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Fifteen former and current staffers expressed concern that important findings unrelated to Trump will not become available to the American public.
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) makes comments during a hearing of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol on Oct. 13, 2022. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Since Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) accepted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) offer to serve as the vice chair of the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, the Wyoming Republican has exerted a remarkable level of control over much of the committee’s public and private work.
Cheney spokesman Jeremy Adler issued a blistering statement Wednesday to The Washington Post in response to the criticisms.
The internal tensions over Cheney’s role also stand in contrast to the widespread public praise from many Democrats and even some Republicans, who have hailed her for standing up to Trump and defending democratic norms. Cheney, under siege by Trump and ostracized by the GOP, was defeated in the Wyoming primary this summer and will leave office in January.
Some staffers noted that the mission of the committee — as spelled out in the resolution authorizing its formation — was to discover what political forces and intelligence and security failures allowed the U.S. Capitol Police and its partners to be so overwhelmed and ill-prepared for the attack and to ensure that such an event could not happen again. Leaving any relevant information out of the final report would ignore important lessons for the future and issues that will outlive Trump, some argued.
A senior committee staffer told staff in a virtual conference meeting two weeks ago that none of the work done by people serving on teams other than the ‘Gold Team’ that didn’t focus on Trump would be included in the final report.
“Everybody freaked out,” said the staffer.
The announcement, this staffer argued, was premature and based on negative reactions from lawmakers who concluded that draft chapters written by non-Gold investigative teams should not be included because they were either too long or too academic in nature. However, the staffer said, while committee members disliked those chapters, they were open to including some of that material in a more concise or streamlined form.
“It’s not a class project — everyone doesn’t get a participation prize,” said a senior Democratic aide. “The Green Team has chapters and chapters of good work but the problem is they’ve learned a lot of great stuff about objectionable but completely legal things.”
Tensions among lawmakers are also high on the committee, with some members angry about information being shared with the press regarding internal discussions on what to include or exclude from the final report, according to people familiar with the mood on the committee. Some distrust has been sown between lawmakers and staff in the wake of the NBC News story, and some senior staff called complaints about Cheney from committee staff unprofessional — and that ultimately, the members call the final shots.
“Ten years from now, most of us are going to think that the work of the committee has been the most important thing we’ve ever done in our careers and I think it’s just very short sighted to have these kinds of smaller, petty kind of complaints,” said a senior committee staffer.
“They were headed for a worse version of the Mueller report, which nobody read — and Cheney knew that,” said this person.
Some staff vehemently objected to the characterization that some of the work product was weak or inconsistent, and countered that it’s long been clear that Cheney deprioritized findings that didn’t fit a specific narrative about Trump’s efforts to foment the insurrection.
Some of the disaffected staff have left in recent months, in part out of frustration that their work is not expected to get significant attention in the report, some of these people said. Cheney has been uninterested in such criticisms, reminding others that she is a member — and if other members have a problem with her work, they can approach her.
The Attack: Before, during and after the assault on the Capitol
In recent days, some staffers have started directly lobbying other panel members to include the full set of findings in the final report, according to people familiar with the discussions. Lofgren said over the weekend during an interview with ‘Face the Nation’ that the public would have access to “all the evidence, for good or ill” within the next month.
“Trump lit the fuse on all of this but he is kind of irrelevant now — it doesn’t matter if he runs for president … Of course we want to stop Trump in any way possible but we’ll still be facing these organized militia types or lone-wolf attackers in five to ten years,” said one committee staffer. “I don’t think it’s good for the committee or democracy at large if this entire final report is the case against Trump.”
Frustration with Cheney’s heavy hand has been building since the committee started putting together the public hearings. While many staffers credit Cheney for the unparalleled success of the bombshell set of presentations made by the panel over the summer, some grew exasperated by her tactics.
Several staffers recalled Cheney’s unpopular initial mandate that witnesses who appeared before the committee for an interview or deposition must review their transcripts in person, rather than online. Staffers griped that Cheney’s orders would be a strain on the relationships that investigators had developed with witnesses, many of whom would have to travel across the country to review their transcript.
Eventually, one of the lawyers who worked closely with Cheney conveyed to her that she was jeopardizing the staff’s goodwill and convinced her to adjust the process. Other staff expressed irritation with Cheney’s last minute decision-making, and being consistently left in the dark on major decisions until public announcements.
Some investigators were furious with the vice chair’s secrecy around former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s appearance before the panel in June, according to former and current staff. Some staffers complained that the appearance caused unforced errors — such as Hutchinson’s uncorroborated claim of a tussle between Trump and a Secret Service officer — because Cheney did not give staff the opportunity to thoroughly vet the line of questioning and structure of the hearing.
A senior staffer argued that Cheney and other members were properly secretive about Hutchinson’s upcoming testimony in late June, and rightly concerned about staff leaks that could both unintentionally put her in danger and prematurely reveal her testimony before she gave it on live television. If details about the account Hutchinson planned to give were leaked, the staffer said, “more rabid Trump supporters might try to hurt her” and, less importantly, the power of her live testimony would be muted.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), a member of the panel, defended Cheney in a statement: “No member of the Committee has worked harder than Liz Cheney. Our bipartisan efforts have led to what some have called the most effective set of congressional hearings in modern history. The Committee intends to release the evidence we have acquired so no element of our work will go unreported.”
With House Republican control of the House coming in January, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and his staff are already preparing to conduct an examination of any evidence omitted from the final report that tends to be more flattering or at least exculpatory about Trump’s actions leading up to the Jan. 6 assault, according to one Republican operative.
Lawyers familiar with witness testimony that was never aired said Jordan is preparing for the deep-dive he will lead as the likely chairman of the House Judiciary Committee as he seeks to portray the investigation as a political hit-job that focused on a predetermined narrative to “blame Trump,” and ignored other facts that conflicted with that storyline.
The committee is well-aware that Republicans are eager to get their hands on whatever materials become available to them when the House GOP conference takes back the majority.
“I expect them to do a document dive and cherry pick from the documents,” said a staffer working on the final report. “I have 100 percent confidence they’re gonna do that — I just don’t think it’s as exculpatory as they’re going to make it out to be.”
Take a look: Get to know Hakeem Jeffries, who is poised to be the next top House Democrat
7:45 PMTake a look: Democrats call for gun action after recent mass killings | 2022-11-23T21:58:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jan. 6 panel staff angry at Cheney for focusing too much of report on Trump - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/23/liz-cheney-jan-6-committee/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/23/liz-cheney-jan-6-committee/ |
Police probe how student from one Va. school got into another before stabbing
Investigators are seeking more details of how a student from West Potomac High School entered Mount Vernon High and allegedly stabbed another student
Fairfax County authorities are trying to determine precisely how a student from West Potomac High School entered nearby Mount Vernon High School and allegedly stabbed another student earlier this month, authorities said.
The incident occurred on Nov. 2 in a bathroom in Mount Vernon High School. Fairfax County Police said that a 15-year old was stabbed following an altercation with another student with whom he had had previous encounters. The wounded student was taken to a nearby hospital for injuries not considered life-threatening. Two juvenile suspects fled the school but were quickly identified and taken into custody by officers, authorities said at the time.
At a public safety meeting at Walt Whitman Middle School the following week, Fairfax County police said that the student believed to have carried out the stabbing attended West Potomac High School. The student was charged with trespassing and aiding in the wounding, police said. His name has not been released.
Fairfax Police said on Monday that detectives believe another student not involved with the incident let the suspect into the building.
Fairfax County Police Capt. Fred Chambers said at the public safety meeting that it’s possible the student entered Mount Vernon High School because students at both schools sometimes go back and forth for different classes, but the matter was still being investigated.
“A lot of the schools in the county have different courses. Whether they have an academy or an auto mechanics class, so you have students that go back and forth from each school, and that could be one of the reasons,” Chambers said. “That part I don’t know for sure, but that part is still being investigated.”
A Fairfax County schools spokeswoman said that as with other incidents, the district’s Office of Safety and Security “conducts additional after action reviews for the purposes of learning and improvement.”
Chambers said that those involved knew each other and had had previous encounters.
“I don’t want to use the word ‘relationship,’ but they had previous encounters with each other, so this was not a random act of someone just showing up and doing something to a student,” Chambers said.
Some parents had expressed frustration with initial communications about the stabbing.
Mike Wendy said that after he noticed emergency vehicles at the school, he tried texting his daughter, but she didn’t immediately respond. He said he then checked his email and saw an initial message from JoVon F. Rogers, Mount Vernon High’s acting principal, which described an incident that happened in a restroom.
“My daughter hadn’t responded yet. It was likely okay, but I was a little nervous,” Wendy said. He said his daughter eventually responded to let him know everything was fine.
Wendy said he later read a news account in which police described a shelter-in-place order being put into effect at the school, but his daughter did not hear any such instruction to do so. “There was certainly a deficit of information,” Wendy said.
Authorities said students were not actually asked to shelter in place, but the building was put on a different status of heightened alert.
Julie Moult, a spokeswoman for Fairfax County Public Schools, said officials implemented a “secure the building” mode that lasted “a number of minutes only, until police, security, and school administration determined that the threat was no longer in the building.”
A Fairfax County police spokesperson said that an officer initially reported that there was a “shelter in place,” because that and “secure the building” are sometimes used interchangeably.
But the spokesperson conceded that different verbiage might have been clearer.
Fairfax County Public Schools use a “secure the building” procedure to prevent unauthorized entry if a possible threat is discovered outside the building, according to information the district posts online. A “shelter in place” procedure is used to temporarily separate people from a hazardous outdoor atmosphere.
Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis said at the public safety meeting that police try to release facts about public safety incidents at schools as rapidly as they can.
“The faster we can get that out there, the better, but we want to get accurate information out there,” Davis said. “If we get inaccurate information out there and we have to walk it back, that erodes trust in the community for us.” | 2022-11-23T22:20:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Police probe how student from one Va. school got into another before stabbing - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/23/fairfax-school-stabbing-student/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/23/fairfax-school-stabbing-student/ |
Georgetown Coach Patrick Ewing continues to search for the right buttons to push after a loss to American dropped the Hoyas to 3-3. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
American University Coach Mike Brennan walked into a media room in the belly of Capital One Arena drenched in water Wednesday afternoon after accomplishing a feat that hadn’t been done in four decades. Soon after, a frustrated Patrick Ewing strode into that same space with the look of a guy who was on the wrong end of both of those moments, 40 years apart.
American stormed back from a 16-point deficit to upset crosstown rival Georgetown, 74-70, beating the Hoyas for the first time since 1982, when Ewing was a sophomore star on the Hoyas.
Now Ewing coaches the Hoyas (3-3), and the result — coupled with a loss last week to Loyola Marymount — will only add fuel to doubts about the state of the program in the wake of last season’s disastrous 6-25 campaign that ended with a 21-game losing streak.
For the Eagles (3-2), coming off a 10-22 season, the victory led Brennan’s players to drench him with water in a postgame celebration.
“Moments like that are few and far between for a lot of programs,” Brennan said. “So, hopefully, we can capitalize on it. I’m happy for the group. They’ve worked since they’ve gotten here. … They’ve stuck with it as a group, stuck together. So I’m glad that they’re able to celebrate a moment like this.”
American has just one winning season since 2016.
For Ewing, who is 71-87 in his sixth season since taking over at his alma mater, the loss is the latest setback in a rocky start. Ewing remade the coaching staff during the offseason and brought in 10 newcomers to create a fresh start for a program seeking to return to national prominence. It hasn’t happened.
“Things are going to happen during a year,” Ewing said. “Hopefully by the end of the year, we'll look back and these setbacks and laugh. But right now I'm not laughing.
“You can't start abandoning ship. We have a lot more games to go. At some point everybody has to look at themselves and see what they're doing right or wrong for the team to do better. We've had long conversations. Sometimes the conversation needs to stop. It's about going out there and getting the job done.”
The Eagles were led by Johnny O’Neil’s game-high 16 points. Geoff Sprouse added 15 and Jaxon Knotek chipped in 14.
Primo Spears led Georgetown with 15 points and six assists, but the point guard also had five turnovers. Teammate Akok Akok posted 14 points and Jay Heath had 10.
Things to know about Wednesday’s game:
Blown lead
The uneasiness started early as Ewing’s fury echoed through the arena (announced crowd of 3,267) as he lambasted his team less than eight minutes into the game. The Hoyas trailed at the time, 11-10, and the coach ripped into his players during a timeout.
His anger appeared to reap benefits. The Hoyas came out of that timeout and went on a 19-2 run, sparked by Ryan Mutomobo using his length over the undersized Eagles with a hook and a layup before closing the run with an offensive rebound putback. Georgetown took a 40-30 lead into intermission.
American got back into the game by shooting 59.3 percent in the second half. The Eagles not only found their range, but they got to the rim on back-cuts and dribble penetration. The Hoyas shot 25 percent after halftime and were undone by a 14-3 AU run that put Georgetown in a 61-55 deficit.
“We’ve been working all year for this, just getting these type of wins,” O’Neil said. “The energy from the bench and just everyone on the court was tremendous. And it just helped us build off it. Especially in the second half, we got a run going and having that support from the bench, it kind of just adds a little bit of motivation hearing those guys cheering and knowing that you you’re not alone out there.”
Pressure packed?
Ewing was asked during the postgame about the pressure he is facing leading a program struggling to get off on the right foot after last season’s debacle.
“Pressure is life, you go through pressure every day in life,” Ewing said. “There are people out there living on the streets trying to find food. That’s pressure. Our parents getting up at five in the morning, getting to their jobs and trying to provide for you. That’s pressure. Yes, we talk about pressure in sports, but that’s not real pressure.
“We all have got to do what we need to do for us to be successful and, yes, to bring Georgetown back to where I think we need to be. But sometimes you’re going to have bumps in the road. Right now we have bumps in the road and it’s all about how are we going to handle these bumps? Are we going to put our head down or are we going to be like rats and run off the sinking ship? Or are we going to step up and get the job done? We brought in guys that are capable of stepping up and getting the job done. We just have to fix the things that we’re doing in the second half of games to be able to do what we need to do.”
Georgetown guard Brandon Murray missed the game with a lower-body injury. The 6-foot-5 sophomore from Germantowm, Md., started each of the first five games and leads the team in both points (15.4) and assists (4.4).
American was without leading scorer Colin Smalls. The junior guard is averaging 11.7 points. | 2022-11-23T22:46:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Georgetown loses to American for the first time in 40 years - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/23/georgetown-american-patrick-ewing/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/23/georgetown-american-patrick-ewing/ |
Michigan State Coach Mel Tucker offered an apology after the melees and said, “The incidents involving a small group of our players do not represent our culture.” (Carlos Osorio/AP)
Seven Michigan State football players have been charged in the wake of violence that broke out in the Michigan Stadium tunnel following a loss by the Spartans last month to the host Wolverines.
One Michigan State player, redshirt sophomore cornerback Khary Crump, was charged Wednesday by the Washtenaw County (Mich.) Prosecutor’s Office with one count of felonious assault. He could face up to four years in prison of convicted on the felony charge.
The other six Spartans players were charged Wednesday with misdemeanors, including one count each of aggravated assault for redshirt sophomore linebacker Itayvion “Tank” Brown; junior safety Angelo Grose; redshirt junior cornerback Justin White; senior defensive end Brandon Wright; and freshman defensive end Zion Young. Senior linebacker/defensive end Jacoby Windmon was charged with one count of assault & battery.
All seven players had quickly been suspended indefinitely by MSU Coach Mel Tucker while school, Big Ten and police investigations took place. Tucker also suspended another player, freshman cornerback Malcolm Jones, who was not included in Wednesday’s announcement of charges.
No Michigan players were charged Wednesday. In videos that surfaced shortly after the Oct. 29 incident took place, two Michigan players, graduate defensive back Gemon Green and sophomore defensive back Ja’Den McBurrows, appeared to be assaulted by several Michigan State players as both teams were heading to their respective locker rooms.
“At the University of Michigan we appreciate the thoughtful, deliberate approach from the Washtenaw County Prosecutor’s Office to this unfortunate incident,” Michigan President Santa J. Ono said Wednesday in a statement. “We also want to express our concern for all the players involved, especially those who were injured. The University of Michigan will continue to cooperate fully with any additional reviews of this matter.”
A spokesman for the Wolverines said the football program would not be issuing any comments Wednesday in addition to Ono’s statement.
A spokesman for Michigan State’s football program did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the charges. In a statement issued a day after the melees, Michigan State President Samuel L. Stanley Jr. had said he was “extremely saddened by this incident and the unacceptable behavior depicted by members of our football program.”
The next day, Tucker offered an apology and said at a news conference, “The incidents involving a small group of our players do not represent our culture.”
At that time, Michigan Coach Jim Harbaugh told reporters he expected “criminal charges” to ensue from the police investigation.
“What happened in the tunnel was egregious,” Harbaugh said. “It’s sickening to watch the videos, the ones that are on social media right now. … This is very open and shut. As they say, watch the tape.”
The Washtenaw County Prosecutor’s Office said Wednesday it had received a request for criminal charges from the University of Michigan Division of Public Safety and Security, which conducted an investigation with the assistance of the Michigan State University Police Department and Michigan State Police. The prosecutor’s office said it had no further comment on its authorization of the charges, in keeping with its policy on “pretrial publicity around pending cases.”
An attorney for Grose, David Diamond, said he and his client were “somewhat surprised and shocked that criminal charges have been filed.”
“Over the last 30 days, I’ve been reviewing other similar incidents on and off a football field in both collegiate and pro football and have not yet seen any criminal charges filed as a result of similar alleged conduct,” said Diamond (via mlive.com). “Of course my client and I are reviewing all the options at this time.”
An attorney for Green who had promised “severe consequences for this kind of misconduct” said Wednesday that the player and his family would not take any potential legal action until Michigan’s season was over. Green reportedly suffered a concussion in the incident and sat out a game earlier this month against Rutgers.
“I don’t want any of this to be a distraction to Michigan football and neither does Gemon,” said the attorney, Tom Mars (via the Associated Press).
Michigan, 11-0 and third in the latest College Football Playoff rankings, plays archrival Ohio State on Saturday. The 11-0 Buckeyes are second in the rankings.
Michigan State will bring its 5-6 record Saturday to a regular season-ending game at No. 11 Penn State. | 2022-11-24T00:31:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Seven Michigan State players charged after tunnel brawl at Michigan - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/23/michigan-state-players-charged-brawl-michigan/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/23/michigan-state-players-charged-brawl-michigan/ |
Former vice president has not been subpoenaed and has not decided whether to cooperate, a person familiar with the matter said
President Donald Trump speaks alongside Vice President Mike Pence early on Nov. 4, 2020, in Washington. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Justice Department prosecutors have asked former vice president Mike Pence to answer questions as part of their sprawling probe into the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The informal request came in recent weeks — before last Friday, when Attorney General Merrick Garland named a special counsel to oversee aspects of the Jan. 6 probe as well as a separate investigation of former president Donald Trump’s possession of hundreds of classified records at his home after leaving the presidency.
Pence has not decided how to handle the request that he answer questions about his interactions with Trump near the end of their time in the White House, said one person briefed on the discussion. Both people familiar with the matter spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal conversations.
Pence has not been issued a formal subpoena, said one of the people, describing the talks with the Justice Department as being in a preliminary stage. Both people said the department has reached out to Pence lawyer Emmet Flood, who is representing the former vice president in this matter.
From Europe, Trump special counsel takes over Mar-a-Lago probe, parts of Jan. 6 investigation
The New York Times was the first to report the Justice Department’s extraordinary ask of the former vice president: that he share his private conversations with his former running mate, president and de facto party leader, even as Trump has launched a new campaign for the White House and Pence is also considering a 2024 bid.
The Justice Department has already engaged in lengthy negotiations with other advisers to Trump over requests to interview them, navigating issues of executive privilege. A request for Pence to relay sensitive conversations with the president could trigger a new battle over that issue.
The move to talk to Pence is a significant step in the long-running investigation. Garland faced intense criticism in 2021 and early 2022 for appearing to be slow to investigate the role of Trump and his top aides in efforts to reverse the results of the presidential election. The department’s probe expanded in March to look at those who planned and financed the rally before the Capitol riot and to request phone records for critical players in Trump’s White House and orbit, up to and including his chief of staff Mark Meadows.
Later this spring and summer, the Justice Department sought vast amounts of additional information, including communications with several top advisers to Trump and scores of others involved in efforts to offer up fake slates of pro-Trump electors in Georgia, Michigan, Arizona and other states won by President Biden.
Pence aides, including chief of staff Marc Short, have answered hours of questions in front of a Washington-based grand jury about Jan. 6, when a riotous mob left a Trump rally and stormed the Capitol, as well as the events that led up to that day and Trump’s interactions with Pence and his team in the White House. Short has appeared twice in front of the grand jury.
At the same time, the Justice Department is compiling witnesses and evidence in its Mar-a-Lago documents probe, which focuses on the potential mishandling of highly classified information, obstruction and destruction of government property. And in Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis (D) is conducting a separate investigation of the efforts by Trump and his allies to reverse the election results in that state.
Sen. Lindsay Graham testified before Georgia grand jury in 2020 election probe
In interviews for his recent book, “So Help Me God,” Pence has criticized Trump for actions that Pence said were “reckless” and “endangered” him, his family and everyone at the Capitol. In an ABC “World News Tonight” interview published Nov. 13, Pence called out Trump for his words egging on his supporters on Jan. 6 and for tweeting that his vice president didn’t have the courage to block the certification and “do what should have been done.”
“I mean, the president’s words were reckless,” Pence said in a preview clip. “It was clear he decided to be part of the problem.” But Pence also said in another interview that speaking to the congressional committee investigating the events leading up to the attack on the Capitol — including Trump’s pressure on Pence — would undermine the separation of powers between the branches of government.
Pence did not appear in front of the Jan. 6 committee and was critical of its composition, even as some of his top aides appeared and he blessed their appearances, the people familiar with the matter said. | 2022-11-24T00:40:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Justice Dept. asks Pence to answer questions as part of Jan. 6 probe - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/23/pence-justice-interview-jan-6/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/23/pence-justice-interview-jan-6/ |
Analysis by Richard Cookson | Bloomberg
I wrote in April that the economic and social costs of maintaining the Hong Kong dollar’s peg to the US dollar was becoming untenable and may need to be abandoned. The pressure I described has only grown and is now probably greater than anybody outside of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority - which took issue with my original analysis - realizes.
The HKMA has a mandate to keep the currency trading in a range of HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar. The current band was set in 2005 and has never been broken. When it gets too close to either end of the band, the HKMA intervenes, either by buying or selling the city’s currency. As the chart below shows, the currency has traded at the extreme weak end of the range for most of the year, pressured by the rising US dollar. That pressure has subsided somewhat recently as interest-rate expectations have eased a bit. But this is only likely to be short-term relief, because the social and economic costs of defending the peg are huge. The Hong Kong dollar peg is like being on the gold standard, and like the gold standard the frailties of such mechanisms are always social and economic.
Because of the peg to the US dollar, Hong Kong has no independent monetary policy; it has had to follow the Federal Reserve and tighten at a time when it should be doing the opposite. If the Chinese economy as a whole has struggled mightily due to its extraordinary “zero-Covid” policies and the mother of all debt-bubble hangovers, Hong Kong’s has done even worse, shrinking 4.5% in the third quarter from a year earlier. The benchmark Hang Seng Index is down by almost half since its high in 2018 even after a recent bounce.
With growth going in the wrong direction and the HKMA having to raise rates, Hong Kong has had to resort to the only option for countries on currency pegs: massive government spending. There is very limited room, though, for any country to ramp up fiscal spending without investors worrying about the accompanying increase in borrowing (debt) and sustainability of the peg. Small wonder, then, that fiscal policy has done little to soften the savage downturn.
Nor is this merely a cyclical problem. Hong Kong’s best days are behind it. China’s political interference has only risen. The working population, especially higher earners in finance, is shrinking. I doubt the weakness is merely cyclical and if it isn’t, Hong Kong’s tax base has been permanently eroded. Which is a problem, for Hong Kong is now a massively leveraged economy.
That the government has very little debt is not really the point because private sector debt more than makes up for it. Andrew Hunt, an independent economist who has followed Asia closely for decades, points out that foreign debt is almost $500,000 for each person working in Hong Kong. Domestic debt levels have doubled since 2007, according to the World Bank. Property debt has grown especially fast, and despite a drop in prices that shows every sign of gathering momentum, Hong Kong property is still among the world’s most expensive.
It is that huge surge in debt, falling asset prices, and ever cloudier outlook for Hong Kong’s economy which makes defending the peg so much more problematic than during the Asian crisis of the late 1990s. You can see the effects of all this in the HKMA’s Exchange Fund, which, among other things, manages Hong Kong’s foreign-exchange reserves. Its assets have tumbled to $417 billion from $500 billion late last year, according to the HKMA, its largest drop ever.
However, most of the drop in the Exchange Fund’s assets over the past few months have come not from intervention but from two other sources. The first is that the government has had to tap the Exchange Fund to make up for revenue shortfalls, according to HKMA and government data. Apart from a slight surplus in 2020-2021, the government has run a consolidated fiscal deficit since 2019. To reduce those deficits — and create that very small surplus — the government has tapped the accumulated fiscal surplus managed by the Exchange Fund. From a peak of HK$1.17 trillion ($150 billion) in 2018-2019, the fiscal surplus shrunk to HK$957 billion by the end of March and to HK$704 billion by the end of September. Over four years, starting in 2019-2020, the government has also transferred HK$82.4 billion put aside as a housing reserve, according to government and HKMA data. Though kept separate, this was also money from previous fiscal surpluses.
These transfers are counted as current income in the government’s accounts, though they are the product of previous years’ income. The government says that this is because it uses cash accounting. That is also the reason it gives for counting the proceeds from $10 billion of “Green Bonds” it has issued as income. It hasn’t treated other debt this way nor would this happen in any other accounting system on the planet. Last year, the government doubled the Green Bond debt it could have outstanding at any one time.
Potential government liabilities are, moreover, mounting. Since 2019, the amount of loan guarantees the government has provided, mainly to smaller companies, has risen from HK$27.8 billion to HK$133.4 billion, annual reports show. These will only go on the government’s balance sheet when companies default, and the current default rate, the government says, is only 2.6%. But you can keep even insolvent companies on life support if you lend them enough money at rock-bottom rates.
To me, the intriguing ways in which the government is having to find revenue smacks of desperation. And if spending is cut, the economy will almost certainly do even worse, creating a vicious circle of even slower growth, more defaults and less revenue. The government says these are one-off problems caused by the pandemic and other isolated incidents. The trouble is that the fiscal deficits predated Covid. And given the likely profile of China’s economy in general and Hong Kong’s in particular, I can’t see this changing.
The second reason that assets at the Exchange Fund have dropped is because of investment losses. Although most look at overall assets when they think of the firepower at the HKMA’s disposal, this isn’t quite right. The peg is backed not by the whole of that $417 billion but by the Backing Fund, which is about half that amount and just 10% above the HKMA’s calculations of the monetary base (the same percentage higher as a year ago). However, the overall amounts are smaller because the money supply has shrunk by about 9%. Although this provides some indication of the deflationary forces gripping Hong Kong, the money supply would have shrunk more had the HKMA not tapped the Exchange Fund.
In various annual reports and statements, the HKMA says that, if necessary, it could utilize the rest of the portfolio to defend the peg. There is a mechanism whereby it will automatically do so were the assets of the Backing Fund shrink to only 5% higher than the monetary base. In contrast, if the value of the Backing Fund is at least 12.5% higher than the monetary base, money is transferred to its investment portfolios. What the HKMA won’t tell me is if there is any discretion in this process.
There are three other portfolios: the Strategic Fund, which contains only the shares of its holdings in Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing; the Investment Fund, which contains public debt and equities; and the Long-Term Growth Fund, which invests in real estate and private equity.
How much are all these funds worth now? The HKMA doesn’t count the profits and losses on its strategic fund toward overall returns. Just as well. But the Backing Fund doesn’t contain anything other than dollars and, presumably, short-dated Treasuries or close substitutes (but since it has had mark-to-market losses, we can’t be sure). The other two portfolios are where most of the HKMA’s risk is sitting. Based on some reasonable assumptions, probably about a quarter of the funds’ exposures are to non-US dollar assets.
Also sitting in them, according to the HKMA, are the overwhelming bulk of the HKMA’s equity and credit risk, of which there is a lot. Total equity exposures outlined in its annual report at the end of last year amounted to HK$745 billion. But there is almost certainly more. Exposures to private equity and real estate joint ventures are lumped together with real estate in another category of unlisted and rather nebulous “investment funds” amounting to HK$443 billion The HKMA makes it very hard to find out what is where.
All publicly traded bonds and equities are contained in the Investment Fund. It is reasonable to assume, though I do not know for sure and the HKMA won’t say, that all the holdings are marked-to-market monthly. Its Long-Term Strategic Growth Fund is another matter. At the end of last year, this fund had assets worth roughly HK$515 billion. Valuations on its unlisted investments are published semi-annually, but the latest performance numbers used valuations as of the end of March.
Apparently, the HKMA is very good at real estate and private equity investments since, contrary to the performance of just about everyone else, it showed a small profit. One should take these results with a pinch of salt. As anyone involved in such valuations will know, they tend to be reflections of hope, modeling and heroic assumptions rather than anything approaching a price at which such assets could be sold. And things have got much worse since then in any case.
Call me old fashioned but a government clearly in need of cash and a chunk of assets whose value has probably further to fall make it rather likely that the Exchange Fund’s assets have further to shrink — and that the reasons for that will put still further pressure on the peg.
Richard Cookson was head of research and fund manager at Rubicon Fund Management. Previously, he was chief investment officer at Citi Private Bank and head of asset-allocation research at HSBC. | 2022-11-24T00:44:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pressure on the Hong Kong Dollar Peg Keeps Building - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/pressure-on-the-hong-kong-dollar-peg-keeps-building/2022/11/23/5f31846c-6b83-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/pressure-on-the-hong-kong-dollar-peg-keeps-building/2022/11/23/5f31846c-6b83-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html |
Smoke rises from an oil depot hit by a Turkish airstrike near Qamishli, Syria, on Wednesday. (Baderkhan Ahmad/AP)
Turkey’s fixation on alleged Kurdish terrorism reached a dangerous flash point this week, as Turkish warplanes bombed targets in northern Syria that are perilously close to U.S. forces there guarding against a resurgence of the Islamic State.
The danger of this latest spasm of Turkish reprisal attacks was described to me on Wednesday by Gen. Mazloum Kobane Abdi, commander of the Syrian Kurdish militia known as the Syrian Democratic Forces or SDF. He said that after three days of Turkish bombing, the SDF could lose its ability to maintain security at prisons and a refugee camp for ISIS fighters and their families.
“These strikes have already placed the ISIS mission at risk,” said Col. Joseph Buccino, spokesman for U.S. Central Command, which oversees the region. “One of the strikes hit within 130 meters of U.S. personnel, so American forces are at risk. Any extension of these attacks will drive up that risk,” Buccino told me in an email.
Mazloum, as he is known, said that an hour before our conversation, a Turkish drone had fired on the SDF security post at the al-Hol refugee camp, which houses families of Islamic State fighters. He said he didn’t know whether any of the residents of the camp escaped, because a Turkish drone was still loitering over the camp, and it was impossible for U.S. and SDF forces there to survey the damage safely.
Mazloum said SDF forces are also “at risk right now” as they try to maintain security at 28 makeshift prisons in northern Syria where about 12,000 captured ISIS fighters are housed. After a January prison break at the Hasakah prison, more than 3,000 of these detainees escaped, and it took more than a week to capture most of them and regain control.
Turkey’s rationale for attacking the Syrian Kurds is its claim that the SDF, and Mazloum personally, are affiliated with the militant Kurdish militia known as the PKK, which they contend was responsible for a Nov. 13 terrorist bombing in Istanbul. Mazloum told me his forces had no involvement in the attack and had expressed sympathy for the victims. As for the charge that he was personally affiliated with PKK terrorism, he said, “these are just excuses” and that he had been working closely with U.S. and coalition forces for more than eight years.
Northern Syria is a bomb that Turkey, through its reckless actions, seems determined to detonate. When I visited the al-Hol camp in April with Centcom commander Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, it housed about 56,000 people, an estimated 70 percent of them under 18. We toured the Hasakah prison, too, and security seemed fragile, even without Turkish bombers overhead.
Mazloum said the Turkish assault began on Monday with an attack on a coalition base in Hasakah, where U.S. Special Operations forces help train the SDF. I visited that base in April, too, and saw the combat partnership between the United States and the Syrian Kurds that shattered ISIS. The Kurdish-led militia paid a heavy price in that campaign, with 12,000 fighters killed, Mazloum reminded me on Wednesday.
Mazloum said that he expects Turkey to soon begin a ground assault in northern Syria, seeking greater control of Manbij and Kobani, two areas liberated from ISIS by the United States and its SDF partners at great cost. He said that the United States has an “ethical responsibility to protect the Kurds from being ethnically cleansed from this region.” He urged U.S. officials to pressure Turkey to de-escalate its attacks before there is a disaster.
Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke on Wednesday with his Turkish counterpart and warned the Turks against attacking restricted zones around U.S. troops. But a Pentagon official said there was “no sign that [the Turks] are ready to de-escalate.” As the Turkish military assault in northern Syria begins to destabilize the U.S.-led coalition’s fragile control over the murderous remnants of the Islamic State, a reasonable person begins to wonder: What kind of an ally is this? | 2022-11-24T00:44:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Turkey is playing with fire in Northern Syria - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/23/turkey-attack-kurds-northern-syria/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/23/turkey-attack-kurds-northern-syria/ |
SEOUL, South Korea — The powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un made insult-laden threats against South Korea on Thursday for considering unliteral sanctions on the North, calling the South’s new president and his government “idiots” and “a running wild dog gnawing on a bone given by the U.S.” | 2022-11-24T00:45:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kim's sister makes insulting threats to Seoul over sanctions - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/kims-sister-makes-insulting-threats-to-seoul-over-sanctions/2022/11/23/d743a038-6b8e-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/kims-sister-makes-insulting-threats-to-seoul-over-sanctions/2022/11/23/d743a038-6b8e-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html |
Therapists say fear, anger and resignation are common responses to gun violence. Talking with loved ones, self-care and altruism can help you cope.
People gather at a vigil at All Souls Unitarian Church in Colorado Springs on Nov. 20, after a shooting the night before at Club Q. (Matthew Staver for The Washington Post)
“There’s this feeling that this is just part of the collective experience. It’s scary that it’s becoming normal,” said Kayla M. Johnson, a licensed psychologist in Tomball, Tex. “It happens and we say, ‘Oh, man. What a shame,’ and two weeks go by and people don’t talk about it anymore, and then it happens again.”
“I had a client just tell me, ‘You know, I’m kind of desensitized to this,’ ” said Steve Alexander Jr., a licensed mental health counselor in Brooklyn. “He said, ‘I don’t know if it’s a bad thing or a good thing.’ ”
“It’s just one more thing for them to feel that this system isn’t working — that now we’re not safe in our grocery stores or our churches,” she said. “Then on the flip side, I see a lot of disengagement from it. How many gun shootings can we grieve in one week? People are too tired to care.”
“I don’t care if it’s a holiday or it brings down the mood,” she said. “People need to share that they’re missing their loved one or they’re angry with the state of the world. The only thing we can do is validate the experience people are having in this moment. It’s real fear and real grief that needs to be witnessed and seen and shared.”
At the same time, if the conversation feels overwhelming, it’s also okay to walk away, said Arron Muller, a licensed clinical social worker in Valley Stream, N.Y. “If you need to step away for a minute and go to another room, feel encouraged to do so,” he said.
One reason recent violent events are having a powerful impact on many people’s mental health is that they happened in spaces where people typically feel safe, said Pooja Sharma, a clinical psychologist in Berkeley, Calif.
The shootings happened at “a club where people go for connection and a night out, and a store where people go to work and shop before the holidays,” Sharma said. “When our safe place becomes the place of trauma, we as a society cannot rely on these places to provide safety, resulting in unpredictably, distress and confusion.”
Therapists note that violent events can be traumatic even for those who are not directly affected by them, particularly for people who have experienced past trauma. And many people haven’t had time to process recent events, and may begin to do so over the holiday break.
“She is struggling with the fact that she was very marginalized in her own family for being LGBTQ+ and has never been allowed to live her true authentic life,” Rieger said. “Hearing about what happened at Club Q feels even more traumatic for her because of her life experience.”
Black therapists say they have developed unfortunate expertise in counseling people of color who often don’t feel safe in their communities or public spaces because of police brutality, racism and microaggressions in the workplace.
Muller, who specializes in Black men’s mental health and wellness, said compounded trauma disproportionately affects people of color — not only during national tragedies, but in daily life. “There’s always this hypervigilance, this hyperawareness where you may not be as present, or you may just have this persistent heaviness,” he said.
“On the other side of despair is justifiable anger and rage at the situation. These are the emotions not to turn off because we can use them constructively,” she said. “Using anger in this way helps us to continue to push for change and helps us to enforce boundaries around how we allow ourselves and others to be treated. And that is the most powerful way to cope with situations of this magnitude.”
“Allow yourself to feel, but don’t allow yourself to live there. Develop a plan of action to manage these emotions,” Muller said.
Several experts said it’s a good idea to take breaks from social media and the news during traumatic events. Muller said distractions like going to a museum or reading a book can help. Sharma suggested exercise, cooking, gardening and listening to music. Prayer, for those who are religious, as well as meditation and seeking support from those close to you can all help.
“If you’re thinking about something that’s going on in the world and you can’t get that thought out of your head, try to redirect yourself,” Rieger said. “Take a walk. Reach out to people. Pick up a book that will help redirect you or watch a TV series that will redirect your mind from thinking about what you heard on the news this morning.”
“Creating some sense of control over a situation, knowing where the exits are, that gives some sense of control,” she said.
“The antidote is altruism,” she said. “Maybe we can’t stop gun violence across the whole country, but what can we do in our community to build people up, to give back, to be a part of something that feels good?” | 2022-11-24T00:47:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Coping with the trauma of mass shootings includes self-care and support - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/11/23/gun-violence-shootings-trauma-coping/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/11/23/gun-violence-shootings-trauma-coping/ |
Six dead as Walmart mass killing reboots horror and grief in Virginia
Shooting in Chesapeake comes as country is absorbing other fatal shootings, including killing of three University of Virginia students 10 days ago
Peter Jamison
Investigators escort people to their vehicles near a Walmart store in Chesapeake, Va. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)
CHESAPEAKE, VA. — A 31-year-old Walmart employee fatally shot six people inside the store where he worked on Tuesday night before taking his own life, police said, restarting a ritual of horror, grief and recrimination with which Americans have grown familiar as they repeatedly absorb the news of mass killings, this one carried out as many were preparing to gather with loved ones for Thanksgiving.
Armed with a handgun and several magazines, Andre M. Bing, a supervisor at a Walmart in this tidewater Virginia city of about 250,000, entered the store and opened fire, authorities said. Among those he targeted were co-workers in a break room, according to police and witness accounts. That room was where officers, responding to reports of an active shooter around 10:15 p.m., found Bing dead, along with two victims.
Another victim was found dead at the front of the store, and three others died after being taken to a hospital. At least seven more were injured, three by gunfire. About 50 people were in the store at the time of the attack, authorities said.
The shooting in Chesapeake — a former agricultural hub whose population has soared over the past two decades — comes as the country is trying to process other shootings, including the killing of five people at a Colorado nightclub four days ago and of three University of Virginia students at the conclusion of a class trip 10 days ago.
As in the wake of those still-fresh tragedies, expressions of anger or heartbreak, of prayerful condolences or steely gun-control advocacy, were resounding across the country by late Wednesday morning. Above all, perhaps, there rose a sense of helplessness, as yet another community saw its name entered in the annals of mass gun violence.
Chesapeake Mayor Rick West — a lifelong resident who was 10 when the city was incorporated in 1963 — said he understands the sentiments of constituents who say they never would have expected a mass killing here. But he said it would be naive not to acknowledge the reality of America in 2022: A shooter could end the lives of large numbers of people at any moment, anywhere.
“I’m not completely shocked,” West said. “I don’t see a pattern where I would say, ‘Okay, I’m looking at all these dots on the map to see where these mass shootings are taking place. Now where am I going to go to make sure I don’t become the next dot?’”
Late Wednesday, police identified the victims as Lorenzo Gamble, Brian Pendleton, Kellie Pyle, Randall Blevins and Tyneka Johnson. Authorities did not release the name of a sixth victim, a 16-year-old boy, because he was a minor.
The FBI is helping local police with the investigation into Bing’s background and possible motives. Early Wednesday, Chesapeake officers searched Bing’s residence, a three-bedroom house with a closely mowed lawn abutting Interstate 464 that he bought in 2019, according to Chesapeake tax records. They said the Walmart would probably remain closed for several days as investigators collect evidence and analyze the crime scene.
Customers and workers who were in the Walmart, along a busy commercial strip, described a terrifying and frantic scene as gunfire broke a quiet spell shortly before closing time.
Jeromy Basham, a manager at a solar company, was picking up supplies for a Thanksgiving luncheon for his employees on Tuesday night. He was debating which tablecloths to buy when he heard gunshots. At first he thought someone might have knocked over metal shelving with a forklift.
“It was so loud,” said Basham, 47. “But then everything was completely silent.”
Seconds later, he saw people sprinting down the aisles.
“There’s a shooter!” they yelled. “Run!”
He and others found an emergency door that led them to the parking lot. Some sought shelter behind shipping containers. Basham, hiding behind trees and metal racks in front of the building, saw police rush into the store with their guns drawn.
Soon after, authorities started to bring out those who were shot.
Basham spotted someone administering CPR to a person on the ground. He saw another body wheeled out in a shopping cart by two people. A third body went by on a stretcher.
“None of them moved,” Basham said.
Kevin Harper, a 34-year-old stocker, said he left the break room about five minutes before Bing entered. When he heard shots and saw “everybody running,” he jumped into the center of a circular clothes rack. But after a moment — and not knowing where the gunman was — Harper decided to take his chances and flee the building.
“If I got hit, I got hit,” he said later. “It just felt like forever to get out of there.”
Harper said Bing was his supervisor, but he didn’t know the man well. Bing had a reputation as a by-the-book type, but nothing out of the ordinary, Harper said.
“He was a nitpick, but you’ve got those type of managers,” he said. “Little stuff — he’d write you up, you know, if you don’t finish stuff. But I didn’t hate the man. We didn’t get in no arguments or stuff like that.”
Speaking to The Washington Post on Wednesday afternoon at his home in Chesapeake, not far from the store, Harper said he had not slept since the shooting.
“I’m trying to mentally process it,” he said. “It’s a blur, in a way.”
Donya Prioleau, a Walmart worker, said she was in the store’s break room when Bing entered and shot three of her colleagues.
“Our manager came in our breakroom and shot half of friends and coworkers in front of us, without saying anything,” she wrote in a Facebook post Wednesday morning. In an interview with The Post, Prioleau said she and others who worked the overnight shift were close associates.
“We’re family, because you spend most of the night together,” she said. “What happened last night was awful to see.”
Walmart said Wednesday afternoon that it was setting up a resource center for employees at a hotel nearby. For the next two weeks, the center will offer workers and their families “counseling, meals and a place to connect with each other” from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., the company said in a statement.
Bing did not appear to have a criminal record or any traffic violations, according to online records for Virginia, Maryland, D.C. and federal courts. He also appeared to have no presence on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or TikTok. Walmart officials and police confirmed he was a supervisor at the store.
Tire tracks from police vehicles could be seen across the front lawn at his house Wednesday. A neighbor, Vera McDuffie, said that as far as she knew, Bing lived alone in the house on East Eva Boulevard.
“Nobody that I knew knew anything about him,” said McDuffie, 65, who has lived in her house for more than three decades. She said the only time she saw Bing was when he cut his lawn.
“His yard is immaculate,” she said.
McDuffie said she frequently shops at the Walmart where Bing worked, but she did not know Bing worked at the store until she saw news of the shooting, which she said “makes me want to move.”
According to the Gun Violence Archive, not a single week in 2022 has passed without at least four mass shootings, which the group defines as an episode where four or more people, not including the assailant, are injured or killed.
President Biden condemned the Chesapeake shooting as “yet another horrific and senseless act of violence” and said he and the first lady would “mourn for all those across America who have lost loved ones to these tragic shootings.”
“There are now even more tables across the country that will have empty seats this Thanksgiving,” Biden said in a statement. “There are now more families who know the worst kind of loss and pain imaginable.”
“Our hearts break with the community of Chesapeake this morning,” Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) said in a statement. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Youngkin — who on Saturday was attending a memorial in Charlottesville for the slain U-Va. students — said it was premature to begin discussing gun-control measures.
Ghazala F. Hashmi (D), a state senator representing Virginia’s 10th District, urged the federal government to act quickly.
“Trauma upon trauma in Virginia. No other country in the world experiences mass shootings and gun violence in the way that we do,” she said. “It’s long past time for federal action.”
Chesapeake area residents described tears and “heartbreak” when speaking to The Post about the deadly shooting at Walmart on Nov. 22. (Video: John Warner, Joy Yi/The Washington Post, Photo: Carlos Bernate/The Washington Post)
Among those struggling to understand the violence is Garnet Raby. She considers the Walmart her home — literally. The 70-year-old lives out of a minivan in the store’s parking lot.
Raby said she comes and goes from the store all day. Its workers are “really good people,” she said, and they gave her warm clothes as the weather turned. Their gifts included a white, quilted vest she wore Wednesday afternoon as she stood outside the store, trying to learn who had been shot.
Raby said she was one of several people who had regularly slept in their vehicles at Walmart since they were ousted from the parking lot at a Kohl’s nearby. She said her son, also homeless, lives in a part of the region with higher crime.
The Walmart had always seemed safe to her.
“This is just unreal for this area,” she said. “But it’s getting unreal everywhere.”
The following reporters contributed to The Washington Post’s coverage of this shooting: Katerina Ang, Nicole Asbury, Victoria Bisset, Cate Brown, Alice Crites, Karina Elwood, Jennifer Hassan, Dana Hedgpeth, Peter Hermann, Tom Jackman, Maham Javaid, Magda Jean-Louis, Jennifer Jenkins, Andrew Jeong, Lizzie Johnson, Marissa J. Lang, Lisa Lednicer, Jim Morrison, Hannah Natanson, Monika Mathur, Razzan Nakhlawi, Rachel Pannett, Azi Paybarah, Jaclyn Peiser, Andrea Salcedo, Gregory S. Schneider, Annabelle Timsit, Amy B Wang, Martin Weil. | 2022-11-24T02:03:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Chesapeake Walmart shooting: 6 killed by store employee, police say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/23/walmart-shooting-chesapeake/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/23/walmart-shooting-chesapeake/ |
By John Woodrow Cox
Crime scene tape outside a Walmart where six people were shot and killed in Chesapeake, Va. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)
“We are not free,” said Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, “if we’re worried that no matter where we are, we are at risk of being shot.”
Watts, known in part for tweeting out the details of nearly every mass shooting, had hoped that this week would provide her a break. She spent Tuesday finding ingredients for stuffing and making airport runs to pick up her children flying home for the holiday. Then she saw the news from Chesapeake, Va., and shared it. But when she noticed the shooting still hadn’t started to trend on Twitter, a sense of dread swept over her. She worried people were looking away.
“We aren’t numb - we’re traumatized,” posted Watts, who had been inspired to launch her gun violence prevention group a decade ago, after 20 first-graders were slaughtered at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn.
“When you are constantly exposed to gun violence, whether you’re a survivor or someone who has experienced this in their community or even secondhand, watching it on the news, it impacts us,” she said later. “The violence bleeds into our consciousness.”
America is enduring a historic stretch of gun violence that spiked at the start of the pandemic and has yet to subside. Bullets killed more than 47,000 people last year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And though a Washington Post analysis of data from the Gun Violence Archive shows the pace of mass shootings — where four or more people are wounded in a single incident, not including the shooter — lags slightly behind last year at this time, 2022’s total could double 2018’s.
School shootings, meanwhile, have never been worse. The number of incidents, deaths and children exposed to campus gunfire are all expected to set records.
The epidemic’s relentlessness has left many Americans exhausted.
On Nov. 13, police say, a 22-year-old student at the University of Virginia fired at his schoolmates after returning from a bus trip to D.C., where the group had watched a play and eaten together. All three of the young men who died played on the football team.
Six days later, in Colorado Springs, authorities allege that another 22-year-old, this one wearing camouflage and a bulletproof vest, opened fire inside an LGBTQ nightclub, killing five and wounding at least 18 others.
And there was the shooting late Tuesday in Chesapeake, where authorities and witnesses said a Walmart employee fired in a break room, killing six co-workers and wounding others before taking his own life. Then came the familiar responses: demands for change from gun-safety activists, dismissiveness of those demands from the National Rifle Association and, from Virginia’s Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, a call to save the debates for some day in the future.
After each mass killing, gun rights activists suggest that what the country really needs to protect itself from is even more lethal weapons, a persuasive refrain to millions of gun owners. That’s despite the fact that armed guards have repeatedly failed to stop school shootings, and years of research has shown that the mere presence of a firearm in a home substantially increases the danger to the people who live in it.
Regardless of the disagreements, only more carnage awaits, as the recent past has made clear.
Less than a month before the Chesapeake shooting, a man with an AR-15-style rifle and more than 600 rounds of ammunition killed two people at a St. Louis high school. And Thanksgiving marks the six-month anniversary of the shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Tex., where 19 children and two teachers were killed.
Then there are the shootings that go mostly unnoticed but that, nevertheless, devastate millions of people each year.
This month, a man fatally shot three people, including his wife, in rural Pennsylvania and then was killed as he fired on troopers. Just more than a week later, a 3-year-old boy died after he accidentally shot himself with a gun he found in an apartment in Utah. A day after that, a Maryland man was accused of gunning down his former girlfriend and her three children.
“What keeps me up at night is the question of whether this country is just learning to live with this,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who has long fought for gun-safety reform. “We have to maintain our sense of outrage at this. And I know that becomes harder and harder.”
Zoe Touray understands that, too.
Touray, 18, survived the massacre at Oxford High School in Michigan on Nov. 30, 2021. As time has passed, she has noticed how many people have forgotten the shooting at her school and the four teenagers whose lives it took.
“It bothers me that people sometimes forget we had tragedy because maybe it was ‘smaller’ than others,” she said. “But in reality, they all have a huge impact.”
Touray recently started a group, Survivors Embracing Each Other, in the hope of supporting more victims. She hosted her first event on Saturday, in Uvalde, just hours before the Colorado Springs shooting 850 miles away. Dozens of kids competed in limbo competitions, played with therapy dogs, munched on wings and made tie-dye shirts.
She learned about the nightclub attack the next morning, on her way to spend the day with a 10-year-old girl who had escaped from Robb. They were supposed to go to an arcade together and eat pizza. Touray had to turn her phone off.
Back in Michigan on Wednesday, she also had to avoid news about the Walmart shooting. She and her former schoolmates had planned to light lanterns together in honor of their friends killed almost exactly one year earlier.
For many people, this trio of widely covered mass shootings felt like a single, inescapable event, with the anguish of one lingering into the next. That was especially true for Johnny de Triquet.
As a U-Va. alumnus, he was stunned to learn that his alma mater’s idyllic campus had been the scene of such terror. As a 38-year-old gay man, he was horrified again last weekend after the killings in Colorado that led the suspect to be charged with a hate crime. And then, finally, as a native of Chesapeake, he was devastated by the attack in his hometown, a bastion of “Southern hospitality” where he and his partner were traveling to from New York City for the holiday.
“You never know what may happen — who’s going to act crazy, in any kind of situation,” he said. “And we end up with a tragedy the next day on the news.”
For millions of Americans, the fatigue and frustration stem both from the rate of gun violence and from how little people in power have done to address it.
The public might never learn why the shooters in Charlottesville or Colorado Springs or Chesapeake pulled their triggers. Investigators haven’t divulged what made them so angry or if anyone could have intervened before blood was shed. They were different people from different places, each with different backgrounds and circumstances, motives and hatreds. But they all had one thing in common: access to guns.
The NRA on Tuesday insisted America’s Second Amendment protection of gun ownership had nothing to do with any of the killings.
“These are heinous acts by deranged criminals,” Amy Hunter, an NRA spokeswoman, wrote in a statement to The Post. “Rational Americans know that these crimes have nothing to do with the constitutional and the self-defense rights of the law abiding.”
Yet America is the only high-income nation on Earth that contends with such extraordinary levels of gun violence, and experts say the only clear difference between this country and those is the number of firearms in this one — more than 400 million, by some estimates — and laws that are less effective at regulating them.
“There might be some diseases that don’t have a cure. What do you do? But there are things about gun violence that are time-tested, and perhaps wouldn’t prevent every act of gun violence, but with the law of averages and big numbers, we would prevent a lot of them,” said David Chipman, a former agent at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and one-time nominee to lead the agency. “Our political people in power are unwilling to do that.”
Youngkin was criticized online after calling the shooting at U-Va. an “event” on Twitter and making no mention of the word “gun.” In his first tweet about the Walmart shooting, he condemned “heinous acts of violence” but again did not note that the act was committed with a gun.
Pressed about potential gun-control reforms by reporters on Wednesday, Youngkin said he was open to discussing it, but — as conservative politicians often do — he insisted now is a time for mourning, not solutions.
“Today is not the day. It’s not the day,” he said. “But it will be. And we will talk about it.”
Murphy said he suspects elected officials, both in state capitals and in Washington, won’t be able to avoid the issue much longer.
“I think this country has made the decision that they aren’t going to live with this,” he said. “There were lots of reasons Democrats did fairly well in this last election. But clearly, gun violence was a motivating issue. Of those that showed up for the midterms, the vast majority of them wanted tougher gun laws. And those folks all voted for Democrats. So I think Republicans are beginning to realize that their political future is at risk if they don’t start joining us in these efforts.”
This summer, with the help of 15 Senate Republicans, Congress passed a gun-control bill for the first time in decades, and though the legislation didn’t include the sweeping changes that activists have long demanded, Murphy said it was a significant victory that he believes will lead to more.
But for a senator whose career has been shaped by the Sandy Hook massacre, Murphy has accepted that nothing will end mass shootings in America.
They are inevitable.
On Tuesday, a former Olympic boxer in Miami was arrested after police discovered that he planned to commit a mass shooting. He made a $150 deposit for a AK-47 semiautomatic rifle at a pawnshop and posted threats online, writing on Instagram that he was “willing to shoot with a actual gun.” He would go through it “for righteousness sake.”
His target, according to police? A local gym that had revoked his membership.
Gillian Brockell, Peter Jamison and Gregory S. Schneider contributed to this report. | 2022-11-24T02:16:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mass killing in Chesapeake, Va., hits country weary over gun violence - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/23/mass-killings-us-chesapeake-virginia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/23/mass-killings-us-chesapeake-virginia/ |
Lisa Murkowski and Mary Peltola projected to win Alaska races, defeating Trump-backed opponents
Rep. Mary Peltola (D) speaks to supporters at a watch party in Anchorage on Nov. 8. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola on Wednesday became the first Alaska Native to win a full term in Congress, securing reelection along with Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who both defeated challengers endorsed by former president Donald Trump after state officials finished a final round of vote-counting.
Peltola, who made history with her August special election win, and Murkowski, a senator for two decades, led after earlier vote counts. But the centrist lawmakers’ victories were not clinched until Wednesday, when the Alaska Division of Elections redistributed votes under the state’s new ranked-choice voting system.
At a victory party at a downtown Anchorage brewery Wednesday night, Peltola told reporters that Alaskans have given her a “a two-year contract.”
“And I will be happy to work for Alaskans again, as long as they’ll have me,” she said. Her win, she added, shows that Alaskans “wholeheartedly embrace nonpartisanship and working together.”
“I am honored that Alaskans — of all regions, backgrounds and party affiliations — have once again granted me their confidence to continue working with them and on their behalf in the U.S. Senate,” Murkowski said in a statement Wednesday night. “I look forward to continuing the important work ahead of us.”
The outcome marked another blow to Trump in this year’s midterm elections. Many candidates affiliated with the former president and his polarizing positions fell in defeat in battleground contests, and his overall record was mixed in competitive contests. That list includes former Republican governor Sarah Palin, who challenged Peltola with Trump’s backing, and Republican Kelly Tshibaka, a former state and federal official who ran against Murkowski with the former president’s support.
After the final round of ranked-choice voting, Murkowski had 53.7 percent of the vote to 46.3 percent for Tshibaka. In the House race, Peltola had 55 percent of the vote to Palin’s 45 percent.
Peltola ran a locally focused campaign with both traditional and unconventional Democratic platform planks — she touted her support for abortion rights and “pro-fish” views, along with her endorsement of a new Alaska oil project and the large gun collection that she and her family maintains.
Peltola’s win secures her first full two-year term on Capitol Hill and follows her victory in August to temporarily fill her state’s only seat in the U.S. House — one that was vacated after the sudden death of longtime Republican Rep. Don Young. Peltola beat Palin in that race too, becoming the first Alaska Native member of Congress and her state’s first woman to fill the seat.
Murkowski, meanwhile, will soon begin serving her fourth six-year term in the Senate, following her 2002 appointment to the chamber by her father, then newly elected governor Frank Murkowski. Her campaign highlighted her work to bring infrastructure money to Alaska, her support for the state’s oil and fishing industries and her close relationships with Alaska Native constituencies.
Trump had long vowed to unseat the senator, predicting in 2018 that she “will never recover” politically for voting against one of his Supreme Court nominees, Brett M. Kavanaugh. Tshibaka joined Trump at a rally held in an Anchorage arena in July.
Palin, the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee, also appeared with Trump in July. She lost both the special and general elections after splitting the conservative vote with Nick Begich III, a Republican from a prominent Alaska Democratic family. (Nick Begich III is a nephew of Mark Begich and a grandson of Nick Begich Sr., who held Alaska’s U.S. House seat before a plane carrying him across the state disappeared in 1972.)
Jim Lottsfeldt, a centrist political consultant who worked with pro-Murkowski and pro-Peltola super PACs, said he’s not sure that Trump’s endorsements offered Palin and Tshibaka much help. Alaska, he said, is small enough that many people who follow politics judge candidates on personal interactions.
“We all have these opinions we’ve earned by looking someone in the eye,” Lottsfeldt said in a phone interview Tuesday. “Donald Trump’s not going to tell me anything about Sarah Palin that I don’t already know.”
This year’s elections were Alaska’s first under the state’s new voting framework, which residents narrowly approved in a 2020 citizens initiative that was partially funded and run by Murkowski allies. The system overhauled primary elections by eliminating partisan races and advancing the top four vote-getters from a single, open ballot to the general election.
In the general election, voters are allowed to rank candidates based on their preferences. If no candidate receives a majority of first-choice votes, the candidate with the lowest vote totals is eliminated, and that candidate’s supporters’ votes are reassigned to their next choices. The process repeats until there are two candidates left and a winner can be declared.
The repeal campaign might face an uphill battle. One path for critics is a repeal by the Alaska Legislature — where a number of seats will now be filled by candidates who won races this year at least partially because of the new voting process.
Even if the new election system remains intact, Peltola’s allies expect she’ll face serious challenges from Republicans when her term expires two years from now.
One dynamic boosting Peltola this year was a national Democratic network that helped her raise more than $5.5 million through mid-October — more than triple the $1.7 million and $1.6 million that Palin and Begich respectively collected in campaign contributions. | 2022-11-24T02:16:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Lisa Murkowski and Mary Peltola projected to win Alaska races, defeating Trump-backed opponents - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2022/11/23/alaska-election-results/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2022/11/23/alaska-election-results/ |
He was elected to his one term in office in 1979, shortly after marrying sportscaster and former Miss America Phyllis George
Kentucky Gov. John Y. Brown Jr. delivers his inaugural address in Frankfort in 1979. (AP)
John Y. Brown Jr., a onetime owner of Kentucky Fried Chicken who parlayed his fast-food fortune into a dramatic rise in Kentucky politics, winning one term as governor shortly after marrying sportscaster and former Miss America Phyllis George, died Nov. 21 at a hospital in Lexington, Ky. He was 88.
The son of a one-term congressman who longed for higher office, Mr. Brown entered politics after a business career in which he helped build Kentucky Fried Chicken into one of the state’s most famous exports and one of the largest fast-food chains in the world. He was also an owner of three professional basketball teams, among them the Boston Celtics.
Mr. Brown was 30 in 1964 when he and a co-investor purchased Kentucky Fried Chicken from founder Harland Sanders, better known as Colonel Sanders, for $2 million. They kept the colonel — the title was honorary — as their spokesman as the chicken chain grew to include 3,500 locations around the globe, eclipsing even McDonald’s for a period.
Mr. Brown and his partner sold the business to Heublein in 1971, with Mr. Brown’s share of the deal reportedly reaching $35 million. He had already purchased the Kentucky Colonels, a team in the now-defunct American Basketball Association, and later became owner of the Buffalo Braves and then the Celtics. He toyed with the idea of running for the U.S. Senate or for governor before jumping into the 1979 Democratic gubernatorial primary less than three months before the election.
In the primary, Mr. Brown defeated several other more experienced candidates, including former Louisville mayor Harvey Sloane, state commerce commissioner Terry McBrayer, U.S. Rep. Carroll Hubbard Jr. and Lt. Gov. Thelma Stovall. Mr. Brown then easily beat former Republican governor Louie B. Nunn in the general election. He drew heavily on his own wealth to blanket Kentucky in television commercials, spending $2 million on his winning campaign, according to the Almanac of American Politics.
His “campaign for the Democratic nomination for governor destroyed the notion that candidates had to invest years of painstaking preparation before seeking the office,” Mr. Brown’s obituary in the Louisville Courier-Journal said. “He demonstrated that a quick thrust, built on modern campaign techniques, could overwhelm organizational politics.”
Mr. Brown pledged on the campaign trail to bring his business acumen to state government. Once in office, he helped steer the state through a recession. He trimmed state spending “by $676 million, or 16 percent, resulting in a reduction in the payroll by 4,000 jobs to 37,200, but loss of programs of only about 4 percent,” according to a report in the New York Times in 1981.
Phyllis George, Miss America who became a trailblazing sportscaster, dies at 70
Kentucky governors at the time were barred by state law from seeking a second consecutive term, and Mr. Brown indicated interest in possibly pursuing the Democratic nomination for president in 1984. But he faced controversy over a federal investigation into his withdrawal of $1.3 million in cash from a Miami bank that did not make a mandatory report of the transactions to the IRS. Mr. Brown later said he used much the cash to pay off a gambling debt that he an incurred in “one real bad night” in Las Vegas.
“I worked hard for my money, I made it legally and I paid the taxes on it,” Mr. Brown told the Times in 1983. “If I want to take it out of a bank in wheelbarrows, that’s my business. It’s my money and I can do with it what I want.”
Mr. Brown ultimately faced no charges.
In 1983, his last year in office, Mr. Brown nearly died after undergoing heart bypass surgery. The following year, he abandoned a primary bid for the U.S. Senate, citing his ongoing recovery. He attempted to reclaim the governor’s seat in 1987 but lost in the Democratic primary to Wallace Wilkinson, who ultimately prevailed.
John Young Brown Jr. was born in Lexington on Dec. 28, 1933, one of five children and the only son. His mother was a homemaker. His father had been named after John Young Brown, a Democrat who served as Kentucky governor from 1891 to 1895. He became a lawyer, speaker of the state House of Representatives, and a member of the U.S. House from 1933 to 1935. He ran seven times for the U.S. Senate and twice for governor, each time unsuccessfully.
“I wanted to atone for that,” Mr. Brown told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in 1994. “That was probably my underlying motivation. I wanted to get in there and throw the rascals out.”
Mr. Brown received a bachelor’s degree in 1957 and a law degree in 1960, both from the University of Kentucky. He displayed an entrepreneurial streak as a college student, making as much as $500 a weekend selling copies of the Encyclopaedia Britannica door to door.
While serving in the Army Reserve, Mr. Brown practiced law with his father. “I was making a good living,” he told the Sun-Sentinel of his years before he purchased Kentucky Fried Chicken from Sanders, a friend of his father’s. “But the Colonel came along, and I said, ‘The heck with law. I can always go back to law.'”
His prolific political fundraising helped bring him to the attention of the state and national Democratic parties. He unsuccessfully challenged U.S. Sen. Walter D. Huddleston in the 1978 Democratic primary before his successful bid for governor the following year. He sold his share of the Celtics in 1979.
Mr. Brown’s first marriage, to Ellie Durall, ended in divorce. He and George were divorced in 1998, and she died in 2020. His third marriage, to Jill Roach, a former Mrs. Kentucky, also ended in divorce.
Survivors include three children from his first marriage, Sissy Brown of Lexington and Sandy Steier and former Kentucky secretary of state John Y. Brown III, both of Louisville; two children from his second marriage, Pamela Brown of Alexandria, Va., and Lincoln Brown of Lexington; and 12 grandchildren.
Mr. Brown owned or helped grow a number of fast-food chains, including Kenny Rogers Roasters, which he co-founded with the eponymous country musician. Another was called John Y’s Grill, a reference to the name by which many Kentuckians knew Mr. Brown. He quipped that he was “the only governor with his name on a chicken house.”
“Of all the things I’ve done, I’m most proud of being in politics,” Mr. Brown told the Sun-Sentinel. “I sort of regret that I didn’t make it a career.” | 2022-11-24T03:47:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | John Y. Brown Jr., former Kentucky governor and KFC owner, dies at 88 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/23/john-y-brown-kentucky-governor-kfc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/23/john-y-brown-kentucky-governor-kfc/ |
Alex Ovechkin notched his 790th goal Wednesday night. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
The situation was bleak for Washington in the final minutes of Wednesday’s game against the sputtering Philadelphia Flyers, with the Capitals trailing by a goal and their energy fading. Then, winger Sonny Milano turned on the jets and found the equalizer, sending the game to overtime.
Captain Alex Ovechkin took it from there, sending the Capital One Arena crowd into a frenzy with a one-timer off a slick feed from Dylan Strome for the overtime winner in the Capitals’ 3-2 win. The victory snapped Washington’s four-game losing streak; Ovechkin’s goal at 1:04 was his 10th of the season and No. 790 in his career.
The Flyers led 2-1 heading into the third period before the Capitals (8-10-3) answered. Washington killed off two penalties in the first five minutes, swinging momentum in its favor. Milano got the backdoor equalizer with 2:58 left before Ovechkin did the rest, converting just moments after hitting the post.
Capitals goalie Darcy Kuemper stopped 21 shots but looked shaky at times. Flyers counterpart Felix Sandstrom made 29 saves.
Washington’s next game is Friday afternoon against the visiting Calgary Flames before it embarks on a six-game, 12-day road trip. The Capitals had gone 0-3-1 in their previous four games, including a dismal 4-0 loss to the defending Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche on Saturday.
With the score tied at 1 entering the second period, Washington came out buzzing. But the Flyers (7-8-5) were the only team to light the lamp.
Philadelphia took a 2-1 lead at 14:33 when Ivan Provorov’s shot went off Patrick Brown’s skate and sneaked through Kuemper. It was just the third shot on goal of the period for Philadelphia, which has lost eight in a row (0-5-3). Washington had two power-play chances in the period but couldn’t convert.
Washington got a pivotal player back in the lineup, and he made an immediate impact. Winger T.J. Oshie had missed the past 11 games with a lower-body injury. On Wednesday, he recorded two assists, drew a penalty, blocked two shots and was credited with seven hits.
But Washington continued to start slowly. Morgan Frost made it 1-0 for the Flyers at 5:27 of the first period with an odd goal: His shot from the circle hit Kuemper’s blocker, popped up in the air, dropped behind Kuemper in the crease and trickled over the goal line. Washington has given up the first goal in 13 of its 21 games.
Marcus Johansson tied the score at 1 on the power play at 11:05. It initially appeared that Ovechkin scored a rebound goal, but Johansson swiped at the puck and got a piece of it before it went over the goal line.
It appeared Johansson had scored Washington’s first goal a few moments earlier. But video review ruled that he kicked the puck into the net, so the goal was wiped off the board.
Here is what else to know about the Capitals’ win:
Svrluga: For the hurting Capitals, the first quarter of the season has been painful
Oshie’s return
In his return, Oshie wanted to bring positivity to a group that went 2-6-3 in his absence. The 35-year-old said if he wasn’t bringing energy, then he wasn’t doing his job properly.
“We are playing our best when guys are smiling, so that will be a focus for me. … If I am not bringing positive energy, then it is probably time to send me home,” he said. “Just kind of one of my characteristics and one of the things I try to bring to the team.”
Backstrom’s progress
Center Nicklas Backstrom skated with the team Wednesday morning, continuing his steady recovery progress after he underwent hip resurfacing surgery in the offseason. He had been skating regularly with winger Tom Wilson (knee) away from the team since late October.
The Capitals anticipate Backstrom taking part in practice on a regular basis moving forward, but it is unlikely he joins the team on its six-game road trip.
“He is smiling, he looks good, he feels good,” Coach Peter Laviolette said. “He is happy to be out there — that is really positive.” | 2022-11-24T04:13:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Alex Ovechkin's 790th goal gives Capitals overtime win over Flyers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/23/capitals-flyers-alex-ovechkin/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/23/capitals-flyers-alex-ovechkin/ |
Dear Amy: At the beginning of the pandemic, my husband and I moved across the country. Our adult son was laid off because of the pandemic and struggled with depression. We decided to invite him to move with us to help him get on his feet again.
It took him a while to get a part-time job, and now he was finally hired full time. We are very happy for him. However, he gets upset when the subject of having him move out and be on his own comes up. He tells us that because of his depression he is afraid to live on his own and needs to have family around.
He is already on antidepressants, but doesn’t follow through with seeking counseling. We are getting close to retirement and don’t want to have children living with us when we do retire.
We also have a younger son who is living with us and attending a local university. We are fine with helping him out until he graduates. We just don’t know how to help our oldest son get to a place where he can live independently. What would you suggest?
Concerned: You should take this in careful stages. The message to your elder son should be, “Our goal is for both of our sons to live independently and to develop rewarding pursuits and relationships. We’ll help you get there.”
According to a study published by the Pew Research Center, “At the height of the pandemic, more people under 30 were living with their parents than were living on their own … the highest percentage since the Great Depression.” Many of these young adults are now struggling to relaunch.
The National Alliance on Mental Illness is an invaluable resource. Check its “family members and caregivers” page for ideas and professional and peer support (NAMI.org).
Dear Amy: Unfortunately, we have a growing homeless population in our city. I understand the causes and feel a great deal of compassion for the difficulties that they face as individuals.
Where I struggle is how to respond when asked for money — often it is very uncomfortable. I can easily afford to give out a few dollars, but is this the right thing to do? What is the best way we can help as individuals?
John: I don’t believe there is any definitive answer to this. Because you are both aware and concerned (good for you!), you could do a lot of good by helping organizations that help the homeless through financial support and/or volunteering. Instead of cash, some people give out socks, gloves, or gift cards for small amounts to be redeemed for food.
Dear Amy: “New Job, New Me” had previously worked for a well-known company, and didn’t know how to respond to new co-workers’ extreme curiosity about the previous job.
Not Talking: Good advice. (I’ve now spent the last several days trying to guess the identity of your previous employer.) | 2022-11-24T05:19:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: Adult son won’t move out now that his life is back on track - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/24/ask-amy-son-move-out-pandemic/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/24/ask-amy-son-move-out-pandemic/ |
Anwar named Malaysian leader, in comeback for anti-graft reformer after prison
Anwar Ibrahim will be appointed Malaysia's 10th Prime Minister on Thursday. (Vincent Thian/AP)
SINGAPORE — The wait is over. And it’s a comeback.
Nearly a week after Malaysia’s general election resulted in a hung parliament, longstanding opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim appears to have garnered enough support among disparate parties to form a government, staving off the rise of more conservative political forces — at least for now.
The naming of Anwar as prime minister on Thursday has brought temporary end to a chaotic election season that has seen the fall of a political titan, surprising gains by a far-right Islamic party and endless infighting among supposed allies, caused in large part by the conviction of a disgraced former prime minister.
After taking into account the views of the state rulers, the king has approved the appointment of Anwar as the 10th Prime Minister of Malaysia, the Istana Negara, the seat of the Malaysian king, said in a statement. In Malaysia, a parliamentary democracy with a constitutional monarchy, the king formally names the head of government.
The announcement marks a dramatic comeback for Anwar, 75, who has strived for decades to reach the country’s top political post, along the way serving two stints in prison for sodomy and corruption — convictions that he says were politically motivated.
Anwar’s multiethnic reformist coalition Pakatan Harapan, or Alliance of Hope, earned 82 seats after last week’s election, several dozen seats shy of the 112 that they needed to form a simple majority. They’ve raced against Perikatan Nasional, a right-wing national coalition that got 73 seats, to garner allies and persuade voters — as well as monarch Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah — that they have a mandate to form the country’s next government. | 2022-11-24T06:41:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Anwar Ibrahim named Malaysia's 10th prime minister - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/24/malaysia-new-prime-minister-anwar-ibrahim/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/24/malaysia-new-prime-minister-anwar-ibrahim/ |
Connecting. (Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg)
For all the difficulties that Meta Platforms Inc. is going through with declining ad revenues, higher costs related to its risky investment in the metaverse and its first major restructuring, the company has been relatively lucky with privacy regulators.
It has avoided the most detrimental fines under Europe’s main privacy law, known as the General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR, despite making billions of dollars from being one of the world’s biggest processors of personal data. But that luck may be about to run out. Meta looks like it could struggle to comply with the European Union’s upcoming antitrust law, which prohibits data combination and reuse.
In a recent court case related to Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal(1), parent company Meta was unable to satisfy a request by a court-appointed special master to produce information about 149 of its internal data systems. Specifically, the special master wanted details on the functions of those systems, and how they were used by other business units in the company. Meta effectively replied it couldn’t provide that information to the court. In other words, its own engineers appeared unaware of the full extent of user data that it held in what appeared to be a Byzantine network of different systems.
The DMA, which went into force on Nov. 1 and whose rules will apply from May 2, 2023(2), could essentially bolster the EU’s relatively unsuccessful privacy efforts against Big Tech.
Meta spokesman Andy Stone said the company was making “significant investments to meet our privacy commitments and obligations, including extensive data controls.” He added that Meta would be working with European regulators to comply with the new rules.
Johnny Ryan, a senior fellow at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, conducted the original research on the court documents, which he says offer a rare insight into what Facebook knows about its own data processing. The documents are now the basis of a letter of warning he is sending to EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager, whose office is responsible for enforcing the upcoming DMA. “Meta’s data free-for-all makes compliance with the [DMA] impossible for the tech giant,” Ryan said.
Of course, the company still has time to get its house in order. Companies that fail to comply with the DMA’s 22 conduct rules(3) face major financial penalties, including fines of up to 10% of their global revenue in the case of a one-off infringement. Repeat offenses will see fines go up to 20%.
It’s perhaps unsurprising that a company of Meta’s size might not know the full extent of what user information it has. The documents released in discovery during the court case listed a word salad of different data systems that Meta presides over, with names like Hive, TAO (which stands for The Associated Objects), FBLearner and F3 (which stands for Facebook Feature Framework). They seem to have a complex array of roles, according to the documents and Ryan’s analysis, not only as databases but also as so-called “abstraction layers.” So complex is their interaction that one engineer cited in the court documents said the data might not be possible for humans to understand.(4)
Meta spokesman Stone said that “no single company engineer can answer every question about where each piece of user information is stored.”
But Anne Witt, an antitrust scholar with EDHEC Business School, said Ryan’s complaint held weight if Meta failed to improve its visibility into its own myriad data systems. She pointed out that his approach was similar to that of Germany’s antitrust regulators, who in 2019 used competition law to stop Facebook from imposing excessive data collection terms on consumers. It was a controversial case but novel in its approach and has been so far successful, being upheld by Germany’s Federal Court of Justice after an appeal by Facebook. The European Court of Justice looks likely to uphold it too.
There is one big caveat, though: Large online platforms like Facebook and Google are widely expected to push back on the EU’s labelling of themselves as “gatekeepers,” in appeals that could delay the DMA’s rollout further. If Facebook loses a significant share of the ad market to TikTok and others over the next two years, and sees its sales further eroded by Apple’s privacy update for iPhones, that could help it argue that it isn’t as dominant as the EU says it is. That creates a (small) chance that it can avoid dealing with these more robust regulations down the line.
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(1) The original complaint alleges that Facebook broke the law when it enabled third parties, like the consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, to access users personal content and information without their permission.
(2) Although the DMA’s rules will technically apply from May 2023, they likely won’t have their full impact on tech giants until around 2024 or even 2025. This is because they are expected to argue in court against the EU’s labelling of them as “gatekeepers,” and thus subject to the Digital Markets Act. They will almost certainly lose these cases, but it will allow them the benefit of kicking the can down the road.
(3) The 22 conduct rules are in Articles 5-7 of the DMA.
(4) Page 575 of one of the court filings. | 2022-11-24T06:50:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Meta Gives Regulators a New Reason to Bite - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/meta-gives-regulators-a-new-reason-to-bite/2022/11/24/5dc0fb1e-6bbd-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/meta-gives-regulators-a-new-reason-to-bite/2022/11/24/5dc0fb1e-6bbd-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html |
Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim waves to his supporters as he arrives at a nomination center for the upcoming general election in Tambun, Malaysia, Saturday, Nov. 5, 2022. Malaysia’s king on Thursday, Nov. 24, 2022, named Anwar as the country’s prime minister, ending days of uncertainties after divisive general elections produced a hung Parliament. (AP Photo/John Shen Lee) (JohnShen Lee/AP) | 2022-11-24T08:22:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | From prisoner to PM, Malaysia's Anwar had long ride to top - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/from-prisoner-to-pm-malaysias-anwar-had-long-ride-to-top/2022/11/24/7e4514f2-6bc6-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/from-prisoner-to-pm-malaysias-anwar-had-long-ride-to-top/2022/11/24/7e4514f2-6bc6-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html |
In this photo provided by the Department of National Defense, ships carrying construction materials are docked at the newly built beach ramp at the Philippine-claimed island of Thitu, in the disputed South China Sea, June 9, 2020. The Philippines has sought an explanation from China after a Filipino military commander reported that the Chinese coast guard forcibly seized Chinese rocket debris in the possession of Filipino navy personnel in the disputed South China Sea, officials said Thursday, Nov. 24, 2022. (Department of National Defense PAS via AP) (Uncredited/DEPARTMENT OF NATIONAL DEFENSE PUBLIC AFFAIRS SERVICE) | 2022-11-24T08:22:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Philippines asks China for explanation over latest sea feud - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/philippines-asks-china-for-explanation-over-latest-sea-feud/2022/11/24/cd5bdb70-6bc6-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/philippines-asks-china-for-explanation-over-latest-sea-feud/2022/11/24/cd5bdb70-6bc6-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html |
Ukrainian firefighters work to extinguish a fire in a town near Kyiv, Ukraine, on Wednesday. (Efrem Lukatsky/AP)
“Energy terror is an analogue of the use of weapons of mass destruction,” Zelensky said. “When the temperature is below zero outside, and tens of millions of people are left without electricity, heat and water as a result of Russian missiles hitting energy facilities, this is an obvious crime against humanity.”
Zelensky told the Security Council that Russia was “a state that does not offer anything to the world but terror, destabilization and disinformation.” He said the Kremlin had fired some 70 rockets at Ukraine on Wednesday.
Kyiv’s regional governor urged residents to heed air raid sirens and stay in shelters as officials reported missile strikes on the capital. Three people were killed in a strike on a two-story building, according to the city’s military administration. Among those killed was a 17-year-old girl, according to Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, and 11 people were injured. Wednesday’s strikes hit 16 targets across Ukraine and caused power outages in the cities of Kharkiv and Lviv, and in several other regions.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is “weaponizing winter” as a strategy to harm Ukrainians, said U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield at the U.N. meeting. “He has decided that if he cannot seize Ukraine by force, he will try to freeze the country into submission,” she said. The White House said the United States had provided more than $250 million for “winterization efforts” in Ukraine — funds intended for heating fuel, generators, warm blankets and shelter repairs.
Zelensky praised the European Parliament’s symbolic vote Wednesday to label Russia a “state sponsor of terrorism.” On Twitter, he said that “Russia must be isolated at all levels and held accountable in order to end its long-standing policy of terrorism in Ukraine and across the globe.” Here’s what the designation means.
Russia attacked Ukraine with another barrage of missiles on Nov. 23, causing a majority of the thermal and hydroelectric plants to temporarily shut down. (Video: Reuters)
Millions of Ukrainians could face life-threatening conditions without power, heat or running water this winter, after attacks on energy infrastructure battered the country to the brink of a humanitarian disaster, The Washington Post reported. Sergey Kovalenko, the head of a power company supplying Kyiv, has warned that Ukrainians could face blackouts until the end of March. The head of power grid operator Ukrenergo on Tuesday described the damage as “colossal.”
Ukraine’s Air Force reported it shot down 51 of 70 cruise missiles that Russia had launched Wednesday from planes and ships in the Black Sea. Five Lancet-type attack unmanned aerial vehicles were also destroyed, the Air Force said in a Telegram post.
Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said he had asked Germany to send Ukraine the Patriot missile launchers that Berlin had previously offered to Warsaw. “This will protect Ukraine from further deaths and blackouts and will increase security at our eastern border,” he said on Twitter.
Pro-Russia hackers have claimed responsibility after the European Parliament’s website was forced offline for several hours, European Parliament President Roberta Metsola said. The apparent Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack came as the E.U. legislative body voted to designate Moscow a state sponsor of terrorism.
Pope Francis compared the Russian invasion to a genocide carried out in Ukraine under Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in the 1930s. “Let us pray for the victims of this genocide and let us pray for so many Ukrainians — children, women, elderly — who are today suffering the martyrdom of aggression,” the Pope said on Wednesday, according to the Associated Press. President Biden also criticized Russian “tyranny” as he marked the anniversary of the Holodomor, the man-made famine that killed millions of people in Ukraine under Soviet policies.
The U.S. Defense Department announced a $400 million military aid package for Ukraine on Wednesday. It includes machine guns meant to target drones, more munitions for advanced surface-to-air missile systems and more than 20 million rounds of small arms ammunition.
European Union talks on a price cap on Russian oil stalled Wednesday, but will resume Thursday, Reuters reported.
A Russian-funded climate foundation is at the center of questions about how Moscow may be influencing German energy policies: After Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the Foundation for Climate and Environmental Protection has become an emblem of how Germany’s craving for natural gas led to a dependent and murky relationship with Moscow, write Loveday Morris, Kate Brady and Souad Mekhennet.
Ellen Francis, David L. Stern, Claire Parker and Sammy Westfall contributed to this report. | 2022-11-24T08:29:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Russia-Ukraine war latest updates - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/24/russia-ukraine-war-latest-updates/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/24/russia-ukraine-war-latest-updates/ |
Bullfighting ban expected to fail in France, a last bastion for the sport
Competitors in a Camargue-style fight try to pluck ribbons that decorate the head of a local cow. (Clémence Losfeld for The Washington Post)
Although these kinds of spectacles are in retreat in Spain and in Latin America, and although polls show as many as 77 percent of people in France want an end to bullfights, the sport is seeing a surge of popularity in southern France. It would be a surprise if lawmakers side with the critics on Thursday, when the French National Assembly is scheduled for the first time to vote on a proposed ban.
Even some animal rights groups admit the chances of a win are slim, as politicians across the political spectrum fear a rural voter backlash.
French President Emmanuel Macron told an audience of mayors on Wednesday that there wouldn’t be a ban. “We must move toward a conciliation, an exchange,” he said. “From where I stand, it’s not the priority at the moment. This subject must progress with respect and consideration.”
Up for debate is whether France’s animal welfare law should be amended to get rid of exemptions for bullfighting and cockfighting in places where they are “uninterrupted local traditions.”
For a time, the contests prospered across France, with major bullrings erected in the Parisian Bois de Boulogne park and in other cities. But it is only in southern France, near the border with Spain and along the Mediterranean, that bullfighting continues today, drawing about 2 million spectators each year, according to the National Observatory of Bullfighting Cultures.
Animal rights activists argue that the practice has no place anywhere in modern times. They say the bulls die slowly and painfully, repeatedly stabbed in the neck and shoulders. Between 800 and 1,000 bulls are killed in French contests each year.
Nathalie Valentin, 56, said the one time she attended a bullfight, she was so shocked she ran out of the arena. “After every stab, the bull reared. It was horrible,” she said. “I didn’t understand why people had come to watch it.”
A parliamentary law commission last week recommended against a ban. “What will be the next regional tradition that we will outlaw?” Marie Lebec, a lawmaker from Macron’s party, asked during the initial debate.
Bullfighter Alexis Chabriol, 21, said he was raised in a family opposed to the contests. But he decided to attend one to form his own opinion. “I found it really beautiful,” he said, despite all the blood. | 2022-11-24T08:52:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bullfighting ban expected to fail in France, a last bastion for the sport - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/24/bullfighting-ban-france/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/24/bullfighting-ban-france/ |
World Cup live updates Switzerland vs. Cameroon to kick off a new day
Cameroon has qualified for the World Cup eight...
What to know about Cameroon at the World Cup
What to know about Switzerland at the World Cup
Wednesday’s best: Japan upends Germany, and another World Cup darling is born
A Cameroon fan gets ready for Thursday's game against Switzerland. (Abir Sultan/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
It’s Thanksgiving in the United States, but it’s just another day of soccer at the World Cup. The last eight teams to make their debuts in Qatar take the field Thursday in Group G and Group H games. Switzerland meets Cameroon at 5 a.m. Eastern before Uruguay battles South Korea at 8. Portugal, led by superstar Cristiano Ronaldo, faces Ghana at 11 a.m., and top-ranked Brazil closes the day against Serbia at 2 p.m.
The day’s first game features two nations with a lengthy World Cup history. Cameroon has qualified eight times, most of any African nation, and Switzerland’s experience on the stage dates back to a quarterfinal appearance in 1934.
Five-time champion Brazil is the best team in the world according to the FIFA rankings, and Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo is perhaps the world’s most recognizable player. Both are in action later Thursday.
The World Cup continues Friday with four more group stage games, including the United States against England. Find the full schedule and group standings here.
Cameroon has qualified for the World Cup eight times, the most of any African nation, and took England to extra time in a famous quarterfinal at Italy 1990. Here is the Indomitable Lions’ lineup against Switzerland. Inter Milan goalkeeper Andre Onana is the biggest name.
The Indomitable Lions have an impressive history when it comes to reaching soccer’s biggest stage: They’ve qualified for the World Cup eight times, the most of any African nation, and took England to extra time in a famous quarterfinal at Italy 1990. There’s no easy road out of the group into the knockout stage this year, but there can’t really be any counting out a team that reached Qatar in the most spectacular of fashions, with a last-minute goal in stoppage time.
Cameroon doesn’t have a long list of European stars, but it has a solid mix of players in some of the continent’s top leagues. Bayern Munich forward Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting lined up for Cameroon at the 2010 and 2014 World Cups. Captain Vincent Aboubakar moved to the Saudi Premier League after a six-year stint in Europe but is still in strong form for his national team: His eight goals were the most of any African player at this year’s Cup of Nations.
Switzerland was the surprise of last summer’s European Championship. The country that hadn’t won a knockout game in a major tournament since 1938 finally did so in exciting fashion: rallying from a two-goal deficit to beat defending World Cup champion France on penalties, then taking Spain to a shootout in the quarterfinals. It’ll try to replicate some of that magic in Qatar.
Arsenal’s Granit Xhaka was a key scorer for Switzerland at both the 2014 and 2018 World Cups, while Breel Embolo (Monaco) led the way with three goals during this qualifying campaign. Striker Haris Seferovic, currently at Galatasaray in Turkey, had three goals for the Swiss at Euro 2020. Yann Sommer had a summer to remember at that tournament, saving a penalty by France’s Kylian Mbappé in the round of 16 and then recording eight saves in extra time alone against Spain in the quarterfinal.
Japan’s 2-1 win over Germany from a 1-0 deficit did not match the far-fetched wonder of Saudi Arabia’s 2-1 win over Argentina on Tuesday, but it did lend the World Cup another darling. It happened after a plodding first half gave way to a riveting second, the matter decided with booming goals on 75 minutes and 83 minutes by Ritsu Doan and Takuma Asano, who play their club soccer in Germany, as do six of their teammates. | 2022-11-24T09:49:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Cameroon vs. Switzerland: Live World Cup updates - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/24/world-cup-scores/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/24/world-cup-scores/ |
A dose of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. (Elaine Thompson/AP)
Measles, the preventable but highly infectious disease, could be on the verge of a comeback after a lull in the immediate months following the emergence of the coronavirus, the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday.
Calling measles an “imminent threat in every region of the world,” the two public health bodies said in a report that almost 40 million children missed their vaccine doses last year. They said 25 million children did not receive their first dose, while an additional 14.7 million children missed their second shot, marking a record high in missed vaccinations.
The number of measles infections has declined over the past two decades, though it remains a mortal threat, particularly for unvaccinated young children in the developing world. But there were an estimated 9 million cases and 128,000 deaths globally last year, up from 7.5 million cases and 60,700 in 2020. That increase came amid poorer disease surveillance and vaccine campaigns that were delayed by the pandemic, the WHO and CDC said.
Vaccination can also confer benefits to one’s community, a concept known as herd immunity. About 95 percent of a population needs to be vaccinated with two doses for herd immunity to occur, but only around 81 percent of children globally have received their first dose, and 71 percent their second, the two bodies said.
Measles, which starts with cold-like symptoms, undermines the immune system, making those infected more susceptible to other diseases. Seizures and blindness are possible in some instances, according to Britain’s National Health Service.
The WHO has previously warned that the dip in measles infections early in the pandemic was the “calm before the storm.”
“Routine immunization must be protected and strengthened” despite the coronavirus, said Kate O’Brien, WHO’s director of immunization, vaccines and biologicals, last year. Otherwise, “we risk trading one deadly disease for another.”
Hur Jian, an infectious-disease expert at South Korea’s Yeungnam University Medical Center, said the recent rebound in global travel portends a probable return of measles even in wealthy countries with higher vaccine coverage. Younger generations who have had less exposure to the disease may have weaker defenses, she added.
The United States declared that it had eradicated measles — defined as no transmission for a year and a well-performing surveillance system — in 2000, but occasional outbreaks still occur. This year 50-plus cases have been detected in the United States, according to the CDC. | 2022-11-24T09:53:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Measles is ‘imminent threat’ globally, WHO and CDC warn - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/11/24/measles-threat-vaccine-who-cdc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/11/24/measles-threat-vaccine-who-cdc/ |
DOHA, Qatar — There’s a good chance the World Cup will go from bad to worse for the Qatar team if the players don’t conquer their nerves when they face African champion Senegal in their second group match.
Qatar’s struggles also stand out after other teams from Arab countries have made themselves more at home at the first World Cup in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia's colossal upset defeat of Argentina was followed by impressive performances from Tunisia and Morocco in the tournament’s first week. | 2022-11-24T09:54:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | World Cup host Qatar must conquer nerves before Senegal - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/soccer/world-cup-host-qatar-must-conquer-nerves-before-senegal/2022/11/24/5c31fa14-6bd6-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/soccer/world-cup-host-qatar-must-conquer-nerves-before-senegal/2022/11/24/5c31fa14-6bd6-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html |
It is not easy getting the gang back together in the premiere of “Criminal Minds: Evolution” on Paramount Plus
Joe Mantegna stars as David Rossi in the “Criminal Minds: Evolution” reboot on Paramount Plus. (Monty Brinton /Paramount Plus)
And that was that, until “Criminal Minds: Evolution,” a new series with 10 episodes on Paramount Plus, the first two episodes of which will stream on Thursday. All you need is one incredibly dramatic killing spree to bring the team back together. For a refresher, here is an update on the characters and what they have been up to.
Spencer Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler) was a “Criminal Minds” and Tumblr favorite for the entire run of the show. The boy genius-turned-regular genius was put through the wringer in his time at the Behavioral Analysis Unit and Gubler has not yet confirmed he will be in “Evolution.” | 2022-11-24T11:25:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ‘Criminal Minds: Evolution’ premiere: Where are the characters now? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/11/24/criminal-minds-evolution-tv-paramount-plus/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/11/24/criminal-minds-evolution-tv-paramount-plus/ |
Composer Tania León, a Kennedy Center honoree, at her home in Nyack, N.Y., on Oct. 14. (Marvin Joseph/TWP)
Tania León changed the sound of being American
The pioneering composer, conductor, educator, and now Kennedy Center honoree, has expanded the reach and meaning of classical music
By Michael Andor Brodeur
The beat must go on. Specifically, the one toward the end of the last section. That’s composer Tania León’s only note for the New York Philharmonic at a recent rehearsal in freshly finished David Geffen Hall, the air lightly perfumed with drywall, the hall quiet after a wild ride through “Stride.”
“Stride” is León’s Pulitzer Prize-winning contribution to “Project 19,” the Philharmonic’s ongoing initiative launched in 2020 marking the centennial of the 19th amendment (women’s right to vote) with 19 commissions by women composers. The Kennedy Center honoree has been an unstoppable force in expanding the possibilities of what American “classical” music can — and ought to — sound like.
“Stride” is a propulsive, arresting stretch of music that takes the pioneering suffragist Susan B. Anthony as its subject and muse. It’s also a perfect musical ambassador for León, a musician, composer, conductor, educator and advocate whose life could be described much the same way the Pulitzer committee did “Stride”: “a musical journey full of surprise.”
Since arriving in the United States from Cuba as a 24-year-old refugee, León, 79, has become one of the most essential voices in American classical music — though that word captures only a single dimension of her compositional voice. Over her prolific 50-year career, León has composed orchestral, chamber and choral works, and operas and ballets — music that draws partially from decades of classical training, but most potently from her own sharp musical instincts, which fuse the rhythms and colors of the folk music she grew up listening to in Havana with a mesmerizing modernism.
As the founder of such influential concert series as the Brooklyn Philharmonic Community Concert Series in 1978, the Sonidos de las Américas Festival in the ’90s, and Composers Now today, León affords new music the same import we more automatically assign contemporary art or literature. She sees no reason composers shouldn’t be active contributors to the cultural conversation.
“The sounds of our time are reflected in the music that living composers are creating,” she tells me after rehearsal at a cafe just outside Lincoln Center. “It’s our reaction to society.”
León is a boundless creative spirit whose work has intersected with dance, visual art and literature. She has collaborated with poets and writers, including Margaret Atwood, John Ashbery, Derek Walcott, Jamaica Kincaid, Rita Dove, Fae Myenne Ng and Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian playwright and Nobel laureate on whose radio play León based her 1994 opera “Scourge of Hyacinths.”
But León’s music also carries the stamp of an artist unfazed by boundaries and borders — whether between genres or eras of music, or countries and the people who make them up. Her career has been one long exercise in defying categorization.
“I’m not supposed to look this way, I’m supposed to be in classical music, I’m not supposed to conduct,” she says. León’s heritage extends beyond Cuba into French, Spanish, Chinese, African lineages. A recent biography, “Tania León’s Stride” by Alejandro L. Madrid, honors León’s rejection of identity markers that she has experienced as pigeonholes — i.e. “Black composer,” “female composer,” “Afro-Cuban composer.”
“I don’t call myself anything but my name,” she says. “My philosophy? Every country is a neighborhood. My identity is human.”
More than most, León understands the importance of introducing more diversity into the world of orchestral music. But she’s also frustrated and fascinated by the ease with which people freely foreground the matter of her identity over the substance of an artist’s work.
It’s a lesson she has passed on to her students, such as composer Angélica Negrón, who studied composition with León at CUNY’s Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College, where León taught until 2019. Originally from Puerto Rico and now based in New York City, Negrón counts León’s lessons in navigating orchestral music as essential to her lessons in composing it.
22 for ’22: Composers and performers to watch this year
“In one of her first classes,” Negrón says, “she said to me, ‘You’re Latina, you’re a woman, you’re very talented, but just know that you’re checking two boxes, and a lot of people are gonna want to work with you just because of that.’ ”
León speaks from experience. Madrid’s book documents an incident when a fellow professor at Brooklyn College interrupted her paper-grading to opine that she’d acquired her position due to her color and not her talent. “I exploded in a faculty meeting and told them I was not going to put up with those things,” she told Madrid.
Her career success has not been slowed by such encounters. But it’s hard to imagine that her music — a bold, genre-fluid force of nature that goes where it pleases — isn’t a response, an attempt to embody the universal in sound.
Journeys and serendipity
Born in Havana in 1943, Tania Justina León Ferran was raised in the home of her paternal grandmother, Mamota, who, after noticing the way 4-year-old Tania sought classical music signals on the family radio, enrolled her and her younger brother Oscar José in music lessons: piano, theory and solfège (the do-re-mi method of ear training).
León followed a strict French curriculum at the Peyrellade Conservatory in Havana, and by age 9 was studying privately with pianist Edmundo López — who, in 1952, sent León an impactful postcard from Paris: a photo of the Eiffel Tower, which sparked what Oscar José (who would go on to sing opera) described as León’s “obsession” to leave.
This longing was exacerbated by the political revolution in Cuba. Fidel Castro and his barbudos (bearded revolutionaries) had triumphed and entered Havana in early January 1959. In Madrid’s biography, León recalls playing records of Chopin to drown out Castro’s voice on the radio.
Determined to make her way to Paris, León graduated from the conservatory in 1960. But without a scholarship (and unmoved by suggestions from the Cuban ambassador to France that she study in Poland instead), León enrolled in an accounting program, earned a degree and ended up pushing papers at the same office where Mamota worked.
Off hours, León tried to keep up with her music. She took lessons with Zenaida Manfugas at the Garcia Caturga Conservatory and started composing short works while deepening her knowledge of Cuban music alongside such peers as Paquito D’Rivera and Marta Valdés.
León finally left Cuba in 1967 on a “Freedom Flight” — an “air-bridge” program established by the Cuban and U.S. governments under President Lyndon B. Johnson to accommodate the influx of political refugees. For León, it represented less an escape from Cuba than a free flight to the States, and the first step to Paris.
As León went to board the plane to Miami, she handed her passport to a Cuban immigration officer who, much to León’s surprise, annulled it on the spot. León was suddenly between countries in two senses, a citizen of neither, speaking no English and with few leads on what would come next.
Once in Miami, León acquired assistance from a Catholic church and swiftly relocated to New York City, where friends put her up and the potential for more opportunities awaited. She visited the American Council for Emigres in the Professions and, after an impromptu piano performance, secured an audition at the New York College of Music (later to become part of New York University).
Mere months after arriving in the States, León enrolled that fall. She took crash courses in English, broadened her studies and graduated in 1971.
But it was in 1968 that a chance encounter turned León’s path in an unexpected direction. When a pianist friend from school fell ill and couldn’t accompany the ballet class she had planned, León agreed to fill in and rushed to Harlem’s St. James Presbyterian Church.
There, she met impressed ballet dancer and impresario Arthur Mitchell, with whom she struck up an instant rapport. Two weeks later, she became pianist and music director of Mitchell’s newly formed Dance Theatre of Harlem. She assembled the company’s diverse orchestra, began composing ballets and started refining her unique compositional voice, scoring such works as “Tones” (1970-1971) and “Haiku” (1973) as well as collaborations with dancer Geoffrey Holder, including “Dougla” (1974, for two flutes and percussion) and “Belé” (1981, for percussion and strings). Holder would later invite León to conduct and music-direct “The Wiz” for its last four years on Broadway.
With Dance Theatre of Harlem, León toured the Caribbean and finally made it to Europe — though not without repeated troubles stemming from the “advance parole document” on which she had to depend for international travel in lieu of a passport. In 1973, León acquired U.S. citizenship.
In 1976, Brooklyn Philharmonic maestro Lukas Foss brought León on to lead its Community Concert Series, with composers Talib Hakim and Julius Eastman. The series brought contemporary works by young, largely minority composers into New York neighborhoods through public performances conducted by León — at prisons, colleges, hospitals, parks, gymnasiums and sculpture gardens. It was through these performances that Leon secured a spot in 1985 on the faculty of CUNY’s Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College, León spent more than 13 years leading the series and advising the orchestra on Latin composers.
In 1993, her presence well-solidified in the city, León started what was to be a prestigious three-year composers fellowship at the New York Philharmonic, where the idea was for her to function as a “new music adviser” to the orchestra, and a foil of sorts against maestro Kurt Masur’s apparent disinterest in contemporary programming.
León was able to organize an ear-opening festival of “American Eccentrics,” featuring a lineup of avant-garde all-stars, including John Cage, Pauline Oliverors and Conlon Nancarrow. But she also languished: By the end of her second year at the Phil, León hadn’t led the orchestra once, had none of her works performed, had none of her suggestions for commissions taken up. She was growing frustrated.
As pressure from inside and outside of Avery Fisher Hall started to build, León began to question what she was actually doing there, and how her identity might shape and steer her career — unless she took control.
“Having a Latin woman of color may have looked very nice,” she told Madrid in 2018, “but the fact is I was not satisfied as an artist.”
Much of León’s career since has been split between creating the music she wants to hear, and creating the world she wants to see for musicians faced with the same barriers, boundaries and burdens of identity.
In 1994, two years shy of leaving the Phil, León collaborated with the American Composers Orchestra to launch the Sonidos de las Américas Festival, a massive endeavor far more reflective of León’s interest in young composers and nontraditional sounds, involving hundreds of artists that extended into six editions and more than 60 concerts. She was the orchestra’s Latin American music adviser until 2001.
In 2010, she founded Composers Now, an organization that provides commissioning, mentoring, residency and performance programs for composers, and continues to present an annual month-long festival of new music, which León considers a keystone of her legacy.
“I think that new music can be difficult for people because there’s two ways of listening,” she says. “One way is just hearing, the other one is listening, and listening is internal.”
Personal quests and persistence
That idea stays with me later that evening when the Philharmonic takes the stage to officially inaugurate David Geffen Hall with a program of largely contemporary works — Marcos Balter’s “Oyá,” John Adams’s “My Father Knew Charles Ives,” and León’s “Stride” (with Respighi’s “Pines of Rome” as a bracing closer).
A lot goes on in “Stride” — strings climb in frenzied ascents, percussion rumbles underfoot, clangorous chimes ring overhead and cascading trumpets call an invisible army to order. The music is filled with the sounds of chants and marches, clarion horns and stomping feet — the sounds of progress.
But so much of the magic in León’s music is about internal listening — an alchemy of associations and echoes. If the music feels personal to you, it’s because it’s personal to her.
“After 12 years away, I went back,” she says of her first return to Cuba in 1979. “I brought the music that I had recorded [here] before I left. And when he heard it, my father said, ‘Yes … it’s very interesting — but where are you in your music?’ ”
León says she is still not entirely sure what her father meant, and he died before she had a chance to ask. But her sense is that he detected a certain spirit missing — or perhaps it was just hidden in the compositional soundness of her music.
Step back a bit from “Stride” and its ostensible subject, and you could read it as an autobiography of sorts. León wanted to write a piece about moving forward even when all the odds push against you, about never giving up, and “Stride” rises to the occasion, with its depiction of a hard-fought journey, its sonic enactment of grit and drive. Here and there, the music models the reliably slow plod of justice, but within the march there’s a dance. León’s spirit animates the music. The artist is alive and present.
With new David Geffen Hall, the NYPhil returns on an optimistic note
León’s music even evokes elements of her teaching practice. She’s known to have students meticulously copy manuscripts of old scores as a way to enter a composer’s imagination, inhabit their rhythmic sensibilities — right down to the movement of their hand across the page.
Negrón originally wanted to study with León for her renowned mastery of polyrhythmic textures, which themselves can present externally as slow and lilting, but internally buzz with complex systems of interlocking rhythm. It’s music with a private life.
“The Caribbean rhythms are there,” Negron says, “but it’s not about that. It’s about something way deeper — more of a sensibility than an homage or a nod or a reference to a specific style. Before studying with her, I thought I needed to sound Puerto Rican and wasn’t doing a good job at it. It was liberating to … figure out my own way of connecting to my own identity in a way that did not have any of the pressure or expectations of how I should sound.”
Today, León’s is still busy composing, leading Composers Now and sitting on the boards of MacDowell, the ASCAP Foundation and the New York Philharmonic. But she’s doing so from the relative quietude of Nyack, where regular visits to the shore and an ever-present horizon remind her of the importance of persistence, of reaching the next place, the next note, the next generation of composers. The beat must go on. | 2022-11-24T11:25:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tania León, Kennedy Center honoree, changed the sound of being American - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/11/24/tania-leon-kennedy-center-honors/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/11/24/tania-leon-kennedy-center-honors/ |
Andrew Forrest, whose company is a major polluter, has fans in the Biden administration for his audacious plan. But the technology he’s promoting doesn’t exist yet.
Andrew Forrest tours the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo., in September. (Chet Strange for The Washington Post)
DENVER — As the leader of one of the world’s biggest and most invasive iron ore mining operations, Andrew Forrest has done more to propel global warming than some small countries.
The Australian billionaire expresses few regrets about his company and its partners having pumped millions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, or the bitter legal conflicts with Aboriginal officials over ecological destruction allegedly committed by his firm, Fortescue Metals Group. He prefers the label “heavy industrialist.” Don’t call him a “greenie.”
Yet as the world reaches an energy inflection point, Forrest is now a point man for audacious climate action, with his sights set on the United States. He is betting the future of his $34 billion company on a plunge into “green hydrogen,” a superfuel theoretically capable of powering jet planes, large machines and even electricity plants without any carbon footprint.
Forrest says he will make 15 million tons by 2030, a scale and pace others doubt. The billionaire boasts he will erase fossil fuels from Fortescue’s operations and supply huge quantities of the new fuel to others.
“Some are arguing that the technology we need to beat global warming is not with us yet,” Forrest said as a black SUV zipped him from his penthouse suite at the Denver Ritz-Carlton earlier this fall to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which is collaborating with him. “I say that is completely false. The most optimal technologies aren’t with us yet, but we’ve got enough now to make huge heavy-industry companies green.”
Forrest’s vision became a lot less fanciful with the Inflation Reduction Act, the historic climate measure enacted by the United States this summer. It is drawing wealthy investors from around the world to pursue all manner of clean energy projects in the United States. The law promises green hydrogen producers a subsidy unmatched anywhere. That $3 per kilogram could move this curious form of energy out of the lab and into mass production.
“It has let the genie out of the bottle,” Forrest said. It has also pushed the executive into the ranks of the climate billionaires, playing the role of an ambassador for green hydrogen on such prominent stages as the U.N. global climate summit known as COP27, which concluded recently in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.
Forrest traces his quest to a near-fatal hiking accident in 2016. He plunged off a cliff into the water, where he had to pry his shattered leg from a rock. “It was brutal,” he said. “I could have lost my life.”
Forrest earned a doctorate in ocean studies during his recovery, learning about the catastrophic changes being wrought by methane released from thawing Siberian permafrost. It convinced him the world’s timeline for climate action is inadequate.
“The fossil fuel industry has been saying we’ll evolve into this and get it right by 2050,” he said. “They can’t say that anymore. The problem is now.”
Fortescue’s intention to produce enough green hydrogen to power the equivalent of 60 million diesel cars by 2030 has sent Forrest around the world, striking tentative deals to build plants and import terminals. The company has committed $6.2 billion, with its plans stretching from the deserts of the Middle East to European industrial zones. The Australian Outback will host facilities, and repurposed coal mines in West Virginia and other states are being scouted.
“He’s not waiting around for people to do what we’ve been doing, which is procrastinate for years,” said U.S. Climate Envoy John F. Kerry. “He could help change thinking.”
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm called the Australian “somebody who has vision and is putting his money where his mouth is.”
Getting machines to run on hydrogen is not complicated. Industries have been using hydrogen for decades, in the oil refining process, to make fertilizer, and as fuel to propel rockets into space. There are several thousand hydrogen cars in California, and a smattering of hydrogen-fueled passenger trains and city buses around the world. The Inflation Reduction Act’s hydrogen subsidies, totaling $16 billion, have lowered the cost of making hydrogen with renewable power so much that many analysts project it will be priced competitively with dirtier varieties as soon as the science catches up.
“Hydrogen has suddenly been recognized as a needed component in the drive to decarbonize,” said Frank Wolak, president of the Fuel Cell & Hydrogen Energy Association. “The Inflation Reduction Act is a kind of accelerator.”
In a bit of marketing spin, the industry calls it “blue hydrogen.” Forrest calls it bunk.
“It is proven unreliable,” Forrest said of carbon capture technologies at a clean energy event in Pittsburgh earlier this year.
“Would any oil and gas executive count on an unreliable technology to save the life of their child when there are reliable options available?” Forrest asked.
He’s also competing with the nuclear industry, which is pushing to power hydrogen production with its technology. The nuke-powered fuel has its own color label: “pink” hydrogen.
Polis wasn’t sure how to address Forrest, who goes by the nickname “Twiggy” (he was skinny as a kid). Polis went with Twiggy. It was awkward, like everything in this alliance between liberals and the heavy industrialist.
“This is, after all, a man who has produced zero green hydrogen so far,” said Rachel Fakhry, a hydrogen expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The signals he is sending are positive, but we are missing some key pieces to make a judgment on how good this ambition is. We need to make sure what he makes is actually green.”
California heavily subsidized a “hydrogen highway” experiment, but it has largely proved a disappointment. There are fewer than 10,000 of the cars on the road in the state, almost entirely burning hydrogen made with fossil fuels.
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“Every generation since the 1970s has had this idea that the next generation will be driving hydrogen cars,” said Martin Tengler, lead hydrogen analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance. “We tell people: You don’t drive a hydrogen car and neither will your children.” But his organization is bullish on the use of hydrogen for other machinery, and it and other groups, including the think tank Carbon Tracker, predict the clean variety Forrest is chasing will dominate a hydrogen economy that could grow to $3 trillion by 2050.
“You know, they are not married to that black stuff, which can eventually kill you,” Forrest said. “They're in coal only because they love their community, their families, their careers. If they have another medium, which is going to be even better for their community, their families, their careers, they're going to switch straight up.”
Is sustainable mining possible? The EV revolution depends on it.
The overtures in West Virginia got the attention of the state’s Democratic senator, Joe Manchin III, the driving force behind the Inflation Reduction Act, with whom he has met. Forrest also presented his plans to President Biden at a White House meeting, he said.
Critics in Australia wince at Forrest’s reinvention, branding it greenwashing.
“They absolutely destroyed our community,” said Michael Woodley, head of the Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corp. “They pit families against each other, and they prey on people who historically come from a very poor background.” Fortescue took a divide-and-conquer approach to negotiating with Indigenous residents, forging deals highly advantageous to the company with allies while freezing others out. The courts ultimately sided with the Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corp., finding it owns title to the land in question.
Fortescue has since been fighting paying compensation to the Yindjibarndi people, calling it “mining welfare” that would be unhealthy for the community.
The billionaire frames his $6.2 billion plan to eliminate fossil fuels from Fortescue’s mining business by 2030 as less about altruism than corporate acumen, a move the company projects will save $818 million a year in diesel and gas costs and drive healthy returns.
“People said, ‘You’re going to be screwing up your dividend,’” John F. Kerry said. “No, he’s not. He’s going to make more money. And he’s going to do it the right way. That’s a really important thought for everybody to have out there. This can be done.” | 2022-11-24T11:26:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Australian billionaire Andrew "Twiggy" Forrest wants to save the planet with green hydrogen - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/11/24/twiggy-forrest-green-hydrogen/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/11/24/twiggy-forrest-green-hydrogen/ |
Mando, a Labrador retriever puppy and the Commanders' team dog, is part of K9s For Warriors, which pairs military veterans with trained service dogs. (Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/For The Washington Post)
One of the Washington Commanders’ most notable free agent signings this year is a 10-month-old out of Folkston, Ga., whose stocky frame and big mitts have scouts drooling. He stands about two feet tall, weighs more than 80 pounds and has a demeanor coaches covet: never too high, never too low, just easy.
Unless the game plan includes treats.
Mando, the black English Labrador retriever puppy the Commanders adopted as their team dog this summer, was an instant fan favorite when he was introduced in September. He wears his No. 00 jersey while waddling through the stadium corridors amid gawking fans. He has a full-page bio in the team’s media guide, his furry face has become appointment viewing for early-arriving fans, and when cameras zoom in on his wagging tongue, the crowd stands and cheers. Even to players, he’s somewhat of a celebrity.
“Every home game, I try to take a picture with him,” quarterback Taylor Heinicke said. “It’s been a good-luck charm so far. He’s awesome.”
Yet there’s much more to those pensive eyes and big paws.
Mando is a pup in training with K9s For Warriors, a Florida-based organization that rescues dogs mostly from high-kill shelters and pairs them with retired military members suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injuries or military sexual trauma. The organization says its mission is to “save two lives, a veteran and a shelter dog” by reducing the chances of veteran suicide and sparing pups from euthanasia. (Some of the dogs, like Mando, are donated by breeders.)
The Commanders, led by co-owner Tanya Snyder, initiated conversations with the organization this summer, in hopes of unofficially adopting a pup like the Jacksonville Jaguars had. (They have a K9s For Warriors puppy named “Maurice Bones-Drew,” or Mojo.) Washington was paired with Mando, who lives with a volunteer “puppy raiser” in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., and flies to the D.C. area for select home games at FedEx Field.
The Washington Commanders Charitable Foundation covers the cost of Mando’s training.
“I think it’s cool — I really do,” Coach Ron Rivera said. “Doing what we’re doing makes sense. We’re training a dog and going to give it to a vet at the end of his training.”
K9s For Warriors says that since it launched in 2011, it has rescued roughly 2,000 dogs and provided more than 800 service members with canine companions trained to fit their needs, free of cost. Through the program, pups begin their training with foster owners who take them in until they’re about 10 to 14 months old and ready to begin a rigorous live-in training program at one of the K9s For Warriors campuses.
That training lasts six to eight months and includes basic commands and more complicated tasks. Many retired service members experience hypervigilance, in which they’re constantly trying to assess potential threats, typically because of trauma; the dogs ease that anxiety by watching their backs. Others feel anxiety in crowds; the dogs can sense that and make space by circling them so others move away.
The dogs are also trained to “lap,” in which they place their front legs over their owners’ thighs to provide deep-compression therapy, and to “brace,” allowing their owners to use their shoulders and back legs to help them stand up.
Football isn’t Jeff Zgonina’s only passion. He’s also partial to dog shows.
“I’ve had so many warriors tell me that before they even have a panic attack, the dog will start to kind of love on them — put their paw on them, snuggle them — and they’re like, ‘Okay, I’m not sure why you’re doing this,’ ” K9s For Warriors CEO Carl Cricco said. “And then, all of a sudden, they’ll feel that panic attack coming. So the dog is really keyed in. It’s a battle buddy, really, to get these folks through the day.”
About half of the dogs make it through the program and are paired with service members who spend three weeks on a K9s For Warriors campus to bond with them. The dogs that don’t pass are put up for adoption.
For some veterans, finding a dog with an energy level and a skill set that align with their needs can be difficult. That was the case for David Crenshaw, a retired master sergeant with the Army National Guard who served 20 years, including roughly 14 months deployed in Iraq. He also taught at a military training facility in New Jersey and was previously a police officer and a firefighter.
“I have what’s called complex PTSD,” Crenshaw said. “… Oftentimes you feel like you’re an island by yourself; no one will understand you, and ultimately you can end up losing your job. It leaves you in a place of vulnerability and loss of control.”
Crenshaw tried the traditional modalities prescribed to him, including therapy and medication, but none were “wholesome enough,” he said. He had friends who had donated dogs to K9s For Warriors, and eventually he inquired about the program.
“I went into K9s For Warriors on hope and faith,” said Crenshaw, who is now an ambassador for the program. “I was hoping it was going to work, and I had to have faith … that they were going to deliver what they were advertising.”
When Crenshaw arrived at the organization’s Florida headquarters nearly three years ago, a four-legged creature eyed him from afar and immediately eased his worry about the process.
“I’m still trying to be this tough guy, still trying to put up this hard exterior,” Crenshaw recalled. “And then finally I sit down, and he just jumps in my lap, and he’s licking and kissing me and loving all over me. That was probably the first time in a long time that I had true, proper emotion to a situation. And that’s when I realized we’re going to be on a good journey.”
Doc is a rescued Labrador retriever-German shorthaired pointer mix who was paired with Crenshaw in 2019 and is Crenshaw’s protector, companion and perhaps the only friend who could’ve saved his life.
In September, just days before the NFL season opened, Crenshaw and Doc, as well as other former service members with dogs from K9s For Warriors, attended a practice at the Commanders’ training facility.
As the team wrapped up its workout and sauntered off the field, players and coaches alike stopped to meet the pups, offering ear scratches and affectionate stares. Such is the routine before most home games.
Mando sits with his tongue hanging out, basking in the attention before he sets off for his biggest job yet: companion to a veteran in need.
“He’s so jolly,” left tackle Charles Leno Jr. said. “He’s just a happy dog. I’ve never seen a happier dog.” | 2022-11-24T11:26:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mando, the Commanders’ team dog, is training for a bigger job - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/24/commanders-mando-dog-veterans/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/24/commanders-mando-dog-veterans/ |
Josiah Gray will be the fourth player ambassador for the Nationals Youth Baseball Academy, as he looks to make an impact in the community. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
When Josiah Gray was named the latest ambassador for the Washington Nationals Youth Baseball Academy in late September, the role represented a full-circle moment for Gray. It was an opportunity to take his youth baseball experience and pay it forward for young, Black baseball players.
Gray and his brothers grew up playing travel baseball, an often expensive avenue for kids to play on the diamond that can sometimes serve as a barrier to continuing to play the sport. Gray had travel ball coaches who helped cover tournament fees and season expenses for him. But he understood that not every kid was as fortunate as him.
There weren’t nearly as many programs funded by Major League Baseball as there are now to get Black kids more involved in the game. Gray didn’t have access to a version of the Nationals Youth Baseball Academy to pique his interest, though his love for the game grew over time.
As the starting pitcher finishes up his first year with the Nationals, the team that traded for him in August 2020 and is placing him the middle of their plans, Gray is using his time off the field to establish roots in the community.
“It’s always something I’ve wanted to do in terms of baseball just because I know my love of the game and I think it can be passed on to the next generation,” the right-hander said. “It’s always been important for me to be able to express that love for the game and hopefully impact some kids in the game of baseball, getting more African Americans in the game.”
Despite efforts from Major League Baseball to improve diversity among younger generations, the league still has a ways to go. In this year’s World Series, there were no U.S. born Black players on either team. Gray believes the right steps are being taken to improve the numbers across the league. And the more Black players that make the majors, the better chance of exposing Black kids to the game.
That’s why Gray hopes to be an inspiration for Black kids in the community and believes that following Josh Bell, the previous ambassador, will give kids a glimpse at two Black players who forged different paths to reach the major leagues. They were both second-round picks, but Bell went straight to the majors out of high school while Gray played Division II baseball at Le Moyne (N.Y.).
His values align directly with the Nationals Youth Academy, which aims to grow the game of baseball in the community by eliminating barriers. The Youth Academy, a nine-acre education and recreation facility located in Ward 7’s Fort Dupont Park Neighborhood, will enter its 10th year in 2023. It provides a range of programming to aid with academic performance as well as physical and mental health.
The player ambassador of the Youth Baseball Academy serves as a liaison between the academy and the locker room, encouraging teammates to get involved in addition to interacting with the kids at the academy and getting involved with programming events.
Gray is the fourth player ambassador, after Ian Desmond, Anthony Rendon and Bell — who first introduced Gray to the academy on a player visit. Bell was traded to the San Diego Padres along with Juan Soto at the trade deadline, leaving the role open. And when the Youth Academy reached out to Gray about being the next ambassador, it felt like a natural fit.
Gray already had donated a portion of proceeds from a clothing line he created with the lifestyle brand Leovici to the Academy in the past. But beyond that, Tal Alter, the CEO of Washington Nationals Philanthrophies, said Gray had an energy and authenticity that stood out when he went to the academy and worked out with the younger kids. And when it came to the older kids, he was able to relate by opening up about his career, his perseverance and his failure.
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“He is himself 100 percent of the time and so I think immediately kids felt comfortable with him,” Alter said. “And I think Josiah felt right at home working with young kids. Just getting out there and playing and interacting and just being a guy. Not Major League Baseball player Josiah Gray, but just a guy.”
Each past ambassador has added his own personal touch to the academy that still exists today.
Desmond ensured that kids met with members of the front office whenever they went to Nationals Park so they could learn about all the roles in a baseball organization. Rendon connected with a vision clinic and established an annual eye clinic at the academy, providing kids in need with prescription glasses. Bell was the keynote speaker at the academy’s graduation the past two years. Now, Gray will have the chance to add his own flair.
While Gray hasn’t yet established his full plans for the academy, he — and those at the Academy — hope most importantly that the kids leave the daily programming having had fun and wanting to come back. If they continue with baseball afterward, that’s up to them.
“I always want to sort of put my name in the ground and sort of make an impact and I think this is a good way unrelated to on the field stuff that I can give back and sort of plant some roots,” Gray said. “Obviously the work on the field has to be taken care of as well, but I think this is going to be something off the field that I can really enjoy.”
“Sort of take a step back from the game and appreciate it just that much more because these kids, they’re not looking up your stats every two seconds. They’re just saying ‘Hey, he’s here to play baseball with us and here to enjoy the game.' ” | 2022-11-24T11:26:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Josiah Gray is new ambassador for Nationals Youth Baseball Academy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/24/josiah-gray-nationals-youth-baseball-academy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/24/josiah-gray-nationals-youth-baseball-academy/ |
NFL Thanksgiving primer: 3 unusually good games, 5 winning teams
Bills safety Jordan Poyer, left, quarterback Josh Allen, center, and tight end Dawson Knox, right, eat a Thanksgiving turkey after last year's victory in New Orleans. (Tyler Kaufman/AP)
The NFL will stage an unusually attractive set of Thanksgiving games, with five potential playoff teams participating.
The Buffalo Bills play at Detroit in the early-afternoon game. The New York Giants meet the Dallas Cowboys in Arlington, Tex., in the late-afternoon game. The New England Patriots are in Minneapolis for the night game against the Minnesota Vikings.
Among those teams, only the Lions are not currently positioned to be in the playoffs. And even they are playing very un-Lions-like football lately, entering Thursday’s game with three straight victories.
The NFL has declared this its first “John Madden Thanksgiving Celebration.” CBS, Fox and NBC will air tributes throughout the day to the late Hall of Fame coach, legendary broadcaster and video game icon. The NFL Foundation will make a $10,000 donation to the youth or high school football program chosen by the player picked as the “Madden Player of the Game” in each of Thursday’s three matchups. Madden died in December at age 85.
The Bills play their second straight game at Ford Field. They beat the Cleveland Browns, 31-23, there Sunday in a game that was relocated from Orchard Park, N.Y., to Detroit because of the massive snowstorm in western New York.
That triumph ended a two-game losing skid for the Bills. They opted to use the visiting locker room, sideline and coaching booth Sunday, knowing that’s where they’d be Thursday. They also chose to return to the Buffalo area following Sunday’s victory, rather than remaining in Detroit for the abbreviated workweek.
The Bills have had their issues recently but remain a strong Super Bowl contender in the AFC. They’ll try to move back into sole possession of first place in the AFC East — at least until Sunday — with a win Thursday. Quarterback Josh Allen should be able to get the offense revved up against the Lions, who are ranked last in the NFL in total defense and scoring defense. But they’re sixth in the league in total offense and eighth in scoring offense. The Lions are coming off wins over the Green Bay Packers, Chicago Bears and Giants.
The Cowboys and Giants play for second place in the NFC East. They have matching records of 7-3 and are two games behind the division-leading Philadelphia Eagles. The Cowboys prevailed, 23-16, in Week 3 in East Rutherford, N.J., in the teams’ first meeting of the season, with Cooper Rush filling in for the then-injured Dak Prescott at quarterback.
Owner Jerry Jones declared the Cowboys capable of being a Super Bowl team after they gave a dominant performance Sunday on the road in a 40-3 triumph over the Vikings. That superb outing followed a stunning loss at Green Bay a week earlier. So consistency is the issue.
The Giants face the Cowboys on Thanksgiving for the first time since 1992. They have greatly overachieved in Brian Daboll’s rookie season as an NFL head coach and are seeking only their second postseason appearance since the 2011 season. But they’ve lost two of their past three games, raising the possibility that a regression to the mean is in progress. Quarterback Daniel Jones must deal with the Cowboys’ formidable pass rush. Tailback Saquon Barkley enters the game as the league’s second-leading rusher.
The Vikings will attempt to rebound from the debacle against the Cowboys. That defeat came one week after their dramatic overtime victory over the Bills in Orchard Park in the most compelling game of the NFL season so far.
The Patriots have won three straight and five of their past six games to move back into playoff position. They held the New York Jets without a touchdown Sunday and won, 10-3, on a touchdown on an 84-yard punt return by rookie Marcus Jones with five seconds remaining. | 2022-11-24T11:26:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | NFL on Thanksgiving: Bills-Lions, Giants-Cowboys, Patriots-Vikings - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/24/nfl-thanksgiving-cowboys-giants-patriots/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/24/nfl-thanksgiving-cowboys-giants-patriots/ |
Former Broncos Coach Vic Fangio, shown here after a 2020 win against the New York Jets, is taking the season off from football. But he's never far from the game. (Elsa/Getty Images)
Vic Fangio is on sabbatical, as he views it. The longtime coach and defensive guru has been out of the NFL since the Denver Broncos fired him in January, but he hasn’t let go of the game.
His office has moved from the corner suite of the Broncos’ facility to his kitchen table, but his computer is still a digital library of NFL games. Almost daily, he reviews tape, takes handwritten notes and saves his findings on thumb drives. He’s watched every game from 2021, many from 2022 and has no intention of slowing.
His goal? To find new ways of making life hell for opposing quarterbacks: a tweak here, a new coverage package there, another front, another pressure, another weapon to keep his defense a problem, year after year after year.
Fangio’s renowned system is a product of his experiences across nearly four decades of NFL coaching. It is predicated on disguise, with a signature two-high safety look that can transform into almost any coverage. Presnap movement is followed by post-snap movement, and, if executed properly, the front should hide clues about the final picture.
“I [try] to make it harder for them to figure out what [coverage] we’re in, both before the snap and after the snap,” Fangio said. “The quarterbacks don’t like going against it."
“It’s really muddy, so when you drop back, you don’t know quite what you’re getting,” Minnesota Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins told reporters earlier this year.
Like a Russian nesting doll, there are plays within plays, and the outer shell is merely a cover for the layers inside. It can leave quarterbacks guessing on every dropback, and over the years, it’s grown ever more prolific across the NFL.
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At least seven teams use some form of Fangio’s system, thanks in part to his growing tree of assistants who have carried it to various stops. Brandon Staley, once a linebackers coach on Fangio’s staff, runs a version of the defense as coach of the Los Angeles Chargers. Ed Donatell, a former Fangio assistant, brought it with him when he was hired as the Vikings’ defensive coordinator this year. Sean Desai, the former Chicago Bears safeties coach under Fangio, introduced it to the Seattle Seahawks. Green Bay Packers defensive coordinator Joe Barry is using it, and Chris Beake, a former Broncos assistant, works on a Fangio-inspired defense with the Los Angeles Rams. Broncos defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero is running the system perhaps better than any other coach, and Philadelphia Eagles defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon has relied heavily on Fangio principles.
Each team has put their own spin on it, but Fangio’s foundation is carried throughout. So even as Fangio waits for his next opportunity, his work to continually update the defense remains paramount.
Making things ‘blurry’
The Fangio defense most know now — with the two high safeties, the pre- and post-snap movement, the light boxes — formed during his time as the San Francisco 49ers’ defensive coordinator from 2011-14.
By the time Fangio the Bears defensive coordinator job in 2015, his library of coverages was thick — and only beginning to grow. In Chicago, he incorporated post-snap reactions after the ball was snapped, then enhanced the system further in Denver.
The premise is simple — Broncos defensive backs coach Christian Parker called it an “illusion of complexity” — but it rarely appears so.
For opposing offenses, safeties (and linebackers) are often the tells; quarterbacks read them first to determine how defenses will unfold post-snap. But Fangio’s defense, Staley said, makes things “blurry."
“We can play everything we want — two-high, single-high, no-high — out of the same look. And we don’t give it away with our fronts, either,” he added. “There’s a lot of times where the front dictates what type of coverage it’s going to be. It may not dictate the entire coverage, but it indicates a lot. We try to be more balanced in the front, and we run multiple coverages out of the fronts.”
The system is designed to take away the big plays that can turn a game on its head because of the help over the top. Though it can make a defense vulnerable to the run because the safeties start deeper, it also allows for adjustments.
There are built-in options — “if this, then that” scenarios — that give safeties some freedom on the back end to toy with quarterbacks. The options add layers, requiring safeties to understand the concepts fully — and to communicate them to the rest of the defense.
As a result, safeties who have succeeded under Fangio have made names for themselves across the NFL. In San Francisco, there were Dashon Goldson and Donte Whitner. In Chicago, Eddie Jackson and Adrian Amos. In Denver, Justin Simmons was a centerpiece of Fangio’s system, and in 2021 he signed a contract worth the highest average annual value for a safety ($15.25 million).
“With Vic, each year we just seemed to graduate,” Simmons said. “There was the base foundation, but there were always wrinkles and levels that we could get to.”
“If you’re running cover-four, there’s, like, 10 different ways we can run that, depending on what the offense is giving us, where the players are positioned, depending on what personnel we have out on the field, depending on what linebacker we have out on the field,” he added. “I think that’s what makes it great, but also hard at the same time.”
The options add complexity to the defense, but they inherently make it flexible, too.
Fangio cycled through 15 linebackers in Denver last season because of injuries, but the Broncos still finished eighth in total yards and passing yards allowed and had the third-best red-zone and scoring defense in the league.
“The way our defense is set up schematically, it does help ... a new player to come in and learn quickly,” Fangio said. “Now, he may not master and conquer the nuances right off the bat, but at least he can get in there and get lined up and know what to do and play good enough from a mental standpoint.”
‘10 chapters’
The dissection of the X’s and O’s of Fangio’s defense can often mask the heart of it.
It is a system that requires dedicated teachers who have to be willing to accept a change in philosophy.
Staley, a former quarterback at the University of Dayton and Mercyhurst College, began his coaching career as a college defensive assistant. He was a coordinator at Hutchinson Community College in Kansas when he began to follow Fangio, who transformed Stanford’s defense into a top-tier unit in 2010, then went on to revive the 49ers defense.
“The more I studied Vic, the more I tried to incorporate things that I saw from those San Francisco units,” Staley said. “I think it starts with fundamentals and ... kind of the essence of football before you even get into the scheme. ... Structurally, we just have a lot more ways to play you than most people.”
“Most teams may have five chapters in their book,” he added. “... We write 10 chapters on it.”
The complexity is compounded by a need for players and coaches to understand why such principles are run and why they’re run in a specific style.
During Staley’s first year in Chicago, in 2017, Fangio coached the outside linebackers himself early in the season before handing the keys to Staley.
“I wanted him to see how I did it and for him to continue that,” Fangio said. “And so I wanted a young guy that was willing to learn and be able to implement what I liked done with those guys.”
The so-called extra chapters in Fangio’s system changed Simmons’s perspective of the game. His lens is wider now, partly because of the multiple positions he played under Fangio, but mostly because of the coach’s philosophy on confusing quarterbacks.
“I think it’s fun to sit back there and play mind games with the guy that gets paid the most money on the field,” Simmons said.
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Jim Hostler, now a senior offensive assistant for the Washington Commanders, learned years ago that Fangio’s view of the game was rare.
It was 2008, and Fangio was a defensive assistant to Baltimore Ravens Coach John Harbaugh, working on advance scouting and defensive game-planning. Hostler coached the Ravens’ receivers and remembers Fangio detailing the plan of attack from both sides.
“Vic understands what an offense is going to do from the standpoint of what they are,” Hostler said. “Most defensive guys understand what an offense is going to do against them from one perspective of, ‘Okay, this is an overall perspective of how offenses are going to attack my defense.’
“He knows enough about offenses and how they attack the defense that he can communicate with offensive guys. Same thing with defense. There’s not a lot of guys that can do that, and that’s an art.”
But as more and more teams use Fangio’s system, or parts of it, the onus on him to evolve becomes greater.
Studying for the future
Fangio’s first foray into head coaching ended after three seasons. The Broncos failed to make the playoffs during his tenure and went a combined 19-30. Yet Fangio’s system remains widely applauded; the Broncos ranked among the top 10 in the league in scoring defense in two of his seasons, and even now, amid turmoil on the offensive side of the ball, their defense is third in total yards, passing yards and scoring.
Fangio said he had options to coach this season, but he is holding out for the right fit. So, in the meantime, he’s traveled to visit his children, watched his beloved Phillies go to the World Series and continued his research of the game he never really left.
Among his conclusions: The quality of play is down. The dearth of elite quarterbacks outside of Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen may be a factor. The proliferation of his defense might be adding to the struggles of the passing game, too; the use of schemes with two high safeties has increased significantly over the past four years.
And though he can only watch from a distance this year, Fangio is confident he’ll be back in the league next fall, pulling the strings on a defense that will probably create more hell for quarterbacks.
And, surely, it will include a few new wrinkles.
“I’ve already come up with a couple of coverages to add to the package to look at," he said. | 2022-11-24T11:27:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Vic Fangio changed defense in the modern NFL - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/24/vic-fangio-nfl-defense/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/24/vic-fangio-nfl-defense/ |
DOHA, Qatar — Another day, another World Cup shocker.
AL RAYYAN, Qatar — Thibaut Courtois saved an early penalty and Michy Batshuayi scored to give Belgium a 1-0 win, spoiling Canada’s return to the World Cup after 36 years.
AL KHOR, Qatar — Morocco held 2018 finalist Croatia to a 0-0 draw in another strong World Cup performance by a team from an Arab country.
LONDON — Former Manchester United forward Cristiano Ronaldo was banned for two matches and fined $60,000 for hitting a phone out of a fan’s hand at Everton after a Premier League game last season.
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Seven Michigan State football players have been charged for their actions during the postgame melee in Michigan Stadium’s tunnel last month, according to a statement from the Washtenaw County Prosecutor’s Office.
GREEN BAY, Wis. — Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers acknowledged he’s been playing with a broken right thumb for the past six weeks.
FLORHAM PARK, N.J. — Zach Wilson was benched by the New York Jets and the underachieving quarterback will be replaced by Mike White as the starter Sunday against Chicago. Joe Flacco will serve as White’s backup, and Wilson will not be active versus the Bears.
BRISBANE, Australia — Adam Scott shot a 5-under 66 after a 6 a.m. tee time to trail by one stroke after the first round of the Australian PGA championship at Royal Queensland.
MALAGA, Spain — Marin Cilic rallied to defeat Pablo Carreno Busta in a three-hour match, sending Croatia into the Davis Cup semifinals. | 2022-11-24T11:27:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Wednesday's Sports In Brief - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/wednesdays-sports-in-brief/2022/11/24/f60a1172-6bdf-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/wednesdays-sports-in-brief/2022/11/24/f60a1172-6bdf-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html |
Showing gratitude is good for all of us, so why don’t we show thanks more?
Many people don’t realize how much a simple gesture of thanks can mean, research suggests
Giving thanks is good for the person giving it as well as the one receiving it. So why don’t we express gratitude more often?
Research suggests that many people don’t realize how much a simple gesture of thanks can mean. In one 2018 study published in Psychological Science, over 300 participants were asked to write a letter of gratitude to someone who positively impacted them — their parents, friends, coaches or teachers from long ago.
Importantly, the letter writers were asked to predict how surprised, happy and awkward the recipients would feel after receiving their gratitude. The researchers then followed up with the recipients to see how they reported feeling.
The gratitude expressers consistently underestimated how much people appreciate being appreciated. And the recipients of the letters found it significantly less awkward than the writers predicted. In short, receiving gratitude was far more likely to make someone’s day than the people giving them gratitude expected.
“In everyday life, we seem to not fully realize the magnitude of the impact that we’re having on other people,” said Amit Kumar, professor of marketing and psychology at the University of Texas at Austin and an author of the study.
This miscalibrated expectation may be one potent reason we often do not express our gratitude more often, Kumar said. “Essentially, if you think you’re not going to be making that much of an impact, you might not actually bother to do so,” he said.
Why thanks isn’t given as often as it should be
Undervaluing gratitude’s effects on the receiver may be because of a mismatch in the perspectives between what the gratitude giver and receiver focus on. The words left unsaid and the thanks left ungiven may be because of these misconceptions.
Kumar and his colleagues found that the participants writing the gratitude letters were hung up on competence expressing their appreciation — was their letter articulate and eloquent enough?
But the people receiving those letters cared more about the feelings of interpersonal warmth and did not judge the writers as harshly on how the appreciation letter was written: They were happy simply for receiving gratitude in the first place.
“In some cases, this inordinate concern with competence can actually stand in the way of engaging in these sorts of actions,” Kumar said.
Intriguingly, participants in these research studies reported they want to perform these prosocial actions more often. But by undervaluing the benefits of sharing gratitude with the recipient, we build barriers to both our own well-being and that of those we care about.
Unfortunately, we do not often have opportunities to recalibrate our sense of how our appreciation impacted someone’s day, which may make it harder to overcome this “misplaced barrier.” This also means missing out on the benefits of expressing gratitude for ourselves; research consistently finds practices such as writing down what you are grateful for improves happiness and well-being.
Emerging social cognition research shows we have a bias toward “undersociality,” where we underestimate how positively others respond to our social outreach, extends to all manners of prosocial behavior, whether it is performing acts of kindness, asking for help or just striking up a conversation.
But making an active intention to give thanks when you feel grateful can make a difference.
Gratitude helps bind us together
“At the end of the day, it boils down to: most people want to be valued,” said Sara Algoe, psychologist who runs the Emotions and Social Interactions in Relationships Laboratory at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “We need social relationships, we value social relationships, we crave being connected with other people.”
Gratitude is a unique catalyst for not only finding these connections but also strengthening them, Algoe said. The “find-remind-and-bind” theory proposes that feeling grateful helps us find new contacts, reminds us that current connections care about us, and binds us closer together.
In one 2022 study published in Scientific Reports involving 125 couples in a five-week field experiment, Algoe and her colleagues found that nudging one partner to express more gratitude led to more time spent together as a couple.
In the experiment, half of the couples had one person who was encouraged to express their gratitude whenever they felt grateful to their partner. The prompt was formulated to “really capitalize on people’s natural opportunities to experience gratitude and show them that there are these opportunities to express it and then have them make a plan to express it,” Algoe said.
The gratitude-expressing partner was also encouraged to keep this extra assignment a secret so that their appreciation would be received as more genuine. (Most partners kept the secret, but one did confess that they talked about the experiment as soon as they left the laboratory, Algoe said.)
Those encouraged to express thanks did share their gratitude with their partners more often; these couples increased the amount of time they spent together by an estimated 68 minutes a day on average, which represents more social investment and stronger social bonds.
“I think one of the big takeaways is that gratitude can contribute to well-being, and part of the reason that it contributes to well-being is because it helps us feel connected to other people,” Kumar said.
How to express gratitude
You likely have people in your life who you are grateful for. So how should you express this gratitude?
“The first thing is do it,” Algoe said. “Don’t forget that basic step. And don’t overthink it.”
You can also make it easier to express gratitude. Kumar said that after seeing the benefits of gratitude from his research, he began keeping a supply of thank-you cards on his desk to help him remember to express gratitude more often in his daily life.
Algoe suggests reframing the goal of what gratitude is for. She calls it putting the “you” in “thank you.”
“It’s subtle, this just turning it away from yourself and turning it toward them and what it was about their actions that were great,” she said.
Ultimately, just remind yourself that saying thank you really does make a difference.
“It’s not like a huge amount of effort,” Kumar said. But a small shift in how often you express thanks can make a “pretty big difference when it comes to how we feel and how we treat others.” | 2022-11-24T11:27:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Showing gratitude is good for all of us, so why don't we show thanks more? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/11/24/gratitude-giving-thanks/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/11/24/gratitude-giving-thanks/ |
The doctor performed CPR on both, who are expected to make full recoveries. The incidents offer lessons and reminders for runners of all abilities.
Joyline Chemutai runs in the Monterey Bay Half Marathon in California. During the marathon, two runners, men in their 50s and 60s, collapsed on the track. (Andrew Tronick/Big Sur Marathon Foundation)
But while running the Monterey Bay Half Marathon in California on Nov. 13, Lome saw not one, but two runners collapse on the course, and he performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on both. The two runners, men in their 50s and 60s, survived and are expected to make full recoveries, Lome recounted in a Twitter thread.
“I just thought it was such a crazy, crazy odds, random event that there were two cardiac arrests, and both happened to be right in front of me,” he said in a phone interview.
The incidents, which have received national attention, offer lessons and reminders for runners of all abilities. While sudden cardiac arrests are uncommon among road race participants — according to a 2012 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the incidence rate is .54 per 100,000 participants, with the rate significantly higher during marathons compared with half marathons. The majority of those cases of cardiac arrest (71 percent) were fatal. There were about 5,000 finishers at the Monterey Bay Half Marathon.
“It was actually an amazing response,” Lome said. “It was quite a team effort.”
When Lome saw the first runner, 67-year-old Greg Gonzales of Vancouver, Wash., collapse about 30 feet in front of him around the third mile of the race, he assessed that it “wasn’t just a simple fainting spell or trip.”
Lome started chest compressions “within a minute” of Gonzales collapsing and said someone had called 911. He added that within a few minutes, paramedics arrived with a defibrillator. The American Heart Association recommends hands-only CPR, which instructs the person giving chest compressions to push hard and fast in the center of the patient’s chest. Push to the beat of the song “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees, Lome said. “That’s because that’s the proper beat.”
“I felt good, other than terrific chest pain, and they indicated the chest pain was from rib fractures due to the chest compressions,” Gonzales said.
Lome continued with his race after helping Gonzales and finished the half marathon in 2 hours 30 minutes 32 seconds. Then he saw the second runner, 56-year-old Michael Heilemann of San Anselmo, Calif., collapse right past the finish line. Lome started chest compressions. A race volunteer brought an AED “within one to two minutes,” he said.
“The finish line is a relatively common area for cardiac events,” said John Ellison, the medical director for the Monterey Bay Half Marathon and the Big Sur International Marathon.
Ellison credited the people around for saving the lives of the runners. “The ultimate treatment for cardiac arrest isn’t CPR, it’s defibrillation, it’s getting electricity in the chest to restart the heart,” he said. “And the CPR is important to preserve brain function and keep that blood flowing in the meantime.”
Gonzales’s father died of a heart attack at 58, and his brother had a heart attack at 59. “That’s why I ran, and I tried to keep my weight down, and I tried to eat the right foods,” Gonzales said.
Both men said they felt healthy heading into the race. But a healthy lifestyle “does not make you immune from your risk factors,” sports cardiologist Jonathan Kim said.
“Generally, if you exercise a lot, you eat healthy, you’re going to control your cholesterol, you’re going to control your blood pressure. But there’s nothing you can do to control your genes,” Kim said. “And making sure if you have that strong family history that you let your doctor know about it, so then as you start getting past 40, 50, that you have the appropriate cardiac assessments and evaluation by preventive cardiologist is very important.”
About 1½ years ago, Gonzales felt a “tiny stitch of pain” on the left and right sides of his chest. The pain came and went. “Five seconds here, 20 seconds here, 30 seconds here, maybe a minute once in a while,” he said. “No more than probably five to 10 times.” Then about eight months ago, Gonzales had a “tiny inch” of pain in his left biceps.
These signs should not be ignored. “Even though you’re running like me, trying to work out like me, if there’s any issues like that, get a hold of your internist or your doctor right away,” Gonzales said.
Studies have shown that exercise can reduce the risk for heart disease, but it’s important that you talk with your doctor before participating in an endurance event, particularly if you have risk factors.
“A lot of people run marathons and do just fine,” Kim said. “But if you’ve never done it before, you want to kind of think about what your risk factors may be, and ensure all of that has been addressed and controlled for.”
Don’t train when you have a respiratory illness
While Lome’s tweet about the two runners with cardiac arrest prompted speculation on social media that the incidents might be related to covid, experts said there’s no evidence to support that.
Kim, who is the director of sports cardiology at Emory University, says the fact that there were two runners who experienced cardiac arrest during the same race is “probably more of a coincidence” as opposed to an indication that there has been an increase in cardiac events because of the pandemic.
“We have not personally observed an uptick in cases of myocarditis, or cases of sudden cardiac arrest in athletes as a consequence of covid,” he said.
“Respect the virus, whether it’s covid or you just have a bad cold or the flu, you should not train through a viral syndrome,” Kim said. “That’s something we preached in my field before covid, and certainly we continue to preach post-covid.”
“I believe this half marathon was the hardest I’ve ever trained for a half marathon,” Gonzales said. “I felt great.” | 2022-11-24T11:28:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Two runners had heart attacks in a race. How often does that happen? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/11/24/heart-attack-running-cpr/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/11/24/heart-attack-running-cpr/ |
Former NBA TV personality and longtime basketball podcaster Leigh Ellis has embarked on a 20-city pickup hoops world tour, making an early stop at a court inside the Kalemegdan fortress in Belgrade, Serbia. (Leigh Ellis, 20 Cities, 20 Countries, 20 Games)
“Anthony Davis can only ever play for two weeks at a time,” Ellis said by telephone from Europe last week. “James Harden wanted respect for giving back $7 million in free agency. Kevin Durant said to fire everyone in Brooklyn. These sorts of guys don’t inspire me anymore. Maybe that’s an age thing. When you’re a kid, you look up to these guys as heroes. Now you look at them and you go, ‘What the f--- is wrong with this guy?’ The NBA season doesn’t have the same spark.”
“I don’t know if I can turn this into a career, but I want to find out,” he said. “If I don’t do this now, it’s not going to happen. No one was going to come to me with this idea and ask me if I wanted to do it. The only way was to make a clean break and dive in headfirst. I felt like I had to try it.”
When Ellis laid out his admittedly unfinished plans to his longtime podcast partners, they were supportive but surprised and a little skeptical about how he would financially sustain the project. J.E. Skeets, the co-host of “No Dunks,” had long referred to Ellis as “the International Man of Mystery” because of his circuitous life journey from Sunbury, a suburb of Melbourne, to London in his 20s, to Toronto in his 30s, and then to Atlanta, where he currently resides. Given that background, and Ellis’s tales of playing pickup in Brazil, Egypt, Mexico and Peru over the years, Skeets understood why some fans envision him becoming basketball’s answer to Anthony Bourdain.
“I’m not afraid of failing at this project,” he said. “I’m more afraid of sitting in the same job in 10 years wishing that I had done this. Travel is the best life experience. You can’t teach traveling, you can only learn. Every time you wake up, you can say that you did something for the first time. ”
Ellis has compiled a cultural catalogue along the way. The shot-happy, full-court, five-on-five games he was accustomed to at Atlanta’s Underwood Hills Park have given way to a pass-and-move style in the Balkans, where three-on-three games are the norm. The 5-foot-11 Ellis has had to adapt to the faster game, and a recent opponent likened him to Warriors star Klay Thompson thanks to his reliable jumper. During intense mixed-gender games in Barcelona over the summer, he noted that the women were often as physical in the paint as the men. In Germany, he marveled at the firm metal rims and chain link nets that were built to last decades, regardless of the weather. In Belgrade, he took to a spongy court surface that was easier on the knees than typical concrete. | 2022-11-24T12:17:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Leigh Ellis quit his job to play pick-up hoops around the world - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/24/why-leigh-ellis-quit-nodunks/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/24/why-leigh-ellis-quit-nodunks/ |
AI threats are the new frontier in weapons control
An image of the H100, Nvidia's latest GPU optimized to handle large artificial intelligence models, which is used to create text, computer code, images, video or audio. (Nvidia/Handout/Reuters)
Henry Kissinger spent much of his career thinking about the dangers of nuclear weapons. But at 99, the former secretary of state says he has become “obsessed” with a very modern concern — how to limit the potential destructive capabilities of artificial intelligence, whose powers could be far more devastating than even the biggest bomb.
Kissinger described AI as the new frontier of arms control during a forum at Washington National Cathedral on Nov. 16. If leading powers don’t find ways to limit AI’s reach, he said, “it is simply a mad race for some catastrophe.”
The warning from Kissinger, one of the world’s most prominent statesmen and strategists, is a sign of the growing global concern about the power of “thinking machines” as they interact with global business, finance and warfare. He spoke by video connection at a cathedral forum titled “Man, Machine, and God,” which was this year’s topic in the annual Nancy and Paul Ignatius Program, named in honor of my parents.
Daron Acemoglu: The AI we should fear is already here
Kissinger’s concerns about AI were echoed by two other panelists: Eric Schmidt, former chief executive of Google and chairman of the congressionally appointed National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, which issued its report last year; and Anne Neuberger, the Biden administration’s deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology.
The former secretary of state cautioned that AI systems could transform warfare just as they have chess or other games of strategy — because they are capable of making moves that no human would consider but that have devastatingly effective consequences. “What I’m talking about is that in exploring legitimate questions that we ask them, they come to conclusions that would not necessarily be the same as we — and we will have to live in their world,” Kissinger said.
“We are surrounded by many machines whose real thinking we may not know,” he continued. “How do you build restraints into machines? Even today we have fighter planes that can fight … air battles without any human intervention. But these are just the beginnings of this process. It is the elaboration 50 years down the road that will be mind-boggling.”
Kissinger urged the leaders of the United States and China, the world’s tech giants, to begin an urgent dialogue about how to apply ethical limits and standards for AI.
The Post's View: The United States can't let other countries write AI policy for it
Such a conversation might begin, he said, with President Biden telling Chinese President Xi Jinping: “We both have a lot of problems to discuss, but there’s one overriding problem — namely that you and I uniquely in history can destroy the world by our decisions on this [AI-driven warfare], and it is impossible to achieve a unilateral advantage in this. So, we therefore should start with principle number one that we will not fight a high-tech war against each other.”
U.S. and Chinese leaders might start a high-tech security dialogue, Kissinger suggested, with an agreement to “create at first relatively small institutions whose job it will be to inform [national leaders] about the dangers, and which might be in touch with each other on how to ameliorate” risks. China has long resisted nuclear arms control negotiations of the sort that Kissinger conducted with the Soviet Union during his years as national security adviser and secretary of state.
U.S. officials say the Chinese won’t discuss limiting nuclear weapons until they have achieved parity with the United States and Russia, whose weapons have been capped by a series of agreements starting with the 1972 SALT treaty, negotiated by Kissinger.
Opinion: How AI could accidentally extinguish humankind
The world-changing power of AI has become a primary concern for Kissinger in his late 90s, with Schmidt as his guide. The two co-wrote a book last year with MIT professor Daniel Huttenlocher titled “The Age of AI: And Our Human Future,” which described the opportunities and dangers of the new technology.
Kissinger’s first major public comment on AI was a 2018 essay in the Atlantic magazine headlined “How the Enlightenment Ends.” The article’s subtitle summarized its chilling message: “Philosophically, intellectually — in every way — human society is unprepared for the rise of artificial intelligence.”
Kissinger told the cathedral audience that for all the destructiveness of nuclear weapons, “they don’t have this [AI] capacity of starting themselves on the basis of their perception, their own perception, of danger or of picking targets.”
Asked whether he was optimistic about the ability of mankind to limit the destructive capabilities of AI when it’s applied to warfare, Kissinger answered: “I retain my optimism in the sense that if we don’t solve it, it’ll literally destroy us. … We have no choice.”
Opinions on AI
Opinion|AI threats are the new frontier in weapons control
Opinion|Will deterrence have a role in the cyberspace ‘forever war’?
Opinion|The immortal Trump | 2022-11-24T12:35:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | AI threats are the new frontier in weapons control - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/24/artificial-intelligence-risk-kissinger-warning-weapons/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/24/artificial-intelligence-risk-kissinger-warning-weapons/ |
By Dhiraj Nayyar
New iPhone 14 models at an Apple event in Cupertino, Calif., on Sept. 7. (Jeff Chiu/AP)
Dhiraj Nayyar is the director for economics and policy at Vedanta Resources.
If the Indian economy has an Achilles’ heel, it is the country’s manufacturing sector. Despite rapid economic growth since pro-market reforms began in 1991, the share of manufacturing in India’s gross domestic product has remained stubbornly low, at about 15 percent. (In China, it has been about 30 percent in recent years.) Indian growth has been driven by services, most famously in information technology.
The lack of a large, competitive manufacturing sector has consequences. One statistic more than any other captures the consequence of an underdeveloped manufacturing sector: Just over 40 percent of India’s total workforce is still employed in agriculture and allied activities that account for only 18 percent of GDP. Unlike advanced economies, India does not have an unemployment problem; instead, it struggles with underemployment. In the absence of significant social security, people cannot afford to go without jobs, so they are forced to content themselves with low-productivity, low-wage jobs in farming. Services have not been able to absorb this excess low-skill workforce. In fact, they have not done so in any country that has become rich.
Now that three decades of rapid growth have raised the expectations of the population, there are increasing calls for high-quality jobs. Ironically, China might lend a helping hand. Beijing’s strict “zero covid” policy is severely disrupting global supply chains. The recent shortage in iPhone supplies is just the most prominent example. China now poses a bigger risk to supply chains than at any point during its rise as the factory of the world over the past three decades. Xi Jinping’s consolidation of unchallenged control at last month’s Chinese Communist Party congress marks a firm break with the moderate era initiated by Deng Xiaoping. The deepening authoritarianism in Beijing translates into great unpredictability in the actions of the world’s second-largest economy. The world looks on with growing concern.
The problems don’t end there. Many critical supply chains outside China, for example, are in the neighboring East Asian region, where China has outsize influence. Over 80 percent of leading-edge technology semiconductors are manufactured in just two locations: Taiwan and South Korea, both of which face permanent threats in the form of China and North Korea.
The United States seems to have recognized the risks. Last month, the Biden administration announced what is in effect a “tech war” on China by banning the export of semiconductor chips as well as the technology and equipment used to manufacture them. U.S. allies that have access to similar knowhow might follow suit. Given that the Trump administration also cracked down on trade with China, it is fair to assume there is now a bipartisan consensus in the United States on the need to contain Beijing and diversify critical supply chains.
India is notorious for missing geopolitical opportunities — but this time might be different. In contrast to his predecessors, who mostly hailed from the agricultural heartland of North India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi comes from the western coastal state of Gujarat, which has long given priority to manufacturing. In Gujarat, manufacturing contributes 30 percent to the state’s GDP, a level comparable to China’s.
Having served as chief minister of the state for nearly 13 years before he became prime minister, Modi is acutely aware of what manufacturing needs to thrive. Since he became prime minister in 2014, Modi has tried to make life easier for businesses by cutting regulations and incentivizing bureaucrats to speed up approval processes. Now, in his second term in office, he is going further by embracing industrial policy.
India’s long history of failed state intervention has made politicians wary of industrial policy. Yet in recent years, as manufacturing continues to lag, Modi has opted to intervene. His production-linked incentives program is designed to reward domestic and foreign-owned firms across 13 chosen sectors, from automobiles to pharma to advanced batteries. The aim is to ensure global competitiveness by achieving greater scale in production. The program is set to distribute about $25 billion to industry over four years.
The second is his program for manufacturing semiconductor and display factories, which offers up to $10 billion in the form of capital subsidy to potential investors. (Disclosure: My company, Vedanta, has applied for subsidies from this program as part of its investment in a semiconductor and display manufacturing joint venture with Taiwan’s Foxconn.) Interestingly, the subsidy program was announced before the Biden administration passed its Chips and Science Act this year.
Modi’s embrace of industrial policy is a gamble — but it might be India’s best hope. Subsidies on their own won’t be enough. Success depends on whether the Indian manufacturing sector can prove its ability to compete in global markets. That will likely require a whole host of other structural reforms — a huge challenge in India’s noisy democracy, where a multitude of vested interests complicates the withdrawal of protections and unproductive subsidies. This will require all of Modi’s considerable political skills (and perhaps a third term in office starting in 2024).
But the country’s manufacturers have no time to waste. Right now, firms exiting China are looking for other options. India needs to do everything to ensure it is the first choice. | 2022-11-24T12:35:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | India needs to jump-start manufacturing. Here’s how to do it. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/24/modi-india-economy-boost-manufacturing/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/24/modi-india-economy-boost-manufacturing/ |
(Washington Post staff illustration; Charlie Neibergal/AP/iStock)
If the United States hopes to stem the abuse of spyware by governments around the world, it is going to have to monitor its own behavior as well. That’s what makes a report by the New York Times suggesting the FBI came close to deploying one of the world’s most controversial hacking tools so concerning.
The Times pored over dozens of internal documents and court records about the FBI’s actions with regard to the technology known as Pegasus — the capability developed by Israeli firm NSO Group that can breach devices without a single click from the target. The revelations throw doubt on representations FBI Director Christopher A. Wray made to lawmakers during a closed-door session late last year. His agency, he claimed, purchased the technology only for research and development “to be able to figure out how bad guys could use it, for example.” The real story seems more troubling. The unveiled documents point to the possibility that officials believed Pegasus could play a role in criminal investigations.
That the FBI ultimately decided not to move forward with its plans is reassuring, but only to a point. The decision came after investigations by The Post and other journalists revealed how authoritarian regimes and democracies alike had exploited NSO’s technology to snoop on their citizens, including dissidents and journalists — among them, associates of Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in the months before his murder in an operation authorized by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The Biden administration rightly added NSO along with other similar companies to a blacklist prohibiting it from receiving American technologies.
The problem is, the story doesn’t end here. The FBI has indicated its flirtation with spyware isn’t over. There are justifiable uses for the technology, in theory: to thwart terrorists, for instance, or crack open drug cartels. Yet in practice, even democracies have too often used it to skirt the limits of their constitutions or law. As the technology and its capabilities leap ahead of norms and legal strictures, the task for the United States and other democratic nations is to ensure they procure and employ third-party spyware in a way that avoids undermining civil liberties around the world, not to mention jeopardizing their own national security.
How to do this won’t be easy or always clear, but it is essential. The FBI’s experience underscores an obvious downside to the acquisition of these singularly invasive tools. Israel has been pushing for an end to the prohibition on NSO; its case is easier to make amid indications that the very government punishing the firm considered becoming one of its customers not so long ago. The same will be true if the United States involves itself with other technologies implicated in human rights abuses. President Biden was wise to take the fight to the mercenary spyware industry with its blacklist action, but a more comprehensive approach is necessary. Like-minded nations should be working together to deny exports to and refuse imports from any destination that has a record of abuse or lacks a framework to prevent it — as well as any one that allows its own products to spread to abusers around the world.
Such a strategy, of course, requires that the United States itself come up with a new framework against the abuse of spyware. Developing some rules of the road is especially essential for law enforcement as some departmental uses of spyware would likely focus on American citizens. Transparency is a bare minimum, starting with mandated reporting, both internally and to cleared lawmakers on relevant congressional committees, on what products have been purchased as well as when and how they’ve been used. The public also should know the broad strokes of how spyware is used. Limits on the employment of these tools, ideally to situations such as protecting national security and domestic terrorism investigations, are also important. So are approval requirements; authorities should have to go to court for a warrant as they do when they want to install a wiretap.
Even with all these protections in place, the United States would do well to weigh how much it really gains from buying spyware abroad. Doing so, even from relatively responsible actors, risks lending legitimacy to an industry that, as a whole, is pushing the globe closer to an era of limitless surveillance. The countries most likely to exploit the proliferation of these new spying technologies aren’t nations like this one, some of whose in-house capabilities can already rival anything NSO and its ilk have to offer. On the contrary, the powers that might use them most aggressively are nations, some of them authoritarian, that would otherwise be limited in their snooping capabilities. Before U.S. law enforcement contemplates how it might buy and use spyware, it must contemplate whether it — or any other country — should. | 2022-11-24T12:35:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Democracies flirting with spyware like Pegasus raises dangers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/24/pegasus-spyware-danger-democracy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/24/pegasus-spyware-danger-democracy/ |
Rebuffing Trump, the justices stake a claim for ideology over partisanship
Supreme Court Associate Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh arrive in the House chamber for President Biden's State of the Union address on March 1. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
There isn’t a lot nice to say about the Supreme Court these days. But the court’s recent series of rebuffs to former president Donald Trump and his fellow election deniers offer an opportunity to do that, and to examine the distinction between ideology and partisanship.
The line between the two is more blurry than crisp, with an enormous overlap between Republican political interests and conservative ideology. Meantime, partisanship exists along a continuum, from the kind of slavish loyalty that Trump expects from justices he appointed to a more general predisposition toward the GOP.
Still, in a moment when progressives routinely flay the conservative justices for supposedly rabid partisanship, it’s worth pausing to recognize that the situation is more nuanced than that: It’s not that this, or any court, is free from the temptations of partisanship, but this majority is far more driven by conservative ideology than by a desire to boost Republican political interests.
That was on welcome display this week, as the court rejected Trump’s bid to prevent the House Ways and Means Committee from obtaining his tax returns. Last week, it turned aside an effort from Arizona GOP Chair Kelli Ward to block the House Jan. 6 committee from obtaining her records — albeit with Justice Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. noting their disagreement. Earlier this month, it refused South Carolina Sen. Lindsey O. Graham’s effort to avoid testifying before a Georgia special grand jury investigating election interference.
These aren’t Trump’s first such defeats: The court in 2020 cleared the way for a New York grand jury to obtain Trump’s financial records. And Trump & Company aren’t doing all that well in the lower courts, either. At the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta earlier this week, a conservative-dominated panel appeared skeptical about Trump’s claims that a special master was warranted to review the evidence seized in the August search of his Mar-a-Lago residence. (A Trump-appointed district judge had granted Trump’s request for the outside review.)
Of course, praising judges for refraining from behaving in a partisan fashion shouldn’t be necessary — that’s the essence of the job. And while nearly all the conservative justices have deep ties to the Republican Party — all but Justice Amy Coney Barrett worked in political positions in the administrations of Republican presidents — there is a difference between being pro-Republican and being pro-Trump.
These are, after all, establishment lawyers, some of whom have expressed private disdain for and public exasperation with the former president. Brett M. Kavanaugh thought Trump was a “buffoon” as he campaigned for the presidency in 2016. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. was moved to issue an extraordinary public statement taking Trump to task after he blasted an “Obama judge” for a ruling protecting migrants seeking asylum. “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” Roberts said.
Trump deserved the pushback, but Roberts’s assessment was also willfully naive. A judge’s political pedigree matters and partisanship, whether knowing or subconscious, creeps into the high court’s rulings at times. By far the most disturbing example is Bush v. Gore, the court’s 2000 ruling halting the Florida recount and effectively handing the presidency to George W. Bush.
That decision, in which the conservative justices sided 5-4 with Bush, was so shoddy that the court itself declared it had limited value for future cases: “Our consideration is limited to the present circumstances, for the problem of equal protection in election processes generally presents many complexities.” Justice John Paul Stevens, a liberal who was nominated by a Republican president, dissented bitterly, saying that the real loser in the case was “the Nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.”
How should we think about the current court? “My goal today is to convince you that this court is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks,” Barrett said in a 2021 speech — choosing the curious venue of the (Mitch) McConnell Center at the University of Louisville, named after the GOP senator who engineered her rushed confirmation, to make that claim. “Judicial philosophies are not the same as political parties,” Barrett said.
True, and there are moments when the conservative majority’s ideological zeal outweighs whatever partisan instincts the justices might have. A political strategist with the GOP’s electoral interests in mind wouldn’t have advised the justices to overrule Roe v. Wade just months before the midterm election, and the court could have easily chosen not to hear the Dobbs case and have postponed deciding the issue.
Other times, it’s hard not to suspect that partisan considerations played a role in the court’s actions — or at least to wonder whether outcomes might have been different if the parties’ roles had been switched.
In February, splitting 5-4, the court intervened in an Alabama redistricting case; a lower court had ruled that the state needed to add an additional majority-Black district, but the justices blocked that decision from taking effect. Kavanaugh, in an explanation joined by Alito, said the court needed to act, under its election law precedents, because the voting was so imminent. In fact, as Justice Elena Kagan noted for the dissenters, “the general election is around nine months away; the primary date is in late May, about four months from now.”
Here, the majority’s ideological hostility toward the Voting Rights Act merged conveniently with its partisan preferences. A seat that would likely have gone to Democrats remained in Republican hands — as did seats in other states where lower courts followed the Supreme Court’s lead and refused to act because the election was supposedly too close.
This is an ideological court more than it is a partisan one. That might be cold comfort given the radical nature and drastic consequences of its views, but in a season of giving thanks, it’s what we have. | 2022-11-24T12:35:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Trump rulings suggest Supreme Court is ideological more than partisan - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/24/supreme-court-ideology-partisanship-trump/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/24/supreme-court-ideology-partisanship-trump/ |
The forgotten furry casualties of the Ukraine war
By Yehor Firsov
The author's military unit poses with its adopted dog, Yur, in Bakhmut, Ukraine, in October. (Courtesy of Yehor Firsov)
Yehor Firsov is a soldier in the Ukrainian army.
When we think of the casualties of the Ukraine war, we obviously think of the human cost — the lives lost, the wounded and injured, the families displaced. But there are other, smaller casualties of this war. They’re not announced on the television news, but I see them in the war zone every day.
They are the many homeless, abandoned animals that roam the streets of front-line towns and villages leveled by the Russian assault.
Most of these animals, and there are hundreds, even thousands, of them, are former pets — dogs and cats left behind by owners who’ve fled or died. In many places, they outnumber any remaining human residents. In fact, it seems that the less human life there is in a place, the more animal life there is.
While serving in the Kyiv Territorial Defense Forces, I participated in the mop-up operation in Bucha after the Russians left. I remember that strange feeling of walking along an empty street — it’s broad daylight and not a single soul in sight. But suddenly there’s a movement: The gate shakes. It’s the wind, you think, but then you open it — and there stands a dog or a cat. You reach down to stroke it and ask, “Hey, how’re you doing?”
Sometimes, these animals amaze us with their humanity. In one yard, we find the corpses of four people and a pit bull. Nearby lies a haggard German shepherd, still alive. It has stayed with its owners, guarding their decomposing bodies and refusing to leave, even though we can tell they have been dead for some time. It won’t abandon those who once gave it their love.
Elsewhere, we come upon a bombed-out high-rise apartment building. There’s not a single window left in the facade — the surrounding ground is completely covered in broken glass. Suddenly, we hear someone quietly stepping on the glass behind us. We turn around — a gray tabby cat. I pick it up, and even though its wounded paws leave traces of blood on my clothes, it immediately starts to purr. I can’t leave it there. It’s well groomed and clearly someone’s pet. I don’t know whether its owners are dead or alive, but when I post a picture on social media, they come forward to claim it. I’m sad to give it up, but it’s a happy ending for the kitty.
Happy endings, though, are the exception. Walk through the ruined, half-empty cities of Bakhmut or Avdiivka, and you’ll come upon scores of wandering cats and dogs. Even Pokrovsk, 25 miles from the front lines, is overflowing with homeless cats. When our unit was at drill there, I saw a dozen or more hanging around the local store. I bought some sausages for them and got to talking with an elderly woman named Lyudmyla. She was also trying to feed the strays huddling near her home. “I made a house for them,” she told me, pointing to a large cardboard box, “but as soon as the snow falls, it will certainly be hard for the animals. I feel so sorry for them. But I can’t take all of them into the house — I could only take three kittens.”
There will be more and more kittens and puppies, because many of the animals are not fixed and continue to breed. “Calculate for yourself. A cat is able to breed up to five times a year and can bring several kittens in a litter,” one animal rights activist from the Donetsk region wrote to me on social media. With thousands of homeless cats, there could be tens of thousands of kittens in a few months.
Now our unit is stationed in Bakhmut, on the front line. In one yard, I meet a woman cooking over an open fire, surrounded by at least a dozen cats. “Are they all yours?” I ask her. “No, just one is mine,” she says. “These are all the cats of my neighbors. They left, and we feed their pets.”
On the very front line, in the trenches, military units often give shelter to one or more dogs. My unit took in one that wandered into our position. We’ve named him Yur. He’s just an ordinary mutt, but when I look into his eyes, it’s like looking at a wise old man who deeply understands everything going on around him.
I asked the soldiers whether having him around helped them. “At night it feels safer with the dog,” one said. “He helps the duty officer see if the enemy is approaching.” But really, Yur is more like a therapist. Whenever the soldiers have a minute, they come over and pet him — it seems to relieve their stress and makes them feel better.
The stories of these homeless creatures touch the hearts of people everywhere. The photo of a dog that survived a rocket attack in Dnipro that killed its owners — and destroyed the dog’s hearing — went viral on Ukrainian social media when it was posted in memory of the family.
There’s obviously no official solution to these animals’ plight, but I’ve come up with a modest solution of my own. I suggested that each member of my brigade adopt one small furry life to take home, and most have agreed.
As for me, I’ve adopted a cat. You might not be surprised to hear that it looks a lot like the one I had to give up. And that it’s just as kind and loving — and reminds me that even in the midst of war, it’s possible to experience fleeting moments of grace.
Opinion|The forgotten furry casualties of the Ukraine war | 2022-11-24T12:43:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Ukraine war's homeless, abandoned pets - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/24/ukraine-war-casualties-abandoned-pets/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/24/ukraine-war-casualties-abandoned-pets/ |
Providing homes to tenants whose rents are backstopped by the government in a country with an acute shortage of property might seem like an investment built on impregnable foundations. The plunge in Home REIT Plc shares following a critical report from a short seller is a reminder that there’s no such thing as a risk-free bet.
Home REIT dropped as much as 31% in London trading Wednesday after Fraser Perring’s Viceroy Research published a 27-page document questioning its financial health and governance. The stock recovered about a third of that drop after the company called the comments “inaccurate and misleading” and based on “mistaken assumptions, misinformed comments, and disputable allegations.” The real estate trust said Viceroy didn’t engage with it before publishing, adding that it will issue a fuller response later. It rose 5.5% in early trading Thursday.
The trust’s business model is simple to understand. There are more than 270,000 homeless people in Britain, and more than 1 million on waiting lists for social housing. Local governments have a duty to house the homeless, and in the absence of suitable accommodation often put them into bed-and-breakfast hotels. These are expensive, costing an estimated weekly average of £245 ($296) per bed, according to a May filing from Home REIT.
Enter private-sector real estate companies, which buy and renovate residential properties, then rent them to charities and housing associations. Home REIT’s average weekly rent was £95 per bed in the six months ended in February. That’s a considerable saving to local authorities, which also (at least in theory) get higher-quality and purpose-built accommodation. For their part, the property investors get low-risk customers and assured returns. The community housing providers sign long-term, inflation-linked leases (averaging 24 years in the case of Home REIT’s properties). They’re also responsible for maintenance, insurance and other costs. Their tenants, meanwhile, are usually on housing benefit or other state support. It starts to look like a sweet business for the landlords.
Stock market investors certainly bought the story. Home REIT raised £240.5 million in an initial public offering in October 2020, a further £350 million in September 2021 and then £263 million in a placement in May this year, the latter two both enlarged in response to demand. The company has expanded at breakneck speed, using up the proceeds of its first two equity sales to reach 2,239 properties by the end of August. Home REIT was added to the FTSE 250 Index in July.
The company’s market value peaked at almost £1 billion in August and has since fallen by half to £492 million as of Wednesday’s close. The stock began declining steeply in September, when disclosures tracked by Bloomberg show hedge fund Oasis Investments started shorting the stock. Viceroy joining the party has renewed the downward lurch. The firm questioned Home REIT’s accounting practices, the quality and diversity of its tenants, and the compensation arrangement with investment boutique Alvarium Investments, which brought the trust to market and manages it.
Perring was an early critic of Wirecard AG, the collapsed German payments firm, and has roiled shares of companies from Australia to Sweden, though its bets haven’t always panned out. Whether Home REIT shares can recover fully will depend on the strength of the company’s rebuttal. That has happened with Viceroy targets on occasion, most notably in the case of South Africa’s Capitec Bank Holdings Ltd.
Look at Home REIT’s funding model, and you might conclude that it would take a heroic effort for this company to fail to make money. The trust pays a fixed rate of 2.53% on its £250 million of debt via two facilities that have terms exceeding a decade. Meanwhile, the average net yield on its property portfolio was 5.87% as of February. Net asset value was £624 million prior to the May placement, so leverage is relatively modest.
Beyond the fortunes of a single company, the attack on Home REIT draws renewed attention to the UK’s policy of enlisting private companies to address its housing crisis, an approach that has stirred controversy. The argument for profit-driven solutions is greater efficiency, though some providers have faced complaints of poor quality. Funneling taxpayer funds into private hands to solve a problem that has its roots in state policies stretching back to the 1980s also raises questions of social equity.
Crisis situations call for crisis measures, and investors can’t be blamed for responding to the incentives placed before them. But if we’re going to talk about governance, let’s not leave Westminster out of the conversation. The problems begin there.
• Another Fine Mess for German Capital Markets: Chris Bryant
• Scotland Needs Good Governance, Not Fairytales: Therese Raphael | 2022-11-24T12:57:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Wirecard Short Seller Meets UK’s Housing Crisis - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/wirecard-short-sellermeets-uks-housing-crisis/2022/11/24/0aa788e4-6bea-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/wirecard-short-sellermeets-uks-housing-crisis/2022/11/24/0aa788e4-6bea-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html |
Expansion of an online screening tool connects students to food, housing and other aid
Student volunteers stock food-pantry shelves at Mountain Gateway Community College in Clifton Forge, Va. (Virginia's Community Colleges)
When Nadine Greene-Hicks met a Central Virginia Community College student who had been in foster care and no longer had a place to live or enough to eat, she had a quick way to help.
By filling out an online screening tool, the full-time student was able to find out whether she qualified for a wide array of benefits, including federal aid programs, and connect with local resources such as food pantries and ways to get used furniture.
“It’s hard to focus on your studies if you don’t have a place to lay your head at night,” said Greene-Hicks, whose job as the college’s community connections coordinator is to try to dismantle barriers students face. They were able to get the student an affordable apartment through a nonprofit group in Lynchburg, connect her to a federal program to help her buy food, and show her that with her student ID, she could ride the bus to school and to work free.
“You can just imagine how worried you are and how anxious you could be when you just don’t know what might happen the next day,” Greene-Hicks said. “Now she can focus on the things she wants to focus on, achieve her goals.”
Virginia’s community colleges are expanding the help they provide students and simplifying the process for getting aid. It’s a response they hope will combat some of the financial and emotional pressures of the pandemic and inflation and help people stay in school.
College enrollment declines for third straight year since pandemic
A national survey of community college students by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin that was published in October found that 1 in 5 had cut back on meals or skipped them in the previous month because of costs and that more than a quarter were unable to pay their rent or mortgage.
And while college enrollment dropped across the country during the pandemic, the declines were especially stark at community colleges, where many students are juggling their educational and career aspirations with financial and other burdens.
Major enrollment decline at community colleges continues
The pandemic exacerbated many of the challenges students were already facing, such as with mental health or needing to care for an elderly family member, said Van Wilson, interim senior vice chancellor of academic and workforce programs with Virginia’s Community Colleges.
And while many four-year colleges have significant supports built into campus life, such as student health centers, housing, meals and counseling services, community colleges typically haven’t been able to provide those.
“But the needs are the same,” Wilson said. “This is what drives that necessity to find partnerships across the community and across the country to build that support structure, because our students need the same things.”
Congress pumped $35 billion into emergency grants for college students. Here’s how it’s going.
Single Stop is an online screening tool that can quickly link students to federal, state and local aid, with questions about household size, income and location. A few years ago, only a couple of community colleges in Virginia used it. In 2020, the system began adopting it statewide. The help could include assistance applying for Medicaid, mental health counseling, child-care vouchers, assistance preparing and filing taxes — or cash from a campus emergency fund to help fix a flat tire.
This year, since January, it has been used by more than 9,700 Virginia students who received more than $21 million in benefits, according to Virginia’s Community Colleges.
Lauren Chase, who is studying business administration and education at Central Virginia Community College in Lynchburg, asked for volunteer opportunities and was given a work-study job helping students at the school’s food pantry in the campus student center — which has been rebranded as the Central Grab-n-Go.
When Greene-Hicks took the job as the community connections coordinator, she decided the food pantry needed help, including a paint job. “It just looked like a dank warehouse to me,” she said. “You want to get your food from somewhere that looks nice, not somewhere dank and dark.”
Now anyone can stop by and select what they need from the shelves, from canned fruit to soup to toothbrushes. When new students come in, Chase asks them to fill out the Single Stop, and often people are surprised to find they qualify for aid they didn’t know was out there.
“It’s very much needed,” Chase said.
She said students have told her the food and other benefits have helped them stay in school. Sometimes students come to tears, grateful for the help.
“I’ve been helped in the past,” Chase said. “I think it’s important to help others achieve their best version of themselves.”
At times, students find they qualify for aid that had previously been denied, unaware of rule changes such as an expansion of food assistance for college students in 2021, Greene-Hicks said.
Virginia’s Community Colleges recently announced a grant to expand aid to schools in a rural area that stretches like a horseshoe from Virginia’s Eastern Shore through Southside and southwestern Virginia and up the Shenandoah Valley. The 14 schools there will benefit from a $125,000 grant from the Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield Foundation to promote Single Stop.
“I really do believe that programs like this can change students’ lives,” Chase said, “and give them the opportunity to do more with their life than they ever thought they could.” | 2022-11-24T12:57:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Single Stop tool at Virginia community colleges helps students in need - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/11/25/virginia-community-colleges-single-stop/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/11/25/virginia-community-colleges-single-stop/ |
Thursday briefing: Victims of the Virginia Walmart shooting; Alaska election results; Georgia abortion ban; NFL lineup; and more
We learned more about the deadly shooting at a Walmart in Virginia.
What happened? A gunman, who worked at the Chesapeake store, fatally shot six people on Tuesday night before taking his own life, police said.
The victims: All were Walmart employees: Brian Pendleton, Kellie Pyle, Randall Blevins, Tyneka Johnson and Lorenzo Gamble. The sixth, who was 16, has not been named.
The investigation: Police identified the attacker as a 31-year-old store supervisor.
Ukraine’s energy systems are on the brink of collapse.
Why? Russia has intensely bombed key infrastructure for six weeks. Yesterday, a round of missile strikes set off blackouts across the country.
Why it matters: Millions of people are facing life-threatening conditions this winter without electricity, heat or running water.
Rep. Mary Peltola was projected to defeat Sarah Palin in a House race in Alaska.
The details: Peltola, a Democrat, is the first Alaska Native to win a full term in Congress. She halted the former GOP vice-presidential candidate’s attempted comeback.
What else to know: Sen. Lisa Murkowski was projected to defeat fellow Republican Kelly Tshibaka, who was endorsed by former president Donald Trump.
What took so long? Alaska uses a ranked-choice voting system and allows absentee ballots sent before or on Election Day to arrive up until 15 days after polls close.
The Georgia Supreme Court reinstated the state’s six-week abortion ban.
How we got here: The law, one of the country’s strictest when it was signed in 2019, was overturned by a judge last week.
Yesterday’s ruling: The state’s high court put last week’s decision on hold while it considers an appeal, meaning the six-week ban immediately went back into effect.
Measles could be on the verge of a comeback.
What’s that? A preventable but highly infectious disease that undermines the immune system and makes infected people more vulnerable to other diseases.
Why we’re talking about it: Almost 40 million children missed vaccine doses last year, meaning there’s an “imminent threat” of a global surge, experts warned yesterday.
There are football and soccer games to look forward to today.
The NFL lineup: The Buffalo Bills and Detroit Lions, at 12:30 p.m. Eastern time (on CBS); the New York Giants and Dallas Cowboys, at 4:30 p.m. (on Fox); and the New England Patriots and Minnesota Vikings, at 8:20 p.m. (on the NFL Network).
The World Cup lineup: Portugal and Brazil will play their first matches of the tournament in Qatar, at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m.
NASA’s Mars rover dug up clues in the hunt for alien life.
What it found: Martian rocks that have the right chemical recipe to preserve evidence of ancient life on the planet, if it ever existed, according to new studies.
When we’ll know more: NASA hopes to retrieve the samples from the Perseverance rover in the early 2030s, when they’ll be examined for signs of life.
And now … what to watch this holiday weekend: “Glass Onion,” a follow-up to “Knives Out,” is in theaters. Or, if you have a long drive: Try one of these new audiobooks. | 2022-11-24T12:58:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The 7 things you need to know for Thursday, November 24 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/11/24/what-to-know-for-november-24/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/11/24/what-to-know-for-november-24/ |
Dear Sahaj: My immigrant parents are my best friends. They’ve sacrificed so much for me — leaving their friends and family behind to start over in a new land and then working to the bone for years to build a comfortable and financially secure life for me and my brother. They’ve given me everything I could ever ask for and more.
I’m now in my mid-twenties and moving away for the first time in my life to start medical school. Since both my brother and I lived at home during our undergraduate degrees and beyond, we’ve always had our parents around and they’ve always had us. I don’t think we know life without each other.
I know they’re so proud and excited for me on this new journey, but I can’t help but feel guilty for leaving. I’ve always been a support system for them — especially for my mother, since my father frequently travels for work — and now I feel like I’m taking away some of their happiness and stability.
My grandmother tells me she’s sad that I’m leaving because my dad will be lost without me. How do I balance this exciting time in my life without feeling like I’m responsible for my parents’ loneliness after I leave? How do I stop feeling guilty for leaving my parents and moving away for school?
— Guilt-Ridden Daughter
Dear Guilt-Ridden Daughter: It’s really sweet that you feel so close with your parents. However, feeling close with someone and feeling responsible for someone are two different things. You may experience discomfort over being on your own, or for leaving your home, but remember this is a normal stage of life. All families function a certain way — each person playing a role — and when this is disrupted, it’s not uncommon for these changes to cause discomfort, disappointment or guilt among family members.
Feelings are not necessarily fact. You can feel like you’re doing something wrong because someone isn’t happy with what you’re doing. But it doesn’t inherently make what you’re doing wrong. This feeling can be overpowering, but having it doesn’t make it true.
There are several strategies for learning to manage guilt. Some of these include:
Identifying your parents’ beliefs and values and then exploring your own, so you can redefine the merits of your guilt. Are you internalizing what’s expected of you?
Knowing that if you don’t nourish yourself, then you can’t show up as presently for your loved ones. The last thing you want is to start building resentment toward your family members or parents.
Remembering that multiple feelings can be felt and acknowledged simultaneously. Your family can feel sad you’re leaving and it can be the right thing for you. You can feel guilty for leaving and you can love your parents and your family fiercely.
You seem to be emotion monitoring, which is anticipating and being hyper-aware of how others are feeling. Having empathy isn’t bad, but it seems like this has swung into territory where you are absorbing the feelings of your family members rather than acknowledging them as separate entities. This can indicate a more enmeshed family system, where your behaviors and feelings may be tied to your family members’, causing your feelings of immense guilt.
It’s not uncommon for immigrant daughters to be emotional caregivers in their families. It may be useful for you to reflect on whether gender roles impacted the ways you and your brother were encouraged to show up in your family. It may help you to discuss with your brother how you can work together to show up for your family without sacrificing yourself.
In my work with children of immigrants, I see many struggle with unrealistic or high standards for themselves. I hear things like: saying no is selfish or disrespectful; other people’s happiness is my responsibility; if my parents aren’t happy, I can’t be happy. This can lead to unhelpful guilt that isn’t rooted in realistic expectations we, or others, have of ourselves.
I worry the guilt you’re feeling is unhelpful. I encourage you to monitor that guilt so it doesn’t lead to shame — or feelings that you are a bad daughter/granddaughter for leaving home. Guilt is a warning sign, a reminder to pause and reflect. Healthy guilt alerts us to our morality — to the pain and hurt we may cause others, or to social and cultural standards that we cross. It ultimately helps us redirect our moral or behavioral compass.
You show a lot of compassion for your parents and their journey coming to this country. Ultimately, I wager they probably want what is best for you. So remember to have compassion for yourself, that you are doing the best you can, too. You are navigating new terrain and new family dynamics just like your parents did by emigrating. Your courage to carry that momentum forward is a beautiful thing. | 2022-11-24T14:28:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Sahaj: I feel guilty moving away from my immigrant parents - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/24/ask-sahaj-guilt-immigrant-parents-moving/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/24/ask-sahaj-guilt-immigrant-parents-moving/ |
‘Villages’ for the aging coming to more Black communities
The villages movement started in Boston two decades ago as a way for seniors to find what they need to age in their communities. Nearly 300 have sprouted across the country.
By Myah Overstreet
Debora Royal, center, takes her seat for the Thanksgiving meal for members of Kingdom Care Senior Village Friday in Washington. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
Debora Royal has lived in Congress Heights in Ward 8 for more than 50 years. And at age 65, she would like to remain in her largely African American neighborhood.
A longtime friend suggested she join Kingdom Care Senior Village two years ago, after her mother’s death left her in a rut. For $10 a month, Royal has been able to take virtual dance classes, attend computer literacy sessions, and go on nature walks and weekly trips to Walmart with other members.
“My health has changed for the better. Definitely my mental health,” Royal said.
Villages are part of a movement that started in Boston two decades ago as a way for seniors to find what they need to age in their own communities. Nearly 300 villages have sprouted across the country, bringing activities, transportation, tech support, home improvements and aging-in-place services to their members, who pay anywhere from $10 to upward of $60 a month to join. Most are grass-roots organizations that operate as nonprofits.
Few, however, are like Kingdom Care, whose membership is predominantly Black. Other exceptions include Golden Age Village in Baltimore, which is also predominantly Black, and Hotel Oakland Village in Calif., which is predominantly Asian.
A 2016 University of California at Berkeley study that was published in the Journal of Applied Gerontology found that 96 percent of village members were White, 77 percent owned their own home, 70 percent were women, and 70 percent were college-educated. According to the Village to Village Network, most of the organizations are on the East and West coasts, with over 64 villages under development.
“I notice I get a lot of communications from other villages and all of the pictures that I see are all White,” said Madeline Franklin, who started STL Village, which serves Black seniors in St. Louis. “And so the message that some people might get from that is that African Americans are not welcome or not a part of that.”
Several factors contribute to the lack of diversity, people in the movement said.
There is a language barrier for non-English speakers, said Barbara Sullivan of Village to Village network, which is a national, membership-based organization that connects villages across the United States.
Another reason is the way the movement has evolved. “I think it’s easy for people who start villages, because they’re grass roots, to just invite people like themselves. In the model, you invite your friends,” said Charlotte Dickson, of Village Movement California, a statewide coalition of villages.
Dickson said her organization is working to broaden its membership by recruiting in Black churches, reaching out to more people of color and LGBTQ groups. “What we’re doing is pushing people to kind of look at what are the demographics of your community, who is in your community, and what are the organizations, institutions and leaders that you need to get involved so that everybody is included,” she said.
Membership fees have also been a barrier, Dickson said. Costs vary, depending on what services the organization provides. At Beacon Hill Village in Boston, where the movement started in 2002, members enjoy a long list of activities such as meditation classes, coffee conversations, cocktail and holiday parties, travel and book clubs, concerts and theater outings and rides to appointments. Annual membership is $675 — discounted to $110 for low-income seniors, according to the website.
At STL Village, full membership costs about as much and drops to $10 a month for low-income seniors, which Franklin said is still a barrier for many. The group now has a grant that provides free membership for those living in underserved communities. That has enabled STL to increase membership among people of color by 20 percent, Franklin said, and expand events and programs even to nonmembers.
In D.C., the city’s Department of Aging and Community Living has made grants to subsidize fees since 2017 after recognizing that there were no senior villages east of the Anacostia River, in wards 7 and 8.
“In order to expand our outreach efforts and ensure there was equity and inclusion across all eight wards, we partnered with the senior villages to expand their footprint,” said Jessica Smith, the department’s interim director in an interview. “Through our partnership with senior villages, we are able to reach, support and serve more seniors, specifically in our most underserved neighborhoods in the District.”
Annually, the Department of Aging and Community Living invests more than $847,000 in 13 senior villages, with each village receiving $50,000 for programming. About 40 villages were already in place when the agency requested applications five years ago. Kingdom Care was the only village to receive funding.
Kingdom Care operates out of Greater Fellowship Full Gospel Baptist Church in Congress Heights where Kathy Pointer, the founding director of the village, is a member. Realizing that a village could be a vehicle to reach more seniors, Pointer, with the church’s support, quickly created a nonprofit and responded to the city’s request.
While most villages take years to form, Kingdom Care was up and running with 20 members within three months of obtaining the bid.
Today, Kingdom Care has 54 members and about a dozen volunteers in a neighborhood that is over 90 percent Black and where a quarter of the households fall below the poverty line. With the grant, Kingdom Care helps to ensure that low-income seniors from wards 7 and 8 can take full advantage of available resources.
“Right now, we have a project going on where we’re trying to make sure every senior that qualifies for a home-health-care aide, that they get it. Everyone that needs home-delivered meals, they get it,” Pointer said.
Stories of Kingdom Care’s success have spread and established villages have reached out to Pointer for ways to bring more people of color into the movement.
“Many of them have come and said, ‘Hey, we need to do something about the disparities, about the racial inequalities. We need to do something because people of color need access to villages too,’ ” Pointer said.
Research shows that in comparison to White seniors, Black seniors experience an increased risk of chronic conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, dementia, stroke and cancer, as well as lower life expectancy by as much as a decade because of factors that include race-related stress.
Belonging to a village can help ease stress and loneliness for seniors. Village members, especially in the three years after joining, feel they have more social support and are more confident they can get the help needed to remain in their homes, according to a 2017 report by the University of California at Berkeley’s Center for the Advanced Study of Aging Services. Villages also drastically reduce isolation by providing opportunities for social and civic engagement.
That has been the experience for Royal, who on Friday attended Kingdom Care’s Thanksgiving celebration with 25 other members. “This has really changed my life," she said, "because I get to do a lot of the stuff outside of the house. I get to see my senior partners.”
Myah Overstreet is a writer with the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California, Berkeley, Graduate School of Journalism. She reported this story through a grant from the SCAN Foundation. | 2022-11-24T14:28:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ‘Villages’ for the aging coming to more Black communities - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/24/senior-villages-kingdom-care/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/24/senior-villages-kingdom-care/ |
Meet the world’s first astronaut with a disability: Paralympian John McFall
John McFall, a doctor and medal-winning sprinter at the 2008 Paralympic Games, has been selected for the European Space Agency's latest class of astronauts. (Francois Mori/AP)
The European Space Agency (ESA) has selected a person with a physical disability to be included in its next generation of astronauts for the first time, in what it hopes is the initial step toward sending a “parastronaut” to space.
John McFall, a 41-year-old British paralympic sprinter who now works as a doctor, is one of 17 candidates chosen from 22,500 applicants to join the space agency’s 2022 astronaut class. The successful candidates will now complete one year of basic training in space technology, science and medicine at the European Astronaut Center in Cologne, Germany, before entering the next Space Station training phase where they will be taught how to operate station elements and transport vehicles.
McFall will take part in the ESA’s “Parastronaut Feasibility Project,” which the agency said in a statement was intended to “develop options for the inclusion of astronauts with physical disabilities in human spaceflight and possible future missions.” While it can’t at this stage guarantee that McFall will be sent into space, the agency has said it will “commit to trying as hard and seriously as we can” to make it happen.
In addition to his medical training, McFall, who lost his right leg in a motorcycle accident at 19, is a former sprinter who represented the U.K. in the 2008 Beijing Paralympic Games — where he won bronze.
European space officials have been using the term “parastronauts” to refer to people who are “psychologically, cognitively, technically and professionally qualified to be an astronaut, but have a physical disability that would normally prevent them from being selected due to the requirements imposed by the use of current space hardware.”
Through technical studies, space simulations, analogue missions and conversations with the agency’s international space partners, the ESA hopes McFall’s participation in the program will allow the agency to determine what is required to send a person with a physical disability into space.
“As an amputee, I never thought that being an astronaut was a possibility,” McFall said in an interview posted to the ESA’s website.
“I’m extremely excited about using the skills that I have for problem solving, identifying issues and overcoming obstacles that allow people with a physical disability to perform the job equally to their able-bodied counterparts,” he said.
McFall also said he wanted to find the answers to the practical questions posed by sending a person with a physical disability into space: “What actually happens to someone with a lower limb amputation in micro gravity? What happens to their residual limb?”
McFall will join five career astronauts and 11 reserve astronauts. It’s the first time the ESA has recruited a new class of space explorers to join its ranks since 2009.
In an earlier statement encouraging candidates with disabilities to apply for the program, the ESA said “the expectations of society towards diversity and inclusivity have changed,” and that “including people with special needs also means benefiting from their extraordinary experience, ability to adapt to difficult environments, and point of view.”
“Science is for everyone, and space travel, hopefully, can be for everyone,” McFall said.
In an interview with the Associated Press, NASA spokesperson Dan Huot said the U.S. spaceflight agency was following the selection process taking place across the Atlantic with “great interest,” but he noted that “NASA’s selection criteria currently remains the same.”
“For maximum crew safety, NASA’s current requirements call for each crew member to be free of medical conditions that could either impair the person’s ability to participate in, or be aggravated by, spaceflight, as determined by NASA physicians,” Huot told AP.
The list of 17 candidates selected by the ESA this year also includes two women, Sophie Adenot from France and the U.K.’s Rosemary Coogan — who will be bolstering another underrepresented group in space. Earlier this year, the agency announced Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti would become the first European female astronaut to serve as the commander of the International Space Station, 15 years after NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson became the station’s first female commander in its history.
At their two-day council, the ESA also announced its 22-members had committed to increasing the agency’s budget by 17 percent, which its director general tweeted was equivalent to 16.9 billion euros ($17.6 billion) over the next three years. The agency said it plans to focus the next stage of its space exploration on low Earth orbit, the moon and Mars. | 2022-11-24T14:29:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Paralympian John McFall joins ESA as first astronaut with a disability - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/24/esa-john-mcfall-disabled-parastronaut-space/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/24/esa-john-mcfall-disabled-parastronaut-space/ |
Elon Musk’s plans to turn Twitter Inc. into a free speech haven could run into its biggest political obstacles in the European Union, where he has to contend with its new Digital Services Act, which forces companies to take down illegal content. Musk said he’ll follow national laws -- and specifically reassured concerned EU officials that he’ll follow the DSA -- but this will be difficult in practice with so few staff left to moderate content. It won’t be easier in the EU’s lawmaking capital of Brussels, where Twitter’s office is now lifeless. EU leaders know Musk himself was a controversial speaker on Twitter -- he was taken to court for defamation after he called a British caver a “pedo guy” (Musk won), the US SEC sued him for tweets about taking Tesla Inc. private (Musk settled), he tweeted a Nazi meme (then deleted it), and posted misinformation about an attack on US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband (also deleted.) While most if not all of these wouldn’t have breached the DSA, it’s certainly made lawmakers attentive to the possibility that they were signs of what’s to come. | 2022-11-24T16:00:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How Musk’s Battle With European Regulation Could Play Out - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/how-musks-battle-with-european-regulation-could-play-out/2022/11/24/8f6eabba-6c04-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/how-musks-battle-with-european-regulation-could-play-out/2022/11/24/8f6eabba-6c04-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html |
For some athletes, sports runs in the family
The Currys, Mannings and Kordas are just a few families with several high-achieving athletes.
Nelly Korda, left, and sister Jessica Korda, both of Team United States, celebrate after Nelly secured the gold medal on the 18th green during the final round of the Women's Individual Stroke Play on Day 15 of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in 2021. (Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)
It’s Thanksgiving, a day when many families gather to share a big meal and good times. So that has me thinking of sports families.
What’s a sports family? The Kordas for example. Petr Korda was a top tennis professional back in the 1980s and ’90s. He married another tennis pro (Regina Rajchrtová), and they have three children.
Nelly Korda is the top-ranked women’s professional golfer in the world. Her sister, Jessica, is ranked Number 18. Their brother, Sebastian, chose to play tennis. He is ranked 34th in the world. That’s a lot of athletic talent sitting around the table whenever the Kordas get together.
Of course, if sisters Serena and Venus Williams meet up over the holidays that is 30 major tennis titles in the house. Serena won 23, and Venus won seven.
The Mannings are a famous football family of quarterbacks. Most football fans know that before they appeared in TV ads brothers Peyton and Eli each won two Super Bowl rings during their National Football League (NFL) careers.
Less well-known is that their father, Archie Manning, was an all-American quarterback at the University of Mississippi who went on to a 13-year career in the NFL. Together the Mannings threw for more than 150,000 yards in the NFL.
Christian Pulisic is a star on the U.S. Men’s National Soccer Team. His father and mother played college soccer at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. But the Pulisics may not sit down for Thanksgiving dinner this year. Christian is busy playing in the World Cup.
Basketball families? Stephen Curry and his brother Seth are sharpshooting guards in the National Basketball Association (NBA). In fact, Stephen may be the greatest shooter ever.
The Curry brothers probably inherited their shooting skills from their dad. Dell Curry played 16 seasons in the NBA, from 1997 t0 2002, after starring at Virginia Tech.
But for hoops it is hard to beat the Barrys. Rick Barry was a Hall of Fame player from 1965 to 1980 who had three sons — Brent, Jon and Drew — who played in the NBA. Brent and Jon each played for 14 seasons.
There may be another basketball family on the way. LeBron James has said he wants to play long enough to play in the NBA with his son Bronny. The younger James is 17 and a top high school prospect.
Almost all families have some kind of sports history. Maybe your dad played youth baseball or your mom has run a marathon. Or someone in the family can tell of the disappointment of being cut from high school basketball and baseball teams. (That’s part of my story.)
Ask your family about their sports stories this Thanksgiving. And if you get outside for touch football or a game called H-O-R-S-E at basketball hoop, maybe you can make new family sports stories.
Fred Bowen writes the sports opinion column for KidsPost. He is the author of 27 sports books for kids. His latest book is “Hardcourt: Stories From 75 Years of the National Basketball Association.” | 2022-11-24T19:46:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | For some athletes, sports runs in the family - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/11/24/some-athletes-sports-runs-family/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/11/24/some-athletes-sports-runs-family/ |
Young LGBTQ Americans search for hope as they grieve in Colorado Springs
Robin L. at the memorial to the shooting victims of Club Q in Colorado Springs. (Ross Taylor/for The Washington Post)
COLORADO SPRINGS — Luis Padillo had wanted to visit Club Q for months. He would sometimes drive around nearby, trying to work up the courage to enter.
“I didn’t have anyone to go with me,” said Padillo, 21, who recently came out to his parents as questioning his sexuality. “I just wasn’t comfortable going by myself.”
But two days after a gunman stormed Club Q, killing five and wounding 18, Padillo finally stopped by to reflect on — and mourn with — Colorado’s gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer community.
“I wanted to see the memorial,” said Padillo, standing in front of a collection of flowers, candles and rainbow flags. “This is a wake-up call, and a cry for change, and although it’s definitely saddening, it’s inspiring at the same time.”
As the nation grieves three mass shootings in the past two weeks, makeshift memorials have served as reminders of the nation’s unrelenting gun violence. But the tribute here has taken on a deeper meaning — it has become a space for LGBTQ teenagers and young adults to grieve, honor their community and ask, “What now?”
Some drove to Colorado Springs from as far away as Boulder, about 90 minutes north, just to stand in front of the memorial for a few minutes. Others came with their parents, reflecting a generational shift toward adults being supportive of their LGBTQ children. A few have stopped by multiple times on multiple days, saying they cannot explain why they keep coming back.
“I am trans and queer myself,” one 15-year-old, who asked to be identified by their first name, Eliot, said while viewing the memorial with their 61-year-old grandmother. “As a high school kid, it terrifies me that this could happen based on someone’s identify. … But being here helps.”
It was not lost on many young visitors that they were standing in front of a bar where they could not even legally drink. Yet many said they know what Club Q represents in this conservative community.
As soon as he heard about the shooting, Wyatt Krob, 20, knew he had to travel here from Denver, about an hour north. In January, after months of “connecting all of the pieces,” Krob told his parents that he was bisexual. He had planned to visit with his father, “but I couldn’t wait for him to get out of work,” he said.
Instead, Krob came alone. “I don’t fully understand it,” he said. “I just felt called to go and experience it myself.”
Krob, who attends Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colo., said the memorial’s combination of pain, anguish and “love” helped him better understand that spots like Club Q “are sacred places” for the LGBTQ community.
It also allowed him to dig deeper for information about himself. “I wanted to come here, find other people who are grieving, and also maybe have a better understanding of myself,” he said. “I would say for anyone who is questioning, or identifies as anything other than straight, this definitely hits home in their soul.”
A few feet away, Amber Cantorna stood wearing a sweatshirt that read “Free Mom Hugs.” Free Mom Hugs is a nationwide group of women whose members travel to LGBTQ-focused events to support youths.
Cantorna, 38, said the sight of so many young people demonstrated how rapidly younger adults — and many of their parents — have become more aware and supportive of issues involving sexual orientation and identity.
“You would not have seen this when I grew up in Colorado Springs, or when I left a decade ago,” Cantorna said.
Still, in a part of the country where it can take an hour to travel between isolated mountain and farm communities, she knows that many young adults still lack a supportive network.
Cantorna said she became suicidal and fled to Denver after her family ostracized her and even took away her set of keys to their house when in 2012 she told them she was gay. At the time, Cantorna’s father worked as a high-ranking official at Focus on the Family, a Colorado Springs-based Christian conservative advocacy group.
She moved back to Colorado Springs last year but remains out of contact with her family.
Even in tragedy, Cantorna said, the Club Q memorial will become a place that helps members of the LGBTQ community feel less alone.
“A lot of queer people still live pretty rural, isolated lives where they don’t have a community to support them,” she said. “These are people who may not have a family or may not have a place to go for the holidays this week.”
Barbara Poma, who owned the Pulse nightclub in Orlando where a gunman killed 49 people in 2016, said she is not surprised that so many younger Colorado Springs residents are choosing to publicly grieve at Club Q. The memorial in front of Pulse still attracts hundreds of people per day to the shuttered venue.
“It amazes me to see the families and the young people there, but it happens every day,” said Pomo, whose onePULSE Foundation is building a permanent monument to honor the Pulse nightclub victims. “We have families that come to Orlando on vacation, but they will still bring their children to visit the memorial. … It is a place of pilgrimage, and a place of bearing witness and for people to face grief and have good conversations.”
‘I hope people come here’
The number of younger Americans who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender is higher than it’s ever been before. In February, Gallup found that 7 percent of Americans now identify that way, including 21 percent of American adults who were born between 1997 and 2003.
In front of Club Q this week, several parents of gay or transgender children said they saw a family visit to the memorial as a way to show their children that more people love them than hate them or want to cause them harm.
On Wednesday morning, Layla Aronow brought her 12-year-old transgender son Kai to the memorial from their home in suburban Denver. They placed flowers at the crosses honoring the victims, while Kai chalked the sidewalk with messages including “We don’t choose who we love — We choose who we hurt.”
“When this happened, especially this close the holiday, it just broke my heart,” said Aronow, 42. “It was important to me, especially with a trans child, to bring him here and show him that for every monster that might come, there are hundreds or thousands of others who are trying to do good.”
As Aronow and Kai took photographs of the candles and chalk writing that now line North Academy Boulevard, they got a firsthand lesson in how a community can help battle cruelty. A passenger in an SUV driving by the memorial rolled down the window and yelled an anti-gay slur at the crowd of mourners.
“That person clearly thinks that word is going to hurt us, and wants the power to hurt us,” Kai responded. “And it just doesn’t hurt us when we are together.”
Aronow swelled with pride.
“That is exactly what I want my son to say and believe,” she said.
Robin L., another transgender man who visited the memorial with his mother, said the collective grieving in front of Club Q had inspired him, even though he had never been inside the venue.
Robin — who is 21 and asked to be identified only by the first initial of his last name because he worries about online harassment — said seeing so many fellow young LGBTQ people standing together this week proved they are “living their ancestors’ dreams.”
“I hope that people come here, and they see that even though this is terrible, there are people everywhere that love them,” Robin said. “We will be here for each other, despite the fear.”
The memorial also attracted a steady flow of heterosexual teenagers and young adults. Many of them also believe that memorial symbolizes how solidarity can arise from the community’s sadness.
Ayden Derby, who is heterosexual and a senior at a local high school, said it still common for some LGBTQ students to be bullied or harassed. But as Derby, 18, gazed at the memorial, he vowed to be a lifelong ally the LGBTQ community.
“Stuff like this speaks to people, and definitely makes them reconsider the actions and words they say,” said Derby, who watched as his 17-year-old friend scrawled “You are wonderful” on a concrete barrier that separates the memorial from highway traffic.
But despite the support, Robin’s mother Kathy L. still worries that the nightclub shooting represents a new, more dangerous time for Robin and other LGBTQ Americans. Especially outside of the nation’s largest cities, “it is getting worse for gay people because it has been getting better for gay people,” she said.
“Gay people have a few rights now, and sometimes you might see a pair of same-sex people walking downtown where you never would have 20 years ago,” said Kathy, who made several visits to the memorial this week to resupply origami paper to make butterflies. “So someone who is hateful and fearful sees that and then they decide to commit a hate crime.”
Ash Lowrance, a 23-year-old transgender man, echoed those concerns when they visited the memorial with their partner Alexis Mullins, who is 26 and identifies as queer.
Lowrance and Mullins moved to Colorado Springs two years ago from their conservative hometown in rural Illinois. Lowrance, who started testosterone treatment about six months ago, said the assault on Club Q has left them wondering if they should proceed with their transition.
“It kind of scares me. I am very early in my transition, and just knowing this happened is really hard to process,” Lowrance said. “A lot of young people are coming here because they realize just how messed-up all of this is.”
Padillo, the 21-year-old who told his parents he will decide his sexual orientation when he falls in love, said he also remains “scared,” even though he found comfort at the memorial. He thinks the shooting will make it even more difficult for some young men to take their first steps into a gay bar.
“This just makes it seem like you are not wanted somewhere, and that can be frightening to a lot of people,” said Padillo, who added he is grateful he has a supportive family.
But after Krob spent about 30 minutes silently gazing at the memorial, the 20-year-old left feeling good. He knew exactly what he was going to do when he got back to Denver.
“I am going to go home and give my mom a big hug,” he said. “I didn’t take any pictures here to show her, but what I saw will definitely stick with me, and it’s going to sit in my head for a long time.” | 2022-11-24T20:34:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | LGBTQ young adults seek hope as they grieve at Club Q in Colorado Springs - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/24/colorado-springs-club-q-memorial/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11/24/colorado-springs-club-q-memorial/ |
Another mass shooting. Another mass shooting.
A man prays on Monday at a makeshift memorial near the site of the shooting in Colorado Springs. (Jack Dempsey/AP)
This week, first Colorado Springs, and now, Chesapeake. Hardly a day goes by without yet another mass shooting [“5 dead, 25 injured in shooting at LGBTQ club,” front page, Nov. 21]. Are we really sure this is the sort of “well regulated Militia” our Founding Fathers had in mind? Or, perhaps the Supreme Court could be truly originalist and limit the “right to keep and bear Arms” to those specific weapons available to the people when the Second Amendment was ratified in 1791.
Richard Juhnke, Arlington
Another day, another mass shooting. Less than a week after five people were shot at the University of Virginia and seven in Mississippi, 30 people were shot in Colorado, followed a day later by four in Texas and six in Chesapeake, Va. And Republicans often can’t even be bothered to offer “thoughts and prayers” anymore.
There have been more than 600 mass shootings in the United States this year, nearly two mass shootings every day. No other civilized nation has more than a few a year. We’ve had more than 39,000 deaths from gun violence, and the year’s not over yet. But Republicans continue to stonewall any and every effort to enact meaningful gun legislation. Republicans have blood on their hands, and they can’t wash it off.
Bob Meyer, Herndon | 2022-11-24T20:35:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Another mass shooting. Another mass shooting. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/24/another-mass-shooting-another-mass-shooting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/24/another-mass-shooting-another-mass-shooting/ |
How to make the GOP more appealing to voters
A ballot drop box on Nov. 8 in Clackamas County, Ore. (Gillian Flaccus/AP)
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), in his Nov. 20 op-ed on what it will take to resurrect and create a new Republican Party, “The GOP is dead. A new GOP must listen to working people.,” focused on something he called the “working-class culture,” as though this somehow defined those things the GOP needs to focus on to gain voters.
Unfortunately, Mr. Hawley, as with so many Republicans, thinks that future votes will come from some sort of typical, unhappy, non-college-educated, working-class American. This sounds very much like the old Trump GOP. There is no working-class culture in the United States. Working-class Americans are as diverse as the population in general, and getting more so over time. They are not a culture unto themselves but come from many different backgrounds and have a variety of concerns that they expect government to address. A decent job and paycheck might be one of those concerns, but it’s not the only one. This was demonstrated in the midterm elections, when Republicans thought inflation would outweigh other issues and bring voters to the GOP. It didn’t happen. Climate change, gun control, humane immigration, abortion rights and LGBTQ rights also were on voters’ minds.
If the GOP and Mr. Hawley really want to expand their voter appeal, they should look at what is on the minds of the diverse American population instead of a so-called working-class culture. Until they do, they will continue to be the minority party in American politics.
Jared Wermiel, Silver Spring
Though the GOP is far from taking its last breath, I applaud Sen. Josh Hawley’s appeal to the party to fight more for the working class and less for the country’s wealthy and more powerful interests. Many Republicans understand this, and the party has been making inroads among middle- to lower-income voters, with whom Democrats still hold an advantage.
To represent workers, Republicans will have to move beyond cultural hot buttons (guns, abortion, etc.) and deliver economic benefits, including wages that can cover the cost of living. That means working with Democrats to raise the federal minimum wage, stuck at $7.25 for more than a decade. It also means taking a hard look at child-tax credits and regressive tax breaks for health and retirement employee benefits that now transfer billions of dollars from the middle and bottom of the workforce to the top.
Are core economic issues — and immigration reform, for that matter — Rubicons that the GOP is willing to cross?
Democrats could decide to respond to Republican inroads among working-class voters by returning to their more egalitarian New Deal roots. If so, how might the GOP respond? More competition for their votes could do a lot to improve working people’s lives.
Karl Polzer, Falls Church
The writer is founder of the Center on Capital & Social Equity.
I am aware that in U.S. politics, positions sometimes flip, as with Strom Thurmond and the Dixiecrats becoming Nixon Republicans. However, it is still astonishing to read an op-ed written by a Midwestern Trump acolyte who sounds significantly more like Hubert Humphrey than Ronald Reagan. Of course, former president Donald Trump was never a real Main-Street or Wall-Street Republican.
Duncan Nixon, Palmyra, Va. | 2022-11-24T20:35:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | How to make the GOP more appealing to voters - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/24/how-make-gop-more-appealing-voters/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/24/how-make-gop-more-appealing-voters/ |
It is unconscionable to insist developing countries slow development
Simon Stiell, U.N. climate chief, speaks Sunday at a closing plenary session at the COP27 U.N. Climate Summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. (Peter Dejong/Associated Press)
Regarding the Nov. 20 front-page article “Climate change deal is reached”:
Barely a day old, the U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP27) generated a great deal of conversation on the burning (pun intended) issue of global warming. The conference attendees reached a deal to create a “loss and damage fund” for supporting poorer countries being ravaged by climate disasters. The fund had been agreed on at the 2015 Paris meeting but repeatedly blocked by Congress.
Missing from the deal, however, is any concern regarding developmental challenges faced by less-industrialized countries. According to the late Thomas Schelling, the 2005 Nobel laureate in economics, the best defense for developing countries against climate change is their own development. The real victims of climate change are people in less-developed countries. They spend more time outdoors and don’t have the institutions and resources to combat climate disasters that the richer countries do.
Richer countries have sometimes suggested that poorer countries should slow down their own development for the sake of climate control, for example not developing their oil and gas fields. As suggested by Frans Timmermans, executive vice president of the European Commission at COP27, “It is important that we stipulate that we need to phase down and ultimately phase out fossil fuels.” According to Schelling, it is unconscionable for advanced countries to insist on developing countries to slow down their development for the sake of controlling climate change.
Vinod K. Jain, Ashburn | 2022-11-24T20:35:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | It is unconscionable to insist developing countries slow development - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/24/it-is-unconscionable-insist-developing-countries-slow-development/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/24/it-is-unconscionable-insist-developing-countries-slow-development/ |
Lab-grown meat can’t get here fast enough
The world's first lab-grown beef burger is seen after it was cooked at a launch event in London in August 2013. (David Parry/Pool/Reuters)
Regarding the Nov. 18 news article “Lab-grown meat is safe to eat, regulators say.”
Lab-grown meat can’t get here fast enough. I’m thrilled to learn that the first regulatory hurdle in the United States has been cleared. Not only will zero animals have to be killed for their meat, but the lab-grown meat will be free of E. coli and other pathogens commonly found on meat from slaughtered animals — and is an essential step toward slowing climate change.
Mindy Kursban, Fairfax | 2022-11-24T20:35:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Lab-grown meat can’t get here fast enough - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/24/lab-grown-meat-cant-get-here-fast-enough/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/24/lab-grown-meat-cant-get-here-fast-enough/ |
Why I won’t take the Silver Line to Dulles
Signs at Dulles International Airport on Nov. 15 direct people toward the Washington Dulles International Airport Station of the Metro Silver Line extension. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)
Taking the Silver Line to Washington Dulles International Airport is impractical because I don’t live within walking distance of a Metro station. Instead, I’d have to walk 10 minutes to a bus that runs every 30 minutes, or take a taxi or a ride-hailing service to a Metro station. I can’t drive my own car because overnight parking is allowed only at four stations: Greenbelt, Huntington, Franconia-Springfield and Wiehle-Reston East. According to Metro’s website, “each of these stations has between 15 and 17 spaces allocated for multiday use of up to 10 days. Availability is on a first-come, first-served basis.” That’s a total of fewer than 65 spaces for the 15 million passengers Dulles serves each year, along with people who use these spaces when they travel from Reagan National Airport or Union Station.
When I’ve tried to park overnight at two of these Metro stations, all of the multiday spaces were taken. There’s no way to know whether a multiday space is available without driving into the Metro garage — not practical for someone with a flight to catch.
If Metro wants high ridership on the Silver Line to Dulles, it should offer plentiful reserved multiday parking at a variety of stations, perhaps charging for the number of days the vehicle will be parked. Though it might take years to build additional garages to meet all of the demand, Metro could offer outdoor parking now by leasing sections of underused shopping center parking lots and shuttling passengers to the nearest Metro station.
Charles M. Carron, Alexandria | 2022-11-24T20:35:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Why I won’t take the Silver Line to Dulles - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/24/why-i-wont-take-silver-line-dulles/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/24/why-i-wont-take-silver-line-dulles/ |
The Twitter chief says he will reinstate accounts suspended for harassment, abuse and misinformation beginning next week.
Twitter CEO Elon Musk, as seen in this August 2022 photo illustration, asked users whether the platform should offer a “general amnesty to suspended accounts, provided that they have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spam?” (Samuel Corum/AFP/Getty Images)
After posting a Twitter poll asking, “Should Twitter offer a general amnesty to suspended accounts, provided that they have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spam?” in which 72.4 percent of the respondents voted yes, Musk declared, “Amnesty begins next week.”
The Twitter CEO did not respond Thursday to a request for comment from The Post. The poll garnered more than 3 million votes.
The mass return of users who had been banned for such offenses as violent threats, harassment, abuse and misinformation would have a significant impact on the platform, experts said. And many questioned how such a resurrection would be handled, given that it’s unclear what Musk means by “egregious spam” and the difficulty of separating out users who have “broken the law,” which vary widely by jurisdiction and country.
“Apple and Google need to seriously start exploring booting Twitter off the app store,” said Alejandra Caraballo, clinical instructor at Harvard Law Cyberlaw Clinic. “What Musk is doing is existentially dangerous for various marginalized communities. It’s like opening the gates of hell in terms of the havoc it will cause. People who engaged in direct targeted harassment can come back and engage in doxxing, targeted harassment, vicious bullying, calls for violence, celebration of violence. I can’t even begin to state how dangerous this will be.”
This is the second time in a week that Musk has used a Twitter poll to seemingly make a major decision related to the platform. On Nov. 18, he restored former president Donald Trump’s account after 52 percent of a poll’s respondents said he should do so. “Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” Musk tweeted, Latin for “the voice of the people is the voice of God. “'
On that day, he also unilaterally reinstated at least 11 high-profile far-right Twitter accounts, including Jordan Peterson, a professor who was banned from Twitter for misgendering a trans person, and the Babylon Bee, a conservative media company. He also restored Project Veritas, a site that was frequently accused of misrepresenting events it commented on and banned “for repeated violations of Twitter’s private information policy,” and Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene’s personal account, which had been banned since January for violating the platform’s covid-19 misinformation policies and pushing violent and extreme rhetoric.
Many predicted reinstating banned accounts would have very bad outcomes and help bring on the “free-for-all hellscape” that Musk had promised advertisers would not come to pass in a letter posted to Twitter on the day he took possession of the platform.
Whether Musk can do what the Twitter poll seeks is a matter of debate. He has laid off leaders of the trust and safety team, which would normally handle the logistics of reactivating the accounts. And separating out those who “broke the law” is entirely dependent on whether Twitter has detailed documentation for each suspension that include what local laws the tweet violated. Without such a legal filter, which would be dependent on state and local laws for each tweet, every account would require a detailed review. Laws also vary widely by country and region.
Madeleine Burkholder, a senior technical solutions engineer who has worked on consumer products managing spam, said Musk’s ask is nonsensical. “Egregious spamming is not a technical term,” she said, and most record keeping at major tech companies doesn’t include questions of local governmental legal codes. The norm is to simply note whether an account violated a company’s terms of service, which are rules set by the platform, not any type of law.
Angelo Carusone, chairman and president of Media Matters, a nonprofit advocacy group and media watchdog, said that Musk’s reinstatement of suspended accounts could mean bringing back networks of individuals that include the American Nazi Party and “a whole bunch of 8chan, 4chan, conspiracy theorists who engage in harassment and abuse.” 8chan and 4chan are two message boards known for their racist and antisemitic posts.
Reversing the suspensions would mean “turning Twitter into a one-stop shop for operationalizing doxxing and harassment, and an engine of radicalization “ Carusone said. “It’s a red pill Pez dispenser.” And quitting Twitter won’t keep you safe. “Even if you’re not on Twitter, you can still be the recipient of these campaigns,” he said. He predicted that public health officials, election officials, journalists, and teachers will all be targeted.
Benavidez said that organizations including Free Press have spent years educating tech giants on complex trust and safety issues and “pressuring them to understand the really delicate and complex role they play in mitigating harm caused to real people.” If “general amnesty” is granted for the majority of suspended accounts, “It will be open season for people suspended for hate, harassment, disinformation, conspiracies, and extremism,” Benavidez said. “It’s open season in the most dangerous ways.”
The lifting of the suspensions was especially troubling to LGBTQ activists, coming just days after a mass shooting at the Club Q in Colorado Springs killed five and wounded 18. Several of the restored accounts had previously been suspended for hateful rhetoric toward the gay and trans community, and Musk has been criticized for replying to Tim Pool, a right-wing YouTube star who falsely claimed the club had hosted a “grooming event,” and other anti-LGBTQ accounts. | 2022-11-24T20:36:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Musk will restore Twitter accounts banned for harassment, misinformation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/24/twitter-musk-reverses-suspensions/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/24/twitter-musk-reverses-suspensions/ |
Live updates:World Cup live updates: Richarlison puts on a show as Brazil leads Serbia
Iranian soccer player Voria Ghafouri, right, vies for the ball during a 2019 match in Dubai. (Kamran Jebreili/AP)
Iran’s World Cup team silently nods to protests at home
Iran’s national team, during a match against England on Monday, declined to sing during the playing of the country’s national anthem, in what was widely seen as a silent acknowledgment of the protests. Iran’s national broadcaster showed select images of spectators cheering for Iran during the match but not the political signs carried by some.
Protest in Iran began in September after a young Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, died in police custody. The uprising against Iran’s clerical leadership has spread across the country and sparked a fierce and deadly crackdown, including in ethnic Kurdish areas, where human rights groups say dozens of people have been killed in recent days.
The U.N. Human Rights Council in a vote on Thursday launched an investigation into alleged rights violations in Iran’s response to the protest movement. “Today’s session leaves no doubt that the HRC’s membership recognizes the gravity of the situation in Iran, and the fact-finding mission established today will help ensure that those engaged in the ongoing violent suppression of Iranian people are identified and their actions documented,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.
Ghafouri, who is Kurdish, has criticized government officials on social media in the past, and recently posted messages on Twitter condemning the killing of Kurds. Iranian news reports did not specify the reasons for his arrest but said the charges included “spreading propaganda against” the Islamic Republic.
He has been called up to play several times over the last decade on the national team, and played for several Iranian club teams including Foolad Khuzestan, his current squad. ISNA, a semiofficial news agency, reported Thursday that Hamidreza Garshasbi, the CEO of the team, had resigned, and said the reason for the his resignation had not yet been announced.
Even before the start of the World Cup, some Iranians had called for FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, to ban the national team, known as Team Melli, as a sign of support for the protests. Others argued that Iran attending the World Cup was a boon to the uprising: a high-profile event that provided players and spectators an opportunity to voice dissent, with international media watching. | 2022-11-24T21:27:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Iranian soccer player Voria Ghafouri arrested amid World Cup scrutiny - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/24/voria-ghafouri-iran-arrest-world-cup-soccer-football/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/24/voria-ghafouri-iran-arrest-world-cup-soccer-football/ |
D.C. police investigating shooting of teen boy
The victim, around 15 years old, was hospitalized with a wound to the leg
A view of a D.C. police car. So far this year, 11 juveniles between the ages of 11 and 17 have been fatally shot or stabbed in the District. (Peter Hermann/The Washington Post)
D.C. police are investigating a Thanksgiving Day shooting at 17th Street NE and East Capitol Street NE that wounded a teenage boy.
According to First District Commander Tasha Bryant, officers received a report of multiple gunshots at 1:24 p.m. Thursday. Officers were already on-site, Bryant said, because they were working the Turkey Bowl football game at Eastern High School.
The victim, a male around 15 years old, suffered an apparent gunshot wound to the left leg, Bryant said at a news conference.
The victim, who was transported to a hospital, “will be fine,” Bryant said, “and is in a stable condition.”
Initial reports suggested an older-model Toyota Camry was on the scene, so officers are looking for that vehicle, Bryant said. It was last seen traveling toward East Capitol and Texas Avenue. They believe a woman may have been driving the vehicle.
Bryant said the shooting is not connected to a fight that happened earlier in the day at the game.
“This is not connected to the game at all,” Bryant said. “The game continued to go on without incident. We were able to dismiss everyone from the game peacefully with no further incidents. We do not believe the victim was at the game. … This is an event that we host every year without issues. I don’t want this to tarnish the rest of the day for everyone else. I don’t want this incident to make people think this is not a positive event. It is.”
Several other young people have been shot in the Metro area over the past month. In late October, 14-year-old Antoine Junior Manning died in Southeast Washington of gunshot wounds. It was the second time he’d been shot that month. A 15-year-old was fatally shot in Northeast Washington on Nov. 4. And another 15-year-old was shot aboard a Metro train. A 4-year-old also was wounded by a bullet not meant for him.
“I’m tired of standing in front of you guys talking about gun violence,” Bryant told reporters Thursday. “This right here is frustrating for me. I’m tired of talking about gun violence. I’m tired of seeing kids be victims. I’m tired of seeing kids victimize other children. We have to do better than this, but it’s going to take all of us together to see us stop.” | 2022-11-24T22:06:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. police investigate shooting of teen boy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/24/dc-shooting-teen-wounded/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/24/dc-shooting-teen-wounded/ |
Joe Heim
Olivia Diaz
Casey Parks
Crosses and other items near the site of the killings in Chesapeake, Va. (Jim Morrison/FTWP)
CHESAPEAKE, Va. — Police here said they spent Thanksgiving Day examining why a Walmart supervisor shot and killed six co-workers — focusing at least in part on an alleged “manifesto” he wrote — as families, friends and co-workers of the victims grieved on what should have been a joyous holiday.
A somewhat clearer picture began to emerge of the gunman — identified by authorities as 31-year-old Andre M. Bing — though neither police nor those who knew him could provide definite answers as to what motivated the Tuesday night rampage. Chesapeake Police Department spokesperson Leo Kosinski said investigators were “actively investigating the allegation that the suspect wrote a manifesto,” first reported by WAVY-TV 10 in Portsmouth, though he provided no details.
One former colleague said Bing, an overnight supervisor who joined the company in 2010, confided in her he had “anger issues.” Another said he was “overly aggressive” and seemed to have little social life outside of work. A mother of one of the victims claimed Bing seemed to have it out for her son — even attempting to fire him this year. But others described Bing as friendly and said they never imagined he would carry out such an attack, which police say ended when Bing took his own life.
“We are actively looking into a motive right now and we want to make sure we get it right before we release it,” Kosinski said.
Relatives of the dead were facing empty seats at their holiday meals, and the nation was left to process yet another episode of high-profile gun violence. The shooting came days after a man was accused of fatally shooting five people at a Colorado LGBTQ nightclub and less than two weeks after a 22-year-old University of Virginia student was accused of killing three student-athletes returning from a school trip. According to the Gun Violence Archive, there have been at least four mass shootings every week in 2022. The group defines a mass shooting as an episode where four or more people, not including the assailant, are injured or killed.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) referenced the two recent attacks in his state in a Thanksgiving tweet writing, “On this day that we offer thanks for our many blessings, [wife] Suzanne and I ask all Virginians to take a moment to lift up in prayer the families of the victims in Chesapeake and Charlottesville, along with the many heroes who serve and protect.”
Brian Pendleton, 39, one of the six employees killed, was supposed to work at Walmart on Thursday after Thanksgiving dinner, said Michelle Johnson, his mother. “I am in the kitchen now, trying to do Thanksgiving for everybody as best I can,” Johnson said Thursday morning. “But it is such a different day.”
Johnson said her son, who had a brain condition called congenital hydrocephalus, had worked at Walmart for more than 10 years. This year, she said her son told her that Bing tried to have him fired — leaving Pendleton confused, because of his longtime service to the company. Johnson told her son to contact Bing’s supervisor and ask for his job back.
“When he did that, they reinstated Brian,” she said. “I just don’t understand how this all slipped through the cracks. It was so evident that this man had something — I feel like he had something against my son.”
The Washington Post could not immediately corroborate that account, and it was not clear whether Bing had the authority to fire someone. Walmart did not respond to a request for comment on whether Bing had attempted to have Pendleton fired.
Johnson said that her son “loved his job,” but she now wondered whether more could have been done to protect him. “He did have some issues with [Bing] at one point, but we thought everything was resolved,” she said.
Bing, who had no apparent criminal record, entered the store Tuesday night armed with a handgun and several magazines and opened fire, authorities said. He targeted co-workers in a break room, according to police and witness accounts.
Friends and relatives remembered the victims as caring, hard-working people. In addition to Pendleton, there was Tyneka Johnson, 22, a fashionista who dreamed of attending college. There was Randall Blevins, 70, who skipped retirement to keep working and enjoyed wrestling and hockey. There was Kellie Pyle, 52, who had just moved back to her hometown and reconnected with her high school sweetheart. There was Lorenzo Gamble, 43, whose mother had put him in charge of both the banana pudding cake and banana pudding for his family’s Thanksgiving dinner.
Another victim, a 16-year-old employee, has not been identified because he is a minor.
Others were wounded, and two people remained hospitalized in critical condition at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, spokesperson Mike Kafka said Thursday.
Nathan Sinclair, a former Walmart employee who worked the second shift, said Bing had a less-than-stellar reputation among colleagues. “He was known in the store for being hostile at times,” Sinclair, 21, said in a phone interview. “He talked to you like he ran the store. … There’s always people in jobs that aren’t liked — Andre was one of them.”
Sinclair, who worked at the Walmart from January until the first week of November and lives in Chesapeake, said he sometimes had to interact with Bing near the end of his shift, but he tried to avoid chatting with the man as much as he could.
“He had too many moments where he’d be overly aggressive,” Sinclair said.
Sinclair said he was told Bing had been written up at least twice by Walmart supervisors, though he did not know the details and The Post could not immediately verify the information. Walmart did not immediately respond to a question about Bing having been disciplined previously.
At work, Bing was either focused on getting his job done or playing games on his phone, Sinclair said. Although he was not fond of Bing, Sinclair described him as a “hard worker.” Other associates sometimes made fun of Bing’s clothes or hair, Sinclair said.
“Andre was kind of picked on a little bit by some associates at the store,” Sinclair said. “There were definitely other employees that made fun of him.”
Sinclair said Bing shared that he lived by himself and would often play video games when he was not working. “He didn’t have a social life,” Sinclair said. “It was work, home. Home, work. It didn’t seem like he had much of a support system, if any.”
Janice Strausburg said she worked at different Walmarts for about 13 years before quitting this year to become a Lyft driver. She said she worked with Bing for about five years at the store where the shooting occurred.
Strausburg said she and Bing talked often, but they drifted apart after he gossiped about her to co-workers. She said she couldn’t recall the nature of his comments.
Bing was “grumpy but sometimes pleasant,” Strausburg said, and he once confided to her that he had anger issues.
“I think it was because of demons,” she said of the Tuesday night attack. “Mental issues.”
Michelle Henry, who worked at the Walmart between 2016 and 2018, said she knew Bing when he was still an associate. She described him as a hard worker whom people got along with. “Andre was just a normal everyday guy. I’ve laughed with him many times,” she said. “I can’t believe he did this.”
She said she never heard Bing talk about family, but he did talk about friends outside of work.
“The only explanation I can think of is bad mental health,” Henry said. “Those were good people he killed. They didn’t do anything bad to anyone.”
Efforts by The Post to locate relatives of Bing have been unsuccessful.
The aftermath of the shootings cast a pall over Chesapeake, a city of about 250,000 people in the southeastern corner of Virginia.
Zachary Adkins, 32, and his girlfriend sat in his car feet away from the police tape lining the Walmart parking lot. They had been driving around and decided to stop and pay their respects.
“We just thought it was the right thing to do, ” he said. “It’s sad so close to the holiday. We’re having a big family dinner. These people don’t get to go to that.”
Matt Cilento, who worked as a police officer in Chesapeake from 2000 to 2007 and now operates a towing business, said that after the shooting, a few of his employees wanted to do something to honor the victims. They decided to build crosses, which they delivered on Thursday to the Walmart parking lot, next to the many flowers placed there by mourners.
“Hopefully people know that everybody in the city of Chesapeake is here to support them,” Cilento said. “It’s not just their families and friends. It’s everybody in the community.”
Laura Vozzella contributed to this report. | 2022-11-24T23:16:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Walmart shooting suspect described as aggressive, angry, but motive unclear - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/24/chesapeake-walmart-shooting-suspect-motive/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/24/chesapeake-walmart-shooting-suspect-motive/ |
Theodore Roosevelt beats Dunbar to claim second straight Turkey Bowl
Roughriders 26, Crimson Tide 18
Theodore Roosevelt's Jeff Leftwich II executes a running aerial flip for teammates after his team defeated Dunbar, 26-18, to win the DCIAA football championship in the annual Turkey Bowl at Eastern High. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
On their sideline, donning highlighter orange uniforms, Theodore Roosevelt players celebrated a 26-18 victory by motioning to their ring fingers and hitting a combination of dance moves that could only make sense in the aftermath of winning the Thanksgiving Classic in back-to-back seasons.
Across the field, Dunbar players slammed their helmets to the turf and wiped away tears.
Playing for the D.C. Interscholastic Athletic Association championship at Eastern High in Northeast Washington on Thanksgiving brought out the rawest emotions for the Roughriders and Crimson Tide.
“The Turkey Bowl means so much,” Theodore Roosevelt Coach Chris Harden said. “As someone that’s still a D.C. resident and grew up in D.C. it’s one of the last reminders of Chocolate City. It’s something that’s ours, that we put together that’s been here for years and stood the test of time.”
Beating Dunbar also provided unusual feelings for Harden, a former Dunbar standout. Harden, who said he hadn’t slept in two days, won three Turkey Bowl championships as a player and was named the game’s MVP in 2003.
“It was definitely a little weird to be looking at Dunbar in a Turkey Bowl from the other sideline, after all the times I’d been to the game with them,” Harden said. “I got so many memories in those colors, but I bleed blue and orange now. This is my home.”
After playing to a 12-12 draw through the first three quarters, Roosevelt (11-1) took the lead on a 19-yard touchdown run by quarterback Khalil Wilkins, who also caught the two-point conversion, with 11:40 to play.
The Roughriders’ defense provided more distance a few plays later when Kevin Montague stripped DCIAA player of the year Mike Brown and returned the fumble 70 yards for a touchdown.
On the ensuing drive, the Crimson Tide narrowed the deficit to 26-18 on a one-yard touchdown run from junior Michael Clark, but Dunbar would get no closer.
Wilkins finished with 149 yards of total offense and two touchdowns.
“Having all of these beautiful Black people in the stands cheering for you while you win a chip is special,” Wilkins said after being named Turkey Bowl MVP. “It’s something that only the Turkey Bowl can do.”
Dunbar (8-4) came into Thursday’s matchup mourning the death of Coach Maurice Vaughn’s mother. She had been a staple at games dating to Vaughn’s time as a youth league coach. On Nov. 16, she died after a lengthy battle with cancer.
“Man, this is a tough one because I really wanted to win this one for her,” Vaughn said. “She was my biggest fan, and before she had passed she had told me how bad she wanted this for us. We gave it everything we had, but it just wasn’t enough to beat [Roosevelt] today.”
The Roughriders, who finished undefeated in DCIAA play for a second straight season, will play the winner of Saturday’s game between Archbishop Carroll and Friendship Collegiate in the D.C. State Athletic Association Class AA championship game Dec. 3.
In last season’s DCSAA title game, an excessive celebration penalty moved back a would-be game-winning extra point, which Roosevelt then missed. The team lost to Carroll in overtime.
Looking ahead to a potential rematch, Wilkins said his team needs to stay disciplined this time around. “We know we left some meat on the bone last year,” the QB said, “and we’re coming back to collect it.” | 2022-11-24T23:37:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Theodore Roosevelt beats Dunbar to claim second straight Turkey Bowl - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/24/theodore-roosevelt-beats-dunbar-claim-second-straight-turkey-bowl/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/24/theodore-roosevelt-beats-dunbar-claim-second-straight-turkey-bowl/ |
D.C. volunteers serve up food and connection on Thanksgiving
Greg Jones preps a pan of turkey while Zachary Thompson works on pies as D.C. Central Kitchen workers prepare Thanksgiving meals for distribution. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
Janet “Jaye” Davis moved from one foil tray to another, scooping out portions of turkey and ham for those who had assembled outside So Others Might Eat’s brick building Thursday in the early-morning chill.
As she surveyed the plates, moving down an assembly line of volunteers inside SOME’s dining room in Northwest Washington, Davis felt she was called here to dole out more than stuffing and collards to the homeless and hungry who would soon line the festively decorated tables. On this Thanksgiving, her first at home in almost 12 years, Davis wanted to offer up a helping of hope.
Davis, 44, had spent the past 11 years in prison for a robbery she committed years ago. Before that, she said, she struggled with addiction — a dark cycle that landed her on the streets more than once.
Unlike many of the volunteers at SOME’s annual Thanksgiving Provide-a-Meal event, where families and young professionals from around the D.C. area gather with churches and community groups to serve hot meals to hundreds of Washingtonians, when Davis looked out into the room, she saw people who reminded her of her own journey and her own struggles.
“I’m thankful for these people. I’m thankful I get to be here today because I used to be homeless, and I know the feeling,” Davis said. “I want to tell them that they can turn things around.”
She shuffled the tray in front of her, eyes downcast at the glistening cuts of meat.
“If I can do it,” she said, “so can they.”
Davis was one of hundreds of volunteers who mobilized throughout the District this week to provide hot meals for homeless and low-income individuals and families at a time when, experts said, ongoing economic instability and pandemic-related hardships have contributed to a high rate of need.
The District’s largest food pantry, Bread for the City, last week shut down its Thanksgiving turkey giveaway early for the first time in its 30-year history, after overwhelming demand raised tensions and safety concerns.
Last week, D.C. Central Kitchen distributed 1,260 turkeys to two dozen community organizations to give away and provided more than 500 pantry bags of shelf-stable food items to students in D.C. public schools. The organization didn’t slow down this week, cooking more than 12,000 servings of sides and carving up trays of turkey to send to homeless and women’s shelters, a veterans group, the Salvation Army and other nonprofits.
On Thursday afternoon, delivery trucks idled outside D.C. Central Kitchen’s downtown headquarters as a crew of cooks and other staff inside hustled to get the last trays of food out the door.
The mood was focused — but festive.
Stacks of cornbread, enormous pots of green beans and vats of gravy filled every corner of the kitchen. Hair-netted workers rolled platters of turkey, carved and ready, through the halls as hip-hop played and several in the kitchen broke in to a shimmy.
“I love being here today,” said kitchen staff member Charles Walker, who took culinary classes at D.C. Central Kitchen after being released from prison in 2010. “We really prepare these meals with love and care so they can go out and feed people who need it.”
Each of the thousands of side dishes doled out by SOME and D.C. Central Kitchen on Thursday began their journey Monday at the Edlavitch Jewish Community Center’s annual Everything But the Turkey event, where hundreds of volunteers gathered to chop vegetables, season stuffing and prep thousands of pounds of food in just under three hours.
They readied apple crumble and coleslaw by the mound, chopped countless green beans and skinned bushels of yams.
For some, the food preparation is a holiday tradition.
Sarah Rabin Spira, 44, and her husband, Mark Spira, 49, met at the JCC 17 years ago. They’ve been volunteering together ever since.
It’s how they kick off the holiday season, Rabin Spira said. And now that the kids are old enough, she said, they bring them along too.
“It’s a whole-family affair,” she said.
Other families, like the Wetmores, are newer to the event, which began pre-pandemic and picked up again this year. But if Alex, 10, and Ayla, 6, have anything to say about it, they’ll be back again next year.
“I like how it’s fun and it’s for a good cause and you know you’re going to help people, so that makes it even more extra fun,” Alex said as he concentrated hard on splitting celery stalks with a chef’s knife.
Next to him, Ayla wrestled with the cap on a carton of vegetable broth.
“I want to show them that we give back to the community during the holidays,” said Dave Wetmore, 47. “That it’s the right thing to do.”
For some of the regulars who come often to eat hot meals at SOME, it’s the volunteers who make the holiday feel special, said Daryl Wright, the vice president of emergency services.
“It’s not just that they’re here serving. It’s the sitting down, the talking to people, having something like that family connection with people,” Wright said Thursday. “That’s what you lose being homeless — not just having a hot meal but having that connection.”
For Davis, who remembers clearly what it felt like to be living on the street or locked up and away from her family, that connection to people who want to help is what allowed her to emerge from her addiction and years of incarceration.
This year, she said, she even regained custody of her 13-year-old son, Correll, a tall, talkative boy who joined her at SOME on Thursday to volunteer in the coat room, organizing donations of warm-weather clothes.
Correll doesn’t know a lot about his mom’s time on the streets, he said. They haven’t talked much about it.
But Davis said she will when he’s ready. She wants to deliver to him the same message she doled out Thursday: No matter what happens, she told several people who came in from the cold Thanksgiving morning, you can find a way back home. | 2022-11-24T23:59:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. volunteers serve up food and connection on Thanksgiving - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/24/dc-thanksgiving-meal-volunteers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/24/dc-thanksgiving-meal-volunteers/ |
PORTLAND, Ore. — Eva Hodgson scored 14 of her 21 points during a fourth quarter flurry of shot-making, and No. 8 North Carolina rallied in the second half and topped No. 18 Oregon 85-79 in the semifinals of the Phil Knight Invitational on Thursday.
BIMINI, Bahamas — Angel Reese scored 21 points and grabbed 19 rebounds for her sixth-straight double-double but LSU’s streak of five-straight 100-point games came to an end at the Goombay Splash in its win over George Mason.
CANCUN, Mexico — Jakia Browner-Turner scored 18 points, Diamond Johnson added 16 points, nine rebounds and seven assists in the Wolfpack’s win over Vanderbilt in the Cancun Classic. | 2022-11-25T01:09:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | No. 8 North Carolina rallies past No. 18 Oregon 85-79 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/no-8-north-carolina-rallies-past-no-18-oregon-85-79/2022/11/24/8706d7f2-6c56-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/no-8-north-carolina-rallies-past-no-18-oregon-85-79/2022/11/24/8706d7f2-6c56-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html |
One person dead after Suitland Parkway crash
A person died Thursday after a two-vehicle crash on Suitland Parkway near Suitland Road in Prince George’s County, authorities said.
Officials said the crash is under investigation. Suitland Parkway will be shut down for “several more hours” between Suitland Road and Forestville Road, according to the U.S. Park Police. Westbound traffic is being diverted to Forestville Road and eastbound traffic is being directed to Suitland Road, the department said in a tweet.
It is unclear what caused the crash, which occurred around 5:30 p.m., authorities said.
Officials declined to share more information Thursday evening about the victim, who was taken to a hospital after the accident. No other people were transported. | 2022-11-25T02:40:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Suitland Parkway crash leaves one dead, U.S. Park Police say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/24/suitland-parkway-crash/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/24/suitland-parkway-crash/ |
What the Hong Kong Dollar Peg Is and Why It Matters
Analysis by Tian Chen and Chester Yung | Bloomberg
A Hong Kong five-hundred dollar banknote, Chinese one-hundred yuan banknotes and U.S. one-hundred dollar banknotes are arranged for a photograph in Hong Kong, China, on Monday, April 15, 2019. China’s holdings of Treasury securities rose for a third month as the Asian nation took on more U.S. government debt amid the trade war between the world’s two biggest economies. Photographer: Paul Yeung/Bloomberg (Bloomberg)
Pegged to the US dollar since 1983, the Hong Kong dollar is usually a dull currency. Except when it isn’t, like this year. When the US Federal Reserve began raising interest rates in March to combat historically high inflation, fund outflows from the Hong Kong dollar market intensified as investors chased higher yields. Consequently, interbank liquidity -- the pool of Hong Kong dollars in the system -- shrank rapidly as the city fought to maintain the peg, drawing market attention and concern about the impact on the struggling local economy.
1. How does it work?
The Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the de-facto central bank, has a mandate to keep the currency trading at HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar. The current band was set in 2005 and has never been broken. When it gets too close to one end or the other, the HKMA intervenes, either by buying or selling the city’s dollars. When HKMA uses its foreign exchange reserves to buy Hong Kong dollars from the commercial banks, the aggregate balance of Hong Kong dollars in the banking system -- interbank liquidity -- goes down accordingly. From May 11 through November, the HKMA’s intervention shrank the balance by more than 70%. That tighter liquidity pushes up local borrowing costs.
2. Why does keeping the peg matter?
First and foremost, it’s considered an anchor for financial stability. A stable currency is important for an open economy like Hong Kong, where trade and logistics are key drivers. Investors park their money in Hong Kong because the currency is relatively safe and easily convertible -- one of the reasons the city became a global financial center in the first place. Breaking the peg would upset that whole equation.
3. What usually moves the Hong Kong dollar?
Often it’s when local borrowing costs don’t move in tandem with the US. For example, the gap between the Hong Kong Interbank Offered Rate (Hibor) and its US counterpart (dollar Libor) widened significantly after the Fed began its aggressive rate hikes, because liquidity in Hong Kong was still very ample. (Hibor and Libor represent a daily average of what banks say they would charge to lend to one another.) That gap makes it attractive for traders to borrow in Hong Kong dollars to buy US dollars to earn the higher yield. That so-called carry trade can push the local currency toward its weak end of HK$7.85, prompting the HKMA to intervene. That strategy became less appealing in the latter part of 2022, as the authorities’ purchase of local dollars pushed three-month Hibor higher than its US equivalent.
4. What’s the concern now?
Less liquidity as a result of defending the peg has led to increased borrowing costs this year for companies and individuals in Hong Kong at a time when stringent Covid-19 restrictions, especially regarding travel, continue to weigh on the economy and hurt employment. In addition, Hong Kong’s property sector is already under pressure from an exodus of Hong Kong residents, whether for pandemic-related or political reasons after Beijing tightened its grip on the city in 2020. Higher mortgage costs won’t help.
5. Should people be worried about the peg?
Officials in Hong Kong say no but some hedge funds disagree. In November, Bill Ackman, the billionaire founder of hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management LP, said he’s betting against the Hong Kong dollar and its peg with the greenback. Boaz Weinstein, founder of Saba Capital Management, tweeted support for the trade, which he said had a payoff upwards of 200-to-one. But officials repeatedly said there was no need to change the peg. In July, Financial Secretary Paul Chan said that the city’s “huge” foreign exchange reserves -- about $440 billion, equivalent to about 1.7 times the monetary base of the Hong Kong dollar -- are enough to maintain the currency peg. A representative for the HKMA on Nov. 24 reiterated there’s no plan nor need to tweak its foreign-exchange system system.
6. Did the peg ever come under pressure before?
Sustained periods of outflows have occurred before during previous bouts of stress such as the global financial crisis, SARS epidemic and during US-China tensions under then-President Donald Trump. At that time, Chan noted that China’s central bank also can provide US dollars through a currency swap line should Washington ever impose sanctions on the city. China has the world’s largest foreign-exchange reserves at more than $3 trillion. John Greenwood, the architect of Hong Kong’s dollar peg and now an independent consultant at International Monetary Monitor, said that because the city has a currency board tasked solely with maintaining the peg, rather than a central bank that conducts domestic monetary policy, “speculation against the Hong Kong dollar always fails.”
6. Why not peg the Hong Kong dollar to the Chinese yuan instead?
There are various factors to support the status quo. The US dollar is fully convertible and can be traded freely in large amounts on foreign exchange markets. The yuan doesn’t fit that bill for now. The US dollar also dominates as an international reserve currency, while the yuan still has a ways to go to boost its reserve status. Hong Kong’s de facto central bank chief Eddie Yue said the peg has worked well for nearly 40 years and there are no plans to change it. However, Hong Kong has tended over the years to adopt currency arrangements that facilitate cross-border trade with the mainland. Pegging the local dollar to the yuan “could be a long-term possibility” -- if the yuan were used more in Hong Kong and internationally, Goldman Sachs Group economists including Hui Shan and Andrew Tilton wrote in May. Politics could be another driver, if Hong Kong were to lose its semi-autonomous status and be integrated into the mainland. As George Magnus, an economist and associate at the University of Oxford China Centre, put it: “It’s China’s choice whether it wants to keep the peg in place.” | 2022-11-25T04:12:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What the Hong Kong Dollar Peg Is and Why It Matters - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/what-the-hong-kong-dollar-peg-is-and-why-it-matters/2022/11/24/2084fabc-6c70-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/what-the-hong-kong-dollar-peg-is-and-why-it-matters/2022/11/24/2084fabc-6c70-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html |
Ask Amy: Fired co-worker asks for money back she contributed to a group gift
Dear Amy: I work in a department with around 20 people. Recently “Jo” was let go.
I don’t know the full circumstances, but I was told there was “cause.” Since then many of us have kept in touch with Jo, commiserating and offering support. Meanwhile, my co-worker “Hannah” is about to have her first child.
A bunch of us chipped in to get a gift for her. Today, the person organizing the gift got a message from Jo, asking for their baby gift contribution back.
This whole incident changed a lot of people’s opinions of Jo. A few people are rethinking giving references for Jo because of this. Was Jo way out of line, or should we cut this person some slack?
Perplexed: My first thought is that “Jo” is in a spiral, and might suddenly be very worried about finances. It is not necessarily rational for Jo to believe that reclaiming this $20 will substantially affect the outcome, and yet when your employment situation has suddenly changed, immediate choices are not always rational.
Of course this will affect your opinion of your former co-worker, and yet my experience tells me that you will almost never regret cutting someone some slack, especially when they are hurt and acting out.
When offering a job reference, you should only comment on your specific knowledge of that person’s job performance. You don’t know why Jo was terminated, but to use this episode as a reason to refuse a recommendation would, in my opinion, also be petty.
We are planning to host our first larger indoor gathering since she got the dog. We do not want to establish a precedent where the pup is automatically included in every event, but — we don’t know how to roll this back.
Unsure: Like many people, I acquired a “pandemic pup” — also adorable and a real crowd-pleaser. And even though my dog is of the portable variety and has been welcome in others’ homes, I assume that any host’s preference is not to have a dog visit. I know this because I wouldn’t want to host a guest’s dog at an indoor gathering.
My wife could have written that letter 40 years ago when we were dating. The first six years of our marriage was extremely difficult because I didn’t understand why she held back emotionally. With the eventual help of a good therapist, she was able to share this vital part of her life.
Grateful: I’m so touched by your account. Thank you. | 2022-11-25T05:44:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: Fired co-worker asks for money back she contributed to a gift - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/25/ask-amy-fired-petty-money-back/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/25/ask-amy-fired-petty-money-back/ |
Miss Manners: My niece is having her third baby — and third baby shower
What do you think? Should I buy another gift and go to the shower? Or is it okay to send my regards, knowing I will still show up with a gift when the baby is born?
Showers are gift grabs. That is their sole purpose. But Miss Manners agrees that second and third ones are excessive.
Dear Miss Manners: My husband and I enjoy the company of another couple we’ve known for years. I’ve had them over for dinner many times. I eat only plant-based (vegan) foods; however, I make both vegan and meat-based dishes for everyone else. I don’t ask them to bring anything, as they are our guests.
That your friends are either thoughtless, inconsiderate or perhaps just forgetful. The latter seems unlikely after all these years, but if you can believe that is all it is, the friendship might be saved — if you think it worthwhile. | 2022-11-25T05:44:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Miss Manners: Niece is having her third baby — and third baby shower - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/25/miss-manners-one-baby-shower-enough/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/25/miss-manners-one-baby-shower-enough/ |
By Marina Lopes
Julia Inuma
Masahiro Yoshida, left, and Takao Watanabe take notes during a class at the Better Home cooking school in Tokyo. (Taro Karibe for The Washington Post)
TOKYO — Masahiro Yoshida hung up his suit jacket and pulled a pink apron over his button-down shirt. After avoiding the kitchen for most of his 65 years, it was time to cook.
As with most Japanese men, Yoshida’s mother prepared all his meals until he got married, when his wife assumed that role. But after he retired four years ago from his job as a government administrator, she proposed they share meal prep. Yoshida agreed but got lost making basic dishes. YouTube tutorials were confounding.
So like a growing number of older men here, he signed up for classes. His six-month course at the Better Home cooking school covered skills such as how to mince garlic, chop mushrooms and shop for meat — all integral for the stroganoff he would attempt before graduating. “I had no idea how complex the cooking process was,” Yoshida admitted.
Strict gender roles have governed domestic life in Japan for generations. Men often retire without ever having held a paring knife or washed a dish. Those who lose a spouse often find themselves unable to do the most rudimentary chores. An old Japanese saying — “Danshi-chubo-ni-hairazu,” or “men should be ashamed to be found in the kitchen” — has spooked husbands from most any housework. Even those who wanted to help typically lacked the know-how.
Evidence of this isn’t merely anecdotal. According to a survey conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Japanese men take on less household responsibility and child care than their counterparts in any of the world’s richest countries. On average, they spend just 40 minutes a day on the combination, five times less than their wives. Only 14 percent reported regularly cooking for themselves.
“The biggest problem is that men don’t see themselves as the responsible party when it comes to housework,” said Yasuyuki Tokukura, who runs the nonprofit group Fathering Japan and advises the government on gender issues within households. The traditional division of labor persists despite the significant number of women now working outside of the home; indeed, dual-income households are more than twice as prevalent as those with single incomes.
Simmering resentments frequently come to a head once a man’s career ends and his wife starts to question the arrangement, Tokukura said. “The power dynamic changes. The wife asks, ‘Why do I have to do all the housework if you are no longer bringing in the money?’ ”
When Onoue started his school five years ago, other men laughed at him. “A housework school for men? That’s ridiculous,” he was told.
Yet he saw a niche market with much potential. Attracting students wasn’t easy initially; only one man came to his first group lesson. That’s when Onoue decided to bring his lessons to the men, working with community programs to advertise the courses anytime retirees showed up with questions about retirement benefits or their national health insurance policies.
He even offers students private consultations to focus on the aspects of housework that they find most daunting. To encourage critical thinking, recipes don’t come with the usual step-by-step sequence. “Men who are used to business thinking need a problem to solve. I give them the basic materials and instructions, and let them figure it out,” Onoue said.
These courses are also popular with men who suddenly find themselves widowed or divorced and don’t know the basics of self-care.
Takashi Kaneko, 74, decided to sign up after his wife died of liver cancer four years ago. He was living mostly on microwaveable foods and found himself desperate for company. Not only had his wife taken care of all the cleaning and cooking, on top of working as an administrative assistant, but she also curated his social life. After she passed, Kaneko realized he did not have many friends of his own.
He has learned how to host his adult children the way his wife once did. “When my kids come to visit, it’s usually after they’re tired from work, and they want to relax. If their mother were alive, she would surely have cooked for them and made them feel at home, so I want to do the same,” Kaneko explained.
The classes introduced him to men in his suburban neighborhood outside Tokyo, who were trying to learn household skills, too. Five of them were fixing a meal recently, Kaneko standing tall in front of the stove and helming the frying pan as the others took turns placing mounds of minced chicken in oil.
“Don’t overdo it,” he warned 80-year-old Kikuo Yano, laughing as he rounded out the nuggets with a spoon.
“All this time my wife has done everything,” the retired architect acknowledged. “I haven’t done anything around the house. If I don’t know how to, I guess there’s nothing I can do. But if I learn how to do it, then it’s time I help.”
He now wakes up early to press his clothes. Ten times he has practiced a curry dish he plans on serving his family on New Year’s Day. “You see this shirt?” he says, running his hands up and down the sleeve, a smile stretching across his face. “I ironed it myself.’ | 2022-11-25T06:23:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Older Japanese men, lost in the kitchen, turn to housework school - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/25/japan-elderly-men-cooking-housekeeping-classes/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/25/japan-elderly-men-cooking-housekeeping-classes/ |
Like Sunak, Starmer advocates controlled immigration, investment in infrastructure, incentives for innovation and policies for a better-skilled workforce. Despite media talk of a more permissive “Swiss-style” trade arrangement with the European Union, Starmer made no attempt to relitigate Brexit (Sunak also dismissed the idea). So far, not a cigarette paper between the two.
In some ways, this marks a new economic consensus in British politics. Harking back to the era of Tony Blair, Starmer positioned his party squarely in the political center. “My Labour government will care — must care — as much about raising productivity everywhere as we have done in the past about redistribution,” Starmer told the Confederation of British Industry’s annual gathering.
And yet none of that answers the central question being posed by UK Plc and struggling small- and medium-sized businesses: What’s the growth strategy? Having ruled out ambitious plans, the answer from both sides of the political divide in Britain seems to be a form of Bidenomics.
As the economist Barry Eichengreen described it in 2021, Bidenomics essentially prescribes an expanded role for the state in a country that has long been suspicious of state-based solutions but needs more of that to maintain its competitiveness and address long-standing racial inequities. Its delivery mechanisms are primarily investment in infrastructure, improving America’s threadbare welfare safety net, protecting the environment and increasing taxes on the wealthiest.
That sounds appealing to British ears. But the starting point is very different in the UK, where households are seeing the largest collapse in living standards since records began in 1956. It’s forecast to be the slowest growing among advanced economies (bar Russia’s), has the highest inflation in the G7 and chronically low levels of labor productivity.
In his CBI speech, Starmer cited Janet Yellen’s theory of “modern supply-side economics.” Speaking to the World Economic Forum at Davos in January, Yellen declared that significant tax cuts on capital and deregulation that marked out the traditional supply-side orthodoxy haven’t delivered the promised growth. Her “new” version seeks to increase labor supply and unleash supply-side forces by making improvements to infrastructure, education and R&D spending. Critics see it as rebranded Keynesianism, but you can see the appeal in a country where there is little room on the tax side of things and where the public demands a high level of taxpayer funded services.
Indeed, Sunak and Starmer could both be seen as modern supply-siders by Yellen’s standards. Both are at pains to show that they can master the detail of delivery, a weakness of the Conservatives in recent years and an area where the public have not trusted Labour in a while. With the Tories having abandoned the tax-cutting agenda of Liz Truss — in what I would argue is an overcompensation for her errors — the competition between the two has turned to how the state can work smarter to turbocharge growth.
The Tory struggle here is a 12-year record in office that is hard to defend, though Sunak personally polls well for competence. But while Sunak may have worked at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Starmer has brought on former Goldman Sachs chief economist Jim O’Neill — a Treasury minister in two Conservative governments and now a cross-bench peer in the House of Lords — to advise on how to improve business conditions.
It’s notable that both Sunak and Starmer operate under two political constraints that limit their flexibility on delivering growth policies. The first is Brexit. The costs of leaving the EU — in lost growth and productivity, increased trade friction, diminished scientific collaborations and lower investor confidence — are apparent to all but the most deluded Brexit supporters. The conversation about eventually renegotiating the terms of UK-EU trade will not go anywhere so soon after Brexit, but nor will it go away. The latest YouGov poll showed a clear majority — 56% to 32% — think the UK was wrong to leave the EU. One in five of those who voted for Brexit now think it was the wrong decision and a further 11% don’t know.
The other major constraint is the National Health Service. The NHS is the single largest item of public spending — after pensions and welfare — and it will continue to consume ever more resources as the population ages and health care grows more expensive. Around Europe there are other models of universal health care that aren’t in perpetual crisis and deliver excellent services. But questioning the NHS’s fundamental model of a taxpayer-funded service that is free at the point of access so far remains a sacrilege in British politics, so even Conservative growth plans have to account for high and growing levels of health and social care spending.
Without a significant change to Britain’s approach to trade with its closest neighbor, immigration or the workings of its health-care system the field of solutions to Britain’s low-growth problem has narrowed and both leaders know it. “It’s not about the size of the state; it’s about what the state does, how it supports businesses to innovate and grow,” Starmer told the CBI. It also means delivering robust, sustainable growth will take more time and more consistent policy than the UK has had in a while, something investors will believe when they see it.
• Sunak Wins Over Markets. Voters Are Another Story: Martin Ivens
• The Fall and Rise of Jeremy Hunt: Adrian Wooldridge | 2022-11-25T07:15:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Britain’s Two Main Parties Are Betting on Bidenomics - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/britains-two-main-parties-are-betting-on-bidenomics/2022/11/25/39007406-6c87-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/britains-two-main-parties-are-betting-on-bidenomics/2022/11/25/39007406-6c87-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html |
Abandoning the Middle East? Navy’s AI Drone Fleet Says Otherwise
For more than a decade, Washington’s Arab partners in the Persian Gulf have feared that the US is slowly abandoning the region. This view ignores strong evidence that the American security commitment remains high, even given the recent US-Saudi Arabia quarreling over oil prices. Nonetheless, the 50-year-old Carter Doctrine, the basis of the US security commitment in the Gulf region, needs to be updated and reaffirmed.
The 1980 Doctrine held that the US would intervene to prevent any outside force from gaining control of the region. It was understood this included repelling any assaults on Gulf Arab states, such as the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.
But the specter of tank columns rolling through the desert isn’t the stuff of 21st century Gulf security nightmares. Concern now focuses on precision-guided missile, rocket and drone attacks; assaults by nonstate actors and terrorist groups; and “gray zone warfare” including cyberattacks and new forms of sophisticated sabotage.
Because of setbacks such as President Barack Obama’s failure to enforce his 2012 “red line” against the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian dictatorship, and President Donald Trump’s refusal to respond to the 2019 Iranian missile attack on Saudi Aramco facilities, Washington’s Gulf partners no longer know what would trigger US action.
President Joe Biden’s administration seems to be taking its security role in the Gulf more seriously. This month, after Saudi Arabia discovered credible threats of an imminent Iranian missile and/or drone attack, US fighter jets were scrambled and flew near Iran in an aggressive show of deterrence. A National Security Council spokesman flatly declared, “We will not hesitate to act in the defense of our interests and partners in the region.”
This decisive action ought to have received more attention than it did in the region. Even less appreciated is a massive new effort in maritime security being pioneered by the US in the Gulf, the Arabian Sea and adjacent waters.
To secure the flow of energy and commercial shipping, as well as for general maritime security, the US is developing and deploying a cutting-edge surveillance system known as Digital Ocean. In particular, it will help protect the three crucial Middle Eastern maritime choke points: the Suez Canal, Bab el-Mandab at the mouth of the Red Sea, and the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf
Led by the Fifth Fleet’s Task Force 59, this operation integrates underwater, aerial and — thanks to recent breakthroughs in technology — surface unmanned systems, all in real-time coordination. Artificial intelligence assesses the information gathered by cameras, radar and other sensors to create a three-dimensional, constantly updated surveillance picture of all vessels operating in vast marine areas. When AI systems detect anything unusual or inexplicable, the information is shared immediately and further investigated by other drones and evaluated by humans. The US systems are controlled by operators in California and linked by satellite.
While the US is spearheading the effort, it isn’t sailing solo. According to Admiral Brad Cooper, commander of the Fifth Fleet, the goal is to have 100 unmanned surface vessels patrolling Gulf waters by the end of summer 2023, 20% from the US and 80% from regional and international partners. It’s precisely the kind of security development that demonstrates not just the depth of US commitment to the region but also the willingness of allies to share the burden.
Eventually, the system will be used in sensitive waterways around the world. But the fact that it is being introduced first in the Gulf is a clear demonstration of the US seriousness about regional security. Yet, despite these enormous political implications, Digital Ocean remains largely unknown to the local public, and largely unrecognized by analysts and opinion leaders who regularly criticize Washington for supposedly turning its back on the region to focus on China and the Pacific.
US willingness to stand up to Iran this month was a reassuring immediate response to an imminent threat. But Washington should also look at the longer term — by clarifying exactly how the Carter Doctrine functions in the 21st century, and what types of threats would trigger US military responses. Saudi Arabia and its neighbors need to know when, exactly, the US will step in to defend them.
Updating the Carter Doctrine, along with long-term deterrence efforts like Digital Ocean, would thoroughly debunk the dangerous misapprehension that the US is withdrawing from the Middle East and abandoning its Gulf Arab partners.
More From Writers at Bloomberg Opinion:
Iran’s Regime Is Already a Big Loser at the World Cup: Bobby Ghosh
Energy Security Is the Global Priority for 2023: Javier Blas
Is the US-Saudi Rift Permanent? These 3 Events Will Tell Us: Hussein Ibish | 2022-11-25T07:15:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Abandoning the Middle East? Navy’s AI Drone Fleet Says Otherwise - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/abandoning-the-middle-east-navys-ai-drone-fleet-says-otherwise/2022/11/25/39ac0d02-6c87-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/abandoning-the-middle-east-navys-ai-drone-fleet-says-otherwise/2022/11/25/39ac0d02-6c87-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html |
TEL AVIV, Israel — Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to return to office, from where he could try to make his yearslong legal troubles disappear through new legislation advanced by his far-right and ultra-Orthodox allies. Critics say such a legal crusade is an assault on Israel’s democracy. | 2022-11-25T07:16:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | EXPLAINER: How could allies help Netanyahu beat charges? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/explainer-how-could-allies-help-netanyahu-beat-charges/2022/11/25/61d72956-6c8c-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/explainer-how-could-allies-help-netanyahu-beat-charges/2022/11/25/61d72956-6c8c-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html |
DOHA, Qatar — Cristiano Ronaldo became the first male player to score at five World Cups with his 65th-minute penalty in Portugal’s 3-2 victory over Ghana on Thursday.
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Tennessee is defending itself against the NCAA’s Level I charge of failing to monitor the football program, saying former coach Jeremy Pruitt and nine others fired “repeatedly deceived” administrators and compliance staff overseeing the program.
TORONTO — Borje Salming, the star Toronto defenseman who was the first Swedish player inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, has died after fighting Lou Gehrig’s disease. He was 71.
NEW YORK — Los Angeles Lakers guard Patrick Beverley was suspended for three games without pay by the NBA for shoving Phoenix’s Deandre Ayton from behind.
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Dan Bradbury matched the Houghton course record with an 8-under 63 to take thge lead in the suspended first round of the Joburg Open.
MALAGA, Spain — Simone Bolelli and Fabio Fognini beat Tommy Paul and Jack Sock 6-4, 6-4 to give Italy a 2-1 victory over the United States in the Davis Cup quarterfinals. | 2022-11-25T07:16:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Thursday's Sports In Brief - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/thursdays-sports-in-brief/2022/11/25/1b60632c-6c8a-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/thursdays-sports-in-brief/2022/11/25/1b60632c-6c8a-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html |
Ukraine live briefing: Ukraine struggles to restore water and power; cost of reconstruction is spiking, Kyiv says
People in line to collect water in Kyiv, Ukraine. (Evgeniy Maloletka/AP)
Fifteen regions in Ukraine are struggling with water supply problems after repeated Russian strikes against civilian and energy infrastructure, President Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday, with the situation in the capital, Kyiv, among the “most difficult.” Efforts continued to restore power, but Kyiv’s mayor said earlier in the day that 70 percent of the city was without electricity.
The attacks on infrastructure, which Zelensky has billed “energy terror,” is also raising Ukraine’s reconstruction bill. “Unfortunately this number grows every day and in the worst case scenario will increase significantly,” the country’s finance minister told Reuters. An assessment released in late summer, before the Kremlin intensified air attacks, pegged Ukraine’s recovery and reconstruction costs at $349 billion.
Outside the capital, Ukraine tried to pick itself up from the latest wave of strikes. In the central Dnipropetrovsk region, around half of residents remain without power, the head of the local military administration said early Thursday. Almost 3,000 miners had to be rescued after being trapped underground during the blackouts, he said.
For the first time, all four of Ukraine’s operational nuclear power plants relied on emergency diesel generators on Wednesday, said International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Mariano Grossi. Since war broke out, fighting has occurred near several of these facilities, forcing their disconnection from power lines. At least one of the plants, the facility in Zaporizhzhia, had been reconnected to off-site power as of Thursday.
Russia and Ukraine said they had exchanged 50 prisoners of war each. The Ukrainian side of the swap included troops captured in Mariupol, some at the Azovstal steel plant where fighters made a last stand, along with some taken prisoner at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and at Snake Island, where the defiance of defenders became a symbolic moment for Ukraine early in the war, Andriy Yermak, head of the presidential office of Ukraine, said on Twitter.
Kyiv said that some Iranians in the annexed Crimea region who had been assisting Russia with the Iranian-designed drones that are being used against Ukraine have been killed. “We didn’t invite them here, and if they collaborate with terrorists and participate in the destruction of our nation we must kill them,” a senior Ukrainian security official told the Guardian. The White House said last month that Tehran had deployed officials to Crimea to “provide technical assistance and training support.”
Russia is likely to redeploy airborne forces from Kherson to the Donbas region, according to a British Defense Ministry assessment.
The European Union is working at “full speed” to prepare a ninth round of sanctions against Moscow, European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen said Thursday, as the bloc’s parliament approved $18.7 billion to help Ukraine “survive the war and start its reconstruction.”
German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht said Thursday that Patriot air defense units bound for Poland were for the defense of NATO and could not be sent on to Ukraine, which is not part of the alliance, Reuters reported. Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said on Twitter that he had asked Germany to send Ukraine the missile launchers.
E.U. member states have not agreed on a level to cap prices on Russia oil. A proposed limit of between $65 and $70 per barrel was seen as too high by some and as too low by others, Reuters reported. Russian President Vladimir Putin told Iraq’s prime minister that a cap would result in serious consequences for the global energy market, according to the Kremlin.
Russian legislature advances bill criminalizing ‘promoting’ LGBTQ relationships: The Russian parliament’s lower house passed the final reading of a bill that seeks to ban attempts to promote homosexuality, including in movies, books or advertising, writes The Washington Post’s Francesca Ebel. The bill now goes to the upper chamber, which is expected to approve it, and then to Putin, who is expected to sign it.
Citizens who promote what the Duma dubs the “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations” could be fined up to $6,600; organizations could be fined up to $82,100. Foreign nationals could be sentenced to up to 15 days and deported. Sexual minorities in Russia already face significant oppression and the bill should be seen as an attempt to distract the public from Russia’s recent battlefield failures in Ukraine, a rights activist told The Post. | 2022-11-25T07:16:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Russia-Ukraine war latest updates - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/25/russia-ukraine-war-latest-updates/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/25/russia-ukraine-war-latest-updates/ |
FILE - In this image made from video provided by the Queensland Police Service, Vanessa Gardiner, mother of Toyah Cordingley, whose body was found on Wangetti Beach of Australia’s Queensland on Oct. 22, 2018, speaks in Cairns, Australia in November 2022. The prime suspect in the murder of Cordingley four years ago had been arrested in New Delhi three weeks after he was targeted with a 1 million Australian dollar ($677,000) reward, Australian authorities said Friday. (Queensland Police Service via AP, File) (Uncredited/Queensland Police Service) | 2022-11-25T07:16:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Suspect in Australia murder arrested in India 4 years later - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/suspect-in-australia-murder-arrested-in-india-4-years-later/2022/11/25/ba479826-6c8e-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/suspect-in-australia-murder-arrested-in-india-4-years-later/2022/11/25/ba479826-6c8e-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html |
Trudeau to defend invoking emergency powers against trucker protests
By Amanda Coletta
Truck drivers block traffic in Ottawa to protest pandemic restrictions and the government of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Feb. 14, 2022. Trudeau is due to testify before a public inquiry Friday on his decision to invoke the Emergencies Act to clear the demonstrations. (Ted Shaffrey/AP)
TORONTO — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will testify before a public inquiry Friday on his decision to invoke never-before-used emergency powers to clear the self-described “Freedom Convoy” demonstrations by protesters, including some truckers, who for several weeks paralyzed the nation’s capital and snarled trade at major U.S.-Canada border crossings.
His highly anticipated testimony will close the six-week inquiry in Ottawa, where life was upended in late January when big rigs and other vehicles rolled in to blockade roads, including the main drag in front of Parliament, to protest pandemic health measures and Trudeau’s government. The demonstrations lasted roughly three weeks.
In a country where officials are careful to hew closely to talking points and requests for public records take years to process, the inquiry has offered a rare peek behind the curtain at the mechanics of police and government — and the dysfunction and rivalries that complicated the response to the blockades.
Trudeau invokes Emergencies Act against Canada’s ‘Freedom Convoy’ trucker protest
“At the municipal level of police and the interaction between police governance, police and the municipal government, there was infighting, incompetence and lack of preparedness,” said Michael Kempa, a criminologist at the University of Ottawa. “At the provincial level, there was total indifference to responding with provincial powers … and then [at the level of] the federal government, there was mass confusion.”
Thousands of pages of documents, including text messages between cabinet ministers and intelligence reports marked “secret,” have been introduced as evidence, and more than 60 witnesses have testified. They include Canada’s top cop, chief spy, mayors of cities big and small, cabinet ministers and convoy leaders.
Few witnesses have emerged unscathed. A lawyer for convoy organizers was ejected after seeking to advance a baseless conspiracy theory. A cartoon in the Globe and Mail depicted inquiry participants as clowns. The exception was Paul Rouleau, the judge leading the inquiry, who thinks, “Beginning to see a pattern here …”
At issue in the inquiry is Trudeau’s invocation on Feb. 14 of the Emergencies Act, a 1988 law that’s supposed to be a tool of last resort, available only when no other law can respond to a national emergency. He revoked the act on Feb. 23, days after a massive police operation cleared the Ottawa blockades.
The law gave authorities sweeping powers to create no-go zones, to temporarily freeze bank accounts belonging to demonstrators and their major donors and to compel tow trucks to clear vehicles blockading roads.
Evidence showed convoy leaders raised nearly $18 million through crowdfunding, cryptocurrency and e-transfers. On one crowdfunding platform, 51 percent of donors identified as American, 43 percent as Canadian.
The Emergencies Act requires a public inquiry be convened to determine whether the threshold for its invocation was met. But as the hearings wrap up, testimony on several key questions — including whether the convoy represented a national security threat, and whether the declaration was needed — has been mixed.
Some police officials said the powers were helpful, but unnecessary. A document from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service said invoking the law “would likely galvanize the anti-government narrative” among some protesters and could advance “radicalization pathways toward violence.”
When talk about the act first surfaced, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Commissioner Brenda Lucki testified, she “had no idea what exactly that meant.” On the eve of Trudeau’s declaration, she said, there was a police plan to end the demonstrations — but she didn’t share that information at cabinet meetings that day.
Asked if she should have, Lucki said, “I guess in hindsight, yeah, that might have been something significant.”
Stephanie Carvin, an associate professor of international relations at Carleton University, called Lucki’s failure to disclose that information “mind-boggling.”
CSIS, the intelligence service, assessed that the demonstrations weren’t a national security threat as defined by Canada’s national security law. The Emergencies Act says there must be “threats to the security of Canada” as defined by the CSIS Act to declare a public order emergency.
But David Vigneault, the head of CSIS, told the inquiry that he recommended Trudeau invoke the act based on a legal opinion he sought that said the definition of a national security threat was “broader” under the Emergencies Act than it is in the context of the CSIS Act.
Other federal officials, including Canada’s top public servant and Trudeau’s national security adviser, offered similar testimony. But they have not provided the opinion that argued for the broader interpretation. Canada’s attorney general did not provide that advice either, citing attorney-client privilege.
“That’s going to be the key issue: Is Rouleau going to buy this argument about being able to widen the understanding,” said Carvin, a former national security analyst.
The self-styled ‘Freedom Convoy’ rumbled up at an inopportune time for U.S.-Canada trade
It’s rare, but not unprecedented, for a sitting prime minister to testify before a public inquiry.
Ottawa residents were among the first to testify. They spoke of the unease and fear that marked life during the protests and the disruption caused by the incessant honking and the fumes released by idling vehicles. They said there was a sense of “lawlessness” in the city. The inquiry heard federal officials received death threats, and police laid more than 530 charges.
Current and former Ottawa police said they were preparing for a single weekend of protest. But the inquiry heard that they were forewarned, including by a local hoteliers association and the Ontario Provincial Police, that demonstrators planned to “gridlock areas” and stay for much longer.
Convoy organizers presented a vastly different portrait of the demonstrations — they described it as a peaceful love fest. But they, too, were riven by divisions and many acknowledged they couldn’t control the actions of all demonstrators. Several claimed they were “leaked” information by police.
Tamara Lich, one convoy organizer, told the inquiry that when she urged demonstrators to “hold the line,” she was not encouraging them to stay in Ottawa, but to “stay true to your values.”
“It seems to me your memory is selective,” a lawyer for the Ottawa Police told her at one point during her cross-examination. “When I take you to something that implicates you, you have no memory of it.”
The inquiry heard officials were worried the border blockades might strain U.S.-Canada ties and hit Canada’s reliability as a trading partner at a time it was seeking exemptions from protectionist measures, including on electric-vehicle incentives, in the United States. (The border blockades were cleared without emergency powers.)
One of the most concerning was the blockade at the Ambassador Bridge, which links Detroit to Windsor, Ontario. The conduit, the busiest corridor on the U.S.-Canada border, is crucial to the automotive industries. At one point, General Motors apparently sought to rent an ice breaker so it could transport cars across the Great Lakes.
At a blockade in Coutts, Alberta, authorities seized a cache of weapons and charged several people with a conspiracy to kill police.
“This was not a second-tier issue in the Canada-U.S. relationship,” Michael Sabia, the deputy finance minister, testified. “This was a first-tier issue.” | 2022-11-25T10:09:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'Freedom Convoy': Trudeau to defend invocation of Emergencies Act in trucker protests - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/25/canada-trucker-protest-emergencies-act/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/25/canada-trucker-protest-emergencies-act/ |
Cardinal Joseph Zen leaves court in Hong Kong on Friday after being found guilty and fined for failing to properly register a humanitarian fund for pro-democracy protesters several years ago. (Isaac Lawrence/AFP/Getty Images)
A Hong Kong court on Friday found Cardinal Joseph Zen, the most outspoken senior Roman Catholic cleric in the city and its bishop emeritus, guilty of failing to properly register a now-defunct humanitarian fund.
The verdict came after Zen’s arrest in May, along with the arrest of four other people. Under a 2020 national security law that Beijing imposed to stifle dissent, all were accused of colluding with a foreign entity while trustees of the 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund.
The fund helped scores of protesters arrested during the sustained pro-democracy protests that convulsed Hong Kong three years ago. It provided individuals with financial assistance and paid their legal and medical fees.
Judge Ada Yim fined Zen HK$4,000 ($512) for failing to register the fund under the securities ordinance, a colonial-era law dating to 1911. Because of the 2019 protests, Yim said the government has a responsibility to regulate groups connected to political organizations, regardless of local or overseas ties, to “protect national security, public serenity and public order.”
The 90-year-old Zen, who has been a prominent critic of the Chinese Communist Party, appeared to be using a walking stick to support himself as he stood in court. He had not faced a prison sentence for the charge.
“I hope this case would not be linked to religious freedom,” Zen said after leaving the court. “I am a supporter of humanitarian work.”
The other former trustees and a secretary of the humanitarian fund, including senior barrister Margaret Ng, scholar Hui Po-keung and popular singer Denise Ho, also were found guilty and fined by Yim.
His arrest this spring elicited strong condemnation from the United States and others. The Vatican said it was “following the evolution of the situation with extreme attention.” The Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong declined to comment on Friday.
The church’s relations with China have drawn increasing concern. In October, the Vatican renewed a controversial secret agreement with Beijing on the appointment of Roman Catholic bishops in China. The United States had voiced concern that such an arrangement would further marginalize underground Chinese priests loyal to Rome.
Last week, the Catholic Church in China hosted a second online meeting with 50 Hong Kong priests to discuss how the biblical translation could properly convey exchanges on “sinicization” — the influencing of non-Chinese societies through Chinese language, culture and other social factors and norms. | 2022-11-25T10:10:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hong Kong Cardinal Joseph Zen found guilty for work with relief fund - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/25/hong-kong-cardinal-zen-guilty/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/25/hong-kong-cardinal-zen-guilty/ |
Black Friday is here, but didn’t it start months ago?
The traditional start of the holiday shopping seaon is expected to be more subdued than years past, but it won’t be for lack of trying
A retailer in Birmingham, Mich., signaled its Black Friday readiness on Monday. The day after Thanksgiving has traditionally marked the start of the holiday shopping season. (Carlos Osorio/AP)
And despite the day’s dwindling relevance — it’s morphed into a months-long sale pitch — merchants of all sizes are digging in.
“I think there’s more emphasis this year than we’ve seen in years past,” said Adam Davis, managing director of the retail division at Wells Fargo Capital Finance. “Retailers getting the consumer’s share of wallet is crucial and so they want to try to … lock in those sales.”
But analysts and industry experts caution that Black Friday sales could be subdued this year. Earlier and steeper sales — while beneficial for strategic shoppers — are hurting retailers whose margins are suffering from a glut of inventory and growing labor costs.
Meanwhile, consumers are showing signs of fatigue after contending with decades-high inflation for much of the year. They got a bit of a reprieve in October: Prices rose 7.7 percent from the year-ago period, according to federal data released earlier this month. Though still far above normal levels, it was lower than analysts had expected. Even wealthier Americans are feeling pinched, polls show. They’re still buying, but choosing less expensive options.
“We are in unique economic situations — inflation has been at a 40-year high and a lot of families’ budgets are being squeezed from all fronts,” said Jie Zhang, a professor of marketing at the University of Maryland. “So there isn’t as much enthusiasm to open up wallets come into this holiday shopping season.”
Over the last few years the novelty of Black Friday, which got its name because the rush of sales could change the retailers’ books from red to black, has slowly diminished.
The major shopping day was once synonymous with doorbuster deals and long lines before dawn. Sunil Singh, 61, used to look forward to Black Friday — not just for the steep discounts on tech gadgets but also because it meant spending time with his son. The two had a tradition of lining up before sunrise outside of Best Buy in the San Fransisco Bay Area in anticipation of its opening.
“That whole waking up at 4 a.m., lining up, you know, drinking hot cider and coffee in the line, waiting for 2 hours, chatting with people, it was just a really fun time,” said Singh, of Mountain View, Calif.
“The deals, you can get them online,” he said. “You’re getting such great deals weeks, ten days ahead. So, it’s no longer that meaningful.”
“It’s lost its novelty,” Singh added.
“I think Black Friday, Cyber Monday [have] sort of morphed from a weekend into a season,” Finkelstein added. “And I think consumers like that because it means they can get more of their shopping done earlier.”
Shoppers also are increasingly reliant on social media: A global survey by the IBM Institute for Business Value, in association with the National Retail Federation, found that 6 in 10 shoppers draw “inspiration and ideas” from TikTok, Instagram and other sites. The platforms allow for a seamless browse-to-buy shopping experience, and with younger demographics spending more of their time on the apps, brands and companies are bringing their products to them.
“If you go into the physical store, oftentimes they have additional doorbuster sales because they’re trying to drive traffic,” she said, adding that after years of covid fears and crowd restrictions, shoppers want to be back in stores. “The pandemic has forced more consumers to realize they want human connection and contact.” | 2022-11-25T10:18:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Black Friday is here, but the deals started months ago - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/11/25/black-friday-shopping/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/11/25/black-friday-shopping/ |
SHARM EL SHEIKH, EGYPT - NOVEMBER 11: U.S. President Joe Biden speaks at the UNFCCC COP27 climate conference on November 11, 2022 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. The conference is bringing together political leaders and representatives from 190 countries to discuss climate-related topics including climate change adaptation, climate finance, decarbonisation, agriculture and biodiversity. The conference is running from November 6-18. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images) (Photographer: Sean Gallup/Getty Images Europe)
This year’s United Nations climate conference in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt — COP27, the latest in a series dating back to 1995 — achieved two important victories.
First, there was a hard-won agreement to start compensating poorer countries for harm due to years’ worth of greenhouse gases emitted by the rich world, which the US had long resisted. The ethics of the “loss and damage” question were never in dispute. Rich countries have already emitted almost all the carbon the atmosphere can stand if climate change is to be arrested. They owe poorer countries generous help in coping with the consequences. But it’s crucial that new resources are channeled in ways that help cut future emissions.
The principle of disproportionate responsibility recognized at COP27 can and should guide rich-country governments in broadening their approaches to the problem — for example, through the role of multilateral development banks in supporting climate-related investments.
While many COP27 observers praised the agreement, others focused on nations’ failure to pledge faster action to limit warming. It would’ve been better to do more, of course, since the world is still on course for devastating levels of warming. But the deal is important progress — and suggests that the kind of coordinated action needed to forestall the worst climate-change scenarios should still be possible.
The second victory at COP27 was not a formal agreement among nations, but rather a growing acceptance by them of a crucial idea — that the battle against climate change cannot be won without a much more robust mobilization of private capital — and a growing willingness to act on it.
As the meeting was underway, a group of countries led by the US and Japan announced a $20 billion financing package to support Indonesia’s plan to shift from coal to renewables. This was a breakthrough agreement, not only because it is one of the largest climate finance packages ever assembled, but because it is in partnership with a nation that holds vast coal deposits and generates 60% of its power from coal.
The agreement would not have happened without the leadership of Indonesia and the G-7 nations, along with Mark Carney and Mary Schapiro of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, a group Carney and I co-chair that includes many of the world’s largest financial firms and asset managers. And it creates a model for assisting other nations that are heavily dependent on coal to transition to clean energy — a transition that will not happen via government actions alone.
At COP27, Bloomberg and Bloomberg Philanthropies announced various efforts to increase private-sector investment in clean energy, particularly in the developing world. That includes a new data portal that will give companies the information they need to meet their net-zero pledges — and give the public the information it needs to hold them accountable for doing so.
Many countries have pledged to achieve net-zero emissions of carbon dioxide by 2050. If all governments committed to it and kept their promises, the goal adopted in Paris in 2015 of limiting future warming to 1.5% would be within reach. But many big emitters still aren’t on board, and the ones that have made net-zero pledges still aren’t fully aligning policies with promises. Changing that can only happen by enlisting the private sector, a mission that was hardly on the agenda in Paris in 2015 but is now emerging front and center.
At COP27, governments were urged “to revisit and strengthen the 2030 targets in their national climate plans by the end of 2023, as well as accelerate efforts to phase down unabated coal power and phase out inefficient fossil-fuel subsidies.” That’s critical, but actions are what matter, not words — and actions still fall short.
The world must invest more ambitiously in renewables and other technologies, phase out fossil fuels more quickly, and improve coordination of such efforts by pricing carbon emissions to reflect environmental harms. There’s no alternative to tirelessly pressing the case for such steps, and enlisting the private sector as an ally in doing so.
An energy transition as dramatic as the one that global warming dictates is a vast undertaking. It can’t be done all at once, and it demands cooperation among all the world’s governments — and the private sector, too. COP27 shows that progress is possible.
Investment in the planet’s future is happening. With more investment — much more — climate catastrophe can still be avoided. | 2022-11-25T10:18:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Climate Progress Is Happening, Just Not Fast Enough - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/climate-progress-is-happening-just-not-fast-enough/2022/11/25/0c7cd93a-6ca8-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/climate-progress-is-happening-just-not-fast-enough/2022/11/25/0c7cd93a-6ca8-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html |
Ladka Bauerova
Ludek Cakl, an IT developer from Prague, receives a lesson on safe handling before a test to receive a firearms license. (Chico Harlan/The Washington Post)
PRAGUE — When eight people had taken their seats in the classroom, the proctor put on his glasses and said it was time to begin. He took attendance. He glowered as one person walked in late. He described how the test would work — 30 multiple-choice questions, 40 minutes — and how to properly mark an X on the answer sheet. Then he ordered phones away; only a pen and paper, he said, were permitted on the table.
“If anybody needs to go to the toilet, now is the time,” he said.
The test had all the tedious markings of a high school exam, down to the motivational poster on the wall saying “I will.”
But in the Czech Republic, this is part of how you obtain a gun.
And 40 minutes later, three of the nine had already failed, ushered out the door as the others went on to the later stages of the exam, in which they had to prove the ability to handle a weapon safely and shoot accurately.
Will U.S. gun owners fight for stronger laws?
In an America riven by gun violence, with recent mass shootings at a Walmart in Virginia and an LGBTQ club in Colorado, weapons can often be purchased without even a background check. With the country divided about even the smallest changes to gun laws, the question is only hypothetical: What if anybody who wanted a gun had to first prove their competence?
The Czech Republic embodies an answer. By European standards, its gun laws are permissive. It allows people to carry concealed weapons for the purpose of self-defense, and it is one of the few countries in the world — and the only one in Europe — that provides the constitutional right to bear arms. But exercising that right is contingent on the test.
Czech lawmakers and gun owners say their national system dramatically increases the odds of responsible ownership. The rules also require a health clearance and a background check, and demand safe storage of weapons once they are purchased. In a country more populous than New York City, there were seven homicides using guns during all of last year.
“We really have bad politics in many ways here — corruption. But something I am proud of is this law,” said Martin Fiser, 35, a weapons instructor. “It can be a model for the rest of the world.”
Thailand gets tougher on guns after child-care massacre that killed dozens
The test is obligatory for anybody who wants a weapon, including hunters, collectors, even someone inheriting a shotgun from a grandfather. The standards are high: The test consists of questions randomly drawn from a pool of 501 possible. Those trying to obtain the hardest-to-get license — for concealed carry — can miss no more than one question. The failure rate is around 40 percent.
“Practice lessons aren’t mandatory. But without it you have a minimal chance of passing,” said Pavel Ausficir, who works at a shooting range in Prague.
He mentioned a government app and a website where people can study for the written part of the exam.
The questions are specific, plumbing the details of safety legislation and the criminal code. One example:
According to Government Regulation No. 217/2017, black hunting gunpowder, smokeless gunpowder and matches can only be stored:
A: In a place with a maximum air humidity of 70%, and at a temperature not exceeding 25 degrees Celsius;
B: In a dry place without direct sunlight, at a temperature not exceeding 30 degrees Celsius;
C: In a dry place, at a temperature not exceeding 40 degrees Celsius.
The correct answer? C.
“It’s not that a person needs to memorize the law,” Ausficir said, “but the test surely checks that they have read it.”
More than 320,000 students have experienced gun violence at school since Columbine
The notion of testing would-be gun owners isn’t solely the purview of the Czech Republic. Many European Union countries have some kind of competence exam, though the difficulty varies.
Some U.S. states, including California and Connecticut, require either safety training or an exam before the issuance of a gun license. But the majority of states allow people to carry guns without ever learning how to shoot one. On a national scale, the patchwork of rules presents a problem. Even those in more restrictive states can circumvent testing requirements by purchasing guns from private vendors online.
In the states that do have exams, the requirements “are not as difficult as what the Czech Republic has put in place,” said Sean Holihan, the state legislative director for the gun violence prevention group led by former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.).
Czech lawmakers say they have a luxury that Americans do not. Guns are not a politically fraught issue. About 1 in every 30 Czechs hold a gun permit. For most of the rest, the issue is rarely discussed.
The constitutional right to bear arms was put in place only last year, not because of some popular groundswell, but because lawmakers liked the national laws as they stand and wanted to make sure E.U. initiatives passed in response to terrorist attacks wouldn’t jeopardize them.
“Guns are valued by gun holders,” said Martin Cervicek, a senator and former president of the Czech police forces. “But they are not viewed as sacred.”
At 10, Caitlyne Gonzales survived Uvalde’s school shooting. Then she became a voice for her slain friends.
That sentiment, and the absence of any major gun lobby, has made it easier to toughen the system. After a gunman killed eight people at a Czech restaurant in 2015, in a rare mass shooting — carried out by a legal-firearm owner who had been showing signs of mental instability — laws were quickly changed to give police power to seize weapons when a person’s mental capacity is in doubt.
The last Czech mass shooting occurred in 2019, when a gunman killed seven people in a hospital. But the perpetrator, who had been ineligible to legally possess a gun, had needed to go to great lengths to fashion a weapon.
The Czech national testing system was born in the vacuum of the 1989 Communist collapse. The Communists had decreed that guns could be licensed only to those proving capability. But in practice almost nobody aside from police and party apparatchiks had been able to get one. As the new Czech democracy tried to interpret that vague law, local police started conducting examinations. Within a few years, the system was formalized: a written and practical test, overseen by a government-appointed commissar. The country has regularly expanded the pool of possible questions for test-takers.
The Czech Interior Ministry, which oversees the testing system, did not allow The Washington Post to sit in on tests. But it shared uncut videos of several testing sessions, which take place at gun centers across the country, generally in groups of 15 to 20 people.
Jan Bartosek, the ministry’s firearms policy director, said the most difficult part involves safe handling, when somebody has to show they can take a gun apart, put it back together, and deal with failures like a squib load or a double feed. One of the videos showed a woman who was asked to simulate the event of a failure to fire. She was supposed to keep the weapon pointed at a target for 10 seconds, just in case the firing might occur on a delay. But she instead tried to unload it immediately.
“Unfortunately, I have to finish your exam right here,” the test administrator said.
Bartosek, showing the video to The Post, said the woman then needed to sign a document affirming the failure. She would be eligible to eventually retake the test. But many people who fail give up after one try, he said.
In any country “you can focus on regulating the weapons or the people,” Bartosek said. “We focus mainly on the people.”
The Czech Republic has seen a slight increase this year in the number of people seeking weapons, something officials attribute to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Ludek Cakl, 43, an IT developer and father of two, said that the war, in which so many Ukrainians have been forced to take up arms, made him reassess the value of knowing how to handle a weapon.
So last month he started the process of obtaining a gun: visiting his doctor, getting a clean bill of mental health, paying a processing fee, and then, five days before his official test, arriving at an underground shooting range, where he stood in front of a yellow table and pieced together a CZ-75 semiautomatic pistol.
A call to arms: Poland’s military and civilian defenses rethink the future
“The commission is going to ask you to describe the various parts of the gun,” an instructor told Cakl.
Cakl took notes on a clipboard.
After several hours, it was time for the shooting practice, and he was ushered to a dark, tunnellike range under the Prague subway tracks, its walls rattling every time a train rolled by.
Cakl was told that on the day of the test, he’d have to hit the target four times out of five. He’d shoot a pistol 10 meters away from the target. And then a rifle 25 meters away.
So that’s what he practiced. The instructor told him how to plant his feet, how to keep a steady hand, and how even his breathing could influence aim of the rifle nestled against his shoulder.
He tried the pistol first: all on the target.
Then he tried the rifle from farther away: he hit four of five.
“My first shots ever,” Cakl said, looking at the bullet holes.
The instructor offered a handshake and took out a pocket knife, cutting away the target sheet — a souvenir for Cakl.
“An excellent result,” the instructor said.
But Cakl, leaving the shooting gallery, said he was still nervous. He had so much running through his mind.
“It’s harder than I expected it to be,” he said.
He told the instructor that he wanted to come back for one more lesson before his test.
“Just for reassurance,” he said. | 2022-11-25T11:15:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What if gun owners had to pass a test? Czech Republic offers an answer. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/25/gun-rights-test-czech-republic/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/25/gun-rights-test-czech-republic/ |
Gibson Island estate on the market for $13.8 million
HOUSE OF THE WEEK | The five-bedroom, nine-bathroom house looks out on Chesapeake Bay
French doors in the great room open to waterfront views. (Porscha Howard)
In Maryland’s Anne Arundel County, signs for Gibson Island dot 100 East until it bleeds into Route 177 and dead-ends at a security kiosk. It’s less than 50 miles from downtown Washington, but this narrow stretch of road — with the Magothy River to the west and the Chesapeake Bay to the east — looks like a different world. And after the boom gate lifts, after the manicured residential streets pass, a house appears on a hill, framed by the river and the bay. It’s known to island residents as Villa dei Fiori.
The house, inspired by estates in the Italian countryside, was built in 1929 for Robert Garrett, winner of six Olympic medals — including gold medals in the shot put and the discus throw — at the first modern Games, in Athens, in 1896. The Baltimore activist was largely responsible for bringing the Boy Scouts of America to the region, and he headed city recreation and parks agencies in the 1940s and 1950s until he was asked to resign from the Board of Park Commissioners because of his opposition to racial integration.
The Garretts were a prosperous and prominent Maryland family. Robert was an investment banker and philanthropist as well as an Olympic athlete. An aunt founded the Baltimore Museum of Art, a grandfather led the nation’s first passenger railroad line and an elder brother worked in the State Department as a diplomat.
The house on Gibson Island was Garrett’s summer home. The private island, purchased for $165,000 in 1921, was developed as a summer community, and it attracted, among others, Baltimore socialites dissatisfied with the quality of the city’s golf courses. Today it is ranked by Forbes as the 24th most expensive Zip code in the country.
The Gibson Island Corp. owns the island’s public spaces, and the island has a private police force. The Gibson Island Club (membership by invitation only) has, among its other amenities, a nine-hole golf course designed by prominent course architect Charles B. Macdonald, tennis courts and a clubhouse. There are also private marinas on Gibson Island, which has become known for its sailing culture — one of the main reasons Elizabeth and Mark Rogers purchased Villa dei Fiori in 2005.
Elizabeth Rogers said she fell in love with the house — which had been through a three-year renovation — when she walked into the open-concept great room, with its six-foot-wide fireplace, original ceiling and custom Murano chandeliers. The room also has a wet bar with cherry wood folding doors and a Miele dishwasher. Multiple French doors open to a porticoed terrace overlooking the water.
“We look directly over the Magothy River as it enters into the Chesapeake Bay,” Rogers said. “On evenings when there are fireworks, you can see the fireworks that come out from Annapolis, and sometimes all the way down to Washington, along the water. Very, very pretty.”
The main floor includes a library with custom cabinetry and marble framing a wood-burning fireplace; a family room; a sunlit breakfast nook with large windows; and a kitchen with a cathedral ceiling, where Rogers said her grandchildren like to cook using ingredients from the garden. There is also a bedroom suite, with cherry wood floors and an en suite bathroom, that could be used as a primary bedroom suite. The Rogers family calls it the “VIP room.”
The primary bedroom suite can be reached by going down a spiral staircase with wrought-iron balusters created by Patrick Cardine, an acclaimed blacksmith and designer, some of whose work can be seen at Washington National Cathedral. The trip to the walk-out lower level can also be made using an elevator with inlaid wood carvings.
The primary bedroom suite has Venetian stucco walls, several walk-in cedar closets and a bathroom with a shower, a free-standing tub and two vanities. This floor has three more bedrooms (although one is equipped as a home gym), each with an en suite bathroom. There is a mahogany wine cellar, a sauna and a sunlit hallway with waterfront views.
Beside the main residence, the estate has a detached coach house with a home theater on the first floor and a studio apartment on the second. Rogers said the coach house was occupied by her sailboat’s captain in the summertime.
A pool and hot tub behind the house are flanked by two pergolas wrapped in vines. One side of the house has a sculpture garden. A gated path in the front of the house leads to a cobblestone patio at the end of the driveway and to a two-car garage, hidden from view.
Behind the house, the property slopes down to the water, and the landscape includes a vineyard, rows of berries, and fig and apple trees. There are more than 25,000 perennial flowers — perhaps the inspiration for the estate’s name, which translates from the Italian to “House of Flowers.”
Rogers describes living on the island as almost like a trip to Italy’s Lake Como, but much closer to her family in Maryland.
“Every morning, we wake up and enjoy the house, loving Gibson Island, the quiet pleasantness,” Rogers said. “We sit down for breakfast, and we look at the view and say, ‘It’s just wonderful to be here.’ ”
744 Skywater Rd., Gibson Island, Md.
Approximate square-footage: The main house is 12,987 square feet; the coach house is 1,760 square feet.
Features: This estate, inspired by the Italian countryside and on the private Gibson Island, is for sale for the first time since 2005. Most of the five bedrooms look out on the place where the Magothy River meets the Chesapeake Bay, and each has an en suite bathroom. Notable features include a sauna, hot tub, pool, garden and vineyard. There is room for two vehicles in the garage and for several more on the cobblestone patio at the end of the driveway.
Listing agent: Sarah Kanne, Gibson Island Corp. Real Estate | 2022-11-25T11:50:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Gibson Island estate on the market for $13.8 million - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/11/25/gibson-island-estate-market-138-million/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/11/25/gibson-island-estate-market-138-million/ |
Ghana is learning the hard way why oil can be a blessing and a curse. The onset of commercial crude production helped turn the West African nation into one of the continent’s top investment destinations, but also prompted successive governments to borrow to the hilt. Skittish investors offloaded Ghana’s bonds and currency, the cedi, amid doubts over its ability to settle its debts. The concern proved to be well-founded: In late November, the government said international bond holders would be asked to accept losses of as much as 30% on their principal loans and forgo some interest as it tries to secure a $3 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund.
The first sub-Saharan African nation to gain independence after colonial rule, Ghana has been a bastion of stability in a region plagued by civil unrest and coups. Peaceful elections have been held regularly since the 1990s, power has changed hands between rival parties and presidents, and there is an independent judiciary and a vibrant parliament. The world’s second-biggest grower of cocoa and Africa’s No. 2 gold producer, Ghana began exporting oil in late 2010. The following year, gross domestic product leaped by almost 14%. The economy has expanded every year since then, albeit at a more modest pace, with the government’s embrace of a free-market system helping to lure foreign capital and financing.
The government abandoned fiscal discipline and opened the spending taps in anticipation of an oil windfall. But energy revenue wasn’t enough to cover a succession of expensive flagship projects, and it borrowed more to plug the gap. Overspending was particularly rife in election years. President Nana Akufo-Addo’s administration has scrapped fees for senior high school students. In 2021, the government spent $1 billion on refinancing loans owed by private power producers, a move that was intended to reduce the state’s electricity bills. A plan to strengthen a banking industry weakened by bad loans has cost more than 25 billion cedis ($1.7 billion), and an estimated 8 billion cedis more is needed to complete the process. Covid-19 dealt a further blow to the state’s already stretched finances. After selling eurobonds for each of the previous nine years, Ghana was shut out of international capital markets in 2022 as investors lost faith in its ability to service its loans. The government shunned an initiative that would have enabled it to suspend interest payments and vowed not to ask for further support from the IMF, before changing its tune in July 2022.
3. What precipitated the debt restructuring?
State debt ballooned to 467.4 billion cedis at the end of September, representing 75.9% of GDP, up from 68.3% five years earlier. When it could no longer tap international markets, the government resorted to taking out domestic loans, paying annual interest rates of almost 30%. The central bank stepped in to provide the government with funding after it risked defaulting on the local debt, but it plans to limit further support to stay within its legal lending threshold. Lawmakers want Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta to take the fall for the economic crisis and have called for his dismissal.
There’s been an exodus from the currency and bond markets. The cedi’s decline of more than 57% between January and late November 2022 made it the world’s worst performer. The premium investors demand to hold the country’s dollar bonds rather than US Treasuries exceeds 3,000 basis points, well above the 1,000 level that signals distress. Fitch Ratings downgraded its assessment of Ghanaian credit to four levels below investment grade in September, the third cut in 2022.
In late October, Akufo-Addo dismissed speculation that an IMF funding deal could translate into losses for any of Ghana’s creditors, but his administration changed course a month later and said it would enter into restructuring negotiations. In addition to the planned debt haircut, the government was also pushing for a suspension of interest payments on foreign bonds for three years, according to Deputy Minister of Finance John Kumah. Domestic debt investors would be asked to exchange existing securities for new ones that may offer a zero coupon in the first year, 5% in the second and 10% in the third. The president has pledged to restore financial discipline by reducing total public debt to 55% of gross domestic product by 2028 and peg external debt-servicing costs to no more than 18% of annual revenue by that year. The Bank of Ghana raised its key lending rate by 10 percentage points to 24.5% in the first 10 months of 2022 to support the currency and help tame runaway inflation. Ghana’s vice president, Mahamudu Bawumia, announced that the government is considering using gold to buy oil products to stem demand for foreign exchange and support the cedi.
--With assistance from Moses Mozart Dzawu, Yinka Ibukun and Paul Richardson. | 2022-11-25T11:50:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why Ghana Went From Hero to Zero for Investors - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/why-ghana-went-from-hero-to-zero-for-investors/2022/11/25/7a76048e-6cb2-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/why-ghana-went-from-hero-to-zero-for-investors/2022/11/25/7a76048e-6cb2-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html |
The debris pile could fill 22 Empire State Buildings. "Where are we possibly going to find room for all this?” asks one expert.
A motorcyclist rides past debris from a home that was destroyed by Hurricane Ian on Matlacha Island in Florida on Nov. 7. (Giorgio Viera/AFP/Getty Images)
Millions more remain. Statewide, Hurricane Ian is estimated to have left behind nearly 31 million cubic yards of disaster debris, according to the Florida Division of Emergency Management, which obtained the figure from the Army Corps of Engineers. That is roughly five times the amount of debris Hurricane Sandy created in New York — and enough to fill the Empire State Building 22 times.
“This is storm debris on a scale Florida hasn’t seen in a long time,” said Jon Paul Brooker, Ocean Conservancy’s director of Florida conservation. “With hundreds of people moving to Florida every day and coastal development off the charts, the combination of that and more intense hurricanes results in this massive problem.”
The already enormous task has only become more daunting after Hurricane Nicole hit Florida’s east coast as a Category 1 hurricane on Nov. 10. When the rare November storm lashed Volusia County, home to Daytona Beach, it toppled beachside homes into the ocean and left others uninhabitable. State officials said they did not yet have an estimate of the hurricane’s damage.
Hauling away storm-related waste has become a daunting routine for communities in hurricanes’ path. After Hurricane Irma swept across Florida in 2017, doing major damage in the Florida Keys and causing about two-thirds of the state’s residents to lose power, nearly 29 million cubic yards of debris was left statewide, the Army Corps estimated. The next year, Hurricane Michael created nearly 33 million cubic yards. Hurricane Katrina, which struck the Gulf Coast in 2005, saddled several states with more than 100 million cubic yards of debris.
For now, experts are asking a more immediate question, said Timothy Townsend, a University of Florida professor of environmental engineering: “Where are we possibly going to find room for all this?”
Each state varies in how it handles such cleanups. In Florida, government officials are hiring contractors to pick up the refuse — at a cost largely reimbursed by FEMA — and bring it to temporary debris management sites. From there, some of the storm debris will be taken to municipal dumps and some will be trucked across the state to privately run landfills.
Florida poses particular challenges because of its shallow water table and potential for makeshift landfills to leach contaminants into groundwater. That’s one reason local officials are likely to face questions about the environmental and public health effects of their decisions.
In Lee County, where Ian came ashore and left a path of destruction in its wake, local officials have decided to reopen a landfill to quickly get rid of storm debris. The Gulf Coast Landfill closed 15 years ago at the urging of nearby residents, who had purchased their homes on the promise that the landfill would close and stay closed. Now the county’s plan is to allow the landfill to stay open, temporarily, as a disaster debris site.
Residents are concerned about the landfill’s rebirth, as is at least one county commissioner, Cecil Pendergrass, who told a local CBS affiliate he fears the effects on air quality and potential water contamination. “There will be runoff from that exposure,” he said.
They were lured by the Florida dream. After Ian they wonder: What now?
John Elias, the public works director for Charlotte County, estimated that Hurricane Ian left behind 2.5 million cubic yards of debris in the county alone — enough that the county could run out of landfill space earlier than planned, forcing difficult conversations about whether to expand. One solution would be to ship some of their debris across the state to a large, private landfill in rural Okeechobee.
“We have a landfill we’re trying to maximize the life of,” Elias said. “And we don’t have that much space in our county to create a new one.”
Some of the hardest areas to clean up are not on land but along the region’s coastal areas and just offshore, according to local officials and environmental advocates. The offshore waters and wetlands are strewn with damaged boats, scattered dock posts and other debris.
“There’s a lot of debris we know is in the water that we can’t see,” said Jason Rolfe, a coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Marine Debris Program. “Anything that was on the land, you should expect to be pushed, pulled, dragged into the water.”
Removing this waste often takes a back seat to digging out homes and businesses. Environmentalists fear that while it remains in the water, it could damage seagrasses and fragile habitats in the state’s shallow coastal waters, harming wildlife for years to come.
More than five years after Hurricane Irma, Rolfe said groups are still working to remove “ghost” lobster traps in the Keys that were abandoned after the storm and continue to ensnare and kill marine animals.
In Florida’s Bay County, which suffered heavy damage from Hurricane Michael, officials said they have been pulling debris and dozens of broken-down boats out of their waters ever since the storm hit four years ago. In total, they estimate they have removed 2.4 million pounds from their bays. They officially wrapped up their efforts this fall, but the battle continues. | 2022-11-25T11:50:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Florida grapples with mountain of debris from Hurricane Ian - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/25/florida-hurricane-ian-debris/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/25/florida-hurricane-ian-debris/ |
Three Virginia teens create a ‘period pantry’ for free pads, tampons
Ramsey Warner, Ariyanna Ghala and Isabel Buescher, all 14, started a free period pantry to help those who can't afford pads and tampons in Vienna, Va. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)
When Ariyanna Ghala, 14, was shopping with her mom, she noticed how expensive a box of pads were and thought there must be something she could do to help people who couldn’t afford them.
The teen in Vienna, Va., talked to her friends Ramsey Warner and Isabel Buescher, both 14, and the three of them got to work. They researched the issue, learning how many states still tax these products. They heard about “period poverty” — unequal access to menstrual hygiene. They read stories about girls who miss school because they lack pads and tampons, and they learned about adults who are unable to afford these essential products.
If people needed pads and tampons, Ghala and her friends thought, then they could find a way to provide them.
In September, they launched their free period pantry outside a church in Vienna, filling the two-foot wide, one-foot deep and 2.5-foot tall wooden container they constructed with donated pads and tampons.
“We are girls and we can totally understand. That’s honestly awful that people wouldn’t have [period products],” Ghala said. “These are so important, so vital.”
The girls, all James Madison High School students, are part of a growing chorus of advocates demanding menstrual equity, said Laura Strausfeld, founder and executive director of Period Law.
Advocates like Strausfeld have used lawsuits and public awareness campaigns to convince policymakers to drop the sales tax on these items as well as provide them in schools, jails, shelters and public spaces. They have long pushed to remove any stigma around periods and increase the availability of pads, tampons and any other products needed to meet basic hygiene, especially for those who are low-wage or are otherwise unable to access this care.
“It’s reaching a tipping point,” Strausfeld said, adding that it’s encouraging to see the way young people are joining the movement. “They see a need and they’re not, for whatever reason, afraid of talking about periods.”
Scotland became the first nation to offer period products in public spaces, including community centers, pharmacies and youth clubs, in August following legislation initially approved by lawmakers in 2020. New Zealand began offering free menstrual products to schools nationwide in 2021.
In the United States, 18 states and Washington, D.C. have passed legislation ensuring students have access to free period products in school; more than 20 states charge sales tax on period products, according to the advocacy group Alliance for Period Supplies. The Justice Department agreed in 2017 to provide incarcerated women with menstrual products at no cost.
Jennifer Gaines, the program director of the Alliance for Period Supplies, a program of the National Diaper Bank Network, said in a “perfect world” period products would be available “everywhere,” similar to the expectation in this country that toilet paper is provided in restrooms.
During the pandemic, Congress recognized how essential menstrual products are, including provisions in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act that allowed people to purchase menstrual products with pretax dollars from health savings and flexible spending accounts.
What you need to know about the tampon shortage
Still, period products are not eligible to be purchased under benefit programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, widely known as food stamps. And prices for tampons and pads also increased during a tampon shortage this year, straining shoppers during historical inflation that was already lifting the cost of gas, groceries and other essentials.
“If your period is going to come and you need a pad or a tampon, I am so heartened that kids like this are thinking about that,” said Jennifer Weiss-Wolf, the executive director of the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Network at the New York University School of Law and author of Periods Gone Public: Taking a Stand for Menstrual Equity. “And ensuring that this is not a need that goes unmet for people who are in those urgent in circumstances.”
The Vienna period pantry, located outside the Emmaus United Church of Christ on Maple Avenue, and next to a food pantry, has been stocked for months now. The teens have been stocking the pantry with donations, and others seem to be adding products themselves, too. The girls hope this support continues, said Heather Buescher, Isabel’s mom.
The pantry has been a project for their Girl Scout Troop 6833, earning the girls the Silver Award, the highest award a Girl Scout Cadette can earn, according to Kelli Naughton, the troop’s adult guide. The requirements include spending 50 hours on a project that has a sustainable impact on the community.
Tampon and baby formula shortage ‘feels like a war on women’
“We already knew that these products were expensive, but we’re kind of just like taught that’s just how it was,” Ramsey said. “When you start thinking about how other people can’t have that mind-set of, ‘That’s just how it is,’ because they can’t afford it, it’s really unfair.”
The teenagers are brainstorming ways to keep the pantry running, including considering turning this effort into a nonprofit.
“It makes me feel good that we’ve been able to help people,” Isabel said.
When setting up the pantry, the girls painted the lumber pink and decorated it with a quote from Helen Keller that captured the role they hoped the pantry would play in their community: “Alone, we can do so little: together, we can do so much.” | 2022-11-25T11:50:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Three Virginia teens create a 'period pantry' for free pads, tampons - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/25/period-pantry-free-tampons-women/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/25/period-pantry-free-tampons-women/ |
Youngkin warns of recession but vows to pursue tax cuts — cautiously
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) speaks at the William King Museum in Abingdon, Va., on Nov. 17. (Emily Ball/Bristol Herald Courier/AP)
RICHMOND — Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) said he plans to seek tax cuts in his budget proposal for next year despite acknowledging that a possible economic recession could weaken the state’s finances.
But Youngkin added that he will approach the issue of tax cuts cautiously — a change in tone since floating the idea of eliminating the state income tax during his campaign for office last year.
“One of our key priorities is not to be in a circumstance where we get over our skis on either side of this — tax cuts or in spending,” Youngkin said this week in brief remarks to reporters after meeting with a panel of business leaders to assess the state’s economic outlook.
Youngkin presided over the annual closed-door meeting of the Governor’s Advisory Council on Revenue Estimates, a group of corporate and financial leaders — as well as lawmakers from General Assembly money committees — who provide economic forecasts that help frame the budgeting process.
Youngkin seeks nearly $400M in tax cuts, takes swipes at Washington
Youngkin said the panel’s broad consensus over two hours of discussion was that some degree of economic slowdown seems likely. “Generally, there is expectation that there will be a recession next year,” he said. That requires budget officials, he added, to be “very prudent in what we do, particularly next year as we head into a storm — and we really all believe it will be a storm; we’re just not sure whether it’s a tropical storm or a hurricane-level storm.”
Inflation, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, supply-chain issues that linger from pandemic-related shutdowns, as well as the Federal Reserve’s steady increase of interest rates to fight rising prices all contribute to economists’ expectation of a coming recession. But Youngkin pointed out that Virginia is in an unusually good position to withstand the drop in tax revenue that could go along with a cooler economy.
As recession fears rise, Washington begins to consider how to respond
That’s because two years of federal pandemic relief, combined with a sharp rebound by corporations and the wealthiest taxpayers, have left state coffers filled to the brim. Thanks to measures passed by the General Assembly and signed into law by Youngkin and his predecessor, former governor Ralph Northam (D), Virginia is set to achieve an all-time high in its budget reserve funds.
By the end of next year, Youngkin said, the state’s reserves will top $4 billion, or roughly 15 percent of the state’s general fund — a level state lawmakers once thought was nearly unattainable. Those reserves help protect Virginia’s prized triple-A bond rating and can safeguard finances if revenue comes up short. In addition, the state finished the last fiscal year with a surplus of $3.2 billion.
“The commonwealth is in its best financial position ever,” Youngkin said, although he has also argued that some of that fiscal cushion is the result of over-taxation during Democratic administrations in Richmond.
Youngkin’s office reported strong tax-revenue figures for October, with collections up 3 percent compared with the same month a year ago. That included the state paying out a round of taxpayer rebates, as well as the first impact of an increase in the standard deduction for personal income tax filers that the General Assembly passed in its session earlier this year.
If not for those factors, October revenue would have been up 10.3 percent compared with a year ago.
Youngkin took office in January promising tax cuts, and the divided legislature — Republicans control the House of Delegates, and Democrats control the Senate — delivered $4 billions’ worth over the next two years, including nearly doubling the standard deduction. That change is expected to reduce state revenue by about $50 million per month.
Virginia lawmakers approve budget with tax cuts, spending increases
But Youngkin failed to win approval for his proposed suspension of the gasoline tax, and while he got lawmakers to agree to end the state’s 1.5 percent tax on groceries, a local grocery tax of 1 percent remains in place. Democrats — and even some Republicans — expressed concern that more extensive tax cuts would reduce the state’s ability to fund its obligations in a time of economic uncertainty.
“We’re in such unsettled waters,” Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee Co-chair Janet Howell (D-Fairfax) told reporters in August. “Hopefully, we’ll be able to do some tax relief, but it’s not necessarily in the bag, and I wouldn’t want people to get their hopes up.”
Senate Majority Leader Richard L. Saslaw (D-Fairfax) said in an interview this week that he is highly skeptical of the idea of cutting taxes during an economic downturn. “If we hit a recession [and cut taxes], we’re going to be shutting down half the government,” he said, adding that Virginia still lags in efforts to boost pay for teachers and law enforcement and in providing mental health services.
“We need to take care of functions that people expect us to,” Saslaw said.
The legislature is set to convene a new session on Jan. 11, and Youngkin has said he will propose a $397 million “taxpayer relief” fund and has expressed interest in cutting the corporate tax rate, among other possible cuts. He will lay out his budget priorities on Dec. 15, when he proposes amendments to the two-year spending plan that went into effect July 1.
On the positive side of the balance sheet, job growth has returned to Virginia since the end of shutdowns and business restrictions that came with the pandemic. The state’s unemployment rate was 2.7 percent in October, a point below the national rate, and wage growth is up.
But Youngkin, a former private-equity executive who delights in discussing state finances, outlined several potential weaknesses that could impact tax revenue next year. The biggest portion of state revenue comes from taxes withheld from residents’ paychecks, he said, and that would suffer from recession-related job losses.
Non-withholding taxes — tied to the stock market or other capital gains — “are much harder to predict,” Youngkin said. “We’re going to be appropriately cautious on that forecast,” given the steep rises and falls the markets have experienced in the past year.
Corporate profits are another major source of state tax revenue, and Youngkin said he expects those to be under pressure next year if the economy slows. And consumer spending, which drives sales tax revenue, “has generally been pretty healthy. There’s been some decline in the overall balance-sheet health of the consumer, but it’s still good relative to even where we were prior to the pandemic. But that can change quickly. And so we’re watching that very closely,” he said. | 2022-11-25T11:50:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Glenn Youngkin warns of Virginia recession but vows to pursue tax cuts - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/25/youngkin-virginia-tax-cuts-recession/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/25/youngkin-virginia-tax-cuts-recession/ |
Jerome Adams and his wife, Lacey, want to tell a personal story about melanoma and cancer prevention. But it is hard to excise the stigma of serving under the former president.
By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Lacey Adams and former surgeon general Jerome Adams at their suburban Indianapolis home this month. As Lacey fights melanoma, the couple works to educate people on skin cancer, but they have had an unwelcome response. (Evan Cobb for The Washington Post)
Former surgeon general Jerome Adams and his wife, Lacey, often find themselves talking about what they have named the “Trump Effect.”
It followed them from Washington to their home in the Indianapolis suburbs. They felt it when he was exploring jobs in academia, where he would receive polite rejections from university officials who worried that someone who served in the administration of the the former president would be badly received by their left-leaning student bodies. They felt it when corporations decided he was too tainted to employ.
Now, two years after Adams left office as only the 20th surgeon general in U.S. history, the couple feel it as acutely as ever. As Donald Trump announced this month that he will run for president again, they had hoped it all would have faded away by now.
Surgeon General Jerome Adams resigns amid new administration
They would rather talk about public health, in a very personal way. This summer, Lacey Adams was diagnosed with a third recurrence of melanoma. Both Adamses have been sharing her experiences on social media and in public appearances, hoping to spread a message about skin-cancer prevention. But the stigma of his association with Trump, even though neither of them is a supporter of his political campaign, remains.
Trump is “a force that really does take the air out of the room,” Adams, 48, said. “The Trump hangover is still impacting me in significant ways.” He said the 2024 Trump campaign “will make things more difficult for me.”
The former surgeon general’s predicament underscores one of the givens of today’s political environment: Association with Trump becomes a permanent tarnish, a kind of reverse Midas touch. Whether indicted or shunned or marginalized, a cavalcade of former Trump World figures have foundered in the aftermath of one of the more chaotic presidencies in modern American history.
Lacey saw it coming. She said she “hated Trump” and did not want her husband to leave his comfortable life in Indiana, where he practiced anesthesiology and served as state health commissioner under then-Indiana governor Mike Pence, who was Trump’s vice president when Jerome became surgeon general. Lacey, 46, worried about a lasting “stigma” but her husband talked her into supporting their move by saying he thought he could make a bigger difference inside the administration than outside it, especially when it came to his efforts to combat opioid addiction.
Surgeon General Jerome Adams may be nicest guy in Washington
Now Jerome bristles at his forever label as “Trump’s surgeon general,” an image sealed by his highly public role during the much-criticized early White House response to the coronavirus pandemic. Other surgeons general, he feels, have been less intensely identified with the president who appointed them, permitting them to glide into a life of prestigious and sometimes lucrative opportunities, unencumbered by partisan politics.
Not him. “It was a lot harder than he thought to find a landing spot because of the Trump Effect,” Lacey said. For eight months after leaving office, Jerome could not find a job. The couple started to worry about how they would support their three children, especially since Lacey does not work outside the home.
“People still are afraid to touch anything that is associated with Trump,” Jerome said. Though he was quick to add in the interview that he is “not complaining.” He added, “It is context.”
Finally, in September 2021, Purdue University President Mitch Daniels, a former Indiana governor and Republican stalwart, hired Adams as the first executive director of health equity initiatives at the school.
Even as Adams was seeking to define the next chapter of his life, he was engaged in an almost constant battle on social media. His frequent tweets about everything from his personal life to public health issues have invariably drawn attacks from both the right and the left. Rather than ignore his critics, he has often punched back, engaging in Twitter spats that stretch for days.
He has battled on social media over his recommendation that people continue to wear masks in crowded indoor settings, his criticism of President Biden’s declaration of an end to the pandemic and about his advocacy for coronavirus vaccinations for children and for adults to get booster shots. He takes heat from the left for a pro-life stance on abortion and from the right for his opposition to laws that dictate what a doctor can say to a patient about abortion.
“I get mad at him for being addicted to Twitter,” Lacey said. “People hated him because he was part of Trump’s administration. Now the Trump people hate him.”
Carrie Benton, an Ohio medical lab scientist who has tangled with Jerome Adams on social media, is critical of what she considers “blanket statements” he is now making about topics such as masking. But she also feels he should still be held accountable for errors committed by the Trump administration early in the pandemic.
The pushback has done little to dissuade Adams. He invites debate. He wants to argue, genially. He tries to search for ways to use his platform as a former surgeon general that do not turn into politically charged spats.
“It is hard to find an issue,” he said.
In August, an issue found him, and it was precisely the topic that he had hoped would not feel so personal anymore. During a routine follow-up check, doctors discovered tumors on the outside of Lacey’s right thigh.
“Here we go again,” Lacey said to herself.
She had first been diagnosed with melanoma 12 years ago, in 2010, when she spotted a “weird mole.” She had it removed. She thought she was in the clear.
“No big deal,” she said.
As an adolescent growing up in the Midwest, she had been a frequent visitor to tanning beds. She did not worry much about the sun, even though she is very light-skinned. After having the mole removed, she changed her ways. Sunscreen. Long sleeves. She joked that her mother would chase her around with floppy hats. She started getting regular dermatology checks. It was all good. Until it was not.
In early 2018, just as her anesthesiologist husband was starting as surgeon general under Trump, she noticed lumps on her groin while shaving her bikini line. The doctor in her house, newly minted as America’s doctor, was constantly on the go as he sought to get a grasp on his job, serving as a public health advocate and overseeing thousands of members of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. “The doctor in my house is my absent-minded professor, always running in 100 directions,” she said.
So Lacey called the doctor next door: her neighbor in Indiana and dear friend, Amy Hoffman, an emergency room physician. When Hoffman realized why her friend was calling, she put her on the speakerphone, so that her husband, an oncologist, could listen in.
He just had one question: Was it on the same side as the melanoma from years earlier? Yes, she said. She could hear the worry in their voices.
“Stop unpacking,” she said they told her. “Stop going to fancy events with your husband. You need to make this a priority.”
She was soon ushered into a special area of Walter Reed National Military Medical Center reserved for high-ranking officials and their families. She was given a fuzzy robe with an embroidered White House logo.
“All of a sudden it is like you are in the Ritz-Carlton,” she recalled, and asked herself, “Why am I deserving of this special attention?”
A scan showed a tumor somewhere between the size of a pea and a grape. She needed to have surgery. Doctors eventually removed 12 lymph nodes, some of which were cancerous. While she was recovering from surgery, still groggy from the anesthesia, her husband came into the room with a request that was hard for her to comprehend through the fog of the drugs: He wanted her Facebook password.
She had taken a selfie at the medical center and posted it to her Facebook page, and she also took a little dig at the administration. The White House was not happy, he told her. They wanted it taken down.
In the months to come, she would again think she had beaten cancer. She underwent a year of immunotherapy treatments. She rang the bell, a tradition among cancer patients completing treatments, at Walter Reed after scans showed she was cancer free.
“Cancer, schmancer,” she thought.
There were other things to worry about. Her husband had come to Washington hoping to focus on opioid addiction, a plague that had hit members of his family. Instead, he was thrust into a much more public role with the arrival of the coronavirus. As the Trump administration struggled with effective responses, the new surgeon general kept setting off firestorms.
He shared a Valentine’s Day poem on social media that said the regular flu was a greater risk than covid and urged people to get flu shots. He told African Americans, who were contracting the coronavirus in disproportionate numbers, to take precautions to protect their “Big Mama.”
In each instance, he fumbled the messaging, making incomplete or poorly explained statements. He asked people not to buy masks because there was a shortage. He said people were at a greater risk of catching the regular flu than covid because projections by the Trump administration, later shown to be inaccurate, suggested more people would get the regular flu.
He used the words “Big Mama,” which led to accusations that he was using Trump-style racist dog whistles, because it was a term of affection in his own family that he thought would help him connect with African Americans.
Those missteps, which Adams has blamed on a partisan atmosphere, drew heavy criticism, which might be expected. What he had not anticipated was how people would come for his loved ones. On social media, trolls called his family ugly. They criticized Adams, who is Black, for marrying a White woman.
While her husband was trying to fend off critics and nasty commenters by sharpening his messaging, Lacey, like many Americans, was putting off medical appointments while limiting her movements because of the risk of contracting the coronavirus. She had a clear scan in January 2020. It was not until July that year that she returned for another scan. It revealed a tumor on her back.
The cancer had returned for a second round: This time it was Stage 4. She started immunotherapy. And again she beat it. For two years she passed routine scans, with good results. Then, this past summer, came the tests that revealed the cancer had returned. His wife cries herself to sleep some nights. He marvels at her resilience.
She has been speaking and writing about the disease that lurks inside her and threatens to deprive her of so many things she looks forward to, like the days her children, now 18, 16 and 12, graduate or get married.
Some days she is too ill from side effects of her treatments to do much. But other times she is full of energy and ready to go. People might look at her and not know she is sick, and that is one of her points: Melanoma is a stealthy disease, the doctors keep telling her. It can hide inside people without any outward signs. She had once had a mole, but other times nothing showed up on her skin. The disease was hiding from her.
She understands that she has been given a platform few have. No one would be listening to a mom from Indiana if she were not the wife of the former surgeon general.
The other day, her husband asked if he could post a photo of her on Twitter. She said for him to go ahead. It showed her in profile, lying in bed with the covers partly obscuring her face, on a day when she was not feeling great. He asked for prayers, but he also gave some advice: “See a dermatologist right away if a mole changes/looks different from your others!”
What happened next was nothing short of amazing to them. People wished the best for Lacey even though they were not fans of Jerome: “I don’t agree with your politics. God bless your sweet wife.” “I’m sorry your wife has cancer, even though I completely disagree with some of your decisions.”
Some people even wanted advice. “Should we worry about a single mole or look for odd shapes and changes in several?” That person did not mention Trump at all. That might be a person they could help. That might be, they dared to imagine, the end of the Trump Effect, and the beginning of a Lacey Effect. | 2022-11-25T11:51:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jerome Adams and his wife, Lacey, fight cancer and the “Trump Effect” - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/11/25/former-surgeon-general-faces-his-wifes-cancer-trump-effect/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/11/25/former-surgeon-general-faces-his-wifes-cancer-trump-effect/ |
Yvan, Paris, France. “The Blindest Man.” (Emily Graham)
A couple of years ago, I played the lottery every week. I’m human and fell prey to the false hope that thoughts of winning conjured in my mind. And I’m hardly alone.
Powerball tickets sell in over 40 U.S. states, and in Michigan on Halloween, lottery players were buying 160,000 tickets an hour. The promise of wealth, with all the fantasies that entails, is a very, very strong drug.
Photographer Emily Graham’s new book, “The Blindest Man” (Void, 2022), taps into a similar vein. But instead of lottery hopefuls, Graham’s book follows people searching for an elusive and legendary treasure, the “Chouette d’Or,” or Golden Owl, located somewhere in France.
The Golden Owl is a sculpture that was buried by an author who then released a book containing eleven clues to where it is hidden. Some 30 years later, the sculpture remains to be found.
Graham spent three years following people looking for the treasure. Like a person buying a lottery ticket hoping to win, these people probably have visions of grandeur dancing through their heads, thinking about being the one who finally finds the Golden Owl.
The possibility of finding a treasure and being thrust into life-changing circumstances is a heavy, magnetic draw for just about all of us. Who wouldn’t love to come into a windfall of cash that could help them pay off bills, retire, and gain a speck of freedom in a sometimes claustrophobically constraining life?
Here’s more about the book from the publisher:
“The clues as to the whereabouts of the Chouette d’Or comprise of text and paintings and have [led] a large number of searchers across the landscape of France. The game was designed to last two or maybe three years and searching for the treasure became a common pastime in France. The author — who was originally anonymous — is now dead, and only the truly committed continue to search against a tide of rumour, misinformation and red-herrings clouding their investigations. Scientists, doctors, retirees, and artists all continue with elaborate calculations and theories as to the location of the cache. Each have their own ‘zone’ in which they scan the landscape, drawing conclusions from snapped branches, the contours of maps, and shadows crossing the land. Some are inspired to continue for challenge of code breaking, others for philosophical reflection, an adventure or a way of experiencing and seeing, a lens through which to look.”
Graham’s photos, and collected ephemera, thrust us into people’s quixotic attempts to find the treasure. There are equal parts yearning, mystery and even beauty in the images. Sometimes the images have a muted palette. But that never takes away from the magnetic power of the work to show people engaging in an act of faith, even if that eventually turns into a fool’s errand. Come to think of it, that’s a pretty good description of life — following the cryptic messages life sends us on our daily journey toward whatever it is we are trying to find.
You can find out more about the book, and buy it, on the publisher’s website, here. | 2022-11-25T11:51:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Photos of French treasure hunters - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/2022/11/25/this-photographer-followed-people-looking-hidden-treasure-france/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/2022/11/25/this-photographer-followed-people-looking-hidden-treasure-france/ |
New Hampshire and Nevada battle over first place, as Michigan and Minnesota angle to replace Iowa in the Democratic presidential process
House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) at Capitol Hill in July. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
New Hampshire’s Republican governor considers Nevada’s bid to become the first-in-the-nation presidential primary state a joke. Nevada’s top Democratic operative is warning against a big state like Michigan jumping to the front of the line. And South Carolina kingmaker James E. Clyburn (D) has signaled support for replacing Iowa.
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) is all but certain Democrats are coming for his state’s first-in-the-nation primary, and he says there is zero chance they will succeed. New Hampshire state law requires its secretary of state to set the primary date seven days before any other, and Sununu says that is what is going to happen no matter what Biden wants, potentially forcing Democratic candidates to choose between ignoring the state and facing punishment from their party.
“Nevada wants to go first? Can we all have a good laugh at that? They’re still counting fricking votes,” Sununu said in an interview one week after the midterm elections. “This isn’t something — ‘I get it because I want it,’ like a petulant child. You have to earn it with high voter turnout, transparency, results, quick access to winners and when you need to do a recount — we did four recounts yesterday — boom, done.”
He warned that if Democrats blackball the state’s primary, New Hampshire voters will remember in the general election, potentially putting at risk the state’s four electoral votes, which Biden won in 2020. “I think Democrats are doing themselves a horrible disservice by even trying to, you know, insinuate that we don’t do it right,” he said.
“I don’t think the DNC should take their advice on this from a Republican governor who wants to run for president against Joe Biden,” Lambe said, before turning her words against New Hampshire’s bid to go first. “They have some of the worst, most restrictive voting laws in the country. They have no early voting, no vote by mail and they have made it a lot harder for college students to vote.”
Democrats in both states won trifecta control of the governor and the state legislatures during the midterm elections — even as Nevada lost its Democratic governor. That will allow state Democratic leaders to set dates for their states if the party chooses to move them up — either by crafting separate dates for Democrats and Republicans or by forcing Republicans to violate their party’s own primary schedule, which leaves unchanged the 2016 order of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.
“Both states clearly have a path now to get this done,” Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party chairman Ken Martin said. “We are going to have a spirited discussion over the next couple of weeks.”
“Michigan is a purple state for Republicans and Democrats and we need states in that early window that reflect the diversity of our country and that will begin to build the infrastructure for our general election,” said Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.).
Some South Carolina Democrats are concerned about Michigan — which was awarded 125 pledged delegates in 2020, more than New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina combined — entering the early window, fearing the big delegate haul will force candidates to spend most of their time campaigning there.
“We have always put in the pre-window calendar smaller states and we’ve done that for good reasons,” said Carol Fowler, a member of the Rules and Bylaws Committee from South Carolina. “If Michigan had been in an early state, I’m not sure President Carter would have ever been president. I think Barack Obama benefited from having small states up front. I think it’s so helpful for a good strong candidate who is not well-funded yet.”
“I’m going to give every consideration to every state that has applied but I haven’t seen any reason yet to support a big state,” she said.
But Clyburn, the dean of South Carolina Democrats and a close ally of Biden, said he would not oppose Michigan’s bid to enter the pre-window as long as it does not overshadow South Carolina and other Southern states that vote on Super Tuesday.
“If it’s Nevada, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Michigan, that’s almost ideal to me,” he said, though he cautioned New Hampshire’s law could hinder efforts to put it behind Nevada. He said he was also open to New Hampshire and Nevada going on the same day, something Sununu has ruled out.
Clyburn said he has not discussed the calendar with Biden, but when asked if he plans to do so, he said, “I reserve comment.”
Iowa, pushed into a defensive spot, continues to petition for some role in the early process. Scott Brennan, a member of the Rules and Bylaws Committee from Iowa, said the process for reviewing the calendar had so far been “inartful and a little bit surprising,” given the success of Democratic presidential candidates winning the popular vote in every election since 2008 using the current system.
“At least with regard to Iowa, there is no other candidate from the Midwest pool that meets what has always been the requirement, which is a state that is accessible to candidates who don’t start the process with $1 billion,” he said. “The other Midwest candidates are too big, too unwieldy and way too expensive, and the members of the committee know it.”
Senior Democrats began meeting in public in March to discuss revamping the nominating calendar, after top advisers to Biden made clear their displeasure with the Iowa caucuses, a largely White state that shunned Biden’s campaign and struggled to count results in 2020. Democrats have said they were concerned about the amount of money and effort Democrats were spending in a state that has become less competitive in general elections.
The full DNC also passed rules this year that empowers the chair of the party to “take appropriate action” against both candidates and state parties who do not abide by the official primary calendar. That could include stripping state delegates from the Democratic convention and barring candidates whose names appear on the state ballots from access to nominating debates or party data.
Whether those punishments come into play will depend largely on the calendar that is set. A White House spokesman declined to comment for this article. But some comment, whether conveyed publicly or privately, is likely to come soon from Biden’s inner circle. | 2022-11-25T11:51:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Democrats battle over 2024 nomination calendar as Biden weighs options - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/25/democrats-primaries-states/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/25/democrats-primaries-states/ |
Mikaela Shiffrin is six World Cup victories away from Lindsey Vonn's women's record of 82 and 10 from Ingemar Stenmark's overall mark of 86. (Alessandro Trovati/AP)
The trek from the mountain in Levi, Finland — where Mikaela Shiffrin opened the World Cup Alpine season by winning the first two races, adding trophies to a pile that has no limits — consisted of a race back to the hotel with 45 minutes to pack, a drive to nearby Kittila for a flight to Helsinki for a stay at an airport hotel to sleep before a 4 a.m. alarm for a 6:30 a.m. flight to Frankfurt, Germany, to catch another plane to Boston, where she could gather her bags, rent a car and drive the three hours to Killington, Vt., arriving around 8 p.m.
“After a race, for me, I’m so wired, I can’t even sleep,” she said. “I’m just totally like, ‘Aaaayaah!’ Especially after the way this season started, it was so spectacular, I just couldn’t turn my brain off.”
Which assumes Shiffrin’s brain has an off switch at all. There’s scant evidence of that. Those two slalom victories in Finland were the 75th and 76th World Cup wins of a career that has few peers. Lindsey Vonn holds the women’s record with 82, and Ingemar Stenmark holds the human mark with 86. That’s the club. It is small.
When you start to consider the slalom at Killington has been contested five times, and Shiffrin has won all five, and do the math that she has three individual seasons in which she has won more than 12 races — well, the stuff of dreams starts to seem real.
“The way I used to think about it is that if I got to a certain point in my career with enough wins, I would actually finally start to feel confident that I am a winner and I deserve to be there and the success has come, I’m there,” Shiffrin said this week in a phone conversation from Killington. “I’m finally there. I’m at the destination.
“And I realize now that it’s never going to feel that way. And every single morning when I wake up, the first thing I’m going to think is: What do I have to do today to earn that again?”
“Which is fine,” she continued. “That’s not a bad feeling. In some ways, I think it’s almost a healthier way to live, not dwelling on things that have gone right in the past, just trying to continue to work on your dreams — wherever they take you.”
Killington — a giant slalom Saturday, a slalom Sunday — is the only U.S. stop on the women’s World Cup schedule. Shiffrin loves those events, just two hours from where she had her formative training, at Vermont’s Burke Mountain Academy. “It’s such a gift, such a kind atmosphere, a kind crowd,” she said.
But it is also very much a business trip. She is there to work, and when some on the women’s circuit move on to speed races in Lake Louise, Canada, the following week, she will head back to Europe to concentrate on training for the technical events, giant slalom and slalom, in which she has posted 63 of her 76 World Cup victories.
In talking to Shiffrin over the years, beginning when she was 17 and bursting onto the international scene leading up to her first Olympics in 2014 in Sochi, Russia, I’ve often wondered whether her nervousness before races or her unrelenting quest for perfection — she is a training and video junkie — have overwhelmed the joy she derives from winning. Now that she’s 27 and somehow closer to the end of her career than the beginning, I realize I’ve been thinking of it backward.
Take some training sessions in Levi in the weeks before the races there. Rather than return to Copper Mountain in Colorado, where many American racers were training for speed, the U.S. technical racers stayed in Europe and trained in Finland — with some of the best Europeans. There, American teammate Paula Moltzan was laying down blazing run after blazing run.
“I would be like, ‘What do I have to do to try catch up to her?’ ” Shiffrin said. “And then maybe I’d get neck and neck or I’d get just a little bit faster — and then she would put down a faster time.” And her voice picks up with emotion here. “Those are the days that are pret-ty fun. That’s amazing to have in a training environment like that.”
We see the results and count the victories and figure out what’s possible and what would be legendary. For Shiffrin, there’s more joy in what we don’t see.
“It’s more like I’m ski racing for the training, and how much fun it is to train when I’m skiing well, vs. the racing,” Shiffrin said. “The racing part is kind of the thing that makes me question even if I want to do this, and the training is the thing that keeps me coming back.”
After the sudden and tragic death of her father, Jeff, early in 2020 and then the pandemic and all the havoc it wrought, coming back wasn’t always a guarantee. A Beijing Olympics in which she not only didn’t medal but also didn’t finish the slalom, giant slalom or Alpine combined could have pushed her further to the brink. Retirement — even at 27, with historic marks just ahead — is always somewhere on the front of the stove, slowly simmering.
“I’m glad that I have stuck with it to this point, but it’s definitely still something that’s always kind of crossing my mind,” Shiffrin said. “When is the moment going to come that I decide the work is not worth the reward anymore? And I don’t feel that so far mostly because the work — I actually really enjoy doing the work.”
From March: Mikaela Shiffrin, 0-for-the-Olympics, got right back up — and won another world title
In her case, the work almost invariably yields results. The results are pushing limits only the sport’s legends have reached. But while the marks of Vonn and Stenmark are certainly within her field of vision, it doesn’t make them Shiffrin’s main motivation.
“I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a factor at all, that I never thought about it,” Shiffrin said. “But it’s not the driving force.
“Lindsey, she earned the entire world of ski racing’s respect. Throughout her entire career, so much of what she did was so groundbreaking. So whatever I do, it doesn’t change anything that happened in her career. I would be so proud to hold that record. But it’s not the thing that makes me feel any kind of gratification when I look back on my career.”
She can look back on her career and realize she has already accomplished more than she could have hoped. The rest of us can look ahead and note the landmarks on the horizon. The joy for the crowd at Killington would be reveling in another Shiffrin victory. The joy for Shiffrin would be the improvement in training runs in the week leading up. Both can exist in the same space. They all lead to a place — with accomplishments bordering on unprecedented — that makes it hard to turn the brain off. | 2022-11-25T11:51:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mikaela Shiffrin closing in on Lindsey Vonn's World Cup record - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/11/25/mikaela-shiffrin-lindsey-vonn-world-cup-record/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/11/25/mikaela-shiffrin-lindsey-vonn-world-cup-record/ |
Friday briefing: Blackouts in Ukraine; China’s coronavirus outbreak; Black Friday guide; how to watch U.S. vs. England; and more
Russian strikes have knocked out water and power in Ukraine.
The details: About two-thirds of Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, is without heat and about 50% of homes don’t have electricity, as of early today. Fifteen regions are having water supply problems.
Why it matters: Temperatures are dipping below freezing in parts of the country, and millions are expected to leave their homes in search of warmth and safety.
China is fighting one of its biggest coronavirus outbreaks of the pandemic.
What we know: A record 31,656 infections were reported yesterday. Major cities including Beijing and Guangzhou have ordered residents in some areas to stay home.
Why is this happening? China’s strict “zero covid” strategy means most of its 1.4 billion people have never been exposed to the virus, leaving them with no natural immunity.
Elon Musk said he plans to bring back all banned Twitter accounts.
When? The reversal would begin next week, according to the platform’s new owner. Users are banned for things like violent threats, harassment, abuse and misinformation.
Why it matters: This would be “existentially dangerous,” one expert said, and help bring on a “free-for-all hellscape.” But it’s not clear whether Musk has the practical capacity to do this right now.
It’s Black Friday, but today will look different than it used to.
Why? Stores started having sales much earlier this year. That’s partially because they wanted to avoid last year’s supply chain issues and now have way too much stuff to sell.
So, what can you expect? Discounts on a wider range of products — but watch out for return fees and high shipping costs. We have a full guide here.
Florida is still struggling to clean up from Hurricane Ian.
Why? The deadly storm, which hit nearly two months ago, left behind enough debris to fill the Empire State Building 22 times.
Where will it go? Temporary dump sites, then larger landfills. But it will probably take months, cost billions of dollars and could have environmental impacts.
The bigger picture: Costly disasters like this one will probably become more common as climate change accelerates.
The U.S. men’s soccer team plays England at the World Cup today.
What to know: A win against the Group B favorite would be a huge step for the U.S. toward the knockout stage. A tie or loss would probably set up a must-win game against Iran on Tuesday.
How to watch: The game kicks off at 2 p.m. Eastern time and will be live on Fox Sports and streaming services. Follow our coverage of today’s matches here.
A British Paralympian will become the first astronaut with a disability.
What to know: The European Space Agency has chosen John McFall, a 41-year-old doctor and medal-winning sprinter, to join its next class of astronauts, it announced this week.
Why this matters: The ESA hopes this is the first step toward sending a “parastronaut” to space.
And now … if you’re struggling to find that perfect present: Check our gift guide. Plus, here’s what to do with those Thanksgiving leftovers. | 2022-11-25T11:52:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The 7 things you need to know for Friday, November 25 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/11/25/what-to-know-for-november-25/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/11/25/what-to-know-for-november-25/ |
Palestinians rally on Sept. 13 to demand natural gas rights in the Mediterranean off the Gaza Strip and the construction of a sea route that will connect the outside world. (Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
GAZA CITY — Europe’s race to secure alternatives to Russian energy supplies is reviving a long-forsaken Palestinian initiative to extract natural gas off the coast of the blockaded Gaze Strip.
Palestinian officials said that rapidly advancing negotiations with Egyptian investors could bring a rare glimmer of hope to Palestinians, after plans to develop Gaza’s gas — along with plans for the creation of a Palestinian state — were sidelined by more than two decades of grinding conflict with Israel and equally intractable Palestinian political divisions.
The $1.4 billion project, which will be finalized by February 2023 and may launch gas production by March 2024, will be a high-stakes collaboration among the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Israel and Hamas, the Islamist militant group that rules the Gaza Strip. Hamas and Israel have engaged in four devastating wars in the Gaza Strip. Both will need to be, at least tacitly, on board.
Israel says historic agreement made with Lebanon on maritime borders
The multilateral partnership will also, industry and political analysts say, throw a lifeline to the cash-strapped and deeply unpopular Palestinian Authority, which is based in the West Bank and has for the past 15 years held no authority in the Gaza Strip.
The Ramallah-based authority sees Gaza’s gas reserves as a “pillar to improving its fiscal plans,” said Zafer Milhem, chairman of the Palestinian Energy and Natural Resources Authority.
“We’ve been waiting for this development and the prosperity that comes with it,” he said. “I hope this will be a step toward the future.”
The Egyptian-led project “will contribute to strengthening Palestinian national independence,” said a February 2021 memorandum of understanding between the Palestine Investment Fund (PIF) and Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Co. (EGAS), an Egyptian consortium of investors.
Since first discovered by British Gas in 1999, Gaza’s natural gas — estimated to be 1 trillion cubic feet — has been mired in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and locked below sea.
In 2000, a day after Palestinian nationalist leader Yasser Arafat hailed the gas discovery as a “a gift from God,” the second intifada erupted. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon halted the project, warning that the profits could be channeled to Hamas and other militant groups.
But the booming global energy market and increased regional energy collaborations have spurred progress, and they could finally open up one of the Palestinians’ few, potentially very lucrative natural resources, said Palestinians involved in the negotiations.
In October, Egyptian Petroleum Minister Tarek el-Molla announced a framework agreement between the Egyptian and Palestinian sides, with close oversight and unofficial consent by Israel. The Palestinian Authority ratified the deal that month and says that it is waiting for Israel, which is planning to swear in its next government, to send an official “letter of comfort” to officially green=light the project.
Israel is hoping its gas will finally make it part of the Middle East
Israel’s new prime minister-elect, Benjamin Netanyahu in 2011 called the proposal “good for stability, good for prosperity and good for peace.” And Palestinian negotiators said they have received positive signs from Israelis when discussing the issue in recent years at the East Mediterranean Gas Forum, in which Israel and Palestine are both member states.
The offices of Netanyahu and Bezalel Smotrich, the head of the far-right Religious Zionist party that is expected to be the second-largest in the incoming Israeli government, did not respond to requests for comment on the current Gaza project.
Ghassan Khatib, former Palestinian minister of planning, said that Palestinians don’t yet know whether Israel, which is preparing for its most right-wing government in its history, will put up opposition.
“Israel has changed,” he said. “It is gradually less interested in making the Palestinian Authority viable, because it’s no longer convinced of the idea of the two states,” in which an independent Palestine would exist alongside Israel.
But even if the whole enterprise has an Israeli sign-off, the Palestinian Authority will still face its bitter rival, Hamas, which has demanded a share of the projected windfall.
“We will not allow gas to be monopolized and Gaza not to fully benefit from it,” Ghazi Hamad, a member of the Hamas political bureau, told The Washington Post.
In a ceremony in September, Hamas hung banners near the Gaza harbor saying, “our gas, our right.”
The still undisclosed deal grants a 27.5 percent stake to PIF and another 27.5 percent to the Athens-based and Palestinian-owned Consolidated Contractors Company (CCC). The remaining 45 percent will go to the Egyptian consortium, EGAS. According to the deal, the gas will be developed in Palestinian waters, then transferred via a 40-mile undersea pipeline to Egyptian processing facilities, where it will merge with the Egyptian energy grid and then be sold, as an export, to Palestinians and others.
“It needs to be commercial, between the developing companies and the buyers, not linked to politics,” said a Palestinian official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the deal is not yet finalized.
The prospects come as Europe scours the Earth in search of alternatives to Russian gas and oil, especially in the eastern Mediterranean.
Gaza’s offshore gas fields, known as Gaza Marine 1 and 2, are located 20 nautical miles off the coast. The estimated trillion cubic feet reserve is a drop in the bucket when compared with Europe’s annual 20 trillion cubic feet usage, and it is also vastly smaller than Israeli gas fields.
But Europe’s future energy strategy will be intentionally patchwork and diversified, and Milhem, the Palestinian Energy Authority chairman, said that outside pressure has been a significant motivator.
“The crisis in the Ukraine, coming at the same time as increased activities in the eastern Mediterranean, have helped move the gas deal forward,” he said.
Mkhaimar Abusada, an associate political science professor at al-Azhar University-Gaza, said that Palestinian officials have also taken note of Israel’s agreement in October with Lebanon, a country with which it is technically still at war.
As part of his reelection campaign, Netanyahu called the U.S.-brokered deal, which will enable Israel and Lebanon to exploit potentially rich offshore gas deposits, a “historic surrender" to Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed group militant group based in Lebanon.
But Abusada said that Palestinians were heartened to see the deal, which initially spurred opposition from Hezbollah, ultimately went through.
“The Palestinians feel there’s a regional and international interest in developing this Gaza gas field,” he said.
Gas would bring Palestinians closer to energy independence from Israel, its largest supplier. The West Bank imports 750 megawatts of its total 850-megawatt consumption. Gaza relies on 120 megawatts of Israeli electricity as well as Israeli fuel for its power plant, which produces around 45 megawatts.
In August, during the most recent flare-up with Israel, Gaza’s regular eight-hour blackouts extended to 12 hours, and hospitals operated on generators as medical staff tended to the wounded.
Residents here fear that either Israel or the Palestinian Authority — or, mostly likely, both — will get in the way of completing the gas project.
“There are many resources in Gaza — antiquities, gas, manpower — but no one is using these resources properly,” said Mahmoud Sayad, a 44-year-old father of seven from Al-Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City.
“The Palestinian Authority does not care about Gaza; for them, the gas field is a source of money,” said Ramy Susi, a 35-year-old construction worker from the same camp, who said that he expects the profits to be squandered by corrupt politicians. “How can this gas make a difference in my life?”
Rubin reported from Ramallah, West Bank. | 2022-11-25T12:33:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Gaza gas deal could make improbable partners out of Israel and Hamas - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/25/gaza-gas-israel-partnership-hamas-egypt/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/25/gaza-gas-israel-partnership-hamas-egypt/ |
Native Americans back proposed Chesapeake Bay National Recreation Area
Native Americans in the Chesapeake Bay’s watershed in Maryland and Virginia hope a proposal to make the bay part of the national park system will also elevate their story. This 17th century map shows the bay. (Library of Congress)
A proposal to make the Chesapeake Bay part of the national park system could benefit thousands of Native Americans whose ancestral homes on the watershed and Indigenous cultures were all but annihilated after the arrival of Europeans, several Indian leaders said.
Under draft legislation proposed by Sen. Chris Van Hollen and Rep. John Sarbanes, Democrats from Maryland, the bay would become a national recreation area, raising its profile as one of America’s most significant natural resources and opening the way to greater federal support for tourism and protection of its waters from pollution. The proposed legislation would give the National Park Service greater authority to knit together and manage sites around the bay to tell its story.
Chesapeake Bay could become national recreation area
Native Americans in the bay’s watershed in Maryland and Virginia hope the proposal will also elevate their story, too. Theirs is a narrative stretching back at least 12,000 years, marked by endurance, adaptation and survival, along with an overarching belief in the sanctity of the natural world. To many Indigenous peoples, the bay and its tributaries represented a source of life that deserves national recognition.
“My opinion is it would be fantastic, and it absolutely should happen,” said Anne Richardson, chief of the Rappahannock Tribe, whose members number about 300 and whose tribal service area extends over four Virginia counties. The bay “played a role of sustenance for us. ... Our religious practices primarily were on the water and our ceremonies were all tied to water because water is life for everybody, and it was revered by the people. So it’s seen as a spiritual being by the people.”
The Chesapeake Bay — named for a tribe centered around the present-day Hampton Roads area in Virginia that was wiped out by intertribal rivalry on the eve of European contact — offered the first permanent foothold for English colonists, whose settlements gave birth to American democracy in the early 17th century. Yet, those same European colonists also brought African slavery and Native American genocide.
Making the bay into national park land could draw attention to Indian history and culture at a time when some tribes, including the Rappahannock and the Chickahominy, have repatriated large tracts of ancestral land that had been wrested from them hundreds of years ago. And it comes as scholars seek to broaden knowledge of Indigenous peoples in the region beyond some fairly well-documented areas.
“There’s a whole story of Indigenous peoples and their history in the Chesapeake Bay region that’s untapped,” said Julia A. King, an archaeologist with St. Mary’s College of Maryland who has done extensive work on Native American tribes in the D.C. region. “So much focus has been done in Williamsburg, Jamestown and Annapolis, and we need to shed more light on places where the Indigenous stories haven’t been told as much,” she said. “They’ve adapted to a changing environment for thousands of years, and there’s an incredible history here.”
The process could be as simple as disseminating Indian history and culture through exhibits and publications in visitor centers operated by the National Park Service, Richardson said. Or it could be as elaborate as finding federal money for initiatives that tie together Native American sites.
In 2007, the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, which is now Virginia Humanities, and the Virginia Council on Indians produced an 88-page guide to the Virginian Indian Heritage Trail that included Indian reservations, cultural sites and history. The guide, edited by the late Karenne Wood, a Monacan who helped push for federal tribal recognition, could be updated and expanded as part of the national recreation area, Richardson said. Highlighting Indian culture and its connection to the bay might encourage others to treat the Earth with the same care and respect as Indians strived to do, she said.
“We were designated by the Creator as stewards of these things,” Richardson said.
Powhatan and his people: The 15,000 American Indians shoved aside by Jamestown’s settlers
Stephen R. Adkins, chief of the Chickahominy Tribe in Virginia, said he was pleased the proposed national recreation area would include a 19-member advisory commission with two Indigenous representatives — one each from Maryland and Virginia — chosen from a state- or federally recognized tribe traditionally associated with the bay.
“The tribes have not had a say in what goes on along the Chesapeake Bay unless they reach out to a senator or congressman to see what’s going on,” Adkins said. “So to be invited to the table — to me that sends a strong signal that the voices of the native communities are valued and need to be heard.”
At the same time, some Native Americans are wary, given the federal government’s past treatment of Indigenous peoples. In its creation of national parks — Mount Rushmore comes to mind, Adkins said — the federal government often bulldozed Native culture and sacred sites. In others, the National Park Service has sometimes ignored, underplayed or misinterpreted the histories of Native Americans in its signage and displays in the park system.
“We find that a lot of our story has been glossed over or just hadn’t been included,” Adkins said.
Unearthing Native American history on an island in Southern Maryland
The word “Chesapeake” is thought to have meant “great water” or might have been the name of a village near its mouth (not “Great Shellfish Bay,” a popular misconception).
In April 1607, when Captain John Smith and other Jamestown settlers sailed into the bay and landed in Tsenacomoco — an Algonquian word meaning “densely inhabited place” or “our place” — located in Virginia’s Tidewater region, they found thriving towns and seasonal fishing camps.
Powhatan — the name taken by the paramount chief in the Tidewater area — oversaw a complex alliance whose population included an estimated 15,000 people in as many as 32 chiefdoms stretching between the James and Potomac river basins and as far inland as ships could travel.
Seeds of empire and vice found at Jamestown
Fields had been cleared and planted with corn, squash and beans. Crabs, mussels and oysters were hauled out from the bay’s waters, and shad ran in such abundance that Smith tried scooping them from the water with a frying pan, as he later recounted in a history of the colony. Indians bathed in the watershed’s rivers and streams, a practice thought unhealthy by English colonists.
Smith also found towns bustling with activity: dugout canoes — hollowed out using fire and shellfish tools — plied the waters between landings crowded with messengers, traders or, in Powhatan’s case, tribes delivering tribute, such as pearls, copper and deerskins.
Within decades after the Europeans’ arrival, however, disease and warfare decimated the Indian populations. Their lands were taken, their culture and language suppressed. Oppression lasted well into the 20th century under Virginia’s state-approved codes of racist segregation and White supremacy.
Four hundred years after Wampanoag Indians helped the Pilgrims, some still have regrets
But Jamestown’s 400th anniversary marked a turning point for Virginia’s tribes in their efforts to seek redress for the wrongs perpetrated against their ancestors and to secure official federal recognition. There are now 11 state-recognized and seven federally recognized tribes in Virginia; Maryland has three state-recognized tribes (although one has been disputed) and none that are federally recognized.
Mary Phillips, a Native American advocate who lives in Northeast Washington and is from the Pueblo of Laguna tribe of New Mexico and the Omaha tribe of Nebraska, said incorporating the bay into the national park system will not only highlight past tribal history, but showcase the present.
“These tribes were nearly decimated from newcomers,” Phillips said, “and the fact that they still exist is extremely important, and people need to know and respect who these people are.” | 2022-11-25T13:21:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Native Americans embrace proposal to create Chesapeake Bay National Recreation Area - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/25/chesapeake-indians-national-park/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/25/chesapeake-indians-national-park/ |
What to watch with your kids: ‘Strange World’ and more
A scene from “Strange World.” (Walt Disney Animation Studios)
Sci-fi adventure/tender family drama has scares, peril.
“Strange World” is an exciting animated sci-fi adventure that follows the Clades, a family of famous explorers who must put aside their differences to hunt down whatever is killing their town’s power-providing plants. Inspired by retro sci-fi films, the movie features several life-or-death pursuits and close calls, including the death of a minor character and the use of a flamethrower and other weapons to defeat foes. The story has positive messages about the environment, diplomatic relations and honest communication between parents and children, whether they’re teens or adults. Teenage Ethan Clade (voiced by Jaboukie Young-White) is openly gay (although the word is never said) and has a crush on another boy. He’s also biracial, but his identity isn’t the movie’s focus. It’s just part of the general inclusivity of the cast, which has representation across categories of race, ethnicity and disability (the family has a happy tripod dog). Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal and Gabrielle Union co-star. (112 minutes)
Sentimental Spielberg origin story; bullying, pot, swearing.
“The Fabelmans” is the sentimental, not-too-dark, at-times-funny origin story of filmmaker Steven Spielberg. While the story follows the development of a great talent, it’s really about the relationship that Spielberg stand-in Sam (Gabriel LaBelle) has with his parents (Paul Dano and Michelle Williams), who surround him with love, support and attention. The movie positively portrays Jewish American experiences and traditions, including religious holidays, music, speaking Yiddish and mourning through Shiva. Also reflected is the shock of the antisemitic bullying and hate speech (“k---”) that Sam encounters when his family moves to an affluent Christian community. The movie has a recurring theme of people trying to find control through life’s twists and turns (in one scene, a mother drives her children toward a tornado, ordering them to chant, “Everything happens for a reason”). There’s some romance between teens, adults and a married couple, and the long-term consequences of infidelity are depicted. Language includes “a--hole,” “s---” and a single use of “f---.” Teens share a joint, adults drink and a powerful character smokes a cigar. (151 minutes)
Disenchanted (PG)
Charming sequel will please fans; mild scares, romance.
“Disenchanted” is the mostly live-action sequel to 2007’s hit “Enchanted.” Stars Amy Adams and Patrick Dempsey reprise their roles, and Maya Rudolph joins the cast. Potentially upsetting or scary scenes involve characters turning evil and treating one another cruelly. Lives, including those of kids, are threatened by dragons, giants, sleeping potions, falls, fires, fights, spells, curses and the destruction of the world. Adults kiss and drink wine. Though characters treat each other cruelly, they do so under spells, and there seems to be a message that the real world can actually be just as good as in fairy tales. (119 minutes)
Wednesday (TV-14)
Dead bodies, spooky imagery in cliched, darkly comic drama.
“Wednesday” is an edgy, darkly comic drama series centered on Wednesday Addams, a character who’s appeared in different Addams Family movies and TV shows. Here, Wednesday (Jenna Ortega) is involved in a mystery with real deaths — in one instance, there are images of a victim’s severed and bloody head, limbs and torso scattered in the woods. She’s also dangerous to those around her: For example, she unleashes bags full of piranhas in a school swimming pool. But the show definitely still has comic touches, and Wednesday herself is sometimes sympathetic, particularly when she’s protecting others from bullying behavior. Violence is the biggest issue in the series, with dead bodies, supernatural powers and battles, injuries, sudden deaths, and frequent mortal danger. Scary imagery includes shadowy woods, black candles burning and characters with unusual physical characteristics (vampires, werewolves, etc.). Characters flirt and kiss, and a long-married couple kisses passionately while making sexual noises. Language includes “s---,” “hell” and “goddamn,” as well as insulting language like “freak.” Storylines dealing with school dramas feel cliched, with thinly drawn characters and “in” groups and “out” groups that play into stereotypes. (Eight 60-minute episodes) | 2022-11-25T13:22:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Common Sense Media’s weekly recommendations. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/11/25/common-sense-media-november-25/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/11/25/common-sense-media-november-25/ |
For evidence that GOP ‘angertainment’ isn’t working, take a look at Colorado
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) attends a roundtable about the pandemic at the Heritage Foundation in Washington on Nov. 10. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
DENVER — Colorado is an odd state. This month the state’s voters approved a ballot measure to legalize the consumption of hallucinogenic mushrooms, 54 percent to 46 percent, but the same voters just barely passed a ballot measure allowing supermarkets to sell both beer and wine.
But come the 2024 election, you’ll probably need magic 'shrooms or a Coors ’n’ cabernet cocktail to imagine that the state is going to be similarly unpredictable if Republicans stay on their current track.
Heading into Election Day, Colorado’s problems looked like those of a lot of other states: Inflation is high, crime is increasing and President Biden’s approval rating in Colorado was just 40 percent, according to Civiqs polling. Yet voters reelected the state’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis, by 19 percentage points, reelected its U.S. Democratic senator, Michael Bennet, by 14 percentage points with easy victories for many down-ballot Democrats and Democratic majorities in the legislature now made lopsided.
Redistricting tweaked the district lines, but all the state’s incumbent members of the U.S. House were reelected. The surprise of the year was Republican controversy connoisseur Lauren Boebert just barely winning reelection in a heavily Republican district by 554 votes, as of this writing. Her Democratic rival, Adam Frisch, wildly overperformed expectations by asking voters whether they were tired of Boebert’s brand of “angertainment.”
It wasn’t that long ago in Colorado — 2014 — that Republican Cory Gardner won a hard-fought Senate race and Republicans won the attorney general, secretary of state and treasurer’s race. Colorado was purplish then, a place where Republicans could win if the political winds were right.
Yes, the GOP underperformed in a lot of places this year, but the limits of “angertainment” were perhaps most vividly illustrated here, a rough lesson in the diminishing returns from an approach to governing that mistakes “owning the libs” for getting things done for constituents.
The razor-thin near-rejection of Boebert — from a district that Donald Trump won by eight percentage points in 2020, covering much of the western half of the state — demonstrates that Trump-esque style of turning the performative outrage up to 11 hit a hard ceiling among the electorate, repelling not just Democrats and independents but apparently a thin but decisive slice of Republicans. It likely isn’t a coincidence that the last good year for Colorado Republicans was the one before Trump announced his 2016 presidential campaign.
If you’re a Republican who wants to run for office — in Colorado or anywhere else — there are two ways to build support. You can get to know local party leaders, appear at every public event possible, be active in your community, accumulate a record of accomplishments. But that’s difficult and takes time.
A much quicker and easier way to stand out is to be the most outspoken, controversial and arguably craziest candidate — and almost all the intersecting media environments of the mainstream media, conservative media and social media gravitate to stories with the theme of, “You won’t believe what this GOP candidate is saying or doing!”
In Republican circles, there’s probably no media entity more widely consumed than Fox News. In a crowded or even not-so-crowded GOP field, an appearance on Fox News, at almost any hour, is a tremendous way to build name ID and attract potential donors and supporters. And in the Trump era, appearing on Fox News was the best way to get on the president’s radar screen and garner one of those all-important Trump endorsements. “Angertainment”? Trump loved it.
The problem is, on a typical night, Tucker Carlson’s prime-time program attracts 3 million viewers, an impressive total for prime-time cable news. But that’s a small, small slice of the overall electorate, and it’s a niche audience.
More than 118 million Americans voted in the 2018 midterm elections, and when all the votes are counted for this year, the final tally is likely to be about the same. The electorate is made up of tens of millions of people who are never going to watch Fox News — not necessarily out of any ideological animus, but because they don’t find it fun to watch people talk about politics with a lot of red graphics and chyrons whooshing around the screen before they go to bed. This doesn’t mean they’ll never vote for Republicans; it means that Fox News isn’t an effective way to reach them or sufficient to make a case for voting for a candidate.
During the Trump presidency and into 2022, a lot of Republican candidates believed that what appeals to the Fox News audience would appeal to enough people in the entire electorate, districtwide or statewide, to win a race. The midterms showed how mistaken that is; Boebert hanging on to her seat by her fingernails suggests that the outlandish, in-your-face, larger-than-life social-media viral personas that attract Trump and perhaps the network’s bookers is just barely enough to get you to 50 percent in a Republican-leaning district.
Colorado Republicans need some new ideas and new approaches for 2024. They’re in a mountain of trouble. | 2022-11-25T13:22:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Colorado provides evidence that GOP ‘angertainment’ isn’t working - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/25/boebert-colorado-republicans-limits-of-outrage-politics/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/25/boebert-colorado-republicans-limits-of-outrage-politics/ |
Too many German voters are gravitating to the political extremes
Sahra Wagenknecht, a leader in the Die Linke party, at a September 2018 news conference in Berlin. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
The curious case of Sahra Wagenknecht can tell you a lot about the current state of German politics. Polls rank her as the country’s most popular female leader. An intensely charismatic woman, the 53-year-old Wagenknecht grew up in East Germany. She joined the ruling socialist party in 1989 and has served as a member of parliament for its successor organization, known today as Die Linke (“The Left”), since 2007. While her party is floundering, earning around 5 percent in the polls, Wagenknecht’s personal approval rating has soared.
She’s built her success by opposing covid-19 lockdowns, “woke” culture and support for Ukraine — all policies identified with a government seen as increasingly out of touch with ordinary people suffering from rising inflation and the economic effects of the pandemic. The fact that she has been “open about taking Russia’s side in the war,” as one commentator puts it, doesn’t seem to have dimmed her appeal. Her stance also helps to explain why she’s finding supporters not only on the far left of the political spectrum — but also among members of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), the resurgent right-wing populists.
With trust in the government at a record low, people are looking to radical politics for solutions. On a recent evening in the eastern city of Dresden, I looked on as hundreds of angry people joined in an anti-government demonstration organized by a far-right group. “Those at the top can’t tell us what to do!” jeered one of the leaders into his microphone to widespread cheers. “End the war now and buy cheap gas in Russia,” shouts another. Handmade placards read “Vaccine boycott now!” and “Down with the Greens!”
The demonstrators didn’t appear to be violent extremists. There wasn’t a shaved head in sight and no one was wearing black boots. Many of the participants were middle-aged. Explicitly peaceful, they claimed to be the heirs of the mass demonstrations that helped bring down the Berlin Wall in 1989. In fact, the number of those taking to the streets remains relatively small. But the scale of the disaffection is serious. According to a recent survey, more than two-thirds of Germans don’t trust their government to do its job — an all-time low. Yet the politicians in Berlin show little concern about the trend.
No one regards the far left, which in theory stands to gain the most from the anger of the masses, as a political threat. Plagued by infighting, the Left holds only 5.3 percent of the seats in parliament.
Yet Wagenknecht’s rise is bucking the trend. In recent years she has criticized the liberals in her own ranks and elsewhere as the “lifestyle leftists,” allegedly more interested in using “gender language” than fighting for those on low wages.
Now, she’s thinking about starting her own political party. A poll by Spiegel magazine suggests that half of all voters in the former East Germany would consider voting for her — as well as a quarter of those in the former West. Remarkably, the survey also indicated that more than two-thirds of those currently voting for the far-right party Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) would give the former communist their vote. Her anti-establishment politics are extremely popular with the disgruntled on both ends of the political spectrum.
If Wagenknecht is an underestimated threat, the AfD doesn’t seem to be causing many sleepless nights in Berlin either. The mainstream parties feel safe in the knowledge that they have agreed not to form coalitions with the far right, which would complicate its efforts to form a government even if it had the votes. “The firewall must stand, and the door to the far right must remain shut,” insisted Green Party politician Emily Büning this month.
Yet the AfD is only two percentage points behind the ruling Social Democratic Party (SPD) of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who would only win a mere 18 percent of the vote according to the latest polling. That is making it increasingly hard to exclude the far-right populists, especially at the local level, where their vote share can be decisive. In the state of Thuringia, the AfD made a deal with the Christian Democratic Union, former chancellor Angela Merkel’s party, to pass legislation. In the Swabian constituency of Backnang, legislation proposed by the AfD passed with only one opposing vote. The party has become an enduring force in German politics, particularly in the former East, where polls suggest it is now the most popular party.
It is high time that the political mainstream in Germany took note of the scale of disaffection. Poll results and anger on the streets should ring alarm bells in Berlin. The advocates of moderate policies will only win the hearts and minds of the German people by fighting for their interests, not by taking them for granted.
Opinions about Europe
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Opinion|Liz Truss’s fall is a warning to populists everywhere | 2022-11-25T13:22:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Too many German voters are gravitating to the political extremes - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/25/germany-wagenknecht-afd-right-left-extremes/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/25/germany-wagenknecht-afd-right-left-extremes/ |
If Sharpton is a ‘Loudmouth,’ Trump is so much worse
Donald Trump and Rev. Al Sharpton speak at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for Sharpton's National Action Network Convention in New York in April 2002. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
When I first met the Rev. Al Sharpton in 1993 as a cub editorial writer at the New York Daily News, he had already earned a reputation as a rabble-rouser at the center of every racial controversy in the Big Apple.
But when I recently watched the new documentary “Loudmouth,” which focuses mostly on the early years of the activist preacher’s public life, I got a clearer understanding of that Sharpton — and of former president Donald Trump along the way.
By “that” Sharpton, I mean the bombastic version who preceded the more sophisticated one I have covered and known for the last 29 years. “That” Sharpton is the man who led Black marchers through the White streets of Howard Beach, Queens, in 1986 to protest the death of Michael Griffith at the hands of a White mob. He’s the man who did the same in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, in 1989, to protest the similar murder of Yusuf Hawkins. Each time, Sharpton and the protesters who joined him were met with the kind of racism once thought to occur only in the South.
“I marched 29 times, including the time I was stabbed [in Bensonhurst], and they never failed to come out and call us the n-word, Sharpton told me during an interview last week. “People literally went and bought watermelons so they could wave them in our face.”
Having grown up around New York, I can’t say I was surprised by the open racism back then. Still, seeing and hearing it in the film touched a present-day nerve. During our interview, Sharpton succinctly pinpointed why: “That’s Donald Trump’s New York.”
Sharpton is perfectly positioned to say so. He and Trump have known and sparred with one another for decades. Take a step back, and you can see how similar they are. Both were quintessential New York showmen who knew how to get and hold the spotlight in a city awash with performers like them. “We understood each other, which is why we could never trust each other,” Sharpton admitted.
Of course, the two men are very different in how they used the attention they gained. In “Loudmouth,” we see Sharpton use theatrics to bring attention to cases and issues ignored by the criminal justice system, media and public. We’ve long known that Trump’s theatrics have always been about pumping up his own image, especially at the expense of people of color.
Indeed, Trump’s followers loved him because, as one once said, “He is not afraid to say what we’re all thinking.” Like calling Mexicans “rapists” in 2015, nicknaming Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) “Pocahontas” for the first of many times in 2016, declaring there were “very fine people” among the white supremacists who marched on Charlottesville in 2017, complaining about immigrants from “s---hole countries” in 2018, demanding that three American-born congresswomen of color “go back” to their countries in 2019, and calling the coronavirus the “kung flu” in 2020. All the while, Trump was assuring us, “I am the least racist person there is anywhere in the world.”
Stop laughing.
Sharpton says the racism on display in “Loudmouth” is the key to understanding the racism displayed by Trump decades later. “He grew up watching Ed Koch and Rudy Giuliani use race to become mayor of New York. And he knew how to play to the basic instincts of White racism in New York,” Sharpton said. “He did nationally what Rudy did in New York.”
But it goes back farther than that. Remember, Trump grew up in Queens under the tutelage of his real estate magnate father, Fred Trump. In 1973, they were sued by the Justice Department for housing discrimination against African Americans. According to a New York Times story at the time, Trump Management Corporation was already more than 40 years old with 14,000 apartments in 39 buildings in areas of Brooklyn and Queens not too far from the neighborhoods that raged during Sharpton’s protests.
Trump’s problems with race is an old story for New York. But the vitriol in “Loudmouth” still hits differently, especially in a post-Trump-presidency America suffering from the ugliness he unleashed on our country.
Even more especially in a country facing another Trump run. Despite the fact that the Republican National Committee said it would stop helping cover Trump’s hefty legal bills if he declared a reelection campaign, the ex-president did just that earlier this month, in an announcement filled with his greatest mendacious hits. But don’t worry about Trump’s bottom line just yet: You can trust he wouldn’t have made this decision if he didn’t think it the better financial move.
“I said it before, I’ll say it again: If Donald Trump had been born Black, he’d have been Don King,” Sharpton said, invoking the legendary boxing promoter. “Showmanship to make money.”
Okay, now you can laugh. | 2022-11-25T13:22:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Al Sharpton documentary 'Loudmouth' gives a look into Trump, too - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/25/loudmouth-al-sharpton-trump/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/25/loudmouth-al-sharpton-trump/ |
Club Q supporters on Wednesday gather to mark last weekend's mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs. (David Zalubowski/AP)
Just as 20th-century global conflicts and new forms of mass communication created new types of on-the-scene war reportage, rising mass firearm murders in the 21st century and the immediacy of the internet have given rise to another journalistic genre. It, too, requires reporters to navigate scenes of violence and chaos, interview victims suffering from deep terror and trauma, and effectively document what they’ve witnessed in all its agony and horror.
You might call practitioners of this new genre “mass shooting correspondents.”
Some of these reporters have covered multiple mass shootings in their careers. Journalists are increasingly experienced at dealing with them — another measure of how routine these shootings have become in American life.
Just after a gunman killed six people at a Walmart in Chesapeake, Va., on Tuesday night, Michelle Wolf, a reporter for WAVY-TV News, got word over a police scanner of an active shooter. Wolf’s station had sent multiple crews to cover another shooting in Charlottesville only 10 days earlier.
In these situations, the terror of the moment must be balanced against the need to inform the public in the midst of a dangerous, fast-moving situation, Wolf said. “My job at that point is not to think about how I’m feeling,” she told me. “It’s to get information out there that’s important.”
Still, the horror of the situation got to Wolf. “Nothing ever prepares you for when it happens,” she said. “It hits you differently every single time.”
When it comes to covering these mini war zones, reporters on the home front are beginning to sound like veteran correspondents. After a man with an AR-15 killed five people in an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs last weekend, Ashley Michels, a reporter at a Denver TV station, offered some grimly revealing testimony.
“Unfortunately, I have covered mass shootings multiple times in my career,” Michels tweeted. She posted examples of vitriolic messages she received for covering that mass killing, adding, “This is the first time I can recall getting message after message from viewers like this.”
The vile, deranged hate directed at LGBTQ victims was new to Michels. The experience of covering a mass shooting was not.
This year alone has seen more than 600 mass shootings in the United States. Many reporters now have a deep working knowledge of how to cover them, and some have tried to grow and develop their craft along with the experience.
For instance, William Brangham, a producer and correspondent for PBS NewsHour who has covered multiple such shootings, has worked to become more sensitive to trauma felt by victims’ loved ones and people who were present during the carnage.
“These people are experiencing the worst day of their life,” Brangham told me. The complication, he noted, is “doing your job” in gathering information even as you’re “standing shoulder to shoulder with people who are sobbing and grieving.”
“It’s a very fine balance,” said Brangham, who recently helped produce a special report on gun violence in America. “You have to have all of your humanity.”
Another reporter who has covered numerous mass shootings and requested anonymity to talk candidly about her work describes a dark aspect of her evolution. When she covered the killing of nearly three dozen people at Virginia Tech in 2007, she interviewed college students looking for missing friends. She thought, “I bet they will find them.”
That changed by the time she covered the 2012 killing of a dozen people in a movie theater in Aurora, Colo. She recalls interviewing people searching for loved ones: “My brain was telling me they were probably not going to find their friend alive,” she says. “I still hate that I was right about that.”
Michael Schudson, a historian of journalism at Columbia University, notes that war correspondence as a calling really developed in the 20th century. The two world wars, followed by major conflicts in places such as Vietnam, intersected with the growth in mass media and TV elevated war correspondents into widely recognized cultural figures.
Mass shootings, or at least their immediate aftermath, are now widely covered on TV as well as social media. While shootings are obviously different from wars in all kinds of respects, and while reporters covering shootings don’t define themselves by this coverage as war correspondents do, the parallels are unmistakable.
“The experience of reporters coming upon those horrific scenes must be searing, in the same way it is for war correspondents,” Schudson told me, citing “the bodies on the floor, the crying, and the suffering.”
“There shouldn’t be a connection,” Schudson said. “But it seems to me that there is.”
After a gunman killed 19 children last spring at a school in Uvalde, Tex., Dylan Stableford, a senior editor at Yahoo News who has been involved with coverage of numerous mass shootings, unfortunately knew he and his team would be prepared.
“Sadly, we had people on my staff, myself included, who had covered plenty of school shootings,” Stableford told me. “Even though it was a crazy amount of kids dying, we know how to do that. It’s a grim, sad reality.”
Opinion|A new type of reporter emerges: The ‘mass shooting correspondent’ | 2022-11-25T13:22:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | A new type of reporter emerges: The ‘mass shooting correspondent’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/25/mass-shooting-journalism-new-correspondent/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/25/mass-shooting-journalism-new-correspondent/ |
3 reasons Yale Law was right to quit the U.S. News rankings
By James Forman Jr.
Yale University Law School in 2018. (Yana Paskova/Getty Images)
James Forman Jr. is Yale’s J. Skelly Wright professor of law and faculty director of the Yale Law and Racial Justice Center.
Last week, Yale Law School, where I teach, announced it was pulling out of U.S. News & World Report’s annual law school rankings. Many people were shocked. After all, Yale has perennially been No. 1 in the 30-plus years since the rankings first appeared. Why quit a system that has brought so much glory?
Because the U.S. News rankings are somewhere between silly and demented — they harm law schools, applicants and graduates. As somebody who has been reading law school applications and advising prospective students for almost a decade, I could offer dozens of reasons for ending the rankings. But here are the top three.
1. The list encourages students to make decisions based on the rankings — and nothing else. When helping prospective law students choose a school, I encourage them to talk to currently enrolled students or recent alums to find out about the student culture. I tell them to explore whether the courses, clinics and professors match their interests. I encourage them to visit — in person or virtually — and get a feel for the school, the community, the city.
I’m mostly wasting my breath. Here’s a story I could tell a dozen versions of: A couple of years ago, the Yale admissions office asked me to call an admitted student who was choosing between Stanford and Yale. As we spoke, I learned that the student was from California, was in a committed relationship with a partner in California and wanted to practice in California.
Megan McArdle: Top law schools bow out of U.S. News rankings. What’s the thinking?
After hearing them out I said, “Well, if it were me, I’d go to Stanford.” The applicant was clearly surprised — wasn’t I supposed to be pitching Yale? But I couldn’t fathom why this was a hard decision. The longer we spoke, the clearer it became that there was nothing on Yale’s side of the ledger except that it was No. 1.
2. The rankings discourage schools from helping graduates pursue public interest careers. When I was in law school, students aspiring to such careers — me included — complained that public interest jobs were harder to find than law firm positions. Civil rights firms and public defender offices can’t afford to hire new lawyers because they need so much training in their first and second years. Even those who can hire newbies rarely know how many openings they’ll have until long after graduating students need to make job decisions. The result: Students in my time commonly gave up their public interest dreams and joined law firms because they feared they would otherwise leave law school unemployed.
But here’s the glitch: U.S. News counts students in such fellowships as unemployed. Because the rankings measure the percentage of students who have jobs out of law school, the more public interest fellowships a school sponsors, the worse it looks in the rankings. Schools such as Yale can take the hit, but schools in the middle of the pack and trying to grind their way up are unlikely to extend such opportunities to their students.
3. I’ve saved the most important problem for last: The rankings discourage schools from admitting students with low LSAT scores. The LSAT does a decent job of measuring certain skills but ignores many others that good lawyers need. Yet it looms large in every law school applicant’s file. As a result, students who struggle with the test are at a huge disadvantage.
Today I run a program that helps New Haven residents from underrepresented groups navigate the path to law school. Each spring, I speak to admissions officers about the fellows in our program. These are compelling applicants who have overcome hurdles most of us can’t imagine. They will bring dramatically different life experiences to law school and the legal profession. Most admissions directors get it; they’ve read the file and seen the grit and perseverance jump off the page.
But when I call about a fellow who didn’t do well on the LSAT, the admissions director must balance their enthusiasm for the person with a concern for the school's average LSAT score, a crucial element of the rankings. A few great people with low LSAT scores will make it through, because admitting two or three won't hurt the overall average. But many more excellent candidates get rejected.
In response to Yale’s decision — and the growing list of schools joining it — to abandon the U.S. News rankings, the company pledged to keep publishing its list. This decision surprised no one. U.S. News publishes the rankings to make money, and it won’t stop as long as people read them.
So what can we do about that? For law schools, the path is clear. You’ve complained about the rankings for years; now you can follow Yale’s lead and quit. Consumers should do the same. Stop relying on the U.S. News rankings — or any rankings.
How will you know if a school is any good? Look at data, visit a school’s website, speak to students and alums, and visit if you can. Then, when somebody asks you if your school is No. 1, you can tell them, “It’s No. 1 for me.” | 2022-11-25T13:22:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Why Yale Law was right to leave the U.S. News rankings - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/25/us-news-rankings-yale-law-quit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/25/us-news-rankings-yale-law-quit/ |
Why are Germans losing enthusiasm for helping Ukraine?
It’s not just about energy costs, our research finds. Germans have a deep cultural aversion toward military intervention.
Analysis by Yehonatan Abramson
Dean Dulay
Anil Menon
FILE -- Oil pumping jacks, also known as "nodding donkeys"in a Rosneft Oil Co. oilfield near Sokolovka village, in the Udmurt Republic, Russia, on Friday, Nov. 20, 2020. (Bloomberg/Andrey Rudakov, file)
Will the spiking costs of energy, which are particularly high in Germany, erode European support for assisting Ukraine’s war effort against Russia? Russia – in its attempt to use energy as a weapon – has reduced gas supplies to Europe. As a result, prices have soared to ten times their previous levels and supplies are simply running out. Not surprisingly, many look to Germany – the EU’s largest economy – as the test case for continued European commitment to Ukraine. Will the astronomical gas bills and the cold winter lead Germans to press their government to reduce or withdraw its assistance to Ukraine?
To investigate, we ran a public opinion survey -- and found that energy prices are not the key issue. We learned, much as other surveys are finding, that while Germans support Ukraine’s battle against the Russian invasion, they believe that Germany has already done enough. Two factors -- their historical memory of German aggression in World War II and concern about the costs of hosting refugees -- matter more than energy prices in German public opinion about helping Ukraine.
We’re sympathetic but we’ve done enough
We surveyed an opt-in sample of 1,000 Germans online between September 14 and October 6, 2022. We used statistical tools to obtain results that reflect the German population along age, gender, and state. We asked a series of questions about the war in Ukraine and what respondents thought of Germany’s efforts to assist.
Then we asked how much they supported (none, a little, some, very, or extremely) four specific policies:
Increasing sanctions on Russia and Putin, even if these sanctions might lead to a further increase in food and gas prices;
Sending more missiles and other military equipment to Ukraine, even if this increased Germany’s military budget;
Admitting more refugees from Ukraine, even if it placed additional burdens on the economy;
Admitting Ukraine into NATO even if this means committing to defending Ukraine militarily in the future.
Most Germans (91 percent) expressed at least some sympathy for the Ukrainians. However, a majority (54 percent) think that their country is doing enough (37 percent) or too much (17 percent) to help Ukraine’s military efforts and its refugees.
Can Putin survive Russia's losses in Ukraine?
Lukewarm support for further military intervention and admitting more refugees
In general, roughly 30 percent of Germans oppose each of the four policies, while roughly 70 percent expressed some degree of support. But if we break down support by intensity (strong or weak), where strong is measured as “very” or “extremely” and weak is measured as “some” or “a little,” we find some telling variation.
While less than half (40 percent) strongly support more sanctions, even fewer support either delivering more weapons to Ukraine or admitting more refugees (just 31 percent strongly support each policy). Strong support for admitting Ukraine to NATO is lower still at only 26 percent.
In other words, German support for increasing either military assistance or humanitarian aid is lukewarm.
Former East Germans are even less willing to support Ukraine than those in the West
This national snapshot, however, hides important differences between erstwhile East and West Germany. East Germans are more opposed to all four policies than West Germans by a wide margin. For example, while only 27 percent of West German respondents are opposed to increasing military assistance to Ukraine, 52 percent of East Germans express this view. This is consistent with a more benign attitude toward Russia and greater skepticism toward NATO among that group.
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If it’s not energy costs, what shapes German attitudes toward Ukraine?
But if Germans are more willing to sacrifice their family budgets than to send weapons or take in refugees, energy costs clearly aren’t as crucial as observers have suggested. We believe two other factors are key.
The first is the commitment to military non-intervention that the nation has cultivated since the end of World War II. That war’s legacy leads many Germans to adopt an attitude of military restraint and aversion to military engagement. By now, Germany’s self-understanding as a “civilian power” has become a core part of its identity, which is hard to change. That same history – including the memory of German cities being bombed – might also influence Germans’ reluctance to be directly involved in the conflict.
In this respect, the German government’s decision to send weapons to Ukraine to fight Russian aggression has been a revolutionary change in its foreign policy, which has had a fundamental commitment not to intervene militarily outside its borders. German jets and troops participated in the NATO-led operation in Kosovo in 1999, helping to end Serbian forces’ genocide against the Albanians. And after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Germany sent troops to the U.S.-led military operation in Afghanistan. But these deployments were unpopular from the outset and the government faced mass protests as a result.
When German Chancellor Olaf Schulz announced that Germany would supply Ukraine with weapons, the public supported him overwhelmingly. But as the war has dragged on, Germans have become more hesitant about being involved militarily. That’s also what happened during the Afghanistan war: German support for direct involvement declined sharply over time, leaving even less appetite for military intervention anywhere.
The second key factor is refugee fatigue. As the social and fiscal reality of hosting refugees has become clearer, Germans are losing enthusiasm for admitting more Ukrainians. This could have serious consequences in the coming months, as Russia’s ongoing bombing campaign will likely send more Ukrainians fleeing to European countries – which might serve to further weaken support for Ukraine.
While declining gas prices since October, due in part to warmer temperatures, have given Europe a reprieve, this may not be sufficient to sustain current levels of support for Ukraine. In Germany, the government has announced a plan to pay the December gas bills for households and small- to medium-sized businesses. But even that might not be enough to boost German public support for delivering weapons and admitting more Ukrainian refugees.
Yehonatan Abramson (@YoniAbramson) is a lecturer (assistant professor) in the department of international relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.
Dean Dulay (@deandulay) is an assistant professor of political science at Singapore Management University.
Anil Menon (@armenon_memorie) is a Klarman Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell University.
Pauline Jones (@PaulineJonesPhD) is professor of political science at the University of Michigan and the Edie N. Goldenberg Endowed Director of the Michigan in Washington Program. | 2022-11-25T13:23:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Will spiking energy costs reduce European support for Ukraine? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/25/russia-ukraine-energy-europe/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/25/russia-ukraine-energy-europe/ |
Ohio State, Oregon and Texas have work to do to earn a spot in a conference title game. (AP and Getty Images)
A full 60 percent of the spots in Football Bowl Subdivision conference title games have been sorted out before the final weekend of the regular season. But that other 40 percent is enough to make anyone swear off math for a while.
For every ACC or SEC that has its matchup set, there’s a Pac-12 going deep into the tiebreaker list. For every Big 12 with a straightforward set of scenarios, there’s an American Athletic turning to a computer formula tiebreaker.
Here’s the full rundown of how to sort through it all while digesting a Thanksgiving feast (or its leftovers) this weekend.
ACC: No. 8 Clemson (10-1, 8-0) and No. 17 North Carolina (9-2, 6-1) had their divisions clinched before last week. They’ll meet in Charlotte in the final ACC title game with the Atlantic and Coastal division format.
Big Ten: The East Division is easy to figure out. No. 3 Michigan (11-0, 8-0) and No. 2 Ohio State (11-0, 8-0) will sort that out Saturday in the Horseshoe, and the winner probably winds up locking in a playoff berth as a result.
The West, unsurprisingly, could be a mess. Iowa (7-4, 5-3) can clinch the division with a victory Friday at home against Nebraska. The Hawkeyes hold a head-to-head tiebreaker over Purdue (7-4, 5-3), which can win the division with a victory over Indiana coupled with an Iowa loss. If both Iowa and Purdue lose and Illinois (7-4, 4-4) can handle Northwestern, the Illini head to Indianapolis.
And what if Iowa, Purdue and Illinois all lose, which would be a very Big Ten West thing to happen? Iowa will claim the division.
Big 12: No. 4 TCU (11-0, 8-0) has one spot sewn up. No. 12 Kansas State (8-3, 6-2) can claim the other with a victory over Kansas or a Texas loss to Baylor. No. 23 Texas (7-4, 5-3) would snag a rematch of its 17-10 loss to the Horned Frogs if it beats Baylor on Friday and Kansas State falls the next night.
Pac-12: No. 6 Southern California (10-1, 8-1) is done with conference play and assured of a title game berth. No. 9 Oregon (9-2, 7-1) can join the Trojans in Las Vegas with a victory over No. 21 Oregon State.
And if the Ducks stumble? They can still make it if No. 13 Washington (9-2, 6-2) loses to Washington State in the Apple Cup. The Huskies and No. 12 Utah (8-3, 6-2) still have some hope, as Pac-12 Hotline’s Jon Wilner explained.
- win over WSU
- OSU win over Oregon
- Cal win over UCLA
- win over Colo
- UW beats WSU
- OSU beats Oregon
- UCLA beats Cal
Washington’s path involves winning its game and getting wins from Oregon State and Cal (over UCLA). Utah needs to win its game (against Colorado, so it’s probably good to go) and then have Washington, Oregon State and UCLA triumph.
Nothing like fourth tiebreakers to get someone’s head spinning.
SEC: This one was locked in two Saturdays ago. No. 1 Georgia (11-0, 8-0) won the East Division again, while No. 5 LSU (9-2, 6-1) will take the West even if it loses to Texas A&M. The Tigers own a head-to-head tiebreaker over No. 7 Alabama (9-2, 5-2) in case it comes to that.
American Athletic: The winner of Friday’s Tulane-Cincinnati game will win the regular season championship and host the conference title game. Both teams are 9-2 overall and 6-1 in the league.
No. 22 Central Florida (8-3, 5-2) can lock up the second spot with a victory over South Florida (1-10, 0-7). But a Knights loss would gunk things up. Paired with a Cincinnati victory over Tulane, it would send the No. 19 Green Wave back to No. 24 Cincinnati for the title game. In tandem with a Tulane victory and a Houston loss to Tulsa, Cincinnati would travel to Tulane.
And then there’s the combination of losses by Central Florida and Cincinnati and a Houston victory, which would send the Bearcats and Cougars (7-4, 5-2) to a tiebreaker in which the highest-ranked team in four computer formulas would earn the trip to New Orleans.
Conference USA: Texas San Antonio (9-2, 7-0) has earned hosting duties on its way out of Conference USA. (The Roadrunners are one of six C-USA schools headed for the American next season.) North Texas (6-5, 5-2) will earn the other spot with a victory over Rice or a Western Kentucky loss to Florida Atlantic. Western Kentucky (7-5, 5-2) needs a win and a North Texas loss to play for the league title.
Mid-American: Ohio (9-3, 7-1) clinched the East Division thanks to Tuesday’s 38-14 rout of Bowling Green. The Bobcats, seeking their first MAC title since 1968, will face West Division winner Toledo (7-4, 5-2) on Dec. 3 in Detroit. Toledo is a game ahead of Eastern Michigan (7-4, 4-3) but holds the head-to-head tiebreaker.
Mountain West: Boise State (8-3, 7-0) will host Fresno State (7-4, 6-1) regardless of how this weekend unfolds. The Broncos earned a 40-20 victory over the Bulldogs on the blue turf Oct. 8.
Sun Belt: Under other circumstances, Coastal Carolina (9-1, 6-1) would be playing for a division title at James Madison (7-3, 5-2) this week. But with the Dukes ineligible for postseason play as part of their FBS transition, the Chanticleers will represent the East Division.
In the West, Troy (9-2, 6-1) owns the head-to-head tiebreaker over South Alabama (9-2, 6-1), so the Trojans need a victory (over 3-8 Arkansas State) or a South Alabama loss (to 3-8 Old Dominion). South Alabama requires a victory and a Troy loss to secure a berth in the title game.
A look at teams with plenty to play for during Thanksgiving weekend
1. Southern California. The Trojans’ playoff path is going to require some help, particularly in the form of at least one of LSU or TCU losing in the next two weeks. But they’re going to need to do their part, too, which means they have to deal with No. 15 Notre Dame (8-3) in their regular season finale. All the playoff chatter goes away if USC can’t handle an Irish team that has won eight of nine.
2a. Ohio State and 2b. Michigan. There’s an argument to place these teams a little lower. After all, the cost of a loss might not even be to get bumped outside the playoff. But whoever wins the showdown of unbeatens gains near-certain passage to the playoff, regardless of what happens in the Big Ten title game. That’s quite the reward, even if the risk isn’t as great as it is for others.
3. TCU. The Horned Frogs remain in survive-and-advance mode. And while it isn’t that hard to conjure up a scenario in which TCU loses the Big 12 title game and still earns a playoff berth (say, if Clemson, LSU and Southern Cal lose at least once in the next two weeks), Sonny Dykes’s team can’t afford a loss at home to last-place Iowa State (4-7, 1-7 Big 12).
4. Clemson. While some skepticism is warranted with regard to the Tigers’ résumé, the fact is a 12-1 Clemson team with an ACC title would generate some discussion for a spot in the semifinals. The Tigers can’t get to 12-1 without defeating South Carolina (7-4), and the Gamecocks should have Clemson’s full attention after dropping 63 points on Tennessee in a shellacking that knocked the Vols out of the playoff picture.
5. Georgia. The Bulldogs can put a bow on their playoff berth a week early by handling rival Georgia Tech (5-6), which has proved plucky under interim coach Brent Key. Georgia rates lower than the Big Ten unbeatens for one simple reason: Win or lose, it gets to play next week. The math isn’t hard: Win one game to earn a semifinal slot, and win both to lock in the No. 1 seed.
1. QB Caleb Williams, Southern California (3,480 yards, 33 TDs, three INTs passing; 316 yards, seven TDs rushing). With a big stage and facing a crosstown foe with its own conference title designs, Williams threw for 470 yards to make his strongest impression yet. He’ll have two more high-profile opportunities to shine — against Notre Dame this weekend and then in the Pac-12 title game. (Last week: 3)
2. QB C.J. Stroud, Ohio State (2,991 yards, 35 TDs, four INTs passing). In another year, Stroud’s chances probably would have faded more after accounting for one or fewer touchdowns in three of the Buckeyes’ past four games. But there’s a prime opportunity for a Heisman moment with Michigan coming to town Saturday. (LW: 1)
3. QB Bo Nix, Oregon (3,061 yards, 25 TDs, six INTs; 509 yards, 14 TDs rushing). He clearly wasn’t much of a threat in the running game on a sore right ankle against Utah (except for a critical first down late in the game), but he still threw for 287 yards to keep the Ducks in the Pac-12 title chase. (LW: 5)
4. RB Blake Corum, Michigan (1,457 yards, 18 TDs rushing). The Wolverines star suffered a knee injury last week against Illinois, and his status for the de facto Big Ten East title game at Ohio State is uncertain. If he does play and he registers a ninth consecutive 100-plus-yard rushing day, his chances of earning an invitation to New York will improve. (LW: 6)
5. QB Hendon Hooker, Tennessee (3,135 yards, 27 TDs, two INTs passing; 430 yards, five TDs rushing). The sixth-year senior’s college career concluded with a torn ACL suffered last week in a loss at South Carolina. He will still land on some Heisman ballots — and rightfully so. Hooker’s 10-plus games were better than most players’ 12 or 13. (LW: 2)
6. QB Max Duggan, TCU (2,858 yards, 26 TDs, three INTs passing; 291 yards, five TDs rushing). He threw for 327 yards, rushed for 50 and accounted for two touchdowns in a comeback victory at Baylor. He and the Horned Frogs close the regular season against Iowa State at home, where he has 15 touchdown passes and no interceptions this season. (LW: Not ranked) | 2022-11-25T13:23:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Who's playing in conference title games and how do tiebreakers work? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/25/college-football-conference-championship-games/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/25/college-football-conference-championship-games/ |
Maryland co-offensive coordinator Mike Miller was named to 247's 30under30 list in 2019 and the American Football Coaches Association's 35 Under 35 in 2021. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
Not long ago, Mike Miller’s coaching résumé included just two seasons as a student assistant for college teams. Miller, then a 25-year-old buzzing with energy, wasn’t far removed from his own football career, so the head coach at Charlotte Christian reminded him during summer workouts that, as the offensive coordinator, he needed to keep his T-shirt on. The responsibility of calling plays lured Miller to the position, and he led the unit to the state championship game.
The stint in Charlotte served as “a sweet little landing spot for our first year of marriage,” said Miller’s wife, Megan, who worked as an assistant in the school’s kindergarten program.
Miller taught teenagers offensive schemes, and he also pressure-washed stadium stands, zip-tied banners to the baseball field’s outfield fence, took out the trash and cut grass. He still talks about the baseball field, which drivers can see from the main road. Miller wanted it to look pristine, so where the infield turf met the grass, he trimmed with scissors.
“It was his pride and joy to cut it the right way,” said Miller’s dad, Mike, who lives a mile from Charlotte Christian and passes the school on his way to work.
The landscaping memories remind Miller of the magnitude of his jump and how far he’s come — because those days weren’t long ago. After arriving at Maryland as an assistant coach, Miller marveled at the absurdity: two-and-a-half years before he had been a high school coordinator who also cut grass.
After that 2016 season with Charlotte Christian, Miller’s rapid climb up the coaching ladder began. Two seasons as an Alabama graduate assistant led him to the Terrapins’ program, where he’s the co-offensive coordinator and tight ends coach. When Michael Locksley hired Miller, he was a mostly unknown assistant with just five years of coaching experience. But in that stretch, he worked under some of the game’s most respected coaches, Alabama’s Nick Saban and Clemson’s Dabo Swinney, and amassed three playoff appearances, two conference championships and a national title — all before he turned 28.
With the Terps, he has jumped from tight ends coach to passing game coordinator to his expanded role now while landing on lists that recognize fast-rising assistants. Miller could have left for an elevated role at a Power Five school after last season — when Maryland’s offense soared and tight end Chigoziem Okonkwo became a fourth-round NFL draft pick — but he stayed in College Park with the promotion to co-offensive coordinator.
Miller, 31, wants to be a head coach one day, but “until then,” he said this past spring, “just bloom where I’m planted, do a great job and see it through.”
Connie Miller can picture her son’s gritted teeth and determined answer to a simple question. She asked why he wanted to play quarterback, wondering if he enjoyed the popularity. Her youngest child explained he wanted to lead.
“That’s why he liked the quarterback position, even though he was not very good,” Miller’s dad said. “Connie wouldn’t tell you that. Connie would say he was an all-American.”
Miller and his mom have the same unwavering optimism. She believed her son could be the starting quarterback at Ole Miss, the alma mater of both parents. Miller’s dad, a former walk-on receiver for the Rebels, had a more realistic view. When Miller navigated the recruiting process, which Connie compared to dating, many coaches showed interest, she said, “but no one really pulled the ring out.”
Miller joined UAB’s program as a walk-on and eventually earned a scholarship, despite never playing a snap in a game. (His dad jokes his career topped that of his son, because he appeared in a total of seven plays.) Miller transitioned to student coaching after a shoulder injury and as his long-held aspirations in this profession crystallized inside his mind.
“Mikey has had a laser focus on what he feels like he’s called to,” his mom said.
Miller’s dad is a pastor, and his grandfather, once a football player at Duke, was a fighter pilot in the Air Force for three decades. As a third-generation college football player, Miller became the first to channel a shared yearning for leadership into coaching.
When the UAB program shut down after Miller’s season as a student assistant, he headed to Clemson. He needed a waiver from the NCAA to finish his degree at UAB while coaching for the Tigers. Miller slept at the houses of friends and sometimes on an air mattress at the football facility. Following Swinney’s advice, Miller then took the high school job to learn how to call plays. Jason Estep, the head coach at Charlotte Christian, gave Miller control of an offense that had a future ACC starting quarterback and was in the midst of changing its identity.
“It will not surprise me that he will be the next up-and-coming offensive coordinator around college football,” Estep said, adding that eventually, “somebody’s going to get a real dedicated young head coach.”
After the season at Charlotte Christian, Miller interviewed for a high school head coaching job and a graduate assistant position at Duke. He didn’t land either. He turned his attention toward a quality control role at Tennessee. Then Jody Wright, at the time a support staffer at Alabama and previously a UAB assistant, asked if Miller had interest in a role with the Crimson Tide.
Wright told Miller to send his résumé, and he’d get it to Saban. Miller drove to Tuscaloosa instead. Estep calls this a “classic Mike Miller” story.
Miller had accepted that he probably wouldn’t get the job. As he began to leave Alabama’s facility, he ran into Saban in a hallway. Wright introduced Miller, explaining he was on his way to interview at Tennessee. Saban responded, “Wouldn’t you want to just GA here?” A few hours later, after meeting with numerous coaches, Miller had the position.
“It’s just in his blood to figure out a way,” Miller’s wife said. “If he wants it to work, he’s going to do everything he can to make it work.”
After Miller arrived at Maryland, he explained how he wanted to coach his position group. Saban-esque principals about the process collided with Swinney-esque philosophies about how he’d love his players. Miller’s dad describes Alabama as a program, with Saban the “quintessential manager.” Clemson feels like a community. Both have been successful, and Miller learned from each.
During the season, coaches work long days, so Megan and the three children visit campus a couple times per week — something the Millers carried with them from Clemson. They value even five minutes together. Those moments can be the “glue,” Megan said, amid the hectic lifestyle.
“It’s not just his thing,” she said. “We’re all part of it.”
Five-year-old Bo pretends to be quarterback Taulia Tagovailoa and throws a ball to his 3-year-old brother, Grisham, telling him, “Here you go, CJ, catch it!” as though he’s tight end CJ Dippre.
Megan brings them to the home games with seven-month-old Mary Caitlin strapped to her chest. They enjoy seeing their dad and the players during the Terp Walk before games. Bo has started to get rowdy as he cheers for his dad’s tight ends — at least when he’s not occupied by Legos. They usually make it a quarter or two before the kids are ready to leave.
Miller’s dad visited last week, and before 7 a.m., the boys had turned on the light and greeted him by saying, “Pops, let’s play!” (Afterward, he was sore from all the playtime.) By that early hour, Miller is heading to College Park, and Megan is taking on another day of the delightful chaos.
At night, Mike and Megan talk about the players as though they are their own kids. They pray for them and feel a responsibility to be a constant source of support.
This is what Miller always wanted — to be a college football coach and to lead young men — but it all happened fast. His dad sometimes sends him pictures of Charlotte Christian’s baseball field to conjure up some memories. And when Miller visited last summer, he headed over to the school. Miller wanted to reflect, so he sat on the lawn mower alone with nostalgia, remembering where he started and how far he’s gone. | 2022-11-25T13:23:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Maryland football co-offensive coordinator Mike Miller is rising fast - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/25/mike-miller-maryland-offensive-coordinator/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/25/mike-miller-maryland-offensive-coordinator/ |
FILE - Ajax’s Sebastien Haller celebrates scoring his side’s second goal during the Champions League group C soccer match between Besiktas and Ajax at the Vodafone Park Stadium in Istanbul, Turkey, Wednesday, Nov. 24, 2021. Borussia Dortmund striker Haller has undergone a second operation for the testicular cancer that has kept him sidelined this season. On Friday, Nov. 25, 2022 Haller said on Twitter that “Operation number 2 went well.” The 28-year-old joined Dortmund from Ajax in July but had to leave a preseason training camp 12 days later for treatment and an operation after the malignant tumor was found. (AP Photo, File) (Uncredited/AP)
DORTMUND, Germany — Borussia Dortmund striker Sébastien Haller has undergone a second operation for testicular cancer, which has kept him sidelined this season. | 2022-11-25T13:23:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Dortmund's Haller has second operation for testicular cancer - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/soccer/dortmunds-haller-has-second-operation-for-testicular-cancer/2022/11/25/bf2b60d6-6cbe-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/soccer/dortmunds-haller-has-second-operation-for-testicular-cancer/2022/11/25/bf2b60d6-6cbe-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html |
Ask Damon: My husband blames his bad hygiene and weight gain on me
Hi Damon: My husband has given up, and he blames me. We both gained a lot of weight after getting married and having a baby, but I have done things to make myself feel better and still look my best. We also live very fortunate lives: nice cars, nice place, good jobs, healthy baby. I am happy minus wishing I was thinner. He, on the other hand, has stopped taking care of himself. He won’t shower, won’t brush his teeth, eats until he throws up, and he blames me for not being able to work out. He says he can’t do it if I am at home, but he gets mad if I leave home without him. I have had countless conversations with him about my concern for his health and concern for how this is affecting our family. He just blames me for all of it. I should encourage him to eat better. I should encourage him to work out. But when I do these things, he gets angry and tells me all the flaws I have. He also throws in my face all the things he does to take care of our child, as if being a present father is supposed to earn extra favor.
At what point does enough become enough? I have tried to be the good, supportive wife for so long, and now I am angry and I want better for myself. But how am I supposed to help someone who won’t help themselves but expects me to just make everything magically better?
— The Good Wife?
The Good Wife?: So there’s an obvious answer here: If you’re extremely unhappy with your husband’s behavior, attitude and hygiene, and it’s been an ongoing pattern, and you’ve already tried, repeatedly, to help him, and he refuses (and criticizes) you, then you should leave. If you’re making an effort, it hasn’t been reciprocated and you’re exhausted, there’s no reason to stay.
Some people might encourage you to stay for the sake of the baby. I am not one of those people. In fact, I think you should leave for the sake of the baby. An “intact” family doesn’t matter if the house is infested with resentment and disdain.
That said, I’m curious about the concept of responsibility. When a loved one is clearly experiencing some mental or emotional distress, do we have an obligation to stick with them through it? Better yet, how long does that obligation last? You were unclear in your letter about how long you’ve been married. Which matters because there’s a difference between a year of this behavior and 10.
I am (obviously) not a doctor, so I can’t diagnose him, but your husband seems to be exhibiting signs of a deep depression. The lack of hygiene and the binge eating are the most telling. You mentioned that you both have good jobs and make good money, so I’m assuming he works from home. (I can’t picture someone in a high-paying office job going days or weeks without brushing their teeth and keeping that job.) It’s possible that the sedentary nature of his workday, plus the existential shift that having a child induces, plus, you know, the raging pandemic we’re still in may have contributed to his malaise, his weight gain, his apparent lack of self-esteem and his rage.
But you have tried to engage him. Tried to encourage him. I was tempted to ask if he’s considered therapy. You might just be ill-equipped to help him, and it seems like he’s at a point where a mental health professional is the best (and only) option. But you can’t force him to do that, and I’m not confident that a man who refuses to heed your request that he shower regularly, and also tries to insult you when you offer him help, is going to listen to your urge that he see a therapist.
I am usually not a fan of ultimatums, but if you wish to give him more time, tell him this: “If you don’t find a therapist by February (or some other set time) — or even just allow me to help you find one — I’m leaving.” I think you’ve fulfilled your obligation, though. If you wish to leave now, you should. | 2022-11-25T14:31:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Damon: My husband blames his bad hygiene and weight gain on me - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/25/ask-damon-husband-blame-weight-hygiene/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/11/25/ask-damon-husband-blame-weight-hygiene/ |
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