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MEXICO CITY — A production team from the popular French fashion label Sézane landed in Oaxaca earlier this month to photograph their new collection, drawing on the vibrant colors and patterns created by local artisans in southern Mexico.
But a video from one of those shoots, involving an indigenous Mexican woman, has drawn widespread criticism, including from the Mexican government, which has launched an investigation into the incident.
The video shows members of Sézane’s production team photographing and filming an older indigenous woman, Guillermina Gutiérrez, apparently wearing a mix of traditional clothing and Sézane apparel. A member of the Sézane team then asks Gutiérrez to dance as the cameras film. A pop song plays in the background.
The video was re-posted across several Instagram accounts and websites, drawing widespread criticism for appearing to manipulate the indigenous woman into serving as a part of the brand’s commercial campaign.
In an interview with Milenio, a Mexican news channel, Gutiérrez said that the Sézane team changed her clothes multiple times. She said she had to stop her work at her small craft shop.
When the shoot was over, she said, “they didn’t give me anything.”
In a statement this week, the Mexican government’s National Institute of Indigenous Peoples (INPI) said that it “strongly condemns the misuse of the image of indigenous Zapotec women by the French clothing brand Sézane.”
“These actions threaten the dignity of peoples and communities and reinforce racist stereotypes about indigenous culture and traditions,” the institute said.
The institute said it would seek a “legal remedy” for the indigenous people who were photographed.
But executives at Sézane say the video is being misconstrued. They say it was not part of a commercial campaign but for a “backstage journal of the creative director."
“No payment was exchanged as these photos were not intended for commercial use,” said Anne-Caroline Wacquiez, the head of communications at Sézane. “These are the photos of a woman met through a spontaneous encounter two days prior in the streets of Teotitlán del Valle, who accepted to come and share a lunch with the Sézane team and to participate in a quick informal backstage photoshoot.”
Wacquiez did not say whether the “backstage journal” was meant to be shared on social media.
Sézane is a favorite among international fashion magazines and frequently featured under headlines such as “How to dress like a Parisian in 5 wardrobe essentials” from a March 2021 issue of Vogue.
The controversy comes as Mexico continues to reckon with vast disparities between indigenous and non-indigenous populations. In recent years, there have been growing campaigns from activists warning against using indigenous people and indigenous culture as the commercial face of Mexico, when those communities seldom benefit from those campaigns.
Last year, Mexico’s government accused fashion brands including Zara and Anthropologie of appropriating designs and patterns from indigenous groups without crediting or paying those communities. The Culture Ministry said that Zara had used a design created by the indigenous Mixteca community in a mint-colored dress with green embroidery.
The design “reflects ancestral symbols related to the environment, history and worldview of the community," the ministry said.
In 2019, it also accused the designer Carolina Herrera of “cultural appropriation” for copying the floral embroidery used by indigenous communities in the state of Hidalgo.
Mexico’s president weighed in on the debate in 2019, saying, “designs from the indigenous cultures of Mexico are constantly being plagiarized.”
For decades, mostly light-skinned Mexican artists and designers — as well as foreigners — have drawn inspiration from Mexico’s indigenous communities.
Yalitza Aparicio, the star of the movie Roma, made headlines here in 2018 when she became the first indigenous woman to appear on the cover of Vogue Mexico.
Mexico’s wheat fields help feed the world. They’re also releasing a dangerous greenhouse gas.
Mexico sues U.S.-based gunmakers over flow of arms across border
Mexico is vaccinating its poorest citizens first — against the advice of health experts | null | null | null | null | null |
As I write these lines, talks between Moscow and the West appear to have stalled, and the world waits with bated breath whether Russian President Vladimir Putin will order the 100,000 troops he’s massed near Ukraine to attack that country. In this moment of peril, it’s worth dusting off three old concepts in international-relations theory to take stock of the strategic situation.
One concept is called “escalation dominance.” It was coined during the Cold War by a think-tanker named Herman Kahn, who inspired the title character in the black comedy “Dr. Strangelove.” The idea is that in any conflict, the side that’s in a better position to raise the stakes — because it knows it would win, could bear the costs more easily, or wants something more intensely — has a strategic advantage. Its adversary will come under ever greater pressure to pull out and settle.
Putin has so far clearly enjoyed escalation dominance in the conflicts over Ukraine and the wider region. He’s made clear that this former Soviet Republic — which he doesn’t consider a proper nation but a branch of a greater Russian realm — is worth more to him than it will ever be to the U.S., NATO or the European Union. He would up the ante in blood — and the West wouldn’t match it.
As a former ambassador to Russia from New Zealand has observed, this means that Putin “can dial up and down the pressure as he sees fit.” The West will never be the first to climb another rung on the escalation ladder (to stick with Kahn’s metaphors); it merely follows where Putin goes. The West’s interest always lies in getting him to climb down.
So Putin is in a pretty place up there on his ladder. He could use that strategic advantage to achieve his objectives, provided he’s clear about what those are. One frightening scenario is that he may not be. Some of the West’s negotiators, after the talks in Geneva, Brussels and Vienna this week, got the impression that even his own emissaries don’t know whether Putin wants a compromise or merely a pretext for an invasion.
His overarching objective is to create a sphere of influence across the former territories of the Soviet Union and the adjoining buffer states in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and beyond. But he covets this zone less to deter a NATO attack on Russia (which he knows isn’t a risk) and more to prevent any neighboring country from becoming a vibrant, liberal and pro-Western democracy.
Any success of that sort would only remind Russians what they’re missing and thereby undermine his own rule, which is the only thing he cares about. In effect, he needs to create a belt of failed states around Russia to stay in power.
In this light, his maximalist demands in two draft treaties with the U.S. and NATO, published last month, do and don’t make sense. They do, because they ask for what would amount to that sphere of influence — he wants NATO never again to expand and even to withdraw from Eastern Europe. They don’t, because he knows that the West can never agree to any of this — NATO might as well tear up its charter and dissolve itself.
The question for me is whether Putin, in a lapse of tactical discipline, accidentally forfeited his escalation dominance. After all, he can dominate only as long as he’s the one deciding whether to climb up or down the ladder.
Owing to something called “audience costs,” Putin may have lost that freedom to choose. The audience he cares about is his own country’s domestic population. Even though Russians can’t choose their leader freely, they must fear and respect him enough for him to hold on to power indefinitely.
Now imagine Putin simply dropping his demands to freeze and shrink NATO and then withdrawing his huge invasion force from the Ukrainian border. The West would of course give him something to brag about — an agreement that both sides won’t maneuver in a certain geography, or something of that sort. But how could he explain to Russians such a huge climbdown from the ladder? He’d look like a loser. And that’s what he can’t afford.
So there’s a real risk that Putin has become trapped in “path dependence.” This concept originally had nothing to do with international relations. It describes situations in which our decisions now are constrained by other decisions made in the past. For example, we have QWERTY keyboards (or software standards, railway gauges, welfare systems, you name it) not because they’re best suited for the task today, but because legacies led to dependencies.
My fear is that Putin, with his many acts of aggression — from cyberattacks to disinformation campaigns and more — has by now gone far enough down a path to make him depend on it. During the first rounds of escalation, he may have been dominant. Now he may feel that, because of what he’s already done, he has no option but to go all the way to war. | null | null | null | null | null |
Rightly so, many think. Djokovic is the marmite of tennis players, after all. Tennis fans either love him (the clinical game, the movement) or loathe him (the bathroom breaks, the showy post-match gestures). Others may just be happy that a celebrity who has touted his opposition to vaccines got caught out when trying to maneuver around the rules others must follow.
And yet, this doesn’t mean the Australian government has won clean either.
The world number one tennis player double-faulted before even stepping foot in the country — failing to report recent travel to Spain on his Australian visa application and holding publicity events after having tested positive for Covid-19. However poorly Australia’s border force handled his late-night arrival — Djokovic challenged his detention and an Australian court agreed with him — he chose (it’s assumed) not to be vaccinated and left the form-filling to an underling.
As with outrage in Britain over Downing Street parties during lockdown, which threatens Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s position, the attitude of exceptionalism makes it easy to side against Djokovic. Add in the stringent measures Australians have endured throughout the pandemic — especially the draconian travel restrictions and quarantines — and it’s no wonder Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who faces an election this year, spotted a very large target.
His immigration minister Alex Hawke revoked Djokovic’s visa Friday “on health and good order grounds” saying it was in the public interest to do so. “The Morrison government is firmly committed to protecting Australia’s borders, particularly in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic,” he said.
A “public interest” defense is a higher bar to clear than Djokovic’s first appeal. Whether or not procedures were followed or his detention and expulsion seem unfair are unlikely to factor, so long as the government can show that deporting him is in the public interest.
But whatever the court decides, it’s worth asking what deporting Djokovic accomplishes. The idea that his refusal to be vaccinated could “excite anti-vaxxers” doesn’t seem serious. While he has refused to reveal his vaccination status, his opposition to vaccines is a matter of public record so he is already a poster boy for those similarly opposed. And most in that camp don’t need the validation. Plus, the player was sure to get a cool, if not hostile, response from a once-enthusiastic Australian audience who, as Morrison noted, had sacrificed mightily to comply with lockdown rules.
More importantly, what actual health risk does Djokovic pose? Assuming he did indeed test positive on Dec. 16, or around then, his antibody levels would presumably be comparable to someone who has been vaccinated. Australians can usually get a temporary exemption of up to six months for a PCR-confirmed infection. He can be expected to follow other precautions, such as masking, during his stay. He already had a period of quarantine.
In the court of public opinion, which the government has a close eye on, Djokovic probably won’t get a break. A November study on attitudes toward vaccine mandates showed strong support for serious consequences for the non-vaccinated — and for exemptions to be tightly regulated for medical reasons, not for flimsy personal belief reasons.
In suggesting that Djokovic poses a risk to health and order, however, the government seems to be stoking the very fears it needs to tamp down if it is to wean people off rules that don’t make sense during the latest phase of the pandemic — when there are far better virus defenses and a weaker variant.
Infection rates in Australia have climbed to the highest point since the pandemic began, with the seven-day average now more than 108,000 and the total number of confirmed Covid-19 cases reaching more than 1.6 million on Saturday. Hospitals in the worst-hit states, already dealing with staff burnout, face the crunch from rising admissions and staff shortages due to illness and isolation requirements.
Stringent border controls — and especially lengthy quarantines — at this stage of the pandemic impose a heavy socioeconomic cost for no discernible health benefit. New South Wales health authorities have said that more than 90% of the cases there are the milder omicron variant, while more than half of those in intensive care in the state are unvaccinated (vaccination rates there are 94% for those aged 16 and over).
Australia’s government may score some points by deporting Djkokovic, whose approach to vaccines and visa forms left him open to attack. But in riding the wave of public indignation, the government has undermined its own case for a much-needed change in pandemic strategy and failed to rectify the problems in its own game. | null | null | null | null | null |
Loudoun County schools pull controversial gender book from library shelves
Loudoun schools pull controversial gender memoir from library shelves, citing graphic images.
Loudoun County schools have decided to pull copies of the book “Gender Queer: A Memoir” from library shelves, citing color illustrations that were deemed inappropriate. (iStock)
Loudoun County schools have decided to pull copies of the controversial book “Gender Queer: A Memoir” from its library shelves, citing color illustrations that were deemed inappropriate.
The graphic novel, written by Maia Kobabe and published in 2019, is about a young person’s struggle with gender identity and chronicles, in comic book-style drawings, the twists and turns of the author’s journey to adulthood.
The book, Kobabe’s first, has sparked debate in school systems across the country, and last year was pulled, but then retained, in school libraries in Fairfax County.
In Loudoun, one of the wealthiest counties in the nation, schools superintendent Scott A. Ziegler asked for a review of the book because of questions about its content, schools spokesman Wayde Byard said Friday.
A “committee recommended (on a split vote) to retain the book in the high school library collection [but] the superintendent decided to remove the book from circulation,” Byard said in a written communication.
That decision was appealed, and “the School Board appeal committee met [Thursday] evening and voted 3-0 to uphold the superintendent’s decision,” Byard said.
Ziegler said in a statement: “I read every book that is submitted for my review in its entirety. I am not generally in favor of removing books from the library. I believe our students need to see themselves reflected in the literature available to them.”
“The pictorial depictions in this book ran counter to what is appropriate in school,” he wrote.
The book contains illustrations of sexual contact, masturbation and a sex toy; an erotic scene of a man and a boy shown on what looks like an ancient Greek urn; and depictions of menstrual blood.
“Sexual content is a large part of this book,” Ian Serotkin, vice chair of the county school board, wrote on Facebook after he voted to pull the book from library shelves. “It is not fleeting or brief.”
“The sexually explicit illustrations which have gotten significant media and public attention may only appear on a handful of pages, but sexual themes are pervasive throughout the book,” he wrote. “And, the sexually explicit illustrations themselves cannot be ignored.”
“I think I can draw a line between something being described in writing and it being depicted in living color,” he wrote.
The book is not available at school libraries, but it is at county libraries, he said.
The book is mainly about the anguished gender struggles that some young people go through.
“My deepest emotional relationships have always been with women,” Kobabe wrote in the book. “Did that mean I was a Lesbian? But my sexual fantasies involved two male partners. Was I a gay boy trapped in a girl’s body? The knowledge of a third option slept like a seed under the soil.”
“Decided I was a lesbian,” Kobabe wrote. “Much confusion. Decided I was bisexual. Decided I was asexual … Got asked directly, ‘Are you gay?’ And answered ‘I don’t know.’ ”
“I feel like there are all these wires in my brain which were supposed to connect body to gender identity and sexuality,” Kobabe wrote. “But they’ve all been twisted into a huge snarled mess.”
Kobabe tells of fascinations with the Irish poet and playwright Oscar Wilde and the late British rock star David Bowie.
Last year, Kobabe, who lives in California, told The Washington Post’s James Hohmann: “There are queer teens, I promise, in every single high school where this book is being challenged.”
People are “reacting because they know that they’re on the losing side of the culture war,” Kobabe said. “And this is sort of an angry effort because they know the tides are already turned against them. But it’s still going on. It can still hurt people.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Live updates:Free rapid tests may not arrive in time to significantly blunt East Coast o...
Americans will be able to order free rapid coronavirus tests Wednesday on n...
District vaccine mandate garners mixed reactions and awkward searches for proof of immunity.
Old Ebbitt Grill Hostess, Precious Davis, checks customer vaccination cards. The restaurant staffed extra hosts on Jan. 15, the first day D.C.'s new vaccine mandates. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
Restaurants, fitness centers and other indoor businesses in the District Saturday began requiring patrons to show proof of vaccination, the first day of a mandate in the nation’s capital that is geared toward curbing the latest surge of the coronavirus.
“Can I see your vaccination card and photo ID?” workers across the city asked customers over and over, receiving warm smiles from some who readily complied while others unaware of the new rule awkwardly searched their wallets and phones.
The new rule applies to anyone 12 or older entering sit-down restaurants, bars, gyms, theaters and most other public places where people spend long periods sitting inside. Grocery stores, retail stores and houses of worship are among the exempt locations.
With the mandate, the District joined other major cities that have implemented similar requirements — including New York, Los Angeles, Boston and Philadelphia — in hopes of reversing a dramatic spike in coronavirus infections brought on by the highly transmissible omicron variant.
The seven-day average for new cases in the Washington region was 31,333 entering into the holiday weekend, a record high for the pandemic and more than 10 times higher than the weekly average in early December. The District’s seven-day average has trickled down during the past week to 1,690.
Amid pandemic fatigue in the District, some felt relieved, while others were irritated by the new mandate.
That was on display inside the Old Ebbitt Grill restaurant, a popular tourist destination a short walk from the White House whose regal dining rooms are frequently packed.
Mary Mikuria, who lives in the District, said she was reluctant to get vaccinated due to her orthodox Christian faith but finally did. Mikuria, 28, said she’s exhausted by the politics over the pandemic.
“If that’s what it takes for it to be over, I support it,” she said about the mandate while sitting at the bar before a plate of poached eggs. “I just want it all to be over.”
Erin Claire, an assistant general manager at Old Ebbitt Grill, said she is worried about how hard it will be to enforce the requirement, particularly during the start of the Metropolitan Washington Restaurant Week, when the pandemic-ravaged industry is seeking to attract more customers. At crowded eateries that tend to cater to foreign tourists, some of those customers may have not had easy access to vaccines, Claire said.
“Here, the logic is anyone can get a vaccine,” she said, while pitching in at the host stand to check patrons’ status as more people arrived. “What if that’s not the case for them?”
Eui Yang and Hee Lee were caught off guard when they wheeled their 3-month-old baby’s carriage into Old Ebbitt in time to make their 11 a.m. reservation. The couple was happy to get out of the frigid January weather and didn’t notice the sign posted outside announcing the new requirement.
“Vaccination card?” Yang replied when they were asked for theirs. They fruitlessly searched their smartphones for proof of the two doses they each received.
“I have a reservation to get a booster shot in my email; will that work?” Yang said.
The answer was no — at least a photo of the card is required — and the couple pushed the stroller back outside toward their car so they could drive back to Virginia to retrieve theirs, a 30-minute round trip.
Inside the Barbers of St. James London barbershop a few blocks away, co-owner Rick Ricci said he wasn’t sure how effective the mandate will be.
“There should really be an app, given how easy it is to manipulate a vaccine card,” he said, while snipping one customer’s hair.
Jamie Nicholas, 52, another customer, said he welcomed any effort to bring down the District’s rate of infections.
“It’s just not a big deal for me to show it,” he said about his vaccination card.
But it is a big deal for others.
A group of about 50 demonstrators marched through downtown D.C. to protest the mandate, their chants of “vaccine mandates have to go” echoing through the streets as bystanders — many wearing masks — watched.
Katie Kortepeter, who lives in Northern Virginia but works on Capitol Hill as a media relations specialist for an education nonprofit, was part of that group.
Though she encouraged her elderly parents to get vaccinated, Kortepeter, 26, said she hasn’t done so because of a severe allergic reaction she had as a child to the pertussis vaccine, which guards against whooping cough and tetanus.
Now, she’s effectively barred by the mandate from joining her friends for drinks after work, she said.
“I fully support people’s choice to get vaccinated,” she said. “But I don’t think that should prevent someone from being able to fully able to participate in society.”
Several businesses worked to avoid confusion or negative reactions by alerting their customers about the requirement in advance.
That was the case at the VIDA fitness center and salon that Rick Eldridge was about to walk into. At the facility’s entrance, a sign encourages members to upload their vaccination status through a QR code link.
“I feel more comfortable knowing that everyone around me is vaccinated,” said Eldridge, 48, who nonetheless wore a look of exhaustion as he donned his mask before heading in to exercise. | null | null | null | null | null |
The rare sedition charge filed against Oath Keepers was used before — against Puerto Rican nationalists
Trump supporters stand on top of a police vehicle on Jan. 6, 2021, at the Capitol Building. (Julio Cortez/AP)
Earlier versions of this article misspelled the first name of one of the Puerto Rican nationalists. He was Irvin Flores Rodríguez.
Hundreds have been charged after a pro-Trump mob stormed the United States Capitol, but on Thursday federal prosecutors filed seditious conspiracy charges for the first time in connection with Jan. 6 investigations, against the leader of the far-right organization Oath Keepers and 10 suspected associates.
It marked one of the few instances in which the law — aimed at protecting the government from attacks — has been applied in the nation’s history. While seditious conspiracy charges are rare, they were often used throughout the 20th century — to persecute Puerto Ricans.
Before the Oath Keepers, there were Lolita Lebrón, Rafael Cancel Miranda, Andres Figueroa Cordero and Irvin Flores Rodríguez — armed Puerto Rican nationalists who opened fire against members of the U.S. House of Representatives in 1954.
In a time when gag laws were being enacted to quash dissidence in the politically shifting island, some took to revolt, bombings and even a presidential assassination attempt in what they said was a fight for Puerto Rico’s independence. But whether their actions amount to sedition is a question that remains.
Sedition charges are rare not only because people “don’t try violently overthrowing the government every day” but also because of how hard the charge is to prove, said Jenny Carroll, a law professor at the University of Alabama School of Law and at Yale Law School.
In the 1930s — three decades after the United States acquired Puerto Rico from Spain — Pedro Albizu Campos, a graduate from Harvard University, became president of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party. Believing that the island’s colonial situation “caused the material and moral misery of his people” and that “the only way to redeem this besieged group was through insurrection,” he turned the party into a militant grass-roots organization.
Strikes and revolts were met with harsh repression, such as the 1935 Río Piedras massacre. In 1936, Albizu Campos and other nationalist leaders were arrested and charged with conspiracy to overthrow the United States. After a decade in prison, he returned to the island and organized an armed revolt in 1950. But his plan was never realized, mostly because of the “Gag Law” that criminalized showing any outward support for independence.
However, the Nationalist Party reorganized in the mainland and undertook a slew of violent acts. In 1950 — the same year Congress established the island’s constitutional self-government — Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola tried to kill President Harry S. Truman. Four years later, the sound of “pop-pop-pop-pop” rang through the Capitol as congressmen debated an agricultural law, recalled House Page Bill Goodwin. Nobody was killed, but the group of four nationalists wounded several representatives. The nationalists were all charged with seditious conspiracy.
A Terrorist in the House
Between the 1970s and 1980s, a hodgepodge of clandestine groups attacked “symbols of capitalism and the U.S. government” to promote the cause of Puerto Rican independence, according to a 2012 Department of Homeland Security study. Among them, the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional (FALN) focused its efforts in New York and Chicago — setting off “two actual bombings, 40 incendiary attacks, 8 attempted bombings and 10 bomb threats, resulting in 5 deaths, 83 injuries, and over $3 million in property damage,” a 1999 House Committee on Government Reform report found.
The acts resulted in Puerto Rican nationalists receiving lengthy sentences, ranging from 35 to 90 years, on charges of seditious conspiracy — though none was found to have connections to actual attacks. Even then, some wondered whether their acts amassed to an attempt at overthrowing the government.
A 1980 Chicago Tribune editorial noted, they had been “out to call attention to their cause rather than shed blood.” A year earlier, President Jimmy Carter had granted commutations to the four 1954 attackers. In a similar move, President Bill Clinton granted clemency to a dozen nationalists in 1999 — saying they were “serving extremely lengthy sentences … which were out of proportion to their crimes.” One who declined that offer had his sentence commuted in 2017 by President Barack Obama. This cycle of action and pardon underscores the barriers to prove sedition and the oftentimes murky and changing line under which the charges are applied.
For years, Puerto Ricans said they were punished not for what they did but for what they represented. Looking back through a modern lens, Carroll said, one could possibly derive the same conclusion.
As generations have come of age in different points in time, so have the country’s perceptions. The America of Albizu Campos and Lebrón was less inclined to tolerate disagreements with the government, Carroll said. But today’s society is more willing to accept pushback against policy as an essential part of democracy.
“It’s the difference in a country that’s 200-plus years old versus 10 minutes old,” she said.
Over the decades, those accused of sedition have spanned the political realm. But while drawing historical lines across diametrically opposed groups is challenging, what unites both is how they firmly stand at the fringes, Carroll said.
“We’re still a country that no matter what political divisions we may have, we’re still able to differentiate people as ‘you look to me like you do pose a fundamental threat to all of us’ versus ‘you just look like you’re some guy who is upset about something,’ ” she said. | null | null | null | null | null |
Tsunami waves rolled ashore Saturday along the West Coast of the United States after the powerful eruption of an undersea volcano near the Tonga islands in the Pacific Ocean, closing beaches, flooding marinas and activating emergency plans from Japan to California.
The National Weather Service issued a tsunami advisory for coastal areas of California, Oregon, Washington and Alaska, a lower threat level than a warning but still signaling a tsunami capable of generating strong currents and dangerous waves. The agency ruled out “widespread inundation” but nonetheless urged caution.
“If you are located in this coastal area, move off the beach and out of harbors and marinas,” the Weather Service advised people along the West Coast.
The forceful eruption sparked concern across the Pacific, with the first impacts felt in Tonga, a remote South Pacific archipelago, where videos on social media showed waves slamming into homes. Tsunami warnings and advisories were also in place for the Fiji and American Samoa islands, parts of Australia and New Zealand, Japan and as far away as South America, where Chilean authorities warned people in some areas to leave beaches.
In the United States, meteorologists reported registering tsunami waves by midmorning, measuring about 1 to 3 feet and generating minor flooding.
Officials in Berkeley, Calif., evacuated more than 100 residents living on boats in the city’s marina, going from vessel to vessel waking people to get them to higher ground. Authorities and fishermen elsewhere tied down boats while urging people to stay away. Nonetheless, some ventured out.
First responders in Northern California said two people were hospitalized in stable condition after being swept into the water while fishing. In another incident, a surfer was rescued after waves broke his board, San Francisco’s Fire Department said.
Tsunami conditions are unusual but not unheard of along the West Coast. In 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck off the coast of Japan, triggering tsunamis and resulting in catastrophic damage and more than 15,000 deaths in the Japanese archipelago. Tsunami waves reached the California and Oregon coastlines, killing at least one person and damaging marinas.
Any eruption-driven waves reaching the West Coast on Saturday were not expected to be as strong, but meteorologists said they could still generate life-threatening conditions.
Brian Garcia, a Weather Service meteorologist based in the San Francisco Bay area, said the community saw waves reach “king-tide-type heights,” referring to extra-high tides usually spurred by astronomical alignments. He said waves similar to a king tide, which happens about twice a year in California, hit more frequently during the advisory.
“We are going to see surges of water pretty much all day today at potentially advisory-level heights,” Garcia said. “This is not something we’re used to seeing.”
At marinas along the coast, boat owners woke up early to prepare their vessels for the rising tide. Jeff Folkema, a marina operator in Garibaldi, Ore., said he got a call at 5:30 a.m. alerting him to the tsunami advisory. Still, he wasn’t overly concerned, noting that the marina had done well the last time the area saw tsunami conditions a decade ago.
“I just make sure everything is free enough to float up with the surge and then go back down with the surge,” he said. “There isn’t a whole lot you can do.”
Federal emergency management authorities said they were closely watching the coasts. Brian Ferguson, a spokesman with the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, said officials were in touch with the U.S. Coast Guard and acted quickly to get surfers and swimmers out of the water, notify campers on the beach and get boats secured in harbors.
“At this time, this is only a tsunami advisory, as opposed to a tsunami warning, but we are leaning forward and taking nothing for granted to try to keep our communities and critical infrastructure safe,” Ferguson wrote in an email.
Some Alaska residents reported hearing a “sonic boom” around 3:30 a.m. local time, roughly seven hours after the volcano erupted, according to the Weather Service. Brian Brettschneider, an Alaska-based climatologist, estimated on Twitter that a pressure wave traveled 5,820 miles from Tonga to Anchorage at a speed of 830 mph.
In Tonga, the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano, located about 40 miles north of Tongatapu, Tonga’s main island, spewed ash, steam and gas up to 12 miles into the air Friday, the Tonga Geological Services said. Local media reported ash falling over parts of the capital and that all domestic flights on Saturday were canceled.
While there were no immediate reports of significant damage or injuries, communications there were still spotty. Global Internet monitor NetBlocks shared data indicating that the Internet had collapsed entirely. Tonga accesses its Internet via a cable from Fiji that connects onto the region’s Southern Cross cable.
Meteorologists in the United States expressed concern about the timing of the tsunami waves, noting that given the early hour of the advisory, some of those who live near the coast might have headed for a walk along the beach unaware of the stronger waves.
“It’s definitely not just any morning on the beaches along the Oregon and Washington coastline,” said Colby Neuman, a Weather Service meteorologist based in Portland.
A 1-to-3-foot rise in wave heights could be enough to knock beachgoers off their feet and pull them into the ocean, he said, adding that the cold water in the Pacific Northwest means a risk of hypothermia for anyone in the water. Neuman also said that logs deposited along the Oregon coast could become a hazard if dislodged by a wave.
“There’s a lot more mass and energy behind these waves,” he said. “So that’s always what makes them sort of more dangerous than what one might expect.”
Dana Felton, a Weather Service meteorologist in Seattle, expected the advisory to last a few hours before being lifted sometime Saturday.
“We don’t know how long the tsunami waves are going to last, but it’s very common for the first wave to not be the highest wave,” he said. “Today is not the day to take a walk along the ocean.”
Savannah Peterson saw some of the biggest waves crash down in front of her apartment along the beach promenade in Pacifica, Calif., about 15 miles outside San Francisco. Peterson, 33, awoke around 6 a.m. when she heard waves that were about 6 to 10 feet high pound the walkway that separates the Pacific Ocean from oceanfront properties.
As Peterson and her neighbors were watching the waves — “One of them said, ‘Nothing brings the neighborhood together like a tsunami,’” she said — the water crashed over the sea wall and made it all the way to her front door at around 8 a.m.
“I’m used to hearing the sound of the waves, and I can tell when they hit differently,” said Peterson, who has lived there for four and a half years. “It almost starts to feel like a small earthquake, hitting with such force that it’ll shake the house.”
She was in awe of how quickly the water level fluctuated from high to low after every wave crashed into the promenade, and how the tsunami got up close and personal with her in the backyard of her home.
“Today was the first time the water kissed my front door,” she said. “That was a game-changer for me. I was like ‘Oh, this is actually a tsunami.’”
Claire Parker contributed to this report. | null | null | null | null | null |
A previous version of this story misquoted a line from "A Raisin in the Sun." The full quote is, "I tell you I gotta change my life because I’m choking to death, and all you say to me is ‘Eat these eggs,’" not, "I say ‘I gotta change my life’ and all you can say is ‘eat your eggs’." This story has been updated.
Sidney Poitier wasn’t exactly an actor of my time. He was my parents’ idol, someone from a bygone Black Hollywood era, usually filmed in a drab, colorless setting that bored a young kid.
Watching “A Raisin in the Sun” in a mostly White classroom, I itched in my seat. As Walter, Poitier expressed battling notions of pride and put-upon inferiority, dignity and the feeling of oppressive futility that comes with swimming against the country’s strongest, darkest currents. “I tell you I gotta change my life because I’m choking to death, and all you say to me is ‘Eat these eggs,’” he bellowed at Ruby Dee, who played his wife, Ruth.
When Poitier died Jan. 6, at age 94, I thought back to how he conveyed worth and Blackness — sometimes together and sometimes separately — throughout his movies. His flight into our iconography came with highs in film — “Paris Blues,” “In the Heat of the Night” — and Broadway misfires such as “Carry Me Back to Morningside Heights.” But they all carried a through line of imprinting the value of Black stories into America’s lobes.
Some of Poitier’s most compelling performances could be linked to his personal history. Undereducated, semiliterate and Black, he was routinely and easily dismissed in his youth. At his first-ever audition, the casting manager told him to go back to being a dishwasher — not realizing that Poitier did, in fact, work as a dishwasher at the time. “I was, at that point, content to be a dishwasher,” he said in a 2009 interview. But the casting manager’s comments offended Poitier so much that he resolved to become an actor. He told himself: “I have to rectify that. I have to show him that he was wrong about me.”
One of the most mesmerizing aspects of Poitier’s acting was the power he packed into language. Early on in 1967’s “In the Heat of the Night,” Poitier’s character, Virgil Tibbs, has a tense exchange with the local chief of police. Tibbs’s use of “whom” baffles and enrages the chief. The diction that the chief finds “uppity” is, in fact, an expression of Black audacity — daring to move in spaces where you’re unwanted, to live.
Then there’s “Lilies of the Field,” from 1963. Gathered around the table with East German nuns, Poitier’s character coaxes the sisters into saying “Amen” with the tinge of Black enunciation. There’s a certain mirth in how Poitier plays Homer Smith, a roving Black journeyman who feels unmoored in an America experiencing a new immigration surge that leaves Black people swimming in the same soup as others. It’s not lost on viewers that Smith, this Black man who is grudgingly thanked and constantly has his worth challenged, is also the man who teaches the nuns to how to speak American, with his unmistakably confident Black voice. “Well, it’s English lesson time,” he says, before leading them in a different sort of baptism.
This translator role often seemed to be Poitier’s calling card. His career was studded with impressive moments of cinematic “zone-outs,” when his ability to tap into some greater Black context seeped into scenes with a moving quality that made the actor a living master class. Muddied and linked to Tony Curtis in “The Defiant Ones,” about two escaped prisoners, Poitier’s Noah Cullen bitterly opens up about the life he lost. He and his wife, he says, “worked 36 acres” of land — four short of the 40 acres promised to formerly enslaved people. Packed inside that is an indictment of an America that consistently and consciously falls short of its promise. Such scenes have a legacy in similarly haunting monologues, including Taraji P. Henson’s dressing down of the engineer room in “Hidden Figures” and Chadwick Boseman’s sharing of a formative childhood tragedy in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.” (Boseman, in particular, seemed to channel Poitier’s gift for tapping into a particular mixture of Black male pride, shame and tucked-away fury.)
Poitier’s career unfolded alongside the civil rights movement, and his films are rich with tension. “The Defiant Ones” followed a few short years after the Montgomery bus boycott. “Lilies of the Field” was released the year of the Birmingham church bombing, in 1963. “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” turned out to be situated between the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Reception of his movies is frequently divided between those who praise him as a bridge to White audiences — Poitier’s characters often found themselves literally or figuratively linked to White characters — and those who criticize him for that. People debate whether his work was in tune with, or tone-deaf to, the racial arguments of his time. That conflict may be an inevitable consequence of a Black artist wading into mainstream racial narratives. It’s part of, but shouldn’t wholly define, his legacy.
There were moments when I recoiled from Poitier’s highlight reels, feeling somehow that I was watching him play a kind of butler, always smiling and conciliatory in the presence of White people — a hard feeling to shake for a long time. What I eventually loved about watching Poitier was the righteous rage that sat right beneath his skin; that implicit reproach of a broken American path that Black people held while trying to walk straight on it. I watched him like I watched my Pop-Pop when I was growing up: I recognized the careful, poised concentration it took to straddle pride and protection, not only of yourself but your loved ones. How heavy the tread was to constantly establish a truth about who you were, what you deserved and what you were worth. Poitier’s roles were an exercise in control, dignity and comportment. That exercise is sometimes criticized as playing into respectability politics. But it was really about establishing the basic level of respect that comes with being taken seriously and being seen as human.
With Poitier, it is hard, disingenuous even, to try separating the art from the artist: His life and career speak to the opportunity that lies in unifying them. In a joint interview with his longtime friend and collaborator Harry Belafonte, Poitier talked about seeing himself, Black American stories and history on a specific cultural continuum. “We have a commitment not only to entertain people but to say some important things during this particular time in our history,” he said in 1972 on the 1960s and ’70s cable-access show “Soul!,” discussing his directorial debut, “Buck and the Preacher.”
Poitier viewed the film, which charts the absence of Black struggles and contributions from histories of the frontier, as a project with an explicitly inspirational purpose: “We thought that Black people played an important part in the building of the West. We want Black children to see that.” Our current cultural conversations around representation, and the power of seeing yourself on the screen in depictions that are nuanced, emotive and whole, owe themselves to Poitier’s steadfast commitment to drawing all of us into the Black mirror. | null | null | null | null | null |
Katty Huertas/The Washington Post
Joe Biden is no Jimmy Carter. He should wish he was.
The comparison is more complicated — and flattering — than critics realize
By Jonathan Alter
Jonathan Alter is the author of "His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life" and the newsletter Old Goats. He has covered Joe Biden on and off for 30 years.
“Jimmy Carter must be the sexiest man in the country,” Mario Cuomo, lieutenant governor of New York, joked privately to friends in 1979. “Everywhere I go, people say, ‘F--- Carter.’”
“Let’s go Brandon” is today’s more public version of that refrain, routinely turning up on T-shirts, at Republican rallies and even during a Christmas Eve call-in event with President Biden and first lady Jill Biden. Comparisons between the 39th president and the 46th have become inescapable: Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) tweeted that “Joe Biden is the new Jimmy Carter.” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) claimed that Biden is “worse than Carter.” Carter has even crept into Democrats’ rhetoric: In a recent interview, Vice President Harris described a “level of malaise” amid the new surge in coronavirus cases, an echo of the “malaise speech” Carter delivered in July 1979. (Carter never used that word; he described the country as suffering from a “crisis of confidence.”)
While historical analogies are often glib and partisan, they can also be illuminating. Biden faces challenges that are strikingly similar to those that bedeviled Carter: surging prices for gasoline and other consumer goods, serious new tensions with Iran and Russia, anemic poll numbers. The danger for Democrats is that the bad odor surrounding Carter’s presidency — the smell of failure that led fellow Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama to marginalize him at four Democratic conventions — has begun to waft onto Biden, who was the first senator to endorse the former peanut farmer’s candidacy in 1976.
The two men won the White House under similar circumstances. Carter beat incumbent Gerald Ford in 1976 as the un-Nixon, a moderate post-Watergate candidate of integrity and healing; Biden — though 25 years older than Carter was in 1976 — won against Donald Trump in 2020 with a campaign that struck the same themes. (A huge difference is that Ford immediately conceded after a closer election than 2020′s, and soon befriended Carter.) Both Carter and Biden inherited sour national moods: Carter faced a widespread sense of ennui and decline laced with fear; at least for now, Biden has it worse, with an angry and divided country exhausted by the pandemic and witnessing the Trump-dominated Republican Party’s assault on democracy. Under Carter, more than two-thirds of the nation thought we were on the wrong track; ditto for Biden today.
The analogy can be stretched yet further: Carter and Biden both stand for an idealistic but pragmatic noninterventionist foreign policy, one that places a premium on avoiding casualties. After the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan late in 1979, Carter was depicted by conservatives as ham-handed for not having anticipated it; so was Biden when he presided over the clumsy withdrawal of U.S. forces from the same country last year. In response to the invasion, Carter made the mistake of boycotting the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Biden, in December, announced a diplomatic boycott of February’s Beijing Olympics in protest of China’s human rights abuses, though it is unlikely to anger Americans as Carter’s decision eventually did. Both men were dealt bad hands in Iran: Carter didn’t play his well, allowing Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to all but paralyze his presidency after Iranian militants seized hostages inside the U.S. Embassy in Tehran; Biden must cope with the fallout of Trump’s unwise decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal.
Beyond the normal hazards of misusing history, there are two major problems with the Carter-Biden analogy. Carter — stubborn and prickly with a high IQ — was the quintessential outsider, arriving in Washington with no national experience and little interest in making new friends. Biden — warm and accommodating with high emotional intelligence — is the classic insider, and it has helped him achieve a surprising level of party discipline, Joe Manchin III and Kyrsten Sinema notwithstanding. This stands in sharp contrast to Carter’s chilly relations with many other Democrats, especially Ted Kennedy, whose 1980 challenge for the party’s presidential nomination hurt Carter badly.
The second major problem with the analogy is that it’s based on an apples-and-oranges comparison between Biden’s first year and Carter’s fourth. At this stage in their presidencies, Biden — polling in the mid-40s — is actually much less popular than Carter, whose approval rating was well above 50 percent throughout his first year in office. In the 1978 midterms, Democrats lost 15 House seats but easily maintained control of both chambers. They’ll have less chance of doing so this November.
Despite some early miscues, Carter wasn’t truly swamped until the second half of his term. Even then, his popularity fluctuated wildly, plunging below 30 percent when Americans lined up for gas in the summer of 1979, but six months later surging toward 60 percent as the public rallied around the flag in the early days of the Iran hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Then it fell again during the 1980 campaign amid double-digit inflation and interest rates and frustration over the fate of the hostages, who were not released until just after Carter left office the following year. That crisis was a much more serious political wound than anything Biden has suffered so far.
American politics is less fluid and more polarized than it was in the late 1970s. Biden is unlikely to experience either Carter’s highs or lows in the polls. And the historical odds suggest that he probably won’t face the array of debilitating challenges that beset Carter in the months before he was trounced by Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election.
That year, inflation averaged 13 percent and interest rates went as high as 21 percent. Today, inflation is running at roughly 6 percent and interest rates are negligible. Even if perception is reality, that’s a nontrivial difference.
Yes, gas and fuel prices were up by about 50 percent last year (from near-record low levels during the start of the pandemic the year before). Prices are rising faster than wages, a condition that makes Americans cranky. And yes, inflationary cycles can be hard to stop once they get going. Unlike high unemployment rates, which wallop only a subset of the workforce, inflation makes life at least marginally harder for everyone. The fact that we haven’t felt that sting for four decades only deepens it.
But for all the deja vu, it’s ahistorical to assume that today’s status quo will apply as the 2024 election gets underway. Given the underlying strength of the economy, Biden is unlikely to face a repeat of “stagflation” — a ruinous combination of slow growth and inflation. In the 1970s, generous labor union contracts and automatic cost-of-living increases embedded inflation in the economy. Skyrocketing energy costs — arguably the main driver of inflation — were a product of post-revolutionary supply disruptions in Iran and OPEC’s stranglehold on oil, neither of which exist today. And Carter’s unpopular remedy for dependence on foreign oil — asking Americans to drive less and undertake other painful sacrifices — is not one Biden will embrace.
Carter’s most important economic decision holds up well, though his timing was off. If he had appointed Paul Volcker as chair of the Federal Reserve in 1977 instead of 1979, Volcker’s harsh medicine — nose-bleed-level interest rates — would have had more than three years to work, probably ending double-digit inflation while Carter was still president. Had that happened, Carter might have avoided the Kennedy challenge and survived the hostage crisis. Instead, Reagan was elected in 1980 and reelected in a landslide (after an inflation-free boom) in 1984, at least in part because of the actions of Volcker — a Carter appointee.
Fed chair Jerome H. Powell (a Trump appointee initially) is facing some of the same choices about interest rates and inflation that confronted Volcker. He appears to be heeding the advice of William McChesney Martin, a Fed chair during the 1960s, who famously said that the job of the central bank was “to take away the punch bowl just when the party gets going.” With impressive growth, low unemployment and a roaring stock market, today’s economy is much stronger than it was in 1980, which gives the Fed a chance to take away a little punch in the form of slightly higher interest rates. The easing of supply disruptions that began during the holiday season may make it possible to tamp down inflation without doing significant damage to the recovery.
Of course, making historical comparisons between different leaders of different eras is always a tricky game. In this case, the picture is further complicated by an emerging revisionist view that Carter was a much better president than most people think — a tone-deaf political failure crushed and overshadowed by Reagan, but a substantive, even visionary, success.
The easy shorthand on Carter — bad president, great ex-president — is misleading. His record in office has been consistently underrated and his achievements in the years since, while inspiring, are slightly overrated. For all his impressive humanitarian work fighting disease, championing democracy and building houses for the poor into his nineties, he simply didn’t have the power to accomplish as much after leaving the presidency as he did in office.
The list of unheralded presidential accomplishments is long. Carter doubled the size of the national park system and brought the first true diversity to the federal government, including the appointment of five times as many female judges as all his predecessors combined. He signed major ethics bills and civil service reform, as well as airline and trucking deregulation that boosted productivity, and established two new Cabinet departments, Energy and Education. First lady Rosalynn Carter spearheaded efforts — now being reversed in some states — that led to all 50 states requiring school-age children to be vaccinated against contagious diseases.
In foreign affairs, Carter brought Israel and Egypt together at Camp David to forge the most durable peace treaty of the postwar era; normalized relations with China, which became the foundation of the global economy; won ratification of the Panama Canal treaties, which prevented a major war in Central America; and established the world’s first true (if sometimes hypocritical) human rights policy, which even Republicans agreed helped end the Cold War, helping to spur a democratic revolution around the world that is only now being rolled back.
In retrospect, Carter’s presidency proved to be ahead of its time, especially on the environment (and not just because he put solar panels on the roof of the White House, which Reagan eventually took down). Carter signed 15 major pieces of environmental legislation, including the first comprehensive energy policy, the first green energy bill and the first toxic waste cleanup. Had he been reelected, he planned to begin addressing a little-known issue called “carbon pollution” — a painful “what if” of human history.
The danger for Biden is that he may follow Carter’s pattern of receiving little credit for his achievements, which already include record job creation, a huge and rapid vaccination campaign, and a long-sought bipartisan infrastructure bill, with the voting rights bills all but dead and his Build Back Better package hanging fire. It’s easy to forget that Biden won an astonishing $3 trillion in public investment in 2021, dwarfing in constant dollars anything Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson did in their first year.
Voters seem to have pocketed these victories. Both Carter and Biden suffer from what political scientist Brendan Nyhan has called the “Green Lantern Theory,” in which Democratic presidents are expected by the press and public to have the powers of a superhero in bending Congress to their will — and are seen as failures when they cannot do so every time.
To succeed, the president will have to do more than tamp down inflation and keep the economy humming — he must sell his accomplishments, which will prove challenging in today’s hyper-partisan political culture. And he must do so while easing doubts about his age and by continuing to fight the anti-democracy Republicans.
In the meantime, Biden doesn’t seem to mind the association with his 97-year-old predecessor. Last spring, he and Jill made a point of visiting the Carters at their home in Plains, Ga. Perhaps he understands that if one judges Carter fairly, the comparison can actually be flattering. | null | null | null | null | null |
Maryland can’t stop Ron Harper Jr., falls to Rutgers after miserable second half
What to know from the Terps’ 70-59 loss
Donta Scott and the Maryland Terrapins fell to Rutgers on Saturday. (Tony Quinn for The Washington Post)
The Maryland men’s basketball team launched itself into an unfamiliar predicament against Rutgers on Saturday afternoon: The Terrapins had the assurance of a comfortable lead, larger than any halftime advantage they’ve held since the season opener — a pleasant surprise for a fan base wading through a dreadful season. But then these Terps, who are far more familiar with tight contests and late blunders, stumbled their way to a 70-59 loss.
A poor second half doomed the Terps, who earned their first conference win in double overtime three days ago at Northwestern. With hopes of assembling a modest winning streak, Maryland (9-8, 1-5 Big Ten) built an 11-point lead by the break. But when the Terps returned, they shot just 25 percent from the field and let Rutgers star Ron Harper Jr. dominate.
“As a team, we've got to adapt better,” senior guard Eric Ayala said. “I feel like when things take a turn or teams go on runs, we’ve just got to take them and not really get defeated by it.”
Harper hit back-to-back three-pointers midway through the second half to lift the Scarlet Knights (10-6, 4-2) into the lead, and he maintained that strong shooting until the final buzzer. The senior scored a career-high 31 points and made 6 of 8 attempts from three-point range, including five in the second half.
“He got it going today,” said Maryland interim coach Danny Manning, who was teammates with Harper’s father in the NBA. “We couldn’t slow him down.”
This Maryland season — which includes the abrupt departure of its coach eight games in, the arrest and suspension of an assistant, and a 1-5 start in conference play — has had few positive moments. On Saturday, though, the Terps mustered a promising first half. Ayala played well early following his career-high 26 points at Northwestern; against Rutgers, he scored 10 with a pair of three-pointers before the break. But then he slowed, finishing with a team-high 13 points, and so did the rest of his team.
Second-half slump
The Terps struggled through the second half, making just 7 of 28 shots from the field and 3 of 15 from three-point range. Before the break, Maryland relied heavily on its ability to get to the free throw line. The Terps were 13 of 15 from the line in the first half, while the Scarlet Knights missed their lone foul shot attempt.
Maryland took just four foul shots in the second half. The Terps made all of those attempts, but that wasn’t enough to overcome the poor shooting performance. Leaning on Harper, the Scarlet Knights shot 7 of 13 from deep in the second half and limited their mistakes.
At halftime, Rutgers Coach Steve Pikiell told his team that Maryland had scored 18 points off turnovers and 13 points at the free throw line. But when the Scarlet Knights played solid defense, the Terps had mustered only seven points.
“We came in at halftime, we were confident,” Harper said. “We just went in there and we told each other that we’re playing hard. We’ve just got to play smarter.”
Capitalizing on turnovers
Maryland is one of the nation’s worst teams when it comes to forcing turnovers. The Terps’ opponents had averaged just 10.6 giveaways, but the Scarlet Knights, who committed only 11.6 per game entering this matchup, ran into early turnover trouble at Xfinity Center.
Rutgers finished the game with 16 turnovers, 11 of which came before the break and Maryland contributed to that with steals from seven Terps. The Terps scored 23 points off those miscues. The early sloppiness kept the Scarlet Knights from threatening sooner.
Rutgers played with composure after halftime while Maryland created its own trouble. Nine of the Terps’ 14 turnovers came after halftime, and they couldn’t disrupt the Scarlet Knights’ rhythm. Harper shined and Paul Mulcahy complemented him with a standout second half.
“Every game is a different journey,” Pikiell said. “We were able to settle down and correct our mistakes.”
Reese starts
Freshman forward Julian Reese earned his first career start against the Scarlet Knights, taking the place of sophomore Qudus Wahab. Even through a coaching change, Maryland kept the same starting five through its first 16 games until Reese broke through.
Reese finished with nine points on 2-of-7 shooting to go along with seven rebounds. He played 25 minutes and helped the Terps seize an early lead. By the time Wahab checked in at the 14:15 mark, Reese had grabbed four rebounds and scored a point at the free throw line. Reese earned the nod through much of the final 10 minutes of the game as the Terps tried to salvage a win.
Wahab, a transfer from Georgetown, had a solid start to the season against mid-major opposition, but hadn’t been productive lately.
“Just went with a different look,” Manning said. “Q’s still going to play minutes. Those two guys will probably flip-flop a little bit more throughout the course of the year.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Cincinnati Bengals’ Larry Ogunjobi (65) is tackled by Las Vegas Raiders’ Kolton Miller after Ogunjobi recovered a fumble during the first half of an NFL wild-card playoff football game, Saturday, Jan. 15, 2022, in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/Jeff Dean)
CINCINNATI — Cincinnati Bengals defensive tackle Larry Ogunjobi was carted off the field with an injury to his right foot in the third quarter of the AFC playoff game against the Las Vegas Raiders. | null | null | null | null | null |
New England Patriots outside linebacker Dont’a Hightower, right, sacks Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence (16) during the first half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Jan. 2, 2022, in Foxborough, Mass. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — New England defensive back Kyle Dugger and linebacker Dont’a Hightower returned to the lineup for the Patriots’ wild-card playoff game at the Buffalo Bills on Saturday night after missing last week’s regular-season finale. | null | null | null | null | null |
Live updates Patriots face the Bills in first round of NFL playoffs
Pregame reading: Home-field advantage is almost extinct
What to watch for when the Patriots face the Bills
The Buffalo Bills and the New England Patriots each won a game against the other during the regular season. (Winslow Townson/AP)
Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills host Mac Jones and the New England Patriots in the first round of the NFL playoffs. Follow along for live updates.
Where: Highmark Stadium in Orchard Park, N.Y.
How to watch: Game broadcast is on CBS; streaming options include FuboTV
By Adam Kilgore and Neil Greenberg8:03 p.m.
The value of home-field advantage has long been ingrained in the NFL. Home teams track the decibel level of the crowd on their scoreboards. Coaches at midweek news conferences implore fans to show up and be loud. Analysts discuss it all season in relation to the playoff race. Bookmakers bake it into their point spreads.
The Patriots and Bills meet for the third time this season. The stakes are raised this time, as they square off Saturday night in the opening round of the AFC playoffs in Orchard Park, N.Y.
With a forecast for temperatures in the low single digits, weather will be a factor … again. The Patriots won, 14-10, at Highmark Stadium on Dec. 6. They ran the ball 46 times, and rookie quarterback Mac Jones threw only three passes on a blustery night with winds gusting above 50 mph.
From December: The Patriots are back to being, well, the Patriots
That victory extended the Patriots’ winning streak to seven games entering their bye week and represented the high point of their season. They returned from their bye to, puzzlingly, lose three of their final four regular season games and were overtaken by the Bills in the AFC East. The Bills won the teams’ rematch, 33-21, on Dec. 26 in Foxborough, Mass., and secured their second straight division crown.
Even so, the sixth-seeded Patriots are back in the postseason in Year 2 following quarterback Tom Brady’s departure. Bill Belichick coaches his 44th postseason game, seeking his 32nd victory. The Patriots ranked second in the NFL in scoring defense during the regular season. The Bills were first.
The Bills were the only team in the league ranked in the top five in both total offense and total defense during the regular season. They’re the conference’s third seed and hope that quarterback Josh Allen leads them to a second straight AFC title game and perhaps beyond. | null | null | null | null | null |
Cold-shooting Virginia wilts down the stretch, falls to Wake Forest
Wake Forest guard Daivien Williamson drives to the basket during Saturday's game at Virginia. (Erin Edgeerton/AP)
Wayward shooting and a second-half defensive collapse conspired to doom Virginia to a 63-55 loss to Wake Forest, ending the Cavaliers’ nine-game winning streak in the series.
The Cavaliers (10-7, 4-3 ACC) failed to score for nearly seven minutes during the second half after taking a three-possession lead and fell behind for good with just over six minutes to play at John Paul Jones Arena, where Wake Forest had not won since Feb. 6, 2010.
“Often times games come down to, ‘Can you go make play on offense and defense,’ “ Virginia Coach Tony Bennett said. “They made some plays, and I thought we left a lot of baskets out there too.”
Analysis: After a season filled with turmoil, Auburn might be the best team in college basketball
Armaan Franklin led Virginia with a game-high 18 points on 7-for-11 shooting with three rebounds and three assists. It marked the Indiana transfer’s seventh straight game scoring in double figures. Kody Stattmann matched a career high with 11 points, but no other Cavalier had more than nine.
Forward Jayden Gardner, Virginia’s leading scorer, finished with nine points and went 3 for 14 from the field.
Virginia shot 36.2 percent, its worst showing this season in an ACC game and second lowest overall. It also committed double-digit turnovers (11) for the second time in as many games and gave up 17 second-chance points overall as well as eight offensive rebounds in the second half.
The Demon Deacons (14-4, 4-3) had four players score in double digits in beating Virginia for the first time since Jan. 9, 2013, at Joel Coliseum in Winston-Salem, N.C. Jake LaRavia led the way with 15 points, and Alondes Williams added 14.
The outcome turned on Wake Forest’s 13-0 run that commenced with Daivien Williamson’s three-pointer. Williams followed with a layup. Isaiah Mucius then sank a three-pointer that put the Demon Deacons in front to stay, 48-47, with 6:19 to play in the second half.
Wake Forest Coach Steve Forbes called timeout three seconds later, and the Demon Deacons emerged from the stoppage even more energized, reeling off another five in a row that included a dunk from LaRavia with 4:18 to play that compelled Bennett to call timeout.
The closest Virginia came thereafter was four points.
Virginia had opened a 47-40 lead in the second half thanks to an 11-4 burst that began with Franklin’s three-pointer and ended with Gardner’s layup. Bennett called timeout moments later, but the stoppage instead allowed the Demon Deacons to regroup.
A 13-2 flurry over five-plus minutes during the first half allowed the Cavaliers to claim the largest lead by either team to that point, 22-13, with 8:10 left after three consecutive three-pointers, including two from Franklin, on the way to a 29-27 advantage at halftime.
“It’s just concentrating, I guess,” Stattmann said of the Cavaliers’ balky shooting. “Focusing on the rim and going up strong with the ball.”
Change in starting lineup
Francisco Caffaro made the first start of his career, replacing redshirt sophomore center Kadin Shedrick, the Cavaliers’ top rim protector who had started each of the first 16 games this season following a mass exodus of frontcourt players from last year.
Caffaro was coming off a career-high scoring performance with 16 points in a 54-52 win against visiting Virginia Tech Wednesday night, making 5 of 7 shots and going 6 for 10 from the foul line, with nine rebounds in 31 minutes, also the most in his career.
The change in the starting lineup was the first such modification this season for Bennett, who has been seeking a consistent presence on the low block apart from Gardner, a transfer from East Carolina.
Bennett also altered his substitution pattern, bringing Igor Milicic Jr. off the bench early in the first half. Milicic did not play against the Hokies and logged only 1:35 in the previous game, a 74-58 loss to North Carolina Jan. 8 in Chapel Hill, N.C., to conclude a season-long three-game road swing.
Williams come up big late
The Cavaliers held Williams, a senior, to two points in the first half, but the ACC scoring leader (20.7 points) entering this weekend tallied eight points over the final 5:19 to help spark Wake Forest’s comeback.
The transfer from Oklahoma shot just 5 for 12 to match his second fewest points this season and committed a season-high eight turnovers (the Demon Deacons had 13 total). Williams has scored in double digits in every game this season after averaging just 6.7 as a junior with the Sooners.
Williams had scored 50 points over the previous two games before Saturday on 16-for-27 shooting (59.5 percent). | null | null | null | null | null |
Prairie View A&M Panthers (2-13, 1-4 SWAC) at Alcorn State Braves (5-11, 4-0 SWAC)
BOTTOM LINE: Alcorn State faces the Prairie View A&M Panthers after Justin Thomas scored 26 points in Alcorn State’s 73-72 win against the Texas Southern Tigers.
The Braves have gone 1-0 in home games. Alcorn State is 0-9 against opponents with a winning record.
The Panthers are 1-4 in SWAC play. Prairie View A&M is ninth in the SWAC allowing 73.5 points while holding opponents to 48.4% shooting.
The Braves and Panthers match up Monday for the first time in SWAC play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Lenell Henry is shooting 38.1% and averaging 8.7 points for the Braves. Darius Agnew is averaging 7.0 points over the last 10 games for Alcorn State.
Jeremiah Gambrell is averaging 7.6 points for the Panthers. Jawaun Daniels is averaging 9.6 points over the last 10 games for Prairie View A&M. | null | null | null | null | null |
Saint Francis (PA) Red Flash (4-11, 1-4 NEC) at Bryant Bulldogs (7-8, 4-1 NEC)
Smithfield, Rhode Island; Monday, 7 p.m. EST
BOTTOM LINE: Bryant hosts the Saint Francis (PA) Red Flash after Adham Eleeda scored 26 points in Bryant’s 73-66 win against the Mount St. Mary’s Mountaineers.
The Bulldogs are 4-1 on their home court. Bryant is third in the NEC scoring 69.3 points while shooting 42.1% from the field.
The Red Flash are 1-4 against conference opponents. Saint Francis (PA) allows 75.8 points to opponents and has been outscored by 4.3 points per game.
The Bulldogs and Red Flash face off Monday for the first time in NEC play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Eleeda is shooting 36.5% from beyond the arc with 2.7 made 3-pointers per game for the Bulldogs, while averaging 9.3 points. Peter Kiss is averaging 15 points and 1.5 steals over the last 10 games for Bryant.
Ramiir Dixon-Conover is scoring 13.7 points per game with 5.1 rebounds and 3.9 assists for the Red Flash. Ronell Giles, Jr. is averaging 10.1 points over the past 10 games for Saint Francis (PA). | null | null | null | null | null |
Towson Tigers (11-5, 3-1 CAA) at William & Mary Tribe (3-12, 2-1 CAA)
Williamsburg, Virginia; Monday, 7 p.m. EST
BOTTOM LINE: William & Mary plays the Towson Tigers after Yuri Covington scored 29 points in William & Mary’s 95-91 overtime loss to the James Madison Dukes.
The Tribe have gone 3-5 at home. William & Mary is eighth in the CAA with 22.9 defensive rebounds per game led by Connor Kochera averaging 4.4.
The Tigers are 3-1 in CAA play. Towson ranks third in the CAA with 10.1 offensive rebounds per game led by Cameron Holden averaging 3.0.
TOP PERFORMERS: Kochera is averaging 11.4 points, 5.1 rebounds and 1.5 steals for the Tribe. Ben Wight is averaging 7.6 points over the past 10 games for William & Mary.
Terry Nolan Jr. is averaging 10.5 points, 4.3 assists and 1.7 steals for the Tigers. Holden is averaging 10.7 points over the last 10 games for Towson. | null | null | null | null | null |
Texas Southern Tigers (5-9, 3-2 SWAC) at Jackson State Tigers (3-12, 1-3 SWAC)
BOTTOM LINE: Texas Southern visits the Jackson State Tigers after Bryson Etienne scored 22 points in Texas Southern’s 73-72 loss to the Alcorn State Braves.
The Jackson State Tigers have gone 1-1 at home. Jackson State is sixth in the SWAC shooting 29.9% from deep, led by Darrian Wilson shooting 62.5% from 3-point range.
The Texas Southern Tigers are 3-2 in conference games. Texas Southern ranks fifth in the SWAC shooting 31.8% from 3-point range.
TOP PERFORMERS: Jayveous McKinnis is shooting 55.9% and averaging 12.0 points for the Jackson State Tigers. Jonas James is averaging 6.1 points over the last 10 games for Jackson State.
PJ Henry is shooting 47.0% and averaging 11.4 points for the Texas Southern Tigers. Joirdon Karl Nicholas is averaging 7.5 points over the last 10 games for Texas Southern.
Texas Southern Tigers: 5-5, averaging 69.4 points, 35.7 rebounds, 11.7 assists, 5.1 steals and 5.3 blocks per game while shooting 45.6% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 67.3 points. | null | null | null | null | null |
Harvard Crimson (9-5, 1-1 Ivy League) at Dartmouth Big Green (4-10, 1-2 Ivy League)
BOTTOM LINE: Harvard visits the Dartmouth Big Green after Noah Kirkwood scored 28 points in Harvard’s 91-82 win against the Columbia Lions.
The Big Green have gone 2-2 at home. Dartmouth ranks eighth in the Ivy League with 6.6 offensive rebounds per game led by Aaryn Rai averaging 1.8.
The Crimson are 1-1 in Ivy League play. Harvard is third in the Ivy League scoring 76.9 points per game and is shooting 44.4%.
TOP PERFORMERS: Rai is averaging 11.3 points and 6.8 rebounds for the Big Green. Brendan Barry is averaging 11.8 points over the last 10 games for Dartmouth.
Kirkwood is scoring 16.6 points per game and averaging 5.7 rebounds for the Crimson. Chris Ledlum is averaging 15.3 points and 8.5 rebounds over the last 10 games for Harvard. | null | null | null | null | null |
Hofstra hosts Drexel following Estrada's 30-point performance
Drexel Dragons (6-6, 2-1 CAA) at Hofstra Pride (9-7, 2-2 CAA)
Hempstead, New York; Monday, 4 p.m. EST
BOTTOM LINE: Hofstra hosts the Drexel Dragons after Aaron Estrada scored 30 points in Hofstra’s 82-77 victory over the Delaware Fightin’ Blue Hens.
The Pride have gone 6-0 at home. Hofstra leads the CAA with 16.1 assists per game led by Estrada averaging 4.8.
The Dragons have gone 2-1 against CAA opponents. Drexel is fifth in the CAA shooting 34.3% from deep. James Butler leads the Dragons shooting 55.6% from 3-point range.
The Pride and Dragons match up Monday for the first time in CAA play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Estrada is averaging 14.9 points, 5.6 rebounds and 4.8 assists for the Pride. Jalen Ray is averaging 2.7 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Hofstra.
Camren Wynter is averaging 13.8 points, 5.3 rebounds and 4.4 assists for the Dragons. Melik Martin is averaging 10.6 points over the last 10 games for Drexel. | null | null | null | null | null |
Weber State Wildcats (11-5, 4-1 Big Sky) at Idaho State Bengals (3-11, 1-4 Big Sky)
BOTTOM LINE: Idaho State hosts the Weber State Wildcats after Tarik Cool scored 20 points in Idaho State’s 81-74 victory over the Idaho Vandals.
The Bengals have gone 3-3 at home. Idaho State ranks fifth in the Big Sky with 8.2 offensive rebounds per game led by Malik Porter averaging 2.0.
The Wildcats are 4-1 against Big Sky opponents. Weber State ranks eighth in the Big Sky shooting 31.6% from deep. Dyson Koehler paces the Wildcats shooting 37.5% from 3-point range.
The Bengals and Wildcats match up Monday for the first time in conference play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Cool is scoring 11.0 points per game with 3.1 rebounds and 2.1 assists for the Bengals. Austin Smellie is averaging 6.3 points and 2.5 rebounds while shooting 45.6% over the past 10 games for Idaho State. | null | null | null | null | null |
Idaho takes on Northern Arizona following Dixon's 21-point showing
Idaho Vandals (3-12, 0-5 Big Sky) at Northern Arizona Lumberjacks (5-9, 1-2 Big Sky)
BOTTOM LINE: Idaho takes on the Northern Arizona Lumberjacks after Mikey Dixon scored 21 points in Idaho’s 81-74 loss to the Idaho State Bengals.
The Lumberjacks are 3-3 on their home court. Northern Arizona allows 72.6 points and has been outscored by 3.2 points per game.
The Vandals are 0-5 against Big Sky opponents. Idaho ranks ninth in the Big Sky with 23.9 defensive rebounds per game led by Rashad Smith averaging 4.4.
The Lumberjacks and Vandals square off Monday for the first time in Big Sky play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Jalen Cole averages 3.1 made 3-pointers per game for the Lumberjacks, scoring 18.0 points while shooting 41.9% from beyond the arc. Nik Mains is shooting 46.3% and averaging 10.5 points over the past 10 games for Northern Arizona.
Dixon is shooting 44.2% and averaging 17.9 points for the Vandals. Smith is averaging 12.0 points over the last 10 games for Idaho. | null | null | null | null | null |
Ike leads Wyoming against Nevada after 23-point performance
Wyoming Cowboys (12-2, 1-0 MWC) at Nevada Wolf Pack (8-6, 2-1 MWC)
Reno, Nevada; Monday, 8 p.m. EST
BOTTOM LINE: Wyoming plays the Nevada Wolf Pack after Graham Ike scored 23 points in Wyoming’s 71-69 win against the Utah State Aggies.
The Wolf Pack are 5-2 in home games. Nevada is 3-1 when it turns the ball over less than its opponents and averages 13.6 turnovers per game.
The Cowboys are 1-0 in conference play. Wyoming is third in the MWC scoring 77.1 points per game and is shooting 47.9%.
The Wolf Pack and Cowboys face off Monday for the first time in MWC play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Grant Sherfield is averaging 19.5 points and 6.4 assists for the Wolf Pack. Desmond Cambridge is averaging 11.3 points and 3.1 rebounds while shooting 42.9% over the last 10 games for Nevada.
Drake Jeffries is shooting 48.9% from beyond the arc with 3.1 made 3-pointers per game for the Cowboys, while averaging 10.3 points. Ike is shooting 55.9% and averaging 12.9 points over the past 10 games for Wyoming. | null | null | null | null | null |
McGowens and the Nebraska Cornhuskers host conference foe Indiana
Indiana Hoosiers (12-4, 3-3 Big Ten) at Nebraska Cornhuskers (6-12, 0-7 Big Ten)
Lincoln, Nebraska; Monday, 6 p.m. EST
BOTTOM LINE: Bryce McGowens and the Nebraska Cornhuskers host Trayce Jackson-Davis and the Indiana Hoosiers in Big Ten action Monday.
The Cornhuskers are 6-6 on their home court. Nebraska has a 2-12 record against opponents above .500.
The Hoosiers have gone 3-3 against Big Ten opponents. Indiana has a 1-2 record in games decided by less than 4 points.
The teams play for the 10th time in conference play this season. The Hoosiers won the last matchup on Dec. 4. Jackson-Davis scored 14 points to help lead the Hoosiers to the victory.
TOP PERFORMERS: Keisei Tominaga averages 1.8 made 3-pointers per game for the Cornhuskers, scoring 8.1 points while shooting 35.9% from beyond the arc. McGowens is averaging 15.5 points and 5.5 rebounds over the past 10 games for Nebraska.
Jackson-Davis is averaging 19.3 points, 8.9 rebounds and 3.1 blocks for the Hoosiers. Race Thompson is averaging 7.6 points over the last 10 games for Indiana. | null | null | null | null | null |
North Florida Ospreys take on the Kennesaw State Owls on 4-game slide
Kennesaw State Owls (6-8, 2-0 ASUN) at North Florida Ospreys (4-12, 0-4 ASUN)
Jacksonville, Florida; Monday, 7 p.m. EST
BOTTOM LINE: North Florida comes into the matchup against Kennesaw State after losing four games in a row.
The Ospreys are 4-2 in home games. North Florida averages 14.6 turnovers per game and is 3-2 when it has fewer turnovers than its opponents.
The Owls are 2-0 in ASUN play. Kennesaw State ranks ninth in the ASUN with 13.6 assists per game led by Terrell Burden averaging 4.7.
The Ospreys and Owls match up Monday for the first time in conference play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Jose Placer is averaging 13.5 points for the Ospreys. Jarius Hicklen is averaging 10.2 points over the past 10 games for North Florida.
Chris Youngblood is scoring 13.7 points per game with 5.4 rebounds and 0.9 assists for the Owls. Burden is averaging 11.2 points and 4.5 assists over the past 10 games for Kennesaw State. | null | null | null | null | null |
Northeastern faces Delaware, seeks to end 6-game slide
Delaware Fightin’ Blue Hens (11-5, 2-2 CAA) at Northeastern Huskies (6-9, 0-5 CAA)
BOTTOM LINE: Northeastern comes into the matchup against Delaware after losing six games in a row.
The Huskies are 4-2 on their home court. Northeastern is 1-2 in games decided by less than 4 points.
The Fightin’ Blue Hens are 2-2 against CAA opponents. Delaware ranks fourth in the CAA scoring 32.0 points per game in the paint led by Dylan Painter averaging 2.0.
The Huskies and Fightin’ Blue Hens face off Monday for the first time in conference play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Jahmyl Telfort is scoring 12.7 points per game and averaging 2.5 rebounds for the Huskies. Nikola Djogo is averaging 1.5 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Northeastern.
Ryan Allen is scoring 14.4 points per game with 2.1 rebounds and 1.4 assists for the Fightin’ Blue Hens. Jameer Nelson Jr. is averaging 13.4 points and 4.5 rebounds while shooting 45.8% over the past 10 games for Delaware. | null | null | null | null | null |
Pacific (CA) hosts Pepperdine following Avdalovic's 23-point outing
Pepperdine Waves (6-13, 0-4 WCC) at Pacific (CA) Tigers (5-11, 0-2 WCC)
Stockton, California; Monday, 10 p.m. EST
BOTTOM LINE: Pacific (CA) hosts the Pepperdine Waves after Luke Avdalovic scored 23 points in Pacific (CA)’s 84-70 loss to the Santa Clara Broncos.
The Tigers have gone 4-4 at home. Pacific (CA) is 3-5 when it wins the turnover battle and averages 12.3 turnovers per game.
The Waves are 0-4 in conference play. Pepperdine ranks third in the WCC with 9.6 offensive rebounds per game led by Victor Ohia Obioha averaging 2.5.
The Tigers and Waves face off Monday for the first time in WCC play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Alphonso Anderson is scoring 11.0 points per game and averaging 5.9 rebounds for the Tigers. Avdalovic is averaging 9.1 points and 0.9 rebounds over the last 10 games for Pacific (CA).
Houston Mallette is shooting 36.5% from beyond the arc with 2.2 made 3-pointers per game for the Waves, while averaging 11.3 points. Jan Zidek is shooting 44.1% and averaging 9.9 points over the last 10 games for Pepperdine. | null | null | null | null | null |
Portland visits Loyola Marymount (CA) following Scott's 29-point game
Portland Pilots (9-7, 1-1 WCC) at Loyola Marymount Lions (7-6, 0-2 WCC)
Los Angeles; Monday, 7 p.m. EST
BOTTOM LINE: Loyola Marymount (CA) hosts the Portland Pilots after Eli Scott scored 29 points in Loyola Marymount (CA)’s 70-65 loss to the San Diego Toreros.
The Lions are 3-3 in home games. Loyola Marymount (CA) is 3-2 when it has fewer turnovers than its opponents and averages 15.0 turnovers per game.
The Pilots are 1-1 against conference opponents. Portland has a 1-2 record in games decided by 3 points or fewer.
The Lions and Pilots meet Monday for the first time in WCC play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Scott is shooting 51.0% and averaging 16.1 points for the Lions. Dameone Douglas is averaging 9.3 points over the last 10 games for Loyola Marymount (CA).
Tyler Robertson is shooting 37.4% and averaging 14.6 points for the Pilots. Chris Austin is averaging 1.3 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Portland. | null | null | null | null | null |
Sims leads UNC Wilmington against Charleston (SC) after 20-point game
UNC Wilmington Seahawks (8-5, 2-0 CAA) at Charleston (SC) Cougars (9-5, 1-1 CAA)
BOTTOM LINE: UNC Wilmington faces the Charleston (SC) Cougars after Jaylen Sims scored 20 points in UNC Wilmington’s 73-66 victory over the Elon Phoenix.
The Cougars are 6-2 on their home court. Charleston (SC) has a 2-2 record in games decided by at least 10 points.
The Seahawks are 2-0 against CAA opponents. UNC Wilmington ranks eighth in the CAA scoring 27.4 points per game in the paint led by Trazarien White averaging 0.8.
TOP PERFORMERS: Dimitrius Underwood is averaging 10.1 points, 6.5 rebounds, 3.2 assists and 2.4 steals for the Cougars. Reyne Smith is averaging 10.3 points and 2.4 rebounds while shooting 40.2% over the last 10 games for Charleston (SC).
Sims is averaging 13 points and 6.2 rebounds for the Seahawks. Mike Okauru is averaging 12.2 points over the last 10 games for UNC Wilmington. | null | null | null | null | null |
Portland State Vikings (4-8, 2-2 Big Sky) at Southern Utah Thunderbirds (9-5, 3-1 Big Sky)
BOTTOM LINE: Southern Utah hosts the Portland State Vikings after Maizen Fausett scored 21 points in Southern Utah’s 91-81 loss to the Northern Colorado Bears.
The Thunderbirds have gone 5-1 in home games. Southern Utah leads the Big Sky with 28.4 defensive rebounds per game led by Fausett averaging 5.0.
The Vikings have gone 2-2 against Big Sky opponents. Portland State averages 68.0 points and has outscored opponents by 1.3 points per game.
The Thunderbirds and Vikings square off Monday for the first time in conference play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: John Knight III is averaging 15.4 points, four assists and 1.9 steals for the Thunderbirds. Fausett is averaging 12.3 points over the last 10 games for Southern Utah.
James Jean-Marie is averaging 12.9 points and 9.8 rebounds for the Vikings. Marlon Ruffin is averaging 10.2 points over the last 10 games for Portland State.
Vikings: 3-7, averaging 61.2 points, 33.8 rebounds, 9.7 assists, 8.4 steals and 3.0 blocks per game while shooting 35.7% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 69.8 points. | null | null | null | null | null |
Bethune-Cookman Wildcats (4-12, 2-2 SWAC) at Arkansas-Pine Bluff Golden Lions (3-15, 1-4 SWAC)
Pine Bluff, Arkansas; Monday, 8:30 p.m. EST
BOTTOM LINE: UAPB heads into the matchup against Bethune-Cookman after losing three games in a row.
The Golden Lions are 3-3 in home games. UAPB is fourth in the SWAC with 10.4 assists per game led by Shawn Williams averaging 3.7.
The Wildcats are 2-2 in SWAC play. Bethune-Cookman is eighth in the SWAC scoring 60.7 points per game and is shooting 40.3%.
The Golden Lions and Wildcats match up Monday for the first time in SWAC play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Williams averages 2.8 made 3-pointers per game for the Golden Lions, scoring 14.7 points while shooting 34.1% from beyond the arc. Kylen Milton is averaging 11.8 points over the past 10 games for UAPB.
Mikey West is averaging 5.3 points for the Wildcats. Joe French is averaging 13.1 points over the last 10 games for Bethune-Cookman. | null | null | null | null | null |
UNLV visits San Jose State following Hamilton's 24-point game
UNLV Rebels (9-7, 1-2 MWC) at San Jose State Spartans (7-7, 0-2 MWC)
BOTTOM LINE: UNLV plays the San Jose State Spartans after Bryce Hamilton scored 24 points in UNLV’s 73-68 loss to the Fresno State Bulldogs.
The Spartans have gone 6-2 at home. San Jose State has a 2-1 record in games decided by 3 points or fewer.
The Rebels are 1-2 in conference matchups. UNLV averages 71.1 points while outscoring opponents by 5.0 points per game.
The Spartans and Rebels meet Monday for the first time in MWC play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Ibrahima Diallo is averaging 5.2 points and 5.5 rebounds for the Spartans. Trey Smith is averaging 1.6 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for San Jose State.
Hamilton is scoring 18.8 points per game with 3.6 rebounds and 2.1 assists for the Rebels. Donovan Williams is averaging 10.5 points over the last 10 games for UNLV. | null | null | null | null | null |
Our obsession with morning routines dates back to Benjamin Franklin
Henry David Thoreau began his days with a brisk early morning swim in Walden Pond, in Concord, Mass. (Elise Amendola/AP)
Henry David Thoreau began most days the same way: with a brisk early morning swim. After he retreated to a cabin in the woods of Concord, Mass., in the mid-19th century, that ritual bath in Walden Pond became a fixture of his days, a “cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity.”
For Thoreau, like many before and after him, the morning — and a morning routine — held a unique, almost mystical, power. “The morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour,” he wrote in “Walden,” adding, “For an hour, at least, some part of us awakes which slumbers all the rest of the day and night.”
Whether for health, wealth or beauty, a belief has persisted in American thought that what we do during the first hour we’re awake determines much more than the rest of the day; it just might determine the course of our lives. It’s an idea that originated before Thoreau, stretching back in the American context to some of the earliest thinkers, who believed the early morning hours were key to unlocking the American Dream.
This belief has only grown more entrenched in our culture in the past 100 years, as readers consume the routines of celebrities, writers, politicians and business leaders, with entire books and magazine columns devoted to the morning routines and daily habits of the nation’s most successful people. Americans may not be the only ones who love New Year’s resolutions and goal setting, but our collective fascination with the morning routine has come to embody a cultural obsession with productivity, wellness and the elusive promise that all that stands between us and achieving our wildest dreams is a 5 a.m. wake-up call.
Benjamin Franklin, for instance, believed that his success was due in part to his 5 a.m. start. As he wrote in his autobiography, from 5 to 7 a.m. every day he would “rise, wash, and address Powerful Goodness!” From there, he moved on to “Contrive day’s business, and take the resolution of the day; prosecute the present study, and breakfast.”
That 1793 account may have been the first recorded morning routine in U.S. history, and it set off an obsession with early rising (and reading about early rising) that has continued to this day. There is an inherent optimism to Franklin’s routine, with his embrace of “Powerful Goodness!” While many present-day readers might not begin the day with this refrain (nor might they take naked “air baths” for their health, as Franklin did), there seems to be truth in the idea that a positive outlook in the morning can lead to a successful day.
Ben Franklin’s bitter regret that he didn’t immunize his 4-year-old son against smallpox
“It’s prioritizing 101: What you do first in the day is your priority for the day and for your life, your career,” said Mason Currey, author of “Daily Rituals: How Artists Work.” He added, “You see over and over again writers carving out this time early in the morning to do the writing before all of the other interruptions and responsibilities of the day come crashing down.”
Modernist painter Georgia O’Keeffe exemplified this dedication, rising at dawn to take a stroll near her home in New Mexico before heading straight to her studio. Armed with her walking stick to ward off rattlesnakes, she walked through the desert scrub and rocky mesas that became a fixture of her art. “Painting is like a thread that runs through all of the reasons for all the other things that make one’s life,” she said.
The relative solitude of the early morning has always been important for parents attempting to balance work and family life. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Toni Morrison said, “Writing before dawn began as a necessity,” when she had to care for her children and balance a job as a book editor while working on her own creative projects. It was a habit that she continued after she’d quit her day job, still waking up before dawn, making coffee and beginning work as the sun came up.
This is a key aspect to how our routines take shape, according to Wendy Wood, a University of Southern California psychology professor and author of “Good Habits, Bad Habits.” “Habits form just through doing,” she said. “We don’t do it by exerting self-control; we do it because we formed these habit associations in memory that we’re not even aware of that get us to repeat behaviors that we’ve done.”
Debate over teaching Toni Morrison in schools has roots in violent 1974 clash in West Virginia
In the 20th century, the proliferation of tabloids brought a new kind of nationwide fixation on morning routines: an obsession with celebrities’ a.m. rituals. Where routines once emphasized reading the Bible or striving for moral improvement, accounts of the morning habits of celebrities (and female celebrities in particular) focused on attaining perfect skin or an ideal figure. Readers clamored for the regimens of everyone from Marilyn Monroe (who reportedly drank raw egg yolks in warm milk first thing in the morning) to Elizabeth Taylor (who swore by bacon, eggs and a mimosa).
Just as Franklin promised success to those Americans who could follow his virtuous advice, the underlying message in sharing Monroe or Taylor’s beauty “secrets” seemed to tell women that these actresses’ exceptional looks were not the product of good DNA and a fleet of stylists. Rather, they could be achieved by the average woman with a few additional egg yolks.
With the rise of self-help literature in the second half of the century, the morning routine was once again updated, paired with new language in the pursuit of old goals. Positive thinking became “self-affirmations,” and Franklin’s decree to “take the resolution of the day” became business guru Stephen Covey’s “quadrant planning.” Covey, author of “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” spent his first moments of the day reading the Bible on a stationary bike, followed by vigorous laps in a pool and a brief yoga session.
Today, the trend has endured, folding in the current fixation on “self-care,” all while combining the aspects of self-help and celebrity voyeurism that have made morning routines popular since Franklin’s time. At their worst, American morning routines can exemplify a punishing meritocracy, a push to always be achieving more. At their best, however, they provide a feeling of freedom and a rare moment for self-determination. We may not be able to write the Great American Novel or shrink our pores between 5 and 6 a.m., but we can all enjoy some expansiveness — or a frigid skinny dip — in an otherwise chaotic day.
Jess McHugh is an author and journalist. Her book “Americanon,” a history of U.S. bestsellers, was published last year. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: Why the ACLU is supporting a Christian flag flying at Boston City Hall
A flag associated with the Christian religion. (iStock)
David Cole is national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed an amicus brief in support of Camp Constitution in Shurtleff v. Boston.
The ACLU has long fought to enforce the separation of church and state. We were the plaintiff in both Allegheny County v. ACLU and McCreary County v. ACLU, in which the Supreme Court held that the Constitution’s establishment clause barred the displays of a crèche and the Ten Commandments in county courthouses. So why are we supporting a Christian organization’s argument in the Supreme Court case Shurtleff v. Boston that it has a right to display a flag bearing the Latin cross in front of Boston’s City Hall? The short answer: The First Amendment requires it.
For more than a decade, Boston has made one of the flagpoles in front of City Hall available to the public for temporary displays, essentially on a first-come, first-served basis. It has flown political flags, national flags and the flags of private civic organizations — including the Chinese Progressive Association, the National Juneteenth Observance Foundation, Bunker Hill Association and Boston Pride. The city’s website and application materials refer to the flagpole as a “public forum,” and invite members of the public to apply to fly their flags there temporarily — usually for just a few hours on a given day. Over a 12-year period, the city displayed 284 such flags, and never denied a single request. In most instances, it did not even ask to see the flags before approving their display.
Until Camp Constitution came along. A conservative Christian organization that celebrates the United States’ “Judeo-Christian” heritage, questions covid-19 vaccinations and criticizes the theory of evolution, the group applied to fly its flag, bearing the Latin cross — the simplest, most common representation of the Christian symbol — for one hour on a day when its members planned to hold an event in Boston. The city refused, not because it disapproved of the camp’s views, but because the flag was religious. The city was concerned that flying such a flag would contravene the First Amendment’s establishment clause.
We take the establishment clause, which requires separation of church and state, very seriously. We’ve opposed opening city council meetings with religious prayers, promoting religion in public schools, and many official displays of religious symbols. But in the Boston case, another part of the First Amendment — the free speech clause — controls.
Religious expression cannot be completely excluded from public property. If that were the case, the government could ban Jehovah’s Witnesses from handing out religious tracts on public sidewalks. And free speech principles prohibit the government from discriminating against speakers because of their messages — including religious messages.
The central issue is whether the religious expression is properly attributed to the government or to private speakers. Where the government itself is “speaking,” the establishment clause generally prohibits religious messages, and the free speech clause generally does not apply. But where private speech is involved, establishment clause concerns are diminished, and the free speech clause requires the government to treat all speakers equally.
We argue that no reasonable observer would understand flying Camp Constitution’s flag — for just one hour on a single day — to be the government’s speech. Like the 284 flags flown before it, this group’s flag would be seen as just that — the group’s flag. And as such, the city can’t turn it down because the flag is religious.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit nonetheless ruled for the city last January, concluding that the flag displays did amount to government speech — so the city could choose which flags to display as its own speech, without regard to the rights of the private flagholders. On this theory, the city could also have refused to display the Boston Pride flag, or any other.
But that is a dangerous expansion of the “government speech” doctrine. It would give cities an easy way out of the long-standing First Amendment obligation to treat all private speakers equally in public forums — by simply re-characterizing private speech on government property as the government’s speech.
We have no doubt that the city acted with the best intentions. And if Camp Constitution had sought to fly its flag for a month, or if the flags displayed in front of Boston City Hall were predominantly religious, the establishment clause would be violated. But treating Camp Constitution’s request the same as all other flag displays is required by the free speech clause, and does not transgress the establishment clause.
When the Supreme Court hears argument on Jan. 18, it should recognize that, having chosen for more than a decade to allow everyone else to display their private flags, Boston can’t turn away Camp Constitution merely because its flag is religious. | null | null | null | null | null |
After demolishing the Patriots, Josh Allen and the Bills are a threat to the entire NFL
Bills quarterback Josh Allen, left, threw one of his five touchdown passes Saturday to wide receiver Emmanuel Sanders. (Jeffrey T. Barnes/AP)
Well, look who kicked in the saloon door to the playoffs, demanded both blue cheese and ranch with their wings, and gave off the vibe they weren’t leaving until the stools were seat-side down on the bar and the floors were being mopped. There, in the back, through the smoke. Yep, that’s Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills, lording over the pool table, asking anyone who dares, “Who wants next?”
Wild-card weekend is just getting started, so there’s an itty-bitty chance someone will make a more definitive statement than the Bills’ 47-17 mockery of the New England Patriots on Saturday night in Orchard Park, N.Y. There’s also a chance it’ll snow in Honolulu on the Fourth of July.
Here’s a list of Buffalo possessions on which it did not score a touchdown: When Allen knelt to run out the clock at the end of the game.
The Bills took their first seven possessions against the Patriots — who are (checks notes) still coached by Bill Belichick — and used them to gain 484 yards and score seven touchdowns. They did not punt. They did not kick a field goal. They did not turn over the ball. That’s … unprecedented. Like, not just for the Bills, and not just against the Patriots. In NFL history.
This wasn’t anything like the pregame gibberish might have suggested — a struggle for field position or a matter of who won the turnover battle. It was neither a struggle nor a battle or anything close.
And it wasn’t a fluke. What warms the hearts and arteries of those who filled frigid Highmark Stadium more than lambasting the Patriots might be the possibilities still ahead. Well, that and the Fireball, no doubt.
“What matters is what we do going forward,” Allen told reporters afterward.
That’s a Buffalo mind-set now, because this is no longer new. What’s most likely going forward would be a rematch of last year’s AFC championship game, this time in round 2, because that requires only a victory by second-seeded Kansas City over seventh-seeded Pittsburgh on Sunday night. Last year’s version went to the Chiefs, 38-24. Would Kansas City be confident about producing a carbon copy?
Likely not. Allen is now officially a menace, and he has the best, most important performance of his career against a thorn-in-the-side opponent to bolster that case. His numbers against the Pats — 21 of 25 for 308 yards with five touchdowns and no interceptions, to go with six rushes for 66 yards — suggest he’s the X-factor these playoffs need. You know what you’ll get from Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers, polished and professional play, a mix of artist and air traffic controller.
Allen is different — and in some ways more exciting. How to defend him? Before the game had been decided — which means, by definition, on Buffalo’s first possession — he scampered for 25 yards on one play then cleverly converted on third and four with a designed keeper up the middle. His first touchdown pass, to tight end Dawson Knox, came after he held the ball, held the ball, held it a bit longer, with his feet moving all the time. He’s always a threat to go forward. Here, he hung back, extending a play that should have been over long before. It about broke the Patriots.
“I thought I threw the ball away,” Allen said.
Except Knox snared it.
“I had no idea what was going on,” Allen said.
Which about describes how all of Buffalo feels at the moment. So watch these Bills, because there’s plenty of evidence they came into these playoffs curiously undervalued. The Tennessee Titans are the top seed in the AFC, so they got to sit back and drink in this performance from afar, knowing they wouldn’t have to face Buffalo until each has won another game. Plus, Tennessee owns a 34-31 victory over the Bills from October. The Titans’ credentials are established and legitimate, and they earned their weekend off.
But the Bills aren’t really who they seem to be on paper, a sleepy third seed in the AFC behind Tennessee and Kansas City. Here are categories in which the Bills led the entire NFL: yards allowed per game (272.8), yards allowed per play (4.6), passing yards allowed per game (163.0 — a number that seems as if it’s from the 1960s), points allowed per game (17.0) and third-down conversion rate allowed (30.8 percent). Seems as if their defense might be at least fair to middling.
They can’t be identified just as that, as some bundled-up, fog-breathing, subzero defense that suffocates opponents who can’t handle the frozen turf. That dismisses Allen and all the weapons he has around him. Take that across-the-board defensive excellence — the group that turned Saturday’s game, because if a 30-point game can have a turning point, Micah Hyde’s it’s-a-touchdown-no-it’s-an-interception pick of Mac Jones in the end zone was just that — and add to it an offense that is dangerous and diverse. Allen’s 21 completions Saturday went to nine receivers, and the Bills ran it 29 times and passed 25. That’s better balance than Simone Biles.
“We’ve just got a lot of guys that can do all sorts of different things,” Allen said.
Fine, Buffalo didn’t lead the league in total offense; it was fifth. It didn’t score more points than anyone else; the Cowboys and Buccaneers did (the Bills were third). Only Kansas City and Tampa Bay converted third downs at a higher rate.
What you have here is a well-rounded team that is better than an 11-6 record might suggest. The Bills outscored their opponents by 194 points in the regular season. That’s more than twice the Titans (+65) and the Packers (+79), the top seeds in the two conferences. It’s the best margin in the league, and it suggests the Bills should be considered among the league’s best, a threat to win everything there is.
Consider, too, the odd flow to Buffalo’s season — a reason it could arrive in the playoffs somewhat off the marquee. A couple of the losses were understandable: at Tennessee and at Tampa Bay. A couple were weird: at Jacksonville and to New England in a blizzard, when the Pats threw just three passes. Add it up, and after a fifth straight win, a reality emerges: The Bills are a threat to whoever is in the way.
Saturday night, that was New England, but only nominally. The Patriots have played 59 playoff games in their checkered history — embarrassing in the 20th century, regal in the 21st. Only once have they allowed more points in the postseason, and that would be in the 1963 AFL championship game, a 51-10 loss to the San Diego Chargers. The Pats had played 41 playoff games under Belichick and never lost by more than 19.
There are adults from Boston and beyond who have no concept of such harsh playoff realities as Saturday’s 30-point drubbing. But this loss for the Patriots is not about them. It wasn’t about Belichick, who used 2021 to reestablish a good foundation for his franchise. It wasn’t about Tom Brady, who’s gone and in the playoffs on the other side of the bracket.
It was about the Buffalo Bills, who are built like their city, hardy and stout and all the rest. Belly up to the bar, Josh. Lick the wing sauce of your fingers. The rest of the games are on. Let’s see if anyone else can match that performance — and seem like a threat to the entire league, as the Bills clearly are. | null | null | null | null | null |
U.K. aware of ‘death of a British man in Texas’ after synagogue standoff ends, hostages freed
COLLEYVILLE, TEXAS - JANUARY 15: Colleyville law enforcement sit parked near the Congregation Beth Israel synagogue on January 15, 2022 in Colleyville, Texas. Police responded to a hostage situation after reports of a man with a gun was holding people captive at the synagogue. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
LONDON — The United Kingdom is “aware of the death of a British man in Texas” after an hours-long standoff at a Dallas-area synagogue on Saturday ended with hostages freed and the suspect confirmed dead.
A spokesperson for the U.K.'s Foreign Office, in a statement to The Washington Post, said “we are aware of the death of a British man in Texas and are in contact with the local authorities.”
Colleyville Police Chief Michael Miller and FBI Special Agent in Charge Matthew DeSarno declined in a news conference after the standoff’s conclusion to share more information about the identity of the suspect, saying an investigation with “global reach” is underway. The Metropolitan Police and other U.K. authorities are working closely with their U.S. counterparts on the U.S.-led investigation.
Officials said Saturday that the man, whose name has not yet been released, was "deceased” but did not say whether had been killed by law enforcement or himself.
Stacey Silverman, who has been a member of the Congregation Beth Israel in the suburb of Fort Worth and Dallas for 13 years and was watching the service, which was livestreamed when the hostages were taken, said the suspect could be heard saying that he had flown to the area from 5,000 miles away – and that he said he chose a synagogue because the United States “only cares about Jewish lives."
A law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation said the man’s motive for taking hostages appeared to be his anger over the U.S. imprisonment of Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani woman being held in federal prison in Fort Worth for trying to kill U.S. soldiers. Siddiqui was convicted on terrorism charges in 2010 and sentenced to 86 years in prison after opening fire on Americans.
The attack, which began around 11 a.m. Saturday local time, has shaken the Jewish community both in the United States and around the world, with many Jews around the world voicing concerns for their safety.
“Our sanctuaries are still the target of those who wish to harm us," Hen Mazzig, a senior fellow at the Tel Aviv Institute, a non-profit dedicated to research and tackling antisemitic hate speech online, told The Post on Sunday.
– Annabelle Timsit, Souad Mekhennet, Bryan Pietsch contributed to this report. | null | null | null | null | null |
Why not lottery admissions for great high schools? It’s not church bingo
Struggling for fairness at two famous schools, Jefferson and Lowell.
Thomas Jefferson High School in Alexandria, Va., admitted fewer than 10 Black students to the Class of 2024, sparking outrage in some quarters and debate among current students and alumni. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
Judging from heavy participation in the Powerball and Mega Millions jackpots, many Americans love lotteries. But when such randomized selection systems have been used lately to decide who gets into popular high schools, they have inspired bitter debates and lawsuits.
Among the most controversial proposed lottery admission systems have been the ones for Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax County, Va., and Lowell High School in San Francisco.
The debate over such systems is often confusing and misleading. Frequently overlooked is the fact that many long-used admissions processes, particularly in our most revered colleges, also are quite random but don’t get as many complaints, in part because the schools involved are considered national treasures.
Jefferson High was built in 1965 and became a magnet school admitting students on academic merit in 1985. It is often the most selective high school in the country, public or private, as measured by the average SAT scores of its students.
Lowell, under another name, became in 1856 the first U.S. public high school west of the Mississippi. It has long selected students on the basis of grades and test scores, but, in recent decades, it has not had average SAT scores as high as some Bay Area public schools that admit anyone living in their affluent neighborhoods.
The Fairfax County schools superintendent proposed in fall 2020 a lottery-like admission system for Jefferson, but the school board said no. Lowell has adopted a lottery system because of issues with grades and test scores during the pandemic. It is set to expire in the next school year, but the school board wants to keep it. Reformers also have suggested lottery-like admissions for selective public schools in Boston, New York City and other places, but many people don’t like what sounds to them like picking names out of a hat.
America’s top SAT school makes another disputed attempt at diversity
Influential people wanted to try lotteries at Lowell and Jefferson for the same reason. They did not like the fact that Black, Hispanic and impoverished students were underrepresented. Jefferson, with 1.7 percent of students low-income and 5 percent Black or Hispanic, was less welcoming to such students than Lowell, with 36 percent of students low-income and 14 percent Hispanic or Black.
The largest ethnic group at both schools is of Asian descent. This has happened at some other selective high schools. I can’t find research on this, but one reason may be that Asian American culture is more focused on academic achievement. Lawsuits have been filed in both San Francisco and Fairfax County, arguing that new admission systems wrongly reduce the number of Asian American students accepted.
The new randomized lottery system at Lowell produced the largest number of Black and Hispanic freshmen in at least 25 years, up from 16 percent to 30 percent of that class. Jefferson also got more low-income, Black and Hispanic admissions out of a new non-lottery system that gave personal background some weight, one of several points of controversy in the lawsuits that have been filed.
While we fret over selective high school admissions, the random nature of our system for picking students for selective universities doesn’t get much attention. Ivy League admissions officers work hard to make sure each year they create a new class of freshmen that is both diverse and talented. But from the perspective of an individual applicant who knows the chance of admission can be as low as 5 percent, the process looks pretty random. Experienced admissions people at such colleges say that with the exception a few uniquely gifted students, those they admit are not clearly superior to many of the students they reject or put on bloated wait lists.
A new documentary about Lowell, “Try Harder!” goes deep into the lives of students on that campus struggling with college admissions systems that don’t make sense to them. The students seem less concerned about the difficulties they encountered getting into their ancient and excellent high school. I think this is in part because the San Francisco district (57,000 students), like the Fairfax County district (178,000 students), has other schools with courses and teachers just as good.
If ninth-graders don’t get into Lowell, there are four other San Francisco campuses in the top 5 percent of U.S. high schools measured by participation in Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses and exams on my Challenge Index list. AP and IB are important for college preparation. Fairfax County has 16 high schools other than Jefferson in the top 5 percent.
Successful principal dodges D.C. rules
Families are understandably pleased to have their children admitted to Jefferson, Lowell or other selective high schools. But I can find no research showing those students do better in college or life than similarly talented graduates of lower-performing high schools.
Complaints about randomized high school admissions often overlook the fact that only the most ambitious students are likely to apply to such demanding schools. Wanting to go to a school like Lowell or Jefferson reveals a desire to succeed that, as many of us learn in life, in the long run is more important than whatever high school we attended.
This is particularly true of the intellectual superstars who critics fear will not get into the best schools because of randomized admissions. I sense there are great teachers in nearly every school who will detect such students and make sure they get the special attention and freedom they need.
Those students’ parents are also likely to supply enriching experiences they would not find in most schools. Our country is blessed to have so many opportunities for young people like that. | null | null | null | null | null |
He transformed a small university in Maryland. Now Freeman Hrabowski is ready for his next act.
After three decades as president, Hrabowski is leaving the University of Maryland Baltimore County
Freeman Hrabowski, the longtime president of the University of Maryland Baltimore County, is retiring at the end of the academic year. He is one of the longest-serving university presidents in the nation and among the most influential leaders in higher education. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)
On a warm fall afternoon, Freeman A. Hrabowski III made his way through his college campus, past glassy buildings and manicured grass. It wasn’t always like this, he says. “In my early years as president, the first year, kids were accustomed just to dropping paper all around.”
On some campuses, the president can be a somewhat obscure figure. He is probably older, White. Students see him only at big events.
At the University of Maryland Baltimore County, however, Hrabowski is a celebrity. Students immediately recognize him, and they stand a little straighter as he peppers them with questions: “How are classes going?” “What’s your major?” “Are you studying hard?” “How’s your mom?” He’ll remember every detail. Some students even ask for selfies.
After 30 years at the helm of UMBC, Hrabowski will retire at the end of the school year, on June 30. He rose to national prominence as he transformed UMBC, a small school in the suburbs of Baltimore, into one of the nation’s top producers of engineers and scientists of color.
He is one of the longest-serving university presidents in the nation and among the most influential leaders in higher education. A search for a successor is underway.
Longtime UMBC president, who turned school into top producer of Black scientists and engineers, to retire
“Those are some big shoes to fill,” said Joshua Slaughter, a senior and computer engineering major. “The way he communicates with students and interacts with students is just something you don’t see at other universities.”
Hrabowski is plotting his next act, but he’s not leaving academia. He plans to continue working with and consulting university presidents and other education leaders, and spreading the message that higher education remains important.
“We must tell the story that higher education matters,” Hrabowski said in October. “When people give you these polls and a certain percent of different groups don’t believe in it, I always say, ‘Show me the family who’s had people go to college, who doesn’t want the next generation to go to college.’ The more people are exposed to education, the more they can envision who they can be and what their families can do.”
A 30-year experiment
Hrabowski’s philosophy — that anyone can succeed with the right support — is a remnant of his Southern upbringing. “Everyone knows his story,” Slaughter said. Hrabowski, at the age of 12, was jailed in 1963 after participating in the thousand-student Children’s March for civil rights.
“It was both frightening and empowering,” Hrabowski said. “The frightening part, the dogs, the fire hoses, the jail. Being in jail was awful. You felt like the caged bird.”
The empowering part: “It taught me … tomorrow can be better than today if I decide to be empowered to make it that way.”
Hrabowski took those lessons with him to what was then Hampton Institute, in Virginia, where he majored in mathematics. Becoming a college president was not on the radar. His parents raised him in Birmingham, Ala., and his mother had hoped her son would one day lead a Black high school — at the time one of the few positions of power offered to Black people. “She said, ‘You’re so smart. You’re going to probably get to be a principal of a high school.’"
After Hampton, Hrabowski went on to earn advanced degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he also worked as a professor and an administrator. He served a short stint as an associate dean at Alabama A&M University before joining the leadership at Coppin State College, before it became a university, in Baltimore.
By the late 1980s, officials at UMBC persuaded Hrabowski to become their vice provost. In 1992, he became president.
The role ended up being a good fit. Through an array of efforts — mentorship programs, financial aid, programs aimed at increasing retention and graduation — UMBC became a model for schools throughout the country.
Drew Faust, who led Harvard University from 2007 to 2018, praised Hrabowski’s leadership and commitment to building an inclusive student body. “He’s shown that it’s possible to do more than many of us had imagined we could do,” she said.
UMBC president is an activist, innovator and ‘mega nerd.’ His latest role: Giddy basketball fan.
Hrabowski’s retirement from UMBC comes at a perilous time for higher education. The student debt crisis is approaching $2 trillion. More than 1 million students have gone missing from higher education since the start of the pandemic. The tenets of a liberal arts education, including the importance of civil discourse, are under scrutiny as free-speech controversies make headlines.
Americans across the political spectrum are questioning whether the institution that promises social mobility is still working.
But at this critical juncture, some say colleges are poised to prove their worth. Universities are uniquely positioned to be at the forefront of efforts to upend structural racism, Hrabowski and others argued in the Atlantic. And campuses should serve as training grounds for students to become civically engaged citizens, they said.
“We want Americans to learn to agree to disagree, with civility, and to focus on the ideas and not the emotions. That’s where we have not finished our work in higher education,” Hrabowski said. “You can’t make people do anything on a college campus. But you can create a culture that encourages hard questions.”
Among those questions, Hrabowski said: “What will it take to become an environment where students of any background can come in and excel, and get to know people from different backgrounds?”
The Meyerhoff Scholars Program — founded in 1988 and accelerated during Hrabowski’s tenure as president — has been the university’s attempt at an answer. Designed to increase diversity in science, technology, engineering and math fields, Meyerhoff is a national model, leaders say. The program has been replicated at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Pennsylvania State University.
“It has produced hundreds of Black and minority students that are literally changing the world,” said Letitia Dzirasa, Baltimore’s health commissioner and a Meyerhoff scholar, at an alumni awards event in October. Kizzmekia Corbett, the immunologist who led the team that developed the Moderna coronavirus vaccine at the National Institutes of Health, is another Meyerhoff. “That is [Hrabowski’s] legacy.”
UMBC’s Hrabowski named to Time ‘influential’ list
Meyerhoff and similar programs at UMBC have been part of a 30-year experiment that has yielded results: The graduation gap between Black and White students has closed, more students from low-income households are enrolling, and the university is the top producer of Black students who go on to earn doctorates in natural sciences and engineering.
It’s a testament to how transformative institutions can be, Hrabowski said.
“It’s this idea that you can come from all kinds of backgrounds and become the best,” Hrabowski said. “That’s the message that we’ve got to send.”
‘Success is never final’
Despite his upcoming retirement, Hrabowski, at 71 years old, is full of energy. Faust described him as “tireless.” Among his health secrets: exercise and meditation. “I never thought I would be this fortunate,” he confessed.
Over the years, other schools — though Hrabowski won’t divulge which — have tried to seduce him into taking the top job. But he remained loyal to UMBC. “The chemistry is very healthy here,” he said. And the state is supportive of the university’s mission. “They invest in us. We’ve had about a billion dollars in construction in recent decades for this campus.”
It’s also hard to leave something you helped to create. Hrabowski has led UMBC for more than half its existence.
The president speaks at campus club meetings with the same level of intensity as a TED Talk. He warmly greeted a group of about a dozen graduate students on a November night during one of his signature focus groups. Students are randomly selected to attend the regular meetings, then invited to spend about an hour asking questions, debating issues, sharing stories — whatever feels right. The point is to get students talking.
It’s part of the culture Hrabowski has carefully constructed at UMBC. “It’s not just a matter of imparting information, it’s a culture that Freeman has built,” said Paula A. Johnson, president of Wellesley College. Michael Summers, a mentor to Meyerhoff scholars and professor in the chemistry and biochemistry department, said Hrabowski has changed the way many faculty think about teaching.
“I didn’t feel like I had any prejudices when I started at UMBC and yet, looking back, I definitely was interacting with Black students differently than I was interacting with White students,” Summers said. “It’s hard to recognize the biases we all have.”
Over Zoom, UMBC beats Yale for mock-trial championship
Students can feel the difference.
“In order to have a truly inclusive school, you need to make sure everyone in the chain of command, down to the students, is with the mission,” Slaughter said.
As at any institution, UMBC has its challenges. Students in recent years have accused campus officials of mishandling sexual assault cases. A 2018 federal lawsuit accused police, prosecutors and university officials of concealing reports of sexual assault. Most of the claims were dismissed in 2020. The institution has taken steps to reform, including overhauling its Title IX operations and processes.
“Success is never final,” Hrabowski likes to say.
The search for Hrabowski’s successor is ongoing. Jay A. Perman, chancellor of the state university system that includes UMBC, announced in October that he had appointed a search committee that includes students, faculty, staff and alumni.
“Whoever that person is who comes will have a great opportunity,” said Vandana Janenja, a professor and chair of the information systems department. “Listening is going to be the most important thing, really understanding the culture, but also being ready to shoot us out into this new place.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: China has a ‘zero-covid’ policy. What happens when it meets omicron?
A student reacts in July 2021 as she receives the Sinopharm coronavirus vaccine at a high school in Shenyang, China. (AFP/Getty Images)
Up till now, China’s leadership has boasted that its tight grip has produced a far more effective answer to the pandemic than the open societies of the West. The Global Times, a propaganda outlet, noted that the United States was hitting record numbers of new cases, along with Europe. “Both have chosen to ‘lie flat’ irresponsibly in the face of the raging pandemic,” the paper said in an editorial, but China “will not lie down.”
China’s effort to defeat the pandemic on Dec. 22 resulted in a severe lockdown of Xi’an, a city of 13 million people, similar to the initial closure of Wuhan. Upon detection of the virus, officials banned most people from leaving their homes unless they had special permission. This has led to rising complaints of food shortages and a lack of access to medical care. Several hospital officials in the city were fired after reports that a woman eight months pregnant miscarried outside a hospital upon being refused care until she had tested negative for the virus. The Chinese government has spurred local officials to impose rapid and severe — but relatively targeted — lockdowns whenever infections crop up, a “zero-covid” tactic that appears to have averted large-scale spread. But on Jan. 11 there were signs this tactic had become more frenzied as outbreaks, including some of the first omicron cases, cropped up in Henan, Shaanxi and Tianjin provinces.
Omicron is far more transmissible than delta or previous variants. Can China’s coercion and closed borders stop it? Will China’s “not lie down” strategy block a virus that has spread around the rest of the world in a matter of weeks? What will happen when the spring festival begins in February as millions of Chinese are on the move across the country? If a mass infection does break out, would China, which earlier attempted to cover up the Wuhan outbreak, be honest with its citizens and the world?
China’s population appears to have little natural immunity, but it has vaccinated more than 85 percent of its 1.4 billion people. However, uncertainty remains about the efficacy and durability of its two-shot vaccines, Sinovac and Sinopharm, that use an inactivated virus to stimulate an immune response. Both were developed before omicron. China as of now has no mRNA vaccines available.
The Beijing Winter Olympics get underway in a matter of weeks. China has vowed to keep the Olympics in a “closed loop,” with the athletes and others walled off from the rest of the country. Is this possible? The next month or two will show whether China’s vaunted system of police-state restrictions and harsh lockdowns can stand up to an airborne virus that knows no bounds. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: Readers critique The Post: The most important mission of public libraries today
More than edifying edifices
The Jan. 2 editorial “A new golden age of public libraries” celebrated the architecture of many new and renovated public libraries, nationally and internationally, as “breathtakingly beautiful” and “cultural masterpieces.” The new and renovated D.C. public libraries, including the recently opened Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, deserved this shout-out. Public libraries have re-created themselves many times over the past century — from bookmobiles to electronic information — and will continue to do so to remain relevant.
Editorials and articles devoted to publicizing and celebrating public libraries as great community spaces are to be applauded. However, the mission of public libraries in this age of disinformation and lack of understanding and tolerance of diverse points of view is more important than facilities. The core mission of public libraries is to provide information that invites all of us, free of charge, to continue to educate ourselves and our children, to explore issues in-depth from many points of view and to become inspired about what is possible for ourselves, our families, our communities and our nation. This invitation to grow, imagine and think should have been in paragraph one.
Ann Friedman, Arlington
The writer is a former director of Arlington Public Libraries.
I can sympathize with John Huey’s desire to consume less vitriol disguised as “news” by reducing his consumption and hopefully augmenting his emotional well-being, as he wrote in his Jan. 4 op-ed, “All the news I intend to quit.” However, his negative answer to a friend’s question about whether there is a place to go “for just good news” was uninformed. He, his friend and others seeking well-crafted and uplifting stories should check out the nonprofit Solutions Journalism Network and the journalism and reporters affiliated with it.
Consuming dispiriting news is a choice, just as choosing positive, helpful and inspirational stories is.
Alex Counts, Hyattsville
Shutting out a shutout
Over New Year’s weekend, University of Maryland redshirt senior wrestler Kyle Cochran, ranked No. 32, took the 184-pound title at the Southern Scuffle Tournament by going 5-0 over two days and beating opponents ranked 13th, 14th and 15th, and not giving up a single offensive point.
Wrestling is a winter sport, Maryland is a local university, and some of The Post’s readers would appreciate a minimum of coverage, especially given Cochran’s accomplishment.
Malcolm Wilson, Silver Spring
Interrogating the pollsters
The poll in the Jan. 2 front-page article “1 in 3 can justify violence against government” contained an alarming question: “Do you think it is ever justified for citizens to take violent action against the government, or is it never justified?” Nazi Germany probably springs to mind for most: a government that kills and imprisons, tortures anyone it doesn’t like. Right?
The following part narrowed this to U.S.-specific cases and asked is violence justified if the “government violates or takes away rights or freedoms/oppresses people.” The poll said 22 percent agreed that violence was acceptable in that case. But what does it mean to take away freedoms and “oppress”? The poll fell apart after this question.
Only 3 percent cited violence as justified in response to a “president or government [that] does not accept election results,” and only — incredibly — 2 percent cited a takeover of the U.S. government by Nazis or fascists as justifying violence.
Why did the most robust case for justifying violence against a government — a Nazi-based takeover — get the weakest response? It’s because the poll was flawed.
The Post misled the public by asserting that the risk of violence is much greater than it is. According to this poll, if only 2 percent are willing to take action against a Hitler 2.0, I seriously doubt people will launch a civil war over mask and vaccine mandates.
Patrick Thibodeau, Washington
Wrong ways to memorialize
Why was it necessary to say in the Jan. 4 obituary for Alexander Garvin, “Urban planner guided Ground Zero rebuilding,” that “his parents were Jewish immigrants from Latvia”? The Post doesn’t say, “Her parents were Catholic immigrants from Ireland.”
Jean Brodsky Bernard, Chevy Chase
The Jan. 4 obituary for Alexander Garvin stated, “Mr. Garvin believed redevelopment projects should not be imposed from above by all-powerful public officials or architects. Instead, they should develop from the ground up, reflecting the needs of local residents, office workers, commuters and business owners.”
At Ground Zero, this is exactly what did not happen. And it means a large portion of the site fails as an asset to its community and New York City and as honoring the memory of Sept. 11, 2001.
The design of the dominant feature of the site — the eight-acre, billion-dollar memorial — was rejected by thousands of on-site and online public meeting attendees by nearly 2 to 1. The public overwhelmingly called for the memorial to include some authentic artifact that speaks directly to the site’s history, as the USS Arizona Memorial and the Hiroshima Peace Memorial do.
This was ignored. Rather, all-knowing, handpicked academics and well-connected officials imposed a financially unsupportable “minimalist” memorial that intentionally remade the site so that it does not acknowledge its history so that visitors may, in the words of the architect, think about 9/11 “or not.”
And they don’t. They check messages and play games on their phones and pose as though they are at Disney. However, they cannot be criticized for disrespecting the history of the site when the memorial was specifically chosen because it does not respect this history.
Furthermore, now in the evenings, to save money, the waterfalls are turned off, rendering two massive, inert pits, and the memorial is, unbelievably, roped off from the public — leaving the site to fail in essentially every way.
At Ground Zero, vanity replaced duty, good sense and efficiency.
Michael Burke, New York
The writer, whose brother, Capt. William F. Burke Jr., died in the response to the Twin Towers attack, led the effort to return Fritz Koenig’s damaged sculpture “The Sphere” to the World Trade Center site.
And in the same strip, Sally called Snoopy stupid!
I have been reading the comics section of the home newspaper since I was 6 or 7. Why does The Post keep reprinting the “Classic Peanuts” strip with no concern for offensive content, as in the Jan. 2 strip?
I might think that my brother is dumb, but I would never say that to his face. If I had called a classmate dumb even back when I was in school in the 1950s, my teacher would have scolded me, and my parents would have known about it.
Lynda M. Durfee, Alexandria
Fact-finding in the opinion section
In his Dec. 30 Thursday Opinion column, “This is the worst economy we never had,” Dana Milbank pointed out how Fox News is being deceptive about the state of the economy. He cited numerous examples of the deception surrounding problems at Christmas that never materialized, and stated, “Americans, particularly Republicans, express a gloom not matched by economic reality. . . . This is, in large part, because disinformation has prevailed.” True facts are not extensively reported in mainstream media.
I read The Post thoroughly every day. Why did I have to learn the facts of our booming economy from Milbank’s column? Aren’t the following significant enough to be the subject of a news story in The Post? The U.S. economy improved more in President Biden’s first 12 months than under any other president during the past 50 years. The U.S. economy expanded at a rate that outpaced those of Europe and even China. U.S. stock markets outperformed those of the rest of the world.
Maybe good news doesn’t sell papers, but isn’t it the responsibility of the media to report on the true state of our economy? Without such reporting, why the surprise and angst about disinformation prevailing?
Susan L. Korfanty, Madison, Va.
More on ‘fewer’
I disagree with Anne Curzan, who wrote in her Jan. 3 op-ed, “Words in English don’t last forever. And that’s okay.,” that the difference in usage between “less” and “fewer” depends on whether something can be counted. It depends on whether one can have a fraction of it. Curzan quoted disapprovingly “less than two weeks.” But there can be less than two weeks: Twelve days is less than two weeks; 1.5 weeks is less than two weeks. “Fewer than two weeks” is one week.
By contrast, one should always say “fewer people” because (except to statisticians) there’s no such thing as half a person.
Kevin W. Parker, Greenbelt
Anne Curzan’s op-ed resurrected a 40-year-old memory. I received A’s in high school English and in freshman college English, but I was never taught the usage difference between “less” and “fewer.” That was abruptly brought to my attention when I was working on my master’s thesis in a health-care topic. Because of the nature of the research, I used “less” many times. And a member of my committee circled the word in bright red every time I should have used “fewer.” This was in manual-typewriter days, and I had to change every single error.
I hope “fewer” never goes away.
Sue Borsuk, Glen Burnie
Anne Curzan’s point that the English language is forever evolving was well taken — after all, the language has adapted well throughout both history and geography.
However, evolution of a language is not the same as its slow poisoning, which is not okay. I refer to the ghastly misuse and overuse of the word “like.” Properly used, it is a verb (“I like tea”) or it is followed by a noun (“She quivered like an aspen”). Regrettably, though, it has become a substitute for “as if/as though” (“We felt as though we had been ignored”) or “that” (“It seemed that the movie would never end”).
Further, it has been seen as an inane response to a surprising situation: “I was, like, wow!” And it has become a tiresome sentence interrupter: “I think, like, I might have to, like, leave early.”
All this “like” cannot mean the English language is unfolding in a good way; rather, it demonstrates its invidious undermining, and, therefore, serves as an excellent reason to swipe left on a dating site or frown dismissively in other situations.
Catherine Hall, Rockville
Making a vast difference to the vas deferens
Regarding the Dec. 28 front-page article “Across the U.S., vasectomies become an ‘act of love’ ”:
I applaud the men and the men’s movements promoting vasectomies, not only as a response to recent antiabortion laws but also because vasectomy is overall a safe and responsible means of family planning and population control. I had an outpatient needle-and-scalpel vasectomy almost 40 years ago — and it was virtually pain-free at that time. (I was even able to watch the doctor with the aid of a mirror!)
I was disappointed, however, that the article mentioned only that current vasectomy is “needle- and scalpel-free” but did not describe just what the procedure is. Knowing precisely what one can expect with a vasectomy would go a long way, I believe, toward encouraging more men to take the plunge.
Larry S. Beyna, Cheverly
Smooth jazz beyond the (O)G
As a jazz musician, I never cared for the “smooth jazz” label, preferring “instrumental pop” as a way to separate the jazz I know from music that’s less complex. But given the economic realities of the U.S. music market, some serious players have taken a detour to the smooth side out of necessity.
I was delighted to see Sam Gendel and Sam Wilkes featured in Andy Beta’s Jan. 2 Arts & Style essay, “2021 was the year smooth jazz gave us some serenity,” as I recently discovered them in entirely different contexts. It turns out they are skilled players on the Los Angeles jazz scene and work in many genres, from “legit” jazz groups to the electro-funk of the group Knower to the ironic chaos of Clown Core. Perhaps they turned to instrumental pop out of necessity or just for the challenge of a musical outlet with different rules.
A few searches on YouTube will uncover what these fine musicians do when they’re not keeping diners company.
Eric Wenocur, Olney
A virtuous virtuoso
I am a huge fan of the cartoons and cartoonists featured in The Post. Usually, readers go to the editorial cartoons for commentary and the comics pages for fun and laughs. But who knew the comics could be a teaching tool as well?
See the Jan. 6 “Candorville” strip by Darrin Bell, who likely introduced many readers to Hazel Scott, a talented and committed singer and jazz pianist who also was a civil rights activist. It doesn’t take much research to learn about Scott. Here’s a Wikipedia excerpt: “Hazel Dorothy Scott (June 11, 1920 – October 2, 1981) was a Trinidad-born American jazz and classical pianist, singer, and actor. She was a critically acclaimed performing artist and an outspoken critic of racial discrimination and segregation. She used her influence to improve the representation of black Americans in film.”
There’s much more, including videos of her performances on YouTube. Bell deserves recognition and everyone’s thanks. He certainly has mine.
Frank A. Aukofer, Falls Church
Curb your enthusiasm for malapropisms
The Dec. 30 news article “Tributes pour in, revealing a soft spot for a mentor who was a ‘fighter,’ ” about the late former senator Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), said Reid was “even ahead of the curb when he criticized the former name of the Washington Football Team in 2014.” Ahead of the curb? Really? Was he on the sidewalk?
Reid was ahead of the curve.
Michael J. Maloney, Fairfax
Distinguish rioters from protesters
Near the end of the second paragraph, the Jan. 2 front-page article “Poll: Views of Capitol riot split on party lines” referred to “convicted protesters” and later referred to “protesters.” Please, please, don’t ever write that again.
The protesters went to the rally and then left. The people who have been convicted were rioters, insurrectionists, participants in a mob, trespassers, brawlers, hooligans, assailants. Saying they were protesters is like calling enslavers “employers” and gives cover to the people who called them peaceful and tourists and orderly.
Please, in the name of accurate and precise reporting, just stop.
Joan Hartman Moore, Alexandria
Fuzzy resolutions
Kudos to Sergio Peçanha’s Dec. 31 Friday Opinion column, “10 common-sense New Year’s resolutions.” However, he should have included the most important resolution: Pass the voting rights bill.
Lora Lee Rodriguez, Solomons, Md.
In his Dec. 31 column, “10 common-sense New Year’s resolutions,” Sergio Peçanha reinforced the white-supremacy narrative by stating, “Unless you’re Native American, you’re here because someone in your family was an immigrant.” My ancestors did not choose to come from Africa to America as immigrants; they came as chattel. It is stunning that no one corrected this enormously myopic historical error before it went to print.
This type of institutionalized bias demonstrates why critical race theory, anti-racism education, the 1619 Project and groups such as Black Lives Matter continue to be vital and necessary in 2022.
Bill Harris, Columbia
Unflattering descriptions of the dead | null | null | null | null | null |
A plume from the eruption of the underwater volcano Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai rises over Tonga in a satellite image taken by a Japanese weather satellite. (National Institute of Information and Communications Technology /Handout via Reuters)
Pita Taufatofua, an unofficial ambassador known for baring his oiled, buff chest during Opening Ceremonies for the Olympic Games, pleaded for help after the eruption of an underwater volcano created a tsunami that struck his homeland island nation of Tonga.
The three-time Olympian, who lives in Australia, created a GoFundMe account that has raised more than $142,000 as of Sunday morning and wrote on social media that communications with his family in Ha’apai had been cut off. Satellite images showed a plume of ash, steam and gas rising in the Pacific Ocean from the eruption Saturday evening and sending tsunami waves crashing into Tonga.
“My current knowledge is that my father (now the governor of Ha’apai) was trying to fly back to Ha’apai from Tongatapu straight after the opening of parliament. After getting to the airport his flight was canceled due to the volcanic eruption,” Taufatofua wrote on Instagram. “Last we heard he was securing our home in Veitongo right on the waters edge. Our family in Ha’apai has had all communication cut off.
“The King has called all the reservists and armed forces to prepare for assistance. The information I’ve been sent shows the tsunami going over both Popua and the main town in Tongatapu, Nuku’alofa. No word yet from Ha’apai. I’ll be keeping you updated as I know more. What I do know is that the Tongan people are some of the strongest most resilient people to grace God’s earth. In times of great struggle is when their true spirit shines.”
Taufatofua, who has competed in the 2016 and 2020 Summer Games in taekwondo and the 2018 Winter Games in skiing, lives mostly in Australia and has been training there, he wrote on GoFundMe. He became a social media sensation for marching in the Opening Ceremonies in traditional island clothing, replete with a well-oiled torso, in summer and winter, as he became the first person to compete in three consecutive Olympics since the Winter Games were added in 1924.
“If my ancestors could sail across the Pacific Ocean for a thousand years, not knowing where the next piece of land was going to be, not knowing where their next meal was going to be, going to war, then I can walk for 25 minutes through an opening ceremony without a shirt on and represent a thousand years of heritage,” he said in South Korea in 2018.
Who knew a Tongan cross-country skier could be so engaging with his shirt on?
He competed in those Games in cross-country skiing, and for the 2020 Games, he had hoped to qualify in sprint kayak as well as taekwondo.
But he tore muscles in his rib cage, affecting his performance. | null | null | null | null | null |
He was a lifelong Baltimore guy — a huge fan of all Baltimore teams and of the University of Maryland, (even though he graduated from Haverford College and Yale Law School) most notably in basketball. The Orioles were his first love, and he was extremely pleased when his wife, Sheila, represented Tom Clancy’s wife, Wanda, in their divorce and Ms. Clancy was awarded Clancy’s box at Camden Yards as part of the settlement. “Means I can go see the O’s anytime I want,” he would say with a laugh. The last time we had dinner, several weeks ago, he argued with great passion that the Orioles are on the right track.
Maryland must do more to preserve housing around the Purple Line | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: A pandemic shows why the United States should not be one of only 11 nations without paid sick leave
Elementary school teacher Carrie Landheer protests for stronger covid-19 safety protocols on Jan. 7 in Oakland, Calif. (Noah Berger/AP)
The United States is one of only 11 countries on the planet that do not mandate paid sick leave at the national level.
This has long been problematic, but in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic and as the omicron variant is spreading rapidly, it’s disgraceful that a significant proportion of American workers do not have access to paid sick leave.
That puts too many — including those who earn the least — in a position of having to choose between going to work with covid-19 or staying home and losing several days of income.
Nearly 80 percent of American workers have at least some paid sick leave, according to a Labor Department survey last year, but that masks a disparity: 95 percent of the highest-paid workers have access to paid sick leave, while only 35 percent of the lowest-paid workers do.
At the beginning of the pandemic, Republicans and Democrats in Congress came together to pass emergency legislation to aid the economy and require more firms to offer paid sick leave. But that requirement is now gone. Last year, Democrats also passed the American Rescue Plan, which included a tax break for companies that offered paid sick leave. That incentive expired in September.
If Congress moves forward with any sort of omicron relief, it should include a requirement that all companies offer emergency paid sick leave. At a minimum, this should be in place for pandemic-related absences.
Omicron has brought into focus how quickly the virus spreads when sick people don’t stay home. About 5 million Americans are home sick or isolating, according to research firm Capital Economics.
Many front-line workers in grocery stores and restaurants are especially at risk since they are the least likely to have paid sick leave. Red Lobster workers are among those who have reported they are going to work ill because of a lack of paid sick leave. A company spokesperson said, “No one is allowed to work sick,” and no one should ever receive pressure to do so. But the reality on the ground is often different.
McDonald’s offers 10 days of paid sick leave for crew members in corporate-owned stores, and Domino’s Pizza offers five, but most locations for these well-known brands are franchises that don’t have the same policies.
Prominent retailers, including Walmart, Amazon, CVS and Walgreens, just scaled back their paid sick leave from two weeks to one after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reduced its recommended quarantine guideline to five days. However, the CDC guideline was supposed to be for asymptomatic people only. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Post.)
Fourteen states and Washington, D.C., mandate paid sick leave, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, but that’s not enough. The fact that almost every other nation in the world requires paid sick leave shows that employers are more than capable of protecting their workers — and customers — by doing the right thing.
Congress should require all companies to offer paid sick leave. | null | null | null | null | null |
Nuclear power plants don’t emit greenhouse gases, but there are cost and safety drawbacks.
The Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant in Lusby, Maryland, is one of the plants that produce about 20 percent of the energy used in the United States. That process does not emit greenhouse gases, which contribute to climate change. But the plants are expensive to build, and there are concerns about the plants' safety. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
By Jason Bittel
Today there are 55 nuclear power plants in 28 states, according to the United States Government’s Office of Nuclear Energy. Together, these facilities — some of which use a slightly different process to create steam — produce about one-fifth of the electricity used in the United States.
“In fact, there is a nuclear plant [Calvert Cliffs] not far from Washington, D.C., near the Chesapeake Bay, that has been generating clean, reliable electrical energy since the mid-1970s,” Evans said.
Jason Bittel is a freelance journalist who often writes about animals. He is also the author of “How to Talk to a Tiger . . . and Other Animals.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Jill Biden’s visit to tornado-ravaged Kentucky marks her third visit to a disaster site in a month
First lady Jill Biden speaks at a recovery center in Bowling Green, Ky., on Jan. 14. (Jon Cherry/Reuters)
Next to a house with a caved-in roof and only one wall standing in tornado-ravaged Bowling Green, Ky., Jill Biden hugged two women from the Ford family who had once lived there.
Later, in the wreckage Friday, she knelt down to speak with a 4-year-old girl, Ambla Mustafa, who had been injured in the tornado and who called the experience a “nightmare.”
The tornado that hit Bowling Green was part of a storm system that was one of the country’s deadliest outbreaks of December tornadoes, killing more than 90 people in five states, including 77 in Kentucky. Here, 17 people were killed after the community was hit by two tornadoes. In December, President Biden visited Dawson Springs, Ky. — about an hour-and-a-half drive west of Bowling Green — an estimated 75 percent of which had been destroyed, according to its mayor, with 13 people dead.
“A month ago, the president visited Dawson Springs to make Kentucky a promise: that we would help you rebuild,” the first lady said in a speech. “He told you that we wouldn’t walk away and that we’re in this for the long haul.”
A first lady visiting the site of a disaster or tragedy and playing the role of “Comforter in Chief,” which Laura Bush was once dubbed, is not unusual. What’s notable is that this is Biden’s third such visit in a month, after spending most of the end of 2021 focused on holiday traditions, her Joining Forces initiative to help military families, and touting the coronavirus vaccines. A little over a week ago, she accompanied the president to Boulder County, Colo., to survey the devastation of wildfires that burned more than 6,000 acres and destroyed more than 1,000 homes. The day the president visited Dawson Springs, the first lady and second gentleman Doug Emhoff met with family members of the victims of the Christmas parade tragedy in Waukesha, Wis., in which a man allegedly rammed his SUV through the parade, killing six and injuring more than 60.
These trips mark a subtle — and perhaps temporary — shift away from Biden focusing on touting the administration’s political priorities and toward sending a message that the Bidens are empathizers.
It’s not a new message; the Bidens talk openly about their personal losses, particularly the 2015 death of their son Beau, at 46. During the 2020 campaign, Joe Biden cast himself in opposition to President Donald Trump, as a leader who understood the losses Americans were experiencing during the pandemic. Now, in this crucial midterm election year, as the president finds himself with tanking approval ratings and an agenda stalled in Congress, members of the administration are returning to that campaign basic and going around the country to reach Americans on a human level.
As for why the first lady visited a state her husband had visited a month prior for the same disaster, her press secretary, Michael LaRosa, said Biden wanted the community to know that the administration was not going to abandon them. “It was important for her to see the devastation and recovery efforts up close, comfort families who lost everything, and reassure them that the state and federal partnership on the ground will continue to be there for them,” LaRosa said.
This comes at a time when the administration is struggling and Democrats are predicted to take heavy losses in the midterms. The Supreme Court recently shot down the president’s vaccine mandate for businesses with at least 100 employees. The Build Back Better Act is still stuck in the Senate, as the White House tries to win the support of Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va) and continually scales back key liberal agenda priorities, including measures to stem climate change, which may be responsible for extreme weather events such as five-state tornadoes or the conditions that lead to raging wildfires. Diplomatic talks with Russia to prevent a possible renewed war in Ukraine have come to an impasse. Inflation last year hit the highest rate it’s been in four decades. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) said last week that she will not support curtailing the filibuster, stymying the president’s efforts to stem the erosion of voting rights. A Washington Post average of December polls shows 43 percent approved and 51 percent disapproved of Biden’s job performance.
Jill Biden spent much of last year going around the country as a surrogate for her husband and giving speeches about his priorities, visiting schools to talk about coronavirus relief or going to red states to urge the unvaccinated to get their shots. She’s been far more active than other recent first ladies, who created initiatives such as Let’s Move and Be Best and stuck almost exclusively to promoting them. Last year, she traveled to more than 60 cities across 35 states and attended or hosted more than 150 events around the country or at the White House, many of them political in nature. This marks her fifth visit to a disaster site. She also went to Houston in February after winter storms caused a massive power outage, and to Surfside, Fla., with the president, a week after the tragic collapse of a condo there.
During the recent visit to Colorado after the wildfires, before a crowd made up of families who had lost their homes, she interrupted the president’s speech to give unrehearsed remarks. “Can I jump in?” she asked. “Of course,” he said. “The boss is going to say something to you all.”
She thanked the firefighters, EMTs and recovery workers, then added: “And I’d like to say, on a personal note, the governor told me how many of you lost your family pet. And, you know, they’re members of the family, too. So, I want to just say how terribly sorry we are for the loss of your pets. Because we’re — we’re animal people. So, you know, we know what a tough loss that is.”
In Bowling Green, the first lady spent 45 minutes surveying the wreckage, walking over broken glass amid piles of debris and talking to about 20 people. She then moved on to the Bowling Green Strong recovery center set up by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, where she joined volunteers in sorting through donated clothes and putting them on hangers. She spoke with a little boy named Maddox, who was visiting an area with donated toys. She emphasized the need for not just physical, but also psychological, recovery. “I think mental health [help] is going to be needed as time goes on here,” she said, “especially for these little children who have experienced such trauma.”
The Bidens, she told these people from a red state that the president did not win and that has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country, would be there as long as they needed them. | null | null | null | null | null |
Live updates Cowboys host the 49ers in first round of NFL playoffs
San Francisco has a strong crowd — but not as strong as last week
NFL plans to consider further instant replay changes; sky judge remains unlikely
Pregame reading: Dynasties, guarantees and ‘The Catch’: These teams have a rich playoff history
Fans stampede into AT&T Stadium
What to watch for when the 49ers face the Cowboys
Quarterback Dak Prescott will lead the Dallas Cowboys against the visiting San Francisco 49ers in the first round of the NFL playoffs. (Julio Cortez/AP)
Dak Prescott and the Dallas Cowboys host Jimmy Garoppolo and the San Francisco 49ers in the first round of the NFL playoffs. Follow along for live updates.
Where: AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Tex.
How to watch: Game broadcast is on CBS and Nickelodeon; streaming options include Paramount Plus and Amazon Prime Video
San Francisco fans, which overwhelmed Los Angeles last weekend in the 49ers’ win-and-in game at the Rams, have a strong presence again in AT&T Stadium. Dallas still holds a clear majority, but there is a fair amount of red, which stands out among the home white of many Dallas fans.
Vivid Seats, which has a crowd forecast model, shows the advantage as 68 percent for Dallas to 32 percent for San Francisco.
The NFL will consider further tweaks to the instant replay system in the wake of this season’s officiating issues, including Saturday’s inadvertent whistle that affected the Las Vegas Raiders’ playoff loss at Cincinnati, but remains extremely wary of going to a full-fledged “sky judge” arrangement, a person familiar with the league’s thinking on the matter said Sunday.
The NFL is pleased with the change enacted this season to the replay system that allows the replay assistant in the press box to consult with the on-field referee on an expanded — but still limited — scope of plays. League officials believed that made games move quicker, avoided some unnecessary coach’s challenges and rapidly corrected some on-field officiating mistakes.
However, the league remains reluctant to go to a sky judge, according to the person familiar with the NFL’s view. That is a system by which the replay official would be empowered to overturn any obvious mistakes by the on-field officials. The league and the rulemaking competition committee always have opposed giving too much authority to the replay official, preferring to have games mostly officiated on the field. They also want to avoid overreaching to an isolated incident, as perhaps occurred with their failed one-year experiment in 2019 to make pass interference reviewable by replay.
The 49ers’ coach, who is preparing his team to face the Cowboys on Sunday in the first round of the NFL playoffs, was an awestruck kid fortunate enough to have had a front-row seat for the titanic clashes between the early-1990s dynasties of San Francisco and Dallas. His father, Mike, was the 49ers’ offensive coordinator when they squared off with the Cowboys in three straight NFC championship games from 1993 to 1995.
“That was a part of my childhood that was just such cool football, because everyone knew those three NFC championships, those three years, those were the Super Bowl,” Kyle Shanahan told reporters.
As for whether his players share his appreciation for this week’s matchup, Shanahan replied with a laugh, “Not at all.”
Some of the most fast-moving, physical action associated with Sunday’s San Francisco-Dallas game occurred before the contest got going, when the doors opened up to fans at the Cowboys’ AT&T Stadium. That set off a stampede involving what appeared to be hundreds of people.
Presumably, many of those fans were holding standing room only tickets, which entitled them to view the game from any of six decks. There is no specific placement associated with those tickets, meaning that the best perches went to those who could get to them the fastest.
Tickets of all sorts to Sunday’s game, featuring the first meeting between the two franchises since the 1995 NFC championship game, were hot items. Standing room only seats, the cheapest kind available for Cowboys games, were heading up toward $200 in the run-up to the game. Tickets that came with an actual seat assignment attached were going for at least twice as much and, in most cases, far more than that.
A once-great NFL postseason rivalry is revisited when the Cowboys host the 49ers in an opening-round NFC playoff game late Sunday afternoon in Arlington, Tex.
The two teams meet in the postseason for the first time since January 1995. Their playoff encounters most famously produced “The Catch,” the soaring touchdown grab by wide receiver Dwight Clark of a pass by quarterback Joe Montana that gave the Niners an NFC championship game triumph over the Cowboys on Jan. 10, 1982.
The third-seeded Cowboys won the NFC East and seek their first postseason win in three years. With quarterback Dak Prescott healthy and back in the lineup, they led the NFL in total offense and scoring offense.
They also are opportunistic on defense, with a league-leading 34 takeaways. Cornerback Trevon Diggs had 11 interceptions and rookie linebacker Micah Parsons had 13 sacks, making the Cowboys the sixth NFL team since 1990 to have a player with 10 or more interceptions and a player with 10 or more sacks.
The sixth-seeded 49ers are back in the playoffs after a one-season absence. They reached the Super Bowl two years ago before losing to the Kansas City Chiefs.
Quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo had a thumb injury late in the regular season but remains the starter even after the 49ers used the third overall choice in last year’s NFL draft on Trey Lance. The Niners like to utilize versatile wide receiver Deebo Samuel in the backfield and can control games with long, time-consuming drives on offense to complement their powerful defense. Left tackle Trent Williams returns to the lineup after missing the regular season finale because of an elbow injury.
The 49ers ranked third in the NFL in total defense during the regular season. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: Dr. King was bold. Don’t make him bland.
A rising full moon passes behind the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial and the Washington Monument on Dec. 29, 2020, in Washington. (J. David Ake/AP)
Similarly, King believed profoundly in moral uplift and the need for individual redemption. “Naturally, I believe in changing the heart,” he said. “I happen to be a Baptist preacher and that puts me in the heart-changing business and Sunday after Sunday I’m preaching about conversion and the need for the new birth and regeneration. … I’m honest enough to see the gone-wrongness of human nature.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: The Texas synagogue hostage situation reminds us that we must prioritize combating antisemitism
A police vehicle sits outside of the Congregation Beth Israel Synagogue in Colleyville, Tex., on Jan. 16. (Andy Jacobsohn/AFP/Getty Images)
The first time I heard Deborah Lipstadt speak, I was in high school in Texas, seated in an overcrowded auditorium as she explained how she took the infamous Holocaust denier David Irving to court — and won. It was spellbinding, one of those moments that stays with you the way things only ever can when you’re young.
It was clear to me even then that this was a remarkable person, someone with the bravery to withstand extreme personal abuse to fight for the truth. In the wake of this weekend’s hostage situation at a Texas synagogue, it’s even clearer to me now how necessary it is to have leaders who prioritize combating antisemitism.
In July, President Biden nominated Lipstadt to be the State Department’s Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism — a position recently elevated to the rank of ambassador. There could be no finer choice. But along with hundreds of other Biden nominees, Lipstadt’s confirmation has been obstructed by Republicans, some of whom appear to want her to apologize to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who in March said that the if Jan. 6 rioters had belonged to Black Lives Matter or antifa, instead of being Trump supporters “who love this country,” he would have felt in real danger.
“This is white supremacy/nationalism,” Lipstadt tweeted in response. “Pure and simple.”
The real problem here is not the meaning of one ignorant comment from an elected official but the broader Republican willingness to play partisan politics with antisemitism, a hatred that must be condemned wherever it appears.
Lipstadt has repeatedly spoken out against antisemitism on both sides of the aisle. On the left, she has criticized Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Mich.) for saying that Israel has “hypnotized the world” and that pro-Israel Americans have foreign “allegiance.” On the right, she has called out, among others, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) for accusing the prominent Jewish donors George Soros, Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer of “buying” the 2018 midterm elections.
Clearly, the problem of antisemitism remains in American life. On Saturday, a man stormed into a synagogue outside Dallas during a Shabbat service and held four people, including the rabbi, hostage for 11 hours. The hostages were eventually rescued. The suspect had demanded the release of Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist convicted in 2010 of attempting to kill U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan and who is being held in nearby Fort Worth.
Siddiqui is a known antisemite. During her trial, she famously demanded that potential jurors submit to DNA tests to prove they were not Jewish. “If they have a Zionist or Israeli background … they are all mad at me,” she told the judge. “They should be excluded if you want to be fair.”
It’s far easier, of course, to denounce bigotry on the other side of the aisle than on one’s own side. The Texas attack should trigger some honest reckoning in institutions such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which condemned the hostage situation but one of whose senior members, Zahra Billoo, declared, barely a month ago, that “Zionist synagogues” contribute to Islamophobia. Far too often, hateful words become calls to action.
But given events of recent years, after the chants of “Jews will not replace us!” rang out in Charlottesville and after the recycling of the “great replacement” conspiracy theory by President Donald Trump and several prominent Republican leaders (a theory that inspired the murders — yes, murders — of 11 Jews in Pittsburgh and one in Poway, Calif.), the onus should be on Republicans in particular to demonstrate that they are serious about antisemitism.
Confirming Lipstadt, who is not a political operative but a scholar of the highest integrity, is a prime opportunity for our leaders to show they actually care. That is too much to ask for the bad-faith brigade that styles itself as the true friend of Israel and the Jewish people but does not seem terribly bothered by the killing of American Jews in suburban synagogues or the rampant antisemitism of right-wing authoritarians in Central and Eastern Europe. In 2017, for example, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban promoted antisemitic imagery of powerful Jewish financiers scheming to control the world. Thousands of posters that said “Let’s not allow Soros to have the last laugh!” were posted around the country.
“In order to fight prejudice successfully, we need to be willing to break ourselves out of the trap of tribalism,” Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, told me recently. “We should see Republican leadership saying to the members of their own party, ‘Cut it out — we’re worried about the rise of antisemitism, and confirming Professor Lipstadt is an opportunity to show we’re going to do something about it.’ I’d expect the same thing of Democrats if the roles were reversed.”
This is an area where the U.S. envoy can make a real difference. Ira Forman, who served as the Obama administration’s appointee between 2013 and 2017, reiterated how actively governments such as Orban’s and the Law and Justice party in Poland are attempting to whitewash the history of the Holocaust in their respective countries. “It is critical that we don’t let them get away with it,” Forman said.
Every day that Lipstadt is kept from the job is another day they will. | null | null | null | null | null |
FILE - In this photo taken during Dec. 27 - Dec. 31, 2021 and provided on Jan. 1, 2022 by the North Korean government, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un attends a meeting of the Central Committee of the ruling Workers’ Party in Pyongyang, North Korea. North Korea fires projectile into sea in the fourth launch this month, South Korea says on Monday, Jan. 17, 2022. Independent journalists were not given access to cover the event depicted in this image distributed by the North Korean government. The content of this image is as provided and cannot be independently verified. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP) (Uncredited/KCNA via KNS) | null | null | null | null | null |
A fight over turning a ‘rural crescent’ in Northern Virginia into a hub for data centers
Page Snyder, owner of Pageland Farm, stands at the entrance of an unused horse barn in December. The power lines in the background are one reason she and her neighbors are now trying to convert their land into a 2,100-acre data center complex, sparking outrage from the broader community in a rural swath of Prince William County. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
Residents along Pageland Lane once would have scoffed at the idea of their farms and regal brick homes becoming the site of a massive data center complex, given all the years of fighting to keep their rural oasis free of Northern Virginia’s relentless growth.
But after a string of defeats that has left their Prince William County neighborhood filled with traffic and towering transmission lines, those residents are now hoping to sell their land so it can become a 2,100-acre hub to the world’s Internet traffic.
“It’s just gotten worse and worse,” said Page Snyder, 71, who grew up on the farm she owns near a Civil War battle site and a sprawling retirement village whose development she and her neighbors opposed. “Basically, we’ve just thrown in the towel.”
Their effort to convince the county to change its land use policy in a portion of western Prince William, where most types of new development have been restricted, sparked a fierce backlash in the broader community — pulling even documentary filmmaker Ken Burns into a larger debate about the changing identity of the fast-growing county that, elsewhere, is struggling with crowded schools and widening pockets of poverty.
With a 10-year review of Prince William’s comprehensive plan for land use underway, the $8.4 billion data center industry that is largely anchored in Northern Virginia is central to that debate, particularly as the coronavirus pandemic fuels an increase in at-home work and online shopping that, in turn, has driven up demand for even more of the massive buildings whose servers make cloud computing possible.
As data centers bloom, a century-old African American enclave is threatened
Prince William — already home to 33 data centers with eight more under construction — is competing to become the industry’s next major host as technology companies seek to expand beyond nearby Loudoun County, home to the world’s largest concentration of data centers, with about 140 occupying 25 million square feet.
Along those lines, the Prince William board is reviewing the “Digital Gateway” proposal brought by 156 Pageland Lane-area property owners, including local Supervisor Pete Candland (R-Gainesville), who generated outrage from slow-growth advocates he has long championed after he reversed position and included his family’s home in the proposal.
The Democrat-controlled board is also considering expanding the boundaries of a 8,700-acre “overlay district” zoned for data centers that the county economic development authority says is running out of available land that technology companies might favor over properties in other jurisdictions.
“This is a chance to really bring in more commercial revenue,” said Ann Wheeler (D), the board chair.
She argued that extra tax revenue from data centers — which generate $79 million a year for Prince William — would allow the county to ease its heavy reliance on residential property taxes to fund schools and other services.
With homeowner payments making up about 47 percent of the county’s general fund, “Just to say: ‘No, we’re not going to do this,’ is not responsible governing,” Wheeler said.
Supervisor Jeanine Lawson (R-Brentsville), whose district is within the 117,000 acres of county protected land known as the “rural crescent,” said there is something larger at stake.
The rural crescent — a home to bald eagles and towering Virginia cedar trees where development is mostly restricted to farming or one house every 10 acres — is one of the last remnants of Northern Virginia’s shrinking countryside, Lawson said.
Silver lining: Pandemic triggers booms in D.C. region's biotech and data center industries
Opening it up to industrial development “will forever change who we are as a county,” she said. “There would be no turning back from this.”
Battles over a rural oasis
Snyder and her family are longtime veterans in the war to keep the Gainesville area rural.
During the 1950s, Snyder’s mother, Annie Snyder, unsuccessfully fought against county plans to turn Pageland Lane into a two-lane asphalt road, predicting that it would bring more traffic through the livestock and crop farms that dominated the landscape, her daughter said.
The following decade, the elder Snyder led a fight to defeat a proposal to build an auto racetrack near the Manassas National Battlefield Park that preserves the site of the two Civil War battles at Bull Run.
After that, the community beat back plans to develop an amusement park, a mega mall and, during the 1990s, a Disney theme park a few miles away.
“We’ve spent our entire lives fighting one thing after another,” said Page Snyder, who joined her mother in the later battles.
Through it all, the area continued to grow, resulting in several new large residential developments, including the 1,863-home Heritage Hunt retirement community built during the 1990s on the site of a farm neighboring Snyder’s.
Meanwhile, farming in Northern Virginia diminished, with wineries and microbreweries taking over. More traditional family farms began to rely on agritourism as they struggled to compete with larger corporate agricultural companies.
Pageland Lane became a convenient cut-through for the area’s increasing traffic, including trucks from a nearby rock quarry that has supplied raw materials for the new construction.
In 2008, the Dominion utility company installed 500,000-volt transmission lines through the area — including the Manassas battlefield site — an upgrade in service that addressed the surge in demand for power, including from data centers in Loudoun.
Snyder and her neighbor Mary Ann Ghadban had led their community in a years-long fight to defeat a planned 10-mile ″Bi-County Parkway” along the edge of the battlefield site that would connect I-66 in Prince William to the Dulles International Airport corridor in Loudoun.
Pumpkin patches vs. ropes courses: Fairfax County battles farmers over agritourism
The $400 million state-funded project was indefinitely stalled in 2016 when the then-Republican-controlled Prince William board removed it from the county’s list of long-term priorities.
But with state transportation officials and surrounding jurisdictions still favoring the bypass while the area’s traffic grows increasingly worse, “we saw the writing on the wall,” said Ghadban, who works as a real estate broker.
The surge in data center development — including a 103-acre parcel of land nearby recently approved for that use — opened a window. The Dominion transmission lines and underground fiber-optic cables already serving Loudoun’s data centers make the Pageland Lane area ideal for that type of development, said the neighbors, who are either under contract or in discussions with technology companies for their land.
“We did not create this situation,” said Ghadban.
“We all thought we’d get to die here,” she said. But “it’s time for Prince William to evolve.”
A ‘lifestyle’ about to change
The residents of Heritage Hunt have mounted the most intense opposition.
Most of the retired professionals in the 55-plus community — which includes an 18-hole golf course that’s a short drive away from wineries and hiking trails — moved to get away from the bustle of the District and its inner suburbs, which they now see following them as more neighborhoods and businesses appear.
“We came out here for a certain lifestyle,” said Bill Wright, 65, who has led his community’s opposition to data centers. “And now it’s about to be changed dramatically.”
The Heritage Hunt residents — joined by slow-growth advocates, environmentalists and national park enthusiasts — argue that data centers are a threat to their quality of life, the local environment and the region’s importance to Civil War history.
Data centers have typically been large one-or-two-story concrete buildings occupying as many as 100 acres of land, with a steady hum emanating from the massive equipment inside, though technology companies have been exploring ways to build more eco-friendly structures that blend into their surrounding environment.
In Virginia, a historic Black neighborhood grapples with whether to grow
Despite assurances in the Pageland proposal that any structures built there would follow that eco-friendly trend, the opponents argue that they will still potentially be visible from the battlefield site, and, therefore, harmful to its historical integrity.
“The idea is: They’re very, very close,” said Kyle Hart, the Mid-Atlantic field representative for the National Parks Alliance.
The Dominion transmission lines running through the battlefield site “are certainly less than ideal,” Hart said. “But I don’t think they ruin the character of the park the way 2,100 acres of data centers would.”
The opponents have also challenged the economic development authority’s assertion that the overlay district is running out of marketable land, and say the structures will add more urban runoff into the region’s already damaged streams.
“In a time when you can least afford to destroy your environmental assets, this board is running us off a cliff,” said Elena Schlossberg, head of the Coalition to Protect Prince William County slow-growth group.
‘A sea of data centers’
Candland, who has represented the Gainesville district since 2012, is at the center of the acrimony surrounding the Digital Gateway proposal.
The outspoken supervisor surprised his supporters when he announced in a November Facebook post that he and his wife Robyn had signed on to the Pageland proposal.
All of their neighbors in the Catharpin Farm Estates development just off Pageland Lane had already done so after a July board decision to include their community in the study area for the potential land use change, Candland wrote.
That created the possibility of remaining behind “in a sea of data centers” and potentially losing what they invested in their home, he wrote.
Prince William logo controversy boils over. Supervisor files a FOIA request for answers
“I can honestly say, this was one of the hardest decisions we’ve ever made,” wrote Candland, who has since recused himself on matters related to the Pageland proposal. He did not return messages seeking comment from The Washington Post.
Some area residents have called on Candland to resign over the issue, which he has said he won’t do.
Even Ken Burns, who documented the histories of the Civil War and the country’s national parks in two of his films, got involved after Wright asked the filmmaker to write to the board chair, opposing the Digital Gateway.
“As a student and chronicler of American history for more than 40 years, I can attest to how fragile our precious heritage is and how susceptible it can be to the ravages of “ ‘progress,’ ” Burns said in his Jan. 5 letter, which data center opponents promptly circulated.
The Pageland Lane residents countered with their own statement titled “Ken Burns doesn’t live in Prince William County and is living in the past,” that criticized him for not hearing out their side.
A spokesperson for Burns, who lives in New Hampshire, said he stands by the letter.
While the Digital Gateway proposal makes its way through a county review process and a study of the data center overlay district’s boundaries continues, the two sides agree on one thing: the Gainesville area is no longer a rural paradise.
Tim Kissler, a neighbor of Candland’s, said he is greeted by “a major traffic jam” along Pageland Lane every morning when he leaves his home for work as a real estate developer. More than 5,100 vehicles pass through per day, according to the state transportation department.
“Everybody likes it here,” said Kissler, who has overseen the Catharpin Farms portion of the Digital Gateway proposal. “The problem is: change has come and is coming and nobody wants to get left behind.”
Denise Roberts said the debate has eroded the area’s once-strong sense of community.
She and her husband signed on to the Digital Gateway proposal but are now against it, reasoning they won’t get much for the renovated brick rambler they bought nearly five years ago.
“These are my friends that no longer talk to me because they think I’m trying to screw them out of $10 million or whatever they stand to get,” she said. But “this is my dream home.” | null | null | null | null | null |
“I’d say it just kind of developed as I went along,” Nolan said. I have great teammates and great coaches who draw up plays for me and find ways to get me the ball. These last couple of weeks, especially, they’ve been on me like: ‘Just have confidence in your shot. Even if you miss a couple, the next one’s going in, the next one’s going in.’ | null | null | null | null | null |
China’s Got Problems, But Inflation Ain’t One
An Olympic-themed sculpture at Shougang Park in Beijing, China, on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022. Beijing said it will conduct the winter games in a so-called “closed loop”, with participants only allowed to move between Olympic venues and other related facilities, and to use designated transport services. (Bloomberg)
Forecasts for a second year of strong global growth face two main dangers: the health of China’s economy and the prospect of much higher U.S. interest rates. How the world’s commercial poles navigate these risks will determine whether 2021’s rapid expansion was a blip or whether the recovery will outlive the pandemic.
China appears determined to quash — rather than live with — Covid-19. An overly muscular economic response, too, may do as much harm as good. Forces unleashed by the disease, such as supply chain snarls that are pushing prices higher, and shutdowns of major Chinese cities won’t dissipate overnight. Success will hinge on the ability to be nimble. China reported Monday that gross domestic product rose 4% in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, down from the 4.9% initially recorded in the preceding three months. While better than many economists anticipated, we have become so accustomed to exceptionalism that a “4” handle rates as a disappointment. Less than an hour before the GDP numbers were released, the People’s Bank of China lowered a key rate for the first time since April 2020. This kind of light-footedness, simultaneously curtain-raiser and response, needs to be a big feature in the coming year. For Beijing, the risks of too tepid a response are significant. The relative modesty of the reduction — 10 basis points to 2.85% — shouldn’t obscure the symbolism. The last time officials reduced the one-year policy rate, China was coming off its first contraction in decades. Authorities are now wrestling with a deepening property-markets slump and disruptions from the coronavirus. Sporadic outbreaks toward the end of last year triggered a lockdown in the western city of Xi’an, which has a population of 13 million. The spread of omicron elsewhere bodes ill for a relaxation of the government’s zero-Covid approach. Retail sales rose just 1.7% in December from a year earlier, the government said Monday, well short of analysts’ forecasts, and investment slowed. Unlike in the U.S., inflation is cooling in China, giving the central bank room to further reduce borrowing costs. The surge in factory-gate prices looks to be abating: The producer price index rose 10.3% in December, still high, though down from 12.9% the previous month. The pace of consumer inflation slipped to 1.5%, compared with 2.3% in November. Both were lower than economists predicted.The PBOC spent much of last year trying to balance the need to support the economy with a persistent fear that too loose a stance would fuel a debt binge. As December drew to a close, it was clear the bank’s attitude had shifted. Buttressing growth would be the main game in 2022. Nudges lower in bank reserve requirements in the second half of last year will likely be followed by more such steps. That’s a different planet from the Federal Reserve, which is now expected to raise interest rates four, or even five, times this year. Inflation has climbed to levels unseen in four decades; the consumer price index jumped 7% in 2021, miles from the Fed’s comfort zone. Quantitative easing will be wrapped up earlier than envisaged a few months ago, perhaps as soon as the Jan. 25-26 meeting. Officials have floated the prospect of a hike by March. So much has the landscape changed, that investors talk about the Fed needing to shock markets to maintain its reputation. The central bank could “restore its credibility” with a 50 basis point hike, Bill Ackman, the founder of Pershing Square Capital Management, said in a weekend tweet. Even if a large part of what’s forecast to come can be interpreted as withdrawing stimulus rather than a desire to restrain the economy, it’s still a big shift. Chair Jerome Powell will need to be careful not to overdo it. China and the U.S., while on divergent paths, have a lot at stake in getting the policy mix right on pandemic management and monetary policy. Despite the popular notion the two powers are engaged in a cold war, they still depend on each other. Beijing posted a record trade surplus in 2021, according to figures released Friday. Global production is dependent on supply chains that revolve around the mainland. Export gains last year helped offset the domestic slowdown, and underscored that factories can’t really function without China. The global recovery winds through both Beijing and Washington. Their agility will make all the difference in 2022.
• Supply Chain Snarls May Be Here to Stay, Too: Fickling & Trivedi
• Forget Covid Zero in China. It’s Now Dynamic Clearing: Shuli Ren | null | null | null | null | null |
Banks and the Saint Peter's Peacocks host conference foe Canisius
Canisius Golden Griffins (5-11, 1-4 MAAC) at Saint Peter’s Peacocks (5-6, 3-1 MAAC)
Jersey City, New Jersey; Tuesday, 2 p.m. EST
BOTTOM LINE: Malek Green and the Canisius Golden Griffins take on Daryl Banks III and the Saint Peter’s Peacocks in MAAC action.
The Peacocks have gone 3-2 in home games. Saint Peter’s is ninth in the MAAC shooting 31.7% from downtown, led by Clarence Rupert shooting 50.0% from 3-point range.
The Golden Griffins are 1-4 in conference matchups. Canisius ranks ninth in the MAAC with 31.1 rebounds per game led by Green averaging 6.2.
The Peacocks and Golden Griffins meet Tuesday for the first time in MAAC play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Banks is averaging 11.5 points for the Peacocks. Jaylen Murray is averaging 1.1 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Saint Peter’s.
Ahamadou Fofana is averaging 8.9 points and 3.6 assists for the Golden Griffins. Armon Harried is averaging 12 points over the last 10 games for Canisius. | null | null | null | null | null |
Kent State Golden Flashes (8-8, 3-3 MAC) at Eastern Michigan Eagles (7-8, 2-2 MAC)
BOTTOM LINE: Kent State takes on the Eastern Michigan Eagles after Sincere Carry scored 32 points in Kent State’s 67-55 victory against the Akron Zips.
The Eagles have gone 6-1 at home. Eastern Michigan is 2-3 in games decided by at least 10 points.
The Golden Flashes are 3-3 in MAC play. Kent State averages 69.3 points and has outscored opponents by 6.0 points per game.
The Eagles and Golden Flashes meet Tuesday for the first time in conference play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Noah Farrakhan averages 1.9 made 3-pointers per game for the Eagles, scoring 17.4 points while shooting 43.9% from beyond the arc. James Scott is averaging 13.9 points over the last 10 games for Eastern Michigan.
Malique Jacobs is averaging 11.9 points and 7.1 rebounds for the Golden Flashes. Carry is averaging 16.6 points over the last 10 games for Kent State. | null | null | null | null | null |
Dayton hosts Saint Bonaventure after Adaway's 25-point game
Saint Bonaventure Bonnies (10-3, 2-0 A-10) at Dayton Flyers (11-6, 3-1 A-10)
BOTTOM LINE: Saint Bonaventure faces the Dayton Flyers after Jalen Adaway scored 25 points in Saint Bonaventure’s 73-53 victory over the VCU Rams.
The Flyers are 6-4 on their home court. Dayton is 2-2 in games decided by 3 points or fewer.
The Bonnies are 2-0 in A-10 play. Saint Bonaventure ranks fifth in the A-10 with 8.3 offensive rebounds per game led by Osun Osunniyi averaging 2.8.
TOP PERFORMERS: Toumani Camara is averaging 10.2 points and 6.7 rebounds for the Flyers. Daron Holmes is averaging 8.4 points over the last 10 games for Dayton.
Jaren Holmes is scoring 16.0 points per game with 6.4 rebounds and 4.3 assists for the Bonnies. Adaway is averaging 9.5 points and 5.1 rebounds while shooting 45.2% over the past 10 games for Saint Bonaventure. | null | null | null | null | null |
East Carolina faces conference rival UCF
UCF Knights (10-5, 2-3 AAC) at East Carolina Pirates (11-5, 2-2 AAC)
Greenville, North Carolina; Tuesday, 7 p.m. EST
BOTTOM LINE: Tristen Newton and the East Carolina Pirates host Darin Green Jr. and the UCF Knights.
The Pirates have gone 10-0 at home. East Carolina is third in the AAC scoring 73.6 points while shooting 43.6% from the field.
The Knights are 2-3 against AAC opponents. UCF ranks eighth in the AAC with 22.7 defensive rebounds per game led by C.J. Walker averaging 4.2.
The Pirates and Knights face off Tuesday for the first time in AAC play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Newton is averaging 17.3 points, 5.2 assists and 1.6 steals for the Pirates. Vance Jackson is averaging 12.8 points and 6.1 rebounds over the past 10 games for East Carolina.
Green is averaging 14.1 points for the Knights. Brandon Mahan is averaging 7.1 points over the last 10 games for UCF. | null | null | null | null | null |
Florida Gulf Coast Eagles (11-7, 1-3 ASUN) at Stetson Hatters (7-10, 1-3 ASUN)
DeLand, Florida; Tuesday, 7 p.m. EST
BOTTOM LINE: FGCU faces the Stetson Hatters after Caleb Catto scored 23 points in FGCU’s 78-75 loss to the Liberty Flames.
The Hatters have gone 5-4 in home games. Stetson is sixth in the ASUN at limiting opponent scoring, allowing 67.4 points while holding opponents to 44.4% shooting.
The Eagles are 1-3 in ASUN play. FGCU averages 12.7 turnovers per game and is 4-1 when committing fewer turnovers than opponents.
TOP PERFORMERS: Rob Perry is averaging 15.9 points and 5.7 rebounds for the Hatters. Chase Johnston is averaging 12.3 points over the last 10 games for Stetson.
Tavian Dunn-Martin is shooting 39.5% and averaging 19.9 points for the Eagles. Kevin Samuel is averaging 12.6 points over the last 10 games for FGCU. | null | null | null | null | null |
Jackson leads Central Michigan against Buffalo after 20-point game
Central Michigan Chippewas (2-12, 1-2 MAC) at Buffalo Bulls (9-6, 3-2 MAC)
BOTTOM LINE: Central Michigan takes on the Buffalo Bulls after Jermaine Jackson Jr. scored 20 points in Central Michigan’s 99-68 loss to the Eastern Michigan Eagles.
The Bulls have gone 4-1 in home games. Buffalo ranks sixth in the MAC shooting 34.0% from deep, led by Ronaldo Segu shooting 43.5% from 3-point range.
The Chippewas have gone 1-2 against MAC opponents. Central Michigan has a 1-8 record against teams over .500.
TOP PERFORMERS: Segu is shooting 43.5% from beyond the arc with 2.0 made 3-pointers per game for the Bulls, while averaging 16.2 points and 5.2 assists. Jeenathan Williams is averaging 15.7 points and 1.5 steals over the past 10 games for Buffalo.
Jackson is shooting 36.3% and averaging 10.4 points for the Chippewas. Kevin Miller is averaging 7.8 points over the last 10 games for Central Michigan. | null | null | null | null | null |
Niagara Purple Eagles (7-8, 2-4 MAAC) at Manhattan Jaspers (9-4, 2-2 MAAC)
BOTTOM LINE: Manhattan plays the Niagara Purple Eagles after Jose Perez scored 33 points in Manhattan’s 80-75 win against the Canisius Golden Griffins.
The Jaspers are 4-1 in home games. Manhattan is sixth in the MAAC shooting 33.2% from downtown, led by Anthony Nelson shooting 46.7% from 3-point range.
The Purple Eagles are 2-4 in conference matchups. Niagara ranks second in the MAAC giving up 65.5 points while holding opponents to 41.3% shooting.
TOP PERFORMERS: Perez is shooting 40.7% and averaging 16.5 points for the Jaspers. Nelson is averaging 11.3 points over the last 10 games for Manhattan.
Marcus Hammond is averaging 17.2 points for the Purple Eagles. Jordan Cintron is averaging 11.7 points, 6.2 rebounds and two steals over the past 10 games for Niagara. | null | null | null | null | null |
Ohio visits Miami (OH) following Carter's 22-point game
Ohio Bobcats (13-2, 4-0 MAC) at Miami (OH) RedHawks (8-7, 2-2 MAC)
BOTTOM LINE: Ohio faces the Miami (OH) RedHawks after Jason Carter scored 22 points in Ohio’s 85-78 victory against the Bowling Green Falcons.
The RedHawks have gone 5-3 in home games. Miami (OH) is fourth in the MAC in rebounding with 34.7 rebounds. Dalonte Brown paces the RedHawks with 7.2 boards.
The Bobcats are 4-0 in conference play. Ohio is 1-0 in games decided by less than 4 points.
TOP PERFORMERS: Dae Dae Grant is shooting 34.7% from beyond the arc with 2.3 made 3-pointers per game for the RedHawks, while averaging 16.6 points and 4.2 assists. Mekhi Lairy is averaging 12.4 points over the last 10 games for Miami (OH).
Mark Sears is averaging 19.7 points, 3.4 assists and 1.7 steals for the Bobcats. Ben Vander Plas is averaging 1.7 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Ohio. | null | null | null | null | null |
Penn leads Bellarmine against North Alabama after 25-point game
North Alabama Lions (8-9, 1-3 ASUN) at Bellarmine Knights (9-8, 3-0 ASUN)
BOTTOM LINE: Bellarmine hosts the North Alabama Lions after Dylan Penn scored 25 points in Bellarmine’s 77-71 victory over the Lipscomb Bisons.
The Knights are 5-1 in home games. Bellarmine ranks fifth in the ASUN in team defense, allowing 67.2 points while holding opponents to 43.7% shooting.
The Lions are 1-3 in ASUN play. North Alabama has a 2-7 record against opponents over .500.
The Knights and Lions square off Tuesday for the first time in conference play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: CJ Fleming is shooting 34.5% from beyond the arc with 1.8 made 3-pointers per game for the Knights, while averaging 11.6 points. Penn is shooting 52.8% and averaging 16.0 points over the last 10 games for Bellarmine.
Daniel Ortiz is scoring 11.2 points per game with 3.1 rebounds and 1.5 assists for the Lions. C.J. Brim is averaging 8.9 points over the last 10 games for North Alabama. | null | null | null | null | null |
Sanogo leads UConn against Butler after 26-point game
Butler Bulldogs (9-7, 2-3 Big East) at UConn Huskies (11-4, 2-2 Big East)
Hartford, Connecticut; Tuesday, 7 p.m. EST
BOTTOM LINE: UConn takes on the Butler Bulldogs after Adama Sanogo scored 26 points in UConn’s 86-78 overtime victory against the Saint John’s (NY) Red Storm.
The Huskies are 7-1 on their home court. UConn leads the Big East in rebounding, averaging 38.6 boards. Andre Jackson leads the Huskies with 7.7 rebounds.
The Bulldogs are 2-3 in Big East play. Butler is eighth in the Big East shooting 32.0% from downtown. Myles Wilmoth leads the Bulldogs shooting 42.9% from 3-point range.
TOP PERFORMERS: R.J. Cole is averaging 16.4 points, 4.9 assists and 1.5 steals for the Huskies. Sanogo is averaging 12.5 points, 6.1 rebounds and 1.7 blocks over the last 10 games for UConn.
Aaron Thompson is averaging 5.9 points and 3.3 assists for the Bulldogs. Bryce Golden is averaging 8.9 points over the last 10 games for Butler. | null | null | null | null | null |
Stevenson, South Carolina Gamecocks take on the Arkansas Razorbacks
South Carolina Gamecocks (10-6, 1-3 SEC) at Arkansas Razorbacks (12-5, 2-3 SEC)
Fayetteville, Arkansas; Tuesday, 7 p.m. EST
BOTTOM LINE: Erik Stevenson and the South Carolina Gamecocks visit JD Notae and the Arkansas Razorbacks on Tuesday.
The Razorbacks have gone 9-1 in home games. Arkansas is fourth in the SEC scoring 79.6 points while shooting 45.9% from the field.
The Gamecocks are 1-3 against conference opponents. South Carolina ranks fourth in the SEC with 36.1 rebounds per game led by Wildens Leveque averaging 5.4.
TOP PERFORMERS: Notae is scoring 18.8 points per game and averaging 4.4 rebounds for the Razorbacks. Jaxson Robinson is averaging 0.9 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Arkansas.
Stevenson is scoring 11.3 points per game and averaging 4.6 rebounds for the Gamecocks. Chico Carter Jr. is averaging 6.3 points and 0.5 rebounds over the last 10 games for South Carolina. | null | null | null | null | null |
NEW YORK — Kevin Durant has a sprained medial collateral ligament of his left knee, sidelining the NBA’s leading scorer just as the Brooklyn Nets were poised to finally have a lengthy run with their Big Three.
MELBOURNE, Australia — Rafael Nadal renewed his bid for a record 21st Grand Slam singles title with a three-set win over American Marcos Giron on Monday at the Australian Open, and defending champion Naomi Osaka had a relatively trouble-free time beating Camila Osorio.
MELBOURNE, Australia — Novak Djokovic was heading home to Serbia on Monday after his deportation from Australia over its required COVID-19 vaccination ended the No. 1-ranked men’s tennis player’s hopes of defending his Australian Open title.
ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — Josh Allen set a franchise record by throwing five touchdowns passing, and the Buffalo Bills showed who’s king of the AFC East with a 47-17 throttling of the New England Patriots in a wild-card playoff game.
HONOLULU — Five shots behind at the turn, Hideki Matsuyama figured all he could do was keep his head down and try to stay in the game Sunday in the Sony Open. And when he finally looked up, he couldn’t see one of the best shots of his career. | null | null | null | null | null |
From the beginning of the 1950s, King embraced a utopian socialist vision of full equality
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. speaks in Atlanta in 1960. The civil rights leader organized protests, led marches and made powerful speeches exposing the scourges of segregation, poverty and racism. (AP)
By Victoria W. Wolcott
These positions seemingly contrasted with earlier desegregation efforts and his championing of nonviolent direct action, which are often viewed as less consequential than challenging structural racism. What is missing from this simplistic depiction of King’s activism is a deeper understanding of just how radical nonviolent resistance initially was deemed to be in the 1940s and 1950s, even within the civil rights community. King’s early and consistent engagement with socialist and utopian thought is also misunderstood. In other words, well before the first bombs dropped in Vietnam and the urban rebellions exploded in American cities, King was challenging the most profound inequalities of class and race.
King learned about the power of utopian thinking from the woman who would become his wife. Coretta Scott grew up in Jim Crow-era Alabama and attended one of the few high schools that accepted Black students. While there, she first met the Black pacifist and civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, who lectured the students about Gandhi and the principles of nonviolence. Her early introduction to pacifist politics was expanded when Scott attended the liberal Antioch College in 1946, where she again encountered Rustin. At Antioch, she also became active in the college NAACP chapter, and in 1948 she campaigned for Henry Wallace, the Progressive Party’s candidate for president. Wallace’s party called for an end to segregation, full voting rights for African Americans and national health insurance.
Musically gifted as a singer and violinist, Scott attended the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, where she met King, who was a seminary student nearby at Boston University. In 1951, she gave King a book: Edward Bellamy’s best-selling 1888 utopian novel, “Looking Backward.” Bellamy’s work was a vision of a socialist utopia set in the year 2000, in which a nonviolent revolution in the United States had produced an egalitarian society where industry was nationalized and everyone ate in communal dining rooms, shopped in consumer cooperatives and retired at age 45. Bellamy’s utopia was deeply popular with Americans concerned about rising inequality in Gilded Age America. By 1892, there were 150 nationalist clubs where readers, intellectuals and activists met to discuss Bellamy’s ideas and plot their own plans for cooperatives and social reform. Because his utopia did not require violent revolution, but rather peaceful, if swift, evolution, it was particularly popular among pacifists.
King wrote Scott a letter to thank her for the book and included his response to Bellamy’s utopian vision. “I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic. … Today capitalism has outlived its usefulness. It has brought about a system that takes necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes.” He finished his letter, “Let us continue to hope, work, and pray that in the future we will live to see a warless world, a better distribution of wealth, and a brotherhood that transcends race or color.” This utopian socialist vision of full equality, embraced by both Scott and King, was central to the campaigns they launched in the next decades.
King’s critique of capitalism and militarism was also tied to his growing interest in radical pacifism and the use of nonviolent direct action. King first encountered the works of Gandhi at the Philadelphia Fellowship House in 1950, a center of nonviolent teaching and interracial communion. There, he listened to a sermon by Mordecai Johnson, president of Howard University. “His message was so profound and electrifying,” recalled King, “that I left the meeting and bought a half-dozen books on Gandhi’s life and works.”
By then, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) had been carrying out desegregation campaigns using nonviolent direct action since 1942. Founded in Chicago by Rustin, along with James Farmer, George Houser and other young pacifists, CORE members lived in interracial communes, such as the Harlem Ashram in New York. Having immersed themselves in works on nonviolence, they began to apply the tactic to segregated public accommodations in northern and border states. CORE members launched sit-ins at segregated restaurants, “skate-ins” at segregated roller-skating rinks and “swim-ins” at segregated pools and beaches. They faced beatings and arrest but successfully forced businesses to abide by existing state civil rights laws. And they honed the tactic of nonviolent direct action, writing manuals and training thousands of other activists.
These pacifists were launching what they called a “nonviolent revolution,” demanding immediate change rather than the gradual reforms promoted by the NAACP and other moderate organizations. Indeed, nonviolent direct action was often denounced by mainstream civil rights organizations as lawbreaking. This included the NAACP, which did not support nonviolent direct action until its 1960 convention. Even W.E.B. Du Bois viewed CORE’s nonviolent campaigns as a misstep and suicidal if brought to the Deep South, where they would face lynch mobs.
King became fully convinced of the utility of nonviolence at the outbreak of the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, when the White pacifist Glenn Smiley traveled with Rustin to Alabama to advise him. They brought their experiences with direct action to Montgomery and encouraged King, who kept weapons in his home for self-defense, to fully embrace nonviolence. King’s open embrace of nonviolence came with political risks. The application of nonviolent direct action, as pioneered by CORE, required a commitment to defying laws and angering potential allies. The earlier defiance of radical pacifists during World War II and the early Cold War also led many to accuse them of being “maladjusted.”
Despite the resistance to radical nonviolence, in 1957 King defended its practitioners in a speech at the Highlander Folk School. Like the Philadelphia Fellowship House and CORE’s ashrams and communes, Highlander trained activists to be on the front lines of the movement.
King’s speech echoed the language he used to respond to Bellamy’s book six years before. “There are some things in our social system to which I am proud to be maladjusted,” said King. “I never intend to adjust myself to the viciousness of mob rule. … I never intend to adjust myself to the tragic inequalities of an economic system which takes necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes.”
King’s utopian vision of a classless society premised on full equality predated the Vietnam War and the urban revolts of the 1960s by more than a decade. Nurtured by interracial pacifist communities such as the Fellowship House and the Highlander Folk School, King was always a radical. Understanding the fullness of King’s influences points to a more far-reaching vision for our own future: a society that takes luxuries from the classes to give to the masses. | null | null | null | null | null |
Law enforcement personnel on Sunday continue the investigation into the hostage incident at the Congregation Beth Israel synagogue in Colleyville, Tex. (Ralph Lauer/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
The imam, rabbi, pastor and priest had been in a small conference room in the building next door to Congregation Beth Israel for hours, worrying and praying for their friend Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker and the other hostages inside the synagogue. Then around sunset came the most emotional moment thus far: the arrival of three Muslim women, friends of Walker’s wife, bearing her favorite — their samosas.
“They hugged for the longest time, all crying on each other’s shoulders,” said Imam Omar Suleiman, a prominent Dallas Muslim leader who, like the others in the room Saturday night, have crossed paths with Cytron-Walker and built close bonds through interfaith, also called multifaith, work.
Suleiman had raced over to Beth Israel in the late morning Saturday to see whether he, as an imam, might help negotiators talk to the Muslim hostage-taker. Local rabbis he had told about his plans then scrambled to find a law enforcement contact to make sure Suleiman wasn’t targeted or somehow wrongly connected to what was unfolding in the synagogue.
Investigators on Sunday were still trying to learn more about the captor, Malik Faisal Akram, and his motives. Identified by the FBI as a 44-year-old British citizen, he was heard on a live stream saying he wanted to free a Pakistani radical and had picked a synagogue because America “only cares about Jewish lives.”
“It’s a one-off, so in that sense, it’s good; it’s not someone in the community, it was an outsider who came to do something,” said Bob Roberts, a Dallas Baptist pastor in the conference room that night whose ministry for decades has focused on working with people of other faiths, Muslims in particular. “On the down side, we are so incredibly polarized right now. There is so much suspicion and hate and anger that for some people, this is another excuse for Islamophobia or antisemitism, just to stir the pot again.”
Some worried mostly about an anti-Muslim backlash, in particular among evangelicals, saying hostility has been growing since Sept. 11, 2001, and was exacerbated under the Trump presidency in certain places — including Texas. Mosques in the area regularly have armed white supremacists standing in front of their community centers, and Suleiman’s life has been threatened multiple times. Others said that although investigators believe Akram was working alone, his choice of a synagogue and his comment about his motivation stem from a steady base of antisemitism that is being brushed off.
Abdullah Antepli, a Duke University professor of interfaith relations who was a longtime Muslim campus representative, wrote a Facebook post Sunday headlined “Houston, we have a problem!” saying Muslims should more actively oppose antisemitism.
“It’s as if there is no context in which these things are happening. We have every right to be pro-Palestinian; American Muslims have to make this a pillar of our faith life, but increasingly this is becoming a zero-sum game, and subtly veiled antisemitism is creeping, hiding behind being pro-Palestine — and we have to stop this denial. Pay attention to the last 10 to 15 years,” he told The Washington Post.
Concern about interfaith alliances and security — particularly at Muslim and Jewish buildings — was high Sunday, with interfaith groups across the country scheduling meetings in the coming days to discuss whether the terrifying situation could be turned into a catalyst for solidarity between faith groups.
Suleiman said Muslim groups in the Dallas area were all scrambling to add security. The Jewish Federations of North America, the umbrella group for many major institutional Jewish groups, said in a statement that it would be rolling out a $126 million security campaign early — in the next few weeks. The campaign aims to get every Jewish community in the country fully trained and equipped to protect itself from assaults.
The group also urged Congress to double a $180 million government program that provides nonprofit organizations with grants to upgrade security.
“There are going to be some people who will never give you their firmly held conviction, but for a broad swath in the middle, they still want to have faith in their underlying belief that people aren’t out to get each other.”
On Sunday, clergy who were in the room Saturday night recalled a serene moment in the chaos when Roberts led a prayer for the tiny group. They sat in their chairs, eyes closed, heads down. Roberts prayed: Individuals are trying to build walls and divide us, people remembered him saying. But we are not going to budge. We are all together. | null | null | null | null | null |
Residential and commercial skyscrapers stand along the coastline in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, on Tuesday, April 10, 2018. (Christopher Pike/Bloomberg)
The UAE’s state news agency quoted Abu Dhabi police saying that a Pakistani and two Indians were killed in the incident which it earlier said could have been carried out by drones.
The rebels, known as the Houthis, are supported by Iran and have frequently carried out drone attacks during Yemen’s years-long civil war that has pitted the rebels against an array of local factions, including the country’s Saudi Arabia-backed government. The Houthis have also claimed responsibility for missile and drone attacks beyond Yemen’s border, mostly targeting areas in Saudi Arabia but also the UAE, claims that were previously denied by the Emirati authorities.
The attacks Monday were the latest sign of how the war, which has killed tens of thousands of people since it began seven years ago, and sparked one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, continues to destabilize the wider Persian Gulf region.
Nasraddin Amer, the deputy minister of information in Houthi-controlled Sanaa, the Yemeni capital, confirmed that the rebel forces had carried out an attack and said they was launched in response to the “UAE’s escalation” in Shabwa and Marib, two contested provinces in Yemen. The UAE has backed anti-Houthi factions in the war.
For the past year, fighting has been largely focused in Yemen’s central Marib province, home to key oil and gas infrastructure that is currently controlled by the internationally recognized government. The Houthi advance on Marib has caused a displacement crisis and hampered international efforts to put an end to the war.
More recently, fighting has picked up in nearby Shabwa province. Last week, the Giants Brigade, a Yemeni force backed by the UAE., reportedly announced that they had wrested control of Shabwa from the Houthis.
Fahim reported from Istanbul, O’Grady reported from Cairo. Ali al-Mujahed contributed from Sanaa, Yemen. | null | null | null | null | null |
Americans who don’t think institutional racism is a problem are more likely to believe that Jan. 6 was a protest, not an insurrection, and that Donald Trump won the 2020 election.
Martin Luther King III, second from left, son of the late civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr., at a voting rights demonstration Jan. 15 in Phoenix. (Carlos Barria/Reuters)
By Jesse Rhodes
Raymond La Raja
Tatishe Nteta
Nearly 60 years later, the Black Lives Matter movement has highlighted continuing racial disparities in policing, education, employment, health care and voting rights, again underscoring the yawning gap between the nation’s democratic ideals and its lived reality. Even so, our research shows that Americans remain divided over whether racial inequality is a problem. Although a majority of Americans recognize that White people enjoy racial advantages and are angry about racism in U.S. society, a substantial fraction disagrees.
These disagreements animate the very real, and very perilous, struggle over the survival of U.S. democracy today. People who deny White racial advantages and the prevalence of racial inequities also doubt the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election, express more positive attitudes toward the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and absolve former president Donald Trump of blame for the riot.
These patterns suggest that the desire to maintain White advantages — the impulse that King identified as largely responsible for the nation’s democratic failures — continues to threaten the well-being of U.S. democracy.
150 years ago, Frederick Douglass predicted the U.S. democratic dilemma today
Since Trump’s election to office in 2016, scholars have carefully documented the relationship between racial attitudes and support for the former president. They have provided strong evidence that negative attitudes toward people of color and hostility toward immigrants are closely associated with support for Trump.
Given that Trump’s false allegations that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him relied heavily on racist claims about voter fraud and election manipulation, we suspected that racial attitudes would shape perceptions of the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
In a survey of a nationally representative sample of 1,000 American adults fielded Dec. 14 to 20, we asked respondents about their views on racism in American society — specifically, whether they agreed that White people enjoy advantages based on skin color or that racial problems were isolated situations, and whether they were angry that racism exists (items from the FIRE scale, which stands for fear, institutionalized racism, and empathy). We also asked about their perceptions of the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election and their views on the events of Jan. 6.
The patterns we found were revealing. For example, although 58 percent of Americans agree that White people have advantages, 15 percent said they were neutral, and 26 percent disagreed. (Among White people, 55 percent acknowledge White advantages and 30 percent disagree.) Twenty-five percent of Americans believe racial problems are just rare, isolated situations, while another 15 percent express a neutral view of this matter, compared with 60 percent who say that racial problems are more common. We highlight the neutrals as well as those who explicitly downplay racial inequities because King famously warned against “lukewarm” or moderate responses to racial injustice.
These divisions over racial equality were closely related to perceptions of the 2020 presidential election and the Capitol attack. For example, among those who agreed that White people in the United States have advantages based on the color of their skin, 87 percent believed that Joe Biden’s victory was legitimate; among neutrals, 44 percent believed it was legitimate; and among those who disagreed, only 21 percent believed it was legitimate. Seventy percent of people who agreed that White people enjoy advantages considered the events of Jan. 6 to be an insurrection; 26 percent of neutrals described it that way; and only 10 percent who disagreed did so, while 80 percent of this last group called it a protest. And while 70 percent of those who agreed that White people enjoy advantages blamed Trump for the events of Jan. 6, only 34 percent of neutrals did, and a mere 9 percent of those who disagreed did.
Similarly, 81 percent of people who recognized that racial problems were more than just rare, isolated situations believed that Biden’s election was legitimate, compared with 39 percent of neutrals and 32 percent of those who thought that racial problems were rare. And 66 percent of those who agreed that racial problems were more than rare situations blamed Trump for the events of Jan. 6, compared with just 35 percent of neutrals and 13 percent of those who thought racial problems were rare.
Racial attitudes matter among both Democrats and Republicans. For example, among Republicans who agree that White people enjoy advantages, 37 percent believe Biden’s election was legitimate, but among those who don’t, only 14 percent do. Meanwhile, among Democrats who agree that White people enjoy advantages, 96 percent believe Biden was legitimately elected, but among Democrats who disagree, only 76 percent do. For independents, 89 percent of those who believe White people have advantages think Biden’s election was legitimate, but only 20 percent of independents who don’t think White people have advantages do.
Divisions over racial equality and the struggle for democracy
These patterns reveal that the wounds that King identified exist still. A majority of Americans acknowledge the reality of racial inequality in U.S. society today. However, as King would have predicted, those who deny the existence of racial inequality are also those who are most willing to reject the legitimacy of a democratic election and condone serious violations of democratic norms. For this reason, and as King argued, advancing racial equality and renewing U.S. democracy go hand in hand.
Jesse H. Rhodes is professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, associate director of the UMass Poll, and co-author (with Brian F. Schaffner and Raymond J. La Raja) of “Hometown Inequality: Race, Class, and Representation in America’s Local Politics” (Cambridge University Press, 2020).
Raymond J. La Raja (@raylaraja) is professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, associate director of the UMass Poll, and co-author (with Brian F. Schaffner) of “Campaign Finance and Political Polarization: When Purists Prevail” (University of Michigan Press, 2015)
Tatishe M. Nteta (@TatisheNteta) is associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and director of the UMass Poll.
Alexander Theodoridis (@AGTheodoridis) is an associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and associate director of the UMass Poll. | null | null | null | null | null |
Monday briefing: Texas synagogue attack; volcano eruption; MLK Day; NFL playoffs; and more
A British man held hostages at a synagogue in Texas.
What happened: 44-year-old Malik Faisal Akram attacked a rabbi and three others during a Saturday service near Fort Worth, officials say. After an 11-hour standoff, the hostages were rescued and Akram was dead.
Why did he do it? Officials are still putting pieces together, but on a live stream of the attack, he talked about wanting to free a Pakistani terrorist and target a synagogue.
What to know today: The FBI is investigating it as an act of terrorism, and two teenagers in the U.K. have been taken in for questioning.
There was a massive volcanic eruption in the Pacific.
The explosion sent tsunami waves around the world on Saturday, and communication is still cut off from the closest Tonga islands.
How big was it? It sent ash roughly three times higher than airlines fly and was heard 5,000 miles away in Alaska.
How dangerous is the volcano? Experts say an eruption like this comes about once every thousand years, and there could be more on the way.
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s family will march for voting rights.
The MLK Day commemoration this morning in Washington, D.C., will push for the Senate to pass a bill (which is looking increasingly unlikely).
In the family’s words: “We’re asking people to honor Dr. King through action to protect the right to vote.”
The first case of the omicron variant was detected in Beijing.
What that means: The Winter Olympics start there in a little over two weeks, so China’s capital has imposed even stricter coronavirus measures.
In case you missed it: N95 masks are far better protection than cloth masks against omicron, the CDC said. We have tips on using (and reusing) them safely.
A powerful winter storm is hitting the East Coast.
About 200,000 people have lost power from the South to the Northeast.
Snow and potentially icy, dangerous roads prompted warnings for people to stay home.
The Australian Open started today — without Novak Djokovic.
The tennis star was deported yesterday, ending a two-week saga over whether he was eligible to be in the country without a coronavirus vaccination.
What this means: The No. 1 men’s player will have to wait several months for another chance to win a record 21st Grand Slam title.
Who else to watch: Naomi Osaka and Rafael Nadal are competing, but all-time greats Serena Williams and Roger Federer are out with injuries.
The NFL playoffs got underway this weekend.
Yesterday’s games: The Kansas City Chiefs beat the Steelers, 42-21, and quarterback Patrick Mahomes had a very good day; and the San Francisco 49ers beat the Dallas Cowboys, 23-17, but the game wasn’t pretty.
Coming today: The Rams play the Arizona Cardinals at 8:15 p.m. Eastern in Los Angeles. The winner will face Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers next weekend.
And now … if you’re looking for a project for your extra day off: Here’s why you should consider crafting. | null | null | null | null | null |
Internet sleuths try to figure out the person behind the newly unearthed footage of the notorious 1969 concert
An image from “Gimme Shelter,” a documentary on the Rolling Stones' 1969 U.S. tour, shows a man filming at the Altamont concert. (Maysles Films)
The newly found reels of the notorious 1969 concert near San Francisco were discovered in February 2020. (Library of Congress)
Asked in a telephone interview how important it was to find the filmmaker, Mashon paused and said: “Honestly, not terribly important. But we would like to acknowledge this person. … It would enhance our enjoyment of the footage.”
Held at the library’s Packard Campus of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, Va., it is now considered the property of the American people, Mashon said.
Sleuths on the Internet — including one in Australia and one in Spain — as well as a photo archivist in California have found four people who might have made the film.
After seeing a Washington Post story about the discovery, Haskett spotted the man while reviewing the 1970 documentary about the concert, “Gimme Shelter.”
“I’m a huge music fan,” he said, adding, “I’m very familiar with ‘Gimme Shelter.’”
When he saw the new footage, he said he thought: “Oh, my God! This is fantastic! Look at Santana.”
“I’d forgotten about all the other bands that played,” he said.
“They are just wailing,” he said. “You’re like, ‘Oh my God. … I really wish I could hear this.’ … I was blown away. I am guitar player. … I was just kind of nerding out.”
A screenshot he provided from “Gimme Shelter” shows the man holding a small camera with three lenses.
“So, unless he was working with two cameras, he’s not our guy,” Mashon wrote.
The photo was taken by Bill Owens, a freelance photographer hired by the Associated Press to cover the concert. He lives in Hayward, Calif.
“Right camera, right place, right time,” Mashon wrote. “He checks out. There’s nothing we’ve seen to disqualify him.”
Gil said he was “almost sure” it’s the person who took the footage. “It sure is a captivating story,” he said, “a quest to find the … author of such an interesting document picturing a turning point” in modern culture.
The third candidate was spotted last week in a photo provided by Owens’s archive. The man is wearing a green jacket and has what looks like a Canon 318, which used Super 8 film, Mashon said.
The man is so close to the action that he’s leaning against one of the music monitors at the front of the stage. He is clearly seen in profile, squinting with one eye as he films.
“But he appears to be camped out at center stage,” Mashon wrote on his blog. Much of the daytime footage in the mystery film seems to have been taken from left of the stage, as viewed from the audience. “That apparently rules him out,” Mashon wrote.
The fourth candidate is the man with a beard wearing a blue shirt, also spotted in “Gimme Shelter” by Haskett. The man is seen at night, during the Rolling Stones’ performance. He is in partial profile, his face slightly obscured by his camera.
“He’s shooting with a Super 8 camera, a Technicolor Super V, which could have shot our footage,” Mashon wrote of him. And he is roughly in the right spot to have shot the second reel. “Can’t rule him out,” Mashon wrote.
“At the moment, it’s our best guess that our mystery man is #2, Brown Jacket Man with the Instamatic,” Mashon wrote. “He’s in just the right spot working with just the right camera. As luck would have it, he’s the only one whose face we can’t see.” | null | null | null | null | null |
I have since undergone four rounds of radiation, two surgeries, two rounds of chemotherapy, and a course of immunotherapy, and am currently undergoing an experimental treatment that has brought my disease under control. But the ordeal has left me significantly immunocompromised, making me one of the estimated 10 million Americans who fit that description. And the omicron variant is posing a particularly alarming threat to us.
People’s objections to government shutdowns, school closings, masks, vaccines, testing, and the like have been well-documented. They don’t want the government to tell them what to do. They have questions about the safety of the vaccines. Testing is inconvenient and uncomfortable. And so on. To be honest, I’m not as orthodox about those things as you might imagine. Widespread shutdowns and school closures at this point, in my opinion, do more harm than good.
But masks? Social distancing? Frequent testing? I’m sorry, but those are no-brainers. The same goes for vaccines. The World Health Organization, CDC, and other leading scientific groups have deemed the shots safe, and hundreds of millions of people worldwide have been safely and effectively vaccinated. Most covid protective measures have proven to be minor nuisances, involving negligible disruption and minimal risk. If the benefit is potentially saving the lives of millions of vulnerable people, and who knows how many in general, then the cost is clearly worth it.
For the record, it isn’t just Republicans or Libertarians who are eschewing recommended safety steps. In the past month alone, I’ve had to ask people in my predominantly liberal New York City apartment building to wear their masks in the lobby, laundry room, or basement gym, where masks are required, and members of my own family have balked at getting tested ahead of gatherings. In the infusion room where I receive my chemotherapy treatments, I’ve had to ask other patients, who are presumably immunocompromised themselves, to wear their masks after the staff — and who can blame them? — got tired of asking them.
At this point, almost two years into the pandemic, I understand everyone is sick and tired of it, and justifiably so. This period has been tragic for some, brutal for many, and awful for everyone. As much as anyone else, I’d like to burn my masks, stop getting shots, and quit shoving long wooden sticks up my nose. Eventually, there will come a point when we can let down our guard. Those of us with immunity issues may still have to take extra precautions, but it won’t be necessary for everyone to do so.
The morning I was diagnosed with my illness, one of the first thoughts that came to my mind was a wish. I wanted to see my firstborn child, my daughter, who was seven months old at the time, graduate from high school. This past June, having survived my initial diagnosis, seven recurrences, and the pandemic to that point, I got to do just that.
My son is now 13, and will start high school this fall. I’d like to see him graduate, too. To get to that day, I’d welcome your help. | null | null | null | null | null |
I have since undergone four rounds of radiation, two surgeries, two rounds of chemotherapy and a course of immunotherapy, and am currently undergoing an experimental treatment that has brought my disease under control. But the ordeal has left me significantly immunocompromised, making me one of the estimated 10 million Americans who fit that description. And the omicron variant is posing a particularly alarming threat to us.
People’s objections to government shutdowns, school closings, masks, vaccines, testing and the like have been well-documented. They don’t want the government to tell them what to do. They have questions about the safety of the vaccines. Testing is inconvenient and uncomfortable. And so on. To be honest, I’m not as orthodox about those things as you might imagine. Widespread shutdowns and school closures at this point, in my opinion, do more harm than good.
But masks? Social distancing? Frequent testing? I’m sorry, but those are no-brainers. The same goes for vaccines. The World Health Organization, CDC, and other leading scientific groups have deemed the shots safe, and hundreds of millions of people worldwide have been safely and effectively vaccinated. Most covid protective measures have proved to be minor nuisances, involving negligible disruption and minimal risk. If the benefit is potentially saving the lives of millions of vulnerable people, and who knows how many in general, then the cost is clearly worth it.
For the record, it isn’t just Republicans or Libertarians who are eschewing recommended safety steps. In the past month, I’ve had to ask people in my predominantly liberal New York City apartment building to wear their masks in the lobby, laundry room, or basement gym, where masks are required, and members of my own family have balked at getting tested ahead of gatherings. In the infusion room where I receive my chemotherapy treatments, I’ve had to ask other patients, who are presumably immunocompromised themselves, to wear their masks after the staff — and who can blame them? — got tired of asking them.
At this point, almost two years into the pandemic, I understand everyone is sick and tired of it, and justifiably so. This period has been tragic for some, brutal for many, and awful for everyone. As much as anyone else, I’d like to burn my masks, stop getting shots and quit shoving long wooden sticks up my nose. Eventually, there will come a point when we can let down our guard. Those of us with immunity issues may still have to take extra precautions, but it won’t be necessary for everyone to do so.
The morning I was diagnosed with my illness, one of the first thoughts that came to my mind was a wish. I wanted to see my firstborn child, my daughter, who was seven months old at the time, graduate from high school. This past June, having survived my initial diagnosis, seven recurrences and the pandemic to that point, I got to do just that.
My son is now 13 and will start high school this fall. I’d like to see him graduate, too. To get to that day, I’d welcome your help. | null | null | null | null | null |
Far-right presidential candidate Eric Zemmour answers questions before a news conference at the Foreign Press Association headquarters in Paris on Jan. 17. (Francois Mori/AP)
PARIS — French far-right presidential candidate Éric Zemmour was found guilty of inciting racial hatred and fined $11,400 on Monday, adding another obstacle to a bid that has lost momentum in recent weeks but may leave a lasting mark on French politics.
Accusations against Zemmour centered around his description of unaccompanied child migrants as “thieves,” “killers” and “rapists” during a debate on the CNews TV channel in September 2020.
Zemmour didn’t attend the criminal court trial in Paris. In a response on Monday, he called the verdict “stupid” and “ideological.”
The strong sentiments that Zemmour’s candidacy has triggered may ultimately thwart his presidential ambitions, with a majority of voters describing him as a “danger to democracy.” In recent polls, he has come in fourth, behind Macron — who is leading the race — Le Pen, and the conservative Republicans party front-runner Valérie Pécresse.
Zemmour also still faces a number of legal proceedings with other past comments.
Later this week, there will be an appeal hearing over his remarks in 2019 that Philippe Pétain — who led Vichy’s collaborationist World War II government — had “saved” the French Jews. The remarks prompted accusations that Zemmour had disputed crimes against humanity, but he was acquitted last year. | null | null | null | null | null |
CUMBERLAND, Md. — A Maryland man was charged with driving under the influence after his pickup truck struck a utility pole. causing a widespread power outage in a Cumberland neighborhood, police said.
The Cumberland Times-News reports that more than 1,500 Potomac Edison customers in Cumberland’s South End were left without electricity following the Sunday evening accident. | null | null | null | null | null |
Skip to main content College Sports Maryland Terrapins Basketball Football
Preseason No. 1 Gonzaga climbed back atop The Associated Press men's college basketball poll on Monday, ending Baylor’s five-week run. The Bulldogs had 25 first-place votes, 11 fewer than No. 2 Auburn, but edged the Tigers in overall points to take the top spot. | null | null | null | null | null |
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. — Rookie Earvin “Magic” Johnson steps in and plays center for the injured Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in Game 6 of the NBA Finals with his Los Angeles Lakers holding a 3-2 series lead over the Philadelphia 76ers. Johnson, a 6-foot-9 point guard, finishes with 42 points, 15 rebounds and seven assists to help the Lakers clinch the title with a 123-107 win over the Philadelphia 76ers. The Associated Press is republishing verbatim the story on Johnson’s position switch to help clinch the title on May 16, 1980: | null | null | null | null | null |
Imam Omar Suleiman, Pastor Bob Roberts, Rabbi Andrew Payley and others at Good Shepherd Catholic Church on Jan. 15 near the hostage situation at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Tex. (Courtesy of Azhar Azeez)
The imam, rabbi, pastor and priest had been in a small conference room in the building next door to Congregation Beth Israel for hours worrying and praying for their friend Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker and the other hostages inside the synagogue in Colleyville, Tex. Then around sunset came the most emotional moment thus far: the arrival of three Muslim women, friends of Cytron-Walker’s wife, bearing her favorite food — their samosas.
“They hugged for the longest time, all crying on each other’s shoulders,” said Imam Omar Suleiman, a prominent Dallas-area Muslim leader who, like the others in the room Saturday night, have crossed paths with Cytron-Walker and built close bonds through interfaith, also called multifaith, work.
Suleiman had raced over to Beth Israel late Saturday morning to see whether he, as an imam, might help negotiators talk to the Muslim hostage-taker. Local rabbis he had told about his plans then scrambled to find a law enforcement contact to make sure Suleiman wasn’t targeted or somehow wrongly connected to what was unfolding in the synagogue.
Investigators on Sunday were still trying to learn more about the captor, Malik Faisal Akram, and his motives. Identified by the FBI as a 44-year-old British citizen, Akram was heard on a live stream of the attack saying he wanted to free a Pakistani terrorist and had picked a synagogue because America “only cares about Jewish lives.” The 11-hour standoff ended with the hostages freed and Akram dead.
“It’s a one-off, so in that sense, it’s good; it’s not someone in the community, it was an outsider who came to do something,” said Bob Roberts, a Dallas-area Baptist pastor in the conference room that night. His ministry, for decades, has focused on working with people of other faiths, Muslims in particular. “On the downside, we are so incredibly polarized right now. There is so much suspicion and hate and anger that for some people, this is another excuse for Islamophobia or antisemitism, just to stir the pot again.”
Some worried mostly about an anti-Muslim backlash, in particular among evangelicals, saying hostility has been growing since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and was exacerbated under the Donald Trump presidency in certain places — including Texas. Mosques in the area regularly have armed white supremacists standing in front of their community centers, and Suleiman’s life has been threatened multiple times.
Others said that although investigators believe Akram was working alone, his choice of a synagogue and his comment about his motivation stem from a steady base of antisemitism that is being brushed off.
Abdullah Antepli, a Duke University professor of interfaith relations who was a longtime Muslim campus representative, wrote a Facebook post Sunday headlined “Houston, we have a problem!” It said Muslims should more actively oppose antisemitism.
“It’s as if there is no context in which these things are happening. We have every right to be pro-Palestinian; American Muslims have to make this a pillar of our faith life, but increasingly, this is becoming a zero-sum game, and subtly veiled antisemitism is creeping, hiding behind being pro-Palestine — and we have to stop this denial. Pay attention to the last 10 to 15 years,” he told The Washington Post.
Concern about interfaith alliances and security, particularly at Muslim and Jewish buildings, was high Sunday. Interfaith groups across the country were scheduling meetings for the coming days to discuss whether the terrifying situation could be turned into a catalyst for solidarity between faith groups.
Suleiman said Muslim groups in the Dallas area were all scrambling to add security. The Jewish Federations of North America, the umbrella group for many major institutional Jewish groups, said in a statement that it would be rolling out a $126 million security campaign early — in the next few weeks. The campaign aims to get every Jewish community in the country fully trained and equipped to protect itself from assaults. The group also urged Congress to double a $180 million government program that provides nonprofit organizations with grants to upgrade security.
“There are going to be some people who will never give up their firmly held conviction, but for a broad swath in the middle, they still want to have faith in their underlying belief that people aren’t out to get each other.”
On Sunday, clergy who were in the room Saturday night recalled a serene moment in the chaos when Roberts led a prayer for the tiny group. They sat in their chairs, eyes closed, heads down. Roberts prayed. “ ‘Individuals are trying to build walls and divide us,’ ” people remembered him saying. “ ‘But we are not going to budge. We are all together.’ ” | null | null | null | null | null |
Jacob Thomas is one of several Stone Bridge football players to join the Bulldogs' basketball team midseason after a championship run on the gridiron. (Scott Taetsch/For The Washington Post)
Stone Bridge boys’ basketball coach Kent Kling started this season with the knowledge that his team was not his team.
One part of coaching at a school such as Stone Bridge is dealing with a football season that is often stretched as long as possible. The Bulldogs are one of the best football programs in the area, consistently competing into mid-December as they chase state championships.
Last year, Kling faced no conflict as basketball season came before football. The Bulldogs won the Class 5 hoops title in February and they won the Class 5 football title in May.
This year, the football team won another Class 5 championship, but the calendar was back to normal, meaning the basketball team started the season with an incomplete roster. Kling’s squad was missing eight football players for the first six games of the season.
The No. 19 Bulldogs (10-1) went 5-1 in that stretch with some junior varsity players filling out the roster. It a sign of how good they could be at full-strength. But that sudden influx of talent also came with the challenge of creating chemistry midseason.
“We’re still figuring out the way we need to play at the end of the season, still getting comfortable with each other,” Kling said.
They’ve won five straight games since that transition, including impressive victories over South Lakes and Champe. They have cemented themselves as the team to beat in Loudoun County, a role they have grown accustomed to in all seasons.
Hunter grows into big role for Dunbar
After winning the D.C. Interscholastic Athletic Association girls’ championship as sophomores in 2020, Dunbar’s Jailen Hunter and Zy’aire Hairston looked primed to lead the Crimson Tide to a another DCIAA title and perhaps contention within the D.C. Scholastic Athletic Association, which includes the District’s public and private schools.
The team’s outlook changed when Hairston, the reigning DCIAA co-player of the year, suffered a season-ending knee injury during a preseason scrimmage against Gwynn Park.
“Everything was going good. We were up, like, 20 and I had just passed her the ball,” Hunter said. “Then she was going up for a layup and got fouled and hit her knee on the wall.”
Losing the star guard put an unexpected amount of pressure on Hunter.
“Last year, I didn’t really have to score a lot, but now I would have to score and be able to get my team on the board as a point guard,” Hunter said. “So I was just thinking would we still be able to beat teams by 20 and 30 points.”
After stumbling to a 1-5 start, the Tide (7-5) have rebounded nicely, winning six of their last seven games. With Hairston out, Hunter has nearly tripled her key stats; the senior is averaging 18.2 points and 3.0 assists per game.
“[When Hairston went down] a lot of teams started looking forward to beating us, but I feel like we are standing on our 10 and just doing what we have to do as a team,” Hunter said.
Dug McDaniel, G, Paul VI. The senior floor general earned tournament MVP honors as the Panthers beat Sierra Canyon to win the Bass Pro Tournament of Champions event in Springfield, Mo.
Sadie Shores, G, Woodgrove. At the helm of an “everybody eats” offense, the sophomore was especially hungry in the 12-0 Wolverines’ three road victories this week as she averaged 20 points, 11 rebounds and three assists.
Stephaun Walker, F, Coolidge. The senior big man averaged 21 points and 21 rebounds to lead the Colts to a 3-0 record for the week.
Mia Smith, G, Clarksburg. The senior averaged nearly 24 points, six rebounds and four assists in three double-digit point wins.
Georgetown Prep boys at St. Stephen’s/St. Agnes, 6 p.m. Tuesday
Patriot girls at Osbourn Park, 7 p.m. Tuesday
Ballou boys at Theodore Roosevelt, 7:30 p.m. Wednesday
River Hill girls at Mount Hebron, 7 p.m. Friday
Huntingtown starts undefeated
When Huntingtown opened in 2004, one of the first signs boys’ basketball coaches posted in the gym read “THE DEFENSE NEVER RESTS.” Tobias Jenifer, a forward between 2006 and 2009, lived by that mantra while helping the Hurricanes become a Southern Maryland Athletic Conference contender.
Jenifer is now Huntingtown’s coach, and that blue-and-white sign still hangs in the Calvert County school’s gym, instilling the program’s values to new players. With stingy defenses spurring their success, the teams Jennifer played for and his squad this winter possess parallels.
Huntingtown has allowed 35.3 points per game and has started 7-0 for the first time since Jenifer’s senior season in 2008-09.
“I want to drill it into their heads that the only way to get over that hump and to get that SMAC championship and that regional championship and eventually that state championship,” Jenifer said, “is to get it done on the defensive end.”
When Jenifer returned as an assistant coach in 2015, he continued to emphasize the program’s attitude by learning from the Memphis Grizzlies, who prided themselves on their defense to rise the NBA’s standings in the early-2010s. The Hurricanes won their first SMAC title in 2017 before Jenifer took over the program a few months later.
A few weeks ago, Huntingtown’s defense sign fell when someone threw a basketball against it. Displaying the toughness Jenifer preaches to his players, the sign remained sturdy and returned to the wall a few days later.
Visitation adjusts to new realities
Coming into this winter, Georgetown Visitation Coach Mike McCarthy knew he had talent on his roster. The Cubs, winners of 13 straight Independent School League titles, always have talent, but this year’s group had a different feel to it.
“We have a lot of basketball players,” McCarthy said simply. “Usually we get some basketball players and some athletes who are here on a break from different sports. This year we have a lot of talented basketball players.”
The team started the season strong and seemed to be hitting a stride by mid-December, when it faced Madison, arguably the best public school program in the area and an annual nonconference opponent for the Cubs. Whereas Madison has handed the team early-season losses in years past, this year’s 54-40 win for Visitation felt like the beginning of something exciting.
“You could just see us coming together. We played great defense and, against a great team, we were in control,” McCarthy said. “And then we went nine days without a practice.”
A surge in coronavirus cases put the program on pause, and its next game came 23 days later. The Cubs didn’t have too much time to regain their footing before they were visited by Sidwell Friends, the No. 1 team in the region and the country.
No. 5 Visitation (8-1) is familiar with Sidwell, but in the two years since there was a full ISL season, the Quakers have transformed into a juggernaut. Suddenly, the Cubs had to approach the game as an underdog.
“The players were excited about it,” McCarthy said. “We all were. I think we’re going to get them a few times this year, and I told the team, ‘We’re not going there to give them a game; we’re going there to beat them.’ ”
Undefeated Sidwell left Visitation with a 73-57 victory, but it was one of its smallest margins of victory this season.
“We learned a lot just playing with them,” McCarthy said. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: Larry Hogan skirts disclosure requirements one self-destructing message at a time
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan speaks at a news conference Jan. 11 in Annapolis. (Brian Witte/AP)
Secretive politicians predate the smartphone age, heaven knows, as do many who employ baroque means to conceal their words and actions from the voters they serve.
So the fact that Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan has sidestepped the state’s open-records laws by means of technology — a self-destructing message app — is not exactly unprecedented. That doesn’t make it less sneaky.
It seems that Mr. Hogan, burned once, was intent on avoiding a repeat. In 2016, a public-records request by the Associated Press yielded a trove of the governor’s emails, which were by turns acid-tongued about journalists and thin-skinned about his public image. By 2018, when Mr. Hogan, a Republican, was running for a second term, he found a workaround.
As reported by The Post’s Steve Thompson, it came in the form of an smartphone app called Wickr, among whose features is a “Burn-On-Read” timer that erases messages on a schedule determined by its users. In the case of Mr. Hogan, his senior staffers and other associates, messages in their closed chat rooms self-destruct after 24 hours, ensuring them a forum beyond the reach of the media’s, and the public’s, prying eyes.
The app, as used by the governor, is also a handy means of eluding Maryland’s Public Information Act, which has been on the books for more than 50 years. That law is meant to preserve government records for public access and posterity — or, if officials oppose their release, provide a process by which the dispute can be adjudicated in court.
John Feinstein: Steve Sachs should have been Maryland governor
Mr. Hogan declined to discuss his Wickr messages with The Post. His spokesman, Michael Ricci, said he uses the app for “political” or “news of the day” exchanges with advisers in and out of government. Those are not categories exempted from the open-records law. Similarly, the governor’s aides insisted that while the law covers “units” of state government, the governor’s office is not a “unit” but rather the head of government. Now there’s an argument likely to disintegrate on contact with a court of law.
In at least one instance uncovered by The Post, Mr. Hogan took to Wickr in an effort at political damage control arising from his own misstep early in the pandemic, when 500,000 coronavirus tests he arranged to purchase from South Korea turned out to be useless, a fact the governor tried to hush up. “Why do we keep talking about such a small number of tests which begs the question where are the half million,” he wrote, scolding his aides.
Like everyone else, governors make mistakes. Like everyone else, they’re also subject to the law. In this case, it seems clear that Mr. Hogan has come to see the public-records law as an annoyance, and Wickr as a way of circumventing it. In so doing, he effectively negates the broad right of access to records pertaining to the people’s business — exactly the right enshrined in law. The governor would be wise to press the self-destruct button on Wickr, and switch back to email. | null | null | null | null | null |
FILE - Gold medal winner Al Oerter, center, shakes hands with fellow Americans, silver medalist Richard Babka, left, and bronze medalist Richard Cochran after the discus event at the Olympic Games in Rome, Sept. 7, 1960. Babka, a former world record holder who was part of a U.S. medals sweep in the discus at the 1960 Olympics, died Saturday, Jan. 15, 2022. He was 85. (AP Photo/Pool, File) (Uncredited/AP) | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: Purple Line skepticism appears to have been well-founded
Purple Line construction in Silver Spring, Md. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
On March 2, 2016, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) announced the state had chosen a team of private companies to build, operate and maintain the Purple Line for $5.6 billion over 36 years. This announcement followed several years of public debate, legal opposition and Maryland Department of Transportation promises regarding the costs and benefits of the project. The Jan. 13 Metro article “New contract would delay Purple Line until 2026” reported that the state’s cost for a private concessionaire to finish, operate and maintain the Purple Line would climb to $9.3 billion.
Skepticism of the true cost of this project was voiced early and often. It was billed and touted politically as the first of its kind where a debt-strapped government could partner with the private sector to efficiently build a large-scale, expensive infrastructure project with fewer financial risks. Even without the coronavirus complication, the Purple Line Project was grossly oversold. This is simply another example of political deception at the public’s expense.
William J. Hickey, Kensington | null | null | null | null | null |
New book challenges Civil War’s old ‘myths’
Charles W. Mitchell, co-editor with historian Jean H. Baker of the new book, “The Civil War in Maryland Reconsidered,” at his home in Parkton, Md., on Nov. 21. (Amy Davis/Baltimore Sun)
Regular folks and history buffs who believe Maryland leaned strongly toward the Confederacy during the Civil War era have never lacked evidence for the claim.
In “The Civil War in Maryland Reconsidered,” a collection of 13 essays assembled and edited by Baltimore historians Charles W. Mitchell and Jean H. Baker, are independent thinkers from as far away as California and England and as close as Johns Hopkins University. They point out, among other things, that contrary to popular belief, Maryland judges refused to put the Dred Scott decision into effect; that more Marylanders voted, in total, for the three presidential candidates who backed the Union than they did for John C. Breckinridge, the Southern Democrat who carried the state in 1860, and that four times as many Old Line State men fought for the Union than for the South.
Maryland, in short, was less sympathetic to the Confederate cause, and more behind the Union, than generations of historians have implied, says Mitchell, a self-taught Civil War expert, author and editor who got the sprawling essay project rolling four years ago.
History, he says, is framed by the values of those who pass it along. In the case of Maryland’s antebellum and Civil War history, the men and women who shaped it first were people who held to the notion that the Southern cause — far from being a bloody campaign to preserve slavery — was a matter of states’ rights. They viewed it as a noble crusade that failed only because the Union side was better equipped and funded.
By diving into court and estate records, schedules of enslaved people, letters written by ordinary citizens, articles in the Black press and more, those scholars, including several represented in the book, began to put together a more comprehensive history — one that weakens Maryland’s “Lost Cause” narrative.
“The deeply researched and tightly written essays in this volume provide new information and insights on the role of a crucial border state in the Civil War,” writes James McPherson, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book “Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era,” in his blurb on the essay collection’s book jacket.
For years, the editors say, the “Southernizing” of Maryland history meant omitting important realities inconvenient to the prevailing narrative, including how African Americans lived before, during and after the war. Three of the book’s authors help to fill that void.
University of Maryland history professor Richard Bell, author of the award-winning 2019 book “Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and Their Astonishing Odyssey Home,” focuses on how a black market network of human traffickers functioned in the slave state of Maryland.
His essay, “Border Wars,” describes how those who ran this “reverse Underground Railroad” kidnapped African Americans in the free commonwealth of Pennsylvania, took them to Baltimore, and kept them in “pens” before selling them into enslavement in the Deep South.
Another author, Jessica Millward of the University of California at Irvine, brings to life individuals such as Charity Folks, a woman who was born into slavery in Anne Arundel County in the mid-1700s and was later freed. By describing how she gave birth to both free and enslaved children, Millward illustrates how such factors as gender could complicate the supposedly clear distinction between slavery and freedom in Maryland.
In his essay, “Maryland Is This Day True to the Union,” Mitchell draws on petitions, pamphlets, voting statistics and public meeting records. They show that even though Breckinridge, the Southern sympathizer, carried the state in the 1860 presidential election, his 45 percent of the state vote was dwarfed by the 54 percent who went for the three pro-Union candidates (including Lincoln, who finished fourth).
Mitchell reiterated the point in a conversation from his home, a rustic 1800s-era farmhouse where Civil War memorabilia is on display. It includes the Union discharge papers of the great-grandfather of his wife, Betsy.
The Louisiana State University Press published “The Civil War in Maryland Reconsidered” late last year. It includes contributions from other prominent historians, who focus on such matters as women’s organizations that supported the Union, the horrors that Union soldiers discovered when they arrived at Antietam after that battle ended and the successful recruitment of Union soldiers in Baltimore.
It’s the third for Mitchell, whose interest in the Civil War was awakened years ago when Betsy inherited a box of memorabilia. The Parkton, Md., man works full time as alumni director for his alma mater, St. Paul’s School. | null | null | null | null | null |
Bipartisan Senate delegation meets with Ukrainian leaders amid Russia tensions
A bipartisan delegation of U.S. senators met in Kyiv on Monday with top Ukrainian leaders in what they described as a show of solidarity while the Eastern European country faces ongoing tension with Russia.
The seven lawmakers held talks with President Volodymyr Zelensky and other top officials in his government. The visit comes as Russia has massed an estimated 100,000 troops near portions of its border with Ukraine and diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis have faltered.
Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), also part of the group, said that as Ukraine “continues to defend its territorial integrity against an increasingly aggressive Russia, while also striving to enact critical domestic reforms to solidify its democracy — it is more important than ever that the U.S. support Ukraine in its efforts.”
In addition to the briefing with Zelensky, the group also met with Ukraine’s interior and foreign ministers and energy executives, then had a working dinner with the country’s defense minister and his team, Murphy said in a call with reporters. The United States will continue providing “the defensive weapons systems that they need,” he said.
Another focal point was how the United States could aid the “citizen defense of Ukraine should it become a last resort,” Murphy added.
The Biden administration and lawmakers from both political parties have grown increasingly concerned in recent weeks that Russia may be preparing to invade Ukraine.
Senate Democrats, with the backing of the President Biden, unveiled legislation last week that would impose sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin, and other top Russian military and government officials and key banking institutions, if Moscow engages in hostilities.
Murphy, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the bipartisan delegation wanted to send a message to Putin by traveling to Ukraine after Cruz’s legislation was defeated. A package of sanctions targeting Russia if it invades Ukraine would enjoy wide Senate support, Murphy said, notwithstanding the current debate over “tactics.”
Biden administration officials have warned that the Russian government has sent operatives into eastern Ukraine in preparation for potential sabotage efforts that could serve as a pretext for a renewed Russian invasion. “The operatives are trained in urban warfare and in using explosives to carry out acts of sabotage against Russia’s own proxy-forces,” a U.S. official said Friday, referring to Russian-backed separatists who have been waging a war against Ukrainian forces in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
Speaking to reporters in Moscow on Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called Washington’s claims “total disinformation.”
For months, top Russian officials have been warning that Ukraine is preparing an attempt to retake the separatist regions in its east. Top Ukrainian and U.S. officials have denied having any such plans and described the Russian comments as an effort to cast Kyiv falsely as an aggressor and lay the groundwork for a new invasion.
The Kremlin has sought formal assurances that the United States and NATO will halt the alliance’s eastward expansion and dial back its military presence in Eastern Europe, demands that U.S. and NATO officials rejected during a series of talks with their Russian counterparts last week. | null | null | null | null | null |
“People are scared of an overreaching agenda at this point in time. We spent a lot of money — and good money — by Republicans and Democrats,” Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.) said while referencing the bipartisan infrastructure bill. “I‘m going to be campaigning on and talking about the work we’ve actually already done. It’d be nice to do a big broader piece, but if this is not exactly the time, so be it.”
While there is a fear of depressing voter enthusiasm for years if Democrats cannot deliver on promises they have made over the last decade, front-line members believe there is an even greater risk in failing to further convince skeptical voters that they have done enough. | null | null | null | null | null |
Freda Levenson appears before the Ohio Supreme Court in Columbus during oral arguments last month in a constitutional challenge to new legislative district maps. (Julie Carr Smyth/Associated Press)
The 4-3 ruling on the legislative maps found that the work of Ohio’s bipartisan redistricting commission amounted to partisan gerrymandering favoring Republicans, who just happen to control both the state House and Senate and the governor’s mansion.
Ohio Supreme Court rejects district map as unfairly partisan
The court noted that, while the statewide legislative vote over the past decade had favored Republicans by about 54 percent to about 46 percent, the new maps would have given Republicans overwhelming majorities in the House and Senate, somewhere between 61 and 68 of the 99 seats in the House and between 20 and 24 of the 33 seats in the Senate.
The National Council of State Legislatures (NCSL) uses two broad criteria to assess the type of redistricting process used in each state, those where legislators have primary control and those where legislators do not have primary control. Overall, 35 states put the power primarily in the hands of the legislature while 15 give power to nonlegislative entities, according to Wendy Underhill, director of elections and redistricting at the NCSL.
But the shape and powers of those nonlegislative entities vary, as the Ohio case shows. Just four states — Arizona, California, Colorado and Michigan — have systems that are basically independent of elected officials. The rest vest some power in elected officials, including Ohio, whose commission is made up of seven members: Gov. Mike DeWine (R), Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R), Auditor of State Keith Faber (R), House Speaker Robert Cupp (R), Senate President Matthew Huffman (R), House Minority Leader Emilia Sykes (D) and Sen. Vernon Sykes (D).
The changes in Ohio called for the redistricting commission to approve legislative maps with a bipartisan majority of the seven-member body and stipulated that the majority must include two members from each of the parties. Failing that, maps can be approved by a simple majority of the commission, but those maps would only be in force for four years, rather than the customary 10 years.
The Ohio process undermined the idea that the commission was somehow less susceptible to partisan maneuvering. One example is the commission itself didn’t even draw the new legislative districts. Instead, the Republican and Democratic legislative caucuses separately produced their own maps, which then came to the commission members for debate and discussion. There was some negotiation between the two sides, but Republicans enjoyed a 5-2 majority. Ultimately, the two Democratic members of the commission said they would not support the Republican-produced maps.
How redistricting is shaping the map for Congress this year
LaRose said he cast his vote “with great unease,” saying the map had many shortcomings, “but they pale in comparison to the shortcomings of this process.” DeWine said he was disappointed with the outcome. “I’m not judging the bill one way or another,” he said, adding that was up to a court to do. “What I am sure in my heart is that this committee could have come up with a bill that was much more clearly, clearly constitutional. I’m sorry we did not do that.”
The Republican legislators on the commission defended the maps but with explanations that the court found wanting. In part, they said the new constitutional provisions did not require them to meet the test for fairness, arguing that wording was “aspirational” rather than mandatory. The court said this was an incorrect reading of the new constitutional requirements.
The second defense was less legalistic and more blatantly political. In defending the lopsided advantage for Republicans, Huffman explained that they had looked at statewide results in two ways. One was the portion of the vote each party had received over the previous decade, the 54 percent to 46 percent advantage for Republicans.
Redistricting commissions have proved themselves in some other states, particularly those where the control is vested almost entirely in citizens rather than politicians. In both Colorado and Michigan, where citizens ultimately control the drawing of lines, assessments of new maps have noted the lack of partisan advantage for either party. | null | null | null | null | null |
One person killed in Delaware house fire
MIDDLETOWN, Del. — Fire officials in Delaware say one person was killed in a house fire Monday in a development north of Middletown.
The extent of the burns to the person killed in the fire made it difficult to immediately make an identification, Assistant State Fire Marshal Michael G. Chionchio said. The body is being turned over to the State Medical Examiner’s Office.
The News Journal reports that the blaze at a 2½-story farmhouse, located in the Airmont Acres development, was reported about 8:35 a.m. Monday, according to volunteer fire companies from Middletown and Port Penn.
Chionchio said he estimates the damage at about $200,000. | null | null | null | null | null |
People stand beside St. Michael’s Tower as they watch the full moon sometimes known as a "wolf moon" rise behind Glastonbury Tor in Glastonbury, England, on Jan. 17. (Toby Melville/Reuters)
Security forces kill seven, activists say
Sudanese security forces opened fire on protesters Monday, killing at least seven people and wounding about 100 others in the country’s capital in one of the deadliest days since an October military coup, activists said.
Earlier Monday, thousands had again flooded the streets of Khartoum and elsewhere in Sudan to denounce the Oct. 25 military takeover that scuttled hopes of a peaceful transition to democracy. The coup came more than two years after a popular uprising forced the removal of longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir and his Islamist government in April 2019.
The turmoil was amplified after Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok stepped down earlier this month. Hamdok, the civilian face of Sudan’s transitional government, resigned after his efforts to bridge the gap between the generals and the country’s pro-democracy movement failed.
Islands' distress signal detected after tsunami
A distress signal has been detected in an isolated, low-lying group of islands in the Tonga archipelago following Saturday’s massive volcanic eruption and tsunami, the United Nations said, prompting particular concern for its inhabitants.
The OCHA said there had been no contact from the Ha’apai group of islands and there was “particular concern” about two small low-lying islands, Fonoi and Mango, where an active distress beacon had been detected. According to the Tonga government, 36 people live on Mango and 69 on Fonoi.
Journalist acquitted in Turkey: A Turkish court on Monday acquitted German journalist Mesale Tolu of terrorism charges, Tolu said on Twitter, in a case that lasted nearly five years and added to strains between Ankara and Berlin at the time of her detention. Tolu was detained in April 2017 as part of a crackdown following a coup attempt in July 2016 and was held in jail for eight months before being released. She had been accused of publishing terrorist propaganda and membership of a terrorist organization. "After four years, eight months and 20 days: acquitted on both charges!" she tweeted.
Boris Johnson accused of lying about party: A former senior adviser to Britain's Boris Johnson said on Monday he was willing to "swear under oath" that the prime minister knew a party was being held at his residence during a coronavirus lockdown, accusing him of lying to Parliament. Dominic Cummings, an architect of Britain's departure from the European Union and a former senior adviser to Johnson who left government under acrimonious terms in November 2020, said on Twitter that the prime minister had agreed that the drinks party should go ahead. | null | null | null | null | null |
FILE - Northwestern quarterback Hunter Johnson throws against Michigan State during the first half of an NCAA college football game in Evanston, Ill., Friday, Sept. 3, 2021. Onetime Clemson quarterback Johnson is returning to the Tigers for his final season of college football, in 2022. It’s Clemson coach Dabo Swinney’s first foray into the NCAA transfer portal. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File) | null | null | null | null | null |
Launching Tuesday, the Tech Oversight Project plans to bring “campaign-style” tactics to push lawmakers to pass competition legislation aimed at the tech industry. The project is primarily funded by the Omidyar Network, a philanthropic venture launched by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar that has called for greater regulation of the tech industry, and the Economic Security Project, a nonprofit organization led by Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, who has called for the breakup of the social network he helped create. | null | null | null | null | null |
False negative results have caused frustration and even heartache for some people who later got back positive PCR results and now fear they may have infected others
The promise of at-home tests to tell people whether they are infectious has been undercut not just by anecdotal reports like MacInnes’s, but also by preliminary data that suggests some of the rapid tests may be less sensitive to the now-dominant omicron variant. Studies suggest they detect infections most reliably two to five days after exposure in people with high viral loads who are experiencing symptoms, which is why people are urged to take the tests serially. But even then, they are not foolproof. And for those who have taken pains to find out whether their sniffle and sore throat might be harbingers of covid-19 to protect others, contradictory test results are often dismaying.
One New York City woman who relied on negative rapid test results to go out with her friends on New Year’s Eve only to get back a positive PCR test result afterward said she believes the at-home tests offer “a false sense of security.”
The Food and Drug Administration acknowledged the issue on Dec. 28, noting that “early data suggests that antigen tests do detect the omicron variant but may have reduced sensitivity.” A week later, a small preprint study that has not yet been peer-reviewed found that the rapid tests failed to detect the virus on day zero and day one after infection for 30 individuals in New York and San Francisco. In 28 of those cases, PCR tests indicated that the patients’ virus levels were high enough on those days to make them infectious. (Several authors of the study serve as unpaid board members of SalivaDirect, a PCR test protocol affiliated with the Yale School of Public Health.)
PCR stands for polymerase chain reaction, a technique that amplifies trace amounts of virus DNA. While PCR tests are considered the gold standard for detecting infection, it can take 12 hours to several days to deliver results and cost $150 or more without insurance coverage.
By comparison, rapid tests, also called antigen tests, are cheaper and most people can administer them at home. They return results in as little as 15 minutes by detecting antigens, a type of proteins on the surface of the virus. But since rapid tests don’t magnify the virus, a person needs to have produced enough antigens in their body to return a positive result.
The good news, researchers say, is that two newly authorized rapid tests coming to market as soon as this month work well in detecting omicron. The FDA issued emergency-use authorizations for the tests by Roche and Siemens Healthineers in late December.
Consumers will be able to purchase Roche tests beginning in late January, spokeswoman Michelle A. Johnson said in an email. A Siemens spokesman said it is too early to say when its tests will reach stores, but production is ramping up. Both companies are expected to produce tens of millions of at-home test kits each month, helping to boost the nation’s supply.
Lam said that when the omicron variant first reached the United States, he and his colleagues used inactivated virus samples to test all of the rapid tests on the market. All performed well. But when they began evaluating the tests against live samples of omicron, some of the tests appeared to be less sensitive to the variant.
More-reliable rapid tests can’t come soon enough for people eager to resume their pre-pandemic lives.
After a New Year’s Eve spent among four friends who all tested before gathering, a painful headache and dry cough spurred a 58-year-old New York City woman to take another rapid test on Jan. 5. The test came back negative, but her symptoms persisted, so she decided to get a PCR test on Jan. 6.
That is especially true because infections caused by the omicron variant appear to move faster than those caused by other variants, said Lam, the Emory biomedical engineer. A positive result on a rapid test followed by a negative result on a PCR test may mean that a patient was infected but stopped producing virus by the time of the second test, he added. | null | null | null | null | null |
Over a 30-year career in the Army Air Forces and its successor, the Air Force, Gen. McGee logged 6,308 flying hours and a remarkable 409 combat missions, among the most in service history. He flew at least 100 combat missions in the Korean and Vietnam wars, taking enemy fire in both conflicts — his plane was hit twice, both times on the right wing — while going on bombing and strafing flights out of Pusan and piloting a photographic reconnaissance plane based near Saigon. | null | null | null | null | null |
One incident was a hit-and-run, police said
Two pedestrians were killed in separate traffic incidents Monday evening in Montgomery County, according to county police. Authorities described one as a hit-and-run.
In that incident, a woman was struck shortly before 6:30 p.m. while crossing Veirs Mill Road at Ferrara Avenue in the Wheaton area, police said. The driver of the vehicle “did not remain” at the scene, police said.
The site is just north of the Capital Beltway in the Hillandale area. | null | null | null | null | null |
Washington withstands high winds on the day after the month’s third snow
Sunday became memorable here for its snow, the third snowfall so far this month, but Monday seemed significant in its own way. Not only was it January’s third day after a snowstorm, but it also boasted winds and breezes of notable strength.
Only a few flakes flew Monday, not enough to measure. But the day could not be dismissed as any sort of calm after the storm, not with wind gusts that whipped across Washington at speeds as high as 47 mph, according to the National Weather Service.
We might have expected nature to be catching its breath on Monday, after the unusual output of three days this month of at least 2.6 inches of snow. But on Monday, it seemed nature was more inclined to let its breath out.
Although the 47-mph gust was Washington’s peak as of 4 p.m., it typified the day’s conditions. Just before 2 a.m. a 40-mph gust was reported, and 44 mph was measured just before 1 p.m.
As of 4 p.m. the average wind speed was just over 16 mph.
As for Monday’s temperatures, they came in close to average.
The reported high of 42 degrees turned out to be only two lower than the average for the date. The 35 degree morning low came to five above average.
Although those who went face to face with the fierce west wind may remember Monday for that alone, the day’s overall average temperature as of 4 p.m. was two degrees above average.
Such conditions apparently helped much of the snow remaining from Sunday to slowly vanish. | null | null | null | null | null |
Over a 30-year career in the Army Air Forces and its successor, the Air Force, Gen. McGee logged 6,308 flying hours and a remarkable 409 combat missions, among the most in service history. He flew bombing and strafing missions out of Pusan during the Korean War and piloted a photographic reconnaissance plane based near Saigon during the Vietnam War, going on at least 100 combat missions in both conflicts. In each war, his plane was hit by enemy fire, both times on the right wing. | null | null | null | null | null |
By Lauren Etter and Brendan Murray | Bloomberg
For the first time, the pandemic demonstrated just how adept the carriers have become at managing the market’s supply of cargo capacity, by curtailing it when Covid-19 first shook the world’s economy and then ramping it up when demand rebounded strongly, driving prices higher than ever. Shippers have chafed at how the alliances’ lock on capacity — the ships, their schedules and speeds, and the millions of steel boxes in circulation — has translated into asymmetric pricing power.
Mario Cordero, former chairman of the FMC and executive director at the Port of Long Beach, which is part of the U.S.’s largest port complex, said it’s a “confluence of factors” that have led to the tangling of the global supply chain in the wake of the pandemic. While he expects port congestion and shipping prices to move closer to normalcy in the second half of 2022, he’s still cautious. “I’m not suggesting we’re over this.”
As carriers commissioned larger ships to obtain cost advantages, they struggled to fill the massive boats to capacity, losing money. Some stayed afloat with government-backed financing or outright state control like China’s ownership of Cosco. In 2013 carriers began forming alliances to collectively allocate cargo space and organize sailing schedules, much like airlines use them to book passengers on each other’s flights, allowing travel on multiple carriers with one itinerary. By 2018, the UN agency that monitors maritime trade described it as “a market structure that is more representative of a loose oligopoly.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Anderson, Oklahoma State Cowboys square off against the TCU Horned Frogs
TCU Horned Frogs (12-2, 2-1 Big 12) at Oklahoma State Cowboys (9-7, 2-3 Big 12)
BOTTOM LINE: Big 12 foes Oklahoma State and TCU face off on Wednesday.
The Cowboys have gone 5-4 at home. Oklahoma State is fourth in the Big 12 with 10.4 offensive rebounds per game led by Moussa Cisse averaging 2.0.
The Horned Frogs are 2-1 in Big 12 play. TCU averages 71.3 points while outscoring opponents by 9.2 points per game.
The Cowboys and Horned Frogs square off Wednesday for the first time in conference play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Avery Anderson III is scoring 10.3 points per game and averaging 3.0 rebounds for the Cowboys. Bryce Williams is averaging 1.0 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Oklahoma State.
Mike Miles is scoring 15.7 points per game and averaging 3.5 rebounds for the Horned Frogs. Charles O’Bannon Jr. is averaging 7.2 points and 2.9 rebounds over the last 10 games for TCU. | null | null | null | null | null |
Boston University Terriers (11-8, 2-4 Patriot) at Loyola (MD) Greyhounds (11-6, 5-1 Patriot)
BOTTOM LINE: Loyola (MD) takes on the Boston University Terriers after Cam Spencer scored 26 points in Loyola (MD)’s 69-57 win over the Lehigh Mountain Hawks.
The Greyhounds have gone 8-0 at home. Loyola (MD) is eighth in the Patriot shooting 32.6% from deep, led by Nick Marshall shooting 37.5% from 3-point range.
The Terriers are 2-4 against Patriot opponents. Boston University ranks ninth in the Patriot with 10.9 assists per game led by Javante McCoy averaging 2.6.
The teams play for the second time this season in Patriot play. The Greyhounds won the last meeting on Jan. 7. Spencer scored 19 points points to help lead the Greyhounds to the win.
TOP PERFORMERS: Spencer is averaging 19.1 points, 3.7 assists and 2.1 steals for the Greyhounds. Jaylin Andrews is averaging 1.3 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Loyola (MD).
Sukhmail Mathon is averaging 14.6 points and 9.7 rebounds for the Terriers. Jonas Harper is averaging 1.7 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Boston University.
Terriers: 5-5, averaging 68.3 points, 33.3 rebounds, 9.9 assists, 6.2 steals and 2.1 blocks per game while shooting 42.0% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 67.9 points. | null | null | null | null | null |
Campbell visits Longwood after Wilkins' 20-point performance
Campbell Fighting Camels (9-6, 2-2 Big South) at Longwood Lancers (10-5, 2-0 Big South)
BOTTOM LINE: Longwood faces the Campbell Fighting Camels after Isaiah Wilkins scored 20 points in Longwood’s 66-60 victory over the Gardner-Webb Runnin’ Bulldogs.
The Lancers have gone 9-1 in home games. Longwood has a 0-1 record in games decided by less than 4 points.
The Fighting Camels are 2-2 in Big South play. Campbell ranks sixth in the Big South with 23.3 defensive rebounds per game led by Ricky Clemons averaging 5.3.
The Lancers and Fighting Camels square off Wednesday for the first time in Big South play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Wilkins is shooting 44.1% from beyond the arc with 1.7 made 3-pointers per game for the Lancers, while averaging 12.9 points, 6.1 rebounds and 1.6 steals. Justin Hill is shooting 41.1% and averaging 11.8 points over the past 10 games for Longwood.
Cedric Henderson Jr. is scoring 12.5 points per game with 6.0 rebounds and 1.7 assists for the Fighting Camels. Jesus Carralero is averaging 11.1 points, four assists and 1.8 steals over the last 10 games for Campbell.
Fighting Camels: 5-5, averaging 64.1 points, 28.0 rebounds, 14.4 assists, 5.9 steals and 1.0 block per game while shooting 46.9% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 62.1 points. | null | null | null | null | null |
Champagnie leads Saint John's (NY) against Creighton after 25-point outing
Saint John’s (NY) Red Storm (11-5, 2-2 Big East) at Creighton Bluejays (11-5, 2-2 Big East)
Omaha, Nebraska; Wednesday, 7 p.m. EST
BOTTOM LINE: Saint John’s (NY) takes on the Creighton Bluejays after Julian Champagnie scored 25 points in Saint John’s (NY)’s 88-69 win over the Georgetown Hoyas.
The Bluejays have gone 5-2 in home games. Creighton ranks fifth in the Big East with 13.1 assists per game led by Ryan Nembhard averaging 4.5.
The Red Storm are 2-2 in conference games. Saint John’s (NY) ranks eighth in college basketball with 17.8 assists per game led by Posh Alexander averaging 4.7.
TOP PERFORMERS: Ryan Hawkins is averaging 13.4 points and 7.7 rebounds for the Bluejays. Alex O’Connell is averaging 1.4 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Creighton.
Champagnie is shooting 39.8% from beyond the arc with 2.6 made 3-pointers per game for the Red Storm, while averaging 21.4 points, 7.2 rebounds and two steals. Alexander is shooting 50.0% and averaging 10.3 points over the past 10 games for Saint John’s (NY). | null | null | null | null | null |
High Point Panthers (7-9, 1-1 Big South) at Charleston Southern Buccaneers (3-13, 0-4 Big South)
BOTTOM LINE: High Point plays the Charleston Southern Buccaneers after John-Michael Wright scored 28 points in High Point’s 78-71 victory over the North Carolina A&T Aggies.
The Buccaneers have gone 2-6 at home. Charleston Southern averages 15.3 turnovers per game and is 2-2 when it has fewer turnovers than its opponents.
The Panthers are 1-1 against Big South opponents. High Point is fifth in the Big South scoring 70.3 points per game and is shooting 43.7%.
The Buccaneers and Panthers meet Wednesday for the first time in conference play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Tahlik Chavez is scoring 10.3 points per game with 2.7 rebounds and 1.9 assists for the Buccaneers. Claudell Harris Jr. is averaging 11.3 points and 4.6 rebounds while shooting 39.4% over the last 10 games for Charleston Southern.
Wright is averaging 19.5 points and 4.1 assists for the Panthers. Zach Austin is averaging 1.6 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for High Point. | null | null | null | null | null |
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