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Garvin leads Hampton against South Carolina Upstate after 28-point game
South Carolina Upstate Spartans (9-11, 6-2 Big South) at Hampton Pirates (6-12, 2-5 Big South)
BOTTOM LINE: Hampton plays the South Carolina Upstate Spartans after Najee Garvin scored 28 points in Hampton’s 78-74 victory against the Charleston Southern Buccaneers.
The Pirates are 4-1 on their home court. Hampton is 2-9 against opponents over .500.
The Spartans are 6-2 against conference opponents. South Carolina Upstate is 4-8 against opponents over .500.
The Pirates and Spartans match up Wednesday for the first time in Big South play this season. | null | null | null | null | null |
NJIT takes on Vermont on 6-game losing streak
NJIT Highlanders (8-11, 3-6 America East) at Vermont Catamounts (15-4, 8-0 America East)
BOTTOM LINE: NJIT looks to stop its six-game skid with a win against Vermont.
The Catamounts have gone 9-0 in home games. Vermont leads the America East with 13.5 assists per game led by Isaiah Powell averaging 3.1.
The Highlanders have gone 3-6 against America East opponents. NJIT gives up 67.7 points to opponents while being outscored by 3.4 points per game.
The Catamounts and Highlanders face off Wednesday for the first time in conference play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Ryan Davis is scoring 17.1 points per game and averaging 5.6 rebounds for the Catamounts. Ben Shungu is averaging 17.5 points and 3.9 rebounds over the last 10 games for Vermont.
Miles Coleman is averaging 15.9 points and 6.3 rebounds for the Highlanders. Dylan O’Hearn is averaging 7.4 points over the last 10 games for NJIT. | null | null | null | null | null |
Spencer, Loyola (MD) Greyhounds take on the Army Black Knights
Army Black Knights (13-9, 7-3 Patriot) at Loyola (MD) Greyhounds (12-9, 6-4 Patriot)
BOTTOM LINE: Patriot foes Loyola (MD) and Army face off on Wednesday.
The Greyhounds are 8-1 in home games. Loyola (MD) scores 68.7 points and has outscored opponents by 1.4 points per game.
The Black Knights are 7-3 in Patriot play. Army leads the Patriot with 9.5 offensive rebounds per game led by Charlie Peterson averaging 2.2.
The teams play for the second time in conference play this season. The Black Knights won the last matchup 77-74 on Jan. 1. Jalen Rucker scored 21 points to help lead the Black Knights to the victory.
TOP PERFORMERS: Cam Spencer is shooting 47.1% and averaging 19.0 points for the Greyhounds. Jaylin Andrews is averaging 10.8 points over the last 10 games for Loyola (MD).
Rucker is scoring 15.9 points per game with 4.0 rebounds and 2.9 assists for the Black Knights. Josh Caldwell is averaging 8.7 points and 1.7 steals over the past 10 games for Army. | null | null | null | null | null |
UNC Greensboro hosts VMI following Bonham's 21-point game
VMI Keydets (12-10, 5-5 SoCon) at UNC Greensboro Spartans (12-9, 4-5 SoCon)
BOTTOM LINE: VMI visits the UNC Greensboro Spartans after Trey Bonham scored 21 points in VMI’s 83-79 win over the East Tennessee State Buccaneers.
The Spartans are 7-2 in home games. UNC Greensboro is 4-3 in games decided by 10 points or more.
The Keydets have gone 5-5 against SoCon opponents. VMI is second in the SoCon shooting 37.9% from downtown. Cooper Sisco leads the Keydets shooting 70% from 3-point range.
The teams square off for the second time this season in SoCon play. The Spartans won the last matchup 72-56 on Jan. 8. Kobe Langley scored 18 points points to help lead the Spartans to the win.
TOP PERFORMERS: De’Monte Buckingham is scoring 13.9 points per game with 7.0 rebounds and 1.2 assists for the Spartans. Kaleb Hunter is averaging 8.0 points and 2.7 rebounds while shooting 42.1% over the last 10 games for UNC Greensboro.
Jake Stephens is scoring 18.8 points per game with 9.1 rebounds and 3.3 assists for the Keydets. Kamdyn Curfman is averaging 13.1 points and 2.6 rebounds while shooting 41.6% over the past 10 games for VMI. | null | null | null | null | null |
Michigan takes on Nebraska following Dickinson's 25-point game
Nebraska Cornhuskers (6-15, 0-10 Big Ten) at Michigan Wolverines (10-8, 4-4 Big Ten)
Ann Arbor, Michigan; Tuesday, 9 p.m. EST
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: Michigan -14.5; over/under is 144.5
BOTTOM LINE: Michigan hosts the Nebraska Cornhuskers after Hunter Dickinson scored 25 points in Michigan’s 83-67 loss to the Michigan State Spartans.
The Wolverines are 6-2 in home games. Michigan is sixth in the Big Ten with 9.1 offensive rebounds per game led by Moussa Diabate averaging 2.6.
The Cornhuskers are 0-10 in conference play. Nebraska gives up 78.0 points to opponents and has been outscored by 5.7 points per game.
The teams square off for the 10th time this season in Big Ten play. The Wolverines won the last meeting 102-67 on Dec. 8. Terrance Williams II scored 22 points points to help lead the Wolverines to the win.
TOP PERFORMERS: Caleb averages 1.8 made 3-pointers per game for the Wolverines, scoring 10.7 points while shooting 36.8% from beyond the arc. Dickinson is averaging 17 points and 8.2 rebounds over the past 10 games for Michigan.
Derrick Walker is averaging 9.5 points and 5.7 rebounds for the Cornhuskers. Bryce McGowens is averaging 11.2 points over the last 10 games for Nebraska. | null | null | null | null | null |
Austria’s vaccine mandate for all adults comes into force this week, in a rollout closely watched by other nations mulling whether to follow suit.
Over a billion people will celebrate the Lunar New Year on Tuesday across Asia and globally, ringing in the Year of the Tiger. Before the pandemic, the holiday often prompted the world’s largest annual migration of people. But the virus will again necessitate scaled-down travel and festivities.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has added 12 more destinations to its list of places that Americans should avoid due to “very high” levels of covid-19, including a popular nearby getaway.
Mexico, which does not require visitors to show proof of vaccination or a negative coronavirus test, is now considered a “Level 4” country. States that include popular tourist destinations like Cabo San Lucas, Cancún and Mexico City have seen cases rise sharply amid the omicron surge.
Other countries and territories that moved to the CDC’s highest level on Monday are Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, French Guiana, Anguilla, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Kosovo, Moldova, Singapore and the Philippines. The “Level 4” list includes more than 100 destinations, with several popular Caribbean islands added last week. | null | null | null | null | null |
In this photo released by the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army Spc. Scottlin Bartlett of the 5-52 Air Defense Artillery Battalion signals to a colleague while working near a Patriot missile battery at Al-Dhafra Air Base in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, May 5, 2021. The U.S. military launched Patriot interceptor missiles during an attack Monday, Jan. 31, 2022, by Yemen’s Houthi rebels that targeted the United Arab Emirates during a visit by Israel’s president, the second-such time American troops have opened fire, officials said. (Staff Sgt. Jao’Torey Johnson/U.S. Air Force via AP) (Staff Sgt. JaoTorey Johnson/U.S. Air Force) | null | null | null | null | null |
Tabitha Peterson will lead the U.S. women's curling team at the Beijing Olympics. (Jeff Mcintosh/AP)
One wouldn’t think a sport that’s been dubbed “chess on ice” would be one of the more popular Olympic competitions, but curling has overcome its bookish nickname to attract a sizable amount of attention every four years. And considering everything involved with the sport — strategy, yelling, big polished rocks, overly ardent sweeping — what’s not to love?
Here’s a look at the basics of curling, darling of the Winter Olympics.
Where did curling originate?
What is a power play in curling?
How does the Olympic curling tournament work? | null | null | null | null | null |
The United States' David Wise will be seeking his third consecutive gold medal in the men’s halfpipe. (Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images)
Freestyle skiing first appeared at the Winter Olympics as a demonstration sport in 1988 and became a medal sport four years later at the Albertville Games — and it has evolved to include six events in men’s and women’s competition this year in Beijing. It will include two new events: men’s and women’s big air and mixed team aerials.
Those events will be held from Feb. 3 to Feb. 19 at Genting Snow Park in Zhangjiakou and Big Air Shougang in Beijing.
Here’s what to know about freestyle skiing at the Winter Olympics:
Blending speed, agility, acrobatics and showmanship while performing aerial tricks, freestyle skiing features six events apiece on the men’s and women’s side: aerials, big air, halfpipe, moguls, ski cross and slopestyle. In addition to the debut of big air, these Olympics also will include a mixed team event in aerials for the first time. Here is a breakdown of the events and judging:
Aerials: Athletes perform acrobatic twists and flips in the air after skiing off a ramp. The total score is calculated by adding together air, form and landing scores, then multiplying by the jump’s degree of difficulty.
Halfpipe: Skiers perform jumps and turns in a halfpipe structure — a U-shaped course with 22-foot walls. Five judges assess runs based on height, difficulty, variety, execution and progression of tricks, averaging the scores in each category.
Moguls: Skiers traverse a sloped course covered in mounds of snow. Each run is judged by a panel of judges. Sixty percent of the score is judged on turns, 20 percent on air and 20 percent on speed, as each run is timed.
Ski cross: Four athletes race down a course featuring jumps, rollers and banks. Intentional contact — by pushing, pulling or another method that causes another skier to slow down, fall or exit the course — is grounds for disqualification.
Slopestyle: Performing on a course with obstacles such as rails, tables, boxes and jumps, skiers are judged on criteria such as progression, amplitude, execution, variety and difficulty of tricks.
Big air: Skiers glide down a nearly 60-foot ramp that propels them into the air, where they perform tricks that are judged on factors such as number of rotations, flips and grabs.
Mixed team aerials: Each team consists of three skiers, with at least one of each gender, to perform aerial maneuvers. The individual scores are added together, and the team with the highest score wins.
How many athletes can compete in freestyle skiing at the Olympics?
A total of 284 athletes will compete in freestyle skiing in Beijing — 142 men and 142 women. A maximum of 16 men or 16 women can compete for each country.
Who won medals in freestyle skiing in 2018?
The United States’ David Wise again will be a headliner in Beijing as he aims to win his third consecutive gold medal in the men’s halfpipe. After winning his first gold in Sochi in 2014, Wise defended his title with another in PyeongChang, using a career-best run in the final round to edge teammate Alex Ferreira.
Canada had a strong showing across several events in PyeongChang: Cassie Sharpe took gold in the women’s halfpipe, and Kelsey Serwa claimed the country’s third consecutive gold medal in women’s ski cross ahead of teammate and silver medalist Brittany Phelan. Brady Leman won the gold medal in the men’s ski cross, and countryman Mikael Kingsbury took home the gold in men’s moguls, the country’s third consecutive title in that event.
Belarus’s Hanna Huskova won the women’s aerials, giving her country its second consecutive gold medal in the event.
Several athletes won gold medals for their countries for the first time, including Ukraine’s Oleksandr Abramenko (men’s aerials), Norway’s Oystein Braten (men’s slopestyle), France’s Perrine Laffont (women’s moguls) and Switzerland’s Sarah Hoefflin (women’s slopestyle).
The 31-year-old Wise will be a headliner as he chases a third consecutive halfpipe gold medal, but he should have plenty of competition from his countrymen, including Ferreira and Aaron Blunck, along with New Zealand’s Nico Porteous, the 2021 world champion.
In the women’s halfpipe, 18-year-old Eileen Gu is considered a favorite to win gold — she’ll compete representing China, where her mother emigrated from in her 20s. Gu won the 2021 world championship in the event, as she did in the slopestyle, along with a bronze in big air. Gu also is expected to contend in those events in Beijing. Gu is firmly atop the World Cup standings, ahead of the United States’ Hanna Faulhaber.
Gu will face competition from Sharpe, who will try to win a second consecutive gold medal in halfpipe after earning medals in the event in four consecutive X Games.
Kingsbury, considered the most accomplished moguls skier in history, will be the heavy favorite to win another gold. Kingsbury won world championships in the event in 2019 and 2021. On the women’s side, Laffont will contend to win another gold medal for France — she claimed the 2021 world championship. She sits in second place in the World Cup rankings behind Australia’s Jakara Anthony.
What is the schedule for freestyle skiing?
Feb. 3, 5 a.m.: Women’s moguls qualification
Feb. 3, 6:45 a.m.: Men’s moguls qualification
Feb. 5, 5 a.m.: Men’s moguls qualification, final
Feb. 6, 5 a.m.: Women’s moguls qualification, final
Feb. 6, 8:30 p.m.: Women’s big air qualification
Feb. 7, 12:30 a.m.: Men’s big air qualification
Feb. 7, 9 p.m.: Women’s big air final
Feb. 8, 10 p.m.: Men’s big air final
Feb. 10, 6 a.m.: Mixed team aerials final
Feb. 12, 9 p.m.: Women’s slopestyle qualification
Feb. 13, 6 a.m.: Women’s aerials qualification
Feb. 13, 8:30 p.m.: Women’s slopestyle final
Feb. 13, 11:30 a.m.: Men’s slopestyle qualification
Feb. 14, 6 a.m.: Women’s aerials final
Feb. 14, 8:30 p.m.: Men’s slopestyle final
Feb. 15, 6 a.m.: Men’s aerials qualification
Feb. 16, 6 a.m.: Men’s aerials final
Feb. 16, 8:30 p.m.: Women’s halfpipe qualification
Feb. 16, 10:30 p.m.: Women’s ski cross seeding
Feb. 16, 11:30 a.m.: Men’s halfpipe qualification
Feb. 17, 1 a.m.: Women’s ski cross 1/8 finals, quarterfinals, semifinals, final
Feb. 17, 8:30 p.m.: Women’s halfpipe final
Feb. 17, 10:45 p.m.: Men’s ski cross seeding
Feb. 18, 1:45 a.m.: Men’s ski cross 1/8 finals, quarterfinals, semifinals, final
Feb. 18, 8:30 p.m.: Men’s halfpipe final | null | null | null | null | null |
By Becky Meloan
The doldrums of winter are here, but February brings something shiny and new for every kind of reader. If you’re looking for inspiration, you’ll find it here, with both true and fictional stories of bravery, defiance, self-acceptance and growth. If you’d rather escape, you’ll find stories that will open your mind to other worlds, with tales of cold-war spies, queens, con-artists and magical birds. Happy reading!
“The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward,” by Daniel H. Pink (Riverhead, Feb. 1)
“No regrets” is a popular cultural mantra, yet as the author reminds us, tattoo removal is a $100 million-a-year industry in the United States. Why is the slogan so favored, when regret is a useful emotion? Differentiating the feeling from mere disappointment, Pink details four core regrets everyone faces, and shows how to see them through new lenses. His pragmatic approach offers techniques to transform regret into something positive.
“In the Shadow of the Mountain: A Memoir of Courage,” by Silvia Vasquez-Lavado (Henry Holt and Co., Feb. 1)
Trying to process the scars from childhood abuse and in denial of her sexual orientation, Vasquez-Lavado turns to drinking to numb her pain. But then she discovers rock climbing. That pastime becomes a way to allow herself to be vulnerable; and in helping other survivors do the same, she finds a path toward healing and peace. The book’s chapters alternate between her enthralling life’s journey and a nail-biting Mount Everest ascent. Selena Gomez will produce and star in the movie adaptation.
“The Matchmaker: A Spy in Berlin,” by Paul Vidich (Pegasus Crime, Feb. 1)
When her East German husband goes missing, an American translator working in West Germany realizes her marriage was based on deception. As protests engulf both sides of the Berlin Wall, she races to uncover secrets, uncertain whom to trust. With a capable female protagonist, Vidich brings a modern sensibility to the complex machinations of the traditional spy novel.
“What the Fireflies Knew” by Kai Harris (Tiny Reparations Books, Feb. 1)
Debut author Harris wanted to “show Black girlhood at its best, at its worst, at its most dull and most exciting.” Her coming-of-age novel about a young Black girl during her first summer away from her parents captures precisely that, without being at all dull. Instead, it’s a sensitive, realistic portrait of a 10-year-old trying to understand her world in the wake of her father’s death. Sent to spend the summer with a grandfather she barely knows, she contends with her losses and fears while learning more about her family, finding her own voice in the process.
“Shadows of Pecan Hollow,” by Caroline Frost (William Morrow, Feb. 8)
The reverberations of childhood trauma can be felt for years, and overcoming such challenges have been themes of recent bestsellers like “Educated” and “Where the Crawdads Sing.” The category’s newest heartbreaking entry follows a runaway orphan lured by a con man into a life of petty crime. When an opportunity to escape arises, she begins a new life far away but can’t stop feeling guilty about her past, which suddenly catches up to her in unexpected ways.
10 noteworthy books for January
“The Great Mrs. Elias: A Novel Based on a True Story,” by Barbara Chase-Riboud (Amistad, Feb. 8)
Fans of HBO’s “The Gilded Age” will enjoy this tale of a woman whose formative years were spent clawing her way out of the poverty obscured by the grandiosity of that era. Hannah Elias, a light-skinned Black girl born in 1865, is forced to grow up quickly and sets her mind on her heart’s desire: wealth. She becomes one of the richest Black women of her time, despite facing racism, sexism and classism. The lush descriptions of glamorous lifestyles and fashions are enticing, and her scandalous courtroom battle against powerful men in turn-of-the-century New York seems all the more incredible for being based on historical fact.
“Nobody’s Magic,” by Destiny O. Birdsong (Grand Central Publishing, Feb. 8)
In some parts of the world, Black people with albinism are endangered by the myth that their body parts can transfer magical powers to others. In this series of three stories about strong Black women living with albinism in Shreveport, La., the author writes instead about the power of transformation. With voices that are appealingly modern and distinct, the three women face hardships complicated by a history of racial and social injustice. Each finds herself at a crossroads and is given the chance to define her own individuality, honoring strengths that others might mistake for weakness.
“The Boy with a Bird in His Chest,” by Emme Lund (Atria, Feb. 15)
Lund’s allegorical novel imagines a boy with a Java sparrow living in his rib cage. Owen is caught in a cycle of fear and shame over this hidden appendage, but his journey toward truth leads to self-acceptance and to love from people who celebrate him as he is. The burden of living with a secret is poignantly rendered and illuminating for those who seek to understand living a life outside the ordinary.
“Scorpica,” by G.R. Macallister (Gallery / Saga Press, Feb. 22)
If Brienne of Tarth or Éowyn, Shieldmaiden of Rohan, are your girls, Macallister has something for you. The first book in her matriarchal fantasy series the Five Queendoms features women as warriors, scholars, farmers and the titular royal leaders. But when years pass and every baby born is a boy, balance is disrupted. As queens compete for power, men, whose acceptable functions have always been beauty and servitude, may have sinister new roles to play.
“The Swimmers,” by Julie Otsuka (Knopf, Feb. 22)
Once per decade we are graced with a new book by Otsuka, the award-winning author of 2012’s “The Buddha in the Attic” and 2003’s “When The Emperor Was Divine.” This year’s novel starts as a catalogue of spoken and unspoken rules for swimmers at an aquatic center but unfolds into a powerful story of a mother’s dementia and her daughter’s love. If Otsuka doesn’t write another novel for several years, it will be okay. This is one to be savored and reread. | null | null | null | null | null |
Forty years of moral panics in Virginia help explain Gov. Youngkin
Long after the cause of a moral panic fades from the spotlight, the battle can shape what is politically possible.
Sonia Zawadsqi, left, and Brenda Bengtson, right, are seen as a rally for continuing the school mask mandate concludes outside the Loudon County Government Center prior to a Board of Supervisors meeting on Jan. 18, in Leesburg, Va. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
By Christopher Ewing
Christopher Ewing is an assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, where he works on transnational queer history between 1945 and the present.
The start of Glenn Youngkin’s term as governor of Virginia has already been marked by controversy, particularly over a series of executive actions. The orders that have caused the greatest concern end the teaching of “divisive” concepts in school, including critical race theory (CRT), lift mask requirements in school and rescind a coronavirus vaccine mandate for state employees. These orders were coupled with proposals in the Virginia Senate and House to restrict transgender students’ access to single-sex school facilities that affirm their gender identity. The factual inaccuracies and heightened emotions on which this agenda is built constitute a renewed moral panic over education.
These fierce contestations over covid regulations, CRT and trans rights seem specific to the political and cultural landscape of 2022 and, some may hope, are also ephemeral. Virginia Democrats are pushing back in the Senate and across the Commonwealth, and if covid cases diminish, debates over regulations may become moot.
However, a closer look at debates about disease, education and LGBTQ rights over the last 40 years reveals that the logic of moral panics can curtail political possibilities long after the source of those panics has become irrelevant. This is especially true when these anxieties are anchored in concerns about education and child welfare.
The AIDS crisis of the 1980s presents a tempting but inexact parallel to our own pandemic times. At first glance, the ideological fault lines look almost reversed. Arguing that parents had a right to keep their kids safe from transmission, many PTA members and conservative school officials supported sweeping policies that would exclude HIV-positive students from in-person schooling. In 1985, marginally Republican-led Fairfax County became the first school district in the D.C. area to formally pass such a policy. But rather than arguing that such measures were scientifically unsound (the CDC had already issued guidelines to the contrary), the Virginia Department of Education under Democratic Gov. Chuck Robb maintained that, according to Virginia law, students with contagious illnesses were not allowed to attend school.
The Virginia Board of Education rolled back these restrictions in 1989, affirming HIV-positive students’ right to privacy. A new debate, however, was ramping up over sex education. In 1987, a Family Life Education curriculum was introduced for Virginia public schools, to be implemented in 1989, which included discussion of AIDS and STD prevention, contraception and human sexuality. The proposal generated swift backlash and became a key issue in the 1989 Virginia gubernatorial election. In Virginia Beach, for instance, about 1000 people gathered at Green Run High School to protest supposed promotion of homosexuality in the classroom, while Republican J. Marshall Coleman’s campaign simultaneously argued for parental control.
Although the state’s schools implemented the curriculum and Democratic Lt. Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, who supported it, defeated Coleman, the mobilization of opposition targeting Wilder and a number of delegates up for reelection laid the groundwork for an ongoing battle.
By the mid-1990s, anxieties about sex education structured both sides of the debate down to the local level, making it increasingly difficult for candidates for school board to extract themselves from the logic of moral panic.
Although the 1995 Fairfax County School Board election saw only one candidate fully oppose Family Life Education — even Christian activists in Virginia Beach had backed down — the majority of candidates who supported the curriculum emphasized its inclusion of abstinence education and parents’ ability to opt out when justifying their support.
During the simultaneous Prince William County School Board elections, candidate Mary Louise Jackson argued that “the daily rise in cases of youth with AIDS and other STDs and the annual increase in teen pregnancies … point to the need for continued access to information for our youth.” Candidate David R. Williams, however, made the opposite claim, explaining that, “the rising illegitimacy rates among teens and the rising spread of sexually transmitted diseases should be evidence enough that the current message of ‘Do it but wear protection’ is not working. We should be teaching the abstinence-based message that our county guidelines spell out.” Although the conclusions were contradictory — with the former more effective in reducing pregnancy rates and the latter potentially harmful, especially to communities of color — the underlying fears of HIV and STIs had combined with anxieties about teen parenthood to set the terms of the debate.
In September 1997, the Virginia Board of Education voted to end the requirement of Family Life Education. In its place, newly-elected Republican Gov. James Gilmore instituted a $1.5 million campaign to promote abstinence among teens. Although Gilmore’s election platform had tried to appeal to moderates, the rhetoric of parental choice and abstinence-only education, combined with block grants offered by a Republican-controlled Congress, enabled a strategy that aligned with the goals of Christian conservatives.
In the mid-2000s, concerns about child protection and welfare were again marshaled in service of a referendum that would amend Virginia’s constitution to restrict marriage to one man and one woman, as part of a national backlash at the time against limited court-based gains. In warning against the dangers of same-sex marriage, Republican delegate and eventual co-author of the amendment, Robert Marshall, wrote in 2004 that in Massachusetts, where the state supreme judicial court had recently legalized same-sex marriage, public schools taught about “gay marriage and gay sex” while “activist homosexuals” in Virginia opposed allowing the Boy Scouts to meet in public schools because of their anti-gay policies.
Contestations over sexuality, schools and marriage continued into subsequent legislative sessions. In 2006, the House passed HB 1308 in a 70-29 vote that would allow school boards to ban any student club that “encourages or promotes sexual activity by unmarried minor students,” implicitly targeting gay-straight alliances. In the same session, another House bill was introduced to emphasize abstinence and “honor and respect for monogamous, heterosexual marriage” in the Virginia Department of Education’s guidelines for (non-mandatory) sex education.
Both bills represented a combination of anxieties about gay rights and sexuality in schools that took heterosexual marriage as a standard of sexual morality. This logic proved difficult even for Democratic legislators to disentangle.
In debating HB 1308 on student clubs, Democratic Sen. Nick Rerras of Norfolk argued in support of the proposal, citing the need to “set a high moral standard” for students. Democratic Sen. Janet Howell of Fairfax countered that she had attended a meeting of a local gay-straight alliance and found that “there was no reference to sex at all.” The bill was ultimately defeated in the Senate, but the terms of its defeat were clear: sexual immorality had no place in schools.
When the constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage did make it on to the ballot, it did so without the support of Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine, although Kaine stressed his continued opposition to same-sex marriage (he has since changed his stance). Virginians nevertheless voted in favor of the amendment, which remains in the constitution.
Sixteen years later, things look different — possibly better. In 2007, Kaine cut funding to abstinence-only education, and in 2014 same-sex marriage became legal in Virginia. However, marriage equality does little directly to help trans kids safely access needed facilities and there is still no comprehensive or LGBTQ-inclusive statewide sex education program.
Local efforts to lift mask requirements, legislative efforts to marginalize trans students in their own schools and executive orders to ban “divisive concepts” are not new phenomena — although their vocabulary is indebted to a post-2020 political moment. At the same time, they are not reversions to a political past that Virginia somehow overcame during the last legislative session.
Instead, they are part of a longer history of moral panics over education that can entrench themselves in the political landscape of a state and constrain the possibilities for even the most well-intentioned efforts at reform. Attention to other debates about education, from the era of desegregation, when schools across Virginia shut down rather than integrate, to fears of gangs in schools, which contributed to the incarceration of minors across the country, may reveal further continuities. In particular, the intertwined histories of HIV/AIDS, sex education and LGBTQ rights in schools reveal that contemporary moral panics over education have the possibility to shape a political landscape for decades to come. | null | null | null | null | null |
History shows why it’s time for Black woman to sit on the Supreme Court
Black women have served admirably at every other level of the judiciary — helping to nurture the next generation of Black jurists.
Supreme Court Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall on Oct. 24, 1967, and Constance Baker Motley at her confirmation hearing on April 4, 1966. (Charles Tasnadi, Left, And Henry Griffin/AP)
By Angela Robinson
President Biden has promised to appoint a Black woman to the upcoming Supreme Court vacancy, which would mark a long-overdue milestone. Biden has quietly and consistently been keeping his promise to enrich the federal courts with much needed diverse talent, particularly the talent of women of color, and more specifically, Black women.
Now, with Justice Stephen G. Breyer’s pending retirement, Biden has an opportunity to make good on his promise about the next Supreme Court justice. Over the last century, Black women have earned their right to be represented on the court. They have proved themselves as able lawyers since 1872, as wise judicial magistrates and judges in state courts since 1939, in the federal court system since 1966 and as state Supreme Court justices and judges since 1975. Their absence on the Supreme Court is a stark reminder of the inequity of the legal system — especially given the historic contributions Black women have made to it. | null | null | null | null | null |
“I want to prepare for the worst scenario and escape somehow, if the war starts,” Ponomarenkotold The Washington Post in her apartment in the city of about 300,000 people, dotted with historical cathedrals and still bearing scars from its Nazi occupation during World War II.
Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary for Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said there are no current signs of an invasion from Belarus, but the military has not ruled out the possibility it could be a springboard for attack. He said dense forests and swamps would make an assault difficult, forcing an invasion along existing roads. Chernobyl, site of the nuclear disaster in the 1986, occupies a swath of no man’s land to the west that would also complicate an off-road assault.
In a tiny village just outside the crossing, Nicholai Lebedev, a 68-year-old retiree, yearned for a return to the Soviet Union, where he said better jobs and utility prices made life easier. He rejected the notion he could be in danger in the event the Russian military uses the road a few feet from a sunken fence.
Ukraine's Zelensky says don't panic. That is making his Western allies antsy.
“I’m on the highway to hell!” a scrum of dancers shouted to the ceiling, including friends Sveta Prikhodko and Liydmila Rochina. | null | null | null | null | null |
Charlotte Bellis with her partner, Jim Huylebroek, in Kabul. (Courtesy of Charlotte Bellis)
While many observers sympathized with Bellis’s case, some argued that she is benefiting from special treatment or criticized her for implying that the Taliban has treated her better than the government of New Zealand — even as the extremist group stands accused of restricting the rights of women and girls and of seeking to keep them from public life.
Muzhgan Samarqandi, an Afghan journalist now living in New Zealand, wrote in an open letter to Bellis published on the local 1News station that the way Bellis told her story trivializes the plight of women and girls living under Taliban rule after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
She continues, “Afghanistani women who resist or protest the regime are being arrested, tortured, raped and killed. Young girls are being married off to Talibs. Education and employment are no longer available to them. ... Relying on the protection of a regime that is violently oppressive, and then using that to try to shame the New Zealand government into action, is not the way to achieve that improvement."
Bellis said she has faced questions about why she didn’t go to another country. “And to that I say: Do people really expect a six-month-pregnant woman to jump on tourist visas from country to country, having lost her health insurance and her job, with no family support, without her partner, only to show up at a hospital when she goes into labor with a credit card and say, ‘Can I give birth here?’ ”
As Bellis prepared her response, she received an email on Jan. 26 saying her application was in process and later that her partner’s application for a special visa was approved — a development she attributes to officials wanting to avoid “an incoming political headache.” Her column was published on Friday.
On Tuesday, Bellis said she received a notification from the government that her MIQ application had been granted and that she could go home. She added, “We are so excited to return home and to be surrounded by family and friends at such a special time.” | null | null | null | null | null |
The house was a hub of Black intellectual thought in the country. From its rooms, Woodson published journals and bulletins and wrote books. In 1933, he published “The Mis-Education of the Negro,” a collection of articles and speeches. The book would become a classic, advocating for excellence in the education of Black students and demanding that school systems across America correct curriculums designed to deliberately “mis-educate” Black children and promote the fallacy of white supremacy.
“The theory of this book was to help Black people understand we come from a greater society,” said Karsonya Wise Whitehead, former ASALH national secretary and an associate professor of African and African American studies at Loyola University Maryland. “And the work we do as parents, teachers and educations should make sure young Black people understand that.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Now, at 98, Ebert is keeping that promise in a way no one could have imagined in 1945. With the help of her 18-year-old great grandson, Dov Forman, Ebert is telling her story to millions of people on TikTok. Since their inaugural video on Feb. 9, 2021, the two have posted more than 380 videos on the social media app, drawing in 1.7 million followers and amassing some 25 million likes in the process.
Success on TikTok led to a book they’ve co-authored — “Lily’s Promise” — which is due out in May. Prince Charles wrote a foreword for the book. And late last year, Ebert and Forman met Prime Minister Boris Johnson at 10 Downing Street.
Ebert’s TikTok campaign comes as antisemitism resurges across the United States. Antisemitic incidents — harassment, assault and vandalism — have spiked 60 percent in the past five years, reaching near record levels, according to the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. Those have been punctuated by high-profile events like the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville and synagogue shootings in Pittsburgh in 2018 and outside San Diego in 2019. Last month, four people were taken hostage inside a synagogue near Fort Worth, Tex., but managed to escape.
Jewish Americans have felt the shift. Three quarters of those surveyed said there was more antisemitism in the country than five years ago, and about 60 percent reported having a personal experience with prejudice, according to a Pew Research poll conducted between November 2019 and June 2020.
“We have to be very strong and say it again and again and again: ‘It happened,’" Ebert said.
She told CBS News that Nazis took her and her family to Auschwitz when she was 20. Upon arriving, they saw people with no hair draped in rags.
In her videos, Ebert is open about the horrors of the Jewish ghettos and Auschwitz, where she was imprisoned for four months. In one, she talked about how the Nazis gave their captives so little food, some died of hunger. For breakfast, they gave prisoners “coffee,” a generous description for black water. At one point, the Nazis shaved their heads, which she described as “shocking.” Ebert told viewers about the smell of burning flesh and how, when she returned to the death camp years later, she felt like she was smelling it again. Female Nazis killed prisoners’ babies. In a video viewed some 25 million times, she held out her left arm to show the number Nazis tattooed into her forearm.
Part of the magic of Ebert’s TikTok videos is that, while they reveal the horrors of Holocaust, they also show Ebert, having survived them, enjoying life. In one video, she played catch with someone off-screen. Others show her reveling amid the snow falling around her, picking out tiny succulents at a store, petting a horse and playing the board game Othello with her great grandson. In one clip set to “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” from “Toy Story,” she rolled dough for baking challah.
At 18, Forman brings technical know-how and social media savvy to their venture. Videos of Ebert are set to Destiny’s Child’s “Survivor,” Surf Mesa’s “ily (i love you baby)” and Olivia Rodrigo’s “happier.” Forman told CBS News he saw in TikTok a powerful tool that could amplify his great grandmother’s story, helping her keep the promise she made when she escaped Auschwitz 77 years ago.
“I said to my great-grandmother, ‘If they can go viral for dancing, why can’t we go viral for sharing these really important messages?’” Forman told CBS News.
Later, the clip cut to Forman looking at the camera, his arm around his great grandmother. | null | null | null | null | null |
The political economy of crypto
Harmless fad, pernicious fad or here to stay?
A digital display for bitcoin in the central district of Hong Kong. (Paul Yeung/Bloomberg News)
I want to talk about crypto, but first a quick question: Have you tried Wordle?
Full disclosure: I was a relative latecomer to this variation on the old Mastermind game. When it started showing up on my social media feeds last month, my contrarian instincts kicked in. Part of it might have been an aversion to something new and part of it might have been that I watched “The Game” episode from “Star Trek: TNG” too many times at a formative age. The point is, I eventually broke down and tried it. It’s fun and free (for now)! As a diversion while I wait for my morning coffee to jump-start my brain, it is good. And I learned that just because something is new does not mean it should automatically be feared.
I also have had an aversion to cryptocurrencies — so should I change my mind on that? Well …
Compared to Wordle, cryptocurrencies are old — like nearly 15 years old. When bitcoin first broke through into the general interest media, I read up a little bit on the concept (one of my day jobs is trying to figure out whether something merits inclusion into my global political economy course). With crypto, my answer was “mostly no.”
As a means of evading economic sanctions and engaging in illicit exchange, crypto has some utility. As an alternative to commonly accepted currencies, cryptocurrencies are absurd. They make no sense as a unit of account. Their utility as a medium of exchange decreases as more people use it, which is a super weird quality for any currency. And their volatility makes them a dubious store of value.
That was then. Now, crypto markets may or may not be more efficient. Either way, they have acquired a new prominence as of late. The total size of the cryptocurrency market has grown to nearly $2 trillion dollars. It you watch any sports on television, it seems difficult not to notice that the crypto sector has gone on an ad-buying binge. Hall of Famer David Ortiz appeared in a commercial for FTX; Matt Damon is cutting ads for crypto.com. And crypto is starting to draw interest from pension funds and sovereign wealth funds. The market is sufficiently deep for large crypto ventures to launch super PACS to lobby against any regulation.
That said, none of this prominence has stopped the volatility. That nearly $2 trillion crypto market? It was over $3 trillion back in October. The New York Times’s Paul Krugman warned last week about “uncomfortable parallels with the subprime crisis of the 2000s. No, crypto doesn’t threaten the financial system — the numbers aren’t big enough to do that. But there’s growing evidence that the risks of crypto are falling disproportionately on people who don’t know what they are getting into and are poorly positioned to handle the downside.”
Krugman linked to survey data backing up his claim. According to a July 2021 NORC survey, the average cryptocurrency trader is under 40 and does not have a college degree. More disturbing: “Investors get their information about cryptocurrency investing mostly through the crypto exchanges themselves (26 percent), general trading platforms like Fidelity or Robinhood (25 percent), or social media (24 percent).”
One rule of thumb I have for asset bubbles is that if celebrities start getting in on the game, it might be time for the smart money to get out. Already some celebrities are being sued for promoting cryptocurrencies that turned out to be classic “pump and dump” Ponzi schemes. This suggests that while crypto will not disappear, we have reached the bubble phase.
Institutional investors are only beginning to show interest in crypto. One wonders whether the recent volatility will cause them to minimize their exposure to this market. This might stall out Krugman’s political economy concerns that crypto will simply buy congressional inaction. Either way, however, it sure seems like the small-time crypto investors are this decade’s equivalent of 1990s day traders and 2000s house flippers.
Maybe we should all just play Wordle instead. | null | null | null | null | null |
Why are two world powers so intent on controlling Ukraine?
A Ukrainian serviceman, seen through a camouflage mesh, stands at a front-line position in the Luhansk region, eastern Ukraine, on Jan. 29. (Vadim Ghirda/AP)
By Bear F. Braumoeller
At first blush, the conflict between Russia and the United States over Ukraine seems puzzling. A Russian invasion, which seems increasingly plausible, would spark the most serious diplomatic and military crisis since the end of the Cold War. It would raise the specter of conventional war between two nuclear-armed countries.
American support for the use of force in Ukraine has risen steadily since Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea. As of December 2021, most Americans with opinions on the matter support protecting Ukraine militarily in the event of a Russian invasion. Yet as political scientist Barry Posen has argued, it is far from clear that Ukraine’s independence represents a vital U.S. interest. Indeed, a survey at the start of the 2014 crisis showed that only about 16 percent of Americans could find Ukraine on a map.
How have we arrived at this point? Understanding the Ukraine crisis requires that we move beyond narrow calculations of national self-interest and focus instead on major powers’ attempts to shape their diplomatic and political environments. International relations scholar Arnold Wolfers called such objectives “milieu goals.” Ukraine is not important to the United States and Russia because of its strategic resources or military capabilities. It is important because it figures in each country’s preferred international order.
When orders clash, conflict is likely
“International order” is a broad concept, less concrete than an alliance or an international organization. In its most widely accepted definition, international order refers to patterns of behavior that uphold the rules and norms of an international society.
These patterns of behavior promote valued norms, like democracy and the rule of law. They also allow countries to avoid conflict by accurately anticipating one another’s reactions and taking competing interests into account. Examples of international orders include the 19th century Concert of Europe, the so-called “tribute system” in early modern East Asia, and the liberal international order of today — the post-World War II complex of military, economic, and human rights institutions that coordinate behavior and promote Western rules and norms.
My research has shown that members of the same international order rarely fight one another, but frictions between international orders are a common source of conflict. During the Cold War, for example, conflicts like the Berlin crisis and the Cuban missile crisis arose directly from frictions along the boundaries of the Western and Soviet spheres. Proxy wars in places like Central America and the Middle East were also fueled by the U.S.-Soviet rivalry.
When orders change, so do patterns of conflict across the international system. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet communist order coincided with an abrupt decrease in international conflicts started and a sharp decline in the number of new and ongoing civil wars.
Ukraine is a contest for order
While the post-Cold War lull has persisted for decades, the United States once again faces conflicts at the intersection of the Western rules-based order and smaller, regional orders defended by other major powers, such as Russia and China.
Clearly, support for international order, rather than specific, narrowly defined national interests such as keeping strategic territory in friendly hands, is driving American policy in Ukraine. Last November’s U.S.-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership, for example, emphasizes support for “shared values and common interests, including a commitment to a Europe that is whole, free, democratic, and at peace,” despite Russia’s attempt to “destroy the rule-based international order.”
Russia’s response to the crisis suggests a similar concern about order. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in December published a draft treaty proposal calling on the United States to limit its political and military influence in the region. Because NATO is explicitly organized as an alliance for defense, it poses no threat to Russia’s territorial integrity, especially given Russia’s nuclear arsenal. But Russia, whose ambitions for international order are limited to maintaining de facto political control over the states that once made up the Soviet Union, perceives the expansion of Western political, military, and economic institutions as threatening its sphere of influence in its own backyard.
If Russia does invade Ukraine, what happens next?
Friction at the peripheries will continue
Because this is a clash that arises from frictions among international orders, even military victory by one side or the other would merely shift the line of contestation east or west rather than settling it. The dispute can probably only be managed, not fully resolved, as long as the international orders that produced it persist.
And they are very likely to persist. New international orders are generally founded in the wake of major wars. As my colleague political scientist Randy Schweller has pointed out, the Cold War’s peaceful end, while obviously preferable to war, has left us without a new “ordering moment.”
Russia seems unlikely to give up its influence in the former Soviet states. Indeed, Putin has recently demanded that the West roll back its influence in Central Europe by ceasing all military activity in the region — even activity on the territory of current NATO members. For its part, NATO has been called the most successful alliance in history, and it’s hard to argue with success.
At the same time, the persistence of current international orders has very real costs. It creates standing tensions in places like Ukraine and Taiwan, which could become shockingly deadly were they to escalate. The liberal international order faces growing opposition from increasingly vocal populist factions in NATO countries Hungary, Poland and Turkey, with democratic backsliding within the alliance.
And today’s global rules-based order is built on foundations that increasingly seem archaic. Critics point out that it has never been truly global. When 50 states signed the United Nations charter in San Francisco in September 1945, laying out the rules and principles of postwar international order, those nations’ colonies and their successor states in the developing world were flatly excluded.
There are no easy answers, of course. The considerable risks associated with “frozen” conflicts like the one in Ukraine may, in the end, be better than wholesale reconsideration of something as established and pervasive as international order. At a minimum, though, President Biden and his counterparts may wish to discuss whether they want to craft a new approach to global relationships — or whether they are committed to enduring different iterations of this standoff indefinitely.
Bear F. Braumoeller (@Prof_BearB) is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and holds the Baronov and Timashev Chair at Ohio State University, where he is a professor in the department of political science and director of the MESO Lab (Modeling Emergent Social Order). | null | null | null | null | null |
Raiders 72, Gators 68
Atholton's Zach Callender, shoots over Reservoir's Matthew Brathwaite during the second quarter Monday in Columbia. Callender finished with a game-high 23 points. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
With under 30 seconds remaining Monday night, Atholton basketball guard Zach Callender peeked at the final seconds ticking off the shot clock. A Reservoir defender stood in Callender’s face as he dribbled on the right wing, but the senior knew he had to shoot.
Callender picked up his dribble and jumped backward as he heaved a three-pointer. Everyone in the Columbia gym wearing a white Raiders jersey, other than Callender, believed their captain would sink the shot.
The ball touched nothing but twine and was key to Atholton’s 72-68 win over Reservoir. By beating their toughest counterpart in Howard County, the Raiders (8-0) continued their dominant start.
“Everybody wouldn’t mind him taking that shot,” Atholton Coach Jared Albert said. “He’s a gamer.”
Atholton and Reservoir’s long-standing rivalry has intensified the past few years as they became the county’s strongest postseason contenders.
In 2019, Reservoir (5-2) reached the Maryland 3A championship game for the first time but fell to Baltimore Polytechnic Institute. In 2020, the Gators posted the county’s best regular season record before falling to Atholton in overtime in the third round of the 3A playoffs. Atholton reached the semifinals, but the games were canceled because of the coronavirus.
While the 2020-21 season also was canceled, many Atholton and Reservoir players competed on the same AAU team, the Laurel Lakers. They became close friends, but they also craved a chance to face each other.
Their meeting was delayed when the county suspended sports for more than three weeks between mid-December and early-January because of coronavirus surges. Last week, players anticipated the game, which was scheduled for Friday, but it was postponed to the ensuing week because of snow. Coaches said there was no need for a pregame pep talk Monday.
“It’s a different environment,” Callender said. “We’ve been hooping with them since we were little. They know us, and we know them.”
Callender had been in a slump the past few games when he arrived at school Monday. His teammate, guard Ayyub Rabb, motivated him.
“Bro, we need you,” Rabb recalled telling his classmate. “Have more confidence in yourself.”
Callender then visited Albert’s office to discuss Atholton’s game plan that night and strategies to create more scoring opportunities. Callender’s game-high 23 points and five assists helped the Raiders storm back from a 10-point deficit with seven minutes remaining.
But Callender couldn’t have predicted a prayer would decide the game. Callender didn’t expect to convert the shot, but teammate Mason Murray began jogging back on defense while the ball hung in midair.
“That’s the shot that he takes,” Rabb said. “I knew that was going in as soon as he shot it.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Tuesday briefing: A coronavirus vaccine for kids under 5; Donald Trump’s ripped records; Wordle; Lunar New Year; and more
A coronavirus vaccine for kids under 5 could be available in weeks.
Pfizer plans to ask the FDA for emergency authorization as soon as today, according to Post reporting, which is far sooner than expected.
The details: It’s a two-shot regimen for kids 6 months to 5 years old. However, the company is testing a third dose because two didn’t give enough protection for all the ages.
In other vaccine news: Moderna’s shot got full FDA approval yesterday, replacing its emergency authorization.
The U.S. will speak with Russia again today about the Ukraine crisis.
The agenda: Probably Russia’s response yesterday to a U.S. proposal on how to de-escalate the situation.
What happened yesterday: U.S. and Russian diplomats had one of the most confrontational international meetings in years at the United Nations.
The backdrop: Russia has more than 100,000 troops on Ukraine’s border, prompting fears of an invasion.
Climate change will make flooding losses in the U.S. much worse.
The cost is expected to jump 26% by 2050, according to a study published yesterday.
Who will be most affected? Disadvantaged communities, particularly along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts in the Southeast, because more hurricanes are expected as temperatures rise.
Donald Trump tore up records as president, the National Archives confirmed.
Why they confirmed this: Some documents given to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol had been ripped and taped back together.
Was this typical? For Trump, yes. Staffers then had to piece the shreds together because a law requires all presidential documents to be preserved.
At least six historically Black colleges received bomb threats yesterday.
Schools in Washington, D.C., Maryland, Delaware, Florida, Georgia and Louisiana had to close and investigate, though nothing was found.
It’s the second time in a month that multiple HBCUs received such threats, but officials don’t yet know whether the incidents are connected.
The New York Times bought Wordle, that online game everyone’s playing.
What is it? A daily puzzle. Players get six tries to guess a five-letter word of the day. Color-coded clues point you in the right direction.
What does this mean for players? The game will move to nytimes.com with no changes to how you play, and the Times said it will still be free.
It’s the Lunar New Year today and the start of the Year of the Tiger.
Over a billion people in Asia and around the world will celebrate this holiday with food, family and parades, though the pandemic has changed what this looks like.
The celebration symbolizes a hopeful transition from the cold winter to spring, the season of renewal. The new year period ends with the Lantern Festival on Feb. 15.
And now … Black History Month begins today: Dive into this project that explores Black Americans’ quest to find their roots. | null | null | null | null | null |
“I want to prepare for the worst scenario and escape somehow, if the war starts,” Ponomarenko, 39, told The Washington Post in her apartment in the city of about 300,000 people, dotted with historical cathedrals and still bearing scars from its Nazi occupation during World War II.
Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary for Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said there are no current signs of an invasion from Belarus, but the military has not ruled out the possibility it could be a springboard for attack. He said dense forests and swamps would make an assault difficult, forcing an invasion along existing roads. Chernobyl, site of the nuclear disaster in 1986, occupies a swath of no man’s land to the west that would also complicate an off-road assault.
In a tiny village just outside the crossing, Nicholai Lebedev, a 68-year-old retiree, yearned for a return to the Soviet Union, where he said better jobs and utility prices made life easier. He rejected the notion he could be in danger in the event the Russian military uses the road a few feet from his sunken fence.
“I’m on the highway to hell!” a scrum of dancers shouted, including friends Sveta Prikhodko and Liydmila Rochina. | null | null | null | null | null |
“Someone could have requested an ambulance had one on standby, just so the individual saw that that was an option,” Lynn said. “And it may have been there. Again, we’re very limited in what we can see from just the body cam.”
Watch the full video released on Jan. 28: | null | null | null | null | null |
Taylor Lorenz joins The Washington Post as a columnist
Taylor Lorenz named a columnist at The Washington Post. (Sara Kenigsberg)
Announcement from Features Editor Liz Seymour, Deputy Features Editor David Malitz and Deputy Features Editor Mitch Rubin:
We are thrilled to announce that Taylor Lorenz, whose dogged reporting, keen insights and boundless curiosity have made her the country’s premier chronicler of Internet culture, will join The Washington Post as a columnist in March.
Taylor has a rare gift for being able to write about the Internet in a way that appeals to digital natives and late adopters alike. She treats her subjects and readers with a respect that has earned her the trust and admiration of a younger generation of news consumers. Her columns will feature the illuminating reporting she is known for and will focus on how technology is reshaping culture, how we communicate and connect, and the ways online influencers are reorienting our world.
Currently a technology reporter at The New York Times, Taylor covers the world of content creators and emerging platforms, which has resulted in great scoops, accountability pieces and enterprise at the Times and The Atlantic, where she previously worked.
Most exciting to us, Taylor is always looking for what’s next and is enthusiastic about using different story forms and platforms to reach readers. Her reported columns will be at the forefront of The Post’s mission to deliver top quality journalism across all platforms as we continue to find readers – and listeners and viewers – where they are. She has more than 500,000 followers on TikTok, where she highlights her reporting process and shares advice for younger journalists. She also maintains a robust presence on Instagram, Twitter and Twitch. Fortune called her “a peerless authority” for her reporting on technology trends and youth culture in naming her to their “40 under 40” list in 2020.
Taylor is a trendsetter not just in what she covers but how she covers it. She has become the chief chronicler of TikTok’s march to social media dominance, was responsible for introducing the phrase “OK boomer” to the masses and was one of the first journalists to identify the influence of the conversation app Clubhouse.
She has the tenacity that has long defined great reporting and is committed to holding the powerful to account, particularly in areas where there has been traditionally less scrutiny than in government. Her deep reporting and investigative work in the influencer world has exposed a YouTuber's poor labor conditions, detailed sexual assault allegations against an Internet superstar, and illuminated the potential exploitative nature of content creator contracts.
Taylor grew up in Connecticut and lives in Los Angeles. She will be based in L.A. but will be making frequent trips to our Washington, D.C., newsroom. She attended the University of Colorado at Boulder and Hobart and William Smith Colleges, from which she graduated with a degree in political science. Her first book, “Extremely Online: Gen Z, the Rise of Online Creators and the Selling of a New American Dream,” will be published by Simon & Schuster in 2023.
Please join us in welcoming Taylor to The Post. She starts March 7. | null | null | null | null | null |
Pence’s former chief of staff, Marc Short, is among those who have testified before the select committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Short appeared before the committee last week, according to people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly. Pence does not plan to appear before the committee, but besides Short, Pence’s top lawyer, Greg Jacob, is expected to appear. | null | null | null | null | null |
Now, at 98, Ebert is keeping that promise in a way no one could have imagined in 1945. With the help of her 18-year-old great-grandson, Dov Forman, Ebert is telling her story to millions of people on TikTok. Since their inaugural video on Feb. 9 last year, the two have posted more than 380 videos on the social media app, drawing in 1.7 million followers and amassing some 25 million likes in the process.
Success on TikTok led to a book they’ve co-authored — “Lily’s Promise” — which is due out in May. Prince Charles wrote a foreword for the book. And late last year, Ebert and Forman, who live in London, met Prime Minister Boris Johnson at 10 Downing Street.
Ebert’s TikTok campaign comes as antisemitism resurges across the United States. Antisemitic incidents — harassment, assault and vandalism — have spiked 60 percent in the past five years, reaching near record levels, according to the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. Those have been punctuated by high-profile events like the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville and synagogue shootings in Pittsburgh in 2018 and outside San Diego in 2019. Last month, four people were taken hostage inside a synagogue near Fort Worth but managed to escape.
Jewish Americans have felt the shift. Three-quarters of those surveyed said there was more antisemitism in the country than five years ago, and about 60 percent reported having a personal experience with prejudice, according to a Pew Research poll conducted between November 2019 and June 2020.
“We have to be very strong and say it again and again and again: ‘It happened,’ ” she said.
Ebert, who was born in Hungary, told CBS News that Nazis took her and her family to Auschwitz when she was 20. Upon arriving, they saw people with no hair draped in rags.
In her videos, Ebert is open about the horrors of the Jewish ghettos and Auschwitz, where she was imprisoned for four months. In one, she talked about how the Nazis gave their captives so little food that some died of hunger. For breakfast, they gave prisoners “coffee,” a generous description for black water. At one point, the Nazis shaved their heads, which she described as “shocking.” Ebert told viewers about the smell of burning flesh and how, when she returned to the death camp years later, she felt like she was smelling it again. Female Nazis killed prisoners’ babies. In a video viewed some 25 million times, she held out her left arm to show the number Nazis tattooed into her forearm.
Part of the magic of Ebert’s TikTok videos is that, while they reveal the horrors of the Holocaust, they also show Ebert, having survived them, enjoying life. In one video, she played catch with someone off-screen. Others show her reveling amid the snow falling around her, picking out tiny succulents at a store, petting a horse and playing the board game Othello with her great-grandson. In one clip set to “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” from “Toy Story,” she rolled dough for baking challah.
At 18, Forman brings technical know-how and social media savvy to their venture. Videos of Ebert are set to Destiny’s Child’s “Survivor,” Surf Mesa’s “ily (i love you baby)” and Olivia Rodrigo’s “Happier.” Forman told CBS News he saw in TikTok a powerful tool that could amplify his great-grandmother’s story, helping her keep the promise she made when she escaped Auschwitz 77 years ago.
“I said to my great-grandmother, ‘If they can go viral for dancing, why can’t we go viral for sharing these really important messages?’ ” Forman told CBS News.
Later, the clip cut to Forman looking at the camera, his arm around his great-grandmother. | null | null | null | null | null |
Quarterback Tom Brady announced his retirement Tuesday from the NFL after 22 seasons in which he established himself as perhaps the greatest player in pro football history.
Brady’s official pronouncement came three days after Saturday’s confusion in which Brady’s health and wellness company announced that he was done playing, then backtracked. But this time, Brady made the announcement himself.
“I’ve done a lot of reflecting the past week and have asked myself difficult questions,” Brady wrote on social media. “And I am so proud of what we have achieved. My teammates, coaches, fellow competitors, and fans deserve 100 [percent] of me, but right now, it’s best I leave the field of play to the next generation of dedicated and committed athletes.”
Brady, 44, walks away after winning seven Super Bowl titles, the first six of which came during his two decades with the New England Patriots. He spent the past two seasons with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and secured his seventh Super Bowl triumph. | null | null | null | null | null |
Democrats finally managed to escape the “soft on crime” label in the 1990s in part because crime rates began to fall, but also because they took action to show that they could be tough, too. The centerpiece of their efforts was the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, authored by then-Sen. Joe Biden and signed by President Bill Clinton. This complex legislation had a bit of everything: the Violence Against Women Act to crack down on domestic abuse, treatment programs for drug addicts, federal funds to build prisons and hire cops, and tough gun controls including a ban on assault rifles. But progressives blamed the law — perhaps unfairly — for the mass incarceration of African American men, and in 2020 Biden was forced to renounce the legislation he had authored. | null | null | null | null | null |
Tom Brady ended the most decorated career in pro football history, and this time it’s official. The Hall of Fame-bound quarterback announced Tuesday that he is retiring after 22 NFL seasons in which he secured seven Super Bowl titles and became one of the most enduring icons across all of sports.
Brady’s official pronouncement came three days after Saturday’s confusion in which his health and wellness company announced that he was done playing, then backtracked. But this time, Brady made the announcement himself.
Brady, 44, walks away after winning six Super Bowl crowns during his two decades with the New England Patriots, then another with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He is the NFL’s career leader in passing yards and touchdown passes, among many other categories. Brady was a three-time NFL most valuable player and a five-time Super Bowl MVP.
“Tom Brady will be remembered as one of the greatest to ever play in the NFL,” Commissioner Roger Goodell said in a written statement. “An incredible competitor and leader, his stellar career is remarkable for its longevity but also for the sustained excellence he displayed year after year. Tom made everyone around him better and always seemed to rise to the occasion in the biggest moments…. He inspired fans in New England, Tampa and around the world with one of the greatest careers in NFL history. It has been a privilege to watch him compete and have him in the NFL."
Brady led the league in passing attempts, completions, passing yards and touchdown passes even in his final season, his second with the Buccaneers after leaving the Patriots amid much fanfare in free agency prior to the 2020 season.
The Buccaneers were eliminated from the NFC playoffs in a divisional-round game against the Los Angeles Rams nine days before Brady’s retirement. Brady and the Buccaneers overcame a 27-3 deficit to tie that game in the final minute but lost, 30-27, on a field goal by the Rams as time expired. He could not quite complete another remarkable comeback in what would be, as it turned out, his final game.
Brady said after that game that he had not made a decision about retirement. His retirement was confirmed on social media Saturday by his company, TB12 Sports. A person with knowledge of the matter said Saturday it was believed that Brady indeed was retiring. ESPN reported that Brady was done playing. But the company later deleted its retirement post and Brady’s agent, Don Yee, issued a written statement in which he said that Brady “will be the only person to express his plans with complete accuracy.”
As recently as Monday night, Brady said on his “Let’s Go!” podcast that he had not made a decision.
A father of three, Brady had spoken of the family concerns weighing on him. It became increasingly clear that it was not about whether he would retire, but about him attempting to make the announcement on his terms.
“We’re in such an era of information, and people want to be in front of the news often,” Brady said in Monday’s podcast. “And I totally understand that and understand that’s the environment we’re in. But I think for me, I’m just literally, it’s day-to-day with me. I’m just trying to do the best I can every day and evaluate things as they come and trying to make a great decision for me and my family.” | null | null | null | null | null |
By Andrew Golden | Feb 1, 2022
The GOAT is finally, after 22 seasons of reigning over the NFL, striding into the sunset. Tom Brady, inarguably the most accomplished player the league has ever known — seven Super Bowl rings, five Super Bowl MVPs, three NFL MVPs — is retiring. His path to stardom was hardly direct.
California to Michigan
Tom Brady played his high school football at Serra High in San Mateo, Calif., and received interest from such college programs as California-Berkeley, Southern California, UCLA, Illinois and Michigan. A talented baseball player as well, he was also an 18th-round draft choice in 1995 by MLB’s Montreal Expos. He stuck with football and opted for Michigan.
Brady takes charge of the Michigan huddle during a 1998 game at Notre Dame.
Riding the bench at Ann Arbor
Brady enrolled at Michigan in 1996, but he didn’t play much during his first two years of college. He served as a backup to Brian Griese, who led Michigan to an undefeated season culminating in a 1998 Rose Bowl victory over Washington State and a national championship. In his first two seasons, Brady completed 15 of 20 passes for 129 yards and an interception.
Brady is shown with his coach, Lloyd Carr, after leading Michigan to a win in the 1999 Orange Bowl over Alabama.
An Orange Bowl coming-out party
Brady split time with highly touted prospect Drew Henson over the next two seasons at Michigan but helped the Wolverines go 20-5 over his final two seasons in Ann Arbor. Brady threw 30 touchdowns and 16 interceptions combined in 1998 and 1999 and closed with a bang — throwing for 369 yards and leading Michigan to a 35-34 Orange Bowl victory over Alabama.
Brady is shown warming up on the sidelines during a preseason game in 2000, his rookie season.
With the 199th pick …
Brady was hardly a can’t-miss NFL prospect entering the 2000 draft, especially after posting a 5.28 time in the 40-yard dash and 7.20 in the three-cone drill. The Patriots took him in the sixth round, 199th overall. Brady wasn’t lacking for confidence, however. “When he introduced himself to me and said, ‘Hi, Mr. Kraft,’ he was about to say who he was, but I said, ‘I know who you are. You’re Tom Brady. You’re our sixth-round draft choice,’” Kraft said about their first introduction. “And he looked me in the eye and said, ‘I’m the best decision this organization has ever made.’”
An injured Drew Bledsoe assists second-year quarterback Tom Brady during a 2001 win over San Diego.
Bledsoe, Belichick and Brady
Brady played sparingly his first season, but when Patriots starter Drew Bledsoe — fresh off signing a 10-year, $103 million contract — was injured in Week 2, Brady got his chance. Bledsoe eventually recovered but Patriots Coach Bill Belichick stuck with No. 12, who led New England to an 11-5 record and a playoff berth.
What looked like a fumble in the fourth quarter of a playoff game in the 2001 season was ruled an incomplete pass in the infamous "tuck rule" game. A short time later, the Patriots beat the Raiders in overtime for the first of Brady's 35 playoff wins.
Jim Davis/Boston Globe via Getty Images
The Patriots opened the playoffs after the 2001 season on a snowy night at home against the Oakland Raiders. The Patriots entered the fourth quarter trailing 13-3 before Brady led them back. But with the Patriots trailing 13-10 and driving with less than two minutes remaining, Charles Woodson, Brady’s former college teammate, sacked Brady and forced an apparent fumble. A lengthy replay review followed. Finally, officials ruled that Brady’s arm was coming forward even as it appeared he was attempting to “tuck” the ball back before fumbling. The Patriots would go on to win in overtime, and “The Tuck Rule” was eventually abolished. It was the first of Brady’s 35 playoff wins, an NFL record.
Brady & Co. celebrate in New Orleans after their upset of the Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI.
Lights out on the ‘Greatest Show on Turf’
The Patriots advanced to the Super Bowl against Kurt Warner and the high-powered St. Louis Rams, knows as the “The Greatest Show on Turf.” The Rams entered as 14-point favorites. Brady completed 16 of 27 passes for 145 yards and a touchdown and led the Patriots on a 53-yard drive to set up Adam Vinatieri’s 48-yard field goal to win it, 20-17.
Brady holds his second Lombardi Trophy following a 32-29 win over Carolina in Super Bowl XXXVIII.
Second Super Bowl
Two years later, Brady had the Patriots back in the Super Bowl following a 14-2 regular season. Against the Carolina Panthers, Brady led another game-winning drive, sealed with another field goal from Vinatieri. Brady was named Super Bowl MVP after passing for 354 yards and three touchdowns in a 32-29 win.
Brady calls an audible during the fourth quarter of the Patriots' 24-21 win over the Eagles in Super Bowl XXXIX in Jacksonville.
Dynasty territory
Another 14-2 season ended with a trip to Super Bowl XXXIX in February 2005, this time against the Philadelphia Eagles. Brady threw for two touchdowns in a 24-21 win, joining Troy Aikman as the only quarterbacks to win three Super Bowls over a four-year span.
Brady threw for 50 touchdowns and just eight interceptions in a stunning 2007 regular season.
Brady’s best individual season was in 2007, when he won his first league MVP and threw for an NFL-record 50 touchdown passes as the Patriots tore through a 16-0 regular season and advanced to Super Bowl XLII, where they were undone by the Giants and the famed “Helmet Catch.” “I still think that was the best team I’ve ever played on, even though we didn’t win the Super Bowl,” Brady said in his ESPN documentary “Man in the Arena.” “Wasn’t the most accomplished team, but it was probably the best team. … It was probably the best team in NFL history.”
Brady grabs at his left knee in the 2008 season opener.
For openers, pain in 2008
The next fall, Brady tore his ACL and medial collateral ligament in the season opener, ending his season after just 11 pass attempts. The Patriots still managed to finish 11-5 without Brady, starting backup Matt Cassel, but the team missed the playoffs for the first time since the 2002 season.
Brady celebrates after winning another Super Bowl MVP award in the Patriots' 28-24 win over the Seahawks in Super Bowl XLIX. He completed 37 of 50 passes for 328 yards and four touchdowns in the game.
Back in the winner’s circle
Following two Super Bowl losses to the Giants and almost a decade of early playoff exits, Brady and the Patriots finally returned to the mountaintop in one of the most dramatic finishes in Super Bowl history. Malcolm Butler’s interception at the New England 1-yard line sealed a 28-24 victory, with Brady collecting MVP honors after setting a Super Bowl record for most completions (37) — a mark he would eclipse two years later.
The Colts cried foul after Brady torched them, 45-7, in the AFC championship game in January 2015.
Jim Rogash
Brady came under heavy scrutiny before Super Bowl XLIX for his involvement in what eventually become known as “Deflategate” — allegations of improperly manipulating the air pressure in footballs that stemmed from the Patriots’ 45-7 win over the Colts in the AFC championship game in January 2015. He eventually was suspended four games.
Brady and teammates celebrate their stunning comeback to beat the Falcons in Super Bowl LI.
All the way back from 28-3
The biggest Super Bowl comeback of all time? Yeah, that would be Brady. With Atlanta up 28-3 and Falcons owner Arthur Blank doing a jig on the sideline, Brady — and the Patriots’ defense — forged a shocking comeback, eventually winning in overtime, 34-28. Brady set Super Bowl records for passing yards (466), attempts (62) and completions (43).
Philly Special: Brady and the Patriots fell to the Eagles, 41-33, in Super Bowl LII in Minneapolis. (Mark J. Rebilas/USA Today Sports)
Wrong side of the 'Philly Special’
Brady has been on both sides of some of the NFL’s most magical moments, and the win over the Falcons was met with heartbreak a year later in Super Bowl LII, when Nick Foles and the Eagles upset Brady in a shootout. Brady finished with a Super Bowl record for passing yards (505) and three touchdowns.
Brady and Kraft embrace after Super Bowl LIII in Atlanta.
Back to the mountaintop at 41
Brady’s 2018 season marked his last championship with New England, which he earned with a 13-3 victory over the Rams in Super Bowl LIII, his sixth ring. The win made Brady the oldest quarterback to win a Super Bowl at 41, another of his own records he would soon break.
Brady signed with the Buccaneers in 2020 after 20 seasons with the Patriots. (Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)
Flying south
After two decades in New England, Brady entered free agency and signed with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, a franchise that hadn’t reached the playoffs since 2007 when he arrived, in 2020. By the end of his first year in Tampa, the Bucs were celebrating a Super Bowl victory and Brady had earned his fifth Super Bowl MVP.
Brady returned to Foxborough as a visitor in October.
Brady returned to New England for a Week 4 Sunday night matchup and broke another hallowed NFL record — most career passing yards — while leading the Bucs to a 19-17 victory. “It was a very emotional week,” Brady said about returning to Foxborough. “These guys are like my brothers.”
Brady walks off the field for the last time as an active NFL player following Tampa Bay's 30-27 loss to the Rams in a divisional playoff game on Jan. 23.
Brady’s final NFL game was classic Brady — stoking memories of the Super Bowl rally to beat the Falcons. In an NFC divisional playoff against the Rams, he led the Bucs back from a 27-3 deficit midway through the third quarter to forge a tie in the final minute. Tampa Bay’s defense was unable to hold, however, and the Rams kicked a field goal as time expired for a 30-27 win. Brady retires as the NFL’s all-time leader in many passing categories, including passing yards, regular season and playoffs (91,653), pass attempts (11,317), completions (7,263) and passing touchdowns (624). | null | null | null | null | null |
U.S forward Abby Roque is a first-time Olympian — and a pioneer for Indigenous people
Abby Roque, right, hugs teammate Grace Zumwinkle before Tuesday's practice session. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek)
BEIJING — The players skated around Tuesday afternoon at Wukesong Sports Center without their helmets and — briefly, mercifully — without their masks, stopping and smiling for the camera that would capture the official team portrait of the 2022 U.S. Olympic women’s hockey team, not to mention their own camera phones tucked under pads on their hips or their shoulders. After the large group photo came the subsets: first-time Olympians in one shot, the goalies in another; University of Minnesota players followed by those from the University of Wisconsin — rivals in everyday life, teammates here.
The tribe is a fundamental part of who Roque is. Its people have supported her career as she developed from a coach’s kid — her father, Jim, was the head coach at Lake Superior State from 2004-15 and is now a scout for the Toronto Maple Leafs — into a national team player and potential star. Until she matriculated at Wisconsin, she didn’t realize that her teammates might never have shared a meal with an Indigenous person.
“I didn’t perceive myself to be a little bit different than my peers because I always grew up through high school and earlier playing with other Indigenous players,” she said. “And when I got to college, I knew I was going to be probably one of few in the NCAA, but not as little as I was.
Roque is in position to change that — both with her play and willingness to embrace her pioneering position.
When the puck drops Thursday for the U.S. women’s opener against Finland — a game that takes place a day before Opening Ceremonies — Abby Roque will be on the ice not as some sort of groundbreaker, but as a playmaking forward who, even in her first Olympics, is a central part of what the Americans do.
“She brings some of that different, unique energy that she’s able to sort of light up a room,” said American teammate Hillary Knight, a four-time Olympian. “Very charismatic individual.”
Part of that is her acceptance — even her embracing — of her status as a role model. The Olympics in general, or hockey specifically, are for White people? Think again. | null | null | null | null | null |
Sebastián Fest is a correspondent for the newspaper El Mundo and editor of Around the Rings. He is the author of “Sin Red.”
Nadal showed Spanish athletes the power of mental discipline, something the public also admired in the national soccer team when it won the World Cup in South Africa in 2010 and the European Championship in 2008 and 2012.
Nadal and the Spanish “Fury," as the soccer team is known, showed that Spain didn’t need to embody the stereotype of a wounded and angry global power always eager to show its virility. | null | null | null | null | null |
My copy of “Ulysses,” acquired during a summer spent in Kansas City in 1974, has traveled the world with me during 40 years in diplomacy — the last four in Washington as the Irish ambassador to the United States — and I’ve always deployed it liberally as an instrument of soft power. This began when I became a head of mission and organized annual “Bloomsday” celebrations on June 16, the day of Bloom’s odyssey. For Irish diplomats, Bloomsday has become something of an ancillary to St Patrick’s Day. In India in the 1980s, Joyce’s navigation of the “nets” of language, nationality and religion resonated locally. In Germany, interest in Joyce and other Irish writers helped broaden perceptions of Ireland at a time when our national reputation suffered from the fallout of the economic and financial crisis of 2009-10. In 2012, I worked with two German radio stations who broadcast complete readings of “Ulysses” to coincide with the expiration of its copyright. Our literature draws people around the world to engage with Ireland who might otherwise have no affinity with our island nation.
For his three main characters, Joyce chose atypical Dubliners — Bloom with his Hungarian and Jewish background; his wife, Molly, half-Spanish and born in Gibraltar; and Stephen Dedalus, a young aesthete with an “absurd” Greek name. It’s as if he wanted to explore 20th century experience through three individuals semidetached from the society around them. Throughout the novel, the Blooms are the butt of prejudice — misogyny in Molly’s case and anti-Semitism in Leopold’s. Molly, although we encounter her only at breakfast time and as she falls asleep that night, is presented as a gloriously feisty and instinctive individual, whereas her husband comes across as the soul of understated prudence and studied discretion. “Mr. Cautious Calmer” is how Bloom is described in one instance, “dissembling as was his wont.”
After keeping his views to himself for the first half of the novel, Bloom cuts loose in the “Cyclops” episode when he is goaded and his nationality is questioned. In response to “the Citizen,” Joyce’s personification of one-eyed nationalism, Bloom describes his nation in a straightforward way: “I was born here. Ireland.” In having Bloom take this stance, Joyce went against the grain in an era when national identity was seen primarily as a compound of homogeneities of race and creed, as many today continue to insist it ought to be. Joyce enjoyed the variegated character of early 20th century Trieste and the “ramshackle empire” of which it was part. During assignments in Europe, I have repeatedly made the point that the horrors of the continent’s catastrophic 20th century might have been avoided had Bloom’s pragmatic definition of nationality prevailed. | null | null | null | null | null |
Attorneys for Tamir's mother Samaria sent four letters to top officials in the Justice Department and met with them last October in the hope of renewing federal interest in her son’s death, and again in December. One of the letters was signed by 50 scholars on constitutional, criminal and civil rights law who wrote that they believed the case must be scrutinized. | null | null | null | null | null |
Washington Post Live “Race in America” series to spotlight pioneering Black women during Black History Month
Washington Post Live today announced the “Race in America: History Matters” series will spotlight the contributions of Black women throughout American history this February. The upcoming conversations marking Black History Month will highlight Ida B. Wells, Mamie Till-Mobley and Judge Constance Baker Motley, among others.
“Throughout American history, Black women have played a central role in the fight for civil and women's rights,” said Chitra Wadhwani, editorial director of Washington Post Live. “This Black History Month, we will take a closer look at some of those women, whose struggles and victories have also paved the way for a new generation to ascend to new heights.”
The series will feature Michelle Duster, historian and great granddaughter of Ida B. Wells, Deborah Watts, co-founder of the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation, and Tomiko Brown-Nagin, author of the new book “Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality.” Janai Nelson, associate director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, will also share her reflections connecting the past and the present.
Explore The Post’s “Race in America” series as well as upcoming programs here. For The Post’s stories and columns that represent Black excellence and triumph, visit here.
For further details on Washington Post Live programing, see below:
Feb. 1 at 11:00 a.m. ET: Michelle Duster, author of “Ida B. the Queen,” on her great grandmother and other pioneering Black women of that time. Learn more.
Feb. 8 at 12:00 p.m. ET: Deborah Watts, a distant cousin of Emmett Till, on how Mamie Till-Mobley galvanized the civil rights movement and her enduring legacy. Learn more.
Feb. 10 at 12:00 p.m. ET: Tomiko Brown-Nagin, discusses her new book, “Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality.” Learn more.
Feb. 16 at 11:00 a.m. ET: Janai Nelson, Associate Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, on how the struggles and victories of Black women of the past paved the way for a new generation of Black women to ascend to new heights, the continued structural barriers Black women face today and the forces that are pushing change. Additional program details to be announced. | null | null | null | null | null |
Punxsutawney Phil’s predictions over the years are filled with holes, but he does surprise us from time to time.
Groundhog Club co-handler Al Dereume holds Punxsutawney Phil, the weather prognosticating groundhog, during the 132nd celebration of Groundhog Day on Gobbler's Knob in Punxsutawney, Pa., Feb. 2, 2018. (Gene J. Puskar/AP)
On Wednesday, a plumply woodchuck will forecast the rest of winter for the 135th time. If Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow on the ground (like he has around 85 percent of the time), then the U.S. can expect six more weeks of winter all around. If he decides to keep his head held high, then an early spring will apply. At least that’s the Phil-osophy of Groundhog Day.
While Phil’s handlers claim he is right “100% of the time, of course!” data shows the supersized squirrel has about a 40 percent accuracy rate over his career. It remains to be seen if the prognostications of the “Great Oz of Weather Forecasting” should be chucked, but we can offer our insight by looking at stuff like numbers and weather models, at least until we can get our own forecasting groundhog.
Then temperatures plunged — much like Phil’s popularity after Feb. 2. January was colder than normal for much of the eastern United States. Last weekend, a “bomb cyclone” dropped at least 2 feet of snow in some parts of New England and Long Island — tying Boston’s single snowiest day in January on record. Washington, D.C., experienced its snowiest January in six years. An unexpected heavy slug of snow doused the Colorado and Kansas border. A cold snap in Florida resulted in falling iguanas, losing their grip due to the abnormally low temperatures and dropping from trees. | null | null | null | null | null |
A view of the building where journalist Roberto Toledo was killed, in Zitacuaro, Michoacan state, Mexico, Jan. 31, 2022. (Magda Alonso/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
A fourth journalist has been killed in Mexico in a month, drawing condemnation from freedom of the press groups.
“One of our colleagues lost his life because three people came and shot him in a vile way, in a cowardly way,” said Linares in the video, clearly distraught. “To our colleague’s family I say that we are not going to leave things like this and that we are going to take them to their last consequences.”
Mexico’s government spokesperson, Jesús Ramírez Cuevas, initially condemned the killing on Twitter, saying “we will work together with the state and municipal government to clarify the case. We will not allow impunity. We defend freedom of expression and the right to information.” A subsequent tweet from his account said that Roberto Toledo worked as an assistant in a law firm, not as a journalist.
In an interview with Mexico’s Milenio, the mayor of Zitácuaro, Antonio Orihuela, also condemned the attack, but said that Toledo wasn’t a journalist.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemned the attack on social media and urged Mexican authorities to investigate. Mexico ranked as the world’s deadliest country for journalists in 2020, according to a report by CPJ. | null | null | null | null | null |
“One of our colleagues lost his life because three people came and shot him in a vile way, in a cowardly way,” Linares said in the video, clearly distraught. “To our colleague’s family I say that we are not going to leave things like this and that we are going to take them to their last consequences.”
Mexico’s government spokesperson, Jesús Ramírez Cuevas, initially condemned the killing on Twitter, saying, “We will work together with the state and municipal government to clarify the case. We will not allow impunity. We defend freedom of expression and the right to information.” A subsequent tweet from his account said that Roberto Toledo worked as an assistant in a law firm, not as a journalist. | null | null | null | null | null |
Shintaro Ishihara, fiery Japanese nationalist politician, dies at 89
Shintaro Ishihara, then governor of Tokyo, in 2003. (Koji Sasahara/AP)
Shintaro Ishihara, a fiery nationalist politician remembered as Tokyo’s gaffe-prone governor who provoked a spat with China by calling for Japan’s purchase of disputed islands in the East China Seas, died Feb. 1 at 89.
He was being treated for pancreatic cancer and had been in a hospital since December, the family announced. No further details were immediately available.
Mr. Ishihara, a screenwriter, film director and award-winning novelist before he became a politician, served in the national legislature early in his career and was governor from 1999 to 2012. He was a driving force behind Tokyo’s bid for the 2020 Olympics, and he pushed through environmental restrictions for diesel-powered vehicles and worked to promote the Tokyo Marathon.
But he was more widely remembered for making sexist and racist remarks that often angered women and rights groups during his 30-year tenure as a lawmaker, mostly as a member of the governing Liberal Democratic Party.
As governor of Tokyo, Mr. Ishihara sparked a diplomatic spat with Beijing over the Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands, which China also claims and calls the Diaoyu.
Mr. Ishihara in 2012 proposed that Tokyo’s governorate buy the islands from their private Japanese owners to defend them from China’s growing territorial claims, triggering opposition from Beijing. To calm the situation, Japan’s government eventually nationalized the islands, but the move backfired and further escalated the dispute, leading to violent anti-Japanese protests and the boycotting of Japanese products in China.
Bilateral ties have since somewhat improved, but China has taken increasingly assertive actions around the islands, including sending coastguard ships. China’s maritime activity in the East and South China Seas has prompted Japan to beef up defenses of its southwestern outlying islands.
Among his provocative comments, Mr. Ishihara proposed that Japan develop nuclear weapons and abandon its war-renouncing Constitution. He also angered the residents affected by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami as he called the disaster “divine punishment” for Japan’s egoism.
Mr. Ishihara, the son of a shipping company manager, was born in Kobe, a port city in western Japan, on Sept. 30, 1932, and grew up in Zushi.
He attended Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo and won the Akutagawa literary prize for his novel “The Season of the Sun,” published in 1955 and turned into a popular film. Like many of his works of fiction, it focuses on a group of disillusioned and nihilistic postwar young people.
He also wrote books on politics, including his 1989 “The Japan That Can Say No,” urging his country to stop always following U.S. policies.
After winning four conservative terms as Tokyo’s governor, he stepped down in 2012 and served two years in Parliament. He retired from politics in 2014.
Survivors include his wife, Noriko Ishida, and four sons.
Speaking to reporters, conservative former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe described Ishihara as “a politician who challenged what became the norms in the postwar era. ... He was not afraid of criticisms and insisted on what he had to say.”
At a news conference announcing his retirement from politics in 2014, Mr. Ishihara said he was thankful to have lived through historical turning points in his career as a politician and a novelist and did not regret stirring up controversy.
“I want to do what I like for the rest of my life, even if people hate me when I die,” he said. | null | null | null | null | null |
Drone company DJI obscured ties to Chinese state funding, documents show
The Chinese firm received funding from several state-backed investors, despite repeated claims that it hasn’t taken money from Beijing
A DJI drone with a thermal-imaging camera is seen in 2018. (Menlo Park Fire Protection District/AP)
Chinese dronemaker DJI, a leading supplier of drones to U.S. law enforcement, obscured its Chinese government funding while claiming that Beijing had not invested in the firm, according to a Washington Post review of company reports and articles posted on the sites of state-owned and -controlled investors, as well as analysis by IPVM, a video surveillance research group.
The documents show that four investment bodies owned or administered by Beijing have invested in the popular drone brand in recent years, including a state asset manager that has pledged to play a key role in promoting partnerships between private enterprises and the Chinese military.
Brendan Carr, the senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission, which authorizes DJI’s equipment for use on U.S. communications networks, labeled reports of the links as “deeply concerning” in an interview. The FCC proposed changes last year that could severely limit access to U.S. markets for companies deemed a national security risk.
Scrutiny of DJI comes as the company is already facing action by U.S. regulators over its ties to Beijing’s security apparatus. DJI was among eight Chinese companies added to a U.S. investment blacklist by the Treasury Department in December over sales of its drone equipment to police in Xinjiang, where U.S. officials said it has been used to surveil ethnic Uyghurs. In 2020, the company was added to the Commerce Department’s Entity List, restricting its access to U.S. components.
The Defense Department clarified last year that its 2017 ban on the purchase of DJI drones remains in place except under very limited circumstances. The Pentagon previously said the Chinese drones pose a national security threat due to “an increased awareness of cyber vulnerabilities.”
Who are the Uyghurs, and what’s happening to them in China?
DJI still accounts for the majority of consumer drones used in the United States. As of 2020, DJI held 77 percent of the American hobby drone market, while a Bard College study showed DJI drones accounted for around 90 percent of the drones in its database used by public safety agencies in the United States, including state and local police, as well as fire and emergency services.
The company is not publicly traded and its Hong Kong ownership structure means its full list of investors is not public — highlighting the broader challenges that investors and governments face in uncovering links between private Chinese tech firms and Beijing, according to the Bethlehem, Pa.-based IPVM, which first surfaced some of the financing links between DJI and Chinese state investment funds.
DJI did not comment on questions about whether Chinese government controlled funders were investors in the company, but maintained it had not received “direct” investments from the Chinese government.
“DJI is privately held. The company is solely managed by and majority-owned by the founder team. Shareholders other than the founders do not participate in the company’s management and operation,” said Adam Lisberg, a DJI spokesman.
The funds that list DJI as an investment include China Chengtong Holdings Group, which is directly administered by Beijing’s state-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC), a ministerial-level organization tasked by China’s State Council to manage the country’s state-owned enterprises.
“If SASAC isn’t the PRC [People’s Republic of China] government, I don’t know what is. If SASAC has invested in you, that means the Chinese government has invested in you,” said Charles Rollet, the IPVM analyst who uncovered the links between DJI and China Chengtong, which invested in DJI through an emerging technologies fund, according to company documents.
“It directly contradicts what [DJI] have been touting to allay concerns around the Chinese government,” Rollet said. “DJI has been saying they have no Chinese government investments. This evidence directly contradicts that.”
Other funds that list DJI as an investment include the Shanghai Venture Capital Guidance Fund, which is administered under the Shanghai Municipal Government. Guidance funds in China mix state assets with private funds to advance Beijing’s industrial development goals in emerging industries.
A Chinese language S&P global report released in March 2021 says that state-run Guangdong Hengjian Investment Holding invested in DJI alongside SenseTime, which was also added to a sanctions list in December by the Biden administration over alleged rights abuses in Xinjiang.
SDIC Unity Capital a fund administered by the State Development & Investment Corporation (SDIC) a state-owned investment holding company approved by China’s State Council, also lists DJI as an investment on its website.
The four state funds did not respond to requests for comment.
While Americans and most federal and local agencies are not restricted from purchasing DJI drones, further regulatory action could threaten the company’s tight hold on the U.S. market.
“One of the independent bases that we have for taking action at the FCC is the lack of candor, so separate and apart from any national security concern, if you lack candor that contributes to our assessment of whether you are qualified to get FCC authorizations or FCC licenses,” said Carr, the FCC commissioner.
Carr has called for DJI to be added to the FCC’s Covered List, which bans access to federal Universal Service Fund (USF) subsides that are available to companies for the upkeep of telecommunications infrastructure. Current firms on the list include the Chinese telecommunications giants Huawei and ZTE.
DJI is not directly eligible for USF subsidies and funding, given it is not a telecommunications provider, said Carr, but the FCC proposed changes last year that would ban equipment authorizations for companies on the Covered List, a move that would mean DJI equipment could not operate legally on U.S. communications infrastructure if it were added to the list.
In November, President Biden signed into law the Secure Equipment Act, which requires the FCC to adopt such bans for companies on the Covered List before the end of the year.
The FCC has signaled it will take a tougher stance on regulating national security threats, but a spokeswoman wouldn’t comment directly on DJI.
“The FCC has also just asked its national security and law enforcement partners to determine whether updates are needed to the agency’s Covered List in light of new evidence of cyberthreats,” FCC spokeswoman Paloma Perez said.
DJI, founded in 2006 by CEO Frank Wang when he was a student at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, is one of just a few Chinese technology brands to claim global dominance in high-end consumer hardware over the past decade.
That success is also what has attracted state-owned and -administered investors, according to information posted on the websites of the funds.
China Chengtong invested in DJI through a government fund worth $55.3 billion, according to a 2018 company report. It’s not clear how much the fund invested. The fund was authorized by China’s State Council and SASAC in 2016 and is headed by China Chengtong’s chief Zhu Bixin.
An October 2019 article posted on China Chengtong’s website confirms the funding and shows images of the fund’s deputy party secretary visiting a DJI facility in Shenzhen with a team to “conduct special research” on the investment.
“DJI adheres to the guidance of Xi Jinping thought on socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era,” the article said, referring to China’s president.
The tour took place almost exactly a year before DJI posted a “myth busting” blog on its English-language website, saying it received no Chinese government funding amid rising pressure from U.S. regulators.
“DJI did not receive any Chinese government investments, but American venture capital firms invested more than $100 million,” the blog said.
China Chengtong did not respond to emailed requests for comment, but it says on its website that its goals are to “to mainly serve the innovation and development of central enterprises … and increase capital support for major national strategies such as the Belt and Road project and military-civilian fusion.”
Military civilian fusion is a Chinese policy that was elevated to a national-level strategy in 2015 and is designed to remove barriers between the country’s private high-tech enterprises and the People’s Liberation Army.
DJI’s ongoing Xinjiang sales
While national security concerns landed DJI on the U.S. Commerce Department’s Entity List in 2020, it’s the company’s ties to Xinjiang security operations that have brought the firm under increased scrutiny in the past year.
Cooperation between DJI and Xinjiang’s Public Security Department was previously disclosed in a 2017 agreement reported on by Bloomberg News. More recent contracts uncovered by IPVM, the research firm, show that Xinjiang police and other local authorities continue to purchase DJI’s technology.
The Post reviewed documents collected by IPVM outlining seven procurement orders for DJI technology by separate Xinjiang police public security departments since 2019, with a combined value of almost $300,000.
They include a procurement document issued in December by police in Xinjiang’s Aksu region that requests $132,000 worth of DJI drones, which can conduct advanced 3-D mapping, according to product specifications. In September, in the northern Xinjiang region of Karamay, the police ordered several advanced DJI drones worth $75,000.
The purchases highlight the ongoing use of DJI’s technology in the Xinjiang region, where experts say over a million ethnic Uyghurs have been detained in recent years as part of a vast crackdown assisted by China’s private surveillance industry.
Four other documents outline $47,000 worth of tenders issued by Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC) units for DJI drones. Added to a sanctions list by the U.S. government in 2020 over human rights abuses, the XPCC is a state paramilitary organization that oversees the administration of several cities and regions in Xinjiang.
Christian Shepherd and Pei Lin Wu in Taipei and Lyric Li in Seoul contributed to this report. | null | null | null | null | null |
Remember the Atlanta schools’ cheating scandal? It isn’t over.
(Michael Quirk-iStock)
Back in 2015, an Atlanta jury convicted 11 teachers of racketeering and other crimes for cheating on student standardized tests, one of many such scandals reported in those years in most states and the District of Columbia. The fallout continues.
The key difference between all the other scandals and the one in Atlanta: Prosecutors used a law ordinarily used to prosecute mobsters — the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, known as RICO — to go after those they deemed guilty.
A grand jury in 2013 indicted Beverly Hall, the now-deceased superintendent, who was accused of running a “corrupt” organization that used test scores to financially reward and punish teachers. Thirty-four teachers, principals and others were also charged. All but one of the charged was Black. Many pleaded guilty. Twelve went to trial; one was acquitted of all charges and the 11 others were convicted of racketeering and a variety of other charges.
The cheating scandals — including some broad-based ones in the District of Columbia over several years — came during a time when standardized test scores had become the chief metric to evaluate teachers, principals, schools and districts because of federal policy during the Bush and then the Obama administrations. Teachers’ jobs were on the line if student test scores didn’t improve (despite questions about whether the tests really showed improvement in student achievement).
In Georgia, the prosecutions were pushed by two Republican governors, one of whom, Sonny Perdue, used the test scores that resulted from cheating to win federal funding in President Barack Obama’s Race to the Top school reform initiative.
This post looks at the current state of things in this scandal. It was written by Anna Simonton, who is a journalist for the Appeal, a worker-led nonprofit newsroom covering the U.S. criminal legal system. She is the co-author with Shani Robinson of “None of The Above: The Untold Story of the Atlanta Public Schools Cheating Scandal, Corporate Greed, and the Criminalization of Educators.” Simonton says she is a proud graduate of Atlanta public schools.
Robinson is one of the teachers who was indicted and who maintains her innocence. “None of the Above” is revelatory about how the prosecutions were handled — the news media virtually ignored the many times the case was nearly dismissed as well as clear examples of prosecutorial misconduct. The judge in the case called the cheating scandal “the sickest thing that’s ever happened to this town,” never mind slavery, Jim Crow laws and their continuing effects, the dismantling of public housing, etc.
Here’s Simonton’s piece.
By Anna Simonton
Teachers have faced unprecedented burdens during the coronavirus pandemic — the risks of teaching in person, the challenges of online schooling, and the furor over critical race theory. Now another threat looms on the horizon for a group of former educators in Atlanta: prison.
The Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal rose to national attention in 2015 when 11 Black educators were convicted of racketeering and conspiracy for allegedly cheating or enabling cheating on students’ standardized tests. The reaction from many corners was outrage.
Commentators asserted that charging teachers with RICO — a federal statute which was originally designed to prosecute mobsters — was overreaching and harsh, that Black educators were scapegoated for a widespread problem, and that sending them to prison wouldn’t solve the systemic failures that led to cheating.
Eventually, the news cycle moved on, and the case was largely forgotten outside of Atlanta. But it’s far from over.
Seven educators who maintain their innocence are still appealing their convictions in a process that has moved at a glacial pace. Last month brought the first major development in several years: Former principal Dana Evans had her appeal rejected by the Georgia Supreme Court on Jan. 11. Evans will soon be incarcerated for one year, followed by probation, unless the trial judge agrees to modify her sentence.
Retired Fulton County Superior Court Judge Jerry Baxter has the power to resentence these educators to time served or any number of alternatives to prison. Now local education advocates are petitioning Baxter, District Attorney Fani Willis, and other elected officials to bring a just resolution to a case that legal experts have called “a textbook example of overcriminalization and prosecutorial discretion run amok.”
It all began in 2010, when then-Gov. Sonny Perdue (R) launched a state investigation into Atlanta Public Schools because he wasn’t satisfied with the district’s internal probe into a suspiciously high number of wrong-to-right erasures on standardized tests.
The problem was widespread — 20 percent of Georgia’s elementary and middle schools were flagged in a 2009 erasure analysis — but Atlanta became the focal point. Less than a week after launching the investigation, Perdue announced the state won a $400 million federal Race to the Top grant for school reform from the Obama administration. What he didn’t mention was that the grant application touted those same test scores, attributing the rise to “higher standards and harder assessments.”
Meanwhile, agents from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation agents interrogated teachers without lawyers present, trading immunity for confessions and accusations against fellow educators. The result was a dragnet that hooked innocent people along with those who cheated. When the investigation concluded by implicating 178 educators in cheating, it was up to the local district attorney at the time, Paul Howard, to bring charges.
At that point, cheating had become commonplace in school districts across the country, due in part to federal laws like No Child Left Behind, which punished schools that didn’t increase test scores each year. In most places, the consequences for cheating amounted to suspended or revoked professional licenses, fines, and community service. When Howard indicted 35 educators (who were almost all Black and all people of color) on RICO charges in 2013, it sent shock waves through the city.
Howard stretched the bounds of RICO — which concerns crimes committed for financial gain — to allege that educators conspired to cheat to receive bonus money awarded to schools that scored well on standardized tests. The indictment was so broad that two teachers at different schools who cheated without any knowledge of the other’s actions could be cast as conspirators. And the claim about bonus money didn’t square with the state investigation, which had found that bonus money “provided little incentive to cheat.”
The 12 educators who went to trial had garnered a total of only $1,500 in bonus money, and some never received any at all. One defendant was a teacher whose students didn’t even pass the test.
Others taught first and second grade, where tests were only taken for practice and didn’t count toward the metrics schools were judged upon. That was the case for Shani Robinson. She was accused by a colleague who was granted immunity by the GBI. A testing coordinator had instructed Robinson and other teachers to erase doodles students had drawn on their test booklets, a practice that was allowed under testing regulations. It wasn’t hard for her accuser to twist the scene to fit what investigators were looking for.
The trial lasted eight months — the longest criminal trial in Georgia’s history — and was marred by unreliable testimony. Most educators who were indicted had taken plea deals that required them to confess, accuse, and testify in exchange for community service instead of prison. Witnesses for the prosecution made contradictory statements so often that at one point the judge said, “Perjury is being committed daily here.” Two people even recanted on the witness stand.
At the end of the trial, prosecutors made a last-ditch effort to convince the jury that educators cheated for financial gain by claiming that their salaries — forget the bonus money — justified a RICO conviction. They reiterated that educators could be conspirators without knowing it. And where reason fell short, they relied on emotion, making impassioned declarations like, “America will never be destroyed from the outside! If we falter and lose our freedoms it will be because we destroyed ourselves!” As if Atlanta educators were responsible for the downfall of democracy.
That was the tenor of the media surrounding the trial as well. Politicians and pundits used the case to paint public education as a failure and peddle corporate-friendly reforms. On the day the prosecution rested, and the cheating scandal dominated headlines, then-Gov. Nathan Deal (R) announced a plan for the state to take over “failing” schools and turn them into charters.
Even if cheating did signal a need for sweeping change, throwing the book at teachers hasn’t led to a better education system. Some students whose tests were manipulated have said the cheating didn’t take a toll on their academic achievement in the first place. The school district’s remediation program for those who have struggled wasn’t very impactful. And new cheating allegations have surfaced because the policies at the root of the problem have not been addressed.
Instead, two educators have served prison sentences and others are headed that way. Changing their sentences and keeping them out of prison would represent a real step toward rectifying the Atlanta cheating scandal. | null | null | null | null | null |
The Domino’s delivery driver dearth isn’t an anomaly. Businesses across the country are struggling to meet their labor needs amid what analysts are calling the “Great Resignation,” a phenomenon that saw 8 percent of the country’s workforce quit their jobs between August and October of last year. Workers have more job opportunities, and are often leaving jobs for those with better pay, benefits, and flexibility. Many companies are responding by attempting to lessen their dependence on some workers, as Domino’s is with its drivers, and offer better pay or other incentives to attract and keep staff. | null | null | null | null | null |
In the largest opioid settlement for Native Americans, the country’s three major drug distributors and Johnson & Johnson will pay up to $665 million to the tribal communities devastated by the public health crisis that has killed them at a disproportionate rate compared with non-natives.
Nationwide, from 2006 to 2014, Native Americans were nearly 50 percent more likely to die of an opioid overdose than non-natives, according to a Washington Post analysis. | null | null | null | null | null |
An Olympic worker holds a paper with a Chinese character for fortune written on it as he poses with Bing Dwen Dwen, the Beijing Winter Olympics mascot. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
BEIJING — Zhao Weidong, a spokesperson for the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games, called this event “an invitation from China.” He forgot to mention it was blank on the inside.
Sure, we know what we’re here for: world-class athletes doing world-classy things in cold weather. Beyond that, though, the 2022 Beijing Olympics experience lacks an important element because of covid-19: the personality of the host city.
On Tuesday here, they celebrated the Lunar New Year with a zeal that penetrated this giant sports bubble. As local Olympic officials and volunteers shared food, played music and educated visitors about the holiday’s tradition and importance, they offered a glimpse of the kind of vitality that these 2022 Games will be without most of the time.
“You can already feel the spirit of the Chinese Spring Festival,” Zhao said. “At this moment, the whole country is filled with celebration.”
He talked about a spirit of family reunion, public togetherness and culture. He described the part of the Olympics that transcends competition, the part that makes it a bucket-list adventure. The part that Beijing won’t be able to manufacture this month. The city is making history as the first to host a Summer and Winter Olympics, both within a span of 14 years. Before the pandemic, the timing seemed perfect, too, coinciding with the Lunar New Year, when the nation is at its most cheerful.
Now, though, much of the joy has been displaced. With the current situation, the location of the Games means little. It is simply the ground upon which the Olympic movement will move forward, stubbornly, on schedule to satisfy television contracts, another indicator that chasing revenue means more than any rhetoric about the glory of sport.
The organizing committee kept referring to “simple, safe and splendid” as a theme for the muted Beijing 2022. That’s smart, I guess. The alliteration sounds better than declaring that they’re just trying to make the most of it.
Yan Jiarong, who is also a BOCOG spokesperson, considered all the excitement and hardships and called it “a very unique and unforgettable experience for me.” In 2015, when Beijing was awarded the Winter Olympics over Almatay, Kazakhstan, it felt like a gift, an opportunity for China to showcase its evolution to the world. It turned out to be a tricky, high-priced assignment.
Covid-19 created the need for the most expansive sports bubble of this protracted pandemic. China fortified it. And so far it feels like a Games that will be observed through plexiglass. If someone told me that I was merely on a movie set resembling the republic, I’d shrug and say, “Figures.” In three days since entering the closed loop — the fortresslike environment in which we shuttle from hotel to Olympic venues and nowhere else — it has been challenging to get a sense of place and impossible to feel the city’s vibe.
And so what will be Beijing’s reward? These Games arrive just six months after the Tokyo Summer Olympics, which were delayed for a year. Beijing 2022 must compete for attention with the Super Bowl. There will be little chance to explore the festive culture of China and the lives of its average citizens, which figures to make scrutiny of the government’s awful human rights record even more pronounced.
The Olympics are marketed as having a massive branding appeal, but in reality, they place a mirror in front of the host city. The beauty and the blemishes become clear, and then the humanity of athletes from all over the world makes everything worth it. This time, the beauty is walled off, and the blemishes are troubling and unavoidable. The athletes will remain the main event, and they have a way of thriving in adverse circumstances. But rarely is this event so entirely about the competition. Rarely does this event commence without a fruitful cultural exchange between host and visitors. Staged during a somewhat calmer moment in the pandemic, Tokyo was a quiet event with few spectators, but its bubble was much more permeable.
In practice, these are not the Beijing Winter Olympics. They aren’t allowed to be. They should be referred to as the Winter Olympics (Beijing). The barrier separating why you’re here and where you are couldn’t be more impenetrable.
Over the past two years, there have been plenty of sterilized sports experiences, including the 2020 NBA bubble and last year’s Tokyo Olympics. But when you combine heightened worldwide concern over the omicron variant with China’s nationwide zero-covid policy, you get an event drenched in caution. You get a cotton swab shoved down your throat daily and few chances to get a taste of the region. The diligence about health and safety may increase the likelihood of getting through the next three weeks relatively unscathed, but the host will hardly get the chance to flicker, let alone shine.
“It’s been super difficult,” United States curler Vicky Persinger said of managing the covid-19 countermeasures before and during arrival. “You’re getting excited to go to the Olympic Games, and you want to be around your family, and they want to celebrate with you, especially since they can’t come here.”
In that sense, Persinger can relate to the 19,000 Olympic volunteers, the majority of whom are Chinese citizens staying in the closed loop and isolating from their families during a time in which they normally would be gathering in their hometowns and reveling in the new year.
“It’s still a lifetime chance I’m getting,” said Beijing Olympic volunteer Liang Shichao, 20. “I miss the regular traditions, but I am proud to be here. This is a dream.”
Inside these inaccessible Games, there’s still plenty of the familiar Olympic spirit. It just too bad it has no room to spread. | null | null | null | null | null |
In the largest opioid settlement for Native Americans, the country’s three major drug distributors and Johnson & Johnson will pay up to $665 million to tribal communities devastated by the public health crisis, which has killed them at a disproportionate rate compared with non-Indians.
“This is epic,” said Lloyd Miller, one of the lead attorneys representing a third of the litigating tribes. “The need is just too great in Indian Country. This settlement is a real turning point in history.”
Johnson & Johnson said in a statement that its “actions relating to the marketing and promotion of important prescription opioid medications were appropriate and responsible,” adding that the drugmaker no longer sells prescription opioids in the United States. The three distributors did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Miller said that tribal leadership had to weigh possibly earning more money after years of trials and appeals vs. receiving the much-needed funds within a month of finalizing this deal.
“They’ve got tribal citizens who are suffering and need relief,” he said, “and that factors more than anything in the final calculus.”
Nationwide from 2006 to 2014, Native Americans were nearly 50 percent more likely to die of an opioid overdose than non-Indians, according to a Washington Post analysis. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: I was attacked with Pegasus. Inaction against spyware has put all of our phones, and data, at risk.
A logo of the Israeli NSO Group company, near Sapir, Israel on Aug. 24, 2021. (Sebastian Scheiner/AP)
By Lama Fakih
Lama Fakih is the crisis and conflict director and Beirut office director at Human Rights Watch.
April 6, 2021, was my baby’s first birthday. Because it was still the pandemic, we celebrated with a small smattering of family on the weekend. On the actual day, we just had cupcakes in the kitchen — baby’s first taste of sugar. I snapped some photos, took a short video. I might have even shared them with some family over WhatsApp, like so many other memories shared remotely these past two years.
I didn’t think about those photos again until late November, when I received an iMessage from Apple informing me that it believed I was the subject of a state-sponsored attack on my iPhone. The notification states that I was most likely attacked because of who I am or what I do. I read the message twice. I was in a meeting and started messaging the Human Rights Watch colleague who leads our information security team. “I just received this message,” I told her. “Is this legit?”
A wave of emotions came over me; panic and dread and something I didn’t want to name at the time but can admit now: fear. And even before my colleague could confirm that the message was indeed legit, I already knew: I had been hacked.
I’ve spent my entire career working to defend people’s rights, and now a government is trying to use me as a tool to undermine them. It’s paralyzing and chilling, and it’s why the stakes are so high when it comes to ending unlawful surveillance.
But who was targeting me, and why? My colleague’s forensic analysis of my phone provided some answers, but there is a lot we still don’t know. She confirmed that Pegasus spyware, which is produced by the company NSO Group and sold to governments, was used to infect my personal iPhone at least five times between last April and August. The first attack started on April 6, maybe early enough in the day to capture the cupcake photos.
My phone was targeted using a so-called zero-click attack, which meant I didn’t need to do anything — like click on a link — for the hack to take effect. There is no way to prevent this type of attack, and once it is there, Pegasus can harvest more or less any information or data on your device or turn on your camera or microphone to spy on you.
But what did they harvest and who were they? Because of the way Pegasus covers its tracks, it was impossible to find out the extent of the attack against me. NSO Group says it sells its products only to governments, but which government was responsible for the attack?
I went back through my calendar looking for clues that could lead me to the culprit. What was I working on that was potentially sensitive involving a country that was a potential NSO client and would target me? The truth is, since I’m the director of the Human Rights Watch Crisis and Conflict Division, the list of possibilities was too long to be useful.
NSO Group says Pegasus is meant to help governments stop criminals and terrorists. But human rights organizations and academic researchers have reported for years on governments using Pegasus to target the phones of journalists, rights activists, politicians and diplomats. We wrote to NSO Group officials to ask them if they thought that targeting me was a legitimate use of Pegasus and how this is consistent with their stated policies. NSO responded that it would open an initial assessment into our allegation to determine if an investigation is warranted. The company said it takes because of any allegation of the misuse of [its] system against a human rights defender most seriously.”
I’ve been living with the reality of not knowing who targeted me and what they stole, not knowing how they have used my data or plan to, and whether I will be attacked again. I don’t know who might be at risk because of the attack or future attacks.
Human rights groups have criticized the unregulated trade in spyware for years. Unchecked sales and the use of surveillance technology make activists and journalists more vulnerable to government abuse and forced censorship. And when those who speak out against rights- abusing governments are attacked, that makes everyone more vulnerable to abuse.
That is why Human Rights Watch and many other human rights organizations and experts are calling on governments to suspend the trade in commercial surveillance technology until rights-protecting regulatory frameworks are in place, and for transparency and accountability in the spyware industry.
In an era when our devices are a gateway into nearly every aspect of our lives, government inaction to stop surveillance companies from profiting off of rights abuse should matter to us all. | null | null | null | null | null |
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The water contained in California’s mountain snow is now lower than the historical average after a January without significant rain or snow.
Snow totals updated Tuesday by the state Department of Water Resources show the amount of water in the Sierra Nevada mountain’s snowpack is at 92% of what's normal for this date. | null | null | null | null | null |
By Bruce Lowitt | AP
LOS ANGELES — The only full season of NFL perfection in the Super Bowl era including winning the championship occurred in 1972. When the Dolphins took the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum field against Washington on Jan. 14, 1973, they were 16-0. But they were underdogs to the veteran opponent led by future Hall of Fame coach George Allen. Of course, Miami also had that level of coach in Don Shula. And despite one of the most infamous plays in pro football history, the Dolphins succeeded, 14-7. The Associated Press is republishing verbatim the story of that game. | null | null | null | null | null |
FILE - Vanessa Bryant arrives at the Baby2Baby Gala on Nov. 13, 2021, in West Hollywood, Calif. Bryant, the widow of the late Kobe Bryant, will be recognized as one of the leading women in sports at the Sports Power Brunch: Celebrating the Most Powerful Women in Sports during Super Bowl week on Feb. 8, 2022, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File) | null | null | null | null | null |
Transcript: Race in America: History Matters with Michelle Duster
MS. GIVHAN: Hello, and welcome to Washington Post Live. I’m Robin Givhan, senior critic-at-large for The Washington Post. And it is my pleasure to kick off Black History month with our series on Black women in American history. And we begin with a conversation about Ida B. Wells, and we’re joined by Michelle Duster, who’s written extensively about her great-grandmother. Thanks for joining us, Michelle.
MS. DUSTER: Oh, thanks for having me so much, Robin.
MS. GIVHAN: I wanted to just remind our audience that you can participate in the conversation. If you can tweet your questions and comments to the handle PostLive, we will hopefully get to some of those questions.
Michelle, I wanted to start with a quote from your great grandmother. "The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them." It seems like such a simple statement, but it really resonates today, I think, when the question of truth and turning the light on truth have become really contentious issues. I'm wondering if you can talk a bit about what drove your great-grandmother's sense of social justice.
MS. DUSTER: Well, what drove my great-grandmother's sense of social justice was the time that she was living in. Unfortunately, you know, during her time, there was an extraordinary amount of violence against the African American community, including lynching, which is what she became really famous for writing about. And she unfortunately lost three of her friends to lynching. She was the firsthand witness to several race riots that happened. And so this was the time that she was living in. And there were false narratives that were pervasive during her time, which basically blamed the victims for this type of violence.
MS. GIVHAN: Early on, there was--there was an incident, I believe, in 1884. And she was riding a train in Memphis when a White conductor questioned her right to be seated where she was. And she had purchased a first-class ticket, and there was really quite a major altercation before she was thrown off the train. How did she respond to that indignity?
MS. DUSTER: Well, we have to remember that this idea of separate but equal, when it came to public transportation, was sort of a new concept. My great-grandmother had been riding that train for a while with no problems. And then all of a sudden, there were these laws put in place that were segregating things, and she decided to defy that law. And as a result of her being thrown off the train after she actually bought the ticket and ridden the same train she had ridden so many times before, she decided to sue the railroad on the basis of separate and unequal, when the law said it was supposed to be separate and equal.
MS. GIVHAN: I mean when--as you learned about your great-grandmother's history and her decisions, were you use surprised that she had such faith in the system that she, you know, decided to sue, that she turned to the practice of journalism, that she really worked to bend the system to her will and to her needs?
MS. DUSTER: Well, she turned to journalism to chronicle what her experience was with the railroad. That was one of the first things that she wrote about. She was in her early 20s when this happened, and just starting in her career. She had been writing for church newsletters. And so somebody encouraged her to write about her situation with the train system. She initially won the lawsuit against the Chesapeake, Ohio and Southwestern Railroad, but then unfortunately, it was overturned a couple of years later when it went all the way to the Tennessee Supreme Court. And so that is what sort of changed her idea when it came to the ability for African Americans to get justice, because originally, she did get justice. But then, you know, it was overturned. And so she turned to journalism as a way to tell her story, and to help people understand the level of indignation, the level of degradation that was happening, and the lack of law when it came to African Americans having their rights respected.
MS. GIVHAN: I mean, she has over time become so known for her investigations into lynchings, and in 2020 she was posthumously awarded a Pulitzer. And the citation was courageous reporting on the horrific and vicious violence against African Americans during the era of lynching. She came to her investigations, though, if I understand correctly, because of somewhat very personal reasons, because of what had happened to friends of hers. Can you tell our viewers that story?
MS. DUSTER: Right, well, one of the things that I did include in my book, "Ida B. the Queen" and when I was doing research for it, I really did look at what happened regarding her friends, Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell, and William Stewart, who were owners of a grocery store, upstanding citizens, leaders in the community. And basically, they were lynched for being successful businesspeople. And when my great-grandmother realized that--well, she found out about the lynching because she was out of town when it happened, she realized that her friends were not guilty of the crime that was the pervasive narrative at that time, which was, African American men were assaulting and violating White women. And she knew they were not guilty of that at all. So it spurred her to find out how many other people who were innocent of any crime were being lynched. And she found out as she investigated that--or she came to the conclusion that lynching was being used as a form of domestic terrorism in order to terrorize the African American community and sort of keep, you know, African Americans in a certain status sociologically within our society.
MS. GIVHAN: As you look back on her work, I mean, were you--how often or how did you, I guess, make sense of so many of the reasons why people were lynched and thinking about the ways in which there’s still to some degree elements of oppression, jealousy that have--that continue long after your great-grandmother's day? I mean, did you find parallels to modern society?
MS. DUSTER: Yes, unfortunately, I do feel that there are quite a few parallels. I mean she--my great-grandmother grew up during Reconstruction, which was a period right after the Civil War--for only 12 years, unfortunately, from 1865 to 1877. But it was a period of time when there was a lot of progress, where newly freed African Americans had the right to go to school. They had the right to start businesses and own land. Men were able to vote starting in 1870. And so she grew up during a period of time when there was enormous amount of progress from being property to actually having self-determination. And she grew up in a family. Her father was very politically active. Education was very strongly encouraged. And so she had the opportunity to become formally educated. And then there was this backlash that happened. And I think the same thing has happened during my lifetime.
MS. GIVHAN: I mean, it often seems like the period of Reconstruction really gets glossed over, gets lost in the conversation about Black history. Have you found in as you've talked about your grandma--your great-grandmother's life--I mean, do people really understand what Reconstruction was and the impact it had on the lives of Black Americans?
MS. DUSTER: What I found when I've talked about my great-grandmother's life is that most people--well, in this country, we tend to think of the civil rights movement as the 1960s. And so we have this idea that there was slavery, slavery ended, and then there was Martin Luther King. And so basically, 100 years have--of history have been glossed over. And so I--it's not just Reconstruction. It's Reconstruction, and then what happened around World War I. I mean, there was a lot of resistance that happened, you know, between 1865 and in 1955. And then there was also a lot of resistance that happened before 1865. So, I think that, you know, unfortunately, we focus on what happened from 1950 until now. And everything that happened before that is sort of, you know, glossed over.
MS. GIVHAN: One of the stories that you've talked about that, you know, your great-grandmother was involved with is the events in Elaine, Arkansas, and the role that she played in--you know, in wrongfully incarcerated men. Can you please share a bit of that story?
MS. DUSTER: Right. Well, in Elaine, Arkansas, there was an effort to create a union for sharecroppers who they realized that they were being cheated, you know, out of their rightful amount of money. They should have been paid for their cotton. And they decided--and these are World War One veterans, and that's very significant, the role that veterans--Black veterans have played in our country. And they--you know to think about they went and fought for freedom, democracy in another country, and then they come back to their own country and suffer these indignities.
And so they were in the process of organizing a union and were attacked, and they defended themselves. And then they were the ones that were considered the aggressors, and the entire--Elaine, Arkansas, the community was greatly impacted. I mean, there was mass murders that happened, and 12 of the men who defended themselves were charged with crimes, and they were put on death row, actually. And my great-grandmother went to Elaine, Arkansas. She went to visit them in prison and wrote a whole pamphlet about what happened regarding that riot. And ultimately, they were--with the help of the NAACP as well--they were released.
MS. GIVHAN: I mean, I’m so struck by the vast reach of your great-grandmother's influence and ambition when it came to social justice. I mean, was there a point at which--at which you have been surprised at the degree to which she was able to sort of see all of these interlinking aspects of injustice? I mean, she was really quite at the beginning of this idea of intersectionality, where she saw the link between sexism and racism and oppression writ large.
MS. DUSTER: Well, one of the things I tried to do in "Ida B. the Queen" was to help the reader understand all of the different issues that were--that my great-grandmother and all of her contemporaries were facing. I mean, she grew up--her lifespan is from the Civil War to the Great Depression. And so that 68-year period of her life, there was an enormous amount of obstacles that African Americans had to overcome, as well as women, because we have to remember women did not have the right to vote until 1913. So my great-grandmother was in her 50s when she finally had that right. So, she spent most of her life without having, you know, political engagement as far as the ability to vote. And so women, you know, during her time, Black women were organizing through the club--women's club movements, and that was a way to sort of have self-determination and empowerment as well. And so there were so many things to battle that, you know, she obviously just took on everything that she could.
MS. GIVHAN: I mean, you mentioned the right to vote, and I love the story of her when she is working with the suffrage movement. And you know, she essentially, you know, highlights the racism within the women's movement, and her unwillingness to march in the back of the parade. I mean that--I think that's such a powerful moment. And it also certainly speaks to some of the things that, you know, we still struggle with today. Can you talk a little bit about that particular incident? I think--I hope you know the one that I mean, where she joins the marchers from Illinois and joins at the very--at the front of the line.
MS. DUSTER: Right. Well, during the suffrage movement, you know, where women were fighting for the right to vote, there was some racial tension where some White women, you know, did not welcome Black women into their suffrage organizations. And so my great-grandmother started her own, the Alpha Suffrage Club in Chicago for Black women. And she had already been involved with several suffrage organizations that were predominantly White, but she made the decision to start something that was only for Black women, in order to encourage Black women to have political empowerment on a local level. And that--and I wrote about this in "Ida B. the Queen," I also wrote a children's book, a children's picture book, "Ida B. Wells, Voice of Truth" so a younger generation, little kids can learn about this progression that women have had in our country, and all of the challenges that we have overcome as African Americans and as women.
MS. GIVHAN: I just want to pause for a moment and remind our audience that you can submit questions and comments via Twitter. Just tweet them to PostLive.
And carrying on with that, I mean, when you were--when you were researching and writing about your great grandmother, one of the things that I found amazing is, as you had mentioned earlier, the backlash to her work, you know, the writing about lynching, doing her investigative reporting. And at one point, you know, her offices are destroyed. I mean, how did she carry on with her work? And how did she end up in Chicago?
MS. DUSTER: Right, well, after her three friends were killed for basically being successful while black, she decided--what she wrote about, she encouraged people in Memphis to help make the White community feel something. And so she encouraged boycotts of the streetcars, boycott of White-owned businesses. And she encouraged those who could leave Memphis to just leave, to go to another place that where there could be justice, because she felt strongly that there was no way you could get justice in a place where the people who are murdering you are the--are the law. They're the judges, the sheriff, and you know, attorneys, and everybody else who is supposed to be protecting you.
And so because of what she was writing and encouraging people, and there was a mass exodus from Memphis as a result of her and I guess other people just feeling like, yeah, we need to go, she was visited and warned to stop what she was doing, or else. So, she knew her life was in danger, but she just continued writing. And ultimately, she wrote an article that really condemned the White community for being complicit in this, and also implying that some liaisons between Black men and White women were consensual. And that was such a volatile thing for her to say that her printing press was destroyed, and her life was threatened, and she never went back to Memphis again.
MS. GIVHAN: I mean, some people have called her fearless. But you make a point of saying that, in fact, she did feel fear, but that she simply moved forward with it. I mean, how do you sort of respond and process that ability of this woman who, you know, was barely five feet tall, to know that, you know, her life had been threatened, and yet she kept moving forward with her work?
MS. DUSTER: I really--when I've tried to sort of get into her head--which is impossible, but you know, I tried to kind of figure out what drove her--and for me, you know, one of the things that I wanted to do in the books that I've written is to humanize her. For me, it was important to kind of relate to her as a human being and not this superhero who has no fear, who never doubts herself. That's just not realistic to me. And so, I always sought ways to figure out like, how did she keep forward, keep moving forward in the midst of fear, despite the fear, despite feeling, you know, doubt about herself or feeling alone, sometimes? She faced an enormous amount of criticism, and she was marginalized. I mean, so her life was not easy.
And so the way I processed it in my own mind is that she was so focused on getting justice and making sure that the situation that led to her friend's death would be known, and she believed that the truth would lead to justice. If only people knew what was really happening, then there would be some pressure on the Southern community to stop this lawlessness.
And so, you know, with her, quote, "The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them," is exactly what she thought. And she continued on not only writing, but she did a lot of public speaking, not only in this country, but she went to England as well. So, she truly believed that the truth would lead to justice.
MS. GIVHAN: I mean, that that's a great segue to one of the audience questions, and it is from T.J. Bird Mattarazzo--I hope I pronounced that correctly--from Vermont. "I teach high school journalism, and I included exploring Ida B. Wells’ writing as part of my unit on the historical development of journalism. I'm curious as to whether you've been able to track Wells' inclusion into curricula, how accepted she is in the canon of studies in American literature, history, journalism, et cetera, and how that may have changed in recent years."
MS. DUSTER: Well, I have not necessarily been able to track curriculum around the country. But I did edit two books of her writing. One was Ida B. Wells--oh my God--"Ida in Her Own Words" and which has her writings from the World's Fair in 1893, then "Ida From Abroad" has her writings from England. And the reason I edited those two books was to make her work acceptable and accessible to students. And so that was my hope, you know, that it would be incorporated into curriculum.
MS. GIVHAN: I mean, just in the last few years there have been, you know, monuments and exhibitions devoted to her story. I mean, are you finding that the stories of Black women and their impact on history--are we getting better at telling their stories? Or are we still missing the contributions of countless women?
MS. DUSTER: Well, I've been involved in having a monument created in honor of my great-grandmother in Chicago, the Ida B. Wells National Monument by Richard Hunt, in Brownsville, and then the street naming, Ida B. Wells Drive in Chicago, which I was involved in making happen. And then there's historical markers, honorary street names in Chicago. I've been involved in a lot of different projects, including, most recently, a suffrage mural that it incorporates 10 different Chicago-area suffragists and my great-grandmother being one of them.
And so in these projects, there has been enthusiasm. There has been buy-in from community and other stakeholders. But there--actually I have run into resistance. You know, so everybody is not on board with celebrating Black women's contributions to this country. And considering that only 7 percent of all public artwork are tributes to women, period, is in this country, and then you break it down by race, then we're still greatly underrepresented.
In Chicago, we only have two public artwork in tribute to Black women, which is Gwendolyn Brooks and Ida B. Wells, and that's in the last--since 2018. So, we have a long way to go when it comes to true representation that's in proportion to our population.
MS. GIVHAN: I mean, I'm curious to know how you are feeling about the growing discomfort that so many people seem to have and grappling with some of the--some of our history, particularly as it pertains to race.
MS. DUSTER: Well, some people seem to feel that if anybody is recognized for their contributions, then that means they are being erased. And so there's not this idea that there's enough space for everybody. It's like, you know--and you know, so there's that fear, I guess, of the great replacement or something which I think is unfortunate, because all of us are part of this country, and we have all contributed in our own ways, and all of those contributions need to be recognized. So, it's not a matter of if Black women get recognition and then other people are erased. It's we're all included. And we do need to get to a better place where people can see that they are not being erased. They're just being--there's just addition.
MS. GIVHAN: You know, how have you been able to or try to process the backlash that has been bubbling up? Simply, when President Biden announces that he plans to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court, again, that seems like a grave disconnect between history and sort of widening gaps in our progress.
MS. DUSTER: Right. Well, the fact that we've had 115 Supreme Court justices, and 108 of them have been White men, and I guess people who are having an issue with the idea of a Black woman being considered don't want to think about those 108 White men being the result of affirmative action for White men. I guess, in their mind, it's just normal. But if a Black woman is considered, then that's affirmative action. So, you know, there--we--it's just kind of an interesting way of thinking about the world that it's okay for White men to get, you know, almost, what, 90 percent of the opportunities, but if anybody else is considered, then it's set aside program, or some kind of special--you know, being treated in a special way versus them actually being qualified just the same way that the White men were.
MS. GIVHAN: I mean, if there's--if there's any lesson--well, there are a multitude of lessons, I'm sure--but if there is a single lesson you could distill down that you hope people take from the work and the actions of your great-grandmother, what might that be?
MS. DUSTER: I mean, to speak up. You know, that's, to me, her biggest legacy is that where she saw injustice, inequality, that she decided to not be silent about it. She happened to be a journalist, which gave her a platform that might be broader than some other people's platforms. But we all have the ability to speak up in our own ways, and we all have the ability to organize. And that was one of the things she did as well. I mean, she was the founder, the co-founder of the NAACP and the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs. She was involved in--you know, she founded the Alpha Suffrage Club. She founded the Negro Fellowship League here in Chicago. So, in addition to her individual work, she was very collaborative as well. And we all can do that.
MS. GIVHAN: Well, we're going to have to leave it there on that inspiring note. We are out of time. But I would very much like to thank my guest, Michelle Duster, for being with me today.
And I’d like to thank all of you for watching. And please head to WashingtonPostLive.com to register for upcoming events about the role of Black women in American history. This month, we will have conversations about Mamie Till-Mobley, the mother of Emmett Till, as well as Judge Constance Baker Motley, the first Black woman appointed to the federal judiciary. I’m Robin Givhan for Washington Post Live. Thank you so much. | null | null | null | null | null |
Transcript: World Stage: Crisis in Ukraine with Estonia Prime Minister Kaja Kallas
MR. IGNATIUS: Welcome to Washington Post Live. I'm David Ignatius, a columnist for The Post. Today my guest is Kaja Kallas, the prime minister of Estonia. We're going to be talking today about the crisis in her neighborhood, as more than 100,000 Russian troops are lined up along the border of Ukraine. Madam Prime Minister, thank you very much for joining us at this urgent moment for the West. Welcome to Washington Post Live.
PM KALLAS: Thank you for having me.
MR. IGNATIUS: So, I want to just remind our audience that if they would like to join in our conversation, please send us your questions or comments to Twitter at Washington Post Live.
Madam Prime Minister, I want to start with the urgent question of the week. What is your latest information about what's happening at the Russia-Ukraine border? And what do you think is the likelihood that we'll see a Russian attack across that border this month?
PM KALLAS: Well, we see military buildup around Ukraine and also in Belarus by Russian troops. We also see other indications that Russia has plans to attack Ukraine. Whether they do or not is up to Kremlin to decide. And so there are dialogue kept--dialogue is kept with Russia in order to deescalate the situation. But it's up to Kremlin to make the move to deescalate because they have created this situation and can only back up from this.
MR. IGNATIUS: As you know, we're now in the moment of diplomacy seeking to explore whether there's a way to deescalate the crisis, what Winston Churchill generations ago called "jaw-jaw not war-war." Today Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is talking by phone to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Lavrov said after receiving the U.S. written response to Russian demands that he saw "a kernel of rationality," was the phrase that Lavrov used. I'm curious what you think is going on in this diplomatic moment, and whether you think there's any real possibility of a diplomatic settlement that would be acceptable?
PM KALLAS: Well, I think the allies are doing a great job in keeping Russia at the table. It's not negotiations, but rather a dialogue with Russia. But again, it's nothing that NATO or the West can really offer to Russia to deescalate, because NATO hasn't created this situation. NATO hasn't or is not planning to attack anybody. So, it's up to Russia to decide. Of course, the question is what brings them out of the corner where they are currently. So, what are the--you know, the elements that they could say that, okay, this is now off the table? But it's up to them to decide. I think, you know, the West should not fall into this trap that we are offering them something that they didn't have before, because, of course, Russia is making all these outrageous demands, you know, making demands regarding NATO's alliance, NATO’s allies who can be members of NATO, and not saying that NATO should go back to its 97 borders, which means that half of the NATO members should not be NATO members. It's not up to Russia to say.
But also, you know, claiming that this should be a limitation regarding military exercises close to NATO's borders. You know, I’m just reminding everybody that NATO is a defense alliance. NATO is not planning to attack anybody. If we agree with Russia on, you know, a limitation of military exercises, it means that we can't have military exercises on our soil. But it is detrimental to our defense posture here being geographically very close to Russia and being geographically as a peninsula, when it comes to NATO.
MR. IGNATIUS: Prime Minister, let me ask you to be specific about that. There has been discussion about limits on military exercises as one possible compromise. Your country is a place that would be affected by those limits, because, as you say, NATO exercises in Estonia, I understand you to be saying they should be flatly opposed to making any concession on this issue of exercises. Am I reading your right?
PM KALLAS: Absolutely, because, as I say, you know, Russia's aim is to get agreement with the West or with NATO. But Russia has not kept the agreements before. Antony Blinken said in his speech in Berlin very well pointing out that Ukraine made this agreement regarding nuclear arsenal, being the fourth-biggest nuclear arsenal they had previously, and how would, you know, the citizens of Crimea or Donbas look at this agreement right now, because it clearly worked as a deterrence that is not there anymore. So, Russia's aim is to get the agreement. But the West, you know, being all the democracies that we are, the countries, we are also bound by these agreements. If we make agreements, we want to keep the agreements. You know, the principle "pacta sunt servanda" is very fair to, you know, the Western world. And so we have a situation where, you know, we have the agreement, and Russia is not keeping his side of the agreement, and the West is.
And our defense is based on two pillars. One is our own defense, our own army, that we are investing more than 2 percent of our GDP to. And the other pillar is the collective defense of NATO. So, you know, the Article 5 of NATO saying that attack on one is attack on all, it is one of our, you know, basic pillars. If we don't have military exercises, we can't really exercise what we would do in our defense, and that would be detrimental to our security.
MR. IGNATIUS: You've been very tough, Prime Minister, in cautioning against making concessions to Russia to deescalate this crisis. Wondering what you think, as you read of, hear briefings about French President Macron making two calls in the last week to Putin, Viktor Orban of Hungary and a NATO member going off to Moscow to conduct his own diplomacy. Do you worry that NATO's unity is becoming damaged by these efforts to seek special contact with Putin?
PM KALLAS: Well, I think, first of all, it is very important that the NATO's unity has been very strong in this case. And we have been coordinating with the allies, and everybody has given the same message to Russia that Russia does not have a say who can and who cannot be members of NATO and how NATO really conducts its defense on NATO's allies' soil. So, the line has been very, very clear.
There might be differences in tactics, and of course, we have never been against a dialogue with Russia, keeping them at the table, having, you know, a solution to this that Russia wouldn’t escalate this situation even further. I think this is all good while the overall principle, the overall unity is still in place. And what has to be kept in mind is that Russia really wants to see us divided, whereas, you know, it shouldn’t be in our interest--I mean all NATO’s allies. Our strength is unity, and we have to keep this. And so far, we have kept this. And it has to come as a negative surprise to Russia that we have been so united.
MR. IGNATIUS: Speaking about this issue of at least small differences of opinion--we’ll see how small they are--within this alliance, President Zelensky of Ukraine, the person at the eye of this storm, said last Friday that he worried that the United States and some NATO allies were making too much of Russia’s buildup and were creating unnecessary panic. And I wonder, what’s your response to President Zelensky’s comment?
PM KALLAS: What you have to understand is that he being the leader of the country has to have this balance. On one side, you know, the fear of war drives away investments and is detrimental to the economy of Ukraine. And on the other side, they clearly see the military buildup around their borders. What Ukraine has seen for the last eight years because they have already been in the war with Russia for the last eight years, so maybe, you know, for them it’s--they see this all the time. But I think he just wants to balance in between those two interests, saying that this situation is grave and the intentions that we see that Russia is building up and showing in all the channels are severe, and at the same time, you know, keep the economy running and people not panicking. So the balance has to be there.
MR. IGNATIUS: Before we leave, a question of diplomacy. I want to ask you whether you think there is a way to address President Putin’s desire for greater security. Every country wants to have secure borders. Without making the kinds of compromises that are inappropriate, do you see any ideas that might be useful as the diplomats discuss some exit ramp, as they say, from this crisis?
PM KALLAS: Well, it is a good question. But we have to understand the point where we have been--I mean the starting point of this crisis. First of all, it is that Russia is putting this or creating this military buildup around Ukraine and then presenting ultimatums. I’ve already quoted this several times, but, you know, it reminds me of the negotiation tactics of the former Soviet Union Foreign Minister Alexei [phonetic] Gromyko, who said basically three things. One is that demand the maximum. Do not meekly ask but demand. Second is that present ultimatums. And you know, this is also something that they are doing. And third is do not give one inch in negotiations because there will always be people in the West who will offer something, and in the end, you will have already a third or even a half of something you didn’t have before. So this is the situation, and we have to keep this in mind, because when there are discussions what could the West offer in order to deescalate, then they already have something that they didn’t have before.
But when I’m saying this, that of course, you know, there could be--could be, for example, the transparency of the military exercises. We could agree to that. But again, the problem is that Russia is usually not keeping their side of the promise or their side of the agreement. So what is the use? You know, the positive side might be that Russia has not walked from the table right now, and the dialogue is going on with NATO. But we have to be very, very careful that we don’t give away something that they didn’t have before.
MR. IGNATIUS: So, I want to turn to the question of what military preparations Estonia and other NATO members should be making now. You, your government has pledged that Estonia will send dozens of anti-tank missiles to Ukraine to aid them in their defense. It’s a crucial weapon. I’m wondering if those anti-tank missiles have arrived and whether you’ll send more if Ukraine actually is attacked. And more generally, Prime Minister, I want to ask if Russian forces go over that border tomorrow or two weeks from now, whenever it might happen, what would Estonia do immediately in response?
PM KALLAS: First of all, we are thinking about our own defense, as well. So just two weeks ago we made a decision in our government to increase our defense spending, and we currently are spending over 2.4 percent of our GDP on defense so that, you know, it’s not only collective defense of NATO allies but it’s also our own army that is stronger. It's just not that we see military threats behind our borders right now but it’s always better to prepare like the saying goes, in order to live in peace, you have to prepare for war.
The other thing what we are doing is to helping Ukraine in all possible means that we can. Of course, we are a small country. We are only 1.3 million people, but we try to do what we can, because we clearly understand what it means to, you know, lose your independence. And for Ukraine, there’s a clear threat for that, and we want to help them with, you know, military capabilities that we can but also political tools, communication, all the tools that a small country can really give to Ukraine.
MR. IGNATIUS: It’s been reported, Prime Minister, that in addition to the anti-tank missiles that I mentioned before, Estonia and other Baltic nations are supplying Stingers, which as we know from the Afghanistan war can be crucial if there’s a drawn-out insurgency. Is that report accurate? Are you sending Stingers to Ukraine?
PM KALLAS: Well, I wouldn't go into details about the concrete capabilities, but I'm saying that we are doing what we can. And we are helping Ukraine with the--with the capabilities that we can, keeping in mind that we also have to strengthen our own defense at the same time.
MR. IGNATIUS: Germany has taken a slightly different view about supplying weapons to Ukraine. And last week, as I read the news, Germany blocked Estonia from transferring some advanced howitzers that it was planning to send to Ukraine. I want to ask two questions. First, were you able to circumvent that German blockade the way the British did in sending weapons to Ukraine? And second, do you worry that Germany's position on arms transfers is undermining the unity of NATO that you spoke of earlier as being so important?
PM KALLAS: Every country has the right to decide how they help or whether they help Ukraine, and so does Germany. I wouldn't go into German internal politics of how they make decisions and what kind of consents they give. It's up to them to decide. For us, it is important to help Ukraine, and that is the message that we are giving. But we haven't received official response from Germany yet. So I cannot confirm that this is--this is their final, final answer to our help.
MR. IGNATIUS: But I take it you’ve requested that you’d be able to transfer those weapons?
PM KALLAS: Well, yes, we have agreement with Germany because we have received those from Germany, that if we give them, we have to get the consent. And so it's up to them to decide. But to your other question, was about the unity, then, still, I think the overall clear messages that NATO has given and all the members of NATO have given to Russia regarding this, saying that, you know, also on the European Union level, we will put sanctions, extremely severe sanctions, if Russia escalates the situation even further. And also, you know, that NATO is not giving in all of those demands. I think those messages have been very clear.
MR. IGNATIUS: I want to ask Prime Minister about a crucial part of this conflict, and one that Estonia has special insight into, and that is the use of disinformation and cyber weapons. One of our viewers, Philip [phonetic] in California, has sent us a question that I want to pose to you. Based on Estonia's experience with the use of disinformation and cyber weapons in the past--I believe in 2007 was the first time you were attacked--what have you learned that would be helpful to Ukraine? What advice would you offer them about how to be resilient in the face of Russian electronic disinformation, cyberattack that you, your country has experienced?
PM KALLAS: Well, considering that although cyberattacks really evolved in time, or they developed, you are always one step behind. Yes, in 2007, we experienced this cyberattack, and we learned from this. And now we have the NATO's Cybersecurity Center of Excellence in Estonia, and we try to, you know, prepare for different cyberattacks. There are exercises that are actually very, very interesting that we prepare for.
When it comes to information war, I think, you know, we don't--none of us have enough tools to fight those. You know, in--when Crimea happened, then everybody was expecting also the cyberattacks to follow. But what followed was a propaganda war really, you know, false information picked up by one of leading newspapers, and then it was published all over the world. And it was very hard to turn back. And what it really aimed at was the democracies and how we--how the democracies make decisions. It's up to, you know, public opinion. And people in the government are very much influenced how the public sees these things. So, if you can create a mess in the information sphere or the public opinion, then it's very hard to render decisions. And this is something that we see here, and will see here as well. We have more such hybrid conflicts, more, you know, smaller conflicts that can, you know, put together the bigger picture. So, we are never totally ready for what is coming, considering the capabilities that Russia also has in the cyber sphere.
But what is also interesting, just one additional point. We were also part of the U.N. Security Council for two years, and I was chairing the first-ever cybersecurity discussion in the U.N. Security Council. And what was interesting about this was that everybody else agreed that, you know, international law should also apply in the cyberspace, whereas, you know, Russia and China, were not that strong on this point. And I guess we know why.
MR. IGNATIUS: And just a small point, but I'd like to clarify for our viewers. Are your cyber experts who are among the most skilled in the world, are they currently in Ukraine helping Ukrainians develop better resiliency?
PM KALLAS: Oh, well, we are helping Ukraine with all the tools that we can get, and we are--we have very many good connections and expertise that we share with the Ukrainians on every level, yes.
MR. IGNATIUS: So let me ask you about forward deployments in Estonia by NATO forces. Last week, six U.S. F-15 fighters are said to have deployed, been sent to Estonia. Tell us about that, whether they're still there. And do you expect the United States and other NATO countries to make additional forward deployments in the event that Russia invades Ukraine as a signal to Moscow, and also to make sure that your defense is secure?
PM KALLAS: Well, one of the basic principles of our defense is the collective defense of NATO. So, it acts or is based on the defense and deterrence posture. We build the defense, but we also built the deterrence. So, when our allies are here in the enhanced forward presence, the troops are here, then it's clearly a deterrent factor for Russia, because as Article 5 goes, attack on one is attack on all. And when you have, you know, the troops are present here like the Brits are in Estonia and Canadians are in Latvia, for example, then it clearly acts as a deterrent.
We have very good contacts with our allies. We have been talking last years about strengthening the eastern flank of NATO. And it's not related to this Ukrainian crisis. But we have been saying this for some time already. And I'm happy to see that this is going forward as well. But the eastern flank needs to be strengthened, and our allies are with us.
MR. IGNATIUS: Let me ask you, Prime Minister, about the energy politics part of this crisis. You said last week very forthrightly that Germany should understand that Nord Stream, the Nord Stream pipeline, is a geopolitical project, not simply an economic one. And you went on to say that if you're connected to someone, then the person on the other side of the connection can hurt you. And you made clear that you thought the Nord Stream pipeline could be destabilizing for European security. I'm wondering whether you're concerned that Germans are not yet taking this danger, which you were so explicit in describing, seriously enough?
PM KALLAS: Well, we have been saying this from the start of this project, that it's a geopolitical project, not an economical one. So, this is no surprise to our Western allies. We have been saying this all along. And when we have now the energy crisis, the energy prices going up in all of the European member states, for example, then there are also voices within Europe saying that, you know, the increase in the energy prices or electricity prices is related to the gas price, and the gas comes from Russia, or the dependence on the gas coming outside Europe is too big. So, this is detrimental to the economy of European countries.
And also, it means that, you know, it can be destabilizing factor for all the countries. What we see here, people are very, very angry at the rising electricity prices, but the rising electricity prices are related to the price of gas. So, I think it has become clear that you should really pick your trading partners in a sense that they might also hurt you if they--their intentions are not economical, but geopolitical.
MR. IGNATIUS: I want to ask you how you would rate President Biden's leadership in this--in this crisis. He has been criticized by some for a comment at a press conference where he initially suggested that a minor incursion might not draw a strong response. He later revised that the next day. More recently, President Zelensky, as I mentioned earlier, in our conversation suggested that he thought Biden was overreacting. I’m really curious what your own assessment would be of how well the Biden administration as a whole has handled this crisis as you've been watching policy unfold.
PM KALLAS: We are a small country, as I said, being a NATO peninsula if you look at the map. And for us, it is very important that we are being consulted with and there is very tight cooperation between the allies--and not only the big ones, but also those affected in the eastern flank. So we are very grateful for that. We understand that it takes a lot of effort to consult with everybody. But we feel that we are also hurt in this process, and it means a great deal to us.
MR. IGNATIUS: So, I should understand you to be saying that from Estonia’s standpoint, the fact you've been consulted so extensively by the--by the United States is a plus for how you’d assess President Biden's handling?
PM KALLAS: Well, of course, we haven't been in this kind of situation before, in this very tense situation that we see unfolding. But we clearly see the wish and, you know, the efforts that the Biden administration is doing in order to keep us on board and to, you know, give us the assurance that nothing is agreed about us without us.
MR. IGNATIUS: So I want to ask you a final question. Pull the camera back a bit from the events of the day, and ask you whether you think that President Putin, whatever happens in the next several weeks, will emerge from this crisis stronger or weaker. What's your guess?
PM KALLAS: Well, it, of course, depends whether we look at the--you know, the internal politics of Russia or the outer world. So, I mean, just I think a year back I wrote--I read a book, "Dictator’s Handbook." And so, if you--if you take this by the measures of "The Dictator’s Handbook," so dictator needs to show strength and any step back is not showing strength. So, the only way is for them to escalate. But I think in the Western world, you know, compromising shows also strength or stepping back and keeping all the interests or understanding also the other country's interest is also considered strength. So, it depends on which side you look at this question.
MR. IGNATIUS: So, Prime Minister Kaja Kallas of Estonia, thank you for a discussion of all the issues that are involved in this crisis. We really appreciate your coming to join us at Washington Post Live.
PM KALLAS: Thank you. All the best.
MR. IGNATIUS: So, thanks for watching today’s special discussion of the Ukraine crisis. To check out what interviews we’ve got coming up--and we have a lot of really good ones--please head to WashingtonPostLive.com to register and to find more information about our upcoming programs. We’d love to hear from you, our audience, if you want to send us comments or questions for speakers that we’ve got coming ahead. Thanks very much for joining us today. | null | null | null | null | null |
Man cited after TSA finds loaded gun at Reagan National Airport
It’s the fifth time agency officers have stopped a person traveling with a gun at National this year
This .40-caliber pistol loaded with eight rounds was confiscated at a security checkpoint at Reagan National Airport on Feb. 1. (TSA)
A West Virginia man was cited by airport police Tuesday for carrying a loaded gun at a security checkpoint at Reagan National Airport.
The man, from Bunker Hill, W.Va., had entered the checkpoint when officers spotted the .40-caliber pistol. It was loaded with eight rounds, including one in the chamber. Airport police confiscated the pistol, and the man was cited on a weapons charge.
The man’s name was not immediately available. It was the fifth gun detected by Transportation Security Administration officers this year at National.
Scott T. Johnson, TSA’s federal security director at National, said in a statement that firearms must be unloaded and packed in a hard-sided case with a lock. When traveling with ammunition, it must be kept in its original box and packed next to the firearm in the locked case. The case must travel as checked baggage, he said.
TSA seizes a record number of guns at airports in 2021
Last year, TSA officials caught a record number of guns at airport security checkpoints. The 5,972 firearms were the most in the agency’s 20-year history. In 2021, 30 guns were found by TSA officers at National, more than double the number found in 2019, when passenger volumes were significantly higher.
People who bring guns to airport security checkpoints can face civil penalties that can stretch into thousands of dollars, depending on the circumstances, the agency said. | null | null | null | null | null |
It’s the second recall to address issues with Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” software through an over-the-air update.
Faiz Siddiqui
It’s the second formal recall to address issues with an over-the-air update. Last fall, Tesla was forced to issue and update after its cars with Full Self-Driving beta began behaving erratically following an overnight update, suddenly slamming on the brakes at highway speeds risking collisions. Tesla filed a recall notice with NHTSA flagging that it was updating the software to address the issues with nearly 12,000 vehicles.
“I’m not aware of any state where that’s permitted,” says Russ Martin, senior director of policy and government relations at the governors highway safety administration. | null | null | null | null | null |
All in-person classes at the University of California at Los Angeles were moved online Tuesday after a former lecturer made what were described as “specific threats” to members of the philosophy department in an 800-page manifesto and sent a video referring to a mass shooting.
UCLA confirmed that police were watching a suspect who was located by out-of-state law enforcement, the university wrote on Twitter. The university did not name the suspect.
The Daily Bruin, the student newspaper, reported that Matthew Harris, a former philosophy lecturer and postdoctoral fellow, is “under observation” after he sent several messages to some faculty and students Monday that included a memo outlining his threats and a YouTube video titled, “UCLA Philosophy (Mass Shooting).” The video included footage from the 2017 mass shooting at a Las Vegas music festival that killed about 60 people and injured hundreds more in what remains the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.
Harris did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It is unclear whether he has an attorney.
The university confirmed that the suspect was under observation and acknowledged the seriousness of the threats, announcing that all in-person classes Tuesday would be held remotely “out of an abundance of caution.” Even with law enforcement locating Harris outside California, the university announced that classes would “remain remote” Tuesday.
A UCLA spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding whether Harris, 40, has been arrested or whether he could face charges.
Harris posted much of his frustration on his YouTube account, which has since been taken down. Most of the 300 videos posted to his account were published Monday night, according to the Los Angeles Times. A YouTube spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A profanity-laden 800-page manifesto posted by Harris, an outline he described as being “dedicated to domestic terrorism and violence,” refers to race and calls for “death to America,” according to Southern California-based news station KTLA.
An email sent by a philosophy instructor to students Monday highlighted the potential threat posed by Harris, who is named in the message. It describes what Harris sent as “a video entitled ‘UCLA Philosophy Mass Shooting’ and an 800-page manifesto with specific threats towards some members of our department.”
As the manifesto and video circulated on Twitter and Reddit on Monday night, students and critics questioned why the university had not informed the campus of the threats sent to the philosophy department.
“We will keep you updated,” the university tweeted. | null | null | null | null | null |
New York cases down more than 90 percent as omicron wave recedes
Democratic senators urge Justice Department to ramp up efforts to prevent sale of fraudulent face masks
6 questions about travel after recovering from covid-19, answered
No indication new version of omicron causes more severe illness, WHO says
Florida school district says it will no longer allow excused absences due to covid
Pandemic creates tons of medical waste, threatening environment and human health, WHO says
He’s declining a coronavirus vaccine at the expense of a lifesaving transplant
Australian convoy protesting vaccination mandates descends on capital city
Downing Street gatherings during U.K. lockdowns ‘difficult to justify,’ report finds
Austria’s vaccine mandate for all adults takes effect this week, in a rollout closely watched by other nations mulling whether to follow suit.
More than a billion people will celebrate the Lunar New Year on Tuesday across Asia and globally, ringing in the Year of the Tiger. Before the pandemic, the holiday often prompted the world’s largest annual migration of people. But the virus will again necessitate scaled-down travel and festivities.
By Hannah Knowles3:17 p.m.
Coronavirus cases and hospitalizations in New York have fallen sharply in the past few weeks, officials said Tuesday, bolstering hopes that the omicron wave is ebbing in some early-hit cities.
“We anticipated the surge. The surge came,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) said at a news conference at North Central Bronx Hospital. “And now it’s starting to go away. Just like the snow is melting, we hope that this winter surge is also melting away.”
“Look at those numbers,” she said as she showed charts representing declines in infection. “That is a beautiful sight, my friends.”
In early January, Hochul said, at the height of the omicron variant’s onslaught, New York reported 90,000 new coronavirus cases in a day. On Tuesday, the state reported about 7,100 new cases, down more than 90 percent from January’s peak. The peak in hospitalizations lagged a bit behind the infections peak referenced earlier.
Hospitalizations and deaths typically lag behind case counts.
“We’re still losing New Yorkers,” Hochul said.
By Adela Suliman3:07 p.m.
Portugal’s prime minister said Tuesday that he has tested positive for the coronavirus, two days after his landslide election victory and just as he starts forming his new government. António Costa said he will self-isolate for seven days, in accordance with his country’s pandemic rules.
Denmark on Tuesday became the first European Union country to lift all of its coronavirus restrictions, relying on vaccinations to tackle the omicron variant. The country said it will remove requirements for masks and covid passes and scrap limited opening hours for shops and restaurants. Neighboring Norway said it will scrap most of its remaining lockdown measures, effective immediately, as a spike in infections is unlikely to jeopardize health services.
Pakistan will begin a nationwide door-to-door vaccination drive starting Tuesday, its National Command and Operation Center said. About 55,000 mobile vaccination teams will provide the doses, including boosters, and aim to vaccinate more than 35 million people.
Rwanda reopened its border with Uganda to truckers this week, after nearly three years. Regular travelers will still be restricted to only essential trips, authorities said, a decision that disappointed traders hoping for a return to normal business.
As the Beijing Winter Olympics kick off later this week, officials in China said Tuesday that the Games’ coronavirus situation is within the “expected controllable range,” despite a number of positive cases being detected. About 200 cases have been reported since Jan. 23 among airport arrivals and those in the “closed loop” area of the Games.
By Mariana Alfaro1:19 p.m.
Democratic Sens. Edward J. Markey (Mass.), Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (Conn.) are urging Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Justice Department to ramp up efforts to prevent the sale of counterfeit face masks in the country.
In a letter, the three Democrats asked that the Justice Department investigate reports of the “proliferation” of fraudulent face masks sold by retailers in the United States. They cited reports claiming that “retailers where many consumers go to purchase high-quality masks sell counterfeit and fraudulent products; this is especially true of online marketplaces where consumers cannot physically inspect and verify product quality.”
The senators call on the Justice Department’s COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force to ramp up efforts to get the fake masks off the market.
“During this critical time, American consumers need assurances that the products they purchase to protect themselves and their loved ones are safe, effective, and legitimate,” the senators wrote. “Americans trying to protect themselves, their families, and their communities should not face potentially life-threatening exploitation by unscrupulous actors.”
By Hannah Sampson1:03 p.m.
If you’re among the millions of people who tested positive for the coronavirus during the omicron surge, you might be feeling confident about traveling as soon as you have recovered. But how soon after an infection is too soon, especially since it’s possible to test positive long after you have stopped being contagious? With a recent infection behind you, will you still need to follow the same international testing rules for travel?
Anyone flying into the United States is required to test negative for the coronavirus within one day of entering the country. But people who have recovered from the virus in the past 90 days can bypass that testing requirement, with the right documentation.
So what should that ever-expanding group of people do? Victor Tarsia, a co-founder of the telemedicine service MDAnywhere and an urgent-care physician, is hearing that question a lot. The company offers online doctor visits and evaluations to provide clearance to travel when patients have met the criteria.
“It’s exploded in the last month or two,” Tarsia said. “We’ve been seeing a lot of people.”
Most of them, he said, have recently recovered and are preparing for upcoming trips. This is what people in that situation need to know, based on guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
By Hannah Knowles11:39 a.m.
World Health Organization officials said Tuesday that a new version of the omicron variant known as BA. 2 appears to be slightly more transmissible. But they said there is no evidence that it causes more-severe disease and cautioned that information is still limited.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a news conference Tuesday that the global health organization is tracking four “sublineages” of the omicron variant, which has fueled a new wave of infections, hospitalizations and deaths. “This virus will continue to evolve,” Tedros said, adding that vaccines also may need to evolve.
Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead on covid-19, said the agency is working with thousands of experts to track the coronavirus. There is “no indication that there’s a change in severity” with BA. 2, she said.
Officials said the WHO will share more information on BA. 2 as it is available.
There’s a new version of omicron, but so far it doesn’t appear to be more dangerous
WHO leaders also expressed concern about a recent rise in covid-19 deaths in most regions of the world, and Tedros said more cases have been reported in the past 10 weeks — since omicron was identified — than in all of 2020.
Asked about countries that have moved to lift coronavirus restrictions, Van Kerkhove said: “Many countries have not gone through the peak of omicron yet. … Now is not the time to lift everything all at once.” She urged countries to increase vaccination and to use mask-wearing and distancing to slow the virus’s spread, although she acknowledged that each country’s situation is different.
Tedros said the WHO’s goal to have 70 percent of the global population vaccinated by this summer remains attainable.
“Ending this pandemic is not a matter of chance,” he said. “It’s a matter of choice.” By meeting vaccination goals, he said, the world “can end the pandemic.”
By Jenna Portnoy and Teo Armus10:38 a.m.
Coronavirus hospitalizations are falling across the Washington region as the omicron wave begins to recede, but experts say hospitals are still coping with staff shortages that will outlast the pandemic.
Hospitalizations due to covid-19 are down by about half in Maryland and about 25 percent in Virginia, both of which had seen record highs this month, prompting Govs. Larry Hogan (R) and Glenn Youngkin (R) to declare limited states of emergencies. But the staffing crisis remains acute.
“People are still worn out. There’s no doubt about it,” said Gabe Kelen, chair of the emergency medicine department at Johns Hopkins University. “Even though numbers are down and a little more doable, it doesn’t mean the crisis has passed. We are seeing a light at the end of the tunnel for this particular surge.”
A pregnant journalist who said she chose to stay in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan because her native New Zealand did not allow her to return due to strict coronavirus restrictions said the government reversed course — and that she would be going home “at the beginning of March to give birth to our baby girl.”
The mask has gone viral on social media and in various online forums, after it was recently unveiled by a South Korean company, Atman. It can be used folded up when eating just to cover the nose, and unfolded to cover both the nose and the mouth after eating. It is available on an online shopping website for about $8 for a box of 10.
By Adela Suliman7:37 a.m.
A school district in Florida — the ninth largest in the United States — says it will no longer provide “excused absences” to students kept home during the coronavirus pandemic as of Monday. However, it said parents should still keep children at home when “exhibiting illness or symptoms” of the virus.
Orange County Public Schools is the fourth largest district in Florida, according to its website. The district serves more than 206,000 students at 202 schools and has more than 25,000 employees.
“This is an update regarding parents keeping students home during the increased COVID-19 cases. Beginning January 31, we will no longer be able to provide excused absences in such cases,” it said. The change was due both to the number of coronavirus cases declining and the “additional strain on our teachers as they continue to manage assignments for large numbers of absent students,” the school district said.
However, it will continue to require masks for adults and strongly encourages them for students through February. It also suggested that parents wishing to keep their children out of school could consider enrolling them in home-school programs.
The district has confirmed 20,362 coronavirus cases in total, the vast majority among students, according to its covid-19 dashboard. In Florida, new daily reported deaths were on the rise over the past week but both the number of cases and hospitalizations due to the coronavirus were down, per a Washington Post tracker.
In a statement posted on social media last week it said the change would be implemented starting Jan. 31.
The coronavirus pandemic is estimated to have created tens of thousands of tons of extra medical waste around the world, threatening the environment and human health, the World Health Organization said Tuesday.
The pandemic has put a “tremendous strain on health care waste management systems around the world,” the WHO said, calling for improvements.
In a report published Tuesday, the United Nations agency estimated that about 87,000 tons of personal protective equipment was procured between March 2020 and November 2021 and shipped to support countries’ responses through a joint U.N. emergency initiative.
“Most of this equipment is expected to have ended up as waste,” the report’s authors said.
They noted that their estimate is only an indication of the scale of the waste problem and doesn’t take into account equipment acquired by countries outside the U.N. initiative or waste generated by the public through the purchase of items such as disposable masks.
A previous study by a group of researchers based in China and the United States last year found that some 8 million metric tons of pandemic-related plastic waste had been created by 193 countries, with about 26,000 tons of that ending up in the world’s oceans, where it threatens to disrupt marine life and further pollute beaches.
According to the WHO report, more than 140 million test kits, with a potential to generate 2,600 tons of noninfectious waste, mostly plastic, and some 731,000 liters of chemical waste — enough to fill a third of an Olympic-size swimming pool — have been shipped by the U.N. Meanwhile, more than 8 billion vaccine doses have been administered globally, producing 144,000 tons of waste in the form of syringes, needles and safety boxes.
“It is absolutely vital to provide health workers with the right PPE,” said Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Program. “But it is also vital to ensure that it can be used safely without impacting on the surrounding environment.”
About 30 percent of health-care facilities — the majority of them in the least developed countries — are not equipped to handle pre-pandemic waste loads, let alone the coronavirus waste.
“This potentially exposes health workers to needle stick injuries, burns and pathogenic microorganisms, while also impacting communities living near poorly managed landfills and waste disposal sites through contaminated air from burning waste, poor water quality or disease carrying pests,” the WHO said.
By Julian Mark5:37 a.m.
For more than four years, Chad Carswell, 38, has suffered from severe kidney disease. In July 2020, he started on dialysis — but now his kidneys are functioning at just 4 percent.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Carswell said he recently applied for a kidney transplant but was turned down because he has not received a coronavirus vaccine. And, despite his hospital’s requirements that organ recipients be vaccinated against the virus, he’s refusing the shots.
Carswell, of Hickory, N.C., acknowledged his condition is a “ticking time bomb,” and said he’s living every day as though it’s his last. Still, he will not take a coronavirus vaccine — even if that means losing out on a potentially lifesaving transplant.
“There is not a situation in this world that I’ll get a vaccine,” he told The Post. “If I’m laying on my deathbed, and they tell me, ‘You have a kidney waiting on you if you get this shot,’ I’ll tell them, ‘I’ll see you on the other side.’”
Protesters opposed to vaccination mandates have descended on Australia’s capital in recent days, in a “Convoy to Canberra” seemingly inspired by trucker protests in Ottawa.
A speech by Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Tuesday at the National Press Club was targeted by chanting crowds in the hundreds, according to local media reports.
Video posted on the group’s Telegram channel showed crowd members with signs and symbols referencing a grab bag of anti-government causes embraced by protesters during the pandemic, many drawing on Internet conspiracy theories. Protesters were seen with a sign reading “End Apartheid,” written on a yellow star; “Free Julian Assange” banners; placards calling local mainstream media outlets liars; Trump flags and Australian flags, along with red versions of the national flag associated with the “sovereign citizen” ideology.
Lines of police stood between protesters and Morrison’s car arriving and departing the club for the speech, which focused on his government’s performance ahead of this year’s election.
A GoFundMe account for the convoy has raised over $122,000. But the Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported that the organizer would not be allowed to access funds until they detailed how the money would be spent — echoing the fundraising platform’s actions in freezing the majority of the $9.2 million donated to the Canadian protest convoy.
The Canberra group remains in the capital, with further protest action planned for the weekend. Australia’s state governments have widely implemented vaccine mandates, including for construction workers, police, health-care workers and teachers, with proof of vaccination also required to attend restaurants, shops and most other venues.
LONDON — An investigation of Downing Street parties held while coronavirus restrictions were in place found that some of the gatherings showed “a serious failure” to observe the standards expected of government officials and the British population.
A nine-page summary of the investigation by senior civil servant Sue Gray assessed that some of the parties showed a failure in leadership, involved excessive alcohol use and “should not have been allowed to take place.”
But the version of the highly anticipated report published Monday did not put an end to the months-long “Partygate” scandal or deliver Prime Minister Boris Johnson from its cloud.
The report provided little detail about 16 reported parties at the British prime minister’s residence and office and at other government buildings, because 12 of the gatherings, on eight different dates, are now the subject of a criminal investigation by London’s Metropolitan Police. | null | null | null | null | null |
Punxsutawney Phil’s predictions over the years are filled with holes, but he does surprise us from time to time
Groundhog Club co-handler Al Dereume holds Punxsutawney Phil, the weather prognosticating groundhog, during a 2018 Groundhog Day celebration on Gobbler's Knob in Punxsutawney, Pa. (Gene J. Puskar/AP)
On Wednesday, a plump woodchuck will forecast the rest of winter for the 135th time. If Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow on the ground (like he has about 85 percent of the time), then the United States can expect six more weeks of winter all around. If he decides to keep his head held high, then an early spring will apply. At least that’s the Phil-osophy of Groundhog Day.
While Phil’s handlers claim he is right “100 percent of the time, of course!” data shows the supersized squirrel has about a 40 percent accuracy rate over his career. It remains to be seen if the prognostications of the “Great Oz of Weather Forecasting” should be chucked, but we can offer our insight by looking at stuff like numbers and weather models, at least until we can get our own forecasting groundhog.
Then temperatures plunged — much like Phil’s popularity after Feb. 2. January was colder than normal for much of the eastern United States. Last weekend, a “bomb cyclone” dropped at least 2 feet of snow in some parts of New England and Long Island — tying Boston’s single snowiest day in January on record. Washington, D.C., experienced its snowiest January in six years. An unexpected heavy slug of snow doused the Colorado and Kansas border. A cold snap in Florida resulted in falling iguanas, losing their grip because of the abnormally low temperatures and dropping from trees.
Spectators gathered at Gobblers Knob in Punxsutawney, Pa., on Feb. 2, 2021, as Phil the groundhog emerged to see his shadow. (Reuters) | null | null | null | null | null |
Guinea-Bissau’s president says situation ‘under control’ after attempted coup
The president of Guinea-Bissau posted a message to Twitter saying he was “fine” Tuesday after mutinous soldiers tried to overthrow the tiny nation’s government in an hours-long shootout.
Video captured gunmen storming the main government compound, and West African leaders condemned an “attempted coup” in the country of 2 million, which has a long history of military uprisings.
“The situation is under control,” wrote President Umaro Sissoco Embaló, who took office in 2020 and who local media outlets reported was in the compound when the attackers arrived.
The 15-nation Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS, earlier asked the soldiers in a statement to “return to their barracks” and keep the president safe, echoing the plea it made to military officers in Burkina Faso only eight days earlier.
West Africa has endured four coups in 18 months. Soldiers across the region are toppling elected leaders at the highest rate in four decades, analysts say. The overthrows tend to start with protest movements and a sense the government has failed people — on education, jobs, health care and security.
Borso Tall in Dakar, Senegal, contributed to this report. | null | null | null | null | null |
All in-person classes at the University of California at Los Angeles were moved online Tuesday after a former lecturer made what were described as “specific threats” to members of the philosophy department in an 800-page screed and sent a video referring to a mass shooting.
UCLA confirmed in a letter to students that police in Colorado arrested an “individual who made threats against some members of our UCLA community.” Matthew Harris, a former philosophy lecturer and postdoctoral fellow, was detained in Boulder, Colo., after a nearly three-hour standoff with authorities, police told reporters.
The Daily Bruin, the student newspaper, reported that Harris sent several messages to some faculty and students Monday that included a memo outlining his threats and a YouTube video titled, “UCLA Philosophy (Mass Shooting).” The video included footage from the 2017 mass shooting at a Las Vegas music festival that killed about 60 people and injured hundreds more in what remains the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.
The university acknowledged the seriousness of the threats by announcing that all in-person classes Tuesday would be held remotely “out of an abundance of caution.” University officials said they were “greatly relieved” that Harris was taken into custody.
“While the campus will continue with plans to keep instruction remote today, with this development, we will return to in-person instruction tomorrow,” officials wrote.
It is unclear whether Harris, 31, has an attorney.
Harris posted much of his frustration on his YouTube account, which has since been taken down. Most of the 300 videos posted to his account were published Monday night, according to the Los Angeles Times.
YouTube spokesman Jack Malon told The Washington Post that the account was terminated for violating the platform’s hate speech policy, “which prohibits content that dehumanizes or incites violence towards individuals based on their nationality or religion.”
A profanity-laden 800-page screed shared by Harris, an outline he described as being “dedicated to domestic terrorism and violence,” refers to race and calls for “death to America,” according to Southern California-based news station KTLA.
An email sent by a philosophy instructor to students Monday highlighted the potential threat posed by Harris, who is named in the message. It describes what Harris sent as “a video entitled ‘UCLA Philosophy Mass Shooting’ and an 800-page screed with specific threats towards some members of our department.”
As the screed and video circulated on Twitter and Reddit on Monday night, students and critics questioned why the university had not informed the campus of the threats sent to the philosophy department.
Police said UCLA law enforcement tracked Harris to Boulder, and alerted local authorities that he was there. Boulder police reviewed Harris’s screed and found thousands of references to the city. Officers began evacuating nearby schools, businesses and residences early Tuesday.
At 11:07 a.m. local time, police were able to “safely take the male into custody,” officials said.
“The threats made yesterday were frightening for many of us and caused our community to feel vulnerable at an already challenging time. We know many Bruins turned to one another for support,” the university wrote. “These are unsettling times and your well-being is a top priority, so please do not hesitate to reach out for help if you need it.” | null | null | null | null | null |
FILE - In this image made from Windsor, Va., Police video, a police officer speaks with Caron Nazario during a traffic stop on Dec. 20, 2020, in Windsor, Va. In a court filing Monday, Jan. 31, 2022, the town of Windsor asked a judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed by former Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring that alleges its police department has operated in a way that led to discrimination against Black people and violated their constitutional rights. The court action came after an investigation by Herring’s office that was prompted by the traffic stop involving two Windsor police officers and Nazario, an Army lieutenant who is Black and Latino. (Windsor Police via AP, File) (Uncredited/Windsor Police) | null | null | null | null | null |
Wing Wa Hing store owner Tracy Tieu helps Ben Tang select tiger decorations for the Lunar New Year in the Chinatown district of Los Angeles on Friday. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
Lunar New Year, being celebrated on Tuesday, could become the United States’ newest federal holiday under a bill proposed by Rep. Grace Meng (D-N.Y.), a significant step to recognize a day honored by many East Asian communities around the world.
Meng, who is Taiwanese American and grew up in Queens, told The Washington Post Tuesday that making Lunar New Year a federal holiday would send a powerful message of inclusion to Asian Americans and non-Asians alike. The bill’s prospects are unclear, though Meng said at this early phase she has not run in to pushback.
Meng’s bill comes at a complicated time for many Asian Americans: a growing population and coupled with increased activism has boosted Asian American visibility and political power just as a rising tide of anti-Asian sentiment has led to discrimination, isolation and violence against people of Asian descent. Across the U.S., the coronavirus pandemic has also imperiled many Chinatowns, which serve as hubs not only for Chinese Americans but for other members of the Asian community.
“Part of it was commercial: Chinatowns were really urban slums because Asians weren’t allowed to live other places — and the Chinese American community needed an economic lifeline,” Wu said. After the Cold War, Chinatowns and their Lunar New Year celebrations were a way for Chinese Americans to share traditions that were culturally Chinese but not tied to Chinese socialism.
The bill was introduced Friday alongside a resolution, “Recognizing the cultural and historical significance of Lunar New Year in 2022.”
Meng said the legislation still in its early phases and acknowledged, “it’s up to me to convince 51 percent of my colleagues.”
“Growing up as a kid in NYC, we always celebrated the Lunar New Year on the night before,” Meng said. “We always had to cut short the celebration because our parents didn’t want us to go to bed so late because we had to go to school the next day.”
Meng’s legislation was applauded by Asian American interest groups like the nonprofit Asian Americans Advancing Justice. President John C. Yang told The Post recognizing Lunar New Year as a federal holiday would not only lift up Asian Americans who have been long been marginalized but would also send a powerful message that the U.S. embraces its diversity.
“I think it’s interesting for us to think about how federal holidays, especially recently, have been created and what that means to us as a country,” Yang said. “Think about how long it took for MLK Day to become a holiday; and now we all, regardless of party, use that day to reflect on his legacy.”
Yang noted the another important aspect of elevating Lunar New Year to a federal holiday would be to dispel the common misconception of Asians as a monolith. Lunar New Year is perhaps the most inclusive term for the celebration, but it is marked by specific names, greetings and traditions in different countries. And while prominent in countries like China, Malaysia, Korea and Vietnam, it’s not celebrated in Japan. | null | null | null | null | null |
Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) speaks during a hearing on children's online safety and mental health in September on Capitol Hill. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
Luján, 49, began experiencing dizziness and fatigue on the morning of Jan. 27, according to his chief of staff, Carlos Sanchez. The senator checked himself into a hospital in Santa Fe, and was then transferred to the University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque for further evaluation, Sanchez said. | null | null | null | null | null |
Child-care worker Debbie James-Dean helps her young charges make dough at Kids Are Us Learning Center in Southeast Washington in 2017. At the time, James-Dean had been working in the field for nearly 20 years and earned $12.75 an hour. (Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post)
The council raised taxes on the city’s highest earners last year, and voted at that time to set aside $53 million in the first year of that tax to somehow raise the pay of day-care workers, saying that their work was vital to the city’s families but not sufficiently compensated by their current salaries.
On Tuesday, the council indicated that they will set up a program to do so in future years, likely by subsidizing part of workers’ paychecks from their employers so that child-care workers will be paid on a scale comparable to public elementary school teachers.
This year, to make sure workers get the money quickly, they’re going to give money directly to any eligible day-care worker who applies for it. Workers who care for babies and toddlers will be eligible for checks of about $10,000 or $14,000, depending on whether they work as assistants or leaders of day-care classrooms.
The council also addressed another long-running concern on Tuesday: boosting the city’s medical marijuana industry, which council members worry is suffering due to competition from unregulated businesses that give away marijuana with a cover purchase like a bottle of juice or a poster. Those businesses have become well-established in the city as an informal workaround since District voters legalized marijuana use in 2014 but Congress blocked the federal city from legalizing recreational sales of the product. (“Thank you, Congress,” Council chairman Phil Mendelson (D) said ironically on Monday when discussing the necessity of legislation to help the medical marijuana businesses compete.)
Members had discussed allowing any adult in the city to self-attest to their need for medical marijuana. They did not vote on that proposal Tuesday, but said they might return to it in the future.
Bowser has said that a grocery chain already operating in the city, which she has not identified, would be interested in building a store on the site at East Capitol and 58th Street if the District purchases it, bringing a grocery to an under-resourced neighborhood on the city’s eastern edge that has clamored for one.
And in a more contentious debate, the council in a vote of 10-2 approved a 15-year contract for a private company to replace the District’s streetlights with energy-efficient lights that will automatically notify the company when a bulb burns out, rather than requiring a resident to call 311 to report a burned-out streetlight.
Council members disagreed over the merits of the public-private partnership, in which the private company will be authorized to borrow up to $160 million in bonds to finance the project and then the District will eventually pay the company, up to $309 million over 15 years. Bowser said it would cost tens of millions more for the District to procure the same services through traditional contracting; the District’s current streetlight company, on the other hand, said they could do the work for more than $100 million less than the company that won the contract. | null | null | null | null | null |
The last stands: Richmond starts taking down Confederate statues’ pedestals, too
Workers dismantle the pedestal of the Matthew Fontaine Maury statue on Monument Avenue in Richmond on Feb. 1. The city is taking down the remnants of Confederate memorials for the next few weeks. (Gregory S. Schneider/The Washington Post)
RICHMOND — The stone pedestals left behind when this city removed its statues glorifying the Confederacy are finally beginning to come down, too, heading into storage after meticulous documentation.
It’s no small task. The City Council has agreed to spend more than $1.5 million to haul away thousands of pounds of ornamental granite over the next few weeks. All of it will be preserved and put under the purview of Richmond’s Black History Museum, which will work with the Valentine museum to find new uses for the materials.
Work began Tuesday on dismantling the stone base that once held a statue of maritime hero Matthew Fontaine Maury, who had a global reputation as the “Pathfinder of the Seas” but chucked his U.S. Navy commission to join the Confederacy during the Civil War.
Robert E. Lee monument, other Confederate statues could go to Richmond's Black History Museum
Workers from Team Henry, the Black-owned contractor that has overseen the job of removing all of Richmond’s Confederate monuments, lifted the 8,000-pound capstone and hoisted it onto a flatbed truck. Carvings of fish, bats and birds decorated the gray granite of the pedestal. The statue was put in place in 1929 as the last of the series of Confederate memorials on Richmond’s grand Monument Avenue.
The crew used a small jackhammer to get into the base of the pedestal, then decided to pause the job just after midday because it was clear the stones holding up either side were too big for the crane on hand. A new rig was due Wednesday to hoist each 30,000-pound block.
Work will then move several blocks east on Monument to the pedestal that once supported a figure of Gen. J.E.B. Stuart, said Jeannie Welliver, of Richmond’s special capital projects office. Still to go: pedestals from statues honoring Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, Confederate President Jefferson Davis, and Confederate soldiers and sailors, as well as the stone base of a Confederate cannon.
One job promises to be trickier than the others: The statue of Confederate Gen. A.P. Hill still stands in the middle of a busy intersection because his remains are buried beneath it — standing up, supposedly. City officials are negotiating with the general’s descendants in the Culpeper area to relocate his remains to a cemetery.
Many of the pedestal sites will be landscaped until community efforts, led by the museums, come up with a long-term plan for what to do with the properties. The fates of the Hill and Jackson sites, however, are already determined: The two intersections where they have stood like roadblocks will simply be paved over, to the relief of motorists and traffic cops alike.
In total, the city will sock away some 1,280 stones, according to Welliver. More than 500 of the stones came from the granddaddy pedestal of them all, the 40-foot tower that once supported the figure of Gen. Robert E. Lee. The state of Virginia took down that statue and pedestal last year and deeded the property to the city.
Robert E. Lee statue is removed in Richmond, former capital of the Confederacy, after months of protests and legal resistance
“We are taking such care of the pedestal pieces,” Welliver said. Each pedestal has been digitally scanned and modeled in 3D, she said. All the stones are catalogued as they are removed and marked with metal tags so they can be reassembled.
“Like instructions for Ikea furniture,” said Paul DiPasquale, a local sculptor who is advising the city on care for the artifacts.
And there might be more than stones. The Maury, Jackson and Davis monuments are all likely to contain time capsules, said local historian Dale Brumfield, who has researched all the statues.
Brumfield’s work led state officials to search the Lee statue’s base for a time capsule. They eventually found two: one official, the other a personal tribute left by two of the men who designed the Lee site. The time capsules contained books, papers and memorabilia related to the Civil War and Richmond at the end of the 19th century. The materials are still being studied by state historians.
Confederate pride and the Chamber of Commerce: Richmond's Lee statue finally gives up its time capsule secrets
There was no evidence of a time capsule at the Maury site Tuesday. But DiPasquale said that given the ornate nature of the monument, he would not be surprised to find that the artist who created it also installed a memento underneath.
DiPasquale has some experience with the topic. He created the statue of tennis legend Arthur Ashe that the city installed a few blocks farther west on Monument Avenue in the 1990s.
“There’s a time capsule under the Ashe monument,” DiPasquale said, “because I put it there..” | null | null | null | null | null |
Child-care worker Debbie James-Dean helps her young charges make dough at Kids Are Us Learning Center in Southeast D.C. in 2017. (Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post)
The council raised taxes on the city’s highest earners last year, and the members voted at that time to set aside $53 million in the first year of that tax to somehow raise the pay of day-care workers, saying that their work was vital to the city’s families but not sufficiently compensated by their current salaries.
On Tuesday, the council indicated that it will set up a program to do so in future years, probably by subsidizing part of workers’ paychecks from their employers so that child-care workers will be paid on a scale comparable to public elementary school teachers.
This year, to make sure workers get the money quickly, the council is going to give payment directly to any eligible day-care worker who applies for it. Workers who care for babies and toddlers will be eligible for checks of about $10,000 or $14,000, depending on whether they work as assistants or leaders of day-care classrooms.
The council also addressed another long-running concern Tuesday: boosting the city’s medical marijuana industry, which council members worry is suffering because of competition from unregulated businesses that give away marijuana with a cover purchase like a juice bottle or a poster. Those businesses have become well-established in the city as an informal workaround since District voters legalized marijuana use in 2014, but Congress blocked the federal city from legalizing recreational sales of the product. (“Thank you, Congress,” D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) said ironically Monday when discussing the necessity of legislation to help the medical marijuana businesses compete.)
Members had discussed allowing any adult in the city to self-attest to their need for medical marijuana. They did not vote on that proposal Tuesday, but they said they might return to it in the future.
Bowser has said that a grocery chain already operating in the city, which she has not identified, would be interested in building a store on the site at East Capitol and 58th streets NE if the District purchases it, bringing a grocery to an under-resourced neighborhood that has clamored for one.
And in a more contentious debate, the council in a vote of 10-to-2 approved a 15-year contract for a private company to replace the District’s streetlights with energy-efficient lights that will automatically notify the company when a bulb burns out, rather than requiring a resident to call 311.
Council members disagreed over the merits of the public-private partnership, in which the private company will be authorized to borrow up to $160 million in bonds to finance the project and then the District will eventually pay the company, up to $309 million over 15 years. Bowser said it would cost tens of millions more for the District to procure the same services through traditional contracting; the District’s current streetlight company, on the other hand, said it could do the work for more than $100 million less than the company that won the contract. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: The U.S. is drowning in its own secrets. It’s overdue for a rescue.
Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines in McLean on July 27, 2021. (Susan Walsh/AP)
Nearly a decade ago, a federal board warned in a report that practices for classification and declassification of national security information were “outmoded, unsustainable and keep too much information from the public.” The report found that petabytes of data were being classified annually. (A petabyte is a million gigabytes.) Then, in 2019, a top U.S. official warned the government was creating petabytes every month and the system was “unsustainable, and desperately requires modernization.” In 2020, the federal board warned of an “explosion” of digital data now underway — and a “tsunami” in the years to come.
The reasons for the logjam are well-known. Too much national security information is over-classified and too little is declassified. The volume of digital secrets is burgeoning, but the declassification system lumbers along at an analog pace. According to the Public Interest Declassification Board’s 2020 report, “The transition to email and other forms of instantaneous communications, and the pervasive use of social media applications have profoundly altered the way the Government conducts business.” By contrast, the paper-based declassification system “was created before the United States entered World War II, and it remains entrenched today.”
Hopefully, action to fix this long-festering mismatch will finally get underway. The 2020 report recommended that a new high-level executive be appointed to oversee the effort, and a new national declassification system be created that would work toward timely release of information. Technology must be used to modernize the aging systems, the report found, and the government ought to deploy the tools of big data, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and cloud storage and retrieval to build a modern system with automation. Not everyone is sold on the automation concept, but it deserves exploration. The slow, page-by-page declassification process is broken.
The nation needs to guard its secrets to function properly. But over-classification is counterproductive and adds to public distrust. A big improvement would be to simplify the classification process into two tiers, “secret” and “top secret,” with appropriate protections and guidelines that will also prevent labeling as “classified” material that does not need to be protected. In the words of one chair of the Public Interest Declassification Board, Nancy E. Soderberg, “Transformation is not simply advisable but imperative.” She was right about both the need and the urgency. That was nearly 10 years ago. | null | null | null | null | null |
Former Dolphins coach Brian Flores sues NFL and its teams for discrimination
Brian Flores, the former coach of the Miami Dolphins, filed a lawsuit against the NFL and all of its teams, accusing them of discrimination.
Flores was a candidate for the Giants’ head coaching job but they hired Buffalo Bills offensive coordinator Brian Daboll last week. In the complaint, he says the Giants put him through a “sham interview” process “that was held only in an effort to comply with the Rooney Rule.” | null | null | null | null | null |
The new nose-only “kosk” from South Korea allows eating with some degree of protection, unlike this fully masked customer in 2020, picking up a takeaway bag from a robot at No Brand Burger in Seoul. (Ahn Young-Joon/AP)
The mask has gone viral on social media and in various online forums, after it was recently unveiled by a South Korean company, Atman. It can be used folded up when eating just to cover the nose, and unfolded to cover both the nose and mouth after eating. It is available on an online shopping website for about $8 for a box of 10.
The two terms are often used to criticize people who are not wearing their masks properly. Mask-wearing is widespread in South Korea, which is among the East Asian countries that quickly implemented the practice and social distancing as a well-known public health response to previous respiratory viruses.
The new mask comes as South Korea grapples with a surge in omicron variant cases and expands the availability of testing and oral treatments to those who are deemed high priority cases, including the elderly. (It appears, though, that the idea of a covid mask covering just the nose is not unique to South Korea.)
South Korea has not mandated a nationwide lockdown in the coronavirus pandemic, but it has imposed restrictions on the number of people who can gather and the hours of operation for restaurants, bars and other businesses. The country now requires proof of vaccine for most establishments. | null | null | null | null | null |
So they were. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) declared Trump’s idea to be “inappropriate,” the equivalent of a robust indictment from one of Trump’s regular champions. New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) was more blunt when asked whether those arrested should be pardoned: “Of course not,” he said on CNN on Sunday.
Even when he first broached the subject, Trump was squirrelly about it. He knows, given his media diet, that an effort within the fringe of right-wing media has started to seep into Fox News’s prime time coverage. It centers on the idea that conditions for that small subset of those detained until trial for their actions at the Capitol have been unpleasant and unacceptable and, therefore, that this is both an indicator of political bias by the Biden administration and one that demands rectification.
It’s useful to recognize that it’s the effort to paint President Biden as targeting political opponents for punishment that defines defenses of the detainees. (As of December, there were about three dozen people being detained in D.C. on charges related to Jan. 6, of more than 725 arrestees in total.) The attention drawn to jail facilities due to complaints from Jan. 6 detainees has reportedly improved conditions, but there’s no reason to think that the detentions themselves are politically motivated and little evidence that the conditions under which they are being held are particularly bad as a function of a concerted effort to punish their political beliefs.
In keeping with his frequent test-the-waters approach to creating controversy, Trump’s comment at the rally was not a sweeping endorsement of blanket pardons. He pledged to “treat those people from Jan. 6 fairly” and said that “if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons.” Trump’s allies rushed to compare this comment to Vice President Harris’s having contributed to bail funds in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, but there is of course a big difference between receiving bail until trial and getting a full pardon.
McConnell has consistently offered a more critical view of Jan. 6 than Trump or many in his party. So when CNN’s Manu Raju asked McConnell whether he was concerned about Trump offering pardons to those who “attacked the Capitol,” one might have assumed that McConnell’s answer would sound more like Sununu than Graham.
Polling suggests it was the former. A January poll conducted by YouGov for the Economist found that about a fifth of Republicans approved at least somewhat of those who stormed the Capitol that day. Another YouGov poll, conducted for Yahoo News, found that the same percentage believed the attack to be justified. This is not equivalent to a question about whether those rioters should be pardoned. In that latter poll, though, 8 in 10 Republicans said that it was time to put the attack “behind us.” That followed a question about the Jan. 6 investigation underway in the House, so the responses may have been colored by that context. That result does suggest some sympathy for simply being done with the whole thing. | null | null | null | null | null |
FILE - Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp speaks in Lafayette, Ga., Jan. 7, 2022. Kemp’s campaign announced Tuesday, Feb. 1, 2022, that it had raised $7.4 million over the last seven months for Republican incumbent’s reelection bid. (Matt Hamilton /Chattanooga Times Free Press via AP, file)
ATLANTA — Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said Tuesday that his main campaign committee raised more than $7.4 million in the seven months ending Jan. 31, giving him $12.7 million in cash as the Republican seeks reelection this year. | null | null | null | null | null |
Brian Flores, the former coach of the Miami Dolphins, filed a lawsuit against the NFL and all of its teams, accusing them of racial discrimination.
Flores was a candidate for the Giants’ head coaching job but they instead hired Buffalo Bills offensive coordinator Brian Daboll for the job last week. In the complaint, Flores says the Giants put him through a “sham interview” process “that was held only in an effort to comply with the Rooney Rule.” In the complaint, Flores says that New England Patriots Coach Bill Belichick inadvertently told him in a text message before his interview that the Giants had already settled on Daboll as their next coach.
The Giants said in a written statement: “We are pleased and confident with the process that resulted in the hiring of Brian Daboll. We interviewed an impressive and diverse group of candidates. The fact of the matter is, Brian Flores was in the conversation to be our head coach until the eleventh hour. Ultimately, we hired the individual we felt was most qualified to be our next head coach.” | null | null | null | null | null |
So they were. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) declared Trump’s idea to be “inappropriate,” the equivalent of a robust indictment from one of Trump’s regular champions. New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) was more blunt when asked whether those arrested should be pardoned: “Of course not,” he said on CNN on Sunday.
Even when he first broached the subject, Trump was squirrelly about it. He knows, given his media diet, that an effort within the fringe of right-wing media has started to seep into Fox News’s prime-time coverage. It centers on the idea that conditions for that small subset of those detained until trial for their actions at the Capitol have been unpleasant and unacceptable and, therefore, that this is both an indicator of political bias by the Biden administration and one that demands rectification.
It’s useful to recognize that it’s the effort to paint President Biden as targeting political opponents for punishment that defines defenses of the detainees. (As of December, there were about three dozen people being detained in D.C. on charges related to Jan. 6, of more than 725 arrestees in total.) The attention drawn to jail facilities because of complaints from Jan. 6 detainees has reportedly improved conditions, but there’s no reason to think that the detentions themselves are politically motivated and little evidence that the conditions under which they are being held are particularly bad as a function of a concerted effort to punish them for their political beliefs.
In keeping with his frequent test-the-waters approach to creating controversy, Trump’s comment at the rally was not a sweeping endorsement of blanket pardons. He pledged to “treat those people from Jan. 6 fairly” and said that “if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons.” Trump’s allies rushed to compare that comment to Vice President Harris’s having contributed to bail funds in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, but there is of course a big difference between receiving bail until trial and getting a full pardon.
McConnell has consistently offered a more critical view of Jan. 6 than Trump or many others in his party. So when CNN’s Manu Raju asked McConnell whether he was concerned about Trump offering pardons to those who “attacked the Capitol,” one might have assumed that McConnell’s answer would sound more like Sununu’s than Graham’s.
Polling suggests it was the former. A January poll conducted by YouGov for the Economist found that about a fifth of Republicans approved at least somewhat of those who stormed the Capitol that day. Another YouGov poll, conducted for Yahoo News, found that the same percentage believed the attack to be justified. This is not equivalent to a question about whether those rioters should be pardoned. In that latter poll, though, 8 in 10 Republicans said it was time to put the attack “behind us.” That followed a question about the Jan. 6 investigation underway in the House, so the responses may have been colored by that context. That result does suggest some sympathy for simply being done with the whole thing. | null | null | null | null | null |
Democrats, who hold a narrow 50-50 majority in the Senate — with Vice President Harris as the tiebreaking vote — will need a unified front if they want to confirm Biden’s nominee without the help of Republicans.
Two other sitting senators have suffered strokes in recent history, leading in both cases to extended absences. Former Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) spent nine months recovering after a December 2006 cerebral episode, while former Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) was absent for nearly a year, returning in January 2013. Neither man served in an evenly split Senate, and their strokes were of different types than Lujan’s. | null | null | null | null | null |
Alexei Navalny, the Russian anti-corruption campaigner and opposition leader, often said President Vladimir Putin runs a party of “crooks and thieves.” Mr. Putin’s security forces subsequently attempted to assassinate Mr. Navalny with a military-grade chemical weapon; when he survived, the regime unjustly handed him a prison sentence a year ago Wednesday and lateroutlawed his organization as “extremist.”
Mr. Navalny endures days and nights in a prison barracks with the windows covered in white paper so he can’t see out, under constant watch by other inmates, but he won’t be silenced. He recently exchanged letters with Time magazine in which he urged the West to put pressure on Mr. Putin by going after his riches abroad. “Everybody knows the names of the oligarchs and friends of Putin who hold his money,” he wrote. “We know those who finance his yachts and palaces.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: Disney needs to work on the heart of the story, not just the color of the characters
Actor Peter Dinklage. (Monica Almeida/Reuters)
As Peter Dinklage mentioned in the article, in “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” the greatest pitfall is the stereotypical portrayal of dwarfs. In the new remake, Disney had the chance to create a story that was more reflective of today’s society with a complex, interesting take on the dwarfs rather than sticking to the one-dimensional, one-personality character of the dwarfs in the original. Though casting these princesses as actresses of color is certainly an exciting development, and I am excited to see Rachel Zegler as Snow White, to make a truly great remake, Disney needs to focus on reworking the characters and fix the heart of the film.
Grace Ko, Fairfax | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: It’s time for the Supreme Court to truly reflect America
The Supreme Court on Jan. 27. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Ruth Marcus, in her Jan. 28 op-ed, “The inaccurate carping over Biden’s Supreme Court pledge,” made a great case for President Biden’s explicit endorsement for a Black female justice. But I wish she had not been uncomfortable just saying so.
It’s long past time for everyone, including Mr. Biden, to be able to say they are comfortably, boldly and explicitly selecting a highly qualified candidate for the courts because they represent a specific segment of American society — whatever their gender, ethnicity, age or sexual identity.
The reality in 2022 is that there are now plenty of highly qualified candidates in all these categories. Making sure the courts represent all of America, after centuries of sacrifice and hard work for diversity and representation by many, is simply the right thing to do.
We’ve learned that there really is no better way to promote equal justice under the law in the United States today. We’ve also learned, the hard way, that diversity counts in all our institutions. Let’s hope the Supreme Court does not forget this all-important American lesson in its decisions in the year ahead.
Keith Henderson, Washington
I was disappointed to see Ruth Marcus’s Jan. 27 op-ed, “Breyer’s replacement will make a difference — and not much difference at all,” in which she said there is “more relief than joy” in this moment.
As a Black woman, minister and civil rights leader, I disagree. It does matter that we will soon see the first Black woman on the Supreme Court — profoundly so.
It matters to my generation’s Black women, unsung foot soldiers in the never-ending fight for justice.
It matters to young Black women who aspire to a seat on our highest court.
It matters to the American people when deliberations and decision-making on our highest court are sharpened by the perspective and persuasive power of a Black female justice.
And if that justice writes brilliant dissents in the tradition of Thurgood Marshall and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, those words will inspire — even if, per Ms. Marcus, they are “not the law of the land.”
It’s unfortunate that Ms. Marcus sees so little joy in this moment. One new justice alone won’t repair the far right’s damage to the court. But there is power and significance in this event for so many of us, and we will rejoice.
Leslie Watson Wilson, Washington
The writer is national director of African American religious affairs for People for the American Way. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: Triage all covid patients as normal, even unvaccinated ones
A health-care worker treats a patient inside a negative pressure room in the covid-19 intensive care unit at Freeman Hospital West in Joplin, Mo., on Aug. 3, 2021. (Angus Mordant/Bloomberg News)
The arguments in Govind Persad and Emily Largent’s Jan. 27 Thursday Opinion essay, “For scarce covid treatments, the unvaccinated should go after the immunocompromised,” might be appealing to some because it imposes consequences for those refusing to get vaccinated. However, this approach will result in poor use of scarce medical treatments. Vaccine status is only one risk factor in deciding who receives medical treatment for covid-19.
When medical resources are scarce, patients are triaged. This is an evidence-based method that prioritizes medical resources to those who are in greatest need of immediate care and who will benefit most from it. Using the example cited by the authors, the New York State Department of Health guidelines for treatment of covid would place patients of any age with moderate to severe immunocompromise in the highest-priority group for treatment. A patient over 65 years of age who is not fully vaccinated and has no risk factors (underlying medical conditions) for severe covid-related illness would be in the next lower priority group. If this unvaccinated-over-65 patient had at least one risk factor, he would be elevated to the highest-priority group. Within the highest-priority group, if necessary, each patient is then prioritized for treatment by age and number of risk factors.
Health-care providers must do what they are trained to do: to treat patients only on the basis of need or risk using evidence-based guidelines.
William E. Duncan, Washington | null | null | null | null | null |
The lead plaintiffs, Christopher Seaman and Elizabeth Allison Lyons, have an 8-year-old son in third grade in Crozet who just underwent a bone-marrow transplant and chemotherapy for leukemia. There were recently two positive cases in his younger brother’s class, they said, underscoring their concerns.
A Washington Post analysis shows that the majority of Virginia public school districts — enrolling more than two-thirds of the state’s students — have opted to disobey the order and continue mandating masks. But in the ACLU suit, the plaintiffs say the conflicting edicts make them unsure whether it is safe to send their children to class even in localities defying his order.
The Youngkin administration did not immediately return a request for comment. In a statement last week, Youngkin said, “If localities want to have a mask mandate, they absolutely are able to. However, parents have a right to opt out. They know what is best for their kids.”
Students who cannot wear masks should be accommodated as well, Heilman said. “But all of that process is being usurped by the governor’s order.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Sensing an opportunity, city leaders in Annapolis, Md., tasked their trio of Washington lobbyists last year to focus their time and attention on bringing some of the new federal bucks back home.
The coastal city has long struggled with flooding in its historical district, as rising tides from the nearby Chesapeake Bay spill over from the docks into the tourist-heavy areas not far from the Maryland State House. But the problem has grown “persistently worse” in recent years as a result of climate change, said David Jarrell, the city manager, who said that Annapolis on its own has “not been able to afford the proper permanent measures” to address the problem. | null | null | null | null | null |
While the omicron variant, which made up 95 percent of covid cases in early January, has reportedly been less severe for adults, children (many of whom are still not eligible for vaccination) might not be as lucky. “Rates of hospitalization for children have skyrocketed to the highest levels of the pandemic,” Aldrovandi warns. “Covid is among the top 10 causes of deaths among children in the U.S. It is heartbreaking and we know that at least in the short term, the numbers are going to increase.” In addition, research published in January linked adolescent covid infection with an increased risk of Type 1 diabetes.
“Our study stresses the importance of immunoglobulins passing through breast milk, even in older children who are still breastfeeding. Breast milk is a living element that protects our children regardless of their age,” explained one of the authors of this study, Dolores Sabina Romero Ramírez, a neonatologist at the Nuestra Señora de Candelaria in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. | null | null | null | null | null |
A view of a skiing venue at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Zhangjiakou, China. (Guillaume Horcajuelo/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
The U.S. government may be boycotting the Olympics, but American corporate sponsors aren’t. Global business reporter Jeanne Whalen says, “China is the world's second biggest economy, and for many of these companies, it is one of their biggest markets.” We break down what that means for the diplomatic boycott and its impact.
A Washington Post review of America's most valuable public companies reveals that Black employees still represent a strikingly small number of top executives — and that the people tapped to boost inclusion often struggle to do so. Business reporter Tracy Jan explains why.
Plus, one more thing about Wordle — and why the popular online word game being bought by the New York Times feels like the end of an era.
Have federal student loans? Tell us what you’ve done since the payment freeze. The Washington Post is covering the freeze on federal student loan payments, which was first imposed in March 2020 because of the pandemic. We'd like to hear from borrowers on how the freeze has impacted them.
Taking politics out of parole
The legacy of “truth in sentencing” politics in Maryland, where the vast majority of people serving life sentences are Black, and how a new law could alter what it means to serve life in prison. | null | null | null | null | null |
LONDON — British police have taken into custody convicted burglar Jonathan Cahill, whose mug shot they posted on social media last week — in the hopes of sending him back to prison after a suspected parole violation — sparked 95,000 comments, largely from women offering to help find him for, um, totally different reasons.
Droves replied to the West Yorkshire police department’s post — which asked, “Can you help us to locate Jonathan Cahill?” — seemingly drawn to the 37-year-old’s blue eyes, chiseled jawline, stony gaze and description of his 6-foot height.
“Daddy I’m in love with a criminal,” wrote one person. “I mean he has committed a crime.. but dang!!!!” wrote another. One said, “I have handcuffs.” There were many other wildly inappropriate comments that cannot be published in The Washington Post.
Cahill, who police said breached the terms of his September release from prison, was swiftly branded “fit felon” or “criminally hot,” and some on social media described him as “Wakefield’s Jeremy Meeks,” a reference to the American “hot felon” whose image also became popular in 2014 after a California police department shared his mug shot to Facebook, where he was branded “The Blue-Eyed Bandit” and “Jail Bae.”
West Yorkshire police declined to comment on the public’s “meme-ification” of convicted criminals and whether the mass fawning over Cahill helped officers to find him.
But social media analyst Matt Navarra said the Internet’s fascination with such men — despite their criminal backgrounds — is a “curious phenomenon.” Some have urged those who may be swooning to pay attention to rap sheets, rather than the men’s looks.
At the time photos of Meeks went viral, for instance, he was facing five weapons charges and one gang charge — and was dubbed by one officer “one of the most violent criminals in the Stockton area.” He later became a fashion model.
The Internet may make such comments about a convict’s appearance feel very low-stakes. “When we comment online about someone we don’t know, have never met and are never likely to meet, it doesn’t feel so real or intimidating,” Navarra said, adding that it is this “physical and emotional disconnect” that also empowers trolls to abuse strangers online.
The phenomenon has occurred in England before: In 2019, another British criminal, Oliver Hargreaves from East Yorkshire, who was wanted on recall to prison, also was widely compared to Meeks — and called the “U.K.’s hottest criminal” after police posted his mug shot on social media. “I’m going to do society a favour and look for this man,” one fan wrote as comments flooded in. | null | null | null | null | null |
The NFL franchise’s new name — and its controversial old one — have created a novel experiment in the sports merchandising and memorabilia markets
Washington football fans come with their share of baggage: the pileup of losses, the churn of starting quarterbacks, the front office scandals, that polarizing mascot. They also have a lot of stuff — branded jerseys, hats, T-shirts, pennants, posters and other memorabilia that celebrate an identity the team has cast off.
Now the question for fans and the franchise: What do you do with it?
As the NFL team fully divests itself of a nickname that many find racially insensitive, the transition has set off novel experiment in the fast-growing sports collectibles industry. A team rebrand typically occurs because of a move, said Leila Dunbar, a D.C.-based memorabilia appraiser. Think how the Cleveland Browns became the Baltimore Ravens, or the Montreal Expos turned into the Washington Nationals.
But the D.C. football team’s situation is unique because it had been under immense pressure to change its mascot, as well as for its unprecedented decision to take a temporary name rather than wait until it had a replacement. The unusual circumstances, combined with the franchise’s core of die-hard fans, create openings for the old gear on the memorabilia market, collectors and appraisers say.
Experts say there are plenty of fans who will snap up Washington Redskins merchandise to preserve what they consider the region’s sporting heritage, shaking off criticisms that it is derogatory. There also are those who are looking forward to embracing the new mascot and being done with the Washington Football Team moniker.
“I look constantly now on eBay,” said Kevin McHale, a lifelong Washington football fan in New Jersey. “I’ve probably bought more since the name changed than I was before. Before I would bookmark something like, ‘I’d like to have that.’ Now when I see something I like I buy it, because I may never see something like that again.”
Chris Bryant in Staunton, Va., is planning a full-scale redesign of his “fan cave.” He spent $1,000 to $1,500 to redo his basement from a Redskins to a WFT theme. And he’ll do it again with the franchise’s new name.
Licensed sports merchandising is a $30 billion global market, according to market research firm Research and Markets, with companies like Nike, Under Armour and Adidas fighting for the right to clothe and equip college and professional athletes.
The NFL has separate apparel deals with Nike, to outfit players and coaches, and Fanatics, to sell merchandise to fans. The league has not released the values of those agreements, but they’re believed to be worth billions of dollars.
Neither the team, Nike nor Fanatics responded to questions about their plans for old Redskins and Washington Football Team paraphernalia. Sports marketing consultants uninvolved with the name change told The Post that rebranding franchises often significantly mark down old merchandise for sale or donate it overseas to keep it from circulating on auction sites domestically.
That still leaves untold amounts of old D.C. football items circulating for collectors. Christie Lopez in Leesburg, Va., purchased a Redskins Christmas village play set in early January. “As soon as I saw it, I was like, ‘I have to have that,’” she said.
“I opened a box one day, and there were 500 [plastic] pig snouts,” she said.
Samu Qureshi of Bethesda, Md., calls his collection “the museum.” It includes game-used equipment, old correspondence and memos from team and league officials, players’ contracts and more. On display in his basement is a jock strap once used by legendary running back John Riggins.
He hopes, one day, to lend some of the items to Washington NFL owner Daniel Snyder for a team museum. He’s even tried to call franchise president Jason Wright to discuss the idea. No one has called him back.
The Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, is considering its approach to capturing this era, according to Jon Kendle, its vice president of archives, education and football information. The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y., may face a similar challenge with the former Cleveland Indians, which became the Guardians in 2019.
“We try to smooth it out as much as possible, but there’s certain things that we just can’t as a museum, as a keeper of history, we can’t scrub the history clean,” Kendle said.
When the D.C. franchise became the Washington Football Team in 2020, Qureshi said, there was a surge in demand for items with its old logo — in use in some form since 1933 — and a pronounced lack of interest in Football Team materials.
It made a limited run of Washington Football Team merchandise, and many hometown fans went to FedEx Field still wearing the old logo. Some even complained online about the relative lack of Washington Football Team apparel compared with other NFL clubs.
“A lot of fans through this period were saying, ‘Why would I waste my money on this stuff? [The name] is going to change again,’” Lopez said.
Now that the name is changing again, collectors say there’s not much Washington Football Team gear to go around. Qureshi said he added a couple items — mostly game programs — to his collection to keep up with the team’s history. Bryant redid his basement for the Football Team, but didn’t go as all-out as he could have because he knew the name was temporary. He has more than 70 Washington NFL jerseys, he said. Eight are from the Football Team.
That makes sense, appraisers say, because, well, the Washington Football Team’s record wasn’t very good. Sure, it won the NFC East in 2020, but with a 7-9 record. The WFT era, memorabilia experts say, has mostly been defined by on-field mediocrity and off-field scandal, namely allegations of a misogynistic work environment and sexual exploitation of the team’s cheerleaders. That significantly hurts the collectible and merchandise markets, which are driven by on-field success.
The combination of excellence, popularity, rarity, and timing all feed into value of collectibles, now a $5.4 billion market by some estimates. Michael Jordan memorabilia, for example, has surged in value since the debut of the 2020 docuseries, “The Last Dance,” about his final season with the Chicago Bulls. A 1986 Jordan rookie card produced by the now-defunct Fleer company is at auction on eBay for $16,100.
And though there might be some early excitement around a new name, she said — who doesn’t like a new hoodie or T-shirt? — much of the interest in the new Washington NFL brand will depend on the team’s wins and losses. Until then, fans will likely gravitate toward items from the team’s past successful eras.
“I doubt I’ll be buying anything Washington Football Team,” said Rudy Gersten, a lifelong fan in Bethesda who’s collected merchandise for three decades. “I doubt I’ll buy any of the new name, whatever it may be. But I may well continue to look into buying old Redskins items and continue to build my collection. I don’t plan on getting rid of any of it.” | null | null | null | null | null |
WASHINGTON — How far the Federal Reserve can go to compel banks to consider the consequences of climate change in their lending policies could take center stage at a Senate hearing Thursday on the nominations of Sarah Bloom Raskin and two economists to the Fed’s influential Board of Governors. The Fed is already moving toward analyzing the risks that banks face from rising temperatures and changing weather patterns. What many in the oil and gas industry fear is something more far-reaching: That the Fed may eventually take steps to discourage banks from lending to the energy industry — something it hasn’t previously considered in its policymaking.
DETROIT — Tesla is recalling nearly 54,000 vehicles because their “Full Self-Driving” software lets them roll through stop signs without coming to a complete halt. Documents posted Tuesday by U.S. safety regulators say that Tesla will disable the feature with an over-the-internet software update. The software allows vehicles to go through intersections with all-way stop signs at up to 5.6 miles (9 kilometers) per hour. Disregarding stop signs is illegal in most states. The recall covers Model S sedans and X SUVs from 2016 through 2022, as well as 2017 to 2022 Model 3 sedans and 2020 through 2022 Model Y SUVs. Tesla says it has no reports of crashes or injuries.
SAN RAMON, Calif. — Google’s digital advertising empire turned in another strong performance during the holiday shopping season, propelling a 36% increase in its corporate parent’s revenue during the final three months of 2021. The results announced Tuesday underscore how technology giants have adapted to become even more successful during a nearly two-year pandemic that has roiled much of the economy. In a show of confidence intended to make its shares more affordable to a broader pool of investors, Google parent Alphabet also announced plans for its first stock split since 2014. Alphabet’s shares surged 7% on the news.
DETROIT — General Motors increased its net income 56% last year, helped by higher prices for its vehicles that were made scarce by a global shortage of computer chips. The Detroit automaker said Tuesday that it made $10.02 billion for the full year. And it predicted record pretax earnings in 2022 of $13 billion to $15 billion and net income of $9.4 billion to $10.8 billion. Excluding one-time items, GM made $7.07 per share for the year, beating analyst estimates of $6.83. Full year revenue of $127 billion fell short of estimates of $128.7 billion. In the fourth quarter, GM made a $1.7 billion net profit.
SEATTLE — Starbucks had a strong holiday season in the U.S. but weaker sales in China as its ended the second year of the pandemic. U.S. same-store sales, or sales at stores open at least a year, were up 18% over the October-December period a year ago. The Seattle-based coffee giant said more U.S. customers were visiting and spending more per visit. But same-store sales in China fell 14%, partly due to continuing lockdowns in some areas. Starbucks’ revenue rose 19% to $8.1 billion in its fiscal first quarter. That was ahead of Wall Street’s forecast.
NEW YORK — Exxon Mobil returned to a profit in its fourth quarter as demand for oil continues to improve. The oil and natural gas company earned $8.87 billion, or $2.08 per share, for the three-month period. A year earlier it lost $20.07 billion, or $4.70 per share. Removing certain items, earnings were $2.05 per share. Analysts polled by Zacks Investment Research expected a profit of $1.96 per share. Exxon does not adjust its reported results based on one-time events such as asset sales.
NAIROBI, Kenya — Ethiopian Airlines says it has resumed flights with the Boeing 737-Max nearly three years after a crash of one of the aircraft outside the country’s capital killed 157 people. The airline said in a statement Tuesday that passengers on the day’s flight included government officials and diplomats. Boeing accepted responsibility for Ethiopian Airways flight 302 losing control shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa Bole International Airport in March 2019. At the time, it was the second crash to involve a 737-Max aircraft in six months. After the Ethiopian crash, U.S. authorities grounded the 737-Max until Boeing could fix the plane’s faulty software.
SAN FRANCISCO — A once-ambitious but now faltering Facebook-backed digital currency project known as Diem is dead, its assets sold to bank holding company Silvergate Capital. Silvergate and the Diem Association announced the sale on Tuesday. Diem said it became clear from its talks federal regulators that the project could not move forward. Meta, which owns Facebook, did not immediately respond to a message for comment. It’s been clear for a while that Diem, which was first named Libra, was fighting an uphill battle with regulators, and Meta has gradually distanced itself from the project. Facebook announced the Libra project in 2019, at the time envisioning it as a stablecoin based on a basket of national currencies that could serve as a global currency for the unbanked around the world. | null | null | null | null | null |
Fourth journalist killed in a month
Mexico’s government spokesperson, Jesús Ramírez Cuevas, initially condemned the killing on Twitter, saying: “We will work together with the state and municipal government to clarify the case. We will not allow impunity. We defend freedom of expression and the right to information.”
A subsequent tweet from his account said that Toledo worked as an assistant in a law firm, not as a journalist.
Monitor Michoacán’s director said Toledo covered the state government and produced video stories for the Web.
“He kept a low profile, given the threats we had received,” he said in an interview with Milenio.
— Maite Fernández
O'Toole says he will resist removal efforts
The head of Canada’s official opposition Conservatives, under fire after losing an election to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last year, says he will resist efforts by some party lawmakers to oust him as their leader.
Unhappy Conservatives say Erin O’Toole pulled the right-leaning party too far into the center during the campaign for the Sept. 20 election, in particular by backing a carbon tax to fight climate change.
Others say he was too slow to show enthusiasm for a truckers’ anti-government protest that is snarling Ottawa, say two senior former Conservative officials.
“I’m not going anywhere and I’m not turning back. Canada needs us to be united and serious!” O’Toole tweeted late on Monday.
Some 35 lawmakers have signed a letter calling for an early leadership review, and the 119 Conservative members of parliament could vote on O’Toole’s fate as early as Wednesday.
'Silent strikes' mark first coup anniversary
Streets in some of Myanmar’s main cities were nearly deserted on Tuesday as opponents of military rule held “silent strikes,” marking the first anniversary of a coup that led to deadly chaos and snuffed out tentative steps toward democracy.
On Tuesday, an explosion took place during a procession of military supporters in an eastern border town, two witnesses said. The blast killed two people, said one of the witnesses, and wounded more than 30 others.
State media on Tuesday said junta chief Min Aung Hlaing extended a state of emergency for a further six months.
U.S. warns Sudan over violence against protesters: The United States has made clear to Sudan's military leaders that Washington is prepared to impose additional costs if violence against protesters continues, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Molly Phee told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday.
South Korea signs arms deal with Egypt — South Korea on Tuesday said it signed a $1.6 billion arms deal with Egypt a week after President Biden's administration approved another massive arms sale to the Middle Eastern nation. | null | null | null | null | null |
The NFL franchise’s new name and its controversial old one have created a novel experiment in the sports merchandising and memorabilia markets
Washington football fans come with their share of baggage: the pileup of losses, the churn of starting quarterbacks, the front-office scandals, that polarizing former team name. They also have a lot of stuff — branded jerseys, hats, T-shirts, pennants, posters and other memorabilia that celebrate an identity the team has cast off.
Now the question for fans and the franchise is this: What do you do with it?
As the NFL team fully divests itself of a name that many find racially insensitive, the transition has set off a novel experiment in the fast-growing sports collectibles industry. A rebrand typically occurs because of a move, said Leila Dunbar, a D.C.-based memorabilia appraiser, in the way the Cleveland Browns became the Baltimore Ravens or the Montreal Expos turned into the Washington Nationals.
But the D.C. football team’s situation is unique because it had been under immense pressure to change its name, as well as for its unprecedented decision to take a temporary name rather than wait until it had a replacement. The unusual circumstances, combined with the franchise’s core of die-hard fans, create openings for the old gear on the memorabilia market, collectors and appraisers say.
Chris Bryant in Staunton, Va., is planning a full-scale redesign of his “fan cave.” He spent $1,000 to $1,500 to redo his basement from a Redskins them to a WFT one. He’ll do it again with the franchise’s new name.
Licensed sports merchandising is a $30 billion global market, according to market research firm Research and Markets, with companies such as Nike, Under Armour and Adidas fighting for the right to clothe and equip college and professional athletes.
The NFL has separate apparel deals with Nike, to outfit players and coaches, and Fanatics, to sell merchandise to fans. The league has not released the values of those agreements, but they’re believed to be worth billions.
Neither the team, Nike nor Fanatics responded to questions about their plans for old Redskins and Washington Football Team paraphernalia. Sports marketing consultants uninvolved with the name change said rebranding franchises often significantly mark down old merchandise for sale or donate it overseas to keep it from circulating on auction sites domestically.
That still leaves untold amounts of old D.C. football items circulating for collectors. Christie Lopez in Leesburg, Va. purchased a Redskins Christmas village play set in early January. “As soon as I saw it, I was like, ‘I have to have that,’ ” she said.
“I opened a box one day and there were 500 [plastic] pig snouts,” she said.
Samu Qureshi of Bethesda, Md., calls his collection “the museum.” It includes game-used equipment, old correspondence and memos from team and league officials, players’ contracts and more. On display in his basement is a jock strap once used by Hall of Fame running back John Riggins.
He hopes, one day, to lend some of the items to team owner Daniel Snyder for a museum. He even has tried to call team president Jason Wright to discuss the idea. No one has called him back.
The Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, is considering its approach to capturing this era, according to Jon Kendle, its vice president of archives, education and football information. The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y., may face a similar challenge with the former Cleveland Indians, who will become the Guardians for the 2022 season.
“We try to smooth it out as much as possible, but there’s certain things that we just can’t as a museum, as a keeper of history — we can’t scrub the history clean,” Kendle said.
When the D.C. franchise became the Washington Football Team in 2020, Qureshi said, there was a surge in demand for items with its old logo — in use in some form since 1933 — and a pronounced lack of interest in Washington Football Team materials.
It made a limited run of Washington Football Team merchandise, and many hometown fans went to FedEx Field still wearing the old logo. Some even complained online about the lack of Washington Football Team apparel compared with other NFL clubs.
“A lot of fans through this period were saying: ‘Why would I waste my money on this stuff? [The name] is going to change again,’ ” Lopez said.
Now that the name is changing again, collectors say there’s not much Washington Football Team gear to go around. Qureshi said he added a few items — mostly game programs — to his collection to keep up with the team’s history. Bryant redid his basement for the Football Team but didn’t go as all-out as he could have because he knew the name was temporary. He has more than 70 Washington jerseys, he said. Eight are from the Football Team.
That makes sense, appraisers say, because, well, the Washington Football Team’s record wasn’t very good. Sure, it won the NFC East in 2020, but with a 7-9 record. The Washington Football Team era, memorabilia experts say, has mostly been defined by on-field mediocrity and off-field scandal, namely allegations of a misogynistic work environment and accusations of exploitation of the team’s cheerleaders. That significantly hurts the collectible and merchandise markets, which are driven by on-field success.
The combination of excellence, popularity, rarity and timing feed into the value of collectibles, now a $5.4 billion market by some estimates. Michael Jordan memorabilia, for example, has surged in value since the debut of the 2020 docuseries, “The Last Dance,” about his final season with the Chicago Bulls. A 1986 Jordan rookie card is at auction on eBay for $16,100.
And though there might be some early excitement around a new name, she said — who doesn’t like a new hoodie or T-shirt? — much of the interest in the new brand will depend on the team’s wins and losses. Until then, fans are likely to gravitate toward items from the team’s successful past.
“I doubt I’ll be buying anything Washington Football Team,” said Rudy Gersten, a lifelong fan in Bethesda who has collected merchandise for three decades. “I doubt I’ll buy any of the new name, whatever it may be. But I may well continue to look into buying old Redskins items and continue to build my collection. I don’t plan on getting rid of any of it.” | null | null | null | null | null |
N.M. senator recovering from stroke; thousands flee as fertilizer plant burns
Sen. Luján suffers stroke, his office says
Luján, 49, began experiencing dizziness and fatigue Thursday morning, said his chief of staff, Carlos Sanchez. The senator checked himself in to a hospital in Santa Fe and was transferred to the University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque for further evaluation, Sanchez said.
It is unclear how long Luján will be out. The senator’s absence comes as President Biden is searching for a Supreme Court nominee to replace Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who recently announced his intention to retire at the end of this court term.
Democrats, who with Vice President Harris hold the tiebreaking vote in a 50-50 Senate, will need a unified front if they want to confirm Biden’s nominee without the help of Republicans when the full Senate votes.
— Amy B Wang and Mike DeBonis
Thousands flee as fertilizer plant burns
Authorities drove through neighborhoods and knocked on doors asking for the evacuation of residents within a one-mile radius of the Winston Weaver Company fertilizer plant on the north side of Winston-Salem, where the fire started Monday night. Overnight, bright orange flames and thick plumes of smoke could be seen shooting into the sky. No injuries were reported.
The evacuation area includes about 6,500 people in 2,500 homes, the Winston-Salem Fire Department said.
At least 90 firefighters fought the blaze for about 90 minutes after it was discovered at a loading dock around 7 p.m. Monday, but the risk of an explosion forced them to retreat, Mayo said. The fire quickly consumed the entire building, and it collapsed. A firetruck was left behind to continue pumping water onto part of the site.
Mayo said an estimated 500 tons of ammonium nitrate were housed at the plant and another 100 tons of the fertilizer ingredient were in an adjacent rail car. He said that is more of the chemical than was present at a deadly blast at a 2013 Texas fertilizer plant blast that killed 15 people, most of them emergency personnel.
Police Chief Jay Henthorne said the students were shot about 12:07 p.m. outside South Education Center in Richfield, a suburb just south of Minneapolis. The surviving student was in critical condition at a local hospital. Henthorne said suspects fled. He gave no other details on the students.
South Education Center has about 200 students, according to its website, which describes the facility as offering offers special education programs and an alternative high school. It is part of District 287, which provides services to 11 school districts across the Minneapolis area as well as some students from other districts. | null | null | null | null | null |
Delle Donne will participate in the 2022 USA Basketball women’s national team training camp this week in D.C., but won’t play in the FIBA World Cup qualifying tournament. The plans are to do individual drills and some five-on-one, but no full contact with an eye on being full-go for the Mystics training camp in late April.
“It was pretty cool, to be honest,” Hines-Allen said about the process. “When I first started talking to teams and speaking with my agent, they were like, where do you want to be? I was like, D.C. D.C. is like home for me. This is where I where I'm growing up, where I want to be.
Mystics Coach/General Manager Mike Thibault intends to add a backup point guard in free agency later this week. Thibault said keeping Hines-Allen and Emma Meesseman were the priorities, though Meesseman elected to sign with the Chicago Sky. There is a bit of a throwback feel to this free agency as Hines-Allen, Hawkins and Walker-Kimbrough were all members of the 2019 championship team.
The addition also has a distinct defensive feel as Williams becomes the fourth player on the team to be elected to an all-defensive team in the last three seasons, along with Natasha Cloud, Ariel Atkins and Clark. Thibault talked about Williams’s ability to communicate on defense and be the quarterback of the unit on the back end. | null | null | null | null | null |
Meanwhile, a separate group of three Loudoun County parents filed a lawsuit against the county’s School Board on Tuesday saying it was violating the law by requiring universal masking in defiance of Youngkin’s order.
Loudoun County schools did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.
In the federal case challenging Youngkin’s order, the lead plaintiffs, Christopher Seaman and Elizabeth Allison Lyons, have an 8-year-old son in third grade in Crozet who just underwent a bone-marrow transplant and chemotherapy for leukemia. There were recently two positive cases in his younger brother’s class, they said, underscoring their concerns.
A Washington Post analysis shows that the majority of Virginia public school districts — enrolling more than two-thirds of the state’s students — have opted to disobey the order and continue mandating masks. The parents who sued Tuesday in Loudoun Circuit Court asked for an injunction against the School Board, saying mask mandates are “increasingly difficult to justify as we approach the two-year anniversary of COVID-19′s arrival in the United States.”
In the ACLU suit, the plaintiffs say the conflicting edicts make them unsure whether it is safe to send their children to class even in localities that are still requiring masks.
Students who cannot wear masks should be accommodated as well, Heilman said, “but all of that process is being usurped by the governor’s order.”
A spokesman for Virginia Attorney General Jason S. Miyares (R) said his office was still reviewing the federal lawsuit on Tuesday afternoon and was not prepared to comment. In a statement last week, Youngkin said: “If localities want to have a mask mandate, they absolutely are able to. However, parents have a right to opt out. They know what is best for their kids.”
Peter H. Meyers, a professor emeritus of law at George Washington University, said the ACLU lawsuit adds a strong new element to the challenges against Youngkin’s mask order by invoking the Americans With Disabilities Act.
“Masks to a certain extent protect everyone,” Meyers said. “There are people who are getting learning at these schools that are in a high-risk situation if they get covid. There is a very good argument that could be made that the ADA might require the masking of other students to keep those with disabilities safe.”
In a similar challenge in Texas by students with disabilities, a federal judge in November ruled that an order by Gov. Greg Abbott (R) banning mask mandates violated the ADA, but that decision was put on hold by an appeals court in December as legal arguments continue.
Hannah Natanson contributed to this report. | null | null | null | null | null |
The house was a hub of Black intellectual thought in the country. From its rooms, Woodson published journals and bulletins and wrote books. In 1933, he published “The Mis-Education of the Negro,” a collection of articles and speeches. The book would become a classic, advocating for excellence in the education of Black students and demanding that school systems across America correct curricula designed to deliberately “mis-educate” Black children and promote the fallacy of white supremacy.
“The theory of this book was to help Black people understand we come from a greater society,” said Karsonya Wise Whitehead, former ASALH national secretary and an associate professor of African and African American studies at Loyola University Maryland. “And the work we do as parents, teachers and educators should make sure young Black people understand that.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Delle Donne will participate in the 2022 USA Basketball women’s national team training camp this week in D.C., but won’t play in the FIBA World Cup qualifying tournament. The plans are to do individual drills and some five-on-none, but no full contact with an eye on being full-go for the Mystics training camp in late April.
“It was pretty cool, to be honest,” Hines-Allen said about the process. “When I first started talking to teams and speaking with my agent, they were like, where do you want to be? I was like, D.C. D.C. is like home for me. This is where I where I’m growing up, where I want to be.
Mystics Coach/General Manager Mike Thibault intends to add a backup point guard in free agency this week. Thibault said keeping Hines-Allen and Emma Meesseman were the priorities, though Meesseman elected to sign with the Chicago Sky. There is a bit of a throwback feel to this free agency as Hines-Allen, Hawkins and Walker-Kimbrough were all members of the 2019 championship team.
The addition also has a distinct defensive feel as Williams becomes the fourth player on the team to be elected to an all-defensive team in the past three seasons, along with Natasha Cloud, Ariel Atkins and Clark. Thibault talked about Williams’s ability to communicate on defense and be the quarterback of the unit on the back end. | null | null | null | null | null |
Hopes for a two-state resolution to the decades-long conflict rose following the 1993 Oslo peace accords, when Palestinians received limited self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip under plans for long-term Palestinian sovereignty. But in the years since, amid continued violence and the growth of Israeli settlements, facts on the ground have dramatically changed and, many experts say, upended the two-state paradigm. | null | null | null | null | null |
House panel says nonprofit Everglades College enriches its owner
House Education Committee chair Robert C. “Bobby” Scott (D-Va.) is calling on the Education Department to review the nonprofit status of Everglades College. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)
A House Education Committee probe into Everglades College Inc., the parent entity of Keiser University and Everglades University, alleges school president Arthur Keiser and other insiders have received millions of dollars from the two Florida universities in violation of Education Department rules.
The findings add to Democrats’ concerns that former for-profit colleges are masquerading as nonprofits to avoid regulation while still reaping the financial benefits of operating as proprietary institutions.
Everglades College, a nonprofit formed by Arthur Keiser, purchased the namesake for-profit university in 2011 with his own money. Keiser, who has received payments and interest on the $321 million he lent, is still owed about $60 million, according to 2019 tax filings.
He and his family still own parts of the properties the school rents and the companies it uses for an array of services, including air travel, roofing, recruitment and legal needs. According to 2019 tax filings, Everglades College paid these Keiser-related businesses nearly $8.9 million, including $1.4 million for charter aircraft and travel.
The rise of the covert for-profit college
“The owner and the owner’s family, substantially benefit from the earnings of the institution in violation of the principles of what makes an institution a nonprofit,” House Rep. Robert C. “Bobby” Scott (D-Va.), the chair of the Education Committee, wrote in a letter to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona Monday.
Scott wants the department to investigate whether Everglades College violated its nonprofit status by allowing its leadership to profit from the school.
The department, which did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday, must approve every for-profit that wishes to become a nonprofit — and monitor its compliance with rules governing nonprofits. The federal agency has grown skeptical of conversions, rejecting the applications of the Center for Excellence in Higher Education in 2016 and Grand Canyon University in 2019. In both cases, the department found the former owners were too enmeshed in the operations of the schools.
Education Department stops for-profit college from sidestepping federal rules
The Education Department’s decision on whether to investigate Everglades College and Keiser University will be closely watched. Keiser is a well-known figure in higher education and was appointed by House Republicans to the Education Department’s advisory committee on college accreditation, NACIQI, which he now chairs.
In a statement, Keiser University officials said the House Committee is attempting to re-litigate the approval of a transition that took place over a decade ago.
“Tens of thousands of students, campus based and online, have successfully advanced their careers because of those approvals,” said Jeff Laliberte, a spokesman for Keiser University. “Unfortunately, based on several inaccuracies in the referral letter, the committee has erroneously been led to believe that this issue is still relevant.”
Laliberte did not elaborate on the alleged inaccuracies in the report.
There are ample benefits to winning a nonprofit designation from the U.S. government. Beside the millions of dollars saved in taxes, nonprofit schools are not subject to what’s called the 90/10 rule, which bars for-profit colleges from getting more than 90 percent of their operating revenue from federal student aid funding.
Becoming a nonprofit school means relinquishing ownership and placing control in the hands of trustees who operate with no financial benefit and in the interest of the public good. But a 2020 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report raised concerns that insiders remained involved with converted universities, posing a risk of financial impropriety.
The GAO identified 59 for-profit college conversions that occurred from January 2011 through August 2020, almost all of which involved the college’s sale to a tax-exempt organization. In about a third of those deals, the former owners had a hand in the conversion by creating the nonprofit or retaining presidency after the sale. The GAO concluded that insider involvement in a conversion poses a risk that insiders may improperly benefit by influencing the tax-exempt purchaser to pay more for the college than it is worth. | null | null | null | null | null |
Covid infections surge in immigration detention facilities
Workers are shown in the kitchen of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Tacoma, Wash., on Sept. 10, 2019. (Ted S. Warren/AP)
Coronavirus infections in federal immigration detention centers have surged to record highs, with at least one detainee taken to the hospital in recent days, increasing pressure on the Biden administration from advocates to release migrants or at least ensure that they are given booster shots.
More than 3,100 detainees were fighting infections late last week, about 14 percent of the detained population and well past the peak of 2,100 last May, according to the nonprofit Vera Institute of Justice, which tracks the issue.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials have said most detainees are new arrivals apprehended at the southwest border and many are infected before being booked into custody, where they are tested, quarantined and offered medical care, including vaccines. But medical experts and lawyers said the virus is also spreading inside the facilities and that booster shots are not widely available.
A pair of government whistleblowers urged the agency to “immediately” ensure that all detainees and staff have access to booster shots, saying in a letter last week to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and ICE acting director Tae Johnson that it was “inexplicable” that ICE had not expanded booster use as the high-speed omicron variant rips through facilities in Texas, Arizona and Georgia.
“The failure to act with alacrity has contributed to the number of confirmed COVID cases skyrocketing since the emergence of the Omicron variant,” doctors Scott Allen and Josiah Rich, who inspect the facilities for the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, wrote in the letter, which was made public by their lawyer at the Government Accountability Project.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a new lawsuit this week seeking booster shots for five immigrants at risk of death because of the virus. The immigrants said they asked for booster shots and were either denied or ignored, despite having conditions such as obesity and heart ailments that put them at higher risk of death if infected.
“This is a huge concern,” ACLU lawyer Eunice Cho said in an interview. “Once omicron hits a facility, it’s devastating.”
ICE did not respond to the allegations outlined in the whistleblowers’ complaint and the ACLU’s lawsuit.
But the agency said last month that officials have been releasing many immigrants at high risk of death because of the virus and offering vaccines and booster shots to all detainees, if they are held long enough to receive them.
A typical detainee spent 37 days in ICE custody last fiscal year, far less time than the months they’d have to wait for a booster shot. As a result, officials said, more vaccines have been administered than boosters. As of Jan. 5, approximately 48,200 detainees had been vaccinated and 671 were given booster shots.
ICE holds immigrants in approximately 200 facilities, a mix of public and privately run detention centers and county jails, while determining if they should be released into the United States or deported. This patchwork system — and the fact that immigration arrests generally are kept secret — makes the explanations for the spiraling infections impossible to verify.
ICE posts infections and deaths on its website but does not publicly track how many detainees or staff members are hospitalized or unvaccinated.
Some information has come to light via lawsuits, such as one in Washington state where a federal judge has ordered ICE to quickly inform the court when detainees or staff at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma are infected or hospitalized.
ICE reported that one detainee with covid was taken to the hospital on Saturday after complaining of chest tightness, and then returned to detention. He had tested negative for the virus before he was transferred from an ICE facility near the border to Tacoma.
Naeem Khan, a 50-year-old detainee from Pakistan at the Tacoma facility, said he has already gotten the virus once and is fearful of getting sick again. He said he got the booster in December but remains at high risk because of worsening diabetes. He has been held since September 2019, longer than he served for the state felony of violating a restraining order against his ex-wife, which landed him in deportation proceedings.
Officials have refused to release him because they said he poses a threat to public safety. But his lawyer Adam Boyd said Khan is a recovering alcoholic who worked hard to rehabilitate himself.
“I am really scared of getting covid” again, Khan said in a phone interview.
ICE’s latest data shows that nearly 80 percent of detainees are migrants who recently crossed the border and were apprehended by Customs and Border Protection. ICE arrested other detainees in the interior of the United States, typically because they have been convicted of a crime, according to the latest agency data online.
Both groups are a priority for deportation under the Biden administration, but those convicted of crimes can spend months or years in detention fighting their cases.
The immigration agency’s response to the coronavirus first came under fire during the Trump administration when officials failed to give detention facilities direct access to vaccines.
The Biden administration is detaining far fewer migrants than the Trump administration did at its peak, when more than 50,000 people were in custody. But federal judges ordered the Trump administration to reduce those numbers during the pandemic, and they dropped to approximately 15,000 when President Biden took office. Because of the influx at the border over the last year, that number has risen past 21,000 detainees.
The number of cumulative infections in ICE detention has risen from 10,000 in March 2021 to 38,000 this week. Eleven people have died, most recently in October when a 40-year-old man from Venezuela died after contracting covid. | null | null | null | null | null |
Toluse Olorunnipa and Griff Witte awarded first place in Cronkite School’s inaugural Shaufler Prize in Journalism contest
Toluse Olorunnipa and Griff Witte (The Washington Post)
Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication awarded The Washington Post’s Toluse “Tolu” Olorunnipa and Griff Witte, along with the Post’s staff, first place in the inaugural Shaufler Prize in Journalism contest. The contest aims to recognize the United States’ best journalism that advances the understanding of stories and issues related to underserved people in society, such as communities of color, immigrants and LGBTQ+.
Olorunnipa and Witte received this honor for their story, “Born with two strikes: How systemic racism shaped Floyd’s life and hobbled his ambition.” This reporting is a part of The Washington Post staff’s six-part series, “George Floyd’s America: Examining systemic racism and racial injustice in the post-civil rights era,” which explores the institutional and societal roadblocks Floyd encountered as a Black man from his birth in 1973 until his death.
Olorunnipa, a political enterprise and investigations reporter, commented to the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, “I’m honored to receive an award that represents such a noble and critical mission — using the power of journalism to tell the stories of marginalized people. A tragic truth about George Floyd’s life is that his struggle to breathe as a Black man in America began decades before a police officer’s knee landed on his neck. My colleagues and I set out to reveal the intricacies of that struggle and the institutional forces that make life so difficult for millions of people like Floyd, and I’m grateful to the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication for honoring the kind of reporting that focuses on people who are far too often neglected by society.”
Witte, a national correspondent for The Post also shared this statement: “...my colleagues and I launched our work on the George Floyd’s America series because we believed it was critical for readers to understand this man’s life, not just the horrific manner of his death. Our reporting revealed that Floyd’s 46 years on earth were profoundly shaped by the racial disparities and injustices that permeate virtually every facet of American life, including housing, education, law enforcement, the prison system and health care. I am profoundly grateful to the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication for recognizing our work with the Shaufler Prize in Journalism. Reporting on marginalized people — those whose stories would otherwise go unnoticed and untold — is among the most essential missions of journalism." | null | null | null | null | null |
Kevin Steele set to become Miami defensive coordinator after accepting Maryland job
Kevin Steele, seen coaching Auburn's defense, is moving on to Miami after a short tenure in College Park. (Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images) (ME/Getty Images)
Maryland will again be looking for a new defensive coordinator after Kevin Steele backed out of a verbal agreement to take the same job with the Terrapins. Steele is set to become the defensive coordinator at Miami, where he will work under new head coach Mario Cristobal.
Steele, who accepted the Maryland job last week and was working at the Terrapins’ facility on Friday, met with visiting recruits over the weekend. While in his campus office on Tuesday, according to a person close to the situation, Steele said that he was going to join the Hurricanes.
Maryland Coach Mike Locksley had turned to the accomplished Steele to revive a defense that struggled under Brian Stewart, who was hired last year to replace Jon Hoke. Hoke, who held the position during the 2019 and 2020 seasons, left College Park to become the secondary coach for the Atlanta Falcons.
The 63-year-old Steele was the head coach at Baylor from 1999 to 2002, after several years as an assistant with the NFL’s Carolina Panthers. More recently, he has served as the defensive coordinator at Alabama, Clemson, LSU and Auburn, and was briefly the interim head coach last year at Tennessee, his alma mater, between the firing of Jeremy Pruitt and hiring of Josh Heupel.
Steele and Cristobal worked together when both were at Alabama. Cristobal, who played for the Hurricanes, returned to Coral Gables, Fla., in December after four seasons as head coach at Oregon.
Stewart, whose contract with Maryland ran through 2023, remained on Locksley’s staff as of last week, when it was unclear what role he might have going forward.
Steele’s move from Maryland to Miami was first reported by On3.com.
Emily Giambalvo contributed to this report. | null | null | null | null | null |
In this photo of a video monitor, Julio Cesar Segura appears remotely in Clark County Superior Court in Vancouver, Wash., on Monday, Jan. 31, 2022, in connection with a Jan. 29, 2022, police pursuit that ended with the mistaken shooting of an off-duty Vancouver Police Department Officer by a deputy from the Clark County Sheriff’s Office near Battle Ground, Wash. (The Columbian via AP) (Uncredited/The Columbian)
The Clark County Medical Examiner’s Office on Tuesday issued the cause of death for Vancouver Police Department officer Donald Sahota, 52, who was shot by a sheriff's deputy who mistook him for the suspect. | null | null | null | null | null |
PITTSBURGH — Tuesday night’s matchup of the Washington Capitals and Pittsburgh Penguins had all of the ebbs and flows you would expect from a heated Metropolitan Division rivalry. Both teams were flying up and down the ice, quick goals came left and right, and special teams play was pivotal in a chippy game.
After erasing a pair of one-goal deficits, the Capitals came out on top when defenseman Dmitry Orlov scored in overtime for a wild, 4-3 victory at PPG Paints Arena. Orlov’s winner, on a snipe from the slot, came with 42.8 seconds left, and it was his second goal of the night.
Vanecek left with an upper-body injury about six minutes into the game and did not return; he was replaced by Ilya Samsonov. The Penguins’ Kasperi Kapanen crashed into Vanecek early, and it appeared Vanecek’s helmet hit the goal post. Samsonov was stellar in relief and finished with 43 saves on 45 shots.
Here’s what to know from the Capitals’ win:
With the Capitals trailing 3-2 about seven minutes into the second period, it appeared Dowd had scored his second goal of the night with a deflection in front. But Pittsburgh challenged, citing goaltender interference, and the officials agreed.
It was a near-disastrous night for the Capitals on the injury front. Forward Tom Wilson and defenseman Trevor van Riemdsyk left the game briefly early in the second period, but both returned within minutes of exiting.
Before Vanecek’s early exit Tuesday night, he had taken control of the net for the Capitals with a strong six-game stretch to close January. His consistency had earned him the net for Tuesday’s marquee matchup against the rival Penguins. He had gone 4-2-0 in his previous six games, and he was coming off his second shutout of the season in a 5-0 win at the Dallas Stars on Friday.
“Through a month where we were struggling to get wins, I felt like he gave us a chance and an opportunity to do that,” Capitals Coach Peter Laviolette said. “He’s played really well.”
Sprong took the Capitals’ first two minor penalties, and those infractions led to the Penguins’ first two goals. Laviolette stuck with Sprong and was rewarded late in the second period, when Sprong scored his eighth goal of the season. He has two goals in his past three games.
Defenseman Nick Jensen was back in the lineup after missing four games with an upper-body injury he suffered Jan. 20 at Boston. | null | null | null | null | null |
PITTSBURGH — The Washington Capitals found themselves fighting through adversity throughout Tuesday night’s game at the Pittsburgh Penguins. In a wild back-and-forth affair, Washington not only lost its starting goaltender six minutes in but had to erase a pair of one-goal deficits en route to a 4-3 overtime victory.
The Capitals came out on top thanks to defenseman Dmitry Orlov’s overtime winner at PPG Paints Arena. Orlov’s goal, on a snipe from the slot, came with 42.8 seconds left, and it was his second of the night.
“It seemed like we were fighting back the entire night,” Capitals Coach Peter Laviolette said. “There were a lot of things going against us and a lot of adversity. Give the guys a lot of credit for just staying with it.”
Washington has won three straight in overtime after starting the season 0-7 in games decided in the extra frame.
“It’s a huge win, a huge two points for us,” Orlov said.
Vanecek left with an upper-body injury about six minutes into the game and did not return; he was replaced by Ilya Samsonov. The Penguins’ Kasperi Kapanen crashed into Vanecek early, and it appeared Vanecek hit the post in the collision. A concussion spotter was not involved with Vanecek’s exit, according to a person with knowledge of the situation. Samsonov was stellar in relief and finished with 43 saves on 45 shots.
“He jumped in; it’s not easy,” Orlov said. “He did great saves and keep us in the game. They outshoot us, but the second half was much better.”
Here’s what else to know from the Capitals’ win:
With the Capitals trailing 3-2 about seven minutes into the second period, it appeared Dowd had scored his second goal of the night on a deflection in front. But Pittsburgh challenged, citing goaltender interference, and the officials agreed.
“I disagree [with the call],” Dowd said. “I honestly think that’s probably one of those goals that go 50/50.”
It was a near-disastrous night for the Capitals on the injury front. Forward Tom Wilson and defenseman Trevor van Riemsdyk left the game briefly early in the second period, but both returned within minutes of exiting.
Before Vanecek’s early exit Tuesday, he had taken control of the net for the Capitals with a strong six-game stretch to close January. His consistency had earned him the start for Tuesday’s marquee matchup against the rival Penguins. He had gone 4-2-0 in his previous six games, and he was coming off his second shutout of the season in a 5-0 win at the Dallas Stars on Friday.
“Through a month where we were struggling to get wins, I felt like he gave us a chance and an opportunity to do that,” Laviolette said. “He’s played really well.”
Sprong took the Capitals’ first two penalties, and those infractions led to the Penguins’ first two goals. Laviolette stuck with Sprong and was rewarded late in the second period, when he scored his eighth goal of the season. He has two goals in his past three games.
“For me, he was trying to make things happen offensively and was using his speed and skill,” Laviolette said.
Defenseman Nick Jensen was back in the lineup after missing four games with an upper-body injury. | null | null | null | null | null |
Maryland comeback thwarted in final seconds against Michigan State
What to know from the Terps’ 65-63 loss to the Spartans at Xfinity Center.
Eric Ayala and Maryland couldn't get past Michigan State during a 65-63 loss at Xfinity Center. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
Maryland offered one of its most raucous crowds of the season plenty of what it wanted on Tuesday night: a comeback from a double-digit deficit against Michigan State, excellent second-half defense and a finish that kept fans in the building.
What it couldn’t muster was a victory that could have added a flourish to an often frustrating season.
Malik Hall’s driving layup over Donta Scott with 1.9 seconds left was the difference as the No. 13 Spartans (17-4, 8-2 Big Ten) escaped after squandering a 15-point lead in the second half.
Eric Ayala had 15 points for the Terrapins (11-11, 3-8), who have dropped back-to-back games at home.
“As a team, I think we fought hard, and it’s something we can build off of,” Ayala said.
The Spartans came out of a timeout with 11.7 seconds to go and eventually fed it to Hall. He worked his way to the basket while being pestered by Scott, then managed to get off a shot just beyond the reach of Scott and a trailing Julian Reese.
Fatts Russell’s heave from near midcourt was off target, sealing Michigan State’s victory.
“Hall made a good read,” Maryland interim coach Danny Manning said. “He put his head down, [went to his] right hand and went to the basket and made a tough shot. He was a tough matchup for us all game long and made a lot of timely buckets. I thought we did a decent job of trying to contest it, but he got to his spot.”
That Maryland managed to make it that interesting was a credit to a team that looked like it was headed for its second consecutive lopsided loss. The Terps trailed by as many as 18 in the second half of Saturday’s 68-55 setback against Indiana.
This time, the Spartans were on the verge of a blowout when they took a 42-27 lead a few minutes after the break. But the Terps scored the next 11 points and Michigan State couldn’t push the lead to double digits again.
“We’re 15 up and should have been able to close it out and we didn’t,” Michigan State Coach Tom Izzo said. “It was because of them playing well, them playing harder than hell, getting to loose balls and rebounds and us taking a few bad shots and making a few bad plays.”
Russell’s three-pointer with 2:49 remaining finally tied it at 61. The teams each made a pair of foul shots on their next possessions, but the defenses largely controlled the final minutes.
Maryland had two chances to take the lead in the last minute. Ayala missed a shot with 38.4 seconds left, but it went out of bounds off a Spartans defender. Russell then tried to get to the basket but had the ball poked away. It went off his foot, and the Spartans took over.
Maryland didn’t let Michigan State build a substantial lead in the first 15 minutes, and tied it at 25 with 4:50 left in the half on two Qudus Wahab free throws. But the Terps’ offense went silent, and Michigan State closed the half on a 10-0 run to create some separation.
Chief among Maryland’s first-half problems were its turnovers (eight in 31 possessions) and the Spartans’ efficiency in punishing the Terps for their miscues. Michigan State held a 14-2 edge in points off takeaways at the break, with five of the points part of the late spurt. The Spartans managed just three points off turnovers in the second half.
Here’s what else to know from Tuesday’s game:
Russell’s return
Maryland received a scare in Saturday’s loss when Russell departed with 4:06 left after injuring his left wrist. The graduate student didn’t miss any more time, taking his usual spot in the Terps’ starting lineup Tuesday.
With his wrist taped, Russell picked up a foul and made a basket in the first 30 seconds. He finished with 10 points on 4-of-9 shooting in 34 minutes.
Small lineup, big results
Manning opted to go with a small lineup with 5:02 remaining and the Terps trailing 59-54, moving Scott to center. Part of it was a response to the Spartans’ dabbling with smaller lineups, though those were partially dictated by foul trouble.
Maryland only made one more substitution, putting Reese in for Hakim Hart with 24.4 seconds left. The Terps didn’t allow a field goal with the smaller lineup on the floor.
“We can put a lot of length out there with a small lineup and switch a lot defensively,” Manning said. “We have to do a better job of getting downhill with that small lineup.”
For the second time in two weeks, Maryland dipped to .500 overall after suffering back-to-back losses. When the Terps fell to 9-9 with a Jan. 18 loss at Michigan, they responded with consecutive victories over Illinois and Rutgers.
Now, they’re back to break-even on the season. If Maryland falls Sunday at Ohio State, it would mark the first time it is under .500 six or more games into a season since going 12-16 in 1992-93. | null | null | null | null | null |
Man fatally shot in Prince George’s, police say
The victim was found in a car, according to police
A man was found fatally shot early Wednesday in Prince George’s County, police said.
He was found suffering from gunshot wounds around 12:30 a.m. in a car in the the 6500 block of Hil Mar Drive, police said.
The man died at the scene, in the District Heights/Forestville area, according to police.
Further details were not available immediately. | null | null | null | null | null |
Teenager slain in Greenbelt, Md., police say
Youth was hit in apparent double shooting Tuesday night, according to police
A male teenager was fatally wounded Tuesday night in Greenbelt, Md., police said.
The 15-year-old died after an apparent shooting about 9 p.m. in the 7800 block of Mandan Road, police said.
Another male teenager, 19 years old, was wounded in the same incident, according to police. His injuries were not thought to be life-threatening, police said.
The slaying was the second in four days in Greenbelt, a city of about 23,000 in northern Prince George’s County. | null | null | null | null | null |
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