text stringlengths 237 126k | date_download stringdate 2022-01-01 00:32:20 2023-01-01 00:02:37 ⌀ | source_domain stringclasses 60 values | title stringlengths 4 31.5k ⌀ | url stringlengths 24 617 ⌀ | id stringlengths 24 617 ⌀ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Clemson guard David Collins, left, hugs Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, center, as Clemson coach Brad Brownell, right, looks on after Collins was ejected for fouling Duke’s Wendell Moore, Jr., during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game in Clemson, S.C., Thursday, Feb. 10, 2022. Duke beat Clemson 82-64. (Ken Ruinard/The Independent-Mail via AP) | null | null | null | null | null |
Watergate 50th Anniversary: Dwight Chapin
Dwight L. Chapin served as the secretary and deputy assistant to President Richard M. Nixon from 1969 to 1973. As Nixon’s personal aide during the 1968 presidential campaign, Chapin crisscrossed the country at Nixon’s side, rising to become one of the president’s senior White House staffers and closest confidantes. Chapin, who was convicted in 1974 of two counts of making false material declarations before the Watergate grand jury, joins Washington Post opinions editor-at-large Michael Duffy to discuss the tumultuous times and remarkable memories working up-close-and-personal with one of the nation’s most controversial commanders in chief, as written in his new book, “The President’s Man: The Memoirs of Nixon’s Trusted Aide.”
Author, “The President’s Man: The Memoirs of Nixon’s Trusted Aide” | null | null | null | null | null |
The IRS directed 7 million Americans to sign up with ID.me face scan service, according to congressional letter
IRS officials confirmed the scope of the program during a Feb. 4 briefing with the staff of the House Oversight Committee, according to a letter from the committee’s chair, Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.). In that letter, Maloney said briefing raises concerns about “the ongoing impact on the millions of Americans who have already turned over their biometric data to a private company.”
In the letter, Maloney also pressed IRS Commissioner Charles P. Rettig on plans to instruct the provider, ID.me, to destroy the biometric data, and how the agency will ensure that ID.me does not use the data for “unapproved or unauthorized purposes.”
But Maloney wants answers about how the IRS will oversee this process or how it may affect the agency’s record retention process. She also raised concerns that the IRS’s “about-face” on its two-year, $86 million contract could negatively affect taxpayers. She asked Rettig how much money has already been expended on the contract and how much it would cost to terminate it.
The letter follows years of controversy over the government’s expanding use of facial recognition software, despite warnings from the General Services Administration that the face-scanning technology has too many problems to justify its use. In 2019, House lawmakers held a series of hearings on the impact of the technology, and the ways that it can discriminate against women and people of color.
Maloney also writes that 13 percent of ID.me users since June 2021 struggled to use the software and were referred to customer service, where customer service representatives would attempt to manually verify their identities over video chat. The letter says this underscores the “widespread issues related to the use of the nascent facial recognition technology.” | null | null | null | null | null |
When Tinder was created a decade ago, it was a creative take on the Hot or Not rating website that Gen Xers and elder Millennials may remember. But now Gen Z — known for its authenticity in everything from clothes to relationships — has entered the dating scene, and Tinder is tailoring its approach, rolling out a new feature to encourage them to get to know each other before making decisions based on appearance.
The notion has been popularized in reality TV shows such as “Love is Blind” and “Sexy Beasts,” as well as dating apps like S’More that are based on sightless dating.
Tinder announced Thursday that the new addition to the app’s Fast Chat features, Blind Date, offers Gen Z daters a more authentic online experience while tapping into their ‘90s nostalgia — long before they were on the market. Users will be matched based on commonalties and given prompts to promote conversation such as “It’s OK to wear a shirt ____ times without washing it” and “I put ketchup on____,” according to the statement.
The feature is now available in the United States, the company said.
Online dating experts said that promoting dating through communication is a nice idea, particularly for an app that was initially based on physical appearance. But as to whether the new feature will have the intended result, the experts said it could go either way.
“This can be very positive if people are open to dating someone who might not necessarily be in their core attraction bubble,” she said.
However, she added, it could also backfire, hurting people who are unmatched after their photos are seen.
And, in the end, the conversations, which are meant be lower pressure to help people interact, are still taking place via text — at best offering a curated version of the other person, said Jennifer Gunsaullus, a sociologist and intimacy speaker.
But experts agree it could provide an interesting alternative to the way many people on dating apps. | null | null | null | null | null |
Reckless ‘power’ or ‘honest mistake’? Sarah Palin and New York Times lawyers make their final case in libel trial
A jury is now considering Palin’s suit, the first libel case against the Times to go to trial in nearly two decades.
And while the Times ran a correction, it did so without mentioning her name or sufficiently explaining how the error happened, her attorney Kenneth Turkel told a New York City jury Friday, “indicative of an arrogance and a sense of power that is uncontrolled, for which Gov. Palin’s only remedy is to use our system here, the judicial system.”
The federal jury on Friday afternoon began deliberating the case, the first libel case against the Times to got to trial in the U.S. in nearly two decades. Since Palin, the 2008 Republican nominee for vice president, is a public figure, her lawyers must prove not only that the Times defamed her but that the paper was motivated by “actual malice.” If they prevail, either now or on appeal, the case could upend the long-standing protections afforded journalists writing about prominent people.
The editorial in question, entitled “America’s Lethal Politics,” was written just hours after a June 2017 shooting attack on a group of Republican lawmakers at a Virginia baseball field — and heavily rewritten on deadline by James Bennet, then the Times’s editorial-page editor. The original draft took note of a campaign map published Palin’s political action committee in 2011 that placed stylized crosshairs over several Democratic congressional districts, including the one in Tucson where then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was later injured in a mass shooting that killed six people. | null | null | null | null | null |
“The pi report confirmed that inflation hasn’t peaked yet and raised the prospects that the Fed is behind the curve, which they are,” said David Donabedian, chief investment officer of CIBC Private Wealth Management. “That’s bound to create angst in the equity markets about what the Fed will need to do to catch up.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Authorities say they may be dealing with copycats
D.C. police conduct an investigation of a security threat at Dunbar High School on Feb. 8. Doug Emhoff, husband of Vice President Harris, was removed from the building by Secret Service agents during an event commemorating Black History Month. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Bomb threats were called into three D.C. schools on Friday, forcing evacuations and heavy police responses for the fourth consecutive day in the city.
Police said nothing hazardous was found at the schools: Calvin Coolidge High in Northwest Washington, and the upper and lower campuses of Digital Pioneers Academy in separate parts of Southeast.
Authorities arrested two 16-year-old boys in connection with some of the threats made to eight D.C. high schools on Wednesday. Both were charged as juveniles with making terrorist threats.
On Friday, City Administrator Kevin Donahue said that the two youths were not connected to each other and that police do not believe they intended to carry out their threats.
“Historically, in other parts of the country, it was a copycat pattern that emerges with school bomb threats,” Donahue said on a weekly call of administration executives and members of the D.C. Council. “That’s what we appear to be seeing so far.”
Regardless of the intent, Donahue said, “These are criminal acts. They are not harmless pranks. They will be investigated and taken very seriously.”
Additional threats were made to schools in the District on Thursday. Police have said the threats were largely similar — all made through telephone calls, and most threatening a bomb and warning that people inside had limited time to leave.
One caller on Thursday told a D.C. school staff member, “I’m gonna blow the school up in fifteen seconds,” according to a police report. A call to another school around the same time gave a 30 second warning.
Most of the callers are male, police said, though one female threatened that she had a gun and a bomb in the building, the police report says.
Authorities said nothing hazardous was found at any of the locations. Someone threatened to “shoot up” a high school in Arlington, Va., on Thursday. That same day, four high schools in Prince George’s County, Md. were targeted, and police said a high school and a middle school in that county received bomb threats on Friday.
The first in this series of bomb threats gained widespread attention because it occurred as second gentleman Doug Emhoff, the husband of Vice President Harris, was visiting Dunbar High School in the District on Tuesday.
D.C. police said they have not linked either of the two teenagers arrested this week to that case. The FBI, the U.S. Secret Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are assisting in the investigation.
Katie Mettler contributed to this report. | null | null | null | null | null |
And although the Times ran a correction, it did so without mentioning her name or sufficiently explaining how the error happened, her attorney Kenneth Turkel told a New York City jury Friday, “indicative of an arrogance and a sense of power that is uncontrolled, for which Gov. Palin’s only remedy is to use our system here, the judicial system.”
The federal jury on Friday afternoon began deliberating the case, the first libel case against the Times to got to trial in the United States in nearly two decades. Since Palin, the 2008 Republican nominee for vice president, is a public figure, her lawyers must prove not only that the Times defamed her but that the paper was motivated by “actual malice.” If they prevail, either now or on appeal, the case could upend the long-standing protections afforded journalists writing about prominent people.
The editorial in question, titled “America’s Lethal Politics,” was written just hours after a June 2017 shooting attack on a group of Republican lawmakers at a Virginia baseball field — and heavily rewritten on deadline by James Bennet, then the Times’s editorial page editor. The original draft took note of a campaign map published Palin’s political action committee in 2011 that placed stylized crosshairs over several Democratic congressional districts, including the one in Tucson where then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was later injured in a mass shooting that killed six people. | null | null | null | null | null |
Woman charged in killing of man in Fairfax County
A Harrisonburg, Va. woman has been charged with second degree murder in the killing of a man in Fairfax County on Thursday night, authorities said Friday.
Kaitlynn Nicole Nicholas, 23, was arrested in Harrisonburg on Friday in connection with the killing of 39-year-old Johnny Lee Robinson III of Leesburg, Fairfax County police Major Ed O’Carroll said at a news conference. Nicholas is being held in the Rockingham County jail, awaiting extradition to Fairfax County to face trial.
Fairfax County police officers were called to an apartment complex in the 3300 block of Willow Crescent Drive in the Fairfax area around 8:15 p.m. Thursday for a report of a man shot in a parking lot, O’Carroll said.
O’Carroll said the pair, who knew each other, had left a nearby apartment before the shooting occurred. The shooting began with an argument, before Nicholas allegedly fired a single shot at Robinson’s upper body, O’Carroll said.
Robinson was taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead, O’Carroll said. Officers scoured the area for a woman who was seen fleeing the scene, but Nicholas was not immediately located. Authorities believe she took a rideshare car to Harrisonburg where she was arrested.
O’Carroll said a gun was recovered near the scene of the shooting.
Nicholas’s case was not yet entered into the court system so it could not be determined if she had an attorney. | null | null | null | null | null |
Police raid in Rio leaves 8 people dead
A police operation in a poor area of Rio de Janeiro on Friday left eight people dead, according to the state’s military police.
Some people protested the operation, demanding to see the bodies of those who were killed.
Police said the raid targeted criminals planning attacks against security forces occupying the Jacarezinho favela, where the state has launched its “Integrated City” initiative to reclaim territory from gangs.
Ruling party moves to ease strife with E.U.
Poland’s ruling nationalists proposed a bill Friday aimed at easing a dispute with the European Union over judiciary independence and unlocking access to E.U. funds.
In October, the E.U.’s top court ruled that Poland must pay $1.13 million a day in fines for maintaining a disciplinary chamber for judges that it says is not independent and breaches E.U. law. The head of the E.U.’s executive branch has said Poland will have to undo the system to unlock billions of dollars in aid.
Under the proposal by a group of Law and Justice lawmakers, the chamber would remain, but only for prosecutors, advocates and other legal professions.
Critics say the measure fails to touch on the basic problem of Polish judicial reform under the ruling party — the politicized appointment of judges.
Telegram channels blocked in Germany: Messenger service Telegram, which has proved popular with far-right groups and people opposed to coronavirus restrictions, has blocked 64 of its channels in Germany, the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported without giving a source for the information. The move came after Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office sent shutdown requests to the messenger service. Telegram did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
France deploys police officers to counter 'freedom convoy': France mobilized thousands of police officers, armored personnel carriers and water cannon trucks in Paris to keep out convoys of motorists converging for a protest against coronavirus restrictions. Inspired by the horn-blaring "Freedom Convoy" protests in Canada, motorists were expected to gather outside Paris ahead of the weekend and seek to defy a police order not to enter the city. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: Newt Gingrich: Dana Milbank’s take on my role as House speaker was way off
Then-House Speaker Newt Gingirch (R-Ga.), left, and President Bill Clinton discuss continuing budget talks on Dec. 30, 1995, in Washington. (Keith Jenkins/The Washington Post)
In his Feb. 6 Sunday Opinion column, “Newt Gingrich started us on the road to ruin. Now, he’s back.,” Dana Milbank wrote that I “embraced white nationalism long before [Donald] Trump’s rise. When Pat Buchanan launched his race-baiting primary challenge to President George H.W. Bush in 1992, Gingrich boosted Buchanan.”
In the election, I supported President Bush against Mr. Buchanan and called on Mr. Buchanan to bow out. My first day in office in 1979, I co-sponsored a bill to put a bust of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the Capitol. I joined then-Rep. Ron Dellums (D-Calif.) in moving to change the Reagan-era policy on South Africa to make it anti-apartheid. I helped pass the Africa free-trade bill.
Mr. Milbank asserted that I “popularized the idea that Democrats weren’t just wrong — they were criminals.” My first action concerning Democratic House members who were criminals involved then-Rep. Charles Diggs (Mich.), who had been convicted of 11 counts of mail fraud and received kickbacks from his staff and was sentenced to three years in prison. He was by definition a criminal. I insisted he quit voting while he was out on appeal. That became a rule of the House. As for my involvement in the ouster of then-House Speaker Jim Wright (D-Tex.), an Ethics Committee chaired by a Democrat concluded that Wright had to resign or be forced out.
Dana Milbank: Newt Gingrich started us on the road to ruin. Now, he’s back to finish the job.
Mr. Milbank wrote that I “pioneered the now-common refusal to negotiate, which brought hopeless gridlock and dysfunction to the political system.” We reformed welfare, Medicare, telecommunications and the Food and Drug Administration and passed the only four consecutive balanced federal budgets in Mr. Milbank’s lifetime — with Democrats voting with us.
I learned from President Ronald Reagan to be a tough negotiator but to always try to get an agreement.
Newt Gingrich, McLean
The writer, a Republican, represented Georgia in the House from 1979 to 1999 and served as House speaker from 1995 to 1999. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: The service academies are in a bind between authority and wokeness
Carolyn Chun is a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy. (The Washington Post)
Regarding the Feb. 6 Washington Post magazine article “Making waves,” about Carolyn Chun, a U.S. Naval Academy professor denied tenure because, as she believes, she is a female woman of color.
The USNA has created a perfect storm. It has internalized intense pressure from Congress to hire and retain non-White-non-male-non-straight faculty members for a student body that is overwhelmingly White, straight, male and conservative. Such hires typically feel defensive about the large numbers of skeptical male students they encounter. The result is that they frequently alienate the typical USNA student, and this comes out in student evaluations, which are subjective.
However, the USNA brass, which has no experience with higher education and is using a top-down authority model for an academic environment, wants to retain these student opinion forms to deal with people such as me. About 15 years after I started teaching English at the USNA in 1987, I began to write critically about the academy. USNA officials fired me. But if they use these forms with people such as Ms. Chun, whom they need to retain for the current political program, the result will be more bad publicity.
In my situation, they used the complaints of a right-wing student that I had advocated positions he didn’t like (such as changing the no-sex-on-campus policy of USNA) as a pretense to fire me. USNA’s allegation was that I failed to “respect” the students. A judge for the Merit Systems Protection Board threw out every one of its allegations, finding that the student was trying to get revenge for a grade lower than he thought he deserved. For the administration, anything that squelches dissent is justified.
Ms. Chun should know that tenure doesn’t ensure anything at the USNA. I have it and was fired anyway, before being reinstated. The USNA is not primarily an academic institution; it’s a vanity project of the brass that costs the taxpayers a bundle and produces fewer than 1 in 5 new naval officers.
The service academies are in a bind they have themselves created between authority and wokeness and should be repurposed to military graduate schools for technical subjects.
Bruce E. Fleming, Davidsonville | null | null | null | null | null |
Ian McDonald, a founder of King Crimson and Foreigner, dies at 75
The multi-instrumentalist played in influential progressive rock bands and was a prolific session musician
Ian McDonald, a British multi-instrumentalist who co-founded the pioneering progressive rock band King Crimson and stadium rock hitmaker Foreigner, died Feb. 9 at his home in New York City. He was 75.
He had cancer, said his son Max McDonald.
Born in London in 1946, Mr. McDonald formed King Crimson in 1968 with guitarist Robert Fripp, drummer Michael Giles, lyricist Peter Sinfield and singer, bassist and guitarist Greg Lake. He played saxophone, flute and vibraphone, among other instruments, on the band’s 1969 debut album, “In the Court of the Crimson King.”
The record is now considered a landmark in bringing classical influences, epic length and mythic scope to rock-and-roll. Its influence endures: Kanye West sampled the track “21st Century Schizoid Man” on his 2010 single “Power.”
Mr. McDonald left King Crimson after that first album, though he later rejoined briefly before Fripp broke up the band in 1974.
In 1976, Mr. McDonald formed Foreigner with musicians including British guitarist Mick Jones and American singer Lou Gramm. He played on three albums — which all made the U.S. Top 10 and yielded hits such as “Cold as Ice” and “Feels Like the First Time” — before Jones fired him in 1980.
Mr. McDonald was also a prolific session musician, playing saxophone on the hit 1971 single “Get It On” by T. Rex. He produced several albums and made his studio debut as a solo artist with “Drivers Eyes,” which featured musicians including Giles, Gramm, Peter Frampton and former Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett.
Hackett said he had admired Mr. McDonald “ever since I was in the teens, when I was totally bowled over by the King Crimson show at the Marquee in London.”
“Ian was both a fabulous composer and an amazing multi-instrumentalist,” he added. “I have always been full of admiration for his solo work, as well as everything he did with Crimson and Foreigner, amongst others.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Cincinnati Bengals fans show their support and enjoy the show during the team's Super Bowl pep rally at Paul Brown Stadium on Feb. 7 in Cincinnati. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
This sports-crazy, blue-collar city on the banks of the Ohio River didn’t have much to celebrate until recently, when the Bengals’ young quarterback Joe Burrow — the NFL’s No. 1 draft pick in 2020 — led the team in a thrilling come-from-behind overtime victory over the Kansas City Chiefs, earning a trip to Sunday’s Super Bowl.
The city and state have rallied behind the team in a big way, celebrating the Bengals’ “surreal” journey to Los Angeles with outbursts of joy, spontaneous hugs with strangers and chants of “Who Dey?” — the team’s rallying cry. Paul Brown Stadium, one of the city’s iconic landmarks, is blazing orange, as are other buildings across the skyline. Schools will be closed the day after the game. And do they dare even dream of a victory parade?
It still seems hard to believe. Last season, the Bengals won four games, the season before, two. They hadn’t won a playoff game since 1991. This is the team’s third trip to the Super Bowl, but the first in 33 years. Their first two appearances — after the 1981 and 1988 seasons — ended in losses to the San Francisco 49ers.
“We are incredibly proud of the Bengals and everything they have accomplished this season,” DeWine said in a statement announcing the honor. The whole state will be rooting for them on Sunday, he said.
The Bengals presented the city with the game ball from their first playoff victory in 31 years, against the Las Vegas Raiders on Jan. 15, and the mayor has been toting it around since.
The contrast between the teams couldn’t be more striking. The itinerant Rams play before celebrities like Jay-Z and Kendrick Lamar while their moneyed fans sip at the champagne bar in the new SoFi stadium. Bengals fans, who have been cheering for their hometown team since 1968, guzzle beer and eat Cincinnati chili while singing along to Guns N’ Roses “Welcome to the Jungle,” their de facto anthem.
Jim Moehring, 54, owner of the Holy Grail sports bar downtown, said this January was the first in a decade that he hadn’t had to lay off any of his kitchen staff, with business up 200 percent during the Bengals’ playoff run. He once feared he might have to close down, he said, even though the bar is just yards from home plate of the city’s other cathedral of sport, the Cincinnati Reds’ stadium.
He endeared himself to his home state during his speech the night he won the Heisman trophy in 2019 en route to winning the national championship as the quarterback at Louisiana State University.
People say they like Burrow because he’s humble and tough, with just the right amount of swagger. He managed to overcome a serious knee injury in a late-season game against the Washington Football Team in 2020 to take his team to a 10-7 record this season, surviving a playoff game against the Tennessee Titans where he was sacked nine times. Asked by reporters Monday which of his many nicknames he prefers — “Joe Brrr” is one, also “Joe Cool” — he said simply, “Just call me Joe.”
At a Monday night pep rally at Paul Brown Stadium before the team left for Los Angeles, fans draped themselves in fuzzy tiger-stripe blankets, braved a wind chill of 25 degrees and chanted “Who dey? Who dey? Who dey think gonna beat dem Bengals?” (Answer: “Nobody!”) The noise level in the stadium rose to a dull roar when the team entered through a cloud of fake smoke. Burrow got the loudest cheer, along with the chant for “MVP, MVP," which is what they hoped he would be named. (He was named “Comeback Player of the Year” Thursday.) | null | null | null | null | null |
FedEx driver D’Monterrio Gibson speaks during a news conference. He says was fired upon and chased by a father and son while delivering packages on his route in Brookhaven, Miss. (Rogelio V. Solis/AP)
FedEx driver D’Monterrio Gibson said he was delivering packages on his route in Brookhaven, Miss., on Jan. 24 when two White men with whom he had not interacted chased him in a pickup truck for about seven minutes and fired at least five shots at the van he was driving.
Gibson, who said he was driving a Hertz van at the time but was in his full FedEx uniform, told reporters Thursday that he believes that Brandon Case and his father, Gregory Case, chased and shot at him because he is Black and thought he didn’t belong in the neighborhood.
Moore said that his client did nothing wrong before the Cases chased and shot at him but “was simply Black while working.” The attorney said the incident echoed the case of Arbery, the 25-year-old Black man who was murdered in Georgia in 2020 after three White men pursued him in pickup trucks while Arbery was jogging.
“It was clearly a copycat crime,” Moore said, adding that he has urged the Justice Department and FBI to look into the case. “These people tried to be copycats, and that’s why we need full justice, not Mississippi justice. This man went to work, and they attacked him like he was a wild animal.”
Gibson, of Utica, Miss., said he had been to the neighborhood in Brookhaven, about an hour outside Jackson, Miss., only once or twice for his work at FedEx. The population in Brookhaven is 60 percent Black, according to the latest U.S. Census data.
At about 7 p.m. on Jan. 24, Gibson was delivering packages when he saw a white pickup truck approaching him and honking its horn. Court records show that Gregory Chase was driving the truck. When the vehicle cut him off as he was trying to leave, Gibson told the Mississippi Free Press that he attempted to swerve around the pickup truck to get out of the neighborhood. But as he drove past a couple of houses, Gibson said there was another man in the road — and he had a gun pointed at him. That man was Brandon Case, according to court records.
After he eventually got away from the men, Gibson told reporters that he called police to report what happened to him. As he was explaining the incident, a dispatcher interrupted him and asked whether he had been on Junior Trail, the street where the driver was delivering packages.
“I said, ‘Yes,’ ” Gibson said at the news conference. “He was like, ‘Well, I just got a call of a suspicious person at this address.’ ” Gibson recalled to the Free Press how he responded, “Sir, I’m not a suspicious person, I work for FedEx. I was just doing my job.”
The Cases eventually turned themselves in on Feb. 1 but were released from the Lincoln County Jail on bonds the next day — Gregory Case for $75,000 and Brandon Case for $150,000.
“The safety of our team members is our top priority, and we remain focused on his wellbeing,” a company spokesperson said. “We will continue to support Mr. Gibson as we cooperate with investigating authorities.”
When asked about what he would ask to the Cases, the FedEx driver said he just wanted to know what was going through their heads last month. The Mississippi native said he had “never really experienced racism ... not to this extent.” Now, he’s just thankful to be alive.
“I’m just looking at everything way different now,” he said. “You can just die doing your job.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Ex-Air Force sergeant pleads guilty to killing
Carillo, of Santa Cruz, is scheduled to be sentenced on June 3.
Prison worker pleads guilty to sexual abuse
Ross Klinger, 36, is one of four employees, including the warden and chaplain, who’ve been arrested in the past seven months for sexually abusing inmates at the federal correctional institution in Dublin, Calif. Several other Dublin workers are under investigation.
Klinger was placed on administrative leave in April 2021 and remains “currently employed with the Bureau of Prisons,” the agency said Friday. | null | null | null | null | null |
DOVER, Del. — The judge presiding over the Boy Scouts of America bankruptcy has delayed the start of a trial to determine whether the BSA’s reorganization plan should be confirmed after an agreement with the official committee representing more than 80,000 men who say they were molested as children by Scout leaders and others resulted in several new plan provisions. | null | null | null | null | null |
World Stage: Crisis in Ukraine with William B. Taylor, Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine
With more than 100,000 Russian troops positioned along the Ukrainian border, the specter of conflict continues to loom large over Europe. On Thursday, Feb. 17 at 12:00 p.m. ET, William B. Taylor, former U.S. Ambassador to Kyiv, joins Washington Post Live to discuss what he learned from his recent visit to Ukraine and the prospects for a diplomatic solution.
William B. Taylor
Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine | null | null | null | null | null |
And although the Times ran a correction, it did so without mentioning her name or sufficiently explaining how the error happened, her attorney Kenneth Turkel told a New York City jury Friday, “indicative of an arrogance and a sense of power that is uncontrolled, for which Governor Palin’s only remedy is to use our system here, the judicial system.”
The federal jury on Friday afternoon began deliberating the case, the first libel case against the Times to get to trial in the United States in nearly two decades. Since Palin, the 2008 Republican nominee for vice president, is a public figure, her lawyers must prove not only that the Times defamed her but that the paper was motivated by “actual malice.” If they prevail, either now or on appeal, the case could upend the long-standing protections afforded journalists writing about prominent people.
The editorial in question, titled “America’s Lethal Politics,” was written just hours after a June 2017 shooting attack on a group of Republican lawmakers at a Virginia baseball field — and heavily rewritten on deadline by James Bennet, then the Times’s editorial page editor. The original draft took note of a campaign map published by Palin’s political action committee in 2011 that placed stylized crosshairs over several Democratic congressional districts, including the one in Tucson where then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was later injured in a mass shooting that killed six people. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: Biden should have been ready to make his Supreme Court pick
Solicitor General Thurgood Marshall, nominated by President Lyndon B. Johnson to the Supreme Court, sits at the witness table before testifying on his fitness for the post before the Senate Judiciary Committee in D.C. on July 18, 1967. (AP)
Said Johnson of Marshall, “I believe it is the right thing to do, the right time to do it, the right man and the right place.”
The same can be said of Biden’s momentous appointment of a Black woman.
But Johnson approached the nomination of his celebrated “first” more adroitly than Biden has handled his.
It remains to be seen whether Biden’s process will be as helpful to his nominee as was Johnson’s to Marshall.
Johnson noted during his announcement that Marshall had already earned his place in history. Counting his service as a private counsel and as U.S. solicitor general, Marshall had argued about 50 cases before the Supreme Court, placing him at the time among just a handful of lawyers in U.S. history who had appeared so many times before the highest court in the land.
Johnson had thought many moves ahead. He had been grooming Marshall for the post, having asked him to leave the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in 1965 to serve as solicitor general. A transcript of Johnson’s July 7, 1965, telephone call asking Marshall to come to Washington revealed Johnson hinting that he had something else in mind: “I want you to have the experience and be in the picture. I’m not discussing anything else, and I don’t want to make any other commitments, and I don’t want to imply or bribe or mislead you, but I want you to have the training and the experience of being there day after day for the next few weeks, anyway. Or maybe the next few months if you could do it.”
Two years later, when Justice Tom C. Clark announced his retirement, Johnson was ready. And except for Southern senators, Marshall’s nomination was approved by the Senate 69 to 11.
Johnson was aware that there were other highly qualified high court contenders among the nation’s Black jurists and lawyers. But the nationally known Marshall, with Johnson in his corner, had a lock on the top of the list.
Would that the same could be said of Biden and his prospective nominee. It’s not as if Biden hasn’t had time to make up his mind.
It was two years ago this month that Biden made a promise at a debate before the South Carolina primary. “I’m looking forward to making sure there’s a Black woman on the Supreme Court to make sure we in fact get everyone represented,” said Biden. That Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), whose backing rescued Biden in the hotly contested primary, had encouraged Biden to make the pledge only underscores the urgency of the president making good on his promise at the first moment possible.
Instead, when Justice Stephen G. Breyer announced his retirement, Biden reacted by repeating his two-year-old declaration and then launching a selection process that has taken on the semblance of a lottery.
From the time he made his promise, Biden knew or should have known shortly thereafter the universe in which he was working. He knew or should have known all he needed to know about the Black women serving on U.S. appeals courts and sitting as federal judges in district courts. He should have learned during his first year in office who are the Black women not serving on the federal bench with the strongest credentials, records, qualifications and dedication to the rule of law for service on the Supreme Court.
Biden should have been ready to announce his choice. As matters now stand, the names of exceptionally qualified Black women are being floated as trial balloons and subjected to behind-the-scenes sniping and outright attack. Litmus tests are being applied to shortlisted candidates without them having an opportunity to speak for themselves. What’s next for the candidates? Bidding wars? Public opinion polls? Senate whip counts?
None of this augurs well for the eventual nominee.
Biden has brought this upon himself and his eventual Supreme Court candidate. Reportedly, FBI vetting of potential candidates is underway. And Biden is now reviewing their records and plans to conduct interviews starting next week. Meanwhile, names dangle and potshots fire away. As recently as Thursday, Biden was inviting Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats to recommend candidates to replace Breyer.
End the politicking and analysis paralysis. Make good on your promise, Mr. President, and make the call now. | null | null | null | null | null |
So when Heather Havrilesky declared, in the New York Times, “Do I hate my husband? Oh for sure, yes, definitely,” people feasted. The Atlantic’s David Frum likened the essay, excerpted from Havrilesky’s new book, “Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage,” to “filing your divorce papers in front of millions of people.” In a now-deleted tweet, the feminist writer Andi Ziesler suggested, with magnificent passive-aggression, “It might be a net good if we stopped conflating ‘successful marriage’ and ‘marriage that lasts forever.’” | null | null | null | null | null |
Perspective: The Kamila Valieva case is an indictment of the anti-doping system, not her
The Olympics are thrilling. The Olympic bosses are infuriating. Ask Katie Uhlaender.
At this Olympic finish line, a grand tapestry of gorgeous misery
By Sally Jenkins8:29 p.m.
YANQING, China — Having slid at five Olympics and lived in the world for 37 years, Katie Uhlaender has experienced all the complexity and contradiction, the exhilaration of competing in the Games and the frustration with the people who run them. She feels cheated by a system complicit of stealing the medal she believes she earned eight years ago, yet she spoke of the “utmost respect” she has for the tainted rival who beat her.
Two Olympic cycles after those 2014 Games, the cloud of Russian doping still hovers over the Games. The Russian Olympic Committee won the team figure skating event Monday, but the skaters have not received their medals. Following days of intrigue and deflection by the International Olympic Committee, the International Testing Agency announced Friday that star 15-year-old skater Kamila Valieva tested positive for a banned substance and promised an expedited hearing to determine her eligibility.
“The way I’d look at that is they let them compete, so if it comes back positive they’re disqualified,” Uhlaender said. “That’s their own risk. But also, at this point, man, I don’t know. Even being here in China, they have the ITA here and all these people, how do we really know what’s going on behind the scenes? It’s not independent. None of this is independent. It’s all run by the IOC. It’s really hard to have faith in a system that failed so hard in 2014.” | null | null | null | null | null |
‘Follow the science’: As Year 3 of pandemic begins, a simple slogan becomes a political weapon
During the first year of the pandemic, Trump promised dozens of times that the virus would vanish. “It’s going to disappear,” he said in February 2020. “One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.” Four months later, he said that “it’s dying out.” Another four months after that, he said science would prove useful against the virus: “It’s ending anyway … but we’re going to make it a lot faster with the vaccine and with the therapeutics and frankly with the cures.” | null | null | null | null | null |
It’s a pas de deux that plays out over 25 laps.
So much uniformity. Or at least there was before Nils van der Poel showed up at these Beijing Olympics, where the Swedish skater has continued his stellar 2021 form, resetting records and seizing a small golden bounty at speeds that untrained eyes — that human eyes — have never seen.
“Eight laps to go, I felt like: ‘Okay, I got the gold within control. Now I just need to not f--- it up,’ ” he said. “With four laps to go, it was like, ‘Okay, now I can also go for the world record now,’ and then I kind of wanted to go for it.”
The 25-year-old entered Beijing hoping to win a gold medal. He said he wanted to have fun and endure pain, and he accomplished all three goals Sunday when he scorched the ice to snatch the gold from Roest, his longtime Dutch competitor, in the 5,000-meter event.
“It’s really amazing how far he’s been able to raise the level,” said Ted-Jan Bloemen, the Dutch-born Canadian whose Olympic title was seized by van der Poel. “He just gets in such a nice rhythm and just keeps going and going, and from there he can accelerate a little bit at the end. I think it’s beautiful.” | null | null | null | null | null |
A day in Washington in the 60s may be welcome any time but it seemed particularly pleasant on Friday where it far exceeded what we expect of winter and February.
By reaching a springlike 67 degrees, Friday’s high beat the average for the date by 22 degrees. Its steep ascent from the morning’s frigid low of 33 seemed a thermal achievement that owed much to bright sunshine.
It appeared that many took the day’s benevolence in stride. Sometimes, that seemed to mean jogging in shorts and a T-shirt.
However much Friday bestowed on us, the date has showed itself capable of even more. The Washington record for Feb. 11, set in 1932, is 76 degrees.
On the other hand, Feb. 11 in Washington may also offer less. Last year’s high was only 35. | null | null | null | null | null |
Julie’s a bit of a mess. When we meet her, she has no sooner enrolled in pre-med courses at a Norwegian university than she’s shifted her major to psychology — no wait, art. She’s all over the map. Her love life is just as prone to last-minute switchbacks. To paraphrase the singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers, she doesn’t know what she wants until she screws it up.
R. At area theaters. Contains sexual material, graphic nudity, drug use and some coarse language. In Norwegian with subtitles. 127 minutes. | null | null | null | null | null |
Baumgartner is competing in his fourth Olympics and has been with the U.S. team since 2005, with his best result before Saturday coming in PyeongChang in 2018 — fourth place. He cried so hard after missing the final of the men’s event this week that he missed watching an entire heat. | null | null | null | null | null |
“The CPIO report confirmed that inflation hasn’t peaked yet and raised the prospects that the Fed is behind the curve, which they are,” said David Donabedian, chief investment officer of CIBC Private Wealth Management. “That’s bound to create angst in the equity markets about what the Fed will need to do to catch up.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Baumgartner is competing in his fourth Olympics and has been with the U.S. team since 2005, with his best result before Saturday coming in PeyongChang in 2018 — fourth place. He cried so hard after missing the final of the men’s event this week that he missed watching an entire heat. | null | null | null | null | null |
Youth dies after DC shooting, police say
Victim was wounded on Chesapeake Street SE
A teenager died Friday after being shot earlier last week in Southeast Washington, the D.C. police said.
DeShawn Francis, 16, of Alexandria, was found Tuesday night in a car on Chesapeake Street, just east of South Capitol Street, according to the police.
The shooting occurred during a gun battle during what was suspected to be a drug transaction, police have said in court papers.
The site is about a mile from the District’s southern tip. | null | null | null | null | null |
Teenage pair arrested in string of recent carjackings, robberies and auto thefts, police say
Offenses came in January and early February, police say
Two male teenagers from Prince George’s County have been arrested in connection with a series of recent robberies, car thefts and carjackings in the District, the D.C. police said Friday.
A 15-year-old was charged in a total of 17 offenses, including seven armed carjackings and six armed robberies in which cars were taken, the police said.
Another 15-year old was charged in the same six robberies and four of the carjackings, D.C. police said.
Both youths were charged in the two thefts, police said. In those cases, vehicles were unoccupied when taken, according to the police
The crimes were reported between Jan. 13 and Feb. 5, most of them in Southeast and Northeast, according to police. | null | null | null | null | null |
Second man seriously wounded, according to police.
One man was killed and another seriously wounded Thursday morning in Prince George’s County, the police said.
The shooting occurred in the 5100 block of Leroy Gorham Drive in Capitol Heights, the county police said.
It came to light when a car approached D.C. police about 12:55 a.m. in the 5000 block of Bass Place SE, according to county police. Investigation showed that the two men in the car had been shot at the Capitol Heights site, the county police said.
One was pronounced dead on Bass Place, and the other was taken to a hospital, the county police said.
The Bass Place address and the shooting site are about two miles apart. It was not clear why the car was driven into the District.
They said they are investigating. | null | null | null | null | null |
February 4, 2022|Updated February 4, 2022 at 6:39 p.m. EST
By the time of that pronouncement, the charmingly goofy celebration concocted by Bengals running back Elbert “Ickey” Woods already had been banished from the end zone, leaving him to perform it on Cincinnati’s sideline. But even that was not enough for a stodgy corporation that, when confronted with an act of individual joy that would look innocuous today and was embraced by fans then, very much lived up to its reputation as the No Fun League.
Woods chose to stay in the Cincinnati area, where he remained beloved as a symbol of happier times for the Bengals while he worked a succession of odd jobs. Eventually, his “Ickey Shuffle” was brought back to life in several 2014 Geico commercials and made its mark on a younger audience. Then this season arrived, re-energizing a Bengals team that notched its first playoff win in 31 years, during which tight end C.J. Uzomah broke out a version of Woods’s dance after catching a touchdown.
“I have to, Mom. I have to,” he replied. Sure enough, Woods unveiled a prototype of the dance after he scored against Cleveland, but upon hearing from a teammate that it was “wack,” Woods added some extra steps. The finished product was launched two weeks later, when Woods reached the end zone against the New York Jets.
“Coach [Sam] Wyche asked me to do the shuffle on the sidelines so as not to be penalized,” Woods said in December 1988.
Even the team’s 80-year-old owner, NFL legend Paul Brown, was inspired to mimic Woods’s moves. “It’s ridiculous, but people laugh when they see it,” said Brown, who acknowledged he favored a more stoic response to scoring touchdowns. “I told him, ‘I think it’s all right to do your little dance.’ I don’t care much for it, but my wife likes it.”
Given the biggest stage in American sports to potentially build on that showman image, Woods instead shared a self-deprecating assessment: “The ‘Ickey Shuffle’ is just some stupid dance.”
“It’s okay to celebrate your accomplishments,” school president Angela Frith said in a subsequent phone interview. “I don’t think it needs to be turned into a bragging moment, but for our kids — especially for our kids — it’s good to celebrate your successes. Sometimes there are a lot of obstacles you have to overcome and challenges you have to overcome, so it’s okay to say: ‘Hey, I did that. I was able to do that.’ ”
“I tell everybody that I was fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time,” he told the children. “We were winning ballgames, and we made it to the Super Bowl that year, and that’s why the ‘Ickey Shuffle’ took off. … I was blessed by the good lord up above to put me in that situation.” | null | null | null | null | null |
It was another packed house in Duluth, with around 75 members squeezed into the lounge. They were loud and raucous – “We almost didn’t hear the phone ring,” Heikkila said -- cheering every hit, guard and angled double run-back pulled off by the Americans.
The atmosphere at the Gold Medal Lounge, named for Team Shuster’s signature achievement, was undoubtedly better than the one in the Ice Cube – the same arena where Michael Phelps won eight swimming gold medals in 2008, when it was known as the Water Cube. Here, on Saturday afternoon, the stands were mostly empty because of the severe covid-19 restrictions -- and sadly, there was no beer to be found.
But at Duluth Curling Club -- his home rink, just across the St. Louis River from his house in Superior, Wis. -- he’s just good ol’ Shustie, a guy who still shows up occasionally for the Thursday night men’s league, a guy who took home the 2012-13 Bagley Trophy as skip of the men’s club championship team. A quick glance at the list of club champions reveals an interesting fact: Shuster hasn’t won another one since. He may be the reigning Olympic champion, but the Bagley Trophy has eluded him for almost a decade.
Like many patrons of the Gold Medal Lounge, Cameron, 74, competed Friday evening in the annual Hoops Brewing International Open Bonspiel -- a weekend-long tournament that cost $280 to enter, with cash prizes awarded at the end – then stuck around to watch Team Shuster take on the Norwegians. Although the kitchen was closed, they had boxes of pizzas stacked on a table, and the beers from title sponsor Hoops, a local craft brewery, were $1 for a pint and $3 for a pitcher.
In 2020, Cameron had been the lead on the championship team of the same bonspiel -- a team that has retained its status as defending champs entering this weekend by virtue of the 2021 edition being canceled because of the pandemic.
But not every member of his team takes the bonspiel as seriously as Cameron, and unfortunately, he had to elevate himself to skip this year -- because his former skip skipped town on the rest of his teammates, choosing to curl in another tournament on the same weekend. | null | null | null | null | null |
Kamila Valieva's test sample in question was taken Dec. 25. The results were not revealed until Feb. 8. (Matthew Stockman/Getty Images)
BEIJING — The Court of Arbitration for Sport will hear the case of Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva via video conference early Sunday night in Beijing, and a decision is anticipated Monday afternoon, according to a statement released by the court.
Valieva would be the gold medal favorite in the women’s individual competition, which begins with Tuesday’s short program, if she is allowed to compete after testing positive for a banned substance in December.
As Valieva continues to practice here, the head of the Russian Olympic Committee called into question the lengthy gap between the collection of her sample and the reporting of the positive result. Valieva, 15, provided a sample Dec. 25, during the Russian national championships, and the Swedish lab analyzing the sample did not report the result until Feb. 8, after Valieva and the Russians won the figure skating team event here.
The World Anti-Doping Code’s handbook that outlines the international standard for laboratories says the reporting of the results from the A sample of a drug test should occur within 20 days of receipt of the sample. (The handbook defines “days” as calendar days, not business days, unless otherwise noted.) Yet, this WADA-accredited lab in Stockholm reported Valieva’s result more than six weeks after it was collected. It is unclear when the lab received the sample.
The Russian Anti-Doping Agency issued a statement that said the laboratory informed the agency that “the delay in analysis and reporting by the Laboratory was caused by another wave of covid-19, an increase in illness among Laboratory staff and quarantine rules.”
Still, the president of the Russian Olympic Committee, Stanislav Pozdnyakov, cited WADA’s 20-day time frame and questioned the delay.
“It looks very strange that the sample traveled from St. Petersburg to Stockholm for almost a month,” Pozdnyakov told reporters, according to Russian news agency TASS. “This raises very serious questions for me, and it looks very much like someone was holding this plug until the end of the figure skaters’ team competitions.”
Valieva’s sample contained the banned substance trimetazidine, which is designed for mostly older people who have a condition called angina that causes severe chest pain because of inadequate blood flow to the heart. The drug could improve an athlete’s endurance.
After the Russian Anti-Doping Agency received Valieva’s test results from the Swedish lab, Valieva was briefly suspended. Valieva challenged that decision Feb. 9, and a Russian anti-doping committee lifted the suspension. The International Olympic Committee and World Anti-Doping Agency appealed the lifting of the suspension, prompting an expedited hearing before the Court of Arbitration for Sport. The ruling is expected before the women’s individual competition in Beijing.
“There will be a resolution of this specific case, which is whether the suspension will be lifted or not,” IOC spokesman Mark Adams said Saturday. “I’m certain of that — as certain as I can be.”
Valieva, the 2022 European champion and Russian national champion, entered these Olympics as the favorite in the women’s figure skating competition. During the team event, she became the first woman to land a quadruple jump at the Olympics. The teenage star has not been available for interviews while the uncertainty looms.
Travis Tygart, the CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, called a delay of this length “unacceptable” and a sign of a “high level of incompetence by RUSADA” in an interview before the organizations disclosed the timeline of events.
“This is a routine screen at the lab,” Tygart said. “It’s a synthetic substance that’s easy to detect. It’s not like [erythropoietin, a hormone that stimulates the production of red blood cells] or human growth hormone where you need some extra time or extra tests to confirm it. It’s a pretty straightforward substance in that regard.”
However, there are past examples of doping sanctions with timelines that are not dramatically different from Valieva’s case. The sample of U.S. swimmer Madisyn Cox, who also tested positive for trimetazidine, was collected on Feb. 5, 2018, with the lab reporting the result on March 2. Recently, American weightlifter Ian Wilson completed a doping test on Dec. 2, 2021, with a positive result prompting a provisional suspension imposed Jan. 5.
Adam Kilgore in Beijing, Gus Garcia-Roberts in Los Angeles and Isabelle Khurshudyan in Kyiv contributed to this report. | null | null | null | null | null |
French scientist Luc Montagnier, at left in 1984, with Jean-Claude Chermann and Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, two members of his lab who helped discover HIV. (Michel Clement/AFP/Getty Images)
The French virologist was a senior researcher at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, where he directed a unit that focused on retroviruses, which multiply by splicing their genetic material into a host cell’s genome. Like many of his colleagues, he suspected that one such virus was the culprit.
The lab of Dr. Montagnier, who was 89 when he died Feb. 8 at a hospital in the Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, had discovered HIV, the drug-resistant virus that was later found to cause AIDS. Originally labeled a “gay plague,” the disease ballooned into a public health crisis as Dr. Montagnier and his team fought for recognition from the scientific community, which ignored and sometimes scorned their early research.
Ultimately, the work done by Dr. Montagnier and his colleagues — including Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, who detected telltale viral activity in the original sample — paved the way for an HIV blood test, spurred the development of AIDS drugs and therapies, and earned the two Pasteur scientists a share of the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 2008.
Dr. Montagnier’s reputation later plummeted as colleagues accused him of spreading pseudoscience and threatening public health through his opposition to vaccination mandates. But for decades, he remained best known for his HIV research and his work to prevent AIDS. Much to his dismay, his early findings plunged him into a decade-long battle for scientific glory, national pride and millions of dollars in blood test patent royalties, as he and an American team led by National Cancer Institute researcher Robert C. Gallo vied over who discovered what and when.
While Gallo was long cited as a key leader in HIV research, credited with definitively linking the virus to AIDS, the Nobel committee sought to honor the “discoverers” of the virus in awarding the prize to Dr. Montagnier and Barré-Sinoussi.
By the time of the announcement, more than 25 million people had died of AIDS-related illnesses, and an estimated 33 million more were living with HIV. By all accounts, the disease’s toll would have been far greater were it not for advances in virology spearheaded by Dr. Montagnier and Gallo in the 1970s and early ’80s.
Dr. Montagnier’s research pointed toward a cause that was unrelated to HTLV. He published his lab’s initial findings in a May 1983 issue of Science, giving a basic description of what he called lymphadenopathy associated virus, or LAV — a reference to the swollen lymph nodes in which it was found. Its role in AIDS, wrote Dr. Montagnier and his colleagues, “remains to be determined.”
The article received little attention. But four months later, when Dr. Montagnier described his work at a conference of top virologists at Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y., Pasteur had mounting evidence that the virus was indeed the cause of AIDS. Dr. Montagnier was reportedly met with derision during a question-and-answer session.
The Pasteur Institute’s work began to gain broad acceptance only in April 1984, when Margaret M. Heckler, the U.S. secretary of health and human services, announced in a news conference that “the probable cause of AIDS has been found” — not by Dr. Montagnier but by Gallo and his lab, which called the virus HTLV-3. There was a chance, Gallo noted at the time, that his virus was the same as the one isolated at Pasteur.
It soon became clear that LAV, HTLV-3 and a third virus — subsequently isolated by researcher Jay Levy — were variants of the same pathogen. Jousting over precedence and priority began almost immediately, with Gallo claiming that he had isolated the virus without relying on help from the French. He said he had gone far beyond their research by establishing the virus’s link to AIDS and detailing its structure and development.
Genetic testing showed a striking similarity between the pathogens isolated by Dr. Montagnier and Gallo. The viruses they relied on for their research appeared to be identical, or at least taken from the same source.
Pasteur applied for a U.S. patent in December 1983, a few months before Gallo’s team filed an application of their own. After the patent was awarded to the American researchers in May 1985, the Pasteur Institute sued the U.S. government, alleging that the Gallo test had been made using the French virus.
The dispute seemed to have come to an end in 1987, after Reagan and Chirac announced an agreement in which royalties from the blood test were split between France and the United States, and the two scientists agreed to describe themselves as “co-discoverers” of HIV. (The virus’s name, coined by an international committee the previous year, was itself a compromise, designed to replace the competing names LAV and HTLV-3.)
The reporting spurred investigations by the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Health and Human Services, which examined Gallo’s lab records and interviewed scores of his colleagues as part of what The Post described as “the longest running and most heavily publicized fraud controversy in the history of American science.”
As a result, the U.S-France blood test agreement was tweaked in 1994, so that the French received a bigger share of royalties from the sale of test kits. “It’s the end of a bad story,” Dr. Montagnier told The Post, adding that he remained focused on his research into HIV/AIDS, which remains uncured.
In an autobiographical essay for the Nobel Prize, he recalled that he had been interested in medicine since he was a young man, when he watched as his grandfather experienced “terrible suffering” and eventually died of rectal cancer. He later found himself just as powerless in the face of AIDS, as patients with the disease waited outside his laboratory offices in Paris.
'I don't have to be ashamed'
An only child, Luc Antoine Montagnier was born in Chabris, France, on Aug. 18, 1932. He grew up near Poitiers, where his mother was a seamstress and theater usher, and his father, who suffered from chronic enterocolitis and lesions in his heart, was an accountant.
He joined the Pasteur Institute in 1972 and was the founding director of the its viral oncology unit until 2000, when he became a professor emeritus. From 1974 to 1998 he was also director of research at the French National Center for Scientific Research, one of Europe’s largest scientific agencies.
Dr. Montagnier was appointed the head of a proposed $30 million AIDS research center at Queens College in New York in 1997, but the research effort failed to attract sufficient financing and closed.
In 1986, Dr. Montagnier and his lab announced the discovery of a second type of HIV, concentrated in patients in West Africa. He went on to establish biotechnology companies focused on developing a cure for AIDS, and in 1993 he co-founded the World Foundation for AIDS Research and Prevention, a UNESCO-
affiliated organization based in Paris.
But Dr. Montagnier drew growing criticism as he threw his weight behind unlikely theories, surprising some colleagues when he asserted that HIV causes AIDS only by combining with bacteria called mycoplasma. He later backed ideas that were widely derided as pseudoscience, appearing at an autism conference alongside actress Jenny McCarthy to declare that the developmental disorder could be cured with antibiotics.
In 2010, he accepted a professorship at Shanghai Jiao Tong University to study “water memory,” claiming to have found evidence that DNA could be “teleported” through electromagnetic waves picked up by water. More recently, he claimed that the coronavirus was human-made, created as part of HIV vaccine research. He cited a paper that had not yet been peer-reviewed and has since been retracted, according to the Associated Press.
Former colleagues reacted to his assertions with anger and dismay. In response to speeches and interviews he gave condemning mandatory vaccinations for children, more than 100 academics denounced him in a 2017 statement.
Dr. Montagnier remained defiant, saying that the criticism of his peers had not stopped him before. “I don’t have to be ashamed of my career, nor of what I’m currently doing,” he told Le Monde in 2018. “The discovery of the AIDS virus saved millions of lives. I have authority, I am recognized, so that can endure.”
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly said when and where patent applications were filed for an HIV blood test. Luc Montagnier’s team originally applied for a patent in Britain, not the United States, before filing for a U.S. patent in December 1983. Robert C. Gallo’s team applied for a U.S. patent several months after that, not more than a year later. The article has been corrected. | null | null | null | null | null |
The “Message in a Bottle” exhibit at Nauticus, in Norfolk, Va., which showcases notes and bottles collected by a conservation nonprofit while cleaning up American rivers in the past quarter-century. The traveling exhibit is in partnership with Living Lands & Waters, an Illinois-based nonprofit that has conducted about 1,400 major river cleanups in 21 states since launching in the late 1990s. (Stephen M. Katz/The Virginian-Pilot via AP)
By Katherine Hafner, The Virginian-Pilot | AP
NORFOLK, Va. — When you hear of a message in a bottle, perhaps the term calls to mind faraway images of someone stranded on a remote island or penning love letters centuries ago. | null | null | null | null | null |
Driver crashes into Delaware ‘shark in a box’ landmark
A replica shark, the trophy from a state record mako catch in 1989, sits broken and its display case battered outside Captain Bones bait and tackle shop on Feb. 8, 2022 in Odessa, Del., after the landmark sign and shark were battered by a car earlier this week. The shark has been a part of the bait and tackle shop since it was built. (William Bretzger/The News Journal via AP)
By Patricia Talorico, The News Journal | AP
ODESSA, Del. — A driver severely damaged an Odessa bait and tackle shop’s well-known “shark-in-a-box” display, a roadside attraction for more than 30 years.
The custom-made mako shark mount, hanging inside a wooden- and glass-enclosed shark tank outside of Captain Bones Bait & Tackle Shop has been a goofy and beloved Delaware landmark since 1989.
The car’s driver also apparently slammed into the steel poles holding up the shark tank, Foley said.
Foley said one of the shark’s fins snapped off.
“It’s not good,” Foley said Feb. 8. “The shark is damaged. It will have to get a spa day.”
The shark has been a part of the bait and tackle shop since it was built by Foley’s late husband, Danny, a union pipefitter whose nickname was “Captain Bones.”
He had an even better idea in 1989. He constructed a replica of an 840-pound toothy mako shark that was hauled from a charter boat called the Shamrock by his nephew Richard H. Reed, who then managed the store.
The mount at Captain Bones was made in Florida with the shark’s exact measurements. (The Delaware anglers ate the meat — shark steaks are good eating — and kept some of the teeth.) A neighbor built the wooden box. Patty said her husband Danny, who died in 2001, would never tell her how much he spent on it.
“We’re going to get it fixed,” she said Tuesday. “It means a lot to so many people.”
Foley said she has no idea how much it will cost to repair the landmark, but the response has been ” just overwhelming. People have been reaching out asking if there’s anything they can help with. People have been pulling in nonstop, taking pictures. A lot of people in the community want to help.”
“It’s a whole thing. We need to get the shark out and get it in a flatbed trailer. And the whole showcase has to be rebuilt,” she said.
Foley said this isn’t the first time the shark tank has been hit by a car. Several years ago on a slippery, snowy Sunday afternoon, she said a driver crashed into a sign on her shop’s property and the vehicle slid underneath the shark tank.
The driver wasn’t injured and the shark had no structural damage.
This time, the shark wasn’t so lucky, but Foley said it “will be back. People really care about it. They have a lot of memories.” | null | null | null | null | null |
As the sun enters a more active phase, even minor geomagnetic activity proves to be a problem for smaller SpaceX satellites
An aurora appeared near Rogart in Sutherland, Scotland, as a minor geomagnetic storm arrived to Earth on Feb. 4. (Christopher J. Cogan)
In recent months, sky watchers have been treated to some of the most beautiful auroras in years as the sun enters a more active period of activity. Notably, moderate and strong solar storms in October and November spurred the dancing purple and green lights on Earth, delighting scientists and photographers.
But last week, SpaceX witnessed a different stunning impact of charged particles flinging around in space when they lost 40 of their small recently launched communications satellites. The loss could cost the company tens of millions of dollars.
According to a news release by SpaceX, 40 out of 49 Starlink satellites will reenter the atmosphere or have already entered after encountering a geomagnetic storm on February 4. The satellites, intended to bring low-cost Internet to remote areas, were launched the day before at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The company said the satellites are not expected to create debris or hit the ground upon reentry.
Spann said NASA and the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are currently analyzing the exact nature of the event that caused the issue, but the conditions do not appear particularly special.
On Jan. 30, satellites observed an expulsion of plasma and magnetic material from the sun, called a coronal mass ejection. The stream was directed toward Earth and arrived around Feb. 2, sparking some aurora sightings along the northern United States as shown above.
“That’s the solar storm we had predicted would hit. It was pretty much on time,” said Tamitha Skov, a research scientist at Aerospace Corp. “When we saw it, we went, ‘Oh, this is pretty mild.'"
However, another solar storm was lurking behind this one and took scientists by surprise.
“We had essentially one observation that was line of sight, which means that we look from Earth to the sun and we see the structure that’s coming at us,” said Skov. “But if there are other things hidden inside that structure or just behind it, it’s very difficult to pull that out or discern.”
When SpaceX launched their satellites on Thursday, the second storm was ramping up. The storm was rated a G1, stronger than the first but still relatively weak.
Skov said, however, the effects from the two successive storms piled up to cause Earth’s atmosphere to inflate, or puff out.
Think of Earth’s atmosphere like a bicycle tire, said Skov. When the first solar storm hit, the storm’s magnetic field drove currents that caused Earth’s upper atmosphere and particles to move in one direction. The motion continued for nearly an entire day.
When the second surprise solar storm hit, however, it was oriented in such a way to cause the motion of Earth’s upper atmosphere to reverse directions, said Skov. The friction and energy of those two opposing forces released heat in quantities more than models had anticipated — similar to the frictional heat released when trying to stop and reverse a moving bicycle tire with your hand.
“It’s kind of a normal G1 storm. It wasn’t anything exotic or extreme,” Spann said. He said his colleagues are working to “understand how this all happened to make us more effective in the prediction and providing the support that the commercial and other entities might need for future launches.”
The second storm also spurred auroras in a handful of areas across the world, from near the Canada-U.S. border to the United Kingdom.
SpaceX stated in their news release the storms caused the atmosphere to warm and increased atmospheric density at the altitudes they were flying.
“The geomagnetic storms, when energy from the sun gets into the Earth’s magnetic field environment, it changes the upper atmosphere. The density of that changes,” said Elizabeth MacDonald, a space weather physicist at NASA. “When a lot of particles are coming into the atmosphere, that can cause increased drag.”
Drag increased up to 50 percent higher than during previous launches, according to the SpaceX news release. The Starlink team ordered the satellites into safe-mode to minimize the effect, but the increased drag then prevented the satellites from leaving safe-mode to begin orbit raising maneuvers.
MacDonald said the atmospheric conditions led to a “perfect storm” in some sense. The timing of the flow of radiation from the sun and the effects of the storm on Earth’s upper atmosphere increased drag. But she added that’s not especially unusual, nor is the occurrence of two geomagnetic storms in close succession.
SpaceX said the satellites were hovering at the intended 210 kilometers above Earth, although Skov said that is lower than expected for a stable orbit. The particle density was also higher at lower altitudes.
Skov said the design of the satellites probably didn’t help reduce drag either. The satellites are impressively small with a comparatively large solar panel — a recipe for drag if the atmosphere inflates. Imagine one of those plastic army man toys deploying its parachute.
Starlink had not encountered such a dense atmosphere in previous launches, but previous satellites were launched during very different conditions on the sun. Approximately every 11 years, the orientation of the sun’s magnetic field flips and activity waxes and wanes. Starlink came online while the sun was going through a period of low activity called a solar minimum. Recently though, the sun has begun to enter a period of increased activity, heading toward a solar maximum.
“Because the Sun has been so quiet and all this technology being developed over the last several years,” said Spann, “this is the first time that we are employing this sort of technology in this new environment.”
Space weather researchers say the sun’s activity is expected to ramp up, reaching solar maximum around 2025. In the past, Spann said some of the most intense magnetic storms have occurred after the sun hit its peak and the solar maximum was declining — meaning Starlink will have to learn how to adapt for these conditions for many years to come.
“This is something that Elon and crew are going to need to pay attention to because this is not something that is an extreme event by any means,” said Skov. “We are going to see more of them.”
In fact, in the one week since the Starlink launch, sky watchers around the world have seen several auroras when another G1 storm reached Earth: | null | null | null | null | null |
In this photo provided by the Syrian Civil Defense White Helmets, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, Syrian White Helmet civil defense workers stand at the site where a shell struck in the Maaret al-Naasan village in Idlib province, Syria, Saturday, Feb. 12, 2022. Opposition activists said six people from the same family including two children were killed in a Syrian military artillery strike on a rebel-held village in northwest Syria on Saturday. (Syrian Civil Defense White Helmets via AP) (Uncredited/Syrian Civil Defense White Helmets) | null | null | null | null | null |
The three judge panel reversed a lower court’s dismissal from 2020 of the Whiteru family’s case on the grounds of error. The earlier decision by then-U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson — subsequently elevated to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in D.C. and now on President Biden’s shortlist for a U.S. Supreme Court vacancy — relied on the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s argument that Whiteru was intoxicated and contributed to his own death, clearing it of any liability.
“This was error,” the appeals panel ruled in a 12-page decision written by U.S. Circuit Judge Robert L. Wilkins and joined by judges Karen LeCraft Henderson and David S. Tatel.
Video footage showed the lawyer falling over a low concrete parapet at the back of the platform at the Judiciary Square station at about 1:15 a.m. on Oct. 19, 2013, landing in a trench-like pit eight feet below. He suffered severe injuries and fractured at least one vertebra, but he was still alive after his fall. The parties agreed he would have survived the accident had he been discovered by 1:30 a.m. by station personnel during one of several scheduled inspections that night. Instead, his body was discovered by a commuter four days later.
According to both sides and surveillance video cited by the court, Whiteru was heavily intoxicated when he exited a train and a station turnstile at about 12:45 a.m. About 22 minutes later, at 1:07 a.m., Whiteru returned to speak with an on-duty station manager at the information kiosk at the mezzanine level of the station, and she helped him reenter the paid area of the station, the opinion said.
Video footage showed Whiteru walking down the stationary escalator steps, stumbling on the last few stairs, falling and laying on his back for about 3½ minutes before rising, according to the opinion. He pulled himself up to lean on a nearby parapet wall but lost his balance after possibly trying to sit on the wall, falling headfirst over it and into the gap between it and the station wall, video cited by the court showed. | null | null | null | null | null |
Ford and GM have warned dealerships to stop selling vehicles above MSRP, but such markups are now pervasive across the industry amid supply shortages.
But data shows such markups are pervasive across the industry: More than 80 percent of U.S. car buyers paid above MSRP in January, according to auto market research firm Edmunds. That compares with 2.8 percent the same month a year ago and 0.3 percent in 2020.
Ford and GM’s warnings expose tense undercurrents between legacy carmakers and dealers, which have grown more fraught in recent years as upstart electric vehicle manufacturers like Tesla, Rivian and Lucid sell directly to consumers. Legacy manufacturers, which often are required by state law to sell through dealerships, have conspicuously eyed direct-to-consumer sales strategies in recent years.
Last summer, the Biden administration said it wanted half of all new cars to be battery-powered or plug-in hybrids by 2030. As of the second quarter of 2021, EVs accounted for about 3.6 percent of U.S. vehicle sales, according to a report from McKinsey & Co.
She turned to David Eagle, a Los Angeles-based auto broker, to help her scope out the market. His company, Current EV, helps car shoppers navigate electric vehicle rebates and incentives, and negotiate price with dealers.
Jeff Aiosa, who owns a Mercedes-Benz dealership in New London, Conn., said he normally has two to three months’ worth of vehicle inventory. But in the past several weeks, he said, it’s been closer to a 20-day supply. A growing number of the vehicles are sold before they reach his lot, and there aren’t many others for a customer to claim. Fewer sales mean he has to mark up prices on what he does have.
Ford, meanwhile, saw a $163 add-on to MSRP on average, while GM’s Chevrolet and GMC brands sold for $625 and $677, respectively, higher than sticker price — but still lower than the industry average markup. That underscores just how much of a threat Ford and GM find unruly dealer prices to their newly launching models, said Jessica Caldwell, Edmunds’s executive director of insights.
Ford chief executive Jim Farley told investors this month that 10 percent of the company’s nearly 3,000 U.S. dealerships consistently priced vehicles above MSRP in 2021. | null | null | null | null | null |
These reflections are stirred by the death this past weekend of Todd Gitlin, one of the world’s truly good, thoughtful and committed people. Gitlin was president of SDS from 1963 to 1964 and wrote the best account of the era in which he played an important role. “The Sixties,” published in 1987, captured a kaleidoscopic time in rich detail, but it was also great because Gitlin was so honest, self-reflective and self-critical.
It declared flatly: “The primary source of this danger is one of our two major national parties, the Republican Party, which remains under the sway of Donald Trump and Trumpist authoritarianism.” The Republican National Committee effectively ratified this claim this past week when it voted — the day before Gitlin died — for the already-infamous resolution describing the violent rampage at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as “legitimate political discourse.” | null | null | null | null | null |
The atmosphere at the Gold Medal Lounge, named for Team Shuster’s signature achievement, was undoubtedly better than the one in the Ice Cube — the same arena where Michael Phelps won eight swimming gold medals in 2008, when it was known as the Water Cube. Here, on Saturday afternoon, the stands were mostly empty because of the severe covid-19 restrictions — and sadly, there was no beer to be found.
But at Duluth Curling Club — his home rink, just across the St. Louis River from his house in Superior, Wis. — he’s just good ol’ Shustie, a guy who still shows up occasionally for the Thursday night men’s league, a guy who took home the 2012-13 Bagley Trophy as skip of the men’s club championship team. A quick glance at the list of club champions reveals an interesting fact: Shuster hasn’t won another one since. He may be the reigning Olympic champion, but the Bagley Trophy has eluded him for almost a decade.
Like many patrons of the Gold Medal Lounge, Cameron, 74, competed Friday evening in the annual Hoops Brewing International Open Bonspiel — a weekend-long tournament that cost $280 to enter, with cash prizes awarded at the end — then stuck around to watch Team Shuster take on the Norwegians. Although the kitchen was closed, they had boxes of pizzas stacked on a table, and the beers from title sponsor Hoops, a local craft brewery, were $1 for a pint and $3 for a pitcher.
In 2020, Cameron had been the lead on the championship team of the same bonspiel — a team that has retained its status as defending champs entering this weekend by virtue of the 2021 edition being canceled because of the pandemic.
But not every member of his team takes the bonspiel as seriously as Cameron, and unfortunately, he had to elevate himself to skip this year — because his former skip skipped town on the rest of his teammates, choosing to curl in another tournament on the same weekend. | null | null | null | null | null |
As the sun enters a more active phase, even minor geomagnetic activity could pose problems for smaller SpaceX satellites.
An aurora appeared near Rogart in Sutherland, Scotland, as a minor geomagnetic storm struck Earth’s atmosphere on Feb. 4, 2022. (Christopher J. Cogan)
But last week, SpaceX witnessed a different stunning impact of charged particles hurtling through space when the company lost several of its recently launched small communications satellites. The loss could cost the company tens of millions of dollars. (Starlink ultimately will consist of thousands of small satellites in low Earth orbit.)
According to a SpaceX news release, 40 out of 49 Starlink satellites will reenter the atmosphere or already have entered after encountering a geomagnetic storm on Feb. 4. The satellites, intended to bring low-cost Internet service to remote areas of the planet, were launched the day before at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The company said the satellites are not expected to create debris or hit the ground on reentry, instead being incinerated during the fiery reentry.
Spann said that NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are analyzing the exact nature of the event that caused the issue but that the conditions do not appear particularly special.
On Jan. 30, satellites observed the sun undergo a coronal mass ejection — an expulsion of plasma and magnetic material. The stream was directed toward Earth and arrived around Feb. 2, sparking some aurora sightings in the northern United States, as shown above.
“That’s the solar storm we had predicted would hit. It was pretty much on time,” said Tamitha Skov, a research scientist at Aerospace Corp. “When we saw it, we went, ‘Oh, this is pretty mild.’”
However, another solar storm was lurking behind this one, and it took scientists by surprise.
“We had essentially one observation that was line of sight, which means that we look from Earth to the sun and we see the structure that’s coming at us,” Skov said. “But if there are other things hidden inside that structure or just behind it, it’s very difficult to pull that out or discern.”
When SpaceX launched its satellites Feb. 3, the second storm was ramping up. The storm was rated G1, stronger than the first but still relatively weak.
Skov said the effects of the two successive storms, however, caused Earth’s atmosphere to inflate, or puff out.
Think of Earth’s atmosphere like a bicycle tire, Skov said. When the first solar storm hit, its magnetic field drove currents that caused Earth’s upper atmosphere and particles to move in one direction. The motion continued for nearly an entire day.
When the second surprise solar storm hit, however, it was oriented in such a way as to cause the motion of Earth’s upper atmosphere to reverse direction, Skov said. The friction and energy of the two opposing forces released heat in quantities more than models had anticipated — similar to the frictional heat released when trying to stop and reverse a moving bicycle tire with your hand.
“It’s kind of a normal G1 storm. It wasn’t anything exotic or extreme,” Spann said. He said his colleagues are working to “understand how this all happened, to make us more effective in the prediction and providing the support that the commercial and other entities might need for future launches.”
The second storm also spurred auroras in a handful of areas across the world, from near the Canada-U.S. border to Britain.
SpaceX stated in its news release that the storms caused the atmosphere to warm and increased atmospheric density at the altitudes at which the magnetic storm activity was occurring.
“The geomagnetic storms, when energy from the sun gets into the Earth’s magnetic field environment, it changes the upper atmosphere. ... The density of that changes,” said Elizabeth MacDonald, a space weather physicist at NASA. “When a lot of particles are coming into the atmosphere, that can cause increased drag.”
Drag was up to 50 percent higher than in during previous satellite launches, according to the SpaceX news release. The Starlink team ordered the satellites into safe mode to minimize the effect, but the increased drag then prevented the satellites from leaving safe mode to begin maneuvers to enter correct orbit.
MacDonald said the atmospheric conditions led to a “perfect storm” in some sense. The timing of the flow of radiation from the sun and the effects of the storm on Earth’s upper atmosphere increased drag. But she added that that is not especially unusual, nor is the occurrence of two geomagnetic storms in close succession.
SpaceX said the satellites were hovering at the intended 130 miles above Earth (the perigee of its orbit), although Skov said that is lower than expected for a stable orbit. Particle density also is higher at lower altitudes.
Skov said the design of the satellites also probably did not help to reduce drag. The satellites are impressively small, with a comparatively large solar panel — a recipe for drag if the atmosphere inflates. Imagine one of those plastic army man toys deploying its parachute.
Starlink had not encountered such a dense atmosphere in previous launches, but previous satellites launches occurred during very different conditions on the sun. Approximately every 11 years, the orientation of the sun’s magnetic field flips and activity waxes and wanes. The Starlink system came online while the sun was going through a period of low activity called a solar minimum. Recently though, the sun has begun to enter a period of increased activity, heading toward a solar maximum.
“Because the sun has been so quiet and all this technology being developed over the last several years, this is the first time that we are employing this sort of technology in this new environment,” Spann said.
Space weather researchers say the sun’s activity is expected to increase, reaching solar maximum around 2025. In the past, Spann said, some of the most intense magnetic storms have occurred after the sun hit its peak and the solar maximum was declining — meaning Starlink’s engineers will have to learn how to adapt the system for these conditions for many years to come.
“This is something that Elon and crew are going to need to pay attention to, because this is not something that is an extreme event by any means,” Skov said, referring to SpaceX founder Elon Musk and the storm on Feb 4. “We are going to see more of them.”
In fact, in the week since the latest Starlink launch, sky watchers around the world have seen several auroras when another G1 storm reached Earth: | null | null | null | null | null |
Polish President Andrzej Duda, left, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron at a news conference in Berlin on Feb. 8, 2022. (Thibault Camus/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
Whether they will succeed is unclear. Many European governments had made a deliberate choice to keep their embassy staffs in Ukraine while other countries were evacuating some of theirs in the past days and weeks. But as U.S. officials warned Friday that Putin could invade Ukraine within the week, one country after another told its nationals to leave immediately.
When Russia last invaded Ukraine, in 2014, it was German Chancellor Angela Merkel, with her fluent Russian and more than a decade of experience in dealing with Vladimir Putin, who naturally took the lead in shepherding a European response with sanctions. And it was Merkel and French President François Hollande who eventually brokered a peace deal with the Minsk Agreement. But now, as Europe faces its first security crisis since Merkel’s departure in December, the absence of her influence is being felt.
Some in Merkel’s camp have drawn a contrast between Scholz’s performance and the former chancellor’s studied competence. It would be good “if Olaf Scholz consulted Angela Merkel,” said Markus Söder, the head of the smaller sister party of Scholz and Merkel’s Christian Democrats.
Long overshadowed on the international stage by Merkel, Macron has claimed a central role in negotiations between Ukraine and Russia. He has been pushing for a diplomatic resolution through what is known as “Normandy Format” talks — involving France, Germany, Ukraine and Russia. And in addition to his 5½-hour meeting with Putin in Moscow, he has spoken to the Russian leader multiple times by phone in recent days, including for more than an hour on Saturday.
Some observers raised questions about whether Macron might be going rogue. And it is true that he wants Europe to stake out greater independence from the United States on security issues. But he has been consulting regularly with President Biden and with his European allies. On both sides of the Atlantic, there seems to be a concerted effort to avoid the sort of surprise and anger that followed the Biden administration’s move to share sensitive nuclear-powered submarine technology with Australia, which effectively canceled an earlier agreement between Australia and France.
On Saturday, he told Putin “sincere dialogue was not compatible with escalation,” according to the French government summary of the call.
Johnson has emphasized that British soldiers will not fight in Ukraine. But he is sending 350 Royal Marines to Poland. And when meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg this week, the prime minister said he offered to double the British troop numbers in Estonia, deploy more Royal Air Force jets to southern Europe and dispatch a destroyer and offshore patrol vessel to the eastern Mediterranean.
Washington Post opinion columnist James Hohmann tells reporter Libby Casey how Ukraine could try to defend itself against a Russian invasion. (The Washington Post)
The country’s withdrawal from the E.U. limited its opportunities to be a transatlantic bridge. But Britain remains one of the dominant military powers in NATO and Europe, alongside the United States and France, and is a member of the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance.
Adam reported from London and Morris from Berlin. | null | null | null | null | null |
Man charged in shooting that injured 2 Frederick police officers
Frederick police and other agencies secure the scene and begin their investigation after police were involved in a shooting that occurred at the intersection of Waverley Drive and Key Parkway on Feb. 11 in Frederick, Md. (Bill Green/AP)
A Virginia man has been charged in the shooting of two Frederick police officers during an incident in which the suspect was injured as well, Maryland State Police said Saturday.
Dominique Lamarr Lewis, 25, of Hampton, is facing two counts of attempted first- and second-degree murder, first-degree assault and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony, state police said. Lewis remains under guard in a Baltimore hospital where he was taken for treatment of gunshot wounds that he sustained in the incident.
2 Frederick police officers, suspect shot during call
State police said Saturday a preliminary investigation has determined the encounter began shortly before 12:45 p.m. Friday, when Frederick police officers responded to a call for a suspicious armed man.
Officers found Lewis, who had a gun, sitting on an electrical box near the intersection of Waverly Drive and Key Parkway, state police said. They approached Lewis and asked him to show his hands, but Lewis ignored their requests and avoided contact with officers, authorities said.
Lewis then began walking away from the officers, before abruptly turning and firing at them with a .45 caliber handgun, state police said. The two officers returned fire, striking Lewis and leaving him incapacitated, state police said. The officers and suspect all received gunshot wounds to the torso.
Frederick police officers Kristen Kowalsky, 32, a nine-year veteran of the force, and Bryan Snyder, 43, who had been with the department for two years, and Lewis were airlifted to a nearby hospital to be treated for their injuries. The officers were released Friday night.
State police said they have yet to determine a motive for the shooting, but the investigation continues. | null | null | null | null | null |
WYTHEVILLE, Va. — Three people were killed in southwest Virginia when the van they were riding in collided with a tractor-trailer on Interstate 81 and overturned, Virginia State Police said.
A news release said the crash occurred in Wythe County at around 2:45 p.m. on Friday.
According to police, traffic in the southbound lanes had slowed down when the passenger van collided with the tractor-trailer at the 65-mile marker. The van overturned and came to rest in the median.
There were seven people in the van at the time of the crash. The four survivors were taken to a nearby hospital for treatment of injuries. | null | null | null | null | null |
A mix of rain and snow will probably change to snow during the predawn hours Sunday with some light accumulation possible through midday, especially in our colder areas north and west of downtown Washington. The National Weather Service has issued a winter weather advisory for the District and counties to the north and west, including Fairfax, Prince George’s and Montgomery, from 1 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday. The advisory does not include Southern Maryland.
However, especially around downtown Washington and points south and east, the ground may be too warm for much accumulation. Most models indicate temperatures won’t drop to around freezing until around sunrise or even a little later and will remain at or above freezing through midday. This really limits accumulation prospects, especially on paved surfaces. Even though several models show 2 to 4 inches of snow, they are not taking into account a lot the snow that falls will not stick.
As you get west of Interstate 95, colder temperatures increase the possibility of at least a coating and up to a couple of inches or so. Any areas that see an extended burst of heavier snow could even see a bit more, especially locations with more elevation.
Here’s how much various computer models project for the District, not taking into account melting due to above freezing temperatures:
The National Weather Service blend of models (which averages the different projections together) projects around 2 inches in the District but, again, is not taking into account melting. | null | null | null | null | null |
Her consideration for the highest court has stirred up unusually staunch opposition from some liberal groups who question her record as a corporate lawyer and call her a “union-buster” — a charge that her defenders, including one of the state’s biggest unions, dispute.
A review of thousands of pages of documents she has submitted to a Senate committee and interviews with close associates and other observers makes it clear that she’s been unusually outspoken during her judicial career on social issues that directly relate to her childhood traumas and her experiences pushing boundaries as a Black woman in the South.
Raised after her father’s death by a single mother, Childs was the first in her family to attend college and was a beauty pageant winner who once considered modeling. She has spent much of her life overcoming discrimination and breaking barriers as the first Black woman to become a partner at a major South Carolina law firm, and then as a state and federal judge, where she made rulings that went against the state’s prevailing politics. She has stepped beyond her federal judgeship to speak out on social issues such as racial discrimination, the disproportionate incarceration of Blacks, and gun violence.
Childs and other family members contacted for this article did not respond to request for comment.
Jean Toal, a former chief justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court who has known Childs for decades, said in an interview: “Her mom was just so frightened about what life would be like up there that she moved to South Carolina. That turned out to be a very wonderful thing.”
Childs became high school valedictorian and class president, and also won numerous youth beauty pageants. She earned a scholarship to the University of South Florida and, in 1986, won the Miss Black Florida pageant — prompting an event that foreshadowed her legal career.
She went into private law practice in Columbia after earning a degree from the University of South Carolina School of Law and then, in 2000, became the first Black woman partner at a major South Carolina law firm, now called Nexsen Pruet, where she was part of the employment law team.
Childs’s work at the law firm has recently drawn scrutiny from liberal groups such as Our Revolution, which has alleged that she “repeatedly worked on behalf of employers against unionization drives.” A spokesman for the group, asked to provide an example of such an effort, noted that Childs had represented employers who were sued for discrimination.
Vickie Eslinger, who worked closely with Childs at the firm, said in an interview it was “ludicrous” to call Childs a union buster or antilabor. Eslinger said Childs worked for both corporations and clients who sued companies. Charles Brave, president of the South Carolina AFL-CIO, said in an interview that he rejected criticism of Childs as antilabor and has written a letter to President Biden endorsing her for the Supreme Court.
In a paper titled “Implicit Bias in the Courtroom,” she wrote that “research has shown that white jurors show racial bias when a case is not viewed as 'racially charged’ ” but that “white jurors’ bias disappeared when race was made a central topic in the case.” She said that promoting “colorblindness can lead to more implicit bias.” She concluded that jurors can be encouraged to acknowledge biases, which should help jurors to act in a manner that is “truly impartial.”
Her 2018 speech at a middle school in Orangeburg, S.C., where she referred to her father’s death by gunshot wounds, provided a window into how her work has been shaped by her life experiences. The text of the speech is among thousands of pages of documents she recently submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee in preparation for nomination to the D.C. Circuit Court, which was postponed when she came under consideration for the Supreme Court. | null | null | null | null | null |
Also hanging there is a high-quality laser print of “The Republican Club” by artist Andy Thomas, which depicts a trim-looking Trump — clad in his signature red tie, drinking a Diet Coke — chatting with former Republican presidents. The painting was given to him by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and previously hung in the West Wing. On a different part of the wall sits another large photo — of Marine One hovering in front of Mount Rushmore, when the former president visited there to celebrate the Fourth of July — that previously hung in the hallway of the West Wing.
“We pursue the return of records — Presidential or federal — whenever we learn that records have been improperly removed or have not been appropriately transferred to official accounts,” Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero wrote in a note to employees this past week. “... Whether through the creation of adequate and proper documentation, sound records management practices, the preservation of records, or their timely transfer to the National Archives at the end of an administration, there should be no question as to the need for both diligence and vigilance.” | null | null | null | null | null |
A mix of rain and snow will probably change to snow during the predawn hours Sunday with light accumulation possible through midday, especially in our colder areas north and west of downtown Washington. The National Weather Service has issued a winter weather advisory for the District and counties to the north and west, including Fairfax, Prince George’s and Montgomery, from 1 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday. The advisory does not include Southern Maryland.
However, especially around downtown Washington and points south and east, the ground may be too warm for much accumulation. Most models indicate temperatures won’t drop to around freezing until sunrise or even a little later, and will remain at or above freezing through midday. This limits accumulation prospects, especially on paved surfaces. Even though several models show 2 to 4 inches of snow, they are not taking into account that the snow that falls will not stick.
As you get west of Interstate 95, lower temperatures increase the possibility of at least a coating and up to a couple of inches or so. Any areas that see an extended burst of heavier snow could even see a bit more, especially locations with more elevation.
Here’s how much various computer models project for the District, not taking into account melting as a result of above-freezing temperatures:
The National Weather Service blend of models (which averages the different projections together) projects about 2 inches in the District but, again, is not taking into account melting. | null | null | null | null | null |
Surf legend Kelly Slater is the world's top-ranked surfer at age 50 after winning the Billabong Pro Pipeline masters in Oahu, Hawaii. (Brian Bielmann/AFP via Getty)
Kelly Slater is somehow still on top. The iconic surfer has won 11 world titles, 56 pro events, 832 heats in his three decades of competing, and in some ways, nothing has changed.
“I just know how to win,” he says matter-of-factly. “I know what it takes.”
In so many other ways, though everything is a bit different — for Slater and for the sport he helped popularize and carry into the mainstream. Slater celebrated his 50th birthday last Friday and though he’s still among the world’s best competitors, he acknowledges retirement is around the corner. This will likely be his last year competing full-time on tour, and Slater is especially reflective on what that means.
“I think it’s easy to mistake continuing with not having satisfaction. If I never surfed another contest right now, I’d be more than satisfied with what I’ve done,” Slater said in a wide-ranging interview with the Washington Post. “And I’m content with all of that … You know, there’s always gonna be another challenge, if you want it. It doesn’t mean that I’m not satisfied with what I’ve done.”
Slater will wear the yellow jersey at this week’s World Surf League event as the tour’s top-ranked competitor, the first time he’s held the honor since 2014. He won last week’s Billabong Pro Pipeline event in Oahu, Hawaii, and not that anyone needed a reminder, but Slater made clear that he’s still plenty capable of keeping up with the young kids on their boards.
Slater’s body has maybe changed a bit and his approach to the sport has probably evolved a lot. But as long as he’s on his board and in the water, there’s an unmistakable competitive fire, one that doesn’t suddenly extinguish at 50.
“I feel like something kind of overtakes me and it’s almost like my avatar, when I really get in the zone. I get such an intense focus that it almost feels out of body for me,” he said. “I guess it feels like my evil twin. To some degree, I feel like it’s this different sort of alpha male inside of me that comes out that has a lot less fear and inhibitions about choices and decisions and stuff.”
“And I think in my normal daily life, I’m a lot more sort of thoughtful and aware of other people’s feelings and that kind of thing,” Slater continued. “But this evil twin gives me a super high intensity, focus and awareness of everything that’s going on.”
The world has seen it since Slater won his first pro event at age 20, but that competitive hunger was born even earlier. As a kid growing up in Cocoa Beach, Fla., a city known more for its sharks than its waves, Slater started surfing at a young age. But he also played other sports. He recalled being an undersized nose tackle on the football field, using his quickness and small frame to maneuver around offensive lineman. He uses that same fearlessness and mental strength to tackle giant waves.
“As a kid I figured out how to win. I had a chip on my shoulder and an inferiority complex or something,” he said. “I wanted to make something of myself. And surfing became that thing … that was going to allow me to channel my inner demons.”
All those victories and all those years at the top weren’t a product of simply being physically better than the field. Surf legend Shaun Tomson has studied Slater his entire career and is consistently amazed at Slater’s ability to connect with, not just himself, but to his field of play.
“I have never ever seen a sportsman that can connect with his art form with his physicality and with the spiritual aspect of this sport at the absolute 11th hour when it’s all absolutely necessary,” said Tomson, credited with helping revolutionize tube riding in the 1970s.
“When you compete against him, you can’t just kill him. You have to kill him twice because he will come back like a zombie. He comes back with this, not aggression, but this pure passion and power. He is this enlightened being, like a Buddhist monk, Zen master and ninja warrior all rolled together."
Slater has grown along with the sport, sometimes forcefully pushing it along, and more recently impressed by what the younger generation can do. The skill level of today’s top surfers, Slater says, exceeds anything his generation could have imagined.
Even though he’s still capable of wrangling any wave and winning any week, Slater is starting to acknowledge that the end is nearing. He’d already retired once before, stepping away from competition in 1999 before returning three years later. This time around he doesn’t want to make his retirement a big show or take on any extra pressure from competition to competition.
And even if he retires from the pro tour, Slater doesn’t rule future competitions, including the Olympics. He just missed the U.S. team for the Tokyo Games, where surfing made its debut, but isn’t yet ruling out the 2024 Paris Games. However, to qualify for the U.S. team, he would have to remain on tour, so he raised the possibility of competing for another country.
Regardless, Slater will remain an important face of the sport and won’t likely disappear from the public eye. He has a popular clothing line and heads up the industry-leading wave pool company, which he developed before selling a majority stake to the World Surf League.
His passion for surfing will certainly continue, even if at times Slater finds himself wrestling with his exact role in growing the sport’s popularity and introducing it to so many new people.
“Part of me likes surfing being a mystical, secret thing,” he said. “The more popular I see it becoming, the less good I feel about being a part of it … we all like to surf by ourselves. There’s a solace in the water that comes from being by yourself or just with your friends.”
“I long for that peace in the water,” Slater said. | null | null | null | null | null |
BEIJING — Sunday is a sports bonanza for NBC, which is airing the Super Bowl in addition to the Winter Olympics. It’s the first time those two events are happening at the same time, and the chance to air them both is part of the reason NBC switched Super Bowl spots with CBS and took this year’s game. | null | null | null | null | null |
Participants in a so-called 'Freedom Convoy' stand on their cars and wave flags as they try to block traffic on the Champs-Élysées in Paris, France. (Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
PARIS — French protesters opposed to pandemic restrictions temporarily blocked parts of the Champs-Élysées on Saturday, disrupting traffic on the capital’s most recognizable street, and marking the first major European emulation of Canada’s anti-government and anti-vaccine mandate movement.
The protesters had made it into central Paris despite an order banning them from entering the capital. French authorities, who had deployed over 7,000 police officers to stop the convoys, warned that violators could face two years in prison, a fine of more than $5,000 and a suspended driver’s license.
In France, Saturday’s disruptions marked a possible resurgence of last year’s wave of anti-health pass protests that at one point drew hundreds of thousands every week. Then and now, protesters’ anger has been directed against President Emmanuel Macron, who was among the first leaders to impose a far-reaching health pass for the general population and vaccine mandates for certain professions.
France first imposed a health pass — documenting vaccination, recovery from covid or a recent negative test — last summer. The pass allowed access to numerous venues, including museums, restaurants and trains and was meant to prevent another lockdown.
But in a less widely approved step, Macron’s government tightened the rules further last month, removing the possibility of gaining access with only a negative test, which effectively banned unvaccinated people from those venues. Macron publicly stated in an interview that his goal was to “piss off" the minority in the country that remains unvaccinated, by making daily life harder for them.
Around 80 percent of the country is fully vaccinated and a majority of the French still supports the vaccine pass. But overall public confidence in the government’s handling of the pandemic has been on the decline, with some saying the rules are tougher than needed, as recent hospitalizations have remained lower than feared.
In an interview, President Macron acknowledged Friday that some of the sentiments driving the “Freedom Convoy” protests may be legitimate — a strikingly different tone, only days after a senior member of his government had called them a “convoy of shame and selfishness.”
With only two months left until presidential elections in April, “Freedom Convoy” protests that disrupt central traffic arteries could still have an outsize impact on the country’s political debate. Even though many of the protest slogans and banners remained focused on pandemic restrictions on Saturday, the scope of the demonstrators’ demands has widened, and also encompasses anger over rising energy prices and costs of living.
Le Pen went on to say that the sight of armored police vehicles on the streets of Paris this weekend “resembles [Macron’s] mandate … of chaos, disorder, conflict, division of the French people."
Macron’s opponents have drawn similarities between the “Freedom Convoys” and France’s Yellow Vest movement in 2018 and 2019, which was initially prompted by a fuel taxes hike, but quickly swelled in size and drew early public support because it captured broader concerns over social inequality and the alienation of some voters. The Champs-Élysées became one of the movement’s central destinations. | null | null | null | null | null |
On a September day in 1904, a Washington Post reporter accompanied Sarah Collins Fernandis as she made her rounds through Southwest Washington. This impoverished area around South Capitol and M streets SW — near today’s Nationals Park — was known then as Bloodfield, for the violence and despair that bedeviled the community.
Many African-American residents knew Fernandis as the “bank lady.” She regularly went door to door with an account book and a tin box, inviting them to entrust her with their nickels, dimes and quarters. Fernandis explained that if they saved their money with her, it would be safe when they needed it in an emergency.
Wrote The Post: “As a receipt and guarantee of future return, she gives each contributor a stamp for her stamp book, which states the amount of the deposit.”
Fernandis was a rarity then: a Black social worker. And she didn’t just visit the neighborhood. She lived in the neighborhood in a building at 116 M St. SW that was home to a groundbreaking organization she helped found: the Colored Social Settlement.
“She was amazing,” said Ida Jones, a D.C. historian and the university archivist at Morgan State University.
And so was the Colored Social Settlement. Among those who served on its advisory board were Anna Julia Cooper, Roscoe Conkling Bruce, Francis Grimke and Mary Church Terrell — “rather stalwart names in Black Washington’s elite,” said Jones.
Fernandis was born in 1863 in Port Deposit, Md., and received an undergraduate degree from Hampton Institute and a master’s from New York University. She embraced a new way to help the urban poor: the settlement house, pioneered by Jane Addams.
Settlement supporters didn’t think charity should be paternalistic — “Like, ‘Oh we’ll help you out of pity,’ ” said, Elisabeth D. Lasch-Quinn, professor of history at Syracuse University. “Instead, they wanted it to be ‘We’re actually going to roll up our sleeves, go in the toughest neighborhoods and listen to our neighbors.’ That’s what they called them: neighbors, not members, clients, customers or patients.”
Settlement houses such as Friendship House on Capitol Hill — the subject of last week’s column — were a response to increased White immigration from Europe. A similar migration was happening within the United States, as African Americans left the rural South to seek opportunity in cities such as Washington.
The Colored Social Settlement is thought to be the first in the country for African Americans. Its offerings ran the gamut. There was physical training for boys on Thursday nights and Campfire Girls on Fridays. Music classes — voice and instrumental — were offered. Two days a week, a branch of the public library operated at the house.
The house offered “hot soup, wholesome baked beans, good coffee and digestible bread” at affordable prices, noted a 1913 pamphlet. For women, there were “Practical talks on the care of the home and the family, as well as lessons in sewing and millinery.”
Daycare was offered “for the neglected children of women who have to go out all day to service or to do washing to support their families.”
The letterhead of the Colored Social Settlement featured not just the name of the organization and a list of its trustees, but a map showing the area it served. The map was highlighted to show blocks with alley dwellings — notoriously unhealthy areas — and included the death rate: 17 per thousand for White residents, 33 per thousand for Black residents.
A doctor and nurse provided free health care. Milk was dispensed for babies.
There were more than 400 settlement houses in the U.S. They were a pinnacle of the progressive movement, run by socially conscious people. And yet, in Washington and many other cities, they were segregated.
“We like to balkanize in America,” said Jones.
Syracuse professor Lasch-Quinn, author of “Black Neighbors: Race and the Limits of Reform in the American Settlement House Movement, 1890-1945,” said that some White settlement houses closed rather than integrate. Some staggered their programming, with different days for Whites and Blacks. Some reestablished themselves outside of the inner city, following their original White clients as they became more socially mobile.
Said Lasch-Quinn: “If the formal settlement movement had made common cause at a deeper level at the time, I truly believe we would have had a civil rights movement earlier. We had all the makings of it — places to gather, a desire for social change. That didn’t happen, partly because of a blindness in the mainstream settlement movement.”
In 1909, the Colored Social Settlement had outgrown its space and moved to a building at 16 L St. SW. Fernandis had left a year earlier to organize a similar house in Rhode Island. Later, she was the first Black social worker hired by Baltimore. She died in 1951.
During her time in the District, Fernandis said, “I am trying in my humble and limited sphere to scatter a little sunshine in the gloom which has pervaded some of the homes in this part of Washington.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Participants in a so-called "Freedom Convoy" try to block traffic on the Champs-Élysées in Paris. (Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
PARIS — French protesters opposed to pandemic restrictions temporarily blocked parts of the Champs-Élysées on Saturday, disrupting traffic on the capital’s most recognizable street and marking the first major European emulation of Canada’s anti-government and anti-vaccine mandate movement.
Macron’s opponents have drawn similarities between the “Freedom Convoys” and France’s Yellow Vest movement in 2018 and 2019, which was initially prompted by an increase in fuel taxes but quickly swelled in size and drew early public support because it captured broader concerns over social inequality and the alienation of some voters. The Champs-Élysées became one of the movement’s central destinations. | null | null | null | null | null |
Data as of Feb. 12 at 9:10 p.m.
Sort medalsChevronDown
Russian O.C.
How different groups of countries stack up
What would it look like if medal totals were compiled differently? We might have a very different-looking leader board.
Choose left groupChevronDown
Choose right groupChevronDown
Canada, United States
Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland | null | null | null | null | null |
Investigators work in front of Hotel Miramar in San Clemente, Calif., where Orange County sheriff’s deputies shot and killed 42-year-old Kurt Reinhold on Sept. 23, 2020. (Mindy Schauer/The Orange County Register via AP)
In a 10-page letter outlining their investigation, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office said they would not criminally charge Deputy Eduardo Duran for the death of 42-year-old Kurt Andreas Reinhold. Prosecutors noted that Duran’s partner, Jonathan Israel, told them that Reinhold grabbed his service weapon as the three men struggled on the ground after they tried to detain him.
Reinhold’s family has disputed law enforcement’s account of the incident, which was partially captured at a distance with dash-cam video and later eyewitness video, since deputies with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department did not wear body cameras in 2020. Reinhold’s family, which has a pending wrongful death lawsuit against the county, allege Reinhold was targeted by deputies with a pretextual stop because he was Black.
The deputies, who prosecutors said cooperated with the investigation, have not faced discipline directly related to the shooting — a fact underscored by the Reinhold family’s lawsuit.
Neither the Orange County Sheriff’s Office nor attorneys for Reinhold’s family immediately responded to request for comment Saturday. In a statement released Friday by their attorneys, the family said that the district attorney’s decision was disappointing but not unexpected, and disputed the independence of the prosecutor’s investigation.
Both Israel and Duran, who were eight- and 13-year veterans respectively, worked as homeless liaison officers for the sheriff’s department and had encountered Reinhold the day before the shooting. When they spotted him the following afternoon, the deputies parked their vehicle to observe him until Israel saw Reinhold cross the street against a red-hand signal for pedestrian traffic, according to the prosecutor’s report.
The deputies are heard on dash cam video briefly debating whether Reinhold committed an offense. Duran, who did not see the alleged violation, is heard saying, “Don’t make case law,” a reference made to Israel in an apparent warning to ensure there was probable cause to stop Reinhold.
Over the next roughly 2½ minutes, audio and partial video of the scene captures the deputies asking Reinhold if he’s going to stop, or “Are we gonna make you stop?” When Reinhold asks why he’s being stopped, a deputy replies, “for jaywalking.” Reinhold, who disagreed that he was jaywalking, is seen trying to move away from the deputies, swatting their hands away as they approached him.
The scene escalates as the deputies try to grab Reinhold’s backpack to force him into place, while Reinhold allegedly shoves a deputy, devolving into a struggle on the ground that is captured on a bystander’s video and later released through the sheriff’s department. Eventually, Israel is heard repeatedly yelling, “He’s got my gun!” Duran fires one shot, but the struggle appears to continue, prompting Israel to yell, “Shoot him!” before Duran fires a second, final shot.
News of Reinhold’s death was largely overshadowed at the time by an announcement the same day that a Louisville grand jury declined to bring homicide charges against the police officers who shot and killed Breonna Taylor.
Locally, Reinhold’s shooting drew protests in San Clemente, an affluent enclave halfway between Los Angelos and San Diego. Some demonstrators in the county said Reinhold was a victim of over-policing by Orange County deputies who disproportionately targeted homeless people.
Alex Piquero, a criminologist at the University of Miami who has written about policing and homelessness, told The Washington Post that officers are challenged with making “heat of the moment” decisions and often dispatched to deal with crises like homelessness or mental health issues they may be ill-equipped for.
“It’s unfortunate that someone who is jaywalking ends up dead,” he said. When you think about use of force cases, you want to hope that [police] are using it as a last resort.”
Reinhold was married with two young children and struggled with schizoaffective disorder, sometimes going off his medication and drifting between staying with his wife and his mother, Neil Gehlawat, an attorney for the family, told the Los Angeles Times in 2020.
“There are a lot of homeless people in America, and Orange County isn’t immune from that,” Piquero said. “The issues are real in big cities right now and it’s a problem we need to get our heads around so we don’t have these outcomes.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Protesters decry Biden's use of funds
Protesters in Afghanistan’s capital on Saturday condemned President Biden’s order allocating $3.5 billion in Afghan assets held in the United States for families of 9/11 victims. Instead, the demonstrators demanded financial compensation for the tens of thousands of Afghans killed during the last 20 years of war in Afghanistan.
“What about our Afghan people who gave many sacrifices and thousands of losses of lives?” asked the demonstration’s organizer, Abdul Rahman.
The country’s economy is teetering on the brink of collapse after international money stopped coming into Afghanistan with the arrival in mid-August of the Taliban. Afghanistan has about $9 billion in assets overseas, including the $7 billion in the United States.
Biden’s order, signed Friday, allocates the other $3.5 billion in Afghan assets to a trust fund to be managed by the United Nations to provide humanitarian aid to Afghans.
Afghanistan’s Central Bank called on Biden to reverse his order and release the funds to it, saying in a statement that they belonged to the people of Afghanistan and not a government, party or group.
Family killed in Syrian government artillery strike: Six people from the same family, including two children, were killed in a Syrian military artillery strike on a rebel-held village in northwest Syria, opposition activists said. Nearby residents said the family was outside their house enjoying sunny weather and drinking tea when the shell struck. Low-flying reconnaissance aircraft circled the area, Maarat al-Naasan village in Idlib province, after the strike.
Armed group shows support for Libya's interim prime minister: A convoy of more than 100 vehicles with armed fighters moved into Tripoli from the Libyan city of Misurata on Saturday to shore up the interim prime minister, Abdulhamid al-Dbeibah, amid a push by the parliament to oust him. Dbeibah has sworn he will hand over power only after an election. The convoy's arrival underscored the danger of renewed fighting in Libya as the crisis plays out.
French troops kill scores of militants in West Africa: French troops killed 40 militants on the Benin-Burkina Faso border in West Africa's Sahel region, the French government said on Saturday. The action followed an attack on park rangers in northern Benin on Tuesday in which a French national was among eight people killed.
Turkmenistan to hold presidential election early: Turkmenistan will hold an early presidential election on March 12, a Central Election Commission official said, after President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov hinted he planned to resign, two years before his current term ends. In a speech to the upper house late Friday, Berdymukhammedov said he had made "a tough decision" and decided that it was time to give way to "young leaders." | null | null | null | null | null |
With mere days remaining until Major League Baseball’s ongoing lockout forces a labor-related interruption of spring training for the first time in nearly three decades, MLB’s negotiating team presented a 130-page proposal to leaders from the players union on Saturday, in the hopes of rallying negotiations in time to limit the damage.
The comprehensive proposal is the league’s first to cover the full scope of a potential collective bargaining agreement, according to a person familiar with the deal, who said it included multiple changes to the proposals MLB has made before.
As recently as Thursday evening, attendees at a Major League Baseball Players Association gathering in Tampa, told reporters that they were skeptical that the league’s new offer would be anything more than a much-hyped codification of the status quo.
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, meanwhile, refused to announce an official postponement of spring training before the league made this offer, suggesting that the sides would assess the calendar Saturday. As of late Saturday afternoon, no formal delay had been announced. Manfred said Thursday that once a deal is reached, camps could likely open within a few days.
Given that timeline, a delay seems almost certain; a person familiar with the union’s thinking said the players were “underwhelmed” with the offer, though it does include more changes on key issues than what the league has offered before.
Most significantly, perhaps, it offers a reduction in non-monetary penalties for teams who outspend the competitive balance tax threshold, which has emerged as a key sticking point.
Instead of losing a draft pick for exceeding the first surcharge threshold, teams would pay only the prescribed tax on their overages until a second, higher threshold is reached. At that point, teams would concede a draft pick as well as a 75 percent tax on their overages. Under that plan, a team exceeding the lowest threshold by, say, 2 million would owe 50 percent or 1 million dollars in tax, a number MLB believes is less of a deterrent to exceeding the threshold than previous proposals.
The players union believe the threshold itself is too low, and has proposed raising it to $245 million. The league’s newest offer increases that threshold more over the five-year life of the CBA than their previous offers, with it ultimately landing at $222 million in the final year. But while MLB’s new offer reduces some non-monetary penalties, the new proposal still includes an increase in tax rates from the previous CBA, something people familiar with the union’s thinking said is still a major problem for players.
The league’s offer also makes changes to the framework by which it is trying to meet the union’s desire to pay younger players — who are relied upon for an increasing proportion of teams’ production — more in keeping with their performance.
Secondly, the offer includes an increase in MLB’s proposed funding for a pre-arbitration bonus pool to be dispersed among the highest achieving players with less than three years of service time. MLB has upped that number to $15 million, while the players union still seeks $100 million.
But MLB’s goal in making this proposal, according to a person familiar with its thinking, is to shift the negotiations from the realm of rules and regulations to that of dollars and cents — the kind of thing it believes can be negotiated more quickly than issues like when players qualify for free agency or whether the current revenue-sharing system should continue. The players union has dropped its request for change on the former issue, but maintains its request to reduce shared money in the latter, something on which the league says it simply will not budge.
MLB also altered its proposed plan to encourage teams to call up elite young players when they are ready, rather than at the last possible moment to delay starting the free-agency clock. Previously, MLB’s negotiators offered to institute a policy by which teams that call up young players who then perform well enough to finish near the top of voting for awards like Rookie of the Year would receive one draft pick as a reward for that move.
The league’s new proposal gives teams a chance to receive two compensatory picks: If a player is called up one year and finishes near the top of awards voting, then does the same in either of his next two years of service, his team can receive up to two picks. In other words, if an eligible player wins Rookie of the Year in his first season, then finishes near the top of MVP voting in his second, his team would receive another pick.
The new proposal also includes a limit on the number of times a player can be optioned in one season, initially setting that number at five. It sticks to previous proposals on issues like creating a draft lottery (league wants a three-team lottery, as opposed to union’s eight), implementing a universal designated hitter and expanding the playoffs.
To this point, individual negotiating sessions and new proposals from one side to the other have been narrower, focused on a couple issues here and a few tweaks there. But with time running out, league officials hope that putting everything in one place will allow the sides to move more quickly. But progress has been so slow so far that even “quickly” will almost certainly still be too slow to salvage a full spring training schedule. | null | null | null | null | null |
LOS ANGELES — If you’re a young NFL player living in Cincinnati, there’s little to do, apparently, so that’s why Bengals cornerback Mike Hilton has had plenty of time to imagine the Bengals secondary as sort of a sitcom family.
Hilton considers himself the dad of the group, a little more settled than the younger ones but still cool enough to vibe out to a Young Thug playlist before games. Cornerback Eli Apple, a former first-round draft pick of the New York Giants, would be the adopted little brother they’d rescued from bright lights and big expectations. Chidobe Awuzie, the one they call “Chido,” is the chill one who also now enjoys a drama-free life away from his former team. And safeties Jessie Bates III and Vonn Bell are the perfect pairing of an odd couple — Bates brings the Zen while Bell acts like the loud uncle in the room.
Hilton could have gone on, casting the rest of the defense: linebacker Logan Wilson as the interloper from Wyoming and defensive end Sam Hubbard as “Cincinnati’s own,” the local hero they all rally around. Maybe they’d name this fictional show something corny like “Meet The Who Deys” and the season finale would end with confetti streaming down from SoFi Stadium following the city’s first Super Bowl championship.
For this show to have that happy ending, sure, Joe Cool and the rest of the stars on the Bengals’ offense will be the main writers of the script. But it’s the mostly anonymous defensive standouts who have created an organic and effective chemistry, playing a crucial role in the team’s surprising run to meet the Los Angeles Rams in Super Bowl LVI.
“It’s just a mixture of personalities and we just all mesh well,” Hilton said Friday.
As a unit, Cincinnati finished 17th overall in scoring defense but owned the NFL’s fifth-best run defense. Only two starters remain from the 2019 season-opening lineup — that would go on to rank as one of the league’s worst — while the current group was quickly and effectively remade through free agency, trades and the draft.
On the surface, they seem like a collection of hodgepodge parts.
Both Apple and Awuzie, who spent the first four years of his career in Dallas, needed a change of scenery. Apple didn’t have the best time in New York or New Orleans, and even as his new team was marching along in the playoffs, he couldn’t help but take a swipe at both fanbases. Awuzie said this week he preferred the blue-collar mentality of the Bengals as opposed to the additional fluff that comes with playing for ‘America’s Team.’
In 2020, the team signed defensive tackle D.J. Reader and Bell. Last offseason, Hilton inked his four-year deal, $24 million deal. Now they may be valuable pieces, but all three carry memories of feeling underappreciated or overlooked. Reader was a backup at Clemson. Bell reportedly refused an offer to re-sign with the Saints, who promptly moved on from him. Hilton went undrafted out of college.
They don’t have the household name recognition like many on the Rams’ defense, and yet here they are.
“It’s just the collective group of the people we have,” said Hubbard, who went to high school at Cincinnati’s famed Archbishop Moeller before starring at Ohio State. “There’s so many great dudes. we just don’t have too many huge-name guys that are worried about themselves. Everybody’s worried about the team collective, what it takes to get the job done and whoever makes the play, I’m just as happy for them as if I made it and that’s the mind-set across the board. Guys feel that and can play harder for that than just for themselves.”
“‘Hey, we’re watching the UFC fight here on Saturday. Pull up.’ And guys pulling up,” Reader said. “Guys going out. Hanging out. Whatever you’re doing, you’re just around guys.
Hilton recalled how the secondary had a tradition during the season to gather to watch Monday and Thursday night games. This kinship works because guys enjoy each other’s company, but also the small town feel of their home market has something to do with it. As a party town, Cincy may be lacking. But it’s the perfect setting for an ensemble cast with a key role in football’s biggest game. | null | null | null | null | null |
The Theodore Roosevelt Bridge is seen in the foreground, along with the Arlington Memorial Bridge behind it, last year. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
The 58-year-old bridge, which carries Interstate 66 over the Potomac River, will be limited to two outer lanes in each direction at all times while the three middle lanes are closed for three to six months, according to the District Department of Transportation. Vehicle weights will be restricted to 10 tons, putting the bridge off limits to Metro buses, tourist buses and large trucks.
D.C. transportation officials said a consultant’s inspection one year ago found the inner lanes’ steel support beams had deteriorated, and DDOT inspectors saw in the past week that the problem had grown significantly worse. The bridge has been federally required to have a consultant inspection annually since it was rated in “poor” condition in 2018, officials said, and the city does its own inspections about twice a month.
DDOT director Everett Lott said Saturday that closing some lanes to limit vehicle weight on the bridge was “something we’ve been talking about.” However, he decided Friday to close the inner lanes around 10 p.m. after hearing the forecast for up to two inches of snow Sunday, which would require plows and other heavy equipment on the bridge. DDOT tweeted a traffic advisory at 10:45 p.m., saying the closures were “effective immediately.”
Lott also had in mind recent failures of aging bridges in other cities. A Pittsburgh bridge collapsed last month, hours before President Biden was scheduled to arrive to highlight new federal funding to repair and replace the nation’s aging infrastructure. No one was killed, but some people were hospitalized. A 3.3-mile bridge over the Mississippi River in the Memphis area also closed for three months of emergency repairs last year after alarmed inspectors called 911 to report a large crack in a critical steel support beam.
The partial closure comes just as many commuters are starting to return to the office at least a few days a week and as traffic volumes have continued to rebound during the pandemic.The work won’t start until materials arrive — a schedule likely to be affected by pandemic-era delays in the supply chain, Lott said. However, DDOT officials said, they wanted to limit the weight on the bridge in the meantime and complete the work before the onslaught of summer tourist traffic.
The bridge, which typically carries more than 150,000 vehicles daily, has not had a major rehabilitation since it opened in 1964, he said.
DDOT will either replace or repair the deteriorated beams depending on the availability of materials such as steel beams, Lott said. The goal is to enable the bridge to safely support the weight of regular traffic until a full rehabilitation can be done in a couple years using federal funding the city expects to receive as part of the recently approved $1.2-trillion infrastructure bill, he said.
DDOT also plans to use federal infrastructure funds to rehabilitate the H Street bridge in Northeast near Union Station, which is also rated in “poor” condition, Lott said. The city also plans to replace the Lorraine H. Whitlock Memorial Bridge on Benning Road NE over Kenilworth Avenue and CSX tracks, also rated as “poor.” | null | null | null | null | null |
The Wizards also acquired a 2022 second-round pick as Sheppard approached the deadline looking for three things: draft capital, trade exceptions and talent.
“There’s only going to be so many opportunities to get talent,” Sheppard said. “And to get talent, you have to give up talent. And understand that three of the players that went out yesterday weren’t with us last season. They were new players, and they were part of our [plan to] go forward.
Beal, who had surgery Thursday to repair a torn ligament in his wrist, wants to win. Plain and simple. The team has fallen to 25-29 after a 10-3 start. Porzingis has dealt with a variety of injuries, though Sheppard said there’s a plan to manage that, and his upside as an elite offensive talent who also provides upper-echelon rim protection, Sheppard believes, was worth the gamble.
“At the end of the day, I had to do my job,” Sheppard said. “Those guys do their jobs, and we all meet collectively. I have enough history with Bradley and with [Coach Wes Unseld Jr.] that they trust us to do what’s best for the Wizards.
The Wizards certainly didn’t sit still with the pieces acquired from the Russell Westbrook trade made in July. Dinwiddie was part of the Porzingis deal. Montrezl Harrell was sent to the Charlotte Hornets for Ish Smith, Vernon Carey Jr., a conditional second-round draft pick in 2023 or 2024 and a trade exception. The team had lost nine of 11 games before Thursday night’s victory over the Nets, in which both teams were shorthanded after executing major trades.
Sheppard acknowledged the Wizards’ struggles since they were 15-11 when a covid-19 outbreak hit, but he also added that the group did not handle the early success well. He specifically pointed to the defensive drop-off in a season when that is supposed to be a main tenet of the team’s identity.
Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, who was also part of the Westbrook deal, had his own thoughts.
“I would say we all weren’t on the same page,” Caldwell-Pope said after Thursday’s game. “Everybody had their own agendas of how they wanted to attack this year. A lot of guys were fighting for minutes. A lot of guys were complaining about minutes, not getting the ball, not touching it. A lot of things were going into the reason why [the team struggled].
“We started 10-3, which was great. No one had no agendas. They just wanted to come in and win. Everybody was new and was getting to know each other. So we wanted to come in and win. But once everybody started getting comfortable, I feel like a lot of agendas and I would say egos took over.”
The roster management is far from over for the Wizards, the GM said. Point guard is an offseason priority, Sheppard said. The talent level still isn’t enough even after the addition of Porzingis, who was averaging 19.2 points and 7.7 rebounds in 34 games playing with Luka Doncic and the Mavericks.
“The two of those guys playing in a two-man game, it’s going to be a nightmare,” Unseld said. “Both guys can shoot with range; both guys can play off the bounce; both guys can handle in certain situations. So it’s a very unique pairing. I’m not going to compare it to two guys I used to work with, but it’s pretty close.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Mikko Arnold, left, and his brother Mikhai have Douglass chasing a state title. (John McDonnell/TWP)
With roughly seven minutes to play in the fourth quarter Friday, and Douglass’s lead dwindling, senior guard Mikhai Arnold turned to his backcourt partner with a look of concern.
For most in attendance at Largo High, the brief glance was an insignificant moment lost in the midst of a potential comeback. But for Mikhai, eye contact with his brother, Mikko, was just enough to put his mind at ease before his Eagles went on to prevail, 68-58.
The 6-foot-1 identical twins have grown accustomed to moments like this at Douglass (11-3).
Since switching from football to basketball because of Mikko’s hesitance about contact and Mikhai’s multiple concussions, they’ve always found solace in each other on the court. Their numbers — No. 2 for Mikhai and No. 3 for Mikko — even neighbor.
“I mean that’s my guy, we’re basically inseparable,” Mikhai said. “Wherever he’s at, I’m at, too, because when we’re together there really ain’t much that can stop us.”
Since arriving at Douglass as freshmen, all they’ve done is win. During their freshman and sophomore seasons, the Eagles won back-to-back Prince George’s County regional titles and reached the state playoffs. When the Arnolds were sophomores, Douglass was two wins away from a Class 2A championship before the remainder of the state tournament was canceled because of the pandemic.
“I’ve had family members play for me before, but never in the way that these two do,” Douglass Coach Tyrone Massenburg said. “Their games fit like a perfectly sized glove. They value and understand each others’ roles and how what they do impacts winning.”
As much as Mikhai and Mikko strive to avoid comparisons of their skill-sets, there’s no question they see the game in totally different ways. Mikhai, who is three minutes older, is a natural scorer and the team’s leader in that department; Mikko is a cerebral facilitator who leads the team in assists.
“I guess we were just meant to play with one another,” Mikko said. “We’ve never had to adjust our games to play with one another because I’ve always enjoyed setting him up to score and my brother has always enjoyed getting buckets.”
Because Mikhai’s scoring prowess affords him the ability to take over a game at any moment, most coaches and scouts view him as a superior college prospect that could flourish at a mid- or high-major school.
Mikko, most say, translates as a low Division I or Division II player. He is focused on his studies and finding a school that offers his preferred major, criminology.
But if you’re privy to witnessing them play one-on-one, assessing the better twin isn’t easy. Neither has any interest in allowing the other to hold the family’s bragging rights. As a result, many of their battles result in blood, bruises and sprained ankles.
“It’s honestly a war when we play each other,” Mikko said. “Feels like the NBA Finals — nobody is trying to give up an inch. There’s no free buckets around here.”
The brothers know the season is running short, and they’ve both come to terms with the fact that whenever their senior year ends, they may never share the court in official games again.
For now, they’re focused on two things: appreciating the time they still have together and winning a state championship.
“Every once in a while we’ll be on the court at different times and I’ll just be watching him do his thing, ya know. Like just sitting there in awe as he’s making these unreal passes and locking guys up,” Mikhai said. “And in those moments, I’m like, ‘I pray this never ends.’ But if we can close out our careers by winning a state championship, man I just feel like nothing else would matter. We’d always have that.” | null | null | null | null | null |
On the campaign trail, Joe Biden pledged more than $70 billion to HBCUs and other minority-serving institutions in recognition of the work they do with limited resources, but Congress has scaled back the proposal. The president’s Build Back Better plan sought $3 billion for the schools to upgrade research infrastructure and $6 billion for those schools to improve academic support services and award need-based financial aid to students. Although the legislation cleared the House in November, it stalled in the Senate without the backing of Sens. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.). | null | null | null | null | null |
Investigators work in front of Hotel Miramar in San Clemente, Calif., where an Orange County sheriff’s deputy shot and killed 42-year-old Kurt Andreas Reinhold on Sept. 23, 2020. (Mindy Schauer/The Orange County Register/AP)
In a 10-page letter outlining its investigation, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office said it would not criminally charge Deputy Eduardo Duran for the death of 42-year-old Kurt Andreas Reinhold. Prosecutors noted that Duran’s partner, Jonathan Israel, told them that Reinhold grabbed his service weapon as the three men struggled on the ground after they tried to detain him.
Reinhold’s family has disputed the law enforcement account of the incident, which was partially captured at a distance with dash-cam video and later eyewitness video, as deputies with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department did not wear body cameras in 2020. Reinhold’s family, which has a wrongful death lawsuit pending against the county, allege Reinhold was targeted by deputies with a pretextual stop because he was Black.
The deputies, who prosecutors said cooperated with the investigation, have not faced discipline directly related to the shooting, according to the sheriff’s office.
Neither the Orange County Sheriff’s Office nor attorneys for Reinhold’s family immediately responded to requests for comment Saturday. In a statement released Friday by their attorneys, the family said the district attorney’s decision was disappointing but not unexpected and disputed the independence of the prosecutor’s investigation.
Both Israel and Duran, who were eight- and 13-year veterans, respectively, worked as homeless liaison officers for the sheriff’s department and had encountered Reinhold the day before the shooting. When they spotted him the following afternoon, the deputies parked their vehicle to observe him until Israel saw Reinhold cross the street against a red-hand signal for pedestrian traffic, according to the prosecutor’s report.
The deputies are heard on dash-cam video briefly debating whether Reinhold committed an offense. Duran, who did not see the alleged violation, is heard saying, “Don’t make case law,” a reference made to Israel in an apparent warning to ensure there was probable cause to stop Reinhold.
Over the next roughly 2½ minutes, audio and partial video of the scene captures the deputies asking Reinhold if he’s going to stop, or “Are we gonna make you stop?” When Reinhold asks why he’s being stopped, a deputy replies “for jaywalking.” Reinhold, who disagreed that he was jaywalking, is seen trying to move away from the deputies, swatting their hands away as they approach him.
The scene escalates as the deputies try to grab Reinhold’s backpack to force him into place. Officials say Reinhold shoved a deputy, which devolved into a struggle on the ground that is captured on a bystander’s video and later released through the sheriff’s department. Eventually, Israel is heard repeatedly yelling, “He’s got my gun!” Duran fires one shot, but the struggle appears to continue, prompting Israel to yell, “Shoot him!” before Duran fires a second, final shot.
News of Reinhold’s death was largely overshadowed by an announcement the same day that a Louisville grand jury declined to bring homicide charges against the police officers who shot and killed Breonna Taylor.
Locally, Reinhold’s shooting drew protests in San Clemente, an affluent enclave halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego. Some demonstrators in the county said Reinhold was a victim of over-policing by Orange County deputies who disproportionately targeted homeless people.
Alex Piquero, a criminologist at the University of Miami who has written about policing and homelessness, told The Washington Post that officers are challenged with making “heat of the moment” decisions and are often dispatched to deal with crises like homelessness or mental health issues they may be ill-equipped for.
“It’s unfortunate that someone who is jaywalking ends up dead,” he said. “When you think about use-of-force cases, you want to hope that [police] are using it as a last resort.”
Reinhold was married with two young children and struggled with schizoaffective disorder — sometimes going off his medication and drifting between staying with his wife and his mother — Neil Gehlawat, an attorney for the family, told the Los Angeles Times in 2020.
“There are a lot of homeless people in America, and Orange County isn’t immune from that,” Piquero said. “The issues are real in big cities right now, and it’s a problem we need to get our heads around so we don’t have these outcomes.” | null | null | null | null | null |
The White House has warned President Vladimir Putin that an attack will make his problem worse
American troops cross the tarmac at an air base located in Romania. (Andreea Alexandru/Associated Press)
The White House has repeatedly warned Russian President Vladimir Putin that if he is concerned about NATO’s presence near the Russian border now, that posture will only increase if he chooses to invade Ukraine. Already, eastern European members of the alliance are clamoring for more U.S. forces as a deterrent against an irredentist Kremlin that once controlled their lands in addition to Ukraine.
But despite the warnings to Putin from the White House, the Biden administration hasn’t detailed what an enhanced presence would look like on NATO’s eastern border after a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. Nor have warnings about a bolstered NATO halted Russia’s buildup of forces, missiles and armored vehicles around Ukraine.
Already, the United States has deployed about 2,000 additional forces from Fort Bragg in North Carolina, primarily to Poland, in response to the Russian building on the Ukrainian border to reassure allies close to Russia. On Friday, U.S. officials said 3,000 from the 82nd Airborne Division would join them, taking the total to 5,000 within days.
Meanwhile, 1,000 U.S. soldiers were to arrive in Romania from a U.S. installation in Germany, adding to the 900 U.S. troops already in that eastern European country.
TikTok videos reveal Russian military forces closing in on Ukraine
For years, the United States had been drawing down forces and removing weaponry from Europe, as NATO cast about for a new mission in the aftermath of the Cold War. But after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and annexed Crimea, Washington and its European allies changed course, again seeing the need to mount defenses against a threat emanating from Moscow, particularly in newer NATO member states close to Russia.
In the years after 2014, NATO established combat-ready battle groups in the Baltic countries and Poland. Those multinational forces, totaling about 4,500, are led by the United States in Poland, Germany in Lithuania, Canada in Latvia and Britain in Estonia.
The United States also has been supporting eastern flank allies on a bilateral basis by, for example, periodically rotating a U.S. armored battalion through Lithuania, a combat aviation brigade through Latvia and U.S. Special Operations Forces through all three Baltic countries. The U.S. Army also established a forward command post in Poznan, Poland, to oversee rotational forces in Europe.
If Russia invades Ukraine, such activities are likely to grow in scope and quantity. The alliance is considering placing combat-ready battle groups — such as the ones already operating in Poland and the Baltics — in Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Hungary, according to a NATO diplomat who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. The diplomat said any additional rotations through those countries would depend on whether the host government is willing to accept them.
The United States would also almost certainly step up the rotation of U.S. forces through eastern NATO member states, as well, the diplomat and a U.S. official added. A senior defense official said that “there have been discussions but no decisions” about more permanent moves.
Russia showcases military prowess as it weighs action in Ukraine
Romania, which joined NATO in 2004, feels particularly exposed and is pushing for additional U.S. forces on its territory. The country shares the biggest land border of any NATO country with Ukraine, as well as a coastline on the Black Sea that is difficult to defend. It also houses Europe’s only operational Aegis Ashore missile defense facility, making the country a target of Moscow’s ire.
“This is what we need — a permanent presence — because as we’ve seen in the last seven years, Russia is not a friend,” he said. “This is very, very clear. Romania is a country with a long and traumatic history with Russian aggression.”
Lithuania is seeking a “heel to toe” rotation of U.S. troops, which would mean there is always a U.S. force present in the country even if it’s not permanently based there, said Laurynas Kasciunas, chairman of the Lithuanian parliament’s national security and defense committee.
“We feel like West Berlin in Cold War times,” Kasciunas said.
The United States and NATO also could provide greater air defenses for the Baltic nations and other eastern flank countries if Russia invades Ukraine, said Ben Hodges, the former commander of U.S. Army Europe who is now at the Center for European Policy Analysis. Romania is the only country in the region with U.S.-made Patriot missile defenses. The alliance also could enhance the logistics necessary to provide rapid reinforcements to the Baltic nations in the event of a conflict with Russia, he said.
“A full-scale Russian invasion would do nothing but galvanize solidarity in the alliance,” said James Stavridis, former NATO supreme allied commander for Europe. “It would also open the door for permanent deployments into NATO member states on the Russian border, most notably Poland.”
The pressure the United States is facing from China in the Indo-Pacific also requires increased commitments from the Pentagon, so Western European allies will need to contribute heavily if NATO expands its activities and reverts fully to a territorial defense mission in the aftermath of any Russian invasion, said Jim Townsend, a former top Defense Department policy official. | null | null | null | null | null |
A planter box built by Winston “Winchester” Hagans at the gravesite of his fiancee, Hannah Ford. Hagans was detained after Ford's father signed an arrest warrant on a charge of criminal littering. (Courtesy of Winchester Hagans) (Courtesy: Winchester /Courtesy: Winchester Hagans)
When Hagans and Ford got engaged on Dec. 21, 2020, she shared on Facebook how she had cried her eyes out with “happy tears.”
The couple’s wedding date of May 1 was fast approaching, and they began to look at venues. As they were leaving a barn venue, they recounted how they still had much planning to do — invites, stamps, guest list, Hagans said. She leaned over and kissed Hagans on the cheek, and told him she was looking forward to seeing him in a couple days.
When she didn’t respond to his texts or voice mails, Hagans contacted her roommate, and learned she had not reached home. He knew something was wrong and raced about 60 miles from his home in Opelika to Montgomery.
“I was thinking, there’s no way she could be gone,” Hagans said. “She was the most loving and kind and hopeful and generous person I ever met.”
Hagans, who said he still has not spoken with Tom Ford about the circumstances that led to the arrest last month, has criticized the father for signing the arrest warrant a year after the tragedy. While he’s hoping to have the charge dropped at an upcoming court date, Hagans said that he is sad he can’t do something as simple as leave flowers for the woman he had planned to grow old with. | null | null | null | null | null |
Maryland casinos now in on Super Bowl betting action
This year is different. With the state’s approval in December, five Maryland casinos began offering sports wagers from an exhaustive, state-approved catalogue containing everything from Olympic ski jumping and badminton to hot dog-eating contests, chess and, of course, football.
Among those making Super Bowl bets at Horseshoe ($20 on the Los Angeles Rams to beat the Cincinnati Bengals) was former Orioles outfielder Al Bumbry, who was at the casino doing a promotion.
Bumbry gazed at the electronic board posting odds for the 2022 Super Bowl, as well as for hockey, college basketball, UFC fight night and the 2022 World Series.
The Los Angeles Dodgers were the 6-1 favorite to win the series. The Orioles were 250-1, meaning a $10 bet would win $2,500.
“Yeah, okay,” Bumbry said, smiling. “That’s a long shot, right? If I were to bet, I’d bet that.”
Maryland regulators allow wide latitude on the types of wagers that casinos may offer. The state Lottery and Gaming Control Agency maintains a voluminous “catalog of events and wagers” that can be updated as needed.
While first-pitch wagers don’t appear in the state catalogue, an operator could seek agency approval to offer them. If there were objections from MLB or another organization, the matter would be decided by the state Lottery and Gaming Control Commission.
Sports betting also is offered by MGM National Harbor in Prince George’s County, Hollywood Casino Perryville in Cecil County and Ocean Downs in Berlin on the Eastern Shore. The state’s sixth casino, Rocky Gap in Western Maryland, doesn’t offer sports wagering.
It’s uncertain when the state will approve licenses for mobile sports betting.
The Ravens still were playing in the regular season when sports betting began at casinos. But Norton, the Live! casino president, said fans tend to bet with their heads, not their hearts.
“Very, very rarely is the home team actually the largest betting action for the weekend,” Norton said.
The majority of the bettors, he said, base wagers on outcomes they believe have the best “chance of success.”
Earlier this month, Horseshoe general manager Randy Conroy said Super Bowl wagers seemed “pretty even” between the Rams and Bengals.
“So it looks like the bookmakers did a great job of setting the lines,” he said.
In 2020, Maryland voters approved a ballot measure allowing the state to join the neighboring jurisdictions of Delaware, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and the District of Columbia in allowing sports wagering, which has proliferated as the nation’s attitudes toward gambling have relaxed. The Maryland General Assembly established a framework and state regulators then began considering license applications.
Sports betting topped $16 million in its first month at Maryland’s casinos, and more than $13 million was paid to winning players, the gambling agency said. The state collected 15 percent of the remainder — more than $460,000 — with the money largely dedicated to public education programs. | null | null | null | null | null |
The Cavaliers (16-9, 10-5 ACC) matched their longest winning streak and defeated Georgia Tech for a ninth consecutive time to remain within reach of claiming the ACC regular season championship for a second straight year.
Jayden Gardner led Virginia with 26 points, the most by a Cavalier in an ACC game this season. The senior transfer from East Carolina shot 10 for 19 and had game highs of seven rebounds and three blocks in addition to two assists without a turnover.
Kihei Clark added 15 points, 12 of which came in the second half. The senior point guard made 3 of 7 three-pointers, the last of which gave the Cavaliers a 57-49 lead with 2:34 remaining in the second half after Georgia Tech (10-14, 3-10) had gotten with 49-47 with 5:44 to play.
Virginia had opened a 17-point lead in the first half and led by 13 at halftime before the Yellow Jackets began their rally.
“I was just taking the shot that comes to me, just trying to take what the defense gives us,” said Clark, who has scored in double figures in five of six games. “Obviously I knew we could use a big basket. Reece [Beekman] did a good job of driving and when they converged on him kicking it out.”
Virginia made six straight free throws over the final 1:07 and 21 of 23 overall to help offset 4-for-18 three-point shooting. The Cavaliers also improved to 17-2 in their last 19 games against Georgia Tech, which has dropped four of is past five.
Underscoring another defensive gem — Virginia has limited three of its past four opponents to 58 points or fewer — was forcing 15 turnovers that led to 19 points. The Cavaliers finished plus-six in points off turnovers and had seven blocks along with six steals.
Virginia’s most skilled on-ball defender was tasked to guard Devoe over the final minutes and bothered the Yellow Jackets’ most dependable scorer several times, including forcing a miss on a step-back jumper and closing out to induce an errant three-pointer from the right corner.
Q1 breather
With five games left in the regular season, the Cavaliers continue to seek coveted Quadrant 1 wins to add to their NCAA tournament resume. They had no such opportunity against Georgia Tech, which entered at 152 in the NCAA Net Rankings that help the selection committee determine at-large bids.
But Virginia can secure Q1 wins over its next three games, beginning Monday night against Virginia Tech (44 in the Net) in Blacksburg. It then plays at Miami (72) next Saturday before a highly anticipated rematch with seventh-ranked Duke (11) Feb. 23.
Home victories over opponents 1-30 in the Net, 1-50 at a neutral site and 1-75 on the road are considered Q1 wins. The Cavaliers, who are 80 in the Net, have two such triumphs this season, most recently beating Duke, 69-68, on Monday thanks to Beekman’s three-pointer with 1.1 seconds remaining. | null | null | null | null | null |
Beijing Winter Olympics live updates Eileen Gu back in action; monobob debuts
Team USA's Kaillie Humphries should be a threat to medal in the monobob. (Joe Klamar/AFP/Getty Images)
A new Winter Olympic sport — think of it like go-karting on ice — is making its Beijing debut, U.S. speedskater Erin Jackson will race in her best event, and the men’s giant slalom will be held in the mountains — if it isn’t snowed out. There’s also cross-country skiing, curling and another U.S. men’s hockey game on the schedule. Follow along for live updates and highlights from the Winter Games.
Monobob will make its Olympic debut with two heats Sunday morning (Saturday night Eastern). The two top-ranked women in the world are both Americans: Elana Meyers Taylor, who has had a harrowing Olympics, and Kaillie Humphries, whose long battle to become an American citizen ended successfully in December.
Eileen Gu, the teenage sensation from California who is competing for China, returns to action after claiming gold in the freestyle skiing big air event. She’s entered in the qualifying for the freestyle skiing slopestyle event Sunday morning in Beijing (9 p.m. Eastern time Saturday). | null | null | null | null | null |
A planter box built by Winston “Winchester” Hagans at the gravesite of his fiancee, Hannah Ford. Hagans was detained after Ford’s father signed an arrest warrant on a charge of criminal littering. (Courtesy of Winchester Hagans)
When Hagans and Ford got engaged on Dec. 5, 2020, she shared on Facebook how she had cried her eyes out with “happy tears.”
The couple’s wedding date of May 1 was fast approaching, and they began to look at venues. As they were leaving a barn venue, they recounted how they still had much planning to do — invites, stamps, guest list, Hagans said. She leaned over, kissed Hagans on the cheek and told him she was looking forward to seeing him in a couple days.
When she didn’t respond to his texts or voice mails, Hagans contacted her roommate and learned she had not reached home. He knew something was wrong and raced about 60 miles from his home in Opelika to Montgomery.
“I was thinking there’s no way she could be gone,” Hagans said. “She was the most loving and kind and hopeful and generous person I ever met.”
Hagans, who said he still has not spoken with Tom Ford about the circumstances that led to the arrest last month, has criticized the father for signing the arrest warrant a year after the tragedy. While he’s hoping to have the charge dropped at an upcoming court date, Hagans said he is sad he can’t do something as simple as leave flowers for the woman he had planned to grow old with. | null | null | null | null | null |
Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) listen during a meeting in October of the House select committee tasked with investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Republicans have voted to punish Cheney and Kinzinger for taking part in the investigation. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
As a Democratic president’s popularity sagged, a Republican gubernatorial victory in Virginia (and, in 2010, in New Jersey, whose election for 2022 was much closer than widely predicted) signaled that the Democratic lock on Washington was in trouble. Republican voter enthusiasm began to rise, as did confidence about big GOP gains in Congress.
If these were normal political times, it should be easy for Republicans all to sing from the same hymn book, focusing the party’s energy on President Biden and his congressional allies, seeking to pick off the Democratic majority seat by seat and effectively ending the Biden legislative agenda.
These are no ordinary times, though. And as a House committee continues to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, the probe — essentially asking, “What did the president do, and when did he do it?” — has led Republicans to expose their internal cracks between those who remain enthusiastic backers of all things Trump and those willing to be critical of the former president (or those who just hope to avoid him as a topic).
Which made the decision of the Republican National Committee to censure Reps. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) at its recent winter meeting in Salt Lake City for the crime of merely participating in the investigation both obvious and curious.
Obvious, because the RNC is eager to do all it can to stay in Donald Trump’s good graces — as demonstrated by the committee footing the bill for his legal expenses, even though the former president controls a $120 million war chest of his own. Curious, because by taking the unprecedented step against two Republican members of Congress, the committee ensured that the GOP’s internal divisions would come to the surface. And these divisions were guaranteed to bring significant media coverage.
Today’s tension between the RNC and the Capitol Hill GOP is somewhat reminiscent of the 2010 election cycle. Back then, the RNC was hit by wave after wave of controversy, including, infamously, a scandal in which a staffer spent nearly $2,000 of the party’s money at a risque Los Angeles nightclub and a leaked internal fundraising memo critical of party donors. Republican congressional leaders vented their frustration publicly and privately because the party committee should not have been a front-page story.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s comment Tuesday on the censure — “That’s not the job of the RNC” — sounded awfully similar to comments that Capitol Hill Republicans directed at the RNC in 2010.
I was the committee’s communications director at the time, and dealing with these kinds of stories constituted my worst days on the job. Whenever we became the center of national news, the self-inflicted crises caused us to retreat into a bunker mentality. Instead of focusing solely on pressing Democratic weaknesses — the then-unpopular Obamacare bill, the lack of a coherent response to the long-running BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, rising taxes and deficits — precious time was lost trying to take care of avoidable blunders. Each time, it was as if the RNC had made an in-kind contribution to the Democratic National Committee.
That’s surely what this month’s vote was, too. The move to censure Cheney and Kinzinger was an internal RNC process — which is to say, it was a self-inflicted injury that became a dominant news story, complete with infighting among committee members and several vocal Capitol Hill Republicans, including McConnell (Ky.) and Sen. Mitt Romney (Utah).
That the RNC has now labeled those senators as part of “the D.C. bubble” will not do anything to quell the back and forth. Indeed, the unheard-of and, until now, unfathomable move by the RNC to throw shade at its own top senators will keep the issue alive for several more days. This was already going to be fodder for the Sunday shows, even before Trump released the inevitable statement Wednesday attacking McConnell and continuing to push the lie that his 2020 election loss was fraudulent.
That means the focus for people paying attention to political news is not on what Republicans should be highlighting: an unpopular president, the belief among a majority of voters that the country is moving in the wrong direction, inflation, rising violent crime and the growing number of Democratic governors removing mask mandates, a move for which they’d long criticized Republicans. Instead, it’s on Republican infighting.
The good news for Republicans is that the political ground remains fertile for them, and narrow Democratic majorities mean that even modest Republican gains in November could easily lead to GOP control of the House and the Senate.
Come November, perhaps this fight will be little remembered, just as I can barely remember some RNC imbroglios that consumed my life in 2010; it’s the kind of political inside baseball that doesn’t register with voters more broadly. Certainly voters then didn’t punish the GOP: Republicans picked up 63 seats in the House and six in the Senate, though Democrats retained control of the upper chamber.
But Republicans should not take that risk. The RNC controversies of 2010 were trivial. The stakes here are much higher: The RNC is targeting its own members of Congress and changing rules so that committee funds may be spent on a Republican primary (which might draw money away from targeting Democratic seats). The description of those storming the Capitol — people seeking to lynch Vice President Mike Pence — as “ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse” is seriously troubling. And, as we’ve seen in the past and are seeing still, Trump is willing to exploit divides however and whenever he sees fit.
This is happening at a time when much of the political incentive structure rewards fighting over actual results and encourages intraparty battles. Trump, in his effort to salve his wounds from losing to Biden, has shown his willingness to exploit party divisions, even with the House and Senate in the balance — as Republicans learned last year in Georgia.
McConnell is mindful of this, which is why, while being clear and consistent on Jan. 6, he has otherwise tread carefully around Trump. | null | null | null | null | null |
OTTAWA — Canada’s capital is under two states of emergency, one local and another provincial. “Freedom Convoy” protesters are being threatened with fines, prison time, and the loss of their licenses and possibly their livelihoods for blocking roads and impeding transportation.
If the idea was to intimidate or scare the protesters, it has not been working. Their mood has been unabashedly celebratory. There’s a swagger in people’s stride as they stroll through Ottawa for what they describe as a gathering of the like-minded. Many are unvaccinated. All are unmasked. They are Canadians with a shared vision of freedom who are busting loose, and they are undeterred.
Hours after the second state of emergency was called Friday, protesters held night raves in the besieged streets of Ottawa, in between the tractor-trailers clogging the city for the third consecutive weekend.
“I don’t see any emergency here,” said Daniel Alexandrov, 24, as he looked around at the emboldened crowd and the police keeping watch. The song “We’re Not Gonna Take It” blared from loudspeakers.
Alexandrov, a father of one, installs siding on large homes around his hometown near Niagara Falls and came in for the weekend with friends to protest. “Everybody’s smiling. It feels like, you know, a friendly neighborhood.”
For many Ottawa residents, the last two weeks of gridlock, horn-blaring, intimidation, and reports of vandalism and hate crimes have been anything but friendly. Bus routes have been rerouted. Roads and businesses are blocked. Confederate flags and swastikas have made appearances. Monuments have been defaced. Far-right extremist groups and right-wing American media have taken up the cause.
The protest was sparked by U.S. and Canadian rules requiring cross-border truckers to be fully vaccinated. But it quickly expanded into a movement against pandemic restrictions more broadly, which are mostly imposed by provinces, and against Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The Canadian Trucking Alliance, an industry group, has denounced the protest, noting that the vast majority of Canadian truckers are vaccinated and that many of the convoy’s organizers are not truckers.
But the protesters are confident in their righteousness. Dismissing polls and scientific studies, they say they are tacitly backed by “the silent majority” — as well as millions of dollars raised online from donors, many of whom remain anonymous and some of whom have U.S. ties.
On Friday evening in Ottawa, Dean Kio received a fine of 80 Canadian dollars (U.S. $63) for each of his three small trucks he parked in the street outside a hotel where some organizers were staying.
It’s what “freedom costs,” said the 33-year-old from the Niagara region who works in the snow-blowing business.
Many Ottawa residents have criticized the police for allowing protesters to continue to occupy the city’s downtown. Critics have cited cases in which protests by Black and Indigenous Canadians were met with a far swifter and heavier police response.
Maurice Vanspronsen, 58, who is from Beamsville in Ontario, has been living out of his truck since Jan. 28, the convoy’s first day. On Friday he was flipping large pancakes for passersby on a gas grill. A young girl happily devoured one.
He is angry that truckers such as him, once ranked as essential workers, are now “blacklisted,” he said. Here he has been welcomed.
In the blocks leading up to the convoy, Ottawa’s Rideau Center, a large downtown mall, was closed Jan. 29 after it was overrun by protesters without face masks. Many other stores were closed Saturday along Rideau Street, a major thoroughfare with high-end clothing stores, tattoo parlors and bubble tea shops. Protesters, many draped in Canadian flags, clearly stood apart from mask-wearing residents.
Nearby, truck-clogged Wellington Street was abuzz with blocks of trucks, food stations and makeshift stages. Homemade signs disparaging Trudeau, the scientific community and covid-19-related mandates lined vehicles and concrete barriers alongside fluttering Canadian flags.
Some protesters posted live feeds on social media as they walked. Others shouted “freedom” or “liberté” as a call and response. Truck horns blared in defiance of a temporary injunction granted Monday to silence them. The smell of fuel filled the air. At one stage, set up with the Canadian Parliament as the backdrop, a woman sang the Canadian national anthem, followed by a rendition of Beyoncé’s “Freedom.”
For Christina Poitras, 40, it was a little liberated corner of her country.
“It’s so awesome and peaceful, and everyone’s so nice,” Poitras said Friday. She was visiting for the second weekend with her three children, parents and husband, a sheet-metal worker. “I chitchat with new people.”
Poitras, who lives about 45 minutes outside Ottawa, home-schools her children, aged 11, 7, and 2, and she is opposed to the coronavirus vaccines and mask-wearing. She said she is worried her children could miss out on typical activities, such as playing on sports teams, because of her stances.
That freedom has a cost for others, including Ottawa residents such as Bobby Ramsay.
Ramsay, 47, has spent the past four afternoons set up among the truck convoy offering to engage with demonstrators. He has come with a sign with a blunt message: “You are hurting the residents of Ottawa. Please go.”
He cited residents complaining about people defecating in their gardens, harassing those wearing face masks or following women. He said some residents have felt unsafe, afraid to walk around at night because of the racist and intimidating language of some demonstrators.
He said he understands the frustration with restrictions and the pandemic itself. “But Ottawa shouldn’t be collateral damage,” he said.
Vanspronsen, the trucker making pancakes, has heard this sentiment but is not deterred. For him, that’s another cost of his “democratic right to voice an opinion.”
“It’s unfortunate with the harassment,” he said. “But there are always bad apples in every basket. … There are a lot of seriously frustrated people.” | null | null | null | null | null |
“They bothered us with their physicality. We went from a game against Kansas State where it was a very finesse game,” Baylor coach Nicki Collen said. “When you play West Virginia, it’s hand-to-hand combat. ... They’re not dirty, they just play hard. They play really physical and they make you uncomfortable.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Actor, writer and producer Pamela Adlon in Los Angeles. (Alyson Aliano/FTWP)
“Sometimes, I look at my show, look at the script, stand on the set and I’m like, ‘Wait a second; we’re not doing that,’ ” she says. “This is not a f---ing Nickelodeon show. This is ‘Better Things.’ We talk about uncomfortable s---, we say things that are like, shocking or whatever, because we need to figure it out.”
This blurring of reality and fiction can be a point of contention with Adlon’s real daughters, Gideon, 24; Odessa, 21; and Rocky, 18. They have watched as their lives, whether an awkward graduation or a friend whose mother allowed them to smoke pot, are adapted for TV by on-camera daughters Max (Mikey Madison), Frankie (Hannah Riley, formerly Hannah Alligood) and Duke (Olivia Edward).
“As an artist, I get that and that’s why I’m not angry,” says Gideon, who is an actress. “And that’s why I’m happy that this show exists, because it’s such an honest portrayal of a family. But within that, of course, we’ve all been a little bit hurt. I think I’m the only one of my sisters that hasn’t watched fully every season. There’s just some s--- I don’t want to relive.”
At Beverly Hills High School, Pam Segall stood out in a student body that included musician Lenny Kravitz, future Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash and actor Nicolas Cage.
“Do you want to buy her the earrings?” Sam asked the onlooker. “’Cause that’s why she’s crying. Because of $6 earrings. She has them at home already. But she wants them right now so … you should go right into that store and buy them for her, ’cause I’m not doing it. … Or stop looking.”
“We were like, ‘You did it already and you’ve got to keep going, you’ve got to keep telling these stories,’ ” says Susie Balaban, a longtime friend who has worked as an assistant director in television. “In a way, I think it was a kind of blessing.”
“I was in my closet trying on my clothes and I was like, ‘This just fit me; I literally just wore this,’ ” she says. “And I couldn’t believe it. I had a big pile of clothes to give to Goodwill and I said, no, I’m keeping these and I’m going to do this on my show.”
Monica Corbin, who spent time with Adlon as part of a mentorship program, remembers visiting a shoot at a supermarket last year. Corbin was standing in the front of the store when she heard, from somewhere, Adlon screaming out, “Monica, where are you?” | null | null | null | null | null |
The pregame session marked the extent of Porzingis’s court time Saturday night at Capital One Arena — the Wizards’ key trade deadline acquisition is still nursing a bone bruise in his knee, which kept him out vs. the Kings.
“Just a bone bruise. I kind of played through it a few games in Dallas, but then I realized something's not right. Did MRI, bone bruise, nothing serious. You just have to sit out some time and let the bone heal. My feeling is that I'm pretty much there where I need to be to start playing. But I think with these kind of things, you have to be a little bit on the safe side to get enough time to heal and not really re-aggravate it.”
Ish Smith, who spent time with the Wizards from 2019-21, saw time to start his second tour in Washington. He came back with Vernon Carey Jr. in another deadline deal that sent Montrezl Harrell to Charlotte.
The Wizards had a 65-59 lead at intermission but were dominated in the second half. The Wizards went cold and missed several good looks and failed to finish around the rim. The Kings shot 56.6 percent for the game, including 42.9 percent from three-point range. They used a 13-2 run in the third quarter to take an 87-82 lead that they never relinquished in the final quarter.
“I though the first half was really good [offensively]," Unseld said. “Second half, we started to stagnate a little bit. … Some of that is shot-making. But continue to move the ball in a timely manner. Find guys when the ball should find them. … I thought we started holding it a little bit and that helps the defense quite a bit.”
Kyle Kuzma led the Wizards with 23 points, eight rebounds and seven assists while Corey Kispert posted a career-high 20 points and a career-high six assists. Seven players scored in double figures for the Wizards.
“I feel much more comfortable,” Kispert said. “Can get to my spots and know what I want to do. As far as the assists go tonight, the credit goes to everybody else. They were able to knock down shots. … Those guys made it really easy on me. Defense was kind of flooding over, so one more pass was natural and they knocked it down. ”
Things to know from Saturday’s game
Neto on point
The trade deadline saw the Wizards trade away Spencer Dinwiddie and Aaron Holiday, effectively pushing Raul Neto into the starting lineup. Barring any unexpected changes, that’ll be his role the rest of the way.
“We’ve been in constant communication along all the way,” Unseld said before the game. “These last couple days, they moved quickly. So, I think he’s aware of his role and things he’s responsible for. He’ll have to take on a larger role than usual. But he’s also been in the starting rotation before. He’ll be fine.”
Still out
Daniel Gafford missed his third consecutive game while in health and safety protocols. Unseld said he’s feeling better and the hope is that he would test negative Saturday evening. The Wizards have played just one true center, Thomas Bryant, the past two games.
The Kings added six players — Sabonis, Justin Holiday, Jeremy Lamb, Donte Divincenzo, Josh Jackson, Trey Lyles — at the deadline and they were all available for the first time. Coach Alvin Gentry said he’s never coached a team that brought in six players at the deadline, but was eager to get them on the floor. | null | null | null | null | null |
With mere days remaining until Major League Baseball’s ongoing lockout forces the first labor-related interruption of spring training in nearly three decades, MLB’s negotiating team presented a 130-page proposal to leaders from the players union Saturday in hopes of rallying negotiations in time to limit the damage.
The comprehensive proposal is MLB’s first to cover the full scope of a potential collective bargaining agreement, according to a person familiar with the deal, who said it included multiple changes to prior proposals MLB has made.
As recently as Thursday evening, attendees at a Major League Baseball Players Association gathering in Tampa told reporters that they were skeptical that MLB’s new offer would be anything more than a much-hyped codification of the status quo.
Commissioner Rob Manfred, meanwhile, refused to announce an official postponement of spring training before MLB made this offer, suggesting that the sides would assess the calendar Saturday. As of late Saturday afternoon, no formal delay had been announced. Manfred said Thursday that once a deal is reached, camps could probably open within a few days.
Given that timeline, a delay seems almost certain; a person familiar with the union’s thinking said the players were “underwhelmed” with the offer, though it does include more changes on key issues than what MLB has previously offered.
Most significantly, perhaps, it offers a reduction in non-monetary penalties for teams that outspend the competitive balance tax threshold, which has emerged as a key sticking point.
Instead of losing a draft pick for exceeding the first surcharge threshold, teams would pay only the prescribed tax on their overages until a second, higher threshold is reached. At that point, teams would concede a draft pick as well as a 75 percent tax on their overages. Under that plan, a team exceeding the lowest threshold by, say, $2 million would owe 50 percent or $1 million in tax, a number MLB believes is less of a deterrent to exceeding the threshold than previous proposals.
The players union believes the threshold itself is too low and has proposed raising it to $245 million. MLB’s newest offer increases that threshold more over the five-year life of the CBA than its previous offers, with it ultimately landing at $222 million in the final year. But while MLB’s new offer reduces some non-monetary penalties, the new proposal still includes an increase in tax rates from the previous CBA, something people familiar with the union’s thinking said is still a major problem for players.
MLB’s offer also makes changes to the framework by which it is trying to meet the union’s desire to pay younger players — who are relied upon for an increasing proportion of teams’ production — more in keeping with their performance.
Secondly, the offer includes an increase in MLB’s proposed funding for a pre-arbitration bonus pool to be dispersed among the highest-achieving players with less than three years of service time. MLB has upped that number to $15 million, while the players union still seeks $100 million.
But MLB’s goal in making this proposal, according to a person familiar with its thinking, is to shift the negotiations from the realm of rules and regulations to that of dollars and cents — the kind of thing it believes can be negotiated more quickly than issues such as when players qualify for free agency or whether the current revenue-sharing system should continue. The players union has dropped its request for change on the former issue but maintains its request to reduce shared money in the latter, something on which MLB says it simply will not budge.
MLB also altered its proposed plan to encourage teams to call up elite young players when they are ready, rather than at the last possible moment to delay starting the free-agency clock. Previously, MLB’s negotiators offered to institute a policy by which teams that call up young players who then perform well enough to finish near the top of voting for awards such as rookie of the year would receive one draft pick as a reward for that move.
MLB’s new proposal gives teams a chance to receive two compensatory picks: If a player is called up one year and finishes near the top of awards voting, then does the same in either of his next two years of service, his team can receive up to two picks. In other words, if an eligible player wins rookie of the year in his first season, then finishes near the top of MVP voting in his second, his team would receive another pick.
The new proposal also includes a limit on the number of times a player can be optioned in one season, initially setting that number at five. It sticks to previous proposals on issues such as creating a draft lottery (MLB wants a three-team lottery, as opposed to union’s eight), implementing a universal designated hitter and expanding the playoffs.
To this point, individual negotiating sessions and new proposals from one side to the other have been narrower, focused on a couple issues here and a few tweaks there. But with time running out, MLB officials hope that putting everything in one place will allow the sides to move more quickly. But progress has been so slow so far that even “quickly” will almost certainly still be too slow to salvage a full spring training schedule. | null | null | null | null | null |
LOS ANGELES — If you’re a young NFL player living in Cincinnati, there’s little to do, apparently, so Bengals cornerback Mike Hilton has had plenty of time to imagine the Bengals’ secondary as sort of a sitcom family.
Hilton considers himself the dad of the group, a little more settled than the younger ones but still cool enough to vibe out to a Young Thug playlist before games. Cornerback Eli Apple, a former first-round draft pick of the New York Giants, would be the adopted little brother they rescued from bright lights and big expectations. Chidobe Awuzie, the one they call “Chido,” is the chill one who also now enjoys a drama-free life away from his former team. And safeties Jessie Bates III and Vonn Bell are the perfect pairing of an odd couple — Bates brings the Zen, and Bell acts like the loud uncle in the room.
Hilton could have gone on, casting the rest of the defense: linebacker Logan Wilson as the interloper from Wyoming and defensive end Sam Hubbard as “Cincinnati’s own,” the local hero they all rally around. Maybe they would name this fictional show something corny like “Meet the Who Deys” and the season finale would end with confetti streaming down from SoFi Stadium following the city’s first Super Bowl championship.
For this show to have that happy ending, sure, Joe Burrow and the rest of the stars on the Bengals’ offense will be the main writers of the script. But it’s the mostly anonymous defensive standouts who have created an organic and effective chemistry, playing a crucial role in the team’s surprising run to meet the Los Angeles Rams in Super Bowl LVI.
“It’s just a mixture of personalities, and we just all mesh well,” Hilton said Friday.
As a unit, Cincinnati finished the regular season 17th overall in points allowed but owned the NFL’s fifth-best run defense. Only two starters remain from the 2019 season-opening lineup — which would go on to rank as one of the league’s worst — while the current group was quickly and effectively remade through free agency, trades and the draft.
On the surface, it seems like a collection of hodgepodge parts.
Both Apple and Awuzie, who spent the first four years of his career in Dallas, needed a change of scenery. Apple didn’t have the best time in New York or New Orleans, and even as his new team was marching along in the playoffs, he couldn’t help but take a swipe at both fan bases. Awuzie said this week he preferred the blue-collar mentality of the Bengals as opposed to the additional fluff that comes with playing for “America’s Team.”
In 2020, Cincinnati signed defensive tackle D.J. Reader and Bell. Last offseason, Hilton inked his four-year, $24 million deal. Now they may be valuable pieces, but all three carry memories of feeling underappreciated or overlooked. Reader was a backup at Clemson. Bell reportedly refused an offer to re-sign with the Saints, who promptly moved on from him. Hilton went undrafted out of college.
They don’t have the household name recognition like a few players on the Rams’ defense, and yet here they are.
“It’s just the collective group of the people we have,” said Hubbard, who went to high school at Cincinnati’s famed Archbishop Moeller before starring at Ohio State. “There’s so many great dudes. we just don’t have too many huge-name guys that are worried about themselves. Everybody’s worried about the team collective, what it takes to get the job done and whoever makes the play, I’m just as happy for them as if I made it, and that’s the mind-set across the board. Guys feel that and can play harder for that than just for themselves.”
“ ‘Hey, we’re watching the UFC fight here on Saturday. Pull up.’ And guys pulling up,” Reader said. “Guys going out. Hanging out. Whatever you’re doing, you’re just around guys.
Hilton recalled how the secondary had a tradition during the season to gather to watch Monday and Thursday night games. This kinship works because guys enjoy each other’s company, and the small town feel of their home market has something to do with it. As a party town, Cincinnati may be lacking. But it’s the perfect setting for an ensemble cast with a key role in football’s biggest game. | null | null | null | null | null |
Beijing Winter Olympics live updates Kaillie Humphries leads monobob; snow postpones slopestyle qualifying
Women’s freeski slopestyle qualifying postponed because of snow
Kaillie Humphries leads after first monobob heat as Olympics welcome new event
Snow finally arrives at Winter Olympics, pushing back freeski slopestyle qualifying
An Olympian in Beijing, he’s still ‘Shustie’ in Duluth
Team USA's Kaillie Humphries competes in the first heat of the monobob Sunday morning in Beijing. (Dmitri Lovetsky/AP)
A new Winter Olympic sport — think of it like go-karting on ice — is making its Beijing debut, U.S. speedskater Erin Jackson will race in her best event, and the men’s giant slalom is being held in the mountains. There’s also cross-country skiing, curling and another U.S. men’s hockey game on the schedule. Follow along for live updates and highlights from the Winter Games.
Monobob made its Olympic debut Sunday morning (Saturday night Eastern). The two top-ranked women in the world are both Americans: Elana Meyers Taylor, who has had a harrowing Olympics, and Kaillie Humphries, whose long battle to become an American citizen ended successfully in December. Humphries leads after the first heat, while Meyers Taylor is tied for third.
Eileen Gu, the teenage sensation from California who is competing for China, was set to return to action after claiming gold in the freestyle skiing big air event. But qualifying for the freestyle skiing slopestyle event was postponed because of snowy conditions.
By Michael Errigo10:10 p.m.
Two qualification runs for the women’s freeski slopestyle event, originally scheduled for Sunday morning, were postponed because of snowy weather at Genting Snow Park.
The qualifying runs had been postponed from a 10 a.m. start to noon, but the decision to reschedule altogether came about an hour before that delayed start time.
As the announcement was made public, the day’s wintry conditions were clear in the men’s giant slalom event being held as planned. Athletes were having trouble navigating a thick layer of snow that made visibility difficult and slopes unpredictable.
Chinese freestyle skier Eileen Gu headlines the pack of 27 athletes set to participate in the freeski slopestyle event. The 12 best scores will advance to the final. An update on the new time for qualifying is expected soon.
By Michael Errigo9:31 p.m.
The first heat of the women’s monobob event, held Sunday morning at the Yanqing National Sliding Centre in Beijing, marked the long-awaited arrival of a new Olympic sport.
Monobob, which features one woman pushing, controlling and braking a bobsled (as opposed to a group of two or four), was introduced this year in Beijing in an effort to provide female athletes a second event to medal in. Previously, women could only participate in a two-person event while men could do two- or four-man races.
Monobob asks one woman to do it all
(at 75 mph) pic.twitter.com/VV4z7MJyt4
— Post Sports (@PostSports) February 12, 2022
Monobob has a short history, having been added to the bobsled World Cup circuit in just 2018. It is one of seven new events at this year’s Winter Games. With just one woman aboard, the bobsled is nimbler and easier to control, but also more liable to skid around the course. One expert compared the sport to driving a go-kart as opposed to a semi (the four-person bobsled).
The final standings will be determined by adding up times across four runs. The first two runs are being held Sunday, while the third and fourth are Monday.
The first run, held on a snowy morning, saw strong performances from two Americans: Kaillie Humphries and Elana Meyers Taylor. Both are considered medal favorites in the event. Humphries, winner of the inaugural monobob world championship last February, finished first in a group of 20 athletes with a time of 1:04.44. Meyers Taylor, who won the Monobob World Series’s overall championship in January, finished tied for third at 1:05.12. Germany’s Laura Nolte finished second and Canada’s Christine de Bruin tied with Meyers Taylor for third.
This event was a long time coming for Meyers Taylor, who is participating in her fourth Olympics and seeking her fourth medal. The Georgia native tested positive for the coronavirus two days after arriving in Beijing and missed out on leading Team USA into the Opening Ceremonies. She now has three heats left to make the most of this new event.
A Winter Games fueled in part by loads and loads of fake snow will now get a few doses of the real thing, as pockets of wintry weather have started to arrive at the Olympics.
Saturday featured a steady snow in events like the mixed-team snowboard cross and Sunday morning featured more snowfall. It may be a sign of things to come as the forecast in Beijing predicts more snow later in the week.
The weather is already having an effect: The second women’s downhill training for Mikaela Shiffrin and company was canceled Sunday morning. The men’s giant slalom event will proceed as planned, but with a slightly altered schedule. And women’s freeski slopestyle qualifying — featuring American-born Chinese star Eileen Gu — was pushed back two hours to noon local time (11 p.m. Eastern).
In a way, it is a welcome change after the first week of action featured plenty of cold air but no snow. The lack of precipitation was not uncommon in the Beijing area this time of year, and could be attributed to the East Asian Monsoon. But whatever drought was in place seems to be giving way. | null | null | null | null | null |
Churchill boys take Metros swim title without a single individual winner; Stone Ridge also prevails
Churchill boys celebrate a victory at the Metros championship meet. (Spencer Nusbaum)
None of the boys on the Churchill swim team won an individual event at the Metros swimming championships Saturday evening in Germantown, and with powerhouse Gonzaga on the other side of the deck, they entered the meet with hopes of a second-place finish. But as more races finished, the Bulldogs continued to perform well, and it became clear they didn’t need to win any single race outright.
Even in the final race, when they placed second to Gonzaga in the 400-yard freestyle relay, the Bulldogs cheered, securing just enough points to win the first-place team medal.
“I think it was the most amazing feeling I’ve ever felt,” said sophomore Brady Begin, who finished second in the 500 freestyle. “Being able to be part of a team and boost each other up, jumping in the pool at the end, screaming, laughing, it was the best thing I’ve ever experienced.”
The 2.5-point victory, with Churchill at 464.5 and Gonzaga at 462, was an abnormally close margin for a championship event (Whitman, at 288 points, finished third). In 2020, the last time the Metros were staged, Gonzaga won by 90 points.
Private schools have long dominated the Metros meet, with Gonzaga and Georgetown Prep combining for 19 of the last 21 championships. But the other two, in 2018 and now 2021, belong to Churchill, a public school.
“I’m so proud of our team, I think it makes the win 10 times better,” Begin said.
Coach Kevin McKenzie and his swimmers reiterated that their team’s victory was a testament to its depth, as well as a diving victory that added the requisite points for a win. The biggest inner-motivation might have been a slight change to their mascot’s name.
“We always thought we were the underdogs,” senior Neo Matsuyama said, in favor of the Bulldogs.
Gonzaga, with its first-place finishes, broke the meet record in all three of the day’s relays. Multi-event individual winners on the boys’ side included Gonzaga seniors Collin McKenzie (100 breaststroke, and a meet record in the 200 individual medley) and Mac Marsh (50 and 100 freestyles), and Richard Montgomery senior Everett Oehler (200 freestyle and 100 butterfly).
Stone Ridge earns another title
Stone Ridge (390.5 points), the top team on the girls’ side, didn’t entertain the possibility of an upset, as its win was the program’s second major title of the championship season, along with the Independent School League meet. Holton-Arms (349 points) and Walter Johnson (324 points) took second and third place.
The Gators became the first back-to-back champions on the girls’ side since 2015, with Erin Gemmell, the team’s top swimmer, again leading the way.
“This has always been the big meet; my parents took me to watch this meet before I was in high school to watch Katie [Ledecky],” Gemmell said. “This was the real goal we were aiming for, to win Metros.”
Gemmell (100 and 200 freestyles) and Holton-Arms’ Sophie Duncan (200 IM and tie in the 100 fly) won both of their individual events, as did Damascus swimmer Carly Sebring (100 backstroke, tie in the 100 fly).
In the day’s tightest race, Sebring and Duncan finished in a tie in the 100 fly, as the board read 54.49 for both swimmers. Other winners included Good Counsel junior Madison Smith in the 500 freestyle, Walter Johnson junior Sienna Karp in the 100 backstroke and Bethesda-Chevy Chase junior Nina Allen in the 50 freestyle. | null | null | null | null | null |
The pregame session marked the extent of Porzingis’s court time Saturday night at Capital One Arena — the Wizards’ key trade deadline acquisition is still nursing a bone bruise in his knee, which kept him out against the Kings.
“Just a bone bruise. I kind of played through it a few games in Dallas, but then I realized something’s not right. Did MRI, bone bruise, nothing serious. You just have to sit out some time and let the bone heal. My feeling is that I’m pretty much there where I need to be to start playing. But I think with these kind of things, you have to be a little bit on the safe side to get enough time to heal and not really re-aggravate it.”
Ish Smith, who spent time with the Wizards from 2019 to 2021, saw playing time to start his second tour in Washington. He came back with Vernon Carey Jr. in another deadline deal that sent Montrezl Harrell to Charlotte.
The Wizards had a 65-59 lead at intermission but were dominated in the second half. The Wizards went cold, missed several good looks and failed to finish around the rim. The Kings shot 56.6 percent for the game, including 42.9 percent from three-point range. They used a 13-2 run in the third quarter to take an 87-82 lead that they never relinquished in the final quarter.
“I though the first half was really good [offensively]," Unseld said. “Second half, we started to stagnate a little bit. … Some of that is shot-making. But continue to move the ball in a timely manner. Find guys when the ball should find them. … I thought we started holding it a little bit, and that helps the defense quite a bit.”
Kyle Kuzma led the Wizards with 23 points, eight rebounds and seven assists, while Corey Kispert posted a career-high 20 points and a career-high six assists. Seven players scored in double figures for the Wizards.
“I feel much more comfortable,” Kispert said. “Can get to my spots and know what I want to do. As far as the assists go tonight, the credit goes to everybody else. They were able to knock down shots. … Those guys made it really easy on me. Defense was kind of flooding over, so one more pass was natural, and they knocked it down. ”
Here’s what else to know from the Wizards’ loss;
Neto is on point
The trade deadline saw the Wizards deal Spencer Dinwiddie and Aaron Holiday, effectively pushing Raul Neto into the starting lineup. Barring any unexpected changes, that will be his role the rest of the way.
“We’ve been in constant communication along all the way,” Unseld said before the game. “These last couple days, they moved quickly. So I think he’s aware of his role and things he’s responsible for. He’ll have to take on a larger role than usual. But he’s also been in the starting rotation before. He’ll be fine.”
Gafford still sidelined
Daniel Gafford missed his third consecutive game while in the NBA’s health and safety protocols. Unseld said Gafford is feeling better and the hope was that he would test negative Saturday evening. The Wizards have played just one true center, Thomas Bryant, the past two games.
Kings gets an overhaul
The Kings added six players — Sabonis, Justin Holiday, Jeremy Lamb, Donte Divincenzo, Josh Jackson, Trey Lyles — at the deadline and they were all available for the first time. Coach Alvin Gentry said he has never coached a team that brought in six players at the deadline but was eager to get them on the floor. | null | null | null | null | null |
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Ja Morant scored 26 points, Desmond Bane added 25 points and four steals, and the Memphis Grizzlies held off the Charlotte Hornets 125-118 on Saturday night for their fifth straight win.
“I was really proud of the guys. They stayed poised, they stayed calm and they stayed together throughout” the comeback, said Grizzlies coach Taylor Jenkins. “... You knew (the Hornets) were going to go on a run and you just have to withstand it.” | null | null | null | null | null |
As the games tick down in Georgetown’s worst season in a half-century, it is easy to wonder whether there’s any reason to believe the Hoyas can engineer a turnaround anytime soon.
The Hoyas (6-17, 0-12 Big East) would probably be well served if they developed amnesia about the past two months. They haven’t won since Dec. 15, and they matched the seventh-worst start to league play in Big East history with their latest loss.
But forgetting this one with a makeup game Monday at Creighton (15-8, 7-5) would not be wise. It would mean overlooking Bluejays forward Ryan Hawkins’s season-high 30 points and the complete inability to limit 7-foot-1 sophomore Ryan Kalkbrenner in the pick-and-roll. The Creighton center had career highs in points (22) and rebounds (15).
Georgetown again hung around into the second half, trailing 42-37 at the break and getting within 50-46 with 14:30 left. But Creighton uncorked a 12-0 run, and KeyShawn Feazell’s dunk with 11:01 to go — one of nine slams against the defenseless Hoyas — prompted Ewing to call a timeout with his team down 16.
Donald Carey and Kaiden Rice each scored 16 points for Georgetown, which is 11 games under .500 for the first time since it went 3-23 in 1971-72 — the program’s last season before Hall of Fame coach John Thompson Jr.’s hire. The Hoyas play road games against NCAA tournament contenders Creighton, Marquette and Villanova in a six-day span starting Monday.
Given its defensive struggles, Georgetown’s best bet to stay in games might be its outside shooting. But even that was a chore Saturday, with the Hoyas making just 6 of their 24 attempts from beyond the arc.
Carey and Rice are Georgetown’s best perimeter threats, and they combined to go 5 of 15 from deep. However, both took only one outside shot in the final 13 minutes as Creighton pulled away. | null | null | null | null | null |
The Cavaliers (16-9, 10-5 ACC) matched their longest winning streak of the season and defeated Georgia Tech for a ninth consecutive time to remain within reach of claiming the ACC regular season championship for a second straight year.
Jayden Gardner led Virginia with 26 points, the most by a Cavalier in an ACC game this season. The senior transfer from East Carolina shot 10 for 19 from the field and had game highs of seven rebounds and three blocks in addition to two assists without a turnover.
Kihei Clark added 15 points, 12 of which came in the second half. The senior point guard made 3 of 7 three-pointers, the last of which gave the Cavaliers a 57-49 lead with 2:34 remaining in the second half after Georgia Tech (10-14, 3-10) rallied within 49-47 with 5:44 to play.
Virginia opened a 17-point lead in the first half and led by 13 at halftime before the Yellow Jackets began their rally.
“I was just taking the shot that comes to me, just trying to take what the defense gives us,” said Clark, who has scored in double figures in five of six games. “Obviously I knew we could use a big basket. Reece [Beekman] did a good job of driving and, when they converged on him, kicking it out.”
Virginia made six straight free throws over the final 1:07 and 21 of 23 overall to help offset 4-for-18 three-point shooting. The Cavaliers also improved to 17-2 in their past 19 games against Georgia Tech, which has dropped four of its past five.
In another defensive gem — Virginia has limited three of its past four opponents to 58 points or fewer — the Cavaliers forced 15 turnovers that led to 19 points. They finished plus-six in points off turnovers and had seven blocks and six steals.
Here’s what else to know from Virginia’s win:
Virginia’s most skilled on-ball defender was tasked to guard Devoe over the final minutes and bothered the Yellow Jackets’ most dependable scorer several times. He forced a miss on a step-back jumper and closed out to induce an errant three-point attempt from the right corner.
Quadrant 1 chances ahead
With five games left in the regular season, the Cavaliers continue to seek coveted Quadrant 1 wins to add to their NCAA tournament résumé. They had no such opportunity against Georgia Tech, which entered at 152nd in the NCAA Net Rankings that help the selection committee determine at-large bids.
But Virginia can secure Q1 wins over its next three games, beginning Monday night against Virginia Tech (44 in the Net) in Blacksburg. It then plays at Miami (72) next Saturday before a rematch with seventh-ranked Duke (11) Feb. 23.
Home victories over opponents ranked 1-30 in the Net, 1-50 at a neutral site and 1-75 on the road are considered Q1 wins. The Cavaliers, who are ranked 80th in the Net, have two such triumphs this season, most recently beating Duke, 69-68, on Monday thanks to Beekman’s three-pointer with 1.1 seconds remaining. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: Coppin State hosts the North Carolina Central Eagles after Kyle Cardaci scored 22 points in Coppin State’s 66-58 loss to the South Carolina State Bulldogs.
The Coppin State Eagles have gone 2-3 at home. Coppin State is third in the MEAC in rebounding averaging 32.6 rebounds. Tyree Corbett leads the Coppin State Eagles with 9.7 boards.
The North Carolina Central Eagles are 5-2 against conference opponents. North Carolina Central is second in the MEAC with 10.3 offensive rebounds per game led by Dontavius King averaging 1.9.
The teams meet for the second time in conference play this season. The Eagles won 69-68 in the last matchup on Feb. 5. Corbett led the Eagles with 17 points, and Justin Wright led the Eagles with 25 points.
TOP PERFORMERS: Nendah Tarke is averaging 13 points, 6.6 rebounds and three steals for the Coppin State Eagles. Corbett is averaging 15.3 points over the last 10 games for Coppin State.
Randy Miller Jr. is averaging 12.4 points for the North Carolina Central Eagles. Wright is averaging 16.4 points over the last 10 games for North Carolina Central. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: Davidson faces the Duquesne Dukes after Foster Loyer scored 20 points in Davidson’s 72-65 loss to the Rhode Island Rams.
The Wildcats have gone 9-1 at home. Davidson has a 4-1 record in games decided by 3 points or fewer.
The Dukes are 1-9 against A-10 opponents. Duquesne is 4-6 when it turns the ball over less than its opponents and averages 11.4 turnovers per game.
The Wildcats and Dukes match up Monday for the first time in A-10 play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Loyer is shooting 44.5% from beyond the arc with 2.6 made 3-pointers per game for the Wildcats, while averaging 16 points and 3.5 assists. Luka Brajkovic is averaging 12.3 points over the past 10 games for Davidson.
Kevin Easley Jr. is averaging 11.1 points and 6.7 rebounds for the Dukes. Jackie Johnson III is averaging 0.8 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Duquesne. | null | null | null | null | null |
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: Purdue -15.5; over/under is 147.5
BOTTOM LINE: Maryland takes on the No. 3 Purdue Boilermakers after Fatts Russell scored 20 points in Maryland’s 110-87 loss to the Iowa Hawkeyes.
The Boilermakers are 13-1 in home games. Purdue ranks third in the Big Ten with 10.1 offensive rebounds per game led by Zach Edey averaging 2.8.
The Terrapins have gone 3-10 against Big Ten opponents. Maryland has a 2-2 record in games decided by 3 points or fewer.
The Boilermakers and Terrapins match up Sunday for the first time in Big Ten play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Jaden Ivey is shooting 48.5% and averaging 17.0 points for the Boilermakers. Edey is averaging 8.9 points over the last 10 games for Purdue.
Donta Scott is averaging 12.7 points and 6.2 rebounds for the Terrapins. Eric Ayala is averaging 9.3 points over the last 10 games for Maryland. | null | null | null | null | null |
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: Oakland -8; over/under is 144
The Golden Grizzlies have gone 7-0 at home. Oakland ranks fourth in the Horizon with 14.1 assists per game led by Jalen Moore averaging 8.0.
The Titans are 7-5 against Horizon opponents. Detroit Mercy has a 0-2 record in games decided by 3 points or fewer.
TOP PERFORMERS: Jamal Cain is averaging 20 points, 10 rebounds and 1.8 steals for the Golden Grizzlies. Trey Townsend is averaging 15.6 points and 5.6 rebounds over the past 10 games for Oakland.
Davis is shooting 36.7% from beyond the arc with 4.0 made 3-pointers per game for the Titans, while averaging 23.6 points and five assists. D.J. Harvey is averaging 10.9 points and 5.8 rebounds over the last 10 games for Detroit Mercy. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: Purdue Fort Wayne hosts the Cleveland State Vikings after Damian Chong Qui scored 20 points in Purdue Fort Wayne’s 73-66 win against the UIC Flames.
The Mastodons have gone 13-2 in home games. Purdue Fort Wayne has a 1-0 record in games decided by 3 points or fewer.
The Vikings have gone 13-3 against Horizon opponents. Cleveland State averages 75.3 points while outscoring opponents by 5.6 points per game.
The teams square off for the third time in conference play this season. The Vikings won the last matchup 65-58 on Jan. 6. Tre Gomillion scored 21 points to help lead the Vikings to the victory.
TOP PERFORMERS: Jarred Godfrey is averaging 15.2 points, 3.6 assists and 1.7 steals for the Mastodons. Chong Qui is averaging 12.5 points over the last 10 games for Purdue Fort Wayne.
Torrey Patton is averaging 14.3 points, 6.6 rebounds, 3.6 assists and 1.5 steals for the Vikings. D’Moi Hodge is averaging 18.0 points over the last 10 games for Cleveland State. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: Youngstown State hosts the Robert Morris Colonials after Michael Akuchie scored 34 points in Youngstown State’s 82-69 win against the Detroit Mercy Titans.
The Penguins have gone 10-5 in home games. Youngstown State has a 3-3 record in games decided by 3 points or fewer.
The Colonials are 4-12 in Horizon play. Robert Morris has a 4-10 record in games decided by 10 or more points.
The teams square off for the second time this season in Horizon play. The Penguins won the last meeting 64-60 on Jan. 6. Akuchie scored 19 points points to help lead the Penguins to the win.
TOP PERFORMERS: Akuchie is averaging 14 points and 7.7 rebounds for the Penguins. Tevin Olison is averaging 2.1 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Youngstown State.
Michael Green III is shooting 31.3% from beyond the arc with 1.4 made 3-pointers per game for the Colonials, while averaging 10.7 points and 3.1 assists. Kahliel Spear is averaging 15.9 points and 9.2 rebounds over the last 10 games for Robert Morris. | null | null | null | null | null |
Saint John's (NY) hosts No. 24 UConn after Wheeler's 31-point game
BOTTOM LINE: Saint John’s (NY) hosts the No. 24 UConn Huskies after Aaron Wheeler scored 31 points in Saint John’s (NY)’s 75-69 loss to the Villanova Wildcats.
The Red Storm have gone 10-5 at home. Saint John’s (NY) is second in the Big East scoring 76.0 points while shooting 44.9% from the field.
The Huskies are 7-5 in conference games. UConn ranks third in the Big East with 14.4 assists per game led by R.J. Cole averaging 4.4.
The teams meet for the 17th time in conference play this season. The Huskies won 86-78 in the last matchup on Jan. 13. Adama Sanogo led the Huskies with 26 points, and Julian Champagnie led the Red Storm with 27 points.
TOP PERFORMERS: Champagnie is averaging 18.5 points, 6.6 rebounds and 1.8 steals for the Red Storm. Wheeler is averaging 9.8 points over the last 10 games for Saint John’s (NY).
Andre Jackson is averaging seven points and 7.3 rebounds for the Huskies. Cole is averaging 10.2 points over the last 10 games for UConn. | null | null | null | null | null |
Stony Brook visits Maine after Kalnjscek's 21-point showing
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: Maine -7.5; over/under is 139.5
BOTTOM LINE: Maine hosts the Stony Brook Seawolves after Maks Kalnjscek scored 21 points in Maine’s 73-63 victory against the Albany (NY) Great Danes.
The Seawolves have gone 6-5 against America East opponents. Stony Brook ranks eighth in the America East with 11.0 assists per game led by Jahlil Jenkins averaging 2.9.
The teams meet for the second time in conference play this season. The Seawolves won 80-72 in the last matchup on Jan. 8. Tykei Greene led the Seawolves with 16 points, and Sam Ihekwoaba led the Black Bears with 22 points.
TOP PERFORMERS: Vukasin Masic is averaging 9.7 points and 3.2 assists for the Black Bears. Kalnjscek is averaging 13.7 points and 2.8 rebounds while shooting 48.7% over the last 10 games for Maine.
Jenkins is shooting 37.2% from beyond the arc with 1.8 made 3-pointers per game for the Seawolves, while averaging 13.5 points and two steals. Anthony Roberts is shooting 40.5% and averaging 15.2 points over the past 10 games for Stony Brook. | null | null | null | null | null |
UTEP hosts Marshall after Taylor's 22-point game
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: UTEP -6; over/under is 143.5
BOTTOM LINE: Marshall visits the UTEP Miners after Andrew Taylor scored 22 points in Marshall’s 72-71 loss to the Florida International Panthers.
The Miners have gone 9-4 in home games. UTEP has a 2-1 record in games decided by 3 points or fewer.
The Thundering Herd are 1-10 in C-USA play. Marshall is 2-4 in games decided by 3 points or fewer.
The Miners and Thundering Herd match up Sunday for the first time in conference play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Souley Boum is averaging 18.9 points and 1.6 steals for the Miners. Jamal Bieniemy is averaging 14.3 points over the past 10 games for UTEP.
Taylor is averaging 13.8 points, 5.4 rebounds, 4.4 assists and two steals for the Thundering Herd. Taevion Kinsey is averaging 14.8 points and 3.3 assists over the last 10 games for Marshall. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: Vermont will attempt to prolong its 14-game win streak with a victory against Hartford.
The Hawks have gone 2-3 at home. Hartford ranks third in the America East shooting 36.1% from deep, led by Jared Kimbrough shooting 57.1% from 3-point range.
The Catamounts are 12-0 against America East opponents. Vermont is 1-2 in games decided by 3 points or fewer.
The teams meet for the second time in conference play this season. The Catamounts won 82-72 in the last matchup on Jan. 23. Ben Shungu led the Catamounts with 24 points, and Austin Williams led the Hawks with 24 points.
TOP PERFORMERS: Williams is shooting 51.0% and averaging 15.9 points for the Hawks. Moses Flowers is averaging 14.5 points over the last 10 games for Hartford.
Isaiah Powell is averaging 9.9 points and 6.3 rebounds for the Catamounts. Shungu is averaging 17.3 points over the last 10 games for Vermont. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: Charlotte takes on the Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders after Jahmir Young scored 28 points in Charlotte’s 82-77 loss to the Louisiana Tech Bulldogs.
The Blue Raiders are 11-0 in home games. Middle Tennessee scores 74.6 points and has outscored opponents by 7.4 points per game.
The 49ers are 6-5 in conference matchups. Charlotte has a 6-8 record in games decided by 10 or more points.
TOP PERFORMERS: Josh Jefferson is averaging 14 points for the Blue Raiders. Donovan Sims is averaging 9.1 points over the last 10 games for Middle Tennessee.
Young is scoring 19.3 points per game with 5.5 rebounds and 3.7 assists for the 49ers. Austin Butler is averaging 9.8 points and 4.4 rebounds while shooting 59.8% over the past 10 games for Charlotte. | null | null | null | null | null |
The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed a lower court’s dismissal from 2020 of the Whiteru family’s case on the grounds of error. The earlier decision by then-U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson — later elevated to the appeals court and now on President Biden’s shortlist for a U.S. Supreme Court vacancy — relied on the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s argument that Whiteru was intoxicated and contributed to his own death, clearing it of any liability.
“This was error,” the appeals panel ruled in a 12-page decision written by Judge Robert L. Wilkins and joined by Judges Karen LeCraft Henderson and David S. Tatel.
Video footage showed the lawyer falling over a low concrete parapet at the back of the platform at the Judiciary Square station about 1:15 a.m. on Oct. 19, 2013, landing in a trench-like pit eight feet below. He suffered severe injuries and fractured at least one vertebra, but he was still alive after his fall. The parties agreed he would have survived the accident had he been discovered by 1:30 a.m. by station personnel making one of several scheduled inspections that night. Instead, his body was discovered by a commuter four days later.
According to both sides and surveillance video cited by the court, Whiteru was heavily intoxicated when he exited a train and a station turnstile about 12:45 a.m. About 22 minutes later, at 1:07 a.m., Whiteru returned to speak with an on-duty station manager at the information kiosk at the mezzanine level, and she helped him reenter the paid area of the station, the opinion said.
Video footage showed Whiteru walking down the stationary escalator steps, stumbling on the last few stairs, falling and lying on his back for about 3½ minutes before rising, according to the opinion. He pulled himself up to lean on a nearby parapet wall, but he lost his balance after possibly trying to sit on the wall. He fell headfirst over it and into the gap between it and the station wall, video cited by the court showed. | null | null | null | null | null |
French police fired tear gas at demonstrators on Feb. 12 after a "Freedom Convoy" protesting coronavirus restrictions made it into the capital. (Reuters)
PARIS — French protesters opposed to pandemic restrictions temporarily blocked parts of the Champs-Elysees on Saturday, disrupting traffic on the capital’s most recognizable street and marking the first major European emulation of Canada’s anti-government and anti-vaccine mandate movement.
Before protesters breached defenses around the Champs-Elysees, authorities said earlier on Saturday that they had prevented 500 vehicles from entering the capital, and penalized hundreds of people.
Macron’s opponents have drawn similarities between the “Freedom Convoys” and France’s Yellow Vest movement in 2018 and 2019, which was initially prompted by an increase in fuel taxes but quickly swelled in size and drew early public support because it captured broader concerns over social inequality and the alienation of some voters. The Champs-Elysees became one of the movement’s central destinations.
Emily Rauhala in Brussels contributed to this report. | null | null | null | null | null |
Super Bowl LVI represents the clash of two realities for people of color in L.A.
The Rams and the NFL have courted fans of color — but they’ve also harmed marginalized communities.
Johnny, a man experiencing homelessness, collects cans and plastic bottles that he stocks in the cart he is pulling with his bike on a street near SoFi Stadium on Feb. 10 in Inglewood, Calif. (Etienne Laurent/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
By Priscilla Leiva
Priscilla Leiva is a professor of Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies at Loyola Marymount University. She is working on two projects: a book about the history of stadiums, race and civic identity in Los Angeles, and a community-curated archive preserving the memories of Mexican and Mexican American communities now buried under Dodger Stadium.
Super Bowl LVI is bound to be historic for Los Angeles. The hometown Rams are hoping to become just the second team in NFL history to win the Lombardi Trophy in their home stadium. Hip-hop icons Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem and Kendrick Lamar, along with R&B legend Mary J. Blige, are practicing for what promises to be an extraordinary halftime show that’s rooted in the 1980s and ’90s Los Angeles rap scene.
Outside the stadium, however, local residents are experiencing the negative impact of these preparations. In a collaboration between the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) and the city of Inglewood, unhoused residents living in an encampment on the path from the Los Angeles International Airport to the stadium have been removed, without housing or services, in the name of safety. These sweeps, primarily affecting people of color, are part of a larger campaign to criminalize the unhoused, an effort crystallized when L.A. city council passed Municipal Code 41.18. The law, which went into effect last fall, makes it illegal to “sit, lie or sleep in or upon any street, sidewalk or other public way.” Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security sent more than 500 personnel, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, to join the increased presence of law enforcement.
Right now, two realities are colliding in Inglewood — a much anticipated national event thrusting L.A. and its diverse local talent into the spotlight it loves, and a humanitarian crisis disproportionately affecting local people of color. This tension is a significant one, but it is not new. The longer history of professional football in Los Angeles tells us that even as the NFL and its teams have courted Black and Latino fanbases, the very communities from which those fans come bear the brunt of the cost of having professional football in their city.
In 1980, Los Angeles had lost the Los Angeles Rams to the city of Anaheim in Orange County. Then-owner Carroll Rosenbloom justified the move away from L.A. Memorial Coliseum by blaming the people of the surrounding South-Central neighborhoods, who were at the time predominantly working-class, African American, Mexican and Central American. While downplaying the enormous financial incentive and new publicly-funded stadium awaiting the team in Orange County, Rosenbloom argued that fans were too fearful to attend games at the Coliseum, dismissing the possibility that some South-Central residents were themselves fans attending games and that local neighborhoods had for years born the brunt of the costs, like traffic and increased policing, associated with home games.
The loss of the Rams opened the door for the contested arrival of the Raiders from Oakland. The Raiders came with a famously sinister reputation. Owner Al Davis crafted a team image meant to incite fear by recruiting players with reputations as troublemakers and encouraging them to chase victory through an aggressive win-by-any-means approach. Mainstream L.A. sports journalists opposed the move and argued that for Los Angeles to adopt the team it would be important to “get Oakland out of the Raiders,” a reference as much to the San Francisco Bay area city closely associated with the Black Panther Party as to the Black and Latino people of East Oakland, fiercely loyal to the team. Residents of the White suburb of El Segundo, where the Raiders would practice, raised concerns about the “type” of fans and associates the team might bring with it.
Nonetheless, the Raiders arrived at the L.A. Coliseum in 1982. Journalists, relying on stadium attendance as a gauge for fan support, described a lukewarm reception for the team. In fact, as the new Los Angeles Raiders prepared to compete against Washington in the 1984 Super Bowl, sportswriters lamented that the team lacked a true fan base and would largely be playing for itself.
Imagine their surprise when, upon the Raiders’ win and the team’s homecoming, thousands attended the multi-day Super Bowl victory celebration and fan favorites, including running back Marcus Allen, a University of Southern California alumnus, and Mexican American head coach Tom Flores, exclaimed their love for their Los Angeles home and their L.A. fans. Flores proclaimed the event was proof of a Raiders takeover of the city, and Allen surprised attendees with his own version of Randy Newman’s hit song “I Love L.A.”
The predominantly Black and Latino crowd outside City Hall cheered on their team, a team that rose to Super Bowl glory in their likeness — underdogs fighting for recognition and respect. L.A.’s first African American mayor, Tom Bradley, thanked the team for bringing the city its first world championship, but he also declared that the Raiders united the community as never before, and, to honor that, he awarded Flores a key to the city.
This moment celebrating African American and Mexican American excellence highlighted a Los Angeles rarely represented by the glitz and glam of Hollywood. The Los Angeles that the Raiders and their fans represented was one that, like East Oakland, had been shaped by housing segregation, economic marginalization and a declining manufacturing economy, but also refused to give up and would fight for a better future with a just-win attitude.
Unlike the Rams, the Raiders franchise actively courted this often-ignored fanbase. Mexican American marketing specialist Gil Lafferty-Hernandez became a local celebrity handing out team souvenirs at community events and working-class neighborhoods. At the request of L.A.-based rap group N.W.A. (of which Dr. Dre was a member), Raiders marketing director Michael Orenstein gifted black-and-silver team pennants, caps and jackets to rappers, producers and DJs. And fans in turn helped advance the Raiders brand, sometimes in radical ways. As former N.W.A. member Ice Cube chronicled in his documentary “Straight Outta L.A.,” Los Angeles gangster rappers and their own fans helped transform Raiders merchandise into symbols of resistance against police brutality and structural racism.
The Raiders franchise profited immensely from this African American-led effort. But it wasn’t enough to keep the team in Los Angeles. Following the 1992 L.A. Uprising — which was, like the rebellion in 1965, against rampant police violence and injustice — Davis took a page from the Rams’ playbook. Just as Rosenbloom had in the 1960s, Davis initiated his own flight from an inner-city community hard hit by economic hardship, racism and law enforcement abuses. Raiders leaders disparaged South Central as dangerous and crime ridden, while big financial incentives — including $85 million in stadium renovations financed by local bonds diverted from public services — awaited them back in Oakland.
After the Raiders left (and the Rams moved to St. Louis), Los Angeles was without a professional football team for over 20 years — that is, until the Rams returned in 2016. This time, they settled in Inglewood, one of L.A.’s last Black enclaves where it seemed the Rams understood the critical importance of acknowledging fans of color. Toward this end, the Rams have (and still do) regularly feature their in-house mariachi band and have sought collaborations with hip-hop artists rooted in the region. The team has also adopted fan-created chants, most famously, the call and response “Whose House? Rams’ House!” inspired by Run-DMC’s “Run’s House.”
Yet, the Rams’ arrival to Inglewood and the construction of a nearly 300-acre multiuse development project that includes SoFi Stadium, the most expensive American football stadium to date and the site for Super Bowl LVI, has drawn new development projects, raised the cost of land, exacerbated housing costs and, therefore, spurred gentrification and displacement. The construction of SoFi Stadium, in this way, represents a very real threat to the future of communities of color in the Los Angeles area.
The Super Bowl halftime show this year will feature some of the most critical narrators of the Black struggle in Los Angeles and the Rams could make history with a win. The team, like the Raiders, have courted fans of color, who will be among those filling SoFi stadium and cheering them on. But representation is not enough and local fans deserve a livable city. Spotlighting the diverse culture of L.A. is no replacement for a true investment in the neighborhoods the Rams franchise impacts. Because as housing rights organizers relentlessly show us, SoFi Stadium may be the “Rams’ House,” but Inglewood, and greater Los Angeles, belongs to the people. | null | null | null | null | null |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.