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David Letterman, Seth Meyers bond over the stress of hosting a late-night show on 40th anniversary of ‘Late Night’
Letterman, of course, was the original host when the show launched on Feb. 1, 1982. To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the franchise (also hosted by Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Fallon and now Meyers), he stopped by to reminisce and also plug his new YouTube channel that has tons of past “Late Night” clips.
The interview was a mutual lovefest, as Letterman gushed over how Meyers has transformed the show (he’s a fan of the “Jokes Seth Can’t Tell” segment with Amber Ruffin and Jenny Hagel) and Meyers was delighted every time Letterman launched into an anecdote about the old “Late Night” days (such as the time animal expert Jack Hanna was bitten by a beaver and had to go to the hospital). But when the two started talking about the unique pressure of being on television every night in front of millions of viewers, it felt like both stars forgot an audience was watching as they opened up about the more vulnerable parts of being a TV host.
Letterman recalled that before “Late Night,” he starred in a spectacular failure of an NBC morning show in 1980. Though NBC executives apparently had big dreams for “The David Letterman Show” — especially given that Letterman was a Johnny Carson favorite on “The Tonight Show" — the series only lasted a few months.
“It seemed like an eternity because in show business, if you screw something up like blowing up a network’s daytime schedule, it could be a while before they call your number again,” Letterman explained. Even though he got a second chance, he was “consumed by paralytic fear”: “I was still living with this trepidation that, ‘Well, this can’t possibly go any better than the other one went.’”
He tried to conquer that fear by making his show as strange as he possibly could (dropping things off the roof, holding elevator races), and it worked. NBC executives renewed the show for six weeks at a time, and eventually, realized they had a hit on their hands.
“Did you have a moment then where you started feeling relaxed with the show, that you'd be around for a long time?” Meyers asked.
Letterman took a long pause as the audience started laughing. “I’m trying to think if I had one waiting to come out here,” he said, before concluding, “No. Show business is awful and ugly.” Then he turned the tables on Meyers: “How about you? Now you, Mr. Established, Ready to Go, Here I Am…you’re in good shape.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Cal Baptist visits New Mexico State after Allen's 28-point game
BOTTOM LINE: New Mexico State takes on the Cal Baptist Lancers after Teddy Allen scored 28 points in New Mexico State’s 71-61 win over the Grand Canyon Antelopes.
The Aggies have gone 9-1 in home games. New Mexico State scores 71.3 points while outscoring opponents by 7.9 points per game.
The Lancers are 2-6 in WAC play. Cal Baptist is 5-3 when it wins the turnover battle and averages 13.7 turnovers per game.
The Aggies and Lancers square off Thursday for the first time in WAC play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Jabari Rice is averaging 13.1 points and 5.6 rebounds for the Aggies. Allen is averaging 20.1 points over the last 10 games for New Mexico State.
Tre Armstrong is shooting 37.6% from beyond the arc with 2.2 made 3-pointers per game for the Lancers, while averaging 12.5 points. Daniel Akin is shooting 51.9% and averaging 13.4 points over the last 10 games for Cal Baptist. | null | null | null | null | null |
Central Arkansas hosts FGCU following Dunn-Martin's 24-point game
BOTTOM LINE: FGCU visits the Central Arkansas Sugar Bears after Tavian Dunn-Martin scored 24 points in FGCU’s 74-63 loss to the Bellarmine Knights.
The Sugar Bears have gone 5-1 in home games. Central Arkansas has a 2-0 record in one-possession games.
The Eagles are 3-5 against ASUN opponents. FGCU ranks third in the ASUN shooting 36.1% from 3-point range.
TOP PERFORMERS: Darious Hall is scoring 13.6 points per game and averaging 7.5 rebounds for the Sugar Bears. Camren Hunter is averaging 13.1 points and 4.1 rebounds over the last 10 games for Central Arkansas.
Kevin Samuel is averaging 11.6 points, 9.8 rebounds and three blocks for the Eagles. Dunn-Martin is averaging 18.6 points over the last 10 games for FGCU. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: Nicholls State takes on the Incarnate Word Cardinals after Devante Carter scored 21 points in Nicholls State’s 73-61 win over the Houston Baptist Huskies.
The Cardinals are 3-7 in home games. Incarnate Word ranks sixth in the Southland in team defense, giving up 76.7 points while holding opponents to 49.6% shooting.
The Colonels are 3-2 in Southland play. Nicholls State scores 79.5 points while outscoring opponents by 8.3 points per game.
TOP PERFORMERS: Drew Lutz is averaging 9.6 points and 3.7 assists for the Cardinals. Glasper is averaging 14.3 points and 3.4 rebounds while shooting 41.0% over the last 10 games for Incarnate Word.
Jitaurious Gordon is shooting 46.6% and averaging 19.9 points for the Colonels. Pierce Spencer is averaging 1.1 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Nicholls State. | null | null | null | null | null |
Montana visits Weber State after McEwen's 24-point performance
BOTTOM LINE: Weber State hosts the Montana Grizzlies after Koby McEwen scored 24 points in Weber State’s 90-84 victory against the Eastern Washington Eagles.
The Wildcats have gone 8-3 in home games. Weber State has a 0-1 record in games decided by less than 4 points.
The Grizzlies are 8-2 against Big Sky opponents. Montana ranks sixth in the Big Sky shooting 34.6% from 3-point range.
The teams play for the second time this season in Big Sky play. The Grizzlies won the last matchup 74-72 on Jan. 2. Robby Beasley III scored 19 points to help lead the Grizzlies to the win.
TOP PERFORMERS: McEwen is shooting 37.4% from beyond the arc with 2.2 made 3-pointers per game for the Wildcats, while averaging 17.6 points. Jamison Overton is shooting 57% and averaging 13.3 points over the past 10 games for Weber State.
Cameron Parker is averaging 8.7 points and 5.5 assists for the Grizzlies. Josh Bannan is averaging 15.9 points and 8.8 rebounds while shooting 51.3% over the last 10 games for Montana. | null | null | null | null | null |
New Orleans visits Texas A&M-CC after Murdix's 21-point outing
BOTTOM LINE: Texas A&M-CC hosts the New Orleans Privateers after Terrion Murdix scored 21 points in Texas A&M-CC’s 90-76 loss to the Northwestern State Demons.
The Islanders are 8-1 in home games. Texas A&M-CC has a 1-0 record in games decided by 3 points or fewer.
The Privateers have gone 5-0 against Southland opponents. New Orleans is fourth in the Southland scoring 76.7 points per game and is shooting 46.8%.
The Islanders and Privateers meet Thursday for the first time in conference play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Isaac Mushila is averaging 15.2 points and 9.5 rebounds for the Islanders. Trey Tennyson is averaging 13.1 points over the last 10 games for Texas A&M-CC.
Daniel Sackey is averaging 7.1 points and 3.1 assists for the Privateers. Derek St. Hilaire is averaging 22.7 points over the last 10 games for New Orleans. | null | null | null | null | null |
Santa Clara hosts Loyola Marymount (CA) after Vrankic's 20-point outing
BOTTOM LINE: Santa Clara plays the Loyola Marymount Lions after Josip Vrankic scored 20 points in Santa Clara’s 81-59 win against the Pacific (CA) Tigers.
The Broncos have gone 11-3 at home. Santa Clara is second in the WCC scoring 77.3 points while shooting 48.5% from the field.
The Lions have gone 2-5 against WCC opponents. Loyola Marymount (CA) is eighth in the WCC scoring 67.8 points per game and is shooting 44.7%.
The Broncos and Lions meet Thursday for the first time in conference play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Jalen Williams is averaging 18.4 points and 3.6 assists for the Broncos. Vrankic is averaging 9.6 points over the past 10 games for Santa Clara. | null | null | null | null | null |
Washington State Cougars face the Stanford Cardinal, aim for 4th straight win
BOTTOM LINE: Washington State seeks to keep its three-game win streak alive when the Cougars take on Stanford.
The Cardinal have gone 9-1 in home games. Stanford is ninth in the Pac-12 scoring 67.4 points while shooting 42.8% from the field.
The Cougars have gone 5-3 against Pac-12 opponents. Washington State is fifth in the Pac-12 scoring 73.8 points per game and is shooting 42.5%.
The teams meet for the 10th time in conference play this season. The Cardinal won 62-57 in the last matchup on Jan. 13. Spencer Jones led the Cardinal with 16 points, and Mouhamed Gueye led the Cougars with 16 points.
TOP PERFORMERS: Jones averages 1.4 made 3-pointers per game for the Cardinal, scoring 9.0 points while shooting 32.9% from beyond the arc. Ingram Harrison is averaging 11.3 points and 6.7 rebounds over the last 10 games for Stanford.
Michael Flowers is shooting 40.5% and averaging 12.9 points for the Cougars. Tyrell Roberts is averaging 1.3 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Washington State. | null | null | null | null | null |
Wyoming plays Boise State after Maldonado's 35-point outing
BOTTOM LINE: Wyoming hosts the Boise State Broncos after Hunter Maldonado scored 35 points in Wyoming’s 84-78 overtime victory against the Colorado State Rams.
The Cowboys have gone 9-0 in home games. Wyoming averages 77.1 points and has outscored opponents by 11.1 points per game.
The Broncos are 8-0 in MWC play. Boise State has a 2-0 record in games decided by less than 4 points.
The teams square off for the 10th time in conference play this season. The Broncos won the last meeting 65-62 on Jan. 26. Abu Kigab scored 18 points to help lead the Broncos to the victory.
TOP PERFORMERS: Graham Ike is averaging 18.7 points and 8.5 rebounds for the Cowboys. Maldonado is averaging 14 points over the last 10 games for Wyoming.
Kigab is shooting 46.6% and averaging 13.2 points for the Broncos. Marcus Shaver Jr. is averaging 8.7 points over the last 10 games for Boise State. | null | null | null | null | null |
Letterman, of course, was the original host when the show launched on Feb. 1, 1982. To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the franchise (also hosted by Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Fallon before Meyers), he stopped by to reminisce and also plug his new YouTube channel that has tons of past “Late Night” clips.
The interview was a mutual lovefest, as Letterman gushed over how Meyers has transformed the show (he’s a fan of the “Jokes Seth Can’t Tell” segment with Amber Ruffin and Jenny Hagel), and Meyers was delighted every time Letterman launched into an anecdote about the old “Late Night” days (such as the time animal expert Jack Hanna was bitten by a beaver and had to go to a hospital). But when the two started talking about the unique pressure of being on television every night in front of millions of viewers, it felt like both stars forgot an audience was watching as they opened up about the more vulnerable parts of being a TV host.
Letterman recalled that before “Late Night,” he starred in a spectacular failure of an NBC morning show in 1980. Though NBC executives apparently had big dreams for “The David Letterman Show” — especially given that Letterman was a Johnny Carson favorite on “The Tonight Show” — the series lasted only a few months.
“It seemed like an eternity because in show business, if you screw something up like blowing up a network’s daytime schedule, it could be a while before they call your number again,” Letterman explained. Even though he got a second chance, he was “consumed by paralytic fear”: “I was still living with this trepidation that, ‘Well, this can’t possibly go any better than the other one went.’ ”
He tried to conquer that fear by making his show as strange as he possibly could (dropping things off the roof, holding elevator races), and it worked. NBC executives renewed the show for six weeks at a time and, eventually, realized they had a hit on their hands.
“Did you have a moment then where you started feeling relaxed with the show, that you’d be around for a long time?” Meyers asked.
Letterman took a long pause as the audience started laughing. “I’m trying to think if I had one waiting to come out here,” he said, before concluding, “No. Show business is awful and ugly.” Then he turned the tables on Meyers: “How about you? Now you, Mr. Established, Ready to Go, Here I Am … you’re in good shape.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Researchers explain why some countries were better prepared for covid
Prime Minister Siaosi Sovaleni said the country would go into lockdown from 6 p.m. local time Wednesday and that the restrictions would be reviewed every 48 hours, local news website Matangi Tonga reported.
He said there would be no boat or plane travel between Tonga’s roughly 170 islands — three dozen of them inhabited — until further notice. Schools will be closed, government bureaucrats given time off and masks are encouraged in public spaces, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
It is not clear how the virus was transmitted into Tonga, though the two people who first contracted it worked at a port in the capital, Nuku’alofa. But there was an outbreak of over two dozen cases aboard an Australian navy ship, the HMAS Adelaide, which docked at the port last week. Aid deliveries had also arrived from New Zealand, France, Japan, and China — all countries that have varying levels of coronavirus cases. | null | null | null | null | null |
Canada's Cynthia Appiah competes in a women's monobob World Cup event in Saint-Moritz, Switzerland. (Reuters/Arnd Wiegmann)
In July 2018, the International Olympic Committee announced it was adding seven new events to the Winter Olympics in an effort to increase female participation and appeal to younger audiences. Those new sports will debut at this year’s Winter Games in Beijing.
Here’s a look at the new sports: women’s monobob, mixed team ski jumping, aerials mixed team freestyle skiing, men’s and women’s big-air freestyle skiing, snowboardcross mixed team and a mixed team relay in short-track speedskating.
What is women’s monobob? | null | null | null | null | null |
Ahead of the Opening Ceremonies on Friday, the main thrust of such measures has been ensuring that nothing can damage China’s image during the Games. Athletes have been warned against making political statements, and foreign journalists’ ability to report on the broader social and economic impacts of the games are limited by covid-19 controls.
The full extent of China’s domestic security state has been unclear since 2013, when the Finance Ministry stopped disclosing it after years of more being spent on internal security than on defense.
Alongside adopting new technologies, the Communist Party has also expanded its idea of who is considered a threat. Human rights activists fear a growing emphasis on “extremism” and “terrorism” is being used to justify government abuses.
Ahead of the Winter Olympics, local governments from Qinghai in northwest China to Shandong on the east coast held “counterterrorism” campaigns.
At the center of the national security state is President Xi Jinping and the upper echelons of the Communist Party. In practice, this means that the capital city of Beijing is the heart of a system of coercion and control designed to apprehend troublemakers.
Many of the upgrades ahead of the Winter Olympics have focused on Zhangjiakou, the joint host city to the northwest of Beijing, which was considered to have a “poor foundation” for surveillance. Security cameras in the city were upgraded to keep track of at least 2 million people. In the mountains of Chongli, where the venues are, one high-definition camera was installed per every square kilometer.
“Difference between 2008 and 2022 is not just the number of surveillance systems and technologies; it’s also the intention of building comprehensive, watertight surveillance,” Wang said.
Security experts have urged anyone going to assume they will be monitored. The U.S. Olympics and Paralympics committee, Britain, the Netherlands and Canada have advised athletes to consider taking measures such as using “burner” phones in Beijing to limit remote monitoring after they return home.
China said the accusations were “without evidence” and later added that, even if there were security flaws, they had now been fixed.
To limit surveillance risks during the Olympics, cybersecurity experts have suggested those traveling to Beijing bring special-purpose laptops and smartphones that can be wiped clean after leaving.
Although Olympics officials have created a gap in the “great firewall” to allow attendees to use usually blocked platforms like WhatsApp and Twitter while in Beijing, some analysts recommend caution about logging into certain social media or email accounts while in China. Using a virtual private network can help mask a device’s identity and create a more secure connection to the Internet.
Lyric Li in Seoul and Pei Lin Wu in Taipei contributed to this report. | null | null | null | null | null |
Hilary Knight and the U.S. team will seek to defend the gold medal they won in a shootout over Canada four years ago in PyeongChang. (Michael Dwyer/AP)
For 19 days in February, hockey again will assume its position as a marquee event at the Winter Olympics in Beijing, and the women’s and men’s tournaments could mirror the brackets of four years prior at the PyeongChang Games. Barring an upset on the women’s side, the United States and Canada are expected to meet for a gold-medal rematch after the Americans stunned their rivals with a shootout victory in 2018. The Canadians had won the previous four gold medals.
And on the men’s side, the field could be wide open again after the NHL pulled its players from competition because of coronavirus concerns, leaving 11 of the 12 teams in this year’s tournament without players who compete in the world’s best league. NHL players competed in five consecutive Winter Olympics from 1998 to 2014, but the league opted out in 2018 and did the same in December for Beijing after initially being onboard.
Here’s what to know about hockey at the Winter Olympics in Beijing:
The women’s format will feature 10 teams for the first time, with two-tiered groups of five teams each. After group play, the five teams from Group A — including the United States and Canada — will advance to the quarterfinals, while the top three teams from Group B will also advance to the quarterfinals.
The men’s format from the past three Olympics will remain in place in Beijing: Three groups of four will compete in three games, with the results determining seeding. The best four teams — the group winners and the second-ranked team with the best record — advance to the quarterfinals, while the remaining eight teams will play an eliminating qualification game. That will be followed by four rounds of elimination games.
Which country has won the most Olympic gold medals?
Canada has won the most gold medals in men’s and women’s hockey; the men have claimed nine gold medals, and the women have won four since the tournament was added in 1998.
Who won the last Olympics in hockey?
The U.S. women defeated Canada, 3-2, in a shootout to claim the gold medal and end the Canadians’ bid for a fourth consecutive title. The gold medal was the Americans’ second since the women‘s tournament was added in 1998.
On the men’s side, Russia, competing under the title of Olympic Athletes of Russia, won the gold medal over surprise finalist Germany with a 4-3 overtime win. Canada claimed the bronze.
Who will be the key players for the United States?
The U.S. women are looking to repeat behind a roster that includes 13 returners from the 2018 team. It includes forward Hilary Knight, who will become just the fourth American player to compete in a fourth Olympics, along with a cast of players making their third appearance at the Games — Kendall Coyne Schofield, Brianna Decker, Amanda Kessel and Lee Stecklein. The women open against Finland on Feb. 3.
With the NHL not participating, the U.S. men’s roster features players competing at the NCAA level, in European leagues or on minor league teams. The only returner from the 2018 team, which finished seventh, is forward Brian O’Neill.
Several players have NHL experience, including forward Nick Shore (299 games) and defenseman Steven Kampfer (231), and there are 13 NHL prospects, led by Michigan forwards Matty Beniers and Brendan Brisson, North Dakota defenseman Jake Sanderson and Minnesota defenseman Brock Faber. The U.S. men open against China on Feb. 10.
What is the Olympic hockey schedule for Beijing?
Women’s preliminary round
Feb. 2, 11:10 p.m.: Canada vs. Switzerland
Feb. 2,11:10 p.m.: Czech Republic vs. China
Feb. 3, 3:40 a.m.: Sweden vs. Japan
Feb. 3, 8 a.m.: United States vs. Finland
Feb. 3, 11:10 p.m.: Russia Olympic Committee vs. Switzerland
Feb. 3, 11:10 p.m.: Denmark vs. China
Feb. 4, 11:10 p.m.: Canada vs. Finland
Feb. 5, 3:40 a.m.: Japan vs. Denmark
Feb. 5, 3:40 a.m.: Czech Republic vs. Sweden
Feb. 5, 8:10 a.m.: United States vs. Russia Olympic Committee
Feb. 6, 3:40 a.m.: Japan vs. China
Feb. 6, 8:10 a.m.: United States vs. Switzerland
Feb. 6, 11:10 p.m.: Canada vs. Russia Olympic Committee
Feb. 7, 3:40 a.m.: Denmark vs. Czech Republic
Feb. 7, 8:10 a.m.: Switzerland vs. Finland
Feb. 7, 8:10 a.m.: Sweden vs. China
Feb. 7, 11:10 p.m.: United States vs. Canada
Feb. 8, 3:40 a.m.: Japan vs. Czech Republic
Feb. 8, 8:10 a.m.: Russia Olympic Committee vs. Finland
Feb. 8, 8:10 a.m.: Denmark vs. Sweden
Women’s quarterfinals
Feb. 10, 11:10 p.m.
Women’s bronze medal game: Feb. 16, 6:30 a.m.
Women’s gold medal game: Feb. 16, 11:10 p.m.
Men’s preliminary round
Feb. 9, 3:40 a.m.: Russia Olympic Committee vs. Switzerland
Feb. 9, 8:10 a.m.: Czech Republic vs. Denmark
Feb. 9, 11:10 p.m.: Latvia vs. Sweden
Feb. 10, 3:40 a.m.: Finland vs. Slovakia
Feb. 10, 8:10 a.m.: United States vs. China
Feb. 10, 8:10 a.m.: Canada vs. Germany
Feb. 10, 11:10 p.m.: Denmark vs. Russian Olympic Committee
Feb. 11, 3:40 a.m.: Czech Republic vs. Switzerland
Feb. 11, 3:40 a.m.: Sweden vs. Slovakia
Feb. 11, 8:10 a.m.: Finland vs. Latvia
Feb. 11, 11:10 p.m.: United States vs. Canada
Feb. 12, 3:40 a.m.: Germany vs. China
Feb. 12, 8:10 a.m.: Czech Republic vs. Russian Olympic Committee
Feb. 12, 8:10 a.m.: Switzerland vs. Denmark
Feb. 12, 11:10 p.m.: Latvia vs. Slovakia
Feb. 13, 3:40 a.m.: Sweden vs. Finland
Feb. 13, 8:10 a.m.: China vs. Canada
Feb. 13, 8:10 a.m.: United States vs. Germany
Men’s qualification playoffs
Men’s quarterfinals
Feb. 16, 1 a.m.
Men’s bronze medal game: Feb. 19, 8:10 a.m.
Men’s gold medal game: Feb. 19, 11:10 p.m. | null | null | null | null | null |
Head Wrangler Jerry Guthlein holds up groundhog Milltown Mel on Groundhog Day at the American Legion on Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017, in Milltown, N.J. (Bob Karp/The Daily Record via AP)
Will spring come early or late this year in Milltown, N.J.?
Residents won’t be able to rely on their own weather-predicting rodent for this year’s forecast since the animal died just before the Groundhog Day ceremony.
“We Wranglers are sad to report that Milltown Mel recently crossed over the rainbow bridge,” his handlers, known as the Milltown Wranglers, said in a Sunday Facebook post. The group did not say how old Mel was.
The Wranglers added that the celebrity marmot’s death was “not such a shock” because of the relatively short life span of a groundhog, but his death was nonetheless untimely. Most other groundhogs are hibernating, leaving the group without a viable understudy.
“No babies will be available to replace him until this Spring,” the group wrote. “We tried everywhere to get a stand-in, but to no avail!”
Mel has made seasonal predictions for the past six years, CentralJersey.com reported. His predecessor, also named Milltown Mel, died in 2015.
This is not the first time a New Jersey groundhog has “crossed over the rainbow bridge” close to Groundhog Day. In 2016, Sussex County’s groundhog, Stonewall Jackson, died the night before the weather-predicting ceremony, NJ.com reported.
Groundhog Day began in the late 19th century in Punxsutawney, Pa., where the largest celebration is still held. There, the groundhog is named Phil. His handlers, members of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club, insist Phil has stayed alive for at least 136 years since his first prediction in 1886 by drinking an “elixir of life.”
In reality, groundhogs live up to six years in the wild and about 14 years in captivity, PBS reported.
According to legend, if Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter. If he doesn’t see his shadow, spring will come early. After being pulled from a tree stump on Gobbler’s Knob in Punxsutawney every Feb. 2, he delivers his prediction in “Groundhogese,” which a member of the groundhog club interprets for onlookers. The ceremony featuring Milltown Mel is almost identical.
Groundhogs can’t actually predict the weather. In fact, Phil, perhaps the most-watched groundhog, is worse at predicting spring’s arrival than the flip of a coin. In the last 10 years, his success rate was 40 percent on average, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
No more Punxsutawney Phil? It’s ‘long overdue’ for an AI groundhog instead, PETA says.
For years, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has criticized the tradition of using a live animal to make inaccurate weather predictions. The animal rights group has recommended replacing groundhogs with an animatronic rodent powered by artificial intelligence or with persimmon seeds — which are perhaps worse at predicting the weather than a marmot. Nevertheless, PETA has called for an end to the practice.
But New Jersey’s Milltown Wranglers don’t seem ready to let the tradition go quite yet. After Mel’s death, the group said it’s working “hard on getting us a new weather prognosticator for next year.” | null | null | null | null | null |
In the past, intellectuals have helped distill presidents’ messages and kept them true to their vision
President Biden delivers remarks during a meeting with the National Governors Association on Jan. 31. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
Tevi Troy is a presidential historian and former White House aide who has worked on two transitions. He is the author, most recently, of “Fight House: Rivalries in the White House from Truman to Trump.”
Joe Biden has had a difficult first year as president. In areas as disparate as foreign policy, economic progress, managing the pandemic and advancing legislation, he has low approval ratings — and now even some of his closest allies are pushing for an internal shake-up.
In his recent news conference, President Biden recognized the need to change his problematic trajectory and noted one change he planned to make: connecting with more historians and academics to seek “more input” and “more information.”
Biden is not the first president to seek the advice of intellectuals. Presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan have done the same. Across the political spectrum, a number of presidents have found that bringing on board a full-time prominent thinker can help distill a governing ideology and agenda to White House staffers and the American people.
In the 1930s, Roosevelt brought in his famous “brain trust” to develop policies at the Departments of Treasury, Agriculture and State. Yet the trustors were a mixed blessing politically, because at the time intellectuals and the very idea of expertise were only starting to gain public credibility.
This changed in the postwar period as intellectuals gained in stature from their service in advancing national security. Many intellectuals, such as Harvard University historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., served in the Office of Strategic Services — the precursor to the CIA — during World War II. In addition, the Soviets beating the United States into space with Sputnik in 1957 highlighted the need for intellectuals’ brainpower to help America win the Cold War.
John F. Kennedy’s short-lived presidency epitomized this shift. In his 1960 run for president, Kennedy actively cultivated intellectuals, crafting an image of himself — a Pulitzer Prize-winning author — as the candidate for the smart set. The Kennedy campaign even had an Academic Advising Committee, a group of professors from elite universities, brought together by speechwriter Ted Sorensen, that gathered both policy proposals and endorsements from top academics. Washington Post reporter Thomas Winship joked in 1959 that Kennedy stood “on the verge of ‘owning’ a remarkable segment of New England’s university and industrial brain power — lock, stock, and speechwriting pad.”
Kennedy continued this effort as president, bringing in multiple intellectuals to serve in his administration, including economist John Kenneth Galbraith as ambassador to India and Schlesinger as the first full-time intellectual in residence in the White House. Schlesinger did relatively little policy work in the White House, but he did serve Kennedy as a cultural adviser, liaison to the academic world and a one-man liberal idea factory. His presence lent cultural cachet to the presidency, helping to create the image of “Camelot” — a Utopian vision of his short-lived presidency — that persisted for decades after Kennedy was assassinated.
In the late 1960s, Richard M. Nixon sought an intellectual to give voice to his feelings about the “silent majority” of Americans who eschewed the various protest movements and attendant social changes of the era. To do this, Nixon crossed party lines to hire Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Harvard professor who had served in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations but was emerging as a critic of extreme liberalism.
Nixon read Moynihan’s writings and brought him into the White House, where he wrote memos decrying radical protesters, biased media and even Leonard Bernstein’s legendary Black Panthers fundraiser at his Manhattan apartment. In one memo, Moynihan described a protest directed at his own house, telling the president: “Yesterday in Cambridge the SDS [Students for a Democratic Society] announced that my house would be burned during the night. The University asked my family to ‘evacuate’ and they, in effect, went into hiding.”
Moynihan’s memos distilled Nixon’s beliefs about a fracturing society and provided extra validation for those views because they came from someone in the opposing party. Moynihan also urged Nixon to develop his own cadre of conservative thinkers so that subsequent Republican presidents could bring in intellectuals from their own party to serve in a Moynihan-type role.
While Nixon never hired his own Republican intellectual, the idea gained purchase throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Nixon’s replacement, Gerald Ford, brought in the conservative academic Robert Goldwin as his own White House intellectual, and Goldwin regularly consulted with top conservative thinkers such as Irving Kristol and Thomas Sowell.
When Goldwin left the White House, he went back not to academia, but to the increasingly influential American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank that had been established in 1943. Goldwin’s move symbolized the movement of conservative intellectuals away from academia and toward the think tank world.
Ronald Reagan benefited from this expanding conservative intelligentsia, with Hoover Institution economist Martin Anderson compiling a group of experts to endorse Reagan’s candidacy and help develop policy proposals. The group had 500 members, many from the growing world of conservative think tanks and policy institutes, including 17 from the Hoover Institution alone. Others who came from academia, like Jeane Kirkpatrick, who became U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and William Bennett, who served as Reagan’s chairman of the National Endowment of the Humanities and then as education secretary, would go to the think tank world after their service in the administration.
Reagan also brought in Anderson to serve as an in-house adviser, ensuring that his administration stayed true to the conservative vision on which he had run. When Attorney General William French Smith proposed a national ID card, Anderson deftly and quickly kiboshed the idea because it offended his libertarian tendencies. Anderson only stayed for a year, but the many thinkers he recruited continued to populate the administration throughout Reagan’s two terms.
These intellectuals served an important purpose. They helped distill their presidents’ visions so that the American people had a sense of what the administrations stood for. They also served as important ambassadors to the intellectual community, helping to leverage other intellectual voices in support of the president’s vision.
Other presidents have failed to hire a White House intellectual to their detriment. Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush chose not to hire in-house intellectuals and found that they lacked the backing of their party’s respective intellectuals when things went poorly in their presidencies. In Bush’s case, he failed to cultivate conservative intellectuals, and in some cases his team actively alienated them. During his transition, a Bush official told The Washington Post: “Our people don’t have agendas. They have mortgages” — a clear dig at the outgoing Reagan team. When Bush violated his “read my lips” pledge and raised taxes, he further alienated conservatives, and then lacked an intellectual to make the case to conservatives in the aftermath.
Biden does not have any full-time intellectuals as staff. The closest thing he has is the popular historian Jon Meacham — someone perhaps pushing him to be more boldly liberal than Biden professed to be as a senator or candidate.
But in-house intellectuals have aided presidents historically by helping them stay focused on a governing philosophy promised during the campaign. An in-house thinker, along the model of previous White House intellectuals, can ask the questions that encourage Biden to return to the moderate vision on which he ran. In the best case, this special adviser could articulate that vision to key outside amplifiers, and then to the American people, which could help Biden turn around his troubled presidency. | null | null | null | null | null |
The right worries Minnie Mouse’s pantsuit will destroy our social fabric. It won’t.
Of mice and men.
The iconic cartoon character Minnie Mouse waves to visitors at the Hong Kong Disneyland on June 18, 2020. Disney recently announced the character would be temporarily swapping her red dress for a polka-dot pantsuit designed by Stella McCartney. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)
By Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell
Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell is a fashion historian and author of "Skirts: Fashioning Modern Femininity in the Twentieth Century," which will be published by St. Martin’s Press in September 2022.
The recent announcement that Minnie Mouse has joined Pantsuit Nation, or at least Pantsuit Magic Kingdom, temporarily swapping her red dress for a polka-dot pantsuit designed by Stella McCartney, triggered a mini-meltdown on Fox News. Conservatives tend to be, by definition, change-adverse. Minnie’s new clothes — coming on the heels of culture-war skirmishes over the green M & M’s “progressive” sneakers and Hasbro’s dropping of the “Mr.” from Mr. Potato Head — may have been the straw that broke Candace Owens’s brain. The right-wing pundit went on “Jesse Watters Primetime” to slam Disney for making Minnie “more masculine” in an attempt to “destroy fabrics of our society” — an interesting Freudian slip, conflating “fabrics” (that is, textiles) with the social “fabric,” or structure.
Of course, as many pointed out on social media, Minnie has worn pants (and shorts) in the past. And at least she’s fully clothed, unlike some pantsless male Disney characters. (Looking at you, Winnie the Pooh and Donald Duck). But the move still riled the right because the politicization of women’s pants is an American tradition. Critiques of women’s fashion have often served as thinly veiled attacks on women themselves, and wearing pants — in the West, reserved for men from the late Middle Ages until just recently — is a convenient metaphor for appropriating historically masculine privileges, from voting to running for president.
In the 19th century, early suffragists like Susan B. Anthony, Amelia Bloomer and Elizabeth Cady Stanton experimented with wearing voluminous pants — also known as “the freedom dress” — but suffered so much mockery that they ultimately rejected them as unhelpful distractions from their cause. The 19th Amendment actually preceded women’s right to wear trousers in public, which was granted by the U.S. attorney general on May 29, 1923.
Yet for several decades wearing pants remained a crime of fashion, punishable under state laws banning cross-dressing by both sexes, which aimed to keep women (and men) in their places. In 1933, Joanne Cummings was arrested for wearing pants in public in New York. In 1938, Los Angeles kindergarten teacher Helen Hulick was barred from testifying in a burglary case when she arrived at the courthouse wearing trousers. Evelyn Bross was charged for wearing trousers on a Chicago street in 1943, even though she was dressed for her wartime job as a machinist in clothes “more comfortable than women’s and handy for work,” as she explained. Bross was acquitted. As the judge explained to The Journal Times, “I think the fact that girls wear slacks should not be held against them when they are not deliberately impersonating men. Styles are changing.”
They changed slowly, however. Pants remained on the fringes of women’s fashion for much of the 20th century, banned from offices, nightclubs, country clubs, churches, classrooms and restaurants. Mary Tyler Moore was a pants-wearing pioneer on “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” the sitcom that premiered in 1961. But her character, Laura Petrie, was a suburban housewife, and initially the actress was allowed to wear pants in only one scene per episode. When Moore went on to play a big-city career woman in her eponymous show, she typically sported office-appropriate skirts
Even as pants gained social acceptance, many women resisted, whether by choice or because the social and physical “freedoms” pants purportedly offered were largely illusive.
Shirley Chisholm, who became the first Black woman elected to Congress in 1968 and later ran for president, was known for her boldly patterned dresses and skirt suits, many of which she designed herself. Once, her staff persuaded her to wear a pantsuit in the House of Representatives, as some other female legislators had begun to do (Rep. Charlotte T. Reid was the first, in 1969). Even though she hid it under an ankle-length sleeveless coat, her press aide recalled: “She was so embarrassed, she kept her head in her newspapers. She must have read the New York Times seven times that day.” For a woman who was never shy about jumping into a debate, it was an uncharacteristic posture. Though Chisholm wore pants and culottes in private, when it came to her political career, she was more comfortable — psychologically if not physically — in a skirt.
Pants for women remained controversial until the peak of the second wave of feminism in the mid-1970s, and even longer in professional settings. In the 1980s, Puerto Rico attorney Ana Irma Rivera Lassén was told she could not enter a courtroom in pants. She sued the judge and won. Yet some New York law firms didn’t permit their female employees to wear pants until the early 1990s, and they were barred from the floor of the Senate until 1993, when Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun (D-Ill.) led what she called a “pantsuit revolution.” Before then, as historian Richard A. Baker told The Washington Post, female staffers and senators “needed to keep a dress to put on quickly or they had to borrow one if they had to appear on the Senate floor.”
These aren’t just quaint fashion history lessons. Legal disputes over policing pants are timelier than ever, and they’re increasingly tied up with broader controversies over sexual identity and gender nonconformity.
As recently as 2016, a lesbian student in Harrisburg, Pa. was refused admission to her Catholic high school’s prom for wearing a tuxedo; a school official even threatened to call the police. And fears of covert discrimination aren’t mere paranoia. Multiple studies have shown that women who work with conservative men (whether politicians or plumbers) are more likely to win their respect if they wear skirts and other conventionally feminine garments. “Blue-collar men react negatively to women wearing pants,” John T. Molloy wrote in the 2008 edition of “New Women’s Dress for Success.”
While suggesting that wearing pants makes a cartoon mouse (or any human woman) look “masculine” may be laughable in 2022, Minnie’s pantsuit — designed to honor International Women’s Day and the 30th anniversary of Disneyland Paris in March — is more of a cynical corporate branding exercise than a profound feminist statement, just as swapping a cartoon M & M’s high-heeled boots for flat, unisex sneakers screams “performative,” not “liberal.”
Women no longer need to wear the pants to wield power, or dress like men to compete with them. Pants are an option, but they’re not the only option.
They’re not the only option for men anymore, either, as prominent male skirt aficionados like Harry Styles, Billy Porter, Jared Leto and Lil Nas X have demonstrated. Yet even as nonbinary, genderfluid and trans celebrities have redefined red carpet fashion, trans rights and “bathroom laws” remain political hot buttons. The day after news of Minnie’s McCartney makeover broke, actor Sean Penn made headlines by disparaging “feminized” men with “cowardly genes that lead to people surrendering their jeans and putting on a skirt.” Maybe it’s not Minnie’s wardrobe that the conservative media is worried about, but the possibility that, if Minnie can wear pants, there’s nothing stopping Mickey from donning a dress. | null | null | null | null | null |
Thousands of men, women and children remain in detention because of their former ties to ISIS
Our research identifies what’s blocking repatriation
A boy plays with a broken sword at al-Hol camp, which houses families of members of the Islamic State, in Hasakeh province, Syria, on May 1, 2021. (Baderkhan Ahmad/AP)
By Devorah Margolin
Austin C. Doctor
The Islamic State’s assault on the Gweiran prison in northeastern Syria last week was a disturbing reminder that prisons and camps across Syria and Iraq continue to hold an estimated 43,000 foreign men, women and children once associated with the group better known as ISIS. Audio of the assault, narrated by an injured 17-year-old Australian, described an ISIS attack that resulted in multiple child casualties.
The attacks signal a potential ISIS resurgence — and prompted the largest U.S. military response since 2019. To foreign governments, the potential return of their citizens back into the ranks of ISIS represents a clear threat, potentially reinvigorating an extremist campaign once declared defeated.
The repatriation and reintegration of foreign fighters and their families is a complicated and contentious issue. While governments have several legal means to address what happens to male foreign fighters, often they lack the tools to process or help women and minors who did not take up front-line positions. Consequently, many countries remain reluctant to bring back citizens who traveled to join foreign conflicts.
20 years later, America’s ‘War on Terror’ language has gone global
However, research-based analysis suggests that repatriating foreign detainees to their home countries mitigates the risk of detained individuals returning to ISIS. And human rights groups point out that while some detained foreign people traveled freely, others were trafficked.
The international community has no cohesive plan to deal with long-running repatriation issues, in part because of persistent knowledge gaps about foreign terrorist fighters who travel with their families, and the implications for noncombatant repatriation and rehabilitation. Our research identified four critical blind spots that leave many ISIS-affiliated families in limbo.
Why are there imprisoned families and minors?
The large number of minors held in prisons and detention camps in Syria and Iraq raises the question, “Who is a foreign fighter?” Unlike in foreign fighter conflicts of the past, ISIS recruited men, women and children in various roles to help legitimize the group’s governance ambitions. The foreign individuals detained in these facilities include recruits with roles on and off the battlefield.
Families have played an important part in the ISIS campaign. Some individuals traveled with their families to join the fight, while in other cases families were formed in conflict zones. For example, a 2019 report estimates that women and minors made up 36 to 42 percent of those who traveled to join ISIS from western Europe, and 46 to 54 percent of travelers from Eastern Europe. The Program on Extremism at George Washington University identified at least 14 adult women and an estimated 12 to 30 minors who traveled from the United States to Syria and Iraq.
The Islamic State has ‘provinces’ in Africa. That doesn’t mean what you might think.
Women recruited by ISIS face an uncertain future
Gendered biases have also clouded policymakers’ understanding of the issue. ISIS actively recruited women into its ranks. While many women who traveled to join ISIS had the freedom to do so, once in-theater their choices were severely restricted by harsh ISIS gender segregation policies that limited the ability of women to carry out even the most menial tasks without a male escort.
Women had diverse experiences under ISIS rule. Some were married to ISIS members, while others worked as doctors or teachers. In some cases, women served as part of the domestic security forces, or had limited participation in conventional military training, and later, operations. Adequately addressing questions surrounding repatriation and reintegration, we argue, requires a nuanced understanding of women’s experiences in the ISIS campaign.
How do foreign fighters — and families — return home?
The means by which ISIS foreign fighters and families return to their home countries varies across formal and informal pathways — a process often complicated by gender, age, timing and country of origin. Public policy has emphasized the formal repatriation aspects. The U.S. government, for example, has recently taken the lead in encouraging the world’s nations to bring their detained fighters back home, at least in theory.
Over the past few years, the U.S. approach has led to the formal repatriation of 12 adults and 16 children from Syria and Iraq, as of December 2021. However, the Program on Extremism also identified a further 15 individuals who returned to the United States through their own accord. This brings the total of publicly known U.S. returnees to 44, including 22 adults (18 men and four women) and 22 individuals who were born abroad or were minors when their parents traveled to join ISIS. The scope of the issue — i.e., the number of returnees in the United States and other countries — may be larger than initially anticipated. And the range of pathways of return may prompt a closer look at nuanced tools of reintegration and rehabilitation.
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What are the consequences of indefinite detention?
Since 2019, thousands of foreign fighters and their families, including approximately 27,000 children, have remained in indefinite detention in Syria and Iraq. U.N. reports note a generation of youth is growing up in detention camps with dire health conditions and political instability. Nearly three years after the territorial collapse of ISIS, individuals who were brought by parents to Syria and Iraq as minors are now coming of legal age.
Moreover, as last week’s prison assault suggests, young male minors have been held alongside adult men in prison facilities. Administrators moved these minors, some as young as 12, to prisons after arbitrarily deeming them too old to be held in detention camps alongside women and young children. Recent ISIS actions offer a harrowing reminder of the consequences of indefinite detention with no cohesive international plan of action.
Progress toward addressing long-running repatriation issues is hampered by the four blind spots described here. The continued reluctance of governments to address the situation for families and minors, along with issues related to women’s diverse participation in the ISIS conflict, the formal and informal pathways for return, and the continued hesitancy to address the indefinite detention of foreign fighters and their families exacerbates humanitarian and security challenges. This increases the risk of a worst-case scenario — the return of foreign families into Islamic State ranks, and the possibility of a reinvigorated ISIS campaign.
Devorah Margolin (@DevorahMargolin) is a senior research fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism.
Austin Doctor (@austincdoctor) is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and a member of the executive committee with the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center. | null | null | null | null | null |
Wednesday briefing: A major winter storm; why ‘The View’ suspended Whoopi Goldberg; ‘cancer moonshot’; a new NFL team name; and more
Snow and ice could cripple the Midwest and South today.
Winter storm watches and warnings stretch from the Mexican border to Canada, including major cities such as Chicago, St. Louis, Memphis and Dallas.
The forecast: A foot or more of snow in parts of the Midwest and the Ohio Valley through tomorrow. Temperatures will drop 20 to 30 degrees below average.
Traffic deaths continued to climb last fall.
The numbers: 31,720 people were killed on U.S. roads last year through September, the highest total since 2006, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said yesterday.
What’s happening: Drivers started speeding more when roads were emptier at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, and they haven’t stopped, experts said.
The Washington Football Team will reveal its new name this morning.
The NFL team wants a clean break from Redskins, the name it used for 87 years and retired before the 2020 season. Many Native Americans and others say it was racist.
The reveal: Between 8 and 8:30 a.m. Eastern time on NBC’s “Today” show. Late speculation has centered on Commanders.
The U.S. “cancer moonshot” will be relaunched today.
The goal: To cut the death rate for the disease by 50% during the next 25 years and “end cancer as we know it.”
How to get there: President Biden’s plan, which doesn’t have funding, calls for more screening, equitable access to care and a more coordinated governmental approach.
Background: Biden and his wife, Jill, started the initiative when he was vice president after his son died of brain cancer.
A Black coach sued the NFL and all of its teams for discrimination.
The case: Brian Flores, who was fired by the Miami Dolphins after three seasons, claims he took part in “sham interviews” with two teams for head coaching positions that had already been decided.
An NFL policy requires teams to interview minority candidates for head coaching and senior management jobs.
“The View” suspended co-host Whoopi Goldberg for two weeks.
Why? She said the Holocaust was “not about race. It’s about man’s inhumanity to man” on Monday. She later apologized, saying that as a Black woman, race is “a very different thing to me.”
What is the Holocaust? During World War II, 6 million European Jews were killed and forced into labor by Nazis and their collaborators. Racism against Jews was a central part of Nazi ideology.
Domino’s started paying customers to pick up their own pizza.
The deal: Order carryout online and claim $3 — the company is calling it a tip — to use on a future online order.
Why: The world’s largest pizza chain, which hires its own delivery drivers, is struggling to find workers.
The bigger picture: 4.3 million people quit or changed jobs in December, still near record levels, as the “Great Resignation” continues.
And now … the show the Internet is talking about: “Pam & Tommy,” which revisits the ’90s sex tape saga (and makes our critic queasy), premieres on Hulu today. | null | null | null | null | null |
More astonishing is that these historically low levels of inventories came when growth has been booming. Real year-over-year GDP grew 5.7% in the U.S. and 4.6% in the euro zone in 2021 (through the third quarter, the latest numbers available). But real GDP is not the world inhabited by companies or consumers. They operate in a nominal world, albeit one that can be divided into real growth and prices. The numbers that most people look at are more or less accurate derivations of those nominal numbers. U.S. nominal GDP, for example, rose 10% over the past 12 months. For much of that year, one can assume that many companies, just like policy makers, expected price increases to abate. | null | null | null | null | null |
1 THE LINCOLN HIGHWAY (Viking, $30). By Amor Towles. Four boys on a road trip take an unplanned journey.
2 VIOLETA (Ballantine, $28). By Isabel Allende. A centenarian recounts her life’s story in the form of a letter to her loved one.
3 CLOUD CUCKOO LAND (Scribner, $30). By Anthony Doerr. An ancient story survives for millennia, stewarded by young people in the past, present and future.
4 TO PARADISE (Doubleday, $32.50). By Hanya Yanagihara. A Washington Square Park townhouse over three centuries is the setting for characters in an alternate version of America.
5 CALL US WHAT WE CARRY (Viking, $24.99). By Amanda Gorman. A collection of poetry by the presidential inaugural poet.
6 DEVIL HOUSE (MCD, $28). By John Darnielle. In the house where notorious murders took place in the 1980s, a writer investigates, then finds himself embroiled in the story.
7 THE MIDNIGHT LIBRARY (Viking, $26). By Matt Haig. A regretful woman lands in a library where she gets to play out her life had she made different choices.
8 THE MAID (Ballantine, $27). By Nita Prose. A hotel maid cleaning a room finds a dead body and becomes the lead murder suspect.
9 THE SENTENCE (Harper, $28.99). By Louise Erdrich. As the pandemic rages, a bookseller is haunted by the ghost of her store’s most annoying customer.
10 THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD MOTHERS (Simon & Schuster, $27). By Jessamine Chan. A woman must endure a government re-education camp to prove her suitability as a mother and regain custody of her daughter.
1 ATLAS OF THE HEART (Random House, $30). By Brené Brown. An exploration of 87 emotions to help people make more meaningful connections.
2 THE 1619 PROJECT (One World, $38). By Nikole Hannah-Jones and the New York Times Magazine. Essays contextualize the history of slavery as part of the founding of the United States.
3 CRYING IN H MART (Knopf, $26.95). By Michelle Zauner. A Korean American indie-rock star chronicles her relationship with her late mother and their shared culture.
4 UNTHINKABLE (Harper, $27.99). By Jamie Raskin. The congressman describes the professional challenges and personal trauma he endured during the early weeks of 2021.
5 THE BOY, THE MOLE, THE FOX AND THE HORSE (Harper One, $22.99). By Charlie Mackesy. The British illustrator brings fables about unlikely friendships to life.
6 THESE PRECIOUS DAYS (Harper, $26.99). By Ann Patchett. Essays from the best-selling writer highlight important relationships in her life.
7 TASTE (Gallery Books, $28). By Stanley Tucci. The actor and cookbook author shares the stories behind his recipes.
8 SOUTH TO AMERICA (Ecco, $28.99). By Imani Perry. A reflection on how the culture and history of the southern United States are integral to understanding the rest of the country.
9 THE DAWN OF EVERYTHING (FSG, $35). By David Graeber and David Wengrow. An anthropologist and an archaeologist challenge modern scientific principles of human cultural evolution.
10 THE STORYTELLER (Dey Street Books, $29.99). By Dave Grohl. The musician reflects on his life and career.
Rankings reflect sales for the week ended Jan. 30. The charts may not be reproduced without permission from the American Booksellers Association, the trade association for independent bookstores in the United States, and indiebound.org. Copyright 2022 American Booksellers Association. (The bestseller lists alternate between hardcover and paperback each week.) | null | null | null | null | null |
Jefferson Parish Sheriff Joseph Lopinto, right, talks about the investigation into the shooting death of 4-year-old Jarion Walker that happened just outside New Orleans on Jan. 29. (Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office)
Lopinto said at a news conference that investigators believe Jarion shot himself around 10:45 p.m. Saturday in a residential neighborhood just across the Mississippi River from New Orleans. The boy was taken to a hospital, where he later died. The mother and her friend have not been identified.
Deaths like Jarion’s are avoidable; gun owners need only secure their firearms and keep them in places children can’t access, Lopinto argued. “These types of deaths can certainly be prevented,” the sheriff said. "As a parent, we should never leave a gun inside of our vehicles for numerous different reasons, this one being the most tragic.”
Jarion was playful, loved toys and had already taken a liking to basketball, his great uncle, Charles Young, told Nola.com. Just days ago, the 4-year-old was jumping on his bed with his sister while visiting Young. | null | null | null | null | null |
Live updates Washington Football Team set to announce its new name
The Washington Football Team will have a new name and logo in 2022. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
After two seasons of existence as the Washington Football Team, Washington’s NFL franchise is preparing to unveil its new name and logo Wednesday morning. Follow along for live updates and reaction from the organization, around the league and beyond.
The Washington Football Team’s new name and logo is set to be revealed Wednesday morning on NBC’s “Today” show.
The announcement is the culmination of an 18-month process that began in the summer of 2020, when the team announced it would “retire” its long-standing Redskins name, which was deemed derogatory toward Native Americans.
Amid significant speculation and apparent leaks, the team has offered only a few guarantees about its new identity: The new name will not have any Native American ties and imagery, and the signature burgundy and gold color scheme will remain. | null | null | null | null | null |
“I barely had time to grab the hand of my 4-year-old son, and I ran to the stairs, to the terrace. Suddenly the walls in front and to the side disappeared,” she told the Associated Press. “We shouted to the neighbors on the first floor, but the water carried away the mother and daughter.” | null | null | null | null | null |
And a GoFundMe campaign for the Freedom Convoy organized by Tamara Lich — a former regional coordinator of “Wexit,” a movement pushing for Alberta to separate from Canada — had raised nearly $8 million as of Wednesday morning. The page says that it seeks funds for fuel, food and lodging and that vaccine mandates are “destroying the foundation of our businesses, industries and livelihoods.”
The Freedom Convoy has also attracted support beyond Canada’s borders, as many countries debate whether it is time to scrap public health restrictions and live with the coronavirus. In the United States, Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s eldest son, and Tesla founder Elon Musk have spoken out in support of the truckers. | null | null | null | null | null |
European and Iranian diplomats in Vienna during a meeting of the joint commission on negotiations to revive the Iran nuclear deal on Dec. 9. (AFP/Getty Images)
But even as the two sides potentially prepare to thrash out everything from U.S. sanctions to Iran’s uranium enrichment, at least one key issue has been left off the nuclear negotiating table: the fate of four U.S. citizens currently being held in Iran.
Here are the four U.S. citizens who are currently in prison in Iran or barred from leaving the country.
Baquer Namazi, 85, is the father of Siamak Namazi and also a dual Iranian American citizen. He was arrested by Iranian authorities when he traveled there in early 2016 to visit his son in prison. A Tehran court sentenced Baquer to 10 years in jail on the same day as Siamak and for the same alleged crime of collaborating with a hostile foreign government.
Baquer, who suffers from a heart condition and other health issues, was released on temporary medical furlough in 2018. Iran’s judiciary later commuted his sentence in 2020 but has refused to renew his passport or allow him to leave Iran. In October, he underwent surgery in Tehran to clear what his U.S.-based lawyer said was a “life-threatening blockage in the arteries to his brain.”
Baquer worked as a civil servant under the Shah, who was overthrown in 1979, serving as the provincial governor of oil-rich Khuzestan. He left Iran for the United States and later spent more than a decade as a senior official with the U.N. Children’s Fund, or UNICEF. Before his arrest, Baquer worked in relief and development through Hamyaran, the nongovernmental organization he established to support aid and community empowerment projects in Iran.
Authorities, however, would not return Shargi’s U.S. passport, and in late 2020, the court informed him that he had, in fact, been sentenced to 10 years in prison for spying and “military intelligence gathering.” Iranian media reported that Shargi was subsequently detained at a checkpoint near the Iraq border while attempting to flee the country. He is also being held in Evin prison north of Tehran and has at times been able to call home, his wife, Bahareh, told NPR.
Shargi was born in Iran and left for the United States as a child. He graduated from the University of Maryland and George Washington University, and later worked for an Abu Dhabi-based company that leases and sells private airplanes. Shargi and Bahareh, who married in San Francisco, decided to move back to Iran after their two daughters left for college, the New York Times reported. While in Iran, Shargi worked for Sarava, a technology venture capital firm. | null | null | null | null | null |
According to a lawsuit filed this week, a coronavirus test clinic allegedly stored samples in red garbage bags for more than a week instead of properly refrigerating them (Courtesy of Washington State Office of the Attorney General)
The woman told authorities she got a second coronavirus test at the same Center for Covid Control site. But two hours later, she was told her test results had been misplaced again.
Now, Washington’s attorney general is suing the Illinois-based clinic, its laboratory and its co-owners — Akbar Syed and Aleya Siyaj — for allegedly jeopardizing the health and safety of thousands of Washingtonians by failing to meet best medical practices during a pandemic. The clinic, the lawsuit alleges, provided “invalid, false and delayed” coronavirus test results — and at times, no results at all. The attorney general’s office says the Center for Covid Control operated at least 13 testing sites across Washington, despite only having a license to operate in one municipality.
The center and its founders did not immediately respond to messages from The Washington Post early Wednesday. All Center for Covid Control locations are “closed until further notice,” according to a news release.
The company was also unable to fulfill its promise of delivering PCR test results via email within 48 hours and verbally sharing rapid test results within 15 minutes, the lawsuit states. Former employees told authorities that as of early December, the company was receiving between 8,000 to 10,000 results per day — a figure it knew it could not keep up with, court records state.
Because of high patient volume, the lawsuit states, the company began placing tests in garbage bags and piling them in office corners. One former employee recounted asking Syed and Siyaj, who were regularly at the facility, to hire more personnel. The couple refused, the lawsuit states. Former staffers told authorities that they regularly found test samples that were over a week old stored in the trash bags scattered around the office, the lawsuit states. Many of the samples, former employees reported, had never been refrigerated or tested by the lab.
When the company did share the results of rapid or PCR tests, the lawsuit states, their reports were often inaccurate. Patients who called back to follow up on their tests results allegedly waited as long as three hours to speak with an operator. At one point, staffers were instructed to lie to patients and tell them their lab results would come back in 24 hours — even if they were unsure when they would be processed, the lawsuit states.
“If a consumer called multiple times, employees were instructed to falsely tell consumers that the test result was inconclusive and that they needed to take another test,” the lawsuit states. Doing so also allowed the company, which has allegedly billed the federal government $124 million, to charge for another test, Washington authorities allege.
The Washington lawsuit is not the only legal action the company is facing. Last month, the FBI searched the company’s headquarters in Rolling Meadows, Ill., USA Today reported. The search took place days after the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office filed a consumer protection lawsuit against the company and its laboratory, alleging they “provide inaccurate and deceptive” test results and have fraudulently reported negative test results, according to the paper.
The company is also under investigation by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Illinois Attorney General’s Office and the Oregon Department of Justice. | null | null | null | null | null |
‘The Christie Affair’ by Nina de Gramont is an ingenious suspense novel that concocts an elaborate backstory about the 11 days the writer was AWOL
(St. Martin’s Press)
There’s only one “cold case” story in the entire Agatha Christie canon, and it’s the one Christie herself lived, not wrote. The mystery of Christie’s 11-day disappearance in 1926 is rivaled only by the mystery of Jimmy Hoffa’s far-more-permanent disappearance in 1975 as the most famous “cold case” in modern times.
Here’s a quick rundown of the details: On the winter evening of Dec. 3, 1926, Christie got into her car — a little green Morris Cowley that she’d bought with earnings from her early novels — and drove off from her house in the suburbs near London. She left behind her sleeping 7-year-old daughter, Rosalind, in the care of the maid. She also left her beloved little terrier, Peter, who habitually laid down beside her as she wrote. Christie was wearing a fur coat and hat and carried only an attache case. She may or may not have made a stop at the nearby village of Godalming to peer into the ground-floor windows of the house where her husband, Archie Christie, was a guest for the weekend. That morning, Archie had told Agatha that he wanted a divorce to marry his mistress, Nancy Neele, who was also a weekend guest at that house.
Review: 'The Mystery of Mrs. Christie'
At 8 a.m. the next morning, Christie’s car was discovered nose down in a ditch near a body of water ominously called “the Silent Pool.” Her fur coat was in the car. For over a week until she was discovered, ensconced in the Swan Hydropathic Hotel in Harrogate, Yorkshire, on Dec. 13, Agatha Christie, the “Lady Novelist” as some newspapers referred to her, was the object of one of the biggest missing-person searches in British history: police, bloodhounds, an army of volunteer searchers, fellow mystery novelists Dorothy L. Sayers and Arthur Conan Doyle, and even Archie Christie and the intrepid little Peter all joined in the search.
Because the mystery of Christie’s disappearance has never been solved (Dame Agatha died in 1976 and never said a word, not even in her autobiography about that painful episode in her life), generations of amateur sleuths — critics, biographers, filmmakers and novelists — have tried to crack the case. Motives for Christie’s disappearance range from the cynical (she was a publicity hound who wanted to boost sales of her books) to the medical (she was in a “fugue state” caused by a concussion when her car crashed) to the compassionate (Christie was suicidal over the end of her marriage, especially since that blow followed quickly after the death of her cherished mother).
Personally, I favor the theory offered by Christie biographer Gillian Gill. In her slim and penetrating 1990 biography simply titled “Agatha Christie,” Gill observes that Christie registered at that Harrogate spa under the alias “Teresa Neele.” In so doing, Gill says, Christie cleverly found a way to publicize the last name of her husband’s mistress at a time when discretion dictated that her existence be kept private. A shy person, Christie, like her novels, was easy to underestimate. That was always a mistake.
Who is the greatest fictional detective? A new book reminds us why it’s Poirot.
In “The Christie Affair,” an ingenious new psychological suspense novel that concocts an elaborate backstory behind Christie’s disappearance, Nina de Gramont reminds readers of “the other woman” in the story and suggests that it also would be a mistake to underestimate her. This Nancy Neele — here called “Nan O’Dea” — is powered by rage and grief and matches wits with the Queen of Crime herself, not only to possess Archie, but to achieve a greater end that few readers will anticipate. And, here’s the neatest narrative trick of all: As Christie characteristically did, de Gramont hides the solution to the mystery of “The Christie Affair” in plain sight.
Nan is our chief narrator, and in de Gramont’s novel she shucks off the role as Archie’s passive mistress. Instead, this Nan revels in her own agency, coolly confessing that she staked out Archie for a long time and engineered the affair. The novel is structured in sections that alternate between the days and hours leading up to Agatha’s disappearance and Nan’s early life in London and Ireland. As the tale gets underway, an omniscient narrator also enters to describe Agatha’s adventures during that fateful night of Dec. 3 and the days that follow.
The opening scene — dated Dec. 2, 1926 — alerts readers to the fact that, although this novel features Agatha Christie as a character, we’re not in classic Christie-land. Here’s Nan describing how she and Archie were almost caught in the act of canoodling in his office minutes before Agatha walks in:
“Archie kissed me. He tasted like pipe smoke. … Tonight he would be going home to his wife. If the course I’d planned so carefully was to continue, it was best to send him to her thinking of me. A sponge soaked in quinine sulfate — procured by my married younger sister — stood guard inside me, protecting against pregnancy.”
Whoa! While passion fueled many a murder in Christie’s universe, sex itself was never mentioned. But, in “The Christie Affair,” both Nan and, eventually, Agatha herself avail themselves of the new erotic freedoms of the 1920s.
That’s just one of the many ways in which de Gramont fleshes out the scant official history of that time in Christie’s life. “The Christie Affair” is richly imagined; inventive and, occasionally, poignant; and about as true-to-life as Christie’s own tales of quaint villages with their staggering murder rates. But when fabrications are this marvelous, why demand realism?
Maureen Corrigan is the author/narrator of the 2021 Audible Original book “The Mysterious Case of Agatha Christie” and the book critic for the NPR program “Fresh Air.” | null | null | null | null | null |
More astonishing is that these historically low levels of inventories came when growth has been booming. Real year-over-year GDP grew 5.7% in the U.S. and 4.8% in the euro zone in 2021. But real GDP is not the world inhabited by companies or consumers. They operate in a nominal world, albeit one that can be divided into real growth and prices. The numbers that most people look at are more or less accurate derivations of those nominal numbers. U.S. nominal GDP, for example, rose 10% over the past 12 months. For much of that year, one can assume that many companies, just like policy makers, expected price increases to abate.
(Updates increase for 2021 euro-zone GDP in the sixth paragraph.) | null | null | null | null | null |
The Oorang Indians played a century before the Washington Football Team rebrands following its controversial Native American-derived name
The Oorang Indians played in the NFL in 1922-1923 and had all Native American players, including Olympic star Jim Thorpe, third from left in back row, as a player-coach. (Adam Bauer/Courtesy of Cumberland County Historical Society)
On Wednesday, Washington’s National Football League team will unveil its new name, following a lengthy campaign by Native American activists to abandon an identity long seen as a racial slur. | null | null | null | null | null |
Beijing issued a white paper on China’s space program. Here’s what’s new.
China wants to shape international rules governing activities in outer space
A Chinese state media broadcast reports on the country's successful landing of a probe on Mars, with footage shown on a large video screen at a shopping mall in Beijing on May 15. (Mark Schiefelbein/AP)
By R. Lincoln Hines
On Jan. 28, China released its first white paper on space-related activities in five years. China is an increasingly important space power and a potential challenger to U.S. interests. This new document provides insights into China’s space ambitions and priorities — both in what is stated explicitly and in what is missing.
The document underscores China’s larger ambition to shape international rules governing outer space and offers insights on Beijing’s plans to overcome significant obstacles facing its commercial space sector. And the paper suggests Beijing may be in no hurry to formally commit to crewed lunar missions.
China plans to shape the rules governing outer space
Notably, this document devotes an entire section to the global governance of space. Compared with China’s last space white paper, the current paper articulates a more active role for Beijing in shaping international rules governing outer space.
Some governments might see this as a positive development — an indication that China may prioritize international cooperation in outer space, as well as space sustainability (the ability for humans to access and use space for various purposes). Current legal interpretations allow countries to conduct anti-satellite tests. For example, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty only bans placing weapons of mass destruction in outer space and military activities on celestial bodies — but does not ban space weapons (including testing them).
Russia proved it can shoot down a satellite. Does this make space less secure?
Given the world’s increasing reliance on satellites, space debris poses a growing challenge with profound consequences for the global economy, international security and everyday life. But objects in orbit are threatened by space debris ranging in size from a paint flake to large, defunct satellites — and this debris travels at roughly 10 times the speed of a bullet. Growing “clouds” of debris can cascade, threatening to make space inaccessible to human activity.
Yet there are reasons to be cautious about Chinese attempts at space governance. In 2014, China and Russia proposed the Prevention of the Placement of Weapons in Outer Space Treaty. Critics emphasize that this treaty lacks mechanisms for verifying compliance and allows China and Russia to continue developing ground-based anti-satellite weapons. U.S. officials highlighted the hypocrisy of China and Russia proposing arms control measures for space while aggressively developing counterspace weapons. The United States has also shot down satellites (though producing far less debris than China’s 2007 test), notably during Operation Burnt Frost in 2008.
Would China be interested in some modest governance measures in space? The new white paper points out that China views space capabilities as essential for economic development and building a “digital China,” which would inherently rely on satellites for communication and transportation. China today has far more to lose from outer space becoming littered with space debris than it did in the past — a trend that will likely increase as China continues investing in space capabilities.
Consequently, there may be some areas in space governance where Chinese and U.S. interests are becoming more aligned. In January, a senior U.S. official suggested that the United States may be interested in rules to ban debris-creating anti-satellite tests. Nonetheless, China’s interest in making international rules for outer space may not necessarily align with U.S. interests. Instead, some of these rules may be aimed at binding U.S activities while allowing China to reap the soft power benefits of “acting responsibly.”
Companies are commercializing outer space. Do government programs still matter?
What did we learn about China’s commercial space sector?
In 2014, China announced that it would allow private investment into its space sector, leading to more than 100 new Chinese space companies. Some analysts worry that this will give China an edge against the U.S. commercial sector, claiming that the United States is “losing the second space race” to China.
However, there is no data to suggest that China’s commercial space sector is even close to rivaling the multibillion-dollar U.S. commercial space sector, other than the number of rocket launches — a count that measures mostly government-funded activity. China’s commercial space sector also faces serious challenges, including the absence of a domestic national space law, the continued dominance of state-owned enterprises in the economy and limited access to military-run launch sites. Consequently, Chinese analysts are far less bullish about the prospects of China’s commercial space sector than outside observers.
This latest white paper suggests that Beijing seeks to solve at least some of the challenges confronting China’s commercial space sector. China will try to “optimize the distribution of the space industry in the national industrial chain,” the document notes, regulate the licensing of civil space launches and “speed up the formulation of a national space law.” The paper also notes that China has already developed plans to build more commercial launch sites over the next five years.
What about China’s moon plans?
Top Chinese space officials have suggested that China plans to send humans to the moon. Yet China’s white paper does not offer concrete plans for such missions or an explicit commitment to carry them out. It states the objective to “continue studies and research on the plan for a human lunar landing, develop new-generation manned spacecraft.” The absence of any concrete proposals suggests that Chinese leaders may have concerns about investing in such an expensive endeavor or about China’s ability to accomplish such a goal.
Sending humans to the moon could provide China with prestige benefits, both internationally and domestically. China has used its human spaceflight program for domestic propaganda, and there are high levels of Chinese public support for sending humans to the moon. However, such missions would be expensive. And China faces slowing economic growth and has already committed to building a space station.
Overall, China’s newest space white paper provides important clues about Beijing’s space ambitions in the next five years. Yet the document is (unsurprisingly) silent on China’s military space plans and, as a result, isn’t likely to assuage growing concerns in the United States and elsewhere about China’s military space ambitions. As other scholars have argued, even capabilities used to mitigate space debris have dual-use functions and may be perceived as space weapons.
R. Lincoln Hines (@lincolnhines) is an assistant professor for the West Space Seminar at the U.S. Air War College. His research focuses on the role of domestic politics, nationalism and prestige in Chinese security and space ambitions. The views expressed or implied are those of the author alone and do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Department of Defense, or of any organization the author is affiliated with including Air University, the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Space Force, or any other U.S. government agency. | null | null | null | null | null |
Good morning and welcome to The Climate 202! Today we're laughing at the alternative names to Build Back Better that Energy Twitter came up with, including “Electric-Sector Boogaloo.” 😂
Exclusive: League of Conservation Voters Action Fund endorses six Senate candidates
The League of Conservation Voters Action Fund is endorsing six Democrats running for the Senate in the midterm elections, according to details shared exclusively with The Climate 202.
The endorsements come as Democrats seek to maintain their slim majority in the Senate — and with it, any hopes of passing ambitious climate legislation.
The League of Conservation Voters Action Fund, the federal political action committee affiliated with the League of Conservation Voters, is throwing its support behind the following candidates:
Rep. Val Demings of Florida, who is seeking to unseat Republican Sen. Marco Rubio.
Rep. Abby Finkenauer of Iowa, who is running against incumbent Sen. Chuck Grassley and faces a crowded Democratic primary.
Charles Booker of Kentucky, who is challenging incumbent Sen. Rand Paul after narrowly losing his primary bid last year to Democrat Amy McGrath, who later was defeated by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Cheri Beasley of North Carolina, a former state Supreme Court chief justice who is running to succeed retiring Republican Sen. Richard Burr.
Rep. Peter Welch of Vermont, who is vying to replace retiring Democratic Sen. Patrick J. Leahy.
Lukas Kunce of Missouri, who is hoping to replace retiring GOP Sen. Roy Blunt.
This marks the League of Conservation Voters Action Fund's first non-incumbent batch of Senate endorsements this election cycle. The PAC has previously endorsed nine incumbent Senate Democrats, including noted climate hawk Sen. Brian Schatz (Hawaii). It has also doled out contributions to candidates through GiveGreen, which has raised more than $9 million so far during the 2021-2022 election cycle.
Notably, the latest batch of endorsements includes two Black women: Demings and Beasley. There are currently no Black women in the Senate.
“We're so excited about these candidates and the experience and diversity that they bring,” Tiernan Sittenfeld, senior vice president of government affairs at the League of Conservation Voters, told The Climate 202. “It could not be more important for the Senate to look more like the rest of the country.”
Finkenauer said that she is "proud to have the League of Conservation Voters on our team to retire Chuck Grassley," who has held his seat since 1981.
"With Iowa experiencing droughts, derechos, and everything in between, we need common sense to protect our state and our future," Finkenauer said in a statement. "Senator Grassley has sadly become a creature of DC, doing favors for special interests in exchange for their corporate campaign checks, and leaving working Iowans behind."
Kunce, a 13-year Marine veteran who was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan and later led arms control negotiations at the Pentagon, said in a statement that these experiences "made it fundamentally clear to me that our addiction to fossil fuels is a threat to our economy, our national security and our way of life."
Booker, who previously served as administrative services director at the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources, told The Climate 202 that he appreciates the endorsement and believes in a “just transition” for former fossil fuel industry workers.
“In many ways, Kentucky is Ground Zero for the ills of the fossil fuel industry because our land was exploited; our labor was exploited,” Booker said in a short phone interview yesterday. “And now we're trying to heal.”
In the final three months of 2021, Paul reported $3.8 million in campaign receipts compared to Booker’s $653,617.
Demings vs. Rubio
The race between Demings and Rubio is one to watch, given that Florida is uniquely vulnerable to the effects of climate change, including algal blooms, rising sea levels and stronger hurricanes.
Demings, a former police chief, has a 97 percent lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters.
As chief of the Orlando Police Department, Demings led efforts to make the department’s car fleet more efficient and helped reduce the agency’s carbon footprint.
Since coming to the House in 2017, the Democrat has consistently voted for legislation aimed at addressing climate change and boosting clean energy.
In September, Demings introduced a bill to shore up the supply chain for components of solar, saying in a statement that “green energy means jobs.”
By contrast, Rubio has a 6 percent lifetime score from the environmental group.
Rubio has consistently voted against climate legislation, although he did miss some votes while campaigning for president in 2016.
In 2019, Rubio wrote in a USA Today opinion piece: “Communities and local businesses in my home state of Florida are already dealing with the very real impacts of rising sea levels, and yet, the Green New Deal will do nothing to address that reality.”
Last year, Rubio joined the bipartisan Senate Climate Solutions Caucus, saying in a statement that he hoped to find “real and responsible solutions” to climate change.
However, the Republican has rejected solutions to the climate crisis that involve phasing out fossil fuel use, a leading cause of rising global temperatures.
Since entering the Senate race, Demings has raked in funding from online donors. Demings raised $7.2 million in the last three months of 2021, compared to $5.2 million for Rubio.
Sen. Manchin says bigger Build Back Better package is ‘dead’
Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) told reporters on Tuesday that Democrats' Build Back Better package is “dead,” CNN's Clare Foran, Manu Raju and Ted Barrett report.
Pressed to elaborate on his comment, the West Virginia Democrat said, "If they're talking about the whole big package, that's gone." On the possibility of supporting a smaller bill, he said, "We'll see what people come with. I don't know."
As Politico's Burgess Everett pointed out, not much has changed since Manchin came out against the legislation in December, leaving Democrats scrambling to pass some kind of scaled-back version of the measure.
While Manchin has emerged as a key obstacle to the bill's passage in the Senate, he has previously voiced support for its $555 billion in climate spending, including tax credits to spur the deployment of clean energy.
Meanwhile, with the Build Back Better legislation stalled, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) plans to deliver his 280th “Time to Wake Up” speech on the Senate floor this afternoon. The speech will mark the end of his one-year hiatus from taking to the floor each week to urge Congress to pass bold climate legislation.
Coal-state lawmakers embrace crypto
States such as Wyoming and Kentucky that were once the lifeblood of the country's coal mining industry are now starting to tie their economies to cryptocurrency, E&E News’s Jael Holzman and Emma Dumain report. The trend has gained speed on Capitol Hill, with lawmakers looking to keep tabs on the industry and ultimately expand it.
Sen. Cynthia M. Lummis (R-Wyo.) is expected to introduce legislation promoting a free-market approach to cryptocurrency regulation this year. And Rep. William Timmons (R-S.C.) is touting a new crypto data center in his district that claims it will achieve carbon neutrality.
But the energy-intensive computing process required to make bitcoin, known as “proof-of-work” mining, has caught the attention of some climate activists and Democrats, who worry about its impact on the planet and the electricity grid.
“The data shows that cryptomining can have harmful impacts on local residents, including higher electricity costs, increased pollution and weaker energy grids," Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said in a statement to E&E News.
Powerful winter storms in the Northeast could be fueled by climate change
Scientists say the recent surge of extreme winter storms in the Northeast is probably tied to rising ocean temperatures and changes in the Arctic, The Washington Post’s Jacob Feuerstein writes.
One study found that near-record snowfalls are consistent with the effects of global warming and could be linked to warming episodes in the polar vortex, which disrupts the winds that keep cold Arctic air at bay and instead allows them to spill south into the United States.
“When Arctic temperatures are cold, snowfall is less likely [in the Northeast],” Judah Cohen, the author of the study and director of seasonal forecasting at Atmospheric and Environmental Research, wrote in an email. “The probability of snowfall increases as the Arctic warms and spikes higher when the Arctic is warmest.”
Warming oceans, a hallmark of climate change, are also responsible for the heavy winter storms, scientists say. Storms strengthen when abnormally warm ocean temperatures clash with frigid Arctic air masses.
E.U. move to label gas and nuclear as green sparks pushback
The European Commission on Wednesday will move to classify natural gas and nuclear power as sustainable investments, prompting allegations of “greenwashing,” The Post's Emily Rauhala reports.
The “EU taxonomy" defines green investments to steer spending toward projects that are consistent with the bloc’s climate goals. The draft text circulated in late December included gas and nuclear as part of a transition to renewable energy. The final plan to be unveiled today is expected to remain largely the same.
Several member countries supported the inclusion of gas, calling it a “bridge” fuel as they transition away from coal and toward renewables. France and others pressed for the inclusion of nuclear, despite fierce opposition from Germany.
Greenpeace blasted the proposal as a “license to greenwash," while a group of powerful investors including BlackRock and Vanguard wrote in an open letter to E.U. representatives that including gas would “seriously compromise Europe’s status as a global leader in sustainable finance.”
Peter Gleick, co-founder of the Pacific Institute, on the irony of Groundhog Day: | null | null | null | null | null |
Live updates Washington Football Team announces ‘Commanders’ as its new name
A Washington Commanders sign is unveiled at FedEx Field on Wednesday morning. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
Eighteen months after dropping its longtime nickname, the Redskins, and beginning an extensive search for a new one, Washington’s NFL team revealed Wednesday that it will be the Commanders, a tribute to Washington’s military ties.
The announcement was made live on NBC’s “Today” show and on social media and was scheduled to be followed with a media event at FedEx Field with owners Daniel and Tanya Snyder and team president Jason Wright. The much-anticipated announcement finally closes the team’s 87-year chapter as the Redskins and marks the start of a new era — at least aesthetically, with the hope Commanders both resonates with fans and reflects the makeup of the Washington area, home to the Pentagon and bases for every branch of the military.
“It’s a name befitting a 90-year old franchise,” Wright said on “Today.” “It’s something that broadly resonated with our fans and something that we believe embodies the values of service and leadership that really defines the DMV and this community.”
For decades, dating back to the early 1970s, Washington received criticism and even drew protests over its name, which many deemed derogatory toward Native Americans. Snyder, who purchased the team in 1999 after growing up a fan of the franchise, vowed he would never change the name. But that changed in 2020, when the murder of George Floyd sparked protests worldwide and led to a national discussion about racial equality. The club’s top sponsors, including FedEx, Pepsi Co. and Nike, vowed to pull the plug on their agreements, and elected officials in D.C. warned that the team could never return to the District unless it got a new name.
As the pressure mounted, the team announced in July 2020 that it would retire the controversial name and adopted the Washington Football Team as a temporary moniker while it began to to seek out a new identity.
Team president Jason Wright, who was hired a month after Washington shed its old name, helped lead a search and remained the face of the initiative, appearing in promotional videos and writing letters to fans on the team’s website. Along the way, he and the team offered only a few guarantees about the next name and uniforms: Their signature burgundy and gold would stay, but the name would not be Warriors or anything with Native American ties or imagery, and it would not be Redwolves, seemingly a fan favorite.
The Commanders name had been the subject of much online speculation in recent weeks. After years of futility on the field and no shortage of controversy away from it, the team hopes fans warm up to a rebranded franchise with familiar colors but a fresh outlook.
“A sports brand is about more than just the logo on the shirt and the team name and the colors,” Washington’s former vice president of strategic marketing, George Perry, said last week. “It’s about the winning on the field, it’s about the pride in the organization, it’s about that organization being a central piece of the community, and it’s about the game-day experience. That team used to have a lot of that, and they don’t have it right now.”
Continue reading for live updates and reaction surrounding Wednesday’s announcement. | null | null | null | null | null |
Hilary Knight: Four-time Olympian, fulltime disrupter
Knight recounts that memory often, because those early days in Boston gave rise to perhaps her most important work. Last year, the 32-year-old became the career leading scorer at the world championships, and this week in Beijing she will be the oldest U.S. women’s hockey Olympian in history when she appears in her fourth Games. But nothing she has done in the past 10 years carries the resonance of her work as an advocate for equity in a sport that has never compensated her fairly.
At the University of Wisconsin, Knight helped the Badgers to two national championships and enjoyed a lifestyle bolstered by the program’s resources — from chartered travel to meals to “Grey’s Anatomy” viewing sessions with teammates.
By 2017, Knight had found her voice against inequities. She was one of the leaders of a strike against USA Hockey, boycotting the world championships after negotiations over better wages and equitable support came to a standstill. The sides came to an agreement just days before the tournament began.
“The 2017 fight has helped in this pro hockey fight significantly,” Coyne Schofield said. “We were successful in that boycott because we were able to come together, we were able to have one voice.”
She found plenty of allies and legal assistance from Philadelphia law firm Ballard Spahr. Even as the organization landed major sponsors and managed to host games at places such as Madison Square Garden and United Center in its first two years, Knight continues to push for more and to face new questions. How will the PHF’s new investment affect the PWHPA? And would the NHL become more involved in the future? | 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 “Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal: The Lives and Careers of Two Tennis Legends.”
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 Euro in 2008 and 2012.
In the first decade of the third millennium, while Nadal was beginning to accumulate one title after another, another mutation was taking place in Spanish sport: The national soccer team was no longer the “Fury” it did not want to be. Partly inspired by the Barcelona of Lionel Messi and Josep Guardiola, the team was transformed into an exhibition of good play. It went from despising the ball to loving it. The “fury” was no longer necessary. Spain didn’t need to embody anymore the stereotype of a wounded and angry global power always eager to show its virility. | null | null | null | null | null |
According to a lawsuit filed this week, a coronavirus test clinic allegedly stored samples in red garbage bags for more than a week instead of properly refrigerating them. (Washington State Office of the Attorney General) (Courtesy of Washington State Office of the Attorney General)
Now, Washington’s attorney general is suing the Illinois-based clinic, its laboratory and its co-owners — Akbar Syed and Aleya Siyaj — for allegedly jeopardizing the health and safety of thousands of Washingtonians by failing to meet best medical practices during a pandemic. The clinic, the lawsuit alleges, provided “invalid, false and delayed” coronavirus test results — and at times no results at all. The attorney general’s office says the Center for Covid Control operated at least 13 testing sites across Washington, despite having a license to operate in only one municipality.
The center and its founders did not immediately respond to messages from The Washington Post early Wednesday. All Center for Covid Control locations are “closed until further notice,” according to a news release from the company.
The company was also unable to fulfill its promise of delivering PCR test results via email within 48 hours and verbally sharing rapid test results within 15 minutes, the lawsuit states. Former employees told authorities that as of early December, the company was receiving between 8,000 and 10,000 results per day — a figure it knew it could not keep up with, court records state.
Because of high patient volume, the lawsuit states, the company began placing tests in garbage bags and piling them up in the office. One former employee recounted asking Syed and Siyaj, who were regularly at the facility, to hire more personnel. The couple refused, the lawsuit states. Former staffers told authorities that they regularly found test samples that were over a week old stored in the trash bags scattered around the office, the lawsuit states. Many of the samples, former employees reported, had never been refrigerated or tested by the lab.
When the company did share the results of rapid or PCR tests, the lawsuit states, the reports often were inaccurate. Patients who called back to follow up on their tests results allegedly waited as long as three hours to speak with an operator. At one point, staffers were instructed to lie to patients and tell them their lab results would come back in 24 hours — even if they were unsure when they would be processed, the lawsuit states.
“If a consumer called multiple times, employees were instructed to falsely tell consumers that the test result was inconclusive and that they needed to take another test,” the lawsuit states. Doing so also allowed the company, which has allegedly billed the federal government $124 million, to charge for another test, Washington state authorities allege.
The Washington lawsuit is not the only legal action the company is facing. Last month, the FBI searched the company’s headquarters in Rolling Meadows, Ill., USA Today reported. The search took place days after the Minnesota attorney general filed a consumer protection lawsuit against the company and its laboratory, alleging that they “provide inaccurate and deceptive” test results and have fraudulently reported negative test results, according to the paper.
The company also is under investigation by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Illinois attorney general and the Oregon Department of Justice. | null | null | null | null | null |
Ahead of the Opening Ceremonies on Friday, the main thrust of such measures has been ensuring that nothing can damage China’s image during the Games. Athletes have been warned against making political statements, and foreign journalists’ ability to report on the broader social and economic impacts of the games is limited by covid-19 controls.
The full extent of China’s domestic security state has been unclear since 2013, when the Finance Ministry stopped disclosing it after years of greater spending on internal security than on defense.
Alongside adopting new technologies, the Communist Party has also expanded its idea of who is considered a threat. Human rights activists fear that a growing emphasis on “extremism” and “terrorism” is being used to justify government abuses.
Ahead of the Winter Olympics, local governments from Qinghai in northwestern China to Shandong on the east coast held “counterterrorism” campaigns.
At the center of the national security state is President Xi Jinping and the upper echelons of the Communist Party. In practice, this means that the capital, Beijing, is the heart of a system of coercion and control designed to apprehend troublemakers.
Many of the upgrades ahead of the Winter Olympics have focused on Zhangjiakou, the joint host city northwest of Beijing that was considered to have a “poor foundation” for surveillance. Security cameras in the city were upgraded to keep track of at least 2 million people. In the mountains of Chongli, where the venues are, one high-definition camera was installed for every square kilometer.
The “difference between 2008 and 2022 is not just the number of surveillance systems and technologies; it’s also the intention of building comprehensive, watertight surveillance,” Wang said.
Security experts have urged anyone going to the Games to assume they will be monitored. The U.S. Olympics and Paralympics committee, Britain, the Netherlands and Canada have advised athletes to consider taking measures such as using “burner” phones in Beijing to limit remote monitoring after they return home.
China said the accusations were “without evidence” and later added that, even if there were security flaws, they have now been fixed.
To limit surveillance risks during the Olympics, cybersecurity experts have suggested that those traveling to Beijing bring special-purpose laptops and smartphones that can be wiped clean after leaving.
Although Olympics officials have created a gap in the “great firewall” to allow attendees to use usually blocked platforms such as WhatsApp and Twitter while in Beijing, some analysts recommend caution about logging into certain social media or email accounts. Using a virtual private network can help mask a device’s identity and create a more secure connection to the Internet. | null | null | null | null | null |
But D.C. Council chairman Phil Mendelson splashed cold water on a possible return to the District for the team, saying in an email that he doesn’t support paying for a new stadium and that he’s troubled by allegations related to the sexual harassment investigation of the team’s leadership.
“I don’t want us to pay for a football stadium that is used less than 10 times a year and in terms of non-sporting events, would compete with other stadiums that we’ve built in the city," Mendelson said in the email. "I also remain very troubled that news reports indicate Dan Snyder interfered with NFL investigation of sexual harassment within that organization.”
Representatives of the team met last year with legislators in Virginia to push for a new stadium complex, and Republican and Democratic legislators introduced bills last month to build a stadium and commercial complex in Northern Virginia as a package to bring professional football to the commonwealth.
Early reaction in Richmond, where the General Assembly is considering pair of bills intended to lure the team to Virginia, was muted at best.
“The new name is fine but I also liked the other one,” said Senate Majority Leader Richard L. Saslaw (D-Fairfax), who is carrying legislation that would create a football stadium authority to oversee the financing and construction of a massive retail and entertainment development anchored by an NFL stadium.
Del. Mark Keam (D-Fairfax) was with those poking fun, tweeting: “On this #GroundHogDay, Punxsutawney Phil predicts 6 more weeks of public ridicule over this new name.”
Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R), who’d given the stadium legislation a shout-out in his formal address to General Assembly last month, had been mum on Twitter since late Tuesday night. His office did not immediately respond to a request for his take on the name.
“This will make numerous people happy, and it will also will make numerous people sad,” he said, adding he thought that fans who grew up with the name and never saw it as offensive felt they have lost something in important to them.
Barnes, the House deputy whip, said lawmakers who represent the community near FedEx community are very eager to keep The Commanders playing in Prince George’s County, provided it made financial sense. | null | null | null | null | null |
Hargus “Pig” Robbins, Nashville pianist who worked with Dylan, dies at 84
Hargus "Pig" Robbins performs at the Country Music Hall of Fame inductions in 2012. (Wade Payne/Invision/AP)
By Terence McArdle
Hargus “Pig” Robbins, a pianist who belonged to an elite cadre of session players known as the Nashville A-team and contributed to Bob Dylan’s classic 1966 “Blonde on Blonde”album, died Jan. 30 at a hospital in Franklin, Tenn. He was 84.
His family announced the death on his Facebook page but did not provide a cause. Mr. Robbins had been treated recently for a bacterial infection, kidney disease and heart disease.
Mr. Robbins’s Nashville recording career began in the late 1950s, when there were only two major studios in town, and spanned more than six decades. With an instinctively melodic style, his playing reflected the era when Music City producers were smoothing off the rougher edges of country music and creating a style often dubbed countrypolitan.
“Pig has come up with more identifiable licks than anyone,” said guitarist and fellow A-team member Harold Bradley at Mr. Robbins’s 2012 induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame. “And he’s also the best rhythm piano player in town.”
His keyboard graced innumerable hits of the 1960s and ’70s, including Patsy Cline’s “Crazy,” Loretta Lynn’s “Don’t Come Home a-Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind),” Dolly Parton’s “Jolene,” Crystal Gayle’s “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue,” and Kenny Rogers’s “The Gambler.”
Kenny Rogers, pop-country singer of ‘The Gambler’ who dominated 1970s music charts, dies at 81
Even when the headline performer was also an accomplished pianist, producers sought out Mr. Robbins, giving him free rein to construct the rippling, melodic intro to Charlie Rich’s “Behind Closed Doors” (1973). As recently as 2016, he was still in the studio; his work gracing Miranda Lambert’s album “The Weight of These Wings.”
Mr. Robbins’s best-known recording may not have been a country record but the Dylan album “Blonde on Blonde.” His rollicking blues fills accompany an out of control brass band on “Rainy Day Woman #12 and 35” with its memorable tagline, “Everybody must get stoned.” Although he enjoyed working with Dylan, he found the songwriter’s methodology chaotic.
“They’d book Bob Dylan at 6 and 10 and he might not show up until 10 o’clock,” Mr. Robbins told interviewer Joe Chambers. “He’d say ‘Boys, I’ve got to write a song,’ so he’d want everybody to get out of the studio. So we’d roam the halls until 1 or 2 o’clock in the morning. Then he’d say, ‘Alright, I’ve got one.’ ”
Hargus Melvin Robbins was born in Spring City, Tenn., on Jan. 18, 1938. At 3, he gouged an eye in a knife accident, and the doctor decided to remove it. He lost his complete eyesight from what he believed to be sympathetic opthamalia in the other eye.
At 7, he began studying piano and trumpet at the Tennessee School for the Blind. He frequently sneaked out of school through a dirty fire escape. An exasperated teacher gave him the nickname “Pig” when he came back from an escapade covered in soot.
Mr. Robbins began his career as a studio player by working on songwriter demos but received a major boost when music publisher Buddy Killen hired him to play a boogie woogie accompaniment on George Jones’s novelty song “White Lightning ” (1959), the singer’s first No. 1 hit.
George Jones, legend of country music, dies at 81
He briefly attempted a singing career with the record “Save It” (1959) under the name Mel Robbins. The recording, almost a parody of Jerry Lee Lewis’s rollicking boogie-woogie style, failed to sell but was later covered by the garage rock band the Cramps in 1983.
In 1961, he played on Cline’s “I Fall to Pieces” (1961) when pianist Floyd Cramer, then the most in-demand pianist in Nashville, couldn’t make the job. Cramer had recently embarked on a performing career after his success with the instrumental record “Last Date,” and Mr. Robbins started getting called for sessions.
He acquired a reputation for versatility with two 1962 rhythm-and-blues hits that crossed over into the pop charts, Clyde McPhatter’s “Lover Please” and Arthur Alexander’s “Anna (Go to Him).”
Mr. Robbins received the Country Music Association’s instrumentalist of the year award in 1976 and 2000. His 1977 album, “Country Instrumentalist of the Year,” won a Grammy Award that year for best country instrumental performance.
His wife, Vicki West Robbins, died in 2019. Survivors include a son, David Robbins, and three brothers. | null | null | null | null | null |
D.C. attorney general sues two landlords for allegedly putting tenants’ health and safety at risk
D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine said the lawsuits against two landlords are part of his office's long-term effort to protect tenants. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)
The D.C. attorney general’s office filed suit against two landlords this week for allegedly allowing their properties to fall into dangerous disrepair. The lawsuits accuse one landlord of using harassment and poor living conditions to push longtime residents out and the other of ignoring dangerous conditions for more than six years.
Officials said the lawsuits are part of an ongoing effort to address issues of neglect and displacement in affordable housing properties. In both cases, the District is asking a judge to appoint a receiver, a third-party answerable to the court, to oversee emergency repairs.
The first case involves the Hawaii-Webster Apartments in Ward 5, an 11-building complex made up of 88 garden-style apartments. It was sold to a new property owner in late 2020. About six months later, as conditions at the property continued to deteriorate, the new owner submitted redevelopment plans to the Board of Zoning Adjustment to transform the property into market-rate condominiums and rental units. According to the attorney general’s office, only 16 of the 134 apartments in the planned redevelopment are slated to be preserved as affordable units.
Residents — who recounted dramatic issues with leaks, mold, rats and cockroaches, and weeks spent living without adequate heat this winter — say they fear the owner is trying to drive them out of their homes.
One former resident, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation, described the rodent issue in the building as “a plague.”
“I didn’t want to keep living here, especially with the rats and cockroaches that leave droppings on the floor where my children play,” the man, a 32-year-old father of two from Puebla, Mexico, said in Spanish. He moved out recently, he said, after falling ill during a weeks-long stretch without heat in his apartment. He was worried about his children, ages 2 and 7. “I feel that the people who bought this place are trying to get rid of us.”
The second case centers on King Towers, a rent-controlled building in Ward 2 with 129 apartments. Roughly half of the tenants receive housing assistance from the government. The building is full of seniors and families with small children. Since at least 2015, the attorney general’s office said, the building has failed inspections more than 100 times.
D.C. and federal inspectors have found floods and leaks, mold, infestations of insects and rodents, ventilation issues and chipping paint throughout the building. The paint at the 53-year-old building is lead-based.
The two apartment complexes are home primarily to immigrant families, D.C.’s attorney general said, some of whom have lived in their apartments for upward of a decade.
“Slumlords and developers should never be able to subject District residents to dangerous and unlawful conditions or attempt to force them out of their homes,” Attorney General Karl A. Racine (D) said in a statement Wednesday. “We filed these new lawsuits as part of our long-term effort to protect tenants, preserve affordable housing, and disrupt the illegal and immoral business model that is driving out long-term residents who deserve to be able to stay in their homes.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Jeffery Robinson in “Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America.” (Jesse Wakeman/Sony Pictures Classics)
At the top of the excellent documentary “Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America,” we hear a solicitation, put to a 2018 audience at New York City’s Town Hall theater by the evening’s host, attorney Jeffery Robinson (former ACLU deputy legal director): “If you have ever owned a slave, please raise your hand.”
And then, when no hands go up, Robinson, who since 2011 has been delivering some version of this talk — akin to a PowerPoint presentation on racism, complete with audiovisual clips — explains the point of asking what sounds like a rhetorical question, but isn’t. “Slavery is not our fault,” he says. “We didn’t do it. We didn’t cause it. It’s not our responsibility.” But it is, he adds, our shared history, and when we try to turn that shared history into something that it’s not — “when we try to make more light of it than it was, then we are denying who we really are.”
That last phrase echoes through the film, giving it its title, and cropping up again at such moments as when Robinson shows a photo of the mutilated face of the murdered Black teenager Emmett Till. He suggests that the decision of Till’s mother, in 1955, to share that horrific image with the media in was in some ways like holding a mirror up to America. “Ignorance is not bliss,” Robinson says, late in the film, “because it allows a false history to thrive.” (Evidence of this is made plain as we watch Robinson rebut the arguments of a White man, holding a Confederate flag on the sidewalk, as he insists that the Civil War was solely about economics, not slavery.)
Also interspersed amid footage of Robinson’s stage presentation, in a way that evokes memories of the climate-change documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” are other interviews that take Robinson out of the theater. We see him pay visits to such institutions as Charleston’s Old Slave Mart Museum and the site of the 1947 murder of Elmore Bolling, a Black Alabama businessman who is said to have been lynched because he was too successful. The combined impact of these scenes, augmented with Robinson’s lecture — which, while deeply informed and informative, is anything but dull or academic — makes for a powerful one-two punch.
New movies to stream: ‘Rise Again: Tulsa and the Red Summer,’ ‘Luca’ and more
“Who We Are” follows a rough chronology, from the founding of this country to today. Along the way, Robinson identifies what he called several tipping points, where it looked like things were getting better only to backslide: the end of the Civil War and Reconstruction, followed by decades of policies that restricted formerly enslaved people; the mid-20th-century rise of the Civil Rights era (culminating in the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.); and the ongoing racial reckoning movement that has been taking place across America over the past few years. A graphic animation of a boulder-like form rolling up a hill, as if by Sisyphus, and then rolling back down before it clears the summit illustrates his point.
But “Who We Are” is ultimately more hopeful than reading about it may sound. Robinson’s quasi-TED Talk is both broad-ranging and deep, covering a history that is political, legal, cultural, economic, psychological, emotional, moral and, in the end, also profoundly personal. Robinson talks movingly of his upbringing in segregated Memphis, where his family was forced to enlist a White family to buy a house in a good school district on their behalf, and then transfer the ownership to Robinson’s parents.
He was lucky, he explains. But no one in this country should have to rely on luck alone to thrive. His Who We Are project — of which this film (directed by sisters Emily and Sarah Kunstler, daughters of the activist lawyer William Kunstler) is just a part — aims to impart knowledge, or, more specifically, self knowledge, to a new generation of boulder-pushers. And knowledge, as everyone knows, is power.
PG-13. At area theaters. Contains mature thematic material, disturbing images, violence and strong language, all involving racism. 118 minutes.
The movie ‘Mass’ is wrenching to watch, but also utterly absorbing | null | null | null | null | null |
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) holds a news conference about severe winter weather along with representatives from the Texas Division of Emergency Management on Tuesday in Austin. (Briana Sanchez/Austin American-Statesman via AP)
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said “no one can guarantee” there won’t be power outages in the state during a winter storm expected to hit a wide swath of the nation starting Wednesday, despite promising months before to the millions affected by last year’s freeze that the lights would stay on this year.
Frigid weather is expected to hit the state in what’s likely to be the first significant test of the Texas power grid a year after a historic freeze killed hundreds of residents and left millions without power for days. The National Weather Service says the state could see freezing rain and cold temperatures, as well as sleet and snow, as early as Wednesday afternoon in Central Texas.
While Abbott said in November that he “can guarantee the lights will stay on” in the state the next time severe winter weather rolled through, the governor cautioned Tuesday that he could not promise that “load shed” events would not unfold this week. A load shed event is when the demand for electricity outweighs the available supply, which results in rolling blackouts in an attempt to keep the state power grid from collapsing. Load shed events happened on a large scale in the state last year.
“No one can guarantee that there won’t be a load shed event,” Abbott said at a news conference in Austin. “But what we will work and strive to achieve — and what we’re prepared to achieve — is that the power’s going to stay on across the entire state.”
The governor said several scenarios could result in blackouts, such as “ice on power lines” or “ice on trees that causes a tree to fall on power lines.”
“We are ready for this storm,” Brad Jones, interim CEO of ERCOT, said to reporters. “We will be prepared for this.”
But with another serious storm bearing down on the state, critics and Democrats were quick to accuse Abbott of going back on his promise to keep the lights. Among those critics is former congressman Beto O’Rourke, who is running for governor this year. O’Rourke told MSNBC on Tuesday night that the Republican has not done enough since last year’s freeze to safeguard the state from freezing temperatures.
“The fact is the governor was warned for years before 2021 when this storm happened that we had vulnerabilities in the grid, and did nothing,” the Democrat told host Chris Hayes.
Nan Tolson, a spokesperson for Abbott, told The Washington Post that the governor noted how enhanced measures in place for the power grid would prevent mass blackouts.
Texas is among more than a dozen states preparing for large amounts of snow and ice in a winter storm stretching from the Mexico border to Canada this week. Nearly 80 million Americans are under winter storm watches or warnings through Thursday. The worst conditions are anticipated Wednesday and Thursday in major cities such as Indianapolis, St. Louis, Memphis, Oklahoma City and Dallas.
There’s a chance that the alerts could be expanded into the Northeast and interior Mid-Atlantic as the system shifts east by Friday. The National Weather Service has already warned Americans to expect “prolonged hazardous winter weather conditions and disrupted travel.”
While this week’s storm is not expected to be a repeat of the deadly freeze of 2021, the warnings are bringing back memories of what the state went through last February when freezing temperatures crippled Texas. At least 246 people died in what was one of the worst natural disasters in the state’s history, according to a Dec. 31 report from the Texas Department of State Health Services. Nearly two-thirds of the deaths from the storm were due to hypothermia, data shows.
Abbott — who initially blamed wind turbines that had frozen in the extreme cold for the power grid’s failure before acknowledging that they played no role — called for ERCOT to be overhauled after the deadly storm. The power outages and equipment failures raised questions about whether the state’s natural gas system, the main source for power and heat generation, was able to perform in the cold.
After Abbott said he had signed new laws to ensure the strength of the power grid, he told KTBC that the state would not face similar issues this winter.
“I can guarantee the lights will stay on,” he said in November. Those sentiments were echoed at a December news conference by Peter Lake, chair of the Public Utility Commission of Texas: “The lights are going to stay on this winter.”
To address some of the issues, ERCOT said last month that 321 out of 324 electric generation units and transmission facilities had fully passed inspection to meet new regulations that make the power generators better equipped for winter weather. Those ERCOT generators account for 85 percent of the state’s total power supply, KXAN reported. Jones told The Post in January that the state was “more prepared for winter operations than ever before.”
But even after the storm, Texas lawmakers did not require natural gas companies to prepare their equipment for the extreme cold ahead of this winter. Some have cautioned that although the electrical grid is better equipped for winter storms, the natural gas side of Texas’s energy system could freeze in extreme conditions — and potentially strain the whole system.
“It’s like fixing your car, but the tank is empty,” Michael Webber, an energy resources professor at the University of Texas at Austin, told The Post last month.
ERCOT is also expecting the peak power demand this week to be comparable to last year’s storm. The demand for power in the state is expected to hit a high of around 73 gigawatts Friday, according to an ERCOT projection obtained by KXAS. The statewide power demand during the 2021 storm topped out at 77 gigawatts.
Although Abbott emphasized that Texas was “working around-the-clock to respond to the winter storm expected to impact our state over the next few days,” critics maintained the governor had gone back on a very public promise made surrounding potential power outages from freezing temperatures. The Lincoln Project, the effort led by former Republicans against former president Donald Trump, posted an anti-Abbott video Wednesday with a familiar title: “Winter Is Coming.” | null | null | null | null | null |
The sports, though, should be compelling — because they always are. The American team’s stars include Alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin, figure skater Nathan Chen, snowboarder Chloe Kim, cross-country skier Jessie Diggins, hockey player Hilary Knight and her gold-medal-winning teammates, on and on. Throw in the best from the rest of the world, and over two-and-a-half weeks, something will grab us and take hold | null | null | null | null | null |
Protecting Public Safety with Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle M. Outlaw
Philadelphia is one of several American cities that hit an all-time high rate of homicides in 2021. On Monday, Feb. 7 at 3:00 p.m. ET, Washington Post criminal justice reporter Tom Jackman speaks with Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle M. Outlaw about her plans to reduce gun violence, institute police reform and strengthen community relations.
Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle M. Outlaw
Provided by the Philadelphia Police Department.
Philadelphia Police Commissioner, Danielle M. Outlaw, is an experienced and respected law enforcement leader. She stands at the helm of the nation’s 4th largest police department, which employs more than 6500 sworn officers and 800 civilians who work to help make Philadelphia a safer city. Commissioner Outlaw is the first African-American woman to lead the Philadelphia Police Department.
A believer in the power of connectivity and continued learning, she meets people where they are, engages critics and contributes nationally and internationally to ensure the Department’s narratives are accurately told, and to benchmark against other organizations to ensure best practices in contemporary policing here. Her overarching community safety goals are rooted in crime prevention and reduction, organizational excellence and community engagement and inclusion.
Commissioner Outlaw’s TEDx Talk – Humanity In Authority – dispels the belief that the two concepts are contrary in nature and explains how the two concepts can, and should, co-exist. She has also presented on various topics including Race and Policing, Women in Law Enforcement, De-escalation and Investigation of Use of Force, Building Community Relationships after Controversy, and Video Recording in Policing and Early Intervention Systems. She has been asked to provide technical assistance in areas of police accountability and risk management.
Prior to taking the helm as Philadelphia’s top law enforcement officer, Outlaw was the Chief of Portland,
Oregon’s Bureau of Police. She was the first African American woman to hold that post. Commissioner Outlaw began her law enforcement career in Oakland, California where she spent 20 years in service with the Oakland Police Department.
The Oakland, CA native has received numerous awards, including the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) Gary P. Hayes Award, the Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare Culture of Caring Award for Community Relations and Civic Engagement, and has been honored as a 2019 Marie Lamfrom Woman of Distinction by the Girl Scouts of Oregon and Southwest Washington.
Commissioner Outlaw earned a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from the University of San Francisco and a Master of Business Administration from Pepperdine University. She is also a graduate of the Police
Executive Research Forum Senior Management Institute of Police, the Major Cities Chiefs’ Association Police Executive Leadership Institute and the FBI National Executive Institute.
Commissioner Outlaw is a member of the International Association of Chiefs of Police Human and Civil Rights Committee, the National Organization of Black Law Executives and is an Eastern Region Representative member of the Major Cities Chiefs’ Association. She continues to demonstrate her civic advocacy through Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated and The Links, Incorporated. | null | null | null | null | null |
Achille Lauro featuring the Harlem Gospel Choir perform “Domenica” at the San Remo music festival in Sanremo, Italy, Tuesday, Feb. 1, 2022. An Italian bishop on Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2022, strongly protested the performance, denouncing both the singer and RAI state television for showing a “profane” faux baptism on stage. (Matteo Rasero/LaPresse via AP) | null | null | null | null | null |
Former Dolphins coach Brian Flores filed a lawsuit accusing the NFL and teams of racial discrimination. (Wesley Hitt/Getty Images)
Former Miami Dolphins coach Brian Flores said in a televised interview Wednesday that he sued the NFL and its teams to try to “create some change” to the minority hiring practices leaguewide. And he said he understands the risks to his own career that could result from making the accusations in his lawsuit of racial discrimination in the treatment of Black coaches.
“We didn’t have to file a lawsuit for the world to know that there’s a problem from a hiring standpoint in regards to minority coaches in the National Football League,” Flores said on the “CBS Mornings” show. “The numbers speak for themselves. We filed a lawsuit so that we can create some change. And that’s important to me. I think we’re at a fork in the road right now. We’re either going to keep it the way it is, or we’re going to go in another direction and actually make some real change where we’re actually changing the hearts and minds of those who make decisions to hire head coaches, executives, etc.”
Flores filed the lawsuit Tuesday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. It cites the league and three teams in particular — the Dolphins, New York Giants and Denver Broncos — but also includes the 29 other teams as potential defendants.
“I understand the risks and yes, it was a difficult decision,” Flores said Wednesday. “And I went back and forth. And like I said, I love coaching. I do. It’s something that I’m passionate about. It brings me joy. And I love helping young people reach their potential and become the best versions of themselves. I’m gifted to do that. But this is bigger than that.”
Flores was fired last month by the Dolphins after a second straight winning season. The Houston Texans have confirmed interviewing Flores for their still-vacant head coaching job. Flores reportedly also has interviewed with the New Orleans Saints, whose head coaching position also remains open.
“I let both the teams know that we were going to file,” he said on CBS. “But look, I love coaching. I’m gifted to coach. I know that. And the relationships I’ve built with players, coaches, support staff — I’m gifted to coach and I love coaching and I want to coach. … But this is bigger than coaching, of course. This is much bigger than coaching.”
The NFL and the three teams named in the lawsuit denied the allegations. Flores was among three Black head coaches in the league this season. Two of them were fired after the season, Flores by the Dolphins and David Culley by the Texans. That has left the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Mike Tomlin as the league’s only active Black head coach.
Flores said that some teams are “just checking a box” when complying with the NFL’s minority interviewing requirements.
“The Rooney Rule is intended to give minorities an opportunity to sit down in front of ownership,” Flores said. “But I think what it’s turned into is … where guys are just checking a box. And that’s been the case. I’ve been on some interviews in the past where I’ve had that feeling. There’s always no way to know for sure. But you know. I know I’m not alone in that.”
Ron Rivera, the coach of the newly renamed Washington Commanders, said later on the CBS show that Flores is doing “a brave thing” by filing the lawsuit.
“I think there is something to be looked at there,” Rivera said. “I really do. I think what Brian is doing is really a brave thing because in this world, in what we do, we’ve got to be willing to open up our eyes and really decide on merit. When you look at a guy like Brian and what he’s accomplished and what he’s done, there is a lot of merit there. And those are the types of things that people should be judged on and things should be based on.”
Rivera said he’s hopeful that Flores will be hired by another NFL franchise.
“I hope he does because, again, if you took what he’s accomplished, you take his resume and put it down on paper and then you compare it to some of the other candidates that are going to be out there, that’s a pretty impressive resume,” Rivera said.
Former Giants quarterback Eli Manning said on the “Today Show” on NBC that the NFL “can definitely look at more options to make sure they're doing everything possible to give everybody a fair chance at those positions.”
Flores reiterated some of the most significant allegations made in his lawsuit. In the suit, Flores accuses Dolphins owner Stephen Ross of offering him $100,000 per loss to aid an alleged 2019 tanking attempt to secure the No. 1 overall selection in the NFL draft.
Of that refusal to comply, Flores said: “I think it hurt my standing within the organization and ultimately was the reason why I was let go.”
The Dolphins said Tuesday it was “incorrect” to imply they “acted in a manner inconsistent with the integrity of the game.”
Flores repeated that he received a text message from New England Patriots Coach Bill Belichick, three days before Flores interviewed late last month for the Giants’ head coaching job, saying that the Giants were hiring Buffalo Bills offensive coordinator Brian Daboll. Both Daboll, who is White, and Flores are former Patriots assistant coaches. Flores said that Belichick initially believed he was sending a congratulatory text to Daboll.
“He thought he was texting Brian Daboll,” Flores said.
The Giants said Tuesday that they are “pleased and confident” with their hiring process and that Flores remained under consideration “until the eleventh hour.” They hired Daboll late last week.
Flores said Wednesday he felt “humiliation, disbelief, anger” after receiving Belichick’s text but proceeded with his interview with the Giants out of “the audacity of hope.” He said it was “very reasonable to me” to suggest that teams can hire the candidates they want to hire, but he also knows there are “more qualified and quite frankly better” minority candidates being passed over.
“I absolutely want to coach in this league,” Flores said. “But I also know that … I’m not the only story here. I’m not the only one with a story to tell. There are people that have come before me and I know there are others who have similar stories. It’s hard to speak out. It is. You’re making some sacrifices. But, again, this is bigger than football. This is bigger than coaching.”
Staff writer Cindy Boren contributed to this report. | null | null | null | null | null |
Wandering chicken seized near Pentagon
The bird was spotted near a checkpoint, according to an animal welfare group
A chicken was found and captured on the Pentagon's grounds. She was named Henny Penny. (Animal Welfare League of Arlington)
Approaching a Pentagon security post while wearing a coat of feathers and keeping close to the ground seems like the sort of thing that might attract attention.
And that is what happened Monday, according to the Animal Welfare League of Arlington, when a wandering hen was spotted near the closely guarded headquarters of the country’s defense establishment.
The chicken “was caught sneaking around the security area at the Pentagon,” said a tweet from the league, Arlington’s animal welfare and humane society.
With its red comb and wattles, and feathery brown coat, the seemingly curious chicken was eventually taken into custody by one of the league’s staff members.
The specific checkpoint at which the chicken drew attention cannot be revealed, a spokeswoman for the league said in an email.
“For actual security reasons we are not allowed to disclose the exact location,” Chelsea Jones said.
However, she said, the chicken is believed to be a Rhode Island red, and an attractive representative of the breed, as well. “Beautiful,” Jones said.
Where the hen came from is unclear, and its presence at the Pentagon appears to be unexplained.
Its future may be less uncertain. League staff members have bestowed upon the fowl the name Henny Penny, said the league. Henny Penny, of course, is one of the names given the chicken at the center of a well-known folk tale.
She will be sent to live at a local animal sanctuary, the league said. | null | null | null | null | null |
But D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) splashed cold water on a possible return to the District for the team, saying in an email that he doesn’t support paying for a new stadium and that he’s troubled by allegations related to the sexual harassment investigation of the team’s leadership.
“I don’t want us to pay for a football stadium that is used less than 10 times a year and in terms of non-sporting events, would compete with other stadiums that we’ve built in the city,” Mendelson said in the email. “I also remain very troubled that news reports indicate Dan Snyder interfered with NFL investigation of sexual harassment within that organization.”
Representatives of the team met last year with legislators in Virginia to push for a new stadium complex, and Republican and Democratic lawmakers introduced bills last month to build a stadium and commercial complex in Northern Virginia as a package to bring professional football to the commonwealth.
Early reaction in Richmond, where the General Assembly is considering a pair of bills intended to lure the team to Virginia, was muted at best.
“The new name is fine, but I also liked the other one,” said Senate Majority Leader Richard L. Saslaw (D-Fairfax), who is carrying legislation that would create a football stadium authority to oversee the financing and construction of a massive retail and entertainment development anchored by an NFL stadium.
Del. Mark L. Keam (D-Fairfax) was with those poking fun, tweeting: “On this #GroundHogDay, Punxsutawney Phil predicts 6 more weeks of public ridicule over this new name.”
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R), who’d given the stadium legislation a shout-out in his formal address to the General Assembly last month, had been mum on Twitter since late Tuesday night. His office did not immediately respond to a request for his take on the name.
“This will make numerous people happy, and it will also make numerous people sad,” he said, adding he thought that fans who grew up with the name and never saw it as offensive felt they have lost something important to them.
“They should stay in that stadium right where they are,” Branch said, citing the economic needs of the state. But the new name didn’t mean most of Maryland would start rooting for the Washington Commanders.
Del. Ben Barnes (D-Prince George’s), who represents the county home to FedEx Field, said lawmakers who represent the community near the stadium are very eager to keep the Commanders playing in Prince George’s County, provided it made financial sense. | null | null | null | null | null |
“I certainly wish my tenure here had ended differently,” he wrote. “But it was an amazing run. And I loved every minute of it.”
The decision stems from Zucker’s relationship with Allison Gollust, the executive vice president and chief marketing officer for CNN Worldwide. The two worked together during their time at NBC.
Zucker, who also served as chairman of WarnerMedia News and Sports, had initially been expected to leave his role at the network at the end of 2021, but then decided to prolong his tenure after plans were announced last spring for Discovery, Inc. to combine with WarnerMedia assets. That deal has not yet been completed, but Zucker had told staff in a town hall meeting in December that it was likely to close “sometime this spring.”
The close relationship between Zucker and Gollust was known to many CNN employees. In her recent memoir, former “Today” show co-anchor Katie Couric, who worked with both of them, dropped heavy hints about the relationship. Describing a “huge push” from Zucker to hire Gollust when Couric and Zucker were launching Couric’s short lived talk show, Katie, in 2012, Couric wrote that Zucker and Gollust “were joined at the hip” at NBC and afterwards.
Zucker has served as president of CNN since 2013, after spending four years as the chief executive of media conglomerate NBCUniversal, the capstone of a lengthy tenure at the company that saw him rise through the ranks and become an executive producer of the “Today” morning show.
The public feuding belied a long and mutually fruitful association for both men: As president of NBC’s entertainment division in 2003, Zucker oversaw the network’s launch of “The Apprentice,” the boardroom reality show that featured Trump.
The network has not said who will serve as president of CNN in the interim, following Zucker’s sudden departure. Jason Kilar, the chief executive of WarnerMedia, told employees in a memo that the company “will be announcing an interim leadership plan shortly." | null | null | null | null | null |
After a tumultuous season, the Washington Spirit defeated the Chicago Red Stars to win its first National Women’s Soccer League title.
Attorney Beth Wilkinson framed the turmoil at the Spirit, including Steve Baldwin’s move to sell the team for 40 percent less than Y. Michele Kang’s offer, as partly an issue of gender.
“How is it that Baldwin has been allowed to hold so many women organizationally hostage in this miserable situation for so long?” Read Sally Jenkins on the Spirit’s ownership dilemma.
Trinity Rodman — the NWSL’s youngest draftee ever, rookie of the year, league champion and U.S. Young Female Player of the Year — was named to the U.S. women’s national team for the first time. | null | null | null | null | null |
In the amped-up war of words between Washington and Moscow, President Biden has leveled what appears to be a next-level threat: If Russian troops defy the West and surge into Ukraine, the United States could slap personal sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin.
An increasingly common U.S. tactic, individual sanctions can ban travel and freeze assets in U.S. jurisdictions and bar Americans and U.S. companies from transactions with designees, targeting everything from New York bank accounts to family trips to Disney World. They can also have global reach through foreign banks and companies that fear running afoul of U.S. law.
Pushing back against Biden’s threat, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said direct action against Putin would be “politically destructive” to U.S.-Russian ties — but not “painful” for his boss.
He might be right.
Broader U.S. sanctions against Russia could indeed sting. The New York Times reported that U.S. officials are prepared to take a “sledgehammer” to Russia’s financial system by targeting state banks and cutting off foreign lending, sales of sovereign bonds and technologies for critical industries, among other steps. Sanctions on that scale aimed at a country the size of Russia are novel and risk disruptions to the global financial system as well as Russian retaliation. European allies, dependent on Russian energy to light Berlin, Paris and Rome, may also be reluctant to join in. But if fully imposed, such sanctions could serve as serious punishment for Russian transgression.
“Putin doesn’t have an account at JPMorgan Chase,” Eugene Rumer, a Russian expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told me. “There’s a lot of talk about him being the richest man in the world with a fortune in the hundreds of billions of dollars. But I’ve never seen any credible proof of that fortune, or where he keeps it. And I don’t think Putin was planning on buying a condo for retirement in Sunny Isles, Florida.”
Forbes recently described Putin’s alleged fortune as “probably the most elusive riddle in wealth hunting — harder than the heirs, other heads of state and even drug lords that we’ve financially smoked out over the years.” Theories run the gamut: That he’s built an empire by demanding cuts from Russian oligarchs, or illicit financial deals or contract kickbacks.
But they’re all just theories. Meanwhile, his stated assets are relatively meager. Bloomberg News reported that a Kremlin declaration of Putin’s earnings claims his income to be roughly $131,000 a year. His declared assets? “A 77-square-meter apartment, an 18-square-meter garage, two vintage Volga GAZ M21 cars, a Lada Niva SUV and a trailer” — all of them in Russia and out of U.S. reach.
“The reality is that there are probably few people other than Putin who know how much loot he has and where he keeps it,” wrote Bloomberg News’s Timothy L. O’Brien. “That will make it difficult to figure out which financial switch to flip to deter Russia from invading Ukraine, or to penalize Putin personally if it does.”
One of the more outlandish possibilities: That Putin actually isn’t as rich as one might think because his awesome powers at home don’t require a fortune to rule.
“In the end, Putin may not need money, so long as he has the appearance of having it and the power that it would otherwise confer,” Forbes Wealth Team mused.
Few believe governments — even U.S. allies — that do business with Russia would agree to steps that turn Putin into a global pariah barred from summits or business events.
“The Europeans are not going to stop him from coming, and the Chinese will welcome him with open arms, so I’m not sure how a travel ban could work,” Rumer said. “Putin is not the kind of leader who goes to Disneyland. If he wanted to, he’d just have one built in Moscow.”
It’s relatively rare for the United States to impose sanctions on a sitting head of state, but it’s happened before — including 1,300 miles off the coast of Florida where Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro goes to bed at night as the sitting global leader perhaps most targeted by Washington’s wrath.
In 2017, the U.S. government added Maduro to a list of high-ranking Venezuelan officials who faced asset freezes and bans on U.S. citizens doing business with them. Since then, federal authorities in Florida have seized from Venezuelan officials and government-linked business executives more than $450 million in assets — including Miami condos, superyachts and show horses. “But they didn’t seem to find any of Maduro personal assets,” Geoff Ramsey, a Venezuela expert at the Washington Office on Latin America, told me.
A further step not seen as an imminent possibility with Putin hurt Maduro more: His indictment in 2020 by the U.S. Justice Department on narcoterrorism charges, including a $15 million bounty for information leading to his capture. Since then, Maduro’s rare official foreign trips have been confined to friendly nations including Cuba and Mexico.
The White House on Monday signaled what could be a more likely — and damaging — play than going directly after Putin: Targeting figures “in or near the inner circle of the Kremlin.” That could include barring children of certain Russian elites from attending prestigious universities in the United States and Europe, the New York Times reported. The targeted Russians could be closer to Putin than those slapped with U.S. sanctions in the past, and reportedly could include Alina Kabaeva, a former Olympic gymnast alleged to have been romantically involved with the Russian leader.
The United States and Europe have already placed sanctions on more than 800 Russian individuals over Russian aggression, including the annexation of Crimea, attempted assassinations of dissidents and disruptions of U.S. elections. A Post report in October illustrated how those sanctions triggered losses that spread across their interconnected financial networks.
The theory: To get to Putin, you make the rich people close to him uncomfortable — striking personal blows to their business affairs and lavish lifestyles.
There is little question such sanctions hurt. But when it comes to compelling those leaders to change course, or, in the most extreme cases, provoking regime change, individual sanctions sometimes have limited purpose.
For instance, the targeting of Maduro’s inner circle has not worked.
Sure, they’re unhappy: I have sat in Caracas with U.S.-sanctioned individuals close to and within the Maduro government. They bitterly complained about their shrinking worlds, and the personal price they’ve paid because of U.S. sanctions.
But in recent years, only one senior Venezuelan official close to Maduro and sanctioned by the United States has actually defected, and Maduro’s grip on power is tighter now than ever. And Putin commands far more formidable powers of persuasion than the Venezuelan leader.
In fact, some argue that cutting key figures in authoritarian regimes off from the West can make them even more reliant on the authoritarians they serve.
“I think for those on the individual sanctions list, it’s an annoyance,” Ramsey said. “But it can also create incentives that can be counterproductive. | null | null | null | null | null |
This 2021 photo provided by the family shows Doug Olson of Pleasanton, Calif., in Bend, Ore. In 2010, doctors treated Olson’s leukemia with an experimental gene therapy that transformed his own blood cells into cancer killers. More than a decade later, there’s no sign of cancer in his body. (Family Photo via AP) (Uncredited/Doug Olson) | null | null | null | null | null |
The groundhog saw his shadow on February 2, his handlers say.
Groundhog Club handler A.J. Dereume holds Punxsutawney Phil, the weather-prognosticating groundhog, during the 136th celebration of Groundhog Day on Gobbler's Knob in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday. Phil's handlers said that the groundhog has forecast six more weeks of winter. (Barry Reeger/AP)
Thousands of people from across the United States and other countries gathered to see Phil at Gobbler’s Knob in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Members of Phil’s “inner circle” summoned him from his tree stump at dawn to learn if he had seen his shadow, a message they said Phil communicated in “groundhogese.” After Phil’s prediction was announced, the crowd repeatedly chanted “six more weeks!”
The event took place virtually last year because of the coronavirus pandemic, depriving the community, which is about an hour’s drive from Pittsburgh, of a boost from tourists. It was streamed live and seen by more than 15,000 viewers worldwide at one point. About 150 cardboard cutouts of fans were there to “watch.”
According to records dating back to 1887, Phil has predicted a long winter more than 100 times. Ten years were lost because no records were kept, organizers said.
Phil’s record isn’t very good for accurately predicting spring’s arrival, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). His prediction has been correct only 4 of the past 10 years, the organization reported.
Punxsutawney Phil may be the most famous groundhog seer but he’s certainly not the only one, and one competitor disagreed with his prediction. New York City’s Staten Island Chuck expects an early spring, according to the Staten Island district attorney. | null | null | null | null | null |
FILE - Coach John Madden of the Oakland Raiders reacts on the sideline as running back Clarence Davis (28) races down the field against Minnesota during Super Bowl XI in Pasadena, Calif., Jan. 9, 1977. Vikings’ Paul Krause (22) comes over to force him out. Oakland won 32-14. After surviving an early blocked punt, the Raiders dominated the game. They set a Super Bowl record at the the time with 429 yards of offense with Clarence Davis running for 137. (AP Photo/File) (Uncredited/AP) | null | null | null | null | null |
“Capehart” with Al Franken
Al Franken, the only U.S. senator who was also a writer and performer on “Saturday Night Live,” returns to his comedy roots with the “The Only Former U.S. Senator Currently on Tour” tour. Join Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart for a conversation with the former senator about his tour, current events and the intersection of politics and comedy on Wednesday, Feb. 9 at 4:30 p.m. ET.
Provided by the Office of Al Franken.
Al Franken is currently the host of the Al Franken podcast and in the midst of a nationwide comedy tour, “The Only Former Senator Currently on Tour Tour.” In the Senate Franken served on the Judiciary; Health, Education, Labor, and Pension; Energy; and Natural Resources; and Indian Affairs committees. He was a champion of mental health, women’s rights, and privacy rights and an opponent of mandatory arbitration and media consolidation. Franken also actively supports Democrats, progressive causes and a host of other good, non-political things through his political action committee, Midwest Values PAC. He is also the author of four New York Times number one bestsellers, the winner of five Emmys and two Grammys. He has been married to Franni Franken for 44 years and has two children and four grandchildren. | null | null | null | null | null |
When the Winter Olympics officially begins Friday in Beijing, U.S. diplomats and international fans won’t be the only ones missing from the festivities. Olympic athletes from multiple countries who want to show solidarity with the victims of the Chinese government’s human rights abuses have been quietly preparing to boycott the Opening Ceremonies, according to human rights activists who have been helping to educate and organize them. | null | null | null | null | null |
In Virginia, an officeholder can be subjected to recall with a number of signatures totaling just 10 percent of the votes cast in that official’s last election. Unlike other states that hold recall elections when voters petition for a recall, the matter is sent to a circuit court judge to determine if the complaints should go to trial. Under current law, judges may also order a recall election but are not required to. Recall can be sought from the moment the target of one takes office.
There has been an increase in recent years of local officials in Virginia being singled out for removal through recall petitions, often by political and ideological entities. School board members are increasingly in the crosshairs. Fairfax County last year saw the start of an effort to recall three of the 12 members of the school board, and in Loudoun County, six of the nine school board members elected in 2019 have been targeted for removal by a nonpartisan political action committee. School board elections are generally low-turnout contests, thus making it fairly easy to obtain the signatures necessary for a recall. And because the reasons for removal are so broadly defined in the law, disputes over policy — such as removing the name of a Confederate general from a high school or allowing for hybrid school instruction during a pandemic — are alleged to be a dereliction or neglect of duty. So far, judges hearing these cases and the commonwealth’s attorneys representing the state’s interests seem to recognize the paucity of the charges and the cases have been withdrawn or dismissed. The rare instance of an official being removed from office occurred in 2010 when a judge ordered a recall election that resulted in the removal of Portsmouth Mayor James W. Holley III.
Not only does Virginia’s process tie up the courts’ precious time and waste public resources, but it also subjects people duly elected to their jobs to attack and intimidation. One Loudoun County School Board member resigned in the face of a recall by a conservative parent group. Who could blame anyone considering a run for these often-thankless jobs to think again? | null | null | null | null | null |
A 15-page report published Tuesday found “multiple concerning behavioural themes,” including discrimination, bullying and aggressive behavior, toxic masculinity, sexual harassment and misogyny. The incidents were widespread and not believed to be isolated or the behavior of a few "bad apples,” the report says. The probe, dubbed Operation Hotton, consisted of nine “linked independent investigations” of members of London’s Metropolitan Police Service, according to the report.
Among the findings related to discrimination, the operation found several text exchanges by officers that were homophobic, mocked non-Christian religions, were insensitive toward disabled people and were derogatory toward Black people and the Black Lives Matter movement. The report calls these communications “deeply concerning,” given the diverse communities served by the police force. They may reflect officers’ “ability to police communities sensitively and impartially,” it says. | null | null | null | null | null |
Again, remember the math here. A 30 year-old who dies contributes about half a century to the cumulative total, while a 90 year-old who dies of covid contributes much less. If more young people are dying, the cumulative toll increases more quickly. CDC data breaking down deaths by age shows that — particularly during the delta variant wave last summer — deaths among those under the age of 65 surged. In August, 2 in 5 deaths were among people below that age.
Perhaps the most dramatic effect Heun-Johnson and Tysinger found was in the disproportionate distribution of those lost years of life by race. Older Americans saw more cumulative years of life lost than did Americans under the age of 65 simply because so many more older people died. But within each of those age groups — over and under 65 — it was Black and Hispanic men and women who lost disproportionately more years of life relative to population.
“The algorithm is falling apart,” Heun-Johnson said, “which is just pretty sad” — given what it implies about the scale of mortality.
For all of the talk about how vaccines have reduced the risk of hospitalization and death from the virus, it is still the case that more than 45,000 people have died on average in each of the last six months. There’s something of a plateau in the death toll since September, one that arose with the delta variant, faded a bit and then began to spike again with omicron. A plateau that exists despite more than half of the population being fully vaccinated.
But, then, the United States has consistently been an outlier in its covid death toll. The U.S. has consistently made up a larger percentage of covid deaths in a month than it does the world’s total population, according to numbers from Our World in Data. In only two months has our toll been disproportionately low instead of disproportionately high. The U.S. makes up more than 3.6 times as much of the cumulative global death toll as we do the global population. | null | null | null | null | null |
The White House on Wednesday pushed back against Sen. Josh Hawley’s suggestion that the United States would be worse off if Ukraine were admitted to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, accusing the Missouri Republican of “parroting Russian talking points.”
Ukraine is not a member of NATO, the military alliance of 30 mainly Western countries — including the U.S. — united by a mutual defense treaty. But as Russia once again threatens to invade Ukraine, NATO members have been sending troops and other reinforcements to the region, and the question of the country’s potential admission to the alliance has risen to the forefront.
President Biden is dispatching about 3,000 additional service members to Eastern Europe in the coming days, and while he has ruled out any combat deployment to Ukraine, it remains possible that U.S. troops could be directed to assist in the evacuation of American citizens and diplomats from that country.
On Wednesday, Hawley sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken seeking “clarity about the Biden administration’s support for Ukraine’s prospective membership in NATO” and arguing that the U.S. should instead focus on countering China.
“Well, if you are just digesting Russian misinformation and parroting Russian talking points, you are not aligned with long-standing bipartisan American values,” Psaki said at a regular news briefing.
“I think it puts Russia on the defensive,” Gallagher told The Washington Post last week. “And if nothing else Russia knows that it would be a massive escalation if they are going against U.S. forces on the ground.” | null | null | null | null | null |
As small college community mourns, suspect to be arraigned in Bridgewater College officer killings
As students, family and friends grieved them Wednesday, the alleged shooter, Wyatt Campbell, a former student at the 1,460-student college, was set to be arraigned in Rockingham County General District Court on murder charges. The arraignment was set for 1 p.m.
Virginia State Police are investigating the double homicide. They said Tuesday night that they did not have a motive for the shooting, and that there appeared to be only one person involved. They did not have details about what occurred before the shooting, or whether Painter was able to fire his weapon. Campbell, who was slightly wounded, was arrested about 30 minutes after the shooting on an island on the North River not far from campus. Authorities did not know how he had been wounded, and said they had found several guns connected to him while retracing his steps Tuesday. | null | null | null | null | null |
CHICAGO — The 2018 conviction of former police Officer Jason Van Dyke for the killing of Black teenager Laquan McDonald marked an important moment in Chicago’s history. It was the first time in roughly half a century that a member of the police force was found guilty of murder for an on-duty killing and it gave hope to many residents that their officers could be held accountable. | null | null | null | null | null |
Again, remember the math here. A 30-year-old who dies contributes about half a century to the cumulative total, while a 90-year-old who dies of covid contributes much less. If more young people are dying, the cumulative toll increases more quickly. CDC data breaking down deaths by age shows that — particularly during the delta variant wave last summer — deaths among those under the age of 65 surged. In August, 2 in 5 deaths were among people below that age.
Perhaps the most dramatic effect Heun-Johnson and Tysinger found was in the disproportionate distribution of those lost years of life by race. Older Americans had more cumulative years of life lost than did Americans under the age of 65 simply because so many more older people died. But within each of those age groups — over and under 65 — it was Black and Hispanic men and women who lost disproportionately more years of life relative to population.
“The algorithm is falling apart,” Heun-Johnson said, “which is just pretty sad,” given what it implies about the scale of mortality.
For all of the talk about how vaccines have reduced the risk of hospitalization and death from the virus, it is still the case that more than 45,000 people have died on average in each of the last six months. There’s something of a plateau in the death toll since September, one that arose with the delta variant, faded a bit and then began to spike again with omicron. It’s a plateau that exists despite more than half of the population being fully vaccinated.
But, then, the United States has consistently been an outlier in its covid death toll. The country has consistently made up a larger percentage of covid deaths in a month than it does the world’s total population, according to numbers from Our World in Data. In only two months has our toll been disproportionately low instead of disproportionately high. The U.S. makes up more than 3.6 times as much of the cumulative global death toll as we do the global population. | null | null | null | null | null |
“Their stories deserve to be heard,” Maloney said in a telephone interview this week. “This investigation is about holding employers accountable — not just the NFL, but all employers — and ensuring that employees have a safe place to work that is free from harassment and discrimination.”
“The NFL is in a particularly prominent position,” Maloney said. “Its decisions, its treatment of employees and its leadership can have national implications. I believe it would be irresponsible for the committee to allow the NFL to set a precedent for workplaces across the country that they can sweep issues of sexism, [or] racism, homophobia and bigotry under the rug without any accountability.”
“I think this situation is a perfect example of why we need to pass legislation in order to protect not only employees of the Washington Football Team, but, I would say, all over the country.”
While the NFL has replied to some questions raised in the letter, it has not provided any documents. Goodell had reiterated that Wilkinson was not asked to provide a written report and that the NFL would not be share her findings publicly. | null | null | null | null | null |
Transcript: The Path Forward: The Global Economy with Kristalina Georgieva
MR. IGNATIUS: Welcome to Washington Post Live. I’m David Ignatius, a columnist for The Post. This morning my guest is Kristalina Georgieva, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund and the person who oversees our global economy. Madam Director, welcome back to Washington Post Live. It’s great to have you.
MS. GEORGIEVA: Thank you very much for the invitation. Wonderful to be with you.
MR. IGNATIUS: So, I want to start with the issue that I think the whole world is focused on this week, and that is the danger of a Russian invasion of Ukraine and a war in Eastern Europe that would be unlike anything that we've seen in many decades. I want to ask you first about the strictly economic consequences of a conflict there. Have your economists and have you personally begun to make some rough projections about what conflict in Ukraine might mean for global growth, for energy prices, for inflation, for all the issues that the IMF worries about?
MS. GEORGIEVA: At a time of higher uncertainty for growth in the world economy, geopolitical tensions only make the situation more complex, and we already see that in terms of impact on energy prices. We very much hope that there would be a diplomatic solution because of the people of Ukraine, and also because of the necessity to sustain the recovery of the world economy. The two channels of impact are going to be energy prices--already elevated globally, but especially in Europe--and also Ukraine being a breadbasket. Interruption of grain supplies from Ukraine can add to pressures on food prices that have also already gone up. It is so very important to find a pathway to reduce these tensions for the sake of Ukraine, for the sake of the European and world economy.
MR. IGNATIUS: And let me ask one more practical economic question. The U.S. and its NATO allies have warned Russia that if there is an invasion of Ukraine, the response would be massive economic sanctions at a level the U.S. has argued has not been seen before. Tell us about what consequences you think that might have. Obviously, there be consequences for Russia. But what knock-on effects would be likely in the rest of the global economy from a sanctions regime as strict as what people are talking about?
MS. GEORGIEVA: As it has been described, it would inevitably create some interruptions in terms of how financial transactions are being done. The most severe of the proposed sanctions is concerning SWIFT, and that is an element of the functioning of the financial system that inevitably would have a spillover impact, should it be triggered. But again, what we hope for is for pragmatism to prevail. It is not in anybody's interest to continue to exacerbate tensions at a time when the world economy is struggling to retain momentum and is faced with multiple challenges, and I'm sure we will talk about them.
MR. IGNATIUS: We will. Just a final practical economic question before we leave the ominous issue of Ukraine, in the event of an invasion, conflict, sanctions, and the disruptions that would flow from that that you just described, would the IMF stand prepared to provide liquidity and other resources that might be needed on an emergency basis by the world due to the disruptions that would be caused by conflict?
MS. GEORGIEVA: Well, let's start from Ukraine. We have a program--ongoing program with Ukraine, and we have about $2.2 billion available to disburse to Ukraine between now and June under this program. Ukraine has been acting responsibly to build up reserves. It has also benefited from the Special Drawing Rights allocation we have done last year. And in that sense, we see our avenue to support specifically the Ukrainian economy quite clear over the next months.
If we are in a situation in which there are spillover impacts that require more engagement from the IMF for other countries, of course we would be there. We have still about $700 billion lending capacity. But the most important role we play, and we will continue to play, is in assessing what are the impacts of action or inaction, and then making prudent policy recommendations how best to handle the situation as it--as it evolves. So, you can be sure that we are keeping a watching eye, and of course thinking about the possible consequences, what can be done collectively--not just by the IMF, but the international community working together--to secure the recovery from the COVID crisis, and also to support what is in front of us--a very important transition to a green and digital economy. So, we see the case we are describing in Ukraine within a global context that requires such a strong focus on priorities. And again, I repeat my message. A sensible diplomatic solution is the best way forward.
MR. IGNATIUS: Final personal question, one aspect of your remarkable biography is that you grew up in Bulgaria in the years before the end of the Cold War when it was part of the Soviet sphere of influence. I think we’ve all worried about a return to the kind of rhetoric and conflict and divisions in Europe that were part of your childhood. I would just ask you if you’d reflect on the dangers of returning to that kind of Europe of divisions and conflict.
MS. GEORGIEVA: It is heartbreaking to see that there is a risk of again confrontation, and the consequences of this confrontation is ordinary people suffer. My brother is right now in Ukraine in Kharkiv visiting his mother-in-law, and he tells me that the pictures from the '80s and '90s we lived through are back. Stores emptied, people anxious, not knowing what tomorrow will bring. So when we talk about geopolitical tensions, we need to remember it is ordinary people who bear the brunt of their impact. And if we can prevent a repeat of what we know was painful for so many hundreds of millions of people, that would be a very noble objective, and I hope we will pursue it.
MR. IGNATIUS: Thank you for bringing that personal perspective to this crisis. Let me turn now to your basic work as managing director of the IMF, and that’s overseeing global economic trends. The IMF just issued in late January a pretty bleak assessment of trends. The headline was “rising caseloads,” meaning COVID caseloads, “disrupted economy and higher inflation.” You said in releasing the report, “I would have liked very much to have had a more optimistic outlook at the beginning of the year, but the reality is we’re looking at a somewhat weaker momentum of the recovery and higher uncertainties, more risks in 2022.” So I want to unpack that outlook document that you released, starting with COVID, the rising caseloads. The continued burden of the pandemic two years on obviously is a fact of life we all live with. Everybody’s struggling to think when we’ll begin to crest and return more to normal. What do--what do your economists, analysts, the people who help you think about the world economy think about the course for COVID around the world?
MS. GEORGIEVA: Well, let me start from the good news, and it is the recovery continues--yes, at a slower pace, but we need to remember that in the beginning of this crisis we feared a great depression. We feared 10 percent contraction of the world economy in 2020. That didn’t happen because of the coordinated strong fiscal and monetary policy response--in other words, helping households and helping businesses through a period of standstill in the world economy. But the momentum is slowing for two reasons. One is a slowdown in the two big engines of the world economy, U.S. and China. And the second one, as you rightly pointed out, is COVID. It is still with us. It causes restrictions, and these restrictions translate into interruptions of global supply chains that on its own is a problem because it adds pressure on prices to go up. And in that environment, the way I would describe '22 is navigating an obstacle course, with the three big obstacles being still COVID--you rightly put your finger on it--but then inflation, and the measures we need to take to combat inflation; and then high levels of debt.
So going to COVID, we must admit that despite all the progress that has been made in vaccinations, testing and tracing, treatments, we are not yet delivering sufficient support to the countries that are falling behind. Eighty-six countries in 2021 did not reach the target of at least 40 percent vaccination of their people. In low-income countries, vaccinations are at 5 percent. In rich countries, at 70 percent. Why is this a problem? Because what we do is we retain a breeding ground for more and more and more COVID variants, and also because we are interrupting the normal functioning of our economy. One of the big problems we have created over the last two years is this dangerous divergence between the countries that are already reaching their pre-pandemic levels--rich countries, some of the emerging market economies, and everybody else.
And what I want to put on the radar screen of our listeners is that for two decades the world was doing the right thing. There was convergence, poorer countries catching up. That is good for their people. It is also good for peace and security in the world. For a first time in decades, the opposite is happening. Poorer countries are getting poorer, and they are getting less stable, more vulnerable. So my main message today is that everywhere we have to build up defense against COVID. Pandemic policy is economic policy. The biggest risk for the performance of the world economy remains this year COVID and the disruption it causes. So continue relentlessly--as much as we are now tired of it, continue relentlessly to build this defense.
MR. IGNATIUS: I think, Madan Director, you’ve just answered the question I was going to put to you. There is a growing debate in the United States, and I think in Europe and other countries too, about whether, as we see the peak of the omicron variant, it's time to think about returning to something closer to normal. Is it time for children in schools to ease mask restrictions is one basic part of this debate. And I'm curious about your view. I think I hear you saying, no, we need to keep vigilant for a while longer, rather than begin to talk about a return to normal.
MS. GEORGIEVA: Actually, these two things are related. The higher our defenses are, the more we can return to normal. And in that sense, what we see is that when vaccinations rates are very high, when the testing and tracing is effective, when there is sufficient capacity to treat patients, we have normalization of economic activities. And this is what we have to pursue. We have learned to live and function with the COVID still around us. But we have to retain our capacity to protect health systems from being overburdened, because this is what creates panic. If I get sick, would I be treated? And to do so, we have all the responsibility to take actions in that regard. Protect yourself, protect your families, protect the functioning of the economy so we can be in a much more normal environment to live and work.
MR. IGNATIUS: Let me ask about the second part of your January forecast, which is the disrupted recovery. What struck me, Madam Director, wasn't simply lowering the forecast for this year--it’s lower by 1.2 percentage points for the U.S. than had been forecast, lower by eight-tenths of a point for China--it's that your forecast going into 2023, next year, continues to be bleak, and in fact is even lower. You're forecasting a decline from 5.9 percent in 2021, to 4.4 percent in 2022, and then down to 3.8 percent in 2023. In that situation of continuing slowing growth, should we be thinking more about economic stimulus? That's gotten a little bit of a bad name because of inflation fears, but do you think we need to be thinking more about stimulus to prevent that sharp downward slope in the growth curve?
MS. GEORGIEVA: We have to recognize that some of this slowdown is natural, because we get a bump when we are overcoming the contraction of the economy. In other words, as countries return to their pre-pandemic levels, it is natural that the growth rate will, if you wish, normalize. But it is also true that before we stepped into this pandemic in 2019, we were concerned about slow growth, low productivity. And also, we were concerned about new risks to macroeconomic and financial stability, such as climate shocks. None of this has gone away.
And when we look into the future, what we need to concentrate our attention on is how to boost productivity, and on that basis, rely on a higher growth. We know some of the elements of productivity boost--invest in people, skilled, educated, and also agile, able to move from a job to a job so they can contribute to the economy, invest in research and development, invest in new technologies, because they provide a potential for higher growth; and also invest in infrastructure, both the normal physical infrastructure, but also the digital infrastructure so we can see goods and services are being better integrated.
I am very keen that we don't lose sight that prior to the pandemic things were not so great. And if you remember 2019 was also the year of protests in Chile, in Paris, in Lebanon, and what we are seeing today is reemergence of these protests. What is the fundamental problem that that pushes people to protest? Well, fairness, or the lack of it. And if we think about a major, major factor for economies to be more dynamic, it is for these economies to be more inclusive, that everybody can participate, that women are not left out because they lack childcare, or affordable childcare, they can't get into the labor market. And that issue of inclusiveness of the economy is one that actually is on a weaker footing today, because the pandemic, unfortunately, has contributed to increase in inequality within countries, across countries. And that is where that key investment in people from the moment they are able to get into a preschool, through how they arrive, I believe is very, very, very important, and removing the barriers for participating in the economy so we can rely on everybody's contribution and do better for all of us.
MR. IGNATIUS: Let me ask you about one more obstacle in the obstacle course as you’ve described it earlier, and that's inflation. You talk in your assessment about the likelihood that assuming inflation expectations stay well anchored, is the phrase that that you use, inflation should gradually wane this year. And I was left uncertain as to where you are in what's really been an interesting debate among economists about inflation. There's the Larry Summers view for shorthand that says we've got a real problem here, and that inflation expectations, in fact, are growing in the global economy. And then our Fed Chairman Jay Powell has said no; it's largely transitory. He's modified that a bit. But tell us where you are, in your judgment, about how fundamental inflationary pressure is today in the global economy.
MS. GEORGIEVA: Inflation is a more significant economic and social problem than we thought it would be some months ago. What is that we learned new that helps us to reassess the role of inflation, and then on that basis the necessity to take measures--central banks to step forward--take measures to combatting inflation?
First, what we learned is that the interruptions in global supply chains are longer lasting than we initially thought. We were hopeful that they would be brought under control as early as in the first half of this year of 2022. Now, we see that they are likely to continue, both because the waves of COVID are still causing the necessity of some restrictions, but also because other factors contribute to pressures on supplies.
Let's take one. We moved quite significantly away from services to goods. What does it mean? Much more demand for computers, for cars, for equipments that are necessary to produce all these goods. And the result is supply just cannot easily catch up.
We also were underestimating the climate factor and the pressure it puts on food prices. We have to recognize we are in a more shock-prone world, and we do need to expect these kinds of shocks to be a factor in the future.
And last but not least, we did--we underestimated somewhat how much delayed consumption--in other words, people getting support through various forms of stimulus and putting it into savings--can contribute to a much stronger consumer demand. So, we are in a situation in which, indeed, we recognize that it is important not only to rely on inflation expectations being well-anchored, but to seek some interventions that would bring inflation under control. Central banks are doing it. They're doing it very carefully, in a deliberate manner, communicating their intentions. And the Fed has done a very good job in that regard here in the United States. In many emerging market economies, steps have been taken even earlier, because inflation became a problem of a larger magnitude earlier.
We need to recognize, though, two issues. One, in '22, conditions in different countries are very different. We are talking about fighting inflation in the United States. And in Japan, they're fighting to boost inflation because they cannot reach their 2 percent target. So, there is an accordion [phonetic] of the presence of this problem, and therefore, measures to be applied.
And the second point that we need to be very mindful of is that taking action to combat inflation has to be very well calibrated against the objective of supporting the recovery. So that balancing act is one that, again, needs to be calibrated in every country. And we need to be very agile, data driven, what is it that we learn, because when we think about inflation, and increase of interest--you know, withdrawal of quantitative easing, raising interest rates, that has spillover impact on access to credit and growth opportunities--the theme we were discussing before. It also has spillover impact on other countries. And there, we have to be mindful of the other obstacle on our course, and it is higher level of debt. In 2020, because we needed to support an economy in standstill, both governments and private sector households borrowed more than they usually would. Debt levels in 2020 reached $226 trillion--the largest increase in debt since the Second World War.
Now we look at that picture, obviously, a good performance of the economy would allow debt levels to gradually go down on average. But for countries under a high level of debt, that happened to be slow on the COVID recovery--because of low vaccinations, because of limited space--that change in policy, that increasing rates by the Fed, by other central banks, by their own banks, central banks, that can be quite restrictive for their own recovery.
And I want to finish with this picture. In 2015, 30 percent of low-income countries were in debt distress or close to it. In 2021, they reached 60 percent. And obviously, we have to be very mindful of measures that can be taken to prevent in different places debt problems turning into a, you know, domestic economic catastrophe. And the Fund plays a very important role in that regard.
MR. IGNATIUS: So that's a somber note to conclude on, the possibility that debt could produce, in your words, a catastrophe if it's not managed. May I ask you a final question, Madam Director? Fed Chairman Powell and the Federal Reserve has signaled that it could begin raising interest rates for the first time in three years in March. We've talked about the inflation issues, but also the need to sustain growth, encourage greater growth. Do you think the Feds--this apparent decision to begin raising interest rates is a wise one?
MS. GEORGIEVA: Given the problem of inflation that, as I said, is an economic concern, it is also a social concern. The Fed is right to be driven by data and take appropriate steps. And let's remember. Even with taking these steps, financial conditions remain very accommodative. In other words, we are far from interest rates, real interest rates that can really bite. And I am confident that the Fed will sustain that well-calibrated, well-communicated policy actions so the recovery can continue, and at the same time, we can put the brakes on inflation.
But again, inflation is a complex phenomenon. It is also a result of COVID. So, back to my message. We need to think of pandemic actions as economic policy tools, because if we reduce the risks of more variants and more lockdowns, we are helping supplies to come on time, and we are helping the economy to recover faster.
MR. IGNATIUS: So, Kristalina Georgieva, again, thank you for joining us and offering a lucid tour of the world economies, some complicated subjects you made, I think, clear for our viewers. Thank you so much for joining us.
MS. GEORGIEVA: Thank you for having me.
MR. IGNATIUS: So, we’ll be back with future programming. I encourage everyone to check it out and see the interviews we’ve got coming up. Head to washingtonpostlive.com to register for future programs and find out what we’ve got ahead. Thank you for joining us today. | null | null | null | null | null |
In this photo illustration, “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast is viewed on Spotify's mobile app on January 31, 2022 in New York City. (Cindy Ord/Getty Images)
Last week, as a public firestorm grew over Joe Rogan and his promotion of medical misinformation, some employees at audio company Spotify made a desperate bid to draw attention to their concerns about their company’s relationship with the blockbuster podcaster — who gets millions of dollars to broadcast exclusively on their platform.
Dozens of workers on a companywide internal chat system said they were embarrassed to work at the Swedish company, which has long been known for egalitarian values, consensus-driven decision-making, and a relaxed, music-loving culture. Some said they knew health care workers who were aghast at Spotify’s support for Rogan, according to company documents and screenshots of the conversations reviewed by The Washington Post. In recent months, Rogan has made scientifically inaccurate comments about vaccines and hosted a prominent anti-vaccine advocate who argued that Americans had been “hypnotized” into wearing masks.
The company reports fourth quarter earnings Wednesday after the markets close. It’s unclear how many subscriptions the company has lost amid the controversy.
In 2020, when Rogan first came on board with a reportedly $100 million deal, workers spoke out because he had hosted white nationalists and an author who said that young people transitioning to become transgender was “contagion” that could infect their peers with the same ideas. Some employees argued that it was time for their employer to exercise editorial oversight.
Though some previous Rogan shows were pulled at the time — including an episode featuring Gavin McInnes, founder of the far-right group Proud Boys — Rogan went on to have largely free creative license, the people said. In 2021, Rogan repeatedly promoted the anti-parasite drug ivermectin as an effective treatment for the coronavirus, though there is only contested and no widespread scientific Oevidence that ivermectin is an effective treatment, according to liberal media-monitoring organization Media Matters. He has also repeatedly called mRNA vaccines “gene therapy,” though scientists say the vaccines do not alter peoples’ genes. He hosted a guest who described being transgendered as a “mental illness” and who had been banned from Twitter. | null | null | null | null | null |
Though some previous Rogan shows were pulled at the time — including an episode featuring Gavin McInnes, founder of the far-right group Proud Boys — Rogan went on to have largely free creative license, the people said. In 2021, Rogan repeatedly promoted the anti-parasite drug ivermectin as an effective treatment for the coronavirus, though there is only contested and no widespread scientific Oevidence that ivermectin is an effective treatment, according to the liberal media-monitoring organization Media Matters. He has also repeatedly called mRNA vaccines “gene therapy,” though scientists say the vaccines do not alter peoples’ genes. He hosted a guest who described being transgender as a “mental illness” and who had been banned from Twitter. | null | null | null | null | null |
As students, family and friends grieved them Wednesday, the alleged shooter, Wyatt Campbell, a 27-year-old former student at the 1,460-student college, was in Rockingham County General District Court on murder charges. A judge appointed him a local private attorney and ordered him held without bond.
Virginia State Police are investigating the double homicide. They said Tuesday night that they did not have a motive for the shooting, and that there appeared to be only one person involved. They did not have details about what occurred before the shooting, or whether Painter was able to fire his weapon. No motive for the attack was immediately known
Campbell, who was slightly wounded, was arrested about 30 minutes after the shooting on an island on the North River not far from campus. Authorities did not know how he had been wounded, and said they had found several guns connected to him while retracing his steps Tuesday.
Campbell, in the Rockingham County jail, appeared by video at his arraignment in district court in Harrisonburg. He wore an orange-and-white striped jail shirt, and stared blankly into the camera.
To determine whether Campbell could afford an attorney, Rockingham General District Court Judge Ian Williams asked him what he did for a living. Campbell said he was self-employed, producing music and art, and had virtually no income. Apart from $1,000 in his bank account and a 2003 Mercedes-Benz, he had no assets. “Do you pay yourself anything?” the judge asked. “About $100 a week,” Campbell said. It was not clear whether he still lived with his mother in Hanover, Va.
Criminal defense attorney A. Gene Hart Jr. was in the courtroom, and Williams appointed him to represent Campbell. Hart told the judge he planned to seek a mental health evaluation for Campbell to determine whether he is fit to stand trial. Then Hart, the judge and Rockingham County Commonwealth’s Attorney Marsha Grast worked out the details of holding another hearing on Feb. 16, while Campbell watched silently from the jail. Williams ordered Campbell to continue to be held without bond.
Though Campbell is charged with two counts of capital murder, he cannot face the death penalty. Virginia eliminated capital punishment as a penalty last year. | null | null | null | null | null |
The Oorang Indians played a century before the Washington Football Team rebranded following its controversial Native American-derived name
The Oorang Indians played in the NFL in 1922-1923 and had all Native American players, including Olympic star Jim Thorpe, third from left in back row, as a player-coach. (Adam Bauer/Courtesy of Cumberland County Historical Society in Pennsylvania)
A photo in this article of Jim Thorpe incorrectly said it was courtesy of the Cumberland County Historical Society in Pennsylvania. It was courtesy of the Marion County Historical Society in Ohio. It has been corrected.
On Wednesday, Washington’s National Football League team unveiled its new name, following a lengthy campaign by Native American activists to abandon an identity long seen as a racial slur. | null | null | null | null | null |
While Republicans in Washington have largely been in agreement on pushing Biden to get tougher against Russian President Vladimir Putin, they differ on the issue of sending U.S. troops to the region. Some, such as Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), have argued in favor of sending as much as a battalion of troops to Ukraine.
Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said in a tweet that he “completely” supports the Biden administration’s decision to send more U.S. troops.
“It is imperative that NATO meet the moment and that we stand firmly against Putin’s efforts to divide the alliance,” Graham said. “Sending additional forces is the right signal, and over time more may be warranted.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Washington’s professional football franchise renamed itself on Wednesday for the second time in two years, the final break from the racially fraught moniker it held for decades and the placeholder Washington Football Team it became in 2020.
Washington Redskins to Washington Football Team to Washington Commanders
The football team first known as the Boston Braves became the Boston Redskins in 1933, then Washington Redskins in 1937. The National Football League franchise took the name for its first coach, William Henry Dietz, who claimed to be of Native American heritage. But activists have long criticized it as derogatory against Indigenous people. The franchise dropped the name in 2020 amid a national wave of civil rights demonstrations and temporarily rebranded as the Washington Football Team. On Wednesday, it took on the name Washington Commanders. | null | null | null | null | null |
Three years ago, Spotify staked its future on bringing in more listeners and advertising dollars with exclusive licensing deals for podcasts with prominent figures, including Rogan, Michelle Obama, and Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. But as the company has transitioned from a music streaming service with a hands-off approach to policing content, company leaders have failed to embrace the responsibilities that come with being a producer of controversial content, the people said.
Though some previous Rogan shows were pulled at the time — including an episode featuring Gavin McInnes, founder of the far-right group Proud Boys — Rogan went on to have largely free creative license, the people said. In 2021, Rogan repeatedly promoted the anti-parasite drug ivermectin as an effective treatment for the coronavirus, though there is only contested and no widespread scientific evidence that ivermectin is an effective treatment, according to the liberal media-monitoring organization Media Matters. He has also repeatedly called mRNA vaccines “gene therapy,” though scientists say the vaccines do not alter peoples’ genes. He hosted a guest who described being transgender as a “mental illness” and who had been banned from Twitter. | null | null | null | null | null |
This photo provided by Andrea J. Cheeney shows four generations of the McKane family pose with an inflatable tank at the Ghost Army exhibit on June 7, 2021 at Historical Society of Cheshire County, Keene N.H. Their patriarch and local resident Mickey McKane was involved with the Ghost Army Unit. Members of two top-secret World War II military units referred to as the “Ghost Army” will be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal more than 75 years after their service, under legislation signed into law by President Joe Biden, Tuesday, Feb. 1, 2022. ( Andrea J. Cheeney via AP) (Uncredited/Andrea J. Cheeney) | null | null | null | null | null |
In this photo provided by the Animal Welfare League of Arlington, is a wandering chicken that was caught sneaking around a security area at the Pentagon, a local animal welfare organization said. The loose hen was found Monday, Jan. 31, 2022, near the U.S. Department of Defense headquarters, the Animal Welfare League of Arlington wrote in a tweet. She has been named Henny Penny. (Animal Welfare League of Arlington via AP) (Uncredited/Animal Welfare League of Arlington) | null | null | null | null | null |
From left, former quarterback Joe Theismann, team owner Daniel Snyder, defensive tackle Jonathan Allen, and owner Tanya Snyder share the stage to unveil the team's new Washington Commanders name and uniforms at FedEx Field. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
Finally, it has a name. Eighteen months after dropping its longtime name and beginning an extensive search for a new one, Washington’s NFL team revealed Wednesday that it will be the Commanders, a tribute to Washington’s military ties.
The much-anticipated announcement, made at FedEx Field with owners Daniel and Tanya Snyder present, along with team president Jason Wright and nearly a dozen current and former players, formally closes the team’s 87-year chapter as the Redskins and marks the start of a new era — at least aesthetically — with the hope Commanders both resonates with fans and reflects the makeup of the Washington area, home to the Pentagon and bases for every branch of the military.
On a makeshift stage set up in a pavilion outside the stadium, Daniel Snyder gave a brief, scripted speech thanking those involved in the rebranding process for “helping us to connect our past to our future.” Tanya Snyder, his wife and co-CEO, offered similar words before unveiling three mannequins outfitted in the team’s new uniforms — one in all burgundy, another all-white set and the alternate black uniforms.
“We landed on this in part because we believe the Washington Commanders can carry the rich legacy of this team. A championship legacy,” Wright added. “It’s something that broadly resonated with our fans in this process, and it’s something that embodies the values of service and leadership that really characterize the DMV.”
Three decades removed from its last championship and the glory years of Coach Joe Gibbs, the team’s beloved former coach, Washington’s legacy is complicated, and, more recently, fraught with controversy and litigation. Since Snyder purchased the team in 1999, Washington has produced only five winning seasons and has been plagued by off-field woes — from its controversial name, considered a slur and the target of Native American protests, to the dozens of accusations of sexual harassment and bullying in the workplace.
On Thursday, only a day after the team announced its new name, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform will hold a roundtable titled “Examining the Washington Football Team’s Toxic Workplace Culture.” The goal of the discussion is to give congressional members a chance to hear firsthand accounts of former team employees who experienced harassment and a toxic culture while working for the team, which may help form potential legislation related to workplace harassment and discrimination.
From the archives: Ex-employees decry Washington’s NFL team workplace
The stakes surrounding a rebranding couldn’t be higher. The team has been bleeding fans with shrinking attendance figures and lackluster merchandise sales, and it has spent the past several years negotiating with Maryland, Virginia and D.C. governments about land for a new stadium, desperate to move on from the aging FedEx Field in Landover, Md. Some officials in the District said a stadium in the city could not happen until the team changed its name.
Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) said Wednesday’s announcement is “a new, necessary chapter,” and called on the team, which is headquartered in Virginia and has played its home games in the Maryland suburbs since 1997, to return to the District.
Even with the congressional inquiry and harassment allegations hanging overhead, team officials were eager to declare Wednesday the start of a new era, not simply a new coat of paint.
“We have an opportunity right now to do something a little bit different, and that’s an opportunity to go forward,” said Commanders Coach Ron Rivera. “With the Redskins and with the Washington Football Team, we dealt with some pretty anxious situations and circumstances — serious ones. And now’s an opportunity to establish that we’re starting a new chapter. We’re turning the new page, we’re going to go forward.”
The team now hopes its fan base — the loyal, the apathetic and the angry — embraces the new name and new logo as a new rallying point.
Team officials knew a name wouldn’t please everyone — like Snyder, many resisted a change for years — and the immediate reaction across the region was decidedly mixed with many bar stool pundits criticizing the reveal as uninspiring.
“I don’t think it shows a lot of imagination,” said Sean Cissel, 42, who grew up in Prince George’s County rooting on Gibbs’ Super Bowl-winning teams. He said winning games would certainly influence his fandom, as he’s increasingly distanced himself emotionally from the team in recent years.
“Just anything that Snyder touches, I think, for a lot of fans like me, is going to be automatically a loser,” Cissel said.
Still, some fans gathered at FedEx Field hours before the press-only announcement, arriving as early as 3 a.m. to buy new Commanders merchandise. Stephen Boyd, known around the stadium as “Rally Captain,” wore his signature chain and “W,” and said “we’re going to do what it takes to get the fan base riled up to get behind” the franchise’s new identity.
“A lot of people aren’t gonna like it,” he said. “But there’s also going to be a few out here that do like it. Give it time. They will eventually gravitate to it. It’s gonna take a minute. But the fact of the matter is, we’re here. We’re die-hards and we aren’t going anywhere.”
Washington’s rebrand was years in the making, dating back to the early 1970s when its old name received criticism and even drew protests for being derogatory toward Native Americans. For years, Snyder vowed he would “NEVER, in all caps” get rid of the Redskins name. But that changed in 2020, when the murder of George Floyd sparked protests worldwide and led to an intensified national discussion about racial equality. The team’s top sponsors, including FedEx and Pepsi Co., threatened to pull the plug on their agreements, and as the pressure mounted, the team finally relented in July 2020, deciding to retire its moniker and adopt the Washington Football Team as a temporary name while it began to overhaul its front office and find a new identity.
“I don’t think they had a lot of choice but to go with this interim brand name because I think the pressure came fairly quickly,” Washington’s former vice president of strategic marketing, George Perry said. “You have to make sure you get the right brand, and it looks like they’ve done a lot of research and tried to get it right.”
Wright, who was hired a month after Washington shed its old name, helped lead a search and remained the face of the initiative, appearing in promotional videos and writing letters to fans on the team’s website. Along with members of his executive team, the digital creative agency Code & Theory, designers from Nike, and NFL executives, Wright guided a rebrand that he said focused heavily on the input of fans, alumni and current players and coaches.
Former quarterback Doug Williams, now a senior advisor to Wright, participated in focus groups to weigh in on possible names and logos. His preference was to keep the Washington Football Team. He said he’s embraced the Commanders, but moving on from the team’s old name is bittersweet.
“But we all realize that the name has to be changed,” he said. “So we’ve got to grab onto this name, put our arms around it and go from here.
“We’re the Washington Commanders. But at the end of the day, when you put your Super Bowl ring on, you know what it says,” he continued. Speculation over the team’s new name was rampant on social media in the months preceding the announcement. Internet sleuths scoured trademark applications and website domains, and found clues hidden in videos posted on the team’s website. Leaks of the logo and the name were circulated, and interviews with alumni, notably Joe Theismann, only validated many fans’ theories.
Then on the eve of the announcement, a news helicopter for the local NBC affiliate zeroed in on a Commanders banner hanging inside FedEx Field, a dead giveaway just hours before the launch.
“Welcome to not the best-kept secret in D.C.,” Daniel Snyder said jokingly as he stepped up to a podium outside the stadium Wednesday to present the new name and uniforms.
The announcement elicited reaction across the NFL and beyond, with even President Biden tweeting: “I suppose there’s room for two Commanders in this town,” along with a photo of his puppy, Commander, in front of the White House.
As fans continue to digest the new identity, the Washington Commanders must tackle an even bigger hurdle. With a new name, new logo and new uniforms, any semblance of true change will likely start with its performance on the field.
“It’s an opportunity for our players as we step into this new phase of our organization to build a new legacy,” Rivera said. “Believe me, that’s something I’m going to harp on with our players. This is our chance to do that, and probably the best way, obviously, is to win.”
Andrew Golden contributed to this report. | null | null | null | null | null |
D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) at an appearance in December. She is pushing legislation that would change how D.C. judicial appointments are confirmed to avoid delays in seating nominees. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
“This is a tremendous jumping off point and puts us in a place where we haven’t been in several years,” said Douglas Buchanan, spokesman for the courts.
D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) applauded the Senate action on Wednesday afternoon, but said it was time to change how D.C. judicial nominees were confirmed to avoid such long delays. Norton has put forth legislation that would allow D.C. judicial nominees to be automatically confirmed after a 30-day congressional review period if lawmakers don’t object during that time frame, which is similar to how D.C. legislation is reviewed in Congress.
Nominees for the D.C. courts go through a more complicated nomination process than federal judges. They are first selected by the Judicial Nomination Commission, whose members are appointed by local and federal appointed officials. The commission sends their selections to the president, who nominates one of them and sends the nominee to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee for consideration.
But once nominees advance from committee, they can languish for months or years.
Buchanan warned in December that the courts had “reached a critical state," and pleaded with the Senate to act to confirm the judicial nominees as quickly as possible. “We have now reached a point in which we find it necessary to sound the alarm,” he said at the time.
One of the Court of Appeals nominees the Senate took up on Wednesday, D.C. Solicitor General Loren L. AliKhan, had said in her nomination hearing that the court’s backlog was the most pressing problem confronting the court, sometimes causing years-long delays in cases.
D.C. Council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6,) who chairs the council’s judiciary committee, said he was grateful the Senate made progress Wednesday, but said the dozen vacancies still present problems. | null | null | null | null | null |
Hail to the joyless: Washington’s new brand forgets that football is fun
Washington Commanders team president Jason Wright addresses the media and Washington alumni Doug Williams, left, and Dexter Manley, right, wear jackets bearing the team's new crest. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
Commanders. That’s the name that emerged from 18 months of focus groups, letter-writing campaigns, surveys and countless marketing meetings. It’s a name that calls to mind a certain presidential German shepherd puppy, as well as the beloved new wave clothing store, Commander Salamander, that once attracted a tidal wave of young shoppers to Georgetown in the 1980s and 90s. But mostly, it speaks of hierarchy, authority and force.
The new name is meant to signify a fresh start for a team that over the years has managed to be an exemplar of most everything that ails the culture: sexual harassment, racial insensitivity, cultural appropriation and the stubborn self-righteousness of a privileged businessman who had to be bullied and shamed into ridding his team of a moniker that was little more than a slur. With all that grotesquerie in its lineage, the name reads as unjustified hubris, rather than what it should have been: an attempt to recall and get back to the essence of what draws so many young men and women to sports long before they have any idea of their athletic abilities, long before they understand sports as a business and a high-pressure identity. They simply want to play. They want to be part of a team. And there is glory in that.
The crest is trying to do a multitude of things and woo a host of people: die-hard fans, estranged aficionados and no small number of DC officials who have been opposed to the team moving back into the city unless it dropped its former name. The crest doesn’t make a single, bold new statement. It mumbles platitudes. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: How ‘woke’ became the least-woke word in U.S. English
In 1937, the Black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey, who advocated that Black Americans physically return to Africa, was a strong proponent of a mental return to the mother continent before physical repatriation could take place. “We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery,” Garvey said, “for though others may free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind.”
The Nation of Islam minister Malcolm X later criticized the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. for his “I Have a Dream” speech, insisting the civil rights leader could be dreaming only if he were asleep.
Yet “woke” flowed into U.S. parlance, bandied about across ethnic lines despite its origins. David Brooks, for instance — the White New York Times columnist — wrote in 2017: “To be woke is to be radically aware and justifiably paranoid. It is to be cognizant of the rot pervading the power structures.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: Emissions aren’t limited to gas stoves
Reporting on natural gas stoves, including The Post’s recent article “Study details environmental risks of household gas stoves” [News, Jan. 28], fails to recognize that cooking on both gas and electric stoves releases emissions, and that indoor air quality is just as dependent on the type of food cooked, length of cooking and ventilation as the energy source being used.
Proper ventilation when cooking with both gas and electricity can improve indoor air quality tremendously — a point that was highlighted by a recent study conducted by Catalyst Environmental Solutions and the California Restaurant Association. Safety measures and existing regulatory appliance standards provide gas stove owners with the ability to leverage the reliability and efficiency of natural gas, which is nearly 2½ times more efficient than electricity when used directly inside the home while saving customers almost $900 annually.
While federal regulations based on tests and research from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and other federal agencies do not consider gas ranges to be a health hazard for consumers, a position held by both Republican and Democratic administrations, municipal gas utilities in cities and towns across the country are committed to helping educate their customers on the safety of natural gas cooking and ways to reduce emissions from the cooking process.
Dave Schryver, Washington
The writer is president and CEO of the American Public Gas Association. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: A failure by the Supreme Court to see the value in diversity
The U.S. Supreme Court. (Stefani Reynolds for The Washington Post)
Regarding Paul Butler’s Jan. 28 op-ed, “This high court will doom affirmative action”:
It has been almost 70 years since the Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education. Yet too many people, most of them White, have not learned its lessons.
I was lucky to grow up in D.C. during the 1950s and 1960s. I saw the most important demographic changes in the city: the “blockbusting” and “White flight” immediately subsequent to Brown; the urban renewal and Black removal in Southwest D.C.; and the fear by self-professed tolerant Whites in Shepherd Park, Colonial Village and North Portal Estates of sending their children to Paul Junior High and Coolidge High schools.
By attending school in D.C., I learned that Blacks and Whites have the same values, are equally smart and aspire to the same American Dream.
Unfortunately, people continue to self-segregate, and not just where they live. They choose different schools, different books and even different cultures. How will they ever learn about one another if they are not exposed to each other? By taking a case on the methods institutions of higher education use to choose their student bodies, the reactionaries on the Supreme Court are positioned to hammer still another nail into Brown by holding that universities may not foster diversity in thinking and education by ensuring that some students of all races, religions and socioeconomic statuses are admitted.
Mr. Butler was right: The failure to permit universities to choose their own student bodies will result in resegregation of our most important schools.
Bruce N. Shulman, Silver Spring | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: Youngkin runs afoul when it comes to education
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) in Richmond on Jan. 27.
In his Jan. 26 op-ed, “Virginia’s parents can decide what’s best for their children,” Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) argued in support of his executive order to allow parents to decide whether their children should wear masks in school. He stated: “As governor, it is my duty to protect the health and welfare of Virginians.” While I respect his intent in allowing parents autonomy in caring for children, this decision was not necessarily in the interest of Virginia’s “health and welfare.”
As a student myself, I do agree that learning in masks was a bit difficult at first. However, after a semester of masked, in-person learning, wearing masks is no longer a challenge. Like parents, many of my peers and I have no desire to return to virtual learning. An outbreak of covid-19 at school would cause exactly that, and masks are proven to prevent this.
Letting up in safety protocols now will only prolong the time that we spend in the shadow of covid-19. As Mr. Youngkin mentioned, students are under “tremendous stress,” especially after more than a year of virtual learning. We should rethink adding the worry for the safety of the school environment and of circumventing maskless peers to students’ already full plates.
Elise Zhu, Oakton
Regarding Dana Milbank’s Jan. 27 Thursday Opinion commentary, “For Youngkin’s kids, anti-racist education was okay”:
Thanks go to Mr. Milbank for his praise of the National Cathedral School (NCS) and the commitment of its leaders, faculty, staff and parents who continue to be dedicated to creating a diverse environment for the benefit of its students. As Mr. Milbank stated, this policy has been a part of NCS “for many years.” NCS was one of the first independent schools to diversify its student body in the 1950s. Although it has not always been an easy journey, the school has progressed over these 68 years to become an inclusive institution for young women. Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s political posturing smacks of the parental admonition “Do as I say, not as I do.”
Elizabeth Dietel, Bethesda
The writer is a former faculty member and director of admissions at National Cathedral School. | null | null | null | null | null |
In considering whether to give emergency-use authorization to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children under 5 years old, it is imperative that the Food and Drug Administration retains public trust and protects the integrity of the process. Many parents are eager for their children to get this vaccine, but many others may be hesitant. The FDA is taking an unusual route in considering the merits and must not leave any doubts in the air.
The anxiety of parents about children under 5 is acute: these are the only Americans not yet eligible for a vaccine. Overall, in billions of doses, the mRNA vaccines have proven safe and effective. Although children represent a small percentage of pandemic hospitalizations, and deaths are rare, the case numbers have spiked during the omicron wave.
Pfizer said Dec. 17 that a two-dose vaccine worked well to stimulate antibodies in children from 6 months to 2 years old in a clinical trial, but did not work in children from 2 years old to under 5. The company said it would attempt a clinical trial with a third dose, to see if that got better results, and if successful, it would seek an emergency-use authorization from the FDA for a three-dose regimen. At issue is not vaccine safety or tolerance, but whether it is effective.
On Tuesday, Pfizer announced the FDA has requested that it submit information for an emergency-use authorization of the first two doses, leaving the third for later. This raises the question: What has changed since the December announcement that those two didn’t work? We may learn more when the matter comes before an FDA advisory committee soon. Pfizer said results on the third dose would only be available in “the coming months.”
In statements, the FDA and Pfizer both pointed to the omicron surge as the reason for the unusual process. An FDA spokesperson said the new variant “has rapidly facilitated the collection of important additional clinical data impacting the potential benefit-risk profile of a vaccine for the youngest children.” The FDA felt it was “prudent” to get the data from Pfizer now instead of waiting, especially because of “notable increase in reports of children experiencing covid-19 long haul symptoms, including in some cases children developing autoimmune diseases and Type 1 diabetes after having had covid-19.”
The company and the FDA are right to feel a sense of urgency. But parents will be asking: Should they start with two doses, given Pfizer’s statement that in the earlier trial, they didn’t work for children from 2 to under 5? Should parents be comfortable starting a vaccine series — which Pfizer calls a “a planned three-dose primary series” — without knowing anything about the effectiveness of the third dose? | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: Where Afghanistan is concerned, we suffer from a serious case of hypocrisy
Taliban fighters pray in Kabul on Jan. 31.
I was very disappointed by the Jan. 28 editorial “A split decision.” Of course, I don’t respect and perhaps fear what could come of the Taliban’s rule, but far worse would be the deaths of 1 million adults and children. The United States and its allies created a dependent economy. The United States spent $300 million a day during the war, according to an August analysis by Forbes.
The editorial board speaks as though providing 4.3 million doses of coronavirus vaccine is almost enough to get us off the hook. What right do we have to control money deposited in good faith in our banks, refusing the self-declared government from saving its people’s lives? From paying its teachers, doctors and all government employees?
I need not name the grossly undemocratic countries that we have supported with aid sometimes designated for the purchase of U.S.-manufactured arms, as well as countries to which we continue to sell arms — or bullets to kill children in their own and neighboring countries. We suffer from a serious case of hypocrisy.
Marilyn Carlisle, Baltimore
The writer is vice president of the MD Peace Action Education Fund. | null | null | null | null | null |
The threats have put a strain on the entire community, Howard officials said, and the campus will close Friday for a mental health day.
“Recent events, from the persistence of the COVID-19 pandemic to the multiple bomb threats issued against our institution, have taken a toll on all members of our community,” said Wayne A.I. Frederick, the university’s president in an email to the community. “It is my hope that we may return to our responsibilities on Monday rejuvenated and energized.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Mel Mermelstein, Auschwitz survivor who challenged Holocaust deniers, dies at 95
Mel Mermelstein, a survivor of the Auschwitz death camp, gazes upon the artifacts of the Holocaust that he collected in the decades after his liberation. (Robert Lachman/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images)
Mel Mermelstein, a survivor of the Auschwitz death camp who, in fulfillment of a sacred promise to his father and the millions of other Jews murdered by the Nazis, took a group of Holocaust deniers to court in the 1980s and won a legal and moral victory in the enduring battle against historical revisionism, died Jan. 28 at his home in Long Beach, Calif. He was 95.
The cause was complications from covid-19, said his daughter, Edie Mermelstein.
Mr. Mermelstein was 17 years old in 1944 when he was deported with his parents, two sisters and a brother from their town in what then was Hungary to Auschwitz, the Nazi camp in German-occupied Poland where more than 1.1 million people, including nearly 1 million Jews, were murdered in the Holocaust.
His mother and sisters died in the gas chambers. His father and brother, too, later perished, leaving Mr. Mermelstein the only survivor of his immediate family. Before he parted from his father, he told the Los Angeles Times years later, “I made a promise to [him] in the camp that I would tell what happened if I did survive.”
After the war, Mr. Mermelstein immigrated to the United States, settling eventually in California, where he became the plaintiff in a lawsuit that made national headlines for challenging an organization that called itself the Institute for Historical Review.
The group, Mr. Mermelstein told the Toronto Star, had “picked on the wrong Jew.”
The Institute for Historical Review was founded by Willis Carto, once described by the Anti-Defamation League as “perhaps the leading anti-Semite in the United States.” The institute sought to challenge the extent and even the fact of the Holocaust, an event that deniers and revisionists depict — in defiance of survivor testimony, overwhelming evidence collected in the aftermath of World War II and the decades since, and the consensus of historians around the world — as a fiction created to engender sympathy for Jews and the state of Israel.
At the time of the institute’s founding, historian and Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt wrote in her 1993 book “Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory,” “most people who were aware of its existence dismissed it as a conglomeration of Holocaust deniers, neo-Nazis, philo-Germans, right-wing extremists, antisemites, racists, and conspiracy theorists.”
The group had a penchant for provocation, and in 1979, at its inaugural Revisionist Convention, it publicly offered a reward of $50,000 to any person who “could prove that the Nazis operated gas-chambers to exterminate Jews during World War II.” To generate greater publicity, the group sent contest entry forms to survivors who had testified publicly about their experience. One of them was Mr. Mermelstein, who had denounced the institute in letters to various newspapers.
“If we do not hear from you,” a letter to Mr. Mermelstein read, “we will be obliged to draw our own conclusions and publicize this fact to the mass media.”
According to Lipstadt’s account, organizations including the ADL and the Simon Wiesenthal Center urged Mr. Mermelstein not to respond, arguing that dignifying the contest with a reply would only help attract the media attention that the deniers craved.
Mr. Mermelstein, however, considered himself “duty-bound” to challenge the group and the ideology it represented.
“I watched my mother and sisters being led to the gas chambers, and they tell me it was a hoax,” he said. “They are hate-mongers, Jew-haters. I’m going to get them if I have to spend the rest of my life doing it.”
With the counsel of William John Cox, a public-interest lawyer who took the case on a pro-bono basis, Mr. Mermelstein charted a strategy that ultimately led them to court. Mr. Mermelstein accepted the institute’s challenge, submitting for the contest an account of his experience at Auschwitz, a copy of his 1979 memoir, “By Bread Alone: The Story of A-4685″ — and a claim for the $50,000.
When the institute failed to pay, Mr. Mermelstein sued the group and related defendants for the $50,000 in prize money and $17 million in damages, alleging libel, breach of contract, intentional infliction of emotional distress and — perhaps most consequential — “injurious denial of established fact.”
On the last point, Judge Thomas T. Johnson of the Los Angeles Superior Court delivered Mr. Mermelstein a major victory in 1981, when he took what is known in legal parlance as “judicial notice” of the gassing of Jews at Auschwitz — essentially declaring that the Holocaust is an indisputable fact, one that requires no evidence to be presented in court.
In 1985, the parties reached a settlement according to which the institute paid Mr. Mermelstein the $50,000 in prize money and $40,000 in damages. The institute also made an apology that recognized the judicial notice about Auschwitz.
“They caved in,” Mr. Mermelstein said at the time. “Not only that, but we proved they cannot get away with taking such a barbaric event as I have been through and turn it into a dagger to hurt me with.”
Mr. Mermelstein, who was also represented by lawyer Gloria Allred, had continued legal battles with the institute. In 1986, he was awarded $5.25 million in damages in a related lawsuit against Swedish publisher Ditlieb Felderer, a defendant who had declined to participate in the earlier settlement, who Mr. Mermelstein said had libeled and tormented him, on one occasion mailing him what was said to be the hair of a victim of the gas chambers. (By 1991, according to the Los Angeles Times, Mr. Mermelstein had collected none of that money.)
“Money was never the thing in my mind in the first place,” he had earlier told an interviewer. His interest, instead, was memory.
“No feeling human being in his right mind would try to prove that this didn’t happen,” he said. “This is like digging up the dead and kicking them around — and the dead include my mother and two sisters.”
In the years since Mr. Mermelstein’s case, Holocaust deniers and revisionists have persisted in their cause, and more legal challenges have followed. Perhaps the most noted was the libel case in Britain that pitted Lipstadt against David Irving, a British historical writer whom she had described in her book as “one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial.” Her story, and her ultimate victory in 2000, was dramatized in the 2016 Hollywood film “Denial” in which Lipstadt was portrayed by Rachel Weisz.
“Mel Mermelstein did a gutsy thing way back in the 1980s when he first took on Holocaust deniers,” Lipstadt said in an interview. “Many people thought it was a foolhardy thing to do, but he went ahead and did it anyway, and he won.” She added that when she was deciding how to respond to Irving, she thought of Mr. Mermelstein and his “example.”
Moric Mermelstein was born Sept. 25, 1926, in Mukachevo, a thriving Jewish community nestled in the Carpathian mountains in what was then Czechoslovakia. After the Munich Agreement of 1938, Mukachevo was annexed to Hungary. It today belongs to Ukraine.
Mr. Mermelstein and his family were arrested soon after Germany occupied Hungary on March 19, 1944. He was taken to Auschwitz along with his father, a winemaker; his mother, a homemaker; and all of his siblings. His sisters, he said, were initially selected for work but refused to leave their mother’s side and thus were sent to the gas chambers with her. His father and brother perished at a subcamp of Auschwitz, according to Lipstadt’s book.
Before the liberation of Auschwitz by the Soviet army on Jan. 27, 1945, Mr. Mermelstein was subjected to a death march. “To keep going,” Smithsonian magazine reported in an account of his life and legal battles, he “took a pair of shoes off a warm corpse, a recent shooting victim on the wayside whose body hadn’t frozen yet.”
He was later taken to Buchenwald, in Germany, where he was ill with typhus and weighed 68 pounds, according to the article. U.S. forces entered Buchenwald on April 11, 1945.
“Finally, finally, I was liberated,” Mr. Mermelstein said years later, “but purely in the physical sense of the word. I will never feel liberated until peace will come among man.”
Mr. Mermelstein immigrated to the United States in 1946, changing his first name to Melvin. He settled first in New York, where he had several relatives, and served stateside in Army intelligence before moving to California. There he founded a business that manufactured wooden pallets.
Mr. Mermelstein returned to Auschwitz for the first of many times in 1967, embarking on a years-long effort to build a collection of artifacts of the Holocaust including concentration camp uniforms, barbed wire, hair from victims, poison-gas pellets and ashes from the crematoria. He built a small museum, founded the Auschwitz Study Foundation and offered his testimony to students and others.
In 1991, Mr. Mermelstein was portrayed by actor Leonard Nimoy in TV-film dramatization of his story, “Never Forget.”
Survivors include his wife of six decades, the former Emma Jane Nance, of Long Beach; four children, Bernie Mermelstein of Ladera Ranch, Calif., Edie Mermelstein and David Mermelstein, both of Huntington Beach, Calif., and Ken Mermelstein of Savannah, Ga.; five grandchildren; and a great-grandson.
When Mr. Mermelstein won his settlement and apology in 1985, he declared that the resolution was “a victory for all” and “a tremendous relief.”
“I will sleep a lot better now,” he said. “I will even die easier.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Todd Howard Ezrin is the principal of Tobe Design Group, a boutique interior architecture and design studio in Bethesda, Md. In his 25 years in the business, Ezrin’s projects have included designing small urban condos and houses, as well as remodeling and furnishing homes where he had to make the most of every inch of space. Tobe Design Group specializes in contemporary and environmentally-responsive design and has clients throughout the country and in Vienna, Lisbon and Tel Aviv. | null | null | null | null | null |
MENLO PARK, Calif. — Meta, the company that owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, saw its stock plunge after-hours Wednesday after reporting a rare decline in its fourth quarter profit due to a sharp increase in expenses. The Menlo Park, Calif.-based company said it earned $10.29 billion, or $3.67 per share, in the final three months of 2021. That’s down 8% from $11.22 billion, or $3.88 per share, in the same period a year earlier. Revenue rose to 20% to $33.67 billion. Analysts, on average, were expecting earnings of $3.85 per share on revenue of $33.36 billion, according to a poll by FactSet.
NEW YORK — CNN President Jeff Zucker has abruptly resigned after acknowledging a consensual relationship with another network executive. The entanglement came to light during an investigation of now-fired anchor Chris Cuomo. Zucker said Wednesday that he was required to disclose the relationship when it began but he did not. The Cuomo investigation revealed that the former anchor had aided his brother, then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, as he navigated a sexual harassment scandal. The CEO of WarnerMedia told employees that an interim leadership plan would be announced shortly. Zucker, who is 56, has been an industry leader since he was executive producer of the “Today” show in the 1990s.
NEW YORK — The number of Americans looking to start their own business is on the rise, as the coronavirus pandemic creates opportunities for some would-be entrepreneurs. People are starting businesses for a variety of reasons: some lost their job during the pandemic and decided to make their “side hustle” their main occupation. Others reevaluated their priorities and decided to leave the corporate world. Some took advantage of the flexibility of working remotely and lower commercial rents. Now, these new owners are also dealing with the problems the pandemic has posed for many established businesses: changing guidance from health officials, difficulty reaching customers, snags in the supply chain and general uncertainty about what’s ahead.
FRANKFURT, Germany — Major oil-producing countries are adding just a bit more oil to the global economy. The decision Wednesday is likely to support prices that are near their highest level in seven years. The 23-member OPEC+ alliance is sticking with its road map and is adding 400,000 barrels per day in March. The oil producers are gradually restoring cuts they made when the pandemic was at its worst. Fears of a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine are adding to supply concerns because Russia is a major oil producer and could be hit with sanctions by the U.S. and Europe. One result: Drivers will pay more for gas.
FRANKFURT, Germany — Inflation fed by high oil and gas prices hit record levels in Europe for the third month in a row. That’s extending pain for consumers and sharpening questions about future moves by the European Central Bank. European Union statistics agency Eurostat reported Wednesday that the 19 countries using the euro currency saw consumer prices increase by an annual 5.1% in January.
BRUSSELS — The European Commission wants to include nuclear energy and natural gas in its plans for building a climate-friendly future. Wednesday’s proposal from the European Commission has divided member countries and drawn outcry from environmentalists as “greenwashing.” The green labeling system would define what qualifies as an investment in sustainable energy in the 27-nation bloc.
NEW YORK — Stocks closed higher on Wall Street Wednesday, putting major indexes on track to extend their weekly gains. The S&P 500 rose 0.9% and the Nasdaq added 0.5%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 0.6%. Big communications and technology companies helped lift the broader market. Google’s parent Alphabet rose 7.5% after it said its digital ad business propelled a 36% jump in profit last quarter. Major indexes are on track for solid gains this week, a welcome turnaround from January’s losses. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note, which is used to set interest rates on mortgages, fell to 1.77%.
WASHINGTON — The FBI has confirmed purchasing NSO Group’s powerful spyware tool Pegasus, whose chronic abuse to hack journalists, dissidents and human rights activists has long been established. The FBI suggested its motivation was to “stay abreast of emerging technologies and tradecraft.” It said in a statement Wednesday that it obtained a limited license for evaluation and never used Pegasus operationally. But critics wondered why the premier U.S. law enforcement agency needed to pay for access to a notorious surveillance tool already well-researched by public interest cyber sleuths. The U.S. blacklisted NSO Group in November, when Apple sued it in an attempt to shut Pegasus down.
DALLAS — The travel industry is lobbying Washington for changes it thinks will get more people on airplanes and staying in hotels. Airline and tourism groups want the U.S. to eliminate its requirement that travelers provide a negative test for COVID-19 before boarding a U.S.-bound plane. The United Kingdom made a similar change last month. And tourism industry officials also say they are talking to lawmakers about tax breaks to boost business travel, which is recovering much more slowly than leisure travel during the pandemic. | null | null | null | null | null |
FAA proposes changes in autopilot training
The Federal Aviation Administration said Wednesday that it is proposing training revisions to help pilots avoid overreliance on autopilot and to ensure they focus on flight path management.
The FAA said it was issuing draft guidance and recommended practices, saying it was important that even on autopilot flight crews “should always be aware of the aircraft’s flight path so they can intervene if necessary.”
The guidance addresses a National Transportation Safety Board recommendation sparked by a July 2013 accident of Asiana Airlines Flight 214 that struck a sea wall at San Francisco International Airport, killing three passengers.
The draft guidance was also prompted by some requirements specified by Congress in late 2019 as part of reforms adopted after two fatal Boeing 737 MAX crashes killed 346 people in five months and prompted the best-selling plane’s 20-month worldwide grounding. The FAA said the advisory “provides a single framework for operations and training programs. This will help pilots develop and maintain manual flight operations skills and avoid becoming overly reliant on automation.”
U.S. saw jump in new credit cards in 2021
U.S. lenders issued more credit cards than ever last year, with a growing share of them going to consumers with lower credit scores, a report says.
A record 196 million Americans held cards at the end of 2021, according to a report by credit-data agency TransUnion. In the third quarter, the latest for which detailed numbers are available, the number of new cards issued hit an all-time high of 20.1 million, it said. Some 9 million of them went to “non-prime” borrowers — those with poor or fair credit.
One unknown risk for issuers is that unless student loan repayments are forgiven or paused again, millions of Americans will have to meet those loan obligations when the forbearance period ends in May.
“For a portion of those consumers, that will mean less disposable income available for discretionary purchases, that could result in lower amounts being added to card balances each month,” Charlie Wise, senior vice president of research and consulting at TransUnion.
The FDA has approved the first generic version of AbbVie’s Restasis, a treatment used in patients with dry-eye syndrome. The approval by the Food and Drug Administration was granted to Viatris, which was formed through the merger of generic drugmaker Mylan and Pfizer’s off-patent drug business in 2020. AbbVie acquired Restasis, which was approved in the United States nearly two decades ago, through its $63 billion acquisition of Allergan. The drug increases tear production by helping reduce inflammation associated with dry eye.
American Airlines said Wednesday that it plans to exercise options to buy 30 more Boeing 737 Max jets while delaying delivery of Boeing 787s, larger jets that have been plagued by production flaws. The airline expects to receive half the 737 Max 8 jets next year and the other half in 2024, as it seeks to rebuild from the pandemic. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Citigroup created a new team inside its trading division that will focus on working more closely with minority depository institutions and diverse broker-dealers and asset managers. The firm’s new diverse financial institutions group team will be led by Harold Butler, a senior banker who spent 16 years covering the Treasury and the Federal Reserve in Citigroup’s investment banking arm, according to a memo to staff Wednesday.
Treasury Secretary Janet L Yellen said it’s too early to contemplate adjusting capital requirements for U.S. banks based on how much risk they face from climate change. “It’s just premature at this point to talk about raising capital requirements,” Yellen said Wednesday in an interview with Bloomberg News. Before that could happen, she said, “it’s really important that regulators do the groundwork that’s necessary for them to evaluate risks to individual firms.” How regulators incorporate climate risks into the safety and soundness rules they enforce on the largest financial institutions has become an increasingly contentious debate in Washington. | null | null | null | null | null |
Whoopi Goldberg and the problem(s) with Holocaust education
The railway tracks lead to Auschwitz Birkenau or Auschwitz II. in Oswiecim, Poland, where hundred thousands of people were directed to the gas chambers to be murdered inside the Nazi death camp. (Markus Schreiber/AP)
A school district in Tennessee recently banned “Maus,” a graphic novel that tells how the author’s father survived the Holocaust. An administrator from the Carroll Independent School District in Texas told teachers last fall to ensure any books about the Holocaust should be taught alongside those offering “opposing” perspectives on the mass murder. In December, a D.C. school librarian instructed third-graders to reenact scenes from the death camps, including shooting victims. And this week, Whoopi Goldberg said on “The View” that the extermination of 6 million Jews — by “master race” leader Adolf Hitler, who considered them “vermin” and an “inferior race” — was not about race. She apologized and was suspended. (Her bosses say 14 days off the air is sufficient time to get up to speed on the causes and effects of the genocide.)
Is Holocaust education even working in America’s schools?
Teachers are asked not only to teach math, reading and science but also mold character, stop hate, and help students develop empathy and become engaged citizens. Some states say they see Holocaust education as part of that quest. But that goal falls short for many reasons, including the sometimes ignored truth that education does not operate in a vacuum and that societal forces affect how young people think and learn. What’s more, the act of legislating that something is taught doesn’t mean that it will be taught well
Fewer than half of U.S. states — 22 — require some form of Holocaust education in K-12 schools, according to the U.S. Holocaust Museum. (They are Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin.)
But many of the laws are limited in what they mandate, and, one Harvard scholar says, are focused on the wrong thing.
The 2019 Texas law mandates that schools have an annual “Holocaust Remembrance Week” in which teachers are supposed to “educate students about the Holocaust and inspire in students a sense of responsibility to recognize and uphold human value and to prevent future atrocities.” A whole week to prevent future holocausts.
In Tennessee — where the McMinn County School Board recently voted to remove the Pulitzer Prize-winning Holocaust book “Maus” from its eighth-grade curriculum because of “rough” language and a nude drawing of a woman (you can read the minutes here) — Holocaust education is mandated in fifth grade. The Tennessee Holocaust Commission states this as the first goal: “5.21 — Analyze the significance of the Holocaust and its impact on the U.S.”
In New York state, Holocaust education is part of a mandate for courses of instruction “in patriotism and citizenship and in certain historic documents.” A state Senate document refers to it in a list of courses that should be required “in patriotism, citizenship, civic education and values, our shared history of diversity, the role of religious tolerance in this country, and human rights issues, with particular attention to the study of the inhumanity of genocide, slavery (including the freedom trail and underground railroad), the Holocaust, and the mass starvation in Ireland from 1845 to 1850.”
The goal of all of this in New York state: “to promote a spirit of patriotic and civic service and obligation and to foster in the children of the state moral and intellectual qualities which are essential in preparing to meet the obligations of citizenship.”
As it happens, says Thomas E. Patterson, professor of government and the press at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, civics courses do not have a large impact on how high school graduates behave as adults. Studies show that they slightly increase voting rates — but there is no evidence to show that they shield citizens from embracing false and hateful beliefs.
Why more (and better) civics education can’t really save us
Experts say what influences young people the most about core beliefs are family, church and social media. “On nearly every single outcome that we can assess,” according to Robert Pianta, dean of the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia, “public schools have a marginal impact that is really small relative to the impact of families.
“The things that we worry about in terms of the state of the country are far more a function of the families the kids are growing up in than the school they go to,” said Pianta, founding director of the Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning at U-Va.
There’s another problem with Holocaust education in the United States: It is aimed at the wrong thing, says Ruth R. Wisse, a Harvard University professor emerita of Yiddish and comparative literature who has studied Holocaust education. States laws — and even a 2020 U.S. law providing $2 million for Holocaust education in public schools — are largely aimed at the issue of fighting hate.
As she notes in this piece in National Affairs, the purpose of the federal legislation, titled the “Never Again Education Act,” was this: “As intolerance, antisemitism, and bigotry are promoted by hate groups, Holocaust education provides a context in which to learn about the danger of what can happen when hate goes unchallenged and there is indifference in the face of the oppression of others; learning how and why the Holocaust happened is an important component of the education of citizens of the United States.”
But she writes:
[T]he destruction of European Jewry was not about hate. The mass murder of 6 million Jews began as part of an electoral process in which a party came to power by organizing politics against the Jews. The politics of grievance and blame may indeed foment hatred, distrust, envy, rage, fear, and violence, but it is primarily a political instrument for gaining, wielding, and extending power. Anti-Semitism draws on centuries of anti-Jewish teaching and opposition, but it assumes greater political potency when leaders need to win the allegiance of voters and followers. Hitler ran on this platform and used it in the conquest of other nations, inviting their citizens to join in the killing and plundering of the Jews. Some people organized against Jews without hating them. Whereas the analysis of anti-Semitism in fascist, nationalist, communist, Islamist, and other forms of government is indispensable for the understanding of anti-liberal politics, the homogenization of anti-Jewish politics into social psychology misdirects analysis, prevents understanding, and distorts the subject it pretends to teach. Fighting political evil takes political will, which requires political perception.
Second, Holocaust education distorts by equating evil with Nazism. The Second World War began with the pact between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia to divide Eastern Europe between them, and the parallels between the two totalitarian regimes included opposition to the Jews, albeit on different grounds. The Soviets in their Gulag and forced famine in Ukraine killed more than the Nazis did in their death camps, and the two systems went head to head in their war on liberals and Jews.
Meanwhile, as more states over the past dozen or so years have made Holocaust education a requirement in some form, antisemitism in the United States still thrives. A report released in October 2020 by the American Jewish Congress said that 1 in 4 American Jews reported being targets of antisemitism in the previous 12 months and that 82 percent of American Jews said antisemitism had risen over the previous five years. Only 44 percent of the general public believed it.
A 2020 report on Holocaust knowledge among Americans ages 18 to 39 found that most of those interviewed could not name a single concentration camp and thought 2 million or fewer Jews had died. (The report was done by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, an international organization that supports Holocaust survivors.)
The efforts of state lawmakers to instill certain mindsets in students has been something of a historic fail. Let’s remember the 2004 law in which Congress declared Sept. 17 as Constitution Day and Citizenship Day. It’s aim: “the complete instruction of citizens in their responsibilities and opportunities as citizens of the United States and of the State and locality in which they reside.”
Under the law, public schools that receive federal funding are supposed to present an “educational program” on the Constitution every year on Sept. 17. The law doesn’t specify further. It doesn’t provide money for resources. It doesn’t have consequences for schools that don’t. So much for complete instruction.
As for Goldberg, what she said during an episode of “The View” was that the Holocaust was about “man’s inhumanity to man” and “not about race” because it was “two White groups of people” involved.”
“This is White people doing it to White people, so y’all going to fight amongst yourselves,” she said, a comment Kim Godwin, president of ABC News, characterized as “wrong and hurtful.” Quite the understatement.
The limits of Holocaust education doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be taught. To the contrary. The Holocaust should be taught, says the U.S. Holocaust Museum, to learn not only how individuals, groups, and nations acted when confronted with genocide, but also to understand that the Holocaust was not inevitable — and that democratic institutions and values have to be nurtured to survive.
On Jan. 6, 2021, there was an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump, who refused to honor a tenet of U.S. democracy — that we accept election results. What better time than now for these lessons? | null | null | null | null | null |
FILE - Elaine May accepts the best performance by an actress in a leading role in a play for “The Waverly Gallery” at the 73rd annual Tony Awards on June 9, 2019, in New York. May is this year’s recipient of the PEN/Mike Nichols writing for performance award, a $25,000 prize established in 2019 to honor the legacy of Nichols (Charles Sykes/Invision/AP, File) | null | null | null | null | null |
Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), seen here in a file photo, is recovering at an Albuquerque hospital after suffering a stroke last week, his office said in a statement issued Tuesday. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
Cerebellar strokes, located in the back of the brain adjacent to the brain stem, are typically more manageable and associated with more positive outcomes than those in other parts of the brain, Sheth said, so long as they are treated quickly. The surgery, he added, was likely done to relieve pressure on the adjacent brain stem, which can cause more serious and permanent damage.
Luján’s malady is distinct from neurological episodes suffered by former Sens. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) in 2006 and Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) in 2012, both of which resulted in months-long absences and permanent disabilities.
“We have some very solid nominees that have been held up just on party line votes and with Sen. Luján gone, that’ll make that more challenging until he returns,” Cantwell said. “But, you know, maybe we’ll figure out some ways to get support from a broader coalition.”
On the Senate floor Wednesday, Schumer set up a rapid-fire series of confirmation votes, taking advantage of the temporary absences of two Republicans senators, John Hoeven (N.D.) and Mitt Romney (Utah), due to positive coronavirus tests. Additional confirmation votes are expected Thursday.
Scion of a well-known political family, Luján rose up the ranks of Democratic leadership during a 12-year House career, leading the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee during a successful push to retake the chamber’s majority in 2018. He was seen as a potential successor to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) before instead seeking to succeed Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) in 2020.
Winning a 15-point victory over his Republican opponent, Luján won Udall’s Senate seat and a perch as one of the most influential Latinos in national politics and one of the Democratic Party’s most experienced campaign players, with decades potentially remaining in his political career.
“I mean, we’re the same age — that’s frightening to think about, what he’s going through right now,” Sen. Christopher Murphy (D-Conn.) said. “Obviously, every stroke is different, but that can be a long, hard road of recovery. But I’m just really worried. I’m really worried for him.” | null | null | null | null | null |
A Washington Commanders logo is displayed at the unveiling of the NFL team's new name on Wednesday. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
When the NFL franchise in Washington announced Wednesday it had rebranded itself as the Commanders, it officially severed its connection to the Native American community that had defined it for nearly a century — and become a symbol of defiance for more than a decade.
Two Native Americans, Crystal Echo Hawk (Pawnee) and Merlin Lucero (Laguna Pueblo), had mixed reactions to the name change but shared a sense of dissatisfaction.
Echo Hawk and Lucero look at the team through different lenses — Echo Hawk as a longtime activist who pushed Washington to change its original name, Lucero as a lifelong fan who’s found a way to buy more gear with the team’s old logo. Each was left wanting more.
Echo Hawk still wants an apology from the team. She emphasized adopting a name with no Native American ties was a significant step, and she noted it’s important to remember that decades of protest and Native American-led organizing helped lead to the name change.
The Commanders' logo, crest and uniforms explained
But she said the team still bears responsibility for the harm it caused Native Americans by holding onto a dictionary-defined slur for 87 years. She said the team should commit resources to helping Native Americans and educating people about the challenges their communities face.
“I’m so happy that today marks a new chapter going forward, but we can’t disregard that harm, that past, that harm that really still is fresh in the mind of so many different Native peoples all across this country who fought for this name change,” she said in an interview.
When asked how much hope she had the team would take any of those steps, she laughed. “I think we’re going to keep pushing,” she said, adding, “People are going to continue to hold them accountable.”
Lucero, 49, grew up on a reservation in New Mexico and loved the team’s original mascot. The Native American profile seemed like a symbol of strength in the era of John Wayne Westerns, which he felt portrayed Natives in an inaccurate, cartoonish light. He believes many others felt pride in the name, and one of the members of his tribe recently made him a coffee cup with the logo as a gift.
Lucero keeps up with the team through podcasts and social media. He lamented the team had to change the mascot, but he liked some other replacement options, including Redwolves.
“Two years of waiting for Commanders is pretty disappointing,” he said. “Man, it doesn’t pop. It’s not original. It’s just eh, I guess.”
Perspective: Commanders name choice is using military as a shield
Last year, Lucero said he found a way to buy new gear with the old name and logo. He found a site that would ship knockoffs from China, so he bought a customized Chase Young jersey. He said this decision is part of an effort to avoid giving money to owner Daniel Snyder, whom he holds responsible for ruining his favorite team.
Lucero pointed out there are problems with every name. Regina, his wife, decided she would stop supporting the team because in the dystopian TV series “A Handmaid’s Tale,” society’s elite men, called “Commanders,” regularly rape enslaved women. She can’t think of the new name without thinking about the show, he said.
Lucero believes he may continue to use the site in China because, while he doesn’t like the new name, he can’t imagine giving up on the team entirely. He compared it to an unhappy but faithful marriage.
“I’ll just always see them, in a sense, as the Redskins,” he said. | null | null | null | null | null |
Senegal’s Sadio Mane celebrates after scoring a goal during the African Cup of Nations 2022 semi-final soccer match between Burkina Faso and Senegal at the Ahmadou Ahidjo stadium in Yaounde, Cameroon, Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2022. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)
YAOUNDE, Cameroon — Sadio Mané set up one goal and scored the last one himself as Senegal beat Burkina Faso 3-1 Wednesday to reach its second successive African Cup of Nations final. | null | null | null | null | null |
Despite operational challenges, strong holiday bookings have boosted earnings for most U.S. carriers
An Alaska Airlines aircraft flies past the tail of a United Airlines aircraft as it lands at Reagan National Airport in Arlington on Monday. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters)
Domestic airlines on Thursday signaled continued enthusiasm for travel two years into the pandemic, as Alaska Airlines and Southwest Airlines reported a modest profit in the final three months of 2021 — a quarter that saw carriers’ plans for recovery challenged by two coronavirus variants, winter storms and staffing shortages.
The two carriers, along with JetBlue Airways, reported earnings Thursday, the latest air carriers to shed light on where the industry stands amid a travel rebound as the nation grapples with the effects of the coronavirus.
Despite operational challenges, strong holiday bookings have boosted earnings for most U.S. carriers, even though not all were profitable in the final quarter of 2021. Several airlines in recent days have indicated they expect demand to rebound in March and stay strong through the rest of the year.
Alaska Airlines’ $18 million profit was the second consecutive quarter the carrier made money without the benefit of federal pandemic relief funds. It came at a time when the airline had canceled hundreds of flights after a significant winter storm hit the Seattle region in late December. The travel disruptions over the holidays cost the carrier about $70 million in revenue during the quarter.
“The combination of severe snow, multiple consecutive days of subfreezing temperatures in our Pacific Northwest hubs and staffing disruptions caused by the omicron variant resulted in one of the most challenging holiday travel periods we have ever experienced,” Alaska Airlines chief executive Ben Minicucci said.
Amid omicron and flight cancellations, earnings shed light on airline industry
In a note to employees, Minicucci wrote: “Clearly, this was a tough way to end a year that otherwise had much to be celebrated.”
Southwest reported that it earned $68 million, its first without the benefit of pandemic relief funds that expired at the end of September. After running into operational issues earlier this year — including a high-profile meltdown in October — the carrier reduced its schedule going into the final months of the year and offered bonus pay to employees for working during peak travel periods. But Southwest also ran into difficulties in the new year after storms hit key hubs in Chicago and Baltimore.
Southwest chief executive Gary Kelly said early this month that the carrier was operating in an “extremely difficult environment.”
During the first three weeks of January, 5,000 employees tested positive for the coronavirus, more than double the number who tested positive during delta variant’s surge, Kelly said. In recent days, however, he said operations have stabilized and the number of employees testing positive has dropped dramatically.
Despite difficulties, Kelly said, the strategy of reducing its flight schedule to match staffing levels worked.
“I’m delighted to be able to say there were earnings … which is obviously a great way to end a tough but much improved year,” said Kelly, who is slated to step down as chief executive at the end of this month. He will be replaced by Bob Jordan, Southwest’s executive vice president of corporate services.
JetBlue said it lost $129 million during the quarter. The carrier also was hit by a surge in virus infections, which hit the Northeast hard — particularly its New York base.
Like other airlines, JetBlue chief executive Robin Hayes said he doesn’t expect the current surge will leave a lasting effect.
“We are confident the worst is behind us, and evidenced by recent case count trends in New York City plummeting, we believe demand is poised to accelerate through the quarter into a robust spring and peak summer travel season, similar to the setup around this time last year,” Hayes said.
American Airlines, United Airlines and Delta Air Lines, which reported earnings earlier this month, also lost money in the final quarter of 2021.
Carriers say navigating the first few months of the year will be easier, a period of lower travel levels as people return to school and work. With many companies delaying plans in-person work, less business travel will also give airline schedules some breathing room.
Even so, Southwest said it has extended an incentive program through early February to encourage employees to work additional shifts and will reduce its schedule as it continues to focus on balancing staffing levels with flight offerings.
Hiring in one indication that airlines expect demand to bounce back. JetBlue said it plans to hire 5,000 employees this year, many in the first half of 2022. Southwest said it expects to hire about 8,000 people this year and has boosted its hourly wage from $15 to $17 an hour.
Airlines were optimistic when entering the final quarter of 2021, having weathered the delta variant, which slowed passenger demand in late summer and early fall. Third-quarter earnings showed many were beginning to turn the corner. At least five U.S. carriers were profitable in the third quarter and, of those, at least two — Delta and Alaska — reached that milestone without the benefit of federal pandemic aid.
28,000 canceled flights later, airlines are still struggling to get the upper-hand
The arrival of the omicron variant scrambled those efforts, with signs of trouble surfacing just before Christmas and extending into the new year.
Kelly said that although the industry is in a better place than in 2020 — in large part because of pandemic relief money to keep front line employees on the job — challenges remain.
“I would have never bet a year ago that this is where we would be here in early 2022. I thought we would have this pandemic beat and behind us. And it’s far from that,” he said. “So I think that just sort of provides the same an even bigger quandary now, which is ‘Where do we think we’re going to be with the pandemic two years from now?’” | null | null | null | null | null |
The threats, which came as Black History Month began, left young Black people asked once again to ‘remain resilient’
Historically Black colleges and universities, including Howard University, have been receiving bomb threats. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)
Buildings were still being searched when Morgan State University President David Wilson released a letter to the campus community.
It began: “Since sending out an alert earlier this morning about the bomb threat we received, a few of you have contacted me to inquire as to whether this is real. Unfortunately, and sadly, it is.”
It ended: “My message to you this morning is to stay strong, remain resilient, and continue to prepare yourselves to grow the future and lead the world because our nation and world desperately need more leaders steeped in the values we teach here at Morgan. Those values are Leadership, Integrity, Innovation, Diversity, Excellence and Respect. Hate is not one of them!”
It was a reassuring message.
It was also a depressing one.
The head of Maryland’s largest HBCU should not have had to write those words. He never should have been forced on any day, let alone the first day of Black History Month, to ask a campus filled with young Black scholars to “stay strong” and “remain resilient” in the face of threats to their education and existence.
Stay strong. Remain resilient.
My first thought when I saw those words: How many Black children throughout history have been asked to do that after being threatened for just existing?
My second thought: How far are we from a time when that will no longer be the case?
Maryland’s Morgan State University was just one of more than a dozen historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) to received bomb threats Tuesday. That same day, Howard University, an HBCU in the nation’s capital, received its third bomb threat in a month. That meant a third day of class disruptions, a third day of heightened awareness, a third day of calls to parents to reassure them that, yes, everything’s okay.
Law enforcement officials did not find explosives on any of the campuses, and because of that it would be easy to dismiss the threats as minor interruptions. But just because no bombs went off does not mean damage was not done.
Students have described feeling anxious and worried — not just about their physical safety but also about the mental health of those around them. Right now is one of the hardest times to be a college student, and the pandemic has made that especially true for many Brown and Black students. The coronavirus has taken greedily from those communities in the form of lives and financial stability.
For many students, HBCUs are more than learning institutions. They are havens. They are second families. And the recent bomb threats have taken away the security that comes with having that space.
“My main concern is my students’ mental health,” Jamera Forbes, a senior at Morgan State and student body president, told my Post colleagues for an article that ran this week about the bomb threats. “As college students, we already have so much mentally to deal with. We’ve tried to push through and overcome so much with covid over the years, and we’re just trying to get back to a norm.”
Saigan Boyd, a student from Spellman College, which also received a bomb threat, told CNN: “It makes me realize how there are still these terrorists that are trying to stop minorities from advancing or just getting a simple education from a predominantly Black institution. … I’m just tired of being terrorized like how my grandparents were.”
“Terrorized” is a word that many people within the Black community have used in the past few days to describe what has been happening on those campuses, and it is the right word. When you don’t know if your dorm room will blow up, that’s being terrorized. When you don’t know if you can go to the dining hall without getting hurt, that’s being terrorized. When you don’t know when the next bomb threat will come, or if the country will care when it does, that’s being terrorized.
On Tuesday night, I spoke with David Johns, executive director of the National Black Justice Coalition. He has lived through bomb scares and threats that didn’t evolve into action. He describes those experiences as causing three things within him. The first: It led him to want to put as much distance between himself and those targeted places as possible, which was difficult given that he needed to be at work to do his job. The second: He experienced post-traumatic responses in which smells or words triggered memories of those threats. And the third: He was left with a lingering worry that talking about what could have happened might invite further violence.
“Part of me really doesn’t want to talk about it,” he says of the HBCU threats. “And part of me doesn’t want to talk about it because I don’t want to inspire thoughts in the minds of white supremacists and their supporters who might not have already thought about targeting HBCUs. But then the rational part of me knows not naming a threat doesn’t make a threat go away.”
He hopes, he says, that the recent bomb threats remind people in positions of power, including campus leadership and lawmakers at all levels, that they have a responsibility to make sure “our babies, as I call them, and our schools and communities” are safe.
“None of us should want to exist in a country, a democracy,” he says, “where children are fearful of showing up in spaces where we require them to be.”
On Wednesday, the FBI identified as many as six juveniles involved in the threats and were exploring racial hatred as a motivation. The suspects’ names were not immediately released. But no matter who they turn out to be, the country’s reactions to their threats was telling.
The response from Black people on social media was swift, powerful and raised important questions, such as: Why weren’t more people concerned? Where was the widespread outrage? Would the public’s reaction have been the same if the bomb threats had occurred on the campuses of Harvard, Yale and other Ivy League universities on the same day?
This month, as we have done in years past, we will look at Black history and celebrate past achievements. But these threats reinforce the need to also look around at the barriers that remain part of the Black experience in this country.
Young Black people who are in college, trying to reach for greatness, can’t yet do that without knowing people want them to fail.
Young Black people who are doing everything society asks of them can’t yet concentrate on their studies without also being asked to put in the emotional work to “stay strong” and “remain resilient.”
“I am a product of a HBCU, where I learned how to think and write and be me,” Ibram X. Kendi, author of “How to be Antiracist,” tweeted on the first day of Black History Month. “It is tearing up my heart seeing all these bomb threats. Our HBCU family is resilient. But we shouldn’t have to be.”
Read more from Theresa Vargas. | null | null | null | null | null |
It is the elephant in the room in sports and in our society. Dungy made that comment to me during my research for, “Race a Fist, Take a Knee,” the book I wrote about race in sports that was published in November. Dungy is hardly a jump-on-the-table-and-shout sort of guy, but he’s seen enough racism in his life to know it when he sees it. | null | null | null | null | null |
Alex Moody falls in the section of fans against the name Commanders. Moody grew up in Alexandria, and one of his first memories as a kid is watching John Riggins stiff-arm Miami Dolphins cornerback Don McNeal for a touchdown en route to a Super Bowl XVII victory.
Tony Bell, 60, joked that he was wrapped in a Washington blanket as a kid and was forced to become a fan. He called the Commanders a “decent choice,” but more importantly, he hopes the new name brings fans back so the team can build a home-field advantage like the RFK days.
Fennell, 47, was decked out in a burgundy robe with the letters “Rev. T” scripted across his shoulders and a hat from the store with the new Commanders logo. Earlier in the day, before the store opened, he was leading chants trying to incorporate the new team name into a song and continued as he left the store with merchandise.
“The damage, so to speak, is already done,” Fennell said. “So at some point, what do you do? Do we continue to cry about it? Or do we continue to embrace it?”
Teddy Amenabar contributed to this report. | null | null | null | null | null |
CHERNIHIV, Ukraine — As Russian troops mass around Ukraine like an iron crescent, Kateryna Ponomarenko keeps an emergency bag near her front door, worried the war will again follow her.
Ponomarenko and her two sons fled intense fighting in 2015 after explosions and gunfire in her town outside Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian separatists took up arms the year before. The family started fresh in Chernihiv, more than 400 miles from the simmering conflict in the east.
Now Ponomarenko, 39, feels the threat closing in once again.
Russian troops, tanks and artillery are massing along the border near eastern Ukraine and moving into neighboring Belarus to the north for what Moscow says are joint military exercises scheduled to begin next week. It is the closest that Russian troops have massed just beyond the border of Ukraine and Belarus, a fast 25-mile drive from Ponomarenko’s home.
Russian officials say they have no plans to invade Ukraine, even as the Kremlin steps up pressure intended to keep Ukraine from bolstering its Western ties. But Russia’s show of military force in the territory of its ally Belarus has prompted fears of a deepening conflict that opens a new front in the north.
The road to Kyiv, 150 miles on a paved highway, is not only the fastest run to the capital from the border, but the road also is the most practical route in, Ukrainian officials acknowledged. Thick forests and icy swamps act as natural barriers in the region.
The first major town on the way south to Kyiv is Chernihiv.
“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 that is dotted with historical cathedrals and still bears the scars of its occupation by Nazi Germany in World War II.
As Ukrainian, U.S. and NATO officials debate the chances of a Russian invasion, Ukrainians along the highway are split on whether their homes will be in the path of potential tank convoys. An escalation is unlikely, some argued, while others waxed nostalgic about the Soviet Union, which included Ukraine as one of its republics. And as talk about destruction reaches a fever pitch, some Ukrainians have hit the dance floor in clubs to escape a sense of dread for a fleeting moment.
One of Ponomarenko’s concerns is what she sees as a sense of complacency. She said many people in the region around Chernihiv have been untouched by the conflict in the east, where Russian-backed separatists carved out two enclaves. If people in her region have not been personally affected by the deaths of nearly 14,000 people since 2014, she said, the conflict can be an afterthought.
About 5,000 Russian troops are in Belarus for training exercises scheduled to last 10 days in February, Ukrainian and U.S. officials have said, although officials have asserted that the number could rise to 30,000. Russia has placed an estimated 100,000 of its troops along the Ukrainian border farther to the east.
Speaking during a Washington Post Live event Monday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Russia’s upcoming military exercises in Belarus are grounds for additional concern. “Russia has used military exercises before as a disguise, as a cover,” he said.
Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary for Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said that there are no immediate signs of an invasion from Belarus but that 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 invading force onto existing roads. Chernobyl, the site of a nuclear disaster in 1986, occupies a swath of no man’s land to the west that also would complicate an off-road assault.
Deployments to secure the Belarusian border are accelerating, along with the delivery of ammunition, fuel and other supplies, Danilov said.
Yet, parts of the northern border appeared lightly defended. At the Senkivka crossing Friday, where the three countries’ borders converge, a handful of Ukrainian soldiers could be seen patrolling the area as commercial trucks rolled past dilapidated bunkers. Drones and observation points help keep the border under watch, Oleksandra Stupak, a border security officer, told a group of reporters. She pointed out a wooden barricade that could be used to block the road.
An obelisk dubbed the Three Sisters, a Soviet-era monument to friendly relations, was installed at the tri-border point, Stupak said. She stopped reporters from approaching the area, warning that the other nations could see that as a provocation.
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 that he could be in danger in the event the Russian military uses the road a few feet from his sunken fence.
“Nobody will attack us. They are my brothers. We are the same nation,” he said, referring to Kyivan Rus, an ancient federation of Slavic people. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Russia has used similar notions of ancient bonds and “one people” in propaganda seeking to blur the concept of a separate Ukrainian identity and culture.
In Chernihiv, Roman Avramenko is more somber.
Avramenko is the executive director of Truth Hounds, a Kyiv-based group that investigates possible war crimes and human rights violations in Ukraine and elsewhere. The group has begun preparations to fall back in the event of a Russian invasion, stockpiling clean water and firewood to get through the unrelenting winter. Its work will continue, he said, with extra vigilance to keep documents in cloud storage and immune to confiscation.
Couples shuffled along icy sidewalks downtown on Saturday night, stopping to smoke and warm up with cappuccinos at coffee shop windows. Hip locals crammed into Zivot a Pivo, a German restaurant featuring a live band belting out a mix of Russian-language and Western hits, including one by the rockers AC/DC.
“I’m on the highway to hell!” shouted a scrum of dancers, including friends Sveta Prikhodko and Liydmila Rochina.
Both women said they have packed emergency bags in case the war comes to their city but are optimistic that diplomacy will win out. “We do worry, but I think there is a 75 percent chance that nothing is going to happen, and a 25 percent chance we have indecent neighbors,” Prikhodko said. | null | null | null | null | null |
Specifically, the proposed sanctions — which must still be enacted into law — would allow the British government to target “any company that is linked to the Russian state, engages in business of economic significance to the Russian state, or operates in a sector of strategic significance to the Russian state.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Prosecution unclear in American's death
An Israeli general says it would be foolish to speculate on whether troops might be prosecuted in the death of an elderly Palestinian American they detained last month.
Washington has called for “full accountability” in the case.
After reprimanding a battalion commander and dismissing two officers involved in the Jan. 12 death of Omar Assad, 78, the military said its police were looking into the possibility of pressing charges.
Maj. Gen. Yehuda Fuchs, the chief of Israel’s forces in the occupied West Bank, where the death occurred, declined to speculate. “It would be so stupid of me to try to assume or guess,” he said Wednesday, adding that he was not privy to the probe.
A Palestinian autopsy found that Assad, who had a history of heart problems, had suffered cardiac arrest. Palestinian officials attributed this to his having been manhandled.
Span to be dismantled for Bezos's new yacht
Rotterdam has agreed to temporarily dismantle part of its historic Koningshaven Bridge so that billionaire Jeff Bezos’s 417-foot-long, three-mast yacht can pass through this summer.
The Dutch firm Oceano has been building the vessel for an estimated $500 million in the nearby city of Alblasserdam. Once finished, the Y721 will be the world’s largest sailing yacht. But for the ship to reach the open sea, the bridge known to locals as De Hef, which has a clearance of just over 131 feet, must be partly dismantled.
Although the exact cost has not been determined, Oceano and Bezos will pay it, Dutch broadcaster Rijnmond reported. (Bezos, the founder of Amazon, owns The Washington Post.)
— Miriam Berger
Canada's Conservatives oust party leader: Erin O'Toole, the leader of Canada's Conservative Party, has been ousted after he failed to defeat Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in last year's election and angered his party's lawmakers by moving the party to the center. He is the third Conservative leader that Liberal Trudeau has helped bring down. The 73-to-45 no-confidence vote has big implications for the party, which could swing farther right and become more populist.
Afghan Taliban reopens some women's colleges: The Taliban says it has reopened public universities for female students in six of Afghanistan's 34 provinces, a move marking a major concession to international demands. Since the Islamist group seized power in mid-August, the international community has watched to see whether it would impose the same harsh measures as during its 1990s rule, including banning girls from education and women from the workplace.
Turkish strikes target Kurds in Iraq, Syria: Turkish warplanes struck suspected Kurdish insurgent positions in Iraq and Syria in a new aerial offensive that Ankara said was aimed at protecting Turkey's borders from "terrorist threats." The airstrikes killed at least four people, a war monitoring group reported, and drew condemnation from U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish fighters battling the Islamic State.
Militiamen kill at least 60 refugees in eastern Congo: Militiamen attacked a camp for those fleeing violence in Congo's eastern Ituri province, killing at least 60 people. Fighters with the CODECO militia coalition arrived at the Plaine Savo camp in Djugu and attacked with machetes and other weapons, said the camp's head. Local officials confirmed the account. | null | null | null | null | null |
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