lot about ants and had a gut feeling, basically.” | 2022-09-19T19:55:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Earth has 20 quadrillion ants, new population study says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/19/ants-population-20-quadrillion/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/19/ants-population-20-quadrillion/ |
Forget the cruel stunts. What should we actually do about immigration?
Undocumented immigrants are loaded onto a bus to be transported off Martha’s Vineyard on Sept. 16. (Dominic Chavez for The Washington Post)
If you watch GOP campaign ads or observe the recent antics of Republican governors, you might think nothing is more important to Republicans than overhauling U.S. immigration policy. This is their priority and their passion, so naturally they have a concrete plan that they will implement once they have the ability to do so.
So … what is it?
The truth is that when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis transports Venezuelan asylum seekers from Texas to Massachusetts (apparently under false pretenses) and then crows about it to any TV camera in sight, the stunt is supposed to overwhelm questions about whether he has an immigration policy agenda. Like other Republicans, DeSantis doesn’t bother talking much about what we as a nation ought to actually do about immigration.
From a cynical political perspective, that might not be a bad approach. Why get bogged down coming up with solutions to a complex policy problem when you can just shout “Crisis! Invasion! Open borders!” all day? It seems to work, at least some of the time.
But because politics is supposed to be how we decide what policies to implement, perhaps we should remind ourselves what the two parties want our immigration system to look like — and, most important, what kind of future each approach might produce.
We’ll start with Republicans. Before 2016, the typical GOP politician would say, “I support legal immigration; I oppose illegal immigration.” Presidents including Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush would talk about their affection for immigrants seeking the American Dream, so long as they did it the right way. So while those Republicans always wanted more border enforcement and tools such as E-Verify, they were open to reforms that would, for instance, provide a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants — provided they met requirements such as paying taxes and learning English.
Democrats didn’t have much of a problem with any of that. Their approach has long been grounded in the idea that the way to stop illegal immigration is to make legal immigration easier. So they support streamlining the bureaucracy to process immigrants, expanding the number of refugees and asylum seekers we bring in, and allowing temporary workers to go back and forth more easily, making them less likely to sneak over the border once and stay here without documentation.
And, of course, Democrats want a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants currently here, especially “dreamers” who were brought as children and have grown up knowing no other home.
For years, the outline of a bipartisan compromise was clear: Republicans would get more border enforcement, Democrats would get more legal immigration and a path to citizenship, and we might begin to move toward a future with less illegal immigration. Democrats keep introducing bills that embody that approach.
But Republicans abandoned it during the Barack Obama presidency. When the “Gang of Eight” immigration bill passed the Senate in 2013 but died in the House amid a backlash from right-wing talk radio, everyone knew what the party base wanted when it came to long-term solutions: nothing.
Which is exactly what they’ve gotten ever since. There might be a few legislative proposals from moderate Republicans floating around that resemble the familiar compromise, but they attract almost no support from the party as a whole.
Insofar as there’s something like a Republican consensus in the ongoing Trump era, it’s that all forms of immigration should be limited as much as possible, if not closed off completely. We should grant asylum to only a tiny number of people fleeing violence and oppression, if any. The same goes for refugees. We should further restrict and reduce legal immigration.
Because that approach is now GOP gospel, the next Republican president can be relied on to re-create Donald Trump’s immigration policies. That means using any possible means to grind the immigration system to a standstill and employing lurid displays of cruelty toward immigrants, including children, to deter migrants from coming at all. DeSantis is continuing that tradition.
The only problem is that it failed. Though the pandemic gave the Trump administration an excuse to shut down certain kinds of entries (which President Biden continued), the population of undocumented immigrants didn’t plunge during Trump’s time in office. Though Trump periodically promised dramatic sweeps producing “millions” of deportations, nothing of the sort happened. Much to his supporters’ chagrin, there are still lots of immigrants in America. And there always will be.
As long as we close off avenues for people to migrate legally — and as long as the United States is a wealthy country located near some very poor countries — people will find ways to enter illegally.
Republicans such as DeSantis have made it more than clear that their desire isn’t to find a solution for America’s immigration problem. It’s to use that problem to drum up hate and fear among their base. And if the immigration system is under increasing strain, even edging toward chaos? That’s just fine with them. | 2022-09-19T19:56:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Forget the cruel stunts. What should we actually do about immigration? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/19/desantis-cruel-stunts-immigration-policy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/19/desantis-cruel-stunts-immigration-policy/ |
Why King Charles III will surprise us
Then-Prince Charles visits with students at the al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo in November 2021. (Ahmed Hasan/AFP/Getty Images)
Ben Judah, the author of “This Is London," is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center.
King Charles III will surprise us. The man whose family has served as the physical symbols of colonialism has spent his life trying to free his mind from the calcified prejudices of empire. Britain’s new head of state is a loud admirer of Islam, a critic of Western interventionism and a champion of multiculturalism who will win his country new friends — and some populist enemies — across the world.
The new king has for decades sought to free himself from what he calls “Western materialism” by immersing himself in the world’s second-largest faith. As the Prince of Wales, he threw himself into the study of Islamic textiles, gardens and architecture. But he did not stop there. The king has also studied Arabic to understand the Quran.
This passion can only be said to have inspired Britain’s new monarch. In speeches as early as 1993, he warned that “the degree of misunderstanding between the Islamic and Western worlds remain dangerously high” and “I believe wholeheartedly that the links between these two worlds matter more today than ever before.” Rejecting the popular narrative of a “clash of civilizations” brewing between the Muslim world and the West, the then-Prince of Wales went on to declare that Islam is “part of our past and our present, in all fields of human endeavor. It has helped to create modern Europe. It is part of our own inheritance, not a thing apart.”
As bigotry and Islamophobia grew rampant after 9/11, he doubled down. “This planet’s survival will depend on you understanding that you can achieve unity through diversity,” he said in 2006 in Pakistan, going on to quote the Quran: “Only they pay attention who have hearts; only they believe (or see signs) who have hearts.” His views put him far outside the mainstream: not only his opposition to France’s bans on Muslim face coverings but also his criticism of Danish cartoons that mocked the prophet Muhammad.
Charles’s admiration of Islam is visible in his personal life and work. He laid out a carpet garden at his beloved home at Highgrove that was inspired by Islamic designs with the plants mentioned in the Quran. He is patron of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies and his Prince’s Foundation’s School of Traditional Arts teaches a wide range of courses on Islamic traditions. He has made visiting Muslim shrines, holy places and even the hugely important Al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo part of his royal travels. The Grand Imam of Al-Azhar called him a “fair Western voice” on Islam and celebrated their meeting. Britain’s new top Royal diplomat — though he might not have said so explicitly — wants to heal the wounds left by the 9/11 era.
His efforts to establish cultural dialogues aren’t limited to Islam. He’s also built remarkable bridges to Jews, hosting a royal Hanukkah party in 2019 at Buckingham Palace and befriending leading rabbis and honoring Holocaust survivors by commissioning portraits of them into the royal collections. Regarding the legacy of empire and those victimized in other countries he’s gone further than his mother ever did by saying in 2021 that “slavery was an atrocity” and, intriguingly, that the “time has come” to confront its legacy.
But it is the new king’s fascination with Islam that has the most obviously political implications. As Prince of Wales, he audibly opposed Western neocolonialism. When Tony Blair’s government prepared to follow the U.S. lead into Iraq, Charles made his opposition known to government. “Marching in carrying a banner for western-style democracy was both foolhardy and futile,” is how journalist Robert Jobson reported the exchange in a Charles biography. The king is also a noted supporter of the Palestinians, most recently and pointedly wishing them “freedom, justice and equality” while repeatedly pressing the British government to do more.
The king’s embrace of Islam has occurred against a backdrop of rising Islamophobia across the West, a political context he is well aware of. Speaking in 2016, he implicitly criticized the newly elected U.S. president, Donald Trump, and his policy of banning many visitors from Muslim-majority countries. Charles lamented the rise of “many populist groups across the world that are increasingly aggressive to those who adhere to a minority faith. All of this has deeply disturbing echoes of the dark days of the 1930s.” This is what makes Charles’s stated ambivalence of his title Defender of the Faith, instead saying he sees himself more as “Defender of Faith,” consequential. Britain’s new king is a man whose mission is to put multiculturalism — not nationalism — first.
Now, critics might question how much Charles, who has multiple palaces and a reputation for finicky indulgences, has really shed Western materialism. He has also acknowledged, both before and since acceding to the throne, that as sovereign he is expected to be more circumspect about his opinions. It is unclear how much he will continue to express political statements and actions. He has already been criticized from the right for pledging in a call with the French president to continue working together, “starting with the protection of the climate and the planet.”
As Charles III embarks on his reign, he will be intensely aware that the power of the monarchy is to use its symbolic power to put certain things above politics as a national mission — just as the queen did with the Commonwealth. “I’ve always thought of Britain as a community of communities,” he told faith leaders this past week. An outspoken king that gives an Eid message, champions diversity and detests Islamophobia can win friends and heal wounds abroad. By the same token, it could also make enemies in the United States if Trump or his movement ever take back the White House with the sort of supremacist politics Charles has rejected. | 2022-09-19T19:56:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | King Charles's embrace of Islam, diversity raises intrigue - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/19/king-charles-embrace-islam-britain-colonialism/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/19/king-charles-embrace-islam-britain-colonialism/ |
Republic Airways, which provides regional services, argued its training school could produce safe pilots with less experience
A Republic Airways Jet operating for American Eagle takes off at Reagan National Airport in August. (Shawn Thew/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
The Federal Aviation Administration rejected a proposal by a major regional airline to cut in half the number of hours its pilots would need to obtain licenses, the agency said Monday, refusing to grant an exemption to safety rules with potentially far-reaching implications.
Republic Airways, which operates flights for major airline brands, filed a petition in April seeking to put its pilot school on equal footing with military aviation training. Former military pilots can earn a limited qualification to fly airliners with 750 hours of experience, compared to the 1,500 hours typically required of civilians.
The 1,500-hour rule has been questioned since it was imposed in 2013 in response to a crash that killed 50 people. Supporters of the rule say it improves safety by ensuring airline pilots have significant experience, but regional airlines that serve smaller markets say it makes it more difficult to find qualified recruits — an acute issue as the industry recovers from the pandemic.
In its decision, the FAA said it concluded that Republic’s proposed training would not be equivalent to military training, which involves flying high-performance aircraft in challenging situations. The airline’s proposal, the agency said, “is not in the public interest and would adversely affect safety.”
The FAA also said that if it granted Republic’s request, other airlines would come forward with similar requests, and setting a precedent could result in sweeping changes to the 1,500-hour system.
“The FAA supports the regulatory requirements that are in place to facilitate the qualification of pilots, and the FAA maintains that the exemption process is not the correct avenue to change the current manner of pilot preparation,” the agency wrote in its decision.
With routes slashed during pandemic, small airports are on shaky flight path
Republic did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the FAA’s decision. The airline operates a fleet of 200 Embraer jets, conducting about 1,000 flights a day on behalf of the regional brands of American Airlines, United Airlines and Delta Air Lines.
In its original petition, Republic cast the request as an opportunity to boost diversity among the ranks of pilots, creating a lower-cost way to get qualified.
“Sluggish industry progress toward diversification of cockpit participation calls for a renewed industry-wide commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion,” Republic wrote. “This is clearly a broken pipeline.”
The petition was being closely watched by other airlines, labor groups and lawmakers. The Regional Airline Association trade group weighed in to support Republic, while the Air Line Pilots Association urged the FAA to stick by the 1,500-hour rule.
The association has blamed difficulty recruiting pilots for service cuts to rural communities, a number of which have lost commercial service entirely in recent years. In formal comments to the FAA, it argued that Republic’s approach would produce safer pilots than would requiring a set number of flight hours.
But the FAA questioned the evidence for a link between pilot flying time requirements and airlines’ recruitment pipelines, adding that it wasn’t the agency’s responsibility to resolve airlines’ hiring challenges.
“The FAA has previously concluded that the argument that an exemption would serve to address a pilot shortage is overly simplistic,” the agency wrote.
While the FAA’s ruling indicates the agency won’t entertain efforts to find ways around the 1,500-hour rule, debate over the requirement is likely to continue. The rule was imposed by Congress, which is set to reconsider a host of aviation laws next year.
Lawmakers are also exploring other ways to boost the supply of pilots, with Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and other Republicans proposing raising the mandatory retirement age from 65 to 67. | 2022-09-19T19:57:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | FAA rejects Republic Airways proposal to cut qualifying flight time - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/09/19/faa-pilot-hours-republic-airways/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/09/19/faa-pilot-hours-republic-airways/ |
A busy weekend for Alaska cruises contributed to the long queue at SEA
Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. (Nate Hovee/Getty Images)
Security lines at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport stretched all the way back into the parking garage over the weekend, with some travelers reporting hours-long waits that caused them to miss flights.
“We apologize and are listening,” the airport said Saturday in a travel alert posted to Twitter. “Please give yourself plenty of time to get through security to reach your gate.”
Travelers like Carolyn Drake waited in security lines that stretched into a parking garage at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on Sept. 18. (Video: The Washington Post)
Airports beset by labor shortages have struggled to keep up with travel demand all summer, especially in Europe, where lines at some airports extended for hours outside the terminal. Seattle’s waits did not reach that level, but the airport acknowledged in its tweet that the lines were an “extreme challenge.”
Airline labor problems aren't going away
Carolyn Drake and her husband arrived at the airport at 10:45 a.m. Sunday for a 12:55 p.m. flight to Philadelphia. After checking their bags at the curb and entering the terminal, they were directed back out and into the parking lot, where the security line began, she said in an email.
It was 12:35 p.m. by the time they made it through security. They spent 45 minutes in line in the parking lot, then were separated when staff split up the lines inside the terminal.
“It was insanely crowded, but it was like organized chaos, with lines winding every which way,” she said.
2 plus hours in TSA line this morning. Missed my flight. pic.twitter.com/yiJWCsMQgb
— John Swanstrom (@JohnSwanstrom2) September 19, 2022
After finding each other post-security, Drake and her husband made it to their gate at 12:40 p.m., just before the boarding doors closed.
“I can’t imagine what we could have done differently to avoid this,” Drake said. “We did everything right — we arrived 2 hours early, we checked our bags and only had small carry-ons, we checked into our flight online ahead of time, we had our IDs and boarding passes ready to go.”
How to pick the best airport line-cutting service for you
Airport spokesman Perry Cooper said in an email that the queues for security between 8:15 a.m. and noon Sunday were “very unusual.” He said it was one of the airport’s busiest days since the beginning of the pandemic, partially because an influx of cruise passengers at the airport in the morning.
According to the Port of Seattle’s cruise schedule, six ships docked in Seattle over the weekend. Similar numbers of ships are expected on some weekends through early October.
Cooper said the airport recorded the longest waits at 90 minutes, and opened additional screening lanes to help deal with the surge. Wait times returned to 10 to 20 minutes after noon, he said.
TSA spokesperson Lorie Dankers said in an email that the agency had 27 of its 29 screening lanes in Seattle open Sunday, with two out of service for maintenance. Still, the surge in passengers in the morning created a backup, with an estimated 28,000 passengers arriving between 6 a.m. and noon, Dankers said.
“I can’t imagine what we could have done differently to avoid this.”
— Carolyn Drake
“That equated to half of the day’s projected travel volume,” she said. “The Alaska cruise ship season is still underway in Seattle and that factored into the large number of departing travelers who were at the airport before noon.”
Port of Seattle staff, who manage the security lines, directed all departing passengers into a single line and then directed them to one of the airport’s five checkpoints once they entered the terminal, according to Dankers.
“That is the reason the line reached the parking garage,” she said, adding that inside the terminal, the line for a single checkpoint peaked at 60 minutes between 10 and 11 a.m.
Are PreCheck, Global Entry or CLEAR still worth it?
Dankers said the weekend’s lines are an example of why passengers should always arrive early and prepared, because wait times can hinge on external factors, like the cruise ship arrivals.
“During certain times of the year and certain days of the week, the number of travelers who need to be screened exceeds the capacity of the security checkpoint,” she said. “By 12:30 p.m. yesterday, the number of departing travelers started to drop and things were back to normal.”
For future passengers, Cooper recommended “virtual queuing” through the airport’s Spot Saver program, a free service which allows travelers to reserve a 15-minute slot to go through security. It is available until 1 p.m. at checkpoints 2, 3 and 5, though it is not compatible with PreCheck or CLEAR.
He also advised passengers to arrive early, especially between 6 a.m. and 11 a.m., when 80 percent of Seattle’s flights are outbound.
“We are nearing prepandemic volumes and the challenges that go with those numbers,” he said, adding that the airport is convening meetings Monday to discuss how to prevent similar wait times in the future.
“We will continue to look into this further with our partners with TSA and work towards determining the next steps forward,” he said.
Seattle has five security checkpoints, and passengers can access all gates from any checkpoint. All offer CLEAR screening, while PreCheck is available at checkpoints 1 and 4 and Premium screening is available at checkpoints 2 and 5, according to its website. Operating hours and live wait times are available on the airport’s app.
For those passengers looking for an alternative airport, Paine Field north of the city reopened to commercial service in 2019 and offers regional flights on Alaska Airlines. Portland and Vancouver airports are each about a three-hour drive from SEA. | 2022-09-19T19:58:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | TSA line stretching into Seattle parking garage caused hour-plus waits - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/09/19/seattle-security-lines/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/09/19/seattle-security-lines/ |
What questions do you have about the Nationals? Ask The Post.
Jesse Dougherty
“I realize the clock is ticking,” Nationals pitcher Stephen Strasburg told The Washington Post. “It’s been almost three years since I’ve been able to pitch competitively, and it’s not like I’m getting younger.” (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
What a long, strange season it has been. The lineups the Washington Nationals are running out there to close the year would have been wholly inconceivable when the year began. Juan Soto is a San Diego Padre. Joey Meneses is a cult hero. And through it all, the Nationals — less than three years removed from their World Series championship — have the worst record in baseball.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t issues and questions and excitement about the future. Because of all that, I thought it would be a great time to bring in Jesse Dougherty, our lead Nationals beat writer. Over the weekend, we published Jesse’s story on Stephen Strasburg’s murky future — with lots of good insight from Strasburg.
One housekeeping note: We’ll begin answering questions at 2 p.m. Tuesday, an hour later than normal because I have some reporting to do for an upcoming column. But either way, send them in early. We look forward to it!
Looking for more? Catch up on The Post’s coverage of the Nationals:
Svrluga: CJ Abrams is showing the Nationals they have their shortstop of the future | 2022-09-19T19:59:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Q&A: Ask Barry Svrluga, Jesse Dougherty about the Washington Nationals - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/20/washington-nationals-stephen-strasburg/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/20/washington-nationals-stephen-strasburg/ |
Hong Kong is not afraid of dissent
The content of children's books are displayed June 22 on a TV screen at a news conference in Hong Kong after five people were arrested under suspicion of conspiring to publish seditious material. (Anthony Kwan/Getty Images)
We strongly condemn the unfounded allegations in the Sept. 10 editorial “ ‘Seditious’ children’s books,” which disrespected our judicial system.
The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government is unwaveringly committed to the rule of law and judicial independence as guaranteed by the Basic Law. All law enforcement and prosecutorial actions are strictly based on law and evidence and have nothing to do with a person’s political stance or background.
The defendants in the case were convicted after a fair trial. In the published reasons for the verdict and sentence, the court set out clearly on what factual and legal basis the defendants were convicted and sentenced.
The book contents quoted in the editorial were highly selective. As the court pointed out, the defendants were conducting “in effect a brainwashing exercise with a view to guiding the very young children to accept their views and values, i.e. PRC has no sovereignty over HKSAR which is not part of PRC,” with the children led to believe, inter alia, that “the only way to protect their home is to resist and to use force if necessary against the authorities.”
Mere criticisms will not be regarded as seditious. A proportionate and reasonable balance has been struck between safeguarding national security and protecting freedom of speech. Any accusation that the offense seeks to silence dissent is baseless.
Chan Kwok-ki, Hong Kong
The writer is the chief secretary for administration of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. | 2022-09-19T20:30:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Hong Kong is not afraid of dissent - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/19/hong-kong-is-not-afraid-dissent/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/19/hong-kong-is-not-afraid-dissent/ |
How we treat migrants matters
Pedro Sánchez Rios entertains his 1-year-old son, Estebeban Sanchez, at Union Station in D.C. after arriving alongside other migrants July 12 via a bus from Texas. (Amanda Andrade-Rhoades for The Washington Post)
I strongly echo the sentiments in the Sept. 14 Metro article “Advocacy groups urge Fairfax to do more to curb deportations.” The “Trust Policy” adopted countywide in January 2021 prohibiting Fairfax County employees from cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement is a step toward the appropriate protection of immigrants. However, the rate of deportations still remains high.
Since April, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has forced more than 7,900 migrants on buses to D.C. and more to other cities as a part of his problematic and inhumane “Operation Lone Star.” As the D.C. area continues to develop a coordinated and comprehensive response, it is more important than ever to ensure that no matter one’s immigration status, migrants feel comfortable accessing health care or contacting the police without fear of deportation. Taking steps to mitigate racial profiling and further conceal arrest data from ICE as a part of the Trust Policy will ensure increased public safety for all Fairfax residents.
It is crucial that programs such as the Trust Policy are not only strengthened within Fairfax County but also that they are expanded to neighboring counties.
Honor Dearlove, Washington
I live in an area that is desperate for people to work in jobs that most Americans deem lowly. Employers in manufacturing, housekeeping, construction, etc. are looking to hire people who want to work. The states that have too many migrants might want to put out a call for help instead of treating them like cattle. Towns could plan to integrate them into their area with businesses willing to hire them. Then volunteer to help the families who risked their lives for a better life in the United States.
I am afraid politicians are forgetting that they represent people. Treating people who need a better life like cattle and shipping them off without a care for their welfare is not Christian. The population is declining in many states, and immigrants are needed to increase productive capacity, which raises gross domestic product.
If immigration makes the economy larger, more efficient and more productive, what’s the problem?
Andrea Marie Zimmerman, Columbia, Pa.
Tricking about 50 migrants to fly to Martha’s Vineyard, where they were reportedly promised working papers and jobs, illustrates how far Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other Republicans have sunk. Their cruel treatment of vulnerable people should be considered when Americans vote in November.
Al Riutort, Newport News, Va.
Aren’t Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) just high-end human traffickers? Shame on these governors — but shame on their states’ senators, too. Shame on Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Ted Cruz (R-Tex.). Where are their bills to improve immigration policy?
We should all expect more from our elected leaders — more decency, more humanity, more suggestions for substantive immigration policy reforms.
Lis Braswell, Washington
Migrants embarking on treacherous journeys to our country deserve to be treated with dignity, at the very least. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is willing to use migrants as political pawns to “own the libs.” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) participated in similar games, sending busloads of migrants to D.C. and elsewhere, including recently to the residence of Vice President Harris.
It is unfortunate that these governors seem to have no regard for the people they are sending to other states, and it is striking that such action is even legal considering the governors have faced allegations of misleading migrants to get them on the buses and planes. These allegations must be investigated by the proper authorities, and, should they be true, government officials partaking in these harmful political games should face the appropriate consequences. Migrants should not be political pawns.
Chris Affambi, Washington
We should be proud of the political protests that founded and shaped this country, but the recent tactics of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) are nothing to be proud of.
Their protest is not dumping boxes of tea into a harbor. It is unthinkable that Americans would stand by and let elected officials use human beings as pawns and de facto human shields in a political play. Such acts reek of cowardice.
We are supposed to be the land of hope and dreams. Hopefully, Florida and Texas voters will send these governors on a trip soon. As human beings, let alone as Americans, we deserve better leaders than this.
Ray Graboski, Harleysville, Pa.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) had two planeloads of asylum-seeking migrants flown from Texas to Massachusetts. In so doing, Mr. DeSantis proudly declared that Florida was not a “sanctuary state,” which seemed to be a strange declaration coming from the governor of a state that has (justifiably) given sanctuary to hundreds of thousands of native-born Cubans.
However, even if Florida is not a sanctuary state, as Mr. DeSantis believes, the United States, under federal law, is a sanctuary nation. Specifically, the application process of the asylum statute provides that “any alien who is physically present in the United States ... irrespective of such alien’s status, may apply for asylum.”
These migrants whom Mr. DeSantis had shipped to Massachusetts are “present in the United States” pursuant to the provisions of our law to apply for the asylum lottery. If politicians do not like this law, which has been on the books for more than 40 years, they should change it. In the meantime, treating these people as political pawns is not a proud moment in our country’s history.
John Maney Jr., Springfield | 2022-09-19T20:30:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | How we treat migrants matters - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/19/how-we-treat-migrants-matters/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/19/how-we-treat-migrants-matters/ |
The legislation would clearly reaffirm the vice president has no role in validating a presidential election beyond acting as a figurehead that oversees the counting process.
Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) speak during a break at a hearing of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol on June 13, 2022, in Washington. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
A pair of House members who sit on the committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol have introduced bipartisan legislation they believe will adequately reform a 135-year-old law, aimed at preventing future presidents from trying to overturn election results through Congress.
The legislation, proposed by Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), would clearly reaffirm the vice president has no role in validating a presidential election beyond acting as a figurehead who oversees the counting process, barring them from changing the results. The Presidential Election Reform Act (PERA) also expands the threshold necessary for members of both chambers to object to a state’s results, as well as clarifies the role governors play in the process.
The House bill introduced Monday is just one of several proposals pitched by members and senators to reform the 1887 Electoral Count Act, which sets the parameters for how Congress should tally electoral college votes that officially certify a presidential election. It is the only piece of legislation on the topic that has the backing of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Some bipartisan will exists in both chambers to reform the archaic law before the next Congress, with lawmakers expressing concern that a future president could take notes from former president Donald Trump, who tried to pressure his vice president to reject or thwart the counting of the electoral college votes. But with only a few weeks left in the current congressional term and competing bills in both chambers, the pathway for such changes to be signed into law remain opaque.
Influenced by their year-long investigation on what sparked the Jan. 6 insurrection, Cheney and Lofgren noted in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published Sunday that it is incumbent upon Congress to pass reforms, arguing Trump exploited the Electoral Count Act and pressured Vice President Mike Pence to reject votes for Joe Biden from certain states. Pence declined to do so, inflaming Trump and his allies, who continued to espouse the falsehood that the 2020 election was stolen.
“Despite this, Mr. Trump continues to make intentionally false election-fraud allegations, claiming that he should be reinstalled as president,” Cheney and Lofgren wrote in their op-ed. “This raises the prospect of another effort to steal a presidential election, perhaps with another attempt to corrupt Congress’s proceeding to tally electoral votes.”
The House bill comes after another bipartisan proposal earlier this summer worked out by 16 senators following months of negotiations led by Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joe Manchin III (R-W.Va.). Nine Republicans were part of the negotiating group on that bill — a crucial number since 10 are needed for passage to overcome a Senate filibuster. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has previously said the Electoral Count Act should be reformed, but has not gone so far as to say whether he supports his colleague’s proposal.
While both pieces of legislation have the same goal, their differences lie in the details. Current law allows for one House member and one senator to raise an objection to a state’s results during a joint session of Congress. The Senate bill would increase that threshold to one-fifth of each chamber, while the House version makes it even more difficult, requiring one-third of each body to approve debate.
Both the House and Senate bills set a deadline for governors to send Congress their states’ electoral votes. If the governor refuses or sends the wrong ones, the candidate can file suit.
Investigators, including the Jan. 6 committee, are exploring the role Trump and his allies may have played in trying to use invalid electors to thwart Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory. The House bill says that if a governor does not submit an accurate number of electors by a certain date, then candidates can obtain a federal court order compelling the governor to immediately act. If a governor again refuses, the court can then appoint another state official to send the slate of electors to Congress.
Like the Senate bill, the House version clarifies how a presidential candidate can raise concerns about a state’s election, with the creation of a three-judge panel and an expedited path to the Supreme Court, an issue that the senators struggled to come to agreement on.
Both measures also address the presidential transition by allowing candidates who don’t concede to receive federal transition resources when an election is “reasonably in doubt,” according to a summary of the bill. But once the election results are certified, only the candidate certified as the winner can continue receiving the funds.
House aides involved with crafting the legislation argue that their bill is more specific and narrow about the instances in which lawmakers can object election results. Senate aides say their bill already has the input and support necessary to pass it through a chamber that requires 10 Republican support than a simple majority like the House.
Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) and Fred Upton (R-Mich.) introduced the Collins-Manchin companion bill in the House last week, but leaders have chosen to take up the Cheney-Lofgren proposal instead. A Democratic leadership aide said the latter provides stronger protections on the threshold for members to object and prevents a state from delaying a presidential election unless there is a catastrophic event.
In addition to Collins and Manchin, members of the negotiating group are Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), Sinema, Mitt Romney (R-Utah), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Todd C. Young (R-Ind.), Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.), Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Ben Sasse (R-Neb.).
House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) stated that a vote on PERA will be held Wednesday, after the Rules Committee convenes to debate the measure on Tuesday. It will then be on Senate Democratic leaders to determine which legislation to vote on since the Senate Rules Committee is expected to clear their chamber’s proposal after a markup hearing next week.
With Congress in session for only a couple more weeks to tackle a looming government funding deadline, a senior Senate Democratic aide noted that the earliest any bill would get voted on would be after the midterm election during the “lame duck” session. It’s possible both chambers meet in a conference setting after each proposal has passed to iron out differences before it becomes law.
“It’s something we’d like to get done and we’re going to try to figure out the best way to get it done,” Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) told reporters when pressed on timing of the votes earlier this month.
Noted: Kinzinger expects GOP will seek impeachment vote on Biden ‘every week’ | 2022-09-19T20:39:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | House proposal to reform presidential electoral process emerges - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/19/houses-long-awaited-electoral-reform-bill-is-ready-can-it-pass/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/19/houses-long-awaited-electoral-reform-bill-is-ready-can-it-pass/ |
Spectators positioned along London's Horse Guards Parade watch live coverage of Queen Elizabeth II's funeral on a phone. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
LONDON — There have been royal blockbusters before, but never a show quite like this.
Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral was an intricately staged farewell production that had it all: elaborate costumes, bagpipes and tolling bells, soldiers on horseback, cannons and castles.
Giant screens were set up in outdoor squares in cities across the country. More than 100 movie theaters and churches showed big-screen broadcasts of the BBC’s coverage. The Royal Shakespeare Company screened the funeral at its theater at Stratford-upon-Avon in central England.
Since covid, many churches are set up for Zoom funerals. On Monday, many people sat in pews at Holy Trinity in London’s Sloane Square, watching with the smell of incense filling the morning air.
“We thought some people might not be able to handle the crowds and need a place to watch, ” said Ken Anderson, who said his son was the owner.
When police no longer allowed any more people into London’s Hyde Park, several thousand just stood in an empty street near Harrods department store listening to hymns blasting over the loudspeaker.
“I will never see the likes of this again,” said Jillian Martin, an educator from Northern Ireland.
“It’s such a momentous moment,” he said. “Not that I personally feel that much, but I can see what it means to the English.”
“I can think of better things to spend all this money on. Sure, it’s great for tourism and the flower-sellers, but I’m not sure the queen would be into this extravaganza,” said Lily Haverford, 42, a teacher.
“It’s pretty as a picture, but, in the end, what does it really mean?” she said.
To prepare the backdrop, London landmarks were scrubbed. New rolls of sod were laid near Wellington Arch, where the coffin was transferred to a hearse for the 25-mile trip to the queen’s final resting place in Windsor.
Even that hearse was made-for-TV, with huge windows and internal lighting designed to give people the best possible view of Her Majesty’s coffin — but more importantly, to make it “pop” on television.
“It has to look good for TV,” said one busy gardener picking “dead bits” out of flower beds near Buckingham Palace ahead of the funeral.
The music was powerful, with military bands, bagpipers and drummers accompanying the queen’s coffin.
Photos: Inside the factory that makes the royal uniforms
In Bermuda, Kim Day, an expat who is involved in community theater and watched the funeral at a theater that showed it live, said Britain put on a “perfect show.”
“They talked today for hours about orbs, scepters, symbolism — and people love it,” he said.
“We take great pride in doing things properly,” said Jess Fox, 24, from York, England, who left her home at 4:45 a.m. to get to London. “The British feel very pleased and proud to look the part.”
The funeral was the perfect bookend production to the queen’s seven-decade reign, which opened with the first televised coronation in history and ended with the most-watched royal event ever.
“The whole of the technical resources of the B.B.C. will be deployed in covering the Coronation for the world from dawn till after midnight on 2nd June,” it said.
There have been other blockbuster shows in the royal catalogue, mainly featuring Princess Diana in the starring or supporting role. The glamorous princess with the electric smile basically brought the royal family into a brightly lit new world — the way color TV pushed aside black-and-white.
First was Diana’s 1981 “wedding-of-the-century” to then-Prince Charles, then her funeral 16 years later, then the weddings of her celebrity sons, William and the elegant Catherine, then Harry and Meghan — fittingly, finally, an actual actress as royal co-star.
“Oh God,” she said. “My dress was so wrinkled; all I could think was, ‘I need an iron.’”
And of course, the royal family has also been the subject of an actual television sensation, “The Crown,” which has blurred the lines between fact, fiction and fandom.
Monday was about Queen Elizabeth and staging the final show of her historic reign. British TV networks carried the events wall-to-wall all day without commercial breaks.
“It was sad when she first died,” said Brendan Hoffman, 50, as he sat in a bar in Sydney. “But this,” he said, gesturing to a large television showing the queen’s hearse on its way to Windsor Castle, was “mourn porn.”
The funeral was planned with the kind of precision that would cheer a Broadway stage manager. The official schedule had the queen’s coffin moving to Westminster Abbey at 10:44 a.m. Not 10:40, not 10:45.
Late Monday afternoon in Windsor, after a service in St. George’s Chapel, the Lord Chamberlain broke his ceremonial wooden Wand of Office and placed it atop the queen’s casket, symbolizing the end of her reign.
As the Sovereign’s Piper played a lament, her coffin disappeared from view as it was lowered into the Royal Vault.
Michael E. Miller in Sydney, Amanda Coletta in Bermuda, Julia Mio Inuma in Tokyo and Karina Tsui in Washington contributed to this report. | 2022-09-19T20:39:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Costumes, wands, castles, a piper: Queen Elizabeth's funeral had it all - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/19/how-many-people-watched-queen-funeral/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/19/how-many-people-watched-queen-funeral/ |
The queen’s funeral doesn’t have to be about the queen
Even for those who didn’t care about the monarchy, there was a way to find meaning in the sendoff for Elizabeth II
Pallbearers transport the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II at Wellington Arch in London. (Daniel Leal/AP)
The state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II was what it looks like when a thousand-year-old country throws in absolutely everything it’s got.
Every castle, bagpipe, Union Jack, bearskin helmet, tea towel, commemorative plate, black armband, well-trained horse, tasteful hat. Every archbishop, commonwealth representative and prime minister. Heads of state from around the world were there — we were told they traveled to the funeral site by bus — and so were the queen’s four children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. Repeatedly news anchors said that “billions” were watching the event, and you thought that can’t be right, but then again, it was 5 a.m. in the United States and you too (or just me?) had set an alarm to watch a live stream from Westminster Abbey.
What more is there to say about the queen that hasn’t been said in the past 10 days?
Every aspect of her life and 70-year reign has been rehashed. Englishmen on the street went on television and declared that it felt as if their own grandmum had died. Scottish football fans heard the news at a match and started euphorically chanting, “Lizzie’s in a Box.” Harry and Meghan showed up from California and caused a ruckus when they appeared jointly in public with William and Kate — for the first time since the couple’s resignation from royal duties — to greet mourners outside of Windsor Castle. Did this mean they were burying the hatchet?
Online, hundreds of smug Americans remarked that we held a revolution just to be rid of this nonsense — as if they were the first to think of the observation, as if that were even the point.
Nonsense is in the eye of the beholder, after all, as is genuine pathos. The funeral itself was almost impersonal, honoring the institution more than the woman. The odd thing that made me emotional was the precise way the queen’s pallbearers carried her casket: one arm steadying the weight of the thing, and one arm wrapped around the shoulder of the pallbearer on the other side of it. The earnest effort and secret practice that would have gone into perfecting that formation. The fact that death is about the ones who are left behind to bear its weight. The way that even when carrying our heaviest loads, we can make them lighter by holding each other up.
Six hours! The funeral components lasted six hours: a procession to Westminster Abbey for the service, and then past Buckingham Palace, and then onto Windsor Castle and St. George’s Chapel where she would be finally laid to rest. Crowds waited at every turn; the miles-long “Queue” to see her casket had already become instantly legendary and included such Brits as David Beckham and Tilda Swinton.
Watching enough hours of funeral coverage eventually devolved into a numb exercise in how many hours news anchors can manage to fill on live air, using a mixture of platitudes and inane trivia.
The queen preferred nude-colored pumps, we learned. She spent World War II at Windsor Castle and was devastated when it caught fire in 1992. She hated “discourtesy” and “impoliteness” and never kept anyone waiting. She had the ability to connect with people from all walks of life, from around the world. The corgis would go to Prince Andrew.
“This is a somber day,” someone on one cable network said, before the station broke to a commercial for psoriasis treatment.
A television commentator imagined the scene from the perspective of Prince George — Prince William’s eldest son, eventual heir to the throne. “The next time he’ll see something like this will be at his grandfather’s funeral,” the commentator said.
But in truth that’s not right, either. King Charles III ascends to the throne at the age of 73. His reign will never be so long and never mean so much. Eighty-six percent of Britons have only ever known Elizabeth as their monarch. Imagine her lifetime. The country she was born into was one in which women did not fully have the right to vote. The country she leaves is one in which sovereignty is seen as a woman’s job.
Her existence held together the Commonwealth, a conglomeration of 56 nations, and upon her death some of those countries were reportedly prompted to question whether they wanted any ties to the monarchy at all. Maybe it was time to move on.
At two points during Elizabeth’s funeral — at the end of the service at Westminster Abbey and at the end of the burial at St. George’s Chapel — all of the congregants, in their dark suits and dark dresses, rose from their pews and sang “God Save the King.”
All of the congregants but one, that is: Charles did not join in because he now was the king; for the first time in 70 years the wording was not “God Save the Queen.”
The man looked emotional. He swallowed hard, his eyes were red. It was the funeral of his mother, and in that moment he looked exactly like a man who has lost his only mother. He was holding back tears.
It was not the funeral of your mother, though, and perhaps you have spent the past 10 days wondering why so much of the world had lost their minds over the entirely expected death of a 96-year-old woman who lived a long life of unimaginable privilege, the public face of an empire that historically had caused unimaginable pain.
I have a humble offering. A way to think about all of this if you, like I, have mixed feelings about the monarchy. If you, like I, wondered exactly what you were doing in front of your television at 5 o’clock in the morning.
The offering is this: If you’re able, try to take this period of the queen’s mourning as permission to mourn the things in your own life that were never given this state-sanctioned, universally acknowledged display of grief. Your own lost loved ones, failed marriages, estranged children. The quiet covid funerals of the past nearly three years, the Zoom memorials, the grandfathers who died alone in old folks’ homes a thousand miles away. The day of the queen’s funeral would have been my own grandmother’s 100th birthday, and I spent the morning thinking of her. The cello she played at church, the wrapping paper she reused at holidays, the back issues of Reader’s Digest that she kept on the bookshelf. If you ever loved a grandmother, the queen’s funeral could be that catharsis.
And maybe, if you’re able, you try to think of this as the end of an era. It’s an overworked term, “end of an era,” a cheap shorthand that I’m loathe to use now, but if ever there was an appropriate use of the phrase, this right here is it.
When an era ends, you feel something. Sometimes you cry with grief, or sometimes with relief, or sometimes just with the heavy weight of knowledge that time marches on for all of us. We all age, we all slow, we all watch our bodies betray us eventually, stooped or weakened and preparing to leave this earth. Superpowers are dismantled, flags are replaced, money is reissued, allegiances are reconsidered, monarchies fade, dust to dust and ashes to ashes. The world changes and whomever you were at the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign is not who you are now.
Time moves only in one direction and the funeral of the queen was about an era that is gone and is never, ever coming back. And when Charles heard “God Save the King,” he would have known that, too.
Queen Elizabeth II funeral live updates: Remains buried next to Prince Philip | 2022-09-19T20:56:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Elizabeth II, Charles III and what it means when an era ends - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/09/19/elizabeth-charles-end-of-an-era/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/09/19/elizabeth-charles-end-of-an-era/ |
For a time, Roger Federer made his small country feel truly big
By Philipp Loser
Switzerland's Roger Federer during a match against Britain's Cameron Norrie at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London on July 3, 2021. (Alastair Grant/AP)
Philipp Loser is a columnist for the Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger.
When the moment arrived, when the inevitable occurred and Roger Federer announced his retirement, it felt to us Swiss almost as though he had died.
On the front pages of the nation’s major newspapers, his face was printed in shades of gray, much like Queen Elizabeth II’s a week earlier. There were eulogies about “King Roger,” reflecting on the elegance of his game and his character. The news channels ran special reports; on the radio, there was talk of little else. Journalists wrote about their personal encounters with the “Maestro.” Politicians posted selfies they had taken with him at some point over the last 20 years, and everyone who had even remotely come into contact with possibly the greatest tennis player of all time — as a physical therapist, or a ball kid or a racquet stringer — was given time and space to tell their own personal anecdote.
By Swiss standards, the excitement was at a fever pitch.
It wasn’t always this way. In 2005, Federer won 11 tournaments on the ATP Tour, including the U.S. Open and Wimbledon. His match record was 81-4. He was playing more successfully than almost any player before him. He was at peak dominance. Yet, when the people of Switzerland voted for the national broadcasters’ annual Sports Personality of the Year award at the end of the year, Federer came in second. He was beaten by a motorcycle racer who, though he hadn’t even performed exceptionally well that year, seemed somewhat more likable.
It took the tennis champ a while to recover from that sting. But even as his home country was denying him the recognition he so rightly deserved, he was beginning to get it everywhere else. Shortly after the disappointing Swiss award ceremony, Federer was voted World Sportsman of the Year for the first of five times, and by the time David Foster Wallace had turned him into a literary figure in a 2006 New York Times magazine article, it was clear to every last person in Switzerland: Roger Federer is a global presence, a world star, an icon. And hey — he’s one of ours!
The reluctance with which we Swiss embraced our greatest sportsman has a lot to do with the Swiss nature. The world has long viewed us exclusively through a lens of cliches: chocolate, Nazi gold, cuckoo clocks (which have nothing to do with Switzerland). In movies and books, Swiss characters appear as sinister bankers — uptight, greedy and basically evil.
But in our own minds, we are not merely different from other nationalities — we are special. We even have a word for it: “Sonderfall,” a kind of Alpine exceptionalism. We are a nation of hard-working ordinary people, ever polite and in control. Not too full of ourselves, not too loud, not too ostentatious. We function in an egalitarian, democratic way. We’ve never had a king, and we do not tolerate grandiosity.
Anyone who achieves something extraordinary in this system is subject to critical scrutiny. That’s why the motorcycle racer was voted Sports Personality of the Year. The message to Federer was not very subtle: Don’t get any big ideas.
Federer just continued to do what he had done before. He dominated the tennis world. And he did it like a good Swiss: politely. Severin Lüthi, Federer’s longtime coach, told my newspaper that on the day Federer announced his retirement, he called Lüthi three times to ask how he was coping. “I think many will remember him primarily as a nice person,” said Lüthi. “That’s more important than one title more or less.”
How very Swiss!
The longer Federer’s career lasted, the more the people of Switzerland came to realize that he was finally bringing the world’s view of us into alignment with our view of ourselves. Suddenly, we were no longer just money-grubbing gnomes from Zurich’s Bahnhofstrasse; we were Federer’s countrymen. On tennis’s world stage, people who couldn’t have found our country on a map were waving Swiss flags. Roger Federer was shining, and we were shining with him.
For that, we forgave him a lot: His second home in Dubai. His deliberately evasive way of not commenting on anything unrelated to tennis (ah, neutrality, another cliché). Or his excessive promotional activities (including for watches and chocolate. Of course).
In return, we Swiss were given a front row seat to sporting history. It was our Roger who played arguably the best tennis match ever against Rafael Nadal in 2008 (and unfortunately lost); it was our Roger who produced one of the greatest comebacks nine years later at the Australian Open; it was our Roger who raised an entire sport to a new level.
Now, he is calling it quits, leaving us as we were before. In the days after his departure, one newspaper published a rather fitting cartoon. It showed two Swiss watching a giant in tennis clothes stomping away. “And we are small again,” the caption read.
Yes, we are. But it was great while it lasted. And for that, we’ll forever be grateful to Roger Federer. | 2022-09-19T20:56:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Roger Federer opened the world's eyes to the real Switzerland - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/19/federer-made-switzerland-special/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/19/federer-made-switzerland-special/ |
A judge on Monday vacated the conviction of Adnan Syed, whose murder case drew wide attention after it was featured on the true-crime podcast “Serial.”
The decision by Baltimore City Circuit Court Melissa M. Phinn comes after prosecutors told the court they had lost faith in Syed’s conviction, citing a nearly year-long investigation that uncovered new information about “the possible involvement of two alternative suspects,” and violations in the government’s turning over evidence to the defense. The judge also ordered Syed released from prison, while prosecutors decide whether they want to try him again.
Read the motion to vacate Syed's conviction
Syed was a 17-year-old high school student when he was arrested in late February 1999 in the killing of Hae Min Lee, his ex-girlfriend. He had long sought to overturn his conviction and get a new trial, but until recently, had faced opposition from prosecutors. Then on Wednesday, the Baltimore City state’s attorney office said in a motion in circuit court that — while its investigation is ongoing — it wanted the conviction tossed and Syed released. | 2022-09-19T21:09:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Adnan Syed, featured in ‘Serial’ podcast, will be released from prison - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/19/adnan-syed-conviction-vacated-judge/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/19/adnan-syed-conviction-vacated-judge/ |
Hopkins may leave CareFirst network, leaving patients in the lurch
Johns Hopkins Hospital is warning people with CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield that it may no longer accept their insurance starting as early as Dec. 5. (Rob Carr/Getty Images)
Johns Hopkins has warned nearly 300,000 patients that their doctors, nurses and other health care providers may no longer accept CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield health insurance as soon as Dec. 5, jeopardizing patients’ access to care.
Hopkins and CareFirst are at an impasse over rates the insurance company pays for care at Hopkins, a major provider of primary, specialized and outpatient surgical services in the region.
CareFirst officials accused Hopkins of putting “the people we collectively serve” in the middle of contract negotiations that began in June, an allegation denied by Kevin W. Sowers, president of the Johns Hopkins Health System and executive vice president of Johns Hopkins Medicine.
“This was a very difficult decision and was not a mechanism to put patients in the middle,” Sowers said. “We did not take this decision lightly.”
The health care system is contractually obligated to give 90 days notice before providers leave the network, he said. Weekly talks continue over the contract, which covers about 4,000 providers employed by Hopkins at the Johns Hopkins flagship hospital and Bayview Medical Center in Baltimore, as well as Howard County General Hospital in Columbia, Md., Suburban Hospital in Bethesda and Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington. Providers at stand-alone ambulatory surgery centers, including those in Bethesda and Columbia, would also be affected.
In addition to the providers, Hopkins hospitals in Maryland may leave the network as well, if Hopkins and CareFirst still can’t reach an agreement by March 5, meaning hospital stays would not be covered.
The changes would leave people like Deborah Wassertzug, a three-time cancer survivor who requires close monitoring from a team of experts, scrambling for a new insurance plan on short notice. As a freelance translator, she is enrolled in CareFirst through the Affordable Care Act.
“Having a specialist I can see who has seen a lot of patients like me is really important, so it’s not like I can pick up and move to another doctor,” she said.
Wassertzug, 50, was diagnosed with a melanoma in 2013 that later metastasized to her lungs and brain. She is in remission, but a cancer medication she was taking touched off recurrent inflammation of her retina and iris — complications that hampered her vision and required the care of a Hopkins ocular immunologist. That’s in addition to a gastroenterologist, rheumatologist and oncologist.
Her oncologist, who keeps once a week hours at Sibley not far from Wassertzug’s home in Rockville, specializes in melanoma, which requires scans as often as every four months and a special kind of blood test that acts as an early warning system for cancer recurrence.
“I think [for] anyone who has had cancer or is dealing with cancer, probably the worst thing they can hear is that there will be a disruption in their access to care or monitoring appointments,” she said. “You want things to stay on a normal trajectory. It can be pretty unsettling to have to change that.”
Sowers, the head of Hopkins, said the health system terminated its contract with CareFirst because the insurance company’s rates are 40 percent lower than other large companies, such as Cigna and Aetna — a disparity he called unsustainable.
“We felt we reached a point where we were so far apart that we really needed to give them that notice,” he said.
Insurer will pay $95 million, ending years-long legal fight over nonprofit’s surplus funds
The dispute comes just before the period when many patients choose their health insurance for the coming year, adding to the pressure for CareFirst. Hopkins and CareFirst are taking calls from concerned patients and in addition to letters and emails, Hopkins produced a video featuring Sowers.
Hopkins and CareFirst officials said care could continue, even if no agreement is reached, for some people with severe illness, rare disorders, certain cancers or who are enrolled in clinical trials.
“CareFirst has been strongly advocating for Johns Hopkins price increases to be reasonable in this negotiation as any additional costs will add to the burden of employers and households who are already feeling strained in this uncertain economy,” officials said in a statement.
Steven Sacks, 72, a retired longtime Department of Energy employee enrolled in CareFirst in addition to Medicare, speculated that by terminating the contract pending final talks, Hopkins is pressuring CareFirst to act.
“They want to see who’s going to blink first,” he said. | 2022-09-19T21:09:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | If John Hopkins drops CareFirst, patients' access to care is at risk - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/19/john-hopkins-carefirst-network-contract/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/19/john-hopkins-carefirst-network-contract/ |
The Truth social network logo is seen on a smartphone in front of a display of former president Donald Trump in this picture illustration taken Feb. 21. (Dado Ruvic/Reuters)
What happened first is that social media companies like Twitter and Facebook, after years of embracing strategies of growth at almost any cost, began facing outcry over how toxic their platforms had become. This overlapped with the 2016 presidential election in the United States, a highly contentious race in which Donald Trump actively stoked vicious online rhetoric. At the same time, Russian actors exploited the platforms in an effort to boost Trump’s chances of victory, an effort that had a minor political effect but a massive psychological one.
So the platforms began tightening the screws. Twitter, for example, implemented a system that shunted people who’d repeatedly been flagged for harassment to the background. Suddenly, some of the loudest, most active voices on the platforms discovered that their reach had been limited or their efforts to go viral shut down. A lot of those people sat on the political right and decided that the issue wasn’t their behavior but the platforms’ biases.
A movement emerged: Social media companies shouldn’t be allowed to police content on their sites! I mean, think about the First Amendment! Lawyers and constitutional experts, sticklers for such things, pointed out that the First Amendment applied to efforts by the government to censor speech, not of private companies. In fact, they added, forcing Twitter to host, say, anti-gay content was a form of governmental imposition on Twitter.
By now, there’s a wide partisan divide on how people understand the application of the First Amendment to social-media companies. In polling released by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania last week, Republicans were much more likely than Democrats to say that the First Amendment mandated that Facebook not moderate content.
As has happened so often in recent years, Republican politicians have rushed to capitalize on their base’s misapprehension. In Texas and Florida, for example, state legislators passed policies limiting companies’ ability to censor content. The ambitious Republican governors in those states enthusiastically signed the bills into law.
In May, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals determined that Florida’s law was unconstitutional, a finding that didn’t surprise most legal observers. The Supreme Court soon after put a hold on Texas’s law while it legal challenges moved forward.
But Texas, unlike Florida, got a hearing in the 5th Circuit. Last week, it released its decision on a lawsuit seeking to block Texas’s law: The law was right and the companies and legal experts were wrong.
“To the extent it chills anything, it chills censorship,” the opinion reads, with emphasis in the original. The section of the Texas law at issue, it continues, “might make censors think twice before removing speech from the Platforms in a viewpoint-discriminatory manner.”
A social media platform may not censor a user, a user’s expression, or a user’s ability to receive the expression of another person based on:
(1) the viewpoint of the user or another person;
(2) the viewpoint represented in the user’s expression or another person’s expression; or
(3) a user’s geographic location in this state or any part of this state.
The law applies only to social-media companies with more than 50 million monthly active users, a boundary that the opinion accepts as functionally distinguishing the platforms as significant.
The decision was written by Judge Andrew Stephen Oldham, nominated to the court by Trump. Trump’s broad effort to reshape the judiciary as more favorable to the political right was especially energetic on the 5th Circuit. The result was a bench that moved noticeably to the right.
Trump, of course, was an energetic advocate for bringing social media companies to heel, by which he meant fighting to keep his allies from facing any repercussions for their activity. He hosted a “summit” at the White House in 2019 centered on arguing that the companies were acting with bias. That was followed by regular excoriations against the platforms on the platforms themselves.
Trump and his allies were handed a political gift when in October 2020 both Twitter and Facebook limited the reach of a New York Post story about Joe Biden’s son Hunter. After being slammed for propagating Russia’s efforts to interfere in 2016, the platforms were wary about the dubiously provenanced narrative, but the action was immediately cast as a function of political bias. That was compounded when Trump’s dishonest claims about the election results were flagged or hidden and, ultimately, when he was booted from the platforms after his election falsehoods and entreaties to come to Washington powered the Capitol riot.
The 5th Circuit’s decision is not the final word; the case will likely head to the Supreme Court. But that simply reinforces how Trump’s nominations as president might help cement his aim of holding social-media companies to account. Justices Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, both Trump nominees, sided with the majority in backing the emergency request to stay Texas’s law in May. That does not mean they will similarly oppose the state law if asked to weigh in on the fight.
Being booted from Twitter, though, opened a door that complicates the picture somewhat. After months of delay, Trump’s bespoke social-media site Truth Social began welcoming users. Frustrated about the rules of play at the existing platforms, Trump and his allies made their own sandbox. While the platform has struggled, Trump has leaned into it, posting regularly and encouraging his supporters to do so as well.
“Another one of our highest priorities under Republican Congress will be to stop left-wing censorship and to restore free speech in America, which we do not have,” Trump said at a rally in Ohio over the weekend in support of GOP congressional candidates. Then he went off-script a bit: “And go out and sign up now for Truth Social, which is doing great. It’s hot and it’s a hell of a lot better than Twitter will ever be. Twitter’s got a lot of headaches right now folks.”
Truth Social also has terms of service to which users agree. Those include stipulations that contributions must not be “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, violent, harassing, libelous, slanderous, or otherwise objectionable” lest posters face “termination or suspension of your rights to use the Service and removal or deletion of your Contributions.” In other words, Truth Social retains the right to censor users for essentially any reason.
The Texas law doesn’t apply here; Truth Social doesn’t have 50 million monthly active users, though Trump is certainly hoping it soon will. But if the Supreme Court upholds the 5th Circuit’s decision, there’s nothing that would theoretically stop a state from passing a law like Texas’s that applies to Truth Social as well.
Trump and his allies would argue that the Texas law focuses on censorship based on viewpoints which, of course, is the argument they’ve made about Twitter and Facebook’s content-moderation policies all along. But, in practice, Truth Social reserves the right to remove content in the same way that Twitter does. It’s just that Twitter — in the spotlight for so long — has far more specific prohibitions in place. Both companies argue that users who break their rules can be booted which, legal experts have consistently argued, is perfectly within their rights.
What’s been argued by the right for years is that Twitter and Facebook’s moderation is often motivated not by the effects of a given post (harassment, incitement, misinformation, etc.) but, instead, by its ideology — something that has never been robustly demonstrated. But this is what the Texas law purports to correct, with the effect of loosening all moderation either directly or through the chilling effect on “censorship” that the court’s opinion celebrates.
Trump elevated this issue. He appointed the judges that might affix his position in the law. And, because he did so, he might find his private business flummoxed in its efforts to define the boundaries of its platform. | 2022-09-19T21:18:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump may wish he hadn’t pushed to block online content moderation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/19/trump-social-media-republicans-texas-florida/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/19/trump-social-media-republicans-texas-florida/ |
Members of the royal household stand with Queen Elizabeth II's corgis, Muick and Sandy, as they wait for the funeral cortege to arrive at Windsor Castle. (Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)
LONDON — The world watched as Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin made its way toward Windsor Castle, the British monarch’s final resting place. Her two corgi dogs and beloved pony watched, too.
Elizabeth was the head of state and had important constitutional duties. But those close to her talk about how she was happiest living life as a countrywoman, enjoying her animals’ company.
So it was perhaps fitting that those three favorites were present during the finale of the ceremonial procession.
Corgis Muick and Sandy were brought outside Windsor Castle ahead of the coffin’s arrival on the Long Walk, a 2.6-mile avenue that leads to the castle.
And just off the avenue, saddled but riderless, her Fell pony Emma was also waiting.
The queen is said to have tolerated London’s Buckingham Palace. She much preferred Windsor Castle, where she could ride her horses, and she was frequently seen trotting through Windsor Great Park. Castle staff would proudly tell visitors that she thought of Windsor as “home” and London as “the office.”
At the start of the pandemic, she moved her primary residence to Windsor — and showed no interest in leaving even when restrictions lifted. Her corgis remained with her there.
One of the public’s greatest concerns when the queen died was where Muick and Sandy would go. A spokesperson for Prince Andrew subsequently confirmed that they will simply change residences on the estate, moving in with the prince and his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson. (Although divorced, the couple live together at Royal Lodge on the grounds.)
While the queen had other breeds over her long lifetime, she loved corgis above all others. She reportedly had more than 30 in her lifetime; Princess Diana once called them a “moving carpet.”
Her corgi Susan, which she got when she was 18, came along on her honeymoon — and started a royal breeding line that produced hundreds of puppies. Three of those descendants would go on to appear with the queen when she teamed up with Daniel Craig, a.k.a. James Bond, in a sketch for the Opening Ceremonies of the 2012 London Olympics.
The queen also had a lifelong passion for horses and rode into her 90s. Earlier this year, health issues forced her to miss the State Opening of Parliament — an important date on the royal calendar — but a few days later she was driven to the Royal Windsor Horse Show to watch her horses take part in the events.
Some of those creatures played a prominent role on Monday.
The queen was commissioner-in-chief of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and helping to lead the funeral procession in London were four horses with the RCMP Musical Ride that were gifted to her during her reign.
Margaret Rhodes, a close friend and first cousin of the queen, once told the BBC: “It’s wonderful when she gets a few days of non-duty she can do the things she likes, and that is, being a country person, going for walks with the dogs, and thinking about doggy and horsy things.”
An artist portrayed Queen Elizabeth II reunited with Prince Philip | 2022-09-19T21:18:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Queen Elizabeth's corgis, pony: The role animals played in the funeral - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/19/queen-funeral-corgis-pony/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/19/queen-funeral-corgis-pony/ |
Investigation underway after D.C. police dog found dead in vehicle
A D.C. police dog was found dead inside a police vehicle on Monday, and the circumstances are being investigated, according to department spokesman.
Few details, including the name of the dog were made public, and the spokesman, Dustin Sternbeck, said authorities are awaiting the results of a necropsy to determined how the dog died.
The dog’s handler has not being identified and Sternbeck said the officer remains on duty. Officials did not provide a location of where the vehicle and the dog were found. WRC-TV first reported the dog’s death.
Police use canines to track people and to detect the presence of drugs, firearms and explosives. The police department’s website says it has 21 canine teams.
“The circumstances around the death are still being looked into,” Sternbeck said. He said that includes inspecting the vehicle involved. | 2022-09-19T21:27:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Investigation underway after D.C. police dog found dead in vehicle - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/19/police-washington-dog-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/19/police-washington-dog-dead/ |
Widespread outages reveal flaws in electrical grid that has been slow to modernize
Arelis R. Hernández
A destroyed banana crop field after Hurricane Fiona made landfall in Guayanilla, Puerto Rico on Sept. 18. (Ricardo Arduengo/Reuters)
The hurricane winds that knocked out power to the entire island of Puerto Rico over the weekend encountered an electrical grid that experts liken to a house of cards: a fragile, decrepit, patchwork system running on old equipment that has failed to substantially modernize since the U.S. territory’s deadliest storm, Hurricane Maria, swept through five years before.
The state-run utility that is responsible for electricity generation is bankrupt and mediation to restructure its $9 billion debt to bondholders ended without a deal last week. Luma Energy, the private consortium that was hired in 2020 to handle transmission, has failed to satisfy critics, as power outages have increased in duration this year even apart from destructive storms, according to a report last month by the Puerto Rico Energy Bureau.
And a major plan to modernize the island’s electricity system, funded with billions from the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency as a response to Hurricane Maria — which killed about 3,000 people and left some residents out of power for nearly a year — has been slow to get started.
Sin Luz, Life without power
“Given all that, it shouldn’t be surprising that we are where we are,” Sergio Marxuach, policy director at the Center for a New Economy, a Puerto Rico-based think tank, said by phone from his home on the island’s north coast, which was running on generator power.
“What we’re seeing right now is a direct consequence of that failure to act” since Hurricane Maria, he said.
Fiona made landfall on Sunday afternoon with 80 mph winds and quickly knocked out power to more than 3 million people — or the entire population of Puerto Rico. Luma Energy officials on Monday said power has been restored to just more than 100,000 people by Monday afternoon, including in the San Juan metropolitan area, at the city’s main hospital campus and the island’s largest airport, but the company had yet to offer a detailed assessment of the damage.
Puerto Rico’s fragile power grid has been at the center of recriminations from protesters, customers and utility union members who have called on Gov. Pedro Pierluisi to cancel the government’s contract with Luma Energy. In recent weeks, Pierluisi levied his first public remarks critical of the company, echoing what for months has been the cry of critics bemoaning the company’s performance.
The U.S.-Canadian power consortium has struggled more than a year after taking over operations of Puerto Rico’s transmission and distribution lines with public perception, frequent brownouts and at least one total blackout. Protests outside their San Juan offices are regular weekly events and the “fuera Luma,” or “out with Luma,” are as ubiquitous in Puerto Rico as the chant of the coqui, the island’s famous frog.
Luma spokesman Hugo Sorrentini said the company’s crews have been hampered by extensive flooding across the island but that some 1,500 utility workers are “ready to respond” to the outages. Helicopters haven’t been able to access some of the areas where power lines are down in the mountains as heavy rains persist, he said. Customers who have been restored so far mostly rely on underground power lines.
“There’s roadblocks, there’s flooding, there’s rivers that just overflowed,” he said. “It’s a very difficult situation, and it’s very complicated, especially with access. But for the next couple of days, we’re going to keep working on and assessing and restoring as best we can.”
One of the major vulnerabilities to Puerto Rico’s electrical system is the cross-country transmission system. Power generation takes place primarily in the southern coast of the island, where giant aging power plants send electricity through transmission lines that run across the mountainous interior. The towers stand atop steep hillsides, looking over ravines and continue to the populous north to where most of the energy is consumed. During storms, those lines regularly fail.
After Fiona, winds knocked out power to at least four of the island’s major transmission lines. Luma has said it put 200 utility workers in place ahead of the storm and called up 70 more through a support brigade to respond to the outages.
The problems with Puerto Rico’s electrical grid go back decades and are a source of ongoing agony for many residents. Prices are high and electricity is still predominantly supplied by fossil fuels, including oil and diesel, even though local laws mandate a transition to renewable energy in coming years.
Eduardo Bhatia, who was president of Puerto Rico’s senate until last year, said the widespread blackouts from Hurricane Fiona makes it clear once again that Puerto Rico’s Electric Power Authority, known as PREPA, failed for decades to invest in modernizing the grid, running on infrastructure he compared to “cars from Cuba — equipment that is 40, 50 years old.”
“How they used the money is a great mystery, but they did not do the investments to strengthen the grid,” he said.
Bhatia added that the storm also showed how desperately the island needs an overhauled energy grid. Since 2020, Congress has appropriated some $12 billion for the project — the largest allocation of FEMA funds in the agency’s history. But bureaucratic delays have hobbled the work of modernizing the grid.
“They have to speed it up,” Bhatia said.
Luma Energy officials say the fragile power grid has long been mismanaged and neglected by PREPA, creating unprecedented challenges for its workforce. But the 3,000-employee company, a consortium between North American companies Atco and Quanta Services, insists that the system is in better shape than ever and that it’s set to spend billions in federal funds to rebuild and harden the grid.
“The system has been declining for decades. The system itself was already in very bad shape,” Mario Hurtado, Luma’s chief regulatory officer, said in an interview days before Hurricane Fiona. “PREPA was the worst performing utility in America, far and away.”
The corruption, unreliability and failures of PREPA are well-documented in congressional hearings, expert testimony and personal experiences. The public utility, which still controls power generation in Puerto Rico, is in bankruptcy and helped drive the U.S. territory’s decade-long financial crisis. Negotiations to restructure $9 billion in debt faltered yet again last week.
In 2016, a federally appointed fiscal oversight board took control of Puerto Rico’s finances and the long-held desire of local politicians to privatize the power grid began to take shape. But lax regulation, an overly generous contract and self-dealing plagued the privatization process from the start, critics say.
Luma Energy took over Puerto Rico’s transmission and distribution system in June 2021 after a year of studying one of the most complicated power grids in the country.
An arrest warrant, a fugitive CEO: Puerto Rico’s effort to privatize its electrical grid is off to a rocky start
Thousands of PREPA workers took jobs with Luma, but hundreds of experienced, unionized line workers refused job offers after learning they would lose hard-fought benefits. Luma set up a training and apprenticeship program to fill up their ranks, but the lack of experience in its ranks has been a point of contention for politicians and experts alike.
Luma officials brushed off the criticism, saying they’ve trained hundreds of people for emergency response, rehabbed customer service centers and upgraded substations, installed thousands of new lines and poles, repaired response vehicles and drilled with government agencies repeatedly.
“The whole idea is that if there is another storm, we will be much better prepared and those assets will be in better shape to resist that sort of an onslaught if it’s high winds or flooding,” Hurtado said. “If there’s outages, we are able to restore service more quickly.”
In the past year, Luma says it has reduced outages by 30 percent and connected 25,000 people to rooftop solar panels.
“We are not in the same place as we were with Maria,” said the company’s regional manager of strategic initiatives, Kathy Roure, one of an estimated 1,500 employees who transitioned from PREPA to Luma.
But criticism of the company has still been mounting. Last month, Pierluisi publicly criticized Luma Energy for the first time, saying he was “not satisfied” with the company’s performance.
Pierluisi said he recognized that the electrical system was “fragile and obsolete,” but he said it was “Luma’s responsibility to operate it under the critical and emergency state in which it finds itself.”
The government set a deadline of Nov. 30 to consider whether to extend Luma’s contract for 15 years.
“I think this disaster’s going to kind of force the government’s hands,” said Marxuach, of the Center for a New Economy think tank, about the ongoing outages.
PREPA no longer has transmission or distribution divisions since the privatization, and the utility company doesn’t have the employees or equipment to do the job now, he said.
“Whether we like it or not, we’re stuck with Luma — at least until the system is brought back online,” he said. “I mean, it would be crazy to change horses in midstream right now.”
Hours before Tropical Storm Fiona turned into a hurricane, thousands of households reported outages. By Sunday morning, all of Puerto Rico was in the dark.
“It’s one thing to drive an old car if you know how to drive it,” said Angel Figueroa Jaramillo, the president of PREPA union workers, was the among the first to report that a total blackout was underway that was affirmed by the Puerto Rico governor 30 minutes later. “It’s another to try to drive an old car if you’re not familiar with it.”
Figueroa Jaramillo, a fierce Luma critic, said his union sent a letter weeks ago warning the company and government officials that vegetation growth on power lines was imperiling systems. His workers know that in a tropical island, trees and vines need to be trimmed regularly to avoid interruptions. It’s one example of the many ways, he said, Luma’s inexperience is compromising the power grid.
For its part, Luma says it is determined to not only restore power, but improve the grid as quickly as possible. Of the 209 improvement projects planned out with FEMA, 14 of them were already under construction when Fiona made landfall.
“Obviously with this storm hitting us today, some of the advances we have might be reversed,” Luma spokesman Sorrentini said. “But we are committed to transforming the electric system in Puerto Rico. We’re here for the long haul.” | 2022-09-19T21:27:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Puerto Rico's power grid struggled ahead of Hurricane Fiona blackout - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/19/puerto-rico-blackout-hurricane-fiona/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/19/puerto-rico-blackout-hurricane-fiona/ |
U.S. arrests along Mexico border surpass 2 million in a year for the first time
Mandatory Credit: Photo by Luis Torres/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock (13398300c) Migrants from Venezuela cross the Rio Bravo towards the US side, from Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, Mexico, 15 September 2022 (issued 17 September 2022). A wave of Venezuelan migrants have been crossing to the United States, 660 on average per day according to Border Patrol reports, since the extension of the Temporal Protection Status was enacted on 10 September. Venezuelan migrants cross the US border upon Temporal Protection Status extension, Ciudad Juarez, Mexico - 17 Sep 2022 (Luis Torres/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
U.S. authorities have made more than 2 million immigration arrests along the southern border during the past 11 months, marking the first time annual enforcement statistics have exceeded that threshold, according to figures provided by senior Biden administration officials Monday.
In August, U.S. Customs and Border Protection detained more than 203,000 migrants were detained crossing into the United States from Mexico, the latest figures show, putting authorities on pace to tally nearly 2.3 million arrests during the government’s 2022 fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. The total, which includes some people arrested more than once, far exceeds last year’s record 1.73 million arrests.
This year’s historic migration wave has been driven by extra large numbers of border-crossers from outside Mexico and Central America, the two largest traditional sources of illegal entries. In recent months, soaring numbers of Venezuelan, Nicaraguan and Cuban asylum seekers have been taken into custody, crossing primarily through remote areas near Yuma, Arizona and the Del Rio, Texas.
“Failing communist regimes in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba are driving a new wave of migration across the Western Hemisphere, including the recent increase in encounters at the southwest U.S. border,” Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Chris Magnus, said in a statement.
The Republican governors of Texas and Arizona have sent more than 10,000 migrants on buses to Washington, New York City and other northern destinations to put pressure on Democrats by straining relief services in their jurisdictions. Last week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) shipped a planeload of Venezuelans to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. | 2022-09-19T21:27:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.S. arrests along Mexico border surpass 2 million in a year for first time - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/19/us-border-patrol-arrests/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/19/us-border-patrol-arrests/ |
Water surrounds the mini convention center, which is also home to the finish of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, in Nome, Alaska, on Saturday, Sept. 17, 2022. Much of Alaska’s western coast could see flooding and high winds as the remnants of Typhoon Merbok moved into the Bering Sea region. The National Weather Service says some locations could experience the worst coastal flooding in 50 years. (AP Photo/Peggy Fagerstrom) | 2022-09-19T21:27:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Damage assessments begin in flooded remote Alaska villages - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/damage-assessments-begin-in-flooded-remote-alaska-villages/2022/09/19/e4ef04e4-385c-11ed-b8af-0a04e5dc3db6_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/damage-assessments-begin-in-flooded-remote-alaska-villages/2022/09/19/e4ef04e4-385c-11ed-b8af-0a04e5dc3db6_story.html |
Biden says ‘pandemic is over,' complicating White House efforts for funds
President Biden speaks during a meeting at the White House on Aug. 26. (Evan Vucci/AP)
President Biden’s off-the-cuff comment during a “60 Minutes” interview that “the pandemic is over” has sparked outrage from all sides. Republicans are accusing Biden of hypocrisy as he asks Congress for more covid-19 funding, while some on the left point to the disease’s continued death toll as evidence that the pandemic is nowhere near its finish line.
These criticisms don’t detract from Biden’s point. He’s right. By multiple definitions, the pandemic is over. That doesn’t mean that the coronavirus is no longer causing harm; it simply signals the end of an emergency state as covid has evolved into an endemic disease.
A pandemic is something that upends our daily lives and profoundly alters the way that we work, go to school, worship and socialize. That was certainly the case in March 2020. I was among the public health experts who urged people to “stay home, save lives.” We called for Americans to avoid “play dates, sleepovers, bars, restaurants, parties or houses of worship.” Employers sent workers home en masse. Schools pivoted to remote instruction.
Things changed with the arrival of vaccines. Many individuals, once vaccinated, began resuming their pre-pandemic activities. Others, like my family, waited until younger kids could receive the shots. By now, the vast majority of Americans have been vaccinated or recovered from covid-19 or both. The preventive antibody Evusheld and treatments such as Paxlovid and monoclonal antibodies provide further protection against severe illness.
The Post's View: No, President Biden, the pandemic is not over
As a result, most Americans have turned the page and abandoned mitigation measures. By August, according to a Morning Consult poll, just 14 percent of adults viewed covid as a severe health risk. This tracks with their other findings that only 28 percent still mask in all settings, while 75 percent were comfortable with indoor dining.
The scientific end of the pandemic may have arrived, too. On this point, there is disagreement among experts. On the one hand, the coronavirus continues to cause illness and death. About 30,000 people are currently hospitalized with covid in the United States, and more than 400 people a day are still dying from it. Long-covid may lead to lasting health effects in as many as 1 in 5 infected with the coronavirus.
On the other hand, deaths globally from covid-19 have fallen to its lowest level since March 2020. The actual numbers may be far lower. Some researchers have argued that reported covid deaths counts are substantially overestimated because hospitalized patients are tested routinely regardless of symptoms, and being hospitalized with covid is different from being ill because of it. An infectious-disease physician in Boston told NPR that 70 percent of reported covid hospitalizations in her hospital are due to patients testing incidentally for the coronavirus.
Perhaps the most significant rationale in favor of the transition from pandemic to endemic is the growing consensus that covid will never be eradicated. Countries that instituted some of the strictest policies have lifted them. Even New Zealand recently removed mask and vaccine mandates and lifted all pandemic travel restrictions. China is the only outlier still pursuing a zero-covid policy that’s exacting a huge exacting an economic and humanitarian toll.
Biden’s detractors argue that he can’t have it both ways — that he can’t say that the pandemic is over and still ask Congress for funding and encourage Americans to get boosted. These critics are willfully misrepresenting public health policy. Just because a disease is endemic doesn’t mean the level of illness is acceptable or should be ignored. Consider HIV and cancer. These are not considered pandemics, but the goal is still to prevent disease and provide affected patients with state-of-the art medical care.
Indeed, there are many other ailments that deserve far more attention, from the epidemics of opioid overdose and obesity to the reemergence of polio and the worsening mental health crisis. Removing the “pandemic” designation for covid places it among the list of diseases harming Americans, all of which require focus and funding.
It is also imperative that we learn the lessons from covid to bolster our inadequate public health infrastructure. People across the political spectrum should agree that we cannot afford to allow our lives to be upended again. As the United States ends its emergency footing in this pandemic, we must double down on efforts to prevent the next. | 2022-09-19T21:28:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Biden is right. The pandemic is over. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/19/biden-covid-pandemic-over/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/19/biden-covid-pandemic-over/ |
Dan Cox takes aim at book that launched Wes Moore’s national profile
GOP nominee for governor wants “equal time” for his messages in public schools and calls for Moore’s to be stricken from the curriculum
Daren Muhammad, right, an uncle to a man featured in Wes Moore’s best-selling “The Other Wes Moore,” in front of Republican gubernatorial nominee Dan Cox, speaks at a news conference in Baltimore on Sept. 19. Cox is calling for his Democratic opponent's book to be pulled from classrooms. (Erin Cox/The Washington Post)
Del. Dan Cox, the Republican nominee for Maryland governor, called for his opponent’s book to be pulled from classrooms in Baltimore City schools on Monday over a long-running inaccuracy on the dust jacket.
The error, that Wes Moore is a Baltimore native, was published on paperback editions of his breakout book, “The Other Wes Moore,” for years before Moore launched his bid for governor and requested — he said, for a second time — that the error be corrected. The publisher has taken responsibility for the error, which was also published in curriculum materials marketed to teachers using the book in the classroom.
The book details Moore’s childhood in Takoma Park, Md., and the Bronx, and tells the parallel story of another Black man around the same age, also named Wes Moore, who grew up in Baltimore and is now serving a sentence for his role in the killing of an off-duty Baltimore County police officer. In contrast, candidate Moore went on to be a Rhodes scholar and White House fellow. The book launched his national profile.
“I think Mr. Moore needs to come clean and the book needs to be withdrawn from the curriculum,” Cox said.
The Moore campaign played down concerns about the book during the crowded primary he won, and called Cox’s accusation — on the day polling showed Moore besting the freshman state lawmaker by more than 20 percentage points — a “desperate attempt by Dan Cox to distract from today’s poll results.” Moore spokesman Brian Adam Jones went on to say that Cox was “peddling baseless conspiracy theories.”
Cox also said having the books in city schools was akin to distributing campaign materials on taxpayers’ dime. Citing an unrelated federal rule about equal time for political candidates on radio and broadcast stations, Cox said he would like his campaign materials in schools, too.
“It’s inappropriate to be presenting material that is really fictional campaign material as part of a curriculum, particularly this fall. I would at least like equal time because my campaign materials are truthful,” Cox said, adding later it was a question of integrity and character that Moore let the inaccuracy stay on the book jacket for years.
An uncle of the incarcerated Wes Moore, Daren Muhammad, joined Cox and also took issue with the book and how it depicted some family members. Muhammad, who has been talking publicly since the spring about the book, said Monday he never granted Moore permission to write about his parents, and it was traumatizing to have them described in a national bestseller.
Cox said his objection to the book was part of his pitch to voters that parents need more control over school curriculum.
Asked whether there were other books he would like to see stricken from the curriculum, Cox said parents told him they “have very serious concerns with books such as ‘Gender Queer,’ ” and what he describes as age-inappropriate depictions of sexual acts.
The graphic novel is a memoir by Maia Kobabe about growing up asexual and nonbinary. It has been pulled from schools in Virginia Beach and debated in districts from South Carolina to the Chicago suburbs.
“We need to get back to world-class education,” Cox said, adding that he thinks teachers should focus on core subjects because “these are where the jobs are.” | 2022-09-19T22:40:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Dan Cox dials up criticism of Wes Moore as polling shows Moore ahead - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/19/book-wes-moore-cox/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/19/book-wes-moore-cox/ |
The $25 million program — which includes cash payments up to $10,000 — will help about 600 families, Mayor Muriel Bowser announced.
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser at a news conference on Sept. 8. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
The District will spend nearly $25 million to help 600 low-income families transition out of homelessness, including up to $10,000 in cash, Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) announced Monday.
The pilot program, called the Career Mobility Act Plan, is aimed at families who are transitioning out of homelessness but do not require permanent housing vouchers. Bowser explained that some residents enrolled in government assistance programs face a dilemma when choosing jobs if their new earnings are less valuable than the benefits they received. She referred to this as the “benefits cliff.”
“We are creating a new program that helps fill that gap,” Bowser said. “We’re telling families that we’ve got your back, but we want you to continue earning, learning and growing, so you’ll be able to handle all the things that those benefits have covered.”
The pilot — available to families enrolled in D.C.'s family rehousing stabilization and rapid rehousing programs — will be tailored to each resident’s career and family goals, Bowser said. Among the available benefits are rent and career support, up to $10,000 in cash, and the city will put $200 in a savings account for every month a family pays their portion of rent, Bowser said. Assistance from the program will last up to five years.
The city initially planned to assist 300 families as part of the pilot using $11.7 million in funds through the American Rescue Plan Act. It doubled that figure after around 1,500 families applied to be in the program, said Laura Zeilinger, director of the D.C. Department of Human Services. All of the participants will be selected through a lottery and the first 300 families will be enrolled before the end of the month; the second 300 will be enrolled next year using an additional $13.1 million that Bowser announced Monday.
D.C. to provide $1,000 for school expenses to 15,000 needy families
Bowser said the effort will further the city’s progress on ending family homelessness in the District. The number of families in shelters has decreased by about 78 percent since 2016, thanks in part to the closing of the decrepit D.C. General shelter. Bowser made the announcement at the DHS service center at 1207 Taylor Street in Ward 4, which closed for renovations during the pandemic and is set to reopen in a couple of weeks.
“This program is going to help for our Ward 4 families. We know that 15 percent of our Black families and Latinx families here are below the poverty line,” said D.C. Council member Janeese Lewis George (D-Ward 4). “And [the service center] will be a great resource for them. They’ll be able to come right here and won’t have to go downtown or any other place. We’re bringing resources to them.”
The pilot marks the latest effort by the Bowser administration to provide families with direct cash payments, including a $1.5 million cash assistance program announced early this year for new and expectant mothers in Wards 5, 7 and 8. And last month, Bowser said the city would provide 15,000 low-income families with one-time $1,000 payments to help them prepare for the school year.
“We have developed over the years so many different programs that are surrounded by a lot of bureaucracy and hoops that aren’t efficient and don’t necessarily help families advance. And a lot of that has to do with not trusting people … or that we think they have to prove they’re deserving of the help,” Bowser said of the recent initiatives. “We think cash can make the difference … And we also have had — let’s be clear — over the last couple of years an infusion of dollars that have allowed us to advance in some of these ways.” | 2022-09-19T22:41:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. will offer $10,000 to help families transition from homelessness - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/19/dc-homeless-transition-cash-payments/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/19/dc-homeless-transition-cash-payments/ |
Big gains by Detroit running back D'Andre Swift helped seal the Lions' win over the Commanders on Sunday. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
Late in the third quarter of Sunday’s game, the Commanders called a blitz, opting to forgo zone coverage on the back end to stay aggressive and knock back the Lions. Washington’s two linebackers moved up to the line, leaving the secondary with four defenders to match with Detroit’s receivers and running back.
Had it worked as the Commanders envisioned, their defense would’ve grabbed an interception or held the Lions to minimal yards. But the blitz failed because someone failed to do his job, Coach Ron Rivera said Monday, ensuring Washington would leave with a loss.
Lions running back D’Andre Swift fell down after catching a short screen pass, but he quickly stood to find not a Commanders defender in sight. So he wove his way toward the end zone, evading at least two tackles before trotting in for the score.
One mistake led to more mistakes and proved costly — the summation of Washington’s play in a 36-27 loss to the Detroit Lions. The list of reasons for the debacle is long and warrants blame from all facets. But after watching the film, Rivera cast most of it on one basic premise: failure to do a job.
The Commanders defense allowed six plays of 20 yards or more, including three that spanned at least 49 yards. The run defense was gashed for 191 yards, special teams allowed a 52-yard punt return and a 33-yard kickoff return, and the Lions collected big play after big play. Swift’s touchdown was among them — 22 yards on a “hot” route — a preplanned option route the Lions used because quarterback Jared Goff predicted the blitz.
“Those plays should have been kept to a minimal gain, and because we were out of position, they were able to exploit it,” Rivera said.
But unfortunately for the Commanders, those same plays, those same mistakes, keep cropping up on defense. Dating back to 2020, when Washington had a top-ranked defense in most statistical categories, the team has struggled to eliminate the chunk plays.
“Because it’s an individual,” Rivera said. “… It’s not a group. It’s not schematics. It is a failure to put ourselves in position to force things to happen.”
After the game, Rivera made a point to emphasize that everyone — players and coaches on offense, defense and special teams — was at fault for the loss.
Safety Darrick Forrest indicated the defense had been predictable, telling reporters he felt as if the Lions knew what was coming. Which they did, at least to a certain degree.
In the first quarter, Goff turned to Lions receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown on a play that reportedly wasn’t even designed for him. According to MLive.com, receiver Josh Reynolds was the intended target throughout practice last week, but Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson anticipated a coverage bust by Washington on the bunch play.
“We screwed up a coverage there,” Rivera said.
About Swift’s 50-yard rushing attempt in the first quarter, the coach added: “It was a bunch formation on their first long run. We misfit the gap, we got scooped, we didn’t fall back. We didn’t get over the top. and he was off to the races. … That’s the hard part for us as players and coaches is that you look at it and you can sit there and say, ‘Man, we could have held those to a minimum.’”
Rivera indicated that the defense made mistakes at every level on the play: A defensive lineman was knocked out of his gap, a linebacker didn’t fall back as he was supposed to, and a safety failed to get his spot.
Speaking Monday, defensive tackle Jonathan Allen declined to point fingers, saying (often) that he had to watch the tape first and adding that the Lions “get paid too.”
Asked if he agreed with Forrest’s comment about the defense being predictable, Allen said “not really,” then added: “We’ve got to execute. I’m not a fan of putting a lot of things on the coaches. At the end of the day, we’re players, and we’ve got to be the ones executing. I could’ve been better and will do better myself.”
Rivera avoided assigning blame publicly for the myriad mistakes. He said his team “missed some opportunities to make plays.” When asked why the mistakes continually happen, the coach seemed as frustrated as the rest in trying to find an answer.
“Sometimes just through the heat of the battle, certain things happen during a play, and sometimes it’s just being a step late or going too quickly,” he said. “… To me, it goes back to those six explosive plays which, in each and every case, if we had done certain things, even if we might have called something differently, those six plays I don’t think would’ve hurt us as badly as they did.”
The Commanders will shift focus to Philadelphia this week with the hope of a different outcome. But the challenge may be even greater. The Eagles rushed for the third most yards of any team in Week 1, and Washington’s lines are getting thinner by the week.
The offensive line that struggled mightily in the first half in Detroit will be without center Chase Roullier, who suffered a knee injury Sunday and is expected to miss a fair amount of time, possibly the rest of the season. Rivera said Wes Schweitzer, who also has been dealing with an injury, will be bumped up to start; Wes Martin will be his backup, and Saahdiq Charles will be the emergency option.
On the other side, Washington lost defensive tackle Daniel Wise to an ankle injury Sunday and defensive end Casey Toohill to a concussion. Allen has been nursing a groin injury and, in light of the injuries, had to take on a greater load against the Lions. To add depth, Washington claimed defensive tackle John Ridgeway, a fifth-round pick by the Cowboys in this year’s draft, off waivers on Monday. | 2022-09-19T22:49:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mistake after mistake doomed Commanders defense in loss to Lions - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/19/commanders-defense-mistakes-lions/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/19/commanders-defense-mistakes-lions/ |
Nitin Gadkari, India’s road and transport minister, center, and Kishore Biyani, chief executive officer of Future Group, right, attend the inauguration of a conveyor at a warehouse operated by Future Supply Chain Solutions Ltd. near the Multi-modal International Cargo Hub Airport at Nagpur (MIHAN) in Nagpur, India, on Saturday, April 29, 2017. India is on the cusp of a sweeping tax overhaul that could turn Nagpur, at the crossroads of busy road and rail corridors that bisect India east to west and north to south, into one of the nation’s biggest logistics hubs. Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg (Bloomberg)
All this had happened by March. More recently, a similar story began to play out for Apollo. It had received, among other collateral, a lien on shares in Future Supply Chain Solutions Ltd., another publicly traded firm in Biyani’s group. Upon nonpayment, the buyout firm invoked the pledge and became a 24.8% owner. Yet, when Supply Chain recently put a proposal to shareholders to sell, transfer or otherwise dispose of the retail group’s assets, the “no” votes cast by Apollo were tossed aside as invalid. The resolution passed when it would otherwise have been defeated. Apollo may have hoped to improve its recovery rate on the soured loan by influencing the fate of 8.2 million square feet of warehousing space,(1) something the Biyani family could still — directly or via another buyer — pass on to Ambani. That plan has now come a cropper.
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• Jeff Bezos Is on the Wrong Indian Magazine Cover: Andy Mukherjee
(1) According to a July 2020 presentation to investors. | 2022-09-19T22:58:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Apollo Wades In Where Amazon Fears to Tread - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/apollo-wades-in-whereamazon-fears-to-tread/2022/09/19/36d59ac0-3867-11ed-b8af-0a04e5dc3db6_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/apollo-wades-in-whereamazon-fears-to-tread/2022/09/19/36d59ac0-3867-11ed-b8af-0a04e5dc3db6_story.html |
WASHINGTON — Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell bluntly warned in a speech last month that the Fed’s drive to curb inflation by aggressively raising interest rates would “bring some pain.” On Wednesday, Americans may get a better sense of how much pain could be in store. The Fed is expected at its latest meeting to raise its key short-term rate by a substantial three-quarters of a point for the third consecutive time. Another hike that large would lift its benchmark rate — which affects many consumer and business loans — to a range of 3% to 3.25%, the highest level in 14 years.
NEW YORK — When President Joe Biden announced a plan to forgive student loan debt, many borrowers who kept making payments during the pandemic wondered if they’d made the right choice. Borrowers who paid down their debt during a pandemic freeze that started in March 2020 can in fact get a refund — and then apply for forgiveness. But the process for doing that hasn’t always been clear. The Department of Education says borrowers who hold eligible federal student loans and have made voluntary payments since March 13, 2020, can get a refund.
NEW YORK — Stocks closed higher on Wall Street after swaying between small gains and losses much of the day as investors brace for another big interest rate increase this week from the Federal Reserve. The S&P 500 rose 0.7% on Monday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq also gained ground. Treasury yields moved higher. Markets were looking ahead to Wednesday, when the Federal Reserve will announce its latest decision on rates. It’s expected to raise its benchmark rate, which influences interest rates throughout the economy, another three-quarters of a percentage point in its fight against inflation.
DEARBORN, Mich. — A parts shortage that has thousands of Ford’s most-profitable vehicles sitting on lots waiting to be fully assembled has forced the automaker to slash its third-quarter earnings forecast. Ford said Monday it is expecting to be missing the necessary parts for as many as 45,000 vehicles. Most of them are SUVs and popular truck models, some of Ford’s biggest money makers. The company based in Dearborn, Michigan, now expects third quarter earnings before interest and taxes to be between $1.4 billion and $1.7 billion. It reported adjusted earnings before interest and taxes of $3.7 billion in the second quarter.
FRANKFURT, Germany — Volkswagen has set the price range for the multibillion-euro sale of a minority stake in luxury brand Porsche. The deal will reap billions to fund the German automaker’s investments in new technologies and businesses including electric cars, software and services. The company said it aims for a listing on the Frankfurt stock exchange on Sept. 29 after it places a minority stake with investors, including the Qatar Investment Authority. The price range for preferred shares translates to 8.71 billion to 9.39 billion euros. Volkswagen has launched a major push into electric vehicles and says future profits will increasingly come from investments in electric cars, software and services as traditional internal combustion cars take a smaller share of the market.
NEW YORK — Video game producer Rockstar Games says early development footage from the next version of its popular title Grand Theft Auto was stolen in the hack of its network. A person claiming to be the hacker dumped 90 videos from the theft online and claimed also to have source code. They were seeking to sell the hacked data. The company said in a statement that it did not anticipate any disruption in live game services or any impact on ongoing projects. The hacker claimed to have been involved in the recent hack of Uber but provided no evidence.
WASHINGTON — Russia’s war against Ukraine, the lingering coronavirus pandemic and the damage of climate change are putting intense pressure on the world’s poorest, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development warns. The Paris-based OECD reported that 60 states, territories and locations fell last year into the category of “fragile contexts″ — meaning they were exposed to economic, environmental, social and political risks that they didn’t have the capacity to absorb. And that was before Russia invaded Ukraine and intensified their burdens. Monday’s report designated the most places in such dire straits since the OECD began issuing its States of Fragility report in 2015.
WASHINGTON — The federal government has turned down a request by a regional airline to hire pilots with half the flying experience generally required. The Federal Aviation Administration says it’s in the public interest to uphold the current standards. Republic Airways petitioned to hire first officers — or co-pilots — with 750 hours of flying time if they completed Republic’s training program. In most cases, people need 1,500 hours of flying time to qualify for an airline pilot’s license, although pilots with military experience can qualify at 750 hours. Republic argued that its training would be similar to the military’s.
FRANKFURT, Germany — The European Central Bank says it will give corporations climate scores before it buys their bonds and intends to prioritize those doing more to reveal and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The announcement Monday fills in details of the bank’s efforts to help Europe meet its environmental goals. The Frankfurt, Germany-based central bank said it was taking the step to support the European Union’s climate goals. The companies’ scores would measure progress in reducing past emissions, plans to reduce them in the future, and completeness of reporting the amount of greenhouse gases they are emitting. Both the ECB and the Bank of England have taken climate change into account more than the U.S. Federal Reserve. | 2022-09-19T22:58:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Business Highlights: Fed pain, student loans - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/business-highlights-fed-pain-student-loans/2022/09/19/cc02e74a-3869-11ed-b8af-0a04e5dc3db6_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/business-highlights-fed-pain-student-loans/2022/09/19/cc02e74a-3869-11ed-b8af-0a04e5dc3db6_story.html |
WINDSOR, ENGLAND - SEPTEMBER 19:The hearse carrying the coffin of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth drives into Windsor Castle ahead of the Committal Service for Queen Elizabeth II held at St George’s Chapel on September 19, 2022 in Windsor, England. The committal service at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, took place following the state funeral at Westminster Abbey. A private burial in The King George VI Memorial Chapel followed. Queen Elizabeth II died at Balmoral Castle in Scotland on September 8, 2022, and is succeeded by her eldest son, King Charles III. (Photo by Peter Nicholls-WPA Pool/Getty Images) (Photographer: WPA Pool/Getty Images Europe)
Not only am I willing to cut US news networks some slack for their decision to provide hours and hours of live coverage of the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II on Monday. I am also prepared to defend their general indulgence of America’s fascination with the British royals, even in the face of more obviously urgent and important news.
I fully concede that the royal funeral had pretty much zero news value, while damage to Puerto Rico from Hurricane Fiona is a huge ongoing story. (“Hey @MSNBC - Maybe cut away from the endless funeral of the monarch of ANOTHER COUNTRY and let us know what is going on in #PuertoRico where ACTUAL AMERICANS are in crisis?” read a typical message on Twitter.) Nevertheless, I can’t really blame CNN, Fox News, MSNBC or any of the other news channels or websites that provided live coverage.
News programs are produced and broadcast by private corporations, which care about readers and viewers. And like it or not, it has never been the case that news coverage alone is enough to sustain a business. Back when Americans bought newspapers, I bet more of them got them for the sports scores, stock market reports, classified ads, TV listings and comics than for the sober analyses of Washington legislation. Sure, a lot of people paid some attention to the news, and maybe some people paid a lot of attention — but even then, the news has always had its share of celebrity and spectacle.
To survive as a business venture, the news media have to fulfill the demand for plenty of things that aren’t important. Yes, news outlets have some self-interest in being seen as conveyors of serious information about the world, and therefore in establishing reputations for strong journalism. When they fall short in significant ways, such as when CNN went out of its way to boost Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential nomination process, they deserve criticism. But no realistic media critic should expect them to be interested in only that, or to take a pass on high-interest, basically harmless spectacles such as a royal funeral.
And I’m not going to blame the audience, either. I myself have well below average interest in the royals, and I’ve watched almost none of the coverage. And everyone has something that fascinates them that isn’t exactly consequential. Put on hours of coverage of the purely ceremonial aspects of the opening day of a new Congress, and I’ll be there. (Thanks, C-Span!) Celebrity-watching in general strikes me as nothing to be embarrassed about — no worse, and probably a lot better, than being fascinated by the various forms of violence that also produce reliably robust TV ratings.
Nor is there anything wrong with proudly free Americans gawking at the fancy trappings of foreign aristocrats — even ones who once considered the US their personal property. After all, it’s been almost 250 years, and the US and the UK have been good friends for about half of that. Many of us live in places there were never British colonies, and most of our families entered the US long after it was independent. Enjoying the pageantry of the royals isn’t really much different than listening to The Beatles or Amy Winehouse or, for that matter, watching Shakespeare.
At any rate: The news media was prepared to provide this coverage, and maybe even made a little extra money doing it. They do need eventually to get around to covering serious problems in the US. But I’m not going to begrudge them the time they spend paying their respects to the queen — and to the audience that wanted it. | 2022-09-19T22:58:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Queen Elizabeth’s Funeral Deserved All That Airtime - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/queen-elizabeths-funeral-deserved-all-that-airtime/2022/09/19/1faed4c6-3865-11ed-b8af-0a04e5dc3db6_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/queen-elizabeths-funeral-deserved-all-that-airtime/2022/09/19/1faed4c6-3865-11ed-b8af-0a04e5dc3db6_story.html |
Man charged in sexual assaults in Pr. George’s, D.C.
Sean Lorenzo Tolbert, 36, is also charged in an attempted robbery at a mall, Prince George’s County police said.
A 36-year-old man has been arrested and charged in a Friday rape in Prince George’s County as well as other recent assaults in the county and the District, authorities said.
Sean Lorenzo Tolbert, of D.C., is accused of first-degree rape, attempted first-degree rape, assault, gun charges, robbery, theft and related counts linked to incidents in Prince George’s County, police said. Authorities in D.C. also obtained a warrant charging him with two misdemeanor sexual abuse offenses.
Tolbert is being held without bond at the county jail, police said.
The incidents began Tuesday in Prince George’s County and the District, according to police. Police accused Tolbert of engaging in unwanted sexual contact in two separate incidents in Southeast. One occurred at about 10:50 a.m. in the 3500 block of 6th Street SE and the other occurred 10 minutes later in the 1500 block of Alabama Avenue SE, D.C. police said. In both cases, Tolbert is accused of approaching a victim, engaging in unwanted sexual contact and fleeing.
About an hour later, in neighboring Prince George’s, Tolbert inappropriately touched six women at a shopping mall in the 3300 block of Donnell Drive in the Forestville area, according to Prince George’s County police. Police said he also attempted, while armed with a gun, to rob a store at the mall. Detectives obtained an arrest warrant for Tolbert on Wednesday, county police said.
On Friday, at an apartment complex in the 6000 block of Surrey Square Lane in the District Heights area, at about 11:45 p.m., police said Tolbert approached a woman entering her apartment and forced her inside at gunpoint. He demanded money, raped her and then fled with the key fob to her car, according to charging documents. Tolbert and the victim did not know each other, according to police.
Police were called again to the same complex Saturday morning at about 10:30 a.m. A woman told officers a man she had met the night before at the complex had tried to rape her inside of her apartment when she confronted him about potentially stealing items from her home, police said. She called 911 and the man fled. Another resident of the apartment complex told police a man attempted to get into her apartment at gunpoint. Once she yelled, he ran away, according to police.
While interviewing the resident, police were called once again for a reported armed person at the apartment complex. Officers apprehended Tolbert nearby and found a loaded gun at the scene, police said.
It was not immediately clear whether Tolbert has an attorney. | 2022-09-19T22:58:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Sean Tolbert charging in sexual assaults in Pr. George's, D.C. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/19/man-charged-sexual-assaults-prince-georges/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/19/man-charged-sexual-assaults-prince-georges/ |
FILE - A Toyota Motor Corp.’s new hydrogen fuel cell vehicle Mirai arrives at a charge station near Toyota’s showroom on Nov. 17, 2014, in Tokyo. Seven Midwestern states are teaming up to accelerate the development of hydrogen as a clean-energy alternative for automobiles and factories that rely largely on climate-warming fossil fuels, governors said Monday, Sept. 19, 2022. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi, File) | 2022-09-19T22:59:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Midwestern partnership backs hydrogen as clean energy source - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/midwestern-partnership-backs-hydrogen-as-clean-energy-source/2022/09/19/07db21fe-386c-11ed-b8af-0a04e5dc3db6_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/midwestern-partnership-backs-hydrogen-as-clean-energy-source/2022/09/19/07db21fe-386c-11ed-b8af-0a04e5dc3db6_story.html |
President Biden waves as first lady Jill Biden watches standing at the top of the steps of Air Force One before boarding at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., on Sept. 17. (Gemunu Amarasinghe/AP)
Just in case someone might have missed it the first three times, President Biden again stated for the record Sunday that the United States would respond militarily to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. In fact, his response to a hypothetical question from CBS News’s Scott Pelley was more unequivocal than the previous assurances he gave in May of this year, October of 2021 and August of 2021. When Mr. Pelley asked him point-blank, “So unlike Ukraine, to be clear, sir, U.S. forces — U.S. men and women — would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion?” Mr. Biden replied, “Yes.” And with that, one more strand of the 50-year-old U.S. approach known as “strategic ambiguity” toward the Taiwan Strait unraveled. The White House’s subsequent official statement that the president’s remark constituted no change in official policy was no more convincing than the walk-backs that followed Mr. Biden’s previous assertions that the United States has a security obligation toward Taiwan that is similar to the one it has to defend NATO allies.
Whether speaking off the cuff, as he so often does, or with the deliberate intent to keep Chinese President Xi Jinping guessing, there may be value in Mr. Biden’s declarations of intent. They usefully ratchet up U.S. words in response to Chinese deeds, such as the years-long expansion of naval activity in waters surrounding Taiwan and the crushing of democracy in Hong Kong. All of that, and more, show that the poor, militarily weak China with which the United States decades ago reached its deliberately, and mutually, noncommittal understandings regarding Taiwan — including Chinese disavowal of “hegemony in the Western Pacific” — no longer exists. Mr. Biden said what a lot of people, including many on both sides of the partisan aisle in Congress, are thinking: Dictatorships need to be deterred, as Russia’s attempt to conquer Ukraine vividly demonstrates.
Henry Olsen: Biden is right on Taiwan. Now he needs a staff that won’t undercut him.
Yet presidential pronouncements alone can only deter China so much. The relevant documents — including joint communiques with Beijing and the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act — are more carefully worded. The latter law provides for U.S. “defensive” arms sales to Taiwan, but not diplomatic recognition, which is reserved for the People’s Republic of China based upon the “expectation” that the latter would pursue its claim to Taiwan peacefully. A Chinese resort to force would be a "grave concern,” which the United States retains merely the “capacity” to “resist,” the law says.
Mr. Biden’s improvisations, albeit repeated, are no substitute for a formal update to U.S. policy. That is what the Taiwan Policy Act, newly passed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on a vote of 17-5, proposes. The most necessary provision is $6.5 billion in new security assistance over the next five years, along with language making it U.S. policy “to deter the use of force” by China. Some more provocative items that would have symbolically raised the status of Taiwan’s representatives in Washington were diluted in deference to White House concerns that they might unduly provoke Beijing — ironic, given Mr. Biden’s own comments a few days later.
The bill’s precise details are debatable, and its prospects for passage cloudy. Yet legislation reaffirming and modernizing the U.S. commitment to Taiwan should pass; Congress should provide Mr. Biden and his successors with a stronger set of legislative instructions that would enhance not only the clarity of what they say but also the authority with which they say it. | 2022-09-19T22:59:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Biden's 60 Minutes statement deterring China on Taiwan was useful - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/19/biden-china-taiwan-60-minutes/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/19/biden-china-taiwan-60-minutes/ |
Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin leaves Westminster Abbey during her funeral on Monday. (James Forde for The Washington Post)
The coffin of Queen Elizabeth II, Britain’s longest-serving monarch, was laid in the royal vault at Windsor Castle on Monday. The funeral procession marks the end of 10 days of national mourning.
London correspondent Karla Adam describes how thousands of people camped near Westminster Abbey to watch the funeral procession. “There were sleeping bags. A lot of people brought toys or games or chess sets just to pass the time because they’ve been camping out for a day or two,” she said, while others watched from big screens across the city.
The queen’s passing has been marked around the world with tributes from world leaders and around-the-clock media coverage. But as foreign affairs columnist Ishaan Tharoor shares later in the show, it also sparked criticism of the monarchy’s past and debates about the relevancy of the institution.
“It's important to look at the queen in her own right as opposed to the queen as this icon of the empire,” Tharoor says. “It is also very hard to separate that, because what is the queen without being an icon of empire?”
Follow The Post’s live coverage of the funeral here. | 2022-09-19T22:59:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Does the world need a British monarchy anymore? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/does-the-world-need-a-british-monarchy-anymore/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/does-the-world-need-a-british-monarchy-anymore/ |
The Jets had no major injuries in the game. Wilson remains out, likely one more game, while recovering from a bone bruise and arthroscopic surgery to repair a torn meniscus in his right knee. Saleh confirmed Flacco will start again Sunday in place of Wilson, who the coach said will “take a step up” in practice this week. ... TE C.J. Uzomah, who missed the game with a hamstring injury, will be evaluated through the week. | 2022-09-19T23:01:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jets could set tone for season with stunning comeback win - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nfl/jets-could-set-tone-for-season-with-stunning-comeback-win/2022/09/19/2d5cea3a-383e-11ed-b8af-0a04e5dc3db6_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nfl/jets-could-set-tone-for-season-with-stunning-comeback-win/2022/09/19/2d5cea3a-383e-11ed-b8af-0a04e5dc3db6_story.html |
Transcript: Reinventing Small Business
MS. ABRIL: Hello, and welcome to Washington Post Live. I’m Danielle Abril, tech at work writer for The Washington Post.
Today, we're going to discuss the state of small business in America. A little later, I'll be joined by the mayor of New Bedford, Massachusetts, but first, I'd like to start with Pinky Cole. She's the founder and CEO of Slutty Vegan, a small restaurant chain that specializes in vegan food.
Welcome to Washington Post Live, Pinky.
MS. COLE: Thank you for having me. So happy to be here.
MS. ABRIL: Yeah. And remember we always want to hear from you, our audience. You can share your thoughts and questions for guests on Washington Post Live by tweeting @PostLive.
So, Pinky, let's start off with this company you've built. You've built it up to be now worth an estimated $100 million. Can you briefly tell us how you started Slutty Vegan, and tell us a little bit about the name.
MS. COLE: So, I'm still here trying to figure out how I started Slutty Vegan, and please forgive me. I just had a grand opening yesterday. So, I've been screaming all day.
But this concept really came out of nowhere. I've always been an entrepreneur. I've always had an entrepreneurial spirit, and about four years ago, I was in my bedroom, and I came up with this idea out of nowhere called "Slutty Vegan." And I called my friends up, and I said I want to create a concept that is plant‑based, but it has a raunchy, racy flavor but not typically what a vegan restaurant will have. And I want to call it "Slutty Vegan," and all of my friends, they were like, "Oh, my goodness, Pinky, that's a really, really good idea."
And do you know when I did that, I didn't realize I was solving a universal problem, and that was figuring out a way to crack the code of helping people to reimagine food, and when I did that, literally everything went up from there.
So, for the people who don't know what the business is, it is a 100 percent plant‑based burger joint that was born and bred in the heart of Atlanta, and now we have multiple locations in Atlanta and in several other cities as well.
MS. ABRIL: So, you faced some challenges, though, in this process. I understand there was‑‑one of your restaurants lasted two years in the Harlem section of New York. It shut down in 2016. Tell me a little bit about the lessons you learned there.
MS. ABRIL: [Laughs] Lessons, so many.
So, I had my restaurant from 2014 to 2016, and it was called "Pinky's Jamaican and American Restaurant," located in the heart of Harlem. And it was my first opportunity being a restauranteur.
Now, half of the time, I did not know what I was doing, right? I went to Google, went to YouTube and learned everything about the restaurant industry, but what I had and what I still have is I got heart, and I'm confident. So, even in the times where I didn't know what I was doing, I always had confidence.
So, while I had this restaurant, it was seemingly successful. I had lines down the block. People would come. People loved the business, and then I realized that I was putting my blood, sweat, and tears in a business. I knew nothing about restaurant industry. So, the best thing that happened to me, which I didn't realize at the time, was I had a grease fire, and in that grease fire, everything caught on fire, lost everything because I did not have fire insurance. And because I didn't have fire insurance, I wasn't able to salvage all of the items inside of the space. So, I literally went flat broke, lost everything, and left the restaurant industry. But what I learned in that moment is I learned resilience. I learned that even in the hardest of times, you do not give up. You do not throw in the towel. You pick that towel back up, and you keep working because, obviously, whatever happened happened for a reason.
I did a commencement speech earlier this year, and I used the acronym FAIL. Failing is not failing at all, but it's finding aspiration in the losses. So, through that perceived failure, it taught me how to be a better entrepreneur. It taught me how to make sure that I had all the things that I needed in line and be more responsible, and I'm happy that it happened that way. So, I don't look at it as a tragedy. I look at it as an opportunity to learn, and I tell people that was the most expensive school that I ever went to, but it was the best school to learn about business, entrepreneur, and me, myself, as an individual.
MS. ABRIL: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I actually had a question about turning failure into success, but it sounds like you wrapped it all up very nicely right there.
I do want to ask you for a little bit more advice, though, for would‑be entrepreneurs who want to start their business in today's economy. It's a challenging situation right now. What advice would you give them?
MS. COLE: Even when you know everything, you know nothing. I'm learning that in business. I don't care how many books you read. I don't care how much you research on the internet. You got to keep reading. You got to keep researching because there never comes a moment where you know everything, and the minute that you feel like you know everything, that's when you begin to lose.
So, to the entrepreneurs that are watching this program, you've got to continue to chase, chase what you're chasing, right? If it's success that you're chasing‑‑not money because we don't chase money. If it's opportunity that you're chasing, continue to research. Continue to do the work. Never get comfortable. Never get lazy because I promise you, the minute that you get lazy, there is somebody standing in the wings right now waiting to take your place. So, hopefully, somebody hears that, it resonates, and when you run your business, just never give up and keep trying.
MS. ABRIL: Great advice there.
I want to continue on your advice for entrepreneurs. Tell me a little bit about how entrepreneurs can find opportunities in this increasingly digital economy.
MS. COLE: So, the opportunities are endless. The advantage that we have as entrepreneurs is that we live in a digital age, right? Everything is on the internet. Everything is at your fingertips. So, you don't have to go far and wide to find the information that you need.
What I want entrepreneurs to know is that information could be free. You don't have to pay for the information. Instagram is free. Social media is free, Facebook, Twitter. There's opportunities where you can market your business and in spaces where the resources are already there for you, and as you grow your business, yeah, one day you could use financial resources to be able to pay for those things. But you can grow your business on TikTok, right?
We live in a‑‑what do you call it? A viral age. So, all it takes is that one viral video to make your business go to the next level, whether it is a product or service. All it takes is that one post for the course of your business to change for the rest of your life. So, using digital resources to be able to grow your business is the best thing, and starting with the free options first because they do exist.
When I started Slutty Vegan, I used social media to my benefit. I did not pay for celebrities to eat my food. What I did is I had celebrities eat my food, and they posted on their own. So, what I did is I would rip their videos and put it on my social media page. That is how I grew in the digital space, and it's not difficult at all.
Now, because we're in an economic downturn, because there's so much inflation happening, you've really got to get creative. You know what? Because people want to have a really good reason to spend their money. So, give people a good reason to spend their money, and get creative with your resources in how you grow your business, especially through the digital space.
MS. ABRIL: So, in May this year, you announced you had secured $25 million in funding to open as many as 20 new restaurants. How did you get that funding, and is it still as hard as it seems for small businesses to get funding for expansion?
MS. COLE: You know, it's interesting because I talk about this all the time. Once upon a time, it was so difficult for Black businesses, minority‑owned businesses to get injections of capital to be able to grow their business. It's just the facts, right? Our counterparts have always historically gotten more than us, but what I realize now is we are in a ripe age now where Black‑owned businesses, small businesses, minority‑owned businesses are now getting the recognition that once upon a time they didn't always get. So now there is an open sea of opportunity to be able to get money to fund your business, and partially, it's because most big corporations want to be in solidarity with small businesses, especially with everything that happened in the recent years with George Floyd and Rashard Brooks‑‑rest in peace to both of them‑‑and all of the things that are happening in our economy, right? Big businesses want to partner with small businesses so that they can feel real, right? Because people are no longer buying products. They are tapping into the ingenuity of businesses and the ethos, right?
So, when it was time for me to get money, it wasn't because I was just a business that was just cool. No. They saw the environment that I was creating, the frequency and the energy and the vibration, and they wanted to tap into what I was building, which is the ecosystem for people who look like me and for people who seek opportunity.
So, was it difficult for me to get that money? Absolutely not. But I was very intentional about it, and I'm speaking again to entrepreneurs. Make sure that you are intentional when you are seeking money, building a relationship with somebody who is interested in giving you money, because it wasn't so much about the physical capital that they were giving me. I wanted to be in partnership with people who can help to take my business to the next level through their resources, through their advice, and through their experiences that they learned.
Slutty Vegan has always been a very great cash‑flow business, but when we started to get an injection of capital, what it did is it put us in the room with the people who have grown in scale businesses to billion‑dollar companies. So, you know, there's a saying when you're in the room with the right people, you are going to start rubbing shoulders with the right people. So, we get to rub shoulders with those people, and I'm very happy about it. But it was not difficult, and it is not difficult, in my opinion, for people to get money. All you have to do is build something so special that it's irresistible that it will make people start banging your door down so that they can throw money at you.
MS. ABRIL: Such good advice there.
I really want to switch to the impact of the pandemic. As we know, your industry was hit pretty hard. How much of a challenge was it for you to keep your employees on the payroll during covid?
MS. COLE: [Laughs] Oh, very hard. It is hard today, and I'd be lying if I sit here and like, "Oh, no, it's great." No, that's a lie. And every single restaurant industry, I can guarantee you for a fact are dealing with the same thing.
What I realized is through this pandemic, we have created more entrepreneurs than we have ever created in America's history, in my opinion. Most people have realized that they can create their own businesses and build their own pathway to generational wealth. So, why would they want to come to work for me? Right? So, while I have a great company and people want to be a part of the company, I also realize I'm encouraging people to be entrepreneurs.
So, specifically speaking for myself, was it difficult and is it difficult? Yes. But what we've done is we've gotten creative and started incentivizing the employees in a different way to say, okay, if you still want to be an entrepreneur, you could still work here and be an entrepreneur, and we're going to incentivize you to make you feel like you are a part of this growth that we're having. So, what does that look like for us? That was raising the minimum wage. That was providing full benefits for everybody in the company who works at least 40 hours a week. So, that means that restaurant crew members can get advantages of insurance. That was also providing life insurance for every single one of my employees if they need it that we paid for. Those incentives really helped the employees to feel like they're wanted, to feel like they're needed, and they want to stay and grow with the company.
And I realize the difference now because before, while we paid our employees good, there wasn't such an investment, and I can be totally transparent and say this because I'm that kind of entrepreneur. But now they feel like they are part of the big picture, and when employees feel like they are a part of the big picture, then they'll stay around longer. So, our turnover rate isn't as high as it used to be. Yeah. Do people come and go sometimes? Yes. You know, it's a business, but at the end of the day, what I realize is, is when you show your loyalty to the employees, they will always show their loyalty with you.
MS. ABRIL: Hmm. That's a good, good piece of advice there. It bleeds into my next question, and maybe this is one in the same. But, if there's more here, I'd like to dig a little bit more. You know, the massive growth of your company really occurred during the pandemic.
MS. COLE: Mm‑hmm.
MS. ABRIL: Tell me a little bit about how you were able to succeed at a time when so many other businesses failed.
MS. COLE: I'm still trying to figure it out.
You know, that is probably the most beautiful story about Slutty Vegan. You know, I like to say Slutty Vegan had its meteoric rise in the midst of the pandemic, right? So, while the world was seemingly falling apart on this side, you had this small business that was bringing the world together on this side in the middle of a pandemic. I opened up four locations in a pandemic. So that tells you that we created something that people wanted to be a part of.
So, many of my peers had to close their businesses because they couldn't keep employees or they couldn't get people to come through the door, but what I did is I got super creative, right? We took a pause down for about two weeks to just press restart to make sure that we had everything that we needed to provide a sustainable business for the people, and what I'm interested is making sure that my businesses maintain sustainability. And how do we do that? We do that by making sure that our marketing is top tier, by making sure that people are always talking about Slutty Vegan, and showing people the core of what we've dealt with in America for years. No matter the tribulation, we always rise above. No matter what we see around us and the energy that tries to take over us, if that energy is the pandemic, it's covid, it's the recession, it's all of these things, we still find a way to rise above, and that energy and that spirit resonated with so many people, which made people want to come back.
Specifically speaking, my foundation, the Pinky Cole Foundation. When I realized that there was a pandemic and people weren't eating like they used to at restaurants, right, and they weren't supporting other businesses like they used to, we realized that we wanted to help organizations, right? We started to pay the local rents of businesses so that they didn't close. We paid the balances of college students so that they could graduate. We've donated fruits and vegetables. We paid the insurance of families that needed it. Right now, we're currently providing life insurance for Black men in Atlanta that make $30,000 or less, and there's a long list of all the things that we do, but we did that in the middle of the pandemic. So, people realized that, yes, although we are in a trying time, this is the time that we need each other the most, and we linked on that. And that has driven the success of the business for us to be able to grow.
MS. ABRIL: That was a great segue to what I wanted to touch on next, which is your philanthropic work. You mentioned the Pinky Cole Foundation. I want to talk a little bit about that. Can you tell me a little bit about the importance of supporting future entrepreneurs and small business owners from underrepresented groups?
MS. COLE: You know, first of all, I love the fact that I have a foundation, right? So, before, I was just helping everybody else, and like my CFO was like, "No, we got to put this on paper. You are helping everybody. We got to track this."
So, I created my foundation in 2019, and it was called the Pinky Cole Foundation, and I really wanted to build that generational wealth gap. So, just like what I told you, some of the things that we've done is really a way to be a resource to the community. I'm all about building and ecosystem, and if I can build the ecosystem with the consumer in mind, then there's a big win for everybody, right? We get a lot of business; we give a lot to the community. And it makes sense, and I believe that is the secret formula of success for small businesses, right?
And I'm not saying like give all you got out, right? If you don't have it, don't give it. If you can't afford to give it out, don't do that. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is, is that if you have a viable business and you can create an infrastructure where people can benefit off of the business even when you're providing them a service, that is when your business will do good, the community will do good. People will talk about your business, and people will continue to rotate in and out of your business. That is what I learned about that.
So, for entrepreneurs who are trying to grow their businesses, you need a philanthropic arm. That philanthropic arm will show that you are not just a business that sells product. It will show that you are a business that cares about ecosystem, that cares about community, that cares about recycling the dollar. That is what we've done, and it allowed us to position ourself in a lane outside of all the other lanes because we are a community‑based business, and community‑based business always win.
So, my advice to entrepreneurs who are listening to this, make sure that you create a community‑based business first, and then everything will follow. I'm a living testament of it, and I continue to do that. And even when I got investors, I made it very clear that I wanted to continue to be a community‑driven business so that, you know, the community will understand that we are not just here to make money. We are here to make the community better.
MS. ABRIL: So, we have about a minute left, Pinky, and I really want to go back to the commencement speech that you gave at your alma mater, Clark Atlanta University. You said, quote, "Here's the truth. You don't know what you're made of until it's been battle tested and proven." I want to know what have you learned about yourself.
MS. COLE: Oh, I learned about me that I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm doing everything right. Sometimes you don't always have to know. You don't ever have to know. You just go with the flow, right? And what that flow is, it's that spirit. Like, I'm an energy person, right? So, I've amassed so much success in a very short amount of time, and I look up and I ask myself like I've done things where I don't even know the answer to that. I did not go to an Ivy League school, right? I did not like read a gazillion books before I started Slutty Vegan, right? I did not go to like all these big courses and pay all top dollar to hear people and celebrities speak. I didn't do that.
But what I realized is that not knowing was all right, and you don't have to know everything. You just got to be excited about the journey, and what keeps me is that I remain confident in my journey, even in the times that I don't know, right? I've gone through a whole lot. So, when I say battle tested, battle tested, I've been through the mud. I went flat broke. I've lost loved ones, right? I had moments where I wanted to give up, but I realized it was in those moments that made me realize that I got work to do. I got people watching me. I got people that believe in me.
So, you know, life has been so good to me, and I don't know anything, but I know everything that I need to know.
MS. ABRIL: I think that's a great place to leave it. Pinky Cole, thank you so much for joining us today.
MS. COLE: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
MS. ABRIL: And I'll be back in a moment.
[Brief recess]
MS. URRUTIA: Hello. I'm Luz Urrutia, CEO of Accion Opportunity Fund, the leading nonprofit organization providing small businesses across the U.S. with access to responsible loans, coaching, and support networks.
With me today are two accomplished small business owners who were recently awarded a $25,000 Love, Tito's Small Business Grant sponsored by the Tito's Handmade Vodka in honor of their 25th anniversary and administered by Accion Opportunity Fund.
Antwon Brinson is the founder of Culinary Concepts AB in Charlottesville, Virginia; and Danielle Ruttenberg is co-founder of Remark Glass in Philadelphia.
Antwon and Danielle, welcome, and thank you so much for joining me and for all you do to make your communities and our economy more vibrant.
Antwon, I'm going to start with you. The mission of Culinary Concepts AB is to empower people and build communities in the kitchen. Why is community so important to you as a small business owner?
MR. BRINSON: You know, there's an African proverb that goes, "If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go further, go together," and I think that's the ethos of what we stand for. Culinary Concepts is all about moving together within the community.
Culinary Concepts is we are all about removing barriers for folks and creating equitable opportunities, and we do this through our training programs. Some of the ways is by prioritizing low- to no-cost programs for our students and working with employers that offer equitable opportunities by removing barriers such as livable wages. They pay livable wages, and they have strong kitchen coaches.
Our programs understand that, you know, we want to make sure that the folks have the right mindset. So, we incorporate life skills into our training programs, and at the end, when the students graduate, we connect them to career pathways with employers that are willing to invest in them.
In the end, our training programs, they're a win-win for both the individual and for the employers. At the core, Culinary Concepts and our workforce development, community makes everything work for us.
MS. URRUTIA: Great. Danielle, your business, Remark Glass, is similarly dedicated not to just generating revenue but also generating impact by keeping thousands of pounds of glass out of landfills. Why is giving back such a critical part of your business model?
MS. RUTTENBERG: So, honestly, I don't think of it so much as giving back but as doing our part. While we started this business in a creative design space, blowing glass from old bottles, Remark Glass is now disrupting a system in which recyclable materials aren't making their way out of the waste stream, and the community and our environment are inherently at the heart of our mission. And with dwindling national resources and limited space in that landfill, it's really now a critical time to start thinking about source materials and our ability to reuse as manufacturing, as makers alike. So, while we're all affected every day by waste and there's really a lack of transparency on the part of our public waste system, we hope to continue to educate and to involve the community in what we believe is the start of a solution to an ongoing problem.
MS. URRUTIA: Wow. Starting a business is a huge investment of time, capital, and passion, and there are so many barriers to becoming a small business owner; most importantly, access to financing.
Antwon, what advice would you give to first-time entrepreneurs?
MR. BRINSON: You know, the best advice that I could give someone is surround yourself with the right people, and that doesn't mean surrounding yourself with people that are going to tell you yes every time you say something great. But it means surrounding yourself with folks that are going to challenge you to think differently, people that are going to push you, people that are going to help you strategize.
You know, in our network, if it wasn't for, you know, the small business development here in Charlottesville, we wouldn't have known about the Tito's grant. So, you know, be engaged, and make sure that the people that you have around you are genuinely adding value to you and your business.
MS. URRUTIA: Thank you.
You were both recently awarded a Love, Tito's Small Business Grant from Tito's Handmade Vodka, which provides $25,000 to small business owners who are following their passion and making great impact in their community.
Danielle, what does receiving this grant mean to you and to your business?
MS. RUTTENBERG: Well, I really think that one of the major hurdles for small businesses in the past few years has been desire to make considerable improvements for our team, while also navigating the waters of such heavy inflation.
Our staff is amazing, are creative and talented, and they're dedicated to making change alongside us. However, the cost of living has skyrocketed, as we all know, and we want to make sure that we can grow our team and business in a responsible way, and that people can, you know, take care of themselves and their families and feel a safe haven in their job.
Opportunities like the Love, Tito's grant supports existing jobs and job creation and, internally, social enterprises like ours to continue building their impact. I'm incredibly grateful to larger organizations like Tito's and like Accion Opportunity Fund for their financial support and their public recognition to businesses like ours that can really help to encourage positive change in the world.
MS. URRUTIA: Wow. Danielle and Antwon, thank you again for your inspiring entrepreneurship, and now I'll hand it over to The Washington Post.
MS. ABRIL: Hello again. I'm Danielle Abril, tech at work writer for The Washington Post.
We're going to continue the program with the mayor of one of the countless cities in America whose small business owners have been challenged the past couple of years. He is the mayor of New Bedford, Massachusetts, Jon Mitchell.
Welcome to Washington Post live, Jon.
MAYOR MITCHELL: Well, thanks for having me, Danielle.
And remember we always want to hear from you, our audience. You can share your thoughts and questions for guests on Washington Post Live by tweeting @PostLive.
Mayor Mitchell, how important are small businesses to the economy of your city of around 100,000 residents.
MAYOR MITCHELL: Yeah. Well, of course, it goes without saying, small businesses are important everywhere, and cities and towns of every size and for good reason, right? We talk about small businesses as being the mechanism to which so many have pursued the American dream. They're the source of, if not the lion's share of jobs in America's economy, certainly a large proportion of them, and they are, in many ways, the spice of the cities that they operate in.
I would go--I would take those general observations that everybody accepts just a step further and say that in cities like mine, the vitality of small businesses are even more important. By that, I mean this. New Bedford is a city of 100,000, and we are not part of a major metro. We sort of sit on our own bottom with our own suburbs and our own smaller metropolitan area, and like other cities of our type, right, especially those with an industrial past, we don't have Fortune 100 companies anchoring the regional economy where major research institutions sat. Our economy is driven by small businesses, and so much of our identity is connected with small businesses. Many of our immigrant neighborhoods, small businesses have turned over with every new immigration wave, over a decade, decade after decade, and people feel a sense of belonging to their neighborhoods in part because of the small businesses that they recognize and associate with.
So, you know, for us, especially as we entered the pandemic, so much of our efforts were centered around stabilizing our small businesses, and I think that we'll be talking a little about that in a moment.
MS. ABRIL: Absolutely. Actually, that's exactly what I want to talk about. What have been the biggest challenges facing these businesses that you've seen, and what have you done to help them?
MAYOR MITCHELL: Well, so our response has evolved over time, but in the early days of the pandemic, of course, none of us in public office or elsewhere had a full grip of what we--on what we were facing, right? We hadn't had a pandemic since--well, since 1918, and so we really didn't know what was unfolding and what the threats were. But, as we started to learn a little bit more about covid 19, we understood that we had to sort of break through certain perceptions in order to enable small businesses to continue to move forward, to stabilize.
In the first month of the pandemic, our unemployment rate here in New Bedford went from about 5 percent to about 24 percent. Our businesses shut down, and this wasn't by virtue of any government orders at all. People didn't want to go into restaurants and shops and so forth.
And so, my job as mayor, to a great degree, was to ensure that the public understood that it was okay to go in and order from a takeout pizza joint, for instance. So, I would, really within the first two weeks of the arrival of the pandemic, I was going around the city, mask on and all, showing up at places and ordering out and posting it on social media so that everybody understood it was okay to do that.
And then we took extra steps in terms of literally using city departments to build out sidewalks to offer, so that restaurants could offer up outdoor dining.
You know, New Bedford, of course, is a big fishing industry. We're the largest fishing port in America. We took a number of steps to ensure that boats could go out safely during the early part of the pandemic and helping with--helping through social distance and to take other precautionary measures. So, it was initially a big scramble, right?
But then other things started to set in, right? So, there were social distancing measures in place, and there were mask requirements and so forth here as there were just about everywhere else, at least in the early going. And so, people needed to understand that folks were still open for business, and again, social media activity was important in that regard. But we also understood that so many businesses were losing employees, and that it was actually safe to work in a number of these--in all these--all the small businesses that we were trying to stabilize.
And then, as time went on, you know, we saw the effects of still greater staffing shortages and inflation, and so helping small businesses with working capital was a big part of what we attempted to do through loans and certain grant programs, and we can go into a little more detail about it. But suffice it to say, stabilizing our small businesses required us to work just very, very closely with them, to have an understanding of what their challenges were, and to try with the resources that we're getting from the federal government, state government, and our own resources, to ensure that they could pay the bills. They could hire folks out, that they could--they could pay for--pay all their vendors, that they could keep the lights on literally in their businesses.
So, you know, it was an iterative process along the way to go. It really was stabilization and then get businesses back on a pathway of growth.
MS. ABRIL: Are there new challenges that they're facing now?
MAYOR MITCHELL: Well, there are, right? And so, you know, they range from, again, just feeling the distortionary effects of heightened inflation, right? That has caused--so, you know, there's a restaurant literally a block from where I'm seated that, you know, sold $12 tostada salads that suddenly became much more expensive for them to make. They started--because of supply chain bottlenecks, those salads started to cost them nearly $14 to make, right? So, they were actually losing money for a while making salads, and that's just one, one example of many.
Now, of course, we still see the effect of Great Resignation. Still many people aren't coming back to work, and so that's starting to play out. That's starting to sort itself out now to a certain degree, but not nearly fast enough. Every small business in the city and in our region is still feeling like they don't have the staff they need to get the job done. And then, of course, you know, they're looking at heightened interest rates and the possibility that reinvesting in their business might prove difficult.
So, what we have done is, in addition to providing working capital to keep things going, we've created new loan and grant couple--and new loan programs and coupled them with grant programs to make the cost of capital lower so that they can start to pour money back into their businesses. We've also created for many of them two programs that I think are very important, and I'll stay this, right? So, the effort here is around stabilizing small businesses and getting them on a pathway of growth, but at the same time, we want to make sure that small businesses are continuing to protect their energy into the city. It's been a long pandemic, and we want to make sure that what businesses are doing in the way of getting themselves back on their feet is actually being felt in the community, as it were. So, we have invested a considerable amount of federal money into a new storefront program for small businesses that had over 90 applications, and we're getting that money out the door now. And it leverages both public sector and private sector funds and other public and private sector funds as well.
So, what we're going to see across the city in a very inclusive way or businesses seeming--that apparently, to the public, coming back to life with new doors, new awnings, and, you know, these little things like that give people confidence that, you know, this city is alive, and that it's worth patronizing those businesses.
We've also spent a fair amount of money helping artists, working artists, get back on their feet. New Bedford is blessed with a really large artist community, one of the larger ones per capita in the country, and we have created a set of programs that offer technical assistance, business technical assistance to them like how an artist might write a business plan, which is not always intuitive to a lot of artists, so that they can understand how they can sell their wares and promote them in the city as well as directly funding certain art projects, again, as well as performing arts projects.
So, again, we're projecting energy back out into the economy. We're boosting consumer and resident confidence, all the while supporting small businesses.
MS. ABRIL: So, you mentioned a couple of things there that I want to return to. You talked about covid, high inflation, supply chain gridlock, the Great Resignation. I mean, it seems like this would have had a really big impact economically on your region. Can you tell me a little bit about the effect it's had?
MAYOR MITCHELL: Well, you know, it's been a little bit of a mixed bag. There have been some successes along the way. Initially, as it was in many places, the arrival of the pandemic was a real trauma on the city, right? Unemployment spiked. People were--you know, retreated back into their homes, of course, and we remember all that from two years ago.
Here, it played out in a number of ways. We still have very much an industrial economy. We've had--we had some factory closures because of outbreaks and such, and what we've tried to do, again, is try to project confidence and stability along the way.
So, you know, we have seen through some of these programs which we're providing, we've provided working capital to small businesses. Some do very well. As it turns out, one of the things we're most proud of is that during the first two years of the pandemic, New Bedford actually was a net plus seven for new restaurants. That is to say, during this period in which the restaurant industry took it on the chin in the United States, here in New Bedford, an older industrial city in the Northeast, we actually added seven more restaurants than we lost, and I attribute some of that to the great work that so many entrepreneurs did, as we heard from Pinky Cole in the first segment, really pivoting, wisely, early in the pandemic and meeting their customers where they are and thinking creatively.
The loan and grant programs also helped providing, again, working capital, some infusion of cash right at the right time. We were able to keep a number of these businesses going, and so we don't see all sorts of boarded up storefronts at this point.
That's not to say they're all out of the woods yet. We continue with these programs, and they're being heavily subscribed because, again, we're still feeling the distortionary effects of the pandemic still, staffing and inflation and so forth, but at least it feels like we're on a pretty solid pathway forward.
MS. ABRIL: So, I want to talk a little bit more about the money. You announced earlier this year, as you mentioned, that the city is providing $3.3 million in grants for local businesses from the American Rescue Plan Act. Tell me, how is that money being used, and what requirements did the government have for businesses to access those funds?
MAYOR MITCHELL: Well, so ARPA, the American Rescue Plan Act regulations laid out a whole set of preconditions as to who may receive the money and so forth. What it boils down to in general is that, you know, the businesses have to demonstrate having experienced some loss during the pandemic, but the regulations are also forward looking. They allow for cities like mine to underwrite efforts to promote new business formation.
So, what we've tried to do is, again, supporting businesses emerging from the pandemic. We're also supporting businesses that are just starting to form now, and under current--in our uncertain times right now providing them the technical assistance and seed capital to get going. So, that program is the New Bedford Forward program and the NBForward! program, and the idea there is that we are providing entrepreneurs right up front $10,000 in cash if they go through a series of training exercises with a number of local institutions, community colleges, accelerators and such, put together a business plan to get a sense of their cash flow projections and so--to get them going. And we're starting to see a real uptick in subscription on that effort.
And so, you know, the idea is here that, you know, we don't want to just sort of go back to where we were when the pandemic started. We want those--the businesses that were around then to be around now and to be on their feet, but we also want to be accelerated forward as things start to stabilize, as they appear that they might in the next few months.
MS. ABRIL: So, Mayor, I want to talk about another program that you guys started called an Enhanced Façade program and it's helping businesses get improved storefronts, raising their curb appeal. Tell me, how is that working out?
MAYOR MITCHELL: I think it's working out very well. Again, businesses weren't reinvesting in themselves in the last year at the same rates they were pre pandemic, right? No surprise there. But when we think about small business investment, we often talk about--as I have, about working capital and paying the everyday utility bills and the staff salaries and so forth. But the outward manifestation of so many small businesses around the country is that storefront on a busy street. You know, it's that restaurant we recognize by the color of its awning or the sign on the door, and ensuring that, giving businesses a little bit of a push to giving themselves a little bit of a facelift can go a long way, not only in helping them but also helping the neighborhoods in which they do their business.
So, we have a number of business districts around the city that have storefronts of the type that I just described, and what we've tried to do is ensure that there's--that they're getting access to funds to do--a very generous set of funds to get--to reinvest in those storefronts. So, we set up this Enhanced Façade program, which offers a 75 percent match for investments in a business's storefront, up to $40,000. So, in other words, you know, for every quarter you put in, you'll get 75 cents from the city of New Bedford, up to $40,000, which is in most instances plenty enough to do a really nice storefront.
And so, we've had, at this point, 90 applicants. We think that there will probably be about 75 that will be fully eligible. We'll spend, you know, between $2- and $3 million in ARPA funds for that purpose, but it's not a total giveaway, right? The matching requirement ensures some level of accountability. We're not just handing out funds. We're expecting each of these small businesses to have to ante up something, if for no other reason, to ensure that what we're investing in as a city government is something that they also are willing to pony up for, too. So, we think that that is going to stretch our dollars even more, taxpayer dollars, but at the end, it's going to have a really, very visible improvement across the city in many of the most densely populated and heavily trafficked business areas that we have. So, we're really bullish on it.
MS. ABRIL: Mayor, we have a few minutes left. So, I'm going to try to squeeze in a couple questions here. New Bedford is known for a large fishing fleet and seafood industry. Can you tell me how the maritime economy has weathered the past two-plus years?
MAYOR MITCHELL: Yeah. So, early on, the price of many fish crashed here because people weren't going out to restaurants in the United States and in Europe. New Bedford is a big source of America's seafood, right? About 8 percent of the fish landed in the United States are landed in the port of New Bedford.
And so, when we saw the prices crash, boats didn't go out. It wasn't profitable for them to go out, and that meant that fishermen weren't fishing. They weren't making a living.
As restaurants started to come back open, as grocery stores started to sell more seafood around the country, the prices came back up, but we also wanted to make sure that we did everything that we could to backstop the maritime economy. So, eventually, we did things like, you know, we had offered up testing, free testing for fishermen before they go out on the boats so that there weren't be outbreaks out at sea, right, that would cause them not to go out the next time and so forth. We had vaccination programs for fishermen as well, and we tried very hard to work with our federal delegation to promote the consumption of seafood as well.
And, you know, by and large, right now, the seafood industry has weathered the storm. The prices have come back up. Fisherman are fishing again, and now, you know, the big thing next for New Bedford is the offshore wind industry. Vineyard Wind will be America's first industrial scale offshore wind project, and that will deploy from our docks, come six months from now, and so that promises to--that represents a large potential infusion into our regional economy. So that we're very--we're getting back on track and really starting to move forward as the maritime--in the maritime economy right now.
MS. ABRIL: Understood. Mayor, I want to ask you one last question. How does government balance spending taxpayers' money on supporting a business that may be failing with offering assistance to these struggling business owners? It seems like, you know, a tricky balance there.
MAYOR MITCHELL: It is a tricky--that is the trickiest balance, I think, Danielle. You know, we were just talking about the enhanced storefront program a minute ago, and there were a number of folks in the city who said, "You know what? You should just give them the money. Give everybody, every store owner $10,000, no questions asked." And, you know, so I asked the question, "Well, what if that's a failing business? We will just be, know, just throwing away money," and I didn't think that would be responsible.
So, we established a match requirement that at least ensured that the business owner thought that the project they were applying for was worthy enough to spend their own money, right? So, that added some accountability to the process.
You know, we had the saying, if these programs are going to work, you have to get money out the door, and you can't--there isn't room for a whole to of second guessing about how the money is spent. So, there's a tricky balance between accountability and being effective in getting money out the door, and that's something that we monitor closely. We have a number of guidelines in the application process in which the store owner has to--the small business owner has to demonstrate need, and we watch it. We watch it very closely because the money--like, it's hard-earned taxpayer dollars that we're deploying, and taxpayers deserve that that money go as far as possible.
MS. ABRIL: Understood.
Well, unfortunately, we're going to have to leave it there, Mayor. Thank you so much for joining us today and giving us such valuable insights. I really appreciate it.
MAYOR MITCHELL: Well, thanks for having me, Danielle. I appreciate it.
MS. ABRIL: Absolutely.
And thanks to all of you for joining us. To check out what interviews we have coming up, please head to WashingtonPostLive.com and find out more information about all upcoming programs.
I'm Danielle Abril, and again, thanks for watching. | 2022-09-19T23:01:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Transcript: Reinventing Small Business - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/09/19/transcript-reinventing-small-business/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/09/19/transcript-reinventing-small-business/ |
In Denver, Brits honor Queen Elizabeth with tea, crumpets and lots of tissues
By David Williams | Sep 19, 2022
DENVER — As thousands of people across London said goodbye to Queen Elizabeth II, a small group here paid their respects.
The assemblage, known affectionately as the “British Girls,” gathered with tea, crumpets and tissues to watch the Queen be laid to rest.
David Williams for The Washington Post
Union Jack flags line the sidewalk to the home of Sylvia Lambe, who is hosting the celebration.
The event was hosted by Sylvia Lambe, who moved to Denver from London in 2016.
Lambe acknowledged that she had complicated feelings about the Queen.
“My parents are from former colonies that had British rule, whose people were subjugated and who fought for their independence against the British,” she said. “I understand and know the history and the Queen benefited from the colonization.”
Sylvia Lambe, right, brews some tea, a quintessential British cuppa.
But, she added, she has also come to appreciate the monarch’s humanity, especially after she lost her own husband to a heart attack.
The queen is “interwoven into the tapestry of my life, whether I like it or not. Her legacy, as an individual, the fact that when she was 21 she said that whether my life is long or short, ‘I will give my life to my country,’ and she has honored that commitment.”
“That is the kind of thing I want to teach my children,” she added.
Members of the British Girls watch replays of Elizabeth's funeral.
For Sandra Shayler, the meetup was a chance to reflect on the significance of the occasion with other Brits.
'I’m here to share something that is historic to us,” said Shayler, who moved to the United States from London in 1999. “The Queen has been part of my life forever, and I’m 60 next week.”
Tea, cakes and other sweets are some of the offerings at the event.
Even the cupcakes are decked out in Union Jack flags.
The women honored the queen’s life with Union Jack-covered tea pots, cupcakes and flags galore.
“I wanted to be around other Brits and celebrate her life,” Sian Kirwan said. “I’d love to be back in London obviously, but it’s just fantastic to be around other British women and celebrate her amazing life.”
Pieces of cake are cut.
The pottery also show British pride.
Nicky Flemming said the gathering was a chance to connect with fellow expats.
“When you’re abroad, you cling on to any support you can get, and we Brits in Denver support each other,” said Flemming, who moved to Denver nine years ago with her husband and three children.
It was an opportunity, too, to reflect on Elizabeth’s legacy.
“The queen is a woman who has always been in our lives,” she said. “She is an amazing, hard-working mother and grandmother. She is iconic. She is our country.”
As the women watch the service, they clutch mugs with British flags, or with British mottos like “Keep Calm and Carry On.”
Though the occasion is a chance to celebrate Elizabeth's life, a tissue is sometimes needed.
“The thing I miss most about living in the U.K. is the history,” Flemming said. “I didn’t appreciate it when I was there. My kids went to a school in the U.K. where we celebrated their 450th anniversary ... their school [in Denver] is only 20 years old.”
The time difference made it impossible for the women to watch the service in real time — they would have had to gather around 4 a.m. So, they watched a replay instead.
At the end, the British Girls offered a champagne toast in Elizabeth’s honor.
“The Queen was the strength of our nation,” said Louise Campbell-Blair. She was “strength for me as well. She meant everything. Everything that she stood for, her quality, her royalty, her humility, she was still so humble with it all.”
The British Girls toast to the life of Queen Elizabeth II.
Photos: The life of Queen Elizabeth II, through the years
Photo editing and production by Natalia Jiménez. Editing by Amanda Erickson. | 2022-09-19T23:28:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In Denver, Brits honor Queen Elizabeth with tea, crumpets and lots of tissues - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/interactive/2022/denver-brits-honor-queen-elizabeth-with-tea-crumpets-lots-tissues/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/interactive/2022/denver-brits-honor-queen-elizabeth-with-tea-crumpets-lots-tissues/ |
A landmark Supreme Court fight over social media now looks likely
The stakes are high because of the increasingly dominant role platforms such as Twitter and Facebook play in American democracy and elections
The Supreme Court building in Washington. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
The stakes are high not just for government and the companies, but because of the increasingly dominant role platforms such as Twitter and Facebook play in American democracy and elections. Social media posts have the potential to amplify disinformation or hateful speech, but removal of controversial viewpoints can stifle public discourse about important political issues.
Governments who say conservative voices are the ones most often eliminated by the decisions of tech companies scored a major victory Friday, when a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld a Texas law barring companies from removing posts based political ideology.
“Big Tech’s reign of endless censorship and their suppression of conservative viewpoints is coming to an end,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) said after the decision. “These massive corporate entities cannot continue to go unchecked as they silence the voices of millions of Americans.”
But a unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit went the other way earlier this year, saying that a similar Florida law violated constitutional protections for tech companies that do not want to host views on their platforms that they find hateful, divisive or false.
Judge Kevin Newsom criticized a depiction of social media platforms as “dumb pipes … reflexively transmitting data from point A to point B.” Instead, he wrote, their “content-moderation decisions constitute the same sort of editorial judgments” entitled to First Amendment protections when made by a newspaper.
All of the appeals court judges considering the Florida and Texas laws have noted the difficulty of applying some Supreme Court precedents regarding legacy media. And all weighing in so far were nominated by Republican presidents, with Newsom and Judge Andrew Oldham, who wrote the conflicting opinion in the Texas case, both nominated by President Donald Trump, who was kicked off Twitter in the aftermath of the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.
“We are in a new arena, a very extensive one, for speakers and for those who would moderate their speech,” wrote Judge Leslie Southwick, who has served on the 5th Circuit for 15 years and dissented from Friday’s decision. “None of the precedents fit seamlessly. … The closest match I see is case law establishing the right of newspapers to control what they do and do not print, and that is the law that guides me until the Supreme Court gives us more.”
It is possible such guidance will come soon, perhaps in the term that begins next month. Disagreements among lower courts about important legal issues is the most likely driver of the Supreme Court’s decision to take up a case, and Florida’s petition challenging the 11th Circuit ruling is due at the high court Wednesday.
When the justices in May decided to keep Texas’s law from taking effect while legal battles continued, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said the issue “will plainly merit this court’s review.”
Supreme Court blocks Texas social media law for now
“Social media platforms have transformed the way people communicate with each other and obtain news,” wrote Alito, who was joined by colleagues Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch. “At issue is a ground-breaking Texas law that addresses the power of dominant social media corporations to shape public discussion of the important issues of the day.”
Alito added: “It is not at all obvious how our existing precedents, which predate the age of the internet, should apply to large social media companies.” The court’s majority did not explain its reasoning for blocking the Texas law, but at the time, only a district court had weighed in, and it had ruled for the tech companies.
Oldham’s opinion changed that. He wrote that social media companies “offer a rather odd inversion of the First Amendment.”
“That Amendment, of course, protects every person’s right to ‘the freedom of speech,’ ” Oldham wrote. “But the platforms argue that buried somewhere in the person’s enumerated right to free speech lies a corporation’s unenumerated right to muzzle speech.”
Generally, legal experts closely tracking the case said the 5th Circuit decision is at odds with long-standing court precedent and warned that the Texas law would force the companies to disseminate what they consider misinformation and harmful content on their platforms.
“To the extent that politicians have spread conspiracy theories or incitement, that will no longer be grounds for platforms taking them down,” said Evelyn Douek, who teaches about the regulation of online speech at Stanford Law School. Social media platforms, she added, may be forced to keep “a lot of horrible and otherwise hateful speech” that they currently remove and “may become unusable.”
At its core, the First Amendment protects against government infringement on speech. Courts have also held that the First Amendment protects the right of private companies, including newspapers and broadcasters, to control the speech they publish and disseminate. That includes the right of editors not to publish something they don’t want to publish.
In a 2019 decision, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote for the court’s conservatives that a private cable access company did not become a government actor subject to the First Amendment’s restrictions just because it was licensed by a government.
In the course of the decision, he touched on the roles of private companies. “Providing some kind of forum for speech is not an activity that only governmental entities have traditionally performed,” Kavanaugh wrote in Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck. “Therefore, a private entity who provides a forum for speech is not transformed by that fact alone into a state actor.”
The liberals on the court dissented on the specifics of the case but seemed to agree on the rights of private companies. “There are purely private spaces, where the First Amendment is (as relevant here) inapplicable,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor. “The First Amendment leaves a private store owner (or homeowner), for example, free to remove a customer (or dinner guest) for expressing unwanted views.”
Oldham found that unenlightening for the Texas case, and pointed to a footnote in Kavanaugh’s opinion: “A distinct question not raised here is the degree to which the First Amendment protects private entities such as [media companies] from government legislation or regulation requiring those private entities to open their property for speech by others.”
Oldham distinguished newspapers from social media platforms, which Oldham writes are more akin to “common carriers” like telephone companies. (Thomas also has declared himself open to such a reading of the law.) Legal experts said the court was correct to note the difference, but that online platforms are distinct from phone companies, for instance, which do not cut off service based on the content of a conversation.
“That’s what makes these cases hard,” said Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. “We don’t have a doctrinal box to put social media platforms in. They occupy a new space, and they should occupy a new space in the law too, but what does that look like?”
Some laws that would be unconstitutional as applied to news outlets and their publishing decisions, Jaffer suggested, may be permitted when it comes to social media platforms. A social media company could be required, for instance, to explain its decision to remove someone from its platform or to be more transparent about how it moderates content.
Both the Texas and Florida laws have such provisions, and the judges reviewing them were inclined to let them stand.
Alan Z. Rozenshtein, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, agreed with the 5th Circuit’s description of social media platforms as increasingly central to public discussion, and said there is potentially a role for some government regulation of content moderation. But he said the Texas law goes too far, calling the 5th Circuit’s position that content moderation is censorship “extreme.”
The companies, he said, are trying to create platforms that their users “want to hang out on.”
“We can talk about whether or not Nazis and terrorists should have the right to speak, but it’s not straightforward censorship,” he said. “If you have an unmoderated cesspool, that’s great for the trolls, but that’s not conducive to other people’s speech — especially to those who are going to be threatened and turned off. There has to be some balance.”
Tech industry groups representing the social media companies are still weighing how they will respond to the ruling. Lawyers for the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) and Netchoice met Monday to discuss how to challenge the decision, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss their plans.
They are considering an emergency request to the Supreme Court to block the law from taking effect early next month, the person said. The groups are also considering asking a full complement of 5th Circuit judges to reconsider the case initially decided by a three-judge panel or appealing directly to the high court, potentially forcing a decision that could have broad implications for state legislatures considering legislation similar to the Texas law.
“The fight is far from over, and in the long run we are very confident that any ruling that attempts to legally mandate what viewpoints a private business distributes will not stand,” said Matt Schruers, CCIA president.
Noted: FAA rejects proposal to cut qualifying flight time for pilots
10:19 PMThis just in: U.S. arrests more than 2 million, a record, along Mexican border | 2022-09-19T23:46:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Supreme Court fight over Texas, Florida social media laws looks likely - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/19/texas-florida-social-media-laws/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/19/texas-florida-social-media-laws/ |
A child boards a bus transporting migrants off Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. (Dominic Chavez for The Washington Post)
A Texas sheriff will investigate the flights arranged by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) to transport dozens of Venezuelan migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, allegedly after making false promises of work and other services.
The Bexar County Sheriff’s Office announced that it had opened an investigation into last week’s incident, in which migrants were “lured from the Migrant Resource Center” in their county — which covers greater San Antonio — and flown to Florida and later on to Martha’s Vineyard, where they were “left to fend for themselves.”
“Additionally, we are working with private attorneys who are representing the victims, as well as advocacy organizations regarding this incident,” Sheriff Javier Salazar (D) said in a statement. “We are also preparing to work with any federal agencies that have concurrent jurisdiction, should the need arise.”
DeSantis surprised federal and state officials on Wednesday by sending migrants who recently crossed the U.S.-Mexico border to the affluent Massachusetts resort island. The move is part of an ongoing campaign by DeSantis and other Republican governors in Texas and Arizona to send migrants to Democrat-heavy cities such as Washington, New York and Chicago to publicize soaring numbers of crossings this year on the southern border.
Migrants flown to Martha's Vineyard from Florida said they were surprised when they arrived on the island on Sept. 15. (Video: Reuters)
About 50 migrants — including men, women and children — boarded shuttle flights from San Antonio to Martha’s Vineyard, with a brief stop in Florida. Many of them later told immigration attorneys and advocates that they were promised work and other benefits if they traveled to Massachusetts. That was not the case.
“They were promised a solution to several of their problems,” Salazar said Monday. “They were taken to Martha’s Vineyard, from what we can gather, for little more than a photo op, video op, and then they were unceremoniously stranded in Martha’s Vineyard.”
Requests for comment made late in the day to DeSantis’s communications office were not answered.
Democrats and immigration advocates decried the incident as a political stunt; the White House slammed DeSantis and other Republican governors “using migrants as political pawns” as “shameful ... reckless and just plain wrong.”
“There is a process that is in place. And what they are doing is illegal stunt, is a political stunt,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said last week. “And it’s really just disrespectful to humanity.”
Jean-Pierre referred questions about whether the Biden administration would take legal action to the Justice Department.
Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff, Maria Sacchetti and Lori Rozsa contributed to this report. | 2022-09-20T00:30:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Texas sheriff to investigate DeSantis flying migrants to Martha’s Vineyard - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/19/desantis-migrant-flights-texas-sheriff/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/19/desantis-migrant-flights-texas-sheriff/ |
Tunisia's President Kais Saied at a news conference after the closing session of the eighth Tokyo International Conference on African Development in Tunis on Aug. 28, 2022. (Fethi Belaid/AFP/Getty Images)
The Biden administration is pressing Tunisia’s leaders to reverse steps weakening the country’s democracy, exposing friction with a nation once seen as the most promising of those who experienced Arab Spring revolutions.
U.S. officials describe efforts to urge Tunisia to embrace a different political course as President Kais Saied continues to consolidate power more than a decade after Tunisians’ uprising against their then-strongman leader helped touch off revolutions in countries from Syria to Egypt.
A senior State Department official said U.S. officials have expressed their concern about events including a recent constitutional referendum that significantly strengthened the powers of Saied, who took wide-ranging steps to weaken institutional checks and sideline political opponents in 2021 in what critics called a “self-coup.”
The U.S. moves include talks between Saied and Barbara Leaf, the State Department’s top official for the Middle East. During a visit to Tunis last month, Leaf conveyed worries about a new constitutional framework “that weakens Tunisia’s democracy and how crucial going forward an inclusive and transparent reform process is to restore confidence of the Tunisian people,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic discussions.
The public critiques have roiled the U.S.-Tunisian relationship. In July, Saied’s government reacted angrily to a statement by Secretary of State Antony Blinken raising questions about a constitutional referendum vote marked by low voter turnout.
“Tunisia has experienced an alarming erosion of democratic norms over the past year and reversed many of the Tunisian people’s hard-won gains since 2011,” Blinken said.
Saied’s government rejected what is called unacceptable “interference in the national internal affairs” following Blinken’s statement and summoned the top official at the U.S. Embassy in Tunis.
Saied’s office said the Tunisian leader pushed back on allegations laid out by Leaf in their meeting and “called on the American authorities to listen to their Tunisian counterparts to find out the reality of the situation,” Middle East Monitor reported.
U.S. officials have sought to forcefully nudge Tunisia while avoiding a total rupture with a nation whose cooperation on counterterrorism is seen as a crucial element of U.S. strategy for North Africa. Tunisia, with a population of nearly 12 million, for its part values U.S. military support and needs America’s backing as it seeks a deal with the International Monetary Fund.
“This partnership is going to be strongest when we have a shared commitment to democratic principles,” the senior official said.
While most Arab Spring revolutions ended in conflict or strengthened autocracy, Tunisia made significant strides to build its democratic process after the 2011 ouster of longtime leader Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali.
But public discontent has festered over joblessness and other pocketbook issues. Responding to those frustrations, the steps by Saied, a former constitutional lawyer, have resonated with some Tunisians fed up with the country’s post-revolution path. Others have grown increasingly alarmed.
Sarah Yerke, a former State Department official who is now a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the series of U.S. visits to Tunisia and public statements about its political process had been “effective in that they let Saied know someone is watching.”
“This kind of consistent drumbeat … is preventing him from taking Tunisia down an even further path,” she said, referring to the potential for Saied to take additional steps concentrating power in the Tunisian presidency.
The Biden administration has adopted a more critical stance than its European allies, many of whom are focused on deterring migration via North Africa. Citing Democratic reversals, the Biden administration has proposed a large cut to U.S. military and economic aid to Tunisia.
The senior official said the United States was ready to help Tunisians forge an accountable democracy including free debate, freedoms, and in “establishing checks and balances that are critical to the health of all democracies.”
He declined to characterize Saied’s response to Leaf’s message but said: “Friends need to be able to speak directly to each other.
U.S. officials believe their pressure may be having the effect of heading off even more problematic steps, like a more dramatic crackdown on the media and civil society groups.
On Friday, Tunisia published a new electoral law that reduced the size of the country’s parliament and lessens the role of political parties. But it did not, as some U.S. officials had feared it might, take more worrisome steps like prohibiting candidates affiliated with parties from participating in upcoming legislative elections. Some opposition groups plan to boycott the vote.
The senior official said the Biden administration welcomed the law as a step toward enabling broad participation in the elections.
“An inclusive and transparent reform process is so crucial going forward,” the official said. | 2022-09-20T00:30:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.S. presses Tunisia, once a bright spot of Arab Spring, on democracy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/19/united-states-tunisia-democracy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/19/united-states-tunisia-democracy/ |
Autumn draws near, but Monday was still summer
In a city of law and lawyers, it may not seem surprising that summer’s celebrated lease is apparently being enforced to the end. On Monday, the temperature hit an unusually warm, and perhaps even hot, 88 degrees.
With the autumn equinox only three days away, a thermometer reading in the afternoon seemed to refuse to yield an hour of summer’s stay. Rather than concede to the inevitable, it soared to an unautumnal peak eight degrees above average for the date.
With at least a hint of Washington humidity in the air, Monday probably came reasonably close to whatever expectations many of us have of a typical summer day.
It seemed a day to satisfy the demands of strict constructionists among weather watchers, who insist that until the equinox actually occurs on Thursday, it shall be summer in our city.
That 88-degree reading, noted by the National Weather Service at 1:02 p.m., outstripped last year’s 83. It failed by only eight degrees to touch the record for the date, the 96 degrees reached in 1895.
An oft-recorded song with this month in its title contains a strain of melancholy as it reflects on the passage of time. The lyrics of the selection, “September Song,” note poignantly how the “the days dwindle down.”
But on Monday, Washington witnessed what seemed a stubborn atmospheric refusal to replicate the time honored trend of many Septembers past.
Instead, it seemed to keep alive, at least for another day, a season that is obviously fading.
It defied time and the movements of the earth to give us the warmest day in more than two weeks. It was the hottest since the 91 on the eve of Labor Day. | 2022-09-20T01:30:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Autumn draws near, but Monday was still summer - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/autumn-draws-near-but-monday-was-still-summer/2022/09/19/89678a04-386d-11ed-9f55-3b65f1323f2f_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/autumn-draws-near-but-monday-was-still-summer/2022/09/19/89678a04-386d-11ed-9f55-3b65f1323f2f_story.html |
At least three schools in the Washington area were targets on Monday of the proliferating hoax known as swatting in which a false report is made to authorities of a violent incident in the school building.
Police searched, but no shootings or other violent incidents could be found, authorities said.
Similar hoaxes or false reports reportedly occurred on Monday elsewhere in Virginia.
They have also been reported in recent days across the United States and have prompted a statement from the FBI. The bureau said it took the practice of making false reports “very seriously,” because it placed the innocent at risk and expended law enforcement resources.
In the Washington area, the targets on Monday included schools in Arlington and in Loudoun County.
In Loudoun, both the county sheriff’s office and the Leesburg police department were notified of acts of violence at Loudoun Valley and Loudoun County high schools, the sheriff’s office said in a tweet. Loudoun County High School is in Leesburg.
The sheriff’s office described the notification as a hoax but said that authorities take such reports seriously and are investigating.
In Arlington, the police said officers went to Washington-Liberty High School, formerly known as Wasington-Lee High School, about 2:20 p.m. in response to a report of a possible act of violence. Officers found no evidence of any shooting or injuries, the police said.
Washington-Liberty’s principal, Tony Hall, said in a message to parents that the report of a violent act at the school was made in a 911 call but “was quickly determined to be a false report.” The message said there was an increased police presence, but no threat and “no lockdown at this time.”
The precise purpose and number of Monday’s false reports could not be determined immediately, nor was it clear who was behind them. | 2022-09-20T01:48:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | False reports of violence Monday at area schools, authorities say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/false-reports-of-violence-mondaty-at-area-schools-authorities-say/2022/09/19/bbc7a830-3877-11ed-9f55-3b65f1323f2f_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/false-reports-of-violence-mondaty-at-area-schools-authorities-say/2022/09/19/bbc7a830-3877-11ed-9f55-3b65f1323f2f_story.html |
Nationals lose again, as 2023 auditions continue for fringe players
Cory Abbott delivers a pitch in the first inning Monday against the Braves. He lasted four innings for the Nationals. (John Bazemore/AP)
ATLANTA — With less than a month remaining in a season that has long been decided for the Washington Nationals, Manager Dave Martinez and his staff continue to evaluate their roster with an eye toward next year.
There’s a young nucleus that includes infielders CJ Abrams and Luis García and starting pitchers Josiah Gray, MacKenzie Gore and Cade Cavalli. And then there are less solidified players who are using these games to make a case for themselves. Cory Abbott, who started Monday’s 5-2 loss to the Atlanta Braves, is one of those players.
Abbott has made seven starts since the trade deadline and has been used as a bullpen arm as well for the Nationals (51-96). His performances have been up and down, and that continued against the Braves (92-55) with a three-run fourth inning.
“Started with the walk and then we throw a ball away,” Martinez said. “It just added up to three runs but, other than that, I thought [Abbott] threw the ball well.”
In the first inning, Abbott allowed a solo shot to Austin Riley to put the Nationals at a deficit they never overcame. Riley’s hit looked like it might stay in the park, but leaping left fielder Alex Call couldn’t snag it.
Then in the fourth, Riley walked, Matt Olson doubled and Travis d’Arnaud and Michael Harris II hit back-to-back singles. Lane Thomas threw out d’Arnaud on Harris’s single, but Harris later advanced on a throwing error by Riley Adams and scored on a sacrifice fly by William Contreras. The Braves lead grew to 4-0. Abbott’s night ended after the fourth; he allowed six hits, two walks and the four runs without striking out any batters. Still, he took positives away from his outing.
“Just a little bit more around the strike zone than before,” Abbott said. “Less walks, should’ve only had one walk. So just kind of focusing on that and keep building.”
The Nationals cut into the Braves’ lead in the fifth inning. Ildemaro Vargas led off with a double down the line before Abrams singled to put runners on the corners with no one out. Victor Robles hit a sac fly to score Vargas, then Call roped a two-out double that drove in Abrams to make the score 4-2.
Vargas, 31, spent most of the season in Class AAA Rochester before being called up at the trade deadline. He outplayed Maikel Franco and became the team’s everyday third baseman, making himself a possible utility player for the Nationals next season. Call, 27, was claimed off waivers on Aug. 7, and Martinez said last week he’s “intrigued” by the former Cleveland Guardian.
And of course, there’s Joey Meneses, 30, who went 4-for-4 on Monday night and stole a base for the first time in his major league career.
Other players trying to prove themselves during this audition include catcher Riley Adams, 26, who has struggled for stretches at the plate and struck out twice Monday night, leaving four runners on base. There’s also Luke Voit, the team’s designated hitter, who could remain in that role next year — or potentially be non-tendered. He finished Monday 0 for 4 with four strikeouts.
The Braves tacked on their final run in the seventh when Eddie Rosario hit a solo shot off Steve Cishek. Outside of the fourth inning, the Nationals offense couldn’t generate much offense.
There were some bright spots and some forgettable performances Monday, a few more data points that could factor into offseason decision-making.
“I like to way they’re playing, I really do,” Martinez said about his veterans. “I mean, they’re getting opportunities to play, they’re showing me some some things that I want to see, and they’re doing well. … We’re looking for players, right? Come spring training, these guys are making a good case for themselves.”
How is Keibert Ruiz doing? The young catcher was cleared to travel with the team to Atlanta after suffering a testicular contusion this month that will sideline him for the rest of the season. Martinez said he’ll continue to sit in meetings with the team’s current three catchers — Adams, Israel Pineda and Tres Barrera. Martinez said he hopes Ruiz will be able to do light workouts before the end of the season.
What’s the latest on Victor Arano? Theright-hander played catch in Atlanta on Monday afternoon before the game, the first time he has thrown since Sept. 4, when he was placed on the 15-day injured list with a right shoulder strain. This is Arano’s second stint on the injured list this year after he was previously sidelined with left knee inflammation.
What’s next for MacKenzie Gore? The team wants the left-hander to throw 60 to 65 pitches, and around four innings, during his next rehab start. He’s scheduled to throw a bullpen session Tuesday in Atlanta before making another start in Rochester to build up toward full strength. The goal is for him to pitch for the Nationals before season’s end. | 2022-09-20T03:02:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nationals lose again, as 2023 auditions continue for fringe players - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/19/nationals-braves-cory-abbott/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/19/nationals-braves-cory-abbott/ |
Coffee County Republican Party Chair Cathy Latham, center, shakes hands with Georgia businessman Scott Hall on Jan. 7, 2021, at the county's election office. (Obtained by The Washington Post)
“I didn’t go into the office,” Latham said, according to a transcript of her deposition filed in court. She said she had seen in passing a pro-Trump businessman who was working with the experts. She said they chatted for “five minutes at most” — she could not remember the topic — and she left soon after for an early dinner with her husband.
A Post examination found that elements of the account Latham gave in her deposition on the events of Jan. 6 and 7, 2021, appear to diverge from the footage and other evidence, including depositions and text messages. Many of those records, including Latham’s Aug. 8 deposition, were filed in a long-running federal civil court case involving election security in Georgia.
During the 2020 election and its aftermath, Latham was a member of the Georgia Republican Party’s executive committee and sat on its election confidence task force. She was also chairwoman of the Coffee County Republican Party. She was one of the “fake electors” who signed unauthorized certificates in a bid to keep Trump in power after his 2020 election defeat.
In response to questions from the Post, Latham’s lawyers said, “Failing to accurately remember the details of events from almost two years ago is not lying.” They have said she did not take part in the copying or in anything improper or illegal.
Her attorneys Robert D. Cheeley and Holly A. Pierson wrote in a court filing last week that the alleged security breach was “actually less of a breach or criminal undertaking and more of a permissible exercise of the County Elections Board’s authority.”
They wrote that “the parties involved plainly believed that they had the authority to authorize it and the authority to do it, and that belief seems to be at least reasonable and likely accurate, which negates any possible criminal intent.”
Coffee County, Ga. GOP Chairwoman Cathy Latham and digital forensics experts hired by lawyers allied with former president Trump on Jan. 7, 2021. (Video: Obtained by The Washington Post)
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation and a grand jury in Atlanta are probing the incident in Coffee County, a Republican stronghold about 200 miles south of Atlanta. Federal and state prosecutors are also investigating the “fake elector” scheme, in which Latham and dozens of other Republicans in battleground states signed certificates proclaiming Trump the rightful winner.
The Coffee County episode is one of several alleged breaches of voting equipment since the 2020 election. In each instance, Trump supporters — often with the help of like-minded local officials — sought access to voting equipment to hunt for evidence that the election was rigged.
Access to voting machines is typically tightly restricted, and some security analysts fear that such breaches — including the copying of voting software that is also used elsewhere — risk exposing the systems to hackers.
Details about what happened in Coffee County, including the surveillance video reviewed by The Post, have surfaced largely because of a lawsuit brought against Georgia by several voters and the nonprofit Coalition for Good Governance. The plaintiffs say the state’s voting system is unconstitutionally insecure, which state officials deny. The plaintiffs have subpoenaed documents and testimony from a number of individuals, including Latham.
Sidney Powell, the Trump-allied attorney who was billed for the work, has not directly responded to questions from The Post about Coffee County. “Prior reports of my involvement were seriously misrepresented,” she said in an email.
Records obtained by the plaintiffs show that Powell signed contracts for the forensics experts’ elections work. The SullivanStrickler team updated her by email on the work in Coffee County and billed her more than $26,000, according to the records.
A local news outlet published a video that featured Hampton purporting to show how she could “flip” votes from one candidate to another. It went viral. Trump’s team later cited Coffee County in its campaign to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory.
In her deposition, Latham said that some time between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. on Jan. 6, after she had worked a full day as a high school teacher — and as Trump supporters were attacking the U.S. Capitol — she received a call from Hall, the businessman.
Hall had been “looking into the election on behalf of the President,” Georgia GOP chairman David Shafer told Trump campaign officials on Nov. 20, 2020, in an email obtained by The Post. The email centered on problems with absentee ballots and did not mention Coffee County or voting machines.
“Because that had been a hectic day. I hadn’t had any sleep, all the stuff had been happening, I had been getting phone calls left and right I was answering. I was tired, I wanted to go home,” Latham said. She said she then briefly telephoned Hampton to put her in touch with Hall.
“I would have called Misty and I said, ‘Well, let me give you his email,’” Latham said, adding: “I sent her the email. That’s all I remember doing.”
At 4:26 p.m., Hampton texted Eric Chaney, a member of the county elections board that employed her, records show. “Scott Hall is on the phone with Cathy about wanting to come scan our ballots from the general election like we talked about the other day,” she wrote.
Latham’s husband joined them at the office at 5 p.m., the footage shows, and later brought in takeout food. The Lathams and Hampton all left the office shortly before 7:40 p.m.
The following morning, Latham exchanged text messages with SullivanStrickler’s chief operations officer, Paul Maggio, as the team drove to Coffee County, records show, coordinating who would fetch Hall from the airport.
Latham also updated Hampton on the visitors’ movements.
“Team left Atlanta at 8. 5 members led by Paul Maggio. Scott is flying in,” Latham wrote Hampton in a text message at 9:26 a.m.
“Yay!!!!” Hampton replied.
In her deposition, Latham said she was just passing on information that Hall asked her to share with Hampton. She said she didn’t know why Maggio and Hall were coming to Coffee County.
Latham said she also worked a full day at Coffee High School on that day, Jan. 7, before briefly visiting the elections-office foyer after about 4 p.m., for reasons unrelated to SullivanStrickler’s work there.
Latham said she could see people behind the front desk but that she wasn’t paying attention to who they were and she remained on the other side of the partition. “There were people in there, and I get uncomfortable when there’s others,” she said.
External surveillance footage made public earlier this month showed that Latham arrived at the office at 11:37 a.m. that day. Three SullivanStrickler employees arrived at the elections office soon after. They were later joined by a fourth colleague. They intended to collect whatever data possible from the county’s voting machines, emails and billing records show.
Cheeley, Latham’s attorney, previously told The Post that Latham did not remember all the details of that day but testified truthfully. He said she did recall visiting the office after school “to check in on some voter review panels from the runoff election” that had been held for Georgia’s two U.S. Senate seats earlier that week.
Digital forensics experts hired by lawyers allied with former president Trump examined voting equipment on Jan. 7, 2021 at the Coffee County elections office. (Video: Obtained by The Washington Post)
Asked during her deposition if the team met Chaney, Latham replied: “I have no idea.”
The new video shows that, after greeting SullivanStrickler’s team, Latham led them into a central area behind the public counter and appears to introduce them to Hampton and Chaney, the board member.
At about 12:30 p.m., Latham joined Maggio, Hall and Hampton as they appeared to examine a large piece of equipment in the central area. At one point, she bent down and touched it. Then, as Maggio began examining electronic “poll pads,” which are used to check in voters at polling locations, Latham took a seat directly across from him and watched, the video shows.
In her deposition, Latham said she left the office before Hall and did not see him depart. The video shows that Hall shook Latham’s hand on his way out shortly before 5 p.m., and that Latham stayed more than an hour longer.
In an email filed to court last month, SullivanStrickler’s lawyers said Latham was “a primary point of contact in coordinating and facilitating” the firm’s work in Coffee County, adding: “Ms. Latham was on-site in the Coffee County elections office that day while the work was performed.”
In the deposition on behalf of the firm, the company executive said Hampton, the elections supervisor, had directed the majority of the team’s work. But “Cathy Latham also provided direction on what was required for collection,” he said, according to a transcript the plaintiffs provided to The Post.
Coffee County GOP Chair Cathy Latham returned to the county election office on the afternoon of Jan. 7, 2021, and spoke with businessman Scott Hall. (Video: Obtained by The Washington Post)
SullivanStrickler believed it had been given proper authorization to make “forensic images,” or exact copies, of the election equipment in Coffee County, the company executive said in his deposition. In a statement to The Post, a lawyer for SullivanStrickler said the firm and its employees were witnesses in the grand jury investigation. “We will continue to fully cooperate with law enforcement,” the lawyer wrote.
In May, when The Post first reported on claims that outsiders copied Coffee County’s central elections server and other election equipment, Chaney said he did not know Hall and was not aware of or present at the office “when anyone illegally accessed the server or the room in which it had contained.” He said he recalled “going by the office” and finding “people present unknown to me” who he believed to be associated with the secretary of state’s office. | 2022-09-20T04:29:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Video undercuts Trump elector Cathy Latham's account of Georgia voting breach - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2022/09/20/coffee-county-georgia-cathy-latham/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2022/09/20/coffee-county-georgia-cathy-latham/ |
We didn’t tell my parents (and definitely not the in-laws!). But one Thanksgiving just before the pandemic, I was going to have my partner of one year with me (“Steve”), and so I told my parents.
Mom refuses to accept Steve. I refuse to leave him alone on a major holiday.
I’ve invited them to our home for Thanksgiving this year (where I get to decide who sits at the table), but what about Christmas? That’s Mom’s favorite holiday, and she loves to decorate and host. I don’t really do any of that.
I’ve thought about staying at Mom’s while my husband and partner get a hotel room nearby. Hubs doesn’t like staying at my parents and would jump at the chance, but Mom’s feelings would be hurt, and at the end of the day, Steve would still be alone while we’re at my mom’s.
Two Directions: The good thing about Christmas is that it really envelops a season, with at least two good opportunities to gather: Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
Many families split things down the middle during the holidays, and so if you want to be with your mom for Christmas dinner, then go there and enjoy yourself. “Steve” can hang with your husband during the event and — my preference — go to the movies.
Now that things seem to be returning to normal (more or less), I’m wondering how to respond when I’m at a restaurant and the service is slow, the food is cold and the reason (excuse) is “staff shortages.”
Wondering: Yes, you are still expected to tip your server.
I hang up, but then the other day I received a letter telling me I had won $250 million! Many instructions and phone numbers were included. I wondered where I could verify this without calling any of the phone numbers.
I called AARP’s Fraud hotline (877) 908-3360 (also check AARP.org).
They were wonderful! A real person answered. I explained my concern, and she transferred me to the proper department where I spoke to another real person.
— Relieved in Hagerstown, Md.
Relieved: Thank you to AARP for providing this invaluable service. | 2022-09-20T05:04:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: I’m polyamorous. My mom refuses to accept my partner. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/09/20/ask-amy-polyamorous-partner-mom/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/09/20/ask-amy-polyamorous-partner-mom/ |
As well he should have been. Returning letters and presents after a breakup is a way of saying that even the memory of the relationship is painful. At the same time, one might find it a relief to recover written evidence of a possibly defunct passion.
As living arrangements have changed, so have obituaries. Listing those closest to the departed serves not only as a record, but to notify others where sympathy would be appreciated.
Answer promptly, congratulate your friend, socialize with her other friends, thank her and put her on the guest list for your next celebration. | 2022-09-20T05:04:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Miss Manners: I want the gifts I gave back to him when we were broken up - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/09/20/miss-manners-broke-up-gifts/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/09/20/miss-manners-broke-up-gifts/ |
Safe As Houses?
Wednesday’s meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee is dominating all discussions. That’s inevitable. But if there’s one area where the Fed’s monetary policy could wreak changes, and where many Americans fear that it will, it is on housing.
The latest diffusion index of homebuilders’ confidence produced by the National Association of Home Builders was published Monday. The outlook is still nowhere near as bad as during the housing slump at the end of the ’00s, but it’s declining sharply:
It’s easy to see why homebuilders are getting nervous. Affordability — defined as the ability of someone on the median income to afford a median house at prevailing mortgage rates — had already dipped to its lowest level since the top of the last housing boom in 2006 by the time it was last measured at the end of the second quarter. Rises in average mortgage rates since then (shown inverted on the following chart) more or less guarantee that affordability has worsened:
The housing market is a critical area where tighter monetary policy can have a big effect, with a lag. Turning to the rental market, Zillow’s index of the rate of inflation in leases taken out each month is inflating much more slowly than at the peak last fall. The bad news for the Federal Reserve, and for those thinking of renting a house, is that monthly inflation continues to be significantly greater than it was in the years before the pandemic. There is a way to go before rental inflation (which accounts for about a third of the Consumer Price Index) is stamped out as the Fed must wish:
While the actual level of homebuilder sentiment has yet to reach historical extremes, the intensity and consistency of the recent declines have. For starters, the six-month rate of change has seen one of the most extreme plunges in the history of the survey (going back to 1985). The only time sentiment deteriorated at a faster rate was in the initial months of the Covid crash. Even during the financial crisis, there wasn’t a six-month period where sentiment fell as fast as it has in the last six months.
This is good news for the Fed, in that it shows it’s having an impact. Now the question is whether the cure could be as bad or worse than the disease. The Absolute Strategy Research survey of investors, featured in yesterday’s Points of Return, revealed that house prices had begun to worry asset allocators, a lot. About half of the respondents in the survey are not based in the US:
As house prices tend to rise over time, this is startlingly bearish. It also implies rising concerns over credit. Absolute Strategy asked asset allocators how likely they thought house prices where they lived would be higher a year from now. A third thought it “very unlikely,” which the firm’s David Bowers said was “an aggressive call and suggests the tightening of monetary conditions is starting to impact an important source of collateral.’’
To be clear, this isn’t just about the US. Comparing house prices across geographies is difficult. The following chart is all in local currency terms, but it should be directionally accurate. Since the peak of the last US housing boom, US home prices have risen less than in Germany, where prices have turned downward. The UK is almost exactly in line with the US, if we use the S&P Case-Shiller indices:
All of this suggests the Fed is getting somewhere, but also opens new risks. This is from Gerard MacDonell of 22V Research:
James Ragan, director of wealth management research at D.A. Davidson, makes a similar point. For the FOMC, he predicts:
… some discussion about if they believe that the rate hikes that they’ve already put in place this year are starting to have some type of an impact because we know there’s a lag. That would give the equity markets a little bit of hope that perhaps the rate hikes that have already been taken are working to some extent. The risk is that the Fed goes too far. If we haven’t had any impact of the previous hikes yet, or if it’s minimal... there could be a period when all of sudden things just really come to a halt in the economy.
There is also one other risk to monitor. Falling house prices are dangerous. For my favorite example, look to the London housing market as the 1980s turned into the 1990s. House prices had risen by a third in 1987, and the government in hindsight was too late to apply the brakes. As a result, prices fell uninterruptedly for all of the first four years of the 1990s:
The problem became self-reinforcing. Many buyers had over-extended, taking out big mortgages in the belief that otherwise they would miss out. Once prices started to fall, they found themselves in negative equity — even if they sold the house, they wouldn’t be able to repay the mortgage. Rather than do this, they toughed it out in houses that were often too small for them, while liquidity in the market steadily dried up. Lower prices forced a negative cycle from which it took years to emerge.
Hope springs eternal and London real estate has enjoyed more booms since then. But the critical point is that the housing market affects people very directly. Living in a house that is no longer appropriate for you sucks away at your quality of life. And housing booms that put homeownership out of the reach of the youngest generation intensify inequality and injustice. As with many other aspects of the economy, it’s possible that the fallout from the pandemic may lead to an overdue reduction in the inequality that is plaguing the western world. But that might come at a high cost. Investors are aware of this, and so is the Fed.
Avoiding US Bias
Points of Return is often criticized for a US-centric bias, which is fair enough. The US stock market is by far the biggest and the newsletter is written from New York, but there are still huge variations across the world. Things look very different outside the US. This is FTSE’s index for global stocks (both developed and emerging markets) excluding the US. It has just dropped to a two-year low:
The key dynamic is the interplay between the US and China, the two greatest economic powers. For more than a decade, the Chinese equity market has been prone to bubble over but had managed to stay ahead of the S&P 500, which shouldn’t be surprising given the rate of growth in the Chinese economy. That has reversed dramatically since the peak in China’s post-Covid stock market boom early last year:
All of these indexes are denominated in dollars, and so the strength of the US currency has much to do with this. The Fed’s monetary policy, by making it harder to buy imports or borrow in dollars, has had its most direct effects thus far outside the US. The energy crisis is hurting Europe far more than the US, which contributes to the phenomenon. But the broadest lesson is that the two superpowers (through higher rates from the US and slowing demand in China) have combined to bring down other stock markets in almost uniform fashion. With a greater lag, we should probably expect US stocks to follow where others have led.
In less than 48 hours, the Fed will raise rates to rein in surging inflation for the fourth time this year, all while hoping such aggressive tightening won’t tip the American economy into a deep recession. The first key question is by how much.
Traders are pricing a 75 basis-point hike Wednesday, with a minority betting on a full percentage point. Rates haven’t been raised this much at one time since then-chair Alan Greenspan introduced transparency in announcing changes in the fed funds rate in 1990, according to Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA. He weighs in:
Since World War II, there have been only seven times when the committee hiked rates by 100 basis points, and all came during the bid to overcome inflation at the end of the 1970s: November 1978, October 1979, February, September, November and December 1980, and May 1981:
After those hikes, CFRA found that the S&P 500 slipped four times over one-month, three-month, and six-month periods, posting average returns of -2.4%, -1.3% and +0.1%, respectively. Such a hike might create the impression that the Fed is “panicking,” said Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers:
Others, however, suggest that Jerome Powell and his colleagues will be keen to follow the example of Paul Volcker, the Fed chair responsible for the previous 100 basis-point hikes. They eventually convinced the market that he was serious about beating inflation. Some, such as Ed Yardeni, president of Yardeni Research, expect exactly this headline-grabbing move:
Beyond the magnitude of the hike, the second key question is the Summary of Economic Projections, best known as the infamous “dot plot.” For Ragan of D.A. Davidson, the dots are most important, because they allow some insight on when the Fed governors expect to end the tightening. Many still expect a peak at 3.75% or 4%, he says: “If it seems like they’re leaning towards higher than that, we could see some ongoing weakness in the market.”
As a reminder, June’s version of the dot plot, in which each dot represents the prediction of one FOMC member, suggested that rates would be higher at the end of 2023 than at the end of 2022 (something that the market has been betting strongly against), but it also shows that a majority don’t think the peak rate will get above 4%. That’s likely to be revised upward:
The dot plot could also be used to show that the FOMC is serious about inflicting a serious slowdown in economic growth in order to get inflation down. To quote David Mericle, economist at Goldman Sachs, the dots “are likely to show GDP growth more materially below potential this year and next than in June, a slightly larger increase in the unemployment rate in the years ahead, and a bit more inflation this year and next.” If not as spectacularly negative as the Bank of England, the Fed governors are going to prepare everyone for the worst. Best to prepare for that.
• Paul J. Davies: The $24 Trillion Treasury Market Needs More Than Just Clearing
• Jonathan Levin: Stocks Are Courting a Nasty Surprise on Earnings
• Clara Ferreira Marques: Frustrated and Snubbed, Putin is Running Out of Options | 2022-09-20T06:35:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rate-Hike Fears Are Hitting People Where They Live - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/rate-hike-fears-arehitting-peoplewhere-they-live/2022/09/20/e76d4b8c-38a1-11ed-b8af-0a04e5dc3db6_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/rate-hike-fears-arehitting-peoplewhere-they-live/2022/09/20/e76d4b8c-38a1-11ed-b8af-0a04e5dc3db6_story.html |
Respects. (Photographer: WPA Pool/Getty Images Europe)
It is a common misconception that there is little point in making a will if all you are likely to leave to your loved ones is a pile of unpaid bills. Nothing could be further from the truth.
As well as stating who gets what of your belongings, your will can set out your wishes for the care of your children or any dependents. Your will should also appoint an executor, who is legally authorized to act on your behalf after you have died. This can either be the solicitor who drew up the will, or a trusted family member or friend. Without a legal representative, there will be no means of fighting off your creditors or maintaining mortgage payments you may have been responsible for.
While writing a will might sound like an expensive undertaking (no pun intended), there is a way to have one written by a qualified solicitor entirely free of charge. The UK has a scheme called “free wills month,” and the next one begins Oct. 3. To participate, you must be aged 55 or over and the will must be fairly straightforward.
Since 2007, it has been possible to transfer any unused portion of a deceased person’s inheritance tax allowance to their surviving spouse. This simplified will writing, as the default for even relatively wealthy couples has been the so-called “mirror will,” whereby everything is left to the surviving spouse.
There is, of course, an ulterior motive in offering to write wills for free. The scheme is sponsored by a group of leading charities that pay a fee for each will written to participating solicitors. The charities are hoping that people writing their wills will include a bequest to a favored organization. There is no obligation to do so, but such charitable bequests can be tax efficient.
Even if you do not wish to use the scheme, the group’s will writing guide is a useful tool to understand what is required.
If you are younger than 55, and therefore not eligible for free wills month, specialist online providers can provide you with a basic will at an affordable price, ranging up from 20 pounds ($23). If your situation is more complex, perhaps because you wish certain assets to be held in trust for minor children, it is worth the additional expense of engaging a solicitor to ensure your will accurately reflects your intentions. Will writing is not an explicitly regulated activity, so there is more protection with a qualified solicitor.
It is important to update wills to reflect major life changes — typically marriage, divorce, births and deaths, as such events will likely affect who you might want to leave stuff to or who should have responsibility for your dependents.
Dying intestate, that is without a will, is a cruel thing to inflict upon your loved ones, most especially if you have an unmarried partner. The briefest of web searches will reveal many painful stories of family members who have suffered a loss coping, not just with grief, but also fending off creditors. Even if there is money to pay the deceased’s bills and their funeral, without an executor, nobody is authorized to do so.
In the UK, without a pre-appointed executor, your next of kin needs to obtain a document called a grant of letters of administration from the probate registry to settle your affairs. Little can be done without this and it can take a year or more just to get to this stage. In the meantime, creditors will become increasingly impatient and it will not be possible to dispose of or distribute property. Administering an estate where the liabilities exceed the deceased’s assets can be especially complicated and distressing.
More generally, the process of informing institutions about a death has improved in recent years. The government has a Tell Us Once Service where one can submit the news, and it will inform every relevant agency. There is also a service called the Bereavement Register, which will remove the deceased’s name from many mailing lists. Nevertheless, attempting to administer the affairs of someone who has died intestate can be an awful, drawn out process.
Nobody enjoys contemplating their own mortality, which is why so many people do not make a will. But death is traumatic enough for those who survive you, so please, follow the Queen’s example and make proper preparations for life’s only certainty.
• Tourists Will Love the Yen. Will Japan Love Them Back?: Gearoid Reidy | 2022-09-20T06:35:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Follow the Queen’s Example: Make Sure You Have a Will - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/follow-the-queens-example-make-sure-you-have-a-will/2022/09/20/38451da6-38a1-11ed-b8af-0a04e5dc3db6_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/follow-the-queens-example-make-sure-you-have-a-will/2022/09/20/38451da6-38a1-11ed-b8af-0a04e5dc3db6_story.html |
Fiona is likely to complicate the already slow pace of reconstruction after the catastrophic 2017 storm.
View of the southeaster coas of the island, where Hurricane Maria made landfall, in Yabucoa, P.R., on September 14, 2022. This year marks the fifth anniversary since Hurricane Maria hit the island causing severe damages and costing the lives of over 3,000 people. (Erika P. Rodríguez for The Washington Post) (Erika P. Rodriguez)
Hurricane Maria cleaved Puerto Rican memory. There was one kind of life before the tempest. And an entirely different life that emerged in its wake. Un antes y un después.
As the anniversary approached, The Washington Post went back to visit those who opened up their homes then, to show us their lives now. Hurricane Fiona — which hit Puerto Rico on Sunday, destroying homes, roads and bridges — was still days away. But even before that, much of the post-Maria recovery work had just begun.
In the mountains of Utuado, teacher Maria Ortiz Viruet was already experiencing blackouts several days a week when Fiona struck — each flicker of a lightbulb filling her with anxiety.
Deeper into the lush central forest, Syndia Maria Sotomayor no longer needed a zip line to get supplies across a river. A temporary steel bridge was built after Hurricane Maria to replace the one that washed away; it still straddles the waterway. But Fiona destroyed a different bridge connecting two parts of the town not far away.
That bridge was also meant as a stopgap solution while a permanent structure was built. But Puerto Rico’s transportation secretary, Eileen Vélez Vega, said Monday that construction on the new, taller bridge isn’t slated to begin until 2024. Video a day earlier showed muddy water washing over the surface of the temporary crossing, the metal breaking apart and drifting into the current.
In the town of Yabucoa, a baseball stadium destroyed by Hurricane Maria has been demolished, but before Fiona it remained a pile of dirt as officials waited patiently for Federal Emergency Management Agency money to rebuild what had been a pillar of the community.
The people of Puerto Rico have adapted. Bregaron, the expression goes, meaning they struggled and survived. And they found ways to ensure that the lesson Hurricane Maria taught is heeded: Do not depend on any government to help.
Maria Ortiz Viruet, Caonillas, Utuado
After the 2017 storm, Maria Ortiz Viruet’s classroom was empty for months. Families moved out, and children weren’t allowed back until the small town’s electricity was restored. Her 18-year-old son, Jesús Mejías Ortiz, worried whether he’d finish high school.
The Ortiz family was without power for nine months. And in this part of Puerto Rico, no electricity means no running water. Maria had to use the creek near her house to wash clothes and bottle water. Life as they knew it was replaced with the surreal routines of another century.
Her wooden house was not severely damaged, but it took Maria months to feel safe inside again. Some of her neighbors fared far worse. One family’s home toppled off a cliff entirely. Maria stayed at her mother’s cement abode a hundred feet away while the town recovered.
The power often goes out at Maria’s home, even when a hurricane isn’t approaching. Steep voltage variations sparked by the frequent interruptions kill their appliances. She’s not alone. Blackouts remain a staple of life in the U.S. territory despite efforts to fix Puerto Rico’s infrastructure.
Students returned to Maria’s school, but in limited numbers. Amid an ongoing exodus, the island’s population has steadily gotten older and smaller. Declining enrollment and political scandals led to closures and pressures to reduce staff. In the last two years, officials moved Maria from the only school she ever knew to a different campus nearly an hour away. She retired early, two years shy of her 30th year as a teacher, in 2020.
The 58-year-old spends her time tending to her elderly mother, cultivating coffee, plantains and other fruits on the land her father left her and participating in political meetings. But when dark clouds gather from over Lake Caonillas, she shudders at what they could bring.
“Every time the weather takes a turn, it triggers my anxiety and we all look at each other and say, ‘The power will go out soon,’” Maria said. “Then I start to feel unwell.”
Jesús, her son, graduated and lives at home while he studies to be an electrician. He wants to know how to restore power to his community. LUMA Energy, the private consortium contracted after Maria to distribute electricity across the island, offered him a job. But he declined, in part because of a lingering sense of betrayal over the local and federal governments’ slow and haphazard handling of the recovery.
As hard as it has been, he won’t leave his island. He is intent on forging a future in Puerto Rico despite the anemic job market.
“Hurricane Maria changed my life,” he said. “There is a clear difference between the person I was then and the one I am today. I learned to value things more. ... But Puerto Rico is the same or worse than where it was five years ago.”
In their rural, mountainous community, every rainfall portends impending darkness. Before Fiona, some streets still had concrete traffic barriers to protect drivers from steering into damaged parts of the roadway left unrepaired. The neighbor’s house that was pushed down the mountain is nearly invisible beneath tropical overgrowth.
Rafael Surillo Ruiz, Yabucoa
Yabucoa’s once pockmarked streets have been repaved. Palm trees sheared by the storm grew anew and adorned the coastline. But there are few other visible signs of progress. The town’s city hall is still destroyed. FEMA allocated $26 million to repair Yabucoa’s stadium — but so far, the only work completed with federal funds is the demolition of the existing structure.
It was here that Hurricane Maria first roared onto shore, disfiguring its picturesque valley and verdant highlands. Vast stretches of land were left an ugly brown as the storm’s unforgiving winds ripped trees and homes from the ground. Yabucoa is one of Puerto Rico’s lowest-income communities, and after the hurricane, 6,000 people left to rebuild lives in the States.
Change here has been happening at a snail’s pace — emblematic of the delays and corruption that have marred the post-Maria years. FEMA has set aside an estimated $28 billion in recovery funds to Puerto Rico to repair infrastructure. But only a fraction of the money has been disbursed by the federal agency. In all, about a fifth of the money slated for major public projects has been released to local governments to begin work. The same is true for other federal agencies with funds for the U.S. territory’s recuperation.
“We are not ready to face another tempest like Maria,” said Yabucoa Mayor Rafael Surillo Ruiz, days before Fiona struck. Behind his conference table was a whiteboard. The letters “F-E-M-A” were written in red, and nearby, a series of blue question marks, echoing the doubts and frustrations brought on by the slow pace of recovery. Damaged roofs and streets that would have been relatively easy to fix if repaired quickly have turned into major reconstruction projects amid the wait for funds. He equated it to the magical realism of a Gabriel García Márquez novel. “This is Macondo.”
On Monday, Rafael said Hurricane Fiona’s destruction confirmed what he suspected. Heavy rainfall triggered severe flooding that left two neighborhoods underwater. More than 200 families had to be rescued and lost everything inside their homes, he said. Bridges collapsed, and the roadwork that had been completed dissolved under the weight and speed of floodwaters.
“If you were to ask me what my top concern is right now, it’s not repairing a bridge,” he said. “It’s how we repair the hearts of those devastated families.”
Rafael carries the weight of all the lives lost due to Maria. Across Puerto Rico, nearly 3,000 people died during the storm and in its aftermath during the power outage — one of the longest in U.S. history. It’s hard to say how many died in his town, but the mayor can name a handful of neighbors. Each barrio now has a federally funded community center equipped with a generator, communal kitchen and cistern — but they will only help meet a fraction of the town’s needs after a storm.
“The biggest lesson I’ve learned, as a city administrator, is that I can’t depend on others to help me lift up this community. Government agencies arrived too late, some two to three months later, and others never arrived,” he said. “I have the assurance of knowing that if something happens, I have community members empowered to do what’s needed.”
Syndia Maria Sotomayor, Río Abajo, Utuado
Hurricane Maria’s rains triggered ruthless flooding throughout Puerto Rico’s mountainous regions. Rivers rose 30, 40 and 50 feet, washing away roads and bridges that cut off entire communities. The day the Río Grande de Arecibo toppled the cement bridge connecting Río Abajo to the rest of Puerto Rico, the community became known as “el campamento de los olvidados.”
They were the “forgotten ones” — a metaphor reflecting the abandonment many Puerto Ricans felt in the weeks after Hurricane Maria engulfed the island archipelago.
Syndia Maria Sotomayor’s family was one of many in Río Abajo who, after Maria, depended on a zip line to ferry groceries, supplies and themselves across a raging river in a crude basket. Their house and farm were on one side. The main road to town was on the other.
In the days after that storm, she and her four sons packed bottles of water, solar-powered lights and animal feed into a wooden cart fashioned with two-by-fours nailed together. It flew just above the river using a pulley system Syndia husband, Daniel, devised. They used the contraption to cross the wide, muddy river to get to work, school, the bank and anywhere else they needed to keep their farm running and family safe.
The Sotomayors depend on no one but themselves and their ingenuity to get by deep in the heart of rural Utuado and most days — living as close to being off the grid as one gets in Puerto Rico. But the island’s financial crisis, exacerbated by Maria, nonetheless has put a strain on their daily lives. The price of a gallon of milk is the same as one hour’s work at minimum wage. The median income here is lower than that of Mississippi, the poorest state in the United States.
The family has adjusted, consuming the milk their goats provide and supplementing their diets with the vegetables they grow.
Six months after the bridge collapsed, FEMA completed construction of a temporary steel bridge. It remains unclear when a permanent crossing will be constructed. The current one has already rusted from exposure to the endless rain and humidity of the tropics.
The family took down their zip line, hoping never to use it again.
As the muddy waters of the Río Grande de Arecibo rose on Sunday, Syndia kept a careful eye on the bridge nearby. It was still standing 24 hours after Fiona hit, but with more rain expected Tuesday, the Sotomayors weren’t taking any chances.
Their Hurricane Maria zip line was ready, just in case. | 2022-09-20T07:06:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico 5 years ago. Recovery in many ways had just begun. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/20/hurricane-maria-five-years-later/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/20/hurricane-maria-five-years-later/ |
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has been at loggerheads with leaders of the northern Tigray region since 2020. Their forces fought each other for more than 16 months before a truce was declared in March, then in August the two sides accused each other of staging fresh attacks. A United Nations human rights panel has reported evidence of widespread abuses. The conflict has pushed millions of people into hunger and tarnished Abiy’s once-illustrious reputation as a Nobel laureate. The nation’s misery has been compounded by the worst drought in four decades and soaring prices of grain and fuel. The authorities are also contending with political violence in the center of the country, a territorial dispute with Sudan and attacks by al-Qaeda-linked militants.
Abiy started with a bang when he became Ethiopia’s prime minister in 2018. He scrapped bans on opposition and rebel groups, purged allegedly corrupt officials and ended two decades of acrimony with neighboring Eritrea, an initiative that won him the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize. He also welcomed foreign capital to maintain momentum in one of the world’s fastest-expanding economies, and vowed to quell civil unrest. But he struggled to contain ethnic tensions and his attempts to sideline the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, the nation’s pre-eminent power broker for decades, led to civil war. The conflict stalled the planned privatization of key telecommunications assets and other economic reforms, and prompted the US government to impose sanctions on Ethiopia and withdraw its duty-free market access.
Abiy set about consolidating power under his newly formed Prosperity Party after taking office. This meant confronting the TPLF, which had dominated the ruling coalition since a Marxist regime was overthrown in 1991 and continued to govern the Tigray region. The TPLF refused to fall into line. Its leaders ignored a government directive to postpone legislative elections in Tigray because of the pandemic, and the federal parliament retaliated by halting direct budget support to the region. Abiy ordered a military incursion into Tigray in November 2020 after accusing forces loyal to the TPLF of attacking a military base to steal weapons. The TPLF said its raid was a preemptive strike because federal troops were preparing to attack. The government eventually gained the upper hand and the rebels withdrew to within Tigray’s borders in December 2021. The government continued air strikes on Tigray and fighting continued in the neighboring Amhara and Afar regions before the truce was declared. In September this year, the TPLF accused federal forces and allied troops from neighboring Eritrea of starting a new offensive in four areas in northern Tigray, raising fears of a resumption of all-out war.
The government hasn’t disclosed casualties and access to the conflict zones was restricted, but there are fears that tens of thousands of people have died due to fighting, hunger and a lack of medical care. The United Nations estimated in September that the war, and a drought in eastern Ethiopia, had left about 20 million people in need of aid. The situation was particularly dire in Tigray and Afar, where malnutrition and food insecurity were rife. The government has rejected allegations from civil rights groups that it obstructed efforts to dispense aid or that its forces were party to widespread human rights violations. The UN expert panel in September reported that all sides in the fighting have likely committed abuses such as extra-judicial killings and rape. It said that there were “reasonable grounds to believe” that in some cases, the violations amounted to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The government has accused members of the Oromo Liberation Army, which has aligned itself to the TPLF and has been campaigning for greater regional autonomy, of killing hundreds of civilians and deployed the army to avert further violence. The group, which controls a number of towns and villages in the central Oromia region, in turn alleges that the federal police have been targeting and killing ethnic Oromos and Nuers. Abiy has also fallen out with Fano, an ethnic Amhara group that fought alongside federal forces against the Tigrayans and opposed the truce because it wanted an outright victory and uncontested rights to disputed territory. Ethiopia and Sudan are meanwhile at loggerheads over the rights to a swathe of fertile land along their border. Al-Shabaab, a Somalia-based Islamist group that’s linked to al-Qaeda and is seeking to expand its influence in the Horn of Africa, also staged an attack in Ethiopian territory in July 2022.
Africa’s oldest nation-state, Ethiopia has long been plagued by discord among its more than 80 ethnic groups. The country was an absolute monarchy until the 1974 socialist revolution that deposed Emperor Haile Selassie. It became a multiethnic federation in 1991, when a TPLF-led alliance of rebels overthrew the Marxist military regime that followed Selassie. The Tigrayans, though comprising just 6% of the population, came to dominate national politics. After failing to quell three years of violent protests over the marginalization of other, bigger communities, including the Oromo and Amhara, Hailemariam Desalegn quit as prime minister in 2018. The then-ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front named Abiy, an Oromo, as his successor. Abiy’s party won a decisive majority in mid-2021 elections.
Ethiopia’s $105 billion economy expanded by an average of more than 7% annually between 2018 -- the year Abiy took power -- and 2021, but the International Monetary Fund sees the growth rate slowing to less than 4% in 2022. With its finances under strain, the government announced in 2021 that it wants to restructure its $28.4 billion of external debt. But the US has urged multilateral lenders to halt their engagement with Abiy’s administration, and a block on their funding could derail the debt overhaul. The IMF also has yet to initiate a new program for Ethiopia -- a key requirement for debt restructuring -- after the previous one lapsed without any money being disbursed. Ethiopia’s central bank, meanwhile, has tightened currency controls. | 2022-09-20T08:07:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Conflict Testing Ethiopia’s Nobel-Winning Leader - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-conflict-testing-ethiopias-nobel-winning-leader/2022/09/20/4e4d5668-38ba-11ed-b8af-0a04e5dc3db6_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-conflict-testing-ethiopias-nobel-winning-leader/2022/09/20/4e4d5668-38ba-11ed-b8af-0a04e5dc3db6_story.html |
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has been at loggerheads with leaders of the northern Tigray region since 2020. Their forces fought each other for more than 16 months before a truce was declared in March, but tensions lingered and in August the two sides accused each other of staging fresh attacks. The conflict has pushed millions of people into hunger and soured Abiy’s once-illustrious reputation. The nation’s misery has been compounded by the worst drought in four decades and soaring prices of grain and fuel. The authorities are also contending with political violence in the center of the country, a territorial dispute with Sudan and attacks by al-Qaeda-linked militants. | 2022-09-20T08:07:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Conflict Testing Ethiopia’s Nobel-Winning Leader - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-conflict-testing-ethiopias-nobel-winning-leader/2022/09/20/edd1b03e-38b1-11ed-b8af-0a04e5dc3db6_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-conflict-testing-ethiopias-nobel-winning-leader/2022/09/20/edd1b03e-38b1-11ed-b8af-0a04e5dc3db6_story.html |
PHILADELPHIA — Jalen Hurts had 301 total yards in the first half in the breakout game of his young career, finishing with three total touchdowns as he led the Philadelphia Eagles to a 24-7 win over the Minnesota Vikings.
ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — Josh Allen threw four touchdown passes, including three to Stefon Diggs, and the Buffalo Bills rolled to a 41-7 win over the Tennessee Titans.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Chiefs linebacker Willie Gay was suspended by the NFL for four games for violating its personal conduct policy.
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — The Houston Astros clinched their fifth AL West title in six years, getting a leadoff home run from Jose Altuve in a 4-0 victory over the Tampa Bay Rays.
MILWAUKEE — Max Scherzer was pulled from his 200th win with a perfect game intact, and the New York Mets clinched their first playoff berth in six years by beating the Milwaukee Brewers 7-2. | 2022-09-20T08:07:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Monday's Sports In Brief - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mondays-sports-in-brief/2022/09/20/55191926-38b2-11ed-b8af-0a04e5dc3db6_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mondays-sports-in-brief/2022/09/20/55191926-38b2-11ed-b8af-0a04e5dc3db6_story.html |
Posters of Palestinian martyrs are seen on a wall in Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank on Sept. 16. (Corinna Kern for The Washington Post)
JENIN REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank — It is just after midnight. Young men gear up in black shirts and black face masks, tie ribbons with militant group insignia around their foreheads, and parade their weapons through the narrow streets.
Israeli officials fear that the black-market AK-47s, pistols, Kalashnikovs and M16s on display in the Jenin refugee camp will be directed at Israelis during the Jewish holidays that begin next week, as they brace for a new chapter of violent Palestinian resistance. Expectations of the passing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas — the deeply unpopular, heavy-smoking 86-year-old autocrat who is believed to be in ill health — have already sparked a bloodier social order in this occupied city.
In Abbas’s wake, “there will be fauda” — “chaos” in Arabic — said Mohammad Sabbagh, head of the People’s Services Committee of the Jenin refugee camp.
“This is the beginning,” he said.
Thousands of young people in Jenin are on Israel’s terrorism watch list, making them ineligible for work permits in Israel that would allow them to make a living. And they have watched as Israeli raids have killed dozens of noncombatants in recent months, already making 2022 the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since 2015. Poverty and fury have made the camp a hotbed of militancy.
Abbas’s strategy of lobbying the United Nations to condemn the Israeli occupation — instead of taking up arms against it — has long been dismissed here. Few said they would be paying attention to his speech at the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Friday.
Sabbagh has seen the evolution of the local youth movement firsthand. During the first intifada, or popular Palestinian uprising, from 1987 to 1993, he fatally stabbed an Israeli soldier and later served 23 years in an Israeli prison. After his release, he watched as younger neighbors splintered off into smaller groups and increasingly abandoned the classic weapon of choice — the knife — in favor of the gun.
The new generation, Sabbagh said as he paused to shake hands with camp residents, is trying to ensure that the despised national government is replaced by local militias, which will measure their legitimacy in guns rather than ballots.
“We may soon reach a situation where not one youth will stay at home; they will all be out clashing with soldiers in the streets,” said Nasser al-Sadi, 27, an unemployed camp resident.
Fifty-six percent of Palestinians support armed attacks against Israelis, and the same proportion expect Jenin’s armed resistance to spread throughout the West Bank, according to a June poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research.
Abbas’s Palestinian Authority (PA), founded in 1993 as a five-year interim government to usher in the establishment of a Palestinian state, will turn 30 next year. It has not held elections since 2006, and an independent Palestine is nowhere on the horizon. In April 2021, Abbas canceled a highly anticipated round of elections after polling showed his Fatah party could lose out to its Islamist rival, Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip.
As Abbas remains in office and the influence of his government fades, Jenin has emerged as a key flash point in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In March, Israel launched the “Break the Wave” military operation in the West Bank after the deadliest string of Palestinian terrorist attacks in years, a number of them originating in Jenin. Young militants here have responded by engaging in gun battles with Israeli soldiers and shooting at civilians near border areas.
Members of Islamic Jihad use M16s or Kalashnikovs, gifted to them in return for joining the group, which fought a three-day battle with Israel in Gaza last month. But Israeli security analysts also report a spike in young people with no militant affiliations using the “Carlo” submachine gun, a cheap imitation of the Carl Gustaf rifle developed in Sweden in the 1940s.
The gun entered the criminal scene during the first intifada in the early 2000s and has since made its way to the West Bank, where it is assembled with spare car parts, scrap metal and other makeshift materials in workshops across the region’s ungoverned areas in the far north and far south. A Carlo can cost less than $1,000 (M16s run about $20,000).
Israel is struggling to keep the arms buildup in check. This year, the Israeli army has seized more than 300 weapons — including pistols, Kalashnikovs and M16s — along the Jordanian and Egyptian borders, nearly double the rate in 2021. It has also confiscated 160 guns within the West Bank, including AK-47s and Tavors — the standard-issue Israeli military weapons — which had mostly been stolen from Israeli soldiers.
A significant number of arms have also been flowing in from Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed group in Lebanon, according to a senior Israeli military official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive security situation. “The PA have the means to deal with these weapons, but not the will,” leaving Israel to pick up the slack, he said.
With the gun market booming, the near-nightly gunfights between Jenin’s young militants and Israeli soldiers have turned increasingly lethal.
Earlier this month, hundreds of young men, carrying guns and explosives, turned out to protest the demolition of the home of Raed Hazem, who fatally shot three Israelis at a Tel Aviv bar in the spring before being killed by security forces. A 29-year-old resident was shot dead by Israeli soldiers while live-streaming the clashes on TikTok; 16 others were injured, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
Last Wednesday, two Palestinian gunmen from Kafr Dan, a village northwest of Jenin, used a Carlo and another improvised gun to fatally shoot an Israeli soldier at al-Jalama crossing. The men, one of them a PA security official, were killed in the subsequent shootout. The Israeli military shuttered Jalama for four days, halted work permits for Kafr Dan residents and began debating a wider operation in Jenin.
Retired colonel Miri Eisin, a former senior intelligence officer in the Israeli army, said the phenomenon of “hybrid” militants, inspired by and only partially affiliated with organized groups like Islamic Jihad, poses a challenge for Israel’s army. The members of this new youth movement, she said, “are young, angry, unemployed members of Palestinian gangs, with no hierarchy — somewhere in between lone wolves and terror cells.”
In recent years, the gangs have rebranded themselves as “battalions.” The “Jenin Battalion” saw recruiting momentum after a 2021 prison break by six Palestinian men with family ties to Jenin, and has served as a model for similar “battalions” in Nablus, Tulkarm, Bethlehem and other West Bank towns, Eisin said.
Mansour al-Saadi, the deputy governor of Jenin, said the Palestinian Authority lacks the political will and resources to rein in the violence.
“We see some who call themselves Fatah in the morning and Islamic Jihad in the evening,” Saadi said.
Part of the problem, Saadi said, is that the Palestinian Authority is headquartered 60 miles away, in Ramallah, where residents often have more direct contact with the Israelis living on the other side of the border wall. In Jenin, most young men are isolated, stuck at home with few economic prospects.
Ahmad Qassem, a 24-year-old camp resident, hasn’t been able to find work since finishing ninth grade, his last year of school. He was recently released from an Israeli prison after a two-year administrative detention, during which he was never charged or granted a trial.
Behind bars, Qassem said he had a realization: “Twenty years ago, we made peace with Israel, but they don’t respect any of it.”
“So, we’re done,” he said. “We want destruction.”
Mohammed Najib contributed to this report. | 2022-09-20T08:07:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Palestinians in Jenin arm themselves for violent resistance - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/20/israel-palestine-jenin-west-bank/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/20/israel-palestine-jenin-west-bank/ |
When it came to her image, Queen Elizabeth ruled until the end
The monarch we’ll remember is both real and imagined, thanks to pop culture, palace PR and the woman herself
Royal Navy sailors walk with the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II as it travels from Westminster Abbey to Wellington Arch in London on Monday. (Odd Andersen/AFP/Getty Images)
The state funeral for Queen Elizabeth II on Monday was a solemn, spiritually grounded affair. From the Anglican service at Westminster Abbey to the procession to Wellington Arch and eventual journey to St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, the six-hour public commemorations were both simple and spectacular, befitting a woman who came to embody her own unique kind of renown.
The United Kingdom’s longest-reigning monarch was sincerely beloved, to which “the Queue” — the thousands of people who waited for up to 25 hours to express their grief and gratitude at London’s Westminster Hall — movingly attested. Meanwhile, the nearly nonstop news coverage that attended the 10 days between her death on Sept. 8 and Monday’s rites and rituals was reminiscent of the kind of obsessive attention paid to the passing of Elvis Presley or Marilyn Monroe — a nod to the pop culture icon the queen warily became.
Queen Elizabeth became a public figure at a young age: Her coronation, at 27, brought a welcome gust of glamour to the dreary rubble of postwar Britain, where her wedding to Prince Philip and the birth of their first child, Charles, had already been the subjects of collective fascination. Since her 20s, she’s been fodder for both adoration and crass exploitation, reflected in the steady market for cups, plates and queen-adjacent collectibles.
Despite her seeming ubiquity, for much of her reign the queen was afforded a level of unheard-of privacy. The contours of her official and personal lives were meticulously shaped within a now obsolete one-way media universe, which dovetailed perfectly with the priorities of a royal family whose public-facing persona was key to preserving its legitimacy, even as the trappings of global empire, fusty social hierarchies and economic caste were falling away. (Of all the portraits made of the queen, the most scathing might be Karl Lohnes’s limited-edition print “It’s All Mine Now, ’53,” at one point sold by the hip home furnishings outlet CB2.)
In America, it’s often been said that movie stars are the closest thing we have to royalty; with the onset of 24/7 news cycles, the infotainment-industrial complex and the tabloidization of modern life, it became clear that the royals themselves were destined to morph from empyrean aristocrats to celebrities, earning their very own vertical on People.com.
As technologies and audience expectations changed, the queen proved to be something of a late adopter: Her obliviousness to, and begrudging acceptance of, the new realities were the dramatic crux of Peter Morgan’s 2006 drama “The Queen,” starring Helen Mirren. The plot turns on the 1997 death of Diana, the queen’s former daughter-in-law and “the people’s princess,” whose untimely demise led to an outpouring of public grief that Elizabeth initially underestimated. The film’s dramatic tension lies in whether the queen will remain a distant, emotionally detached figure or bend to the demands of relatability (spoiler alert: she bends).
By the time Morgan began producing the Netflix series “The Crown” in 2016, the ground under Her Majesty’s feet had shifted even more seismically. Buckingham Palace was forced to confront an onslaught of negative press, such as stories involving Prince Andrew’s friendship with Jeffrey Epstein and increasingly vocal criticism of the family’s disproportionate wealth and ties to Britain’s ruinous colonial legacy. The queen accommodated yet again, often with a twinkle in her eye, such as when she helped open the 2012 Summer Olympics by appearing in a slyly amusing skit with Daniel Craig as James Bond. By now celebrity itself had morphed into a new form of radical transparency, with “unscripted” viral moments and unfiltered access the new coin of an ever-evolving realm. Once, the fairy tale might have been enough; now, the queen’s subjects — her audience — wanted all the tea.
While the queen’s grandson, Prince Harry, and his wife, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, sat down with Oprah Winfrey in an effort to reclaim their narrative, the queen maintained her careful balance of concealment and legibility. (She always made sure to wear colors bright enough that she could be espied in a crowd.) Until the end, when the occasion called for it, she proved willing to puncture the veil of her scrupulously tended inscrutability — if not spilling the tea with Oprah, at least taking a tasteful drop with Paddington Bear during her Platinum Jubilee.
When most of us tuned in to Queen Elizabeth’s funeral on Monday, we were saying goodbye to a character both real and imagined: an amalgam of Hollywood myth, romantic fantasy, palace PR and the redoubtable sovereign herself. In their grandeur and intimacy, ethereal transcendence and military precision, the queen’s funeral and homegoing to Windsor were suffused with the dignity and sense of duty befitting a leader who embodied both for almost a century. And they were as multifaceted and contradictory as the queen’s peculiar kind of fame — one that was thrust upon her, one that she learned and relearned how to manage, and one that she eventually came to cultivate with such skill.
The unexpected addition of a spider to the proceedings notwithstanding, we shouldn’t be surprised that the queen’s final ceremonies were executed so flawlessly. She helped plan them, leaving us with a last act of fan service from a woman who became a reluctant but surpassingly gifted master of the form. | 2022-09-20T09:21:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | When it came to her image, Queen Elizabeth ruled until the end - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/09/20/queen-onscreen-image-funeral/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/09/20/queen-onscreen-image-funeral/ |
Lyric Li
Volunteers in PPE deliver boxes of vegetables in Guiyang, China, on Sept. 12. (VCG/Getty Images via Bloomberg)
In democratic countries, it would have had all the makings of a political crisis for senior leaders: A horrifying and preventable loss of life; a direct line from the disaster to national-level policies; a looming reelection.
In China, it’s only a blip for President Xi Jinping, as he prepares for a historic third term.
The deadly crash of a bus full of people heading for coronavirus quarantine over the weekend underscored the extent to which Xi has safeguarded his reign. After crackdowns on political dissent, the chances are vanishingly slim that this incident — or any others — could prompt organized protests against his rule.
“It is very difficult for public discontent to put pressure on Xi Jinping,” said Wang Hsin-hsien, a professor of East-Asian Studies at National Chengchi University in Taipei. “The Communist Party is very skilled in handling this kind of situation.”
The bus crashed into a ditch around 2:40 a.m. Sunday, as it rushed 45 Guiyang residents deemed close contacts of coronavirus patients to a quarantine center some 180 miles away. Twenty-seven people on board died.
The tragedy struck a nerve with the public, unleashing widespread anger and grief, possibly in part because it could have happened anywhere in China. Such late-night transfers have been common throughout the pandemic, as local officials struggled to meet deadlines to eradicate outbreaks.
“In fact, I have been on a late-night bus several times this year,” began one Weibo post by an anonymous woman in Shanghai, where residents endured a traumatic two-month lockdown this year, with many people bused into quarantine centers.
Cutting corners on safety to stamp out the virus has long been tacitly accepted by Beijing as long as public scandals were avoided, with Xi’s government making it clear the priority was stopping the coronavirus in its tracks.
Following the Guiyang crash, even usually pro-government commentators, like Hu Xijin, the hawkish former editor in chief of state-run newspaper Global Times, found it hard to simply label it a traffic incident, and called for a review of local pandemic-control policies.
On Tuesday, the public anger was largely channeled toward the city government in Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou province, despite its pandemic approach being far from unique in the country. Criticism of the central government’s policies was broadly censored on Chinese social media.
“There’s a lot of public criticism of zero-covid, but you don’t see this translate into significant criticism of Xi Jinping from within the system,” said Vincent Brussee, an analyst at the Mercator Institute for China Studies, of the bus crash backlash.
In response to the crash, the Guizhou government announced Monday that three officials in Guiyang have been suspended and are under investigation. They were Zhu Gang, head of the city’s Yunyan district, Song Chengqiang, head of Yunyan district’s quarantine transfers, and a senior police official in the district.
Scholars said that Xi’s government was unlikely to back down from its “dynamic covid zero” approach for now, which Beijing has declared superior and more humane than the U.S. strategy of allowing the virus to circulate. China’s central government has repeatedly blamed deaths and suffering from the lockdowns on poor execution by local officials, while calling the overall strategy correct.
Despite the public dissatisfaction, organized resistance is unlikely, in part because Xi ordered a crackdown on political activists soon after he came to power in 2012. Many of the Chinese Communist Party’s most outspoken critics were imprisoned or otherwise silenced.
Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute at the University of London, said Xi had enjoyed broad grass-roots popularity at home until this year, when protracted lockdowns became an increasingly stark contrast to the loosening of controls in other countries. But he said other officials were unlikely to challenge Xi because of it.
“I would go as far as to say that if China were to have a genuine open and fair election last year, Xi would have won with a landslide. Not any more,” he said. “Be that as it may, the drop in Xi’s popularity cannot change the fact that Xi now has the party machinery under his control.”
The pandemic has also provided Chinese authorities with practical tools to prevent unauthorized gatherings, as reflected earlier this year in Zhengzhou when angry customers tried to demand local banks return their deposits. Protesters reported their coronavirus-tracking health codes suddenly turned red, barring their entry into public spaces.
Beijing tightened entry rules this month, amid a spate of new outbreaks, requiring a week of quarantine for those arriving from anywhere in the country with even a single coronavirus case.
Shanghai’s covid siege: Food shortages, talking robots, starving animals
On Chinese social media, apparent veiled criticisms of Xi and his covid policies circulated, though some were quickly censored, and others were worded ambiguously.
“As expected, it’s the lowest-level workers who are pulled out to take responsibility. Even if you don’t stand trial while you are alive, you will be nailed to the pillar of shame in history," Yi Shenghua, a Beijing-based lawyer, wrote on Weibo about the Guiyang crash, without specifying whom he was referring to.
In one censored post on WeChat posted on Sunday, a historian surnamed Zhao wrote a poem about an emperor whose subjects were being exploited to death by officials.
On Sunday, Guiyang officials had publicly apologized for the crash announced an investigation, and promised to prevent such accidents in the future. But they said they would continue the transfers of quarantine subjects. On Monday evening, according to an official post online, the city’s party secretary told officials that there was no room for them to slack in epidemic control.
Chiang reported from Taipei, Taiwan, and Li from Seoul. Pei-Lin Wu in Taipei contributed to this report. | 2022-09-20T09:38:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | China bus crash sparks anger against local covid policies, officials - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/20/china-guizhou-bus-crash-covid/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/20/china-guizhou-bus-crash-covid/ |
Megan Piphus Peace, who until last month was working as a real estate agent, joined the cast of the longtime children’s show
Megan Piphus Peace with her “Sesame Street” character, Gabrielle. (Courtesy of Sesame Workshop)
She appeared on “The Tonight Show” in 2012, and “America’s Got Talent” in 2013. After graduating from Vanderbilt in 2014 with a degree in economics and a masters of science in finance the following year, she worked full-time in real estate for seven years, all the while puppeteering on the side.
After toiling for years, immigrant artist brothers in their 80s find new success | 2022-09-20T10:17:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Megan Piphus Peace is Sesame Street's first Black puppeteer - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/09/20/puppeteer-sesamestreet-megan-piphus-peace/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/09/20/puppeteer-sesamestreet-megan-piphus-peace/ |
Epic queue for Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin had a quarter-million people
People queue to pay their respects to the late Queen Elizabeth II during the lying-in-state at Westminster Hall, in London on Sept. 17. (Felipe Dana/AP)
LONDON — About a quarter of a million people saw Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin as she lay in state for four days at Westminster Hall in central London, according to preliminary figures released by the British government.
Members of the public wanting to pay their final respects after the queen’s death on Sept. 8 had to stand in a line — or queue — that grew so long over four days that wait times reached 24 hours at one point. The line even had to be paused for a while and then there was a queue for the queue.
Initial estimates suggest that more than 250,000 people “went through Parliament” to see the queen’s coffin, British Culture Secretary Michelle Donelan told U.K. broadcasters early Tuesday. While some who entered Westminster Hall were able to bypass the queue — including lawmakers and their guests, accredited journalists and foreign dignitaries invited to the queen’s funeral — most would have had to queue, in many cases overnight.
If confirmed, the figure would be significantly lower than estimates floated by some officials earlier. Reuters reported Thursday that a total of about 750,000 people were expected to file past the queen’s coffin in Westminster Hall.
Kylie Galloway, a spokeswoman for the Guinness World Records, told The Washington Post in an email that the world-records organization had made contact with the British government to help corroborate numbers. “We cannot confirm any record just yet, but we are looking into it,” she said. In a previous post, Guinness said that the line could “well be part of a record-breaking event.”
Estimating crowd sizes — whether at protests, political rallies or in queues — is a difficult and often contentious exercise that can have political implications if officials want to downplay or exaggerate turnout.
The 10-day national mourning period for the queen, which ended Monday in an elaborate state funeral at Westminster Abbey, was full of eye-catching displays of the monarchy’s power. But the queue was a messy, funny and uniquely human moment amid all the rehearsed pageantry. Soccer star David Beckham was in the queue for 13 hours, and told Good Morning America how he survived the ordeal with Pringles, sherbet lemons, coffee, sandwiches and doughnuts. King Charles III and Prince William stopped by unexpectedly on Sunday to greet well-wishers.
Some mourners endured 24-hour wait times. There were hardships for some — the London Ambulance Service said it treated 2,012 patients in the queue, with 240 taken to hospital — as temperatures plunged on many nights and people huddled under blankets and tents to stay warm.
The last group of mourners who emerged from their viewing around 6.30 a.m. on Monday morning had queued, and queued, and queued over night.
The Washington Post spoke to the first and last people in the queue. Vanessa Nanthakumaran, an administrative assistant and the very first person in the queue, arrived on Monday morning and camped outside for two nights. Like many, she said she was there “to be part of history.”
For Christina Heerey, the last person in the queue, it was so important to see the queen lying in state that she did it twice.
During the four-days that began Wednesday at 5 p.m. and ended Monday at 6:30 a.m., the queue became an object of fascination both at home and abroad, with a dedicated government tracker and parody social media accounts.
Some nicknamed the queue “the Elizabeth line,” which is also the name of a new subway line. The queue for the queue (yes, there was one) was dubbed QEII, a playful double entendre for the line and the queen.
For many, it was a surprisingly joyful affair, with people of all ages and nationalities lining up, many of whom had a connection with the queen.
Pluck a random person from the crowd, as Australia Broadcasting Company’s correspondent Barbara Miller did — live on air — and you may have found yourself talking to the queen’s former representative in Parliament, the so-called Black Rod, David Leaky, who spent years helping to plan the queen’s funeral. (Miller hilariously owned her ignorance before turning the conversation into a fascinating chat about Leakey’s relationship with the queen and his thoughts on the new king’s frustration with a leaky pen.)
David Hatchett, 44, from east London, was among the last to see the queen’s coffin. He said that copious amounts of tea helped him get through his nine-hour ordeal, and the small talk with new friends — albeit in a very British kind of way.
He said there was a lot of “politely talking to people you don’t really know … We exchanged anecdotes, understood people’s motives for wanting to be there, there was a camaraderie about it. It’s not like we shared our whole life stories though,” he added.
He said that seeing the “queen’s coffin, the crown jewels on top, it was a touching moment. Being one or two meters away from the queen, it’s a strange concept to comes to terms with.” | 2022-09-20T10:35:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Britain's queue for Queen Elizabeth II's coffin had 250,000 people - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/20/queen-elizabeth-coffin-queue-size/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/20/queen-elizabeth-coffin-queue-size/ |
Quarterback Tua Tagovailoa looks to throw in the Dolphins' comeback victory Sunday at Baltimore. (Rob Carr/Getty Images)
BALTIMORE — It has been a trying year for the Miami Dolphins, from football-related turmoil to real-life tragedy. Yet two games into their season, they suddenly are grabbing attention for on-field exploits. It’s nothing that merits comparisons to the Don Shula, Bob Griese and Dan Marino glory days, at least not yet. But maybe, just maybe, the Dolphins are relevant again.
They improved to 2-0 with a 42-38 triumph here Sunday over the Baltimore Ravens. Quarterback Tua Tagovailoa shelved the talk about him being a bust with a dazzling 469-yard, six-touchdown passing show. Wide receivers Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle were virtually unstoppable. Coach Mike McDaniel said he stopped worrying about the outcome when the Dolphins trailed by three touchdowns at halftime and focused instead on the process — and then he watched Tagovailoa throw four touchdown passes in the fourth quarter.
“I feel like as a team in the second half, we really showed who we were, who the Miami Dolphins were,” Hill said.
The Dolphins have not mattered much for quite some time. They last reached the playoffs in the 2016 season. They last won a postseason game in December 2000. Their two Super Bowl titles in the 1972 and ’73 seasons are nearly a half-century old.
In January, the Dolphins fired Brian Flores as their coach after a second straight winning season. Flores filed a lawsuit against the NFL and its teams in February, accusing them of racial discrimination. He alleged in the lawsuit that Dolphins owner Stephen Ross had offered him $100,000 per loss in 2019 in a failed effort to secure the top pick in the 2020 NFL draft. Flores also accused Ross and the Dolphins of tampering with a prominent NFL quarterback under contract to another team.
In late August, respected Dolphins communications executive Jason Jenkins died suddenly from a blood clot as the team prepared for a preseason game. He was 47. Colleagues and friends expressed shock and sadness, and the Ravens held a moment of silence in the press box before Sunday’s game.
I know he has the best seat in the house tonight in Glory but I had to make sure my guy was set up with a seat right next to me for the opener! Love you Jenk! pic.twitter.com/nCzgD2Iiku
— Ted Crews (@Ted_Crews) September 15, 2022
“I just didn’t care about the outcome of the game at that point,” McDaniel said. “At halftime … it was a huge opportunity for us to show who we are and play good football for each other.”
McDaniel told his players Saturday night that if they fell behind Sunday, it would represent a chance for them to demonstrate their resilience. “And apparently,” he said, “they just took me way too literal.”
These new-look Dolphins feature an improved version of Tagovailoa. He has fallen well behind the two other top quarterbacks in his 2020 draft class, the Cincinnati Bengals’ Joe Burrow and the Los Angeles Chargers’ Justin Herbert, and there was some speculation this would be a last-chance, produce-or-else season for him in South Florida, especially with Teddy Bridgewater as his backup.
Yet there was Tagovailoa on Sunday, shrugging off two interceptions and resembling the once-celebrated prospect who, while in college at Alabama, inspired “tank for Tua” talk among NFL fans.
“Now maybe Tua will finally listen to me,” McDaniel said. “What I mean by that is … it’s awesome to be critical of yourself. It is good. He has a high standard for himself. But after the first game, I just wanted to see the guy enjoy playing football and understand that, yes, you want to make the perfect read and the perfect throw every time. But who cares? If you just get better at one thing a game, you’re going to be pretty good at the end of the season. So let’s just press forward.”
“This is huge because he stopped worrying about the [previous] play,” McDaniel said. “And he went and played and took his responsibility serious to his teammates about, ‘Hey, I’m going to lead this team confidently.’… I think it was a moment that he’ll never forget, that hopefully he can use moving forward. … His teammates learned a lot about him. And I think he learned something about himself.”
It helps, of course, to have a pass-catching duo such as Hill and Waddle. This was precisely what the Dolphins had in mind when they made their blockbuster trade in March for Hill, the standout speedster for the Kansas City Chiefs, to go with Waddle, a second-year pro who was the No. 6 choice in last year’s draft. The two totaled an otherworldly 22 catches for 361 yards and four touchdowns against the Ravens.
“The second half, we came in and played the way we wanted to,” Tagovailoa said. “That’s what I’d say about that.”
But if Hill and Waddle are the Dolphins’ modern-day version of Mark Duper and Mark Clayton, they still needed their answer to Marino to get them the ball. It all works only if Tagovailoa develops into something close to the quarterback he was drafted to be.
“That last drive that we had, it really showed who he was as a leader,” Hill said, referring to the final rush down the field in Baltimore, punctuated by Tagovailoa’s seven-yard touchdown pass to Waddle with 14 seconds remaining.
Every Sunday won’t be as magical as this past one was. But the Dolphins’ season does seem to have possibilities.
“I’m always confident in what I can do, confident in myself,” Tagovailoa said. “But I think that just shows the resiliency of our team. It brings all our confidence up — confidence in one another, confidence that if the offense has its turnover, that the defense is going to get us the ball back and vice versa. So I think if you look at the big picture of it, the confidence goes up.” | 2022-09-20T10:39:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tua Tagovailoa is suddenly thriving, and the Dolphins are relevant again - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/20/tua-tagovailoa-dolphins/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/20/tua-tagovailoa-dolphins/ |
How Diego Luna brought his Star Wars character back to life in ‘Andor’
“It helped me a lot to come into this universe of Star Wars feeling kind of like I was in control,” Luna told The Washington Post in a recent interview. “It was close to what I have been doing my whole life. I was going to be a part of one film. It had a beginning and an end. My experience was going to be one.”
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The 10 Obi-Wan Kenobi moments to know before his Disney Plus return | 2022-09-20T10:48:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How Diego Luna and ‘Andor’ brought his Star Wars character back to life - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/09/20/diego-luna-andor-disney-plus/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/09/20/diego-luna-andor-disney-plus/ |
Network comedy’s best cast returns for another school year after its big night at the Emmys
Sheryl Lee Ralph as Barbara in Season 2 of “Abbott Elementary.” (Gilles Mingasson/ABC)
The mockumentary was supposed to have died sometime in the mid-2010s, when the setup seemed to have been sucked dry. But “What We Do in the Shadows” breathed new life into it in 2019 by, ironically, coating it in dust and spiderwebs; we were told by its vampires of their eternal cool and saw for ourselves how neutered and mildewy the undead actually are. The revival continues with ABC’s “Abbott Elementary,” which pulled off an even more impressive feat with its Emmy-winning debut season: making the network sitcom relevant once again. (Season 2 premieres Wednesday.)
If you’re heading into “Abbott” for the first time, it’s well worth catching up on Season 1 first. The first two episodes of the new season (the portion screened for critics) build on the character development of those 13 earlier episodes, like Janine’s will-they-or-won’t-they with Gregory and her lessons from Barbara and Melissa on how not to burn out in a caring profession. (“More turnovers than a bakery!” laments Barbara about the school’s constant churn of inexperienced instructors.) By giving the tropes of yore such a fresh update, Brunson may have forged a new classic of her own.
Abbott Elementary (30 minutes) returns Wednesday at 9 p.m. on ABC. | 2022-09-20T10:48:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ‘Abbott Elementary’ is the rare sitcom with something for everyone - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/tv/2022/09/20/abbott-elementary-season-2-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/tv/2022/09/20/abbott-elementary-season-2-review/ |
NASA achievement headlines ‘Sammies’ honors for federal workers
Federal employee of the year, Gregory Robinson. (Joshua Roberts)
Growing up, Gregory Robinson tuned into the Apollo-era moon missions like millions of Americans. Although he was strong in math and science, as one of 11 children of sharecroppers in segregated Danville, Va., “I never had a burning in my soul to join NASA.”
But after friends with internships at the agency talked about the challenges of space exploration, Robinson was intrigued. He signed-up, and “I never looked back.”
Now, Robinson is the newly minted 2022 Federal Employee of the Year,
The Partnership for Public Service will fete Robinson’s leadership as re director of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, and other winners of the Service to America Medals, a.k.a. the “Sammies,” on Tuesday evening at a Kennedy Center ceremony. This is the 21st year of the awards, dubbed the Oscars of government service and among the most coveted in federal work. Federal Employee of the Year is the top prize.
Although Robinson hasn’t looked back, his work on the Webb telescope has allowed us to look far, far away, deep into space. Orbiting 1 million miles from Earth, it is “the world’s largest, most powerful, and most complex space science telescope ever built,” according to NASA. “Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it.”
Before Webb could tackle those mysteries and before Robinson took over, it was a mystery when it would launch and how much it would cost. Webb, which started with a planned June 2014 launch and a $4.9 billion budget including five years of operation, was way behind schedule and way over budget. Its cost eventually rose to $9.7 billion.
What the project needed, said Karen Flynn, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for management, was someone who could forge success among a team of 10,000 people in 14 countries.
That someone was Robinson, who became director in 2018, and oversaw the successful launch on Christmas Day last year. He retired in July at age 62.
It “takes true leadership and vision and focus in order to be able to do that,” she said by phone. “And so that’s what I would principally say Greg brought to the team,” calling him a “truly unique world class leader.”
Flynn praised Johnson, who has two degrees from historically Black colleges and universities, plus an MBA, as “one of the most engaged leaders that we have within NASA in the area of diversity and inclusion.”
Johnson had no role models like him in STEM — science, technology, engineering and math — during his youth. Time and location matter, he likes to say, and while he was growing up in Danville, college wasn’t a priority. “For many families,” he said, “it was a heavy lift to finish high school.”
When I asked the winners what they like least about federal service, the most common answer was some version of Robinson’s complaint about “‘unnecessary’ bureaucracy, and overly complicated organizational structures.”
While Robinson’s Federal Employee of the Year prize is the highest honor, the other winners also provide important stories of feds serving the public. The Partnership cited the following honorees and their accomplishments:
• H. Clifford Lane, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is recipient of the Paul A. Volcker Career Achievement Medal because he has “had an enormous impact combating and treating infectious diseases overseas such as Ebola,” did critical HIV/AIDS research and helped set covid-19 treatment guidelines. “We are accountable to the American public and carry out our mission with that in mind …” he said by email. “In the right setting and with the right leadership and support, what one can accomplish as a federal employee is close to limitless.”
• Amanda Cohn, Anita Patel and David Fitter, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), are the recipients of the Covid-19 Response Medal, after designing and implementing distribution plans for hundreds of millions of coronavirus vaccines during the pandemic. “This work has saved hundreds of thousands of lives,” said Barbara Mahon, a CDC official with agency’s COVID-19 response team. “It’s a truly unprecedented and amazing accomplishment, and without the three of them and the teams they led, it wouldn’t have happened.”
• Krista Kinnard, Labor Department, is the recipient of the Emerging Leaders Medal for igniting a “technology transformation” that saved time and money by automating repetitive administrative procedures. With her leadership at age 34, work that previously took 40 hours was cut to less than three minutes. “I love finding creative and innovative ways to solve hard problems and serve the workers and wage earners of our country …” she said. “I truly believe that for government to be able to continue to deliver on its mission in the 21st century, we must embrace technology so that receiving government benefits is as smooth of an experience as using a food delivery app on your phone.”
• Barbara Morton, Department of Veterans Affairs, is the recipient of the Management Excellence Medal for her work in building trust among constituents and a customer-oriented culture in the department. “The fact that we collectively … have been able to move the needle on Veterans’ trust in VA is totally inspiring to me,” she said by email. “And my favorite thing is when a Veteran or family member share with me that VA is different than it used to be or from what they expected, and that they have had an incredible experience with us.”
• Hilary Ingraham, Holly Herrera and Kiera Berdinner, Department of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, are recipients of the Safety, Security and International Affairs Medal for coordinating “the largest resettlement of refugees in modern U.S. history,” by providing housing and services for more than 76,000 Afghans who fled their country last year as American forces withdrew. “The reality of this work at State is infinitely more complex, nuanced, and challenging than I could have ever imagined, but it is also incredibly rewarding,” Berdinner said. “This team is also comprised of the most dedicated, compassionate, intelligent, and mission-driven people I have ever had the pleasure of working with.”
• Cindy Newberg, Environmental Protection Agency, is the recipient of the Science, Technology and Environment Medal for her “instrumental role” in curbing the use of hydrofluorocarbons, which are major contributors to climate change. “It is easy to think of climate change and become pessimistic …” Newberg said, adding “think about the small steps you can take to start tackling one part of the problem and then think about how you can leverage that small step into an even bigger step. My career has been about starting small and, as we succeed, finding ways to do more.”
Newberg also said, “I don’t think folks realize the dedication of federal employees.”
Government work “is often invisible to the public,” said Max Stier, the partnership’s president and CEO, “but the 2022 Service to America Medal winners place the spotlight on a wide range of remarkable success stories and defy the stereotypes of those who are dedicated to serving the nation and our collective interests.” | 2022-09-20T11:05:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'Sammies' awards for federal workers honor NASA, other agency achievements - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/20/sammies-awards-federal-workers-2022/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/20/sammies-awards-federal-workers-2022/ |
Joe Borg, Alabama’s chief financial watchdog, has emerged as a captain of a state-led push to protect investors from crypto fraud
Joe Borg, one of the most aggressive crypto regulators in the country, at home in Alabama. (Julie Bennett for The Washington Post)
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — The dozy capital of a state where roughly a fifth of the population lacks internet access seems like an unlikely hub for crypto regulation. And Joe Borg is an unlikely captain of that effort.
The 69-year-old director of the Alabama Securities Commission, in the job since 1994, looks more like a small-town lawyer with his trim, white mustache and boxy suits than an enforcer canny enough to outwit a brash new breed of billionaire tech moguls.
Yet Borg, along with a handful of other state financial watchdogs, is at the vanguard of policing the trillion-dollar digital asset market, raising questions about where the industry’s Washington minders have been.
While federal regulators took no action, Borg and his counterparts in Texas, New Jersey, Kentucky and Vermont targeted the operations of two key crypto players at the heart of this summer’s crypto meltdown, Celsius and Voyager, filing cease and desist orders against them months before the self-styled crypto banks declared bankruptcy.
The state financial watchdogs also were way ahead of the feds in the summer of 2021 when they issued cease-and-desist order against BlockFi, another rapidly growing crypto bank, leading to a $100 million, first-of-its-kind settlement for securities law violations. The Securities and Exchange Commission, the federal agency most often thought of as the crypto watchdog, joined talks between the two sides only as they neared a deal, state regulators say.
Crypto lending company BlockFi to pay $100 million fine over charges it broke securities laws
Now, Borg and his fellow state regulators are working to help hundreds of thousands of Celsius and Voyager customers recoup billions of dollars worth of assets from frozen accounts. Again, federal regulators are either largely silent or late to the action. The Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation only wrote Voyager demanding it drop “false and misleading” marketing claims three weeks after it had declared bankruptcy.
“I didn’t anticipate we would end up in the driver’s seat,” said Borg’s counterpart in Texas, Joe Rotunda, the enforcement director at the Texas State Securities Board who estimates roughly 100,000 Texans invested in Celsius and Voyager. “There’s a lot of money on the table, these are very complex cases, and it would be the job of the national regulator. I don’t know why the SEC isn’t out there in these areas right now.”
SEC chair Gary Gensler rejects the notion that his agency hasn’t done enough. “We’ve worked well with the states,” Gensler said in a recent call with reporters. “I think the firms could have done a lot more to protect the public. I think the firms could do a lot more still to protect the public. And that’s why I continue to say, come in, work with us, find a path to registration, comply with the laws.”
Crypto’s frozen mystery: The fate of billions in Celsius deposits
Others say the states deserve credit, and Washington criticism, for the way crypto has been addressed. “The states were on very solid ground, acting courageously and swiftly, and the SEC should have really followed those footsteps as fast as they could,” said John Reed Stark, a crypto critic who formerly headed the SEC Office of Internet Enforcement.
Borg chalks up state regulators’ successes to a nimbleness not shared by the SEC. If the federal agency pivots at a battleship’s pace after each change of administration, “the states are kind of like PT boats that can zip in and out.” Plus, with the SEC, “there are political considerations from Congress.” Borg, whose agency is financed by industry fees, does not have that problem.
“Should they move faster? That’s not my call to make,” he said. “I can only work with them as fast as they’re willing to work with us.”
A ground-level view
On a recent weekday morning, Borg walked into the Farmers Market Cafe, a diner in downtown Montgomery, and spotted some familiar faces in the corner. The breakfast regulars gathered around the table included former state lawmakers and retired lawyers, and when Borg approached to greet them, the traces of his native Queens, N.Y., accent melted into a mellifluous Alabama drawl.
“Y’all be good,” he said, walking away. Later, chatting with one of them at the cash register, the man mentioned he had information that might be helpful for an investigation Borg was conducting unrelated to crypto. Borg told him to find time to stop by his office, a few blocks away.
Borg said the ground-up approach he and other state regulators take to monitoring the markets gives them a potential edge over their federal counterparts in spotting emerging threats in digital assets. “Chances are, from the retail market, we’re going to see it first,” he said.
That was the case back in early 2014, when Borg’s office started fielding complaints from customers of a Tokyo-based bitcoin exchange called Mt. Gox who were having trouble getting their funds from the platform. Borg said he tried to reach the administrators of the exchange, at the time the largest of its kind in the world, and they did not respond. “Those are all red flags, especially when they don’t talk to regulators,” he said.
Mt. Gox announced in early February that year that it was temporarily halting customer withdrawals to get a “clear technical view” into what it described as a programming flaw. Hours before it collapsed a few weeks later, Borg issued the first of what would become a series of warnings about the dangers of investing in crypto. “The risk of using Bitcoin may be off the charts!” he said in the alert. “When using Bitcoin for investing, it is difficult to seek any protection or recourse for losses due to fraudulent schemes.”
Looking back, he said, Mt. Gox’s implosion provided “the first wake-up call” that what was going on in the crypto world was likely going to affect mom-and-pop investors.
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Developments over the next few years confirmed the hunch, as a wave of start-ups began raising money from the public through what became known as initial coin offerings, or ICOs. The method allowed companies to avoid the rigorous disclosures the SEC requires of firms that sell stock to raise capital, even though regulators argued many were effectively doing the same thing. Others turned out to be frauds.
By 2018, coin-issuing ventures had raised $6.9 billion through ICOs. Borg, then serving as president of the North American Securities Administrators Association — the group representing state and provincial financial regulators in the United States, Canada and Mexico — launched a coordinated campaign to crack down on the offerings. “Operation Cryptosweep,” as the watchdogs dubbed it, kicked off 330 probes of ICOs, from Vancouver to Atlanta, resulting in 85 enforcement actions.
Nearly all of the projects violated the law, Borg said, because they failed to register with the SEC or state financial regulators. His argument rests on a seemingly technical matter that has taken on central significance in the debate over how the crypto economy is regulated: the legal interpretation of what counts as an investment contract.
Advocates of stricter crypto oversight point to a standard the Supreme Court established in a 1946 case involving Florida fruit. Back then, a businessman named William John Howey sold parcels in citrus groves he owned outside Orlando to investors on the understanding he would lease the land back from them, grow and sell the produce, then share the profits.
The court found the arrangement was legally equivalent to a stock sale, and Howey violated securities law by not registering it with the SEC. The decision gave rise to what became known as the Howey test, handing securities regulators jurisdiction over any deal in which investors pool money in a project managed by others with the expectation of a profit.
Crypto entrepreneurs who argue they are developing breakthrough technology to fundamentally transform the financial system bristle at the suggestion they are hawking the digital version of stakes in a citrus farm. But Borg and his counterparts contend most crypto projects meet the definition, including the lending platforms they began raising alarms about last year, starting with BlockFi. The company was not registered as an investment company or a bank, though it was offering retail customers annual yields as high 9.25 percent on deposited crypto the firm then lent to institutional traders willing to pay a premium for it.
“That’s no different from a security,” Borg said. More ominously, with no regulators peering into the company’s books, it was not clear to whom the firm was lending, on what terms, and what collateral it held to back up customer deposits in the event it ran into trouble. BlockFi declined to comment for this story.
Borg had seen it before. He first made his name as a regulator going after another financial juggernaut that recruited amateur investors with promises of outsize returns. In 1995, he was a year into the job as Alabama’s top financial cop when the office started getting calls from locals with stories about getting defrauded by penny-stock peddlers at a firm called Stratton Oakmont, later memorialized in “The Wolf of Wall Street.”
The operation functioned by paying brokers commissions to cold-call people across the country and sell them shares in all-but-worthless companies. That gave states securities regulators jurisdiction over what turned out to be a corner of the financial market that was too lightly overseen by the SEC. Borg stepped in, spearheading the formation of the multistate task force that ultimately shut the firm down.
Like Stratton Oakmont chief executive Jordan Belfort (played by Leonardo DiCaprio in the Hollywood version), Borg hails from Queens and demonstrated an entrepreneurial instinct early. Born to Maltese immigrants who fled the tiny European island in the wake of World War II, he supported himself through City College and Hofstra Law School with a floor-cleaning business. But he also pursued public service, landing an internship in law school with New York attorney general Louis Lefkowitz, a glad-handing moderate Republican who became known as “the people’s lawyer” and held the job for a record 22 years.
After law school, Borg joined a small law firm in Manhattan. One client, a truck axel manufacturer, was based in Montgomery, bringing Borg south on work trips. When he realized he could afford both a place on nearby Lake Martin and another on the Gulf Coast for the cost of his New York rent, he moved down for good in 1977 and went to work for the business.
Borg did another in-house stint, for an Alabama bank, then joined a local law firm, at one point securing a settlement for a couple who lost money investing with a Stratton Oakmont spinoff called Biltmore Securities. His performance in that case caught the eye of state authorities looking to breathe new life into Alabama’s financial watchdog, and they convinced Borg to take the challenge.
Borg set about building momentum and concentrating power. By enforcing licensing requirements on financial professionals, he grew the office’s dedicated funding stream, so it no longer needed appropriations from the state legislature. Successful prosecutions of fraudsters brought in more money, and good press, which helped keep elected officials from meddling. Wins begot wins: He added staff, including veteran federal prosecutors, and hashed out arrangements with law enforcement allowing his agency to bring its own criminal cases in court, an unusual privilege.
The regulator last year returned roughly $14 million to the state’s general fund and slightly more in restitution to victims of financial crimes. And Borg now counts 62 employees in his office, up from 13 when he arrived. For comparison, roughly 4,500 people show up to work at the SEC every day.
Rotunda’s agency in Texas, meanwhile, counts 76 staffers. Yet only 29 of them work in enforcement, meaning he has roughly one person policing financial crime for every 1 million people in his state. For the last five years, those regulators have been disproportionately focused on crypto. It has been “the single biggest product subject to investigation by our agency” in that period, Rotunda said. “I’ve been in securities regulation for 17 years, and I’ve never seen anything like it.”
For Rotunda, the ability of the crypto lending platforms to spread rapidly into every corner of the state hit home when his office began probing them, and he learned one of his staffers had invested with Celsius. He hived off the employee from the investigation, but the discovery underlined the stakes. “If you can get a securities regulator to invest in something like this, you can really get anybody,” he said.
Once BlockFi reached its settlement deal in February, with a roster that had grown to include 32 states and the SEC, Celsius and Voyager seemed bound to follow suit. “There was discussion along that line,” Borg said. “The impression we got from them and their lawyers was, ‘Let’s see how we can go about getting this settled.’”
Instead, in May, the collapse of the TerraUSD stablecoin sparked a wider crypto market crash. Both Celsius and Voyager maintained customer deposits were safe as fallout from the downturn spread. But the reckoning revealed the companies had lent too much to institutional borrowers while maintaining too little collateral to back it up. Both froze accounts and then declared bankruptcy in July in the face of a wave of customer demands for withdrawals.
Now, the states are getting creative to secure relief for devastated depositors. Texas regulators have officially joined the bankruptcy proceedings for both companies, a move Rotunda said gives his office an opportunity to advocate in the process. And Borg said he is exploring the possibility that customers could be eligible for payouts from a finance industry-funded nonprofit that helped victims of the Bernie Madoff fraud.
The state regulators are also investigating the twin collapses to reconstruct precisely what happened and who may need to be held accountable. They hold a weekly conference call, typically on Thursdays, to coordinate efforts.
The state watchdogs are also looking into other crypto companies, probes they so far cannot discuss. Borg may not see all of them through. He said he is planning to retire next year and hand the reins over to his chief deputy, Amanda Senn. In the meantime, he said the market downturn “may be the shakeout that brings a better system down the road, but a lot of folks are going to get hurt.” | 2022-09-20T11:09:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | States faster than the feds to regulate crypocurrency - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/20/crypto-regulation-alabama-states-feds/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/20/crypto-regulation-alabama-states-feds/ |
Losing weight could help protect your knees from arthritis
(Getty Images/Science Photo Library RF)
Weight loss may help prevent the development and progression of knee osteoarthritis by as much as 22 percent, according to research published in the journal Arthritis & Rheumatology.
That was the benefit found in study participants who lost enough weight to drop from one body mass index (BMI) category to another — from “overweight” to “healthy weight,” for instance. The study included 9,762 participants whose knees were X-rayed and tracked for four to five years.
Osteoarthritis, which affects the joints and is considered the most common type of arthritis, is often thought of as a “wear and tear” disease. It develops when the cartilage that acts as a cushion between the bones in a joint breaks down or wears away, leaving the bones to rub together and cause pain, stiffness and movement issues.
The researchers noted that even study participants who lost less weight still achieved “protection against structural degeneration of the knee.”
The benefit of weight loss was found to apply not just to those who were overweight or obese “but also in people with a BMI in the normal range,” they wrote. For example, those whose BMI dropped just one unit, to a lower number on the BMI chart (from a BMI of 19 to 18, for instance) were still about 5 percent less likely to either develop osteoarthritis or have existing osteoarthritis worsen.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 32 million U.S. adults have some type of osteoarthritis. Although the knees are the joints most often affected, osteoarthritis can develop in joints in other parts of the body as well, such as the hands, hips, neck and lower back. | 2022-09-20T11:10:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Losing weight could help protect your knees from arthritis - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/09/20/weight-loss-arthritis-knees/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/09/20/weight-loss-arthritis-knees/ |
What ‘The Woman King’ gets wrong — and right — about Dahomey’s warriors
The new film tells an embellished story of Dahomey women soldiers.
Perspective by Ana Lucia Araujo
Suzanne Preston Blier
Viola Davis attends “The Woman King” premiere during the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 9. (Unique Nicole/Getty Images)
“The Woman King,” directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood and starring Viola Davis, tells an embellished story about female soldiers from the Kingdom of Dahomey, one of the most powerful and militarized African states during the 18th and 19th centuries. The film is set in 1823, when the Kingdom of Dahomey eventually defeated the Kingdom Oyo. Despite this victory, Dahomey continued waging wars and selling its prisoners in the Atlantic slave trade until the 1860s, when the trade to Brazil and Cuba were finally banned.
Few people know that Dahomey was the first African kingdom to develop an all-female military regiment. Whereas European visitors to Dahomey called the soldiers “Amazons,” an allusion to the Greek mythological women warriors, they were locally known as Agodjie. “The Woman King” challenges western depictions of these West African women as either minor players in Atlantic history or simply savage warriors. Instead, the Hollywood movie portrays the soldiers as central historical actors who influenced political decisions and who not only fought wars side by side with men but led entire regiments.
As many motion pictures do, the film distorts and idealizes the history of Dahomey’s women warriors. They were not freedom fighters as portrayed in the movie. Rather, like other West African women, they were trying to survive in the tumultuous period of the Atlantic slave trade. Nevertheless, the film does help to dismantle some long-standing stereotypes associated with the Agodjie by restoring their agency and challenging the historical European accounts of them simply as bloody warriors.
The Kingdom of Dahomey emerged in the 17th century, but its territorial expansion began in the 18th century, a period marking the height of the Atlantic slave trade. As Dahomey and its inland capital Abomey had no exit to the sea, the kingdom’s army conquered the neighboring Kingdom of Allada in 1724, and then the Kingdom of Hueda in 1727. The conquest of Hueda gave Dahomey the control of its seaport Ouidah, the second-busiest African slave-trading port until the final ban of the Atlantic slave trade in the 1860s.
Historians disagree about when the all-female regiment was created. After the death of King Huegbadja, who ruled Dahomey between approximately 1645 and 1685, his son Akaba succeeded him on the throne. After Akaba’s death (probably in 1716), Tassi Hangbé, Akaba’s twin sister, occupied the throne for a few years until her youngest brother, Agaja, was enthroned as King of Dahomey in 1718. Therefore, the female regiment may have emerged as Hangbé’s royal guard during her short rule.
Some accounts by European visitors to Dahomey during Agaja’s reign reported the presence of armed women protecting Abomey’s palaces. Some 18th century visitors referred to royal parades with regiments of up to 500 women, while written sources report the Agodjie fighting wars later in the 19th century. At its peak, the all-female regiment had an impressive number of 8,000 warriors.
At least initially, the king of Dahomey recruited the Agodjie from royal women who were considered his wives. However, during the rule of King Gezo (1818-1859), played in the film by John Boyega, they were also recruited outside the walls of the palace. As the movie accurately portrays, the female regiment included prisoners captured during wars waged by Dahomey against its neighbors.
European enslavers and colonizers described the Agodjie as unattractive women who had to remain virgins. Indeed, chastity was expected among those considered royal wives. Many Agodjie may have remained sexually inactive during their period of service. But several did become pregnant, something the movie portrays when Nanisca (Viola Davis) becomes pregnant after being raped repeatedly while held captive by the Kingdom of Oyo. Existing sources also refer to Agodjie who became pregnant in circumstances that probably involved consensual sex. Moreover, after the end of their military service, some Agodjie married and had children as well.
As royal wives and members of the royal army, the Agodjie were trained to fight wars as well as kill and capture men, women and children to be sold into slavery in the Americas. Like most West African women during the era of the Atlantic slave trade, the Agodjie were left with little choice. Some female soldiers were war captives who were incorporated in the all-women regiment. During their service, they could capture prisoners to be sold in the slave trade or be captured and sold as enslaved people themselves.
When the French invaded Dahomey in 1890, the Agodjie still existed, but in much smaller numbers. With the rest of the Dahomean army, the female regiment fought the French invaders between 1892 and 1894.
Most of the remaining Agodjie died fighting the French. But nearly 50 women became war veterans, and several of them raised families. Today, their descendants remember their ancestors as brave women who fought as soldiers in an era of great violence for African women, at a time when most western White women were confined to domestic roles.
“The Woman King” simplifies Dahomey’s complicated history by transforming it into an anti-slavery kingdom. In doing so, it misses a crucial historical reality by focusing on the story of Dahomey’s female soldiers as African liberators. Dahomey rulers never opposed the Atlantic slave trade. They were deeply engaged in waging wars and selling their enemies into slavery. Several women joined the Dahomean army as captives of war and therefore were forced to serve in the all-female regiment.
Most Agodjie were killed in battle while resisting the French conquerors at the end of the 19th century. Europeans explored the history of the female warriors during the 19th and 20th centuries. The French collected the bodies and belongings of the Agodjie killed in battle and incorporated them in museum collections. In 2002, a skull reported to be that of an Agodjie transformed into a dish and cover was put on sale by Christies. If the skull’s origin is accurate, it’s probably one of the only existing preserved remains of an Agodjie. Stolen and commodified, the body of this woman had the same fate as the remains of other men, women and children who were victims of the Dahomean army.
Despite the expected pitfalls of a work of fiction, “The Woman King” does something the European colonizers never did: It remembers these women soldiers in nuanced ways that give them back their humanity. | 2022-09-20T11:10:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'The Woman King’ gets some things wrong about Dahomey’s women warriors - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/09/20/what-woman-king-gets-wrong-right-about-dahomeys-warriors/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/09/20/what-woman-king-gets-wrong-right-about-dahomeys-warriors/ |
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Lt. Gov. John Fetterman listened to campaign worker Lee Horton speak during a rally in Plymouth Meeting, Pa., in April 2022. (Tom Williams/Getty Images)
The Hortons grew up in a housing project in Philadelphia. Despite growing up without many advantages, the two men were doing well for themselves by their twenties. Lee Horton had a wife and four kids, at times working two jobs to support his family. He had applied to become a police officer, and his acceptance letter would soon arrive in the mail.
As the brothers have told it in court documents, their lives were abruptly upended during a family cookout in May of 1993 when Lee asked his brother to go with him to get some beer. On the way back, Lee spotted an old friend named Robert Leaf. The friends chatted for a bit, after which they decided Leaf would ride with the brothers back to Lee’s house. The Hortons say they weren’t aware of it at the time, but Leaf was fleeing police. He and at least one other man had just robbed a bar and, in the course of the robbery, shot up the place, killing one and wounding several others.
In 2020, led by Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons unanimously recommended that the Hortons be granted clemency. Gov. Tom Wolf agreed, and in February of 2021 the two men were released on parole. Since then, they’ve continued to mentor and counsel current and former prisoners and have participated in a violence interruption program.
Last month, right-wing media got hold of the brothers’ story, and the attacks began. Fetterman’s opponent, Mehmet Oz, accused him of paying “two convicted murderers.” Oz later hired actors to pose in orange jumpsuits as “convicts for Fetterman” at campaign events. National Republican Senate Committee spokesperson Lizzie Litzow implored Fetterman to "start putting Pennsylvania communities ahead of murderers and other criminals,” and said he “can start by firing the two convicted murderers he’s employed.”
I don't know if the Hortons are innocent. But if they are, it wouldn't be the first time conservatives have made political hay of "convicted killers" who turned out to be innocent. There's certainly plenty of reason to question their guilt. | 2022-09-20T11:11:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Freed from prison, Pennsylvania brothers become political fodder - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/20/horton-brothers-fetterman-pennsylvania-politics/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/20/horton-brothers-fetterman-pennsylvania-politics/ |
Tuesday briefing: Hurricane Fiona’s damage in Puerto Rico; interest rates; Martha’s Vineyard investigation; Adnan Syed; and more
Hurricane Fiona caused “catastrophic” destruction in Puerto Rico.
What happened? Over 32 inches of rain fell in parts of the U.S. territory, killing at least two people and causing “billions” in damage since Sunday, the governor said yesterday.
One big problem: The island’s power grid hasn’t been substantially updated since deadly Hurricane Maria five years ago. Fiona knocked out electricity to more than 3 million people.
What else to know: The storm is disrupting travel in the Caribbean. We’re tracking Fiona here.
The U.S. central bank is about to hike interest rates again.
What’s going on? The Federal Reserve is meeting today and tomorrow, and it’s expected to raise rates by three-quarters of a percentage point for the third time in a row.
Why does this keep happening? Inflation remains high, and raising rates is the Fed’s top tool to control rising prices. It makes borrowing money more expensive, which, in theory, makes people spend less.
Florida’s migrant flights to Martha’s Vineyard are under investigation.
The background: Dozens of Venezuelan migrants were flown from Texas to the Massachusetts resort island last week as part of a Republican protest of U.S. immigration policy.
What’s new? A Texas sheriff yesterday said he’s looking into the flights, which were arranged by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — allegedly after making false promises of work and assistance.
A Russian missile exploded near Ukraine’s second-largest nuclear plant.
Where? About 300 yards from reactors at the plant in south Ukraine. Some nearby equipment was damaged, officials said yesterday, but the facility is operating as normal.
The bigger picture: It renews fears of a potential disaster after the area near Ukraine’s biggest nuclear plant, Zaporizhzhia, repeatedly came under fire last month.
Adnan Syed, whose murder case captivated the nation, was freed from prison.
What to know: He was convicted in 2000 in the killing of his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee and given a life sentence. The podcast “Serial” reexamined the case in 2014 and became a cultural obsession.
Why was he released? A judge found problems in how evidence was handled. Prosecutors have 30 days to decide whether to retry Syed, now 42.
The Bills won in another blowout to wrap the NFL’s second week.
Last night: Josh Allen threw four touchdowns — three to Stefon Diggs — and Buffalo never trailed in the 41-7 romp over the Tennessee Titans.
It was a wild weekend: Three teams came back to win from multiple-touchdown deficits in the fourth quarter, including the new-look Miami Dolphins.
There are nearly 20 quadrillion ants on the planet.
What does that look like? 20,000 trillion, or 20,000,000,000,000,000. To put it another way, there are about 2.5 million ants for every human, scientists said yesterday.
Why are we counting ants? Scientists worry about a possible “bugpocalypse” — a massive insect die-off. But they don’t know for certain if ant numbers are rising or falling.
And now … what to make this week: one of these six recipes with peanut butter, or something to use up your leftover condiments. | 2022-09-20T11:11:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The 7 things you need to know for Tuesday, September 20 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/09/20/what-to-know-for-september-20/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/09/20/what-to-know-for-september-20/ |
One of 14 dead sperm whales lies washed up on a beach at King Island, north of Tasmania, Australia, Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2022. The whales were discovered Monday afternoon on King Island, part of the state of Tasmania in the Bass Strait between Melbourne and Tasmania’s northern coast, the state Department of Natural Resources and Environment said in a statement. (Department of Natural Resources and Environment Tasmania via AP) (Uncredited/Department of Natural Resources and Environment Tasmani) | 2022-09-20T11:12:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 14 dead sperm whales found beached on Australian island - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/14-dead-sperm-whales-found-beached-on-australian-island/2022/09/20/e273b9c6-38ca-11ed-b8af-0a04e5dc3db6_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/14-dead-sperm-whales-found-beached-on-australian-island/2022/09/20/e273b9c6-38ca-11ed-b8af-0a04e5dc3db6_story.html |
Lionel Shriver taunts the ‘culture police’ and more in her new book
‘Abominations’ brings together essays and lectures by a novelist who seems to get a kick out of provocation
Veteran novelists usually have a particular, predictable asset — a knack for characterization, clever plotting, a distinctive style. Lionel Shriver, though, is oddly unpredictable — and that’s what keeps her interesting. She seems to actively resist satisfying expectations.
Her fiction has moved from the provocative “We Need to Talk About Kevin” (2003), about the mother of a school shooter, to the more intimate “Big Brother” (2013), about a woman caring for her morbidly obese sibling, to the wildly high-concept near-future dystopia “The Mandibles” (2016). Her 2020 novel, “The Motion of a Body Through Space” is a satire about the fitness industry.
Review: "The Motion of the Body Through Space"
“Abominations,” Shriver’s first book of nonfiction, is more predictable. Throughout this collection of written-to-order essays, speeches and op-eds, she assumes single tone: provocateur. Whether she’s talking about Brexit (which she supported), cultural appropriation (“a contrived taboo”) or taxes (“the criminalization of making money”), Shriver is ever the contrarian. And for the most part, she doesn’t seem to care that about the consequences of ruffling feathers: “Bring on the ridicule,” she taunts, “I’d welcome being laughed at, so long as I’m spared any real-life manifestations of the visions that haunt me.” Though she occasionally postures as being chilled by PC scolds, she mostly sells herself as comfortably delivering opinions that are “underexpressed, unpopular, or downright dangerous.”
In her fiction, Shriver’s polemicist side tends to go down fairly easy. Her 2010 novel “So Much for That” was a jeremiad about American health care that cruised on the strength of its characters. Left to facts alone, though, Shriver is often exasperating, missing the target or vigorously stabbing at straw men. That tendency is most pronounced in a series of pieces on cancel culture, the most infamous of which was a 2016 address in Brisbane, Australia, where she bemoaned cultural appropriation and trolled the crowd by donning a sombrero. “Ideologies recently come into vogue challenge our right to write fiction at all,” she warned.
How the pandemic has affected books
There and elsewhere in “Abominations,” she grumbles about a “culture police” that’s trying to sideline authors who write outside their lived experience. “I am now much more anxious about depicting characters of different races, and accents make me nervous,” she writes. As if thinking twice about that might be a bad thing; as if navigating into that anxiety and trying to make sense of it weren’t a writer’s job. Given that the growing wave of book bans largely targets LGBTQ writers, it may be that Shriver’s radar for who represents the “culture police” and who’s endangered by it is a tick faulty.
Our “dour and censorious age,” she continues, has led to diversity initiatives that can only mean that a publisher “no longer regards the company’s raison d’etre as the acquisition and dissemination of good books.” Writing about transgender people either sends her down slippery-slope thinking — “We seem to be entering an era in which everything about ourselves that we don’t like is subject to revision” — or infantile cracks about pronouns and LGBTQ+ culture. (“A three-year-old bashing the keyboard would produce a more functional shorthand.”)
But her arguments lack depth. Liberals should watch what they say, she cautions, because it riles Trumpers tired of “being told what they can and cannot say.” (Rest assured, they’re riled already — and saying what they want anyhow.) The removal of Confederate monuments in her hometown of Raleigh, N.C., she laments, “would result in an ineffable atmospheric loss.” On the evidence of the essay, the ineffable atmosphere is chiefly composed of hot air.
The compressed, click-chasing nature of the op-ed might explain the flimsiness in some of her arguments. The bad news is that Shriver’s affinity for the polemic has infected her fiction. In “The Motion of a Body Through Space,” she expressed a weird grievance that exercise is bad and faddish (except the way Shriver does it). The novel focuses on a 60-something man who finds the time to train for a triathlon because he’s been pushed out of his job by a young Nigerian-born woman who’s weaponized her gender-studies degree to undermine every White man in sight. This lecture-as-fiction may have been the worst novel of 2020.
And yet: Shriver followed up that book with “Should We Stay or Should We Go” (2021), a witty and sensitive speculative tale about a couple’s varied responses to old age. There are some similarly well-made pieces in “Abominations” — considerations of her religious upbringing, remembrances of her late brother, a funny riff on self-improvement during covid quarantine, another on the evolving misuse of words like “performative.”
But Shriver can’t seem to miss an opportunity for hollow provocation. In a 2020 speech that appears toward the end of the book, she delivers an extended feat of covid-era catastrophizing, a mélange of reasonable concerns about inflation and monetary policy with more curious statements about how China will exploit America’s anti-racist movement, somehow, and we’ll be left without iPhones. “I may be an alarmist crank,” she concedes. But that’s okay. Contemporary literary culture is roomier than Shriver lets on. There is space for cranks. Here’s an entire book proving it.
Abominations
Selected Essays from a Career of Courting Self-Destruction
By Lionel Shriver
Harper. 304 pp. $26.99 | 2022-09-20T12:23:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Lionel Shriver taunts the ‘culture police’ and more in her new book - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/09/20/lionel-shriver-taunts-culture-police-more-her-new-book/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/09/20/lionel-shriver-taunts-culture-police-more-her-new-book/ |
Cinema Hearts: An ex-pageant queen turned indie rocker
Caroline Weinroth, who performs as Cinema Hearts. (Sammy Hearn)
When she started performing as Cinema Hearts, Caroline Weinroth set out to unite two icons of Americana that seemed impossibly far apart: Miss America and the electric guitar.
After graduating from college, the singer-songwriter tried to make that fantasy a reality, competing on the pageant circuit and winning a handful of crowns throughout Virginia. Apart from giving her post-college life some structure, the world of pageants allowed her to tango with how girls and women are taught and treated in society.
“I always felt like I was performing or presenting myself a certain way to try and be what other people wanted,” Weinroth says. “Only very recently, I realized that doesn't work; it ultimately doesn't make you happy.”
While Cinema Hearts has previously viewed the subject of the female experience through the prism of pageantry, the fixation is most acute on the recently released “Your Ideal” EP. The five-tracker kicks off with two songs from the perspective of a woman ready to be whatever is expected of her: a queen, a princess, a trophy, a fantasy, an ideal. A few years removed from the scene, Weinroth is grappling with the larger societal struggles that pageants underscore.
“You can present yourself as this hyper-feminized, obedient, cooperative woman, and that can get you ahead — you get invited to the parties, people like you, people want to take your photo, people want to be your friend, whatever,” she says. “Ultimately, you go home alone and it's an empty feeling.”
But even if Weinroth and her fellow competitors were alone, they were not lonely: The pageants provided a sense of community that reminded her of experiences in the DIY music scene, a connection she explores on all-electronic closer “Sister.”
“It’s people all over the state and country at the grass roots who put on a show,” she explains. “Obviously, it’s a very different ethic and aesthetic, but at its core are people who want to make something special happen in their everyday lives.”
Even with her time in pageants over, Weinroth has sought to continue making special things happen, within and without Cinema Hearts. Although she worked in live sound for years and now teaches guitar, piano and voice, her attempts to bring musical events and mentoring to her community weren’t always easy. She recalls a local library that didn’t seem to trust her or take DIY music seriously.
Clearly, this wasn’t D.C.’s Mount Pleasant Library, which raised thousands of dollars with now-ubiquitous shirts and totes that ask, “What’s more punk than the public library?” Just as clearly, this library must not have listened to Weinroth’s music, which reaches back to the era of ’60s girl groups and doo-wop for inspiration.
“We all know Cinema Hearts is the most dangerous band,” she says, laughing.
Sept. 23 at 10 p.m. at Comet Ping Pong, 5037 Connecticut Ave. NW. cometpingpong.com. $15. Proof of vaccination required. | 2022-09-20T12:24:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Cinema Hearts: An ex-pageant queen turned indie rocker - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/09/20/cinema-hearts-interview/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/09/20/cinema-hearts-interview/ |
A new and improved version of Electoral Count Act reform
Security forces draw their guns as rioters try to break into the House Chamber at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
The compromise proposal that Senate negotiators cobbled together earlier this year to reform the 1887 Electoral Count Act was a good start to prevent a repeat of the 2020 coup attempt. But the bill was far from perfect, as testimony before the Senate Rules Committee highlighted.
Fortunately, two members of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) put forth their own improved version on Monday, as described in an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal.
Their proposal makes a number of key changes to the law, which stipulates the certification of electoral votes. For example:
It confirms that the vice president has only a ceremonial role.
It specifies that members of Congress can only object to electoral votes if they concern “the explicit constitutional requirements for candidate and elector eligibility and the 12th Amendment’s explicit requirements for elector balloting.” Interestingly, the proposal makes clear that one objection might be that the candidate is ineligible under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which bars from federal office anyone who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.” In other words, it would serve as a trip wire for challenging former president Donald Trump on the basis that he instigated an “insurrection.”
It raises the threshold for Congress to vote on an objection from one lawmaker in each chamber to one-third of each chamber.
The proposal also avoids some of the confusing language included in the Senate proposal regarding state certification. The House version is a helpful and precise description of the correct process:
Governors must transmit lawful election results to Congress; if they fail to fulfill that duty, or another official prevents the lawful results from being transmitted, candidates for the presidency should be able to sue in federal court to ensure that Congress receives the state’s lawful certificate. These suits would occur before Congress counts electoral votes, and should ensure, in all cases where one candidate has the majority of electoral votes, that Congress’s proceeding on Jan. 6 is purely ministerial.
In foreclosing the sort of maneuver that Trump lawyer John Eastman concocted, the proposal makes clear that “the rules governing an election can’t change after the election has occurred.” In short, the state legislature cannot upset the voters’ choice.
And in an inspired bit of lawmaking, the revised ECA would specify that it is a violation of the Constitution to refuse to count and certify ballots according to the rules in effect on Election Day. A candidate can go to federal court to seek an injunction against state officials who refuse to do so. That can then be appealed directly to the Supreme Court. (A treble damage provision is also included in an attempt to deter frivolous litigation.)
Finally, the proposal also clears up the existing ECA and improves on the Senate plan by specifying that the law’s “failed election” provision only applies to “a genuine catastrophic event affecting enough ballots to swing the outcome of the state’ election.”
Norman Eisen, a Brookings scholar who provided testimony to the Senate Rules Committee on the Senate proposal, tells me, “The bipartisan House proposal represents another step forward to getting to a bicameral agreement.” He approves the House version’s expansion of the period allotted to resolve legal disputes over a state’s election result from six to nine days. It also avoids language included the Senate version that characterized a governor’s certification of a state’s results as “conclusive,” reducing “the risk of a rogue governor,” Eisen says.
The bill will come to the House floor this week. If it passes (as is likely on a near party-line vote), it will go to the Senate. The Senate Rules Committee, which took testimony pointing out the flaws in the original Senate proposal, will then take up the House version in the normal process of legislative back-and-forth. In other words, we seem to be inching toward the best version of ECA reform possible.
We will soon find out whether there are 10 Republicans who sincerely want to block future coup attempts by anti-democratic candidates and their shoddy lawyers. Now is the time to construct a significant barrier to prevent a repeat of Jan. 6. With Democratic majorities in the House and Senate at risk, such reform cannot wait until after the midterm elections. | 2022-09-20T12:24:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | A new and improved version of Electoral Count Act reform - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/20/electoral-count-act-eca-reform-house-bill/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/20/electoral-count-act-eca-reform-house-bill/ |
The Confederate monument, which was erected in 1912 at the corner of Court and Church streets, outside the Matthew's County Courthouse. (Gregory S. Schneider/The Washington Post)
MATHEWS, Va. — A referendum last fall on whether to preserve the Confederate statue outside this county’s historic 1830 courthouse was resounding, with more than 80 percent of voters in favor. But some worried that the monument’s prominent public location still wasn’t safe.
So the Mathews County Board of Supervisors is considering a more permanent solution: Deed the municipal ground under the statue to a private group, such as the Sons of Confederate Veterans, to protect it from future changes in public sentiment.
Of all the reckonings with icons of the Lost Cause that have gripped Virginia for the past two years — from Charlottesville deciding to melt down Robert E. Lee to Richmond loaning other bronze generals to a museum in California — this is a new twist, a sign of the enduring power of the Civil War’s legacy.
Officials at the state’s Department of Historic Resources said they are not aware of any other locality in Virginia exploring such a step. Opponents say giving control over a public site to a private heritage group sets an alarming precedent.
“The long-term implications are really far-reaching, because this group could do whatever it wanted with that piece of land,” said Kaitlin Banner, deputy legal director of the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights & Urban Affairs. “The government would lose all control despite the fact that it’s right in the middle of the historic courthouse square.”
The lawyers group signed onto a letter to the county last week warning of possible legal action on behalf of the local chapter of the NAACP. Transferring the land to a pro-Confederate group sends “unquestionable messages that the Mathews County Board of Supervisors endorses white supremacy and supports the second-class status of Black people,” the lawyers wrote.
The letter has turned up the heat on an idea that has been kicking around in Mathews for months. Turnout is expected to be heavy for a public hearing Wednesday night on the general topic of transferring public property to private groups. The hearing originally had been scheduled to take up the statue specifically, but board members last month — in the face of fiery public discussion — decided to slow the process.
“Let me tell you something, the NAACP jumped the gun on this thing,” county supervisor Dave Jones said last week in an interview. There will be no vote Wednesday on what to do about the statue, he said.
“We don’t know what action they could take,” said NAACP chapter president Edith Turner.
Confusion has built since last fall’s referendum, in a county of some 8,600 residents that’s roughly 8 percent Black. Even though the voters’ message was clear, and despite the fact that the statue has not been targeted by graffiti or other protest damage, some residents and county supervisors have been on a crusade to save it from any possible future calamity.
One day last week, Jones stood outside the old courthouse and said he “would never vote to move the monument from its place,” though that has not been an issue.
He denied that Wednesday’s hearing is even related to the statue, and said the flap over giving the site to preservationists is overblown. He pledged that he “will not vote to transfer that monument to the SCV” or the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the two groups that erected it in 1912 and have offered to take it over this year.
But minutes later, Jones and Matthews County Board of Supervisors chair Paul Hudgins — who had joined him in the shade under a willow oak tree — were a bit more vague. Would they transfer ownership to some other group who might protect it where it stands?
“We can give ownership to anything, it isn’t no law against it,” Jones said.
“That’s a conversation to be had at a later date,” Hudgins said.
“That’s right,” Jones said.
‘Not racism’
Turner, the NAACP president, is Black and a teacher who was born and raised in Mathews County. She gives her age as “over 60,” and said she was in about fourth grade when the local schools were integrated. She attended Lee-Jackson Elementary, named for the Confederate generals.
Two years ago, Turner was proud when her daughter spearheaded an effort to rename the school. It’s now known as Mathews Elementary. In response, someone placed a giant Confederate flag on private property across the street.
Confederate battle flags wave by the roadway along several entrances to Mathews County, a fact that Turner said discourages friends and family who might want to visit. “But I feel comfortable here because I’m from here,” she said.
Renaming the school, though, was an unwelcome taste of change for some residents of Mathews who have looked with horror at statues coming down in other parts of the state.
Richmond, the former capital of the Confederacy, has removed several Confederate monuments, including statues of Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis. (Video: The Washington Post)
Ben Richardson, 61, grew up in Mathews on property that’s been in his family since the 1700s. Like many in this countryside of marshes and creeks along the Chesapeake Bay, he spent most of his life on the water, on tugboats and oil tankers.
He had ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary War, he said, and for the Confederacy. The statue is not racism, it’s just history, he said. And the groups that erected it should own it and protect it.
“People just want to open up a can of worms,” Richardson said, sitting outside his Pudding Creek Carvings art shop in a “Good Vibes” T-shirt. “I think the statue ought to stay where it is … and the land, that should be deeded to them.”
The statue itself is the figure of a generic Civil War soldier atop a column. The base reads “Our Confederate soldiers” on one side, and “In memory of the soldiers and sailors of Mathews County Va.” on another.
It stands about 15 feet from the corner of the old courthouse, which anchors a square featuring historic buildings including a jail and a clerk’s office.
Several local residents said they had seldom paid much attention to the statue until 2017, after the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, when people supporting Confederate heritage began showing up around the statue to show support for it.
After 2020, when the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police provoked a national movement for racial justice, Confederate supporters would festoon the ground around the statue’s base with small Confederate battle flags.
Some in the county objected, and the board of supervisors warned that the flags couldn’t be placed in the ground because that was public property.
For a time, though, the statue itself was thought to belong to the SCV and UDC. Many of the Confederate statues around the state were placed about a century ago by those heritage groups, and a handful continue to be owned by them despite being located on public property.
In Alexandria, for instance, a Confederate statue was taken down at the request of the UDC and returned to the group for safekeeping.
According to research compiled by staffers at the Mathews Public Library, the county’s memorial was spearheaded by a group called the Mathews County Monument Association made up of seven members from the UDC and seven from the SCV, who raised money from the public to finance it.
But both of those local chapters died out or disbanded long ago, the research showed. Today’s groups were reconstituted in recent years, and the research found no evidence that the statue was ever passed on to them.
At last month’s board of supervisors meeting, a representative of the UDC submitted a letter that seemed to acknowledge the county’s ownership.
Neither the UDC nor members of the SCV could be reached for comment for this story. But two supporters spoke out strongly at the August meeting.
Bobby Dobson, who is a member of the county school board, blamed former governor Ralph Northam, a Democrat, for stirring up trouble about monuments and said the fact that a statue of Confederate president Jefferson Davis is displayed vandalized and prone in Richmond’s Valentine museum is “a disgrace.”
Richmond's statues fell. Now these sisters aim to lift up Black history.
“Now everybody seems like you want to remove” statues, Dobson said. Noting that the county’s referendum in support of the monument was nonbinding, he said the Mathews statue needs permanent protection. “God bless the fallen Southerners,” he concluded, “and God bless Robert E. Lee.”
Joey Taylor, president of the local chapter of the SCV, said his group wants to take ownership of the monument because “we believe that if this is not done then these people on the left will do their very best to destroy this because that’s what they want.”
Neither Dobson nor Taylor could be reached for comment.
Mathews County Administrator Ramona Wilson, who took office in April when the controversy was already in full swing, said in an interview that she remains uncertain about the status of the statue itself. “We don’t know who owns it at this point,” she said.
The next step hinges on Wednesday night’s public hearing. If residents fully support transferring public property to private interests, she said, the board will schedule a hearing on deeding the land under the statue.
If the public opposes the concept, she said, “I think then it’ll just go away.”
But Jones and Hudgins, the board members, made clear that the statue itself isn’t going anywhere.
The county is going to install video surveillance, Hudgins said.
“If they want to come try to tear it down, they got to go through us, and we’ll take all measures,” Jones said.
“This is not Richmond,” Hudgins said, “I can tell you that.”
Jones agreed. “This is not Richmond.” | 2022-09-20T12:28:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mathews County, Va., tries to protect Confederate statue at courthouse - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/20/mathews-virginia-confederate-statue/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/20/mathews-virginia-confederate-statue/ |
Brother Victor-Antoine d’Avila-Latourrette, a Benedictine monk and cookbook author, lies in his bed at Ferncliff Nursing Home in Rhinebeck, N.Y. (Photos by Angus Mordant for The Washington Post) (for The Washington Post)
As dusk began to fall on Jan. 10, 2001, Ray Patchey just wanted to get home to his family for his birthday dinner.
A lineman with Verizon, Patchey had been sent out to repair telephone lines following a snowstorm in rural Dutchess County, N.Y. Chilled to the bone, Patchey and another technician were just packing up to leave when the door to the nearby farmhouse swung open and a voice called out, “Don’t go, I’ve made some soup for you!”
Looking up, Patchey saw a Benedictine monk, clothed in traditional habit and sandals, standing in the doorway, and thought, “How can I say no?”
Little did he know that the monk was a best-selling cookbook author with legions of fans around the world. That bowl of soup, like so many others that Brother Victor-Antoine d’Avila-Latourrette has shared with friends and strangers alike over the course of several decades while living mostly alone at Our Lady of the Resurrection Monastery, was just the beginning.
Now 82, Brother Victor is the author of some 18 books, half of which are cookbooks that have collectively sold in the millions and been translated into multiple languages, including French, Japanese and Dutch. Born in Lées-Athas, a village in southwestern France’s Pyrenees mountains, Brother Victor grew up eating food that was cooked in rhythm with the seasons, saying now: “There is nothing like the French way of cooking, and everyone I knew cooked well — my mother, my grandmother. Everything we ate, vegetables, cheese, bread, was fresh and local.”
But one day, when young Victor was 16, he walked down the road to the local monastery in pursuit of a more contemplative life. Under the rule of St. Benedict, the strong emphasis on cultivating a self-supporting community requires the brothers to tend to all the needs of the monastery, including growing most of their own food and cooking communal meals. Brother Victor began serving as an assistant cook in the kitchen, where soup was a common component of every meal.
So it’s no accident that nearly every person’s recollections of Brother Victor seem to include sitting around the kitchen table with a bowl of it. Today, Our Lady of the Resurrection Monastery sits quietly among the trees and fields, filled with the memories of those moments of communion.
It was this solitude that first drew Elise Boulding to the monastery in the early 1970s. A renowned peace activist, Boulding had been intrigued by monastic life for many years and, during her first spiritual retreat, was struck by how, as she later wrote, “monasteries have kitchens and monks have to cook.” Eventually, she approached Brother Victor, who had come to the United States in 1966 to pursue a master’s degree at Columbia University before resuming a cloistered existence in the Hudson Valley, about writing a cookbook. The result was “From a Monastery Kitchen” in 1976, a 127-page collection of mostly vegetarian recipes, as monastic life generally precludes eating four-legged animals.
That first edition reads, in many ways, like a typical community cookbook, a hodgepodge of quotes, images and collected recipes, ranging from Brother Victor’s French-inspired lentil soufflé to a yeasted Christmas bread calling for 2½ pounds of raisins. In the introduction, Boulding, who died in 2010, wrote that the book was “intended to open the monastery door in a symbolic way for those who may never come here but who would like to evoke the peace of the monastery in their own kitchens.” As her son Bill says, “Creating community motivated everything she did.”
Indeed, Boulding had clearly recognized that other people would be equally drawn to the idea of preparing and sharing simple, seasonal meals, of creating their own culinary oasis in the storm of everyday life. It was her only foray into the world of cookbook writing, but it opened a door for Brother Victor, who took on revising a new edition of the book a decade later. The result, released in 1989, is spare and elegant, showcasing a single recipe and woodcut image per page, highlighting his clear-eyed understanding of what constitutes a good cookbook: an evocative theme, a distinct progression of recipes and an invitation to the reader to collaborate.
Monks and nuns often need an entrepreneurial flair to keep their communities afloat, and Brother Victor was no exception. “Brother Victor is a deeply spiritual and beautiful soul,” says Richard Rothschild, a book packager who helped produce three cookbooks with him in 2010. “He’s also deeply business-minded.”
Ann Shershin, a Poughkeepsie, N.Y., resident who began volunteering at the monastery in 2007 when her son was doing an Eagle Scout project there, saw Brother Victor’s marketing prowess up close, particularly when she began helping him host an annual festival promoting his locally celebrated homemade vinegars the next year. “Brother Victor had done a vinegar sale in the summers before,” says Shershin, “but this was a real festival, with other vendors coming to sell their wares also. Cars were lining up to get in.” Patchey had been learning the art of vinegar making from Brother Victor as well, volunteering his time to help increase production. In its heyday, the festival brought in as much as $12,000 — a small fortune for a self-sufficient monastery.
The vinegar business brought with it a certain amount of fame. New York City chefs purchased the vinegars for their restaurants; there were television appearances and even a particularly striking photograph by Italian photographer Francesco Mastalia for his 2014 book, “Organic.” Curator Gail Buckland wrote of the photograph, “The book opens with Brother Victor-Antoine looking towards the heavens, allowing the holy light to fall upon him … a bottle of his prized vinegar in one hand, a hoe in the other.” The vinegar, says Cheryl Rogowski, a second-generation farmer in Pine Island, N.Y, was truly special, made with a mother — the compound of cellulose and acetic acid bacteria that ferments alcohol into vinegar — that Brother Victor had brought from his family home in France decades earlier. “Each bottle traces its roots back to his own heritage,” she says. “It’s mind-blowing.”
It was around this same time that Baltimore filmmaker Alex Levy, then a senior at Vassar College, began filming “An Instrument of Peace,” a documentary about Brother Victor and his life at the monastery. Brother Victor had hosted student interns from Vassar for several years; when Levy began visiting the monastery to help weed the gardens and do odd jobs, he was intrigued. “It was a setting that felt like it was outside of time,” he recalls. “I was interested in finding out how this person went from being a lone hermit to becoming the center of a community.”
For Michael Centore, a fellow Vassar alum and friend to both Levy and Brother Victor, the opening scene of the film offers a glimpse into the monk’s ability to connect with people in meaningful ways, as it follows him picking up castoff produce from a local grocery store. “He’d use that food for his animals or to feed others, and he’d be chatting away with everyone working in the backroom of the grocery store, in different languages depending on where they were from,” says Centore. “I think those are the times that I remember him at his happiest.”
What no one expected was that in 2014, a vigorously healthy Brother Victor would suddenly suffer a debilitating stroke. It was just two weeks after a successful vinegar festival, when Shershin remembers thinking, “We could be doing this festival for years, Brother Victor is in such great shape.” The narrative of Levy’s film suddenly changed from documenting a thriving self-made ecosystem to a struggling enterprise. “I didn’t want to make that story,” says Levy. “It was very hard to see someone knocked off their game.”
It’s now been nearly two years since Brother Victor took up residence at a nursing home in nearby Rhinebeck, after a slow recovery from the stroke made it difficult for him to continue living in the monastery, even with full-time help. Patchey and other friends and neighbors keep watch over the monastery itself, although Brother Victor’s adored sheep, chickens and other animals had to be rehomed to live out their lives at nearby sanctuaries and farms.
On a recent visit to the monastery, now closed to the public, the afternoon sun slanted through the kitchen windows, sending long shadows across the floorboards and illuminating dusty shelves stacked with books, jars of preserves and random bits of crockery. Patchey looked over at the table by the window. “We used to sit right there, with the dog curled up at our feet and the cats prowling around on top, with bowls of soup made with vegetables that had just come from the garden, hunks of day-old bread and glasses of wine,” he said.
Now, Patchey plays the lottery twice a week, hoping for a payout that will help bring the monastery and its beloved gardens, sanctuary and kitchen back to their full glory. Brother Victor, on the other hand, holds on to his belief that an active life can resume again at Our Lady of the Resurrection Monastery — the sharp scent of fermenting vinegar, warm steam escaping from soup bubbling on the stove, the cadence of prayers being chanted in the stillness of the chapel.
“When you have faith,” he says, “miracles still happen.” | 2022-09-20T12:41:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How a solitary monk, whose soups are known around the world, united a community - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/09/20/brother-victor-antoine-soup/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/09/20/brother-victor-antoine-soup/ |
Mike Florio on Deshaun Watson and covering NFL controversies
The analyst says that the NFL always finds ways to move on from scandals off the field
By Robin Rose Parker
Mike Florio is the creator and co-owner of ProFootballTalk. (Rebecca Kiger/For The Washington Post)
I expected that the NFL would suspend him for at least a calendar year and take whatever consequences came from that. And then I started hearing that there was a possibility of a settlement. My guess is the NFL Players Association was dug in at 10 games and the NFL wanted 12, and you obviously split the difference to 11 and Deshaun Watson pays a little bit more than he wanted to get back on the field sooner. I am surprised it happened because I felt like all the momentum was pointing toward the NFL taking full advantage of the power that it has, once it got the ruling from [appointed disciplinary officer] Sue L. Robinson finding that he had violated the personal conduct policy in three different ways, with four different women, nonviolent sexual assault, egregious behavior, predatory conduct, and then Commissioner [Roger Goodell] spoke about it at a league meeting. I thought: That’s it, game over. We’re not going to see Deshaun Watson at all in 2022.
There was an issue involving one of the teams, years ago — I can’t remember the specific context — but I’ll never forget the response I got from the league. When I asked the question about what if this, what if that, the response was: We are the ultimate reality show. That’s the mind-set that they’ve embraced. Is it true that there is no such thing as bad publicity? I think at a certain point it does become a little problematic, but where the NFL benefits, especially in season, any controversy that pops up, there is always a bright, shiny object in the form of another game that gets everyone’s attention off whatever it may be. You’ve got all the games on Sunday, then you’ve got Monday, and if anyone’s upset about something that happened on Monday night, you’ve got Thursday for everybody to forget and move on. So it’s much easier for them to deal with it in season because people just have an insatiable appetite for the product. And the product is what causes people to either embrace and enjoy the drama or when necessary, hold their nose and move on.
It’s not easy to do.
In this business, I don’t care if a certain number of people don’t like me. I didn’t do it to make friends. I didn’t do it to score popularity. I did it because I love football. Now, some people don’t like the way I do it. Some people don’t like that I share some candid beliefs that they disagree with, and I’ve been fortunate that during our 13-year affiliation with NBC they’ve been very supportive any time the NFL has an issue with me. I respect the fact that they have always had my back. You need that if you are going to balance this out where you’ve got a major platform but you still have an independent approach. ’Cause it’s hard to have an independent approach if you’re on a major platform. There is a certain amount of your soul that you have to slice off and sell to keep the overlords happy. We’ve been able to strike that balance, and I’m fortunate for it. Because it’s not just stubbornness on my part; you need to have a partner that is willing to respect what you do, support what you do, and take the arrows from time to time with the NFL.
What happened for me was, when you grow up and you follow the NFL, players are larger than life. The players are superhuman. And then as you get older, you realize one day you are the same age as the players. Then you realize the players are younger than me. Then you realize there aren’t many players who are older than me. What really did it for me was when my son got to the age of college and adulthood. You understand him and his issues and the challenges of being a young adult in today’s world. It made me more sensitive to what these guys go through. They are every bit as vulnerable and inexperienced and confused and intimidated as my own son. That’s what I try to do — to get people to view these players as son, cousin, brother, nephew, friend. Someone you know. Someone you care about. Someone who, when they have surgery, it’s not minor surgery, it’s major surgery. Every surgery is major surgery. It’s only minor surgery when it’s not performed on you or someone you love.
So that’s the voice that I’ve kind of evolved to. I don’t know that it ever would have happened without having a child who evolved through the same steps as I did. But it’s something that I feel passionate about, and it upset some people. People don’t like to have their enjoyment of the sport disrupted by any of the broader moral wrestling matches. There is a conflict with the team. Why do you get mad at the player? The player’s got one shot to get enough money to take care of him and his family. The owners are already taken care of, and they’re going to be doing this over and over again.
Well, I think that from the perspective of the people who don’t have a lot of money, there is very little difference from billionaires and millionaires — and there is huge difference from millionaires and billionaires! And a lot of the players aren’t even millionaires. A lot of the players are making — and I know to say only $600,000, but in comparison to Tom Brady or some of the star players, it’s peanuts in comparison to what the owners have. It’s peanut sweepings, as Homer Simpson would say. There is a bit Jerry Seinfeld [has] done over the years, where when you are a sports fan, you’re just rooting for the laundry. You are not rooting for the individuals wearing them, and if the guy leaves and is wearing different laundry, you hate him, and if he’s wearing your laundry you love him. The common link between the fan and the owner is they are identified with supporting that laundry. The players are going to come and go. | 2022-09-20T12:41:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mike Florio on Deshaun Watson and covering NFL controversies - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/09/20/mike-florio-football-nfl/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/09/20/mike-florio-football-nfl/ |
FIREBAUGH, CA - APRIL 18: Heat waves shimmer on dry farmland on April 18, 2009 near Firebaugh, California. Central Valley farmers and farm workers are suffering through the third year of the worsening California drought with extreme water shortages and job losses. The office of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has predicted Central Valley farm losses to reach between $325 million and $477 million with a total loss for crop production and related business between $440 and $644 million. Central Valley is expected to lose 16,200 to 23,700 full-time jobs and food prices are expected to rise nationwide. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar this week pledged $260 million in federal stimulus money to help address the California water crisis. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images) (Photographer: David McNew/Getty Images North America)
Viral Acharya: The first finding is that across markets the physical climate risk that seems to be priced — both statistically and economically significantly — is exposure to heat stress. Second, we find the economic magnitudes to be quite large when you standardize the distribution of physical climate risk across municipalities or corporations. About one standard deviation in variation seems to contribute, in the case of municipal bonds, something on the order of 15 to 20 basis points [per annum in muni bond yield spreads]. In the case of sub-investment grade corporate debt, something on the order of 40 basis points. And in terms of cost of capital in issuing equity, it’s also something on the order of 40 basis points per annum. While not earth-shattering, I would say these are still respectably large magnitudes that we’ve attached to physical climate risk.
VA: Maybe the risk was always there, but somehow with the activism of investors, multilateral agencies, think tanks, NGOs, etc., maybe there’s some learning and greater awareness of these risks in the markets. At any rate, the fact that these risks are priced more for sub-investment grade companies, the fact that they are priced more recently and the fact they are priced more for heat stress rather than risks like hurricanes or drought in which adaptation might be an easier possibility, we think that all of this gives us reasonable confidence that we are picking up what looks like a pricing of physical climate risk.
VA: In the case of municipal debt, where we think that adaptation is not really feasible — you can’t change the location of the municipality — we think that it’s natural that the impact would be there. We did anticipate that munis would show pricing of physical climate risk. We find even in the case of munis that the effect is stronger for sub-investment grade debt, but interestingly it’s also stronger for longer-term debt because you expect climate risk to be sort of like disaster risk, which picks up in its accumulated frequency of arrival over a long period. And we also find that the pricing is stronger in revenue-only bonds rather than in general obligation bonds — general obligation bonds have a greater diversified pool of cash flows.
VA: Companies can move their locations. They can move the intensity of their sales, employment and production at different plants. Yet what we find is that in the case of heat stress, in spite of the possibility of adaptation, especially for sub-investment grade debt, the effect of being exposed to heat stress is quite large. Now, we don’t find a similar effect from other physical climate risk such as being exposed to hurricanes, like being on the coastline, or being exposed to certain flooding and drought-style areas. We think that one rationale for this result could be that it’s not that hard to relocate your plants from being on coastline to, say, a bit inside, whereas the gradient of heat-stress exposure moves very slow geographically. There are just big pockets of states in one collection which are kind of all exposed to heat risk. Now you have to fundamentally shift your location altogether. Sometimes that could even mean changing your business model fundamentally. Like if you are an agriculture company in the Midwest, it’s not like you can just relocate to the Northeast, for example.
Tuomas Tomunen: Air conditioning is kind of like the one big way that humans are going to adapt to climate change, but the consequence of actually ramping up cooling is exactly what a lot of climate science literature thinks is ultimately the most expensive cost of climate change once you account for this type of adaptation. Of course, if we can find a renewable and inexhaustible source of energy, this problem would probably go away, but to the extent that we can’t, there doesn’t seem to be any easy solution to this type of increase in energy demand.
VA: These things get pretty interesting in a world in which power and fuel are also simultaneously experiencing very steep increases. For example, in an emerging market like India, where I’m from, every summer there is a very heavy load on power sharing in the country. Temperatures in cities like New Delhi reach 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit), and invariably that leads to huge imports of coal and production of even more thermal power. ... And ultimately what you observe in a country like India is that for weeks sometimes schools have to be closed, offices have to be closed. There are times of the day when plants are not allowed to operate because at that point the consumption of air conditioning is very, very large in the economy. What I’m trying to say is, once you’re in a situation where there’s something else going on in the background such as a power shortage or fuel prices are very high, these climate shocks can really exacerbate the mitigation and adaption strategies at that point.
• Harrowing Droughts Should Be a Global Warning Sign: Editorial | 2022-09-20T12:41:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A Hotter Planet Is Already Warping Asset Prices - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/a-hotter-planet-is-already-warping-asset-prices/2022/09/20/2efa8e24-38d4-11ed-b8af-0a04e5dc3db6_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/a-hotter-planet-is-already-warping-asset-prices/2022/09/20/2efa8e24-38d4-11ed-b8af-0a04e5dc3db6_story.html |
All this happened, he told national TV, as “we implemented the greatest policies of social inclusion in the history of this country.” The minimum wage rose by half, after inflation. Poverty fell from 40% to 25%. Infant mortality declined.
Despite a sharp slowdown toward the end, over 13 years Nestor Kirchner and his wife, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, presided over an economy growing 4.5% per year, on average. Bolivia’s GDP grew by 4.7% per year, on average, during the 14 years of Evo Morales’s government, substantially more than over the preceding 14.
Argentina today not only is suffering galloping inflation, which is expected to hit 100% by the end of the year. Its economy is slowing from the post-Covid rebound. The International Monetary Fund expects it to grow by less than 2% per year, on average, over the term of the current president Alberto Fernandez, a close ally of Ms. Fernandez de Kirchner, now his vice president.
Bolivia’s economy is also growing substantially slower than in Morales’s day. And Brazil and Chile are also unlikely to buck the slowing trend. The IMF expects them to grow only around 1.5% per year over the next 4 years. What’s more, inflation is rising pretty much across the continent, threatening the livelihood of the politically powerful middle class. If interest rates in the United States rise much farther, their economic reality will get much worse.
Lula’s diagnosis of the challenges facing Brazil — where growth is anemic and nearly one in ten workers lacks a job; where 18.4% of the population subsist in poverty and the richest 10% percent of households makes 15 times as much as the poorest 40% — is spot on. The diagnosis would be similar across most of Latin America.
Must the US Kiss Latin America Goodbye?: Eduardo Porter
In Search of Political Salvation, Bolsonaro Deploys His Wife and Her Prayers: Clara Ferreira Marques
Governance Must Trump Ideology in Latin American Elections: Shannon O’Neil | 2022-09-20T12:42:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Latin America’s Incoming ‘Pink Tide’ Suffers From Rosy Nostalgia - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/latin-americas-incoming-pink-tide-suffers-from-rosy-nostalgia/2022/09/20/61dde9cc-38d8-11ed-b8af-0a04e5dc3db6_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/latin-americas-incoming-pink-tide-suffers-from-rosy-nostalgia/2022/09/20/61dde9cc-38d8-11ed-b8af-0a04e5dc3db6_story.html |
A cruise ship docked off Manhattan in 2013. (Mark Lennihan/AP)
The reason: “We’re not going to leave any stone unturned,” Adams said during a news conference Monday. “We’re going to find creative ways to solve this man-made humanitarian crisis.”
New York has become one of the main destinations for asylum seekers transported from the southern border by Texas’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, in “Operation Lone Star” — an effort to bus migrants to Democratic-led cities, including D.C. and Chicago. Last week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) employed a similar measure, flying 48 Venezuelans to Martha’s Vineyard. The tactics have been decried by many Democrats. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre accused Republicans last week of “using migrants as political pawns.”
The wave has prompted New York to open up 23 emergency shelters, but the available housing is “nearing a breaking point,” the mayor said.
Though the city is facing challenges, officials are committed to providing resources for migrants, Adams said in an appearance Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“We’re going to follow the law and as well as our moral obligation and responsibilities,” Adams told host Jake Tapper. “As has been mentioned over and over again, this is a right-to-shelter city, and we’re going to fulfill our obligations.”
Under New York City law, anyone who doesn’t have a roof over their head can find one through the homeless shelter system. The decades-old mandate is a product of several lawsuits that sought to secure homeless people’s right to a safe shelter. But in the midst of a housing crunch, the pressure to fulfill that responsibility has called for creative approaches.
Adams first mentioned the cruise-ship idea on Friday in an interview with Marcia Kramer on WCBS-TV.
“We’re looking at that as a temporary measure and not as a permanent measure. A permanent measure is to get people into housing,” Adams told Kramer.
He’s not the first politician to raise the idea of a floating shelter.
In 2002, then-New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg proposed doing as much when the city’s homeless population skyrocketed. City council members in Oakland, Calif., raised a similar plan to house up to 1,000 homeless people on a cruise ship in 2019, and that same year, President Donald Trump suggested cruise ships could be used to shelter Bahamians left homeless by Hurricane Dorian.
Although Adams mentioned the idea multiple times over the weekend, the details remain unclear. After being questioned about it at Monday’s news conference, Adams told reporters: “When there’s something to announce more about a cruise-ship idea or any other idea, I’m going to announce it. I’m finished with that. Next question.”
Reached by The Washington Post on Monday, the mayor’s office was unable to provide answers on potential timelines or details about any cruise line partnerships. According to the New York Times, Adams met with Norwegian Cruise Line’s chief executive in June, though a spokesperson for the mayor told the paper the meeting had “nothing to do with asylum seekers.”
In his interview with Tapper, Adams said the Republican strategy of offloading migrants runs contrary to the nation’s humanitarian identity, calling it a “blight on our entire country.”
“In some cases, we had those who were covid-positive on the buses with individuals who were dehydrated, didn’t have proper food. Some were even tagged, like you would tag an animal,” he said. | 2022-09-20T12:42:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | NYC Mayor Eric Adams suggests housing migrants on cruise ships - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/20/eric-adams-migrants-new-york/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/20/eric-adams-migrants-new-york/ |
Hurricane Fiona live updates FEMA chief expected to visit Puerto Rico as rain continues
Tuesday marks 5 years since Hurricane Maria’s destruction
FEMA leaders promise more effective response to storm
Five years after Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico, killing thousands and triggering one of the largest blackouts in U.S. history, the island is digging out after another devastating storm.
Even though the core of Hurricane Fiona has pulled well to the northwest of Puerto Rico and storm warnings have been discontinued, its circulation is forecast to drag rain bands over the island into Tuesday. Some areas could still add a few inches to current totals, bringing potentially more flooding and landslides.
Federal Emergency Management Administration chief Deanne Criswell is expected to travel to Puerto Rico on Tuesday to meet with local officials and assess the damage.
Puerto Rican Gov. Pedro Pierluisi said Monday that Hurricane Fiona killed at least two people and caused “catastrophic” destruction.
Fiona reached maximum sustained wind speeds of 115 mph, the National Hurricane Center said early Tuesday, making it this year’s first “major hurricane,” which is defined as a tropical cyclone with maximum sustained winds of 111 mph or more.
Luma Energy officials said power had been restored to more than 286,000 customers as of 6:30 a.m. Tuesday — a fifth of the 1.5 million total households that rely on the private energy consortium. It also said late Monday that Luma had restored power to Pavia Emergency Room (Carolina), Caribbean Hospital (Fajardo), Canovanas CDT and Cambalache Regional Hospital (Arecibo).
Tuesday marks five years since Hurricane Maria battered Puerto Rico — killing thousands of people and triggering one of the largest blackouts in U.S. history. Once again, Puerto Ricans are grappling with uncertainty after a major natural disaster.
By Josh Partlow and Arelis Hernández
The hurricane winds that knocked out power to the entire island of Puerto Rico over the weekend encountered an electrical grid that experts liken to a house of cards: a fragile, decrepit, patchwork system running on old equipment that authorities have failed to substantially modernize since the U.S. territory’s deadliest storm, Hurricane Maria, swept through five years before.
The state-run utility that is responsible for electricity generation is bankrupt, and mediation to restructure its $9 billion debt to bondholders ended without a deal last week. Luma Energy, the private consortium that was hired in 2020 to handle transmission, has failed to satisfy critics, as power outages have increased in duration this year even apart from destructive storms, according to a report last month by the Puerto Rico Energy Bureau.
Top officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency are pledging a more effective response to Hurricane Fiona than five years ago, when the agency acknowledged systemic failures in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.
“There’s a lot of progress we’ve made to make FEMA better positioned for this response, with our partners in Puerto Rico, than we were for Maria,” Keith Turi, FEMA’s assistant administrator for recovery, said in an interview. “We’ve got 10 times more food and water and three times more generators on the island today than we did before Maria.” | 2022-09-20T12:42:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hurricane Fiona live updates: After Dominican Republic landfall, storm moves north - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/20/hurricane-fiona-live-updates-storm-track/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/20/hurricane-fiona-live-updates-storm-track/ |
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