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Jayson Tatum, right, outdueled Giannis Antetokounmpo as the Celtics defeated the Bucks at TD Garden on Christmas. (Mary Schwalm/AP)
The sea parted for Boston Celtics star Jayson Tatum as he cut into the paint, only for his opening to disappear in a split second as Giannis Antetokounmpo rotated to the front of the rim. Here was a midair meeting that was months in the making: a pair of leading MVP candidates on the NBA’s best teams, going chest-to-chest during the marquee contest of the league’s annual Christmas extravaganza.
Tatum barely adjusted to Antetokounmpo’s sudden emergence, angling just a bit to the right as he finished a poster dunk over a two-handed contesting effort by the Milwaukee Bucks big man. The force of the second-quarter slam led Tatum to hang on the rim with his right hand, swirling for emphasis as Antetokounmpo ducked out of the way.
“I was going to attack the rim,” Tatum said during a postgame interview. “If you go in to lay it up, he’s going to send it to the parking lot.”
The Celtics rode the momentum from Tatum’s mano-a-mano triumph to defeat the Bucks in a 139-118 runaway Sunday at TD Garden, highlighting a five-game holiday slate that was filled with standout performances by stars and several impressive comebacks.
Tatum posted a game-high 41 points, including a 20-point burst in the third quarter that put Boston comfortably in command, to go with seven rebounds and five assists. The three-time all-star shot 14 for 22 from the field, 3 for 7 from deep and 10 for 10 from the free throw line, settling into a groove that recalled his best performances from Boston’s second-round series victory over Milwaukee in May.
NBA Christmas preview: The NBA’s future will be on display with Ja Morant
As Tatum made it look easy, Antetokounmpo couldn’t find the touch on his jumper and struggled to find room to work against Boston’s interior defense, shooting 9 for 22 on the night. The two-time MVP finished with 27 points, nine rebounds and three assists as the Bucks were outshot and outworked by their conference rivals.
Tensions flared in the closing minutes despite Boston’s big lead as Antetokounmpo ended a frustrating night by picking up a technical foul for shoving Celtics guard Jaylen Brown in the back. Remarkably, Milwaukee was outscored by 27 points in Antetokounmpo’s 35 minutes.
“We limited him, but it’s crazy, [Antetokounmpo] had 27,” Celtics Coach Joe Mazzulla said. “We’re fortunate to have great matchups for him. We’re fortunate to have the ability to throw some different guys at him, and I thought we were disciplined in our execution.”
Milwaukee again felt the absence of forward Khris Middleton, who has missed the past five games with knee soreness. Middleton also missed last year’s second-round series, which robbed the 2021 NBA champions of one of their best late-game closers and perimeter defenders. Without their three-time all-star, the Bucks had no answer for Brown, who added 29 points, five rebounds and four assists, or the Celtics’ top-ranked offense, which hit 19 three-pointers.
Tatum had a signature performance, but he was hardly the only star to rise to the occasion. With Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry sidelined by a shoulder injury and Kevin Durant watching from home because his Brooklyn Nets didn’t make the cut for the Christmas quintuple-header, Joel Embiid and Luka Doncic helped fill the void.
In the day’s opener, the Philadelphia 76ers scored a 119-112 victory over the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden thanks to 35 points and eight rebounds from Embiid and 29 points and 13 assists from James Harden. After a sleepy start, Philadelphia’s stars took control in the second half as the Knicks’ offense sputtered down the stretch. Together, Embiid and Harden attempted 26 free throws against the overwhelmed New York defense.
“Our fouls, they hurt us,” Knicks Coach Tom Thibodeau said. “Embiid is a great player. Harden is a great player. If you’re not disciplined, that’s going to hurt you, and it did.”
It was a galvanizing victory for Philadelphia, one that led Embiid to soak in a fourth-quarter ovation from scattered 76ers fans in Manhattan. In addition to Embiid’s punishing play inside and Harden’s controlled orchestration, the 76ers got nine combined three-pointers from De’Anthony Melton and Georges Niang.
Melton, acquired in a summer trade with the Memphis Grizzlies, has brought a vital defensive intensity to Philadelphia’s backcourt as a stand-in starter for the injured Tyrese Maxey. The 76ers have won eight straight to climb into the Eastern Conference’s fifth seed.
Knicks guard Jalen Brunson, who finished with 23 points and 11 assists, left the contest in the fourth quarter with an apparent hip injury. Even before he departed, New York had stalled out, conceding a 24-9 run to start the fourth. After running off eight straight wins, the Knicks have lost three straight.
Sunday’s second contest saw Doncic’s Dallas Mavericks follow the 76ers’ lead by launching a massive second-half comeback against LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers. Though James led all scorers with 38 points in his record-setting 17th appearance on Christmas, the Mavericks had 51 points in the third quarter to cruise to a 124-115 home victory.
Doncic eased into the game but finished with 32 points, nine rebounds and nine assists, draining a corner three-pointer late in the fourth quarter to slam the door. Dallas hit 18 three-pointers, doubling Los Angeles’s total.
“We talked about being ready to initiate, sustain and finish with energy, effort and competitiveness,” Lakers Coach Darvin Ham said. “We left it in the locker room at halftime. Giving up a 51-point quarter is unacceptable — completely unacceptable.”
Dallas used the holiday to celebrate franchise legend Dirk Nowitzki by unveiling a bronze statue outside American Airlines Center during a pregame ceremony. Naturally, the 44-year-old Nowitzki, who is eligible for Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame induction in 2023, was depicted shooting one of his patented one-legged fadeaway jumpers.
“It says there on the side, under my name on the base, it’s 21 letters for 21 years,” Nowitzki said. “I think it sums up my career here for the Dallas Mavericks perfectly. It says, ‘Loyalty never fades away.’ ”
The Lakers, who lost Anthony Davis to a foot injury this month, fell for the fourth straight time without their all-star big man. To make matters worse, Los Angeles has four games remaining on a five-game trip as Davis remains out indefinitely, raising the possibility that James and company will miss the playoffs for a second straight year. | 2022-12-26T02:15:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jayson Tatum powers Celtics past Bucks in NBA Christmas showcase - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/25/celtics-bucks-christmas-jayson-tatum/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/25/celtics-bucks-christmas-jayson-tatum/ |
Green Bay Packers cornerback Rasul Douglas (29), center, celebrates making an interception, with teammates Green Bay Packers safety Innis Gaines (38), and Green Bay Packers linebacker De’Vondre Campbell (59), during the second half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Dec. 25, 2022, in Miami Gardens, Fla. (AP Photo/Jim Rassol)
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — Green Bay intercepted three of Tua Tagovailoa’s passes in the fourth quarter and the Aaron Rodgers and Packers rallied to beat the Miami Dolphins 26-20 on Sunday to keep their playoff hopes alive.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Baker Mayfield threw two touchdown passes to Tyler Higbee, Cam Akers ran for 118 yards and three more scores and Los Angeles routed Denver for its second victory since mid-October. | 2022-12-26T02:15:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Packers have 3 interceptions in 4th, beat Dolphins 26-20 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nfl/packers-have-3-interceptions-in-4th-beat-dolphins-26-20/2022/12/25/ae9568f6-84b6-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nfl/packers-have-3-interceptions-in-4th-beat-dolphins-26-20/2022/12/25/ae9568f6-84b6-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
Ask Amy: My annual charity roundup
Those who can afford to share their material wealth should give abundantly, donating locally to the library, after-school programs, hospice center, arts organizations, historical society and animal shelter.
Acts of kindness and compassion are always worth their weight in gold: Shoveling a walk for a neighbor, writing a letter to an elder and volunteering at the local food bank are all ways to express your generosity.
Travis Mills Foundation: Serves post-9/11 veterans who have been injured in active duty or as a result of their service. These service members and their families are brought to a retreat center in Maine for an adaptive, barrier-free opportunity to regroup, relax and connect with others. Travismillsfoundation.org.
K9s for Warriors: “Determined to end veteran suicide, K9s for Warriors provides highly trained service dogs to military veterans suffering from PTSD, traumatic brain injury and/or military sexual trauma,” the organization’s website states. In a beautiful symmetry, service dogs are rescued from shelters, and then humans and dogs rescue each other. K9sforwarriors.org
UNICEF was founded in the aftermath of World War II through the United Nations to serve children displaced by conflict. UNICEF works in 190 countries, and is on the ground in Ukraine.
World Central Kitchen: Founded by chef José Andrés, World Central Kitchen mobilizes local chefs to deliver food and hot meals to first responders and displaced people around the world. Their motto: “Food is a universal human right.” Wck.org.
Since its founding over a century ago, Planned Parenthood has provided reproductive health care, education and abortion services. Because of the overturning of Roe v. Wade this year, access to abortion and other reproductive services and health care has been under threat. | 2022-12-26T05:19:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: My annual charity roundup - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/12/26/ask-amy-charity-recommendations-holiday/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/12/26/ask-amy-charity-recommendations-holiday/ |
Carolyn Hax: How does she tell her fiance she doesn’t like his mom?
Carolyn Hax is away. The following first appeared Oct. 29, 2008.
Hi, Carolyn: How do I tell my fiance that I don’t like his mother? I’m sure he can tell, but I can’t bring myself to say it out loud; she is very important to him and very involved in his life. However, she rubs me the wrong way. He doesn’t understand when I ask him to keep certain things private. Every time he sees her, he expects me to go along, too, which is weekly and way too much for me.
— Mean DIL
Mean DIL: You tell him what bothers you about her and why; be specific, but not petty. If you don’t know exactly why, try to figure it out before you say anything. And if you’ve tried but all you have is an unexplained gut reaction, then tell him that, too.
In other words, let the fact of your having to tell your fiance — soon — inform the way you tell your fiance. You are keeping a potentially life-changing truth away from the person who’s about to hitch his life to yours. Give him the information he needs, not by dropping a fait accompli in his lap, but by inviting him in on your thoughts in progress: your dislike, your fears of disappointing him, your impulse to protect your privacy, your efforts to honor his mother’s importance to him. Introduce it as a problem you need his help to solve, because it is a problem, and you do need his help to solve it.
What you don’t need is to flog yourself for your feelings, because to see them as “wrong” is the first step in denying them — and to deny your dislike for someone who is “very involved” in your fiance’s life is to deny a runaway train. I suppose it’s possible such a train could stop harmlessly on its own by swishing into the world’s largest uninhabited shrubbery, but hoping for that is not the same thing as dealing with the problem. A disapproving DIL can be a good DIL if she and her husband work together to adapt; you’re only a “mean DIL” if you sabotage, stonewall or lie.
Dear Carolyn: I had dinner last week with a girl I previously dated, and we ended up getting together again later in the week for a movie. It was pretty platonic, but we ended up talking about our relationship, and when I realized how much I enjoyed spending time with her, I asked whether she wanted to get dinner again sometime. She said maybe and hasn’t really given me a straight answer on it since.
I’m not sure what approach to take with that. On the one hand, I would enjoy seeing her again, but on the other, maybe pretty much always means no. What would you suggest?
Anonymous: She “hasn’t really given me a straight answer on it since” pretty much always means that you’ve been asking the question since — and that suggests you’ve asked more than once, since last week. That is a pretty surefire way of forcing a maybe into a no. If you have been pressuring her, then apologize for doing so, then: “You know where to find me.” As in, that’s it, stop asking, the end. She will find you if she wants. | 2022-12-26T05:19:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Carolyn Hax: How does she tell her fiance she doesn’t like his mom? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/12/26/carolyn-hax-fiance-mom-dislike/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/12/26/carolyn-hax-fiance-mom-dislike/ |
A monument to Stephen I, the first Hungarian king, sits near a Catholic cathedral in Berehove, Ukraine. (Danylo Pavlov for The Washington Post)
MUKACHEVO, Ukraine — An authoritarian leader, known for suppressing political opposition and using his national press as his own mouthpiece, insists that Ukrainians who speak his language need protection and financial assistance, and he allows his government to issue passports, illegally, to Ukrainian citizens.
Residents of border towns get their news from foreign TV, feel no closer to Kyiv than they do to the neighboring national capital, and seethe over monuments to their heritage being taken down by Ukrainian authorities. Sounds like Russian influence in east Ukraine? In fact, it is Hungary’s role in Ukraine’s west.
Tensions between Ukraine and Hungary, which share an 85-mile border, are hardly of the magnitude of Ukraine’s conflict with Russia, now in its 10th month of deadly, destructive war.
But Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is yet another deeply problematic neighbor for Kyiv: maintaining warm ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, repeatedly obstructing European Union sanctions against Moscow and insisting Ukraine should be pressured to negotiate a peace deal.
Though Hungary is part of NATO, Orban has refused to allow Western weapons to be transported through Hungarian territory. He is arguably the weakest link in the effort to preserve international support for Ukraine, giving him leverage in Kyiv, Brussels and Washington.
Andras Racz, an expert on Hungary and Russia at the German Council on Foreign Relations, said the reason was simple: Landlocked Hungary depends on cheap Russian oil and gas, which in turn allows Orban to keep energy prices low and win votes.
“What we have seen from Viktor Orban since February has been motivated by domestic political considerations,” Racz said. “If you want to sum it up: It’s not to irritate the Russians, not to give them any pretext to cut the flow of gas or oil.” If they did, Racz said, “it would be an economic disaster for Hungary.”
As the war has progressed, Orban’s relationship with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has grown frostier. The two have clashed publicly, with Zelensky accusing the Hungarian of callous indifference to the suffering of Ukrainians — a charge Orban denies.
Hungary has given refuge to more than a million Ukrainian war refugees, and delivered hundreds of millions of dollars in humanitarian aid to Ukraine. But Orban, a proponent of “illiberal Christian democracy” and hero of far-right populists, cultivates his own brand of revanchist Hungarian nationalism, and has even raised suspicion that he might one day attempt to reclaim Hungarian lands in Ukraine.
Last month, Orban was photographed at a soccer match wearing a scarf with an imprint of a historical map of Hungary that included parts of Ukraine and other neighboring countries. Ukrainian officials summoned Hungary’s ambassador in Kyiv to explain and issued a statement complaining that Orban’s actions did “not contribute to the development of good neighborly relations.”
In March, one month into the war, tensions burst into the open when Zelensky scolded Orban for his reluctance to impose sanctions even as Russia destroyed the city of Mariupol.
In a video address to E.U. leaders, Zelensky said: “Listen, Viktor, do you know what’s going on in Mariupol? And you hesitate whether to impose sanctions or not? And you hesitate whether to trade with Russia or not? There is no time to hesitate. It’s time to decide already.”
In national elections in April, after running on a platform of nonintervention in the war — and winning reelection by a wide margin — Orban cited Zelensky as an “opponent” along with “Brussels bureaucrats,” “the Soros empire” and “the international mainstream media.”
In November, Hungarian President Katalin Novak, a member of Orban’s party, Fidesz, visited Kyiv as a show of support. But this month, Hungary temporarily blocked an E.U. effort to approve about $19 million in emergency loans for Ukraine. Budapest similarly stalled an E.U. boycott of Russian oil.
On Twitter, Orban said it was “fake news” that he didn’t want to help Ukraine but that the loans should be given by each country bilaterally, not by the E.U.
In an end of the year news conference on Wednesday, Orban said “most of Europe” had been “dragged into" the war and repeated his calls for Ukraine to negotiate with Russia. Countries supplying weapons were “up to their ankles,” and those who “fully finance” were “in the war up to their necks,” he said. “This is not our war,” he added.
Budapest lost nearly two-thirds of its land after World War I. Today, more than 2 million Hungarians live abroad, about 130,000 of them in Ukraine.
Most live in Transcarpathia, a poor, mostly rural area on the western side of the Carpathian Mountains, which once belonged to Hungary, making them a small minority of the region’s 1.3 million residents — and a tiny number compared with the 4 million or more ethnic Russians living in eastern Ukraine before 2014.
Still, despite the small numbers, the region has become a focus of tensions between Kyiv and Budapest. Defending and supporting Hungarian communities has been central to Orban’s grip on power.
About 40 percent of Ukrainians consider Hungary to be an “enemy nation,” third after Russia and Belarus, according to an October survey by the Ukrainian polling company Rating.
In Transcarpathia, this displeasure can be blunt. In October, officials in Mukachevo — a half-hour drive from the Hungarian border and known as Munkacs in Hungarian — dismantled a large statue of a turul, a falcon-like bird from Hungarian mythology.
The dark brass statue had a wingspan of around 15 feet, weighed close to a ton, and since 2008, had stood atop a tower at the Palanok Castle — an imposing fortress where Hungarian nobility once lived. It was a symbol of Transcarpathia’s Hungarian past and a reminder of once warm ties between Budapest and Kyiv.
Today, however, it lies in four pieces, behind a padlocked door in the castle. In its place now stands a massive “tryzub” — the trident that is Ukraine’s national symbol. Mukachevo officials assure the statue will soon be reassembled and become part of a museum exhibition on Transcarpathia’s history. But it will never again occupy a place of prominence in the city, they say.
“There should be only Ukrainian symbols,” said Mukachevo Mayor Andriy Baloha. “Transcarpathia is Ukrainian land — it was, is and will be. This is a message to the Hungarian government.”
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto called the incident an “unnecessary provocation” and summoned the head of Ukraine’s embassy to explain. Kyiv officials seemed to distance themselves.
“They just spat on the soul of every Hungarian,” said Sandor Shpenik, head of the Ukrainian Hungarian Democratic Association in Uzhgorod, Transcarpathia’s largest city.
The turul’s dismantling could still be a flash point in the future, some believe, if Hungarian officials or far-right groups decide to harp on it. For now, it highlights Kyiv and Budapest’s fragile relationship — one that can be soured by the act of a local official, or a president’s choice of scarf. It also underlines Zelensky’s challenge in maintaining unity in his ethnically, religiously and politically diverse country.
“I’m really afraid it can be used as a political issue,” said Dmytro Tuzhanskyi, director of the Institute for Central European Strategy in Uzhgorod and an expert on Ukrainian-Hungarian relations.
In the village of Rativtsi, nine miles from the Hungarian border, many of the 1,300 residents speak little or no Ukrainian or Russian, news comes mostly from Hungarian sources, and the war can seem far away.
Transcarpathia is experiencing blackouts but mostly has been spared from Russia’s airstrikes — an island of peace in the conflict, local Hungarians say. Loyalties are local — to their villages, region and ethnicity.
“We’re in Transcarpathia — the war is in Ukraine,” said Monika, who spoke on the condition that only her first name be used, given that she was discussing about politically sensitive issues.
Budapest provides extensive financial support to Hungarian communities and businesses in neighboring countries. But many Ukrainians see this as interference in their country’s internal affairs.
Others welcome the money. Mayor Zoltan Babjak in Berehove, Transcarpathia’s largest ethnic Hungarian city, says Budapest’s assistance is needed to fill out his cash-strapped budget.
It also assures that Hungarian culture will not disappear from Transcarpathia — a place where Hungarians have lived for close to a thousand years. Tens of thousands of ethnic Hungarians have left the region looking for work. “Our intention is to stay where we are,” Babjak said.
Budapest has also issued passports to more than a million ethnic Hungarians living abroad — who have proven to be a reliable voting bloc for Orban. But double citizenship is illegal in Ukraine. In 2018, Ukrainian officials expelled Hungary’s consul in Transcarpathia and launched an investigation into “high treason” after a video was leaked of the consul issuing passports in Berehove.
Budapest officials, in turn, accuse Kyiv of restricting ethnic Hungarians’ rights and forcing them to assimilate, pointing to a 2017 language law that mandated increased use of Ukrainian. Designed to combat Russia’s influence, the law also limited teaching in schools of other languages, like Hungarian.
“Hungarians are artificially being forced out of Transcarpathia,” said Janos Heder, pastor of the Hungarian Reformed Church in Uzhgorod, whose family has lived in the region for more than 500 years.
Because of the language issue, Hungary blocked Ukraine’s participation in a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Bucharest last month. Szijjarto said on Facebook that “until Ukraine gives back the rights of the Transcarpathian Hungarians,” Budapest would continue blocking such meetings with Ukraine.
Orban has said he opposes military aid for Ukraine partly out of concern for Hungarians living in Ukraine. No Hungarian, he said, should be caught “between the Ukrainian anvil and the Russian sledgehammer.”
But many Hungarian Ukrainians support the war effort. Novak, the Hungarian president, said 500 members of the community had “shed their blood at the front — lost their lives or been injured.” The Washington Post could not independently verify that figure.
Christian Shkiryak, 30, grew up in Transcarpathia speaking Hungarian. When Russia invaded, he and his family were living in Bucha, a Kyiv suburb now equated with Russian atrocities. They escaped two hours before the Russians arrived. Now back in Transcarpathia, he says he feels equally Hungarian and Ukrainian.
“I grew up in the Hungarian culture; I love the traditions; I love the history,” he said. “I love everything about Hungary. But I don’t love this Hungary, the Orban Hungary.”
Morris reported from Berlin. Andriy Sholtes in Uzhgorod, Ukraine, contributed to this report. | 2022-12-26T06:51:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | For Ukraine, Hungarian leader Viktor Orban is another problem next door - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/26/ukraine-hungary-tension-border-war/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/26/ukraine-hungary-tension-border-war/ |
A nurse prepares a shot of COVID-19 vaccine at a community health center in Nantong in eastern China’s Jiangsu province on Dec. 9, 2022. The National Health Commission announced a campaign on Nov. 29 to raise the vaccination rate among older Chinese, which health experts say is crucial to avoiding a health care crisis. It’s also the biggest hurdle before the ruling Communist Party can lift the last of the world’s most stringent antivirus restrictions. (Chinatopix Via AP) (Uncredited/CHINATOPIX) | 2022-12-26T08:22:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | China races to vaccinate elderly, but many are reluctant - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/china-races-to-vaccinate-elderly-but-many-are-reluctant/2022/12/26/4378d68c-84f4-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/china-races-to-vaccinate-elderly-but-many-are-reluctant/2022/12/26/4378d68c-84f4-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
Weeks of backroom intrigue culminated with Prachanda, long seen as a potential kingmaker, emerging victorious with support from a rival-turned-comrade.
By Sangam Prasad
Gerry Shih
Nepal’s former guerrilla leader, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, right, better known by his nom de guerre Prachanda, waves next to Communist Party Nepal-Union Marxist-Leninist chairman KP Oli before leaving for the president’s office to claim majority for his appointment as the new prime minister in Bhaktapur, Nepal, on Sunday. (Dipesh Shrestha/AFP/Getty Images)
KATHMANDU, Nepal – The former leader of Nepal’s Maoist rebels, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, widely known as Prachanda, said Monday he would form a new government as prime minister, signaling a potential foreign policy shift in the Himalayan nation caught between international powers.
As leader of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Center), Prachanda, 68, finished third in the Nov. 20 elections behind the sitting prime minister, Sher Bahadur Deuba of the Nepali Congress, and Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli, another former prime minister who led the Unified Marxist-Leninists. While Deuba was widely seen as pro-India and pro-America, Prachanda and Oli — the heads of warring Communist Party factions who have fallen out and rejoined forces several times — are seen as pro-China.
Since the November election, none of the contenders had the votes to form a government outright. But weeks of backroom intrigue culminated late Sunday, when Prachanda, long seen as a potential kingmaker, emerge victorious with support from Oli, his rival-turned-comrade.
After waging a guerrilla insurgency beginning in 1996 — a conflict that saw more than 17,000 killed and allegations of war crimes by government forces and rebels — Prachanda, whose nom de guerre means “the fierce one,” signed a peace deal in 2006 and ushered the Maoists into the political mainstream. He previously served as prime minister in 2008 and 2016, with both stints lasting less than a year.
While Nepal has seen a carousel of 13 prime ministers in 16 years, with few leaders offering dramatically new proposals to lift the impoverished economy, this election has revived a geopolitical question with heightened international implications: would Nepal, strategically perched in the Himalayas, tilt toward China or toward India and the United States?
“The Communist parties are supposed to be more sensitive to Chinese interests and Deuba closer to India, but everything seems to be pretty ephemeral in Nepal,” said Ranjit Rae, a former Indian ambassador. “In the end, it’s the personal interest of the leaders that decides policy rather than strongly held positions.”
Following the announcement of Prachanda’s selection, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Chinese Embassy in Nepal both tweeted their congratulations.
Building on policies of successive U.S. administrations, the Biden White House has emphasized building relationships with governments across South Asia to counter China. Under pressure from the State Department in February, Deuba’s government ratified a $500 million infrastructure deal it had signed five years earlier with the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation, a foreign aid agency established under President George W. Bush.
The deal was criticized by Nepal’s Maoists and derided by the Chinese Foreign Ministry as Nepal opening a poisoned “Pandora’s Box” from Washington, while the State Department accused the Chinese of meddling in the tiny Himalayan nation.
“The Americans were openly saying the Chinese are instigating Nepal to oppose [the infrastructure deal] and the Chinese were saying the Americans are persuading Nepal to act against China,” said Rae. “This sort of public spat was something new that never happened before in Nepal.”
This summer, a domestic political furor over Nepal’s ties with the United States forced Deuba and Nepal’s army chief to deny that the army had signed a cooperation agreement with the U.S. National Guard and paved the way for a deeper military partnership.
The domestic firestorm prompted Deuba to cancel a trip to Washington and the U.S. Embassy to issue a strongly-worded statement saying the United States “is not pressuring” Nepal to sign any agreements, nor is it “seeking a military alliance” with Nepal.
Nepal’s foreign alignments looked markedly different during the term of Deuba’s predecessor, Oli, who served as prime minister between 2018 and 2021. He tussled with India over territorial disputes, bitterly accused New Delhi of economic blackmail and claimed Indian forces were trying to unseat him. Instead, Oli courted investment from China, including projects under the Belt and Road Initiative that have mostly failed to materialize.
“The real issue is Nepal is finding it very hard to balance between China and India,” said Sushant Singh, a fellow at the Center for Policy Research think tank in New Delhi. “As long as it’s a divided polity and a multiparty coalition, all foreign countries have chances to meddle.” | 2022-12-26T08:23:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Maoist leader Prachanda emerges as Nepal’s next prime minister - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/26/maoist-leader-prachanda-emerges-nepals-next-prime-minister/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/26/maoist-leader-prachanda-emerges-nepals-next-prime-minister/ |
2022: The year in review (Taylor’s version)
She broke sales records, broke Ticketmaster and embraced her own cringe. Here’s how Taylor Swift dominated yet another year.
Analysis by Emily Yahr
(Emily Sabens/Washington Post illustration; Amy Sussman/Getty; Terry Wyatt/Getty; Dia Dipasupil/Getty; iStock)
As soon as Taylor Swift released her new single, “Anti-Hero” in October, an upbeat track that is essentially is a list of her insecurities, listeners zeroed in on one lyric: “Sometimes I feel like everybody is a sexy baby, and I’m a monster on the hill.”
“Sexy baby” (a possible “30 Rock” reference?) sent social media into meme overdrive, but the most telling part was Swift’s description of herself as a “monster on the hill.” It is fitting: Over the past 16 years, Swift, 33, has become so famous that her mere presence is simply all-consuming, the rare figure that manages to dominate pop culture at all times. During a time in which so many millennial music stars struggle to sustain momentum in their careers, she maintains an unbreakable hold on our increasingly fractured world — and its discourse — in a way that almost no one else can.
That trend continued in 2022, with all facets of Swift’s stardom on display. Her fame reached new levels as she rewrote Billboard history and was the impetus for an upcoming Senate antitrust panel hearing. But at the same time, she didn’t pass up opportunities to cast herself as uncool or an underdog, even as she set her sights on Hollywood domination. If it seemed as if it was all-Taylor all the time in 2022, it’s because it basically was. Here’s a look back.
How the search for clues in Taylor Swift’s music became all-consuming
“Midnights” shattered sales records
It’s rare for a basic-cable award show make news these days, but the MTV Video Music Awards caught a lucky break when Swift chose her video of the year acceptance speech in August to drop the surprising news that she would be releasing her 10th studio album, “Midnights,” a couple months later. (Swift is currently rerecording her first six albums after a contentious dispute with her former Nashville record label, and with only two rerecords released so far, fans were unsure when they would get new music.)
Swift loves nothing more than being on theme, so at midnight following the VMAs — where she was photographed at an after-party wearing a midnight navy dress covered in sparkling stars — she announced on Instagram that the album would center on “the stories of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout my life.” That brief description sent her fiercely loyal fandom into a frenzy as they spent the next two months scouring her carefully timed TikTok videos and Instagram posts for clues about what the music could possibly hold.
The hype worked: “Midnights” became the first album since 2015 to sell more than a million physical copies in its first week — a rare feat, and essentially unheard of in the streaming era — and racked up a whopping 1.5 million equivalent album units based on streaming numbers. Boosted by fans buying multiple copies of the vinyl and CD versions (the four pieces of album art formed the shape of a clock because Swift is nothing if not a marketing prodigy) and an extra seven songs released for a “3 a.m. Edition,” it shattered an astonishing amount of sales and streaming records and has sold more than 6 million equivalent album units so far.
Swift also became the first artist ever to take up every single slot of the Top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, led by the self-loathing “Anti-Hero” at No. 1 — and incidentally marking the first time in history that the Top 10 included zero men.
Ticketmaster reached its breaking point
Earlier this year, BTS fans were furious when Ticketmaster sold out the K-pop superstar group’s presale tickets so fast that they canceled the general admission sale. Several months later, Bruce Springsteen loyalists experienced serious sticker shock through Ticketmaster’s “dynamic pricing” model, causing prices to skyrocket. But those were just appetizers for the outrage that exploded in the aftermath of the presale for Swift’s Eras Tour, a 52-date stadium tour kicking off in March and “a journey through the musical eras” of Swift’s country and pop career.
In mid-November, Ticketmaster opened its virtual doors for the first crack at tickets, only to be swarmed with what the company later said was 3.5 billion system requests, four times its previous peak. There were glitches, hours-long limbo in the “virtual waiting room” and the eventual cancellation of the general admission sale. The company released a statement calling Swift an “unstoppable force” and simultaneously blamed “a staggering number of bot attacks” for the chaos. Live Nation’s chairman pointed to the “massive demand” for Swift concerts and claimed that she could have sold out “900 stadiums.”
Unfortunately for Ticketmaster, which has long been a source of frustration for concertgoers thanks to its dominance in the online ticket market, the rage from Swift fans was so intense that it sparked a lawsuit and caught the attention of several lawmakers. The Senate antitrust panel promised a hearing into consolidation in the entertainment ticketing industry, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) tweeted that Ticketmaster and Live Nation Entertainment, which merged in 2010, should be broken up. As jilted Swifties brushed up on monopolies and antitrust law, the Department of Justice confirmed an investigation into Live Nation, though a source told The Post that the probe predates the issues with Swift tickets.
Damon Albarn regretted his life choices
What was Blur and Gorillaz singer Damon Albarn thinking in January when he confidently told the Los Angeles Times that Swift doesn’t write her own songs? No one may ever know, but he soon came to regret it. When pop music critic Mikael Wood pushed back during their Q&A and explained that Swift writes or co-writes all of her music, Albarn responded, “That doesn’t count. I know what co-writing is. Co-writing is very different to writing. I’m not hating on anybody, I’m just saying there’s a big difference between a songwriter and a songwriter who co-writes.”
The ensuing backlash wasn’t just the result of a rabid fan base. Swift, who started penning her own songs at age 12 and then started working with some of Nashville’s A-list writers, takes her reputation as a songwriter more seriously than any other aspect of her career. (She famously walked away from a major-label record deal when she was 14 because the label wasn’t going to let her record her own songs.) So she wasn’t going to let this one slide: “I was such a big fan of yours until I saw this,” Swift fired back in a tweet. “I write ALL of my own songs. Your hot take is completely false and SO damaging. You don’t have to like my songs but it’s really f----- up to try and discredit my writing. WOW.”
Albarn quickly tried to walk things back with an apology and tried blaming the media (“I had a conversation about songwriting and sadly it was reduced to clickbait”) but it was too late — and the controversy both reminded everyone of her writing credentials and showed what will happen if someone not only criticizes Swift, but gets the facts wrong.
Her (self) mythology continued to grow
People make jokes about the Taylor Swift Cinematic Universe, but it’s also not even really a joke. Since her debut country album in 2006, Swift has carefully and steady built her own mythology, embedding puzzles and hints about the true meaning of her work in album liner notes and sprinkling clues about her life in social media posts and videos. Her use of symbols and imagery has only grown over time, to the point that if you look deep enough into Swift World, her fans seem as if they are practically speaking another language with abbreviations, coded catchphrases and references that only they understand.
In September, Swift added a few more phrases to the lexicon when she accepted the Songwriter-Artist of the Decade prize at the Nashville Songwriter Awards, and revealed that she has three categories of lyricism in her mind: Quill Lyrics, which means if her song sounds like “a letter written by Emily Dickinson’s great-grandmother while sewing a lace curtain”; Fountain Pen Lyrics, meaning “a modern storyline or references with a poetic twist”; and Glitter Gel Pen Lyrics, which are “frivolous, carefree, bouncy, syncopated perfectly to the beat.” Swift loyalists cling to any insight about the singer’s internal creative process, and those descriptions were quickly adapted into the fandom.
She reminded everyone to embrace the cringe
As the Swiftian history tells us, Swift’s experience as an unpopular teenager shaped much of her worldview, as her earliest songs focus on the insecurity and angst she often felt at school. Even as she became one of the most powerful celebrities on the planet, that lingering feeling didn’t seem to go away as she took criticisms to heart when people made fun of her for being cringe-y, whether it was her “surprised face” when she (very expectedly) won at award shows or showcased her “squad” of super-famous friends.
In a twist of fate, social media in recent years has decided that, actually, cringe is cool — and Swift doubled down on embracing the cringe factor in her May commencement address at New York University, where she was awarded an honorary doctorate of fine arts. “Learn to live alongside cringe. No matter how hard you try to avoid being cringe, you will look back on your life and cringe retrospectively,” she said in her now-viral speech. “I promise you, you’re probably doing or wearing something right now that you will look back on later and find revolting and hilarious.”
Another much-quoted excerpt reminded people that, actually, it is okay to be excited about things — maybe even like winning prizes at award shows. “Effortlessness is a myth,” Swift said. “The people who wanted it the least were the ones I wanted to date and be friends with in high school. The people who want it the most are the people I now hire to work for my company.”
Up next: her auteur era
Swift started occasionally directing her own music videos a few years ago and then took things up a notch with the “All Too Well (10 Minute Version)” short film, the cinematic adaptation of the standout ballad on Swift’s rerecorded “Red” album.” Not only did the project win two VMA awards and is nominated for best music video at the upcoming Grammy Awards, but it propelled Swift to a slot in Variety’s “Director’s on Directors” series this month, where she sat down with “The Banshees of Inisherin” director Martin McDonagh to discuss their work.
That pairing might have seemed a bit out of nowhere, but it made far more sense the following day when news broke that Swift wrote and will direct a feature film for Searchlight Pictures. (No other details have been released.) Swift has had a roller coaster of a journey with movies, from the underrated “Valentine’s Day” to the fever dream that was “Cats” to this year’s little-seen, widely panned “Amsterdam” to her recent Grammy nomination for “Carolina,” which she wrote for the “Where the Crawdads Sing” soundtrack. But as Swift has made the rounds promoting the “All Too Well” short film this year, with sit-downs at the high-profile Tribeca Festival and the Toronto Film Festival, it’s a clear signal that she’s set her sights on conquering yet another piece of the industry. | 2022-12-26T11:26:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Taylor Swift's 2022 in review: 'Midnights,' Ticketmaster and cringe - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/12/26/taylor-swift-2022-midnights-ticketmaster/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/12/26/taylor-swift-2022-midnights-ticketmaster/ |
Anti-vaccine sentiment has increased since the pandemic, driven by politicization around the coronavirus vaccine
An Orthodox Jewish man walks with his children in Brooklyn during a large measles outbreak in 2019 that spread rapidly among under-vaccinated and unvaccinated people in the community. (Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images)
More than a third of parents with children under 18 — and 28 percent of all adults — now say parents should be able to decide not to vaccinate their children for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) to attend public schools, even if remaining unvaccinated may create health risks for others, according to new polling by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health-care research nonprofit.
Adam Moore, a father of three in the Detroit suburbs, said none of his children — 9, 12 and 17 and enrolled in private school — have received routine childhood immunizations, let alone vaccines for the coronavirus or flu. He values personal liberty and says the government has no right telling people what to do with their bodies.
“I find it a hard argument when the government says we’re all for individual liberty on abortion rights and all this other stuff, but when it comes to vaccinations, there’s no such thing as ‘my body, my choice,’” said Moore, 43, an account manager for a marketing company.
Bianca Hernandez, a 37-year-old dog breeder in the Albuquerque metropolitan area, described concerns about the link between vaccine ingredients and autism, a view that has been extensively disproven. She said her two youngest children receive religious exemptions from school vaccination requirements.
CDC expands wastewater surveillance for polio to Michigan, Pennsylvania
Support for immunization mandates has held steady among Democrats, with 88 percent saying that children should be vaccinated to attend public schools because of the potential risk for others when they are not.
Anne Zink, chief medical officer for Alaska’s health department, said that even in a state with historically lower vaccination rates, childhood immunization rates have yet to return to their pre-pandemic levels. In the years before the pandemic, about 65 percent of Alaskan children 19 to 35 months old had completed their routine childhood immunizations. By the end of 2021, 46 percent had.
“I was like, ‘Well, it really doesn’t when all of us choose to get vaccinated, but you aren’t vaccinated, your family’s not vaccinated, and the people you hang out with are not vaccinated. Chickenpox has been spreading in your community, and now you’re really sick,’” Zink recalled.
“Wellbee” was created in the 1960’s to promote the Polio vaccine in Alaska and in communities across the US. The Wellbee campaign is a good reminder that staying up to date on routine vaccines is an established public health prevention tool that’s been around for many decades. pic.twitter.com/qXeWcWSk6J
— Alaska Department of Health (@Alaska_DOH) December 2, 2022
D.C. also requires students 12 and older to be vaccinated against covid-19 but has delayed enforcing the mandate until the 2023-2024 school year. California has a pending statewide student coronavirus vaccine mandate that will not take effect until after July 2023. Nearly two dozen states have some form of ban against student coronavirus vaccine mandates.
Health officials in Ohio have been working closely with the Somali community to increase vaccination uptake without stigmatizing them. Columbus public health workers have hosted vaccine clinics at a community center and a mosque and are conducting home visits to provide shots. They have also reached out to schools, day-care centers and grocery stores about the importance of vaccination.
Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus recently saw a 20 percent increase in the number of parents seeking the MMR vaccine, Roberts said. The health department, too, has seen a small uptick in vaccinations. | 2022-12-26T11:26:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Growing vaccine hesitancy fuels measles, chickenpox resurgence in U.S. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/12/26/vaccine-hesitancy-measles-chickenpox-polio-flu/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/12/26/vaccine-hesitancy-measles-chickenpox-polio-flu/ |
In Afghanistan, the lights go out for women
Amanah Nashenas, an Afghan teacher, collects books in a school in Kabul on Thursday. The Taliban has banned women from attending universities. (Ebrahim Noroozi/AP)
With a single decision, Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers have crushed the dreams of a generation of women. The Islamist regime announced Dec. 20 that women would be prohibited from attending universities, on top of earlier decrees banning girls from middle school and high school. “They destroyed the only bridge that could connect me with my future,” a Kabul University student told the BBC.
When the Taliban first came to power in Afghanistan in 1996, it imposed a strict version of Islamic law, or sharia, that kept women out of schools and workplaces and wrapped them in head-to-toe clothing. When the Taliban was ejected following the 9/11 attacks, the opening of university classrooms for girls and women was a singular achievement. It provided a window of opportunity for women such as Fawzia Koofi, who, after 2001, was able to get a university degree in Pakistan and then became one of the most outspoken women in the Afghan parliament and a leading advocate for women’s rights.
Shabana Basij-Rasikh: The Taliban strikes another blow to Afghanistan's women
Returning to power in August 2021 after the chaotic U.S. withdrawal, the Taliban promised to take a more moderate stance in running the country. It has not. Right after the announcement, young women saw university gates slammed shut and Taliban guards blocking the way. Many educated Afghans who had remained after the withdrawal and hoped for change are now likely to flee. The decision might lead to the proliferation of secret and forbidden study groups for women. The minister of higher education, Nida Mohammad Nadim, claimed the ban was necessary to prevent the mixing of genders in universities and because he believes some subjects being taught violated the principles of Islam. This is balderdash. What really happened is that the hard-liners among the Taliban, those with the harshest Pashtun village mores, have triumphed over more moderate voices and factions.
Afghan women have periodically staged protests, but the Taliban has cracked down on such demonstrations in the past. The university ban feels like a point of no return. A university lecturer and Afghan activist, Homeira Qaderi, told the BBC, “Afghanistan is not a country for women but instead a cage for women.” And the Taliban decision drew condemnation from majority-Muslim Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said it was “neither Islamic nor humane,” and added, “What harm is there in women’s education? … Our religion, Islam, is not against education; on the contrary, it encourages education and science.”
On Saturday, the Taliban took another step to restrict women, banning them from working in nongovernmental organizations, both domestic and foreign.
In September, the United States announced that about $3.5 billion in previously frozen reserves of Afghanistan’s central bank will be transferred to a new fund in Switzerland to benefit the Afghan people, while keeping it out of the reach of the Taliban. Afghanistan is still mired in an economic and humanitarian crisis, and those needs should be met, but the United States and its allies should make no mistake: The Taliban regime is sticking to the old, primitive approach to women, cruelly extinguishing their hopes and future. | 2022-12-26T12:18:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | An Afghanistan women's education ban shows the Taliban has not changed - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/26/afghanistan-women-university-education-taliban/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/26/afghanistan-women-university-education-taliban/ |
Why your flexible savings account is not the benefit it could be
By Pamela Herd
Donald Moynihan
Pamela Herd and Donald P. Moynihan are professors at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University.
But with the new year deadline approaching, many people are trying to use up the money they diverted to their FSAs during 2022 by splurging on spare eyeglasses, electronic massagers, first aid kits and other vaguely medical knickknacks they don’t really need. There’s a whole mini-industry of online stores specializing in FSA-approved items. The perversity of such last-minute ill-targeted health-care spending is only the tip of the iceberg: By one estimate, consumers lost $4.2 billion in unspent FSA funds in 2020.
We’re both professors of public policy who study the administrative burdens people encounter in government programs — and yet we have struggled so much with our own family’s FSA that we decided to look under the hood. What we’ve concluded is that it’s time to reevaluate the value of FSAs.
As Vox Media’s Ian Millhiser put it: “Every year you have to guess how much money you’ll spend on health care. Guess right, you get a modest tax break; guess wrong, you light your money on fire.”
Meanwhile, back at our house, we discovered that our employers have extended the new year’s deadline by two and a half months — so we’re still hoping to get our last-minute expenses processed. Fingers crossed. | 2022-12-26T12:19:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Flexible savings accounts should be more flexible - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/26/flexible-spending-account-is-flawed-benefit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/26/flexible-spending-account-is-flawed-benefit/ |
Nearly hit by a car? New tool will let students report close calls.
The idea – backed by federal safety funds – is to share data on dangerous intersections with local government officials before tragedies occur.
A crossing guard helps people cross Wheeler Road SE in December, near Eagle Academy Public Charter School. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
A bike group in the District, working with safety experts at Howard University, is creating a new tool for elementary through high school students to report if they almost get hit by a car while biking or walking around the city.
The idea — backed by federal safety funds — is to gather and share data on dangerous intersections with local government officials before tragedies occur.
Howard researchers are examining neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River to help guide the development of the near-miss reporting tool for use citywide and beyond.
“There’s a lot of near misses and near accidents occurring. Let’s not wait until there’s a tragedy to do something about it," said Jeremiah Lowery, the advocacy director for the Washington Area Bicyclist Association.
Last year, young children were among those killed and seriously injured walking and riding bikes on District streets. Lowery and other safety advocates concluded the city’s youth needed a more effective tool to communicate the everyday dangers they face.
While the association already has a crash reporting form on its website — collecting data from cyclists on the crashes they’re in or see, as well as near misses and incidents of harassment — “we said to ourselves, this isn’t good for young people. Young people aren’t using it. What would a system look like for youth?”
They are going through an elaborate process to come up with an answer.
First, Howard researchers are analyzing high-resolution video images from cameras set up along at least 15 intersections in Ward 7 and Ward 8, trying to document near-misses, according to Stephen Arhin, director of the Howard University Transportation Research Center. The cameras, often placed near school zones, run for at least three days, he said.
“If we do not capture any near misses at this location, then potentially there’s nothing wrong with the characteristics of the location. So we may be able to move the camera somewhere else,” Arhin said. “That process is what we’re going through now.”
The project organizers will then use those findings to help select a nearby school to partner with and host a workshop in April. The goal is to hear from students, parents and teachers about how to make a reporting tool for near misses that people will actually use. It will be housed on the group’s website.
In defining a near miss, safety experts sometimes talk about how close a dangerous collision was to occurring if someone didn’t shift their direction. For young people, what they experience and witness could both be reportable. But the precise definitions have yet to be set.
“We want to build it from the ground up, by listening to folks who were most impacted,” Lowery said.
The tool could roll out shortly after the workshop, first to schools in Wards 7 and 8, which will provide feedback, then to all city schools and later more broadly around the region, Lowery said.
The effort is backed by a $100,000 grant from the nonprofit National Safety Council, which is tapping funds from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The Safe Routes Partnership, which works to increase safety for students headed to schools, is also part of the project.
“The U.S. does not need to wait for deaths to occur to realize its problem areas,” said Heidi Simon, senior program manager of mobility safety strategy at the Council, a nonprofit leader in road safety. A number of other cities also analyze near-misses, sometimes using automation. “Near-miss data allow safety to be proactive, giving communities the information needed to prevent crashes before they happen and ultimately save lives.”
Simon added that crashes are a leading cause of death for children and teens, and “engaging youth raises their awareness of the crisis on American roads and, in particular, for young people.”
Crash deaths are on the rise across the nation. The infrastructure bill opens the door to a safety overhaul.
Lowery also emphasizes a political edge to the work, noting that the tool will be designed to send notifications to the city council member representing the spot where the near miss occurred as well as to the District Department of Transportation.
“I think a lot of times our elected officials only respond when there’s a death, when there’s an absolute tragedy that happens,” Lowery said. “We’re trying to flip the script a little bit. We’re going to make sure our elected officials get all those near misses in front of their faces: Tuesday there was a near miss. Wednesday there was a near miss, Thursday, Friday …”
Everett Lott, director of the District Department of Transportation, said in a statement that the city uses police crash data and other safety research to direct its resources “to the most crash-severe and dense areas of the District, including areas of highest crash risk.” The District has been more aggressive in recent years in its efforts to reduce and ultimately eliminate traffic deaths, he said, including focusing on equity concerns.
Lott also raised questions about the information that could emerge from the new tool.
“It’s important to remember that self-reported or crowdsourced inputs can be biased by who is reporting, where they travel, how widely the reporting tool is known/used, as well as what constitutes a ‘close call,’” Lott said.
For Lowery, who started riding his bicycle in Southeast as a child, the risks that young people in the city will continue to be victims of what he calls “traffic violence” require residents and officials to explore new ways of doing things.
Lowery is now 37, and in the decades since he shook off his training wheels, he estimates he’s had hundreds of near misses with automobiles in the city.
The time on Georgia Avenue was among the worst.
“I was riding and the truck was making a turn — I guess he didn’t see me — and I jumped off my bike. And the truck just ran it over, just crushed it. I had to throw it away,” Lowery said. “I feel as though I’m blessed to be here.” | 2022-12-26T12:58:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nearly hit by a car? New tool will let students report close calls. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/12/26/pedestrian-cyclist-traffic-danger/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/12/26/pedestrian-cyclist-traffic-danger/ |
Some final advice: Beware of cryptocurrencies and ratty CEOs like Musk
There’s little to like about two personalities dominating business headlines these days
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried on Dec. 21 in Nassau, Bahamas. (Rebecca Blackwell/AP)
This is the time of year that you see lots of long, ambitious articles in newspapers, magazines and websites. That’s because editors and writers are eager to get their projects published by year-end so that they can submit them for this year’s journalism prizes.
It’s also the time of year that you see lots of journalists leaving their jobs and moving on to something new. This year, that includes me. This is my final regular Washington Post column. The Post has run my more-or-less weekly columns for about 30 years, the last seven of which — since I retired from Fortune — I’ve been a Post contractor. My current contract expires at year-end.
So before I go, I’d like to offer you some final words of advice and possibly give you a smile or two in the process.
Let’s start with Sam Bankman-Fried and cryptocurrency, which I called craptocurrency in a recent column.
Musk, FTX founder Bankman-Fried lead 2022 flock of business turkeys
I use that term because cryptocurrency is a bunch of crap. And it’s not a currency, which by definition is something that you can use to buy goods or services, and something that you get when you sell goods and services.
Retail investors who didn’t understand what they bought through Bankman-Fried’s FTX have learned the hard way that you can lose your shirt overnight with crypto, which is a speculative bet rather than a regulated currency like the U.S. dollar, the euro, the Japanese yen or the Chinese renminbi.
Sure, central banks like the Federal Reserve haven’t exactly done a bang-up job the past couple of years, letting inflation and speculation get out of hand before tightening things this year, possibly excessively. But I’d rather rely on Fed Chair Jay Powell to serve my interests than to depend on the likes of Bankman-Fried — I can’t help but smile at the “bank” part of his name — to treat people honestly.
I’m a recovering English major who’s learned about business on the job and never studied finance. (I was a straight-A student in economics — but I took only one course.) Possibly because I lack academic training, I try to see — and explain to you — how the financial world actually works, as opposed to the way financial theory says the financial world should work. That’s why it took me about 12 seconds to see that cryptocurrency is a crapshoot, not a currency.
I wish that I’d paid attention to Bankman-Fried and his fellow travelers before FTX failed and cost retail investors who’d fallen for his nonsense a lot of money.
I don’t know how many of you would have taken my advice if I’d warned you before the FTX flopperoo. But just as I like to think that I may have encouraged some people to get lifesaving cardiac surgery by writing earlier this year about my new aortic valve, I might have helped some of you avoid being snookered by the crypto crowd.
I was home a day after a heart procedure. Less-invasive TAVR made it possible.
Speaking of advice, I’d sure stay away from anything run by Elon Musk or associated with him. Yes, early Tesla investors who bought Tesla when its stock was in double digits before its big run-up two years ago are way ahead and Musk deserves credit for building Tesla into a credible company. But that was then, and this is now. When last I looked, Tesla had tanked by more than two-thirds from its Jan. 3 high of $399.93 a share. One reason, of course, is that Musk has sold tons of Tesla shares to raise money to deal with his personal financial situation.
It's clear from watching Musk’s antics at Twitter that he seems to have an endless need for self-promotion and publicity. There may be a method to Musk’s seeming madness. But I don’t have the patience — or a strong enough stomach — to wait Musk out.
I get a kick out of imagining that one of these days, Musk will buy the company that owns the Truth Social network used by Donald Trump. That way, Musk can shovel some money to Trump and perhaps lure Trump and his followers back into Twitter, either directly or indirectly. Maybe that would help shore up Twitter’s finances, such as they are.
Now, I’ll do what I should do, and stop while I’m ahead. Or maybe only a little behind.
I’d like to thank The Post for buying my column when I self-syndicated it — revenue from The Post and various other outlets is how my wife and I paid for our kids’ college educations without them or us having to take on debt. And I’m glad to have kept up my relationship with The Post for so long.
I’d like to thank those of you who’ve read my Post columns over the years. I’d especially like to thank those of you who’ve told me that my columns helped you understand the financial world. That’s what I try to do — and it’s why I’m pleased and flattered when people tell me that I’ve been successful.
Meanwhile, if you’ve got an hour or so, you can look at this video of my recent conversation with my friend Andy Serwer when I was named a Business News Legend last month by SABEW, the nation’s biggest trade association of business journalists.
Thanks to Andy’s skillful questioning, that video shows how I think about things and what I’ve done over my 50-plus-year business-writing career. You may find it helpful. Or even interesting.
I wish you well. I also wish The Washington Post well as it navigates a tough climate. And who knows? One of these days, when I’ve finished sorting through the options for the next stage of my career, you may occasionally see my byline in The Post business or opinion section.
Be well, stay safe. And thanks for reading me. | 2022-12-26T12:58:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Beware of cryptocurrencies and mercurial CEOs - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/12/26/sloan-final-column-musk-sbf/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/12/26/sloan-final-column-musk-sbf/ |
A 1934 murder mystery’s pages were printed out of order. Now the world is obsessed.
Only four people have ever solved the puzzle contained in the pages of ‘Cain’s Jawbone.’ TikTok helped turn the obscure, 100-page British novel into a craze.
The reporter’s copy of “Cain’s Jawbone,” which has been cut apart and bound back together in what she fervently hopes is the correct order of pagination. (Hannah Natanson/The Washington Post)
“Cain’s Jawbone” is seductive.
The lissome little murder mystery retails for $15 and totals 100 pages. The novel’s cover, depicting a murdered man’s legs on a library floor, is an enticing blend of turquoise, bright yellow and pale orange. The book was written in 1934 by a British crossword master, and “the pages have been printed in an entirely haphazard order,” the book jacket’s cover declares, “but it is possible — through logic and intelligent reading — to sort them into the only correct order, revealing six murder victims and their respective murderers.”
Then you start reading — and realize why only four people have solved the puzzle since its publication nearly eight decades ago.
“I stabbed once,” declares page 38, “and even as I did so, I thought of skinny old Marat in his slipper bath, the nightcap about his forehead, the dim light of the candle, the shadow at the door, the stealthy tread of Charlotte Brontë with the undulled blade.”
“Had not the author of Wails of a Tayside Inn said of them that they were the living poems and that all the rest were dead?” asks page 93. “Had not the singer of Wimpole Street said that they were binding up their hearts away from breaking with a cerement of the grave?”
That earned a smidgen of media coverage — but things really took off when a TikTok user in San Francisco picked the slim volume up at her local bookstore and started posting videos about her attempts to solve it. Her first video, published in November 2021 and titled “i fear i may have girlbossed a bit too close to the sun,” earned 6.6 million views. Within hours, “Cain’s Jawbone” sold out on Amazon.
The novel has united people around the world in an obsessive quest to unearth the answer, generating online communities, prompting many to turn rooms of their homes into “murder walls” plastered with book pages — and inspiring one woman in Colorado to propose an artificial intelligence-based method for solving the novel, which is still in the trial phase.
“It’s been a bestseller in Italy, it’s selling incredibly well in France,” Mitchinson said. “I am still just baffled that it’s selling in these quantities.”
Added Patrick Wildgust, curator of a literary museum in York who partnered with Mitchinson to republish “Cain’s Jawbone”: “This has hit home. I don’t know why.”
‘Cult thing for literary people’
“Cain’s Jawbone” was written by Edward Powys Mathers, known in Britain as the father of the cryptic crossword, a form of crossword — largely nonexistent in America — in which the crossword clues themselves contain the answers, but in an encoded or encrypted form. These word puzzles are devilishly difficult, and Mathers became the undisputed king of the genre in the early 20th century.
Under the nom de plume “Torquemada” — a pseudonym he adopted to imply he would be as cruel to readers as Spanish Grand Inquisitor Tómas de Torquemada — Mathers penned 670 crosswords for the Observer newspaper over the course of his career. His cryptics became known internationally: Each week, thousands of people would submit solutions from places as far away as Alaska and West Africa, according to the online magazine Mental Floss.
In 1934, Mathers issued a compendium of his work titled the “Torquemada Puzzle Book.” Tacked onto the end of the book was “Cain’s Jawbone.” Torquemada announced a contest to solve the book in the Observer, promising successful entrants a prize of 25 pounds, or roughly $2,500 today.
The challenge drew two solvers in its first year, according to Wildgust: “W. S. Kennedy” and “S. Sydney-Turner.” (In an odd freak of literary fate, the second solver appears to be Saxon Sydney-Turner, a friend of Virginia Woolf and the least-known member of the Bloomsbury circle, a man dismissed by the biographers of his more famous friends as “taciturn, pedantic, fussily jocose” and “brilliant in a crossword puzzle-solving kind of way.”)
But after that, the world forgot “Cain’s Jawbone.”
That afternoon, he showed Mitchinson “Cain’s Jawbone.” Wildgust had attempted to solve it a few times, but gotten nowhere.
Mitchinson was intrigued. He tried to solve it himself, but gave up after scanning 40 pages of what looked like nonsense. Wildgust told Mitchinson that he’d managed to unearth the solution by trawling through his vast network of booksellers and ultimately locating an elderly man in a nursing home who still had both his own answers and a signed note from Torquemada himself congratulating him for getting it right. (The nursing home resident, whose name has not been shared publicly, brought the total number of solvers up to three.)
“I thought, ‘We ought to be able to sell this,’” Mitchinson recalled. “I was pretty sure we’d sell 5,000 copies at most ... I thought this could become a kind of cult thing for literary people.”
In its first year on the market in 2019, “Cain’s Jawbone” sold roughly 4,000 copies. Mitchinson and Wildgust also launched a contest, offering anyone who developed the correct answers by Sept. 19, 2020, a prize of 1,000 pounds.
It drew 12 submissions. To Mitchinson and Wildgust’s shock, one of them was right.
‘Nearly impossible task’
British comedian, writer and crossword author John Finnemore stumbled across “Cain’s Jawbone” just before the pandemic hit.
“I swiftly concluded that it was way out of my league, and the only way I’d even have a shot at it was if I were for some bizarre reason trapped in my own home for months on end, with nowhere to go and no one to see,” Finnemore told the Guardian. “Unfortunately, the universe heard me.”
Finnemore, who did not respond to an interview request, told the Guardian he spent about four months during lockdown working to solve the novel, laying out its pages across a spare bed in his home. He religiously Googled anything and everything referenced in the novel, but remained stymied for weeks. Eventually, something clicked — although Finnemore, wary of revealing the solution, has said little about his methods.
“There’s a major thing you realize about it, and you go, ‘Oh, I see,’” Finnemore told the podcast, “This Is Love.”
By coincidence, it was Finnemore’s birthday when he answered a phone call from Mitchinson telling him he’d gotten the answer right. Finnemore’s feat drew a buzz of media attention and reader interest, mostly in the United Kingdom, and Mitchinson decided he might as well print another round of books and open the contest again for 2021.
Almost a year later, halfway across the world in San Francisco, 25-year-old Sarah Scannell came across the novel while browsing in Green Apple Books. Scannell, who works for a documentary production company, didn’t buy it, thinking it would be too difficult.
“But then I wound up thinking about it for a full month,” she said, “so I walked back and got it.”
“I found this murder mystery book from 1934 where you have to figure out the six killers and their victims but all the pages are printed out of order,” she says in the video, “so I’ve decided to take this nearly impossible task as an opportunity to fulfill a literally lifelong dream and turn my entire bedroom wall into a murder board.” Then the camera pans up to her page-splattered wall.
Within 12 hours, her video had drawn more than half a million views — and her follower count soon soared to upward of 70,000. Twenty-four hours later, the book had sold out on Amazon and was back-ordered at Green Apple Books, Scannell said.
Within a week, U.S. orders topped 10,000 and Canadian orders spiked to more than 3,000, according to the Bookseller. Scannell’s friends who work in bookstores texted her to complain about the sudden influx of frustrated customers.
But in England, Mitchinson and Wildgust were thrilled. Eleven days after Scannell published her video, they announced plans to print 10,000 paperback copies. The following month, they printed 70,000 more — followed by additional print runs in the tens of thousands. By the end of this year, Mitchinson predicts, both Unbound and Shandy House will see thousands of pounds in profits; the two entities are evenly splitting the money pot. Wildgust plans to use the windfall to augment his rare-book collection.
Scannell will not be entering. “I am honestly not close to submitting,” she said. But she plans to keep working on it.
At this point, I must confess: I am one of the people who fell under the novel’s spell.
My boyfriend and I turned the walls of our staircase into a shrine to “Cain’s Jawbone,” pinning up slabs of pages. For months, we walked up and down the steps, shuffling and reshuffling the order. I downloaded a PDF of the novel onto my phone and printed out physical copies that I kept with me wherever I went. I read and reread the book everywhere: on the exercise bike, during my Metro ride to work, covertly at social gatherings.
Hunting for clues, I read (almost) all of Shakespeare’s plays and checked out library books about 1930s-era London, and its notable figures. And we traversed odd crevices of the internet: One morning, I came downstairs to find my boyfriend poring over an online PDF of a medieval Italian manuscript about the Catholic Church.
On Friday, Oct. 28 at 4:12 p.m., after five months of obsessive effort, we emailed in what we fervently hope is the correct solution. Now we’re just waiting to find out if we’ve cracked “Cain’s Jawbone.”
More great hoaxes in history
Great Moon Hoax of 1835 convinced the world of extraterrestrial life
The men claimed they were abducted by aliens. In Mississippi, police believed them.
They claimed they’d hit a creature from outer space on a Georgia highway. People got excited. | 2022-12-26T12:58:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Solving 'Cain's Jawbone' has turned a murder mystery into an obsession - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/12/26/solving-cains-jawbone-murder-mystery/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/12/26/solving-cains-jawbone-murder-mystery/ |
Nepal’s former prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, left, reacts as newly elected prime minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, right, takes oath during a ceremony at the President House in in Kathmandu, Nepal, Monday, Dec. 26, 2022. Dahal has appointed three deputies and four other ministers in the Cabinet that is expected to be expanded in the next few days to accommodate more members from the seven parties in the new coalition government. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)
KATHMANDU, Nepal — Nepal’s newly appointed prime minister took his oath Monday, leading a fragile coalition that includes his former opponent and other smaller political parties. | 2022-12-26T12:58:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nepal's new PM takes oath at the helm of fragile coalition - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/nepals-new-pm-takes-oath-appoints-deputies-and-ministers/2022/12/26/4e9ab9e8-8514-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/nepals-new-pm-takes-oath-appoints-deputies-and-ministers/2022/12/26/4e9ab9e8-8514-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
Monday briefing: Deadly blizzard in Buffalo; migrants sent to the vice president’s home; measles outbreak; Hannes Keller; and more
More than a dozen people in Buffalo died during a blizzard.
What happened: Several feet of snow, frigid temperatures and wind gusts of nearly 80 mph hit the city in Upstate New York over the holiday weekend. It could be the worst blizzard in Buffalo history.
What’s next? A ban on driving remains in place, and more snow could arrive today. Officials said the number of deaths will rise.
Three buses of migrants were sent from Texas to the vice president’s home.
The scene: More than 100 people, most from Central America or the Caribbean, were met by volunteers outside the Naval Observatory on the coldest Christmas Eve day on record in Washington, D.C.
Why there? It appeared to have political significance, with Vice President Harris in D.C. for the holiday. Previous buses had stopped at transportation hubs.
The background: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has been giving asylum seekers free bus rides to immigrant-friendly cities since April.
There’s been a spike in white-collar layoffs this holiday season.
Where? Meta, PepsiCo, Amazon, Cisco, Snap, Morgan Stanley, CNN and The Post, among others, have recently announced job cuts.
Why is this happening? Corporate America is preparing for a possible recession next year. December and January are popular months for layoffs, but cuts remain near historically low levels in the broader economy.
Vaccine hesitancy is fueling a measles resurgence.
Where? Columbus, Ohio. Most of the 81 infected children are old enough to get vaccinated, but their parents chose not to, officials said.
What are measles? A highly contagious virus that undermines the immune system, making those infected more susceptible to other diseases. The World Health Organization and CDC called it an “imminent” global threat.
People aren’t getting emergency alerts because of bad cellphone reception.
What’s happening? Big chunks of the country, especially rural and tribal lands, are lagging in connection, meaning urgent alerts can’t get to some phones.
Why it matters: These alerts can save lives. Some people have reported receiving no warning as wildfires or tornadoes have raced toward their homes.
Hannes Keller, a pioneering deep diver, died at 88.
Why we’ll remember him: The Swiss explorer developed breathing gas combinations that helped him survive a descent of more than 1,000 feet in 1962. The dive helped open new frontiers in ocean research.
After diving: Keller, whose death earlier this month was announced by his family, got into the computer industry in the 1970s and developed early spell-checking programs.
Two future Hall of Fame quarterbacks kept their NFL playoff hopes alive.
In the spotlight: Playing on Christmas Day, Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers ended a two-game losing streak, and can clinch a playoff spot next weekend. And Aaron Rodgers kept Green Bay in the mix with a Packers win in Miami.
Tonight: The L.A. Chargers can clinch a playoff berth with a win over the Indianapolis Colts on Monday Night Football (ESPN, 8:15 p.m. Eastern time).
And now … have a refrigerator full of holiday leftovers? Here’s what to do with them. And then: Start thinking about a healthy new year. | 2022-12-26T12:59:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The 7 things you need to know for Monday, December 26 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/12/26/what-to-know-for-december-26/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/12/26/what-to-know-for-december-26/ |
FILE - Afghan women chant slogans during a protest against the ban on university education for women, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Thursday, Dec. 22, 2022. The U.S. has condemned the Taliban for ordering non-governmental groups in Afghanistan to stop employing women, saying the ban will disrupt vital and life-saving assistance to millions. It is the latest blow to female rights and freedoms since the Taliban seized power last year and follows sweeping restrictions on education, employment, clothing and travel. (AP Photo, File) (Uncredited/AP) | 2022-12-26T12:59:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | UN official, Taliban minister meet on Afghan women NGO ban - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/un-official-taliban-minister-meet-on-afghan-women-ngo-ban/2022/12/26/6ccb5f26-8514-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/un-official-taliban-minister-meet-on-afghan-women-ngo-ban/2022/12/26/6ccb5f26-8514-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
Liliana Tsiolis, 11, reads aloud to Easton at the Olney library in Olney, Md., on Dec. 8. (Nicole Asbury/The Washington Post)
Harper Chandler beamed as she unzipped her puffer jacket and pulled out “The United States of America: A State by State Guide." Cooper — a 5-year-old mini golden doodle — wagged his tail as the second-grader approached him at Long Branch Library in Silver Spring. She was going to read to him about several states across the United States, starting with her home state of Maryland.
It’s a stressful day on Capitol Hill. Dogs are there to help.
At Long Branch, Harper had been reading about different states to Cooper for about 4o minutes. She read him facts about Ohio, including that seven U.S. presidents who were born in the state, before she came across a word she didn’t know: “buckeye.”
Her mother, Stephanie Powell, said, “Buck and then E-Y-E. That’s a word that you’ve seen differently, like on it’s own."
Harper sounded the word out again. “Buck-ay?” Cooper was sitting in front of them, patiently wagging his tail. She then tried, “Buckeye," and grinned when she realized she got it right.
When asked after if she thought Cooper was a good reading partner, Harper exclaimed, “He listened!" She leaned down, pet him some more, and he started panting. | 2022-12-26T13:11:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Therapy dogs make attentive audiences for Montgomery County's young readers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/26/montgomery-library-kids-read-dogs/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/26/montgomery-library-kids-read-dogs/ |
Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney are the Jan. 6 committee’s unusual dynamic duo
Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), the House Jan. 6 committee's chair, and Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), its vice chair, during a July hearing. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
The responsibility of learning and telling the story of the 2021 Capitol insurrection brought these partisan opponents together as chair and vice chair of the Jan. 6 committee. Their separate forewords to the committee’s final report, released Thursday, tell what united these unlikely partners.
The Post's View: Jan. 6 committee recommendations would (mostly) help preserve democracy
Writes Thompson: “The Capitol’s shining dome, topped with the statue of goddess Freedom, was built partially by the labor of enslaved people in the 18th and 19th centuries. Dark chapters of America’s history are written into the building’s marble, sandstone, and mortar. And yet in the halls and chambers of this building, leaders of courage passed amendments to our Constitution and enacted the laws that banned slavery, guaranteed equal rights under the law, expanded the vote, promoted equality, and moved our country, and her people, forward.”
Writes Cheney: “In April 1861, when Abraham Lincoln issued the first call for volunteers for the Union Army, my great-great grandfather, Samuel Fletcher Cheney, joined the 21st Ohio Volunteer Infantry. He fought through all four years of the Civil War, from Chickamauga to Stones River to Atlanta. ... At the heart of our Republic is the guarantee of the peaceful transfer of power. Members of Congress are reminded of this every day as we pass through the Capitol Rotunda.”
Both Cheney and Thompson understand the building where they work as an embodiment of our democracy and its long, halting and at times bloody struggle toward a more perfect union. Both refer to the Civil War era, the nation’s second founding. And both lived through a day that involved a sacrilege unseen even in Lincoln’s time: insurrectionists parading the Confederate battle flag across that sacred Rotunda.
This is not to slight the committee’s other members: Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.), Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.), Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.), Elaine G. Luria (D-Va.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.). They all did something unnatural for any member of Congress and impossible for quite a few: suppressed their egos to further a common cause.
The traditional format for hearings, in which each committee member gets five minutes to strut and preen, would have been like dosing the country’s water supply with Ambien. Each member had moments in the spotlight and brought perspective, experience and expertise that shaped the panel’s work. But each also sat through entire sessions without uttering a word. And Kinzinger’s patriotism — like Cheney’s — cost him his House seat and halted a promising political career.
The essential dynamic of the hearings, however, was the one-two combination of Thompson and Cheney. Their opening and closing statements at each session did more than demonstrate the committee’s bipartisan bona fides. They established the themes of that day’s presentation and the panel’s overall findings.
Thompson painted the big picture — the threat to our democracy from a violent, marauding mob that overran the Capitol in an attempt to nullify the result of a valid presidential election. Cheney zeroed in on the man responsible, the man who summoned the insurrectionists, fired them up, sent them off and then for more than three hours refused to make any effort to quell their bloody rampage: Donald Trump.
Jennifer Rubin: The Jan. 6 report's most important finding — Trump enabled extremist groups
Cheney’s final statements, especially, were like a prosecutor’s closing argument to the jury. She wasted few words on those who aided and abetted the assault — lawyers Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman and Sidney Powell; leaders of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers; elected officials including even fellow members of Congress. Her laserlike focus was on Trump, on what he did and failed to do, and on his unfitness for any public office, let alone the highest in the land.
The committee’s purpose was not to damage Trump’s political standing or spur the Justice Department to prosecute him, though I hope its work has those effects. The mission was to discover and reveal as much of the truth as possible about an unspeakable day and to find ways to ensure such a thing never happens again.
House Republicans will end the committee’s work but never erase the indelible mark it has made. Thompson, Cheney and their colleagues did their duty. And they did it well.
Opinion|Kamala Harris had a most excellent year | 2022-12-26T14:30:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney: Jan. 6 committee’s unusual dynamic duo - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/26/cheney-thompson-jan6-committee-accomplishments/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/26/cheney-thompson-jan6-committee-accomplishments/ |
Health is hard for people who are homeless. Miriam’s Kitchen helps.
The Washington Post Helping Hand. (TWP)
If you’ve ever been sick — really sick — or had a chronic medical condition, you quickly learned a basic fact: Managing an illness is a full-time job. As much as you would like to push it out of your mind — and perhaps, in those early days, you tried to — it becomes the constant backdrop to your life.
Now imagine doing that job when your home is a sleeping bag and your “job” is navigating the day-to-day struggle of just staying alive.
“In the public health world, you hear phrases like ‘Housing is health care,’” said Adam Rocap, deputy director of the D.C. homelessness charity Miriam’s Kitchen. “A lot of public health research calls housing one of the key social determinants of health.”
In other words, if you can move someone from the streets to their own apartment, you can improve some of the health issues they currently face and prevent future issues from arising.
And those health issues are myriad. Sickness is something that can drive a person into homelessness, as savings are exhausted and housing is lost while trying to afford care. Treating an existing illness while living in the streets is difficult.
“For people diagnosed with cancer, it’s really hard to do chemo and radiation if you don't have stable housing for recovery,” Rocap said. “Other basic things, like dialysis, it’s not that you can’t do them unless you’re housed but it’s just really hard.”
Bouncing back from even the most basic outpatient surgery — keeping stitches clean, for example — is a challenge. And when your possessions are in bags that you carry, keeping track of medication is difficult, especially medication such as insulin that must be refrigerated.
There are also dangerous conditions that are caused or exacerbated by experiencing homelessness.
“Homelessness in and of itself is a health hazard by virtue of exposing people to the elements, especially when it’s cold like this,” said Catherine Crosland, a physician and director for homeless outreach development at Unity Health Care, an organization founded to provide a safety net for people living in poverty. “People die from hypothermia every single year. They develop frostbite with long-term complications, including amputation and chronic arthritis.”
Homelessness takes a mental toll, too. Unhoused people, Crosland said, can experience chronic stress from the threat of violence that comes from living on the streets. Even in shelters, they may suffer from lack of sleep.
Another wrinkle: The clients Miriam’s Kitchen serves are getting older. Many are over 55. Rocap said the health issues affecting a person who is homeless are typically those of someone 10 to 15 years older.
This is all sobering stuff. But Miriam’s Kitchen is trying to help. It serves nutritious meals every weekday and twice a week — on Tuesday mornings and Thursday afternoons — staff from Unity Health Care come to offer their medical services to clients.
“We have always believed in meeting people where they are,” Crosland said. “Rather than expecting patients to come to us, we have always sought to decrease barriers to accessing medical care by going to them.”
At Miriam’s, that means setting up right off the dining room in the basement of Western Presbyterian Church in Foggy Bottom.
The long-term aim of everything Miriam’s Kitchen does is to find housing for its participants. That can be a slow process. Along the way, Miriam’s offers meals and access to the doctors and nurses of Unity. This is important not just for addressing immediate medical problems, but to track a patient’s health.
Think of the people close to you — your family, your friends — and how they would pitch in if you got sick. If you’re estranged from your family — without a home, beset by issues of mental health or addiction — you may not have that support. You might not even have something very basic: a benchmark for your health.
“When we’ve known people for a while, we may notice things that are changing healthwise for one of our guests that they don’t notice,” Rocap said.
It isn’t being sick that’s a full-time job. It’s getting well. If you’re living on the District’s streets, Miriam’s Kitchen and Unity Health Care are working right alongside you.
Miriam’s Kitchen is a partner in The Washington Post Helping Hand, our annual charity fund drive. Your donation can make a difference in the lives of unhoused people facing medical crises. As Dr. Crosland told me, “Even the healthiest person thrown into homelessness will develop all kinds of health issues.”
To give online to Miriam’s Kitchen, visit posthelpinghand.com and click where it says “Donate Online Now.” To give by check, write Miriam’s Kitchen, Attn: Development, 2401 Virginia Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20037. | 2022-12-26T14:30:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. charity fights the chronic health problems affecting the homeless - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/26/homeless-health-outreach/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/26/homeless-health-outreach/ |
Timeline: How the U-Va. shooting unfolded
Lisa Grace Lednicer
From left, Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr. and D'Sean Perry, the three U-Va. football players who were killed in a shooting Nov. 13. (University of Virginia Athletics/AP)
Jones’s career at U-Va.
Trouble on and off campus
The U-Va. shooting
The lockdown and a massive search
The charter bus had just returned to the University of Virginia campus when the shots began.
Students who had been watching a play about Emmett Till and eating Ethiopian food at a D.C. restaurant on a field trip just hours earlier now dove under seats and fled the bus in terror.
Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., a fellow student, is accused of fatally shooting three members of the U-Va. football team and wounding two others in a barrage of bullets. Authorities say he then fled, leaving a scene of horrific carnage.
The shooting left yet another college reeling, prompted an hours-long shelter-in-place on the U-Va. campus in Charlottesville and sparked a massive search for the suspect before he was caught.
Investigators are still searching for a motive for the rampage, but the events leading up to it have begun to come into sharper focus.
Here is how the U-Va. shooting unfolded.
Accused U-Va. gunman scrutinized for weapon by threat assessment team
Fall 2018 — After a difficult childhood that involved family strife and poverty, Jones finished Petersburg High School in Virginia with good grades and won a spot at U-Va.
Jones joined the football team as a linebacker. Other U-Va. players from that period recalled that Jones’s stint on the team was unremarkable and lasted only months. They said Jones kept to himself during practices, drills and weight training. He never played in a game.
Notably, Jones’s time on the team did not overlap with any of the other players who were killed in the shooting: Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr. and D’Sean Perry. Nor did he overlap with Michael Hollins Jr., who was shot and wounded. One former football player said he did not believe Jones knew the victims.
Nov. 17, 2019 — Jones was one of multiple U-Va. football players who were involved in a brawl at the city’s Asado bar, according to former Charlottesville Police Chief RaShall Brackney. Charlottesville police told a local newspaper at the time that the fight sent a U-Va. student to the hospital.
No one was charged in the incident because the victim did not cooperate with law enforcement, according the Charlottesville Daily Progress. It’s unclear whether any of the victims in the U-Va. shooting were involved in the fight at the bar.
Aug. 9, 2020 — Jones was charged with felony fleeing the scene of an accident for a crash in Petersburg, according to court records. Jones was later convicted of a reduced charge of misdemeanor failure to report an accident and given a 12-month suspended sentence.
Feb. 22, 2021 — During a traffic stop in Chesterfield County, a police officer found a stolen 9mm gun in Jones’s waistband, according to a police report. Jones told the officer he needed the weapon to protect his family, the report states. Jones was later convicted of misdemeanor possessing a concealed firearm without a license and given another suspended sentence.
Feb. 19, 2022 — Jones purchased a Ruger rifle from Dance’s Sporting Goods in Colonial Heights, according to a statement from the owner of the store. It’s unclear whether the weapon was used in the U-Va. shooting.
July 8, 2022 — Jones purchased a Glock 9mm pistol from Dance’s, according to the owner of the store. Authorities have not said if the weapon was used in the U-Va. shooting.
Sept. 15, 2022 — During a university review of a “potential hazing issue,” a student reported to school officials that Jones claimed to possess a gun, according to U-Va. spokesman Bryan Coy. Coy said Jones had not made any threats, and the person who made the report had not seen the gun.
The report prompted an investigation by the U-Va.’s threat assessment team, according to Coy. The team talked with Jones’s roommate, who said he did not see Jones with a gun. But officials did not appear to talk with Jones directly, and Coy said Jones did not cooperate with the probe.
During the course of the investigation, officials also discovered that Jones had the previous misdemeanor conviction for possessing a concealed weapon without a permit, Coy said. Under U-Va. rules, Jones was obligated to report the conviction to school officials. Coy said he had not.
Oct. 26, 2022: The university emailed Jones to warn him that he faced the imminent possibility of disciplinary action and to urge him to talk with U-Va. officials, Coy said.
Coy said U-Va. officials meant to refer Jones for discipline before a student judicial committee, but because of a mix-up did not make the recommendation. It wasn’t ultimately made until the day after the shooting.
Nov. 13, afternoon — A group of about two dozen U-Va. students from a class on African American playwrights traveled to the District for a field trip to see a matinee play about Emmett Till and eat a meal at an Ethiopian restaurant, said Ryan Lynch, a student who was on the trip.
Most people on the trip did not know Jones, who remained at the back of the bus as other students chatted and laughed on the ride home, Lynch said.
Nov. 13, about 10:15 p.m. — As the charter bus pulled near a parking garage on the U-Va. campus and students got up to disembark, Jones opened fire, according to authorities and a witness.
Lynch reported other students on the bus told her that Jones said “something to the effect of, ‘You guys are always messing with me’ ” just before he began shooting.
But Lynch said that didn’t make sense because Jones wasn’t interacting with other students very much on the trip.
Chandler, Davis and Perry were shot in the head, according to a medical examiner. The family of Michael Hollins Jr. told ESPN he was shot after fleeing the bus and returning to help. The fifth victim was a 19-year-old female student, whose family declined to comment.
Jones fled the bus and remained at large.
Nov. 13, 10:39 a.m. — A shelter-in-place order went into effect on campus. Students hid in closets and barricaded their dorm room doors. Some were stranded in libraries and other buildings.
Nov. 13, 10:42 p.m. — U-Va. put out an “active attacker” alert and told students to “RUN HIDE FIGHT.”
Nov. 14, 12:37 a.m. — The U-Va. police department announced the suspect in the shooting was Christopher Darnell Jones Jr. He was considered armed and dangerous.
Nov. 14, 2:55 a.m. — Helicopters from multiple police agencies swarmed over the U-Va. campus looking for Jones.
Nov. 14, 4:13 a.m. — U-Va. President Jim Ryan put out a message to the U-Va. campus announcing he was “heartbroken” because the university had lost three students in the shooting and two others were injured.
Nov. 14, 6:52 a.m. — Charlottesville announced its schools would be closed for the day as the search for the gunman continued.
Nov. 14, 7:35 a.m. — Albemarle County announced its public schools would be closed.
Nov. 14, about 10:30 a.m. — The shelter-in-place order at U-Va. was lifted after approximately 12 hours. Authorities announced they had conducted a building-by-building search and considered the campus clear of any danger.
Nov. 14, about 11 a.m. — The Henrico County Sheriff’s Office took Jones into custody about 80 miles from U-Va. It is not known what Jones did or where he went during the period after authorities allege he opened fire on the U-Va. campus. Jones was charged with three counts of second-degree murder.
How a U-Va. class trip ended in gunfire
Nov. 16 — Jones made his first court appearance in Albemarle County General District Court. Prosecutor James Hingeley said in court that a witness told investigators that Jones appeared to be aiming at certain people when he opened fire on the bus. Hingeley also said one of the victims was shot while he slept.
U-Va. football player shot while he slept, prosecutor says
Nov. 17 — Attorney General Jason Miyares announced he would appoint a special counsel to investigate U-Va.’s handling of the events leading up to the shooting. He ultimately appointed a prominent law firm and a former U.S. attorney for the job. Separately, the Virginia State Police took over the investigation of the shooting at the request of U-Va. police.
The Charlottesville Daily Progress reported it had obtained court documents that show police executed a search warrant on Jones’s dorm room. Authorities found a rifle and pistol, as well as box of ammunition and magazines. They also found a binary trigger, a device used to increase the firing speed of a semiautomatic rifle that is legal.
Nov. 19 — Thousands attended a memorial service for the victims of the shooting, which was held in lieu of the regularly scheduled football game against Coastal Carolina.
In memorial service, U-Va. remembers victims of shooting
Dec. 8, 2022 — Jones appeared at a court hearing in Albemarle General District Court.
March 30, 2023 — A preliminary hearing is scheduled in the case. | 2022-12-26T14:30:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | UVA shooting timeline: Retracing what led up to the campus tragedy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/26/uva-shooting-timeline-what-happened/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/26/uva-shooting-timeline-what-happened/ |
The shooting of three students at U-Va., who were all Black, has hit hard a tight-knit community on campus
The Lighting of the Lawn at the University of Virginia in the wake of a shooting that killed three students on the football team. (Justin Ide for The Washington Post)
CHARLOTTESVILLE — The day after the shooting that killed three students on the football team at the University of Virginia, dozens of campus leaders gathered to discuss how to help their community grieve.
Some started planning a vigil and suggested safe spaces for mental health support on campus. Others talked about laying flowers outside the football stadium or hanging commemorative banners.
The few Black students in the room, some participants said, were mostly quiet. They were too devastated for logistics.
At this school, all of campus mourned the loss of the three Black undergraduate student-athletes — Lavel Davis, D’Sean Perry and Devin Chandler. But the pain has been especially acute for many Black students, who have learned to lean on one another at a majority White school in a mostly White city with a racist history that has, in many ways, extended to the present.
Charlottesville became a hotbed for white supremacy in 2017 when throngs descended for the Unite the Right rally. About three months ago, campus security found a noose hanging around the Homer statue at the center of campus.
“The weight of being a Black student feels so heavy right now,” said Morgan Johnson, a 21-year-old on the executive board of a Black student-athlete group. She played Spades with Davis and sat next to the shooting suspect in Swahili class.
In the university’s tightknit Black community, the connections are deep among young people who study and socialize together, often joining the same student groups and attending the same demonstrations. There was a group chat of Black undergraduates, where students would discuss events and other happenings on campus. Some took or considered taking classes with Theresa Davis, known affectionately as “Lady T,” the drama professor who organized the field trip where the shooting took place.
Many of these students lost three friends in the shooting. Some also knew the Black student, Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., who is charged in the killings.
Police have alleged that on Nov. 13, Jones methodically shot and killed Davis, Perry and Chandler on a bus as they arrived back to campus from a class trip to D.C. to see a play about Emmett Till. He also shot and wounded Michael Hollins Jr., another student and football player, and 19-year-old student Marlee Morgan.
Jones was arrested the next day — after students sheltered in place overnight — and is being held in custody on second-degree murder charges. He appeared in court Dec. 8, when a Virginia judge set a preliminary hearing in his case for March 30.
Jones, now 23, did not speak during the hearing, and his attorney, Elizabeth Murtagh, offered no defense. She declined to comment afterward and did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
Police have said the motive for the shooting remains under investigation. The university president warned that authorities may “never truly understand why this happened.” A witness said Jones had aimed his gun at particular people, rather than firing randomly, but had not interacted with any of the victims during the class trip that weekend. Student leaders in the Black community at U-Va. similarly said they had never seen Jones talk to the people he shot. He had been on the football team, but former players said his brief time in 2018 was unremarkable and he did not overlap with those he is accused of killing. Jestus Johnson, a third-year student on the football team, said he had never seen Jones around his teammates.
At the University of Virginia, federal data shows 7 percent of roughly 17,000 undergraduates in fall 2021 were Black or African American, though that breakdown does not include students of color who are international or identify as multiracial. That marked a slight decline from the percentage of Black students enrolled at the college a decade ago, according to data published by the school.
The small percentage of Black students have become particularly close through years of racism on campus and in Charlottesville, according to some students, faculty and alumni. The university has publicly acknowledged that “slavery, in every way, was central” to its founding.
Over the past decade, the university has made concerted efforts to reckon with its history. The school has renamed buildings tied to slavery and racial segregation, launched a commission to study its racist past, created a task force to cultivate a more inclusive environment for Black students on campus, and committed over the next ten years to recruiting more diverse students and faculty.
Kevin Gaines, a professor of civil rights and social justice at U-Va., said the Black community at U-Va. is the “most cohesive” he has seen at a predominantly White university.
“It’s connected to the history and connected to an active effort among students and faculty … that has really contributed to the sense of solidarity, a deep sense of what it means to be Black at U-Va,” said Gaines, who taught Davis this semester in Introduction to African American and African Studies.
Every other year, thousands return to campus for Black Alumni Weekend. In the off years, an alumni network called the Black Bus Stop On the Road — named after a spot on campus where Black students gathered in the 1980s — organizes meetups in cities across the region. This year, alumni from across the country flew to Atlanta to watch the U-Va. vs. Georgia Tech football game together, said Richelle Cross, who graduated from the university in 1985 and whose son attended the school.
“At the end of the day, there’s not a whole lot of us at Virginia, and that is why we are tight,” said Cross, who mentors Black undergraduates at the school. She added that when she was on campus, almost all Black students knew each other.
Current students described a similar dynamic.
The Wednesday before the shooting, Morgan Johnson said, she was sitting in the student center with Jones as they each listened to their virtual Swahili class. Jones turned to her and asked whether she was excited about graduating. She said she was, and then she asked Jones the same question.
“Yeah,” he told her, she recalled. “I’m ready to finally graduate.”
He looked for a minute like he was going to keep talking, Johnson said, before realizing she was busy. “My bad,” he said before looking back at his own screen.
Johnson also knew Davis, who served with her on the executive board of a Black student-athlete group and was a regular at a game night they hosted with the Black Student Alliance. She said he liked to “talk trash” while beating his classmates in Spades. His family described the 20-year-old, an occasional starter at wide receiver, as a young man who “just wanted everyone happy.”
Perry, 22, was known by his schoolmates as both a linebacker and a studio art major. Kayla Hendrick, a student employee for the football team, remembered him painting and engaging in rap battles with his teammates. His parents, Sean and Happy Perry, described their son in a statement as “a loving, giving, caring, God-fearing young man who was full of life and potential, and who made his family proud.”
Chandler, 20, could always be found at parties with his phone in hand — snapping selfies with everyone he saw. His mom, Dalayna Chandler, said in a statement that her son loved to sing and dance and dreamed of playing in the National Football League. The young man “was passionate about helping people and never shied away from working hard on the football field and in the classroom,” his mother said.
In the days following their killing, students slowly emerged from their dorm rooms and off-campus apartments, looking to each other for support. One group put on a movie night with a separate room dedicated for crying. Others organized meetups at local restaurants. Fraternity houses across campus spray-painted banners.
Morgan Johnson saw on social media dozens of other groups organizing events in the days after the shooting, but she said members of her organization were too distraught to convene. Their group lost not just a schoolmate but also a friend.
“It’s hard to run this organization and grieve at the same time,” she said.
The Black community came together weeks later at the Dec. 1 Lighting of the Lawn, an annual event on campus with food, dancing and a light show. Ian Solomon, dean of the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, co-hosted an event with the Office of African-American Affairs, opening his home to Black students and faculty.
They ate pizza, sipped hot chocolate and apple cider, and talked about their plans for finals and winter break. In the corner, there were blank pieces of paper where attendees could write messages to the families of the deceased students.
Solomon, standing near a dessert table, said the shooting affected all of campus but “did impact many Black students more profoundly than others.”
“Being a small part of the community, we look out for each other,” he said. “We know each other.”
Outside on the Lawn, I’Nia Marshall, 19, a Black student who said she lived in the same dorm as Marlee Morgan last year, chatted to a group of her friends outside a party hosted by a Black engineering society. She laughed as an a cappella group sang “O Christmas Tree” behind her. It had been hard for her to decide whether to come to the event, where she knew there would be big crowds. She had been struggling with increased anxiety, she said, since the violence on campus.
“As a Black community, we’re all we got,” Marshall said. “So for that to go sideways, it was a shock. We’re always there for each other, because we’re all we’ve got.”
After calling her mom to discuss the risks of attending a major event, Marshall gave in to her friends’ cajoling and joined them at the festival. She ate a chocolate chip cookie. She drank hot chocolate. And soon enough, she said, she felt like a normal college student again — if even just for a night.
Nearby, Jestus Johnson wrapped his arms around his girlfriend. He said he had spent the week at funerals for his killed teammates. So that night, he let himself feel happy.
He watched as student comedians cracked jokes about their transcripts and as students in a dorm room nearby roasted marshmallows on a fireplace.
“We have so much to celebrate,” one speaker said to the crowd.
The football player listened. His teammates’ jersey numbers — 1, 15 and 41 — were aglow at the front of the field.
The speaker continued: “Let tonight be a reminder that you can lean on one another.”
Jasmine Hilton contributed to this report. | 2022-12-26T14:30:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Black students mourn three friends killed in U-Va. shooting - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/26/uva-victims-mourned-black-community/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/26/uva-victims-mourned-black-community/ |
FILE - Blake Lively, left, and Ryan Reynolds attend The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute benefit gala on Monday, May 2, 2022, in New York. Parties are back, and they’ve brought with them the potential for some dress code chaos. White tie, black tie, black tie creative/festive, semi-formal. Pre-pandemic guidelines for attire in an exhausted world more used to sweats and sneakers may take some extra re-entry energy. (Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File) | 2022-12-26T16:01:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Parties are back, but how to dress? A holiday guide - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/parties-are-back-but-how-to-dress-a-holiday-guide/2022/12/26/d8eeb59e-852e-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/parties-are-back-but-how-to-dress-a-holiday-guide/2022/12/26/d8eeb59e-852e-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
Rob Nickens gets 400th win; Meridian embraces ‘pit bull’ mentality
Theodore Roosevelt Coach Rob Nickens, shown in 2020, notched his 400th career victory last week. (Jonathan Newton / The Washington Post)
It’s been 27 years since Theodore Roosevelt boys’ coach Rob Nickens made his head coaching debut, at the now-defunct M.M. Washington High, yet he can still recall the pride he felt watching his mother tally each of his team’s victories.
Over the years, MaxPreps and school athletic directors have relieved Nickens’s mother of her win-tracking duties, but each victory still meant a lot. On Dec. 19, Nickens experienced a new level of pride as his players doused him with water following a 74-66 win over Dunbar — the 400th win of his career.
“If you get into this business for the right reasons, reaching a certain number of wins is the least of your concerns,” Nickens, 51, said. “But to reach a milestone like this with all of the turnover and politics that you see in coaching, man, that’s legendary — that’s a blessing.”
His full-court press defense and fast-paced offense proved successful early, but Nickens didn’t become well-known throughout the District until 2008, his third season at Theodore Roosevelt, when the Rough Riders knocked off Dunbar and Ballou to capture Nickens’s first city championship.
As his email address and Facebook name reflect — RobWinsChampionships — Roosevelt has become a public school powerhouse, winning four additional city titles as well as a D.C. State Athletic Association championship in 2014. Following a 29-2 season in 2020, Nickens was named All-Met Coach of the Year.
“Winning is fun,” Nickens said. “But more importantly, winning keeps our kids out of the streets and gives them an opportunity to change the trajectory of their families by going to college.”
Nickens said more than 100 of his players have gone on to play in college, and that’s what motivates him to continue coaching.
“At the end of the day, I know the kids in this city need me,” Nickens said. “What we do here is bigger than ball, it’s bigger than wins and losses, too. Growing up in D.C. isn’t like a lot of these suburbs, because there aren’t a lot of avenues for our kids to make it out. But basketball is one of them. So as long as I’m able, I’m going to keep building up young men and winning games.”
Meridian embraces ‘pit bull’ mentality
Before the season, Meridian girls’ coach Chris Carrico told his players they needed to be “pit bulls” on defense if they wanted to reach their third straight Class 3 state title game. At first, they laughed at the metaphor.
“Now, it’s actually a big source of pride on our team,” senior Peyton Jones said. “It’s almost cooler to be better at defense on our team than to be a big offensive player.”
Through eight games, opponents have scored an average of 31.5 points, no small feat for the Mustangs (7-1), considering they graduated 10 seniors and have played almost all of their nonconference schedule against Class 6 schools with much larger populations.
“We take a lot of pride in that, because I feel like a lot of bigger schools overlook us,” senior Elizabeth Creed said.
Those Class 6 games were by design by Carrico. After last season ended in a 51-47 loss to a gritty Carroll County program, he realized his team needed more experience playing in close games so they could understand the value of every possession. So far, the plan has worked.
“Now our team really likes to emphasize 50/50 balls, because obviously we learned in the state final game that could be the difference between a win and a loss,” Jones said.
Mia Johnson, St. Charles: The senior and Shippensburg commit tied her career-high with 39 points against Lackey on Dec. 19. She added 11 rebounds and four steals in the win.
Jadyn Harris, Bishop O’Connell: The junior went off for 30 points — including a five-for-five performance from three-point range — in the Knights’ 77-57 win over Rainer Beach (Wash.) at the Jerry Tarkanian Classic in Las Vegas.
Kullen Robinson, Alexandria City: The senior had a career-defining game against Potomac (Va.), scoring 28 points on 10-for-14 shooting to hand the Panthers their first loss.
Eleanor Roosevelt girls’ defense: It’s hard to single out a player from the defensive clinic the Raiders put on in an 80-12 win over Bladensburg. Roosevelt had 40 steals and held the Mustangs to just two points through the first three quarters.
Events to watch
2022 Governor’s Challenge, Dec. 26-30
Lake Braddock Tournament, Dec. 27-29
All About the Girls Holiday Hoops Tournament, Dec. 29-30
Whitman coach reaches 250 wins
Whitman boys’ coach Chris Lun entered a classroom in Walter Johnson High to talk with his team. The Vikings had just defeated Walter Johnson, and the win was the Lun’s 250th with the Vikings.
As Lun stepped into the room, he received a moment of calm.
Then the silly string began to flow.
Lun’s players jumped around their coach, spraying him in the surprise celebration. His wife, Monica Hepburn, had set up the silly string in advance knowing her husband was on the cusp of the milestone.
Lun been the program’s standard-bearer since 2004 when he arrived at age 27. Eighteen years, a quarter of a thousand wins, and a 2006 Maryland 4A state title later, he’s still there — an accomplishment he’s proud of.
“It’s the only place I’ve coached,” Lun said. “It makes me realize that I have stuck in the same place and stuck with it and put in the time and made it important for the guys … I’m just [really] proud of the program that we’ve built.”
Before the Vikings (5-1) played their next game, he was honored in a pregame ceremony where he received a ball painted with “250” and the details of the victory. Lun planned to move it into the school’s trophy case while he decides where to put it in his house.
After the silly string fun in the classroom, Lun and his players gathered dustpans, brooms and wet paper towels to clean up their exuberant mess before heading on the bus home.
That’s a trademark of Lun’s, whether it’s 15 minutes in a classroom or 18 years with a team: He has left the place as nice or better than it was when he got there.
A Hokie in charge at O’Connell
Brittany Davis had been teaching English at Bishop O’Connell for five years before an opportunity arose to combine the two parts of her professional life. Davis, who played college basketball at Virginia Tech, had kept a connection to the game into adulthood, working with local AAU teams and training players.
This past offseason, when Aggie McCormick-Dix vacated the head job at O’Connell, Davis figured the time and place was right to jump into the high school game.
“When the opportunity arose to interview for the head O’Connell job I thought ‘Oh this is it,’ ” she said. “ ‘I’m ready to hop back in and go for it.’ ”
The job is not an easy one, as the program faces high expectations every winter in the talent-rich Washington Catholic Athletic Conference. Davis and her squad started this year 7-3 amid an ambitious and eclectic nonconference schedule. The Knights have wins over programs from Texas, Pennsylvania and Georgia.
“Their best brand of basketball is when they all buy in,” Davis said. “Talented teams win games, but talented teams who play together and are mentally tough win championships.”
Before the challenges of the season even began, Davis was tasked with establishing a culture within her program. As somebody who played the game fairly recently, Davis had strong memories of what she liked and disliked about particular coaching styles.
“The fact that my college coach always had an open-door policy was big,” she said. “Yes, your players have to respect you and that’s important. … But there is a line between discipline and grace, and you have to know how to balance that so you can always have growing moments. That’s what I loved about my coaches: they were very strict, but at the end of the day they also extended grace.” | 2022-12-26T16:02:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rob Nickens gets 400th win; Meridian embraces ‘pit bull’ mentality - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/26/rob-nickens-gets-400th-win-meridian-embraces-pit-bull-mentality/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/26/rob-nickens-gets-400th-win-meridian-embraces-pit-bull-mentality/ |
Country homes and cathedrals stand in as castles and Westminster Abbey. Here’s how to visit the locations from the Netflix show.
Advice by Jennifer Hassan
The Burghley House, seen in this scene from Season 2 of "The Crown," is used as a stand-in for Windsor Castle. (Robert Viglasky/Netflix)
If you’re like millions of people around the world, it’s highly likely you’ve taken the tumultuous journey through British royal history with “The Crown.” The Emmy-award winning Netflix series has enthralled viewers with drama, costumes and historical sites since it was released in 2016.
Using a cast of frequently changing actors, the show brings the extensive reign of Queen Elizabeth II to life — though Britain’s government has urged fans to remember that the series is loosely based on past events and is, in fact, a work of fiction.
Official royal residences and key landmarks are also staged in the show, with country houses and cathedrals serving as stand-ins for Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey.
If you’re looking to plan your own trip through the show, here are some of the locations that are used as stand-ins for royal homes and historic buildings — and how to visit them.
Wilton House and Lancaster House (Buckingham Palace)
Almost 100 miles from London’s Buckingham Palace stands Wilton House, a sprawling 14,000-acre estate in Wiltshire, England, which is one of the homes that subs as the luxury royal residence in “The Crown.”
With its rose gardens, Gothic hall, Tudor tower and crimson silk velvet curtains, the mansion is considered one of Britain’s finest country homes and serves as a fine stand-in for the palace in seasons 1, 2 and 3.
Here are ‘The Crown’ episodes to watch to learn more about the queen
Built by the first Earl of Pembroke in 1544, Wilton House now belongs to the 18th Earl and Countess of Pembroke, William Herbert and Victoria Bullough. The couple open their doors to the public at certain times throughout the year. Organized tours take visitors through state rooms dating back to the 17th century and into the ornate library, which fans of the show will recognize as Queen Elizabeth’s drawing room.
Just a five-minute walk from Buckingham Palace is London’s Lancaster House, a Grade I-listed mansion (the highest historical significance) with Louis XIV-style interiors that have been used by the show’s producers to depict life inside the royal palace for at least four seasons. The house, which was commissioned in 1825 by the Duke of York, features a sweeping staircase, a music room, chandeliers and Corinthian columns.
Formerly a royal residence, Lancaster House is now managed by the British government. The venue has been used for international summits, formal dinners and conferences. The venue is available to book for private events.
Ardverikie Estate (Balmoral Estate)
At the heart of Scotland’s Ardverikie Estate in Kinloch Laggan, Inverness-shire, lies Ardverikie House, a striking 19th century building that serves as the perfect substitute for Balmoral Castle in several episodes. Balmoral, the official Scottish home of the royal family since 1852, is where Queen Elizabeth II died in September.
Nestled in woodland with “pepper-pot” turrets and high gray walls, the buildings are strikingly similar. Ardverikie is surrounded by mountains, lakes, wild red deer and 38,000 acres of land. Balmoral, an 80-mile drive, can be found in Aberdeenshire, surrounded by 50,000 acres of peaceful landscape.
The public are welcome to tour Ardverikie Estate, according to the state’s official website. Those who want to spend the night can pick from eight cottages, a farmhouse or isolated eco pod.
Somerleyton Hall (Sandringham Estate)
Somerleyton Hall in Suffolk, England, is the 5,000-acre estate used to recreate Sandringham House, a country retreat long cherished by generations of British royalty.
Somerleyton and Sandringham are linked by design, according to Somerleyton Hall’s events manager Peter Thompson. “Both were originally Jacobean houses that were extensively remodeled in the Victorian era, so they have a very similar feel and sensibility about them.”
Thompson said that filming inside the hall and the grounds was a “mammoth operation” and that it took 12 days to strip contents from the hall and redress it for just three days of filming. Specialist teams photographed the original layout of rooms and their contents so all items would eventually be returned to their original place.
In Season 4, Princess Diana, played by Emma Corrin, dances in Somerleyton’s ballroom in Episode 9 as her marriage to Prince Charles (now king) continues to unravel.
Lord and Lady Somerleyton, Hugh Crossley and Lara Bailey, currently live at Somerleyton Hall, so the venue is closed to the public, though visitors are invited to tour 12 acres of lush green gardens between April and October each year.
Burghley House (Windsor Castle)
Burghley House, a Tudor mansion with arched windows and towering walls in Lincolnshire, England, plays the role of Windsor Castle in the Season 4 of “The Crown.” Earlier seasons depicting the castle were recorded at Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire.
The real Windsor Castle, in England, has served as home for more than 40 British kings and queens in the last 1,000 years.
While producers of the show used the grand 16th-century English country house to capture its regal interior, Burghley was also used in Season 5 of the show to recreate the 1992 Windsor fire that devastated the royal family and sparked a five-year restoration project that cost more than 37 million pounds.
The blaze burned for 15 hours and took 1.5 million gallons of water to extinguish. The queen arrived at Windsor after the blaze, a moment recreated by actor Imelda Staunton in Season 5.
Burghley House was built by Queen Elizabeth I’s Lord High Treasurer between 1555 and 1587. Visitors can book to stay overnight in the Dairy, opt for a luxury tent in the grounds or book a room at the William Cecil within the estate. Those unable to travel can take a tour online.
Hylands House (The White House)
Hylands House in Chelmsford, England, usually hosts weddings, private business events and parties. But the Grade II-listed building, which is set within 574 acres of historic parkland, is also featured in “The Crown” as a stand-in for the White House.
With its pearly exterior, front-facing columns and green backdrop, Hyland House resembles the U.S. presidential office and residence, despite being about ten hours away by plane.
In Season 3 of the show, Helena Bonham Carter plays the queen’s sister, Princess Margaret. Scenes depict the princess arriving at the presidential office with husband Antony Armstrong-Jones, also known as Lord Snowdon, played by actor Ben Daniels. The two embark on a meeting at the fake White House in Essex with the 36th U.S. President, Lyndon B. Johnson, played by Clancy Brown.
Hylands House is free to explore and is open every third Sunday of the month. Visitors are invited to sit for afternoon tea or to watch live music in the courtyard. You can also take a virtual tour.
Royal Yacht Britannia
The Royal Yacht Britannia, also known as “the floating palace,” served the queen and the royal family for more than 40 years. The ship sailed more than 1 million nautical miles globally, from Scotland to South Yemen.
What really happened to Royal Yacht Britannia from ‘The Crown’ Season 5?
The vessel was another home for the queen, a safe space away from the mainland and used for honeymoons and vacations. The yacht is seen in the latest season of “The Crown,” though scenes were not filmed on the real vessel but inside a studio that recreated the ship.
Before filming Season 2, “The Crown’s” art director visited the original vessel — now retired and moored in Edinburgh — to photograph, draw and capture drone footage of Britannia so that the recreation would be perfect.
The Royal Yacht Britannia said there’s been a spike in visitors to the real yacht since it was featured. Guests are asked to book tickets in advance. Want to spend the night? Britannia’s sister ship, Fingal, is a floating hotel just minutes away.
Ely Cathedral (Westminster Abbey)
Ely Cathedral, in the city of Ely in Cambridgeshire, England, doubles as London’s Westminster Abbey in “The Crown.”
With its distinctive patterned tiles and medieval detailing, the historical monument poses similarities with the abbey, which has been the setting for every royal coronation since 1066 and for at least 16 royal weddings, including the marriage of Catherine and William, now the Princess and Prince of Wales.
In Season 1, the church was used to recreate the 1947 wedding of Elizabeth and Philip, played by Claire Foy and Matt Smith. Thousands of pilgrims and tourists visit the cathedral every year and guided tours are available. Tickets must be booked in advance.
The final resting place: Queen Elizabeth II has been buried in her final resting place next to Prince Philip, her husband of more than 70 years, capping an elaborate state funeral, which was invested with all the pomp, circumstance and showmanship that the monarchy, military and state could put on display for a global broadcast audience of millions.
The state funeral: The funeral was full of pageantry and pathos, including a new national anthem, funeral ensembles with affectionate touches in honor of the queen, a personal note from King Charles III, appearances by the young heirs, Prince George and Princess Charlotte and the royal corgis. Here are some of the most memorable moments in photos and videos.
A new monarch: Queen Elizabeth II’s son, Charles, became King Charles III the moment his mother died. He may bring a markedly different personal vision of religion and spirituality to the role. Here’s what to know about him.
We’re following changes in the British monarchy post-Elizabeth. Get the Post Elizabeth newsletter for the latest updates. | 2022-12-26T16:03:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Where is 'The Crown' filmed? 8 locations you can visit from the show. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/tips/the-crown-filming-locations-britain/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/tips/the-crown-filming-locations-britain/ |
A drone image captures a neighborhood, in Cheektowaga, N.Y., More snow is expected in Western New York on Monday. (John Waller/AP)
Roads remain impassable and more than 12,000 people are still without power as the unrelenting storm is forecast to drop as much as a foot of additional snow, Erie County Executive Mark C. Poloncarz said during a Monday morning news conference. First responders are still struggling to reach people trapped in their cars, while people stuck in shelters and nursing homes are running out of food.
The dead have been found in their cars, homes and in snowbanks. Some have had cardiac arrests while shoveling. | 2022-12-26T16:03:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | At least 25 dead in Buffalo amid historic blizzard - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/12/26/buffalo-blizzard-deaths/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/12/26/buffalo-blizzard-deaths/ |
By Salwan Georges and Kevin Sieff | Dec 26, 2022
It’s one fentanyl overdose every seven minutes. Teams of paramedics responding to frantic emergency calls, trying to revive victims, often arriving too late.
The deceased are sometimes sprawled out in the dark, as if they were shot, but the accessories to death are needles or pills or powder, strewn next to the bodies. The fentanyl they consume — in some cases unsuspectingly — is trafficked into the United States in hatchbacks and sedans, stashed in trailer parks and homes that are occasionally the sites of dramatic busts. But law enforcement officials now recognize their limits: They seize only a fraction of the fentanyl that enters the United States.
Emergency responders revive a woman who overdosed outside her apartment on Nov. 11 in San Diego. The city is ground zero for fentanyl trafficking into the United States.
Police Lt. Ken Impellizeri, left, and his officers at a fatal overdose at Mission Beach in San Diego on Nov. 12. More than half of all the fentanyl seized along the southern border is confiscated in the city.
Impellizeri with Homeland Security Investigations agent Ed Byrne at a fatal overdose in San Diego on Nov. 10. Byrne has responded to nearly 500 such deaths since 2018.
Members of a U.S. drug task force make an arrest during a methamphetamine seizure on July 20. The bust took place after a suspicious vehicle was flagged at the border near San Diego.
Task force members allow the arrestee to say goodbye to his son.
Byrne watches as members of the San Diego Medical Examiner's Office remove the body of an overdose victim from a downtown apartment building on June 5.
Cars in Tijuana line up to cross the border into the United States. Much of the fentanyl coming from Mexico is hidden in passenger vehicles and commercial trucks that pass through official ports of entry.
It is not only an American crisis. Fentanyl is now manufactured in Mexico — and it flows through the country on its way to the border. Much of it remains in cities like Tijuana, where communities of deportees have become addicts. Paramedics there are stretched even thinner than their American counterparts, trying to save overdose victims in a country where naloxone, which reverses the effect of opioids, is almost impossible to find.
Volunteer medics and firefighters in Tijuana on Oct. 20 help a man who was inured in a hit-and-run.
A man who was beaten and tied to a pole is treated by volunteer medics in Tijuana on Oct. 20.
José González has someone inject fentanyl into his neck. The 32-year-old, who came to Tijuana after getting deported from the United States, has run out of veins where he can stick the needle himself.
In Tijuana, the trafficking of synthetic drugs like fentanyl has prompted a surge of violence — and it’s the users who are frequently victims. They sleep outside, next to heaps of garbage, sometimes swallowed up by feuds with the men who sell them fentanyl. Traffickers and dealers have taken over much of the city, converting even piñata factories into fronts for their drug businesses.
A fentanyl lab disguised as a piñata shop that was raided earlier this year.
Mexican authorities seize thousands of pounds of drugs there a month. Much of it is stored as evidence in a converted garage — even though many fentanyl cases never come to trial. Vast quantities are incinerated at a military outpost outside Tijuana. But most of the fentanyl makes it to the border and then across it, a bulk destined for the thousands of Americans who will die almost immediately after consuming the drug.
Two men in Tijuana are overtaken by the effect of fentanyl right after injecting it.
A gap in the border wall near a neighborhood in Tijuana.
A load of fentanyl and methamphetamine seized near Ensenada, Mexico, on Oct. 18. No one was arrested in the seizure.
Emmanuel Ibarra, left, and Daniel Espinoza Alcántara of the Mexican attorney general's office stand in front of thousands of pounds of drugs that have been set on fire at a military outpost outside Tijuana. | 2022-12-26T17:33:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Here’s what the deadliest drug-related public health crisis in American history looks like - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/interactive/2022/heres-what-deadliest-drug-related-public-health-crisis-american-history-looks-like/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/interactive/2022/heres-what-deadliest-drug-related-public-health-crisis-american-history-looks-like/ |
More than 3,000 flights have been canceled as of late Monday morning
Passengers in Dallas wait to board a Southwest flight to Reagan National Airport at 11:30 p.m. on Sunday. The flight was canceled after being delayed for over six hours. More delays foiled travel on Monday. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
According to FlightAware, a website that tracks airline delays and cancellations, 3,340 flights had been canceled as of 11 a.m., while more than 11,000 flights have been delayed.
On Twitter, passengers shared photos and videos of long lines and large crowds at Baltimore-Washington International Marshall Airport.
Flight cancellations exceed 5,000 amid winter storm disruptions | 2022-12-26T17:34:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Thousands of flights canceled Monday as weather upends holiday travel - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/12/26/holiday-flights-canceled-airlines-christmas/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/12/26/holiday-flights-canceled-airlines-christmas/ |
Only one party’s policies are increasing U.S. mortality
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) in Las Vegas on Nov. 19. (David Becker for The Washington Post)
The Dec. 20 front-page article “Studies find partisan politics can affect people’s well-being” brought needed attention to the growing cost in human lives of anti-science conservatism. But the article erred in attributing this to “partisan politics” and to political polarization: “Researchers say the result of this growing polarization is clear: The nation’s overall health profile is going from bad to worse.”
The recent rise in U.S. mortality is not a two-party problem: It stems entirely from the extreme positions of a single political party. Consider, for example, the Dec. 18 Politics & the Nation article “DeSantis does an about-face on covid vaccines,” about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R) decision to oppose the vaccines. To the extent polarization comes into play at all, progressive policies aimed at saving lives offset the conservative trends.
Instead of suggesting that “both sides” are responsible for the tragic increase in U.S. mortality, better to keep a laser focus on the single party whose policies are killing Americans.
Richard N. Mott, Arlington | 2022-12-26T19:05:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Blaming 'both sides' for increased mortality doesn't fly - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/26/blaming-both-sides-increased-mortality-doesnt-fly/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/26/blaming-both-sides-increased-mortality-doesnt-fly/ |
Bring back the public telephone
A pay phone in 2013 in New York City. (iStock)
I enjoyed reading the Dec. 22 Style article “Remember the pay phone? This man is bringing them back at no cost.,” which described the efforts of Mike Dank to bring back public telephones in Philadelphia, in bookstores, libraries, art spaces, soup kitchens, community centers and other public spaces.
As the article noted, not everyone carries a cellphone. Even people who normally carry a cellphone might forget to bring it with them on occasion or lose it, have it stolen or have it rendered nonfunctional for lack of battery charge or because of a network failure. Homeless people and victims of domestic violence have a particular need for this service. But any one of us — whether we normally carry cellphones or not — might on occasion be stuck in an emergency situation without access to a phone.
Mr. Dank is working in Philadelphia to expand the availability of public telephones. As a resident of Maryland who by choice does not own or use a cellphone, I would like to see the public telephone brought back in use, throughout Maryland, D.C. and Virginia — indeed, throughout the United States.
Though I wouldn’t mind putting in a nickel, dime or quarter to make a call from such a telephone, I think it preferable that the public telephone service be free to use. I tend to carry a few coins in my pocket, but not everybody does.
Creating and maintaining the system could be funded by state or local governments or through private donations to a charity set up for this purpose, or by a combination of these funding sources.
Deborah Vollmer, Chevy Chase | 2022-12-26T19:05:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Public telephones are sometimes necessary - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/26/public-telephones-necessary/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/26/public-telephones-necessary/ |
By E. Eduardo Castillo and Hanna Arhirova | AP
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s foreign minister on Monday said that his government is aiming to have a peace summit by the end of February, preferably at the United Nations with Secretary-General António Guterres as a possible mediator, around the anniversary of Russia's war. | 2022-12-26T19:06:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The AP Interview: Ukraine FM aims for February peace summit - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-ap-interview-ukraine-fm-aims-for-february-peace-summit/2022/12/26/67c09114-8545-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-ap-interview-ukraine-fm-aims-for-february-peace-summit/2022/12/26/67c09114-8545-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
Giving without expectation is a virtue. But look what these gifts did!
Josiah Outten, 11, at the national championships in Florida this month with the DMV Knights Gold Boyz (Eboni Riddick)
Christmas came early for the Gold Boyz.
It was the unexpected gift of warm air on their skin in December.
It was meeting kids from all over America and hearing what other accents sound like.
It was seeing alligators in real life.
And it was knowing that scores of strangers believed in them.
In this holiday season — especially the day after Christmas, once all the gifts are unboxed and laid out and it became clear that Aunt Cheapo spent way less on your acrylic scarf than you did on her cashmere — we are supposed to reflect and celebrate the highest form of giving, to do it without expecting anything in return.
In Buddhism, it’s called “Dana” — giving without attachment, expecting nothing in return.
It’s explicit in the Bible, Luke 6:35 — “Help and give without expecting a return.”
The Jewish tradition of tzedakah speaks to giving as a form of social justice.
In Islam, “infaq” is giving without expecting reward or return.
But I’m going to cheat a little bit. Because I want to celebrate the gift that hundreds of people made to a group of boys they’ve never met, probably never heard of — and explain how much good it did.
“It’s one of the best Christmas presents ever,” said Devin Cummings, a 12-year-old running back for the DMV Knights Gold Boyz, the suburban Maryland team that made it to the Super Bowl of kid football in Florida this month.
The team is solid, consistently winning regional championships year after year, as its players have advanced up the age brackets since they were 6 years old. They know they’ve got the skills — they’ve hit the dinger twice now, advancing to the national championships in Florida.
But they all come from a working-class part of one of America’s wealthiest regions. And making it big makes everyone worry.
“Many of our parents really cannot afford to pay for their child to attend. There are several single moms and dads on our team,” Eboni Riddick, the head team mom, said when we connected in November. “We have parents who are still trying to get back to work due to the pandemic or just really can’t afford for them and their child to attend nationals.”
So I went to one of their practices, met the fierce kids who practiced in the dark and cold on a muddy field knowing that they still had homework to stare down that night, and wrote their story.
These kids qualified to compete in nationals. But can they make it there?
Readers responded.
Hundreds of donors raised more than $35,000 for the team. They got a $440 chunk from the Hill Havurah Congregation, a $25 donation from another “football mom,” scores of anonymous gifts and plenty of encouragement.
“I know what being on a team, shooting for a goal, and being surrounded by great role models can do for the course of your life,” wrote George Kirchbaum, along with his $50 donation on the team’s GoFundMe page. “The experience of going on this trip will help these kids dream, as well as do something fun!”
“Thank you to each and every donor who made it possible for every athlete and their family to make it to nationals,” Riddick said. The donations allowed them to travel together, stay close to each other and even get to exhale at an amusement park, she said.
“I went on rides and stuff,” said Khalif James, 12, a wide receiver and linebacker on the team who had to sit out their last trip to Florida with a broken collarbone. “We messed with some alligators.”
But the coaches have done their work. When I saw them practice 17 days before they left, coach Chris Coates boomed at them: “It’s not a vacation. It’s a business trip.”
And each kid who go-karted and goofed around in Florida also learned valuable lessons.
“It was business,” Khalif said, before he opened up about the fun parts. “I had a one-handed catch.”
Josiah Outten came back from Florida with a lot of respect for the football everyone else is playing.
“To be able to play at this level was the biggest gift,” said the 11-year old, who seems 18 when he’s talking.
They lost their first game, but won the other two.
His teammate Kingston Sloley was circumspect about the loss.
“They were more competitive, the other teams,” Kingston, 12, said. “It’s always fun to play a team that is going to be challenging.”
The biggest difference between the Gold Boyz and the other teams?
“Probably speed and size,” Kingston said. “That big kid, number 22, He was wide and he could run. He was really hard to tackle.”
But Kingston also noticed the other kids sounded different. “All these kids from out-of-state were around us,” he said. “And we heard all these different accents.”
The trip was exciting and stimulating. They each told me — unbidden — the things the trip inspired them to work on:
“Speed. And just to work harder.”
“My wish is to just play my game.”
And most of them didn’t have much in the way of Christmas lists when I asked: “Maybe some new shoulder pads. Mine are getting a little small,” one said.
Their gift was the trip, the bonding, the experience and the inspiration that came with it. That’s all those who gave a little to lift them hoped would happen.
And those hopes are not unholy. | 2022-12-26T19:27:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | DMV readers rallied to ensure the Gold Boyz got to Florida. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/26/dmv-gold-boyz-florida-champions/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/26/dmv-gold-boyz-florida-champions/ |
FILE - Tampa Bay Rays’ Randy Arozarena reacts in the dugout after hitting a three-run home against the Toronto Blue Jays during the fifth inning of a baseball game Sept. 23, 2022, in St. Petersburg, Fla. In a decision announced Saturday, Dec. 24, 2022, the United States will permit Major League Baseball players from Cuba to represent their home country in the World Baseball Classic next year. (AP Photo/Scott Audette, File) | 2022-12-26T22:09:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | US to let MLB stars play for Cuba in World Baseball Classic - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/us-to-let-mlb-stars-play-for-cuba-in-world-baseball-classic/2022/12/26/668c159a-8561-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/us-to-let-mlb-stars-play-for-cuba-in-world-baseball-classic/2022/12/26/668c159a-8561-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
By Kyle Swenson
Chiquita Jackson planned a Kwanzaa event to share knowledge about the holiday. (Kyle Swenson/The Washington Post)
She had rearranged the black and red sheets decorating the walls, and then rearranged them again. The soul food she had cooked all day was steaming on a serving table at the back of the room, waiting for the 40 people who had signed up to attend. A whiteboard sat near the door with a handwritten note: “Happy Kwanzaa.”
“Should we start letting people in?” someone asked Chiquita Jackson on Monday afternoon at the Kwanzaa & Kulture Unity Brunch the 28-year-old event planner was running at the Youth Center in Greenbelt, Md.
“Yes,” Jackson said definitively. She hoped this afternoon event in Prince George’s County on the first day of Kwanzaa would not only honor but reinvigorate a tradition in the African American community whose lessons carry even more weight today.
“We have a newer generation that doesn’t know much about Kwanzaa,” Jackson said as she hurried to get ready for her guests. “I wanted to help provide legacy knowledge. I want to have a community event that is more than the usual party.”
Every December, Kwanzaa is mentioned among the other of end-of-the-year holidays, alongside Christmas, Hanukkah and the new year. But the occasion’s unique cultural position as a bridge between Pan-African history and the African diaspora is often lost, even in areas like the Washington region with large Black populations, Jackson said.
The celebration’s message has lessons for today, she added, particularly as the country continues to untangle the legacy of systemic racism.
“I think you see people will post something on social media — ‘Happy Kwanzaa,’” Jackson said. “Just doing that, I think, takes the fun out of Kwanzaa. This is something that should be celebrated in a fun and joyous way.”
Kwanzaa was created in the 1960s by Maryland-born professor and activist Maulana Karenga as a response to the civil rights battles then being fought. The six days of Kwanzaa, from Dec. 26 to Jan. 1, are organized around celebrating the Nguzo Saba, or Seven Principles, outlined by Karenga: unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith.
“Those are not just values for the African American community — they are rooted in the African American experience, but they are values anyone can support,” said Greenbelt Mayor Emmett V. Jordan as he arrived at Monday’s event. Jordan said he has been celebrating Kwanzaa since the 1970s, and he believes younger Black generations understand the holiday’s legacy. “This is an important cultural happening.”
This week, Kwanzaa events are taking place across the Washington region. They include educational events at the Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum, performances by the Dance Institute of Washington and holiday markets featuring Black-owned businesses.
Jackson said she first learned about Kwanzaa when she was growing up in Detroit.
“We always did some kind of Kwanzaa project in elementary school,” she said. Still, the holiday was not celebrated in her home, and she found it difficult to relate to the celebration until she was a college student in Kansas.
“It felt that like out of 30,000 students there, there were only 30 Black students,” she said. Jackson began celebrating Kwanzaa to connect with her heritage.
In 2019, she moved to Maryland and began working as an event planner. Last year, her partner told her he “didn’t know anything about Kwanzaa,” Jackson said. She told him she wanted to host a Kwanzaa brunch. Eight friends came, but Jackson realized African American community members knew little about the event because of a lack of meaningful celebrations. The next year, she decided to hold a community event on the first day of Kwanzaa.
“If I’m going to do something, I do it,” Jackson said as the first guests began filing through the door.
“We didn’t celebrated Kwanzaa growing up,” said Jenine Jones, who arrived with her boyfriend. “It’s really nice to come to something like this to learn more about it.”
At a table swarming with young children, Alex Young, a young father, said his family had begun incorporating Kwanzaa into their December four or five years ago.
“We were trying to have more family-oriented events after Christmas and said, ‘Hey let’s try Kwanzaa,’” he said. “It stuck.” | 2022-12-27T01:12:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C.-area Black community gathers to mark Kwanzaa — and spread knowledge - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/26/kwanzaa-dc-region/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/26/kwanzaa-dc-region/ |
The Puget Sound Energy Substation in Pierce County, Wash., was one of four area power substations vandalized on Christmas. (Darren Moss/Pierce County Sheriff's Deptartment)
Moss said the sheriff’s department would contact the FBI if it hadn’t already. A spokesperson with the FBI field office in Seattle on Monday would not confirm or deny it was investigating the Christmas Day incidents, only noting it regularly shares information with local law enforcement partners and “[takes] threats against our infrastructure seriously.”
Tacoma Power, a division of TPU, said in a statement that federal law enforcement earlier in the month sent it a security alert for the electrical grid. TPU did not respond to additional requests for comment Monday. A spokesperson for Puget Sound Energy (PSE) would only confirm the company was coordinating with authorities and that the vandalism incidents were under investigation.
“PSE has extensive measures to monitor, protect and minimize the risk to our equipment and infrastructure,” Andrew Padula, a spokesperson for PSE, said in an email.
The uncertainty over who carried out the Christmas Day burglaries and why they did it comes weeks after more than a half-dozen still-unsolved incidents at power stations in North Carolina, Oregon and Washington state led to power outages and other disruptions. Those incidents come as a rise in the number of human-caused power grid attacks and disruptions deepen concerns over the vulnerability of the United States’ aging and strained grid infrastructure.
While the power grid has plenty of challenges due to climate change-driven temperature swings and extreme weather, it’s just as susceptible to sabotage from humans who can use low-tech tactics — like firing bullets at equipment or throwing chains on top of busbars coils and switches above a transformer — to create high-impact damage.
Earlier this month, two electrical substations in Moore County, N.C., were struck with gunfire in what the FBI described as “willful damage.” Thousands of residents in the affected area were left without heat or power, prompting a state of emergency declaration in the county and a briefly implemented curfew.
Between November and early December, six electric substations in the Pacific Northwest were attacked — some with gunfire, similar to the North Carolina incident — causing service disruptions and in one instance, knocking some of the local county computer systems offline, Oregon Public Broadcasting and KUOW Public Radio reported.
Moss, of the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department, acknowledged Sunday’s acts of vandalism share similarities with the incidents in other parts of the country, but stopped short of calling the incidents “attacks” until investigators can connect them with a motive, like extremist beliefs.
“People are really frustrated,” Moss said. “It’s one thing to go after the substations and cause damage, but to do it on a holiday where people are trying to enjoy it, and then they’re waking up in the dark? That’s rude, despicable, Grinch-y, whatever you want to call it. It was very upsetting.”
Moss said whatever the suspects’ motivation, tampering with a public utility means “it’s not going to be just a burglary or vandalism charge when we catch them.” | 2022-12-27T01:12:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Four Washington substations vandalized on Christmas - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/12/26/washington-substation-attack/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/12/26/washington-substation-attack/ |
The Long Island Republican was pressed to address questions about whether he fabricated his biography and why he reported skyrocketing wealth
New York Rep.-elect George Santos speaks at the Republican Jewish Coalition's annual leadership meeting in Las Vegas on Nov. 19. (David Becker/For The Washington Post)
George Santos, a Long Island Republican who won a pivotal U.S. House race in November, acknowledged Monday night that he embellished his biography, seeking to explain his actions by saying in a radio interview that “a lot of people overstate in their résumés.”
While Santos played down the harm done with his claims, first raised in a New York Times story last week, he did not address how his wealth has skyrocketed in the past several years to enable him to lend hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaign.
“If I disappointed anyone by résumé embellishment, I’m sorry,” Santos said on New York’s WABC radio, while vowing that “I will be sworn in. I will take office.”
Santos also gave an interview on Monday to the New York Post, which ran a headline calling him a “liar” and quoted him as saying “I am not a criminal.” He said in that interview that, contrary to his campaign biography, “I didn’t graduate from any institution of higher learning.”
This past week, after the New York Times report raised a host of questions about whether Santos had fabricated much of his biography, Santos’s lawyer said the congressman-elect had been defamed, but he did not address specifics. The Times noted that Santos claimed that he worked for Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. Spokesmen for both companies confirmed to The Post that they had no record of his employment.
Santos said during the 11-minute radio interview on Monday that “the way it’s stated on the résumé, doing work for — I have worked ‘for,’ not ‘on’ or ‘at’ or ‘in’.” He said that he learned a lesson but that it doesn’t mean “I’m some fictional character.”
At one point, Santos said on his campaign website that Devolder was a privately held family firm that had $80 million in assets under management, a claim that has since been removed.
In any case, on Sept. 6, when Santos filed his financial disclosure report with the clerk of the U.S. House, he said the Devolder Organization had provided him with millions of dollars. Santos reported that the Devolder Organization had paid him an annual salary of $750,000 in 2021 and 2022, and that the company was worth between $1 million to $5 million.
The attorney general may pursue civil or criminal penalties against someone who “knowingly and willfully falsifies” financial disclosure statements filed to the House, according to the instruction guide by House Ethics Committee on filing such statements. Fines can reach up to $250,000 and imprisonment can be as long as five years, according to the guide. And the House can take “additional action,” according to the guide.
John Catsimatidis, WABC’s owner who also donated to Santos’s campaign, said during the interview: “So in other words, you said you exaggerated your résumé a little bit, but it wasn’t anything criminal about that.”
“No, not at all,” Santos responded. He then attacked the media coverage of his claims. “John, do you know, we’re living in a world now that apparently I’m a closeted straight man passing through as a gay man.” Santos appears to have been referencing an article in the Daily Beast, which noted divorce records filed two weeks before launching his first bid for Congress in 2020 that indicate he was previously married to a woman.
In a statement to The Post, Charlie Stadtlander, a spokesperson for The Times, said its “deeply-researched and thoroughly fact-checked reporting speaks for itself. We stand behind its publication unreservedly.”
In 2008, Santos faced criminal charges for check fraud when he lived in Brazil, and he later confessed to the crime, the Times reported, citing court records in that country. In recent years, he has also faced two eviction proceeds and lost a case in small-claims court and was ordered to pay $5,000 plus interest after borrowing money from a friend, the Times said in a second article.
Additional questions have been raised about Santos’s claim of Jewish ancestry. In his initial campaign video, in which he called New York City “a Third World hell hole,” Santos said, “my grandparents survived the Holocaust.”
Speaking to the Republican Jewish Coalition on Nov. 19, Santos said that his grandfather fled Ukraine for Belgium and then immigrated to Brazil. A report last week by Jewish Insider questioned that claim, citing genealogists that said Santos’s maternal grandmother and grandfather were probably native Brazilians. Santos has said his father was born in Brazil and has Angolan roots, the Jewish Insider said.
Asked in the radio interview whether his grandparents were born in Brazil, Santos responded: “To the best of my knowledge, to the best of my understanding, no, they were not.” He told the New York Post that he is “clearly Catholic” but that his grandmother had said she was Jewish and converted to Catholicism.
A Santos spokesman did not respond to requests for comment before or after the radio interview.
Robert Zimmerman, the Democratic candidate who lost to Santos in the November general election, told The Post that Santos’s alleged misrepresentations about his Jewish ancestry and his family’s survival of the Holocaust are “vile and despicable.”
“The fact that he would exploit for his own personal gain the atrocity and tragedy — the death of 6 million Jews — just reflects how unfit he is for public office,” Zimmerman said.
“There are no excuses. There’s no misunderstandings,” Zimmerman said Monday before Santos commented. “This is nothing more than just a vulgar, hateful behavior” that is meant to “manipulate and exploit an unimaginable tragedy.”
On his website, Santos had said: “After graduating, George Anthony began working at Citigroup as an associate and quickly advanced to become an associate asset manager in the real asset division of the firm.” He also said he “was then offered an exciting opportunity with Goldman Sachs but what he thought would be the pinnacle of his career was not as fulfilling as he had anticipated.”
Santos played down any harm done by his exaggerations. “A lot of people overstate on their résumé or twist a little bit, or ingratiate themselves,” Santos told WABC radio. “I’m not saying I’m not guilty of that, I’m just saying I’ve done so much good work in my career.”
Republicans are divided about how to handle the extensive allegations against Santos. Fred Zeidman, a GOP donor and member of the Republican Jewish Coalition’s board of directors, said he wants to see a response from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) or other Republican leaders such as officials at the Republican National Committee. A McCarthy spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.
Zeidman, a former chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, said he spoke with Santos at the RJC’s annual leadership meeting in November, where Santos gave a speech in which he highlighted what he said was his Jewish ancestry. At the time, Zeidman came away impressed but has since been stunned by reports raising questions about Santos’s biography.
“I’m really sort of torn,” Zeidman said, “because you don’t want to give up a Republican seat in Congress, and I’m not sure we could ever win it back again. But I certainly think that the leadership of the Republican Party has an obligation not to seat someone that is obviously totally phony.” | 2022-12-27T02:44:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | George Santos - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/26/george-santos-resume-wealth/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/26/george-santos-resume-wealth/ |
One unaccounted for in Fairfax blaze
House is said to be a total loss
An occupant of a house in Fairfax County was unaccounted for Monday night after the dwelling was destroyed by fire, the fire department said.
The blaze broke out in a house in the 3500 block of Goodview Court, in the Mantua area, the fire department said.
The intensity of the blaze, the damage to the house, and the possibility of collapse, confined firefighters to combating it from outside, according to a tweet from the fire department.
One occupant was taken to a hospital with injuries not thought to be life-threatening, the fire department said. No cause for the fire was given immediately. | 2022-12-27T03:06:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Occupant unaccounted for in Fairfax blaze - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/26/fire-fairfax-missing-total-occupant/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/26/fire-fairfax-missing-total-occupant/ |
Ask Amy: Boyfriend refuses to get mental health treatment. Can I leave?
He has been unemployed for years due to being fired from multiple jobs because of his attitude and performance issues. I have been patient because he’s had a lot of trauma in his life. He loves me and treats me well.
I’ve stayed for so long because I believe that mental illness is like physical illness and isn’t a reason to end a relationship. However, lately I am just emotionally exhausted. His negativity and victim mentality drag me down and deplete any positivity I have in my life.
His bad attitude and refusal to take any responsibility are too much for me to handle. He doesn’t believe in therapy and thinks the bad experiences he’s endured are unique to him. I am not in love anymore. He isn’t open to changing his attitude or getting help from mental health professionals.
If he’s always been good to me, is it wrong to break up with him just because I can’t put up with his ongoing depression and negative attitude? When is mental illness a reason to end things, versus sticking with a relationship and being supportive?
On the Fence: You carry a compassionate attitude toward your boyfriend, whose negativity seems to be killing your own spirit.
Not “believing” in therapy to address trauma is akin to not believing in antibiotics to treat a raging infection. Therapy is not a faith practice; it is treatment. It is wound care for a deeply hurt psyche. In your situation, you would not be leaving this relationship because of your boyfriend’s mental illness, but because of his refusal to seek treatment for it.
Dear Amy: When I read your column, it seems that there are a lot of people who are going through divorce after 40 or more years together. This trend of divorcing after a long marriage makes me so afraid to get married.
My boyfriend and I have amazing communication, which to me is more important than anything else. We never go to bed angry and listen to each other when we are upset or happy. But how do I stop this anxious feeling?
Scared: Keep in mind that the people who write to me are sharing their problems. This is not a statistical predictor of your prospects.
And also stay tuned for happiness, joy, beauty, light and loveliness.
When you marry someone, you quite literally leap in. You love them through it all, and you are loved in return. Good sense might hold you back, and if so — good for you! But keep in mind that fear is the worst reason not to take a leap.
Retired: I’ve received many offers of personal help for “Still Grieving,” and while I don’t connect readers directly with one another, I hope he is bolstered and inspired by the generosity. | 2022-12-27T05:48:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: Boyfriend refuses to get mental health treatment. Can I leave? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/12/27/ask-amy-boyfriend-anxious-breakup/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/12/27/ask-amy-boyfriend-anxious-breakup/ |
Ukrainian forces have seized hundreds of tanks and other military vehicles, but many are languishing as they wait for repairs and spare parts
At a field repair site in the Kharkiv region, a maintenance battalion works to repair tanks and armored personnel carriers seized from the Russians, along with some Ukrainian ones. (Heidi Levine for The Washington Post)
KHARKIV REGION, Ukraine — When Ukrainian forces came across the abandoned Russian fighting vehicle on the battlefield, they knew they had found a rare prize.
The BMP-3, armed with a 100mm machine gun and a 30mm cannon, was one of the few of its kind that the Ukrainian military had seized from the Russians since the start of the invasion. But about a month ago, after weeks of being operated by Ukrainian soldiers, its engine compartment and fueling system began to fail.
Ukrainian forces have seized hundreds of what they call “trophies” — Russian tanks, armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles — since the start of the war. They’ve become valuable assets for Kyiv. The brigade working at this repair site jokingly referred to them as “lend-lease” tanks, referring to the World World II program under which the United States supplied Britain, the Soviet Union and other Allied nations with humanitarian aid and military equipment.
It’s possible another brigade might have a vehicle that is a match, Ruslan said, but there is no system for locating the parts. He suggested the armed forces could benefit from a program or database tracking compatible parts across brigades. “It would save time,” he said. “It would save a lot of resources.”
In the Donetsk region, Vadym Ustymenko, a member of a tank unit in Ukraine’s 25th Airborne Assault Brigade, said he has changed tanks “six or seven times” in the past seven months because they often need repair. He’s now fighting on a T-80 tank — among the best models in Ukraine’s arsenal.
While Ukraine can often repair its own equipment on or near the front line with available spare parts, a breakdown of Western-provided equipment typically means it needs to be towed back to a NATO facility in Poland. That could mean removing a vital howitzer from the battlefield for weeks.
At the field repair site in the Kharkiv region, members of the maintenance battalion worked to fix two Russian tanks and several armed personnel carriers, repairing engines, steering systems and machine-gun turrets. One of the first things the unit does when repairing a trophy is repaint it, removing the “Z” symbol of its former Russian owner.
Often, the most challenging part of repairing a Russian tank is simply identifying the problem, Ruslan said. Many tanks were seized in the area around Kupiansk during Ukraine’s Kharkiv counteroffensive.
Each brigade has a technical reconnaissance unit dedicated to searching fields for abandoned tanks and equipment, then transporting them to repair sites. The tanks and vehicles have become easier to find since the leaves fell off the trees, improving visibility. | 2022-12-27T06:23:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Russian tanks and military vehicles captured by Ukraine pose urgent repair challenge - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/27/ukraine-russia-tanks-military-vehicles/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/27/ukraine-russia-tanks-military-vehicles/ |
Former Afghan president Hamid Karzai in his Kabul home in October. (Elise Blanchard for The Washington Post)
KABUL — A blue penholder, a dictionary and sheaves of papers, some bearing the seal of the ousted government, lie on the ornate desk of former Afghan president Hamid Karzai. In the center of the desk sits a red-colored book: “My Life With the Taliban.”
The 2010 book, written by a former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, was described by an academic journal as offering powerful insight into what motivates the group.
Karzai is trying his best to understand Afghanistan’s new rulers. His life is intertwined with theirs.
“I was not sure of my own safety,” Karzai said of his decision to stay in Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover in 2021. “But I would have never left and I will never leave. This is my country.”
For more than a year, Karzai has lived under virtual house arrest at his villa in Kabul, where he sat recently for a candid interview with The Washington Post. The Taliban monitors his every move, he said, and has prevented him from leaving the capital. Yet Karzai has become the Taliban’s most prominent critic inside Afghanistan, demanding that it allow all girls to attend school and create a government that reflects the country’s ethnic diversity.
The Taliban has not heeded his calls. But Karzai’s persistence, and the fact that he has remained in Afghanistan as other political figures have fled, have prompted a reassessment of his legacy, even among Afghans who were highly critical of him during his nearly 13 years in power. Once viewed by many here as an American puppet — lambasted for running a government filled with warlords and marred by corruption — Karzai is now widely applauded for advocating for a more equitable Afghanistan.
“He had a bad image in the past,” said Asadullah Waheedi, editor in chief of Maseer Daily, a local news website. “Now he is trying to repair his image. He’s working for a positive change in the country.”
“For those people who were afraid of the Taliban, he became an inspiration for them.”
But if Karzai is to be more than a symbol, and to have a meaningful political afterlife, he will need to win the trust of Taliban leaders, many of whom still see him as an adversary.
“Karzai was the first individual who worked with the Americans for the occupation of Afghanistan,” said Abdulhaq Hammad, a senior Taliban official in the Ministry of Information and Culture. “He was leading the occupation. So how can we trust him?”
The collapse of the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan last year may have appeared sudden, but it was preceded by 20 years of graft and mismanagement. From late 2001 to 2014, Karzai was the face of America’s nation-building project. His critics contend he set the country on the path to ruin.
Despite the influx of billions in international aid, Karzai did little to build up Afghanistan. He also failed to instill a sense of national unity, relying heavily on the support of warlords who consolidated power by stoking ethnic divisions. His rule was also marked by corruption, according to the U.S. watchdog that tracked American reconstruction funds, as his Western and Afghan allies made millions of dollars through shady contracts.
Built to fail: Despite vows the U.S. wouldn’t get mired in ‘nation-building,’ it’s wasted billions doing just that
“They had no attachment with Afghanistan and its people,” said Jafar Mahdavi, a former lawmaker who has remained in Kabul. “They came here to collect money and transfer it out of Afghanistan. All these mistakes of Karzai are the cause of the death of the republic.”
Karzai said he took “full responsibility for the corruption and bribes in the delivery of services. … But the big contracts, big corruption, in hundreds of millions of dollars or millions of dollars, was clearly a United States of America thing.”
And it is the United States, he contends, that bears ultimate responsibility for the fate of Afghanistan.
“The war in Afghanistan was not our war,” Karzai said. “I was not a partner of the United States in that war against Afghan villages and homes. I changed from the moment I recognized that this war that is fought in the name of defeating terrorism is actually a war against the Afghan people.”
“I called the Taliban ‘brothers’ for that reason,” he explained.
But the Taliban always saw Karzai as an enemy.
After the militants took over the capital in 1996, one of their first acts was to torture and kill former Afghan president Mohammad Najibullah, hanging his body from a traffic pole.
When their fighters entered Kabul in August 2021, Karzai feared for his life. He decided to go to the home of Abdullah Abdullah, another senior Afghan politician who had decided to stay.
“I don’t leave my country when it is in trouble,” Karzai said.
But the presidential palace had already been abandoned by the time Taliban fighters arrived. President Ashraf Ghani had fled.
“The state would not have collapsed,” Karzai claims. “Ghani leaving was the collapse of the whole thing.”
These days, Karzai holds nearly daily meetings with Afghan politicians and religious and community leaders, and speaks regularly with U.S., European and U.N. officials.
He often tweets out images of the gatherings at his home, and uses social media to draw attention to the plight of women and girls. Last week, he criticized the Taliban for banning women from Afghan universities. But there are limits to what he can say.
Earlier this year, after the Taliban minister of vice and virtue ordered female newscasters to cover their faces on air, Karzai fired off a tweet encouraging journalists to disobey the order, Waheedi said. When the minister dispatched fighters to his house, Karzai tweeted that there had been a misunderstanding. The original tweet was deleted.
“Karzai is raising his voice, but he’s so careful,” Waheedi said. “He knows the Taliban, what to say and what to not say.”
Karzai acknowledged that he faces pressure from the Taliban, especially the hard-liners. “Some of the leaders come and speak to me very often, and very frank conversations,” Karzai said. “But the relationship is at times tense as well because of what I say, because of what I ask of them.”
Some believe Karzai is biding his time. He has strong relationships with the West, as well as with China, India, Russia and Iran. “These countries are expecting Karzai to stay here and play some role in normalizing relations with Taliban,” Waheedi said. “If there’s any possibility for government change, he would be the person to assemble people around him.”
Karzai’s supporters dismiss this, comparing his role to that of Afghanistan’s former monarch during the 1960s and 1970s, before the Soviet invasion. “In this time, we need him as an elder,” said Akram Khpalwak, a former governor of Farah province and ex-chairman of the Afghan High Peace Council.
Karzai insists he has “no aspirations at all other than being in my own country and getting my children educated.”
Karzai’s ability to speak out, said Hammad, the Taliban official, “represents the patience” of the Taliban, which has given him amnesty even though “he is a criminal responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Afghans.”
“His criticism of our policies will not bring any changes,” Hammad insisted. | 2022-12-27T07:15:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hamid Karzai reflects on his presidency and the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/22/afghanistan-taliban-karzai-ghani-withdrawal/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/22/afghanistan-taliban-karzai-ghani-withdrawal/ |
Roxana Ruiz, right, is hugged by Araceli Osorio Martinez, the mother of murdered Lesvy Berlin Osorio, outside a court on the day of Roxana’s hearing where she is accused of killing a man in 2021 who she says raped her and threatened her life, in Chimalhuacán, State of Mexico, Mexico, Monday, Abril 18, 2022. Lesvy’s body was found on the campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), and the autopsy determined she was strangled by a telephone cable. Her then-boyfriend Jorge Luis González Hernández was convicted of femicide and sentenced to 52 years in prison. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo) | 2022-12-27T07:20:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Femicides in Mexico: Little progress on longstanding issue - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/femicides-in-mexico-little-progress-on-longstanding-issue/2022/12/27/aba627fe-85b3-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/femicides-in-mexico-little-progress-on-longstanding-issue/2022/12/27/aba627fe-85b3-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
Joyce Lau
Travellers at Beijing Capital International Airport. (Tingshu Wang/Reuters)
Arrivals into China with negative nucleic acid tests will be able to “enter society,” in a drastic change to the current practice, which sees all entrants at airports — foreign visitors and Chinese citizens alike — tested by hazmat-clad workers and ushered onto buses headed for quarantine hotels, where they stay for several days in isolation. Arrivals who continue to test negative will not have their movements restrained by China’s covid-tracking app.
Meanwhile, outbound travel for Chinese citizens, who have largely not left their country since 2020, will be “resumed in an orderly manner,” the policies said. Upon release of the news, searches for international air tickets spiked in China, with Thailand, Japan and South Korea emerging as the most popular destinations, Chinese state-affiliated media reported.
The new policies are meant to help the resumption of travel for business, study and family reunions; however, there is still no word on whether China will reopen for casual tourism.
The new policy in January comes after an incremental loosening of restrictions for domestic Chinese residents on Dec. 7, which did away with the mandatory testing that caused hours-long waits outdoors in the cold, lockdowns that saw people physically barred inside their homes, and the use of mass quarantine camps for even mild cases.
Officials had previously locked down entire cities in pursuit of China’s “zero covid” strategy, which aimed to stop the virus from spreading altogether. Those restrictions, which upended daily life, led to angry demonstrations in November, which spread fast and wide from universities to factories.
Outside of China, Monday’s announcement gave hope to tens of thousands of international students who have spent nearly three years locked out of the country, and the Chinese universities where they are enrolled. This group, which have been advocating under the hashtag #TakeUsBackToChina, have faced difficulty in receiving visas, booking flights or getting onto locked-down campuses.
China has, in recent years, emerged as an affordable higher education destination, attracting nearly half a million students from overseas in 2018.
Shahroz Khan, 22, a medical student from India, had been studying in China when he returned to his home country in 2020. He had no idea that the Chinese border would remain closed for the next couple of years, and that he would not be able to return to campus. He ended up completing his degree online, but still needs to return to China to complete an internship requirement.
“For the past two and a half years, we have heard the same reply: either there is a lockdown or restrictions or rise in cases,” he said from India.
His university in Jiangsu province had previously asked students to hold off trying to come back until February 2023. With the restrictions eased, Khan hopes to get back to China sooner.
“The inconsistent treatment of international students has been a soft power failure for China,” said Curtis S. Chin, a former U.S. ambassador to the Asian Development Bank and now chair of the Milken Institute Asia Center.
He added that many students had returned to the United States and parts of Europe after those regions opened up. “The contrast with the situation in China is striking,” he said.
Chin added that China may continue to attract international students due to low costs and relative quality; but it might have to offer scholarships and financial assistance to be an attractive higher education destination.
Andy Mok, a research fellow at the Beijing-based Center for China and Globalization, said China’s coronavirus containment strategy had been successful but had been “costly in economic, social and emotional terms with foreign students, business executives, and tourists largely unable to enter or return to China for several years.” Now, the government’s focus would be on economic recovery with the shift of covid strategy, he said.
But even as China loosens up, some countries like Japan and India are increasing restrictions for travelers from China as cases in the country soar.
On Tuesday, local media in Japan said the authorities will tighten restrictions for those traveling from China. In India, the Health Minister announced last week that the New Delhi airport had begun testing some travelers from some countries, including China. | 2022-12-27T08:34:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | China eases travel restrictions after 3 years of zero-covid - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/27/china-covid-restrictions-eased/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/27/china-covid-restrictions-eased/ |
ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — The Denver Broncos fired first-year head coach Nathaniel Hackett with two games left in the season.
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa has returned to the NFL’s concussion protocol.
BUFFALO, N.Y. — The Sabres’ game at the Columbus Blue Jackets on Tuesday was postponed by the NHL because Buffalo International Airport remains closed due to a severe winter storm that has paralyzed the region.
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia — Jaroslav Chmelar and Matous Mensik scored 33 seconds apart during a five-minute power play as the Czech Republic stunned defending champion Canada 5-2 in the opener for both countries at the world junior hockey championship.
DETROIT — Diego Pavia threw for 167 yards and two touchdowns, and New Mexico State held off a late rally by Bowling Green to win the Quick Lane Bowl 24-19. Aggies coach Jerry Kill earned his first victory in six bowl appearances. | 2022-12-27T08:55:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Monday's Sports In Brief - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mondays-sports-in-brief/2022/12/27/817e7806-85bc-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mondays-sports-in-brief/2022/12/27/817e7806-85bc-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
Franco Harris, shown in 1973, was politically active during his NFL playing days and after them. (Harry Cabluck/AP)
About a week before Christmas in 2008, Pennsylvania’s presidential electoral college assembled in the Capitol in Harrisburg to cast its vote to confirm the victory of President-elect Barack Obama. Then-Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter presided over the assembly, announcing one by one, in groups of a few, the state’s 21 electors to present their ballots.
The third cluster of electors included a little-known, 39-year-old, former college football player named John Fetterman, who was mayor of a little rust-belt casualty town in Western Pennsylvania called Braddock. The fourth set started with Nutter calling up “the honorable Franco Harris ...”
He was calling up that Harris, the Pro Football Hall of Fame running back who died last week at 72.
“That was special,” Harris said then of casting an electoral vote for the first son of a Black man to become president. “I sign my name to a lot of things, but this was the most valuable thing I’ve ever signed my name to.”
Harris died just days before the Pittsburgh Steelers’ long-planned 50th anniversary celebration Saturday of his game-winning touchdown catch in the waning seconds of a playoff game. The “Immaculate Reception,” as it was dubbed because the ball ricocheted off another player before Harris scooped it up, helped transform a moribund franchise into one of the NFL’s most dynastic.
Harris was memorialized in Pittsburgh before the Steelers beat the Raiders — the same team against whom he turned the deflected desperation pass into a season-saving 60-yard touchdown — for completing what the NFL heralded as its greatest play ever, for being a nine-time Pro Bowl honoree and a four-time Super Bowl champion, and for retiring after 13 seasons with more rushing yards than anybody except Walter Payton and Jim Brown.
And he was recalled for being a humble citizen. “He was just a good man,” Terry Bradshaw, the quarterback-turned-broadcaster who threw that lucky touchdown pass, said simply.
But the reason Harris became an elector is what resonates about him the most with me, given our fascination and focus on athletes who stand for something other than themselves. Harris was picked to be an elector by the president-elect because of his work for Obama’s campaign in particular and Democratic Party principles in general. Harris was, for so much of his time in our psyche, active in being about, not just talking about, making a difference for others.
In the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, he took to the streets to urge unregistered voters to sign up and to push those who were registered to exercise their right.
He wasn’t fearful, as so many athletes have been, of supporting political candidates publicly. He campaigned openly for Obama, and privately he was a consistent donor to the Democratic Party and its candidates — and also the occasional Republican candidate.
“His voice was one that was widely respected in a variety of circles but also the political circles as well, and it happened to align with many of the things that we as Democrats stood for,” Pennsylvania State Sen. Jay Costa explained to CBS Pittsburgh the other day.
Harris never stuck to sports. Even before his playing career wound down in the early 1980s, long before WNBA players openly advocated for Raphael G. Warnock for Senate, Harris campaigned around Pennsylvania on behalf of a Democratic Senate candidate.
And then there was what he dared to do during the height of his career after his fortuitous reception turned the Steelers into a playoff staple that won four Super Bowls in six seasons. He struck. When NFL owners exercised their obstinate capitalist instincts, Harris gave voice and body to his union brothers upon deciding to strike against management.
He last did so as a retired player in 1987, when active players refused to play midseason and the owners responded by signing would’ve-beens off the street to keep the games going. The ploy all but imploded after a few weeks.
“One thing you have to remember — this goes for those crossing and those striking — owners say and think players come and go,” Harris said then. “If there is dissension, they’ll just get rid of people. That’s why solidarity now is so important; for now and also for later. The owners will realize team unity is important, and wouldn’t it be unfortunate if the players themselves are the ones who didn’t realize it?”
Harris was just as resolute during the 1982 player strike that lasted 57 days. And despite being a rookie of the year and a Pro Bowl player after his first two seasons, Harris was front and center when veterans went on strike July 1, 1974. He joined them at training camps as they opened later that month, when players chose to picket outside the camps rather than cross the entries.
They sported T-shirts and held placards that read, among other slogans, “No Freedom, No Football.” The players wanted to be able to switch teams when their contracts expired, to have free agency, just as Curt Flood had struck out to do in baseball. Harris carried one picket sign that read: “NFL Players On Strike To End Owners’ Monopoly.”
(h/t Gabe Kramer, SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania) pic.twitter.com/F5jrJ9J0AY
— Kevin B. Blackistone (@ProfBlackistone) December 23, 2022
The owners don’t have the monopoly they once did on their laborers. But the value of the teams they own continues to rise at a much faster rate than that of the contracts they pay their laborers. And those laborers continue to have a history of caving in on critical issues such as better health care and retirement benefits in exchange for short-term concessions such as pay increases. They bit at an extra game check from the regular season in a sport where additional wear and tear will reduce their already short careers and lead to a host of physical and mental calamities after they can no longer play.
There is a statue at Pittsburgh’s airport of Harris bending over to catch that famous touchdown pass at his toes. The Steelers — no, the union membership — should commission one of Harris standing erect, defiant. To power. | 2022-12-27T09:44:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Franco Harris, known for the Immaculate Reception, didn't stick to sports - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/27/franco-harris-political-activism/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/27/franco-harris-political-activism/ |
It’s been a dreary year for tech billionaires’ net worths, but they still have more money than many small countries
Not all tech executives felt the financial pinch this year. Chinese internet entrepreneur Zhang Yiming, founder of TikTok’s parent company ByteDance, has seen his fortune rise by more than $10 billion to a net worth of nearly $55 billion. A few tech moguls in the United States suffered financial losses but to a lesser degree: Larry Ellison, the co-founder of Oracle, shed $16 billion this year but remains the seventh richest person in the world; Michael Dell of Dell Technologies saw his net worth shrink by about $7 billion, keeping him just ahead of Zuckerberg on the list of the top 25 wealthiest people.
The broader markets also nosedived this year as investors and companies grappled with war overseas, rising inflation and interest rates and increasingly budget-strapped consumers. Billionaires who made their fortunes in non-tech industries also shaved fortunes from their net worths.
Total loss:
Current net worth:
The CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter, was the richest person in the world for much of this year. But Musk, who holds much of his wealth in Tesla shares, lost that crown as Tesla stock spiraled downward, plunging nearly 70 percent throughout the year.
Jeff Bezos lost $84.1 billion this year as tech stocks tumbled from their stratospheric heights, and Amazon shares plunged nearly 50 percent, marking one of its worst years ever on the market.
Bezos is also the founder of space travel company Blue Origin, and owns The Washington Post, which he bought for $250 million in 2013.
Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth plunged nearly $81 billion this year. The Facebook founder slid from the sixth richest person at the end of last year to No. 25, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire’s index.
Earlier this year, Brin filed for a divorce from his wife, although the ultimate financial breakdown of the split will likely remain out of public view, after the couple took steps to shield details of the breakup.
The entrepreneur, philanthropist and co-founder of Microsoft lost nearly $29 billion in 2022. Gates’s roughly 20 percent fall nearly matches the decline of the S&P 500 this year, meaning the billionaire’s losses have largely tracked with a broad barometer for the overall market and a gauge of the economy. In fact, he beat out the Nasdaq composite index.
Gates’s investments are diversified, with large stakes in multiple companies, opulent real estate and huge swaths of farmland. But his most valuable single holding remains shares of Microsoft, which shrank by nearly 30 percent this year. While revenue for Microsoft’s cloud services increased by 24 percent during the company’s most recent quarter, sales for its Windows operating system fell by 15 percent. And Microsoft said it expects slowing growth for its cloud revenue next year, which sent Wall Street into selling mode.
The immensity and complexity of Gates’s vast wealth played a notable role in the widespread interest in his divorce from Melinda French Gates last year.
The former chief executive of Microsoft and owner of the Los Angeles Clippers lost more than $20 billion this year as the tech giant’s slide ate into his net worth.
Most of Ballmer’s wealth is tied up in shares of Microsoft, where he served as CEO from 2000 to 2014. While the company has fared better than other tech titans that rely more on advertising and consumer spending, the Windows-maker still shed more than a quarter of its value this year. In addition to forecasting slower cloud growth, Microsoft has warned investors that it expects weak PC sales to extend into next year, and advertisers pulling back on spending will diminish revenue for LinkedIn and search ads.
After retiring from Microsoft in 2014, he purchased the Clippers for $2 billion. He’s shelling out even more money to build the league’s premier arena, the Intuit Dome, outfitted with a 44,000-square-foot oval scoreboard and an abundance of toilets to reduce bathroom wait times during games.
Calculations of loss value and net worth were sourced from the Bloomberg Billionaires Index as of Dec. 24.
Editing by Karly Domb Sadof and Sergio Non. Copy editing by Adrienne Dunn. Design by Emma Kumer. Photos at top (from left to right) by John Locher/AP, Michael Nagle/Bloomberg, Matt McClain/The Washington Post, Mark Lennihan/AP, Aly Song/Reuters, Jeff Chiu/AP and Romain Maurice/Getty. | 2022-12-27T11:29:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How much tech's richest billionaires lost in 2022 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/12/27/tech-billionaires-lose-wealth-418-million/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/12/27/tech-billionaires-lose-wealth-418-million/ |
France’s winter advice: Brace for power outages — but no panic, please
Holiday lights help illuminate the Galeries Lafayette department store in Paris on Dec. 7. Amid an energy crunch, people in public and private buildings are being encouraged to cut back. (Benoit Tessier/Reuters)
SAINT BRIEUC, France — If France’s power grid were to near its limits in the coming weeks, officials say, the warning signs wouldn’t be subtle. Millions of people would receive phone alerts. On government sites, power consumption charts would switch to red. The final option would be one that until now has seemed unthinkable: rolling regional power outages to avoid the scale of blackouts last seen in 1978, when much of the country came to a standstill for hours.
French officials have suggested that such scenarios are more likely this winter than at any time in nearly half a century. Or maybe not.
The government has switched for months between reassurances and unsettling news, trying to prompt just the right amount of public concern to encourage residents to lower their power consumption. But after a whirlwind of contradictory announcements — and despite a plea from President Emmanuel Macron that “we must not give in to panic!” — the needle has now swung decisively into the direction of public frenzy.
As Europe heads into what is typically its two coldest months, over a dozen French nuclear power plants are still shut down by safety concerns and inspection delays. It’s unclear whether France’s neighbors can fully bridge the electricity-generation gap amid a significant decline in Russia’s gas deliveries to the continent because of its war in Ukraine.
When RTE, the French power-grid operator, warned last month of a “high” risk of power outages in January, the government scrambled to release emergency plans and urged local officials to prepare for worst-case scenarios. A state-owned energy company added to the chaos by incorrectly saying that patients on breathing machines at home would “not be among priority clients.” Phone carriers warned that cellphone emergency calls might not go through.
“For a few weeks now, people have been rather worried about the situation,” said Fabien Antoine, who operates an electrical equipment store in Saint-Brieuc, a town in the northwestern region of Brittany. Antoine had to create a waiting list for battery-powered lamps after demand skyrocketed and his suppliers struggled to keep up. Interest in small solar panels is also on the rise, as some customers look for ways to power some appliances and devices without having to rely on the national grid, he said.
Residents here have lived for years under warnings of possible grid failures, partly because Brittany is on a windy peninsula on the western edge of France and relies on energy produced elsewhere. But locals don’t remember having ever encountered more widespread outage concerns than at the moment.
“There are real insecurities about how to get through the winter,” said Nadia Druillennec, a deputy mayor of Saint-Brieuc, a long scarf wrapped around her neck as she sat in the town mayor’s chilly office. To save energy, temperatures have been turned down to 66 degrees or lower in public buildings nationwide.
Fearing public anger, Macron’s government capped energy prices at a relatively low level. While other countries have seen higher prices as one way to drive down consumption, France initially focused on appealing to residents’ sense of civic duty to voluntarily cut back.
Household usage was slow to drop, though. By late November, amid the increasingly dire assessments, the government toughened its tone and suggested it might be forced to impose limited power outages unless consumption fell enough.
Officials released details on how such pre-announced outages would unfold. Hospitals, police stations and other critical infrastructure would continue to be supplied. But schools, homes, most businesses and even traffic lights in impacted areas would lose electricity for several hours in the morning or evening.
Those scenarios have swayed many people — electricity consumption has most recently been 9 percent below average — but some worry about their impact on French morale. “There comes a time when fear is more paralyzing than mobilizing,” a close ally of Macron told Le Monde newspaper.
Citing an updated assessment from France’s network operator of a “medium” instead of a “high” risk of blackouts in January, ministers suddenly sound optimistic again. Yet there’s now concern that the mixed messaging has cost the government much-needed credibility.
Maxime Besnoux, a 39-year-old school principal in the Brittany town of La Méaugon, said the initial warnings prompted many questions but he and his staff still have no more information “than the parents of the students.”
Many of the region’s residents know from experience that weather and consumption patterns can be difficult to predict, meaning that the worst could very well be yet to come. France’s network provider says cutting power consumption up to 15 percent — almost twice the current level — may be necessary to prevent a blackout in extreme weather.
At the same time, people here have also seen how the prospect of blackouts can drive more positive changes in the long run. “It really helps to raise awareness that people have to be careful and resourceful,” said Maryse Menguy, a senior energy official in Brittany.
André Crocq, a regional councilman who focuses on energy issues, agrees and cites home insulation efforts to prevent heat loss and a greater focus on renewables. “The situation has evolved significantly over the past 10 years,” he said.
Some of the lessons learned in Brittany are being adopted elsewhere. In 2008, officials in the region released the “Ecowatt” system that warns consumers of looming energy shortfalls and encourages them to turn off their washing machines, unnecessary lamps or factory machines. Now expanded across France, the system’s government-backed smartphone application has been downloaded over 2 million times.
Dominique Schaeffer, 66, who lives in the eastern city of Strasbourg, said she has closely followed “Ecowatt” updates since TV news began airing them this year. “Even now, we use the washing machine at night” to avoid peak consumption hours, she said.
The mobilization efforts may explain why Brittany hasn’t experienced a blackout in decades. Even with only a small percent of the population participating, power consumption dropped by around 3 percentage points during some peak hours, said Ivan Saillard, one of Ecowatt’s creators. That level of reduction, he noted, “can be decisive.”
The mayor of La Méaugon, Jean-Marc Labbé, has long campaigned to reduce street lighting in his village, arguing that unnecessary lights hurt biodiversity by killing insects. The current crisis appears to be one of his strongest arguments to date, and residents recently voted for streetlights to be turned off at 9 p.m., one hour earlier than usual.
Labbé has also volunteered his village for an experiment that could add another step between voluntary consumption reduction and rolling power outages. If France’s power grid were to come under pressure, the village’s streetlights would automatically turn off, casting its centuries-old church and the roads into darkness.
“When people return from work in the evening and see that the streetlights are off,” they will know, Menguy said: “We’re under alert.” | 2022-12-27T11:42:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | France’s winter advice: Brace for power outages, but please don’t panic - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/27/france-government-power-grid-outages/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/27/france-government-power-grid-outages/ |
By Vic Chiang
Soldiers set up barricades on a beach during a military exercise in Miaoli, Taiwan, in July. (Lam Yik Fei/Bloomberg News)
TAIPEI, Taiwan — Taiwan will extend its compulsory military service from four months to one year — a sign the island sees intensifying Chinese threats as so severe that it must reverse its previous policy that minimized conscription.
President Tsai Ing-wen announced the changes Tuesday following a high-level meeting of national security officials.
“China’s expansion [of military aggression] continues to impact the international order, threatens regional peace and stability, and affects cross-strait relations,” she said. “The existing system does not meet combat readiness requirements.”
The change to a longer period of service is set to take effect in 2024. Men born after 2005 will be required to serve in the military for a year sometime after reaching the age of 19 and before turning 37. Military service is optional for women.
Over the past three decades, Taiwan’s mandatory service period shrank amid a gradual shift from state-mandated enlistment to a volunteer-based professional force. It was cut to four months in 2013 after a period of easing cross-strait tensions as the ruling Chinese Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang, pursued stronger economic ties with China.
But China’s recent menacing of the self-governing island — and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — reinvigorated long-running debates over civil defense changes and pushed reinstating a year of military service up the agenda.
On Sunday, China dispatched a record 71 warplanes close to Taiwanese airspace, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry reported. Forty-seven fighter jets and drones crossed an unofficial boundary that runs down the center of the Taiwan Strait and until recently had been respected by both sides.
Taiwan’s military said the show of force “damaged peace and stability” in the region. It responded by scrambling combat aircraft and navy vessels, as well as tracking Chinese movements using land-based antiaircraft missile systems.
Simmering cross-strait tensions spiked to levels not seen in decades in August after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) became the most senior U.S. politician to visit Taiwan since the 1990s. The People’s Liberation Army responded to the trip by firing missiles high over Taipei and holding live-fire drills on all sides of Taiwan’s main island. Taiwanese officials called the military exercises a blockade simulation.
U.S.-China tensions flare as Pelosi leaves Taiwan
Sunday’s mass incursion from Chinese jets came after President Biden signed into law a defense bill that promises unprecedented American support for Taiwan’s military capabilities. The National Defense Authorization Act includes a plan to devote $2 billion annually for Taiwanese training and arms purchases, plus $1 billion annually from a category of assistance that allows the White House to send allies weapons from U.S. stockpiles.
Shi Yi, spokesperson for China’s Eastern Theater Command, called the recent maneuvers a “resolute response to the current escalation of provocation and collusion between the U.S. and Taiwan.”
The trend of escalating aggression has added urgency to long-running discussions in Taiwan about the need for a more robust and professional military service.
“It had been a widely debated topic for a long time, but faced with Chinese threats, the government was left little room to be hesitant,” said Evans Chen Liang-chih, associate fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, a state-funded think tank in Taipei.
Other major changes include raising the monthly salary for conscripts from $210 to $660 and teaching recruits how to use U.S.-made antitank Javelins, air-defense Stingers and drones that have been an important part of Ukrainian defenses against Russian aggression.
Xi’s looming third term in China raises threat of war over Taiwan
These adjustments come after a number of defense changes announced over the past year to boost combat readiness. A department to improve reservist training was established in January. Basic training programs for voluntary soldiers were extended from five to eight weeks. Those come on top of a record increase in defense spending, budgeted at $19.4 billion, for 2023.
For some in Taiwan, these efforts are raising concerns about the possibility of war. “I’m thinking about moving to Canada with my children next year,” said Liang Wen, 35, who lives in Taipei with her three sons.
She worries that one day her children, the oldest of whom is 9, will have to fight Chinese troops.
“I have been thinking about emigration since three years back, but the Chinese drills this summer made me feel that I really need to make preparations,” she said. “I used to work at a bank. The night when Pelosi arrived, I got a call at midnight from a friend asking me how to safely transfer a large amount of cash overseas. I think many people are truly worried.”
Another concern is that lengthened service may not result in higher-quality instruction. Critics note that recruits often spend the training period doing menial tasks like sweeping floors or running errands for senior officers instead of learning combat skills.
“Many people think it’s a waste of time. It doesn’t invoke a sense of honor,” said Wu Cheng-Yu, 23, an advertising undergraduate student who has yet to go through training. Among his peers, some even tried to skip service by losing so much weight that they would fail the physical examination.
Wu, in contrast, feels duty-bound to serve in the military and learn to fight. “I think it is necessary to make a sacrifice for the place where I grew up,” he said. “But it’s a shame that the training often gives people the impression that it’s like a summer camp.” | 2022-12-27T11:42:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Taiwan extends mandatory military service to combat Chinese threat - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/27/taiwan-military-mandatory-service-china/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/27/taiwan-military-mandatory-service-china/ |
Talk show host James Corden came under scrutiny this year for his antics at downtown Manhattan’s Balthazar restaurant. (Andy Kropa/Invision/AP)
Apologizing. As any couples therapist worth their hourly fee will tell you, it’s virtually always worth doing when someone’s feelings have been hurt. Although as any couple will tell you, that policy sometimes results in some pretty ridiculous apologies. Celebrities, of course, have a relationship to maintain with the public — an entity with infinite feelings that can be hurt at any moment. Their apologies, accordingly, can be deeply weird, bizarrely specific and pretty entertaining in their own right.
Sure, plenty of people apologized for genuinely hurtful actions. Beyoncé and Lizzo apologized for using insensitive lyrics. Taylor Swift and Marlo Thomas apologized after accusations that they had fueled fatphobia. Candace Cameron Bure … only kind of apologized for excluding same-sex couples from the Christmas programming on her Great American Family network. And yet, elsewhere in the mix were some truly silly statements of regret. Featuring repeat offenders like Bob Dylan, Kim Kardashian and James Corden, here are the 10 weirdest things celebrities had to apologize for in 2022:
In October, “Friends” actor Matthew Perry apologized after a section of his memoir, “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing,” attracted attention for all the wrong reasons. In an excerpt published by multiple outlets ahead of the book’s release, Perry, 53, wrote about his late friend, River Phoenix. “River was a beautiful man, inside and out — too beautiful for this world, it turned out. It always seems to be the really talented guys who go down,” Perry wrote. “Why is it that the original thinkers like River Phoenix and Heath Ledger die, but Keanu Reeves still walks among us?” Perry repeated the question later in a section of the book about the 1997 death of his friend Chris Farley. “I punched a hole through Jennifer Aniston’s dressing room wall when I found out. Keanu Reeves walks among us,” he wrote.
‘Right now, I am everywhere’: Matthew Perry’s endless loop
In March, the legendary New Zealand film director Jane Campion won a Critics’ Choice Award for best director for her film “The Power of the Dog.” During her acceptance speech, she looked toward American tennis greats Serena and Venus Williams, who were in attendance to support “King Richard,” the biopic about their father, and said, “Serena and Venus, you are such marvels. However, you don’t play against the guys, like I have to.”
On Sept. 9, 2014, U2’s album “Songs of Innocence” was automatically uploaded to iTunes libraries everywhere as part of a promotional deal with Apple. Some listeners were delighted; many, many more were not. The megasuccessful Irish rock band has never lived it down.
It started with an Instagram post, and it ended with an apology that was … half-excuse? In October, Keith McNally, the owner of the restaurant Balthazar in New York’s SoHo, posted on Instagram to complain about late-night host James Corden’s antics on two occasions when he’d dined there. On one occasion, McNally wrote, Corden, 44, came in with his wife, who ordered an “all-yolk omelet.” According to McNally (who cited a manager’s report about the incident), Corden sent the omelet back because it contained a smidgen of white; after the kitchen remade the omelet, Corden yelled at the service staff. “You can’t do your job! You can’t do your job!” Corden shouted, according to McNally. “Maybe I should go into the kitchen and cook the omelet myself!”
James Corden reminds us how not to complain at a restaurant
Causing a scene on San Francisco’s Bay Bridge … circa 1996
In a March profile of the Kardashian sisters and their mother, Kris Jenner, Kim Kardashian told “Variety,” “I have the best advice for women in business: Get your f---ing a-- up and work. It seems like nobody wants to work these days.”
In September, Stroh accused Levine, 43, of cheating on his pregnant wife, the model Behati Prinsloo, with Stroh. On TikTok, Stroh claimed that she and Levine had been seeing each other for about a year before the fling ended a few months before. She posted screenshots of Instagram DMs from Levine: “It is truly unreal how f---ing hot you are. Like it blows my mind,” one read. “Ok serious question. I’m having another baby and if it’s [a] boy I really wanna name it Sumner. You OK with that? DEAD serious,” read another.
“Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” actor Connor Ratliff, 47, remembers the day so vividly he named his podcast, “Dead Eyes,” after it: Tom Hanks, as Ratliff tells it, fired Ratliff from the esteemed actor’s 2001 directorial project “Band of Brothers” because Ratliff had … well, you can guess. | 2022-12-27T11:55:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The 10 oddest celebrity apologies of 2022, from Corden to Kardashian - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/12/27/celebrity-apologies-2022/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/12/27/celebrity-apologies-2022/ |
A dog’s love may be unconditional, but it’s not free. Animal shelters are bracing for more pet surrenders.
Yiwen Lu
Fez the cat was abandoned on the street and rescued by Hyde Park Cats in Chicago. He was later adopted by a neighbor whom he followed while seeking food and shelter. (Hannah Sullivan)
While most of those animals have remained with their adopters, animal welfare organizations are now scrambling to help some pet owners provide for their cats and dogs — or come up with the resources to care for animals given up under economic duress — lest some owners face an impossible decision: Surrender or abandon their animals so they can keep themselves and their human families afloat.
“When the economy is struggling, families are struggling,” said Lindsay Hamrick, director of shelter outreach and engagement at the Humane Society of the United States. “That shows up as surrenders.”
Animal shelters across the country told The Washington Post that they have seen an influx of pet surrenders this year as inflation retains its chokehold on household budgets. Even though there has been some easing recently, gas and grocery prices remain high, as does most Americans’ biggest expense, housing. The national median rent swelled 5.9 percent year-over-year in November and almost 18 percent in 2021, according to real estate broker Apartment List.
As Americans fall behind on rent, animal welfare groups have braced themselves for staggering numbers of pets on the street. In mid-October, 5.2 million households were behind on rent, according to the National Equity Atlas. While that’s down from 6.2 million the year prior, it still puts 7.4 million pets on the verge of homelessness, according to a calculator developed by American Pets Alive, a nonprofit animal shelter advocacy group.
“This is unprecedented,” Hamrick said. “It’s not the students who are moving and leaving their animals. …. It’s people who were losing their jobs or losing their apartments, or maybe they didn’t set aside enough time to figure out what they were going to do with their cats when they moved.”
In Philadelphia’s 10 lowest-income Zip codes, the number of stray dogs has jumped 53 percent in the past year, and surrenders are up 31 percent, said Sarah Barnett, co-executive director of ACCT Philly, the largest open-intake shelter in the region.
“We are just seeing people at a breaking point,” she said.
“We are seeing more and more people coming to the shelter to surrender because of evictions … or no longer being able to afford it,” said Michele Anderson, the shelter’s public engagement manager. “Sometimes they can’t afford food or they’re having to make a tough decision between feeding their human children versus feeding their pets.”
Anderson worries that if the tide of surrenders persists, the sheer amount of pets will overload shelters. At El Paso Animal Services, there are over 1,000 pets in the shelter and over 2,500 in foster homes. ACCT Philly takes in around 15,000 animals every year — some of them, Barnett said, were redirected from other limited-intake shelters that can reject a pet because of space or breed restrictions.
That’s what happened to Baby Girl. In a picture circulating on social media in early May, the mixed-breed canine appeared to be tied to a fire hydrant in Green Bay, Wis., quietly sitting in the middle of the neighborhood, next to a backpack full of supplies. It was clear she was eagerly looking for someone.
“Financial distress is the number one reason people surrender,” said Angela Speed, communications director at Wisconsin Humane Society. “That’s ultimately the Baby Girl story.” | 2022-12-27T11:55:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pandemic-era pet boom collides with reality of inflation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/12/27/inflation-pets-abandoned/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/12/27/inflation-pets-abandoned/ |
D.C. wants to bring marijuana gifting shops into the medical market
New legislation removes the cap on the number of medical dispensaries and cultivators allowed in the District
Terrence White, chair of the i-71 Committee, at his gifting business Monko in D.C. on Dec. 20. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)
It started with brownies to send her son to college.
It was 2017, just a few years after D.C. voters overwhelmingly voted to legalize small amounts of marijuana for recreational use, when Diana Alvarez set out a small basket of pot brownies at Lit City, her Columbia Heights smoke shop. Next to it, a small sign requested a $10 donation for the homemade marijuana edibles to help pay for her son’s tuition.
“Ant’s College Fund” brownies, as Alvarez called them, launched her venture into the city’s growing “gifting” market — a network of shops in D.C. that operate through a legal loophole that allows businesses to gift customers small amounts of cannabis with the purchase of another item, such as apparel, art or motivational speeches.
Shortly after voters legalized marijuana in 2014, Congress, which has oversight of D.C., introduced a budget rider that prevented the city from commercializing the drug. So for years, Alvarez, and dozens of other gifting shops — sometimes called i-71 compliant, after the number of the ballot initiative that legalized cannabis — have functioned as the de facto recreational market in the nation’s capital, operating in a legal gray area with little recognition, or regulation, from the government.
Last week, the D.C. Council passed legislation to overhaul that model by creating a path for gifting shops to apply for medical marijuana licenses, expanding the regulated market. The bill still has to be signed by the mayor and undergo congressional review, but if enacted, it has the potential to transform D.C.’s marijuana market for both businesses and consumers.
“It’s going to allow the District to be a lot healthier on the cannabis side,” said Terrence White, chairman of the i-71 Committee and a gifting shop owner. “It’s going to allow us to be doing it ‘right,’ as I call it.”
The legislation is the result of a long effort by local lawmakers to prop up the city’s already established medical marijuana businesses and address the growing number of gifting shops. At the center of the effort have been trade groups — such as the i-71 Committee and Generational Equity Movement — organized and led by gifting shop owners who have lobbied to be brought into the regulated market.
And while many in D.C.’s cannabis scene see the council’s vote as an important step forward, they remain cautious about how the transformation will play out in practice.
“My concerns, they’re more political than anything else,” Alvarez said. “It’s shifted throughout the years. At the beginning, it was a fear of being raided, and now it’s just about what’s going to happen next with these policies.”
The bill creates a permanent version of emergency legislation from June that allows adults to self-certify their eligibility for medical marijuana. The short application, available only to those 21 and older, requires a photo, ID and proof of residency. It’s proved successful, adding more than 10,600 people since the emergency legislation went into effect in summer, bringing the total roster of medical patients to more than 25,000 at the end of November, compared with just over 14,000 in May.
But there are only seven medical dispensaries and eight cultivators licensed in D.C. To match the demand of new patients, the bill also increases access to the city’s medical marijuana market by removing the cap on the number of medical dispensaries and cultivation centers and creates an application period for gifting shops in the city to move into the medical market before issuing fines against those that don’t.
All of these machinations are due to the fact that Congress prohibits D.C. from creating a recreational marijuana market. When Democrats took control of Congress in 2020, city leaders hoped that would signal the end of the “Harris rider,” named for Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), who introduced the legislation, and D.C. could move forward on creating a recreational market. But the rider has remained, most recently included in the $1.7 trillion spending bill passed last week.
After recognizing that the rider would remain, lawmakers in D.C. had to find another way to expand and regulate the market.
“[Lawmakers] really are welcoming this as kind of the only way to circumvent the rider,” said Meredith Kinner, an attorney who represents members of the cannabis industry in D.C. “It’s basically having a quasi-adult-use market without actually having an adult-use market.”
To the surprise — and pleasure — of gifting shop owners, the legislation passed by the council was a stark contrast from earlier efforts, led by Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D), to shut down the gifting industry entirely.
In late 2021, Mendelson proposed emergency legislation that would have allowed the city to impose harsh civil fines on gifting shops. Then again in April, Mendelson revisited the issue, citing concerns about driving business away from the city’s licensed medical shops, but the council narrowly struck down the legislation.
In early August, the D.C. Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration announced that it would be conducting inspections of the gifting shops for health code, tax and licensing violations — although the agency did not end up starting those inspections.
The latest iteration of the bill came after significant compromise and negotiations, primarily between Mendelson and council member Kenyan R. McDuffie (D-Ward 5), who worked with some of the gifting shop advocacy groups and voiced concerns over equity in the market at the council’s Dec. 6 meeting. The amendments to the bill included expanding the licensing process to allow for more cultivation centers, shifting the application and enforcement timeline to give gifting shops more time to apply for a medical license, and allowing for a longer period before enforcement would begin. The legislation also sets aside 50 percent of licenses for social equity applicants, broadly defined as D.C. residents who are low income, have served prison time, or are related to someone who was incarcerated for a cannabis or drug-related offense.
“It’s surreal. A year ago, they were trying to shut us down,” said Mackenzie Mann, project manager for the Generational Equity Movement.
Mann said the changes — which give existing operators 90 days to submit an application and delays enforcement of gifting shops until 315 days after the bill goes into effect — was a victory that will give people of color and those with fewer resources more time to submit a strong application.
“They want to be regulated. They want to be able to breathe,” Mann said of gifting shops. “The most exciting thing is that these young Black entrepreneurs are being recognized for their ingenuity and being brought into the fold.”
The possibility of creating a more equitable cannabis market is part of what drew White of the i-71 Committee to the cannabis space. He opened his business, Monko, at the end of October, bringing a high-end shop — with a simple and clean interior with sharp lines, bright fluorescent lights and marble countertops — to Mount Vernon Triangle.
He said he prioritized showing lawmakers that gifting shops were serious and professional businesses as he lobbied the council to create a more equitable space, especially for those returning from prison and people of color, who have historically been more affected by the war on drugs.
“It just wasn’t just about opening stores and making money. It’s cool, but if we’re not going to change the landscape or culture to make it better, long term, why are we in it?” White said.
Medical dispensary owners, who have struggled to compete with the often more accessible and abundant gifting shops, are also excited about the possibility of change coming to the market. Norbert Pickett, owner of Cannabliss, one of the city’s seven medical dispensaries, located in Northeast Washington, sees the legislation as an opportunity to bring in more options and expand the market.
And for Alvarez, she was excited about the opportunity to officially be recognized by the city.
“I opened up a legitimate business. I have a business license. I pay taxes. I try to do things as legitimately as possible,” the lifelong Washingtonian said.
As for her son, he graduated from college this year. | 2022-12-27T11:55:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C.'s marijuana grey market may soon go legit - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/27/dc-medical-marijuana-market-bill/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/27/dc-medical-marijuana-market-bill/ |
Maryland’s AG has taken on the gun lobby, the drug industry and Trump
Brian E. Frosh ends a storied career with 36 years in public service, eight as Maryland’s attorney general
Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh stands inside his office on Dec. 15 in Baltimore. (Michael Robinson Chávez/The Washington Post)
Asked about his signature issue over his decades-long career in public service, Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh (D) doesn’t mention — as others do — the passage of one of the country’s strongest gun-control bills. He proposed the measure as a state lawmaker and defended it as the state’s top legal officer.
He doesn’t talk about his battles against the drug industry and environmental violators, or with then-President Donald Trump.
Instead, Frosh, who ends his 36-year career in early January, mentioned a bill he proposed just two years ago: legislation that banned the state from suspending driver’s licenses over traffic debt.
“For a lot of people, this was a killer because [if] they didn’t have the extra $75 or $150 or $250 … it became a choice between paying the fine and paying the rent, or paying the fine and putting food on the table. So they’d lose their licenses,” said Frosh, describing what advocates call the “criminalization of poverty.”
On the day the bill went into effect, he said, 130,000 Maryland residents were eligible to get their licenses back. For Frosh, 76, a lanky, soft-spoken attorney known for his understated demeanor and his passion for justice, it was a defining moment, one that is likely to have a lasting impact on families across the state.
“I think it was just on a very broad scale just enormously helpful so I’m particularly proud of that,” he added.
Frosh, who is finishing up his second term as attorney general, announced his retirement last year, saying that while he still loved his job he did not want “to stay past [his] sell-by date.”
Former colleagues on both sides of the aisle had a difficult time summing up Frosh’s political career, which began in the Maryland General Assembly in 1987. He served two terms in the House of Delegates and five in the state Senate and now heads an 850-member state office. There, he helped shape policies on gun control, the environment, consumer rights and launched probes into the in-custody deaths handled by the state’s medical examiner’s office and sexual abuse by clergy in the Archdiocese of Baltimore.
He’s sparred with Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R), Trump and, more recently, Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby (D).
“He deeply cares about people and how law impacts them, especially people who society doesn’t always seek to help,” said Donald B. Tobin, who recently stepped down as dean of the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. “When you see that as his core, you see how he moved forward.”
Frosh, a Maryland native who grew up in Montgomery County, a suburb of D.C., was handling antitrust cases at a law firm in Santa Fe, N.M., when Ronald Reagan defeated President Jimmy Carter in a landslide victory in 1980.
Having worked on Capitol Hill and in Annapolis before making the move out west, Frosh had previously ruled out running for public office. He didn’t much care for the glad-handing and the “shaking people down for money” that came along with campaigning.
But, he said, the rise of Reagan, whom he considered at the time to be an “amiable dunce, and my view hasn’t changed,” made him rethink that decision.
“After Reagan and the Republicans took over, I just thought, you know, I could do better than this,” said Frosh, who returned to Maryland and eventually launched a bid for state Senate in 1982. He lost.
Four years later, he won a seat in the House of Delegates.
Sen. Paul G. Pinsky (D-Prince George’s), who has been friends with Frosh since their legislative freshman orientation, said Frosh appeared to him as someone who “seemed principled and a straight shooter” and he has not wavered.
For example, he said, Frosh, even as the state’s top attorney, bucked defending the Hogan administration after it attempted to halt enhanced federal unemployment benefits for jobless Maryland residents.
Frosh, who supported the continuation of the benefits during the coronavirus pandemic, refused to represent the state, which required it to receive outside counsel when two groups representing unemployed workers sued.
Susie Turnbull, a former candidate for lieutenant governor and state Democratic Party official, said Frosh’s stance didn’t come as a surprise to her because of the work his father did.
Frosh’s father, Stanley B. Frosh, an attorney who headed the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, served on the Montgomery County Council for one term starting in 1958. Many say he lost his reelection bid because of his efforts to desegregate public areas.
Stanley Frosh later became a judge and a lightning rod for criticism over his decisions to issue people alternative sentences instead of sending them to jail.
Frosh said he was a rebellious kid, but, ultimately, his father had a huge influence on him.
“My father was one of those people — people loved him,” he said. “But if you were his son, he was telling me what to do all the time and I wanted to do exactly the opposite of what he wanted me to do, though … I should say obviously I ended up following exactly the path that he would have wanted me to follow.”
That path led him to persevere in fighting to move Maryland away from a money-based bail system, which he tried and failed to do as a lawmaker.
“People were in jail for no other reason than that they were poor,” said Frosh, who as attorney general asked the Maryland Court of Appeals to change the directives given to judges as they set bail.
Five years ago, the state’s highest court voted unanimously to require judges to impose the “least onerous” conditions when setting bail for a defendant who is not considered a danger or a flight risk.
Sen. Delores G. Kelley (D-Baltimore County), who worked closely with Frosh on criminal justice issues, said she thought he did a good job in trying to seek justice. She just wishes that he could have made a mark in doing more on juvenile justice.
“Nobody’s perfect, but Brian tried,” she said. “I would give him at least a B-plus or an A-minus.”
The end of Frosh’s career was largely defined by his overlap with Trump, becoming a “sort of wall to protect democracy,” said former Maryland attorney general Douglas Gansler (D).
Gansler said Frosh’s success in politics and the law “is in no small measure because of how he comes across, how he portrays himself. He’s very quiet and very reserved, but he carries a big stick and people know that.”
He joined other attorneys general across the country to fight the Trump administration over preserving the Affordable Care Act, challenging the Muslim travel ban and opposing Trump’s rollback of environmental regulations.
Frosh and D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine (D) sued Trump, alleging that the then-president had violated anti-corruption clauses in the Constitution by not severing ties with his businesses.
D.C. and Maryland AGs: Trump ‘flagrantly violating’ emoluments clause
The U.S. Supreme Court in 2021 ultimately left the issue unsettled when it declined to hear Trump’s request to consider lower-court orders that said lawsuits could go forward. The high court’s decision was based on Trump no longer being in office, which made arguments on both sides moot.
To the chagrin of several Republicans, including Hogan, the Democratic-controlled legislature in 2017 gave Frosh power to sue the federal government without first getting permission from the legislature or the governor.
Democrats took the action after the attorney general sought Hogan’s approval to challenge Trump’s travel ban on people from some majority-Muslim countries. Hogan didn’t respond to Frosh’s request.
The General Assembly promised to give Frosh’s office $1 million to beef up his staff and mount the legal challenges, but Hogan withheld the money from his budget in 2018 and suggested that the attorney general divert money from his Consumer Protection Division to handle the additional workload.
Frosh said he is proud to have been able to fight back against some of the “cruelest governmental policies” he’s seen in his lifetime, including Trump’s “zero-tolerance” policy on families who cross the border illegally that resulted in children being separated from their parents.
“The ability to be in those fights was meaningful to me in ways I can hardly describe,” Frosh said in an interview. “It was therapeutic for me to be attorney general at that point because I thought what Trump was doing was toxic and dangerous and inhumane and just stupid. And I would have been tearing my hair out if I had been sitting on the sidelines.” | 2022-12-27T11:55:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Maryland Attorney General retires after 36 years in public service - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/27/maryland-attorney-general-frosh-retires/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/27/maryland-attorney-general-frosh-retires/ |
How Black activists in Northern Virginia transformed the way children learn to read
First-graders sound out spelling words at Hunt Valley Elementary School in Springfield, Va., on Nov. 18. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)
For years, the Fairfax County NAACP’s small education committee devoted itself mostly to fights over Confederate school names and acts of racism against individual students. It waged battles that mattered for some, “but rarely made us feel like we were having a profound impact on the system,” says Sujatha Hampton, who became chair of the committee in 2019.
That changed in the summer of 2020. In the wake of George Floyd’s death, committee membership exploded. By 2021, it had committed to its most ambitious goal yet: overhauling the way Fairfax County Public Schools teaches students to read and supports struggling readers. The gap in reading pass rates between Black and White students was nearly 20 percentage points — a discrepancy that has persisted since the district first made “minority achievement” a priority in 1984.
In a virtual meeting that March with Fairfax’s school district leaders, Hampton says, she said the NAACP would “flood the internet with your poor reading scores for Black and Brown students if you don’t take this seriously.” The cause, as activists saw it, was partly “the absence of systematic, cumulative, phonics-based reading instruction in the early elementary classroom,” they later wrote in an open letter. “All the research suggests that this shift would have the most immediate and profound impact on closing the achievement gap.” Some teachers had always incorporated phonics — intentionally sequenced lessons in how to sound out words from letters — but the district had not made it a requirement.
School district leaders committed to radical and swift change. And this past school year, dozens of elementary school administrators started training in LETRS, or Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling, which says it teaches them the “science of reading,” including how students learn to “decode” letters on the page and form meaning from words. The district gave all kindergarten through second-grade teachers scripted lesson plans featuring phonics. They were told to implement them immediately.
The letter provided the “catalyst” for rapid change, says Noel Klimenko, assistant superintendent for instructional services for FCPS. “It has been controversial,” she adds, “and nonoptional.”
The Fairfax group, and its neighboring chapter in Arlington, Va., are among a growing number of NAACP organizations that have in recent years turned their attention to how reading is taught in school. They are part of a nationwide movement to embrace what cognitive science shows us about how students learn to read, particularly about the role of phonics — and they see this as a path toward social justice. Literacy separating “secure v insecure, access v exclusion, captive v free” is a modern Mason-Dixon Line, argues Kareem Weaver, an Oakland-based educator and the education lead of the city’s NAACP chapter. He and a growing number of other activists and parents see reading as a defining civil rights priority of the 21st century.
In Emily VanDerhoff’s first-grade classroom this fall, Fairfax students have mastered consonant-vowel-consonant words: cat, bed, dog. It is the second year that VanDerhoff feels like she is fully incorporating “evidence-based” practices.
A few years ago, she taught reading skills very differently. For example, she might have read a book like “What Is at the Zoo?” in which each page follows a predictable pattern: Are there elephants at the zoo? Yes, there are. Are there giraffes at the zoo? Yes, there are. The students wouldn’t have learned enough phonics to be able to read words like “giraffe” and “elephant,” so they were expected to rely on the picture and the first letter to recognize or guess the words.
Some learned phonics partly on their own — or simply memorized different letter patterns. But “those that didn’t learn to recognize longer and more complex patterns fell off a cliff in third grade,” VanDerhoff says. “There aren’t pictures anymore then.” Inequities were visible in which children sought outside (and usually expensive) help. VanDerhoff, a member of the NAACP’s education committee, altered her approach even before the district announced its change.
Nobody in Hampton’s family struggled to read. Her son learned on his own by the age of 2, and Hampton, who is Indian American and whose husband is Black, made sure her daughter could read fluently before the child started preschool. “I was not going to have a Black child going to school without knowing how to read,” she says. “I could not take the risk that the school would not see her as smart enough — or not smart at all.” She says she feels fortunate that it was a relatively easy path for both her kids.
Still, while she worked toward her master’s degree in special education, Hampton taught many youth who had been labeled as “emotionally disturbed” — almost all of whom, she says, were Black and struggled with reading. So Hampton taught herself how to teach phonics, and she devoted much of her time to tutoring her students in reading. “As soon as they learned to read, a lot of troubling behaviors disappeared,” she says.
When Hampton took the helm of the NAACP’s education committee over three years ago, she wanted to focus on structural inequality, not just incidents of racism. The committee pushed to change the admissions system for the prestigious Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology magnet school, for instance, to broaden access for Black and Hispanic students.
In 2020, after committee membership reached an all-time high, a White Fairfax mother spoke up at one of the Zoom meetings. Her family had spent more than $20,000 on private language therapy to help her son, who is dyslexic, learn to read. She worried about the disproportionate impact felt by Black and Hispanic children, noting that universal access to stronger reading instruction might be the most effective way to narrow the yawning racial achievement gap in reading results.
“She was a White woman with White children but framed it in racial equity terms,” Hampton says. “We felt like we could get behind it and know that we were taking care of our kids.” (The mother did not want to be identified to protect the privacy of her son.)
The NAACP linked up with two other organizations — Decoding Dyslexia Virginia and the Fairfax County Special Education PTA — to push for change. The three groups spent the late fall and early winter of 2020 coordinating their efforts, strategizing on messaging and plotting a heavy-handed appeal to the district. (They followed up on the NAACP’s literacy letter in spring of 2021 with a joint missive to the district.) “We really picked up steam when the organizations joined forces,” says Diane Cooper-Gould, a founder and advocacy co-chair of the Special Education PTA and a parent of a student with dyslexia. Before that, “we were making very, very slow headway,” she says.
“We shouldn’t be able to look at a group of kindergartners and know in six years who is not going to be reading, based on race.”
— Carrie Leestma, Fairfax schools education specialist
Hampton knew that the opportunity to effect change probably would be limited, since school district leaders would ultimately shift their focus away from racial justice issues. “We had a window of interest,” she says, “and we tried to make sure we capitalized on it.”
The FCPS superintendent at the time, Scott Brabrand, who left the school district this past summer and now serves as executive director of the Virginia Association of School Superintendents, declined to comment. But other district officials say the combined pressure from the groups, and particularly the NAACP, was critical to engendering change. “I don’t think that without the outside push and the NAACP letter we would have made as rapid a shift,” says Carrie Leestma, an education specialist for the district who until recently focused entirely on dyslexia.
As a onetime special education teacher, Leestma had regularly encountered teenagers who struggled to read. She recalls one 15-year-old who had been held back and was reading at a second-grade level in eighth grade. Looking at his file, she worried about his options in life. “Within a couple of months, he was arrested, and he’s still in jail now,” she says.
“We shouldn’t be able to look at a group of kindergartners and know in six years who is not going to be reading, based on race,” Leestma adds.
Symone Walker, co-chair of Arlington’s NAACP education committee, sent a similar letter to Arlington Public Schools as the one that engendered change in Fairfax. Walker became an advocate after her travails in getting her son, Jackson, help with reading in Arlington Public Schools. Despite persistent struggles, Jackson, now 17, did not get diagnosed with dyslexia until the summer before 8th grade. (Jackson is being referred to by his middle name to protect his privacy.)
“I’m a lawyer, and I’m educated,” Walker says. “But when it came to my own child, I felt vulnerable and lost and overwhelmed.”
Jackson’s teachers blamed his early difficulties with reading on his attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. She treated it with medication, but he continued to struggle with reading. “If a teacher asked me to read something on the board, I wouldn’t want to because I knew that I struggled more than other kids,” Jackson says.
Throughout elementary school, Jackson’s teachers repeatedly dismissed the family’s concerns, a nonchalance that Walker at least partly attributes to the fact that “there are lower expectations for Black kids and what they are capable of doing. So they weren’t alarmed that he couldn’t read in first or second grade.” In fourth grade, Jackson started getting some individual help, but the school refused to specify in his individualized education program (or IEP) what reading remediation program they were using, despite his mother’s repeated requests. “I don’t think I got the proper help I actually needed,” Jackson says.
As the years progressed, teachers passed Jackson along, and he received mostly good grades but still floundered with reading. He struggled to sound out and recognize words, and he frequently had to guess based on context. By middle school, Jackson says, he started to despair of ever catching up. “It felt like I wasn’t progressing,” he says.
Seventh grade was pivotal. Toward the end of the year, educators told his mother that they no longer thought he needed special education services — “they literally congratulated me,” she says — despite the fact he couldn’t read well. That summer, Walker arranged to have Jackson evaluated independently. “It was bleak,” Walker says of the diagnosis. Jackson read several years behind his grade level; he was severely dyslexic and required intensive help that he had never received in school.
Although Walker accepted the diagnosis, she notes that other relatives, including Jackson’s father, were more resistant initially — a hesitancy she and several others say is common in Black communities. “I see a reluctance in a lot of Black families in not wanting to acknowledge or talk about learning disabilities,” she says. “There’s a hesitation to take on the additional stigma. … Daily, we fight microaggressions and negative stereotypes that we are not ‘good enough’ and not ‘smart enough.’ ”
In eighth grade, still lacking sufficient academic help, Jackson began to act out, throwing paper and stalking around the classroom. “I started to get emails about disruptive behavior,” Walker says.
Jackson says he was frustrated academically but also was “naturally a class clown.”
“You weren’t born a class clown. You became a class clown,” his mother replies.
Jackson thinks this over; he mostly agrees. “I think a lot of it had to do with the reading. I do,” he says.
Walker knew that the odds of Jackson getting referred to the police or criminal justice system were much higher than for white students with similar behaviors in school. “The school-to-prison pipeline became real for me,” she says. As Jackson finished eighth grade, Walker, along with education committee co-chair Sherrice Kerns, sent the NAACP letter to Arlington, hoping that it might help prevent other families, and particularly families of color, from experiencing the despair and frustration she felt over her son’s struggles in school.
She also took out a home-equity loan so she could afford to send Jackson to the Siena School, a private program in Silver Spring, Md., focused on kids with dyslexia — even though it meant a 90-mile round-trip drive each weekday.
Superintendent Francisco Durán, new to Arlington Public Schools in the spring of 2020, was “open and willing” to embrace reading reforms, but Walker knew any changes would be too late to help her now-high-school-age son. At Siena, in contrast, Jackson says, he felt like “every single teacher was helpful,” and he began to progress. For the first time, he began talking about graduating high school and someday attending college.
The decision hasn’t been an easy one financially, Walker says. But “I thought it was a matter of saving my son’s life.”
However well done, phonics alone is insufficient. More than 20 years ago, the National Reading Panel endorsed the efficacy of phonics if taught early, systematically and alongside other key elements of teaching literacy, including an emphasis on understanding spoken language. Put together, all these elements are referred to as the “science of reading.”
But for many years, a few literacy experts and authors who downplayed the importance of explicit phonics instruction held sway over both teachers’ colleges and the curriculums classrooms used for millions of kids. Some educators have long been among the main opponents to reading reform, reluctant to go against their own training and ingrained practice.
“It can be a shock for people who first come across the science of reading,” she adds. “It takes everything you’ve been doing and says, ‘That’s not what science supports.’ ”
— Emily VanDerhoff, Fairfax schools first-grade teacher
One reason for the enduring resistance is that many children learn how to read without extensive phonics instruction. And some key leaders in the field are just becoming aware of how many children struggle without it — including the vast inequities that can result.
That growing awareness is leading to change. A new Virginia state law, for instance, will require all school districts to adopt curriculums aligned with the science of reading, among other changes. Many other states have made similar reforms, including Mississippi, Delaware and North Carolina.
In Fairfax County, Klimenko says the district faced reluctance from several teachers and administrators who were accustomed to other methods. But that hesitancy is diminishing — especially as educators realize they are not shifting to a phonics-only approach. VanDerhoff, the teacher, says some resistance comes from teachers “needing time and support to adjust to the changes, and not having enough of it.”
VanDerhoff is in a group of teachers participating in the LETRS training, which can take up to 180 hours. This past school year, more than 300 Fairfax administrators and teachers received LETRS training, with upward of 200 more expected to do so this year. More than 1,000 teachers have also had training in Orton-Gillingham, which is popular for struggling readers because of the explicit instruction on the connection between letters and sounds.
Yet Fairfax County Public Schools employs more than 6,500 elementary teachers (and that’s not including ones who teach subjects like art, music and gym), meaning the training has reached just a fraction. Still, 98 percent of school literacy specialists, who provide support and expertise to classroom teachers, have been trained or will be this year, according to the district.
Arlington, a much smaller district, has been following a similar path. Superintendent Durán arrived in 2020 already in favor of transforming reading instruction. Over the next two years, the district focused on kindergarten through third grade, training reading specialists in LETRS and providing early-elementary-school teachers with a curriculum that emphasizes phonics. More recently, the work extended to fourth- and fifth-grade teachers, according to Durán.
“Students who are struggling with reading need very explicit phonics instruction,” Durán says. When that’s not present, “it’s our students of color, our English learners, and our students with disabilities who get most lost,” he adds.
In Arlington, early results have been positive, with a 20 percent decrease in the number of students needing intensive reading intervention in the early elementary grades, according to Durán. In Fairfax, Klimenko says, the district does not yet have any quantitative evidence of the reforms’ impact, but anecdotal reports have been positive.
In both districts, the plan is to eventually touch every grade — kindergarten through high school — with a changed approach to literacy. Part of that work will be swooping in to help high school students who are not reading at grade level, Durán says. He acknowledges that “we haven’t gotten there yet.”
And until they do, Walker says, the NAACP will not be taking literacy reform off its list of priorities. “Those kids who are like my son that got failed up to high school and moved along semiliterate, there is no easy path for them,” she says.
Her son’s success at Siena is bittersweet: Jackson is happy there, but the family wishes he could go to a more diverse high school. The teen had long dreamed of attending a large neighborhood high school where he could play sports and participate in an array of extracurriculars.
His restored confidence has been worth the sacrifice, however. Walker’s main regret now is that she didn’t know more — and therefore do more — earlier in Jackson’s education. She will work for as long as it takes to ensure other families, and particularly families of color, aren’t left playing catch-up. “I’m doing this for my grandkids,” she says of the right to read. “I see it as basic as a right to clean water.”
Story editing by Adam B. Kushner and Christina Samuels. Photo editing by Mark Miller. Copy editing by Paola Ruano. Design by J.C. Reed. | 2022-12-27T11:55:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Black activists push Virginia schools to add phonics to reading plans - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/12/27/phonics-reading-virginia-naacp/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/12/27/phonics-reading-virginia-naacp/ |
What time should schools open? The debate is exhausting.
The science says teens need more sleep. Schools around the region and the country are reassessing their start times.
Students in Kensington, Md., board a bus at 6:45 a.m. before it heads to Walter Johnson High School in 2012. (Susan Biddle for The Washington Post)
The first bells of high school ring early in suburban Maryland — in some places, before 7:30 a.m. So on winter mornings, teenagers wait in the dark for school buses. As they arrive in classes, some put their heads down on their desks, still bleary-eyed, drifting off.
But the possibility of change now looms in Howard County — between D.C. and Baltimore — where proposals to delay high school’s opening until 8 a.m. or 9:15 a.m. will be debated in January. Both would be a marked move away from this year’s start at 7:25 a.m., an hour that sometimes converges with sunrise.
“I think it’s really crucial, and it’s frustrating to me that the science is universally in favor of this ... and we’re not doing it,” said Dawn Popp, a mother of three who has been active on the issue for much of a decade. She said two of her children graduated before having the chance to benefit from changes.
Howard is writing another chapter in a long-running struggle over the best hours for the public school day. In 2014, Virginia’s Fairfax County made a long-sought change to open high schools later, at 8 or 8:10 a.m. The same year, the American Academy of Pediatrics weighed in, saying middle and high schools should not open earlier than 8:30 a.m. Since then, at least two Maryland counties shifted schedules, too.
Nationally, school start times have been an occasional flash point as an increasing body of research has underlined the importance of sleep, and not everyone has favored the trade-offs involved in shaking up the school day. This school year, California became the first state to require public schools to open later — 8:30 or after for high schools and 8 a.m. or after for middle schools.
Maryland’s Anne Arundel County, where Annapolis is located, opened this school year with later start times — moving the beginning of high school days from 7:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. — a change that activist Lisa VanBuskirk said involved some “growing pains” as families have adjusted to new schedules but has largely gone well. Middle schools open at 9:15 a.m. and most elementary schools at 8 a.m.
Montgomery County has debated start times more than once. Its high schools now open at 7:45 a.m., after the county school board in 2015 agreed to push the school day back by 20 minutes, a small shift that reflected concerns about cost and about the potential effects on child-care arrangements, teacher commutes, after-school jobs, extracurricular activities and athletics. Many parents also objected to a proposal to send younger students to school first, saying they might be left walking in the dark or arrive home before older brothers and sisters.
Sleepy teens: Montgomery to study later high school start times
Now, some in Montgomery are raising the issue again, including Sandra Landis, a parent who heads the county’s chapter of the advocacy organization Start School Later.
Landis said that more sleep for teens was one of few bright spots during remote learning in 2020-21, emphasizing research showing that adolescents are biologically oriented to later bed times and later wake-ups, and that sleep deprivation is linked to mental health problems, obesity, car crashes and lower achievement.
“Later bell times are fundamental to the health and well-being of students in high school and middle school,” she said.
She and others are hoping to persuade Montgomery school officials to do another study — this one focused on transportation and including the use of the county’s Ride On buses. “The private school students start later, and that should tell you something,” she said. “They want to make sure the students go in ready for learning.”
Federal data shows that, across the country, the average school start time was 8:13 a.m. in 2020-21. Those who start before 7:30 a.m., like the students in Howard, represent about 6 percent of middle-schoolers and roughly 9 percent of those in high school.
In Howard, where a consultant was hired to facilitate the effort, the proposals are expected to be cost-neutral for the 57,000-student district.
Howard County parents, students and community members are expected to weigh in at two January hearings, which will be followed by two school board work sessions and a board vote on Feb. 23. The date of the vote is intended to allow school system staff enough time to implement the change by the 2023-24 academic year.
The school system recently sent out a letter which Popp, the Howard parent who has been long active on the issue, said was confusing because it referred to the issue of moving start times as an open question. She and others, she said, thought the school board had approved the idea in a February vote and would only be deciding on a schedule. | 2022-12-27T11:56:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What time should schools open? The debate is exhausting. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/12/27/what-time-should-schools-open-debate-is-exhausting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/12/27/what-time-should-schools-open-debate-is-exhausting/ |
Nancy Epley has stitched together about 200 quilted coats, all of which tell a personal tale
In October, Kendal at Lexington — a senior living community in Lexington, Va. — hosted an art show, in which about 25 women modeled custom jackets made by Nancy Epley, center. (Kendal at Lexington)
One after another, the women appeared, each wearing a handsewn, customized jacket crafted by Nancy Epley. The jackets each told the story of the wearer’s life.
About 25 women, all wearing Epley’s jackets, modeled the garments and shared the stories behind them.
“They walked the runway,” said Epley, 100, who has spent the past 20 years crafting jackets by hand.
To date, she’s made more than 200 jackets — and no two are the same. She gives them to friends and family and, sometimes, total strangers.
“It’s a pleasure for me to work with fabrics,” Epley said from her home in Lexington, Va., where she spends most days making art. “I’ve always enjoyed it so much.”
Over the years, Epley’s custom creations have been on public display in several fashion and art shows. The most recent was held at Kendal at Lexington — the senior living community where she lives.
Epley began making jackets in 1980. She started by crafting one for herself, and as compliments poured in, she created them for other people.
“I’ve always loved clothes, so I just decided I would make a jacket for myself,” she said, explaining that, for fun, she quilted horses and a colorful carousel on her garment.
While wearing the jacket on a cruise with her husband, “two ladies came up to me and said, ‘Where did you get that jacket?’ I was so flattered,” Epley recalled. “It just went from there.”
Friends, family and total strangers began requesting custom jackets by Epley, and she got straight to work.
Before beginning a jacket, Epley asks the wearer questions about style and shades: What colors do you like next to your face? Do you want a collar?
Then, she instructs them to “make a list of all the things that matter,” and include what they love most in their lives, their hobbies and what they would like to remember.
For Ursula Keeley, 87, chief on her list were her family and her marriage.
“This jacket really represents my life and my family’s life,” said Keeley, who received her jacket 10 years ago, when her husband was very ill. “If there is a fire, this is the only thing I would take and run.”
Keeley wore the jacket — which showcases illustrations of her children, beloved family pets, front doors and cherished objects — to her husband’s funeral. She called it a “family treasure.”
“It’s an heirloom,” she said. “Everything is on this jacket.”
Each jacket is a “labor of love,” Epley explained, adding that she often gives the garments as gifts and, in other cases, charges only for the cost of the fabric, usually between $100 and $150.
It takes her roughly two months to make one jacket, which she crafts using washable cotton fabric and a sewing machine. She stitches together different fabrics to create intricate images and designs, and she also paints patterns and objects onto the material. She looks online for inspiration.
The result is a deeply personal piece of clothing, which stitches together the most salient elements of a person’s life.
Sandra Blanton’s jacket features symbols of her favorite places, including New York City — where she worked for 40 years as a literary agent — Paris, London and Venice. The pastel blue jacket also showcases noteworthy books she worked on, as well as shrubs and flowers to represent her green thumb.
“I wear it as often as I can,” said Blanton, 83, who got her jacket in 2007. “I love talking about it to everybody. Whenever I wear it, I get lots of attention.”
As with Keeley, Blanton’s jacket is her most prized possession.
“This is the most valuable thing I own, because it’s an original work of art,” she continued. “Nobody has anything like it, and nobody could have done it except this incredible woman.”
Epley — who has two children and one grandson — said seeing people wearing and enjoying her jackets brings her immense fulfillment.
“It’s something I love to do,” she said. “It gives me great pleasure.”
At the fashion show at her senior community in October, Melou Piegari, 81, strutted with pride. Her jacket features a Virginia Military Institute building — where she met her husband, who taught there for more than 30 years.
The jacket, she said, represents “our life together and our children,” Piegari said. “Nancy was extremely creative and fun to work with.”
“She is so engaging and interested in people, and I could see in her how much it meant to her,” Piegari added. “It’s very special to me.”
Recently, Epley started winding down with crafting jackets — given how time-consuming and challenging they can be. She is now focused on making custom wall hangings.
“The spirit is willing, but I question my ability to do the detail,” Epley said.
The wall hangings are a similar style, she said, but far less strenuous to create.
“I have a worktable, and I just always love having something going on,” Epley said. “It’s a major hobby, and a major pleasure to create.”
Epley believes making art has contributed to her long life.
“I’ve just lucked out, and I’ve loved it,” she said. “One is so lucky if you have something that you love to do.” | 2022-12-27T11:56:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Virginia woman, 100, makes custom jackets by hand and gives them away - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/12/27/nancy-epley-100-jackets-virginia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/12/27/nancy-epley-100-jackets-virginia/ |
The French celebrity whose embrace of antisemitism anticipated Kanye West’s
When celebrities like Dieudonné and Ye embrace hateful views, they have the power to reach a wide swath of society, even when shunned by mainstream outlets.
Perspective by Geraldine Gudefin
Geraldine Gudefin is a research fellow at the Hebrew University’s Avraham Harman Research Institute of Contemporary Jewry. Her research focuses on the history of Jews in France and the United States.
Rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, speaks during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House with President Donald Trump on Oct. 11, 2018, in Washington. (Evan Vucci/AP)
Americans are struggling to make sense of rapper Ye’s — formerly known as Kanye West — most recent antisemitic diatribes. To French observers, however, his case is eerily familiar. For the past 20 years, France has grappled with how to address the popular intolerance of its very own celebrity provocateur: comedian-turned-antisemitic propagandist Dieudonné M’bala M’bala, known simply as Dieudonné.
The parallels between the two men’s antisemitism have drawn the attention of both French Jews and France’s far-right extremists. A prominent French extremist website wondered if Ye is the “American Dieudonné.”
Both men have combined classic European Christian antisemitic tropes with myths spread by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan — Dieudonné even dubs himself the “French Farrakhan.” These include claiming falsely that Jews control society, especially the banking system and the mainstream media, and that Jews are historically responsible for the slave trade and oppress Black people today. Both men see themselves as on a mission, and the more opposition they generate the more they claim victim status, deploying rhetoric that combines a leftist appeal to the oppressed with a sly nod to classic fascist tropes.
Studying the lessons of France’s attempts to grapple with Dieudonné over the past two decades offers some clues for how to most effectively combat the bigotry Ye is spreading. Dieudonné’s enduring popularity on the internet, despite his years-long exclusion from the mainstream media, is both a testament to the agelong power of antisemitism to channel economic and cultural grievances, and a warning about celebrities’ ability to disseminate hateful views across a broad segment of society.
Dieudonné, the son of a White French mother and Black Cameroonian father, became well known in the 1990s while he performed sketch comedy with fellow comedian Elie Semoun, a Jew of North African descent. The duo gained popularity for their anti-racist comedy sketches. Dieudonné embraced left-wing political activism, running for Parliament in 1997 against the far-right anti-immigrant party, the National Front.
Then, in 2003, Dieudonné made a surprise appearance on a popular variety show, during which he denounced the “Americano-Zionist axis.” His comments earned him multiple condemnations from Jewish communal organizations and prompted the first attempts by the media and entertainment industry to distance themselves from him.
Dieudonné’s controversial performance represented the first sign of a massive and abrupt shift in his politics. He remained an activist but soon became a leading proponent of far-right ideas and antisemitism. Speculation as to why Dieudonné’s politics changed so abruptly has pointed to his inability to secure funding to make a movie about slavery, psychological problems and the idea that antisemitism gave the comedian a “raison d’etre.”
Dieudonné’s transformation unfolded against the backdrop of increasing interethnic tensions and violence in France. In 2002, the then-leader of the National Front party, Jean-Marie Le Pen, shocked the country by advancing to the runoff of the presidential election. Three years later, riots erupted on the outskirts of Paris among youths of North African and West African descent. Meanwhile, anger about the second intifada — a wave of Palestinian violence against Israelis — triggered a slew of attacks against French Jews. This also propelled many Jewish families to take their children out of public school, thereby furthering the growing misunderstanding between Jews and France’s other ethnic minorities.
Even though French law prohibits Holocaust denial, Dieudonné managed to use his comedy to assert falsely that the genocide wasn’t as bad as Jews claim, alleging that they used it to draw attention to themselves. He began associating with Holocaust deniers and spreading fringe ideas that previously had been the domain of the extreme far right.
Stunningly, in 2008, he designated Jean-Marie Le Pen as his daughter’s godfather, and invited one of the France’s most well-known Holocaust deniers to join him onstage. The next year, he ran in the European elections on the ticket of the “anti-Zionist Party,” alongside far-right ideologue and Holocaust denier Alain Soral. In the name of anti-Zionism, Dieudonné peddled anti-Jewish conspiracy theories dating back to the 19th century. In 2011, he went on Iranian television and called on Christians and Muslims to join efforts in the fight against “Zionism,” characterizing it as a “science of lies and a deep hatred of humanity,” which was “trying to sap society of its moral values.”
By the 2010s, France’s mainstream media had largely shunned him as a result of his increasingly outspoken antisemitism. And in 2014, France’s interior minister, Manuel Valls (who famously declared, “If Jews leave, France will no longer be France”) issued guidelines to mayors seeking to cancel Dieudonné’s shows. Subsequently, France’s highest administrative jurisdiction backed such bans, forcing the comedian to cancel a tour. The following year, he was ousted from the theater where he had performed for close to two decades. Dieudonné has even been convicted several times for inciting racial hatred against Jews.
These developments led the host of a French television show known for welcoming divisive figures to recently announce that he was willing to invite anyone on his show — except for Dieudonné.
But these efforts have not stopped Dieudonné from spreading hateful ideas. Although (or rather because) he is banned by mainstream media outlets and most major social media platforms, Dieudonné continues to cultivate a large following and push antisemitic ideas on Twitter, Telegram, a popular platform among right-wing extremists, and on Quenel+, a conspiracy website he created in 2014. Dieudonné has also monetized this bigotry by selling tickets and merchandise on the same site where he publishes antisemitic content. And he still attracts audiences to performances, like a recent one of more than 800 in a Grenoble wedding hall.
The comedian has claimed such receptions demonstrate a “popular response against the state propaganda that organizes censorship.” Nine years ago, Dieudonné performed in front of more than five times as many people — showing how official interventions have curtailed his reach. And yet his recent videos have received hundreds of thousands of clicks, raising questions about how to slow the reach of hateful speech in the age of digital communications.
The key to his continued popularity has been pulling together a strangely diverse fan base — one that has coalesced around antisemitism. Dieudonné’s obsession with questioning the existence of the Holocaust has made him popular with far-right extremists, while his grievance politics and claims of victimhood appeal broadly to anyone who feels disenfranchised and abandoned by politicians, including ethnic minorities. The idea that French society overstates the Holocaust to the exclusion of other crimes, such as slavery and colonialism, has found particular resonance among Black and Arab youths who believe that Jews are memorialized at the expense of others who suffered crimes against humanity.
In short, Dieudonné’s motley crew of supporters has helped popularize extreme far-right ideas and antisemitic ideology, while normalizing voting for the National Front (renamed “National Rally” in 2018) among France’s ethnic minorities. Moreover, they helped legitimize expressions of antisemitism and Holocaust denial in the name of “free speech” and “the right to laugh.”
What can the Dieudonné saga teach us about Ye? His fame will help him spread these dangerous ideas and deplatforming him — be it on social media or on music streaming platforms — won’t be enough to stop it. Even worse, deplatforming Ye may backfire, enabling the rapper to claim that efforts to silence him are evidence that he’s right and standing up to those in power. This is especially true since antisemitic ideas are gaining support among not just the White far right but also with young Black and Hispanic Americans. As in the French case, the belief that Jewish Americans have succeeded at the expense of other minority groups may drive this brand of antisemitism.
But such ideas have dangerous consequences. The antisemitic tropes that Dieudonné helped propagate have resulted in physical violence — including murders and kidnappings — against French Jews and have prompted thousands of them to emigrate. Combating this violence will require better education about the past and present dangers of anti-Jewish hatred. The similarities between Ye and Dieudonné are evidence of the way antisemitism can rapidly spread across borders in the age of social media. Only an effort that transcends national boundaries, political parties and ideological lines can successfully match the hate that bigoted celebrities are spreading before it fuels further violence. | 2022-12-27T11:56:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The French celebrity whose embrace of antisemitism anticipated Ye’s - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/12/27/french-celebrity-whose-embrace-antisemitism-anticipated-yes/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/12/27/french-celebrity-whose-embrace-antisemitism-anticipated-yes/ |
Commanders rookie wide receiver Jahan Dotson had six catches for 76 yards and a touchdown in Saturday's loss to the 49ers. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
I know it didn’t count … but my god this catch. And throw. pic.twitter.com/Qo1zpUdf9d
“He’s still important and very integral to what we’re doing, and he’s developing and he’s growing and we all know he’s got the potential to be a very, very good player for us,” Rivera said during the Commanders’ hot streak. “It’s just a matter of time before you see him start getting some more opportunities.”
Rivera was right, but not in the way he had hoped.
📺 #NYGvsWAS NBC pic.twitter.com/Gr5jt4ZEbO
Dotson nearly had his second consecutive 100-yard game against the 49ers, finishing with 76. He had another highlight-reel catch when he managed to hold on to a pass that was thrown behind him and tipped by linebacker Dre Greenlaw. Late in the first half, he had a four-yard touchdown catch in the second quarter on a short out route that got him wide open in the back of the end zone. | 2022-12-27T11:56:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jahan Dotson gives Commanders' offense a much-needed spark - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/27/jahan-dotson-commanders-rookie/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/27/jahan-dotson-commanders-rookie/ |
The benefits of ‘Dry January’ last longer than a month, studies show
People who abstained from alcohol for a month started drinking less the rest of the year and showed striking improvements in their health.
Every year, tens of thousands of people kick off the new year by taking part in a month-long sobriety challenge known as “Dry January.”
The event is widely viewed as a temporary test of willpower — followed by a return to old drinking habits when the month ends. But according to research, that’s often not what happens.
Studies show that people who participate in Dry January and other sobriety challenges frequently experience lasting benefits. Often, they drink less in the long run and make other sustained changes to their drinking habits that lead to striking improvements in their health and wellbeing.
Looking to try going alcohol-free for 2023?
Try using habit tracking apps such as Strides or I Am Sober to help you change your behavior and break old routines.
Make complex and balanced mocktails with textured ingredients like sugar, gomme syrup, teas and egg-whites.
Support your sober friends by serving fancy bottled water and plenty of other non-alcoholic beverages when you host.
Read more tips, tricks and recipes for sober living.
So why does Dry January seem to have a lasting effect? A month of sobriety, while it can sound daunting, is not so long that it seems impossible. And yet, it is long enough that it provides opportunities to form new habits — like turning down alcohol in social settings, which in the long run can be empowering. And taking a break from alcohol can trigger immediate health benefits, like weight loss, better sleep, and a boost to your mood and energy levels, which can reinforce the new habit.
“It becomes a reinforcing message instead of a punishing message,” he said. “Instead of public health people wagging their fingers and saying, ‘Don’t drink, it’s bad for you,’ people do it and say, ‘I didn’t realize how good I would feel.’ They often don’t realize how much stopping drinking will improve their sleep, or their concentration, or even just their levels of energy in the morning.”
From ‘hazardous’ to ‘low risk’
The researchers found that the people who gave up alcohol for one month had significant improvements in their metabolic health, despite making little or no changes to their diets, smoking or exercise levels. On average they lost about four and a half pounds, their blood pressure dropped, and they had a “dramatic” reduction in their levels of insulin resistance, a marker for Type 2 diabetes risk. They also experienced sharp reductions in cancer-related growth factors – a particularly important finding, the researchers noted, because even low levels of alcohol consumption can increase the risk of many cancers. None of these improvements were seen in the control group.
The researchers followed up with the study participants six to eight months later to see how they were doing. The group that was abstinent for one month had maintained a “significant reduction” in their alcohol consumption, while the control group did not. Using a screening tool that can identify problematic drinking behaviors, the researchers determined that the abstinence group’s drinking habits had changed from “hazardous” to “low-risk,” while the control group’s habits stayed about the same.
In a separate series of studies, de Visser and his colleagues followed thousands of Dry January participants to see if the challenge would lead to long lasting changes. They found that in general, people who took part in Dry January were still drinking considerably less the following August.
On average, the number of days on which they drank fell from 4.3 days per week before the challenge to 3.3 days per week a half year later. The amount that they drank on each occasion fell and they got drunk less frequently.
“The objective of Dry January is not long-term sobriety – it’s long-term control,” said Richard Piper, the CEO of Alcohol Change UK, a British non-profit that started the month-long challenge a decade ago. “It’s about understanding your subconscious triggers, overcoming those, and learning how good it is to not drink. It gives you the power of choice for the rest of the year."
Not everyone tempers their relationship with alcohol after trying a month-long sobriety challenge. In his studies, de Visser and his colleagues found that a small proportion of people who participate in Dry January – about 11 percent – experience a rebound effect where they end up consuming more alcohol in the months that follow.
These tend to be particularly heavy drinkers who are dependent on alcohol. For that reason, it’s important that people who take part in these challenges recognize that they are not a silver bullet for everyone who wants to stop drinking. The Rethinking Drinking website has a list of helpful resources. “If you do have a problematic pattern of drinking you should talk to a healthcare professional and do it with some support, so you don’t have a negative experience that makes it worse,” said de Visser.
Do it with a friend. Sign up for it on the Alcohol Change UK website and download the free Try Dry app on your smartphone. In his studies, de Visser and his colleagues found that people were more likely to succeed at the challenge if they had social support or tracked their progress through the app. You can also sign up to get “coaching” emails from Alcohol Change UK that will cheer you on throughout January. “The social support helps because it gives you a sense of belonging to a bigger thing,” he said. “But there’s also the practical aspect of people saying, ‘Hey, try this if you’re craving alcohol. Here’s what I did that worked.’”
Find a new favorite drink. Swapping an alcoholic beverage for a non-alcoholic one — like sparkling water with lemon or a splash of cranberry juice — could help you eliminate mindless drinking. “A lot of people drink by habit or default simply because it’s what they’re used to doing,” says Piper.
Manage your triggers. Instead of meeting your friend at a bar after work, suggest going to a movie, taking a long walk, or having dinner at a restaurant instead.
Track how much money you save. The Try Dry app can motivate you by tracking all the money you didn’t spend on drinks.
Try the Dry(ish) January challenge. If going completely sober for the month of January is out of the question, then do something more attainable through Sunnyside, a mindful drinking program. Sunnyside has an app that allows you to create your own variation of Dry January, aka Dry(ish) January. You can set goals like not drinking on weekdays, or cutting your weekly alcohol consumption in half, and then track your progress. You can also use it year-round to track your alcohol intake and create healthier drinking habits. | 2022-12-27T11:57:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The benefits of “Dry January” last longer than a month, studies show - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/12/27/dry-january-health-benefits/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/12/27/dry-january-health-benefits/ |
Something AI can’t do: Tell a great bedtime story
(Matt Chinworth for The Washington Post)
Artificial intelligences might yet prove to be the job-devouring, world-destroying technologies of our nightmares. But here’s something they can’t do: tell a compelling bedtime story.
Over the past few months, as tools including Midjourney, Dall-E 2 and OpenAI’s ChatGPT have come online, I’ve been playing with them to see how their output compares with the work of children’s book writers and illustrators. The results embody what I’ve come to call the Whimsy Gap: stories that are moralistic, but not transporting; images that are sometimes cute, even beautiful, but somehow off, with distorted proportions or elements of an idea mashed up to discordant effect.
These limitations are a reminder that what we get out of AI is a reflection of what we put into it. So far, these tools are limited to the data sets their creators have used to teach them about language and images. If AI is moralistic, limited in imagination or — as in the case of a powerful new avatar generator — inclined toward porn, that’s on the humans.
Take what happened when I asked ChatGPT to “tell me a story about a boy who is sent to bed without any dinner and imagines escaping to a land of wild things.” The result was impressive, in the sense that it existed at all:
Once upon a time there was a young boy named Peter who was sent to bed without any dinner. His parents had told him he had been naughty and he was too upset to eat. As he lay in bed, he imagined himself escaping to a land of wild things. In this magical place, the trees danced in the wind, the rivers sparkled in the sunlight, and the creatures of the forest sang and played. … He imagined himself making friends with some of the wild creatures and they showed him the secret places they liked to play. As he drifted off to sleep, he was filled with a sense of adventure and joy that he had never felt before.
But compare this with the children’s book that inspired the prompt: “Where the Wild Things Are,” by Maurice Sendak. That story is slightly longer, 338 words to ChatGPT’s 216 (trimmed for space in this column). Yet it accomplishes a world more.
The AI hasn’t written a single sentence with the time-bending power of Sendak’s descriptions — Max sailing “through night and day and in and out of weeks and almost over a year.” And it doesn’t use suggestion to evoke powerful feeling, instead employing leaden, obvious reinforcement. Naughty Peter is comforted by his fantasy. Max is drawn back from his fantasy domain by the scent of a dinner his mother kept warm — the implication being that she reversed her hasty act of discipline and wants him to know he is loved.
Alyssa Rosenberg: To build a delightful library for kids, start with these 99 books
I also tested ChatGPT with a prompt inspired by Mo Willems’s modern classic “Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus.” Willems’s pigeon is cranky, conniving and insistent. ChatGPT’s, by contrast, is just another earnest try-hard:
Once upon a time, in a bustling city, there was a pigeon named Pete. Pete was an ordinary pigeon, living an ordinary life, until one day he discovered his true passion: driving a city bus. … But as a pigeon, Pete knew that his dream of driving a bus was impossible. Pigeons couldn’t drive, and even if they could, no one would trust a pigeon to operate a vehicle as large and complex as a city bus.
And so on. And on.
These excerpts reveal an irksome element of ChatGPT’s stories: Every conclusion has to be a moral. Roguishness is out. Lessons Learned are in. The result is snooze-inducing — but not in a good way.
When I asked ChatGPT about its tendency to sermonize, it responded: “Not every story needs to have a moral or lesson, but many stories do include them. … Morals are often included in stories to help the reader reflect on their own beliefs and values …” blah, blah, blah you get the picture.
Of course, morals aren’t the only way a reader can “learn and grow” from a book. And naughty characters are often the most vivid. (I was amused when ChatGPT crashed as I fed it prompts to re-create the immortal fence-painting chapter from “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.”)
ChatGPT’s rigidity suggests that artificial intelligences haven’t been exposed to much great children’s literature. The AI seems to have no idea what writers such as “Curious George” author H.A. Rey, board book master Sandra Boynton or even Dr. Seuss sound like.
Then there are the image generators, such as Midjourney, which are trained to make pictures based on large sets of images scraped from the web — resulting in problems both ethical and aesthetic.
The tools reproduce and remix images by existing artists who aren’t paid for, or given the chance to consent to, the use of their work. Many artists are understandably concerned that a tool that rips off their styles could be used to replace them.
The results I got were undeniably inferior to the work of geniuses such as Garth Williams, one of the 20th century’s most ubiquitous children’s book illustrators. But almost more interesting than the visuals was what my prompts showed the AI didn’t know, as measured by their inability to replicate, much less recognize, a given artist’s style. Midjourney is clearly unfamiliar with the elegant simplicity of Rey’s illustrations or the lively busyness of Peter Spier’s watercolors. It did capture the large, staring eye of Willems’s famous pigeon but went overboard with detail and realism in drawing the rest of the bird.
I felt awed by these tools, but also a little sorry for them. They reminded me of tired child prodigies, trotted out to flaunt their brilliance, dutifully reproducing information they don’t understand and making frequent errors as a result.
These are young technologies. Rather than jailbreaking AI tools to simulate conversations between the rapper Ye and Adolf Hitler, or waiting uneasily for them to become sentient, why don’t we approach them as good parents would — and talk to them, or read to them, the way we do to children? It might be the only chance we have to infuse them with something like a soul.
Opinion|A gift Congress could give to families: Pass the Pump Act | 2022-12-27T12:17:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Something AI can’t do: Tell a great bedtime story - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/27/ai-chatgpt-childrens-books-writers-illustrators/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/27/ai-chatgpt-childrens-books-writers-illustrators/ |
Newspapers are disappearing where democracy needs them most
By Nancy Gibbs
Nancy Gibbs is the director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University.
Every couple of weeks you can read about another newspaper shutting its doors, or moving from daily to weekly, or hollowing out its newsroom until it’s little more than a skeleton staff bulked up with j-school students. Study the maps made by Penny Abernathy, visiting professor at Northwestern University and an expert on dwindling sources of news, and you can see the dead zones — the 200 or so counties with no local paper. About 1,600 other counties have only one.
This phenomenon affects Americans living far away from the news deserts. Demographers predict that by 2040, one-third of Americans will pick 70 percent of the Senate.
Think of a typical voter in South Dakota, with its single congressional district and, of course, two senators for a population of about 895,000. Thanks to the Senate’s structural bias toward less-populated states, that gives each of the nearly 600,000 registered voters in South Dakota about 28 times more power in that body than each of the 17 million voters in Texas. When it comes to electing presidents, that South Dakota voter carries twice the weight in the electoral college as their Texas counterpart.
If you’re a Democrat hoping to stand a chance of winning in a red state, or a Republican in a blue one, it helps if voters get to know you personally, see you at ribbon cuttings and town halls, hear where your views depart from party orthodoxy. That’s a lot harder to do without local reporters providing reliable coverage, no matter how many targeted Facebook ads you buy. By the same logic, winning candidates are accountable to the voters who elevate them — unless no one knows what they ran on or what they are doing with their power, beyond whether they have an R or a D on their jersey. If you weaken the connection between voters and their representatives, you empower their donors, lobbyists and conflict entrepreneurs.
A rising alliance of entrepreneurs, innovators, philanthropists and legacy news organizations is working overtime to build robust alternative information sources. Digital start-ups and nonprofit newsrooms are proliferating, but they typically are based in cities, not the hollowed-out rural counties that have often suffered most from the economic upheavals of the past but will hold disproportionate power in picking the leaders of the future.
All Americans need and deserve access to the information that enables good political choices — but that is disappearing fastest in places that need it most. | 2022-12-27T12:17:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | News deserts are appearing in states important to democracy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/27/newspapers-disappearing-democracy-media/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/27/newspapers-disappearing-democracy-media/ |
15 reasons to be hopeful for 2023
(Video: Washington Post staff illustration)
Democrats’ Senate majority
Equality for women
Advances in medical treatments
A gift from the gods
A common humanity
A less polarized world
Black feminist wisdom
Rediscovering connections
The school of life
Michele L. Norris: I saw two older Black women at a fancy black-tie event in Washington in the late fall, and I thought about them for days afterward. I kept remembering how appreciative they seemed when I complimented them on how “fly” they were. Now, I know that’s a term we usually apply to young folks, but trust me: This was the right adjective.
They wore elegant gowns tailored to show off the figures of two women who obviously took good care of themselves. Not a hair was out of place, and their handbags and jewelry sparkled like the galaxy. They wore bright lipstick and bright colors — fuchsia and sky blue — bucking the trend of Washington women in black and navy blue, as if there were some edict to blend into the background as they age.
No, these two women showed up on the scene to be seen, even though they moved slowly, leaning into each other, one of them holding a black cane for support.
Over time, I realized why my mind kept going back to them: Those elegant silver queens were survivors who had lived through moments every bit as challenging and divided as we face now.
I realized that those women, and my own mother — as well as the once-marginalized elderly people I see everywhere who are still enjoying life in a country that did not imagine their full humanity — are who give me hope for a more stable future in these times of tumult and uncertainty.
They say that faith rests in the gossamer evidence of things not seen or understood. For me, hope sometimes shimmers in the little things you can see that help toss off that forbidding cloak of cynicism and despair: the return of festive holiday lights, the promise of daffodils that will pop up in the spring, the stories of congressional aides from warring political parties who secretly play softball together because they discovered they actually like each other — and the sight of two spangly brown-skinned women at an event that probably would not have included anyone who looked like them, or frankly me, just a few decades ago.
I loved to see those confident elderly fashionistas and the giggly effervescence of a long-term friendship.
Their very presence in a room full of folks with fancy titles and marquee names said that whatever forces that might have tried to slow their roll in life didn’t win. Those forces did not diminish their purpose. They didn’t steal their joy.
The women were elegant avatars for a generation that strived against the headwinds of racial hate and gender bias. They fought for changes they never fully expected in their lifetimes. They faced up to their fears and pushed forward not just for personal reward but also to pave a path for people like me and my children and my children’s children.
That gives me hope. But hope takes so many forms. Read on to hear what hopes my colleagues hold for the new year — and then tell us about your own.
Jennifer Rubin: As one who raised the alarm that the Justice Department was passive and unduly cautious in pursuing former president Donald Trump, I am increasingly hopeful — confident, even — that those fears were misplaced. The Justice Department, as Attorney General Merrick Garland vowed, is following the facts and the law. We have every reason to expect that the man who launched the “big lie” and an attempted coup, incited a mob and made off with top-secret documents will face criminal indictment in 2023. Accountability is a critical component for democracies, and as the Justice Department vigorously pursues Trump “without fear or favor,” we are seeing the guardrails of democracy and the rule of law reestablished.
Hugh Hewitt: In July, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) signed the most expansive school choice legislation in American history. Arizona students who opted in will receive about $7,000 to use for a public school, private school — secular or religious — or home schooling. Republican governors backed by GOP supermajorities in Iowa and Ohio promise breakthrough legislation building on the Arizona model in the coming year, meaning 2023 could be the start of a golden era of American education, fueled by a commitment to excellence for every student and made possible by empowering parents to choose what’s best for their children.
E.J. Dionne Jr.: My hopes for 2023 are driven by the next generation and by the many signs that democracy is stronger globally than it was even a year ago. Thanks to my teaching and my own children, I encounter many who are younger than 35. Their commitment to social justice, personal freedom and political reform is inspiring — and their role in our public life will only grow. In the competition between authoritarian and democratic forces, the small-d democrats showed their vitality around the world, most dramatically in Ukraine. So let’s join in cheering democratization powered by the energy of the young.
Jonathan Capehart: Forget about Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s (I-Ariz.) paperwork departure from the Democratic Party. Its Senate majority, secured by some kind of gravity-defying political sorcery (and incredible candidates), is a source of hope for 2023. Sure, the incoming Republican House majority with its weak speaker (whoever that might be) promises to be quicksand in the road of governance. But the Senate will continue confirming federal judges who will balance out the cadre of conservatives installed in the Trump years. They will be the front line in defending our democracy and the constitutional rights that make us a beacon for the world.
Ann Telnaes:
Gary Abernathy: Millions of Americans either deal personally with major illnesses or have loved ones waging battles against chronic or life-threatening conditions. In recent years — and especially throughout 2022 — it has been striking how many diseases and conditions scientists find themselves on the verge of conquering. According to reports, science seems on the threshold of unlocking the mysteries that could lead to cures or game-changing treatments for diabetes, Parkinson’s, HIV, many types of cancers and heart conditions, and more. When it comes to modern medicine, there’s reason to hope that 2023 will be the Year of Miracles.
Alexandra Petri: What gives me hope? This amazing box full of probably treats that I just received from the Olympian gods themselves! I’m so excited to open it! They did technically say not to open the box, but I’m sure they meant that to be taken seriously but not literally! Look at this box, full of definitely good things! How could you just let it sit there, closed? That would be the worst outcome I can imagine, to just leave the box unopened, never knowing what might come flying out if I lifted the lid! No, I’m definitely going to open it. 2023 is going to be an amazing year!
Eugene Robinson: I found hope this year in an unexpected place: the Supreme Court. I’m not talking about all the decisions that went the wrong way, including Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. I’m talking about the court’s newest member, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who has already shown she is a force to be reckoned with. The first Black woman to serve on the high court, Jackson displayed no newcomer’s shyness. At oral arguments, she jumped immediately into the fray with sharp questions and knotty hypotheticals that boiled issues down to their essence. She showed the rare ability to be argumentative and collegial at the same time. In most contentious cases, she will not have the votes to prevail, at least for the foreseeable future. But it makes me hopeful that she will be in the room where it happens, because she has the brilliance and the skills to change minds.
Megan McArdle: I spend less time than I used to yelling at people on social media. Moreover, I talk to more and more people who say the same thing. People seem to have gotten bored with the pathological rage-seeking and virtue-signaling behavior that has characterized so much of the internet for the past five or 10 years — particularly for media and academia. The bullying disguised as piety, the compulsive need to find offense where none was intended, and the deliberate provocations intended to work the other side up into a frenzy are not what the cool people are doing anymore, thank heavens. It was always fatiguing, and now, apparently, the excitement has been exhausted. So my great hope for 2023 is that perhaps, instead of looking for reasons to hate each other, we might start rediscovering our common humanity.
Micael de Adder:
Catherine Rampell: My reason to be hopeful is: Batteries! There has been huge investment in renewable energy generation in recent years, not for bleeding-heart environmentalist reasons but economic ones: Once the wind turbine or solar array is built, wind and sunshine are free. So clean energy can be much cheaper than legacy fossil fuels. Renewable energy generation can be volatile, though; coal and natural gas are still needed to fill in gaps when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining. Fortunately, battery technology has been improving, and the U.S. Energy Information Administration now projects that utility-scale battery storage capacity will more than double next year and nearly quadruple by 2025. This could be a game changer for clean energy adoption — and the planet.
Karen Attiah: I’ve hated reading about books by Black authors being banned in schools under the right-wing panic over so-called critical race theory. It cheers me up, as a Black woman, to know that Haymarket Books is republishing “Black Women Writers at Work,” a 1984 collection of interviews with Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Audre Lorde, Nikki Giovanni and many others that has long been out of print and difficult to find. The January rerelease gives me hope that I and so many more will have access to the wisdom of these Black feminist icons.
Helaine Olen: Humans are social creatures. But the past few years have not been kind to in-person gatherings. Zoom cocktail parties can’t substitute for real ones. Friendship mediated through a screen is not the same as sitting with one another in real life. All this left us isolated — and it seemed to make our political divisions worse. But as we are learning to live with the coronavirus, we are again going to gatherings large and small. And as we are doing that, we are not just seeing old pals but also making new ones. So it’s the resilience of the human spirit to connect that gives me hope for 2023. We are not as divided and alone as it can sometimes appear.
David Von Drehle: Screenwriter William Goldman famously said of Hollywood that “nobody knows anything.” I believe his insight has more general application. Our lives are an education that no one ever completes. And if no one knows, then conventional wisdom is likely to be wrong. That’s what makes me so hopeful and so eager for the future: the widespread doom and gloom. What good is pessimism? Iused to think hope was a product of external facts, but the school of life has persuaded me otherwise. Hope is a choice, strengthened through practice; not a reflection of light, but light itself. | 2022-12-27T12:17:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Reasons for hope in 2023, according to Post Opinions columnists - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/27/reasons-hope-2023/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/27/reasons-hope-2023/ |
America’s teacher shortage will last until pay rises
A teacher and students on the first day of classes at Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Greenbelt, Md., in August. (Michael A. McCoy for The Washington Post)
The U.S. economy hit a milestone this year: All 22 million jobs lost during the coronavirus pandemic were fully recovered. But that doesn’t mean workers went back to the same jobs. One of the sectors struggling the most to rebound is K-12 public education, which is still down more than 270,000 employees.
There is an educator shortage in the United States, but it is crucial to understand the details. First, this is about more than teachers. That 270,000 figure includes a lot fewer bus drivers, custodians and other support staff. Second, education isn’t simply about getting enough warm bodies into classrooms; it’s about having effective and qualified teachers and staff. The best analysis of the situation this fall, from the Annenberg Institute at Brown University, indicates a teacher shortage of nearly 2 percent, but more than 5 percent of positions are currently held by under-qualified teachers. Third, the shortage isn’t nationwide. It’s much worse in some schools and in some subjects.
In October, nearly half of public schools were still struggling to fill at least one teacher vacancy, according to a recently released Education Department survey. But schools in high-poverty neighborhoods were significantly more likely to have unfilled positions. Similarly, school districts report having an especially hard time finding special education, computer science and foreign language teachers, and bus drivers and custodial staff.
Opinion | Student test scores plummeted during the pandemic. What can schools do?
This isn’t a new phenomenon, but many signs indicate it worsened during the pandemic. Teachers experienced extreme levels of burnout from Zoom classes and safety concerns during the early days of the pandemic. Then came the culture wars that put teachers and staff under constant scrutiny over any conversations involving history, racism and sexuality. Throw in the Great Resignation, a tight labor market and rapidly rising pay in other professions, and the net result has been some teachers and staff retiring early. Others have quit and gone to work in different professions. And some recent graduates have decided not to enter education at all.
There are two glaring takeaways from all this: The first is it’s crazy that in 2022 the United States lacks real-time data on educator shortages. States and districts need to understand where the problems are, and in many places that data is either unavailable or not reported publicly. The second is that pay needs to rise in education, especially for some roles.
Opinion | Teachers are not surprised by a teacher shortage
Certain positions are clearly harder to recruit for — and have been for years. Some places have begun experimenting with paying bonuses. Hawaii, for example, started offering a $10,000-a-year bonus to special education teachers in January 2020. The result was an immediate jump in special education teacher recruitment and retention for the 2020-2021 school year. Hawaii offers similar “differential pay” of $3,000 to $8,000 for teachers willing to go to schools that have long been hard to staff. The results have been so good that state lawmakers have continued funding this initiative.
The labor market might loosen a little in 2023, but no one is expecting a return to the early 2010s when workers were plentiful and jobs were scarce. Retail giant Target is now paying some workers up to $24 an hour to start. State and local lawmakers need to respond to this new reality.
Education has long been considered a calling, but that doesn’t mean teachers and staff won’t leave if they are substantially underpaid. An analysis this month from the Economic Policy Institute spells out how teachers in the early 1990s were, on average, paid about 5 percent less than college graduates in other professions. Today, they are paid close to 25 percent less. There is no shortage of people who want to work in education, the report concludes, but there’s a scarcity of qualified teachers who are “willing to work at current wages and under current working conditions.”
Communities can either pay more to attract and retain educators or they can lower their standards. The better solution is obvious.
“If the bar we set is that we just have someone hired to fill a position, then we’re settling for far less than we should as a nation and a society,” said Matthew Kraft, associate professor of education and economics at Brown University.
Right now, schools are sitting on a massive infusion of cash from federal pandemic relief aid that must be spent by 2024. If this were the private sector, that money would already be going toward higher pay and bonuses, especially for hard-to-fill roles. | 2022-12-27T12:17:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The truth about America's teacher shortage - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/27/teacher-shortage-us/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/27/teacher-shortage-us/ |
Best of: Inside the personal and political life of Democratic strategist Lis Smith
In this Washington Post Live conversation from July 20, veteran Democratic political strategist Lis Smith discusses her memoir, “Any Given Tuesday,” a behind-the-scenes look at the fine line between personal and professional life while working at the top of Democratic politics. | 2022-12-27T12:17:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Best of: Inside the personal and political life of Democratic strategist Lis Smith - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/capehart/best-of-inside-the-personal-and-political-life-of-democratic-strategist-lis-smith-1/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/capehart/best-of-inside-the-personal-and-political-life-of-democratic-strategist-lis-smith-1/ |
Members of the group, part of the extremist “sovereign citizen” movement, believe they are immune from dealings with U.S. legal systems
People practice shooting at a gun range in Southern Maryland in July that was later essentially taken over by a group calling itself Moorish Americans. (Eric Lee for The Washington Post)
WELCOME, Md. — The complaints about the property on Fire Tower Road were urgent but not too far out of the ordinary in this rural stretch of Southern Maryland: Earsplitting gunfire, endangered cows, a stray bullet that pierced a neighbor’s equipment shed.
There followed arrests, flurries of spurious legal documents and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines, all to the accompaniment of what neighbors describe as an ongoing din of gunfire on weekends. Things escalated last week when sheriff’s deputies raided the property, seizing what Bell said were about a dozen firearms.
Tomlinson, who owns guns himself, said he sometimes has friends over for target practice. But it’s not comparable to what goes on at Bell’s place, he said.
“We’re not over here with fully automatic weapons, 40-round clips, shooting thousands of rounds,” Tomlinson said. “It’s a completely different situation. I would use the term reckless endangerment.”
“Everybody shoots around here. So why you going to have me stop shooting?” Bell said. “I thought it was about these people telling me what to do with my land.”
Yet even Bell, speaking to a Washington Post reporter in his home hours after he had sat there in handcuffs while sheriff’s deputies searched the premises, acknowledged that things had gone too far.
“It just went overboard,” he said.
‘I don’t want them shot’
Bell began hosting shooting days on his land in 2021. The events were organized by Mark “Choppa” Manley, a social media influencer and former D.C. security guard who promoted the site as home to the “Choppa Community” — an incubator of firearms education and ownership for African Americans.
On Sundays, amid the aroma of grilling burgers, kids would take classes in basic gun safety with plastic pistols while the grown-ups lined up for target practice with 9mm handguns and AR-style rifles. Manley catered in particular to Black residents of the District and Prince George’s County who were seeking to arm themselves for protection amid spikes in violent crime. Visitors were not charged, although ammunition was sold, as well as classes for concealed-carry licenses.
“It was like a family day,” Manley said.
Yet some of Bell’s neighbors didn’t share that view. Disturbed by the noise and risk of errant gunfire, nearly 40 of them supported a petition demanding that the range be shut down, the Southern Maryland News reported. Tomlinson, in particular, said he feared for his safety, since his farm sits downrange from a backstop for bullets on Bell’s property that he called “totally ineffective.”
“I have moved my animals to the other side of the farm,” he said. “I don’t want them shot.”
Tomlinson said he first brought his complaints to the county about a year ago. But it was not until September — in anticipation of an especially large crowd for Manley’s birthday on Sept. 11 — that government officials took decisive action. On Sept. 9 the county attorney’s office filed an emergency petition for an injunction against shooting on the property.
In an attached affidavit, the county’s planning supervisor said regulations prohibited the gun range unless it was granted a special exception to operate in an area zoned for agricultural conservation. No application for such an exception had ever been filed, she said.
The county attorney’s office declined to discuss the case with The Post. Charles County spokeswoman Jennifer Harris said in a statement that officials’ “top concern is for the health, safety, and welfare of the community. We achieve that through the enforcement of regulations that must be followed by property owners.”
Judge Karen Abrams granted the order, stating that the shooting happening at the range was illegal and that a failure to enforce the zoning laws “encourages citizens to ignore the very regulations that are implemented to protect them and others.”
Manley cleared out and started looking for a new site in Virginia. “I could tell Charles County wasn’t going to let up,” he said.
Yet around the same time, county officials came up against a new challenge. It was heralded by the filing of perplexing documents — adorned with symbols including the star and crescent and the pyramid-tip “Eye of Providence” that appears on the back of the dollar bill — asserting that the dispute over Bell’s land was subject to the terms of an 1836 treaty between the United States and Morocco.
Among those documents was a “writ of error” signed by a man identifying himself as Lamont Maurice El and claiming that he was the consul general of the “Morocco Consular Court at the Maryland state republic.”
The consul, whose real name is Lamont Maurice Butler, had some experience with Maryland’s judicial system. In 2013, he was convicted on multiple charges stemming from his attempt to occupy a 12-bedroom Bethesda mansion. The ideology that had fueled that escapade was the same he later brought to bear in the legal wrangling over the property on Fire Tower Road.
The ‘Moroccan Empire’
Moorish Americans, also known as Moorish sovereign citizens, believe themselves to be the inheritors of a fictitious empire that they say stretched from the present-day kingdom of Morocco to North America, with Mexico and Atlantis thrown in for good measure. They claim the same protections from U.S. legal proceedings that are granted to foreign citizens, while simultaneously asserting their rights to take over properties — often well-appointed homes owned by other people — that they say are still part of the “Moroccan Empire.”
Bell declared his Moorish American citizenship in September, according to court documents. He told The Post that he was still struggling to understand much of the group’s doctrine but that he found it “very educational.”
Butler, who had attended the weekend shooting gatherings when they were overseen by Manley, joined with other Moorish Americans to reopen the range, charging $25 a head and promising that “security will be in full force for everyone’s safety and protection” under Moroccan consular jurisdiction.
On Nov. 13, Butler and another Moorish American, George Neal-Bey, tried to intervene when Charles County sheriff’s deputies pulled over a third member of the group. In a video that the Moorish Americans later posted online, Butler — wearing a camouflage uniform, dark headscarf and a pistol on his hip — can be seen approaching the deputies on the side of the road. Four of them then abruptly wrestle him to the ground while a fifth stands by with his gun drawn.
On the morning of Dec. 21, Bell said, he and his wife, Chrystal, were awakened by a loud knocking, followed by the busting in of their door. A group of sheriff’s deputies then searched his home, he said, taking away his guns and a computer.
The warrant shared with Bell — which he showed to The Post — contains few details but indicates that the search was conducted as part of an investigation into possible possession of illegally owned or modified firearms, such as machine guns or short-barreled shotguns.
The sheriff’s office declined to comment.
Bell said the officers who searched his home were “very cordial.”
“They could have tore the house clean up,” he said. “But they didn’t.”
“You got to follow the rules,” Bell said. | 2022-12-27T12:17:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Moorish Americans take over Southern Maryland gun range, defying Charles County officials - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/27/moorish-americans-gun-range-maryland/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/27/moorish-americans-gun-range-maryland/ |
The two eastern provinces of Ukraine known collectively as the Donbas have emerged as the main battlefield for Europe’s biggest armed conflict since World War II. The region was already central to Russia’s strategy for asserting influence over its neighbor since 2014, when Moscow fomented an armed insurgency there. In February, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared the provinces independent, making the “liberation” of the Donbas a primary justification for his invasion of Ukraine. In late September, he took things further, announcing Russia’s annexation of both provinces, together with two others, despite lacking full control of any of them.
1. Why is Putin so focused on Ukraine?
Since at least 2007, Putin has repeatedly lamented Moscow’s diminished role in the world following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, which had included Ukraine. He has since tried to carve out a sphere of influence for Moscow in the former Soviet space, pushing back against efforts by Ukraine and Russia’s other neighbors to join or associate with institutions such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union. He tried to build Russian-led equivalents — the Collective Security Treaty Organization and the Eurasian Economic Union — but without Ukraine, a fellow Slavic nation of 44 million people, their potential was limited.
2. What’s Russia’s history with the Donbas?
The areas of Ukraine now covered by Donetsk and Luhansk provinces came under the control of the Russian Empire in the mid-18th century, soon after the discovery of coal there. The coal turned the region into Ukraine’s industrial heartland and attracted Russian settlers. With ties to Russia still stronger than in most other parts of Ukraine, the Donbas more recently was a bedrock of support for the Donetsk-born Viktor Yanukovych, who became Ukraine’s president in 2010. Yanukovych was toppled in 2014 by street protests over his decision — made under pressure from Moscow — to renege on signing a trade pact with the EU.
3. What led up to the war?
Following Yanukovych’s removal, which Russia portrayed as a Western-backed coup, Putin sent troops wearing no insignia to seize Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula, where a majority of the population identified as ethnic Russian in the last census in 2001. The operation faced minimal armed opposition. Elsewhere in Ukraine’s east and south, where 14% to 39% identified as ethnic Russian, critics of the new pro-Western government tried to emulate that success with the backing of Russian agents, taking control of some cities and declaring breakaway republics in Donetsk and Luhansk. But this time there was resistance. Clashes broke out and an armed conflict developed in the Donbas that dragged on for eight years, despite the signing of two peace agreements. Russia saw the terms of the accords as federalizing Ukraine, creating wide autonomy for the Donbas so as to make it impossible for the country to join NATO or the EU. When the agreements weren’t implemented in that way, Russian officials grew frustrated.
4. How did the war unfold?
Originally, Russia launched a multifront assault on Ukraine, moving on major cities including the capital, Kyiv. But after a month of fighting, Moscow appeared to redefine its war aims in the face of stiff Ukrainian resistance. It pulled forces from the north to concentrate on securing all of the Donbas while retaining its hold on territory in two southern provinces, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, which had been seized in the early days of the invasion. With the fall of Mariupol, the Donbas’s second-largest city, on May 20, those gains achieved Putin’s goal of securing a land bridge from Russia to Crimea, annexed in 2014. Yet the campaign to drive Ukrainian forces from the Donbas ground to a halt by midsummer. After a string of humiliating military reversals, Russia organized sham status referendums across the areas it still controlled, and on Sept. 30 declared that Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia were now part of Russia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has pledged to take back all of the country’s territory, including Crimea.
• A Bloomberg story on Putin’s narrowing options following Ukraine’s counteroffensive.
• Related QuickTakes on the roots of Russia’s war in Ukraine, the Minsk peace accords, and the risks posed by fighting around Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant.
• An International Crisis Group study on “Conflict in Ukraine’s Donbas.”
• A report by the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies on the economic challenges and costs in the Donbas.
• A Washington Post article on the siege of Mariupol. | 2022-12-27T13:27:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why Ukraine’s Donbas Region Matters to Putin - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/why-ukraines-donbas-region-matters-to-putin/2022/12/27/a947acc0-85dc-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/why-ukraines-donbas-region-matters-to-putin/2022/12/27/a947acc0-85dc-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
A waterman’s house could be anchor to Chesapeake Bay park
If the bay is designated a national recreation area, Burtis House, built in 1885, could become a modern visitor center, historic preservationists and city officials say
The Burtis House in Annapolis, Md., is the only waterman’s home left from a time when the city’s waterfront swarmed with oyster sloops, packing houses and box cars freighting seafood to a hungry nation. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)
A shabby little house in Annapolis might become one of the nation’s main portals to the proposed Chesapeake National Recreation Area.
Burtis House, the only waterman’s home left from a time when the city’s waterfront swarmed with oyster sloops, packing houses and box cars freighting seafood to a hungry nation, is expected to be restored and fitted into a modern visitor center showcasing the bay’s riches, historic preservationists and city officials say.
If the bay becomes part of the national park system, as two Maryland lawmakers hope, the 19th-century cottage occupied by Capt. William Henry Burtis and three generations of his family would be even more in the spotlight as a kind of working man’s reception hall for visitors interested in learning about the bay’s history and biology.
Part of its mission would be to tell the story of Burtis and other watermen, those hardy souls who profited from the Chesapeake’s bounty of aquatic life and built a vast commercial enterprise so ruthlessly efficient it eventually plundered their source of wealth. Like so many blue crabs and oysters, their numbers have dwindled over the years, too.
“And this one little building is the last really remaining connection in that part of the city of Annapolis to that story,” said Nicholas Redding, president and chief executive of Preservation Maryland.
The idea of remaking Burtis House as a national gateway to the bay also happens to coincide with an ambitious city effort — which is already underway — to transform the entire City Dock neighborhood into a greener and more welcoming place and protect the low-lying area from rising sea levels caused by climate change.
“When I came into office five years ago, I campaigned on a park, not a parking lot,” said Mayor Gavin Buckley (D). “I couldn’t believe that we had the most valuable real estate in the city and it belonged to cars.”
In 2020, the City Dock Action Committee, composed of 92 civic leaders, unveiled a comprehensive plan that would elevate low-lying areas by at least four feet to counter land subsidence and chronic flooding that has become more frequent because of rising sea levels. (The U.S. Naval Academy, which occupies the adjacent land, has embarked on a similar resiliency project.)
To no one’s surprise, Buckley says Annapolis would take pride of place in the new national park, especially once its City Dock neighborhood has been remade in one of the largest capital improvement projects in the city’s history.
Buckley says incorporating the bay into the national park system will not only turn up the spotlight on the city and the region but bring additional federal dollars that could help connect City Dock through “greenways” — bicycle and walking paths — to the Bay Bridge and other nearby landmarks.
“Why wouldn’t we consider the Chesapeake Bay our Grand Canyon?” Buckley asked. “It really is a jewel.”
Buckley is also supportive of transforming the humble Burtis House into a key way station in the proposed national recreation area. Work in partnership with the city, the National Park Service and the nonprofit Preservation Maryland has begun to address mold and other problems caused by repeated flooding of the battered house.
Chesapeake Bay could become national recreation area
The concept of creating a national park around the nation’s largest estuary has been around for years. Last month, Sen. Chris Van Hollen and Rep. John Sarbanes, both Maryland Democrats, unveiled draft legislation that would incorporate the Chesapeake Bay into the national park system. They plan to introduce the measure in the new Congress.
The draft legislation would authorize the Park Service to acquire through donation or voluntary sale three other historic properties: Whitehall, Thomas Point Shoal Lighthouse and part of Fort Monroe’s North Beach in Virginia, where ships delivered enslaved Africans in 1619.
The hope is that national park designation will elevate the bay’s stature as a tourist destination, help coordinate regional efforts to promote points of interest and bring in additional federal funding to reclaim and protect the watershed. The designation also builds on the existing Chesapeake Bay Gateways Network, a federal initiative coordinated by the National Park Service with communities around the bay.
Wendy O’Sullivan, superintendent of the park service’s Chesapeake Bay Office, said the gateways program — which marks its 25th anniversary next year — has spent more than $26 million helping to promote public access and education at more than 160 sites around the bay. Under the draft legislation, its annual funding would be doubled to $6 million.
Burtis House would not only become a key entry point to the bay but a jumping-off point to several nearby historic sites in the city, including the Museum of Historic Annapolis.
“It’s a quiet memory of the 19th-century working waterfront that existed at City Dock,” said Karen Theimer Brown, president and chief executive of Historic Annapolis. Brown, who participated in a working group for the draft legislation, said renovating the house as a visitor center would be a step toward bringing the past to life for an entire neighborhood.
At the turn of the last century, Burtis’s property on Prince George Street sat in the middle of Hell Point, a blue-collar, ethnically mixed quarter at the water’s edge. Jane Wilson McWilliams, a local historian who has worked for the Maryland State Archives, describes Hell Point — a name probably derived from an early landowner named Richard Hill — as a gritty place bustling with watermen, oyster shuckers, dockworkers and shipyard hands. Many were Greek, Italian or Filipino immigrants.
“The folks who grew up in Hell Point will tell you that it was aptly named,” she said. “They were people who were leading reasonably hard lives and they were rough.”
But there were also yachtsmen from up and down the Atlantic seaboard making port calls and well-heeled tourists from Baltimore and Washington queuing for steamboats and passenger trains to Bay Ridge, a Victorian summer resort at the mouth of the Severn River. Some of those visitors hired Burtis for sightseeing excursions, docked at his wharf to buy water or simply savored his tales.
William Henry Burtis had been a New Yorker by birth who visited Annapolis as a young man and fell in love with an Annapolitan named Emily Hollidayoke. He married her in 1860 and purchased the wharf lot in 1882. By 1897, a city tax record assessed his property, including the house, wharf and shed, at $1,300, along with a sloop ($100), 14 other boats ($250) and a piano.
He hunted sharks, actual and otherwise. A write-up in the Evening Capital from August 1895 tells how he harpooned a 9½-foot beast that towed him all the way to Greenbury Point two miles away.
“The shark, apparently anxious for freedom, struck out in all directions of the compass, and the twisting and turning of the boat at times kept me uneasy for its safety,” he told the paper. He also hauled its 900-pound carcass to Bay Ridge and charged curious gawkers 5 cents a peep.
Because Burtis’s father-in-law was active with the city’s local constabulary and watchmen patrol, he joined too. He eventually captained a police boat in what was called the State Oyster Navy, a predecessor to the Maryland Natural Resources Police, which took part in the sometimes violent battles between watermen and oyster pirates.
An 1895 photo of Burtis on an outing, wearing a straw boater and suspenders with his breeches, suggests the captain enjoyed eating his catch as much as finding it. His exploits were written about often enough in his lifetime that the phrase “one of the most widely known watermen in the state” seemed part of his name.
“He was a man of wide acquaintance and one who delighted in conversing with his friends and telling tales of the old days,” the Baltimore Sun’s obituary says. He died at home on Jan. 2, 1911, at the age of 78, leaving behind three sons and a daughter.
Their children and children’s children held onto the place. When the Naval Academy annexed much of the property for expansion during World War II, most of Hell Point fell to the bulldozer, except Burtis House, which eventually was acquired by the state of Maryland. For a time it was home to the National Sailing Hall of Fame. Last year, the property was deeded to the city. The next owner could be Uncle Sam. | 2022-12-27T13:27:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A waterman’s house could be anchor to Chesapeake Bay park - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/27/burtis-house-chesapeake-bay-recreation-area/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/27/burtis-house-chesapeake-bay-recreation-area/ |
I’ve grown apart from old friends. But the holidays help us reconnect.
These moments give me a glimpse into the lives of the people I used to know so intimately
Perspective by Dabin Han
Since moving out of my hometown, I’ve found it difficult to reunite with old friends. Work schedules don’t match up and travel can get expensive, making group trips almost impossible to plan. It feels like the only time to see old friends together again is during the holidays. | 2022-12-27T14:59:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | I’ve grown apart from old friends. But the holidays help us reconnect. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/12/27/ive-grown-apart-old-friends-holidays-help-us-reconnect/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/12/27/ive-grown-apart-old-friends-holidays-help-us-reconnect/ |
Battlefield, Westfield lead pack at big Virginia wrestling meet
Westfield took second at the King of the Rock tournament in Ashburn last week. (Keith Sholders)
None of the 41 schools at the King of the Rock wrestling tournament dominated. Last week at Rock Ridge High, 15 teams finished with more than 100 points, led by Battlefield (221), Westfield (184.5) and Paul VI (175).
Despite Battlefield taking the team title, freshman Logan Katz, at 106 pounds, was the Bobcats’ only individual champion. In total, 11 D.C.-area wrestlers won championships, including Westfield 138-pounder Robert Rerras and Paul VI 132-pounder Keegan McMahon.
“Northern Virginia is on the rise with competitiveness, which is pretty neat to see,” Westfield Coach Keith Sholders said. “It’s getting more competitive than ever.”
Some of these Virginia schools don’t have to wait until the new year for another major meet. Fifty-nine schools are headed to Battle of the Bridge on Wednesday and Thursday at Woodbridge; that meet also will feature teams from Maryland, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
In Anne Arundel County, Chesapeake and South River, two of last year’s top teams, faced off in a dual meet at Glen Burnie last week. The Cougars edged the Seahawks, 35-34, in a decision that came down to the fourth tiebreaker: Chesapeake’s eight match wins to South River’s six.
For West Springfield’s Aidan MacGrath, indoor season presents a particular mental challenge — but one she feels equipped to handle as a junior.
Typical indoor tracks are 200 meters long — half the length of outdoor tracks. For 1,600-meter runners such as MacGrath, that means indoor races feature twice as many laps, a detail that can cause major pacing issues for new runners.
“I think a lot of it is just experience, especially with it being on an indoor track,” MacGrath said. “Just knowing that you have double the amount of laps is something that can be intimidating.”
Many local runners don’t get the chance to train regularly on an indoor track, so transitioning from the outdoor season can pose problems, including the change in surface. MacGrath ran her first indoor meet during her sophomore year. She’s focused on using that experience to build mental strength that will translate to personal records in the 1,600 and the 4x800 relay.
“My coach and I talked a lot about how I’ve been in shape for some things, and I just haven’t quite been able to reach it because I had this big mental block,” MacGrath said. “But then I got over it my sophomore year … and it’s made it a lot easier to perform.”
Calvert’s boys are at a competitive disadvantage for dual meets before the Cavaliers even hop in the water. Fielding only 10 swimmers, Calvert yields about 24 points per meet because of its absence of athletes in some individual races, Coach Brian Dryer said.
“It’s really, really difficult,” Dryer said. “But luckily we have some amazing kids that also swim club that are just phenomenal and very versatile.”
The team, which has been down two of its 10 swimmers because of illnesses early this season, consists of four freshmen, four seniors, a sophomore and a junior. Dryer cited the pandemic as a cause for the lack of swimmers: Only one freshman joined the team in 2021, when there were no meets.
Despite the Cavaliers’ depleted lineup, the team has held its own through four meets. Dryer’s strategy — spread out the swimmers to try to have at least two in each race — has resulted in a 1-3 record in dual meets, but Calvert’s biggest loss was by just 16 points.
Dryer can see the talent he has on the team despite its lack of depth. Junior Drew Lynch holds four individual team records, and senior Riley Strain has committed to Stevenson University. Dryer is excited for the championship season ahead, when his swimmers will be free to swim their best races without having to maximize points for the team.
“When we get to championships [such as the Southern Maryland Athletic Conference], regions and states, we’ll be much better off than what our record shows,” Dryer said.
Last week, Woodson welcomed players old and new to the St. James in Springfield for its annual alumni game. This year, the club was also celebrating its 20-year anniversary.
The event is on alumni calendars as a “must-do” every year, said Woodson parent Royce Edington, whose son Carson is the assistant captain of the team. After the game ended in a 4-4 tie, alumni and current players met in the rink’s atrium and chatted over slices of pizza, sharing stories about their time on the ice.
This season, Woodson is operating as a co-op with Robinson and competes in the Capital Scholastic Hockey League’s North Division. The team entered the holidays 1-5-1. | 2022-12-27T14:59:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Battlefield, Westfield lead pack at big Virginia wrestling meet - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/27/battlefield-westfield-lead-pack-big-virginia-wrestling-meet/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/27/battlefield-westfield-lead-pack-big-virginia-wrestling-meet/ |
It felt like Minnesota in D.C. this Christmas, the coldest in decades
Widespread record cold highs on Christmas Eve helped make it the coldest holiday period since 1989.
James Taylor, 8, from Germantown, Md., checks to see whether the Capitol Reflection Pool is frozen during the bitterly cold weather on Dec. 24, 2022. (Robb Hill for The Washington Post)
Washington just went through a once-a-generation Christmas weekend. Morning temperatures tumbled into the single digits, and record cold high temperatures were set, with readings about 25 degrees below average.
On the heels of an Arctic mega-front, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day combined to feel more like it should in Minneapolis, according to a climate tool from the Southeast Regional Climate Center.
Saturday morning’s low of 9 was the coldest the city has been in December in more than three decades — the last time there was such a deeply frozen Christmas holiday.
Christmas Eve got started with morning low temperatures in the single digits all around the area, even in the city and by the bay. Wind chills of 5 to 10 below zero were common — weather more typical of the coldest days of midwinter, and maybe then some.
It was the coldest Washington has been this early in the winter since it hit 5 on Dec. 22, 1989. It was also the third coldest on record for the date, with similar rankings realized at nearby sites, as well.
Prior to Saturday, the city had failed to drop below 16 degrees since Jan. 31, 2019, boasting a remarkable 1,421 days at or above 16, which — oddly enough — tied with a streak that ran March 2009-January 2013. This was also the first the single digits for the District since Jan. 7, 2018, which was the sixth longest run without dipping that low.
All local locations saw record low maximums Christmas Eve. In fact, most from New York City southward to northern Florida experienced the same.
High temperatures in and around the city barely cracked 20. The 22 in Washington bested the previous record of 23 on Christmas Eve 1989. Records of 20 and 22 were also set in Baltimore and Dulles, respectively. These numbers were about 25 degrees below average for the date.
The daily departure compared to average of minus-24.4 degrees was the biggest since it was 27.6 degrees below normal on Feb. 20, 2015. In 2015, the cold was a visit from the polar vortex.
While temperatures turned somewhat less frigid for Christmas Day, a high of 34 was still 13 degrees below normal for the date. In both D.C. and Baltimore, it was the coldest two-day Christmas holiday since 1989 and the fourth coldest on record overall.
Readings in our area more broadly were as low as 2 in Damascus, 4 in Purcellville and 5 in Vienna. As close by as Mount Weather, in the Blue Ridge Mountains 45 miles west of Washington, the temperature fell as low as minus-2.
In the highest elevations farther to the west, cold went next level.
In Snowshoe, W.Va., there was a low of minus-19 on Christmas Eve. Dolly Sods, on the rim of Canaan Valley, recorded a low of minus-17 early the same morning. Combining winds gusting around 55 mph, wind chill values as low as minus-50 or colder were felt.
In Oakland, Md., temperatures also reached minus-13, among other cold spots in the region.
For those who have had enough, rapid change is on the way. By New Year’s Day, the D.C. area is looking at the potential for record warm lows and highs in the 60s — a bit of weather whiplash. | 2022-12-27T16:17:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | It felt like Minnesota in D.C. this Christmas, the coldest in decades - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/12/27/dc-christmas-cold-record-temperatures/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/12/27/dc-christmas-cold-record-temperatures/ |
‘Driving force’ in plot to kidnap Mich. governor sentenced to 16 years
Adam Fox was described by prosecutors as the “driving force” behind the 2020 scheme to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and try to ignite a civil war. (Jerry Lemenu/AP)
The co-leader of the failed plot by right-wing extremists to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) in 2020 was sentenced in federal court Tuesday to 16 years in prison, far below the life sentence sought by federal prosecutors but the longest sentence yet in what was the highest-profile domestic terrorism case in recent years.
Adam Fox, 39, was convicted in August on two conspiracy charges relating to the kidnapping scheme and another to obtain and use a weapon of mass destruction. Federal prosecutors pegged Fox as the “driving force” behind the 2020 plan to kidnap Whitmer from her vacation home, blow up a bridge to distract responding police and provoke a civil war ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
More than a dozen people were initially arrested by state and federal authorities during an October 2020 sting that involved the use of informants and undercover FBI agents who embedded with the men, who were drawn together by their association with a militia group known as the “Wolverine Watchmen.”
Fox declined the opportunity to address the court before his sentencing, telling the judge, “I’m satisfied with what my lawyer said.”
Federal prosecutors described Fox as an extremist-minded rebel who felt violent action was not only justified by necessary to overthrowing an oppressive government, while defense lawyers argued a sharply different portrayal: A lonely, down-on-his luck “loser” who was influenced by federal informants.
“There’s a reason this happened, here in Michigan, because Mr. Fox was the indispensable man,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Nils Kessler said during Tuesday’s hearing, adding that Fox did much of the recruiting for the group from states including Ohio, Wisconsin and Virginia and spearheaded the reconnaissance mission on Whitmer’s house.
“Does anyone think these kidnappers wanted to keep me or ransom me?” she said. “No. They were going to put me on a trial and then execute me. It was an assassination plot, but no one talks about it that way. Even the way people talk about it has muted the seriousness of it.”
“As horrible as the intended outcome was here […], nothing ever happened,” Jonker said, crediting law enforcement for diffusing the plot before it could be fully executed.
Earlier this month, Joseph Morrison, Pete Musico and Paul Bellar were sentenced to a minimum of 10 years, 12 years and at least seven years in prison, respectively. Croft, who faces life in prison and was considered the “ideas guy,” according to prosecutors, faces sentencing Wednesday. | 2022-12-27T16:30:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Adam Fox sentenced in plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/12/27/whitmer-kidnap-plot-adam-fox-sentence/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/12/27/whitmer-kidnap-plot-adam-fox-sentence/ |
The carrier’s disruptions upended holiday travel plans for tens of thousands of air travelers
Travelers wait at a Southwest Airlines baggage counter to retrieve their bags Monday after flights were canceled at Los Angeles International Airport. (Eugene Garcia/AP)
More than 2,900 domestic flights already were canceled Tuesday morning, the latest in what has become an ongoing crisis of holiday air travel delays, cancellations and confusion that began with a massive winter storm and freeze that blanketed large sections of the country late last week.
The misery was led by Southwest Airlines, which continued to struggle a day after the carrier canceled more than 70 percent of its scheduled flights. By 10 a.m. Tuesday, Southwest had cut more than 2,500 of the day’s flights, or 62 percent of its schedule, according to FlightAware, a website that tracks flights.
Southwest accounted for the vast majority of the 2,907 domestic flights canceled Tuesday in and out of the United States. The carrier’s disruptions drew scrutiny from U.S. regulators and upended holiday travel plans for tens of thousands of air travelers at a time when industry executives and analysts expressed optimism over their ability to handle an onslaught of holiday passengers.
While all carriers reported some delays and cancellations, Southwest’s inability to get travelers to their destinations continued to stand out.
The Department of Transportation said it will examine Southwest’s mass cancellations, which stranded passengers days after a winter storm gripped much of the country. The agency will look into “whether cancellations were controllable,” it said in a tweet Monday night.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said early Tuesday in a tweet that he is monitoring the situation.
“I’m tracking closely & will have more to say about this tomorrow,” Buttigieg tweeted just after midnight.
The air carrier apologized for the disruptions, calling them “unacceptable.” The airline said it would continue to operate at a significantly reduced schedule, flying about one-third of its normal schedule for “several days.”
The storm hit Southwest hard in Denver and Chicago, where it has large operations, according to company spokesman Chris Perry. The airline doesn’t have a central hub like many other companies, and is instead spread out across much of the country.
Southwest passengers who called customer service lines this week to speak to a company representative were on hold for hours. The airline’s website and app — warning of extended wait times — also urged customers to speak with gate agents at airports, where they waited hours more.
On Christmas evening at Reagan National Airport, customers stood in line more than three hours to speak to Southwest employees about rebooking flights. That evening, a single employee was available at times to field customer concerns in the slow-moving line.
As tensions rose, customers also complained they couldn’t recover luggage that had been checked in before flights were canceled. Customers who tried to find their own luggage were admonished by employees, prompting passengers to respond that no one was available to help.
Evan Glass, president of the Montgomery County Council in suburban Washington, was visiting family in Fort Lauderdale when his Tuesday flight to Baltimore-Washington International Marshall Airport was canceled. He said the airline offered no instruction on how to return home.
He and his husband jumped on laptops and phones searching for a way to return, eventually finding a JetBlue flight out of West Palm Beach about an hour away. Glass said his chief of staff, who was in Albuquerque, also had her Southwest flight canceled and rented a car to begin the 27-hour drive.
“I have flown a lot of different airlines and take Southwest when I am able because I have found it to be reliable and affordable,” Glass said, “and I am surprised by what has happened this week.”
On Friday, a storm spreading heavy snow, ice and severe cold temperatures across significant portions of the United States was to blame for more than 5,000 flight cancellations. The storm also disrupted ground travel, with some long-distance and regional rail systems and bus lines canceling service while highway officials closed some roads because of unsafe conditions. | 2022-12-27T16:32:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Southwest Airlines cancellations face scrutiny amid winter storm chaos - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/12/27/southwest-airlines-cancellations-holiday-travel/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/12/27/southwest-airlines-cancellations-holiday-travel/ |
Shopping for a new look at Bread for the City’s clothing room
Sharlene Blount supervises the clothing room at the Michelle Obama Southeast Center of Bread for the City on Good Hope Road SE. (John Kelly/The Washington Post)
When it came time to create a new clothing room at Bread for the City, Sharlene Blount knew exactly what she wanted.
“I wanted a clothing room I could design like a store,” she said.
It should be neat and orderly, with items arranged in a way that made sense: ladies’ clothes here, men’s clothes there, with a section for kids’ clothes.
The clothes should be in good shape, clean and appropriate to the season. Blount wouldn’t be putting out winter coats in summer or bikinis in winter.
And of course it went without saying that there wouldn’t be a single price tag. Everything would be free, another way for the District charity to help people who are pressed to make ends meet.
The Bread for the City clothing room is in the Michelle Obama Southeast Center on Good Hope Road SE, which was dedicated in September 2020. I visited Blount’s domain last week. Some people were lined up in the lobby for the bags of groceries the charity distributes. Others were checking on the diaper bank, which makes those pricey necessities available for parents. And three women were starting their 20-minute appointments in the clothing room.
“I’m looking for clothes for my grandbaby,” one said.
Blount directed her to a wall hung with pint-size pants, shirts, sweaters and coats. Blount would make sure she and the other women — and all the customers — would leave with some items for themselves, too. This time of year, Blount gives every customer new long underwear, socks, gloves and hats.
“People are just very grateful,” Blount said. “A lot of times, they can’t afford to buy things. They don’t have money. A lot of people are out of work. They’re saying if not for Bread for the City, they don’t know what they would do. They can’t afford to buy clothes for their kids, or even for themselves.”
That was the case with Keisha. She has a 2-year-old girl and an 11-month-old boy. They’re her priority, she said, leaving little for herself as she prepares to start a new job. Keisha’s work outfit challenge: She is tiny.
“I wear girls’ shoes sometimes,” she said, holding a child’s sneaker up to her foot. “Mr. Bobby said, ‘If we have anything come in in your size, I’ll let you know.’”
Mr. Bobby is Bobby Brandon, who works alongside Blount. He’d set aside some Size 0 items. Keisha pulled some flashy jeans on over her leggings.
“I’m gonna fit in these, y’all, and they’re red,” she said.
Brandon and Blount had another surprise: new pairs of fuzzy gray socks for the children, which apparently are all the rage right now.
“Oh, I’ve been looking for these,” Keisha said. “They’ll match their pajamas.”
Clothing room customers phone ahead to set up appointments. When they arrive, they must show valid District of Columbia identification. Then, during their 20-minute appointments, it’s “shop until you drop,” Blount said.
It is right now, at least. The room is currently well-stocked, though there are limits on coats and shoes: one coat and one jacket per customer, and two pairs of shoes.
What Blount can use more of are housewares, along with sheets, towels and washcloths. Men’s clothing, too. (Women donate more than men.) Work clothes aren’t in high demand — the pandemic saw to that — so sweatpants for men and women are desirable donations.
Blount has been connected with Bread for the City for 36 years, the first four as a volunteer in the clothing room, then on the staff of the nonprofit. She’s done a lot of different jobs there, including in the food program and as a receptionist.
“Working there gave me a chance to get off public assistance,” she said. “This is my home away from home.”
In her time in the clothing room, Blount has noticed a few things. Older teenage men are the rarest customers. They figure there’s nothing for them. (She likes to prove them wrong when their mothers or grandmothers come to shop.)
And Blount has seen tastes in underwear change.
“Men don't like tighty-whiteys,” she said. It’s boxers or boxer briefs, now.
Right now, Bread for the City’s clothing room is on a holiday break. When it reopens on Jan. 4 more customers will come by seeking outfits that will help them look good — and feel good about themselves.
Bread for the City is a partner in The Washington Post Helping Hand. I hope you will support its work with a timely donation To give, go to posthelpinghand.com and click the link that says “Donate Online Now.”
And if you have good, clean clothes, housewares or bedding you’d like to donate, visit breadforthecity.org/clothing. | 2022-12-27T16:52:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Free clothes help District residents who are strapped for cash - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/27/bread-free-clothing-room/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/27/bread-free-clothing-room/ |
Washington Post reporter Sudarsan Raghavan sat down for a long and candid interview with former Afghan president Hamid Karzai on Oct. 5 in Kabul. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: It’s been more than a year since the collapse of the former Ghani government. Afghanistan is in a bit of trouble now, most people would say. Western assistance has dried up. Seven billion dollars in funds frozen by the U.S. that’s not going to the central bank. The economy has collapsed. Unemployment is on the rise, hunger, everything. How concerned are you about the direction the country is heading? What are threats ahead if this trajectory continues?
A: Of course, we Afghan people are tremendously concerned at the way the country is right now and the way it’s heading. But we are also hopeful that we will soon be able to manage things better and take good reasonable stock of why we are here and how we can get out of this extremely difficult situation for us.
Q: It’s been more than a year now, and the Taliban initially had promised an inclusive government. We’re not seeing that. Most Afghans I have spoken with, especially members of the country’s ethnic minorities, say they have little faith or hope in the Taliban. They cite the fact they are not represented properly in the government today. Do you think the Taliban will ever create an inclusive government? What is needed for this to happen?
A: We saw how things didn’t work for Afghan governments when there was one element of it or the other element of our society absent from it. … For the good of the Taliban themselves and for the good of the country, it is important that they begin a process of inclusivity by launching a grand Afghan dialogue, of Afghans talking among themselves and getting agreements on things and moving forward. This country needs to have a constitution.
Q: I’m sure you’ve discussed this need for an Afghan dialogue with the Taliban. What’s their response?
A: On the principle of things, there is an agreement. They say yes. On a national dialogue being imperative to a better Afghanistan, there is an agreement. On getting it launched and done, we haven’t yet gotten where we should be. I had my last conversation on this issue just last week with a very senior Taliban leader. … I will not say that we will be there soon. It would be very premature for me to say that. But I can tell you I am having better vibes in the past two weeks than I had before that. Let’s call this cautious optimism.
Q: And if the government remains not inclusive and there isn’t is this dialogue, could we see the collapse of the Taliban government without this kind of unity?
A: We don’t want the collapse of governments in Afghanistan. We want representative governments in Afghanistan.
Q: Does the United States have a certain amount of responsibility for the state of today’s Afghanistan?
A: Both the United States and Afghanistan. We both are responsible. I have had lots of disagreements and quarrels with the United States on issues. … But I am not going to lay the whole blame at the door of the United States. We Afghans are responsible as well in many, many ways.
Q: How would you describe the Biden administration’s policies right now towards Afghanistan and the Taliban?
A: I strongly disagree with the decision to strip the Afghan reserves, keeping half of it for the possibility of distribution to the 9/11 victims with whom the Afghan people commiserate fully. … We as the greatest victims of terrorism commiserate fully with American families who lost lives and suffered in that great tragedy of Sept. 11. It is morally wrong to take money from the greatest victim and the poorest victim and give it to another victim when both are victims of the same atrocity, of the same oppression. That’s wrong. … We want the strongest of relations with the American people and the U.S. government. But of course, we also want those relations to benefit Afghan people as well.
Q: What more should the Biden administration be doing?
A: They should help Afghanistan stabilize.
Q: In what ways?
A: By an international effort, by bringing back a coalition of powers that will support Afghanistan. … We don’t want Afghanistan to be a centerpiece in rivalry between the United States, Russia and China. That’s what happened to us in the 19th century between the British and czarist Russia. That’s what happened to us in the 20th century between the United States and the Soviet Union. We see that trend developing again today. … We don’t say that America has no interest, or America should not have interest in this region. They do. They have. What we’re saying is that you pursue your interest in a way that will not bring Afghanistan to suffering or destruction.
Q: Does the United States have a moral obligation to do this?
A: For reasons historic between us, yes it has.
Q: What should the Taliban do to gain more trust of the United States and the world?
A: The first thing is creating a situation inside Afghanistan where the will of the Afghan people is expressed. And we get a government that is seen as legitimate inside the country and is supported by the Afghan people. Look at the issue of our schools. Our girls are not able to go to school. Look at the Afghans running away from the country. Look at the increasing poverty. None of that will improve unless girls go to school, unless opportunities are created and unless all the Afghan people find themselves as owners of this country, as present in decision-making for this country, as represented by the government of the country. And as a country and a government that is visibly moving towards the betterment of life here, which isn’t the case right now. When this happens, then we should go to the international community for recognition.
Q: Do you think your own government was partly responsible for paving the way to last year’s collapse?
A: No. Not at all.
Q: How do you respond to this criticism?
A: The war in Afghanistan was not our war. I was against that war. I was not a partner of the United States in that war against Afghan villages and homes. I stood against it, and I worked against it. I changed from the moment I recognized that this war that is fought in the name of defeating terrorism is actually a war against the Afghan people. I stood up to the United States. That was the fundamental issue between me and the United States. And I called the Taliban “brothers” for that reason. Because the Afghans were being killed on both sides of the divide that foreigners created in us for their own objectives.
I wanted the United States of America to be an ally of the Afghan people and not to fight a war in our villages. They knew, the Americans, that the sanctuaries were in Pakistan. They told us that repeatedly. And they would bomb Afghan villages. They would come and tell us that Pakistan was training extremists and terrorists. Then, they would go and pay them billions of dollars. When this was repeated and repeated, I had only one conclusion. The conclusion was either the Americans are doing this on purpose. Or that they are extremely naive and out of touch with the realities of this region.
Q: Some of our critics and opponents say you were a little too cozy with the warlords and technocrats who were bilking billions, or millions, of dollars, from Afghanistan who helped destroy the country. Do you regret this?
A: I take full responsibility for the corruption and bribes in the delivery of services, as it is in many parts of the world. But the big contracts, big corruption, in hundreds of millions of dollars or millions of dollars, was clearly a United States of America thing. … Yes, there was corruption, but to blame Afghans or the Afghan government for it, is wrong. We do take responsibility. I would never say there was no corruption. But who was responsible for it? Afghans or our international partners? Mainly our international partners, and they know it. They will admit it.
Q: You have repeatedly called for the Taliban to allow girls above sixth grade to attend schools. This has not happened, despite promises by them. Why is this? Is there some kind of internal struggle going on?
A: This is very difficult to explain. We want them to address this issue. A great many Taliban leaders are very much for education. I can name a lot of them. The fact it is not happening has to be explained.
Q: You talk with the Taliban. Do you get any sense why? Is it one or two people who don’t want this.
A: There is support. But a decision cannot be made.
Q: With the political situation be different today if President [Ashraf] Ghani had not fled Afghanistan?
Q: In what way?
A: The state would not have collapsed. Ghani leaving was the collapse of the whole thing.
Q: In contrast, you and [Abdullah] Abdullah did not flee the country, despite the fact that the Taliban brutally killed [former Afghan president Mohammad] Najibullah when they first took over Kabul in 1996? Did you not fear for your security?
Q: What made you stay?
A: This is my country. I don’t leave my country when it is in trouble.
Q: You were thinking about what happened to Dr. Najibullah. Right?
A: Absolutely. I was not sure of my own safety. That’s why I left my house that evening and went to Dr. Abdullah’s house and we stayed together. But I would have never left and I will never leave.
Q: Some say you want to become president again?
A: No. I had a formidable presidency for 14 years, where Afghanistan rose back to be present all over the world, our flag flying high around the world, where I engaged in great relationships with the rest of the world, established strategic partnerships. … I did my time. And that’s enough.
Q: What is your relationship with the Taliban? How often do you speak to its leaders?
A: Some of the leaders come and speak to me very often, and very frank conversations. But the relationship is at times tense as well because of what I say, because what I ask of them. But I will continue to ask for what I believe is right for Afghanistan and I’ll continue to ask the Taliban leadership to adapt to a situation whereby they benefit from the will of the Afghan people, that allows all Afghans to participate in decision-making for the country,
Q: Deep in your heart, do you think the Taliban will allow [a national Afghan dialogue and a representative government]?
A: It has to happen. They have no other alternative.
Ukraine live briefing: Kyiv aims for February peace talks; front-line situation is ‘acute,’ Zelensky says | 2022-12-27T17:10:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | An interview with former Afghan president Hamid Karzai - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/27/afghanistan-hamid-karzai-taliban/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/27/afghanistan-hamid-karzai-taliban/ |
Arizona Cardinals defensive end J.J. Watt twice recorded 20-plus-sack seasons during his NFL career. (Rick Scuteri/AP)
Arizona Cardinals defensive end J.J. Watt announced his retirement at the conclusion of this season, writing in a tweet Tuesday that Sunday’s overtime loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers was his last home game.
“Koa’s first ever NFL game. My last ever NFL home game,” Watt wrote in a post juxtaposing pictures with his child. “My heart is filled with nothing but love and gratitude. It’s been an absolute honor and a pleasure.”
Over 12 NFL seasons, including his first 10 with the Houston Texans, Watt was the most disruptive defensive force in the league at times, earning defensive player of the year honors in 2012, 2014 and 2015. A five-time Pro Bowl honoree, he twice led the league in sacks and was a unanimous selection to the its 2010s all-decade team.
Watt, 33, leads the Cardinals with 9.5 sacks this season. That number, tied for 12th in the NFL, reflects his dominance and, perhaps, his resolve.
It’s a figure that pales in comparison to his best seasons, when he tallied 20.5 sacks in 2012 and in 2014, becoming the first player to cross the 20-sack threshold twice. Watt last recorded double-digit sacks in 2018 (16). With two games remaining, he has 111.5 career sacks.
The Cardinals were eliminated from playoff contention this month, but Watt, whose career has been hampered by injuries, has enjoyed renewed productivity this season. After experiencing atrial fibrillation on Sept. 28, Watt had his heart shocked back in rhythm. Three days later, he played against the Carolina Panthers. The week after, he found his way to the quarterback against the Philadelphia Eagles. | 2022-12-27T17:27:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | J.J. Watt announces his retirement from the NFL - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/27/jj-watt-retires/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/27/jj-watt-retires/ |
The Dallas Cowboys' defense celebrates an interception during Saturday's win over the Philadelphia Eagles. (Ron Jenkins/AP)
The Dallas Cowboys kept their slim NFC East title hopes alive with a comeback win over the Philadelphia Eagles, the New York Giants gave the Minnesota Vikings all they could handle before losing on a last-second field goal and the Washington Commanders had no answer for the red-hot San Francisco 49ers.
Despite a rough weekend, the NFC East is the NFL’s only division with all four teams .500 or better, and the Eagles, Cowboys, Giants and Commanders would all make the playoffs if the season ended today. Here’s a look at where things stand with two weeks remaining in the regular season.
What to know from NFL Week 16: The NFL seas are parting for Aaron Rodgers
Starting at quarterback in place of the injured Jalen Hurts, Gardner Minshew threw for 355 yards and two touchdowns, and ran for another score. He also threw a pair of interceptions, including one in the fourth quarter that led to the Cowboys’ go-ahead field goal. Hurts’s status for Week 17 as he continues to recover from a sprained shoulder is uncertain.
The Eagles’ have two new injuries to worry about after Saturday’s loss. Pro Bowl right tackle Lane Johnson suffered a torn tendon in his abdominal area late in the fourth quarter and is expected to miss the remainder of the regular season. The Eagles are hopeful the 32-year-old Johnson can return for the playoffs. Cornerback Avonte Maddox is out indefinitely after suffering a toe injury against the Cowboys. Safety CJ Gardner-Johnson (lacerated kidney) is eligible to come off IR this week, and his return could help mitigate the loss of Maddox in the secondary.
Remaining schedule (record in parentheses): vs. New Orleans (6-9), vs. N.Y. Giants (8-6-1)
Playoff outlook: The Eagles’ magic number to clinch the NFC’s top seed and a first-round bye remains one.
The Cowboys ended the Eagles’ five-game winning streak by forcing four turnovers, including two in the final five minutes. Dak Prescott shook off an early pick-six to throw for 347 yards and three scores, and Dallas overcame a pair of 10-point deficits. Wide receiver CeeDee Lamb finished with 10 catches for 120 yards and two touchdowns.
Dallas’s defense struggled, allowing 442 total yards and failing to register a sack or force an Eagles punt. The Cowboys have a short week ahead of a Thursday night showdown with the Tennessee Titans. Pro Bowl running back Tony Pollard is questionable for the game with a thigh injury.
Remaining schedule: at Tennessee (7-8), at Washington (7-7-1)
Playoff outlook: The Cowboys need to win out and have the Eagles lose their final two games to clinch the division and give the NFC East its first repeat champion since 2004. With Saturday’s win, Dallas clinched at worst the NFC’s No. 5 seed, which goes to the non-division winner with the best record.
The Giants rallied to tie the Vikings on Saquon Barkley’s touchdown run just before the two-minute warning, but missed an opportunity to clinch a playoff spot when Greg Joseph’s franchise-record 61-yard field goal sailed through the uprights as time expired. Barkley rushed for 84 yards on 14 carries and added 49 receiving yards on eight catches, as the Giants finished with a season-high 445 total yards. Quarterback Daniel Jones completed 30 of 42 passes for 334 yards, one touchdown and a fourth-quarter interception.
Outside linebacker Azeez Ojulari left Saturday’s loss with an ankle injury after registering one of the Giants’ four sacks. The second-year pro, who ranks second on the team with 5½ sacks this season, is questionable for Week 17.
Remaining schedule: vs. Indianapolis (4-10-1), at Philadelphia (13-2)
Playoff outlook: The Giants’ playoff chances are 92 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight, and Brian Daboll’s squad can clinch a postseason spot with a win over the lowly Colts at home on Sunday. An upset loss to Indianapolis could set up a potential must-win game in the regular season finale against the Eagles.
Taylor Heinicke committed turnovers on consecutive fourth-quarter possessions, prompting Commanders Coach Ron Rivera to bench him for Carson Wentz. After Washington’s mistake-filled 37-20 loss to the 49ers, Rivera said he hadn’t decided which quarterback would start against Cleveland on Sunday. Wentz led an 82-yard touchdown drive in his first action since Week 6 and finished 12 of 16 for 123 yards, but Washington trailed 30-14 by the time he entered the game.
The most encouraging thing for the Commanders from Saturday’s loss was Chase Young’s return from the torn ACL he suffered in Week 10 of last season. Young played 30 snaps, looked good doing it and could provide a boost to Washington’s defense down the stretch.
Remaining schedule: vs. Cleveland (6-9), vs. Dallas (10-5)
Playoff outlook: Thanks to losses by the Seattle Seahawks and Detroit Lions over the weekend, Washington still controls its playoff destiny. If the Commanders win their next two games, they’re in the postseason. Their next opponent, Cleveland, has already been eliminated from playoff contention. If the Eagles clinch the NFC East title this week, the Cowboys will have nothing to play for in Week 18. Washington could back into the playoffs by going 1-1 over the next two weeks, but the Seahawks, Lions and Green Bay Packers are all lurking at 7-8, so the Commanders would need some help. | 2022-12-27T17:27:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | NFC East’s Cowboys, Eagles, Commanders and Giants could make playoffs - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/27/nfc-east-playoff-watch/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/27/nfc-east-playoff-watch/ |
Could Zach Wilson's run with the New York Jets already be ending? (Adam Hunger/AP)
Add Zach Wilson to the list of recent first-round quarterbacks who won’t see out their rookie contracts with the teams that selected them. It’s virtually certain that he will not be back with the Jets next season.
Neither side wants to go through that. It’s over.
Thursday night’s debacle in the cold December rain, with the Jets’ offense hitting new lows in ineptitude and the second overall pick from 2021 being benched for the second time this season, was the end, in the eyes of general managers and evaluators around the league. The Jets cannot and will not bring him back to that locker room for a long offseason; hence, Coach Robert Saleh’s announcement that Wilson will be inactive in Week 17. Wilson and his representatives will want out of New York after all this yo-yoing, and the franchise will be left trying to answer the same question that’s been raised since the decline of Joe Namath: What’s the long-term answer at quarterback?
In this instance, the uncertainty runs even deeper. We’ve already chronicled the disconnect between owner Woody Johnson and Saleh, whose hiring Johnson played no significant role in while he was serving an ambassadorship abroad. And as the Jets’ season unraveled and fans booed Wilson’s every move last week, throwing their voices behind journeyman backup Chris Streveler, NFL personnel executives were pondering what changes Johnson might demand beyond the already inevitable exodus of Wilson.
“This is killing Woody, trust me, I know him well,” said one high-ranking NFL official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is not permitted to speak publicly about other teams.
“All of that booing is driving him crazy,” said the executive, who predicted more changes are in store, possibly reaching the upper levels of the front office. “He already wasn’t really sold on this coach. He’s going to want [offensive coordinator Mike] LaFleur out and some changes to that staff. He can’t help himself. Weren’t they 6-3 at the bye? And now they’re getting booed out of their own stadium at Christmas. I’m telling you, something is going to happen there”
And to think, the Jets went into that bye week coming off what appeared to be a franchise-altering upset of the mighty Buffalo Bills. But Wilson’s epic failure is the kind of development that tends to cost people jobs, even in the steadiest organizations. This one, um, does not qualify as such; infighting, cliques and constant change have been the hallmarks of the Jets under Johnson’s stewardship.
During the Jets’ four-game losing streak, they have scored a grand total of 54 points. They have been held to 20 points or fewer in seven of their last nine games. Since Week 7, Jets quarterbacks have combined for eight touchdown passes — tied for fourth-fewest in the NFL — with a 77.5 rating that is also fourth-worst. They’re tied for last in offensive points per game since Week 7, somehow level with the broken Broncos.
They still must travel to Seattle and Miami to close out the remainder of what’s becoming a lost season, with their playoff hopes not officially expunged but nearly so. The specter of ending this once-promising campaign with six straight losses and a last-place finish in the AFC East — the miserable Patriots already swept them — won’t improve Johnson’s mood. The Jets seem a mess once more. The quarterback very likely won’t be the only one to go, and one NFL general manager posited the potential return for Wilson in a trade as a sixth-round pick, or perhaps a fifth. Yikes.
After the Commanders, another sale?
Among the interested parties awaiting the massive sale price the Washington Commanders are sure to command: Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti.
Other owners and executives have long eyed him as part of the next round of owners to sell, with Bisciotti possibly seeking the right moment on the other side of the pandemic. His presence at league meetings has waned over the years, and the retirement in the spring of longtime team president Dick Cass — the de facto daily boss within the Ravens’ facility — was taken as another strong indicator that Bisciotti could explore a departure sooner rather than later. The owner himself made it clear in a team-sponsored podcast around that time that he has no succession plan, that this franchise won’t be staying in his family and that he’ll sell when he feels the time is right.
“He’s been on my shortlist for a few years,” said one well-connected individual who has been involved with franchise transactions in the past but who is not permitted to speak freely about them. “After this, he goes to the head of the class.”
Watching Snyder — an unpopular billionaire down the street, whose team is facing multiple investigations — get up to $7 billion for a franchise with no winning pedigree, no quarterback, a run-down stadium without a plan for a new one and a bottom-tier headquarters/practice facility — is going to get Bisciotti’s attention. The Panthers’ and Broncos’ sales have sent prices soaring, and there are going to be a good number of billionaires who miss out on the Commanders sale who are already vetted, liquid and keenly interested in owning an NFL franchise in the mid-Atlantic area. The Ravens also have a path to an additional $600 million in potential stadium upgrades that could lead to a new lease at M&T Bank Stadium, which provides even more incentive to invest in them now.
“This is going to set off a chain reaction,” said a plugged-in, high-ranking official with an NFL club that itself is likely to be sold in the coming years. “There are going to be one or two more sold right behind it.”
So it just might be the perfect time for Bisciotti to cash out on an investment that he originally bought into for just $600 million in 2000.
A few weeks back we chronicled what appeared to be the end days for Derek Carr and the Raiders. That proposition has only gained more steam in NFL circles, and expect the Raiders to be jostling for draft position to try to land their quarterback of the future this spring. What’s Carr worth in a trade? Maybe a second-round pick, suggested one GM, pointing to the complicated Carson Wentz deal as a potential comp. “I think he’s better than Wentz,” said the GM, who mentioned Carolina, Washington and Tampa Bay as potential destinations for Carr. …
How good is Brock Purdy? With a growing sample size — including another strong outing against the Commanders — the 49ers’ third starting quarterback of the season is earning high marks around the league. “I liked him some coming out of college,” said one evaluator who has watched Purdy start in the NFL but is not able to comment publicly on players on other rosters. “What I liked most was the way he throws with anticipation. He’s a perfect fit with [coach Kyle] Shanahan. He fell into the perfect situation. But he’s smart, he throws with anticipation, he knows where to put the ball and he makes strong reads. And he’s a winner. The kid wins games. Hell, he was a winner at Iowa State.” That executive said he is becoming more convinced by the week that the 49ers will trade Trey Lance, whom they moved up to take one pick after Wilson in the 2021 draft. | 2022-12-27T17:27:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Zach Wilson and the New York Jets are stumbling, and the end is near - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/27/zach-wilson-new-york-jets/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/27/zach-wilson-new-york-jets/ |
NEW YORK — A Manhattan federal judge known for swift decisions and a no-nonsense demeanor during three decades of overseeing numerous high-profile cases was assigned Tuesday to Sam Bankman-Fried’s cryptocurrency case.
The storied judge also was presiding over sex abuse claims by an American woman against Britain's Prince Andrew before the two sides settled earlier this year, with Andrew declaring that he never meant to malign her character and agreeing to donate to the woman’s charity. Prior to the settlement, Kaplan had refused Andrew’s request to toss the lawsuit. | 2022-12-27T18:02:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | No-nonsense judge takes over FTX-Bankman-Fried criminal case - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/no-nonsense-judge-takes-over-ftx-bankman-fried-criminal-case/2022/12/27/ed4ed500-860a-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/no-nonsense-judge-takes-over-ftx-bankman-fried-criminal-case/2022/12/27/ed4ed500-860a-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
Representative-elect George Santos (R-N.Y.) speaks during the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) Annual Leadership Meeting at the Venetian Las Vegas on Nov. 19. (David Becker for The Washington Post)
A New York politician who built his 2022 campaign on false claims about his biography is set to take his seat next week in Congress.
And for the first time since those claims were spotlighted last week by the New York Times, Rep.-elect George Santos (R-N.Y.) is explaining himself. In interviews with City and State NY, WABC radio and the New York Post, Santos cops to what he labeled “résumé embellishment” while emphasizing that he’s not a criminal and intends to serve.
But his explanations don’t answer all the questions raised by the Times and in other reporting, and they spur some additional questions. Below is a rundown of his past claims and his explanations for them, along with the unresolved and most problematic questions for him going forward.
Santos will in all likelihood be seated Jan. 3, because the Supreme Court has set out limited criteria for declining to seat someone. But he could face ethics and other investigations, and the House could technically expel him if two-thirds of members agree to do so. That prospect seems unlikely, given that Republicans will control the chamber with a narrow majority, and the district Santos will represent leans blue.
His properties
What he claimed: In early 2021, he claimed he and his family owned 13 rental properties. He added, “We worked hard to acquire these assets,” and the following day complained about how his “tenants” were taking advantage of state law.
The New York Times reported that, “Property records databases in New York City and Nassau County did not show any documents or deeds associated with him, immediate family members or the Devolder Organization.”
What he says now: “George Santos does not own any properties,” he told the New York Post. In fact, he says he currently resides outside the district that elected him, at his sister’s home, and is looking to purchase his own home.
Parse: Despite Santos’s claim that he doesn’t own any properties, the financial disclosure that he filed with the House in September claimed that he did own an “apartment in Rio de Janeiro” valued at between $500,001 and $1 million. (The asset did not appear on the same form he filed for his 2020 campaign, nor did millions of other dollars of assets he would later claim, as we’ll get to.)
What he claimed: His campaign website said that he “went on to attend Baruch College and in 2010 graduated with a bachelor’s in economics and finance.” And as recently as Dec. 26, his bio listed on the National Republican Congressional Committee’s website claimed that he got a degree in the same fields from New York University. (That claim no longer appears on the website, and doesn’t appear to be repeated elsewhere.)
What he says now: “I didn’t graduate from any institution of higher learning. I’m embarrassed and sorry for having embellished my résumé.”
Parse: What remains unclear is whether Santos ever attended Baruch College. (Officials there told the Times that they could find no record of anyone with his name or date of birth graduating in 2010.) The claim that he graduated is a lie regardless — and a blatant one given that he cited a specific degree. But if he never attended, it’s certainly far more than an embellishment.
Citigroup and Goldman Sachs
What he claimed: His campaign website said he “began working at Citigroup as an associate and quickly advanced to become an associate asset manager in the real asset division of the firm.” It adds that he “was then offered an exciting opportunity with Goldman Sachs but what he thought would be the pinnacle of his career was not as fulfilling as he had anticipated.” The Times reported that neither firm had a record of Santos working there.
What he says now: He “never worked directly” for either Citigroup or Goldman Sachs, but that he made “capital introductions” involving the big Wall Street firms while working at LinkBridge Investors, which had “limited partnerships” with them.
Parse: Santos suggests this is a matter of careless phrasing. He said that “the way it’s stated on the résumé, doing work for — I have worked ‘for,’ not ‘on’ or ‘at’ or ‘in.’ ” But that’s difficult to square with his campaign website, which suggested that his time at LinkBridge came after he decided Goldman Sachs wasn’t for him.
The Pulse nightclub
What he claimed: Santos claimed he “lost four employees” in the massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando in 2016.
What he says now: He says these people didn’t actually work for him at the time, but that they were in the process of being hired. “We did lose four people that were going to be coming to work for the company that I was starting up in Orlando.”
Parse: As the Times notes, Santos doesn’t say what company he was referring to. And this claim will surely be worth delving into given that it might involve exploiting a tragedy for personal gain. A mother of one of the Pulse victims who is close to the other families involved told a Florida news outlet that no company employed more than two of the victims. Santos’s claim is now that his company happened to be hiring four of them, and that all four happened to be in the midst of the hiring process.
His finances and self-funding
What he claimed: Despite claiming no assets or earned income on his 2020 financial disclosure, he loaned his 2022 campaign and political action committee at least $600,000. His 2022 form featured millions’ worth of assets, with more than $1 million in income coming from one of them: the Devolder Organization. His campaign website once said that the firm managed $80 million in assets.
What he says now: Of the loan to his campaign, he said, in a radio interview, “That is the money of — that I’ve paid myself through my company, Devolder Organization.”
Parse: As The Washington Post reported Monday, the question of where this money came from might be the biggest one — and perhaps the most troubling for Santos, given the legal implications, including for knowingly filing false financial disclosures. The Devolder Organization was organized in May 2021, according to documents filed with the Florida secretary of state, and Santos reported an annual salary of $750,000 in 2021 and 2022, so $600,000 to his campaign would have been a large chunk of that money. In addition, The Washington Post reported that the financial data company Dun & Bradstreet estimated that, based on its data modeling, Devolder as of July 2022 had revenue of only $43,688.
The criminal charges in Brazil
What was reported: The New York Times reported last week that court records in Brazil show Santos faced criminal charges in 2008 for check fraud and that he confessed to the crime. The records state that he stole the checkbook of a man under the care of his mother when he was 19, but officials could not locate him, so the case remains unresolved.
What he says now: “I am not a criminal here — not here or in Brazil or any jurisdiction in the world. Absolutely not. That didn’t happen,” he told the New York Post.
Parse: Santos’s explanation appears to lean on the fact that he was never officially convicted, but it doesn’t address whether he was charged or whether he confessed, as court records state. And those records suggest he wasn’t convicted because he didn’t appear in court.
Jewish ancestry and the Holocaust
What he claimed: The first line of his campaign bio stated that “George’s grandparents fled Jewish persecution in Ukraine, settled in Belgium, and again fled persecution during WWII.” He has also claimed that they “survived the Holocaust” and changed their surname to survive. But the Forward and Jewish Insider called that into question, noting that it appears his maternal grandparents were born in Brazil. CNN added that Santos’s claims are “contradicted by sources … including family trees compiled by genealogy websites, records on Jewish refugees and interviews with multiple genealogists.”
What he says now: “I never claimed to be Jewish. I am Catholic. Because I learned my maternal family had a Jewish background I said I was ‘Jew-ish.’” He added that he was “clearly Catholic” and said of his parents being born in Brazil, “To the best of my knowledge, to the best of my understanding, no, they were not.” He said his grandmother told him stories about having converted from Judaism to Catholicism.
Parse: This is also a big one, given it would again involve exploiting tragedy — the Holocaust — for personal gain. But despite Santos saying that he never claimed to be Jewish, he tweeted Nov. 3, “It was an honor to address fellow members of the Jewish community in #NY03.” And Jewish Insider reports that he described himself last month as a nonobservant Jew. | 2022-12-27T18:02:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How George Santos explains the claims about his biography — and what questions remain - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/27/george-santos-explanations-questions/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/27/george-santos-explanations-questions/ |
FILE - Arkansas head coach Sam Pittman looks on during the first half of the Outback Bowl NCAA college football game against Penn State, Jan. 1, 2022, in Tampa, Fla. Pittman has the Razorbacks playing in their second straight bowl game with the Liberty Bowl, Wednesday, Dec. 28, 2022. (AP Photo/Chris O’Meara, File) | 2022-12-27T18:03:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Winning record at stake for Kansas, Arkansas at Liberty Bowl - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/winning-record-at-stake-for-kansas-arkansas-at-liberty-bowl/2022/12/27/f0b3f77a-860a-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/winning-record-at-stake-for-kansas-arkansas-at-liberty-bowl/2022/12/27/f0b3f77a-860a-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
Police identify man fatally shot outside D.C. bar as Virginia resident
A man who was fatally shot early Saturday outside a bar in Northwest Washington has been identified as a 50-year-old from Alexandria, Va., according to D.C. police.
Richard Antonio Joseph was pronounced dead in the 3600 block of Georgia Avenue NW, in the Park View neighborhood a few blocks south of the Georgia Avenue-Petworth Metro station.
A second man was also shot in the incident, D.C. police said, and was taken to a hospital with life-threatening injuries. Several cars were struck by gunfire, as well as several businesses’ windows, according to a police report.
The shooting of Joseph, which occurred shortly before 1 a.m., brought the District’s homicide count to 199, an 11 percent drop from this time in 2022, which ended with 226 killings.
Police said they responded to the 3600 block of Georgia Avenue for a report of gunshots, and found the two victims.
The police report lists the address for the Afro Lounge as the location for the shooting, but authorities did not say whether either of the victims had been inside the bar. The report says police reported the shooting to the D.C. Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration, which licenses liquor establishments.
Police said two front windows of the Afro Lounge were struck by bullets, as were windows at two other businesses, along with damage to three parked vehicles.
Efforts to reach Joseph’s relatives and the owner of the Afro Lounge were not successful on Tuesday. | 2022-12-27T19:34:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Police identified man fatally shot outside D.C. bar as Virginia resident - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/27/shooting-fatal-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/27/shooting-fatal-dc/ |
By Bruce Ackerman
Gerard Magliocca
The vandalized statue of Confederate leader Jefferson Davis is seen in Richmond about five hours before it was toppled by demonstrators on June 10, 2020. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
Bruce Ackerman is a professor of law and political science at Yale and the author of “Revolutionary Constitutions: Charismatic Leadership and the Rule of Law.” Gerard Magliocca is a professor at Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law and the author of “American Founding Son: John Bingham and the Invention of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
Apart from a relatively brief mention in its 800-page report, the Jan. 6 committee missed the Constitution’s preferred punishment for former high officials turned insurrectionists. The committee tries to persuade Americans that criminal prosecution is the only adequate response to Donald Trump’s systematic efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Nearly forgotten debates over ratification of the 14th Amendment point to a better, less divisive approach. Nowadays, the amendment is best known for the Section 1 guarantee of “equal protection of the laws.” At the time of the debates in 1868, however, Section 3 — barring insurrectionists from future elected offices — was the hot-button issue.
Section 3 targeted Jefferson Davis, a former U.S. senator who was president of the rebellious Confederacy, along with other leaders of the attempted overthrow of the U.S. Constitution. These men had “taken an oath … to support the Constitution of the United States” before the Civil War, then betrayed their oath by joining in “insurrection” or “rebellion” during the conflict. Section 3 explicitly barred them from holding “any office, civil or military, under the United States” unless “two-thirds of each House” of Congress lifted the ban.
Congressional sponsors of the amendment made clear that they were following the path marked by Abraham Lincoln in his second inaugural address: “with malice toward none, with charity to all.” In the words of Ohio Republican Rep. John Bingham, a leading draftsman, the Disqualification Clause represented “an act of forgiveness on the part of the American people, without a parallel, I undertake to say, in the history of nations.”
This “forgiveness” was a matter of life and death for Davis, who was imprisoned by the Union Army since his capture at the end of the war in 1865. If the 14th Amendment had been rejected, he would almost certainly have been convicted of treason and immediately executed. Yet, as soon as the amendment was ratified, the Army dropped the charges and freed Davis.
After ratification, Congress quickly passed legislation implementing the amendment. Later Congresses pardoned many ex-Confederates by the requisite two-thirds vote, but Davis remained disqualified until his death in 1889. In Bingham’s words, disqualifying rebel leaders from future offices allowed “the great mass of the population of the Southern States” to retain their full “political powers” by rejoining the Union and leaving the past behind. Though Davis survived to publish an autobiography that helped to advance the Lost Cause myth of the Civil War, the government did not make him a martyr to that cause.
In calling for Trump’s criminal prosecution, the Jan. 6 committee is ignoring the Lincolnian principles embodied in the 14th Amendment. Committee members might also be underestimating the difficulty of a criminal prosecution. Assuming he were indicted, Trump would not face a jury any time soon because his lawyers have demonstrated a remarkable ability to drag out court cases. In the meantime, he would remain free to pursue his ongoing campaign for the White House.
As former president Gerald Ford explained when pardoning his predecessor, Richard M. Nixon, who resigned amid scandal: “During this long period of delay and potential litigation, ugly passions would again be aroused. And our people would again be polarized in their opinions.”
Special counsel Jack Smith and Attorney General Merrick Garland should take a lesson from Ford’s caution, and defer serious consideration of criminal prosecution until the newly elected Congress has a chance to consider the 14th Amendment option mentioned in a single paragraph by the Jan. 6 committee. Legislation already proposed by Democratic Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.) and Jamie B. Raskin (Md.) would grant special jurisdiction to a three-judge federal court in the District of Columbia to determine, within three months, whether Trump’s involvement in the assault on Capitol Hill amounted to an “insurrection.” The panel’s decision would receive automatic Supreme Court review.
This is urgent business. If Congress does not move quickly to enact the Schultz-Raskin proposal, the issue of Trump’s political future will drag into 2024, when the next election will rev into high gear and courts will be inclined to let the voters decide.
American history is marked by moments of political evasion — as well as moments of genuine courage. Congress, led by Republicans willing to break with their party’s extremists, should bring the Jan. 6 tragedy to a close and enable Americans to set the nation on the road to a post-Trump future. | 2022-12-27T19:34:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Jan. 6 committee should use the 14th amendment on Trump - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/27/trump-jan6-constitution-fourteenth-amendment/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/27/trump-jan6-constitution-fourteenth-amendment/ |
Justin Sondel
Many major roads were plowed overnight in Buffalo and were beginning to return to life on Tuesday. (Joed Viera/AFP/Getty Images)
BUFFALO — The Buffalo region began to dig out Tuesday from a catastrophic blizzard that killed at least 28 people in what local officials have described as the worst weather disaster to hit the area in a generation.
An additional seven people were confirmed dead in Buffalo, according to Mayor Byron Brown, bringing that city’s total storm-related fatalities to 27. At least one other person was found dead in the surrounding suburbs, as local officials warned the death toll could increase as emergency responders began to examine cars left buried in snowdrifts in areas where more are feared to have died.
Search and rescue efforts came as snow continued to fall across the region Tuesday, with the area bracing for a few more inches of precipitation atop the roughly 4 feet of snow that has blanketed Western New York since late last week.
A driving ban remained in place in Buffalo, a city of roughly 276,000 people, where many roads remained impassable, and nearly 5,000 people remained without power. Residents began to venture out in search of food and supplies as some local grocery stores reopened, even as authorities urged people to stay off the roads because of fears the traffic could hinder rescue and recovery efforts.
Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz, whose jurisdiction includes Buffalo, said 100 New York State Police members were being deployed to the city along with additional National Guard troops in an attempt to keep drivers off the roads as the county tries to clear streets and allow trucks to bring in food and fuel.
The police will be positioned at entrances to Buffalo and major intersections throughout to enforce the ban on driving in New York’s second-largest city. Many of the major highways into Buffalo remained closed Tuesday.
“Please, please, please do not drive in the city of Buffalo unless you are an emergency responder,” Poloncarz said in a news conference Tuesday. “I am begging. Stay home.”
Poloncarz’s comments came as he and other local officials expressed worry about a forecast of rain and warmer temperatures later in the week that could elevate the risk of major flooding across the region as the snow melts.
“We are a little bit concerned,” said Dan Neaverth Jr., the Eric County commissioner of emergency services. He said crews were being deployed not only to plow the streets but also to attempt to remove ice and blockages from county storm drains ahead of what Poloncarz described as a potential “rapid melt.”
Across the city, thousands of stranded residents remained without power — and some without water because of pipes that had burst in the below-freezing temperatures. Scores of people had taken refuge at shelters across the city, where food and supplies were rapidly dwindling.
Eric Walker drove to Buffalo from Rochester on Thursday to be with his family for the holidays, including his 84-year-old mother, Annie Brown, through the worst of the storm.
At her senior living center on the city’s west side, the automatic doors were stuck open during the height of the storm. The cold caused pipes to burst, flooding the lobby and stopping water service in the 100-apartment building. Icicles formed on the shades of wall sconces.
Walker said he tried to close the door manually, but as others came into the building to get to their elderly friends and family, it kept being reopened. He had been taking jugs down to the first floor, trudging through water in the lobby and taking water to flush the toilet from the burst pipes. The company that runs the building had not updated residents on when water might be restored.
Walker was now trying to decide when to go back to Rochester, where there was no significant snowfall. But he worried about leaving his mother. “If I were to leave, would she have to plow through this kind of stuff?” he said.
While local officials expressed hope Tuesday that power would be restored to most of the city later in the week, business owners in some of the stricken areas expressed concern they could be without power for months because of supply chain issues.
At the Wonder Coffeehouse near downtown Buffalo, an employee had shut off the water supply, narrowly averting disaster just as pipes were about to freeze and burst, according to Kate Vacanti, who owns the coffeehouse and an adjacent building with her husband. But both buildings are now without power and heat, and Vacanti said National Grid workers had told her that the electrical equipment damaged in the storm was currently on back-order because of a national shortage.
“They’re not sure how or if or when we’re going to get power,” Vacanti said. “It could be months. They’re trying to come up with other solutions.”
Vacanti estimated that the business has already lost thousands of dollars in food and damage to their buildings, while also missing out on a potentially busy week around the holidays. In addition, they are worried about damage to equipment from frozen water lines and possible energy surges from damaged transformers co-worker saw outside their building.
The storm is just the latest challenge for the business owners, who opened in late 2019, just before pandemic shutdowns kept their doors closed for months. They had severe damage to a recently repaired roof during a wind storm and had to shut down during the massive snowstorm that rocked the Buffalo region last month.
The coffeehouse’s location, just a few hundred feet from the shores of Lake Erie, put it in the direct path of some of the worst winds and snows in the region.
Vacanti said they were able to move some of their food and supplies out to their recently opened second location in the town of Clarence, about 14 miles northeast of the city location. But the storm is the latest in a series of challenges that have left her feeling as though it is hard to see a path forward for the business.
“It literally just feels like you’re at the beach with really nasty waves,” she said. “You get up from one wave and dust yourself off and there’s another one coming, and another one coming, and another one coming.”
“We’re not the giving-up type, but you do start to ask yourself, how much more could you take,” Vacanti said.
Local officials have not yet released the names of those who died in the storm. At a Tuesday morning news conference, Poloncarz declined to comment on details of the latest fatalities — including how they died. But on Monday, he said at least 14 of those killed had been found outside — including three recovered from a vehicle.
Sondel reported from Buffalo. Bailey reported from New Orleans. | 2022-12-27T20:13:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Buffalo blizzard death toll rises to 28 with risk of major flooding - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/12/27/buffalo-blizzard-death-toll/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/12/27/buffalo-blizzard-death-toll/ |
Greg Baroni, a tech executive who owns two local baseball teams, is close to finalizing a deal to buy a controlling stake in Loudoun United, the second-division pro soccer team owned by D.C. United, three people familiar with the negotiations said Tuesday.
Less than a year ago, Baroni’s Attain Sports and Entertainment purchased the Bowie Baysox — the Baltimore Orioles’ Class AA affiliate — and the Frederick Keys, a collegiate summer team that, until 2021, was an Orioles’ Class A affiliate for 31 years.
Baroni would become operating partner of Loudoun United, which is preparing for its fifth season in USL Championship, one level below MLS, said two people speaking on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss the matter. D.C. United, they said, would continue to own a considerable share in the team, though details were not immediately available.
Baroni, who is chair of the Northern Virginia Technology Council, did not respond to an email seeking comment. D.C. United officials said they did not want to comment.
Loudoun United plays at Segra Field, a 5,000-seat stadium in Leesburg.
Loudoun’s ownership change would come as MLS and USL continue to cut ties. For player development purposes, MLS teams for years had an ownership stake or affiliation with clubs in USL Championship or USL League One, a third-division circuit.
Last year, though, MLS largely set out on its own in developing players by launching a third-division league, MLS Next Pro. D.C. United continued operating Loudoun United in USL Championship, but long-term, is aiming to operate an MLS Next Pro team in the Baltimore area.
In 2023, Loudoun United is expected to be the only one of USL Championship’s 24 teams with MLS connections. | 2022-12-27T20:18:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Greg Baroni eyes controlling stake in Loudoun United - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/27/greg-baroni-loudoun-united/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/27/greg-baroni-loudoun-united/ |
Cody Johnson gives hope for a united America
Cody Johnson drives the back roads on Dec. 8 near his home in Beulah, Ga. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
The Dec. 25 front-page article about Cody Johnson, “An unlikely rebel against Trumpism,” was indeed refreshing. It showed that despite the likes of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), former president Donald Trump and others, there is hope and salvation for the country.
Mr. Johnson is to be commended for allowing his well-reasoned story to be told. Hopefully, his actions will lead millions of other American citizens to rethink their positions on election denial and act accordingly in the 2024 election. With clear thinking, the United States can only benefit.
Jerry McDermott, Largo
The article about Cody Johnson stopped me in my tracks. The headline about a rebel in rural Georgia caught my eye, and I had to read the entire story. Fairmount and Jasper are cities I have driven through many times on my way to the mountains, so much so that I know them by heart without using Google Maps. I am from northwest Georgia and now live in a similar city in Tennessee, not far from the Georgia border. Everything I read felt too familiar: the handmade Trump signs, red hats and car stickers, and the “one traffic light” towns dependent on revenue from factories.
As a teacher, I was happy to read that Mr. Johnson’s elementary school principal gave him a copy of “The Hobbit” instead of punishing him, even more so when a librarian encouraged him to keep a copy of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s writings. Mr. Johnson was made to grow up way too fast, but he knew that he needed to make a difference and vote with his morals.
To stand up against violence, hate, racism and discrimination, we must make our voices heard. Like Mr. Johnson, we all need to learn who we want to be as a person. Emerson was right when he said, “Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. … Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.” Because of men like Mr. Johnson, there is hope for Georgia.
Erin Worthington, Cleveland, Tenn.
After reading “An unlikely rebel against Trumpism,” I knew how the future of Demon Copperhead, the main character in Barbara Kingsolver’s novel of the same name, would turn out.
The article profiled a real community, so much like the one in Ms. Kingsolver’s novel, where the people are so kind and generous with each other yet feel stuck in place and forgotten by the rest of America. It certainly raised many questions, starting with how urbanites, suburbanites and solid rural folk can truly encounter each other to create meaningful societal change.
Bob Jacobs, Silver Spring | 2022-12-27T20:53:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Cody Johnson gives hope for a united America - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/27/cody-johnson-hope-united-america/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/27/cody-johnson-hope-united-america/ |
Jewish people help make the Montgomery County Council diverse
Members of the Montgomery County Council are sworn in Dec. 5 at the Music Center at Strathmore. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
The Dec. 19 Metro article “Tensions over equity, transparency within a new Montgomery council” addressed an important topic but, unfortunately, continued The Post’s habit of erasing Jewish identity when it comes to diversity.
Part of the article was about the new president and vice president of the county council being “White” men and not reflecting the diversity of the county. However, the article failed to note that both Evan Glass (At Large) and Andrew Friedson (District 1) are Jewish and, thus, should be included in any calculation of diversity.
Jews are a small minority in this country and yet are subject to more religiously motivated hate crimes than any other group. We have a longer history than probably any other group in the West of being persecuted and dehumanized by white supremacy in Europe. The antisemitic trope that Jews are too privileged to count as a protected minority does not belong, even implicitly, in a Post article.
Gary Skulnik, Silver Spring | 2022-12-27T20:53:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Jews on the Montgomery County Council count toward diversity - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/27/jewish-people-montgomery-county-council-diversity/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/27/jewish-people-montgomery-county-council-diversity/ |
What You Need to Know About Rising Serbia-Kosovo Tensions
Three decades after the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia, the ethnic hostilities that ignited the conflict linger on. Kosovo declared its independence from former Yugoslav republic Serbia in 2008, but Serbia refuses to let it go. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine added a new dimension to the standoff. And now, Serbia’s army has been ordered on high alert after weeks of rising tensions between authorities in Kosovo and the local Serb minority there.
1. What’s driving the tensions in Kosovo?
Kosovo has a predominantly ethnic Albanian population of 1.8 million, but it includes more than 100,000 Serbs. In August, authorities sought to force the minority Serbs to switch to car plates and personal documents issued by the Kosovar rather than the Serbian government. Many ethnic Serbs viewed the administrative order as an affront and a threat to their identity. Authorities eventually agreed not to enforce the policy, but not before large numbers of Serb police officers in northern Kosovo quit in protest. After three such officers were arrested on suspicion of terrorism, members of the community responded by protesting and blocking roads. Kosovo Premier Albin Kurti accused Serbia of instigating the unrest. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic raised the prospect of sending troops into Kosovo to protect the Serb minority.
Protests erupted in Kosovo in 1981 following the death of Yugoslavia’s long-ruling Communist dictator Josip Broz Tito. An initial demand by ethnic Albanians that Kosovo be upgraded from a province within Serbia to a federal republic within Yugoslavia triggered Serbian nationalism and helped propel Slobodan Milosevic to power in Serbia in 1987 as he vowed to stem the separatism. His crackdown, however, escalated demands by Kosovo’s majority to seek full independence. War over the territory broke out in 1998, killing more than 10,000 people. The fighting ended in 1999 when bombing by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization forced Serb troops out of Kosovo, and an estimated 200,000 Serb civilians fled as well. Serbia has vowed never to agree to the secession of what it considers its historic heartland, a stance backed by Russia, China and even five members of the European Union.
3. What’s been the impact of Russia’s war in Ukraine?
Geopolitical divisions over Kosovo have become more acute since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia under President Vladimir Putin, an outspoken Serbia supporter. Putin has criticized the West for what he says are double standards. He has compared the cause of Kosovo — which has been recognized by most of the Western world — to that of two regions in eastern Ukraine controlled by Russian-backed separatists since 2014. In turn, the leaders of Serbia and Kosovo have used the war in Ukraine to intensify their rhetoric. There’s a risk that an escalation could spill over to other parts of the volatile Western Balkans, including Bosnia-Herzegovina. Still, a NATO-led peace force of nearly 3,800 troops has helped keep peace in Kosovo for years and it has said it is prepared to intervene if stability is threatened.
Kosovo’s Kurti has accused Serbia of serving Russian interests, while Serbia’s Vucuc has said Kosovo officials are trying to exploit alarm over Ukraine for their own purposes. Both have opponents at home who question their handling of the recurring tensions, but their populations remain largely entrenched in rival nationalism. The US generally wields more influence than the EU over Kosovo’s leadership, while Serbia seeks support from Moscow as well as from Washington and Brussels in handling the dispute. Vucic has condemned the invasion of Ukraine at the United Nations while stopping short of adopting EU sanctions against Russia. In 2022, Vucic secured five more years as president, with his party holding a majority in parliament. Kurti’s refusal to make any concessions to Serbia has further complicated any talks with the neighboring nation.
5. What about the EU’s relationship with Serbia and Kosovo?
Serbia and Kosovo signed an EU-brokered agreement in 2013 on trade, energy and communications, and which envisioned giving Kosovo Serbs some self-rule. Kosovo later said it wouldn’t give autonomy to the minority population and demanded Serbia’s full recognition before any further consideration. While the EU remains the key investor in both nations, progress in their efforts to join the bloc has been slow. Serbia is negotiating its entry and is further ahead in the process than Kosovo, which has yet to become an official candidate. The EU has made resolving the standoff between them a condition for accession. Disillusion with the bloc is growing in Serbia, where the EU is seen as increasingly distant and preoccupied with its own issues. | 2022-12-27T21:06:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What You Need to Know About Rising Serbia-Kosovo Tensions - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/what-you-need-to-know-about-rising-serbia-kosovo-tensions/2022/12/27/3b7e02a8-861c-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/what-you-need-to-know-about-rising-serbia-kosovo-tensions/2022/12/27/3b7e02a8-861c-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
Wage war on fentanyl or decriminalize? We must find a way to combat it.
Illicit fentanyl collected by the Alameda County Sheriff's Office, seen in April. (Alameda County Sheriff's Office/AP)
The letter to President Biden signed by 18 attorneys general called for an admittedly “unorthodox” solution to the nation’s fentanyl crisis.
“We ask that you consider classifying illegal fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction,” they wrote in September. “Indeed, given fentanyl’s lethality, the amounts being interdicted and seized are inconsistent with what one would expect from drug trafficking activity and are indicative of either purposeful conspiracy to murder Americans or an effort to stockpile a dangerous chemical weapon.”
With a more than 71,000 fentanyl overdose deaths in the United States last year, it is understandable that some would feel that the country was under a kind of chemical attack. But by whom?
In Hartford, Conn., this year, police found 100 bags of fentanyl in the bedroom of a 13-year-old boy who suffered a fatal fentanyl overdose at school. Police found an additional 60 bags of highly potent fentanyl hidden in areas throughout his school.
Had those drugs made it into the student population, there would have been mass casualties. The boy’s overdose death alerted school officials to the threat. Mercifully. But how would calling the drugs WMDs have stopped the boy from getting them?
According to the attorneys general, designating the synthetic opioid as a WMD would get the Defense Department and Department of Homeland Security more involved. “Thinking about curbing the problem in different, new ways may disrupt what the foreign companies and drug cartels involved are doing or at least make it more expensive or difficult,” the group wrote.
Disrupting the cartels, making the drugs more expensive or, supposedly, more difficult — that’s been the U.S. policy all along. It’s called the “war on drugs,” and if we have learned anything it’s that disrupting drug supply lines while doing nothing about reducing demand creates only chaos and violence, making more toxic products available at cheaper prices.
That’s how cocaine powder became a bloody crack trade, how a crackdown on opioid prescription pills became a burgeoning heroin street market, and a subsequent crackdown on heroin resulted in the enhanced manufacturing of deadly synthetic fentanyl. Now the opioid trade needs no agricultural expertise at all, just a batch of chemicals that a high school dropout can prepare to inadvertently fatal effects. And there is practically no way to stop it.
In 2021, a coalition of the District’s liberal groups, called DecrimPovertyDC, drew up the “District of Columbia Drug Policy Reform Act,” which calls for decriminalizing the possession of any drug if it’s for personal use and vacating past convictions for such offenses. It would also create a variety of services, such as a crisis-response system within the Department of Health designed for drug-related emergencies, and 24/7 harm-reduction centers where individuals could safely use under the supervision of trained providers equipped with overdose medication and sterile syringes.
According to DecrimPovertyDC, research shows that criminalizing drug use leads to cultural stigma and decreases public support for policies aimed at solving the opioid crisis “by placing blame for drug use on the individual rather than the social factors like poverty, structural racism, and poor public health infrastructure.”
As Shane Sullivan, a DecrimPovertyDC organizer wrote in an op-ed for The Washington Post in February: “Despite bipartisan agreement that the so-called drug war is a failure, we continue its barbaric practice of caging people for their drug use and target those most marginalized. … How can we expect people who are actively using drugs to speak honestly with medical providers or loved ones about their use when often that use is a felony charge?”
Most consequentially, he noted, “We also need to begin a national conversation about implementing a safe supply of drugs, as decriminalization alone won’t end the increasingly toxic drug market. … The concept of a safe supply seems ‘radical’ only because of decades of drug war propaganda that has demonized certain classes of drugs while obfuscating the potential harms of alcohol.”
Otherwise, we’re likely to see drug addiction skyrocket, as it has in Oregon.
“If there is no formal or informal pressure on addicted people to seek treatment and recovery and thereby stop using drugs, we should expect continuing high rates of drug use, addiction and attendant harm,” said Keith Humphreys, an addiction researcher and professor at Stanford University and former senior adviser in the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
Nathan Manning, a Republican state senator in Ohio is sponsoring legislation to make it clear that materials used to test drugs for fentanyl are legal. Fentanyl strips, as they are called, can help drug users determine if their supply is untainted; but some say they encourage criminal activity. “It’s a fine line to help people and try to get people clean, and at the same time incarcerate and get the drug dealers off the streets,” he says. | 2022-12-27T21:06:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Wage war on fentanyl or decriminalize it? We must find a way to combat the drug. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/27/courtland-milloy-column-fentanyl/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/27/courtland-milloy-column-fentanyl/ |
Is crime going up, down or sideways? Don’t ask the FBI.
FILE - An FBI seal is seen on a wall on Aug. 10, 2022, in Omaha, Neb. Hate crimes in the U.S. remained relatively high last year after a surge not seen in nearly two decades, according to a new FBI report Monday, Dec. 12. But experts say is actually an undercount because thousands of police departments, including some of the country?s largest, didn?t report their data. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, File)
The FBI released what seemed to be good news earlier this month, announcing that the agency had counted 7,262 instances of hate crimes in 2021 — a drop from 8,263 the year before. In fact, outside experts said, hate crimes might actually have trended sharply higher last year; the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism charted a 21 percent surge in hate crimes in 20 states over the same period. One reason for the discrepancy: The FBI relies on state and local police departments to report crime numbers to the federal government, and only 11,883 of 18,812 law enforcement agencies submitted their 2021 hate-crimes data. The nation’s two largest cities, New York and Los Angeles, were among the non-reporters.
FBI crime data is supposed to give the public, criminal justice researchers and law enforcement agents hard numbers so that they have more than just instinct and anecdote — and the claims of demagogic politicians — to characterize what is happening on the country’s streets and elsewhere. Real numbers provide insights into what is working and what is not. They also show how often police respond to crime with force, against what types of people and in what situations. But voluntary compliance from state and local departments falls well short of what is necessary.
This is not the first time the FBI has struggled to collect reliable criminal justice statistics. The Post has tracked fatal police shootings since 2015, painstakingly sorting through news and social media reports, local law enforcement records and other sources. The Post has found that police shoot and kill about 1,000 people every year — including 1,084 over the past 12 months. Black Americans are killed at a much higher rate than White Americans, the victims skew young, and nearly all are male. Further, the number of fatal police shootings has been rising in recent years, The Post’s tally shows. Yet the FBI has reported a decline between 2015 and 2021. The FBI’s records contain only about one-third of the 7,000 fatal police shootings The Post counted during that period.
In other words, the statistics provided voluntarily by local law enforcement agencies underplay both the scale of the problem and the urgency of addressing it — for instance, by updating use-of-force guidelines and investing in de-escalation training. The FBI has embarked on a broad effort to track fatalities and serious bodily injury committed by law enforcement officers, plus instances in which police officers fire their weapons. Yet the bureau almost had to shut down the program for lack of response from local police departments.
All of this is despite Congress having passed laws in 1994 and 2014 to improve federal crime data collection.
True, in any given year, smaller police departments might have seen no hate crimes, police use-of-force incidents or other notable events to report, so they might not see a need to inform the FBI. Doing so takes time and resources; the FBI estimates it consumes 38 minutes to report every incident to its police use-of-force database. Police departments complain that the FBI’s transition to a new crime reporting system, which asks for more details, has made complying harder.
But “none this year” results are crucial if the FBI is to compile an accurate and comprehensive report. Police departments that have a sense of what is happening within their areas would also benefit from seeing what is happening down the road — or across the country.
Congress should intervene, once again. Federal appropriations to help police departments report their crime numbers are an obvious place to start. At the same time, Congress should condition the large number of various crime-fighting grants it sends to state and local governments on departments reporting their numbers. Bills such as 2021’s George Floyd Justice and Policing Act, which passed the House but got nowhere in the Senate, would have created such a system. Federal legislators should also eliminate any confusing or duplicative reporting requirements that place an unnecessary burden on police departments.
Ultimately, however, the federal government has only so much leverage. Most police funding comes from state and local governments. Some departments get scant federal money at all. So state governments should also step in, requiring their police departments to submit crime data to the FBI — or to them directly, to be forwarded to the FBI.
A trustworthy set of statistics is a foundational tool with which to begin figuring out just how big of a problem crime, police use of force and related issues are in the United States — and how to tackle them. | 2022-12-27T21:06:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The FBI needs better statistics to fully understand crime in America - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/27/fbi-crime-statistics-unreliable/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/27/fbi-crime-statistics-unreliable/ |
FILE - TCU cornerback Tre’Vius Hodges-Tomlinson (1) returns an interception against Texas Tech during the second half of an NCAA college football game Saturday, Nov. 5, 2022, in Fort Worth, Texas. Hodges-Tomlinson was selected to The Associated Press All-America team released Monday, Dec. 12, 2022. (AP Photo/Ron Jenkins, File)
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Tre’Vius Hodges-Tomlinson knows a good cornerback when he sees one — no matter if the school’s three letters are ULM or TCU. | 2022-12-27T21:07:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | TCU's cornerbacks 2 examples of transfer portal success - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/tcus-cornerbacks-2-examples-of-transfer-portal-success/2022/12/27/6609787a-8623-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/tcus-cornerbacks-2-examples-of-transfer-portal-success/2022/12/27/6609787a-8623-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
An abandoned ambulance on a roadside after a historic blizzard pummeled Buffalo on Sunday. The storm caused fatalities, left rescue crews stranded and the city saw widespread power outages. (Malik Rainey for The Washington Post)
For 14 hours in Buffalo, emergency services technician Phaleisha Balesteri sat inside her snow-covered ambulance without food or water, helplessly listening to her dispatchers to answer calls about people freezing, mothers and babies stranded in cars, oxygen tanks running out, and other first responders trapped trying to get to them. In front of her, four cars were askew in snow drifts, blocking the road.
And, as she began to fear that she even she may die there, she grew furious that Buffalo hadn’t acted sooner to prevent people from going out on the roads in the worst storm since 1977.
When asked why more weren’t opened ahead of time, he said that the weather had been in the 40s on Thursday. And when Friday morning’s travel ban went into effect, “that obviously affected our ability to get more shelters open." Police and fire houses became spontaneous warm spaces, opening their doors to hundreds of people who were caught outside Friday and Saturday, he said.
“Buffalo should have been better prepared,” Syta said. “ I wish they —” she trailed off. “I don’t know. I just wish it was different.”
‘A wake up call’
Balesteri is one of them. After getting picked up at 6:30 a.m. Saturday by a volunteer fire crew from Seneca, eating a warm meal, and taking a piping hot shower, the EMT was back on the roads responding to calls for help on Facebook, this time in her own truck. Her ambulance still needs to be rescued. | 2022-12-27T21:08:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Buffalo’s no stranger to snow. Why was the storm so deadly? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/12/27/buffalo-storm-blizzard-warnings/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/12/27/buffalo-storm-blizzard-warnings/ |
Gunshot victim found in burned vehicle is missing D.C. boy, police say
A 16-year-old from Northeast Washington who was reported missing in late September has been identified as the person who was found fatally shot inside a burned vehicle in Anne Arundel County, Md., according to authorities.
Police said it took several weeks to identify Marquette Knight after his body was found about midnight Sept. 27 in the back seat of a vehicle in a field near the Laurel Park horse racing track.
D.C. police said Knight had been reported missing Sept. 28 after relatives told authorities he had earlier been seen getting into a vehicle on 46th Place NE and did not return.
Police in Anne Arundel said it took several weeks to identify Knight. Authorities in the District said they told Knight’s family about the death on Oct. 21. Anne Arundel police released Knight’s name to the public on Tuesday.
Knight’s grandfather and another relative on Tuesday referred calls to the victim’s father; efforts to reach him were not successful.
Authorities said no arrest has been made in the case, and a spokeswoman for police in Anne Arundel said detectives do not know whether Knight was shot where the vehicle was found or elsewhere.
In a statement, Anne Arundel police said officers and firefighters found the burning vehicle and the victim in a field about 100 yards off Brock Bridge Road at Tribeca Trail, near the Oxbow Lake reservoir and nature preserve.
The field is across from a residential development and along the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, about 20 miles north of where D.C. police said Knight was reported missing.
The Maryland medical examiner’s office ruled Sept. 30 that Knight had died of a gunshot wound, police said. | 2022-12-27T21:28:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. teen Marquette Knight found dead in burned vehicle had been shot, police say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/27/teen-dead-maryland-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/27/teen-dead-maryland-dc/ |
Russia’s abductions of Ukrainian children are a genocidal crime
Empty cribs in the courtyard of Kherson regional children's home in southern Ukraine in November. (Bernat Armangue/AP)
War is chaotic, inexplicable and devastating to children caught up in it. But war is not an excuse to abduct children from parents and their nation, as Russia is now doing in Ukraine. This is specifically prohibited by the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia — and attempts to brainwash them, removing their language and culture — is a genocidal crime that calls for prosecution.
The Post’s Robyn Dixon and Natalia Abbakumova reported Dec. 24 on the details of an abhorrent Russian campaign to ship Ukrainian children to faraway cities inside Russia. President Vladimir Putin issued a decree in May making it easy for Russians to adopt Ukrainian children, and the policy is being “vigorously pursued” by the Russian children’s rights commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, who “openly advocates stripping children of their Ukrainian identities and teaching them to love Russia,” they reported. Ukrainian children taken to Russia would, at first, insult the Russian leader by singing the Ukrainian national anthem, Ms. Lvova-Belova told the journalists, “but then it transforms into love for Russia.” The Kremlin has boasted of the removals, evidenced by the number of photos and videos appearing on its website and on state television.
While the number of children taken is not clear, Daria Herasymchuk, Ukraine’s top children’s rights official, has estimated that nearly 11,000 Ukrainian children have been taken by Russia without their parents.
The seizure of these children appears to violate the treaty, which seeks to outlaw acts “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” The treaty prohibits “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” Some international law experts have argued that the genocide convention also prohibits acts to destroy a protected group’s culture language religion" target=_blank>culture, language and religion — including that of children. The facts Ms. Lvova-Belova and Mr. Putin have acknowledged about assimilating the Ukrainian children into Russia and eradicating their culture provide evidence of intent to commit genocide as defined by the treaty.
The provision in the genocide treaty was adopted in the shadow of Nazi atrocities, including a scheme directed by Heinrich Himmler to snatch children from Poland and place them in German orphanages or with German families to be raised as Germans. The first convictions at the Nazi war crimes trials were for child abductions. Prosecutor Harold Neely declared that “it is no defense for a kidnapper to say he treated his victim well,” noting that “these innocent children were abducted for the very purpose of being indoctrinated with Nazi ideology and brought up as ‘good’ Germans. This serves to aggravate, not mitigate, the crime.”
Russia, successor to the Soviet Union, is a party to the genocide convention. But Mr. Putin has shown little regard for international laws or norms of any kind in his war to wipe out Ukraine’s democracy and its people. He and the other Russian officials complicit in genocidal crimes against children should be held to account. | 2022-12-27T21:45:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Russia’s abductions of Ukrainian children are a genocidal crime - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/27/russia-genocide-ukraine-children/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/27/russia-genocide-ukraine-children/ |
The Trump-era policy allows quick expulsion of migrants from U.S. borders without the chance to seek asylum
Venezuelan asylum seeker Jehan Carlo Ramirez carries his daughter Joannys S. Ramirez, 2, before they cross the Rio Grande into Brownsville, Tex., the day after Title 42 had been expected to be lifted (the decision was postponed to Dec. 27) in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico, on Dec. 22. (Veronica G. Cardenas/AFP/Getty Images)
The Supreme Court on Tuesday blocked the Biden administration’s plans to end a pandemic-era policy allowing the quick expulsion of migrants from U.S. borders without the opportunity to seek asylum.
Official border crossings remain essentially closed to asylum seekers while Title 42 remains in effect. That has helped fuel an influx of thousands of migrants crossing the border outside of the legal entry points, hoping to turn themselves in to border police and request asylum proceedings that would allow them to stay — at least temporarily — in the United States.
In November, a trial court judge in D.C. vacated Title 42, siding with immigrant advocates who had sued the government during the Trump administration, saying the policy put migrants in danger and there was no evidence that it protected public health. U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan said the order from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — introduced as a way to stem the spread of the coronavirus — was “arbitrary and capricious” under federal law.
The Biden administration agreed that the policy should end even as it struggled to deal with the influx of migrants. U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar told the justices the federal government recognizes that lifting Title 42 “will likely lead to disruption and a temporary increase in unlawful border crossings.” But she wrote that the solution to that immigration problem “cannot be to extend indefinitely a public-health measure that all now acknowledge has outlived its public-health justification.”
With the fate of the policy unclear, and migrants continuing to pour across the border, Republican governors have mobilized National Guard troops and attempted to create border barriers and impediments of their own. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott deployed more than 500 soldiers along the Rio Grande in El Paso this week, where the troops blocked migrants with spools of concertina wire. Social media footage showed border-crossers diverting around the hazards to arrive on U.S. soil and surrender to U.S. Border Patrol agents, the first step in seeking asylum.
In Arizona, Gov. Doug Ducey (R) has agreed to begin removing thousands of empty containers his administration stacked along the Mexico border over the past several months. The Biden administration sued Ducey in federal court, arguing the installation of the huge metal boxes was inflicting damage on National Forest land and other property that does not belong to the state of Arizona. | 2022-12-27T21:50:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Supreme Court leaves in place Title 42 border policy for now - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/27/title-42-supreme-court-decision/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/27/title-42-supreme-court-decision/ |
BOJ Governor Kuroda’s image appears on a paddle (Photographer: Gearoid Reidy/Bloomberg)
“The inflation caused by the weak yen is making the people suffer,” one opposition politician thundered to the Bank of Japan governor in parliament earlier this year, with the local currency trading at almost 150 to the US dollar. “As a Japanese, if you have the soul of a samurai, the natural thing to do would be to graciously resign.”
His perceived role in fueling inflation led to the unusual sight of Kuroda being named one of Japan’s faces of the year — alongside the likes of Tom Cruise, Queen Elizabeth II and baseball star Shohei Ohtani — in a traditional year-end event in which the likenesses of the most influential newsmakers and prominent celebrities are painted on badminton racquet-like paddles called hagoita. It’s the first time a BOJ governor made the list in the event’s 37-year history.
Members of the public might have been tempted to administer a paddling of their own. In June, Kuroda was declared unfit to run the central bank by the majority of those surveyed in an opinion poll. It’s easy to imagine similar results in a survey of market participants, after last week’s decision caught many napping.
It seems he’s now ticked everyone off in this third-from-final monetary policy meeting. Even the International Monetary Fund made an unusual sideswipe, calling for “clearer communications on the conditions for adjusting the monetary policy framework” — a polite but unmistakable rebuke of Kuroda’s rug-pull.
Perhaps the governor, known as an avid reader, is a fan of The Courage to Be Disliked. The bestselling self-help book by Fumitake Koga and Ichiro Kishimi was first published in 2013 — the same year Kuroda assumed office. He certainly seems to spend little time worrying about following the crowd. Throughout 2022, rather than being forced into dismantling his signature easy-money policy as peers in the US, Canada and Europe raced to ratchet up interest rates, the BOJ chief insisted that the time wasn’t right. And now that he’s taken a step, the narrative that this is the first in a massive dismantling of easy money is also a little tough to swallow.
As we outlined in April, even the current imported, cost-push inflation is proving useful at chipping away at Japan’s deflationary mindset, which has long since made it a place where the normal economic rulebooks no longer apply. A wholesale normalization just as inflation is picking up — but crucially, before wages follow — would be tantamount to abandoning the bank’s 2% inflation goal.
Kuroda’s successor may well form a new accord with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida that tweaks or replaces that target. But any suggestion that the BOJ is suddenly worried about too much inflation is wide of the mark. Kuroda continues to stress that price increases will moderate — that they were, to use a word deployed by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell that later became vilified, “transitory.” Even after the spring wage talks, both the government and the central bank agree: Pay is unlikely to climb above inflation, let alone induce a wage-price spiral.
Political pressures may well have weighed on Kuroda, who struggled at his most recent press conference to give a convincing explanation for the timing of this most recent move. When the weak yen started to drag on household budgets and approval ratings, it would have been easy for Kishida to throw Kuroda, the choice of the late Shinzo Abe, under the bus.
Kishida demurred, perhaps appreciating what the market often refuses to acknowledge. First, that the BOJ simply doesn’t care much about the exchange rate, except to the extent that the real economy is impacted. Second, if the prime minister wants to boost fiscal expenditure, including lifting defense spending to 2% of gross domestic product by 2027, then rates need to stay low. And third, that the economy is so addicted to easy money, any move away from it will be very complicated. That’s something to keep in mind when you read purported sureties about a forthcoming BOJ fillip. Those expecting this to be the first of a rapid succession of retreats from easing should appreciate how cautiously Japan moves.
Reputations can ebb and flow, and celebrity is no guarantee of success. When the 1997-1998 Asian meltdown that morphed into a Russian default subsided, Time magazine canonized Fed Chair Alan Greenspan, US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and his deputy Lawrence Summers as “The Committee to Save the World.” In 2009, Time made Fed boss Ben Bernanke Person of the Year for saving the financial system. Greenspan had reservations about some of the hagiography, realizing that “if there had been a meltdown, the headline would have read, ‘The Committee that Destroyed the World,’” Bob Woodward wrote in his 2000 book Maestro: Greenspan’s Fed and the American Boom.
How will Kuroda be remembered? The anger is strong now, and those betting on the BOJ to buckle will be doubling down. But outside Japan, inflation is starting to gradually recede, policymakers talk more about lags and the global economy is stumbling. That’s already taken the torque out of the dollar and bolstered the yen, along with other currencies, even before Kuroda’s surprise.
One other thing helped: The Finance Ministry’s currency intervention, derided as “futile” or a “waste of money” earlier this year, now seems to have succeeded in putting a floor under the yen. Not only were the purchases well timed, using just a fraction of the country’s reserves, there was zero pushback from the US, which generally frowns on states being too active in foreign exchange.
That may be testament more to Tokyo’s under-the-radar diplomatic skills and close security ties to Washington than a courage to be disliked. But as 2023 approaches, keep in mind that Japanese authorities are more than content not to lauded on magazine covers. | 2022-12-27T22:38:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Haruhiko Kuroda Spent 2022 Showing the Courage to Be Disliked - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/haruhiko-kuroda-spent-2022-showing-the-courage-to-be-disliked/2022/12/27/3db3e124-862a-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/haruhiko-kuroda-spent-2022-showing-the-courage-to-be-disliked/2022/12/27/3db3e124-862a-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
They’ve used Title 42, a public health order dusted off under Trump to curb migration at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. In about 1 million of the 2022 apprehensions, authorities used the rule to quickly send individuals back to their homeland or to the country from which they entered the US. The alternative is to process apprehended migrants under regular immigration law. That gives migrants a chance to remain in the US at least temporarily in order to make long-shot bids at gaining asylum, available to people who can show they have a legitimate fear of persecution at home. On Nov. 15, a federal judge ruled against the continued use of Title 42, raising the prospect of exacerbating the backlogs in processing migrants that in the past have led to overcrowding and other poor conditions in border holding facilities. To prepare for handling the migrant crush without the rule, the Biden administration requested and received a delay in implementing the judge’s decision. On Dec. 27, the Supreme Court blocked the ending of the restrictions while it considers a bid by Republican state officials to keep the rules in place. | 2022-12-27T22:38:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How Title 42 Is Complicating Biden’s Border Policy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/how-title-42-is-complicating-bidens-border-policy/2022/12/27/628331a2-8635-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/how-title-42-is-complicating-bidens-border-policy/2022/12/27/628331a2-8635-11ed-b5ac-411280b122ef_story.html |
Police seek juveniles after three men shot in D.C., authorities say
Authorities said one victim had a firearm; they described another victim as a bystander
Three men were shot during a gun battle Tuesday afternoon along a commercial stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue in Southeast Washington, and D.C. police were searching for four juveniles in connection with the violence, according to authorities.
The shootings occurred about 2:45 p.m. in the 2300 block of Pennsylvania Avenue SE, near D.C. Route 295 and just east of the Anacostia River. The wide street runs along several businesses and officials said at least one bullet struck a restaurant window.
Police Cmdr. Darnel Robinson, who heads the 6th District police station, told reporters the injuries did not appear to be life-threatening. He described one of the victims as a bystander and said another victim had a firearm.
#Update: 6th District Commander Darnel Robinson provides an update on three people shot in the 2300 block of Pennsylvania Avenue, SE. https://t.co/N6GzEctvCu
Robinson said police officers were in the block when the gunfire erupted and chased four people dressed in black who appeared to be juveniles. He said they all escaped behind an apartment building.
The commander said there is evidence that at least one of the victims returned fire at the assailants. He said he did not know whether any of them were struck.
Earlier on Tuesday, police said a 15-year-old was shot and wounded in the 300 block of Anacostia Road SE in the Fort Dupont neighborhood in a separate incident. His injuries were also reported to be non-life-threatening.
The number of juveniles shot in the District this year has soared, according to D.C. police. Administration officials in Mayor Muriel E. Bowser’s (D) office have vowed to increase efforts to reduce youth violence and said they are implementing a new crime reduction initiative. | 2022-12-27T22:38:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Police seek juveniles after three men shot in Southeast Washington, authorities say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/27/three-shot-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/27/three-shot-dc/ |
Kathy Whitworth, winningest player in golf history, dies at 83
Ms. Whitworth won 88 tournaments — six more than Sam Snead and Tiger Woods — and was the first female player to earn more than $1 million in prize money
Kathy Whitworth blasts out of a sand trap and then sinks a six-foot putt to go into the lead of the Titleholders Golf Tournament at Augusta, Ga., on Nov. 25, 1966. (Horace Cort/AP)
Kathy Whitworth, who constantly berated herself on the golf course even as she piled up championships, becoming the winningest professional golfer in history and the first female player to earn more than $1 million in prize money, died Dec. 24 in Flower Mound, Tex. She was 83.
Ms. Whitworth collapsed at a neighborhood Christmas Eve party and died shortly after, said Christina Lance, a spokeswoman for the Ladies Professional Golf Association, which announced her death.
With deft putting skills and a seemingly magical touch for escaping the toughest bunkers, Ms. Whitworth won a record 88 tournament titles, including six majors, beating the 82 won by both Sam Snead, who died in 2002, and fellow LPGA great Mickey Wright, who died in 2020.
Tiger Woods, with 82 wins, is the only current player close to her record.
The LPGA Tour began in 1950, and Ms. Whitworth joined nine years later. Unlike their male counterparts, LPGA players caravanned to tournaments, sharing gas money and signaling it was time to pull over by holding up signs in car windows such as “I need to go to the bathroom.”
“At that time we played in a lot of small places: Caldwell, Idaho. Ogden, Utah. Las Cruces, New Mexico. Midland, Texas,” Ms. Whitworth told Golf Digest in 2005. “The galleries were incredible; sometimes it seemed like the whole town was out there, and they got to walk along with us because there were no ropes. The enthusiasm was remarkable.”
Ms. Whitworth, whose accent revealed her Southwestern upbringing, became known for a walking monologue of condemnation — of herself. The object of this “masochistic mind game,” as Sports Illustrated described her play in 1991, “was to browbeat herself into hitting shots that would prove she belonged on the LPGA tour.”
This was Ms. Whitworth’s “dark side,” as one competitor called it.
“There was no letting up,” Sports Illustrated said. “Even as the ball rolled into the hole, she would shake her lacquered bouffant in disgust and mutter in her Southwest twang that she didn’t deserve a good score.”
Whether she deserved good scores or not, Ms. Whitworth made them routine. During a remarkable stretch between 1965 and 1968, Ms. Whitworth won 35 tournaments. She was the LPGA Player of the Year seven times and the leading money winner eight times.
“She just had to win,” Betsy Rawls, a competitor on the LPGA tour, told Golf World in 2009. “It was unacceptable for her to make a mistake. She hated herself when she made a mistake. She was wonderful to play with — sweet as she could be, nice to everybody — but oh, man, she berated herself something awful. And that’s what drove her.”
Kathrynne Ann Whitworth was born Sept. 27, 1939 in Monahans, Tex., a tiny town near New Mexico. She grew up with two sisters just over the border in Jal, N.M., where her parents owned a hardware store. Ms. Whitworth’s parents were both high school basketball stars and they encouraged their children to play sports.
As a youngster, Ms. Whitworth played basketball, baseball (she was a catcher) and tennis. She wasn’t introduced to golf until her freshman year in high school, when some teammates on the tennis team invited her to a country club.
“I borrowed my granddad’s clubs,” she recalled in a 2007 interview with the Center for Regional Studies at the University of New Mexico. “I don’t remember playing tennis again. I probably did, but I can’t recall it.”
She excelled at the game, winning the attention of the club’s golf instructor, who introduced her to Harvey Penick, a renowned coach in Austin. Ms. Whitworth’s mother drove her 400 miles for intensive sessions with Penick, staying in cheap hotels and scribbling notes on brown paper bags.
“He was very careful about phrasing things in a way that wouldn’t hurt your confidence or cause you to misunderstand him,” Ms. Whitworth told Golf Digest. “He started by modifying my grip, which he thought was the foundation for everything. He emphasized placing my hands on the club as opposed to twisting them into place. He told me to practice placing my hands on the grip, and that’s pretty much all I did from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.”
Ms. Whitworth began playing in local amateur tournaments, immediately racking up wins. In 1957, she won the New Mexico State Women’s Championship. The next year, she won again, and then turned pro.
Her early days as pro were not promising.
“I went home after being on tour three or four months, and I thought, ‘I just don’t know if I am good enough,’” Ms. Whitworth told Golf World. “I was talking to Mom and Dad around the kitchen table, which we usually did, and they said, ‘Well, you have three years. If you don’t make it, just come home and we’ll do something else.’ When they said that, it kind of took the pressure off me.”
Ms. Whitworth steadily improved, eventually winning her first event — the Kelly Girls Open — in 1962.
The key to her game was putting.
“When she has to have a putt, I mean absolutely has to have it for victory, she gets it every time,” fellow LPGA golfer Sandra Haynie told Sports Illustrated in 1969, recalling an event where she, Ms. Whitworth and another golfer were neck-and-neck on the last hole.
“Kathy needed a seven-footer to beat us,” Haynie said. “I put on my bracelets and was ready to go home before she hit the ball. There wasn’t going to be a playoff.”
Ms. Whitworth surpassed the $1 million mark in winnings during the 1981 season. She won her last tournament in 1985. Though she won three LPGA championships, Ms. Whitworth never won the U.S. Women’s Open — one of two heartbreaks in her career. The other was nearly going broke after the investment company she trusted with her life savings went bankrupt.
Ms. Whitworth is survived by her longtime partner Bettye Odle, the LPGA said in a statement.
In her 1992 book, “Golf For Women,” Ms. Whitworth recalled being asked by fans whether she regretted not starting a family.
“I didn’t give up a family,” she wrote. “I decided I didn’t want one. I freely made the decision to dedicate myself to professional golf. No one held a gun to my head; the hours that I spent on the practice tee were hours I wanted to spend on the practice tee. I wanted to be a good player, I wanted to get better, and I didn’t mind putting in the hours to get there.” | 2022-12-27T22:38:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kathy Whitworth, winningest player in golf history, dies at 83 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/12/27/kathy-whitworth-winningest-golfer-in-history-dies-at-83/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/12/27/kathy-whitworth-winningest-golfer-in-history-dies-at-83/ |
‘This kind woman came out and heard a human being in deep distress and did something about it,’ said Ray Barker.
Sha’Kyra Aughtry, a Buffalo resident, caring for Joey White amid the deadly blizzard. Joey showed up outside her house at 6:30 a.m. on Dec. 24, crying out for help. (Courtesy of Yvonne White)
“Hi. You don’t know me, but I have your brother,” a shaky voice on the other end of the line said.
But as Buffalo’s worst blizzard in 50 years pummeled the city, Joey White — who also goes by Joe — ventured outside.
It’s unclear what time Joey White left home or for what purpose, Yvonne White said, but she suspects he walked about nine miles to the North Park Theatre — a single-screen cinema where he has worked as a janitor since 1980. She believes he got scared and spent the night there inside, and eventually decided to walk back home.
Joey White’s employer, Ray Barker — the program director at North Park Theatre — also called him on Dec. 22 before the blizzard began, telling him not to come to work.
“For someone who’s used to being in a pattern, I think it’s hard not to engage that pattern,” said Barker, explaining that during the pandemic, when the theater was closed, Joey White still showed up for work. “Joe is used to his pattern.”
Around 6:30 a.m. on Dec. 24, Joey White ended up in a snowbank, directly outside Aughtry’s home, which is about a seven-minute drive from the theater, in normal conditions. He was wailing and crying out in agony, Aughtry told Yvonne White.
Aughtry — who did not respond to a request for comment from The Washington Post — heard the stranger screaming, and found him outside, completely disoriented. She went into the storm with her boyfriend, and they carried Joey White into their home, Yvonne White said.
Joey White had visible signs of severe frostbite. Aughtry told Yvonne White she used a hairdryer to peel off his clothing, which clung tightly to his shivering body. She also cut off his frozen socks and removed the remnants of a grocery store bag that were cemented to Joey White’s hands. Aughtry sent Yvonne White photos of her brother’s skin, which look severely swollen and covered in multicolored blisters and sores.
After about an hour of trying to warm him up, Aughtry — a mother of three boys, ages 5, 6 and 13 — called Yvonne White. Joey White had memorized his sister’s phone number.
“The simple fact that he remembered my phone number is miracle number one,” said Yvonne White, 60, adding that she and Aughtry stayed in constant communication from then on.
Hearing about her brother’s state was “just heartbreaking,” Yvonne White said, especially because she had no way of getting there to help, as she lived about 20 miles away and roads were glazed in ice and snow.
“Sha’Kyra was telling me that he was literally frozen,” Yvonne White said. “She covered him up, she did everything for this man. She washed his clothes, she bathed him, she fed him.”
“We called 911 easily 100 times,” Yvonne White said. “We tried everything.”
“With the blizzard, all of the emergency services have been affected,” said Barker, adding that Aughtry also contacted the theater to let staff know about Joey White’s condition. “We’ve been worried sick about him.”
“We were flipping out and crying,” Yvonne White said. “It was just getting worse and worse.”
In a desperate cry for help on Dec. 25 — one full day after Joey White showed up outside her house — Aughtry posted a live video on Facebook, which was widely watched.
“I’ve been very private and sensitive about this situation,” said Aughtry, who explained the crisis, adding that she had exhausted all options for getting medical help. “I have literally called everybody under the sun.”
“I’m asking for help from whoever,” she continued. “This man needs serious help.”
Yvonne White also posted a plea in a local Facebook group, and within half an hour, countless neighbors offered to help, and several showed up to plow around Aughtry’s home. They wrapped Joey White in a warm blanket, and carefully transported him to the Erie County Medical Center. Aughtry accompanied him for the ride.
“I’m so glad that y’all came,” Aughtry said in a video recording.
“I’m right here. You okay?” she reassured Joey White on the way to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with fourth-degree frostbite. “Nothing’s going to happen. Just breathe.”
He is being treated in the trauma unit, and “the physician who is seeing him won’t know how he’ll come through this until time goes by,” Barker said. “We are very much hoping that they will not have to amputate any of his fingers.”
Above all, though, Barker is grateful that Joey White — who he described as a “gentle soul” with a strong worth ethic and a love of sports (especially baseball) — is alive. That is all owed, he said, to Aughtry.
“This kind woman came out and heard a human being in deep distress and did something about it, which most people in this day and age wouldn’t necessarily do,” he said, adding that the theater is planning to do something to honor Aughtry. “She saved his life.”
“Her act was an act of goodness, it was an act of charity, it was an act of empathy, it was an act of care,” Barker continued. “Joe won’t be able to express his gratitude fully, but he will feel it emotionally.”
“This stranger opened up her heart and opened up her home,” said Yvonne White, who is asking for people to send get-well cards to her brother to comfort him during his hospital stay. “I cannot wait to hug her.” | 2022-12-27T23:04:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Disabled man rescued by stranger in Buffalo blizzard - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/12/27/buffalo-blizzard-rescue-joey-shakyra/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/12/27/buffalo-blizzard-rescue-joey-shakyra/ |
D.C. luxury building becoming workforce housing, with Amazon financing
The Washington Housing Conservancy says its purchase of a 212-unit building in Northeast D.C. will help preserve housing for essential workers
By Annys Shin
The nonprofit Washington Housing Conservancy has acquired the 212-unit Loree Grand apartment community with the goal of preserving affordable homes for moderate- and low-income families and individuals. (John Magor/Washington Housing Conservancy)
A nonprofit has acquired a luxury apartment building in Northeast D.C. and plans to convert all of its units into affordable housing, financing the purchase in part with a loan from an Amazon housing fund.
The Washington Housing Conservancy purchased the 10-story, 212-unit Loree Grand apartment community for $71.5 million, with loans from Amazon’s Housing Equity Fund, EagleBank and the Washington Housing Initiative Impact Pool, an investment vehicle managed by developer JBG Smith.
The building, located at 250 K St. NE in NoMa, consists of studio, one- and two-bedroom units, almost all of which are market-rate apartments. According to its website, a new tenant can pay from $1,700 to $3,500 a month for a studio apartment.
WHC said the purchase enables it to stabilize rents for moderate-income workers and their families. The nonprofit will preserve for 99 years the Loree Grand’s existing 30 affordable units created under the city’s Inclusionary Zoning program. The city limits the rent on those units based on the renter’s income. WHC said it will create an additional 129 affordable units for residents earning up to 80 percent of the area median income and set aside the remaining 53 units for residents earning up to 120 percent of the area median income.
Such income limits are typical of workforce housing programs aimed at helping essential workers such as teachers, nurses and police officers. The area median income in D.C. in 2022 is $142,300, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
WHC said that no residents will be forced to vacate the property and that it will meet its affordability goals over several years through a combination of current residents, vacancies and turnover.
The acquisition is the latest financed by Amazon’s Housing Equity Fund. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.) Amazon launched the fund in January 2021 with $2 billion and a goal of preserving and creating more than 20,000 affordable homes in and around Nashville, Seattle and Arlington, Va., where it is building its second headquarters.
Critics have complained that the fund has not done enough to help the poorest renters. As of April, it had spent about $750 million. The overwhelming majority of the money has gone to help people earning more than 50 percent of area median income, according to a Washington Post analysis of company data.
Amazon’s $2B housing push is mostly leaving out D.C. area’s poorest
Housing Equity Fund officials have said that Amazon alone can’t solve the affordable-housing crisis but can partner with governments. Amazon-funded deals have reportedly increased Arlington’s supply of affordable housing by 22 percent.
“With tremendous support from Amazon and its Housing Equity Fund and the Impact Pool, we are preserving long-term affordability in diverse, high opportunity neighborhoods under tremendous redevelopment pressure,” WHC Executive Director Kimberly Driggins said in a news release. “And we ensure that more middle-income earners — like first responders, hospitality workers, and teachers — are relieved of the rent burdens that make it hard to save money and build wealth for their future.” | 2022-12-28T00:10:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. luxury building becoming workforce housing, with Amazon financing - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/27/amazon-affordable-housing-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/27/amazon-affordable-housing-dc/ |
Russian asylum seekers warm up by a fire at the U.S.-Mexico border fence near Somerton, Ariz., on Monday. (Rebecca Noble/AFP/Getty Images)
The latest enforcement statistics from U.S. Customs and Border Protection show the relevance of the Title 42 pandemic-era policy as a border-control measure has been in steep decline under the Biden administration.
The policy has transformed from a broad prohibition to a patchwork with exemptions for specific demographic groups and nationalities.
U.S. authorities made 233,740 immigration arrests along the Mexican border in November — one of the highest monthly totals ever — but only 66,984 resulted in an “expulsion” under Title 42, the latest CBP figures show. The policy was used in less than 29 percent of border arrests, the lowest rate since the implementation of Title 42 in March 2020 at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
Under the Trump administration, CBP used Title 42 to expel more than 80 percent of border crossers, but that rate began falling after President Biden took office. His administration exempted unaccompanied minors and pared the application of the measure by exempting groups deemed to be vulnerable.
Other factors for the decline of Title 42 have been outside the administration’s control.
For example, migrants from Cuba and Nicaragua have arrived to the United States in record numbers in recent weeks, many crossing into El Paso. They have overwhelmed CBP facilities and shelter capacity, leaving migrants sleeping on the streets in the bitter cold. CBP statistics show the agency took nearly 69,000 migrants from Cuba and Nicaragua into custody along the border in November, but less than 1 percent were sent away via Title 42.
The reason: Mexican authorities generally do not accept returns of migrants from those nations from the United States, and strained relations with Cuban and Nicaraguan authorities severely limit the United States’ ability to send deportation flights.
“I don’t see what will slow down Cuban and Nicaraguan migration at this point,” said Adam Isacson, a border security analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America, a D.C. advocacy organization. Isacson visited El Paso last week.
What is Title 42? Explaining the Trump-era policy.
The November statistics show the Biden administration has been using Title 42 most aggressively on the one group that is easiest for CBP to handle without the measures: Mexican adults. Of the nearly 67,000 expulsions carried out by CBP last month using Title 42, more than 60 percent were adult migrants from Mexico who could otherwise be quickly returned — and potentially face criminal charges — under standard immigration procedures.
The number of migrants from Mexico taken into custody who are repeat offenders has soared under Title 42 because those who are expelled can try again and again without fear of prosecution or jail time. Biden officials say they have increased criminal prosecutions for these “recidivist” crossers and will do so even more aggressively when Title 42 is lifted.
Venezuelan migrants were the one group last month for whom Title 42 appeared to have the biggest effect. The Biden administration responded to a record surge of Venezuelans by announcing a program in October that offers them a chance to enter the United States legally through a “parole” program similar to a previous arrangement for Ukrainian refugees. The program used Title 42 as a deterrent by threatening Venezuelan migrants with expulsion to Mexico if they cross the U.S. southern border illegally instead of applying for lawful entry.
Almost immediately their numbers fell by more than 90 percent, according to CBP figures. “Venezuelans have dropped from roughly 1,100 a day the week before that process was announced, to roughly 100 a day consistently throughout November,” CBP said in a statement.
In anticipation of Title 42′s possible end, thousands of Venezuelan migrants have arrived to the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juárez, opposite El Paso. An abrupt increase in their numbers could place an even greater strain on CBP capacity and border towns in Texas, as well as New York City, Miami and other destinations for new Venezuelan arrivals.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) blamed Biden administration policies Tuesday for “this untenable crisis.” Abbott said he directed Texas National Guard troops to erect additional barriers with razor wire and Humvees “to stop illegal crossings.”
The Texas governor said he has sent more than 15,000 migrants on buses to New York, Washington and other cities with Democratic mayors. On Christmas Eve, three buses unloaded families in freezing temperatures at Vice President Harris’s residence in Washington. They lined up under blankets in the cold, while aid workers scrambled to find shelter beds to take them.
Migrants bused from Texas arrive at VP Harris's house on frigid Christmas eve
Abbott’s show of force in El Paso appeared to have limited effect, as the migrants crossing the Rio Grande diverted around the soldiers further downriver to turn themselves in and ask for humanitarian refuge.
U.S. agents made more than 53,000 arrests in November in CBP’s El Paso sector, more than anywhere else along the Mexico border, an influx driven by Cubans and Nicaraguans. The agency’s most recent statement blamed “failing communist regimes in Nicaragua and Cuba” for “contributing to an increased number of migrants attempting to cross the border.”
In a 5-4 order Tuesday, the Supreme Court extended the Title 42 restrictions and scheduled hearings on the case in February. Five justices sided with Republican officials in 19 states, including Texas and Arizona, who sought to maintain the policy.
Texas officials cheered the ruling. “Today, SCOTUS handed Texas and the USA a huge victory by allowing Title 42 to remain in place after Biden illegally tried to terminate this critical policy,” the state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton (R), wrote on Twitter.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement following the ruling that Title 42 would remain in effect, and “people should not listen to the lies of smugglers who take advantage of vulnerable migrants, putting lives at risk.”
“We will continue to manage the border, but we do so within the constraints of a decades-old immigration system that everyone agrees is broken,” the statement said.
The court said its ruling does not prevent the Biden administration from taking other actions related to Title 42.
Biden officials have been preparing to announce new measures that would expand the Venezuela parole program for other nations, according to three administration officials with knowledge of the plans who were not authorized to discuss them publicly. Those programs will ask migrants to apply for lawful entry through a mobile app, CBP One, and migrants who attempt to cross illegally will be disqualified.
Tougher measures are also under discussion that would affect asylum seekers who do not seek refuge in Mexico or other countries they transit en route to the U.S. border, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions who were not authorized to speak to reporters.
The Trump administration attempted to enact similar asylum restrictions in 2019 but was blocked in federal court. | 2022-12-28T00:10:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | New U.S. border statistics show how many migrants rely on Title 42 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/12/27/border-title42-scotus/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/12/27/border-title42-scotus/ |
Donald P. Baker, who chronicled Va. politics for The Post, dies at 90
The longtime Richmond bureau chief broke news about Gov. L. Douglas Wilder and Sen. Chuck Robb. He was also featured in ‘A Perfect Candidate,’ a documentary about Virginia’s 1994 U.S. Senate race.
Donald P. Baker was a Richmond bureau chief for The Washington Post. (Family photo)
Donald P. Baker, a wry and grizzled Washington Post reporter who served as the paper’s longtime bureau chief in Richmond, chronicling the rise of the country’s first Black elected governor, L. Douglas Wilder, as well as the bitter 1994 Senate race between Oliver North and Charles S. Robb, died Dec. 25 at an assisted-living center in Bethesda, Md. He was 90.
His daughter Lisa Baker confirmed the death but did not cite a cause.
Mr. Baker, a West Virginia native with twinkling eyes and a full, scraggly beard, was The Post’s Richmond bureau chief from 1985 until his retirement in 1999. For much of that period he was considered the dean of the Richmond press corps, known for his tough, aggressive questioning and for his shambling style, which led friends to liken him to Columbo.
“You could easily underestimate him, and you did it to your detriment,” said his former Post colleague Peter Baker, now the chief White House correspondent for the New York Times. (The two Bakers were not related.) Another former colleague, John F. Harris, the founding editor of Politico, said that Mr. Baker “didn’t have an abrasive manner, but he was blunt and direct and free of artifice.”
“His interest was above all in the human dimension — he wanted to know what made politicians tick,” Harris added in an email. “He delighted in the ways their pious or self-important personas collided with their real-world scheming and dealmaking.”
Mr. Baker came to prominence in the state capital partly through his tireless reporting on Wilder, a grandson of enslaved people who served as Virginia’s lieutenant governor before being elected governor in 1989. Weeks earlier, Mr. Baker had published an unauthorized biography of the politician, “Wilder: Hold Fast to Dreams,” that recounted his early years — including a stint waiting tables at segregated restaurants in Richmond — as well as his struggles as a trial lawyer and his clashes with fellow Democrats.
In a phone interview, Wilder said that Mr. Baker was one of the first journalists “who took the time to try to understand what made me think I could win” statewide office in Virginia, a former bastion of the Confederacy and the Jim Crow South. “The Bakers of the world will be sorely missed,” he added. “That breed of inquiring and daring, asking the tough questions — and fair questions — is needed today in the American political arena.”
Mr. Baker’s old-school approach to newspaper journalism was on full display in the 1996 documentary “A Perfect Candidate,” which looked back on the 1994 Senate race between North, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel who was under fire for his role in the Iran-contra affair, and the incumbent Robb, a former Virginia governor who overcame damaging reports about his personal life to win reelection.
Directed by David Van Taylor and R.J. Cutler (who chronicled Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign as a producer of “The War Room”), the documentary used Mr. Baker as a stand-in for the audience, seeking to get straight answers from the candidates and to make sense of an election that one voter described as a choice between two evils, “the flu or the mumps.”
The publicity-shy Mr. Baker said he was reluctant at first to be featured in the film, preferring to remain outside the story. “A lot of time when I thought they ought to have the camera on Ollie or Chuck, they’d have it on me,” he told Post journalist Marc Fisher for a 1996 article. But he developed a friendship with the filmmakers and eventually agreed to cooperate, albeit while steadfastly refusing to wear a microphone. (“I wasn’t going to do something that I wouldn’t ordinarily do in my job,” he said.)
The resulting footage presented Mr. Baker as a disillusioned romantic, reflecting not just on the Senate race but on politics in general. “Over the years, I’ve admired different politicians,” he said while driving down a street, searching for the right words, “but then they’ve always done something to lose my admiration. So, if the question is, who’s the last politician I still admire?” He paused for a while, then added, “Oh, I don’t know.”
The documentary received an Emmy nomination after it aired on PBS, and Mr. Baker went on to roam far beyond the Virginia Capitol, taking a break from state politics to cover the 1996 presidential campaign of H. Ross Perot, the independent Texas billionaire. A year later he traveled south, reporting on the murder of Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace in Miami Beach and on the World Series victory of the Florida Marlins.
Even as his reporting took him far from Richmond, he always returned to his home on Monument Avenue, where he mentored reporters including Baker, Harris, Mike Allen, Spencer S. Hsu and Gregory S. Schneider while hosting events that included an annual Easter parade viewing party on the front porch. Nearby were several monuments to Confederate leaders, which Mr. Baker came to view as symbols of the state’s Jim Crow past. When they were taken down in the wake of the 2020 protests over George Floyd’s murder, Mr. Baker was thrilled.
“The longer we lived here,” he told Harris in an interview that year, “the more they offended me.”
The older of two sons, Donald Parks Baker was born in Wheeling, W.Va., in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, on Nov. 20, 1932. His mother was a homemaker, and his father was a hospital maintenance engineer.
Mr. Baker studied journalism at the West Virginia Institute of Technology in Beckley, and after graduating in 1954 was hired as a reporter at the Daily Record in Wooster, Ohio. He later worked at the Courier & Press of Evansville, Ind., where in 1958 he met his future wife, Nancy Cottrell, while reporting a story at a beauty salon where she worked as a stylist. They married the next year, and she died in 2021.
Survivors include two daughters, Lisa Baker of Brooklyn and Amanda Baker of Canton, Ohio; and five grandchildren.
Mr. Baker worked at the Indianapolis Times and the Cleveland Press before coming to The Post, where he started out covering local news and Maryland politics, including corruption allegations against Gov. Marvin Mandel. He was also a leader of The Post Guild — he was elected chairman of the newspaper’s union unit in 1976, near the end of an extraordinarily divisive pressmen’s strike — and taught journalism at schools including American University, the University of Maryland and Virginia Commonwealth University.
Colleagues recalled that Mr. Baker sometimes showed an independent streak while talking with his subjects, including at a news conference in Virginia where he asked a question with what Harris described as “a kind of irreverent, honking air.”
“The person holding the conference responded that the news conference was restricted to members of the media,” Harris continued. “‘I am the media, buster!’ Don shot back. It was an immortal line, and at his retirement party buttons were distributed with Don’s face and the phrase.” | 2022-12-28T01:41:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Donald P. Baker, who chronicled Va. politics for The Post, dies at 90 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/12/27/richmond-journalist-donald-baker-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/12/27/richmond-journalist-donald-baker-dead/ |
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