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“I’m certainly questioning a lot,” Mikaela Shiffrin said. “I’m really disappointed, and I’m really frustrated.” (Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images)
Thursday, she made it 10 gates before a wobble, and by the 12th she was on her right hip — out after 10 seconds of a run that should have gone more than 50. By that point, it was some combination of completely astonishing and somehow expected.
But three DNFs in races she is accustomed to dominating … well, if you could have found a Vegas bookie to take those odds, good luck.
Not just the day. The entire two-week stay. Shiffrin was open about her ambivalence toward the Olympics as recently as last fall. She likened the pressure at the Games to a monster that couldn’t be kept at bay. From the outside, it would seem to have consumed her whole time here.
“I think you want … to be able to say it’s a pressure thing,” Shiffrin said. “There are certainly points during the Games where I felt the weight of pressure and expectation. But in general, when I was racing, it wasn’t the case. That wasn’t something outrageous. And it certainly wasn’t more than I ever experienced in my career before. …
“Any time I’ve ever been so sure about something like that, in my entire career, welp …” she said of how she began Thursday’s run, pausing, “it’s gone pretty well. The track record is …” | null | null | null | null | null |
A hospital slated to rise east of the Anacostia River will take its name from the nearby estate of abolitionist Frederick Douglass: Cedar Hill Regional Medical Center.
Wayne Turnage, D.C. deputy mayor for health and human services, called the start of construction of Cedar Hill Regional Medical Center “a seminal watershed moment in health care for the residents of Wards 7 and 8.” | null | null | null | null | null |
The all-too-easy buy-now-pay-later options appearing everywhere you spend your money online are likely to get a boost from rising interest rates this year. Zero-percent interest on smaller payments will look even more tempting for shoppers already wary of the 16% average interest rate assessed on credit-card balances.
But buyers better beware. Buy now and pay later can wind up being a worse deal for consumers. Unlike credit cards, where the terms are expressed in a standardized way among issuers, these new payment plans are all over the map and require more vigilance to be sure you know what you’re getting into. Let your guard slip and you might find yourself paying even more than that credit card would have charged you.
For anyone still unfamiliar: This is about the ubiquitous button that pops up when you’re shopping online and ready to check out, asking if you want to pay the full amount or, instead, divvy it up into four or six installments over a set period of time.
Retailers partner with different payment platforms — Klarna Bank AB, Affirm Holdings Inc. and Afterpay Ltd. are among the biggest — and the platforms provide a short-term loan before you make payments at regular intervals. The platforms make most of their money by charging fees to retailers, which are willing to pay because they know shoppers will buy more stuff if they don’t have to pay for it all up front. Global sales for these platforms are about $100 billion, and Bloomberg Intelligence estimates volumes could jump 40% a year through 2023.
But here’s one of the problems: There are more than two dozen providers and they all work differently. Some just allow consumers to make interest-free payments over a short period of time, while others offer longer-term financing that charges interest (much like a credit card).
Many offer both options, which is where it can get confusing. Shoppers may start out using one of these payment apps for 0% interest loans, but then they get offered a loan with interest and bite. In that case, the rates they get charged could be the same if not higher than they’d face with a credit card.
For those buy-now-pay-later providers that do charge interest, the terms may vary depending on the retailer and a consumer’s credit profile. For example, Affirm charges interest rates that range from 0% to 30% for purchases from Amazon, arts and crafts store Michael’s, and Peloton.
Unlike credit cards, there aren’t strict regulations mandating standardized disclosures of terms and conditions. Following legislation in 2009, every credit-card issuer was required to provide clearer explanations up front of its rates and fees. There’s no such requirement for buy-now-pay-later networks. A consumer has to go to each provider’s website to figure out the penalties for missing a payment and what the interest rate could potentially be.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau started an inquiry late last year into the burgeoning industry, asking five of the biggest players to provide data so the consumer watchdog can have a better handle on its risks.
In the meantime, for a careful consumer, there are times when buy now, pay later may be more attractive than a credit card. For example, if it’s being used for a necessary item that the user wouldn’t be able to afford without breaking it up into smaller payments.Unfortunately, that’s not how it’s usually used. Consumers are often lured into impulse buying when allowed to pay later, and they shop across multiple platforms, which can lead to confusion about the terms they’re agreeing to.
More than half of Gen Z and millennial respondents in a survey last year by Credit Karma said they’ve missed at least one payment on such plans. A separate report from LendingTree earlier this month found that just 46% of respondents were very confident and 34% were somewhat confident they would be able to pay off their buy-now-pay-later loans in full without missing a payment.
The payment networks aren’t required, as credit-card issuers are, to assess a borrower’s ability to repay. So they won’t necessarily know how many other short-term loans or other credit have been extended to the shopper.
Finally, given the lack of oversight, buy-now-pay-later consumers aren’t as protected when something goes wrong with a purchase as they are when paying with credit cards. If a product doesn’t meet expectations, credit-card users usually have an easier time disputing a payment. Returns can also be complicated when using buy now, pay later, especially if payments are still being made.
While it sounds enticing to get something interest-free now and foot the bill later — especially as interest rates head higher — this is a growing area where consumers have fewer safeguards. Until regulators provide more guardrails, proceed with caution.
• Americans Indulge in a Little Retail Therapy: Robert Burgess | null | null | null | null | null |
Jones, a former professional snowboarder, became engaged in climate action after a 2005 trip to Prince Rupert, Canada, where locals showed him a small ski area that had been forced to stop operating. He started switching to more efficient light bulbs and saving water but soon realized that the sweeping changes necessary to reach climate goals had to come from politicians.
“It’s all working very well,” Wiesnegger says. “You can really tell that there’s support, including from the community.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: Maryland judges must be trained on child custody and abuse
By Annie Kenny
Annie Kenny is a child safety advocate who serves on her local Family Violence Coordinating Council, as a panelist on the “Allen v Farrow” panel series, and is a member of the National Safe Parents Coalition. She has collaborated with Maryland state officials and policymakers regarding legislation reform and has provided written testimony to the U.S. Senate.
There’s this place around the corner from you, seemingly insignificant, but it hosts a house of horrors. It’s a place where the same therapists, medical providers and teachers who are legally required to report suspected child abuse are not allowed to save a child before more abuse occurs. Where truth is obsolete, and right and wrong don’t matter.
It’s called family court. And I’ve been trapped there for four years now.
Before I ever stepped foot into a family courtroom, my now ex-husband had already been convicted of sexually abusing a minor. He already was a Tier III registered sex offender for life. It was determined that for the safety of society as a whole, his photo, address and vehicle description needed to be posted publicly for all to see for the rest of his life. None of that outweighed his “parental rights.” He was granted access to my children, under the presumption that although he had admittedly sexually abused one child, he was not necessarily a danger to all children. It was easier to get him convicted of his crime than it was to keep him away from my children afterward. His conviction happened quietly. Behind closed doors. Just a few months after he was indicted on felony child sex abuse charges. But the family court battle? Years. Thousands of documents. Hours upon hours of testimony. Tens of thousands of dollars. Our lives picked apart. Privacy destroyed. Even though the Maryland State Police had identified me as being in such clear and present danger that they granted me a completely unrestricted concealed-carry gun permit. All the while, I’m court-ordered to meet the convicted abuser every Friday night for dinner so he can see “his” children.
It’s almost impossible to identify which players are the good guys and which are the bad guys. The same judge who smiles at me sympathetically is the same person who also keeps arguing that “these kids deserve to have a relationship with their father.” The lawyers taking every penny I’ve ever had and then some encourage me to negotiate with the abuser. I’m given a list of what to wear to court because the size of my earrings could speak louder than my ex-husband’s crimes. I’m told that I’m too traumatized to make appropriate decisions for my own children. That it can’t be up to me to decide what access to their father is appropriate.
People ask me how we are, and I say words such as “fine” and “okay.” Because at best, you simply won’t believe what I have to tell you, and, at worst, I’ll be punished in court for speaking the truth.
There’s no guide to follow, no map on how to escape these dark woods. I sink deeper and deeper each day into the quicksand, my body and mind aching more and more under the weight of each step, without even knowing if I’m walking toward anything. Do my daughters and I make it out of this?
My story isn’t extraordinary, as much as you’d like to think it is. I’m not some mythical creature that exists thousands of miles away. I am your neighbor. Your sister. Your co-worker. I’m the mom handing out the orange slices at the soccer game. I’m your daughter’s Girl Scout leader, the person volunteering next to you at church. I am everyone and no one at the same time. There are tens of thousands of stories like mine out there, but no one wants to look at them.
I hope things can change. There are advocacy groups such as Child Justice in Silver Spring taking on some of these cases and fighting for legislative change. There are multiple family court reform bills being considered this year in Maryland. In fact, S.B. 17/H.B. 561 on ″Child Custody — Cases Involving Child Abuse or Domestic Violence — Training for Judges” has just been introduced. I testified in the Senate this month and will at the House hearing Thursday.
Judicial training sounds like an easy ask: relevant training advised by folks in the fields of child abuse and domestic violence and updated every two years. It is not unreasonable that judges given the power to determine what happens to children and protective parents in cases involving violence be educated on what trauma looks like, the process involved in reporting sexual abuse, and the dynamics of domestic violence and child abuse. How can they be given the enormous task of protecting children in custody cases without training on the subject matter? There’s too much at stake here. No one hires a nanny without experience with children or takes a child to a doctor without medical training.
I’m semi-free from my ex-husband right now, but not because family court saved me. He was caught molesting more children and is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty. It’s hard for him to demand access to me and my children from prison. But I don’t know how long this breathing room will last. And I am angry that it has taken the physical and psychological harm of other innocent children to get us here. Beautiful little souls destroyed, their lives altered. And I think about the thousands of parents ordered to hand their children over to proven abusers again and again and being ordered to co-parent with individuals who later harm or even kill their own children. Even though my ex-husband is still legally my children’s father and has parental rights and his name is still on my babies’ birth certificates, I keep reminding myself that I am one of the lucky ones.
Maryland can protect firefighters and other first-responders with a bill that bans some chemicals | null | null | null | null | null |
The greatest conservative satirist in American history passed away this week. He will be missed,
Writer P.J. O'Rourke participates in the Booming Tech Forum at the Westin Boston Waterfront on May 8, 2014. (Gretchen Ertl for The Washington Post)
In some small way, the Spoiler Alerts columns you read are the fault of conservative humorist P.J. O’Rourke, who passed away Tuesday at the age of 74. And now that he’s dead, my plan is to blame him and only him for any future scandals this column produces.
Please forgive that joke, but rest assured that O’Rourke would not have been offended. As he posited in the introduction to his 1987 essay collection, “Republican Party Reptile,” the difference between liberals and conservatives is that conservatives will say you shouldn’t make fun of something, whereas liberals will say that you can’t make fun of something — “laughter is involuntary and points are not.” He proved that last point many times over in that collection, particularly in “Ferrari Refutes the Decline of the West” and “Ship of Fools.”
It was the irreverence that first attracted me to O’Rourke’s writings as an undergraduate. I devoured his next essay collection, “Holidays in Hell,” while studying abroad. That collection primarily consisted of the pieces he wrote as Rolling Stone’s foreign affairs correspondent, including a priceless description of his efforts to get into Libya during the 1986 crisis in the Gulf of Sidra that morphed into a cantankerous, wildly amusing essay about anti-Americanism in Europe.
His introduction to “Holidays in Hell” also stuck with me, particularly his motivation for writing about the world’s trouble sports: “I was curious about the trouble man causes himself at the drop of a hat, or, anyway, a gun. I wanted to know why life, which ought to be only a moderately miserable thing, is such a frightful, disgusting horrid thing for so many people in so many places.”
Most O’Rourke devotees read that line and aspired to grow up and become a journalist. That observation struck me as a really good motivation to study the social sciences more seriously, because that’s the best way to answer those kinds of questions. Still, whenever I have written a satirical piece of work, O’Rourke was one of my inspirations.
O’Rourke was often compared to H.L. Mencken, but that seems somewhat off. O’Rourke was never bitter in his prose and definitely not in person. I only met him once and remember being extremely tongue-tied and him being very gracious about it. That jibes with what the Bulwark’s Jonathan Last said about him Tuesday: “For many years he was as close to being a household name as magazine writers get. And yet he was never a big shot. No matter who you were, he’d talk to you.”
I get a lot of "I'd rather not" emails. P. J. O'Rourke sent the best ones pic.twitter.com/5qJD3nbdCI
— Martin Hemming (@Martin_Hemming) February 16, 2022
Last further observed that “the better a writer is, the easier he is to edit … P.J. was a joy to edit. Collegial, professional. The kind of writer who makes you a better writer once you get to look under the hood at his process. The kind of writer with whom it is a privilege to work.”
Dwight Garner correctly noted that O’Rourke “was that rare conservative who appeared to be having a better time, and doing better drugs, than everyone else. He was well-read; he was, it often seemed, the only funny Republican alive.” Part of that might have been due to the fact that he was willing to take shots at everyone. In O’Rourke’s best-known book, “Parliament of Whores,” he wrote that “the Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work and then they get elected and prove it.”
Great writers produce enduring lines. O’Rourke was a great writer. | null | null | null | null | null |
Russia wants to recognize the independence of two eastern Ukraine republics. What do people there think?
Those who live in the Donbas region care more about bread-and-butter issues, our latest surveys reveal
A child copies Ukrainian service members standing at attention during the national anthem in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine on Feb. 16, 2022. (Vadim Ghirda/AP)
By John O’Loughlin
Gwendolyn Sasse
At the heart of the current Russia-Ukraine crisis is the long-standing conflict in the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, divided since 2014 into separate territories controlled by the Ukrainian government and by Russian-backed separatists. On Tuesday, the Russian Duma passed a measure appealing to President Vladimir Putin to recognize separatist regimes there as independent states. Putin also declared that “genocide” was happening in the Donbas.
We have researched public opinion on both sides of the Donbas divide for the past six years. Our largest research survey there, which concluded just two weeks ago, reveals a dimension of the crisis that many may overlook: economic despair. Ordinary people on both sides of the conflict line hold similar attitudes about their well-being and current conditions, despite their wartime experience or geopolitical orientation.
Ukraine’s economy has not flourished
It is now 30 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, but Ukraine’s gross national income per capita has stagnated at roughly 80 percent of the level in 1990. Neighbors such as Poland, relatively poorer at independence than Ukraine, are now more economically prosperous, with per capita incomes that greatly exceed those of ordinary Ukrainians. Living standards in the Donbas, once an industrial powerhouse, have plunged because of the ongoing war.
We’ve tracked public opinion in the Donbas since 2016
The Donbas region today comprises Kyiv-controlled parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts (government-controlled areas), and the separatist Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” (DNR/LNR). Both parts have experienced war and forced population movements within and beyond the region, and the war has cost more than 14,000 lives. The Donbas front line remains an anxious divide as Russian military forces mass at various points on Ukraine’s eastern, southern and northern borders.
Our prior surveys on both sides of the contact line in 2016, 2019 and 2020 reveal divergent responses to questions about the preferred final status for the separatist republics. Conflict zones are difficult environments for public opinion research. Sample design, mode of surveying (telephone, online or face-to-face) and question framing all require considerable care.
This year, we used three reputable companies — one from Ukraine, one from Russia and one based in the U.K. — to conduct a computer-assisted telephone survey of 4,025 people Jan. 14-17. Simultaneous double surveys on each side of the contact line provide an additional check on potential biases introduced by different survey companies. The Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) and U.K.-based agency R-Research each surveyed in the government-controlled areas while KIIS and Levada Market Research in Moscow surveyed in the non-government-controlled area (the Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics).
All three companies used the same questionnaire and methodology and conducted the same number of interviews in each location, allowing us to compare the responses between the two parts of the Donbas. The survey included questions about war experiences, forced relocation, blame for the conflict, plans in case of a Russian invasion and trust in political leadership. Our respondents expressed many different views on geopolitical questions — but particularly striking were the answers to a question asking them to prioritize their economic well-being or the identity of the government in charge.
What do ordinary citizens want?
Reporters often remark that ordinary Ukrainians appear indifferent to the passions of geopolitics. In 2014, British journalist Tim Judah interviewed a 27-year-old woman in Sloviansk, in Donetsk oblast, who reported, “It does not matter if I live in Russia or Ukraine. All I want is a good salary.”
We’ve adapted this sentiment in our research surveys in Ukraine and in other parts of the former Soviet Union — as a way to gauge whether ordinary economic well-being, not the identity of the government in charge, is a primary concern. We modified the statement slightly, adding pensions along with a salary to make the survey question relevant for older respondents.
In our January Donbas surveys, half of the respondents, regardless of whether they lived in either government- or non-government-controlled areas of the Donbas, agreed that it does not matter where they live, whether in Russia or Ukraine (51.8 percent agree in the government-controlled area and 52.6 percent agree in the separatist republics).
Those who disagreed with the prompt, apparently putting politics over economic well-being, totaled 37.9 percent (16.1 percent disagree and 21.8 percent strongly disagree). Fewer than 1 percent of respondents refused to answer the question and 8 percent said they could not give an answer to this tough choice. As seen in the figure, these patterns are consistent on both sides of the contact line and also evident in the results collected by each of the various survey companies. These answers are similar to our survey in the same Donbas regions in late 2020.
Responses were given to computer-assisted telephone interviews of 4,025 respondents conducted on both sides of the line of control by the KIIS, R-Research and Levada Market Research in January, using a questionnaire designed by the authors.
How is it that citizens appear little invested in the territorial outcome of the ongoing Donbas conflict? The survey responses point to a socioeconomic answer: 11.5 percent of the overall sample reported they did not have enough money for food, and 30.2 percent indicated they could afford food but no other expenditures. Over half (54 percent) of the residents of the Donbas as a whole report that their families have been directly affected by the war, either suffering casualties or being forced to move.
While poorer residents (54 percent) and younger people (59 percent) are more likely to agree that they don’t care what country they live in as long as they have a decent salary, those most affected by the war are less likely to agree with the statement (46 percent) — suggesting they prioritize which government is in control over their family’s well-being.
It’s understandable that the current crisis diplomacy and media coverage are preoccupied with the risk of a large-scale war, resurrected talks and de-escalation options, and narratives of geopolitical spheres of influence.
This crisis, however, has a long backstory. Ukraine’s uneven economic development since its independence, especially in devastated industrial regions like the Donbas, is a crucial part of that story. Geopolitics and territorial belonging certainly matter, but economic stagnation has a powerful effect on the lives of ordinary people in conflict zones. What flag flies overhead matters less than material stability in their lives, our research suggests.
John O’Loughlin, professor of distinction at the University of Colorado at Boulder, is a political geographer with research interests in the human outcomes of climate change in sub-Saharan Africa and in the geopolitical orientations of people in post-Soviet states.
Gwendolyn Sasse, director of the Center for East European and International Studies (ZOiS), professor in the department of social sciences at Humboldt University of Berlin and senior research fellow at the University of Oxford’s Nuffield College, researches the dynamics of war, identities, protest and migration. She is currently engaged in a series of survey projects in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus.
Gerard Toal, professor in the School of Public and International Affairs at Virginia Tech’s campus in Arlington, Va., is the author of “Near Abroad: Putin, the West and the Contest for Ukraine and the Caucasus” (Oxford University Press, 2019). | null | null | null | null | null |
USOPC chief Sarah Hirshland remains frustrated over Kamila Valieva situation
“We’ve got to live up to our duty and responsibility,” USOPC chief Sarah Hirshland said of Olympic officials' obligation to preserve competitive integrity. (Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty Images)
BEIJING — Sarah Hirshland, the CEO of the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee, continued to express exasperation Thursday over the way Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva’s positive doping test has been handled.
“This is just absolutely a frustrating and difficult situation, and it is unfair to these athletes,” she said on a conference call not long before the final evening of the women’s skating competition began. “It’s unfair not only to the athletes on our team who won the silver medal, but it’s unfair to all of the athletes who show up here and expect the integrity of the competition to be intact. And they deserve that from us, and we didn’t give it to them and that’s not right.”
Hirshland has been one of the more outspoken officials from any country over the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s decision this week to let Valieva skate in the women’s individual competition despite a positive test for a banned heart medication saying at the time she was concerned “about the message (the ruling sends).
“We have a real obligation to conduct a competition and all that leads into it with complete integrity and ethics,” she said, referring to all the countries and organizations at the Olympics. “And if we fail to do that, we will lose what this is all about; we are compromising the values of this movement; and it will suffer, absolutely. We’ve got to live up to our duty and responsibility in that regard when the integrity of the competition comes into question. In a way we’ve seen here, you run the risk of compromising the integrity of the entire system. We’ve got to fix it.”
She also has been annoyed by the International Olympic Committee’s decision to not give out medals for events that featured Valieva, including last week’s team event, won by the team representing the Russian Olympic Committee and the individual competition where even the post-competition “flower ceremony” was called off in advance.
Hirshland offered more details about the meeting the American skaters from the team event had Wednesday night with IOC President Thomas Bach, confirming what an IOC spokesman had said earlier Thursday. Bach had requested the meeting to explain why the U.S. skaters were not getting their silver medals. The IOC has said repeatedly that it wants to wait for a full investigation of Valieva’s test, including an analysis of her B-sample before giving out medals.
“I was incredibly proud of our athletes,” she said of the skaters who met with Bach. “I thought they were candid, and I thought they were productive and constructive in their conversation. It made me proud to be on the same team as that group of individuals yesterday.”
She also said the USOPC has been working with U.S. Figure Skating officials to set up an event where the Team Event’s skaters get their medals.
“We’re thinking about it, and we’re going to have a heck of a party,” she said | null | null | null | null | null |
After three silvers in Beijing, Japan’s Miho Takagi strikes gold in the 1,000 meters
Miho Takagi of Japan won her first individual Olympic gold medal Thursday, following three second-place finishes in Beijing. (Jerome Favre / EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
BEIJING — Jutta Leerdam knew she hadn’t done enough when she crossed the finish line late in the women’s 1,000-meter speedskating event. Where others might pump a fist or flash a smile when they capture the lead in an Olympic final, Leerdam stripped her hood and dropped her head before shaking it in frustration. The 2020 world champion in the event had just missed an Olympic record, but she knew who was behind her.
Skating in the 11th of 15 pairs, Leerdam knew three-time world champion Brittany Bowe and Dutch legend Ireen Wüst had yet to go, but she was worried about another name: Miho Takagi.
Indeed, Leerdam’s worst fear materialized two pairs later, when Takagi captured Leerdam’s top spot and her would-be Olympic record Thursday, positioning herself as the most decorated speedskater of these Beijing Games with a gold medal.
“[My time] was not unbeatable, so I was a little bit sad about that,” Leerdam said. “I thought Miho was going to go faster and no one else, and that’s what happened.”
Takagi, who made her Olympic debut during the 2010 Vancouver Games at 15, has been one of the top speedskaters in the world this season. After she missed the cut for the Sochi Games during the 2013 Japanese Olympic Trials, the now 27-year-old won three medals in PyeongChang in 2018, including gold in women’s team pursuit.
Takagi held the 1,500-meter world record before Beijing, but after she arrived, she finished .44 second behind Wüst in the event. A week later, Takagi finished .08 second behind American gold medalist Erin Jackson in the 500-meter sprint, then settled for a third silver medal when her sister, Nana, lost her balance and fell as their women’s pursuit team rounded the final curve with a slim lead over eventual winner, Canada.
Miho wrapped her arms around her older sibling after the heartbreaking result.
“Many people told me, ‘Miho, maybe you will go back to Japan with four silver medals,’” Takagi said through an interpreter.
She said she wasn’t discouraged by the near-misses. She focused on maintaining her form and keeping her eyes trained on her first individual Olympic gold medal.
During the 13th of 15 pairs on Thursday, she surged past Angelina Golikova of the Russian Olympic Committee around the final bend before swinging her arms left to right like a pendulum. She leaned toward the line, crossed it in an Olympic record 1 minute 13.19 seconds, and pumped her right fist as Leerdam watched helplessly.
“I just went for it and at the end it was silver,” said Leerdam, whose first-lap stumble might have cost her the gold. “I can be happy with it. I just want to stay positive, and I’m positive with the silver.”
Takagi’s result bumped Leerdam’s, but the new front-runner had to wait out Bowe’s result.
Bowe captured headlines when she sacrificed her place in the 500-meter race to allow for Jackson’s earlier feat. Her 1,000-meter world record — 1 minute 11.61 seconds, set in Salt Lake City in 2019 — was two seconds faster than Takagi’s time Thursday.
But Bowe, the reigning world champion who entered her final race of these Games without an individual medal in three Olympics, took bronze, edging Golikova by .1 second. Fellow American Kimi Goetz finished seventh, a place below Wüst.
“Obviously, Miho put down a phenomenal performance, which was not unexpected. She has skated out of her mind this entire competition,” Bowe said. “I knew that was going to be a hard time to beat, but when that gun went off, I was going for gold. I left it all out there. Unfortunately, didn’t bring home the gold, but I can rest easy tonight knowing that I left everything out there on the ice.” | null | null | null | null | null |
President Donald Trump speaks at a “Save America” rally near the White House on Jan. 6, 2021. Photographer: Eric Lee/Bloomberg (Eric Lee/Bloomberg)
It’s been less than a week, but the inaccurate summary of a court filing by special counsel John Durham promulgated on the right has become canon. Here, for example, is Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) articulating it on Fox News Wednesday night (shortly before taking a moment to plug campaign merchandise glamorizing his encouragement of protesters on Jan. 6).
But, precisely because it lets people like Hawley make wild claims about Hillary Clinton and about how Trump was so oppressed by his opponents, the Hawley narrative is the default one on the right.
On Thursday evening, Trump released a statement through his secondary business, the deep-pocketed political action committee that’s been vacuuming up contributions for more than a year now. It took the false storyline above and pushed it forward precisely as you’d expect. It read, in part:
So, again, there was no “breaking into the White House” or his apartment at Trump Tower, despite his very boomerian effort to conflate what happened to him with the burglary that triggered Watergate. There was no demonstrated “spying into the Oval Office” and, as far as has been reported, no examination of legally collected data from the executive office after 2016. It’s probable that the data at issue — log files of domain requests gathered in order to track possible infiltration attempts — was still collected after Trump was president, since its collection related to normal cybersecurity activity. It’s possible that the data then continued to be shared with external research organizations. But it’s not clear that it was or that it was used for any reason other than normal tracking of potential threats. It’s also not clear that the research conducted on the 2016 data was necessarily outside the scope of that same outcome.
And why not? Why not take an untrue assertion about the Durham filing and claim that it goes even further? What are Fox News and Josh Hawley going to do, interject to say that, no, we’re only pretending it continued until early in your administration? Trump gets away with this stuff anyway because it’s easier and less politically risky to agree with him than it is to disagree. (Hence the Houston Chronicle’s determination that only 13 of Texas’s 143 Republican House candidates were willing to say that President Biden was legitimately elected.) So who’s going to pop up on Sean Hannity’s show and say, actually, Trump has it wrong. Certainly not Sean Hannity. | null | null | null | null | null |
Saudi women are seen in line as they travel at the Dammam railway station in Dammam, Saudi Arabia, in 2019. (Hamad I Mohammed/Reuters)
An ad for a job has created a clamoring rush in Saudi Arabia, where more than 28,000 female applicants have signed up to jostle for just 30 spots to work as train drivers in the kingdom, which is trying to liberalize economic opportunities for women.
The advertisement is for a position as a train driver for Renfe, a Spanish transport company responsible for operating bullet trains between the two Saudi cities of Mecca and Medina — a route traveled by millions of Muslim pilgrims each year.
Women in the conservative kingdom were permitted to get behind the wheel of a car only in 2018, after much global scrutiny and internal social pressure.
Renfe said in a statement on Wednesday that this was the first time in the country’s history that Saudi women would have access to such a profession. It added that more than half of the applicants had passed the first phase of the hiring process, which assessed academic records and English language skills.
The hiring process opened in January, the company said, with candidates’ ages ranging between 22 and 30. Those lucky few who make it to the next round will need to undertake more tests, an interview and, if successful, one year of paid training beginning in March, Renfe said.
Women make up about 42 percent of the Saudi population but account for just 21 percent of the total labor force, according to World Bank data. They have long faced strict gender segregation rules and guardianship laws often requiring permission to travel and marry, with jobs largely confined to professions such as teaching and health care.
Female participation in the workforce has nearly doubled in the past five years to 33 percent, according to Reuters, but female unemployment remains far higher than male, despite the de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman working to diversify the oil-reliant economy and expand the nation’s workforce.
The Haramain High Speed Railway, which opened in 2018, has revolutionized how pilgrims, who flock to perform the umrah and hajj in Saudi Arabia, move around. The high-speed bullet trains, equipped with special sand blowers and air conditioning able to withstand scorching desert temperatures, reach a maximum speed of 300 kilometers per hour, or about 186 mph. At least 20 trains run each day, with more added during the month of Ramadan. | null | null | null | null | null |
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A tanker owned by a Los Angeles-based private equity firm likely took part in the illicit trade of Iranian crude oil at sea despite American sanctions targeting the Islamic Republic amid the collapse of its nuclear deal with world powers, an advocacy group alleges. The firm said Thursday it is cooperating with U.S. government investigators. | null | null | null | null | null |
‘If we don’t start taking action now, then when are we going to?’
Jones, a former professional snowboarder, became engaged in climate action after a 2005 trip to Prince Rupert, Canada, where locals showed him a small ski area that had been forced to stop operating. He started switching to more efficient lightbulbs and saving water but soon realized that the sweeping changes necessary to reach climate goals had to come from politicians.
“If we don’t start taking action now, then when are we going to?” Kim says.
Four years from now, the Winter Olympics will return to Cortina d’Ampezzo, in the Italian Alps, which already hosted the Games in 1956. Back then, winter temperatures remained low, skiing conditions were excellent and the Olympic flag was framed by snow-covered mountains.
Much will have changed in 2026, when Kim, the POW snowboarder, hopes to compete. Until then, Kim, now 15 years old, wants to help “convince people to go outside and just to see how magical it is,” she says. “Hopefully, they’ll — out of their own conscious — start trying to protect it.” | null | null | null | null | null |
A hospital slated to rise east of the Anacostia River will take its name from the nearby estate of abolitionist Frederick Douglass: Cedar Hill Regional Medical Center, GW Health.
Wayne Turnage, D.C. deputy mayor for health and human services, called the start of construction of Cedar Hill “a seminal watershed moment in health care for the residents of Wards 7 and 8.” | null | null | null | null | null |
The National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center, meanwhile, has hoisted a level 3 out of 5 “enhanced risk” for severe weather over Mississippi, Alabama and much of the Deep South, noting that “damaging winds and a few tornadoes are possible.”
A cold front, marking the leading edge of cool, dry continental air from the west-northwest, was draped from southeast Oklahoma to near Laredo, Tex. Ahead of it, a mild, moisture-rich air mass was overspreading parts of the Eastern Seaboard, Tennessee Valley, Mid-South and Gulf Coast.
In advance of the front, temperatures will climb into the lower 70s. That will provide some instability, or juice, for thunderstorms, but instability will not be robust. That will probably be compensated for by a fierce low-level jet stream, with a highway of strong winds just a few thousand feet above the ground.
A level 2 out of 5 “slight risk” for severe weather surrounds the bull’s eye, and blankets a broader area of the South and Mississippi Valley that includes almost all of Arkansas, northern Louisiana, Bowling Green and Lexington, Ky., and Birmingham.
Even behind the frontal passage, which will occur during the early morning hours Friday along the Interstate 95 corridor, gusty winds will continue as chilly air blows in from the northwest. That “cold air advection” will maintain a blustery day before the breeze finally abates Friday evening.
Kansas City, where thundersnow was reported Thursday morning, is under a winter storm warning. A general 4 to 8 inches of snow is likely by the time precipitation wraps up late Thursday.
Meanwhile, heavy rain will occur where temperatures are above freezing near and just east of a stalled warm front draped northwest of the Ohio River. A widespread inch to two inches of rainfall will be common in southern Missouri and Illinois and most of Ohio, as well as in western New York State on the shores of Lakes Erie and Ontario. | null | null | null | null | null |
Another concern, Woody Cooper said, is that using the term “high-functioning” might be incorrectly interpreted as a less serious form of depression.
Woody Cooper and Cowan also noted that “high-functioning depression” is often observed in communities of color, where barriers to getting treatment can be higher due to cost, availability and cultural stigma. “In the Black community, for example, we’re still trying to fight this stigma about ‘You are weak,’ ” Cowan said. “As if we’re weak if we reach out for help — and that’s not true.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Dettmer, author of the book ‘Immune,’ talks about the body’s defense system — and the consequences of our misunderstanding it
Philipp Dettmer (Marie Jacquemin; Random House)
The pandemic has turned us all into armchair immunologists, rhapsodizing about T cells and antibodies with the ardor once reserved for — well, anything else.
So, the timing was fortuitous for Philipp Dettmer to release his first book, “Immune,” in November, as covid-19 continued to lash the globe. Dettmer, 36, who lives in Munich, is the founder of the YouTube channel Kurzgesagt — German for “in a nutshell.” It’s one of the platform’s most popular science channels, with nearly 18 million subscribers who tune into colorful, animated videos on topics such as black holes, what dinosaurs really looked like and the origin of consciousness.
Amid a muddled quest for covid’s source, a crucial message
In “Immune,” a 300-plus-page book with striking illustrations, Dettmer turns his focus to the cells and chemicals that make up the immune system. Dettmer makes difficult ideas accessible by explaining them in lively ways: “Bacteria are among the oldest living things on this planet and have been partying for billions of years,” he writes. “They are the smallest things we can consider alive without getting a headache.”
Dettmer isn’t a medical doctor or an epidemiologist. In “Immune,” he describes himself as “a science communicator and immune system enthusiast.” He credits a team of experts with fact-checking the book and answering his questions. For the most part, he gets it right, says Daniel M. Davis, a professor of immunology at the University of Manchester in England and the author of three immune-system books. “Philipp is really gifted in getting to the crux of things and boiling it down to the essence, and then translating those details into wonderful, colorful metaphors,” Davis says. Dettmer’s style aims for mass appeal — and, indeed, his book sold 100,800 copies in the United States, as of the week ending Jan. 29, according to NPD BookScan.
During a video interview, Dettmer talked about his book’s journey to publication and what we still need to learn about immunity.
(This interview has been edited for length and clarity).
Q: How did the book come about?
A: At first I worked on it just for myself, then tried to see if anyone wanted to publish the book — but nobody was interested. Then, in 2020, I got probably the fastest book contract anyone has ever gotten. When the pandemic hit, I contacted an agent and about two weeks later, I had a contract.
Q: Do you have a favorite chapter in “Immune” or something you learned that you found to be the most fascinating?
A: I’m very proud that in the end, I managed to explain a process that’s usually even hard for university students to understand.
And I have a favorite story inside the book. It’s the story of the neutrophil, a type of white blood cell that’s like an immune-system soldier. You make around 100 billion of these cells every day. It’s basically called into action when you have an infection anywhere, and this soldier is very aggressive. In the book, I describe it as “a chimp on coke with a bad temper and a machine gun.” And [these] cells have one thing they can do that’s just insane: Like a little suicide bomber, they can explode themselves. And what they do is they take all of their DNA and unfold it, and spit out the DNA as a huge net that’s spiked with all these chemicals that are dangerous and deadly to bacteria and viruses. And they basically try to make physical barriers with themselves that kill enemies.
The amazing thing is that sometimes the neutrophils survive that process, and for a time, they can fight on. But they don’t have DNA anymore, so what even are they? Are they zombies?
Q: As a science communicator, how much does the misinformation circulating about covid-19 worry you?
A: It has all sorts of horrible consequences for the coherence of society. In the next 10 years, or the next 30, we’ll see them. Like with measles, you need a very high vaccination rate to get herd resistance and herd immunity, and if 10 percent of people now decide not to vaccinate against measles, we have a problem. That stuff worries me much more than covid — the long-term effects of skepticism.
Q: What do people tend to get wrong about the immune system?
A: For a lot of people, it feels like an energy field that you can charge or something, and that makes people very susceptible to all sorts of bad ideas. Once you understand that it’s not a thing, but a system — like a great orchestra that works together — you realize you can’t just pop an immune-boosting pill to fix things. During the pandemic, a popular orange juice in Germany had an “immune boost” added to it. What does that even mean? There’s also the idea of a “strong immune system” that I really don’t like. This idea works well in our self-improvement culture, but in reality, you don’t want an immune system that’s so strong that it smashes everything, including things your body needs. You want a calm immune system that always reacts with the correct level of force to defeat an unwanted intruder.
Q: I know you were recently sick, and I’m curious what that experience is like for you after writing a book about the immune system.
A: It gives me a big, calm feeling. It’s like in a horror movie, when the evil monster is very creepy if you don’t see it properly, if it stays in the dark. But once the monster is revealed, and pulled into the light, it gets less creepy. And that’s how I feel about being sick. When you’re not able to see clearly what’s happening, that’s unpleasant. But if you know that when you have joint pain and body aches, that’s your immune system working, it’s much more reassuring.
Angela Haupt is a freelance writer and health editor.
A Journey into the Mysterious System that Keeps You Alive | null | null | null | null | null |
NBC reporter Michele Tafoya wipes away tears before leaving the field after the Los Angeles Rams defeated the Cincinnati Bengals in Super Bowl 56 on Feb. 13, 2022 in Inglewood, Calif. (AP Photo/Tyler Kaufman)
Carlson devoted a segment to Tafoya on Wednesday night, now that Tafoya is retiring from sports reporting to join a Republican gubernatorial campaign. Tafoya plans to devote more time to criticizing critical race theory and airing other views about race, and Carlson is trying to turn her into a new right-wing hero.
Carlson, a clever demagogue, sees great potential in the idea that Tafoya is being persecuted for saying “skin color” shouldn’t “matter.” He airedcq a recent exchange between Tafoya and Whoopi Goldberg on “The View” that generated controversy:
Tafoya gestured at this, telling Carlson that we should appreciate “the progress we’ve made in this country," rather than “looking in the rear view mirror.”
There are two separate disputes here. One is over how much racial progress we’ve made. The other is over what we should do about it, what tools help us understand how racial injustice persists, and how we should rectify it.
But the point is, Tafoya and Carlson don’t want a good faith debate on these questions, either. By preemptively casting their position as the only race-neutral one, they seek to remove from the agenda debate on that very idea — that lingering racial disparities can and should be addressed through critical thinking and governmental remedies.
This trickery is everywhere. The phrase “All Lives Matter” advances the deeper premise that the African American experience doesn’t have a special claim on our attention; the truly race neutral position is that it doesn’t.
When Republicans extol Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream" speech while banning discussion of vaguely defined “divisive concepts,” they’re saying the only color-blind position is the one that minimizes the legacy of racial injustice and takes intellectual tools that might attack that injustice off the table. | null | null | null | null | null |
How to watch the Daytona 500
The Daytona 500 is scheduled for Sunday. (Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images)
The Daytona 500, the biggest race on the NASCAR calendar, is scheduled to be held Sunday at Daytona International Speedway.
Michael McDowell was the surprise winner last year, seemingly coming out of nowhere on the final lap to earn the first victory of his career.
Sunday’s race is scheduled to begin at 2:30 p.m. Eastern and will be broadcast on Fox. Streaming options include the Fox Sports app. | null | null | null | null | null |
Administration officials engage in ‘the war of the track changes’ as aides differ on corporate responsibility for high prices
That language was eventually taken out of the official’s remarks before they were delivered. Economists at the White House Council of Economic Advisers had raised objections to the idea that a spike in prices was due to corporate power, according to two people aware of the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to fears of professional reprisals.
“It’s been the war of the ‘track changes’ inside the administration over how much the White House can lean in on the extent to which competition and greed are driving inflation,” said one person briefed on the internal dynamics, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of professional reprisals.
White House allies split over inflation plan as Biden focuses on corporate greed
Prices rose 7.5 percent in January compared to one year earlier, the biggest spike in 40 years. White House officials early last year said these price increases would likely just be temporary. But they were wrong, and the increases have persisted amid labor shortages, supply chain issues and robust consumer demand. These higher prices have eaten into wage increases and become one of the most dominant economic issues facing voters, putting the White House on the defensive as its attempts to arrest inflation have come up short.
CEA Chair Cecilia Rouse and NEC Deputy Director Bharat Ramamurti said they were unaware of any incident in which an administration official’s testimony was altered to take out references to corporate consolidation’s role in inflation. Both Rouse and Ramamurti also said the president’s economic advisers have worked closely together on the administration’s broader competition agenda for months, downplaying any friction as part of the natural policymaking process.
“The policy debate within the economic team is totally normal. It’s malpractice for there not to be debate because that would suggest we are working in an echo chamber and the president is not getting the benefit of critical thinking of diverse opinions,” Rouse said.
Added Ramamurti: “We have discussions about what the evidence shows.”
The White House has faced substantial political head winds from the pressures caused by inflation, with the president’s economic approval rating declining amid the biggest price increases in roughly four decades.
As price hikes have hurt many Americans, large corporations are seeing their most profitable quarters in years, with corporate profits up by as much as 27 percent from 2019 to 2021, according to Dean Baker, a liberal economist. The share of corporate income going to profits rose from 24.1 percent to 26.7 percent from the fourth quarter of 2019 to the third quarter of last year.
To this point, Biden has mostly limited his remarks on corporate greed and inflation to specific sectors in which a few firms hold massive amounts of market power — stopping short of embracing either the rhetoric or the policy response called for by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). Biden said at the end of January: “This isn’t a new issue. It’s not been the reason we’ve have high inflation today. It’s not the only reason. But, over time, it has reduced competition; squeezed out small businesses and farmers, ranchers; and increased the price for consumers.”
Part of his hesitance reflects the trepidation among his economic team about whether inflation actually is tied to corporate consolidation. Officials at CEA believe that monopoly power is a major economic problem and support the White House’s broader antitrust agenda. But these economists do not believe consolidation explains the 7.5 percent surge in prices over the last year that has created the worst inflation in four decades.
The differences among the president’s advisers are also broadly described as collegial and a difference of degree, rather than the kind of internal warfare that characterized much of the Trump administration’s economic team. Some economists have praised the White House for resisting the political temptation to make a bigger deal out of monopoly’s role in inflation.
“I think they’ve tried to be honest about the economic situation, and I, for one, appreciate that,” Baker said. “They have to make a political call about whether that’s the right decision, but I think it’s best for them to be honest and I think they’ve done that.”
This week, two groups — the American Economic Liberties Project and the Groundwork Collaborative — sent a letter to Biden urging him to order CEA to “study market realities” and determine the connection between corporate profits and higher prices.
Antitrust advocates often say their arguments are more nuanced than their opponents suggest. They contend that while it is true that American industry has been consolidated gradually over the course of several decades, only now — in an environment where it has become easy for firms to blame broader trends — are they able to fully exploit it by passing costs onto consumers.
Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster, pointed to the recent result of a focus group in which some respondents expressed outrage at corporations over a massive increase in the cost of chicken fingers.
“People are really responding to the idea that corporations are price-gouging. You can’t tell people that’s not going on; they’re experiencing it,” Lake said. She added that “it’s testing off the charts.”
“There is now overwhelming evidence that large corporations with significant market power are exploiting the broader supply chain crisis to raise prices — even when no bottleneck or shortage seems to exist,” the letter stated.
Warren, who has pushed the White House to get tougher on the issue, said in a statement: “CEOs of giant companies are saying the quiet part out loud: Corporate executives are happy to help drive inflation and fatten their profit margins by price gouging Americans. More evidence that years of corporate consolidation in the U.S. economy is hurting families’ wallets and workers’ wages will strengthen the case for strong antitrust enforcement as a critical tool to fight inflation.”
But many economists, including those influential with the White House, think these arguments are strained. In particular, they say high corporate profits and high prices are both the function of the same underlying cause — elevated consumer demand. Higher demand leads companies to raise prices, causing inflation, which in turn leads to higher profits. Even many liberal economists — like Baker and Claudia Sahm of the Jain Family Institute — have dismissed the argument that consolidation accounts for a major part of inflation.
Former Democratic treasury secretary Larry Summers and Jason Furman, a top economist in the Obama administration, have also been openly critical of the attempts to blame corporations for inflation. | null | null | null | null | null |
The National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center, meanwhile, has hoisted a Level 3 out of 5 “enhanced risk” for severe weather over Mississippi, Alabama and western Tennessee, noting that “damaging winds and a few tornadoes are possible.” Nashville and Memphis are included in this elevated risk zone.
A cold front, marking the leading edge of cool, dry continental air from the west-northwest, was draped from southeast Oklahoma to near Laredo, Tex. Ahead of it, a mild, moisture-rich air mass was spreading over parts of the Eastern Seaboard, Tennessee Valley, Mid-South and Gulf Coast.
In advance of the front, temperatures will climb into the lower 70s. That will provide some instability, or juice, for thunderstorms, but instability will not be robust. That will probably be compensated for by a fierce low-level jet stream, with a highway of strong winds just a few thousand feet above the ground that will draw northward vast amounts of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico.
A Level 2 out of 5 “slight risk” for severe weather surrounds the bull’s eye, and blankets a broader area of the South and Mississippi Valley that includes almost all of Arkansas, northern Louisiana, Bowling Green and Lexington, Ky., and Birmingham, Ala.
Even behind the frontal passage, which will occur during the early-morning hours Friday along the Interstate 95 corridor, gusty winds will continue as chilly air blows in from the northwest. That “cold air advection” will maintain a blustery day before the breeze finally abates Friday evening.
Kansas City, Mo., where thundersnow was reported Thursday morning, is under a winter storm warning. A general 4 to 8 inches of snow is likely by the time precipitation wraps up late Thursday.
Meanwhile, heavy rain will occur where temperatures are above freezing near and just east of a stalled warm front draped northwest of the Ohio River. A widespread inch to two inches of rainfall will be common in southern Missouri and Illinois and most of Ohio, as well as in western New York on the shores of Lakes Erie and Ontario. | null | null | null | null | null |
Sharlto Copley in “Ted K.” (Super LTD)
Mixing rare archival footage, photographs and recordings with eyewitness accounts, the documentary “The Beatles and India” tells the story of how the Fab Four’s 1968 visit to India to take part in Transcendental Meditation training influenced their music and spiritual lives. Though there isn’t much new here, according to the Guardian, “it’s still salutary to be reminded of how these four young men … used their colossal influence, greater than any politician or movie star or religious leader, to direct the world’s attention to India, a country which until then had been opaque for many in the West.” TV-PG. Available on BritBox. 95 minutes.
In the thriller “Here Before,” Andrea Riseborough (“Birdman”) plays a mother, distraught over the death of her young daughter, who comes to believe that a neighbor’s child is the reincarnation of her own little girl. “ ‘Here Before’ keeps us off guard,” according to Variety, “and all the more awake because of it.” R. Available on demand. Contains strong language. 82 minutes.
The documentary “Oscar Peterson: Black + White” celebrates the life, the career and the music of the late Canadian jazz pianist, with performance clips of Peterson and testimonials from the likes of Quincy Jones and Herbie Hancock. According to the New York Times, “The footage of Peterson at work is an infinitely better testament to [Peterson’s] brilliance than words of admiration from artists he influenced.” TV-PG. Available on Hulu. 83 minutes.
In the crime thriller “Pursuit,” a detective (Jake Manley) seeks to recapture a fugitive hacker (Emile Hirsch) — desperate to free his kidnapped wife — while at the same time uncovering what the hacker’s crime-boss father (John Cusack) has to do with the confusing situation. R. Available on demand. Contains violence, disturbing images, crude language and some drug use. 92 minutes.
A sequel to the 1974 original, the horror film “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” revisits the murderous Leatherface (Mark Burnham), whose quiet retirement is disrupted by fresh, young victims. R. Available on Netflix. Contains strong bloody horror violence, gore and crude language. 83 minutes. | null | null | null | null | null |
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks at the Justice Department on Jan. 5, 2022. (Pool/Reuters)
The Justice Department announced Wednesday that it’s suing the state of Missouri over a new gun rights law that blocks local police from enforcing certain federal firearms measures and has been decried by critics as unconstitutional.
The Second Amendment Preservation Act, which went into effect in August, is considered among the most wide-reaching gun rights bills in the United States. The law, passed by the state’s GOP-led legislature and signed by the Republican governor, allows private citizens to sue local jurisdictions or governments for $50,000 if they believe their Second Amendment rights have been violated.
In a lawsuit filed in a federal court in Kansas City, Mo., the Justice Department argues that the law is unconstitutional because it attempts to supersede federal law. The Missouri law rules that federal gun measures that don’t have an equivalent in state law are “invalid.” Some federal measures covered in the state law involve weapons registration and tracking, as well as gun possession by some domestic-violence offenders.
“This act impedes criminal law enforcement operations in Missouri,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. “The United States will work to ensure that our state and local law enforcement partners are not penalized for doing their jobs to keep our communities safe.”
The lawsuit against the state names Missouri Gov. Mike Parson (R) and Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt (R) as defendants. Representatives for Parson and Schmitt, who is running for the U.S. Senate this year, did not immediately respond to requests for comment early Thursday. Parson defended the state law to The Washington Post in August, saying the measure is “about protecting law-abiding Missourians against government overreach and unconstitutional federal mandates.”
“We will reject any attempt by the federal government to circumvent the fundamental right Missourians have to keep and bear arms to protect themselves and their property,” he said in a statement at the time. “Throughout my career, I have always stood for the Constitution and our Second Amendment rights, and that will not change today or any day.”
Schmitt on Wednesday accused the Biden administration of “time and again” putting “partisan politics ahead of public safety.”
“Make no mistake, the law is on our side in this case, and I intend to beat the Biden administration in court once again,” he said in a statement.
The litigation against Missouri comes at a time when gun laws and bills in the Show Me State have faced public scrutiny. A bill recently proposed by a Republican lawmaker would alter self-defense laws in the state and establish that any use of “physical or deadly force” would be presumed to be self-defense. The bill has won support from Republicans and supporters such as Mark McCloskey, an attorney who gained national attention after he and his wife pointed firearms at Black Lives Matter protesters marching past their home in St. Louis in 2020. While proponents say the bill would shield citizens from unfair prosecution, critics have decried the proposal as the “Make Murder Legal Act.”
Biden administration tells court Missouri gun law undermines public safety
The Justice Department argued at the time that the law “will continue to cause, significant harms to law enforcement within the State of Missouri.”
The department maintained in its lawsuit that the law “prohibits state and local officers who have been deputized as federal officers from enforcing federal firearm laws.” The Justice Department stated that the measure is hindering law enforcement efforts in Missouri, where “nearly 80 percent of violent crimes are committed with firearms.”
“The Missouri law has had a harmful impact on public safety efforts within the state,” the agency stated in the lawsuit. “Critical information that state and local offices previously shared with federal law enforcement officers to facilitate public safety and law enforcement is now frequently unavailable to federal law enforcement agencies in the same manner.”
A separate state lawsuit seeking to overturn the law is still pending in Missouri Supreme Court after oral arguments were heard this month. It’s unclear when the state could rule in that lawsuit filed by the city of St. Louis and St. Louis and Jackson counties.
“A state cannot simply declare federal laws invalid,” Brian M. Boynton, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, said in a statement. “This act makes enforcement of federal firearms laws difficult and strains the important law enforcement partnerships that help keep violent criminals off the street.”
Paulina Villegas and Matt Zapotosky contributed to this report. | null | null | null | null | null |
NBC reporter Michele Tafoya wipes away tears before leaving the field after the Los Angeles Rams defeated the Cincinnati Bengals in Super Bowl 56 on Feb. 13, 2022, in Inglewood, Calif. (AP Photo/Tyler Kaufman)
Carlson devoted a segment to Tafoya on Wednesday night, now that Tafoya has left sports reporting to join a Republican gubernatorial campaign. Tafoya plans to devote more time to criticizing critical race theory and airing other views about race, and Carlson is trying to turn her into a new right-wing hero.
Erik Wemple: He is no longer Tucker Carlson. He’s King Tucker.
Carlson, a clever demagogue, sees great potential in the idea that Tafoya is being persecuted for saying “skin color” shouldn’t “matter.” He aired a recent exchange between Tafoya and Whoopi Goldberg on “The View” that generated controversy:
Tafoya gestured at this, telling Carlson that we should appreciate “the progress that we’ve made in this country,” rather than “looking in the rear-view mirror.”
There are two separate disputes here. One is over how much racial progress we’ve made. The other is over what we should do about it, what tools help us understand how racial injustice persists and how we should rectify it.
But the point is, Tafoya and Carlson don’t want a good-faith debate on these questions, either. By preemptively casting their position as the only race-neutral one, they seek to remove from the agenda debate on that very idea — that lingering racial disparities can and should be addressed through critical thinking and governmental remedies.
This trickery is everywhere. The phrase “All Lives Matter” advances the deeper premise that the African American experience doesn’t have a special claim on our attention; the truly race-neutral position is that it doesn’t.
When Republicans extol the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream" speech while banning discussion of vaguely defined “divisive concepts,” they’re saying the only color-blind position is the one that minimizes the legacy of racial injustice and takes intellectual tools that might attack that injustice off the table. | null | null | null | null | null |
Trump allies can’t stop defending themselves by citing the bigness of the Big Lie
When a group of GOP senators mounted a futile attempt to hold up Joe Biden’s certification as president-elect a little more than a year ago, they chose their words carefully. Most big-name Republicans weren’t completely signed on to then-President Donald Trump’s claims of massive voter fraud. So they instead focused on how many such claims there were and how many people believed such claims.
“Voter fraud has posed a persistent challenge in our elections, although its breadth and scope are disputed,” conceded a statement from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and 10 colleagues. They cited a poll showing 4 in 10 people — mostly Republicans — believed the election was “rigged.” And since both that belief and “unprecedented allegations of voter fraud” were out there, they said, they needed to block Biden’s win on Jan. 6 to give the process more time.
More than a year later, there is still no proof of widespread voter fraud or really anything to call into question Biden’s 2020 win. But the argument that people’s feelings should be accounted for — both in the legislative process and in court cases against those who spearheaded efforts to overturn the election — continues to live a long life.
Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes is the latest to invoke the importance of what people (wrongly) believe as he fends off his seditious conspiracy charge. Judges have cited Trump’s ongoing claims of an illegitimate election in preventing the pretrial release of Jan. 6 figures who promoted and acted on such claims. The judges have argued that the continued campaign poses a danger because people might again act out violently.
But as Politico’s Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein note, Rhodes’s lawyer tried to reverse that logic. He argued that the fact that lots of people still believe what Rhodes has been saying is actually a reason not to detain him:
The Rhodes tactic follows on another leader of the effort to overturn the election — former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell — making much the same argument in a court case just last week.
While fighting off professional sanctions for her legal career, Powell noted in a filing that, “Millions of Americans believe the central contentions of the complaint to be true …" Then the filing added (tellingly when it comes to Powell’s lack of actual proof) “ … and perhaps they are.”
To be clear, this is hardly the first time Republicans have argued that perception is something amounting to reality when it comes to voter fraud — and that the perception itself must be acted upon. They did much the same thing with their voter ID push over the past decade-plus. And they’ve done so while recognizing that this argument can pass muster with the courts.
“It is true that there isn’t widespread voter fraud,” said State Rep. Ken Rizer, who steered a bill requiring voters to display IDs through the Iowa House of Representatives this month. “But there is a perception that the system can be cheated. That’s one of the reasons for doing this.”
It’s not difficult to say where this kind of justification can go awry. It incentivizes creating a pretext for something you already wanted to do, as long as you can find enough people to embrace it.
What results is a bunch of legislators and extreme actors in the effort to overturn the election citing the very perception they’ve fomented as some how legitimizing their original argument — and justifying the particular bandage they had already wanted to apply to the perceived wound. If a lie makes its way into the mainstream, is it really a lie? Or just a difference of valid opinions? Who can know? And how can you sanction someone or block a voting restriction if both were predicated on a sincere belief held by so many people? | null | null | null | null | null |
St. John’s wrestling tried to welcome a girl on its team this season. The school said no.
At a preseason lift for his St. John’s wrestling program, Coach Michael Sprague was introduced to a female student who was interested in joining the team. Sprague welcomed the possibility.
“I still thought that there were things I could do internally at the school to help change it,” said Sprague, 25, who works for a consulting company and is not a member of the school’s fulltime staff. “I made it my mission to do everything I could to get that changed.”
But as the Cadets near the end of their season, with the D.C. city championship Saturday and National Prep championships later this month, the female student never was allowed to take the mat for St. John’s.
After initially learning the student wouldn’t be allowed to compete, Sprague wrote a letter to Mancabelli and Hart asking them to reconsider their stance. In the letter, which Sprague shared with The Post, he mentioned that he spoke with the head of WCAC wrestling and the director of the D.C. wrestling championships, both of whom confirmed girls are allowed to wrestle during the season and in end-of-year championships.
Sprague, a Georgetown Prep and American University graduate who’s in his third season as the Cadets’ coach, finished his latter by saying, “I am happy to have a conversation with you about this.” And that’s what he got. When he met with Mancabelli and Hart, though, he could not change their minds.
Sprague did not make his wrestlers available for comment on the matter, saying he didn’t want them to receive any pushback.
In pushing for the girl to be able to compete, Sprague also worked with Sally Roberts, a former U.S. national champion who is the founder of Wrestle Like a Girl, an organization that advocates for female wrestlers. Roberts connected with Olympians around the area to “weigh in and use their voice,” she said. She messaged Maroulis, whom Roberts said tried to help while in Russia competing.
The St. John’s administrators suggested the girl form a club team and said in their statement to The Post: “When a club team operates successfully for three years, it then becomes eligible for varsity status. This was the pathway that led to what is now our championship varsity girls ice hockey team, among others. This is a leadership opportunity for our students and a model that works for everyone involved.” | null | null | null | null | null |
In Australia, which according to the government is home to about 180 of the estimated 400 global species of sharks, there have been three unprovoked shark attacks, none fatal, this year, according to the Australian Shark Incident Database, a project of the Taronga Conservation Society in Australia. It is unknown whether Wednesday’s attack was included in that tally and authorities did not comment on whether the attack was provoked. | null | null | null | null | null |
Sean Walton, left, an attorney representing the family of Casey Goodson Jr., and Goodson’s mother, Tamala Payne, take questions after a hearing to determine whether the former Ohio sheriff’s deputy who fatally shot Goodson in 2020 should be tried in state or federal court, on Friday, Feb. 11, 2022, in Columbus, Ohio. Walton said murder cases are almost always tried in state court, and said that’s where this prosecution belongs. (AP Photo/Andrew Welsh-Huggins) | null | null | null | null | null |
At a preseason weightlifting session for his St. John’s wrestling program, Coach Michael Sprague was introduced to a female student who was interested in joining the team. Sprague welcomed the possibility.
“I still thought that there were things I could do internally at the school to help change it,” said Sprague, 25, who works for a consulting company and is not a member of the school’s full-time staff. “I made it my mission to do everything I could to get that changed.”
But as the Cadets near the end of their season, with the D.C. city championship Saturday and National Prep championships later this month, the female student was never allowed to take the mat for St. John’s.
After initially learning the student wouldn’t be allowed to compete, Sprague wrote a letter to Mancabelli and Hart asking them to reconsider. In the letter, which Sprague shared with The Post, he mentioned that he spoke with the head of WCAC wrestling and the director of the D.C. wrestling championships, both of whom confirmed girls are allowed to wrestle during the season and in end-of-year championships.
Sprague, a Georgetown Prep and American University graduate who’s in his third season as the Cadets’ coach, finished his letter by saying, “I am happy to have a conversation with you about this.” And that’s what he got. When he met with Mancabelli and Hart, though, he could not change their minds.
Sprague did not make his wrestlers available for comment on the matter, saying he didn’t want them to receive any “pushback from the school.”
In pushing for the girl’s right to compete, Sprague also worked with Sally Roberts, a former U.S. national champion and founder of Wrestle Like a Girl, an organization that advocates for female wrestlers. Roberts connected with Olympians around the area to “weigh in and use their voice,” she said. She messaged Maroulis, whom Roberts said tried to help while she was in Russia competing.
The St. John’s administrators suggested the girl form a club team and said in their statement to The Post: “When a club team operates successfully for three years, it then becomes eligible for varsity status. ... This is a leadership opportunity for our students and a model that works for everyone involved.” | null | null | null | null | null |
But to those who closely follow the sport, the 17-year-old Shcherbakova was neither a surprise figure nor an unlikely winner. The reigning world champion wowed judges throughout the 2021 season, managing to remain elite through her speed, musicality and dramatic presence even if her jumping program was not quite as explosive as those of her fellow Russian teens. She was twice a silver medalist at the European championships, and took third at the most recent Russian championships — behind her training partners, Valieva and Alexandra Trusova, the silver medalist in Beijing.
Yes and no. Yes, because nearly everyone expected Valieva to run away with the victory after the short program and because Shcherbakova reportedly had battled knee and foot injuries over the past year (she also tested positive for the coronavirus in November 2020). No, because Shcherbakova was the 2021 world champion, so she had experienced the ultimate success on the world skating stage previously. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: A glimmer of hope for common-sense, bipartisan policymaking
A U.S. Postal Service mailbox in a parking lot on Feb. 10 in Houston. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
Much has been said about Congress’s failure to pass voting rights reform and the bulk of President Biden’s agenda in the Build Back Better Act. But at least one piece of common-sense, bipartisan policymaking is moving forward: the Postal Service Reform Act, which passed the House 342 to 92 last week.
The U.S. Postal Service has struggled with its balance sheet for years, with losses of $160 billion predicted over the next decade. It currently has more than $200 billion in liabilities, nearly three-quarters of which stem from a requirement for it to pre-fund retirees’ health-care costs. This mandate was established in 2006 when the agency was profitable, but falling revenue — largely due to competition from modern technology and declining first-class mail use — has meant the Postal Service has been unable to keep up with payments.
The overhaul bill would drop the mandate and require retirees to enroll in Medicare when eligible. The Congressional Budget Office projects this would save taxpayers $1.5 billion over 10 years. The bill would also erase $57 billion of the agency’s liabilities; establish an online dashboard for delivery times; allow it to offer non-postal services such as hunting and fishing licenses; and mandate service at least six days a week.
The legislation is a product of lengthy, bipartisan negotiations and involved compromises from various stakeholders. Some Democrats, for example, wanted to include protections for mail-in voting and funding for electric vehicles. Ultimately, a narrower bill moved through the House because it had a better chance of passing. There is an urgent need for reform: Without Congress stepping in, the Postal Service estimates it would run out of operational funds by fiscal year 2023.
This overhaul is not a panacea for all the Postal Service’s ills. It addresses the short-term concern of prepayments, but the larger question of how to make the agency financially sustainable remains. Getting rid of the pre-funding mandate will not make a practical difference to cash flow because the Postal Service has missed payments for the past decade, and traditional mail continues to decline in popularity. The six-day mandate could also deprive the Postal Service of flexibility it might need in the future. Still, the bill is a necessary step to cleaning up its balance sheet. The performance dashboard is a particularly smart reform, boosting transparency in a system that has seen heavy delays with service.
Though Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) has vowed to pass the bill soon, it was delayed Monday when Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) blocked it from being brought quickly to a vote. The Senate will deliberate further, but it should not hesitate to pass the core of the current proposal once the process is complete.
The past two years have given us ample evidence of why an efficient postal system is vital to our society — not least for voting by mail and deliveries to remote communities that might not be served by pure market forces. Congress is right to finally address one source of the Postal Service’s shortfalls. Then it should turn to the more difficult issue of its long-term viability and future. | null | null | null | null | null |
In this week’s By The Way Concierge, we tackle the risks of long-haul flights during the pandemic.
(Cynthia Kittler for The Washington Post)
I am 59, vaccinated and boosted, and scheduled to go to Nepal in March for two months — a trip that’s been fully paid for and postponed twice. I feel fairly confident of covid safety on the trip itself, but I am leery of the 15+ hour flight. How risky are long-haul flights with omicron? — Jasmine, Tetonia, Idaho
“The second reason: I’m fully vaccinated and that includes the booster,” he says. “If you’ve had a booster within four months, you’ve got a significant level of neutralizing antibodies that are going to really reduce your chances of catching covid.”
While there will be risks any time you’re in crowded places, “I don’t personally think that the risks on a long-haul flight are necessarily that much greater than a shorter flight,” says Emily Hyle, an infectious-disease specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital.
“Just by probability, you decrease the number of chances you’re exposed to somebody who is positive for covid,” Rodgers says.
Of course, there’s no guarantee you will be fully protected from an infection.
“You still need to be cautious because you are in close proximity to multiple people,” says Susan Hassig, an epidemiologist at the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.
For example, Hyle tells patients to stagger when they eat or drink with other passengers. Once you feel comfortable, don’t fully remove your mask and linger over your refreshments. Instead, “pull your mask down to take a sip, and pull it right back up,” says Anthony Harris, chief executive and medical director of HFit Health.
If you’re not used to N95 or KN95 masks for long periods of time, Hassig recommends preparing yourself by practicing. Pack a supply of them so you can swap them out when they get swampy.
“After a 12-hour flight … you’re going to want to throw that mask away,” Hassig says.
Aside from being mindful of eating and drinking situations, Gendreau says, travelers can open the air vent above their seat to further reduce their risks.
Gendreau’s biggest concern for travelers is deplaning. Citing a study on infectious-disease mitigation in airports and on planes, getting off is the riskiest part of a flight.
“As you hear that ‘ding,’ everybody jumps up and crowds the aisle,” he says. “You’re there for sometimes 10 minutes or longer, and you are incredibly close to a lot of people.”
Gendreau recommends waiting until it is your row’s turn to exit and the aisle is clear ahead of you before you grab your bags and go. (Beyond a coronavirus mitigation strategy, this is also just good plane etiquette.)
Hyle says you also have to think about risks to and from the airport and inside. “So wearing a high-filtration and well-fitting mask during those periods of time are every bit as important,” she says.
Because Rodgers’s wife is immunocompromised, he would assess the coronavirus rates where he traveled and proceed accordingly. “Anything above moderate, I would be considering a quarantine of at least five days and take a PCR or rapid test at the end [before going home],” he says.
Hassig also encourages travelers to be aware of the coronavirus situation in both the arrival and departure destination, particularly if you or your loved ones are high risk. Even with a promising drop in cases, “omicron is still circulating very, very widely,” she says. “Practically the entire United States is still red.” | null | null | null | null | null |
U.S. defense secretary tells NATO that Russia is adding forces, not drawing down
By Emily Rauhala, Karoun Demirjian and Alex Horton1:26 p.m.
BRUSSELS — U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, attending a NATO meeting in Brussels, told reporters Thursday that the reports of the shelling of a government-held village in eastern Ukraine are “certainly troubling” and that the United States is still gathering details.
“But you know, we’ve said for some time that the Russians might do something like this in order to justify a military conflict, so we’ll be watching this very closely,” he said.
At a news conference in Brussels, Austin said of Russia’s claims that it was pulling some of its forces from the border: “We don’t see that. Quite the contrary, we see them add to the more than 150,000 that they already have arrayed along their border even in the last couple of days. We’ve seen some of those troops inch closer to that border. We’ve seen them fly in more combat and support aircraft. We’ve seen them sharpen their readiness in the Black Sea. We’ve even seen them stocking up their blood supplies.”
He added: “You know, I was a soldier myself not that long ago, and I know firsthand that you don’t do these things for no reason, and you certainly don’t do them if you’re getting ready to pack up and go home.”
The U.S. Army will deploy a Stryker company to Bulgaria in the coming days, Austin said, joining thousands of U.S. troops who have mobilized along NATO’s eastern flank. They will depart from their home base in Germany, which has already sent Stryker vehicles and soldiers to Romania. Other service members and their equipment have arrived in Poland, part of a growing U.S. presence there.
Horton reported from Kyiv and Demirjian from Washington. | null | null | null | null | null |
The request comes after Trump’s accounting firm said financial statements it prepared for him should not be considered reliable.
In their letter to the GSA, Maloney and Connolly say that the disclosures from Mazars warrant a closer look at the least. The lawmakers point specifically to a clause in the lease requiring that any information provided by the leaseholder to a bank “ … shall be true and correct in all material respects …”
“My company has among the best real estate and other assets anywhere in the world, has significant amounts of cash, and has relatively very little debt, which is totally current,” Trump said in the release. A spokesman for Deutsche Bank, which lent Trump $170 million to develop the hotel, declined to comment.
GSA spokeswoman Channing Grate issued a statement saying GSA “has taken, and will continue to take, steps to ensure that the tenant is in compliance with the terms and conditions of the lease.”
The agency has begun a review of the sale to make sure the buyer meets basic criteria of being able to finance the purchase and manage the property. Channing said “GSA is committed to ensuring a thorough and appropriate review process” of the sale.
James is pursuing testimony and documents from Trump himself in her case. In a hearing before New York State Supreme Judge Arthur Engoron Thursday, attorneys for Trump and his two eldest children, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump, continued to resist the attorney general’s request that the three of them testify.
Trump’s attorneys argued that James shouldn’t be permitted to bring such a case against him because she disparaged him publicly while running for office, and that she has improperly used her civil inquiry to circumvent rules guiding a separate criminal investigation that she is conducting with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.
Alan Futerfas, representing Trump’s son and daughter, said by bringing a civil case, James was doing an “end around the grand jury” convened in the criminal case. Trump attorney Alina Habba raised comments James made about Trump on the campaign trail and argued that the case was politically motivated.
Kevin Wallace, from the attorney general’s office, argued that “what matters is the substance of the investigation, the substance of what we’ve found. And we’ve been very detailed in what we’ve found.”
Wallace said the idea that the office cannot pursue both a criminal case and criminal inquiry at the same time “is not accurate.” | null | null | null | null | null |
“Voter fraud has posed a persistent challenge in our elections, although its breadth and scope are disputed,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and 10 colleagues conceded in a statement. They cited a poll showing 4 in 10 people — mostly Republicans — believed the election was “rigged.” And since that belief and “unprecedented allegations of voter fraud” were out there, they said, on Jan. 6 they needed to block Biden’s win to give the process more time.
More than a year later, there is still no proof of widespread voter fraud or really anything to call into question Biden’s 2020 win. But the argument that people’s feelings should be accounted for — in the legislative process and in court cases against those who spearheaded efforts to overturn the election — continues to live a long life.
Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes is the latest to invoke the importance of what people (wrongly) believe as he fends off his seditious-conspiracy charge. Judges have cited Trump’s ongoing claims of an illegitimate election in preventing the pretrial release of Jan. 6 figures who promoted and acted on such claims. The judges have argued that the continued campaign poses a danger because people might again act out violently.
But as Politico’s Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein note, Rhodes’s attorney tried to reverse that logic. He argued that the fact that lots of people still believe what Rhodes has been saying is actually a reason not to detain him:
The Rhodes tactic follows on another leader of the effort to overturn the election — lawyer Sidney Powell — making much the same argument in a court case just last week.
While fighting off professional sanctions for her legal career, Powell noted in a filing, “Millions of Americans believe the central contentions of the complaint to be true.” Then the filing added
— tellingly when it comes to Powell’s lack of actual proof — “and perhaps they are.”
To be clear, this is hardly the first time Republicans have argued that perception is something amounting to reality when it comes to voter fraud — and that the perception itself must be acted upon. They have done much the same thing with their voter-ID push over the past decade-plus. And they’ve done so while recognizing that this argument can pass muster with the courts.
“It is true that there isn’t widespread voter fraud,” said State Representative Ken Rizer, who steered a bill requiring voters to display IDs through the Iowa House of Representatives this month. “But there is a perception that the system can be cheated. That’s one of the reasons for doing this.”
It’s not difficult to see where this kind of justification can go awry. It incentivizes creating a pretext for something you already wanted to do, as long as you can find enough people to embrace it.
What results is a bunch of legislators and extreme actors in the effort to overturn the election citing the very perception they’ve fomented as somehow legitimizing their original argument — and justifying the particular bandage they had already wanted to apply to the perceived wound. If a lie makes its way into the mainstream, is it really a lie? Or just a difference of valid opinions? Who can know? And how can you impose sanctions on someone or block a voting restriction if both were predicated on a sincere belief held by so many people? | null | null | null | null | null |
BEIJING — At exactly the moment Kamila Valieva began her fateful, disastrous free skate Thursday night in the women’s figure skating competition at the Beijing Olympics, Alysa Liu walked into a corner of the interview area beneath the Capital Indoor Stadium stands, still dressed in her light blue skating dress and Team USA jacket, and began to talk about her greatest skating night ever.
“Oh,” she replied, in a tone that suggested Valieva’s skate was the least important thing on her mind.
For everyone else, Valieva was the biggest sports story of the moment. The 15-year-old whose positive doping test and ensuing victory in the Court of Arbitration for Sport that allowed her to compete had devoured he Olympics. Her skate started under a fog of gloom and anger and sorrow.
But in this room, only a hundred yards away from the ice where Valieva was skating, Liu wasn’t thinking about Valieva or doping or the Russian skaters or any of the things that obsessed the adults around her. Only a year older than Valieva, the main thing she cared about was that she had come to the Olympics and skated well and saw many of her skating friends. And because of all this, she began to cry.
“I’m just like … and so many of my friends are here, and they, like, trained so hard and went through a lot and they, like, finally did really good at the Olympics,” she said, before she began to sob.
“I’m really happy for everybody and myself, too,” she said. “[The Olympics] exceeded my expectations. I didn’t think I was going to do this good here, and I made a lot of friends along the way and I got to see them here.”
Through smiles and tears, Liu talked about the day barely more than a month ago when she was told at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships that she had tested positive for the coronavirus. She was sure the test meant she couldn’t go to Beijing, even though she was the United States’ top female skater. She said she had already accepted the fact she would never live her childhood dream of skating in the Olympics when the text arrived from a U.S. skating official telling her she had made the team.
For a brief time, she even led on Thursday night. She came off the ice, heard her score and prepared to turn right toward the changing rooms, but an official stopped her and said to go left, into the green room, here, where the current top three skaters wait until someone with a higher score pushes them out. Bell was already there, having been No. 1 herself for a brief time. And even though Bell is nine years older than Liu, the two of them laughed and shouted and took selfies. | null | null | null | null | null |
Kamila Valieva falls during her free skate. (REUTERS/Eloisa Lopez)
BEIJING — The first two dozen competitors skated, jumped, slipped and spun over the course of nearly four hours, some delivering the best performances of their careers and many living out the highlight of their lives. With Olympic medals at stake, tears of joy and disappointment accompanied occasional finishes. And yet, it all served as the seemingly insignificant prelude to the Olympics most controversial and heart-wrenching four minutes and nine seconds of competition.
Kamila Valieva, the 15-year-old wunderkind from Russia who’s now at the center of a doping scandal, competed Thursday despite a recent drug test that revealed a banned substance in her system. And when she took the ice for the final time of these Games, she looked entirely broken, as though the enormity of the past week had suddenly taken its toll all at once.
Valieva entered as the undisputed gold medal favorite, then turned into the Games’ biggest headline. She slipped, stumbled and fell two times during a free skate that a mere two weeks ago seemed poised to become her Olympic title-winning dream. Instead, the disastrous performance and pent-up emotion left the teenager inconsolable and out of medal contention.
“I saw from her first jump how difficult it was, what a burden it was for her,” teammate Anna Shcherbakova said through an interpreter. Shcherbakova won the gold medal, followed by fellow Russian Alexandra Trusova. Japan’s Kaori Sakamoto took bronze.
Once Valieva’s score appeared and confirmed her fourth-place finish — previously an unthinkable outcome — she cried with her coaches. The tears began on the ice, and a distraught Valieva remained planted to her seat for a couple of minutes.
Then she finally left the arena, her time in Beijing meeting its contentious, sorrowful end. Valieva’s fourth-place finish eased the path forward for Olympic officials. They could award medals here, which they hadn’t planned to do if Valieva landed on the podium — a clear sign they are preparing for the possibility that she is retroactively disqualified.
So as Valieva relocated her distress to a private space, the other medalists celebrated. Shcherbakova, the reigning world champion, won the gold with a 255.95, followed not far behind by Trusova in second. Valieva, Shcherbakova and Trusova all train together and have pushed the boundaries of their sport with difficult programs. This competition could have been a showcase of quadruple jumps, and athletes representing the Russian Olympic Committee could have swept the podium, which no country has ever done in women’s figure skating. Instead, the event was tarnished by both scandal and sadness.
“I have mixed feelings, but I was feeling a lot of pleasure because I happened to be in the right time and the right place and did the right things,” Shcherbakova said, without directly mentioning Valieva. “... But talking about results, I still don’t comprehend what has happened. I'm just overwhelmed by happiness on the one hand. On the other hand, I feel this emptiness inside.”
Valieva’s on-ice meltdown opened the door for Sakamoto. She had a less difficult but clean performance and won the bronze medal with a 233.13, well behind the Russian duo but a comfortable margin ahead of Valieva’s 224.09. Sakamoto, who still has a newspaper clipping from Shizuka Arakawa’s gold medal for Japan in 2006, called her podium finish surprising. As figure skating competitions roll through competitors, the top three in the standings wait in a room together until someone bumps them out of medal position. When Japan’s Wakaba Higuchi left the room, Sakamoto said she told her, “I’ll be catching up with you.” But Valieva’s skate wasn’t enough for a medal, so Sakamoto stayed through the end and onto the podium ceremony.
The three medalists received panda mascots as though this was just another typical Olympic competition, even though the skaters below Valieva technically have provisional placements until her case is resolved.
Valieva first brought her brilliant skating to Beijing and then an enormous cloud to the competition. She tested positive for a prohibited substance in December, but the lab analyzing the sample didn’t report the result until last week, after the Games had already begun. That prompted an expedited hearing before the Court of Arbitration for Sports, which ruled Valieva could continue competing. With the legal process ongoing, the court cited the irreparable harm to Valieva if she had been suspended and later found innocent. So she got to participate, but that only led to a stunning, raw collapse.
She breezed through the interview area without stopping for questions after Tuesday’s short program that, despite minor mistakes, placed her in the lead heading into Thursday’s competition. After the free skate, Valieva again did not answer questions from reporters. When asked about her teammate, Trusova said, “I am not going to say anything about Kamila.”
Valieva had seized the status of the next Russian figure skating star, unfamiliar with anything other than gold. But in Beijing, Shcherbakova, the three-time national champion until Valieva dethroned her this season, continued the country’s run of excellence. The Russians have dominated women’s figure skating in recent years, with athletes from the country winning the last three Olympics and five of the last six world championships.
This trio of Russians train under Eteri Tutberidze, the coach whose tactics have drawn scrutiny. They each have a remarkable arsenal of difficult jumps, ones previously never landed at the Games.
Before she surged to the center of this controversy, Valieva became the first woman to land a quadruple jump at the Olympics when she attempted three and landed two during her free skate in the team event. Shcherbakova attempted two on Thursday but leaned on her exquisite performance quality and near-perfect execution.
“After my performance, I realized that I had done the maximum of what I was capable of, and I had done everything,” the 17-year-old said.
That was enough to edge Trusova, who had the best free skate score of the evening after landing five quads — the same number that men’s gold medalist Nathan Chen performs. Trusova fell during her short program, and she entered Thursday’s competition in fourth. Her coach suggested she attempt only four quads, but Trusova said she replied: “No, I will do everything here.” Even when that plan worked, despite a couple shaky landings, Trusova, 17, still wasn’t pleased with the silver.
“I did what I could,” she said through an interpreter. “I am not happy with the result. That's why I was angry. I was disappointed.”
The rest of the field, including the Americans, lacked that difficult technical content. Alysa Liu, 16, led the contingent of U.S. skaters in seventh. Mariah Bell, who performed a lovely program but one that didn’t include jumps to match her peers, placed 10th, and Karen Chen stumbled on her way to 16th.
Sakamoto knew that without a triple axel or a quadruple jump, she needed to skate exceptionally well. And she did. After Valieva struggled on nearly every jump, Sakamoto’s mark turned out to be enough for bronze.
With a scoring system that incentivizes difficulty, the Russians have an advantage. Trusova and Shcherbakova showed that with their medal-winning performances. Their jumps evoke awe. So do Valieva’s usual programs, when she combines those tricks with mesmerizing grace and flexibility. But that’s not the version of Valieva who appeared on the ice here. She received this opportunity to compete — knowing it could be deemed invalid at a later date — and in that moment, she looked like only a fragment of herself and a 15-year-old crushed by the chaos. | null | null | null | null | null |
The man said he forgot he had the gun on him, the agency said
The gun recovered at a security checkpoint this week at Dulles International Airport. (TSA)
The Transportation Security Administration said it caught a Leesburg man with a loaded gun Monday as he tried to pass through a security checkpoint at Dulles International Airport.
The man, who the TSA did not identify, was cited by police and faces a civil penalty.
Officials said the man had a 9mm handgun that was loaded with 12 rounds and an additional magazine containing another 12 rounds. The gun was found among his carry-on items by an X-ray machine and was confiscated by airport police. The man said he forgot he had the gun, according to the TSA.
“Responsible gun owners know where their weapons are at all times,” Scott T. Johnson, the TSA’s federal security director for the airport, said in a statement. “It makes no sense that a firearm owner would not know the location of their loaded gun.”
It was the second gun the TSA had found at the airport this year. In 2021, the agency caught 30 firearms at Dulles, far more than in recent years and an increase that reflects a national pattern. | null | null | null | null | null |
Louisville Democratic mayoral candidate Craig Greenberg speaks during a news conference on Feb. 14. Greenberg was shot at Monday morning at a campaign office but was not struck, though a bullet grazed a piece of his clothing, police said. (Timothy D. Easley/AP)
Louisville mayoral candidate Craig Greenberg said Thursday that he and his family have been further traumatized after the activist charged with attempted murder was released on bail just days after the shooting.
Quintez Brown, 21, was released Wednesday with the help of the The Louisville Community Bail Fund, a group co-founded by Black Lives Matter Louisville organizer Chanelle Helm, put up the $100,000 bail.
According to the Courier Journal, Brown had interned for the newspaper, appeared on MSNBC and met with high profile liberal figures including former president Barack Obama and the Rev. Al Sharpton over the past few years.
Brown made national headlines in 2021 after going missing for two weeks. He was later found on a park bench in New York City. Earlier this year, the former University of Louisville student announced a run for Louisville Metro Council. | null | null | null | null | null |
A health-care worker prepares a syringe with the Moderna coronavirus vaccine. (Mike Segar/Reuters)
Until about two years ago, the anti-vaccination movement in the United States sat at the fringe of the political discussion. It would erupt into view sporadically, following a protest somewhere or if a prominent celebrity endorsed one of the long-debunked claims about effects. The benefits of broad vaccination were so obvious and the opposition so scattered — intellectually as well as individually — that it was not something to which much attention was paid.
Until about two years ago.
In retrospect, we should have anticipated how the country would respond to the broad availability of a vaccine effective at reducing infection and largely preventing worst-case health scenarios. The initial government response, which focused on masking and limits on person-to-person interactions, was quickly undermined by President Donald Trump’s desire to quickly return the country to normal economic activity, his eye on his 2020 reelection bid.
But it was also easier for Trump, a fundamentally anti-establishment politician, to cast doubt on experts than to elevate them. So millions of Americans, particularly Republicans, developed skepticism about official recommendations that carried over into the wide-scale vaccination effort that began at the end of 2020.
Over the course of the past year, the pool of unvaccinated Americans has increasingly consisted of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents. Republicans are less likely to get any dose of a vaccine and are less likely to say they’ll get a booster dose even if already vaccinated. Often, that hesitancy has been framed as being in opposition to perceived mandates — orders from the establishment that they receive a dose. That relatively few Americans are subject to an actual mandate has little effect on that perception, one that even Trump — always eager to play to the base — has amplified.
The challenge to all of this is demonstrated in polling released this week by YouGov, conducted on behalf of the Economist. Asked if schools should be allowed to mandate vaccines for students — any vaccines, that is, not just coronavirus ones — a plurality of Americans said no. Nearly three-quarters of Republicans held that position, even more than the percentage of those who haven’t been fully vaccinated.
What’s particularly remarkable about this is how it overlaps with one of the frequent arguments for efforts to encourage vaccination. Often, those who object to rules mandating either a vaccine or frequent testing have been reminded that vaccination requirements are common in other contexts. The actual coronavirus vaccine mandate that applied to servicemembers, for example, sat alongside a number of other required vaccines for recruits, ones that were probably barely noticed by those seeking to enlist. When states implemented covid-19 mandates for schools, it was noted that schools have long mandated vaccines before enrollment.
What this poll appears to show is that America has not become broadly supportive of vaccine mandates, recognizing where they might already apply, but instead has become skeptical of previous mandates where they exist. Granted, we don’t have data on how this has changed over time; it may be the case that being informed about the existence of mandates a decade ago would have met with similar skepticism. But given that Republicans are so much less supportive of the idea reinforces that this overlaps with the politics and understanding of the moment.
This poll result attracted some substantial attention when shared by the Economist’s G. Elliott Morris on Twitter. But, as it turns out, it wasn’t the end of the research. Morris on Thursday shared a follow-up survey conducted by YouGov.
It made two important changes. First, it changed the word “mandate” for “required to,” eliding some of the associations that likely accompany the former term by now. Second, it differentiated between different vaccines. Views of the requirement for the MMR vaccine (preventing measles, mumps and rubella) were separated from views of the coronavirus vaccine or a generic vaccine for “infectious diseases.”
The upshot? Most Americans remain supportive of MMR vaccine requirements and even for one targeting “infectious diseases.” Except, it seems, the infectious one that’s still killing thousands of people a day at the moment.
Here again you can see the partisan divide — but also the ongoing partisan difference.
Republicans are broadly supportive of the long-standing MMR requirement. Identifying it specifically and casting it not as a mandate likely contributed to the difference from the results in the first survey. But the politics of the coronavirus vaccine are also apparent: Only a quarter of Republicans support a requirement for those vaccines where available.
Part of this certainly derives from the reduced likelihood of negative effects from the coronavirus on younger people. The virus, thus far, has been far less deadly for young people than older ones. But, then, the odds of dying from measles, mumps or rubella are also low. Part of the intent of the requirement is to reduce the likelihood of broad spread by increasing community immunity.
That, of course, is at the heart of this question. What the coronavirus pandemic has done is increase the salience of the question of how much Americans owe to one another. This has long been an undercurrent in our politics but being directly asked to take a step to keep everyone safe has made this tension obvious.
For years, vaccine opponents sought to unwind mandates out of misguided concern about the safety of vaccines. Turns out, all they needed in order to gain ground was a deadly international pandemic in which vaccines could make a real difference — leading people in positions of authority to do what they could to ensure as much vaccination as possible.
Making government advocacy explicit seems to have reduced support for government advocacy. | null | null | null | null | null |
Our two great parties are always evolving, but what we’ve often seen in the past is that one party at a time will have an intense internal debate — usually after it looses a few elections — while the other party, having won recent victories, sees little need to change.
Democrats, on the other hand, are having a traditional debate between centrists and true believers. To be sure, the party as whole has moved left over the long term, but that evolution is still punctuated by short-term pullbacks toward the center. Even in the most liberal places in the country, there are still vigorous debates about policy and tactics. | null | null | null | null | null |
Govind Persad is assistant professor at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. Alyssa Burgart is an associate professor of pediatric anesthesiology at Stanford University. Emily Largent is assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.
The FDA’s reasoning seems dubious given omicron’s ability to evade protection against infection. The original two-dose series for adults is only about 10 percent effective against omicron infection after 20 weeks, but continues to offer far more protection against severe disease. Poorer reported efficacy against infection may just reflect the limitations of any tightly spaced two-dose series against omicron rather than anything unique to children under 5. If adult trials were rerun against omicron, the two-dose series might not meet the standards the FDA is applying to pediatric vaccines.
What we can be certain of is that waiting for third dose results before opening access will inevitably lead to thousands more children being infected with the coronavirus without the protection of a vaccine. Worse, the FDA and Pfizer have announced no further efforts to fine-tune the optimal dose. Children under 5 received 3 micrograms of the vaccine in the trials, compared to the 10 micrograms authorized for 5- to 11-year-olds. If a third 3-microgram dose doesn’t meet FDA’s nebulous efficacy threshold, children will be forced to wait even longer.
Meanwhile, Pfizer reports much better results for children 6 to 24 months old, whose antibody response was comparable to adults. This is important because children in this age group have been hospitalized more often than children older than 5. Yet, the FDA stuck to its rigid policy of “age de-escalation” — that is, no age group may receive vaccines until the next oldest group is eligible for the shots. This is difficult to justify, especially in a pandemic.
Regulators’ treatment of high-risk children has been particularly egregious. A 5-year-old with moderate or severe immunocompromise can receive an additional primary dose of vaccine beyond the first two. This is not based on clinical trials, but on the reasonable expectation that a third dose will reduce severe illness in immunocompromised patients. But an immunocompromised 4-year-old must face omicron completely unprotected.
Frustratingly, the CDC has restricted physicians’ ability to prescribe coronavirus vaccines “off label.” Typically, physicians have discretion to treat patients who aren’t included in the FDA-approved label, including with vaccines. Off-label prescribing is quite common in pediatrics because children are often understudied compared to adults. But the CDC has imposed provider agreements that purport to prohibit the practice specifically for coronavirus vaccines. This prevents physicians from making common-sense recommendations for their patients, including those at heightened risk of severe illness and death. The CDC’s ban strikes us as especially indefensible when off-label use of completely unproven medications — such as ivermectin — faces no such limitations.
When pediatricians and parents agree together that the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks, they should be allowed to give the Pfizer vaccine to children under 5. As city and state governments end mask mandates, children are at greater risk; the federal government could afford these children more protection by permitting off-label use. If regulators refuse to relent, it would be hard to fault a city, hospital or pediatrician for ignoring their roadblocks, as some have with boosters. | null | null | null | null | null |
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That conclusion was supported by a second report released Thursday showing that the virus infected 16 of 23 friends who attended the event together — with some staying in the same rental and socializing in bars or restaurants away from the convention — and that some brought the virus home to their households.
Though everyone in the social group was vaccinated, the highly contagious omicron variant infected 70 percent of them, the CDC reported, as well as 33 percent of their household contacts — a remarkably high “attack rate.” The first person in the cluster was a man from Minnesota who flew to the convention the day before it began and later became the first reported case of community-acquired omicron infection in the United States.
All of the omicron infections at the convention — a gathering of fans of a Japanese style of animation — were found in this one cluster. The rest were caused by the delta variant or other sublineages of the virus. | null | null | null | null | null |
FILE - Gail Halvorsen, also know as the “Candy Bomber”, poses for a portrait at his son’s home in Midway, Utah, on Oct. 7, 2020. The man known as the “Candy Bomber” for his airdrops of sweets during the Berlin Airlift when World War II ended nearly 75 years ago has died. Gail Halvorsen was 101 when he died Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2022, in his home state of Utah surrounded by most of his children after a brief illness, James Stewart, the director of the Gail Halvorsen Aviation Education Foundation, said Thursday. (Isaac Hale/The Daily Herald via AP)
By Colleen Slevin and Kirsten Grieshaber | AP
DENVER — U.S. military pilot Gail S. Halvorsen — known as the “Candy Bomber” for his candy airdrops during the Berlin Airlift after World War II ended — has died. | null | null | null | null | null |
Transcript: World Stage: Crisis in Ukraine with William B. Taylor, Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine
Russia now has an estimated 150,000 troops at the Ukrainian border, according to the latest Washington Post reporting, and despite talk of a diplomatic track, military action could come at any moment, as President Biden said this morning.
My guest today is Ambassador William Taylor, who served as ambassador to Ukraine from 2006 to 2009 and later as chargé d'affaires there in 2019. He's currently vice president for Russia and Europe at the U.S. Institute of Peace, and he's one of the wisest, coolest heads I know on this hot crisis.
Welcome, Ambassador Taylor.
MR. TAYLOR: David, thank you. It's great to be here. Very kind.
MR. IGNATIUS: So, Mr. Ambassador, I'd appreciate your sense of this confrontation right now, this morning. President Biden said several hours ago that he thought the threat level was very high, and to quote him, they, the Russians, "have moved more troops in, number one. Number two, we have reason to believe they are engaged in a false flag operation as an excuse to go in. Every indication we have is that they're prepared to go into Ukraine, attack Ukraine. What's your assessment as of right now about the likelihood of a Russian attack?
MR. TAYLOR: David, I think you're right, and I think President Biden put it well. That is, they are ready. The Russians have done everything to prepare for an invasion. I imagine that President Putin told his generals, told Defense Minister Shoigu, do everything. Put everything in place. Do these false flags. Move the medical facilities up. Move the aircraft into position. Move these ships around from the various locations toward the Black Sea, toward the Sea of Azov. Do all of those things. Place your special forces inside of Ukraine. Do everything, Putin told them, to be prepared to do this, because, David, he wanted to intimidate President Zelensky of Ukraine or President Biden to give him concession, to fold, to agree to things that would compromise Ukraine security or would compromise our security. That's what President Putin wanted, and he was ready to do everything and maybe including invading.
He hasn't yet decided, I think. We haven't heard. No one will be in his mind. Our best intelligence, you are a channel to our best intelligence. I don't think we have figured out that he has made a decision yet to do that, to pull that trigger. He's got‑‑the gun is clearly cocked and loaded, and his finger is on the trigger. He hasn't pulled it yet, which means that he can still be deterred. He can still be stared down, David.
So President Zelensky and President Biden, indeed, backed up by NATO and Europe, are staring him down. They are not caving in. They are not blinking. President Putin might be blinking. So that's where I think we are right now.
MR. IGNATIUS: That's a powerful set of images, Mr. Ambassador.
One more issue on today's agenda, the Russians expelled, without any clear explanation, the number two official in the U.S. embassy in Moscow. That's the sort of thing that would normally draw a prompt retaliation from the United States, which would then step up the level of crisis, arguably would play to Putin's interest. What's your judgment about how we should respond to that today or in the coming days? Should we do a tit for tat, as we usually do?
MR. TAYLOR: David, I think we can't let President Putin dominate the discussion, the negotiation, the challenge, the crisis, the information flow. I couldn't make any sense of that, of expelling the deputy chief of mission from Moscow. I can't understand.
We have an ambassador there. Ambassador Sullivan has been there. He's been there since the previous administration put him there, and he stayed on. He was apparently receiving, finally, the response that the Russians have finally prepared and told. I think Lavrov told President Putin that he had been working on this 10‑page document to respond to the United States position, a paper of a couple of weeks ago, and Ambassador Sullivan was there getting that response finally. I don't think‑‑we've not seen it yet, don't know what it says. It presumably has something to do with the negotiations, but for them to take that moment, that exact moment to expel Ambassador Sullivan's deputy, that makes no sense.
And then your question is the right one: What's our response? We need to be firm. We'll probably respond in the way we always do, and that is to send their deputy chief of mission home. I don't know. I can't figure this out. This is an unusual, odd move.
MR. IGNATIUS: So a final element today is what might be called "last‑minute diplomacy." Secretary of State Antony Blinken is said to be heading to the United Nations. What's your feeling, Ambassador Taylor, about whether we should seek to animate the diplomatic track that only Monday, as you said, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov seemed to be saying was Russian's preferred path? Should we act as if the diplomatic channel remains open and seek consultations, discussions, exchange of views? What do you think?
MR. TAYLOR: Absolutely, David. I absolutely believe that until Putin pulls that trigger‑‑and he might. He might do it now. He might do it tomorrow. He might do it next week, but until he does, we should do everything we can to do two things. One is to make it clear to him that the costs that he will pay for pulling that trigger are not worth it, are very, very high. We should make that case very strongly, and we should do what we need to do to bolster our support.
I will give the Biden administration a lot of credit for that diplomatic activity that you just referred to that has been going on now for months.
The NATO alliance is more unified than ever, in my‑‑I used to work at the NATO alliance. You know, I saw them. They're not‑‑they weren't unified then like they are today, and it's due to an enormous effort. This diplomatic effort that the Biden administration has undertaken has been unprecedented in my experience, and others will have more experience than I on this. But the number of phone calls, number of meetings, the number of levels of diplomacy that have gone into this to forge this alliance that Putin is facing‑‑and again, I bet he's surprised at how firm the NATO alliance is and how strong the Europeans are with the United States. He, I'm sure, didn't expect that‑‑and others, and others as well.
So, yes, I think we should continue that work, and it continues at the UN where the Russians are about to violate again international law and the UN Charter. He's about to commit war crimes, David. So this is the right place to have that conversation.
MR. IGNATIUS: Mr. Ambassador, you know Ukraine well. You served there twice, and you've just visited there at the end of January for some meetings that I'll come back to in a moment. But let me just ask you to assess whether Ukraine is prepared for what could be a quite horrific Russian attack. What's your sense of the mood in Ukraine, and what's your sense of what, if anything, the United States should be doing to give them additional military help now in terms of weapons, not troops, to help them deal with what could be an overwhelming assault?
MR. TAYLOR: On the first part of your question, the Ukrainians are as ready as they can be right now. Both their military‑‑they could be a little more prepared military if they were to call up the reserves right now. That's the one thing that they have not yet done, but their active duty military‑‑I've been in touch with the defense minister regularly. He is very active, and he's confident that they are as ready as they can be militarily for what's about to come if it, indeed, comes. That preparedness extends to the rest of the country.
I was just there. Many people, a lot of‑‑your organization and other news organizations have been reporting on the incredible training and preparations that these territorial defense forces are making. I have good friends in Ukraine, and they are telling me about their preparation.
One young man, not so‑‑he's kind of middle‑aged now. I met him when he was young. He was on the Maidan. He was on the Independence Square for the Revolution of Dignity in 2014. He was a squad leader. He had men with him. He was well prepared, forceful. He's a civilian. He was telling me that he was buying his weapon that he's ready to use against Russians if they were to attack and invade and occupy. He was there at a gun shop, and it was jammed. And it was jammed. There are people who are preparing. There are many people.
There are 500,000 veterans, and the defense minister makes this point. There are 500,000 Ukrainian veterans who have fought the Russians in the east over these eight years that the Russians first invaded Ukraine in 2014. These people are very motivated, very skilled, and they are ready.
So it's a grim determination. They are going about their business. They hope it doesn't happen. They are ready if it does.
David, you know that the Ukrainians have a tough history. They've been under the Russian oppression, Soviet oppression, czarist oppression for a long time. They've experienced Holodomor, this death by famine that Stalin killed 4 million Ukrainians. They experienced Chernobyl. They have gone through very tough times. They want to be out from under Russia, and so they're prepared. They are prepared for what's to come.
Oh, and, David, sorry. You asked about should we be doing more. Yes. Yes, we should. We should do as much‑‑army. We should provide the antitank weapons, the antiaircraft weapons, other kinds of ammunition. We should be making as much effort as we can, and it's going in.
I mean, we've seen now recently in the past couple of weeks, the videos, the shots taken at the Kyiv Airport. At the Boryspil Airport that many of us know well, it's now getting planeload after planeload of weapons, ammunition, antitank weapons from not just the United States but also from other NATO allies. The Baltics, the Baltic nations are sending antiaircraft weapons. So we should be doing more of that in answer to your question, absolutely.
MR. IGNATIUS: Mr. Ambassador, I had mentioned that you had recently traveled to Ukraine, and I've written one purpose of your visit was to go see President Zelensky and to encourage him to seek more unity. Ukraine is, as you say, is a resolute country, but there's so many different competing political leaders, business oligarchs. It's a country that is sometimes democratic to a fault. And you, I'm told, urged President Zelensky to embrace unity. He said he wasn't ready to welcome the opposition yet. Do you still have that concern that unity needs to be tighter in Kyiv, and do you think with the Russians now moving ever closer to invasion that there's going to be some move toward the unity that you urged on Zelensky?
MR. TAYLOR: I do. In answer to your last question, I do think that it's going‑‑we're going to see that unity. We are starting to see that unity. We had the Day of Unity yesterday. He had a demonstration across the country of citizens, Ukrainians out there, all ages and all across the country. It didn't matter what language they speak. It didn't matter where they were, in east or the west. They were out there demonstrating, singing the national anthem‑‑singing the national anthem.
Hey, by the way, David, this is so interesting. The Ukrainians know every word of their‑‑they know the second and third verses of their national anthem.
MR. TAYLOR: This is a proud nation, and they are unified. The people are unified, in particular, against Putin, in particular, against the Russians. So that's there.
You are exactly right. Several of us went to Kyiv two and a half weeks ago. The Atlantic Council organized this. We had a good session with President Zelensky and others, and before we saw President Zelensky, I asked several of the other political leaders, some in opposition, if President Zelensky were to call a meeting of these political leaders, would they come? And to the person, to the man and the woman‑‑there were both‑‑they said yes, they would.
It's there. That unity is there, and that unity will be solidified as soon as Putin pulls that trigger. As soon as he goes across and dispels any hope that many of us have, including a lot of Ukrainians, hope that there's still an off‑ramp, still a way that he will back down, he will blink and go to negotiations, there is still that hope, but if that hope is dashed, as soon as it's dashed, you will see the Ukrainian society, including political leaders rallying behind President Zelensky. President Zelensky is the only president they have right now. They may‑‑the fact is President Zelensky not long after we were there, I think the next day, he came out and made some comments about unity. And he said‑‑he said, you know‑‑he was speaking to the whole notion. He said you can hate the president or you can hate the government, but you can't hate the country. And the country is unified, and if the Russians pull that trigger, if Putin pulls that trigger, they will unify. Their opposition will unify. Zelensky, I'm convinced, will step up.
He's been resolute so far, as I've said. He hasn't blinked. President Biden has been with him, and he will demonstrate leadership, I am sure.
MR. IGNATIUS: So I want to come back to the core issue of the diplomatic track, to the extent it still exists, and that's Russia's demand that its security interests be recognized by a guarantee that Ukraine on its border will never become a member of NATO. And the United States and NATO quickly responded that's a nonstarter. Any country should be free to apply to NATO. That's not an appropriate NATO decision.
I'm wondering, given that again this morning Russia said that if this demand is not addressed, it will seek to resolve the problem through‑‑again, they used this odd phrase‑‑"military technical means," I'm wondering, Mr. Ambassador, if you see any way to speak to this Russian concern about their security without doing something that would be unacceptable to NATO, some way to finesse this.
Everybody I talk to says Ukraine isn't going to be in NATO anytime soon. Is there any way to embrace that reality without making a compromise that we'd regret?
MR. TAYLOR: Well, David, I firmly believe that President Putin can achieve a lot of what he's after, what he says he needs, what he has demanded of NATO and the United‑‑he can achieve a lot of that through this negotiated path that we talked about, that you just mentioned.
You know, he slapped down on the table, two draft treaties back in December and said negotiate these‑‑not "negotiate"‑‑sign these right now, and if you don't sign them right now, then I'm going to use, exactly what you just said, this military technical‑‑I'm going to‑‑he didn't say it, but I'm going to invade. You know, I'm going to, military technically, fix this if you don't sign.
In those treaties, in those draft treaties that he's suggesting, he listed a bunch of concerns, many concerns that he's got about his own‑‑about Russian security, concerns about Russian‑‑many of whom‑‑many of which he says we've been ignoring for years and years and years. He says that he's been yelling at the United States and NATO and the Europeans to "take my security concerns seriously," and he could say now he's succeeded. He could say now that, finally, "The Americans, NATO are taking my concerns, my security concerns seriously, and they have agreed‑‑". He can tell his Russian citizens, "They have agreed to sit down with me and talk about these things. They never were willing to do that before. Now they are. I have succeeded." That's the story he could tell.
Now, the question you ask is in that negotiation, are there ways to‑‑"finesse," I think the word you used‑‑finesse this issue of Ukraine in NATO? Or the other way to think about this is NATO's open door. NATO in its original document and the Washington treaty that founded NATO back in, I think '49, said that any European nation that meets the standards has a right to apply--Democratic nation has the right to apply. That's in the‑‑that's in the treaty. That applies to Ukraine.
By the way, it applies to Sweden and Finland, who have recently indicated that while they're not ready to apply tomorrow, they're worried about their security when they see what the Russians are doing, when they see that the Russians are threatening for the first time since World War II to invade a neighbor and grab territory. Actually, they did it in 2014, but now they're talking about doing it on a large scale, the largest land war in Europe since World War II. And the Finns and the Swedes are worried about it as well. So they should have the right to apply to NATO, as should Ukraine. It's a sovereign right. Finland, Sweden, Ukraine, they're sovereign countries. They get to decide.
So I don't think there is a finesse there. You're right, and the Ukrainians know that they're not going to get into NATO tomorrow. They know that. NATO knows that. Russia knows that. Putin knows that. So why he's threatening to have thousands of Russian troops killed and tens of thousands of Ukrainians die on the principle, on the reason, on the demand to change something that's not even going to happen immediately, he's going to kill a lot of people because he's worried that sometime in the future, Ukraine is going to join NATO? This is crazy. This is the war crime I was talking about.
So I don't think there's a finesse there. I think that Zelensky and Biden have not blinked on that issue or the other issues as well, and that there are ways that Russia can improve its security by sitting down and negotiating. And that's the way to go.
MR. IGNATIUS: Let me ask you what you think the consequences would be for Russia if Putin surges across that border, invades Ukraine, faces a hostile country, the caskets go home to Moscow, and sanctions that really do cripple the Russian economy are put in place. Do you think that it's likely that history will look back at this and judge that Putin badly overplayed his hand, that to use a very familiar analogy, that this was a mistake like what most people would say the United States made in invading Iraq in 2003? How do you think history is likely to judge what Putin is doing now?
MR. TAYLOR: I think history will not be kind to Putin at all, and I think, you know, the historians will look back, and they will look at other dictators who caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands, millions of people in the previous century. We can think of those dictators' names. They lost in the end.
President Putin will go into that category of dictator and that category of a historical figure who failed and who, as failing, was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands, even millions of people. This would be a tragedy. This would be a tragedy. It would be a tragedy for Putin. Who cares about a tragedy for Putin? It would be a tragedy for Russia. It would be a tragedy for Europe.
And all of that cost, David, that you just described well is the reason he shouldn't do that. It's the reason he should decide that the costs are just not worth the benefit on that, and one of the things that you said which I think bears emphasizing, when Russian soldiers come back to Russian villages and are buried in Russian graveyards and cause mourning and anger on the part of Russian families, that could destabilize Russia. That could‑‑that could bring people to the streets. That could bring people to the bygones across Russia.
That could challenge Mr. Putin's regime. It's not a‑‑it's not a strong‑‑it's a fragile regime. He's been there a long time. People are‑‑the Russians are not happy with him and getting less happy with him by the day, and they have a pretty‑‑Russians, by and large, have a pretty good attitude about Ukrainians. And they're going to ask themselves why exactly are we invading, killing Ukrainians, and at the same time having our sons and daughters coming back dead? Why are we doing this? I think he has‑‑he will be in jeopardy politically. He will be in jeopardy from a historical standpoint. The Russian economy will be hammered. I don't see how he comes out of this at all. This is a tragedy for Russia.
MR. IGNATIUS: Mr. Ambassador, we have come to the end of the time that we set. This has been an extraordinary examination of the crisis that's just ahead of us by one of America's most knowledgeable experts on Ukraine and Russia. I just want to thank Ambassador Taylor for joining us for this discussion this morning. Let's hope that the worst of the possibilities that he described so clearly don't happen.
Ambassador Taylor, thanks for being with us.
MR. TAYLOR: David, thank you very much for letting me be here.
MR. IGNATIUS: So please join Washington Post Live for future programming. As this crisis goes forward, we’ll be doing our best to keep you informed about it. Go to WashingtonPostLive.com to see all of the amazing programming that we’re putting together. Thanks for joining us this morning for this discussion of the Ukraine crisis. | null | null | null | null | null |
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That conclusion was supported by a second report released Thursday showing that the virus infected 16 of 23 friends who attended the event together — with some staying in the same rental and socializing in bars or restaurants away from the convention — and that some took the virus home to their households.
Although everyone in the social group was vaccinated, the highly contagious omicron variant infected 70 percent of them, the CDC reported, as well as 33 percent of their household contacts — a remarkably high “attack rate.” The first person in the cluster was a man from Minnesota who flew to the convention the day before it began and later became the first reported case of community-acquired omicron infection in the United States.
All of the omicron infections at the convention — a gathering of fans of a Japanese style of animation — were found in this one cluster. The rest were caused by the delta variant or other sublineages of the novel coronavirus.
Despite the omicron variant’s infectiousness, none of the 23 were hospitalized, and their symptoms were mostly not severe, the CDC said. And those who had received booster shots fared somewhat better than those who were only fully vaccinated: Six of 11 who had been given the extra shot became infected, compared with 10 of 12 who had completed only their initial vaccination series. | null | null | null | null | null |
Judge holds D.C. in contempt for failing to provide education to older students with disabilities in jail
Education services disrupted during the pandemic continue to leave some students without enough support to learn, judge found.
The D.C. jail (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
A federal judge found the District in contempt of court for failing to provide adequate special education to students with disabilities detained at the D.C. jail.
In the Wednesday order, District Court Judge Carl J. Nichols required the city to have a “remote-learning system fully operational” by March 15, submit individualized plans to make up for missed special education hours over the past five months, and extend eligibility for all students who may have aged out of the education program since the court first issued an injunction in June 2021.
“Today’s contempt order is a historic victory for the often overlooked high school students incarcerated at the DC Jail,” said Tayo Belle, senior staff attorney at the School Justice Project, a nonprofit that advocates for older students with disabilities involved in the courts, in a statement.
The order came more than 10 months after the School Justice Project, the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs and Terris Pravlik & Millian law firm filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of students with disabilities incarcerated in D.C. during the pandemic, alleging that the city had “effectively abandoned efforts to teach them,” per the complaint. While some services have since improved, the contempt order revealed deep and persistent failures to operate the high school program, which attorneys say is responsible for 30 to 40 students at any given time.
The suit is just one part of a firestorm of litigation that has surrounded detention in the District over the past two years. Attorneys have sued over coronavirus conditions at the D.C. jail and the special education of people with disabilities at the city’s youth detention center, and the U.S. Marshals Service wrote a searing letter accusing the jail of “systemic” mistreatment of detainees, including unsanitary living conditions and the punitive denial of food and water.
Under city law, D.C. is responsible for providing specialized education to people between 18- and 22 years old with disabilities while they are detained. That means the high school program inside the D.C. jail — which was run by D.C. Public Schools until Maya Angelou Public Charter School took over the responsibility in October — is supposed to have services such as speech-language pathology to ensure that each person is able to access the curriculum.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs said those services halted when coronavirus landed, and they had not resumed more than a year later. There was still no regular teaching instruction nor any related services by April 2021, according to court filings. Instead, students at that time were expected to complete work packets on their own time and without ample support.
Sarah Comeau, director of programs and co-founder at the School Justice Project, said that there have been small improvements since Maya Angelou took over the high school program in October. Some students resumed in-person classes and other programming became more regular. But she said there were always some students who did not receive the specialized education and services to which they were entitled.
“The failure of the District to educate these young people and comply with federal law effectively left the entire population of students with disabilities languishing inside this facility,” she said.
“The Contempt Order is a clear signal that D.C. must take seriously its obligation to provide special education and related services at the D.C. jail,” said Kaitlin Banner, deputy legal director at Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights & Urban Affairs, in a statement. | null | null | null | null | null |
FILE - Elliot Page attends The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute benefit gala in New York on Sept. 13, 2021. Page is working on a memoir, in which he will write about everything from his Oscar-nominated film career to becoming a prominent transgender person. Flatiron Books announced Thursday that “Pageboy” will be published next year. (Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File) | null | null | null | null | null |
When some of the families who lost loved ones in the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting sued the manufacturer that marketed the assault rifle used to kill 20 first graders and six adults, some legal experts said they had no chance of prevailing. Congress, after all, had granted the gun industry unprecedented — some said bulletproof — protection from liability. But having suffered unimaginable tragedy, the families pressed ahead. The result was a remarkable victory that puts the gun industry on notice that it can now be held accountable for shootings committed with its products.
Under a settlement agreement disclosed this week, Remington Arms, the maker of the Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle used in the 2012 shooting in Newtown, Conn., will pay $73 million to relatives of five of the children and four of the adults killed. The landmark deal, believed to be the largest payout by a gun manufacturer to victims of gun violence, is the first time a lawsuit against a firearms maker has been settled since Congress, at the behest of the gun lobby, granted the industry sweeping immunity from civil liability in 2005.
Remington didn’t admit liability and the $73 million will be paid by four insurers of the now-bankrupt company. Representatives of the gun industry seized on those factors to argue that the impact of the Sandy Hook settlement will be limited; solvent gunmakers would more vigorously defend themselves. No doubt they would. And there are still formidable obstacles to gun victims seeking redress because of the misguided federal law that gives gunmakers protection that no other industry enjoys.
Nonetheless, the Sandy Hook families accomplished much of what they set out to do. They took on an industry that thought itself untouchable and they made it accountable. They opened up gun manufacturers to greater scrutiny by forcing Remington to release thousands of pages of internal company documents. They provided a framework that states can use to make the gun industry more responsible. Nothing, of course, can make up for what these families lost; what they most sought was to spare other families the grief they have had to bear. | null | null | null | null | null |
ORANGEBURG, S.C. — U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm on Thursday announced that $3 million in federal funding would be directed toward historically Black colleges and universities, and other minority serving institutions, for research she said will further the Biden administration’s goals of carbon neutrality and help strengthen a pipeline from those schools into energy-related jobs. | null | null | null | null | null |
Eric Kay, who worked as the liaison between the team’s players and the reporters who covered them, was accused of giving Skaggs a lethal mixture of oxycodone and fentanyl, leading to his death in his Southlake, Tex., hotel room. His body was found on July 1, 2019, the day the Angels were to play the Texas Rangers. He was 27.
Kay faces 20 years to life in prison on a charge of drug distribution resulting in death and up to 20 years on a drug conspiracy charge. Skaggs’s family is also suing the Angels and Kay over the pitcher’s death.
Following several days of testimony, including from a former all-star and other ballplayers, the jury of 10 women and two men began deliberating around midday Thursday after blistering closing arguments from the prosecution and defense. It returned with a verdict before 4 p.m. | null | null | null | null | null |
Judge holds D.C. in contempt for failing to provide education to students with disabilities in jail
Education services disrupted during the pandemic continue to leave some students without enough support to learn, judge found
A federal judge has found the District in contempt of court for failing to provide adequate special education to students with disabilities detained at the D.C. jail.
In the Wednesday order, District Judge Carl J. Nichols required the city to have a “remote-learning system fully operational” by March 15; to submit individualized plans to make up for missed special education hours over the past five months; and to extend eligibility for all students who may have aged out of the education program since the court first issued an injunction in June 2021.
“Today’s contempt order is a historic victory for the often overlooked high school students incarcerated at the DC Jail,” Tayo Belle, senior staff attorney at the School Justice Project, a nonprofit that advocates for older students with disabilities involved in the courts, said in a statement.
The order came more than 10 months after the School Justice Project, the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs and Terris Pravlik & Millian law firm filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of students with disabilities incarcerated in D.C. during the pandemic, alleging that the city had “effectively abandoned efforts to teach them.” While some services have since improved, the contempt order revealed deep and persistent failures to operate the high school program, which attorneys say is responsible for 30 to 40 students at any given time.
The suit is just part of a firestorm of litigation that has surrounded detention in the District over the past two years. Attorneys have sued over coronavirus conditions at the D.C. jail and the special education of people with disabilities at the city’s youth detention center, and the U.S. Marshals Service wrote a searing letter accusing the jail of “systemic” mistreatment of detainees, including unsanitary living conditions and the punitive denial of food and water.
Under city law, D.C. is responsible for providing specialized education to people 18 and 22 years old with disabilities while they are detained. That means the high school program inside the D.C. jail — which was run by D.C. Public Schools until Maya Angelou Public Charter School took over the responsibility in October — is supposed to have services such as speech-language pathology to ensure that each person is able to access the curriculum.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs said those services halted when the coronavirus landed, and that they had not resumed more than a year later. There was still no regular teaching instruction nor any related services by April 2021, according to court filings. Instead, students at that time were expected to complete work packets on their own time and without ample support, the filings said.
Sarah Comeau, director of programs and co-founder at the School Justice Project, said there have been small improvements since Maya Angelou charter school took over the high school program in October. Some students resumed in-person classes and other programming became more regular. But she said there were always some students who did not receive the specialized education and services to which they were entitled.
“The failure of the District to educate these young people and comply with federal law effectively left the entire population of students with disabilities languishing inside this facility,” Comeau said.
“The Contempt Order is a clear signal that D.C. must take seriously its obligation to provide special education and related services at the D.C. jail,” Kaitlin Banner, deputy legal director at Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, said in a statement. | null | null | null | null | null |
Our two great parties are always evolving, but what we’ve often seen in the past is that one party at a time will have an intense internal debate — usually after it loses a few elections — while the other party, having won recent victories, sees little need to change.
Democrats, on the other hand, are having a traditional debate between centrists and true believers. To be sure, the party as a whole has moved left over the long term, but that evolution is still punctuated by short-term pullbacks toward the center. Even in the most liberal places in the country, there are still vigorous debates about policy and tactics. | null | null | null | null | null |
Louisville Democratic mayoral candidate Craig Greenberg speaks during a news conference Feb. 14. (Timothy D. Easley/AP)
Louisville mayoral candidate Craig Greenberg said Thursday that he and his family have been further traumatized after the activist charged with his attempted murder was released on bail just days after the shooting.
Quintez Brown, 21, was released Wednesday with the help of the Louisville Community Bail Fund, a group co-founded by Black Lives Matter Louisville organizer Chanelle Helm, put up the $100,000 bail.
According to the Courier Journal, Brown had interned for the newspaper, appeared on MSNBC and met with high-profile liberal figures including former president Barack Obama and the Rev. Al Sharpton over the past few years.
Brown made national headlines in 2021 after going missing for two weeks. He was later found on a park bench in New York City. This year, the former University of Louisville student announced a run for Louisville Metro Council. | null | null | null | null | null |
A federal jury of 10 women and two men deliberated for three hours before finding Eric Kay guilty of two counts of drug dealing: conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute a controlled substance and distribution of a controlled substance, fentanyl, resulting in Skaggs’s death.
Kay, who worked as the liaison between the Angels’ players and the reporters who covered them, was found guilty of giving Skaggs a lethal mixture of oxycodone and fentanyl, leading to his death in his Southlake, Tex., hotel room. His body was found on July 1, 2019, the day the Angels were to play the Texas Rangers. He was 27.
Once the verdicts were read, Skaggs’s mother, Debbie Hetman, slumped and began crying. Kay’s mother, Sandy Kay, also became emotional. “I’m in shock,” she later said to a reporter.
Kay faces a minimum sentence of 20 years and could be behind bars for the rest of his life. The defense plans to appeal after his sentencing date, scheduled for June 28.
“I’m sorry but I have to order you taken into custody,” U.S. District Judge Terry Means said after the verdict was read.
He was later led down to the basement of the federal courthouse, his legs and hands shackled by a metal chain.
The jury began deliberating around midday after blistering closing arguments from the prosecution and the defense. | null | null | null | null | null |
But to those who closely follow the sport, the 17-year-old Shcherbakova was neither a surprise figure nor an unlikely winner. The reigning world champion wowed judges throughout the 2021 season, managing to remain elite through her speed, musicality and dramatic presence even if her jumping program was not quite as explosive as those of her fellow Russian teens. She was twice a silver medalist at the European championships, and she took third at the most recent Russian championships — behind her training partners, Valieva and Alexandra Trusova, the silver medalist in Beijing.
Yes and no. Yes, because nearly everyone expected Valieva to run away with the victory after the short program and because Shcherbakova reportedly had battled knee and foot injuries over the past year (she also tested positive for the coronavirus in November 2020). No, because Shcherbakova was the 2021 world champion, so she had experienced the ultimate success on the world skating stage previously. She also is a three-time winner at the Russian figure skating championships, beating both Valieva and Olympic silver medalist Alexandra Trusova on separate occasions. | null | null | null | null | null |
People hold signs and pictures of Christina Yuna Lee during a rally in Chinatown on Feb. 14. (Seth Wenig/AP)
NEW YORK CITY — On Monday afternoon, Yul Lee walked past crime scene tape on Chrystie Street, just outside the Grand Street subway station, as she rushed to meet her husband. Despite a family emergency of her own to attend to, she took a moment to look at the entrance of the building where 35-year-old Christina Yuna Lee was slain over the weekend.
“It’s just scary,” said Yul Lee, who is 31, and, like Christina Yuna Lee, is also Korean American (but not related). Unlike some of the passersby, she had already read news reports with details of the killing. And she was acutely aware of the similarities in their demographics.
She works around the corner, so she regularly walks by the apartment building in Manhattan’s Chinatown where Christina Yuna Lee, a senior creative producer at the digital music platform Splice, was killed in her own apartment.
Just before 4:30 a.m. Sunday, a man followed Lee into her building after she arrived home in a taxi, according to surveillance video published by the New York Post. The man, identified by police as Assamad Nash, 25, followed her up six flights of stairs to her apartment, the video shows.
Neighbors heard screams for help, they said, and called the police. When police entered Lee’s apartment, they found her fatally wounded, and she was pronounced dead at the scene. The suspected killer was taken into custody.
On Monday afternoon, Nash was arraigned on first-degree charges of murder, burglary and sexually motivated burglary and is being held without bail. He is facing other charges of criminal mischief and unlawful escape, and was on supervised release at the time of Lee’s killing, according to the New York Times.
Authorities have not determined whether Lee’s killing was a hate crime. But amid a rise in crimes targeting people of Asian descent since the coronavirus pandemic began, her brutal killing in her own home has escalated concerns among New York’s Asian American communities. The attack follows that of 40-year-old Michelle Alyssa Go, who was fatally shoved into the path of an oncoming train at the Times Square station on Jan. 15. It comes nearly a year after the Atlanta-area spa shootings, in which six Asian women were killed — targeted because of their race and gender, prosecutors have argued.
Many Asian American and Asian women with ties to Chinatown felt on edge, and out of answers, on Monday.
Earlier that day, Asian organizers and residents held a rally at nearby Sara D. Roosevelt Park, calling attention to the increase in violence. A carefully arranged constellation of flowers — mostly white, which symbolizes mourning in Korean culture and is used at funerals — lay at the base of a tree in front of the building in tribute.
For many, Michelle Go’s NYC subway death highlights failures in public safety for women
Yuh-Line Niou, the Taiwanese American member of the New York State Assembly whose district includes Chinatown, had organized a news conference on Sunday after the killing. The state legislator, who is 38, noted that her proximity in age and neighborhood made Lee’s death more poignant.
Niou said that she heard about Lee’s death at 8 a.m. on Sunday, and that some of her staff and friends had known Lee. “When they found out it was her, it was a lot, you know? She’s somebody in the community,” Niou said.
“That’s exactly why it hurts so much, and also hits so close to home,” she continued. “The community is feeling a lot of the same things. There’s so many people who have just told me: They’re so afraid. They’re afraid for their sisters, they’re afraid for their grandparents, they’re afraid for their daughters.”
For Niou, the legacy of racism is clear in the recent violence. “We have a history in America of perpetuating this notion that Asian Americans do not belong here,” she said, pointing to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and Japanese internment during World War II. At the same time, she added, the model minority myth has further othered Asian Americans.
“We don’t get resources, we don’t get help. Instead, people think, almost like, we deserve it,” Niou said. “The community feels all these things at once, there’s the layers of it, the history of it, and then the exhaustion of constantly having to beg for our own existence.”
Niou’s feelings were echoed by other women who saw themselves reflected in Lee’s story, realizing that the world would see them similarly: college-educated, professional women who are potentially targets of violence because of their age, gender and race.
Alice Wong, 37, was born and raised in Chinatown and now works for a nonprofit nearby in Lower Manhattan; she has worked in advocacy for the Asian American and Pacific Islander or, AAPI, community for over 15 years. She said she is feeling “heartbroken and angry.”
“What I keep thinking about is that Christina took a cab home to be safe. She did what she was supposed to do, and she was brutally murdered,” Wong said. “It feels like everyone cares for a short while, and then they don’t anymore. And my community is still here trying to pick up the pieces from every attack.”
The continuous cycles of concern among Asian American communities are grating on Wong, who wants others to care about her community “for longer than a week,” noting that she has been giving interviews about this cycle of anti-Asian violence for two years.
Marilla Li, deputy director of Queens Community Services for the Chinese-American Planning Council, said she and her friends are struggling under a similar blanket of exhaustion and “a genuine sorrow on both the part of fellow millennial Asian American women and the circumstances that led to this guy doing what he did — those things mixed together.”
As the New York Times points out, Lee’s killing fits a pattern that has become common during the pandemic in New York City: “a seemingly unprovoked attack in which the person charged is a homeless man.”
With her advocacy work, Li, 33, said she is trying to create structural changes that would prevent someone who may be mentally ill or homeless from attacking people who look like her, she said. (Nash’s last known residence was a nearby homeless shelter.)
“I feel really compelled to educate my fellow Chinese or Asian community members on how to really find some compassion in this moment, for all parties involved,” she said.
At the same time, she said, “I have to find a little bit of time to also figure out how to process and allow myself to be really, really sad about it.”
For Niou, Lee’s killing must move the city government to action. She said Asian American communities need more funding, especially for mental health services, including basic wellness checks for folks. She also believes the city needs a better solution for the homeless population. But, she added, the Asian American community cannot do it alone.
“Everybody’s kind of on pause because this has been so horrific, and on top of that, everybody wants us to have a solution,” Niou said. “Our Asian American community has many ideas. But why is it that everybody’s always asking us to find a solution? We need everybody’s help — it’s not our fault.” | null | null | null | null | null |
“We are alarmed by the revelation that these conditions have persisted for years despite reportedly being known to installation leadership,” the lawmakers wrote. “We appreciate fully that military installations must often operate under budgetary constraints and with competing priorities, but these conditions are critical for the wellbeing of service members and pose an immediate threat to military readiness.” A spokesman for the secretary of the Navy did not respond to a request for comment Thursday afternoon.
Van Hollen, Cardin and Raskin asked Del Toro to describe actions the Navy is taking to “end the troubling pattern of on-base facilities being neglected until they reach a state of crisis,” and asked what the Maryland delegation could do to support its efforts. A spokeswoman for Van Hollen said the Navy confirmed receipt of the letter. | null | null | null | null | null |
NEW YORK — Walmart muscled through rising inflation, surging costs related to COVID-19 sick leave and snarled global supply chains to put up strong fiscal fourth quarter results. The Arkansas company reported Thursday that its quarterly profit reached $3.56 billion, or $1.28 per share. Per-share earnings adjusted for one-time costs and benefits was $1.53, or 3 cents better than Wall Street expected. Revenue edged up to $152.87 billion. Last year during the same period the company lost $2.9 billion due partly to costs related to the pandemic. Walmart is the first major retailer to report fourth-quarter fiscal results, which include the critical holiday shopping period, and is a major barometer of spending.
DETROIT — U.S. auto safety regulators have launched another investigation of Tesla, this time tied to complaints that its cars can stop on roads for no apparent reason. The government says it has 354 complaints from owners during the past nine months about “phantom braking” in Tesla’s Models 3 and Y. The probe covers an estimated 416,000 vehicles from the 2021 and 2022 model years. No crashes or injuries were reported. The cars and SUVs have partially automated driver-assist features that allow them to automatically brake and steer in their lanes. Government documents posted Thursday say the vehicles can unexpectedly brake at highway speeds.
NEW YORK — Stocks and bond yields sank Thursday as markets remained anxious over the possibility that Russia could invade Ukraine. The S&P 500 fell 2.1%, its biggest drop in two weeks. Technology stocks led the way lower, pulling the Nasdaq down 2.9%. Investors shifted money into low-risk U.S. government bonds, pushing yields lower. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 1.97%. Markets are unsettled by Russia’s buildup of troops near Ukraine, and U.S. President Joe Biden said there was a high risk that Russia would invade the country. European markets closed lower. Walmart rose after reporting strong results.
BEIJING — China has rejected a U.S. accusation that Beijing is failing to live up to its market-opening commitments in a new round of complaints as companies wait for the two governments to restart talks on ending a tariff war. The Ministry of Commerce criticized the Biden administration for saying it is developing new ways to deal with Chinese trade tactics. The chief U.S. trade envoy said Beijing has “expanded its state-led, non-market approach” instead of carrying out market-opening promises made when it joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. The Ministry of Commerce rejected that as “completely at odds with the facts.”
WASHINGTON — The Senate has voted 65-30 to start debating legislation averting a weekend government shutdown. The bill would keep agencies afloat through March 11. Leaders hope that would give bipartisan bargainers enough time to finally reach a deal financing federal agencies until fall. Without the current legislation, federal spending authority will expire Saturday. The House approved the legislation last week with both parties’ backing. The process has had minimal drama, with neither side believing it would benefit by forcing an election-year shutdown. In exchange for allowing quick votes on the bill, Republicans want votes on proposals halting federal vaccine mandates and prodding Congress to write balanced budgets.
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department is launching a new initiative aimed at identifying companies that exploit supply chain disruptions in the U.S. to make increased profits in violation of federal antitrust laws. The program is being unveiled Thursday by the Justice Department’s antitrust division and the FBI. The program comes amid ongoing supply chain struggles and labor shortages in the U.S. that have plagued retailers since the coronavirus pandemic began. The Justice Department says it worries companies may “seek to exploit supply chain disruptions for their own illicit gain.” Prosecutors point to agreements between individuals and businesses to fix prices or wages or to rig bids.
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A lease agreement says Ford Motor Co. and a South Korean company would have to create more than 5,000 full-time jobs at a planned electric pickup truck factory and battery manufacturing plant in Tennessee or pay back at least part of a $500 million state grant for the project. The Megasite Authority of West Tennessee’s board of directors signed off on the lease during a meeting to discuss the $5.6 billion project to build electric F-Series pickups and batteries at a 3,600-acre parcel of land in rural Haywood County.
LOS ANGELES — The stock market’s blockbuster gains in 2021 helped pad savers’ retirement accounts, lifting the average balance on some popular investment plans to new highs. The average 401(k) plan balance stood at $130,700 at the end of last year, a 7.6% increase from 2020, according to a review of 20.4 million accounts by Fidelity Investments. The median balance, a better measure of the typical plan size, rose 2.1% to $28,600. The gains come amid a banner year for stocks as consumer demand fueled by easing pandemic lockdowns pumped up corporate profits, keeping investors in a buying mood. | null | null | null | null | null |
The professor apologized, and the school’s dean acknowledged the use of a derogatory term to the campus community last week. But many on campus called on administrators to do more to confront what they called an urgent need to address institutional problems — such as making implicit bias training mandatory for faculty — and to more publicly acknowledge the incident.
A spokeswoman for Georgetown Law did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
The Asian Pacific American Law Students Association posted a statement on Instagram last week calling for changes after learning of the slur incident. The tweet with the video clip, which had been viewed more than 140,000 times by Thursday, appeared to show Franz Werro, a professor who teaches in both Switzerland and D.C.
In the new letter, students said that while they understand Werro is not from the United States, “this does not excuse the incident.”
Werro did not respond to requests for comment. The dean’s statement does not name him. | null | null | null | null | null |
FILE -This Sept. 28, 2010, file photo shows the coal-fired Hunter 2 power plant in Castle Dale, Utah. A new type of nuclear reactor that would provide carbon-free energy to utilities in four states in the Western U.S. poses financial risks for utilities and their ratepayers, according to a report released Thursday, Feb. 17, 2022 that was immediately criticized by owner of the project and the company developing the reactor. The reactors are part of a broader nationwide effort to reduce greenhouse gases, like those from this coal plant in Utah.(AP Photo/The Salt Lake Tribune via AP, File) (Al Hartmann/The Salt Lake Tribune) | null | null | null | null | null |
This crisis, however, has highlighted a larger strategic failure, one that extends beyond this administration. One of the central rules of strategy is to divide your adversaries. But, increasingly, U.S. foreign policy is doing the opposite. Earlier this month, in a more than 5,000-word document, Russia and China affirmed a “friendship” with “no limits.” The two powers appear to be closer to one another than at any time in 50 years.
For Russia — essentially a declining power — China’s support is a godsend. The most significant reason even tough sanctions against Russia might not work is that China, the world’s second-largest economy, could help. Russia recently announced new deals to sell more oil and gas to China, and Beijing could buy even more energy and other imports from the country. It could also let Moscow use various Chinese mechanisms and institutions to evade U.S. financial restrictions. “China is our strategic cushion,” Sergey Karaganov, a Kremlin adviser told Nikkei. “We know that in any difficult situation, we can lean on it for military, political and economic support.” | null | null | null | null | null |
The MLB lockout shows no signs of a thaw after a 15-minute session in Manhattan
With spring training games scheduled to start in a matter of weeks, the locks stayed on facilities like the Angels' in Tempe, Ariz. (Ross D. Franklin/AP)
NEW YORK — If anyone had wanted to play baseball in Manhattan on Thursday, they would have been able to do so comfortably. It was an unseasonably warm February afternoon, the kind of day just nice enough to remind one of just how welcome the spring thaw will be — and of just how far away it still is.
But for Major League Baseball, mired deep in a lockout well into its third month, a thaw in labor negotiations between the league and its players union seems no closerafter another brief negotiating session Thursday.
These days, the closest thing to a “home game” for MLB players is a collective bargaining session held at the union headquarters instead of the league offices a few blocks away. That was the setting for Thursday’s session, which lasted just 15 minutes, enough time for the players union to hand over a proposal with a few changes from their last one, then watch MLB’s negotiating team head back to its offices to mull it over. Spring training games, for which tickets have been sold and fans have planned trips, are scheduled to begin in less than two weeks.
The length of Thursday’s session — the first the sides have held since Saturday — is not necessarily indicative of its productivity, according to people involved on both sides of the negotiations.
No one expected a deal to be reached Thursday, and the union’s proposal was relatively narrow, according to people familiar with it: The MLBPA dropped its demand for 100 percent of players with two-plus years of service time qualify for salary arbitration, instead asking for 80 percent of those players to become eligible. It also suggested that the pre-arbitration bonus pool meant to distribute additional money to high-performing young players who do not yet quality for arbitration be set at $115 million and benefit 150 top-performing players, instead of the union’s previous proposal of $100 million to be distributed among 30.
From the union’s perspective, the first move represents a major concession. The players had long argued for arbitration eligibility after two years of service instead of three, which is how the system used to be set up decades ago. They seemed to believe they had a chance to get it, too.
Instead, the union is effectively moving from a proposal in which all players with two-plus years of service time qualify for arbitration to 80 percent of eligible players — something they argue will cost players millions over the five-year life of a collective bargaining agreement.
From the league’s perspective, that move is minimal — a rewording, rather than a meaningful reworking — of an ask the owners were never going to answer in the affirmative. And as for the union’s proposal to increase the number of players who would benefit from a pre-arbitration bonus pool, the owners will see that as a step back, not forward, given that they had been advocating for a far smaller pool ($15 million) to be distributed among far fewer players.
The brevity of Thursday’s negotiating session, then, was more related to the extent of the union’s proposal than any ill-will on both sides. After the meeting broke up, lead negotiators Dan Halem of MLB and Bruce Meyer of the players union spoke privately for 20 minutes in what one person familiar with the conversation described as a “candid” and not unexpected heart-to-heart.
What came of that meeting is unclear, as is the timeline for another major negotiation. The sides are scheduled to talk about less heated issues not directly related to the more contentious economic ones Friday, after which the union will expect the league to offer a counterproposal of its own — perhaps sometime next week.
When it does, the union will almost certainly be focused on the competitive balance tax as a key to quick progress. MLB has proposed to move the competitive balance tax threshold to $214 million in 2022 and to $222 million by the end of the deal, numbers the union argues are far too low given the rates at which revenue have increased in recent years.
Just as important to the union, according to people familiar with players’ thinking, are the tax rates imposed on teams that spend over those thresholds. MLB is proposing to double current tax rates, something the players believe will curb free agent spending and effectively create a hard salary cap — the one thing the MLBPA has always been clear it would do anything to avoid.
Until those tax rates come down, until the sides inch closer on the many other issues at play — until negotiating sessions no longer resemble something that could have been easily been an email — baseball’s long winter will endure. | null | null | null | null | null |
The White House was unable to extend an expansion in the Child Tax Credit amid pushback from Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.).
MASON, MICHIGAN — December 21, 2021: Amy, a behavior technician works with Moira Gillilland, 2, who has Autism, at the home of Lydia Coe, MoiraÕs mother, in Mason, Mich., on December 21, 2021. Lydia has been utilizing the Child Tax Credit to help support her family. (Brittany Greeson for The Washington Post)
Democrats in Congress last March approved an expansion of the Child Tax Credit that ran from July through the end of 2021. The program extended payments of $250-per-month for children aged 6 through 17 and $300-per-month for those under 6 to almost all families in the U.S., though the benefits were phased out for wealthier families. The program’s cost was about $120 billion per year. More than 61 million children in roughly 36 million households received the payment in December, according to federal data.
With the expansion in effect, Democrats and the White House frequently touted the credit as achieving a dramatic victory over child poverty. Administration officials pointed to data showing a 24 percent drop in hunger for families due to Biden’s tax credits, among a range of other improvements in the well-being of poor children.
Columbia’s study found that child poverty is now at its highest since the end of 2020. Despite the tremendous increase in unemployment caused by covid, government relief programs such as stimulus checks and unemployment benefits in fact lowered poverty rates in the U.S. Most dramatic for lowering child poverty was the expanded Child Tax Credit, which was made both more generous and extended to nonworking and poor parents who had traditional been excluded from receiving benefits.
The White House statement also urged families to fill out their taxes this year to ensure they receive the full benefit from the program. Half of the expanded Child Tax Credit will be paid out to Americans when they file their taxes this year, with the other half disbursed in monthly increments over the last six months of 2021.
The Columbia study was authored by Zachary Parolin, of Bocconi University, as well as Sophie Collyer and Megan Curran of Columbia University. | null | null | null | null | null |
Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) speaks to reporters Feb. 16, 2022, outside a Judiciary Committee hearing on Capitol Hill. (Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters)
Blackburn specifically demanded a formal commitment that the federal government would not spend taxpayer dollars on crack pipe, despite days of public denials from the Department of Health and Human Services. That official word arrived Tuesday from the health agency’s leader, Secretary Xavier Becerra, prompting Blackburn soon after to release her hold on the proposal.
A previous version of this article misspelled the last name of U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra. | null | null | null | null | null |
The White House was unable to extend an expansion in the Child Tax Credit amid pushback from Sen. Joe Manchin III
A behavior technician works with Moira Gillilland, 2, who has autism, at the home of Lydia Coe in Mason, Mich., in December 2021. Coe had been utilizing the Child Tax Credit to help support her daughter. (Brittany Greeson for The Washington Post)
Democrats in Congress last March approved an expansion of the Child Tax Credit that ran from July through the end of 2021. The program extended payments of $250-per-month for children ages 6 through 17 and $300-per-month for those under 6 to almost all families in the United States, though the benefits were phased out for wealthier families. The program’s cost was about $120 billion per year. More than 61 million children in roughly 36 million households received the payment in December, according to federal data.
With the expansion in effect, Democrats and the White House frequently touted the credit as achieving a dramatic victory over child poverty. Administration officials pointed to data showing a 24 percent drop in hunger for families connected to Biden’s tax credits, among a range of other improvements in the well-being of poor children.
Columbia’s study found that child poverty is now at its highest since the end of 2020. Despite the tremendous increase in unemployment caused by the coronavirus pandemic, government relief programs such as stimulus checks and unemployment benefits in fact lowered poverty rates in the United States. Most dramatic for lowering child poverty was the expanded Child Tax Credit, which was made both more generous and extended to nonworking and poor parents who had traditional been excluded from receiving benefits. | null | null | null | null | null |
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) speaks with former NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom at the Capitol on Thursday. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
For years, liberals have claimed Colin Kaepernick has been blackballed by the NFL for racial-justice protests which included kneeling during the national anthem. Today, conservatives are claiming much the same thing about the NBA’s Enes Kanter Freedom, who has struggled for playing time and was recently released, following months of criticizing China.
Freedom has been outspoken on human rights before, particularly in his home country of Turkey. But at the beginning of the current season, he became more focused on China, whose market has become an increasingly important one for the NBA — a situation which had already touched off controversy in recent years.
On the NBA’s trade deadline day last week, Freedom was dealt from the Boston Celtics to the Houston Rockets and promptly cut by Houston. (The Rockets happen to be a big team in China, given former NBA star Yao Ming played for them. The team also provided the scene the 2019 controversy, when the Rockets’ general manager briefly tweeted in support of Hong Kong’s independence.)
Freedom was once paid handsomely as well — even more than Kaepernick at his peak, in fact. But in his late 20s, he had seen a decline in both stats and playing time, and he signed with the Celtics this past offseason for the veteran’s minimum of $2.7 million. Despite the relatively small salary he was making, Houston opted not to keep him on.
Kaepernick had led the 49ers to the Super Bowl as recently as the 2012 season and also the conference championship game the following year. Comparing him to other quarterbacks is somewhat difficult, in that he never put up huge passing stats but was more of a running threat than most. But his numbers had clearly been on the decline. His passer rating declined every year between his Super Bowl season (98.3) and the year before which he was named a backup (78.5), when it was near the bottom of the league. He stats improved when he regained the starting job in 2016, but he quarterbacked the team to just a 1-10 record in his 11 starts.
Freedom is also somewhat difficult to pin down statistically, in that he has put up good numbers — at least offensively, and at least when he plays. He earned his big contract in 2015, for four years and $70 million, after scoring 18.7 points per game and pulling down 11 rebounds per game in a partial season with the Oklahoma City Thunder, and averaging 15.5 points for the full season. He’s struggled to match those numbers since then, but even as he has generally been a backup in recent years, Freedom has often put up good offensive numbers when he’s been on the court. Last season, he was eighth in the league in rebounds per 48 minutes and 20th in player efficiency rating.
In no season has his playing time been as cut, though, as it was this season. Following his China criticisms, he played in just two of the team’s first 13 games, leading him to tweet, “Keep limiting me on the court, I will expose you off the court.” He has played more since then, but has still averaged just 11.7 minutes per game for the Celtics in the games he has played, scoring 4.6 points and pulling in 3.7 rebounds. After Freedom’s November tweet, Celtics coach Ime Udoka dismissed the idea that it was due to Freedom’s activism and spotlighted what others had before: defense — and particularly the slow-footed Freedom’s inability to switch quickly in a particular brand of defense that requires a lot of it.
That quote spotlights another key difference: Freedom has made clear he’s talking about the same people who run and fund the NBA — rather than merely talking about something that could turn off fans who happen to disagree with his protest. He has clashed with LeBron James, Nike and plenty of others. It also remains to be seen whether he’ll catch on with another team, given it’s only been a few days, but we probably shouldn’t hold our collective breath. | null | null | null | null | null |
The scene where two Frederick City Police officers were shot responding to a call at the intersection of Waverley Drive and Key Parkway on Feb. 11, 2022 in Frederick, Md. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
The Frederick state’s attorney concluded that two Frederick city police officers were justified shooting a 25-year-old man during an encounter last week that left all three people wounded, officials said in a statement released Thursday.
Lewis faces charges of attempted first-degree murder of two law enforcement officers, prosecutors said. Online court records state Lewis also was charged with two counts of attempted second-degree murder, two counts of assault and a weapons charge.
The online court record did not name a defense attorney representing Lewis.
The officers were treated for gunshot wounds following the incident, but were later released from the hospital, officials said last week. Prosecutors said Lewis remains hospitalized. | null | null | null | null | null |
The professor apologized, and the school’s dean acknowledged the use of a derogatory term to the campus community last week.
“The statement I made was just after the break in the class, during which I had enthusiastically noted the great diversity of languages spoken by members of the class,” professor Franz Werro wrote in a note to his class released by the university. “As a non-native English speaker myself, I did not appreciate that it was a derogatory term, as I now understand it is. I am very sorry I used it.” In a later note to the law school community, Werro said he recognized that his use of the word “caused real hurt and pain for many people in the Georgetown community and beyond.”
But many on campus called on administrators to do more to confront what they called an urgent need to address institutional problems — such as making implicit bias training mandatory for faculty — and to more publicly acknowledge the incident.
The Asian Pacific American Law Students Association posted a statement on Instagram last week calling for changes after learning of the slur incident. The tweet with the video clip, which had been viewed more than 140,000 times by Thursday
Werro teaches in Switzerland and D.C. In the new letter, students said that while they understand Werro is not from the United States, “this does not excuse the incident.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Jia Liu, 26, was indicted on charges including conspiracy to defraud the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and conspiracy to commit forgery over his alleged efforts with a medical clinic nurse who was also charged. The pair allegedly distributed cards to at least 300 people who didn’t actually get vaccinated but who wanted proof that they had. They also allegedly made more than 70 false entries in immunization databases.
As part of the alleged scam, nurse Steven Rodriguez, 27, saw patients who came to the clinic for vaccination appointments but who didn’t actually get shots. Rodriguez allegedly wasted doses of the lifesaving treatment by disposing vials of vaccine that would have been used had the shots been administered, according to the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York.
Officials said Liu and Rodriguez, who live in Queens and Long Island, put countless people in danger by peddling real Centers for Disease Control and Prevention vaccination cards in the hands of people trying to hide their unvaccinated status — including Marines who were mandated to be vaccinated in September following a Defense Department mandate.
“[Liu] has absolutely no regard for the safety of the community at a time when the virus was absolutely raging,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Adam Amir said at Liu’s arraignment on Thursday evening.
Amir requested that Liu, who had a GPS jammer device in his car when it was searched on Thursday, be held without bail on the grounds that he’s a flight risk and sophisticated with technology. He worked as a cyber network operator in the Marine Corps and was skilled enough to figure out how to avoid detection, the prosecutor said.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Sanket J. Bulsara said what the conduct prosecutors described about Liu “makes me very upset, infuriated even,” but that he was giving him what should be his final chance to remain at liberty by setting a $250,000 bond that was secured by a property his stepfather provided for collateral.
“He thinks that in some ways this is one big joke … He basically is giving the middle finger, as far as I can tell, to three federal judges by not following their instructions” and through other conduct, Bulsara said.
Prosecutors said in court papers that Liu allegedly bragged about his forgery acumen in an encrypted message in September, boasting to the recipient that “you have no idea how many documents I faked in my [military] career.”
Liu was charged in October with four misdemeanor counts of trespassing and disorderly conduct related to his presence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when insurrectionists overtook the government landmark where Congress had convened to certify the election results, expressing rage over results of the 2020 presidential election.
The mob was inspired by former president Donald Trump and his supporters, who made unfounded claims of election fraud and sought to overturn the valid results of the contest.
Many believers in disinformation are also opposed to the coronavirus vaccine and have expressed outrage at mandates imposed by governments and workplaces. The vaccine has been deemed safe for most people by an overwhelmingly large percentage of public health officials and scientists. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: The slurs and texts of Ahmaud Arbery’s killers reflect the persistent racism in our society
A woman holds a sign outside the Glynn County courthouse in November 2021 after Ahmaud Arbery's killers were found guilty. (Marco Bello/Reuters)
It is not really surprising that the three men convicted of killing Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man whose fatal mistake was jogging through a White neighborhood, would share a racist worldview. But the casual virulence of their racism — revealed in a Georgia courtroom this week — is truly shocking, even to someone such as myself who grew up under the boot of Jim Crow.
Travis McMichael; his father, Greg McMichael; and their friend William “Roddie” Bryan have already been convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison for the Feb. 23, 2020, homicide; the McMichaels were given no chance of parole. Now all three are back in court, being tried on federal hate-crimes charges, and prosecutors have introduced into evidence text messages and social media posts to demonstrate that racial hatred was indeed a motivating factor in Arbery’s killing.
Post news story: Racist slurs, violent messages: How Arbery's killers talked about Black people
In January 2019, Travis McMichael was making plans to meet a friend identified as N.J. at a Cracker Barrel. When N.J. arrived first at the restaurant, he texted McMichael that a number of Black people were there. McMichael texted back: “Need to change the name from Cracker Barrel to [n-word] Bucket.”
Two months later, Travis McMichael was texting with someone else, identified only as H.B., who complained that while bar-hopping the previous evening he had encountered too many Black people. “Zero [n-word] work with me,” McMichael replied, apparently referring to his job. “They ruin everything. That’s why I love what I do now. Not a [n-word] in sight.”
Another text exchange involving Travis McMichael included a photo of a disabled man wearing a T-shirt that said “At least I’m not a [n-word].” And in his social media accounts, FBI analysts — who unearthed this cornucopia of racism — found a video clip of a Black child dancing that had been overdubbed with a racist song titled “Alabama [n-word].”
Investigators were unable to crack into Greg McMichael’s iPhone to access his texts, but they did find a Facebook post in which he portrayed Black people as lazy and looking only for government handouts.
As for Bryan, the feds managed to access his texts and they found, well, just what you might expect. He appeared to have a particular grievance about the federal holiday that honors the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.. On MLK Day in 2019, he messaged someone that “I’m working so all the [n-word] can take the day off.” The following year on MLK Day, he complained about the “monkey parade over there” in downtown Brunswick, Ga., the coastal town where Aubrey and his killers lived.
When Bryan’s daughter began a relationship with a Black man, he said in a message that she was “dating a [n-word] now.” He also referred to the man as a “monkey.” And on the day of Arbery’s killing, according to prosecutors, Bryan told authorities that he saw Arbery “running and knew he had to be a criminal.”
As I said, it’s no great surprise that men who carried out a modern-day lynching would have racist views. And it’s not a crime to harbor or express racist sentiments — nor should it be.
But I’m highlighting the vile words of Arbery’s killers for the elucidation of anyone who might believe that this kind of raw, unapologetic racism is a thing of the past. For the education of anyone who imagines that U.S. history can be taught in schools without teaching Black history, or that Black history can be taught without making anyone the slightest bit uncomfortable. For the benefit of anyone who fantasizes that we inhabit a nation where all individuals are judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
We will never reach that point until we deal honestly and forthrightly with the reality of persistent racism. It’s not all out in the open, such as it was when I was young in South Carolina and White people used the n-word — I hate that euphemism, but I hate the actual word more — in front of Black people without hesitation or embarrassment. But racism is not trying terribly hard to hide, either, and it’s not going away.
The recent controversy over richer-than-Croesus podcaster Joe Rogan, who used the n-word repeatedly, missed the point. It’s not that he spewed racism (and misogyny, and covid-19 misinformation, and all manner of other ugliness). It’s that there is an audience of millions of listeners who can’t wait to lap that stuff up. | null | null | null | null | null |
This crisis, however, has highlighted a larger strategic failure, one that extends beyond this administration. One of the central rules of strategy is to divide your adversaries. But, increasingly, U.S. foreign policy is doing the opposite. Earlier this month, in a more-than-5,000-word document, Russia and China affirmed a “friendship” with “no limits.” The two powers appear to be closer to one another than at any time in 50 years.
For Russia — essentially a declining power — China’s support is a godsend. The most significant reason even tough sanctions against Russia might not work is that China, the world’s second-largest economy, could help. Russia recently announced new deals to sell more oil and gas to China, and Beijing could buy even more energy and other imports from the country. It could also let Moscow use various Chinese mechanisms and institutions to evade U.S. financial restrictions. “China is our strategic cushion,” Sergey Karaganov, a Kremlin adviser, told Nikkei. “We know that in any difficult situation, we can lean on it for military, political and economic support.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Under a settlement agreement disclosed this week, Remington Arms, the maker of the Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle used in the 2012 shooting in Newtown, Conn., will pay $73 million to relatives of five of the children and four of the adults killed. The landmark deal, believed to be the largest payout by a gun manufacturer to victims of gun violence, is the first time a lawsuit against a firearms-maker has been settled since Congress, at the behest of the gun lobby, granted the industry sweeping immunity from civil liability in 2005.
E.J. Dionne Jr.: Thank you, Sandy Hook families, for taking on the gunmakers
Remington didn’t admit liability, and the $73 million will be paid by four insurers of the now-bankrupt company. Representatives of the gun industry seized on those factors to argue that the impact of the Sandy Hook settlement will be limited; solvent gunmakers would more vigorously defend themselves. No doubt they would. And there are still formidable obstacles to gun victims seeking redress because of the misguided federal law that gives gunmakers protection that no other industry enjoys.
Nonetheless, the Sandy Hook families accomplished much of what they set out to do. They took on an industry that thought itself untouchable, and they made it accountable. They opened up gun manufacturers to greater scrutiny by forcing Remington to release thousands of pages of internal company documents. They provided a framework that states can use to make the gun industry more responsible. Nothing, of course, can make up for what these families lost; what they most sought was to spare other families the grief they have had to bear. | null | null | null | null | null |
Govind Persad is assistant professor at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. Alyssa Burgart is an associate professor of pediatric anesthesiology at Stanford University. Emily Largent is an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.
The FDA’s reasoning seems dubious given omicron’s ability to evade protection against infection. The original two-dose series for adults is only about 10 percent effective against omicron infection after 20 weeks, but continues to offer far more protection against severe disease. Poorer reported efficacy against infection might just reflect the limitations of any tightly spaced two-dose series against omicron rather than anything unique to children under 5. If adult trials were rerun against omicron, the two-dose series might not meet the standards the FDA is applying to pediatric vaccines.
What we can be certain of is that waiting for third-dose results before opening access will inevitably lead to thousands more children being infected with the coronavirus without the protection of a vaccine. Worse, the FDA and Pfizer have announced no further efforts to fine-tune the optimal dose. Children under 5 received 3 micrograms of the vaccine in the trials, compared with the 10 micrograms authorized for 5-to-11-year-olds. If a third 3-microgram dose doesn’t meet FDA’s nebulous efficacy threshold, children will be forced to wait even longer.
Meanwhile, Pfizer reports much better results for children 6 to 24 months old, whose antibody response was comparable to adults. This is important because children in this age group have been hospitalized more often than children older than 5. Yet, the FDA stuck to its rigid policy of “age de-escalation” — that is, no age group may receive vaccines until the next-oldest group is eligible for the shots. This is difficult to justify, especially in a pandemic.
Regulators’ treatment of high-risk children has been particularly egregious. A 5-year-old with moderate or severe immunocompromise can receive an additional primary dose of vaccine beyond the first two. This is not based on clinical trials but on the reasonable expectation that a third dose will reduce severe illness in immunocompromised patients. But an immunocompromised 4-year-old must face omicron completely unprotected.
Frustratingly, the CDC has restricted physicians’ ability to prescribe coronavirus vaccines “off label.” Typically, physicians have discretion to treat patients who aren’t included in the FDA-approved label, including with vaccines. Off-label prescribing is quite common in pediatrics because children are often understudied compared with adults. But the CDC has imposed provider agreements that purport to prohibit the practice specifically for coronavirus vaccines. This prevents physicians from making common-sense recommendations for their patients, including those at heightened risk of severe illness and death. The CDC’s ban strikes us as especially indefensible when off-label use of completely unproven medications — such as ivermectin — faces no such limitations.
When pediatricians and parents agree together that the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks, they should be allowed to give the Pfizer vaccine to children under 5. As city and state governments end mask mandates, children are at greater risk; the federal government could afford these children more protection by permitting off-label use. If regulators refuse to relent, it will be hard to fault a city, hospital or pediatrician for ignoring their roadblocks, as some have with boosters. | null | null | null | null | null |
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) with former NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom at the Capitol on Thursday. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
For years, liberals have claimed Colin Kaepernick has been blackballed by the NFL for racial justice protests that included kneeling during the national anthem. Today, conservatives are claiming much the same thing about the NBA’s Enes Kanter Freedom, who has struggled for playing time and was recently released, following months of criticizing China.
Freedom has been outspoken on human rights before, particularly in his home country of Turkey. But at the beginning of the current season, he became more focused on China, whose market has become an increasingly important one for the NBA — a situation that had already touched off controversy in recent years.
On the NBA’s trade deadline day last week, Freedom was dealt from the Boston Celtics to the Houston Rockets and promptly cut by Houston. (The Rockets happen to be a big team in China, given that former NBA star Yao Ming played for them. The team also provided the scene for the 2019 controversy, when the Rockets’ general manager briefly tweeted in support of Hong Kong’s independence.)
Freedom was once paid handsomely as well — even more than Kaepernick at his peak, in fact. But in his late 20s, he had seen a decline in both stats and playing time, and he signed with the Celtics this past offseason for the veteran’s minimum of $2.7 million. Despite the relatively small salary Freedom was getting, Houston opted not to keep him on.
Kaepernick had led the 49ers to the Super Bowl as recently as the 2012 season and also the conference championship game the following year. Comparing him to other quarterbacks is somewhat difficult, in that he never put up huge passing stats but was more of a running threat than most. But his numbers had clearly been on the decline. His passer rating declined every year between his Super Bowl season (98.3) and the year before he was named a backup (78.5), when it was near the bottom of the league. He stats improved when he regained the starting job in 2016, but he quarterbacked the team to just a 1-10 record in his 11 starts.
Freedom is also somewhat difficult to pin down statistically, in that he has put up good numbers — at least offensively, and at least when he plays. He earned his big contract in 2015, for four years and $70 million, after scoring 18.7 points per game and pulling down 11 rebounds per game in a partial season with the Oklahoma City Thunder, and averaging 15.5 points for the full season. He has struggled to match those numbers since then, but even as he has generally been a backup in recent years, Freedom has often put up good offensive numbers when he’s been on the court. Last season, he was eighth in the league in rebounds per 48 minutes and 20th in player efficiency rating.
In no season has his playing time been as cut, though, as it was this season. Following his China criticisms, he played in just two of the team’s first 13 games, leading him to tweet, “Keep limiting me on the court, I will expose you off the court.” He has played more since then, but has still averaged just 11.7 minutes per game for the Celtics in the games he has played, scoring 4.6 points and pulling in 3.7 rebounds. After Freedom’s November tweet, Celtics coach Ime Udoka dismissed the idea that it was because of Freedom’s activism and spotlighted what others had before: defense — and particularly the slow-footed Freedom’s inability to switch quickly in a particular brand of defense that requires a lot of it.
That quote spotlights another key difference: Freedom has made clear he’s talking about the same people who run and fund the NBA — rather than merely talking about something that could turn off fans who happen to disagree with his protest. He has clashed with LeBron James, Nike and plenty of others. It also remains to be seen whether he’ll catch on with another team, given it has only been a few days, but we probably shouldn’t hold our collective breath. | null | null | null | null | null |
As part of the alleged scam, nurse Steven Rodriguez, 27, saw patients who came to the clinic for vaccination appointments but who didn’t actually get shots. Rodriguez allegedly wasted doses of the lifesaving treatment by disposing of vials of vaccine that would have been used had the shots been administered, according to the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York.
Officials said Liu and Rodriguez, who live in Queens and Long Island, respectively, put countless people in danger by putting real Centers for Disease Control and Prevention vaccination cards in the hands of people trying to hide their unvaccinated status — including Marines who were required to be vaccinated by Nov. 28 under a Defense Department mandate.
“[Liu] has absolutely no regard for the safety of the community at a time when the virus was absolutely raging,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Adam Amir said at Liu’s arraignment Thursday evening.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Sanket J. Bulsara said the conduct prosecutors accused Liu of “makes me very upset, infuriated even,” but that he was giving Liu what should be his final chance to remain at liberty by setting a $250,000 bond that was secured by a property his stepfather provided for collateral.
“He thinks that in some ways this is one big joke. … He basically is giving the middle finger, as far as I can tell, to three federal judges by not following their instructions” and through other conduct, Bulsara said.
Prosecutors said in court papers that Liu allegedly bragged about his forgery acumen in an encrypted message in September, telling the recipient that “you have no idea how many documents I faked in my [military] career.”
Liu was charged in October with four misdemeanor counts of trespassing and disorderly conduct related to his presence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when insurrectionists overtook the government landmark where Congress had convened to certify the presidential election results, expressing rage that Joe Biden had been determined the winner.
The mob was inspired by President Donald Trump and his supporters, who made unfounded claims of election fraud and sought to overturn the valid results of the contest.
Many believers of election disinformation are also opposed to the coronavirus vaccines and have expressed outrage at mandates imposed by governments and workplaces. The vaccines have been deemed safe by an overwhelmingly large percentage of public health officials and scientists. | null | null | null | null | null |
BEIJING — There was an unofficial men’s bobsled training session at the Beijing Olympics earlier this month. It was an opportunity for most drivers to pay and take a couple of extra trips down the track, just to start getting a feel for the place before the main events started. | null | null | null | null | null |
What to know from Washington’s 5-3 victory in Philadelphia
Garnet Hathaway scored twice late in the third period to push the Capitals past the Flyers. (Derik Hamilton/AP)
PHILADELPHIA — As they arrived at Wells Fargo Center, the Washington Capitals knew they were about to face an injury-riddled, inferior team. But the Capitals have acknowledged that they have trouble getting in the right mind-set for games against teams below them in the standings. At times, it seems they play bored.
That ultimately didn’t matter Thursday night, when the Capitals got two goals from Garnet Hathaway to erase a late deficit and claim a 5-3 win over the lowly Philadelphia Flyers.
With the Flyers ahead 3-2 after Gerry Mayhew’s second goal of the night with 3:51 left, Hathaway took over, knotting the score at 3 with 2:57 to go when he got a piece of a John Carlson shot from the point. He beat Flyers goalie Martin Jones again for the winner with 1:12 left, depositing a slick feed from Carl Hagelin after a brutal Flyers turnover behind the net. Carlson added an empty-netter to set the final score.
“These are big points for us right now. Everything is not going as smoothly as we all hope, but through those times where you don’t feel like you got your 'A' game, to come away with wins is just as important,” Carlson said.
Two nights after he led the way to a 4-1 win at the Nashville Predators, Capitals goalie Ilya Samsonov made 30 saves to deny the Flyers, who have lost four in a row, stand seventh in the Metropolitan Division and have had losing streaks of 13 and 10 games. Jones made 20 saves.
“I think Nashville was one of [Samsonov’s] best games I’ve seen him play — and this one is good, too,” Carlson said. “Huge stops at big times and weathered the storm and gave us a chance to regroup ourselves and come back out for the third — and that’s what you want every night.”
After an uninspired start, defenseman Michal Kempny gave the Capitals a 1-0 lead with 1:25 left in the first period on a slap shot through traffic from the blue line. It was Kempny’s first goal since he scored twice against Vancouver on Oct. 25, 2019. After he dealt with three major leg injuries and a stint in the American Hockey League, Thursday was his eighth game of the season. He faced the Flyers after Justin Schultz suffered an upper-body injury Tuesday in Nashville.
The Flyers tied it at 1 on Mayhew’s power-play goal 8:54 into the second period. Northern Virginia native Joe Snively then continued his strong play for the Capitals, scoring his fourth goal in as many games. The 26-year-old rookie converted his own rebound at 12:49. His goal gave the Capitals a power-play tally in three straight games, matching their season high.
“He finds the way to make a difference,” Coach Peter Laviolette said.
The Flyers’ Travis Sanheim tied the score at 2 with a transition goal with 58.4 seconds left in the middle period. That led to Mayhew’s go-ahead goal in the third, but Hathaway — with the help of a strong effort from the rest of the fourth line — turned the tables and sent the sputtering Flyers to yet another loss.
“It’s more expected right now with how they play the game,” Laviolette said of the fourth line. “They’ve done an excellent job the last couple years. They have a good identity. What you see from them is a good identity and they bring that pretty consistently on a nightly basis and they are able to produce as well.”
The Capitals don’t play again until next Thursday against the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden, so Washington will take Friday through Sunday off. The Capitals will return to practice Monday.
“We wanted to have a game that we could look back on after the break and say, ‘That was great; let’s continue to build off that,’ ” Hathaway said. “Up until the third, I think we weren’t happy with it, and we had a long talk in the third with what we had to do to be happy with it because we were on the verge of letting it slip away.”
The Rangers game was set to be the Capitals’ first coming out of the Olympic break, but that changed when the NHL backed out of the Beijing Games in December.
Here is what else to know about Thursday’s game:
Questionable instigator call
Capitals defenseman Trevor van Riemsdyk racked up 17 penalty minutes in the second period for his fight with Scott Laughton. Van Riemsdyk didn’t like Laughton’s high hit on Kempny along the boards and dropped the gloves.
Van Riemsdyk was given five minutes for fighting, two minutes for instigating and a 10-minute misconduct. Laughton got five minutes for fighting. With van Riemsdyk in the penalty box, the Flyers tied the score at 1 on Mayhew’s first goal.
Scott Laughton and Trevor van Riemsdyk tussle. pic.twitter.com/m3yUfyi5KK
Sprong sits
Winger Daniel Sprong was a healthy scratch, and Brett Leason replaced him in the lineup. Sprong’s most recent goal came Feb. 1 at Pittsburgh, and he had been on a line with Lars Eller and Connor McMichael in recent games. His lack of productivity combined with defensive lapses led him to be taken out of the lineup; Leason played his first game since Feb. 10 at Montreal.
Vanecek progresses
Goalie Vitek Vanecek was on the ice for the morning skate Thursday. It was the first time he had worked with the Capitals’ main practice group since he suffered an upper-body injury Feb. 1.
The Czech netminder is progressing, but the Capitals aren’t rushing his return. The details of his injury have not been disclosed, but Laviolette has described the recovery process as one similar to the concussion protocol.
Pheonix Copley backed up Samsonov again Thursday night. | null | null | null | null | null |
BEIJING — At exactly the moment Kamila Valieva began her fateful, disastrous free skate Thursday night in the women’s figure skating competition at the Beijing Olympics, Alysa Liu walked into a corner of the interview area beneath the Capital Indoor Stadium stands, still in her light blue skating dress and Team USA jacket, and began to talk about her greatest skating night ever.
“Oh,” she replied in a tone that suggested Valieva’s skate was the least important thing on her mind.
For everyone else, Valieva was the biggest sports story of the moment. The 15-year-old whose positive doping test and ensuing victory in the Court of Arbitration for Sport that allowed her to compete had devoured the Olympics. Her skate started under a fog of gloom and anger and sorrow.
But in this room, only a short walk from the ice where Valieva was skating, Liu wasn’t thinking about Valieva or doping or the Russian skaters or any of the things that obsessed the adults around her. Only a year older than Valieva, the main thing she cared about was that she had come to the Olympics and skated well and saw many of her skating friends. And because of all this, she began to cry.
“I’m just like … and so many of my friends are here, and they, like, trained so hard and went through a lot, and they, like, finally did really good at the Olympics,” she said before she began to sob.
“I’m really happy for everybody and myself, too,” she said. “[The Olympics] exceeded my expectations. I didn’t think I was going to do this good here, and I made a lot of friends along the way, and I got to see them here.”
Through smiles and tears, Liu talked about the day barely more than a month ago when she was told at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships that she had tested positive for the coronavirus. She was sure the test meant she couldn’t go to Beijing, even though she was Team USA’s top female skater. She said she had already accepted the fact she would never live her childhood dream of skating in the Olympics when the text arrived from a U.S. skating official telling her she had made the team.
For a brief time, she even led Thursday night. She came off the ice, heard her score and prepared to turn right toward the changing rooms, but an official stopped her and said to go left, into the green room, here, where the current top three skaters wait until someone with a higher score pushes them out. Her teammate, U.S. champion Mariah Bell already was there, having been No. 1 herself for a brief time. And even though Bell is nine years older than Liu, the two of them laughed and shouted and took selfies. | null | null | null | null | null |
Maryland rallies past Ohio State for its eighth straight win
What to know about the Terps’ 77-72 victory
Terrapins forward Angel Reese scores over Ohio State's Taylor Thierry during Thursday's 77-72 win over the Buckeyes. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
Angel Reese dribbled almost the length of the court, eluded a defender with a Euro step and finished with an acrobatic layup midway through the third quarter. The sequence pushed Maryland’s lead to nine and earned the sophomore forward an enthusiastic hand-slap from Coach Brenda Frese as she headed upcourt.
Frese kept Reese, a regular starter, on the bench to open the game after Reese was late to pregame shoot-around Thursday at Xfinity Center. The coach made sure she was on the court when it mattered, however, in No. 13 Maryland’s 77-72 win over No. 18 Ohio State.
Reese scored 14 of her 21 points in the second half, when she also collected 10 of her game-high 15 rebounds. as the Terps (20-6, 12-3 Big Ten) overcame a slow start to win their eighth straight.
It also vaulted Maryland into second place in the Big Ten with two games left in the regular season. The Terrapins, who split the season series with Ohio State (19-5, 11-4), close the regular season at No. 9 Michigan, which sits third in the conference, and at home against No. 5 Indiana, the Big Ten leaders.
“I was just trying to get my team hyped, get my team into it, keep our energy up,” said Reese, who went 9 of 10 at the foul line. “I knew our defense, it’s something that we’ve been working on and something we’ve been getting better at, so I knew our defense would feed off our offense.”
Maryland limited the Buckeyes to 33 points and 33.5 percent shooting in the second half. Ohio State also committed seven of its 11 turnovers in the second half while laboring to handle the Terrapins’ length and athleticism in the frontcourt.
The Terrapins finished with a 44-30 advantage in rebounding, including 13-8 offensively, and held a 19-5 margin in second-chance points. They also wen 19 for 21 from the free throw line.
Diamond Miller added 18 points and six rebounds, and Mimi Collins, starting in place of Reese, scored 12 points and had four rebounds.
“This team is kind of starting to understand that rhythm, where it needs to go,” Frese said of Maryland’s size advantage. “For us to go 19 for 21 on free throws, Angel being 90 percent, they did a tremendous job staying focused. Those are the easy points we’ve got to be able to get.”
The Buckeyes, by contrast, were just seven of eight from the stripe.
An inspired third quarter from Maryland on both ends of the court featured a 12-0 run that pushed the Terps’ lead to 59-50 lead with 2:10 to play.
The quarter began with Reese battering the Buckeyes in the painted area, scoring six consecutive points on a pair of free throws and two layups despite being covered by multiple defenders.
The Terrapins were playing from behind for the vast majority of the first half, trailing 39-34 at the break after sloppy ball security contributed to Ohio State compiling a double-digit lead with 6:01 left in the second quarter on Taylor Mikesell’s first three-pointer.
Homecoming for Mikesell
Mikesell led the Buckeyes with a game-high 29 points, burying 12 of 16 from the field, including 5 of 7 from beyond the arc. The three-point specialist was playing her first game back in College Park after transferring from Maryland to Oregon and then to Ohio State this season.
Mikesell played two seasons at Maryland and set the school record (men and women) by making 95 three-pointers as a freshman.
“We found out she can still make shots here,” Buckeyes Coach Kevin McGuff said. “That was good to see. We needed every one of them. She’s a great player, and fortunately she had great success here and is doing a great job for us as well.”
Ailing Owusu honored
Ashley Owusu, Maryland’s second leading scorer (14.3 points), missed her fourth straight game with a sprained right ankle but joined Frese on the court before tip-off to be recognized for winning the Ann Meyers Drysdale Award last season as the top shooting guard in Division I.
The junior from Woodbridge, who played high school basketball at Paul VI Catholic and was named Washington Post first-team All-Met in 2018, has been sidelined since Feb. 3.
Owusu participated in shoot-around Thursday and remains day-to-day, according to Frese. | null | null | null | null | null |
The situation would be more encouraging over the next few weeks, as the Wizards jumped out to the best record in the Eastern Conference at 10-3. They resiliently won games they would’ve lost in the past and the jolt of their offseason additions made it palatable for Bradley Beal not to play at his typical all-star level.
As Unseld heads into his first all-star break, the Wizards are once again trying to shake the doldrums as they enter yet another period of uncertainty. But in their final game before they all take a much-needed reprieve from a grueling campaign that featured chemistry problems, covid protocols and limited continuity, the Wizards recorded an encouraging 117-103 victory against the Brooklyn Nets at Barclays Center. The ball was moving, three-pointers were dropping and runs from the hosts were throttled with big plays.
Seven players scored in double figures and none were Kyle Kuzma, the team’s leading scorer in Beal’s absence. In easily his best game of the season, Rui Hachimura scored a season-high 20 points, 13 coming in the final period as he capped his night with an emphatic two-handed slam.
With the roster makeover from at the trade deadline, the Wizards (27-31) are neither the team that started the season looking like a playoff team, nor the one that plummeted to being just outside the play-in tournament. They’re a team that can compete and scrap without the burden of expectations.
Beal is done for the season with a wrist injury, and the franchise heads into the offseason with its fingers crossed that he’ll see enough upside to stay. They have a former all-star running mate in Kristaps Porzingis, who won’t make his debut until the team returns from the break, and who will spend the rest of the season trying to rediscover the game and the confidence that appeared to fade in Dallas.
What the remaining 24 games represent are a developmental opportunity for their past three first-round selections — Hachimura, Deni Avdija and Corey Kispert. It will also provide Thomas Bryant and Daniel Gafford with the chance to reestablish themselves as reliable front-line options. Kispert hit four of the Wizards’ 12 three-pointers and finished with 16 points.
The first-half collapse after that fast start was rapid and not much of a mystery. Beal, among others, confirmed that individual agendas — and frustration over minutes and shots — led to an unpleasant locker room that wasn’t connected on or off the court. A six-game losing streak, which included blowing a 35-point lead at home to the undermanned Los Angeles Clippers and Beal’s unfortunate landing on his left wrist, dampened most of the enthusiasm for what this season could become.
“But we still want to approach these games, as always: We want to win as many games as we can,” Unseld said. “That’s the priority. … Attack the last 24 aggressively.”
Wizards GM Tommy Sheppard didn’t strip the team all the way down, leaving just enough talent to tantalize. But he also left a glaring hole at point guard. Raul Neto and Smith will handle those duties until an upgrade is found this summer. Kuzma, whom Unseld refers to as his team’s “Swiss Army knife,” will also have the ball in his hands more, even if some nights look like Thursday night, when he airmailed two passes several rows into the stands.
“It was good energy,” Hachimura said. “Everybody was sharing the ball. We had a good flow and I was in a good rhythm, too. And we were defending. We still have a lot of chance to make the playoffs. We got to push it.” | null | null | null | null | null |
NEW ORLEANS — Luka Doncic had 49 points and 15 rebounds and Dallas never trailed against New Orleans en route to its sixth victory in seven games.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Kyle Lowry scored 12 of his 25 points after regulation and Miami beat Charlotte in double overtime to enter the All-Star break tied for the Eastern Conference lead. | null | null | null | null | null |
The situation would be more encouraging over the next few weeks as the Wizards jumped out to the best record in the Eastern Conference at 10-3. They resiliently won games they would have lost in the past, and the jolt of their offseason additions made it palatable for Bradley Beal not to play at his typical all-star level.
As Unseld heads into his first all-star break, the Wizards are again trying to shake the doldrums as they enter yet another period of uncertainty. But in their final game before they all take a much-needed reprieve from a grueling campaign that featured chemistry problems, covid protocols and limited continuity, the Wizards recorded an encouraging 117-103 victory against the Brooklyn Nets at Barclays Center. The ball was moving, three-pointers were dropping, and runs from the hosts were throttled with big plays.
Seven players scored in double figures, and Kyle Kuzma, the team’s leading scorer in Beal’s absence, was not among them. In easily his best game of the season, Rui Hachimura scored a season-high 20 points, with 13 coming in the final period as he capped his night with an emphatic two-handed slam.
With the roster makeover from at the trade deadline, the Wizards (27-31) are neither the team that started the season looking like a playoff team nor the one that plummeted to being just outside the play-in tournament. They’re a team that can compete and scrap without the burden of expectations.
Beal is done for the season with a wrist injury, and the franchise heads into the offseason with its fingers crossed that he’ll see enough upside to stay. They have a former all-star running mate in Kristaps Porzingis, who won’t make his debut until the team returns from the break and who will spend the rest of the season trying to rediscover the game and the confidence that appeared to fade in Dallas.
What the remaining 24 games represent are a developmental opportunity for their past three first-round selections — Hachimura, Deni Avdija and Corey Kispert. They also will provide Thomas Bryant and Daniel Gafford with the chance to reestablish themselves as reliable front-line options. Kispert hit four of the Wizards’ 12 three-pointers and finished with 16 points.
The first-half collapse after that fast start was rapid and not much of a mystery. Beal, among others, confirmed that individual agendas — and frustration over minutes and shots — led to an unpleasant locker room that wasn’t connected on or off the court. A six-game losing streak, which included a blown 35-point lead at home to the undermanned Los Angeles Clippers and Beal’s unfortunate landing on his left wrist, dampened most of the enthusiasm for what this season could become.
“But we still want to approach these games as always: We want to win as many games as we can,” Unseld said. “That’s the priority. . . . Attack the last 24 aggressively.”
Wizards General Manager Tommy Sheppard didn’t strip the team all the way down, leaving just enough talent to tantalize. But he also left a glaring hole at point guard. Raul Neto and Smith will handle those duties until an upgrade is found this summer. Kuzma, whom Unseld refers to as his team’s “Swiss Army knife,” also will have the ball in his hands more, even if some nights look like Thursday, when he airmailed two passes several rows into the stands. | null | null | null | null | null |
George Washington plays Rhode Island after Bamisile's 21-point performance
BOTTOM LINE: George Washington hosts the Rhode Island Rams after Joe Bamisile scored 21 points in George Washington’s 73-52 victory against the Duquesne Dukes.
The Colonials have gone 6-4 in home games. George Washington has a 4-1 record in games decided by 3 points or fewer.
The Rams are 4-8 in conference play. Rhode Island is 1-3 in one-possession games.
The teams play for the 10th time in conference play this season. The Colonials won the last matchup 63-61 on Jan. 22. James Bishop scored 15 points points to help lead the Colonials to the win.
TOP PERFORMERS: Bishop is averaging 17.3 points for the Colonials. Bamisile is averaging 1.7 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for George Washington.
Makhi Mitchell is averaging 9.9 points and 7.6 rebounds for the Rams. Makhel Mitchell is averaging 7.1 points over the last 10 games for Rhode Island. | null | null | null | null | null |
Loyola Chicago hosts Drake after Knight's 20-point game
BOTTOM LINE: Loyola Chicago faces the Drake Bulldogs after Chris Knight scored 20 points in Loyola Chicago’s 71-69 victory over the Valparaiso Beacons.
The Ramblers are 11-1 on their home court. Loyola Chicago is 1-1 in games decided by less than 4 points.
The Bulldogs are 9-5 in MVC play. Drake has a 4-1 record in one-possession games.
The teams play for the 10th time this season in MVC play. The Bulldogs won the last meeting 77-68 on Jan. 30. D.J. Wilkins scored 20 points to help lead the Bulldogs to the win.
TOP PERFORMERS: Braden Norris is averaging 10.1 points and 4.1 assists for the Ramblers. Lucas Williamson is averaging 10.1 points and 2.7 rebounds while shooting 47.3% over the past 10 games for Loyola Chicago. | null | null | null | null | null |
Miami takes on Virginia, seeks 4th straight victory
BOTTOM LINE: Miami seeks to keep its three-game win streak alive when the Hurricanes take on Virginia.
The Cavaliers are 10-6 in ACC play. Virginia is eighth in the ACC with 14.0 assists per game led by Reece Beekman averaging 4.9.
The teams square off for the 10th time this season in ACC play. The Cavaliers won the last matchup 71-58 on Feb. 5. Armaan Franklin scored 22 points to help lead the Cavaliers to the victory.
TOP PERFORMERS: Kameron McGusty is scoring 17.5 points per game with 5.2 rebounds and 2.3 assists for the Hurricanes. Isaiah Wong is averaging 10 points over the last 10 games for Miami.
Jayden Gardner is averaging 15 points and 7.1 rebounds for the Cavaliers. Franklin is averaging 7.5 points over the last 10 games for Virginia. | null | null | null | null | null |
Shaver leads Boise State against Utah State after 20-point performance
BOTTOM LINE: Boise State plays the Utah State Aggies after Marcus Shaver Jr. scored 20 points in Boise State’s 85-59 victory against the Air Force Falcons.
The Broncos have gone 10-3 at home. Boise State averages 68.9 points and has outscored opponents by 9.1 points per game.
The Aggies are 6-8 in MWC play. Utah State ranks fifth in the MWC with 7.4 offensive rebounds per game led by Justin Bean averaging 2.6.
The teams square off for the 10th time this season in MWC play. The Broncos won the last meeting 62-59 on Jan. 21. Mladen Armus scored 22 points points to help lead the Broncos to the victory.
TOP PERFORMERS: Armus is averaging 7.2 points and 8.1 rebounds for the Broncos. Tyson Degenhart is averaging 8.6 points over the last 10 games for Boise State.
Bean is averaging 18.3 points, 9.8 rebounds and 1.7 steals for the Aggies. Brandon Horvath is averaging 9.8 points over the last 10 games for Utah State. | null | null | null | null | null |
Shumate, McNeese Cowboys to visit St. Hilaire, New Orleans Privateers
BOTTOM LINE: Christian Shumate and the McNeese Cowboys visit Derek St. Hilaire and the New Orleans Privateers in Southland action Saturday.
The Privateers have gone 10-2 in home games. New Orleans scores 76.9 points while outscoring opponents by 4.9 points per game.
The Cowboys have gone 4-6 against Southland opponents. McNeese ranks fifth in the Southland shooting 33.2% from 3-point range.
The teams meet for the third time in conference play this season. The Privateers won 84-78 in the last matchup on Jan. 30. St. Hilaire led the Privateers with 23 points, and Brendan Medley-Bacon led the Cowboys with 17 points.
TOP PERFORMERS: St. Hilaire averages 2.0 made 3-pointers per game for the Privateers, scoring 20.6 points while shooting 35.6% from beyond the arc. Troy Green is shooting 45.2% and averaging 18.9 points over the past 10 games for New Orleans.
Zach Scott averages 2.1 made 3-pointers per game for the Cowboys, scoring 10.3 points while shooting 42.3% from beyond the arc. Shumate is shooting 53.3% and averaging 16.0 points over the last 10 games for McNeese. | null | null | null | null | null |
The Coyotes are 10-4 on their home court. South Dakota averages 75.5 points and has outscored opponents by 5.1 points per game.
The Leathernecks are 6-9 against Summit opponents. Western Illinois averages 79.3 points and has outscored opponents by 2.5 points per game.
The teams play for the second time this season in Summit play. The Coyotes won the last meeting 75-72 on Jan. 25. Tasos Kamateros scored 17 points points to help lead the Coyotes to the win.
TOP PERFORMERS: Kruz Perrott-Hunt is shooting 42.9% and averaging 15.2 points for the Coyotes. Archambault is averaging 2.1 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for South Dakota.
Trenton Massner is scoring 16.3 points per game and averaging 6.1 rebounds for the Leathernecks. Luka Barisic is averaging 17.8 points and 7.7 rebounds over the last 10 games for Western Illinois. | null | null | null | null | null |
Pence — who repeated his belief that “January 6 was a tragic day” — said he does not think the RNC’s resolution, which has been criticized by both Republicans and Democrats, was “talking about people that engaged in violence against persons or property that day.” Instead, he said, it was referring to “a whole range of people that have been set upon” by the House committee investigating the riot.
The awkward defense, made during Pence’s Thursday evening appearance at Stanford University, reflects the fractious divide in the Republican Party over how to talk about the attack on the U.S. Capitol, which was carried out by a pro-Trump mob. The resolution censuring Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, which passed overwhelmingly earlier this month, sparked backlash among Republican senators who feared it would hurt the party in the midterm elections. The RNC has since said it was not supporting violent insurrectionists, an assertion Pence echoed.
“I just don’t know too many people around the country, including my friends at the RNC, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, who have any different view than it was tragic day, that the people that ransacked the Capitol were wrong and should be held to account in the law,” Pence said. “And I think they made a very clear statement, after the fact, that said, ‘We were talking about what’s happening in Washington today, with the January 6th committee.’ … and I believe them. They’re good people, and I believe that’s what they meant.”
He blasted Biden’s handling of the conflict in Ukraine and he claimed the recent San Francisco school board elections as a victory against “woke” liberalism.
Dozens of students protested the event outside the campus’s Dinkelspiel Auditorium on Thursday, holding signs that read “Stand against hate” and “Refuse fascism.” Inside, the occasional heckle or expletive could be heard in the 710-seat auditorium, which was sold out according to the event page, but there were no major disruptions to Pence’s speech.
During the Q&A portion, a couple of students sneaked in gag questions, with one taking the microphone to ask the former vice president if he knew where the nearest bathroom was.
“The one I used is out this back door,” Pence answered to a chorus of laughter. “Hey, this is a real thing,” he added. “President Harry Truman said, ‘Don’t ever pass up the opportunity to use the restroom.’” | null | null | null | null | null |
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Jeff Gordon called NASCAR races for Fox when his old boss popped in for a visit and left behind a note. Rick Hendrick had good-naturedly posted hours of his 12-plus-hour work days for his former star driver. Those are the grueling demands of the job when you own more than 100 car dealerships and have your name on the winningest organization in stock car history. | null | null | null | null | null |
BEIJING — Anna Shcherbakova won a stunning gold medal in women’s figure skating at the Beijing Games on Thursday night, while teammate Kamila Valieva tumbled all the way out of the top three after a mistake-filled end to her controversial Olympics.
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Brad Keselowski celebrated a sweep of the Daytona duels as he debuts with his new team. | null | null | null | null | null |
Harri Pesonen celebrates his empty-net goal in Friday's semifinal (Matt Slocum/AP)
BEIJING — Harri Pesonen can rattle off memories of watching Finland play in the Olympics as a kid, but maybe none is as vivid as in 2006, when his country lost to rival Sweden in the men’s hockey gold medal game in Turin. Pesonen was 17 and a rising prospect then, but nearly two decades later on Friday afternoon, he was thinking about that game after he had helped the Finns defeat Slovakia 2-0 to return to their first gold medal game since.
“That was a tough loss for us,” Pesonen said, “and now we have another chance and can go for the gold.”
Pesonen made sure of it: The 33-year-old threw his hands up in the air after he had scored on an empty net in the final seconds in Friday’s semifinal, escorting the puck all the way to the crease after a breakaway. Finland is the only member of the “Big Six” — the unofficial name for the six most successful hockey nations in the world — to have never won an Olympic gold medal. It could come Sunday against either their rival Sweden or the Russian Olympic Committee, who will meet later Friday in the other semifinal, but while the wait continues, the Finns’ victory over the upstart Slovakians also conjured reminders of their tormented Olympic past.
It could be traced back to 1980 in Lake Placid, N.Y., where after the United States had beaten the Soviet Union in the “Miracle on Ice,” the Americans had to rally past the Finns in the third period to win the gold. Finland was a historical footnote in other Olympic tournaments, settling for silver medals in Calgary in 1988 and Turin in 2006, along with four bronze medals between 1994 and 2014. That history wasn’t lost on players after they had held off a late charge by the Slovakians, who were playing in their first semifinal since 2010 in Vancouver.
“You can’t think about those things before a tournament, during a tournament,” defenseman Marko Anttila said, “but now it’s possible.”
It was made possible only after a remarkable comeback win over rival Sweden in the team’s preliminary round finale last week, as Finland erased a three-goal deficit in the third period to win 4-3 in overtime and earn a spot in the quarterfinals. The Finns blasted Switzerland, 5-1 to reach Friday’s semifinal, where they faced a young, speedy Slovakian team that featured 17-year-old Juraj Slafkovsky, who is expected to be a top pick in next summer’s NHL draft.
Slafkovsky entered the game tied for the tournament lead in goals with five, including one in his team’s upset of the United States in the quarterfinals. But the Finns were physical with the 6-foot-4, 218-pound teenager from the onset Friday, delivering hits and checking Slafkovsky whenever he touched the puck. That included late in the first period, when Slafkovsky made a nifty move behind the net to try a wraparound shot — only to be crushed into the boards by defenseman Juuso Hietenan.
Finland’s defensive effort was reinforced by stellar goaltending from Harri Sateri, who finished his shutout with 28 saves. He was gifted a 1-0 lead to protect after Sakari Manninen scored late in the first period, cradling a rebound around the stick of Slovakia goaltender Patrik Rybar and flicking the puck into a wide-open net.
Slafkovsky dazzled in the open ice in the middle of the second period, using his speed to create a two-on-one opportunity and sailing a pass toward the net through the legs of a Finland defender. But his teammate, Marek Hrivik, received the pass late and missed a wide-open net with Sateri out of position.
“It wasn’t the best choice, but I have to learn from that and pass it quicker,” Slafkovsky said. “We had pretty much offensive chances when we held the puck in their end, but when the luck isn’t on your side … then it’s tough.”
After his team was unable to crack Sateri in the final seconds despite putting an extra attacker on the ice, Slafkovsky stopped to talk to reporters about what it would mean for his country to earn its first bronze medal in the consolation game Saturday. But as he spoke, Finland’s players were still celebrating their chance at gold around him. Personen removed his helmet and cracked a huge grin on his way back to the locker room.
“It’s a pretty special day,” Pesonen said. “What a great opportunity to play for the brightest medal.”
As his team’s second-oldest player, Anttila, 36, had watched Finland prosper in big tournaments over the years — including world championships in 1995, 2011 and 2019 — only to never be able to break through for gold at the Olympics.
Anttila almost lost a chance to be a part of the run in Beijing: He tested positive for the coronavirus a few weeks before he arrived for the Games and was forced to isolate in a hotel in Beijing while his team practiced. Finland Coach Jukka Jalonen told reporters before the tournament that Anttila was not receiving adequate food and was under mental stress because of the isolation — and blamed China for violating his Anttila’s “human rights.” He was eventually cleared to rejoin the team after nearly a week, and by Friday, it was hard to process how his fortunes had changed over the past two weeks.
“Of course, it wasn’t an easy time there,” Anttila said. “A lot of time to think, and think all kinds of thoughts. This was actually one of them, playing in an Olympic final. And now it is possible for us.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Two Polish women died after being refused abortions. Many Poles are outraged — and protesting.
Antiabortion organizations are powerful in Poland, but abortion rights support is growing
People place candles in Warsaw last November in tribute to a woman who died in the 22nd week of pregnancy. (Czarek Sokolowski/AP)
By Courtney Blackington
Last month, the death of a Polish woman known as “Agnieszka T.” inflamed public debate about Poland’s abortion law. She died a month after doctors delayed aborting twin fetuses, which had separately died in utero over the course of a week. Her family blames Poland’s current abortion law for her death. Another woman, Izabela, died under similar circumstances last September. Their deaths may be spurring protests in support of abortion access. In my research, I have spoken to activists to understand what drives them to protest.
What is the current abortion law in Poland?
Since a 2020 Constitutional Tribunal ruling, Polish doctors can only perform abortions in cases of rape, incest or if the patient’s health is endangered.
Though there is an exception in cases where the patient’s life is at risk, a doctor may spend up to three years in prison if a prosecutor decides that a doctor performed an abortion too early or without justification. Some doctors hesitate or refuse to perform abortions, even when it could save patients’ lives. Thus, even those people who qualify to obtain legal abortions may struggle to get them.
How do Polish citizens feel about the current abortion law?
As in many countries, abortion is a polarizing issue in Poland. Antiabortion activists have gathered enough signatures to force the Polish parliament to debate a bill that would give people who have abortions prison sentences of up to 25 years. These activists are a powerful force in Polish politics. Officials from the Polish Catholic Church have directly and indirectly backed these groups’ positions and actions over time.
Even as antiabortion organizations have demonstrated their clout, abortion rights protests have expanded in scope and size. As research by Agnieszka Graff, a culture and gender studies scholar, underscores: A grass-roots feminist movement has spread since 2016, when a proposal to make all abortions illegal emerged, challenging the abortion law that existed since 1993. At least 430,000 people have protested for abortion rights across 200 Polish cities and towns in recent years.
If the E.U. doesn't wake up to what's happening in Poland, it may sleepwalk into self-destruction.
How do the deaths of Agnieszka T. and Izabela shape abortion attitudes?
Over the past five months, I interviewed about 25 Polish citizens who have protested in support of abortion rights in Warsaw.
Some only began protesting after Izabela’s death. I spoke to protesters who said they feared dying or having a loved one die. Several reported that they wanted to have a child; however, they no longer felt safe being pregnant in Poland. They worried that if they or their partner became pregnant and needed an abortion to save their lives, a doctor might refuse to perform it because of the current abortion law. This fear drove some previously apolitical people to protest. Some protesters with a longer protest history said that the deaths of Agnieszka T. and Izabela have reawakened their activism, which had fallen off during the coronavirus pandemic.
Beyond reinvigorating abortion rights activism in Poland, these two deaths may accelerate the current trend of growing public support for abortion.
Survey data consistently show an increase in pro-choice views over the past 10 years. Data from November 2021 indicate that 74.1 percent of Polish citizens want to change the current abortion law. Of these respondents, 42.8 percent hoped to return to the abortion law that existed before the 2020 Constitutional Tribunal ruling, which allowed for abortion in cases of rape, incest, fetal defects, and risk to the pregnant person’s health. The other 31.1 percent said they wanted abortion for any reason during the first 12 weeks of the pregnancy.
Only 10.4 percent of these respondents were content with the current abortion law and only 5.2 percent wanted to further constrain abortion access.
Perhaps more surprisingly, attitudes toward abortion have shifted among supporters of Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (PiS), the socially conservative ruling party. Data from November 2021 reveal that 28 percent of PiS voters hoped to return to the abortion law that existed before the 2020 ruling. Moreover, 14 percent of PiS voters wished to see laws that would be even more liberal than the one that existed before the 2020 ruling.
Poland is a Catholic country. So why are mass protests targeting churches?
Are the two deaths encouraging abortion rights activists to adopt new strategies?
In recent years, Polish abortion rights activists have gone beyond protesting in two ways. One group has focused on gathering signatures for a bill that would make abortion legal for up to 12 weeks into the pregnancy, for any reason. These legal strategies are likely to force parliament to debate liberalizing abortion access. At protests sparked by the two deaths, signature-gatherers are usually present.
Further, more than 1,000 Polish women have sent applications to challenge the 2020 abortion law in front of the European Court of Human Rights. The ECHR has grouped some of these applications into categories to try the cases. These women argue that this legislation gravely harms them and violates their human rights.
Will these deaths affect support for the Polish Catholic Church?
These protests and court cases may affect the Roman Catholic Church’s influence in Polish society. Political scientist Anna Grzymała-Busse’s research finds that churches lose moral authority when they openly partner with a political party. By working openly with the ruling party PiS to push restrictive abortion policies, the Polish Catholic Church may lose support.
Indeed, trust in the Catholic Church has steadily decreased in recent decades. One survey even showed that 50 percent of Polish respondents believed that Pope Francis should dismiss the entire Polish episcopate, although that was largely in response to the coverup of pedophilia scandals within the church.
Furthermore, abortion rights activists have increasingly confronted the Catholic Church. In recent years, they have protested in front of churches, disrupted religious services and graffitied churches.
If Polish citizens continue to view the Catholic Church as a key partner of the PiS, these actions may continue, and more people may support these protest tactics.
Thus far, many Polish citizens are blaming the current abortion law for the deaths of at least two women. More people continue to join the abortion rights movement and to adopt those views. The women’s deaths will likely shape the future of both the political scene and the role of the Catholic Church in Poland.
Courtney Blackington is a doctoral candidate at the University of North Carolina, a Fulbright U.S. student researcher and a Title VIII Critical Language and Research Scholar.
The views expressed in this article are those of Courtney Blackington and do not represent the views of the Fulbright Program, the State Department or any of its partner organizations. | null | null | null | null | null |
Canada’s Brad Gushue gestures to United States’ John Landsteiner at the end of the men’s curling bronze medal match between Canada and the United States at the Beijing Winter Olympics Friday, Feb. 18, 2022, in Beijing. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)
BEIJING — John Shuster began his fifth Olympics as a U.S. flag bearer, leading the defending men's curling champions and the rest of Team USA into the Beijing Games’ opening ceremony. | null | null | null | null | null |
BEIJING — No matter how the IOC tries to spin it, the enduring symbol of the Beijing Games -- and really, the entire Olympic movement -- is a sad little girl put in an untenable position by adults who have no shame.
The Russian child — and let’s not lose sight that she is just a child — shouldn't have been allowed to compete in women’s figure skating after testing positive for a banned heart medication. | null | null | null | null | null |
Speaking at an end-of-Olympics news conference, Friday, IOC President Thomas Bach was critical of the coaches and support people around Russian skater Kamila Valieva. (Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)
BEIJING — A few hours after watching Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva unravel on the final night of the women’s individual skating competition, International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach said he was “disturbed” by what he saw.
The pressure on Valieva, following last week’s revelation of her positive doping test and the Court of Arbitration for Sport hearing that allowed her to continue skating in the Olympics, was “beyond my imagination,” Bach said unprompted in his opening remarks at Friday’s IOC daily briefing.
What seemed to bother Bach most was the reaction from Valieva’s coach Eteri Tutberidze who appeared on television to be angry with a weeping Valieva rather than supportive.
“When I afterwards saw how she was received by her closest entourage with what appeared to be a tremendous coldness, it was chilling to see this,” he said. “Rather than giving her comfort, rather than try to help her, you could feel this chilling atmosphere, this distance, and if you were interpreting the body language, it was worse because it was some kind of dismissive gestures I saw there on TV.”
Such a strong reaction was striking from an Olympic official who typically avoids controversial matters, often avoiding anything that might be considered political or meddling with the autonomy of a country’s sports organization. But after Valieva’s past week — from the revelation of her positive test for a banned heart medication to the lifting of her brief suspension by the Russian anti-doping authority to the IOC and World Anti-Doping Agency attempting to prevent her from skating this week to the scenes of her weeping and walking alone from the Olympics — Bach could not ignore what had happened and the public’s reaction to it.
When he talked Friday, his strongest criticism was for what the IOC often refers to as the entourage: the coaches, sports officials, trainers and doctors that surround athletes.
Thursday night’s display “does not give me much confidence in this closest entourage of Kamila, neither, with what happened in regard to the past and as far as it concerns the future,” he said. “How to deal, how to address, how to treat a minor athlete at the age of 15, I can only wish for her that she has the support of her family, the support of her friends, and the support of her people who help her over this extremely difficult situation.”
Later, he said, he hoped the inquiry into Valieva’s entourage will find “the people who are responsible for this, that they will be held responsible for this in the right way. And when I say in the right way, [I mean] in the strongest possible way.”
In addition to the inquiry the IOC has started into Valieva’s positive test — including an analysis in the next few days of her B sample — Bach said he wants the IOC to begin looking into athletes’ entourages, finding a way to better protect athletes who might be exploited by those around them.
“My experience over the years of having to listen to many lies and to many explanations of doping cases is that doping very rarely happens alone by the athlete,” he said. “You always have an entourage.”
In response to a question, Bach also seemed to signal support for age limits for athletes, something that has been suggested in recent days here.
“This is for the international federations, but we will initiate a discussion and at least give them a food for thought,” he said. | null | null | null | null | null |
Biden officials launch ‘screening tool’ to help identify disadvantaged and polluted communities
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan speaks in November about long-standing water issues that have plagued Jackson, Miss., at the O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Plant near the city. (Rogelio V. Solis/AP)
As part of its effort to address historic environmental injustices, the Biden administration launched an online screening tool Friday to identify “communities that are marginalized, underserved, and overburdened by pollution.”
The administration is calling on residents to use a “beta version” of its Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool over the next 60 days to upload data that will reveal communities with multiple pollution sources and health threats such as tainted water, poor air quality, dirty roadways and nearby Superfund sites.
“Too many American communities are still living with water that isn’t safe to drink, housing that isn’t built to withstand climate change-fueled storms, and too few opportunities to benefit from the nation’s bright and clean future,” Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) Chair Brenda Mallory said in a statement.
“The Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool will help Federal agencies ensure that the benefits of the nation’s climate, clean energy, and environmental programs are finally reaching the communities that have been left out and left behind for far too long,” Mallory said.
Once the CEQ, which designed and launched the tool, has the public’s feedback, it will consult with federal departments such as Transportation, Energy, and Health and Human Services to find the communities that need some of the 40 percent of the overall benefits in climate, clean energy and other services Biden vowed to deliver.
Biden officials called the tool an important step to delivering on his campaign promise to alleviate pollution in marginalized communities by directing 40 percent of federal resources to them.
Critics have questioned if the administration can pull off such an ambitious pledge when financial aid from the federal government would have to be filtered through state governors, many of whom are hostile to the president’s initiatives. In addition, billions of dollars in funding for environmental justice initiatives are dependent on the Build Back Better plan that is stuck in Congress.
The screening tool was on a list of recommendations from the 26-member White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council formed by the CEQ. The panel asked for a high-quality program to ensure aid reached disadvantaged areas across the nation and in Native territories. | null | null | null | null | null |
Americans nurtured Afghanistan’s central bank. Now they’re gutting it.
Biden’s decision to give away $7 billion is part of a pattern of abandonment
President Biden’s recent decision to seize the frozen reserves of the central bank of Afghanistan came as a shock to starving Afghans battling a harsh winter coupled with a crippled economy. It has led private banks to impose severe withdrawal limits, further squeezing the pocketbooks of average people. Imagine dissolving the U.S. Federal Reserve, blocking the savings of all Americans and implementing a weekly withdrawal limit of less than $400.
Biden’s intention to divide the money between survivors of the 9/11 attacks and, nonspecifically, humanitarian aid for the Afghan people, is as confounding as it is cruel. A year ago, the United States was trying hard to preserve and strengthen institutions in Afghanistan like the central bank. Now, the Biden administration is knocking the legs out from under the country’s banking sector, thwarting the economy and leaving Afghans like me unable to access our savings.
The pattern of costly and damaging starts and stops is nothing new. I remember vividly in 2011 meeting U.S. government officials at USAID offices in Kabul made of cramped cubicles inside tight cargo containers. At the time, I was leading the implementation of large power projects at the national power utility of Afghanistan. USAID was promoting the idea of providing electricity to southern Afghanistan from Central Asian countries via imported electricity passing through the rough terrain of more than 800 kilometers.
As a parting shot to the new Taliban-led government, which the United States considers illegitimate, the U.S. government imposed punishing sanctions that throttled the economy. The impact has gone beyond the widespread starvation that has left 97 percent of the population unsure where their next meal will come from. The central bank’s $7 billion were frozen, leading to instant consequences for everyday Afghans. For instance, when my father wants to withdraw cash, he has to register his name four days in advance and stand in a queue for hours — once, more than six hours. When it’s his turn, he is permitted to withdraw the equivalent of $400. That sum won’t cover regular household expenses like rent, groceries, utility bills and medicine.
Such actions by the United States send a bitter signal to 38 million Afghans. The majority of Afghans, especially in rural areas, didn’t know about the 9/11 attacks and why the United States invaded and bombed them for 20 years, but they do feel the hunger of 23 million of their fellow citizens and the pain of 3.2 million malnourished children younger than 5, out of which 1 million could starve to death by the end of the winter.
In seizing the central bank funds, Biden issued a statement that his plan was “designed to provide a path for the funds to reach the people of Afghanistan, while keeping them out of the hands of the Taliban and malicious actors.” But this concern can be addressed in various ways; members of the Supreme Council, which governs the bank, have suggested having monitored and conditional access to reserves. The transactions can be verified electronically through one of the international auditing firms currently operating in Afghanistan.
The resumption of irrigation, energy and transport projects will more likely bring an end to the crisis without the need for more humanitarian assistance. Lifting sanctions on commercial activity and completing unfinished development projects will be sufficient for the economy to recover. This would be in line with American values. It would be justice to the $2 trillion in American taxpayers’ money spent on the war in Afghanistan. | null | null | null | null | null |
How U.S. racial segregation in the Panama Canal Zone sparked long-lasting Black internationalist networks
Loading dynamite shot holes in Panama, 1912. (Historical/Corbis via Getty Images)
By Kaysha Corinealdi
Pushing back against these measures is necessary — but it’s not enough. Truly understanding the history of white supremacy requires broadening one’s perspective of U.S. history, and centering the work of Afro-Caribbean and African American activists who challenged discrimination in their own place and time. Doing so serves as a reminder of the rich legacy of activism that has connected Black people in the Americas and pushes against efforts to ignore the full reach of state-sanctioned white-supremacist practices.
As it oversaw construction of the Panama Canal between 1904 and 1914, for example, the United States introduced Jim Crow segregation — which would persist for more than 50 years. A controversial 1903 treaty granted the United States sovereign-like rights, in perpetuity, to what was called the Panama Canal Zone, a 10-mile-wide area surrounding the canal. This meant that the Zone was operated as an unofficial colony of the United States.
As in the United States itself, racial segregation depended on a strict race and citizenship hierarchy. A “silver” and “gold” wage scale separated Zone workers, with White U.S. citizens (gold employees) earning four times as much as the majority-Black non-U. S. citizen workforce (silver employees). U.S. officials justified these unequal wages on the grounds that the lower wages were in line with those provided in the Caribbean.
Over 150,000 men and women from across the British and French Caribbean made their way to Panama during the canal construction. Their work and their very bodies made the canal, its operation and the functioning of the Canal Zone possible. Yet they, alongside their Panamanian-born peers and other non-U. S. citizens, were treated as outsiders and expendable sources of labor within the Zone.
Soon, Jim Crow, as a system of governance, shaped Canal Zone schools, entertainment venues and courts. The Zone provided a paradise for White U.S. citizens, including both soldiers stationed in Panama and their families and U.S. civilians attracted to the higher pay and guaranteed housing available to them there. But the system relegated Black workers and their children — the majority of the Canal Zone’s residents into the 1940s — to underfunded schools, crowded housing and cramped entertainment venues.
Just as in the United States, Black residents living the realities of Jim Crow organized to make better lives for themselves and their families. Teachers, community activists and labor union leaders called for change and, just as important, helped envision a radically different world. Teachers in the segregated Canal Zone schools designated for “colored” students, like their counterparts in the United States, inculcated messages of pride to their students. For example, Leonor Jump, a teacher, wrote in 1930 in the Panama Tribune about inspiring students by “selecting achievements of our own people who fought greater battles with fewer instruments.”
At a time when schools did not provide a secondary education for Black residents, educators also advocated for high school classes for students of color. They created a “Negro History Week” in the mid-1940s, drawing inspiration from African American scholar Carter G. Woodson’s introduction of the concept in the United States two decades earlier. They believed they had a responsibility to offer guidance and support to a younger generation who could change the world.
George Westerman, born in Colón, Panama, obtained his elementary school education in the Zone. A journalist and public intellectual, he used outlets like the New York-based Common Ground magazine to publish pieces educating U.S. audiences about the inequities faced by Black workers in the Canal Zone. His writing put the issue on the radar of African American U.S. Rep. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. (D-N.Y.), then chair of the House Subcommittee on Education and Labor. Powell asked Westerman to write a report detailing the Zone’s discriminatory policies. Powell used the report to force a debate on the topic in Congress, making him one of the few elected officials calling for a review of U.S. labor practices in the Zone. No changes to U.S. policy followed, but the report served as evidence that a coalition of Black activists in Panama and the United States had aligned in their shared interest in bringing the indignities of Jim Crow in the Canal Zone to an end.
The end to official racial segregation in the Canal Zone schools came shortly after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case. Although the Zone did not fall under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Supreme Court, the Canal Zone government opted to use the Brown case to justify reorganizing local schools as “Latin American” and “U.S.” schools. Race would no longer be used to separate students, but citizenship would still determine who had access to the Zone schools. One exception was the Panama Canal College, which eventually allowed tuition-based admittance to Panamanian citizens. The end to explicit race-based segregation in K-12 schooling was thus anti-climactic — but the legacy of anti-Jim Crow activism informed Black internationalism for years to come.
Among those who continued this tradition were educators and graduates of the Zone schools. Roy Bryce-Laporte, born in Panama City, was both a student and a teacher in the Canal Zone schools before migrating to the United States. A scholar and public intellectual, his doctoral work at the University of California at Los Angeles focused on Black immigrant experiences in the United States. He argued in 1973 that “black immigrants are subject to white racist discrimination, aware of their subjugation, and prone to sympathize and participate in the domestic struggle for black liberation and community development.” He recognized that regardless of place of birth, Black immigrants arrived in the United States having already experienced racial discrimination, including U.S.-sponsored Jim Crow in territories under U.S. control.
In 1977 Panama and the United States signed a treaty that finally reverted the canal and Zone area to Panamanian hands, a process that began in 1979 and culminated in 1999. Schooling for non-U. S. citizens continued during this time, albeit with diminishing numbers and under the auspices of the “Latin American” schools. As was the case with earlier generations, many educators and students nonetheless continued to embrace a Black internationalist tradition.
Bryce-Laporte brought his hemispheric understanding of Black life to the U.S. institutions where he worked, including as the founding chair of Yale University’s African American Studies program, founding director of the Smithsonian’s Research Institute on Immigration and Ethnic Studies and director of the Africana and Latin American Studies program at Colgate University. | null | null | null | null | null |
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