text stringlengths 237 126k | date_download stringdate 2022-01-01 00:32:20 2023-01-01 00:02:37 ⌀ | source_domain stringclasses 60
values | title stringlengths 4 31.5k ⌀ | url stringlengths 24 617 ⌀ | id stringlengths 24 617 ⌀ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
“The Jim Bohannon Show” provided amiable companionship to millions of night owls during its decades in national syndication
Jim Bohannon appears at an induction ceremony at the Radio Hall of Fame in 2019. He was inducted in 2003. (Michael Kovac/Getty Images/Radio Hall of Fame)
Rush Limbaugh, conservative radio provocateur and cultural phenomenon, dies at 70
“He was a master storyteller,” said Tom Taylor, a journalist who covered the radio industry for 30 years, including as editor of the newsletter Inside Radio. “In contrast to some other people on the air … he didn’t want to raise your blood pressure. He wanted to make you smile and laugh.”
Mr. Bohannon did not fully embrace the conspiracy theories and mysteries that other all-night talkers explored as they committed endless hours to the intricacies of the debates surrounding the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy or eyewitness accounts of UFO travel. Mr. Bohannon was more of a skeptic on such matters.
Larry King, TV host who gave boldface names a cozy forum, dies at 87
But neither was he a straight-ahead celebrity interviewer like Larry King, whose late-night time slot he inherited in 1993 when King shifted his attention from radio to his television talk show on CNN. Rather, Mr. Bohannon’s program was about giving voice to the great wash of Americans, all taken on air, unscreened and uncensored.
Their comments — whether fringe views about the military-industrial complex or rants about why women’s restrooms don’t have urinals — reached national audiences, with only Mr. Bohannon’s finger on the kill button standing between a caller and the ears of many thousands of listeners.
“A lot of uninhibited expression occurred in the wee hours of the night, and he responded extremely well to all perspectives, which I think was his great talent,” said Michael C. Keith, the author of the book “Sounds in the Dark: All-Night Radio in American Life.”
“He didn’t ride any political track as the majority of radio talkmeisters did and do,” Keith continued. “People knew they were not going to hear political proselytizing.”
In his interactions with guests and callers, Mr. Bohannon cultivated a tone that he described as “somewhere between NPR and verbal mud wrestling.”
“There are far too many in this business for whom confrontation is the only idea,” Mr. Bohannon told Newsday in 1995. “They’d get into a nose-to-nose screaming match with Mother Teresa. … Confrontation is not my first choice, ever. Of course, sometimes you’ll have a guest who relies on obfuscation. And a few have tried to bully me on my own show; in that case, you have to abdicate control or knock a head or two.”
In the latter years of his career, Mr. Bohannon moved rightward in his politics and expressed support for President Donald Trump, whom he credited with creating “the hottest economy we’ve ever had” and other accomplishments that Mr. Bohannon said should have guaranteed Trump a landslide reelection victory in 2020.
But he faulted Trump for his “undisciplined mouth” and said that while he opposed the president’s impeachment, he considered Trump’s rhetoric partially responsible for precipitating the attack on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6, 2021.
“Were Trump’s words inflammatory? Yes,” Mr. Bohannon told the the Journal, of Seneca, shortly after the attack. “It would be as if you walked up to your teenage son and you said, ‘Here’s a bottle of whiskey and the car keys. Please drive carefully.’ ”
“I am not sorry he’s leaving,” Mr. Bohannon added. “He’s not an indispensable man. Others can pick up the banner.”
James Everett Bohannon was born in Corvallis, Ore., on Jan. 7, 1944. His father was a salesman, and his mother was a hospital laboratory technician.
Mr. Bohannon grew up in Lebanon, Mo., where he got his first radio job in high school, working for a dollar an hour as what he described as an “all-purpose announcer.” He gained more radio experience as a student at what is now Missouri State University in Springfield but left before graduating for Army service in Vietnam.
Upon his return, he was stationed at Vint Hill Farms Station, a base in Fauquier County, Va., not far from Washington, where his career took off.
Mr. Bohannon was heard on Washington-area stations including WGAY, WTOP and WRC, sometimes broadcasting with his then-wife, Camille Bohannon, who went by Laura Walters on air at WTOP.
He was a morning news anchor at WTOP and was at the mic when an armed group of Hanafi Muslims laid siege to several buildings in Washington in March 1977, taking 149 hostages, killing a reporter, and wounding then-City Councilmember Marion Barry Jr. A security guard died days later of a heart attack. Mr. Bohannon anchored for 21 consecutive hours during the ordeal.
At one point, he “made reference to [the assailants] as ‘apparently a Black Muslim group,’ not realizing that the term ‘Black Muslims’ referred to the main body of Black Muslims who were in literal war with the Hanafi Muslim sect,” Mr. Bohannon recounted to WTOP years later. Mr. Bohannon apologized after a leader of the gunmen phoned the station and threatened to, “as he put it, start cutting off heads, putting them in paper bags, and tossing them out the window,” Mr. Bohannon said, if the radio host did not express remorse.
Mr. Bohannon did a stint in the early 1980s as a morning anchor in Chicago, also working as a freelancer reporter for CNN, before he returned to the Washington area in 1983 to join Mutual Network, which later became Westwood One. He was a regular fill-in host on King’s late-night radio show before taking over the time slot.
In addition to his late-night show, Mr. Bohannon hosted the morning newsmagazine “America in the Morning.”
Mr. Bohannon was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2003 and the National Association of Broadcasters’ Broadcasting Hall of Fame in 2022. He retired from his hosting duties last month and was succeeded on air by Rich Valdes.
Mr. Bohannon’s marriage to the former Camille Skora ended in divorce.
Survivors include his wife of 24 years, the former Annabelle Arnold, of Westminster S.C., and a stepdaughter, Elizabeth Smith of Janesville, Wis.
For all his love of the talk-radio format, Mr. Bohannon expressed sadness over the diminishment of in-person connection, for which he said radio at times seemed to serve as a substitute.
“One thing I’ve learned,” he once told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “is that there are a lot of lonely people out there craving the opportunity to communicate with other humans.” | 2022-11-15T13:31:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jim Bohannon, host of the late-night 'Jim Bohannon Show,' dies at 78 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/15/jim-bohannon-late-night-radio/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/15/jim-bohannon-late-night-radio/ |
You don’t need to be an ardent soccer fan to enjoy the World Cup, which begins on Sunday with host Qatar facing Ecuador.
You also don’t need a huge amount of soccer knowledge to either run or join a World Cup pool. They can take many shapes, from those familiar to American sports fans (the bracket pool) to the more esoteric. Here are a few basic options:
Bracket pool
The World Cup begins with the group stage, with eight groups of four teams. Each team plays the other three teams in its group once. The top two teams from each group advance to the knockout round, which takes the form of a traditional 16-team bracket.
You could wait for the knockout round to begin and simply have the players fill out that bracket, like during the NCAA basketball tournaments. But that eliminates the fun of the earlier games. Alternatively, you could incorporate the group-stage games by having players predict the group winners and runners-up before the tournament begins, and then fill out their brackets from there. Those who correctly predict the advancing teams in the proper order of finish will have a far better chance of success in the bracket. Points could also be awarded for selecting the correct group winners and runners-up.
As a third (and probably best) option, you could pair a traditional bracket pool with a stage pool. Ask each participant to choose the winner and runner-up of each group; entries receive three points for correctly picking the winner or the runner-up of a group and one point for picking a team that advances to the knockout stage but in the wrong spot. For example, if you choose the Netherlands to win Group A and it comes through, you receive three points. If you pick the Netherlands to win Group A and it advances as the group’s runner-up, you get one point. Some pools ask you to pick the full group stage standings and then award an additional point for every team slotted in the right position; if you pick Qatar to finish fourth in Group A and the host nation does, you’d get one point.
Those group-stage points carry over to the more traditional bracket stage, where points are awarded in NCAA tournament fashion. (Four-eight-12-16, to give one example, for wins in the round of 16, quarterfinals, semifinals and final.) Participants don’t fill out the bracket until the group stage is over and the 16-team bracket completed.
Draft pool
Because the men’s World Cup includes 32 teams, this works best with either exactly four or exactly eight people. Each participant takes turns drafting a team until they’re all snapped up. Each win by one of your teams is worth two points, a draw is worth one point and a loss gets you nothing. The most points after the tournament ends is the winner.
Alternatively, you could award three points for wins, two points for a win in penalties, and one point for a loss in penalties or a draw. You could also award more points for wins in later rounds, or a bonus for selecting the champion. Some draft pools also award one point per goal scored, with bonus points for shutouts.
This Reddit thread from four years ago offers some more-involved variations on this type of pool.
Confidence pool
This type of pool starts by grouping each team based on its pre-tournament odds. For instance, favorites Brazil, France, Argentina, England and Spain are worth one point; Germany, Netherlands, Portugal and Belgium are worth two points; Denmark, Croatia and Uruguay are worth three points; and so on down the list of teams. You would have to determine the groups yourself; World Cup odds provide a starting point.
Each player selects five teams, and each team gets points for victories (and half-points for group-stage draws) for every result based on their assigned value. In other words, correctly picking the high-value long shots leads to more points for surprising early results, but might leave contestants without any remaining teams by the end of the tournament.
The points multiply for wins in the knockout rounds, and the player with the most points at the end of the tournament wins.
Each participant picks one team per day, or maybe one team every two days. If that team loses, you’re out of the pool. A win or draw keeps you alive. Players can only pick a team once. The last one standing is the winner. | 2022-11-15T13:40:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How to run a World Cup pool - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/15/world-cup-pool/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/15/world-cup-pool/ |
Even after adjusting for whopping restaurant price increases, consumer spending on what government statisticians call food services and drinking places is up more than 7% from what it was before the pandemic. Meanwhile, employment at food services and drinking places is down more than 4%. That can be irritating for diners. It’s also economic progress.
For most of the 2010s, restaurants were a troubling sort of economic engine for the US. Spending on food away from home surpassed spending on food at home for the first time in either 2007 or 2014, depending on which US Department of Agriculture data series you use, with the gap growing to $234 billion (11.6% of total food spending) in 2019.(1) Food services accounted for about 15% of US job growth from 2010 through 2017, nearly double the sector’s share of existing jobs, but the pay was low and productivity gains were almost nonexistent. The sector’s value added, or contribution to US gross domestic product, grew only slightly from 1.9% of GDP in 2010 to 2.3% in 2019. A dining boom is fun (“it’s hard to think of any sphere of American life where the selection and quality have improved so much as food,” my fellow Bloomberg Opinion columnist Tyler Cowen wrote in 2017) but it’s not exactly something you can build a prosperous economy around.
Then came the pandemic, which was initially a disaster for restaurants, forcing most to close temporarily and thousands to shut their doors for good. The sector’s rebirth involved lots of innovation and experimentation, from high-end restaurants turning to takeout to legalization of to-go alcoholic drinks to delivery-only ghost kitchens preparing huge quantities of chicken wings to, when in-person dining resumed, lots more outdoor tables, online menus and other tweaks. The experimentation continued as the tight labor market of 2021 made it impossible to go back to pre-pandemic staffing levels even as demand returned. For diners, this hasn’t always been great — restaurant guest satisfaction as measured by Merchant Centric fell in 2021. But it did wonders for the sector’s long-lagging productivity numbers.
It hasn’t been bad for the workers, either. Inflation-adjusted food-service wages are up almost 6% over the course of the pandemic, while overall private-sector wages are down slightly.
The big real-wage gains were all in 2021 and have stalled since, and there’s no chance of anything close to a repeat this year of 2021’s productivity gains, which are only reported annually. A recession, or just more normal labor market conditions, could even send these trends into reverse. But things won’t go back to the way they were before the pandemic. Restaurants experienced a huge shock, found ways to cope with it, and in many cases fundamentally changed how they do business. Meanwhile, many former employees have found better work at other restaurants and in other sectors. Employers in food services and accommodation, which combined accounted for 13.6 million jobs in the US in October, had 15.6 million employees quit during 2021 and the first three quarters of 2022. These have always been high-churn sectors, but their recent quits rate is nearly double what it was a decade ago.
Elevated quits rates, which generated talk of a “Great Resignation” last year, have accompanied a significant reallocation of labor in the US. In October, there were 804,000 more nonfarm payroll jobs than in February 2020, a gain of just half a percent, but that masks a lot of sectoral upheaval.
Leisure and hospitality is by far the biggest loser, still down more than a million jobs. Break things down into narrower categories and the largest losses are in, big surprise, food services.
The closely related accommodation sector has experienced a much bigger percentage drop in jobs than food services, and accommodation spending is also up even after adjusting for inflation. But in accommodation, spending and employment growth disconnected a while ago, with employment not only down 17% during the pandemic but now pretty much the same as it was in January 2010.
Part of the explanation is the rise of Airbnb Inc., which is included in the accommodation spending numbers but not, for the most part, in the payroll employment numbers. That is, its employees, of which there are about 6,000 worldwide, are included if they’re in the US, but its self-employed hosts, of which there are 4 million worldwide, are not. Airbnb reported North American gross bookings of $25.3 billion for 2021, which is 19% of reported consumer spending on accommodation, and it is of course not the only short-term rental service.
The divergence between spending and employment in accommodation is thus bigger in the statistics than in economic reality, but clearly Airbnb has brought change and innovation to the industry. Meanwhile, anyone who has stayed at an actual hotel lately can attest that the business has become less labor-intensive, with daily room cleaning increasingly a thing of the past. The lodging industry was transforming before 2020, and the pandemic seems to have accelerated those changes. Not all these changes are for the better, and the same goes for the new directions restaurants have been taking. But if they’re part of a broader shift away from low-pay, low-productivity work, the net effects could be very positive.
• Why Can’t Workers Get the Skills They Need?: Romesh Ratnesar
• Labor Market Strength Is Also a Sign of Dysfunction: Conor Sen
(1) In the USDA and US Bureau of Economic Analysis numbers, meals prepared at restaurants but consumed at home are still counted as food away from home or food services spending, although the fees charged by delivery services aren’t. | 2022-11-15T13:48:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Reason You’re Still Waiting to Order a Meal - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-reason-youre-still-waiting-to-order-a-meal/2022/11/15/55cc31fc-64e8-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-reason-youre-still-waiting-to-order-a-meal/2022/11/15/55cc31fc-64e8-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html |
Man fatally shot and found in vehicle in Northern Virginia
Police identified a man who was found fatally shot in a vehicle in Prince William County. (iStock)
Authorities have identified a man who was fatally shot Saturday and found in a vehicle in Prince William County.
Local police said Demetrious Levar Graham, 44, of Woodbridge, was found around 5:30 a.m. near Morgan Court and Old Triangle Road in the Dumfries area after police received a call about gunfire in the area. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
The case remains under investigation, and authorities are trying to find a suspect or suspects. | 2022-11-15T13:49:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man fatally shot, found in vehicle in Prince William County - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/15/man-fatally-shot-prince-william-county/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/15/man-fatally-shot-prince-william-county/ |
President Biden meets with military leaders, including Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, left, and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley, at the White House on Oct. 26. (Susan Walsh/AP)
Ukraine’s advances on the battlefield have likewise come at a horrible cost. Milley estimates that each side has suffered at least 100,000 casualties. Totally dependent on aid from the West, Ukraine’s forces are also short on soldiers, guns, air support and artillery. Millions of Ukrainians have been displaced. Russia has savaged Ukraine’s electrical grid. Liberated Kherson, like much of the country, faces a “humanitarian catastrophe.” And as Putin mobilizes more troops, there is little chance that Russia can be dislodged from much of the Russian-speaking east, much less from Crimea.
With an estimated price tag of $1 trillion to rebuild Ukraine, the imperative to bring the war to an end is apparent, and more voices are cautiously pushing for a diplomatic resolution. In a recent column, former U.N. ambassador Tom Pickering and George Beebe, director of grand strategy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft (he also served as a special adviser on Russia to former vice president Dick Cheney), acknowledge the seemingly insurmountable obstacles while arguing that diplomacy is the only way to end the war. To those who claim that the time is not right, they reply that diplomacy takes time and preparation should start now. To those who argue that the border questions are insoluble, they suggest that diplomacy could begin with less knotty issues: ways to reduce civilian casualties, build mutual confidence and lay the groundwork for an eventual cease-fire.
The Russian invasion outraged opinion worldwide, even if much of the world chose not to take sides in the battle. In the United States, it stoked patriotic fever and made truth an early casualty. As the progressive caucus debacle showed, the bellicose will seek to squelch the calls for peace or negotiation. But the stakes are too high for us to sit idly by as the catastrophe spreads and the costs — and the risks — keep growing. | 2022-11-15T13:49:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Diplomacy is the best option for ending the Ukraine war - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/15/ukraine-war-end-diplomacy-negotiations/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/15/ukraine-war-end-diplomacy-negotiations/ |
A $20 billion deal aims to help Indonesia quit coal. Will it work?
Good morning and welcome to The Climate 202! ICYMI, The Washington Post is hosting a Global Women’s Summit today, with speakers including the youth climate activists Alexandria Villaseñor, Wanjiku “Wawa” Gatheru and Xiye Bastida. You can register here. But first:
A $20 billion climate-finance deal aims to help Indonesia quit coal. South Africa shows it will be tough.
The United States, Japan and other countries on Tuesday pledged to mobilize $20 billion to help Indonesia, the world’s fifth-largest greenhouse gas emitter, shut down coal plants and ramp up investment in renewable energy.
The climate-finance deal, unveiled at the Group of 20 leaders summit in Bali, marks a significant step toward slashing the world’s dependence on fossil fuels, even as prospects fade for any ambitious agreement at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Egypt, known as COP27.
Still, some environmentalists have criticized a similar $8.5 billion package that seeks to wean South Africa off coal, saying civil society has not been adequately consulted and that the financing pales in comparison to what is needed.
The details: The pact, formally known as a Just Energy Transition Partnership, seeks to mobilize $20 billion in financing from the public and private sector over the next three to five years.
The United States and Japan are co-leading the initiative on behalf of the Group of Seven major industrial nations. Also supporting the initiative are Canada, Denmark, the European Union, France, Germany, Italy, Norway and the United Kingdom.
The deal calls for climate pollution from Indonesia’s power sector to peak by 2030, seven years earlier than projected, and to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, a decade ahead of the country’s current target, according to State Department and Treasury Department officials.
In addition, the agreement seeks to roughly double the deployment of renewable energy in Indonesia by 2030, so that clean energy generation comprises at least 34 percent of the country’s power generation by the end of the decade.
At least half of the finance will come from the private sector, officials said, with seven banks participating under the auspices of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, including Bank of America and Citigroup.
Tuesday’s announcement follows roughly a year of talks between U.S. climate envoy John F. Kerry and Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati, as well as several conversations between President Biden and Indonesian President Joko Widodo.
“Together, we hope to mobilize more than $20 billion to support Indonesia’s efforts to reduce emissions and expand renewable energy and support workers most affected by the transition away from coal,” Biden said at an event Tuesday with Widodo and European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen.
Kerry said in a statement that the deal "can truly transform Indonesia’s power sector from coal to renewables and support significant economic growth. At every step, Indonesia has communicated the importance of building a clean economy that works for the people of Indonesia and attracts investment.”
(Our colleague Rebecca Tan reports on how difficult it has been for Indonesia to quit coal.)
A truly ‘just’ transition in South Africa?
The agreement is modeled after an $8.5 billion Just Energy Transition Partnership, announced at last year’s COP26 climate talks in Scotland, that seeks to help South Africa move away from coal. That deal is backed by the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union.
However, civil society groups and environmental justice communities in South Africa have not been sufficiently briefed on the inaugural Just Energy Transition Partnership, raising questions about whether it is truly “just,” said Luísa Abbott Galvão, a senior international policy campaigner at the green group Friends of the Earth.
“In South Africa, our partners were being consulted on plans that they didn't have the actual documents for, so they didn't have a lot to base their actual input on,” she said. “So JETPs still have a lot to prove, frankly, to live up to their name.”
Meanwhile, the scale of financing that South Africa needs for its clean-energy transition is orders of magnitude larger than the $8.5 billion offered by wealthy nations, environmentalists say.
To realize the Just Energy Transition Partnership over the next five years, South Africa will need at least $86.7 billion, according to the Life After Coal campaign, a coalition of South Africa-based environmental groups including groundWork, Friends of the Earth South Africa, Earthlife Africa and the Centre for Environmental Rights.
“South Africa’s plan is ambitious, and we need new, additional funding at scale in order to realize such ambition,” Leanne Govindsamy, head of the corporate accountability program at the Centre for Environmental Rights, said in a statement.
Similarly, the $20 billion offered Tuesday will make a small dent in the estimated $600 billion that Indonesia needs to pivot away from coal power, which currently produces more than 60 percent of electricity in Southeast Asia’s largest economy.
In addition to Indonesia and South Africa, leaders of the G-7 countries have said they plan to explore potential Just Energy Transition Partnerships with India, Senegal and Vietnam. However, observers do not expect an announcement about those three countries at the G-20 summit this week.
Climate envoys from the United States and China have resumed formal negotiations after President Biden and China’s Xi Jinping struck an agreement at the Group of 20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, the White House said Monday, our colleague Timothy Puko and Maxine report.
The agreement, which comes after China suspended climate talks with the United States in August over the visit of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to Taiwan, opens up a possible path for greater greenhouse gas cuts from the world’s two largest emitters.
“The two leaders agreed to empower key senior officials to maintain communication and deepen constructive efforts on these and other issues,” an official White House readout of the one-on-one talks said.
Observers and delegates at this week’s United Nations Climate Change Conference in Egypt have said there isn’t clear momentum toward any ambitious deal at COP27. By resuming their talks, the United States and China could use their clout to urge other countries to ramp up their climate ambition, said Ani Dasgupta, president of the World Resources Institute.
COP26 president warns against backsliding on 1.5-degree goal at COP27
Alok Sharma, who presided over last year’s COP26 climate talks in Scotland, warned Monday that COP27 could result in “backsliding” on a global goal of limiting Earth’s warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels, Bibi van der Zee and Helena Horton report for the Guardian.
“We’ll either leave Egypt having kept 1.5C alive or this will be the COP where we lose 1.5C,” Sharma said, adding that the more ambitious target of the 2015 Paris agreement must be a “red line.”
Here’s what else to know as the tense COP27 negotiations continue:
Mexico announced Monday that it plans to significantly increase the amount of power it generates from renewable energy, adding more than 30 gigawatts of annual electricity generation from wind, solar, geothermal and hydropower by 2030, Ben Adler reports for Yahoo News.
Brazilian President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will arrive at COP27 on Tuesday, after other world leaders have left for the G-20 summit in Bali. He is expected to outline his vision for protecting the Amazon rainforest, which faced record deforestation under predecessor Jair Bolsonaro. The country’s former environmental minister and close ally to Lula, Marina Silva, also said Monday that Brazil wants to host the annual climate talks in 2025.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm will also attend the summit on Tuesday. She will participate in an event on the Energy Department’s Energy Earthshots Initiative.
On America Recycles Day, a pair of bipartisan recycling bills stall in the House
As the nation recognizes America Recycles Day on Tuesday, two bipartisan bills aimed at improving the nation’s recycling and composting systems remain stalled in the House after easily clearing the Senate.
In July, the Senate passed the Recycling and Composting Accountability Act and the Recycling Infrastructure and Accessibility Act by unanimous consent. The first bill would require the Environmental Protection Agency to collect and publish data on recycling and composting rates across the country, while the second would establish a pilot recycling grant program at the EPA.
Both measures are backed by Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chair Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.) as well as Sens. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) and John Boozman (R-Ark.). But the bills have faced resistance from some House Republicans who don’t want to empower the EPA to collect additional data, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.
Meanwhile, during a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing in June, Rep. David B. McKinley (R-W.Va.) accused Democrats of pushing recycling legislation to “ban the manufacture of critical plastics.”
Chesapeake Bay could become national recreation area — Fredrick Kunkle for The Post
Senators representing Appalachia call out delay of new mining safety standard — Zack Budryk for the Hill
Hippos, sharks up for protection at UN wildlife conference — Michael Casey for the Associated Press
Meat on the menu, not the agenda, at COP27 climate conference — Richard Valdmanis and Tim Cocks for Reuters
We can’t bear how cute this is: 😍 | 2022-11-15T13:49:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A $20 billion deal aims to help Indonesia quit coal. Will it work? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/15/20-billion-deal-aims-help-indonesia-quit-coal-will-it-work/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/15/20-billion-deal-aims-help-indonesia-quit-coal-will-it-work/ |
Two enormous cyberattacks convince Australia to 'hack the hackers'
Welcome to The Cybersecurity 202! I’m with these guys. “The Gang Cracks the Liberty Bell” is one of the best episodes.
Below: Industry weighs in on proposed rules for how critical infrastructure organizations should report hacks to the government, and state attorneys general reach a settlement with Google over location tracking. First:
Australia has had enough. But going on offense against cyberspace tormentors has some downsides.
Australia’s Cybersecurity Minister Clare O’Neil vowed this weekend to “hack the hackers” after two monumental, back-to-back cyberattacks against Australian telecommunications giant Optus and insurance titan Medibank affected swaths of people.
The fallout has included the public exposure of sensitive health data and the theft of information about millions of customers.
The stretch of high-profile hacks is comparable to what the United States experienced from late 2020 to mid-2021, when Russian hackers infiltrated federal agencies and tech companies after breaching IT firm SolarWinds and the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack triggered a fuel panic on the East Coast. The combination of those hacks, among others, prompted more drastic action from the U.S. government, both in the Biden administration and Congress, Glenn Gerstell, former general counsel of the National Security Agency, told me.
“In some ways, this is a repeat of the kind of shock that the United States went through,” said Gerstell, now a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. “I think it also reflects maybe a bit of frustration with traditional tools, law enforcement tools and even diplomatic tools, that are going to be limited — because most of these hackers are located offshore, probably in Russia — against attacks that nation-state-condoned, or state-tolerated at best.”
But going on the offensive and trying to strike back in cyberspace against one’s attackers has its own risks, with rewards that might not prove lasting.
On the plus side of offensive action, the U.S. has proven capable at times of clawing back stolen cryptocurrency, for instance, and has successfully targeted the servers of a ransomware gang, as my colleague Ellen Nakashima reported last year.
“You’re going to make a statement, obviously, if it takes some infrastructure down,” Tim Kosiba, the former chief of the NSA special liaison office in Canberra, Australia, and now CEO of cyber firm Redacted’s Bracket f subsidiary, told me. And it might send more of a message than filing charges against hackers unlikely to ever see the inside of a courtroom, he said.
On the negative side:
“That sort of gives away your ability to track down and attest where the attack came from,” Kosiba said.
It requires complete confidence about who’s responsible for the attack to make sure an innocent target isn’t victimized, he said. And it can potentially cause trouble for allies, given the distributed global nature of the internet and the need to sometimes route attacks through the infrastructure of other nations.
The known, reported cases of U.S. hacking operations against cyber adversaries include operations like the 2018 disruption of the Russian troll farm the Internet Research Agency, which doesn’t seem to have done permanent harm. “I don’t see that as anything that amounted to much more than a momentary annoyance, in the grand scheme of things,” Gavin Wilde, who has served at the National Security Council and NSA and is now a senior fellow in the Technology and International Affairs Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told me.
U.S. experiences
Notably, the ransomware gang that Australia reportedly believes is responsible for the Medibank hack is REvil, the target of the operation that Ellen reported on last year. At the time, a pair of operations by U.S. Cyber Command and a foreign government at least temporarily “left its leaders too frightened of identification and arrest to stay in business, according to several U.S. officials familiar with the matter,” Ellen reported. Ransomware gangs in general have shown the ability to rapidly regenerate.
The first hacking operation the U.S. government ever acknowledged came against the Islamic State terrorist group in 2016. NSA and Cyber Command Chief Gen. Paul Nakasone, reflecting on the operation in 2019, said that while the group may have still been online, it had to change its operations and was no longer as strong in cyberspace as before.
“We were seeing an adversary that was able to leverage cyber to raise a tremendous amount of money to proselytize,” he told NPR. “We were seeing a series of videos and posts and media products that were high-end. We haven't seen that recently. … As ISIS shows their head or shows that ability to act, we're going to be right there.”
That still means even U.S. Cyber Command is in its “relative infancy as far as offensively capable units,” Wilde said, and any nation should be “pretty circumspect” about sending the signal that retaliatory attacks are capable of being effective against cybercriminals. (Attacks on fellow nation states might be a different story.)
Australia’s experiences
With a population of just under 26 million people, Australia is far smaller than the United States (332 million). So it was a massive impact on the country when the attacks affected 9.7 million Medibank customers and 9.8 million Optus customers, Kosiba said.
“I’m pretty familiar with their capabilities, and they have great capabilities,” he said. Australia has also benefited from working closely with the United States as part of the “Five Eyes” intelligence partnership, he said. And a recent study ranked Australia as No. 5 in cyber power, with the United States at the top of the list.
That said, Australia is going up against the same adversaries in cyberspace that the United States has struggled to contend with, only Australia’s doing it with a far smaller cyber force, Gerstell said. That means going on offense is “just part of the solution,” he said, and must be paired with partnering with law enforcement and improved defense, something Australia seems to realize.
Both Australia and the United States also appear to recognize that they need to do more, Kosiba said.
“The big question is, are we at the stage where you should impose greater costs to the adversary?” he asked. “Obviously, it sounds like the Australians believe that … there needs to be more cost imposed on these types of ransomware gangs.”
Industry groups weigh in on rules to report hacks to government
The groups weighed in ahead of a Monday deadline to comment on how the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency should require critical infrastructure organizations to report hacks to the government. President Biden signed legislation laying out the outline of those rules into law in March.
Many industry groups and firms that commented said they didn’t want the rules to overburden themselves or complicate their interactions with other regulators, some of whom have already imposed reporting requirements of their own.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a major corporate lobby, said the list of covered entities should be “tightly construed” to only cover the most consequential critical infrastructure entities. BlackBerry argued against narrow rule-writing, saying that the company “would encourage CISA to resist calls to overly narrow the law’s application within these critical sectors.” CISA has until 2024 to formally propose its rules.
Google reaches record $392 million settlement with state AGs over location tracking
Connecticut Attorney General William Tong (D) called the 40-state settlement a “historic win for consumers,” the Associated Press’s Dave Collins and Marcy Gordon report. The state investigation of Google came after a 2018 AP story that found that Google still tracked users’ locations even after they turned off Google’s “location history” feature.
“The attorneys general said Google misled users about its location tracking practices since at least 2014, violating state consumer protection laws,” Collins and Gordon write. “As part of the settlement, Google also agreed to make those practices more transparent to users. That includes showing them more information when they turn location account settings on and off and keeping a webpage that gives users information about the data Google collects.”
Google says it had updated the policies at the center of the case. “Consistent with improvements we’ve made in recent years, we have settled this investigation, which was based on outdated product policies that we changed years ago,” company spokesperson Jose Castaneda said, per the AP.
Italy bans many uses of facial recognition technology, allows use in criminal investigations
The ban by the country’s privacy watchdog comes as two municipalities said they would begin using the technology, Reuters’s Elvira Pollina and Federico Maccioni report. The technology will still be allowed when the technologies “play a role in judicial investigations or the fight against crime,” they write.
“Under European Union and Italian law, the processing of personal data by public bodies using video devices is generally allowed on public interest grounds and when linked to the activity of public authorities,” they write, citing the privacy watchdog. The technology is controversial in regions including Europe, where lawmakers have been working on legislation to ban sweeping, real-time use of the technology.
Medibank faces new headaches as it finds staff data has also been hacked (Sydney Morning Herald)
Google agrees to $391.5 million privacy settlement with 40 states (CNET)
Facebook $90 million privacy settlement approved over antitrust lawyers' objection (Reuters)
K-12 cyber maturity improving, but still lags behind other sectors (StateScoop)
Twitter’s SMS two-factor authentication Is melting down (WIRED)
Elon Musk keeps taking Twitter advice from right-wing trolls (Rolling Stone)
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray and National Counterterrorism Center Director Christine Abizaid testify at a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on worldwide threats today at 9:30 a.m.
The Election Assistance Commission holds a public hearing today at 10 a.m.
Top U.S. cybersecurity officials speak at the Aspen Institute’s annual Aspen Cyber Summit on Wednesday.
The Senate Judiciary Committee holds a hearing on oversight of the Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday at 10 a.m.
He probably gets so many people with this 🤣 (via beemedina98/TT) pic.twitter.com/fEFeN9aQau
Analysis: Reeling Republicans brace for Trump campaign announcement | 2022-11-15T13:49:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Two enormous cyberattacks convince Australia to 'hack the hackers' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/15/two-enormous-cyberattacks-convince-australia-hack-hackers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/15/two-enormous-cyberattacks-convince-australia-hack-hackers/ |
Novak Djokovic reportedly cleared to play in Australian Open
Novak Djokovic triumphed in his match with Stefanos Tsitsipas on Monday in Italy. (Alessandro Di Marco/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Australian officials have reportedly cleared Novak Djokovic to enter the country to seek his 22nd Grand Slam singles title in the Australian Open early next year, lifting a ban that was imposed in January when he was deported because he refused to be vaccinated against the coronavirus.
Djokovic’s ban was automatically triggered by his drama-filled deportation, and while there is no longer a vaccine mandate for foreign travelers entering the country, the Serbian tennis champion’s lawyers have been working to have his visa reinstated. Australia has had a change in government since Djokovic’s visa was canceled on the eve of this year’s Australian Open, and officials confirmed for the Guardian and CNN on Tuesday that his ban had been overturned by Immigration Minister Andrew Giles. A new visa application is expected to be quickly approved.
While his representatives work on that, the nine-time Australian Open winner told reporters at a tournament in Italy on Monday night that there was “nothing official yet.”
“We are waiting,” Djokovic added in comments to reporters at the ATP Finals in Turin (via Australia’s Nine.com). “They are communicating with the government of Australia. That’s all I can tell you for now.”
Craig Tiley, the Australian Open tournament director, was confident that Djokovic would play in the event, the first of the four annual Grand Slam tennis tournaments and Australia’s highest-profile sports competition. The 2023 tournament is scheduled to begin Jan. 16 in Melbourne.
“There’s a normal visa application process that everyone is going through right now, and everyone will go through the right timing,” Tiley said Tuesday (via the Australian Associated Press). “I don’t think there should be any preferential treatment for anyone, but I fully expect to have an answer for everyone by the time they need to book their flights and come in, including Novak.
“That’s entirely up to the Australian government.”
Djokovic is chasing Rafael Nadal, the all-time leader in Grand Slam men’s singles titles with 22 and the winner of last year’s Australian Open in Djokovic’s absence. Nadal is second in the ATP world rankings, and Djokovic is eighth.
“I know Novak wants to come and play and to get back to competing,” Tiley said. “He loves Australia and it’s where he’s had the best success, but the timing [of an announcement] is up to somebody else and we’ll just play that one by ear.”
Tiley had told Djokovic in January that he had been granted a medical exemption to play at Melbourne Park, but Alex Hawke, then the immigration minister, intervened and Djokovic was forced to leave Australia after a protracted legal battle.
“I’ve spoken to Novak a few times. We caught up and spent some time together in London, and he’s fine. Our relationship is fine,” Tiley said Tuesday. “He played the Laver Cup, and it was really nice to be able to spend some private time with him.
“He understands the circumstances and everything but he’s got to work it out with the federal government. I’m confident they’ll reach some arrangement and hopefully it’s positive, but I don’t know that. That’s really between he and the feds. But the conditions have changed significantly from where they were a year ago, and I’d like to have Novak here. | 2022-11-15T13:50:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Novak Djokovic reportedly cleared to play in Australian Open - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/15/novak-djokovic-australian-open/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/15/novak-djokovic-australian-open/ |
Apple has a new emergency feature you hope to never need
Chris Velazco
Apple rolled out a new feature that lets its latest iPhones connect to low-Earth orbit satellites and relay information to emergency rescue teams. (Video: Jonathan Baran/The Washington Post)
You’re on an early winter hike with friends, following an unkempt “moderate” path you found on the AllTrails app. There’s a dusting of snow on the ground, just enough to throw you off, and your group ends up lost. It’s getting late, you aren’t packed for an overnight stay and there’s no cellular reception on anyone’s phones.
If one person in your crew has an iPhone 14, there’s a new way to call for help when off the grid. Starting Tuesday, a feature called Emergency SOS via satellite will allow users in trouble to send their location — plus short, explanatory messages — to emergency responders.
“There are people who think, ‘Now I’m connected, now it doesn’t matter where I go, how I go,’ ” says Sheriff Kevin Rambosk of Collier County, FL. “We still want you to have a plan, to let someone know what your plan it, and when you need this, use this.”
More recently, satellite connectivity has come into vogue for smartphone software providers and wireless carriers. Over the summer, T-Mobile announced a partnership with SpaceX that would see the latter’s next-generation Starlink satellites act as orbiting cell towers, allowing stranded customers to fire off emergency texts when needed. And days before Apple unveiled its satellite-friendly iPhones, Google senior vice president Hiroshi Lockheimer also confirmed that a future version of Android would support similar features.
Apple’s new service is made possible by dozens of satellites in low Earth orbit, whizzing around the planet at around 15,000 miles per hour. Apple didn’t actually put them there, though — it instead poured millions into Globalstar, a Louisiana-based communications company that launched its first satellites in the late 1990s.
If you have a compatible iPhone and you attempt to call 911 in an area without WiFi or cellular service, you’ll see an option to send an “Emergency Text via Satellite” appear on-screen. Tap that, and the phone will ask you questions such as “What’s the emergency?” and “Is anyone injured?”
Your answers — along with your precise location and your medical ID, if you’ve added one — are plucked from the ether by a Globalstar satellite and relayed to a ground station. If the appropriate emergency responders are equipped to receive calls for help via text message, they’ll be alerted directly. But if they aren’t, Apple routes the calls to third-party relay centers that include Apple employees. They collect your responses — and sometimes ask clarifying questions — and liaise with emergency services on your behalf.
For this process to work, you need a clear, unobstructed view of the sky, or as close to it as you can get (clouds are okak). Because those satellites are flying around at such high speeds, you will also occasionally need to point the iPhone at different parts of the sky to send or receive those emergency messages. The phone will tell you which way to position it. Rather than the seconds it usually takes to conduct a conversation via text message, messages sent via satellite can take many minutes to reach their destination.
A satellite-connected iPhone 14, rugged Apple Watch and AirPods
“It’s providing an inflated sense of safety and security because you have this, even a little bit of hubris,” says Chris Boyer, executive director for the National Association for Search and Rescue. “When you’ve got something in your pocket like this, I think people rely on it heavily and get a flawed risk assessment. That overconfidence can end in tragedy.”
Boyer has worked in search and rescue operations, including being on teams in the field, since 1996. He applauds Apple adding the feature but thinks consumer education will be key to making sure it’s making people safer. He also worries that suddenly expanding access could lead to an uptick in unnecessary calls. “Search and rescue is already pretty overwhelmed,” he says.
“This is one of those features you’re never going to think about or use until the one moment you need it.” said Michael Martin, CEO of RapidSOS, which connects Apple’s SOS data to nearby 911 centers.
RapidSOS’s technology acts as a sort of translator for these types of private emergency calls and the public 911 hubs that answer them. It’s been a long slog to update 911 infrastructure in the United States, and while advances have been made in recent years, many dispatch centers still cannot receive text messages directly from people in distress. Meanwhile, companies like Uber, SimpliSafe and Google are adding built-in buttons for reporting emergencies or using sensors and relying on RapidSOS.
Collier County’s Sheriff Rambosk says private companies such as Apple investing in emergency technology can help advance public infrastructure. He thinks Apple’s SOS feature could help his own department get more calls from people lost in the Everglades or stranded after hurricanes.
Apple is selling a promise of safety. It’s also the latest tech company to tap into fear to market a product. Google’s Nest, Amazon’s Ring and other home security cameras have exploded in popularity, while neighbors use apps such as Nextdoor and Neighbors to trade information about the latest crimes or “suspicious” people. Citizen, a crowdsourced app for monitoring nearby crime and emergencies, has a $20 a month service called Protect that includes immediate access to an agent. (The Washington Post is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.)
Emergency SOS joins a line of Apple safety features that include the Apple Watch’s fall detection and the iPhone 14’s Crash Detection, which can tell when you’ve been in a car accident.
Satellite SOS could be more than another selling point for iPhones in the future. The chances of an iPhone user actually needing satellite SOS may be slim, but Apple hasn’t publicly ruled out the idea of charging customers for that peace of mind. The company says the feature will be free for the first two years, and has not said what — or if — it could cost after that.
Whether or not Apple charges, the service could cost users. Garmin’s InReach devices — satellite-equipped communication gadgets that can hold a charge for days, even up to a month — start at $14.95 a month for service. The company also offers insurance for $40 a year, to cover up to $100,000 in rescue costs.
“I’ve seen search and rescue helicopter invoices for $40,000, for fuel, rotary miles, crew, specialized equipment,” said Kevin Stamps, a senior manager at Garmin Response. “It varies instant to instant.”
Here’s a way to try the satellite SOS feature without actually summoning emergency responders. For now, the feature can only be used by people in the United States and Canada with an iPhone 14 or 14 Pro model running the iOS 16.1 software.
Scroll down and select the “Demo mode” option. | 2022-11-15T13:50:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Apple's new satellite SOS feature is out. Here's how it works. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/15/iphone-satellite-sos/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/15/iphone-satellite-sos/ |
A damaged vehicle at the scene of an attack in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Tuesday. (Ammar Awad/Reuters)
TEL AVIV — An 18-year-old Palestinian stabbed two Israelis to death and ran over a third with a vehicle Tuesday near the West Bank settlement of Ariel — the latest escalation in an Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has seen the highest death tolls in years.
The assailant, identified as Muhammad Murad Sami Souf from the Palestinian village of Hares, attacked a crowd of people with a knife at the entrance to the Ariel Industrial Park in the West Bank. The site employs hundreds of Palestinians, and Souf held a work permit there.
He then attacked another group of people at a nearby gas station and fled the scene with a stolen vehicle, crashing into several cars and running down a person. Israeli military forces shot him dead at the scene. Three others were critically injured.
The stabbing comes amid near-daily raids on Palestinian areas by Israeli forces in retaliation for earlier attacks and as a new right-wing government promising even harsher methods comes to power.
The Israeli army said it was searching the area for a suspected accomplice who drove the attacker to the gate. Souf had no criminal record, though his father, a member of Fatah, the party ruling the West Bank, was previously imprisoned in Israel, according to Israeli media.
Odelia Shahaf, an EMT with Magen David Adom, Israel’s emergency services, said she arrived at the scene of the attack on Route 5 and “saw a wounded man lying on the road. … While I started treating him, I heard shouts of ‘terrorist, terrorist’ and saw a man running with a knife in our direction. We started to run away, and people pulled out guns. He managed to stab a 35-year-old man before he was injured.”
The attack coincides with a swearing-in ceremony in the Israeli parliament. Former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu clinched a decisive victory in the Nov. 1 vote, in part thanks to support from the far-right party Religious Zionism, whose members have pledged to intensify Israel’s policies regarding Palestinians.
“Already, on the first day of the new Knesset, we receive a painful reminder of the most important and urgent issue on the table,” said Bezalel Smotrich, a West Bank settler who leads the Religious Zionism bloc and has demanded to be made head of the Defense Ministry. “We must restore security to all Israeli citizens and restore the eroded deterrence.”
“This is a wake-up call for the future government: The death penalty law for terrorists must be passed to put an end to terrorism. Only an iron hand will stamp out terrorism,” said firebrand politician Itamar Ben Gvir, who is expected to be appointed public security minister.
The position would place him in charge of the police, the prison systems and the al-Aqsa Mosque esplanade, a site that has served for decades as a flash point in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He has also advocated giving Israeli security forces wider latitude to use live ammunition and to protect them from criminal prosecution for killing or injuring Palestinians.
Since the spring, when a spate of Palestinian attacks on Israelis left 19 dead, the largest number of fatalities in years, the Israeli military has been conducting near-nightly raids across the West Bank with the goal of dismantling Palestinian militant networks.
Recent months have put 2022 on track to be the deadliest year for Palestinians since the United Nations began keeping records in 2005. Many of those killed were implicated in terrorist attacks, Israel’s security forces maintain, though they have said that civilians have been killed, too.
In May, the Palestinian American reporter Shireen Abu Akleh was killed, spurring international outrage and an unprecedented U.S. investigation into Israeli military behavior.
U.S. to probe killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, spurring outrage in Israel
A 15-year-old Palestinian girl, Fulla al-Masalma, was killed early Monday morning by Israeli soldiers who shot at her car in the West Bank town of Beitunia, near Ramallah, the Palestinian Health Ministry reported.
The escalation, many fear, could spill over into a broader conflict.
Tuesday’s attack was “a heroic stabbing operation that proves our nation’s ability to continue the revolution,” said Abd al-Latif al-Qanua, the spokesman of Hamas, the Islamist group ruling Gaza that has fought four wars with Israel.
Hazem Balousha in Gaza City contributed to this report. | 2022-11-15T13:50:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Three Israelis killed, Palestinian attacker shot in West Bank attack - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/15/israel-palestinian-stabbing-attack-ariel/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/15/israel-palestinian-stabbing-attack-ariel/ |
A Hydro-Québec truck at a hydroelectric station on the Saint Lawrence River in Beauharnois, Québec, in October 2021. (Graham Hughes/Bloomberg News)
Canadian authorities have arrested a researcher at the country’s largest electric utility and charged him with espionage for allegedly trying to obtain trade secrets for China, according to police.
While working at the state-owned utility, “Mr. Wang allegedly obtained trade secrets to benefit the People’s Republic of China, to the detriment of Canada’s economic interests,” the police statement said Monday.
Canadian police said foreign espionage attempts were a top concern. RCMP Inspector David Beaudoin told reporters this was the first time the trade secrets charge, which carries a maximum jail sentence of 10 years, has been laid under the Security of Information Act in Canada. He said interference by foreign actors that could affect national security has “recently been gaining a lot of traction” in police operations. “We are more and more active in that sphere,” he added.
The inspector said Wang, who is from a Montreal suburb, had allegedly used information without the knowledge of his employer in crimes that took place between 2018 and October this year. He said the employee had “used his position to conduct research” for a Chinese university and research centers in China — a dominant supplier in the global electric vehicle battery market.
Hydro-Québec said Wang had worked at its Center of Excellence in Transportation Electrification and Energy Storage, a research unit that develops battery materials for electric vehicles and energy storage systems. The center has previously teamed up with the U.S. Army Research Laboratory. Police said a complaint from the company’s security branch had sparked an investigation in August.
A statement from the utility company described him as a researcher whose “work related to battery materials” but did not have access to Hydro-Québec’s “core mission,” without providing further details. It said his access at work was revoked once the suspicions emerged and that he had since been fired.
“No organization is safe from a situation like this one, which is why we must always remain vigilant and transparent,” Senior Corporate Security Director Dominic Roy said.
Alleged Russian spy studied at Johns Hopkins and won internship at ICC
Canada’s public broadcaster reported that Wang had worked at the power utility since 2016 and that officers had arrested him Monday at his home. | 2022-11-15T14:36:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hydro-Quebec employee charged with spying for China, Canadian police say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/15/canada-espionage-china-hydro-quebec/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/15/canada-espionage-china-hydro-quebec/ |
Man fatally shot in Southeast Washington
A man was fatally shot Tuesday morning in Southeast Washington, according to D.C. police.
The shooting occurred shortly before 5:30 a.m. in the 2500 block of Southern Avenue SE, along the border with Maryland in the Shipley neighborhood.
Police said the man, whose name has not been released, was unresponsive at the scene. A police spokeswoman said that the death was being investigated as a homicide and that additional information would be made public later. | 2022-11-15T14:37:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man fatally shot in Southeast Washington - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/15/shooting-homicide-dc-2/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/15/shooting-homicide-dc-2/ |
A Trump 2024 bid for president won’t stop Justice Dept. criminal probes
Officials have discussed whether a special counsel should be appointed if Trump runs. But some legal experts think it’s too late for that.
Attorney General Merrick Garland departs after speaking to the media Oct. 24 at the Justice Department. (Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Another Donald Trump presidential bid wouldn’t protect him from a criminal investigation, but it could complicate the decision-making process at the Justice Department, as senior officials strive to show that investigating a political figure is not the same thing as a political investigation.
Privately, Justice Department officials have discussed the possibility of appointing a special counsel to take over investigations involving Trump — such as the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case or the attempts to prevent Joe Biden from ascending to the presidency after the 2020 election — if Trump formally declares himself a 2024 presidential candidate, people familiar with the matter said.
How serious those discussions were and how long ago they occurred is not clear. But Attorney General Merrick Garland and others may soon face a decision point, as Trump, who lost his bid for a second term in 2020, may announce another presidential campaign as early as Tuesday night.
A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment. The people familiar with the matter spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Investigators see ego, not financial gain, as Trump's motive for keeping classified documents
Plenty of political candidates have been investigated while they ran for office — including Hillary Clinton, Trump’s Democratic opponent in 2016. The FBI investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server was opened in mid-2015, continued throughout the primaries, was closed just before the nominating convention and then publicly reopened less than two weeks before Election Day.
No special counsel was appointed for that probe.
Critically, even if a special counsel is appointed, that person would still report to the attorney general, who would have the ultimate authority on what to do about the evidence.
Sarah Isgur served as an adviser to Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein in 2017, when he appointed Robert S. Mueller III a special counsel to investigate any possible ties between Russian election interference and the Trump campaign. She said she doesn’t think Garland has much choice but to name a special counsel if Trump runs for president.
“Unless they’ve already made the decision not to indict, I don’t see how the attorney general can get around the regulations here,” Isgur said. “He must appoint a special counsel where a criminal investigation would present a conflict of interest. And what bigger conflict is there for the political appointees at the Justice Department than whether to indict the guy running against their boss?”
While the Mueller special counsel appointment was not very controversial when it was first made, there were some circumstances surrounding that decision that are not yet apparent in the current Trump investigations.
Mueller was appointed shortly after Trump fired the FBI director, James B. Comey, and Trump gave an interview saying he was thinking about the Russia probe investigation when he made the decision to fire Comey. And behind the scenes, there was significant tension between FBI and Justice Department leaders over how to run the investigation.
It’s true that the current investigations involving Trump are being overseen by a Biden administration official. But it’s also the case that the FBI director, Christopher A. Wray, was appointed by Trump and is a Republican. Perhaps even more important, it is not certain that Biden will run again in 2024. The president has said he “intends” to run for reelection but has not made a decision. If he declined to seek a second term, that may reduce any potential conflict for the Justice Department.
Another difference between then and now is that Rosenstein and other senior Justice Department officials were just beginning to grapple with the facts of the Russia investigation when Mueller was appointed — unlike now, when Garland has been overseeing the Mar-a-Lago and Jan. 6 related investigations for many months.
On the other hand, it’s also possible that there is some as yet publicly unknown factual wrinkle that has emerged in the Mar-a-Lago or Jan. 6 cases that could increase officials’ concerns about potential conflicts of interest.
Matthew Miller, a Justice Department spokesman during the Obama administration, said he didn’t see any upside to appointing a special counsel now, after nearly two years of Trump and his allies blasting the Justice Department investigations as politically motivated.
“The typical reason for a special counsel is it depoliticizes a case or attempts to depoliticize a case. I think with Trump, it will have the opposite effect because it would give him a foil to rage against,” Miller said. “Trump always benefits from turning everything into a circus and the way out of the circus is to not buy a ticket. You are better off treating this case as business as usual, handled by [federal prosecutors] who report up to an attorney general who will defend it.”
Mar-a-Lago classified papers held secrets about Iran missiles, China
Other experts, like Mary McCord, a former senior national security official at the Justice Department, said the investigation has been going on for too long for Garland to now appoint a special counsel. “There are already people who say it is politically motivated,” she said. “You can’t really erase it if there is a special counsel.”
McCord noted that the Justice Department started its probe many months before Trump declared his candidacy. And since Biden has not yet announced if he will seek a second term, it would not be accurate to say the Justice Department launched a criminal investigation into someone running against the sitting president.
Another complicating factor is how Republicans, if they win control of the House of Representatives, may approach the Justice Department’s investigation of Trump.
Trump “will attack any special counsel who investigates him, without a doubt,” said Stephen A. Saltzburg, a George Washington University law professor and a Justice Department official during the George H.W. Bush administration.
“If the attorney general picks a lawyer with prosecutorial experience and who is a Republican, a prosecution would go down a little easier than if the Justice Department were to bring a prosecution itself,” Saltzburg said.
But he cautioned there are potential downsides as well.
“You do not know how the prosecution will go,” he said. “And there is some risk that people will get the impression that the Justice Department appoints special counsels because it can’t be fair.” | 2022-11-15T14:49:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump 2024 presidential bid won't stop DOJ investigations; special master role unclear - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/11/15/trump-doj-2024-special-master/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/11/15/trump-doj-2024-special-master/ |
Analysis by Scott Allen
Brian Robinson Jr. celebrates his touchdown against the Eagles. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
A look at the good (Hail!) and bad (Fail!) from the Washington Commanders’ 32-21 win over the Philadelphia Eagles on Monday.
Hail: Perfect no more
Undefeated teams from Pennsylvania don’t stand a chance against Washington teams wearing all-white uniforms in prime time. In the Super Bowl era, only four teams with a losing record have defeated a team that was 8-0 or better on the road, according to ESPN Stats & Info. Washington is responsible for two of those upsets in the past three seasons.
In 2020, Alex Smith led the 4-7 Washington Football Team to a 23-17 upset of the 11-0 Pittsburgh Steelers at Heinz Field. Smith was the only member of ESPN’s “Monday Night Countdown” pregame show, including Robert Griffin III, who picked the Commanders to upset the 8-0 Eagles and improve to 3-6 against teams 7-0 or better in the Super Bowl era. Larry Csonka and fellow members of the 1972 Miami Dolphins squad that remains the only NFL team to finish a season undefeated celebrated accordingly.
Fail: QB controversy
In the immediate glow of a stirring win, Coach Ron Rivera said he didn’t want to talk about who would be Washington’s quarterback going forward. While Carson Wentz is eligible to be activated off injured reserve this week after missing the past four games with a fractured finger, there shouldn’t be any debate. Taylor Heinicke, who has the endorsement of Joe Theismann, has earned the right to keep the job for the foreseeable future after leading the Commanders to a 3-1 record in Wentz’s absence.
Worth debating: Who wore the icy chains better — Heinicke, who celebrated Washington’s upset by donning his teammates’ jewelry and downing a few Busch Lights on the team plane, or Kirk Cousins?
Hail: Joey Slye
Slye made all four of his field goal attempts, including a 58-yarder as time expired in the first half and a 55-yarder that gave the Commanders a five-point lead in the fourth quarter. Slye’s 58-yard bomb was the longest of his career and the longest by a Washington kicker since Graham Gano hit a 59-yarder in 2011.
Joey Slye NAILS the 58-yard field goal to end the half for Washington! 💪
Boos coming down from Philly fans as the undefeated Eagles trail the Commanders 20-14 at the half 👀
(via @NFL) pic.twitter.com/HG8a2jSqWZ
Fail: Officiating
There were brutal calls against both teams at important moments in the game. Washington was on the wrong end of two questionable pass interference penalties, including one on rookie wide receiver Jahan Dotson that negated a third-down conversion in the fourth quarter. The Eagles and their fans had reason to be upset when officials missed a blatant face mask on linebacker Jamin Davis that contributed to a fourth-quarter fumble by Dallas Goedert. The roughing-the-passer penalty on Brandon Graham that all but iced the game was the correct call.
Hail: Washington’s ball control
The Commanders ran more plays in the first half (51) than any team this season and racked up a 17-minute, 38-second advantage in time of possession that ranked as the largest margin through two quarters in franchise history. Washington converted nine of its 12 third-down opportunities in the first half after going 5 for 22 in that department over the previous two games. Rookie Brian Robinson Jr. led Washington’s rushing attack with 26 carries for 86 yards and a touchdown.
The Commanders, who averaged fewer than six plays per possession in Heinicke’s first three starts, had scoring marches of 13, 12, 16 and 14 plays, and at one point they scored on five consecutive drives. Washington finished with 81 offensive plays, the team’s most since it ran 83 in a 30-27 loss to the Detroit Lions in 2020. (The franchise record is 110 plays in a 41-38 overtime win against the Lions in 1990, which is better known as the Jeff Rutledge game.)
Fail: Philadelphia’s carelessness with the ball
The Eagles entered Monday’s game with the best turnover differential (plus-15) and fewest giveaways (three) in the league. It didn’t take long for Philadelphia to add to the first number: Defensive end Josh Sweat had a sack-fumble of Heinicke on the Commanders’ first drive that Marlon Tuipulotu recovered to set up an Eagles touchdown. Washington evened the turnover battle in the second quarter on Darrick Forrest’s over-the-shoulder interception on a deep ball intended for A.J. Brown. The Commanders had three takeaways in the fourth quarter, including fumble recoveries on back-to-back possessions.
Hail: Ron Rivera
An emotional Rivera, who flew to California for his mother’s funeral last week, got choked up as he addressed his team in the locker room after the game. “My mother would’ve been proud,” he finally said before Terry McLaurin stepped in to finish the postgame speech.
Rivera has made plenty of questionable in-game decisions over his three seasons with Washington, but he has done a commendable job keeping his team together despite more off-the-field distractions than most coaches encounter in a career. On Monday, he pushed all the right buttons, going for it on fourth and short on two trips in Eagles territory and being aggressive to try to score points before halftime. He was rewarded with the biggest win of his Washington tenure.
Fail: Bad beats
Never gamble, kids. If you were holding a ticket for Eagles wideout DeVonta Smith to finish with more than 40 receiving yards, or Monday’s game to finish under 52 points or perhaps no defensive touchdown to be scored, the final snap of the game was a nightmare. Smith was credited with a 14-yard loss on the play, dropping his total from 53 to 39, when his desperation lateral was scooped up by Washington defensive end Casey Toohill for a touchdown. | 2022-11-15T15:16:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Highlights and lowlights from the Commanders' win over the Eagles - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/15/commanders-eagles-highlights-and-lowlights/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/15/commanders-eagles-highlights-and-lowlights/ |
In G-20 talks, China objects to calling Russia invasion of Ukraine a ‘war’
Chinese President Xi Jinping and his delegation confer during the G-20 leaders summit in Indonesia on Nov. 15. (Dita Alangkara/AP)
Negotiations on the joint statement included a fractious debate over the word, with Russia and China pushing hard for another term to describe more than eight months of grinding, bloody military conflict that followed Russia’s full-scale assault of Ukraine, according to delegates.
The final communique is expected to include “war,” though it will likely note that some countries hold differing views on the conflict and its global impact — the language required to seal the deal on the communique. Several developing countries served as a “bridge” between the G-7 and the Russia-China alliance.
China’s opposition to the word “war” highlights how it has tried to play both sides on Ukraine. Beijing has walked a diplomatic tightrope since the start of the invasion, at times appearing to distance itself from Moscow while maintaining that Russia has “legitimate security concerns” and the “ultimate culprit” in the conflict is the United States and NATO. That dual approach is under strain as China tries to tell different stories to its home audience and international interlocutors.
In President Xi Jinping’s first overseas visit since securing a third term — and only his second trip abroad since the start of the pandemic — the Chinese leader has sought to defuse tensions with the United States and allies in the wake of the Ukraine war, which Beijing has refrained from condemning.
Despite the charm offensive, China remains at odds with most other leaders in the group over its continued support of Putin, underscoring Xi’s reluctance to sacrifice a carefully cultivated strategic partnership with Russia to regain trust in Western capitals. On Monday, China was one of 14 countries to vote against a United Nations resolution calling for Russia to pay war reparations to Ukraine.
Xi’s rejection of the threat or use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine during a meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Beijing last week was seen by some in Europe as a sign that he was losing patience with Russia after nearly nine months of fighting and its occasional veiled threats to use such arms. But the Chinese readout of Xi’s three-hour meeting with President Biden on Monday made no similar mention of nuclear arms.
Beijing is “trying to get the most out of the nuclear weapons rhetoric” and “trying to leverage a common position into improved relations with Europe,” said Amanda Hsiao, senior China analyst at the International Crisis Group. The stance Xi voiced with Scholz has long been China’s policy on nuclear weapons, albeit one that Beijing had not previously stated when talking about Ukraine.
Unlike when meeting Europeans, China appears less willing to side with the America against its partner. “The fact that they only referenced [opposition to nuclear weapons] obliquely in the Xi-Biden meeting readout suggests discomfort with appearing aligned with the U.S. on this issue and was likely meant as a reassuring gesture to Moscow,” Hsiao said.
China is cautious about using the word “war” because it sympathizes with Russia’s position and dislikes the United States strengthening its alliances in response to the conflict, said Ren Xiao, a professor of international relations at Fudan University.
After the more upbeat tone of Biden’s meeting with Xi following months of simmering tensions, a senior Biden administration official on Tuesday would not address which countries or how many have signed onto to the strong language for the final statement — or whether China was among those siding with Russia in arguing against such a condemnation.
The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to offer an assessment of G-20 talks, said that “most” of the G-20 countries were expected to sign onto a strong condemnation of Russia’s war in Ukraine and the statement would “make clear that Russia’s war is wreaking havoc for people everywhere and for the global economy as a whole.”
“It will be clear that most G-20 members condemn Russia’s and the immense suffering it has caused — both for Ukrainians and for families in the developing world that are facing food and fuel insecurity as a result.”
“I’m convinced that he understood exactly what I was saying, and I understood what he was saying,” Biden continued. That relatively upbeat tone marked a departure from tense exchanges in early meetings of Chinese and American diplomats in the early days of Biden’s presidency.
Beijing’s mixed messaging was on display again on Tuesday when a meeting between Wang and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov received only a terse write-up in Chinese state media while discussion of the event was partially restricted on Chinese social media.
In their meeting Tuesday, Xi told French President Emmanuel Macron that he “hopes France will push the European Union to continue with an independent and positive China policy,” reflecting Beijing’s fear that the continent will adopt similar restrictions on Chinese advanced technology as the United States.
According to the French readout, Xi had “expressed his deep concern over Russia’s choice to continue the war in Ukraine” and joined Macron in affirming commitment to respecting Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. | 2022-11-15T15:16:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | At G-20, China objects to calling Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a ‘war’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/15/china-xi-ukraine-g20-war-russia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/15/china-xi-ukraine-g20-war-russia/ |
You’re one in eight billion.
The world population just hit a milestone. Here’s where you fit in.
Ruby Mellen
Leslie Shapiro
Hailey Haymond
The world’s population reached a record 8 billion people Tuesday, according to estimates from the United Nations, a staggering number.
Find out where you stand in this moment — and where the world is headed next with the pace of growth at its slowest since 1950.
If you are a 53-year-old woman from India, there are fewer than 100 people like you on Earth.
Your country
Your gender
U.N. data includes only binary gender options. Your data will not be stored or shared.
Continue scrolling
Demography “affects almost everything,” said William H. Frey, an American demographer and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
More young people will require more schools; a growing elderly population will necessitate an expanded safety net, and a young workforce to care for them; aging countries may need to reassess their immigration policies.
While on different timelines, each country is ultimately moving in the same direction — “toward longer lives and smaller families,” said John Wilmoth, director of the U.N. population division. Collectively, the population is growing older, living longer, and having fewer children.
“Humans are incredibly adaptable and can find ways to make it work” Wilmoth said. “The challenge is the speed of change.”
The world’s population is expected to peak at 10.4 billion in 2086, according to projections from the U.N. Population Division.
Even as growth slows, the increase in population well into this century raises important questions over how many people the planet can sustain, especially amid the effects of climate change. As birthrates have fallen dramatically in most wealthy countries, they remain high in many poorer parts of the world, which are least equipped to manage the impacts of continued growth.
02B4B6B8B10 billionNov. 2022Your birthYour 100thbirthdayCountries with lessthan 50m population
It took 12 years for the world population to grow from 7 billion to 8 billion. The largest population increase in human history has occurred over the last 70 years, and is not likely to be replicated.
More than half of the world’s population is concentrated in just seven countries: India, China, the United States, Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria and Brazil.
By the year 2100, half the world’s population is projected to be concentrated in ten countries: India, China, Nigeria, Pakistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, United States of America, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Tanzania and Egypt.
Growth declines and an aging population
Populations are declining across the world. Dozens of countries are expected to see at least a one percent dip by 2050, according to the U.N. projections.
Analysts worry about the implications of a shrinking, and aging, workforce.
An older population is “less dynamic, less likely to set up businesses and more reliant on the state,” said Paul Morland, a demographer and author of “The Human Tide: How Population Shaped the Modern World.”
One solution could be changes in immigration policies. In the United States and Canada, for example, lower birthrates have been offset by a growing number of immigrants.
Other economists think this could be a moment for reassessing what constitutes prosperity.
“The growth model we are addicted to is based primarily on producing things,” said Vanessa Pérez-Cirera, director of the Global Economic Center at the World Resources Institute. She noted that more countries could include older people in service roles such as therapists or museum employees.
Concentrated population booms
By 2050, the population is projected to increase by 1.7 billion. Half of that growth will occur in just eight countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Tanzania, and India.
By next year, India is expected to surpass China as the world’s most populous country.
These swelling populations are a challenge for governments already scrambling to build enough infrastructure. In some of these countries, population growth and fertility rates are declining, but not quickly enough.
Places “where we find very rapid growth tend to be much poorer,” Wilmoth said, and therefore less resilient to climate change. In Pakistan, more than 1,000 people have died since June after heavy rains and mass flooding decimated parts of the country. India saw deadly, unbearable heat this summer that disproportionately affected the millions of people who live without air conditioning.
Population growth over the next 60 years has renewed long-standing questions over how many people a warming world can support.
Unequal distribution of resources
The 18th-century demographer and economist Thomas Malthus predicted that population growth would outpace food production, resulting in famine, drought and war. Advances in agriculture proved Malthus wrong, but today’s experts still fear a food crisis: driven not by overall yields, but by drastic inequality.
“There are enough resources to feed the population today,” said Pérez-Cirera. “But it’s just not evenly distributed.” According to the World Food Programme, some 828 million people — more than 10 percent of the world’s population — go to bed hungry every night.
The human footprint’s continued expansion could further harm the natural order — 75 percent of the planet’s ice-free land has been significantly altered by people, according to a 2020 report from the World Wildlife Fund. An estimated two-thirds of mammals, fish, reptiles and amphibians have been lost in the last approximately 50 years.
As the world hits a new population milestone, and the effects of man-made climate change become a fact of life, Pérez-Cirera said it should prompt a collective “moment of reflection.”
“It’s a bit like we’ve grown without thinking,” she said. “Do we want to be the species on Earth that uses it up?”
Population estimates by country, age and gender are from the United Nations Population Division. The U.N. produces multiple projections of population growth after 2022. The figures included in this story reflect what is know as the “medium variant” projection, which is the median of several thousand potential trajectories for growth.
Editing by Reuben Fischer-Baum, Reem Akkad, Jesse Mesner-Hage and Joseph Moore. Copy editing by Sam-Omar Hall.
Ruby Mellen reports on foreign affairs for the Washington Post. Twitter Twitter
By Leslie Shapiro
Leslie Shapiro has been a Graphics Reporter for The Washington Post since 2016, focusing on data visualization and new media storytelling. Twitter Twitter
By Hailey Haymond
Hailey Haymond is a designer at The Washington Post and works on projects for print and digital. | 2022-11-15T15:16:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The world population hit 8 billion. Here's where you fit in. - Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2022/world-population-8-billion/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2022/world-population-8-billion/ |
Are your detergent pods bad for the planet? A debate is raging.
A cleaning products company and anti-plastics groups are asking the Environmental Protection Agency to assess the safety of polyvinyl alcohol, which encases detergent pods
A petition launched Tuesday argues that the plastic film that surrounds laundry pods may not completely break down in water as advertised. (Ssuaphotos/Shutterstock)
Easy-to-use detergent pods have become ubiquitous in American homes, containing just the right combination and amount of cleaning agents to leave clothes fresh and dishes sparkling. But now a debate is raging over whether they may contribute to the growing plastic pollution problem that threatens human health and the environment.
An eco-friendly company that sells cleaning products and advocacy groups Tuesday petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to take action against the use of the “plastic film” that surrounds pods, arguing that this material does not completely break down in water as advertised. The petition urges the agency to require health and environmental safety tests for polyvinyl alcohol, also known as PVA or PVOH, which encases the pods. Until the tests are conducted and PVA is proven safe, the petition calls on the EPA to remove the compound from its Safer Choice and Safer Chemical Ingredients lists.
Blueland, a company which sells a “dry-form” laundry detergent tablet, has spearheaded the effort to subject pods to greater federal scrutiny. Its actions have angered major players within the cleaning products industry, including an influential trade association and the manufacturer of the film used in detergent pods.
“Polyvinyl alcohol is a polymer, so by definition it is a plastic — it’s a synthetic petroleum-based plastic,” said Blueland co-founder Sarah Paiji Yoo.
Yoo added that she and others at the New York City-based company view the popular pods and newer laundry detergent sheets that use PVA as “arguably worse than straws.”
“At least with a straw you can look at it and know like, ‘Okay, this is trash. I should put this in the trash can,’ ” she said. “These pods and sheets are plastics that are designed to go down our drains and into our water systems that ultimately empty out into the natural environment,” she said.
Asked for comment, an EPA spokesperson said the agency “will review the petition and respond accordingly.”
From national parks to the deep sea, plastic pollution is showing up wherever scientists look
PVA, which is also used in the textile industry, has been widely regarded as safe. In addition to being included on the EPA’s Safer Chemical Ingredients list, the compound is approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use in food packaging, dietary supplements and pharmaceutical products. The Environmental Working Group has also rated PVA as a low-hazard ingredient in personal care products.
What’s more, single-dose detergent pods that use PVA are often considered to be a more environmentally friendly alternative to traditional liquid products that come in plastic containers.
Research touted by the American Cleaning Institute, or ACI, a trade group, suggests that at least 60 percent of PVA film biodegrades within 28 days and 100 percent of the film within 90 days. The group says water containing the dissolved film will go to wastewater treatment plants, where bacteria and other microorganisms break down the material “through natural biodegradation.”
But Blueland commissioned and helped fund a peer-reviewed study last year that challenges that claim. Its petition, which is supported by several organizations dedicated to fighting plastic pollution, cites the study’s estimate that about 75 percent of PVA from laundry and dishwasher pods remained intact after passing through conventional wastewater treatment.
Charles Rolsky, the study’s co-author and a senior research scientist at the Shaw Institute in Maine, said that earlier research suggesting PVA could leave no trace over time often involved conditions that typically aren’t found in the real world. Those results could lead consumers to believe that a pod product using PVA film may “seem more eco friendly and biodegradable than it actually is,” he added.
“At this point, there are probably millions of consumers who are buying these sheets or pods thinking they’re doing a really great thing for the planet,” Yoo said. “They’re converting into these products because of the sustainability messaging, because of the plastic-free messaging, but unbeknownst to them, they’re actually sending plastic particles down their drains.”
Trying to shop sustainably? Here’s what you need to consider.
Fully biodegrading PVA requires the presence of the right species and concentration of microorganisms, which also have to be trained to break the compound down, Rolsky said. And there isn’t “a single wastewater treatment plant in the United States where water sits with those microbes for anything close to 28 days,” he said. “At most, it might be a week, but more realistically it’s days to hours.”
While more research is needed on PVA’s potential effects on humans and the planet, the concern is that the film is “very similar to conventional plastics that we see on a regular basis,” Rolsky said. But there’s one major difference, he said: PVA “just happens to be water soluble.”
He compared PVA’s ability to dissolve to pouring salt into water. “The salt will disappear, but you can still very much taste the salt itself, even though you can’t see it.”
A growing body of research suggests that plastic pollution can have serious health and environmental impacts, including the ability of small plastic particles to absorb chemicals, contaminants and heavy metals and move those harmful substances up the food chain.
Both MonoSol, the Indiana-based company that manufactures the wrapping, and the American Cleaning Institute rejected the call for federal officials to regulate use of the film in consumer goods.
In a statement, Matthew Vander Laan, MonoSol’s vice president of corporate affairs, called the petition a “publicity stunt” and accused Blueland of “exploiting the credibility of the EPA in pursuit of its own commercial goals.”
“Decades of study, including evaluations by the EPA, FDA, regulatory and certification bodies around the world, have proven the safety and sustainability of PVA,” Vander Laan said.
Meanwhile, the ACI issued a lengthy statement that highlighted the benefits of PVA film and supporting research findings. The trade association also reiterated its criticisms of the research commissioned by Blueland, noting that the study “presents a flawed model based on theoretical assumptions and uses flawed data in that model.”
“Because this chemistry has enabled these innovative laundry and automatic dishwashing product formats, it is extremely disappointing to learn about the misinformation that is being spread about PVA/PVOH,” the ACI statement said.
But Rolsky said that he and other experts are calling for more research. “PVA shouldn’t be vilified.”
“We can’t speculate,” he added. “We have the tools to do the analysis. We should do the analysis and learn how it actually behaves.”
What you need to know about installing solar panels on your home
Gyms are going ‘green,’ but are they actually eco-friendly? Here’s what to look for. | 2022-11-15T15:20:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Are your detergent pods bad for the planet? A debate is raging. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/11/15/laundry-detergent-pod-plastic-pva/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/11/15/laundry-detergent-pod-plastic-pva/ |
The history of White House weddings, the ultimate public-private event
Lynda Johnson Robb and Chuck Robb hold a sword to cut their wedding cake at their 1967 White House wedding reception with President Lyndon B. Johnson and first lady Lady Bird Johnson standing at their side. (Yoichi Okamoto/Courtesy of LBJ Library)
When presidential granddaughter Naomi King Biden and Peter George Heerman Neal get married on the South Lawn of the White House on Saturday, they will join a short list of couples, including presidential children, nieces and friends, and one president (Grover Cleveland), whose wedding days were celebrated in a residence that is a cultural icon.
“It’s the most famous house in the country,” says Carl Sferrazza Anthony, author and presidential family historian. “Look at the proportions of those rooms and the high ceilings, whether you choose to get married in the Blue, Green or Red rooms. Or if you marry out on the lawn, it’s those columns and the magnificent view of the nation’s capital.”
Lynda Robb, daughter of President Lyndon B. Johnson, says there was no question of where she would marry Marine Capt. Chuck Robb on Dec. 9, 1967: the White House, of course. “It’s where I was living. It’s a beautiful setting. It was an easy decision,” she says.
The White House hosts hundreds of events every year, but none are as personal and romantic as a wedding. The combination of history, grandeur and celebrity makes it a rare and unforgettable experience. But having a personal event in a public space also comes at a price. Patti Davis, daughter of President Ronald Reagan, and Julie Nixon, who married President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s grandson after her father was elected but before he took office, opted out of a White House wedding, citing privacy concerns. Others embraced the idea, conjuring all the magic they could out of the storybook setting and the devoted teams of chefs, florists, calligraphers and butlers that come with it.
What makes a White House wedding so special? “Exclusivity,” says Gary Walters, who served as the White House chief usher from 1986 to 2007. “It doesn’t happen that often.”
There have been only 18 documented weddings and four receptions (with vows held elsewhere) celebrated here, according to the White House Historical Association. These brides are part of a bipartisan sorority: Tricia Nixon Cox invited former White House brides Alice Roosevelt Longworth and Johnson sisters Luci and Lynda to her own nuptials.
Many wedding guests have never been to the White House. “There is nothing like the feeling of coming inside those doors,” says Ann Stock, White House social secretary during the Clinton years. “Every president lived there except George Washington,” she says. “Some people get tears in their eyes when they walk in.”
The home’s iconic rooms also provide plenty of photo ops. Luci Baines Johnson married Pat Nugent at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in 1966 and their reception was held at the White House. She and her 10 bridesmaids had the run of the private quarters while they had their hair done. Her wedding veil was splayed carefully across the famous Lincoln bed for safekeeping during the preparations.
“A White House wedding takes precedence over everything,” says Bill Yosses, the White House pastry chef from 2007 to 2014, who made a four-tier wedding cake slathered with whipped cream for the 2008 Washington celebration of Jenna Bush Hager’s marriage (the actual wedding was held in Crawford, Tex.). It was an adaptation of a tres leches cake, as requested by Hager. “A state dinner is important, but a wedding is private, and the first family has a personal emotional investment in that moment,” he says. “We all want to give them the best happy and pleasant moment they deserve.”
For one fan of White House history, old wedding cake is a tasty collectible
Yosses remembers wheeling the massive cake into the Blue Room with current White House pastry chef Susan Morrison. “It was a pretty dramatic cake,” he says. “The ushers kept asking us to move the cake to improve traffic, and we were worried about it falling over.” Chief White House flower designer Nancy Clarke decorated the base of the cake with blue hydrangeas and white roses. Yosses says Hager came over to thank him for the cake just before the party started. “The Bushes were always very good about that,” he says.
Gabriella Rello Duffy, editorial director of Brides, says the nation will be “obsessed” with every detail of Naomi Biden’s affair. “It’s the American version of a royal wedding,” Duffy says. “We have not seen a major presidential wedding since Tricia Nixon’s in 1971.”
Biden, 28, is the first presidential granddaughter to hold both her ceremony and reception at the White House. She is the first grandchild of Joe and Jill Biden (and the oldest daughter of Hunter Biden and his first wife, Kathleen Buhle). She works as a lawyer in Washington. Neal, 25, from Jackson Hole, Wyo., recently graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He works at Georgetown Law.
Politico reported that Bryan Rafanelli of Rafanelli Events, the celebrity planner who masterminded Chelsea Clinton’s posh 2010 wedding in Rhinebeck, N.Y., will also orchestrate this one. Rafanelli is well versed in White House protocol, having helped stage state dinners and holiday decorations in the Obama years. (Neither the White House nor Rafanelli returned emails for comment.)
Elizabeth Alexander, Jill Biden’s communications director, declined to share any of the closely guarded details about plans for the ceremony and reception. What we do know is this: The Biden/Neal wedding planners must grapple with the traditional issues of security, logistics and media access — as well as the more modern challenges of cellphone cameras and social media postings that could undermine the privacy of the first family and their guests. The public wants the scoop on the dress, the bridesmaids and the bouquets, and also demands to know who will pay for the celebration, to make sure taxpayers aren’t footing any of the bills.
So who is paying for all this?
Alexander said in a statement: “Consistent with other private events hosted by the first family and following the traditions of previous White House wedding festivities in prior administrations, the Biden family will be paying for the wedding activities that occur at the White House.”
Billing for private expenses is part of the daily routine at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. “Absolutely every expense is kept track of and the first family is always sent a bill for flowers, food, help, et cetera,” says Amy Zantzinger, special assistant to the president and White House social secretary during the George W. Bush administration. “The usher’s office keeps track of all that. Every time there is a private event in the residence or they have friends over for dinner, they are billed for all those expenses.” For example, Laura Dowling, chief flower designer at the White House from 2009 to 2015, says that any blooms she arranged for the Obamas’ private dinners were counted, recorded and charged to the president. For Hager’s cake, Yosses says he wrote down the ingredients and submitted the list for payment.
The person who keeps track of these transactions is the White House chief usher, who functions as a sort of general manager and has a long list of duties. Those include preparing budgets for the executive mansion and organizing daily activities and major events such as state dinners and receptions. The chief usher also oversees the residence staff, usually around 90 to 100 people, including chefs, housekeepers, maids, doormen, plumbers and others.
“It’s the behind-the-scenes folks that make everything happen,” Walters says. “And they want to make the best possible day for the president and first lady and their guests.”
The first family “has all the resources at their disposal” for private events, Walters says. This can include setting the tables with one of the official White House china services, asking the calligraphy staff to prepare the invitations, using the ballroom chairs, or having the Marine Band perform. Strict 24/7 security is already in place. But if a White House staff member (such as a florist, butler or chef) has to work overtime for a private event, the first family pays for that, according to Walters.
Presidents are always invoiced for personal expenses, he says. “Monthly, they get a bill from the chief usher for their private meals and those of their guests,” based on information collected from the residence staff, Walters says. “We have records of incoming food and how it is used. If we get a crate of 144 eggs, the staff has to write down which eggs went to the family and which went to a soufflé served at an official presidential function. Each one of those eggs is accounted for. If one is cracked and not used — that is marked as spoilage.”
White House social secretaries frequently take on the role of wedding planners. When Lynda Johnson Robb got married, the executive mansion was decked with fresh evergreens, twinkling lights and other winter-themed decorations. Social secretary Bess Abell suggested a red and white color scheme to match the crimson poinsettias already on-site. The bride agreed, choosing red bridesmaids’ dresses. The frugal Lady Bird Johnson was all in on the color choice: “My mother was always interested in saving money,” Robb says. They decided on an afternoon ceremony in the East Room and a receiving line in the Blue Room, then migrated back to the East Room for cake and dancing with 500 guests. To this day, Robb has no idea what the wedding cost her parents. Anyway, she says, “they wouldn’t have told me.”
Her “very sentimental” father was mostly concerned about becoming an empty nester. The rehearsal dinner had been full of emotional speeches (“We were all practically sobbing,” she says), and the first lady spent most of the following day consoling the president. “It’s going to be okay,” Lady Bird told Lyndon, “she’s not going far.” The day passed in a blur. Robb says she wishes there had been a way to spend more time with guests, but she knew she couldn’t linger. “In those days, no one could leave until the bride and groom left.”
Until the wedding of Nellie Grant in 1874, executive mansion weddings were small, private affairs that merited only a passing mention in the newspapers, says Matt Costello, a senior historian at the White House Historical Association. With the rise of photography, though, the public saw more of them and got more curious about the first families’ private lives.
Alice Roosevelt’s 1906 affair for more than 1,000 guests was perhaps the country’s first celebrity wedding. Alice, eldest child of President Theodore Roosevelt, married Rep. Nicholas Longworth (R-Ohio). News reports at the time described scenes of private messengers and wagons pulling up to the front door delivering lavish gifts, including jewels and furs from foreign dignitaries, as well as giant turnips from everyday Americans. It was a “national event,” Costello says.
Interestingly, the public ate up every juicy tidbit but didn’t complain about costs. “Family was off limits,” says Costello. “You didn’t go after a president for his daughter getting married. That’s a much more recent development — who pays for what.”
The media’s role also has changed. Nixon Presidential Library documents include press releases that detailed Tricia’s menu, china and wedding cake recipe. (The guest list included J. Edgar Hoover and the Rev. Billy Graham.) Veteran White House reporter Helen Thomas organized a shower for Tricia, attended by female journalists. (The first and possibly last such event.) Judy Agnew, wife of the vice president, hosted a kitchenware shower with Cabinet spouses and their daughters; gifts included an orange juice squeezer and a plastic pail with soaps, detergents and cleansers. A Nixon Foundation video about the wedding says 500 journalists were credentialed to cover it; that evening, 110 million people — more than half the population of the United States — watched the TV coverage.
In the 51 years since Tricia Nixon Cox’s party, there has been little wedding action in the executive mansion. Anthony Rodham (Hillary Clinton’s brother) married Nicole Boxer in the Rose Garden in 1994; in 2013, Pete Souza, chief official White House photographer, married Patti Lease in front of 35 guests.
In June 1992, Dorothy (Doro) Bush LeBlond (daughter of George H.W. and Barbara Bush) married Bobby Koch — her second wedding — at Camp David, the secluded Maryland presidential retreat. Clarke drove there in a van filled with blush peony and peach gerbera centerpieces and flowers for the Camp David chapel. When the groom knelt, everyone could see that someone had put “Bush/Quayle stickers on the soles of his shoes,” Clarke wrote in her memoir “My First Ladies.”
Doro’s niece Jenna Bush and fiance Henry Hager also decided a formal White House wedding was not for them. The couple instead exchanged vows outdoors with 200 guests at the Bush family ranch in Crawford, Tex., on May 10, 2008. Clarke flew to Texas on Air Force One with buckets of hydrangeas and white roses, she writes in her memoir. “It felt like we had done a White House wedding, but on the back of a truck.” Yosses didn’t make the Crawford cake, but he sent cookies for the bride to snack on during the flight.
“I did live in Washington, but I never lived in the White House,” Jenna Bush told Ann Curry on NBC’s “Today” show in April 2008. “I guess it maybe says we’re crazy,” she said with a laugh. “I wanted to be at home, and I wanted it to feel natural and I wanted it to be a private thing. It’s the one day of my life — it happens once — that I want to have a private time with Henry and my family. Plus, I’m not that glamorous. I’m more an outdoor type.”
A month after the Texas nuptials, George and Laura Bush celebrated the marriage with a White House party for about 600 guests. Zantzinger says this second event allowed them to host more members of their extended family and a wider circle of friends. “But it was not a re-creation of the wedding,” she says. The Marine Band played and the president danced with his daughter, who wore a cocktail dress, not her wedding gown.
The couples who choose White House weddings might not love seeing details of their big day splashed all over the news, but the public nature of the event can pay off later, because all of the details have been carefully preserved.
For Lynda and Chuck Robb, this proved to be an unexpected blessing. The couple celebrated their 50th anniversary in 2017 and, two years later, the WHHA’s White House History Quarterly published an extensive piece about their wedding and life together. Last year, the Robbs were badly injured in a fire that gutted their McLean home and destroyed virtually all of their personal memorabilia. Fortunately, thanks to that interview, the LBJ Presidential Library and Museum and the WHHA, Robb was able to reconstruct one of the most important days of her life.
Another plus for a White House bride: Her wedding gown might end up in a museum. Robb’s Geoffrey Beene dress and 15-foot veil weren’t lost in the house fire because they’re safely stored at the presidential library in Austin, a beautiful reminder, she says, of a “wonderful day.” | 2022-11-15T15:20:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The history of White House weddings, the ultimate public-private event - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/11/15/white-house-wedding-history-biden/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/11/15/white-house-wedding-history-biden/ |
Felecia Davis, an associate professor at the Stuckeman Center for Design Computing at Pennsylvania State University, with textile panels she developed. (Rebecca Kiger for The Washington Post)
Felecia Davis is pioneering all-fiber construction materials, clothes that monitor your health — and much more
By Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson
Imagine you’re standing in an outdoor pavilion, one that’s similar in design to a covered picnic area at a local park or an amphitheater, only instead of support columns made from concrete, wood or stone, this structure is propped up by what appear to be posts of crocheted wool. Above you, a vast expanse of undulating roof is made of the same knitted material. Fungus coats this wool frame, forming the walls and the ceiling, not unlike the way plaster might cover the wood framing of a wall.
This is the premise of an experimental material known as MycoKnit. “We’re trying to make an all-fiber building,” says designer Felecia Davis, an associate professor of architecture and a lead researcher in the Stuckeman Center for Design Computing at Pennsylvania State University. She is part of an interdisciplinary team testing how knitted materials, such as wool yarn, might function as the framing for a building while a mixture of straw and mycelium fungus embeds itself onto this knitted fabric to create the rest. Mycelium is composed of individual fibers known as hyphae, which, in nature, create vast and intricate networks through soil, producing things like mushrooms. The amazing thing, Davis tells me, is that something as basic as fiber can become both the structure (the wool yarn) and the infill (the fungus).
Davis and her partners are harnessing mycelium’s fast-growing power by regulating environmental conditions in the lab to encourage the fungus’s expansion on their knitted edifice. With the assistance of a computer algorithm made by one of Davis’s PhD students, the team can virtually assemble and examine the structure stitch-by-stitch in order to predict its shape, before building it and letting the fungus propagate overtop.
“The idea that future building materials could be ‘grown’ rather than manufactured is fascinating,” architect Scott Duncan said in 2021, upon awarding MycoKnit a research prize from the foundation arm of SOM, the firm where he is a design partner. He noted that a malleable, lightweight material like MycoKnit has the potential to change the very shape of buildings.
It’s projects like this one that have cemented Davis as a star in computational textile design, a subset of the architecture and design field that uses technology — processors, sensors, actuators, cloud computing and networks — to develop new possibilities for soft materials. Davis is now working with her students to create a 12-by-12-by-12-foot MycoKnit prototype that can be fabricated and grown in one place, and then taken on-site to build, like an Ikea kit. She imagines a future where biofabricated materials replace less-sustainable building supplies, many of which wind up in landfills.
Davis is a triple threat designer: trained as both an architect and an engineer, and with a penchant for technology. In her Penn State lab and through her firm, Felecia Davis Studio, she mixes time-honored craft techniques and humble materials with the high-tech — so that clothing might, for instance, alert the wearer to excess carbon monoxide in the air or signal when an infant stops breathing in their crib. Davis works with textiles, she says, because “you can address it at the nano- and micro-scale with tiny particles that you can spin to make a thread or yarn, or you can look at it from the massive scale. A building. A city.”
In September, Davis was named a 2022 National Design Award winner by the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum for her portfolio of projects. “We’re not just recognizing the work that people like Felecia have done in the past,” one of the jurors, industrial designer Raja Schaar, tells me. “We’re also interested in how the work that they’ve done, and are continuing to do, will inspire and catalyze their field.” What Davis dreams up in her lab and studio, Schaar says, “is the future of design.”
Davis has always loved experimenting with objects and material. The oldest of three siblings, her earliest collaborator was her sister Audrey (now a neonatologist). As kids in the ’60s and ’70s, they explored the foothills of Altadena, Calif., near their home, gathering fresh bay laurel leaves and other natural materials for projects. With their friends, they fashioned dolls out of flour-based papier-mâché, carving apples for the heads. “Some things worked, other things grew mold and were awful and had to be thrown out,” Davis said in a video for the PBS series “Women in Science Profiles.” The joy, she tells me, was in the making, even though “we were basically creating the optimal conditions for fungal growth.”
Davis’s mother volunteered at the Pasadena Art Museum and introduced her children to abstract art and modernism; she was also a docent at the Gamble House in Pasadena, one of the country’s most well-preserved examples of Arts and Crafts design. Davis credits that house, in part, for her early desire to pursue architecture. “We would do our homework in the attic while she gave her tours,” Davis says. “That house was mind-blowing.”
On a recent October day, the SoftLab at Penn State is “messy,” Davis says, but that mess is a necessity of the play that leads to creative sparks of insight. Fabric samples have been stretched and pinned to a corkboard, sharing space next to thin electrical conduits and sketches of networking design. There are clear boxes filled with copper-coated yarn and fabrics twisted with stainless steel that are capable of conducting electricity. Davis is refreshingly agnostic about her sourcing, using a combination of existing craft techniques and materials — from wool to human hair — in combination with the latest in software and hardware, such as the LilyPad Arduino, a microcontroller designed to work with e-textiles.
A pair of black leggings stretch across the bottom half of a dress form. From a distance, they resemble something a rock star might wear, bedazzled and tricked out with lines of metallic thread, but on closer inspection these accents are electrical threads and processors. The leggings are the result of a partnership with Penn State engineer Conrad Tucker, who wanted to create a way of alerting people with Parkinson’s disease to subtle changes in their walking gait, which can foreshadow the onset of more debilitating symptoms. “We ended up with an algorithm that could tell how people were moving,” Davis says, “and we learned that we could have an algorithm that worked through our sensors in the clothing.”
The leggings were originally an information-gathering experiment, but “we’ve circled back on this project now that we have a yarn that is washable,” she says. “We think we can make a simpler version of our leggings.” Davis sees the potential for other “smart” clothing like a hospital shirt that frees patients from the tether of wires affixed to machines, allowing them to move freely or, ideally, go home sooner because their clothes, connected to the internet, would be able to communicate critical data to doctors.
While Davis was earning her master’s in architecture at Princeton University, she “noticed how little people talk about the emotional experience of people in [a] space.” And yet our human-built environment — anything that is created by us and not by nature — is pivotal to how we feel. “You’re in basic response with your environment all the time,” Davis says. “You’re meshing with it, which is why it’s so important to think about human emotion in design.” In this view, the aesthetics of what we design is more than an accessory, but a fundamental need in support of human emotional health. “We as designers can be more conscious of the role emotion plays in design and what gets communicated through seeing and touching objects in our environment,” Davis says. “The objects that we see and touch shape experiences in our brains.”
As humans we tend to imbue the materials in our lives with emotional resonance — a child’s security blanket or a favorite sweater — and Davis has wondered whether we could also imbue the materials themselves with emotional feedback capacities. In 2012, she partnered with two other designers to create and install a project called the Textile Mirror at Microsoft Research Lab in Redmond, Calif. In the back of a fabric panel, Nitinol wires, made of a shape-changing nickel-titanium alloy, were activated after a person entered information about their state of mind into a mobile phone. The panel would adjust, shrinking and crumpling to reflect pain or sadness, for instance, and then release. As the textile “relaxed,” it helped those in an agitated state to relax as well. Textiles capable of reflecting emotion have the potential to alert architects, building owners and inhabitants to the effect that specific design and material choices have. We can begin to create emotionally reactive dwellings and objects, as Davis calls them.
This led to a research project in 2016 called FELT, or Feeling Emotion Linked by Touch, which included a computational textile panel capable of changing shape on its own. Davis was interested in understanding how people’s emotions might change upon seeing, and then feeling, a shape-shifting material. Her study found that a computational textile can be an effective nonverbal communicator, with participants noting a variety of new feelings based on interactions with the panel. As Davis wrote in the 2017 book “Textiles for Advanced Applications,” a textile that can move or change its shape “could be used on a robot as robot skin, for example, for people who may benefit from some communication through vision and touch.” Research like hers is helping to spur an emerging architecture of emotion that prioritizes how aesthetic experiences affect our well-being.
As someone who believes in the scientific method of showing data and results, Davis recognizes that working with emotions is tricky. It’s nearly impossible to scientifically pin down, precisely, what people are feeling at any given time. “This is kind of at the edge of what computation can actually tell you,” she says. “We can’t read people’s minds, and yet we function as a species because we can intuitively read emotions.”
What Schaar finds particularly compelling about Davis’s creations is that they are aesthetically stunning and functional. “Felecia’s work is coming from this architectural standpoint, but you look at her portfolio and you could think that it came from a textile designer, a fashion designer, an industrial designer or a sculptor,” Schaar says. Her work “is not just locked in a lab,” Schaar continues. “She’s looking to create more accessible, healthy, inclusive technologies that are also available to everyone.”
Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson is a writer in Baltimore. | 2022-11-15T15:21:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Buildings Made of Wool and Fungus? Meet Textile Expert Felecia Davis Who’s Making It Happen. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/11/15/felecia-davis-textiles-pennsylvania-state-university/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/11/15/felecia-davis-textiles-pennsylvania-state-university/ |
A scene from the film “Joyland,” which has been banned from Pakistani cinemas, despite being previously approved for release. (Khoosat Films/AP)
“Joyland,” a Pakistani film that tells the story of a young married man who falls in love with a transgender woman, won a prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and is set to represent the South Asian country in next year’s Academy Awards.
Mushtaq Ahmad Khan, a senator from the nonruling Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami party, praised the ban, arguing that the film was against Islamic values. He shared a Friday statement from the country’s Information and Broadcasting Ministry, which said the decision came after written complaints alleged that the film “contains highly objectionable material” and went against “decency and morality.”
The ban immediately prompted sharp criticism from the film’s director and rights activists in the country, with the hashtag #ReleaseJoyland used tens of thousands of times on social media as of Tuesday.
Following the outrage, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif ordered a “high level” review into the ban, an aide tweeted Monday night. “The committee will assess the complaints as well as merits to decide on its release in Pakistan,” Salman Sufi said.
“Joyland” director Saim Sadiq had described the ban as a “grave injustice,” as well as “absolutely unconstitutional and illegal.” In a Sunday statement, he accused the government of giving in to “pressure from a few extremist factions,” noting that the film had already received certification from the country’s censorship boards.
In practice, however, prejudice and even violence against transgender people in Pakistan have continued, with Human Rights Watch accusing authorities of “failing to provide adequate protection or hold perpetrators to account.” The country’s penal code also criminalizes same-sex relationships. | 2022-11-15T16:21:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pakistan bans Cannes-winning 'Joyland,' its entry for the 2023 Oscars - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/15/joyland-pakistan-movie-ban-cannes-oscars/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/15/joyland-pakistan-movie-ban-cannes-oscars/ |
Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake attends a rally in Phoenix on Nov. 7. (Olivier Touron/AFP/Getty Images)
For the past week, Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s Twitter feed has been a steady stream of optimism. In tweet after tweet, Lake told her followers that everything was falling into place, that totals coming in from various counties showed her gaining solid percentages of counted votes. In television interviews, she assured supporters that there was some batch of heavily Republican votes sitting out there, waiting to be counted — enough to propel her to a confirmable victory.
There was not any such batch and, on Monday evening, Lake’s opponent, secretary of state Katie Hobbs, was projected to be Arizona’s next governor.
Lake’s response to the news was terse: “Arizonans know BS when they see it.”
No one running in the 2022 midterm elections had made false claims of election fraud more central to their candidacy than did Lake. Her entire campaign was a subset of a particular iteration of right-wing theorizing, one in which the non-sycophantic media was dishonest and scheming, one in which the results of the presidential contest two years ago was obviously corrupted by fraud. Lake’s campaign looped in a who’s-who of conspiracy theorists, from Stephen K. Bannon to Arizona state Sen. Wendy Rogers. But Lake remained the lead actor in this particular drama.
In the months before the election, she offered ominous warnings. There were “already tons of election irregularities,” she insisted in July. She suggested that Democrats were poised to appoint elections officials who might skew the vote. She appeared at an event hosted by True the Vote, the group behind the debunked election fraud claims in the film “2000 Mules.” She later touted an endorsement from one member of the organization, Gregg Phillips.
On Monday, shortly before the race was called, she promoted a website aimed at collecting stories about problems at the polls. A few days earlier, she’d informed supporters that her team was on the hunt for possible malfeasance in this year’s race.
“Rest assured that I have the brightest & best attorneys in the Nation, right here on the ground in Arizona,” she said. “Every ballot has eyes on it.”
All of this is familiar, even if the path forward isn’t. We now recognize the period after the 2020 election as a robust, baseless effort by Donald Trump to hold onto power despite the election results. But we might forget that the immediate aftermath of that election looked much like Arizona now: claims about votes that never materialized; efforts to compile anecdotes aimed at ginning up suspicion about the results; insistences that the legal fight would lead to success. In the immediate aftermath of Trump’s loss, it all seemed silly and doomed. That infamous quote from an unnamed Republican official — what’s the harm in humoring Trump’s conspiracies? — came three days after the presidential election was called.
What’s different in Arizona, of course, is the thing that Lake doesn’t want to admit: claims of rampant fraud became less credible, not more. After all, this was an election in which Lake and her allies were earnestly (if delusionally) committed to blocking the sort of illegality they think happened two years ago. They had people watching ballot drop boxes and confronting voters out of a misguided belief (spurred by “2000 Mules”) that drop boxes had been a vehicle for fraud in 2020. The presidential contest has been examined more than any election in American history, it’s safe to say, with Arizona consistently at the forefront in conducting those examinations. But in 2022, the scrutiny began well before the election, making claims of fraud even less defensible.
That Lake’s opponent, Hobbs, was the secretary of state has helped boost the conspiracy theories this time around, though elections are administered at the county level. But the argument doesn’t make much sense: if there was an effort to rig the vote against Lake, why spend a week counting votes only to have the result land at a near 50-50 split? Why not just give Hobbs a clear victory on election night to avoid all of this scrutiny? If you control the system, why not control it in a way that erodes questions about it?
Lake and her allies have spent a lot of energy insisting that the slow counting of votes is suspect. But the vast majority of votes cast in Arizona — including for Lake — were early votes, according to state data. Lake outperformed Hobbs on Election Day, but those votes made up less than a fifth of all votes cast. They made up only about a quarter of Lake’s total.
The point, of course, is simply to create space to try to finagle a potential victory. The question is how much appetite Lake and her allies have to do so.
As the results came in on Monday night, there was a surprising concession. Rogers appeared on right-wing talker Charlie Kirk’s radio show, where she came close to recognizing a key factor at play in the election — if not over the past two years.
“We wonder now if we were in echo chamber,” she said about perceptions of Lake’s chances. “I don’t know. I’m just beginning to get some perspective.”
Over at Fox News, Lake’s loss was treated with open derision.
“I just want you to notice how quickly some people really want to declare a winner and just move on in that Arizona gubernatorial race,” Kevin Corke said on “Fox & Friends.” “But the process may not be over, especially if it’s within a half a percentage point that’s going to trigger a recount.” He mocked the idea that Hobbs “somehow” got more votes.
He quoted Hobbs’s tweet responding to her win — “democracy is worth the wait” — reading it with a mocking tone. “As you can well imagine,” he added, “not everybody’s buying that.”
All of this suggests that the ground is prepared for Lake to push back hard against her loss. There will probably be a recount, though it’s unlikely to overturn a 20,000-vote lead, which is what Hobbs enjoys. The question is whether Lake will buck the trend of other election deniers who lost last week and go further.
On Monday, The Washington Post reported that Lake had been huddled with advisers, planning for a negative result that the slow accretion of votes was making increasingly likely. Her team, we reported, was considering how forcefully to contest a loss.
“Nobody is advocating to go storm the castle,” one adviser told The Post.
But, you know, what’s the harm in humoring her for a little bit? | 2022-11-15T16:21:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Reality waits to see if it has a new supporter in Kari Lake - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/15/arizona-kari-lake-governor-elections/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/15/arizona-kari-lake-governor-elections/ |
Calif. first lady Siebel Newsom gives graphic testimony in Weinstein trial
In this courtroom artist sketch, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, a documentary filmmaker and the wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), testifies at the trial of Harvey Weinstein in Los Angeles on Nov. 14. (Bill Robles/AP)
Documentary filmmaker Jennifer Siebel Newsom, wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), gave emotional testimony against disgraced former movie producer Harvey Weinstein in a Los Angeles courtroom on Monday.
Siebel Newsom accused Weinstein of raping her at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills in 2005, where the pair held a meeting to discuss her career.
She took to the stand at the Los Angeles Superior Court as a three-week trial is underway. Weinstein is serving a 23-year sentence for sexually assaulting two women in New York — a conviction he is appealing.
Asked to identify Weinstein, 70, in the courtroom Siebel Newsom, 48, became tearful: “He’s wearing a suit, and a blue tie, and he’s staring at me,” she said, according to the Associated Press.
She said she had not expected to be alone with Weinstein when they met at his hotel suite, and said he emerged in the room wearing only a bathrobe and began groping her while he masturbated.
“Horror! Horror!” she told the court of her feelings in the moment, the Associated Press reported. “I’m trembling. I’m like a rock, I’m frigid. This is my worst nightmare.”
She then went on to tearfully describe in graphic detail her recollection of the alleged sexual assault and rape at the hotel.
She said she felt “scared,” Reuters reported and “remembered physically trying to back away,” she added. “He was just so big and so determined.”
Siebel Newsom told the court she had felt “so much shame” in the aftermath of the “traumatic” event.
Weinstein has pleaded not guilty to 11 counts of rape and sexual assault including forcible oral copulation and sexual battery by restraint in California, involving five women in separate incidents spanning nearly a decade, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office.
His lawyers told the court the pair had engaged in consensual sex and that Siebel Newsom and other accusers had been seeking to use the former movie mogul to advance their own Hollywood careers.
Weinstein, one of the most high-profile individuals to face #MeToo allegations, was involved in producing movies such as “Pulp Fiction” and “Silver Linings Playbook.” The movement became widespread in 2017 after reports of sexual assault and harassment by powerful male figures in a variety of industries as women spoke out on social media and elsewhere.
Siebel Newsom told the court she first met Weinstein at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2005. “It felt like the Red Sea was parting,” she said as people made way for him, “I don’t know if it was deference or fear.”
She said in her testimony that he had on previous meetings been “charming” and showed “a genuine interest in talking about my work.”
She said she had been nervous while waiting for Weinstein in the hotel suite for the meeting. When asked by Deputy District Attorney Marlene Martinez why she didn’t walk out at that point, she said: “Because you don’t say no to Harvey Weinstein,” adding that “he could make or ruin your career.”
Harvey Weinstein sentenced to 23 years in prison for sexually assaulting two women in New York
Siebel Newsom is known as “Jane Doe #4” at the trial, however her attorney confirmed to reporters that she is Jane Doe #4 while both the prosecution and the defense have identified her during the trial as Newsom’s wife.
In 2017, Siebel Newsom wrote an op-ed for Huff Post, as allegations against Weinstein were coming to light, stating that she believed “every single word” written by the New York Times when they first published allegations of Weinstein’s sexual misconduct, calling it “extremely disturbing, but not all that shocking.”
She wrote that she had “my own personal experience with Harvey Weinstein,” and referred to the Peninsula Hotel meeting “where staff were present and then all of a sudden disappeared like clockwork,” without elaborating. She added that she was “naive, new to the industry, and didn’t know how to deal with his aggressive advances.”
Mark Werksman, Weinstein’s attorney, questioned Siebel Newsom on when she first told her husband about the alleged assault and why he had accepted political donations from Weinstein in the past.
Siebel Newsom said she had hinted about the assault in the years after meeting Gavin Newsom, and gave him the full story after allegations about Weinstein spread in 2017. He took money “from somebody you hinted had done something despicable to you?” Werksman asked, according to AP.
She replied that it was “complex” and that Gavin Newsom had returned donations after 2017 following the #MeToo reckoning. Newsom won a decisive second term victory as California’s governor last week.
Weinstein was extradited from New York to California last year. “Anyone who abuses their power and influence to prey upon others will be brought to justice,” L.A. County District Attorney George Gascón said at the time.
Siebel Newsom’s cross-examination will continue on Tuesday. | 2022-11-15T16:34:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jennifer Siebel Newsom testifies against Harvey Weinstein on LA. rape trial - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/11/15/jennifer-siebel-newsom-testimony-harvey-weinstein/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/11/15/jennifer-siebel-newsom-testimony-harvey-weinstein/ |
The settlement resolves litigation with states, cities and tribes tied to the painkillers, and follows similar agreements with Walgreens and CVS
Meryl Kornfield
Walmart has agreed to spend $3.1 billion to resolve opioid lawsuits with several states, cities and Native American tribes. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)
The retailers say they followed the law and blamed doctors for overprescribing the medication. There were no admission of wrongdoing under the terms of their settlements.
“Too many families have lost loved ones to the opioid epidemic, and too many people have lost years of their lives to addiction,” Pennsylvania Attorney General and Gov.-elect Josh Shapiro (D) said in a statement. “My office is determined to hold accountable the companies that created and fueled this crisis. Companies like Walmart need to step up and help by ensuring Pennsylvanians get the treatment and recovery resources they need.”
Funds from the settlement will go to state, local and Indigenous governments to be used for opioid addiction treatment, recovery and abatement, officials said. The settlement also includes court-ordered remedial measures for Walmart, including “robust oversight to prevent fraudulent prescriptions and flag suspicious prescriptions.”
Tribes have not received money from any of the opioid settlements yet, Miller said. Meanwhile, Native Americans are disproportionately dying from drug overdoses, according to federal data.
Shapiro and New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) led the complaint, which also included attorneys general from North Carolina, Nebraska, Ohio, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Texas. | 2022-11-15T16:52:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Walmart agrees to pay $3.1 billion to resolve opioid lawsuits - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/11/15/walmart-opioid-settlement/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/11/15/walmart-opioid-settlement/ |
This photo provided by U. S. Customs and Border Protection shows cocaine seized by customs officers from a traveler who was smuggling the drugs in the wheels of her wheelchair at New York’s Kennedy International Airport. The bust happened Nov. 10, 2022, when Customs and Border Patrol officers stopped a woman traveling from Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic with a wheelchair whose wheels weren’t turning, the agency said in a news release. (U. S. Customs and Border Protection via AP) (Uncredited/U. S. Customs and Border Protection) | 2022-11-15T16:52:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Feds: Cocaine worth $450,000 seized from wheelchair wheels - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/feds-cocaine-worth-450000-seized-from-wheelchair-wheels/2022/11/15/7896d7b2-64fe-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/feds-cocaine-worth-450000-seized-from-wheelchair-wheels/2022/11/15/7896d7b2-64fe-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html |
Flint Hill volleyball finally drops a set but finishes season 36-0
The Flint Hill volleyball team capped a perfect season with a win at the VISAA championship Saturday in Richmond. (Courtesy of Patrice Arrington)
Flint Hill took on Norfolk Academy in the Virginia Independent Schools Athletic Association championship match on Saturday with more than just the title on the line. The Huskies were attempting to finish the season without losing a single set.
Both teams had improved since a Huskies sweep in September, and Norfolk Academy showed just how much by taking the opening set in Richmond. “We had never lost a set against this team and as a coach I was wondering, are we going to crumble or are we going to come back from this?” Flint Hill’s Patrice Arrington said.
Captains Sydney Bryant, Natalie Nguyen and Ryla Jones stepped up in the huddle after the six-point set loss to encourage their teammates to fight for every point and work together to prevent a repeat.
The Huskies turned that talk into action and won the next three sets to clinch the state title and solidify a 36-0 record.
Flint Hill also repeated as Independent School League AA champions, beating Georgetown Day in three-straight sets the previous weekend. Though it missed out on a perfect set record, the finality of another dominant season had the Huskies beaming.
“I was almost in tears because in timeouts they were so focused on winning the title together,” Arrington said. “I think these girls will be friends forever, and I’m just super excited to see where this team is going.”
Flint Hill will graduate four seniors — Bryant, Ellie Running, Alexandra Carbonara and Sonja Meyer.
At the final whistle of Saturday’s Maryland 4A semifinal, several Blair soccer players dropped to their home turf in despair. The Blazers had earned an opportunity to host Severna Park in the program’s biggest match in years, and they had played well. But the Falcons, a perennial power out of Anne Arundel County, had conjured two timely goals to earn a 2-1 victory.
Blair Coach Allie Coyle wandered the field consoling her players. Her first year in charge was officially over. Coyle had been in the program four five years as a varsity assistant and JV coach, but she had pushed for the top job after it came available last winter. Her candidacy was given a boost when several of the program’s rising seniors went to the athletic department and advocated for her. Once she got the job, she leaned on her relationship with the team’s eight seniors to help her navigate her debut season.
“I’m real with them and they’re real with me,” she said. “It starts with the relationship and then you become a family and then there’s no stopping it.”
Coyle first knew her team could make it as far as the state semifinals on the third day of tryouts. The program had 140 kids come out, and cut decisions were difficult. But on that third day the varsity team was finalized, and after tryouts were over Coyle watched the group play casually.
“All right, we may be able to do this,” she remembers thinking. “There’s a lot of skill and talent on this team, and they all have their own motivations for needing to win and needing to make a name for Blair.”
Of the eight seniors, none had a college offer in hand. The desire to earn that opportunity fueled the Blazers as they worked their way through a difficult Montgomery County schedule. By mid-October, when the team beat Churchill to move to 6-1-2, Coyle’s feelings were beginning to look prescient.
A postseason run followed, culminating in the program’s first state semifinal appearance since 2015. After Severna Park took a 1-0 lead in the second half, Blair showed the resilience that has carried it all year by responding with an equalizer 10 seconds later. Before the heartbreak of that second Falcons goal, the Blazers had their home stadium in a frenzy — one last memory in a season full of them.
When Washington Latin scored with about seven minutes remaining in the Public Charter Schools Athletic Association final Nov. 4, D.C. International players felt a sense of urgency.
In October, DCI had progressed to challenge Latin in a one-goal loss. Dragons players believed this postseason was their opportunity to dethrone the PCSAA’s powerhouse.
A few minutes after Latin’s goal, DCI’s Mischa Rogin sent a cross into the box, where fellow freshman Adelina Renaut struck the ball into the bottom right corner of the net at the Fields at RFK Campus. In overtime, midfielder Kit Mooney scored from outside the box to deliver a 2-1 win and DCI’s first PCSAA championship.
“The girls knew that this was their chance to rewrite this history,” said Coach José Reyes, who started DCI’s girls’ program in 2017. “They just did not give into Latin’s pressure. They rather came back with more energy themselves and were able to turn that game around.”
DCI, which opened in 2014 in Northwest Washington, had lost to Latin in two PCSAA finals. On Oct. 11, the Dragons (11-6-1) lost to Latin, 2-1. Because DCI scored first in that game, players built confidence that they could defeat the Lions (10-5) for the first time.
DCI also won the boys’ championship, 3-2, over BASIS behind forward Kadin Nuri’s hat trick. The boys’ finished 11-4-1.
The Potomac School went into Saturday’s VISAA finals knowing it was the underdogs. For the second year in a row, the Panthers were up against a strong squad at Collegiate School and felt the pressure to perform. But after falling in four singles matches, Potomac found itself too far behind to mount a recovery.
“Although we did lose, we went in with a positive attitude and I feel like we left with the same amount of positivity,” sophomore Sonali Sachdeva said. “Everyone was proud of each other and how far we had even come to make it to the finals and get this far.”
Potomac School beat Flint Hill and St. Catherine’s School on its way to a state finals rematch against Collegiate. But after finishing as runners-up again with a 5-2 loss, the Panthers (16-4) have improvement on their mind as they jump back into training for next season.
For Sachdeva, her upcoming training regimen is all about integrating what she has learned from team leaders.
“I think everyone is looking forward to the seasons to come because we know our potential and we’re excited to get back onto the courts,” Sachdeva said. “I’ve improved on the court and off the court and overall as a person a lot because of [my teammates] and their influence.”
For some, the Maryland private school state championship is just another meet. For Jewish Day school, it is the season’s culminating meet and one that brought great anguish to Oliver Ferber in 2021. Last fall, Ferber sat out on a Saturday — on Shabbat — after pleading to area programs to change the date to Sunday. Before this year’s event, he sent a letter to the schools, outlining just how much it would mean to compete in his senior season.
His wish was granted this year, giving the Lions a full roster — and, for the first time in school history, state championships in the boys’ and girls’ small school championship division.
Because of their religious observations, Jewish Day faces challenges distinct from most of its competitors. The team recently endured a month-long stretch in which it practiced just twice a week because of Jewish holidays. But there are also opportunities with their set-up: the school’s sixth- through 12th-graders practice together, creating a culture that is unique from other area programs.
“We have high schoolers that become close friends with people they normally would not interact with,” Coach Jason Belinkie said. “It’s a conscious effort to bring people together. We focus a lot on paying it forward, finding opportunities to lift younger runners up.”
The girls’ team (39 points) benefited from a full roster Sunday, as it eked out a three-point victory over St. Andrew’s Episcopal with eighth-graders Mali Osofsky (22:51.1) and Eve Sharp (23:09), who moved up to the 5k distance just six weeks earlier, leading the way.
Sophomore Nathan Szubin (17:45.8) and senior David Fritz (17:58.6) were the top two finishers for the Lions (35 points), who beat out Sandy Spring Friends (57) and St. Andrew’s Episcopal (59). Ferber finished eighth.
River Hill field hockey headed into Saturday’s 3A championship game against Crofton riding a 14-game winning streak and looking to avenge last year’s tight title game loss to Arundel.
The Hawks had gone 10-0 against Howard County opponents in the regular season to secure their second county title in three years. Senior Maddie Vasilios, a Maryland commit, scored 49 goals this season. But ultimately, a strike from Crofton’s Kylie Corcoran in the final minutes of Saturday’s contest in Owings Mills, Md., had the Stevenson University scoreboard reading the same score the one at Washington College read last year — a 2-1 loss for River Hill.
“We tried lots of different things, and we just couldn’t past them,” said River Hill Coach Shelly Chamness, who completed her 23rd year at the helm. “Their defense was the hardest defense we’ve come up against.”
Shamness’s squad finished its campaign 16-3. It had surrendered just two goals in the postseason before Saturday, blanking Atholton, Tuscarora and Marriotts Ridge as it rolled back into the 3A championship game.
Senior Puja Nanjappa, a four-year starting midfielder who’s committed to Stanford, scored eight goals and added eight assists this season. That goal mark was good for third on the team, behind Vasilios and sophomore Maya Chan, who broke the ice in the opening minutes on Saturday. But a talented Hawks team came up just short again. | 2022-11-15T16:53:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Flint Hill volleyball finally drops a set but finishes season 36-0 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/15/flint-hill-volleyball-finally-drops-set-finishes-season-36-0/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/15/flint-hill-volleyball-finally-drops-set-finishes-season-36-0/ |
Grammy nominations 2023: Will Beyoncé and Adele be among the nominees?
Nominees for the 65th Annual Grammy Awards were announced on Nov. 15. (Video: The Washington Post)
The Grammy Awards will be celebrating even more music than normal when the 2023 nominations are announced Tuesday afternoon, as the Recording Academy added five new categories this time around: songwriter of the year, non-classical; best alternative music performance; best Americana performance; best spoken word poetry album; and best score soundtrack for video games.
Despite the widening playing field, it always feels as though there are a few glaring omissions when it comes to the Grammys. This year, one is intentional: In the lead-up to nominations, Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak declared they would be withdrawing their album “An Evening with Silk Sonic” from the running, despite its lead single having won all four Grammys it was nominated for last year.
That leaves just a smidgeon of space for other talented artists to break through, though it’ll be quite difficult given the number of heavyweights who also released eligible music this past cycle, from Beyoncé to Adele to Kendrick Lamar. Will Beyoncé make history (again)? Will Bad Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti” become the first all-Spanish album to land a nomination for album of the year?
Stay tuned to find out. This post will be updated with many of the Grammy nominees announced at Tuesday’s ceremony, which will feature performances from former winners Dan + Shay and Cyndi Lauper. The 65th Grammy Awards, whose host has not yet been announced, will air Feb. 5 on CBS. | 2022-11-15T17:22:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Here are the nominees for the 2023 Grammy Awards - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/11/15/grammy-nominations-2023/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/11/15/grammy-nominations-2023/ |
President Donald Trump speaks about the coronavirus in Washington on April 23, 2020. (Alex Brandon/AP)
I have to admit that at no point in my life — and particularly at no point in the seven-plus years that Donald Trump has been at or near the center of American politics — did it ever occur to me to compare him to Galileo Galilei.
Yet that is precisely the analogy drawn in a new brief by lawyers arguing for Trump and several other plaintiffs in a lawsuit against Twitter. First reported by Politico, the brief compares Trump’s claims about election fraud with the pushback on one of the central advancements in scientific history. Because, why not?
Lest you think I am exaggerating or overstating the point, here is the pertinent excerpt — centered on Galileo’s early-1600s argument that the Earth revolved around the sun and not vice versa.
“[C]rackpot ideas sometimes turn out to be true. The earth does revolve around the sun, and it was Hunter Biden, not Russian disinformation agents, who dropped off a laptop full of incriminating evidence at a repair shop in Delaware. Galileo spent his remaining days under house arrest for spreading heretical ideas, and thousands of dissidents today are arrested or killed by despotic governments eager to suppress ideas they disapprove of. But this is not the American way. We believe the path to truth is forged by exposing all ideas to opposition, debate, and discussion. Confident in the wisdom of the American people, we believe ideas that survive the gantlet of criticism will flourish and those that don’t will fall by the wayside. E=mc2 revolutionized physics, not because it got thousands of likes on Facebook, but because it survived withering criticism by proclaimed experts.”
Let us forgo the pedantry of pointing out that the Catholic Church’s objections to Galileo’s claims may have been more centrally rooted in his rejection of the idea that wine and bread transubstantiated into the literal blood and body of Jesus Christ. Or, at least, let’s just dispatch with that in one sentence.
Let us instead focus on the sheer ridiculousness of comparing conspiracy theories including that “the 2020 election was stolen” with the works of Galileo and Einstein.
The point is precisely that claims about election fraud are rooted in the same sort of mythology and baseless “evidence” that led the Catholic Church to demand that Galileo renounce the idea of heliocentrism. Galileo conducted careful analysis of the evidence and reached a conclusion at odds with the fables and assumptions of state leaders, a group that overlapped with leaders of the church. This was at the dawn of the scientific method, the process of offering and testing hypotheses to construct a concept of the world affixed to demonstrable reality. One reason that Einstein’s work was so hotly contested, of course, was that it challenged the idea that observed reality was necessarily fixed.
What Trump does with his election fraud claims is akin not to Galileo but to the church. He is not conducting a careful consideration of the evidence as he evaluates his theory that the election was stolen; he is operating on faith, on a logic built of allusions and signs. This is not meant to disparage religion by association, certainly. It is, instead, to note that Trump’s attorneys get the situation precisely backward.
In the broadest strokes, this isn’t a new argument. The idea that there is some ineffable process by which public discussion vets and rejects theories and assertions — some process by which claims survive “withering criticism” — is a constant component of defenses of sharing nonsense or hate speech on the internet. What we’ve learned over the past decade is that social media is far more adept at protecting falsehoods than challenging them. Much better at spreading dishonesty than dismantling it. That’s because claims like Trump’s can nestle into a comfortable, safe community of adherents who work collectively to treat it as serious and accurate. Leadership of the Catholic Church in the 17th century was largely impervious to the outside world; on social media, you can build your own similar bastion of belief and organize adherents willing to stand by your side.
Let’s be blunt. Who does Trump more closely resemble: the leader of an upstart religion or a scientist robustly assessing available evidence?
Perhaps the most telling part of the legal filing, though, is how the attorneys describe the effort Twitter undertook to stamp out misinformation on its platform. Twitter, in the business of getting advertisers to view its platform as a good way to reach potential customers, finds it less than useful to have organic communities spreading misinformation to its users. (Any analogue to the 17th century is rough, for obvious reasons. Maybe Twitter is the guy who wants people to run advertisements in his newspaper but realizes people don’t want them appearing next to claims about how werewolves are eating babies’ brains.)
So, before comparing Trump’s assertions to Galileo, the attorneys criticize social media companies for wanting to “suppress opinions and information about matters that Americans consider of vital interest — including those that turn out to be correct or at least debatable.”
See how that works? You can’t censor bad opinions or false statements because they are “debatable” — as is literally everything. And that debate is the only way to avoid the sort of state-level suppression that leads to “dissidents” being “arrested or killed.”
But then we just stop and consider Trump’s specific claims about the election. More than two years later we can say very clearly and very confidently that they are false. They have been debated to the point of derangement and rejected categorically — not by the Church of Trump, certainly, but by the thousands of Galileos pointing out the obvious relationship between Earth and sun.
Trump’s own claims show that the just-debate-it system presented in the filing doesn’t work to challenge and dismiss false assertions.
I’ve been tracking false claims about election fraud since well before the 2020 election. What has struck me repeatedly is how simple logical tests reveal that there’s nothing of substance to the claims, that the entire idea originates with the idea the election was stolen and then works to find evidence to support it. It’s a teleological argument for the presumed existence of fraud.
Trump is the pontiff of this religion, not the challenger to it.
The latest: Vindicated House Democrats search for leadership, caucus rule changes | 2022-11-15T17:53:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump lawyers offer a new theory: Maybe Trump is like Galileo? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/15/trump-fraud-claims-elections-galileo/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/15/trump-fraud-claims-elections-galileo/ |
FILE - This combination of photos shows the Saturn V rocket with Apollo 12’s spacecraft aboard on the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in 1969, left, and the new moon rocket for the Artemis program with the Orion spacecraft at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on March 18, 2022. (AP Photo, File) (Uncredited/AP) | 2022-11-15T18:23:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | EXPLAINER: NASA's new moon rocket, 50 years after Apollo - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/explainer-nasas-new-moon-rocket-50-years-after-apollo/2022/11/15/c6feed6a-6510-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/explainer-nasas-new-moon-rocket-50-years-after-apollo/2022/11/15/c6feed6a-6510-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html |
Idaho students were killed by sharp weapon in targeted attack, police say
Officers on Monday investigate the deaths of four University of Idaho students at an apartment complex south of campus. (Zach Wilkinson/Moscow-Pullman Daily News/AP)
Four University of Idaho students found dead at an off-campus home Sunday were most likely killed with a knife or similar weapon, police said Tuesday in their first substantive update on the slayings, which have unnerved the community.
Police in Moscow, Idaho, a city of about 26,000 people, said they believed an edged weapon had been used to commit an “isolated, targeted attack,” though they had not found a weapon. Autopsies to determine the exact causes of death are scheduled for later this week.
Although no one was in custody Tuesday morning, police insisted there was no threat to the community. Investigators were trying to establish a timeline for the students’ whereabouts Friday evening and early Saturday, police said, and were “following all leads and identifying persons of interest.”
The killings left the campus community stunned and grieving — and many expressed fear for their safety. On the university’s Facebook page, parents expressed worry about their children, begged officials to release more information and suggested that the school be closed.
With Thanksgiving break starting next week, some parents discussed having their children come home early. University President C. Scott Green said in a statement Monday that the school had asked faculty and staff to “work with our students who desire to return home to spend time with their families.”
Steve Jobs loved Birkenstocks. His old pair just sold for over $218,000.
Ethan Chapin, 20, of Conway, Wash.; Madison Mogen, 21, of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho; Xana Kernodle, 20, of Avondale, Ariz.; and Kaylee Goncalves, 21, of Rathdrum, Idaho, were found dead about noon Sunday when police responded to a call about an unconscious person at a home just south of the university.
People on the campus, about 70 miles southeast of Spokane, Wash., were asked to shelter in place for about 40 minutes Sunday afternoon as police investigated. Classes were canceled Monday.
Moscow Mayor Art Bettge on Monday called the killings “senseless acts of violence” and said only limited information could be shared without compromising the investigation.
“It is impossible to understand the senselessness of events like this, and we all are seeking answers that are not yet available,” he said in a statement.
Condolences poured out on social media profiles for the students, who were often photographed together.
“You deserve justice, peace, and power,” one person wrote on an Instagram profile for Mogen. “I hope your loved ones, friends, and community can receive the same.” | 2022-11-15T18:24:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | University of Idaho students were killed by knife-like weapon: police - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/15/university-idaho-students-homicide-deaths/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/15/university-idaho-students-homicide-deaths/ |
Putin said Kherson was ‘Russian forever.’ ‘Forever’ turned out to be 40 days.
A Ukrainian tears down a billboard reading "Russia is here forever" in Kherson, Ukraine, on Monday. (AFP/Getty Images)
The liberation of Kherson on Friday is a joyous event that is rightly being celebrated as Ukraine’s third major victory of the war after the battles of Kyiv and Kharkiv. It further validates the Ukrainian way of war and further undermines Russian pretensions to rule any part of Ukraine.
The city of Kherson, after all, is the capital of one of four regions that Russian President Vladimir Putin “annexed.” On Sept. 30, he proclaimed that these regions would be “Russian forever.” A mere 40 days later, the Russians pulled out of Kherson. Forever ain’t what it used to be.
What this shows is that not even Putin himself takes seriously the idea that Kherson was ever part of Russia. Can anyone imagine the Russian dictator pulling back so nonchalantly if the Ukrainians were on the outskirts of actual Russian cities such as Belgorod or Voronezh? Of course not. He would be telling his troops to fight to the last man and might even be using nuclear weapons. Whatever Putin says, the Kremlin is not treating the loss of Kherson as the loss of actual Russian territory.
The residents of Kherson certainly did not regard the departure of the Russian army and the arrival of the Ukrainians as cause for commiseration, even though they had supposedly voted to be part of Russia in a bogus referendum. Rather, they celebrated their liberation as though they were Parisians in 1944.
Even during the dark days of the Russian occupation — whose full brutality is only now being revealed — the people of Kherson staunchly resisted attempts to turn them into Russians. The New York Times reported that teachers at one school ignored a new curriculum that involved memorizing the Russian anthem and instead discreetly greeted students every morning with “Glory to Ukraine!”
In short, Putin’s claims to rule Ukrainian territory are a sham. Like the French and Americans in Vietnam or the Soviets in Afghanistan, Russian soldiers control nothing beyond the range of their guns. They cannot win the support of the population, and their illegitimate occupation is unlikely to last long given their military ineptitude.
The retreat from Kherson was one of the more skillful maneuvers the Russian army has pulled off. They managed to avoid a slaughter as their troops were crossing the Dnieper River to the east bank. But, as Winston Churchill said after Dunkirk, “Wars are not won by evacuations.”
That the Ukrainians forced the Russians to retreat is further vindication of their “thousand bee sting” strategy — what the British strategist Basil Liddell Hart called “the indirect approach” and the retired Australian general Mick Ryan calls a strategy of “corrosion.” The Russians suffered massive casualties this summer in Donbas with World War I-style frontal assaults. The Ukrainians, by contrast, have minimized their own losses by focusing their firepower on logistical lines and command centers to erode the Russian ability to fight.
The U.S.-supplied HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System) has been the star weapon in this campaign of attrition. While HIMARS warheads are too small to destroy bridges, the Institute for the Study of War writes, the Ukrainians smartly used multiple strikes to render bridges across the Dnieper unusable — and then targeted the Russians as they attempted to repair the bridges or build pontoon replacements. With all but one of the bridges into Kherson disabled, the Russians had no choice but to evacuate if they did not want to risk having tens of thousands of soldiers cut off and captured.
The Ukrainians will now aim to use similar tactics to degrade the Russian garrisons in the rest of southern and eastern Ukraine — including in Mariupol, the only major city, aside from Kherson, captured since the start of this war. This will not be an easy task, because the Russian lines are now more compact and closer to supply depots in Russia proper and occupied Crimea. Ukraine cannot yet reach Crimea with HIMARS (the range is about 45 miles) and Washington will not allow HIMARS to be used on Russian soil.
The Ukrainians need longer-range weapons, but even without them, they cannot afford to pause for the winter as though they were George Washington’s army at Valley Forge. The Russians need time to train and equip the 300,000 conscripts they claim to have mobilized. The Ukrainians cannot give them the luxury to retrofit for a spring offensive. They will need to keep attacking despite the snow and cold.
Mechanized movement across frozen ground is actually easier than in the muddy conditions of late fall. But winter operations are still arduous and reward forces that have high morale — meaning they are willing to endure privations to prevail. Luckily, the Ukrainians, who are fighting to defend their homeland, have a decided advantage in this regard over the sullen and unmotivated Russian soldiers — just as the Finns did during the Winter War in 1939-1940.
Talk of a settlement appears, sadly, premature. A deal could be done tomorrow if Putin agrees to evacuate Ukrainian territory. But until he does, the war will grind on — with further Ukrainian victories likely.
Opinion|Putin said Kherson was ‘Russian forever.’ ‘Forever’ turned out to be 40 days.
Opinion|It’s time to end the war in Ukraine | 2022-11-15T18:24:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Putin said Kherson was ‘Russian forever.’ ‘Forever’ turned out to be 40 days. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/15/putin-ukraine-kherson-russian-annexation-sham/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/15/putin-ukraine-kherson-russian-annexation-sham/ |
Justin Fields and the Chicago Bears have been on an offensive tear. (Nam Y. Huh/AP)
Chicago Bears at Atlanta Falcons (-3)</b>
Detroit Lions at New York Giants (-3½)
Cleveland Browns at Buffalo Bills (-8½)
Carolina Panthers at Baltimore Ravens (-12½)
New York Jets at New England Patriots (-3½)
Philadelphia Eagles (-6½) at Indianapolis Colts
Washington Commanders (-3½) at Houston Texans
Las Vegas Raiders at Denver Broncos (-2½)
Dallas Cowboys (-1½) at Minnesota Vikings
Cincinnati Bengals (-4½) at Pittsburgh Steelers
Kansas City Chiefs (-6½) at Los Angeles Chargers
San Francisco 49ers (-8) at Arizona Cardinals
So: Last week was not my best week. None of my picks — not the Dallas Cowboys, not the Arizona Cardinals and Los Angeles Rams, nor Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa — cooperated. In fact, you could argue they all conspired against me. I won’t take it personally, but they should know that we know what happened.
Let’s start with Dallas, a best bet over the Green Bay Packers. The Cowboys jumped out early and had a 14-point lead at the end of the third quarter, giving America’s Team a 95 percent win probability, per ESPN. Certainly they should have covered a 4½-point spread, right? After all, they were 180-0 all-time when leading by at least 14 points through three quarters, and 195-0 if you include the playoffs. Dear reader, it pains me to say: They could not. The Packers scored two touchdowns in the fourth quarter, forced overtime and then walked off with a 31-28 win thanks to Mason Crosby’s 28-yard field goal.
Meanwhile, Arizona and Los Angeles went into the half with a score of 17-3, giving us hope the under would cash. Nope. Backup quarterbacks Colt McCoy and John Wolford led their offenses to a combined 24 points in the second half, busting the under. The game was tied, 3-3, at the first half’s two-minute warning, at which point the under felt perfectly safe. Still, the total moved down in the days before the game, indicating that our process was sound. Finally, my player prop — Tagovailoa finishing with under 268½ passing yards — would also bust with his 285-yard effort, despite the quarterback having just 42 passing yards in the first quarter.
The lone bright spot was the Minnesota Vikings beating the Buffalo Bills outright in overtime, cashing the Vikings +6½ ticket advocated earlier in the week before the uncertainty around Bills quarterback Josh Allen was resolved. Allen did play, but he was not at his best, tossing two interceptions in the loss.
Pick: Chicago Bears +3 or +140 on the money line
Chicago’s offense has improved over the last three weeks, with each week better than the last. Quarterback Justin Fields is leading this charge, largely on the ground, where he’s produced an average of 128 rushing yards per game. He’s also got four rushing touchdowns over that three-game span.
I’d expect another big game against Atlanta. The Falcons are allowing 6.3 yards per carry to quarterbacks this season — the league average is 4.7 — and opposing quarterbacks are producing 12 more points per game than expected on the ground after factoring in the down, distance and field position of each rush against Atlanta, per data from TruMedia. That gives the Falcons the NFL’s worst rushing defense against quarterbacks this season.
Pick: Detroit Lions +3½, playable to +3
The Giants have scored 21 more points than expected off turnovers in 2022, the fifth-highest total in the league. The Lions have barely benefited at all from turnovers, scoring three fewer points than expected. Otherwise, despite their records, these have actually been very similar teams. New York has been the 19th best team after adjusting for opponent, per Football Outsiders. Detroit is ranked at No. 22. Pro Football Focus ranks the Giants 29th and the Lions 27th after looking at each play and judging them on their merits, not just the results.
My own power rankings have this game Giants -1, but I wouldn’t wager on Detroit getting fewer points than the key number of three. At less than that, I would back the Lions on the money line.
Under 43½, playable to 40. For the game, the pick is the Bills -8½, but it’s not a best bet.
This total has moved significantly since I started writing this blurb early Tuesday — it started at 47 — so proceed with caution, although I do think there is still some room to work with. There is a chance for significant snow accumulation in the Buffalo area, with recent forecasts calling for around 31 inches of snow. Also aiding a low total is the forecast of 20 mph winds, with the possibility of 37 mph wind gusts. It’s going to be tough to play efficiently in those conditions. There are not a lot of historical games to draw from, but since 2000, games played under similar conditions have gone over the total just two out of 10 times, missing the over by an average of nine points.
I have a few plays working for this game, including under 47, under 44½ +116 and under 30½ +830. I also invested in longest field goal under 47½ yards at -115 odds, and for the game to have zero or one total touchdowns scored at +4100 odds. I’m also playing unders in the Akron at Buffalo college game on Saturday.
Pick: Green Bay Packers -3
Pick: Carolina Panthers +12½
Pick: New York Jets +3½
Pick: Indianapolis Colts +6½
Pick: New Orleans Saints -4 or -6½ at +140 or better
Pick: Cincinnati Bengals -4½ or -6½ at +120 or better
Pick: Arizona Cardinals +8 | 2022-11-15T18:24:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | NFL Week 11 odds, picks and best bets - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/15/nfl-picks-odds-best-bets-week-11/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/15/nfl-picks-odds-best-bets-week-11/ |
Here are the best routes and days to avoid traffic ahead of Turkey Day
Nearly 49 million people plan to hit the road for Thanksgiving this year, meaning highways will be crowded if you don’t time your trip correctly, according to a projection released by AAA on Tuesday.
Thanksgiving is typically one of the busiest holidays for road trips over 50 miles. This year, car travel is projected to be 0.4 percent higher than 2021, though still 2.5 percent below pre-pandemic levels in 2019, according to AAA.
Here’s what to know before getting in the car before Thanksgiving.
When should I fly or drive this holiday season? Send Post reporter your travel questions.
Best and worst times to drive
The best time to hit the road Thanksgiving week is Monday at 8 p.m. local time, according to Google, which examined its Maps data from last Thanksgiving in more than 20 major U.S. cities.
The worst traffic is expected when Thanksgiving drivers overlap with the regular evening commute on Tuesday and Wednesday, around 4 to 5 p.m. local time, per Google.
With many people unable to leave work and school until Wednesday, INRIX, a transportation analytics firm, partnered with AAA to provide congestion projections for the peak parts of Thanksgiving week.
INRIX also expects traffic to peak nationally on Wednesday afternoon. If you need to travel Wednesday, leave before 8 a.m. or after 8 p.m., the company recommends.
For those traveling by road on Turkey Day itself, the worst congestion will be from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., so try to drive in the morning or after 6 p.m.
Traffic on the return trip should offer more flexibility, though Black Friday shopping could clog some roads, especially between noon and 4 p.m. on Friday, according to Google. Avoid driving between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, according to INRIX.
The firm recommends leaving before 11 a.m. if you’re driving on Friday or Sunday, and before 2 p.m. on Saturday. Alternatively, the roads are likely to be more open after 8 p.m. on any of the three days.
Where to expect the worst traffic
The nation’s largest metro areas, especially New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta, are likely to see significant increases over typical congestion, according to INRIX.
“Although travel times will peak on Wednesday afternoon nationally, travelers should expect much heavier than normal congestion throughout the holiday weekend,” said Bob Pishue, a transportation analyst at INRIX.
At peak Wednesday afternoon, New York City will see a 158 percent increase above typical traffic, Los Angeles 144 percent, and Atlanta 105 percent. Traffic in those cities, along with Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, San Francisco and Seattle, will peak Wednesday afternoon.
The only city tracked by INRIX where traffic will peak on a day other than Wednesday is D.C. Congestion in the nation’s capital is expected to be at its worst between 11:15 a.m. and 1:15 p.m. on Sunday, especially on the Capital Beltway and Interstate 95 to Virginia State Route 123.
INRIX also tracked the individual highways across the country that are expected to see the biggest increases in traffic over a typical week. In New York, stay off I-278 south, where traffic will be 158 percent worse than normal. In L.A., avoid I-5 south and I-405 south, where traffic will be up 144 percent and 106 percent, respectively. Atlanta residents should avoid I-85 south, which will see 105 percent more traffic than usual.
A full list of expected traffic by corridor can be found here.
How much to budget for gas
One area where drivers should see some relief over last year: at the pump.
The national average for gas is $3.77 as of Monday, which is down 36 cents from a year ago and 13 cents from a month ago, according to AAA. It’s also well below the $5-a-gallon peak that drivers were paying in June, thanks to steadying oil prices.
How to save on road trips
“There are now about 13 states with some stations selling gas below $3 a gallon,” said Andrew Gross, a AAA spokesperson. “More gas stations could follow, which may be a big help with road trip budgeting as Thanksgiving approaches.”
The cheapest gas can be found in the South, especially Texas, Georgia and Mississippi, where average prices are below $3.20 per gallon. The Midwest saw the largest drop in prices over the past week, with Wisconsin gas prices falling 25 cents on average.
To budget for your road trip, AAA recommends its TripTik travel planner, which shows current gas prices along your route, as well as hotels, restaurants and attractions. | 2022-11-15T18:25:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The best times to drive for Thanksgiving this year - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/11/15/thanksgiving-best-time-drive-traffic/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/11/15/thanksgiving-best-time-drive-traffic/ |
Air Force veteran Robert “Bobby” Gerino in the Frederick, Md., townhouse he rents, with one of the hot peppers he grows. Gerino found the townhouse with the help of Friendship Place, a nonprofit in the District and a partner in The Washington Post Helping Hand. (John Kelly/The Washington Post)
When he served in the U.S. Air Force in the 1960s, Robert “Bobby” Gerino took solace in the belief that he’d probably survive the first stages of a nuclear war. It was his job to plot the mission that American B-58 pilots would fly from their base in Little Rock to the Soviet Union.
“It was really kind of cool,” Gerino said. “I worked right out of the atomic bomb shelter. Anything incoming, I would have a pretty good chance of surviving. That was comforting.”
Fifty years later, Gerino needed comfort of a different sort, after losing his house when a family member turned against him, he said. Homeless, he found help at Friendship Place, a Washington nonprofit that offers programs for veterans in need of housing assistance.
“When I joined the Air Force, the last thing I ever had in my mind was that someday I’d need their help,” said Gerino, 77. “I’ve always made great money and been able to take care of things. But then one day, all of sudden, I can’t take care of myself. And I was scared, to be honest with you. I didn’t know what was going to happen with me.”
Turned out of his home at Christmas in 2018, Gerino moved in with a friend in Northern Virginia. As supportive as his friend was, Gerino knew he couldn’t stay there indefinitely. And neither could Gerino’s wife, Mary. Ex-wife, actually. For complex reasons, the two had gotten divorced. They were apart — Mary was homeless, too, living in her car — but they remained as committed to one another as ever.
Then Gerino heard about Friendship Place, a partner in The Washington Post Helping Hand, our annual reader fund drive. Having served in the military, Gerino was able to qualify for a program that provides up to 50 percent of a veteran’s rent money for up to 24 months.
Emily Greene manages the program for Friendship Place. She said veterans experience higher rates of homelessness than others. That can be due to post-traumatic stress disorder or difficulty in readjusting to civilian life.
Friendship Place administers two programs aimed specifically at those who have served in the military. One provides quick funding to get veterans off the street and into rapid rehousing, aiming to stabilize them within 90 days.
That program wasn’t quite right for Gerino, who after leaving the Air Force had held good, well-paying jobs, from working in a high-end Tysons restaurant to running his own limo service. But health woes and his family problems knocked him for a loop.
He connected with Friendship Place. Greene searched for apartments in Frederick, Md., for Bobby and Mary. She found an end-unit townhouse that would accommodate the couple, who moved in April 2019. The program, funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs, pays half their rent.
“Without Friendship Place, I would not have made it,” Gerino said. “I can’t tell you how wonderful this group is. They’ve done so much for Mary and I.”
Said Mary: “We're just blessed we had this place to come to.”
Gerino hopes to soon be on his feet financially. Ever the entrepreneur, he’s been growing hot peppers on the deck and in the backyard of the townhouse. He hopes to soon launch Uncle Bobby’s Exotic Hot Peppers.
“I grow these and I make rubs,” he said, lifting up a plastic bin of pale orange peppers.
Gerino’s business card lists the different types of peppers he grows, their names redolent of the punch they pack: Carolina reaper, yellow brain attack, death spiral, dragon’s breath.
After picking and drying them, Gerino grinds the peppers to powder and combines the powder in various concoctions. (“I make my own Old Bay,” he said.) He hopes to soon get health department approval to sell his creations at farmers markets around town.
That wouldn’t have been possible without a home, without Friendship Place.
Said Gerino: “It was the greatest thing that ever happened in my life, that when I needed something, they were there.”
Last year, Friendship Place assisted 500 veterans and their families. Your donation can help it continue that work. To contribute to Friendship Place online by credit card, visit posthelpinghand.com. To donate by mail, send a check to Friendship Place, 3655 Calvert St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20007. | 2022-11-15T18:36:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Special Friendship Place programs help veterans in need - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/15/friendship-place-veterans/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/15/friendship-place-veterans/ |
Mike Thibault will step down as head coach of the Mystics and his son Eric Thibault will be the new head coach. Mike Thibault will stay on as general manager. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
Mike Thibault started to feel it last season, an elevated sense of appreciation. He began to relish little moments a bit more — time with a former player, a visit to a certain arena, the quiet moments on the bench before a game. Deep down, Thibault knew even before fully understanding — his days on the bench were numbered.
The winningest WNBA coach of all time has decided to retire to the front office, handing the clipboard off to his son Eric, 35, after 20 seasons, 379 wins and a WNBA championship. Mike, 72, will hold onto his general manager responsibilities and continue to lead the franchise from the front office while Eric gets the head coaching job he’s been groomed for most of his life.
“I think that Eric and our staff can provide them a better coaching job than I can right now, and I mean that with all sincerity,” Mike Thibault told The Washington Post. “I’m at the point after this many years, 50-something years, that it takes a lot of energy on a daily basis to be the head coach and GM. I didn’t think I could give full service to both.”
This has been a yearly evaluation for some time, and Thibault came close to hanging it up after the 2021 season. The Mystics had missed the playoffs for just the second time during his tenure, and it was a grueling season marred by injuries and a team chemistry that was just off. Thibault couldn’t go out like that.
The Mystics reset their culture in 2022 with hopes for a brighter 2023
There was a thought that 2022 could be the end, but Thibault certainly didn’t want a farewell tour. He was more concerned with winning a title with a championship-caliber roster. But there were little signs that the time might be right. Eric was handling more responsibilities in addition to his role as de facto defensive coordinator. Mike has always planned to pass along the keys to the car with a full gas tank, and this is a roster with a core of two-time MVP Elena Delle Donne, two-time all-star Ariel Atkins, the league’s assist leader Natasha Cloud, all-WNBA forward Myisha Hines-Allen and No. 3 overall pick Shakira Austin. The Mystics also hold the No. 4 overall pick in the 2023 draft. Additionally, Mike’s wife Nanci has had some health issues in recent years.
All of that equated to the perfect time to leave the sideline.
“I think I needed to feel it most inside that I wasn’t going to have a regret doing it,” Mike Thibault said. “You never say never when you walk away from coaching, but I’m feeling pretty comfortable with it. Satisfied.
“It’s kind of one of those things where you have a job, but it doesn't feel like a job. I've always said to myself when it started to feel like that too much, maybe it's time to walk away. And I was starting to get that feeling a little bit more.”
Mike talked to ownership and colleagues from both the WNBA and NBA about the right time to leave coaching. Owner Ted Leonsis said in an email that the majority of their conversations focused on ensuring the team was set up for future success, including succession plans and front office organization. Leonsis noted that he and fellow owner Sheila Johnson will be more involved day-to-day.
Mike offered to give up his perch of an office, with the window that overlooks the practice court at Entertainment and Sports Arena, but there haven’t been any takers yet. He has always enjoyed the general manager responsibilities — college scouting, free agency, trades, the draft and player evaluation. Thibault plans to travel to most road games and looks forward to limited media sessions.
Still, at 72 years old, Thibault doesn’t expect to sit in that GM chair for another 20 seasons. He’s been grooming assistant general manager Maria Giovannetti to assume that role and she recently received the title of senior vice president of strategy and vision. Mike envisions a future with Eric and Giovannetti working side-by-side to guide the organization forward.
Atkins noted Mike’s openness as a coach and the rare quality to be completely honest — good and bad — with players. She also pointed out that he’s been able to not only bring in quality athletes, but players with character.
Brewer: This Mystics team had flaws, but it also offers plenty of promise
“It was definitely bittersweet,” Atkins said about getting the news. “I know that he has put his all into coaching. It’s definitely hard knowing thinking that I was going to be playing for him for at least another few years.
“But I’m really happy for him. You can ask anyone, he’s one of the greatest minds to come through the game, be it a GM or coach. … Thankful to have started my pro career under his tutelage.”
Not much is expected to change. Eric has the freedom to tweak as he desires, but the Thibaults, Giovannetti and the staff have had the same philosophy for some time. LaToya Sanders will be promoted to associate head coach and another assistant will be added, but the rest of the staff will remain the same. Mike will have the final say on personnel but expects to make decisions with Eric and Giovannetti.
“I don’t know,” Thibault said about how long he’ll serve as GM. “I don’t think it’ll be a long, long time. I promised Ted Leonsis a while back that whenever we got to this point that I would stay for at least a short amount of time, a year or two, and then see where it is and see how we’re doing.”
Leonsis has said in the past that he entrusted the organization to Thibault, and Eric was put through a full series of meetings before being given the job. There is no WNBA requirement to interview minority candidates and Eric was the only person to interview for the job.
“It’s going to reflect on me,” Thibault said. “If we don’t do what I think we’re going to do, I’m going to get blamed for it anyway. ”
Mike did wonder what it’ll be like watching games from the stands alongside Nanci after all this time. He already admits to being stressed out watching their daughter Carly Thibault-DuDonis coach at Fairfield and there were similar feels watching Eric coach a few games when Mike has been out the last two years. Nanci and Mike met through basketball when still in college and she previously expressed a bit of good-natured concern about post-retirement life.
“I have a lot of friends to do things with and I’m thinking, oh, my gosh, he’s not going to come with us is he?” Nanci said with a laugh.
Eric now takes over a position that he’s been training for most of his life. He was working with Connecticut Sun players when Mike was coach and Eric was still in college. He was hired as an assistant when Mike went to Washington and has been in charge of running practices, player development and coached two regular season games when Mike was unavailable. He was named associate head coach four years ago.
“As a young coach who can identify more with players today, I think that’s a big plus,” Mike said. “He’s on the cutting edge of all the technology and data that’s available. But day-to-day, all the players he’s worked with here have improved.
“When five other teams in the league over the last two years have wanted him, I think that would be a clue.” | 2022-11-15T19:11:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mike Thibault steps down as Mystics coach with son Eric taking over - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/15/mike-thibault-retires-mystics-coach/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/15/mike-thibault-retires-mystics-coach/ |
Protesters on the steps of the Georgia state Capitol protesting the overturning of Roe v. Wade. (AP Photo/Ben Gray, File)
A Fulton County judge has overturned Georgia’s six-week abortion ban, ruling that two key parts of the law “were plainly unconstitutional when drafted, voted upon, and enacted” and writing that the law cannot be enforced.
The ruling, handed down Tuesday by Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, stemmed from a lawsuit that argued the state’s “heartbeat bill” violated pregnant people’s rights to liberty and privacy rights under the state constitution.
Georgia’s ban has been in effect since July. Kara Richardson, a spokeswoman for Georgia’s attorney general, told Axios that the state will “pursue an immediate appeal and will continue to fulfill our duty to defend the laws of our state in court.”
Georgia’s abortion law was among the strictest in the country when Gov. Brian Kemp (R) signed it into law in 2019. The law bans abortions after fetal cardiac activity is detected, at roughly six weeks. But it had been blocked from taking effect until this summer, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade’s decades-old protections, allowing restrictions on the procedure in states with trigger laws to be implemented across the country.
McBurney in his 15-page ruling said when the law took effect, “everywhere in America, including Georgia, it was unequivocally unconstitutional for governments — federal, state, or local — to ban abortions before viability.”
The decision adds new pressure on lawmakers from both sides of the aisle to advance either abortion restrictions or abortion protections.
Kemp, who won re-election last week, could face pressure from anti-abortion advocates to further restrict the procedure in the state once legislative sessions reconvene. He beat Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams, who had pledged to roll back restrictions on the procedure.
Meanwhile, the state’s Republican Attorney General Chris Carr won re-election last week, beating back a challenge from Democratic state Sen. Jen Jordan. Carr had moved to enact the state’s ban on abortion after fetal cardiac activity is detected after the nation’s highest court overturned Roe. | 2022-11-15T19:25:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Judge overturns Georgia abortion ban starting at six weeks of pregnancy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/15/georgia-abortion-ban-overturned/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/15/georgia-abortion-ban-overturned/ |
A brief recent history of Republican governors seeking the presidency
Former Wisconsin governor Scott Walker poses for a portrait at Young America's Foundation on Sept. 22, 2021, in Reston, Va. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
In the last three decades, Republicans have won the presidency three times and the popular vote once. Two of those elections (and the one popular vote victory) were of a former governor, George W. Bush of Texas. In the years since Bush won the popular vote, seven other Republican governors have sought the nomination, two of them twice. One earned his party’s nomination, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. None won the presidency.
What’s important, though, is that many of these governors, even beyond Romney, seemed like they were viable contenders for the nomination. Five of them (including Romney, obviously) led in polling averages at some point between the preceding midterm election and the Iowa caucuses. And none became president.
We must recognize that these numbers are tainted by two factors: a small sample size and 2016. The former is obvious; there have only been eight presidential elections in the past 30 years. The latter should be obvious, too. In 2016, a massive Republican field included five high-profile governors and former governors. Also in 2016, Republican politics reorganized around Donald Trump in a way that makes comparisons with the past trickier than they might otherwise have been.
Nonetheless, given that Trump’s (likely) bid for the 2024 nomination faces its strongest opposition in the (likely) candidacy of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, it’s useful to review the nine prior times governors tried to become president in the past four presidential cycles.
We can start in 2008, when former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee ran an unexpectedly strong campaign against Sen. John McCain (Ariz.). Huckabee was personable in a way McCain wasn’t and an outsider in a way McCain only tried to be. But, despite a late surge, he came up short. The stronger governor in that race was Romney, who trailed McCain the entire time but had a bigger core base of support than Huckabee.
That translated into success in 2012. But Romney’s nomination that year came only after repeatedly taking and losing his lead. That included a surge from Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who, at one point, climbed over 30 percent in RealClearPolitics’ average of polling. Perry had long been touted as a potential contender, given that he was following explicitly in George W. Bush’s footsteps. It all came crashing down during a debate in mid-November.
Romney won the nomination. In an echo of his party’s 2022 outcome, though, Romney lost the presidency despite party confidence and some pundit predictions.
First there was New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. He won his 2013 reelection bid by more than 20 points, a show of strength in a blue state that prompted a lot of chatter. Very early on, he had a slight lead in the polling average. But his reelection success ran through the traffic-choked streets of Fort Lee, N.J., and Christie’s political support collapsed.
Then there was Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. He’d survived a recall effort in 2010 and won reelection in 2014 more narrowly than Christie. But he led in polling average for a month in the spring of 2015 before flaming out well before the primaries after burning through an enormous amount of money.
Finally, there was former Florida governor Jeb Bush. Bush, of the Bush Bushes, was backed by a nine-figure outside group and led for much of the period before July 2015, when Trump jumped into the race. He stuck around long enough to lose a few primaries before dropping out.
The governor that lasted the longest in 2016 was someone never seen as particularly viable: Ohio’s John Kasich. He stuck around through the Ohio primary, earning some delegates to the convention, though he never led the field and was never a contender to win enough delegates to earn the nomination. His approach, instead, was to be positioned to replace Trump if convention delegates desired, which they didn’t.
That brings us to DeSantis.
There are three things that make DeSantis’s current position different than the governors listed above. The first is that he is not technically a candidate at this point. The second is that he has been consistently at or above 20 percent in the RealClearPolitics average, well above where most of the recent governor candidates found themselves. The third is that, despite that strength, DeSantis has never led, specifically because he remains in Trump’s shadow in polling.
Again: post-2016 is unique! You’ll notice that I didn’t even bother including former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld in my list of contenders for the nomination since, when he ran in 2020, the GOP effectively boxed him out. Trump’s hold on the GOP has been robust and DeSantis’s support to some extent a reflection less of him than of his position as Someone Else — someone who can conceivably sneak past Trump to the nomination.
The former president is expected to announce his 2024 candidacy on Tuesday evening, the first time in a very long time that a former president has sought to regain his old job and the first time ever that a president who launched an unsuccessful effort to overthrow election results has tried to take another bite of the apple. If Trump’s campaign should collapse or if he should ultimately decide against running, DeSantis is currently well-positioned.
Until, of course, other candidates enter the contest. Then DeSantis would find himself in a position familiar to Christie and (Jeb) Bush and Perry and Romney: scrambling to edge out potential contenders over more than a year of campaigning.
The only certainty in Republican presidential nominating contests, it seems, is that one should not be certain about what will happen.
Noted: DeSantis doesn’t name Trump, but urges GOP to ‘Check out the scoreboard’ | 2022-11-15T19:42:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A brief recent history of Republican governors seeking the presidency - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/15/desantis-trump-bush-romney-governors/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/15/desantis-trump-bush-romney-governors/ |
Republicans close to winning control of House of Representatives
The party has 215 seats, according to The Washington Post’s unofficial count, but 218 are needed to gain control. Ballot counting continues in several districts.
By News Services and Staff Reports
Members-elect of the House of Representatives pose for a photo at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday in Washington, D.C. The Republican Party is near to having a majority in the House beginning in January, but some of the races are too close to call. (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)
Republicans stood a few seats short of retaking control of the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday afternoon, but the amount of votes still to be counted in California and other states prevented The Washington Post from calling control of the chamber for the Republican Party.
The Post has called 215 seats in the House for Republicans to 205 for Democrats. The Democratic Party has had the majority of seats in the House since 2018.
The Post uses information from the Associated Press and Edison Research, two organizations with researchers and analysts keeping track of results posted in each district. As unofficial voting tallies are posted by districts, the analysts figure out whether a candidate who appears to be losing has any chance of winning. Once it is clear that the remaining uncounted votes cannot change who wins, those organizations will declare a winner. That call is not official, however. Districts and states must certify election results, a process that often takes several weeks.
Democratic control of the U.S. Senate was unofficially settled Saturday when Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada won reelection. The party has 50 seats compared with Republicans’ 49. A Senate race in Georgia failed to produce a winner because no candidate received at least 50 percent of the votes. Control of that seat will be decided in a December 6 runoff election between Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker. Even if Walker wins, Democrats will keep control. That’s because Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat, would break any tie votes. | 2022-11-15T19:46:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Republicans close to winning control of House of Representatives - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/11/15/republicans-close-winning-control-house-representatives/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/11/15/republicans-close-winning-control-house-representatives/ |
DHS blocked vital research on domestic threats, say terrorism experts
Homeland Security allocated millions of dollars for research on targeted violence. Two years later, the work hasn’t started because of a fight over privacy protocols.
Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas on Capitol Hill in Washington on May 4. (Amanda Andrade-Rhoades for The Washington Post)
As bloody, hate-fueled attacks rose in 2019, Homeland Security officials pledged to step up their response to domestic terrorism, funding in-depth research that would help them understand the scale of the problem.
“Accurate nationwide statistics will better position DHS to protect communities from these threats,” the department said in a strategy report.
More than two years later, that data collection has not begun, and $10 million languishes unused because of internal disputes over privacy protocols, according to researchers and an official of the Department of Homeland Security.
Academics who received DHS contracts say their projects to study violent attacks and extremist movements have been delayed, some effectively scrapped, because of an endless loop of privacy concerns that typically would n0t apply to work based on open-source records — unclassified materials such as news reports. In interviews, researchers described the roadblocks they have faced as “crazytown,” “mind-boggling” and “beyond logic.”
Their accounts were confirmed by a DHS official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to freely describe a sensitive internal debate. The official said around 20 research projects funded by Homeland Security faced varying degrees of delays because of rulings by the DHS’s Privacy Office that deemed them high-risk even after researchers repeatedly explained that the information they intended to use was widely available to the public. At least $2 million of funding has been returned unused; $10 million more is essentially frozen unless privacy officers approve the research.
After so many months of paralysis, the official said, DHS relations with top terrorism scholars have soured, and DHS leaders are left with a gap in data — just as national attention is again focused on political violence, which is at the root of the ongoing trials in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the recent assault of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, and far-right threats around the midterm elections.
Those issues are likely to come up this week as Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas makes public appearances to address the government’s response to violent extremism, a national security priority for the Biden administration. In June 2021, the need for more research was spelled out in the country’s first national strategy for countering domestic terrorism, which noted that understanding the threat “requires facilitating a systematic provision of information and data.”
So far, that information-gathering work has not been carried out.
“Right now, if the secretary of Homeland Security turns to us and says, ‘Last year, how many serious attacks based on ideology or grievance happened?’ we can’t answer those fundamental questions,” the DHS official said. “We don’t know.”
Homeland Security spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment.
Within the department, the official speaking anonymously said, one view is that privacy officers are trying to shield Mayorkas from potentially controversial research at a time when federal agencies are criticized by both major political parties for their response to political violence. Republicans in Congress have portrayed the effort to investigate domestic terrorism as a thought-police exercise that infringes on First Amendment rights. Some Democrats, too, have expressed wariness of federal overreach, citing the civil liberties violations of the war-on-terror years.
DHS is already under scrutiny because of the rollback of plans to fight disinformation and for reports that authorities sought dossiers on protesters in Portland, Ore. — indications of how easily counterterrorism work can be politicized.
The academic researchers on contract with DHS said they share those concerns, stressing that the recent transgressions make it awkward to push back on privacy oversight. But the researchers say that in long Zoom meetings and months of correspondence with DHS, they have explained that their work is different: It is governed by a code of ethics, reviewed by their universities and built from data that is already available to the public. The contracts come from the innovation-focused Science and Technology Directorate inside DHS, not the enforcement side. Nevertheless, researchers said, DHS privacy officers have ruled that collecting and analyzing public information is too risky.
“It’s going to be equally or more controversial that we’re doing nothing. That we’re not doing our jobs: understanding these problems, how to describe them, or how to respond to them,” the DHS official said.
In one example of a stalled project, a University of Maryland terrorism research team was awarded $2.6 million in September 2020 to build a database of nationwide attacks based on publicly available information — essentially, a digital repository of newspaper clippings. Researchers would then analyze the data to determine trends such as methods of attack or motivations for attacks.
That project was deemed by DHS privacy officers to be a “high risk” information-gathering effort, and the 14-month contract ran out in January without a scrap of data collected, according to lead researcher Erin Miller, who provided corroborating emails from DHS. In September, the university returned $1.25 million of unused funds to DHS, Miller said. Her team has another contract proposal pending and expects to hit the same wall.
“We’re months into this now, and I’m sort of trying to get a sense, like, is this real?” Miller said. “Is this a genuine concern about privacy or does someone just not want this research to happen?”
Miller is a veteran researcher who for years has overseen the Global Terrorism Database, or GTD, a vast archive now funded by the Defense Department. Her proposal to Homeland Security was a U.S.-focused spinoff of the GTD that would take details from public reports of attacks and analyze them across various categories: motivation, targets, deaths, injuries, weapons, and so on.
“It’s not a wild-goose chase in terms of trying to track down information on random individuals,” Miller said. “Everything we collect data on has to have some nexus to violence, a violent attack.”
Miller said the information would be a guide for policymakers studying the evolving threat of ideologically motivated violence, and could be useful in the training of law enforcement agencies and emergency medical workers. The response from DHS privacy officers, Miller said, was that public news articles might contain names of people participating in activities protected by the First Amendment. Miller said she was stunned; not only was the information public, but there had been no plans to include source material in the data collection.
“It’s literally the news,” Miller said. “We’re using the news. It’s the opposite of private.”
On Nov. 1, a month after Miller briefed privacy officials on her methodology, she received a message from DHS that once again blocked the work: “Our subject matter experts have reaffirmed their stance that there is a high risk of unauthorized access to or disclosure of sensitive information.”
The message, Miller said, was that her project is “basically dead.”
“It’s very difficult at this point to interpret what is happening as something other than ‘DHS as an entity doesn’t want this to move forward,’ ” Miller said.
Mayorkas has said “domestic violent extremism poses the most lethal and persistent terrorism-related threat to our country today,” an assessment that still stands, he told a congressional hearing Tuesday. The DHS official and researchers said they were unsure whether Mayorkas is aware that his privacy officers are seen as hampering an effort the department has called a priority.
The lack of reliable data on violent-extremist threats has persisted for years despite demands from Congress and advocacy groups for improvement. Under the Trump administration, Homeland Security released a counterterrorism report that acknowledged a growing threat, but could not offer hard numbers on attacks because “current national-level statistics on terrorism and targeted violence in all its forms are not comprehensive.”
To fill that information gap, DHS pledged to “prioritize resources toward the collection of this data” with the help of universities and nongovernmental organizations. The overture was welcomed by researchers who had watched with alarm as the Trump administration infused its hard-right politics into the counterterrorism effort, insisting on portraying far-left “antifa” militants as equal to the exponentially deadlier far right.
“It’s so, so important to be able to have public, transparent, independent and objective numbers and research about this stuff because that’s what prevents people with a political agenda from saying, ‘It’s all antifa!’ or ‘It’s all Nazis!’ ” the DHS official said. “It allows people to say, ‘We know what it is because we’ve seen the trends.’ ”
Another long-stalled project is led by John Horgan, a professor and the director of the Violent Extremism Research Group at Georgia State University. In 2019, a few months after an attack in Canada drew attention to misogynistic “incel” communities, Horgan asked DHS officials whether they were researching the movement. They were not, so they invited Horgan to apply to do so. He was awarded a $125,000 contract for a one-year study that would offer “a baseline view” of incels — the term is shorthand for “involuntary celibates” — and their violent subset.
“I’m not in the business of trying to collect identities or trying to expose people,” Horgan said. “I’m interested in the message, the content: What are they saying? What are the ways in which violent incels are normalizing and routinizing the subjugation of women?”
The project start date was in September 2020. About a month later, Horgan recalled, his DHS contacts called to say, “Hold on a sec, we have to put the brakes on” because the Privacy Office had questions.
Horgan said that such reviews are normal and are welcomed as a safeguard.
“There may be a perception that we’re trying to work around privacy issues,” he said. “On the contrary, we don’t do this research unless there are privacy concerns in there.”
But in this case, Horgan said, the questions stretched on and on. For more than two years, Horgan has been in “bureaucratic limbo with the privacy folks.” His research has not begun, but he remains under contract and regularly sends DHS emails seeking to resolve the situation.
“It just goes into a black hole and nothing happens. In two or three months I get a response back saying, ‘Okay, privacy has additional concerns,’ ” Horgan said. “It got to the point where I said to my DHS contacts: This is just not worth this. I came here with a very serious intention to get some research done on what I see as a potential emerging threat.”
In a last-ditch effort to convince the privacy holdouts, Horgan put together a detailed primer that he presented to officials over the summer. He said he tried to make the basics crystal clear, “explaining research, privacy and ethics as you would to a 10-year-old.” He walked the officials through the process, noting that the work involved no human subjects, no automated data-scraping tools, no third parties, no raw-data dumps.
“That was back in August,” Horgan said. “I have heard nothing.” | 2022-11-15T19:55:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | DHS bureaucrats killed research on domestic threats, say terrorism experts - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/11/15/dhs-mayorkas-domestic-violent-extremism/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/11/15/dhs-mayorkas-domestic-violent-extremism/ |
Africa’s natural resources should be tapped with minimal outside help
Ibrahim Mohammed, left, works on a rice farm on Jan. 5 along with his family members in Agatu village on the outskirts of Benue in north-central Nigeria. (Chinedu Asadu/Associated Press)
I read with great interest Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari’s Nov. 10 Thursday Opinion essay, “The wrong way to talk with Africa about climate change.” As an economist and professor in development economics, I have a few comments based on decades of theoretical and practical experience.
First: Economic and social progress is made by people, not by governments. But for successful development to happen, the government has to provide the right environment, including security and other civic infrastructure. Second, the recent pandemic and the war in Europe are lessons for the developing world that food security is the first priority. Africa in general has the resources to develop that sector and provide employment with decent living conditions to African citizens with minimum reliance on advanced and costly Western or other technology. Africa is blessed with natural and energy resources that need to be tapped by serious and dedicated governing authorities with minimum help from the outside. Third, a lesson for Africa and the developing world in general is that industrialization and a better standard of living are not synonymous with progress. Other development strategies are equally valid, as demonstrated by New Zealand and others.
Mehdi Al Bazzaz, Alexandria | 2022-11-15T19:56:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Africa’s natural resources should be tapped with minimal outside help - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/15/africas-natural-resources-should-be-tapped-with-minimal-outside-help/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/15/africas-natural-resources-should-be-tapped-with-minimal-outside-help/ |
Poplar Point is not the place to put the FBI headquarters
People bicycle on the Anacostia Riverwalk Trail, which cuts through Poplar Point on its southern end. (James M. Thresher/The Washington Post)
I’m all for keeping the FBI headquarters in D.C. But Jack Evans was wrong to suggest in his Nov. 6 Local Opinions essay, “The FBI headquarters belongs in D.C.,” Poplar Point as a possible location.
Poplar Point is an approximately 100-acre parcel of land on the east side of the Anacostia River managed by the National Park Service as part of Anacostia Park. A federal law was passed nearly 16 years ago to transfer the land to D.C. as soon as the interior secretary approved a land-use plan with no fewer than 70 acres set aside for permanent park use. The land-use plan has never been completed because the Navy and the Architect of the Capitol left toxic messes when they used the land decades ago. Development of a cleanup plan has been moving at a frozen snail’s pace since 2008.
The Navy and the Architect of the Capitol need to clean up their mess, and Poplar Point needs to be transferred to D.C. for the benefit of D.C. residents, particularly those east of the Anacostia River. The FBI needs to look elsewhere.
I am a Ward 8 resident who has been attending community meetings on Poplar Point for the past 30 years. It is critical that residents of Ward 8 have a voice in this matter.
Brenda Lee Richardson, Washington
The writer is a member of the Citizens Poplar Point Working Group. | 2022-11-15T19:56:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Poplar Point is not the place to put the FBI headquarters - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/15/poplar-point-is-not-place-put-fbi-headquarters/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/15/poplar-point-is-not-place-put-fbi-headquarters/ |
By Michael Balsamo and Michael R. Sisak | AP
FILE - Colette Peters, director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, speaks during at interview with the Associated Press at Federal Bureau of Prisons headquarters in Washington, Oct. 24, 2022. Officials will begin assessing security protocols at federal prison camps across the U.S. after an inmate obtained a gun and tried to shoot a visitor in the head at a prison camp in Arizona. Peters tells The Associated Press on Nov. 15, the episode that happened Sunday at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tucson, Ariz., was a “terrifying incident to have had happened.”(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File) | 2022-11-15T19:56:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Feds to review security after inmate tried to shoot visitor - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/feds-to-review-security-after-inmate-tried-to-shoot-visitor/2022/11/15/04b1a418-651b-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/feds-to-review-security-after-inmate-tried-to-shoot-visitor/2022/11/15/04b1a418-651b-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html |
Hawken Miller
When the development team at Infinity Ward rolled out the massive playing area of Verdansk for “Call of Duty: Warzone,” they viewed it as a starting point. After what game director at Infinity Ward Jack O’Hara describes as a short break, they turned their attention to building their next map — Al Mazrah, the sprawling environment that is Call of Duty’s biggest battle royale map to date, and serves as the battleground for “Warzone 2.0,” which releases Nov. 16.
“We started on this map straight after Verdansk,” O’Hara said. “We kind of rolled from that one to a little bit of a breather and then we started laying the foundations for the next map, which is Al Mazrah. It’s a chance to refine what we did last time and a chance to build on all the lessons.”
In the months and years that followed “Warzone’s” March 2020 debut, O’Hara and the teams at Infinity Ward and fellow Call of Duty developer Raven Software watched as players engaged in and around the fictional city of Verdansk, traversing from one end to the other, pushed by a lethal cloud of gas that simultaneously constricted the playing area and forced remaining players closer together.
Now those years of observation have manifested in Infinity Ward’s latest creation. O’Hara said Al Mazrah is a marriage of two elements. The first is the developers’ creativity as they stitched together 18 points of interest into a massive playscape, aiming to delight players with unique and unexpected environments. The second element is the information they’ve gathered, both on how players approach a battle royale map and how to deploy the mapmaking tools at their disposal.
“When we were first doing Verdansk, we were dealing with fresh technology and a fresh set of tools to make it,” O’Hara said. “And so there’s definitely things where we made Verdansk where we’re like, okay, we wish we could change that, but it all turned out okay.”
Al Mazrah will serve as the home for “Warzone 2.0’s” battle royale mode as well as the new open-world DMZ mode, in which players will attempt to complete mission objectives and successfully extract while battling opposing players and AI soldiers. As such, the city and its surrounding areas will tell a story while also serving as a kind of sandbox for players.
In a conversation with The Washington Post, O’Hara and Raven Software Associate Creative Director J.J. Williams detailed what players can expect from certain points of interest around the map, as well as Al Mazrah as a whole.
The old “Modern Warfare 3” map, Dome, returns to serve as the highest point in Al Mazrah.
Observatory, originally a multiplayer map from “Modern Warfare 3” called Dome, serves as Al Mazrah’s high ground. From atop the peak, players can survey the ground below them, making it a choice perch for snipers while also making ascent from below the point of interest rather challenging.
But building a fan-favorite multiplayer map into the battle royale mega map isn’t as simple as it may seem. While O’Hara said that the multiplayer map’s familiarity will appeal to players, and that the developers know the area works as a battleground between two six-person teams, they then need to build out the surrounding area.
“It’s looking at how two teams would be fighting over it,” O’Hara said. “How would they be engaging each other? What are the things of combat … what are the ways they’re going to traverse that space? And then we look at a lot of real-world references to kind of see how a facility like this would be laid out. What makes sense? Obviously, you don’t want to cluster everything together. You want your logical, negative space between buildings, and you want it all to kind of fit in there. And then, of course, you have to, you know, make it run in frame and you have to make sure the art looks good and all the rest.”
Players who like to hold the high ground may not be able to stay there too long at Observatory, however. With “Warzone 2.0’s” new multi-circle mechanic — in which there could be multiple safe zones inside of the encroaching deadly gas — the game can push out players if they’re getting a little too cozy. Also, Williams said, the map makers have incentivized players to push out from powerful positions like Observatory by including nearby AI-populated areas called Strongholds, which reward players for completing a mission with top-tier loot and their loadouts.
“So you drop into the observatory and you can have a good knowledge base of where you’re at, but what we’re trying to do is be like, ‘Hey, go explore the rest of the play space,’ ” Williams said. “And we’re doing that with Stronghold spawning. There’s 77 in the map, but we spawn three at a time.”
Flooded streets and buildings allow players to traverse on foot, by truck or boat near the map’s Southwest edge.
While Observatory serves as the map’s highest point, there’s plenty of other high ground, including the hull of a wrecked ship near Sawah Village.
“I think downtown [with Al Mazrah City] and … with the ship, there are good counterpoints and good counterplay to that [high ground at the Observatory]. So it’s not just one point to rule them all,” Williams said. “There are definitely other vantage points. … You’re not totally safe up there.”
While high ground presents an advantage familiar to “Warzone” players, depth provides a new one. One of the other major enhancements of the “Warzone 2.0” engine is the inclusion of water features, through which players can wade or — if it’s deep enough — dive below the surface. Sawah Village is a partially flooded area, with water sloshing inside of buildings as well as through the streets.
In deeper water, players can swim and stealthily take out foes with a throwing knife or pistol (though the physics of the water will impact aim below the surface).
But the water will do more than just affect bullet speed and trajectory, according to O’Hara. Characters will look wet after they emerge from water, vehicles will slowly sink if the water is too deep and the river has its own current. (Interestingly, the depth of the water in Sawah Village allows players to utilize multiple vehicles to traverse it quickly with either a land or water vehicle.)
While the developers do want to show off the new water element, Williams noted they wanted to find a proper balance.
“Sooner or later there’s going to be a circle that might go above the water and there’ll be that,” he said. “But it gets to be very infrequent because we don’t want ‘Waterworld,’ where it’s just a bunch of people in the water, staring at each other with pistols.”
In the map’s Northeast corner looms the Al Mazrah City skyline, offering rooftop perches above and a tight urban battleground at street level.
The downtown area of the map leans into verticality, providing strong positioning for snipers above while also producing close-quarter combat inside the buildings.
Another way to reach the top of the Al Mazrah City skyline is with a nifty new helicopter capable of carrying a whole squad and hovering on autopilot while the team shoots at targets below.
“Me and my friends, my co-workers, we do it all the time just because it’s just hysterical to watch people scatter when [the chopper] comes by,” Williams said, noting that it also makes for an appetizing target for snipers on the ground. “I’d say it’s like 50-50 that I usually get sniped by someone sooner or later.”
To the Southeast, the popular “Modern Warfare 2” map provides the main concourse for Al Mazrah’s airport, complete with a Burger Town.
Terminal, another multiplayer map from the original “Modern Warfare 2,” serves as the location of Al Mazrah’s airport. Inside, players will find the usual array of shops and restaurants — including a local branch of the Call of Duty franchise’s familiar fast food joint, Burger Town — as well as security checkpoints and boarding areas. But the boundaries will extend beyond the familiar fighting ground of Terminal.
“Again it’s the logic of, ‘What’s the space?’ Right?” O’Hara said. “So there’s the runway and we wanted it in a place that geographically makes sense, which is why it’s on the coast near the ocean.”
The entrances are also big enough to support some rather unconventional playstyles as well.
“I’m that guy that likes to drive these vehicles through the doors of the airport, trying to go up the stairs, while the rest of my team is like ‘We’re going to die!’ ” O’Hara said.
In addition to the stories players will craft with the game’s emergent play, there will be a narrative underpinning both the battle royale and new DMZ modes that provide a connective tissue between “Warzone 2.0” and the events of “Modern Warfare II’s” campaign.
“There’s stuff coming that basically follows the story from the campaign, and then also brings up what happens in Al Mazrah and what is the story that links ‘Modern Warfare’ and ‘Warzone,’ over the course of the year, to kind of work up to some big things that are coming down the line,” O’Hara said. “So as the seasons go on, we mix a blend of the environmental storytelling for the people that like exploring the map and it’s like ‘What’s this thing over here? What’s that connected to?’ So there’s a bunch of things like that, that are kind of baked in and then there’s the kind of bigger beats that will come during the season that will have even more beautiful things to look at and play.”
Hawken Miller is a contributor to Launcher, The Post's home for coverage of the video game industry. In 2020 he worked as a multiplatform producer intern for the Emerging News Desk at The Washington Post. Twitter Twitter | 2022-11-15T19:58:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Inside Al Mazrah, the new map for 'Warzone 2.0' - Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/interactive/2022/al-mazrah-map-warzone-2/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/interactive/2022/al-mazrah-map-warzone-2/ |
The company is expected to cut thousands of employees.
Amazon offices on Monday in New York City.
Amazon is expected to cut about 10,000 workers, about 3 percent of its corporate workforce. The company started communicating the layoffs to employees Tuesday afternoon, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive matters.
Amazon plans to cut thousands of corporate workers
The cuts will mostly affect areas such as retail, human resources and devices. Earlier this month, Amazon announced a broad hiring freeze among its white-collar workforce that would last at least “the next few months.”
Dan Ives, a financial analyst with Wedbush Securities, told The Washington Post on Monday that the layoffs may signal an imminent recession. Tech companies, he said, “got significantly bloated, and they’re not built for a softer economy like we’re seeing.”
Earlier this month, Twitter CEO Elon Musk cut half his company’s staff shortly after acquiring the social network.
Twitter slashes its staff as Musk era sets in
Mass layoffs represent a sharp reversal for Amazon, which has been expanding for much of its history. At the end of September, it employed more than 1.5 million workers, a 5 percent increase from the year before. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Post.)
Moreover, in the face of high inflation and increasingly budget-conscious consumers, Amazon issued a disappointing forecast for the holiday season — typically its strongest time of the year — sending its stock plummeting last month. Amazon’s stock has tumbled nearly 39 percent since the beginning of the year, though it still has a market capitalization above $1 trillion.
Mandy Dean, 39, was a contract recruiter in Chicago for Amazon Luna, the company’s cloud gaming platform. The company let her contract expire in September, although she said she was on track to interview to go full-time job.
It wasn’t a total surprise as Dean said she saw the signs in August, as the software engineer openings she was tasked with filling dwindled.
“It was bad timing for it all to happen,” Dean said. “I really liked working for Amazon. I liked the culture, the people I worked with, the job itself. It was a rough situation but there was nothing I could do.” | 2022-11-15T20:43:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Amazon starts cutting thousands of workers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/15/amazon-massive-layoffs/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/15/amazon-massive-layoffs/ |
Firefighters rescue residents from senior apartments in Foggy Bottom
D.C. firefighters at a fire at a senior apartment building Nov. 15 in the 700 block of 24th Street NW.
Six people in an apartment building for seniors in Northwest Washington were injured Tuesday in a fire that forced firefighters to use ladders to rescue several residents huddled at their windows as smoke filled the hallways, according to the department.
Two of the people injured were taken to hospitals in serious to critical condition, a fire department spokesman said.
2 Alarm fire 700 block 24th St NW. Fire 2nd floor 8 story building with numerous senior citizens. Rescues in progress via ladders and other means. pic.twitter.com/tdn2IvgysZ
The fire was first reported about 11:35 a.m. in a second-floor apartment in the building in the 700 block of 24th Street NW, in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood near George Washington University. More than 100 firefighters responded.
Vito Maggiolo, spokesman for the D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department, said firefighters arrived to find “people in distress at their windows.”
He said smoke filled the entire building, but occupants of the second and third floors were in the most distress.
The fire department tweeted videos of firefighters helping residents out of windows and slowly down ladders; Maggiolo said some of the residents had limited mobility. He said firefighters guided residents on other floors through smoke and too safety.
Maggiolo said there are 140 apartments in the building, which he said has no sprinklers. He said the fire was confined to one apartment and was extinguished. The cause of the blaze remains under investigation.
Residents were being assisted by organizations and city services. Buses were brought in so people could take shelter, and a nearby church opened its doors to help. Maggiolo said firefighters will inspect the building, with the possibility that some residents may be able to return. | 2022-11-15T20:56:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Firefighters rescue residents from senior apartments in Foggy Bottom - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/15/fire-dc-seniors-rescues/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/15/fire-dc-seniors-rescues/ |
18-year-old Trump supporter coasts to victory in Frederick County
Republican Mason Carter is running against Democrat Julianna Lufkin for a seat on the Frederick County Council. (Mason Carter Campaign)
Mason Carter, an 18-year-old Republican and avid supporter of former president Donald Trump, scored a decisive victory in his race for a seat on the Frederick County Council.
Carter easily defeated Democrat Julianna Lufkin, 31, a small-business owner and blacksmith who, like Carter, was a first-time candidate for office. Votes were still being counted Tuesday, but as of late Monday night Carter had won about 66 percent of the vote in the contest for the District 5 seat on the council according to results posted on the Maryland State Board of Elections website.
The seat represents a red and rural district of northern Frederick County that stretches to the Pennsylvania border and includes Thurmont and Emmitsburg.
Carter, who turned 18 in April and graduated high school in May, becomes one of the youngest people ever elected to a county council level position in Maryland. He said he will continue to live at home with his parents for the time being and plans to attend Frederick Community College in the spring to pursue a career in public safety. Council meetings are limited to 45 days a year and members are paid $35,000 per year following a raise approved by council members in 2021.
In the week since Election Day, Carter said he’s been busy taking down campaign signs, thanking supporters, building new relationships and preparing to get to work when the new council is sworn in on Dec. 6.
“I wouldn’t say I’m nervous, I’m just ready to give northern Frederick County a voice again,” Carter said in an interview Tuesday. “It’s always been about improving the quality of life for all Frederick families. It’s about having roads that aren’t congested and schools that aren’t overcrowded and making life affordable for families.”
Carter surprised some in Frederick County Republican circles when he challenged and then defeated an incumbent Republican in the party primary this summer. His unlikely bid earned him the support of gubernatorial candidate Dan Cox, a state delegate from Frederick who bested the Republican establishment candidate in the primary and was then soundly defeated by Democrat Wes Moore in the general.
During his campaign, Carter said he had decided to run because he wanted to reduce taxes and government regulation. And he also opposed the decision by county officials to put restrictions in place during the pandemic to limit the spread of the coronavirus.
“Government should stay off our backs and out of our pockets,” he said in the run up to the election.
Carter was backed by Kirby Delauter, a business owner and conservative former Frederick County council member. Delauter made headlines as a council member in 2015 when he threatened to sue the Frederick News-Post for using his name without authorization. He later apologized.
Republicans had the majority on the county council when Delauter was in office. Carter will be facing a much different reality. Early results in the race had been promising for Republicans in the county but as the tabulation of votes continued throughout the week following Election Day, the lead swung back to the Democrats.
“On election night it was looking like it might be 5 to 2 Republicans on the council and now it looks like it will be 5 to 2 Democrat,” Carter said. “But that doesn’t change our plans. We’re all going to work together. We don’t have the hyper-partisanship here that we see in D.C. and some other states. So we’re very proud of that.”
Carter said Tuesday he had already been in contact with other council members and started talking with them about what they can achieve with legislation.
“I’m confident that we’re going to hit the ground running as soon as we’re sworn in,” he said.
But Michael Blue, the Republican that Carter defeated in the primary, said he’s concerned about Carter’s inexperience, particularly on a council where Democrats maintain solid control.
“I wish Mason Carter well, but I am a little apprehensive as to how he’s going to deal with the workload and the pressure that comes with being a council member,” Blue said. “I certainly do hope that he finds more value in working in a collaborative and bipartisan way with his council members. But that remains to be seen.”
Lufkin, 31, conceded the race in a message to her supporters on her campaign’s Facebook page.
“My goals in running for office included being a voice of reason, compassion, and progress in the political scene in Northern Frederick County,” she wrote. “I hope that on top of those things, I contributed a spirit of civility and sportsmanship to this race. I wish Mason all the best. I plan to stay involved, and to keep listening, and hope that you folks do the same.” | 2022-11-15T20:56:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Teenage Trump supporter wins Frederick County Council seat - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/15/mason-carter-18-elected-frederick-trump/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/15/mason-carter-18-elected-frederick-trump/ |
Children’s book by Caroline Brewer spotlights a fictional girl protesting violence by police and others
Amari Russell, 6, examines a copy of Caroline Brewer's “Say Their Names” at a signing in Washington. (Courtland Milloy/TWP)
At the Potter’s House community center in Adams Morgan, an audience gathered recently to hear children’s book author Caroline Brewer read from her latest work, “Say Their Names.” The book is a poem about a fictional 7-year-old girl named Aliya who leads a demonstration against violence, including police shootings, in her neighborhood.
Brewer asked the audience to repeat after her as she read from the book. The children responded enthusiastically.
I hear demands for love
for a cease
to so many of our people
being made deceased.
I see a new day
for justice, for peace.
And it makes me want to say their names.
Most of the names they recited were familiar to the adults: Breonna Taylor, Tamir Rice, George Floyd, Eric Garner, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, for instance. All of the people mentioned had been killed by police in cases involving unjustified use of force. But Brewer’s book does not get into the details of their deaths or even mention the police.
“That’s for the parents to explain when the children are ready,” Brewer told me. Brewer is a D.C. resident who also works as a literacy consultant. She got the idea for “Say Their Names” after visiting Black Lives Matter Plaza in 2020. That memorial space, near the White House, was created after George Floyd was murdered by police in Minnesota the same year.
The picture book is richly illustrated by artist Adrian Brandon. Among the drawings is a sidewalk memorial showing the image of a Black boy on a poster marked R.I.P. attached to an iron fence and surrounded by flowers. For a young reader, the death could have been caused by anything — a traffic accident, a police shooting or a gunfight between rival neighborhood crews.
The point, for even the youngest reader, is that they were people, with names — and their lives mattered.
During the reading, Brewer advised the children to “look out for moments when you see hope, courage and love.” The poem reading continued:
I look around at
the broken, the battered.
I hear the cries of
the scorned, the tattered
I feel the angels weep
Because these lives mattered
And it makes me
Want to say their names
Brewer was asked if she was concerned that her book might be banned from libraries or classrooms because of the subject matter. In some parts of the country, calls for more frank talk about race and gender have resulted in a backlash that includes banning books that broach such subjects.
“So far, nobody has come to me and said, ‘Oh, I think this is too heavy for children,’ ” said Brewer, who so far has done readings at Potter’s House, Mahogany Books and Simon Elementary School, all in D.C. “To the contrary, people have been grabbing the books out of my arms saying, ‘I want this.’ ”
She added, “If we are going to live full and rich lives, we have to know how to cope with these terrible things that are happening in the world today. And I believe we must equip our kids with the language competence, and the mental and emotional stamina, to handle the hard stuff. We are doing them a great disservice if we don’t.”
Donovan Anderson, a seminarian who lives in D.C., attended the reading at Potter’s House with his wife and four children — a son, 4, a daughter, 7, and 9-year-old twin daughters. He appreciated the subtle way Brewer handled the subject — in the book and during the reading.
“At their age, it’s about planting seeds,” Anderson said. “When I’m ready to have a conversation with my daughters about the kinds of violence we are having in this country, I can refer back to this book. That’s why I read the Bible to them. The hope is that when a tough conversation is necessary, the subject has already been presented in some introductory way. Some parents are big on not waiting to tell the unvarnished truth. Personally, I’m trying to keep my daughters’ innocence as long as I can.”
Chancee’ Lundy Russell brought her 6-year-old son Amari to the book reading. She, too, thought Brewer’s book had just the right tone given the solemn subject matter.
“Living in this area, it seems like every day you hear about a young person who was murdered,” Russell said. “It almost makes you feel like putting your child in a bubble. But how do we give him the best life possible while also being truthful about the kind of society we live in? His dad and I want him to believe that he can be anything he wants to be, but we also want him to know the truth — the Black history that the people behind these book bans are trying to keep from him. So, I make sure we have books like “Say Their Names” so we can talk about such things at home.”
During the book reading, Brewer and the audience said more names: Charleena Lyles, Eleanor Bumpurs, Sandra Bland, India Kager, Freddie Gray, Philando Castile, Travyon Martin, Korryn Gaines, Michelle Cusseaux.
And she led them back into the poem:
Ball your fist.
Push up your hand.
We, the people,
Must take a stand.
Change gon’ come
With our demands
C’mon and
Say their names!
When they finished, some of the children continued holding their fists high.
Brewer’s reading had made another point: It’s possible for children to begin understanding the toughest subjects — with the right teacher, parent, student and book. | 2022-11-15T20:56:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | New children's book by Caroline Brewer teaches about violence with love - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/15/say-their-names-childrens-book-plea-to-stop-the-killing/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/15/say-their-names-childrens-book-plea-to-stop-the-killing/ |
Democrats sue to allow Saturday voting in Georgia runoff amid holiday dispute
Officials have said early voting on Saturday is not legally possible, because of a state holiday once known as ‘Robert E. Lee’s Birthday’
Demonstrators in Decatur, Ga., in late October. (Elijah Nouvelage for The Washington Post)
ATLANTA — Democrats are suing to force Georgia election officials to allow early voting on a Saturday ahead of the Dec. 6 U.S. Senate runoff election. The suit comes in response to a determination by state officials that law forbids voting right after Thanksgiving and a state holiday that once honored Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
The state’s decision, announced over the weekend, prompted a lawsuit from the Democrat fighting for reelection, Sen. Raphael G. Warnock, as well as the Georgia Democratic Party and the Democrats’ Senate campaign arm. They argue in their suit that current guidance “applies only to primary and general elections, not runoffs.”
Without action by the courts, the suit states, Georgia voters “will be deprived of their right to vote during the advance voting period permitted by Georgia law.”
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) responded to the lawsuit Tuesday morning by accusing Democrats of “seeking to change Georgia law right before an election based on their political preferences” and “muddying the water and pressuring counties to ignore Georgia law.”
Although Raffensperger originally said that early voting would be offered on a Saturday, his staff later determined that it is not possible under state law. The early voting period is set for Nov. 28 through Dec. 2, a stretch that does not include a weekend day and that voting rights advocates say makes it more difficult for some people to cast ballots.
A notice sent to county officials by the secretary of state’s election director over the weekend stated that “if the second Saturday before the runoff follows a Thursday or Friday that is a state holiday, voting on that Saturday is not allowed.”
For many years, the Friday after Thanksgiving was recognized as “Robert E. Lee’s Birthday” in Georgia, even though the Confederate general’s birthday was Jan. 19. In 2015, Gov. Nathan Deal (R) supported legislation that changed the name to “State Holiday.”
Democrats will keep Senate majority after winning eight out of the nine seats rated competitive by Cook Political Report. The only remaining race will be decided in Georgia in a Dec. 6 runoff.
A Republican Party red wave seems to be a ripple after Republicans fell short in the Senate and are on track to narrowly win control in the House. Donald Trump is poised to announce his 2024 presidential campaign on Tuesday night, ignoring the advice of longtime allies who encouraged him to delay the announcement.
Warnock is facing a runoff against Republican Herschel Walker after neither candidate earned more than 50 percent of the vote in the general election. Georgia is one of only two states that require a tiebreaking runoff election to resolve general-election contests. (The other is Louisiana.) Both of Georgia’s 2020 Senate races went to January 2021 runoffs. Democrats swept those races, delivering the party control of the Senate.
Nearly 4.5 million people voted in the dual Senate runoffs — one of which was won by Warnock. That’s higher than the total number of people who voted in Georgia’s election last week.
During a Tuesday news conference in Atlanta, Warnock said elements of Georgia’s 2021 election law — including a shorter period between the general election and the runoff — had hurt access to the ballot. “This is not theoretical. These decisions have practical implications for ordinary, hard-working Georgia families,” Warnock said. “Not only is it wrong, it is a misinterpretation of the law.”
Walker has not publicly addressed the issue. “We’re focused on meeting the voters and winning the election,” said campaign spokesperson Will Kiley.
At issue in the dispute over Saturday voting is the text of a Georgia statute outlining when early voting is allowed in the state. The policies have been amended multiple times over the past decade, leading to conflicting interpretations.
One of the most recent changes came last year, when Georgia’s new election law shortened the period between a general election and a runoff from nine weeks to four. But it was unclear how the change would affect Saturday voting around a holiday, which had been banned in 2016.
“I think the big takeaway is that this part of the statute is drafted very poorly,” said Anthony Michael Kreis, a professor of constitutional law and legal history at Georgia State University.
“On the one hand, the secretary of state’s office is correct that the language is pretty clear about the couple-day window around a public holiday,” Kreis said. “However, this language is also placed in a section of the code that seems to be talking about a normal, three-week early-voting process, not the condensed handful of days that we have before a runoff now in Georgia.”
Vasu Abhiraman, a senior policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia, called the decision to shrink the runoff time frame a “disaster,” arguing it restricts voters’ access to the ballot.
“Instead of inventing reasons to eliminate the few remaining options for Georgia voters to make their voices heard, the state should collaborate with counties to maximize voter access for the runoff election,” he said.
What the results mean for 2024: A Republican Party red wave seems to be a ripple after Republicans fell short in the Senate and are on track to narrowly win control in the House. Donald Trump is poised to announce his 2024 presidential campaign on Tuesday night, ignoring the advice of longtime allies who encouraged him to delay the announcement. | 2022-11-15T20:56:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Democrats sue over Georgia early voting amid dispute over Robert E. Lee holiday - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2022/11/15/democrats-sue-georgia-early-voting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2022/11/15/democrats-sue-georgia-early-voting/ |
Live updates:Ukraine war live updates: Missile lands in Poland, according to Polish offi...
Ruslan Edelgeriev, Russia's special presidential representative on climate issues, prepares to speak at the COP27 U.N. climate summit on Tuesday. (Peter Dejong/AP)
Russia had big plans for the COP27 meeting in Egypt, scheduling four roundtable discussions. No foreigners agreed to speak on the panel; the Russians were left to talk among themselves.
The war has loomed large over the climate conference. Just weeks before it opened, Russia began waging intense attacks against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, adding to mounting concerns about the global energy crisis set off by the Russian invasion. At the G-20, the annual gathering of world powers, Russia has also found itself in an unusual position — a leading topic of discussion rather than a leading player.
Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi — who has remained friendly to Russia throughout the war, welcoming Russian tourists and hosting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov earlier this year, used his COP27 speech to call for an end to the fighting. “This is a call from our conference,” he said. “Let this destruction and killing end.”
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who addressed the conference in Sharm el-Sheikh last week, said: “Putin’s abhorrent war in Ukraine, and rising energy prices across the world are not a reason to go slow on climate change. They are a reason to act faster.”
Unlike previous G-20 summits, there is not likely to be a traditional “family photo” at the end of this year’s meetings in Bali, in part because several government leaders said they would not participate if Russian delegates are present, Indonesian officials said.
Russia is one of the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gas, and Fetisov said it was shortsighted to ignore his country’s perspective at the global climate talks.
For months leading up to the summit, Indonesian officials worried that Putin would attend, leading other world leaders to boycott the event. Two days before the summit, and hours after Russian troops were forced to withdraw from the Ukrainian city of Kherson, the Russian Embassy in Indonesia announced that Putin would not be attending and that Lavrov would take his place. | 2022-11-15T21:18:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Russia sees its role on the global stage diminished by Ukraine war - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/15/russia-ukraine-g20-cop27-lavrov/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/15/russia-ukraine-g20-cop27-lavrov/ |
Neon signs in Hong Kong, China, on Monday, Oct. 10, 2022. Once ubiquitous in Hong Kong, the signs — which became familiar to foreign audiences through movies like Blade Runner and Ghost in the Shell — have been steadily removed in the last few decades. The recent dismantling of some of the largest remaining ones, however, is rekindling interest in the local art form. (Bloomberg)
Hong Kong is stuck. Without Beijing’s permission, the city can’t call off its draconian anti-pandemic campaign even though it’s a drag on the economy. The world outside of China has downgraded the disease to a more infectious flu. But even if Hong Kong must stick with Covid Zero to keep its policies aligned with the mainland’s, surely a tech-savvy financial center could do a better job of it, getting a head start on a new digital currency in the process?
To that end, I propose turning the ubiquitous rapid antigen test, or RAT, into money. Proof of health, as measured by a single red line on a small, thin, plastic stick, is crying for elevation to the status of cash. Yes, this is a joke. But more than that, it’s a desperate plea to authorities to return Hong Kong to normal by scrapping polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, tests at government facilities, and by doing away with tracking bracelets, masks, surveillance orders and other irritants. It could perhaps even act as a laboratory of sorts for mainland China, as President Xi Jinping seeks to pivot away from costly lockdowns and global isolation.
Here’s the crux of my plan: A daily RAT result will replace the vaccine pass, currently the most crucial digital document in the Chinese special administrative region. The pass displays a blue QR code on smartphones of vaccinated residents above five years of age and visitors. Trouble is, the pass doesn’t work everywhere or for everyone. It isn’t enough for bars, which get raided for not asking patrons to show RAT results that aren’t more than a day old. Schools want students and staff tested every morning.
The pass also militates against openness, the bedrock of the city’s success. It’s painful for visitors and local travelers. Upon arrival in Hong Hong, the QR code automatically turns amber. It reverts to blue only after three days, restricting movement. Besides, people coming in from overseas have to self-administer a RAT everyday for a week and go to a community center for three more PCR tests in addition to the one they undergo after landing at the airport. Miss one of those? Pay a HK$10,000 penalty. Fail to comply with a compulsory testing notice slapped on your building door? Get ready to be fined again.
The coercion embedded in testing makes people hate it. Which is why it’s a perfect candidate to act as cash. More on that later. For now, suppose all 7.3 million residents self-administer a mandatory RAT each morning. The outcome posted to a central repository should be verifiable so that John doesn’t upload Jane’s test or pass off his negative result from the previous day. This is analogous to money: Nobody gets to spend someone else’s purchasing power or double-spend their own. Based on this, the government remits, say, 40 Hong Kong dollars ($8) digitally to each person. (1)When people get on a bus, go to the school cafeteria, or drop in at Starbucks, they could choose to pay with their e-HKD instead of Hong Kong dollars.
Hong Kong is separately contemplating a full-fledged central bank digital currency. By the time the monetary authority introduces it, users would be accustomed to a prototype version, which will expire at midnight for the next 24-hour cycle to begin. The system would sweep the balances in digital wallets into exchange traded fund accounts of all residents. However, during the day, people would be able to swap their e-HKD for cash, transfer them to a bank account, or send them to another person.
Currently, venues where people drop their masks to eat, drink or get a facial read vaccine passes via a mobile app. They would continue to do so but now check for whether their mask-less customers were issued fresh e-HKD that day. After verification, the merchant’s system would offer to accept e-HKD before proceeding to take cash or card payment. Authorities who never really know what percentage of the population is infected — people have no incentive to report positive results — will have better data.
You might ask why I’m advising Hong Kong’s freedom-loving society to institutionalize 24x7 state surveillance and deep intrusion into people’s daily lives. A simple answer is that the DNA of laissez faire may now be forever lost. All that an individual can expect from Covid Zero is that one day the population will be allowed to drop face coverings. That isn’t even a goalpost currently.
A second objection may be technical: The government has committed more than HK$100 billion on consumption vouchers to help residents cope with the pandemic (HK$36 billion last fiscal year, and HK$66 billion this year). So what’s the big deal? Actually, e-HKD will offer three benefits over use-or-lose vouchers: One, it can be freely exchanged person-to-person. Two, it can be saved in a bank account or ETF. Finally, it will repurpose the coercive aspect of Covid Zero by turning it into a bargain.
According to the Chartalist theory of money, successful currencies arose in history when people stopped plundering one another’s cattle and crops and instead paid taxes to a central authority that had a monopoly on violence and could enforce rules. The authority chose if it wanted corn, gold or paper, and that made people work to obtain the commodity. Proof of being virus-free is also a tax. If, as a reward for paying it, the state permits me to meet other people mask-free, it’s giving me what must be the most precious exchange in the city today: to smile, and see others smile back.
• My Isolation Feeds Hong Kong’s Viral Economy: Andy Mukherjee
(1) Assuming the test kit is made available for free. | 2022-11-15T21:27:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hong Kong Could Turn Covid Zero Into Money - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/hong-kong-could-turn-covid-zerointo-money/2022/11/15/35e64458-6520-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/hong-kong-could-turn-covid-zerointo-money/2022/11/15/35e64458-6520-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html |
Testimony sought from governor about his contacts with Trump and his allies as they challenged the results of the 2020 election
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) addresses his supporters at a watch party Nov. 8 in Atlanta after winning reelection. (Megan Varner/Getty Images)
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) appeared for about three hours Tuesday before the Fulton County grand jury investigating whether former president Donald Trump and his allies interfered in the 2020 election in Georgia.
Kemp’s testimony had been sought for over a year by the Fulton County district attorney’s office, which has viewed him as central to the ongoing inquiry and which appears to be nearing a conclusion. The governor, who won reelection last week, had sought to kill or delay a subpoena seeking his testimony, but his post-election appearance was ordered in August by Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney.
Advisers to Kemp did not immediately respond to requests for comment on his grand jury testimony, which is considered secret.
After the 2020 election, Trump and his allies tried to pressure Kemp and other Republican officials in Georgia to overturn Joe Biden’s narrow victory in the state. Kemp came under attack from Trump and his supporters for refusing to convene a special session of the state legislature to reconsider the results.
Kemp said at the time that he had no authority to interfere in elections. Trump repeatedly ridiculed the governor in speeches and media appearances in late 2020, saying he regretted endorsing Kemp’s bid for governor in 2018. Trump also pushed former senator David Perdue (R) to challenge Kemp for the GOP gubernatorial nomination; Kemp trounced Perdue.
Prosecutors have said Kemp is a witness, not a target of the special grand jury inquiry, which has investigative authority but cannot issue indictments. District Attorney Fani Willis has said she expects the grand jury to issue a report on its findings before the end of the year. Willis said she will then decide whether to bring criminal charges.
Kemp is the latest in a string of reluctant witnesses to appear at the Fulton County courthouse. After seeking repeated delays, Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s former lawyer, testified for six hours before the grand jury in August.
Other Trump lawyers, including Boris Epshteyn and John Eastman, have also appeared. The panel has also heard testimony from Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) and his staff, Georgia Attorney General Christopher M. Carr (R), state lawmakers, and local election workers.
Willis has been pressing in recent weeks to secure testimony from additional top-tier Trump advisers, including Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows and Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn. CNN reported Tuesday that Cassidy Hutchinson, a former top aide to Meadows, is expected to provide testimony Wednesday. The district attorney has asked former House speaker Newt Gingrich to appear Nov. 29.
Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) had sought to kill a subpoena seeking his testimony, but the Supreme Court early this month rejected the senator’s request.
Graham had argued that his actions — calling Georgia election officials after the 2020 vote — were made in the course of conducting his official legislative duties and were thus protected by the U.S. Constitution. The court ruled that Graham could not be asked about matters pertaining to his legislative duties but that other topics could be considered fair game.
Willis launched the probe days after taking office in early 2021, following news reports that Trump and his allies placed calls to Georgia officials seeking to overturn election results. It has dramatically expanded since and now includes alleged threats against election workers, the effort to send would-be Trump electoral votes to Washington and allegations that unauthorized individuals had access to election systems in Coffee County, Ga. | 2022-11-15T21:27:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kemp testifies before Ga. grand jury in 2020 election probe - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/15/trump-kemp-georgia-2020-election/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/15/trump-kemp-georgia-2020-election/ |
Former Maryland delegate Tawanna Gaines dies at 70
Longtime Maryland state delegate Tawanna Gaines leaves behind an admired and complicated legacy. (Julio Cortez/AP)
Tawanna Gaines, a longtime Maryland state delegate, died early Saturday from bladder cancer.
Gaines was diagnosed in early October after experiencing abdominal pains doctors had initially told her were caused by fibroid tumors, her son, Roger Gaines, told The Washington Post.
“She was ready to fight it,” he said. “That was the plan at first.”
Her condition worsened quickly and she died just after 1 a.m. at Doctors Community Medical Center, her son said. She was 70 years old.
Gaines worked her way up from a town council seat to state House leadership, building a reputation as a hard-working and thoughtful lawmaker — a record later dimmed by a federal wire fraud conviction that resulted in a six-month prison sentence.
Gaines got her start as a Berwyn Heights Town Council member in 1998 and was mayor of Berwyn Heights from 2000 to 2001. As a delegate, she was deputy majority whip from 2003 to 2007, vice chair of the Prince George’s House delegation from 2007 to 2008 and assistant majority leader in 2015.
She represented District 22, which covered parts of Prince George’s County, from Dec. 21, 2001 to Oct. 4, 2019. She hastily resigned from office two weeks before she was charged with federal wire fraud for using campaign funds for personal use. She pleaded guilty and was sentenced in January 2020.
Former Mt. Rainier Mayor Malinda Miles said in an interview that although Gaines should’ve known better, there was more to her story than her mistake.
“I would hope that people won’t remember the $22,000,” Miles said. “I hope they’ll remember all the 20 or 30 years she put in working for Prince George’s County.”
Outside the courthouse where she pleaded guilty, Gaines told reporters that she took “full responsibility” for her actions and encouraged the public to not judge other lawmakers because of her choices.
Her daughter, Anitra Edmond, who was the treasurer for the “Friends of Tawanna P. Gaines” campaign also pleaded guilty to the same charge. Edmond declined an interview.
Before Gaines faced a federal court, she had faced state investigators for flouting campaign finance rules, resulting in fines and a 2016 referral to the Office of the State Prosecutor, the state agency that oversees corruption.
Gaines’s fall from political grace was devastating to people of color and women for whom Gaines was a role model and advocate. She maintained close connections to municipal leaders after ascending to Annapolis and had ready ears to hear their concerns, Miles said.
Not only was Gaines available, she would boldly fight for her home county’s needs in Annapolis, Miles said.
Miles credited Gaines with spearheading moving highway user revenue, money that comes from a portion of gasoline tax that is used for local road maintenance, back to municipalities. Maryland lawmakers passed legislation in April. Gaines co-sponsored similar legislation in 2016.
Gaines was also a vocal advocate for investments in transportation and a key champion of the Purple Line. She was also passionate about expanding mental health access for low-income residents, Roger Gaines said.
She regained her spark in her last years when she worked for white hat lobbying firm Public Policy Partners, he said.
Tawanna Phyllis Gaines was the daughter of World War II vet David Shep Smith and homemaker Lucille “Bang” Smith born in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 1, 1952.
She would later relocate to Prince George’s County, Md. where she married and had two kids, but she frequently visited her mom who remained in the district for home-cooked Sunday dinners, Roger Gaines said.
Gaines said he and his mother grew closer over the past two years as he served as her caretaker after she had a pulmonary embolism in February 2021.
The pair enjoyed laughter, difficult conversation and recipes he tried to perfect.
He will miss the warmth of her “to die for” baked macaroni and cheese. He’ll long for impromptu trips to Chuck E. Cheese with her grandchildren that seemed to doubled as a way to satisfy her own sweet tooth. He’ll remember the mother who packed and set up a tiny Christmas tree on a trip to Disney World with him and his sister so they could celebrate the holiday in 80-degree weather.
“My mother was selfless,” he said. “What made her happy is helping other people.”
Gaines is survived by her son, daughter and five grandchildren; Roger, James, Ansley, Darin and Aaliyah; and her sisters Gretchen Love, Lavita Walker and Pam Smith. | 2022-11-15T21:48:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Former Maryland delegate Tawanna Gaines dies at 70 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/15/tawanna-gaines-death-delegate-maryland/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/15/tawanna-gaines-death-delegate-maryland/ |
The bill will now go to Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D), who has said she is concerned about some aspects of it
Julie Zauzmer Weil
The D.C. Council meets in March. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
The D.C. Council unanimously approved a major overhaul of the city’s criminal code Tuesday, despite objections from Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) and law enforcement leaders over certain aspects of the legislation.
If Bowser signs the bill, it will eliminate most mandatory minimum sentences, allow for jury trials in almost all misdemeanor cases and reduce the maximum penalties for offenses such as burglaries, carjackings and robberies. The law will not take effect for three years to give the courts, police and other groups time to prepare for implementation, officials have said.
The bill passed unanimously through the council in a first vote and received unanimous support in the five-member judiciary and public safety committee. Tuesday’s second and final vote was somewhat more contentious, with a near hour-long debate largely centered on an amendment over gun crimes. But the amendment was ultimately rejected, and the bill was passed unanimously.
Judiciary and public safety officials had previously expressed some reservations. Anita Josey-Herring, the chief judge in D.C. Superior Court, said in a letter to Bowser on Monday that the revised criminal code’s guarantee of a jury trial in more cases would have an “extensive” impact on D.C. courts. Josey-Herring said the Superior Court is already operating with 14 judicial vacancies, with an additional six expected by the end of 2023.
“Filling these judicial vacancies is vital to the fair and timely administration of justice for the public we serve,” Josey-Herring said. “Given the dire need to have these judicial vacancies filled, it is important to emphasize the critical impact that increasing the workload will have on court operations, and the fair and timely administration of justice.”
Bowser said in a letter to Council chairman Phil Mendelson (D) that she opposed the proposal to weaken what she termed “already lenient sentencing for gun possession” by reducing the current penalties for carrying a pistol without a license and being a felon in possession of a gun.
The debate Tuesday focused on an amendment proposed by council member Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2) that would have raised the maximum sentences for carrying a dangerous weapon and unauthorized possession of a firearm. Pinto’s amendment would have treated the violations as Class 8 felonies, which carry a maximum possible sentence of four years imprisonment; the legislation classifies those crimes as Class 9 felonies, which carry a maximum possible sentence of two years in prison.
Council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3) said the council should send a strong message, given the state of crime in the city. “Everybody knows we are awash in guns and gun violence. We have residents being shot almost every day, including children,” she said. “We have shootouts in the street. And this is not a time, I don’t think, to lessen penalties for gun possession.”
But the amendment did not find broad support. Three members — Pinto, Cheh and Council member Vincent C. Gray (D-Ward 7) — voted for it. Ten voted against. Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), who chairs the council’s public safety committee said that the amendment was not based on any data or evidence that it would improve safety, and that only a tiny percentage of defendants sentenced for carrying a dangerous weapon or unauthorized possession of a firearm get more than two years.
“For supporters of this amendment, I hear you saying we need to raise penalties to meet this moment, to send a message. But I ask you to show your work,” Allen said. “At some point, this Council needs to reckon with what it means to have one of the highest incarceration rates per capita in the free world and yet endure this kind of violence.”
Jinwoo Charles Park, executive director of the D.C. Criminal Code Reform Commission, said in a letter to the Council on Monday that the bill should not be amended to increase the penalty classifications. Doing so, he said, would exacerbate racial disparities in incarceration.
“Increases in the average sentence for these offenses would have a disproportionate effect on African American defendants,” Park said. “Although it is likely that only a small percentage of defendants would be sentenced to the maximum penalties, changing the penalty classifications could result in an increase in the average sentence for these offenses.”
The bill overhauling the code has drawn strong support from some criminal justice reform advocates, who said they are eager to see Bowser sign it into law.
Patrice Sulton, executive director of the D.C. Justice Lab, said in an interview Monday the law modernizes the District’s criminal code and makes it clearer for residents.
“People who want punishment as a mechanism of accountability would embrace this measure that makes obvious what is and is not a crime,” Sulton said. “We need the elements to be obvious to police, prosecutors, judges, courts, defense attorneys and everybody who’s living in the District under these laws.”
Sulton, who served as the senior attorney adviser of the Criminal Code Reform Commission, said that even though the U.S. attorney’s office and Public Defender Service disagree on some aspects of the bill, she believes all parties want to see a revamped criminal code.
“Everybody agrees that this was the time to do this and that the Council should take it under consideration and take action,” Sulton said. “I don’t think there’s any real desire from council members to just leave our criminal code in the mess that it’s in now.” | 2022-11-15T22:06:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. Council passes new criminal code, despite some objections - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/15/dc-criminal-code-passes-objections/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/15/dc-criminal-code-passes-objections/ |
Like the world, America’s population is growing because it’s graying
The Masquerade March last month in Key West, Fla. (Florida Keys News Bureau/Andy Newman/AP)
There are two ways that a population can increase in size: more people being born, or fewer people dying. Either add people at the front end or keep them alive at the back end and the number of people climbs.
On Tuesday, the world’s population climbed to 8 billion people, the United Nations announced — an announcement rooted less in a careful tally of every living human than an orchestrated recognition of long-standing trends. A central trend? Fewer people dying. Meaning the world’s population isn’t just getting bigger, it’s getting older.
The Washington Post’s graphics team has a fascinating exploration of what that means for any individual person that I encourage you to explore. But it’s worth drilling down on how this same trend is visible in the American population.
A century ago, there were about 110 million people living in the United States. Over the next 100 years, the country’s population tripled. That was, in part, a function of the baby boom that began in 1946, certainly, but it’s also because Americans are living longer than they used to.
You can see the shift in the population below. In 1922, 81 million of the nation’s 110 million residents were aged 40 or under. In 2020, 154 million of the country’s just under 330 million residents were aged 41 and older.
You can see the effects of the baby boom on that chart. The orange section begins to surge in the mid-1940s, slowing in the mid-1960s. By the 1990s, it’s flat. Meanwhile, the purple section begins surging in the mid-1980s — 40 years after the baby boom began.
The point of that chart is simpler than its details, though. Just look at how the proportion of purple to orange shifts. That’s the split between the two ways in which population can grow. Since 1990, America has grown from about 250 million to 350 million people. Nearly 80 percent of that population growth was in the population that’s over the age of 40.
We can visualize the shift by looking at the oldest and youngest elements of the population as a percentage of the total. In 1900, more than a fifth of the country was aged 18 or under; less than 3 percent was aged 65 or older. In 2020, about 12 percent of the population was aged 18 or under, only a bit over three percentage points more than the portion of the population that was aged 60 and up.
Much of that shift is a function of the baby boom, visible in the chart above as the lump just to the left of “18 and under.” But not all of it is. The percentage of Americans aged 75 and older — older than the oldest baby boomer was in 2020 — climbed from 3 percent of the population in 1960 to 4.4 percent in 1980 to 5.9 percent in 2020 to 7 percent at the last census.
That, again, is a function of expanded life expectancy. The coronavirus pandemic ate away at life expectancy in the United States, but the trend for the past 60 years has been climbing upward. Those are the twin components of the expanded population of older Americans: more Americans reaching age 65, and more Americans living longer once they get there.
There is understandably concern about how the population is shifting from younger to older, from more orange to more purple on that first chart. Elderly Americans are less likely to work and pay income taxes, for example.
But there is at least one point of consolation to be taken from the day’s news: At least this isn’t just a concern in America. | 2022-11-15T22:28:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Like the world, America’s population is growing because it’s graying - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/15/population-world-baby-boomers-united-states/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/15/population-world-baby-boomers-united-states/ |
A COP27 logo sign in the grounds of the Green Zone area at the COP27 climate conference at the Sharm El Sheikh International Convention Centre in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, on Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2022. More than 100 world leaders are set to be in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt over the next two weeks for the UN’s annual climate talks. (Bloomberg)
Delegates at the United Nations COP27 climate conference this month have been seeking to understand why the world is failing to raise the cash needed for emerging countries to prepare for climate change. The answers are visible all around them.
Egypt — home to Sharm el-Sheikh, the resort town hosting the event — last month devalued its currency, bringing the pound’s decline this year to nearly 36%. Bailout programs with the International Monetary Fund and Gulf monarchies over the past decade have amounted to nearly $130 billion, equivalent to a third of national income. Forget wind farms and desalination plants. Egypt barely has enough cash to pay for its wheat imports.
For all that the politics and technology for tackling climate change has improved in recent years, the financial picture has been deteriorating. Rising interest rates are particularly punishing for renewables, whose costs are all in the construction stage and must be debt-financed years into the future. Cutting borrowing costs by 2% in emerging markets would save $15 trillion from the cost of hitting net zero, the International Energy Agency wrote last month — but the movement right now is in the opposite direction.
The surging prices of food and fossil fuels make things worse for the large number of emerging economies that aren’t self-sufficient in those commodities, raising their import bills and draining exchange reserves before they even think about major overseas investments. A greenback still hovering at record levels makes things even worse, pushing dollar-financed renewables projects toward default.
“The macro environment is creating concerns among our investors,” said Mikkel Torud, chief financial officer of Scatec ASA, a Norwegian company that invests in renewables projects including Egypt’s 1.8-gigawatt Benban solar park. “Our cost of capital is going up and we are seeing these types of project demanding higher risk premiums.”
There are well-established ways of managing this. Having multiple projects in different countries reduces a developer’s exposure to individual governments. Partnering with multilateral institutions such as the World Bank also allows state or quasi-state lenders to take on the worst political and currency risks, creating a more attractive environment for private investors.
Clearly, though, it’s not enough. A 13-year-old target of providing $100 billion in annual climate finance to developing countries has still not been met. The funding that’s there, moreover, is overwhelmingly dependent on states. An ideal situation would be one in which every $20 of high-risk, low-return state and multilateral funding was able to mobilize another $80 of private investment. In practice, the ratio is pretty much the opposite, with $66 billion in public climate finance in 2019 needed to put $14.4 billion of private money into action.
Furthermore, even a fully-functioning international finance mechanism is unlikely to deliver poorer countries what they need. Facilities like the Benban solar park — renewable and low-carbon industrial and power projects that reduce present-day emissions, known in the climate jargon as “mitigation” — are the most investable ones, and in less developed nations other projects may be worthwhile.
That’s because, outside of the BRIC nations and a handful of other emerging industrial powers such as Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa, and Turkey, mitigation isn’t the most critical battle to fight. Less wealthy countries don’t account for many emissions. Excepting South Africa, the whole of Africa south of the Sahara produces about the same amount of carbon pollution as France. The far greater priority in such places is investment known in the jargon as “adaptation” — sea walls, storm protection, and drought-resistant crop technologies to deal with the effects of climate change, rather than stop its cause.
If the challenges of bringing mitigation money into lower-income nations are substantial, funding adaptation is well-nigh insurmountable. Such projects are rarely investable even in wealthy countries with sophisticated financial and regulatory setups — one reason that most infrastructure spending is done by governments or at least public-private partnerships. In poorer countries, there’s almost no chance.
“The most significant climate adaptation investments like sea level and flood defenses do not provide a substantial revenue stream for the private sector,” Avinash Persaud, a Barbadian economist who’s advised the country’s Prime Minister Mia Mottley on financial approaches to climate, wrote in August.
Persaud has suggested using the IMF’s unofficial currency of Special Drawing Rights to take more risk and attract more private money, as well as a levy on emissions similar to the small fee on oil imports that funds the International Oil Pollution Compensation Fund, a long-standing institution to pay cleanup costs after tanker spills.
A better lesson may be to learn may be to take a lesson from the oil-and-gas industry. Petroleum is a rare business that flourishes in frontier markets where many investors fear to tread. Its secret is that most of its product is sold in the same markets where finance is raised. If your financing and revenues are both in dollars, a currency crisis doesn’t cause your project to default — indeed, it may even make it more competitive as local-currency costs decline.
That’s reason to pay attention to more speculative investments in green hydrogen and building a robust system of climate offsets for protection and expansion of tropical forests. In technological terms, they seem less attractive than more tried-and-tested wind and solar power generation for local grids. In financial terms, though, such export industries may have crucial advantages — and the turmoil of 2022 may be just the moment to test their mettle.
• Climate Change Costs Are Eating Up the Money to Avert It: David Fickling | 2022-11-15T22:58:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How Do You Finance Climate Projects in a Currency Crisis? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/how-do-you-finance-climate-projects-ina-currency-crisis/2022/11/15/f77b54f4-6530-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/how-do-you-finance-climate-projects-ina-currency-crisis/2022/11/15/f77b54f4-6530-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html |
Scientists have to deal with many issues — including hurricanes and computer glitches — before a rocket can be launched into space.
The Artemis I mission will send the unmanned Orion spacecraft to orbit the moon several times and return to Earth. The launch has faced delays because of weather and problems with the rocket. (Red Huber/Getty Images)
There’s a big problem, however. The first launch in the three-launch series keeps getting delayed.
Artemis 1 was first scheduled to blast off from Cape Canaveral in Florida on August 29, but a problem with one of the engines kept the spacecraft grounded. Then, a fuel leak scrapped another launch attempt September 3. Later in the month, Hurricane Ian caused yet another delay.
Jason Bittel is a freelance journalist who often writes about animals. He is also the author of “How to Talk to a Tiger . . . and Other Animals.” | 2022-11-15T22:58:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | NASA’s Artemis I launch has faced several delays. That’s actually common. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/11/15/nasa-launches-often-delayed/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/11/15/nasa-launches-often-delayed/ |
Venezuelan migrants, some expelled from the United States to Mexico under Title 42, stand on the banks of the Rio Bravo river, in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, on Oct. 30. (Jose Luis Gonzalez/Reuters)
A federal judge on Tuesday struck down a Donald Trump-era policy used by U.S. border officials to quickly expel migrants because of the covid pandemic, saying the ban had little proven benefit to public health even as it shunted migrants to dangerous places.
U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan in the District of Columbia vacated the order known as Title 42, effectively restoring asylum seekers’ access to the borders for the first time since the Trump administration issued it during the earliest days of the pandemic.
Biden officials have long worried about a mass rush to the border creating an emergency similar to the one that occurred in Del Rio, Texas, in Sept. 2021, when thousands of migrants crossed illegally and overwhelmed U.S. agents, creating a squalid camp on the banks of the Rio Grande that embarrassed the Biden administration.
Sullivan’s ruling also comes days after top border official Chris Magnus resigned under pressure after clashing with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
The American Civil Liberties Union, one of the organizations that brought the lawsuit on behalf of migrants, said Sullivan’s decision to vacate the Title 42 policy means the policy ends for all migrants, including families and adults traveling without children.
Sullivan also made clear that that he would not stay his order pending appeal, leaving it to a higher court to do so if the Biden administration sought more time to address the ruling.
In his ruling, Sullivan sided with migrants who sued the government last year arguing that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Title 42 order was “arbitrary and capricious” in violation of federal law. Advocates said there was no evidence the policy protected public health and that the government had failed to consider alternatives that might have prevented migrants from being expelled into countries where they faced extreme danger.
Sullivan wrote that the federal officials knew the order “would likely expel migrants to locations with a ‘high probability’ of ‘persecution, torture, violent assaults, or rape’ ” — and did so anyway.
Sullivan’s ruling makes that lawsuit moot by declaring that the CDC never should have issued the Title 42 order at all.
Sullivan’s ruling Tuesday stemmed from a case filed by migrant families, but the judge’s decision to vacate the order means that it extends to all migrants, including adults traveling solo, the biggest group taken into custody at the border last year.
“The last thing we need is to say we’re going to stop immediately, the access to asylum, the way it’s being run now, and end up with 2 million people on our border,” Biden said in December 2020 before he took office.
Nick Miroff contributed to this report. | 2022-11-15T22:58:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Federal judge strikes down Trump-era border policy known as Title 42 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/11/15/border-ruling-title-42/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/11/15/border-ruling-title-42/ |
Ron Rivera didn’t name a starting QB. But he offered some hints.
Analysis by Nicki Jhabvala
Washington's football team reporter
Taylor Heinicke (center) has started the past four games for the Commanders with Sam Howell (right) as his backup. Wentz has been recovering from finger surgery on his throwing hand. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
Washington Commanders coach Ron Rivera declined to announce the team’s starting quarterback for Sunday’s game against the Houston Texans, and he has yet to definitively say defensive end Chase Young will be activated this week and play after a lengthy recovery from a knee injury.
But Rivera dropped a number of hints as the Commanders move forward following their 32-21 upset victory over the Eagles in Philadelphia Monday night.
Taylor Heinicke, Washington’s backup quarterback who has filled in while Carson Wentz recovers from finger surgery on his throwing hand, has guided the Commanders to a 3-1 run and the eighth spot in the NFC, a feat that seemed out of reach after the team’s 2-4 start.
Washington placed Wentz on injured reserve in late October. Health pending, he is eligible to return to practice and be added to the active roster this week.
In a video conference call with reporters Tuesday, Rivera said he has yet to sit down with head athletic trainer Al Bellamy about Wentz’s status, and he needs to meet with offensive coordinator Scott Turner, quarterbacks coach Ken Zampese and, of course, his players before announcing a decision.
What Rivera did say, however, is that he’ll consider myriad factors, and the decision must be the best one for the team as a whole.
“You have to look at the momentum. You have to look at what the mood of the team is, obviously,” Rivera said, adding, “You look at what is best for the team, and at the end of the day, that’s how it has to be.”
Rivera also noted that the Commanders still must designate Wentz to return to practice. Once they do, they have 21 days to activate him.
Could the coach’s comments — coupled with the rejuvenation of the team and its fan base over the past four weeks — indicate Heinicke is favored to remain as the starter? Maybe. But such a move would come with implications.
For one, the Commanders have $22 million in salary tied to Wentz — a steep investment for any player, especially a backup.
And then there’s the reality of any positional change: If it fails to pan out, it can sometimes be difficult to reverse course, especially if a player’s confidence and rapport with the coaching staff suffers after his demotion.
On the other hand, the Commanders’ trade for Wentz included sending a conditional third-round pick in 2023 to the Colts. That pick would turn into a second-rounder if Wentz were to play at least 70 percent of the Commanders’ snaps this season. If Wentz becomes a backup, it’s unlikely he’d reach that threshold.
“We’re gong to see what happens this week,” Rivera said. “… Remember, everything’s one game at a time. I’m not getting ahead of ourselves. We’re going to focus in on winning one game at a time.”
Rivera and his staff must also decide when to activate Young, who has missed more than a full year to recover from an extensive knee injury. The Commanders designated Young to return to practice Nov. 2, which means they have until Nov. 23 to add him to the active roster.
Last week, defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio said Young had yet to practice at full speed and that the team would not let him play until he’s completely ready.
Rivera noted the defensive end is “trending in the right direction” and said the team will activate him at some point before the deadline passes. But he also indicated Young’s performance in practice this week could determine his availability for Sunday’s game.
Svrluga: The Commanders should keep Taylor Heinicke at quarterback
“The things that he’s going to have to do in a game, he’s going to have to do full speed,” Rivera said. “He’s going to have to have a little more confidence and really be able to stick that foot in the ground and work off of it and play off of it. That was one of the things we saw that we were a little concerned with.
“Jack hit the nail on the head; we’re not going to expose him until it’s time to, and I know the 21 days will be coming up pretty soon, but our anticipation is we will be activating him at some point though.” | 2022-11-15T23:02:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Carson Wentz or Taylor Heinicke? The Commanders’ QB decision lingers. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/15/carson-wentz-taylor-heinicke-rivera/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/15/carson-wentz-taylor-heinicke-rivera/ |
Nationals rerack roster ahead of Rule 5 draft, re-sign Ildemaro Vargas
Ildemaro Vargas rejoined the Nationals on a one-year deal, avoiding arbitration. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
With the Rule 5 draft looming, the Washington Nationals on Tuesday rearranged their 40-man roster and agreed to a contract with a 2022 contributor.
The Nationals placed six minor leaguers — infielder Jake Alu, outfielder Jeremy De La Rosa, right-handers Jackson Rutledge and Jake Irvin and left-handed relievers Matt Cronin and Jose Ferrer — on their 40-man roster, which protects them from being selected in the Rule 5 draft Dec. 7.
To clear roster space for those six, the Nationals designated righty Tommy Romero for assignment and sent outfielder Yadiel Hernandez, lefty Evan Lee and righty Jackson Tetreault to Class AAA Rochester after they cleared outright waivers.
Washington also agreed with infielder Ildemaro Vargas on a one-year deal to avoid arbitration. Terms were not disclosed. Vargas, 31, hit .280 with three home runs and 19 RBI over 196 plate appearances in 53 games, mostly at third base.
The Nationals entered the week with 39 players on their 40-man roster. That number dropped to 38 when lefty Seth Romero, a 2017 first-round pick, was released Monday after being charged with driving while intoxicated for the second time this year. Tuesday’s shuffling set the roster at 40.
The Rule 5 draft allows teams to select any player not on a 40-man roster who signed at 18 or younger and has been in professional baseball for five years, or who signed at 19 or older and has been in the pros for four years. The Nationals had the worst record in the majors, so they will have the first pick in this year’s Rule 5 draft.
They would need to remove a player from their 40-man roster to make a selection, and any selected player must remain on the 26-man active roster for the entire 2023 season. If that player is removed from the roster, he must be placed on waivers and made available to the other 29 clubs. And if he clears waivers, he must be offered back to his original club.
Alu, 25, has impressed with his power numbers; he hit 20 home runs in 2022, including 11 after being called up to Rochester. He and Cronin, 25, are the only players among the 40-man roster additions who have played for the Red Wings; Cronin made 34 relief appearances. Rutledge, a 23-year-old who was a first-round pick in 2019, spent 2022 with Low-A Fredericksburg. De La Rosa is an intriguing outfield prospect but has only reached High-A Wilmington. Ferrer and Irvin finished last year with Class AA Harrisburg.
Perhaps the most notable Nationals prospect who was not protected from the Rule 5 draft is catcher Drew Millas, a 24-year-old who had a strong performance at the Arizona Fall League after advancing to Harrisburg last season. | 2022-11-15T23:02:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nationals make roster moves for Rule 5 draft, re-sign Ildemaro Vargas - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/15/nationals-rule-5-draft-ildemaro-vargas/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/15/nationals-rule-5-draft-ildemaro-vargas/ |
Flowers and notes line a walkway at Scott Stadium on Tuesday in Charlottesville after the fatal shootings of three University of Virginia football players on Sunday. (Steve Helber/AP)
“ACTIVE ATTACKER . . . RUN HIDE FIGHT.” That alert from University of Virginia police came at 10:42 p.m. on Sunday, sending the campus into a terrified lockdown. Students huddled overnight in libraries and academic buildings; they barricaded themselves in their apartments and dorm rooms, hiding in closets and pushing furniture against doors. After 12 hours of fear and worry — and after three students were killed and two others wounded — police arrested the alleged gunman, and another community irrevocably shaken by gun violence is asking why.
Murdered Sunday night as they returned from a field trip were Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr. and D’Sean Perry, all juniors and members of the school’s football team. “These were incredible young men with huge aspirations and extremely bright futures,” said the university’s first-year coach, Tony Elliott, in a statement. “My heart is broken for the victims and their families,” said U-Va. President James E. Ryan, his voice cracking.
According to authorities, Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., a former member of the football team, allegedly opened fire on a charter bus that had pulled into a university parking garage, full of students returning from a field trip to Washington. The father of one of the wounded young men said that the students were in a drama class that had gone to see a play. Mr. Jones was on the bus. Authorities are still trying to determine what drove him to allegedly pull out a gun and kill his classmates. Just as urgent is the question of whether the attack could have been prevented.
Just two months before the shootings, Mr. Jones had been brought to the attention of the university task force charged with identifying and responding to threatening student behavior. During a review of a hazing incident, a student told school staff that Mr. Jones owned a gun. No one officials interviewed, including Mr. Jones’s roommate, said they had seen the gun. Mr. Jones wouldn’t answer questions, but officials learned that Mr. Jones had been convicted of a misdemeanor concealed weapon violation in 2021, something he should have disclosed. Administrative disciplinary action was pending.
On the eve of his 2018 high school graduation, the Richmond Times-Dispatch profiled Mr. Jones, detailing how he grew up in public housing in Petersburg, Va., with three younger siblings who he often cared for; how he struggled after his parents divorced; how he was regularly disciplined for getting into fights. He seemed to have overcome those challenges, getting good grades, winning scholarships and earning acceptance to the state’s prestigious public university.
Now, the university has several questions to answer. How did Mr. Jones get his gun? How did it go undetected even after its existence was reported to the school? Why didn’t the university move faster to investigate Mr. Jones’s circumstances and press disciplinary action? What warning signs did they miss?
Answering these questions will not bring back those who died or heal those who are wounded. But it is important that the public not become inured to these tragedies. The nation has logged another gruesome episode in its dysfunctional relationship with guns. Each one is different, but the lessons are so often the same. Once again, the public needs to relearn them.
The Editorial Board on gun violence
Opinion|Our dysfunctional relationship with guns rears its ugly head in Virginia
Opinion|The St. Louis school shooting is a case study in gun-law dysfunction | 2022-11-15T23:03:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | University of Virginia shooting is latest episode of gun violence - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/15/uva-shooting-gun-violence/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/15/uva-shooting-gun-violence/ |
Virginia McLaurin, centenarian who danced with Obamas, dies
The longtime Washington resident, believed to be 113, became an internet celebrity after her exuberant encounter with the president and first lady at the White House in 2016
President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama greet 106-year-old Virginia McLaurin at the White House in 2016. (Courtesy Barack Obama Presidential Library)
Virginia McLaurin, a daughter of Black sharecroppers who, as a centenarian, became an internet celebrity with her exuberant dance upon meeting Barack and Michelle Obama in 2016, her moves the expression of boundless joy at seeing an African American family in the White House, died Nov. 14 at her son’s home in Olney, Md. She was believed to be 113.
Ms. McLaurin grew up in South Carolina during the Jim Crow era, received no formal schooling beyond the eighth grade and came to Washington in 1939. She worked as a nanny, a laundress, a seamstress and a house cleaner, never imagining, she said, that the racial order of American society would change.
When Obama, the first African American president, met with Ms. McLaurin on Feb. 18, 2016, during a White House commemoration of Black History Month, their encounter seemed to embody the arc of history.
Dancing 106-year-old describes the day she charmed the Obamas: ‘I can die smiling now’
In a scene captured in a video that was viewed tens of millions of times online, a presidential aide announced Ms. McLaurin as she entered the Blue Room of the White House. She raised her arms and cane skyward and shimmied as President Obama walked over to greet her, towering over her 4-foot-11 frame.
“It’s an honor. It’s an honor,” Ms. McLaurin exclaimed.
Holding her hand as he escorted her to meet the first lady, Obama jokingly admonished the jubilant Ms. McLaurin to slow down. Not heeding his advice, she broke into a dance, which the Obamas quickly joined.
“I thought I would never live to get in the White House,” Ms. McLaurin declared, “and I tell you, I am so happy. A Black president. A Black wife. And I’m here to celebrate Black history.”
Virginia Lugnia Campbell was born in Cheraw, S.C., her delivery assisted by a midwife. South Carolina had no official record of her birth, according to her son, but Ms. McLaurin said she believed her birth date to have been recorded in a family Bible as March 12, 1909. Government documents later issued to her recorded the year of her birth as 1916 or 1917, her son said.
Ms. McLaurin grew up in a home with no electricity. Light was provided by a kerosene lamp that she later donated to the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington as an artifact representing the lives of Black sharecroppers in the early 20th century.
Her life was defined by segregation, de facto if not de jure. “This was White, and this was Black,” Ms. McLaurin told The Post. “There were so many things we weren’t allowed to do. We were raised up like that. ... I felt like it would always be that way.”
Ms. McLaurin lived for decades on the same block in the District’s Petworth neighborhood. For 24 years, from 1994 until the year she was believed to turn 110, she volunteered 40 hours a week through the United Planning Organization’s Foster Grandparent Program. She was a constant presence at C. Melvin Sharpe Health School, which served students with severe disabilities, and later at Roots Public Charter School for preschoolers, feeding children, reading to them and encouraging them in their schoolwork.
Public recognition of Ms. McLaurin’s volunteering helped lead to her visit with the Obamas, as did a petition she submitted to the White House in 2014.
“I know you are a busy man, but I wish I could meet you,” Ms. McLaurin wrote to President Obama. “I would love to meet you. I could come to your house to make things easier.”
Ms. McLaurin became a celebrity in the District and beyond. Months after her White House visit, she attended her first Washington Nationals game, dancing on the field as she was presented with a personalized jersey. She drew the Harlem Globetrotters to Washington for subsequent birthday celebrations, which she shared with D.C. schoolchildren. People stopped her on the street to ask to have their photo taken with her.
After dancing with the Obamas, 107-year-old spins a ball with Harlem Globetrotters
A fundraising campaign on Ms. McLaurin’s behalf allowed her to move into a better apartment and access services, including dental care, that she had previously not been able to afford. She had lost her photo ID in a purse-snatching years earlier and, without a formal record of her birth, had been unable to replace it. In 2016, with the intervention of Mayor Muriel E. Bowser, she was able to obtain a new District ID.
Ms. McLaurin was also gifted an iPad, so that she could watch the viral video of her with the Obamas for herself.
Ms. McLaurin’s son said that she was married three times, including to Marshall McLaurin and Willie Johnson Sr. She and Johnson had two children, including a surviving daughter, Idamae Streeter of the District, and a son who predeceased Ms. McLaurin, Willie Johnson Jr.
Ms. McLaurin took Cardoso in when he was 3 and later formally adopted him. In addition to her children, survivors include numerous grandchildren, great-grandchildren and other descendants.
When she reflected on her years, Ms. McLaurin described a sense of awe at the change that she had seen transpire. “A lot of things happened in my life,” she said, “that I didn’t think would ever happen.” | 2022-11-15T23:37:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Virginia McLaurin, centenarian who danced with Obamas, dies - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/15/virginia-mclaurin-obamas-white-house-centennarian-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/15/virginia-mclaurin-obamas-white-house-centennarian-dead/ |
From left, Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr. and D’Sean Perry, students at the University of Virginia, were killed in a shooting Sunday. (University of Virginia Athletics/AP)
The three young men who were shot and killed Sunday on the campus of the University of Virginia were students there. D’Sean Perry described himself as an “artist” on social media. Devin Chandler had declared American studies as his major. Lavel Davis Jr. was the sort of attentive student who made a point of introducing himself to his professor on the first day of class to quietly signal that he was eager to engage and not simply let lectures wash over him — a fact that was noted by that very professor after his death. When they were killed, they were on a charter bus returning from a field trip to the nation’s capital where they’d seen a play. They also happened to play football.
Their connection to the school’s football team is relevant in painting a full picture of who these young men were, and the fact that the accused shooter was once a member of the team may prove to be significant. But the way in which their athleticism has been highlighted, underscored and lionized one might have thought that football was their profession rather than a hobby or a passion. At the very least one might have assumed that the tragedy occurred in direct relation to a game or a practice or a workout. But it did not.
The heartbreaking death of these students — along with the wounding of two others — in yet another mass shooting at a school is an affront to everything Americans tell themselves about how life should unfold for the young. But the default description of the dead as football players first and students somewhere thereafter, gets at a cultural conundrum: the complicated knot in which sports, race and achievement are bound.
Miah’s shrug and the unbearable weight of gun violence
To describe them as students is to imply wide-open possibility. It’s to paint them as inquisitive and thoughtful, and yes, possibly impetuous and noncommittal as well. There’s an element of idealism in that title. To be a student is to exist in a place of heady optimism and belief in a promising tomorrow. It’s the act of delaying gratification and investing in something unseen. Labeling them as football players first underscores the fraught business of college sports in which the mythical student-athlete is really just an athlete. It suggests that who they might ultimately have become had already been decided. It’s specific. It’s limiting. It’s short-lived.
Do we need to see what the guns do to children? | 2022-11-16T00:25:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | They were UVA students, with all the limitless possibility that implies - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/15/they-were-college-students-with-all-limitless-possibility-that-implies/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/15/they-were-college-students-with-all-limitless-possibility-that-implies/ |
NEW YORK — Walmart reported higher sales in the fiscal third quarter as more Americans seek to cut spending in face of high inflation. Also on Tuesday, Walmart, based in Bentonville, Arkansas, agreed to pay $3.1 billion to settle lawsuits nationwide over the impact of prescriptions its pharmacies filled for powerful prescription opioid painkillers. The agreement must still be approved by 43 states to take effect. The settlement is similar to those already announced by CVS Health and Walgreen. Walmart sales rose 8.7% to $152.81 billion. ___
WASHINGTON — Prices at the wholesale level rose 8% in October from a year ago, the fourth straight decline and the latest sign that inflation pressures in the United States are easing from painfully high levels. The annual figure is down from 8.4% in September. On a monthly basis, the government said Tuesday that its producer price index, which measures costs before they reach consumers, rose 0.2% in October from September. That was same as in the previous month, which was revised down from an initial reading of 0.4%.
NEW YORK — Stocks closed higher, boosted by more signs the nation’s high inflation may be falling off faster than expected. But a flare-up of worries about the war in Ukraine kept Wall Street shaky Tuesday and undercut much of its big morning gains. The S&P 500 rose 0.9%. Earlier in the day, it saw a 1.8% gain disappear and swung briefly to a loss of 0.1%. Through the market’s swerves, technology stocks continued to lead Wall Street on hopes that the Federal Reserve may ease up on the pace of its interest rate hikes, which are meant to tame inflation by slowing the economy.
NEW YORK — Just days after cryptocurrency’s third-largest exchange collapsed, the public is starting to get a feel of how messy FTX’s bankruptcy case could be. Users remain frustratingly in the dark about when they might get their funds back, if at all. They’re directing much of their anger toward FTX’s founder and CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried. In a court filing, FTX’s lawyers said there were already more than 100,000 claims against the company and estimated that figure could grow to more than 1 million, most of them customers, once the case is complete.
DETROIT — Gas-electric hybrids were the most dependable vehicles sold in the U.S. in the past year, while big pickup trucks and fully electric automobiles performed the worst in Consumer Reports’ annual reliability survey. The nonprofit group said Tuesday that Hybrids generally are tried-and-true designs with few frills, while automakers are cramming glitchy electronic features into expensive new pickups and EVs. Jake Fisher, Consumer Reports’ senior director of auto testing, says hybrids have been around for more than two decades. He says even though they switch between electric and gasoline power, they don’t have a lot of the technology or complex multi-speed transmissions that have caused problems with other vehicles.
NEW YORK — The Trump Organization’s longtime finance chief has testified at trial that he saved it hundreds of thousands of dollars by scheming to evade taxes on company-paid perks, including a Manhattan apartment and luxury cars. The prosecution’s star witness, Allen Weisselberg, says he deducted such expenses from his salary because it cost the company about half as much as it would have to give him a raise to cover them. Weisselberg pleaded guilty in August to evading taxes on $1.7 million of fringe benefits, an agreement that requires him to testify against the company in exchange for a five-month jail sentence. The Trump Organization has denied wrongdoing. Its lawyers allege that Weisselberg concocted the scheme on his own. | 2022-11-16T00:30:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Business Highlights: Walmart settlement, wholesale prices - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/business-highlights-walmart-settlement-wholesale-prices/2022/11/15/5821769a-6544-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/business-highlights-walmart-settlement-wholesale-prices/2022/11/15/5821769a-6544-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html |
Catholic diocese’s suit over alley by Alexandria housing project dismissed
Church officials had contested the city’s vacation of an alleyway near a Catholic school that developers included as part of a planned affordable housing complex
The nonprofit Alexandria Housing Development Corporation plans to build a 474-unit affordable housing complex in the Arlandria-Chirilagua neighborhood. (Alexandria Housing Development Corporation)
A judge in Alexandria has dismissed a lawsuit from the local Catholic diocese against the Northern Virginia city, putting a formal end to a legal dispute over an alleyway next to both a Catholic church and a planned affordable housing development.
The suit had escalated a tense back and forth between city and church officials and the complex’s nonprofit developer, the Alexandria Housing Development Corporation (AHDC), who all serve the mostly Central American immigrant population living near the alley in the Arlandria-Chirilagua area.
Those parties all agreed to set aside the suit ahead of the Nov. 9 dismissal order.
The alley will no longer be included in the AHDC development and will remain accessible to parents at Saint Rita School and parishioners at Saint Rita Catholic Church who use it for drop-off and pickup away from the busy roadways on Russell Road and West Glebe Avenue.
Catholic diocese sues Alexandria over affordable housing development
Earlier this year, Alexandria city lawmakers had voted to vacate a portion of the alley, allowing AHDC to use it as part of its plans for a 474-unit affordable apartment complex — a long-awaited project in this lower-income neighborhood.
But Bishop Michael Burbidge, who oversees parishes across the region from the Catholic Diocese of Arlington, filed a lawsuit in April contending that the city did not have the proper authority to vacate the alley. His suit cited a decades-old land deed that he said shows his diocese has a private right to the alley over that of the public.
After the lawsuit was filed, AHDC resubmitted new designs that incorporated an additional parcel of land and did not end up using the alley. The city of Alexandria withdrew its vacation of the alley and subsequently asked that Burbidge’s lawsuit be dismissed.
Billy Atwell, the chief communications officer with the Diocese of Arlington, said in a statement that the church was happy to agree to a final order dismissing the court case.
“The Diocese’s legal action was necessary to preserve and clarify certain property rights relating to the alley adjacent to the property that are critical for the continued operations of Saint Rita Catholic Church and School,” he said. “After the lawsuit was filed, the parties had sufficient time to coordinate their efforts.”
Alexandria officials did not respond to a request for comment. Kayla Hornbrook, a spokeswoman for AHDC, said the organization was looking forward to continuing with the project.
“We were glad to arrive at this solution that we think is architecturally better than where we started and works for the church and works for all our other neighbors as well,” Hornbrook said.
Wary of Amazon, Latino neighborhood vows not to be pushed out
Amid rising rents and rapid development prompted by Amazon and Virginia Tech, many advocates have feared that existing Arlandria residents could be displaced from market-rate properties in the neighborhood. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
Alexandria leaders have said they hope the community can benefit from lower rents in the AHDC project, which will stand to become one of the largest sources of “committed affordable” housing units in the city.
The project — which is for now known simply as “Mount Vernon and Glebe” — is also set to provide unusually deep levels of affordability: About one quarter of units at the AHDC property will be reserved for families making less than 40 percent of the area median income, and another half of the units for families making less than 60 percent of the area median income.
Burbidge’s suit was filed but never served. Some advocates feared the suit would delay the long-awaited AHDC project but without ever leading to time-consuming legal proceedings.
Alexandria City Council approved a revised AHDC plan for the site in July. The revised plan also eliminates a proposed new north-south road that would have been next to the Saint Rita playground and relocates two loading docks that were adjacent to the school play area.
Construction of that road was also contingent upon a land swap with Saint Rita Church for a small portion of its property — one that city officials noted was premature, according to ALX Now.
Atwell, the diocese spokesman, said the church would have liked to see some other minor modifications to the AHDC project to reduce “negative impacts” on its property — ones that will require “significant alterations to facilities and operations” at both the church and the school.
“That said, the Church appreciates that sacrifices are inevitable, and adaption is necessary,” he said. “We look forward to welcoming our new neighbors, the future residents of the AHDC development.” | 2022-11-16T00:30:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Catholic diocese’s suit over alley by Alexandria housing project dismissed - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/15/alexandria-catholic-church-affordable-housing/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/15/alexandria-catholic-church-affordable-housing/ |
Special election set for Virginia Senate seat Jen Kiggans will vacate
Rep.-elect Jen A. Kiggans (R-Va.) attends the member-elect class photo at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
RICHMOND — A special election will take place Jan. 10 to fill the Virginia Senate seat being vacated by Jen A. Kiggans, who is heading to Congress.
One week after Kiggans (R-Virginia Beach) unseated Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) in Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District, Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) and state Senate President Pro Tempore L. Louise Lucas (D-Portsmouth) separately set the date, one day before the General Assembly kicks off its annual session on Jan. 11.
The special election for a seat in the narrowly divided Senate is sure to be hard-fought, set in swing territory that includes parts of Virginia Beach and Norfolk. Kiggans, a nurse practitioner and former Navy helicopter pilot, won the state Senate seat in 2019 with just over 50 percent of the vote. She announced Tuesday that she was resigning effective Dec. 31. The filing deadline for candidates is Nov. 21.
Youngkin and Lucas, one of the governor’s sharpest critics in the legislature, disagree on many things — including which of them had the authority to call the special election. The governor has that power when the legislature is not in session, while the Senate pro tempore has it when it is.
But there was disagreement over whether the legislature concluded a special session in September. The Republican-led House said it was all over, while the Democratic-controlled Senate said it was still on.
Youngkin and Lucas settled on a date and then concurrently issued separate writs of election in which each called the election. | 2022-11-16T00:30:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Virginian sets special election for the state Senate seat vacated by Kiggans - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/15/kiggans-virginia-senate-special-election/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/15/kiggans-virginia-senate-special-election/ |
California reports its first RSV and flu death in a child under 5
Emergency department staffers at a hospital in Orange, Calif., early this month. (Mark Rightmire/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register/Getty Images)
California on Monday reported its first death of a child under 5 due to flu and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, this season.
Amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the United States has seen an unusually early and hard flu season alongside a spike in cases of RSV, which causes a cold-like illness in children. California saw a rise of RSV infections in October, two months earlier than usual, the California Department of Public Health said in a news release.
The release did not say where the child lived or where the death occurred, citing patient confidentiality.
“Our hearts go out to the family of this young child,” CDPH Director Tomás Aragón said in a statement. “This tragic event serves as a stark reminder that respiratory viruses can be deadly, especially in very young children and infants.”
The department said young children, especially those who were born prematurely or who have underlying conditions, are most vulnerable to severe complications from RSV and the flu.
The rise in RSV and flu as the coronavirus continues to circulate has some health officials worried about a “tripledemic” this winter.
“Covid has impacted the seasonal patterns of all these respiratory infections,” Tina Tan, a pediatric infectious-diseases specialist at the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, told The Washington Post this month as RSV cases were surging and flu cases were starting to rise. “Whether the pattern will go back to the way it was pre-covid, I don’t think anyone really knows, but it does make it more complicated to provide the care that people need when you have three viruses that can cause serious diseases surging at the same time.”
Hospitals are worried about child RSV this year. Here’s what to know.
California’s health department issued a statewide advisory Saturday, saying hospitalizations from respiratory viruses in the coming months would continue to strain hospitals, which have been overwhelmed since the coronavirus set in. In Orange County, officials declared a health emergency this month, citing the high number of respiratory illnesses, including RSV, that were causing pediatric patients to be hospitalized.
Across the country, there were 8,597 cases of RSV detected the week of Nov. 5, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This season, there have been 1,300 deaths from flu, according to CDC estimates as of Thursday.
While there is federal data on flu-related deaths, there is none on RSV-associated deaths, because the disease is not a “nationally notifiable condition,” CDC spokesperson Kristen Nordlund said in a statement.
In its Monday news release, the California health department’s safety recommendations included getting vaccinated, boosted and treated for flu and the coronavirus. The department also advised Californians to stay home when they are sick, wear a mask, wash their hands, and cover coughs or sneezes to protect themselves and others. | 2022-11-16T00:30:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What you need to know about California's first child death from flu and RSV - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/11/15/california-flu-rsv-child-death/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/11/15/california-flu-rsv-child-death/ |
NEW YORK — Beyoncé has been crowned the most Grammy-nominated person in history — tying her husband and rapper Jay-Z with 88 nominations apiece. Here are the reactions to the Tuesday’s Grammy nominations:
“’All Too Well 10’ is the song I’m the most proud of, out of anything I’ve written. The fact that it’s nominated for Song of the Year at the Grammys, an award I’ve never won, that honors the songwriting... it’s momentous and surreal,” Taylor Swift said in a story posted on Instagram. Swift is nominated for four Grammys.
“We can’t believe our eyes and ears but we just got nominated as best new artist at the Grammys. We couldn’t be more thankful and excited about it. Thanks to the Academy and all of you who have always supported us with love,” Italian rock band and 2021 winners of Eurovision Måneskin posted on Instagram stories. | 2022-11-16T00:31:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Swift, Lizzo, Miranda Lambert react to Grammy nominations - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/swift-lizzo-miranda-lambert-react-to-grammy-nominations/2022/11/15/55674418-6542-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/swift-lizzo-miranda-lambert-react-to-grammy-nominations/2022/11/15/55674418-6542-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html |
Depending on whether Warsaw invokes NATO provisions, alliance will have to decide how to respond, expert says
Smoke viewed from Nowosiolki, Poland, near the border with Ukraine, on Tuesday. (Stowarzyszenie Moje Nowosiolki/Reuters)
There are suggestions that an explosion in Poland that reportedly killed two people was possibly the result of a Russian missile. It’s not clear what happened, but the Polish government is holding an emergency meeting, and it may possibly invoke NATO provisions. I asked M.E. Sarotte, the Kravis professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and the author of “The Collapse” and “Not One Inch,” to explain the history and what may happen next.
Q: You describe in your book on NATO expansion, “Not One Inch,” how the famous Polish leader Lech Walesa explained decades ago that “we are all afraid of Russia. ... If Russia again adopts an aggressive foreign policy, that aggression will be directed toward Ukraine and Poland.” Was Walesa right?
A: Walesa, the former Polish president and a Nobel laureate, is obviously a major figure of history. Whether today’s explosion in Poland resulted from an intentional, aggressive Russian policy directed toward both Ukraine and Poland — as opposed to resulting from an aggressive strike directed toward Ukraine that went horribly off course into Poland — is not clear at the time of writing. Both options of course represent acts of aggression but would have different consequences. As of now, the Russian Defense Ministry is denying that Moscow is the author of the strikes.
Q: Poland, of course, succeeded in becoming a member of NATO. How does NATO membership protect it from aggression by Russia and other hostile powers?
A: NATO seeks to protect its allies from attack by any enemy (not just Russia) through a variety of means, among them both conventional and nuclear deterrence, as well as signaling of the potential consequences of aggression against allied territory. Particularly important in this regard are Articles 4 and 5 of the treaty that created NATO. The former guarantees that allies “will consult together whenever ... the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the Parties is threatened.” The latter guarantees that allies will consider “an armed attack against one or more of them ... [as] an attack against them all” and that NATO will in response take “such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force.”
Q: Poland might choose to invoke either Article 4 or Article 5. What are the implications if Poland invokes one rather than the other?
A: To boil the above down to its essence: Article 4 guarantees consultations. Article 5 guarantees that allies will, in response to an attack, take whatever action they deem necessary. Because Article 5 states that such action may include force, its invocation would make the chance of armed conflict higher.
Q: There have been worries since the beginning that the Ukraine conflict might lead to “inadvertent escalation.” Is that happening now?
A: It bears repeating that, as of the time of writing, it is not yet clear what is happening. But it is indeed possible that the events of Nov. 15 may represent inadvertent escalation. The potential for such escalation is one of the most dangerous aspects of the current conflict in Ukraine. | 2022-11-16T00:31:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | NATO may face tricky situation if Poland invokes alliance's provisions - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/15/nato-poland-russia-monkeycage/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/15/nato-poland-russia-monkeycage/ |
NATO tanks and military vehicles are shown ahead of a live-fire exercise as part of the Iron Spear military drill in Latvia on Tuesday. (Ints Kalnins/Reuters)
Two people were killed in explosions Tuesday in the Polish town of Przewodow on the border with Ukraine, according to a Polish official. The incident came amid a day of heavy Russian strikes on Ukrainian territory, but it was unclear where the reported strike in Poland came from, or whether it was deliberate.
Because Poland is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a 30-member military alliance, a strike on the country could mark a pivotal moment in the Russia-Ukraine war — depending on what actually happened.
Despite the fact that authorities are still investigating the source and cause of the explosions, news of the incident quickly led to speculation about NATO’s Article 5, which states that “an armed attack against one or more of [the members] in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all” and that force can be used in response.
While clear-cut evidence of a deliberate Russian attack on Poland could theoretically lead a country to invoke Article 5, Polish authorities have yet to provide such details, and U.S. and European officials stressed Tuesday evening that they are still collecting information and coordinating among allies.
A more likely — but not certain — outcome is that Poland could invoke Article 4 of NATO’s founding treaty, which allows members to bring any issue of concern, especially related to security, for discussion at the North Atlantic Council, the alliance’s political decision-making body. This would give members the chance to come together to discuss the next steps.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki on Tuesday called an emergency meeting of the country’s national defense and security council. In a statement, Russia’s Defense Ministry said it did not strike any targets in or near Poland.
Oana Lungescu, a spokesperson for NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, said he would chair a meeting of alliance ambassadors Wednesday morning in Brussels “to discuss this tragic incident.” | 2022-11-16T00:32:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why are NATO Articles 4 and 5 being discussed after the blast in Poland? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/15/what-is-article-5-nato/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/15/what-is-article-5-nato/ |
Leaders in both chambers faced open revolt from some members as they make their selections
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) at a news conference Tuesday. (Elizabeth Frantz/For The Washington Post)
Republicans in both chambers of Congress mounted challenges to their leaders on Tuesday as disappointment over their lackluster performance in the midterm elections manifested in infighting and instability in the Capitol.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) won his party’s nomination for speaker Tuesday afternoon with 188 votes from the GOP caucus — well past the simple majority needed for victory. But 31 lawmakers voted for a challenger, presenting a steep obstacle for McCarthy come January, when he will need 218 votes to win the speakership when the 118th Congress convenes.
And in the Senate, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) announced he would challenge Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) during an hours-long airing of grievances among party members frustrated over their failure to win back the chamber. McConnell conceded that the group’s leadership elections, set for Wednesday morning, could be delayed if a majority of the caucus votes to postpone them.
“I want to repeat again — I have the votes, I will be elected,” McConnell told reporters after emerging from the party meeting. “The only issue is whether we do it sooner or later.”
The discord came just hours before Donald Trump was expected to announce his presidential reelection bid from Florida, injecting another note of turmoil on the Hill between those who remain staunch allies of the former president and others who are beginning to publicly question whether Trump contributed to the party’s stunning failure to win more seats last week. Midterm elections typically favor the party that doesn’t hold the White House, and many Republicans were predicting a “red wave” that failed to materialize in either chamber as battleground voters rejected many of the candidates most vocally committed to Trump’s false claim that he won the 2020 election.
House Republicans are expected to gain a razor-thin majority after the remaining congressional races from last week’s elections are decided. Senate Republicans lost a seat in Pennsylvania to Democrat John Fetterman, and are battling to flip one in Georgia in a runoff vote next month to avoid seeing their minority shrink further.
“This new Republican leadership is ready to get to work,” McCarthy said confidently after the elections. But he conceded that with such a small majority, even just a few members wield a lot of power. “Either we’re going to lead as a team or we’re going to lose as individuals.”
‘A long way from 218’
McCarthy faced a challenge for the speakership from Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), a member of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus who on Monday had announced his intention to run.
“The American people want us to turn a page. They do not want excuses or performance art, they want action and results,” Biggs wrote Monday on Twitter. “The promised red wave turned into a loss of the United States Senate, a razor-thin majority in the House of Representatives, and upset losses of premiere political candidates.”
Biggs and other House Freedom Caucus members have long been critical of McCarthy, criticism that ramped up following the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol, during which McCarthy was recorded blaming Trump for the attack and pledging to urge Trump to resign. McCarthy later pivoted to supporting Trump and voted against efforts to impeach him.
“To believe that Kevin McCarthy is going to be speaker, you have to believe he’s going to get votes in the next six weeks that he couldn’t get in six years,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) said. He said he didn’t believe McCarthy would become speaker and that he wouldn’t vote for him in January.
Another Freedom Caucus member, Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) noted, “One hundred eighty-eight is a long way from 218. I think this just opens up the opportunity for anyone interested to let us know what their vision is.”
The two most recent speakers, Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), also faced some rebellion initially, but they received 203 and 200 votes, respectively, in their 2018 and 2015 bids for speaker. Those are significantly higher starting points than McCarthy’s in his bid for 218 votes. Biggs has suggested he may not run against McCarthy again in January, however, leaving the McCarthy opposition without anyone to rally around. And some Freedom Caucus members, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), are backing McCarthy.
To win the speakership in January, McCarthy will probably be forced to make concessions to some of the House’s most conservative Republicans. But with his majority so slim, moderate members will also be able to make demands.
“He’s going to have to make a deal with the devil, and if he does, he’s also going to have to contend with the centrists and growing number of moderates in the conference,” said one Republican lawmaker who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid. “We’re usually the first to fold but we won’t this time. It’s too important for the future and longevity of our party.”
Some members hope dysfunction does not loom.
“It’s all right to disagree, to debate … but gridlock does not work, especially with a three- or four-seat majority,” said Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), a more moderate member. “We need to work together. And it’s not just for the party, it’s for the country. … We need to have a stable, predictable two years.”
In other leadership elections, House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) was elected majority leader on a voice vote. And Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), a onetime centrist who became a vocal Trump ally, won reelection as the chair of the Republican conference, the No. 3 position in House GOP leadership.
Raucous Senate meeting
In the Senate, Republicans spent hours Tuesday afternoon locked in an intense, closed-door conversation about why the party failed to gain a single seat in last week’s elections. Several members again called for Wednesday’s leadership elections to be postponed, and Scott announced he would formally challenge McConnell for the top spot.
Scott’s challenge marks the first contested race for Senate leader for either party since 1996, and one that is shaping up to center on who deserves blame for the midterms.
Scott, who chaired the National Republican Senatorial Committee, received a lot of criticism for how he raised and allocated funds this cycle, while McConnell, who is associated with a political action committee that spent more than $230 million backing Republicans, has been criticized by Trump and his allies for not doing more to help unsuccessful GOP Senate candidates in Arizona and New Hampshire.
McConnell is known for his tight grip on his caucus, and so far only a handful of Republicans have been vocal in their criticism of him. Since leaving office, Trump has launched multiple attacks on McConnell and his wife, contributing to some of the fractures within the party.
During the hours-long meeting that became what one senator had predicted the day before would be an “airing of grievances,” about 20 senators spoke, and some of them got heated, according to Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.), who is supporting Scott and called the meeting a “serious discussion” about where the party goes from here.
“Senator Scott disagrees with the approach that Mitch has taken in this election and for the last couple of years, and he made that clear,” said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who opposes McConnell for leader. “And Senator McConnell criticized Senator Scott’s management of the NRSC.”
McConnell mostly listened during the meeting, according to one senator present, and only interjected a few times when the discussion got “out of line.”
The conversation felt like a festival of blame.
“There was finger-pointing at the leader,” said the senator, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the meeting frankly. “There was finger-pointing at the NRSC. There was finger-pointing at Trump. There was finger-pointing at the candidates who had gone too far to the right and denied elections in the primaries. There was a lot of finger-pointing going on.”
In closing remarks, McConnell told the group he doesn’t mind not being liked as long as he makes sure Republican senators are successful.
In a lengthy letter to GOP colleagues, Scott said there was “no one person responsible for our party’s performance across the country.” He criticized the leadership for not releasing a Republican agenda.
Some Republicans expressed skepticism that Scott was the right person to challenge McConnell.
“If you’re going to make this about assessing blame for losing an election, I don’t know how the NRSC chairman gets off the hook,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), who is backing McConnell.
Others have pointed out that Scott’s decision to release a Republican agenda that included reauthorization votes for Social Security and Medicare and tax increases for low-income people provided a potent line of attack for Democrats this cycle.
“If you liked Republicans losing Senate campaigns, while saddling the party with tax increases and Medicare cuts, then you’re going to love Rick Scott’s campaign for leader,” McConnell adviser Josh Holmes said in a statement. “It does have a constituency but unfortunately for him it’s entirely within the confines of the Democratic conference.”
Many frustrated Senate and House Republicans had previously called to delay leadership elections in both chambers. On Monday, dozens of conservative leaders sent an open letter to Republican members of Congress to urge them to postpone their leadership elections until after the Dec. 6 Senate runoff election in Georgia.
“The Republican Party needs leaders who will confidently and skillfully present a persuasive coherent vision of who we are, what we stand for, and what we will do,” the letter stated. “We strongly urge both Houses of Congress to postpone the formal Leadership elections until after the December 6 runoff in Georgia and all election results are fully decided.”
The letter was signed by 72 conservative leaders, including Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, a lawyer and the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas; Matt Schlapp, chairman of the Conservative Political Action Coalition; and Mark Meadows, who was chief of staff in the Trump White House.
Republicans are expected to vote on a delay Wednesday morning. If the vote fails, McConnell is expected to stay on top, which would set him up to become the longest-serving leader of either party in the Senate.
Mariana Alfaro, Jacqueline Alemany, Camila DeChalus, Josh Dawsey and Paul Kane contributed to this report.
Biden, in call with Poland’s Duda, offers support with investigation into explosion
12:10 AMNoted: Mike Braun hands Rick Scott his first public endorsement for Senate GOP leader
11:47 PMNoted: The history of White House weddings, the ultimate public-private event | 2022-11-16T00:47:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Republican infighting roils Congress as midterms fallout continues - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/15/house-gop-leadership-elections-kevin-mccarthy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/15/house-gop-leadership-elections-kevin-mccarthy/ |
A witness reveals new details about the shooting Sunday that left three University of Virginia football players dead
From left, Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr. and D'Sean Perry, the University of Virginia football players who were killed Sunday. (University of Virginia Athletics/AP)
Most in the group, which included five U-Va. football players, didn’t know Jones, who’d briefly played football himself in 2018. Jones wasn’t in their African American theater class, said Ryan Lynch, a 19-year-old neuroscience major, but he’d been invited along by their professor because he was taking a social-justice class with her.
Jones, 22, sat apart in the theater as the two dozen or so students watched a Mosaic Theater Company play about Emmett Till, whose young life was cut short by racial violence.
Three people were killed and two were wounded in a shooting at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville on Nov. 14, according to police. (Video: The Washington Post, Photo: The Daily Progress/The Washington Post)
Lynch, a sophomore from Philadelphia, had met Jones only once before, when had both tried out to be runway models for a group on campus called Fashion for a Cause. Neither had ended up joining that fall. Seeing him alone at the back, Lynch said, she went to talk with him for a while and make sure he felt included.
But as she stood, she saw Lavel Davis Jr., a 6-foot-7 wide receiver on the football team, laying facedown in the middle of the bus.
They had grown close that semester in theater class. Just minutes before, Davis had been charging his cellphone using her computer and talking about how excited he was to be able to play football again after recovering from a concussion.
Jones, who’d sent the campus into lockdown for 12 hours, was arrested Monday after a massive manhunt. Now he is charged with three counts of second-degree murder, and any potential motive remains unknown.
They arrived at the Atlas Performing Arts Center on H Street in Northeast Washington for the 3 p.m. performance of “The Ballad of Emmett Till,” the first in a trilogy about the 1955 lynching that helped spark the civil rights movement.
Lynch spent much of the 2½-hour ride talking at the front of the bus with a friend and some of the football players.
As the bus neared Charlottesville, three of the players headed to the back to use the bathroom.
Since the shooting, Lynch said, she has replayed those last moments in her mind, trying to figure out what happened.
Others on the bus told her they heard Jones yell before opening fire — “Something to the effect of, ‘You guys are always messing with me,’” she said. “But that doesn’t make sense because no one was really talking to him the whole trip.”
Keith L. Alexander, Alice Crites, Susan Svrluga, Justin Jouvenal, Gene Wang and Emily Davies contributed to this report.
The latest: The University of Virginia campus is left shaken after a gunman opened fire on bus full of students, killing three and leaving two injured, authorities confirm. The suspect, identified as Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., was taken into custody and charged with murder.
Who are the UVA shooting victims? Officials identified the deceased victims as current U-Va. football players Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis and D’Sean Perry.
Who is accused of the UVA shooting? 22-year-old student Christopher Darnell Jones Jr. is the accused gunman in the U-Va. mass shooting. He’s now charged with three counts of second-degree murder. | 2022-11-16T01:13:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How did a UVA field trip end in gunfire? Witness reveals new details. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/15/uva-shooting-witness-reveals-details/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/15/uva-shooting-witness-reveals-details/ |
U-Va. head football coach Tony Elliott and athletics director Carla Williams spoke to the press about the three football players who were killed on Nov. 13. (Video: The Washington Post)
CHARLOTTESVILLE — In addition to supporting a distraught locker room after the fatal shootings of three Virginia football players, Cavaliers Coach Tony Elliott also has had to be a father. Those duties included talking with his two young sons about the tragic events that unfolded Sunday night.
Elliott’s oldest boy, A.J., was especially close with Lavel Davis Jr., an ebullient junior wide receiver who died after a gunman opened fire on a bus in an on-campus garage, also killing D’Sean Perry, a junior linebacker, and Devin Chandler, a junior wide receiver.
One conversation with A.J., 9, underscored for Elliott the pain of unimaginable loss. It was when A.J. told his father he understood Davis was not coming back.
“The tough part of this is my boys and my 9-year-old,” Elliott said Tuesday afternoon, choking back tears, his voice cracking then trailing off. “I mean, he considers these guys his friends, and that’s what’s tough, and every time I see him, I think about the 125 guys that I got, and that’s how their moms see them.
“We’re taking it one day at a time, trying to teach a 9-year-old about the reality of life on a level that he can understand it. We’re just putting our arms around him, loving him, supporting him and trying to teach him as much as he can comprehend.”
The visceral emotions from those moments have spilled over into the locker room, where Elliott spoke in-person with all his players for the first time Monday morning shortly after a shelter-in-place order had been lifted.
Elliott had to pause to collect himself Tuesday in relaying some of the details of that address at the school’s football facility, adding no decision has been reached as to whether the Cavaliers will play their final home game of the season Saturday against Coastal Carolina.
“We’ll make it together,” Virginia Athletic Director Carla Williams said about the decision. “It’ll be a discussion with coach and the team. Obviously, they’re going through a lot. We want to make sure they’re involved as well, and so we’ll use our best judgment, but it’ll be soon. We’ll make a decision soon.”
Elliott arrived roughly 15 minutes late for Tuesday’s news conference, marking his first public statements since the tragedy, because he was at the hospital visiting Michael Hollins Jr. The junior running back had a bullet removed after being shot in his back, underwent a second surgery Tuesday and is off a ventilator, according to his father, Mike Sr.
Elliott declined to provide an update on Hollins, but according to a person with knowledge of his situation, the prognosis is positive, although Hollins remains in serious condition. Hollins’s mother, Brenda, meantime, has been posting updates about her son on social media.
Neither Elliott, hired in December following the sudden and unexpected resignation of Bronco Mendenhall, nor Williams addressed in-depth what, if any, relationship the accused shooter, a walk-on for a semester in 2018, according to Williams, had with the deceased or current team members.
Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., 22, was arrested Monday and charged with three counts of second-degree murder.
“I don’t believe — there was no overlap,” Williams said of Jones’s time on the team and that of Davis, Perry and Chandler, a transfer from Wisconsin. “So I don’t know if there was any interaction outside of the class.”
Jones had joined about 25 other students Sunday on a school trip to Washington, where they attended a play and ate together, the university’s chief of police, Timothy Longo Sr., said Monday at a news conference. When the students returned to campus, Jones allegedly opened fire about 10:30 p.m. Sunday for reasons that remain unknown.
The elder Hollins said officials told him Jones brought the gun onto the bus, waited until returning to campus and began shooting.
“We have really focused on our players and their families,” Williams said. “It’s so shocking that you just want to love on our players, so that’s what we’ve — that’s where we’ve spent our energies. That’s where we’ve spent our time. I think that’s what we need to continue to do.”
Elliott and Williams spoke for approximately half an hour in the media workroom at John Paul Jones Arena before departing to be with players and staff members to plan the next steps, both on the field and with regard to the logistics of getting an entire team to memorial services.
Williams indicated the NCAA rules for attending such events are “permissive,” providing a great deal of latitude for players to travel and receive compensation for expenses.
“My initial thoughts are to be sensitive to whatever the young men desire to do as it relates to their teammates,” Elliott said. “Per Carla’s response from an NCAA standpoint, I won’t stand in the way of that because this is way bigger than football. This is a life situation here.”
Nick Anderson, William Wan, Laura Vozzella, John Woodrow Cox, Justin Jouvenal, Karina Elwood, Susan Svrluga, Emily Davies and Keith L. Alexander contributed to this report. | 2022-11-16T01:22:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What's next for UVA football after shootings? Coach shares next steps. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/15/uva-football-after-school-shooting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/15/uva-football-after-school-shooting/ |
Signs on a University of Virginia fraternity house on Monday honor the students killed in the shooting this week. (Justin Ide for The Washington Post)
CHARLOTTESVILLE — The University of Virginia on Tuesday said it had failed last month to report the suspected gunman in this week’s deadly shooting to a student-run judiciary committee after learning he had not disclosed a previous gun conviction.
Brian Coy, a U-Va. spokesman, had previously said the referral was made to the committee in late October, weeks before authorities allege 22-year-old Christopher Darnell Jones Jr. opened fire on a bus returning to campus from a field trip in Washington on Sunday night. He revised crucial details in that account Tuesday, blaming the oversight on an inadvertent mix-up.
Coy said university officials ultimately made the referral Tuesday over Jones’s not disclosing that he had a previous conviction for illegally possessing a concealed handgun. Coy also said the university had emailed Jones on Oct. 26 to warn him that he faced the imminent possibility of disciplinary action and to urge him to talk with U-Va. officials.
The new disclosure came as investigators continued to search for answers in the shooting and Jones’s criminal record came into sharper focus.
Football players Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr. and D’Sean Perry were killed and two others were wounded in the shooting. One of the wounded had surgery to remove a bullet from his stomach and was recovering in the hospital; UVA Medical Center said the other was slated to be discharged.
The shooting rocked the campus, forcing students to shelter in place while authorities searched for the gunman. On Tuesday, the mood was somber.
Buses flashed the names of victims between their routes. Students placed hundreds of flowers along the north entrance to Scott Stadium, where the three slain teammates once played. They wrote notes, dropped off teddy bears and shed tears outside the stadium. Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) was among the mourners, stopping by the venue to drop off bouquets of flowers and bow his head in prayer.
Classes will resume Wednesday, but students will not be required to complete graded assignments or take exams before Thanksgiving break, the university said.
As in other mass shootings, investigators and witnesses struggled Tuesday to understand what could have motivated the violence. Ryan Lynch, a student who was on the bus when the shooting occurred, said Jones did not know many of the other students on the field trip to see a play about Emmett Till in D.C. and did not interact with them much.
She said others on the bus told her they heard Jones yell something before opening fire: “Something to the effect of, ‘You guys are always messing with me.’”
“But that doesn’t make sense, because no one was really talking to him the whole trip,” she said.
U-Va. Athletic Director Carla Williams said at a news conference Tuesday that she was not aware of any interactions between Jones — who was briefly on the football team his freshman year — and members on the current roster. “I don’t believe — there was no overlap,” Williams said of Jones’s time on the team and that of Davis, Perry and Chandler, a transfer from Wisconsin. “So I don’t know if there was any interaction outside of the class.”
Michael Hollins Sr., whose son, Michael Hollins Jr., was wounded, said the younger Hollins told family members he heard Jones ask one of the players about a video game.
In the aftermath of the shooting, U-Va. officials had disclosed that an internal threat assessment team was notified about Jones in mid-September, after a student reported that Jones told him he had a gun. The tipster did not see the gun himself, and there was no sign at the time that Jones had made any specific threat connected with it, officials said.
The threat assessment team learned from an investigation that Jones’s roommate had not seen a gun, either. But investigators were unable to speak with Jones himself, U-Va. officials said, despite making efforts to do so.
The investigation also uncovered the fact that Jones had a concealed-weapon conviction in 2021 in Chesterfield County.
This sequence of events before the shooting raised questions in hindsight: Did the threat assessment team make a finding that Jones was not a threat? How could it resolve the matter without speaking with Jones directly? Why would the university not decide to knock on Jones’s door or insist that he come to a meeting as soon as possible to provide answers?
Coy said the university was unable to share more than what it had already provided during an intense period of crisis response.
“We’re still in the midst of a criminal investigation and responding to the immediate impacts of the tragic shooting that occurred less than 48 hours ago,” Coy wrote Tuesday afternoon. “I will update you with more information as I’m able.”
Police provided new information about the concealed-weapons conviction Tuesday. Chesterfield County police officers stopped Jones while he was driving on Feb. 22, 2021, because his vehicle’s registration “did not come back on file,” the department said in a statement.
During the stop, the officers discovered Jones was carrying a concealed handgun that he did not have a permit for, according to the statement. Court records show it was a 9mm semiautomatic gun.
The officers also found Jones was wanted on two arrest warrants, which court records show were for counts of felony fleeing the scene of an accident and misdemeanor reckless driving related to an August 2020 incident in Petersburg, Va.
Jones was taken into custody on the outstanding warrants and was charged with a misdemeanor count of possessing a concealed gun without a permit, according to the statement.
Jones was found guilty on the gun charge in Chesterfield County General District Court in August 2021, according to court records. He was given a 12-month suspended sentence and was ordered to surrender the gun, which the Chesterfield County police say they still have in their possession.
Jones was scheduled to be arraigned on three counts of murder in connection with the U-Va. shooting on Wednesday morning. No attorney was listed for him in court records.
When reached at home by a reporter Tuesday, Jones’s grandmother spoke only through the closed front door and said she knew nothing about what happened and did not want to talk.
“Everything hit me just like a ton of bricks,” she said.
She said she does not have a TV and heard about the shooting when a relative called at 6 a.m. Monday. “He always went with me to church, sang in the choir,” she said of her grandson. “I’ve got lots of pictures of it, tapes of it and everything.”
She said she did not want to share the items with a reporter: “I’m not prepared to show it.”
An additional jolt of fear shot through campus Tuesday after university officials announced the arrest of a 31-year-old Charlottesville man, Bryan Michael Silva, who was accused of making threatening online posts.
The posts prompted Charlottesville police to get a search warrant for a residence associated with Silva, and he was subsequently taken into custody on charges of possession of a firearm by a felon and drug possession, according to a university news release. He was not associated with the school. No attorney was listed for him in online court records.
“Yesterday was shock,” freshman Amogh Sandil said. “Today is feeling heavy.”
He said he never thought this is how his first few months of college would go. Then again, school shootings feel more familiar than foreign to the 18-year-old.
“There’s been senseless gun violence all across the country,” he said. “I guess it was just a matter of time before it got to us.”
Vozzella reported from Petersburg. Emily Davies and Gene Wang in Charlottesville and Keith L. Alexander, Susan Svrluga and William Wan in Washington contributed to this report. | 2022-11-16T01:31:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U-Va. says it failed to report suspected shooter for discipline - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/15/uva-failed-report-shooter-discipline/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/15/uva-failed-report-shooter-discipline/ |
Children’s National doctors rally over working conditions amid RSV surge
Amber Shelton, center, a first-year resident at Children’s National Hospital, speaks at a rally outside the hospital. She and other residents are calling for improved working conditions, including a cap on the number of patients they treat at any given time. (Oliver Contreras for The Washington Post)
Hannah Kilcoyne, a first-year resident at Children’s National Hospital, started a recent 14-hour overnight shift with a tall order: spend as much time as possible with newly admitted patients, write treatment plans for each, tend to an anxious father’s questions about his sick child and maintain her humanity.
She made it all work but felt fried. She was sure that better working conditions — higher wages, a flexible mental health fund and a patient cap — would make her a better doctor.
Kilcoyne, 28, was among dozens of residents and their supporters who rallied Tuesday evening outside Children’s National Hospital in Northwest D.C. to press for these and other benefits as union negotiations continue with the Top 5 children’s hospital. Residents stood under makeshift tents in the driving rain across from the hospital as ambulances screamed by, carrying signs that read, “I’m tired,” “Children deserve healthy doctors” and “Fair contract = physician wellness,” highlighting the challenges providers face as respiratory illnesses stress the health-care system.
Doctors exhausted in the third year of a pandemic marked by chronic staff shortages are now facing a national spike in RSV during flu season with the coronavirus still circulating — and juggling more patients as demand for a dwindling number of pediatric intensive care beds outstrips capacity.
“I felt like I had to choose what I wanted to do, and that’s not fair to these families,” Kilcoyne said in an interview Tuesday. “That’s not the kind of doctor I want to be … I want to be able to do it all.”
At Children’s National and hospitals across the country, residents — doctors who have completed medical school and are receiving specialty training for at least three years — say they need help coping with the demands of the job.
They are seeking a contract that provides higher wages, guaranteed mental health benefits outside the hospital and a contractually binding cap on the number of patients they can treat at a given time, which residents say can range from about 10 to 14 or more, depending on the shift. Doctors typically see more patients at night and on the weekend because there are fewer staff members working.
In a statement, Children’s National Hospital officials declined to discuss details of the negotiations, which the union said have been going on since April. Hospital officials thanked residents for their hard work in handling — with other hospital workers — a significant increase in emergency department visits and admissions.
“Children’s hospitals around the country are managing through record surges in patients while also managing health care workforce shortages. We also see some hospitals closing pediatric inpatient beds and even closing pediatric intensive care beds, which puts even greater stress on children’s hospitals,” hospital spokeswoman Diana Troese said in a statement.
“We remain hopeful that this surge in respiratory infections will subside to historical levels which would reduce some pressure on our teams.”
Residents at Children’s National belong to the Committee of Interns and Residents, which is a branch of the Service Employees International Union and represents 22,000 resident physicians and fellows nationwide.
The D.C. rally, which organizers called a Unity Break, although only off-duty doctors attended, is part of a week of demonstrations in eight cities, including San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago, to support contract negotiations. The events come at a time of growth for the resident-physician union; a record 3,000 residents joined in one year, according to a CIR statement.
At UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland, residents voted to authorize a strike — the first such vote in 30 years, according to the union — before reaching a deal last month with management. Residents at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx this month announced plans to unionize.
CIR officials said that after the coronavirus exposed structural inequities in health care and clinical training, “medicine should not continue its exploitative, traumatic and inequitable training culture.”
Health-care workers say they are drained from working at full tilt through covid and now RSV and wonder what crisis awaits them next.
Liz Taliaferro, 30, a graduate of the medical school at Brown University who uses they/them pronouns, said they realized in their third year of residency at Children’s National that residents are a hospital’s workhorses.
“What that means is when the hospital is stretched thin, residents are also stretched thin,” said Taliaferro.
Residents described working long shifts that often exceed 12 hours and caring for more patients than they have time for, which they said leaves them too exhausted to do much besides work and sleep — a recipe for poor mental health.
“I have personally experienced and witnessed our residents here stretch themselves to and beyond their emotional and physical limits,” Taliaferro said at the rally. “If you want kids to be well, you need their doctors to be well.”
Amber Shelton, 27, a first-year resident at Children’s National with family in Prince George’s County, entered medicine to work with the whole family unit. When time is short, she said, mining the possible genetic, environmental or autoimmune reasons for a child’s condition is impossible.
Shelton, a graduate of the medical school at Temple University, said doctors want to provide the best care.
“We want to be functioning at the level of a Top 5 children’s hospital,” she said. “We just need help doing that.”
The group’s numbers grew Tuesday evening as residents finished their shifts. Holding umbrellas, they walked across the street and joined the protest. | 2022-11-16T02:01:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Children's Hospital doctors rally over working conditions amid RSV - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/15/rsv-doctors-childrens-rally-union/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/15/rsv-doctors-childrens-rally-union/ |
Authorities failed to halt years-long pattern of ‘aggressive and unethical’ treatment, report says
Nick Miroff
Dawn Wooten, left, a nurse at Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Ga., speaks at a September 2020 news conference in Atlanta protesting conditions at the immigration jail. (Jeff Amy/AP)
Women held at a privately run immigration jail in Georgia were probably subjected to unnecessary gynecological procedures, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities did not halt a years-long pattern of what medical experts called “aggressive and unethical” treatment, according to a report published Tuesday by a bipartisan Senate panel.
The inquiry did not substantiate claims that women at the facility, operated by the for-profit company LaSalle Corrections, had been subjected to mass hysterectomies, as advocates initially claimed. But the investigation found that Georgia physician Mahendra Amin appeared to have performed “excessive, invasive, and often unnecessary gynecological procedures” on dozens of women detained for deportation proceedings between 2017 and 2020.
Neither ICE nor La Salle Corrections took action until 2020, after the whistleblower came forward, the report said.
“Our findings are deeply disturbing,” Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee’s permanent subcommittee on investigations, said at a hearing Tuesday.
ICE to stop detaining immigrants at two county jails under federal investigation
Denouncing what he called “a catastrophic failure by the federal government to respect basic human rights,” Ossoff said Amin scheduled surgeries when less-invasive options were available, performed “unnecessary injections and treatments” and often proceeded without the patients’ informed consent.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), the ranking Republican on the subcommittee, and other GOP lawmakers were not at the hearing, but Johnson’s name was on the report, and Ossoff thanked him and his staff for their work on the investigation.
From 2017 to 2020, Amin was the provider for 6.5 percent of all off-site obstetric and gynecological visits for ICE detainees nationwide. Yet he performed 82 percent of all “dilation and curettage” surgeries, 93 percent of all contraceptive injections and 94 percent of all laparoscopic surgery to remove lesions.
“One doctor,” Ossoff said.
He said the subcommittee asked to interview Amin, then subpoenaed him when he refused. Ossoff said Amin invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to testify.
Amin’s lawyer, Scott Grubman, defended Amin in an email to The Washington Post. Amin has filed lawsuits against a media outlet and an author who publicized the allegations, saying the claims against him were false.
“Dr. Amin has been practicing for nearly 40 years, and has never performed a procedure that was not, in his professional judgment, necessary and appropriate,” Grubman said in the email. “Curiously, the Congressional Committee seems to have reached certain conclusions regarding Dr. Amin’s medical care without requesting a single medical record from Dr. Amin’s office, proving that the Committee was not at all interested in the truth, but simply scoring political points.”
Grubman’s email did not respond to questions about why Amin took the Fifth or how Democratic or Republican lawmakers would gain politically from the report.
The Senate panel consulted with medical experts such as Peter Cherouny, an OB/GYN who previously conducted medical reviews for the Department of Health and Human Services and other federal agencies. Cherouny reviewed more than 16,600 pages of medical records that covered approximately 94 women treated by Amin, according to the report.
In the report, Cherouny found Amin’s use of certain procedures to be “too aggressive” and “woefully behind the times,” noting that Amin was not a board-certified physician who would be required to remain up-to-date on the most current medical practices.
Cherouny said the care Amin provided was “pretty good medicine for the 1980s, but we’re not there anymore,” according to the report.
U.S. border reopens for some migrants as judge strikes down Trump-era policy
Former detainees held at the Irwin facility filed a class-action lawsuit in 2020 against the jail, ICE, Amin, the Irwin County Hospital and other parties, alleging that the detainees had undergone nonconsensual and unnecessary gynecological procedures.
Amin has not been charged criminally, though the report says he was “under criminal investigation by multiple federal agencies” as of early 2022. Department of Homeland Security Inspector General Joseph Cuffari, who also testified at the hearing, confirmed that multiple agencies are still investigating the matter, including his.
In emotional testimony, Karina Cisneros Preciado, a mother of two who lives in Florida, said she was taken to Amin for a postpartum checkup in 2020, while she was in immigrant detention for several months. She testified that she was arrested after calling the police to report that her partner abused her. Authorities dropped criminal charges against her, she said, then transferred her to ICE for civil deportation proceedings.
She had been brought to the United States at age 8 from Mexico and had a 4-month-old daughter at the time of her arrest.
During the appointment, she said, Amin barely acknowledged her, roughly examined her pelvis, diagnosed her with a cyst and administered an injection. “Then he asks the nurse, ‘How many more?’ And he just walks off,” she told the Senate panel.
She said she signed a piece of paper but didn’t understand it.
Ossoff assailed Stewart D. Smith, assistant director of ICE Health Service Corps, for not properly vetting Amin. The senator said Amin had previously been sued by the Justice Department and the state of Georgia for allegedly “performing excessive and unnecessary procedures,” had been dropped by a major insurer for “excessive malpractice claims” and was not board-certified.
“Are you not shocked that this happened under your watch?” Ossoff asked Smith, who called the testimony “very troubling.”
Smith said ICE learned from the whistleblower in September 2020 of allegations of “forced medical procedures” and conducted a review the next month. ICE did not find evidence of any such procedures, he said in his written testimony, but immediately stopped sending patients to Amin “out of an abundance of caution and due to the seriousness of the allegations.”
In May 2021, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said he would stop housing detainees at the Irwin County facility.
“ICE is firmly committed to ensuring all those in its custody receive appropriate medical care and are treated with respect and dignity,” Smith said in his written testimony.
Pamela Hearn, medical director for LaSalle Corrections, said the private company had a “limited role” in detaining immigrants and transferring them to nearby health-care providers selected by Smith’s office. In her written testimony, she said ICE “was solely authorized and responsible for vetting and credentialing all off-site medical providers to offer medical services to detainees.”
Ossoff told Smith that if the committee had been able to background-check Amin and quantify the disproportionate number of procedures he was performing, then ICE should have, too.
“The data was warning you, but you weren’t looking at it,” Ossoff said. “And a lot of people got hurt.” | 2022-11-16T02:01:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ICE failed to stop medical mistreatment of female detainees in Georgia, report finds - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/11/15/ice-amin-women-medical-mistreatment/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/11/15/ice-amin-women-medical-mistreatment/ |
By Foster Klug and Kim Tong-Hyung | AP
NUSA DUA, Indonesia — With all the big issues dominating this week’s meeting of leaders of the world’s biggest economies — war, famine, poverty, to name just a few — there’s been little public discussion of North Korea and its pursuit of nuclear-armed missiles. | 2022-11-16T02:02:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Leaders quietly work to ramp up pressure on N. Korea at G-20 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/leaders-quietly-work-to-ramp-up-pressure-on-n-korea-at-g-20/2022/11/15/48ca2cea-654a-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/leaders-quietly-work-to-ramp-up-pressure-on-n-korea-at-g-20/2022/11/15/48ca2cea-654a-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html |
Terry Francona has been named manager of the year three times with Cleveland. (Seth Wenig/AP)
Despite Major League Baseball’s recent lurch toward younger managers, a pair of 60-plus veterans, the Cleveland Guardians’ Terry Francona and the New York Mets’ Buck Showalter, took home manager of the year honors for the 2022 season Tuesday.
Francona, 63, steered MLB’s youngest roster all the way to Game 5 against the New York Yankees in the American League Division Series. He oversaw MLB’s toughest lineup to strike out as Cleveland powered its way to the AL Central title.
“When you start to hear people talk about you personally, it makes you a little uneasy. But for the things it allows me to brag about our organization, that makes me really happy,” Francona said Tuesday night on MLB Network.
The award is Francona’s third as Cleveland’s manager. He also won in 2013 and 2016. This year, he earned 17 of 30 first-place votes. The Baltimore Orioles’ Brandon Hyde was second with nine. Seattle’s Scott Servais (one first-place vote) and Houston’s Dusty Baker (three) wound up third and fourth. Francona ranks third among active managers with 1,874 career wins. Only recent World Series winner Baker and newly hired Texas Rangers manager Bruce Bochy have more.
Just behind Francona on the active list is Showalter, who led the Mets to 101 wins in his first season with the team. He entered this week as a three-time manager of the year, with all of those honors coming in the AL — with the Yankees in 1994, the Rangers in 2004 and the Orioles in 2014.
The 66-year-old inherited a team that spent much of 2021 consumed by off-the-field chaos. But under Showalter, the Mets limited those distractions and led the NL East for most of the season. They then lost an NL playoffs first-round series to the San Diego Padres in three games.
“Every day you spend in the big leagues is an honor, and I’ve never forgotten that,” Showalter said on MLB Network. “... I didn’t start coaching or managing with the idea I would be a major league manager. You just take each job, you work the heck out of it, and see if somebody thinks you can do something else.”
He joined Tony La Russa and Bobby Cox as the only managers to win the award four times. Nobody else has won with four different teams. Showalter has managed 21 major league seasons in four different decades branching vastly different eras.
“What’s the old expression — adapt or die? There’s a lot of truth to that,” Showalter said on a conference call Tuesday night. “We always want to talk about things in years past. You don’t want to become a prisoner to it, but you also don’t want to mistake change for a lack of respect for tradition. ...
“I think that everybody will tell you it’s about the players and it’s about — you take your experience, but you have an open mind about learning new ways to get to the endgame. You’re trying to shorten the learning curve. I learn something every day. I see something every day I haven’t seen before. … We’ve all stepped on our tails. The problem is if you repeat it.”
Showalter tied with the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Dave Roberts with eight first-place votes but earned 10 second-place votes to Roberts’s four to claim the honor. The Atlanta Braves’ Brian Snitker earned seven first-place votes, the St. Louis Cardinals’ Oli Marmol landed five, and the Philadelphia Phillies’ Rob Thomson took two. All voting took place before the playoffs began.
MLB will announce its Cy Young Award winners Wednesday, with the MVPs following Thursday. | 2022-11-16T02:40:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Terry Francona, Buck Showalter are MLB's managers of the year - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/15/terry-francona-buck-showalter-manager-year/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/15/terry-francona-buck-showalter-manager-year/ |
Trump is out for vengeance — and to protect himself from prosecution
By George T. Conway III
Former president Donald Trump speaks during the America First Policy Institute's America First Agenda Summit in Washington, D.C., on July 26. (Al Drago/Bloomberg)
That goes also for many Republicans, particularly the sophisticated ones. Their views were succinctly stated by Marc Thiessen just the other day: “Mr. President, it is not in your interest to run in 2024. If you do, you will likely lose. And you will destroy what remains of your legacy in the process. Please, don’t do it,” Thiessen begged.
George T. Conway III: Trump’s luck may finally be running out
Legacy? Trump has none, other than his impeachments and the stain of Jan. 6, 2021. He’ll never be remembered for much else. Historians will perpetually rank him as among the worst — if not the worst — in the presidential pantheon. As they should, befitting a man who, despite having sworn an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, did his level best to destroy it.
Trump can’t ruin a legacy he doesn’t have, but he could easily wreak something else: the Republican Party. Which is why so many in the GOP are, at long last, so alarmed. And why Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, the right-wing donor class and so many Republican Party operatives seek an alternative. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, they hope, will save the day.
That’s unlikely. DeSantis is popular, to be sure, and won a victory last Tuesday far exceeding anything Trump could ever achieve. But the problem is that the GOP is no longer just a political party — it’s something of a cult.
One Republican pollster taxonomizes the party thusly: Ten percent are “Never Trumpers,” who have long despised Trump. (This might be high, because of people like me who re-registered as independents to escape the cult.) As many as 50 percent could be considered “Maybe Trumpers,” Republicans who voted for Trump twice, but are exhausted by him and would love to support someone else. That leaves 40 percent, the “Always Trumpers” — the cultish voters who will never abandon him, even if he shoots someone on Fifth Avenue, or at the Capitol, or anywhere else.
The math means Trump can only be bested for the GOP nomination in a contest that’s one-on-one from the outset. Given the delegate rules, 40 percent could be enough to win a multicandidate race.
Who could beat Trump one-on-one? Certainly not the one Republican sure to run: former vice president Mike Pence, who’ll run for no better reason than that he has nothing else to do. Here I agree with Trump: Pence is weak. Sure, he did the right thing on Jan. 6, for which he deserves eternal credit. But it took a titanic struggle of conscience for him to do what his constitutional oath so manifestly required. And it took nearly two years for him to muster the backbone, as he did this week, to say he was angry at Trump — the man who all but set the mob after him.
George T. Conway III: Donald Trump’s new reality
DeSantis would have a chance to beat Trump one-on-one, but why should he try? He’s ambitious to be sure, but running against Trump would be a brutal mud bath. To beat Trump, an opponent wouldhave to go after Trump hammer and tong, battering his ego to trigger him into narcissistic, self-defeating, unhinged rages. That would be fun to watch: Hey, Donald, where’s the wall? Where’s that check from Mexico? Why did you stand by your buddy Anthony S. Fauci for so long?
But does DeSantis have that in him? We don’t know yet. He’s not the accomplished orator some make him out to be. Most importantly, he’s only 44. He’ll be 48 when he serves out his new gubernatorial term in 2026. Why not just sit back and keep building his war chest? Even if DeSantis wins the 2024 nomination, he’ll wind up with the Always Trump 40 percent hating his guts. The alternatives for the GOP aren’t pretty: Another national defeat led by Trump, or intraparty civil war.
But if you think that’s great for the rest of us, I’ve got bad news for you. A big reason Trump announced his run is he fears criminal prosecution. He’s a desperate man, a threatened and rabid animal, who could face multiple indictments (the stolen classified documents, Georgia) over the next year. | 2022-11-16T02:45:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | George Conway: Why Trump is running again in 2024 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/15/george-conway-trump-2024-prosecution/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/15/george-conway-trump-2024-prosecution/ |
The twice-impeached former president has been eager to declare his candidacy, hoping to get ahead of likely rivals and potential criminal charges
Former president Donald Trump announces that he will again run for president in 2024 during an event his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., on Nov. 15, 2022. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
PALM BEACH, Fla. — Donald Trump, the twice-impeached former president who refused to concede defeat and inspired a failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election culminating in a deadly attack on the Capitol, officially declared on Tuesday night that he is running to retake the White House in 2024.
The announcement at his Florida Mar-a-Lago Club came in a moment of political vulnerability for Trump as voters resoundingly rejected his endorsed candidates in last week’s midterm elections. Since then, elected Republicans have been unusually forthright in blaming Trump for the party’s underperformance and potential rivals are already openly plotting challenging Trump for the nomination.
Trump has been eager to reclaim the spotlight and pressure Republicans to line up behind him, inviting prominent party leaders to his launch event and keeping track of who attended. Advisers spent much of the year lobbying Trump to hold off announcing until after the midterms, arguing that he might motivate Democratic voters or get drowned out by election news. He finally agreed to promise a “very big announcement” for Tuesday, and stuck with that plan despite further efforts to convince him to wait until after next month’s runoff for a Georgia Senate seat.
“This comeback starts right now,” Trump said Tuesday night at his Mar-a-Lago resort, the site three months ago of an FBI search warrant to recover records he took from the White House, including some that were highly classified.
Trump’s attorneys filed paperwork Tuesday night with the Federal Election Commission for a newly named “Donald J. Trump for President 2024” committee. The filing said the new campaign would coordinate with an existing Trump Save America Joint Fundraising Committee, allowing him to potentially raise money at the same time for other political efforts.
Trump’s urgency to announce also comes from wanting to get ahead of a potential indictment in any of the several ongoing criminal investigations into his conduct. He and close associates are under multiple criminal investigations: by the Justice Department for the effort to submit phony electors claiming Trump won key states in the 2020 election and for the mishandling of classified documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago; and by an Atlanta-area prosecutor for pressuring Georgia officials to overturn that state’s election results. His company is also in the middle of a trial for criminal tax fraud and the New York attorney general filed a lawsuit that could freeze the company’s operations, already winning the appointment of an independent monitor.
A defeated former president running for election again while facing potential criminal indictment is unprecedented in U.S. history. Trump becomes the first former president to run again since Theodore Roosevelt, and the first since Grover Cleveland do so after losing reelection. He is the only president to be impeached twice, and the only one impeached by a bipartisan vote.
Almost two years on, Trump’s divisiveness has remained a defining feature of American politics, reshaping the Republican Party in his image as much as he has mobilized Democrats against him and strained the checks and balances in every branch and level of government. In exit polls by AP VoteCast, 54 percent of voters said they had an unfavorable view of Trump, including 44 percent who were “very unfavorable.” The same survey found 34 percent of midterm voters said they cast their ballot to express opposition to Trump, with 22 percent who said they were voting as an expression of support for him and 41 percent who said he wasn’t a factor.
The GOP’s disappointing midterm results have heightened efforts within the party to move on from Trump. On Monday, David McIntosh, president of the conservative Club for Growth, said the group’s research showed Trump’s attacks on other Republicans are taking a toll on his support and joined calls for him to delay his announcement until after the Georgia runoff. Many of the party’s top donors, who were often not Trump’s biggest fans to begin with, have begun private conversations about how best to sideline him for a new generation of leaders, according to people in touch with them.
“He’s doing it from a place of defensiveness, of his own self-opportunity and weakness,” New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R), fresh from a 16-point win in the first presidential primary state, said in an interview earlier Tuesday outside the Republican Governors Association meeting in Orlando. “So he’s announcing he’s going to run for president at a low point in his political career. I don’t know how that’s going to work out, man.”
Trump is plowing ahead amid a broader reckoning for the party’s leadership after last week’s disappointments. In the House, Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) handily won a party leadership election Tuesday but still needs to line up enough votes for an outright majority of the chamber in January. In the Senate, several Republicans have called for postponing leadership elections until after the Georgia runoff, and Sen. Rick Scott of Florida announced a challenge to longtime leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Several challenges have also been floated to Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, though her position appears to remain secure.
Trump’s candidacy also increases the likelihood that President Biden runs for reelection, setting up a rematch of the 2020 campaign, according to the president’s advisers.
In a tweet Tuesday night, Biden tweeted from his personal account: “Donald Trump failed America."
Trump, born on June 14, 1946, would be the oldest president to enter the White House at the age of 78 and about seven months in January 2025. Biden, born on Nov. 20, 1942, entered office in January 2021 at the age of 78 and about two months.
Despite his vulnerabilities, Trump’s enters the presidential race with clear advantages. He has amassed a roughly $69 million war chest that he will be legally barred from using to fund his campaign but could route to a super PAC to support his candidacy without direct coordination. He can also benefit from the massive database of donors that his old group built up and he remains the party’s best fundraiser, frequently appearing in solicitations for other candidates and committees. He is also the party’s biggest draw for rallies, routinely packing events with thousands of fans, and his endorsements proved decisive in many primaries, even if many of those candidates went on to lose in November. In the AP VoteCast exit polls, 66 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said they considered themselves to be supporters of the Make America Great Again movement.
Trump has already begun attacking his likely GOP rivals, including DeSantis and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin. Trump views DeSantis especially as a threat, according to his advisers, even before the governor’s landslide reelection last Tuesday buttressed his esteem with many of the party’s top donors and campaign professionals. DeSantis is scheduled to speak this week at meetings of the Republican Governors Association and the Republican Jewish Coalition.
DeSantis brushed back at Trump’s swipes earlier on Tuesday, saying at a news conference, “I would just tell people to go check out the scoreboard from last Tuesday night.”
In a close-door speech at the governors’ meeting, former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, once a close Trump adviser, criticized the ex-president and other divisive candidates, saying the party would lose if it kept nominating unelectable people and emphasizing that voters “rejected crazy,” according to attendees. More surprising than Christie’s remarks, they said, were the rounds of ovation they received.
Trump has made clear that former vice president Mike Pence would not return as his running mate. According to testimony to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, Trump profanely lambasted Pence for refusing to overturn the electoral college results, sympathized with rioters chanting for Pence’s hanging and never called Pence to check on his well-being. At recent rallies, Trump has mocked Pence’s single-digit standing in early primary polls.
“I really do believe we’ll have better choices,” Pence told a TV interviewer Tuesday when asked if he’d support Trump in 2024.
In Pence’s place, Trump’s inner circle believes an ideal No. 2 would embody at least some of Pence’s attributes — absolute subservience and a willingness to spout the Trump line, both publicly and privately, no matter how outrageous. Trump has made complimentary remarks recently about Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem (R).
Trump’s campaign will be led by Florida operative Susie Wiles, veteran strategist Chris LaCivita, and former White House political aide Brian Jack. His son Donald Trump Jr. is increasingly involved in the political operation, whereas daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner have drifted away since leaving the White House. Donald Trump also frequently speaks with loyalist Boris Epshteyn, but many of Trump’s other advisers, lawyers and consultants say they talk to him less often than they once did.
A recent NBC News poll found that more Republicans identified themselves with the party over Trump than ever before, and found 47 percent of Americans have a very negative view of him. Multiple polls have shown that a majority of Americans believe he should be charged with a crime for his role in encouraging supporters to march on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, leading to a riot that injured more than 100 police officers and disrupted the ceremonial counting of electoral votes. Even as his popularity remains high among Republicans, there is a hushed but notable sense among both political professionals and base voters that the party might be better off with someone new in 2024.
Among the changes in Trump’s life since leaving office is that the lifelong New Yorker changed his voter registration to Florida, an increasingly GOP-leaning state, and lists his Mar-a-Lago Club as his primary residence rather than Trump Tower in Manhattan.
Trump has publicly indicated that a second term would double down on his brand of combative, nationalist politics and a drastic policy agenda. He has called for executing drug dealers, modeled off authoritarian governments like China and Singapore, and suggested he will be more aggressive in deploying federal forces against crime, unrest and protests. As he continues to insist without evidence that Biden benefited from subterfuge and fraud, Trump has called for sweeping restrictions on voting, including ending early voting (currently in use in 46 states) and voting by mail (available without an excuse in 35 states).
Alumni of Trump’s administration have been working to assemble rosters of appointees and shovel-ready policies to supply a return to power with more discipline and efficiency than before.
The packed ballroom at Mar-a-Lago Tuesday night was a mash-up of a Trump rally and a glitzy gala, with superfans sporting costumes such as a brick-printed suit (“Build the Wall”), Bikers for Trump in leather vests and about a dozen members of the “Front Row Joes,” who travel around to every Trump rally. The hundreds of attendees included alumni of the Trump White House such as former Office of Management and Budget head Russ Vought, speechwriter Stephen Miller, former acting intelligence director Ric Grenell, former acting attorney general Matthew Whitaker, former Pentagon aide Kash Patel and former aide Sebastian Gorka.
All eras of Trump’s political life were represented, from advisers Roger Stone and Michael Glassner to lawyer Christina Bobb. Republican officials included outgoing Rep. Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina and Michigan GOP chair Meshawn Maddock. Other invitees included MyPillow CEO and election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell and right-wing online prankster Alex Stein.
Since winning his party’s nomination in 2016, Trump has driven a partisan realignment — inspiring massive turnout among rural and non-college-educated White voters while pushing more prosperous suburban parts of the country into the Democratic column. He has also overseen a dramatic shift in the ideological focus of the American right, embracing a more restrictive approach to immigration, a more skeptical view of foreign military intervention and a new interest in tariffs as a way to protect American industry.
Michael Scherer, Joshua Dawsey and Ashley Parker contributed to this report.
House control: Control of the House is still up in the air, though Republicans are nearing majority as votes are being tallied in key undecided races. Follow our live coverage and get results for key House races.
Senate control: Democrats will keep Senate majority after winning eight out of the nine seats rated competitive by Cook Political Report. The only remaining race will be decided in Georgia in a Dec. 6 runoff. Find election results for your state or see key Senate races. | 2022-11-16T02:49:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Donald Trump announces he is running for president in 2024 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/15/trump-2024-announcement-running-president/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/15/trump-2024-announcement-running-president/ |
Former president Donald Trump announces that he will once again run for president during an event at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., on Tuesday. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
Wallace, who was a Trump precursor, had a precursor. Huey Long, architect of a Louisiana police state, was America’s first dangerous demagogue of the era of mass communication, which dawned before television and social media: on radio. Long was Willie Stark in Robert Penn Warren’s 1946 roman à clef, “All the King’s Men.” In it, Warren’s protagonist is advised: “Make ’em cry, or make ‘em laugh … Or make ‘em mad. Even mad at you. Just stir ‘em up … and they’ll love you and come back for more.” | 2022-11-16T03:15:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | George Will: Republicans should deny Trump the 2024 nomination - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/15/george-will-republicans-deny-trump-nomination-2024/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/15/george-will-republicans-deny-trump-nomination-2024/ |
FILE - Actor Danny Masterson appears at the CMT Music Awards in Nashville, Tenn., on June 7, 2017. Opening statements are set to begin soon in the trial of the “That ’70s Show” actor, who is charged with raping three women about 20 years ago. A Los Angeles County jury is expected to be seated as soon as Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2022, in the trial of the former star of the long-running sitcom. Masterson is a member of the Church of Scientology and all three women are former members, making it likely the church will loom large during the trial. (Wade Payne/Invision/AP, File) | 2022-11-16T03:33:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Defense: Masterson rape case plagued by contradictions - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/defense-masterson-rape-case-plagued-by-contradictions/2022/11/15/0f3d4c38-6553-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/defense-masterson-rape-case-plagued-by-contradictions/2022/11/15/0f3d4c38-6553-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html |
Arizonans, who pride themselves on a maverick spirit, unexpectedly delivered Democrats their best results in decades
A Phoenix polling place on Election Day on Nov. 8. (Eric Thayer for The Washington Post)
PHOENIX — In the waning weeks of Arizona’s midterm election campaign, from the red rocks in the state’s north to the desert border in its south, one word reverberated: democracy.
Democrats warned that the stakes for the nation were life-or-death, that the country’s system of governance itself was on the ballot, while Republicans doubled-down on their attacks against the rule of law and democratic norms.
In a purple state where fewer than one in three registered voters is a Democrat, and where inflation has reached historic levels, Republicans were confident about their chances for an emphatic victory. Instead of pivoting to issues with broad appeal, they took the MAGA roadshow into the heart of suburban Phoenix, home to discerning independents and moderate Republicans with a history of ticket-splitting. They claimed victory even before the results were known.
But Arizonans, who pride themselves on a maverick spirit, unexpectedly delivered Democrats their best results in decades. Defying pollsters and political strategists, voters backed candidates who promised to preserve the guardrails of democracy.
It was a trend that defined this year’s midterm elections across the country.
Democrats kept control of the Senate and netted at least two governorships and at least three statehouse legislative chambers. While the GOP is still favored to take control of the U.S. House of Representatives, the party has gained far fewer seats than expected.
In Arizona, experts and analysts said Republican candidates misread the electorate, betting that Trump-style talking points would energize the party’s base. But the results suggest that approach alienated many moderates and independents, who appear to have sided with Democrats, abstained from certain races or sat out the election altogether, delivering liberals one of their largest victories in state history.
“In this election, Arizonans chose solving our problems over conspiracy theories,” Governor-elect Katie Hobbs (D) said at a victory rally on Tuesday. “We chose sanity over chaos, and we chose unity over division. We chose a better Arizona, and we chose democracy.”
Hobbs, the current secretary of state, narrowly defeated the former TV anchor Kari Lake, one of Trump’s most strident supporters. Hobbs oversaw the 2020 election in Arizona and gained a national profile in the months that followed, appearing often on television to swat away baseless claims of wrongdoing that blossomed here following Trump’s loss.
Lake repeatedly refused to recognize Joe Biden as the nation’s legitimate president and said she would not have certified Arizona’s 2020 election results — the governor’s legal duty. The race remained close until the end, and Lake, who made election denialism a central component of her campaign, has called the results “BS.” She has not called Hobbs to concede, as of Tuesday night.
Lake’s advisers and allies continued to weigh possible legal options Tuesday as they awaited results from the final batches of ballots, according to a person close to the campaign. The discussions were unfolding in coordination with Abraham Hamadeh, the Republican nominee for attorney general who was trailing his Democratic opponent but whose race had not yet been called.
In the state’s other marquee race, Sen. Mark Kelly (D) was projected to beat Republican nominee Blake Masters, the venture capitalist whose campaign commercial advertised his disbelief in the 2020 election results. Masters on Tuesday called Kelly to concede and congratulated him on his reelection.
Those expected wins cap a recent streak of success for Democrats that analysts say started with Trump.
“The trend in Arizona is quite clear: Voters have told us this is not a Trump state,” said Barrett Marson, a Republican strategist in Arizona who blames Trump’s influence for tanking his party’s performance. “If there is anything that Donald Trump has accomplished in the last several years, it is turning Arizona from a reliably red state to a purple state. That is his legacy in Arizona.”
Until the 2016 race, Republican nominees had captured more than 50 percent of the vote in four straight presidential elections and in 14 of the previous 16 contests, dating back to 1952 — often by decisive margins. In 2016, Trump won the state’s 11 electoral votes with just under 49 percent of ballots cast. Four years later, he fell short of 50 percent again and became the first Republican to lose the state since 1996.
Meanwhile, Republicans in recent cycles have maintained a consistent share of registered voters. In this political climate — especially given skyrocketing inflation in the Phoenix metro area — the GOP “should have crushed it,” said Samara Klar, a professor at the University of Arizona who studies political behavior. But the party nominated candidates far to the right of the statewide electorate.
“Arizona is switching from red to blue, or red to purple, not because the voters are changing,” Klar said, “but because the candidates are changing.”
Democrats saw “a great window of opportunity” after the Republican primaries in August, said John Loredo, a Democratic political consultant who served four terms in the Arizona statehouse.
“These were the most extreme candidates we’ve ever seen,” Loredo said.
The results didn't surprise him, because issues like election denialism may win in the Republican primary, he said, “but that’s not the majority of Arizonans.”
“As long as the Republican Party remains hijacked by these really extreme folks, nothing is going to change,” Loredo said. “Democrats are going to win more and more and more.”
Democrats in statewide races pitched themselves to independents and traditional Republicans either by downplaying their connection to the national party, or by portraying themselves as moderate alternatives to their radical opponents.
On the trail, Kelly did his best to appear independent of the national party. He didn’t often appear with Arizona’s other Democratic hopefuls, and he avoided mentioning President Biden.
“When he gives speeches, he sounds like a Republican,” said Klar, the University of Arizona professor.
As of Tuesday, Kelly had received 12,000 more votes than Hobbs, an indication that some residents may have cast their ballots for him and then chose not to vote for governor at all.
Meanwhile, Adrian Fontes, Arizona’s new secretary of state, did not moderate his message. Rather, his campaign shifted the target audience.
About two and a half weeks before Election Day, the Fontes team moved his political advertising off MSNBC and other outlets deemed too left of center and onto Fox News, along with making a big push on talk radio stations popular in rural areas.
“Those are the folks we needed to win,” Fontes said in an interview. “A lot of Democrats campaign as if they’re running to govern for Democrats. You’ve got to campaign as if you’re running to govern for everyone, because that’s the truth. Democrats in Arizona are the minority out of the three main voting blocs. So you have to talk to Republicans, you have to talk to independents, it’s just a no-brainer.”
During the Democratic primary, Fontes’ slogan, “Protect Democracy,” was plastered on his website and printed on his signs. But when he kicked off his general election campaign, his staff made a subtle rhetorical shift: He was now running to “Protect the Republic.”
Fontes acknowledged the change in diction was meant to appeal to voters on the right, where some argue that the United States is a republic, not a democracy, and they treat the latter like a dirty word.
“I don’t want to be nice, I want to win,” Fontes said of the strategy. “And if sharing the exact same message using slightly different language that is more politically acceptable to a certain group is going to get it for me, I’m not proud enough or pure enough to say that I’m going to insist on just one way of doing it.”
It’s unclear how many Republicans wound up voting for him, but as of Tuesday, Fontes had received more than 1.3 million votes, more than any other Democrat but Kelly.
Fontes favors making voting easier, and he courted controversy as Maricopa County recorder in 2020, when he announced he would mail early ballots to all of the jurisdiction’s registered Democrats — contrary to state law — to address pandemic-fueled fears over in-person voting. A court blocked the move, and Hobbs rebuked him in an email.
On the campaign trail, Fontes underscored opponent Mark Finchem’s history of extremism, including his membership in the Oath Keepers militia group and his presence in a mob outside the Capitol on Jan. 6. Finchem, who would have been charged with overseeing elections, said he would not have certified Biden’s victory and suggested he might reject future Democratic wins. He seemed unwilling to accept his own loss, urging supporters on the site Truth Social to get out their Trump flags and to “Get ready to rumble.”
In the attorney general race, Democrat Kris Mayes, who was a registered Republican until 2019, cast her contest as one of high stakes and national import. At an election night celebration, she told a crowd of supporters that Republicans would “dismantle our democracy.” A week later, she held a slight lead in the race, but it remained too close to call.
Her opponent, 31-year-old first-time candidate Hamadeh, made baseless allegations of election malfeasance one of his campaign’s central issues. He has repeatedly promised to pursue criminal charges against “those who worked to rob President Trump in the rigged 2020 election.” In one social media post, he vowed “a day of reckoning” and added an image of handcuffs. With votes still being counted, Hamadeh urged supporters to “FIGHT LIKE HELL,” a Trump rallying cry in 2020.
So far, few of the candidates’ backers have appeared willing to fight — at least not in the aggressive, militaristic manner groups displayed following Trump’s loss.
Outside of Maricopa County’s ballot tabulation center, the site of raucous protests in 2020, small crowds of conservatives gathered in recent days. On the first occasion, they numbered near 100. On the second, their ranks had dwindled to a couple dozen.
The mood was subdued, and the protests peaceful. Sheriff’s deputies outnumbered attendees, and a drone buzzed overhead. People prayed or waved signs, alternately urging workers to “count the votes” and alleging that Democrats were corrupt.
Carol Gairing, 67, was one of a few people who attended both events, making the 45-minute drive from her home in Chandler twice in three days. On Monday, she held a Kari Lake sign and said she wasn’t sure “if anything nefarious is happening,” but that she just wanted “the truth to be revealed.”
“We’re not a rowdy group,” Gairing said, adding that she’d “like to see a recount” in the Lake race, but wasn’t hopeful about legal challenges.
“I’m not sure I trust that the courts are going to be in our favor,” she said.
The next day, at Hobbs’ victory party inside a small, Latina-owned business in downtown Phoenix, the mood — and the outlook on the country’s future — was decidedly different.
Gov. Doug Ducey (R) had just called to congratulate her, beginning an orderly transition of power. When Hobbs took the mic, she faced the same throng of television cameras that spent much of the past year following Lake, and she warned that attacks on democracy would continue.
“It is on all of us to continue to defend it,” she said.
Michele Newcomb, a 64-year-old Phoenix resident, watched from the crowd. She had been dismayed by her state’s open grapple with basic democratic traditions, and the unexpected win gave her hope.
“I support democracy,” she said, tears in her eyes.
Hobbs left the stage accompanied by a state police detail that is now responsible for her protection. She is expected to be sworn into office on Jan. 2.
Isaac Stanley-Becker and Hannah Knowles contributed to this report. | 2022-11-16T03:33:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Arizona voters back candidates who vowed to protect democracy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/15/arizona-democracy-election-results/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/15/arizona-democracy-election-results/ |
Live updates NASA tries again to launch its Artemis I moon mission
LA to New York in 15 minutes: Fun facts about the SLS rocket
Another hydrogen leak: NASA sending in a ‘red team’ to fix
The SLS booster and Orion spacecraft, explained
Who will fly on the first crewed missions of the Artemis program?
Launching at night is not ideal but doable, NASA says
NASA launches the Artemis I rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Nov. 15 for their moon orbit mission. (Video: The Washington Post)
NASA is once again attempting to launch its giant Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft to the moon. The two-hour launch window opens at 1:04 a.m. and if all goes well, the rocket will propel the autonomous spacecraft, without any astronauts on board, on a test flight scheduled to last 25 days, 11 hours and 36 minutes, ending with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego.
The latest attempt comes after NASA left the rocket on its launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center while Hurricane Nicole battered the Florida coastline. NASA engineers said that it did not suffer any real damage and that it was ready to fly.
The SLS has never flown before. Two previous launch attempts, one in late August and another in early September, were waved off because of technical issues: a faulty engine sensor valve and persistent leaks of the liquid hydrogen the SLS uses as fuel. Another attempt was canceled because of Hurricane Ian.
If all goes well on this test flight, known as Artemis I, NASA will put astronauts on the next mission, called Artemis II, to orbit around the moon, perhaps as early as 2024. A human landing on the lunar surface, the first since the last of the Apollo mission in 1972, could come in 2025 or later.
The Artemis I flight will travel a total of 1.3 million miles and reenter the Earth’s atmosphere at 24,500 mph, or Mach 32. NASA wants to see how well the Orion’s heat shield performs under those extreme conditions before putting astronauts on board.
The SLS rocket is big — hard-to-fathom big. It’s so big that even the liquid hydrogen tank is 130 feet tall. And when it gets filled with propellant, which is kept at minus-423 degrees Fahrenheit, it shrinks about six inches. To compensate, all the ducts, vent lines and brackets that connect to the tank have to be able to move like an accordion.
There are more than 45 miles of cables in the core stage, with more than 18 miles in the engine section alone.
The four RS-25 engines mounted to the bottom of the core stage are left over from the space shuttle program, but have received significant upgrades, including new engine controllers, which serve as the brain of the engine, as well as software updates.
NASA is working to stem a liquid hydrogen leak on its Space Launch System rocket, sending a crew to the launch pad to tighten bolts around a valve at the base of the SLS rocket’s booster stage.
The setback came as the countdown had been going exceedingly smoothly, and NASA was moving swiftly toward a launch scheduled for 1:04 a.m. Wednesday from the Kennedy Space Center.
But then at about 9:15 p.m., agency officials noticed an intermittent leak from what’s known as a replenish valve on the booster stage. The stage had been fully fueled with liquid hydrogen, but it is so cold, -423 degrees Fahrenheit, that it continually boils off. To keep the tanks full, NASA has to replenish the fuel.
Cobbled together with refurbished legacy pieces of space shuttle boosters, NASA’s Space Launch System has been years in development and still has its critics. However, it’s the biggest rocket NASA has attempted to launch since the Apollo program’s giant Saturn V. The uncrewed Artemis spacecraft on top of it is set for a serious, deep-space mission. Critics’ reservations aside, this is the most excitement that’s surrounded a NASA mission in years.
Artemis 1: New booster with
a big mission
NASA’s new rocket will use “legacy” hardware — meaning, largely left over from the space shuttle program — to launch the uncrewed Orion spacecraft around the moon and back. Along the way, Orion will also launch 10 shoebox-sized “cubesats” — miniature satellites — to study the Moon and the environment around it.
SLS BLOCK 1
(Orion)
Orion stage
RS25 rocket engines (repurposed space shuttle engines) (4)
A long-awaited, and unusual, return to the moon
Orion will enter a long, looping orbit around the moon that will take it farther from the Earth than any crew-capable space vehicle has ever gone. There’s no crew, but sensor-packed mannequins will send back details on how the flight would go
if there were one.
The total mission is scheduled to take about 42 days.
lunar orbit
Note: Orbit diagram is not to scale.
WILLIAM NEFF/THE WASHINGTON POST
Artemis 1: New booster with a big mission
SLS BLOCK 1 ROCKET
(Orion
spacecraft)
(liquid
oxygen,
fuel)
A long-awaited, and unusual, return
“Distant retrograde”
The total mission is scheduled
to take about 42 days.
Orion will enter a long, looping orbit around the moon that will take it farther from the Earth than any crew-capable space vehicle has ever gone. There’s no crew, but sensor-packed mannequins will send back details on how the flight would go if there were one.
NASA has yet to name the astronauts who will fly on the first crewed missions of the Artemis program. Artemis II, which would go into lunar orbit, perhaps in 2024, and the Artemis III mission, which would land on the moon, would be the most significant astronaut assignments since the Apollo era.
But the astronaut corps has changed dramatically since then. During the early days of NASA, it was dominated by White men with military backgrounds. Today, NASA’s astronaut corps is far more diverse, with more minorities and women. It plans to send the first woman and person of color to the moon during the Artemis program.
With the repeated delays, NASA’s launch window for the Artemis I mission is now in the middle of the night, which makes it more difficult for engineers to keep an eye on the rocket during the preparations for launch and the launch itself. NASA has said it would prefer to launch during the day, but that it can still fly in the darkness.
On the pad the rocket will be lit up, officials said, and the agency will have infrared cameras tracking the rocket as it flies through the atmosphere. “We’ll see the things that we need,” said Michael Sarafin, the mission manager. | 2022-11-16T04:12:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Live updates: NASA Artemis I moon rocket set for launch - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/15/artemis-moon-launch/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/15/artemis-moon-launch/ |
The top five spots remain unchanged: Georgia, Ohio State, Michigan, TCU and Tennessee
Kayshon Boutte and his LSU teammates keep moving up. (Michael Woods/AP)
After the top five teams in last week’s College Football Playoff rankings won Saturday, their positions remained unchanged, as expected, when the latest list was revealed Tuesday night.
The intrigue began at No. 6, which was held by Oregon before it was upset by Washington. The Ducks paid the price by getting pushed back to No. 12, and the CFP selection committee handed its sixth position to LSU.
The Tigers (8-2), who were seventh last week, crept closer to a berth in the playoff after a close win at Arkansas secured their spot in the SEC championship game Dec. 3. The Tigers, representing the West division, will take on East winner — and CFP No. 1 — Georgia, which pulled away to win at Mississippi State.
As with LSU, Southern California (9-1) moved up one spot to No. 7. LSU has two losses to one for USC, but the Tigers have a better mark in metrics such as strength of schedule and ESPN’s strength of record, which may have swung sentiment against the Trojans among the 13 selection committee members.
The top four teams in the final rankings, which will be revealed Dec. 4, advance to a two-round tournament to determine the national champion. The top five in Tuesday’s rankings were Georgia, Ohio State, Michigan, TCU and Tennessee. The first four are the only unbeaten squads left on college football’s highest level.
Tennessee may have been trying to make as much of a statement as it could by racking up 66 points in a lopsided win over Missouri on Saturday. “The statement is that we’re a good football team playing good football,” Coach Josh Heupel said afterward.
Elsewhere in the SEC, Alabama kept its faint CFP hopes alive with a six-point win at Mississippi, which tumbled from 11th last week to No. 14 on Tuesday. The Crimson Tide moved up one spot to No. 8.
Narrow margins of victory are old hat for TCU, but the important thing is that it remains undefeated. The Horned Frogs’ 17-10 victory Saturday at Texas was the sixth time in as many weeks they prevailed by 10 or fewer points. Given that the Longhorns were ranked 18th at the time, they made for a high-quality opponent, helping TCU maintain its case for inclusion in the playoff.
CFP selection committee chairman Boo Corrigan, whose panel moved TCU ahead of Tennessee last week, said of the Horned Frogs on ESPN: “They continue to improve. They’ve earned the opportunity to be in the top four.”
USC trounced one-win Colorado, 55-17, on Friday and is the only one-loss team left in the Pac-12. The Trojans haven’t played a difficult schedule — their toughest test, at Utah, resulted in their sole defeat, albeit by just one point — but they can bolster their résumé with upcoming games against UCLA and Notre Dame.
In what could all but guarantee the winner a spot in the tournament, Ohio State plays rival Michigan in two weeks — after the Buckeyes take on 6-4 Maryland. Next up for the Wolverines is what may be a stiff test against 7-3 Illinois, which was ranked 21st by the CFP committee before losing to Purdue on Saturday.
With its win Saturday over Tulane, Central Florida moved into position to get the automatic berth in the New Year’s Six slate of bowl games that goes to the highest-ranked team from Group of Five programs. Central Florida moved up to No. 20; Tulane fell to No. 21.
Tumbling out of the top 25 following losses last weekend were Illinois (7-3), Texas (6-4) and Kentucky (6-4). | 2022-11-16T04:21:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Two-loss LSU moves up to No. 6 in the College Football Playoff rankings - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/15/cfp-rankings-lsu/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/15/cfp-rankings-lsu/ |
Wildcats 75, Hoyas 63
Patrick Ewing, pictured here from last season, and the Hoyas lost their first game of the season to Northwestern on Tuesday. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
The first Northwestern triple came from the left bend of the arc for the opening basket of the game. The next came from the opposite side. The Wildcats were back on the left wing when the third splashed in.
The early barrage was a sign of things to come for the Georgetown Hoyas. With the game nearly decided with less than two minutes remaining, Northwestern’s Chase Audige buried one more and then turned to the crowd with outstretched arms and sporting a grin. Ballgame.
Georgetown suffered its first loss of the season, 75-63, at the hands of the hot-shooting Wildcats as part of the Gavitt Tipoff Games on Tuesday at Capital One Arena. The Hoyas dropped to 2-1.
“We’ve got to do a better job of defending,” Georgetown Coach Patrick Ewing said. “It wasn’t just the fact that they had 14 threes, it’s all about effort. I didn’t think we gave enough effort tonight to be able to come away with a win.”
Last time out: Georgetown uses big second half to rout Green Bay and improve to 2-0
The first half was clearly a clash of styles as Northwestern (3-0) came out firing from beyond the arc. On the opposite end, the Hoyas attacked the basket. The teams went back and forth with mini runs, but neither led by more than seven and Georgetown led 35-33 at halftime.
Northwestern Coach Chris Collins was disappointed with his veterans in the first half, and things certainly changed after the break. The Wildcats used a 20-7 run to take a nine-point lead and the threes started falling at a more consistent clip. The lead extended to 13 as Northwestern hit threes and Georgetown made twos. The Hoyas finished 7-for-22 (31.8 percent) from beyond the arc while the Wildcats went 14-for-33 (42.4 percent).
“I was just really proud of our team the way we kind of battled through some adversity in the first half,” Collins said. “Our main guys really weren’t playing well. I thought our guards got some layups, which was big. It really unlocked Audige. … I just think our guards really kind of settled us. And we were able to get the stops.”
Georgetown guard Primo Spears finished with 22 points and six assists, surpassing the 20-point plateau for the third consecutive game. Jay Heath added 13 off the bench. Ewing called the offense “stagnant” in the second half and lamented a lack of ball movement and body movement.
The Hoyas now head south for the Jamaica Classic in Montego Bay with an opening game against Loyola Marymount on Friday.
Here’s what else to know about Georgetown’s loss:
Heath has arrived
The Hoyas had Arizona State transfer Jay Heath available for the first time after he missed the first two games while the NCAA ruled on his eligibility. The D.C. native’s 10.6 points per game ranked second for the Sun Devils last season, and he led Boston College in scoring (14.5) in 2020-21.
The junior checked in just before the 17-minute mark of the first half and took less than a minute to hit a floater while drawing a foul. He dealt with some cramps in the second half and admitted he still needs to get in game shape.
“It was definitely frustrating,” Heath said about the wait. “In practice, I was staying active, but it was frustrating. But when I got the call … we were all just yelling. The whole team was happy. Everybody’s screaming and my mom was crying, but it was definitely an exciting feeling. It was definitely fun [playing]. I’ve been practicing with these guys all summer.”
Live by the three
Northwestern trailed at halftime after shooting 33.3 percent from beyond the arc, with six of its 10 first-half made field goals coming from three. That percentage bumped up to 53.3 percent in the second half as the Wildcats pulled away thanks to eight three-pointers.
Audige (17 points) was 4-for-9 from long range, and Boo Buie (12 points) and Robbie Beran (11 points) combined for five three-pointers.
“The whole thing was, don’t you dare try to score on [Akok] Akok at the basket,” Collins said. “If you drive in there, and he’s there, you better pass that thing out. …. So our whole thing was to try to collapse them. We knew that Akok and [Qudus] Wahab were going to be guys that were going to want to be shot blockers. And we wanted to be smart.”
Wahab’s up-and-down playing time
Wahab’s minutes continued to fluctuate. The Hoyas’ starting center who transferred back after a year at Maryland logged less than 15 minutes in the season opener against Coppin State and just over 22 in the second game against Green Bay. He played just eight in the first half Tuesday, partially because of a pair of fouls, and 19:07 overall. But Ewing also went with a smaller lineup for long stretches.
Wahab’s low minutes came against the Eagles and Wildcats who attempted 38 and 33 triples, respectively, while the Phoenix attempted 24.
“Foul trouble in the first half and we went to a smaller lineup in the second half,” Ewing said. “There’s nothing that he did wrong. It was just the way the game went tonight.” | 2022-11-16T04:21:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Georgetown can’t match Northwestern’s shooting in first loss - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/15/northwestern-beats-georgetown-basketball/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/15/northwestern-beats-georgetown-basketball/ |
Former president Donald Trump announces that he will once again run for president in 2024 at an event at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., on Tuesday. (Reuters/Jonathan Ernst)
The thing about a fading star playing the hits to his biggest fans is that the fans love it. It doesn’t matter how many times they’ve heard it, it doesn’t even matter how good the performance is. When parrotheads hear Jimmy Buffett lean into “Margaritaville,” that’s when they start dancing. That’s why they’re there.
On Tuesday evening, that vibe — very familiar to southern Florida — permeated Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s event space in Palm Beach. The former president appeared in a ballroom at the facility to announce that he was pivoting back to seeking elected office after last seeking to claim political power by subverting the constitutional process that led to his ouster from the White House. So, for the third time, we got a speech from Donald Trump about how he should be elected president, for all of the reasons that he offered in each of the prior two campaign announcements.
In keeping with the venue, Trump served the audience a warmed-over version of the same meal he offers everyone. It was all there: America’s cities are crime infested, President Biden is a failure, MS-13, the 2020 election was suspect, all of it. There was a little bit about the midterm elections, since there’s always some snippet of current events. But that, too, was familiar, the same recitation of how he was right and they were not and how he was successful and everyone should have just listened to him all along.
If you didn’t watch the speech, it doesn’t matter: you’ve heard all of it before, in 2015 or 2016 or 2017 or 2018 or 2019 or 2020 or 2021 or sometime earlier this year. There was nothing about it that was new or novel in any way.
Even Trump seemed bored about it, like Jimmy Buffett just getting through the chords that stood between him and his paycheck. Trump began by reading from the teleprompter, as he often does, offering up his familiar pastiche of dishonesties, metaphors and exaggerations. There was an unmistakable accent of Stephen Miller, the right-wing former administration official who wrote many of Trump’s speeches and who emerged from backstage shortly before Trump began to speak. But the performance was lackluster. Even the asides, the unscripted riffs, seemed lackadaisical. We’ve all heard it before and Trump’s certainly said it all before.
The speech was so muddled that Trump deflated the room’s energy precisely when he came to the part to which he should have been building.
“That was not good what he did," Trump said at one point of Biden. “There are a lot of bad things, like going to Idaho and saying, ‘Welcome to the state of Florida. I really love it.’”
There was a smattering of chuckles. Then, half a beat later:
"In order to make America great and glorious again, I am tonight announcing my candidacy for president of the United States.”
Oh. OK then.
It was interesting to hear Trump blame the GOP for last week’s unexpectedly weak midterm performance, given that the rest of Trump’s speech relied heavily on the exact same pitch that had failed so many of those Republican candidates. The stuff about parents and schools? The bits about how crime is out of control? The mention of “gender insanity”? That was the playbook for candidates hoping to win election on Trump’s coattails, and it didn’t work. Trump tried to rationalize this by claiming that people simply hadn’t been paying attention, that “the total effect of the suffering is just starting to take hold.” By 2024, he felt confident, things will be unmistakably horrible. Just you wait.
Look, Donald Trump won the nomination in 2016 on the backs of his most fervent supporters, a group of voters who helped keep him floating on the surface of that year’s large pool of candidates. He won the presidency as skeptical Republicans fell in line, independents gave him a shot and die-hard Trumpers surged to the polls. In 2020, he almost got there again, losing only a big chunk of those independents. His approach in 2024 seems like more of the same: tell the crowd that loves him the things they want to hear. Keep playing those hits instead of getting into anything from that new album that no one cares about.
Over the course of the hour that Trump spoke, the crowd clapped along, laughed at the right spots, cheered the expected applause lines. These were the Trump superfans — Roger Stone, his kids, Mike Lindell, you name it — and they were there to see one more boffo performance from their guy. For them, he delivered. But how could he not have?
The question is whether those same old songs, those same tired riffs everyone has heard so often — the election was stolen, the country is collapsing — will win him any new fans. It’s hard to see how they could. | 2022-11-16T04:25:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump 2024: The Margaritaville campaign - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/15/trump-2024-margaritaville-campaign/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/15/trump-2024-margaritaville-campaign/ |
Former president Donald Trump arrives onstage ahead of his 2024 presidential campaign announcement speech on Tuesday night in Palm Beach, Fla. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Donald Trump’s announcement that he will run for president again in 2024 could scarcely have come at a worse time for him.
Thanks to how poorly Republicans did in the 2022 election, the former president’s political stock is arguably lower than at any point since early in the 2016 campaign. That poor performance owed in no small part to Trump picking bad primary candidates — that, and his brand of election denialism turned out to be an utter electoral flop.
Given that — and given that Trump backed himself into a corner by teasing an imminent announcement before the election went sideways — he had some accounting to do on Tuesday night. How could he go about arguing that he’s the guy to carry the torch forward, in light of the 2022 results?
He tried mightily. But even when his arguments weren’t based on falsehoods and oversimplifications, they basically amounted to a remarkable attempted bargain with GOP primary voters.
Trump, as he is wont to do, inflated his endorsement record. He claimed that he endorsed 232 winning candidates to just 22 losers. According to Ballotpedia, he actually endorsed twice as many losers as he claimed, in both primaries and the general election. What’s more, Trump padded his stats by endorsing in myriad uncompetitive races the GOP was never going to lose; his candidates lost most of the competitive Senate and governor’s races. And almost across the board, those candidates underperformed their fellow Republicans.
Trump also claimed Republicans won the House popular vote by 5 million votes. The actual number is already down to 4.5 million and will go on to drop significantly. He also claimed it was “the largest margin in many, many years,” though Republicans won by more in both 2010 and 2014. (The ultimate totals could wind up similar to 2016, when the GOP won the House popular vote despite Trump losing his.)
But perhaps Trump’s biggest — and bleakest — line came when he spoke about why the 2022 election wasn’t better for his party.
“The citizens of our country have not yet realized the full extent and gravity of the pain our nation is going through, and the total effect of the suffering is just starting to take hold,” Trump said. “They don’t quite feel it yet, but they will very soon. I have no doubt that by 2024 it will sadly be much worse, and they will see much more clearly what happened and what is happening to our country. And the voting will be much different. Twenty twenty-four. Are you getting ready? And I am too. I am too.”
This last part, notably, was the moment when Trump suddenly seemed to amp up what, up to that point, had been a pretty low-energy speech.
Let’s set aside that Trump seemed almost gleeful that continued suffering would open the door to his return to the White House. He’s basically arguing, to any Republicans worried about his electoral prospects, that things will be so bad that voters will have to recognize it — and then he’ll actually have a good shot.
But if voters didn’t recognize that things were bad this year, exit polls sure didn’t reflect it. Fully three-fourths of voters rated the economy as either “not so good” or “poor,” and voters said by a 14-point margin that President Biden’s policies were hurting the country. Pre-election polling showed that the share of Americans satisfied with the country’s state of affairs had reached one of the lowest points in decades.
Those are the very bad numbers for the party that holds the White House. And they suggest that very few people view how things are going — or the policies of the party in power — through rose-colored glasses.
The problem for Republicans wasn’t that people failed to recognize the gravity of the situation; it’s that they didn’t like the alternative. Fully 36 percent of voters who rated the economy negatively voted for Democrats, as did 62 percent who rated it merely “not so good” rather than “poor.” And among voters who “somewhat” disapproved of Biden, Democrats actually won by four points — perhaps the most striking stat in all the exit polls. That’s how Democrats hung tough with a pretty unpopular president.
The problem for Trump right now is that he just doesn’t have a good story to tell. The 2022 election was a clear disappointment for Republicans — a reality even Trump didn’t attempt to spin — but it was even more unequivocally a bad day for Trump.
It’s precisely the wrong time to begin asking Republicans to reinvest in him. So his message is apparently that they should count on Americans souring even more in two years.
At that point, apparently, the guy who lost the popular vote twice, who won the presidency in the first place only because he faced a historically unpopular opponent, and who helped squander both the House majority and Senate majority (twice) will apparently have a shot.
Republicans now must decide if they want to roll the dice on the bargain he’s proposed. They might do so, but after the rebuke that was 2022, that will involve even more faith than they invested in Trump six years ago. | 2022-11-16T04:34:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump's bleak bargain with the GOP on 2024 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/15/trump-2024-announcement-analysis/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/15/trump-2024-announcement-analysis/ |
ABC, NBC, CBS stuck to regular entertainment programming while Fox News and CNN carried much of the speech but not all of it.
Donald Trump announces his bid for president at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., on Tuesday. (Thomas Simonetti for The Washington Post)
ABC, NBC and CBS all decided to stick with previously scheduled entertainment programming — reality show “Bachelor in Paradise” on ABC, science fiction drama “La Brea” on NBC and a fictionalized show about the FBI on CBS.
Former president Donald Trump announced his candidacy for the 2024 presidential race on Nov. 15 at Mar-a-Lago. (Video: The Washington Post)
Fox’s decision to carry the speech is notable considering that several network commentators expressed a clear on-air preference last week for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to take over as the Republican 2024 standard-bearer after the party’s disappointing showing in the midterm elections. Two other properties in Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, the New York Post and The Wall Street Journal, also signaled last week a preference for DeSantis, with the Post declaring him “DeFUTURE” on the tabloid’s cover and the Journal’s editorial board declaring that “Trump Is the Republican Party’s Biggest Loser.”
While ABC, NBC and CBS did not preempt prime time programming to air the speech, the networks all had correspondents stationed at Mar-a-Lago who reported on the announcement earlier in the evening during the nightly newscasts hosted by David Muir, Lester Holt and Norah O’Donnell.
Fox News host Pete Hegseth declared during a break in live coverage that Trump was “in as good a form as you have ever seen him,” while former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee called the speech “pitch-perfect” and Trump unbeatable “if he keeps on like this tonight.” | 2022-11-16T04:47:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Broadcast networks take a pass on Trump campaign announcement - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/11/15/tv-news-trump-campaign-speech-broadcast/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/11/15/tv-news-trump-campaign-speech-broadcast/ |
Live updates:Russia-Ukraine war live updates: Missile that killed two in Poland ‘unlikel...
CIA Director William J. Burns was in the U.S. embassy and unhurt in the assault, which occurred a day after he met with his Russian counterpart in Turkey
By Shane Harris
CIA Director William J. Burns, seen here on Capitol Hill in March, was in Kyiv on Tuesday for meetings with President Volodymyr Zelensky and Ukrainian intelligence officials. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
CIA Director William J. Burns met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv on Tuesday, reaffirming U.S. support for the country on the same day Russian missiles pummeled the capital and sent residents fleeing for cover.
The visit came at a moment of Ukrainian triumph, days after its forces liberated the city of Kherson and Zelensky declared a turning point in the war. But it was a moment of extraordinary tension and uncertainty, as well, as a Russian-made missile appeared to land in Poland, raising the question of how the NATO alliance might respond to a possible attack on a member state.
Burns, whom President Biden often has dispatched to speak with Russian and Ukrainian leaders, also met with his Ukrainian intelligence counterparts and discussed a U.S. warning he had delivered on Monday to the head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service “not to use nuclear weapons” in its war on Ukraine, according to a U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the sensitive discussions.
Burns had met with the Russian official, SVR Director Sergei Naryshkin, in Ankara.
In Kyiv, Burns “reinforced the U.S. commitment to provide support to Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression,” the official said. The director was safely inside the U.S. Embassy during the missile strikes, the official noted.
There was no indication the Russian attacks were meant to coincide with Burns’s visit. Russian media disclosed his visit to Ankara, in what has become a routine practice of publicizing Russian officials’ meetings with the CIA director, who customarily keeps his travel schedule private.
Burns, a seasoned diplomat and former ambassador to Russia, went to Moscow last November and met with top Kremlin officials, speaking by phone with President Vladimir Putin. He carried a letter from Biden to Putin and warned the Russian president that should he invade Ukraine, the United States would impose massive consequences.
Burns has cautioned that officials must be on guard to Putin’s threats to use tactical nuclear weapons. “We have to take very seriously [any] kind of threats given everything that’s at stake,” Burns said in an interview with CBS News’s Norah O’Donnell in late September. “And, you know, the rhetoric that he and other senior Russian leaders have used is reckless and deeply irresponsible.”
Burns added that U.S. intelligence agencies had not yet seen “any practical evidence” that Putin was moving closer to using nuclear weapons. That has been the case over the course of the war, with Putin making threats that officials say aren’t reflected in sings that Russia is deploying the equipment and personnel necessary to use such weapons on the battlefield.
Tuesday’s missile strikes on Kyiv followed a two-week lull, and initially many residents ignored them. When explosions reverberated around the city, people sought shelter in basements and corridors.
Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said that “Russian aircraft” had fired the missiles, noting that “for the duration of this campaign, Russia has used a mix of capabilities,” including airborne, ground-based and sea-launched missiles, to target cities and civilian infrastructure.
On Monday, Zelensky visited Kherson, the sole regional capital that Russia had captured and held following its invasion in February. He declared to hundreds of people gathered in the central square that the city’s liberation marked “the beginning of the end of the war” and pledged that Ukrainian forces would to drive Russia from the country entirely.
Liz Sly in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Karoun Demirjian contributed to this report. | 2022-11-16T05:13:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | CIA director met Zelensky in Kyiv as Russian missiles targeted capital - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/11/16/cia-director-burns-kyiv-missile-attack/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/11/16/cia-director-burns-kyiv-missile-attack/ |
Dear Amy: My wife’s nephew “Chris” is going through a divorce. Chris and his wife, “Jan,” have two children. Jan has always had a positive relationship with our family. Their divorce has been a cordial parting of ways, but my wife’s family now wishes to ghost Jan.
I don’t think being estranged for no good reason is healthy, and I feel bad about it. Common sense tells me to stay out of it, but can you say something that will make me feel not so bad about it?
Middled: Unfortunately, I can’t help you to feel better about your wife’s clan’s choice to deliberately initiate an estrangement. If they succeed, “Chris’s” children will be forced to continually split their time and attention, not only between their two parents, but now extending into other generations.
And thus the emotional editing begins. Furthermore, if your wife’s family would punish you for simply being kind and cordial to “Jan,” this reflects extremely poorly on all of them.
“Circling the wagons” following a break up is expected. Families will show loyalty, and in my opinion, this is mainly demonstrating supportive behavior during a challenging time.
I certainly hope that Chris will actively discourage this “ghosting,” however. Nor should you play along. No, you should not contact Jan to tell her you’re sorry you won’t be able to speak to her. This would only insert you into their drama.
Yes, you could contact her to say that you’re sorry that this break up is happening, that you always enjoyed her presence in the family, and that you hope she and the children do well through the process.
Dear Amy: My friend “J” celebrated her birthday five months ago. She invited me, her husband, “M,” and another friend out to a karaoke bar for dinner and drinks. M told us that he was paying for everything as a gift to J.
I didn’t hear anything about it again, until this week when I got a Venmo request for $85. I texted M and asked what the request was for, and he said that he found a sticky note saying everyone owed him that much for the party.
I feel like it’s extremely tacky of him to ask for repayment now. Plus, if I do, I’ll have about 17 cents until my next paycheck. The petty side of me wants to make him wait five more months to get his money, but frankly after this long I don’t feel like I should have to pay him back at all.
Broke: According to PayPal, which owns Venmo, the “Venmo life cycle = 48 hours.” They suggest that users should send a request within 24 hours, and the request should be honored within the next 24 hours.
Sick: The police interviewed the son and chose to advance the case to be prosecuted. The son tacitly admitted the assault. In this case, my alleged bias might be confirmed. | 2022-11-16T06:14:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: Family wants to ghost relative's ex-wife after their divorce - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/16/ask-amy-ghosting-divorce-nephew/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/16/ask-amy-ghosting-divorce-nephew/ |
Food Prices Are Coming Down — Just Not in Time for Thanksgiving
The headlines are still screaming “food crisis,” and policymakers remain worried. Sure enough, the prices of a few staples, notably corn and wheat, are still high. But dig a bit deeper, and the scare is all but over. From salmon and chickpeas to lamb and tomatoes, food prices are coming down. Deflation is now on the menu.
For central bankers fighting the largest price increases in 40 years, the drop in food prices should give some breathing room to slow down interest rate hikes. For monetary authorities and households in emerging nations, such as India and Brazil, where food accounts for a much larger share of day-to-day expenditures, the drop in farming prices is even more important.
The fall in wholesale agricultural commodities prices will take some time to filter down into the supermarkets. And their high energy and transportation costs will still offset some of the declines. Because of the delay from farm to fork, US families will stay pay dearly for their Thanksgiving turkeys later this month.
Yet even so, food inflation is reversing. Take the monthly food-cost index compiled by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation. Over the last two years, it surged inexorably higher, posting year-on-year increases of as much as 40% by the middle of 2021, and 20% to 30% in early-to-mid 2022. Since then, however, the index has fallen back sharply, paring its annual gains in October to just 1.9%. Based on current trends, the FAO index is likely to post in November its first annual drop in more than two years.
Deflation is already visible in large swathes of food categories, including fish, legumes and certain kinds of meat and vegetables. The cost of lamb, for example, is down 25% since January. Salmon prices are down 40% from their most recent peak. Poultry prices have tumbled more than 25% since the beginning of the year. And from a recent peak only a few months ago, chickpeas, a staple for one billion people in south Asia, are down 20%, while tomato prices in Europe have fallen 40% and palm oil in Asia is down almost 50%.
As important as these price drops are, it’s worth noting that rice — a key agricultural commodity — has remained stable despite dire predictions of shortages. In many ways, rice has single handily prevented a full-blown food crisis this year.
Despite rising corn and wheat costs, rice prices have remained subdued in 2022. Several consecutive years of bumper harvests boosted global rice stockpiles to a record high, creating a buffer against inflation. Year-to-date, benchmark rice prices have averaged $414 per metric ton, below the 5-year average of $416 per ton and the 10-year average of $434 per ton. In 2007-2008, rice prices climbed, almost vertically, to above $1,000 per ton.
As always in the natural resources industry, the best cure for high prices is high prices — farmers and ranchers have reacted, boosting production. The weather has helped too, with better crops than many observers had predicted earlier this year. For example, Australia, the world’s second-largest wheat exporter after Russia, will harvest in 2022-2023 its second consecutive bumper crop. Canada and Brazil are expecting good crops, too.
The UN-brokered deal to restart Ukrainian grain exports has also helped. Its likely extension should bring a further drop in corn and wheat prices. Stronger grain exports from Russia, as the US and Europe quietly encourage commodity traders to continue shipping the country’s crop, is also helping. But above all, the world learned the mistakes of the 2007-2008 food crisis, when export bans exacerbated shortages. With the exception of limited trade restrictions by India, most of the world’s top agricultural commodity exporters have this time kept markets largely open.
• Is the Electric Scooter Apocalypse Finally Upon Us?: Chris Bryant
• India Is Bright Spot for World Oil Demand: Javier Blas | 2022-11-16T06:36:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Food Prices Are Coming Down — Just Not in Time for Thanksgiving - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/food-prices-are-coming-down--just-not-in-time-for-thanksgiving/2022/11/16/c5f77c84-6574-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/food-prices-are-coming-down--just-not-in-time-for-thanksgiving/2022/11/16/c5f77c84-6574-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html |
It’s an opportune moment for US billionaire John Henry to try to cash in on his 2010 investment in Liverpool Football Club. But is there any financial rationale for buying what he may be willing to sell?
Henry’s Fenway Sports Group Holdings LLC is open to a deal and said last week it would consider accepting new shareholders. The £2.5 billion ($3 billion) purchase of London rival Chelsea FC in May shows there’s appetite for buying soccer clubs. The headline price understates the all-in cost, with US buyers Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital Group agreeing to invest £1.8 billion in the club as part of the deal. While that’s money that stays in Chelsea, it’ll still need to generate a payback.
The share price of publicly traded Manchester United Plc gives an enterprise value of £2.4 billion. Again, that’s little reflection of what it would cost to buy it whole. The stock labors under a governance discount given minority shareholders are subject to the whims of the controlling Glazer family. And Man Utd’s value is depressed by a recent trophy drought; the valuation at which the Glazers might cede control of the franchise would almost certainly be far higher.
Against that backdrop, consultancy firm GlobalData says Liverpool could fetch at least $5 billion.
There are two drivers of the valuation uplift from Henry’s original £300 million purchase price. Firstly, Liverpool has been well run with relatively tight cost controls. After being rescued from near collapse, it made a small profit in 2013-2014 and was then lossmaking in only one other year prior to the pandemic. The appointment of manager Juergen Klopp in 2015 was astute, leading to six major trophies even if performance has wobbled this season.
Secondly, investing in European soccer has arguably become less risky over the past decade. Regulators have introduced spending constraints designed to prevent clubs going bust.
All the same, multibillion valuations sit awkwardly with current levels of profitability. In the three years before the pandemic, Liverpool’s annual operating profit plus gains on player sales averaged just £74 million.
There will always be buyers who want to own a football club for non-financial reasons. Yet Clearlake and the other private equity investors who vied for Chelsea are attracted to this sector because they see scope for making decent returns. They will need to take a 10-year view and have in mind a buyer who’ll pay still more when the time comes to exit. The business case rests on achieving three things: growing revenue, making that revenue more reliable, and keeping costs controlled.
One tailwind from the last decade will probably continue — the pressure to make football more financially sustainable. This comes from governments, regulators and owners. Hence the continued effort, despite antipathy from fans, to resurrect the Super League, a European closed-shop competition where the top clubs would play without risk of relegation.
What if the Super League never happens? US influence in the English Premier League has become notably stronger, with around half of the teams under at least partial US ownership. The US sports model is based on closed competitions and salary caps. Support for measures that would help profit maximization could therefore grow, according to Rob Wilson of Sheffield Hallam University. Major changes to the EPL need the support of at least 14 of the competition’s 20 clubs.
Then there’s the question of whether Liverpool could be run with more commercial aggression. Soccer club revenue comes from broadcast rights, matchday ticket sales and commercial activities including sponsorship, fan memberships and merchandise. Liverpool has a stadium expansion plan underway to increase capacity by around 15%. But the bigger opportunity is to make more of its global brand.
As a sales engine, Liverpool trails Man Utd by some way. Sponsorship revenue is $162 million, around half of what its rival makes and putting Liverpool fifth among UK clubs, according to estimates by GlobalData. Premier League title holder Manchester City has about twice as many sponsors as Liverpool. Dropping Anfield from the stadium’s name in exchange for the moniker of a sportswear brand or airline would probably be anathema to the club’s fans given its iconic status. But there is doubtless more that Liverpool can do.
True, Liverpool’s fanbase outside of the UK is not as powerful as Man Utd’s. It has 101 million followers across the main social media platforms, versus its arch rival’s 169 million, on GlobalData’s count. Still, for a financially minded owner, the business goal will be to generate recurring revenue from commercial activities even if the trophies don’t come consistently — just as there are lucrative American football teams that haven’t won the Super Bowl for years. That would have to go hand-in-hand with some mechanism to prevent revenue gains being absorbed entirely by player wages.
There are considerable uncertainties on this next leg of football’s journey, and additional investment will be required. Even if he doesn’t sell completely, Henry would be wise to bring in a fellow traveler. | 2022-11-16T06:36:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How Liverpool FC Might Merit a $5 Billion Price Tag - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/how-liverpool-fc-might-merit-a-5-billion-price-tag/2022/11/16/c50a6f66-6574-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/how-liverpool-fc-might-merit-a-5-billion-price-tag/2022/11/16/c50a6f66-6574-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html |
Under the “migration and economic development partnership” with Rwanda announced last April, asylum seekers attempting to cross into the UK are given an initial screening by British authorities. Anyone judged to have entered the UK illegally is eligible for deportation, with the exception of unaccompanied minors and families with children under 18, as well as individuals who might face the threat of persecution in Rwanda. Deportees granted protection by Rwanda’s government would be eligible to live there but would not be permitted to return to the UK. Unsuccessful applicants would be relocated to yet another country, or possibly back to their country of origin. | 2022-11-16T06:36:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Offshoring Is the Wrong Response to the UK Migration Crisis - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/offshoring-is-the-wrong-response-to-the-uk-migration-crisis/2022/11/16/c6a47290-6574-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/offshoring-is-the-wrong-response-to-the-uk-migration-crisis/2022/11/16/c6a47290-6574-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html |
Desperate. (Photographer: Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images Europe)
In 2008, if you wanted a new car, you could get one free — as long as you were prepared to buy a house.
The global credit crunch was well underway and no one really wanted to buy a house from the UK’s nearly bankrupt house builders. That did not sit well with the nearly bankrupt house builders. So they started offering incentives — cash back, free kitchens, taking over buyer mortgage payments for a year or two — that sort of thing. In Scotland, one developer even offered buyers mad enough to buy into an obvious housing crash a “free” car — a £15,000 Mercedes ($17,810 by today’s conversion). Cala Homes went further: Their incentive package offered £30,000 worth of cash, carpet and landscaping.
It didn’t make much difference: Nothing screams end-of-a-mania more than a Merc chucked in as a perk. House prices across the UK fell 15% between January 2008 and May 2009.
I am sorry then to report that the house builders are at it again: If you want your mortgage paid for a couple of years, a few grand to cover your legal costs or even just a complimentary fridge or furniture pack, give one of them a call. I’m pretty sure they’re waiting by the phone. Why? Because, once again, they have to be.
Persimmon recently noted, for example, that buyer cancellations are up and weekly sales per site are down. Nationwide and Halifax have both reported small declines in month-on-month nominal prices (so quite large falls in inflation-adjusted prices), and the latest numbers from the RICS Residential Market Survey display the market’s miseries in full.
The net balance of surveyors reporting rising house prices in the last three months fell to -2 in October from +30 in September, according to the RICS data. That’s the largest drop on record since the survey got going in 1978. As Pantheon Macro Economics put it, that’s pretty “clear evidence” that house prices are on the way down.
Volumes are falling too. The new enquiries balance fell to -55 — not far off the nasty numbers seen in the global financial crisis, when it reached -67.
Beyond the house builders, sellers are beginning to get the message too: Zoopla report that around 7% of houses currently on the market have seen their prices cut by 5% or more. No wonder the bribes are back. All this, says Pantheon, is consistent with monthly mortgage approvals falling below 40,000 by the end of the year — a level we haven’t seen since the dark days of free cars last time around. Falling mortgage approvals pretty much always mean falling prices.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. When interest rates go up, the monthly payments on any given amount of borrowed money go up, the maximum amount you can borrow goes down and so then does the maximum you can pay for a house. And, contrary to popular belief, it is not the supply of houses but fully financed demand for houses — what people can afford to pay for them — that actually determines prices. Mortgage rates go up, volumes collapse as the market adjusts and then prices begin to slide. The dynamic is always the same.
And mortgage rates have most definitely been going up. The average rate for a three-year fixed-rate mortgage rose from a mere 1.64% in January (practically free money) to just over 4% in September and then to 6.01% in October. A 25-year £250,000 mortgage on a rate of 1.64% costs £1016 a month. One on 5.5% (rates have slipped back a little since October) costs £1535 a month. You get the idea. Rates up, house prices down.
There are complications in here, of course. A wealth tax, a rejigging of council tax or a change to the capital gains tax regime on primary homes in the UK are all possibilities in the near future. That’s on top of a long list of disadvantageous tax changes being imposed on buy-to-let property owners. This all adds more of a negative overlay on the housing market, as does the cost-of-living crisis, since spending more on energy bills leaves less for mortgage payments.
A fall in mortgage rates (entirely possible as the economic weakens) would cheer things up a little. But we can also take heart from the fact that the majority of mortgage debt in the UK is held by those with the deepest pockets. As the analysts at Berenberg point out, the top 50% of households have around 86% of mortgage debt and the bottom 30% a mere 5%. One might hope that some savings buffers at the top will mean no nasty round of 1989-1992 style defaults (house prices fell 20% in that crash).
Property bulls will also point to the fact that most house price wobbles in the UK resolve themselves pretty quickly. March 2020 barely counts as a crash: Prices were actually up 8.5% by the end of the year. None of the horrible Brexit-related crash predictions came to pass. And even 2008 turned out to be not much more than a blip for most people: Prices were back to peak levels pretty much everywhere by 2012 and positively boomed after that. Buy the dip, they will say. You can’t go wrong with UK property.
Yet there is a problem with this argument. In 2008 and in 2020, mortgage rates did not go up; they went down. In 2007, the base rate was 5.5%. By 2008, it was 2%. In 2019, it was 0.75%. By the end of 2020, it was 0.1%. That’s not going to happen this time around.
Sure they may flatten or fall slightly. Consumer spending in the UK is sensitive to house price shifts. (How can it not be given this is pretty much all we talk about?) So the more surprised the Bank of England is by house price weakness — and what is the BOE not surprised by these days? — the more likely they will pull back from the current tightening cycle.
Mortgage rates may fall back to 4.5% or the like. But fall by 50% plus again? I don’t think so. This is not 2007, and it is not 2020 either. You may soon find yourself wishing that it was. In the meantime, if someone offers you a free car, just say no. | 2022-11-16T06:37:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | UK Housing Market Is Getting Desperate Once Again - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/uk-housing-market-is-getting-desperate-once-again/2022/11/16/c5a904fa-6574-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/uk-housing-market-is-getting-desperate-once-again/2022/11/16/c5a904fa-6574-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html |
World Cup Throws Qatar a Regional Consolation Prize
Analysis by Bobby Ghosh and James Gibney | Bloomberg
Nearly 12 years since their country won the right to host soccer’s quadrennial World Cup, Qataris might reasonably wonder, just days ahead of the kickoff, if it was worth the trouble. Rather than bestow the petrostate with the prestige associated with international sporting events, the World Cup has brought unwanted attention — most notably, to its exploitation of foreign workers and its attitudes toward sexuality — and accusations of “sportswashing” away a poor human-rights record.
Critics, including my colleague Martin Ivens, argue that “a Western sense of fair play will be outraged that a country without any native tradition in the game has won the right to host the tournament through financial muscle.”
No fair, say the Qataris. The ruling emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, has inveighed against what he called an “unprecedented campaign” against his country. Doha’s defenders have, in vain, accused critics of double standards, pointing out that they took no umbrage when Russia was named host for the 2018 World Cup — on the same day as the emirate was awarded this year’s tournament.
Now, the man who presided over that ceremony a dozen years ago says it was a mistake to allow the emirate to host the tournament. Sepp Blatter, only recently acquitted of financial misconduct when he headed FIFA, soccer’s governing body, says Qatar is too small a stage for the greatest show on earth. He has suggested that the US, which had been the favorite, was denied the privilege because of some eleventh-hour skullduggery involving France’s then-President Nicolas Sarkozy.
But Blatter’s successor, Gianni Infantino, won’t have call to cavil over the receipts: FIFA’s takings from the monthlong tournament are expected to top the $5.2 billion record set in Russia four years ago.
And if the World Cup doesn’t produce the anticipated payoff in international prestige, it has already delivered a remarkable dividend of sorts from within Qatar’s immediate neighborhood. By sharing the economic bounty from the tournament, the emir is earning goodwill from Gulf countries that until recently were dead set on his downfall.
Qatar’s successful bid to host the World Cup had set off resentment and rancor in the courts of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, which were already suspicious of Doha’s outsize international ambition. Seven years later, those countries (and Egypt) would seek to cut Qatar down to size by imposing a diplomatic and economic embargo.
The Qataris believed that their antagonists’ main motivation was plain old jealousy, and that the World Cup was one of the causes of envy. At various points, officials from the embargoing nations suggested that Qatar should give up the tournament, or at least agree to share the hosting responsibilities (and the revenues, natch) with its neighbors.
When the Saudis finally ended the boycott in early 2021, Sheikh Thani was careful not to gloat. Instead, Qatari officials quietly opened discussions about sharing the World Cup pie. The games, they insisted, would all be staged in Qatar, but its neighbors could partake in the tourism windfall.
This made sense in practical as well as political terms: 1.2 million soccer fans are expected to attend the tournament, and Doha can’t accommodate them all, not even by offering rooms in giant cruise ships berthed in the harbor. Why not let them stay in nearby countries and arrange special flights that allow day trips to Qatar for matches? The upshot of these discussions is a regional shuttle service connecting Doha to Dubai, Muscat, Riyadh, Jeddah and Kuwait City — and tens of thousands of hotel bookings scattered across them.
The biggest beneficiary of this arrangement is the UAE, which had been the prime mover of the embargo: Of the more than 90 new daily flights into Qatar, 40 will be from the UAE, and Dubai, a 45-minute hop to Doha, will be the main gateway to the tournament. Saudi Arabia and Oman are counting on a spillover of tourists: If your team is eliminated in the first round, what easier place to console yourself than on a beach along the Red Sea or the Indian Ocean.
Other countries to benefit from the World Cup include Turkey and Pakistan, which are supplying police and troops to keep the peace.
Qatar will still get the biggest slice of the economic pie: It expects the World Cup to add $17 billion to its economy. But the diplomatic dividend it will accrue from the goodwill of its neighbors is worth many times that sum.
James Gibney is an editor for Bloomberg Opinion. Previously an editor at the Atlantic, the New York Times, Smithsonian, Foreign Policy and the New Republic, he was also in the U.S. Foreign Service from 1989 to 1997 in India, Japan and Washington. | 2022-11-16T06:37:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | World Cup Throws Qatar a Regional Consolation Prize - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/world-cup-throws-qatar-a-regional-consolation-prize/2022/11/16/c64c5b96-6574-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/world-cup-throws-qatar-a-regional-consolation-prize/2022/11/16/c64c5b96-6574-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html |
Anuar Abdullah, 61, walks along the beach toward a coral nursery where he is using fragments of live corals to propagate new ones. (Rebecca Tan/The Washington Post)
PERHENTIAN ISLANDS, Malaysia — For nearly four decades, the coral gardener worked alone.
“Everyone thought I was stupid,” said Anuar Abdullah, 61. “But I knew I was doing the most important thing in the world.”
Anuar Abdullah catches a ride to a spot called “Shark’s Point” off the Perhentian Islands where locals say the conditions of a coral reef have deteriorated. (Video: Rebecca Tan/The Washington Post)
Abdullah has spent his entire adult life restoring coral reefs, until recently working in obscurity — and at times, in poverty. In a world rapidly losing its reefs to climate change and to environmental damage, he is now emerging as an increasingly influential expert on how to revive them. Governments and resorts have come calling, asking whether he can help with reefs lost to natural disasters and overtourism. Banks and corporations have reached out, asking to sponsor his projects across Southeast Asia.
His résumé may be unconventional, observers say, but he possesses a type of practical expertise that is growing in currency as people seek out concrete and accessible ways of acting against climate change. In the past decade, thousands have traveled from around the world to learn from Abdullah how to grow corals, some eventually leaving their jobs to join his projects full time. With his roughly 700 active volunteers, he says, he has already revived about 125 acres of coral reefs.
In 2021, after Typhoon Rai wrecked the island of Cebu in the Philippines, a group of resorts asked Abdullah whether he could save what was left of the shoreline’s coral reefs. And earlier this year, Abdullah launched a new effort with officials and companies in Egypt to build the world’s largest subtropical coral nursery in the Red Sea. There was a presentation on the nursery at the U.N. climate change summit, COP27 this month but Abdullah did not attend.
On a recent afternoon, Abdullah zipped up his dive suit and waded into the warm, shallow waters off Perhentian Kecil, the smaller of two islands near the coastal state of Terengganu in Malaysia. The island lies squarely inside the coral triangle, a part of the Pacific Ocean that contains 75 percent of the coral species in the world. Locals say the corals in this particular bay were once so abundant that it was impossible to walk on the seafloor. But they’re dead now, washed up on the beach in piles of white carcasses.
The coral in this inlet were once so abundant that it was possible to walk on the seafloor, locals say. But most of these coral have died in recent years. (Video: Rebecca Tan/The Washington Post)
Oceans are warming faster than ever. Here’s what could come next.
Bending over to pick up a rock where he had affixed a coral fragment several weeks earlier, he murmured, “My little acropora.”
Abdullah squinted, his eyes gray and his face lined and leathery from years in the sun. He looked for signs that the fragments were welding to the rock and starting to grow.
“My little stylophora,” he continued, tilting the rock toward the sun to examine another fragment. “How are you doing today?”
Born in Terengganu, Abdullah was sent to live in a foster home after both his parents died when he was 6. Curfews were strictly enforced at the foster home, but he stole trips to the seaside when he could. The ocean, he remembered, felt like freedom.
In the 1980s, Abdullah settled in Perhentian as a diving instructor and became obsessed with corals. He spent two decades experimenting with how to grow them in the ocean, along the way alienating most of his friends, getting divorced from his wife and nearly bankrupting himself, he recalled.
In 2006, he found success with his low-tech, affordable approach and, exhilarated, shared it with a local university. The professors, he said, made fun of his grammar.
As a field, coral restoration has been siloed, split between scientists and researchers on one end and practitioners and coral “tinkerers” on the other. For a long time, many scientists had an “ivory tower syndrome” that prioritized theory over application, said David Suggett, a marine biology professor at the University of Technology in Sydney. “The questions we were asking, from a science perspective, were not always quite right — or useful,” Suggett added. “But that’s changing.”
Faced with catastrophes like the mass bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, scientists are seeking out the expertise of practitioners — diving instructors, tour operators, local fishermen — who know the reefs in their areas better than anyone else. To amass the “people power” needed to revive reefs with scale, Suggett said, there’s also now an appetite for low-tech solutions.
“It’s accessible science,” said Heidy Martinez, 29, a biology researcher who volunteered on the Maya Bay project. Watching coral fragments grow into small bulbs is a “magical” feeling, she added. “And it gets people hooked.”
Scientists rush to save 1,000-year-old trees on the brink of death
“For so long, I was part of the problem,” said Jungo, shirtless and barefoot on the island, “Finally, now, I can be part of the solution.”
He has rented a small wooden chalet not far from shore. And twice a day, he will trek down through the forest to visit his young corals. He will see to it, he said, that they make it through the monsoon. | 2022-11-16T07:28:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | As reefs die from climate change, a coral gardener in Asia draws a following - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/11/16/coral-climate-change-ocean-malaysia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/11/16/coral-climate-change-ocean-malaysia/ |
The launch came at 1:47 a.m. Eastern time, and the Space Launch System rocket appeared to perform flawlessly as it sent an Orion capsule on its way to orbit the moon
After two failed attempts, NASA’s Artemis 1 rocket lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Nov. 16. (Video: NASA)
The flight marked the first launch of the SLS rocket, a towering 322-foot tall beast in development for a decade, and propelled a capsule, known as Orion, through the atmosphere toward the moon as part of its Artemis program. Because the mission is a test flight — a rehearsal for future missions — no astronauts were onboard, and the spacecraft won’t land on the moon. Rather, Orion is to stay in lunar orbit in a flight that is expected to last up to 25 and-a-half days and demonstrate, NASA hopes, that the rocket and spacecraft are capable of flying safely.
If all goes well, NASA plans another flight, called Artemis II, with astronauts that will orbit the moon in 2024. A lunar landing is scheduled for 2025 but many think it will be later. To get astronauts to the surface, NASA intends to use a separate spacecraft being developed by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
While a lunar landing may still be years away, the successful launch of Artemis I marked a significant milestone for the space agency. NASA has not sent an astronaut beyond low Earth orbit since the last of the Apollo missions, in 1972, when astronaut Eugene Cernan vowed “we shall return” in a short speech before he climbed back into the lunar module for the return trip to Earth.
In the 50 years since, NASA’s on-and-off attempts to fulfill that pledge have been unsuccessful, and its human spaceflight missions have been confined to the neighborhood just outside of Earth’s atmosphere, where the International Space Station flies, just 240 miles up.
NASA has struggled for years to get its SLS rocket off the ground, and briefly during the countdown to Wednesday’s launch there was concern about another setback when NASA detected a leak of liquid hydrogen, the same kind of malfunction that had scuttled two previous launch attempts. But NASA dispatched a pair of engineers, along with a safety officer, to the launch pad to tighten some bolts, which successfully stopped the leak, allowing the allowing the countdown to continue.
After the launch, Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, the Artemis I launch director congratulated her team. “You have earned your place in this room,” she told them. “You have earned this moment. You have earned your place in history. You are part of a first. It doesn’t come along very often. The first step in returning our country to the moon and on to Mars. What you have done today will inspire generations to come. So thank you. Thank you for your resilience.”
Born from a compromise with Congress in 2010, the SLS rocket has been in development for years and suffered so many technical delays and management challenges that some wondered if it would ever fly. It had been derided by critics as the Senate Launch System for doing more to provide jobs in key congressional districts than explore outer space, and has been the subject of a series of scathing reports by government watchdogs who criticized NASA’s poor management and the lackluster performance of Boeing, the rocket’s prime contractor.
In recent years, however, NASA and Boeing made a concerted effort to get the program back on track, and the launch Wednesday was a major milestone — and a relief for NASA’s leadership. The liftoff sent a deafening roar across Florida as it climbed higher and higher. A couple minutes after liftoff, its side-mounted solid rocket boosters eparated. Then the core stage fell away. Then the rocket’s second stage fired its engines for nearly 18 minutes, putting Orion on course for the moon.
Bob Cabana, NASA’s associate administrator and a former astronaut, stressed earlier this year that the mission was a test flight designed to ferret out problems before NASA puts humans on board. The mission could encounter some challenges, he said, “that can cause us to come home early, and that's okay. We have contingencies in place.”
One of the biggest challenges will be testing Orion’s heat shield. As it returns from the moon it will be traveling 24,500 m.p.h., or Mach 32, and generate temperatures, a NASA official said, that will reach “half as high as the sun.” | 2022-11-16T09:30:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | SLS rocket blasts Orion capsule on way to moon - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/16/artemis-moon-mission-launch/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/16/artemis-moon-mission-launch/ |
Who’s the Queen of Christmas? Not Mariah Carey, trademark agency rules
Singer Mariah Carey holds hands with Santa Claus as she performs at the National Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony, attended by President Barack Obama and his family, in Washington in December 2013. (Charles Dharapak/AP)
Singers fight Mariah Carey’s bid to trademark ‘Queen of Christmas’
All we want for Christmas is ... these songs. Here’s why.
“We saw this as a case of trademark bullying, where essentially Mariah Carey’s company tried to trademark ‘Queen of Christmas’ in dozens and dozens of different fields,” said Louis W. Tompros, Chan’s attorney. “It was extremely broad, permanent and … it was not a term that she was alone using, so it wasn’t right.” | 2022-11-16T09:31:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mariah Carey's application to trademark 'Queen of Christmas' is denied - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/16/mariah-carey-queen-christmas-denied/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/16/mariah-carey-queen-christmas-denied/ |
If Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was supposed to weaken NATO and stop its eastward expansion -- one rationalization offered by President Vladimir Putin -- it seems to have backfired. Rather than exploit tensions within the alliance, Russia’s war seemingly strengthened it, with Finland and Sweden, two close neighbors of Russia, seeking to join. The countries that make up NATO have not fired a shot as part of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. But the alliance came close to being pulled in when a Russian-made rocket was reported to have landed in Poland, a former Soviet ally turned NATO member. While it was immediately not clear whether the rocket was fired by Russians in offense or Ukrainians in defense, the event raised questions about sections of the NATO treaty called Article 4 and 5.
4. What’s Article 4 then?
One step short of Article 5, Article 4 is a way for allies to consult with each other if any ally believes the “territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the parties is threatened.” Over the years, Article 4 has been invoked seven times, for instance by Turkey, and more recently by a eight European countries when Russia launched its attack in February. The consultation can take many forms from exchange of information to discussion on joint policies. | 2022-11-16T09:35:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What to Know About NATO, Putin and Article 5 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/what-to-know-about-nato-putin-and-article-5/2022/11/16/8d357ae4-658e-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/what-to-know-about-nato-putin-and-article-5/2022/11/16/8d357ae4-658e-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html |
‘Plagued by nightmares,’ Anne Heche crash survivor seeks $2M from estate
Lynne Mishele said Heche’s negligence caused a crash that’s left her ‘completely traumatized’
Actress Anne Heche in 2012. (Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP)
Lynne Mishele was working from her Los Angeles home the morning of Aug. 5, unaware that the actress Anne Heche had already crashed her car into an apartment complex garage, backed up and peeled off down the street. And while Mishele, barefoot and in sweatpants, spent time alongside her two dogs, she didn’t know that Heche and her blue Mini Cooper were hurtling toward her.
Then came 10:55 a.m.
The car plowed into the front of the 738-square-foot house before going through the living room, kitchen, home office, a closet and into the laundry room, immediately turning all of it into “a towering inferno” that would cause Heche to slip into a coma and die within days.
More than three months later, Mishele is making a claim against Heche’s estate for at least $2 million in the Superior Court of California in Los Angeles County, asserting that the actress’s “outrageous conduct and unlawful acts” left Mishele homeless, “completely traumatized” and without possessions both sentimental and needed for everyday life. She’s alleging negligence, trespassing and the infliction of emotional distress.
A lawyer representing the executor of Heche’s estate did not respond Tuesday to a request for comment.
Anne Heche, wide-ranging actress, dies at 53 after car crash
The crash felt like “a record-breaking earthquake had hit, and [Mishele] was right in the middle and on the fault line,” the claim states.
Mishele and her three pets — dogs Bree and Rueben as well as a tortoise named Marley — escaped unscathed with help of fast-acting neighbors like David Manpearl, who told the Los Angeles Times that he was at his desk at home that morning when he saw a car fly by his window. Moments later, he heard the crash. Manpearl bolted out of his house, raced down the street and, when he saw that the car had barreled into his neighbor’s home, went inside. There he found a barefoot Mishele asking for help with her pets.
“She couldn’t move because the ceiling had come down, so there was all kinds of debris everywhere,” he told the paper.
Manpearl escorted Mishele to safety. He turned back to do the same for Heche, but the flames wouldn’t let him.
“It got to a point where there was fire everywhere. It was all around us,” he told the Times. “It had spread from the car to the house and the smoke was getting thick. I kept hoping that the fire department was there, but it hadn’t come yet, and eventually I had to leave the house for my own safety.”
Firefighters did come. It would take nearly 60 of them more than an hour to extinguish the flames that turned Mishele’s rental home to ruins. And although they managed to extract Heche from the wreckage, she soon slipped into a coma. She died a week and a half later.
After news broke that Heche was brain dead, Mishele posted a short video to Instagram calling it “devastating” and “a great loss,” especially for Heche’s children.
“My heart goes out for them,” she said. “This entire situation is tragic, and there really are just no words.
“I’m sending love to everybody involved.”
In the days after the crash, police said they were investigating the possibility that Heche had been driving under the influence, and in her claim, Mishele alleges that a blood analysis confirmed the actress had cocaine and fentanyl in her system. A representative for Heche declined to comment on Mishele’s allegations.
Anne Heche is ‘brain dead’ after fiery crash, rep says
Although Mishele escaped physically unharmed, the events of Aug. 5 have thrown her life into chaos and scarred her psychologically, the claim states. It says the fire caused by the crash burned or otherwise destroyed Mishele’s “entire lifetime of possessions,” including her laptop, iPad, clothing and everyday household items, as well as her photographs and mementos.
In the months since the crash, Mishele can’t sleep and battles anxiety and depression, according to the claim. Because of her displacement and “fragile mental health,” she can’t run her business, which she’d operated out of her home. And although she’s been to counseling, she’s still traumatized by what she referred to in her claim as Heche’s “irresponsible behavior.”
People fixated on what happened to Heche, Mishele said in her claim, but the crash caused by the actress has left Mishele “unusually startled by hearing loud noises, plagued by nightmares and flashbacks of the incident, terrified of walking outside, and, atop that, without a place to live.”
Her former landlords, the owners of the house that burned down, have raised more than $183,000 for Mishele through a GoFundMe campaign. Late last week, Mishele posted another short video updating people about how things were going more than three months later.
“I’m still trying to navigate everything since the fire,” Mishele said, “still kind of wrapping my head around all of that and the aftermath.” | 2022-11-16T09:35:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Lynne Mishele sues Anne Heche’s estate after house destroyed in crash - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/16/anne-heche-lynne-mishele-lawsuit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/16/anne-heche-lynne-mishele-lawsuit/ |
The Salt Lake Temple in Utah. (Rick Bowmer/AP)
The church said it was “grateful for the continuing efforts” to ensure that the legislation included such provisions “while respecting the law and preserving the rights of our LGBTQ brothers and sisters.”
It added: “As we work together to preserve the principles and practices of religious freedom together with the rights of LGBTQ individuals, much can be accomplished to heal relationships and foster greater understanding.”
The statement follows other shifts from the church in recent years, including support for state anti-discrimination legislation and a 2019 reversal of its policy not to baptize the children of LGBTQ parents. In 2015, when the policy sparked uproar among LGBTQ Mormons, the church said “our concern with respect to children is their current and future well-being and the harmony of their home environment.”
In 2008, the church also backed Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California. It told California Mormons at the time: “We ask that you do all you can to support the proposed constitutional amendment by donating of your means and time to assure that marriage in California is legally defined as being between a man and a woman. Our best efforts are required to preserve the sacred institution of marriage.”
Taylor Petrey, a religion professor at Kalamazoo College in Michigan, said the church’s “shift to supporting same-sex marriage as a legal matter is a reversal of decades of official policy and teaching, though it reflects the direction that the general membership of the church has been trending over the past decade.”
The church says on its website that, while the law may evolve, any such changes “do not, indeed cannot, change the moral law that God has established.” It also says that “consistent with our fundamental beliefs, Church officers will not employ their ecclesiastical authority to perform marriages between two people of the same sex, and the Church does not permit its meetinghouses or other properties to be used for ceremonies, receptions, or other activities associated with same-sex marriages.” | 2022-11-16T09:36:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mormon Church voices support for federal same-sex marriage bill - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/11/16/mormon-church-gay-marriage-lds/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/11/16/mormon-church-gay-marriage-lds/ |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.