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The Weimar Republic has a warning for the U.S. about its judges
It’s dangerous to have a judiciary hostile to democracy
Perspective by Samuel Huneke
Samuel Huneke is a historian of modern Germany and an assistant professor of history at George Mason University.
(Mariam Zuhaib/AP)
It was spring of 1920, and troops were marching on Berlin. Conservative officers, who had helped the Weimar Republic defeat communist insurgents, were now turning on the politicians who led the country. Paramilitary units occupied the capital, forcing panicked leaders to flee. They declared Wolfgang Kapp, a minor civil servant, the new chancellor of the German Reich. It was neither the first nor last time that the radical right would menace the young democracy.
The coup, known as the Kapp Putsch, quickly collapsed. Government leaders from the Social Democratic Party (SPD) called for a general strike — that is, for every adult in the capital to take to the streets, stop working and thereby paralyze the military government. Electricity halted, newspapers shut down, the bureaucracy closed its doors. The strike worked: A few days later the putsch was over.
You might expect that after an unsuccessful coup its leaders would have been arrested, tried and punished. But you’d be wrong. Many of the military conspirators were let off, and the parliament passed an amnesty law later that year. Few of those brought to trial were actually convicted by Weimar’s notoriously conservative courts.
The Weimar Republic, Germany’s first experiment with democracy, was a frail creature. After all, it collapsed into Nazism only 14 years after its creation. But what you might not know is that Germany’s judges were deeply complicit in the republic’s demise. While we tend to think of courts as the guardrails of democracy, in 1920s Germany they were among its most implacable and insidious enemies. And their role in the rise of Nazism holds an important lesson for us as we confront a radically conservative Supreme Court that seems intent on undermining our own democracy today.
The Weimar Republic was born in the aftermath of Germany’s defeat in World War I. Germany’s emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, was forced off the throne on Nov. 9, 1918, and politicians from the SPD quickly proclaimed a democratic republic. A new constitution was drafted the following year in the provincial town of Weimar, leading contemporaries to term it the Weimar Republic. In many ways the constitution was a utopian document, enfranchising women, sweeping away censorship and aspiring to establish a truly universal democracy after centuries of monarchical rule.
But Weimar also had a darker side. In the days after the November revolution, the country’s new socialist leaders struck a devil’s bargain with the old conservative establishment. Friedrich Ebert, the new chancellor, agreed with military leaders that he would not purge the officer corps and that he would support its suppression of communist uprisings around the country. The judiciary too was left largely untouched. Staffed with conservative, upper-crust judges from the imperial era who yearned for the restoration of the monarchy, the courts remained profoundly hostile to democracy.
Judges’ antagonism toward the republic was never more evident that in their handling of right-wing terrorism. The early years of the republic were a profoundly violent time, as demobilized soldiers returned home and joined paramilitary organizations known as the Freikorps. Putsches and rebellions cascaded across the country, and political assassinations were the order of the day. Between 1919 and 1923, far-right terrorists assassinated at least 400 people. But while courts happily threw the book at leftists involved in communist uprisings, they responded mildly to right-wing vigilantes. On average, courts sentenced right-wing assassins to a mere four months in prison; leftists received on average 15 years.
When former vice chancellor Matthias Erzberger was murdered in 1921 (by members of the same paramilitary that had instigated the Kapp Putsch), the assassins were quickly spirited abroad. They would only stand trial decades later after the end of World War II. When foreign minister Walter Rathenau was killed in 1922, most of his assassins were let off with light jail terms.
And when Adolf Hitler attempted to overthrow the republic in 1923 in the infamous Beer Hall Putsch, the court handed down a five-year sentence, of which the Nazi leader served less than one year. His co-conspirator Erich Ludendorff was acquitted. Aided and abetted by the judiciary, right-wing terrorists murdered with virtual impunity.
In the mid-1920s, the Weimar Republic stabilized and enjoyed its golden years. But when the Great Depression crashed the world economy in 1929, the republic entered its death spiral. Extremist parties began to win greater shares of the vote. In 1932, the Nazi party became the largest bloc in parliament. Between 1929 and the Nazi assumption of power in 1933, a string of conservative chancellors governed by emergency decree, establishing a virtual dictatorship with the support of Reich President Paul von Hindenburg. By the time Hitler was named chancellor in January 1933, democracy had already withered.
In this dismantling of democracy, the judiciary again played a key role. During the summer of 1932, the arch-conservative chancellor Franz von Papen moved to replace the state government of Prussia with his own cronies. Prussia was a massive federal state, encompassing two-thirds of the country’s population, and was one of the last bastions of democratic government in Germany. Papen’s order to remove the state government and impose one selected by the central government was blatantly unconstitutional. Moreover, it gave the conservatives control of Prussia’s massive police force, control that would prove decisive for the Nazis when they consolidated power a year later.
The enervated social democrats appealed the order to Germany’s constitutional court. The court first denied their request for an injunction — after all, the judges didn’t want to preempt their judgment. Then, months later, they handed down a weak-kneed decision that, in essence, confirmed the constitutionality of Papen’s usurpation of the Prussian government. The Weimar judiciary had struck its last and most consequential blow against the republic. After Hitler came to power, the courts proved eager partners in Nazi rule — so much so that American occupation officials dedicated one of the 12 Nuremberg trials to the Nazi justice system, the “judges’ trial” memorialized in the film “Judgment at Nuremberg.”
Today, we are again confronted with a judiciary hostile to democracy. Lower-court judges appointed by Donald Trump have shown a disturbing deference to the former president as well as to the insurrectionists who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Over the last decade, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court has taken an ax to voting protections while simultaneously empowering states to gerrymander democracy out of existence. This term, the court’s radical supermajority may endorse a fringe theory that might empower state legislatures to ignore the results of presidential elections and submit handpicked electoral college slates. Such a ruling would be the death-knell of democracy in America.
While there are obvious differences between the 1920s and the 2020s — miraculously the United States does not yet have anywhere near the level of political violence that Weimar did, and most of our judges still take their oaths to the Constitution seriously — it’s clear that Trump’s four years in office reshaped our judiciary into one far more hostile to democracy. The question arises: Will our elected officials rein in our anti-democratic judges before it is too late? | 2022-10-28T10:26:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Weimar Republic has a warning for the U.S. about its judges - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/10/29/judges-supreme-court-weimar-republic/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/10/29/judges-supreme-court-weimar-republic/ |
Trump Republican or liberal Democrat? Latinas battle for House seat
No matter who it is, the winner of the Rio Grande Valley congressional district race will represent a sharp break from the region’s political past
Downtown McAllen is reflected in the window of a dress store in McAllen, Tex. (Sergio Flores for The Washington Post)
MCALLEN, Tex. — After a light round of conchas and empanadas in a modest home decorated in her campaign’s bright pink and yellow posters, congressional candidate Michelle Vallejo talked to a room mostly filled with educators about issues facing their community, like low wages and health-care access.
“We are a beautiful community, pero nos hace falta mucho — we’re missing a lot of things. And that’s what we should be fighting for … what our families need,” said Vallejo, wearing her signature gold hoops and fanny pack.
Just three miles away, the liberal Democrat’s challenger Monica De La Cruz took the stage at the Young Republicans of Hidalgo County convention. Like Vallejo, De La Cruz is also the descendant of Mexican immigrants. She, too, grew up in the Rio Grande Valley, along the U.S.-Mexico border. And she voted Democratic for most of her adult life.
“Democrats have been in control of this region for over a hundred years. And you know, they’ve taken our vote for granted. They disrespected nuestra cultura. These policies have hurt our people and our community,” she said to raucous applause from an audience clad in suits and high heels.
Despite their similarities, Vallejo and De La Cruz have embarked on starkly different political paths, which have culminated in a South Texas showdown that serves as a stand-in for their parties’ national clash over Latino voters. No matter who it is, the next Texas’s 15th District congresswoman will represent a sharp break from the region’s past in both ideology and gender.
For the first time, the district that has often been represented by whom people here describe as “South Texas Democrats” — Democrats with conservative stances on issues like abortion and guns — will be represented either by a party liberal or a Trump-backed Republican, the ascendant factions of the opposing sides. It will also be the first time a woman represents the district, after a race in which two Latina candidates have woven Mexican American culture into mainstream party platforms.
Since the 2020 presidential election, when the GOP made significant inroads in this part of South Texas, both parties have been fighting for ownership — or the perception of ownership — over the Hispanic vote here. The outcome in this 81 percent Hispanic district could serve as a national symbol for whether the rightward shift of the nearly-homogenous communities of South Texas was a Trump-era aberration or the start of a longer-term political trend.
The Latino vote shifted to Republicans in 2020. Will it again?
The race “might very well show what we haven’t been able to see until now: that Latinos are very complex, and parties are now adapting to that complexity. It’s going to be a big signal to the rest of the country,” said Sergio Garcia-Rios, associate director of research at the University of Texas at Austin’s Center for the Study of Race and Democracy.
The district lacks an incumbent because under Texas’s Republican-run redistricting process, Texas-15 grew redder and more competitive, shifting from one Trump lost by 2 points to one he would have won by nearly 3 points. In response, Democratic incumbent Vicente Gonzalez switched to a redrawn and bluer adjacent district.
Texas-15 is described by many here as a “fajita,” snaking its way northward from the more urban border through rural parts of the Rio Grande Valley and ending just past Seguin, a city northeast of San Antonio.
“The message there for Republicans is going to be, Latinos are within reach, you just have to reach out to them.” Garica-Rios said. “And Democrats need to also wake up and say wait, we are letting go of this demographic, and we need them. I think it’s going to be a waking call for Democrats and motivation for Republicans to keep … reaching out to Latinos.”
De La Cruz, 47, is running a Trump-backed campaign that leans heavily on national Republican rhetoric, positioning herself as the protector of Latino culture against Democrats. She often campaigns with two other Republican Latinas who are challenging Democrats in competitive South Texas border districts.
“We are the party that tells Hispanics: respetamos tu idioma. We recognize Hispanics as the people who have given the world the likes of Tito Puente, Luis Miguel and our beloved Selena,” she said at the local young Republicans convention. “South Texas is certainly not woke, but we are awake.”
Her speeches often praise God and the late Tejana singer Selena while bashing the term “Latinx” favored by some liberals. De La Cruz ran in the district in 2020 before it was redrawn and came within 3 percentage points of Gonzalez. She emphasizes enhanced border security, approves of Texas’s ban on abortion without exceptions for rape or incest and joined the ranks of Republicans who questioned the legitimacy of mail-in votes.
Vallejo, 31, was the favored candidate of LUPE Votes, the campaign arm of the labor rights nonprofit La Union del Pueblo Entero. She won a 6-way primary by 35 votes over a male, veteran, moderate challenger who fit the traditional mold of representatives here. A co-owner of her family’s flea market, Vallejo has pushed for raising the minimum wage and Medicare-for-all as solutions to the region’s high poverty and low insured rates. She also wants to provide a path to citizenship for law-abiding undocumented immigrants and smooth the processing of asylum seekers at the border.
Endorsed by liberal Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), she is unequivocal about her support for abortion rights but frequently talks about the need to understand antiabortion neighbors — often referencing the difficult conversation she had on the topic with her own abuela.
“Overall people have felt like we need a big change,” Vallejo said. “What’s at stake here is, is South Texas representing itself for who it is?”
‘Daniel in the lion’s den’
It was in 2016, when Trump was elected, that De La Cruz and others like her turned away from Democrats.
“It was not socially acceptable to say you were Republican,” she said. “It wasn’t something we talked about down here. And many of us stayed quiet. With that being said, I often felt like Daniel in the lion’s den saying, ‘I must be quiet because I’m not allowed to have a voice.’ But I felt the Holy Spirit in me tell me ‘This is your time Monica, this is what I want you to do.’ ”
In the Rio Grande Valley, Democrats have not only dominated federal offices but also often occupied local seats. Last year, however, the district’s largest, predominantly Hispanic city, McAllen, elected its first GOP mayor in two dozen years. Some locals and experts credit the Republican Party’s rise on cases of local corruption involving Democratic officials through the years; others say the defund the police movement and other positions adopted by liberals prompted the shift.
Hispanic voters favor democrats, but by smaller margin, Post-Ipsos poll finds
“The Democratic Party had just moved so far to the left that it no longer aligned with my personal values but even more important, with South Texas values,” De La Cruz said in an interview with The Washington Post.
Still, the Republican gains are a matter of degree; Latinos, even those in South Texas, still mostly favored Democrats in 2020. A Pew Research Center survey released this month showed that nationally, registered Latinos say the would vote for or are leaning to vote for a Democrat to Congress over a Republican by 25 percentage points.
De La Cruz was raised by a single mother in Brownsville, an eastern border city. She heralds her family’s immigration story but distinguishes her grandmother’s legal migration from Mexico from the journeys of those who currently cross the border. A number of her television ads show her standing or walking by the border wall.
“For those who live at the border it is not very difficult to comprehend the magnitude of the crisis we’re seeing,” she said in a mailer to supporters. “For those of us who call this area of the United States home, it is impossible to avoid this brewing disaster.”
She has refused to debate Vallejo, demurring when questioned on the issue on a press call by mentioning that the candidates “shared a stage” earlier this year. (It was a January dinner event featuring more than a dozen female candidates).
Why is the border a midterm issue?
But De La Cruz’s emphasis on faith and her cultural background captured the attention of Marlén Chávez. At a Republican prayer breakfast, tears rolled down Chávez’s cheeks as De La Cruz spoke. She dabbed them with a soft napkin.
“She’s basically describing me,” said Chávez, a former Democrat who home-schools her three boys. “It’s my background. I was born and raised here, I’m a Mexican American. Hispanic. Went to college here … That completely represented me.”
A ‘South Texas progressive’
When Vallejo was 4 years old, her mother developed the symptoms of what was later diagnosed as multiple sclerosis: bruises on her body, intense fatigue and overwhelming bouts of pain.
Suddenly, her family was faced with the challenges of affording her mom’s medications while taking time away from work at Pulga Los Portales — the flea market her family owns — to travel to doctors’ appointments. Often, her family would cross the border to Mexico, where medications are cheaper than in the United States.
During those years, Vallejo said, it wasn’t uncommon for the pulga to host a barbecue fundraiser for a fellow neighbor whose family was suffering from similar issues — access to and money for the health care of their loved ones.
“There need to be big systemic changes and policy changes in order for our lives to improve,” Vallejo said. “And I know growing up my mom needed so much more than she had access to.”
Her mother died from the disease at age 46. Vallejo was 19.
The need she saw in her community, she said, is why she advocates for Medicare-for-all, a single payer, government-run health care program that would cover all Americans.
Vallejo said her campaign has been boosted by voters’ worries about abortion rights, but she faces some setbacks. Vallejo got a later start to her campaign than her opponent, having to battle her way through a close primary, a runoff and a recount before she could begin competing in the general election, while De La Cruz soared from her 2020 campaign to her 2022 one.
Republicans also have outspent Democrats on ads in the district by millions of dollars since September. The Democratic House Majority PAC cut planned ads in the nearby city of Corpus Christi while continuing to funnel resources to incumbents in tough races in other tight border district races; state Democrats have scrambled to make up the difference.
Democrats aim to keep spotlight on abortion as they face midterm headwinds
Standing outside a barbecue truck on a recent evening, Mia Diaz-Aleman, a local merchandiser who supports Vallejo, said what residents don’t understand is that Vallejo is not just any liberal candidate — she’s “a South Texas progressive.”
To her, that means “we have some conservative views but we also have some progressive views, in the sense that we are out there for each other, like Medicare-for-all and education for all, in the sense of environmental justice, immigration … but behind us we are pro-Second Amendment, we are pro small business,” she said.
Diaz-Aleman said it hurts her to see the division the fierce campaigning has caused in their community.
“Now we’re hoping for a bright, bright future,” she said. “Hopefully we can all come together, become more cohesive and get our region where we believe it should be.” | 2022-10-28T10:26:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Two Latinas vie in Texas congressional race, aiming to make history - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/28/house-texas-latina-candidates/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/28/house-texas-latina-candidates/ |
An Afghan soldier and an American soldier patrol Kandahar’s poppy fields during the 2011 opium harvest. Detail from a 360-degree panoramic made with a toy camera. (Ben Brody)
In August 2021, I found myself somewhere off the coast of Alaska on a small cruise ship with my wife and her family. It was a beautiful, serene time — a trip of a lifetime gifted to us by my father-in-law. One of the best things about the cruise was a lack of internet or phone access that allowed for some much-needed peace and quiet.
Every now and then, depending on where we were along the coast, I’d get a few bars on my mobile phone, and that allowed me to log on to the ship’s free, limited internet service, which included a lite version of the New York Times. One day, when I logged on, I saw the image of a Taliban soldier resting on the hood of a Humvee — Afghanistan had fallen to the Taliban after the United States left the country.
For a moment, the peace and serenity that enveloped me on that ship was shattered. It brought back visceral memories of my own, scant time in Afghanistan when I embedded with the 82nd Airborne in Khost province. I’ve always looked back on that time and have wondered what happened to the very young soldiers I spent time with. But even more than them, I’ve always wondered what has become of the Afghan people I passed while seated in a Humvee kicking up dust along the countryside wadis.
As it turns out, I am, by far, not the only one whose memories were tugged back to another time. Photographer Ben Brody, who served in Afghanistan with the U.S. Army and then returned there to work as a journalist, was also thinking about it. As the country was falling to the Taliban, Brody’s longtime interpreter reached out to him, fearing for his life and his family’s future.
Brody and a group of other military vets tried to do what they could to help in this nightmare scenario. Here’s Brody in his own words:
“I and a few other military veterans pooled our resources and did the best we could to help our Afghan friends escape Kabul on military aircraft. Many veterans and experts did the same, in an effort that was described as the “Digital Dunkirk.” It would have been a more apt analogy if the English Channel had been fogged over and most of the boats crashed into each other and sank. For weeks we coordinated spotty intelligence reports and assembled State Department paperwork that would allow our Afghan colleagues to get on a plane to the US. The problem was navigating the oceanic crowds at Hamid Karzai International Airport, running the gauntlet of violent Taliban checkpoints, picking the right gate, and presenting the right password to the right Marines at the gate.
“For eight days, connected on WhatsApp, we all agonized over every meter to the airport from 300 meters away (where the crowds began) to the gate itself. It only worked for a couple of our friends who flew to safety. Most of our friends are still in Afghanistan, contending with the reality of Taliban rule, and what that means for their wives and daughters’ prospects for education and equality.”
Back in 2011, Brody took a toy camera that made 360-degree photos with him during Kandahar’s annual poppy harvest. He mostly took it along as an icebreaker to tamp down any tension that might come up between him, working as a journalist, and combatants. At the time, he was mainly using digital cameras for his work and didn’t really have any plans for the images he made with the toy camera.
In the winter after Afghanistan’s fall to the Taliban, Brody began working on a book composed of the images he made with that toy camera. He thinks of the book that ensued, “300m,” (MASS Books, 2022) as a kind of epilogue to his blisteringly original first book about his time in Afghanistan, “Attention Servicemember.”
“300m” is an exquisitely unique book all on its own. The images made with the toy camera are beautifully imperfect. Their imperfection magnifies the chaos of “being there.” The sloppiness of the images creates a kind of poetic, interpretive aura.
The “cheapness” and imperfection of the image quality also helps transmit a feeling of being there on the ground. Everything flashes by quickly and fragmented and fleeting and fragile and brittle. It evokes the feeling I had while scuttling along Afghanistan’s arid landscape in a Humvee where the radio is constantly klunking out or pulling up to a mess tent to load up on carbs — everything coated with a fine layer of dust.
The construction of the book is also unique. It collects Brody’s 360-degree panoramas in an accordion format, and as he told me, “You can flip through it like a regular book, or lay it on the floor where it stretches out 16 feet. There is something surreal about the images, and the structure of the book pushes me to try and make sense of them, which is impossible.”
When you open the cover of the book, you’re greeted with a haunting WhatsApp chat from Brody and Co.’s last attempt on the airport gate, a harrowing experience that is re-created through the cacophony of the imagery inside, shattering one’s sense of peace and serenity. This is fitting. The war, and its aftermath, has done a lot to magnify pain and uncertainty for so many lives.
You can find out more about the book and buy it here. And you can see more of Brody’s work on his website here. | 2022-10-28T10:26:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Photos of Afghanistan War - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/2022/10/28/photos-afghanistan-war/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/2022/10/28/photos-afghanistan-war/ |
Why are people in West Africa waving Russian flags?
Russian propaganda has a wide reach. Here’s what else is boosting pro-Russian sentiment.
Analysis by Aoife McCullough
Supporters of Burkina Faso’s new junta hold Burkina Faso and Russian flags as they gather to protest against the arrival of an ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) delegation in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, on Oct. 4, 2022. (Vincent Bado/Reuters)
Earlier this month, coup supporters in Burkina Faso waved Russian flags as they protested near the French Embassy in the capital city of Ouagadougou. In September in Niger, protesters against Western military presence draped Russian flags across a monument in front of the national assembly building. Similarly, in Mali prior to the 2021 coup, Russian flags often fluttered above protesters.
In the U.S. and Europe — where media coverage of the Russian invasion is pro-Ukraine — it’s easy to assume that protesters in West Africa must be misled. Russian propaganda is indeed rife on social media. Videos circulating on WhatsApp and Facebook amplify Russia’s justifications for the invasion of Ukraine, and make claims about the hypocritical, covert and colonial nature of French and Western military interventions in the Sahel. Many of these claims are outrageous falsehoods — the most damning being that the French support jihadist groups.
Can ECOWAS convince Burkina Faso to return to civilian rule?
But some of these claims are true. The French government supported the unconstitutional postponement of elections in Chad following a military coup in early 2021, then several months later called for sanctions against Mali when coup leaders there decided to postpone elections. Most defense agreements between France and West African nations are not made available to the public, leaving people suspicious about what has been agreed between France and its former colonies.
The post-colonial nature of the relationship between France and West African countries persists in different forms. Most obvious is the CFA currency — used in many West African countries — that dates from the colonial period and continues to benefit French companies. These realities mean that West Africans have reasons to ask questions about Western interventions in the Sahel. But why do so many people believe that Russia is a better partner?
Even in areas that experience terrorist attacks, people have doubts about Western military interventions
In my research I explore how people living in areas where terrorist groups operate perceive Western military counterterrorism interventions. Between January and May 2022, I carried out 42 hour-long interviews with people who had either fled the conflict-affected zones in west Niger and are now based in regional capitals, or who were visiting a regional capital for work. The interview group included pastoralists, farmers, chiefs, administrators and students. Alongside these qualitative interviews, I analyzed data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), which collects real-time data on all reported political violence and protest events around the world.
The Nigeriens I interviewed had doubts about the real purpose of Western troops operating in their localities. These doubts were not based on Russian propaganda but on direct experiences.
One example involves German military operations in Tahoua, a region in the west of Niger, bordering Mali. Germans built a military base there in 2018 and began training Nigerien Special Forces. Since then, insecurity in the Tahoua region has massively increased. In the five years leading up to the establishment of the German base, ACLED data show the average annual number of attacks on civilians by armed groups or militaries in Tahoua was zero. Since 2018, the average annual number of attacks on civilians has reached 16. In 2022 to date, the database has tallied 45 attacks on civilians.
Are coups really contagious?
To be sure, the German base is in an area where the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) were starting to become active in 2018 — making this a strategic location to support counterterrorism operations. But for those living in the area around the base, it didn’t feel like that.
While the base was being set up, ISGS began shifting across the Malian border, into the area around the base. At first, they demanded zakat (Islamic tax) from both Tuareg and Fulani communities and seized livestock when communities refused to pay up. Tensions escalated and in March 2021, ISGS forces killed almost everyone in three Tuareg camps, one of which was located approximately 15 miles from the German base. According to my interviews and ACLED data, 144 people were killed. In the months that followed, Tuareg militia groups, believing that Fulani pastoralists were involved in the attacks by ISGS, carried out revenge attacks against Fulani communities living between the base and the Malian border.
The German operation in Tahoua forms part of the European Union Training Mission in Mali, which has no direct mandate to protect civilians. The Nigerien Special Forces are trained in conducting high-precision operations that focus mainly on “neutralizing” jihadist group leaders. The Nigerien Gendarmerie — the national paramilitary force — is responsible for protecting the population but people complained help was slow to arrive, and the attackers had long since departed. Most interviewees attributed the Gendarmerie’s slow response to their lack of vehicles and helicopters, but found it difficult to understand why the Special Forces and the German military did not respond. Local people mentioned the vehicles and equipment at the disposal of Special Forces patrols in the area, for example.
Conspiracy theories help people make sense of confusing events
Cognitive psychologists have shown that the human mind is primed to see causality between co-occurring events. Conspiracy theories about French and German troops supporting jihadist groups make rising insecurity coinciding with their arrival more understandable.
There are other confusing events that feed belief in conspiracy theories. Several interviewees reported seeing a low-flying plane about 40-60 minutes before ISGS attacked their village. Interviewees incorrectly assumed that these were French surveillance planes that passed information onto ISGS. Few people imagine that ISGS has surveillance equipment, but ISGS has recently started to use drones before launching an attack.
Do West Africans really think that cooperation with Russia would be better than French or German cooperation? Yes and no. They have heard about the allegations of violence carried out by the Wagner Group, a private Russian mercenary group operating in Mali as part of the cooperation between Mali and Russia, but many believe these allegations to be Western propaganda.
Interviewees consider the current situation in Niger to be dire, and they can only hope that a change in partner would bring an improvement. As one interviewee remarked, “We have to choose between the bad and the worse.”
Aoife McCullough (@aoifemccullough) is a PhD candidate in international development at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research focuses on the foreign militarization of Niger and legitimation processes. | 2022-10-28T10:27:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How do West Africans view Western military interventions? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/28/west-africa-niger-france-germany-russia-terrorism/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/28/west-africa-niger-france-germany-russia-terrorism/ |
HBO’s ‘The White Lotus’ returns for Season 2 with sex on its mind
The second season of Mike White’s award-winning covid-era creation might feel like a slight rehash, but includes enough new ideas to make it worthwhile
Review by Travis M. Andrews
From left, Will Sharpe as Ethan Spiller, Aubrey Plaza as Harper Spiller, Meghann Fahy as Daphne Sullivan and Theo James as Cameron Sullivan in HBO’s “The White Lotus” Season 2. (HBO)
Michael Corleone’s retreat to Sicily in 1972’s “The Godfather” starts out pleasant enough — he meets and marries a local woman named Apollonia.
But by the end of his stay, a car bomb kills her and shatters him. Arguably, her death serves as little more than a plot device and character motivation for her grieving husband.
At one point in Season 2 of HBO’s “The White Lotus” — which replaces the lush Hawaiian setting from the Emmy-winning first season with a White Lotus resort in Sicily, the place that eroded Michael’s soul — a small group visits the house where that very scene was filmed. In the driveway is a replica of the car. Inside it, a replica of Apollonia.
“She blows up, like blows up? That’s a little, tasteless, maybe?” says one young woman, nodding at the car.
A young Stanford graduate, interested in her, quickly bemoans the movie: “Men love the ‘The Godfather’ because they feel emasculated by modern society. It’s a fantasy about a time when they could go out and solve all their problems with violence and sleep with every woman and come home to their wife who doesn’t ask them any questions and makes them pasta.”
“Hey, hey, hey,” an older character interjects. “It’s a normal male fantasy.”
It doesn’t feel like mere coincidence that Simonetta Stefanelli, the actress who played Apollonia and appeared topless in the film, was only 16 years old at the time, which has become a blemish on the movie’s legacy. On writer/director Mike White’s mind in the new season, which premieres Sunday, are the power dynamics of sexual politics: Who has said power, how it’s abused, who is exploited and who is exploiting, and in the most dire of situations, who is the hunter and who is the hunted.
Much like the first season, “The White Lotus” kicks off with an unidentified dead body and quickly seems to forget about it, making a time jump to a week prior. It even includes this tantalizing exchange between the hotel manager and another employee: “How many dead guests are there?” “I don’t know. A few.”
Once again, the joke is on the modern viewer obsessed with binge-watching streaming, mystery-box shows, ones that always need a death to get things going. Yeah, someone died, the show seems to say, but you’re simple-minded — or maybe just shallow — for thinking that’s what’s important here.
The show’s true focus, again, is on a cast of wealthy Americans attempting to escape the rigors of daily life back home, only to realize they can’t. The big difference, which is enough to recommend the new season for fans of the show, is this time they unwittingly find themselves stuck in something resembling an erotic satire.
The only returning characters are Tanya McQuoid-Hunt (Jennifer Coolidge) the impossibly dimwitted and breathtakingly insecure heiress and her now-husband Greg Hunt (Jon Gries), the no-longer-terminally-ill man she met in the first season, who seems exasperated with his new bride. With them is a new face, her beleaguered, depressed assistant Portia (Haley Lu Richardson), who yearns for a little bedroom fun with a hot Italian man but is ordered by Tanya to remain in her room at all times.
Also on the boat headed for the resort are three generations of Di Grasso men who hope to explore their Sicilian heritage but spend most of the trip focusing on their issues with women. There’s the grandfather Bert Di Grasso (F. Murray Abraham), who thinks his life of (what he erroneously believes to be discreet) affairs is the norm; his sex-addicted, Hollywood producer son Dominic (Michael Imperioli) struggling to change; and his grandson Albie (Adam DiMarco) who, armed with progressive talking points, assures himself that he’s nothing like the men he’s traveling with.
Rounding out the crew are two married couples: Cameron (Theo James) and Daphne Sullivan (Meghann Fahy), whose constant PDA and boasts about how they never fight draw the suspicions of the cynical Harper Spiller (Aubrey Plaza) and, increasingly, her husband and Cameron’s college roommate Ethan (Will Sharpe), who recently joined the ranks of the wealthy after selling his company.
This time around, though, rather than juxtapose the guests with the hotel’s staff — with whom this installment spends little time — it’s two young, local burgeoning prostitutes, Lucia (Simona Tabasco) and Mia (Beatrice Grannò) instigating most of the conflict after Dominic gives them week-long access to the hotel.
Soon enough, as, erm, everyone’s relations overlap and become more complicated, it feels like an anaconda is wrapped around the entire resort, slowly tightening, tightening, tightening.
Some vacation.
“The White Lotus” began as a covid-era creation when HBO needed a series that could be filmed relatively easily while adhering to strict safety protocols. The result was genius: what at first glance felt like an escape to gorgeous Hawaii when none of us could travel turned out to be the wealthy vacationers’ worst nightmare. What could be more claustrophobic than realizing you can’t escape yourself, even as you escape to the world’s most beautiful locales?
This seven-episode season still retains that central motif — our characters quickly realize how claustrophobic being stuck with themselves can be, even in a breathtaking Italian resort — but thanks to the lifting of said restrictions, more of the show is able to spill out onto the streets of Sicily and its surrounding towns. The ability to escape the escape, which naturally only invites more misery, only serves to reinforce the theme.
For some viewers, this all might feel like a slight rehash, idiosyncratic as it might be. But though these new episodes (of which five were made available to critics) meander at times, Season 2 is more tightly plotted and there are enough new ideas, with even the most staid insights heightened by White’s razor-sharp writing, for it to feel fresh.
Let’s just hope that, despite our franchise-centric entertainment culture, White will be able to stop when he runs out of compelling ideas. The new season works, but the idea of spending a third vacation at a White Lotus resort (with yet another red herring of a dead body) already feels a bit tiring. As any good bellhop knows, it’s important not to overstay your welcome.
The White Lotus (one hour) returns at 9 p.m. Sunday on HBO. | 2022-10-28T10:28:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | HBO’s ‘The White Lotus’ returns for Season 2 with sex on its mind - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/tv/2022/10/28/white-lotus-season-2-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/tv/2022/10/28/white-lotus-season-2-review/ |
You may have hearing loss and not know it. Here’s what it sounds like.
Hearing loss can be gradual and difficult to notice, but experts say hearing checks should be a routine part of health care.
The problem with identifying hearing loss is that many people don’t know what they are missing.
One study found that about 24 percent of people between the ages of 20 and 69 who think they have excellent hearing actually have measurable hearing damage.
To keep track of hearing health, audiologists say people should take hearing tests annually, like any other regular health checkup.
After a hearing test, you may be given a chart called an audiogram, which gives you detailed information about the status of your hearing in both ears.
Audiograms show how well — or poorly — you hear sounds at different frequencies, or pitches, providing a visual representation of how you hear the world.
The horizontal axis of an audiogram maps the pitches that are audible to your ears, from low-pitched sounds, shown on the left, to high-pitched sounds, shown on the right.
Water dripping from a faucet into a sink would represent a low-pitched sound on the left of the chart. A small chirping bird would register as a high-pitched sound on the right.
The vertical axis on your audiogram shows how loud a sound needs to be for you to hear it well. Sounds at the top of the chart are quiet, while sounds at the bottom are very loud.
A blaring ambulance siren would appear at the bottom of the chart.
When a person is speaking, the frequency and loudness of the sounds they make typically fall in a “U” shape in the center of the audiogram.
The audiogram of a person with normal hearing might look like this, showing that they can hear soft sounds that fall between 0 and 20 decibels.
The area in blue shows the frequencies and decibel levels a person can hear. The area above indicates the range of sounds they can’t hear.
Press play to hear how these hard-to-distinguish words sound with normal hearing.
Chat Death Gin Knock Thin Yearn Puff
Two people with the same level of hearing loss can hear the world in very different ways, depending on which frequencies they are struggling to hear. This animation shows how hearing can move from normal to a mild, moderate or profound high-frequency hearing loss.
Someone with a moderate level of high-frequency hearing loss has more trouble with higher-frequency sounds, such as “s” or “th” sounds. Certain words may sound less clear to them.
Press play to hear how these hard-to-distinguish words sound with high-frequency hearing loss.
Someone with a moderate level of low-frequency hearing loss would have the opposite problem — they struggle to hear lower-pitched sounds. Some words may sound tinny or harsh.
Press play to hear how these hard-to-distinguish words sound with low-frequency hearing loss.
Some people experience hearing loss at middle frequencies. They might have trouble with hearing certain speech sounds that fall into this range. This is called a “cookie bite” hearing loss and might make words sound muffled.
Press play to hear how these hard-to-distinguish words sound with ‘cookie bite’ hearing loss.
Hearing aids work by amplifying sounds at specific frequency channels, with the aim of giving wearers the ability to hear a more normal range of sound.
Once you know your audiogram profile, you can shop for a hearing aid that will optimize sound for the specific type of hearing loss you have.
An in-person hearing test with an audiologist gives the most accurate results, said Sarah A. Sydlowski, an audiologist with the Cleveland Clinic. An audiologist also can diagnose the source of a hearing loss, which, in some cases, could be fixable, she said. Health insurance doesn’t always cover this service, which typically costs around $100-$150 out-of-pocket.
Another option is to try a hearing center run by hearing aid specialists, such as at Costco or Sam’s Club, which often offer a free or discounted hearing test, but may try to persuade people to buy their products afterward. Hearing aid specialists can’t offer a full medical or diagnostic exam but can run hearing tests for the purpose of fitting hearing aids.
If an in-person or telehealth test is not an option, there are some online tests that can give fairly accurate results and could be used as screeners, according to experts.
Anyone with a hearing loss should treat it, experts said. Untreated hearing loss can result in changes in the brain that make it harder to hear even after getting hearing aids, said Heidi Hill, an audiologist with Hearing Health Clinic in Osseo, Minn.
“The parts of their brain that process sound slow down and go a bit dormant,” she said.
Research also shows that untreated hearing loss is associated with increased risks for falling, dementia and heart attacks, and has been linked with more hospitalizations, emergency room visits and higher medical bills.
Someone with a mild or moderate hearing loss may be able to buy hearing aids over the counter. Here’s a guide to help you choose the right one. For people with more significant hearing loss, experts recommend going to see an audiologist because they will probably need more powerful, complex hearing aids that are required to be professionally fit.
Garland Potts and Ariel Plotnick contributed to this report.
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Amanda Morris is a disability reporter for The Washington Post on its Well+Being desk. Before joining The Post in 2022, she was the inaugural disability reporting fellow for the New York Times. Twitter Twitter | 2022-10-28T10:28:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | This is what hearing loss looks and sounds like. - Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/interactive/2022/hearing-loss-audiogram-hearing-aids/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/interactive/2022/hearing-loss-audiogram-hearing-aids/ |
Israel election: A far-right politician moves closer to power
Shira Rubin
Itamar Ben Gvir, center, a far-right Israeli lawmaker and the head of the Jewish Power party, visits a market where his supporters gathered Friday in Tel Aviv during his campaign ahead of the country's election. (Oded Balilty/AP)
TEL AVIV — This liberal neighborhood of hipster cafes and bike paths in the center of Israel’s coastal tech hub is not supposed to be a stomping ground for the likes of Itamar Ben Gvir, one of the country’s most extreme right-wing politicians. But here, a week before national elections, a boisterous group of supporters was waiting for him to arrive at a rally.
Several dozen backers held banners and traded insults with a similarly sized group of protesters: “Racists, go home!” vs. “Our time has come!” Many of his supporters were as young as the urbanites zipping by on electric scooters.
“I like how radical he is,” Noam Maor-El, 17, said of the pistol-packing lawyer who built his career defending Jewish settlers accused of violence and who has advocated expelling “disloyal” citizens, including leftists and Palestinians, from Israel. “This is what Israel needs right now.”
For decades, Ben Gvir was a political untouchable. His roots in the overtly racist Kach party — founded by a radical American rabbi, Meir Kahane, and banned by Israel — put him beyond the fringe of even the most right-wing parties. That changed last year when then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had lost his governing coalition and was desperate for a few more parliamentary votes, invited Ben Gvir into his alliance.
Netanyahu downplayed his maneuver, largely dismissing Ben Gvir as a backbencher who wouldn’t play a major role in government.
What a difference a year makes. As Israelis head to the polls yet again on Nov. 1 for the fifth time in less than four years, the bit player has become a marquee attraction.
Ben Gvir is drawing attention not just in the West Bank settlements where he is a hero to many, but in ultra-Orthodox communities and suburban centers. At a high school in Ramat Gan, known for its political activism, some students protested his appearance but others greeted him with the anti-Arab chant: “May your village burn!”
The surging Ben Gvir is hailed by modern-day Kahanists as the messenger who makes their ideology palatable to new audiences, a telegenic teddy bear who can brandish his sidearm in an Arab neighborhood at night and banter about it during a cooking spot on a morning news show. He garnered more airtime in 2021 than any other Knesset member, according to one media analysis.
“Netanyahu opened the door for Ben Gvir to participate in mainstream politics,” said Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute. “Now he is becoming a force.”
Polls suggest that Ben Gvir’s Jewish Power party, which is running jointly with two other far-right parties, is on track to win 14 or 15 seats, Plesner said. That would likely make the combined party the third largest in Israel’s 120-seat Knesset, after Netanyahu’s Likud and Prime Minister Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party.
Netanyahu, who appears close to returning to power as prime minister, has not ruled out making Ben Gvir a cabinet minister, a prospect that sends chills through a political establishment that has blackballed the ultranationalist since he was a teenager.
As a provocateur, Ben Gvir was a prodigy. The “David Duke of Israel,” as one commentator dubbed him, first came to prominence as a 19-year-old in 1995 in the wake of a peace deal with the Palestinians signed by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. An outraged Ben Gvir brandished a car ornament reportedly ripped from Rabin’s Cadillac and said: “We got the car. We’ll get to Rabin, too.”
Weeks later, Rabin was assassinated by a right-wing Israeli extremist. Ben Gvir was not connected to the killing, though he campaigned for the assassin’s release from prison. He has been prosecuted for inciting violence and was known to keep on his wall a portrait of Baruch Goldstein, the American Israeli who massacred 29 Palestinian worshipers at Hebron’s Cave of the Patriarchs in 1994.
As his profile has grown, Ben Gvir has softened his rhetoric, if not his ideology. He has distanced himself from Kahane, whom he used to call “a hero,” and said his calls to deport Palestinians have been exaggerated.
“We don’t have a fight with every Arab who lives in Judea and Samaria,” said Ben Gvir, using the biblical names for the West Bank, in a voice message sent to The Washington Post in response to questions about his stances. “If an Arab lives here and recognizes the state of Israel, ‘Ahlan wa sahlan’ [‘Welcome,’ in Arabic]. No problem with them. But anyone who wants to destroy, to throw stones, to throw molotov cocktails — we’re at war with them.”
For some of his new, young followers, the inflammatory language is what draws them, at a time when tensions between Jews and Palestinians are on the rise.
Daniel Levy, 19, came to see Ben Gvir in Tel Aviv from Bat Yam, a beach town to the south with a large Palestinian population. His friendship with Palestinian neighbors and schoolmates largely ended after riots broke out in mixed communities such as his during the 2021 Gaza war.
“Now I see that there is no normal Arab person,” said Levy, raising his voice to be heard over the shouting match between Ben Gvir supporters and protesters. “I had Arab friends who were part of all that. We have to fight back, and Ben Gvir is here to lead.”
The rapid normalization of Ben Gvir has many of Israel’s supporters abroad ringing alarms over the rise of “racist, homophobic fanatics,” as the editor of a Jewish newspaper in Britain put it.
Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), a stalwart Israel backer in Congress, reportedly warned Netanyahu that Ben Gvir’s presence in a future government could harm American-Israeli relations. The New York-based Israel Policy Forum deplored the idea of Ben Gvir serving as a cabinet minister as “contrary to Zionism’s principles of fundamental justice and equality.”
But some American Jewish groups that condemned Ben Gvir in the past have gone silent as he nears the center of power. The American Jewish Committee, which described the views of Ben Gvir’s party as “reprehensible” as recently as 2019, said in an email Tuesday that the group would have no comment on his alliance with Netanyahu and his rise in the polls.
Some American Jewish leaders, including Israel Policy Forum head Susie Gelman, are beseeching others to take a stand.
“It takes an excessive measure of cognitive dissonance to condemn displays of racist supremacy at home as American citizens while dismissing similar displays as irrelevant or beyond our legitimate concerns when they so prominently occur in the Jewish state that is our historical homeland,” Gelman wrote in the Times of Israel.
At the rally, as his friends tore down campaign posters for one of Ben Gvir’s opponents, Maor-El defended his candidate’s extremism. Netanyahu, whom his family has backed for years, wasn’t tough enough to take on the Palestinians, he said.
“The Arabs are radical; they want to kills us,” he said. “We need Ben Gvir to balance it out.” | 2022-10-28T10:28:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Israel election: Far-right figure Itamar Ben Gvir moves closer to power - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/27/israel-election-ben-gvir-netanyahu/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/27/israel-election-ben-gvir-netanyahu/ |
Bar-tailed godwits stand on the beach at Marion Bay in Australia’s Tasmania state on Feb. 17, 2018. A young bar-tailed godwit appears to have set a non-stop distance record for migratory birds by flying at least 13,560 kilometers (8,435 miles) from Alaska to the Australian state of Tasmania, a bird expert said Friday, Oct. 28, 2022. (Eric Woehler via AP) (EJ Woehler/Eric Woehler) | 2022-10-28T10:28:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Alaska-Australia flight could place bird in record books - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/alaska-australia-flight-could-place-bird-in-record-books/2022/10/28/a8509c24-56a1-11ed-ac8b-08bbfab1c5a5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/alaska-australia-flight-could-place-bird-in-record-books/2022/10/28/a8509c24-56a1-11ed-ac8b-08bbfab1c5a5_story.html |
Kid Congo Powers looks back on his rock-and-roll journey
In ‘Some Kind of New Kick,’ the guitarist for multiple bands in the post-punk pantheon writes about his one-of-a-kind career
By Zachary Lipez
Kid Congo Powers. (Romi Mori)
The list of proper guitar heroes, those six-string shredders who play solos with their teeth while their groins are busy looking good in leather, is a short one these days. And not just because Eddie Van Halen and B.B. King are both dead, and Eric Clapton’s reputation as a jerk has finally outpaced his reputation as God’s White blues representative on earth. Guitar music simply doesn’t hold the cultural space it once did; being extremely good at playing the guitar is about as culturally relevant as being the world’s greatest telephone landline installer.
One interesting aspect of this development is that as less attention is paid to guitar heroes, it can help us redefine what it means to be one. If we let go of nostalgia and its stranglehold and embrace an alternate timeline where Sonny Sharrock is as important as Jimmy Page, where Screaming Females’ Marissa Paternoster is the one on posters in Guitar Center, then the list is longer and more representative of the possibilities of sound a guitar can hold. And to that list you might add Kid Congo Powers, a self-described “queer man, Mexican American, Chicano, self-taught, self possessed weirdo” who calls his own playing “an expressionistic blob of sound.”
He’s the guitarist who gave the Cramps’ “New Kind of Kick” its psychedelic siren coda, who co-founded post-punk cult favorites the Gun Club and who played on Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds two late-‘80s gloom-grandeur classics “Tender Prey” and “The Good Son.” Stories of those bands and more are covered in his new memoir, “Some New Kind of Kick,” a whirlwind of discovery and debauchery that is so loaded with iconic scenes and scenesters that it might feel name-droppy if its author didn’t treat his fellow freaks with the same unbridled affection he shows for his more notorious peers.
“I definitely have a very healthy ego, and at the time even more so,” Powers said in a recent interview. “But I also came from being a young fan, and I understood that always. That’s what I always felt like I was, and I still am. Not young, but a young fan inside.”
Born Brian Tristan in La Puente, Calif., in 1959, Kid Congo is what most people would call a “musician’s musician.” If his work and persona are less well-known to the general public, he’s a borderline legend to any artist who has ever tried to fit a mile teased high of jet black hair underneath a cowboy hat. Over the last four decades, the guitarist has, as both sideman and frontman of his own group the Pink Monkey Birds, achieved notoriety as a stylish purveyor of noirish and gritty bonhomie, and amassed an impressive circle of influences (Nick Zinner of Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Jack White among them) based on his texturally inventive but rarely indirect playing.
At 63, Powers still maintains a youthful joie de vivre shaded by the arch sophistication that Cave describes as “a kind of louche sexiness.” As for his playing style, Cave says: “Kid would land that slow open chord on his guitar, playing it with a particular kind of languorous sleaze that was immediately identifiable.”
That style has evolved over the years into something of his own. It’s one part garage/R&B house rockin’ traditionalism and two parts “nonsense that makes a lot of sense,” to use a phrase attributed to one of Powers’s own chief influences, the “no wave” guitarist Pat Place. It’s resulted in Powers being a regular and welcome presence, like a Zelig with agency and riffs, in almost every underground American rock scene of the last five decades, from ’70s glam rock, the birth of punk and the ascendancy of goth, to whatever iteration of the seemingly eternal cycle of garage rock revivals we’re on in 2022.
“I was just someone who put myself in whatever I wanted to be in,” Powers said, attempting to sum up a journey that began with his entry into the music industry as the teenage founder of the Ramones Fan Club in California.
Powers has been writing “Some New Kind of Kick” on and off since 2006. Inspired and encouraged by his longtime friend, the soul DJ and counterculture impresario Jonathan Toubin, who he remembers telling him: “Some people know you did the Cramps. Some people know you did the Gun Club. Some people know you did the Bad Seeds. But a lot of people don’t know you did all those things.”
Sharing some hallmarks of rock bios (notably in its journey from heroin addiction to something akin to serenity), Powers’s memoir — told in a conversational/conspiratorial breeziness influenced, he says, by Cookie Mueller’s “Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black” — is less a typical rocker-coming-of-age story than a dream of one, where near-familiar names and faces pop up and pass through as though by Tarot.
Among the book’s tent poles are: the lifelong trauma induced by the murder of a beloved cousin; a spiritual awakening sparked by a tween Powers encountering a proto-goth girl gang waiting in the same line to see the New York Dolls play on “The Midnight Special”; being feted as a teen tastemaker by major-label publicists hoping to eke the Ramones up the next rung of fame; and, at one point, the no wave innovator Lydia Lunch bullying the memoirist into picking up a guitar for the first time and telling to him to just pretend he was playing a Kiss song.
“She was just like, ‘make that s--- up right now. Don’t even think about it. Just do it right now,’ ” Powers said. “I say she was screaming at me, but that’s just the way she talks.”
Eventually Powers recounts how he was asked to join the Bad Seeds, arguably the most widely known of his affiliations. Powers writes about his run with the Bad Seeds as largely positive, but also as a time when he put pressure on himself to conform to what he perceived as a hyper-straight and masculine atmosphere within the band.
“Being gay … all your friends knew,” Powers said. “Everyone in your personal life was well aware. And public life was more of a game, or something, to see if people could guess,” he added, discussing how the average music fan in the 1980s might not have any idea of his (or other indie luminaries’) sexuality. “There was a strict taboo against labeling yourself anything beside ‘punk rocker’ or whatever. Part wanting to be mysterious, part being in the closet, part not being labeled as gay, so you could ‘pass,’ I guess is the word. But also not denying it in what you present to the public.”
Asked if he recalls, in any way that Powers might have seemed an outsider at the time, Cave wrote: “I would say that, personally, I was so consumed by the general chaos of my own life and its attendant appetites, not to mention an overinflated regard for my own genius, that Kid’s sexuality was probably the last thing on my mind. It may be that I didn’t know he was gay. I don’t know. I’m not sure it matters. I was drawn to him because he was joyful and funny and possessed a humility toward things that was rare in the Bad Seeds at that time.”
Setting aside to what degree Cave’s knowledge in 1987 of Powers’s sexuality may or may not matter, calling the guitarist “closeted,” in the traditional sense, is an oversimplification.
“I mean … look at me in the Cramps,” Powers said, referring to the stylistic choices he was making while performing songs like “Faster Pussycat” on albums such as one titled “Smell of Female.” “C’mon. Come onnnnn.”
Powers is open about how his politics evolved in the wake of the AIDS epidemic. This sense of duty, as both a Latino and gay man, he believes is one of the reasons he’s written the memoir. The other reason for the memoir is to correct a slightly less universal injustice.
The final chapter of “Some Kind of Kick” depicts a visitation by Jeffrey Lee Pierce, the troubled frontman of the Gun Club, from the astral plane into Powers’s dreamscape kitchen.
“This book is very much about my relationship with Jeffrey,” Powers said, about his nearly 20-year collaboration with the blues punk savant who died at age 37 in 1996. “There’s lots of stories about Jeffery,” the guitarist continued. “And 99.9 percent are about how difficult this man was. To me? I had a friendship. He wasn’t a thing. He was my brother.”
It was Lunch who first put a guitar in his hands, and it was Lux Interior of the Cramps who gave him his moniker, but it was Pierce, and his insistence that Powers learn to play so they could start a band together, that Powers credits for nearly everything else. “The person in front of me looked nothing like a typical punk. … I thought, who is this completely strange creature?” Powers writes of his first impression of Pierce, spotting him in line to see Ohio proto-post-punk powerhouse Pere Ubu. Before the end of the night, the two men had started a band. Near the end of the book, Powers muses whether, if the two had never met, would Powers have ever learned the guitar? Ever played music? Or would he have stayed in college and led a completely different life? “The only thing that matters, that I can even be sure of, is that I met Jeffery,” he concludes.
What also comes through in the book, as in conversation with him, is that Powers remains expansive and humble in the span of his gratitude.
“I’m not a household name, but I make records, and I go around the world and get to express myself the way I want to express myself,” he said. “Those leading lights of those bands are inspiring figures to me to do my own thing. They worked very, very, very hard, and came into a lot of opposition to make it work, and hold it fast … not pandering to outside forces.”
“That is still my credo,” Powers said. “And that’s how I wrote a book.” | 2022-10-28T11:08:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kid Congo Powers looks back with 'Some Kind of New Kick' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/10/28/kid-congo-powers-memoir/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/10/28/kid-congo-powers-memoir/ |
What to watch with your kids: ‘Black Adam’ and more
Dwayne Johnson in “Black Adam.” (Warner Bros. Pictures/AP)
Lots of bashing and smashing in disappointing DC movie.
“Black Adam” is a DC Extended Universe superhero movie and a spinoff from “Shazam!” Dwayne Johnson stars as the title character, who was originally a supervillain in DC comics. The movie has a diverse cast and asks interesting questions about heroes and villains, but it ultimately becomes a dull smash-and-bash fest without much time for character development or anything else. Expect large-scale action violence, with explosions, destruction, guns and shooting, and lots of fighting. Many characters (including women and children) are killed, sometimes in gruesome — though bloodless — ways: electrocution, stabbing, etc. Language includes occasional use of “s---,” “a--,” “b-----d,” “p---,” “damn” and “hell.” There’s a bit of flirting, and several posters and toys depicting other DC characters are shown in a boy’s room. (118 minutes)
Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi (TV-PG)
Gripping but intense animated shorts detail Jedi lore.
“Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi” is a series of animated shorts about Jedi lore. It delves into Jedi history and shares the early adventures of some pivotal Star Wars characters. While the stories range in tone from somber to lighter, all are somewhat intense, and there are some frankly brutal scenes, including a beheading. Violence includes sci-fi guns and other weapons. In one long sequence, a dead body is paraded through a town. There are also scary and disturbing villains who may be too much for younger viewers. Alien characters drink in a bar. (Six roughly 15-minute episodes)
The Midnight Club (TV-MA)
Spooky show has teen peril, body horror, drug use, cursing.
“The Midnight Club” is based on the 1994 book of the same name by young adult horror author Christopher Pike, and is created by Mike Flanagan (“The Haunting of Hill House”) and Leah Fong (“The Haunting of Bly Manor”). The storyline concerns a group of terminally ill teens at a mysterious hospice who meet at night to tell scary stories (many of which are plotlines of other Pike books). The overall mood of the show is spooky, yet lightened up by the relationships between teen hospice residents. Nonetheless, expect lots of scary moments, including the body horror engendered by serious illness (including blood, scars, dead bodies, medical procedures, self-harm and hospital beds), and supernatural imagery (ghostly apparitions, humanlike figures with empty eye sockets). Characters will die over the course of the series. Parents should also expect romance to play a minor part in the story, with flirting and kissing. Cursing includes “motherf---er,” “f---,” “f---ing,” “s---,” “bulls---,” “b----,” “hell,” “damn” and “a--.” Teens share wine and other drinks together and frankly discuss taking morphine for pain. In at least one spooky side story, a character is a heroin addict and we see her injecting heroin, guzzling liquor and smoking pot. Nonetheless, this show is not without redeeming messages, including the value of accepting things one cannot change, the importance of supportive friendship and the message sent by its diverse young cast, who focus on what they have in common instead of differences. (10 roughly hour-long episodes)
Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities (TV-MA)
Nightmare-fueling anthology has gory violence, swearing.
“Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities” is an eight-episode horror anthology series created by the Mexican director of “The Shape of Water” and “Pan’s Labyrinth,” among others. Del Toro himself hosts each episode, in the style of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents.” It’s very gory, with grotesque scenes, decomposing bodies, nasty-looking monsters and jump scares. The stories deal with greedy characters, dominated by selfishness and grief, who encounter ghosts and monsters. There’s also frequent use of words including “f---,” “s---,” “a--hole” and “goddamn.” Like most of Del Toro’s filmography, this series has high-quality production values and is very well written and acted but is definitely not for young/sensitive viewers. (Eight hour-long episodes) | 2022-10-28T11:08:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Common Sense Media’s weekly recommendations. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/10/28/common-sense-media-october-28/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/10/28/common-sense-media-october-28/ |
HANDOUT PHOTO: SullivanStrickler photographed the devices it copied in Coffee County on Jan. 7, 2021, including these flash cards. The images were turned over in response to a subpoena from plaintiffs in a long-running federal lawsuit over election security in Georgia. (Obtained by The Washington Post)
After the 2020 election, allies of President Donald Trump mounted a multistate effort to access voting machines in a quest to find purported evidence that the results had been rigged. Parts of that effort played out in public as Trump allies sought to access machines with court orders or subpoenas. But other aspects were secret and did not involve court orders, giving rise to multiple criminal investigations.
In rural Coffee County, Ga., forensics experts paid by a nonprofit run by pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell copied virtually every component of the voting system. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is now investigating.
What happened with the voting machines in Coffee County, Ga.?
On Jan. 7, 2021 — the day after Trump supporters mounted a deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol — forensics experts visited the elections office in Coffee County. Trump had won the south Georgia county in a landslide in the 2020 election, yet suspicions persisted among some county leaders that fraud was to blame for Trump’s loss to Joe Biden in the state and nationwide.
The forensics experts were employees of an Atlanta-based firm called SullivanStrickler. They were welcomed by the county elections supervisor, a member of the county elections board and the chair of the county GOP, who suspected that the 2020 election results had been rigged.
The experts proceeded to copy voting system components, including software and data that the federal government considers “critical infrastructure” vital to national security. They then posted it to a password-protected site, where it was downloaded by election deniers across the country.
The Dominion Voting Systems software copied from Coffee County is used statewide in Georgia. State and federal officials say that security protocols make it very difficult for anyone to manipulate votes. But some security analysts say the data — circulated beyond a limited number of authorized officials — could give hackers a powerful tool to simulate voting machines and probe for weaknesses. They also fear that, short of manipulating future vote counts, bad actors could use the copied software to claim evidence of fraud, undermining trust in election outcomes.
What did the forensics experts learn?
No analysis of the Coffee County data has been made public. But the copying of that data is the subject of a criminal investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and a special grand jury in the Atlanta area is probing the episode as part of its investigation into whether Trump and his allies violated laws in their quest to overturn the 2020 election results.
How did the copying come to light?
There is a long-running civil lawsuit over election security in Georgia. Several voters and the nonprofit Coalition for Good Governance sued Georgia elections officials in 2017 claiming that the state’s voting system is insecure. Information about the copying in Coffee County — as well as video surveillance footage showing who was at the elections office on Jan. 7, 2021 — surfaced during that lawsuit in response to subpoenas from the plaintiffs.
One plaintiff recorded part of a phone call with Scott Hall, an Atlanta businessman, who said he had helped arrange for the copying. That phone call was played in February during the deposition of a senior employee in the office of Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R).
Georgia officials said they began investigating immediately but were skeptical for months that the copying had occurred, with one telling The Washington Post recently that he had initially believed that the allegation bore “the hallmarks of misinformation.” Raffensperger’s office now acknowledges that the copying occurred and has said that anyone who broke the law should be prosecuted.
How is this episode related to other efforts to access voting machines?
Records reviewed by The Post show that SullivanStrickler also worked in Las Vegas and northern Michigan after the 2020 election. Billing records reviewed by The Post show that Jesse Binnall, a lawyer for the Trump campaign, signed an agreement on Dec. 2, 2020, to pay $19,500 to SullivanStrickler to examine Dominion machines in Nevada. However, a court order allowed the team to examine only materials used in the pre-election testing of the machines.
On Dec. 6, 2020, Powell signed an agreement to pay SullivanStrickler $26,000 to work in Antrim County, Mich., where a clerk had failed to properly update machines following last-minute ballot changes, briefly causing Biden to appear to have won in the deep-red county. After the clerical blunder, Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, pressed a local prosecutor to give voting machines to the Trump team. The prosecutor refused. A local man sued and secured a court order allowing for an examination of the machines. That examination gave rise to a report by a little-known Texas company claiming that the Antrim machines demonstrated that Dominion systems were “intentionally and purposefully designed” to manipulate election results. Independent experts disputed the report’s central claims, as did officials in Trump’s administration and Republicans in Michigan, and a hand count confirmed that the election result was accurate.
Other efforts to access machines were clandestine affairs.
In other Michigan counties and in Colorado, outsiders are alleged by state officials to have accessed or copied data from machines without court orders. SullivanStrickler was not involved in those incidents, according to evidence that has been made public.
After an alleged breach in Mesa County, Colo., three county officials were charged with state felony offenses, including the elected county clerk, who has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial. A Michigan special prosecutor is probing the activities of nine people in relation to alleged breaches in that state, five of whom have links to the copying in Coffee County. | 2022-10-28T11:17:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What happened in Coffee County, Georgia, with voting equipment? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2022/10/28/coffee-county-election-voting-machines/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2022/10/28/coffee-county-election-voting-machines/ |
A son was charged with murdering his father. His brothers have doubts.
Police charged Samy Hassanein with second-degree murder. His brothers say he struggled with mental illness, but they are skeptical about the murder allegation.
Talat Hassanein and Samy Hassanein at a Ramadan dinner in 2020. (Adel Hassanein)
Sherif and Tarik Hassanein had tried to get help for their younger brother, Samy. He’d been in and out of hospitals for over 15 years, the siblings said, after doctors in Virginia diagnosed him with bipolar disorder and paranoid schizophrenia. Nothing seemed to work.
In March of 2018, Tarik filed a petition for involuntary admission of Samy for treatment of his illness, saying he believed Samy “to be a threat to himself and others.” Samy was committed for three days, and then released. Their father, Talat Hassanein, also tried to have Samy admitted to an institution to treat his mental health problems in January, but Samy insisted that he was fine, his brothers said. They said that Samy soon refused to take his medication altogether.
“Once he’s off his medication, that’s when he tends to go to haywire,” Sherif, 41, said. “There are times when he’s just unaware of anything going on around him. If he couldn’t find his vape, he would go nuts.”
About nine months later, the unthinkable happened.
According to police, Samy, 36, “fatally assaulted” his 82-year-old father on Sept. 27, leaving Talat at the bottom of a staircase in the basement of a home in the Rose Hill area of Fairfax County he shared with his adult sons. He was charged with second-degree murder. Samy has pleaded not guilty, Tarik said. The public defender’s office, which is representing Samy, declined to comment.
Sherif and Tarik concede their brother had troubles. But they are skeptical of police’s theory of what happened. Tarik said his father had a history of getting dizzy in his old age, and he believes that Talat fell and hit his head on the concrete floor.
“Do I think my brother is capable of doing something bad? Absolutely. I will never lie about that,” Tarik, 45, said. “But do I think, in this particular instance, that this was my little brother? Absolutely not.”
A grandmother’s killing: Covid’s mental health crisis hits one family
Separated and questioned
Sherif said he woke up just before 2 p.m. that Tuesday afternoon and went outside to smoke a cigarette. Their father slept in the basement, but Sherif said he hadn’t seen him that day yet. When Samy later woke up to smoke a cigarette and make coffee, he told Sherif that he also hadn’t seen their father.
Sherif panicked. Talat usually woke up before his sons to make tea and smoke a hookah before heading back to the basement, Sherif said. It was unusual that no one would have seen him by the afternoon.
Sherif said he screamed for his father but got no response. He said he rushed to the basement, flung the door open, and found Talat crumpled on the floor in a pool of blood.
Sherif said he checked for a pulse on his father’s arm, chest, and neck before he yelled out to Samy to call 911. Samy said his phone wasn’t working, so Sherif rushed upstairs to grab his own and summon authorities, according to Sherif.
Police questioned both brothers before asking them to get in separate vehicles to go to the police station, according to Sherif. At the station, Sherif said officers took photos to see if he had any wounds on his body.
Sherif said he told officers that he needed to go home, and he was released. But investigators continued to question Samy, Sherif said, adding that he was told he could not see his brother.
Sherif said he arrived home around 6 p.m., and Samy arrived not long after. He said they went to stay at a hotel around 11 p.m. that evening, and Samy left to return home at around 5 a.m. the next day.
According to Sherif, police called him a little after 6 a.m. to let him know that Samy had been arrested.
A Fairfax County police spokesman said in a statement that “detectives investigating the death of Talat Hassanein, 82, quickly identified significant trauma to his upper body. Detectives from our Crime Scene Section also responded and discovered evidence to indicate Talat’s death was not accidental. Further investigation determined that Samy Hassanein fatally assaulted his father.” Police declined to detail their evidence against Samy.
‘That’s where he wanted to die.’
Talat, who was born in Egypt in 1940, loved tailoring, a trade he first took up as a soldier in the military in Cairo, Sherif said. He came to the United States in 1971. There he worked on his uncle’s farm in Waldorf, Md., for a few years until returning to tailoring in the mid-1970s, when he opened a store in D.C., Sherif said.
He was a hard worker, contemplating applying for an open position in a thrift store even after he retired, Sherif said. Both Talat and his wife retired around 2000 and rotated between living in the United States and Egypt. Tarik said his mother has been living in Egypt for the past year.
While in the United States, Talat was drawn to the Arlington and Alexandria area, Sherif said. On occasion, he would take his sons with him when he drove past the Washington Monument.
“He would show us the pride he had in the United States, and he wanted us to have that pride,” Sherif said.
Talat also wanted to instill in his sons the value of hard work and a good education, and an appreciation for their heritage, Sherif said. He enrolled the boys in Northern Virginia’s Islamic Saudi Academy and taught them how to speak, read and write Arabic. He wanted to ensure his children knew the official language of their home, as well as mastering English, Sherif said.
“He wanted us to know about Egypt and our religion, but he wanted us to love America,” Sherif said. “He always referred to the United States as home. That’s where he wanted to die.”
Struggling with mental illness
Through the years, the family had struggles — particularly with Samy. He had seizures at ages 2 and 6, and was diagnosed partially schizophrenic. As he got older, he talked to walls and had conversations with himself, Sherif said.
While his brothers played basketball or hide-and-seek with other kids in their Fairfax neighborhood, Samy buried himself in first-person shooter video games like Counter-Strike and Call of Duty, Sherif said. During his first two years at Edison High School, which his brothers also attended, Samy allegedly found solace in smoking marijuana.
Throughout high school, Samy kept to himself and complained about not having many friends, Sherif said. He had but one romantic relationship that Sherif said went sour very quickly — because Samy would too often talk about outlandish conspiracy theories. He was a big fan of Infowars founder Alex Jones, Sherif said. Tarik said that Samy would sometimes be glued to Jones’s show for 12 hours a day.
“We told him that no girl wants to sit there and hear conspiracy theories and hatred about the country where she was born and the flag that she supports,” Sherif said.
In adulthood, Samy worked at Alexandria Renew Enterprises, or AlexRenew, a water resource recovery public utility that cleans water, Sherif said. (The company declined to comment.) Samy still struggled with mental illness.
During Samy’s paranoia, Samy often distanced himself from the family. Sherif said Samy always reached out to him first, when he was ready to reconnect.
The two bonded over Michael Jackson music, and Samy particularly enjoyed the song “Blue Gangsta,” which was released after Jackson’s death in June of 2009. But Jackson’s death also brought Samy deeper into conspiracy theories, Sherif said.
“He started saying the government can’t stand the idea of a Black man being the most famous person in the world,” Sherif said. “But months later, he flipped on Michael Jackson and called him the head of the Illuminati.”
Kathy Harkey, the executive director of the National Alliance of Mental Illness (NAMI) of Virginia, said that adults with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder may experience symptoms such as hallucinations, a change in sleeping habits or changes in temperament.
The pandemic created particular challenges for those seeking treatment. In a recent study that Harkey conducted in early October, 41.9 percent of respondents agreed that they faced more difficulty in getting mental health appointments and services than before the pandemic, and 14 percent strongly agreed.
But Harkey said that people with serious mental illnesses are often the victims of crimes, not perpetrators. And Harkey also said only 1 percent or less of those people actually commit major crimes like murder.
“Society always seems to need a reason to turn back to whether a person has a mental illness because they can’t justify in their minds that regular people commit heinous crimes,” Harkey said.
Natasha Tonge, an assistant professor at George Mason University’s psychology department, said this stigma may persist because people avoid or treat those afflicted with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia as foreign or scary.
“As a result, it’s easier to stigmatize people with serious mental illnesses and it’s harder to put yourself in their shoes and understand the complexity of their illness,” Tonge said. | 2022-10-28T11:25:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A son was charged with murdering his father. His brothers have doubts - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/27/fairfax-son-arrested-murder/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/27/fairfax-son-arrested-murder/ |
Pei-Lin Wu
Chinese President Xi Jinping leads members of the Politburo as they visit an exhibition on Yan'an city's 13 years (1935-1948) as the headquarters of the party on Thursday. (Wang Ye/Xinhua/AP)
Fresh from securing another term — if not life tenure — as China’s paramount leader, Xi Jinping on Thursday led a symbolic field trip of his newly appointed top lieutenants to the historical revolutionary base of Yan’an, the cradle of Mao Zedong’s Communist Party takeover of the nation.
Standing in the cave from which Mao led his Red Army troops, China’s most powerful leader in decades delivered a warning about the need for loyalty, hard work and sacrifice. The party must carry forward the Yan’an spirit, Xi told the assembled leaders, which he described as primarily one of “pioneering self-reliance and arduous struggle.”
According to Xi, that wartime ethos is needed today as much as in the 1940s, when the Communists fought first the Japanese invasion and then a civil war with the ruling Nationalist Party.
The nature of the battle for which Xi is preparing can be divined from the backgrounds of the country’s two dozen most senior leaders, selected at the twice-a-decade political meeting that just concluded. His choices reflect a focus on developing advanced military and technological capabilities so that Beijing can withstand any pressure from the United States and its allies, particularly when it comes to enforcing territorial claims over Taiwan, the self-governing island democracy of 23 million.
“Xi is emphasizing that he succeeds the tradition of Mao,” said Guoguang Wu, a senior research scholar at the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions. “Under his leadership, just like under Mao’s leadership in the 1940s, the party will be able to gain whatever they would like to.”
Despite China’s growing global clout, Xi still worries that slowing growth and deep links with Western industrialized economies will weaken the party’s hold on power, said Wu, who worked as an adviser to reformist Chinese leader Zhao Ziyang in the 1980s until he was deposed during the 1989 Tiananmen protests. “Xi has huge ambition. In his own words, he would like to bring China back to the center of the world stage. For that purpose, China is not strong enough.”
During the meeting, Xi underscored the severe challenges facing China. He elevated security concerns alongside economic concerns and he called for the country to be “united in struggle” to overcome hardships.
The meeting cemented Xi’s role in setting the policy agenda. His former rivals, Li Keqiang and a one-time would-be successor, were both pushed out, indicating that alternative political networks had been erased. And most of the 13 individuals promoted to join the 24-member Politburo not only have strong personal ties to Xi but technical expertise or experience relevant to his policy priorities of advanced technologies, security and military power.
Five — Ma Xingrui, Zhang Guoqing, Li Ganjie, Liu Guo Zhong and Yuan Jiajun — have worked in the state-run military-industrial complex responsible for China rapidly gaining on the United States in space flight and for the People’s Liberation Army’s expanding arsenal of conventional and nuclear missiles.
Yuan, the current Zhejiang party boss who studied aerospace in Germany, led a program that in 2003 sent the first Chinese astronaut into space. Liu majored in the design and manufacturing of fuses for artillery systems at East China University of Science and Technology and later worked in one of China’s earliest bomb and missile factories before switching to a political career.
The promotions reflect Xi’s “focus on scientific and technological expertise as a critical input for China to innovate itself out of the middle-income trap and out of Western chokeholds on core technologies,” said Neil Thomas, senior China analyst at the Eurasia Group.
Xi talks often about how officials must re-create the hard-won breakthroughs in satellite and nuclear weapon technologies from the early days of the People’s Republic, which were essential to keeping China from being pushed around by other nuclear-armed nations.
The other major issue that looms over the Politburo appointments is Taiwan, with 15 of the two dozen members having some kind of links to the island, either through managing cross-straits business ties — the carrots of Beijing’s effort to compel unification — or as part of the army that may one day be charged with bringing it back into the fold should it ever formally declare independence.
Cai Qi, one of the more surprising additions to the elite seven-member Politburo Standing Committee, visited Taiwan in 2012 when he was working under Xi as a local official in Zhejiang and called for China to engage and shift political allegiances in the independence-leaning south of the island.
Cai, whose work with Xi across two provinces helped him skip stages of promotion to become Beijing party boss in 2017, wrote positively about meeting with an elderly relative, encouraging Taiwanese investment in China and getting along well with politicians from the more China-friendly Kuomintang party that ruled Taiwan at the time.
Much of this experience with Taiwan could merely reflect Xi’s own career path: He spent many years in Fujian and Zhejiang, two coastal provinces with deep business ties to Taiwan. An exception, however, is He Weidong, leader of the Taiwan-focused Eastern Theater Command. The 65-year-old general’s rise from not even being a member of the 370-odd Central Committee to a seat on the Politburo represents the more menacing side of Xi’s Taiwan agenda.
Shen Ming-Shih, the director of national security research at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, a think tank in Taiwan, said the personnel changes appear to show that Xi is “losing patience” over Taiwan and is pushing a “tough Taiwan strategy that does not care about the deterioration of cross-strait relations.”
The decision to retain Zhang Youxia, 72, despite an informal age limit of 68, is probably driven by Xi’s desire for combat experience at the top of the PLA. Zhang, the oldest Politburo member, fought in China’s 1979 war with Vietnam.
Another norm-breaking decision was to make Chen Wenqing, China’s current spy master, a Politburo member for the first time since the Ministry of State Security was created in the 1980s. Chen became the youngest deputy secretary in the corruption watchdog that Xi used to purge graft and rivals.
The promotion indicates that “the spies have come to power” in Xi’s China, much like the KGB in the Soviet Union, said Wu, the Stanford scholar. “Now it seems that Xi Jinping really wants to use the system to control not only social forces, but also to play a role in the surveillance of the political elite and in foreign relations,” he said.
Hung Yao-nan, a China studies scholar at Tamkang University in Taiwan, said that Xi’s emphasis on security reflects a dilemma of his highly centralized rule. Hung calls it the “Mao Zedong trap,” whereby Xi will either need to make internal control ever more stringent, like Stalin, or pursue rampant nationalism and aggression.
“With Xi Jinping at the center of an ever smaller decision-making circle, it is becoming easier to make the bad decisions,” he said. In his speeches, Xi often warns that the whole world must fight against divisions and entering a “new Cold War” but, to preserve personal control, “he has built the wall by himself,” Hung said. | 2022-10-28T11:26:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Xi Jinping’s new Politburo suggest Taiwan and military are China’s priorities - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/28/china-politburo-xi-jinping-policy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/28/china-politburo-xi-jinping-policy/ |
The Saudis have pledged billions to disrupt golf and alter the kingdom’s reputation. At a tour stop in Jeddah, those efforts were on full display.
Volunteers are seen on the course during the opening day of the LIV Golf Invitational Jeddah at Royal Greens Golf & Country Club in Saudi Arabia. (Charles Laberge/LIV Golf via Getty Images)
KING ABDULLAH ECONOMIC CITY, Saudi Arabia — Hundreds of young women wandered out their doors as early as 6 a.m. one recent day, headed to a bus stop in Jeddah. Most boarded one of the exhaust-belchers wrapped in golden vinyl and the ubiquitous words: “Vision 2030.”
Saudi Arabia is hellbent on transforming itself, or at least convincing the world it is, striving toward a post-oil and pro-women future. LIV Golf, the controversial renegade series financed by the Saudi government, is a small part of that plan. For its tournament in the homeland of its investor, it needed volunteers to direct foot traffic, hold ropes and lift signs (“PLEASE STAND STILL”) as famous millionaires prepared to swing.
The Saudi Universities Sports Federation, an NCAA-like organization overseen by the kingdom’s ministry of education, requires students to do volunteer work. Some assignments are better than others, and there’s no more plum a gig than working a golf tournament. So an army of students applied, and more than 300 were chosen and told selections were based on exemplary class attendance.
Arriving at the course, though, the overwhelming majority have something else in common: They’re women.
“The rulers here are transforming this country very, very fast,” says Bouchaib el Jadiani, the head of mass participation and national teams for Golf Saudi, the sport’s marketing and youth outreach arm. When the organization recently announced a new girls’ league, el Jadiani says, there were 1,300 sign-ups in 72 hours. “How many years have they been locked? This is the beauty of the transformation: Now our time has come.”
It’s a dynamic on display from the moment you touch down in Jeddah. International travel can be disorienting, particularly when the destination has historically closed itself to the rest of the world. Saudi Arabia allowed its first tourist visas in 2018, the same year a national ban was lifted on women driving and working outside their home. It was part of the mass distancing of the country’s hyper-conservative Islamic culture by the country’s de facto leader, Crown Prince and prime minister Mohammed bin Salman, that for the first time allowed Saudi women to exercise, play sports and attend sporting events.
Considerably less visible is any reminder of lingering oppression: Women still must get a male guardian’s approval to marry, and in August a Saudi woman was sentenced to 34 years in prison for tweets critical of the government. The marketing push is meant to deflect attention from that and onto the promise that Riyadh or Jeddah or Neom — a planned supercity that doesn’t yet exist but will supposedly include a $1 trillion, 110-mile horizontal building — may be the next Dubai, the futuristic metropolis and global tourist destination just across the Arabian Peninsula.
The sales pitch is so vigorous, the supposed changes so abrupt and in conflict with the kingdom’s reputation, that merely arriving here forces you to question your own eyes and ears. Passport control at Jeddah’s King Abdulaziz International Airport is staffed almost entirely by women. Is this the result of an emphasis on diversity hiring? Or, considering airports are often the initial impression of a place, just the first thing the palace wants you to see?
In the airport garage, a driver tasked with shuttling reporters to the hotel engages the massaging rear seats in his LIV-branded luxury car. Saudi Arabia has a long history of jailing, intimidating and censoring journalists. Four years after it drew worldwide condemnation when Jamal Khashoggi, who wrote columns for The Washington Post, was murdered by a Saudi “death squad” — at the direction of bin Salman, American officials say — has its stance softened? Or is it just another act of apparent hospitality meant to win favor or even lower guards, not unlike the deep-sea fishing trip, go-kart racing and the four-day vacation to “two of the Kingdom’s most prestigious destinations” offered to the media assembled here? (The Post declined these offers.)
“They want to behave like that because they need to wash their face,” says Zeinab Abu al-Kheir, whose brother has been on death row in a Saudi prison since 2014 on alleged drug smuggling charges. Through human rights group Reprieve, she wrote a letter this month to former PGA Tour star Greg Norman, LIV Golf’s chief executive and commissioner, calling for Norman to demand an end to capital punishment in the kingdom. Norman didn’t reply, nor did anyone else at LIV.
At Royal Greens Golf & Country Club, an island of lush green in an ocean of desert brown, LIV staffers wear shorts and skirts, historically frowned upon in Saudi. They insist this is the real Saudi — safe, friendly, less restrictive than western media suggests — and facilitate interviews with anyone who helps spread the good news.
“You are American,” al-Kheir points out. “They want to hide this, what they are doing, and give the world the show that they are nice and they are changed. They change, yes. But it is still not enough.”
LIV, with a three-year, $3 billion pledge from the Saudi government’s Public Investment Fund, has an almost bottomless reserve of cash. The series reportedly lured golf stars Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau from the PGA Tour for a combined $550 million in signing bonuses.
In Jeddah, players stay at a hotel overlooking the Red Sea and spend evenings partying on a massive yacht. During news conferences, they take frequent questions about course conditions and weather patterns and avoid references to the host nation’s poor human rights record or that 120 people were put to death here in the first half of 2022. The week’s controversy centers on whether players should receive points in the Official World Golf Ranking for their LIV play, not increasing tension between bin Salman and President Biden as Saudi cozies up to Russia.
“It's such an awkward time zone,” Patrick Reed said as part of an explanation for why he hadn’t followed the news and couldn’t possibly comment on it. “Everything will work out.”
The buses loaded with volunteers arrive behind fencing near the 18th fairway. Golf carts shuttle them to their postings six at a time. A few hold ropes and signs, yes. The vast majority have nothing to do. Some seek shade under large canopy tents, chat with friends, pick at the free snacks. Many stare at their phones.
“For you,” former Masters champion Sergio Garcia says, offering his ball to a volunteer in a niqab. But she is texting, and the would-be piece of memorabilia falls to the ground. A White fan approaches, notices the ball and Garcia’s confusion and stuffs the ball in his pocket.
Is this a productive use of the students’ volunteer time? Or, with a worldwide audience and reporters present, is the actual assignment just being here — and being seen?
“I see people playing, and I want to play,” one volunteer says, taking a break from killing time with her friends near the 18th tee box to conduct a short interview with a media relations consultant listening in.
“In the past it wasn’t that familiar,” another volunteer says of golf. “Now there are new things to learn about.”
“Life is good,” another says.
Ninety minutes south, a few hours before the LIV season’s penultimate event, a 43-year-old Saudi man weaves between buildings in Old Jeddah. Its historic mud and coral structures have withstood sieges and revolts for five centuries. But can they survive the next decade and the vision of a ruthlessly ambitious crown prince? Bin Salman is racing to modernize the kingdom by 2030, in hopes of expanding the Saudi economy and decoupling it from exporting oil.
There is scaffolding everywhere. Abdullah Assiri, a licensed guide in the booming Saudi tourism industry, talks over the sound of power tools and change. The building with the green awnings, he says, used to be a traditional family home not far from where pilgrims disembarked on their way to Mecca. It’s being gutted. Not long ago a woodworker’s meticulously constructed house was demolished.
“My fear,” Assiri says. “The change is fast. You feel it.”
He forces a smile. Two Saudi police officers trail closely behind, and the small tour group includes a pair of government officials.
“But thanks God,” Assiri says, “the Ministry of Culture starts bringing everything back.”
A five-star hotel is planned for the site of the home, a cafe in place of the woodworker’s house, a specialty coffee house where the Egyptian embassy stood. Cranes dot the city skyline; Starbucks and TGI Friday’s and AMC Theatres line a four-lane highway, giving the northern part of Saudi’s commercial hub a suburban Dallas feel. In the distance is the partially complete Jeddah Tower, surrounded by massive construction equipment, designed to surpass Dubai’s Burj Khalifa as the tallest building in the world.
Royal Greens is one of seven golf courses in Saudi Arabia, but el Jadiani says 30 are under construction. Many will anchor sprawling resorts, enough for the 100 million annual visitors the nation has promised by 2030. It’s attractions such as these, Assiri says, that led the government last year to pledge to hire 10,000 new tour guides.
“It’s like, look, this is our first championship golf course that we’ve made here on the Red Sea, and wait to see what’s coming,” Othman Almulla, the kingdom’s first pro golfer, says on the course one afternoon. “All Saudi is doing is saying, ‘Look, we have a lot of really, really good things happening in the country, and we just want you to come see it.’ I think we can come off as being misunderstood.”
But is this a necessary and overdue modernization, as one Saudi journalist insists, even as families such as hers are displaced to raze crumbling buildings to make space for the gleaming new structures? Or, amid the social progress, the hasty abandonment of cultural touchstones?
Until recently, Assiri wasn’t so sure. Shopkeepers had begun asking him when the tourists would start coming. They adapted their business models, preparing for the inevitable boom, and even skipped prayers to keep their businesses open. Still, the cafes in Old Jeddah are empty, the electric scooters sit idle, and golf carts procured to show visitors around the old city wait in an alley unoccupied.
Assiri used to notice these things, too, but his continuing education included a course in “change management.” It taught him that to question or resist evolution is to be selfish.
“I have to be more open,” he says. “I have to look not only from my place. I have to listen to others.”
Now he urges patience. Good things are coming, he assures doubters. Just wait. Neom and the Line and a rejuvenated Jeddah. Assiri has even come around on his wife and sister getting their driver’s licenses, and not long ago someone asked whether he would like to add a girls’ team to his soccer coaching duties.
“If you ask me before?” he says and shrugs. “I have to believe in the vision. Now I say, ‘Why not?’ ”
After nearly a year of controversy, lawsuits and even the occasional golf tournament, it’s impossible to know if Saudi Arabia is getting its money’s worth from LIV. Its inaugural season concludes this week, with the team championship tournament at Trump National Doral in Florida, and in mainstream quarters the series is still viewed as corrupt, its players greedy, its investor following Russia, China and Qatar in trying to “sportswash” its image. Television networks and streaming services have reportedly balked at making a deal with LIV.
If the Jeddah tournament was the latest commercial for the kingdom, players and the legion of student volunteers mere pawns in a larger game of geopolitical chess, it had limited reach. Only 17,000 viewers watched on YouTube as Koepka shot a first-round 59, and fewer than 300,000 logged on to watch Koepka fend off “Smash GC” teammate Peter Uihlein to pocket a combined $4.75 million for three days’ work.
“If a player wins a golf tournament in a forest and no one sees it, does it count?” PGA Tour golfer Joel Dahmen posted on Twitter.
LIV’s leadership claims it is unbowed, saying 2022 was a beta test with a few simple objectives from its financial backer: bring the concept to life, sign golfers and play an actual season. Atul Khosla, LIV’s president and chief operating officer, says it used the eight events to produce a TV-ready broadcast and gather 150,000 data points that reveal what spectators want and what they could live without.
“There are many things that look great on a PowerPoint and an Excel spreadsheet, but once you get on course, it was a bad idea,” Khosla says. “I don’t think anybody here woke up and said, ‘Let’s disrupt golf.’ I think we woke up and said, ‘Where is there an opportunity in the world of sports to go out and be innovative, and what does the data tell us?' ”
Music on the course? A surprise hit, he says, among players and fans. Indoor fan villages? Not so much. Khosla, whose background is in professional soccer and the NFL, adds that young families with children will be at the center of LIV’s 2023 strategy, with 14 events packaged as “golf festivals,” he says, with increased emphasis on four-golfer teams rather than individual play.
Then again, that may not be the paramount subject of Khosla’s calls with the Public Investment Fund’s board of directors. “For a good, viable league,” he says, “you have to get the product on air.”
A lucrative media deal may be the only pathway to a long-term financial return for Saudi’s massive initial investment. Last year the NFL signed a new deal with broadcasters worth $110 billion, CBS and Turner agreed last year to a contract extension that will pay the NCAA $1 billion per year just to air the men’s basketball tournament, and the PGA Tour’s 2020 media rights deal is worth $875 million per year. Khosla declined to provide a timeline for a possible agreement for broadcasting rights, saying negotiations with various outlets are ongoing. LIV has denied a report that it was close to a deal in which it would pay Fox Sports to air events.
And if Phase 2 fails? Or LIV gets boxed out of the crowded sports conversation? Or the kingdom’s millennial leader trains his focus on something new?
“The story of Saudi Arabia: this habit of investing huge amounts of money in building bright, shiny objects,” says Gerald M. Feierstein, a former U.S. ambassador to Yemen and diplomacy expert at the Middle East Institute. “And then when they don’t fly, just walking away.”
Around here, reminders of the throne’s short attention span are everywhere. Jeddah Tower, the 167-floor skyscraper planned to be the world’s tallest structure, has remained one-third finished since the project was suspended in 2018. Riyadh’s $10 billion financial district still isn’t complete 16 years after construction began.
King Abdullah Economic City, home of Royal Greens, was announced in 2005 as the Middle East’s next megacity: space for 2 million residents, high-speed rail, a budget of $100 billion. It was Neom before Neom. Two decades later, 7,000 people live here. With buildings empty and construction stalled, it feels like a ghost town.
The center of Saudi’s current vision is a hope to begin diversifying its economy by 2030. Tourism, science, technology. For now, it remains reliant on oil and at the mercy of its constantly fluctuating price. From 2015 to 2019, a barrel averaged about $60, before a sharp rise the past two years. If the value suddenly plummets?
“Saudi Arabia tightens its belt,” Feierstein says. “When you’re doing that, the kinds of things that automatically go on the chopping block are things like LIV.”
Not far from the 18th tee at Royal Greens, there is a concession stand with air-conditioned restrooms, an ice cream truck that accepts Apple Pay and a partial view of the Red Sea. A half dozen of the student volunteers sit on Persian rugs as the hours pass, the temperature rises, the novelty fades.
It’s midafternoon when a meandering golf cart approaches, and one of the volunteers walks into the path. The young woman in a white LIV hat signals for it to stop and says she needs a ride to the bus stop. Climbing in, she offers her name and speaks openly; The Post is choosing not to identify her. She’s 19, studying information systems management at a university in Jeddah.
“Do you know Arabic?” she asks. “I’m going to teach you an Arabic word: khalas. It means I’ve had enough. This s--- is too much, bro.”
She’s tired, hot, bored. And she’s nobody’s pawn, so she neither alerts her supervisor nor asks anyone for permission to leave. She says her father didn’t even know she was volunteering until this morning. Why would she tell him? She was born into a moderate household, she says, but even if her father disagreed, she was going to King Abdullah Economic City anyway.
“Your daughter wants to go out,” she says. “Your daughter wants to explore the world.”
She wants to travel, learn Spanish and French, someday return to Saudi Arabia and become a diplomat. There aren’t enough jobs here, she says, and too little outside belief in the kingdom’s social agenda. She imagines a future with diversity among its leadership, a place where visitors needn’t question if what they see and hear is real. In a country where her grandfather was his wife’s legal guardian, where just five years ago driving a car would have been considered a crime, she calls herself a feminist.
“Women’s rights is like drinking water,” she says. “If I drink water, will they say to me, ‘Oh, you are so lucky, you are so good, you drink water’? No! It’s normal. When we say a father is good with his daughter, no, that’s normal. You are so good; you let me go out, you let me learn — no, that’s the normal thing.”
The cart veers to the right, off the pavement and onto a gravel path.
“I am not afraid,” she says. “I don’t care.”
Is she an outlier here? Or are there others like her in the kingdom, willing to speak their minds and refuse to be a pliant character in a global, well-funded production? Regardless, she has made her own choice, and across five days in Saudi Arabia, this would end up seeming like the rarest thing: an organic, truly genuine interaction.
She hadn’t known the cart would be passing. Even the driver didn’t. There were no messaging experts standing by or government officials monitoring her words or outside forces needling her to support their agenda. She was just sharing her own perspective and that she was done here — khalas — and had decided to leave. | 2022-10-28T11:39:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Inside LIV Golf's Saudi Arabian tour stop - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/28/liv-gold-saudi-arabia-event/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/28/liv-gold-saudi-arabia-event/ |
They want their children to have more success than they did, but a new Gallup poll finds they aren’t optimistic it will happen for the next generation
(Seth Wenig/AP)
All three of my 20-something children are living at home.
They are all college graduates. One has a master’s degree. They are employed. They don’t have credit card debt. And unlike millions of their peers, they have no student loans. (Nor did my husband and I take out debt for their education.)
On paper, these young adults are prepared to be on their own.
The reality of financial independence is far different. And if you ask, most Americans would say the outlook for the next generation is bleak.
Only 42 percent of U.S. adults think it is very or somewhat likely that today’s youths will do better economically than their parents, according to a new Gallup poll. That’s an 18-percentage-point drop since June 2019, Gallup noted.
“Americans have as little optimism as they have had at any time in nearly three decades about young people’s chances of having greater material success in life than their parents,” Gallup said in releasing its data.
The lack of optimism is understandable.
Inflation is at a 40-year high. There’s fear the economy might head into a recession. The pandemic is still causing supply chain issues, pushing prices up on food, clothing and other consumer goods. Housing prices are insane in many large cities where young adults want to live. The Federal Reserve’s fight against inflation has sent mortgage rates to their highest level in 20 years.
Because young adults tend to be lower on the wage scale, the high cost of living can take an outsize toll. Monthly rents in many areas can eat up half or more of their take-home pay. Inflation has only made things worse.
In 2020, 23 percent of U.S. renters spent at least 50 percent of their income on housing, according to the Census Bureau.
My husband and I encouraged our children to choose the financial safety of their childhood home over the high cost of independent living in the Washington metropolitan area. We don’t charge rent in exchange for their saving more than half of their annual earnings.
It’s an economically strategic plan that allows them to contribute to retirement plans, build healthy emergency funds and save for a down payment for their own homes.
If all goes as we planned, our children will be better off when they launch than we were in our 20s.
That’s what most parents want, right? For their children to have a better standard of living, one with a decent cash cushion when life happens.
Let adult children fend for themselves? That’s outdated in today’s economy.
When it comes to saving for the future, paying for college, buying a home or finding a job, most Americans say young adults have it harder than their parents’ generation, according to a Pew Research Center survey released this year.
We know that homeownership is a huge contributor to household wealth.
In looking at data from more than 960,000 users of its platform, LendingTree found that the average down payment based on a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage on a home across the nation’s 50 largest metro areas was over $62,000. Of course, down payments can vary depending on location. But none of the metro areas had an average down payment of less than $38,000, according to LendingTree’s analysis.
The Pew survey found that 84 percent of adults younger than 30 say buying a home is harder for young adults today. Among those ages 30 to 49, 72 percent say buying a home and paying for college is harder for young adults today, according to the Pew survey.
This is why multigenerational living makes economic sense.
A quarter of U.S. adults 25 to 34 lived in such households in 2021, up from just 9 percent in 1971, according to another Pew survey.
“Multigenerational households can have financial advantages,” Pew said in a July report. “Pooling financial resources means that family helps out in hard times.”
In 2021, the share of people in poverty during the previous year was lower in multigenerational households for White, Black and Hispanic Americans, Pew reported.
Share housing can give young adults a chance to develop the vital habit of saving early. Being in the financial position to save early on can make a huge difference in their ability to build a safety net for their retirement. If young adults are struggling to make ends meet, they won’t save, because they can’t afford to do it.
Only about half of millennials 24 to 39 own at least one type of retirement account, according to census data released this past summer. The earlier young adults start investing, the better likelihood they have to accumulate substantial retirement savings.
Young people: Go home. Or stay home, if you can. Parents, grandparents, aunties and uncles: Welcome them, if you can.
Multigenerational living is one answer to the pessimism that the next generation won’t do better. Done right, with goals, checks and balances, it’s not about coddling grown folks. It’s about cost-cutting and the impact that can have on wealth-building for their futures. | 2022-10-28T11:56:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Optimism about next generation's success falls - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/10/28/americans-pessimistic-about-next-generation-success/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/10/28/americans-pessimistic-about-next-generation-success/ |
Chips Act Won’t Work Without Every Part of the Chip
WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 29: Surrounded by House Democrats, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) poses for a photo after signing the CHIPS For America Act during a bill enrollment ceremony outside the U.S. Capitol July 29, 2022 in Washington, DC. The bill, which has now passed in both houses of Congress, is aimed at boosting U.S semiconductor manufacturing and science research to better compete with China. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images) (Photographer: Drew Angerer/Getty Images North America)
The US was awakened by the pandemic to the gaping holes in its supply chains for crucial medical supplies and electronics. One of the most significant was semiconductors, the pieces of silicon that hold millions of tiny transistors that are needed in everything from automobiles to toys.
The Chips and Science Act devotes $52 billion to begin to remedy a decades-long trend of US production drifting away to lower cost regions, mostly to Asia and especially to China. The rebuilding of that supply chain and manufacturing capacity will take years, but it will come to naught unless all the components, even the low-margin ones, have a presence in the Americas, if not the US.
The combination of this mobility and the push of US chipmakers to improve profit margins resulted over the decades in the industry being broken down into several distinct activities, with specialized manufacturers at each stage. US companies have kept the research and design, which is the most lucrative part of the business. Although there are some integrated chipmakers, most of the manufacturing has migrated overseas: the raw materials; silicone substrates on which the chips are built; the wafers on which chips are engraved; and a final production process than encases and tests the chips.
Like any chain, the one that produces semiconductors is only as strong as its weakest link. It doesn’t make any sense for the US government to invest billions of dollars to support the manufacturing of chips if they need to be shipped to Asia anyway to be completed. Each stage of production should be readily available to make it much easier to ramp up if supplies were disrupted instead of having to start from scratch.
Farming out the lower-margin businesses made sense at the time. Stand-alone chip designers have gross margins of 60%, while companies that assemble the chips and test them manage gross margins of only 17%, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. The US dominates chip design with 68% of the global market but has only 3% of the outsourced semiconductor assembly and testing. The US market share is even lower for production of the integrated chip substrates.
This strategy, though, left the industry dependent on Asia, which has built up the supply chain to become a one-stop, low-cost area to manufacture computer chips. The products that require the chips, such as laptop computers and television, are also mostly made in Asia because the US ceded manufacturing to others.
The Chips Act has made headlines for enticing new so-called fabs, the factories that jam millions of transistors onto silicon wafers. Companies including Intel Corp., Samsung Electronics Co. and Micron Technology Inc. are among the companies planning large investments. It’s unclear how much of the other separate processes of the chipmaking chain will remain abroad. It’s even more unclear how the government plans to entice these low-margin activities to locate in the US.
Amkor Technology Inc. is an outsourced assembly and test company based in Tempe, Arizona. The company, though, doesn’t have any factory operations in the US. Its factories are in China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan and Portugal. It’s building a plant in Vietnam that will be up and running next year. Amkor, which completes the semiconductor assembly process so the chips can be used by makers of electronics, vehicles and consumer goods, has no manufacturing operations in the Americas. This isn’t only about wages — Japan and Portugal aren’t low-wage countries. Chip assembly and testing is already highly automated manufacturing.
There is an argument that the US just can’t produce these components or perform these processes competitively. Labor costs are just too high, which means production here would only add to inflation or require perpetual subsidies. If this is the case, what’s the purpose of the Chips Act? It’s imperative for the US to have redundant sources of supplies on critical products. The pandemic and now China’s more aggressive stance on the world stage has made that clear.
“We are deglobalizing. There’s no going back on this,” Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics Inc., said in an interview with Bloomberg TV last week. “Xi is moving in a different direction. US is moving in another direction. We are pulling apart.”
The US will have to lean on automation to have cost-competitive manufacturing. In those areas where it’s more difficult to replace low-cost labor with automation, Mexico, Brazil, Costa Rica and other partners can help fill that gap. The bottom line is that if the Chips Act doesn’t bring back the whole chain — even the less lucrative parts — it will fail to achieve its goal.More From Bloomberg Opinion:
• US Should Steal China’s Regional Cooperation IP: Shannon O’Neil
• US Focus on Chips Could Prove to Be a Fatal Flaw: Tim Culpan
• New Chips Act Could Become a $280 Billion Boondoggle: Editorial | 2022-10-28T11:56:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Chips Act Won’t Work Without Every Part of the Chip - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/chips-act-wont-work-without-every-part-of-the-chip/2022/10/28/7c0156c2-56b0-11ed-ac8b-08bbfab1c5a5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/chips-act-wont-work-without-every-part-of-the-chip/2022/10/28/7c0156c2-56b0-11ed-ac8b-08bbfab1c5a5_story.html |
Sandy knocked them down. Nothing will make them leave.
Ten years after the superstorm, residents of Long Island’s Mastic Beach are rooted to the coast despite a growing risk from rising seas and fiercer storms
The last home inhabited, and the end of the town's electric line on a bay peninsula of Mastic Beach on Oct. 25. (Jonah Markowitz for The Washington Post)
MASTIC BEACH, N.Y. — When Joe Kelly learned Superstorm Sandy was headed toward his home on Long Island’s southern shore, he threw a “hurricane party.” Concern overtook the boozing and laughter as water from the ocean surge extinguished the fire roaring in his living room. Cocktail tables that held beer were left floating in seawater.
Kelly and neighbors in this working-class community endured a grueling storm aftermath, discarding destroyed washing machines, dishwashers, refrigerators and mattresses. They then faced an agonizing dilemma: Rebuild or move away after accepting government buyouts. Kelly decided he would stay put.
Many of Kelly’s neighbors are just as defiant, choosing to stay despite the danger posed by future storms and flooding that will intensify because of climate change.
As parts of New York and New Jersey take stock of how they have become more resilient a decade after Sandy — raising and floodproofing thousands of homes and returning the shore to nature in other places — Kelly said he accepts the risk that comes with his decision.
“If a storm comes in, we’re going to get beat down,” he said. “We’re going to rebuild again.”
Local officials: Buyouts are the best option
On a recent drive exploring the most vulnerable areas, Brookhaven town councilman Daniel Panico seesawed his SUV through tire-deep puddles on an exposed peninsula at the edge of Mastic Beach, which is part of the larger town of Brookhaven.
Where five bungalows used to sit, only one is left, the others bought and demolished by the government. Empty seashells dot what was once an asphalt road, now eroding away into marsh. Mastic Beach is one of the lowest lying areas on Long Island.
To Panico and other local officials, buyouts are one of the primary solutions to building resiliency to an encroaching ocean.
“You know, realistically, you cannot have homes here anymore,” Panico said. “The town or any entity of government cannot hold back the water from the bay.”
However, Panico’s “proactive approach at restoring the natural habitat” has been muddled by the Mastic Beach residents who refuse to retreat from the water.
Mastic Beach suffered significant damage when Sandy walloped coastline from the Jersey Shore to New York City to Long Island. More than a fifth of all homes in Mastic Beach were inundated by ocean water up to chest-high. Then-Mayor Bill Biondi said it was the worst storm for his town since the hurricane of 1938.
In an effort to shield residents from the wrath of another catastrophic storm, Brookhaven has focused on making voluntary, fair-market offers to homeowners in flood-prone areas. These properties were torn down and returned to their natural state, as marshland.
“We need the marshland to act as a sponge to try to absorb some of the flooding that will be taking place in the future and now,” said Edward Romaine, Brookhaven’s town supervisor.
In Mastic Beach, a predominantly White community, interest in buyouts was high from residents without the means to rebuild. Brookhaven has spent more than $1.6 million to acquire parcels of land that stretch across more than 50 acres. The goal is to acquire 375 acres.
Brookhaven’s efforts are part of a broader state strategy of buyouts, prompted by residents for whom Sandy was the last straw after repeated floods.
Through a federally funded grant, New York state spent $270 million to buy 721 flood-prone properties whose owners volunteered for buyouts in the year after Sandy, according to the Governor’s Office of Storm Recovery. They were spread across Staten Island and the southern shore of Long Island, as well as an area north of New York City prone to river flooding. The $4.5 billion grant also went toward elevating some 11,000 homes, largely on Long Island, said Paul Lozito, the office’s chief program officer.
“The goal was, if you want to stay, you can elevate your home out of harm’s way, or you can move out of harm’s way,” Lozito said. At no point in the process “did we ever want to displace anybody who did not want to leave.”
'They are not slowing down': The rise of billion-dollar climate disasters
Moving forward, storm preparation and recovery will continue to include a combination of buyouts and home elevations, as well as restoration of wetlands and shoreline vegetation to provide natural storm buffers, he said.
“All options are on the table,” Lozito said.
The choice to stay
Even some residents who have chosen to stay, such as Peter Wimett, have had to make major adjustments.
Wimmet’s home, raised 13 feet in the air since Sandy, offers a reminder of the storm’s scars, future risks and his own challenges. He said his bank informed him that he had to elevate his home in order to keep his mortgage.
After suffering a stroke, he walks with a cane, while his wife was left disabled after a car crash, so mustering the strength to climb the stairs is a challenge.
“Every time I have to go out of my house for whatever reason … I don’t look forward to it,” said Wimett, who is 62. “I’m not happy about it because getting up and down the stairs with the cane and things of that sort, it’s very difficult for me to get around.”
Many residents with raised homes said they have to park their cars on elevated slabs of land, put on rubber boots and wade through shin deep ocean water to get to their homes after work.
“Your house is high and dry, but you can’t get to it,” said Kevin Collins, president of the Mastic Beach Property Owners Association. His own ground floor living room was submerged by the storm, his wife’s piano floating in the surge, but he decided to stay.
While raising homes offers a solution, experts say, it may be a temporary one. A 2016 study projected that Sandy-like extreme flood events will increase sharply over the coming decades.
“Elevating homes is good until there’s a flood higher than the elevation that you design to,” said Chad Berginnis, executive director of the Association of State Floodplain Managers. Given the risks of future storms, amplified by sea level rise and increasing storm intensity, “that is kind of a dicey proposition,” he said.
Despite the threat of flooded roads and homes, many residents have chosen to overlook the risk because they can’t imagine living anywhere else.
“We’ve been out here since 1967, grew up out here,” said Mike Kobasiuk, whose home received four feet of flooding during Sandy. “We’ve seen storms come, we’ve seen them go. This is our home.”
A risky future for shoreline homeowners
As the memory of Sandy’s destruction fades for some Mastic Beach residents, the possibility of another disaster looms.
The risk of hurricanes hitting New York and southern New England “is definitely going up,” said Adam Sobel, a professor at Columbia University focused on extreme weather.
A NOAA-led study published in 2014 found that, with each passing decade, tropical cyclones are reaching peak intensity at higher latitudes, meaning more northern stretches of the East Coast face worse storms.
Even during normal weather, signs of water’s threat emerges. Light rain showers can completely saturate roadways. Near the bay, still water languishes at the top of flood drains. High water and flood has been and will continue to be an everyday occurrence for Mastic Beach residents, Biondi said.
Catherine Kobasiuk has already mentally prepared for the idea that in 100 years, her home that was gutted by Sandy, rebuilt and elevated in its aftermath, will be taken by the sea once more. She has come to terms with the fact that ocean water will reclaim the land and turn all of Mastic Beach into a marsh.
“I told my daughter she’ll live through it, but I don’t think she’ll have our house after that,” Kobasiuk said.
While there isn’t a clear solution to combating the encroachment of the ocean and the future of Mastic Beach remains to be seen, the many residents that choose to stay see it as a problem for the next generation.
“I’m not going to retreat. I’m not. I’m here,” Collins said. “My kids might have a problem.”
Forty feet of sandy beach used to serve as a divider between the asphalt road and the ocean at the end of Joe Kelly’s block. Now the ocean nibbles on the outer edges of the road. Still, Kelly sits in his unelevated home waiting for the ocean to rise again.
“We cross our fingers,” Kelly told The Post. “You take a chance down here by the water.”
Dance reported from Washington. Jonah Markowitz contributed to this report. | 2022-10-28T11:56:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Sandy knocked them down. Nothing will make them leave. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/10/28/superstorm-sandy-mastic-beach-buyout/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/10/28/superstorm-sandy-mastic-beach-buyout/ |
Is a dilapidated playhouse worth repairing?
Q: Our new property came with a charming but dilapidated old playhouse. Our young daughters might love to play in it, but it’s occupied by a swarm of ants, a few hornets’ nests and rotted wood. It’s also situated awkwardly on concrete blocks facing away from the house. We are working parents and are slightly crafty/handy, but we have less time than creativity. Any advice on how to make this safe and accessible for children? Or is it less expensive and less of a hassle to just have it hauled away?
A: The answer to whether it’s worth fixing depends partly on what the damage is. But also important is the level of repair you’d find satisfying. Targeted repairs and fresh paint can do wonders, especially if you need the building to last just during the playhouse years of your daughters’ lives. After all, small buildings such as garden sheds and playhouses aren’t collateral for a 30-year mortgage.
The pictures you sent show damage to the bottom of the siding and to corner pieces (maybe metal flashing) that have twisted off. The adult-height door on the end also has some rot at the bottom. But other than that, there doesn’t appear to be much that a good scrubbing and some new paint wouldn’t fix.
Inside might be a different story, but it’s hard to assess that without first clearing the debris. If the hornets’ nests are near the doors, deal with those first with a can of wasp and hornet spray, applied at night or early in the morning from a distance. If you are highly allergic to stings, hire a professional. Fox Pest Control (fox-pest.com; 855-953-1976), which works in Northern Virginia and various other parts of the country, said the fee typically ranges from $150 to $200. You could have the company treat for ants at the same time for no additional fee.
Judging from the pictures you sent, the inside of the structure appears to be dry. Put on a disposable respirator and gloves, and walk in. If the floor seems solid, move the big items outside and scrape smaller debris into a pile, so you can scoop it up with a dustpan or a flat-head shovel. Dust cobwebs and sweep or vacuum up what remains.
If sections of the walls or the underside of the roof are black, water has almost certainly seeped in. With a screwdriver or an awl, poke into the wood; if it goes in more than ⅛ inch, rot has probably begun. This isn’t a good sign, but it’s not necessarily a death knell for a shed or play structure if the damage is not extensive.
On the other hand, if the floor is so soft that it seems unsafe to walk on, or if numerous studs or roof rafters are spongy, then you might conclude that it’s better to have a junk-removal company demolish the building and haul it away, a bill that could run from about $200 to $2,000, according to 1-800-Got-Junk. The company also offers advice about the steps involved, if you want to tackle this yourself.
Chances are, though, that the building still has years of life left. In that case, you might want to reorient it before you tackle repairs. If you have friends who work in construction or landscaping, invite them over to talk through the process and enlist their help. You or a landscaping crew will need to prepare the new site before moving day; the structure should sit on a level bed of ¾-inch crushed gravel that is four to six inches deep (or deeper if you need to fill in a low spot). Sheds and playhouses usually sit on 4-by-6-inch pressure-treated skids between the floor and the gravel, but the 4-by-4 pieces that support the structure now should suffice. Trim them after the move, so they don’t stick out past the building.
Buy enough Schedule 40 PVC pipe (four or six inches in diameter), so you can cut three or four pieces a foot or two longer than the distance between the 4-by-4s. (A 10-foot piece of six-inch-wide pipe is $101 at Home Depot; a four-inch-wide piece is $52.96 but would make the move more laborious.) You’ll also need four jacks, such as Husky’s six-ton hydraulic bottle jacks ($32.98 each at Home Depot).
Check before you buy to make sure the highest setting is enough to at least slightly lift the corner of the building that’s farthest from the ground. And have a couple of thick planks to use as a ramp as the building rolls onto the gravel, plus more that you can insert under the building to keep it level as you roll it, as well as scraps of plywood to place under the jacks, so they don’t sink into the soil.
On moving day, with helpers present, use the jacks to raise the building just enough so that you can move away the concrete blocks. Place the pipes perpendicular to the 4-by-4s, maneuver wood under them to make the pipes level and gradually lower the building onto them using the jacks. Then use your people to move the house to the new location. As a pipe comes free at the back, move it to the front, so the building stays on its “wheels” the whole way, and insert more of the scrap wood, so the house stays level. Depending on which way you want to move the building, you might need to modify these directions, such as by first adding another pair of 4-by-4s perpendicular to the existing ones, so you can place the pipes to roll the building in a different direction.
To repair the exterior, wash the siding, and let it dry. If the siding is plywood, you can probably repair the rotted bottom edge of the siding and the adult door by first brushing on an epoxy wood hardener, then filling in with an epoxy putty, such as Abatron LiquidWood & WoodEpox ($42 for a 24-ounce kit on Amazon). If the siding is made from flakes of wood, get tips from my June column titled “How to repair damaged shed siding.”
Then, at last, are the fun, transformative final steps: new paint inside and out, as well as decorating.
Only you can decide whether all of this is worth the effort. | 2022-10-28T11:57:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How to move an old playhouse and replace damaged wood - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/home/2022/10/28/tips-repairing-old-playhouse/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/home/2022/10/28/tips-repairing-old-playhouse/ |
Harvard University's campus near the Charles River in Cambridge, Mass., in 2017. (Charles Krupa/AP)
The suits against Harvard and North Carolina are brought by Students for Fair Admissions, some Asian American students challenging the indisputable bias against Asian Americans, the nation’s most academically able demographic cohort. SFFA says: “An Asian American in the fourth-lowest decile [of Harvard’s academic index] has virtually no chance of being admitted to Harvard (0.9 percent); but an African American in that decile has a higher chance of admission (12.8 percent) than an Asian American in the top decile (12.7 percent).”
The diversity rationale for racial discrimination in admissions — in 1978 the court cheerfully anticipated a “robust exchange of ideas” — is mocked by campuses that offer racially segregated dormitories, graduation ceremonies, etc. And by the survey of Harvard’s class of 2025 showing that 72.4 percent are predominantly liberal, and 8.6 percent are very or somewhat conservative. And by the fact that since the court embraced the “diversity” rationale for racial discrimination, universities have become markedly more intellectually monochrome and intolerant.
In 1996, Californians voted 54.6 percent that the state “shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to,” any individual or group on the basis of race in public education. In 2020, a much bluer and more diverse California was asked to repeal the 1996 proposition. Instead, Californians endorsed it more emphatically (57.2 percent). A national Pew Research Center poll in April found 74 percent hostile to racial preferences, including Hispanics (68 percent), Asians (63), Blacks (59), Republicans (87) and Democrats (62). The sordid business of divvying us up by race has brought us together in opposition to it. | 2022-10-28T11:57:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Supreme Court rulings won't end discrimination at colleges - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/28/college-racial-discrimination-affirmative-action-supreme-court/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/28/college-racial-discrimination-affirmative-action-supreme-court/ |
Gretchen Whitmer must think she’s the governor of Florida
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) speaks during a debate with Republican challenger Tudor Dixon at Oakland University in Rochester, Mich., on Tuesday. (Robin Buckson/Detroit News via AP, Pool)
John Fetterman, the Democratic Senate nominee in Pennsylvania, wasn’t the only politician who got mixed up on a debate stage Tuesday night. Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan’s Democratic governor, seemed to confuse herself with Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis.
In an exchange with her Republican opponent, Tudor Dixon, over Whitmer’s draconian coronavirus policies, the governor claimed that in school shutdowns, “kids were out for three months.”
That was true … in Florida, not Michigan.
In July 2020, DeSantis ordered all Florida schools to reopen in the fall for full-time, in-person learning — including all public schools, public charter schools and private schools that accept state scholarship money. Schools were directed to provide all services required by law, including specialized instruction and services for students with learning disabilities, and to set up monitoring systems to make sure students were not falling behind academically.
That decision spared Florida students from the catastrophic learning losses that have plagued children in many other parts of the country.
Whitmer, by contrast, did the opposite: She signed an education package in August 2020 that did not require school districts to offer in-person learning to be eligible for state funding — leaving the decision up to local school districts and their teachers-union overlords.
As a result, the data-analytics company Burbio reported, a majority of Michigan schools were using virtual or hybrid learning at the start of the school year. Those that did start the year in-person received a directive in November from Whitmer’s health department ordering them to “end in-person classes.” It was not until Dec. 21, 2020, that her administration finally allowed — not required — schools to reopen for in-person learning.
According to Chalkbeat Detroit, in January 2021, only 23 percent of Michigan schools were fully in-person. Detroit, the state’s largest school district, was fully remote until the last three months of the 2020-2021 academic year, which means Detroit students were out of school for a full year. The Ann Arbor school district stayed partly remote all the way to the start of 2022.
It was not until March 2021 that Whitmer finally signed a law requiring some Michigan school districts to offer in-person instruction in order to receive increased emergency pandemic funding. But even then, the law affected less than a third of Michigan schools and required only 20 hours of in-person instruction. And, the Associated Press reports, the law was “spearheaded by Republicans” in the state legislature, not by Whitmer.
Why would Whitmer lie about her record? Does she think Michigan parents didn’t notice that their kids were home, doing online school? Parents know exactly how long their kids were out of the classroom. They lived this — and their children are now living with the consequences.
Test scores in Michigan plummeted. The National Assessment of Educational Progress — better known as the “Nation’s Report Card” — just revealed that fourth-grade math scores declined five points nationwide. But in Detroit, fourth-grade math scores fell 12 points — putting students 20 points below basic mastery of fundamentals.
Across Michigan, fourth-graders recorded their lowest reading scores in 30 years — wiping out three decades of reading progress. And a report from Michigan State University’s Education Policy Innovation Collaborative found that Michigan students who learned remotely for all or most of 2021 suffered far greater learning losses than those who were in classrooms.
The damage from these learning losses is irretrievable. If kids don’t learn to read and do basic math in younger grades, they can’t perform expected work in subsequent grades — and fall further and further behind.
The cumulative damage may affect disadvantaged students for the rest of their lives. A study by professors from Yale, Northwestern the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Amsterdam projects that “one year of school closures will cost ninth graders in the poorest communities a 25% decrease in their post-educational earning potential.”
The denial of in-person learning also helped spark a children’s mental health crisis. One study found that 71 percent of parents said the pandemic had taken a toll on their child’s mental health, and 69 percent said the pandemic was the worst thing to happen to their child — citing social isolation, remote learning and excess screen time as most damaging to their children’s mental health. In 2020 mental health-related emergency room visits increased 24 percent for children ages 5 to 11, and 31 percent for those ages 12 to 17, compared with 2019.
The damage done by Whitmer’s lockdown policies to Michigan’s children is devastating. And by claiming that “kids were out for three months,” she adds insult to injury. Perhaps that’s why her race with Dixon is tightening. Michigan parents know that Whitmer kicked their kids out of school. On Nov. 8, they’ll have a chance to return the favor — by kicking her out of office.
Or, like so many others fleeing blue lockdown states, they could always move to Florida. | 2022-10-28T11:57:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Gretchen Whitmer must think she’s the governor of Florida - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/28/gretchen-whitmer-covid-school-shutdown-record/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/28/gretchen-whitmer-covid-school-shutdown-record/ |
Colombians are occupying land to protest inequality. Here’s the history.
Indigenous and other marginalized Colombians are putting pressure on the new government to follow through on land redistribution promises.
Analysis by Laura García-Montoya
Isabel Güiza-Gómez
A child rests inside a temporary shelter assigned by the Bogota mayor’s office in Colombia on Oct. 20, after Indigenous groups spent months negotiating with the government to return to their homelands after being displaced by Colombia’s violence. (Luisa Gonzalez/Reuters)
In Colombia, Indigenous, peasant and Afro-descendant groups have escalated land occupations in recent months, seeking to ensure the government carries out long-standing land redistribution promises. President Gustavo Petro and Vice President Francia Márquez, sworn in as the leaders of Colombia’s first leftist government in history in August, campaigned on a political agenda that included land redistribution.
Current land conflicts are an extension of Colombia’s long history of political violence and inequality. What does the recurrence of land occupations mean for the prospects for peace and development in Colombia today? And will increased public support for redistribution and the new government’s commitment to socio-economic change help marginalized rural communities gain land ownership rights?
Land redistribution was a key goal when the Colombian government and the former guerrilla group FARC-EP negotiated the 2016 peace accord that ended the longest-running civil war in the Western Hemisphere. The peace deal pledged 7 million hectares for titling programs directed toward small shareholders who have farmed land but lack formal titles and 3 million hectares for landless communities as means for subsistence.
Colombia’s new president aims to swing his country left. It won’t be easy.
Research on past rural mobilization efforts helps explain this latest chapter in Colombia’s land occupations. In the 1970s, land occupations skyrocketed, and these types of popular land claims continued into the 1980s as peasant and Indigenous communities saw land occupations from large landowners as the way to pressure the government into materializing land reform. However, the violent backlash from paramilitary groups colluding with private landowners erased land occupations from the toolkit of rural movements during the civil war.
Land policies in the 1970s fell short — and rural residents fought back
Seeking to dissuade land conflict and the nascent insurgency, President Alberto Lleras-Camargo took a reformist approach by creating national-level institutions tasked with land policy changes through the 1961 Agrarian Law. Later that decade, the administration of President Carlos Lleras-Restrepo enhanced these institutions and encouraged peasants to participate in implementing new land policies. Yet wealthy Colombian landowners and cattle ranchers worked with coalitions in Congress to derail these efforts, and bribed local-level officials to hamper implementation.
Disappointed by the broken promises on land redistribution, ANUC — the largest peasant movement at the time — coordinated a campaign of land occupations in the early 1970s. In the northern department of Cordoba, for example, dozens of peasant families settled in temporary shacks on land owned by 30 private haciendas (or estates).
The peasants’ aim was to pressure authorities to fulfill land redistribution promises. Similar episodes unfolded around the country. By year’s end, Colombian officials had recorded 645 occupation events. Political and economic elites in the 1970s denounced these “land invasions” as a threat to economic development.
In some instances, rural communities attained formal titles over occupied land. But elites’ demands led to a strong shift in land policy, which crystallized in a government-elite agreement known as the “Pacto de Chicoral,” signed in January 1972. Henceforth, land policies favored economic growth over a fairer distribution of rural assets.
Colombia’s elections could determine the fate of the peace deal
Importantly, the Pacto de Chicoral helped legitimize government repression of peasants, Indigenous peoples and Afro-Colombians mobilizing for land rights, while paramilitary groups violently evicted rural communities from recently allocated land. Unaddressed land claims also deepened political conflict, violence and displacement. The findings from Colombia’s Truth Commission — an institution established by the 2016 peace accord — report local alliances of paramilitary groups, landed elites and the National Army had carried out counter-agrarian efforts, using lethal violence against peasant communities.
Is there political momentum for land redistribution today?
Echoing the mobilizations of the 1970s, Indigenous, peasant and Afro-Colombian movements have taken over large land plots in recent months. For instance, in the northern part of Colombia in Cesar, peasant movements are contesting the ownership of plots of land purchased by private companies after paramilitary forces forced out local farmers in the mid-2000s.
Similarly, in southwestern Colombia in Cauca, land occupations have unearthed long-running conflicts between Indigenous peoples and the sugarcane industry. Adding to the conflict, tensions have emerged between Afro-Colombians demanding their right to work, and peasant and Indigenous communities mobilizing to claim land ownership. These disputes are rooted in widespread wealth inequality in Cauca, where the Land Gini Index — a measure of income inequality ranging from 0 (low) to 1 (high) — has reached 0.9.
In recent months, cattle ranchers and opposition leaders have responded to the land occupations in ways that strikingly resemble the actions of self-defense groups — a response that fueled violence against peasant communities during the decades of armed conflict ended by the 2016 peace agreement. Will the various factions now find ways to compromise? In sharp contrast to the 1970s, Colombia today has institutional frameworks to address war atrocities and is more capable of implementing redistributive policies, including land redistribution.
Aware of the interplay of land conflicts and violence, the national government seems to be taking steps toward fulfilling promises to end land conflicts and alleviate inequalities. Petro’s administration signed an agreement this month to buy about 3 million hectares from cattle ranchers to expedite rural land redistribution. The government’s plan seeks to give land back to landless communities by favoring negotiation over contention.
Of course, the Petro administration’s plans have produced some criticism. Some politicians have criticized the government’s willingness to negotiate with sectors that have colluded with paramilitary groups. Others have raised concerns about the unintended consequences of transferring resources to already wealthy landed elites through land purchase. However, as long as the agreement prioritizes land access to landless communities while diminishing dissenting voices from Colombia’s powerful large landowners, it may work toward solving long-standing inequalities in Colombia and continue the path to peace.
Laura García-Montoya (@LauraGarciaMo) is an assistant professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto and adjunct professor of economics at the Universidad del Rosario.
Isabel Güiza-Gómez (@IsabelGuiza) is a doctoral student in political science and peace studies at the University of Notre Dame. | 2022-10-28T11:57:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Will Colombia's new government boost rural land ownership? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/28/colombia-petro-land-redistribution-indigenous/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/28/colombia-petro-land-redistribution-indigenous/ |
This oil refinery poses a major environmental justice test for Biden
Good morning and welcome to The Climate 202! Our colleague Brady Dennis will moderate two conversations today at 11 a.m. ET with Jigar Shah, director of the Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office, and Liane Randolph, chair of the California Air Resources Board. You can register for The Washington Post Live program here. But first:
EPA closed a refinery that rained oil. Now it’s a 'ticking time bomb.’
An oil refinery in the U.S. Virgin Islands that the Environmental Protection Agency shut down last spring now poses the risk of a fire, explosion or other “catastrophic” releases of “extremely hazardous substances,” the agency found in a report released this week, Maxine reports this morning.
The idled plant on St. Croix, formerly known as the Limetree Bay refinery, experienced a series of accidents over the course of last year that spewed noxious fumes and showered oil droplets onto nearby homes, sending some residents to emergency rooms.
Now deteriorating conditions at the massive facility, which was sold in a bankruptcy auction in December, pose a major test of the Biden administration’s commitment to environmental justice.
In September, the EPA conducted an inspection of the refinery and observed “significant corrosion” of equipment including valves, pipes and pressure relief devices, the agency said in an Oct. 13 letter sent to the owners’ lawyers and made public this week.
Elias Rodríguez, a spokesman for EPA Region 2 — which oversees New Jersey, New York, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and eight Native American tribes — said the agency is “continuing its vigilant oversight” of the refinery.
‘Cancel his weekend plans’
Enck called on EPA Administrator Michael Regan to “cancel his weekend plans” and immediately board a flight to St. Croix, where she said the agency must inform residents of the imminent threats to their health.
A recent survey found that roughly 20,000 people live downwind of the refinery, while in an earlier 2019 analysis, the EPA found that 75 percent of residents of adjoining neighborhoods are people of color and 27 percent live below the poverty line.
But Jennifer Valiulis, executive director of the St. Croix Environmental Association, questioned whether the federal government would act with more urgency if the situation were unfolding in the contiguous United States.
House Republicans probe Biden’s oil reserve release, possible export ban
Republicans on the House Oversight and Reform Committee are investigating what they see as the Biden administration’s “potential misuse” of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, as well as the White House’s potential plans to ban oil and gas exports, Ari Natter reports for Bloomberg News.
In a Wednesday letter to the Energy Department, the lawmakers requested a tranche of documents and information related to both moves, saying the administration “continues to pursue policies that suppress domestic energy production and drive fuel prices higher for consumers.”
President Biden announced last week that he is releasing 15 million more barrels of fuel from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a move aimed at easing gasoline prices ahead of the midterm elections. The letter was led by Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the top Republican on the Oversight panel, and Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), the ranking member on the House oversight subcommittee on civil rights and civil liberties.
In response to the probe, the Energy Department said in a statement that the administration is using the emergency supply as designed during a time of volatility within the energy market.
With only two weeks before the midterms, the letter serves as a preview of what could become more robust investigations into the Biden administration’s climate agenda if the GOP takes control of one or both chambers of Congress.
California regulators weigh ban on diesel-powered trucks, buses by 2040
California regulators met Thursday to consider a sweeping proposal to ban sales of diesel-burning trucks and buses by 2040, a move that is widely expected to accelerate the transition to zero-emission vehicles both in California and nationally, our colleague Anna Phillips reports for The Climate 202.
The proposed rule would require that all new medium- and heavy-duty trucks and buses sold in the state be zero-emission by 2040. Cities, counties and private fleet owners would gradually work toward this goal, making a larger percentage of their new vehicle purchases either electric or hydrogen-fuel-cell-powered, beginning in 2024.
If the rule is adopted — the California Air Resources Board will vote next spring — other states will likely follow. More than a dozen states typically adhere to California’s stricter emissions rules, and officials from New York, Connecticut, Washington state and Wisconsin have backed the proposal.
At Thursday’s hearing, fleet owners and trade groups representing major truck makers pushed the state to lower its ambitions, calling the proposed rule unworkable and costly.
The proposal “does not address a number of circumstances where the performance of zero-emission trucks is inadequate,” said Mike Tunnell, director of environmental affairs for the American Trucking Associations.
Meanwhile, climate advocates and Californians from communities that bear the brunt of diesel exhaust asked the state to move faster, pushing for a diesel truck and bus ban to take effect by 2036 and for smaller fleets to be included in the regulations.
Energy crisis likely to speed, not slow, green transition, IEA says
The energy crisis spurred by Russia’s war in Ukraine will likely accelerate, not slow, the global transition away from fossil fuels and toward green technologies, the International Energy Agency said Thursday, Brad Plumer reports for the New York Times.
The agency’s World Energy Outlook, which forecasts energy trends through 2050, found that although some countries are burning more fossil fuels such as coal to make up for gas shortages, the effect is expected to be short-lived.
In fact, for the first time, the agency projected that global demand for oil, gas and coal would peak in the near future. Meanwhile, worldwide investment in clean energy is set to jump from $1.3 trillion in 2022 to more than $2 trillion annually by 2030, the agency said.
Still, scientists say the clean energy transition is not happening fast enough to avert the most catastrophic consequences of climate change. The report comes on the same day as a separate United Nations report that found nations have delayed climate action for so long that the Earth is on track to blow past a safe temperature threshold by almost a full degree.
Britain’s new prime minister will not attend COP27
Rishi Sunak, the United Kingdom’s new prime minister, will not attend next month’s United Nations climate conference in Egypt, despite hopes among environmentalists that he would restore Britain’s credibility on climate change, Kate Whannel reports for BBC News.
A spokeswoman for 10 Downing Street said in a statement that Sunak will skip the COP27 climate talks “due to other pressing domestic commitments” and that Britain will instead be represented by other ministers, including Alok Sharma, who served as president of the COP26 climate talks in Scotland last year and is losing his role in Sunak’s cabinet.
Before her resignation as prime minister last week, Liz Truss had been expected to attend the conference, leading the opposing Labour Party to call Sunak’s absence a “massive failure of climate leadership.”
The spokeswoman for 10 Downing Street, however, said the U.K. remains “committed to net zero and to leading international and domestic action to tackle climate change.”
Prices are down. Supplies are good. Europe’s gas crisis gets a reprieve — Loveday Morris and Evan Halper for The Post
This scientist uses drones and algorithms to save whales — and the rest of the ocean — Tatiana Schlossberg for The Post
For the first time in 6,000 years, a bison is born in the wild in the U.K. — Sydney Page for The Post
Sandy knocked them down. Nothing will make them leave — Amudalat Ajasa and Scott Dance for The Post
15 state AG races to watch on the environment — Ellie Borst, Pamela King and Lesley Clark for E&E News | 2022-10-28T11:58:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | This oil refinery poses a major environmental justice test for Biden - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/28/this-oil-refinery-poses-major-environmental-justice-test-biden/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/28/this-oil-refinery-poses-major-environmental-justice-test-biden/ |
Live updates Elon Musk takes control of Twitter
Elon Musk in 2020. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)
Elon Musk has taken over Twitter, seizing control of one of the most influential social media platforms in a $44 billion blockbuster deal.
The sale’s closing capped a months-long saga that saw the world’s richest person try — then reverse his decision — to buy the site, before changing course again as the matter was scheduled to head to trial.
Already, the takeover finalized Thursday is being cheered by some right-leaning Twitter users, and decried by a coalition of nonprofit advocacy groups, who say Musk’s plans could make the site a “hate-filled cesspool.”
Thierry Breton, the European Union’s internal market commissioner, reminded Musk that he must follow its laws.
“In Europe, the bird will fly by our rules,” he tweeted Friday.
Musk, a prolific Twitter user, is finally in control of the site with which he has a love-hate relationship. He has amassed a following of more than 110 million in a venue that can sometimes land him in trouble.
Twitter’s days as an also-ran among the big social media companies may be limited. Musk is known for taking big swings and making bets that more risk-averse corporate leaders might shy away from. It remains to be seen whether Twitter can mimic the successes of his other companies, Tesla and SpaceX.
Twitter could be entering a painful readjustment period, with a new owner who has decried its work environment as too relaxed and made plans for steep cuts along with a rethinking of its content-moderation strategies. The executive firings could be just the beginning. | 2022-10-28T12:26:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Live updates: Elon Musk takes control of Twitter - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/10/28/elon-musk-buys-twitter/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/10/28/elon-musk-buys-twitter/ |
Adele tells fans her next move: She wants to get a college degree
British singer Adele performs onstage during the BRIT Awards 2022 ceremony and live show in London on February 8, 2022. (Tolga Akmen/AFP/Getty Images)
In January, she had shocked fans by postponing her residency just 24 hours before the opening night, saying in a teary video that her show wasn’t ready, citing delivery and covid-related delays. She later said she faced a “brutal” backlash from the public as a result and was “devastated” by guilt, stating she “was a shell of a person” in the months that followed.
Adele says ‘brutal’ backlash followed cancellation of Las Vegas residency
She told fans in L.A. this week that McDonald had made her “fall in love with books.” Adding, “if I hadn’t made it in my singing, I think I would definitely be a teacher.”
Adele often takes a hiatus in between her chart-topping albums, the release of which become headline news.
Last year, she released her album “30,” hailed as emotionally honest with moving melodies, which went on to shatter sales records. The album reflects on her divorce from British charity executive Simon Konecki, with whom she has a son, Angelo. She is now in a relationship with famed U.S. sports agent, Rich Paul. | 2022-10-28T12:35:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Adele wants to go to university and get an English Literature degree - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/10/28/adele-english-literature-university/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/10/28/adele-english-literature-university/ |
In ‘Trespasses,’ an affair can be fatal during Ireland’s Troubles
Review by Malcolm Forbes
In Louise Kennedy’s debut novel, the threat of judgment is ever-present and inescapable. “A free country, indeed,” scoffs the protagonist’s mother. “It’s a bigoted hole.” Two pages later, the protagonist’s lover gives his point of view. “It’s not about what you do here,” he says. “It’s about what you are.”
“Trespasses” is set in Northern Ireland during the 1970s amid the sound and the fury of the Troubles. For many, sectarian strife is a brutal reality and a daily ordeal. For Kennedy’s beleaguered characters, it is background noise. However, peace is precarious: All it takes for tensions to flare and violence to erupt is one wrong move, one false allegiance – or one illicit love affair.
Kennedy’s protagonist is 24-year-old Cushla Lavery. She lives with her mother, Gina, in a small, “mixed” town outside Belfast. Her day job is teaching young children at a Catholic primary school. Some nights she helps her older brother Eamonn at her family’s pub. The place attracts all sorts: a ragtag band of regulars; intimidating and untouchable British soldiers who throw their weight around; and lost causes “who had drunk themselves out of marriages and into unheated bedsits near the esplanade.” Cushla keeps her head down. Eamonn watches what he says, “in case he offends somebody and ends up on a loyalist hit list.”
One evening, Cushla becomes interested in a customer – “the man with the neat whiskey and tidy nails.” Michael Agnew is markedly different from her: He is an “ould lad” in his 50s, Protestant and married. He is also a barrister who fights for the rights of young Catholic men. Opposites attract. Michael asks Cushla to teach him and his middle-class friends to speak Irish, and on the way home from their first “conversation night” one thing leads to another and a romance sparks to life.
So begins several especially dangerous liaisons, each one conducted in deadly secret. The novel would have been somewhat threadbare had it centered solely on the pair’s forbidden love. Fortunately, Kennedy weaves in another couple of narrative strands. One involves Cushla caring for gin-marinated Gina as she crashes and burns behind closed doors. The other, more substantial plotline, charts Cushla’s relationship with a boy from her class. At school, Davy McGeown is bullied by the other children. At home, he and his family are persecuted by their Protestant neighbors.
When Davy’s father is beaten up and left for dead, Cushla takes Davy and his siblings under her wing. But then disaster comes Cushla’s way. As her world caves in and her pain takes hold, her creator’s parallel plotlines skillfully intersect. At this crisis point Cushla is reminded that in her fractured community, certain acts have terrible repercussions.
Like Cushla, Kennedy grew up near Belfast. She worked as a chef for almost three decades before she turned her hand to writing. Her first foray into fiction was short-form, and last year saw the publication of her collection of stories “The End of the World Is a Cul de Sac.” The best of those tales were miniature marvels which provided snapshots of shattered lives. In “Trespasses,” Kennedy has more room to flesh out her characters and dramatize their predicaments. She does so masterfully, convincing her reader of all that unfolds.
'Say Nothing': The tale of a woman who died and a woman who killed in the Northern Ireland conflict
The book’s gritty backdrop is brilliantly depicted. The Laverys live in a garrison town, “although it had not felt like one until 1969, when the troops were sent in.” We hear of regular disruptions (Cushla and a friend are stopped and searched on their way to a party) and precautions (Cushla’s neighbor checks under his car for a bomb before driving to work). Before lessons, the children in Cushla’s class recount the latest news headlines, each one an itemized atrocity. Booby trap, incendiary device, gelignite and rubber bullets are, writes Kennedy, “The vocabulary of a seven-year-old child now.”
Kennedy sprinkles in more idiomatic vocabulary – geg, neb, snatter, wheeker, pokes, marleys – to make her characters’ exchanges ring true. Other, seemingly familiar terms – romper room, sherry trifles – have their innocence stripped from them to reveal a second, more sinister meaning.
Through her thoughts, her deeds and her dialogue, Cushla emerges as a flawed, bruised but ultimately defiant heroine. Whether we find her happy yet unfulfilled with her lover, or at her lowest ebb with her mother – “like a tag team, taking turns to fall apart” – she is someone we root for every step of the way.
Kennedy has written a captivating first novel which manages to be beautiful and devastating in equal measure. Its bittersweetness is encapsulated in one of Cushla’s memorable comebacks. Michael asks if they, as a couple, are all right. “We’re doomed,” she replies. “Apart from that we’re grand.”
Malcolm Forbes is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in the Economist, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal and the New Republic.
Trespasses | 2022-10-28T12:53:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trespasses by Louise Kennedy book review - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/10/28/trespasses-louise-kennedy-irish-troubles-novel/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/10/28/trespasses-louise-kennedy-irish-troubles-novel/ |
How a recession will louse up 2023 for both parties
A shopping cart at a San Francisco grocery store on May 2. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg News)
The 2022 midterms aren’t quite a poisoned chalice; a political party would always rather win an election than lose one. Republicans are poised to win the House of Representatives and perhaps the Senate as well, in addition to a bunch of governors’ races. The problem for the GOP — and everyone else — is that the already not-so-hot U.S. economy is projected to worsen. And it could happen shortly after the new Republican majorities, if they take both houses, are sworn into office.
Many financial analysts regard Thursday’s news of 2.6 percent third-quarter U.S. growth as a pause on the way to a 2023 recession. Those expectations have been steadily building — Bloomberg declared this month that there is a 100 percent chance of a recession in the coming year.
The Conference Board, a business organization, similarly forecast in recent weeks that “economic weakness will intensify and spread more broadly throughout the U.S. economy over the coming months with a recession to begin before the end of 2022. This outlook is associated with persistent inflation and rising hawkishness by the Federal Reserve. We forecast that 2022 real gross domestic product growth will come in at 1.5 percent year-over-year and 2023 growth will slow to zero percent year-over-year.”
For Republicans, that’s a dark lining in the silver cloud of a congressional takeover: Shortly after they step into office, the already pessimistic and angry American electorate will feel like things are getting worse instead of better. It’s mostly economic dissatisfaction and high inflation that are driving expectations of GOP midterm success. Voters are going to the polls in the expectation of improved economic prospects under new representation.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said this month that if Republicans win control of the House, the GOP will use raising the debt limit as leverage to force spending cuts — which could include cuts to Medicare and Social Security — and limit additional funding to Ukraine.
Just how warmly do you think the public will greet high-stakes brinkmanship on budget and spending battles, if unemployment is rising and the country is enduring another recession?
Those of us who remember the Obama years will recall similar fights about the debt ceiling that rarely worked out well for Republicans. Debt-ceiling fights are like high-stakes, quickly forgotten Kabuki theater; they freak out the financial markets and give each side a chance to accuse the other of being reckless and irresponsible before agreeing at the 11th hour to more or less the status quo.
Democrats want to win this year’s midterms, but if they lose big, they’ll quickly remember the upside of being in the minority — you’re powerless, but you’re unified. In early 2019, after Democrats had retaken control of the House, I asked a GOP staffer on Capitol Hill how it felt to be in the minority again. He was surprisingly cheerful: “We’re back to throwing grenades instead of catching them.”
The other side of the coin is that a recession might make Democrats extraordinarily wary about nominating President Biden for another term. Biden will turn 80 on Nov. 20, which means that if he follows through on his intention to seek reelection, he would be running at age 81. It would be extremely difficult to generate enthusiasm for an octogenarian president who has been rebuked in the midterms, while the country is experiencing a recession.
If Biden doesn’t run, or if he faces a serious primary challenge, Democrats will have a long-overdue debate about what kinds of economic policies will achieve their goals and not exacerbate inflation. Biden and company began 2021 with a sense that they could spend as much as they liked, and that any increased inflation would be, in the president’s infamous July 2021 prediction, temporary. Inflation was 8.2 percent last month.
It turned out, as Biden and a free-spending Democratic-controlled Congress learned (or maybe they haven’t), that if the federal government spends too much, too quickly, when the economy is already recovering, too much money ends up chasing too few goods, and inflation worsens.
Right now, Republicans are hoping the 2024 presidential election can be turned into a referendum on Biden’s performance, and Democrats are hoping the 2024 presidential election can be turned into a referendum on the return of Donald Trump. But when the campaigns kick into a higher gear in late 2023, the biggest question on the minds of the American people for Democrats and Republicans alike may well be, “Which one of you is going to get us out of this recession, and how are you going to do it?” | 2022-10-28T13:01:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | How a recession will louse up 2023 for both parties - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/28/how-recession-hurts-democrats-republicans/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/28/how-recession-hurts-democrats-republicans/ |
By Barkha Dutt
Newly elected Indian National Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge speaks in New Delhi on Oct. 26. (Rajat Gupta/Shutterstock)
In nearly 137 years, India’s Congress Party — the main, albeit severely diminished, opposition to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party — has held only six internal elections. This month, in its first such contest in more than two decades, it missed a crucial opportunity to reset.
Since Prime Minister Narendra Modi rose to power in 2014, the Congress Party has been crushed under the wheels of the BJP juggernaut. It went from having 206 seats in Parliament in 2009 to 52 seats a decade later, and it leads governments in just two of the country’s 28 states. The party that once led the fight for the country’s independence is struggling for relevance. And a leadership race that could have signaled renewal has ended up only reaffirming the stale status quo.
On paper, the results of the contest were a break from the leadership of the Nehru-Gandhi family, descendants of India’s first prime minister who have steered the fortunes of Congress for decades. But in fact, the election only reconfirmed the party’s reputation as an entrenched family firm — one gravely out of sync with the aspirations of a fast-changing India. Instead of embracing disruption and a new storyline, members elected Mallikarjun Kharge, an 80-year-old party veteran and Gandhi loyalist, as the new chief.
Kharge won out over the media-savvy, erudite former diplomat Shashi Tharoor. Kharge’s supporters emphasize his string of parliamentary victories and symbolism as a Dalit politician, arguing that support for Tharoor is concentrated among India’s Anglicized elite. It’s true that Kharge has an inspiring personal story, rising from poverty and becoming the first in his family to attend college.
Yet this debate is not about individual critiques of Kharge — or a preference for clipped English accents and degrees from foreign universities. Quite simply, Kharge lacks the charisma needed for a political era of populism, personality and polarization. With his repeated assertions that he will seek guidance from the Gandhis, he only confirms the perception that he is a proxy candidate. By contrast, Tharoor told me that “a self-respecting [Congress] president would essentially want to exercise his own authority … there is no provision in the constitution of the party for the president to report to anyone else.”
Kharge would not have even run for party president if the Gandhi family had not wished it. His last-minute entry into the race was a dead giveaway, following an unexpected rebellion by the Gandhis’ preferred candidate that made them double down on a “safe” alternative. Kharge is effectively a trusted placeholder for the family, keeping the seat warm while Rahul Gandhi, its 52-year-old scion, seeks personal reinvention.
Admittedly, Rahul Gandhi is not sitting idly by: He is undertaking an ambitious journey on foot across India. His “Bharat Jodo Yatra” (Journey to Unify India) has helped showcase an amiable, accessible side to the politician, who for much of his career has been stilted among people. Congress — belatedly learning the power of images in an age of viral videos and WhatsApp forwards — has found success with photos of Gandhi delivering speeches while drenched in rain, embracing elderly people and playfully interacting with children. These engagements have made Gandhi look better than he has in years.
Without election wins, however, this remains a largely personal pilgrimage. The pan-India journey omits the states of Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat, where state elections are scheduled for this year. Perhaps the party does not want Gandhi linked in any way to electoral defeats — but it is counterintuitive for a politician to deliberately avoid connecting a mass contact program to electoral success.
Congress loyalists say the media is not as critical of the BJP, where all internal decision-making is by the prime minister or his all-powerful lieutenant Amit Shah. Why is there not as much focus on (relatively) low-key BJP President J.P. Nadda? The answer is simple: There is no ambiguity in the BJP; Modi is both the message and the mascot. In Congress, on the other hand, Rahul Gandhi neither openly pursues power, nor lets go of it.
So, without a clear change in personality, what will the Congress bring to counter Modi in the next general election, which must be held by May 2024? The BJP’s emphasis on Hindu identity has pushed opposition parties — not just Congress, but also the newer Aam Aadmi Party and others — to similarly embrace religious symbols. Meanwhile, the BJP’s economic policy is not very different from Congress’s. In fact, the ruling party has co-opted Congress’s classic welfarism with strategic microeconomics. Free rations, direct cash transfers, toilets and housing have been welded with aggressive nationalism, caste coalitions — and, above all, the cult of Modi.
The Congress Party faces an existential test for its future. It needs a person, a plan and a compelling story to put up a fight on the electoral battlefield. The past few weeks show it has a long way to go on all three fronts. | 2022-10-28T13:01:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | India's Congress Party missed a chance to reset — and take the fight to Modi - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/28/india-congress-mallikarjun-kharge-rahul-gandhi-leadership-reset/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/28/india-congress-mallikarjun-kharge-rahul-gandhi-leadership-reset/ |
Story by Rick Noack
Photos by Sandra Mehl
From ‘flight shame’ in Sweden to cheap train tickets in Germany to flight bans in France,
European countries are trying to get people to embrace lower-emission trips.
The Washington Post explored how well those efforts are working
and whether Europe’s railways are ready for a new era.
Waiting on a train platform in Hassleholm, Sweden, Manni Elfborg was both poetic and practical in explaining why his family was taking a 24-hour rail trip, rather than two short-hop flights, to their vacation destination in Slovenia.
Elfborg, 61, talked about the experience of the train — watching landscapes pass by outside the windows. He said he appreciated disembarking in city centers, rather than at airports on the outskirts.
But his son, 27-year-old Theodor, acknowledged they were an exception among their family friends: “We’re usually the only ones who say: ‘We took the train.’ ”
For nearly two decades, cheap, short flights defined European travel. With the rise of budget airlines, people with limited discretionary funds could consider trips that were previously out of reach. And people took advantage of that access, exploring other countries and cultures, embracing the European Union ideal of free movement across borders.
But all those flights amounted to a big carbon footprint. While cheap for travelers, they incurred a hefty environmental cost — undermining Europe’s pledges to cut harmful emissions and become carbon-neutral.
Now, climate-conscious European governments and groups are going to varying lengths to break people of their flight habits. Some are building on the “flight shame” movement popularized by Swedish teen activist Greta Thunberg. Germany and Spain have been experimenting with ways to make train travel more appealing, offering tickets at a nominal price. Meanwhile, France, the Netherlands and Austria are trying to limit people’s options by limiting flights.
We set out to discover how well those efforts are working: whether they are successfully getting people to skip carbon-heavy flights in favor of more environmentally friendly trains. We embarked on a multi-leg train trip that began in Sweden and took us through Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium before ending in France.
SWITZER-
Along the journey, we found that the government efforts have contributed to something of a rail renaissance. Trains at the end of summer in Europe were packed. “I had a seat available on this train for the last time in May,” said Linus Hall, a conductor on the sold-out Snalltaget sleeper train between Stockholm and Berlin.
Flights are also nearly back to their pre-pandemic levels, however. And for those who do opt for the train, European rail services may not be up to their expectations. Our trip involved multiple delays, complicated connections, long bathroom lines, stolen luggage and at one point a rail strike that forced us off the train and onto a bus.
Malmo, Sweden ➞ Berlin
Trains similar to the ones we took emit
about an eighth of the carbon dioxide
that planes emit on the same trip.
about an eighth of the carbon dioxide that
planes emit on the same trip.
We joined the night train in the early evening at the railway junction of Hassleholm, about 45 minutes north of the Swedish city of Malmo.
The prevailing standard of train travel in Europe is a far cry from the sleek Chunnel trains that zip beneath the seabed of the English Channel and can reach speeds of 186 miles per hour.
More typical is the boxy Snalltaget. The night train’s operators boast that it runs on renewable energy. But it also tops out at 124 miles an hour and features refurbished but still bare-bones cars built in the 1970s.
All the seats on the train require reservations. Few remained unoccupied when we boarded. Many passengers had already been on the train for as long as four hours, after boarding in the Swedish capital or one of the stops in between. Pillows and shoes were strewn about the floor. Some people were already asleep, their heads leaning against seat covers that read in Swedish: “Say hello to your fellow travelers!”
When Snalltaget began service from Sweden to Berlin in 2012, it seemed doomed to fail. Budget airlines were expanding their fleets and selling seats on their 1-hour 40-minute flights from Stockholm to Berlin at dumping prices. Snalltaget struggled to find enough travelers for even two small carriages on its 15-hour, not-much-cheaper trip.
On the night train to Berlin.
But a new era of rail travel began in the summer of 2019, when Thunberg, then 16, helped popularize flygskam, or “flight shame.” In Sweden that year, train travel increased one-third over the previous summer, while air travel dropped about 4 percent at the country’s major airports.
Paul Chiambaretto, who has studied the flight shame movement, cautioned that shame has its limits. “People who often travel by train are also the ones who often travel by plane,” he said, adding that few are ashamed.
A common defense: Why be ashamed when trains are often more expensive than equivalent flights, when trains sell out far in advance and when booking can be dizzyingly complicated, especially on cross-border trips involving multiple European rail operators.
“The number of apps or website tabs you need to have open to even find out how to make some of these trips,” said Berlin-based blogger and train enthusiast Jon Worth, “means it’s basically out of reach of anyone who’s not uber keen.”
For many, it comes down to which mode of transportation is less of a hassle. Ten major Swedish airports saw about a quarter fewer travelers this summer than in 2019, before the pandemic. But along with environmental concerns, that drop can be linked to strikes, widespread flight cancellations and rising ticket prices. Rail passenger numbers, meanwhile, were down 5 percent in the second quarter of this year, compared with the same period in 2019.
(Sandra Mehl/FTWP)
Nobody taking the Snalltaget sleeper train cited social pressure as a reason they booked their ticket, though some talked about the environment.
Ellen Haaslahti, 23, said she was studying environmental sciences and has been alarmed by the “brutal” predictions of scientists she has spoken with.
“Every day, I’m hearing how bad things are,” she said. Taking the train was “a way to express how I can change my lifestyle according to what I believe.”
In the dining car, where the lights were dimmed for the evening, Tomas Hedblom, 29, said he preferred the train over planes: “It’s more comfortable. You can walk around!”
But when he did get up to walk, his girlfriend, Nina Tikkanen, 25, admitted she wouldn’t have minded a flight.
The real reason they didn’t fly? “I think he’s a bit afraid,” she said, and laughed.
At Malmo Central Station, the night train stopped for a scheduled hour, so the dining car could come off and sleeper coaches could be added. Then the train continued on its route — crossing the strait that connects the Baltic and North seas via the Oresund Bridge, passing the blinking runway lights of Copenhagen airport a short time later.
The conversations onboard became quieter. Travelers closed their curtains. Many were asleep by the time they crossed the Danish-German border.
The cheapest train tickets just get you a seat. For more money, passengers can reserve a spot in a small cabin with three berths stacked on each side of a narrow aisle. Don’t want to be inches above or below strangers? You need to reserve an entire cabin.
The train cars have been retrofitted, but they still have a retro feel. “A brand new passenger coach is quite expensive — for us, that was not an alternative,” said Marco Andersson, a senior executive at Snalltaget.
With the revival of train travel, European railway companies have competed to secure secondhand coaches.
“Compared to other markets, railway passenger coaches have a long lifetime,” Andersson said, noting that many of the Snalltaget cars were produced in Germany in the 1970s.
The train arrived in Berlin 10 minutes ahead of schedule the next morning, nearly 17 hours after leaving Stockholm. But because of construction, the route terminated at a commuter station. Passengers were left to find their own way to Berlin Central.
Berlin ➞ Amsterdam
NETHER-
about a quarter of the carbon dioxide
78 kg per person
As travelers streamed onto the platform at Berlin’s main station, they were met by environmental activists who encouraged them say into a camera in German: “Yes, I would welcome an extension of the 9 euro ticket!”
The German government wants to double train ridership by 2030. And it doesn’t think shame — or the deterrence of airport chaos — will get it there. So this summer it tried to get people to take a fresh look at public transportation, while easing the burden of inflation, with the offer of unlimited regional rail and bus travel, costing a symbolic 9 euros (about $9) per month.
At the end of the three-month experiment, German railway companies reported they had sold more than 52 million tickets. The regional trains of DB, the main operator, were 10 percent busier than before the pandemic. And as many as one in five people who made use of the tickets said they did not previously rely on public transportation.
Waiting on the platform in Rheine, Germany.
According to preliminary estimates by a public transportation association, the tickets may have saved 1.8 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions. (This month, the German government agreed on a successor model, though it is expected to cost travelers about $50 a month.)
Sabine Laurisch, a retiree who rushed to buy a 9 euro ticket when they first became available in May, said she used it for about 30 train trips this summer — discovering places she otherwise wouldn’t have explored. When we spoke to her the day before the 9-euro program ended, she was just returning from a nearby spa town.
“For years, I traveled excessively” by plane, she said. “I’m embarrassed when I think of the carbon footprint.”
Heidi Rupp, 58, said she saved about $300 by using the ticket this summer. But disappointing service — with widespread reports of overfilled trains, broken air conditioning and long delays — raised questions for her about how many minds it would change.
“You have to change what you offer, and not just tweak the prices,” she said.
We saw what Rupp and other critics meant. We wanted to try to get to the Dutch border by mostly traveling on the 9-euro tickets we had just bought. But the tickets weren’t valid on the direct trains between Berlin and Amsterdam. So we switched from one regional train to the next.
In the German city of Hanover, the train station was so busy that moving along the platform required advanced skills in negotiation and gentle pushing.
It’s been like this all summer, travelers and staffers told us.
“At times, one had the slight feeling that the system is breaking down a little bit,” said Marcel Tewes, a senior executive at German railway company Eurobahn.
All three of our German trains were behind schedule — though one made up the time en route. That’s in keeping with data showing almost every second German long-distance train was delayed by six minutes or more through the summer months.
Tewes said he was proud of how his company had managed the busy period. But he blamed strategic political failures for capping railway ambitions.
“One should have invested many, many years ago,” he said.
Germany — a country with a powerful car lobby, where people embrace autobahns without speed limits — spent $74 per capita on railways in 2019, compared with about $400 in Switzerland, which leads statistics in train performance. Under Germany’s current center-left government, the country may now for the first time spend more money on railways than on road construction and maintenance. (The United States spends many times more on roads than on rails.)
A train strike in the Netherlands forces people off the train.
When our train got to the Dutch border, our trip hit its biggest hitch: a major rail strike in the Netherlands. The conductor urged everyone to get out to avoid getting stuck. People rushed toward the doors. But when we got to the station’s parking lot, it was empty.
It took another half-hour for the first replacement bus to show up. We were lucky and among the first to get on.
As we slowly made our way to Amsterdam, the grass outside appeared yellow and burned from an extended drought.
In an interview, Dutch Environment Minister Vivianne Heijnen told us that with climate change, the moist peat common in northern Europe is shrinking and collapsing — requiring the restructuring of rail beds, increasing maintenance costs and presenting another challenge to the country’s goal of increasing passengers on trains by 30 percent by 2030.
“If it takes too long [to travel], or if lines are not reliable, some people will go back into the car or into the plane,” Heijnen said.
We arrived in Amsterdam about one hour late. By then, the schedules of travelers trying to reach the Dutch capital had long been tossed aside. Many were relieved, and even a bit surprised, that they made it.
Amsterdam ➞ Bordeaux, France
about one-sixteenth of the carbon dioxide
125 kg per person
8kg per person
about one sixteenth of the carbon dioxide
The final leg of our trip took us from the Netherlands to France — both countries that have gone beyond shaming and train incentives and begun to limit flights as an option.
Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, one of the world’s busiest international hubs, in June introduced a cap on the number of passengers who could depart from there. The airport plans to continue caps through the end of March.
In the near-term, the move is mostly about dealing with post-pandemic staff shortages, which have prompted long lines and flight cancellations. But starting next year, the Dutch government — which owns a majority stake in Schiphol — will cap flights in and out of the airport at 440,000 flights per year, down 12 percent from the 2019 peak. In that decision, the government highlighted the need to address climate change.
Flight caps are in effect at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport.
At the central train station in Amsterdam, as cold wind blew over the platforms, some travelers said Schiphol doesn’t need to work much harder to keep people away. A pair traveling to Paris said in the past they would have taken a plane. But going through security at the airport these days could take longer than the three-hour train ride.
The padded red seats on the smooth-running, high-speed Thalys train offered a soothing experience after a day of delays and a strike. It was, perhaps, too soothing. As we watched sunrise, another passenger discovered their bag had been stolen. It’s happening with growing frequency, a train staffer told us.
When the train reached Paris, it came to a halt next to a French TGV with a slogan that boasted: “World record in railway speed. 357 mph.”
France has some flight shaming. After the country’s top soccer club posted a video of its team traveling to a nearby match by plane and not by train or bus, the transport minister invoked the Latin saying: “To err is human, but to persevere diabolical.”
France also has train bragging, reflecting the country’s pride in its high-speed rail network, which offers some of the fastest connections in the world and is relatively reliable.
The state-owned SNCF railway company had a record summer, tallying 10 percent more high-speed train passengers than in 2019. That had a lot to do with rising gas prices and post-pandemic revenge travel, said Alain Krakovitch, the head of SNCF’s high- and medium-speed connections. But another factor may have been at play, too.
As part of an effort to reduce carbon emissions by 40 percent by 2030 compared with 1990 levels, the French government wants to ban short-haul domestic flights. A pending regulation is controversial, and its legality is being reviewed by the European Union. But the government has essentially made it happen anyway, by conditioning Air France’s pandemic bailout on an agreement that the flag carrier would stop serving routes that can be reached in less than 2½ hours by train.
Krakovitch said it’s unclear how many travelers have since shifted; previous estimates suggested that more than 2 million trips could be impacted annually.
The link between Paris and the wine capital of Bordeaux is one of the affected routes.
In only two hours, the train zips past vineyards, fields and medieval towers. There’s a constant stream of passengers heading to the onboard restaurant, which sells small Bordeaux wine bottles and croque-monsieur. The espresso comes with a piece of chocolate.
“The train has a lot of advantages,” said Pierre Hurmic, the mayor of Bordeaux. “You can perfectly work on the train, so two hours on the train are never two lost hours.”
On the platform in Bordeaux, France.
Bordeaux-based real estate specialist Sébastien Duchamp de Chastaigné, 40, who often travels overseas for work, was less convinced. What was previously a smooth journey with a quick connection at Paris Orly airport has become longer and more unreliable since his flights were suspended, he said. He worries about “strikes, breakdowns and the fact that there aren’t enough trains.”
The absence of planes, he said, also means “there is no competition” even when trains are fully booked.
For France’s railway company, full trains are good for business. They indirectly help fund the country’s costly high-speed network.
But some local politicians — including those who share the government’s concerns over climate change — worry the strategy will backfire.
“The impact for the area is quite catastrophic,” said Marie Récalde, a regional center-left politician in Mérignac, an industry hub and the town where Bordeaux’s airport is located. She said the ban has made the area less attractive for companies, and has left her scrambling for tickets when she has to travel to Paris.
Some businesses have begun shuttling their employees between Paris and Bordeaux on private planes, she said.
Passengers rest in the station in Bordeaux.
Design and development Hailey Haymond. Editing by Marisa Bellack, Olivier Laurent, Joseph Moore and Reem Akkad. Copy editing by Jeremy Hester and Laura Michalski.
Rick Noack is a Paris-based correspondent covering France for The Washington Post. Previously, he was a foreign affairs reporter for The Post based in Berlin. He also worked for The Post from Washington, Britain, Australia and New Zealand. Twitter Twitter
Story by Meg Kelly
Meg Kelly is a video reporter for The Washington Post's Visual Forensics team. Twitter Twitter | 2022-10-28T13:14:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | To reduce emissions, European countries want more people on trains. - Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/interactive/2022/europe-trains-planes-lower-emissions/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/interactive/2022/europe-trains-planes-lower-emissions/ |
Rihanna, seen earlier this week at the world premiere of “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” returned to music Friday with an original song for the Marvel film's soundtrack. (Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty Images)
Rihanna made a grand return to music on Friday, releasing “Lift Me Up,” an original song for the “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” soundtrack that marks her first single as a lead artist in six years.
Co-written by Rihanna, singer-songwriter Tems, composer Ludwig Göransson and director Ryan Coogler, “Lift Me Up” was described in a news release as “a tribute to the extraordinary life and legacy of Chadwick Boseman,” the star of the first Black Panther film, who died of colon cancer two years ago.
“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” explores how the fictional East African nation fares after the death of King T’Challa, Boseman’s character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. “Lift Me Up” resembles a lullaby, with Rihanna singing soulfully at a low tempo over the dreamy sounds of strings and light strumming. The single was released alongside an instrumental version of the track.
While she has since collaborated with artists such as Kendrick Lamar, DJ Khaled and N.E.R.D., Rihanna last released solo music in 2016. Her single “Sledgehammer,” released in June of that year to promote the film “Star Trek Beyond,” landed roughly five months after “Anti,” her eighth studio album. The record ended up on numerous lists of the decade’s best music and earned her six Grammy nominations. (She has 33 total nominations to her name, including nine wins for both solo and collaborative work.)
“Me the designer, me the woman who creates makeup and lingerie — it all started with music,” she said in an interview for the magazine’s cover story. “It was my first pen pal-ship to the world. To cut that off is to cut my communication off. All of these other things flourish on top of that foundation.”
The rest of the “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” soundtrack is set to drop Nov. 4, while Göransson’s score will be released a week later on Nov. 11, the day of the film’s theatrical release. Göransson won an Academy Award in 2019 for his work on the first film. Rihanna’s single would be eligible for best original song. | 2022-10-28T13:27:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rihanna's 'Lift Me Up' for 'Black Panther' sequel marks return to music - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/10/28/rihanna-black-panther-lift-me-up/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/10/28/rihanna-black-panther-lift-me-up/ |
SILVER SPRING, MARYLAND - OCTOBER 27: Voters fill out and cast their ballots at the early voting location at White Oak Community Recreation Center on October 27, 2022 in Silver Spring, Maryland. Including this location in Silver Spring, Montgomery County opened 14 early voting sites on Thursday that will remain open through November 3. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) (Photographer: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images North America)
Of course, if Republicans gain “only” 30 House seats and one Senate seat, they are going to have a comfortable majority in the House and a narrow majority in the Senate, and they’ll feel pretty happy about the election. That’s certainly a reasonable reaction.(1)
This is perhaps a counterintuitive conclusion. The tendency is always going to be to assume that whatever the winning party did helped them and whatever the losing party did hurt them. But the truth is far more complicated. The big things that drive elections are largely out of the control of campaign operatives and perhaps even out of the control of elected officials.(2) And the small things that may matter at the margins almost certainly don’t all push the results in the same direction.
• Tom Pepinsky on what makes the current political situation in the US so rare — and so dangerous.
• Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux and Meredith Conroy on women running in the midterms.
• Dave Karpf on political innovation.
• Natalie Jackson on the consequences of the polls going wrong.
• Zoila Ponce de León and Gabriele Magni at the Washington Post’sMonkey Cage on the runoff election in Brazil.
(1) In fact, those results might wind up beating the final projections from various experts. Election-eve expectations really shouldn’t matter when evaluating the results, but they will, especially on election night and in the immediate aftermath.
(2) I’ll leave it to the economists to argue about how much responsibility Biden has for the current state of the economy. What I will point out is that there are usually trade-offs, and had the administration worried more about inflation early on they might have successfully contained it, but perhaps at great cost to economic growth and the job market. | 2022-10-28T13:28:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Spin Election Results Now, Win Political Battles Later - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/spin-election-results-now-winpolitical-battles-later/2022/10/28/5c196c94-56bc-11ed-ac8b-08bbfab1c5a5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/spin-election-results-now-winpolitical-battles-later/2022/10/28/5c196c94-56bc-11ed-ac8b-08bbfab1c5a5_story.html |
Finding child care is still impossible for many parents
As the industry struggles to recover from the pandemic, parents are encountering daunting wait lists and severe staff shortages
By Jackie Mader
A sign advertises positions at a preschool in Austin. Some centers have reported wait lists as large as 1,500 children due to staffing shortages that are keeping classrooms closed. (Jackie Mader/The Hechinger Report)
Mckell James first applied for child care in October 2019, five months before her oldest son was born. She got on a half dozen wait lists, but it took two years to get off just one. And that spot, while coveted, was only for two days of care each week. The Salt Lake City family took it anyway, falling into a dizzying juggling act the other three days, with James, 35, and her husband, Corper James, 51, balancing their full-time jobs while watching their toddler.
In the spring of 2022, after enduring a string of 10-day quarantines, Mckell James, a human resources director, and Corper, an employment attorney, decided to pull their son out of child care to try to keep the family healthy before the birth of their second child. Now, both children are on months-long wait lists at four child-care centers with no end in sight. When Mckell James had to return to work at the end of the summer, she and her husband hired a nanny for two days a week. At $25 an hour, the bill for part-time help nearly equals the cost of their monthly mortgage. The other three days, she and her husband split care of their sons.
“At the end of the day, you’re like, ‘Did I really do anything?’ ” James said. “I did everything and nothing and I don’t feel like I did anything fully right, because you’re spread so thin.”
Although most offices and schools have reopened, the pandemic is still hurting child-care and after-school programs. Parents face daunting wait lists. Child-care centers, which already operated on thin margins, are shuttering classrooms and capping enrollment numbers because of severe teacher shortages and a lack of funding.
“We knew the pandemic put a huge strain on a system that was already strained, so this is just a continuous struggle that’s been made worse,” said Nina Perez, the early childhood national campaign director for MomsRising, a nonprofit advocacy group.
The shortage of spaces means that some parents are still shut out of careers and losing income. Others have uprooted their lives and moved closer to family to receive more help. Still more are struggling to take care of their kids while working from home. Perez said the situation has become so tenuous that parents have told her they are taking out loans for child care or considering unsafe arrangements, like leaving young children alone for periods of time or with frail elderly family members.
In a late-summer Census Bureau survey of households, more than 365,000 adults reported losing a job because they needed to take time to care for children under the age of 5 in the four weeks preceding the survey. More than 1.3 million responded that an adult in the household left a job to care for children. More than 1.6 million supervised one or more children while working.
Parents with minor children make up almost one-third of the workforce and work disproportionately in fields like retail, education, health care and social assistance, according to a report by the Brookings Institution. Yet child care is still largely seen as a personal problem for families — and especially women — rather than a social benefit that supports the younger generations who will eventually sustain many aspects of society.
Advocates and educators had hoped the federal government would provide permanent financial help through President Biden’s proposed Build Back Better plan, which would have provided money to stabilize the child-care industry by boosting the pay of early childhood educators and helping to lower costs for families. But the child-care funding was cut from the federal legislation in August. Many child-care centers continue to struggle, often unable to pay staff a living wage or even find enough workers to fully open classrooms.
Opinion | How to fix America’s broken child-care industry
“We can’t compete with McDonalds offering $15 to $17 an hour to start out,” said Toni Dickerson, a resource and referral administrator for Sussex Preschools, a network of five child-care centers in Delaware. “Pre-covid we were more worried about getting qualified staff. Now, we’re just trying to get staff.”
At Beach Babies Child Care, which runs four centers across Delaware, with a fifth slated to open soon, owner Sean Toner estimates that as many as 80 additional children could be served by his centers if he had enough staff to fill classrooms that are currently closed because of teacher shortages. Staffing “has always been an issue, but it’s never been exacerbated to the point it is right now,” he said.
In the meantime, the wait list for a spot at one of his centers has ballooned to 1,500 kids. “It was never like this,” he said. “There’s not enough child care in this area to serve the need.”
In Wisconsin, Kari Zimbric, 41, had to quit her job as a nurse practitioner last year because of a lack of child care. Zimbric registered her twins, now 21 months old, for child care more than six months before they were born in 2021. They have yet to find a spot. “No one had space for even one infant, let alone two,” Zimbric said. “Finding a day care for twins right now is pretty much an impossible task.”
Without available center-based care, Zimbric and her husband, Luke Zimbric, an engineer, hired a nanny to provide part-time care while Zimbric worked part-time as well. When the nanny quit for another position, the family “panicked and scrambled,” she said. They hired a college student who was home for the summer for temporary help. But soon, the stress of trying to find in-home help was too much. When the twins were 6 months old, Zimbric quit her job to stay home. “It was really hard,” she said. “I had a job I loved.”
For low-income parents, no day care often means no pay
Parents say they want more funding for the child-care sector to increase pay and capacity at centers, the return of the monthly child tax credit that could help offset some of the costs, better family leave policies — especially after the birth of a child — and government subsidies to help pay for care. Permanent change largely depends on Congress, although President Biden has said he would like to make the tax credit permanent.
In the absence of federal action, some states are stepping up. In Virginia, a new formula went into effect this month that will reimburse providers for the full cost of caring for children who receive state subsidies, rather than paying them a market rate that may be far below the actual cost. In California, new legislation will make it easier for low-income families to enroll in state-funded preschool and subsidized child care. And in New Mexico, voters this year will consider a ballot initiative that will permanently fund early childhood in the state, providing more than $1 billion to the system over the next eight years.
That doesn’t negate the need for federal investment, however, said Elliot Haspel, a senior fellow at Capita, a think tank focused on children and families. “As school funding has shown us, you quickly get huge inequities if you rely purely on the states. This will ultimately need to have a federal solution.”
Employers could also offer work-from-home arrangements and flexible schedules, as well as more paid time off, said Maura Mills, an assistant professor at the University of Alabama’s college of business who studies work-life balance. Many businesses have failed to offer flexibility to working parents, even when school systems adopt virtual days and child-care programs still require quarantines. “They’ve taken a lot of work-from-home options away,” Mills said. “It’s just an impossible bind for parents.”
In Texas, child-care providers are returning to a broken system
In Salt Lake City, James wakes up around 7:30 a.m. and nurses her baby while answering emails, often with one hand. She takes calls and completes work between wrangling her toddler and caring for her infant. She often catches up on work in the evenings when her children are asleep.
She worries that if her job requires her to go in person more than the one day a week she’s currently managing, she’ll be forced to find a different position. Whatever job she takes, her paycheck has to cover child care. The family is eventually looking at a cost of $2,400 a month total just for part-time center-based care for both boys — if the children ever get off the wait list. Ultimately, she said, state and federal governments need to step up.
“We all need to do more to be family focused,” she said. “If the government really does care about families and care about future generations, put your money where your mouth is.”
This story about finding child care was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter. | 2022-10-28T13:28:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Waiting game: Pandemic continues to strain the child care system - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/10/28/child-care-shortage-pandemic/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/10/28/child-care-shortage-pandemic/ |
The Cavaliers host Miami at 12:30 p.m. Saturday
Virginia wide receiver Dontayvion Wicks catches a touchdown pass at Scott Stadium, where the Cavaliers play their next four games. (Mike Kropf/Daily Progress/AP)
Playing on the road has been a mostly futile endeavor for the Virginia football team. The Cavaliers lost their first three such games, including a pair by 21 points, until surviving shorthanded Georgia Tech last week after ailing Yellow Jackets quarterback Jeff Sims left for good in the second quarter.
Still, the atmosphere on the trip back to Charlottesville two Thursday nights ago was a bit more celebratory than usual considering not only had the Cavaliers (3-4, 1-3 ACC) ended a three-game skid but also that their next four opponents, including Miami (3-4, 1-2) on Saturday, would be coming to Scott Stadium.
Virginia is 23-6 in Charlottesville since 2018; the Cavaliers have the most victories at home among all Coastal Division schools during that time. That total ranks third in the conference entering this week, behind fifth-ranked Clemson (30) and No. 24 North Carolina State (26).
What’s more, the Cavaliers are not leaving the Commonwealth for the rest of the regular season. Their finale is the Commonwealth Cup showdown with Virginia Tech, which this year is being played in Blacksburg on the Saturday after Thanksgiving.
“It’s just been kind of abnormal,” Virginia Coach Tony Elliott said of a schedule that has included traveling to Duke in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian and an open week before facing Georgia Tech. “But just excited to get on a routine and be consistent for the next three or four weeks. Definitely want to take advantage of the pride that’s here at U-Va. of playing at home.”
The welcoming environment at Scott Stadium includes Saturday’s family weekend, which is expected to draw one of the largest crowds of the season. Virginia’s previous home game ended in a loss to Louisville, 34-17, in front of an announced homecoming crowd of 38,009 that witnessed the Cavaliers open a 10-0 lead before surrendering 20 straight points. The closest margin thereafter was when Virginia drew within 20-17 midway through the third quarter.
The Cavaliers finished with just six rushing yards, committed eight penalties for 66 yards and allowed quarterback Brennan Armstrong to get sacked seven times. In a season that has fallen well below expectations, the fifth-year senior completed 24 of 34 passes for 313 yards and a touchdown with two interceptions.
For the season, Armstrong, Virginia’s career leader in total offense (9,624 yards), passing yards (8,442) and touchdowns (57), has 1,618 passing yards and six touchdowns, completing 136 of 246 attempts. He also has 286 yards and four touchdowns on 81 carries. Last year, Armstrong set single-season program records for total offense (4,700) and passing with 4,449 yards and 31 touchdowns, completing 326 of 500 throws.
“You’ve got to reset every single day and understand that you must respect the process at all times and challenge yourself now,” Elliott said. “You’re in Game 8. The body is starting to tell you: ‘Man, this is a long season. I’m a little bit tired. I don’t want to start feeling sorry for myself.’ As coaches, we have to do a good job applying the pressure and respond the right way, go to work and [get players to] understand if you want to enjoy the feeling that you felt [against Georgia Tech], then you’ve got to pay the price.”
Additional motivation comes with playing in the mediocre Coastal Division, which has one team, North Carolina (3-0), above .500 in league play. Virginia draws the No. 21 Tar Heels next weekend, so despite a rocky opening stretch it remains in the hunt for the division title and a berth in the ACC championship game.
The Cavaliers last won the Coastal in 2019, and claiming the crown this time would yield a sixth consecutive year of bowl eligibility, although Virginia did not play in a bowl game the past two seasons amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Last season’s Fenway Bowl between the Cavaliers and SMU was scrapped when a rash of positive tests in the Virginia locker room compelled school officials to withdraw. In 2020, the Cavaliers finished 5-5 but opted out of a bowl game, citing fatigue from virus protocols.
“I feel like the weight’s still the same,” wide receiver Dontayvion Wicks said. “We’re still 3-4, so we’ve got to get to a winning record, play the best we can and win out.” | 2022-10-28T13:29:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Four straight home games give Virginia chance to finish strong - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/28/virginia-football-home-games/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/28/virginia-football-home-games/ |
Teen shot aboard Metro train at Petworth station
The 15-year-old was shot in the leg after an altercation and expected to survive, police said
A 15-year-old male was shot and wounded aboard a train at the Petworth Metro station Friday morning, authorities said.
The shooting occurred around 8:40 a.m. on a Green Line train. It followed an “altercation between a group of juveniles aboard,” according to Metro Transit Police.
The teenage victim was taken to a hospital with a gunshot wound to his leg. His injuries are non-life-threatening, police said.
Metro Transit Police said they were searching for a suspect Friday morning. D.C. police said they are assisting Metro Transit Police with the investigation.
Service on the Green Line was briefly suspended between the Fort Totten and U Street stations, with a shuttle bus service as a replacement. Metro said later that service had resumed by 9:30 a.m., though trains were single tracking and bypassing the Georgia Avenue station.
Green Line Delay: Train service suspended between U Street & Fort Totten due to police activity at Georgia Avenue. Shuttle buses requested.
Justin George contributed to this report. | 2022-10-28T14:28:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Teen shot aboard Metro train at Petworth station - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/28/shooting-petworth-metro-station-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/28/shooting-petworth-metro-station-dc/ |
New York police officers detain a climate protester during a demonstration on Oct. 27 at the Park Avenue residence of Stephen Schwarzman, founder and CEO of Blackstone Group. (David Dee Delgado/Reuters)
You may recall that President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign in 2020 had an unusual focus: Elect him to put a stop to rampant crime … that was unfolding while he was president. It was always clunky when considered beyond a superficial level — what was Trump going to do in term two that he wasn’t doing in term one, exactly? — but it wasn’t a rational appeal. It was an emotional appeal, meant to bolster perceptions of his own toughness and his opponent’s weakness.
The apparatus focused on helping him retain power eagerly lined up to promote the same line of argument. Fox News’s prime time shows ran the same footage of riots that followed Black Lives Matter protests for weeks on end. A narrative emerged that U.S. cities run by Democrats had become unlivable pits of crime and danger, a narrative seized upon even more tightly after the Capitol riot in 2021. That event, many on the right argued, paled next to the wanton criminality that had been seen the summer before!
Then Joe Biden was inaugurated as president — and the narrative kept chugging along. Now data from Gallup shows that perceptions of local crime are at the highest on record, largely a function of an increase among Republicans.
You can see that here. Gallup breaks out its question into two parts: Is crime rising nationally and is it rising near you? In keeping with other polling questions, people are more pessimistic about the national picture than the situation in their own area, where, presumably, they have firsthand knowledge. And that “in your area” number is at 56 percent in 2022, the highest in Gallup’s history of asking the question.
It’s important to note at the outset that national data on crime is spotty and outdated. There was a documented rise in violent crime in 2020, but the numbers for 2021 were far murkier. Data for this year is piecemeal, plucked from local jurisdictions that report different things in different ways. In other words, even those who track the data don’t really know if crime is up significantly nationally. But that hasn’t stopped conservative media, including Fox News, from increasingly discussing crime in their coverage.
So we see the partisan gap. Between 1989 and 2020, the widest gap between the parties on whether crime was rising in the respondent’s community was in 2004, when Democrats were 17 points more likely to say that it was. In 2021, the gap was 20 points, with more Republicans saying it was rising. This year the gap increased to 22 points, with half of Democrats but nearly three-quarters of Republicans expressing concern about local crime increases.
Notice that the perception of crime has long been influenced by partisanship. In years when a Democrat is president, Republicans are more worried about crime and vice versa. Under George W. Bush, Democrats were about eight points more concerned about local crime than Republicans during years in which Gallup polled. Under Barack Obama, Republicans were about eight points more concerned than Democrats. Under Biden? Republicans have been 21 points more concerned.
A similar gap shows up in perceptions of national crime. Again, partisans are more skeptical when the other party controls the White House. But the seven-point average by which Democrats were warier of national crime under Bush became a 12-point average for Republicans under Obama and a 19-point one under Biden.
On that chart, though, notice what happened in 2020, the last year of Trump’s term. It is one of only a few years in which members of the party that controlled the White House were more worried about crime in the United States than the party that was out of executive power. Republicans were more concerned about national crime in 2020 to nearly the same degree that they were on average when Obama was president.
The year 2020 was an exceptional, tumultuous year in any number of ways. There were high-profile incidents of violence that summer that contributed to the sense that the nation was falling apart. But it’s impossible to extricate perceptions of crime from the reality that understanding of crime at a national level is dependent on reporting about crime at the national level. And that reporting — generally lacking reliable, comparable data across states or even cities — has been very different depending on the outlet.
Take a look: Cheney’s PAC debuts ad targeting Arizona election deniers | 2022-10-28T15:00:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The historic — and unsurprising — partisan gap in perceptions of crime - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/28/crime-elections-partisanship/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/28/crime-elections-partisanship/ |
Plus, a Group of Five check-in, five teams with the most at stake and Heisman Watch
Jimbo Fisher's Texas A&M program is one of the most disappointing teams in college football. (Vasha Hunt/AP)
A nearly eight-figure salary doesn’t buy what it used to in college football.
Just ask Texas A&M and well-compensated coach Jimbo Fisher, which straggles into the weekend at 3-4 and losers of three in a row.
The Aggies fell 30-24 last week at South Carolina, a team with considerably less talent and dramatically more pluck. Texas A&M is under .500 for the first time since dropping its season opener in 2017. It last had a losing record this deep in a season when it went 6-7 in 2009.
Oh, and there were three freshmen from a vaunted class — one that played a major role in making the Aggies this year’s offseason champions — who were suspended this week. All of this is unfolding as Fisher is in just the second year of a 10-year, $95 million fully guaranteed contract extension.
Things aren’t great off the field entering Saturday’s meeting with No. 15 Mississippi, and if you thought Rebels Coach Lane Kiffin wouldn’t miss the opportunity to jab a division rival while he was down, well, you were right.
(Necessary aside: The fact there are any jokes involved about employing DJ Durkin, whose head coaching stint at Maryland ended after offensive lineman Jordan McNair’s avoidable death from heat stroke in 2018, is frankly a strike against both SEC West coaches who have hired him in recent years.)
On the field, Texas A&M’s season highlight is either (a) beating fellow chronic underachiever Miami; (b) edging Arkansas when the Razorbacks doinked a go-ahead field goal attempt off the top of an upright; or (c) taking Alabama to the final play in Tuscaloosa.
No one in the Aggies’ program should be peddling anything resembling a moral victory, but the Alabama outing was the most impressive Texas A&M has been all season. That it followed it up with an open date and a listless performance at South Carolina suggests the Aggies are just as erratic (if not more so) than they were while going 8-4 last season.
A lot of people chose to ignore that — offseason champs, and all — and Texas A&M has since quickly emerged as one of several contenders to be among the nation’s most underachieving teams. (Notre Dame and Oklahoma deserve spots in that conversation, too.).
Which Top 10 team finishes unranked (Bama, Ohio St, Georgia, Clemson, NDame, Texas A&M, Utah, Michigan, OU, Baylor)? Every year for past 20 seasons - except 2019 - there has been at least 1 preseason Top 10 team that finished season unranked. Last year, it was UNC, A&M & Iowa St
— Brett McMurphy (@Brett_McMurphy) August 15, 2022
But, as Action Network’s Brett McMurphy noted back in August, Fisher has overseen two similar nose-dives since 2017. One led him to flee Florida State for Texas A&M. The other was last year, when injuries in the passing game often constrained the Aggies’ offense.
Current coaches who started year in AP’s Top 10 & finish season unranked:
J. Fisher, A&M ’21, FSU ‘17
M. Brown, UNC ’21
M. Campbell, Iowa St ’21
J. Franklin, Penn St '20
M. Cristobal, Oregon '20
P. Chryst, Wis. '18
G. Malzahn, Aub. ’18 & '15
B. Kelly, ND '16
L. Kiffin, USC '12
Perhaps the lesson here is to be a little more skeptical of Texas A&M, a program now a decade removed from its last 10-win season, finally turning the corner for good.
It’s also long past time to regularly point out Fisher, whose stewardship of the Aggies doesn’t look dramatically different from predecessor Kevin Sumlin’s, has lived off the reputation of his Jameis Winston-led 2013-14 run at Florida State for nearly a decade.
Just don’t bank on it really sinking in. Texas A&M has little choice but to remain invested in him, and the Aggies (who play four of their last five at home) could yet finish strong now that they’re out of SEC title contention, clean up in recruiting and emerge as a trendy offseason pick to make a big step forward. Yet again.
Group of Five check-in
The stars aligned perfectly last season for a Group of Five team to command attention all the way through the season. Cincinnati enjoyed a perfect regular season, dealing a Notre Dame team that barely beat anyone of substance its only loss of the year. And when Clemson wasn’t Clemson and the Big 12 and Pac-12 cannibalized themselves — voilà! — there was a playoff spot for the Bearcats.
No such luck this year, mainly because there are no more undefeated Group of Five programs. The crew of one-loss teams is dwindling, down to Cincinnati, Coastal Carolina and Tulane. (Liberty, an independent, is 7-1).
The highest-ranked Group of Five conference champion will still earn a New Year’s Six berth and a trip to the Cotton Bowl, and at this stage it appears the eventual American Athletic Conference winner is the most likely possibility. Tulane (7-1, 4-0) and Cincinnati (6-1, 3-0) play on the final weekend of the regular season, and both also have meetings with Central Florida (5-2, 2-1).
But if it isn’t them? Coastal Carolina (6-1, 3-1 Sun Belt) is one possibility, but don’t overlook another well-known Group of Five name. Boise State (5-2, 4-0 Mountain West) has won three in a row since changing offensive coordinators. If any Mountain West team has a credible chance at this point, it’s the Broncos. But they’ll need the top teams in the American to trade blows over the next six weekends.
1a. Kansas State and 1b. Oklahoma State. It’s a bit premature to dub this matchup a Big 12 knockout game, though No. 9 Oklahoma State (6-1, 3-1) would certainly see its playoff hopes end with a loss. Both the Cowboys and the host No. 22 Wildcats (5-2, 3-1) already have lost to league leader TCU, so this one does have tiebreaker implications for the conference title game.
2. Georgia. Weird things occur at the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party. Granted, nothing odd happened last year, when the Bulldogs smothered Florida, 34-7. And frankly, nothing should happen this year, either. No. 1 Georgia is 7-0 (4-0 SEC). Florida is 4-3 under first-year coach Billy Napier. But it’s a notable rivalry game, both teams are coming off an open date and the Bulldogs have Tennessee looming next week.
3. Tennessee. Now for the other half of next week’s SEC East showdown. The No. 3 Volunteers (7-0, 3-0 SEC) have a victory over Alabama, and they’re at home this week against No. 19 Kentucky (5-2, 2-2), a perfectly solid team that probably doesn’t have the offense to keep up with Hendon Hooker and Co. Still, in a lean week, it’s a game worth monitoring.
4. Ohio State. The No. 2 Buckeyes (7-0, 4-0 Big Ten) are playing fabulously heading into an early kickoff at No. 13 Penn State (6-1, 3-1), which was bulldozed two weeks ago at Michigan before getting well at home against Minnesota. Even if it’s fair to question just how good the Nittany Lions are, this looks like Ohio State’s most imposing remaining test before they face Michigan on Thanksgiving weekend.
5. Cincinnati. The No. 20 Bearcats’ schedule between this week’s visit to Central Florida and a home game against Tulane to close the regular season is fairly manageable — 2-5 Navy and 5-3 East Carolina at home and 2-5 Temple on the road. Cincinnati can take a major step toward another American Athletic Conference title game trip with a victory in Orlando.
A weekly look at the race for college football’s favorite stiff-arming statue.
1. QB C.J. Stroud, Ohio State (2,023 yards, 28 TDs, 4 INTs passing). One minute you look and Stroud looks like he’s muddling toward an average day against Iowa, and the next he has 286 yards and four touchdown passes. This is how Heisman campaigns are won (while playing for a national title contender, of course). (Last week: 1)
2. QB Hendon Hooker, Tennessee (2,093 yards, 18 TDs, 1 INT passing; 315 yards, 3 TDs rushing). No one gets extra credit for torching a Football Championship Subdivision team like Hooker did last week against Tennessee-Martin. Nonetheless, he’s clearly one of the first two names involved in any player of the year conversation at this point. (LW: 2)
3. QB Bryce Young, Alabama (1,906 yards, 18 TDs, 3 INTs passing; 137 yards, 3 TDs rushing). It was a workmanlike day for both the Crimson Tide and Young against Mississippi State. Last year’s Heisman winner threw for 249 yards and two touchdowns against the Bulldogs to head into Alabama’s open date with a solid but unspectacular showing. (LW: 3)
4. QB Max Duggan, TCU (1,871 yards, 19 TDs, 1 INT; 274 yards, 4 TDs rushing). The Horned Frogs took command of the Big 12 over the last two Saturdays with defeats of Oklahoma State and Kansas State. Duggan’s showing in those games: 566 yards, five touchdowns, no interceptions. That’ll work. (LW: 5)
5. QB Caleb Williams, Southern California (1,971 yards, 19 TDs, 1 INT passing; 235 yards, 3 TDs rushing). It’s time for Williams to put up some numbers the next few weeks. The Trojans return from their open date for a sequence that sees them visit Arizona before meeting California and Colorado at home. (LW: 4)
6 (tie). RB Chase Brown, Illinois (1,059 yards, 4 TDs rushing; 15 catches, 107 yards, 2 TDs receiving). There are probably some classic cold-weather games in the offing for Brown, who figures to carry a heavy load in November contests against Michigan State, Purdue, Michigan and Northwestern. But since his coach is Bret Bielema, he’ll have high usage even when the forecast is for sun and 67 degrees — like it is Saturday in Lincoln as the Illini visit Nebraska. (LW: 6)
6 (tie). QB Bo Nix, Oregon (1,809 yards, 17 TDs, 3 INTs passing; 382 yards, 8 TDs rushing). Nix was, to be charitable, not great in his debut as a Duck against Georgia. But since then? He’s thrown for 1,636 yards, 17 touchdowns and one interception while rushing for multiple touchdowns in three of six games. Oh, and he picked apart previously unbeaten UCLA for 283 yards and five scores last week. (LW: Unranked) | 2022-10-28T15:25:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Offseason champ Texas A&M reeling (college football Week 9 preview) - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/28/college-football-preview-texas-am/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/28/college-football-preview-texas-am/ |
If you want to watch Sunday’s NFL game in London, you’ll need ESPN Plus
The Broncos and Jaguars will square off Sunday at Wembley Stadium in London, and ESPN Plus is the only place for American television viewers to watch the game. (Steve Luciano/AP)
Anyone looking to watch Sunday morning’s NFL game between the Denver Broncos and Jacksonville Jaguars in London will have to pay for the privilege. The game will be streamed by ESPN Plus, the network’s online subscription service, and not televised by any network (unless you live in the Denver or Jacksonville areas, in which case the game will air on local television). It kicks off at 9:30 a.m. Eastern.
As part of the television deals the NFL announced in March 2021, ESPN Plus received the right to exclusively stream one of the league’s international games each season (the others are televised by NFL Network, the league’s cable channel). The new television contracts, over which the NFL will earn more than $110 billion in rights fees through the 2033 season, represented the league’s first significant leap into the world of streaming-only broadcasts.
As part of the 2021 television deals, Amazon Prime won the right to exclusively stream the NFL’s Thursday night package, a setup that began this season. Peacock, the streaming arm of NBC Universal, also received exclusive rights to certain games over the length of the deal, though there are no such games on this season’s schedule.
“Over the last five years, we’ve started the migration to streaming, and with today’s deals, we make another large step in that direction,” New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft said at the time the new television deals were announced. “Our fans want this option, and our media partners and the league understand that streaming is truly the future.”
Over the first six weeks of the season, Amazon said its Thursday night games averaged 12.1 million viewers, which is less than the 16.4 million on average who watched the Thursday night games that were televised simultaneously by Fox and the NFL Network last season. But it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, considering that those two television networks have a much longer reach than Amazon Prime, and the streaming rollout has been considered a success.
The first Amazon Prime Thursday night game, Week 2′s Chiefs-Chargers contest, garnered 13.03 million viewers, nearly double the number of people who watched the 2021 “Thursday Night Football” season premiere on NFL Network. Before that Week 2 game, Amazon announced that it had set a record for new Prime sign-ups, and it later said that more people signed up for Prime during the game than on any other day in its history, including Prime Day, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, when the company offers its most prominent sales.
ESPN Plus costs $9.99 per month or $99.99 for 12 months. It also can be accessed in a bundle with Disney Plus and Hulu for $13.99 per month. | 2022-10-28T15:25:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | To watch Denver Broncos vs. Jacksonville Jaguars, fans need ESPN Plus - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/28/nfl-london-game-espn-plus/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/28/nfl-london-game-espn-plus/ |
Aaron Judge gestures to New York Yankees fans after an October game. (Frank Franklin II/AP)
It is going to be a daily occurrence for the next several weeks, if not longer: “Report: Dodgers eyeing offer to Judge.” “Report: Giants hope to bring Judge home to Northern California.” “Report: “Bidding for Judge closes in on $400 million.”
Let me save everyone a lot of time, trouble and words: Aaron Judge isn’t leaving the Yankees. He isn’t leaving because, regardless of the cost or their bloated payroll, the Yankees can’t let him leave. And Judge would be crazy to go anyplace else.
That’s no knock on the Los Angeles Dodgers or the San Francisco Giants or even on the team I’ve rooted for all my life — the Mets. But when you have become a part of Yankees lore, you don’t go anyplace else. The exception that proves the rule is Roger Maris, but he was traded (generations ago) when the Yankees were in a unique free-fall, finishing last in the 10-team American League in 1966.
Judge’s No. 99 will be in Monument Park someday, and his arrival will be a no-brainer. Players like that don’t leave the Yankees.
Now, you can point out that other players who similarly symbolized their teams left for more money. Freddie Freeman — Mr. Atlanta Brave — left shortly after the team won last year’s World Series. Just this season, the Washington Nationals traded Juan Soto after his agent, Scott Boras, turned down an offer of $440 million over 15 years. Barry Bonds left the Pittsburgh Pirates. Alex Rodriguez left the Seattle Mariners. Once upon a time, the Mets traded Tom Seaver, whose nickname was, “The Franchise.” It’s been 45 years and I’m not over it.
But with all due respect to all of those teams, they aren’t the Yankees.
It’s very easy to make fun of the Yankees right now. They haven’t won — or even reached — a World Series since 2009. The Yankees going 13 years without a World Series appearance is roughly equivalent to the Chicago Cubs going 108 years without winning one. But, if only because of their enormous payroll, they contend just about every year. Since 1995 they have missed the playoffs four times; their last losing record came in 1992. Money can’t buy championships — or happiness — but it can buy being a perennial contender.
Every spring when the so-called experts make their picks for October, the Yankees are guaranteed to be mentioned. They do not play in historic Yankee Stadium — “the house that Ruth built” — but they play across the street. And they still wear the pinstripes, and there is no more iconic uniform, with apologies to the Montreal Canadiens, in all of sports.
Judge is a bright guy. He understands these things, and he understands legacy. It probably explains why he tightened up when he got to 60 home runs with 10 days left in the season and just barely surpassed Maris’s single-season American League record of 61 home runs down the stretch. And thankfully, Boras isn’t his agent. Boras would tell him to sign with the Kansas City Royals or the Arizona Diamondbacks if they offered $1 more than the Yankees.
Someone may in fact offer Judge more than his current employer, but unless the Yankees don’t come to the table with some kind of reasonable offer, he isn’t going anywhere. The Yankees will do what has to be done.
Some will bring up the fact that he grew up in Northern California and might want to return to the West Coast full time. He might. Things like that do happen: Mike Trout was tempted to sign with the Philadelphia Phillies several years ago because he’d grown up near Philadelphia. John Tavares signed four seasons ago with the Toronto Maple Leafs after nine years with the New York Islanders. On the day he signed, he posted a photo of himself sleeping in a Maple Leafs uniform as a boy.
But the Islanders aren’t the Yankees.
Barry Svrluga: MLB playoffs have Nats fans wondering, ‘Why can’t we get guys like that?’
Derek Jeter was 36 when he became a free agent for the first time in 2010. His skills were beginning to slip, and there was even talk that he might spend the final years of his career playing the outfield. Negotiations between the Yankees and Jeter and his agent, Casey Close, were tense. At one point, General Manager Brian Cashman suggested Jeter test the free agent market to understand that what the Yankees were offering — ultimately $51 million for three seasons — was not unfair.
Jeter was never leaving the Yankees. If someone had offered him what he was hoping to get — four years and more than $20 million a year — New York owner Hal Steinbrenner would have coughed it up, and Jeter was smart enough to know that his fame would diminish if he played anywhere but with the Yankees.
There’s another reason Judge isn’t going anywhere: He’s keenly aware of the fact that he hasn’t finished the job in New York. He’s been rookie of the year; he’s going to be the MVP this year; he’s hit 62 home runs and the Yankees have made postseason in each of his six full seasons.
But they haven’t won a World Series. He might go someplace else and win one, but it wouldn’t feel the same as doing it in the place where he grew up as a player, and where memories of postseason failures will make a postseason victory that much sweeter.
So, hunker down for all the headlines and “reports” about Judge’s future. Prepare to see constant replays of him making the final out of the American League Championship Series as a talking head asks, “Was this the final at-bat of Aaron Judge’s Yankees career?”
Don’t believe any of the “reports” until you hear one that sounds something like this: “The Yankees and Aaron Judge have agreed to a 10-year contract worth more than $400 million.”
That one will be accurate. | 2022-10-28T15:34:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Aaron Judge and the New York Yankees need each other - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/28/aaron-judge-new-york-yankees-free-agent/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/28/aaron-judge-new-york-yankees-free-agent/ |
Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen, seen at the 2019 Met Gala, announced their divorce, after 13 years of marriage, on Friday. ((Angela Weiss/AFP/Getty Images))
Bündchen noted that the couple had “grown apart and while it is, of course, difficult to go through something like this, I feel blessed for the time we had together and only wish the best for Tom always.” | 2022-10-28T16:04:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen confirm they will divorce - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/10/28/tom-brady-gisele-bundchen-divorce/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/10/28/tom-brady-gisele-bundchen-divorce/ |
On the last mile (Bloomberg)
Brazil’s famous soap operas thrive on outlandish plots and the final leg of the country’s presidential race has not fallen short, a storyline liberally sprinkled with accusations of Faustian pacts and cannibalism. With the runoff vote approaching, prosaic reality may well be catching up with incumbent Jair Bolsonaro. His list of blunders is growing long and efforts to win over undecided voters appear to be faltering, not least after a former congressman and supporter threw stun grenades and shot at police to avoid being taken into custody.
Here’s what is certain: The bitter fight of the last few months, culminating in the mud-slinging of recent days, has entrenched profound and lasting cleavages, with far more time spent debating smears than, for example, much-needed plans to improve the country’s fiscal outlook. Deep-set enmity means that whoever wins, roughly half of the population in Latin America’s largest nation will be left aggrieved. Political violence is on the rise. Brazil has rarely been harder to govern and its democracy harder to defend.
In Sunday’s contest, the advantage still sits with Lula. Bolsonaro beat expectations in the first round but his leftist opponent came in ahead and has the backing of the third and fourth-place finishers. Lula is leading in Minas Gerais, the bellwether state won by every successful candidate. Crucially, the gap between the two candidates means the current president must woo the vast majority of swing voters to secure victory. He needs more women and poorer families, cohorts where he lags.
To tackle that, he’s bet on cooling inflation, more generous cash handouts and tax cuts, put his evangelical wife on the campaign trail and ramped up efforts to increase voter rejection of Lula, loved by some for his poverty-reduction campaigns during the 2000s, but hated by others for his part in the mammoth corruption scandal that followed. Bolsonaro has portrayed the election as a fight of good versus evil so extreme that Lula’s campaign denied the one-time labor leader was in cahoots with Satan. (“He has no pact and has never spoken with the devil.”)
The combination isn’t working well enough for Bolsonaro. Polls remain stable, while the same negative tactics are being thrown back at him. Social media has been flooded with the president’s unsavory comments on young female Venezuelan migrants, old clips of visits to Masonic lodges and discussions on eating human flesh, none of which play well with his conservative evangelical base or with the family-man image the thrice-married president seeks to project.
Then came last Sunday’s police shootout with former congressman Roberto Jefferson, a vocal supporter of Bolsonaro accused of violating the terms of his house arrest by, among other things, posting a video insulting a female Supreme Court judge. Like the April presidential pardon for far-right lawmaker Daniel Silveira — sentenced to prison over his incitement of physical attacks against Supreme Court judges — it may generate sympathy among some core supporters. For everyone else, it’s an unwelcome portent of a more violent political future.
Should he lose narrowly, perhaps the most likely outcome, the problem is different, but no less complex. Not because of outright efforts to grab power — an attempted coup remains at the extreme end of potential outcomes, even if Bolsonaro’s senator son Flavio has already declared his father to be the victim of the “greatest electoral fraud ever seen.” Ultimately, as Creomar de Souza of Brasilia-based Dharma Political Risk and Strategy puts it, a coup is a gamble that doesn’t sit with Bolsonaro’s risk-averse record in politics, given the extreme penalties if he fails.
This toxic discourse is here to stay. The negative politics of Bolsonarismo (of which the campaign has been a manifestation) will persist, as Mariana Borges Martins da Silva, who researches Latin American politics at Oxford University’s Nuffield College, points out, feeding anti-system, anti-elite sentiment that predates him, offering easy solutions to Brazil’s complex problems, backed in particular by a lower middle class to whom he has offered a voice in politics.
A Lula win would put the brakes on authoritarian mission creep, but it doesn’t resolve the larger issues facing the country. The toxic campaign and messy outcome of this election is a symptom, not a cause. His pragmatic record in government and initiatives like a letter pledging fiscal and social responsibility this week are encouraging. He has already called on plenty of high-profile centrist voices, and they will be in government or remain advisers. But this is a very different environment to the 2000s, a far harsher economic backdrop and a fragmented legislature.
• Brazil’s Middle Class Isn’t Buying Lula’s Pitch: Eduardo Porter
• Even a Lula Win May Not Restore Brazil’s Forests: David Fickling | 2022-10-28T16:30:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Brazil Gets the Election Finale It Didn’t Need - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/brazilgets-the-election-finale-it-didnt-need/2022/10/28/359d8766-56d6-11ed-ac8b-08bbfab1c5a5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/brazilgets-the-election-finale-it-didnt-need/2022/10/28/359d8766-56d6-11ed-ac8b-08bbfab1c5a5_story.html |
Police rule death of 2-year-old boy in Southwest D.C. a homicide
Mars Jones died of ‘complications of inflicted trauma’; no arrests have been made
Police said Thursday that the death of a 2-year-old boy found unconscious and unresponsive in Southwest Washington was a homicide.
Mars Jones of Southwest Washington died Oct. 18 of “complications of inflicted trauma,” according to authorities. Mars was found unconscious Oct. 13 in the unit block of Atlantic Street SW.
By Friday, police had not made an arrest in Jones’s killing. The department said the investigation was active. | 2022-10-28T16:31:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Police identify two-year-old boy killed in Southwest D.C. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/28/two-year-old-dead-southwest-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/28/two-year-old-dead-southwest-dc/ |
CVS in Miami on Oct. 17, 2022. (Bloomberg)
While flu season is usually between October and May, peaking in December and January, it’s arrived about six weeks earlier this year with uncharacteristically high illness. There have already been at least 880,000 cases of lab-confirmed influenza illness, 6,900 hospitalizations and 360 flu-related deaths nationally, including one child, according to estimates released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The flu vaccine’s effectiveness in preventing a doctor’s visit, hospitalization or death is uneven from year to year, and in years past, has hovered between 40 and 60 percent, according to the CDC. But Brammer and others say this season’s vaccine is well matched against circulating strains. That offers a “little ray of sunshine” for what could be a bleak winter, Schaffner said.
Nationally, the predominant virus — a particularly nasty strain, H3N2 — causes the worst outbreaks of the two types of influenza A viruses and two influenza B viruses that circulate among people. Seasons where H3N2 dominate typically result in the most complications, especially for the very young, the elderly and people with certain chronic health conditions, experts say.
What many people don’t realize is that even after someone recovers from flu, the inflammatory response generated by the virus continues to wreak havoc for another four to six weeks in those who are middle-aged and older, increasing the rate of heart attacks and strokes, Schaffner said.
In the southern hemisphere, influenza season has also been far different, Brammer said. In Australia, there was a “really sharp, very fast uptake then very quick drop,” she said. In Argentina, the peak flu activity occurred at what would have been that country’s summer.
“Things have not settled back into a normal pattern,” Brammer said.
The latest CDC data show overall respiratory illness activity is “very high” in South Carolina and Washington, D.C. and “high” in 11 states: Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York City, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.
“This was something that we were expecting because we are a hub, and a lot of people are traveling here,” said Cesar Arias, the hospital system’s chief of infectious diseases. “I didn’t expect to see that much [flu] that early.”
Arias said conversations around flu vaccinations have become tied to the hesitancy around coronavirus vaccines. The conversations in Texas, “as you can imagine, [are] stronger and at least more vocal,” he said. “We are struggling with that, trying to put the message out to get vaccinated.” | 2022-10-28T16:31:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Flu season 2022 started a month early, severity is highest in 13 years - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/10/28/flu-season-2022-cdc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/10/28/flu-season-2022-cdc/ |
Coast Guard boats patrol in front of the partially collapsed Champlain Towers South condo building in Surfside, Fla. on July 1, 2021. Residents of a Miami Beach building on the same street where a condominium collapse killed nearly 100 people were forced to evacuate on Thursday evening. (Mark Humphrey/AP)
Residents of a high-rise Miami Beach condominium located about a mile and a half down the road from the site of the deadly 2021 condo collapse in Surfside, Fla., were ordered to evacuate Thursday evening after the building’s structural engineer reported that a key support beam needed repairs.
Engineers inspecting the site as part of its 50-year recertification said they had discovered a growing crack and deflection in a main beam in the building’s garage, meaning the beam was bending or moving away from its intended position.
“We believe this beam and the other beams located in the third-floor garage might support the entire building structure,” an inspector and an engineer for Inspection Engineers Inc. wrote in a letter to the city dated Thursday, though they said that was based on observation because they don’t have the building’s original structural calculations.
It could take about 10 days to design and install shoring to address the issue, wrote the engineers, who said a shoring expert is working on calculations for the design, which must be submitted to the city for approval and permitting before work can begin. Once the shoring has been installed, engineers will evaluate whether it’s safe for residents to return to their homes.
City engineers also visited the building to inspect what the engineers had found in the garage and agreed residents needed to be evacuated, the letter said.
‘Still a nightmare’: Surfside families mark one year since collapse
The 163-unit building was built in 1971, county property records show. Sitting on Collins Avenue, it’s down the road from the site where the 12-story Champlain Towers South condo building collapsed in June 2021, killing nearly 100 people.
Residents were warned by the condo board Wednesday that they might need to vacate, the Miami Herald reported, but were not ordered to evacuate until around 5 p.m. Thursday, when the board told them to be out by 7 p.m.
Photos in the engineers’ report showed damage and crumbling near the property line, water leaking into an active electrical gutter, and issues with columns.
Engineers first found issues in the garage about 10 months ago and marked various areas for repair, they said in the letter. The repairs began four weeks ago, and the problem with the beam was found in this week’s inspections. | 2022-10-28T16:31:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Residents evacuated from Miami high-rise near Surfside condo collapse - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/28/miami-condo-evacuated-surfside/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/28/miami-condo-evacuated-surfside/ |
By Anthony Williams
A Metro train pulls up to the Naylor Road Metro station in January. (Mark Gail/The Washington Post)
Anthony Williams, a former D.C. mayor, is chief executive officer and executive director of the Federal City Council.
Metro’s new general manager, Randy Clarke, faces daunting challenges as he assumes his new role. The agency’s financial woes are no secret. It is hurtling toward a $185 million fiscal cliff in fiscal 2024 when federal pandemic relief runs dry. By fiscal 2025, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority estimates its annual operating budget deficit could hit $527 million. By fiscal 2029, that number will grow to $731 million — and that’s with a relatively optimistic assumption ridership will hit 75 percent of pre-pandemic levels. Rail ridership is currently hovering around 45 percent of pre-pandemic levels.
Of course, Metro leadership must find a solution to its financial crisis, but its track record is poor. Before area jurisdictions commit new dollars in fiscal relief, Metro must adopt new, tangible and measurable commitments to better service and accountability, overseen by an independent oversight commission composed of D.C., state and federal representatives.
We’ve been here before. After the fatal smoke event at L’Enfant Plaza in January 2015, major regional stakeholders agreed on a two-pronged strategy: One, secure long-term dedicated capital funding; and two, reform Metro’s broken, outdated governance structure. The former was done; the latter was ignored.
So it should come as no surprise that months after the inspector general was terminated, the position remains unfilled. Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.) — long one of Metro’s strongest supporters — expressed his exasperation: “WMATA’s ‘crisis of confidence’ and public silence around the Inspector General has the potential to sow additional speculation and doubt.”
Such doubt has only deepened over the course of the past year. The Blue Line derailment in October 2021 and the subsequent removal of 7000-series trains from service, left more than 60 percent of WMATA’s rail fleet out of service. Although we applaud the Washington Metrorail Safety Commission (WMSC) and WMATA for coming to an agreement on the return of service, we cannot ignore the harm that was done from a year of less frequent, less reliable rail service. There have also been reports of breathtaking indifference to basic safety and communications best-practices, as well as the lapse in critical certification requirements by its rail operators.
Hearkening not only to the Federal City Council’s recommendations five years ago but also those of The Post, elected leaders in D.C., Maryland and Virginia should call for a temporary oversight board to chart a new strategy for WMATA’s long-term success. In 2018, this recommendation was ignored in favor of securing stable financing and spending more money. Today, independent oversight is a step that can no longer be ignored, because it is clear Metro cannot fix itself. The clock is ticking.
In the immediate term, the agency can start by placing more accountability on operational performance. There must be full transparency about the extent of its operational problems. There is abundant evidence, from a collection of different federal and other investigatory bodies, that WMATA has a long way to go until it achieves a true culture of safety. Employee and asset performance should be tied to safety, and modern data practices should be adopted to track performance across the entire system.
In the medium to longer term, WMATA’s broken governance structure must be recreated into one that fosters genuine, accountable and Metro-centric oversight. But we’re a long way from that day. There are immediate and fundamental organizational, operational and accountability issues that require non-cosmetic responses.
There is no doubt in my mind that WMATA is worth additional public investment, and I will be the first in line to rally the regional business community around a new funding solution for WMATA. But before we line up, we need to see WMATA implement real, immediate operational reforms and take governance reform seriously as the foundation of a renewed, long-term commitment to making WMATA accountable for delivering safe, reliable, competitive and high-quality public transportation for the next 50 years. But first, dramatic and comprehensive measures must be in order.
There’s an adage that goes, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Well, WMATA is broken — structurally, culturally and financially. Let’s fix it. | 2022-10-28T16:31:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Anthony Williams: Metro must fix itself before it gets more funding - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/28/anthony-williams-metro-must-fix-itself-before-it-gets-more-funding/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/28/anthony-williams-metro-must-fix-itself-before-it-gets-more-funding/ |
Spain drops criminal charges against Neymar over Barcelona transfer
Neymar will no longer be prosecuted over fraud and corruption charges in Spain. (Josep Lago/AFP/Getty Images)
State prosecutors in Spain dropped fraud and corruption charges against soccer star Neymar and a number of other people on Friday. However, a civil suit brought against the defendants over the same charges could still proceed.
The charges stemmed from Neymar’s transfer from Brazilian club Santos to Spanish titan Barcelona eight years ago. DIS, a Brazilian investment firm that owned a 40 percent stake in Neymar’s rights while he was at Santos, claims it did not receive its rightful cut of the player’s transfer to Barcelona because it claims the true value of the deal was concealed.
Spanish prosecutors initially asserted that Neymar and the eight other defendants — including his parents, former Barcelona presidents Josep Maria Bartomeu and Sandro Rosell, and other representatives from Barcelona and Santos — attempted to hide the true amount of the transfer fee so they could make a lower payment to DIS.
But on Friday, after a two-week trial in Barcelona, prosecutor Luis Garcia Canton told a judge that “there is not the slightest hint of crime” and asked for “acquittal of all defendants.” Neymar and the other defendants denied wrongdoing, and he testified that he did not take part in the negotiations over his transfer to Barcelona and signed the agreement upon his father’s recommendation.
“I didn’t participate in the negotiations. My father always took care of it and always will. I sign everything he tells me to sign,” Neymar said in court. “Playing for Barcelona was always my dream, a childhood dream.”
A court document revealed that Barcelona initiated transfer talks with Neymar in 2011, three years before the end of his Santos contract, and that the club agreed to pay Neymar 40 million euros to ensure his move to Barcelona. But the official transfer price, paid to Santos at the time of the move, was only 17 million euros, and DIS received its 40 percent stake from that amount.
On the stand, Rosell equated the 40 million euro agreement to a “down payment” on a house or apartment, and the prosecutor said he did not consider that payment a crime under Spanish law, though it may have violated Brazilian law and the rules laid out by FIFA, soccer’s governing body.
Prosecutors initially asked that, if found guilty, Neymar and his father serve a two-year prison sentence and pay a $9.7 million fine. Separately, DIS asked for a five-year prison sentence for Neymar and his father and for $32.1 million in compensation plus a $190 million fine that would be paid to the Spanish state. The firm also has asked that Neymar not be allowed to play soccer during any punishment. The compensation sought by DIS still could be decided in civil court.
Reuters reports that Neymar’s legal team may demand that DIS pay its fees for what they consider recklessness, acting in poor faith and for abuse of process. | 2022-10-28T16:32:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Neymar no longer facing criminal charges in Spain - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/28/neymar-charges-dropped/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/28/neymar-charges-dropped/ |
In this photo illustration, a phone screen displays a photo of Elon Musk with the Twitter logo shown in the background. (Olivier Douliery/AFP/Getty Images)
For all of the attention paid to billionaire Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, there’s an aspect that is often overlooked: Not that many Americans use the social-media platform.
Pew Research Center, which tracks use of social-media platforms over time, estimated that less than a quarter of American adults used the platform in 2021 — beneath Facebook (nearly 7 in 10), Instagram (4 in 10) and about even with Snapchat (25 percent). It is a niche product, despite the company’s efforts, but one that nonetheless absorbs a lot of attention and commentary.
That’s significant because of what that niche is. Twitter is the domain of the news media, a place where journalists share work and interact far more than other platforms. And that means that it both gets more media attention than other platforms and is used for news consumption disproportionately relative to its competitors. That’s lumped into a broad sense that Twitter is an organ of America’s elites, a pejorative that is applied so that it overlaps with left-wing political views.
So when Musk bought the company, it wasn’t just a rich guy buying a platform. It was a guy whose interest in the platform was explicitly intertwined with his left-skeptical politics suddenly gaining control over what his fans view as the left’s newsroom.
This wasn’t Steve Ballmer buying the Los Angeles Clippers; it’s Donald Trump buying the New York Times.
Let’s first establish that Twitter does occupy a unique space in America’s social-media universe. In addition to measure how often people use each platform, Pew conducted research at the end of 2020 evaluating where people got campaign and political news. While only 23 percent of adults use Twitter, 14 percent of those polled said they used it for campaign news. That’s a much narrower gap than other platforms; while more people said they used Facebook for news (25 percent), more than two-thirds of adults use Facebook.
Twitter is used as a place for news more than other platforms. And people who use Twitter, other Pew research found, have tended to be more engaged on news and politics — though recent internal analysis suggests that interest in news on the platform is waning.
But what we’re talking about here is perception. The sense that Twitter is a place for news and for the media. And, moreover, that it’s a place for left-leaning news and media.
Pew polling from 2021 shows wide divides in partisan perceptions of the platform. Democrats (and independents who tend to vote for Democrats, a group referred to as “leaners”) are more likely to say Twitter is good for democracy. Republicans (and Republican leaners) are more likely to say it’s bad. Democrats are also more likely to say they have trust in news and information posted on Twitter than are Republicans.
The first result is worth keeping in mind in the context of Musk’s purchase. He’s often framed Twitter as being essential to the health of the democratic (small D) conversation — implying that he sides with skeptics about how it functions at the moment, skeptics who tend to be on the right.
That perception stems in part from how Twitter responded to concerns about content on the platform that emerged around the time of the 2016 election. In addition to facing criticism for facilitating a (relatively toothless) effort by Russian actors to influence the American political conversation, the platform endured calls to limit abusive and often racist or bigoted posts. It implemented a system that would give those who’d violated its rules lower visibility.
This was quickly noticed. Conservatives who’d faced this minimization declared that this was a function not of their own behavior but of Twitter’s effort to silence political opponents. Twitter, based in the uber-liberal bastion of San Francisco, was turning the screws on the right out of vindictiveness, they argued. A term of art was generated: shadow banning.
It’s clear that some users, not exclusively on the right, were affected by the policy. And it is also true that Twitter’s standards for acceptable content is not necessarily in line with a political right that has increasingly framed its focus on combating increased acceptance of marginalized groups as a free-speech issue. What many on the right (including a former president) decry as out of control “wokeism” might be described by others as “reducing vitriolic or discriminatory attacks.” There are edge cases here, as there always are — but, again, we’re talking about perceptions.
In Pew’s polling, 6 in 10 Republican (and leaning) Twitter users said that limiting the visibility of certain posts — like obscuring election misinformation — was a “major problem.” The same percentage said that banning users entirely was a major problem. Overall, only 30 percent of Americans saw the former as a major problem and only a quarter viewed the latter that way.
Shortly before the 2020 election, Twitter (and Facebook) made a decision that crystallized a lot of this sentiment. When the New York Post reported that it had obtained a laptop belonging to Joe Biden’s son Hunter, both social-media platforms — wary of again amplifying material that might have been part of a Russian hacking effort — limited how the story could be shared. From that moment on, the perception was locked into place. Twitter wanted to help Democrats. This then became conflated with “the media,” which has at times been accused of similarly boxing out coverage of the laptop. (Here is a piece The Washington Post published at the time. And here is a more recent one assessing the contents of the hard drive said to be a duplicate of the laptop — once we were given a copy more than a year later.)
Into this steps Elon Musk. Here’s a guy saying what the right is saying: moderation goes too far, the platform is too hostile to voices from the right. Not only did Musk bid to buy the company, he energetically trolled Twitter on Twitter as he was doing so. And if there’s one thing that gets you attention and praise from the political right on Twitter, it’s deploying memes against the left or perceived left.
All of this occurs in the context of a long-standing and national campaign by voices on the right against a perceived leftist hegemony. This takes many forms, like Tucker Carlson’s rants about vaccines on Fox News. But the common theme is that there is a bulwark of inherently leftist centers of power in the media, academia and entertainment that drive how Americans talk and act. This narrative has long been useful to Republican officials; casting objective news coverage as bias blunts the force of critical coverage. (Trump elevated this particular approach to something of an art form.) But now it is expanded, drifting at times even into baffling, dangerous terrain like the QAnon movement.
But finally, at long last, here was Musk. Carving out a victory against the left — and on their most prized social-media terrain. The right’s response to Musk’s taking over Twitter has been broad celebration and an assumption that the perceived political constraints that existed last week will be gone by next. (If not already.) But this isn’t just about tweeting about transgender people. It’s about cracking the elite hold on America.
Elon Musk is to technology what Trump was to politics. He is rich and has a fan base that is fervent to the point of being deafening. Like Trump, he has decided to take over a center of American power in order to reshape things to his liking.
It’s Jan. 20, 2017, in the Twitterverse. We’ll see what comes next. | 2022-10-28T17:18:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Twitter is a skirmish in the right’s war on the media and ‘elites’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/28/twitter-elon-musk-politics/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/28/twitter-elon-musk-politics/ |
FBI blocked St. Louis shooter from obtaining gun, police say
Orlando Harris used an AR-style rifle to kill two people and wound seven in an attack on his old high school in St. Louis on Monday. (St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department/AP) (AP)
Weeks before Orlando Harris opened fire inside his old St. Louis high school Monday, killing two people and wounding seven, an FBI background check stopped him from buying a gun, police said.
On Oct. 8, the 19-year-old Harris tried to buy a weapon from a licensed dealer in St. Charles, Mo., but an FBI background check “successfully blocked this sale,” St. Louis police said Friday in a news release shared with The Washington Post.
Police did not say why the FBI had flagged Harris. The FBI did not immediately respond to a message from The Post.
After being refused by the licensed dealer, Harris bought the AR-style rifle he used during the rampage at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School from a private dealer who had legally purchased the weapon in 2020, police said. Police did not identify the person. Harris died Monday in a gunfight with police.
“There is no existing law which would have prevented the private sale between the original purchaser and the suspect in this case,” police said.
The new information tracing the gun’s path comes days after police shared that Harris’s mother called 911 on Oct. 15 to say that he had a gun at his house and that she wanted removed. When police arrived at Harris’s home around 5 p.m. that day, they took the rifle from Harris and gave it to an adult who did not live in Harris’s home and was legally allowed to carry, police said.
Police did not identify the adult or answer specific questions about that person’s relationship to Harris. Investigators are still trying to determine how Harris was able to get the weapon he used when he broke into his alma mater on Monday carrying 600 rounds of ammunition.
Officers did not seize the rifle when they arrived at Harris’s home after his mother’s call because Missouri does not have a red-flag law, meaning officers did not have “clear authority” to confiscate the rifle that day, police told The Post in a statement Friday. A red-flag law authorizes officials to seize a weapon if a person is considered to be a threat to self or others.
Harris struggled with his mental health and spent time in and out of mental health programs, his family told police. His family often monitored his interactions with others, went through his mail and checked his room, interim St. Louis police commissioner Michael Sack said at a news conference Wednesday.
“They made every effort that they felt that they reasonably could,” Sack said at the news conference. “I think that’s why the mother is so heartbroken over the families that paid for his episode.” | 2022-10-28T18:02:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | FBI blocked St. Louis school shooter Orlando Harris from buying gun: police - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/28/st-louis-school-shooting-orlando-harris-gun/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/28/st-louis-school-shooting-orlando-harris-gun/ |
The piano-playing wild man was part of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s inaugural class
Jerry Lee Lewis at New York's Madison Square Garden in 1975. (Rene Perez/AP)
Mr. Lewis, a Louisiana tenant farmer’s son and the cousin of televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, performed with a riveting, maniacal quality. On storming 1950s hits such as “Great Balls of Fire,” “Breathless” and “High School Confidential,” he slashed up and down the keys with his right hand, deliberately sped up tempos in mid-song and often finished songs onstage by standing on the piano.
His high-energy music was a distinctly Southern synthesis of rhythm and blues, country, gospel and boogie-woogie, and his barely contained stage frenzy thrilled and unnerved audiences. He was called “The Killer” because of his ability to completely overshadow other performers. His Rock & Roll Hall of Fame biography — he was inducted in 1986 as a member of the inaugural class — describes him as “the wild man of rock and roll, embodying its most reckless and high-spirited impulses.”
Mr. Lewis recorded in 1956 for producer Sam Phillips at Sun Records, an incubator of talent that also launched the careers of Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins. The next year, Mr. Lewis drew national attention and notoriety for his performance of his hit song “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” on NBC’s “The Steve Allen Show.”
A scandalous revelation soon cast a shadow over Mr. Lewis’s burst of success. During his 1958 tour of England, reporters discovered that the 22-year-old entertainer’s bride, Myra Gale Brown, was also his 13-year-old cousin and the daughter of his bass guitarist, J.W. Brown. Mr. Lewis had brought a grown woman to forge the signature on the marriage license.
Their marriage was his third. The English press labeled him a “cradle snatcher.” His tour of Britain was canceled, and Mr. Lewis lost further bookings and national television appearances in the United States. After the marital scandal, Mr. Lewis struggled for hits and radio airplay and gradually reestablished himself as a country performer.
Singer Jerry Lee Lewis joined the Country Music Hall of Fame on May 17, 2022. He is most known for 1950s hits like “Great Balls of Fire” and “Breathless.” (Video: Country Music Association, Photo: Jason Kempin/Getty Images/Country Music Association)
He placed 26 songs in the Billboard Top 10 country charts between 1968 and 1981, including such honky-tonk weepers as “Another Place, Another Time” and “What’s Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made a Loser Out of Me),” a rocked-up version of “Me and Bobby McGee” and a rendition of the standard “Over the Rainbow.” (Mr. Lewis was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in October but did not attend the ceremony because of poor health.)
In his personal life, Mr. Lewis grew addicted to pills and alcohol and was bedeviled by tragedy. Mr. Lewis and Myra Gale Brown’s first son, Steve Allen Lewis (named for the TV host), drowned in the family swimming pool at 3. Jerry Lee Lewis Jr., a son from his second marriage who was also the drummer in Mr. Lewis’s touring band, died in a car accident in 1973.
His estranged fourth wife, Jaren Gunn Pate, drowned in a swimming pool in 1982. The following year, Shawn Stephens Lewis, his fifth wife, died of a methadone overdose less than three months after their wedding. Mr. Lewis maintained that the methadone had been prescribed to him to ween him off addictive painkillers.
A story in Rolling Stone magazine highlighted discrepancies in Mr. Lewis’s accounts of the incident and the police investigation. The Stephens family called publicly for an investigation, but a grand jury found no evidence of wrongdoing.
In 1976, Mr. Lewis shot his bass player during a drunken target practice at his 41st birthday party. That same year, he was charged with trespassing and public drunkenness after being arrested at the gates of Elvis Presley’s Graceland mansion with a loaded gun. In 1977, he totaled his Rolls-Royce while under the influence of tranquilizers. In 1979, the IRS confiscated Mr. Lewis’s fleet of cars in lieu of payment for back taxes. Two years later, he canceled a tour while being treated for stomach cancer.
Raised as a Pentecostal, Mr. Lewis often expounded on biblical scriptures, salvation and a belief that performing rock-and-roll had marked him for eternal damnation. He initially refused to record the song “Great Balls of Fire” (1957), one of his biggest hits, because he considered the title blasphemous.
“I’m a sinner, I know it,” he told writer Nick Tosches in 1979. “Soon you and me are going to have to reckon with the chilling hands of death.”
In fact, Mr. Lewis lived on to become one of rock-and-roll’s oldest active performers and received a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement in 2005.
Influenced by boogie-woogie
Jerry Lee Lewis was born in Ferriday, La., on Sept. 29, 1935. His father, Elmo, a part-time carpenter, ran a family moonshine still and farmed land owned by Mr. Lewis’s wealthier uncle and namesake, Lee Calhoun. Calhoun also owned Ferriday’s biggest business, a paper mill.
Mr. Lewis started playing piano at 8, alongside two cousins, Mickey Gilley and Jimmy Swaggart, at the Calhoun house. Swaggart would later become a singing televangelist, while Gilley would emerge as a popular country and pop performer with a style similar to Mr. Lewis’s.
After hearing his son plunk out “Jingle Bells,” Elmo Lewis saw his promise and mortgaged the family house to purchase a secondhand piano.
As a youngster, Jerry Lee Lewis hid behind the bar at Haney’s, an African-American juke joint, listening intently to blues and boogie-woogie. Other early musical influences included vaudevillian Al Jolson and country singers Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams — a trio of performers he referred to as the “three great song stylists.” Mr. Lewis later called himself the fourth.
Mr. Lewis briefly enrolled at Southwestern Bible Institute, a Pentecostal school near Dallas, but landed in trouble for playing a slow, staid hymn in a boogie-woogie style.
He took his first music job at 18, alternating on drums and piano at a honky-tonk in Natchez, Miss. Mr. Lewis and his father sold eggs to finance trips to Nashville and Memphis to audition for record companies. On their third trip to Memphis, he secured an audition at Sun Records.
Phillips recalled to writer Peter Guralnick, “They put that tape on, and I said, ‘Where … did this man come from?’ I mean he played that piano with abandon. Between the stuff he played and didn’t play, I could hear the spiritual thing, too. I told [engineer] Jack [Clement][to] just get him in here as fast as you can.”
Although Mr. Lewis’s first Sun single, a cover of the Ray Price country hit “Crazy Arms,” didn’t sell, he did tour Canada in support of Sun artists Perkins and Cash. Perkins advised the inexperienced pianist to “turn around so they can see you, make a fuss.”
His second single, “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” (1956), previously a modest hit for blues singer Big Maybelle in a slower rendition, made the pianist a star.
His marriages to Dorothy Barton, Jane Mitchum, Myra Gale Brown and Kerrie McCarver ended in divorce. In 2012, he married Judith Brown. In addition to his wife, survivors include four children, Jerry Lee Lewis III, Ronnie Lewis, Phoebe Lewis and Lori Lancaster; a sister, Linda Gail Lewis, who is also a singer and pianist; and many grandchildren.
Tosches chronicled Mr. Lewis’s tumultuous life in the 1982 novelistic biography “Hellfire.” A Hollywood film, “Great Balls of Fire” (1989), recounted his Sun Records years with Dennis Quaid as Mr. Lewis and Winona Ryder as Myra Gale.
In later years, a 1956 jam session at Sun among Mr. Lewis, Presley, Cash and Perkins took on a life of its own. The Memphis Press-Scimitar proclaimed the four “A Million Dollar Quartet” and published a picture of the four that has since become much reproduced.
A recording of the session, though never intended for commercial release, was finally released in 1981 and later became the subject of a Broadway tribute show, “Million Dollar Quartet,” in 2010. Three of the principals — Cash, Perkins and Mr. Lewis — also recorded with fellow Sun artist Roy Orbison as “The Class of ’55” in 1986. A record of interviews with the participants, “Interviews With the Class of ’55,” won the Grammy Award for spoken word recording the following year.
Mr. Lewis continued to perform in recent years, although doctors limited his time onstage. In 2006, he released the album “Last Man Standing,” which featured duets with such performers as Jagger, Bruce Springsteen, B.B. King and Willie Nelson. Another album of duets, “Mean Old Man,” followed in 2010. Author and journalist Rick Bragg wrote an “as told to” biography, “Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story,” in 2014.
Mr. Lewis was not known for his public expressions of humility.
“There’s very few great talents left,” he once said. “I’m not saying I’m one of ’em. I’m saying I’m the only one.” | 2022-10-28T18:02:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jerry Lee Lewis, unbridled early rocker, dies at 87 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/10/28/jerry-lee-lewis-dead-great-balls-of-fire/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/10/28/jerry-lee-lewis-dead-great-balls-of-fire/ |
18-year-old fatally shot in Prince William County
A man died at a hospital after being shot in Virginia on Thursday, officials said Friday.
On Thursday at around 10:25 p.m., officers responded to the 13900 block of Richmond Highway in Woodbridge for the report of a shooting, Prince William County police said in a statement.
They found Milton Humberto Escalante Escobar, 18, of Woodbridge, suffering from gunshot wounds, and he was transported to a hospital, where he died of his injuries, the statement said.
Escobar was hit after shots were fired in a wooded area behind a local business, according to police, and before a vehicle fled the area.
Police said anyone with information about the shooting should contact them at 703-792-7000. | 2022-10-28T18:02:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 18-year-old fatally shot in Prince William County - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/28/prince-william-shooting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/28/prince-william-shooting/ |
American Jews start to think the unthinkable
Flowers and stars line outside the Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh in 2018 after a shooter opened fire during services. (AP /Gene J. Puskar)
On the holiest night of the Jewish year this month, my rabbi looked up from his Kol Nidre sermon — a homily about protecting America’s liberal democracy — and posed a question that wasn’t in his prepared text: “How many people in the last few years have been at a dining room conversation where the conversation has turned to where might we move? How many of us?”
The sermon included a quotation from the Jewish scholar Rabbi Michael Holzman: “For American Jews, the disappearance of liberal democracy would be a disaster. … [W]e have flourished under the shelter of the principles behind the First Amendment, and we have been protected by the absolute belief in the rule of law. Without these, Jews, start packing suitcases.”
Incidents of antisemitic harassment, vandalism and assault nearly tripled between 2015 and 2021, the ADL reports, and it says 2022 attacks are on pace with last year’s record level. This week was the fourth anniversary of the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre, which was followed by other synagogue attacks in 2019 and earlier this year. One in four U.S. Jews has experienced antisemitism in the past year.
Now we have Kanye “Ye” West unleashing a torrent of filth on social media (“death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE”), white supremacists applauding him (and giving Nazi salutes to Los Angeles motorists), Elon Musk’s Twitter preparing to welcome white supremacists, and the Pennsylvania Republican gubernatorial nominee deploying antisemitism against his Jewish opponent.
The leader of the Republican Party, who remains the top presidential contender for 2024, reacted to West’s attacks on Jews by saying, “He was really nice to me.” Donald Trump compared Jews unfavorably to “our wonderful Evangelicals,” and warned Jews to “get their act together and appreciate what they have in Israel — Before it is too late.”
The threat was the latest of many Trump claims that Jews have a dual loyalty and are not fully American. As usual, Republicans were mostly silent.
The United States has until now been different, because of our constitutional protections of minority rights: our bedrock principles of equal treatment under law, free expression and free exercise of religion. Now, the MAGA crowd is attacking the very notion of minority rights. Ascendant Christian nationalists, with a sympathetic Supreme Court, are dismantling the separation between church and state. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), for example, calls the principle “junk that’s not in the Constitution” and claims “the church is supposed to direct the government.” Red states, again with an agreeable Supreme Court, are rolling back minority voting rights and decades of civil rights protections. And leading it all is Trump, threatening violence and going to “war with the rule of law,” as Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) puts it.
In reality, it will be almost a quarter century before White people are no longer a majority in this country — and they should remain a plurality well into the next century, at least. But if white nationalists truly fear becoming an oppressed minority, the best way to guard against that is to fortify minority rights. The rule of law protects us — all of us — from tyranny.
I admit I’ve thought about where my family and I might go if the worst happened here. But we’re not going anywhere. The only choice is to stay and fight for our liberal democracy. As my rabbi, Danny Zemel, put it on Kol Nidre: “If there is a Jewish message for our time, it is to support our great experiment with every fiber of our being.”
If it isn’t safe here, it won’t be safe anywhere. | 2022-10-28T18:03:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | American Jews start to think the unthinkable - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/28/american-jews-exile-fears/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/28/american-jews-exile-fears/ |
Washington Post national environmental reporter Brady Dennis speaks with Jigar Shah, director of the Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office, and Liane Randolph, chair of the California Air Resources Board, about the role of technology in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and creating a more sustainable economy. Conversations recorded on Friday, Oct. 28, 2022. | 2022-10-28T18:03:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Harnessing technology to combat climate change - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-live/harnessing-technology-to-combat-climate-change-/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-live/harnessing-technology-to-combat-climate-change-/ |
A portion of a Kansans for Life mailer listing its candidate endorsements and its recommendations on whether six state Supreme Court justices should be retained at the bottom, is shown on Friday, Oct. 28, 2022, in Topeka, Kansas. Kansans for Life is the state’s most influential anti-abortion group, and it has criticized the court over a 2019 decision protecting abortion rights. (AP Photo/John Hanna) | 2022-10-28T18:03:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Abortion foes seek ouster of 5 Kansas Supreme Court justices - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/abortion-foes-seek-ouster-of-5-kansas-supreme-court-justices/2022/10/28/f68a6446-56e3-11ed-ac8b-08bbfab1c5a5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/abortion-foes-seek-ouster-of-5-kansas-supreme-court-justices/2022/10/28/f68a6446-56e3-11ed-ac8b-08bbfab1c5a5_story.html |
Skywatch: November brings a Thanksgiving-like bounty in the heavens
Casual sky-gazers in November can savor a cosmic Thanksgiving-like feast all month long, thanks to a total lunar eclipse, the Leonid meteors and a strong showing by Jupiter and Mars.
Wake up early, as North America gets treated to a total lunar eclipse on the morning of Nov. 8. Barring clouds, Washington can observe most of the totality phase, but toward the end of it, the moon — on the verge of setting — will be very low in the sky.
A lunar eclipse is perfectly safe to see since the moon is merely ducking into Earth’s shadow. The sun is behind us. Step outside and you’ll catch the moon from your Washington-area location. During totality, the moon will turn a variation of red or rusty orange, according to U.S. Naval Observatory astronomer Geoff Chester.
For Washington, the partial eclipse phase, which is when you can see our lunar companion enter the deeper part of Earth’s shadow, starts about 4:09 a.m. Eastern time. The moon will be about 30 degrees above the horizon in the western sky, Chester said.
The moon darkens and then enters the totality phase at 5:16 a.m. — when you are likely to see a reddish tint. At that time, for Washington, the moon will be about 15 degrees above the western horizon.
Maximum eclipse occurs at 5:59 a.m., but the lunar disk is only about 8 degrees above the horizon, which is low and hard to see, he said. You’re going to need a higher place. Totality ends at 6:41 a.m., the sun rises at 6:43 a.m. and the moon sets at 6:50 a.m., according to the observatory.
The western United States will get to view all phases. For the November feast’s next course, the Leonid meteor shower will peak on the night of Nov. 17-18, according to the American Meteor Society (amsmeteors.org).
The society forecasts about 15 shooting stars an hour at peak, so in a dark sky, you’ll see a few.
To look, find a hot beverage, go out later at night and into the morning hours, move away from streetlights, get your eyes acclimated to the dark and stare at the sky.
The American Meteor Society notes that some astronomers think the Earth may go through a heavier-than-expected dusty trail for this year’s Leonids, and gazers may be treated to more than 50 meteors an hour. Nobody knows until the shower occurs.
Meteors become visible when the Earth — on its annual tour around the sun — runs into dusty, pebble-filled streams left by comets gone by. For the Leonid meteors, the parent is Comet Tempel-Tuttle, a periodic dirty snowball discovered independently by the German astronomer Wilhelm Tempel and by Horace P. Tuttle, a Naval Observatory astronomer.
Tuttle found it on Jan. 5, 1866, from the observatory, then located at Foggy Bottom. (Tuttle died in 1923 and is buried in an unmarked grave in Falls Church, near Seven Corners.)
Saturn leads a line of planets deep into the night. Find the ringed planet in the southern sky just after nightfall. On Nov. 1, it will be that dot — at about zero degrees magnitude, bright — just above the first-quarter moon. Saturn has a second encounter with the moon Nov. 28.
Large Jupiter can’t be missed in the southeast after dark. The planet is an in-your-face -2.8 magnitude (very bright) object and greets the moon Nov. 4.
The rusty, reddish Mars ascends the east-northeastern sky more than two hours after sunset in the Taurus constellation now. At -1.2 magnitude, our neighboring planet beams with brilliance. It gets better. At the end of November, it rises just after 5 p.m. at a phenomenal -1.8 magnitude, according to the observatory.
Mars is in glorious opposition — in other words, a full Mars — on Dec. 8 when it reaches -1.9 magnitude.
As the leaves fall, we’re reminded to turn our clocks back one hour to standard time on Nov. 6 at 2 a.m.
* Nov. 12 — Enjoy the late-autumn skies at the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, with telescopes provided by Northern Virginia Astronomy Club volunteers. 6 to 8 p.m., 14390 Air and Space Museum Parkway, Chantilly, Va., 20151. Information: novac.com
* Nov. 13 — “Amateur Telescope Making — Past and Future,” a talk by astronomer Guy Brandenburg, who has been teaching the art of telescope making for nearly two decades. The talk will be at the Northern Virginia Astronomy Club meeting, Room 3301, Exploratory Hall, George Mason University. 7:30 p.m. Information and remote meeting. Details at novac.com. | 2022-10-28T18:04:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Skywatch: November brings a Thanksgiving-like bounty in the heavens - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/10/28/skywatch-november-brings-thanksgiving-like-bounty-heavens/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/10/28/skywatch-november-brings-thanksgiving-like-bounty-heavens/ |
FILE - United States Luca de la Torre is pictured prior the international friendly soccer match between USA and Japan in Duesseldorf, Germany, on Sept. 23, 2022. American midfielder Luca de la Torre has sustained a leg injury that will sideline him for three weeks, his Spanish club Celta Vigo said Friday, Oct. 28, 2022, with the World Cup less than a month away. Celta said De la Torre has a muscle tear in his left leg. However, Celta coach Eduardo Coudet said he was confident that his player would be fit in time for the World Cup.(AP Photo/Martin Meissner) | 2022-10-28T18:04:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | US midfielder De la Torre out for 3 weeks before World Cup - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/soccer/us-midfielder-de-la-torre-out-for-3-weeks-before-world-cup/2022/10/28/3155681e-56e4-11ed-ac8b-08bbfab1c5a5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/soccer/us-midfielder-de-la-torre-out-for-3-weeks-before-world-cup/2022/10/28/3155681e-56e4-11ed-ac8b-08bbfab1c5a5_story.html |
Ukraine has used images from privately owned satellites and has leveraged Elon Musk’s Starlink system to counter the Russian invasion
A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket lifts off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida in 2018. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
On Thursday evening, SpaceX launched yet another of its Falcon 9 rockets to space, the 49th in 2022, a record as it continues to launch a rocket about once every six days. This one carried 53 Starlink satellites to orbit, adding to a constellation that now has more than 3,000 in operation — more satellites than the rest of the world combined, according to analysts.
On Tuesday, SpaceX is scheduled to launch a much more powerful rocket, the Falcon Heavy. This time, the customer is the U.S. Space Force and the payload — a spy satellite of some sort? — is strictly classified.
The launches come as tensions between the United States and Russia mount over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and just days after Russia threatened to target the commercial satellites, which have proved a boon to Ukraine and its allies during the war.
The launches are yet another sign of the Pentagon’s increasing reliance on the commercial space sector, which has become more capable at the same time that space has become an increasingly contested domain. That partnership was even codified in the National Defense Strategy released by the Defense Department earlier this week: “We will increase collaboration with the private sector in priority areas, especially with the commercial space industry, leveraging its technological advancements and entrepreneurial spirit to enable new capabilities.”
Commercial satellites test the rules of war in Russia-Ukraine conflict
“I am certain that my counterpart in Russia, whoever that is, is not very happy with Starlink, as it’s assisting Ukraine,” Lt. Gen. John Shaw, deputy commander of the U.S. Space Command, said at a space conference on Monday. “And with commercial imagery, such as Maxar’s products, that are plastering all over the world news the things that are going on, I don’t think they’re very happy about that either. And we know that they’re probably going to take steps to try to stop those commercial services because they run counter to Russia’s national interest.”
In a speech, Konstantin Vorontsov, deputy director of the Russian foreign ministry’s department for non-proliferation and arms, said the proliferation of privately operated satellites is “an extremely dangerous trend that goes beyond the harmless use of outer space technologies and has become apparent during the latest developments in Ukraine.”
He warned that, "quasi-civilian infrastructure may become a legitimate target for retaliation.”
Asked about the threat, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Thursday reiterated earlier comments form her counterpart at the Pentagon, and said that “any attack on U.S. infrastructure will be met with a response, as you’ve heard from my colleague, in a time and manner of our choosing. And that still stands. We will pursue all means to explore, deter, and hold Russia accountable for any such attacks. Clearly, I’m not going to lay them down here in public. But we have made ourselves very clear.”
“The bulk of innovation in space is coming from the commercial sector, not the government, and that is a huge shift from previous decades,” said Brain Weeden, the director of program planning at the Secure World Foundation, a think tank. “The big challenge is, how does the U.S. military take advantage of that? It’s a very different way of doing business.”
Ukraine and its Western allies have relied on a number of commercial companies from the United States, including Planet and Maxar Technologies, which have provided real-time satellite imagery of the battlefield, and SpaceX, which operates the Starlink satellite constellation that has provided internet access, keeping Ukraine online despite Russian attacks on terrestrial communications systems.
The Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies have taken a keen interest in Virgin Orbit, the small launch company founded by Richard Branson. Instead of launching its rockets from a vertical launch pad on the ground, the company tucks its boosters under the wing of a 747 airplane that carries it aloft. It then drops the rocket, which fires its engines and flies off to space. That allows the company to launch from any runway that can accommodate a plane the size of a 747.
Russia is adept at disrupting satellites, and has repeatedly tried to jam the Starlink system, though it has remained online, U.S. officials have said. Last year, Russia fired a missile that destroyed a dead satellite in a test that demonstrated its ability to target sensitive spacecraft.
Swarms of satellites make it simply more difficult to target them, as Derek Tournear, director of the U.S. Space Force’s Space Development Agency said earlier this week, according to SpaceNews: “How many Starlink satellites have the Russians shot down?" The answer, he said, was “zero.” | 2022-10-28T18:04:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Russia threatens commerical satellites Pentagon and Ukraine depend on - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/10/28/space-war-ukraine-pentagon-russia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/10/28/space-war-ukraine-pentagon-russia/ |
The one trend that matters when betting the NFL
Washington Post illustration/iStock
Betting trends are easy to find, which is why every weekend preview is filled with them. For example, the Atlanta Falcons and New York Giants are each 6-1 against the spread this season, while Cleveland Browns games have gone over the total six times in seven games, the most in the NFL. The Philadelphia Eagles, Buffalo Bills and Falcons are a combined 8-0 against the spread at home, while the Giants, Los Angeles Chargers and New York Jets are collectively 9-0 against the spread on the road.
Does that mean you should lean into these trends at the betting window? No, because the sample sizes are too small to make that an informed decision. In general, to get an idea of how successful a team should be against the spread at any point of the season, you should add eight games of .500 performance to their total. For example, if a team like Atlanta starts off 6-1 against the spread, we wouldn’t expect them to go 15-2 against the spread over a full season. Instead we could estimate they would win 67 percent of games against the spread (six wins + four divided by 15 games, representing seven real games and the eight extra games we added to adjust for the small sample size), or one that would go 11-6 against the spread over the course of a season. Still impressive, but short of the extrapolated 15-2 based solely on Atlanta’s current against-the-spread record.
If you really want to know whether you should back a team or not, a more reliable method involves looking at the trend of the team’s cover margin — the amount of points by which it covers, or fails to cover, the spread. That will tell us not only if a team is on the rise or decline but also if the market has caught up with reality. If not, we could have an edge.
Let’s look at the New York Jets as an example. During the first few weeks of the season, with Joe Flacco under center, the Jets failed to cover the spread in two of their first three games. After the switch to Zach Wilson, they have covered in every game, and by an average of 15½ points. It remains to be seen how the season-ending injury to running back Breece Hall and subsequent trade for James Robinson will affect them going forward, but these are meaningful upward trends against the sportsbooks’ expectations.
At the other end of the spectrum are the Green Bay Packers. A letdown blowout loss against the Minnesota Vikings to start the season was followed by two straight performances in which the Packers covered the spread, but things have gone downhill over the past month. The Packers are 0-4 against the spread since, and weren’t closer than six points to the spread in any of those games, a troubling downward trend that has coincided with quarterback Aaron Rodgers playing with an injured thumb over the last two weeks. A similar story can be found in Tampa Bay with the injury-wracked Buccaneers. Two decent performances at the start of the season have been overshadowed by six straight losses against the spread, including a 20-18 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers as 10-point favorites, a 21-3 loss to the Carolina Panthers as 12-point favorites and Thursday’s 27-22 loss to the Baltimore Ravens as narrow favorites.
This doesn’t mean you should run out and blindly bet on the Jets or against the Packers and Buccaneers, but it does show you potential market inefficiencies — and potential opportunities. A recent example arrived in Week 7, when the Jets were getting as many as 3½ points against the Denver Broncos before the severity of Denver quarterback Russell Wilson’s injury was widely known. It was clear leading up to the game that the Jets were on the rise and worthy of backing for an outright upset. The Broncos, meanwhile, had covered twice in their first six games with combined actual totals averaging 31 points per contest. A low total puts points at an even bigger premium, leading to last week’s recommendation of the Jets even after the point spread moved in New York’s favor.
We can trust these trends even in smaller samples because they’re measuring not performance or execution, like a win-loss method might, but the market’s efficiency. And the improvement or decline against the spread should be rooted in real change: Wilson taking over at quarterback for the Jets. Rodgers’s thumb injury hampering his passing. The Cincinnati Bengals making personnel and scheme changes that led to improved results.
offensive changes for Cincy
11 personnel:
79% wk 1-4
98% wk 5+
shotgun rate:
first down run rate:
results?
massive decrease in stacked boxes (47% wks 1-4, 29% since) & more efficiency
more for @NFLonFOX:https://t.co/vz5z0YmSPO
How do you know when the market has caught up to the changes? Ideally, when the pregame spreads better reflect the final margin of victory. This method, like all methods, will never be perfect, but you can rest assured that a team covering the spread by more than two touchdowns for a few games in a row is being undervalued by the market.
Pick: Carolina Panthers +4½ (This number has since moved down.)
Pick: New England Patriots -1½ (This number has since gone up.)
Cincinnati Bengals (-3½) at Cleveland Browns
Pick: Cincinnati Bengals -3 (This number has since gone up.) | 2022-10-28T18:50:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | NFL Week 8 betting strategy and picks - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/28/nfl-week-8-betting-strategy-picks/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/28/nfl-week-8-betting-strategy-picks/ |
An inventory of documents and other items seized from former president Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate. (Jim Bourg/Reuters)
Mar-a-Lago classified papers held sensitive information on Iran and China
When deciding whether to file charges in an investigation, Justice Department officials often use past cases as a guide. In 2015, authorities won a misdemeanor guilty plea from retired general and former CIA director David H. Petraeus. Ten years earlier, former national security adviser Samuel “Sandy” R. Berger pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for removing classified documents from the National Archives and Records Administration.
FBI's Mar-a-Lago search followed months of resistance, delay by Trump
Spencer S. Hsu contributed to this report. | 2022-10-28T18:54:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | David Raskin, veteran prosecutor, joins Trump Mar-a-Lago probe - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/10/28/raskin-mar-a-lago-trump-documents/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/10/28/raskin-mar-a-lago-trump-documents/ |
Don Bolduc, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in New Hampshire, listens to a question as he campaigns at the Auburn Tavern on Oct. 5, 2022, in Auburn, N.H. (Mary Schwalm/Associated Press)
If you look on social media from the period around the 2020 election, there is one thing that appears to be absent: any footage of a bus dropping off voters in New Hampshire.
You’d think that if there were school buses or charter buses rolling up to polling places and disgorging dozens of people, that would have been captured somehow: by other voters, by neighbors, by workers at the polling places themselves. But there are no such images or videos that I could find.
That means one of two things. Maybe the buses parked around the corner or behind a wall, letting people out one or two at a time to slip into the church where ballots were cast. Or maybe there were no buses of people shuttling illegal voters from other states to cast ballots in New Hampshire, as Republican Senate candidate Don Bolduc alleged during a debate on Thursday.
If you are only vaguely familiar with Bolduc’s name, it’s probably because he was in the news a month or two ago, also for voter-fraud-related reasons. Bolduc won the Republican primary in the state after echoing Donald Trump’s false claims that the results of the 2020 election were suspect. But then, as soon as he earned a spot in the general election, he backtracked. The rapid reversal was flagged as an indicator that, for some people at least, repeating Trump’s claims was little more than opportunism.
But then there was this week’s debate. During a section focused on election integrity — itself a reflection of the spread of Trump’s claims — Bolduc elevated that idea about the buses.
“We need to make sure that school buses loaded with people at the polls don’t come in and vote,” he said, to tittering in the audience. “ … You can laugh about it, but people in New Hampshire aren’t laughing about it.”
The moderator pushed back. “You’re claiming that buses full of voters who are not permitted to vote here,” he asked — “you’re claiming that that happens in New Hampshire?”
“I am claiming that that is what Granite Staters tell me,” Bolduc replied. “And I’m saying we need to respond to that. … I’m saying that this is what Granite Staters are telling me, and I think it’s valid.”
At the outset, notice that Bolduc frames this idea as being a response to voters’ concerns rather than a concern of his own. This is a common way in which Republicans have managed to elevate fraud claims from a distance. When Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) announced that he would be objecting to electoral votes cast on Jan. 6, 2021, he said that “the allegations of fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election exceed any in our lifetimes.” Note the emphasis added there. He wasn’t saying there was fraud. He was just responding to others saying it.
Others have been saying this about New Hampshire for a while, actually. In 2017, Donald Trump — eager to suggest that he’d won the popular as well as the electoral vote — claimed that thousands of people were hauled from nearby Massachusetts to vote against him.
This doesn’t make much sense, in part given that the Republican running against Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), Bolduc’s opponent this year, lost more narrowly than Trump did. (Did the illegal voters only get to the top of the ticket?) Federal Election Commission Commissioner Ellen Weintraub asked Trump to provide evidence of this “fraud” so that the FEC could investigate, to no avail. Various New Hampshire officials weighed in to dismiss the assertion as baseless.
At the time Trump elevated the idea, I did a little back-of-the-envelope math. If we assume that 10,000 people showed up to vote in the state on Election Day 2020 (the number cited by Bolduc), all of whom traveled there by bus, that’s going to require 179 full school buses, assuming 56 seats per bus. If they all came at once, that’s a mile-and-a-half of school buses, pouring into New Hampshire. But if they didn’t, that’s still 181 opportunities for someone to see what was happening.
One of the New Hampshire officials who weighed in back in 2017 was Fergus Cullen, a city councilor in the town of Dover, N.H., and a former chairman of the state Republican Party. That experience in hand, he issued a challenge on social media in 2020.
I am renewing my offer to pay $1000 to the first person who can prove that even one out-of-state person took a bus from anywhere in Massachusetts to any New Hampshire polling place and voted illegally in the Nov 2020 election #nhpolitics 1/5 pic.twitter.com/6X74DN0nnF
In a phone call with The Washington Post, Cullen confirmed that his thousand-dollar challenge in 2020 had gone unmet.
“It’s like Bigfoot, right?” he said. “Everyone’s got a smartphone with a camera. You’d think Bigfoot sightings would go up. In fact, you’ve got none.”
An update for Don Bolduc: Granite Staters are concerned about the number of Bigfoots (Bigfeet?) they aren’t seeing in their state. Clearly, officials need to respond to that.
On our radar: DeSantis and Youngkin to campaign for Zeldin in New York | 2022-10-28T18:54:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In an era of innovative vote-fraud claims, Don Bolduc dusts off a classic - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/28/bolduc-new-hampshre-fraud-claims/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/28/bolduc-new-hampshre-fraud-claims/ |
We’ve been told a lie about rural America
From far right to left, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper and White House adviser Mitch Landrieu look at broadband internet equipment at Wake Technical Community College in Raleigh, N.C., on Oct. 27. (Allen G. Breed/AP)
There’s a story Republicans tell about the politics of rural America, one aimed at both rural people and the rest of us. It goes like this: Those coastal urban elitist Democrats look down their noses at you, but the GOP has got your back. They hate you; we love you. They ignore you; we’re working for you. Whatever you do, don’t even think about voting for a Democrat.
And for the most part, they don’t. Donald Trump won 71 percent of White rural votes in 2020, a significant improvement over the 62 percent he got in 2016.
That story pervades our discussion of the rural-urban divide in U.S. politics. But it’s fundamentally false. The reality is complex, but one thing you absolutely cannot say is that Democrats don’t try to help rural America. In fact, they probably work harder at it than Republicans do.
Let’s talk about just one area that has been of particular interest to Democrats, and to rural people themselves: high-speed internet access, a problem that’s addressed by hundreds of millions of dollars in funding that the Biden administration announced this week.
The problem is straightforward: The less dense an area is, the harder it is for private companies to make a profit providing internet service. Laying a mile of fiber-optic cable to reach a hundred apartment buildings is a lot more efficient than laying a mile of cable to reach one family farm.
So you need government to fill the gaps. That’s because the lack of high-speed service makes it harder to start and sustain many kinds of businesses, have schools access the information students need, and allow people many of the basic pleasures of modern life, like rewatching all six seasons of “Peaky Blinders.”
The Biden administration has now rolled out $759 million in new grants and loans for building rural broadband. This money comes from the infrastructure bill, but the other big spending bills President Biden signed, the American Rescue Plan and the Inflation Reduction Act, also had a wealth of money and programs specifically targeted to rural areas.
While those programs cover a variety of needs, broadband is particularly visible. The administration is using the money to fund rural broadband projects from Alaska to Michigan to Minnesota to Oregon. And of course, when that federal money provided by Democrats over the objection of Republicans comes to red states, Republican officials rush to take credit for it.
This isn’t new or unusual. Every Democratic presidential campaign puts out a plan for rural America. The Biden administration created the Rural Partners Network to coordinate executive branch initiatives affecting rural Americans. Every big spending bill Democrats write makes sure to direct money to address the needs of rural areas.
Liberals sometimes say rural dwellers have been fooled into voting Republican — and therefore against their economic interests — based on social issues such as abortion and LGBTQ rights. That’s not the argument I’m making here. It’s legitimate to put those issues first if they’re what you care about the most. If you live in rural Kansas and your opposition to abortion is profoundly important to you, it would be unreasonable to expect you to support the pro-abortion-rights party, even if it brought broadband to your town.
But it would be wrong to ignore the extremely hard work Democrats do to improve the lives of rural Americans, even as they won’t win most of their votes. We could argue about the value of different programs or economic policies in such areas, but you can’t say Democrats aren’t trying.
That’s all the more notable because Democrats are in fact a primarily urban and suburban party. Even if they don’t campaign in rural areas as much as they should, when it comes to governing, they do just about everything they can to help rural America.
This doesn’t work politically partly because of cultural issues, but also because of the power of the story of liberal disdain for rural folks. “We pretty much own rural and small-town America,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said earlier this year. Not only is he right, but Republicans know they don’t have to do much of anything to maintain that support.
So if nothing else, we ought to give Democrats credit for working to improve the lives of rural Americans. Even if the people who benefit probably won’t. | 2022-10-28T19:21:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Democrats do more to help rural America than Republicans do - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/28/lie-rural-americans-broadband-democrats/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/28/lie-rural-americans-broadband-democrats/ |
Post Elizabeth: 5 things we know about Prince Harry’s memoir
Prince Harry with his older brother, Prince William, and their cousin Peter Philips during the funeral procession of their grandmother Queen Elizabeth II in London on Sept. 19. (Tom Nicholson/Reuters)
One picture may be worth a thousand words, but the one-word title of Prince Harry’s forthcoming memoir was enough to ignite social media when details of the much-awaited book dropped this week. Harry’s story is called “Spare,” a play on the royal dynamic of “an heir and a spare” — and Harry’s unofficial role as backup to his older brother, Prince William, the heir to the throne.
The internet seized on the “power and the pathos of one word,” as one royal commentator tweeted Thursday. The arresting cover photo (reportedly taken by Ramona Rosales, who also photographed Harry’s wife, Meghan, for Variety) sparked chatter too. But amid speculation of a tell-all, the question remains: Will this book say anything we don’t already know?
As you would expect, Penguin Random House is busy stoking the memoir as “remarkably personal and emotionally powerful.” And as of Friday morning, “Spare” sits atop Amazon’s bestseller list.
But let’s take a moment to consider all that we actually know.
1. After a lot of uncertainty about timing, Harry’s memoir will be released Jan. 10. The price point — $36 retail — is well above the average hardcover price. The book will be published in 16 languages. (The Spanish title, “Spare: En La Sombra,” translates as “Spare: Life in the Shadows,” Britain’s Telegraph newspaper reports.)
2. Harry is giving away some share of the profits. The multi-book deal reportedly generated an advance in the range of $20 million. A publisher statement says Harry “wishes to support British charities with donations from his proceeds.” It’s unclear how much he may ultimately earn or distribute. He has already given $1.5 million to Sentebale, a charity he co-founded in 2006 to help youth in Lesotho and Botswana affected by HIV/AIDS, the statement said.
3. The book is 416 pages. The prince is narrating the audio version.
4. The prince had writing help. “Harry is working with the acclaimed ghostwriter J.R. Moehringer, who won accolades for his work on the autobiography of the tennis player Andre Agassi, and is known for probing the tensions inherent in father-son relationships,” the New York Times reports. Moehringer, who reportedly received his own million-dollar advance, is a former Times journalist who won a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 2000. (The Telegraph notes that Moehringer has worked on at least three biographies with one-word titles.)
5. Until someone gets their hands on a bootleg copy, we can only speculate about the contents. The 2021 announcement quoted Harry as saying: “I’m writing this not as the prince I was born but as the man I have become.” Cue frenzied speculation (and reported palace dread) about what he might reveal. Would the prince criticize stepmother Camilla, whom his mother, Princess Diana, famously derided as the third person in her marriage? Or elaborate on the family tensions — and those accusations of racist remarks — that he and Meghan disclosed in their Oprah Winfrey interview? “The decision to write a tell-all autobiography has been branded a ‘moneymaking exercise at the expense of his blood family,’ ” the Daily Mail huffed last summer.
Though books about the royals are common, books by royals are much less so. The publisher’s book site recalls Harry and William walking behind Diana’s coffin in 1997: “Billions wondered what the princes must be thinking and feeling — and how their lives would play out from that point on. For Harry, this is that story at last.” Whatever Penguin says about the book’s “raw, unflinching honesty,” remember: The publisher has an advance to recoup. On the other hand, the frustrations Harry has shared — his father stopped taking his calls as Harry sought to negotiate his 2020 exit from royal life — make clear that the only thing muzzling him at this point is his own judgment.
Royal roles questioned: The status of Harry and his uncle Prince Andrew as designated stand-ins for the monarch has been questioned in Parliament. Neither prince is a “working” royal; Harry famously stepped back from official duties in 2020, and Andrew was yanked off stage in 2019 amid a backlash to a “nuclear explosion level bad” interview about his association with financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Yet by virtue of their age and position in the line of succession, both remain counselors of state under the Regency Act, which puts them among the handful of people who can step in for the monarch if he is abroad or incapacitated. The princes’ status as potential stand-ins was raised in the House of Lords this week, People magazine reports, with one member suggesting the king consider a “sensible amendment” to update the act. Royal biographer Robert Hardman predicts in the Daily Mail that a proposal will come before Parliament, “possibly within weeks,” to expand the group of counselors to include the king’s sister, Princess Anne, and youngest brother, Prince Edward.
Majestic flashback: The November issue of British Vogue includes a collection of tributes to the late Queen Elizabeth II. We particularly enjoyed Jordan’s Queen Rania reflecting on “an icon in sensible shoes.” And this: Julie Andrews confessing to being “almost speechless” when, as she was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire, the queen told her, “I’ve been waiting a long time to see you here.”
Inside Althorp: The Spencer family’s ancestral home is opening its doors — at least virtually. The wife of Princess Diana’s younger brother Charles announced a video series exploring the Althorp estate and artifacts, People magazine reports.
“If I’m honest,” Karen, Countess Spencer, says in a trailer for the production, called “Spencer 1508,” “I initially sort of rejected the full-time nature of this role.” But being chatelaine of the 514-year-old grand home grew on her. “I thought that this whole house was lovely, but that wasn’t going to take up very much of my time. I will confess that it, it has sucked me in.”
The countess is Charles’s third wife; the couple married at the Althorp estate in 2011. “We’re trying to make this place accessible to those who won’t ever have a chance to visit here,” Charles says in another trailer.
Diana is buried at the estate in a location off-limits to the public.
Richer than the royals: For the first time, the residents of 10 Downing Street may be wealthier than those of Buckingham Palace, writes Post London correspondent Karla Adam. The annual Sunday Times Rich List estimates the wealth of Britain’s new prime minister, former banker Rishi Sunak, and his wife, Indian tech heiress Akshata Murty, around 730 million pounds ($830 million). (The couple are in a three-way tie for ranking No. 222 on this year’s list.) By comparison, Queen Elizabeth's net worth was estimated at about 370 million pounds ($420 million) before her death. If that sounds low, it’s because the monarch doesn’t personally “own” all of the jewels and castles associated with the royal family but is custodian of gems and properties that belong to the crown.
Prime details: Here’s a Post slideshow on the 15 prime ministers who spanned Elizabeth’s seven-decade reign. (Among our favorite nuggets was this one drawn from Ben Pimlott’s “The Queen: Elizabeth II and the Monarchy”: that Harold Wilson, Elizabeth’s first prime minister from the Labor Party, and a politician with socialist leanings, “behaved towards her — unexpectedly — as an equal, and talked to her as if she were a member of his Cabinet.”)
The Royal Parks reports that hundreds of teddy bears left among floral tributes to Queen Elizabeth are being cleaned and donated. A week after the funeral, volunteers began removing floral tributes to be composted and reused around park properties.
A post shared by The Royal Parks (@theroyalparks)
Opinion|Post Elizabeth: 5 things we know about Prince Harry’s memoir
Opinion|Post Elizabeth: ‘The Crown’ controversy’s clash of art and reality | 2022-10-28T19:21:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Prince Harry's book 'Spare' will release Jan. 10. Here's what we know. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/28/post-elizabeth-newsletter-prince-harry-memoir-five-things/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/28/post-elizabeth-newsletter-prince-harry-memoir-five-things/ |
By John Stirrup
Prince William County chair Ann B. Wheeler and vice-chair Victor S. Angry at a Sept. 8, 2020, Prince William County Board of Supervisors meeting in Woodbridge. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)
John Stirrup is a member of the board of directors of the Manassas Battlefield Trust. From 2003-2011, he represented the Gainesville District on the Prince William County Board of Supervisors and has served on the county’s Zoning Ordinance Review Committee and Parks Authority.
The citizens of Prince William County deserve honest, aboveboard governmental proceedings that work in their best interest. But as we close in on a Nov. 1 vote that could drastically change the nature of land use in sensitive areas, I am increasingly concerned they are being let down.
It’s not too late to pause, and for those who govern Prince William County — as I once did — to bring transparency and credibility to review the proposal to build the world’s largest data center amid the county’s historic, preservation and residential lands.
An all-nighter with a sudden predawn vote on a radical planning change is no way to instill public faith in the process.
But that’s precisely what happened at 5 a.m. on Sept. 14 in a marathon public hearing on the Prince William County Digital Gateway Comprehensive Plan Amendment (CPA) when the planning commission approved surprise changes sought by data center developers that will weaken the carefully considered, built-in protections for environmental and heritage preservation.
It was such a bizarre and unprecedented action, County Board of Supervisors Chair Ann Wheeler decided that because of the “confusion about the process,” she would delay the supervisors’ vote on the CPA, which had been scheduled for Oct. 11, until Nov. 1.
That is not enough.
Data centers and their massive buildings have become an integral part of modern life around here with the tremendous growth of cloud computing. Northern Virginia has become a worldwide leader in data centers. Prince William County, which has 33 existing data centers, 13 more under construction and even more in the works, could overtake Loudoun County, the region’s leader, if the county approves the proposed CPA. The CPA would allow for rezoning of 2,133 acres of residential and agricultural land along Pageland Lane in Manassas for development of new data centers that are even larger than the massive existing facilities.
The problem and the challenge for good planning is that the proposed new “Prince William Digital Gateway” is not only in the county’s rural crescent but shares borders with the Manassas National Battlefield Park and the Conway Robinson Memorial State Forest.
To help mitigate negative effects, county planners proposed a 60-acre park to separate the data centers from the battlefield by 15 to 20 acres. They also called for two wildlife corridors no fewer than 300 feet wide, as well as protections for a suspected mass grave of Civil War soldiers, a historic home site and other historic resources and measures to control storm water runoff.
QTS Data Centers, which, with Compass Datacenters, seeks to rezone 800 acres in the proposed new gateway, initially claimed that it was “committed to a thoughtful development strategy that will preserve the historical significance and aesthetic beauty of the area.”
But that attitude changed literally in the middle of the night when Neabsco Planning Commissioner Qwendolyn Brown made a motion not only to recommend approval of the new Digital Gateway CPA but also approval of “revisions and clarifications” requested by QTS and Compass in a Sept. 9 letter.
The requested revisions were unknown to nearly everyone because the letter had not been made public. Perhaps that’s because the data centers knew they were turning their backs on both history and the environment. They want to cut the size of the 60-acre park by as much as a third. They want to eliminate one wildlife corridor and remove the 300-foot width requirement on the other. They want the protections removed for the suspected Civil War burial site and the historic home site, charging that the county “unreasonably and prematurely assumes” they are worth preserving. They want to ditch the storm water stipulations because the county’s storm water policies are “confusing and unworkable.”
The changes requested by the data center companies are unreasonable and unacceptable. That they were rushed through the approval process in the dead of night is made even more shocking by the fact that Sept. 9 letter was not made available to the public before the hearing and there was no discussion of them whatsoever before the new CPA was rubber stamped by the commission. This middle-of-the-night surprise was obviously a major source of the confusion, frustration and controversy that has erupted in the wake of the commission’s ill-considered action.
The county has an obligation to mitigate this fiasco. The Board of Supervisors should send this proposal back to the Planning Commission. It must direct the staff to assess these proposed changes and then bring them up for open discussion at a future public meeting. Only then can the public begin to feel reassured that the planning and zoning process is one of professionalism and integrity.
Opinion|The ‘missing middle’ is a crucial piece of Arlington’s housing puzzle | 2022-10-28T19:21:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Prince William residents deserve transparency on data centers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/28/prince-william-residents-deserve-transparency-data-centers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/28/prince-william-residents-deserve-transparency-data-centers/ |
Belarus punishes Siarhei Satsuk, a journalist who exposed the truth
Belarusian journalist Siarhei Satsuk. (Nadia Buzhan/Nasha Niva)
As an independent journalist in a country ruled by a despot, Siarhei Satsuk took chances — big chances. He was editor of the popular online news outlet Ezhednevnik and he was fearless in exposing corruption, showing how fat cats and officials had ripped off medical supplies meant for the public during the pandemic. Now he is paying a terrible price.
On Oct. 26, Judge Svetlana Bondarenko of the Minsk City Court sentenced Mr. Satsuk to eight years in prison. He has been in pretrial detention since he was detained Dec. 8. The authorities shuttered his website. According to the Belarusian Association of Journalists, he is formally charged with “incitement of hatred,” “abuse of power or official authority” and “taking a bribe.” Those charges are a sham. He is being punished by the Belarus regime strongman Alexander Lukashenko because he dared challenge the country’s kleptocratic power structure.
According to the Belarus human rights group Viasna, Mr. Satsuk’s reporting touched a sensitive nerve. He unearthed corruption that included kickbacks for the supply of medical equipment; examined “the purchase of an unregistered vaccine, which was actually tested on Belarusian children”; and exposed falsification of data, with the approval of the Ministry of Health, on the spread of the coronavirus in Belarus.
Moreover, Ezhednevnik gave extensive coverage to Belarus’s stolen 2020 election. That year, one of the prominent candidates for president was Sergei Tikhanovsky, a popular YouTuber, who ran on an anticorruption slogan of “Stop the cockroach.” He was arrested and jailed. His wife, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, and two other women ran in his place and drew enormous crowds with the promise to bring Belarus back to democracy after almost 25 years under Mr. Lukashenko’s erratic dictatorship. Ms. Tikhanovskaya’s election victory was sizable, but Mr. Lukashenko refused to relinquish power and forced her out of the country, unleashing massive popular demonstrations. Thousands of citizens were jailed for protesting and many were beaten in prison. One of Ms. Tikhanovskaya’s running mates, Maria Kolesnikova, remains in prison.
The group Viasna now counts 1,335 political prisoners in Belarus, including its own chairman, Ales Bialiatski. Many of those jailed did nothing more than demand democracy. They include 32 media workers, according to the journalists’ association. Among them are four from the private news agency BelaPAN who were recently given harsh prison sentences. Andrei Aliaksandrau, the former deputy director, was sentenced to 14 years in prison on bogus charges of organizing protests, tax evasion, creating “an extremist formation” and high treason. His wife, Iryna Zlobina, was sentenced to nine years; former director Dzitry Navazhylau received six years; editor in chief Iryna Leushyna was sentenced to four years. The association said all the charges were “politically motivated since the first day” of prosecution, aimed at journalists who “performed their professional duties legally and remained a model of high-profile Belarusian journalism.”
These journalists have done nothing wrong. Even in Mr. Lukashenko’s police state, they began every day seeking to record what they saw, to provide that essential link to readers about the world around them. Along with all those unjustly held in Belarus, the reporters must be freed. Journalism is not a crime. | 2022-10-28T19:21:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Belarus punishes Siarhei Satsuk, a journalist who exposed the truth - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/28/siarhei-satsuk-belarus-journalist-lukashenko/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/28/siarhei-satsuk-belarus-journalist-lukashenko/ |
Employees conduct quality control checks on the Volkswagen ID Buzz electric microbus in the light tunnel of the assembly line during a media tour of the Volkswagen AG (VW) multipurpose and commercial vehicle plant in Hanover, Germany. Europe’s biggest automaker is set to become the world's biggest electric-car maker, inching past rival Tesla Inc. by 2024, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. (Alex Kraus/Bloomberg)
After months of negotiations, the European Union reached a political agreement this week to effectively ban new nonelectric cars from 2035 onward.
The agreement, reached at 9 p.m. on Thursday in Brussels and announced by the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament, amounts to a 100 percent carbon dioxide emission reduction target for new cars and vans by 2035.
“This agreement will pave the way for the modern and competitive automotive industry in the EU. The world is changing, and we must remain at the forefront of innovation,” Jozef Sikela — the minister of industry and trade in the Czech Republic, which holds the rotating council presidency — said in a statement. | 2022-10-28T19:33:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | EU plan for only electric new vehicles by 2035 ‘without precedent’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/10/28/eu-electric-cars-2035/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/10/28/eu-electric-cars-2035/ |
By Gary Gerard Hamilton | AP
Possessing a credit list far too lengthy to print, Babyface began making his mark in music in the late ‘80s before finding massive success in the ’90s through early 2000s writing and producing for megastars like Michael Jackson, Beyoncé, Madonna, Boyz II Men, Usher, Celine Dion and frequent musical collaborator Toni Braxton, who refers to herself as Babyface’s “muse.” He also built a very successful solo career with major hits like, “And Our Feelings,”“Never Keeping Secrets,”"When Can I See You” and “Every Time I Close My Eyes.” | 2022-10-28T19:34:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Babyface doesn’t rest on his laurels with ‘Girls Night Out’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/babyface-doesnt-rest-on-his-laurels-with-girls-night-out/2022/10/28/08fb1eca-56f0-11ed-ac8b-08bbfab1c5a5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/babyface-doesnt-rest-on-his-laurels-with-girls-night-out/2022/10/28/08fb1eca-56f0-11ed-ac8b-08bbfab1c5a5_story.html |
The appearance of crumbling U.S. resolve in Ukraine is a boost to Putin
Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Wednesday. (Alexei Babushkin/Sputnik/Kremlin Pool/AP)
Regarding the Oct. 25 front-page article “Liberals push new Ukraine strategy”:
I was left shaking my head after reading the public letter from 30 Democratic members of Congress to President Biden about Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine. They ask Mr. Biden to negotiate a settlement and cease-fire with Russia so that we can have a “sovereign and independent Ukraine, and … a rapid end to the conflict.” As though it were that easy. They also noted that the war has “contributed to elevated gas and food prices at home, fueling inflation and high oil prices for Americans in recent months.” The signers quickly retracted their letter the next day in the face of strong blowback from members of their own party, but I fear the damage is already done. Mr. Putin’s takeaway will be that he need only bide his time and the U.S. resolve to help Ukraine will soften.
Mr. Putin is a ruthless dictator, cut from the same cloth as Joseph Stalin. Mr. Putin’s murderous war on Ukraine, and his repeated threats to use nuclear weapons, demonstrate that there is no limit to his barbarity. Appeasement does not work with people like him — it only emboldens them. We saw that with British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Adolf Hitler before World War II. And Ukrainians, who lost millions of people in the early 1930s to the man-made famine engineered by Stalin’s government, know that their lives mean nothing to Mr. Putin. He will destroy their entire country in order to own it.
I don’t know how the United States and other democratic nations can best help Ukraine while also preventing an escalation to World War III and a potential nuclear holocaust. It is not easy. But I do know that Mr. Biden has assembled one of the most competent national security teams with Antony Blinken and Jake Sullivan, and they are doing their best to handle this powder keg. It doesn’t help when members of Congress naively undercut their efforts because of an upcoming election.
Liz Reiley, Alexandria | 2022-10-28T19:34:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The appearance of crumbling U.S. resolve in Ukraine is a boost to Putin - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/28/appearance-crumbling-us-resolve-ukraine-is-boost-putin/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/28/appearance-crumbling-us-resolve-ukraine-is-boost-putin/ |
Carbon capture is already making a difference
A flame burns at the Shell Deer Park oil refinery in Deer Park, Tex., in August 2017. (Gregory Bull/AP)
The Oct. 16 Business article “Cash for carbon capture is gift to Big Oil, climate experts say” was misguided in its criticisms of the new carbon capture tax incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act. The reality is that the potential of carbon capture is already being realized, as demonstrated by the United States’ 13 commercial-scale operating carbon capture, utilization and storage facilities, capable of capturing approximately 25 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually.
With time, the developing industry in the United States will be capable of much more, allowing sectors of our economy that are hard to decarbonize do exactly that. Moreover, the emerging technologies covered by the Section 45Q program for carbon capture, use and storage are a rarity in the world of energy policy — they have the backing of Democrats, Republicans and independents alike.
Carbon capture is already making a difference. Additional research and investment are how it can reach its full potential. Now is the time to lean in, not give up.
Aaron Padilla, Washington
The writer is vice president of corporate policy at the American Petroleum Institute. | 2022-10-28T19:34:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Carbon capture is already making a difference - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/28/carbon-capture-is-already-making-difference/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/28/carbon-capture-is-already-making-difference/ |
An ominous sign hangs near Washington Square Park in New York on March 24, 2020, at the beginning of pandemic lockdowns seeking to stop the spread of the coronavirus. (Jeenah Moon for The Washington Post)
Regarding the Oct. 24 front-page article “As covid evolves, a racial shift in deaths”:
As a physician, I was saddened to read of the death of Skill Wilson, a Tennessee paramedic, who died of covid-19 at age 59. According to the article, he was an accomplished individual who was beloved by all. I extend my condolences to his widow, family and friends.
While his death was tragic on multiple levels, two stand out. First, his death might well have been prevented if only he had been vaccinated and boosted. On a personal level, he chose not to follow vaccination requirements, and it was his right to make that decision over his own health and bodily autonomy. However, and perhaps even more important, his decision to forgo vaccination put others at risk. The more the coronavirus infects the unvaccinated, the more the virus can adapt, mutate and become more transmissible, which puts the general population, even those who have been vaccinated, at greater risk of infection.
For someone such as Mr. Wilson, who was so competent at treating and caring for others, it was incongruous for him to ignore the potential risk he posed to others by remaining unvaccinated. May Mr. Wilson’s story resonate with everyone who resists becoming vaccinated.
Robert D. Greenberg, Bethesda | 2022-10-28T19:34:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The decision to forgo vaccination puts others at risk - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/28/decision-forgo-vaccination-puts-others-risk/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/28/decision-forgo-vaccination-puts-others-risk/ |
The U.S. is ill-equipped to respond to autocratic China and Russia
Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing in February. (Alexei Druzhinin/Sputnik/AFP/Getty Images)
As described in the Oct. 24 front-page article “China’s Xi is granted power not seen since days of Mao,” Xi Jinping’s reelection as general secretary of the Communist Party is a clear harbinger that the United States will be engaged in another Cold War for the indefinite future. Together with Vladimir Putin, these two leaders of autocratic governments will continue to confront the United States at every opportunity. How will the United States respond to these rivals, as well as to the spread of autocratic influences we’re seeing in other countries such as Turkey, Hungary and India?
In the past, the United States was led by presidents who were prepared to lead our country and the West to preserve the idea that democracy was the more moral and ethical path for governing. But now, the very institutions that represent and uphold our democracy are being eroded — not by outside forces, but by Americans who have a perverse sense of honesty, integrity and accountability.
By not recognizing right from wrong, by rewarding those who see conspiracies everywhere, by supporting the demagoguery of those who would undermine our democratic institutions, the United States is ill-equipped to compete with China and Russia for the hearts and minds of people around the world.
Jeff Oltchick, Germantown | 2022-10-28T19:34:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The U.S. is ill-equipped to respond to autocratic China and Russia - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/28/us-is-ill-equipped-respond-autocratic-china-russia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/28/us-is-ill-equipped-respond-autocratic-china-russia/ |
Alex Alexeyev is on a long-term conditioning loan with the Hershey Bears. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
The Washington Capitals loaned defenseman Alex Alexeyev to the Hershey Bears of the American Hockey League on Friday on a long-term conditioning assignment. Alexeyev underwent shoulder surgery in June and has not played this season.
The long-term conditioning loan lasts for up to six days or three games. In some situations, teams are allowed to ask for a two-game extension if more time is needed to evaluate a player’s player.
When Alexeyev’s conditioning loan is over, he will likely be joining the Capitals roster. (He can’t be formally assigned to the AHL without clearing waivers.) From there, Washington can decide whether they want to send the 22-year-old blue-liner back down to Hershey.
Capitals assistant coach Kevin McCarthy said in late September that Alexeyev’s injury put him “on the back burner a bit,” but once he got healthy, Washington was excited to see what he could bring to the table.
“He is a big body that we feel like can fit in on the left side,” McCarthy said.
The 6-foot-4, 210-pound defenseman recorded a goal and 18 assists for the Bears last season. Alexeyev made his NHL debut in December 2021. He was selected by the Capitals in the first round of the 2018 NHL draft.
When Alexeyev likely rejoins the Capitals roster — unless there are transactions before that — Washington will have to make some tough decisions. As of Friday, Washington (4-4-0) has been carrying 14 forwards, seven defensemen and two goaltenders for the roster maximum of 23. Washington’s next game is Saturday in Nashville.
When Alexeyev is added, the Capitals will need to send another player down to Hershey or make a trade to create a roster spot.
Connor McMichael, Aliaksei Protas and Beck Malenstyn are the only three players on Washington’s roster who would not require waivers to be sent down. Protas, however, has found a full-time role in the lineup and has been gaining confidence on a line with Lars Eller and Anthony Mantha, so he seems like an unlikely choice.
McMichael, 21, has only played in one game this season and could benefit from regular minutes in Hershey. Capitals Coach Peter Laviolette said Wednesday there were no plans for McMichael to be sent down. Alexeyev’s conditioning loan could change that, though.
“We got a roster going that we’re happy with. I’m sure it’s tough sitting out,” Laviolette said Wednesday. “Every player wants to play and that’s a good thing. He’s just got to keep working hard and wait for his chance … I think it’s good to play games and I also think it’s good to be around [the NHL level] and practice at a certain level, at a certain pace every day.”
Malenstyn, who was recalled last week after Connor Brown suffered a lower-body injury, appears to have found his footing on the fourth line. Washington could send him down to Hershey, but it would need another player to quickly get up to speed in his place. Malenstyn can go back down to Hershey without clearing waivers until he plays in 10 games or spends 30 days on an NHL roster.
Joe Snively could also be an option. Snively requires waivers though, and could be a hot commodity for teams looking to pick up a speedy, gritty forward with offensive upside.
Washington has already lost young talent to waivers this season. Axel Jonsson-Fjallby was claimed by the Winnipeg Jets and Brett Leason by the Anaheim Ducks when the pair were placed on waivers at the end of training camp. Jonsson-Fjallby scored the game-winner Thursday night for the Jets. | 2022-10-28T19:35:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Capitals loan Alex Alexeyev to Hershey Bears - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/28/alex-alexeyev-hershey-conditioning/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/28/alex-alexeyev-hershey-conditioning/ |
Man, 38, fatally shot early Friday in Southeast D.C., police say
Maurice Frazier, 38, was killed in the 900 block of Bellevue Street SE around 2:50 a.m.
Police car with focus on siren lights. Beautiful siren lights activated in full mission activity. Policemen with patrol car in intervention operation at crime place. Emergency lights flashing on patrol car. (iStock)
A 38-year-old man was fatally shot early Friday in Southeast Washington, police said.
Maurice Frazier, from Southeast D.C., was fatally shot in the 900 block of Bellevue Street SE around 2:50 a.m. Police said they found Frazier unconscious and unresponsive in the hallway of an apartment building. He died at the scene.
Frazier’s relatives could not immediately be reached, and police had not made an arrest in his killing by late Friday afternoon. Their investigation into the incident was active. | 2022-10-28T20:34:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man, 38, fatally shot early Friday in Southeast D.C., police say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/28/homicide-dc-friday-bellevue/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/28/homicide-dc-friday-bellevue/ |
Kanye West’s enablers have a lot to answer for
Kanye West in Los Angeles on March 11. (Ashley Landis/AP Photo)
Kanye West and Lil Pump (real name Gazzy García) made a lasting and irrevocable impact on me with lyrics they recorded for the song “I Love It.” I wrote about it in 2018, saying what I thought about West, now known as “Ye” — a gazillionaire who has been hailed as “one of the greatest rappers and producers of his generation.”
The lyrics appear in my earlier column — I don’t need to repeat them again. But suffice it to say the word “misogynistic” doesn’t begin to convey the depths of it.
West left no doubt where women stood with him: firmly under his feet. He, along with other artists of his ilk, sparked the National Congress of Black Women, led by E. Faye Williams, to wage a campaign against “urban” radio stations featuring music such as West’s, which demeaned, denigrated and promoted violence against Black women. I added my two cents’ worth, observing that West’s music sent Black youths the message that deviant behavior directed toward Black girls and women is quite all right.
For our troubles and all we had to say, West continued making millions upon millions from his albums and those he has produced for others, his live sold-out performances, his Donda Sports agency with Black celebrity athletes, and his lucrative brand partnerships and commercial associations with companies such as Adidas, Balenciaga, Gap and TJ Maxx.
Karen Attiah: Congrats, you canceled Kanye. Call me when White guys get in trouble.
While Black women have been treated by West as if they are less than nothing (he ignorantly said the abolitionist and formerly enslaved Harriet Tubman “never actually freed slaves — she just had the slaves go work for other White people”), and while he embraces former president Donald Trump and right-wing politics as part of the Second Coming, West luxuriates in two $14 million ranches in Wyoming and houses a car collection reportedly worth $3.8 million.
But his financial empire is now coming down on his head. He set his mouth in motion before putting in gear whatever he has left of his humanity and good sense, letting fly with enough virulent antisemitism to warm the cockles of a Nazi’s heart.
So corporate America is cutting West loose. And so are American celebrities. Wrote author Jessica Seinfeld on Instagram following his rantings, “I support my Jewish friends and the Jewish people.” I, too, have had my say about antisemites like West.
But I can’t help but wonder where was the world of commerce and the entertainment industry when West was working his way up the financial ladder by pushing sexual misconduct and violence against Black women? I’ll tell you where.
They were right there with him, reaping the financial rewards from shows and songs that celebrated the n-word galore. How could they forget his song “N----- in Paris”? And every fashion house executive, Hollywood mogul and corporate headquarters financing enterprises like West’s knows it.
Eugene Robinson: Kanye West’s antisemitism has no deeper meaning. Stop looking.
But that also includes those who buy his music, wear his clothing apparel and envy his wealth — however he gained it.
West’s mental health has been a source of questions and reporting for several years. During a recent interview, he was asked whether he suffered from any form of mental illness. He said in reference to his hospitalization in 2016 for a psychiatric emergency, “I believe that I suffered from exhaustion. I suffered from being lied to constantly by the people around me, by my management, by my ex-wife, and I believe those things can drive anyone to a point of maximum exhaustion.” He added, “But I also believe that I’m extremely brilliant, and I’m here to make the world a better place. And I’m tired of the left media trying to pick on me.”
In an op-ed this week for the Financial Times, Ari Emanuel, the chief executive for the Endeavor media company, wrote : “Some of West’s behaviour has been dismissed over time, citing mental illness. … However, mental illness is not an excuse for racism, hatred or anti-Semitism.”
A few years ago, I stepped out of the shadows of my depression. Mental illness is, I well know, a hard battle to wage alone. I also know that hate and bigotry are no excuse. If it’s true that West has mental health challenges, he needs help, not enabling. Which is what those who have sponsored (and those who have bought) what he has served up have been doing.
West, damnably and sadly, didn’t get here on his own. He had help.
Opinion|Kanye West’s enablers have a lot to answer for | 2022-10-28T20:39:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Kanye West’s enablers have a lot to answer for - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/28/kanye-west-antisemitism-enablers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/28/kanye-west-antisemitism-enablers/ |
Learning about concussions the hard way
C.H. Flowers High School and Henry A. Wise Jr. High School during their football game in Upper Marlboro on Oct. 8. (Scott Taetsch for The Washington Post)
Thank you to Leana S. Wen for speaking out in her Oct. 25 op-ed about what my then-17-year-old brother figured out in 1965: “Concussions are a risk in youth sports, too.” To avoid a Colorado league limit on high school preseason practice, his ambitious coach (who later moved on to college football) had taken his team to Wyoming for a week in August.
When my brother Mike was hit hard in a scrimmage and was lying on the grass, the coach rushed out and asked whether he saw stars. “Yes,” Mike said. “Don’t tell anybody,” the coach told him, “or they’ll make me take you off the field.” The senior linebacker carefully stood up, removed his helmet and set it down on the turf. “I quit,” he said. “This isn’t fun anymore.”
Mary K. Schoen, Alexandria
Opinion|Codifying Roe v. Wade isn’t as simple as some would like
Opinion|A poor grade might help a student in the long run | 2022-10-28T20:39:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Learning about concussions the hard way - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/28/learning-about-concussions-hard-way/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/28/learning-about-concussions-hard-way/ |
U.S. Capitol Police officer convicted of obstructing Jan. 6 probe
Michael A. Riley was found guilty of deleting his messages with man who was at the Capitol and later arrested
Supporters of President Donald Trump scale walls to attack the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)
About two weeks after he went into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and posted extensively about it on Facebook, Virginia Beach fishing boat captain Jacob Hiles was arrested. In speaking with the FBI, Hiles mentioned something that caught the attention of investigators, according to court records: “following the riot he had become friends with a Capitol police officer.”
The FBI then took a look at Hiles’s phone, and found a screenshot of a Facebook message sent to Hiles by U.S. Capitol Police Officer Michael A. Riley on Jan. 7. “Hey Jake,” Riley wrote, “im a capitol police officer who agrees with your political stance. Take down the part about being in the building they are currently investigating and everyone who was in the building is going to be charged. Just looking out!”
Riley and Hiles continued to message until Hiles’s arrest, court records show. Then Riley deleted all of his messages with his Facebook friend, whom he’d never met in person. In August 2021, Riley was indicted on two felony counts of obstructing a federal grand jury, for his original message to Hiles and the deletion of their conversations.
After hearing five days of evidence, and then deliberating for parts of four days, a federal jury convicted Riley on Friday afternoon on one of the obstruction counts, for deleting his Facebook messages with Hiles, and failed to reach a verdict on the issue of his initial message to Hiles. Two jurors, who declined to give their names, said the jury was deadlocked 11 to 1 in favor of conviction on the message count.
Riley, 51, was not in the courtroom for the verdict, due to a previously scheduled medical appointment. His attorney, Christopher Macchiaroli, declined to comment. U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson declared a mistrial on the unresolved count, and still must rule on Macchiaroli’s motion for acquittal filed at the close of evidence.
Some Capitol Police officers were criticized for their actions on Jan. 6, accused of taking selfies with rioters or standing aside as rioters entered the Capitol. The Capitol Police said last year that they had investigated 26 officers internally, found no wrongdoing by 20 of them, and disciplined six for conduct unbecoming an officer, failure to comply with directives, improper remarks or improper dissemination of information.
Riley is the only Capitol Police officer to face a criminal charge related to Jan. 6, and that did not emerge from the internal probes.
Riley testified in his own defense, saying he didn’t consider that a grand jury would investigate Hiles’s nonviolent actions, or the pair’s messages. Most protesters the Capitol Police arrest are charged with misdemeanors, with no grand jury involvement.
Protesters ridiculed the notion that a 25-year veteran wouldn’t know that a grand jury would be investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection. “Of course the defendant knew,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Mary L. Dohrmann said in her closing argument, “that a grand jury would be involved in investigating the massive attack on the Capitol on January 6.”
Capitol Police officer charged with obstruction, accused of warning Jan. 6 riot suspect to remove Facebook posts
Riley was suspended without pay after his arrest, and resigned from the Capitol Police in October 2021, his lawyer said. He was a K-9 officer who spent Jan. 6 working with his partner on the bombs that were left outside the Democratic and Republican national headquarters on Capitol Hill.
Riley faces about 15 to 21 months in prison, according to federal sentencing guidelines. Hiles, on the other hand, received two years probation for trespassing in the Capitol. He is one of only six defendants, out of nearly 300 sentenced so far, for whom prosecutors did not recommend incarceration or home detention. Prosecutors asked the court to seal their sentencing memorandum and sentencing hearing for Hiles, which Jackson did. Jackson then presided over Riley’s trial.
“Absent Hiles’ forthrightness, both in preserving records of communications by him and Riley,” the prosecutors wrote in the memo, obtained by The Washington Post before it was sealed, “and in addressing sensitive inquiries from law enforcement, prosecution of Riley — a now-former U.S. Capitol Police Officer — may not have been possible.”
Hiles was on the witness list for the prosecution as well as the defense in Riley’s case but neither side called him. Before Hiles’s arrest, he attracted media attention when he told a Norfolk TV station in 2020 he wouldn’t allow Democrats on his fishing boat.
Hiles said in an interview after the verdict that he was surprised he wasn’t called to testify, and noted he had never met Riley.
“I don’t have any ill will or bad blood with him,” Hiles said. “I don’t even think what he did was wrong. I think there’s a lot of political things going on.” He noted that he didn’t delete any of his Facebook posts “because I didn’t have anything to hide. I didn’t do anything violent, that’s not who I am. I was there protesting.”
Riley testified he was a passionate fisherman and friended Hiles on Facebook in early January 2021 because Hiles had a large following and posted fishing videos on YouTube.
Hiles was captured on video smoking marijuana inside the Capitol and harassing officers, and he recorded multiple videos of the scene himself on Jan. 6, court records show. He sent several videos to Riley after Jan. 6, and Riley’s friends sent him a video on Jan. 9 of Hiles smoking pot, but Riley continued to communicate with Hiles. One of Riley’s friends testified he sent the video expecting that Riley would forward it to the FBI, but Riley did not.
When Hiles learned on Jan. 16 that there was a warrant for his arrest, he messaged Riley. “Call me,” Riley responded, and the two spoke for more than 20 minutes, prosecutors said.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Anne P. McNamara asked Riley why he told Hiles to delete evidence.
“It’s not that I didn’t want him to be charged,” Riley said. “I reached out to him because he’d made a post that said he’d been pushed into the building. I didn’t associate him with those who went into the building and assaulted officers.” Riley said he had been “duped” by Hiles into thinking he was innocently pushed into the Capitol.
“That I tricked him, that he was duped,” Hiles said, “that wasn’t the best defense. ... I didn’t reach out to him. He reached out to me.”
Then on Jan. 20, after Hiles surrendered and first met with the FBI, he messaged Riley that the FBI had his phone and was curious about his interactions with the Capitol Police officer. Riley then deleted hundreds of his prior communications with Hiles, court records show, and sent Hiles a message the next day declaring their conversations over. He did not delete his farewell note to Hiles, which prosecutors called his “coverup story.”
“He betrayed his oath and he betrayed his fellow officers,” McNamara said in her closing argument. “Rather than report Jacob Hiles, he told Mr. Hiles what to do to avoid getting caught. He told him to get rid of the evidence to avoid being charged with a crime. Evidence the experienced police officer knew was already being investigated.”
Macchiaroli, the defense attorney, pointed out that the FBI had Hiles’s videos and posts as early as Jan. 8, 2021, and that there was “nothing” in the messages between Hiles and Riley “showing he wanted to help Jacob Hiles avoid charges, or being arrested, or anything like that.” He added, “You don’t wake up one day and decide you’re going to obstruct the grand jury, on a post that everyone has already seen.” | 2022-10-28T21:00:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ex-Capitol Police officer Michael Riley convicted of obstructing justice in Jan. 6 probe - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/28/capitol-police-officer-guilty-jan6/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/28/capitol-police-officer-guilty-jan6/ |
Trick-or-treating? Here’s your Halloween night weather forecast.
The two main weathermakers will be fronts pushing through the Ohio Valley and into the Pacific Northwest, which will be accompanied by rain showers along and ahead of them
The weather on Halloween night won't be all that spooky for most of the country, with the exception of possible rain in the Mid-Atlantic, Pacific Northwest and Ohio Valley. (Tracy Glantz/The State/Tribune News Service/Getty Images)
Boo! Halloween is just around the corner, and tens of millions of children (and, let’s face it, some candy-hungry adults too) are set to take to neighborhood streets and sidewalks for trick-or-treating. Naturally, spending hours outdoors comes at the risk of Mother Nature’s caprice.
The two main weathermakers will be fronts pushing through the Ohio Valley and into the Pacific Northwest, which will be accompanied by some rain showers along and ahead of them.
Between the two fronts, tranquil high pressure will extend over the central U.S., leading to a pleasant and unseasonably mild evening for many.
Climate Central, an organization that tracks temperature trends over time, notes that October nights in the U.S. have warmed about 2.2 degrees since 1970. This Halloween’s span of unusually warm weather fits into a larger overarching trend.
Here’s your region-by-region Halloween forecast.
Forecast-in-brief
Where the atmosphere may play a few tricks:
New England | Mid-Atlantic | Southeast | Ohio Valley | Pacific Northwest
Here, the weather could be a bit damp, at least in parts of the region.
Where the weather will be a treat:
South | Central U.S. | Southwest | Rockies | California
Little or no precipitation is expected in this zone.
Temperatures will be in the upper 40s in northern New England to the lower- to mid-50s elsewhere. A blanket of cloud cover, predominantly high clouds but with a few low- to mid-level clouds, will hang overhead. The halfway full moon, which sets shortly before midnight local time in most locations, will intermittently shine eerily through the overcast skies.
A few very light showers can’t be ruled out, but high pressure working to become established may thwart attempts at wet weather for most. Instead, expect a bone-chilling evening with only low-end chances of some spooky mist. Odds of any precipitation will be highest in southeastern areas near Cape Cod.
Halloween day will start nicely with highs in the mid- to upper 60s near and east of Interstate 95, though clouds will remain thick. By evening, readings in the lower 50s will start bleeding east out of the Appalachians, but they may hover near 60 closer to the coastline.
Weather models are split on how inclement the weather may be at the time of trick-or-treating. The American model depicts little in the way of meaningful rainfall, with occasional light drizzle in a couple of patches, especially toward the higher terrain. The European model is a bit more bullish on some isolated to widely scattered rain showers, with even some downpours in Virginia.
It’s one of those “plan for the worst and hope for the best” forecasts. We recommend a costume that can take a few raindrops.
There could be a few trouble spots with scattered showers or an isolated thunderstorm in the Carolinas during the evening, which may put a damper on Halloween festivities. Likewise, a couple of spot showers or storms are possible in Florida, but they’d be of the typical “10-minute drenching” variety inveterate to the Sunshine State.
If you live in Georgia, there are reasons to be optimistic — it’s looking like most of the showers (emphasis on most) should be withdrawing to the Northeast. That said, some damp weather may linger and overstay its welcome.
Temperatures will be in the 60s to around 70 degrees, with the warmest temperatures to the east.
If you see a raindrop, don’t fret! Shower activity should be very, very limited and pulling away to the east. Sure, there might be some patchy drizzle or a speckle or two of fog, but you can safely leave the umbrellas at home. Temperatures will mostly be in the upper-50s and low-60s.
A low pressure system moving ashore in southern British Columbia will swing a cold front into region. Western Washington and Oregon probably will be wet thanks to onshore flow associated with that disturbance. Temperatures will mostly be in the 50s.
Across the South, temperatures will be in the mid-60s, except for 70s across central and southern Texas, where a shower or storm isn’t out of the question. Dew points, a measure of how much moisture is in the atmosphere, will be in the mid- to upper-50s. That means the air isn’t too humid, but also isn’t noticeably dry. To quote Goldilocks, “the porridge is just right.”
Central states
Perfect trick-or-treating weather. Finding rain on a radar map will be tougher than finding Waldo in “Where’s Waldo?”
Expect 50s in North Dakota, upper-50s in South Dakota, lower- to mid-60s in Nebraska and Kansas and upper-60s in Oklahoma and North Texas. Toward the Great Lakes, temperatures will be in the mid-to-upper 50s.
In other words, there’s no weather to speak of.
There will be no rainfall to speak of. Temperatures will be in the 20s and 30s in the mountains of Colorado, 30s and 40s for Utah and New Mexico, with 30s and 40s in northern parts of Arizona and across Nevada. A sliver of warmth, with temperatures in the 60s and 70s, will be present in southern Arizona in the desert.
Temperatures will be a few degrees above seasonal norms. In the mountains, they will be 30s and 40s, and in the lowlands, 50s. A few showers may sneak into the Columbia River Basin in Idaho in the late evening ahead of the Pacific Northwest system, but a washout is not expected.
California will have typical California weather — with readings in the 60s and 70s in the Central Valley and South. Conditions cool quickly near the California-Oregon border, with 50s in the lower elevations and 30s and 40s in the hills and mountainous terrain. Some light rain could sneak into northern California toward midnight. | 2022-10-28T21:05:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Halloween weather forecast: What to expect for trick-or-treating - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/10/28/halloween-weather-forecast-temperatures-rain/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/10/28/halloween-weather-forecast-temperatures-rain/ |
Nearly three years into the covid-19 pandemic, some wear masks while others do not. (Hilary Swift for The Washington Post)
One of my Revolutionary War forefathers, Tarleton Brown of Barnwell, S.C., had to abandon the siege of Augusta in 1781 when he contracted smallpox and returned home, such as it was.
The cottage acquired its name on account of having become sort of a hostel for the sick, my eight-year-old great-niece included. When she tested positive at camp last summer, she and her mother quarantined here until she was allowed to return.
It’s not exactly Walden Pond, but it’ll do. Unlike Thoreau, I didn’t build it with my own two hands. Far as I can tell, roaches did. Only they know all the secret places within. Surrounded by woods, the cottage is accessed by dirt road and a wooden bridge. Though less remote than it sounds, it’s home to countless deer, rafts of geese, several hawks and at least one or two quite vocal owls, in addition to the usual backyard inhabitants. We probably have foxes and coyotes, too, but they’re too smart to be seen.
No telling what passes in the night, but morning reveals tracks of varying sizes and sorts that keep me mindful of why I tend to stay indoors once darkness settles so deep and black, only bats can see. Other than a single, dim porch light, there’s no illumination except for an occasional wink from the moon. The quiet is immense.
Maybe nothing’s out there. Maybe everything is. But I’ll tell you what’s everywhere — covid-19 — and it smells your fear. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, and don’t deceive yourself into thinking we’re all done with it. We’re not by a long shot. Despite our best efforts to thwart the virus that leads to covid — and despite my own adherence to best practices — it got me again.
This isn’t to suggest that one shouldn’t get shot and boosted. I’m confident that my suffering would have been far greater had I not taken these precautions. The bear of it is that the newest omicron variant doesn’t care. The honey badger of infectious diseases, it will find a way to find you and gobble you up, if you’re not careful. It also likes to linger, and its victims tend to test positive for longer periods, which translates into longer quarantines. I will say that this time was worse than the previous round, even if experts say this newest version is supposedly “mild.”
Opinion|The decision to forgo vaccination puts others at risk | 2022-10-28T21:05:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Kathleen Parker: Covid isn't over. Get booster shots, please. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/28/covid-masks-shots-/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/28/covid-masks-shots-/ |
Transcript: Protecting Our Planet: The Role of Technology
MR. DENNIS: Hello, and welcome to Washington Post Live. I’m Brady Dennis, a national environmental reporter for The Washington Post.
Today, we have two segments on the role of technology in addressing climate change. Later, I will be joined by Liane Randolph, chair of the California Air Resources Board, the regulatory authority behind California's recent decision to ban gasoline-powered engines and automobiles in the years ahead. So, stick around for that. But first, we'll hear from Jigar Shah, director of the Loan Programs Office at the Department of Energy.
Jigar, welcome to Washington Post Live.
MR. SHAH: Thanks for having me.
MR. DENNIS: 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.
Jigar, a colleague of mine wrote back in March that you might be the most important man in America when it comes to boosting the nation's deployment to clean energy and the shift toward clean energy, maybe perhaps beside President Biden or Senator Joe Manchin. And of course, this was before the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. So, for viewers who might be surprised to hear that, could you tell us a little about what the head--what your job is there at the Energy Department's Loan Office, and how your role has changed and is changing with the passage of the IRA.
MR. SHAH: Well, thanks, and those are very kind words. I'm not sure that a commercial banker has ever been viewed as powerful, but I appreciate the sentiment.
Look, I think America, with the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act is set to take aggressive action to strengthen our nation's energy security. I think when you think about all the provisions that are in the Inflation Reduction, it basically adds roughly $100 billion of additional loan authority to our three existing programs: So, that's Title 17, the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Program, the Tribal Energy Loan Guarantee Program. And it also adds a really important new program called the Energy Infrastructure Reinvestment Program, or 1706 which really allows us to help retool, repower, repurpose, or replace energy infrastructure that ceased operations or improve the efficiency of existing energy infrastructure that's currently operating.
Look, I think that the Loans Program office doesn't have money that it gives out; it has loans that we accept loan applications for. And today, we're receiving 1.2 loan applications per week, and we have about 91 active applications that are seeking $92.6 billion in loan requests. And so, these are across advanced vehicles and components, advanced nuclear, biofuels, virtual power plants, transmission, critical mineral storage, carbon management, and more. And so, we're very excited to be serving American entrepreneurs and innovators.
MR. DENNIS: So, in some ways, the office that you oversee was essentially dormant under the Trump administration. I saw in a recent video when you took the job you said something to the effect of, we're open for business, again.
And I just--before we talk about specific technologies and technologies of scale, in wonder if you could take a minute and talk about how you are trying to scale this office, especially with the additional funding that you just mentioned. How do you meet the demand--or the requests, I guess--for loans that are coming from across different industries?
MR. SHAH: Yeah, it's a great question. I think the process of rehabilitating the Loan Programs Office is really about trust-building. And so, it's about reaching out to these growth companies, to these Fortune 500 companies, to infrastructure investors, and actually saying, look, this tool is a tool that you absolutely know and believe is necessary to fully realize the promise of these technologies, but it wasn't a reliable tool in the past. It's a reliable tool today and it's here now and we have an enabling infrastructure that really wants to see this money go out the door.
And I think part of what we've done is also make sure the office runs like a commercial bank, right? So, if you meet the requirements of the office, if you meet the reasonable prospects of repayment, which means that we think we're going to get paid back, then we're going to treat you fairly. It doesn't matter whether you're doing advanced fossil projects, advanced nuclear projects, renewable energy projects, or, you know, battery manufacturing and critical minerals. We treat everybody exactly the same. When they're ready to be processed, we process them.
And it's taken a long time to build that trust but today we're seeing roughly $7 billion a month of loan applications coming into the office.
MR. DENNIS: You mentioned that number, and both the number of applications that you're seeing and sort of for the amounts that you're seeing, and I wonder if you could expand on that a little bit. Have you seen a big increase in applications since the Inflation Reduction Act was passed? And if so, where are those--like, what sort of companies and industries are those coming from, and do they sort of align with the priorities of your office or with this administration?
MR. SHAH: Well, I think it's important to recognize that we're private sector-led, government-enabled in the United States. And so, all of the planning in the world is super important, but ultimately, the private sector is the one that has to champion those sectors.
And so, we publish the sectors that we have the most loan applications in every month in our monthly application activity report. And right now, the top three technology categories are advanced vehicle--vehicles and components, advanced nuclear, and biofuels. But what I would say is that we are seeing a tremendous amount of additional interest in the Loan Programs Office. And so, when you think about when the Inflation Reduction Act passed, it takes our applicants an average of three to four months to put these applications together. There's hundreds of files, a lot of work, right? I mean, our average loan application is for a billion dollars. And so, you can imagine whether you're working fully in the private sector or whether you're working on innovative technologies here at the Loan Programs Office, it's a long process.
And so, we know of hundreds of applications that are in pre-consultation with our office, that are being prepared but it will take them to get a full application submitted.
MR. DENNIS: So, I do want to go to a question from one of our audience members, Paul West from Wisconsin, who asks, "In order to cut emissions in half by 2030, we need to invest more in deploying existing tech than R&D, on future tech. How does DOE prioritize its work in terms of time to impact and geographies where it will have the highest immediate impact?"
MR. SHAH: Yeah, it's a great question. And I think the beauty of the Department of Energy is we can do both, right? So, we can do R&D in our extraordinary national laboratories and we can do deployment.
But I do think it's an important distinction that he's making, which is that, for a long time, there was this mistaken notion that if we just do more R&D and pursue more innovation, that the technologies will reach some sort of price reduction and be able to be cheaper than the alternative. And I think what we've all learned today is that the only way to reduce prices is to deploy, right? So, you have to deploy even when technologies are more expensive. And then, through the learning curve and learning by doing and incremental innovations all along the way, you get price reductions and you get the ability to save money while doing good.
But that starts with deployment, and I think, for whatever reason, we allowed people to think R&D alone could achieve these cost reductions, and today we know that that's false.
MR. DENNIS: So, I want to talk a little bit more about the existing clean technologies for a moment, things that have been around for a long time. We know the price of wind and solar has come down dramatically over the years and that their usage is increasing steadily.
Where you sit, what are the obstacles in scaling them further, and what role does your office play in that?
MR. SHAH: Well, so, we have much less of a role in mature technology. So, when you look at our monthly activity report, we have a lot less applications now in for solar and wind. There's a lot of innovation happening there. So, for instance, we have applications that have come in on advanced tower designs that allow you to get from 80-meter hub heights to 120-meter hub heights. We have some applications that have come in for advanced racking solutions for solar. So, in places like Puerto Rico, you can put these solar systems down when a hurricane is coming and so that the panels don't get damaged. So, there are some innovations that cross the threshold where private sector banks are still afraid of investing in those next-generation technologies where we play an important
role. But I would say we've shifted our attention in terms of the applications we have received really more towards these advanced sectors, right, like nuclear or sustainable aviation fuels, or carbon sequestration and storage, or hydrogen.
MR. DENNIS: Speaking of some of those other technologies, I did want to ask about that and whether you could just briefly run through some of the sort of moonshot--or, as you refer to it, earthshot technologies that maybe aren't quite there yet on a broad scale but seem to have the most promise.
What would you say to someone who was interested in that?
MR. SHAH: Yeah, I think that, you know, when we talk about these things, it's related to the audience question, which is that, for a long time I think that people really did believe that R&D is what reduced cost, and that it does on an incremental basis. But I think what we've now come to believe and understand is that deployment is what reduces cost. And so, when you look at the earthshots and moonshots that people are talking about, it's really around technologies that are already proven.
So, whether it's geothermal or long-duration energy storage or hydrogen, these technologies are already proven. They don't have technology risk; they're just expensive. And what you find is that to get them across the bridge to bankability requires roughly $100 billion of private sector involvement for every single sector, and there's probably 20 or sectors that we need to do.
The good news is that $2 trillion exists. People have made those commitments at the COPs and other things. But the question is, how do we coordinate with those capital providers to say, how do we derisk those sectors, not just through our office at the Loan Programs Office by providing the first $5- to $10 billion worth of loans but also through some of our other offices at the Department of Energy where there may be some risks around commodity prices or development risks or other things that we can do, things like streamlining, permitting, or, you know, other pieces.
MR. DENNIS: I mean, you mentioned several technologies there, one that certainly engenders a lot of opinions and a lot of attention is carbon capture. And I wonder what your thoughts are on its role as part of the solution to climate change, to getting to sort of the nation's climate goals. Is it a small piece? Do you think it will become large over time? Where does that fall into the puzzle of actually reaching the goals that President Biden has laid out?
MR. SHAH: Yeah, I think it's important for people to recognize that, while I'm a huge fan of solar and wind power, that we're going to need 20-plus technologies to reach the decarbonization goals that the president has laid down by 2035, and then for the full economy by 2050.
And carbon sequestration and storage technologies are part of that. So, when you think about what's in the national climate plan, it talks about a gigaton or more of CO2 that needs to be sequestered every year starting in 2050. And so, those technologies have to be ready, mature, and at scale and fully market accepted by the private sector by that time. So, we have a critical role to play there. And so, whether it's around, you know, capturing CO2 from ethanol plants or ammonia plants or methanol plants and putting them into CO2 trunk lines, into Class VI wells where we can bury that CO2 underground permanently, or whether it's advanced techniques around direct air capture or other approaches, it, I think, is incumbent upon the Department of Energy to make sure these technologies have been fully proven but then also deployed at scale so that they actually become a relevant tool when they're needed to decarbonize industrial emissions and other emissions that are critical to living a modern lifestyle.
MR. DENNIS: So, just some context for our viewers, the Energy Department's loan programs began in I think 2005, under George W. Bush administration, and expanded significantly in the Obama years. This gets to what you were saying about the 20 or more technologies that there are plans to invest in and to scale. You know, historically, the department provided really crucial loans that helped, as you've said, Tesla get off the ground and become the world's largest and most valuable automaker. Of course, there's been critics who seized on the failure of Solyndra, which was a solar company that borrowed about a half-a-billion dollars from the Energy Department.
I just wonder if you could talk about the sort of philosophy of investment and what measures are in place to make sure that the government is investing in--making wise investments. And then, on that same point, there's bound to be some failures that are inevitable, and how do you think about risk in this job and what is--what kind of failures are okay versus what are not?
MR. SHAH: Yeah, it's a great question and one that is clearly on my mind. I think we start with what we've accomplished, right? So, the DOE has put out roughly $32 billion to date. 13.6 billion of that principle has already been rapid, along with $4.21 billion of interest. We also set aside $5 billion for losses. Only 1.07 billion of that has been fully realized, right? So, this program makes money for the federal government.
And you know, it's had a huge impact on ways you suggested, electric vehicle manufacturing, battery manufacturing, solar, and wind deployment, et cetera. The other thing we've done is, look, we take our responsibility to protect taxpayer resources seriously. And so, we've received tremendous amount of guidance from the Congress through the Energy Act of 2020, as well as the bipartisan Infrastructure law related to how LPO evaluates risk and ensures proper oversight of our programs.
I think today most outside parties would say that we manage risk as well or better than all of the other lending programs in the federal government. We've also addressed recommendations of a key independent audit, performed by Herb Allison, of LPO and our portfolio back in 2012, an earlier time for our office, measuring results against the recommendations in that audit. And we've seen remarkable progress in adequately staffing the office and filling key roles with risk management and underwriting professional staff, standing up a risk division and robust portfolio monitoring and early warning systems, increasing transparency in interagency oversight and proactively protecting taxpayers.
So, I think that's a really longwinded way of saying, we started with 12 employees in this office in 2009. Today, we're over 200 men and women that are working together to really help America's innovators and entrepreneurs fully realize the deployment of these technologies so we can ensure our nation's energy security.
MR. DENNIS: So, we spoke about risk just now and I want to sort of turn that a little bit and say, what, then, is your ultimate measure of success? Is it making money back on some of these loans? Is it fueling technologies that really get us closer to climate goals?
How do you measure success and how much do you think your office can help to push the nation toward where the administration has set out for climate goals in the next five to ten years? About a minute here left, so this is probably our last...
MR. SHAH: Yeah, look, I think this is about American--America showing that it has the best technologies in the world, right? When you think about all the things we've invented, whether it's solar technology or wind technology or EV technology, we have the ability to dominate the landscape around the world as it comes to energy security and our national security.
I think when you look at nuclear technologies, we have the best nuclear technologies in the world. When you look at things like carbon sequestration and storage, when you think about hydrogen, all of those technologies were invented here, and they're being scaled up here. When you look at our impact on the world today on solar and wind, for instance, every single country in the world prefers to do business with American firms when they're building solar and wind projects. When you look at electric vehicles, every single country in the world looks to Tesla and our technology here in this country as what to emulate, right?
And so, the question really becomes how do you make sure the next generation of American innovators and entrepreneurs create that wealth creation here? How do we make sure the next million jobs, right, requiring specific trade skills, or good-paying jobs, and they're trained to be able to do a good-quality job without any of the safety concerns or other risks that are currently in place? How do you make sure that we're actually sharing these technologies with other countries around the world to help them with their carbon reduction but also energy security, right?
To me, the LPO plays this critical role to make sure we bridge these technologies from, yes, they were invented here, but now to, they're creating jobs here and they're actually projecting American power around the world.
MR. DENNIS: So, so many questions we didn't get to, but we'll keep an eye on this, and unfortunately, we are out of time for today. We'll have to leave it there.
Jigar Shah, thanks so much for joining us, today.
MR. SHAH: Thank you.
MR. DENNIS: Up next, we'll hear from Liane Randolph after this video. Please stay with us.
MS. KELLY: Hi there, I'm Suzanne Kelly, CEO and publisher of the Cipher Brief, a national security-focused media publication.
Today, we're talking about protecting our planet and the role of technology, specifically, coming together to build climate resilience. And joining me today to talk about this is chief sustainability officer and senior vice president of corporate responsibility at AT&T, Charlene Lake.
Charlene, welcome.
MS. LAKE: Thank you, Suzanne. Thanks for the invitation.
MS. KELLY: I'm looking forward to digging in on this. You know, AT&T has really long been a leader in addressing climate change. Why is climate action important for AT&T, and what is your strategy for addressing climate change?
MS. LAKE: You know, Suzanne, it is so important to us because climate change is affecting our customers' lives, our employees, the communities, our operations, and that's why we are driving the reductions in our emissions and we are building climate-resilient networks, and we're doing it with a three-part strategy. We have a net zero goal, scope one and two emissions by 2035. Also, the second part of our strategy is about technology. We are so passionate that that's part of the solution. So, we've set a goal to enable our business customers to reduce emissions by a gigaton by 2035. And then, finally, we all have to prepare and adapt to climate change; it is happening. So, we have new data and a tool that we're using to make our network more resilient.
MS. KELLY: You know, let's dig in on that carbon neutrality goal for just a moment. What key sources of emissions are you needing to tackle, and how do you plan to reduce them?
MS. LAKE: Well, we have to tackle electricity usage. Our electricity usage represents 99 percent of our scope to emissions, and it's because customers have such a voracious appetite for data and carrying that data across our network requires energy.
So, our plan includes several initiatives. We're going to continue to reduce consumption and increase efficiency, and we're optimizing our networks as we transition from a copper network to the more efficient fiber network. And then, of course, we have thousands of energy projects across the enterprise every year. The second part of what we're doing in this plan is we're procuring renewable energy. Our investment in clean power, so far, makes us one of the largest corporate purchasers in the U.S. And then, finally and importantly, we're focusing on our fleet. In fact, we'll soon be piloting battery-electric vehicles as we make the transition to either no emission or low emission technology.
MS. KELLY: You know, Charlene, just recently we've seen heat waves. We saw a hurricane that caused billions of dollars' worth of damage in the State of Florida.
I'm wondering, how does AT&T prepare for the physical impacts of climate change, both in your operations, and then also in the communities that you serve.
MS. LAKE: Yeah, that's a really important question. Our customers rely on us for critical connectivity. And so, that's why, when disaster strikes, you're going to see AT&T there. And because they rely on us for that critical connectivity, we are focused on resilience. And we started planning for the long-term impacts of climate change a while ago, working with the Department of Energy's Argon National Labs. And the point was to integrate forward-looking, actionable data into our planning. And so, now, with this data, AT&T is looking decades ahead so we could better assess our risk and boost our resilience. We are integrating the data into our planning tools. We are using it to analyze the vulnerability of our cell sites and what sites need retrofitting to withstand extreme weather. We're using it to determine where we put fuel cells and generators for backup power, and the reason we're doing it, it only makes sense. We're investing billions of dollars every year in our network. So, we have to protect it and we have to make it strong and resilient for our customers.
MS. KELLY: So, you have some experience in applying climate data to build resilience. What lessons have you learned, and what advice would you offer to other businesses that are looking to do the same thing?
MS. LAKE: Well, we're continuing to learn. But there's a few things, a few thoughts that I could offer.
First, we need to get out of our quarter-to-quarter mentality and really recognize the importance of long-term planning and especially doing it with data, showing the value. We worked with Argon to pilot our project in the southeast states where we were most vulnerable. We confirmed the value; we built the business case to expand; and now, we have the data for the contiguous United States.
The second thing is the value of the data is limited unless it is integrated, and that is difficult. You have to know the business. You have to work with stakeholders. You have to prove the impacts presented visually. And that's difficult, because you're changing processes and systems and attitudes.
And then, finally, I'd say you can't go it alone. We couldn't have accomplished our resiliency plan without Argon National Labs and other stakeholders. So, that's why we're making our climate data publicly available so organizations can assess their own vulnerability and get a step ahead. Communities really need resiliency plans to withstand these extremes, so we all have to work together and take the initiative to build a resilient world, but it's a collective effort.
MS. KELLY: It is a collective effort. Very well said. Charlene Lake is chief sustainability officer and senior vice president of corporate responsibility at AT&T. Thank you so much for being here to talk about this.
MS. LAKE: Thanks, Suzanne.
MS. KELLY: Now back to my colleagues at The Washington Post.
MR. DENNIS: Welcome back. And to those of you just joining us, welcome to Washington Post Live. I'm Brady Dennis, a national environmental reporter here at The Post.
I am now joined by Liane Randolph, chair of the California Air Resources Board, and a key figure in her state's recent move to ban gasoline-powered vehicles.
Liane, welcome to Washington Post Live.
MS. RANDOLPH: Thanks for having me.
Liane, I want to start in late August of this year. California announced a plan to ultimately ban the sale of gasoline vehicles by 2035. The rule, which is issued by your agency, will require that all cars sold in the state by then be free of greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon dioxide. Governor Newsom described this as the beginning of the end for the internal combustion engine. And I just wonder if you could take us through a little bit about the lead-up to that decision. Why know; how that came to be; your role in that; and why you think it's a consequential moment.
MS. RANDOLPH: Right, well, it is an absolutely consequential moment. It is really building a future where 40 percent of the emissions in California will be reduced, because those transportation causes 40 percent of our GHG emissions, and causes significant particulate matter, NOX emissions, and other impacts.
And this really was years in the making. California has been a leader in tailpipe emissions regulation. We kicked it off with the catalytic converter back in the day. And so, here we are with the opportunity and the technological path to getting to zero emission in light duty vehicles, 100 percent sales by 2035. So, it really all started with Governor Newsom's executive order towards the end of 2020, stating that we as a state needed to move our transportation sector to zero emission in all sectors, starting with the light duty vehicle sector. And we began the regulatory path a little--about two years ago, and it culminated in the adoption in August of this year.
MR. DENNIS: So, we heard in the opening video there Governor Newsom talk about how certain companies, auto companies, had embraced this, and heard you, I think, speak about how you had considered supply chains and other elements of timing. And I just wonder if you could expand on that a little bit and talk about how confident you are that the bulk of the auto industry will embrace this move, and on that timeline. I mean, the industry hasn't always even embraced more efficient gas vehicles.
And so, I just wonder what gives you the confidence that this transition will happen at the pace that California would like it to happen?
MS. RANDOLPH: So, first, I will start with a little detail. So, this rulemaking, which is called Advanced Clean Cars II is a follow-up to the first Advanced Clean Cars regulation, which required automakers to have a certain percentage of vehicles be zero emission. So, it's really building on a basic regulatory framework and making it fundamentally stronger. And it starts with model year 2026. And so, that's an important detail, because it does give the automakers time to consider the products that they are going to produce to meet this requirement, and it builds on the existing requirement that apply to the model years that are currently out being sold right now.
So, it really is a--we're able to follow on. We're able to look at what the fleets look like now, and chart a path based on how we think the fleets are looking in the future. And there's an international movement towards zero emission vehicles, and the automakers are seeing that. They're seeing the incredible success that we have had here in the United States. They're seeing the incredible success that is building in the European Union and in China. And they know that the world is moving to zero and they need to be part of that transition and they need to be creating vehicles that people want to drive and will purchase.
MR. DENNIS: I wonder if you could elaborate a little bit on what you are seeing other states doing in the wake of California's announcement. I think for our audience, traditionally, correct me if I'm wrong, 12--or about a dozen or more states have traditionally followed California's lead on the efficiency of vehicles and other related tailpipe standards.
So, how many states do you expect to follow the lead on this and on what timeframe. And what do you see as being some of the obstacles to that in certain states, whether it's wanting to or the ability to or that kind of thing?
MS. RANDOLPH: Right. So, we had 17 states follow us on ACC I. And so, we expect many of those states to also adopt ACC II. Several already have their processes in the works and we think the bulk of the states that traditionally follow us will continue to follow us in this rulemaking. And I will say, having the bold action by Congress and the Biden administration is really going to help with that, because some of the concerns we hear from other states is, you know, how are we going to meet the infrastructure needs to deploy these vehicles? And the investment in the Inflation Reduction Act and in the Infrastructure Act will help states deploy charging infrastructure throughout the country. The NEVI Program will provide for alternative fuel corridors throughout the country and every state and the District of Columbia have submitted plans to deploy that infrastructure. And so, that's a really exciting way to support the states that are adopting these rules, as well as states that maybe have--you know, we don't traditionally think of participating--that may be enticed to participate because states that don't adopt these rules are going to see cars being deployed in other states and really want their residents to be able to take advantage of these cleaner, newer technologies.
MR. DENNIS: So, this is obviously a sea change, or will be, for the auto industry and for consumers and for supply chains. And I want to make sure--I'm going to read these figures to make sure I get them correct. I believe, and correct me if I'm wrong, again, that California has an interim target requiring that 35 percent of new passenger vehicles sold by 2026 produce zero emissions. My understanding is you're currently at about 16 percent. So, that's a significant jump, just three years from now. Can you walk us through what needs to happen in order for California to hit that early mark, whether it's from the state side, from the automaker side, from consumer sales? Like, what will it take to actually reach that goal?
MS. RANDOLPH: I would say all of the above. I mean, the automakers need to step up and produce the vehicles. And right now, they're incredibly popular and there's a lot of demand and interest. So, I'm confident the automakers will continue to produce what they need to produce.
We need to continue to deploy infrastructure. We have a strong presence of infrastructure here in California, both slower chargers and, increasingly, DC fast-charging. And the California legislature and Governor Newsom adopted a $10 billion package that will be deployed over a six-year period that supports infrastructure development and vehicle incentives. So, we also assist customers with purchasing vehicles and help defray the additional upfront cost.
The total cost of ownership of zero emission vehicles in many instances is cheaper, because battery electric vehicles, for instance, have lower maintenance costs. But getting folks over that initial hump and in helping with incentives is one way to deploy vehicles. And we are also working with our sister agencies and nonprofit organizations to really tout the benefits of zero emission vehicles, the importance of zero emission vehicles in communities. We have a provision in our regulatory package that allows automakers to earn credits for programs that help deploy zero emission vehicles in lower-income communities, and into car-sharing programs that serve lower-income communities. And so, we're really just looking for ways to get these vehicles deployed throughout the state.
MR. DENNIS: Speaking of that, and you alluded to this in your answer just a moment ago, but I wanted to go a little deeper, how concerned are you as far as from an infrastructure perspective that the state can build out charging stations, transmission lines, that kind of thing, on the timeline that you need to, to hit these goals? And do you worry at all that the failure to do that could undercut the ambitions you have to make this transition?
MS. RANDOLPH: I am very confident that we will have the infrastructure we need to make this transition. And the reason is we are working very closely with our sister agencies and with utilities in the state to identify the barriers and the challenges to infrastructure deployment and addressing those.
So, as I mentioned, deploying funding to support the buildout of infrastructure, working with the utilities on identifying where system upgrades will be necessary. California is embarking on a major transition away from fossil fuels and towards electrification. So, that entire transition is going to take a lot of work. Fortunately, the light duty vehicle sector is actually, from a demand perspective, kind of a small piece of the picture. Just yesterday, our board considered the first of two hearings to consider an advanced clean fleets regulation that would transition medium and heavy-duty vehicles to zero emission. And that is going to definitely present an infrastructure challenge, because those vehicles are much larger and the way they move in the world is very different than light duty vehicles. So, there is going to be a lot to unpack when it comes to deploying that infrastructure.
So, to me, I'm feeling like the light duty sector is well on its way, and I'm very confident, as I mentioned, with the assistance of the investments from the federal government, that we will be able to meet that demand in deploying the light duty vehicles.
MR. DENNIS: I do hope to get back to the heavy-duty vehicle question in just a moment, but I want to make sure to get to one question from our audience. And you know, an issue that some people have raised, of course, is this idea of whether people will hold onto their gas-powered vehicles for a long time so you could still have gas-guzzling vehicles on the road in 2050 or beyond.
And so, that brings us to a question from an audience member, Jeffrey Davis of New Jersey, who wants to know how the government and private industry can promote the use of clean energy and, let's say, specifically EVs, here, when the public has some slow adoption concerns?
MS. RANDOLPH: I guess I would say a few things. As I mentioned, we are working with both state and federal partners and nonprofits to really tout the benefits and the importance of zero emission vehicles. But you know, the bottom line is that the people who most want to promote these vehicles are the manufacturers, right? I mean, I think we were all seeing those ads on the Super Bowl this year about how--what amazing options there are out there now for zero emission vehicles.
And so, that's a key opportunity to think of these not just as cleaning the air and saving the planet, but thinking of them as a product that people want to buy, and being supportive and creating that buzz and that energy around moving toward a zero-emission future for our planet and combining that interest and excitement in new technology with cleaning the planet.
MR. DENNIS: I do, as promised, want to get back to the question of heavy-duty vehicles, because I think it is an important part of this. You've proposed effectively to ban diesel powered buses and trucks I believe by 2040. There's some pushback from that initially from utilities, from trucking companies, from other folks.
How do you get all the folks involved on board and in the same direction on that? And as you mentioned, just logistically and practically, it's a different question than the cars that most of us drive every day. What are the different challenges and how do you see getting past those?
MS. RANDOLPH: Right. Well, the first challenge is the challenge of imagination. You would not believe how many people don't realize that there are large, class eight trucks that can pull full trailers that are zero emission. There are battery electric ones; there are hydrogen fuel cell ones. And then, all through the medium and heavy-duty sectors, there are delivery trucks, box trucks, all sorts of vehicles that are zero emission.
So, starting to get those on the road and having people see them is a big first step. And I've been to truck showcases and presentations where people just can't get over how quiet and smooth and, of course, not smelly these trucks are. And I'll further remind folks that buses are a big piece of this, right? School buses, putting kids on buses that are quiet and zero emission instead of rumbling, diesel-spewing vehicles is such an exciting opportunity. So, getting people to see the future is the first step and getting them to understand that future is here; it's coming.
The second step is setting forth a clear regulatory path with clear timelines of how we're going to make this transition, working with the manufacturers and the customers so that we can help address the challenges that are inevitably going to come, and working closely with, as I mentioned earlier, the utilities, our energy planning agencies, our energy regulatory agencies, to ensure that the grid needs are there, that depot charging facilities are able to be constructed and energized and connected to the grid, and that we also think about how retail charging will work for some of those trucks that may need to not go back to depot every night and may need to have medium and heavy duty public charging options.
Some of the truck stop companies are really looking into this as a growth opportunity to start thinking about charging clauses at their locations and how they can add those amenities for their customers. So, there's a huge amount of economic opportunity and energy around this transition.
And the last thing I'll mention is, particularly in the heavy-duty sector, these--the benefits to communities of making this transition cannot be overstated. We have people living near ports, living alongside freeways, living near warehouses that are impacted by diesel pollution every day. And getting rid of the dirtiest of the dirty vehicles and moving them to zero emission will fundamentally change lives, and we need to make this transition as soon as we conceivably can.
MR. DENNIS: Well, I'm sure we have lots more questions about this that we hope to ask you over the coming months and years. Unfortunately, we're out of time for today.
So, Liane Randolph, thank you for joining us.
MS. RANDOLPH: Thank you.
MR. DENNIS: And thanks to all of you for joining the conversation. To check out what interviews we have coming up, please head to WashingtonPostLive.com to find out more information about all our upcoming programs.
I'm Brady Dennis, and thank you again for joining us today. | 2022-10-28T21:07:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Transcript: Protecting Our Planet: The Role of Technology - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/10/28/transcript-protecting-our-planet-role-technology/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/10/28/transcript-protecting-our-planet-role-technology/ |
Montgomery hit-and-run victim dies in hospital
William Villavicencio, 19, was struck as he was crossing Georgia Avenue on his bicycle
A 19-year-old struck on his bicycle by a hit-and-run driver in Montgomery County has died as a result of his injuries, officials said Friday. The victim, William Villavicencio, was struck Sunday night.
“William was a happy young man, searching to find his way, like most 19-year-olds,” said a family friend, Pastor Paula Moutsos from Pathways Baptist Church. “This was the son of a single mom who has raised three boys. He was loved.”
Speaking at a news conference Friday, Assistant Police Chief Marc Yamada said Villavicencio was crossing Georgia Avenue on his bike about 11 p.m. Sunday near Janet Road when he was struck by a southbound car, described as dark red or maroon.
The car, which left the scene, was possibly a 2003-2007 Honda Accord, Yamada said, and it probably has damage to the right front bumper and is missing its right-side mirror.
Villavicencio was hospitalized with critical injuries. He died Friday, police said.
Police asked anyone with information about the hit-and-run to call 240-773-6620 or 866-411-TIPS (8477). | 2022-10-28T21:44:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hit-and-run driver fatally strikes man on bicycle - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/28/fatal-hit-and-run-montgomery-villavicencio/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/28/fatal-hit-and-run-montgomery-villavicencio/ |
Can we give ‘peace’ a chance again?
By Michele L. Norris
A woman at a Bangkok, Thailand, art museum on Oct. 22 ponders a framed print with the peace sign. (Diego Azubel/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Author narrated|Listen 0 min
As we hear more disturbing news each day about the ravages of war in Ukraine — and the threat of war between China and Taiwan — I’d like to say a word about a word we don’t use nearly enough anymore.
The word is peace.
I was a child of the ’60s and '70s, which meant I grew up surrounded by peace signs. Stoked by the Summer of Love counterculture, longhair hippie sit-ins, Vietnam and other protests, that little circle with an upside-down tree was everywhere.
The symbol was on buttons, bumper stickers, T-shirts and black-light posters that glowed when you turned the regular lights down low. The word was embroidered on our jeans, dangled from our earrings, emblazoned in cement with rainbow-colored graffiti. John Lennon and Yoko Ono were asking the world to “Give Peace a Chance.” Marvin Gaye was asking, “What’s going on?” Cat Stevens was singing about the peace train.
Sure, a lot of that was corny and commercial and performative, but the word “peace” was in constant rotation. It was in the air we breathed. No matter how you spelled or pronounced the word, that little symbol was something everyone understood. And believed in.
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The circular peace sign was conceived and designed by British textile designer Gerald Holtom in 1958 as a symbol for a Ban the Bomb protest that started in London’s Trafalgar Square. You’ve probably seen the semaphore system where years ago people in uniform waved handheld flags to convey messages.
Holtom used the semaphores for N (two arms down at an acute angle) and D (one arm straight up in the air) to create a circular symbol promoting nuclear disarmament. The signs became pins, and then banners. As the peace marches spread widely, so did that symbol. By the time the United States stepped fully into the war in Vietnam, it was ubiquitous.
We tend to think of “the peace movement” through the narrow lens of the American experience, but there was a period after World War II when massive peace marches happened on a regular basis all over the world, spurred by Cold War fears and the aftermath of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
I have been thinking a lot about how my youngest kid’s generation is processing what’s going on in Europe right now. For young people in their 20s, war has been a constant backdrop in their lives, even if they don’t personally know someone who was in uniform in Iraq or Afghanistan. A baby born when U.S. forces first invaded Afghanistan is now old enough to have served multiple tours of duty.
At the same time, an unreal kind of war is always within arm’s reach. You can level a city with an Xbox or PlayStation, then press a button and the streets that were once rubble and shattered glass are again pristine. A player in a video game can kill an opponent on screen and get extra points for head or chest hits, reboot and do it all again after a refrigerator run. And don’t get me started about Hollywood’s obsession with Armageddon.
The ways and means — and words — of war are all around us. We speak of bunker mentalities, outflanking our opponents, SWAT teams and scorched-earth approaches.
But what about the language of peace? What about the concept of building bridges instead of walls, or bringing opposing forces to a shared understanding? Quick, name the catchphrase that’s in frequent use that speaks directly to peacemaking? (Example: Some used to say, “Make love, not war.”) I tested myself and eventually came up with “passing the olive branch.” Not exactly impressive.
I used to wonder why the video-game industry could not produce titles that rewarded players who managed to forge a truce, or successfully led an armistice. Peace is often described as the absence of violence, but that framing suggests that conflict is the default human state, while peace and stability are instead the aberration. Somewhere over the past century, we got it backwards.
If you slapped a peace sign on your car or jacket lapel, most people would see it as a nod to nostalgia. Yet what a hopeful nod. What if we started committing ourselves to elevating and celebrating the peacemakers among us? Not just the diplomats and Nobel Prize winners. But the principals who get parents to work toward a common cause. The coaches who lead teams with players from different experiences and perspectives. The managers and community volunteers who figure out in this fractured era how to get folks with opposing ideologies to row in the same direction. These are the places where detente in a divided America could begin.
Peace requires a focus on peacemaking. That is an active, constant process that takes effort and will and frequent articulation.
We again need to give peace a chance. And not be afraid to say so out loud. As that adage goes, the words you speak become the house you live in. | 2022-10-28T22:10:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Michele Norris: Can we give the word ‘peace’ a chance again? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/28/peace-movement-language/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/28/peace-movement-language/ |
How to respond to the horrifying Pelosi attack
A police officer rolls out more yellow tape on the closed street below the home of Paul Pelosi, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in San Francisco on Oct. 28. (Eric Risberg/AP)
There is much we still don’t know about the Friday attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) house. But the facts that have emerged so far are horrifying and raise a question Americans have had to ask too often in recent years: Can the most powerful country in the world protect its leaders?
In the early hours of Friday morning, an assailant broke into Ms. Pelosi’s San Francisco home and attacked her husband, Paul Pelosi, with a hammer. Mr. Pelosi was admitted into the hospital with “significant” injuries but is expected to make a full recovery. The Wall Street Journal reported that the suspected assailant — who is in custody — had “espoused extreme right-wing views on social media, including conspiracy theories about covid-19.” According to initial reports, he yelled out “Where’s Nancy?” during the attack — an eerie echo of the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, when rioters screamed, “Where are you, Nancy? We’re looking for you!”
While the attacker’s motives and mental state remain to be determined, the imperative to safeguard members of Congress and other senior officials from such wanton violence could hardly be clearer.
The danger is neither new nor one that is confined to a single party. In 2011, a gunman grievously wounded Gabrielle Giffords, then a Democratic congresswoman from Arizona, as she met constituents outside a Tucson-area Safeway. He then turned on bystanders and hit 18 more people, killing six. A half-dozen years later, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) was shot at a congressional baseball practice by a man carrying a list of several Republican lawmakers in his pocket.
Since those episodes, threats and intimidation against politicians have continued to escalate amid the toxic rhetoric that has come to pass for political discourse and against the backdrop of a deeply polarized landscape. Earlier this month, the New York Times documented a surge in violent political speech since 2016; threats against members of Congress have reportedly increased more than tenfold, with nearly 10,000 reported incidents in 2021. A man was arrested in July for threatening to kill Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), and just this week another man pleaded guilty to threatening to kill a congressman. “I wouldn’t be surprised if a senator or House member were killed,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) told the Times.
It is not just legislators who are at risk: In June, a man accused of planning to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh turned himself in to police outside the conservative justice’s home. That incident spurred Congress to pass a bill boosting protections for justices and their families. As violent rhetoric mounts, security for lawmakers likely needs strengthening, too.
Whatever else we learn about the attack on the Pelosis, it is incumbent on politicians — regardless of party — to condemn anything resembling political violence. On Friday morning, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said he was “horrified and disgusted” by the reported assault, while Mr. Scalise said that “violence has no place in this country.” Several others have released similar statements. We hope lawmakers turn their outrage into action by tamping down on political vitriol — and by considering new investments in security for themselves and other leaders who appear to face more risk by the day. | 2022-10-28T22:10:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Pelosi attack should spur more security for U.S. leaders - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/28/pelosi-house-attack-congress-security-protection/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/28/pelosi-house-attack-congress-security-protection/ |
Fox Business correspondent Jackie DeAngelis appears on Fox News. (Fox News)
Shortly after noon Friday, as reporters scrambled to learn more about the horrifying assault on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) husband, Paul, at their home in San Francisco, Fox News aired a panel discussion in which the attack was a central topic.
By that point, some details were known. It was known that Paul Pelosi had been attacked with a hammer. As the panel was live, we also learned that the alleged attacker had called out “Where is Nancy?” at some point as the incident unfolded. (The speaker was in Washington.) Beyond that, we didn’t know a lot.
So Fox’s panel — and in particular, Fox Business correspondent Jackie DeAngelis — filled the vacuum with speculation. Speculation that aged very badly, very quickly, but speculation that also served as a concise encapsulation of how much of the network’s other coverage of the event would play out over the following hours.
Here is the beginning of what DeAngelis said.
“We’re waiting to find out what the motivation was. But there are two things that we could have on our hands here.”
"A crime situation that just happened more randomly or with some motivation but wasn’t really targeted at the Pelosis per se. That shines a light on what’s happening not only in San Francisco, but all these other cities."
As soon as you find yourself saying we’re waiting to learn what happened, but, it’s worth taking a pause. It is quite natural for people to quickly form opinions about things happening in the world. It is, however, very different to then offer those opinions to a live television audience. Though again, in this case it was revealing.
So what are the two options for what occurred, per DeAngelis?
Well, the first is that the attack was an example of random violence. And this, she argues, ties into the narrative that the network on which she was appearing has been energetically promoting: that Democratic cities are hives of precisely that sort of crime. There’s no pause to acknowledge that any individual incident is not necessarily representative of broader trends in crime because Fox has repeatedly given primacy to isolated incidents over broader data. Violent crime is up in San Francisco this year, about 8 percent. (Homicide is down very slightly.) But DeAngelis doesn’t offer this incident as a point to that end; rather, she frames this one attack as being reflective of what’s happening in “all these other cities.”
Why is Fox News so heavily focused on these examples of increases in crime? Mentions of crime on the network began to skyrocket in late September and have increased consistently as the midterms have approached. To think that this is about casting Democratic leaders as soft on crime — a heavy focus in Republican politicians’ campaign ads — is hardly a stretch.
Particularly given DeAngelis’s second theory.
“If we have a situation where this is politically motivated, you have to step back and say: why is our country so divided? President Biden, you got up to the podium and said you were going to bring us together. And that was one of the things you promised people. It’s one of the reasons they voted for you and they backed away from Trump because they did think that he was divisive. So why is this happening and why are we so polarized?”
“It’s a huge question right now.”
This is a not-uncommon line of rhetoric. President Biden has, indeed, called for unity, as Donald Trump did before him. But both presidents were facing a nation with deep political divides that it’s silly to assume a partisan politician might be able to mend.
It’s convenient, though! If you are a cable news network with a lengthy resume of amplifying misinformation about and hostility toward one political party, that a president from that party was unsuccessful at mending the partisan gulf just gives you somewhere else to point. Biden said he would fix the rupture (that our network has helped widen) but he didn’t. He is why this division still exists! It’s like blaming Ukraine for the war with Russia because President Volodymyr Zelensky asked for peace and it didn’t happen.
But all of that is secondary to the most egregious part of this statement. To suggest that the attack was a function of division is to equate an alleged attempted homicide with mere political opposition. This isn’t a guy standing outside Pelosi’s house with a bullhorn, calling her names. This is — according to early reports — a guy inside her house striking her husband with a hammer. To credit this to “division,” even based on the more-limited information available to DeAngelis at the moment, is to suggest that this is a natural endpoint of political disagreement.
Paraphrasing, then: If this wasn’t a function of politics, it is an act of heinous violence that represents precisely the sort of horrible, surging crime that Fox News has been warning its viewers about endlessly for weeks. If it was a function of politics — presumably politics that cast Pelosi negatively — then it’s simply division, something that lamentably reflects our nation’s sad state under Biden.
It is admittedly hard to speak off-the-cuff on television, though this is DeAngelis’s job. But again, her arguments did not occur in isolation. They were just one early segment. You can also see Fox News hosts and guests downplaying the “where is Nancy” question, blaming the city’s politics and, of course, somehow, “defund the police.”
Where DeAngelis landed, though, is precisely where you’d expect a Fox commentator to land. If it wasn’t politically motivated, it’s because of the crime wave and therefore the Democrats’ fault. If it was, it’s because Biden didn’t unite America … and therefore the Democrats’ fault.
A simple, effective formula. | 2022-10-28T22:27:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Fox News response to the Pelosi attack, in 40 short seconds - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/28/fox-news-response-pelosi-attack-40-short-seconds/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/28/fox-news-response-pelosi-attack-40-short-seconds/ |
SAN FRANCISCO — Elon Musk has taken control of Twitter after a protracted legal battle and months of uncertainty. The question now is what the billionaire Tesla CEO will actually do with the social media platform that he bought for $44 billion. Musk gave one indication of where he’s headed in a tweet Friday. He wrote that no decisions on content or reinstating of suspended accounts will be made until a “content moderation council” is put in place. He wrote that the council would have diverse viewpoints. Major personnel shakeups are widely expected, with Musk ousting several top Twitter executives on Thursday. A fourth confirmed his departure, in a tweet.
NEW YORK — Wall Street closed sharply higher, capping another strong week with gains led by Apple and other companies that made even bigger profits during the summer than expected. The S&P 500 rose 2.5% Friday and marked its first back-to-back weekly gain since August. Stocks have revived recently partly on hopes for a dialing down later this year of the big interest-rate hikes that have been shaking the market. More recently, many big U.S. companies have been reporting stronger earnings than expected, though the bag remains decidedly mixed. Apple, Intel, and Gilead Sciences jumped following strong reports, which helped offset a discouraging forecast from Amazon.
WASHINGTON — A measure of inflation that is closely monitored by the Federal Reserve remained painfully high last month, the latest sign that prices for most goods and services in the United States are still rising steadily. Friday’s report from the Commerce Department showed that prices rose 6.2% in September from 12 months earlier, the same year-over-year rate as in August. Excluding volatile food and energy costs, so-called core prices rose 5.1% last month from a year earlier. The report also showed that consumers spent more last month, even after adjusting for inflation, a sign of Americans’ willingness to keep spending in the face of high prices.
BRUSSELS — European Union lawmakers and member countries have reached a deal to ban the sale of new gasoline and diesel cars and vans by 2035. The deal EU negotiators sealed Thursday night is the first agreement of the bloc’s “Fit for 55” package, which the bloc’s executive commission set up to achieve the goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 55% over this decade. Under the deal, carmakers will be required to reduce the emissions of new cars sold by 55% in 2030 before reaching a 100% cut five years later. According to EU data, transportation is the only sector in which greenhouse gas emissions have increased in the past three decades.
BERLIN — The German economy grew in the third quarter, an unexpectedly positive performance powered largely by private spending. But the immediate outlook for Europe’s biggest economy remained gloomy, with inflation rising again in October. The Federal Statistical Office said Friday that gross domestic product in Europe’s biggest economy expanded 0.3% in the July-September period compared with the previous quarter. That followed a slight increase of 0.1% in the second quarter. The government said earlier that GDP was believed to have shrunk in the third quarter and was expected to decline again in the last three months of the year as well as in early 2023. Germany’s annual inflation rate rose again in October, climbing to 10.4% from 10% the previous month.
NEW YORK — Oil companies brought in staggering profits once again as consumers worldwide struggled with high gasoline and energy prices. Exxon Mobil broke records with $19.66 billion in profits in the third quarter. Chevron earned a record $11.23 billion in profits. Oil and natural gas prices were high globally, as demand grew faster than supply. The high cost of energy has hit consumers in multiple ways. Americans have struggled with painfully high gasoline prices in recent months. And high energy prices also hit manufacturers and retailers, who pass on those costs to customers in the form of high prices for food, clothing and other goods.
WASHINGTON — The IRS says the amount of income tax money owed but not paid to the government is projected to grow. For tax years 2014 through 2016, the estimated gross “tax gap” rose to $496 billion a year. That’s an increase of more than $58 billion from prior estimates. IRS data released Friday projects that for 2017 to 2019, the estimated average gross tax gap will be $540 billion per year. Ensuring that people actually pay their taxes is one of the tax collection agency’s biggest challenges. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said last month that the tax gap is estimated to be $7 trillion in full over the next decade. | 2022-10-28T22:36:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Business Highlights: Musk's Twitter plans, Wall Street surge - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/business-highlights-musks-twitter-plans-wall-street-surge/2022/10/28/baf0251e-5707-11ed-ac8b-08bbfab1c5a5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/business-highlights-musks-twitter-plans-wall-street-surge/2022/10/28/baf0251e-5707-11ed-ac8b-08bbfab1c5a5_story.html |
Hundreds of people wait to see a screening of the movie “Till” at John F. Kennedy High School in Mound Bayou, Miss., on Thursday, Oct. 27, 2022. The feature film is going into wide release across the U.S. this weekend after being in limited release since Oct. 14.(AP Photo/Emily Wagster Pettus)
Beauchamp is one of the producers and writers of “Till,” which largely focuses on Mamie Till-Mobley's reaction to the loss of her only child and her evolution into a civil rights leader. Her 14-year-old son had traveled from Chicago to Mississippi to visit relatives in August 1955, and white men kidnapped, tortured and killed him after accusations that he flirted with Carolyn Bryant, a white woman working in a country store. | 2022-10-28T22:36:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Emmett Till movie shown in Black town pivotal to the story - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/emmett-till-movie-shown-in-black-town-pivotal-to-the-story/2022/10/28/1c509e92-5708-11ed-ac8b-08bbfab1c5a5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/emmett-till-movie-shown-in-black-town-pivotal-to-the-story/2022/10/28/1c509e92-5708-11ed-ac8b-08bbfab1c5a5_story.html |
People around the world witness the last solar eclipse of the year; KSK German military special forces demonstrate their amphibious training with a dog that simulates the jump from a helicopter; Rishi Sunak becomes the United Kingdom’s first prime minister of color; a former student opened fire at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School in St. Louis, killing two people. See 10 of the week’s most interesting images from around the world, as selected by Washington Post photo editors.
Oct. 25 | Lahore, Pakistan
A partial solar eclipse is framed by young girls jumping on a trampoline. People around the world gathered to witness the last solar eclipse of the year, which was visible across Europe, western Asia, northeastern Africa and the Middle East.
Oct. 24 | Calw, Germany
A soldier, of the KSK German military special forces, shows German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht their amphibious training by jumping into a pool with a dog, simulating the jump from a helicopter.
Oct. 24 | London
Rishi Sunak, center, gestures as members of Parliament greet him after arriving at party headquarters for the Conservative Party leadership contest. Sunak won the race to replace Liz Truss, who resigned, and he became the United Kingdom’s first prime minister of color.
Oct. 24 | Berlin
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, seventh from left, and others lay flowers during the 10th anniversary of a memorial to the victims of the Sinti and Roma communities killed during the Holocaust.
Oct. 24 | St. Louis
Student Messiah Miller, 16, center, prays with his teacher Ray Parks, second from right, following a shooting at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School. A 19-year-old former student opened fire at the school, killing a teenage girl and an adult woman before police shot and killed him, according to law enforcement officials.
Robert Cohen/St. Louis Post-Dispatch/AP
Oct. 27 | Bakhmut, Ukraine
An elderly couple hug each other while sitting on a bench in the front-line town amid Russia's invasion. The town, known for its salt mines and vineyards, has been under attack for months by Russian forces, who are mostly on the defensive in other regions across Ukraine.
Oct. 21 | Overland Park, Kan.
Starlings gather on power lines at dusk.
Oct. 20 | Mexico City
Murals are painted on top of the Xochitepango market in the Iztapalapa neighborhood.
Oct. 24 | Budapest
A lion statue, built from 850,000 Lego bricks and completed in 28 days, is unveiled at the Pest bridgehead on the landmark Chain Bridge spanning the River Danube. The original stone lion was transported for renovation as part of the work related to the renewal of the bridge.
Peter Lakatos/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Oct. 23 | Schierke, Germany
A train travels through a forest, destroyed by bark beetle and drought, in the Harz mountains.
Photo editing by Troy Witcher, Dee Swann and Stephen Cook | 2022-10-28T22:37:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pictures of what happened this week: People around the world witness the last solar eclipse of the year; Rishi Sunak becomes the UK's first prime minister of color - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/interactive/2022/10/28/best-photos-of-the-week/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/interactive/2022/10/28/best-photos-of-the-week/ |
World Series live updates Philadelphia Phillies face Houston Astros in Game 1
Svrluga: Dusty vs. Bryce culminates a month of Half Street Blues
World Series day games are long gone, and they’re probably never coming back
By one measure, Astros-Phillies is the biggest World Series mismatch since 1906
Martin Maldonado and the Astros are back in the World Series. (David J. Phillip/AP Photo)
Adam Kilgore
The World Series begins Friday night, when the Houston Astros host the Philadelphia Phillies in Game 1 at Minute Maid Park.
The Astros, winners of the American League, are playing in their second straight World Series and their fourth in the past six seasons. The National League champion Phillies emerged as this postseason’s biggest surprise, clicking at the right time after earning the NL’s final wild-card spot.
Starting pitchers: Phillies right-hander Aaron Nola (2-1, 3.12 ERA this postseason) vs. Astros right-hander Justin Verlander (1-0, 6.30).
First pitch: 8:03 p.m. Eastern.
Dusty Baker, managing the juggernaut Houston Astros, against Bryce Harper, slugging the Philadelphia Phillies into the World Series. For an October without the Washington Nationals, there sure were a lot of Washington Nationals.
Since the wild-card era began in 1995, Major League Baseball’s playoffs have culminated in a World Series matchup between the teams with the best records in the American League and National League four times.
While a division winner facing a wild-card team in the World Series is hardly rare, this year’s showdown between the Houston Astros and Philadelphia Phillies is the Fall Classic’s greatest mismatch — at least on paper — in more than 100 years. | 2022-10-28T23:20:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | World Series Game 1 live updates and score - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/28/world-series-game-1-phillies-astros/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/28/world-series-game-1-phillies-astros/ |
Twelve more coffins found in search for Tulsa Race Massacre graves
The discovery follows the unearthing of multiple coffins a year ago in an unmarked pit in Tulsa’s Oaklawn Cemetery
By DeNeen L. Brown
In this aerial photo, a mass grave is refilled with dirt at Oaklawn Cemetery on July 30, 2021, in Tulsa. The mass grave was discovered while searching for victims of the Tulsa Race Massacre. (Mike Simons/AP)
Scientists searching for bodies of victims killed in the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre found 12 more coffins Friday in a mass grave blocks from the site of the massacre.
The unearthing of the coffins, in the city-owned Oaklawn Cemetery, follows several rounds of similar discoveries since Tulsa began its excavation for mass graves in July 2020.
In October 2020, scientists found multiple coffins in the same unmarked mass grave. In June 2021, after the excavation was resumed, scientists discovered 35 coffins; they exhumed human remains from 19 of them. The remains were taken to an on-site lab for analysis.
One set of the remains examined was that of a man who had multiple gunshot wounds, including a bullet still lodged in his left shoulder area.
City officials have said previously that it is still to be determined whether the burials are associated with the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.
On Wednesday, after the city expanded its excavation of Oaklawn Cemetery, workers began digging again.
Oaklawn Cemetery is located blocks from Greenwood, the all-Black community destroyed nearly 100 years ago by a White mob in a horrific rampage that historians say may have left as many as 300 Black people dead and thousands of homes and businesses in Black Wall Street destroyed.
Survivors reported seeing bodies tossed into the Arkansas River or loaded onto trucks or trains, making it difficult to account for the dead. Other survivors told stories of Black people being placed in mass graves. No White person was ever arrested in connection with the massacre. For decades after the rampage, few people spoke of what happened.
Tulsa isn’t the only race massacre you were never taught in school. Here are others.
After the July 2020 search for mass graves ended without finding human remains, the city decided to expand its search. The second excavation focused on an area called the Original 18 Site, where officials believed the bodies of 18 Black people were buried after the massacre.
Records show that a White-owned funeral home charged the county of Tulsa in June 1921 for burials of “18 Negroes.” Funeral home records and death certificates from 1921 show that at least 18 identified and unidentified Black massacre victims were buried in an unmarked grave in Oaklawn.
The mass grave found in October 2020 was discovered in the Original 18 area, near the headstones of Reuben Everett and Eddie Lockard, the only known marked graves of massacre victims in the cemetery.
The first investigation into mass graves that might be connected to the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre came in 1998. It identified four potential sites, but that investigation was closed without a physical search. In 2018, Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum (R) announced that the city would reopen its search at the four sites, including Oaklawn Cemetery.
“As we open this investigation 101 years later, there are both unknowns and truths to uncover,” Bynum said in a statement last year. “But we are committed to exploring what happened in 1921 through a collective and transparent process — filling gaps in our city’s history, and providing healing and justice to our community.”
‘They was killing Black people’: A century-old race massacre still haunts Tulsa
One of the last survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre — 107 years old — wants justice
His arrest sparked the Tulsa Race Massacre. Then Dick Rowland disappeared. | 2022-10-29T00:08:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Scientists find 12 more coffins in Tulsa Race Massacre grave search - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/10/28/coffins-tulsa-race-massacre/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/10/28/coffins-tulsa-race-massacre/ |
The Rev. Calvin O. Butts III, pastor of iconic Harlem church, dies at 73
Rev. Butts used his political savvy to advocate for social change and renew Harlem
The Rev. Calvin O. Butts III in April. (Bennett Raglin/Getty Images)
The Rev. Calvin O. Butts III, who for three decades pressed for social change with political savvy and occasionally combative tactics as leader of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, died on Oct. 28 in New York City. He was 73.
The church’s website announced Rev. Butts’ death. No cause was given.
Though he never held elected office, Rev. Butts saw himself in the mold of one of his predecessors, the Rev. Adam Clayton Powell Jr., who became a leading voice on civil rights in Congress while serving as Abyssinian’s pastor.
Rev. Butts often recalled seeing Powell preach as a teenager.
“I was amazed,” he told the New York Times in 1987. “He was a larger-than-life figure, and people were in love with him. He was prophet, priest and king.”
In leading Abyssinian, one of the nation’s oldest Black churches and the first in New York state, Rev. Butts sometimes took a combative approach to activism.
In 1990, he led a campaign to whitewash Harlem billboards that advertised cigarette and alcohol products, telling Fortune magazine that G. Heileman Brewing, a malt liquor manufacturer behind some of the ads, “is obviously a company that has no sense of moral or social responsibility.”
Later in the decade, Rev. Butts took on rap music, threatening to use a bulldozer to steamroll over CDs and tapes with lyrics that infuriated him by degrading women and dehumanizing Black people. Instead, he and his supporters dumped the music in front of Sony Records.
“This is your garbage,” he said. “Take it back.”
Rev. Butts was often unpredictable, especially when it came to politics. He bickered frequently with David Dinkins New York’s first Black mayor, accusing him of being inaccessible. In 1992, he endorsed independent candidate Ross Perot for president, saying that Bill Clinton was “no more than a neoconservative trying to dress himself in liberal clothes.”
But Rev. Butts was also politically shrewd, working closely with elected officials on both sides of the aisle, particularly in his role as chairman of the Abyssinian Development Corp., an offshoot of the church that has developed more than $1 billion in housing, commercial property and neighborhood services, including a new high school in Harlem.
Rev. Butts hosted Cuban leader Fidel Castro. He also invited New York Gov. George E. Pataki, a Republican, to speak. Pataki later appointed him to two state economic development boards. Rev. Butts was blunt in favoring economic development over preserving social services, an objectionable opinion to other members of the clergy, who also worried about gentrification in Harlem.
“I think the Republicans are in an excellent position to make the argument and demonstrate that you can do as much through economic development as you can through social welfare programs — in fact more,” he told the New York Times in 1995. “Because you break a dependency cycle, you increase responsibility, people have a greater sense of ownership and you create jobs.”
Calvin Otis Butts III was born in Bridgeport, Conn., on July 19, 1949, and grew up on the Lower East Side of New York and then in the borough of Queens. His father was a chef and his mother worked in social services.
“My father was the kind who would say, ‘If a Black man opens a store, go shop in it,’ ” he told the New York Times in 1991.
After graduating from Flushing High School in 1967, Rev. Butts attended Morehouse College, a historically Black university in Atlanta. It was the late 1960s and the country was mired in racial strife. In 1968, after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Rev. Butts joined the riots and admitted to helping firebomb a store. He soon vowed to never resort to violence again.
Rev. Butts moved back to New York after graduating in 1971 with a philosophy degree. He enrolled at the Union Theological Seminary, which tilted liberal and supported gays and lesbians. Rev. Butts, in a sermon that shocked some of his classmates, argued that homosexuality was a sin — an opinion he continued to carry, telling Christian Century in 1991 that “Gays and lesbians have to be affirmative about who they are … We are all sinners saved by grace.”
At age 22, Rev. Butts landed a job as a junior minister at Abyssinian, making house calls and conducting funerals. He became pastor in 1989. He was credited with creating affordable housing, building retail centers that provided jobs, and never wavering from his role as a fierce advocate for Harlem. He also served as president of SUNY College at Old Westbury.
In 1986, Rev. Butts refused to condemn Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan after he called Judaism a “gutter religion.” To protest his silence, members of the New York Philharmonic orchestra refused to play at Abyssinian. Rev. Butts defended himself, saying nobody had asked him to condemn the remarks.
He told Jewish leaders, “I will not be your boy,” according to the New York Times.
But Rev. Butts was also praised for his roles in being an early advocate for AIDS treatment and for supporting gays and lesbians despite his stated beliefs. In 1991, he criticized then-Cardinal John O’Connor for not condemning spectators who jeered gay marchers during a St. Patrick’s Day parade.
“I happen to believe that the divine imperative does not allow for homosexuality. But having said that,” Rev. Butts told Newsday, “the gay person should not be discriminated against nor should he or she be the victim of senseless violence or ridicule.”
Rev. Butts is survived by his wife, Patricia, three children and six grandchildren, according to the Associated Press.
During the coronavirus pandemic, even as his church was closed, Rev. Butts turned Abyssinian into a vaccine center, inviting the media to photograph him rolling up his sleeve to a receive a shot — an image, he hoped, that would get skeptical African Americans to follow his lead.
“To those who may be a bit skeptical about receiving the vaccine,” he said, “good religion goes best with some common sense.” | 2022-10-29T00:34:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Rev. Calvin O. Butts III, pastor of iconic Harlem church, dies at 73 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/10/28/rev-calvin-butts-harlem-church-leader-dies-at-73/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/10/28/rev-calvin-butts-harlem-church-leader-dies-at-73/ |
Longtime NBC4 anchor Doreen Gentzler announces retirement
Veteran co-anchor started at the Washington station in 1989 and helped lead the local ratings for decades. Her last newscast will be in November.
Doreen Gentzler, who has co-anchored Washington's NBC4 newscasts since 1989, told viewers on Oct. 28 that she will retire in November. (NBC4)
Doreen Gentzler, who co-anchored the most popular local TV newscast in Washington for over three decades, said Friday that she would retire next month, closing out a nearly unbroken reign as the area’s most-watched journalist.
Gentzler, 65, broke the news herself on the 6 p.m. newscast on WRC (known as NBC4), where she has anchored since 1989. “I may get a little emotional, so I’ll just say it right out: I’ve decided to retire,” she said. “Not an easy choice but something I’ve been considering for a while.”
Gentzler may be Washington’s last connection to an era of local TV in which anchors were nearly civic institutions and newscasts were broadly watched — a time rapidly fading in the internet age. Her contemporaries included a long list of familiar figures, particularly Jim Vance, with whom she co-anchored WRC’s newscasts for 28 years until his death in 2017.
In an interview on Friday, Gentzler said she planned to spend time with family and to travel in retirement; her announcement coincided with the retirement of her husband, Bill Miller, a public information officer at the U.S. attorney’s office in the District and a former Washington Post journalist.
“I thought, ‘Why not step away while I’m healthy enough to enjoy [retirement]?’ ” she said, adding, “I am very much going to miss it, especially the people I’ve worked with.”
But Gentzler also acknowledged that she’s been worn down by the news of late. “It’s difficult reporting on children in the crossfire, about hateful speech and behavior toward each other, about all the personal and political attacks,” she said. “It weighs on you night after night.”
NBC4’s decades-long run atop the local news ratings began in 1989 after the station’s then-general manager, Allan Horlick, hired Gentzler to share the anchor desk with Vance. She was a surprise choice: At the time, Gentzler had been working at a station in Philadelphia that had demoted her from anchoring on weeknights — the marquee shift — to weekends.
Vance was already a familiar figure to local viewers, but the station had struggled to find a co-anchor who countered his cool, almost aloof persona. Gentzler, then 31, offered a softer counterpoint not only to Vance, but to the station’s all-male team of sportscaster George Michael, weatherman Bob Ryan and entertainment reviewer Arch Campbell.
Helped in part by the popularity of NBC’s “Must See TV” lineup, “Jim and Doreen” gradually became the preferred local news team in a news-obsessed region. During their long run on the air, Gentzler-Vance drew more viewers throughout the Washington area than CNN, Fox News and MSNBC averaged together among local viewers in prime time.
The station’s popularity endured until Vance’s death in 2017 after 48 years on the air — and continued afterward as well. Gentzler’s early evening and late-night broadcast — now co-anchored with Jim Handly — continue to lead local stations.
Gentzler grew up in Arlington, Va., though she spent the latter years of her childhood living near Charleston, S.C. She attended the University of Georgia and worked as an anchor and reporter at stations in Chattanooga, Tenn., Charlotte, Cleveland and Philadelphia before she was hired to anchor with Vance, whom she’d watched growing up.
Gentzler said on Friday that the death of another co-anchor, Wendy Rieger, influenced her thinking about retirement. Rieger retired from WRC at the end of 2021 after battling health issues; she succumbed to brain cancer in April at 65, the same age as Gentzler.
“How could it not” affect her thinking, she said. “Wendy started [at the station] a year before I did, and we just about grew up together. I miss her very much. It was very tough to watch what happened to her. It certainly makes you think.”
Gentzler said she will continue on the air until Thanksgiving week. The station has not named a successor.
“I’ve been working here for more than half me life now,” she said on the air on Friday. “Those [two] babies that I had back in the ’90s … they’ve grown up and moved out now. It is time for me to retire. Or maybe evolve, like Serena Williams.” | 2022-10-29T03:02:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Longtime NBC4 anchor Doreen Gentzler announces retirement - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/10/28/doreen-gentzler-retires-nbc-washington-anchor/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/10/28/doreen-gentzler-retires-nbc-washington-anchor/ |
Rock Creek Christian tops Friendship Collegiate in anticipated finale
Eagles 28, Knights 6
Rock Creek Christian improved to 6-3 with a win Friday over Friendship Collegiate. (Tramel Raggs)
With the score tied at the half and his team looking sluggish, Rock Creek Christian Coach Andre Kates stared at one player after another and implored them to get something going.
“Can someone make a … play out there?” Kates asked. “Seniors, y’all only got these next 24 minutes guaranteed on a football field. Is this how y’all want to be remembered? As a team that couldn’t perform when lights came on? That’s what you want your legacy to be?”
None of the players offered a verbal response. But senior quarterback Tahj Smith made it clear he would be the one to make a play, as he overcame knee and ankle ailments to throw three second-half touchdowns as the Eagles beat Friendship Collegiate, 28-6 Friday night in Northeast D.C.
“I think we were a little too amped up at first with it being our last game,” Smith said. “In the second half, we finally just took a breath and did our jobs. We knew we couldn’t go out like that, so we all just tried to step up and make plays.”
Rock Creek (6-3), an independent program in Upper Marlboro, started the season slow against a rugged schedule that included opponents from Florida, New York and Ohio. But the Eagles, who treated their season-finale like a championship game, closed the year by winning six of their last seven games.
The Eagles’ defense forced a fumble to start the second half Friday, and then Smith got straight to work.
With Friendship Collegiate (5-4) bearing down on him, the quarterback scrambled for a 21-yard gain. Two plays later, he connected with senior AJ Myers for a 46-yard touchdown, giving the Eagles a 12-6 lead.
Smith hit Jayden Catchings on a three-yard slant, and the freshman turned it into an 18-yard score after breaking four tackles with 9:27 remaining in the fourth.
Later in the fourth, with the Eagles leading 20-6, Smith put the game on ice with a 16-yard strike to Catchings. Members of Rock Creek’s bench chanted “He’s a freshman” in reference to Catchings.
Smith, the senior who received his first Division I offer, from Jacksonville State on Thursday, was the difference-maker this year. He rushed for 61 yards Friday in addition to his 236 yards passing and four total touchdowns.
“I like to think that I know damn near everything, but when we first got [Smith] I had no idea that he was this good,” Kates said. “All season long he’s carried this team on his back, but to see him do it on a cold night like this while dealing with all the injuries that he has. It’s like man, this kid is just special.”
Friday was the first time Kates patrolled the sidelines as a visiting coach at his alma mater. As a Friendship Collegiate player in 2004, Kates scored the first touchdown in school history on a kickoff return against Fairmont Heights.
“At the end of the day, this win is for our seniors,” Kates said. “But I’d be lying if I said that this didn’t mean something to me as well. To finish off our year, the right way, at a place that did so much for me growing up is like something out of a movie. I’m going to remember this one for a long time.” | 2022-10-29T03:11:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rock Creek Christian tops Friendship Collegiate in anticipated finale - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/28/rock-creek-christian-tops-friendship-collegiate-anticipated-finale/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/28/rock-creek-christian-tops-friendship-collegiate-anticipated-finale/ |
Ask Amy: I paid a deposit and the plumber never showed up
Well, the next day he never showed up. After I called and texted him several times, five days later, he texted me that his mother had suffered seven strokes and was in the hospital, so he wasn’t working all week. Another week has gone by, and I texted him to see how his mother was doing and if he was going to be able to get the job done.
I haven’t heard back from him and I’m suspicious that I never will. I feel like an idiot for not getting a contract to see if he was licensed, bonded and insured. Should I continue to contact him?
I have his name and number and want to warn people in my neighborhood on the social media app NextDoor.com. Maybe that would be a bad idea in case he sees and comes after me? Groan.
Duped: One red flag I see is that the worker only responded to your contact after it was obvious that you weren’t going away. (And “seven strokes” is almost too specific.)
Nextdoor.com might be a good place to post a query to find a plumber recommended by people who live in your area — I would not name and trash him on that site (which has something of a reputation for being toxic), but you could ask in nonspecific terms if others nearby have had a similar experience. (Keep in mind that there is a remote possibility that everything he has told you is true.)
Dear Amy: I am a 75-year-old mother and grandmother. I live with my 55-year-old daughter and 35-year-old step-grandson. My problem is with my daughter, my only child.
The only time she is nice to me is when she wants something. She is critical of everything I do and constantly says hurtful things to me and my grandson. I’ve thought so many times about moving, but knowing that she can’t make it without my Social Security income keeps me there.
She has a good job but spends the majority of her earnings on weed. My grandson is just the opposite: loving, caring, helpful and understanding.
I just want to enjoy the rest of my life without the depression and hurt I’m experiencing now. I’m exhausted from walking on eggshells. Should I (and my grandson) stay or go?
Hurting: Go! Your grandson sounds like a responsible person. If you two have a good rapport, it might be a good idea to seek housing together. You might also consider sharing housing with another senior.
Disappointed: I took this person to task for every single choice he had made in this regard, but yes I do believe that the son has the right to know about his DNA parentage. | 2022-10-29T04:42:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: I paid a deposit and the plumber never showed up - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/10/29/ask-amy-scammed-online-plumber/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/10/29/ask-amy-scammed-online-plumber/ |
Carolyn Hax: One friend attempted truth-telling. The other ‘blew up.’
Carolyn Hax is away. The following first appeared Oct. 26, 2008.
Hi, Carolyn: I have been working on being more honest in relationships and more willing to address issues rather than staying quiet and feeling resentful. I have always been too afraid of hurting people’s feelings, so I tend to stay quiet, even if I’m upset.
I sent my friend what I thought was a nice-as-possible email saying that I understand she’s busy, but I am sad that she wasn’t in touch with me when she knew I was going through difficult times this summer. This is the first time I’ve ever addressed an issue like this with her.
She blew up and now says I owe her an apology for confronting her when she is so busy and overwhelmed. I am at a loss; other than not bringing it up at all (and getting more and more resentful), I don’t know what I could have done.
This could end a 15-year friendship, because I am not willing to apologize for raising what I think is a reasonable concern. I’m now even more hurt at her refusal to recognize my feelings as valid. Because I have always avoided things like this in the past (and now I’m reminded of why!), I don’t know how to handle this.
— Everywhere
Everywhere: Actually, you do know what you could have done: You could have remained Old You and been the friend who never says anything. After all, that’s the person your friend plucked from the crowd 15 years ago.
More to the point, she didn’t choose a friend who stood up for herself. So it’s important to realize that when you decided your character had room for improvement — a difficult and laudable step — you took the chance that you were changing traits others liked.
It’s a natural assumption that our self-improvement will be well-received, because our loved ones wish us the best, right? But to be valid, that assumption requires universal agreement on what constitutes strength and weakness — when, in fact, human qualities are highly subjective. Plus, some people seek out convenient or compatible flaws in their companions, or simply like someone as is, and regard metamorphosis with a sense of loss.
It’s also possible she’ll be your most enthusiastic supporter — if she comes around to considering your needs along with her own. It’s worth a try to find out. Be kind and firm in maintaining that you didn’t ask anything from her that you didn’t have a right to request; remind her, too, how difficult it is for you to speak up. Her failure to recognize this herself, by responding more charitably, probably compounds your hurt feelings.
At the same time, be open to the possibility that your “nice-as-possible email” was a clunker. Wording intended to be honest and gentle can come across as quite the opposite — contrived, say, or mealy-mouthed — to a reader. Misreading tone is a hazard with all communication, but it’s a particular danger with writing. (Another thing you could have done differently is called or addressed her in person.)
Here’s the variable on which I believe your friendship hinges: If you spent 15 years caring about each other, then there’s a good chance she will come around. If she spent 15 years taking advantage of your compliant nature, then the new you might not want this old friend anymore. | 2022-10-29T04:42:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Carolyn Hax: One friend attempted truth-telling. The other 'blew up.' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/10/29/carolyn-hax-friend-blew-up/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/10/29/carolyn-hax-friend-blew-up/ |
Miss Manners: I don’t like when people hand me their phone to look at photos
“Oh, thank you, I would love to look, but I had better go wash my hands before I handle your phone.” And then Miss Manners recommends that you do not get yourself trapped outside the bathroom.
“I have some work to do and a few errands to run. Why? What did you have in mind?”
Consider that giving the money was the accident, not forgetting it. | 2022-10-29T04:42:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Miss Manners: I dislike people handing me their phone to look at photos - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/10/29/miss-manners-photos-on-phone/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/10/29/miss-manners-photos-on-phone/ |
A poster showing a soldier with the slogan “Glory to the Heroes of Russia” in front of the Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow, on Oct. 18. (Yuri Kochetkov/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Ehson Aminzoda seemed to be following the path of many Central Asian immigrants in Russia — initially working as a bricklayer after arriving in Moscow earlier this year, then at a local restaurant, saving his modest earnings in hope of returning to his native Tajikistan to marry. On Oct. 10, he headed out to meet friends, and was seen leaving the Lyublino subway station in southeast Moscow. Then, he disappeared.
Five days later, according to Russian authorities, Aminzoda, 24, was in Belgorod, just 24 miles from the Ukrainian border, where he and another man, Mehrob Rakhmonov, 23, allegedly opened fire at a military training base, killing 11and injuring 15 others.
The Russian defense ministry said the shooting took place during a training session for a group of volunteers “who wished to participate in the military operation in Ukraine.” Russian authorities quickly branded the incident a terrorist attack, deliberately highlighting the nationality of the alleged gunmen, who were Tajik.
Officially, little else has been disclosed about the shooting, which has been overshadowed by the ongoing death and destruction of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
But rights activists and relatives of the alleged gunmen believe they were forcibly conscripted. They said the mere presence of the two Tajik men at the base in Belgorod points to pervasive abuses against migrant workers in Russia and to long-simmering ethnic tensions, which have worsened as a result of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s chaotic and much-criticized military mobilization.
While many men of fighting age have fled Russia to avoid being sent to fight in Ukraine — creating a new, reverse migration of Russians to Central Asian countries, including Tajikistan — some migrants in Russia have been swept into the ranks of the Russian military despite having no obligation to serve.
Some appear to have volunteered to fight, potentially induced to enlist by a new law offering a “fast track” to Russian citizenship for foreigners who sign a one-year military contract.
In other cases, advocates say, men seeking help from Russia’s Federal Migration Service were tricked into signing military papers, while still other migrants have been caught up in the botched mobilization drive and illegally issued draft orders despite not being Russian citizens.
It is unclear how Aminzoda ended up in Belgorod, which is a major staging ground for the war in Ukraine. Relatives said they have no idea.
“How he ended up in Belgorod, we do not know,” Firuz Aminzoda, a brother of the alleged gunman told Radio Ozodi, RFE/RL’s Tajik service. “My brother was not a terrorist, and he did not have such thoughts. He [was] an ordinary immigrant who wanted to work and build his life.” He emphasized that Ehson Aminzoda was not a Russian citizen and therefore not eligible to be mobilized.
The alleged Belgorod shooters disappeared around the same time that authorities in Moscow began raiding offices and hostels, and grabbing men off the streets in what appeared to be a mad push to reach the mobilization’s targets. (On Friday, defense minister Sergei Shoigu declared it completed).
Shortly before Putin issued his mobilization decree on Sept. 21, the Russian military opened a recruitment office at Moscow’s main migrant service center. Since the opening of that center, lawyers and activists say they have been inundated with pleas for help from migrants who say they have been detained, coerced or tricked into signing up for the army.
Videos on social media from Ukraine also appear to show Russian prisoners of war who claim they are workers from Central Asia and were sent to fight because they did not have their documents in order.
Valentina Chupik, the director of Tong Jahoni, a nonprofit organization that helps Central Asian migrants in Russia, said she has received at least 70 requests for assistance from migrants, some saying they were beaten and tortured.
According to Chupik, who is based Yerevan, Armenia, after being deported from Russia, one man from Kazakhstan was bundled into a van, where police beat him, electroshocked his genitals, and forced him to sign a draft order.
The Washington Post could not independently verify Chupik’s account. The alleged victim has fled back to Kazakhstan and could not be reached.
But other migrants from Central Asia living in Russia said in interviews that they were detained by the police and pressured to enlist. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because of security risks.
A 35-year-old food deliveryman from Uzbekistan who has lived in Russia for 15 years, said that when he went to the migrant center officials marked his passport, fingerprinted him, and without explanation announced that he had just signed a contract to serve.
“When I first heard the words of ‘mobilization,’ I didn’t feel anything, because my situation is far worse than any mobilization drive in Russia,” the man said. “Here, the attitude toward migrants is very harsh.”
He added: “I would never fight on a foreign land and for the sake of foreign people.”
A second man, a 36-year-old dual Russian-Tajik citizen who works as an electrician and gives legal advice to other migrants in Moscow, said that he was detained during a raid by the police at the construction site where he works, on account of his ethnic Caucasian appearance. The man said he was brought to a police wagon where officers threatened to beat him and forced him to sign the summons.
“I’m not going to serve, I am against it,” he said, adding that he was trying to leave Russia as soon as possible. “Why take someone else’s land for yourself in the first place?”
Lawyers said that the Russian authorities are using several methods to pressure migrant workers to enlist including falsifying criminal cases against them, promising money, and threatening deportation.
Karimjon Yorov, a Moscow-based lawyer and human rights activist helping Tajik migrants, said that some migrants had signed up voluntarily, drawn by the promise of money or citizenship but that others have had their residency permits canceled if they refused to enlist.
Chupik called the heavy-handed methods “a bunch of crimes rolled into one.”
“Firstly, it is mercenarism, which is prohibited by Russian law,” Chupik said. “Secondly, when a person is forced into military service, this is already, of course, a crime, and this is coercion to commit the crime of mercenarism. Thirdly, violent crimes have reportedly been committed including the abuse of authority and torture.”
Chupik said that forcing migrants to fight in a war was just the latest example of cruelty and injustice that they face living in Russia, where they are always in an “extreme position of oppression.”
“Naturally, in a war, they are the first victims, because they are defenseless,” Chupik said. “Who will come out for them at a rally? Who will defend them? To whom can they complain so that their voice is heard?”
Military analysts say that a disproportionate number of Russian fighters in the war in Ukraine are ethnic minorities from regions outside the main cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg, including Buryatia in Siberia, and Chechnya and Dagestan in the North Caucasus. These regions have suffered heavy casualties.
Putin had long resisted declaring a mobilization in part to avoid the war being felt by middle class Russians from Moscow and St. Petersburg who are more likely to criticize and resist. Following September’s decree, however, protests broke out in Dagestan and Yakutia, and governors in several regions acknowledged that many men were mobilized by mistake.
A recent report from the Institute of the Study of War, a U.S.-based research group, found that the shooting in Belgorod was likely a consequence of the Kremlin’s “continual reliance” on ethnic minority communities to bear the burden of mobilization.
“Ethnic minorities that have been targeted and forced into fighting a war defined by Russian imperial goals and shaped by Russian Orthodox nationalism will likely continue to feel alienation, which will create feedback loops of discontent leading to resistance followed by crackdowns on minority enclaves,” the report stated. “The Belgorod shooting is likely a manifestation of exactly such domestic ramifications.”
Details about the shooting remain scarce. Russian media and war-focused Telegram channels have reported that it may have been set off by a dispute between volunteer fighters who were being trained at a shooting range and a senior officer who made disparaging remarks about Allah.
“I think that we will not know the truth about the shooting or shooters for a while, if ever, as this is not in the interests of the military or the state” said Yorov, the lawyer and rights activist. “But the Russian authorities will surely make life even harder for migrants in Russia, especially Muslims.” | 2022-10-29T05:12:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mass shooting in Belgorod exposes Russia’s forced mobilization of migrants - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/29/mass-shooting-belgorod-exposes-russias-forced-mobilization-migrants/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/29/mass-shooting-belgorod-exposes-russias-forced-mobilization-migrants/ |
British army soldiers prepare ahead of the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II, in London, UK, on Monday, Sept. 19, 2022. The Queen’s life is commemorated at her state funeral in Westminster Abbey in London, to be attended by roughly 500 global dignitaries and world leaders including US President Joe Biden. (Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg) | 2022-10-29T07:45:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | As Europe Wavers, Sunak Must Toughen Up Support for Ukraine - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/as-europe-wavers-sunak-must-toughen-up-support-for-ukraine/2022/10/29/6a792fd6-5757-11ed-ac8b-08bbfab1c5a5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/as-europe-wavers-sunak-must-toughen-up-support-for-ukraine/2022/10/29/6a792fd6-5757-11ed-ac8b-08bbfab1c5a5_story.html |
Shira Ovide
Former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, left, was one of three top executives fired by Elon Musk. (Lionel Bonaventure/AFP/Getty Images)
Top Twitter executives who were fired after billionaire Elon Musk’s purchase of the social media giant will collectively receive more than $120 million, compensation data company Equilar said Friday.
Agrawal’s approximate base salary was $1 million, while his health benefits were listed at $9,172. The vast portion of his exit compensation comes from equity — which includes shares he had held in the company — valued at about $56.4 million, according to information Equilar emailed to The Post.
Twitter’s workforce is likely to be hit with massive cuts in the coming months, no matter who owns the company, The Washington Post reported last week. Musk told prospective investors in his deal to buy Twitter that he plans to get rid of nearly 75 percent of its 7,500 workers, whittling the company down to a staff of just over 2,000. | 2022-10-29T08:46:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Twitter executives to receive millions in 'golden parachute' payouts - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/10/29/twitter-executives-payouts-musk/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/10/29/twitter-executives-payouts-musk/ |
From stingray encounter to Marine Corps Marathon: A Navy diver’s long road back
Former U.S. Navy diver Julius “Jay” McManus is preparing to compete Sunday in the 47th Marine Corps Marathon as a push-rim athlete. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
Three years after he medically retired from the U.S. Navy with a permanent disability, former U.S. Navy diver Julius “Jay” McManus is closing in on completing a long-awaited mission: He’s preparing to compete Sunday in the 47th Marine Corps Marathon as a push-rim athlete.
“I’m a father of three. I run to show my family and my community that regardless of the obstacles, we can always overcome, we can keep pushing forward,” McManus said. “The true reality of it is there’s a large selfish part of that, too. I’m not just running to show them, but I’m running to prove to myself that I’m better than my injuries. I’m better today than I was yesterday, and I will continue to improve tomorrow.”
McManus joined the Navy in 1997 and entered diving school in 2005. By 2008, he had dived on many recovery missions, including one involving a World War II B-24 off the coast of Papua, New Guinea. However, his diving career shifted after an accident in Panama City Beach, Fla., in 2010.
While on a trip with the Navy Experimental Diving Unit, McManus was stung by a stingray, with the barb remaining inside his patellar tendon. The barb was undetected by initial X-rays and remained in his knee for several months, deteriorating his mobility. This led to six knee surgeries and his eventual retirement from the Navy.
McManus spent a year at the National Intrepid Center of Excellence rehabilitating. His injuries from his time in the Navy included “dead spots” in his brain from a traumatic injury, severe spinal damage, and a lump in his throat from radiation exposure. He was later diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder from multiple combat explosions.
After his treatment, McManus struggled with being separated from his passions and career. He openly discussed his struggles with anxiety and depression.
“I did hit some very dark places. I had made plans to terminate my existence and was trying to find the best way to do it without having a negative impact on my family,” McManus said. “I went to an adaptive sports introductory camp with the Navy Wounded Warrior program, and it was through that camp that I found a renewed sense of purpose and a renewed sense of self.”
This sparked a reawakening in McManus’s competitive spirit. He was reintroduced to push-rim running — different from hand-cycling in both posture (more forward-inclined) and the absence of pedals to propel the athlete; runners use their hands on the rim itself — through the Semper Fi and America’s Fund via their “Runner’s Batallion” and became infatuated. The organization assists wounded veterans and family members in all branches of military service. Through the fund’s sports program, 84 service members will be running and 23 hand-cycling the full marathon this year.
“Jay is one example of many of why I do what I what I do,” said Sam Tickle, director of the fund’s sports program. “Being a veteran myself, I want to help those that I’ve served with and those that have come before and after me. It’s an incredible feeling. It’s a lot of work, but the payoff is beyond words.”
Initially, McManus planned to compete as a handcycle athlete. However, when he suggested the possibility of becoming a push-rim athlete, the fund took extra steps to help him reach his goal. It put him in contact with Joey Peters, a research specialist at the University of Illinois, who is one of the U.S. Paralympic coaches for track and field and the marathon.
D.C.-area street closures planned Sunday for Marine Corps Marathon
Working with Peters and other coaches, McManus tirelessly perfected his form. Before his training with Peters, his mile time sat around nine minutes. A few months later, his mile time now falls in the four-minute range. After running the Marine Corps Marathon for the past two years virtually, McManus is eager to run alongside his fellow service members and display his hard work.
“The opportunity to run this race in this location with these people … it’s an honor. It’s a privilege,” McManus said. “It’s hard to imagine what three years of anticipation is going feel like at the end [of the race], but I’m very excited to find out.”
While completing the Marine Corp Marathon will mark a significant milestone, McManus already is searching for his next athletic challenge. At the top of the list: Transitioning to paratriathlon with his eyes set on the 2023 U.S. championships.
But first McManus must take care of Sunday’s business.
“I’m beyond excited to, after three years of anticipation and training, get to the Marine Corps Marathon,” McManus said. “Part of me is absolutely terrified because I’ve heard stories of the hills. But I’m very confident.” | 2022-10-29T09:07:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Navy diver's path from stingray encounter to Marine Corps Marathon - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/29/navy-diver-stingray-marine-corps-marathon/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/29/navy-diver-stingray-marine-corps-marathon/ |
Southern California quarterback Caleb Williams has thrown for 1,971 yards and 19 touchdowns this season. (Rick Bowmer/AP)
The Trojans, after all, were the most active Power Five dealmaker in college sports’ transfer market, according to recruiting website 247Sports, with Coach Lincoln Riley scooping up 20 players who entered the NCAA’s transfer portal — including Oklahoma’s five-star quarterback, Caleb Williams, and the nation’s top wide receiver, Jordan Addison of Pittsburgh.
“You have to be nimble; you have to be active. You can’t just sit back,” said Heisman-winning former USC quarterback Matt Leinart, a college football analyst for Fox. “Every day you’re recruiting. And you’re recruiting your own kids to stay, which is the harder part. We talk about it all the time: The transfer portal has become free agency.”
Former U.S. congressman Tom McMillen, president and CEO of Lead1, which represents athletic directors of FBS member schools, likens the present-day landscape to the "Wild West.”
Riley’s rebuilding via the transfer portal didn’t stop with a star quarterback and wide receiver. He added tackle Bobby Haskins (Virginia), linebackers Romello Height (Auburn) and Shane Lee (Alabama) and defensive end Solomon Byrd (Wyoming, after reneging on Georgia Tech).
Mississippi Coach Lane Kiffin appears to be one such coach. He pounced on the portal to land USC quarterback Jaxson Dart, a former four-star recruit, and tight end Michael Trigg, as well as TCU running back Zach Evans in the offseason. The Rebels are off to a 7-1 start and contending for the SEC title.
In an April interview with SiriusXM Radio, Oklahoma Athletic Director Joe Castiglione sharply criticized the effect the transfer portal and unregulated NIL deals were having on college football coaches, making the job of building rosters untenable. “This is ridiculous, to be candid,” he said.
Kiffin, who has adapted to the transfer portal as well as anyone, also has sounded alarms about unpoliced NIL, which he likened to “legalized cheating” in the amateur arena.
“It’s like a payroll in baseball,” Kiffin said at SEC media day in July. “What teams win over a long period of time? Teams that have high payrolls and can pay players a lot. We’re in a situation not any different than that. I said Day 1: ‘You legalize cheating, so get ready for the people that have the most money to get players.’ Now you have it.”
Five FBS coaches already have been fired this season. | 2022-10-29T10:30:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Free agency has come to college football. Not everyone is winning. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/29/free-agency-has-come-college-football-not-everyone-is-winning/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/29/free-agency-has-come-college-football-not-everyone-is-winning/ |
A crowd of more than 22,000 at Providence Park in Portland, Ore., helped push the Thorns past San Diego last week and into Saturday's NWSL title game at Audi Field. (Amanda Loman/Getty Images)
The National Women’s Soccer League arrived in Washington this week for its championship game carrying the weight of a recent report documenting widespread malfeasance but also bearing signs of a brighter future.
Saturday night’s title game at Audi Field, pitting the Portland Thorns against the Kansas City Current, will culminate a month of surging interest in the 10-year-old league: The four largest playoff crowds in NWSL history came in a seven-day block this month, with an average of more than 22,000.
Attendance for this neutral-site final is expected to surpass 18,000 and, for the first time, receive prime-time network TV coverage (CBS).
Viewership this year increased 30 percent and sponsorship revenue 90 percent, Commissioner Jessica Berman said Friday. Regular season attendance averaged almost 7,900, 28 percent higher than the WNBA, which completed its 26th season this fall.
At least five groups are expected to file expansion applications soon for two slots in 2024, she added.
“It can be true that the league has incredible momentum and incredible opportunity ahead of us,” Berman said. “It can also be true that we have some very hard things to address and to work on and to face down. And we are going to own and be transparent that both will be a priority.”
The championship comes less than a month after an investigation — commissioned by the U.S. Soccer Federation and headed by Sally Q. Yates, the former acting attorney general — found “systematic abuse and misconduct” perpetrated by former NWSL coaches and team executives.
A separate investigation, launched by the league and its players’ association, is expected to be completed by the end of the year.
The Yates report — which followed investigative reporting by The Washington Post and the Athletic into sexual coercion and emotional abuse by coaches, plus subsequent inaction by team and league officials — shined a light on problems the players have confronted for years. Its release forced players to balance off-field stress with on-field demands during the final stretch of the season.
“It is a balancing act, for sure,” Kansas City midfielder Desiree Scott said.
Her teammate and goalkeeper Adrianna Franch said, “This has been going on for way too long. People are calling it distractions, but it’s what people deal with every single day. . . . We’ve been speaking up for a long time. It’s just finally being heard, and it’s unacceptable that it’s finally being heard. But that tells you how strong these women are that constantly deal with stuff like that on a regular basis.”
Portland has been in the center of the storm. Fallout from management concealing player abuse by former coach Paul Riley resulted this month in the firing of general manager Gavin Wilkinson and president of business Mike Golub.
Team owner Merritt Paulson also was implicated in the scandal and subsequently stepped down as chief executive. He is under pressure from fans to sell both the Thorns and the MLS’s Portland Timbers.
Fan desire to support the players collided with wanting to boycott the organization. Days before the Thorn’s 2-1 semifinal victory over the San Diego Wave last weekend before a crowd of 22,035, goalkeeper Bella Bixby posted a letter asking supporters to attend the game “because the club belongs to us.”
Striker Christine Sinclair said Friday: “The players have been hurt enough in everything that’s happened. For our fans to come and show the support that they did last week, it was one of the loudest stadiums I’ve experienced. They supported us when we needed them the most.”
The Yates report also detailed abusive misbehavior by coaches in Chicago and Louisville. Separately, a few days later, the league announced it had terminated the contracts of Orlando Pride coach Amanda Cromwell and assistant Sam Greene for retaliatory conduct against players. They had been on administrative leave since June 6.
The NWSL has yet to announce the findings of an investigation into James Clarkson, Houston’s coach and general manager, who was suspended in April amid an investigation into complaints of discrimination, harassment and abuse.
“In order for this league to heal — and these players to trust the league and the future direction of the NWSL — they have to know that [uncovering all issues] is the sole priority of the joint investigation,” Berman said.
While the investigation winds down, the league continues to mark gains. Both expansion teams this year were well received. Los Angeles-based Angel City FC led the league in attendance with a 19,105 average, ending Portland’s eight-year reign.
San Diego began the season at a 6,000-seat college venue before moving late in the year into San Diego State’s Snap Dragon Stadium; for a first-round playoff match, the Wave set a league record with a crowd of 26,215.
Kansas City’s owners opened an $18 million training center and broke ground on the first stadium built for a first-division U.S. women’s pro team. The 11,500-seat riverside complex is due to open in 2024.
“Ownership is very clear: It’s a player-led, player-first environment that we’ve tried to create for them,” Current Coach Matt Potter said. “In many ways, we were lucky the [stadium] groundbreaking came with the [Yates report] news, and that got to shed some light on a dark moment for everybody. The light has continued to shine a little bit for the right reasons with this group.”
Kansas City’s success lends belief that, in the wake of the abuse scandal, the league is on the right path.
“This will be a year that every club and every player can say, ‘Hey, we’re in this together and we want better for the whole league,’ ” Portland star Crystal Dunn said. “We can look back on our careers and say, ‘Yeah, this was a tough year, but we were able to create all the change that we ever wanted for this league.’ ” | 2022-10-29T10:30:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ten years in, the growing NWSL is facing more scrutiny than ever - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/29/nwsl-title-game-attendance/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/29/nwsl-title-game-attendance/ |
Starbucks will get reporters’ messages with union, federal judge rules
Singer Billy Bragg receives a Starbucks Workers United shirt from striking union members outside a Starbucks in Buffalo on Oct. 12. (Lindsay Dedario/Reuters)
A federal judge has ordered the organization behind a unionization drive at Starbucks stores in western New York to turn over all of its messages with journalists — a sweeping and unusual ruling that will let the company peek into communications that courts usually view as private and protected.
U.S. District Court Judge John L. Sinatra Jr. issued the little-noticed order last month at the behest of Starbucks, which has been aggressively fighting the organizing effort by an employee group called Starbucks Workers United in the Buffalo area for months.
The giant coffee chain asked to subpoena the records as part of discovery in a bitter legal fight with the employees and the National Labor Relations Board, whose regional director in May issued a complaint against Starbucks that included over 200 violations of the National Labor Relations Act.
The board asked the court in June to reinstate seven Starbucks workers who were allegedly fired for union-organizing activities through a group called Starbucks Workers United.
The employee group has appealed Sinatra’s decision to the 2nd Circuit Court, which has yet to rule on it.
Sinatra, who was appointed to the federal bench by former president Donald Trump in 2018, ruled against the NLRB’s motion, which sought to quash Starbucks’s request. Instead, he ordered the employee organization to turn over documents, emails, texts and other electronic communication between the workers and “any digital, print, radio, TV, internet-based or other media outlet” that it has been in contact with regarding its organizing efforts.
The order would likely affect thousands of messages between organizers and a large swath of news organizations that have covered the Buffalo story. Among others, The Washington Post, the New York Times, Vice, Fox News, Al Jazeera, the Guardian and the Buffalo News have reported extensively on the organizing campaign.
Buffalo has been ground zero in a push to unionize employees of the sprawling chain, which has more than 15,000 locations in the United States. Workers at a Buffalo store were the first to petition for union recognition last year, sparking a movement that has spread to more than 6,000 workers at some 200 Starbucks across the country.
A group of former and current Starbucks workers have accused the Seattle-based company of union-busting tactics in Buffalo; in June, the federal NLRB agreed. Its region director filed a petition alleging that Starbucks had engaged in a “vigorous anti-union campaign” and had used illegal tactics at stores where elections were taking place, such as closing locations with active organizing drives, threatening employees and bringing in supervisors to discourage union activity.
A Starbucks spokesman, Andrew Trull, defended the broad order in a statement.
“This is about getting to the truth and uncovering misinformation that [union-supporting workers] have disseminated to both our partners and the public,” he said. “The outcome of this trial should be based on a fair evaluation of the facts — including how [the workers group] has spread knowingly false information to many, including the media.”
He didn’t specify what misinformation had allegedly been communicated. But in a follow-up email, another Starbucks representative said asking parties involved in litigation to share material communications “is standard practice.”
In rare cases, courts have ordered news reporters to reveal the source of sensitive stories, especially those involving classified material or national security. But it’s unusual for a judge to order a party in a civil case to hand over such a broad record of contacts with journalists.
New York has a “shield law” that protects professional journalists from disclosing confidential sources. But the law doesn’t address the situation presented in the Buffalo case, in which the sources themselves are being asked to turn over material shared with reporters.
The danger is that disclosure of such information could chill communications between journalists and their sources. If reporters know their private correspondence is subject to public or legal disclosure, they may refrain from seeking the information.
“I keep rereading [the judge’s order] and saying, ‘This can’t be right,’” said Cathy Creighton, the director of Cornell University’s school of industrial and labor relations lab in Buffalo and a former labor-union attorney.
She added, “I’ve never heard of this in 30 years as a labor attorney. I don’t know how else to say it: It takes my breath away.”
That was also the view of union organizers and some of the workers involved in the NLRB suit.
“This company has contempt for all the norms of democracy,” said Richard Bensinger, senior adviser and organizer of Starbucks Workers United and a former national organizing director for the AFL-CIO. “They blatantly spy on, harass and fire workers for exercising their right to organize. They have contempt for freedom of the press and our right to freely speak to the media.”
Casey Moore, a Starbucks barista in Buffalo who has helped organize the local union drive, called Starbuck’s quest for the communications “a fishing expedition” to identify employees who might be sympathetic to the union. “It violates every journalistic standard, and is designed to stymie news coverage.” | 2022-10-29T11:05:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Starbucks will get reporters’ messages with union, federal judge rules - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/10/29/starbucks-reporters-union-communications-judge/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/10/29/starbucks-reporters-union-communications-judge/ |
The St. Louis school shooting is a case study in gun-law dysfunction
Visitors pray at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School in St. Louis, on Oct. 25. (Robert Cohen/St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP)
Jean Kuczka, 61, was a lifelong teacher who couldn’t imagine doing anything else. “I love teaching Health and Physical Education and guiding students to make wise decisions,” reads her online biography. Alexzandria Bell, 15, was an avid dancer with an outgoing personality. “Beautiful inside and out,” said her high school principal. Both were killed in Monday’s mass school shooting in St. Louis. Seven other teenagers were injured. Countless students who fled in terror and witnessed their classmates being shot have been traumatized.
“This could have been much worse,” interim St. Louis Police Chief Michael Sack said about the shooting at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School. He was right. Had it not been for the heroic, unhesitating actions of police who shot and killed the gunman within minutes of arriving at the school, more people would have been killed and injured. But make no mistake, what happened in St. Louis — a teacher killed protecting her students along with a young girl who had her whole life ahead of her — is the worst. And it happens with tragic regularity in the United States.
According to a Washington Post tally, there have been at least 33 school shootings this year. Last year, there were 42 acts of gun violence on K-12 campuses during the school day, more than in any year since at least 1999, when a mass shooting occurred at Columbine High School. Since 1999, The Post found, at least 188 children, educators and other people have been killed and another 389 have been injured in assaults on schools. More than 320,000 students have experienced gun violence at school since Columbine.
At Central Visual and Performing Arts High School, the terror started shortly after 9 a.m., when the gunman broke a window out of a door and entered the school firing. Students barricaded themselves behind doors, huddled in classroom corners and jumped from windows. One girl was eye-to-eye with the shooter when his gun apparently jammed and she was able to run. Before shooting Ms. Kuczka, the gunman was reported to have yelled, “You all are going to die.”
The shooter was 19, a former student at the school, and he came armed with an AR-15-style rifle and 600 rounds of ammunition. How he obtained his weaponry could be a case study in how deficient the nation’s gun laws are. Authorities said he legally purchased the gun from a private individual after his efforts to purchase a gun from a licensed dealer were blocked by an FBI background check, apparently because of mental health issues. Nine days before the shooting, police were called to the gunman’s home, and his family, worried about those mental health issues, asked authorities to remove the gun. Police determined the gunman was lawfully permitted to have a firearm. A third person, someone known to the family, took the rifle so it would be out of the home. Police are investigating how the gunman got the weapon back.
Missouri, notorious for having some of the weakest gun laws in the nation, doesn’t have a red flag law that would have given the family legal recourse to confiscate the gun. The state doesn’t require background checks to buy or own guns, and anyone who is 19 or older can legally conceal or openly carry guns. Last year the state enacted a measure barring police officers from enforcing federal gun laws, subjecting them to a fine of up to $50,000.
How many more school shootings need to happen before Missouri wakes up? How many more before Congress enacts a national assault weapons ban and requires universal background checks?
Opinion|The St. Louis school shooting is a case study in gun-law dysfunction | 2022-10-29T11:31:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The St. Louis school shooting shows how gun control laws fail - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/29/st-louis-school-shooting-gun-control-laws/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/29/st-louis-school-shooting-gun-control-laws/ |
In Montgomery Co., bus driver shortages anger parents, strand students
Corinne Dorsey
A sign about hiring bus drivers is draped on a school bus in Montgomery County on Aug. 12, 2021, in Rockville, Md. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
In Montgomery County, a bus driver shortage has led to some schools having to excuse students from classes when their buses don’t show. At others, parent volunteers are solicited to drive groups of bus riders to school in their personal cars.
The transportation woes seen since schools have reopened have continued, and parents argue their students are suffering because if it. The problems seemed to spike this week, with a number of schools sending emails to parents Friday about routes being unstaffed and buses being late.
Gizework Atraga got an email early Friday morning that the bus that takes her child to Montgomery Knolls Elementary School in Silver Spring wouldn’t be coming. Miscommunication later with a staff member led her to believe the bus would come at some point. But that information was wrong, and she found out from the principal that the bus wouldn’t be there.
Atraga’s second-grader was instead driven to school by her father. But Atraga said the incident was frustrating and disrupted the family’s entire day. For her, the short notice is not enough.
“They have to give you a heads up, so you can prepare,” Atraga, 35, said.
It wasn’t the first time it happened this school year. Even on the first day of classes, the bus didn’t show.
The school system, like many others, has struggled to staff routes amid a national driver shortage. Just over a week before school started, Montgomery County reported 70 open school bus driver positions; as of Friday, there were 32. Thirty people are in training, schools spokesman Chris Cram said. The problem hasn’t worsened, he said, but parents do have complaints. Last school year, the school system enlisted mechanics, supervisors and other employees to pick up routes as it worked to hire 100 new drivers before classes began.
Montgomery County Schools working to fill hundreds of teacher, staff vacancies
In a newsletter to parents this month, the school system noted the local and national challenge to recruit and hire bus drivers. When a bus driver or attendant can’t come to work due to an illness or other reason, “it puts a strain on the system to keep that bus on the road,” the newsletter read.
The school system uses substitute drivers and multiple runs to keep as many buses on the road for school each day. Canceling a bus route is a last resort, according to the newsletter. If it happens, parents are supposed to be told the day before or by 6:15 a.m. the morning of. On Friday, dozens of routes were uncovered or delayed, according to the district’s website, which posts a lists of problem routes each day for morning and afternoon trips.
Cram said sometimes the notification doesn’t get to parents, since roughly 80 percent of the parent population has their contact information online. He added that the school system was looking into having a system like Prince George’s County Public Schools that posts real-time information on how far a bus is and when it’s projected to arrive.
Without reliable bus transportation, Montgomery County parents are having to scramble to work around the shortages. At Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, officials sent out an email Friday morning notifying parents that a bus route would not be running and that any student who could find other ways to school would receive a pass to class. Students who couldn’t find other transportation would be excused. The school’s parent-teacher association is looking into mapping public transportation routes that line up with school bus routes to help get students to school on time when the buses are delayed or don’t run.
Other parents are coordinating volunteers to help students get to class. At Silver Creek Middle School in Kensington, the parent-teacher association is working to expand a list of volunteers on days when buses don’t run. Those parents park their cars at an assigned bus stop and take the students waiting there to school. The PTA sends emails to families in the morning with the make, model and color of the vehicles that would get students to school. The school used parent drivers for at least three bus stops Friday, according to an email sent to families.
Shannon Ingram, a parent who lives in Olney, waits at the stop at 6:30 a.m. every day to see if a bus will come pick up her 13-year-old daughter. The eighth-grader attends Eastern Middle School in Silver Spring, a magnet school that is roughly a 45-minute commute from their home.
If no bus arrives by 6:40 a.m., Ingram and her family change their schedules to make sure the 13-year-old makes it to class on time.
“It’s about a broad problem all over, but especially for the kids in the magnet programs that are putting forth as much as they can to have themselves into these schools and have tried their hardest to get into these schools, to leave them high and dry,” Ingram said. “This just a slap in the face for these kids.”
But even if the bus has shown up on time, there have been other issues with getting her daughter to class. One time, the bus dropped her daughter off at the wrong school.
Pr. George’s schools may combine classes amid 900 teacher vacancies
Pia Morrison, president of Montgomery’s chapter of the Service Employees International Union — which represents bus drivers, said many employees left when the pandemic began. She added that the school system — which is Maryland’s largest with more than 160,000 students — needs to reevaluate how much it pays employees and make sure the rate is competitive. From a fiscal standpoint, the school system is “falling behind in compensation,” she said.
Montgomery’s starting pay for drivers is $22.42 per hour (once you successfully complete the bus operator training), according to a hiring notice on the system’s website. Neighboring Prince George’s County offers a starting pay range of $20.32 to $39.97.
“We can’t continue to use old ways to solve new problems, so there needs to be a level of creativity,” Morrison said. “And that probably involves opening the organizational wallet.” | 2022-10-29T11:35:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In Montgomery Co., bus driver shortages anger parents, strand students - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/10/29/montgomery-maryland-school-bus-driver-shortage/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/10/29/montgomery-maryland-school-bus-driver-shortage/ |
14 schools recognized for outperforming peers in the District
EmpowerK12′s list of Bold Performance Schools includes elementary, middle and high schools
Niya White, principal of Center City Public Charter School in Congress Heights, distributes “dress down passes” to students. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)
Niya White, the principal of Center City Public Charter School’s campus in Congress Heights admits she is a “little obsessive” when it comes to her students’ data. In her office, she flipped through pages of completed math worksheets and “exit tickets.”
“It’s almost like your ticket out,” Smith said about the forms, which are collected at the end of classroom lessons and used by students to demonstrate what they’ve learned. “Just so that you know they understand and mastered that lesson for that particular day and we can move on to something else or different, or if there’s some pockets.”
The pages revealed neatly printed math functions written by fifth graders. She pointed out examples of mastery, but there were errors as well. “If I look through and see like, ‘Hey, there’s like eight kids who made the same, common mistake,’ let’s go back.” Sometimes, White will pore through dozens of assignments — from kindergarten all the way though eighth grade.
It’s a strategy that helped land the campus in Southeast Washington on EmpowerK12’s list of 2022 Bold Performance Schools. These schools, which educate high numbers of students considered by the city as “at risk,” are outperforming their peers across the District, according to the D.C. education research group.
At-risk children include students from low income families, as well as children who are homeless or in the city’s foster care system. But the educators who teach them, grade their assignments and help them procure T-shirts for spirit week don’t think of them that way.
“We don’t have struggling students, we don’t have at-risk students,” said LeVar Jenkins, principal at John Burroughs Elementary School, another school on the list. “We just have students.”
This year’s Bold Performance Schools include 14 elementary, middle and high schools. Students at the schools scored proficiency rates on the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers test — widely known as PARCC — that were an average of 9.1 percentage points higher than other schools with similar demographics. They also outperformed the pre-pandemic average among similar schools on the standardized test.
At Burroughs, Jenkins said teachers doubled down on giving feedback to students during the pandemic. “You could really see what a student was or was not able to grasp in the moment,” Jenkins said. If a teacher noticed an issue, it was corrected “then and there.”
In other cases, these schools found ways to give children more classroom time. Center City started offering some in-person learning to students during the 2020-21 school year, when many schools remained closed. Families who struggled to keep their children online, whether due to obligations at work or shoddy internet access, could send their children to school.
The Bold Performance Schools include nine charter campuses: Center City at Congress Heights; Washington Global Public Charter School; Roots Public Charter School; KIPP DC Legacy College Prep High School; Friendship Southeast Elementary School; Digital Pioneers High School; Paul Public Charter School; Cesar Chavez Public Charter Schools for Public Policy; and Bridges Public Charter School.
Burroughs, Burrville, Langdon, Garrison and Payne elementary schools, which are traditional public campuses, were also recognized.
EmpowerK12 uses a mathematical model to calculate how schools with large at-risk populations — at least 30 percent of the student body — perform on the standardized test relative to their peers. Across the city, about 14 percent of children at schools with high at-risk populations are reading and doing math on grade level, according to an EmpowerK12 analysis of 2022 PARCC data. Among Bold Performance Schools, however, an average of 23 percent of children meet that standard.
The schools are spread across sectors and wards, but share some commonalties. They prioritize family engagement, extended learning time for students, small-group instruction and weekly data monitoring, according to EmpowerK12. Teachers are regularly observed and coached to improve.
“A lot of it is about the quality of the staff and the leadership that are within those schools,” said Josh Boots, founder and executive director of EmpowerK12, and an “overemphasis on relationships and fun.”
Tarsha Warren, assistant principal at Burroughs, knows every student in the building and, in many cases, their parents, aunts and cousins. So do most of her colleagues.
“We don’t go nowhere,” she said about the staff. Warren has been at Burroughs for more than 20 years and most teachers have worked in the building for at least a decade. Warren compared the school’s staff to a family, where everyone is supported but also held accountable for missteps. It’s what keeps them around. “Our kids know that from year to year, they’re going to see the same faces.”
Jenkins said it’s crucial that teachers, as well as students, parents and staff, feel they have agency and ownership over the school. The hallways and classrooms are decorated with student artwork and hand-painted murals.
A hallmark of the campus is weekly “character education,” which centers student voices, Jenkins said. The lessons include a theme — a recent topic revolved around respecting the school’s culture and environment, Jenkins said.
“What you’re going to notice is students talking, you’re going to notice students stating their viewpoint, you’re going to have students challenging one another,” he said about the conversations, which are guided by the school’s mental health staff. About 30 percent of Burroughs’s students are on grade-level in reading and math, according to an EmpowerK12 analysis. Forty-one percent of the majority-Black school is considered at-risk, data from D.C. public schools show.
Twenty-eight percent of Center City’s mostly Black students are on grade-level in the subjects, Empowerk12 found. More than half of the students there are considered to be “at-risk,” a term that makes the principal laugh.
“I find humor in folks asking like, ‘Hey, how did you do it?’ How did we do what?” White asked. “How did we teach the kids like we were supposed to? How did we care for them like we’re supposed to? How did we keep them safe like we’re supposed to? We did what we were supposed to.”
White showed off a room of 4-year-olds who were practicing their penmanship by writing the date on dry erase boards. Their unsteady hands tightly gripped their markers, but when White entered the room, one dropped the utensil to bend her fingers into the shape of a heart.
Elsewhere in the building are small reminders of support. The vocabulary words or multiplication problems a student may encounter on a test are posted in the hallways. In the corridor where the middle-schoolers take their classes, college pennants line the walls.
Students meet regularly with counselors and participate in extracurricular activities, including drama and debate. For years before the pandemic, White led college trips to Georgia, Tennessee and Florida. “Places that they’ve never been, things that they’ve never seen,” he said, reminiscing about taking students on a tour of the Everglades. “I mean, just for them to see and take in all of that was so major and so huge.”
The school has a long-standing tradition of assembling in the gym before class for morning gathering, during which students give each other shout-outs, wish each other happy birthday or thank teachers for supporting them through a difficult lesson the day before. It’s a practice that makes every student feel welcome and respected, White said, which translates into academic success.
Zowie Boyd, an eighth grader, called Center City a “second family,” which is something students missed during virtual learning.
“It was not a good time for me,” Keniya Brown, a seventh grader, said about the time spent learning through a computer screen. “But coming back in school where you have people that understand you and have known you for a while … makes it easier.” | 2022-10-29T11:48:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. schools serving at-risk students recognized for academic achievement - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/10/29/dc-bold-performance-schools-at-risk-students-empower-k12/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/10/29/dc-bold-performance-schools-at-risk-students-empower-k12/ |
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