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Rehabbing Gio Reyna is hopeful he’ll be ready for USMNT’s World Cup qualifiers
Gio Reyna, left, has been limited to five Bundesliga matches and no Champions League games this season. (Ina Fassbender/AFP via Getty Images)
When he felt the pain in his right hamstring again, the same muscle that required five months of rehabilitation after injuring the first time, Gio Reyna thought the worst. So did his Bundesliga club, Borussia Dortmund, and the U.S. national soccer team staff, which, aside from the opening match, had gone through World Cup qualifying without him.
“It was pretty scary,” Reyna said during an video interview with about a dozen reporters Friday. “The five months were really complicated and really hard. I am happiest when I am playing. So the thought I was maybe going to be out for another extended period of time with the same injury was tough to take in.”
The 19-year-old attacker, one of the brightest stars in a brigade of young U.S. talent, was left in tears after having to leave in the first half of Sunday’s home match against Mönchengladbach. It was his third appearance since his recovery and first start for Dortmund since Aug. 27.
Another significant injury would have canceled his plans of helping Dortmund chase front-runner Bayern Munich and joining the U.S. squad for the final three World Cup qualifiers in late March.
On Monday, though, Dortmund announced Reyna should be able to resume training in two weeks — a huge relief for all involved parties.
“I don’t really have too many worries” about being ready for U.S. camp in three weeks, Reyna said. “I am pretty positive I will be able to go to that. I really want to go. I haven’t been with them for a long time and it’s three really important games now. I’ll really give everything and make sure I’m there.”
While Reyna continues rehabbing, the U.S. medical staff will have regular communication with its Dortmund counterparts and he will talk with the coaching staff. From the U.S. standpoint, Reyna’s ability to not just return to Dortmund’s training but play in a match would bolster Coach Gregg Berhalter’s confidence in including him on the roster.
Dortmund has two Bundesliga matches scheduled after Reyna’s expected return to active duty: March 13 against Arminia Bielefeld and March 20 at Köln.
Berhalter is expected to name the roster between those dates and U.S. camp will begin in earnest March 21 — three days before a showdown with archrival Mexico in Mexico City. The Americans will then host Panama on March 24 in Orlando and visit Costa Rica on March 27.
They need at least three points to secure one of Concacaf’s three automatic berths in the World Cup late this year in Qatar.
Reyna’s return to the U.S. squad would help compensate for the loss of Juventus midfielder Weston McKennie, who will be sidelined at least eight weeks after breaking his foot Tuesday in an UEFA Champions League game.
Dortmund officials are optimistic about Reyna’s recovery.
“To see him after such a long time having maybe another deep and bad injury, [everyone] was feeling terrible,” executive Carsten Cramer said. “I am really happy to see him smiling and that he is more positive that it will take some more days but definitely not as long as anyone expected.”
Reyna, whose father Claudio captained the U.S. squad 20 years ago, is in his third season with Dortmund’s first team. He enjoyed a breakout campaign in 2020-21 with 46 appearances, 30 starts and seven goals across all competitions.
He said the long absence this season weighed on him.
“It was hard when I got into the two- or three-month range where it wasn’t really getting better and we were getting desperate and I was getting desperate,” Reyna said. “Obviously, all the players’ favorite thing is to play on Saturday or Sunday. It was hard to watch them without me helping them for several months.”
Having dodged a scare last weekend, he said he is looking forward to returning in the next few weeks, for both club and country.
“I am doing really well,” Reyna said. “I am seeing a few people that should — and will — be able to help and get me back to 100 percent very, very soon.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Members of the Territorial Defense Forces of Ukraine receive weapons to defend Kyiv, Feb. 25, 2022. (Mikhail Palinchak/Pool/REUTERS)
The country’s former president is patrolling the city streets with a civilian defense force, armed with an AK-47. Civilians have been called to find their own weapons and make molotov cocktails — a type of crude, homemade explosive named, mockingly, after a former Soviet foreign minister.
It marks a remarkable armed civilian mobilization, unseen in Europe in decades. But it isn’t yet clear if this is closer to a real grass-roots flood that could truly bolster war efforts, or something closer to a tragic last stand. Although Ukraine has surprised many observers in some early battles, the invading Russian forces have far more manpower and firepower. And so far, they have used only a fraction of it.
Many Ukrainians had been preparing for this day. Though Ukraine’s active military has fewer than 200,000 enlistees and is far smaller than Russia’s, it has sizable reserve forces, including a new civilian branch that has attracted recruits from all corners — and all ages. Ukraine’s defense minister said this week that anyone who can hold a weapon is urged to join the country’s Territorial Defense Forces.
“We have simplified all the procedures,” Oleksii Reznikov wrote Thursday on Twitter, telling Ukrainians they need only their passport to sign up.
Accounts of exceptional bravery from Ukrainian soldiers have buoyed nationalistic pride for many in the country. Zelensky has said the defenders of Zmiinyi Island, or Snake Island, would be honored with the title “Hero of Ukraine,” the highest in the country, after battling to the last man. Audio files shared on social media appeared to show a small team of Ukrainian border guards being asked to lay down their weapons or die by a Russian warship.
Government calls to make molotov cocktails tapped into a broader history of efforts to resist Moscow. The weapons, usually glass bottles filled with a flammable liquid and a rag that is set alight before they are thrown like a grenade, were used to notorious effect in Finland after the Soviet invasion in 1939. They were named after the Soviet foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov.
“It is important that everyone be strong in spirit. This is our land. We won’t give up,” Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar wrote in a Facebook post about the makeshift weapons.
Poroshenko, who served asUkrainian president from 2014 to 2019, said the number of people trying to sign up was a “great demonstration of how Ukrainian people hate Putin and how we are against Russian aggression.” | null | null | null | null | null |
For the second time in a little less than two years, President Biden has selected the person many people thought he would select for a huge position. First, it was Kamala D. Harris for his running mate. Now, it’s Ketanji Brown Jackson for his first Supreme Court vacancy.
But even as Jackson’s selection was considered the most likely to fill a slot Biden promised would be reserved for a Black woman, there was some pressure on Biden to go in a different direction. In particular, that would have meant picking fellow federal judge J. Michelle Childs, who had the backing of House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) and was considered more amenable to Republicans.
Although Childs is well-regarded, some Republicans’ decision to telegraph potential support for her certainly cut both ways. Childs also was viewed suspiciously by some labor groups, a key constituency in the Democratic Party. This stemmed mostly from her work in the private sector on behalf of employers fighting worker claims. Childs also is known to be very tough on crime at a time in which Democrats have trended more toward sentencing reform.
In picking Jackson, though, Biden and Democrats still can credibly point to her bipartisan support. She got the votes of three Senate Republicans when she was confirmed to a federal appeals court post just last year. During her 2012 confirmation hearings for a district judgeship, she received effusive praise from none other then Rep. Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), to whom she is related by marriage and who later became House speaker.
Jackson’s previous hearings were relatively amicable affairs, even as Republicans previewed a number of potential criticisms that they could push harder this time around. Biden seems to think she’ll be confirmed regardless, though, and he will be daring Republicans to push back on the first Black woman nominated to the court.
There’s also what the nomination means, practically speaking. The liberal wing of the court faces a historic 6-3 deficit after President Donald Trump was able to confirm three justices in his four years. Nominating a justice who is more moderate risked rendering the liberal wing potentially less potent.
Jackson hasn’t exactly amassed the record of a fire-breathing liberal — Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) acknowledged last month that “it’s hard to find something tangible in her record to object to" — but there’s a reason that left-leaning groups raised concerns about Childs and not her.
The biggest question, of course, is whether Jackson will get the 50 votes of the Democrat caucus — not because there are reasons to think any of them would vote against her, but because 50 votes would be sufficient, and recent history suggests having all 50 members of the Democratic caucus there to vote isn’t a complete given.
When Jackson was confirmed to a federal appeals court last year, she got three GOP votes from the Republican senators who most frequently cross the aisle on such votes: Sens. Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska). All three will have the chance to vote on her again.
Graham, a former chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has shown significantly more deference to Biden’s right to pick judges than virtually any other GOP senator. But right away Friday, he suggested that he might fight Jackson’s nomination, saying on Twitter that her selection over his preferred choice of Childs shows “the radical Left has won President Biden over yet again.”
Collins, for what it’s worth, has signaled that she could oppose Biden’s nominee on process grounds. She voted against conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett last year because she said the process was too rushed, and she has raised similar concerns about Biden’s timetable.
Murkowski also has suggested this vote could be different for her.
“It is at a level that commands its own evaluation, separate and above everything that we have considered to date,” Murkowski recently told The Washington Post’s Seung Min Kim.
Jackson’s selection is indeed historic. Of the 115 justices in our nation’s history, all but seven have been White men, and we’ve had only two Black men — Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas. Black women also account for less than 2 percent of all federal judges throughout U.S. history.
Biden’s pledge was clearly made with politics in mind. Black women are a hugely important piece of the Democratic coalition, and they proved extremely important to his win in the 2020 primaries and in the general election. It was also something Clyburn pushed, as The Post’s Cleve R. Wootson Jr. and Marianna Sotomayor wrote recently: | null | null | null | null | null |
The group discussed two new pieces of intelligence: one suggesting that Russia was planning to stage a “false flag” operation pegged to a specific date, blaming the fake attack on Ukraine and using it as justification to invade the country; and the second that the timeline for a Russian invasion had accelerated.
The 13 days that followed those impromptu Situation Room huddles provide a revealing window into the Biden administration’s unsuccessful scramble to stop Russian President Vladimir Putin from launching a full-scale invasion, as explosions now echo across Ukraine and Russian forces close in on the capital, Kyiv. The attack has plunged the NATO alliance and global markets into crisis, and leaves the United States with limited options as Americans remain broadly opposed to direct military intervention.
The multipronged approach also highlighted a recognition inside the administration that Putin was unlikely to be dissuaded by any countermeasures and that Biden and his team were trying to prevent an invasion that seemed inevitable.
“The Russian military has begun a brutal assault on the people of Ukraine, without provocation, without justification, without necessity,” Biden said Thursday in the East Room of the White House, in a speech that was as much an explanation of a fait accompli as an address to the nation. “This is a premeditated attack. Vladimir Putin has been planning this for months as I’ve — we’ve been saying all along.”
On Dec. 3, The Washington Post reported that U.S. intelligence had found the Kremlin planning a multi-front offensive as soon as early 2022, involving as many as 175,000 troops. The assessment relied principally on a map that included satellite images, which officials said showed that 50 battlefield tactical groups were deployed, along with “newly arrived” tanks and artillery.
“Biden wanted that information out in the world before he spoke with Putin, and he wanted Putin to know that we knew and we were going to make sure the world knew,” a senior administration official said. “It was the start of a new phase where we were talking about what we were seeing. This is a very different way to do diplomacy.”
This initial declassification was the first in an unusual series of coordinated public disclosures, from December through this month, in which U.S. officials declassified intelligence from sensitive sources to expose Putin’s planning. They used satellite imagery to reveal his massing of troops along the Ukraine border; released details of a scheme to install a puppet regime in Kyiv; and reported that Russia was planning an elaborate false-flag attack — staging a video that would accuse Ukrainian forces of attacking Russian territory or Russian-speaking people in Ukraine, complete with corpses to stand in for victims and a cast of actors posing as mourners.
But the calculation was a complex one. The U.S. intelligence community historically has been reluctant to share classified information publicly for fear of compromising the sources and methods used to acquire it, including human spies and technology for covertly intercepting communications.
Rather, they were attempting to shape the public debate and disclose enough information about Putin’s plans so that he could not operate with impunity or attempt to blame Ukraine for a war that he started, according to officials in multiple countries involved in the effort. If he tried to stage a false-flag attack, for example, the world would have been warned that it was a ruse.
“We learned collectively from Russia’s disinformation campaigns in the past,” said William Klein, an associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a consulting partner with Finsbury Glover Hering, a global strategic-communications firm. “This time, the United States was very, very proactive in calling out Vladimir Putin before he could act, and the United States was pretty accurate about its forecasts.”
The information environment has changed since then, as well — with more open-source analysis, commercially available satellite imagery, social media live-streaming of wars and invasions, and a public more likely to understand terms like “disinformation.”
The senior administration official said Biden administration officials did share downgraded information with the Ukrainians in real time, but were also aware that the Russians had deeply penetrated the Ukrainian security infrastructure and so were cautious to not reveal sources or methods.
“Seeing people greet these rumors and these streams of disinformation with initial skepticism and then to go to work at debunking them quickly exposed how effectively amateurish a lot of them were,” said the first senior administration official. “For a lot of people who had been wondering if we were crying wolf or if we were being too aggressive in our strategy, it was a wake-up call saying: ‘Oh, no, this is happening. Everything that they we have been warning about is not a crazy spy novel. They’re actually going to do that.’ ”
'Like something out of “Argo” '
The days leading up to the Feb. 10 Situation Room meetings had been tense in the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, as well. By the end of that week, U.S. officials briefed allies that Russia’s military preparations were complete, and the embassy began making plans to evacuate.
“It was like something out of ‘Argo,’ ” the diplomat said, referring to the Ben Affleck thriller about the rescue of six U.S. diplomats amid the 1979 hostage crisis in Tehran.
Looming large for Biden, too, was the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan last summer. A suicide bombing at a gate of the country’s largest airport had killed 13 U.S. troops, and chaotic images from the final days of the American drawdown had hurt Biden politically, undermining his image as a competent leader.
The evacuation of Kabul was historically unique, and administration officials worried that Americans now would expect a similar U.S. evacuation, although the situation in Ukraine was quite different. Biden several times urged Americans to leave the country while they still could.
Oysters, chestnut-cream-topped foie gras and cardamom-scented pollock were on the menu. Underneath cloud-painted ceilings and next to gilded chandeliers, one of the diplomats watched as foreign ministers and their aides — sprinkled across the restaurant — pulled out their phones and cued up a live stream of Putin’s speech.
The diplomats watched the Russian president and swiped through live reactions on Twitter, shifting on their green velvet banquettes as Putin grew angrier and angrier.
For months, Blinken had been shuttling back and forth to Europe to coordinate with U.S. allies on a variety of doomsday scenarios. His problem was that Europeans might splinter apart if Putin mounted an attack that fell short of a full-scale invasion — a reality Biden candidly acknowledged last month, when he admitted that a “minor incursion” might not prompt the full buffet of a response from the West.
Macron, according to officials familiar with the call, noted that Putin’s recognition of the two territories had just eviscerated the Minsk Agreement, a diplomatic accord designed to resolve the conflict in Eastern Ukraine and keep Donetsk and Luhansk within the country’s borders.
Yet what surprised both U.S. and French officials was the reaction from Scholz, who had long hoped to preserve a controversial $11 billion Russian gas pipeline to Germany known as Nord Stream 2. U.S. and German officials kept in close touch through the night, and the next day, Scholz announced that he was halting certification of the pipeline — a major pivot for Germany, which had cultivated a reputation for accommodating Russia.
That same day, the Biden administration began referring to the crisis as “an invasion,” and the American president, speaking from the East Room, outlined additional sanctions against Russia, including against two big banks and several individual oligarchs and their families.
And while the halting of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline made for a powerful opening salvo, Putin’s decision Wednesday to move tanks, troops and warplanes beyond Ukraine’s separatist regions placed new pressure on Biden and his team to respond even more forcefully.
The multipronged attack did not surprise the administration, after months of Russia encircling Ukraine by land and sea. A senior U.S. defense official described Russia’s actions as a likely “initial phase” of a campaign that could unfold for some time.
Michael McFaul, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Russia under President Barack Obama, similarly said he did not fault the Biden administration for the current conflagration. | null | null | null | null | null |
Joni James, a dulcet-voiced pop singer whose 1952 recording of the ballad "Why Don’t You Believe Me?” sold millions of copies and established her as a Hit Parade queen for a dozen years before she largely exited the music world, died Feb. 20 in West Palm Beach, Fla. She was 91.
Ms. James was 21 when “Why Don’t You Believe Me?” became a No. 1 hit. Her other signature recordings included a version of Hank Williams’s “Your Cheatin’ Heart” as well as "Have You Heard,” “How Important Can It Be?” “There Goes My Heart,” "Mama, Don’t Cry at My Wedding” and “Little Things Mean a Lot.”
Her 1960 album “Joni James at Carnegie Hall,” featuring a symphony and chorus conducted by her then-husband and musical director, Anthony “Tony” Acquaviva, was another commercial success and included jazz-pop standards such as “When I Grow Too Old to Dream" and “Let There Be Love.” Lindsay Planer, a critic for AllMusic.com, praised the "maturity and refined elegance in her delivery,” setting her apart from other teen idols of the ponytail pop era.
“Singing was something we grew up with,” she told the Los Angeles Times. "I’m Italian. Italians breathe and Italians sing. There was always music around the house, but when I thought of real singers, I thought of Sarah Vaughan and Billie Holiday and Doris Day and Hank Williams. I was just little Joni. ... I always felt I had to work hard to be good enough. I had to tell the story and pour everything into a song . . . my heart, my soul, my guts.”
“I became the nurse and the Italian mother," Ms. James told the Times. "I wanted to be near my family. Besides, I couldn’t possibly turn away from Tony. He was in a wheelchair for years. They were going to amputate his leg at one point because of gangrene, but we saved it. I used to bathe the leg six times a day.”
As Ms. James revived her career — she stopped performing about 15 years ago — she said she was greeted by audiences as a long-lost friend or with curious stares ("It is either ‘Joni, where have you been?’ or ‘Joni who?’ "). But she told the Tribune that she never had any intention of adapting to an updated repertoire.
“I resent rock-and-roll because it only tells one half," she said. “All they have is rhythm, rhythm, rhythm, which is great. But when you fall in love and want to be romantic, you still need that gorgeous melody.”
“I can’t live without singing,” she added, "because I love music, and how can you live without love?” | null | null | null | null | null |
Some critics saw the prank scenes as misogynistic, although Ms. Kellerman argued that they gave her character a chance to develop over the course of the film, and revealed a vulnerability that was missing early on. The shower sequence was also transformative for her as an actress, after years of anxiety over her appearance and frustration with the roles she had been offered.
Supporting herself with jobs as a waitress, secretary, swimming coach and elevator operator, she began to appear on television, including episodes of “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis,” “Hawaii Five-O,” “Mannix,” “Cheyenne” and “The Outer Limits.” “It took me eight years to get into TV — and six years to get out,” she told Life. “Frigid women, alcoholics they gave me. I got beat up, raped and never played comedy.” | null | null | null | null | null |
The new guidelines reflect the view that the United States has entered a potentially less dangerous phase of the pandemic with more tools to protect the most vulnerable.
WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 15: A discarded face mask is seen outside near the Senate on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Feb. 15, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
The new guidelines, which took effect Friday, reflect the administration’s view that the United States has entered a different, potentially less dangerous phase of the pandemic and follow the lead of Democratic governors responding to declining case counts as well as public pressure. Top health officials said the shift reflects that after more than two years of living with the virus, many communities have greater protection against severe disease because of widespread vaccinations, treatments, better testing and higher-quality masks, among other improvements.
The approach is expected to be less disruptive to daily life. It incorporates new metrics such as the number of new hospital admissions with covid-19, and the number of hospitalized covid-19 patients, in addition to case counts to assess levels of covid-19 disease in every county in the nation. Instead of focusing on eliminating transmission of the virus, it is aimed at preventing hospitals and health-care systems from being overwhelmed and protecting people at high risk for severe illness, officials said.
Officials said the framework would also provide individuals with an understanding of what precautions they should consider based on the level of disease in their community, their underlying risk, and their own risk tolerance."
In communities with medium levels, CDC recommends people at high risk for illness-- including those who are immunocompromised or have underlying medical conditions-- consult with their health-care providers and consider wearing a mask.
In communities with low levels of disease, high-risk individuals can consult with their providers and wear masks as needed. Regardless of the level of disease in a community, “people may choose to wear a mask at anytime, based on personal preference," said Greta Massetti, a CDC official leading the agency’s covid response. | null | null | null | null | null |
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — Six companies bid a combined $4.37 billion for the right to build wind energy projects on the ocean floor off New Jersey and New York in the U.S. government’s largest such auction in history, a federal agency said Friday.
“This week’s offshore wind sale makes one thing clear: The enthusiasm for the clean energy economy is undeniable and it’s here to stay,” U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said. “The investments we are seeing today will play an important role in delivering on the Biden-Harris administration’s commitment to tackle the climate crisis and create thousands of good-paying, union jobs across the nation.”
The provisional winners announced Friday afternoon by the agency are: Bight Wind Holdings, LLC, which bid $1.1 billion on the largest tract, 125,964 acres off the coast of New Jersey’s Long Beach Island; Attentive Energy LLC which bid $795 million on an 84,332-acre tract; Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind Bight, LLC which bid $780 million on 79,351 acres; OW Ocean Winds East, LLC which bid $765 million on 71,522 acres; Invenergy Wind Offshore LLC which bid $645 million on 83,976 acres, and Mid-Atlantic Offshore Wind LLC, which bid $285 million on 43,056 acres. | null | null | null | null | null |
The new guidelines, which took effect Friday, reflect the administration’s view that the United States has entered a different, potentially less dangerous phase of the pandemic. The change follows a relaxation of restrictions already made by most Democratic governors responding to declining case counts and public pressure. But top health officials said the shift reflects that after more than two years of living with the virus, many communities have greater protection against severe disease because of widespread vaccinations, treatments, better testing and higher-quality masks, among other improvements.
The approach is expected to be less disruptive to daily life. It incorporates new metrics such as the number of new hospital admissions with covid-19, and the number of hospitalized covid-19 patients, as well as case counts, to assess levels of covid-19 disease in every county. Instead of focusing on eliminating transmission of the virus, it is aimed at preventing hospitals and health-care systems from being overwhelmed and protecting people at high risk for severe illness, officials said.
In communities with low levels of disease, high-risk individuals can consult with their providers and wear masks as needed. Regardless of the level of disease in a community, “people may choose to wear a mask at anytime, based on personal preference,” said Greta Massetti, a CDC official leading the agency’s covid response. | null | null | null | null | null |
Ms. James was 21 when “Why Don’t You Believe Me?” became a No. 1 hit. Her other signature recordings included a version of Hank Williams’s “Your Cheatin’ Heart” as well as “Have You Heard,” “How Important Can It Be?” “There Goes My Heart,” “Mama, Don’t Cry at My Wedding” and “Little Things Mean a Lot.”
Her 1960 album “Joni James at Carnegie Hall,” featuring a symphony and chorus conducted by her then-husband and musical director, Anthony “Tony” Acquaviva, was another commercial success and included jazz-pop standards such as “When I Grow Too Old to Dream” and “Let There Be Love.” Lindsay Planer, a critic for AllMusic.com, praised the “maturity and refined elegance in her delivery,” setting her apart from other teen idols of the ponytail pop era.
Giovanna Carmella Babbo was born in Chicago on Sept. 22, 1930, one of six children raised by a widowed mother during the Depression. She was a dancer in her youth and began babysitting, modeling undergarments and icing cakes in a bakery to pay her way to New York to study ballet.
“Singing was something we grew up with,” she told the Los Angeles Times. “I’m Italian. Italians breathe and Italians sing. There was always music around the house, but when I thought of real singers, I thought of Sarah Vaughan and Billie Holiday and Doris Day and Hank Williams. I was just little Joni. ... I always felt I had to work hard to be good enough. I had to tell the story and pour everything into a song ... my heart, my soul, my guts.”
She never again generated the level of commercial fervor that greeted that debut single, but she maintained a steady output of pop songs for the next dozen years before mostly dropping out of the business, except for periodic concert and nightclub engagements, and appearances at U.S. military posts overseas. Acquaviva, whom she had wed in 1956, developed a severe case of diabetes, and by 1964 she was needed to care for him and their two children.
“I became the nurse and the Italian mother,” Ms. James told the Times. “I wanted to be near my family. Besides, I couldn’t possibly turn away from Tony. He was in a wheelchair for years. They were going to amputate his leg at one point because of gangrene, but we saved it. I used to bathe the leg six times a day.”
As Ms. James revived her career — she stopped performing about 15 years ago — she said she was greeted by audiences as a long-lost friend or with curious stares (“It is either ‘Joni, where have you been?’ or ‘Joni who?’ ”). But she told the Tribune that she never had any intention of adapting to an updated repertoire.
“I resent rock-and-roll because it only tells one half,” she said. “All they have is rhythm, rhythm, rhythm, which is great. But when you fall in love and want to be romantic, you still need that gorgeous melody.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Some critics saw the prank scenes as misogynistic, although Ms. Kellerman argued that they gave her character a chance to develop over the course of the film and revealed a vulnerability that was missing early on. The shower sequence was also transformative for her as an actress, after years of anxiety over her appearance and frustration with the roles she had been offered.
Supporting herself with jobs as a waitress, secretary, swimming coach and elevator operator, she began to appear on television, including in episodes of “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis,” “Hawaii Five-O,” “Mannix,” “Cheyenne” and “The Outer Limits.” “It took me eight years to get into TV — and six years to get out,” she told Life. “Frigid women, alcoholics they gave me. I got beat up, raped and never played comedy.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Demonstrators hold up placards, one of them reading "No business with Russia, Stop Putler," "Cut Russia from SWIFT" and "Germany finances the war as well" during a protest Russia's invasion of the Ukraine on February 25, 2022 in front of the Chancellery in Berlin. (John MacDougall/AFP via Getty Images)
He was talking about SWIFT — short for Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication — a messaging network connecting banks around the world. The Belgian-based consortium links more than 11,000 financial institutions operating in more than 200 countries and territories, acting as a critical hub enabling international payments. Last year, the system averaged 42 million messages a day.
Whetherto cut Russia off from SWIFT has become one of the first points of serious Western division in this crisis, after the European Union, a block of 27 nations, had for weeks demonstrated unity.
Before the invasion, Western nations promised a punishing regime of sanctions that President Biden said would be “swift and severe." In Europe, it remained difficult Friday to gauge the swiftness or the severity or to determine exactly which countries were doing more or less because the punitive actions remained a work-in-progress. European Council President Charles Michel said a “further package” was under “urgent preparation.”
Speaking on Friday evening, Germany’s Finance Minister Christian Lindner said “we’re open” to the idea of cutting off Russia from SWIFT. “But one has to know what one is doing," he cautioned, saying Europe needed to pose the question to itself whether the step may “prompt Russia to stop its gas deliveries, because they can’t be paid anymore."
"And if those gas deliveries end, what will be the impact on our supplies?” he said.
Standing next to his German counterpart, French Finance Minister Le Maire initially said Friday morning that cutting off Russia from the global payment system would be an option of “last resort.” But by the afternoon, he clarified that “France is not among those countries” that have "expressed reservations” about the move. He cited the diplomatic obligations of France, which holds the presidency of the Council of the E.U., as the reason for the country’s initially vague position.
On Thursday, Biden had sought to portray a SWIFT cut off as a limited sanctions step, saying “the sanctions we’ve imposed exceed SWIFT."
Yet Jacob Kirkegaard, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, predicated Western powers will move within days to banish Russia from the international financial network. “The domestic political pressure on these leaders is building rapidly, because it becomes a symbol of standing with Ukraine,” he said. “The governments can’t afford to be seen as being on the wrong side of history for very long.”
Earlier this week, after the scope of the invasion became clear, Biden said the United States would block certain technology exports to Russia. He sanctioned Russian banks and Russian oligarchs as well, saying more sanctions were likely on the way. | null | null | null | null | null |
Reports from the front lines: Friday, Feb. 25
Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion are waiting to cross the border into Poland on Feb. 25. (Wojciech Grzedzinski for The Washington Post)
On Friday, Russian forces pressed closer to the Ukrainian capital. A senior U.S. defense official said the Russian military has lost momentum in its offensive, but cautioned that could change in the coming days.
Friday evening on the streets of Kiev, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky posted a defiant video in which he said that he and his government were “defending our independence from the Russian invasion.”
Washington Post journalists are reporting on the ground in Ukraine. Here are their dispatches from Friday, Feb. 25.
Blasts audible from central Kyiv
By Siobhán O’Grady | 2:07 p.m. ET
KYIV, Ukraine — Several blasts could be heard from central Kyiv starting after 8 p.m. local time Friday, with the sound of sporadic gunfire ringing out in the distance. This marks the first time The Washington Post has heard gunfire from Ukraine’s capital in recent days.
A louder blast appeared to strike at 8:51 p.m. local time.
Most civilians remained indoors, with many sheltered in underground bunkers, basements or parking garages to try to protect themselves. Concerns continued to mount over the possibility that Russian forces could soon close in on the capital.
Very loud boom in Kyiv just now. It sounded louder and longer than others I've heard recently.
By Siobhán O’Grady |11:48 a.m. ET
KYIV, Ukraine — As sirens blared in the streets of Kyiv, signaling that residents should head to underground bunkers, Washington Post journalists headed to their hotel’s basement where staff and their families were also sheltering. There, hotel workers served up heaping plates of spaghetti bolognese and Greek salad — a welcome surprise considering the restaurant is closed and supplies are dwindling.
With a shortage of plates, some guests shared, and others took turns waiting for plates or silverware to be washed. One man handed out pieces of carpet for guests to put over the cold tile floor. The elderly and children have been given priority for seating. Afterward, a jovial hotel staffer walked around mopping up spilled sauce and lettuce.
The shared sense of camaraderie in the basement bunker was a glimmer of light in an otherwise dark time.
‘I’m going to fight to my last drop of blood’: Ukrainians return from abroad to join battle
SHEHYNI, Ukraine — Some Ukrainian men living overseas lined up Friday at border crossings to return to Ukraine and do their part to fight Russia’s onslaught. Others, attempting to leave Ukraine, expressed frustration at being blocked amid a national call to arms.
Ukraine’s border guards stopped all male citizens between the ages of 18 and 60 from leaving the country on Friday, as the Defense Ministry called on residents of one district of Kyiv to make molotov cocktails.
Alexander Gorbenko, 54, complained that there was little he could do to protect his homeland from Russian troops as he parted from his wife and 11-year-old daughter at the Medyka-Shehyni border crossing to Poland, unable to cross with them.
“I just have an air rifle, the cash machines don’t work, and there is no organization,” he said. “I cannot prepare. You cannot just go and buy a weapon. It’s not like the United States.”
He said he would try to protect his home and neighborhood, but not more. “A lot of young guys haven’t been in the military at all. They will just die, like they have been in Donbas,” he said, referring to the area of eastern Ukraine where war has raged for the past eight years.
“If I could go too, I would,” said Vitali, 31, who declined to give his last name, after his wife and child crossed into Poland. “It’s brutal,” he said, with tears in his eyes.
But others raced toward minibuses after passing through the metal border gates. “I’m going to fight,” said a young man weighed down with bags. He said he did not have time to stop and talk.
Viktor, a 22-year-old reservist who was waiting for a ride into Ukraine with four jerrycans full of fuel, said that he left London as soon as he heard the call, flying to the Czech Republic and crossing by land.
“We will fight them back,” he said, adding that he was disappointed with the level of international support. “Even if the United States turned their back on us, we will remember their behavior.”
But Ukraine is his land, he said: “I’m going to fight to my last drop of blood.”
‘Nowhere to run’ — Ukrainians crowd into subway stations and shelters to take cover
By Ellen Francis and Whitney Leaming | 7:28 a.m. ET
When the sounds of explosions rocked the Ukrainian capital and other cities, many sought shelter the only place they could find: underground.
Hundreds of people flocked to subway stations and basements to take cover from the Russian onslaught that swept across the borders Thursday. Some spent the night there.
In the eastern city of Kharkiv, loud blasts sent families down into a station, with their backpacks and pets, scrambling to understand what could happen next.
“We had to do something, so we came here,” Stas Dikii, a Kharkiv resident, told The Washington Post from the station, where he went for shelter Thursday with his mother and grandmother.
Around him, people sat on the stairs or leaned on trains, scrolling through their phones for news. Others made calls to check on loved ones.
“I’d like to hear in a few hours, or no matter when, some news saying: ‘We have survived. Kharkiv has been saved, everything’s great,' ” he said. “But if there’s no such news, we will have to stay here.”
At another station in the capital, people had hunkered down for the night as Ukrainian troops prepared to fend off Russian forces believed to be advancing toward Kyiv.
Photos later showed residents gathering in the basement of a school after their building was damaged. Some rested on the floor, while children played cards and one boy caressed a dog in the shelter.
Video: Residential building shattered in Kyiv
By Sudarsan Raghavan and Julie Yoon | 6:20 a.m. ET
On Feb. 25, a civilian building was destroyed after a projectile hit a residential neighborhood of Kyiv, according to Ukrainian officials. (The Washington Post)
A rocket hit a residential building in the southern part of Kyiv early Friday. Many of the building’s windows were shattered, and debris fell to the ground. Several people were inju
Devastating scene at an apartment block in eastern Kyiv this morning. Elderly Ukrainians are tossing the remnants of their apartment walls, insulation etc off the edge of their balconies. Peoples clothes, satellite dishes and air conditioners are hanging off the damaged building pic.twitter.com/2aKoam3dmN
red, including one who was in critical condition, according to the mayor’s office.
Video: Post reporters run for shelter in Kharkiv
By Whitney Leaming | 5:30 a.m. ET
The Washington Post's Isabelle Khurshudyan is in Kharkiv, Ukraine where shelling on Feb. 25 has intensified. (Whitney Leaming/The Washington Post)
KHARKIV, Ukraine — There were loud booms just now in the center of Kharkiv, much closer than they had been in recent days. Four guys who had been walking on the street started running. One group of people in a long line for the pharmacy looked around confused before dispersing. It’s very snowy today. Smell of sulfur in the air. One upscale hotel told people to take shelter in its underground garage and handed out chairs. There are kids and pets and media crews in here.
Eerie quiet on streets of Kyiv as citizens shelter at home
By Siobhán O’Grady | 3:06 a.m. ET
KYIV — The streets of the Ukrainian capital remained eerily quiet Friday morning as most civilians heeded advice to stay home and seek shelter amid the threat of Russian air attacks.
Few cars were on major roads, and outdoor areas that are normally bustling with activity were largely free of pedestrians.
At a bus station in an industrial area of town, several people crowded together.
On some roads, men in military fatigues gathered, apparently waiting for transportation.
All men between the ages of 18 and 60 are now banned from leaving the country. Some are now preparing to deploy.
By Siobhán O’Grady and Kostiantyn Khudov | 2:06 a.m. ET
By David L. Stern and Amy Cheng | 1:40 a.m. ET
LVIV, Ukraine - Kyiv city authorities issued an urgent warning on social media shortly after 8:15 a.m. local time on Friday, telling residents to head to bunkers “immediately.” The city said it was an urgent air alert.
By David L. Stern and Andrew Jeong | 12:56 a.m. ET
LVIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, Ganna Malyar, urged the country’s citizens to take up arms, including by manufacturing molotov cocktails or small arms, as Russia’s invasion entered its second day. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: When the truth hurts, ban it
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R) speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas in 2021. (L.M. Otero/Associated Press)
Regarding the Feb. 21 front-page article “College faculties take up critical race theory fight”:
It appears that Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R) is the model for the antidemocratic, anti-academic-freedom, pro-censorship and book-banning wing of the Republican Party.
Republican-controlled legislatures across the country are attempting to ban books, concepts and teachers’ free-speech rights to prevent their followers from feeling any discomfort or cognitive dissonance from their sanitized view of reality. This is what authoritarian governments in China, Myanmar, North Korea and Russia, and a host of other right-wing governments, have been doing for decades.
Joseph A. Izzo, Washington
Academic freedom will best be served by allowing college faculties to offer elective courses in critical race theory and by professors encouraging open discussions about the validity of the claims of critical race theory. Anyone who read the Wikipedia page on critical race theory should realize that this is not a topic that can be discussed by elementary school children. Perhaps a few teenagers are experienced and skilled enough to discuss this topic and weigh the arguments for and against some of the assertions.
In any event, critical race theory ought not be mandated at any level of education; that would be an affront to academic freedom.
Frank Nicolai, Fort Washington
The legislatures that think they can affect by law college classroom teaching and the faculty who claim great fear that their academic freedom is being threatened understandably misunderstand the entire issue.
As a university professor, I have been on panels discussing critical race theory. The issue of university faculty teaching politically controversial perspectives, especially in the humanities and social sciences, will be determined by the faculty universities hire and virtually nothing else.
There is no way a legislature can stop the teaching of a salient news topic, nor is there a way it can determine how it is taught. In addition, there is no way that faculty will ever infringe on the academic freedom of liberal or progressive professors in public universities.
The universities wherein there is a vote for academic freedom in faculty senates are acting symbolically, as they do not protect faculty from anybody; they just make faculty feel good. Hence, you get silly and smug pronunciamentos, such as Ohio State University’s that “there are no ‘two sides’ to racism.” Of course there are varying sides as to what constitutes racism, what should be punished or ignored, etc.
For all of the self-righteous claims of the critical need for academic freedom at universities, hardly any of their academic organizations believe in hiring conservatives, treating them equitably if hired or allowing them to publish well-researched and well-argued articles in their major journals.
Few academics believe or fight for “academic freedom” for anyone but their ideological kin, and legislatures are just spinning their wheels in the hope that they affect hiring.
Richard E. Vatz, Towson | null | null | null | null | null |
WASHINGTON — An inflation gauge that is closely monitored by the Federal Reserve jumped 6.1% in January compared with a year ago, the latest evidence that Americans are enduring sharp price increases that will likely worsen after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It was the largest year-over-year rise since 1982. Robust consumer spending has combined with widespread product and worker shortages to create the highest inflation in four decades — a heavy burden for U.S. households, especially lower-income families faced with elevated costs for food, fuel and rent. At the same time, consumers as a whole largely shrugged off the higher prices last month and boosted their spending 2.1% from December to January.
BRUSSELS — With a military intervention in Ukraine off the table, countries around the world are looking to heap more financial punishment on Moscow. The United States, Britain and European Union said Friday they will move to sanction Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The EU’s unanimous decision, part of a broader sanctions package, indicated that Western powers are moving toward unprecedented measures to try to force Putin to stop the brutal invasion of Russia’s neighbor and from unleashing a major war in Europe. White House press secretary Jen Psaki indicated the U.S. sanctions will include a travel ban.
NEW YORK — Relief flowed through Wall Street on Friday, even as deadly attacks continued to rage in Ukraine. Stocks rose sharply, oil prices fell and investors turned away from gold and other traditional havens they favor when fear is high. The S&P 500 jumped 2.2% following a wild Thursday. Stocks have made big swings as Russia’s invasion raised the prospect of even higher inflation, particularly in energy prices, and threatened to put a drag on the global economy. The volatility seemed likely to continue, with so much uncertainty about Ukraine as well as over how quickly the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates.
WASHINGTON — U.S. and European officials are holding one key financial sanction against Russia in reserve. They’re choosing not to boot Russia off SWIFT, the dominant system for global financial transactions. The Russian invasion of Ukraine caused a barrage of new financial sanctions Thursday. The sanctions are meant to isolate, punish and impoverish Russia in the long term. President Joe Biden announced restrictions on exports to Russia and sanctions against Russian banks and state-controlled companies. But Biden pointedly played down the need to block Russia from SWIFT. Biden says that while it’s “always” still an option, “right now that’s not the position that the rest of Europe wishes to take.”
BRUSSELS — After the political outrage against Russia comes the economic reckoning. Finance ministers of the 19 countries that use the euro gathered Friday in Paris to weigh the economic fallout of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the resulting European Union sanctions. The EU, and allies like the U.S., are trying to starve Russia of international capital and key industrial technologies. EU government heads approved new penalties at an emergency meeting Thursday evening, and they will be submitted for approval to EU foreign ministers Friday. Some national leaders acknowledged the pain of sanctions also would be felt in Europe. The EU faces considerable costs because of close economic ties with Russia.
CAMDEN, N.J. — Drugmaker Johnson & Johnson and three major distributors have finalized a nationwide settlement over their role in the opioid addiction crisis. The announcement Friday clears the way for $26 billion to flow to nearly every state and local government in the U.S. It’s the largest settlement to date among the many opioid-related cases that have been playing out across the country and is expected to provide a significant boost to programs aimed at reversing the crisis in places that have been devastated by it. That includes many parts of rural America. The money is to be delivered over 18 years, and most of it must be used to fight the epidemic. | null | null | null | null | null |
Hyundai, Kia sued by drivers over anti-lock brake system problem
Hyundai, Kia sued over brake problems
Hyundai Motor and Kia were sued Friday by drivers who claim that a defect in their vehicles’ anti-lock brake systems could trigger fires.
The proposed class action filed in federal court in Santa Ana, Calif., followed the South Korean automakers’ Feb. 8 recall of nearly 485,000 Hyundai Santa Fe, Hyundai Tucson, Kia K900 and Kia Sportage vehicles from model years 2014 through 2019.
Hyundai and Kia said malfunctioning hydraulic electronic control units could cause electrical shorts, increasing the risk of fire in engine compartments while the vehicles were being driven or even parked.
They recommended that vehicles be parked outside and away from others, and said dealers would install new fuses. The recall followed 11 reports of fire incidents in the United States.
Pending home sales down in January
A gauge of U.S. pending home sales unexpectedly fell in January for a third month as high prices and low inventory continued to restrict home-buying.
The National Association of Realtors’ index of pending home sales decreased 5.7 percent from a month earlier to 109.5, the biggest drop since February 2021, according to data released Friday. The figure was worse than all estimates in a Bloomberg survey of economists.
The figures suggest that home buyers are still struggling to get into a housing market marked by record prices and lean inventory. It will only get less affordable as mortgage rates rise ahead of expected interest rate increases by the Federal Reserve.
Contract signings dropped in three of the four regions from the prior month, led by a 12.1 percent plunge in the Northeast. The West posted the only gain.
The Biden administration's sale of offshore wind development rights off the coasts of New York and New Jersey drew a record $4.37 billion in high bids from developers. The auction, which began Wednesday and stretched into Friday afternoon, is the first offshore wind lease sale under President Biden, who sees the expansion of the industry as a way to tackle climate change and create jobs. The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which oversees energy development in federal waters, offered six leases across 488,201 acres between New York's Long Island and New Jersey, an area known as the New York Bight.
Goldman Sachs Group became the latest bank to be investigated over employees communicating using messaging services that aren't approved by the companies. Goldman is cooperating with the Securities and Exchange Commission and producing documents related to an investigation, the New York-based bank said in a regulatory filing Friday. In December, the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission imposed $200 million in fines on JPMorgan Chase, saying that even managing directors and other senior supervisors at the bank had skirted regulatory scrutiny by using services such as WhatsApp or personal email addresses. This week, HSBC Holdings said it's being investigated by the CFTC over bankers' misuse of WhatsApp and other messaging platforms.
Exxon Mobil reached a final investment decision on expanding a carbon capture facility at LaBarge in Wyoming, with the $400 million project expected to start up by 2025. The project will capture as much as 1.2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide a year, an increase of about 20 percent over current levels. The oil giant is feeling the heat from investors to do more to reduce its carbon footprint after losing a quarter of its board to an activist campaign last year. | null | null | null | null | null |
ANNAPOLIS, Md. — A panel of Maryland lawmakers voted Friday to end a statewide emergency order and enable local school districts to decide whether students must wear face coverings in school.
“The time is right,” Choudhury told the panel’s members Friday. “I’m proud of the work that we’ve done, but like I said we can’t mask our kids forever. This is a good time to do it.”
“This year’s Super Bowl brought a capacity crowd of more than 70,000 people to the SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California. The stadium was full of people eating, drinking, screaming, hugging, without masks on. Yet, our children in Maryland had to go to school the following day masked,” said Heather Fletcher. | null | null | null | null | null |
Carteret County Sheriff Asa Buck speaks with reporters in Carteret County, N.C., on Monday, Feb. 14, 2022. Authorities say four teenagers and four adults returning from a hunting trip were on board a small plane that crashed off the coast of North Carolina over the weekend. (WCTI-TV via AP) (Uncredited/WCTI-TV) | null | null | null | null | null |
It used to be said that there was a “Black seat” on the Supreme Court. But Black legal perspectives are far too diverse to be represented by any single figure.
Ketanji Brown Jackson, whom President Biden has nominated to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer, speaks during an announcement ceremony with Biden, left, and Vice President Harris, right, at the White House, Feb. 25, 2022. (Al Drago/Bloomberg)
By Melissa Murray
This is why President Biden’s nomination of Judge Kentanji Brown Jackson, a Black woman, to the high court is so important. A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, Jackson would bring a range of professional experiences that will diversify the court. If confirmed, she will be the first justice since Marshall to have worked in criminal defense, and she served on the U.S. Sentencing Commission, where she spoke out about the disparity in crack and powder cocaine sentences. She will be the first justice to have clerked at all three levels of the federal judiciary. And importantly, to judge from her written opinions and public statements, she’ll serve as a weighty counterpoint to Thomas, demonstrating to the country the vast diversity of Black viewpoints.
To be sure, Justice Sonia Sotomayor routinely has sought to elevate the perspectives of people of color — and, specifically, women of color — in the court’s debates. But the addition of a Black woman to the court’s diminished liberal wing could amplify these efforts. Serving as a counterweight to Thomas, Jackson would make clear, through her presence and her arguments, that the Black experience is anything but one-dimensional. | null | null | null | null | null |
Why supporters of religious liberty should care about Ukraine
People sleep in the Kyiv subway as they use it as a bomb shelter on Friday. (Emilio Morenatti/Associated Press)
The news that Russian troops had invaded Ukraine was of deep concern for Bradley Nassif, a theologian and expert on Orthodox-evangelical dialogue who spent years as a tenured professor of religion at an evangelical university.
The status of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine has long been a source of tension. While Ukraine is home to millions of Orthodox Christians, they are divided in loyalties, with ties to rival leaders in Eastern Orthodoxy, including the Russian Orthodox Church with its Moscow patriarch and an independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church recognized by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, the leader of Orthodoxy worldwide.
Nassif, author of “The Evangelical Theology of the Orthodox Church,” spoke with Religion News Service about the crisis in Ukraine, how Orthodox Christians in the United States are responding and why events in Ukraine should concern Americans.
How is this news from Ukraine affecting Orthodox Christians in the United States?
The Council of Bishops of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the United States believe the Russians want complete domination of the land and its resources. Under the guise of the “Soviet Union,” Russia wants not only the rich natural resources of Ukraine but also a buffer zone between itself and the Western world. These are also largely the sentiments of the Ukrainian American people.
Yes. The Council of Bishops of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the United States has directed all its clergy to pray specifically for the situation. Ukrainian families in the United States are profoundly worried about their relatives as well as Ukraine itself.
Communication, however, has been difficult or blocked. Ukrainian immigrants are shoring up their support for family members there through financial donations and organized demonstrations. I’m hearing some calling for President Biden to go beyond sanctions and use military force to defend democracy in Ukraine.
The religious consequences of the Russian occupation of Ukraine are enormous. There has been a long dispute, recently revived since 2018, between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Turkey over the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
The question centers on who has the ecclesiastical authority to grant autocephaly to the Ukrainian Church. If Russia should establish itself in Ukraine, the Russian Orthodox Church will have much more power to control the fate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. As a result, the political conflicts we are now watching on television could soon become a major religious conflict as well.
There are some Americans, in particular some evangelicals, who are taking a “who cares” response or, in some ways, are supportive of Russia. What would you say to them?
Evangelicals who take a “who cares” attitude to what is going on now in Ukraine will be in for a big surprise once the dust settles. One needs only to look at what the Russians did to evangelicals after they annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014.
Evangelicals may well face similar governmental penalties for church gatherings, preaching and evangelistic campaigns. The growing concern is over evangelicals who allegedly “sheep steal” members of the Orthodox Church into their own Protestant ranks.
— Religion News Service | null | null | null | null | null |
A Transportation Security Administration order enforcing the mandate expires on March 18, and it could be extended
Passengers wait to board a United Airlines flight to Hawaii at San Francisco International Airport. (Jeff Chiu/AP)
A federal mask mandate for airline passengers and transit riders will stay in place for at least three more weeks, despite steps Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to ease mask guidance in other settings across the country.
A Transportation Security Administration order enforcing the mandate expires on March 18, and it could be extended. The rules, imposed in the early days of the Biden administration, require mask-wearing across all forms of public transportation, including transit stations, on airplanes and at airports.
“The mask requirement remains in place and we will continue to assess the duration of the requirement in consultation with CDC,” TSA spokeswoman Alexa Lopez said Friday.
The CDC’s revised approach and decisions by local and state officials to drop mandates could leave transportation as one of the few remaining settings in which people are required to wear masks.
The transportation mandate has fueled a rash of conflict on airplanes and in airports, with the Federal Aviation Administration logging record numbers of complaints about unruly passengers. The agency says the vast majority of reports have been mask-related.
The FAA has proposed more than $1 million in fines for badly behaved passengers and the TSA has issued another $400,000 in penalties.
The guidance the CDC issued Friday takes a new approach to measuring the risks that communities face from the virus, focused on the strain faced by medical systems. The shift means that only about 28 percent of the population lives in areas where the agency recommends universal mask-wearing, while previously almost everyone did.
The CDC also said it now only recommends masks in schools in communities with high levels of disease. | null | null | null | null | null |
But even in a region that normally sees snow pile up, recent bouts of extraordinary snowfall have astounded locals accustomed to whiteouts. Late February snow depths are surpassing 15 feet in spots, which is enough for modern records to be tested and bested. A big chunk of that came in a recent storm that delivered as much as 12 feet over the course of several days, ending earlier this week.
Record snow has been a common story for parts of Japan since November. Round after round of intense wintry weather has caused numerous disruptions in regions that know big snow. And the onslaught is not ready to give in yet.
The Japanese Alps are made up of several mountain chains bisecting the country to the northwest of Tokyo, with some peaks up to 10,000 feet. A three-hour drive from the city, a unique set of geographical features comes together to deliver some of the world’s biggest snowfalls. The Olympics was held there in 1998. | null | null | null | null | null |
A previous version of this article misstated the title of Linda Hoffman. She is the president and CEO of the New York Foundation for Senior Citizens, not its founder.
The 76-year-old lives in a sunny three-bedroom, two-bathroom home overlooking a lake in a 55-and-over community in Groveland, Fla. The sunsets from her back porch are “stunning.” However, the homeowners association fees just went up again and inflation has left her “flabbergasted.”
“I live on a very strict budget and am not able to indulge in any extras at all,” said Raffa, who worked in administrative jobs before she and her late husband retired in 2010. Raffa now views that move as a “hasty decision” in light of her financial circumstances. “I am a worrier and a planner, so logic suggested getting a roommate.”
When she takes out ads specifying women over 55, she gets responses mostly from men in their 60s or adults in their 20s, 30s or 40s. Raffa hopes for an easier way to find and vet potential sharers of her home. “I’m very frustrated,” she said.
Four decades later, the idea of housemates late into adulthood is experiencing a revival, but with financial factors front and center. As boomers live longer and retire without the financial safety net of employer-sponsored pensions, covering the rising costs of food, housing and insurance become major considerations. Linda Hoffman, president and CEO of the New York Foundation for Senior Citizens, which runs a home-sharing program, noted an increasing number of applications as finances become more of a stressor.
“When we started the home-sharing program in 1981, relieving feelings of isolation and loneliness was the primary need,” Hoffman said. “Now, an affordable place to live is the number one need. Hosts need help in meeting their housing expenses.” Even for housemates who entered into the arrangement for social reasons, the extra money has become more important as their financial picture changed with the pandemic.
Debbi Campbell, 70, a retired copywriter, met Loretta Halter, a retired manager from the Kroger grocery chain, in 2018 at a Czech cultural event in New York City. Campbell was mourning the loss of her live-in boyfriend of almost 20 years to cancer. Halter had moved to New York City from Appling, Ga., several years earlier. She had used the NYFSC home-sharing program earlier to find an affordable apartment but was unhappy in her situation, which is when she decided to become housemates with Campbell.
The two went through the NYFSC program to handle the background checks, vetting and administrative details before Halter moved into Campbell’s rent-stabilized one-bedroom apartment in Greenwich Village. Before the pandemic, the two lived somewhat separate lives. Campbell lived mostly in the bedroom and Halter lived mostly in the living room. But when the city shut down, they developed a strong friendship.
While the dozen home sharers interviewed for this article insisted their parents would have found the idea outlandish, having housemates later in life seems to be finding more acceptance. In 2021, 70 percent of adults over 50 reported being open to sharing their home with a family member who was not a spouse, 51 percent said they would be willing to share with a friend and 6 percent would share a home with a stranger, according to a survey from AARP. Of those who reported they would not share their home at all, 23 percent said they would change their mind if they needed extra income.
The growing interest in home sharing, especially for those boomers who are house-rich and cash-poor in expensive housing markets, is being cultivated by nonprofit and commercial programs as well as municipalities. Since 2015, New York, Seattle, Denver, Tucson, Northern California and the metro Washington area all have established or are launching programs. | null | null | null | null | null |
February 22, 2022|Updated yesterday at 9:27 a.m. EST
In analyzing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, many commentators have focused on factors specific to the actors in this case: President Vladimir Putin’s hatred of democracy, his desire to show that post-Soviet Russia remains a global power or Russians’ view that Ukraine is historically part of their state, to name a few examples. Putin has made his territorial ambitions in Ukraine abundantly clear — he seeks autonomy, at least, for the breakaway regions — and his motives are clearly nefarious. War, however, is not the obvious approach for achieving these goals. Why would Putin opt for a full-scale invasion instead of a diplomatic solution to the question of the disputed territories? What makes war attractive in this case is the fact that one country (Ukraine) has been positioning itself to join an alliance (NATO) meant to counter the other (Russia).
International-affairs scholars know that, throughout history, few moments are more ripe for war than when the enemy of one country makes a bid to join forces with other adversaries. Such alliances can utterly transform the balance of power between two countries, and therefore, when a potential alliance is signaled but not yet consummated, the nation that will be put at a disadvantage faces a huge incentive to strike.
Ukraine’s membership in NATO was hardly imminent, but Russia felt threatened enough by the possibility that it was willing to launch a war to prevent it (in addition to other nationalist goals Putin thinks he is achieving). Recognizing the dynamic at play is the first step toward understanding the conflict — and recognizing how NATO’s membership process may unintentionally invite this kind of crisis.
The relationship between alliance formation — imminent partnerships, especially — and war is a close one, as we explored in a recent scholarly article. In 1939, for instance, Britain made a commitment to defend Poland but was not able to make good on the pledge right away. Germany attacked Poland before Britain and France could get into position. In 1954, the Chinese communists attacked islands held by the Chinese nationalists in a failed attempt to block an alliance between the United States and Taiwan. And in a situation with marked parallels, albeit on a smaller scale, to the current crisis in Ukraine, Russia attacked Georgia in 2008 after NATO membership for that country was proposed. Perhaps not coincidentally, Georgia is still not a NATO member.
Alliances — even “defensive” ones such as NATO — bring about significant power shifts, creating a new strategic landscape. When a country stands to benefit from a future power shift caused by joining an alliance, then it knows its hand will be strengthened in future negotiations. After the power shift, it may be strong enough to flout agreements reached today. Its rival knows this as well. As a result, negotiations in the present — such as those that had been underway between Ukraine and Russia over the status of two breakaway regions in Ukraine’s east — lack staying power.
Political scientists refer to this phenomenon as a “commitment problem” — and commitment problems lead to crises and even war. Our research suggests that impending alliances are particularly dangerous when certain conditions apply: when the alliance explicitly or implicitly targets another country; when the anticipated power shift from the alliance is large; when it takes time for the alliance to be fully implemented (opening a window for attack); and when an attack is likely to block the alliance.
Ukraine potentially joining NATO checks those boxes. NATO is a military juggernaut, and Ukraine’s situation would be utterly transformed if its 30 members were pledged to defend it. NATO also “targets” Russia, in the sense that its raison d’etre, at its founding, was to counter the Soviet Union. In Putin’s mind, war today may lead to a better outcome than negotiating with Ukraine in the future, when it could be backed by the combined strength of NATO countries.
In principle, Ukraine and NATO might have defused the situation by committing to Ukraine being barred from NATO. But the underlying commitment problem, as well as other factors, made this approach unrealistic from the beginning. The NATO powers understandably didn’t want to reward Putin for his aggressive stance, which included massing troops on the border, and Ukraine wants badly to be under NATO’s umbrella. What’s more, it’s not clear that NATO’s rules permit such a concession: NATO’s “open door” policy, based on Article 10 of its founding treaty, holds out the promise of membership to any European country able to fulfill specific obligations of membership (civilian control of the military, a democratic government and so on). Why would Putin believe a commitment to rule out membership for Ukraine if it seems on track for meeting membership requirements?
Potential new alliances can often provoke hostility, but the path NATO lays out for potential members all but invites armed conflict — however inadvertently. To join NATO, countries must first be offered a membership action plan, which includes a formal invitation and a tailored road map for future membership. To obtain such a plan, prospective members must first peacefully resolve outstanding international, ethnic and territorial disputes. The problem this poses is obvious: Putin can sabotage a state’s NATO bid by starting a conflict.
He’s done it before. In 2004, new Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili made accession to NATO a priority. Four years later at a NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania, President George W. Bush pushed for a membership action plan to be offered to Georgia. However, separatist movements in the Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions served as a roadblock. Other NATO members, including France and Germany, were reluctant to extend a membership action plan under these conditions.
Seeing an opportunity, Russia invaded in August 2008. (In 2011, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev boasted that Georgia would have already become a NATO member had Russia chosen not to attack.) Putin may have invaded the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, grabbing it from Ukraine, for similar reasons. By now, using force to thwart NATO bids is a standard play for Russia.
A better approach for defending Ukraine than the prospect of NATO membership might have used the United States’ commitment to Taiwan as a model. That commitment is deliberately ambiguous — and therefore sidesteps the problem of creating a dangerous implementation window on the way to a formal mutual defense pact. Certainly, the United States’ stance on Taiwan does not create a road map for China to use armed conflict to prevent a U.S.-Taiwan alliance, as the NATO membership rules do.
The invasion of Ukraine points to an underlying systemic problem. Telegraphing the possibility of a military commitment can trigger a dangerous race between efforts to implement and to block the alliance. NATO is likely to face these crises again, because its transparent and drawn-out membership processes exacerbate the dangers caused by potential alliances. Not every conflict will be as cataclysmic as the Ukraine invasion, but the negative incentive remains.
As the United States and its allies punish Russia with sanctions, and otherwise pressure Putin to withdraw from Ukraine, they should be thinking about how to change these structural flaws. In particular, the alliance might consider replacing its road map for future members with a more opaque, private, deliberative process, so that adversaries aren’t encouraged to preempt membership by instigating fights.
Feb. 24: This article has been updated.
An earlier version of this article stated incorrectly that Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvili made NATO membership a priority beginning in 2003. He became president in January 2004. The article has been corrected. | null | null | null | null | null |
Even in a region that normally sees snow pile up, recent bouts of extraordinary snowfall have astounded locals accustomed to whiteouts. Late February snow depths are surpassing 15 feet in spots, which is enough for modern records to be tested and bested. A big chunk of that came in a recent storm that delivered as much as 12 feet over the course of several days, ending earlier this week.
Record snow has been a common story for parts of Japan since November. Round after round of intense wintry weather has caused numerous disruptions in regions that know big snow. And the onslaught is not about to end.
The Japanese Alps are made up of several mountain chains bisecting the country to the northwest of Tokyo, with some peaks up to 10,000 feet. A three-hour drive from the city, a unique set of geographical features comes together to deliver some of the world’s biggest snowfalls. The Olympics were held there in 1998. | null | null | null | null | null |
The new guidelines, which took effect Friday, reflect the administration’s view that the United States has entered a different, potentially less dangerous phase of the pandemic. The change follows a relaxation of restrictions by most Democratic governors responding to nosediving case counts and public pressure. CDC officials said the shift reflects the reality that after more than two years of living with the virus, most communities have greater protection against severe disease because of widespread immunity gained from both vaccinations and infections, as well as the increased availability of treatments, testing and higher-quality masks.
But schools are included in public settings where masking and testing may not be necessary if the covid-19 disease risk is low based on the new metrics.
She stressed the new approach could be dialed up or down if an unpredictable virus should pose new challenges.
“None of us knows what the future may hold for us and for this virus,” she said. “We need to be prepared and ready for whatever comes next. We want to give people a break from things like mask-wearing, when levels are low, and then have the ability to reach for them again, should things get worse in the future.”
The new approach is expected to be less disruptive to daily life at a time when cases and hospitalizations across the United States have plummeted, with the seven-day average of newly reported cases now near 70,000 a day, the lowest since late October and a drop of more than 85 percent from the end of January. Hospitalizations have dropped by nearly two-thirds, with under 55,000 covid patients.
The framework incorporates new metrics such as the number of new hospital admissions with covid-19, and the number of hospitalized covid-19 patients, as well as case counts, to assess levels of covid-19 disease in every county. Instead of focusing on eliminating transmission of the virus, it is aimed at preventing hospitals and health-care systems from being overwhelmed and protecting people at high risk for severe illness, officials said.
Under the approach, many parts of the country that were previously considered to have high or substantial levels of the virus are now reclassified as having low to medium levels of covid-19 disease.
People in communities with high levels of disease, including schools, are still urged to wear masks in indoor public places — but there are far fewer of them.
In communities with medium levels of disease, the guidance recommends that those at high risk for illness — including those who are immunocompromised or have underlying medical conditions — consult with their health-care providers and consider wearing masks.
In communities with low levels of disease, high-risk individuals can consult with their providers and wear masks as needed.
Regardless of the level of disease in a community, “people may choose to wear a mask at anytime, based on personal preference,” said Greta Massetti, a CDC official leading the agency’s covid response.
The country’s two large teachers unions welcomed the new guidance recommending universal masking in schools located in communities with high levels of disease, saying it was based on science, not politics -- a swipe at those who argued mask requirements should be lifted because the public was tired of them. The American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association had asked the CDC for metrics to guide the lifting of mask mandates.
NEA President Becky Pringle said she was optimistic that the virus was in retreat but said schools should be ready to reverse policies if the situation worsens again.
“School districts should act cautiously in response to today’s announcement, with the health and safety of students, educators, and their families always in mind,” she said in a statement.
The updated metrics change the U.S. map from what was almost exclusively red and orange — signifying substantial or high transmission risk — to one that will show green, yellow and orange, signifying states and counties with low, medium and high levels of disease. With omicron cases continuing to drop sharply, officials expect fewer communities to be facing high levels of covid-19 in the weeks ahead.
Under the new standards, only about 28 percent of people live in high-level disease areas, with 240 million living in medium and low areas.
While not saying so explicitly, the new guidance provides a framework for living safely with a virus that is expected to remain at endemic levels for the foreseeable future — a goal that was out of reach for most of the last two years amid recurring surges and the arrival new variants when far fewer people had gained immunity from vaccinations or infections.
State health officials applauded the framework, saying they wanted better barometers of covid’s impact in their communities.
The new metrics are “a timely step in the right direction,” said Nirav Shah, president of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials and director of Maine’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
A focus on hospitalization rates gives states a benchmark to better understand covid-19′s medical severity and its impact on the health-care system, he said in a statement. It also recognizes the declining importance of daily cases, given the wider use of at-home tests, he said.
Several officials noted that while case counts and hospitalizations are declining, but they are still at elevated levels. They also expressed concern that less than two-thirds of Americans are fully vaccinated, defined as two doses of Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna or one dose of Johnson & Johnson. Only about half of Americans have received a booster dose, which provides the highest level of protection against infection, hospitalization and death.
The federal government’s messaging about masks has drawn criticism since the pandemic began. The Trump White House delayed initial guidance on wearing masks in April 2020 to preserve enough of the higher-quality N95 masks for front-line health-care workers. Some political advisers also worried that widespread mask use might cause panic. The CDC reversed itself one year later recommending nearly universal masking but many Republican officials pushed back on the advice and declined to mandate the practice.
Laura Meckler and Jacqueline Dupree contributed to this report. | null | null | null | null | null |
Days before taking office in 2019, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky put flowers on the grave of his Jewish grandfather, who fought the Nazis in World War II. (Facebook/Volodymyr Zelensky)
Days before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky assumed office, he made a trip to his hometown of Kryvyi Rih. There, he visited a cemetery and laid flowers on the grave of his grandfather, Semyon Ivanovich Zelensky, who fought in the Soviet Union’s Red Army during World War II.
It was May 9 — Victory Day in Ukraine — and a day of “thanksgiving,” he wrote in a Facebook post.
“[Semyon] went through the whole war and remain[s] forever in my memory one of those heroes who defended Ukraine from the Nazis,” he wrote. “Thanks for the fact that the inhuman ideology of Nazism is forever a thing of the past. Thanks to those who fought against Nazism — and won.”
This touching statement would seem strange this week if one were to believe Russian President Vladimir Putin’s pretext for invading the country. One of the goals of the “special military operation,” as he called it, was to “denazify” Ukraine.
The claim is ridiculous on its face. Not only is Ukraine’s leader Jewish, many of his relatives were killed by Nazis in the Holocaust.
In January 2020, during the commemoration in Israel of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Zelensky told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu two stories of some of his country’s bravest heroes during the war: a Crimean Muslim woman and a Catholic priest who each saved scores of Jewish children.
Then, he said, he had one more story “about a family of four brothers.”
Bernie Sanders lost family in the Holocaust. The Nazi flag at his rally was personal.
“Three of them, their parents and their families became victims of the Holocaust. All of the were shot by German occupiers who invaded Ukraine,” he said. “The fourth brother survived. … Two years after the war, he had a son, and in 31 years, he had a grandson. In 40 more years, that grandson became president, and he is standing before you today, Mr. Prime Minister.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Feb. 24 that he remained in the country despite being “target No. 1” for Russian forces. (Reuters)
In an interview with the Times of Israel the same month, Zelensky said his great-grandfather and his grandfather’s three brothers all fought in the Soviet army that but his grandfather was the only one to return home.
A grandmother escaped in an evacuation of Jews to Kazakhstan, he said. She returned to Kryvyi Rih after the war and became a teacher. Zelensky said he grew up in an “ordinary Soviet Jewish family,” which was to say, not very religious, since “religion didn’t exist in the Soviet state as such.”
The U.S. Holocaust Memorial and Museum on Thursday condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, saying Putin had “misrepresented and misappropriated Holocaust history.”
The Holocaust entered a new phase in 1941 with the invasion of Eastern Europe, including Ukraine, the museum said. Rather than ship Jews to concentration camps, mobile squads of Nazis began killing Jewish men, women and children in places like Babi Yar, where more than 33,000 were shot to death, their bodies dumped in a ravine.
More than 1 million Jewish Ukrainians were killed during the Holocaust.
As president, Zelensky has overseen name changes to many old Soviet monuments and street names to those of Ukrainian heroes, including Ukrainian Jews. A new Holocaust Memorial Center at Babi Yar was expected to open in 2023. | null | null | null | null | null |
Importantly, the guidelines leave open the possibility that these metrics may need to change in the future should a new variant arise that escapes vaccine immunity. Instead of viewing masking as an on-off switch, the CDC makes the case that mitigation measures are more like a dial. Depending on changing circumstances, restrictions can be turned up or down.
Beyond the rationale for the revision, the CDC deserves recognition for its newfound clarity of messaging. I appreciated the easily understood orange, yellow, and green categorizations: When concern for severe illness is very high (orange), everyone should mask; when they are low (green), everyone could unmask; in between (yellow), people can decide whether to mask depending on their medical circumstances and risk tolerance.
The revised guidance will surely anger people on both sides. Some will argue that the CDC should have ended mandatory masking altogether and that masks should be a matter of individual choice everywhere. I don’t think this is a responsible stance, because masks — especially high-quality N95, KN95 or KF94 masks — remain an important tool to prevent disease transmission and ensuring that hospitals are not overwhelmed. More dangerous variants may emerge, and federal health officials need to set the expectations that masks may be needed in the future.
No matter what guidance the CDC released, they would been accused of going too far or not far enough. This time, I think they’ve got it about right. Of course, I wish this guidance arrived a few weeks earlier, before governors took it upon themselves to remove mandates in nearly all states. Still, it’s better late than never, and I’m relieved that the CDC has finally signaled that we need to live with covid-19 and remove restrictions while we can, with the understanding that they may need to return in the future. | null | null | null | null | null |
The attorney, David Thompson, filed an emergency request asking that the high court set aside the new map while he seeks arguments on the constitutional question before the full court. If the map isn’t set aside, he wrote, his clients will be “losing forever the opportunity to appeal the orders ... before the 2022 elections are conducted under a judicially crafted and unconstitutional congressional map.” | null | null | null | null | null |
The team, which has been in discussion with Virginia officials for months about possibly building a new stadium in the commonwealth, is considering three options there — one in Loudoun County and two in Prince William County. The most accessible site from D.C. is in Sterling, near a quarry off the northeast corner of Dulles Airport. The other two, in Prince William County, are along I-95 in Woodbridge, and near the Potomac Shores Golf Club in Dumfries.
While Maryland and D.C. officials are also still engaged in discussions with team officials about a new stadium, Virginia’s efforts to lure the Commanders to the commonwealth have intensified in recent weeks, coinciding with the franchise’s rebrand. Legislation to create a football stadium authority that would oversee the financing and construction of the project has been making its way through Virginia’s General Assembly. The Republican-controlled House of Delegates and the Democratic-led Senate passed similar bills earlier this month by wide margins, but all differences will have to be ironed out before the measures can be considered by Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R), who has expressed support for the project.
If Youngkin signs off, the stadium authority could sell bonds to help fund a stadium worth roughly $1 billion. Senate Majority Leader Richard L. Saslaw (D-Fairfax), who described the project as a “mini-city,” said the team would have to invest around $2 billion to complete the surrounding development.
According to the planning documents, the Commanders’ vision for a new complex in Virginia would include much more than a state-of-the-art stadium. For all three locations — in Sterling, Woodbridge and Dumfries — the team has outlined plans for a resort and conference center with an accompanying amphitheater, plus a cinema, a nightclub and a family-friendly venue, perhaps similar to the LEGO Discovery Center slated for Fairfax County; plus additional retail and office space, and housing.
“We want to build more businesses,” Commanders president Jason Wright told The Washington Post last summer. “This could be a business at the scale of our local football business if we do it right. So the design and thinking around the stadium takes that into primary consideration, and that fits with what leaders in the D.C., Maryland and Virginia area want. They don’t want something that just sits idle between games. They want something that is driving economic activity on a consistent basis, and we agree with that vision.”
The plans for Dumfries include a marina attached to a resort, and second phase of development for residential clusters with a nearby Metro station (there is currently no metro stop in Prince William County).
“We’ve always been focused on getting control of the land at RFK, which we think the situation there is abysmal,” Bowser said at a press event earlier this month. “We have a stadium that’s falling down, surrounded by asphalt, when this city is in need of housing and other amenities, so we’re very focused on that. Second, we have always been very clear that we want the Washington [Commanders] to play in Washington, and we will continue to pursue the best way to get there.”
Earlier this week, Reps. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) and Don Beyer (D-Va.) reintroduced a bill to scrap the significant tax breaks teams receive for their stadiums. Speier told The Post that the goal of the legislation is to, in part, send a message to the NFL and Snyder that Congress will not condone sexual harassment their workplace. Speier is a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, which has been investigating the NFL’s response to widespread allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct in the Commanders’ workplace.
The NFL recently appointed former U.S. attorney Mary Jo White to investigate new allegations of sexual harassment against Snyder. In a roundtable earlier this month, former Commanders marketing manager and cheerleader, Tiffani Johnston, told members of Congress that Snyder put his hand on her thigh during a work dinner and pressed her toward his limo, allegations Snyder called “outright lies.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Langley’s girls’ 4x800 team tops vaunted West Springfield on first day of state championships
From left, Corinne Jaggard, Elena Pesavento, Lila Waters and Lila Pesavento formed the Langley 4x800 relay team that won the Class 6 title Friday in Virginia Beach. (Jim McGrath/FTWP)
VIRGINIA BEACH — For the past five years, West Springfield, a traditional distance running power in Northern Virginia, has shown exceptional aptitude in one race — the 4x800-meter relay. The boys claimed the event at the 2020 and 2021 Class 6 indoor track meets, while the girls won titles in 2018, 2019 and 2021. So it was no surprise to see both Spartans teams seeded first for the event as this year’s state meet got underway Friday at the Virginia Beach Sports Center.
And while the boys captured a third straight state championship, the highlight of Day 1 action may have come from the girls’ race, as Langley, which had not won the event since 1993, upset the Spartans while running to a state-best time of 9:17.86.
“We knew that if we had a great race there was a chance to win. We didn’t expect to run 9:17,” said Elena Pesavento, whose opening leg put the team in a commanding position from the starting gun.
The Saxons were certainly underdogs against the Spartans. Their best collective effort in 2021 had resulted in a time of 10:20.79, a fourth-place finish at the Region 6D meet. The team of Pesavento, Lila Pesavento, Corinne Jaggard and Lila Waters posted a state-leading time of 9:31 at this season’s Liberty District meet, only to see West Springfield lower it by nine seconds at their Region 6C meet.
“When they ran 9:22, our coach [Andrew Diller] sent [the result] to us,” said Jaggard, a freshman. “We were like 15 seconds behind and didn’t know if we could ever catch up to them.”
Undaunted, the Saxons took command of the race early and held off the Spartans to win.
The feat was more impressive considering Waters, who specializes in the 1,000 and 1,600, is the only true distance runner among the four. Jaggard and both Pesaventos are long sprinters and will compete in the 4x400 relay Saturday, with Jaggard adding the 500 to her event lineup.
The West Springfield boys’ foursome of Henry Anderson, Sean Cochran, Kyle LaJoye and John O’Donnell had to overcome an early lead by South Lakes, as well as a late surge from Yorktown’s Owen McArdle, to pull off its win. The Spartans finished in 7:53.32 to top Yorktown (Lucas Keith, Jack Blocher, Jack Levine, McArdle) by 2.67 seconds.
In other events at Friday’s Class 5 and Class 6 meet, Northern Virginia athletes struggled. Only two athletes within the area won any of the 12 individual events contested.
Miles Lanham of Annandale outdistanced South Lakes’ Tyler Benett to win the Class 6 boys’ triple jump at 46 feet 8.5 inches. Viviana Rodriguez of Osbourn Park won the Class 6 girls’ pole vault with a clearance of 11-6.
South Lakes (17) and West Springfield (15) are first and second in the boys’ Class 6 standings. Thomas Dale (28) and Glen Allen (34), both from the Richmond area, lead the Class 6 and 5 girls’ team standings, respectively. Robinson is second in the Class 6 girls’ standings with 14 points.
The meet resumes Saturday morning with several more field events before the finals of most running events are set to take place in the afternoon. | null | null | null | null | null |
FILE - Auburn’s Lionel James, (6) gains yardage as Michigan’s Dave Meredith (96) tries to stop him in NCAA college football Sugar Bowl action in New Orleans, Jan. 2, 1984. Former Auburn and San Diego Chargers running back James has died after a lengthy illness. He was 59. Auburn says James, a 5-foot-6 player nicknamed “Little Train,” died Friday, Feb. 25, 2022. (AP Photo/File) (Uncredited/AP) | null | null | null | null | null |
Three plead guilty in plot to hit power grid
Three men have pleaded guilty to terrorism-related charges for plotting to attack the U.S. power grid, hoping that the ensuing electricity outages would stir civil and economic unrest that could lead to a race war, the Justice Department said.
“The defendants believed their plan would cost the government millions of dollars and cause unrest for Americans in the region,” the Justice Department said in a news release Wednesday. “They had conversations about how the possibility of the power being out for many months could cause war, even a race war, and induce the next Great Depression.”
— Andrew Jeong
Sailor facing court-martial in ship fire
A sailor accused of starting the fire that destroyed the USS Bonhomme Richard will face a court-martial for arson, the Navy said Friday.
It marked one of the worst noncombat warship disasters in recent memory, and the vessel had to be scrapped. It would cost an estimated $4 billion to replace.
Mays maintains his innocence and looks forward to proving it at trial, Barthel said.
Teen charged in slayings of boy, 2 adults
A 16-year-old boy has been charged as an adult in the fatal shootings of three people, including a mother and her 5-year-old son, in a Detroit home. | null | null | null | null | null |
Now that it has been reported that Russian propaganda and misinformation campaigns have been launched on social media platforms and have targeted websites, including those of Fox News in the United States, Le Figaro in France, La Stampa in Italy, and Der Spiegel and Die Welt in Germany, maybe more people in this country will believe findings that the Internet Research Agency purchased political advertisements on social media in the names of Americans and U.S. organizations, and even staged political rallies within the United States in support of Trump. | null | null | null | null | null |
Here in Kyiv, we can watch Russian television, allowing us to see Moscow’s version of events. For now, the Russian media is allowed to describe the invasion only as “a special military operation in Donbas” — Orwellian language apparently dictated by Putin himself. (That reluctance to use the word “war” shows that the authorities understand that the attack might not be popular with ordinary people.) Ukrainians can track the Kremlin’s disinformation campaigns and compare them with the reality we see on the ground. Russian TV, for example, broadcasts stories of fake Ukrainian soldiers surrendering to Moscow’s forces — even though we all know firsthand that our soldiers have been offering bitter resistance.
Here at home, by contrast, it is heartening to see how people are taking on the responsibility for the defense of our country. People are doing their best to support one another, to help. A British TV reporter asked me on air whether looting has been going on in cities attacked by the Russians. The comment irritated me because it missed something very fundamental about our state of mind. To Putin, democracy means chaos. He is desperate to depict us as a failed state. We’re determined to prove him wrong.
Ukrainians have a long tradition of disrespect for the government. Criticism of the authorities is in our blood. Now, people are putting that aside. Before the invasion, President Volodymyr Zelensky met with the leaders of political factions, who have pledged to work together. Top business leaders have rallied around the state. The Kremlin is eager to divide and conquer, to destabilize the country. But the more Putin pushes, the more united the country becomes. We have to do everything we can to resist.
Ukrainians are doing what they can — as soldiers, as firefighters, as doctors or just as people willing to open their doors to those they don’t know. It’s also a way of showing that we are not ready to accept a world driven by madness, hatred and military force. | null | null | null | null | null |
We can reduce global temperatures faster than we once thought — if we act now
But climate science actually doesn’t say this. To the contrary, the best climate science you’ve probably never heard of suggests that humanity can still limit the damage to a fraction of the worst projections if — and, we admit, this is a big if — governments, businesses and all of us take strong action starting now.
For many years, the scientific rule of thumb was that a sizable amount of temperature rise was locked into the Earth’s climate system. Scientists believed — and told policymakers and journalists, who in turn told the public — that even if humanity hypothetically halted all heat-trapping emissions overnight, carbon dioxide’s long lifetime in the atmosphere, combined with the sluggish thermal properties of the oceans, would nevertheless keep global temperatures rising for 30 to 40 more years. Since shifting to a zero-carbon global economy would take at least a decade or two, temperatures were bound to keep rising for at least another half-century.
This revised science means that if humanity slashes emissions to zero, global temperatures will stop rising almost immediately. To be clear, this is not a get-out-of-jail-free card. Global temperatures also will not fall if emissions go to zero, so the planet’s ice will keep melting and sea levels will keep rising. But global temperatures will stop their relentless climb, buying humanity time to devise ways to deal with such unavoidable impacts. In short, we are not irrevocably doomed — or at least we don’t have to be, if we take bold, rapid action.
The science we’re referencing was included — but inadvertently buried — in the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s most recent report, issued in August. Indeed, it was first featured in the IPCC’s landmark 2018 report, “Global warming of 1.5 C.” That report’s key finding — that global emissions must fall by 45 percent by 2030 to avoid catastrophic climate disruption — generated headlines declaring that we had “12 years to save the planet.” That 12-year timeline, and the related concept of a “carbon budget” — the amount of carbon that can be burned while still limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels — were both rooted in this revised science. Meanwhile, the public and policy worlds have largely neglected the revised science that enabled these very estimates.
Nonscientists can reasonably ask: What made scientists change their minds? Why should we believe their new estimate of a three-to-five-year lag time if their previous estimate of 30 to 40 years is now known to be incorrect? And does the world still have to cut emissions in half by 2030 to avoid climate catastrophe?
The short answer to the last question is yes. Remember, temperatures only stop rising once global emissions fall to zero. Currently, emissions are not falling. Instead, humanity continues to pump approximately 36 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year into the atmosphere. The longer it takes to cut those 36 billion tons to zero, the more temperature rise humanity eventually will face. And as the IPCC’s 2018 report made hauntingly clear, warming of more than 1.5 degrees Celsius would cause unspeakable amounts of human suffering, economic loss and social breakdown — and perhaps trigger genuinely irreversible impacts.
Scientists changed their minds about how much warming is locked in because additional research gave them a much better understanding of how the climate system works. Their initial 30-to-40-year estimates were based on relatively simple computer models that treated the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as a “control knob” that determines temperature levels. The long lag in the warming impact is due to the oceans, which continue to warm long after the control knob is turned up. More-recent climate models account for the more dynamic nature of carbon emissions. Yes, CO2 pushes temperatures higher, but carbon “sinks,” including forests and in particular the oceans, absorb almost half of the CO2 that is emitted, causing atmospheric CO2 levels to drop, offsetting the delayed warming effect.
Knowing that 30 more years of rising temperatures are not necessarily locked in can be a game-changer for how people, governments and businesses respond to the climate crisis. Understanding that we can still save our civilization if we take strong, fast action can banish the despair that paralyzes people and instead motivate them to get involved. Lifestyle changes can help, but that involvement must also include political engagement. Slashing emissions in half by 2030 demands the fastest possible transition away from today’s fossil-fueled economies in favor of wind, solar and other non-carbon alternatives. That can happen only if governments enact dramatically different policies. If citizens understand that things aren’t hopeless, they can better push elected officials to make such changes.
Last year’s record wildfires in California and the Pacific Northwest illustrated just how deadly climate change can be in the United States. Yet minimizing temperature rise matters even more in the highly climate-vulnerable communities throughout the global south. Countless people in Bangladesh, the Philippines, Madagascar, Africa’s Sahel nations, Brazil, Honduras and other low-income countries have already been suffering from climate disasters for decades because their communities tend to be more exposed to climate impacts and have less financial capacity to protect themselves. For millions of people in such countries, limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius is not a scientific abstraction.
The IPCC’s next report, due for release Feb. 28, will address how societies can adapt to the temperature rise now underway and the fires, storms and rising seas it unleashes. If we want a livable future for today’s young people, temperature rise must be kept as close as possible to 1.5 C. The best climate science most people have never heard of says that goal remains within reach. The question is whether enough of us will act on that knowledge in time. | null | null | null | null | null |
The team, which has been in discussions with Virginia officials for months about possibly building a stadium in the commonwealth, is considering three options there — one in Loudoun County and two in Prince William County. The most accessible site from D.C. is in Sterling, near a quarry off the northeast corner of Dulles International Airport. The other two, in Prince William County, are along I-95 in Woodbridge and near the Potomac Shores Golf Club in Dumfries.
While Maryland and D.C. officials are also still engaged in discussions with team officials about a new stadium, Virginia’s efforts to lure the Commanders to the commonwealth have intensified in recent weeks, coinciding with the franchise’s rebrand. Legislation to create a football stadium authority that would oversee the financing and construction of the project has been making its way through Virginia’s General Assembly. The Republican-controlled House of Delegates and the Democratic-led Senate passed similar bills this month by wide margins, but all differences will have to be ironed out before the measures can be considered by Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R), who has expressed support for the project.
If Youngkin signs off, the stadium authority could sell bonds to help fund a stadium worth roughly $1 billion. State Senate Majority Leader Richard L. Saslaw (D-Fairfax), who described the project as a “mini-city,” said the team would have to invest around $2 billion to complete the surrounding development.
According to the planning documents, the Commanders’ vision for a new complex in Virginia would include much more than a state-of-the-art stadium. For all three locations — in Sterling, Woodbridge and Dumfries — the team has outlined plans for a resort and conference center with an accompanying amphitheater, plus a cinema, a nightclub and a family-friendly venue, perhaps similar to the Lego Discovery Center slated for Fairfax County, along with additional retail and office space as well as housing.
“We want to build more businesses,” Commanders President Jason Wright told The Washington Post in the summer. “This could be a business at the scale of our local football business if we do it right. So the design and thinking around the stadium takes that into primary consideration, and that fits with what leaders in the D.C., Maryland and Virginia area want. They don’t want something that just sits idle between games. They want something that is driving economic activity on a consistent basis, and we agree with that vision.”
The plans for Dumfries include a marina attached to a resort, plus a second phase of development for residential clusters with a nearby Metro station (there is currently no stop in Prince William County).
“We’ve always been focused on getting control of the land at RFK, which we think the situation there is abysmal,” Bowser said at a media event this month. “We have a stadium that’s falling down, surrounded by asphalt, when this city is in need of housing and other amenities, so we’re very focused on that. Second, we have always been very clear that we want the Washington [Commanders] to play in Washington, and we will continue to pursue the best way to get there.”
This week, Reps. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) and Don Beyer (D-Va.) reintroduced a bill to scrap the significant tax breaks teams receive for their stadiums. Speier told The Post that the goal of the legislation is to, in part, send a message to the NFL and Snyder that Congress will not condone sexual harassment in their workplace. Speier is a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, which has been investigating the NFL’s response to widespread allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct in the Commanders’ workplace.
The NFL recently appointed former U.S. attorney Mary Jo White to investigate new allegations of sexual harassment against Snyder. In a roundtable this month, former Commanders marketing manager and cheerleader Tiffani Johnston told members of Congress that Snyder put his hand on her thigh during a work dinner and pressed her toward his limo, allegations Snyder called “outright lies.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Trayvon Martin, wipes her eyes during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on “Stand Your Ground” laws on October 29, 2013, in D.C. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Explaining his latest decision not to prosecute, Marc Bennett ticked through case after case tossed out in the name of “stand your ground.”
A man who fatally shot someone in the back. A man who met punches with gunfire. And a man who stabbed his unarmed neighbor with a sword. All of them, Kansas courts ruled, were allowed to fight back against an attacker, even if they might have safely backed away.
Now Bennett, the Sedgwick County district attorney, was holding a news conference on the death of a Black teenager named Cedric Lofton, detailing how county staff had restrained the 17-year-old facedown for more than half an hour. He said the state’s stand-your-ground law precluded charges because staff had a right to defend themselves after Lofton struck someone and struggled.
When a reporter asked if he would push for legal change, Bennett said, “We’ll try.” He had been trying for years. “It’ll go nowhere.”
Bennett’s comments last month underscored a frustrating reality for prosecutors, police, activists and researchers who have loudly criticized stand-your-ground laws: The policy has only expanded — and grown “more extreme,” some say — since the death of another Black 17-year-old thrust it into the spotlight 10 years ago.
George Zimmerman’s lawyers did not cite Florida’s stand-your-ground law, opting to mount a more general self-defense case that Zimmerman fatally shot Trayvon Martin out of fear for his life. But the jury that acquitted Zimmerman got instructions about the law, and Martin’s killing brought intense scrutiny to a policy that critics accuse of encouraging vigilantism and violence. A growing body of research links stand-your-ground laws to sudden increases in homicide, including unlawful killings.
“Again and again, we are seeing these stand-your-ground laws being used as an excuse to kill Black people and particularly Black children,” said Maurice Evans, a Wichita pastor and spokesman for Lofton’s biological father. “We have to reevaluate these laws and how they’re being applied.”
Stand-your-ground laws have now spread to most states in the United States, propelled by gun groups such as the National Rifle Association and lawmakers of both parties who say people under attack should not have to worry about a legal “duty to retreat.” For some, the policy is also a response to public anxieties during a pandemic marked by rising violent crime, anti-Asian attacks and civil unrest.
Arkansas, Ohio and North Dakota passed stand-your-ground laws last year, and Hawaii is debating the issue. Republican members of Congress introduced a national stand-your-ground bill in December, invoking Kyle Rittenhouse — the teenager acquitted last fall in yet another polarizing trial that hinged on self-defense.
“Like Kyle Rittenhouse, every American has the right to defend their life from an attacker,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla) said in a statement announcing the bill. Discussing the legislation on a gun rights group’s podcast, Gaetz argued that stand-your-ground legislation protects “law abiding” people from those who would hurt them.
“A lot of groups focus on making sure that firearms can be on your person, can be concealed carried, or open carried, whatever,” said Gaetz, whose office declined an interview request for this report. “But that really will be useless if you’re not able to access your firearm and to protect yourself in the event of a violent attack.”
Allison Anderman, senior counsel at the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said stand-your-ground laws have not only spread around the country, but also have grown “more extreme.” States such as Florida — which kicked off a wave of stand-your-ground laws in 2005 — have augmented their policies by putting the onus on prosecutors to prove that the stand-your-ground law does not apply before going to trial.
Anderman says a new crop of state-level bills is especially worrying. One would allow defendants to sue prosecutors if they successfully prove self-defense. Another would allow someone to shoot a person defacing their property if they have a “dangerous instrument,” regardless of whether they fear physical harm.
“I think the next iteration of these laws is the expansion of the right to use deadly force, even when your life is not threatened or your personal safety is not threatened,” Anderman said.
Opponents of stand-your-ground policies emphasize that standard self-defense laws allow people to protect themselves with force, even deadly force. Stand-your-ground laws specifically remove the “duty to retreat” from a threat when possible, telling people they can stay and fight in any place they have a right to be.
The laws have often passed over objections from police and prosecutors who worry about violence. In Ohio, some of the most vocal opposition to stand-your-ground expansion came from the state Fraternal Order of Police.
Michael Weinman, the group’s director of governmental affairs, said the policy is particularly alarming in combination with another measure working its way through the Ohio Statehouse — a bill that would remove the requirement to get training and a permit before carrying a concealed handgun.
“We have a lot of friends in the legislature … We lose a lot of our friends when it comes to these gun bills,” he said.
On Thursday, with the 10th anniversary of Martin’s death approaching, advocacy groups announced a nationwide task force with state legislators to denounce, prevent and repeal “Shoot First” laws — shorthand for “shoot first, ask questions later.”
Researchers say it is not clear that repealing such laws would reverse increases in homicide, even if it were politically feasible.
“Depending on how long those laws are in place, they might have a permanent change on how people choose to conduct themselves,” said David Humphreys, an associate professor at the University of Oxford. He and his colleagues just published a study that linked stand-your-ground laws to 700 additional killings each year in the United States and an 11 percent increase in the nation’s firearm homicides.
The findings echoed other studies: In 2017, Humphreys and his colleagues found that Florida reported an “abrupt and sustained” nearly 32 percent spike in firearm homicide after passing its pioneering stand-your-ground law. They also found that most of those added homicides were unlawful rather than justifiable uses of force.
“We thought when we published the previous paper in Florida … that this would have to be taken seriously,” Humphreys said.
“I was a bit naive,” he concluded.
The stand-your-ground debate does not always reflect partisan divides. In Kansas, lawmakers passed a stand-your-ground bill unanimously in 2010; a Democratic governor signed the measure. In Hawaii, liberal lawmakers — including a liberal caucus co-chair — are pushing for a similar law.
State Rep. Matthew LoPresti (D) said in an interview that Hawaii’s “robust” gun restrictions differentiate it from other states that have adopted stand-your-ground laws.
“This an issue about civilians being able to defend themselves — not being required to cower away from violence when it is brought to them,” LoPresti said, adding later: “I think pandemic politics has shifted the need, or at least the feeling that people need to feel more secure.”
Hawaii Rep. John Mizuno (D) said recent anti-Asian attacks are one of many factors pushing people toward a stand-your-ground law.
“I think people have come to a point where we are tired of being victimized and we're tired of being attacked and we want to take back our streets,” he said.
Others argue that stand-your-ground laws are ripe for abuse — deployed in ways that legislators say they never intended. In Kansas, Lofton’s death last fall has stirred new debate.
Police arrested Lofton last September after responding to a call from his foster father, who had expressed concerns in recent days about the teen’s mental health, according to a report from the Sedgwick County District Attorney’s office. Lofton was arrested after a struggle and taken to a juvenile intake center.
County staff at the intake center said they were forced to restrain the 135 pound, 5-foot-10 teen after he struck one of them in the face. Just before 4:30 a.m., they put Lofton in leg shackles, the district attorney’s office said. Soon they had him face down on the floor as they tried to put on handcuffs.
After a long struggle, Lofton went limp, authorities said. Workers at the intake center said he started to “snore.” But minutes later, they could not find a pulse.
In December, a coroner ruled Lofton’s death a homicide caused by “complications of cardiopulmonary arrest sustained after physical struggle while restrained in the prone position.” Armed with the autopsy, Lofton's family called on prosecutors to file criminal charges.
But Bennett, the district attorney, said in January that “a judge would be duty bound to dismiss the case.”
“This should not have happened … But these folks are protected by Kansas law,” he said.
Lofton’s family is not convinced that Bennett’s hands are actually tied. “The spirit of stand your ground was not based on an unarmed 17-year-old Black teenager who was killed in the care and custody of the juvenile intake center in Wichita,” said Andrew Stroth, the family’s attorney.
Asked about the criticisms over email, Bennett reiterated details of Kansas’s stand-your-ground policy.
Lofton’s case has raised questions even for state leaders who helped pass the law more than a decade ago. “I don’t know how you apply stand your ground to that scenario,” state Senate President Ty Masterson (R), told the Associated Press in January. “It’s meant to be for self-defense, to allow you to protect yourself.”
Masterson did not respond to inquiries from The Post, nor did Kansas House Speaker Ron Ryckman, who has said the case sparked discussion among GOP lawmakers. But state Rep. Jo Ella Hoye (D), who took office last year, said it was time for lawmakers to “work together to fix our mistake.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin are pictured in Beijing on Feb. 4, 2022. (Alexei Druzhinin/Sputnik/Kremlin Pool/AP)
Beijing is struggling to navigate its newly upgraded partnership with Moscow, as its lends rhetorical support to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine while attempting to remain unscathed by a war that has few benefits for the world’s second largest economy.
In the days since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered troops into Ukraine, China has not directly addressed Russia’s role, declining to label it an invasion and calling for a diplomatic resolution.
However one element of China’s messaging has remained consistent: scathing criticism of NATO and U.S. response to Ukraine, including sanctions, which China’s foreign ministry said on Thursday will only bring “serious difficulties” to the region.
“The truly discredited countries are those that wantonly interfere in other countries’ internal affairs and wage wars in the name of democracy and human rights,” said Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin on Thursday. At the same time, Chinese officials have issued broad calls for the sovereignty of countries to be respected.
Analysts say Beijing’s muddled messaging reflects anxiety over potential threats to China’s extensive trade partnerships with the West, particularly with large European Union countries, whose contribution to the Chinese economy vastly outweighs Russia’s. China’s trade volume with E.U. countries rose 27.5 percent to $828 billion in 2021, compared to $147 billion in Russian trade in the same period, according to official Chinese figures.
“It’s becoming quite clear that Beijing is scrambling a little bit, they’re trying to square the circle,” said Helena Legarda, a senior analyst at the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Germany. “I don’t think that’s sustainable now war has broken out.”
U.S. will sanction Putin as Russian forces close in on Kyiv
On Thursday, President Biden said any country that backed Russia’s war in Ukraine would be “stained by association.”
“I think that China doesn’t want the world to split into this sharp divide between autocracies and democracies in which it is put into a can with Russia and some other autocracies, and this would be detrimental not only to China’s political interests, [and] importantly its economic interests,” said Bonnie Glaser, director of the German Marshall Fund’s Asia program.
The war in Ukraine is likely to challenge the limits of the Sino-Russian relationship, which has grown stronger in recent years but falls short of an alliance and is — in practice — a partnership based on a mutual disdain for the U.S.-led global order.
It’s unclear how much of Putin’s plans Beijing was aware of before Russian troops entered Ukraine, but analysts say China may have been blindsided by the scale and speed of the invasion.
“If China really knew, would they send [Foreign Minister] Wang Yi to the Munich security conference to revive the Minsk agreement only for Putin to tear it up? I do wonder if Beijing got played a little,” said Legarda. Wang called for Russia and Ukraine to return to a diplomatic agreement known as the Minsk accords.
In the weeks before the invasion, China and Russia laid out sweeping agreements as part of a “no limits” pact that formalized the growing ties between the two powers.
“It was a position advantageous to Russia and China to put forward the idea that they could operate outside the U.S. international rules-based order, but that architecture doesn’t fully exist,” said Craig Singleton, an adjunct fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies who specializes in China.
Part of China’s Ukraine calculus will hinge on how it handles a more dependent Russia as the United States and others seek to cripple Putin’s economy with sanctions.
“In my view, the relationship will be increasingly asymmetric — with China having the leverage — but I think Russia sees that as a necessity because it has far bigger national interests at stake, at least in Vladimir Putin’s view,” said Alexander Gabuev, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center. Gabuev said there is hesitancy in Russia about over reliance on the Chinese, but “that is all out the window because of bigger events.”
For Chinese President Xi Jinping, the conflict also comes at a critical time as he is looking to solidify his image as a global leader ahead of China’s 2022 National Party Congress, where he is poised to accept an unprecedented third term after abolishing term limits in 2016.
Inside China, where the government has sought to temper strong opinions on the conflict through censorship, public opinion largely follows Beijing’s line, railing against the U.S. and its allies. Some voices, however, have questioned the official response, pointing out China’s own strong stance on noninterference in the affairs of other countries and respecting sovereignty.
“What is Russia’s war if is not blatant aggression? What reasons do these netizens choose to support trampling on national sovereignty?” said professor Qu Weiguo at China’s Fudan University in a blog posted on Thursday in reaction to social media commentary. “Aren’t we worried that we might be ravaged by the same kind of robbery ourselves tomorrow?”
Yet others said that if China manages to maintain its strategic balancing act between Russia and the West, Beijing could benefit from the redirection of resources from Biden’s much-touted Indo-Pacific strategy to Europe.
“As long as we do not make subversive strategic mistakes ourselves, not only will China’s modernization process not be interrupted, but China will instead have the ability and will to play a more important role in the process of building a new international order,” said Chinese political scientist and government adviser Zheng Yongnian in a social media post on Thursday.
Paul Sonne in Washington, Christian Shepherd and Vic Chiang in Taipei, Taiwan, and Lyric Li in Seoul contributed to this report. | null | null | null | null | null |
JUNEAU, Alaska — A pep club’s “country” theme, for which some student fans dressed like cowboys for a basketball game against a school from Alaska’s only Indian reserve, wasn’t intended to be “racially provocative,” but it had a negative effect that was “predictable and should have been prevented,” according to the findings from an investigation of the incident released Friday. | null | null | null | null | null |
Exactly where they ended up by Friday night remains unclear, but people familiar with the negotiations said that both sides, during the course of the day, offered changes to the restrictions proposed on how often teams could be in the lottery. Both sides are hopeful they can finish dealing with that issue early Saturday, then build off the first ounce of momentum they’ve generated in months to get a deal done by Monday.
But even that relative progress came with a reminder of how much has already been lost to this dispute, as an MLB spokesman said Friday that the league has canceled three more days of spring training games, meaning nearly 10 days of the spring training schedule has already been lost. Games will begin on March 8, at the earliest, if the sides reach a deal by Monday.
One way to move the process forward would be to negotiate more often, and for longer. And that did take place Friday. The sides met three times in addition to Manfred’s meeting with Clark. They met well past sunset, which they hadn’t this week. And though draft order was the focus of the day’s efforts, multiple people involved in the negotiations said they discussed a wide range of issues, as they have all week — meaning that, however far apart they may be on all the other issues, their discussions are not starting from square one. | null | null | null | null | null |
FILE - John Landy of Australia, right, leads Roger Bannister of England at the half-way mark during the one mile race at the Empire Games, now known as the Commonwealth Games, in Vancouver, Canada, on Aug. 7, 1954. Landy, an Australian middle-distance runner who dueled with Roger Bannister to be the first person to run a four-minute mile, has died, his family said Saturday, Feb. 26, 2022. He was 91. (AP Photo, File) (Uncredited/AP)
By Dennis Passa | AP | null | null | null | null | null |
JUPITER, Fla. — Progress has been a relative term during this winter’s collective bargaining negotiations between Major League Baseball and its players union. Since the owners imposed a lockout Dec. 1, just getting the two sides in the same room seemed significant. Despite an MLB-imposed Monday deadline for a deal, daily meetings this week have been halting.
By that measure, what happened Friday, with three days to go before MLB has said it will start canceling regular season games, represented something unprecedented: a reason for optimism.
Now, draft order is just one of a handful of issues in which the sides disagree. Many of the others, such as the competitive balance tax, have been more fraught and convoluted. The players wanted a draft lottery of eight teams, then seven, as a means of reducing the certainty that a losing team will be rewarded with the top pick. The owners agreed to a lottery, but even as late as Friday morning, they had proposed four teams instead.
Exactly where they ended up by Friday night remains unclear, but people familiar with the negotiations said that both sides, during the course of the day, offered changes to the restrictions proposed on how often teams could be in the lottery. Both sides are hopeful they can finish dealing with that issue early Saturday, then build off the first ounce of momentum they have generated in months to get a deal done by Monday.
But even that relative progress came with a reminder of how much has already been lost to this dispute. A spokesman said Friday that MLB has canceled three more days of spring training games, meaning nearly 10 days of the spring training schedule already have been lost. Games will begin March 8, at the earliest, if the sides reach a deal by Monday.
One way to move the process forward would be to negotiate more often and for longer. And that did take place Friday. The sides met three times in addition to Manfred’s meeting with Clark. They met well past sunset, which they hadn’t this week. And though draft order was the focus of the day’s efforts, multiple people involved in the negotiations said they discussed a wide range of issues, as they have all week — meaning that, however far apart they may be on all the other issues, their discussions are not starting from square one. | null | null | null | null | null |
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed to defend the capital alongside his country’s soldiers and citizens, who have armed themselves with pistols, rifles and homemade molotov cocktails. “This was a hard, but brave day,” Zelensky said in a video address late Friday. “This night they will begin to storm. … We have to withstand. The fate of Ukraine is being decided right now.”
More than four dozen explosions thundered in Kyiv before dawn Saturday. Continuous shelling could be heard for about 30 minutes, around the same time the Ukrainian military repelled Russian attacks near a thermal plant in northern Kyiv, the Kyiv Independent reported.
Even with stiffer resistance by Ukrainian troops than Western and U.S. officials anticipated, few doubted that Russia’s much larger and more capable conventional forces would prevail. “They’re likely to defeat Ukrainian regular military forces and secure their objectives in the coming days or weeks,” said a senior Western intelligence official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic.
Still, as Ukrainians took shelter in subway stations amid blaring air raid sirens, the United States cheered on Ukraine’s forces, seeking to dispel what it called Russian disinformation about mass surrenders.
At a heated session of the U.N. Security Council in New York, a diverse array of countries supported a resolution denouncing Russia’s assault — a move Russia was nevertheless able to veto under its authority as a permanent member of the council. Eleven countries voted in favor of the resolution. Only Russia voted against it. Three nations abstained: China, India and the United Arab Emirates.
On Ukraine's Snake Island, a defiant last stand against Russian forces | null | null | null | null | null |
The Wizards' Kyle Kuzma reacts after a second-half turnover Friday night in a 157-153 loss to the Spurs. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
The first extra period had elite shot-making from both sides — Lonnie Walker and Murray for the Spurs; Corey Kispert, Kuzma and Raul Neto for the Wizards. A Neto layup in traffic tied the game at 145 with 18.3 seconds remaining, where it stayed into the second overtime.
Murray continued his fantastic season with another triple double — 31 points, 13 rebounds, 14 assists. Keldon Johnson led the Spurs (24-36) with 32 points and Jakob Poeltl finished with 28 points, 11 rebounds and eight assists.
The Wizards remained without Kristaps Porzingis, who has yet to make his debut since being acquired at the trade deadline. He continues to deal with a bone bruise in his right knee. Unseld said he came back from the break playing one-on-one and has to progress to full-contact five-on-five.
“He’s here, he’s in the fold, just itching to get him out there,” Unseld said. “But we’re not going to rush that. Right now he’s still day-to-day. He’s progressing nicely. Doing a little bit more each day, which is a positive sign, but we don’t want to get overeager and jump the gun, so to speak. When he’s ready and gets the clearance from medical staff, we’ll ramp up accordingly and get him in the fold.”
Center Daniel Gafford was back in the starting lineup, yet another tweak to his role. He was the starter most of the season until Thomas Bryant returned from injury, and then Unseld shortened the center rotation to Bryant and Montrezl Harrell. The trade deadline moved Harrell out of the mix, but then Gafford missed time with covid-19. He had played 13 minutes in the last game before the all-star break.
Kuzma and Poeltl were both freshman on the 2014-15 Utah team coached by Larry Krystkowiak. Poeltl was a starter and Kuzma averaged just 8.1 minutes per game on a team that advanced to the NCAA regional semifinals.
Poeltl was the team’s leading scorer the next season when the Utes lost in the second round of the tournament. The Toronto Raptors selected Poeltl No. 9 in the draft afterward, and Kuzma led the Utes in scoring as a junior. | null | null | null | null | null |
Prince George’s school board moves forward with plan to consolidate its alternative schools
The Prince George’s County school board approved a plan to consolidate its five alternative schools into three campuses over pleas from community members to keep all the schools open.
As part of a budget proposal, public schools CEO Monica Goldson pitched the redesign plan for the alternative schools, which serve students who struggled in traditional school settings, as a way to bolster students’ academic performance by combining resources.
The budget plan, approved during a school board meeting Thursday night, now moves to the county council for approval.
Under the plan, Community-Based Classroom, known as CBC, would close. Students from the school could either attend school through an online program or choose to attend one of the remaining alternative school options. Tall Oaks High School would combine with another alternative school, Annapolis Road Academy. Green Valley Academy and Croom High School — the remaining alternative schools — would also consolidate to offer a ninth to 12th grade program. Green Valley would be redesigned as a sixth to eighth grade program.
But community members pushed back against the consolidation, specifically of CBC. Over the past several weeks, dozens of students, teachers and community activists have spoken in favor of keeping the schools whole and separate.
An amendment was put forward during Thursday’s meeting by two school board members that would have left the schools as they are structured, but it did not get enough votes.
Once it failed, supporters in favor of keeping the current structure yelled “Shame!” repeatedly at board members and banged on drums from outside the meeting.
Gerda Theodore, a senior at CBC, said that at other Prince George’s County public schools, she felt like nobody was hearing her. But at CBC, the school therapist understood her, and her English teacher, who she called the best in the county, helped her learn punctuation.
“They had no sympathy for what we were doing,” Theodore, 18, said after the school board’s vote. “It felt as if we weren’t being heard.”
Enrollment figures show 68 students attend Community-Based Classroom. All of the school’s seniors will be graduating, Goldson said, and the remaining students will now go to one of the consolidated alternative schools.
Goldson said some of the information has been misconstrued about the alternative school redesign. All of the alternative schools have a one-star rating with the Maryland Report Card, an accountability system that rates schools from one to five stars to let parents know how their schools are performing.
“Ultimately what we’re doing is just converting them from schools to programs,” Goldson said, adding that the redesign would not make the schools subject to the rating from the state. Often times, the low ratings lead to interventions by the state, which Goldson said she was trying to avoid.
But opponents to the redesign say cutting Community-Based Classroom would be removing a program that worked. CBC Principal Tammy Williams told the board that the school has a 95 percent graduation rate and an attendance rate of 93 percent.
“It’s definitely disappointing,” said Rachel Sherman, a former student who helped organize the campaign to keep the schools open. “They had over 100 people testify to not close CBC, so to see that happen at the hands of our board is disturbing.” | null | null | null | null | null |
The Wizards' Kyle Kuzma after a second-half turnover Friday night in a 157-153 loss to the Spurs. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
The first extra period had elite shot-making from both sides — Lonnie Walker and Murray for the Spurs and Corey Kispert, Kuzma and Raul Neto for the Wizards. A Neto layup in traffic tied the game at 145 with 18.3 seconds remaining, where it stayed into the second overtime.
Murray continued his fantastic season with another triple double — 31 points, 13 rebounds and 14 assists. Keldon Johnson led the Spurs (24-36) with 32 points, and Jakob Poeltl finished with 28 points, 11 rebounds and eight assists.
The Wizards remained without Kristaps Porzingis, who has yet to make his debut since he was acquired at the trade deadline. He continues to deal with a bone bruise in his right knee. Unseld said he came back from the break playing one-on-one and has to progress to full-contact five-on-five.
“He’s here. He’s in the fold, just itching to get him out there,” Unseld said. “But we’re not going to rush that. Right now he’s still day-to-day. He’s progressing nicely. Doing a little bit more each day, which is a positive sign, but we don’t want to get overeager and jump the gun, so to speak. When he’s ready and gets the clearance from medical staff, we’ll ramp up accordingly and get him in the fold.”
Center Daniel Gafford was back in the starting lineup, yet another tweak to his role. He was the starter most of the season until Thomas Bryant returned from injury, and then Unseld shortened the center rotation to Bryant and Montrezl Harrell. Harrell was moved at the trade deadline, but then Gafford missed time with covid-19. He had played 13 minutes in the last game before the all-star break.
Kuzma and Poeltl were freshmen on the 2014-15 Utah team coached by Larry Krystkowiak. Poeltl was a starter and Kuzma averaged just 8.1 minutes per game on a team that advanced to the Sweet 16.
Poeltl was the team’s leading scorer the next season when the Utes lost in the second round of the tournament. The Toronto Raptors selected Poeltl No. 9 in the draft that year, and Kuzma led the Utes in scoring as a junior. | null | null | null | null | null |
Shorthanded Maryland gets a big night from Angel Reese to edge Indiana
Angel Reese goes to the basket for two of her game-high 20 points against Indiana on Friday. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
Right before the media timeout in the third quarter, Maryland forward Angel Reese collided with an Indiana defender and sat on the court by the Terrapins’ sideline, the team’s training staff tending to a cut above her nose. Coach Brenda Frese had only a six-player rotation for the game, so when Reese went to the locker room with Maryland up nine, Xfinity Center grew quiet with concern.
The lead was four when she came back (wearing a different number), and the home crowd came to life with her return. And while her offensive output was muted the rest of the way, she delivered crucial rebounds and a steal to help No. 13 Maryland to a 67-64 win over No. 10 Indiana.
The win in the regular season finale left Maryland at 21-7 and 13-4 in the Big Ten. The Terps are no worse than the No. 4 seed in next week’s conference tournament and could finish as high as No. 2. Either way, they earned a double-bye.
“This team is battle-tested,” said Frese, whose regular rotation was short junior guard Ashley Owusu, who missed the game with an illness. “They didn’t even flinch when the game was close there. They’ve been through all these kind of matchups, and right now they’re one of the best teams in the country.”
Indiana (20-6, 11-5) trimmed the Maryland lead to one after a three-pointer by Hoosiers guard Nicole Cardano-Hillary with 34.4 seconds remaining, but a floater by guard Katie Benzan extended the lead to three. Indiana had a last-second three-point attempt by Cardano-Hillary, but Reese’s defense affected the shot, and it landed short.
Reese finished with 20 points and 16 rebounds, guard Diamond Miller scored 16 and Shyanne Sellers added 12 as Maryland shot 43.8 percent from the field while holding Indiana to 41 percent.
Early on, Maryland’s suffocating defense turned into instant offense as the Terrapins held Indiana to just 25 percent (4-for-16) shooting in the first quarter. The Terrapins closed the quarter on a 13-6 run.
Reese didn’t produce the performance she had hoped for in her previous contest against Michigan — she played 14 minutes because of foul trouble and scored just six points before fouling out. But on Friday, Maryland’s leading scorer got back into her rhythm.
“Coming from the last game, I didn’t have the best game,” Reese said. “I think I kind of didn’t do the best for my team, and I just want to do the best for my team today and control what I can control.”
Reese scored 13 points in the first half and continued to thrive in the second before exiting briefly with the injury.
“Credit to her, she played great tonight,” Indiana forward Mackenzie Holmes said. “She just outplayed us tonight, outplayed me tonight. She’s just an extremely skilled, athletic player.”
The game was a taut defensive battle in the fourth quarter, but Reese’s return stabilized the Terps. Maryland sits as a No. 3 seed in the Big Ten tournament and could move to No. 2 if Ohio State loses its finale to Michigan State.
Here’s what else to know about Maryland’s victory:
Owusu absent
Owusu was absent from Friday’s game with an illness, one game after she returned to action following an ankle injury.
Owusu scored two points in 21 minutes off the bench in the team’s 71-59 loss at No. 6 Michigan on Sunday as she worked her way back to full speed. Frese said after Sunday’s game that Owusu was still playing through some pain but hoped that she would be able to get her timing and rhythm back for the Big Ten tournament.
The all-Big Ten guard missed Maryland’s previous four games before Sunday’s contest against Michigan after she suffered an ankle injury against Michigan State, but the team was still undefeated without her.
Turnover issues
Maryland entered Friday with the league’s best turnover differential. The Hoosiers were tied with the Terrapins for the fewest turnovers per game in the Big Ten (12.9).
Maryland’s defense set the tone early, forcing five turnovers in the opening five minutes of the game as it jumped out to an early lead. Indiana finished with 14 turnovers for the game, including a crucial late-game mistake that gave the Terrapins the ball back with a four-point lead with 1:38 left.
“We wanted to set the tone early, punch first,” Frese said. " I definitely thought the mentality that we were able to display early was a big factor for us.”
Strong from deep
The Terrapins buried seven of 15 three-pointers. Benzan, who entered third in the Big Ten with a 43.6 percent three-point percentage, made two of three. Sellers also hit two of three.
Graduate forward Chloe Bibby and Miller each added one in the first half as Maryland went 6 for 8 from behind the arc to build its lead as Maryland sought to spread the floor. | null | null | null | null | null |
Saxons 2, Falcons 1
Langley, which last won the Northern Virginia School Hockey League title in 2019, seizes the crown again with a win over Briar Woods. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
Both Langley and Briar Woods had been in this position before. The teams played at Ashburn Ice House for the Northern Virginia School Hockey League championship on Friday night, a repeat of the final that took place in 2019.
The score was different, but the result was the same: Langley again prevailed, this time, 2-1.
Noah Scheinerman blasted the puck into the top right corner of the net off a feed from Kam Khazai with 6:21 left in the third period to break a tie and return the crown to the Saxons, who had won the 2019 matchup by a score of 4-2.
In this one, Langley scored both of its goals on the power play, something that has been a strong suit for it all season.
“The team that possesses the puck more tends to win more,” Coach Patrick Keough said. “So our power play is about possess — don’t shoot until it’s the right shot.”
The Saxons took Keough’s advice en route to their first goal midway through the second period. Even though they trailed, they took their time to set up the equalizer. That came when Khazai skated down the left side into the Falcons’ zone, creating a one-on-one with the goalie that he capitalized on.
Langley played a clean game all around, mostly staying out of the penalty box and playing stingy defense, too.
Freshman goaltender Harrison Smith had 20 saves on 21 shots, only letting in a goal with 1:52 left in the first period when Keldon Maoury shot from the slot and Falcons captain Derek Zhou tipped it in.
“I was really nervous when I got that first shot,” Smith said. “… But after that I calmed down, and the rest of the game was all right.”
The Saxons have come to rely on their freshman, who was otherwise stout. “When your team knows their goalie has their back, they play better,” Keough said.
Seeded fifth in the tournament, Langley (6-3-1) took down No. 4 seed Stone Bridge, 7-3, in the first round of the tournament Monday and then ninth-seeded Broad Run, 3-2, to advance to the final. Broad Run had knocked off top-seeded Riverside in the previous round.
In a tournament full of upsets, Briar Woods (5-4-1) upset No. 2 Yorktown in the quarterfinals and beat No. 6 Oakton to make it to the championship. | null | null | null | null | null |
Biden authorizes Pentagon to send up to $350 million in defense aid
Zelensky continued to present a grim but defiant face as the Kremlin assault on his country enters a third day. As daylight broke, an unshaven Zelensky posted a video of himself apparently in the capital’s streets, as proof he was still there. The United States, which fears the city will soon fall, has offered to help him leave Kyiv. But he has pledged to remain in his post as head of state.
President Biden has authorized a defense aid package to Ukraine worth up to $350 million, the White House announced late Friday, as Washington rushes to send more assistance to the pro-Western government that is being attacked by Russia.
The package includes “defense articles” as well as military education and training. The Biden administration intends to provide support as long as there is a viable Ukrainian government, The Washington Post previously reported.
Western leaders have said that U.S. and NATO troops would not be deployed to Ukraine, though they have ramped up shipments of materiel to Kyiv.
The United States had already provided some $650 million in defense aid to Ukraine in the past year. It has sent equipment including antitank Javelin missiles that were used to destroy Russian tanks this week, according to the Ukrainian government.
Earlier in the day, the White House asked Congress to approve $6.4 billion in new emergency aid to assist Ukraine, hoping to boost humanitarian assistance to the war-torn country and shore up other allies in the region against any further Russian aggression. | null | null | null | null | null |
Adaway leads Saint Bonaventure against Saint Joseph's (PA) after 23-point game
BOTTOM LINE: Saint Bonaventure plays the Saint Joseph’s (PA) Hawks after Jalen Adaway scored 23 points in Saint Bonaventure’s 73-55 win over the Rhode Island Rams.
The Hawks have gone 8-6 in home games. Saint Joseph’s (PA) ranks eighth in the A-10 with 7.6 offensive rebounds per game led by Ejike Obinna averaging 2.6.
The Bonnies are 10-4 in A-10 play. Saint Bonaventure ranks sixth in the A-10 allowing 67.0 points while holding opponents to 42.4% shooting.
The teams square off for the 10th time this season in A-10 play. The Bonnies won the last meeting 80-69 on Jan. 29. Adaway scored 22 points to help lead the Bonnies to the win.
TOP PERFORMERS: Jordan Hall is averaging 14.2 points, 6.5 rebounds and six assists for the Hawks. Erik Reynolds II is averaging 9.4 points over the last 10 games for Saint Joseph’s (PA).
Dominick Welch averages 2.7 made 3-pointers per game for the Bonnies, scoring 12.2 points while shooting 36.2% from beyond the arc. Adaway is averaging 11.9 points over the last 10 games for Saint Bonaventure. | null | null | null | null | null |
Alabama A&M hosts Alabama State following Strawbridge's 28-point performance
BOTTOM LINE: Alabama State visits the Alabama A&M Bulldogs after Kenny Strawbridge scored 28 points in Alabama State’s 89-78 win over the Bethune-Cookman Wildcats.
The Bulldogs have gone 5-2 in home games. Alabama A&M is 2-5 when it has fewer turnovers than its opponents and averages 13.8 turnovers per game.
The Hornets are 6-9 against SWAC opponents. Alabama State has a 0-4 record in games decided by 3 points or fewer.
The teams play for the second time this season in SWAC play. The Hornets won the last meeting 59-55 on Jan. 15. Trace Young scored 15 points to help lead the Hornets to the victory.
TOP PERFORMERS: Jalen Johnson is averaging 15.8 points and seven rebounds for the Bulldogs. Cameron Tucker is averaging 10.6 points over the last 10 games for Alabama A&M.
Strawbridge is scoring 10.4 points per game and averaging 4.5 rebounds for the Hornets. Juan Reyna is averaging 2.4 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Alabama State. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: Alcorn State will try to keep its three-game road win streak alive when the Braves face Prairie View A&M.
The Panthers have gone 5-2 at home. Prairie View A&M is ninth in the SWAC at limiting opponent scoring, giving up 74.5 points while holding opponents to 45.9% shooting.
The Braves are 10-4 against SWAC opponents. Alcorn State is 3-4 in one-possession games.
TOP PERFORMERS: Jawaun Daniels is scoring 14.2 points per game with 6.0 rebounds and 2.1 assists for the Panthers. Jeremiah Gambrell is averaging 15.7 points and 3.6 assists over the past 10 games for Prairie View A&M.
Justin Thomas is averaging 9.5 points, four assists and two steals for the Braves. Darius Agnew is averaging 10.9 points over the last 10 games for Alcorn State. | null | null | null | null | null |
Army visits Holy Cross after Rucker's 21-point game
BOTTOM LINE: Army visits the Holy Cross Crusaders after Jalen Rucker scored 21 points in Army’s 73-60 win over the Bucknell Bison.
The Crusaders have gone 5-7 in home games. Holy Cross ranks sixth in the Patriot with 30.6 points per game in the paint led by Gerrale Gates averaging 2.7.
The Black Knights are 8-9 in conference play. Army has an 8-10 record in games decided by at least 10 points.
The teams play for the second time in conference play this season. The Crusaders won the last matchup 69-65 on Feb. 5. Gates scored 23 points points to help lead the Crusaders to the win.
TOP PERFORMERS: Kyrell Luc is shooting 35.8% from beyond the arc with 1.2 made 3-pointers per game for the Crusaders, while averaging 13 points and 1.5 steals. Gates is averaging 11.7 points and 5.9 rebounds over the past 10 games for Holy Cross.
Rucker is averaging 16.6 points and 3.1 assists for the Black Knights. Chris Mann is averaging 1.0 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Army. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: Sam Houston plays Grand Canyon in WAC action Saturday.
The Antelopes are 12-2 in home games. Grand Canyon ranks ninth in college basketball giving up 59.5 points per game while holding opponents to 38.9% shooting.
The Bearkats have gone 12-4 against WAC opponents. Sam Houston ranks seventh in the WAC with 23.7 defensive rebounds per game led by Savion Flagg averaging 5.6.
The teams meet for the second time in conference play this season. The Bearkats won 58-56 in the last matchup on Jan. 22. Jaden Ray led the Bearkats with 15 points, and Jovan Blacksher Jr. led the Antelopes with 16 points.
TOP PERFORMERS: Blacksher is scoring 16.8 points per game with 2.7 rebounds and 4.0 assists for the Antelopes. Holland Woods is averaging 15.8 points and 2.2 rebounds while shooting 37.6% over the past 10 games for Grand Canyon.
Flagg averages 2.4 made 3-pointers per game for the Bearkats, scoring 19.1 points while shooting 36.5% from beyond the arc. Ray is shooting 40.2% and averaging 9.2 points over the past 10 games for Sam Houston. | null | null | null | null | null |
Carry leads Kent State against Central Michigan after 42-point showing
BOTTOM LINE: Kent State takes on the Central Michigan Chippewas after Sincere Carry scored 42 points in Kent State’s 93-82 victory against the Ball State Cardinals.
The Chippewas are 2-7 in home games. Central Michigan is 2-12 in games decided by 10 or more points.
The Golden Flashes are 13-4 in conference games. Kent State ranks ninth in the MAC shooting 33.9% from 3-point range.
The teams square off for the second time this season in MAC play. The Chippewas won the last meeting 72-69 on Dec. 29. Harrison Henderson scored 18 points points to help lead the Chippewas to the victory.
TOP PERFORMERS: Kevin Miller is averaging 13.1 points and 4.3 assists for the Chippewas. Cameron Healy is averaging 11.8 points over the last 10 games for Central Michigan.
Carry is averaging 18.5 points and 4.8 assists for the Golden Flashes. Malique Jacobs is averaging 9.5 points, 6.6 rebounds and 3.1 assists over the past 10 games for Kent State. | null | null | null | null | null |
Clark leads Virginia against Florida State after 25-point performance
BOTTOM LINE: Virginia hosts the Florida State Seminoles after Kihei Clark scored 25 points in Virginia’s 65-61 loss to the Duke Blue Devils.
The Cavaliers are 10-5 in home games. Virginia is 4-2 in games decided by 3 points or fewer.
The Seminoles are 7-10 in ACC play. Florida State is 5-8 in games decided by 10 or more points.
The Cavaliers and Seminoles square off Saturday for the first time in conference play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Jayden Gardner is scoring 15.3 points per game and averaging 7.0 rebounds for the Cavaliers. Clark is averaging 1.5 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Virginia. | null | null | null | null | null |
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: Brown -16.5; over/under is 144.5
The Bears have gone 5-7 in home games. Brown ranks sixth in the Ivy League with 11.7 assists per game led by Tamenang Choh averaging 3.0.
The Lions are 1-11 against Ivy League opponents. Columbia ranks third in the Ivy League with 8.2 offensive rebounds per game led by Patrick Harding averaging 2.6.
The teams meet for the second time in conference play this season. The Bears won 93-74 in the last matchup on Jan. 22. Choh led the Bears with 20 points, and Ike Nweke led the Lions with 16 points.
TOP PERFORMERS: Choh is scoring 13.7 points per game and averaging 8.3 rebounds for the Bears. Kino Lilly Jr. is averaging 2.5 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Brown.
Geronimo Rubio De La Rosa is scoring 12.3 points per game with 4.0 rebounds and 3.3 assists for the Lions. Cameron Shockley-Okeke is averaging 10.0 points and 3.3 rebounds while shooting 41.7% over the past 10 games for Columbia. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: Bowling Green hosts the Western Michigan Broncos after Samari Curtis scored 21 points in Bowling Green’s 82-68 loss to the Akron Zips.
The Falcons have gone 8-6 at home. Bowling Green averages 12.3 turnovers per game and is 7-10 when it has fewer turnovers than its opponents.
The Broncos are 2-15 in MAC play. Western Michigan averages 13.5 turnovers per game and is 2-4 when winning the turnover battle.
The teams meet for the second time in conference play this season. The Falcons won 82-75 in the last matchup on Jan. 22. Daeqwon Plowden led the Falcons with 23 points, and Lamar Norman Jr. led the Broncos with 20 points.
TOP PERFORMERS: Plowden is scoring 15.9 points per game and averaging 7.0 rebounds for the Falcons. Myron Gordon is averaging 13.5 points and 1.9 rebounds over the last 10 games for Bowling Green.
Norman is shooting 36.6% from beyond the arc with 3.3 made 3-pointers per game for the Broncos, while averaging 19.7 points. Mileek McMillan is averaging 8.4 points over the past 10 games for Western Michigan. | null | null | null | null | null |
Drexel plays Charleston (SC) after Williams' 20-point performance
BOTTOM LINE: Drexel plays the Charleston (SC) Cougars after Amari Williams scored 20 points in Drexel’s 69-63 loss to the UNC Wilmington Seahawks.
The Dragons have gone 7-4 at home. Drexel ranks fourth in the CAA with 32.0 points per game in the paint led by Melik Martin averaging 1.6.
The Cougars are 8-8 against conference opponents. Charleston (SC) has a 6-11 record against opponents over .500.
The teams meet for the third time in conference play this season. The Cougars won 79-75 in the last matchup on Feb. 15. Nick Farrar led the Cougars with 17 points, and Coletrane Washington led the Dragons with 21 points.
TOP PERFORMERS: Camren Wynter is averaging 15.2 points, 5.1 rebounds and 4.7 assists for the Dragons. Martin is averaging 10.3 points over the last 10 games for Drexel. | null | null | null | null | null |
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: Davidson -11.5; over/under is 131.5
BOTTOM LINE: Fordham visits the Davidson Wildcats after Chuba Ohams scored 20 points in Fordham’s 60-54 victory over the La Salle Explorers.
The Wildcats have gone 11-1 at home. Davidson has a 4-1 record in games decided by 3 points or fewer.
The Rams are 6-8 against A-10 opponents. Fordham is 6-5 in games decided by 10 points or more.
The teams play for the 10th time in conference play this season. The Wildcats won the last meeting 69-66 on Jan. 22. Luka Brajkovic scored 21 points points to help lead the Wildcats to the win.
TOP PERFORMERS: Foster Loyer is averaging 16.5 points and 3.5 assists for the Wildcats. Brajkovic is averaging 11.0 points over the last 10 games for Davidson.
Darius Quisenberry is shooting 38.0% and averaging 17.4 points for the Rams. Josh Navarro is averaging 1.2 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Fordham. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: Campbell hosts the Longwood Lancers after Cedric Henderson Jr. scored 23 points in Campbell’s 68-66 loss to the Hampton Pirates.
The Fighting Camels have gone 9-3 at home. Campbell has a 5-7 record against opponents over .500.
The Lancers are 14-1 in conference matchups. Longwood is eighth in the Big South with 22.9 defensive rebounds per game led by Isaiah Wilkins averaging 4.4.
The teams play for the second time in conference play this season. The Lancers won the last matchup 72-64 on Jan. 20. Jordan Perkins scored 14 points to help lead the Lancers to the victory.
TOP PERFORMERS: Henderson is scoring 14.1 points per game with 5.7 rebounds and 1.6 assists for the Fighting Camels. Jordan Whitfield is averaging 10.7 points and 3.7 rebounds while shooting 35.4% over the past 10 games for Campbell.
DeShaun Wade averages 2.1 made 3-pointers per game for the Lancers, scoring 11.5 points while shooting 41.5% from beyond the arc. Justin Hill is averaging 16.3 points, 5.4 rebounds, 4.3 assists and 1.9 steals over the last 10 games for Longwood. | null | null | null | null | null |
Huff leads VMI against Western Carolina after 20-point performance
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: Western Carolina -4.5; over/under is 155.5
BOTTOM LINE: VMI faces the Western Carolina Catamounts after Honor Huff scored 20 points in VMI’s 83-72 loss to the Wofford Terriers.
The Keydets are 9-8 in SoCon play. VMI is 7-4 when it has fewer turnovers than its opponents and averages 11.0 turnovers per game.
The teams meet for the second time in conference play this season. The Keydets won 76-69 in the last matchup on Feb. 4. Jake Stephens led the Keydets with 20 points, and Nick Robinson led the Catamounts with 19 points.
TOP PERFORMERS: Robinson is shooting 39.1% and averaging 14.9 points for the Catamounts. Joe Petrakis is averaging 1.9 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Western Carolina.
Kamdyn Curfman averages 3.6 made 3-pointers per game for the Keydets, scoring 15.7 points while shooting 39.2% from beyond the arc. Stephens is averaging 17.2 points, 9.1 rebounds and 1.5 blocks over the past 10 games for VMI. | null | null | null | null | null |
Hunter leads Central Arkansas against Lipscomb after 24-point game
BOTTOM LINE: Central Arkansas visits the Lipscomb Bisons after Camren Hunter scored 24 points in Central Arkansas’ 81-72 win against the North Alabama Lions.
The Bisons are 7-6 in home games. Lipscomb is 4-13 against opponents over .500.
The Sugar Bears are 7-8 in ASUN play. Central Arkansas has a 2-1 record in one-possession games.
The Bisons and Sugar Bears meet Saturday for the first time in ASUN play this season.
TOP PERFORMERS: Will Pruitt is averaging 9.9 points and 5.3 rebounds for the Bisons. Greg Jones is averaging 2.4 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Lipscomb.
Hunter is averaging 14.5 points, 3.2 assists and 1.6 steals for the Sugar Bears. Jared Chatham is averaging 16.5 points over the last 10 games for Central Arkansas. | null | null | null | null | null |
Incarnate Word visits McNeese after Morgan's 23-point outing
The Cowboys have gone 6-4 in home games. McNeese leads the Southland in rebounding, averaging 37.0 boards. Christian Shumate paces the Cowboys with 6.7 rebounds.
The Cardinals have gone 2-10 against Southland opponents. Incarnate Word has a 0-4 record in one-possession games.
The teams play for the second time in conference play this season. The Cowboys won the last meeting 82-72 on Jan. 22. Shumate scored 29 points points to help lead the Cowboys to the victory.
TOP PERFORMERS: Kellon Taylor is averaging 10 points and 5.8 rebounds for the Cowboys. Shumate is averaging 12.4 points and 6.7 rebounds over the past 10 games for McNeese.
Morgan is shooting 40.0% from beyond the arc with 2.1 made 3-pointers per game for the Cardinals, while averaging 12 points. RJ Glasper is averaging 15.9 points over the last 10 games for Incarnate Word. | null | null | null | null | null |
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: Wofford -8.5; over/under is 131.5
BOTTOM LINE: Wofford plays the Mercer Bears after Max Klesmit scored 22 points in Wofford’s 83-72 victory over the VMI Keydets.
The Terriers have gone 9-4 at home. Wofford is third in the SoCon shooting 35.8% from downtown, led by Sam Godwin shooting 50.0% from 3-point range.
The Bears are 8-9 against SoCon opponents. Mercer ranks fourth in the SoCon with 14.6 assists per game led by Felipe Haase averaging 3.1.
The teams play for the second time in conference play this season. The Bears won the last meeting 67-62 on Feb. 1. Jalen Johnson scored 21 points to help lead the Bears to the win.
TOP PERFORMERS: B.J. Mack is averaging 16.1 points and six rebounds for the Terriers. Klesmit is averaging 2.1 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Wofford.
Johnson averages 2.5 made 3-pointers per game for the Bears, scoring 13.9 points while shooting 39.8% from beyond the arc. Haase is averaging 11.4 points over the past 10 games for Mercer. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: Louisville travels to Wake Forest looking to stop its six-game road skid.
The Demon Deacons are 14-2 on their home court. Wake Forest ranks third in the ACC with 26.7 defensive rebounds per game led by Alondes Williams averaging 5.3.
The Cardinals are 6-11 against ACC opponents. Louisville has a 2-0 record in games decided by 3 points or fewer.
The teams play for the 10th time this season in ACC play. The Cardinals won the last matchup 73-69 on Dec. 30. Noah Locke scored 17 points to help lead the Cardinals to the victory.
TOP PERFORMERS: Williams is scoring 19.7 points per game and averaging 6.8 rebounds for the Demon Deacons. Damari Monsanto is averaging 1.3 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Wake Forest.
Malik Williams is averaging 9.7 points and eight rebounds for the Cardinals. El Ellis is averaging 7.6 points over the last 10 games for Louisville.
Cardinals: 2-8, averaging 64.5 points, 33.5 rebounds, 8.5 assists, 6.9 steals and 2.3 blocks per game while shooting 43.8% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 66.6 points. | null | null | null | null | null |
Maryland-Eastern Shore hosts Coppin State after Hood's 28-point performance
BOTTOM LINE: Coppin State visits the Maryland-Eastern Shore Hawks after Mike Hood scored 28 points in Coppin State’s 86-82 victory against the Howard Bison.
The Hawks are 4-4 in home games. Maryland-Eastern Shore is sixth in the MEAC scoring 68.1 points while shooting 41.3% from the field.
The Eagles have gone 5-6 against MEAC opponents. Coppin State is 1-13 against opponents with a winning record.
The teams play for the second time in conference play this season. The Hawks won the last matchup 64-61 on Jan. 29. Dom London scored 16 points points to help lead the Hawks to the victory.
TOP PERFORMERS: Zion Styles is scoring 10.2 points per game with 3.8 rebounds and 0.8 assists for the Hawks. Nathaniel Pollard Jr. is averaging 10.0 points and 6.5 rebounds while shooting 55.7% over the past 10 games for Maryland-Eastern Shore.
Tyree Corbett is averaging 13.6 points and 9.2 rebounds for the Eagles. Nendah Tarke is averaging 15.8 points over the last 10 games for Coppin State. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: Western Kentucky visits the Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders after Dayvion McKnight scored 23 points in Western Kentucky’s 73-64 victory over the Old Dominion Monarchs.
The Blue Raiders have gone 14-0 at home. Middle Tennessee is 1-0 in games decided by less than 4 points.
The Hilltoppers are 9-6 against C-USA opponents. Western Kentucky is sixth in C-USA scoring 31.2 points per game in the paint led by Darrius Miles averaging 4.0.
The teams play for the second time in conference play this season. The Blue Raiders won the last meeting 93-85 on Jan. 29. Josh Jefferson scored 31 points points to help lead the Blue Raiders to the victory.
TOP PERFORMERS: Jefferson is scoring 14.9 points per game with 3.3 rebounds and 1.9 assists for the Blue Raiders. Donovan Sims is averaging 10.1 points and 3.6 rebounds while shooting 48.0% over the past 10 games for Middle Tennessee.
Camron Justice is shooting 40.6% from beyond the arc with 2.7 made 3-pointers per game for the Hilltoppers, while averaging 14.6 points and 3.2 assists. McKnight is shooting 50.8% and averaging 13.5 points over the last 10 games for Western Kentucky. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: Texas A&M-CC takes on Houston Baptist in Southland action Saturday.
The Huskies are 6-5 on their home court. Houston Baptist has a 1-1 record in games decided by 3 points or fewer.
The Islanders have gone 5-6 against Southland opponents. Texas A&M-CC is third in the Southland with 35.0 rebounds per game led by Isaac Mushila averaging 9.9.
The teams meet for the second time in conference play this season. The Huskies won 77-71 in the last matchup on Jan. 22. Darius Lee led the Huskies with 25 points, and Mushila led the Islanders with 22 points.
TOP PERFORMERS: Lee is averaging 17 points, 8.1 rebounds and 2.5 steals for the Huskies. Brycen Long is averaging 10.3 points and 1.5 steals over the past 10 games for Houston Baptist. | null | null | null | null | null |
Northern Arizona hosts Weber State following McEwen's 24-point game
BOTTOM LINE: Weber State plays the Northern Arizona Lumberjacks after Koby McEwen scored 24 points in Weber State’s 81-75 loss to the Portland State Vikings.
The Lumberjacks have gone 5-9 in home games. Northern Arizona is ninth in the Big Sky scoring 68.1 points while shooting 42.0% from the field.
The Wildcats have gone 12-6 against Big Sky opponents. Weber State is fourth in the Big Sky scoring 77.1 points per game and is shooting 47.4%.
The teams meet for the second time in conference play this season. The Wildcats won 67-44 in the last matchup on Dec. 3. Dillon Jones led the Wildcats with 18 points, and Nik Mains led the Lumberjacks with seven points.
TOP PERFORMERS: Jalen Cole is averaging 18.8 points and 3.8 assists for the Lumberjacks. Mains is averaging 12 points and 5.7 rebounds over the last 10 games for Northern Arizona.
Seikou Sisoho Jawara is averaging 12.8 points for the Wildcats. McEwen is averaging 19.7 points and 4.0 rebounds while shooting 46.0% over the past 10 games for Weber State. | null | null | null | null | null |
Northern Kentucky hosts Youngstown State after Warrick's 30-point showing
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: Northern Kentucky -5.5; over/under is 138
BOTTOM LINE: Northern Kentucky hosts the Youngstown State Penguins after Marques Warrick scored 30 points in Northern Kentucky’s 78-64 victory over the Robert Morris Colonials.
The Norse are 10-4 in home games. Northern Kentucky is 2-2 in games decided by 3 points or fewer.
The Penguins are 12-8 against Horizon opponents. Youngstown State has a 4-7 record against opponents above .500.
The teams play for the second time in conference play this season. The Norse won the last meeting 68-67 on Jan. 14. Warrick scored 20 points points to help lead the Norse to the victory.
TOP PERFORMERS: Warrick is scoring 15.8 points per game with 2.9 rebounds and 2.3 assists for the Norse. Sam Vinson is averaging 12.4 points and 4.3 rebounds while shooting 41.2% over the past 10 games for Northern Kentucky. | null | null | null | null | null |
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: Northwestern State -1.5; over/under is 157.5
BOTTOM LINE: Northwestern State looks to stop its three-game home losing streak with a victory over New Orleans.
The Demons have gone 5-5 in home games. Northwestern State ranks sixth in the Southland in rebounding averaging 32.0 rebounds. Kendal Coleman leads the Demons with 9.7 boards.
The Privateers are 9-2 against Southland opponents. New Orleans ranks sixth in college basketball scoring 39.2 points per game in the paint led by Derek St. Hilaire averaging 1.5.
The teams play for the third time in conference play this season. The Privateers won the last meeting 85-77 on Jan. 22. St. Hilaire scored 29 points to help lead the Privateers to the victory.
TOP PERFORMERS: Coleman is averaging 15.6 points and 9.7 rebounds for the Demons. Carvell Teasett is averaging 2.7 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Northwestern State.
Troy Green is averaging 15.3 points, 5.9 rebounds and 1.8 steals for the Privateers. St. Hilaire is averaging 22.7 points over the last 10 games for New Orleans. | null | null | null | null | null |
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: Rice -13.5; over/under is 147
The Golden Eagles are 1-14 in C-USA play. Southern Miss is sixth in C-USA with 23.9 defensive rebounds per game led by Tyler Stevenson averaging 6.2.
The teams square off for the second time in conference play this season. The Owls won the last matchup 76-62 on Jan. 29. Pierre scored 17 points points to help lead the Owls to the victory.
TOP PERFORMERS: Fiedler is averaging 9.8 points, 7.5 rebounds and 3.2 assists for the Owls. Pierre is averaging 14.8 points over the past 10 games for Rice.
Jaron Pierre, Jr. is shooting 34.3% from beyond the arc with 2.3 made 3-pointers per game for the Golden Eagles, while averaging 10 points. Stevenson is averaging 11.8 points over the last 10 games for Southern Miss. | null | null | null | null | null |
Samford visits Chattanooga after Glover's 22-point game
BOTTOM LINE: Samford plays the Chattanooga Mocs after Ques Glover scored 22 points in Samford’s 83-75 win against the Furman Paladins.
The Mocs have gone 11-3 in home games. Chattanooga is fifth in the SoCon in rebounding averaging 32.7 rebounds. Silvio De Sousa paces the Mocs with 6.8 boards.
The Bulldogs have gone 10-7 against SoCon opponents. Samford is ninth in the SoCon shooting 33.1% from downtown. Quinn Richey leads the Bulldogs shooting 51.2% from 3-point range.
The teams square off for the second time in conference play this season. The Bulldogs won the last meeting 80-72 on Feb. 3. Glover scored 20 points to help lead the Bulldogs to the victory.
TOP PERFORMERS: Malachi Smith is averaging 20.5 points, 6.6 rebounds, 3.2 assists and 1.7 steals for the Mocs. David Jean-Baptiste is averaging 11.2 points over the last 10 games for Chattanooga.
Jaden Campbell is shooting 38.5% from beyond the arc with 1.9 made 3-pointers per game for the Bulldogs, while averaging 10.3 points and 1.6 steals. Glover is averaging 17.8 points and 3.6 assists over the last 10 games for Samford. | null | null | null | null | null |
SIU-Edwardsville takes on Morehead State after Carter's 21-point showing
BOTTOM LINE: SIU-Edwardsville takes on the Morehead State Eagles after Courtney Carter scored 21 points in SIU-Edwardsville’s 68-64 overtime loss to the Austin Peay Governors.
The Cougars are 7-5 in home games. SIU-Edwardsville ranks fifth in the OVC with 31.2 points per game in the paint led by Carlos Curtis averaging 2.0.
The Eagles are 13-4 against OVC opponents. Morehead State ranks second in the OVC with 34.7 rebounds per game led by Johni Broome averaging 10.6.
The teams square off for the second time in conference play this season. The Eagles won the last meeting 77-74 on Jan. 22. Broome scored 20 points to help lead the Eagles to the win.
TOP PERFORMERS: Carter is averaging 7.8 points and 3.4 assists for the Cougars. Shaun Doss is averaging 11.8 points over the last 10 games for SIU-Edwardsville.
Ta’Lon Cooper is averaging 8.9 points and 6.1 assists for the Eagles. Broome is averaging 15.8 points and 10.1 rebounds while shooting 56.6% over the last 10 games for Morehead State. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: Oral Roberts hosts the South Dakota Coyotes after Max Abmas scored 34 points in Oral Roberts’ 106-102 overtime loss to the South Dakota State Jackrabbits.
The Golden Eagles have gone 10-4 in home games. Oral Roberts is fifth in college basketball averaging 83.7 points and is shooting 45.9% from the field.
The Coyotes are 10-7 in conference matchups. South Dakota is 2-1 in one-possession games.
The teams play for the second time in conference play this season. The Golden Eagles won the last meeting 82-73 on Dec. 21. Abmas scored 32 points points to help lead the Golden Eagles to the victory.
TOP PERFORMERS: Abmas is shooting 39.9% from beyond the arc with 4.0 made 3-pointers per game for the Golden Eagles, while averaging 23 points and 3.7 assists. Issac McBride is shooting 51.0% and averaging 15.2 points over the last 10 games for Oral Roberts.
Kruz Perrott-Hunt is shooting 42.3% and averaging 15.1 points for the Coyotes. Mason Archambault is averaging 15.7 points over the last 10 games for South Dakota. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: Marcus Watson and the North Carolina A&T Aggies host Rashun Williams and the Radford Highlanders.
The Aggies have gone 7-3 in home games. N.C. A&T is the top team in the Big South with 12.2 fast break points.
The Highlanders have gone 6-9 against Big South opponents. Radford is 3-11 against opponents over .500.
The teams meet for the second time in conference play this season. The Aggies won 73-72 in the last matchup on Jan. 8. Watson led the Aggies with 18 points, and Josiah Jeffers led the Highlanders with 18 points.
Jeffers is averaging 9.6 points and 1.7 steals for the Highlanders. Williams is averaging 11.3 points over the last 10 games for Radford. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: No. 19 Murray State takes on the Southeast Missouri State Redhawks after K.J. Williams scored 30 points in Murray State’s 76-43 win against the Belmont Bruins.
The Redhawks have gone 8-4 in home games. Southeast Missouri State is 2-1 in games decided by 3 points or fewer.
The Racers are 17-0 in OVC play. Murray State is fourth in the OVC with 15.4 assists per game led by Justice Hill averaging 5.1.
The teams meet for the second time in conference play this season. The Racers won 106-81 in the last matchup on Dec. 31. Hill led the Racers with 26 points, and Eric Reed Jr. led the Redhawks with 20 points.
TOP PERFORMERS: Nygal Russell is averaging 7.9 points and 6.5 rebounds for the Redhawks. Reed is averaging 17.8 points over the last 10 games for Southeast Missouri State.
Williams is scoring 18.0 points per game with 8.5 rebounds and 0.7 assists for the Racers. Tevin Brown is averaging 9.9 points over the past 10 games for Murray State. | null | null | null | null | null |
BOTTOM LINE: George Washington faces the George Mason Patriots after Joe Bamisile scored 29 points in George Washington’s 84-71 loss to the Richmond Spiders.
TOP PERFORMERS: Davonte Gaines is averaging 10.7 points and 8.2 rebounds for the Patriots. D’Shawn Schwartz is averaging 1.7 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for George Mason. | null | null | null | null | null |
Niagara Purple Eagles (12-14, 7-10 MAAC) at Saint Peter’s Peacocks (13-11, 11-6 MAAC)
BOTTOM LINE: Saint Peter’s hosts Niagara in a matchup of MAAC teams.
The Peacocks have gone 7-4 at home. Saint Peter’s is 1-4 in games decided by less than 4 points.
TOP PERFORMERS: Daryl Banks III is averaging 11.1 points for the Peacocks. Doug Edert is averaging 1.7 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Saint Peter’s. | null | null | null | null | null |
JUPITER, Fla. — Baseball players and owners took a first step toward salvaging opening day, nearing agreement on an amateur draft lottery during lockout negotiations that included a surprise one-on-one meeting between Commissioner Rob Manfred and union head Tony Clark.
MINNEAPOLIS — James Harden had 27 points, 12 assists and eight rebounds in his 76ers debut, Joel Embiid added 34 points and 10 rebounds and Philadelphia routed the Minnesota Timberwolves 133-102.
LOS ANGELES — Terance Mann had 19 points and 10 rebounds, Amir Coffey added 12 of his 14 in the fourth quarter and the Los Angeles Clippers returned from the All-Star break with a 105-102 victory over the Los Angeles Lakers.
PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. — Daniel Berger had a three-shot lead through two rounds of the Honda Classic, after a second consecutive round of 5-under 65.
TUCSON, Ariz. — Miguel Angel Jimenez had a hole-in-one during a 6-under 66 in breezy conditions to match Jeff Sluman for the first-round lead at the Cologuard Classic.
ANAHEIM, Calif. — Jonathan Quick became the fourth American-born goalie to reach 350 victories in the NHL, Adrian Kempe scored twice and the Los Angeles Kings extended their winning streak to four with a 4-1 victory over the Anaheim Ducks. | null | null | null | null | null |
Girl, 14, charged in five carjacking offenses, D.C. police say
Incidents were in Adams Morgan, Columbia Heights, according to police
A 14-year-old girl has been charged in five carjacking offenses over two days in Columbia Heights and Adams Morgan, D.C. police said.
Three of the carjackings and one attempted carjacking involved a pistol, police said. No gun was seen in a fifth offense, they said. At least two robbers took part in each of the five incidents, according to a police account.
The incidents occurred over about 13 hours from Jan. 24 to Jan. 25. In the attempted carjacking, no car was taken. In the other four incidents, the cars were recovered.
Police said the 14-year-old from Southeast was arrested Friday and charged with armed carjacking in three of the incidents, unarmed carjacking in a fourth and attempted armed carjacking in the fifth.
Police gave no explanation for the relatively large number of carjacking offenses within a brief period in an area of about two or three square miles.
The girl’s name was not released. Carjackings have become a major law enforcement problem in the city; authorities have said that many of the offenses involve teenagers. | null | null | null | null | null |
Jessica Cisneros, 28, an immigration attorney from Laredo, is challenging Rep. Henry Cuellar again for his congressional seat, two years after her first campaign came close to toppling the nearly two-decade incumbent
Jessica Cisneros speaks at a campaign event in San Antonio. (Ilana Panich-Linsman for The Washington Post/For The Washington Post)
Jessica Cisneros, a 28-year-old immigration lawyer from Laredo, Tex., would rather focus on her campaign to unseat her former boss, Rep. Henry Cuellar (D), than her identity as a millennial backed by self-described liberals.
Cisneros argues that the 17-year incumbent — a first-generation Mexican American attorney like herself — is no longer the right fit for Texas’s 28th Congressional District, the deep-south Texas stretch from San Antonio to the border that came close to nominating her two years ago.
Cuellar dismisses Cisneros as a candidate with ties to “far-left” celebrities — a reference to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who recently campaigned for Cisneros in the district — and liberal groups that have backed her candidacy.
But the liberal label is not Cisneros’s pitch to voters.
“I’ve never branded myself in any of the terms Cuellar is using,” she told The Washington Post in an interview. “I never go up to a door and expect a voter to vote for me because I’m progressive. Like, we actually have conversations about the policies that I’m running on.”
With days to go before Tuesday’s primary, Cisneros stands as a serious challenge to Cuellar, one of the last congressional Democrats to oppose abortion rights and a frequent critic of President Biden’s immigration policies. The closely watched contest underscores the divide in the party and is a fresh test of whether left-leaning candidates, who have struggled in recent elections, can prevail over more moderate Democrats.
This is not Cisneros’s first bid against Cuellar. After interning for him in 2014, she waged a primary challenge six years later and came within 2,700 votes of defeating him. Cuellar was able to prevail thanks to decades of name recognition and a deep campaign account — he outspent her by $700,000.
But now, Cisneros is confident that years spent strengthening her relationship with the community, a stronger grass-roots campaign and a district redrawn to include more portions of liberal San Antonio will be enough to push her to a primary win.
When talking about her agenda, which includes support for abortion rights, Medicare-for-all and a more immigrant-friendly revamp of the nation’s system, Cisneros said her embrace is more than backing liberal ideals.
“When I talk about Medicare-for-all and why support that policy, I always talk about how when I was 13 years old, I had to help my family fundraise by selling plates of food to raise money … No 13-year-old or no family should have to do that,” Cisneros said. “It’s much easier for people to be able to grasp the concepts and policies that we’re running on if we do it that way, instead of trying to pigeonhole ourselves into one label or the other.”
Labels or not, Cisneros gladly campaigned with Ocasio-Cortez and welcomed the endorsement of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). She received the support of Planned Parenthood, Emily’s List, the Latino Victory Fund, and labor unions, including the Texas AFL-CIO. She backs policies that often stand at the opposite end of the Democratic spectrum from Cuellar’s, who is considered one of the most conservative members of Congress.
Cuellar is running on the promise that he will strike bipartisan deals in the House, telling voters in a recent campaign ad that he wants to “build relationships with both parties.”
“While people in Washington fight each other, who will fight for us?” Cuellar asks. “I will.”
Despite serving in a fiercely divided Congress, Cuellar has remained close to the center, often crossing party lines and touting his deals struck with Republicans. He has voted with Republicans to ban the coverage of abortion care for those insured through Medicaid, asked the Biden administration along with Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) to name a “border czar,” and was among a group of nine centrist Democrats who urged their party to pass the bipartisan infrastructure deal without first voting for Biden’s $3.5 trillion social spending package — a priority for liberal Democrats. The infrastructure deal was signed into law, but the social spending bill remains in limbo.
Cuellar’s willingness to break with his party on high-priority issues — most notably, the border and abortion — is what Cisneros is targeting.
Last September, Cuellar was the only House Democrat who voted against a bill that — in an attempt to nullify Texas’s S.B. 8, a near-total abortion ban — would have codified the right to an abortion into federal law. Cuellar’s colleagues criticized his decision, but Cuellar remained unmoved. For him, abortion is “not a health issue,” but a matter of conscience.
Cisneros accused him in an op-ed of not acting on behalf of reproductive health by voting to ban the coverage of abortion care for those insured through Medicaid and defund Planned Parenthood.
Cuellar dismissed her criticism.
“When people frame this as ‘women’s health’ … if you want to call it abortion, call it abortion, please call it abortion,” Cuellar said in a Zoom conference days after the op-ed. “Women’s health — I have added money for health care for women.”
Cuellar has criticized Cisneros, arguing that she supports two key issues pushed by liberal Democrats that he claims could have a negative impact on the district — a move toward more clean energy and less funding for the U.S. Border Patrol.
“Cisneros is against oil and gas and I’m not going to vote to get rid of 40,000 jobs that are good paying jobs here,” Cuellar said in an interview with The Post.
While Cisneros has voiced support for the Green New Deal and the renewable energy industry, she’s pledged to be “a voice for workers in the fossil fuel industry to ensure no one gets left behind.”
On the border, Cuellar said he wanted to make sure “that we don’t have open borders or defund the police or attack Border Patrol.”
“Those are good paying jobs,” he said. “My opponent has said that my district is too dependent on Homeland Security jobs — that we totally disagree on.”
Like Cuellar, Cisneros is the daughter of migrant farmworkers. Her parents immigrated to Laredo from Mexico because her older sister needed medical care that was only available on this side of the border.
Cisneros has highlighted her background as an immigration lawyer to draw a contrast with Cuellar, who has become one of his party’s most outspoken critics of the Biden administration’s immigration policies. While he assailed many of former president Donald Trump’s immigration policies — he opposed the construction of a border wall — Cuellar has described the Biden administration as being too welcoming to immigrants.
He has also accused Biden of listening too much to “immigration activists” and not enough to those living on the border, including landowners and law enforcement officials.
Cuellar supports funding for programs meant to stabilize Central America’s Northern Triangle and of policies that would ramp up law enforcement across the border, a stance many Democrats have pushed against, arguing that the Biden administration’s handling of the border situation should be more humane, not more militarized.
Cisneros, meanwhile, constantly invokes her work defending immigrants from deportation during the Trump administration as evidence that her views on immigration are the opposite of Cuellar’s — and more attuned to her voters in her district, which is predominantly rural and Latino.
She supports the scrapping of a 1996 law passed during the Clinton administration that laid the groundwork for the country’s massive deportation system that still exists today.
“It was so heartbreaking and painful,” she said during a campaign event, of her work on deportation cases. “But I was representing so many people that reminded me of myself, of my family, and that the only difference between them and me was the fact that I was born in this country, that I just so happened to be born five minutes north of the river.”
While Cisneros is still running a grass-roots campaign like she did in 2020, her profile has grown, and so has her fundraising. Between the launch of her campaign in August and Dec. 31, Cisneros raised $812,000, a campaign spokeswoman said.
“There’s no question that she has a strong ground game,” said former Housing secretary Julián Castro, a Texas Democrat who endorsed Cisneros during her 2020 campaign. “If she has the strength, way above Cuellar, it’s not necessarily in money, it’s in people power.”
The race in the 28th District also comes on the heels of an FBI raid into Cuellar’s home and campaign headquarters on Jan. 19. The congressman has maintained his innocence and vowed to remain in the race but has not specified why he’s under investigation.
While Democratic congressional leadership supports reelection of their incumbents, only House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) has publicly endorsed Cuellar this election cycle. A spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who endorsed Cuellar last time, did not respond to a request on whether she will endorse him again this year.
Cuellar told The Post he remains confident the Democratic Party leadership will continue supporting him, touting the investments he helped secure for other Texas Democratic campaigns, and the work he did for the Biden campaign in 2020.
As for voters in his district, he’s also confident their perspective on him hasn’t changed.
“It’s the same voters that we’ve had,” Cuellar said. “People have lived here for generations [who] know the work I’ve done.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson pictured in D.C. on Feb. 3. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)
Cleve R. Wootson Jr.
Three years ago, a photo of 19 African American women — all candidates for judgeships in Harris County, Tex. — went viral. The image seemed to captured the hearts and hopes of Black women across the country.
Judge LaShawn A. Williams, one of the women in that photo, recalled the sisterhood she felt as part of that “Black Girl Magic” campaign. When asked about President Biden’s decision to nominate Ketanji Brown Jackson as the first Black woman nominated to the Supreme Court, she felt something even more powerful, she said.
“This is angelic,” she said. “This is magic on such a profound level.”
Williams, who serves on the county’s civil court, didn’t get to see the Rose Garden ceremony where Biden introduced Jackson. She was on the bench Friday, presiding over cases. But she described herself as being “over the moon” about the president’s choice to fill his first vacancy on the high court.
“She’s a real sister,” Williams said, noting that Jackson wears her hair in sisterlocks. “A beautiful Brown sister. So smart, so eloquent … I have been beaming all day.”
If she is confirmed by the Senate, Jackson would become the third Black person and sixth woman to serve on the Court since its 1789 founding. The 51-year-old currently serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Biden promised to name a Black woman to the Supreme Court during his 2020 presidential campaign and reiterated that vow last month when Justice Stephen G. Breyer announced his retirement. The news was met with excitement by Black women activists.
On Friday, as the nominee was announced, those same women felt a profound sense of pride and appreciation for the decades of struggle of Black women to be seen and heard in the nation’s most important institutions. Even before Biden formally introduced Brown and her family at a brief ceremony, Black women were celebrating the historic moment.
“I was literally in my hotel room preparing to go down for breakfast and my cellphone started ringing off the hook … I have two cellphones and they both were ringing, so I knew something was going on,” said Janette McCarthy Wallace, the general council of the NAACP. “As a Black woman who was discouraged from going into the law profession because of the low numbers of Black women in the legal profession, this is especially gratifying to me to be able to witness this moment.”
The country’s first Black female judge was Jane Bolin, appointed in 1939 to family court by New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. Bolin also was the first Black woman to graduate from Yale Law School. Her father, Gaius Bolin, was a lawyer and tried to dissuade his daughter from the aggravations of the legal profession.
She told the New York Times in a 1993 profile that she struggled to find work when she applied to law firms in Poughkeepsie, where her family lived. “I was rejected on account of being a woman, but I’m sure that race also played a part,” she said.
She went to work for New York City’s corporation counsel and, she said, was surprised one day when the mayor asked to meet with her — she thought to reprimand her — and instead announced, “I’m going to make you a judge. Raise your right hand.” Bolin served on the court for 40 years, retiring in 1978 when she reached the mandatory age of 70. She died in 2007.
Jackson, during her brief remarks, made a touching revelation about a Black female jurist who had inspired her. “As it happens, I share a birthday with the first Black woman ever to be appointed as a federal judge, the Honorable Constance Baker Motley,” Jackson said. “Today I proudly stand on Judge Motley’s shoulders, sharing not only her birthday but also her steadfast and courageous commitment to equal justice under law.”
Motley was nominated by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1966. Mississippi Sen. James Eastland, chair of the Judiciary Committee, worked hard to block her path. Angered by Motley’s work fighting Jim Crow as a lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Eastland held up her nomination for several months.
In her autobiography, “Equal Justice Under Law,” Motley wrote about Eastland’s campaign against her nomination. “In a speech on the Senate floor, where he would be protected from libel and slander suits, Eastland said he opposed my nomination because he believed I was a Communist.” She also recounted constant slights and insults from the overwhelmingly White male legal community, including once at a dinner held by the circuit court conference being introduced as “Connie Motley who is doing a great job on the district court. In contrast everyone else had been introduced with a full-blown curriculum vitae.”
Taneisha N. Means, an assistant professor of political science at Vassar College, is frustrated that Motley’s struggle to be confirmed will probably echo 56 years later, as some Republican lawmakers and conservative activists use racist and sexist arguments to oppose Jackson’s nomination.
Even though Jackson went through confirmation hearings last year when she was elevated to the D.C. Circuit, Means said, “It rises to a different level when it’s a Supreme Court.”
“My anxiety and my fear really comes from wanting this Black woman to be supported, wanting her to be fortified,” she said. Means is excited for Jackson, but said she worries about the way critics on the right wield race and gender against diverse candidates “not in a way to say it adds value to the [court] but doing it in a way to tarnish them, to make them out to be unfit for the position.”
Means, whose scholarship has focused on Black women in the judiciary, notes that the path to the Supreme Court, narrow for any individual, is almost impassable for Black women. In modern times, most appointees to the court have come from the Ivy Leagues and have clerked for federal judges.
“If White men are overrepresented in the judiciary and they’re selecting who they want to work with in their offices, will they select people who look like them? Yes, unless they prioritize having diverse clerks,” she said.
Jackson clerked for Breyer, the justice she has been nominated to replace.
Supreme Court nominees also tend to come from the federal bench. Means said there are only 45 Black female federal judges out of more than 780 active federal judges. That’s in part because Black women are still fighting for equitable treatment in political parties and ideological groups, which tend to elevate the names for consideration.
Melanie Campbell, president and CEO of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation and convener of the Black Women’s Roundtable, is among activists who have been publicly and privately pushing for a Black woman on the high court for more than a decade.
When she got the news alert Friday that Biden had officially announced Jackson’s nomination, “I almost drove off the road. I shouldn’t be driving and looking at my phone anyway.”
“It’s kind of like when the vice president was chosen,” she said, speaking of Vice President Harris’s historic selection. “You feel the weight of history of this moment and how long it’s been and suddenly realize that it’s really happening.”
“In the midst of all that’s going wrong, this is a bright shining moment in our democracy,” Campbell said.
Back in Texas, Williams said she was looking forward to watching the full video of Jackson’s remarks. After she left court Friday, she had to pick up her 9-year-old daughter from school, so she hadn’t had a chance to savor this moment.
Williams, 53, said that she is a first-generation college graduate and that she “didn’t know any lawyers or judges growing up. I watched them on TV.”
But her daughter has an abundance of role models. There’s Harris, who her daughter met in 2020 when Harris was campaigning in Texas. And, Williams adds, “she’s got 17, 18 aunties, that are all judges” she said, referring to that viral photo of the Harris County Black female judges.
“It’s just great for girls,” she said. “It would have been great for me, but it’s great for my daughter and all the other little girls. We’re over the moon down here.”
A previous version of this post misspelled the name of James Eastland, a U.S. senator from Mississippi. This post has been corrected. | null | null | null | null | null |
Bottles of Russian Standard vodka line a shelf in a state liquor store in Ottawa, Feb. 25, 2022. (Patrick Doyle/Reuters)
Some Canadian consumers welcomed the move, praising it as an “excellent decision” on Twitter, while others were more skeptical. “What is this gonna do?” one critic posted “NL Liquor and other liquor boards have already bought and paid for the products. It is not going to hurt them one bit.”
Elsewhere in Canada, Steven Del Duca, leader of the Ontario Liberal Party, tweeted that he had written to the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, one of the world’s largest buyers and retailers of beverage alcohol, according to its website, “requesting swift action to remove Russian Vodka from store shelves.” He said that “any and all means of cutting off Vladimir Putin should be considered, both provincially and federally.”
Elsewhere, sports continued to be an arena of boycott as Poland’s Football Association on Saturday announced that its national soccer team would not take part in an upcoming match to qualify for the World Cup tournament. The match was set to take place in Russia next month, said Cezary Kulesza, president of Poland’s Football Association.
“Due to the escalation of the aggression of the Russian Federation towards Ukraine the Polish national team does not intend to play the play-off match against Russia,” he said on Twitter. “No more words, time to act!”
Some commentators online questioned whether soccer’s governing body, FIFA, would “stay out of geopolitics and stick to its mandate of football,” while others praised the players. One said, “Poland shouldn’t have to make that stance as @FIFAcom should have already banished Russia from the competition.”
Another major soccer tournament final is being moved from Russia to France due to the invasion, as European soccer’s governing body, UEFA, announced Friday it would relocate the May 28 Champions League final from the Gazprom Arena in St. Petersburg to Paris in response.
In auto racing, Formula 1 said this week it has pulled its race from Sochi, Russia, following the country’s invasion of Ukraine. The Russian Grand Prix had been scheduled for Sept. 25. | null | null | null | null | null |
Report says Park Police dispatch center has outdated equipment, mold, inability to monitor alarms
Inspector general says officers who signal for help aren’t immediately identified, dispatchers lack training, and birds leave droppings everywhere
U.S. Park Police Chief Pamela A. Smith. Though dispatchers and managers have been pointing out problems in the department's dispatch center for years, an inspector general's report found the complaints wre ignored. ( and National Park Service/National Park Service)
Last month, an alarm went off in a historic building in Arlington National Cemetery after a sprinkler pipe broke. An emergency signal was sent to the U.S. Park Police dispatch center in southeast Washington. But the dispatch center receives security alarms on a separate computer in a closed room adjacent to the dispatchers, and no one heard it. Instead of notifying the fire department and cemetery staff, no one was alerted, resulting in flooding which damaged the building and historical artifacts, an inspector general’s report released Friday said.
The report outlined numerous serious problems with the Park Police dispatch operations center, from the mundane — birds are flying in and covering furniture and computers in their droppings — to the serious: if an officer sounds an emergency signal, the dispatchers cannot automatically identify the officer in trouble. The findings by Interior Department Inspector General Mark Lee Greenblatt, which also cited lack of training for dispatchers and longstanding staffing issues, led to the conclusion that “these issues jeopardize the safety of officers and the public and create liability risks for the USPP [Park Police].”
The report repeatedly says that complaints by dispatch center employees to Park Police commanders have been ignored. Park Police Chief Pamela Smith, who assumed the top post in February 2021 after years as a commander, said in a statement that she was “dismayed by the unacceptable conditions I saw during a personal inspection of the facility in recent months and that were documented by the Inspector General. Prior to the IG completing its review, I took several actions to correct clear deficiencies and I am taking additional steps to remedy remaining concerns.” She did not specify which deficiencies were corrected.
The head of the Park Police officers’ union said he had not seen the report and declined to comment.
The inspector general launched its report after investigating the June 1, 2020, actions by the Park Police at Lafayette Square in which protesters were pushed out of the area around the park, and President Trump arrived soon after for a photo opportunity in front of St. John’s Church. That investigation revealed that the Park Police didn’t record any of their radio transmissions from that day. The inspector general then launched a deeper look into the dispatch center, interviewing current and former managers and employees and the current police chain of command.
Park Police did not record their tradio transmissions during Lafayette Square operation on June 1
The Park Police dispatchers generally don’t receive 911 calls from the public, but instead receive transferred calls from local cities or counties when the call applies to national parks or the George Washington or Baltimore-Washington parkways. But the investigation found that the Park Police have no formal agreements with any local jurisdictions defining how calls will be transferred, though their policy requires them to have such agreements.
The “dispatch center’s workspace and equipment were substandard,” the inspector general found, with a roof which leaks rain and appears to have black mold throughout. If the center loses power, the Park Police do not have a dedicated emergency backup location where they could relocate.
“The dispatch center has outdated phone equipment,” the report found, including a lack of enhanced caller ID and the ability to have multiparty calls. Dispatchers told investigators that they were often unable to determine the location of public callers, return calls if the caller is disconnected, or confer with third-party translators for callers who don’t speak English.
Read the inspector general's report on the Park Police dispatch center
And though Park Police officers’ radios have an emergency button to signal that they’re in trouble, dispatchers cannot automatically identify which officer has pressed the emergency button. Instead, the dispatchers must look at a list of numerical radio identifiers to determine which officer is assigned to the radio sending the emergency signal, the report said.
A dispatch manager told the inspector general that the Park Police have the software to automatically identify emergency signals, but it hasn’t been installed. When the inspector general received a complaint about the dispatch center in December 2020, the report said the complaint was referred to the Park Police internal affairs unit, which found possible “safety hazards.” But the internal affairs unit didn’t send its report to the department’s force safety officer, the inspector general found, and employees said the safety issues remained.
Employees also reported that only one dispatcher had the ability to log in to the security system alarms from National Park Service properties, such as the one at Arlington Cemetery, and the only way other dispatchers could monitor the alarms was to check a separate computer in an adjacent room. The dispatchers also reported they did not have the ability to instantly replay radio or phone communications, which might be important in an emergency to rehear a caller’s information.
The employees also told investigators that the electrical circuits in the dispatch center are “overloaded on a daily basis,” sometimes causing temporary failures of critical radio and computer equipment. The inspector general said a third-party inspection of the building in 2018 found it also had inadequate fire suppression equipment, and that wires connecting the radio and computer systems are poorly organized, leading to inadvertent disconnection and other electrical issues. Many of the center’s issues can’t be addressed until new electrical circuits are installed, the report said, which is hampered by continued holes in the roof. The report said that as recently as November “birds continued to enter the dispatch center and leave droppings on dispatcher equipment.”
The dispatch center also faces “serious staffing and training deficiencies,” the report said, and complaints from the center to Park Police administration have been ignored. The lack of staffing has led to Park Police officers being pulled off the streets to handle dispatch duties, the inspector general found.
And while some dispatchers have received training, some have expired certifications “and others have never received any formal training,” the inspector general said. An internal memo sent to Park Police commanders in 2020 said the on-the-job training for dispatchers “makes for a dangerous situation for our police officers and civilian callers,” the report said. Investigators found dispatchers do not receive emergency medical dispatcher training, even though the center regularly receives such calls. Though Park Police leaders told the investigators that such training was “mission critical,” no one had gotten the training as of this month.
“Our force’s readiness requires that everyone work in a safe, structurally sound and functional environment,” Chief Smith said in her statement. She said President Biden’s 2022 budget request calls for an increase in Park Police funding that, in part, “is intended to remedy some of the needs confirmed by this report. When people read a report like this, it may make them feel less confident in our abilities or our commitment, and I take that very seriously. I will do everything I can to ensure that the facilities and equipment that support our officers match their very high level of skill and dedication.”
Charles F. Sams III, the director of the National Park Service, which oversees the Park Police, said in a written response to the report that the park service was working to mitigate the bird infestation and upgrade the conditions of the space, or possibly enter into an agreement to move in with the District’s Office of Unified Communications. Sams said the service would work to ensure minimum staffing and implement necessary training for the dispatchers. | null | null | null | null | null |
This Feb. 16, 2022 photo shows Sumuri testing hub in Magnolia, Del on Feb. 16, 2022. Sumuri is a provider of digital forensic solutions. The company builds and creates hardware and software to fight crime and protect vulnerable people and children. (Logan B. Anderson /Delaware State News via AP)
MAGNOLIA, Del. — Many people and companies say they want to save or change the world but one company working out of a historic building in Magnolia is actually doing it. | null | null | null | null | null |
The exercise is loved and hated in equal measure. Here’s how to safely work up to doing one.
A woman and her daughter do burpees at home during the coronavirus lockdown. (iStock)
By Rachel Fairbank
There is perhaps no exercise as feared or recommended as a burpee. A full burpee combines a squat, jump-back, plank, push-up and a jump in the air into one continuous movement.
“Burpees are a fully functional exercise,” said Ben Walker, a personal trainer and owner of Anywhere Fitness, based in Dublin. Different body parts have to work together, while also developing a fuller range of movement. “This promotes better movement and flexibility in our everyday life,” Walker said.
The burpee was invented in the 1930s by a physiologist named Royal H. Burpee Sr., as a way to test a person’s fitness. It was later adapted by the U.S. Army to evaluate recruits’ fitness levels.
Given how hard each of these separate exercises can be, combining them into a single exercise is a tough task, but one that develops and shows flexibility, and improves range of motion, strength and cardiovascular conditioning.
“One of the biggest benefits is that burpees challenge the cardiovascular system as well as the muscular system in one catchall movement,” said Jacque Crockford, a personal trainer and senior product manager with the American Council on Exercise. “When done appropriately, the burpee can be a high-reward exercise.”
If you’d like to access some of the benefits of burpees, but don’t know where to start, these are some ways to safely and gradually work your way up to doing them.
When it comes to learning to do a full burpee, think of it as an end-goal, rather than the beginning. “You’re much better off building up slowly and steadily, rather than overdoing it on day one and potentially hurting yourself,” said Vijay Jotwani, a sports physician at Houston Methodist Hospital.
The risk of pushing yourself too hard, too fast is that burpees require a high degree of flexion in the wrists, elbows, shoulders, hips and knees, which can increase the risk of straining or injuring a muscle or ligament.
To build up slowly, focus first on the individual components or modified burpees. “Just because someone does something one way doesn’t mean that it is incorrect to do it another way, especially if you have particular needs in your own body that you have to be managing,” Crockford said. “Giving yourself a little bit of grace is important.”
A gradual approach can help avoid overtraining and injury. “As long as someone is listening to their body and slowly advancing the intensity of their exercise, the risk of injury is low,” Jotwani said.
If you are recovering from an injury or have any concern, talk with your doctor and work with a certified fitness professional who can suggest additional modifications. One of the challenges of burpees is the quick transition from a prone to an upright position. If you are dehydrated or recovering from an illness, this can cause dizziness. Be sure to hydrate well, and if the dizziness persists, be sure to talk with your doctor.
If you are struggling with one or several of the burpee’s components, work on them separately until you are comfortable doing each one. “The whole burpee can be broken down and workshopped,” said Cat Kom, a personal trainer and the founder of Studio SWEAT onDemand in San Diego.
Starting with individual movements gives you the space to focus on developing the necessary strength. Combining them into a single continuous movement has the added benefit of getting your heart rate up, which helps with cardiovascular conditioning.
Moving from repetitions of a single body weight exercise to the combined movement of a burpee, however, means adding in transitions, most notably the jump into and out of the plank position. “In my experience, the jump-back is usually the most fearful part of a burpee,” Walker said.
Step-back burpees
One way of getting used to the transition from a plank to an upright position is to do a step-back burpee. For this modification, you step back into the plank position, and then step forward to return to an upright position. Kom recommends bringing your hands upward again, reaching toward the ceiling, to prepare yourself for doing the same during a full burpee.
A step-back burpee will also help with hip and ankle mobility, which is needed for the jump. “Because you are moving your body from a horizontal position back to a vertical one, there is some extreme hip flexibility that is necessary,” Crockford said.
Half-burpee
Once you have developed enough hip flexibility to do a step-back burpee, you can then progress to a half-burpee, where you assume a plank position, jumping your feet forward and then back again.
Half-burpee with squat
When you are comfortable with a half-burpee, one variation is to add in a half-squat after jumping your feet forward. Then, you’ll jump your feet back again, returning to a plank position.
Half-burpee with push-up
To get used to adding in a push-up, you can do a half-burpee, for which you’ll just be jumping your feet forward and back, adding in the push-up right after you return to a plank position.
One of the final components of a burpee is to go from a squatting position to a jump in the air, a movement that can be practiced separately.
Once you are comfortable with all of these modified versions, you can combine them for a full burpee.
There are other ways to modify the different components of a burpee to suit your needs and goals. “Every part of the burpee can be modified,” Kom said. “There’s a burpee for everybody.” | null | null | null | null | null |
“For many of us, our phone represents an attachment object, much as a security blanket or teddy bear does for a child,” one expert says
STOCK IMAGE: Closeup shot of an unrecognisable couple using their digital devices at home. (iStock)
When Shiri Melumad was working on her doctorate in 2012, she found herself reaching for her smartphone during moments of stress, before a tough exam, for example. She didn’t always use it, she just held it. It was comforting.
“Just holding it made me feel good,” says Melumad, assistant professor of marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, who studies the relationship between people and their phones. “It gave me a sense of ease or calm. It was similar to children who seek out their pacifiers when they are stressed. For many of us, our phone represents an attachment object, much as a security blanket or teddy bear does for a child.”
Also — much like children — we become frantic when our “security blanket” goes missing, a reaction confirmed by several studies. In 2014, after Melumad accidentally left her phone in a restaurant, she spent an entire day searching for it. “I definitely freaked out,” she says, adding: “I haven’t lost it since.”
Smartphones are ubiquitous. It’s rare to see someone in public who isn’t scrolling, texting or talking on one. Most of us already know their risks and annoyances: distracted driving and walking, meal interruptions and the irritation that comes from hearing a persistent ringtone during a concert, play or film. Research also has found that we tend to suffer cognitively when our phones are nearby — we do better on tasks when we aren’t tempted to use them.
Using hands-free cellphones when you drive is not as safe as you think
A deep personal connection
But scientists studying the relationship between people and their smartphones also have come up with additional insights in recent years about how people behave when using them, including discovering that people can draw needed comfort by their mere presence.
Individuals hold a deep personal connection with their phones, according to researchers. This leads phone users to express their views more freely when using their phones, often in exaggerated ways, and with more honesty, disclosing personal or sensitive information, for example, compared with laptops or tablets, experts say. They are portable and they have haptic properties that stimulate our sense of touch. And we regard them as much more personal than computers, which are closely associated with work.
“Smartphones allow people to be themselves,” says Aner Sela, associate professor of marketing at the University of Florida, whose ongoing research suggests that people communicate with more emotion on smartphones than with other devices, seeing them as a safe space to do so. “When we are engaged with our phones, we feel we are in a protected place. You feel like you are in your own private bubble when you use them. We get into a state of private self-focus, looking inward, paying attention to how we feel, and less attuned to the social context around us.”
Kostadin Kushlev, assistant professor of psychology at Georgetown University and director of its Digital Health and Happiness Lab (the “Happy Tech Lab”), which studies the role of digital technology in health and well-being, agrees, adding that he can easily see how smartphones can become pacifiers for grown-ups.
“What might be going on? We don’t know, but one theory that makes sense to me is that they represent that we have friends,” he says. “It’s a reminder that we have friends, and knowing we can reach them, even remotely, is comforting. Also, they are very personal devices, more so than any other device, and with us all the time. From that perspective, we see them as an extension of ourselves.”
The phones also serve as a repository for all the details in our lives, from banking and entertainment, to tracking the whereabouts of our children, and getting us from one location to another. “They are the holy grail for convenience,” says Jeni Stolow, a social behavioral scientist and assistant professor at the Temple University college of public health. “It’s someone’s whole world in the palm of the hand. That is really appealing because it can make people feel in control at all times.”
A price for social insulation?
But Kushlev wonders whether we pay a price for this social insulation. “These devices make our lives easier,” he says. “There is no doubt they complement our lives, but what happens when you introduce this amazing device into everything you do? What are the costs of that? Every time I use my phone to find a place, maybe I miss an opportunity to ask for directions and connect with someone? Is it sometimes causing us to disconnect from our immediate social environment?”
Adrian Ward, an assistant professor of marketing at University of Texas McCombs School of Business who studies consumers’ relationships with technology, also points out that most children who grow up devoted to a security object eventually abandon it, having acquired the ability to soothe themselves.
“What do we miss when we turn to our phones for comfort?” he says. “Does it give us an easy out?” Still, he acknowledges the deep attachment people have for their phones. “They represent something that is more than just a piece of metal and glass,” he says. “A rock is not going to do that. A personal memento is not going to do that.”
Moreover, during these tremulous pandemic years, smartphones have become a lifeline, enabling isolated people to reach out to others they cannot be with in person, and to engage in other activities such as telemedicine and shopping. “I certainly found myself reaching for my phone more during this time — even though my other devices have been just as readily accessible to me at home,” Melumad says. “I wouldn’t be surprised if others found themselves doing the same thing.”
Helping smokers
Melumad’s research, five studies published collectively and co-written with Michel Tuan Pham, professor of business at Columbia University, grew out of her own personal experience. As she suspected, the experiments showed that smartphones were soothing during stressful situations, including among former smokers trying to deal with the aftermath of quitting.
In one of her studies, subjects were randomly assigned to either write a speech they were told they would have to recite later — a situation known to produce stress — or to complete a neutral task. They then were asked to wait alone. While they were waiting, a hidden camera videotaped them. The speechwriters were more likely than the low-stress control group to grab their smartphones first, before anything else they brought with them. In fact, they went for their phones in about 24 seconds or less, compared with those in the low-stress group, who waited about 90 seconds before reaching for their phones — if they went for them at all.
In the former smokers’ study, the subjects, who had given up smoking during the past year, reported a similar degree of attachment to their phones as they did to food, the latter a well-established coping mechanism among those who have recently stopped smoking.
“Consumers who are particularly susceptible to stress were more likely to show emotional and behavioral attachment to their phones, which suggests that the device may compensate for the stress relief previously afforded by other means, such as cigarettes,” Melumad says. “As such, health professionals might actually encourage the use of smartphones as a means to reduce stress across a variety of contexts.”
This, in fact, may prove to be one positive impact of smartphones on mental health worth focusing on, she says. “These phones aren’t going anywhere, so why not use them for the good they can do?” Melumad says. “There are many destructive things people can do to soothe themselves but holding your phone during a moment of stress doesn’t have to be one of them.” | null | null | null | null | null |
‘Traumaversaries’ can be hard. Here’s how 4 sexual assault survivors honor theirs.
Sitting on the cold metal bench of an Italian police station on Nov. 12, 2008, Keri Potts had one thought: I should’ve ordered the wine and cake.
The night before was supposed to be her last night of vacation. Potts, then 31, and her friend Lynn went to one last dinner at a Roman cafe. She felt like she’d overindulged on the trip, so she opted for water over her favorite red wine, and also declined dessert.
She didn’t know that just hours later, she would be fleeing an assault and attempted rape, ultimately leaping over a balcony in the dark to escape her attacker. Sitting on that bench between hours of questioning, the gravity of what she faced began to settle in. Plus, she was hungry.
“Oh my god, I almost died, and I denied myself something I love so much,” she recounted thinking. “The arrogance that you’ll live another day! I just thought: No, never again. Don’t deny yourself. Don’t ever take yourself for granted.”
Now each year around the date of her attack, Potts treats herself to those two pleasures: a glass of red wine and a slice of chocolate cake. On the 10th anniversary, she threw a benefit for Pathways to Safety International, an organization that provides resources to overseas victims of sexual assault and on whose board she now serves as president. She asked friends around the world to toast to her and sliced into a multitiered cake.
Commemorating the anniversary of trauma isn’t just symbolically meaningful; it can also be a tangible way to counteract what psychologists call anniversary reactions. Survivors may experience increased feelings of unease, guilt, shame, anger, anxiety and more around dates associated with trauma.
This happens because our brains catalogue clues associated with traumatic events, said Jocelyn St. Cyr, a licensed independent clinical social worker who works with trauma survivors. When that time of year rolls around, environmental clues like weather, holidays or dates on the calendar might trigger alarm bells in our brains as a protective mechanism: This happened before, and it could happen again.
“Our bodies have a hard time telling time,” St. Cyr said. “Even though we know logically it’s been five years, 10 years since something has happened, our bodies sometimes don’t recognize that.”
Because of this, our bodies can often enter fight-or-flight mode around trauma anniversaries, said St. Cyr, who works with victims of sexual assault, child abuse and domestic abuse. She often advises clients to prepare for them in some way: Limit stress intake, automate your daily tasks and seek additional support from loved ones and therapists if possible.
However, she also stresses that there’s no one-size-fits-all formula for any kind of healing. And for survivors with multiple anniversaries or trauma associated with ongoing incidents, this healing can be more complex. Still, those who do not have one specific anniversary date may find empowerment in designating a specific day or time to commemorate their healing.
For Jessie Losch, 36, that day is Aug. 11. On that day years ago, when she was 21, she was sitting in her parents’ basement to keep cool; it was a hot and sticky day in the New Jersey suburbs. For the past few years, she had been plagued by panic attacks, disassociation and flashbacks associated with ongoing sexual trauma she experienced at 14. But in that moment, she took an expansive breath, the first she’d been able to take in a while, and thought: “Maybe, maybe this is what the start feels like,” she said.
“It was with such fierce desperation that I was like, I needed to cling onto this or I will go backwards,” Losch recalled thinking. “I need to mark this, and I need to mark it permanently.”
Her mind immediately turned to a tattoo. She traced a hamsa, a palm-shaped symbol of protection popular in North African and Middle Eastern cultures, on a scrap of paper and took it to a tattoo shop to get it inked permanently on her right foot. For her, the tattoo symbolizes both the protection of the hamsa itself and the act of taking her body back after so long of feeling like it was not her own — an act of agency that directly contrasts with the violation and harm of her trauma.
Since then, Losch takes time each August to remember that moment and to take stock of how far she’s come. She’s also gotten two other tattoos associated with her healing: the word “enough” repeated on her left foot and rib cage.
“When something harmful and physical has been done to your body without your consent … there’s really a symbolic and ritualistic sense of reclaiming and reconnection in putting love back into it,” Losch said.
Tattoos or less-permanent physical changes like haircuts can provide tangible reminders that time has passed, while also providing an opposite or different experience to the trauma, St. Cyr said. This doesn’t have to be a change of appearance; it can be as simple as rearranging some furniture or going to see a new movie that didn’t exist at the time of your assault, she added.
Even for survivors with specific traumatic dates, the fog of these anniversaries rarely lasts a single day, but can extend throughout entire months or seasons, St. Cyr said. Because of this, they can sometimes take people by surprise — and cause them to blame themselves or falsely think they aren’t making progress in their healing.
“That time of year will roll around and they don’t know why they’re feeling all these feelings,” she said.
Marking your calendar can serve as a reminder to be gentle on yourself, put coping plans in place and reach out for extra support, St. Cyr said. “Be patient with yourself. It can feel like each of these times is a setback, but really, each time it’s your body trying to heal through it,” she added. “And so whatever you can do during those times to work through them can help you for the next time.”
This past January, Aditya Tiwari, 23, was reminded of an upcoming anniversary through an unwelcome memory on his phone: a snapshot from around the first of two violating experiences in 2017.
At first, he began to sink back into the old memories, back into feeling like the vulnerable, scared 17-year-old he’d been at the time, he said. He let himself feel it, just for a moment, and then directed his thoughts to the present: He’s now a poet living in Norwich, England, and advocates for queer people in small Indian towns like the one where he grew up before the country decriminalized homosexuality.
“I have found strength even when it felt out of reach,” Tiwari said. “And I think it is because I chose to speak. I chose not to hide these experiences.”
One night in January, he opened the window of his apartment, lit a candle, and spoke to that younger version of himself: “You’re no longer afraid,” he said he told his younger self.
Those experiences will always be a part of him, he added. But he uses annual reminders to reclaim his power and fuel the work he wants to do to uplift others: “The more Brown queer people that come out and claim spaces, the safer we’re making it for other queer people.”
Sexual assault: How to support survivors
For some survivors, finally being able to pass these anniversaries with some sense of normalcy can feel like a milestone.
Explicitly striving to ignore trauma anniversaries is the coping strategy St. Cyr recommends to clients the least, especially if it’s out of denial or avoidance.
“When we’re not doing anything, even small things, we’re sort of prolonging our healing on that trauma,” St. Cyr said. “Then the next year it shows up again with the same intensity, and nothing has changed.”
But, she emphasized, since no healing journey is the same, ignoring the anniversary may work for some survivors. For others, it can feel like an important marker of their healing.
Ever since Kay Neufeld experienced an assault in the summer of 2018, they’ve often felt solemn and introspective when August arrives, they said. It brings an unsettled feeling, prompting ruminations about where they were on certain days alongside feelings of shame and guilt. They think about how they were so carefree, a recent graduate just about to finish an internship in Washington, D.C., and how the assault and its aftermath threw everything into a state of chaos, they said. They’re reminded of all the little things, like how they can no longer watch “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” which used to be one of their favorite shows.
In short, the remembering “feels like a curse,” they said.
But for the first time last year, August passed largely unnoticed to them. When mid-September arrived, they realized with surprise that they’d made it through.
“I was excited by the prospect that this won’t always feel like such a fresh wound,” said Neufeld, a 25-year-old writer living in western Maine.
The not remembering, too, comes with its own complicated emotions — the conflicted feeling of letting go of something that informs so much of who they are — but they prefer it that way, they said. Ideally, next August, they’ll spend the anniversary deep in nature with people they love. And maybe they’ll be able to watch “SVU” again. | null | null | null | null | null |
Broadway High School French teacher Daniel Hill goes over vocabulary with sophomore Braedon Mongold during class Feb. 23, 2022 in Broadway, Va. Hill is retiring at the end of this school year after 50 years as a teacher, 43 of which were with Rockingham County Public Schools, where he currently is the division’s longest serving employee. (Daniel Lin/Daily News-Record via AP)
By Megan Williams, Daily News-Record | AP
BROADWAY, Va. — When Daniel Hill was a French teacher at Spotswood High School in 2008, he had the chance to teach AP French, the highest level of the subject area in high school. | null | null | null | null | null |
By Tamela Baker, The Herald-Mail | AP
HAGERSTOWN, Md. — The path to freedom for enslaved people before — and during — the Civil War was an arduous one.
That organized effort itself didn’t necessarily include Hagerstown, but situated just below the Pennsylvania border, the city was a place of connection for some who sought to escape.
“The sites are not like parts of the Underground Railroad,” Amt recently told Herald-Mail Media. “They are sites from which people escaped.”
Then there’s Henry Wagoner, a free Black man who worked as an agent of the Underground Railroad and eventually felt pressured to leave Maryland and go north himself.
“One of the things that you find out about the Underground Railroad when you start to learn about it is that it was much more active north of the Mason-Dixon Line than below,” Amt said, “and people who were escaping from slavery really usually had to get themselves out of the South and into the North before they could really hope for much assistance from the Underground Railroad.”
“It happens all over Washington County,” she said, but she concentrated on Hagerstown for the brochure to create a walking tour.
“The stories in there about Hagerstown are typical of Washington County,” she said. “We have that kind of story everywhere. There are a lot of stories from the Boonsboro area, Funkstown, Clear Spring.”
One story from Clear Spring that Amt likes to tell involved three brothers who escaped the farm where they were enslaved on an Easter Sunday. They hitched two of the farm horses to a carriage “and off they went,” Amt said.
Then he offered to negotiate their freedom if they would come back. “And they’re like, ‘No, thanks, we’re good,‘” Amt said.
But one of the brothers did go back. He saved up $80 to go to Clear Spring and try to get family members who’d been left behind. But his efforts were in vain.
“They wouldn’t go,” Amt said.
They’d been promised their eventual freedom, she said, and opted to wait for it.
“It was probably that they thought it was too dangerous,” she said, so he “returned empty-handed.”
“And that was every enslaved person’s worst nightmare, was being sold farther south,” Amt said. “They’d be separated from their families, they’d have much worse working conditions … it was like the end of the road if you were sold south.”
Maryland, a border state during the secession crisis, was Southern-leaning but ultimately did not secede. It had the largest free Black population of any “Southern” state, and by the time of the Civil War, Amt noted, half the Black population in Washington County was free.
Politically, Washington County’s residents were conflicted over secession.
“The majority of white folks out here were pro-Union, but there was an important secessionist minority. And so things got tense,” Amt said.
She’s been surprised by some of the things she’s learned in her study of local Black history, Amt said. While the Underground Railroad is the topic she’s asked to speak about most, “Black history goes so far beyond the Underground Railroad,” she said.
“I think it’s important for us, especially for white people, to learn more broadly about Black history,” said Amt, who is white. ”… It is important for us to learn more about the slave era, and that it was violent, it was oppressive. It was terrible.
“And it was terrible here in Washington County, too. There was violence here; there were beatings … people were sold to the south. It was not some ‘easy’ form of slavery that happened here in Washington County — it was brutal. It’s not a comfortable message to tell or to hear. But it’s an important one for us to know if we want to know a true history.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Martha’s Table is one of four local nonprofits that participated in a program providing cash payments of $5,500 to low-income families. (Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post)
Hundreds of low-income D.C. families reported better mental health and food security after participating in a direct cash pilot program that could be a model for efforts elsewhere, according to an Urban Institute analysis of the program’s effectiveness
The THRIVE East of the River cash-payment program, a combined effort of four established D.C. nonprofits, launched in 2020 soon after the pandemic began. It gave $5,500 with no-strings-attached to approximately 600 families in Ward 8, where the median income is $40,000, under half the Districtwide median.
Placing money into peoples’ hands without restrictions empowered them to address their needs, program administrators said, and removed the typical layers of bureaucracy and eligibility requirements that can frustrate recipients and hamper the effectiveness of aid efforts.
“I would argue that people with less means are going to make even more smart and thoughtful decisions because they know how to stretch the dollar,” said Scott Kratz, director of 11th Street Bridge Park, one of the nonprofits that created the program.
The study’s quantitative and qualitative data showed that “participants often struck a thoughtful balance between addressing immediate survival concerns like paying rent and longer-term concerns like accumulation of debt,” analysts concluded.
Recipients surveyed for the study, which was released Thursday, reported lower rates of mental health stressors and food insecurity than people with comparable incomes in the District and nationally.
Nonprofit project offers cash lifeline to District’s poorest
For Rahgeena Preble, a single mother of two young children who lives in southeast D.C., the money arrived last year when she needed it most. She didn’t have a car and had missed a couple of doctor’s appointments for her children because of unreliable transportation. She also had an unexpected medical bill for herself that she had to put on a credit card.
“It helped tremendously,” said Preble, 26. “I’m very grateful. It’s just amazing when you think about how much they’re giving.”
Preble said she opted to take the $5,500 spread out over six months. She used it to pay for transportation, food and clothes for her children. And she paid down her debt. She also managed to save some of the money for an emergency fund after the payouts ended.
“It made everything a lot easier for me,” she said. “The money definitely gave us a head start.”
A city gave people $500 a month, no strings attached, to fight poverty. It paid off, study says.
The THRIVE East of the River program is a partnership of organizations that have long addressed the needs of low-income District residents: Martha’s Table, Bread for the City, the Far Southeast Family Strengthening Collaborative and 11th Street Bridge Park (a project of Building Bridges Across the River). The program raised more than $4 million in private and foundation funding to pay for the cash relief effort.
Administrators say the results were a success by almost every measure. According to the report, a key goal of THRIVE — to stabilize participants hard hit by crisis — was mostly achieved. Participants in the program applied to the nonprofits that administered it and were selected based on need.
The program “demonstrated that unconditional cash is an extremely effective form of support during an emergency,” said Scott Kratz, director of 11th Street Bridge Park.
Before receiving the cash payments, 34 percent of the participants said they sometimes or often did not have enough to eat, the study reported. After receiving the payments that number dropped to 19 percent. Sixty percent of recipients said they used personal savings to meet household needs before receiving the payments. After the payments were disbursed, 50 percent said they resorted to personal savings.
Housing was a big concern for most of the participants. Fifty-four percent of recipients said they spent “all or almost all” or “a lot” of their $5,500 paying rents and mortgages.
Mary Bogle, principal research associate at the Urban Institute, a Washington think tank that conducts economic and social policy research, said the numbers on food and mental health are particularly compelling.
“Here is a more marginalized and distressed population doing better on mental health than anybody else in the country in a like-type income group,” she said. “And on food insecurity, the THRIVE participants come close to what people without low income are reporting.”
Kratz and Bogle said they hope the findings from the study will encourage other cities and communities to consider similar cash disbursement programs to address the needs of low-income families, even in non-emergency situations.
Last month, D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser announced a $1.5 million pilot program that will provide $900 in monthly cash assistance to new and pregnant mothers in need as part of an effort to support child care efforts in the city and reach children long before school.
The city of Richmond launched a smaller guaranteed pilot program last year that provided 18 recipients with $500 a month for a year. It has since announced plans to expand by 37 recipients after reporting “very positive outcomes for the individuals who participated.”
Bogle and Kratz dismiss critics who argue that people who are poor will make bad decisions with their money if given cash directly rather than through food stamps or housing vouchers.
“You have to look at the evidence on these things,” Bogle said. “The conclusion of these studies isn’t, ‘Oh, people with low income who you give benefits to never spend that money on temptation goods.’ The conclusion of these studies is that they don’t spend it [on those goods] any more than you or I or anybody else would.”
A study released last year of a $500 monthly guaranteed income program in Stockton, Calif., showed recipients were more likely to find full-time jobs, be happy and stay healthy. According to the study, most of the money distributed was spent on food or other essentials. Tobacco or alcohol made up less than 1 percent of tracked purchases.
Bogle and Kratz also said that local, state and federal governments should rethink how funding is currently distributed through allocations that subject applicants to extensive bureaucracy and ever-changing requirements.
The current way that billions of dollars are distributed to the most needy “have so many strings attached to it and you have to jump through so many hoops,” Kratz said. “There is something that is just sort of clean, elegant and respectful of providing cash directly to families.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Whether defending Putin or downplaying the war, the Kremlin-backed global news organization is drawing louder accusations of propaganda.
Margarita Simonyan, the editor in chief of RT, in 2018. A proponent of Vladimir Putin’s rationales for invading Ukraine, she claimed not to be troubled by the European Union’s imposing sanctions on her. (Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP)
As Russian military forces began their broad assault on Ukraine, the top news stories on RT’s English-language website weren’t about missiles, airborne troops or the deaths of civilians.
Instead, Thursday’s most prominent headlines included, “Firm admits selling potentially tainted rocket fuel to NASA” and “U.S. investigating complaints of self-braking Hondas.”
As for Russia’s deadly aggression against its neighbor? That story was literally off to the side, dressed up in benign, pro-Russian spin: “Russia ready to negotiate with Ukraine — Kremlin.”
It was, in short, a predictable display for RT, the Kremlin-funded media organization. Long denounced as Russia’s propaganda megaphone to the world by the Western nations where it broadcasts, the multilingual network has routinely echoed Vladimir Putin’s criticisms of NATO and the United States, and championed his dubious rationales for attacking Ukraine.
This week, Russia’s aggression against Ukraine sparked a new round of outrage and condemnation of RT, whose initials once stood for “Russia Today.”
Poland on Thursday banned the network, following Germany’s decision to do so last month. French lawmakers have asked for its license to be rescinded, and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson urged his nation’s media regulator to monitor RT UK for “disinformation” and take action against it if necessary.
Meanwhile, at least two contributors — a French journalist who hosted a daily talk show on RT’s French-language service, and a British reporter based in Moscow — resigned in protest of the military action. And yet a handful of American celebrities, including William Shatner and comedian Dennis Miller, host shows for RT.
Among the well-connected Russians hit with sanctions by Western nations this week was Margarita Simonyan, RT’s 42-year-old editor in chief. Putin appointed Simonyan to launch RT in 2005 when she was just 25, and she has remained close to him, at one point serving as a member of his reelection team.
A combative presence on Twitter, Simonyan has swerved from insisting last week that Russia would not invade to claiming this week that Ukrainians were greeting Russian troops with home-baked pies. “This is a standard parade rehearsal,” she posted above a video clip of rolling tanks. “It’s just that this year we decided to hold the parade in Kyiv.” In response to reports that the European Union would freeze her assets and impose a travel ban, Simonyan said mockingly that she would take out a handkerchief and have “a little cry.”
The United States has been reluctant to ban RT’s domestic offshoot, RT America, whose headquarters are located three blocks from the White House, for fear of a retaliatory response from Putin against Western news organizations in Russia.
RT has nevertheless attracted the attention of several presidential administrations. During the Obama years, Secretary of State John F. Kerry called it a “propaganda bullhorn,” and another State Department official denounced it as “a distortion machine.”
In 2017, the Trump administration compelled RT to register as a “foreign agent,” officially recognizing that it was working to advance Russia’s interests. The decision was freighted with irony, given that U.S. intelligence sources found that RT helped boost Donald Trump’s candidacy over Hillary Clinton as part of Russian election-interference efforts in 2016.
Putin’s goal, he said, was to ensure that viewers and readers saw Russia as a great power, despite the nation’s relatively small economy and limited cultural influence. RT also is part of his effort to sow division in the West, particularly in the United States, Orttung said.
So RT often highlights Russian successes, such as military gains in Syria, while also emphasizing divisive “wedge” issues in the United States, such as racial tensions and police brutality.
In the run-up to Russia’s invasion, RT repeated Putin’s baseless claims that Russian-speaking nationals in breakaway regions of eastern Ukraine were subject to “genocide” by Ukrainian forces. One of its news stories on Thursday parroted without challenge a Russian government official’s assertion that Russian troops were seeking the “denazification” of Ukraine’s democratically elected government. It has also posted unconfirmed clips of Ukrainians cheering Russian forces as they streamed over the border and Ukrainian troops surrendering.
RT America broadcasts some of the programming produced in Moscow but also produces its own news and business programs, documentaries and talk shows. Its offerings include a politics-discussion program hosted by Scottie Nell Hughes, who once served as a pro-Trump pundit on CNN and Fox News. Miller, formerly a star of “Saturday Night Live” and a Fox commentator, hosts a showbiz-focused interview show.
On Thursday, Hughes discussed the Ukraine conflict in terms of the impact on American gas prices. She chided President Biden for pledging to turn Putin into a “pariah” on the world stage without “addressing the root cause of all this turmoil,” she said.
Hughes also highlighted an RT interview in which Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova laughably claimed that Putin’s main objective “is to stop the escalation of the war that, despite not being reported on, has been going on for eight years.”
RT America isn’t entirely rigid in its adherence to Kremlin orthodoxy: Another well-known host, former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura, made a point of declaring several weeks ago on his five-year-old show that “I don’t support any country invading any other country. That is just plain wrong.”
Yet even he seemed to contort his message to fit the prevailing RT ethos, taking a swipe at “the hypocrisy” of sanctions against Russia, noting the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Hours after Russia began its assault, Ventura re-upped his message by posting the video on Twitter and adding, “War is the result of the failure of politicians on all sides.”
In June, RT America began airing a science show hosted by Shatner, the legendary “Star Trek” actor, which the network promised would highlight stories “the establishment media all too often hesitates to tackle.” Recent topics have included space debris, ghosts and meditation. Responding to criticism that he had become an unwitting mouthpiece for a propaganda network, Shatner told NBC News he developed his show not for RT but for Ora TV, a production company founded by the late Larry King, who had once licensed his own syndicated talk show to RT America.
“I’ve never heard of RT America, I don’t know where RT America is, but that’s fine,” Shatner said. “Is it a propaganda network? I don’t know. Is it any more than the BBC or the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. or the French network or the Japanese network? I don’t know.”
It’s not clear how many Americans actually watch RT America — Nielsen doesn’t track it — but it is likely to have a tiny audience: According to the network itself, it is available on just two cable systems, out of about 5,200 across the country. It is also carried on Roku, and the Dish and DirecTV satellite services.
RT appears to be somewhat more successful in spreading its message via digital platforms — in part because its posts on Facebook, TikTok and other platforms are amplified by right-wing American commentary organizations, such as Breitbart and Infowars.
For example, RT’s Twitter account, which features clips of its news programs, has 2.9 million followers. It describes its YouTube channel, which has 4.6 million subscribers, as “the most watched news network” on the platform, with more than 10 billion views. Many of its most popular posts have been apolitical clickbait — police-chase videos, accidents and weather disasters. (Twitter flags RT as “Russia-state affiliated media”; YouTube notes that its is “funded in whole or in part by the Russian government.)
The relative popularity of RT’s YouTube videos means that the Kremlin earns a share of the revenue generated by ads that precede the clips — a fact that led to calls this week for the Google-owned platform to throw RT’s posts off its servers. Google said it has no such plans.
Orttung, the international-affairs scholar, is skeptical about some of RT’s self-reported traffic figures. But he acknowledges that “the Russian government would not continue to fund it if it was not effective” in achieving the Kremlin’s goals.
In fact, RT has made several attempts to appeal to American audiences by beefing up its television operations. In 2012, it generated headlines by giving WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange his own short-lived interview program. Assange scored a huge “get” on his first show — an interview with Hassan Nasrallah, the elusive leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah political party and militant group.
In early 2016, RT America hired former MSNBC host Ed Schultz to host its signature prime-time news and discussion program. Schultz, who died in 2018, frequently invoked Kremlin talking points, casting doubt, for example, on American intelligence reports about Russia’s meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
RT also has promoted discredited conspiracy theories about the 2016 killing of Seth Rich, a young staffer for the Democratic National Committee, similar to those for which Fox News was sued by Rich’s parents, eventually reaching a settlement.
Making a pitch for Carlson to interview Putin, she told a Moscow TV program, “He is the most popular host in the United States and perhaps the only one who is reasonable … who understands everything the way it should be understood.”
She went on to assert — without irony, facts or reference to RT’s own government ties — that Western media organizations publish information based on directives from American intelligence agencies.
Drew Harwell and Elahe Izadi contributed to this report. | null | null | null | null | null |
Importantly, the guidelines leave open the possibility that these metrics might need to change in the future should a new variant arise that escapes vaccine immunity. Instead of viewing masking as an on-off switch, the CDC makes the case that mitigation measures are more like a dial. Depending on changing circumstances, restrictions can be turned up or down.
Beyond the rationale for the revision, the CDC deserves recognition for its newfound clarity of messaging. I appreciated the easily understood orange, yellow and green categorizations: When concern for severe illness is very high (orange), everyone should mask; when they are low (green), everyone could unmask; in between (yellow), people can decide whether to mask depending on their medical circumstances and risk tolerance.
The revised guidance will surely anger people on both sides. Some will argue that the CDC should have ended mandatory masking altogether and that masks should be a matter of individual choice everywhere. I don’t think this is a responsible stance, because masks — especially high-quality N95, KN95 or KF94 masks — remain an important tool to prevent disease transmission and ensuring that hospitals are not overwhelmed. More dangerous variants might emerge, and federal health officials need to set the expectations that masks might be needed in the future.
No matter what guidance the CDC released, it would been accused of going too far or not far enough. This time, I think it has it about right. Of course, I wish this guidance arrived a few weeks earlier, before governors took it upon themselves to remove mandates in nearly all states. Still, it’s better late than never, and I’m relieved that the CDC has finally signaled that we need to live with covid-19 and remove restrictions while we can, with the understanding that they might need to return in the future. | null | null | null | null | null |
One killed, one injured in Prince George’s car crash
Collision happened near Kenilworth Avenue in Cheverly, Md.
One driver was killed and another was critically injured in a car crash Friday, Prince George’s County police said.
Officers responded to the collision near Kenilworth Avenue and Lydell Road in Cheverly around 5:30 p.m. One driver was pronounced dead at the scene. The second driver was taken to the hospital with life-threatening injuries. Police have not released the names or ages of the drivers.
The cause of the crash is under investigation, a police spokesman said. | null | null | null | null | null |
For the unvaccinated but uncertain, these doctors have a plea and a plan
In a powerful essay, one of the D.C. doctors describes a painful phone call she had to make to a covid-19 patient’s wife
A nurse touches the hand of a covid-19 patient in the ICU. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
Lia Losonczy wasn’t writing for anyone but herself.
She was participating in a workshop that aimed to help health-care workers process traumatic experiences, and as an intensive care and emergency medicine doctor at two D.C. hospitals, she had accumulated plenty of those during the pandemic. The one she chose to pull from her mind and put into words that day involved a man in his 30s.
She wrote about how she spent three neck-aching hours bent over him “pulling clot after clot out of his lungs” as the pictures of his children sat on his bed stand. She wrote about how afterward she went to the nurses station in the ICU, sat down and called his wife. She wrote about the words they exchanged.
Losonczy allowed me to read that personal essay, and I asked her if I could share parts of it with you because it offers a powerful and raw glimpse into what health-care workers have been experiencing. It also presents a side of the vaccine issue that has been muffled by politics. The scene detailing that phone call contains the word “please” four times:
“Can you keep trying? Please?” As she pleads, I can hear the faint giggle of a child in the background.
“Of course. I promise I will keep trying. But I am concerned that despite all we are doing, and all we will keep doing, he will not get better. I am truly sorry, but he will die. Listen, I know you are worried about the vaccine —”
“We weighed all of the options. Both had risks. We made the choice we thought was right,” she interrupts.
“Yes … I know,” I say as calmly and as compassionately as I can. “Look, you made the best decision you could at the time. But now, your kids need you. Now you know. You need to get vaccinated, if not for yourself, for your children. Please.”
I heard myself begin to break … Their small faces. The notes hanging on his wall: “Dear daddy, I baked you a fruit pie. Please come home to eat it.” “Daddy, I love you. Please get better soon. I want a hug. Tell the doctors I said hi.” “Daddy, come home …”
As covid-19 caseloads go down and political tensions remain high, efforts to persuade people who have yet to get one of the coronavirus vaccines may seem futile. The national narrative tells us that lines have been drawn and people have picked sides. But if we look at the quiet scenes that have been playing out in area hospitals, a more hopeful picture emerges. It is one that shows the divide between the unvaccinated and vaccinated goes beyond red vs. blue, and that many people remain hesitant but not firmly resistant.
Among the reasons people have given D.C. health-care workers for not getting vaccinated: They worry it could make them miss a day or two of work. They don’t have a primary care doctor they can turn to with questions. They heard from a friend or a relative that someone had a negative reaction to the vaccine.
“My sense is there are a whole swath of people out there who are getting the wrong information,” says Losonczy who has two children younger than 4 and splits her time between George Washington University Hospital and United Medical Center. She says that just by having short conversations with patients at UMC, which is located in Ward 8, a medical desert, she has been able to get one to three people vaccinated during almost every shift.
Monika Misak, a resident doctor who also works in emergency medicine in D.C., describes having that same experience. She says she has encountered patients who only needed someone to hear their concerns before asking if they could get the shot that day.
Those are the people — the unvaccinated but convincible — Losonczy and Misak hope to help with a new vaccine ambassador program at UMC. The two worked together to come up with the program, and in recent days, they received approval to launch it. Misak, who will spearhead the effort, said the idea for it came to her after watching too many Black and Latino patients die unnecessarily.
“I want to change this. I want to stop seeing what I’m seeing,” she recalls thinking.
Misak, who was born in Egypt and grew up in New York, says that when the vaccine came out, she had close friends who were hesitant to get it. To convince them it was safe, she told them she administered it to her 87-year-old grandmother, something she would’ve never done if she had any doubts.
“Being able to talk to someone who is not judgmental, who is not coming from a political stance, really does help,” she says.
Now that the program has received approval, the plan calls for recruiting at least three medical students, training them to talk with people about the vaccine and then scheduling them to work shifts at UMC so they can have those conversations with patients. UMC offers the program a unique chance to reach people other medical professionals aren’t seeing. For many residents who live east of the river, it serves as their primary source of medical care.
“It’s not about forcing people,” Misak says of the effort. “It’s just about spreading good education or good information that is scientifically based, so they can have all the information they need to make informed decisions.”
In that personal essay Losonczy wrote for The Things They Carry Project, she described how that conversation with her patient’s wife ended.
Thinking of my own small children, I break. “Please,” I beg her, as the tears begin to well. “Please, please, just get the vaccine…”— and I am suddenly grateful that all we have is the telephone, and she cannot see the tears streaming down my face for all the lives still to be lost at the hands of misplaced fear and lies.
“I can tell you are truly concerned. I will think about it.”
“Thank you” is all I can muster, before I am called back into the room as her husband begins to bleed again. | null | null | null | null | null |
Poland, Sweden prepared to boycott World Cup play-in games against Russia
Poland star Robert Lewandowski supported his country's decision to boycott games against Russia due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. (Czarek Sokolowski/AP File)
Poland’s men’s soccer team announced Saturday that it would boycott a World Cup qualifying match against Russia in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The match was scheduled to be played on March 24.
Cezary Kulesza, president of the Polish Football Assocation, said in a tweet “No more words, time to act! Due to the escalation of the aggression of the Russia Federation towards Ukraine the Polish national team does not intend to play the play-off match against Russia.” Kulesza added that the PZPN is in talks with Sweden and the Czech Republic about bringing a joint statement to FIFA.
The Polish national team players released a joint statement with the Polish Football Association, saying the choice to not play the game was “not an easy decision.”
Kedziora, 27, is a defender for Dynamo Kyiv. The statement ended with the hashtags #SolidarnizUkrainq and #NoWarPlease.
A few hours later, the Swedish Football Association announced it would also not play a possible match against Russia, “regardless of where the match is played.” Sweden also called on FIFA to cancel Russia’s playoff matches next month.
Sweden was scheduled to meet the Czech Republic on March 24 in World Cup qualifying matches, with the winner set to meet the winner of Russia-Poland in Moscow on March 29. The Czech Republic has yet to release an official statement.
“The illegal and deeply unjust invasion of Ukraine currently makes all football exchanges with Russia impossible,” Swedish soccer federation chairman Karl-Erik Nilsson said Saturday. “We therefore urge FIFA to decide that the playoff matches in March in which Russia participates will be canceled. But regardless of what FIFA chooses to do, we will not play against Russia in March.”
The decision to boycott games against Russia comes two days after Poland, Sweden and the Czech Republic said in a joint statement that they would not travel to Russia for World Cup qualifiers.
Kulesza’s tweet on Saturday was met with support from Polish leaders, including president Andrzej Duda, who replied saying “And rightly so, Mr. President. You don’t mess with bandits.” Prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki also voiced his approval and gratitude, thanking Kulesza and Polish players including Polish star Robert Lewandowski.
Lewandowski, striker for Bayern Munich and the nation’s all-time leading scorer, called the move to boycott games against Russia “the right decision.”
“I can’t imagine playing a match with the Russian National Team in a situation when armed aggression in Ukraine continues,” Lewandowski said. “Russian footballers and fans are not responsible for this, but we can’t pretend that nothing is happening.”
These planned boycotts mark another significant move in the soccer world after the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) announced Friday that the Champions League would be moved out of St. Petersburg to Paris in response to the attack on Ukraine.
“UEFA wishes to express its thanks and appreciation to French Republic President Emmanuel Macron for his personal support and commitment to have European club football’s most prestigious game moved to France at a time of unparalleled crisis,” UEFA said in a Friday statement. “Together with the French government, UEFA will fully support multi-stakeholder efforts to ensure the provision of rescue for football players and their families in Ukraine who face dire human suffering, destruction and displacement.”
The UEFA Executive Committee said in the same statement that Russian and Ukrainian clubs and national teams competing in UEFA competitions would have to play home games at neutral sites instead of their home stadiums.
Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine has also impacted the sports world outside of soccer. Formula One issued a statement Friday that September’s Russian Grand Prix won’t be held in Sochi, saying, “It is impossible to hold the Russian Grand Prix in the current circumstances.”
The International Olympic Committee urged all international sports federations in a statement Friday to relocate or cancel events scheduled to be held in Russia or Belarus. The International Ski Federation also announced Friday that all remaining World Cup events scheduled to take place in Russia between now and the end of the season will be canceled or moved. | null | null | null | null | null |
Putin cites ‘genocide’ in Ukraine. He’s right: Jews were slaughtered there 80 years ago.
In 1941, Nazi killing squads executed more than 33,000 people at Babyn Yar.
Portraits of Jews killed at the Babyn Yar National Historical Memorial on Oct. 5, 2020, in Kyiv, Ukraine. (Maxym Marusenko/AP)
The ravine where the massacres took place looked like a dusty river bed. In 1941, it was outside Kyiv, Ukraine, out of sight. The sound of gunfire from within didn’t carry far.
Over two days that September, more than 33,000 people were executed there by Nazi killing squads in one of the worst mass murders of Jews during the Holocaust of World War II.
Today, the notorious site is inside Kyiv city limits. It’s called Babyn Yar, or Babi Yar, and the invading Russian soldiers fighting to subdue the city might notice the monuments to those who were murdered there.
On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin cited “genocide” against Russians in Ukraine as a reason for invading. He also claimed Russia would pursue the “de-Nazification” of Ukraine.
The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, in Washington, bristled at the assertions. “Putin’s statements made analogies that are absolutely false,” Paul Shapiro, the museum’s director of international affairs, said Friday. “Ukraine is not committing a genocide.”
“It is an assault on the memory of people who actually were victims of genocide,” he said. “The leadership of the Russian federation ... has made it a habit to distort Holocaust memory for political gain.”
A real genocide took place across Ukraine in World War II, with as many as 1.5 million Jews murdered by the actual Nazis and their allies.
Across Europe, more than 6 million Jews and others were systematically slaughtered between the late 1930s and the war’s end in 1945.
On the eve of the Nazi invasion of Russia in June 1941, Ukraine was home to the largest Jewish population in Europe, according to historian Wendy Lower. Some were able to flee the Nazis. But many — children, the elderly, the sick — stayed.
Of those, less than 2 percent survived, she wrote.
Ukraine had been part of the area in 18th-century Russia where Jews were permitted to live, Shapiro said. They thus became early victims of the Nazi invasion.
Special Nazi killing squads, called Einsatzgruppen, followed the German army, murdering people in its wake. “In every town and village in Ukraine, somewhere there is a shooting site,” Shapiro said.
Jews were massacred at Babyn Yar, Dubno, Gurka Polonka, Bila Tserkva, Kamenets-Podolsk — where 23,000 were killed on Aug. 27 and 28, 1941 — and scores of other Ukrainian towns.
At Babyn Yar, on Sept. 29 and 30, 1941, German troops and Ukrainian police rounded up unsuspecting local Jews and herded them toward the ravine. They were instructed to leave their belongings sorted into piles, and then told to strip.
A truck driver watched what happened next.
“Once undressed, the Jews were led into a ravine which was about 150 meters long, 30 meters wide and a good 15 meters deep,” the driver, identified only as Hofer, recounted in historian Michael Berenbaum’s 1997 book “Witness to the Holocaust.”
They were taken through a narrow entrance to the ravine and forced to lay down on the bodies of people who already been killed. Two executioners methodically shot the Jews, one by one.
The killers “would walk across the bodies of the executed Jews to the next Jew, who had meanwhile lain down, and shoot him,” the driver related.
“It went on in this way uninterruptedly, with no distinction being made between men, women and children. The children were kept with their mothers and shot with them,” he said.
The gunfire could not be heard outside the ravine. “That is why I think the Jews did not realize in time what lay ahead of them,” Hofer recounted.
Kurt Werner, one of the executioners, said it was hard work. “I had to spend the whole morning down in the ravine,” he recalled, according to Richard J. Evans’ 2008 book “The Third Reich at War.”
“For some of the time I had to shoot continuously,” he said.
Babyn Yar continued as an execution site for local psychiatric patients, Roma (Gypsies), Russian prisoners of war and local citizens, according to the Holocaust museum. An estimated 100,000 people, Jews and non-Jews, were killed at Babyn Yar during the war.
In Dubno, about 280 miles west of Kyiv and not far from current Russian attacks on Lutsk, a German civilian construction manager, Hermann Graebe, witnessed a slaughter similar to that at Babyn Yar.
His account was read at the Nuremberg trial of Nazi war criminals after the conflict ended.
“Without screaming or weeping these people undressed, stood around in family groups, kissed each other, said farewells,” he said. “I watched a family of about eight persons, a man and a woman, both about 50 with their children of about 1, 8 and 10, and two grown-up daughters of about 20 to 24.”
“An old woman with snow-white hair was holding the 1-year old child in her arms and singing to it,” he said.
“I looked for the man who did the shooting,” Graebe related. “He ... sat at the edge of the narrow end of the pit, his feet dangling into the pit. He had a Tommy gun on his knees and was smoking a cigarette.”
In Bila Tserkva, just south of Kyiv, the entire adult Jewish population of about 900 was murdered in August 1941. Orders were to shoot the children, reportedly 90 in number, too. But two German chaplains protested. The execution was put off, but only for a day.
German Field Marshal Walter von Reichenau ordered it to go forward, and the children were taken into the woods and shot. “The wailing was indescribable,” a Nazi officer who was present said later.
In 1961, the late Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko wrote “Babi Yar,” a meditation on the massacre that includes the stanza:
Wild grasses rustle over Babi Yar
The trees look sternly, as if passing judgement.
Here, silently, all screams, and, hat in hand,
I feel my hair changing shade to gray. | null | null | null | null | null |
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