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In 2021, Joni Mitchell was honored at the 44th Kennedy Center Honors in Washington, D.C. (Samuel Corum/AFP/Getty Images)
The singer, who last year celebrated the 50-year anniversary of her album “Blue,” also linked to an open letter signed by medical and scientific professionals calling on Spotify to “immediately establish a clear and public policy to moderate misinformation on its platform.”
The letter explicitly names “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast hosted by Joe Rogan, and a particular episode featuring guest doctor Robert Malone, “for promoting baseless conspiracy theories.” The letter said the podcast had a “concerning history of broadcasting misinformation, particularly regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Spotify did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Washington Post, but in a statement a Spotify spokesperson told The Post earlier this week: “We want all the world’s music and audio content to be available to Spotify users. With that comes great responsibility in balancing both safety for listeners and freedom for creators.”
Young, a Canadian rock star whose best-known hits include “Heart of Gold,” “Harvest Moon” and “Rockin’ in the Free World,” had about 6.6 million monthly listeners on the platform. His letter, which has since been deleted, was addressed to his manager and an executive at his record label and cited podcaster Rogan as part of his issue with Spotify.
The letter continued: “I want you to let Spotify know immediately TODAY that I want all my music off their platform. They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.”
Rogan, who helms one of the most popular podcasts on Spotify, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Post.
He has been accused by critics of spreading misinformation about the coronavirus vaccine to his estimated 11 million listeners per episode. In September, he discussed catching covid-19 himself and treating it with a number of therapeutics, including ivermectin, a medication used to kill parasites in animals and humans, which is not authorized or approved by either the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the Food and Drug Administration to treat covid. In December, Rogan invited Robert Malone, a physician who has become a prominent skeptic of the coronavirus vaccines, to appear on his show, causing controversy.
Rogan also came under fire in April for suggesting that healthy, young people shouldn’t get vaccinated but also stated: “I’m not an anti-vax person. In fact, I said I believe they’re safe and I encourage many people to take 'em,” in an episode with comedian Andrew Santino. “I just said, I don’t think that if you’re a young, healthy person, that you need it.”
Mitchell, 78, like Young is a California-based songwriter who hails from Canada and enjoyed wide success in the 1970s. Known for hits such as “Big Yellow Taxi” and “A Case of You,” she has about 3.7 million monthly listeners on Spotify.
In a message on his website Friday, Young said that when he left Spotify “I felt better.” He added: “I am happy and proud to stand in solidarity with the front line health care workers who risk their lives every day to help others.”
So far, more than 876,000 people have died of covid-19 in the United States, and more than 74,015,000 cases of coronavirus have been reported, according to a Post tracker. | null | null | null | null | null |
Va. fabric shop owner looking to sell after nearly 2 decades
Laura “Belle” Stemper, owner of Ragtime Fabrics in Harrisonburg, Va., measures out ribbon by the foot for a customer on Jan. 26, 2022. Stemper is retiring at the end of March and is hoping that a member of the community will step up to buy the business from her. (Daniel Lin/Daily News-Record via AP)
HARRISONBURG, Va. — A fabric store might not sound like the most exciting place, but the energy in Ragtime Fabrics in Harrisonburg is palpable.
“If I could have my cake and eat it too … Ragtime would stay in business but it wouldn’t be me running it,” Stemper said. “If someone came in, I would always be available (as a consultant).” | null | null | null | null | null |
Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow leaves the field after the Bengals beat the Tennessee Titans last weekend. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)
They anchored green and gold balloons to the ground before the team buses passed, and residents lined the street and waved as Athens High traveled northwest to Ohio Stadium. It was 2014, Burrow’s senior year. Athens High had averaged 57 points in its first 14 games, fulfilling Burrow’s prophecy and going undefeated with a quarterback whose tranquil lethality was, according to one opposing coach, “almost disturbing.”
Egger knows how ludicrous that sounds, not just because the Bengals play in the same conference as Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes, Buffalo’s Josh Allen and the Los Angeles Chargers’ Justin Herbert. But because it’s Cincinnati, where residents believe that Bo Jackson’s career-ending injury in the 1991 playoffs against the Bengals led to a curse on the city’s sports teams. How else to explain that Kenyon Martin broke his leg days before the top-ranked Cincinnati Bearcats tipped off in the NCAA tournament? Or that Bengals quarterback Carson Palmer, another Heisman winner and top overall draft pick, suffered a catastrophic knee injury in the opening game of the 2005 playoffs? Or that the Reds’ Johnny Cueto, the ace pitcher of baseball’s second-best team, strained a back muscle early in a 2012 playoff game before the team blew a 2-0 series lead and were eliminated by San Francisco? | null | null | null | null | null |
On April 11, 2021, Pope Francis arrives to celebrate Mass in the Santo Spirito in Sassia Church in Rome. (Alessandra Tarantino/AP)
In a State of the World address at the start of the year, Francis touched on the pandemic and called for widespread vaccination in all countries and suggested the global coronavirus response was being complicated by “baseless information.”
Several prominent U.S. catholic groups and individuals, including President Biden, also have been vocal in their support of vaccines. More recently, the Holy See issued a vaccine mandate for all employees, while Francis has described vaccination as an “act of love.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Stepping into virtual reality as a parent brings adventure and unknowns
A recently released study by a Stanford group explored whether VR could help children learn from their homes during the pandemic
An Oculus Quest 2 headset. (Theresa Vargas /TWP)
I worked out with comedian Tiffany Haddish the other day.
We stood in Egypt, surrounded by nothing but sand and pyramids.
As we warmed up, I faced her and mirrored her movements. When she lifted a knee, I lifted a knee. When she stretched out an arm, I stretched out an arm. In the 20 minutes we had together, she tossed out a few jokes, but mostly she offered encouragement.
That was her purpose, after all — not to sweat with me but to get me sweating as I jabbed and ducked, practicing boxing moves I had learned just days earlier. She wasn’t real, but my movements were.
There is no way to work out in virtual reality without looking ridiculous. A weighty pair of goggles sits on your head and no one around you can see the objects you’re hitting with precision. They only see you swiping at air, and if you haven’t marked your boundaries correctly, bumping into furniture.
I could hear my kids giggling in the background. They pulled me back into reality for a moment, but if they were laughing, that meant they were fine and I could get back to smashing the black and white balls hurtling at me.
I don’t fall into the typical VR user demographics, which according to one study, tend to be males between the ages of 16 and 35. But throughout my life, I’ve enjoyed playing video games and as a mom, I’ve found there’s no better ego boost than seeing awe on your children’s faces when you beat them at Mario Kart or Super Smash Bros.
So, when a family member gifted me an Oculus Quest 2 headset, I didn’t leave it sitting in the box. I decided to explore the virtual world with my eager 9-year-old son.
The first time we used the headset, I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know if we would feel nauseated within five minutes or if time would pass quickly as we visited places the pandemic had kept us from seeing. I didn’t know if it would feel like an escape from pandemic parenting or a disorienting extension of it.
The first thing I learned was this: Exploring virtual reality as a parent is much different from using it without children in mind. In many ways it feels like stepping off a paved path onto one that hasn’t yet been cleared of greenery and marked with signs that provide clear guidance.
The science is still developing when it comes to children using VR and several major manufacturers of headsets have set the recommended age of use at 12 and older. That doesn’t mean, though, that children across the country aren’t slipping on those headsets every day. VR experts and parents know they are and that based on sales predictions many more will be in the next few years. They also know that some interesting things, both good and uncertain, can happen when children use the technology.
I can tell you about my own family’s experience, but I am not a VR expert. So, I reached out to someone who is. Jeremy Bailenson is the founding director of Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, which builds and studies virtual spaces.
One of the most recent studies to come out of the lab is titled, “Accessibility of Educational Virtual Reality for Children during the COVID-19 Pandemic.” The study involved surveying and interviewing the parents and legal guardians of 411 children who ranged in age from 0 to 17 and had at least one VR headset at home. The mean age of the children ended up being 9.5.
The research started at the beginning of the pandemic and grew out of Bailenson’s own experience.
“In March 2020, I’m a parent and I had an 8 and a 6-year-old at the time,” he says. “My 6-year-old didn’t even know how to type, didn’t even know how to use a computer, and yet she was having to do online school all day. Think about just how bonkers that is.”
It occurred to Bailenson that he could use his VR expertise to look for virtual experiences that would build on what his children were learning in school.
“And what I found as a parent very quickly,” he says, “was that there was almost no educational content that 'A’ was at the quality where it was going to really add value and 'B’ that plugged into the curriculum.”
The study, he says, aimed to explore on a broader level the question he had asked himself about his own children: “How can this be used for education?”
In interviews conducted as part of the study, parents described using VR to visit the Frida Kahlo Museum in Mexico City, the moon and places where they had spent real-life vacations. One parent told of using it to let a child who was learning Russian travel virtually to Moscow.
One of the most powerful examples of its use for education came from a mom of teenage daughters. She spoke about how the Anne Frank House VR experience resonated with her children at a time when the pandemic had forced people to be stuck in their homes.
“My daughter couldn’t believe how small the house is that Anne Frank was in and she’s like, ‘Mom, you can’t go anywhere,’” reads the study. The daughter spent a considerable amount of time in the virtual house and read all the material. Her mom, when interviewed afterward, said the family ended that experience with gratitude for the home they had.
Bailenson says his general rule for VR is that it should be used for “quick, intense, aha experiences” and for no longer than 30 minutes at a time. The study also notes that research has found that young children, such as 6- and 7-year-olds, are prone to remember events in VR as if they happened in real life and that more research is needed to assess the effects of VR on children.
My 7-year-old tried on the headset and within minutes decided he did not like the way it made him feel.
My 9-year-old put it on, felt fine and was easily able to distinguish the difference between real life and the realistic portrayal of it.
I don’t think VR can make up for the learning loss that has occurred among children during the pandemic — and Bailenson agreed — but I can see how when used under supervision at home, virtual experiences can lead to real discoveries and conversations that might not have occurred otherwise.
My son can spend hours lost in books or searching for insects outside. But I’ve also seen VR ignite a different type of curiosity in him. I have been careful about the privacy settings I’ve chosen, the age-appropriateness of the apps I’ve purchased and the amount of time I allow him to wear the headset. Without those precautions, I wouldn’t feel comfortable with him exploring the technology. But with them, I am enjoying, at least for now, our shared adventure.
On days that are too cold to go outside, we take turns working out on “Supernatural,” which is where I encountered Haddish that day. When we want to laugh, we fling Angry Birds at taunting pigs. And on a recent night, we stepped into the imaginary roles of photographers for National Geographic.
“I just took a photo of sea lions,” my son shouted after a few minutes. “Whoa, whoa! Emperor penguins swimming underwater. This is fun.”
He narrated the actions of several more animals before he decided to leave Antarctica.
“I’m going to a place called Machu Picchu” he said. “Do you know where that is?”
I told him I had hiked through there when I was in college and studying in South America. When he took the headset off a few minutes later, he started asking questions: How old was I? What was the place like? What animals did I see?
Only later did it occur to me that we had gone from having a virtual adventure together to having a conversation about a real one. | null | null | null | null | null |
But of all the numbers that should be worrying Democrats nine months before the election, the one that might be most ominous is a figure that suggests their voters are far less energized than Republican voters. An NBC News poll found that where 61 percent of Republicans say they are highly interested in the upcoming midterms, only 47 percent of Democrats feel that way, with the largest drops coming among Black voters, the young and people who live in urban areas.
Part of this might be sheer exhaustion. After four years of being in a constant state of high anxiety over Trump, it is understandable that many Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters would welcome a respite from thinking about politics all the time.
What might change the dynamic for Democrats, at least somewhat, is the Supreme Court vacancy created by Justice Stephen G. Breyer’s decision to retire. As Biden fulfills a campaign promise to name the first Black woman to the nation’s highest bench, he might be able to reinvigorate the party’s deflated base, as well as elevate issues such as abortion rights, which are threatened by the openness the Supreme Court’s conservative majority has shown toward overturning the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.
The election last November of Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) in blue-trending Virginia should have served as an early warning signal of what might await Democrats this year across the map if they cannot find a way to reenergize the voters they need most. So far, however, there is little evidence of what, if anything, they have figured out to do about it. | null | null | null | null | null |
Clearly, Democrats prefer to cobble together a less expensive Build Back Better bill that could win Manchin’s support. At some point in the coming weeks, however, if progress is not made with the West Virginian, that proposal is going to look a lot like the Bruce Willis character in “The Sixth Sense,” a ghost who believes he’s alive, with Democrats serving as the audience that finally realizes Manchin’s December declaration that “I can’t get there” was the political equivalent of Haley Joel Osment saying “I see dead people.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Rare Steller’s sea eagle travels far from home to Maine coast
The large eagle, native to northeastern Asia, was first spotted in Maine in late December.
A Steller's sea eagle is seen December 31 off Georgetown, Maine. The rare eagle has taken up residence thousands of miles from its home range, delighting bird lovers and puzzling scientists. (Zachary Holderby/AP)
A rare, large species of eagle that has thrilled bird lovers and baffled scientists since arriving in Maine last month might not be in a hurry to leave.
The Steller’s sea eagle arrived in Maine in late December after a brief stop in Massachusetts more than a month ago. It has stuck to Maine’s middle coast, eating fish and ducks and attracting hundreds of birdwatchers from around the world.
The sea eagle numbers only a few thousand worldwide and is listed as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. It is native to northeastern Asia, including Russia and Japan. The bird is far off-course, and it’s unclear why it came to the East Coast of the United States, said Doug Hitchcox, a staff naturalist at Maine Audubon.
But the bird doesn’t appear to be in any danger, Hitchcox said. It has an ample food supply and is living in a habitat that is similar enough to its native range, he said. It’s possible it could eventually return to its home range, but now it appears comfortable in Maine, Hitchcox said.
“This one is so far off-course, it’s just purely speculation to say it could go back and then return. There is no reason it couldn’t make its way back to Japan or Russia,” he said. “It seems to be doing okay.”
It’s not uncommon for bird species to return year after year to places far from their typical range. A single red-billed tropicbird, a species commonly seen in the Caribbean and tropical oceans, has been seen off the Maine coast in the summer for years. Birders affectionately call it “Troppy.”
Maine’s Steller’s sea eagle is an adult, and its sex is not confirmed. It is sometimes seen near bald eagles, dwarfing them with its wingspan of nearly eight feet. The Steller’s, named for German naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller, is one of the largest eagles in the world, often weighing 13 to 20 pounds. That’s twice as heavy as a bald eagle — the United States’ national symbol.
The bird attracted dozens of onlookers to Reid State Park in Georgetown when it was first seen in Maine, and birdwatchers have continued to visit the state for weeks with no sign of stopping. | null | null | null | null | null |
FILE - Norway’s Anne Kjersti Kalvaa competes during a women’s cross country skiing freestyle 10 km pursuit competition at the FIS World Cup Ruka Nordic event in Kuusamo, Finland, on Nov. 29, 2020. Two members of Norway’s women’s cross-country team, Heidi Weng and Anne Kjersti Kalvaa, have tested positive for the coronavirus ahead of next month’s Beijing Olympics. They contracted COVID-19 at a training camp in the Italian Alpine resort of Seiser Alm and are now isolating. (Emmi Korhonen/Lehtikuva via AP, File) | null | null | null | null | null |
Youngkin spent much of this weekseeking face time with legislators, working out of a tiny office on the third floor of the Capitol so they could easily pop in for what his advisers call “drop-bys.” He hosted a reception at the mansion for freshmen delegates from both parties. He wooed leaders of Virginia’s historically Black colleges and universities, giving them top billing at a campaign-style event touting his plan for partnering higher education with K-12 schools.
None of the outreach worked instant magic on Senate Democrats, who continued thwarting many of the governor’s legislative priorities that they see as undermining long-sought liberal wins notched over the past two years, when the party fully controlled the legislature and governor’s mansion.
Youngkin is an overtly religious man who years ago launched a nondenominational church from his Great Falls home and today starts Cabinet meetings with a prayer. He started that day at an early-morning Bible study in the Pocahontas Building, the high-rise where legislators have their offices. Led by former Republican House speaker William J. Howell, the lesson was on forgiveness and the scriptural admonition to settle conflicts through direct conversation.
“Imagine if Ralph marched over to the Pocahontas Building every time a Republican said something about him he didn’t like,” Jones said, referring to former governor Ralph Northam. “It sets a bad precedent, and he might end up being in [the] Pocahontas every single day of his administration.”
“I don’t know how all of you felt, but when this governor opened up massage parlors and ABC stores and kept my church closed, I knew he didn’t start his mornings like I do, which is in prayer,” Youngkin said, complaining about pandemic restrictions at a rally with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in May.
Bagby said the 30- to 40-minute meeting inside Room E319 was a positive step, and in keeping with a conversation that he’d had with Youngkin over dinner several weeks earlier, before Youngkin was sworn in. | null | null | null | null | null |
President Donald Trump speaks during a near the White House on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington. (Eric Lee/Bloomberg)
No one should underestimate former president Donald Trump’s standing within the Republican Party, especially the passionate allegiance of a substantial part of the GOP base. But there are signs that, since the assault on the Capitol last year, his support within the party may not be quite as robust as it once was.
The latest poll, released last weekend, shows a reversal in attitudes, compared with the pre-election 2020 survey, and a further decline from last January. Today, 56 percent of Republicans say they are more supporters of the party than of Trump, while 36 percent say they are more supporters of Trump than the party.
For years, Trump bragged that his support was near-universal within his party. Tweet after tweet — before he was banned from Twitter — came forth proclaiming the rank and file’s love affair with their leader. He still has high favorable ratings among Republicans. After all, he did restore them to the presidency, if only for four years. But his current approval ratings are not quite what they were before Jan. 6, 2021.
“That’s an interesting gap between 73 percent liking him but only about 60 percent saying they would like him to run again,” said Charles Franklin, the director of the poll. “That still leaves him as the odds-on favorite in a primary today, but you can see a gap between continued affection for Trump in the party but the opportunity to think about future candidates rather than past candidates."
To take this a step further, the Marquette Law School poll tested both Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) in hypothetical 2024 matchups against President Biden. Both trail Biden in the survey, but DeSantis runs as well against the president as does Trump. The poll found that, if either of those pairings were the 2024 matchups, between a fifth and a quarter of the overall electorate say they would prefer another candidate or wouldn’t vote. It should be noted that some Republican strategists believe that in a straight-up, head-to-head test between Trump and Biden right now, the former president would be at rough parity with the incumbent.
DeSantis has made plenty of news as governor, especially as a critic of masks and vaccine requirements, but he is still far less known nationally than Trump. Accounting for that difference in familiarity, his favorable-to-unfavorable ratio among Republicans is 5 to 1 in the Marquette poll. For Trump, it’s 3 to 1. For former vice president Mike Pence, it’s 2 to 1. If DeSantis were to run for president in 2024, his ratio likely would change for the worse, but it is a marker that reminds Republican voters of the baggage that Trump would carry into a general election.
And how would anyone run against him? DeSantis could run as a younger version of the former president — pugnacious and in-your-face to the elites. Trumpism without Trump. Christie, judging from his recent book, would run against Trump’s 2020 election lies and urge his party to move on from the Trump era. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) would likely skirt direct conflict with Trump and instead hope, as he did unsuccessfully in 2016, to be the alternative if Trump were to stumble. | null | null | null | null | null |
The daughters of Madeleine Furey-Livaudais, 33, who was stabbed in her own home, said it was “a lot of information to absorb so suddenly” that the man who killed their mother, a writer and ecologist, had assaulted and killed others, including the Aurora police officer. “With her sacrifice, she prevented him from killing anyone else,” they said.
George Journey, a brother of Antoinette Parks who was killed at 17 years old in Adams County in 1981, said it was difficult that her killer could not face justice but added that he was “thankful for the hard work and determination” to find him.
“This has taken a long time,” he added. “I’d like you guys to know we have closure.” | null | null | null | null | null |
So, it makes sense that Sony Pictures is bringing the Uncharted franchise to the big screen. In three weeks, the movie adaptation of “Uncharted” will open in theaters, starring Tom Holland as the treasure-hunting, debonair Nathan Drake and Mark Wahlberg as Drake’s cigar-toking partner-in-crime Victor “Sully” Sullivan.
Ahead of the upcoming film debut, Naughty Dog, the developer behind the franchise, is releasing “Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection,” a polished-up PlayStation 5 update to the two most recent Uncharted games. Both adventures — “Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End” and “Uncharted: The Lost Legacy” — look better, feel better and sound better on the PS5. If you’ve never tried the series before, the remastered collection is a great excuse to jump in. But, like any action movie, if you’ve already played the Uncharted games, “Legacy of Thieves” can feel like re-watching a film you already own. Once you’ve been through it a few times, the movie magic can start to lose its spell.
For the first-timers here, “A Thief’s End” is the award-winning final act of Nathan Drake’s story. I’ll tiptoe around the plot details and just write that in the beginning of the game, which originally released in 2016, Drake is cajoled out of retirement to go on one last hunt for a long-dead pirate’s treasure. “The Lost Legacy,” which Naughty Dog released a year later, follows Chloe Fraizer and Nadine Ross — two of the most compelling characters in the series — on their own adventure through the Western Ghats, a mountain range on the southwest coast of India. Neither of these games is going to spoil whatever happens in Tom Holland’s adventure as Nathan Drake. Sony has said that the movie “took inspiration from the games” but the story line is “completely unique.”
“A Thief’s End” and “The Lost Legacy” are now a part of a growing library of games that have been remastered for the PS5, including Sucker Punch’s “Ghosts of Tsushima.” (My colleague Gene Park called the PS5 remaster of “Ghosts” one of the prettiest games ever made.) I’ve never been one to notice the fine details in an update when developers show side-by-side comparisons of an original game and its remastered alternative. I always feel like I’m at the optician, squinting at tiny letters during the eye exam. What I can say is this: After around five years, which is approaching middle-age for any game, both of the Uncharted titles look pretty spotless on Sony’s new spaceship of a console.
Dust hangs in the air as make your way into a subterranean tomb. Gas lamps flicker shadows against the walls. In “The Lost Legacy,” the ancient Hindu temples of the long-gone Hoysala Empire seemed photo-realistic at times. There were a few moments when the game prompted Chloe to take photos of the vista in “The Lost Legacy.” I always took the opportunity.
The Uncharted collection also boasts an improved “3-D audio” system that may sound like a buzzword of a gimmick (it sure did to me) but I can confirm that both games do sound fantastic. I recently bought myself a new gaming headset and this is the first time I noticed a difference between my headset and the television stereo. As you walk through a Hindu temple, Chloe’s voice reverberates offthe stone-faced statues. And when you take cover to hide from enemy fire, bullets whiz by your head. All the little sound effects — the chirping birds, the babbling creeks, the boom of dynamite knocking down a door — helped draw me into the game.
Naughty Dog’s well-timed re-creation of Nathan Drake’s final act did remind me that Tom Holland’s résumé as the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man doesn’t exactly fit this dry-humored, modern-day Indiana Jones. Will Tom Holland swap out his boy-hero suit for Drake’s haphazard charm? Bigger leaps have been performed. And Holland says he knows the character. He played one of the Uncharted games while filming “Spider-Man: Homecoming.” Still, I’m skeptical.
Chloe and Nadine’s adventure, “The Lost Legacy,” was originally intended to be a DLC for the fourth Uncharted game. But, instead, Naughty Dog turned the short story into a seven-hour campaign — a novella of a game, which is fine by me because games are too long nowadays. This was the first time I’ve played “The Lost Legacy,” and I enjoyed playing as Chloe and Nadine more than I did running through “A Thief’s End” for a third time.
The “made-for-Hollywood” spectacles in both games continue to be jaw dropping on the PS5, but in “A Thief’s End,” I found the connecting parts between those moments to feel a bit dull and tedious. I had already solved that puzzle or navigated that maze of ruins before. The connecting parts in “The Lost Legacy” didn’t feel as laborious, and the climactic set pieces at the end of almost every chapter were just as fun to play.
If you happen to already own copies of “A Thief’s End” or “The Lost Legacy” on PS4, you’ll be able to upgrade your game to the PS5 versions for $10 — which is markedly cheaper than the $50 sticker price Naughty Dog will charge for the “Legacy of Thieves” collection starting on Thursday. It’s a good deal. You just might not feel the same rush of movie magic the second, or third, go-round. I know I didn’t. | null | null | null | null | null |
Italian lawmakers move to reelect a reluctant president Sergio Mattarella
Saturday, Italy’s politicians were on the verge of reelecting him anyway.
Such an outcome would be a testament to Mattarella himself, a widely respected former constitutional court judge who was recently given a four-minute standing ovation at Milan’s La Scala opera house.
But the outcome would also reflect a failure among Italy’s weak and divided political parties, which in theory are able to consider any citizen 50 or older for the job. After a week of backroom deliberations and secret balloting, they couldn’t agree to support a single name.
So, after seven inconclusive rounds of voting, the leaders of Italy’s warring coalition parties on Saturday all but begged Mattarella to come back, asking him to reconsider in the interest of the country. His re-election is not yet official and will depend on the outcome of a Saturday evening ballot. But Italian media expect Mattarella will easily come away with the simple majority that is needed. Several newspapers also reported that Mattarella signaled his willingness to return to the job.
Mattarella’s re-election would be a boost for Italy’s short-term stability. The position is often ceremonial, but it becomes highly important in moments of crises — when the president can call for new elections or handpick prime ministers.
If Mattarella is re-elected, he is fully entitled to serve out his next term, at which point he’ll be 87. But speculation is rife that he might step down beforehand, perhaps some time after the next elections. That could pave the way for Draghi — depending on his luck in a country where political fortunes can rise and fall with astonishing speed. | null | null | null | null | null |
Youngkin spent much of this week seeking face time with legislators, working out of a tiny office on the third floor of the Capitol so they could easily pop in for what his advisers call “drop-bys.” He hosted a reception at the mansion for freshmen delegates from both parties. He wooed leaders of Virginia’s historically Black colleges and universities, giving them top billing at a campaign-style event touting his plan for partnering higher education with K-12 schools.
None of the outreach worked instant magic on Senate Democrats, who continued thwarting many of the governor’s legislative priorities that they see as undermining long-sought liberal wins from the past two years, when the party fully controlled the legislature and governor’s mansion.
Youngkin is an overtly religious man who years ago launched a nondenominational church from his Great Falls home and today starts Cabinet meetings with a prayer. He started that day at an early-morning Bible study in the Pocahontas Building, the high-rise where legislators have their offices. Led by former House speaker William J. Howell (R), the lesson was on forgiveness and the scriptural admonition to settle conflicts through direct conversation.
“Imagine if Ralph marched over to the Pocahontas Building every time a Republican said something about him he didn’t like,” Jones said, referring to former governor Ralph Northam (D). “It sets a bad precedent, and he might end up being in [the] Pocahontas every single day of his administration.”
“I don’t know how all of you felt, but when this governor opened up massage parlors and ABC stores and kept my church closed, I knew he didn’t start his mornings like I do, which is in prayer,” Youngkin said, complaining about pandemic restrictions at a rally with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) in May.
Bagby said the 30-to-40-minute meeting inside Room E319 was a positive step and was in keeping with a conversation that he had had with Youngkin over dinner several weeks earlier, before Youngkin was sworn in. | null | null | null | null | null |
The group, which includes leaders of the Northern Virginia and Prince George’s County chambers of commerce, Greater Washington Board of Trade, Tysons Partnership, Federal City Council, Greater Washington Partnership and Coalition for Smarter Growth, was assembled in 2018, campaigning successfully to help Metro receive annual, dedicated capital funding from Maryland, Virginia and the District.
Laura Miller Brooks, a co-leader of MetroNow who also works for the nonprofit Federal City Council, said the group released the report as part of an effort to get regional governments and transit agencies to collaborate on a regional bus system, create more bus lanes, hire more bus operators and expand service in underserved areas. Miller Brooks spoke to The Washington Post about the organization’s ideas for improving transit. The interview was lightly edited. | null | null | null | null | null |
LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- AJ Griffin scored 22 points, including consecutive 3-pointers during a late 12-0 run to help No. 9 Duke escape.
FORT WORTH, Texas -- Chuck O’Bannon scored 16 of his career-high 19 points after halftime, including three consecutive 3-pointers from basically the same spot and TCU held on to beat slumping No. 19 LSU in the Big 12/SEC Challenge.
DAVIDSON, N.C. -- Luka Brajkovic scored 22 points, Foster Loyer added 14 points, six rebounds and five assists and No. 25 Davidson held off La Salle in Bob McKillop’s 1,000th game as head coach of the Wildcats. | null | null | null | null | null |
TCU forward Chuck O’Bannon Jr. (5) shoots a three pointer in the second half of an NCAA college basketball game against in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, Jan. 29, 2022. O’Bannon scored 16 of his career-high 19 points after halftime and TCU held on to beat slumping 19th-ranked LSU 77-68. (AP Photo/Gareth Patterson)
FORT WORTH, Texas — Chuck O’Bannon and TCU had a deep response to 19th-ranked LSU’s pressure in a comeback performance. | null | null | null | null | null |
The Bengals had not won a playoff game in 31 years before Joe Burrow arrived in Cincinnati. Now the quarterback has the franchise on the cusp of the Super Bowl. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)
They anchored green and gold balloons to the ground before the team buses passed, and residents lined the street and waved as Athens High traveled northwest to Ohio Stadium. It was 2014, Burrow’s senior year. Athens High averaged 57 points in its first 14 games, fulfilling Burrow’s prophecy and going undefeated with a quarterback whose tranquil lethality was, according to one opposing coach, “almost disturbing.”
Egger knows how ludicrous that sounds, not just because the Bengals play in the same conference as Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes, Buffalo’s Josh Allen and the Los Angeles Chargers’ Justin Herbert. But because it’s Cincinnati, where residents believe that Bo Jackson’s career-ending injury against the Bengals in the 1991 playoffs led to a curse on the city’s sports teams. How else to explain that Kenyon Martin broke his leg days before the top-ranked Cincinnati Bearcats tipped off in the NCAA tournament? Or that Bengals quarterback Carson Palmer, another Heisman winner and top overall draft pick, suffered a catastrophic knee injury in the opening game of the 2005 playoffs? Or that the Reds’ Johnny Cueto, the ace pitcher of baseball’s second-best team, strained a back muscle early in a 2012 playoff game before the team blew a 2-0 series lead and were eliminated by San Francisco? | null | null | null | null | null |
The WCAC, typically ruled by the same basketball powers, is providing ample chaos this winter
Rodney Rice and the DeMatha Stags have now won six straight games after a rocky start to the season. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
The St. John’s Cadets had stormed back late, providing an exciting finish to those fans who had braved a snowy Friday night to see them play No. 10 DeMatha. After trailing for much of the night, the Cadets had cut the Stags’ lead to just two with a minute remaining, and the limited capacity crowd turned up the noise as DeMatha brought the ball down the floor.
Stags senior Rodney Rice got the ball at the top of the key, surveyed his options and drove to the hoop. He dodged one defender and then crashed into another, laying the ball in the with a gentle touch as the whistle blew for an and-one. Rice sunk the free throw and sealed a win for DeMatha. It wasn’t easy, but another conference victory was in the books.
“We’re starting early in terms of a playoff mind-set,” Rice said after a 64-56 win. “Don’t have time to wait.”
The Cadets and Stags are consistently two of the best programs in the area’s proudest league: The Washington Catholic Athletic Conference. Most winters, they make it to American University, where the conference semifinals and championship are played in late February.
But this season has been unpredictable. After being sidelined for much of last school year, the league has returned with a new level of parity, meaning teams such as DeMatha and St. John’s must work even harder to survive an arduous conference schedule.
“The league this year is completely and utterly treacherous and completely and utterly unpredictable,” DeMatha interim coach Pete Strickland said.
Whereas past years have been defined by a team such as the Stags emerging as the one to beat, this season has lacked a true juggernaut and featured new names toward the top of the standings. Bishop McNamara, Archbishop Carroll and Good Counsel have quickly proven they have what it takes to hang tough with the best.
Last week, McNamara ascended to the top of The Post’s Top 20 rankings for the first time in recent memory. But then DeMatha demolished the Mustangs, 77-50, the next day. With Friday’s win over St. John’s, the Stags have won six straight games since starting 6-4.
“I don’t want to say that was a statement win,” DeMatha guard Tyrell Ward said of the victory over McNamara. “I’ll just say it was us doing what we can do.”
Results like that one surprise not only fans but also league participants. O’Connell senior Paul Lewis said that he often comes home from practices or a game and checks Twitter to see what’s ocurring within the WCAC. He’s often surprised by a final score.
“It’s wide open,” Lewis said. “There are so many good teams this year, it feels like one of the deeper seasons.”
Like most everywhere else, the WCAC has had to deal with issues beyond the court this year. All of the programs faced some sort of pause around the holidays as coronavirus cases surged. But in a conference of private schools spread across D.C., Maryland and Virginia, programs followed different protocols.
Attendance policies also vary. Some coaches in the league have been frustrated by the disparate protocols, as home court advantage takes on new meaning. Some schools are boasting capacity crowds, others are allowing only parents, and some permit no spectators whatsoever.
Changes in scheduling have also irked some coaches and administrators. In order to make room for nonconference competition, the league was recently split into two divisions. The divisions were divided based on the final standings in 2019 — schools that finished in odd positions were in one division, evens in the other — and schools play division opponents twice and other programs just once. As expected, some teams have drawn more difficult schedules than others.
But for a player such as Lewis, the league is much too difficult to get caught up in those logistics.
“You have to stay focused on what you do,” the O’Connell guard said. “If you worry about what team you’re playing, that’s too much mentally. It can be overwhelming. So you just have to focus on yourself to be a consistent team in this league.”
Lewis, a three-star prospect, has helped lead the No. 8 Knights through a strong campaign. He said the team’s best abilities are its toughness and its teamwork, two qualities that seem to carry more weight this season. The league is stocked with talent, but there is not a dominant player such as DeMatha’s Hunter Dickinson or Paul VI’s Trevor Keels — two recently graduated standouts — that completely shifts the landscape. This winter has been more defined by depth and chemistry.
“It’s all going to come down to the end of February and who is playing the best team basketball at that point,” said G.J. Kissal, coach of No. 19 Good Counsel.
The drama will eventually crest in a four-day stretch starting February 25. While this winter’s WCAC tournament it might lack the big name attractions of the past, the weekend could feature a new form of entertainment: probable chaos.
“This league is up for grabs,” DeMatha’s Rice said. “All these teams are so well-balanced that anybody is capable of going and getting it. We just have to be hungrier than everybody else.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Baylor guard Jordan Lewis (3) is defended by West Virginia guard Ja’Naiya Quinerly (11) during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game in Morgantown, W.Va., Saturday, Jan. 29, 2022. (AP Photo/Kathleen Batten)
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Queen Egbo and NaLyssa Smith combined to score 25 of their 40 points in the first half when No. 11 Baylor took a 30-point lead, Jordan Lewis had a triple-double and the Bears beat West Virginia 87-54 on Saturday. | null | null | null | null | null |
Reluctant Mattarella reelected president
Italian President Sergio Mattarella, 80, had made it clear he did not want to be reelected. He said he was looking forward to the chance to “rest.” On Saturday, Italy’s politicians reelected him anyway.
The outcome was a testament to Mattarella himself, a widely respected former constitutional court judge who was recently given a four-minute standing ovation at Milan’s La Scala opera house. But it also reflects a failure among Italy’s weak and divided political parties, which were able in theory to consider any citizen 50 or older as his replacement. But after a week of backroom deliberations and secret balloting, they couldn’t agree to support a single name.
Mattarella’s reelection is a boost for Italy’s short-term stability. The position is often ceremonial, but it becomes highly important in moments of crises — when the president can call for new elections or handpick prime ministers.
— Chico Harlan
and Stefano Pitrelli
Pope warns of spread of 'infodemic'
Pope Francis on Friday denounced the “distortion of reality based on fear” that has ripped across the world during the coronavirus pandemic, but he also called for compassion, urging journalists to help those misled by misinformation and fake news.
Meeting with members of the International Catholic Media Consortium on COVID-19 Vaccines — a fact-checking network that aims to combat misinformation — the pope said that being fully informed by scientific data is a human right.
— María Luisa Paúl
and Adela Suliman
Thousands in Ottawa protest pandemic measures: Thousands gathered on Parliament Hill in Canada's capital, Ottawa, on Saturday to protest vaccine mandates, masks and lockdowns. Some compared covid restrictions to fascism and made use of Nazi symbols on upside-down Canadian flags. Others carried expletive-laden signs targeting Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has said Canadians are not represented by this "very troubling, small but very vocal minority of Canadians who are lashing out at science, at government, at society, at mandates and public health advice."″
About 50 sentenced to death in Congo in U.N. experts' slaying: About 50 people were sentenced to death in Democratic Republic of Congo in connection with the murders of U.N. experts Zaida Catalan and Michael Sharp in 2017. However, Thomas Fessy, Human Rights Watch's senior researcher on Congo, and Catalan's sister say investigators had ignored the potential involvement of government officials. Catalan, a Swede, and Sharp, an American, were investigating violence between government forces and a militia in the central Kasai region when they were stopped by armed men and executed.
Huge meth bust brings warning in Laos: Police in Laos have seized 36.5 million methamphetamine tablets in the northwestern province of Bokeo, the region's second-largest seizure after 55.6 million meth pills were captured in October in the same province. Jeremy Douglas, the regional representative for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, warned that the Mekong River region was experiencing a surge of drug production and trafficking that required strong efforts to get under control. | null | null | null | null | null |
Mary Fleming Kowalski traveled from Havertown, Pa., to honor her great-grandfather, Thomas Fleming, 71; her great-uncle, John Paton Fleming, 32; and her great-aunt, Mary Lee Fleming, 29. She recalled hearing how her grandfather had taken the train from Pittsburgh to identify the bodies of his siblings and father, whose gold watch he found in the snow. From then on, she said, the family knew not to ask him about it.
Organizers brought a 13-foot wooden sculpture of a violin with a list of the 98 names as a temporary memorial. Artist Cesar Maxit said it symbolized the violin played by Joseph Wade Beal, a 26-year-old musician and newlywed who died in the theater’s orchestra. Beal had been able to accompany the silent comedy “Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford” that night because, unlike most of the orchestra, he lived nearby and was able to trudge to the theater in the historic snowfall.
The memorial organizers included activists who have been pushing to preserve the entire triangle-shaped plaza, where a developer is planning a six-story apartment building. Two neighborhood groups have argued that the president of a bank who owned the property in the 1970s gave a written commitment to preserve public space. The case is pending before the D.C. Court of Appeals. | null | null | null | null | null |
Andria Hayes-Birchler had barely begun to comprehend her new reality as a single parent before the pandemic hit. In March 2020, she had an 8-month-old infant and a 4-year-old, and her soon-to-be-ex-husband had recently moved from their home in Washington, D.C., to California. What followed was a year and a half of unrelenting crisis as she struggled to balance her career as a research consultant with caring for her two young sons, alone.
So, in September, when her now-6-year-old son finally returned full-time to a first-grade classroom and her 2-year-old was thriving at day care, and Hayes-Birchler found herself inundated with new clients, it felt as if maybe they had crossed a finish line. “Like now we were going to be okay,” she says, “and now I was able to actually establish my baseline as a single parent.”
Then came omicron. In December, her older son’s school abruptly returned to virtual learning. Her younger son was already home — he’d come down with an ear infection, which required antibiotics, which he did not tolerate well, which meant he couldn’t attend day care for 10 days. Then his older brother tested positive for the coronavirus, and the whole family had to begin a lengthy quarantine, and their holiday travel plans to visit family were canceled. (And of course, in the midst of all this, their refrigerator broke.) For 33 days in December and January, Hayes-Birchler found herself home alone with her boys, and unable to work. Again.
About 3 in 10 families with children are headed by single parents, according to the U.S. Census, and 75 percent of those parents are mothers. Single-parent families comprise more than 10 million households in America — yet those who spoke to The Washington Post said they often feel like outliers, especially during the pandemic, and especially during this stage of the pandemic, as they cope with years of cumulative stress as well as the fresh chaos unleashed by the omicron variant. Many parents say they’ve felt painfully overlooked: by school systems who expect them to be able to accommodate virtual learning; by employers who aren’t flexible when a day-care closure upends a workweek; by lawmakers who have withdrawn financial safety nets; and by health guidelines that are often impossible for a solo-parent household to follow.
For Lauren Smith, a single mom in D.C., ‘even worse’ looked like a particular afternoon in May 2020 when she was attending a work meeting on Zoom while caring for her then-11-month-old twin boys. One of them had a diaper blowout during the meeting, and while Smith was in the middle of changing him, her other son dropped her laptop on his foot and started screaming. She was expected to deliver a presentation to her co-workers within minutes, she recalls, but instead she closed her laptop, lay down on the living room floor with her two babies, and sobbed along with them.
The memory alone evokes a surge of visceral anxiety, she says, which is why it felt like a particularly destabilizing gut-punch when her sons’ day-care facility announced in early January that it would be closed for a week because several teachers and staff had developed covid-19 over the holiday break. Once again, she found herself trying to figure out how she would make an impossible situation somehow possible.
“As a single parent, we have this mind-set to just ‘figure it out,’ and this pandemic exposes that we don’t have as much control as we think we do,” says Tal’Meisha Frontis, a mental health counselor in North Carolina with an 11-year-old son. “You always have another thing coming, you can’t catch your breath. If I had to sum up this whole entire thing — it’s just drowning.”
When Frontis and her son both tested positive for the coronavirus in December, she says, it was almost a relief that they didn’t have to try to isolate from one another. The CDC recommends that covid-infected family members stay away from all other members of a household — “but those guidelines, they’re irrelevant to us,” Frontis says. “We always knew, if either of us tests positive, we’re here together.”
Allison Plagens, a single mom to a 12-year-old in Michigan, says she’s come to accept that these protocols are not meant for households like hers. “I’ve just thought, ‘well, I’m just going to ignore that — that’s not going to work for my family,’” she says. “I don’t think anyone has taken into account what a single parent has to go through.”
Plagens says she’s felt this way many times during the pandemic, including when she joined a support group for fellow parents of students in Ann Arbor, Mich. The public school system hosted the sessions virtually, led by school counselors and social workers. “But most of the other parents were pretty well-off, and they weren’t single parents,” Plagens says. She listened as other participants asked what to do about their child’s Zoom fatigue, or whether it might be worthwhile to switch school districts; some noted that they’d found it helpful to take paid time off to focus on their children.
Plagens, meanwhile, had no choice but to leave her administrative job because her child, who identifies as gender-nonbinary and struggles with depression and anxiety, could not be safely left at home alone. Suddenly unemployed, Plagens cut back dramatically on their spending, collected free lunches handed out by the school and relied on the now-expired child tax credit disbursements to help keep her family afloat.
And alternative arrangements are expensive, says Jessica Dillman, a single mom in D.C. who has her groceries delivered because her toddler daughter is not yet old enough to wear a mask. “My groceries cost 20 to 25 percent more than what they would if I felt safe enough to take her into a grocery store with me,” she says. Anytime Dillman leaves the house without her daughter, she says, she pays a babysitter $20 per hour — the going rate in her area — to stay with her child.
Such outings are rare; Dillman works from home for a public relations firm, and she has postponed enrolling her daughter in day care while the omicron variant is still rampant. So for now, Dillman’s days remain a blur of nonstop multitasking.
Rachel Perrone is pragmatic; panic, she says, isn’t a luxury she can afford. She and her 12-year-old daughter recently finished quarantine after testing positive in early January. Her 14-year-old son is still working to catch up academically after struggling through virtual schooling last year. “We’ll just take it as it comes,” Perrone says, equally resolved and resigned. “I’m exhausted in my bones, but I try not to spend too much time in that kind of head space, because it doesn’t help. Spiraling isn’t going to get supper on the table.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Two New York nurses accused in $1.5 million forged vaccination card scheme
Nurses accused of faking vaccine cards
Two nurses on Long Island are accused of forging coronavirus vaccination cards and pocketing more than $1.5 million from the scheme, prosecutors and police said.
Man gets new trial after twin confesses
Bridge collapse site closed during probe
Frick Park in Pittsburgh will remain closed until further notice, city officials announced Saturday morning, as government inspectors begin to determine what caused the bridge carrying Forbes Avenue over the park to collapse early Friday.
Though the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation announced the closure of all trails and woods around 10 a.m., there were still people strolling through the park beforehand, particularly close to the site of the Fern Hollow Bridge wreckage, where crews were beginning cleanup work.
The actual crash site hadn’t changed much in the day that had passed since the bridge collapsed into the ravine just before 7 a.m. Friday. Above the site, however, first responders and government officials had been replaced by cranes and recovery workers.
National Transportation Safety Board inspectors had started to examine the crash site in Frick Park.
NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said Friday the agency’s investigation could last 18 months.
T-Mobile to fire unvaccinated: T-Mobile US will fire corporate employees who are not fully vaccinated against the coronavirus by April 2, according to a memo to staff obtained by Bloomberg News. In the email to U.S. employees, the wireless carrier's human resources chief also said that office employees who haven't received the first dose of a vaccine by Feb. 21 will be placed on unpaid leave.
Six dead in Florida crash: A 17-year-old driver speeding up State Road 7 just west of Delray Beach on Thursday night plowed into a car full of people, killing six, police said. Investigators with the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office believe Noah Galle, of Wellington, was under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs at the time of the 10:58 p.m. crash. Galle's injuries were minor, according to a preliminary crash report from the Sheriff's Office. | null | null | null | null | null |
“I beat my head in the wall all day trying to get our kids to attack and get the ball inside and get the ball in the paint,” he said. “I just -- I lost the battle. We really settled a lot for jump shots. I really had a hard time trying to get my team to play the way we practiced for two days.”
“We forced 27 turnovers, but we had 24 of our own,” Schaefer said. “And you can’t win on the road turning the ball over 24 times. It just -- it doesn’t work.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Lisa Dribben, who owns six McDonald’s restaurants in the Dallas suburbs, has hired and lost hundreds of workers over the past two years. During the holidays, she gave her hourly managers jackets and other McDonald’s branded clothing as well as bonuses. In addition to employee meals, her workers have gotten $20 each week to spend on food to take home to their families during the pandemic. Workers who get sick with covid-19 get a bag of groceries delivered to their homes. She now provides reviews and raises every six months. | null | null | null | null | null |
By retiring, Breyer avoids Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s mistake
An apolitical justice appears to have bowed to political reality
Justices Stephen G. Breyer, left, and Clarence Thomas prepare to testify on Capitol Hill in April 2009 at a committee hearing on Supreme Court appropriations. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)
By Leah Litman
Leah Litman is an assistant professor of law at the University of Michigan and host of the Supreme Court podcast "Strict Scrutiny."
While Justice Stephen G. Breyer has not given his reasons for leaving the Supreme Court, he may have learned some lessons from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s fateful decision to remain on the bench into President Donald Trump’s term. Despite his desire that the court not be viewed as a political body, Breyer appears to have bowed, in the end, to political reality.
Ginsburg reportedly said in her last days — in 2020 — that it was her “most fervent wish” that Trump’s successor, not Trump, select her replacement. Among other reasons, Ginsburg may have had in mind Trump’s promise to appoint justices who would overrule Roe v. Wade. While Ginsburg had nuanced thoughts about Roe, in a dissent in a 2007 case, she wrote that women’s “ability to realize their full potential … is intimately connected to ‘their ability to control their reproductive lives.’”
But Ginsburg chose not to retire while President Barack Obama was in office, despite frequent calls for her to do so. When she died in September 2020, Trump got to nominate Amy Coney Barrett to replace her, and Republican senators quickly confirmed Barrett (even as ballots were already being cast in the presidential race). Sure enough, with Barrett on the bench, the court allowed Texas to effectively nullify the right to an abortion. The court left in place — and continues to leave in place — a law that essentially makes it impossible for women in the nation’s second-most-populous state to obtain abortions more than six weeks after their last period.
Breyer had a front-row seat at that tragedy. He saw firsthand the vigor with which a Republican-chosen successor (and her fellow conservative justices) quickly undid so much jurisprudence that Ginsburg held dear — in ways that went well beyond women’s reproductive autonomy. Consider voting rights. In 2013, when the Supreme Court invalidated a key piece of the Voting Rights Act, the “preclearance" requirement (which required certain states with histories of racial discrimination to obtain permission before changing their voting laws), Ginsburg warned about a resurgence of “second-generation barriers” to minority voting, such as voter identification requirements or discriminatory legislative districting. Sure enough, after the court-sanctioned dismantling of the requirement, states enacted a host of voting restrictions. Then, with Barrett in the majority, the Supreme Court made it easier for states to keep those restrictions in place by watering down the remaining protections in the Voting Rights Act.
Ginsburg helped those excluded by the legal system. The court needs that view.
Breyer’s judicial philosophy overlaps considerably with Ginsburg’s, and he has watched as his conservative colleagues have set about tearing down legal structures he helped to build. He, too, has written opinions protecting women’s ability to procure an abortion. But he also has his own areas of special interest. Before he arrived on the bench, he was a scholar of the administrative state and federal agencies. Breyer believes that the political branches — that is, Congress and the president — should be the ones to decide how policies are made, including through federal agencies, and that courts should largely get out of their way. As a justice, he has defended agencies’ authority to enact rules and regulations regarding health, safety and the environment, arguing that Congress’s choice to give agencies decision-making authority reflects the reality that agencies, not lawmakers, often have the relevant expertise. They are also often the institutions best placed to act quickly and deftly in response to changing circumstances.
Yet the newly appointed Republican justices appear interested in dismantling the modern administrative state. This month, Republican-appointed justices invalidated an Occupational Safety and Health Administration mandate that employees be vaccinated or tested regularly, a policy designed to contain the spread of the coronavirus in the workplace. Last August, the Republican-appointed justices invalidated another federal policy created in response to the pandemic: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s moratorium on evictions. And the court is slated to hear a major case that will determine whether the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to regulate greenhouse gases to address the threat of climate change.
Texas abortion providers ‘won’ in court Friday. The future is bleaker than ever.
Breyer has also written impassioned dissents arguing that the government has the constitutional authority to consider race when it seeks to address the persistent effects of racial discrimination in this country. He believes that universities may consider an applicant’s race in admissions decisions and that school districts may consider race in assigning children to schools, describing these issues as touching on the “nature of a democracy that must work for all Americans.” Yet this month, the court ominously said it would hear two cases addressing the question of whether universities may consider an applicant’s race as part of a holistic admissions decision. The court may be preparing to rule that public and private universities are forbidden to consider race even when trying to rectify past racial discrimination.
As Ginsburg did, Breyer had resisted calls for him to retire. But he’s surely seen the writing on the wall: Any Republican-selected successor would enthusiastically reverse decisions Breyer believes in and undermine aspects of our government that he thinks helps it to function. And while this year’s elections are months off, it’s not at all clear that Democrats will hold the Senate afterward — which could mean that Biden wouldn’t be able to name a new justice in 2023 or 2024.
Breyer’s retirement will not stop the Supreme Court from destroying the administrative state as Breyer understands it, curtailing reproductive rights or outlawing race-conscious remedies for racial discrimination. But the timing of his decision ensures that he won’t be replaced by someone who rejects ideals and legal values that he stands for. It ensures that he won’t repeat the error of his friend Ruth Bader Ginsburg. | null | null | null | null | null |
It’s been two years. Why does the pandemic feel so much harder for me now?
When I began experiencing covid-19 symptoms, I couldn’t find a PCR test within a two-hour drive of my home for at least a week. I bought one of those home tests you have to send back to get results, but when I went to drop it off at the local health department, it was inexplicably closed. So I had to walk into a UPS drop-off site at a pharmacy, which didn’t feel safe for anyone. I put on my KN95 mask and tried not to breathe. I didn’t know what else to do.
That same day, the county next door stopped its contact tracing program. I called one of the supervisors to find out what was going on, and he too had covid. That same week, in response to an overwhelming demand for tests, President Biden encouraged people to find one by Googling “covid test near me.”
I live in Iowa, a red state, where we opened everything up in May 2020 and have never looked back. Nor will we. In the spring of 2021, Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a law outlawing mask mandates in schools. As a working single mom, part of me is glad that schools are open, because affordable child care is harder to find than Atlantis. But I’m also worried for teachers, bus drivers and cafeteria workers who have little choice but to go to work despite a lack of affordable health care. It’s an impossible situation, with few right answers. And because our leaders have failed to carve a clear path forward, mothers and teachers are left to fight over economic scraps in a society that refuses to help them.
It’s the beginning of the third pandemic year, but it feels as if we’ve gotten worse at all of this, not better.
And then, well, I thought perhaps it would be better when my kids were vaccinated. But here they are, 10 and 8 years old and fully vaccinated, and we’re still not free of this. It feels as if we’ve been running a marathon, only to have the finish line moved farther ahead. | null | null | null | null | null |
Thousands lost electricity and heat as the storm howled and frigid water flooded streets.
Parts of southeastern Massachusetts could receive as much as 30 inches of snow, said Gov. Charlie Baker (R). In Boston, nearly 2 feet of snow had fallen as of 7 p.m., according to the National Weather Service, making the storm one of the 10 largest on record for the city.
Restoring electricity lost in the storm will be a challenge and temperatures were set to plunge in the wake of the storm. Eversource, the largest power company in New England, said its crews were encountering dangerous winds and difficult road conditions as they attempted to clear downed lines and repair broken poles. | null | null | null | null | null |
It was the start of a remarkably public push on the political left to pressure Breyer, 83, the high court’s oldest justice and one of its three liberals, to retire while Democrats controlled the White House and Senate and make way for a younger nominee installed by President Biden. Activists were motivated by the experience of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the liberal icon who died in office in 2020 and was replaced by President Donald Trump’s nominee, conservative Amy Coney Barrett.
The campaign was carried out by various groups and politicians — not always acting together, and with some delivering their messages far more discreetly than others — that culminated this past week with Breyer’s announcement that he would soon step down after serving since 1994.
A court spokeswoman said Justice Breyer is not giving interviews at this time about his decision to retire. | null | null | null | null | null |
Virginia rallied from a double-digit deficit during the second half against Notre Dame to get within one possession in the closing seconds but was unable to complete the comeback, falling Saturday night, 69-65, in South Bend, Ind.
Trailing 52-37 with 11:50 to play at Purcell Pavilion, the Cavaliers chipped away by getting the ball to Jayden Gardner on the low block and ramping up their defensive intensity. The formula held the Fighting Irish to just three points over an eight-minute stretch on 1-for-10 shooting.
Gardner led the Cavaliers with a game-high 22 points on 10-of-17 shooting with 10 rebounds. It marked the East Carolina transfer’s fifth double-double of the season and his first in the ACC.
Guard Reece Beekman added 13 points, and Francisco Caffaro (11 points, 12 rebounds) produced the first double-double of his career for Virginia, which had a six-game winning streak in the series end amid spotty three-point shooting defense and turnovers, among other breakdowns.
The Cavaliers came into the contest having won 16 of 17 against Notre Dame dating to 1982.
Blake Wesley chipped in 14 points but nearly cost Notre Dame (14-6, 7-2) dearly in the final seconds with an inbound pass teammate Cormac Ryan had to leap high to control with one hand before heaving the ball toward the other end of the court, where Goodwin managed to gain control in a footrace with Beekman.
The junior transfer from Indiana went 2 for 11 from the field, including 1 of 5 on three-pointers, and had three turnovers. The Cavaliers’ second leading scorer this season (12.2 points) coming into Saturday is shooting 30 percent (12 for 40) over the past four games.
Wayward three-point shooting continued to plague Virginia, which went 3 for 14 (21.4 percent) and has not been better than 31.3 percent from behind the arc in four of its past six games. | null | null | null | null | null |
Virginia rallied from a double-digit deficit during the second half against Notre Dame to get within one possession in the closing seconds but was unable to complete the comeback, falling, 69-65, on Saturday night in South Bend, Ind.
Trailing 52-37 with 11:50 to play at Purcell Pavilion, the Cavaliers chipped away by getting the ball to Jayden Gardner on the low block and ramping up their defensive intensity. The formula held the Fighting Irish to just three points on 1-for-10 shooting over an eight-minute stretch.
Gardner led the Cavaliers with a game-high 22 points on 10-for-17 shooting with 10 rebounds. It was the East Carolina transfer’s fifth double-double of the season and his first in ACC play.
Guard Reece Beekman added 13 points and Francisco Caffaro (11 points, 12 rebounds) produced the first double-double of his career for Virginia, which had a six-game winning streak in the series end amid spotty three-point shooting defense and turnovers, among other breakdowns.
The Cavaliers came into the contest having won 16 of 17 against Notre Dame dating from 1982.
Blake Wesley chipped in 14 points but nearly cost Notre Dame (14-6, 7-2) dearly in the final seconds with an inbounds pass teammate Cormac Ryan had to leap high to control with one hand before heaving the ball toward the other end of the court, where Goodwin managed to gain control in a footrace with Beekman.
Here’s what to know about Virginia’s loss:
The junior transfer from Indiana went 2 for 11 from the field, including 1 for 5 on three-pointers, and had three turnovers. The Cavaliers’ second leading scorer this season (12.2 points) coming into Saturday is shooting 30 percent (12 for 40) over the past four games.
Wayward three-point shooting continued to plague Virginia, which went 3 for 14 (21.4 percent) and has been 31.3 percent or worse from behind the arc in four of its past six games. | null | null | null | null | null |
By the time the 115-95 loss to the Girzzlies at FedExForum was complete, the Wizards were staring at a five-game losing streak with two games remaining on their three-game trip. Washington (23-26) has lost six of seven.
Ja Morant had a game-high 34 points, his sixth straight game of at least 30. That Memphis (35-17) runs its offense through Morant, named an all-star starter this past week, is hardly a secret. But the Wizards opened the game paying him no special attention, and he made them pay from the start — hitting an early three-pointer and a floater in the lane that showcased his athleticism.
There was more to come. Just before halftime he used a behind-the-back dribble to get in the lane and deliver a hanging scoop layup in traffic. He backpedaled to the defensive end of the floor doing the cabbage patch dance. In the second half, he threw down a windmill dunk that sent the crowd into a frenzy.
The backcourt of Morant and Desmond Bane was key to putting the Wizards into a 30-15 hole after one quarter. By halftime, the margin was 63-41, and Washington never got within single digits in the second half.
“We couldn’t stop Ja,” Wizards forward Kyle Kuzma said. “He really set the pace for them, did a great job in pick-and-roll, and what we did with our coverage. He just exploited it left and right. That’s dude’s a special player. We tried to stay in our drop with him and that didn’t work. And then we started switching.”
The Grizzlies shot a blistering 50 percent in the first half, with Morant and Bane combining for 32 points. When Memphis did miss, the Grizzlies hit the boards and turned 12 offensive rebounds into 16 second-chance points in the opening half.
“Kind of the three areas we talked about, we didn’t minimize those areas,” Wizards Coach Wes Unseld Jr. said. “Paint. They scored 60 in the paint. Fast break points, transition, they had 17. We turned the ball over, which I think fueled some of that. Then turnovers.”
Every time the Wizards seemed to find momentum in the second half, Morant made a play.
Kuzma warmed up in the second half and led the Wizards with 30 points and eight rebounds. Bradley Beal had an off shooting night for nine points, but did hand out 12 assists. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope was the lone bright spot in the first half and finished with 15 points.
Here’s what else to know from Saturday’s game:
The rotation has been a bit unsettled since Bryant and Rui Hachimura returned. Daniel Gafford had started all but three games this season, but he never entered Saturday’s game. Montrezl Harrell had started those other three games at center.
“We’ve been trying to play three bigs, and some of that is re-integrating two key components from last year, and that dynamic is difficult for a lot of people,” Unseld said. “It’s choppy minutes, and we never get really a rhythm. The decision was made. I wanted to see TB with that starting group. I’m going to give it a handful of games and see how it goes. I think he’s still kind of working his way back. But he was a starter last year on a playoff team, so I think he’s he’s got the ability to impact that starting unit.”
The Wizards shot just 34.9 percent in the first half, and their biggest weapons were largely ineffective. Beal was 1 for 9 in the first half for just six points, and Kuzma recorded six points and four turnovers before the break.
Forward Isaiah Todd was suspended one game for conduct detrimental to the team, the Wizards announced Friday. He is currently on assignment with the Capital City Go-Go and served his suspension when the team played the G League Ignite on Thursday. | null | null | null | null | null |
RUSSIA-UKRAINE BORDER — The helicopter cut through the gray sky, following the path of the razor-wire fence below it. Lt. Col. Uiry Trubachov, of Ukraine’s Border Guard Service, squinted up at the chopper.
At Ukraine’s northeastern border crossing near Kharkiv — the country’s predominantly Russian-speaking, second-most populous city, with about 1.5 million people — the fences are controversial. Some who live right at the edge of the boundary resent the obstruction to Russian territory they used to visit often — to pick mushrooms in the nearby forest or see friends in Belgorod, a Russian city about an hour away from the main land crossing.
It’s also what makes Kharkiv a rich study in Ukrainians’ views toward Russia as its president, Vladimir Putin, deepens a showdown with NATO over what Moscow perceives as its sphere of influence, which includes Ukraine.
Liudmilya Makarova has been living here with her daughter, who has Down syndrome, and her son since 2015, about a year after they fled the self-proclaimed Luhansk separatist republic. The kids sleep on the bunk beds. Makarova is on a couch that doesn’t have room to unfold into a bed. Colorful drawings line the wall, giving the space a cozy feel despite the cramped quarters. But it was never supposed to feel like home. | null | null | null | null | null |
TAMPA, Fla. — Mark Stone scored the winner in the seventh round of a shootout and the Vegas Golden Knights beat the Tampa Bay Lightning 3-2 after blowing a two-goal lead in the third period Saturday night.
It was Stone’s first shootout attempt this season. He is 3 for 13 overall. ... Carrier ended a 14-game goal drought. … Vegas is 13-6-1 on the road. … Tampa Bay is 11-2-1 in its last 14 home games. ... The Lightning had 14 shots blocked and missed the net on 16 more. ... DeBoer is four wins from becoming the 28th NHL coach to reach 500. | null | null | null | null | null |
Man is slain in Greenbelt
The victim appeared to have been shot, police say
A man was slain Saturday in Greenbelt, Md., the city’s police said.
The victim was found about 2:45 p.m. in the 5900 block of Cherrywood Terrace, the police said.
According to the police, he died as a result of “what appears to be a gunshot wound.”
Earlier this month, the police reported a fatal shooting in an adjacent block of the city in Prince George’s County.
The victim in that shooting was found in the 5800 block of Cherrywood Terrace on Jan. 13. It was not known if any connection existed between the two incidents. | null | null | null | null | null |
Alcorn State hosts Grambling after Christon's 22-point performance
BOTTOM LINE: Grambling visits the Alcorn State Braves after Cameron Christon scored 22 points in Grambling’s 73-64 victory over the Jackson State Tigers.
The Braves are 2-1 on their home court. Alcorn State ranks eighth in the SWAC with 26.4 points per game in the paint led by Dominic Brewton averaging 1.8.
The Tigers are 6-2 against SWAC opponents. Grambling ranks fourth in the SWAC shooting 33.0% from 3-point range.
TOP PERFORMERS: Justin Thomas is averaging 9.3 points, 4.2 assists and 1.9 steals for the Braves. Keondre Montgomery is averaging 8.6 points and 2.3 rebounds while shooting 36.8% over the last 10 games for Alcorn State.
Christon is scoring 12.4 points per game with 3.6 rebounds and 1.1 assists for the Tigers. Tra’Michael Moton is averaging 12.9 points over the past 10 games for Grambling. | null | null | null | null | null |
Colorado State visits Wyoming following Maldonado's 31-point performance
BOTTOM LINE: Wyoming takes on the Colorado State Rams after Hunter Maldonado scored 31 points in Wyoming’s 63-61 victory against the Air Force Falcons.
The Cowboys are 8-0 on their home court. Wyoming ranks second in the MWC with 26.1 defensive rebounds per game led by Graham Ike averaging 6.1.
The Rams have gone 6-2 against MWC opponents. Colorado State is 1-0 in games decided by less than 4 points.
TOP PERFORMERS: Ike is averaging 18.8 points and 8.5 rebounds for the Cowboys. Maldonado is averaging 12.8 points over the last 10 games for Wyoming.
David Roddy is scoring 18.5 points per game with 7.8 rebounds and 3.0 assists for the Rams. Isaiah Stevens is averaging 11.5 points over the past 10 games for Colorado State. | null | null | null | null | null |
Florida A&M visits Alabama State after Young's 21-point performance
BOTTOM LINE: Alabama State takes on the Florida A&M Rattlers after Trace Young scored 21 points in Alabama State’s 79-73 win over the Bethune-Cookman Wildcats.
The Hornets have gone 4-3 in home games. Alabama State is 0-2 in one-possession games.
The Rattlers are 6-2 in SWAC play. Florida A&M is 2-9 against opponents with a winning record.
TOP PERFORMERS: Jordan O’Neal is averaging eight points and 5.3 rebounds for the Hornets. Young is averaging 1.7 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Alabama State.
Bryce Moragne is averaging 9.3 points, 7.2 rebounds and 1.5 steals for the Rattlers. MJ Randolph is averaging 21.3 points over the last 10 games for Florida A&M. | null | null | null | null | null |
French leads Bethune-Cookman against Alabama A&M after 27-point performance
BOTTOM LINE: Bethune-Cookman faces the Alabama A&M Bulldogs after Joe French scored 27 points in Bethune-Cookman’s 79-73 loss to the Alabama State Hornets.
The Bulldogs have gone 2-2 in home games. Alabama A&M is 1-5 when it turns the ball over less than its opponents and averages 13.8 turnovers per game.
The Wildcats are 3-5 against conference opponents. Bethune-Cookman is fourth in the SWAC with 30.7 rebounds per game led by Dylan Robertson averaging 6.2.
TOP PERFORMERS: Jalen Johnson is averaging 14.6 points and 6.8 rebounds for the Bulldogs. Garrett Hicks is averaging 14.3 points over the last 10 games for Alabama A&M.
French is shooting 42.6% and averaging 14.8 points for the Wildcats. Kevin Davis is averaging 0.8 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Bethune-Cookman. | null | null | null | null | null |
Kennesaw State hosts Liberty following McGhee's 25-point outing
The Owls have gone 7-4 at home. Kennesaw State is 3-7 against opponents over .500.
The Flames are 5-1 in ASUN play. Liberty is sixth in the ASUN scoring 73.5 points per game and is shooting 48.8%.
TOP PERFORMERS: Chris Youngblood is shooting 46.6% and averaging 13.6 points for the Owls. Jamir Moultrie is averaging 1.9 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Kennesaw State.
McGhee is shooting 40.2% from beyond the arc with 4.1 made 3-pointers per game for the Flames, while averaging 22.8 points. Shiloh Robinson is averaging 9.6 points over the past 10 games for Liberty. | null | null | null | null | null |
Mashburn leads New Mexico against San Diego State after 23-point showing
BOTTOM LINE: New Mexico takes on the San Diego State Aztecs after Jamal Mashburn, Jr. scored 23 points in New Mexico’s 86-70 win against the San Jose State Spartans.
The Aztecs have gone 8-1 in home games. San Diego State averages 64.2 points while outscoring opponents by 6.8 points per game.
The Lobos are 1-7 in MWC play. New Mexico has a 5-5 record in games decided by 10 or more points.
The Aztecs and Lobos match up Monday for the first time in conference play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Matt Bradley is scoring 16.1 points per game with 5.1 rebounds and 2.4 assists for the Aztecs. Trey Pulliam is averaging 5.5 points and 1.7 rebounds while shooting 41.8% over the last 10 games for San Diego State.
Jaelen House is averaging 15.6 points, five assists and 1.9 steals for the Lobos. Mashburn is averaging 11.5 points over the last 10 games for New Mexico. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: Norfolk State takes on the North Carolina Central Eagles after Joe Bryant Jr. scored 22 points in Norfolk State’s 87-69 victory against the South Carolina State Bulldogs.
The Eagles have gone 4-1 at home. North Carolina Central ranks third in the MEAC shooting 32.7% from downtown, led by Kevin Crawford II shooting 50.0% from 3-point range.
The Spartans are 6-0 against conference opponents. Norfolk State is 5-3 against opponents over .500.
The Eagles and Spartans square off Monday for the first time in MEAC play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Eric Boone is averaging 7.1 points, four assists and two steals for the Eagles. Randy Miller Jr. is averaging 14.7 points over the last 10 games for North Carolina Central.
Bryant is scoring 16.5 points per game and averaging 5.0 rebounds for the Spartans. Jalen Hawkins is averaging 1.6 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Norfolk State. | null | null | null | null | null |
Oklahoma hosts TCU in conference matchup
BOTTOM LINE: Tanner Groves and the Oklahoma Sooners host Mike Miles and the TCU Horned Frogs in Big 12 action.
The Sooners are 8-3 on their home court. Oklahoma ranks sixth in the Big 12 with 23.3 defensive rebounds per game led by Jalen Hill averaging 4.6.
The Horned Frogs are 3-3 against Big 12 opponents. TCU has a 2-1 record in games decided by 3 points or fewer.
The teams square off for the 17th time in conference play this season. The Horned Frogs won the last meeting 59-58 on Jan. 15. Charles O’Bannon Jr. scored 11 points to help lead the Horned Frogs to the win.
Miles is averaging 14.8 points and 3.9 assists for the Horned Frogs. O’Bannon is averaging eight points over the past 10 games for TCU. | null | null | null | null | null |
Penn State hosts Iowa after Murray's 23-point showing
The Nittany Lions are 6-3 in home games. Penn State has a 1-0 record in games decided by 3 points or fewer.
The Hawkeyes are 4-5 in conference games. Iowa averages 8.7 turnovers per game and is 13-5 when turning the ball over less than opponents.
The teams play for the 10th time this season in Big Ten play. The Hawkeyes won the last meeting 68-51 on Jan. 22. Keegan Murray scored 15 points to help lead the Hawkeyes to the win.
TOP PERFORMERS: Jalen Pickett is scoring 13.4 points per game with 4.0 rebounds and 4.4 assists for the Nittany Lions. Seth Lundy is averaging 7.8 points and 3.5 rebounds while shooting 35.4% over the last 10 games for Penn State.
Keegan Murray is averaging 22.4 points, 8.4 rebounds and 2.1 blocks for the Hawkeyes. Kris Murray is averaging 7.1 points over the last 10 games for Iowa. | null | null | null | null | null |
Portland State hosts Northern Colorado after Thomas' 25-point outing
BOTTOM LINE: Portland State takes on the Northern Colorado Bears after Khalid Thomas scored 25 points in Portland State’s 97-76 win over the Northern Arizona Lumberjacks.
The Vikings have gone 2-7 in home games. Portland State has a 0-4 record in games decided by 3 points or fewer.
The Bears are 5-2 in Big Sky play. Northern Colorado is 4-1 in games decided by less than 4 points.
The Vikings and Bears square off Monday for the first time in Big Sky play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: James Jean-Marie is scoring 12.9 points per game and averaging 8.9 rebounds for the Vikings. Thomas is averaging 12.1 points and 5.4 rebounds over the last 10 games for Portland State.
Daylen Kountz is averaging 19.7 points for the Bears. Dru Kuxhausen is averaging 11.2 points over the last 10 games for Northern Colorado. | null | null | null | null | null |
South Dakota State visits North Dakota after Scheierman's 23-point game
BOTTOM LINE: South Dakota State faces the North Dakota Fightin’ Hawks after Baylor Scheierman scored 23 points in South Dakota State’s 80-76 victory against the North Dakota State Bison.
The Fightin’ Hawks have gone 3-5 in home games. North Dakota has a 2-11 record in games decided by 10 or more points.
The Jackrabbits are 10-0 in Summit play. South Dakota State leads the Summit shooting 46.0% from downtown. Matthew Mims leads the Jackrabbits shooting 56.5% from 3-point range.
The teams square off for the second time in conference play this season. The Jackrabbits won the last meeting 96-61 on Jan. 28. Doug Wilson scored 23 points to help lead the Jackrabbits to the victory.
TOP PERFORMERS: Paul Bruns is averaging 13.7 points and 5.1 rebounds for the Fightin’ Hawks. Ethan Igbanugo is averaging 11.6 points over the last 10 games for North Dakota.
Scheierman is averaging 14.8 points, 8.5 rebounds, 4.2 assists and 1.5 steals for the Jackrabbits. Wilson is averaging 15.8 points over the last 10 games for South Dakota State. | null | null | null | null | null |
Tennessee Tech faces Morehead State, aims to halt 3-game skid
BOTTOM LINE: Tennessee Tech will try to end its three-game losing streak when the Golden Eagles play Morehead State.
The Golden Eagles are 4-4 in home games. Tennessee Tech averages 12.8 turnovers per game and is 5-6 when it has fewer turnovers than its opponents.
The Eagles are 8-1 in conference play. Morehead State scores 71.1 points while outscoring opponents by 7.0 points per game.
TOP PERFORMERS: Jr. Clay is averaging 11.5 points, 3.8 assists and 1.9 steals for the Golden Eagles. Keishawn Davidson is averaging 10.2 points and 3.5 assists over the last 10 games for Tennessee Tech.
Johni Broome is shooting 55.6% and averaging 16.4 points for the Eagles. Tray Hollowell is averaging 3.0 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Morehead State. | null | null | null | null | null |
West Virginia takes on No. 4 Baylor, aims to break 5-game slide
BOTTOM LINE: West Virginia aims to end its five-game losing streak with a win over No. 4 Baylor.
The Bears are 10-2 in home games. Baylor leads the Big 12 with 17.2 assists per game led by James Akinjo averaging 5.4.
The Mountaineers have gone 2-5 against Big 12 opponents. West Virginia averages 68.4 points and has outscored opponents by 2.9 points per game.
The teams meet for the 10th time in conference play this season. The Bears won 77-68 in the last matchup on Jan. 18. LJ Cryer led the Bears with 25 points, and Malik Curry led the Mountaineers with 19 points.
TOP PERFORMERS: Cryer is averaging 12.5 points for the Bears. Adam Flagler is averaging 10.4 points over the last 10 games for Baylor.
Taz Sherman is scoring 18.3 points per game and averaging 2.9 rebounds for the Mountaineers. Sean McNeil is averaging 1.2 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for West Virginia. | null | null | null | null | null |
In Connecticut, for instance, the number of chronically absent students soared from 12 percent to 20 percent to 24 percent, said Emily Bailard, chief executive of the company. In Oakland, Calif., they went from 17.3 percent pre-pandemic to 19.8 percent last school year to 43 percent this year. In Pittsburgh, chronic absences stayed where they were last school year at about 25 percent, then shot up to 45 percent this year. | null | null | null | null | null |
Politicians have long courted Jews, even as antisemitism abounds
Dating to the early years of the United States, American politicians have cited their understanding of, and tolerance for, Jews.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) is shown giving his address at his inauguration. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
By Rebecca Brenner Graham
Rebecca Brenner is a PhD candidate in history at American University in Washington, DC.
One of Glenn Youngkin’s first acts as Virginia governor was signing an executive order to create a commission to combat antisemitism. The move stood out because Youngkin’s other early executive orders fulfilled a laundry list of right-wing goals: ending the teaching of “divisive concepts” in public schools, rescinding mask laws and vaccine mandates and withdrawing from a regional climate change initiative.
On the same day that Youngkin signed the order, however, a gunman outside Dallas held three congregants and their rabbi hostage for 10 hours in a synagogue.
Following the end of the standoff and safe release of the hostages, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) went on Twitter to highlight a call with the Israeli prime minister and Texas’s laws “against BDS & anti-Semitism.” (BDS stands for the boycott, divestment, sanctions movement that calls for a boycott of Israel over what supporters say is its mistreatment of Palestinians.)
The events of Jan. 15 highlight a complexity in the United States’ centuries-long history of antisemitism — alongside it, politicians have simultaneously and consistently courted Jews because of their political utility, ironically enough, in appealing to Christian voters. They’ve preached tolerance toward Jews and conducted outreach to signal their approval of religious tolerance and religious freedom — all without posing a threat to Christian dominance of the United States.
Dating to the country’s earliest days, engaging with Jews and knowing their customs have enabled Christian political leaders to indicate their support for the powerful and politically convenient ideal of religious freedom.
In May 1818, for example, Thomas Jefferson wrote to Mordecai Noah, a New York-based Jewish leader and writer. Jefferson thanked Noah “for the discourse on the consecration of the synagogue in your city. … I have read it with pleasure and instruction, having learnt from it some valuable facts in Jewish history which I did not know before. Your sect, by its sufferings, has furnished a remarkable proof of the universal spirit of religious intolerance in every sect … practiced by all when in power.”
At the time, there were only a little more than 3,000 Jews in the United States, but Jefferson understood that his target audience wasn’t Jews themselves. Gaining and wielding this knowledge appealed to Christians, because they wanted to see enlightened, non-theocratic political leaders.
Citing the allegiance of Jews and the importance of tolerance toward them also became a popular tactic in one of the big political fights in the early republic: the battle over Sunday mail delivery.
Christian “Sundayists” considered Sunday mail to be part of a larger secular threat against their sense of identity and power during the late 1820s and early 1830s. In 1829, Presbyterian minister Lyman Beecher called the Sunday mail controversy, “perhaps the most important [issue] that ever was, or ever will be submitted for national consideration.” While Beecher believed it of the utmost importance to end Sunday mail, his opponents — notably religious minorities observing Sabbath on Saturdays and depending on Sunday mail for business, including Jews — adamantly defended the practice.
Col. Richard Mentor Johnson, chairman of the House Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads, wrote reports in 1829 and 1830, aiming to settle the controversy. He explained that Congress did not have any right to decide religious matters. And intervening in Sunday mail on behalf of the Sundayists would constitute just such a move when economic expediency made clear the value of seven-days-per-week mail delivery.
Jews and their religious freedom played a big role in Johnson’s rationale, and he and his allies cited Jews and Jewish customs to bolster the legitimacy of their arguments. One of his reports observed: “The Constitution regards the conscience of the Jew as sacred as that of the Christian and gives no more authority to adopt a measure affecting the conscience of a solitary individual than that of a whole community.” For Johnson, it was the government’s responsibility “to afford all — to Jew or Gentile, pagan or Christian, the protection and the advantages of our benignant institutions on Sunday as well as every day of the week.”
In fact, Johnson also pointed to an “ancient Jewish government” that enforced religious observances as an example of what not to do. His committee hoped that no American “would willingly introduce a system of religious coercion in our civil institutions.” But such examples from history admonished them “to watch carefully” for the “earliest indication” of the adoption of such practices.
While Johnson could have cited countless examples of government theocracy between ancient times and 1830, he chose a Jewish one, seemingly for two reasons. First, publicly deciding not to discriminate against Jews even though they upheld a theocracy thousands of years ago bolstered the egos of Christian policymakers. Second, however, Johnson recognized the utility of a Sunday observer like himself referencing Saturday observers in what would become the defining political speech of his career.
It made clear that Johnson understood the religious minority and their practices and was therefore both tolerant and enlightened. Jews remained so few in number — as of 1826, there were still only 6,000 Jews in the United States — that their support would’ve been meaningless. But Johnson knew that displaying these sentiments and knowledge would curry favor with Christian voters because it allowed him to display his commitment to religious freedom, and in a way that didn’t threaten Christian dominance of American society, because there were too few Jews to change the dominant culture.
Johnson’s political savvy paid off. Democrats mobilized around his reports, and he became known as a defender of religious freedom, helping to springboard him to becoming vice president in 1837.
A wave of Jewish immigrants from Germany in the 1840s meant that, by 1848, 50,000 Jews lived in America — a number that would grow to 230,000 by 1880. As the Jewish population increased, they experienced rising xenophobia. Even so, however, showing tolerance toward and courting Jews remained a political winner.
Nowhere was this clearer than when Ulysses S. Grant engaged in the practice despite having issued the most anti-Jewish policy edict in American history during his days as a military general. In 1862, Grant expelled Jews from his military district, using language in the order reminiscent of European discrimination and unfairly singling out Jews for speculation when soldiers of all religions had engaged in the practice.
Yet when Grant won the presidency in 1868, he began atoning for this sin. As president, Grant appointed several Jews to prominent positions in the government, including several postmasters. Magnolia, Calif., even had four consecutive Jewish postmasters from the late 1860s through the early 20th century, though this series began a year before Grant became president. At the time, serving as postmaster signaled the appointee’s social influence and political capital, making such appointments a major gesture.
By providing this capital, Grant was courting Jews, who finally constituted a large enough voting bloc to warrant attention. But he was also courting Christians by demonstrating atonement for his earlier, bigoted order and a commitment to the ideal of religious freedom in the United States.
These episodes expose how, like so many other minority groups throughout American history, Jews have confronted bigotry and discrimination. But politicians have also courted them, working to display a knowledge of the Jewish community and tolerance toward them. Doing so allowed politicians to espouse the American ideal of religious freedom — without posing a threat to any sense of Christian nationalism or the Christian predominance in society. Jews were a small enough proportion of the population that affording them tolerance wouldn’t change the character of society. Importantly, most Jews also passed as White. True concern over the dangers of antisemitism or Jewish rights played less of a role in motivating these actions than the sense that it would appeal to the Christian majority.
Youngkin and Abbott are following in this tradition, courting their Christian base by displaying tolerance toward Jews, support for Israel and an unwillingness to accept antisemitism. While it may seem at odds with how Republicans treat other minority groups in 2022, it makes sense in the history of this longer tradition. | null | null | null | null | null |
Rock musician Nils Lofgren on Saturday became the latest artist to join a protest kicked off by his former bandmate Young, saying in a statement that he, too, would “cut ties with Spotify” and urged “all musicians, artists and music lovers everywhere” to do the same. Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell also said she plans to remove her music from Spotify in solidarity with Young “and the global scientific and medical communities.”
Lofgren, the rock musician best known as a member of Crazy Horse and Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, and Mitchell in their statements said they stood in solidarity with Young, who had demanded his music be taken off the streaming platform in response to the presence of “fake information about vaccines” in some of the content it hosts. | null | null | null | null | null |
Rock musician Nils Lofgren, best known as a member of Crazy Horse and Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, on Saturday became the latest artist to join a protest kicked off by Young, saying in a statement that he, too, would “cut ties with Spotify” and urged “all musicians, artists and music lovers everywhere” to do the same. Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell also said she plans to remove her music from Spotify in solidarity with Young “and the global scientific and medical communities.”
Lofgren and Mitchell in their statements said they stood in solidarity with Young, who collaborated with Crazy Horse to produce many well-known albums. Young who had demanded his music be taken off the streaming platform in response to the presence of “fake information about vaccines” in some of the content it hosts. | null | null | null | null | null |
Helen Rottier, 25, shows her mother, Amy Rottier, 50, how she organizes her calendar on her iPad while sitting at the dining room table of her family’s home in Madison, Wis., on Wednesday, Jan. 26, 2022. The two women illustrate the way Gen Xers and millennials differ in how they spent their time on an average day as young adults because of changes in technology and patterns in forming families over the last two decades. (AP Photo/Scott Bauer). (Scott Bauer/ap) | null | null | null | null | null |
Message in a bottle helped heal a Maryland teen’s grief
By Sydney Page, The Washington Post | AP
Sasha Yonyak had nearly forgotten about the message in a bottle that he had tossed off the side of a fishing boat in Ocean City, Maryland, in the summer of 2019. The 14-year-old figured it was gone for good.
The bottle that Sasha and Smith originally plucked out of the water contained two $1 bills and a note from two American women, whom they were not able to track down. The letter urged the finder to “pass it on.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Yet those uses don’t seem as though they’re worth trillions, as the cryptocurrency market is currently valued. To justify those kinds of valuations, crypto needs to at least partially replace major currencies such as the dollar, or payment systems such as Visa, or investments such as gold, or some other fairly important economic activity yet to be named. Ideally, that activity would be legal, because otherwise, there’s a high risk that governments will get together and do to cryptocurrencies what they are trying to do to offshore tax havens. | null | null | null | null | null |
Dear Olympians,
I am not alone in experiencing something like this. Many Uyghur kids who were sent to United States to attend schools here have been totally cut off from their parents and families after the internment camps were instituted in 2017. Some found out their parents were locked up in camps or in prison from news stories years later. | null | null | null | null | null |
Former president Donald Trump on Saturday night sent his strongest signal to date that he will fight his legal problems outside of a court of law. He encouraged people to engage in massive demonstrations in jurisdictions pursuing criminal investigations against him over Jan. 6- and tax-related issues. Then, minutes later, he said that if he’s reinstalled as president, he would consider pardoning some of the Jan. 6 Capitol rioters.
Both Trump comments were, as with many earlier ones about ongoing legal matters, carefully tailored. (Trump seemed to be reading them off a teleprompter rather than speaking extemporaneously.) The combination of the two comments, though, can’t help but conjure a repeat — or at least the suggestive prospect of a repeat — of the kind of lawlessness we saw just more than a year ago. | null | null | null | null | null |
Lorraine Hansberry in 1959 in her New York City apartment at 337 Bleecker St., where she wrote the first-ever Broadway play by an African American woman, "A Raisin in the Sun." (David Attie/Getty Images)
Years before anyone used the term “intersectionality,” Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965) saw, wrote and spoke about the ways class, race and gender discrimination were intertwined in the United States. Unsurprisingly, there’s been a resurgence of interest in her in recent years, with increasing attention paid to Hansberry’s journalism and political activism, in addition to her best-known achievement, the play “A Raisin in the Sun.” Charles J. Shields’s Hansberry biography is the third in little more than three years: Imani Perry blended biography with a personal tribute in “Looking for Lorraine,” and Soyica Diggs Colbert took a more scholarly approach in “Radical Vision,” making detailed analyses of Hansberry’s writings. Shields, also the author of biographies of Harper Lee and Kurt Vonnegut, offers general readers a well-researched account of Hansberry’s life and conscientious summaries of her literary and political work.
Making good use of private papers as well as published materials, Shields paints an evocative portrait of Hansberry’s childhood in Chicago. She grew up in affluence, “smart but spoiled” in the opinion of her older sister’s best friend, “fond of getting attention.” She may have been reacting to her mother’s rigid notions of gentility and propriety. Nannie Hansberry sent her 5-year-old daughter to her first day at a nearly all-White elementary school dressed in ermine, to show that “we were better than no one but infinitely superior to everyone.” (Lorraine got pushed in the mud by her tough, streetwise classmates.)
In her youth, Lorraine lived the contradiction between her parents’ cosmopolitan world of African American culture and achievement and the hostile White society around them, which did its best to keep upward strivers like the Hansberrys in their designated place. Lorraine’s family was even sued after her father bought their house through a White front man in a neighborhood with restrictive racial covenants.
Carl Hansberry was a real estate speculator; his victory in court enabled him to continue buying buildings in White neighborhoods, chopping apartments into one-room, notoriously overcrowded and unsanitary “kitchenettes,” and renting them at an enormous profit to African American families eager to move up. The glaring disconnect between her family’s civil rights activism and their fortune, made by exploiting other Black people, probably played a role in Lorraine’s move toward Marxist politics, but Shields doesn’t explore it. By contrast, his depiction of her intellectual development is substantive, from her teenage readings in Harlem Renaissance literature through her discovery, at the University of Wisconsin, of theater, in particular Sean O’Casey’s Irish folk dramas. Shields also revisits a summer workshop in Mexico that cemented her commitment to social realism in art and her tenure as a journalist at the radical monthly Freedom after she dropped out of college.
When it comes to her personal and emotional life, however, Shields is regrettably hands-off. He mentions a “crush” on college classmate Edythe Anne Cohen and includes a few excerpts from Hansberry’s letters to Cohen that raise intriguing questions about how intimate they were. One refers to Lorraine’s interest in a “very wonderful young man. (I never thought it possible.)” Given her subsequent marriage to Marxist activist Robert Nemiroff and later lesbian affairs, this moment cries out for consideration of Hansberry’s complicated sexuality. Instead, Shields jumps to the fact that she met the “wonderful young man” through a left-wing group supporting Progressive Party presidential candidate Henry Wallace.
Shields’s capable account of her journalism reminds us just how radical Hansberry was, presciently seeing the struggles of African Americans as part of the global battle by people of color against colonialism. She was an unabashed Marxist and fellow traveler of the Communist Party during the Cold War years, when it was very unpopular and dangerous, and her marriage to Nemiroff was at least, in part, an alliance of politically like-minded people. She also came to rely on him to keep her focused on the literary and dramatic work that she saw as her true calling, and here, too, Shields presents provocative source material without offering much in the way of analysis. He describes as “indulgent” an excerpt from a letter by Nemiroff urging Hansberry to stick to her writing, advice that might well strike other readers, especially female readers, as patronizing and controlling.
The chapters on “A Raisin in the Sun” are Shields’s best, detailing an engrossing narrative of the creation and production of an American classic. Later chapters that chronicle Hansberry’s declining health and difficulties with later plays — “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window” and “Les Blancs” — are also compelling. But Shields dodges the question voiced by several of how extensively Nemiroff revised Hansberry’s work when she was dying and after her death. Shields’s statement, “Whether he exceeded his mandate as her literary executor will be left to theater historians and scholars to determine,” feels disingenuous, given that he had access to Hansberry’s manuscripts and the published versions.
The Life Behind ‘A Raisin in the Sun’ | null | null | null | null | null |
How politics and the pandemic put schools in the line of fire.
In Connecticut, for instance, the number of chronically absent students soared from 12 percent in 2019-20 to 20 percent the next year to 24 percent this year, said Emily Bailard, chief executive of the company. In Oakland, Calif., they went from 17.3 percent pre-pandemic to 19.8 percent last school year to 43 percent this year. In Pittsburgh, chronic absences stayed where they were last school year at about 25 percent, then shot up to 45 percent this year. | null | null | null | null | null |
Part of the confusion over the lack of recognition had to do with a missing trophy. The original silver cup used for the 1949 and 1950 competitions included the names of all winners, but then it disappeared. For 55 years, its whereabouts were unknown.
An earlier version of this article stated that the trophy's whereabouts were unknown for 43 years. In fact, they were unknown for 55 years. This version has been corrected. | null | null | null | null | null |
Since Wednesday, the clip of Alexander’s remarks has been viewed thousands of times on social media, elevating the voice of a Black Floridian in a school curriculum debate that has often been dominated by the concerns of White, conservative parents.
“I ran for the Florida legislature to deal with real issues, and to have a seat at the table to address them in a responsible way,” said Alexander, who represents Gadsden County and part of Leon County in the Florida panhandle. “I think a lot of my frustrations have built up over the years where it’s not about addressing those issues and improving quality of life, it’s about campaign rhetoric and feeding false narratives to a [Republican] base that continues to divide our country.”
But Alexander criticized the Republican Party’s focus on divisive issues. “People are struggling. They are living paycheck to paycheck,” he said in his speech. “Instead of addressing systemic poverty, instead of addressing all these issues that impact people’s quality of life, we are using these distraction tools.”
Alexander, 37, was born in Tallahassee and attended Florida A&M University, a historically Black college. He is a fifth-generation Floridian who is the descendant of enslaved people.
In 2012, Alexander worked on voter turnout among African American and Caribbean residents during President Obama’s reelection campaign. He was elected to the Florida House in 2016, where he represents Florida’s only majority Black county, Gadsden. Three years later, Democratic leaders appointed Alexander as caucus whip.
To accomplish that, Alexander said he wants more Democrats to do what he just did in the Judiciary Committee — speak passionately about the party’s priorities. “We have to push back on these false narratives and help people wake up to see we have more in common than we have that separates us,” he said. | null | null | null | null | null |
Wendy Marco is the founder of Cold Rush Hockey, which is based in Northern Virginia. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
Learning, Marco explained, is a verb. It is an action and something that doesn’t happen without effort. It includes being actively involved.
Marco’s tutorial was just one of the many mini life lessons packed in the 45-minute skating session for these budding hockey players. Marco runs Cold Rush Hockey, one of the top hockey academies in Northern Virginia. She has spent 30 years training players of all ages and, at 56, is the go-to skating coach in the area not only for kids but for professional players as well.
That’s why Marco’s noun and verb lesson that morning was so important. Good skating doesn’t just happen. Everyone — even NHL players — has something to work on, Marco says.
Marco’s client list includes several Olympians and NHL players, including a handful of Washington Capitals. Most recently, she worked with Nicklas Backstrom as he made his way back from a hip injury.
The Capitals reached out to Marco in November. She and Backstrom had about 10 sessions together before he got off long-term injured reserve and made his season debut Dec. 15. He had a slow start — after a stint on the NHL’s coronavirus protocols list and a bout with the flu — but is starting to look more like himself. He scored his first goal of the season Thursday at Boston and followed it up with a nifty overtime winner Saturday against Ottawa.
Marco previously worked with Lars Eller, John Carlson, Jason Chimera, Jay Beagle, John Erskine and Jeff Halpern. She still works with Eller and Carlson in the summers. She has worked with Joe Snively — a native of Herndon who made his NHL debut with the Capitals this season — since he was a kid.
“I look at video of myself playing before 2010, when I started working with her, and it’s like I can’t watch it because it’s so bad,” Halpern said. “I wish I could go back [and start sooner]. It is like getting a superpower. … I think if I saw that early in my career, it would have been a huge difference.”
Halpern worked with Marco in the summer of 2010, when he was coming off a subpar season that started with Tampa Bay and ended in Los Angeles. At the end of the year, Terry Murray, then the coach of the Kings, told Halpern he needed to work on his skating if he was going to keep going in the NHL.
“I basically said I was going to change everything, and I did,” Halpern said.
Halpern was on the ice with Marco four to five times per week in sessions that included private workouts and shared ice time with 10-year-olds. He completely changed his skating stride and technique in one summer, an adjustment he remains proud of. Halpern continued to go back to Marco for lessons until he retired and now credits her for adding years to his playing career.
“Kids growing up in that Ashburn ice rink and the kids that she touches, you know, in the D.C. area, they’re such good skaters,” said Halpern, now an assistant coach with the Lightning. “... They’re so much better than other kids around them, and it’s a credit to her. I think it’s remarkable what she does.”
“If you freeze frame them, you’ll see there’s a line in their body from the center of their head to the point of contact of their blade on the ice,” Marco explained.
Marco grew up as a competitive figure skater in Northern Virginia. She moved back home at 27, after her career ambitions as a TV reporter didn’t work out. She started bartending and decided to teach skating lessons in Fairfax City.
She started out just teaching figure skaters but quickly moved to hockey players. She liked teaching the skating intricacies needed in hockey and felt like all of her skills from competitive figure skating and her time as a competitive water skier in college had come together.
She continued to teach long after she was married and gave birth to her first daughter, but in the back of her mind, she remained hopeful she could one day go back to TV. Teaching was just a way to get by.
“I was like, ‘Wait a minute — I want to do this hockey thing,’ ” Marco said.
She founded Cold Rush Hockey several years later. Marco said she still hopes to become a full-time NHL skating coach, but for now her career is still satisfying.
“I think she has immense passion,” Snively said. “It could be 6 a.m. in the morning, and she has the most energy on the ice sometimes. She isn’t afraid to push you. It doesn’t matter who you are.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Joe Rogan at a UFC Fight Night event in Newark in April 2015. (Alex Trautwig/Getty Images)
Rock musician Nils Lofgren, best known as a member of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band as well as Crazy Horse, on Saturday became the latest artist to join a protest kicked off by Young, saying in a statement that he, too, would “cut ties with Spotify” and urged “all musicians, artists and music lovers everywhere” to do the same. Singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell also said she plans to remove her music from Spotify in solidarity with Young “and the global scientific and medical communities.”
Separately, Brené Brown, a research professor at the University of Houston who hosts the popular podcasts “Unlocking Us” and “Dare to Lead” on Spotify, tweeted Saturday that she “will not be releasing any podcasts until further notice” but did not list a specific reason or whether the announcement was linked to the protest. The Post could not immediately reach Brown for comment.
And competitors appear to be seeking an advantage amid the controversy: Apple Music on Friday called itself the “the home of Neil Young” in a tweet promoting his catalogue.
Lofgren and Mitchell in their statements said they stood in solidarity with Young, who collaborated with Crazy Horse to produce many well-known albums. Young had demanded that his music be taken off the streaming platform in response to the presence of “fake information about vaccines” in some of the content it hosts. | null | null | null | null | null |
This Humboldt penguin chick recently hatched from an egg being cared for by two male penguins at the Rosamond Gifford Zoo in Syracuse, N.Y. (Rosamond Gifford Zoo)
Two male Humboldt penguins who adopted an egg during breeding season are the proud new foster parents of a fuzzy-haired chick — and the New York zoo where it hatched says its first-ever same-sex couple to take on this role is doing a “great job.”
The Rosamond Gifford Zoo in Syracuse has for years worked to boost the dwindling population of Humboldt penguins in the wild. This species, which can be found off the coast of Chile and Peru in South America, is listed as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
“We have some very exciting news!” the zoo wrote on Twitter, as it shared images of the fluffy brown chick, which weighed in at 226 grams (8 ounces) during its first health check earlier this month. The chick hatched on Jan. 1.
Elmer and Lima, two male penguins from the zoo’s colony of 28 birds, were given the egg to incubate and look after by officials who were concerned that breeding pairs at the zoo had “a history of inadvertently breaking their fertilized eggs,” according to a statement released Friday.
The zoo said staff gave the egg to the male penguins in a bid to boost the chances of the egg eventually hatching. The two were “exemplary in every aspect of egg care,” the zoo said, adding that the males took turns protecting the egg before it hatched.
The males have been tending to the chick by feeding it and keeping it warm — actions that the zoo said highlight that “non-traditional families do a wonderful job of child-rearing.”
And while Elmer and Lima’s same-sex fostering journey is a first for the Rosamond Gifford Zoo, other institutions around the world have also reported positive results with same-sex pairs fostering eggs.
Penguin couples usually take turns protecting and nurturing an egg, nestling it between their feet and shielding it from cold temperatures and dangers with a fold of skin described by experts as a “fleecy fold of belly plumage.”
At an aquarium in Spain, two female gentoo penguins became first-time moms in 2020 and spent time raising a baby chick they had adopted as an egg.
Skipper and Ping, a pair of male king penguins at the Berlin Zoo, adopted an abandoned egg in 2019. A zoo spokesman told the Berliner Zeitung newspaper at the time that the couple were “behaving like model parents, taking turns to keep the egg warm.”
In 2005, the Rosamond Gifford Zoo joined the Species Survival Plan — a program used by zoos and aquariums to protect endangered or threatened animals in the wild — for Humboldt penguins.
Experts say the Humboldt penguin population’s continued decline could be linked to ocean currents and temperatures in the Pacific changing amid the climate crisis, along with the mining of their habitats in Chile. Humboldt penguins feed primarily on fish but adults hunting for prey in the wild are being forced to travel further for food because of high commercial fishing demands and oil pollution. Researchers say the population’s habitats have been devastated by guano mining for fertilizer.
Staff there have not ruled out giving Elmer and Lima more parenting responsibilities, saying that the pair would most definitely be top candidates “to foster future eggs.” | null | null | null | null | null |
CROFTON, Md. — A man was shot and killed by a police officer who had been seriously injured while responding early Sunday to a 911 call reporting family violence at a Maryland home, authorities said.
A division within the Maryland Attorney General’s Office will lead an investigation into what happened, in keeping with a new state law related to officer-involved shootings. | null | null | null | null | null |
Why race-based affirmative action is still needed in college admissions
The U.S. Supreme Court (iStock)
The Supreme Court has agreed to take up a case that will allow it to rule again on whether universities may consider race in admissions decisions — and given the makeup of the conservative-dominated panel, affirmative action supporters are concerned.
The case in point involves admissions at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which use race as a factor in admissions in ways that lower courts have found compliant with previous Supreme Court rulings. But earlier decisions upholding affirmative action were made before the court’s membership tilted firmly to the right during the Trump administration.
For years race-based affirmative action has been losing support in the United States — but this post explains why it is still important. It’s not just to reverse historical discrimination — something that it seems many conservatives would rather have us forget — but also because of the benefits of diversity to individual students and American society.
America historically prided itself on being a melting pot of cultures. Some people may pretend college admissions are based on a meritocracy, but, of course, they aren’t, and race-based affirmative action has been a critical mechanism to help create diverse communities in school.
I asked Natasha Warikoo, professor of sociology at Tufts University, about this issue, and below you can read her analysis about why race-based affirmative action is still important. She is the author of the 2019 book “The Diversity Bargain: And Other Dilemmas of Race, Admissions, and Meritocracy at Elite Universities.” Her new book, being published in May, is “Race at the Top: Asian Americans and Whites in Pursuit of the American Dream in Suburban Schools.”
I very rarely include bibliographies in blog posts, but this subject warrants a reading list for those who are interested, so you will find Warikoo’s at the end. The piece is also loaded with links.
What you should know about race-based affirmative action and diversity in schools
By Natasha Warikoo
1. Simply put, American society continues to suffer from racial inequality, so affirmative action provides more equitable opportunities for a top-notch college education.
Racial inequality in the United States stems partly from the ongoing knock-on effects of past exclusion and discrimination. For example, White families have had more opportunities over generations to accumulate wealth; that wealth often aids middle-class Whites as they go to buy their first home. The average White family today holds more than $170,000 in net assets, compared with just $17,000 for the average Black family. In turn, middle-class Black families tend to live in more disadvantaged neighborhoods than middle-class White families. This affects where their children go to school, and who they go to school with.
But history is not the only driver of racial inequality. Decades of research have shown that unequal opportunities continue to shape the educational experiences of Black, Latino and Native American youths, even within the same schools, and even with well-meaning teachers. To take one example, when tested for unconscious bias, most teachers show pro-White, anti-Black bias. In turn, when teachers hold implicit racial bias, their Black students have demonstrably worse learning outcomes. Black youths also experience more disciplinary surveillance at school and harsher punishments for the same behaviors compared with their White peers.
In contrast, White youths tend to enjoy many privileges in the United States. These privileges include growing up, on average, in more affluent neighborhoods and attending higher-performing schools than Black and Latinx youths, even of the same social class; and having parents with more financial resources to support their development. Increasingly, Asian Americans, too, benefit from privileges previously associated with Whites. The two largest subgroups of Asian Americans — Indian Americans and Chinese Americans — have incomes and levels of education that, on average, surpass those of Whites, due in part to U.S. immigration policy since the 1960s, which has made it much easier for highly educated Asians to move to the United States compared with low-skilled Asians.
Studies show that even middle- and upper middle-class Black Americans don’t reap the benefits associated with financial security that others enjoy. A recent study found that Black adults in the United States born in households with incomes above the 80th percentile (in 2019, more than $142,000 per year) are as likely to fall to the bottom 20 percent as they are to remain in the top 20 percent; in contrast, White adults are five times as likely to remain in the top 20 percent as they are to slip to the bottom 20 percent.
Affirmative action helps to account for these historical and contemporary inequities, and makes a difference in the lives of its beneficiaries. Attending an elite college improves future earnings for Black and Latino students. In contrast, the research is unclear on whether attending an elite college makes a difference for future earnings for White, non-low-income, non-first generation students. Scholars think this difference is because students from families with fewer resources are more likely to draw on the connections they make in college for future opportunities, compared with those whose parents can already provide those connections, no matter where they go to college.
2. Affirmative action benefits all students by exposing them to diverse perspectives on campus.
Residential segregation in the United States means that many kids will grow up with little interaction with kids of other races. This is particularly true for White kids. After Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. voiced acceptance for the “diversity rationale” in the 1978 Bakke decision, social scientists set out to understand just how diverse learning environments shape educational experiences, if at all. We now know the considerable benefits to all students of having a quorum of classmates of all races. It makes students more likely to socialize with peers of other races, which in turn seems to improve their intellectual engagement and performance. It even bolsters their leadership skills. Experiencing a diverse student body in college is associated with having diverse friendships, greater civic engagement and positive racial attitudes many years after graduation.
3. Affirmative action leads to more diverse leadership, which is essential for sound decision-making and legitimacy.
Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, in the 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger case, argued that lack of diversity in leadership in society would delegitimate that leadership in the minds of many citizens. That is, national unity and effective governance required that people of all racial groups should see themselves in the leadership of the country, which signals that people like them are included in social opportunities.
A comparison to Britain, where no affirmative action exists, is informative here. When Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, many in Britain asked why Britain did not have a cadre of potential leaders who are Black like the United States did. Indeed, many U.S. underrepresented minority leaders have pointed to affirmative action as enabling their social position, including Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Obama. In contrast, despite 14 percent of Britain’s population identifying as Black or Asian/South Asian, the country has never had a prime minister of color, nor a Supreme Court justice of color.
Affirmative action is also an effective policy to address the goal of increasing diversity among professionals, such as doctors, lawyers and teachers. One study found that Black graduates of selective colleges went on to earn advanced degrees in large numbers, despite having overall lower-than-average SAT scores than their White peers on campus, coming from families with fewer economic resources and earning lower grades than their peers on average.
If selective colleges are to adhere to the mission of contributing to the public good that so many of them espouse, they must provide opportunities to talented and eager teens from a range of backgrounds. Affirmative action is one small mechanism to increase the likelihood that Black, Latino and Native American youths have a realistic shot at the privileges that education at the likes of Harvard, the University of North Carolina and other selective colleges can provide. Without it, White and Asian American students, too, will miss out on the opportunity to better understand a wide range of life experiences and perspectives.
Alba, R.D., J.R. Logan and B.J. Stults 2000. “How Segregated Are Middle-Class African Americans?” Social Problems 47(4): 543-558.
Barnes, R. 2014. “Justice Sonia Sotomayor defends affirmative action.” The Washington Post Retrieved Oct. 15, 2021
Bowcott, O. 2020. “UK Supreme Court Should Have a BAME Justice ‘Within Six Years’.” The Guardian Retrieved Oct. 17, 2021
Bowen, W.G. and D.C. Bok 1998. The Shape of The River : Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions. Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press.
Bowman, N.A. 2010. “College Diversity Experiences and Cognitive Development: A Meta-Analysis.” Review of Educational Research 80(1): 4-33.
Bowman, N.A. 2011. “Promoting Participation in a Diverse Democracy: A Meta-Analysis of College Diversity Experiences and Civic Engagement.” Review of Educational Research 81(1): 29-68.
Census, U. S. 2020. HINC-05. Percent Distribution of Households, by Selected Characteristics Within Income Quintile and Top 5 Percent., United States Census.
Chang, M.J. 1999. “Does racial diversity matter? The educational impact of a racially diverse undergraduate population.” Journal of College Student Development 40(4): 377-395.
Chetty, R., N. Hendren, M.R. Jones and S.R. Porter 2019. “Race and Economic Opportunity in the United States: an Intergenerational Perspective*.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 135(2): 711-783.
Chin, M.J., D.M. Quinn, T.K. Dhaliwal and V.S. Lovison 2020. “Bias in the Air: A Nationwide Exploration of Teachers’ Implicit Racial Attitudes, Aggregate Bias, and Student Outcomes.” Educational Researcher 49(8): 566-578.
Dale, S.B. and A.B. Krueger 2002. “Estimating the Payoff to Attending a More Selective College: An Application of Selection on Observables and Unobservables.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 117(4): 1491-1527.
Dale, S.B. and A.B. Krueger. 2011. “Estimating the Return to College Selectivity over the Career Using Administrative Earnings Data.” NBER Working Paper 17159 Retrieved April 3, 2015.
Davis, T.M. and A.N. Welcher 2013. “School Quality and the Vulnerability of the Black Middle Class: The Continuing Significance of Race as a Predictor of Disparate Schooling Environments.” Sociological Perspectives 56(4): 467-493.
Fischer, M.J. 2008. “Does Campus Diversity Promote Friendship Diversity? A Look at Interracial Friendships in College*.” Social Science Quarterly 89(3): 631-655.
Gurin, P. 1999. “The compelling need for diversity in higher education.” Gratz et al. v. Bollinger et al. No. 97-75231 (E.D. Mich.) and Grutter et al. v. Bollinger et al. No. 97-75928 (E.D. Mich.) (pp. 99-234). Ann Arbor, MI, University of Michigan.
Jacoby-Senghor, D., S. Sinclair and J.N. Shelton 2016. “A Lesson in Bias: The relationship between implicit racial bias and performance in pedagogical contexts.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 63: 50-55.
Jayakumar, U.M. 2008. “Can Higher Education Meet the Needs of an Increasingly Diverse and Global Society? Campus Diversity and Cross-Cultural Workforce Competencies.” Harvard Educational Review 78(4): 615-651.
Jayakumar, U.M. and S.E. Page 2021. “Cultural Capital and Opportunities for Exceptionalism: Bias in University Admissions.” The Journal of Higher Education: 1-31.
Johnson, H.B. 2006. The American Dream and the Power of Wealth: Choosing Schools and Inheriting Inequality in the Land of Opportunity. New York, Routledge.
Lee, J. and M. Zhou 2015. The Asian American Achievement Paradox. New York, Russell Sage Foundation.
Lewis, A.E. and J. Diamond 2015. .. New York, Oxford University Press.
McIntosh, K., E. Moss, R. Nunn and J. Shambaugh. 2020. “Examining the Black-White Wealth Gap.” Brookings Retrieved Oct. 16, 2021.
Owens, A. 2020. “Unequal Opportunity: School and Neighborhood Segregation in the USA.” Race and Social Problems 12(1): 29-41.
Shedd, C. 2015. Unequal City: Race, Schools, and Perceptions of Injustice. Russell Sage Foundation.
Sidanius, J., S. Levin, C. van Laar and D.O. Sears 2008. The diversity challenge: social identity and intergroup relations on the college campus. New York, Russell Sage Foundation.
Skiba, R.J., R.H. Horner, C.-G. Chung, M. K. Rausch, S. L. May and T. Tobin 2011. “Race is Not Neutral: A National Investigation of African American and Latino Disproportionality in School Discipline.” School Psychology Review 40(1): 85-107.
Starck, J.G., T. Riddle, S. Sinclair and N. Warikoo 2020. “Teachers Are People Too: Racial Bias among American educators.” Brookings Institution.
Swarns, R. 2008. “Delicate Obama Path on Class and Race Preferences.” The New York Times Retrieved Oct. 17, 2021.
U.K. Cabinet Office Race Disparity Unit. “Ethnicity facts and figures.”
Warikoo, N. 2022. Race at the Top: Asian Americans and Whites in Pursuit of the American Dream in Suburban Schools. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. | null | null | null | null | null |
Lindsey Graham praises potential Supreme Court nominee pushed by Clyburn, calling her ‘fair minded, highly gifted’
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Sunday appeared to enthusiastically endorse one of President Biden’s potential Supreme Court nominees to replace Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who last week announced his intention to retire at the end of this court term.
“I can’t think of a better person for President Biden to consider for the Supreme Court then Michelle Childs,” Graham told “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan. “She has wide support in our state. She’s considered to be a fair minded, highly gifted jurist. She’s one of the most decent people I’ve ever met.”
Graham’s show of support stood in stark contrast to most Republican senators who have either refrained from weighing in or have expressed concern that Biden would nominate someone too “radical.” Some have been critical of Biden’s promise to nominate the first Black woman to the Supreme Court. On Saturday, the White House issued a rebuke to Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), who had said Biden’s pick would be a “beneficiary” of affirmative action and predicted she would “probably not get a single Republican vote.”
“Put me in the camp of making sure the court and other institutions look like America,” he said. “Affirmative action is picking somebody not as well qualified for past wrongs. Michelle Childs is incredibly qualified. There’s no affirmative action component. If you pick her, she is highly qualified … We’ve only had five women serve and two African American men [on the Supreme Court]. So let’s make the court more like America.”
Breyer’s retirement announcement, coupled with Biden’s stated goal of choosing a nominee by the end of February — and recommitting to his vow to nominate a Black woman — set off a flurry of speculation over who could be the next Supreme Court nominee. The White House has said someone being a sitting judge was good experience but not necessarily a prerequisite to being nominated.
Childs, 55, who has served as the U.S. district judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina since 2010, has emerged on multiple shortlists, despite Supreme Court picks often coming from the appeals courts, not the district courts. Others include Ketanji Brown Jackson, 51, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and Leondra Kruger, 45, a California Supreme Court justice.
Clyburn, who also appeared on “Face the Nation” Sunday to boost Childs again, has said he believed she would receive support from both of South Carolina’s Republican senators.
“It would be good for the court to have somebody who’s not at Harvard or Yale,” he said. “She’s been a workers comp judge. She’s highly qualified. She’s a good character. And we’ll see how she does if she’s nominated. But I cannot say anything bad about Michelle Childs. She is an awesome person.” | null | null | null | null | null |
YAOUNDE, Cameroon — The African soccer confederation lifted a temporary suspension on games at the main stadium at the African Cup of Nations tournament on Sunday, and it will allow the stadium to host a semifinal and the Feb. 6 final after a crush that left eight fans dead and 38 injured, seven of them seriously. | null | null | null | null | null |
No one was injured in the fire in the 9500 block of Main Street in Fairfax, Deputy Chief Bill Betz said in a video update posted on Twitter Sunday.
Fairfax County Fire and Rescue units arrived at the scene at 3 a.m. to find a large fire, he said. They initially tried to fight the blaze from inside but the size of the fire in an older building forced them to fight it defensively from the outside, Betz said. He believes the building was vacant when they arrived. | null | null | null | null | null |
49ers fans hope presence at Rams’ stadium can flip home-field advantage in NFC title game
49ers fans wait to enter the “49ers Invasion” pregame rally Saturday at Tom’s Watch Bar in downtown Los Angeles. (Bing Guan/Reuters)
Three weeks ago, a playoff berth was on the line for the San Francisco 49ers and their fans — “The Faithful” — turned SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif., into their home away from home.
Rams players — and at least two of their wives — feared a repeat of the scene in which fans of the visiting team were so raucous that the home team’s offense had to go to a silent count in its own house. Surely there wouldn’t be a repeat of that scene when the teams met again in the playoffs, right?
Those concerns may not have been misplaced because there were multiple reports of flights from the Bay Area to L.A. jammed with Niners fans for Sunday’s NFC championship game against the Rams and a CBS report that as much as 65 percent of the crowd might be rooting for San Francisco. Even Kurt Warner, the Hall of Famer who won a Super Bowl with the Rams when they played in St. Louis, was alarmed Saturday when he arrived for his flight from Arizona to L.A.
“My plane to LA is filled with @49ers fans,” he tweeted. "…trying to figure out how to keep this plane grounded for about 28hrs (and still get myself to LA for @NFLGameDay Morning & to game for @westwood1sports) …so @RamsNFL fans. send me your best ideas!??? #WhoseHouse”
The scene at the airport in San Francisco was an impromptu pep rally with Sourdough Sam.
San Francisco Chronicle columnist Ann Killion estimated Saturday that “at least 80 percent of my flight is people wearing 49ers gear. If this is replicated on every flight to LA…”
By Sunday morning on the East Coast, “#49ersinvasion” was trending on Twitter, with an assortment of selfies of 49ers-garbed passengers continuing to board airplanes. It was enough to raise questions about whether the Rams’ brief attempt last week to restrict ticket sales to customers with L.A. area Zip codes had backfired.
Shane Stern, a lifelong 49ers fan who lives in Thousand Oaks, Calif., found out just how great the demand for tickets was among San Fran fans when he tweeted an offer to “happily buy everyone’s tickets” using his billing address if fans sent him money in advance via Venmo. He was greeted by a deluge of messages from all over the country.
“I was pretty surprised,” Stern told Yahoo Sports. “They told me where they wanted to sit and let me know that they were ready to send the money.”
He was able to take care of “quite a few people” before the Rams relented and lifted their restrictions. They’re in a Super Bowl-or-bust season and have lost their last six games against the NFC West rival 49ers. Coach Sean McVay is 3-7 against 49ers Coach Kyle Shanahan and hasn’t beaten San Francisco since Week 17 of the 2018 season.
Kelly Stafford, the wife of the Rams quarterback, was willing to do her part as she looked for an edge for the home team.
“Just went on Ticketmaster and saw how expensive tickets are getting. I’m going to buy a good amount and give them away,” she wrote on Instagram. “If you are a hard core rams fan, or just a regular rams fan, a veteran, active in the military, a public servant, etc. email me …and tell me your story with some photos attached!”
The rush by 49ers fans to buy tickets on the secondary market began Monday, when all presale tickets had been snapped up and the Rams lifted their restrictions. “The Rams aren’t going to stop anybody who wants tickets from coming,” Joe Leonor, whose 49ers fan group Niner Empire has over 100 chapters, told Yahoo. “What they’re doing really just infuriates 49ers fans. You’re trying to keep us out? Okay, now we really are going to go.”
The last time the teams met, on Jan. 9, at least one-third and possibly up to half of the SoFi stands were filled with 49ers fans by the Mercury News’ reckoning. McVay admitted at that time that the number of Bay Area fans “did catch us off guard. There was a lot of red there.”
Last week, a possibility of a repeat drew attention from players and another wife of a player. Melissa Whitworth, whose husband, Andrew, is a Rams offensive tackle, admitted Sunday night that she was worried about a Bay Area invasion and was willing to pay to prevent it.
“Wouldn’t you be?” she tweeted. “I’ve been around a LONG time and know how hard these games can be. But being ------ to a players wife doesn’t speak well for you … but y’all keep being classless. It’s a good look.” | null | null | null | null | null |
No one was injured in the fire in the 9500 block of Main Street in Fairfax, Deputy Chief Bill Betz said in a video update posted to Twitter on Sunday.
Fairfax County Fire and Rescue units arrived at the scene at 3 a.m. to find a large fire, he said. They initially tried to fight the blaze from inside, but the size of the fire in an older building forced them to fight it defensively from the outside, Betz said. He believes the building was vacant when they arrived. | null | null | null | null | null |
9 ISIS militants killed in strikes north of capital
Iraqi airstrikes killed nine Islamic State fighters in retaliation for an attack on army barracks this month, officials said.
Islamic State gunmen broke into the barracks in Azim district outside the town of Baqubah on Jan. 21, killed a guard and fatally shot 11 soldiers as they slept. It was one of the boldest attacks by the Islamic State in recent weeks and came amid an uptick in violence that has stoked fears that the group has been re-energized.
A spokesman for Iraq’s commander in chief said the joint military operations room and the air force identified the cell behind the attack as Islamic State members. Three airstrikes were launched, he said, and nine militants were killed. A security official said four Lebanese were among the militants killed.
Also Sunday, Iraqi anti-terrorism units inspected seven prisons holding Islamic State militants. The move comes after a prison attack by Islamic State militants in northeastern Syria that lasted more than a week.
The Islamic State was largely defeated in Iraq in 2017. The group was dealt a final blow in 2019 when it lost its last territory in Syria. But thousands of militants melted into the desert and have continued to wage attacks.
Landslides kill 19 in Brazil: Landslides caused by heavy rains killed at least 19 people in Brazil's largest state, according to officials, who said flooding forced about 500,000 families from their home. João Doria, governor of São Paulo state, announced the equivalent of $2.8 million in aid for the affected cities. Southeastern Brazil has been punished with heavy rains since the start of the year.
Israel's president makes 1st visit to UAE: President Isaac Herzog met the crown prince of Abu Dhabi on the first official visit by the country's head of state to the United Arab Emirates, the latest sign of deepening bilateral ties. The UAE and Israel normalized relations in fall 2020. In talks with Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, Herzog urged more countries in the region to join in recognizing Israel and condemned recent aerial attacks on Abu Dhabi by Yemen's Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.
5 militants killed in Kashmir, Indian police say: Indian troops killed five militants, including a top commander from the Jaish-e-Muhammad group, in Kashmir, police said. The militants were killed in two overnight operations. In January, 21 militants, including eight Pakistani nationals, have been killed across Indian Kashmir, according to police. Kashmir is split between India and Pakistan, and both claim it in its entirety.
Gunmen kill priest on way home from Mass in Pakistan: Gunmen killed a Christian priest and wounded another as they were driving home from Sunday Mass in Pakistan's northwestern city of Peshawar, police said. A third priest in the car was unharmed. Militants have targeted Pakistan's tiny Christian minority several times in recent years. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: Canada must do more to back Ukraine. Hashtags are not enough.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Jan. 26 in Ottawa. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press via AP)
The long-standing Russia-Ukraine conflict is teetering on the brink of a full-scale war. While most nations hope a diplomatic resolution is forthcoming, leaders are also planning strategies to combat Russian President Vladimir Putin’s potential militaristic overreach.
President Biden, for instance, recently described this tense situation as “the most consequential thing that’s happened in the world in terms of war and peace since World War II.” He put 8,500 soldiers on alert last week. The United States also formally rejected Russia’s demand to keep Ukraine from ever opting to join NATO.
What about Canada? My country’s response has been little more than the soft, fluffy rhetoric that’s often defined Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s weak, ineffective leadership.
First, Canada offered a $120 million loan to Ukraine on Jan. 21. According to two CBC News sources, the Liberal government is “considering sending … small arms, protective vests and goggles,” which would be “part of a package of both ‘lethal and non-lethal equipment.’ ” The date is still to be determined, and it remains to be seen whether a more significant number of Canadian troops would be deployed.
Second, a social media campaign has started in (mostly) Canadian progressive circles. There are various photos of Liberal politicians such as International Development Minister Harjit Sajjan holding flimsy placards with the hashtag #StandWithUkraine. There are also Liberal MPs such as Adam van Koeverden making meaningless gestures and taking selfies.
Other than this, Trudeau’s political cupboard has been pretty bare. He recently extended Canada’s 200-troop training operation in Ukraine (Operation Unifier) for three years, and agreed to immediately deploy 60 additional troops “in the coming days.” The entire mission could grow to 400 troops.
I’m obviously not criticizing the sentiments behind these decisions. Most right-thinking (and left-thinking) Canadians support Ukraine in this conflict. They’re fed up with Putin’s dream of attempting to rebuild the Iron Curtain that once encompassed the old Soviet Union. They don’t want to see anything that could potentially ignite World War III.
At the same time, the Liberal government’s strategic position is ridiculous. What the Ukrainians need is weapons and military aid, not impending loans and flimsy paper signs. That’s the best course of action to help defeat Putin’s growling Russian bear.
Don’t expect Canada’s Liberals to shift gears, however.
Trudeau isn’t a strong or confident leader. He accepts Canada’s status as a middle power and prefers to follow larger countries rather than take a leadership role. With a few exceptions, including the Syrian civil war and recognizing the opposition leader Juan Guaidó as the legitimate president of Venezuela, Trudeau seems perfectly content to be a small participant on the big world stage.
He’s also consistently refused to punch above his weight with respect to foreign relations and international conflicts, as his predecessor (and also my former boss), Stephen Harper, did. He certainly doesn’t have Harper’s confidence or courage to tell Putin to “get out of Ukraine,” as he did in a tete-a-tete at the Group of 20 Summit in 2014.
This also helps explain why Biden has seemingly lost some faith in Trudeau’s leadership. While the two are like-minded on quite a few political issues, the former takes a much tougher stance when it comes to foreign policy, safety and security. It’s one of the few areas where U.S. conservatives (and others) regularly find common ground with Biden. Canada’s notable exclusion from the AUKUS nuclear submarine pact last fall may have caught some political observers off-guard, but it’s not that shocking when you consider how different these two leaders look, act and react with respect to international relations.
Here’s the reality of the situation. Trudeau is only going to take baby steps when it comes to Russia and Ukraine. That’s always been his leadership style, and it won’t change. While the Ukrainian government was appreciative of Canada’s gestures and the “special partnership” between the two countries, because you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, it won’t help them fend off the powerful Russian armed forces for even a nanosecond.
If Canada really stands with Ukraine, waving flimsy paper signs isn’t enough. In this important moment in history, Trudeau needs to find something he’s always lacked as a world leader: a backbone. | null | null | null | null | null |
Terps women’s basketball wins at Penn State, but second-half effort leaves team feeling cold
Maryland Coach Brenda Frese, shown Thursday during her team's game against Rutgers, wasn't pleased with the Terps' second-half effort against Penn State on Sunday. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
The No. 17 Maryland women’s basketball team may have as much offensive skill as any roster in the country, but that won’t be enough for the Terrapins to reach their goal. This season has been all about completing the mission of winning a national championship after a disappointing Sweet 16 loss in the 2021 NCAA tournament.
To get anywhere close, the Terps will have prove the can play defense at a high level for long stretches. They did not accomplish that during an 82-71 victory over Penn State on Sunday.
The defense was stifling in the first half to give Maryland a 48-29 lead that it never relinquished, but the effort lessened after halftime, and the Nittany Lions outscored the Terps in both the third and fourth quarters.
“Our energy and intensity, the first half, was really, really good going into halftime,” said Maryland Coach Brenda Frese, who wondered if a lack of maturity is contributing to the swings. “The biggest hurdle for this team is just consistency. Not proud or pleased of our second half. I thought we took our foot off the pedal and relaxed — and credit to Penn State.
“They know that their head coach isn’t happy,” Frese continued about her Terps. “… You can’t lose two quarters in a four-quarter game with the goals that we have.”
Penn State struggled to take care of the ball in the first half as Maryland (15-6, 7-3 Big Ten) forced 15 turnovers and scored 17 points off them. That allowed the Terps to get out in transition and score 13 fast-break points. Maryland created a 27-14 advantage after the first quarter with a 13-0 run as Chloe Bibby continued her hot shooting from Thursday’s game against Rutgers.
That swarming defense wasn’t the same in the second half, but Maryland had built a 19-point cushion and still had enough offense the keep the Nittany Lions (9-11, 3-7) from rallying. The Terps also had 21 offensive rebounds, two shy of their season high, and turned them into 20 second-chance points to keep Penn State at bay.
Diamond Miller tied for a game-high 19 points to go with six rebounds, four assists, three steals and a block. She scored a season-high 24 against Penn State on Jan. 6 but had averaged 10.4 points in the five games in between.
“I think it’s just my mind-set of building confidence in myself and understanding that I can do this,” Miller said. “And I think today I moved the needle a little bit. I’d fallen off a little bit, but I got back up. So just constantly stepping forward.”
Bibby had her first double-double of the season with 17 points and a season-high 10 rebounds. Angel Reese added 16 points, Mimi Collins chipped in 14 off the bench and freshman Shyanne Sellers matched a career-high nine assists.
Makenna Marisa led Penn State with 19 points while teammate Kelly Jekot posted 16 points. Leilani Kapinus finished with 14 points and seven rebounds. The Nittany Lions shot 59.2 percent from the field, but the Terps took 26 more shots.
Collins throwback
The previously slumping Collins scored in the double-figures for the first time since Dec. 9 against Purdue. The junior forward averaged 15.2 points in her first six games, but a lineup change on top of lingering groin and toe injuries had slowed her down. She was known for hot starts last season and was back at it against Penn State with eight first-quarter points on 4-for-4 shooting.
“I’ve been dealing with some nagging injuries, but I’m going to play through it, regardless,” Collins said. “I’m not just the type to just sit for no reason. ... But yeah, it is back in the groove. I know I haven’t had a lot of elevation on my shot and my lift for jumping and everything else, for rebounding. But having the shot just go in and see it go in and having such amazing teammates — that put confidence in me.
Owusu has off game
Maryland star Ashley Owusu scored a season-low two points and was held to single digits for just the third time this season. She was 1 for 5 from the field and had four turnovers. Even on nights when her shot isn’t falling, Owusu often uses her physicality to get to the line, but she didn’t attempt a single free throw Sunday.
The Terps sit in fifth place in the Big Ten standings behind Indiana, Michigan, Iowa and Ohio State. They will eventually get an opportunity to make up ground as they close the regular season with four games in a row against the quartet.
Now is the time for the Terrapins to keep themselves in the hunt for the Big Ten regular season title with wins against those behind them in the standings. So far, so good, with three straight victories against Northwestern, Rutgers and now Penn State. Up next is a trip to Michigan State before home games against Nebraska and Wisconsin.
“If you’re playing one of those four teams the way we played today, it’s an ‘L,’ ” Frese said. “We have to build those habits up to play that hard defensively for 40 minutes. And that’s what separates, right now, the elite-level teams that are able to provide that kind of intensity for 40 minutes.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Yet those uses don’t seem as though they’re worth trillions, as the cryptocurrency market is currently valued. To justify those kinds of valuations, crypto needs to at least partially replace major currencies such as the dollar, or payment systems such as Visa, or investments such as gold, or some other fairly important economic activity yet to be named. Ideally, that activity would be legal, because, otherwise, there’s a high risk that governments will get together and do to cryptocurrencies what they are trying to do to offshore tax havens. | null | null | null | null | null |
Ahead of the Beijing Olympics, can anyone help me reach my family?
Dear Olympians:
I am not alone in experiencing something like this. Many Uyghur kids who were sent to the United States to attend schools here have been totally cut off from their parents and families after the internment camps were instituted in 2017. Some found out their parents were locked up in camps or in prison from news stories years later. | null | null | null | null | null |
Rams’ Matthew Stafford picked off in the 49ers’ end zone
49ers punt on their first possession
Rams punt on first possession
49ers or Rams to face Bengals in Super Bowl
Matthew Stafford was intercepted in the 49ers’ end zone, ending a very promising Rams drive on their second possession.
Los Angeles got all the way to San Francisco’s 3-yard line, but on a third-down play, Stafford threw a pass to Cooper Kupp that was broken up. The ball popped into the air and was grabbed by 49ers cornerback K’Waun Williams, who returned it to his team’s 23.
(49ers 0, Rams 0, 6:53 left in first quarter)
Jimmy Garoppolo saw a bad third-down throw by Matthew Stafford and raised him an egregious miss of a wide-open George Kittle. The 49ers quarterback’s miscue forced his team to punt after a three-and-out, just as the Rams had done on the game’s opening possession. San Francisco started their possession with two runs by wide receiver Deebo Samuel.
Sam Fortier: Both quarterbacks are off to rocky starts as Matthew Stafford threw behind Odell Beckham Jr. on third down and then Jimmy Garoppolo overthrew George Kittle on third down. Both receivers were wide open and could’ve gone for big gains.Stafford gets the next chance against a 49ers defense with a clear plan: rush four, stop the run, play mostly zone coverage. The Rams’ hopes rest on Stafford’s right arm.
The Rams were forced to punt on the game’s opening possession, after Matthew Stafford threw behind Odell Beckham Jr. on third down. Beckham reached back and got his hands on the ball but was not able to pull it in. Los Angeles went three-and-out, with a good punt that had San Francisco starting from its 20-yard line.
Whichever team emerges from the NFC championship game, be it San Francisco or Los Angeles, will be facing Cincinnati in the Super Bowl. The Bengals rallied from an 18-point deficit in the first half Sunday and shocked the Chiefs in Kansas City, 27-24, in overtime.
The Chiefs, who blew a great chance for points just before halftime and scored just three after it, got the ball first in overtime but Patrick Mahomes threw an interception. Cincinnati’s second-year quarterback, Joe Burrow, then led a drive that was capped by a game-winning field goal from Evan McPherson, the Bengals’ uncannily accurate and unflappable rookie kicker.
The Bengals are in the Super Bowl for the first time since after the 1988 season, when they lost to the 49ers for the second time in that decade. Cincinnati, which had the league’s worst record two seasons ago, is looking for the first NFL or AFL championship in franchise history.
He’d given the Green Bay Packers one, too. The play began, after all, with the 49ers’ best wide receiver lined up in the backfield. He was handed the ball as a running back, zipped past a defensive lineman, bounced off a cornerback and plowed into two more defenders before finally hitting the frosty grass of Lambeau Field. Less than a minute later, kicker Robbie Gould — his field goal attempt made 10 yards easier because of Samuel’s run — sent the 49ers to a 13-10 victory and into Sunday’s NFC championship game against the Los Angeles Rams.
But Precious Martin, Samuel’s stepmother, at home watching on television, was concerned after seeing him hobble off the field. Two months ago, San Francisco Coach Kyle Shanahan had begun using her stepson in an unusual football experiment. Samuel is 6 feet and 215 pounds, stocky for the prototypical NFL receiver, so a few times a game Shanahan called plays that required Samuel to carry the ball as a running back. It worked, so the 49ers gave Samuel more carries, pegged him to return kicks, even let him throw a touchdown pass against the Rams. This in addition to Samuel’s responsibilities as a receiver, and he leads the team in both rushing and receiving touchdowns. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: The Beijing Olympics will be focused on sports
An illuminated installation is pictured ahead of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics on Jan. 26. (Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters)
Regarding the Jan. 23 editorial “Shut up and ski”:
Beijing will embrace the Winter Olympics moment this week, carrying forward the Olympic spirit, which requires “mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play” and present streamlined, safe and splendid Olympic Games.
The Olympics should be about sports, not politics. Beijing 2022 should be an international arena for the Olympic spirit, not political manipulation. It is unethical to take the athletes hostage in the name of “free speech” and force them to “speak out” against International Olympic Committee rules, especially when narratives have been adversely impacted by the U.S. government and some media outlets. To name just one, the Uyghur population growth has been much higher than the national average over the past two decades.
The Beijing Winter Olympics will be a huge success. Every participant will be a winner. The only losers are the rumormongers who make futile attempts to politicize sports.
Liu Pengyu, Washington
The writer is minister counselor and spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in the United States. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: Boardrooms’ diversity should not be mandated
A worker sweeps up confetti after the opening bell at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York. (Michael Nagle/Bloomberg News)
The Jan. 24 editorial “Boardrooms’ changing complexion” was uncommonly shy about conservatives’ main point: that race and sex discrimination is illegal and immoral. As Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote in Grutter v. Bollinger, “outright racial balancing … is patently unconstitutional.” Similarly, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg explained in United States v. Virginia that the way to end sex discrimination is to prohibit policymaking based on shopworn stereotypes about women’s talents and abilities.
Forcing “diversity” through quotas doesn’t even get you the profitability that the editorial asserted. As the Securities and Exchange Commission itself noted, Nasdaq’s evidence about the performance benefits of race and sex diversity is at best “mixed.” And more rigorous studies have shown that diversity efforts like Nasdaq’s actually hurt firm performance.
The question the editorial should have asked is not whether the world will “survive” if race and sex quotas become the norm in corporate America but, rather, whether the world and our legal system will be better for it. On every metric, the answer is no.
C. Boyden Gray, Washington
The writer represents the Alliance for Fair Board Recruitment in its legal challenges to California’s and Nasdaq’s board diversity mandates, and was White House counsel to President George H.W. Bush. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: Standardizing scores won’t help the SAT stay relevant
A student takes a college test preparation class at Holton Arms School in Bethesda. (Alex Brandon/AP)
The Jan. 26 Politics & the Nation article “Drop your pencils! The venerable SAT is going digital." discussed the College Board’s decision to administer the SAT digitally beginning in the United States in 2024. According to Priscilla Rodriguez, the vice president of college-readiness assessments for the College Board, “The digital SAT will be easier to take, easier to give, and more relevant.” I fail to understand how shifting the exam to a digital format will make it any more relevant.
A major feature of the new format is that the difficulty of the questions will depend on the test taker’s performance on an introductory set of questions. This is supposed to deliver questions “appropriate to a student’s performance level.” If the College Board implements such a policy, it should no longer be able to call the SAT a standardized test. The whole point of standardized college-readiness testing is to test students on an even playing field to gauge where their skills stand. The new format appears to accomplish the opposite by manipulating difficulty according to the test taker’s performance. In essence, the goal of the digital SAT seems to be to standardize scores, not difficulty.
Amid concerns over the efficacy of standardized testing for college admissions, this new format should serve only to expedite the inevitable downfall of the SAT.
Rishik Balerao, Aldie | null | null | null | null | null |
The Cincinnati Bengals climbed out of an 18-point hole in the first half and then beat the Kansas City Chiefs in overtime on Evan McPherson's 31-yard field goal. (Eric Gay/AP Photo)
The upstart Bengals, led again by second-year quarterback Joe Burrow, extended their surprising postseason run. They overcome a sluggish start and beat the Chiefs, 27-24, in overtime here Sunday at a stunned Arrowhead Stadium in the AFC championship game.
Rookie kicker Evan McPherson’s 31-yard field goal on the second possession of overtime won it for the Bengals. Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes threw an interception on the opening drive of the extra period, giving Burrow and the Bengals a chance to march down the field and set up McPherson’s second game-winning kick in as many weeks.
The Bengals scored 21 straight points in regulation to lead, 24-21, before the Chiefs tied the game with a field goal as time expired to force the overtime.
The Bengals will make their first Super Bowl appearance since January 1989. They’ll face the winner of Sunday’s Rams-49ers game on Feb. 13 in Inglewood, Calif.
Until this postseason, the Bengals hadn’t had a playoff victory in 31 years. But these Bengals aren’t those Bengals. Not with Burrow, the top overall selection in the 2020 NFL draft, back in the lineup and doing wondrous things.
The Bengals beat the Las Vegas Raiders at home in the opening round of the playoffs and then upset the top-seeded Tennessee Titans last weekend in Nashville. And now they’ve ended the AFC reign of the Chiefs.
Mahomes threw three first-half touchdown passes and the Chiefs seemed well on their way to further postseason glory. Mahomes seemed poised to become the youngest quarterback ever to start three Super Bowls. The Chiefs were set to join the early-1970s Miami Dolphins, the early-‘90s Buffalo Bills and the New England Patriots near the end of quarterback Tom Brady’s tenure in reaching three Super Bowls in a row.
Their offense looked practically unstoppable and the Chiefs led, 21-3 in the opening half. Mahomes threw first-half touchdown passes to wide receiver Tyreek Hill, tight end Travis Kelce and wideout Mecole Hardman. But they did not cash in on a scoring opportunity in the final seconds of the second quarter.
The Chiefs tried for a fourth touchdown just before the half ended, running a play with five seconds left and no timeouts remaining rather than settling for a field goal. But Hill failed to reach the end zone after catching Mahomes’s swing pass to the left, and time expired.
Their offense stalled in the second half. The Bengals, who’d beaten the Chiefs during the regular season, kept hanging around. And then they made their move.
The Bengals reached the end zone once in the opening half when running back Samaje Perine rumbled 41 yards for a touchdown after catching a short pass from Burrow. They pulled even in the third quarter with a field goal and Burrow’s touchdown pass to rookie wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase, followed by a successful two-point conversion. The touchdown came after Mahomes threw an interception on a screen pass. | null | null | null | null | null |
The Bengals climbed out of an 18-point hole and then beat the Chiefs in overtime on Evan McPherson's 31-yard field goal. (Eric Gay/AP)
The upstart Bengals, led again by second-year quarterback Joe Burrow, extended their surprising postseason run. They beat the Chiefs, 27-24, in overtime here Sunday at stunned Arrowhead Stadium in the AFC championship game by overcoming a sluggish start with a flurry after halftime.
“I wouldn’t call it surreal,” Burrow said. “I would say it’s exciting. I think if you had told me before the season that we’d be going to the Super Bowl, I probably would have called you crazy. But then we played a whole season. And nothing surprises me now. I know the kind of guys we have and the team that we have.”
Rookie kicker Evan McPherson’s 31-yard field goal on the second possession of overtime won it for the Bengals. Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes threw an interception on the opening drive of the extra period.
The Bengals scored 21 straight points in regulation to lead 24-21 before the Chiefs tied the game with a field goal as time expired to force the overtime.
Cincinnati will make its first Super Bowl appearance since January 1989. It will face the winner of Sunday night’s Los Angeles Rams-San Francisco 49ers game Feb. 13 in Inglewood, Calif.
“A special team that’s capable of doing special things,” Bengals Coach Zac Taylor said. “And we’ve believed from the get-go. Whether people believe in us or not, we did. And so we’re not surprised. This is where we’re meant to be. I’m proud of the guys in that locker room.”
Until this postseason, the Bengals hadn’t had a playoff victory in 31 years. But these Bengals aren’t those Bengals. Not with Burrow, the top overall selection in the 2020 draft, back in the lineup and doing wondrous things after his rookie season was cut short by a knee injury.
The Bengals beat the Las Vegas Raiders at home in the opening round of the postseason and upset the top-seeded Tennessee Titans in Nashville in the divisional round. And now they’ve ended the AFC reign of the Chiefs.
“The leaders on this team know that this isn’t our standard,” Mahomes said. “We want to win the Super Bowl.”
“It’s definitely disappointing,” Mahomes said. “Here with this group of guys that we have, we expect to be in that game and to win that game. And anything less than that is not a success.”
Mahomes threw three first-half touchdown passes, and Kansas City seemed well on its way to further postseason glory. Mahomes was en route to becoming the youngest quarterback ever to start three Super Bowls. The Chiefs were poised to join the Miami Dolphins of the early 1970s, the Buffalo Bills of the early 1990s and the New England Patriots near the end of quarterback Tom Brady’s tenure in reaching three Super Bowls in a row.
Their offense looked practically unstoppable, and the Chiefs led 21-3. But they did not cash in on a scoring opportunity in the final seconds of the first half. And then their offense stalled in the second half. Kansas City had six straight scoreless possessions before the tying field goal at the end of regulation.
The Bengals, who had beaten the Chiefs during the regular season, kept hanging around. And then they made the clutch plays down the stretch.
“It’s my responsibility to make sure that we do better offensively and as a team,” Kansas City Coach Andy Reid said. “And I obviously didn’t get that done that second half. So I’ve got to do a better job there. … Unfortunately this is so final. And that’s where we sit now. Our players are disappointed, obviously.”
Mahomes threw first-half touchdown passes to wide receiver Tyreek Hill, tight end Travis Kelce and wideout Mecole Hardman. The Chiefs tried for a fourth touchdown just before the half ended, running a play with five seconds left and no timeouts remaining rather than settling for a field goal. But Hill failed to reach the end zone after catching Mahomes’s swing pass to the left, and time expired with the Chiefs at the Cincinnati 1-yard line.
The Bengals reached the end zone once in the opening half when running back Samaje Perine rumbled 41 yards for a touchdown after catching a short pass from Burrow. They pulled even in the third quarter with a field goal by McPherson and Burrow’s touchdown pass to rookie wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase, followed by a successful two-point conversion. The touchdown came after Mahomes threw an interception on a screen pass.
“We were playing so well in the first half,” Mahomes said. “And the second half, we were just off a tick.”
McPherson’s 52-yard field goal with 6:04 left in regulation gave the Bengals their first lead. Kansas City drove to the Cincinnati 4-yard line but was pushed backward, as Mahomes was sacked twice. Kicker Harrison Butker connected from 44 yards to force overtime.
The Chiefs won the coin toss, and the fans cheered wildly, envisioning a repeat of the touchdown on the opening possession of overtime that beat the Bills the previous weekend in an NFL postseason classic. But it was not to be, as Mahomes’s third-down pass toward Hill was deflected and intercepted by Bengals safety Vonn Bell.
“I think if you would have told me coming into the league when I got drafted that we’d be here this year, it obviously would be a shock,” Burrow said. “But like I said earlier, now I’m not surprised. Playing this whole year, I knew we would have a chance to be here. I would say it was a great win for the organization, for ownership and the city and me personally as well.” | null | null | null | null | null |
(Pictograms by Álvaro Valiño for The Washington Post)
December 2, 2021|Updated January 22, 2022 at 1:52 p.m. EST
Less than six months after the Tokyo Olympics concluded, the Beijing Olympics will begin Feb. 4. Unlike the Tokyo Summer Games, which were delayed for a year by the coronavirus pandemic, the Winter Olympics will start on time.
Beijing is hosting an Olympics for the second time in 14 years, having also put on the 2008 Summer Olympics. While these Games will be centered in the same area of Beijing as the 2008 Olympics, the mountain events are in the resorts of Yanqing and Zhangjiakou.
Here is what you need to know about the 2022 Beijing Games.
When are the Beijing Winter Olympics?
When are some of the most popular events?
How will the Super Bowl impact the Olympics?
What are the new events at these Olympics?
Will spectators be allowed at the Beijing Olympics? | null | null | null | null | null |
Authorities said they seized about $900,000 during a search of Julie DeVuono's home while investigating the alleged sale of fake vaccination cards. (Suffolk County District Attorney's Office)
DeVuono, 49, and Marissa Urraro, 44, were arrested last week and charged with forgery. DeVuono is also accused of offering a false instrument for filing, which involves knowingly submitting false information to a public office. Prosecutor say the nurses charged $85 for each “false entry” for children and $220 for adults.
Police searched DeVuono’s home and seized about $900,000, the district attorney’s office said, as well as a ledger of earnings from the card operation that they say began in November 2021. Photos of the seizures shared by prosecutors show wads of cash. | null | null | null | null | null |
Hundreds mark killing of Thai father in San Francisco
Hundreds mark
killing of Thai father
On Sunday, Monthanus Ratanapakdee marked the first anniversary of her father’s death with a rally in the San Francisco neighborhood where the 84-year-old was killed. She was joined by Mayor London Breed, local leaders and several hundred people who came out to say they would stay silent no more.
Hundreds of people in San Francisco, New York, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago and Los Angeles joined in the national event, all of them seeking justice for Asian Americans who have been harassed, assaulted and killed in alarming numbers since the start of the pandemic.
Vicha Ratanapakdee encouraged his oldest daughter to move to the United States more than two decades ago to pursue a master’s degree. He and his wife were living with Ratanapakdee, her husband and the couple’s two sons, now 9 and 12. He was on his usual morning walk when authorities say Antoine Watson, 19 at the time, charged at him and knocked him to the ground. Ratanapakdee’s father died two days later, never regaining consciousness.
On Sunday, Ratanapakdee and Breed led a short chant-filled march to the house where her father fell, and where flowers marked the pavement.
“I know people are scared about anti-Asian hate in the community, and we must demand action for justice and all human rights,” Ratanapakdee said Sunday. “Please be strong in memory of my father.”
Dozens of guns raided from trains, police say
Police arrested three people last summer carrying new .22-caliber handguns, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday. One of the suspects said the guns had come from cargo trains in L.A.’s Lincoln Heights rail yards, where widespread thefts have been reported.
“These guns were unguarded, unprotected. . . . God knows how many guns have been stolen that way,” Hurtado said.
At least nine killed
in six-vehicle collision
A six-vehicle crash killed nine people and left one person in critical condition, and police are trying to determine whether a driver was impaired before running a red light, causing the collision.
Las Vegas police said that the driver and his passenger were among the dead after Saturday’s crash and that the ages of the other victims ranged from minors to middle-aged adults.
Two people were taken to a hospital where one died and the other was in critical condition, according to North Las Vegas police. In all, 15 people were involved in the crash.
“We have not seen a mass casualty traffic collision like this before,” police spokesman Alexander Cuevas said at a news conference. Cuevas said the crash was reported at 3 p.m., after the driver struck multiple vehicles, causing “a chaotic event.” Some of the vehicles struck were pushed into a vacant lot at an intersection, which was reopened by Sunday afternoon.
Officials rescue 60 dogs from 'inhumane' conditions in N.C.: Forty-seven dogs and 14 puppies were found in "unsanitary and inhumane living conditions" at Bentwood Labradors in Moyock, not far from the Outer Banks, Currituck County officials wrote on Facebook on Friday. They were rescued by Currituck Animal Services. Officials said the dogs' owner is facing charges. One dog was found dead and "several others were taken for emergency medical treatment," officials said. "More information on the dogs' health and any possible adoptions will be announced as it is determined."
Carbon monoxide poisoning in Ohio sends at least 11 to hospital: Authorities are trying to find the source of carbon monoxide at a hotel that sent at least 11 people, including five adults and six children, to a hospital. Marysville Fire Chief Jay Riley told the Columbus Dispatch that everyone who was hospitalized had been in the pool area of the Hampton Inn. Authorities said a 911 call Saturday evening said a 2-year-old girl fell into the pool or was found unconscious there. More 911 calls soon followed about people unconscious or feeling such symptoms as dizziness and a burning in the throat, Marysville Police Chief Tony Brooks said. Officials said the building was evacuated, and Riley said any potential sources of carbon monoxide had been shut off. | 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 on Sunday, Jan. 30, 2022 fired at least one suspected ballistic missile into the sea, its 7th round of weapons launches this month, in an apparent attempt to pressure the Biden administration over long-stalled nuclear negotiations. 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, File) (Uncredited/KCNA via KNS) | null | null | null | null | null |
Temperature at Dulles Airport drops into single digits as cold continues
We’ve heard lately about blustery conditions driving our wind chill temperatures down to the single digits. But at one of the area’s airports Sunday, the actual temperature, unaided by wind, dropped into the single digits.
The 9-degree morning low at Dulles International Airport came as one more sign of a cold day and weekend in the metropolitan area.
It was the lowest reading at Dulles Airport in more than a year.
Sunday’s cold visited at a time with its share of risks and perils, and it helped create a cold-weather metaphor for the situation. A glance at the Potomac River revealed it to be coated by what seemed obviously thin ice.
It served as further notice that the final weekend of January, typically our coldest month, would not readily surrender to any warming trends.
Differences can be found throughout the metropolitan area, but often they turn out to be less distinct than Sunday’s.
On Sunday, the official low temperature in Washington fell to 18 degrees, one of the month’s three lowest.
Yet that low was a full nine degrees above the low at Dulles Airport.
For the record, we did not spend all of Sunday in frozen immobility.
The temperature in Washington did rise high enough for a time to touch the freezing mark.
Sunday’s official high temperature was 32 degrees, recorded at 3:49 p.m. | null | null | null | null | null |
Authorities said they seized about $900,000 during a search of Julie DeVuono’s home while investigating the alleged sale of fake vaccination cards. (Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office)
Some people have sought to evade mounting restrictions on where unvaccinated people can work and participate in public life.
Police searched DeVuono’s home and seized about $900,000, the district attorney’s office said, as well as a ledger of earnings from the card operation that they say began in November 2021. Photos of the seizures shared by prosecutors show piles of cash.
DeVuono and Urraro were arraigned Friday and released, according to online court records. Both are scheduled to appear in Suffolk 1st District Court on Feb. 8. | null | null | null | null | null |
INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Rainbow signs and white party tents littered the parking lots, like teasers to the big show. Music blared from the DJ’s booth as fans, forced to take more circuitous routes around the Super Bowl signs, filtered in for a familiar matchup with the familiar big plays and close ending.
Call it the preshow, 60 minutes of back-and-forth between a pair of NFC West rivals with the victor earning a ticket to Super Bowl LVI, back here at SoFi Stadium in just 14 days.
Sunday evening, after losing twice to the San Francisco 49ers earlier in the season, the Los Angeles Rams capitalized late to win 20-17 and return to the Super Bowl for the second time in four seasons. The win was the Rams’ first victory over the 49ers in six meetings, dating back to 2018, and made them the first team in NFL history to host both a conference championship and a Super Bowl in the same season.
Yet it wasn’t always pretty and it certainly wasn’t easy, but somehow Cooper Kupp, Los Angeles’s star receiver, made it all look simple.
The 28-yard-old compiled 142 receiving yards a week after recording 183 in a divisional win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and set the Rams up for their go-ahead score in the final minutes.
The Rams out-gained the 49ers 396 yards to 282, but the biggest discrepancy was on third downs, where L.A. converted 11 of 18 attempts (61 percent), compared to only 3 of 9 (33 percent) by the 49ers.
Jimmy Garoppolo, starting in likely his last game as a 49er, finished 16 of 30 in passing for 232 yards, two touchdowns and an interception for an 87.1 passer rating.
His counterpart, Matthew Stafford, meanwhile, had 45 pass attempts, completing 31 of them for 337 yards, two touchdowns and interception for a 96.2 rating.
Unlike Garoppolo, whose interception with barely 1:19 remaining in the game sealed the 49ers’ loss, Stafford’s pick came early, on the Rams’ opening drive. The quarterback tried to hit Kupp on a slant from the 49ers’ 3-yard line, but cornerback K’Waun Williams, who was glued to Kupp’s hip, swatted the ball at the edge of the goal line. Safety Jimmie Ward caught the deflected pass and zig-zagged up field 23 yards.
It wasn’t until the second quarter that both teams found the end zone. The Rams struck first, taking 18 plays and eating 9 minutes, 33 seconds for Stafford to find his favorite target, Kupp, for a back-shoulder touchdown pass. But first, the two set it up on a third and 13, with Kupp lined up out wide in a trips formation. The 28-yard-old receiver put a double-move on cornerback Ambry Thomas to gain a good two yards of separation as he turned to the sideline for a 15-yard catch.
The 49ers responded in less than 3 minutes, thanks to a 31-yard pass from Garoppolo to Brandon Aiyuk, and later a 44-yard catch-and-run by Deebo Samuel, who took a reception in the flat and wove his way up field. Samuel dodged three defenders, even stiff-armed 312-pound defensive lineman Greg Gaines, before diving over the pylon to tie the score at 7-7.
The first half was controlled by the Rams, whose defense held the 49ers to only six first downs and a 33 percent third-down conversion rate, and whose offense consumed 20 minutes and 19 seconds. Stafford attempted 24 passes compared to Garoppolo’s 12 in that span. Yet it was the 49ers who went into the break with the lead.
Stafford missed receiver Odell Beckham Jr. on a deep ball to squander the Rams’ final drive of the half and leave enough time for San Francisco to take the lead. A couple of chunk plays — an 11-yard completion to tight end George Kittle and a 13-yarder to Aiyuk — set up a 38-yard field goal by Robbie Gould.
But Garoppolo, among the more enigmatic quarterbacks, continued to defy logic in the third quarter, missing receivers on short slants, or throwing high on in-breaking routes, before tossing a perfect deep ball to the end zone. After rookie receiver Jauan Jennings stretched to catch an 11-yard pass that was high and slightly outside, Garoppolo went deep with a toss just high enough for Kittle to pull down the 50-50 ball in the end zone and expand the 49ers lead to 17-7.
When Stafford narrowed the 49ers’ lead with yet another touchdown pass to Kupp, early in the fourth quarter, the 49ers were prepared to hand the ball back to them at the 45-yard, when a quarterback sneak on a fourth-and-1 came up short. But Rams Coach Sean McVay oddly challenged the ruling, arguing the 49ers fumbled.
The ruling was upheld, stripping McVay of his final timeout and challenge, but not of his chance to win. Stafford led the Rams back down the field, resulting in a 40-yard kick to tie the game at 17-all. Then his defense, with its swarming defensive line, rattled Garoppolo deep in his own territory and forced a punt.
Garoppolo had a minute and 46 seconds to respond, but was picked off and immediately surrounded by players in blue jerseys leaping in celebration. | null | null | null | null | null |
INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Rainbow-colored signs and white party tents littered the parking lots, and the music from a DJ’s booth blared. Teasers of the big show were unavoidable, but few could have imagined the outcome of the pre-show Sunday night. Not even Matthew Stafford, who was traded to Los Angeles exactly one year earlier, or Von Miller, who was traded here less than three months ago, or his sidekick Odell Beckham Jr., who joined days later.
After a back-and-forth battle between a pair of NFC West rivals, the Rams and their remade roster edged the San Francisco 49ers, 20-17, in the final minutes of the NFC championship game to earn a ticket to Super Bowl LVI, back at SoFi Stadium in 14 days. It was the Rams’ first victory over the 49ers in seven meetings, dating back to 2018, and made them the first team in NFL history to host both a conference championship and a Super Bowl in the same season.
The close win, secured by a go-ahead field goal by kicker Matt Gay and sealed with an interception by linebacker Travin Howard, embodied Los Angeles’s season and was reflective of its quarterback and surrounding playmakers: gritty and resilient. While it wasn’t always pretty and it certainly didn’t look easy, the Rams got it done.
“Today was a great sign of the resilience,” Rams Coach Sean McVay said. “… You got down 17-7, it doesn’t look good, but the guys just stayed in the moment. One play at a time. Did a great job. And the defense to be able to close it out. … There were just so many great plays by great players.”
The Rams outgained the 49ers 396 yards to 282, but the biggest discrepancy was on third downs, where L.A. converted 11 of 18 attempts (61 percent), compared with only 3 of 9 (33 percent) by the 49ers.
Jimmy Garoppolo, starting in possibly his final game as a 49er, finished 16 of 30 in passing for 232 yards, two touchdowns and an interception for an 87.1 passer rating.
Unlike Garoppolo, whose interception with 1:19 remaining in the game sealed the 49ers’ loss, Stafford’s pick came early, on the Rams’ opening drive. The quarterback tried to hit Kupp on a slant from the 49ers 3-yard line, but cornerback K’Waun Williams, who was glued to Kupp’s hip, swatted the ball at the edge of the goal line. Safety Jimmie Ward caught the deflected pass and zig-zagged upfield 23 yards.
It wasn’t until the second quarter that both teams found the end zone. The Rams struck first, taking 18 plays and eating 9 minutes 33 seconds for Stafford to find his favorite target, Kupp, for a back-shoulder touchdown pass. But first, the two set it up on third and 13, with Kupp lined up out wide in a trips formation. Kupp put a double-move on cornerback Ambry Thomas to gain a good two yards of separation as he turned to the sideline for a 15-yard catch.
The first half was controlled by the Rams, whose defense held the 49ers to only six first downs, and whose offense consumed 20 minutes and 19 seconds. Stafford attempted 24 passes compared to Garoppolo’s 12 in that span. Yet it was the 49ers who went into the break with the lead.
Stafford missed Beckham on a deep ball to squander the Rams’ final drive of the half and leave enough time for San Francisco to take the lead. A couple of chunk plays — an 11-yard completion to tight end George Kittle and a 13-yarder to Aiyuk — set up a 38-yard field goal by Robbie Gould.
But Garoppolo, among the more enigmatic quarterbacks, continued to defy logic in the third quarter, missing receivers on short slants or throwing high on in-breaking routes, before tossing a perfect deep ball to the end zone. After rookie receiver Jauan Jennings stretched to catch an 11-yard pass that was high and slightly outside, Garoppolo went deep with a toss just high enough for Kittle to pull down the 50-50 ball in the end zone and expand the 49ers’ lead to 17-7.
When Stafford narrowed the 49ers’ lead with yet another touchdown pass to Kupp early in the fourth quarter, the 49ers were prepared to hand the ball back to them at the 45-yard line when a run by Kyle Juszczyk on a third and two came up short. But McVay oddly challenged the ruling, arguing the 49ers fumbled.
“A long time coming, you know," he said. | null | null | null | null | null |
Howard Hesseman, comic DJ on ‘WKRP,’ dies at 81
He later played actor-turned-history teacher on ‘Head of the Class’
Howard Hesseman in 2013. (Richard Shotwell/Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)
Howard Hesseman, who played the hippie disc jockey Dr. Johnny Fever on the sitcom “WKRP in Cincinnati” and the actor-turned-history teacher Charlie Moore on “Head of the Class,” died Jan. 29 in Los Angeles. He was 81.
The cause was complications from colon surgery, said his manager, Robbie Kass.
Mr. Hesseman, who had himself been a radio DJ in the 1960s, received two Emmy Award nominations for his supporting role as Johnny Fever on CBS’s “WKRP in Cincinnati,” which aired from 1978-1982.
Mr. Hesseman told the New York Times in 1979 that the character, with his ’60s counterculture spirit, made network executives nervous. In one episode, Fever is given an on-air sobriety test after being given alcohol, only his reaction time keeps improving.
“I think maybe Johnny smokes a little marijuana, drinks beer and wine, and maybe a little hard liquor,” he said. “And on one of those hard mornings at the station, he might take what for many years was referred to as a diet pill. But he is a moderate user of soft drugs, specifically marijuana.”
Mr. Hesseman had played a hippie in one of his first roles, on the TV show “Dragnet” in 1967, and also in the 1968 film “Petulia.” He wasn’t so disconnected from some of the characters he played. He once told People magazine that he had conducted “pharmaceutical experiments in recreational chemistry.” In 1963, he was jailed in San Francisco for selling marijuana.
George Howard Hesseman was born in Lebanon, Ore., on Feb. 27, 1940. Initially performing under the name Don Sturdy, he started out as a member of the San Francisco improv group The Committee, which regularly performed at antiwar and civil rights protests.
At the time, he also moonlighted on Saturdays as the disc jockey for the San Francisco rock-and-roll station KMPX. Later on “WKRP in Cincinnati” Mr. Hesseman often ad-libbed his on-air banter.
“Impossible to overstate Howard Hesseman’s influence on his and subsequent generations of improvisors,” said the actor and comedian Michael McKean on Twitter. He recalled first seeing Mr. Hesseman in 1971 with The Committee. “I saw that he was the real deal.”
Mr. Hesseman appeared briefly but memorably with McKean in the 1984 rockumentary “This Is Spinal Tap” as Terry Ladd, manager to the rock superstar Duke Fame. He frankly ends a conversation: “We’d love to stay and chat but we’re going to sit in the lobby and wait for the limo.”
In the ABC sitcom “Head of the Class,” which ran from 1986 to 1991, Mr. Hesseman played a teacher to a diverse group of overachieving students. Mr. Hesseman was sometimes critical of the show — co-created by political activist and writer Michael Elias — for not being as adventurous as he had hoped it would be. He departed after four seasons and was replaced by Billy Connolly in the fifth and final season.
“Part of me says, ‘Is that all there is? A television series?’ Obviously not. I could go on stage or scratch my way into the movies,” Mr. Hesseman said in a 1989 interview. “But how many movies are made that you want to be a part of? And how many want you? There is a certain kind of ‘for-rent’ sign on my forehead. I’m an actor and I like to work.”
A prolific character actor, Mr. Hesseman’s credits included appearances on “The Bob Newhart Show,” "That 70′s Show,” “Fresh Off the Boat,” “House” and “Boston Legal.” His films included “The Sunshine Boys,” “Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment,” “About Schmidt” and “The Rocker.”
His marriages to Karen Saintsure and Catherine Maison ended in divorce. Survivors include his third wife, actress and acting teacher Caroline Ducrocq. | null | null | null | null | null |
Miss USA 2019 and “Extra” correspondent Cheslie Kryst died Jan. 30 in New York. (Jemal Countess/Getty Images/BET)
Unlike most pageant queens, Kryst had already established a high-powered professional career when she won Miss USA. With a law degree and an MBA from Wake Forest University, Kryst was working as an attorney in North Carolina when she entered the 2019 competition. Her résumé and stage presence dazzled judges and earned her legions of fans, and her victory was a highlight in a historic year that saw Black women win all five major beauty pageants. Kryst wore her crown on top of her natural curls, a decision she hoped would empower other women to feel confident wearing their hair natural, she said in an interview with Refinery 29.
In “There She Was,” a history of the Miss America pageant published last year, Post editor Amy Argetsinger wrote that the moment marked a triumph for the “movement of African-American women trying to overturn the rigid old beauty standards that forced generations into the painful conformity of flat-ironing or chemically straightening their hair.”
And Post columnist Christine Emba wrote that Kryst’s crowning could be a force by which “stereotypes can be corrected and misunderstandings changed.”
Kryst was among the pageant winners shouted out by then-Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), who said of her and her fellow champions: “You are trailblazers, creating your own path on your own terms. Congratulations.”
During the Q&A portion of the Miss USA contest, Kryst did not shy away from potentially inflammatory subjects, addressing the #MeToo movement and other social justice initiatives head-on.
“I don’t think these movements have gone too far,” Kryst said then. “What #MeToo and #TimesUp are about are making sure that we foster safe and inclusive workplaces in our country. As an attorney, that’s exactly what I want to hear, and that’s exactly what I want for this country.”
After she won, Kryst joined “Extra” as a correspondent, someone the nationally syndicated show’s producers praised as “a moment-making machine.”
“Our hearts are broken,” the show’s staff said in a statement after her death. “Cheslie was not just a vital part of our show, she was a beloved part of our ‘Extra’ family and touched the entire staff. Our deepest condolences to all her family and friends.”
Kryst was born in Michigan and moved to the Carolinas as a child, eventually attending the University of South Carolina, where she competed as a Division I track and field athlete and graduated from the business school. She went on to earn her law and graduate degrees at Wake Forest.
Kryst’s fellow Miss USA 2019 contestant Tianna Tuamoheloa said in an interview Sunday that Kryst “really did just have a light about her.” She streamed live workouts with her mother after the pandemic hit. Even if friends hadn’t talked to her in a while, Tuamoheloa said, they knew she had their back.
Tuamoheloa, 29, was the first national Miss USA contestant of Samoan descent, the Associated Press reported at the time. She is also part African American and has spoken about the joy and weight of representing many people as a “mixed girl on stage.”
“For anyone who is looking for a role model in pageantry, Cheslie would be that. Specifically for any Black girl who wanted to compete,” Tuamoheloa said. “She was our Miss USA.”
Tuamoheloa, who represented Nevada in the national competition that year, said she will remember Kryst as a quiet, funny and supportive person who was incredibly busy. She kept in touch with other Miss USA contestants in an active group chat.
In Instagram posts on Sunday, other 2019 Miss USA contestants paid tribute to “Our sister, our friend, our role model, our Miss USA.”
“You were a vibrant, strong and beautiful light,” said the statement, signed by the pageant’s 2019 class. “You inspired us beyond measure. Your impact will be forever remembered.”
Tuamoheloa wrote of Kryst: “I have ALWAYS prided myself in saying that I shared not only a stage with you, but a sisterhood. You were historical. Graceful. Uplifting.”
“God knew what he was doing by blessing us to experience your beautiful, big-haired, bright beam of light,” she wrote. | null | null | null | null | null |
Arrest made in council candidate’s carjacking, D.C. police say
Candidate’s car was taken at gunpoint, according to police.
A teenager from Maryland has been arrested and charged in connection with the carjacking of a candidate for the D.C. Council, D.C. police said Sunday.
The youth, a 17-year-old male from District Heights, was charged with robbery in connection with an incident in which a car was taken from Nate Fleming on Jan. 15 in the 4200 block of Nannie Helen Burroughs Avenue NE, according to police.
In the carjacking, police said, a robber approached, showed a pistol and got the victim’s car keys. The robber fled in Fleming’s car and another robber fled the scene in another vehicle, police said.
The 17-year-old was arrested Friday, and based on investigation by members of the police anti-carjacking task force, charged in the carjacking of the candidate, police said. Fleming has been running for an at-large seat.
Police said they are still investigating.
Carjackings have been occurring in the District at an increasing rate, and represent a major law enforcement problem. | null | null | null | null | null |
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Evan McPherson kicked a 31-yard field goal with 9:22 left in overtime after Joe Burrow kept his cool while leading a furious second-half comeback to get the Cincinnati Bengals to the Super Bowl for the first time in 33 years with a 27-24 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC championship game.
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Helio Castroneves climbed the fence for the third time this calendar year Sunday after earning another crown jewel victory, this time a second consecutive win in the Rolex 24 at Daytona. | null | null | null | null | null |
Covid-19 live updates Spotify to add content advisories to podcasts after pandemic misinformation complaints
In Germany’s east, extremists find footholds in escalating anti-vaccine protests
Pope calls access to accurate information on vaccines ‘a human right’
Neil Young fired off a public missive to his management last week, demanding that his music be removed from Spotify in protest over misinformation about covid-19 on Joe Rogan's popular podcast. Rogan defended his podcast but said he would do his best to balance out perspectives among his guests. (AP)
Spotify will start adding content advisories to podcast episodes about covid-19, the streaming service announced Sunday, after Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and other artists demanded the platform remove their music, saying it allows misinformation to spread about the pandemic and vaccines.
Their objections put the spotlight on provocative podcaster Joe Rogan, who has suggested that healthy, young people shouldn’t get vaccinated and praised unproven treatments for the coronavirus, such as the anti-parasite drug ivermectin. An open letter signed by medical and scientific professionals recently called on Spotify to “immediately establish a clear and public policy to moderate misinformation on its platform.”
Other platforms, including social media giants Facebook and Twitter, have employed disclaimers similar to the one Spotify has promised, as they have struggled to find and take down anti-vaccine propaganda. But false claims continue to proliferate.
In a video posted after Spotify’s announcement, Rogan praised the platform’s decision to add the disclaimer, which according to Spotify will direct users to a hub of “data-driven facts.” At the same time, he questioned the use of the term “misinformation” and defended his decision to invite guests who “have an opinion that’s different from the mainstream narrative.”
Two New York nurses were arrested last week after authorities said they made more than $1.5 million selling fake coronavirus vaccination cards.
Protests in Germany are growing, along with anti-vaccine movements across Europe, as winter surges in infections have brought new restrictions and mandates.
Rapper Kanye West must be fully vaccinated if he wants to perform in Australia in March, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has said.
The response to reporters comes after a furor erupted this month over the controversial entry of unvaccinated tennis player Novak Djokovic, who had been slated to play in the Australian Open. Djokovic lost his legal challenge to remain and compete without being vaccinated against the coronavirus.
“The rules are you have to be fully vaccinated,” Morrison said at a news conference. “They apply to everybody, as people have seen most recently. It doesn’t matter who you are, they are the rules. Follow the rules, you can come. You don’t follow the rules, you can’t.”
The government had argued Djokovic’s presence in the country might incite anti-vaccine sentiment and “civil unrest.” Nearly 80 percent of Australia’s population is fully vaccinated, according to Johns Hopkins University data. (Rafael Nadal won the men’s tournament Sunday and with it a record 21st Grand Slam title that Djokovic was also chasing.)
The Sydney Morning Herald reported Friday that West — who released an album, “Donda,” in the summer — was slated to play a series of stadium concerts in March. West’s vaccination status isn’t known. The rapper took an anti-vaccine, anti-abortion stance in his presidential bid in 2020, declaring himself skeptical about a coronavirus vaccine. A representative for West wasn’t immediately available to comment on his vaccine status or to confirm the impending tour.
By Loveday Morris and Vanessa Guinan-Bank4:00 a.m.
By María Paúl and Adela Suliman3:59 a.m. | null | null | null | null | null |
Kiara Age moved in less than a year ago and now it’s time to move again: Rent on her two-bedroom apartment in Henderson, Nev., is rising 23 percent to nearly $1,600 a month, making it impossibly out of reach for the single mother.
Rental prices across the country have been rising for months, but lately the increases have been sharper and more widespread, forcing millions of Americans to reassess their living situations.
“The fact is, for too many Americans, housing is unaffordable,” said Dennis Shea, executive director of the J. Ronald Terwilliger Center for Housing Policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “We have an inadequate supply of homes — for both rent and for sale — and of course the lowest income families are being hit hardest.”
Aleksei Valentín and his husband, both doctoral students, recently downsized from a one-bedroom apartment in Frederick, Md., to a studio in a neighboring county in search of lower rents. Their previous building repeatedly hiked amenity fees during the pandemic, Valentín said, adding about $200 in extra charges to their monthly rent of $1,290. That apartment is now on the market for $1,600.
There were other problems too but the final straw, he said, came when the company removed the dumpster closest to his apartment. Valentín, who is in a wheelchair, said he had to travel a quarter-mile to dispose of his trash. Now he and his husband pay $1,400 a month and said they were deliberate about moving to a county with strong tenant rights laws.
LeMere, who used to work as an accountant, receives $900 a month in disability benefits. Her wife, Brandi Kalinowski, spent a decade as an auditor for a national grocery chain but quit last week in anticipation of the move. | null | null | null | null | null |
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — When the coin fell on the grass and showed tails, Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow grimaced beneath his helmet as if it crushed his soul when it landed.
A week earlier on this very field, a different team played the Kansas City Chiefs to overtime. And when the official requested that a visiting player from that team pick heads or tails, he chose heads and was wrong. Moments later, the Chiefs turned that coin flip into a touchdown drive and a rousing, magical win.
So on Sunday at Arrowhead Stadium, with a trip to the Super Bowl on the line, you could forgive Burrow — known for his unflappable coolness — for letting an honest expression slip across his face when his backup also chose heads and he, too, was wrong.
But a coin couldn’t hurt Burrow. It seems nothing at this point can stop him and these Bengals. Not the Chiefs and certainly not the decades of doubt and suffering that had tormented this franchise and its city. And because rookie kicker Evan McPherson boots game-winners like they’re chip shots and Burrow, who at this time last year was recovering from a torn ACL and MCL, smokes opponents as if they’re celebratory cigars, the underdogs shocked the standard-bearer of the AFC and created a sentence that seems too silly for anyone to comprehend:
The Bengals won, 27-24, in overtime of the AFC championship game, and they are going to the Super Bowl.
“I wouldn’t call it surreal. I would say it’s exciting,” Burrow said. “I think if you would have told me before the season that we’d be going to the Super Bowl, I probably would have called you crazy.”
There were so many moments early in the game when the Bengals’ Super Bowl chances seemed like lunacy. Such as when Patrick Mahomes wiggled out of pressure and then found Travis Kelce in the end zone. Or when he connected with wide receiver Mecole Hardman for the third touchdown and a 21-3 lead.
The coin, that tiny, circular weapon that helped take down the Buffalo Bills a week ago, prompted Bills quarterback Josh Allen, watching from home, to tweet one word: “Pain.” It prompted Chiefs fans to make a wave of sound that gushed throughout the stadium.
“Our guys were tired and stretched thin,” Bengals Coach Zac Taylor said of his defense, which already had battled through a six-minute drive to end regulation.
Mahomes shook off his coat as if he was ready to lead the Chiefs to a third straight Super Bowl appearance, then the unthinkable — he almost threw a pick-six. He followed that with an actual interception. Burrow, now displaying his usual visage of calm and control, took the field, and then the Bengals snatched the conference away from Kansas City’s clutches.
No matter how much Burrow hated the narrative — sorry, bud, but the Bengals came into this game as the underdogs — he couldn’t do a thing to change people’s minds about who runs the AFC. The Bengals finished last in their division from 2018 to 2020 and are just two years removed from a dreadful two-win season.
They weren’t supposed to win on this field, the place where postseason upsets come to die. The Chiefs had won six straight playoff games at Arrowhead, which was the longest active home winning streak in the league. And they weren’t supposed to beat this quarterback, the dynamic passer who appeared to be Tom Brady’s successor.
Over the four years in which he rocketed to top billing — no television commercial break is safe without this guy pitching insurance or shampoo — Mahomes had lost to only one quarterback in the postseason. A quarterback who wasn’t really a quarterback at all but a goat masquerading in human flesh.
Only Brady (2019 with the New England Patriots and last year with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the Super Bowl) had bested Mahomes in the playoffs. That was it, the whole list. And now, with the 44-year-old Brady apparently on the way out and Ben Roethlisberger retiring, Mahomes seemed destined to fill the gap as the game’s best passer and brightest star.
But along came Burrow and his 23-for-38 line with 250 yards and two touchdowns. He interrupted the Chiefs’ dynasty and then showed up to speak to the media wearing a black turtleneck, an iced-out “JB 9” necklace (“They’re definitely real; I make too much money to have fake ones,” he said of the diamonds) and the look of a man ready to make the unexpected, the inconceivable and the crazy very much possible. | null | null | null | null | null |
The tests may slow down in February, though, with some analysts expecting North Korea to pause with the start of the Beijing Winter Games this weekend, to avoid crossing China, its key security and economic ally.
Since last fall, Pyongyang has conducted a flurry of tests designed to diversify and expand its arsenal with a variety of new missile systems, as a part of leader Kim Jong Un’s five-year plan to expand his nuclear arsenal. These tests have become so routine that they are rarely featured on the front page of state-run newspapers nowadays. According to NK News, January tied the record set in the summer of 2019 for the most test launches in a 30-day period.
Missile tests can serve many purposes, from improving technical capabilities for new missiles or doing quality control of existing systems, to sending a domestic political message that the regime is taking care of its people — despite a deteriorating economy from its strict, self-imposed covid border lockdown that has strained its food and cash flow.
It also serves as a reminder of the lack of progress made on jump-starting diplomatic negotiations with the regime — after U.S.-North Korea nuclear talks collapsed in 2019 — and how North Korea’s progress on improving its military capabilities have evolved in the three years since.
The Biden administration, however, has not shown it is willing to grant the sanctions relief that Kim seeks. Meanwhile, South Korea has continued to build up its military capabilities, which it describes is a defensive measure toward the nuclear-armed North.
But as demonstrated in the past month, Kim has continued to test ballistic missiles despite the multiple United Nations resolutions banning all ballistic missile and nuclear weapons-related activities.
In fact, China and Russia, members of the U.N. Security Council, have not only pushed back on the U.S. bid to impose new sanctions, but have pushed for sanctions relief for North Korea, noting that Pyongyang has not tested any nuclear devices or intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the United States.
Analysts say that North Korea is taking advantage of the divide between the U.S. view of ballistic tests and that of China and Russia, to improve its ballistic missile program without prompting a unified punitive reaction from the U.N. Security Council against Pyongyang. | null | null | null | null | null |
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