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What is all this stuff? I frequently go into clients’ homes, and as they show me around, they’ll usually open a few closets and say: “I have no idea what’s in here.” Or they’ll explain that they couldn’t find the box of printer paper they bought last month, or their hammer or stapler, so they bought another one. This seems harmless, but when it becomes routine, it creates organization problems.
Shop with intention. Our shopping habits are complex. Some people buy items because they’re on sale or come highly recommended. Other people think it’s necessary to stock up on almost everything, “just in case,” or because they’re not sure whether they own something already. And other people shop because it makes them happy. Whatever the reason, the excitement usually doesn’t last long. New items make people happy momentarily, then they become part of the mountain of stuff we find overwhelming.
Our consumption habits also affect the environment. Buying less, considering where and how pieces are made, and shopping locally are all ways to help protect the planet. Avoid purchasing items with the mind-set that you can return them if they don’t work out. Returns require attention, money and energy. The manufacturing, shipping and disposal of the goods we’re all churning through are draining increasingly scarce resources. We should all do our part to minimize our footprints.
Shopping for new items can be fun, and it’s natural to want to have everything you need for you and your family to live comfortably. But many of us have gone too far. How many wineglasses, tablecloths, sweaters, pairs of shoes and beauty products do we really need? Most of us only regularly use a small percentage of what we own. Reaching a state where we spend less time organizing and keeping track of our belongings and more time enjoying them starts with purchasing fewer of them. Doing so will benefit us, the next generation and our planet. | null | null | null | null | null |
Investigators with the Martin County Sheriff’s Office found Cynthia Cole’s body in a septic tank in her backyard. (Martin County Sheriff’s Office)
“He just [knelt] down, undid that riser, pulled it back and unfortunately … he did discover the body of our victim,” Sheriff William Snyder said at a Saturday news conference.
The discovery ended a days-long search for the victim, identified by authorities as 57-year-old Cynthia Cole. She was last seen at an event on Feb. 24 and was reported missing on March 1 by a friend, according to court records.
Hours after the discovery, law enforcement officials arrested Keoki Demich, a 34-year-old handyman who had worked for Cole for several years. He was charged with second-degree murder.
The public defender’s office, which is representing Demich, did not immediately respond to The Washington Post’s request for comment late Monday.
Cole’s friends grew suspicious when they hadn’t heard from her for several days, the report says. Cole was a creature of habit, they told investigators. She posted daily sunset pictures on her social media accounts, stayed in regular contact with her friends and never missed an event or appointment, court documents say.
But in the days following Feb. 24, the last time her friends saw her, something was off — Cole’s car hadn’t been in front of her home for days, she didn’t show up to a party on Feb. 25 or a subsequent doctor’s appointment, and she wasn’t responding to texts and phone calls, the sheriff said.
LouAnn Linekin, Cole’s friend, alerted the sheriff’s office that Cole was missing and told deputies that Cole did not have any psychological issues or substance abuse problems and wasn’t depressed or suicidal, the report says. She later told detectives that Cole is “not one to disappear,” according to investigators.
Deputies went to Cole’s house that same day and returned the next, the affidavit says. Her car was not in the driveway, but deputies found her purse inside the house with her driver’s license inside.
“The victim was not in the home and it appeared she had not been home for some time,” the arrest affidavit says.
Linekin pointed law enforcement to Demich, Cole’s handyman, according to the report. Demich allegedly told Linekin that Cole was supposed to pick him up on Feb. 26, but she never showed up.
Cellphone records showed that Cole sent Demich a text around 2:40 a.m. on Feb. 25 saying, “Hey key, sent you some money to finish the house off I’ll call you Saturday morning when I’m on my way.” Location data also showed Cole was at her home late on Feb. 24 and early the next day, the report says.
Detectives spoke with Demich on March 2, and he agreed to hand over his phone, according to the affidavit. Investigators said they found a $567.75 money transfer from Cole to Demich on Cash App at 3:46 a.m. on Feb. 25. But the text from Cole was not on his phone, “possibly indicating the text message had been deleted from the phone,” the affidavit says.
During questioning, Demich told detectives that he often did work at Cole’s house on the weekends and that she paid him in cash — never via an app. He said the last time he saw her was on Feb. 22, when he was at her house inspecting her air conditioner, the report says.
When detectives asked him about the missing text message, Demich allegedly claimed he lost his phone at a gas station on Feb. 24, adding that when he replaced it, his new phone did not show the texts he missed in the interim. But he later changed his story, according to the affidavit, saying that he lost his phone while riding his bike on Feb. 25.
“He admitted to lying about the phone and he stated he lies often,” the report says.
Demich soon became the top suspect, Snyder, the sheriff, said at the news conference.
“We got so suspicious we began doing almost around-the-clock surveillance,” he said.
On March 4, investigators found Cole’s car in a parking lot in Stuart, Fla., walking distance from Demich’s home, Snyder said. Surveillance footage showed a man matching “Demich’s general physical description walking multiple times towards and away from the area where the victim’s vehicle was located” in the early morning of Feb. 25, the affidavit says.
A subpoena for Demich’s Lyft account also showed that he ordered a car to Cole’s home around 7 p.m. on Feb. 24, the day she was last reported seen, according to the report.
After finding the car, detectives returned to Cole’s house to do another search and found the body of an undressed White woman in the septic tank, the affidavit says.
“To see a human being in a septic system, it’s pretty jarring,” Snyder said.
An autopsy report is underway to confirm the identity of the body, but Snyder said he is certain it is Cole.
After finding the body, detectives called Demich back to the station, where they questioned him again. He admitted to going to Cole’s house the night she disappeared and said he had driven her car to the parking lot, the affidavit says.
Investigators were at the crime scene all night Friday and into the early hours of Saturday, Snyder said. The sheriff noted that the excavation was difficult and time-consuming.
“It was probably as challenging a crime scene as I’ve seen,” Snyder said. “I’ve been doing this 40-plus years. I’ve never seen anything like it.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: America’s four-party system
(Illustration by Danielle Kunitz/The Washington Post; photos by the Associated Press, Reuters, iStock)
The United States right now has four political parties stuffed into a two-party system — and that’s increasingly a big problem for the country.
This reality becomes clear if you set aside the long-standing catchall labels “Democrat” and “Republican” and look at the fissures actually animating our politics. Importantly, by “party” I’m referring to an informal group of elected officials, intellectuals and institutions with a shared ideology and policy positions. Rank-and-file voters do play some role in shaping the views of these parties, but I think the process is largely driven by political professionals.
In 2017, immediately after Donald Trump’s election, I viewed America as having essentially four political parties, too, but the contours were different then: There were the Democrats, the anti-Trump Republicans, the Old Guard Trump-skeptical Republicans and the Trump-aligned Republicans. I thought the Old Guard represented more Republican voters and was more powerful than the Trump faction, which I believed had lucked into winning the Republican primaries and the general election.
But the Old Guard, perhaps best embodied by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), news outlets such as the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page and organizations such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, remains influential. A small bloc within the Old Guard, such as Utah Sen. Mitt Romney and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, isn’t just Trump-skeptical but outright anti-Trump.
There are policy differences between these two Republican parties. Old Guard Republicans are more conservative on foreign policy, for instance, while the Trump ones fall to the right of the Old Guard on immigration. Most important, Old Guard figures such as McConnell wouldn’t go along with Trump’s scheme to overturn the 2020 election results.
But I think the biggest difference between these two groups comes down to style: The Old Guard is resistant to America becoming a more multicultural, multiracial country, but not in the loud, aggressive way that the Trump Party opposes that evolution. “McConnell wants more establishment-style Republicans in power and to keep pushing the traditional Republican agenda of low taxes and regulation,” said Seth Masket, a University of Denver political scientist. “The Trump wing is less interested in challenging that agenda than on changing how elections are done. They’re trying to make it easier for their side to win elections and to contest those they lose.”
Meanwhile, “Never Trump” Republican activists and intellectuals have largely been absorbed into a third party, the Center-Left Democrats. This is the party of, for instance, President Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), New York City Mayor Eric Adams, the policy group Third Way and the MSNBC show “Morning Joe.”
Finally, the surprisingly strong 2016 campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) reignited the left wing of the Democratic Party and created our fourth party — a Left-Left Democratic Party. This party includes Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, publications such as the American Prospect and the Intercept, and groups such as the Working Families Party. My own views are closest to this group.
There is an ideological divide between the two Democratic parties, certainly, but their differences are also generational and attitudinal — the Left-Left Democrats tend to be younger, newer to politics and more confrontational with the Republicans than the Center-Left Democrats are. “Much of the divide is about approach, confrontation, urgency, as well as policy,” said Daniel Schlozman, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University.
I don’t think that many rank-and-file voters fit perfectly into either of these Democratic groups. But I suspect that in a two-candidate Democratic presidential primary, a generic candidate endorsed by Biden, Pelosi and other Center-Left Democrats would defeat someone embraced by the Left-Left Democrats by about 70 percent to 30 percent. I think a generic Trump-backed Republican would defeat a McConnell-backed Republican by about 80 percent to 20 percent in a two-candidate primary.
First of all, it is empowering the Trump Republicans. Most voters are not that ideological but are quite partisan. So whoever wins a Democratic or Republican primary will have the support of the overwhelming majority of that party’s voters in a general election. That’s how Trump, whom many GOP voters were fairly wary of at first, ended up president. It’s likely Sanders, if he had won the Democratic nomination in 2016 or 2020, would have won the overwhelming majority of Democratic voters in a general election, even though many centrist party leaders were wary of him.
That makes it all too easy for Trump Republicans to gain power in our current four-parties-in-two arrangement. They simply have to win low-turnout primaries and then reap the benefits of partisanship, which vault them to victory in general elections in many places. And that’s where the biggest problem comes in. We are seeing the worst kind of governance in states such as Florida and South Dakota, where Trumpian officials have gained power and are mirroring the terrible tendencies of the former president.
Further, because the Trumpian Party is gaining strength, the Old Guard is also moving in a radical direction to compete. For example, former U.S. senator David Perdue, once a Republican in the McConnell mode, is now running as the Trump-aligned, election-results-questioning candidate for governor of Georgia. Defeated in his Senate reelection bid in 2021, Perdue correctly sees a clear path back to political power by running as the Trumpian candidate against incumbent Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who angered many conservatives by refusing to go along with Trump’s scheme to overturn the state’s election results.
The second problem with our current structure arises on the Democratic side, where we now have two ideologically distinct blocs unhappily stuck together under the same banner. Center-Left Democrats view people with very left-wing ideas such as Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) as tarnishing the party’s brand. Meanwhile, Ocasio-Cortez, who in 2020 correctly noted that she and Biden would be in different parties in many countries, regularly complains about what she describes as the lack of urgency coming from the Center-Left Democrats on major issues. This tension shows up on issue after issue, and it seems intractable.
Third, many voters, particularly anti-Trump Republicans and people with a mishmash of views that don’t fit into one of these four groups, have fairly little representation in this structure.
What can be done about these problems? Our predicament makes me long for ranked-choice voting, proportional representation, multi-member congressional districts and other ideas being pushed by political reformers. Those reforms would make it easier for candidates who aren’t Democrats or Republicans to win legislative seats, thereby hastening the creation of the true multiparty system we desperately need — and under which these four parties could be their true selves. Maybe the Center-Left Democrats and Old Guard Republicans would occasionally unite in a coalition of the moderates; perhaps the three other parties would join forces against Trumpism.
None of those reforms have much chance of becoming law anytime soon. But growing acknowledgment of the four-party structure is nonetheless acting to make American politics more transparent — and in many cases better.
Center-Left Democrats and Left-Left Democrats are increasingly running competing candidates in Democratic primaries, recognizing that it matters what kind of Democrat represents a given district. After Biden’s State of the Union address last week, a prominent Left-Left Democrat (Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan) delivered a response laying out a more progressive vision for the country, while a more conservative Democrat, Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, also gave separate remarks, urging Democrats to work more with the GOP.
The obvious downside of the greater acknowledgment of these four parties is that Trump and his allies can read the political landscape, too. So they are getting deeply involved in GOP primaries and turning those into races to be the most radical, anti-democratic candidate. But even those primaries and the differences illustrated in them have a positive side — Old Guard Republican and Democratic voters get a very clear sense of the terrible things that will happen if a Trump Republican gets elected. If there had been a full-fledged Republican primary in Virginia, it would have been easier to determine that Glenn Youngkin would govern in the Trumpist style that he has.
So it’s not great that we have four parties stuffed into a two-party system. But the path to fixing American politics probably begins by being really honest about its problems. | null | null | null | null | null |
Richard Sherman, shown during a July hearing in King County District Court, pleaded guilty Monday to two misdemeanors. (Ted S. Warren/Associated Press)
NFL cornerback Richard Sherman pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor charges Monday, the result of his arrest in July in Seattle.
“Richard is grateful to have this matter concluded,” his lawyer, Cooper Offenbecher, said (via the Seattle Times). “He is focused on spending time with his family and looks forward to the next steps in his career.”
Sherman, who turns 34 on March 30, was arrested July 14 after driving into a construction site shortly before 2 a.m., crashing his Mercedes sedan, leaving the scene and trying to force his way into his in-laws’ Redmond, Wash., home. | null | null | null | null | null |
“How can I be here when my family is there and in such horrible conditions?” said Oleg, a 48-year-old driver from Dnipro, as tears began welling up in his eyes. “I cannot leave my family alone.”
While Dnipro is still relatively safe, Oleg — who didn’t want to share his last name — said he wasn’t sure how long that would continue to be the case. But he said he was determined to stay no matter what happened. His parents are there, and his father is prepared to die in Ukraine.
Vyacheslav, a 40-year-old driver from Lutsk, who also provided only his first name, said most of his friends have already gone to fight.
One volunteer heard from friends fighting in Kyiv that they had little food left, only weapons. So the volunteer spent two days cooking, gathering snacks and cigarettes and packaging it all for them. Pashkiuskiy, who plans to drop off the bulk of his load in Zhytomyr, promised that the volunteer’s friends would receive the care package.
Maria Köster, who has organized a separate but similar effort, said the trucks she’s coordinating have gotten as close as 40 miles from Kharkiv, but haven’t ventured farther. “You can’t go there with big trucks,” said Köster, who was born in Moscow. “They’d be bombed in five minutes.” | null | null | null | null | null |
The long-awaited measure comes as the Russian invasion of Ukraine raises new questions about the asset class.
It comes as the Russian invasion of Ukraine has sharpened Washington’s focus on both the promise and peril of the technology. The Ukrainian government and affiliated causes have collected tens of millions of dollars in cryptocurrency donations since the conflict began. Meanwhile, some U.S. policymakers have raised concerns about the potential for Russians to use crypto to dodge sanctions, though others say the relatively small size of the asset market and the traceability of digital tokens makes it an unworkable option for targeted Russians.
Biden’s order will ask for a report on the opportunities crypto presents for illicit financial transactions and what steps the federal government should take to address them, said the people, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the matter publicly.
The measure will also ask a number of agencies to produce an analysis of whether it makes sense for the Federal Reserve to launch a central bank digital currency, a sort of digital dollar that other nations, including Russia and China, are exploring.
The report, highly anticipated by crypto advocates, is neutral on the asset class as a whole. But it sends a signal that the administration believes crypto has proved itself as an economic force that will continue to grow rapidly and that policymakers need to reckon with, one person briefed on the order said.
News that Biden is set to sign the measure in the coming days was first reported by Bloomberg.
Staff writer Jeff Stein contributed to this report. | null | null | null | null | null |
“Winning Time,” the new HBO basketball drama about the Los Angeles Lakers’ halcyon days in the ‘80s, is the kind of series that wears its research on its sleeve. Despite its long roster of marquee names — with John C. Reilly, Sally Field, Jason Clarke, Jason Segel, Adrien Brody, Gaby Hoffmann and winsome newcomer Quincy Isaiah comprising a sampling of the cast — the real star of the show is the facts.
Sometimes, the whirlwind of details we’re thrust into helps convey a sense of the milieu — in this case, that of a sport revitalized by a racially charged rivalry between two emerging superstars. Just as often, our attentions are diverted to trivia and gratuitous digressions: dropping the names of player Spencer Haywood’s wife (Iman) and her eventual husband (David Bowie); pointing to a baby in the stands that’s supposed to be future Laker luminary Kobe Bryant; rubbing elbows at a party with Donald Sterling, who’d later be banned from the NBA for life, just before his purchase of the L.A. Clippers.
A decade ago, we’d probably most associate this kind of show-your-work approach with the math teacher who taught us long division. Today, it’s filmmaker and TV producer Adam McKay, who helped establish “Winning Time’s” frenetic, motormouthed, subtlety-allergic style as the pilot director. McKay helmed the first episode of “Succession” — another HBO drama he’s an executive producer on — where its jittery, roving handheld camera matches the on-edge-ness of so many of the characters; it’s the perspective of a watchful squirrel looking around to see when to scurry away. Similarly, the direction here captures the restless pace of basketball and the speed and flash — the sexiness, as new Lakers owner Jerry Buss (Reilly) puts it in an early scene — that’s about to take over the then-unpopular sport, with new recruit Earvin “Magic” Johnson (Isaiah) rekindling the Lakers’ storied feud with the Boston Celtics.
“Winning Time” opens in 1991, the year the real-life Johnson retired after testing positive for HIV and closed that chapter of the Lakers. But much of the 10-part debut season takes place in 1979, as Jerry — a real estate mogul with a hedonistic streak as extravagant as the Playboy Mansion — overleverages himself to become the latest and least popular team owner in the NBA. In some ways, Jerry and his 19-year-old draftee are peas in a pod: men from modest backgrounds who find themselves transfixed by, then feel right at home amid, the glitz and sleaze of ’70s L.A. Despite their talent, ambition and dedication, both give off a false air of nonseriousness. And in Magic’s case, the bald racism of basketball culture means constantly being overlooked in favor of the other celebrity rookie: the Celtics’ Great White Hope, Larry Bird (Sean Patrick Small).
There was nothing fated about the Lakers’ glory days in the ‘80s. Based on Jeff Pearlman’s nonfiction book “Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s,” “Winning Time” delights in the stranger-than-fiction turn of events that led to the team’s domination of the league. Foremost among them is the succession crisis set off when the Lakers’ head coach, Jerry West (Clarke), a depressive neurotic, quits three weeks before training is to begin for the new season. By the end of Episode 8 — the last installment screened for critics — the Lakers will go through three coaches and court two more.
The coaching catastrophes offer a compelling throughline to the otherwise limpingly paced season, cohering the massive ensemble and complementing the show’s know-it-all earnestness with its can-you-believe-this raconteurism. That love of minutiae is paralleled in creators Max Borenstein and Jim Hecht’s clear adoration of male idiosyncrasy. In contrast to virtually the rest of society, sports are an arena where masculine hyper-emotionality is encouraged, even cultivated.
No wonder, then, that the Lakers are a bundle of fascinating eccentrics. In this telling, the extroverted Magic was born to be a celebrity, charming everyone he meets and dependent from an early age on external approval, first from his Seventh Day Adventist mother (LisaGay Hamilton), then from millions of strangers. His happy-go-lucky demeanor unnerves Jerry West, whose ostentatious misery is so abject it inches back up toward dark humor. Just as grave is Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (an excellent Solomon Hughes), a surly and devout intellectual all-too-aware of the sport’s racial hierarchies and existentially skeptical of the material comforts he’s been afforded from being really good at putting a ball through a hoop. The fifth episode, dedicated to his backstory, is one of the season’s most distinctive and engaging.
But no character is as finely carved as Jerry Buss, a charismatic womanizer whose appreciation of female bodies actually extends to their brains. He admires his single mother (Field), who never finished high school but helped him become a millionaire through her creative accounting. Yet watching Jerry’s absolute helplessness when it comes to sexual temptation, his newest executive, the severe but brilliant Claire (Hoffmann), and his college-age daughter, Jeanie (Hadley Robinson), concoct somewhat unsavory side businesses for the cash-strapped tycoon that makes them both proud and queasy. Jerry is the kind of man who always makes a woman feel needed, but never fully comfortable acceding to his wants. All these complications do underscore, though, the wanness of Magic’s central storyline, about his on-again-off-again relationship with his girlfriend Cookie (Tamera Tomakili) — a conspicuously overfamiliar plot on a show that takes swing after swing on the novelty of its characters.
But McKay had to gild the lily. “Winning Time” is full of asides to the camera, mostly but not exclusively from Jerry. Grainy cinematography meant to evoke the Carter years comes and goes irregularly, as do unnecessary montages, seconds-long flashbacks, screens within screens, and the briefest glimpses of Richard Pryor, Jack Nicholson and, ugh, Bill Cosby. Subtext is literally made text as a description of Larry Bird as a “hard-working, disciplined, all-American boy” is followed by the screen wallpapered with the word “White” and a corresponding summary of Magic Johnson as a “showstopping, naturally gifted physical specimen” with the word “Black.” We’ll do the thinking for you, the show seems to say. We don’t trust you to do it yourself.
Some viewers, like a friend of mine who was enamored with the pilot, will find the formal inventiveness cheekily endearing and the no-holds-barred indictment of the league’s racism (and homophobia) refreshingly straightforward. That’s certainly an understandable point of view; the tack is gaudy and obvious, like the era it’s depicting. (If you need any more convincing, wait until the episode about the Laker Girls.) But for my tastes, McKay has entered, with “Winning Time,” an Aaron Sorkin-esque level of directorial obtrusiveness, where a filmmaker’s tics and indulgences keep calling attention to themselves, distracting from the narrative at hand rather than amplifying it. If only one of the greatest and most twist-filled turnarounds in basketball history, featuring three of basketball’s biggest names and a cultural sea change in the popularity of the sport itself, were exciting enough a story to tell. | null | null | null | null | null |
Supporters of the "People's Convoy" cheer and wave flags as it travels east on Interstate 70 on Monday in Myersville, Md. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
After two days of circling the Beltway in protest of the government’s handling of the pandemic, leaders of the “People’s Convoy” met with lawmakers Tuesday to voice frustrations with workplace vaccine mandates and other measures designed to limit the spread of the coronavirus.
Brian Brase, a 37-year-old truck driver from northwest Ohio who is leading the effort, met with Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Ted Cruz (R-Tex.). Brase outlined the next steps for the group Monday evening, which he said would include another Beltway loop Tuesday.
It wasn’t clear whether the meeting with lawmakers would alter the group’s plans for the week. Brase said previously that the convoy intended to remain at Hagerstown Speedway through at least Saturday — but he also has said he hoped to wrap up by Wednesday.
“I don’t know if these meetings are going to be successful,” he told supporters Monday evening. “I don’t know if our voice is truly going to be heard on Capitol Hill.”
A supporter yelled out, “They will!” Crowds at the speedway have displayed support for former president Donald Trump and disdain for President Biden.
Brase told the crowd there have been small victories already, listing mask mandates that have dropped since the first members of the convoy departed last month from Adelanto, Calif
Monday night, the initial group was joined by another convoy of nearly 150 trucks and cars, blaring their horns when they arrived at the speedway.
The group began its protest Sunday, with two loops around the 64-mile Beltway and a single loop Monday. While a “passionate faction” has voiced support for heading into the nation’s capital, Brase said there are no plans to do so. Authorities said traffic disruptions Monday were minimal, and there were no reports of convoy-related incidents. | null | null | null | null | null |
Already, however, some firms have pulled away. Most alarmingly, Cogent Communications, a leading carrier of Internet data internationally, cut ties with its Russian clients, thereby crushing a bit of the Web’s backbone. The move, the company says, was necessary to prevent its networks from being harnessed by Russia for cyberattacks and other nefariousness — but the decision nonetheless threatens to cut the citizenry off from the outside world. TikTok recently announced that it would suspend the posting of video from Russia in response to the nation’s “fake” news law, saying in a statement that it had “no choice.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Rodgers and the Packers are working to complete negotiations on a new contract that would pay him at least $50 million per season, according to multiple people familiar with the deliberations. The expectation is that, barring a last-minute breakdown in those talks, Rodgers will remain with the Packers, according to one of those people.
The new contract could end up being worth slightly more than that if the negotiations indeed are completed as expected, according to multiple people familiar with the situation. Rodgers would supplant Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, whose contract is worth $45 million per season, as the NFL’s highest-paid player. | null | null | null | null | null |
In Churilyana’s home, though she can’t see her brother’s portrait photo anymore, she remembered exactly where it is hanging. He is dressed in his military uniform in World War II. There is another photo of him on the same wall — also dressed in uniform, but older.
Churilyana was born in Russia’s Ural Mountains before she and her siblings eventually moved to Ukraine. She has outlived all of her siblings. Now native country and the one her father and brother fought for is waging war against her current home. | null | null | null | null | null |
Enrique Tarrio, a longtime leader of the Proud Boys, and Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers, attend a meeting in a garage in the Washington, D.C. on Jan. 5, 2021. (Video still from Saboteur Media/REUTERS)
Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, a longtime leader of the Proud Boys, has been indicted on a conspiracy charge in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack — the second high-profile arrest of an extremist leader accused of fueling political violence around the 2020 election results.
Tarrio, 38, who lives in Miami, joins Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes as the two most well-known individuals charged by the Justice Department in connection with the Jan. 6 attack. In recent months, Tarrio has described himself as a former leader of the Proud Boys, a radical group that was formed in 2016 and has become a fixture at political demonstrations around the country.
An indictment unsealed in federal court in Washington D.C. on Tuesday accuses Tarrio of conspiring with other senior Proud Boys leaders, including Ethan Nordean and Joe Biggs, both of whom are already charged in connection with Jan. 6. The charges against Tarrio include conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding — in this case the formal tallying by Congress of electoral votes in Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential victory. The charges against Tarrio were added to the previously filed indictment against Nordean, Biggs, and other Proud Boys followers.
From the start of the Jan. 6 investigation — the largest in the FBI’s history in terms of charged suspects — agents have focused on the role that the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers allegedly played in driving the confrontation between supporters of then-President Donald Trump and police guarding the Capitol. More than 100 police officers were injured, many of them seriously, by a violent mob that falsely claimed Trump had won the election.
'Some are still suffering': Months after Capitol riot, police who fought the mob have not recovered
Tarrio was not at the Capitol that day, and has denied that he or his group organized any violence there. He had been ordered to stay outside of Washington, D.C., shortly before Jan. 6, part of his bond conditions set in a separate criminal case.
In that case, Tarrio was arrested for allegedly burning a Black Lives Matter banner stolen from an African American church on Dec. 12, following a different D.C. rally by Trump supporters who did not accept the results of the 2020 election. Tarrio eventually pleaded guilty to burning the banner and to attempted possession of a high-capacity ammunition magazine. He served four months in jail for those offenses and was released early this year.
The updated indictment unsealed Tuesday offers new details of Tarrio’s alleged role in discussions that preceded the violence at the U.S. Capitol. On Dec. 30 and 31st, prosecutors charge, Tarrio exchanged messages with an individual who sent him a plan to occupy “crucial buildings” in Washington, including the House and Senate buildings, with “as many people as possible.” After sending the document, the individual allegedly messaged Tarrio that “The revolution is (sic) important than anything," to which Tarrio allegedly replied: “That’s what every waking moment consists of... I’m not playing games.”
Proud Boys are known for brandishing batons at rallies and gatherings and for being eager to spar with their perceived enemies in the leftist antifa movement. While the group’s leaders disavow racism, some members have ties to groups that espouse white nationalistic rhetoric common among hate groups. At times, their visits to the District have ended in street brawls.
During a presidential election debate in September 2020, Trump famously refused to denounce the Proud Boys, urging them to "stand back and stand by.” The group took those words as a rallying cry, which appeared to energize members in the months leading up to Jan. 6.
Analysis: Donald Trump, the extremists and the conspiracy to storm the Capitol
The new indictment pointedly ties Tarrio to Rhodes, noting that, even after Tarrio was ordered by a court to leave Washington, he did not do so right away. On Jan. 5, the indictment says, he met in a parking garage in the city with Rhodes and other individuals “known and unknown to the grand jury, for approximately 30 minutes. During this encounter, a participant referenced the Capitol.”
Rhodes and 10 other Oath Keepers or associates were accused in January of seditious conspiracy, a historically rare charge that carries a maximum 20-year prison term. That indictment alleges that Rhodes plotted in late 2020 and early 2021 to prevent Biden from becoming president, guiding a months-long effort to unleash political violence that prosecutors say culminated in the Jan. 6 Capitol breach.
“Rhodes and certain co-conspirators ... planned to stop the lawful transfer of presidential power by January 20, 2021, which included multiple ways to deploy force,” his indictment says.
Rhodes, 56, remains in jail awaiting trial. He has pleaded not guilty and has said he did not enter the Capitol, denying any wrongdoing.
One co-defendant in the case, Joshua James, last week became the first defendant to plead guilty to seditious conspiracy. James, a 34-year-old Army veteran from Arab, Ala., admitted helping lead a group that prosecutors say sent two teams in body armor, helmets and tactical gear into the Capitol and staged a cache of weapons in a hotel just outside the city.
This is a developing story. Peter Hermann and Rachel Weiner contributed to this report. | null | null | null | null | null |
In striking down the lead charge brought in the government’s Jan. 6 investigation — punishable by up to 20 years in prison — U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols broke with all other U.S. trial judges in Washington who have ruled on the question in Capitol riot cases. The decision throws a wrench pending appeal into the felony prosecutions of as many as 275 arrested individuals.
Nichols dismissed 1 of 12 counts against Garret A. Miller, a North Texas man who allegedly bragged about storming the Capitol and threatened lawmakers and police on social media. He is accused of stating “Assassinate AOC” in response to a tweet by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) calling for President Donald Trump’s impeachment.
Nichols’s reasoning is likely to apply to the cases of at least seven other defendants who are before him on the same charge. One other, Beverly Hills spa owner Gina Bisignano, awaits sentencing after pleading guilty in a deal with prosecutors.
Other U.S. trial judges in Washington are not bound by the decision from Nichols, a 2019 Trump appointee who served in the Justice Department’s civil division under President George W. Bush and clerked for Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas. At least seven judges have previously rejected the same defense motion. Given the novel application of the law and the high stakes of the Jan. 6 probe, a certain government appeal could send the question to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and eventually to the U.S. Supreme Court, legal experts said.
The ruling also has broader implications. Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) has suggested Trump could be charged with obstruction of an official proceeding, as has the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 events — although in Trump’s case, allegedly with regard to the counting of electoral college votes.
In an indictment and court filings, prosecutors assert that Miller, 35, predicted the likelihood of violence on Jan. 6, 2021. Authorities also accuse him of pushing past police to enter the Capitol, making various incriminating statements and posting on social media videos and pictures taken inside the building.
Miller has pleaded not guilty. Nichols said he has rejected a defense motion claiming Miller was a victim of selective government prosecution and seeking his release from jail pending trial. He has been held since his Jan. 20, 2021, arrest in Richardson, Tex.
At issue is an obstruction charge carrying some of the heaviest penalties leveled against nearly 300 defendants, including associates of the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys and Three Percenters, far-right groups that allegedly conspired and prepared for violence. The government has also brought the charge against scores of individuals not accused of attacking police or destroying property but facing some of the most egregious allegations — such as occupying the Senate chamber, sitting in the vice president’s chair and targeting government officials.
Prosecutors have sought to differentiate such acts from protest-related civil disobedience that rarely results in prison time and more politically charged offenses such as seditious conspiracy or the use of political violence against U.S. authorities to prevent Biden’s inauguration.
Defendants in well over a dozen cases assert that the joint House and Senate session that met Jan. 6 does not qualify as an official proceeding of Congress. They also argue that the law is unconstitutionally vague because it fails to put individuals clearly on notice as to how “corruptly” obstructing or influencing Congress differs from misdemeanor trespassing, parading or disorderly conduct in the Capitol. Defendants have also said that among what they say are defects in the law, it does not cover individuals’ alleged illegal actions.
Before Monday, all of at least seven judges who have ruled to date accepted Justice Department arguments that Congress intended a broad “catchall” provision for obstructive acts after the exposure of a massive corporate fraud in the early 2000s wiped out hundreds of billions of dollars of shareholder value, triggered by the collapse of Enron and the revelation that Enron’s outside auditor, the accounting giant Arthur Andersen, systematically destroyed potentially incriminating documents.
But some legal scholars have long asked whether the expansion applies only to financial fraud or to traditional obstruction-of-justice crimes such as destroying documents.
The Supreme Court in 2015 rejected an expansive reading of a related law, overturning the conviction of a Florida fisherman who destroyed smaller-than-20-inch red grouper to impede U.S. wildlife inspectors. The court ruled that when Congress barred the destruction of any “tangible object,” it meant documentary evidence, not fish — a case cited by Nichols.
“Congress was faced with a very specific loophole: that then-existing criminal statutes made it illegal to cause or induce another person to destroy documents, but did not make it illegal to do so by oneself,” Nichols said, referring to Arthur Anderson’s actions. In passing that portion of the law, Congress closed the loophole, but “nothing in the legislative history suggests a broader purpose than that,” Nichols said.
The judge said prosecutors never accused Miller of tampering with records, and he dismissed the obstruction charge without prejudice, meaning the government can recharge Miller if other evidence emerges. | null | null | null | null | null |
You can see that I’ve also highlighted Russia (in dark gray) and Ukraine (outlined in black), given their salience to this discussion. And while Ukraine does share a lengthy border with Russia, there are several Baltic countries to the north of Ukraine that share a border with Putin’s nation. So does NATO-member Norway (albeit only for a short, remote stretch).
Let’s zoom in. Here’s the primary region at issue, showing the NATO member countries in green. Belarus is indicated with striping to indicate that, particularly in regard to the conflict with Ukraine, it currently serves as a vassal state to Russia. | null | null | null | null | null |
Hari Close prepares to embalm bodies at his Baltimore funeral home in January. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)
BALTIMORE — There were so many bodies in Hari Close’s funeral home one day last month that he arrived to begin embalming them at 2 a.m. It was his 61st birthday, but he had to get to work.
Later that day, the Baltimore funeral director counseled the family of a 13-year-old who had died of covid-19, after weeks on a ventilator. He tried to help them navigate their grief even as he struggled with his own, thinking of his grandchildren around the same age. Close phoned a friend to vent. Then he headed back to the embalming room, where his work would stretch into the evening.
As the pandemic enters its third year, the nation is edging toward normalcy. But Close does not get to move on.
There has been too much death. It’s been concentrated in the mostly Black community he serves, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data showing that Black Americans have died because of covid-19 at 1.7 times the rate of White Americans. And it’s haunted the historically Black funeral organization he leads.
While Close counts losses in the National Funeral Directors & Morticians Association — founded during the Jim Crow era — in the dozens, the leader of the predominantly White National Funeral Directors Association says he’s not aware of a single member death due to covid-19.
“It’s like someone turned on a faucet and things were just running over and over and there was no way to turn this faucet off,” Close said of the death. “We just had to manage the best we could. Still, we don’t know how to manage this pandemic.”
Deaths in Maryland have begun to abate following a pandemic peak in January. But Close remains deeply worried about those most at risk — people who are unvaccinated, with underlying health conditions, without good health care. People in his community.
Throughout the pandemic, he has repeatedly — and mostly without success — tried to draw attention to these jarring inequities. He’s pleaded for protective gear, for clarity on health guidelines and for priority in vaccine distribution. For officials to recognize the role Black funeral directors play in their communities and help them give out vaccine doses. For them to see the mounting grief, and to acknowledge it.
That February night, Close was at home in his driveway, trying to decompress in his car, when he got a call from his oldest son. He had forgotten about his own family birthday dinner at Capital Grille.
Over steaks and malbec later, he kept talking about work.
“Relax,” Close’s son urged him. “Please relax.”
Close nodded and promised his family: He was trying.
‘What about the funeral directors?’
When the virus first started spreading, Close kicked his staff out of the embalming room.
The phone rang and rang as the dead his Baltimore funeral home cared for monthly jumped from 20 to more than 60. But Close, then 59, worried his younger employees would not be able to keep themselves and their families safe.
No funeral directors knew then whether the corpses could be carriers for the virus, as was the case with Ebola. Even after the World Health Organization and CDC released guidance saying there was no evidence that dead bodies could be contagious, Close and many of his peers were afraid.
So between shifts in the embalming room that sometimes stretched for more than 12 hours, counseling families and conducting services with suddenly new restrictions, Close went searching for gear — at Lowe’s, Home Depot, Dollar General. Often, there was nothing.
Frustrated when he heard Home Depot had donated their respirators and masks to a hospital, Close asked to see a manager.
“What about the funeral directors?” he asked.
“Oh, my God,” he remembers her replying. “I never thought about that.”
Inside this Maryland ICU, a depleted staff struggles to keep going
Close has had a reverence for the dead and a determination to celebrate life since he was a child. Raised in a family that ran a Massachusetts funeral home, he buried dead animals when he found them as a little boy, saying a prayer over the makeshift graves. He was responsible as a teenager for answering the calls and arranging body pickups, often sleeping at the funeral home overnight.
After taking a break in his teens — he worried the hearses were scaring away dates — he returned in his mid-20s to the profession he feels is his calling.
He was elected to lead the National Funeral Directors & Morticians Association in August 2019, hoping to focus his presidency on growing the organization’s membership. Instead, the pandemic hit and the member deaths started climbing.
Among the first was Jeremiah C. Gaffney, a Long Island funeral director who Close always called for advice on New York cases. But when Close tried Gaffney in early May, there was no answer.
“He’s on a ventilator, and it’s killing him,” Close remembers Gaffney’s sister, physician Mary Gaffney, saying when he got through to her. “I’ve already instructed them to take him off.”
Gaffney, a gregarious 65-year-old with a doctorate in economics who was so committed to his work that he slept with two work phones under his pillow, had been hospitalized on Easter with covid-19. The man known for thinking of his staff and his clients before himself died May 6.
He was among at least 41 Black funeral directors since March 2020 — a staggering toll for the National Funeral Directors & Morticians Association, which has about 2,000 members.
Each time Close learned he had lost another member, he felt numb. There was 76-year-old William Penn Troy in August, who had been a pillar in his South Carolina community and a personal mentor to Close.
When Close heard the news, he called Troy’s sons and asked a question he’d found himself repeating again and again: “What can I do?”
Over his wife’s protestations and with the coronavirus spreading rapidly in the South, Close traveled to Mullins, S.C., for Troy’s funeral. He sat in the back of the church for hours, watching as people from across the area paid homage to a man who epitomized the values of traditional Black funeral home directors, donating food, registering people to vote and paying water bills for those in need.
And there was Oliver Lomax, a 73-year-old leader in the industry from Dallas known in the National Funeral Directors & Morticians Association for his ability to whip votes who died in December 2020. He had known he had wanted to be a funeral director since he was 12, said his wife Linda Lomax, and opened his own business in South Dallas in 1989. Lomax always wanted to give people the service they deserved, even when their families could not afford it — often helping out with paying for caskets and having staff edit obituaries.
Most obituaries of members of the National Funeral Directors & Morticians Association reviewed by The Washington Post did not list covid-19 as the cause of death. Stigma, and sometimes medical uncertainty, meant that many families did not want to publicly say the coronavirus killed their loved ones, Close said.
Some have told him the truth only in private, he said, even as he has repeatedly tried to make clear: There is no shame.
Randy Anderson, the president of the National Funeral Directors Association, which is 10 times as large and has a membership that is more than 97 percent White, said the only funeral directors he knows who have died because of covid-19 during the pandemic are a few Black directors in his native Alabama.
The disparity was unsurprising to Stephen Kemp, who is Black and a member of both associations. Covid-19, he noted, targeted the most vulnerable — people with underlying conditions, who live in close quarters, who work front-line jobs and who lack access to health care. His funeral home just outside Detroit was so overwhelmed in the spring of 2020 that he had to rent a 32-foot refrigerated truck.
“It is like two different Americas, and one doesn’t hear the other’s pain,” said Kemp. “It is like yelling in the wind.”
The fight for recognition
The long hours took a toll on Close. There were bouts of breathlessness and spells of dizziness so bad he had to sit down. He and his longest-tenured employee, David Hebron Sr., felt their joints hurting after especially long services.
“Where,” they asked each other with increasing frequency, “did the years go?”
During a regular checkup in January 2021, Close’s doctor checked his pulse and determined his heart was beating so quickly he was on the verge of a heart attack or a stroke. He needed to get to the hospital, she said, right then.
Close learned he had atrial fibrillation, or AFIB, which could be addressed by a procedure to shock his heart into beating normally. After a successful operation, Close felt younger — and newly determined to save as many of his peers as he could.
He hoped the vaccines would offer the way out.
He sent messages to Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R), the mayor of Baltimore and a state senator, asking that funeral home directors be included in the first vaccine-eligibility category. Maryland was ultimately in the minority of states, Close said, to put funeral directors and morticians in that top priority category with health-care workers, nursing home staff members and first responders.
Even once the vaccine was available, though, many of his members — and his own staff — did not want to get the shot.
Part of the problem, he figured, was that funeral directors had been given such limited information from officials throughout the pandemic that their trust in the system had been eroded.
With the media focused on rapidly filling hospital beds, Close said, society was not paying attention to where the bodies of the dead went, or the people who cared for them.
So he started writing letters and emails, pleading with officials to speak to his association’s members. To the CDC. To Kizzmekia Corbett, who led the team behind Moderna’s vaccine. To the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, Anthony S. Fauci.
“The National Funeral Directors & Morticians Association, Incorporated (NFDMA) are African-American businesses who service the black and brown communities in times of need,” he wrote in a letter to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “We are last line of defense for these communities, especially on Healthcare.”
“Unfortunately,” came a reply from the deputy director, “Dr. Fauci’s schedule is so full that we simply cannot add any additional commitments.”
Close was hopeful when he connected through an old friend with Omar Neal, the former mayor of Tuskegee, Ala., and Stephen B. Thomas, head of the Center for Health Equity at the University of Maryland, who had gotten recognition from the White House for his efforts to use barbershops as vaccine distribution points.
When they asked Close to join a Zoom town hall in March 2021, he agreed.
Hari Close, president of the nation’s biggest association for Black funeral directors and morticians, discussed how covid-19 impacted funeral directors. (University of Maryland School of Public Health)
It was a “tragedy,” he said, how few governors included funeral directors in the first eligibility category for vaccinations. Society did not seem to be paying much attention, he said, even as Black funeral directors and preachers were dying. It was scary how many funerals of his peers he had attended, Close said, sometimes talking over the hosts and then apologizing.
“I am trying to be polite,” he said. “I am also a health-care provider as well. Sometimes people forget that.”
He texted a friend afterward, wondering whether he had been too forceful.
Soon after, he got an email from Thomas, the professor. He and Neal wanted to work with Close to try to get the White House to recognize Black funeral homes as possible distribution points for coronavirus tests and vaccines. Thomas told Close he had watched the Zoom webinar 10 times.
“Each time,” he told Close, “your contribution continues to inspire.”
The burden-holders
Rain had been steadily falling on a recent winter morning in Baltimore, but Close still carefully washed the hearses. Thinking of the family who had lost their matriarch, he wanted his fleet to sparkle.
As mourners filed into the foyer of the Baptist church, he handed out tissues, enveloped a few tearful women in hugs and placed his hand on the shoulders of grieving men. At just the right moments, he cracked jokes to make people smile.
He believes funerals should be more about celebration than sadness, knowing that at his own one day, he wants an efficient service and upbeat music. But the past two years have often made celebration feel impossible.
The amount of death — among customers, among colleagues — left him questioning at points whether he could continue to do this work. He made a few appointments with a psychologist after watching her speak to the association in the spring of 2021. Close wanted to make sure he was emotionally strong enough to keep going.
In the evenings, he sits outside in his backyard, smoking a cigar, listening to the birds chirp and watching the deer. Sometimes he stays out there so long he dozes off. It’s one of the only places he feels at peace.
It’s a balance that he’s still reaching for. How to absorb families’ grief, day after day. To stay present, even when staying present means danger. How to care for the pandemic’s victims, while also being victimized.
“Who eases the burden of the burden-holder?” he said. “Every family that we deal with, we take part of the grief. Where is the release for those who have the heavy burden?”
At the funeral on the recent winter morning, he handed out spritzes of hand sanitizer along with funeral programs. He reminded men to take off their hats, and to put their masks over their nose.
When one barefaced young woman at the church’s door asked whether masks were required, he nodded sternly: “For your protection.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Florida Sen. Shevrin Jones (D), left, speaks about his proposed amendment to a Republican bill, dubbed by opponents the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, at the Florida Capitol on March 7, 2022. (Wilfredo Lee/AP)
The legislation, which Florida Democrats and LGBTQ activists refer to as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, now advances to Gov. Ron DeSantis (R). In recent days, DeSantis has indicated that he is likely to sign the legislation, saying it is designed to shield Florida’s youngest students from exposure to sensitive topics in the classroom.
Lessons for older grades would have to be “age appropriate,” which Democrats argue is a vague way of stifling all conversations about LGBTQ issues. Republicans played down that risk, saying the legislation prevents “planned lessons” but does not ban discussions between students or prevent teachers from answering specific questions from a student.
The measure also allows parents to sue school districts if they feel their children have received inappropriate lessons. Democrats warned of a wave lawsuits against cash-strapped school systems.
The 22-to-17 vote Tuesday, which was largely along party lines, followed days of emotional debate over the legislation on school grounds, in corporate boardrooms, and in the Florida Senate.
Last week, students at dozens of Florida schools walked out of classes to protest the legislation. Several corporate leaders also spoke out against it.
On Monday, during initial debate over the bill on the Senate floor, Sen. Shevrin “Shev” Jones (D) became emotional while urging his colleagues to vote against the legislation. Jones, who in 2018 became the Florida Senate’s first openly gay member, spoke about how hard it had been for him to come out to his father, a pastor in South Florida.
“It just seems like in politics today, we have gone down a road where we are scared to just step up and make sure we are not hurting people,” Jones said through tears.
During Tuesday’s debate, Book and others lashed out at Pushaw, saying her comments were an insulting betrayal of the state’s LGBTQ residents.
“The governor’s communications director accused us of being pedophiles for being again this bill. Boy, oh boy, I got news for you: You can’t teach gay and you sure can’t pray away gay,” said Sen. Gary M. Farmer (D).
“I actually appreciate the discipline, and sometimes I wish our party would do the same thing,” Bracy said, while looking at his GOP colleagues. “But in your effort to elect Ron DeSantis and send him to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, I just ask you: Is it worth it? Is it worth it if one child is affected by this legislation? Is it worth a child being outed or bullied or potentially becoming suicidal?”
Sen. Ileana Garcia (R) countered that children have their entire lives to sort out their sexual orientation or gender identity, so there is no need to have “tough conversations” in elementary school. “This is not about targeting, this is about rerouting responsibility back to the parents and allowing children to be children,” she said.
But Democrats argue that the legislation will hurt gay Floridians and endanger the state’s reputation around the world.
“Who in the world have we become? Who in Florida have we become?” asked Sen. Janet Cruz (D), who noted that she has a daughter who is gay who was in the chamber to watch the floor debate. “I feel like I had a dream of a bad version of ‘Back to the Future.’ I mean, there is no time machine here. We can’t roll back 40 years; we are here.” | null | null | null | null | null |
A summit at NATO headquarters in Brussels last month. (Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP/Getty Images)
Carlson lately has tempered his unfortunately timed suggestion that perhaps Vladimir Putin isn’t that bad a guy. But with that point largely conceded, he now has shifted to assuring that Putin is not the only bad guy. Carlson on Monday drove home an argument that has lingered on the fringes of the conservative movement for some time — that the United States and the West invited this war with their support for admitting Ukraine into NATO, a step that Russia finds unacceptable.
To be clear, the idea that NATO expansion into countries such as Ukraine is provocative and might even be a bad idea is not a fringe position; it has long been espoused, dating to prominent, establishment foreign policy voices in the 1990s. But Carlson took things a good few conspiratorial steps further, arguing that the push for NATO was deliberately intended to provoke this war.
“‘Up yours, Vladimir Putin,’” Carlson summarized. “‘Go ahead and invade Ukraine.’ And of course Vladimir Putin did that just days later. So the invasion was no surprise to the Biden administration. They knew that would happen. That was the point of the exercise.”
A version of Carlson’s effort to blame the West — and by extension, Biden — has been around for a while now, in varying versions. Conservative provocateur Candace Owens tweeted recently that “WE are at fault” for Russia’s invasion, because of NATO expansion. Other Republicans have pointed in that direction as well. Still others, such as Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), have not gone that far but have argued for backing off from NATO expansion to reduce tensions.
Surely, the consequences of the Ukraine-NATO push must be considered. And you need not look far into the past to see studied minds cautioning about a situation much like the one we find ourselves in today. Former Clinton administration defense secretary Bill Perry said in 2016 that Putin bore most of the blame for Russia’s aggression in Crimea but that “I have to say that the United States deserves much of the blame” for supporting NATO’s expansion in Eastern Europe. George Kennan, a former U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, called it “a tragic mistake” after the Senate in 1998 ratified NATO expansion, even as Russia was still picking up the pieces from the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) warned at the same time, “We have no idea what we’re getting into.” Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski argued relatively recently that Ukraine should not join military alliances and instead stick with a Finland-esque approach of remaining neutral while cooperating with the West in other ways.
Even if you believe it might have averted this war, what message would it send about Russia’s ability to throw its weight around? It’s massing of troops on Ukraine’s borders would have earned an immediate payoff. Even if Harris had merely declined to restate U.S. support for Ukraine’s right to pursue NATO membership, that would have been a telling omission. (Conservative Washington Post columnist Henry Olsen, for one, has argued that Hawley’s posture was correct, even though he is “wrong about whether the United States should say so publicly.”)
And beyond that, there’s the fact that this isn’t just U.S. policy; Ukrainians now support their country’s membership in NATO by a significant margin. If anyone is big on self-determination, it would seem to be Carlson. And yet that’s curiously missing from his argument.
In January, former Trump and Bush administration Russia expert Fiona Hill offered a worthwhile and nuanced view on this in the run-up to Russia’s invasion in an essay for the New York Times: | null | null | null | null | null |
Rodgers and the Packers are working to complete negotiations on a new contract that would pay him about $50 million per season, according to multiple people familiar with the deliberations. The expectation is that, barring a last-minute breakdown in those talks, Rodgers will remain with the Packers, according to one of those people.
The new contract could end up being worth around $50 million per season or perhaps even slightly more than that if the negotiations indeed are completed as expected, according to multiple people familiar with the situation. Rodgers would supplant Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, whose contract is worth $45 million per season, as the NFL’s highest-paid player. Rodgers’s deal is expected to be structured in a way that would provide salary cap relief for the Packers during the upcoming season. | null | null | null | null | null |
As leaders of the convoy meet with lawmakers on Capitol Hill, truckers circle the Beltway for a third day
Organizers of the "People's Convoy" meet with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday in Washington. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
On the group’s third day of circling the Beltway to protest the government’s handling of the pandemic, leaders of the “People’s Convoy” met with lawmakers Tuesday to voice frustrations with workplace vaccine mandates and other measures designed to limit the spread of the coronavirus.
Brian Brase, a 37-year-old truck driver from northwest Ohio who is leading the effort, joined other members in meeting with Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) on Capitol Hill. Brase vowed to continue the fight until vaccine mandates are ended.
As the meeting was taking place, a convoy of trucks, SUVs and cars was looping the Beltway for a third day. As with previous days, there were no immediate reports of problems during the single, 64-mile loop.
“We’re making our statement,” one trucker said in a radio transmission. “Just be safe.”
Cruz and Johnson praised Brase and other members of the group, saying their actions serve as an example to Americans. Crowds at the speedway have displayed support for former president Donald Trump and disdain for President Biden.
“God bless all of you,” Johnson said. “I think your stories are so powerful.”
Brase, who said earlier that the convoy intended to remain at Hagerstown Speedway through at least Saturday, hinted Tuesday that convoy members might remain in the Washington area longer and are seeking to meet with more lawmakers.
“We could go indefinitely right now if that’s what it takes,” Brase said Tuesday. He said the group has more meetings scheduled Tuesday afternoon, but did not elaborate.
Brase told the crowd Monday night there have been small victories already, listing mask mandates that have dropped since the first members of the convoy departed last month from Adelanto, Calif. The initial group was joined Monday by another convoy of nearly 150 trucks and cars, blaring their horns when they arrived at the speedway.
The group began its protest with two loops around the Beltway Sunday and a single loop Monday. While a “passionate faction” has expressed support for heading into the nation’s capital, Brase said there are no plans to do so. Authorities said traffic disruptions Monday were minimal, and there were no reports of convoy-related incidents. | null | null | null | null | null |
Sometimes, the whirlwind of details we’re thrust into helps convey a sense of the milieu — in this case, that of a sport revitalized by a racially charged rivalry between two emerging superstars. Just as often, our attentions are diverted to trivia and gratuitous digressions: dropping the names of player Spencer Haywood’s wife (Iman) and her eventual husband (David Bowie); pointing to a baby in the stands that’s supposed to be future Lakers luminary Kobe Bryant; rubbing elbows at a party with future L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling, who’d later be banned from the NBA for life.
A decade ago, we’d probably most associate this kind of show-your-work approach with the math teacher who taught us long division. Today, it’s filmmaker and TV producer Adam McKay, who helped establish “Winning Time’s” frenetic, motor-mouthed, subtlety-allergic style as the pilot director. McKay helmed the first episode of “Succession” — another HBO drama he’s an executive producer on — where its jittery, roving handheld camera matches the on-edge-ness of so many of the characters; it’s the perspective of a watchful squirrel looking around to see when to scurry away. Similarly, the direction here captures the restless pace of basketball and the speed and flash — the sexiness, as new Lakers owner Jerry Buss (Reilly) puts it in an early scene — that’s about to take over the then-unpopular sport, with new recruit Earvin “Magic” Johnson (Isaiah) rekindling the Lakers’ storied feud with the Boston Celtics.
“Winning Time” opens in 1991, the year the real-life Johnson retired after testing positive for HIV and closed that chapter of the Lakers. But much of the 10-part debut season takes place in 1979, as Buss — a real estate mogul with a hedonistic streak as extravagant as the Playboy Mansion — overleverages himself to become the latest and least popular team owner in the NBA. In some ways, Buss and his 19-year-old draftee are peas in a pod: men from modest backgrounds who find themselves transfixed by, then feel right at home amid, the glitz and sleaze of ’70s L.A. Despite their talent, ambition and dedication, both give off a false air of nonseriousness. And in Magic’s case, the bald racism of basketball culture means constantly being overlooked in favor of the other celebrity rookie: the Celtics’ Great White Hope, Larry Bird (Sean Patrick Small).
There was nothing fated about the Lakers’ glory days in the ‘80s. Based on Jeff Pearlman’s book “Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s,” “Winning Time” delights in the stranger-than-fiction turn of events that led to the team’s domination of the league. Foremost among them is the succession crisis set off when the Lakers’ head coach, Jerry West (Clarke), a depressive neurotic, quits three weeks before training is to begin for the new season. By the end of Episode 8 — the last installment screened for critics — the Lakers will go through three coaches and court two more.
The coaching catastrophes offer a compelling throughline to the otherwise limpingly paced season, cohering the massive ensemble and complementing the show’s know-it-all earnestness with its can-you-believe-this raconteurism. That love of minutiae is paralleled in creators Max Borenstein and Jim Hecht’s clear adoration of male idiosyncrasy. In contrast to virtually the rest of society, sports is an arena where masculine hyper-emotionality is encouraged, even cultivated.
No wonder, then, that the Lakers are a bundle of fascinating eccentrics. In this telling, the extroverted Magic was born to be a celebrity, charming everyone he meets and dependent from an early age on external approval, first from his Seventh-day Adventist mother (LisaGay Hamilton), then from millions of strangers. His happy-go-lucky demeanor unnerves Jerry West, whose ostentatious misery is so abject it inches back up toward dark humor. Just as grave is Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (an excellent Solomon Hughes), a surly and devout intellectual all too aware of the sport’s racial hierarchies and existentially skeptical of the material comforts he’s been afforded from being really good at putting a ball through a hoop. The fifth episode, dedicated to his backstory, is one of the season’s most distinctive and engaging.
But no character is as finely carved as Jerry Buss, a charismatic womanizer whose appreciation of female bodies actually extends to their brains. He admires his single mother (Field), who never finished high school but helped him become a millionaire through her creative accounting.
Watching Buss’s absolute helplessness when it comes to sexual temptation, his newest executive, the severe but brilliant Claire (Hoffmann), and his college-age daughter, Jeanie (Hadley Robinson), concoct somewhat unsavory side businesses for the cash-strapped tycoon that make them both proud and queasy. Buss is the kind of man who always makes a woman feel needed, but never fully comfortable acceding to his wants. All these complications do underscore, though, the wanness of Magic’s central storyline, about his on-again-off-again relationship with his girlfriend Cookie (Tamera Tomakili) — a conspicuously over-familiar plot on a show that takes swing after swing on the novelty of its characters.
But McKay had to gild the lily. “Winning Time” is full of asides to the camera, mostly but not exclusively from Buss. Grainy cinematography meant to evoke the Carter years comes and goes irregularly, as do unnecessary montages, seconds-long flashbacks, screens within screens, and the briefest glimpses of Richard Pryor, Jack Nicholson and, ugh, Bill Cosby. Subtext is literally made text as a description of Larry Bird as a “hard-working, disciplined, all-American boy” is followed by the screen wallpapered with the word “White” and a corresponding summary of Magic Johnson as a “showstopping, naturally gifted physical specimen” with the word “Black.” We’ll do the thinking for you, the show seems to say. We don’t trust you to do it yourself.
Some viewers, like a friend of mine who was enamored with the pilot, will find the formal inventiveness cheekily endearing and the no-holds-barred indictment of the league’s racism (and homophobia) refreshingly straightforward. That’s certainly an understandable point of view; the tack is gaudy and obvious, like the era it’s depicting. (If you need any more convincing, wait until the episode about the Laker Girls.) But for my tastes, McKay has entered, with “Winning Time,” an Aaron Sorkin-esque level of directorial obtrusiveness, where a filmmaker’s tics and indulgences keep calling attention to themselves, distracting from the narrative at hand rather than amplifying it. If only one of the greatest and most twist-filled turnarounds in NBA history, featuring three of basketball’s biggest names and a cultural sea change in the popularity of the sport itself, were exciting enough a story to tell. | null | null | null | null | null |
Russian policemen detain a participant in an unauthorized rally against the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in downtown Moscow, on March 6. (Yuri Kochetkov/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
Gary Langer, a U.S.-based polling expert who runs a research firm, obtained the results of the study from the Russian research organizations and shared them with The Washington Post. He declined to name the Russian firms involved due to the risks they face as Moscow tightens censorship, but said he has partnered previously with the organizations, which he described as “strong, independent survey research firms.”
Forty-six percent of respondents said they firmly supported the action, and 13 percent said they somewhat supported it. Roughly 23 percent opposed the operation, and 13 percent had no opinion or declined to answer.
The results diverge from those of a survey conducted by the government-owned polling firm VCIOM, which says it found 71 percent support for the “decision to conduct a special military operation.” That is compared to 75 percent of Russians who supported Moscow’s military action in Chechnya in 1999 and 91 percent for Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. | null | null | null | null | null |
Beyond that, the argument that the EPA has overstepped its authority in issuing the rule is tenuous at best. The Supreme Court has already made clear that the EPA can regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. Opponents of the Clean Power Plan argue that the rule went beyond what the law allows in attempting to regulate emissions from the entire electric grid, rather than individual power plants. While it is true that the decades-old Clean Air Act is not the ideal mechanism to combat climate change, the Obama-era plan fit well within the bounds that the Clean Air Act laid out for regulating dangerous pollutants.
There is no need for such radical rewiring of administrative law in this case. The Supreme Court should recognize what is plainly obvious: This case has been overtaken by events. The justices should stop making legal mischief and let the Biden administration craft its own rule. Meanwhile, Congress should supersede these legal battles and finally lay out a comprehensive strategy to combat climate, ideally by taxing carbon pollution. | null | null | null | null | null |
While the governor said the corridor stemmed from an agreement between Ukraine and Russia, he warned that there was still a “very high risk of provocation,” and he urged people to evaluate the risks of leaving for themselves.
Mikhail Mizintsev, the head of the Russian National Defense Control Center, blamed Ukraine for the failure of evacuations Tuesday. He accused Ukrainian authorities of confirming only the route out of Sumy while rejecting others proposed by Russia, including several that he said would lead to Poland, Moldova and Romania. | null | null | null | null | null |
Ukrainian refugees wait to register for shelter in Brussels on March 8, 2022. (Kenzo TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images)
Britain’s process for accepting refugees from Ukraine should be quicker, and the country will do more to help those fleeing Ukraine, British Defense Minister Ben Wallace said Tuesday in an interview with the BBC.
Wallace said the number of refugees that Britain is able to accept is “very generous,” and he pledged to help the home secretary in balancing Britain’s security when admitting refugees. Establishing people’s identities should be done quickly, and he noted that it was done “very quickly in Afghanistan,” he said.
“We could do more to make that processing much, much quicker,” he said.
Wallace said 17,000 people have started the visa process under a plan launched Friday for refugees to reunite with family members in Britain. Five hundred Ukrainian refugees have been granted visas so far under this plan, Immigration Minister Kevin Foster said in Parliament on Tuesday.
However, that’s a small fraction of the number of people who have fled Ukraine so far. More than 2 million refugees have left the country since the beginning of the invasion, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said. Half of them are children, according to UNICEF. Most of those fleeing Ukraine have gone to Poland, which has received 1.2 million refugees so far.
About 600 refugees are stuck in the French city of Calais trying to enter Britain, and some of them have been told they need to travel to Paris to process their visas. Many said they were turned away for lack of paperwork, the BBC reported.
The European Union is allowing Ukrainian refugees in for up to three years without visas. Britain, no longer part of the E.U., has instituted entry controls, drawing criticism from other countries.
French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin wrote a letter to the British home secretary, Priti Patel, calling on the British government to set up a consular service in Calais.He said London’s response so far showed a “lack of humanity” toward refugees and was “completely unsuitable,” according to the Guardian newspaper.
Speaking Tuesday to the British Parliament via video, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recounted events since Russia invaded, reiterated calls for a no-fly zone and asked for tougher sanctions against Russia. | null | null | null | null | null |
By Brooke Sutherland | Bloomberg
Signage displaying fuel prices at a Chevron gas station in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Monday, March 7, 2022. The average price of gasoline in the U.S. jumped above $4 a gallon for the first time since 2008 in a clear sign of the energy inflation that’s hurt consumers since Russia invaded Ukraine. (Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg)
“It’s time for Americans to get back to work and fill our great downtowns again,” President Joe Biden said during this month’s State of the Union address. “You can’t stay home in your pajamas all day,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams said in a recent speech aimed at encouraging local employers to bring workers back to the city’s still relatively empty offices. Both comments were well-intentioned: There is a cost in keeping wide swaths of the working population out of city skyscrapers — to local restaurants, to fare-funded mass transit systems and to broader perceptions of urban vitality and safety. Declining Covid case counts across the U.S. present an opportunity to reverse some of that pain.
But there’s also a cost to resuming the pre-pandemic daily grind, one that’s become only more acute as Russia’s hostilities and increasingly aggressive sanctions in response send shockwaves through energy markets. Driving was the most popular commuting option in the U.S. in 2017 but also the most expensive, with an annual median cost of $2,782, according to a survey sponsored by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. The average national cost of gas was elevated that year relative to recent history as the oil industry recovered from a 2014-2015 slump but pales in comparison to today’s prices. U.S. regular unleaded prices averaged $2.49 a gallon in 2017; the national cost hit a record on Monday at $4.17, according to AAA. (Adjusted for inflation, gas prices were higher in 2008, when the average price per gallon reached roughly $5.37, and they don’t cause as much pain as they used to. Still, Americans are feeling the pinch.)
Both the European Union and the U.S. are racing to rejigger their energy strategies as Western leaders contemplate ways to increase the economic penalties for Russia’s decision to start an unprompted war in Ukraine. The Biden administration on Tuesday announced a ban on U.S. imports of Russian fossil fuels including oil. The U.K. will announce a similar move, though it will continue to allow imports of natural gas and coal, Bloomberg News reported. Meanwhile, the European Union’s executive arm is mapping out a path to curb its use of Russian gas by almost 80% this year. Such a reordering of energy markets — considered unthinkable only a few weeks ago — would obviously entail a reconsideration of supply, whether the source is U.S. shale companies, alternative imports of liquid natural gas or renewable energy. But these policies would be more effective and ultimately less painful at home if governments consider the demand side of the equation as well. Encouraging companies to let employees continue working from home — as so many did for the better part of the past two years — would seem a decent place to start.
Fossil fuel demand collapsed during the pandemic as cars stayed parked, businesses closed temporarily and global air travel ground to a virtual halt. The U.S. consumed about 124 billion gallons of finished motor gasoline in 2020, or roughly 8 million barrels a day, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That was the lowest level since 1997 and a 14% slide from the use record set in 2018. It wasn’t that long ago (April 2020, to be exact) that oil prices briefly turned negative as the demand drop fueled an inventory glut. Interestingly, even though people spent significantly more time at home during 2020, U.S. residential energy consumption declined relative to 2019 as the benefits of relatively warmer winter weather curbed demand for natural gas and other heating sources and offset higher retail electricity sales to the sector, according to the EIA.
• The World Can Get By Just Fine With $129 Crude: David Fickling | null | null | null | null | null |
Biden taps head of the Environmental Protection Agency’s air office, eyeing climate rules
The nomination could garner criticism from Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which is tasked with vetting EPA nominees. Specifically, GOP senators will likely denounce Goffman’s writings from his time at Harvard Law School in between stints at EPA. The writings were often critical of the EPA’s efforts to dismantle environmental regulations under Donald Trump.
With Democrats’ 50-50 majority in the Senate, Goffman could still win confirmation if every Democrat unites behind him. But the timeline for moving the nomination is unclear, given a packed congressional agenda that includes passing a deal to fund the federal government, delivering aid to Ukraine after Russia’s unprovoked invasion, and holding confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson.
When Trump took office in January 2017, Goffman left the EPA to become executive director of Harvard’s energy and environmental law program. As an academic, he penned a number of pieces that were critical of the Trump administration’s rollbacks of environmental policies, including a 2019 paper that asserted that the Trump EPA had made “dubious arguments” to justify its weaker power plant regulation.
At least one well-known conservative industry voice on environmental regulations, however, has praised Goffman’s nomination. | null | null | null | null | null |
At 2:09 p.m., members of that crowd breached police lines and broke into the building, Berkower said. Reffitt’s “decision to step forward and take on police officers allowed the crowd behind not just to advance but to adapt,” she said. The group tore down tarp to protect themselves and climbed up exposed inauguration state scaffolding to flank officers.
Within five minutes, at 1:55 p.m., a police officer used a baton to strike a person who stole an officer’s shield, and a rioter responded with bear spray. By 2:06 p.m., the mob flanked police from below and from the side. Three minutes later, rioters shoved through the line of officers, breaching the building at 2:12 p.m., video exhibits showed. | null | null | null | null | null |
FILE - Michael Gableman delivers remarks to members of the Wisconsin Assembly elections committee at the State Capitol in Madison, Wis., Tuesday, March 1, 2022. Wisconsin’s Republican Assembly speaker has signed a new contract with Michael Gableman, the former state Supreme Court justice he hired to investigate the 2020 election, Gableman’s attorney told a judge on Tuesday, March 8, 2021. (John Hart/Wisconsin State Journal via AP, File)
MADISON, Wis. — Wisconsin’s Republican Assembly speaker signed a new contract Tuesday with Michael Gableman, the former state Supreme Court justice he hired to investigate the 2020 election, extending his review for an unknown period and cost.
The news from Gableman’s attorney announced in court came just before a judge ordered the release of 700 pages of documents under the state’s open records law, which he said do not support conclusions made in Gableman’s latest report or that there has been much of an investigation at all.
Gableman released his latest report last week and told lawmakers then that he was in talks with Vos to extend his contract that had expired on Dec. 31. Gableman’s attorney James Bopp did not say in court how long the contract extension would last, if more taxpayer money would be paid to Gableman or if there were any limits on what Gableman’s investigation could cover going forward. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: Plowshares or swords?
A woman in a wheelchair is helped as thousands of Ukrainians flee the area of Irpin at a damaged bridge on the outskirts of Kyiv on March 7. (Heidi Levine for The Washington Post)
Regarding the March 7 news article “Amid rubble, Ukrainian teams hunt for evidence for possible war crimes”:
As the number of autocracies around the world is rising and that of democracies shrinking, we are witnessing a tragic struggle between a despotic regime and a nascent democracy. Interestingly, in 1835 the great political sociologist Alexis de Tocqueville predicted an ongoing struggle between American democracy and Russian despotism and outlined the essential differences between the two traditions. “America’s conquests are made with the plowshare, Russia’s with the sword,” he wrote at the end of the first volume of “Democracy in America.” The American “gives free scope to the unguided strength and common sense of individuals. [The Russian] concentrates the whole power of society in one man. One has freedom as the principal means of action; the other has servitude. Their point of departure is different and their paths diverse; nevertheless, each seems called by some secret desire of Providence one day to hold in its hands the destinies of half the world.”
We do not know if Ukraine or Russia will win. But I want to believe that participatory democracy, freedom of speech, conscience and the press, and inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are more moral, more humane and more powerful than the desperate tyrant’s sword.
Susan Dunn, Williamstown, Mass.
The March 5 news article “Biden struggles to elevate Americans’ views on economy” noted that “Biden officials on Friday cited the danger of higher prices at the gas pump as they weighed whether to ban U.S. purchases of Russian oil.” Democrats often criticize Republicans, and rightly so, for placing party above country on many important issues. The Biden administration should not expose itself to the same criticism over this issue. It is hard to imagine Americans accepting the purchase of products from Hitler’s Germany during World War II. Neither should we be buying products from Putin’s Russia today.
Robert F. Benson, Silver Spring
This is the moment when the United States should be actively setting up an initial evaluation procedure, an aviation shuttle and reception process to take in a fair percentage of the refugees from Ukraine, probably under temporary protected status. I believe volunteerism will bear the majority of the burden of support these people will need, but the U.S. government and Congress must initiate the process.
Allan Barlow, Washington
Hostility toward Russians in the United States merely earning a living is a shocking display of misguided prejudice [“In a very difficult spot,” Sports, March 5]. Russians living in the United States typically work for a living like the rest of us. They have nothing to do with the Putin-managed debacle in Ukraine. Whether it is a Russian NHL star on a payroll earning megadollars or an entry-level Russian worker in Queens, they deserve the same respect we would give to a Canadian hockey star and a young Russian worker.
This anti-Russian prejudice improperly extends the action in the international community banning Russian government-sponsored competitive events such as, most recent, gymnastics. If the Russian government is not directly or indirectly involved, let’s move on.
Jack Lahr, Annapolis
Sorry, hockey fans! The National Hockey League and team owners must follow the example of the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, the Munich Philharmonic and other cultural organizations. This is no less than a war about the survival of civilized life. It is also uniquely Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war. Statements such as “I’m against all wars” won’t do.
Russian hockey players must expressly disavow all support for Mr. Putin. If not, even the greatest hockey athlete of all time must be sent home.
David Falk, Washington | null | null | null | null | null |
Below are charts of weekly gas prices (top left), spot prices for Brent crude oil (top right), weekly gasoline imports and production (bottom left) and weekly crude oil production and imports (bottom right). Brent crude oil is produced and traded in northern Europe.
What this shows is that domestic gas prices are driven largely by international oil prices,because the American oil industry is intertwined with the global marketplace. | null | null | null | null | null |
The Washington Post’s Emily Giambalvo wins U.S. Basketball Writers Association’s Jim O’Connell Award
The U.S. Basketball Writers Association has named Washington Post reporter Emily Giambalvo winner of this year’s Jim O’Connell Award for her coverage of University of Maryland men’s basketball.
The award is presented annually in honor of the late Associated Press national college basketball writer to a reporter who demonstrates excellence in beat writing. The board of voters, comprised of Emily’s college basketball journalist peers, recognized Emily for “her professionalism, dedication, accuracy, passion, proficiency and outstanding storytelling on the Maryland basketball beat.”
The U.S. Basketball Writers Association also recognized Emily as a Rising Star nominee, which annually honors a college basketball reporter younger than 30. | null | null | null | null | null |
Three destinations — including two that had kept coronavirus at bay for most of the pandemic — moved into the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s highest warning level for travel on Monday.
Americans should avoid traveling to New Zealand, Hong Kong and Thailand because of very high levels of covid-19, the public health agency said in an update that placed the destinations into the “Level 4” category. All three had most recently been categorized as “Level 3,″ with high levels of the virus.
New Zealand and Hong Kong have both kept strict travel restrictions in place throughout the pandemic, even as other popular countries have reopened to the world with vaccination and testing rules. But new cases in both destinations are soaring, despite largely remaining off limits to foreign travelers. | null | null | null | null | null |
At 2:09 p.m., members of that crowd breached police lines and broke into the building, Berkower said. Reffitt’s “decision to step forward and take on police officers allowed the crowd behind not just to advance but to adapt,” she said. The group tore down tarp to protect themselves and climbed up exposed inauguration stage scaffolding to flank officers.
Within five minutes, at 1:55 p.m., a police officer used a baton to strike a person who stole an officer’s shield, and a rioter responded with bear spray. By 2:06 p.m., the mob flanked police from the side as well as confronting them from below. Three minutes later, rioters shoved through the line of officers, breaching the building at 2:12 p.m., video exhibits showed. | null | null | null | null | null |
While the governor said the corridor stemmed from an agreement between Ukraine and Russia, he warned that there was still a “very high risk of provocation,” and he urged people to evaluate the risks of leaving for themselves. Dozens of buses had reached Poltava by egenin
Mikhail Mizintsev, the head of the Russian National Defense Control Center, blamed Ukraine for the failure of evacuations Tuesday. He accused Ukrainian authorities of confirming only the route out of Sumy while rejecting others proposed by Russia. | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: The Syrian White Helmets are ready to help Ukraine
Members of the Syrian Civil Defense force, known as the White Helmets, search for victims under the rubble of a building hit by an airstrike, in Ariha, Syria, on July 12, 2019. (Syrian Civil Defense White Helmets/AP) (Uncredited/AP)
As Russian President Vladimir Putin expands his murderous attacks on civilians across Ukraine, regular citizens are becoming front-line troops. Syrians, who have been facing Russian military attacks for seven years, are ready to help Ukrainians organize their first responders. Ukrainians will need all the help they can get to save as many innocent lives as possible in what could be a long struggle.
Since 2015, when Putin dispatched his troops to Syria to help President Bashar al-Assad maintain his hold on power, the Russian military has been attacking civilians in opposition-held areas, reportedly committing war crimes on a regular basis by targeting hospitals, schools and critical infrastructure. Those tactics are now being used in several Ukrainian cities, complete with attacks on fleeing families and credible reports of illegal weapons such as cluster bombs. Last week, the International Criminal Court said it would “immediately proceed” with an investigation into alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine.
The Syrian Civil Defense force, known as the White Helmets, has been working to rescue, evacuate and give emergency care to civilians under attack since 2014. The all-volunteer force says it has saved more than 100,000 civilian lives and that at least 252 of its members have been killed in the process. Now, the White Helmets are turning their attention to Putin’s latest victims.
The White Helmets are preparing a series of videos to help Ukrainian civilians learn civil defense tasks, such as how to handle unexploded rockets or how best to evacuate a building under attack. They are also preparing lists of supplies and equipment Ukrainian rescue and evacuation teams will need. They’re even ready to send in staff.
Meanwhile, Ukrainians can learn from the White Helmets’ experience. Saleh recommends, for example, that the Ukrainians organize their civil defense forces inside each city by separating them into small teams of four or five people, dispersed geographically with small, quick vehicles that can easily speed to an attack site. Don’t establish any large or permanent headquarters, he warned, because they, too, will become targets for Russian bombs.
Short-range walkie-talkies are best for communications, he said, rather than cellular or Internet communications, which can be tracked by the Russians and might not work in an attack zone anyway. Also, some team members should be deployed to monitor the skies for planes, because that’s often a better early warning system than radars or sirens.
Understanding the Russian military’s cruel tactics can also save lives, Saleh said. For example, the Russian air force is notorious for what are called “double tap” strikes. Russian planes attack civilians, wait for first responders to arrive and then attack the first responders.
“One thing that we learned is, after the initial attack, you’ve got about seven to nine minutes, tops, to be able to do anything in that area, before they can hit it again,” Saleh said. “So, those seven to nine minutes are really important.”
The Ukrainians should establish small medical outposts around the city that can handle minor injuries and take the pressure off larger hospitals, Saleh said. But keep those secret and move them often, he warned, or they will be targeted by the Russian military as well.
Despite being widely recognized in the West for their heroism and bravery, the White Helmets have been the constant target of a massive disinformation campaign by the Russian government and the Assad regime, falsely accusing them of being terrorists. Saleh said Putin hates them not just because they save lives, but because they document Russian war crimes in the process.
“The GoPro camera is the best way to fight Russian disinformation,” he said. “Remain truthful. Report the reality on the ground. Because at the end of the day, the facts are the facts.”
There are some things the Syrians have learned not to do. Do not give GPS locations of medical facilities to the United Nations, which may claim it needs the information to keep them safe. The Russians will use that information to target them. Never let Moscow have any say or control over how humanitarian aid is distributed, even when it’s a U.N. program. The Kremlin will use that power to starve out civilian populations, as it is doing in Syria now.
So how do you persuade thousands of people to put their own lives on the line to help others? “There is no greater honor than doing this work,” Saleh told me, adding that it’s the duty and privilege of the rescue workers to save people who represent the future of their country.
Even though some Syrians are reportedly being recruited to fight for Russia in Ukraine, the vast majority of Syrians are ready to help Ukrainians fight the Russian invaders, he said. Ukrainians are showing impressive strength and bravery. But there’s still a long way to go.
“For the last seven years, the Syrian people have stood up to Russia and have yet to be defeated. So we believe the Ukrainians can also resist for a very long time," Saleh said. "At the end of the day, it is the will of the citizens that is the strongest weapon, even against the mightiest militaries in the world.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Three destinations — including two that had kept the coronavirus at bay for most of the pandemic — moved into the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s highest warning level for travel on Monday.
Americans should avoid traveling to New Zealand, Hong Kong and Thailand because of very high levels of covid-19, the public health agency said in an update that placed the destinations into the “Level 4” category. All three had most recently been categorized as “Level 3,” with high levels of the virus.
New Zealand and Hong Kong have both kept strict travel restrictions in place throughout the pandemic, even as other popular destinations have reopened to the world with vaccination and testing rules. But new cases in both countries are soaring, despite their largely remaining off limits to foreign travelers. | null | null | null | null | null |
March 8 marks International Women’s Day, a time to honor, encourage and celebrate the vital role of women, their specific achievements and contributions now and through history. The day has been celebrated for more than a century, starting with campaigns for women’s rights to work, vote, to hold public office and end discrimination.
Previously, we honored the influence and significant contributions of Joanna Simpson, Eunice Foot, June Bacon-Bercey, Suzanne Van Cooten, Fadji Zaouna Maina, and Mika Tosca. Here are six more women to add to this outstanding list. | null | null | null | null | null |
Shell says it will halt operations in Russia, apologizes for buying Russian...
A ‘Dancing With the Stars’ alum escaped Ukraine. Wracked by survivor’s guil...
In a tearful video post released by Slovakian authorities, his mother, Yulia Pisetskaya, said she was a widow and was unable to leave Zaporizhzhia because she was caring for her mother, who could not move on her own.
UNICEF and the U.N. refugee agency are urging neighboring countries to quickly identify and register unaccompanied and separated children fleeing Ukraine because those without parental care are at “heightened risk of violence, abuse and exploitation.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Lumen became the second top carrier to make such a move in recent days, following Friday’s announcement by Cogent Communications. Taken together these moves are likely to make it harder for Russians to gain access to international services, such as news sites and social media based in the West, said telecommunications experts. Access to internal networks within Russia would not be affected. | null | null | null | null | null |
Jayden Gardner (1) and Virginia and Justyn Mutts (25) and Virginia Tech each need a deep ACC tournament run to bolster their NCAA tournament chances. (Matt Gentry/The Roanoke Times/AP)
The Virginia and Virginia Tech men’s basketball teams face similar predicaments heading into this week’s ACC tournament, where by virtually all accounts each requires an extended stay to get back on steady ground for an NCAA tournament berth.
A dearth of signature wins combined with resume-damaging losses to the likes of James Madison have left the sixth-seeded Cavaliers (18-12, 12-8 ACC) in such a position three seasons removed from claiming the program’s first national championship. It’s the highest seed for the Cavaliers since they were also a No. 6 in 2017.
Virginia plays the winner of No. 11 seed Louisville and No. 14 Georgia Tech in the second round Wednesday night, with tip-off scheduled for 9:30 p.m., at Barclays Center in Brooklyn. It knocked off the Yellow Jackets on Feb. 12 during the regular season and beat the Cardinals on Saturday in their only meeting.
“I think it’s a little motivation,” said Cavaliers senior guard Kihei Clark, playing in his third ACC tournament after the coronavirus pandemic forced the 2020 installment to be scrapped. “The goal is to make the [NCAA] tournament, so we’ve -got to lock in and buckle down, and we’ve got to win four games.”
The No. 7 seed Hokies (19-12, 11-9), meantime, are in jeopardy of snapping a school-record run of four straight NCAA tournament appearances.
They open the ACC tournament Wednesday night against the winner of No. 10 Clemson and No. 15 North Carolina State in their second visit of the season to Barclays Center. Virginia Tech played in a tournament there over Thanksgiving, losing to Memphis and Xavier.
The Hokies, who have won nine of 11 entering this week, split with the Wolfpack during the regular season and dropped their only meeting against the Tigers, 63-59, in Saturday’s regular season finale in Clemson, S.C.
“We didn’t do ourselves any favors on Saturday,” Virginia Tech Coach Mike Young said. “I haven’t talked to [the players] about [making the NCAA tournament]. They’re smart people. I have done this now for 20 years. It’s always the same thing, winning a game. I’ve always thought if you start looking down the road, it doesn’t work out very well for me.”
A glaring absence of quality victories this season nonetheless leaves the Hokies with much work to do in New York. Their best win, for instance, based on the NCAA Net Rankings came against Miami, 71-70, Feb. 26 in Coral Gables, Fla.
Virginia Tech, which last season lost to North Carolina, 81-73, in the ACC tournament quarterfinals, is 37th in the Net Rankings but 1-5 against Quadrant 1 opponents, another metric considered when awarding at-large berths.
“I think our mind-set is this is a new season,” Virginia Tech junior guard Hunter Cattoor said. “You get into postseason play, and whatever happened in the regular season before kind of doesn’t matter now. Everyone starts 0-0, and just try to go out there and win the ACC tournament.”
An intriguing component to this year’s bracket is Virginia and Virginia Tech potentially meeting in the semifinals. The Cavaliers would need to beat No. 3 seed North Carolina in the quarterfinals to do so while the Hokies would need to upset second-seeded Notre Dame.
The bitter rivals separated by 150 miles split the regular season series.
“I’ve had teams I’ve felt worse about that went on and did really cool things,” said Young, who directed Wofford to five NCAA tournament appearances before arriving at Virginia Tech in 2019. “I’ve had teams that were playing really well, and hey, that’s the tournament. You play poorly, and that other team will get you.”
The Hokies did end Virginia’s four-game winning streak, its longest this season in the ACC, with a 62-53 triumph Feb. 14 at Cassell Coliseum in Blacksburg behind 24 points, eight rebounds and four blocks from forward Keve Aluma, who on Monday was named second-team all-ACC.
One week before that game, the Cavaliers had made strides in boosting their NCAA tournament credentials by beating Duke, 69-68, at Cameron Indoor Stadium on sophomore guard Reece Beekman’s three-pointer with 1.1 seconds to play.
It marked only the second victory for Virginia (77 in the Net Rankings) at the storied venue since 1995 and the second of three Quadrant 1 wins this season.
Its most recent Quadrant 1 win was Feb. 19 against the Hurricanes, 74-71, on the road thanks to 23 points, seven rebounds and three blocks from forward Jayden Gardner, selected third-team all-ACC.
But consecutive losses at home to Duke, 65-61, and Florida State, 64-63, on a three-pointer at the buzzer blunted what little progress the Cavaliers had gained toward burnishing their NCAA tournament standing.
“Who knows exactly what it would take for you to qualify for an NCAA tournament,” Virginia Coach Tony Bennett said. “It’s just getting ready to play and being sharp. Nothing changes. I think it’s just kind of been understanding that there’s opportunity out there, and you go after it.”
The Cavaliers have won a pair of ACC tournament titles under Bennett, the last in 2018 at Barclays Center. Last season as the No. 1 seed they stunned Syracuse, 72-69, at the buzzer in the quarterfinals on Beekman’s three-pointer but withdrew the next day because of a positive coronavirus test by a Virginia player.
Beekman and Clark are the only starters back from that team. Two of the Cavaliers’ starters this season, Gardner and guard Armaan Franklin, are playing in their first ACC tournament. Gardner is a senior transfer from East Carolina, and Franklin, a junior, transferred from Indiana.
“There’s always an excitement when you get into the postseason, the regular season finishes, and yeah it’s been awhile since it’s more than about [NCAA tournament] seeding for us,” Bennett said. “Our guys finished with a 12-8 record [in the ACC], and they improved from the beginning of the season to the end, and now the key is to be as ready as you can.” | null | null | null | null | null |
The actual results, according to Metzl, were an increase in White deaths because of poor health care, suicide by gun and despair over being uneducated and unemployable.
“To realize how easily racism can be used to get people to vote against their best interest was an eye opener,” Jacinth Green said. “Of course, it’s not just conservative White people who suffer. The Black people who live around them in Southern red states also fared poorly. So, ending racism is still in everybody’s best interest.”
While living in Dakar, the family had visited Gorée Island, just off the coast of Senegal. Millions of enslaved Africans had been sent to labor until death in the Americas between the 15th and 19th centuries. The Greens had stood in a doorway that looked out over the Atlantic, where millions of Africans had jumped to their death rather than be forced to live and die as enslaved people.
Voting rights legislation was defeated. But activists are not. | null | null | null | null | null |
While the U.S. and the U.K. have announced plans to ban Russian oil imports, sanctions punishing Russia for its invasion of Ukraine have mostly not targeted its energy exports. Nevertheless, Russian crude is being shunned in what some traders are calling “self-sanctioning.” Because of confusion about what’s legally permitted, fears about additional import bans and concern about reputational damage, banks are pulling financing, buyers are holding back and tanker operators are reluctant to ship. The squeeze has started to have the same effect as an embargo. Since Russia is among the world’s top three exporters, it’s leaving a big hole, sending the price of oil rocketing.
With financial sanctions on Russia imposed by the U.S., U.K. and European Union, market participants are wary of taking trades with Russian counterparties, even if the energy market itself has been largely exempted. Many oil tanker owners -- often companies with relatively small compliance departments -- are taking a conservative approach until the full picture is clear. That’s a killer blow for Russian oil, a mainstay of the country’s economy, because almost two-thirds of its crude sales move by ship. Some traders are also mindful of negative publicity. Shell Plc’s purchase of Russia’s flagship Urals grade crude on March 4 was criticized by Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba on Twitter as smelling of “Ukrainian blood.” Four days later, the company said the decision was “wrong” and that it would make no new purchases of Russian oil and gas. BP Plc matched that commitment.
As buyers scrambled for alternative supplies during the initial days of the invasion in early March, the oil market went into a frenzy and prices rose sharply. More significantly, the market went into one of the biggest so-called backwardations on record -- where contracts for more immediate supply are priced much higher than those for later deliveries.
4. What are the U.S. and U.K. doing?
President Joe Biden said the U.S. will ban imports of Russian fossil fuels including oil. Crude from Russia made up about 3% of U.S. imports last year. The U.K. ban, to be phased in over the rest of the year, applies to all imports of Russian oil as well as refined products; the U.K. relies on Russia for about a third of its diesel imports. The U.K. measure won’t apply to natural gas.
There are several possible sources of additional supply. There are hopes that Iran could inject oil into the market, should world powers succeed in their efforts to secure a new agreement with the country limiting its nuclear program in exchange for the U.S. lifting sanctions that have restricted its oil exports. There is also spare capacity in the U.S., where producers have been limiting growth in recent years under pressure from investors. The U.S. has also been in talks with Venezuela, signaling a possible major shift in the U.S. approach to the socialist government. So far, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies have declined to accelerate their output. At meeting in early March, the group stuck with the modest 400,000 barrel-a-day production increase it had earlier scheduled for April.
(Updates with U.S. and U.K. bans on Russian oil imports) | null | null | null | null | null |
The rapper-singer-producer exceeded expectations for a euphoric D.C. crowd at Capital One Arena.
Tyler, the Creator performs at Capital One Arena. (Kyle Gustafson for The Washington Post) (Photo by Kyle Gustafson/For The Washington Post)
For years now, Tyler, the Creator has been disproving that adage that you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Since he burst onto the scene as a teenager in the late aughts, spewing slurs and courting controversy alongside his Odd Future crew, the rapper-producer-singer has been constantly reinventing himself. With each successive effort, he’s gotten closer to answering the question: What happens when an enfant terrible grows up?
On Monday night at the Capital One Arena, the portrait of an artist as a 31-year-old man came into focus, with Tyler’s beautiful, dark, twisted fantasies brought to life in front of an adoring, capacity crowd.
Touring in support of “Call Me If You Get Lost,” Tyler turned the 2021 album’s opulent lyrics into his setting, projecting an image of an Alpine retreat behind a two-story mansion set. Shortly before 10 p.m., he emerged from beneath the stage in a sea-foam-green 1939 Rolls-Royce Wraith. In case the house and the coupe were too subtle, he later rode a yacht through the crowd to a second stage.
But don’t be mistaken: this is conspicuous consumption as coping mechanism. Behind the bombast is a brokenhearted romantic. “Remembered I was rich, so I bought me some new emotions,” he later rapped, “And a new boat 'cause I’d rather cry in the ocean.”
“Call Me If You Get Lost” dominated the set list, but Tyler made plenty of time for highlights from his six-album discography, bounding between orchestral boom bap, sun-kissed soul trains and loungy tropicalia. The audience — a diverse crowd in laid-back looks that resembled the fashion-forward cast of “Euphoria” — ate up each lyric and gesture, singing along to every word.
Tyler, the Creator and Vince Staples show how fame doesn’t always lead to happiness
The crowd’s love wasn’t only for Tyler. Two of his opening acts, longtime compatriot Vince Staples and Colombian American singer Kali Uchis, received rave welcomes as well. Staples, another preternaturally talented Southern California rapper, made the most of a short set and solo setup, while Uchis — a rising star who was born in nearby Alexandria — dazzled with an eclectic array of songs and choreography that mixed her belly-dancer gyrations with the interpretive moves of her background dancers.
But the chameleonic Creator more than earned his headlining slot. Tyler’s lyrics formed a cataract of consonants that worked themselves into frenzied screeches or passionate croons. In a short-sleeved animal print button-down, black shorts, high socks, loafers and the type of ushanka he’s been rocking for years, he’s an unlikely style icon and an elastic dancer, even if his moves are a mix of robotic mannequin, cartoon cat, uncle-at-a-cookout and the King of Pop. He’s also a bit of a comedian, roasting audience members with ease and begging to be booed instead of serenaded for his birthday, which was on Sunday.
On “Call Me If You Get Lost,” Tyler anointed himself “Tyler Baudelaire,” after Charles Baudelaire, and it’s a surprisingly fitting moniker. The French poet once wrote that boredom or ennui was the worst fate one could experience — worse than many of the grim topics that Tyler used to rap about. With each passing year, Tyler continues to prove that he is many things, but he’s never boring.
Billie Eilish makes an arena feel intimate in her long-awaited D.C. return | null | null | null | null | null |
Woodgrove, Meridian girls and Loudoun County boys earn trips to Virginia state finals
The Wolverines, pictured after a region final win, are headed to the Class 5 championship. (Courtesy photo/Sam Mesecar) (Studio 1725 Photography/TWP)
At intermission of Monday night’s Class 5 girls’ basketball state semifinal game, with his team facing the largest halftime deficit it had seen all year, Woodgrove Coach Derek Fisher talked about belief.
“We haven’t made our run yet,” he told the Wolverines, who trailed Briar Woods by 13 points. “The shots have not started falling yet. You have to believe in what we do.”
The No. 10 Wolverines entered Monday with a perfect record and four previous wins over the Falcons. But this game provided a fresh challenge, as the team was without senior captain Ashley Steadman. She had gone out with an injury in the state quarterfinal game, meaning Woodgrove would have to find a way to win without the top scorer in program history.
“It took us about a half just to get used to playing without her,” Fisher said. “We didn’t want to be down 13 points, but I think we were expecting we might have to come from behind a little bit.”
In the second half, Woodgrove (29-0) successfully picked up the pace of the game and earned points in transition. By the fourth quarter, Briar Woods’ lead was down to four. In front of their home crowd, the Wolverines rode a wave of momentum to a 50-47 win.
The comeback win not only sent the Wolverines to their first state championship, it also kept the perfect season alive. But, even one win away from a 30-0 season, Fisher insists the team doesn’t think too much about the bigger picture.
“We are a very game-by-game team,” he said. “There’s no Woodgrove offense or Woodgrove defense; we’re always just thinking about what is the best answer for today’s game.”
The Wolverines will face Menchville at 6 p.m. Friday at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Siegel Center in Richmond.
VA championships
All games at Siegel Center
Madison vs. Osbourn Park
Hayfield vs. Battlefield
Woodgrove vs. Menchville
Meridian girls return to the Class 3 final
Before the Monday’s state semifinal game, Meridian girls’ coach Chris Carrico told his players there wasn’t a speech in the world he needed to give them to prepare them to take on Lakeland. They were ready and they had worked hard for months to be ready.
“And I got 15 heads nodding back at me,” Carrico said. “So that made me feel good going in.”
No. 17 Meridian (24-1) showed just how prepared they were in the first quarter when Lakeland scored the first basket of the game and the Mustangs responded with a scoring barrage. At the end of the first, Meridian led 22-2. The Falls Church school earned its spot in the Class 3 title game with a 65-33 victory.
Carrico was so confident in his Mustangs because he had seen them come through many times before. Almost the entire rotation of this year’s team won a state championship in last year’s condensed season.
There are plenty of changes from that season to this season, though — most obviously a shift in location for the big game. Whereas last year’s championships were played at local sites, the festivities are returning to VCU this season. That means more travel, a different schedule and a bigger stage for the Mustangs.
“The kids aren’t used to shooting against that backdrop, the court is 10 feet longer, things like that,” Carrico said. “There will be things that are different. So we just want to get down there as fast we can and get on the court.”
Meridian will take on Carroll County at 6 p.m. Thursday.
Loudoun County to make first championship appearance
On the boys’ side, the Class 4 semifinal featured the fifth meeting between neighboring rivals Loudoun County and Loudoun Valley.
Entering Monday night’s game, the series was as even as can be. Tied 2-2 with three of the games being determined by five points or fewer, it seemed a thriller was in store.
“It’s great for the county to showcase the talent of two teams that are equally matched,” Loudoun County coach Mark Alexander said. “And the crowd was tremendous, we sold out tickets in about an hour.”
After a slow start, Alexander’s team found its rhythm and hung around with the Vikings, using some late free throws to pull away for a 50-40 victory. The Captains (23-6) are headed to the first state championship game in program history, where they will face Richmond-area power Varina.
“We’re playing a very, very athletic and accomplished Varina team,” Alexander said. “People may not give us a chance, but if we’re disciplined and we take care of the ball — we’ll see. We’ll stick to our style and see what happens.”
The coach describes his team’s style as one centered around a high collective basketball I.Q. and good chemistry. The Vikings are always ready to help on defense and make a back cut on offense. They’ve been building this culture for years, waiting for a chance to test it at the highest level.
“We’re a homegrown team. We don’t play the transfer game,” Alexander said. “We’ve just been building for a long time and that’s what makes this so special for our guys.”
Loudoun County will play Varina at 2:30 p.m. Thursday. | null | null | null | null | null |
Transcript: International Women’s Day with Maria Ressa
MS. STEAD SELLERS: Hello, and welcome to Washington Post Live. I’m Frances Stead Sellers, a senior writer here at the Post.
My guest today is one of the Philippines' most prominent journalists and a global advocate for press freedom. She co-founded Rappler, the Philippines' leading digital media company. She joins me today to talk about her work and about threats to freedom of the press.
Maria Ressa, a very warm welcome back to Washington Post Live. Last time we spoke, you were not yet a Nobel Laureate, so congratulations.
MS. RESSA: Thank you, Frances. Thanks for having me back.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: We're just thrilled.
So I want to talk about a dark topic right away and move straight away to Ukraine. I'm seeing incredible examples of courage coming from the ground, including from my own colleagues. What's going right in our coverage of that conflict?
MS. RESSA: I think it's a reminder of the role journalists play and the bravery and the courage of the journalists who have gone in, and of course, it's a reminder of what's really at stake. These battle for facts isn't happening in the virtual world alone, and in many ways, this is what Russia's move, its invasion of Ukraine, has reminded all of us around the world.
Two big things, I think, have gone right. One is it has triggered a global reaction. It is not something that you can look away from. It can't go with a death by a thousand cuts, right? The world looked, acted. Business acted, and now we're looking at the tech platforms also acting. And I'm hoping out of the horrific events and the pictures that are coming out of there that we actually see some forward momentum against disinformation, which has led up to--in situations like this.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: Maria, you've talked often about this phrase "disinformation," and of course, it's key right now to what's happening in Russia. What concerns you most about the message ordinary people in Russia are receiving at the moment?
MS. RESSA: It's--well, just based on Putin's own statements and the new law that journalists--that have been put down against journalists, pushing foreign journalists out, and forcing local--the Russian journalists to choose, either to shut down or to take down coverage, right? They can't use the word "war" among all of these things and the kinds of penalties they have to face. So it is blatant. It isn't insidious in the same way it has happened on social media. This is a reorientation of reality. It is propaganda taken to the nth degree.
What do Russians want? How can they know what they want if they're not getting the right information, if they're not getting factual information? This splintering of reality is alarming and helps to justify exactly what Putin is doing.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: When you received the Nobel Peace Prize, you did so along with another very courageous journalist, Dmitry Muratov. Have you spoken to him? He's in Russia now, I believe, or last we heard from him, he was in Russia. Have you spoken to him in recent days?
MS. RESSA: I haven't, no, although I have seen some of his interviews where he said he was going to continue to use the word "war" banned by the Kremlin, also that he would print parts--he would print the stories in Ukrainian, you know, in the language of Ukraine.
I, you know--we're all waiting to hear where he is and what he will do.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: He said he would use those words and take the consequences. Talk to me a little bit from your own personal experience about the importance of individual words like that, the word "war," which, of course, is being banned in Russia, as you said.
MS. RESSA: You have to call a spade a spade. Anything beyond that moves reality, right? I mean, as journalists, we spend our careers learning how to shave the frills away and actually hone in, and so, even a word like "disinformation" and "misinformation"--this is one of those things that, you know, misinformation is not on purpose, right? Disinformation is on purpose, to manipulate you. So call a spade a spade. By changing that word, just getting rid of the word "war," you've already softened exactly what Russia is doing, what Putin has ordered. So, again, if you were to serve the public well, you called it what it is.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: We're also hearing about journalists fleeing Russia. Are you tracking that as well?
MS. RESSA: Some of my friends are there. I have friends who are Russians, and again, you know, it's not just the journalists who are fleeing. There are Russians who are uncertain of what is going to happen. The state inside Russia itself has ceased--but even before the sanctions, it will be worse moving forward. And I think that's--I guess part of what we're dealing with globally is it's not just the uncertainty that's outside but also inside Russia.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: So, over the weekend, I think TikTok suspended its operations. You talked to the role of social media companies. What do you want to see happen? And I want to understand as well the implications inside the country for suspension of services like this.
MS. RESSA: Look, I think you have to look at this in two different ways. The actual design of social media platforms has helped situations like this. For years now, we have seen the disinformation of the Kremlin seep into mainstream, but people begin to doubt, which is, you know, that word "disinformation" came from Russia, "dezinformatsiya." And to quote Yuri Andropov, the former KBG chair, he actually said that "dezinformatsiya" is like cocaine. You take it once or twice, and you're okay, but you take it all the time, you get addicted. It's like you're changed person. So I paraphrased him a little bit, but that's actually what's happened to the world. We've been fed with disinformation, but the actual platforms that deliver the news, the world's largest distribution, distribution platform for news is Facebook, right? These platforms, when they're designed to spread lies laced with anger and hate over facts--changes people, changes emergent human behavior, and so this is where you would lead. The lies that Putin has used have been seated into meta narratives that make people doubt exactly what the facts are. So this is a fundamental problem that every democracy around the world faces, and it's part of the reason why for the last few years now we demanded guardrails be put around social media platforms.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: Well, help me understand this a little bit more on a global and then on a personal level. So we've had the spreading of the global internet and understanding that we could get news everywhere around the world. Are we at a moment where it could fracture, as I have seen people posit?
MS. RESSA: It already has. I mean, if you think about it, the foundation of the internet today is essentially advertising. The advertising model that has atomized meaning, right, destroyed meaning down to the bare bones, and then it has also commodified news. This has made it harder for news organizations to actually--our revenue model, our business model is dead. Let me not even go there. This is the--these are the platforms that are used to attack the credibility of news organizations, necessary in times like this, right? So that's another--this is part of where journalists are now showing why our role is important.
The biggest problem is that the business model that has permeated the internet has distilled journalism to page views, and that means the entire incentive structure is built around this advertising model, The Washington Post, any news organization now. The money that you make it based on your page views. This is now the new thing, and how do you get those page views? The incentive structure of that is based on the algorithms of the social media platforms. What are they based on? What will keep people scrolling, and what will keep people scrolling? Lies laced with anger and hate. This is part of the reason as early as 2018, research has shown that we--that the design of the social media platforms have actually worked not just to fragment but to divide, to polarize, and to radicalize.
As early as January 2021 now, Oxford University's Computational Propaganda Research Project said that these cheap armies on social media have rolled back democracy in more than 80 countries around the world, and it's getting worse.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: Just to push back a little bit on that broad analysis, reputable media companies are putting enormous emphasis on the importance of conveying truth, fact checking truth and making sure that the information they disseminate around the world--and I would include The Washington Post--prominently is truthful.
MS. RESSA: Of course, but it doesn't matter in the sense of if your delivery platform actually allows lies to spread faster and further than facts, we can create all the content we want, but it won't get the delivery. This is why putting guardrails around that is not a freedom of speech issue, right? What's happening is we're being forced to talk about content where that's not where the problem is. It's technology. You move further upstream, and you have to look at the algorithms of amplification. Those algorithms are determined by, move further upstream, the business model, what Shoshana Zuboff calls "surveillance capitalism."
So what does this mean? It means that, you know, every single post you put on Facebook, on Twitter, this is all kind of sucked up by machine learning, and a model of you that knows you better than you know yourself is created and then pulled up by artificial intelligence into this surveillance capitalism model. Every single problem that we're dealing with on the internet today, whether that is content moderation, antitrust, user safety, or even--I mean, I'm just thinking, content moderation, user trust, anti-safety, data privacy. You put all of that in. This is where it begins. If we want to tackle these problems, they're not separate problems. They're all part of surveillance capitalism.
But then you look up here. The algorithms, which is essentially opinion in code, right, it's like taking an editor of The Washington Post and replicating that editor a million times, coding it in. That person, that opinion in code, then determines what gets distributed, and what gets the widest distribution? Whatever will keep you scrolling.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: Very nicely put. I love that, that phrase.
Just to take us back to Putin's strategy, I know the Committee to Protect Journalists said he was pushing us back into an information dark age. Do you see technology overcoming that? Is it going to help us overcome that period that he's pushing Russians into?
MS. RESSA: I think what's fundamental right now is that the design of these technology platforms needs to be revamped to allow facts, to allow a shared reality, right?
So I said this in the Nobel lecture. If you have no facts--and why do you not have facts? Because lies told a million times in the age of abundance become facts. That's what's called information operations or, in many nation states, information warfare.
When you have these lies coming bottom up--and this is the same methodology in the Philippines, in the Ukraine, in the United States, right? The meta narrative of "stop the steal" was seeded a year earlier before it came out of former President Trump's mouth. The same thing happens. Bottom up, exponential lies, top down from authority, and when you do that, you make a fact a lie. You make a lie a fact, right? So, without facts, you can't have truth. Without truth, you can't have trust. If you don't have these, you don't have a shared reality. You can't have democracy. That is--actually, forget democracy. We cannot get people together to solve any complex problem.
It's part of the reason now we can't solve COVID. Look at the disinformation. Both the EU and the United States have said that COVID disinformation has come out of many of the same places that have used disinformation for information operations, and you can't--I guess the last part is you do not know who to trust. So, until we fix this, then everything else becomes secondary.
In terms of what Putin has done, clamping down, these are the same problems that we have had all throughout, right? The world then can come together, but what will stop the world coming together is if it doesn't have the right information.
So, ironically, in the last few weeks, what we've seen is that social media, which Putin had controlled to many degrees--the Kremlin had the IRA and the GRU playing with this since 2014 in the Ukraine, right? Well, now people have taken that and are turning it against the Kremlin, and that's part of the reason you're seeing the information lockdown.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: So talk to me about who the arbiter is in this process. We know there are hard facts. We know there are lies on the other side. There is an area in the middle where there's judgment. There are questions of fairness, of showing things from different angles. Where does that happen on social media?
MS. RESSA: It's already happened. It's coded. It's already coded in, right? And then what--and this is part of the reason we want to look at the system, not at individual decisions of content. It's the system that's a flaw, right? The flaw is built in.
So that--those editorial decisions are done at scale, and they have--the research has shown this since 2018. They amplify lies more than facts. So that's the fundamental flaw, and it's not just lies that, you know, like, you know, the sky is red versus blue. This is lies that have high valence, like high arousal emotions. Essentially, it is amplifying the worst of human nature, inciting anger and hate. Is it any wonder that these issues of identity are tearing our countries apart? Those are the targets, the fracture lines of society.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: Maria, you run a news organization. You're watching what's going on in Ukraine. What's it like in your office right now? What's the discussion among your team?
MS. RESSA: You know, it's we're under attack. We remain under attack, and just a few minutes before we spoke, I just got word that, you know, an independent body, the Commission on Elections, which oversees our elections on May 9th. So we have presidential elections on May 9th. That this independent body essentially folded to political pressure by the solicitor general. We're going to be fighting this, and we'll continue to demand courage and independence from institutions, but here is the problem. The problems in the Ukraine are also being lived out in the Philippines, are also being lived out by journalists in other countries under attack, right?
Myanmar, where genocide has been enabled by these social media platforms, journalists there have had to flee. I've got friends who are, you know, outside on the border.
So what are we thinking? I guess when I saw this happen, it's glass half full, half empty, right? So the half empty part is there's war, and the entire world can get sucked in. We don't know what will happen, and then the reaction and how that's also made President Putin, how Putin has hunkered down, but then the upside, here's the upside. In many ways, the death by a thousand cuts of democracy that we have seen all around the world is now front and center, that now these problems will be addressed, and that will hopefully mean problems of disinformation, for example, will be addressed head on, that what the social media platforms do in Russia, in the Ukraine can be done in other countries around the world where journalists are under attack.
It's difficult to predict where the world will go, but that's the way I've felt for the last six years.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: Right. So I wanted to ask you, talk to me about the toll it takes on you and your team of being on the front line of this information war for so many years.
MS. RESSA: It's exhausting, but at the same time, you know that it's important to hold the line in this moment. We are not going to voluntarily give up our rights. We are not going to voluntarily give up our power. The Philippines has a constitution that's patterned after the United States. We have a Bill of Rights. So it feels now, more than ever, that it is important to actually make sure freedom of the press, freedom of expression, that these rights are exercised. We won't be intimidated.
I think the other part is that for the Philippines, it's an existential moment where we have presidential elections on May 9th. That's less than 65 days away, you know, and we're counting the days, and what we have done in the absence of any legislation that is going to hold back the tech, right, in the absence of that, what we've done is to try to figure out how civil society, media, and the law can work hand in hand to try to deal with this pandemic of lies.
You know, I've said that even as we are facing the coronavirus and this global pandemic, we're also in our information ecosystem facing a pandemic of lies, and as you played earlier, it is targeting women, to marginalize. It is hitting us far more than it is hitting the mainstream. So, you know, if you were marginalized before, it's even worse today, and gender disinformation has pushed many women out of journalism and of politics all around the world.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: I want to ask you much more about gender, the disinformation, but before I do so, just one quick question about--you referred to your own election coming up. Of course, we're in an election cycle almost always in the United States, but what needs to happen to ensure that those elections go forward in a free and fair way?
MS. RESSA: I think it starts with whether or not we have free will, whether social media, which I have called the "behavior modification system," allows us to exercise that. You cannot have integrity of elections if you don't have integrity of facts. If we debate the facts, how can we then have an entire system? That's the fundamental flaw.
So here's the problem. In this year, as we face all the elections coming up, right--from after the Philippines, you have elections in Hungary, in Kenya, in France, in Brazil, and Bolsonaro, you know--Bolsonaro was kind of off on the fringe, far right, until social media brought him into the mainstream. This was YouTube in that instance. And then, of course, the United States, many Americans think that, you know, what we are going through in the Philippines is happening out there, but I certainly hope that by now, after January 6th last year, you realize that the same thing is happening to you.
So what does that mean? We need to demand that guardrails be put in place by the social media platforms because if we have a virus of lies in our information ecosystem, we all get infected.
And then the second part is, you know, an awareness that civil society, that governments, that human rights groups, every--this is kind of what we're doing in the Philippines. Four layers that we put together with a data pipeline coming through, trying to get our communities together, that we need a new way of putting democracy into action, that you can't wait, right? When you're dealing with exponential lies, civil society, media, the law cannot wait for the normal pace of ingesting the lies, of fighting back the lies. It must move at the same pace. That's what we're trying to do, and apparently, I guess we're successful because we've been targeted by political forces again. So, yeah, we keep going.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: So talk to me again about this phrase "gender disinformation." You've been on the receiving end. Tell me about the significance in terms of driving women out of positions and what the everyday pressures can be like.
MS. RESSA: So the International Center for Journalists working with UNESCO last year did a big data study of the attacks against me. They went over almost 400,000, so almost half a million attacks, right? And out of that big data case study, what they found was that 60 percent of the attacks against me were meant to tear down my credibility, so really trust is the first target, right, tear down my credibility.
The other 40 percent was meant to tear down my spirit. It was abusive. It was dehumanizing. It would take every part and just tear it apart. You have to get used to this. There were points when I was getting at least 90--nine zero---hate messages per hour. What's happening to me is not unique, right? Many women journalists all around the world feel this, and any targeted--anyone who is standing up to power can get targeted on social media in the same way.
Rana Ayyub--I think The Washington Post just ran kind of the 10--you know, the 10 press freedom issues right now, and Rana Ayyub, who's in India, is facing the same kind of horrific situation that I'm--that I have faced and continue to face in the Philippines.
What does that do to women journalists? Many I've spoken with say they opt out, that it's just not worth it, but others decide to fight it out. Looking for systemic solutions, we don't have them yet, but in the meantime, what we tried to do is, you know, a three-prong approach in Rappler. It's tech, journalism, and community. With tech, we try to fight back with tech. We built our own tech. We demand that guardrails be put. Right now--a few years ago, if you asked me whether I believed in legislation, I would have said no. Now I know it is imperative.
The second is we need to strengthen journalism, and that's part of the reason I became a co-chair of the International Fund for Public Interest Media, which is to try to help independent journalism survive. In the United States, you know, you have enough philanthropic groups at least that can kind of plug a finger in the dam, and you have groups like The Washington Post and the large organizations that are able to then turn--redo revenue into a business model.
I think the third part is the most important part, and we don't talk about it enough as journalists. It is community. Rappler's--Rappler's elevator pitch in 2012 is that we build communities of action, and the food we feed our communities is journalism. Well, now more than ever, these communities of action are important, and for our presidential elections, we are mobilizing them to protect the facts because this is--you know, when you have--the frontrunner in the Philippine presidential elections is Ferdinand Marcos Jr. So 36 years after the Marcos family was ousted in a People Power revolt, that helped trigger peaceful democracy movements all around the world, his son, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., is now poised, is now the frontrunner in our presidential elections. And hand in hand with that were the networks of disinformation that essentially revamped history in front of our eyes. Marcos, who was kicked out in People Power, was actually a hero. So these are narratives that Filipinos believe, and they will have an impact in our elections.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: Maria, it's International Women's Day. I have two questions about--what more do we need to do to make sure that women journalists can carry on working and extend that to other marginalized communities as well? And then, secondly, what's your message on International Women's Day to women journalists around the world?
MS. RESSA: I think we need to acknowledge what women journalists have gone through, and I've certainly seen some progress, although not enough. You know, it's if you're in the newsroom and you're getting attacked, you are not going to be able to ignore it, and you're not going to be able to do this on your own.
So one of the things that we did early on in Rappler in October of 2016 was to actually, A, offer counseling to the women who were under attack, because this was both social media and our reporters, and then, secondly, to actually create a system where we were able to collectively fight back against these attacks, because in the age of abundance, information abundance, a powerful--the old powerful news organizations can't afford to just ignore these attacks, because a lie seated said a million times becomes a fact. So I think that's the first.
I think the second one is to kind of do more stories that show these social impacts. So much of the stories on tech was about--for a very long time about its power and how wondrous it is. We're beyond that now. We're now in Aldous Huxley's--you know, Huxley's, his "Brave New World," and social media has kind of become like soma. So we need to kind of break through and help, and there's been a lot of stuff that you have done that news organizations are now doing but still not enough. We need to rate--to sound the alarm and demand protection for the users, for all of us, right? This is kind of like creating the Better Business Bureau for our minds.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: A Better Business Bureau for our minds, what a great note to finish on.
Maria Ressa, thank you so much for joining me today at Washington Post Live.
MS. RESSA: Thanks for having me.
MS. STEAD SELLERS: Thank you also for joining us. If you would like to see more of our programming, please go to WashingtonPostLive.com. As always, I’m Frances Stead Sellers. Thank you. | null | null | null | null | null |
March 8 marks International Women’s Day, a time to honor, encourage and celebrate the vital role of women, their specific achievements and contributions now and through history. The day has been celebrated for more than a century, starting with campaigns for women’s rights to work, vote, hold public office and end discrimination.
Previously, we honored the influence and significant contributions of Joanne Simpson, Eunice Foot, June Bacon-Bercey, Suzanne Van Cooten, Fadji Zaouna Maina, and Mika Tosca. Here are six more women to add to this outstanding list. | null | null | null | null | null |
In 1922, author W.L. George imagined what life would be like in 2022. He came pretty darn close.
The British Airways livery on the tail fins of passenger aircraft at London's Heathrow Airport last month. W.L. George wrote in 1922: "It could take as little as eight hours" to fly between New York and London in 2022. (Chris J. Ratcliffe/Bloomberg)
As I gazed at the blurry scan of the 100-year-old newspaper page on my computer, I started to wonder if what I saw was some kind of joke: a hack of the newspaper archives or a mind game from a puckish time traveler.
“Novelist Visions World of Year 2022,” read the headline on the May 7, 1922, article in the Memphis Commercial Appeal. It was above the sort of story editors like to assign and readers like to read: predictions of the future.
But this one was … different. English writer W.L. George had gotten nearly all of it right, from how long it would take an airplane to fly between New York and London in 2022 (“It could take as little as eight hours,” George wrote), to a decreasing reliance on coal as a fuel (“a great deal of power will be obtained from radium … while it may also be that atomic energy will be harnessed”); from legalized birth control to motion pictures that had sound — and color!
“When one can not prophesy, one may guess,” George wrote, “especially if one is sure of being out of the way when the reckoning comes. Therefore it is without anxiety that I suggest a picture of this world a hundred years hence.”
George was 40 when he wrote his futurecast. I’d never heard of him before. He published more than two dozen books but didn’t attain the lasting fame of H.G. Wells or George Bernard Shaw. He died in 1926, just four years after his predictions were published.
Silver Spring reader Michael Ravnitzky pointed me toward George’s 1922 essay, originally published by the New York Herald. It appeared in newspapers across the country, sometimes illustrated with drawings possibly meant to convey the outlandishness of the prediction: a female politician orating in Congress, for example.
George felt the world wouldn’t change as much between 1922 and 2022 as it had between 1822 and 1922. “[The] world today would surprise President Jefferson much more, I suspect, than the world of 2022 would surprise the little girl who sells candies at Grand Central Station. For Jefferson knew nothing of railroads, telephones, automobiles, aeroplanes, gramophones, movies, radium, etc.”
He began with technology. Planes would replace both steamships and long-distance trains. Trucks would probably replace freight trains. Communications technologies such as the telephone would go “wireless.” Wrote George: “the people of the year 2022 will probably never see a wire outlined against the sky.”
Improvements in the movies — in “natural colors,” with actors speaking “with ordinary voices” — would threaten stage plays.
George wasn’t right about everything. He thought most people in 2022 would opt for “synthetic” food in the form of pills. And he believed houses would be easier to clean, not because of robotic vacuum cleaners, but because of reduced coal smoke.
Also, he wrote, the floors and walls will be made of compressed papier-mâché, bound with brass or taping along the edge.
Rather than scrub the floor or wall, homeowners of the future would simply unscrew the brass and peel off the dirty paper, revealing the clean layer below.
George expected the family to change, with the state taking on many aspects of child-rearing. An avowed feminist, George said societal improvement would be dependent on how women were treated.
“It is practically certain that in 2022 nearly all women will have discarded that idea that they are primarily ‘makers of men,’” he wrote. “Most fit women will then be following an individual career. … The year 2022 will probably see a large number of women in Congress, a great many on the judicial bench, many in civil service posts and perhaps some in the President’s Cabinet.”
But progress would be slow, he cautioned, writing “a brief hundred years will not wipe out the effects on women of 30,000 years of slavery.”
Nations would still go to war, but maybe less frequently and in a more limited fashion.
“I suspect that those wars to come will be made horrible beyond my conception by new poison gases, inextinguishable flames and lightproof smoke clouds,” he wrote. “In those wars, the airplane bomb will seem as out of date as is today the hatchet.”
If George was wrong in places, it was, I think, because he was too optimistic. He believed the United States would be more “settled” in 2022. The zeal that drove the pioneers across the continent would be exhausted. Instead of scrapping for wealth, Americans would put that energy toward producing art and literature.
He predicted “a great liberalism of mind” and a sort of national homogeneity. “The American from Key West and American from Seattle will be much the same kind of man,” he wrote.
There was a tinge of nostalgia in George’s prose, a nostalgia for a future he would not know. “The sad thing about discovery,” he wrote, “is that it works toward its own extinction, and that the more we discover the less there is left.”
I’m happy to have discovered W.L. George. | null | null | null | null | null |
Members of Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Force help to evacuate the elderly that fled to safety in Irpin, Ukraine, on March 8, 2022. (Heidi Levine for The Washington Post)
IRPIN, Ukraine — As thousands flee the besieged Kyiv suburb Irpin, allegations are emerging of Russian forces looting, hiding military equipment in residential areas, deploying snipers and cutting water and power as they seek use the area as potential launchpad to invade the capital.
The Russians have cut off electricity, gas, and water to the city, the residents claim, which could violate international humanitarian laws that ban destroying objects during wartime that are vital to the survival of civilians.
Andrii Kolesnyk, 45, who runs at guesthouse in Irpin, said about 15 troops entered their property late last week. Then they parked five military vehicles outside and stayed overnight, “using me and my guest as a [human] shield,” he said.
“We are appalled by Russia’s brutal tactics and the rising number of innocent civilians who have been killed in Russian strikes, which have reportedly hit schools, hospitals, kindergartens, an orphanage, residential buildings, and those fleeing through humanitarian corridors,” a spokesman for National Security Council said in an email to The Washington Post. “We will support accountability using every tool available, including criminal prosecutions where appropriate.” | null | null | null | null | null |
The newspaper said that it hopes to return editorial staffers to the country at some point.
The New York Times announced it is removing its editorial staff from Russia. (Mark Lennihan/AP)
The New York Times on Tuesday became the first major American news organization to announce it will pull its staff out of Russia in response to the country’s increasing crackdown on journalism, including a new law against “fake” news that threatens those who accurately refer to the invasion of Ukraine as an “invasion” — rather than a “special military operation” — with a prison sentence of up to 15 years.
“For the safety and security of our editorial staff working in the region, we are moving them out of the country for now,” Nicole Taylor, spokeswoman for the Times, told The Washington Post. “We look forward to them returning as soon as possible while we monitor the application of the new law.”
Meanwhile, the BBC took a step in the opposite direction, saying Tuesday it would resume reporting from Russia after a four-day hiatus.
The BBC was one of several media organizations that announced Friday they would cease reporting and broadcasting from the country, or in the country, but no others have yet said they will remove all editorial personnel.
Bloomberg News editor in chief John Micklethwait said the global news organization would “temporarily suspend our newsgathering inside Russia,” arguing that the changed criminal code “makes it impossible to continue any semblance of normal journalism inside the country.” He said that Bloomberg News “will obviously continue to support our staff in the country, even if for now they can no longer do their jobs there.” (The news organization has 27 reporters, editors and translators based in Russia.)
A Post spokeswoman, Shani George, said on Saturday that the newspaper is “continuing to seek clarity about whether Russia’s new restrictions will apply to international news organizations,” although in the meantime it is removing bylines and datelines from specific stories as a means of protecting Russia-based contributors. “We want to be sure that our Moscow-based correspondents are not held responsible for material that is produced from beyond Russia,” she added.
The BBC issued a statement Tuesday saying that it would resume broadcasting from Russia again later in the day. “We will tell this crucial part of the story independently and impartially, adhering to the BBC’s strict editorial standards,” the statement said. “The safety of our staff in Russia remains our number one priority.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Sen. Janet Howell (D-Fairfax), chair of the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee, and Del. Barry D. Knight (R-Virginia Beach) chair of the House Appropriations Committee, confer outside the Senate chamber at the Capitol in Richmond on Feb. 25. (Bob Brown/Richmond Times-Dispatch/AP)
A previous photo caption incorrectly identified Virginia Beach Del. Barry D. Knight's political party. He is a Republican. The caption has been corrected. | null | null | null | null | null |
Students reenter school after a walkout in protest of the Montgomery County High School system's covid-19 safety response outside of Gaithersburg High School in Gaithersburg, MD on January 21, 2022. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
“This board would like to remind our community that the decision to wear or remove a mask is an individual and very personal one," Montgomery County Board of Education President Brenda said ahead of the vote. Wolff called for community members to treat teachers, staffers and students with respect who may choose to continue to wear a mask.
As all school board members raised their hands to vote in favor of dropping the mask requirement, a parent in the audience quietly cheered, “Yes!"
In voting, board members noted new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that doesn’t require universal masking in school settings. The CDC’s new public health guidance eases masking for most Americans, and recommends schools to use universal masking only in communities with high levels of covid-19. In areas with low levels of the virus, which include most of the D.C. metro area, masks can be removed indoors, including in schools.
The Montgomery County Education Association — a union which represents roughly 14,000 classroom teachers and school staffers — said ahead of the vote that it would support a measure from the school system that followed CDC and local and state health authorities’ guidance.
Board member Lynne Harris turned to the audience at the end of public testimony and told them she was “incredibly disappointed" with how they acted during the public comment session.
In the past month, Montgomery County’s Board of Education condemned online harassment that targeted the student member of the board, Hana O’Looney. They wrote that individuals online were using “vile language and personal attacks” that were “clearly harmful attempts at cyberbullying.” O’Looney previously voiced at a board meeting that she was in favor of keeping a mask requirement in place, after meeting with many students about the issue.
Two public school systems in Maryland have kept their requirements as of Tuesday — Prince George’s County and Baltimore City. Prince George’s County has previously indicated it plans to lift its mandate after it reaches an 80 percent vaccination rate in the county. Baltimore City will lift their masking requirement on March 14. | null | null | null | null | null |
Ed DeChellis and the Navy men's basketball team are a win from the NCAA tournament. (Geoff Burke/USA Today Sports)
It was more than an hour after Navy outlasted Boston University in overtime on Sunday in a wildly entertaining Patriot League semifinal. The Midshipmen had survived two late, deep three-pointers by the Terriers’ Javante McCoy that extended the game — and had reached the Patriot League championship game for the first time since 2001.
All those thoughts ricocheted through Navy Coach Ed DeChellis’s mind as he walked in circles around a now-empty empty Alumni Hall. He remembered the pride he felt as he and his players stood in front of the delirious Brigade of Midshipmen at game’s end and sang “Navy Blue and Gold,” the alma mater.
He also remembered the stress and felt the exhaustion.
“My doctor insists I have to keep my sugar levels down,” he said. “Stress sends the number up. It was way up after that game.”
DeChellis is 63 and has been dealing with health issues since Sept. 29, 2020. On that morning, he and Navy strength coach Brandon Spayd were walking into Navy’s practice facility when DeChellis suddenly felt weak and dizzy. His left leg and his right arm weren’t working.
“Honestly, I thought I was having a heart attack,” he said.
Spayd looked at him and said, “Coach, you look awful.”
A moment later, DeChellis was on the ground and Spayd was calling 911. It wasn’t a heart attack, but a brain bleed. While DeChellis was in the hospital, doctors told him he was diabetic and had high blood pressure.
Other than that …
Even so, by the time Navy opened that season against George Washington, DeChellis was back on the bench, looking considerably thinner and with a different lifestyle. His diet changed and so did his habits. If he felt stressed, he had to walk until he got his blood sugar number went down. Unfortunately, a coach can’t go for a walk in the middle of a tight game.
“I told my players and my staff, ‘You can’t kill me,’” he said with a laugh. “I’m from Western Pennsylvania and we can’t be killed. It probably helped that we had a really good team.”
The Mids went 15-2 in that covid-shortened regular season and 12-1 in the Patriot League to secure the top seed in the tournament for the first time since 1998 — the last time they reached the NCAA tournament. With home-court advantage locked in, they were upset in the quarterfinals by ninth-seeded Loyola of Maryland. DeChellis did a lot of walking after that game.
“That was really a tough one,” he said. “We had a good team, we’d played well all season to earn home court and then we couldn’t get past the first game. It hurt — it hurt us all. We had several guys in the dorm [because of] contact tracing and John Carter played with the flu. Didn’t matter, no excuses. We lost.”
In a normal season, Navy would have gotten an NIT bid as a regular season conference champion. But in that covid-world, the NIT was cut from 32 teams to 16 and there were no automatic bids. Since ESPN has a huge influence on the bracket, the committee took a 13-10 ACC team (North Carolina State) and a 15-14 SEC team (Mississippi State) — but not Navy. Why invite a group of future Naval and Marine Corps officers who would love the chance to compete when you can take power conference teams that might not even want to be there?
“The only good thing was that I think the Loyola loss has really played a role in what we’ve accomplished this season,” DeChellis said. “Sometimes, when we’re in tight spots like Sunday, I remind the guys that this is what all the work has been for. This is what the 6 a.m. runs [were for]; the work in the weight room; the grind of practice, all the hours you spend on the driveway — all of it. They get it.”
That was DeChellis’s message early Sunday evening after McCoy’s three-pointer with four seconds left turned what had looked like a Navy win into a game that needed five extra minutes to decide. “I told them this is where mental toughness comes into play,” he said. “We’ve got five minutes to get to a championship game. Let’s go and do it.”
They did it, and now they’ll play at Colgate, where a win will be anything but easy: The Mids had to again make the dreary 357-mile bus trip to Hamilton, N.Y. to face the Raiders, who won the regular season by four games, have won 14 straight and have been the league’s dominant team for five seasons.
DeChellis and Colgate’s Matt Langel faced similar rebuilding jobs when each arrived at their current school in the spring of 2011. It took Langel six years to turn Colgate around — the Raiders were 71-117 in that span — but once he got things going, the program took off. The Raiders will be playing in their fifth straight Patriot League final on Wednesday and have been to two of the past three NCAA tournaments.
Navy was even worse than Colgate when DeChellis arrived. The Midshipmen were 3-26 in his first season, including 0-14 in the Patriot League. It’s been a long, steep climb since then.
“I realized we weren’t likely to get anyone who was considered a great player coming out of high school,” DeChellis said. “We had to recruit good players who could also deal with being Midshipmen. I called it the “Noah’s Ark” approach. We had to try to get two guys at every position. This place can wear you down. We needed depth.”
The best player DeChellis recruited was Cam Davis, last year’s captain. If Navy were a civilian school, Davis would have been eligible for a fifth season because of the covid disruptions. But the military schools don’t work that way, so Davis is now at MIT studying nuclear engineering.
The team he left is built around four solid seniors and the Noah’s Ark theory. Carter, the leading scorer, had 21 Sunday, 19 of them in the second half. But fellow senior guard Greg Summers came off the bench to also score 21. Noah’s Ark to the rescue.
Because Colgate won the regular season title, Wednesday’s game is win or go home for the Mids. The only team the NIT would be required to take is Colgate, and that tournament certainly wouldn’t want a 21-team team (that won at Virginia to open the season) over the eighth-best team from the ACC or the Big Ten. What’s more, Navy Athletic Director Chet Gladchuk doesn’t believe in paying to play in the postseason, so it is NCAA or bust for Navy.
The Mids lost by five in Hamilton two weeks ago, but DeChellis believes they left points on the floor and could have won that game by making a couple more plays late. “It’s there for us,” he said. “Colgate is very good and we won’t have any margin for error, we all know that. But it’s 40 minutes to get to the place we’ve wanted to go since the season began. I have a lot of faith in our guys.”
Regardless of the outcome Wednesday, DeChellis is going to need a long walk when the game’s over. He can only hope he ends it with the same smile on his face he had Sunday evening. | null | null | null | null | null |
Nations appear eager for this sort of American leadership, and passionate about the Ukraine fight — from the northernmost tip of NATO to the southern edge. Artis Pabriks, the defense minister of Latvia, told us proudly that his country was the first to send Stinger antiaircraft missiles to Ukraine. “They are fighting our fight for us,” he said. As for the Russians, he predicted, “many of them will end up as sunflowers, I am sorry to say,” meaning that they will die. “We will make a second Afghanistan for Russia.”
Milley’s army is preparing for a war he hopes it will never have to fight. It’s eerie, traveling this NATO arc, to see U.S. and NATO forces arrayed like a picket line. NATO, once a seeming anachronism, is re-energized. Putin is cornered with his reckless adventure in Ukraine. | null | null | null | null | null |
Read this piece in Arabic.
While Sissi was expressing those views, security services were locking up Coptic activists and violating the religious rights of other minorities. Fatma Naoot, a secular poet, was sentenced in January 2016 to three years in jail for mocking the slaughter of sacrificial animals for Eid al-Adha. A month later, another court sentenced four Coptic teenagers to up to five years in prison for also “insulting Islam.” Ramy Kamel, a Coptic rights defender, was arrested in November 2019, allegedly tortured and jailed in “pretrial detention” for over two years.
It is during Egypt’s democratic experiment that Eissa’s troubles with Salafi Islam deepened. He published a novel that depicted Salafists as ignorant and hypocritical. His disillusionment with Islamists and scorn for inept secularists pushed him to side with Sissi. Falling in and out of grace with Egypt’s dictator, he continued to question the hold of Salafi thought over Islam. In his seminal novel “The Blood Journey,” Eissa tracks down the origin of violence and Salafism in the years following the death of the prophet, depicting the struggle of the prophet’s wives and companions with power, greed, lust and pride. In other words, he portrayed them as mortal.
And here lies the predicament Sissi faces. He is probably genuine in his desire for religious reformation, but his authoritarianism prevents it. In his quest for absolute power, Sissi has decimated the nascent power of liberals, the only group genuinely pursuing religious reform. And while he acknowledges that Salafi thought is the origin of religiously motivated violence, he himself has been fomenting paranoid and militaristic nationalism that feeds it. When Sissi insists that Egypt is targeted by external conspiracies that aim to destroy its culture and its people, Islamists simply add more religious flavor to its “culture.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Robert Regan, who is running to represent Michigan’s District 74 in the state legislature, made the comments during a Facebook live stream Sunday. The discussion was hosted by the Rescue Michigan Coalition, a conservative group that supports former president Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. The Justice Department found no evidence to support Trump’s baseless allegations.
During the discussion, fellow panelist Amber Harris, a Republican strategist, told the group that it is “too late” to continue challenging the results of the 2020 election, suggesting Republicans should instead move on and focus on future races, to which Regan replied: “I tell my daughters, ‘Well, if rape is inevitable, you should just lie back and enjoy it.’ ”
A shocked Harris, however, tried to cut in as Regan and the discussion’s host, Rescue Michigan Coalition founder Adam de Angeli, moved on. When de Angeli gave Harris the chance to speak, she said Regan’s comments were “shameful.”
Regan, who last week advanced to the general election after winning the special Republican primary by 81 votes, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. On Monday, he told Bridge Michigan, a local news outlet, that “sometimes” his words “aren’t as smooth and polished as the politicians are because I’m not a politician.”
He said his comments on rape and the election only meant “nothing is inevitable.”
“Upon reviewing the video, I think he was actually talking about the 2020 election and saying that Republicans shouldn’t concede that Biden won fairly,” De Angeli said, adding that Regan apologized for his comment.
“We do want to decertify this election and we do want it returned to the rightful owner, just like if someone stole your car or stole your jewelry,” Regan said. “It goes back to the rightful owner. You decertify and you give it to the rightful owner, and that’s Donald Trump, and that’s what I’m pushing for and we’re going full-bore on that.”
Still, the party leaders did not call for Regan to drop out of the race.
Jason C. Roe, a Republican strategist in Michigan, said that while the group of people who continue to say that “we should re-litigate 2020 is shrinking,” the “obsession” among some Republicans in his state with a forensic audit of the presidential election is going to cause the party to miss out on “historic” gains in the next election.
“Increasingly, I think there’s a lot of frustration that we’re giving away our opportunities statewide, and I think this adds to the problems,” Roe said of Regan’s controversy. Regan, he said, is still poised to win this year’s election, but once the district is redrawn, “he’s gone.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Lumen became the second top U.S.-based carrier to make such a move in recent days, following Friday’s announcement by Cogent Communications. Taken together, these moves are likely to make it harder for Russians to gain access to international services, such as news sites and social media based in the West, telecommunications experts said. Access to internal networks within Russia would not be affected.
American technology and telecommunications companies have been cutting services in Russia since it invaded Ukraine last month. In the same period, Russia’s government has throttled or blocked popular U.S.-based services such as Twitter and Facebook while imposing new criminal penalties for news coverage that doesn’t follow the Kremlin’s strict censorship policies. Many leading Western news organizations have ceased operations there, further weakening the flow of information from the country that is being roiled by punishing international sanctions.
The company tried to downplay its importance to the Russian market, saying, “The business services we provide are extremely small and very limited as is our physical presence. However, we are taking steps to immediately stop business in the region.”
Ukrainian officials have been calling on companies and institutions to isolate Russian from the online world, even going so far as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a California-based nonprofit group that oversees key elements of the Internet’s functioning, to suspend Russia’s “.ru” country domain.
Russia’s own government, meanwhile, has been cutting back access to the West as well through a growing number of blocks on popular Internet services. While some Russians are using technological tools, such as VPNs, to evade such restrictions, many observers warn the nation risks becoming increasingly cut off from the outside world, as it was during Soviet times.
“Disconnecting Russia from the global internet means leaving Russian people only with state propaganda that is telling them that Ukrainian people are their enemies. This will silence the anti-war voices and it will hurt Ukraine,” said Natalia Krapiva, a digital rights attorney with the Internet freedom group Access Now. | null | null | null | null | null |
Committee members and aides said the goal of scrutinizing and documenting the money flow is twofold. The primary objective is to determine whether email solicitations spreading false claims of election fraud served as a powerful source of misinformation, prompting the need to make proposals for strengthening campaign finance laws. The committee will also consider if any laws were broken and refer those to the Justice Department, which would then decide whether to pursue any prosecutions. The committee’s staff argue that the events of the day cannot be fully explained without explaining the months leading up to them. | null | null | null | null | null |
President Biden is expected to sign the Postal Service Reform Act, which is a cornerstone of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s controversial 10-year postal restructuring plan
A U.S. Postal Service truck drives in Philadelphia on March 3. The Senate on Tuesday approved a $107 billion overhaul of the Postal Service's finances, sending the bill to President Biden for his expected signature. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
The Postal Service Reform Act, which passed 79-19, provides financial flexibility for the mail agency to take on improvements that have been debated for years. Republicans have traditionally criticized the agency as a poster child for government waste and incompetence, even as it won high marks for approval and trust from the public. During the pandemic, Democrats hailed mail workers as everyday heroes, and pushed the agency as an example of the benefits of robust government services.
But the Postal Service’s role throughout the coronavirus pandemic forced lawmakers to reach a consensus on restructuring its balance sheet, with worries that the agency could not withstand another financial shock. Nearly half of all voters cast their ballots by mail during the 2020 election, and surging e-commerce demand saw postal workers hauling packages from doorstep to doorstep, allowing individuals to purchase essentials remotely and stay home during public health lockdowns.
The Postal Service has endured years of losses triggered by slumping mail volumes and a 2006 bill that required it to annually pre-fund retirees’ health care costs. Declines in mail revenue have forced the agency to default on those health care payments since 2011.
Tuesday’s bill gives the agency a significant reprieve, removing $57 billion in past due postal liabilities, and eliminating $50 billion in payments over the next 10 years. It requires future postal retirees to enroll in Medicare, a move that would add minuscule costs to the public health care system, but would save taxpayers $1.5 billion over the next decade.
The legislation also codifies new timely delivery transparency requirements for the Postal Service, which has struggled with on-time service since Postmaster General Louis DeJoy took office in June 2020, and allows the agency to contract with local, state and Indigenous governments to offer basic non-mail services, such as hunting and fishing licenses.
“By passing this historic legislation, the Senate has shown the American people that we can come together, build consensus and pass meaningful reforms that will improve lives,” Sen. Gary Peters (Mich.), the bill’s lead Democratic sponsor, said in a statement. “This bill, which has been 15 years in the making, will finally help the Postal Service overcome burdensome requirements that threaten their ability to provide reliable service to the American people.”
The bill is the cornerstone of DeJoy’s 10-year restructuring plan. The mail chief has long been a foil of Biden and congressional Democrats because of his past as a Republican financier and the Postal Service’s delayed performance ahead of the 2020 election.
Within weeks of taking office in summer 2020, DeJoy ordered workers to slow the delivery of the mail and presided over the scrapping of 671 high-speed mail sorting machines and public mailboxes. The removals were unrelated to DeJoy’s policies, but critics saw them as part of then-President Donald Trump’s strategy to delegitimize mail-in voting.
Months after the election, he announced a 10-year vision for the Postal Service that included longer delivery windows and raising postage prices to cut costs and boost revenue. The proposal calls for shuttering 18 mail sorting plants and cutting post office hours.
He’s also led the Postal Service to begin purchasing up to 148,000 gas-powered mail delivery trucks, rebuffing the Biden administration’s climate goals and concerns from environmental experts that the vehicles will permanently damage the planet and pose public health risks.
Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.), one of the House’s lead postal advocates plans to introduce legislation in the lower chamber Wednesday morning that would prohibit the Postal Service from enacting its contract for the trucks, worth up to $11 billion, with Oshkosh Defense unless the fleet is made up of at least 75 percent electric vehicles, according to two people involved with the legislation. The bill has 68 co-sponsors.
But DeJoy’s plan also vastly increases the Postal Service’s plans to replace failing equipment and renovate dingy post office buildings, and embrace package shipping as core to the agency’s future.
DeJoy opened 48 package-specific processing plants in the run up to the 2021 holiday season, that saw the Postal Service handle 13.2 billion items between Thanksgiving and the end of the year.
Since late January, those facilities were transformed to pack and ship more than 270 million free rapid coronavirus test kits, a program postal leadership and the White House have found so successful that they’ve expanded it, allowing households to request additional kits. Postal advocates have called the initiative a mold for future mail agency services.
DeJoy’s USPS slowdown plan will delay the mail. What’s it mean for your Zip code?
“This bill doesn’t reduce costs,” said Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.). “It just shifts them from one unfunded govt program to another underfunded govt program.”
“The Postal Service has a postmaster general right now who is absolutely committed to … making the post office more effective, more efficient, but he needs a little breathing room, as he says, and that is what we are doing here in Congress,” Sen. Rob Portman (Ohio), the lead Republican sponsor of the postal bill, said Monday on the Senate floor.
Peters and Portman led months of sprawling negotiations with a Democratic and Republican House leaders, DeJoy and the Postal Service’s four powerful unions on the bill.
In May they unveiled a more limited bill omitting more controversial issues such as voting access, electric mail vehicles, postal banking and post office closures, lawmakers said.
What remained was a narrower package that focused on the Postal Service’s financial obligations, but left unresolved the other major questions that linger about the future of the mail agency.
“It’s not a blank slate, but a more blank slate,” said Porter McConnell, campaign director of the consumer rights group Take on Wall Street and co-founder of the Save the Post Office Coalition. “In no way does it settle the debate about the post office in the U.S. It buys time for a conversation about what the post office looks like.” | null | null | null | null | null |
FILE - Heavyweight champion Joe Frazier ducks to miss a right by challenger Ron Stander during their boxing bout May 25, 1972, in Omaha, Neb. In the background is referee Zack Clayton. Stander, whose fight against Frazier in 1972 was the highlight of his 13-year career, has died. He was 77. Toddy Stander said her husband died at home Tuesday, March 8, 2022, from complications of diabetes. (AP Photo, File) (Anonymous/AP) | null | null | null | null | null |
One year ago, a gunman killed eight people including six Asian women in Atlanta. The attack was one of a record number of anti-Asian hate crimes around the country since the coronavirus pandemic began. On Wednesday, March 16 at 3:00 p.m. ET, join Washington Post Live for a conversation with Amanda Nguyen, CEO of the nonprofit civil rights organization Rise, about the impact of these attacks, her organization’s work and the role of education in raising greater awareness about the history of Asian American Pacific Islander communities. | null | null | null | null | null |
Shareholders asked oil giant Chevron to cut emissions. Now some want the chairman ousted.
A shareholder advocacy group announces that it will campaign to block the reelection of the chairman and a director.
Chevron’s chairman and chief executive, Michael Wirth, is interviewed while visiting the New York Stock Exchange on March 1, 2022. (Justin Lane/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
A shareholder advocacy group filed papers Tuesday asking investors in the energy giant Chevron to oust the chairman and another board member because of the company’s failure to cut carbon emissions, setting off a campaign to alter significantly the strategy of the nation’s second-largest oil company.
The shareholder group seeking to remove the board members argues in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that even though a majority of shareholders last year called for Chevron to “substantially” reduce carbon emissions, the company is planning only to cut as little as 5 percent of the emissions intensity from its energy products.
Such shareholder efforts to oust board members are seldom successful. But a number of large investment companies and pension funds, which typically play key roles in the voting, say they are willing to use their votes to demand that companies address climate change.
Last year, widespread discontent over ExxonMobil’s climate change strategy and financial performance allowed dissident shareholders to take three seats on the 12-member board.
ExxonMobil aims for net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050
“More and more shareholders have been calling for transformational change from companies,” said Eli Kasargod-Staub, the director of the shareholder advocacy group Majority Action, which is organizing the campaign at Chevron. “If board members are failing to take action, we believe responsible shareholders will hold them accountable.”
The group aims to displace from the board Michael Wirth, 61, chairman and chief executive since 2018, and Ronald Sugar, 72, a board member since 2005 and the retired chairman and chief executive of the aerospace and defense company Northrop Grumman. The group is not seeking to fire Wirth as chief executive, only to remove him from 12-member board.
In a statement to The Washington Post, the company said: “Chevron’s board of directors reviews proposals from shareholders in detail and will make recommendations to stockholders about how to vote on each request in our proxy statement, which we plan to publish next month.”
Over the past decade, more investors have begun to pressure companies in which they own stakes to reduce their carbon emissions and develop business plans adapted for climate change.
Environmental groups and scientific reports say emissions cuts are critical to thwarting climate change and to the broader health of the planet. But some shareholder groups say companies also have a narrower financial reason to move away from fossil fuels: Eventually, governments will impose stricter limits on their use, they say, and even if they do not, alternative energy sources eventually will become cheaper and shrink the demand for oil and gas.
Many investors have become impatient for change.
“There’s a lot of [investor] frustration at the slow pace of the energy transition,” said Marc Goldstein, the head of U.S. research at Institutional Shareholder Services.
He foresees more efforts to displace board members over climate issues.
“Big investors are going to be increasingly voting against directors because of climate issues,” Goldstein said. “It doesn’t mean they’re going to be voting against every director. They’re going to look at which companies are in the lead and which are laggards on disclosing current emissions as well as their transition plans.”
One of the biggest players, for example, BlackRock, the world’s largest money manager, has repeatedly warned that it will steer away from investments that carry high environmental risks.
“BlackRock believes that climate change has become a defining factor in companies’ long-term prospects,” it said in January in a document indicating how it will decide how to vote in shareholder elections this year.
BlackRock said it will ask companies for “a business plan for how they intend to deliver long-term financial performance through the transition to global net zero” carbon emissions.
This year’s bid to unseat Wirth and Sugar builds on a key event last year, when a shareholder group presented a resolution calling for Chevron “to substantially reduce the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of their energy products.”
“I think we needed to be very clear with Big Oil,” said Mark van Baal, the founder of Follow This, the group that submitted the resolution. “We must get substantial reductions.”
The Chevron board opposed the measure, saying that the company was supporting an approach to achieve the goals of the Paris agreement, the landmark treaty on climate change, “as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible for society.”
More than 60 percent of shareholders sided with the reformers.
Today, much of the case against Wirth and Sugar turns on that resolution and the company’s conduct since then. Van Baal said the company had ignored the will of the shareholders, calling its actions over the past year “a snub.”
Even so, the case against the directors faces some head winds. Both withstood a similar effort last year. With gas prices rising, so are Chevron share prices, and that might make some shareholders less willing to force a change on the board. Moreover, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has led to calls for companies in the West to produce more oil, not less, to reduce dependence on Russian resources.
Top Democrats, Republicans say they have a deal to ban Russian energy imports as U.S. stock markets sell off sharply
Kasargod-Staub, the director of the advocacy group Majority Action, said a better way to become independent of Russian oil is to develop more alternative energy sources at home.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change “just a week ago reported that we are rapidly running out of time to evade the worst ravages of runaway climate change,” he said. “Responsible long-term investors know that the solution to the crisis in Ukraine cannot rest in a massive expansion of fossil fuels.” | null | null | null | null | null |
McDonald’s is in a unique category among businesses that have announced halts and freezes in service or products in Russia. Fast-food brands have largely continued operating because many of their restaurants are owned by franchisees, and corporate brands have limited abilities to control operations at local facilities.
McDonald’s owns more than 80 percent of its Russian locations compared to roughly 5 percent of restaurants that are owned in the United States.
The stores that are company-owned are mainly for testing products and other corporate goals, according to John A. Gordon, an independent restaurant chain expert and founder of Pacific Management Consulting Group.
Gordon said the company owns a lot more stores in Europe because the sales and profits are higher. The closing down of its stores in Russia combined with the decision to continue paying employees will come with a significant financial hit but not one that will bankrupt the company or cause markets to react in a volatile manner.
“We don’t know how long ‘temporarily’ means in terms of closures, but McDonald’s will report an operating loss,” he said. “What will happen now is the Wall Street security analysts will actually lower their earning forecast because of the Russia and Ukraine effect. McDonald’s stock price won’t be arbitrarily affected.”
McDonald’s announcement is also a sign that companies are moving away from antiquated business mentalities that center shareholder interests above all others, Gordon said.
“It’s really about the stakeholders, which is greater world of nations and people,” he said.
Other companies, such as Yum! Brands, which owns Pizza Hut and KFC, might find it more difficult to replicate McDonald’s stance as many of the locations are owned by franchisees, who are likely Russians themselves, making it a bit more challenging to just close shop, Gordon said, who counts Yum! Brands among his clients.
Yum! Brands announced on Tuesday that it is suspending operations of KFC company-owned restaurants in Russia and finalizing an agreement to suspend all Pizza Hut restaurant operations in the country, in partnership with its master franchisee.
“This action builds on our decision to suspend all investment and restaurant development in Russia and redirect all profits from operations in Russia to humanitarian efforts,” the company said in a statement.
Yet, McDonald’s expressing global solidarity with Ukraine is among the most bold and decisive moves taken by a restaurant chain of its magnitude, said Aaron Allen, a restaurant analyst and founder of Aaron Allen & Associates Global Restaurants Consultants.
“This will absolutely be a watershed moment and will reflect a precedent not just for war but for other causes or means of showing solidarity,” he said. “You’re pretty much closing off your revenue to make a statement. Agreeing to put purpose over profits is an indication that world’s largest restaurant chain taking a leadership stand.”
Jacob Bagoge contributed to this report. | null | null | null | null | null |
“We will defend every inch of NATO territory with the full force of our collective power,” he said during a visit to Tallinn, Estonia, on Tuesday, in what became a verbatim refrain throughout his six-day sprint from Brussels to the Baltics.
Late on Tuesday, the Polish government said it was ready to put its fleet of Soviet-designed MiG-29s under U.S. control at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, and called on other NATO states to do the same. The United States all-but declined the offer from Poland.
“We do not believe Poland’s proposal is a tenable one,” said Pentagon spokesman John Kirby.
Blinken’s stop in Estonia marked the first unilateral visit for a U.S. Secretary of State since 1991. Brian Roraff, the charge d’affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Tallinn, said then-secretary James Baker’s visit occurred shortly after Communist hard-liners staged an attempted coup against reformist Soviet leader President Mikhail Gorbachev. | null | null | null | null | null |
For more than a year, the Tour has been rattled by the inelegant attempts of the upstart Super Golf League to change the game. Before last month, the SGL’s efforts had gained little notice beyond golf media, but they coincided with the Tour’s lucrative new media rights deal that began this year.
That discontent appeared to fuel momentum, at least briefly, for the SGL. Backed by Saudi Arabian money and fronted by golf legends with polarizing histories among their peers, the SGL threatened to poach some of the Tour’s top players not necessarily with greater financial rewards but guaranteed compensation via smaller fields. Only after a series of incendiary remarks by Phil Mickelson, one of the SGL’s most vocal supporters, did several prominent players declare their allegiance — and essentially all of them, even those suspected of dalliances with the new entity, sided with the PGA Tour. | null | null | null | null | null |
In its statement, Poland said it is “ready to deploy — immediately and free of charge — all their MiG-29 jets to the Ramstein Air Base and place them at the disposal of the Government of the United States of America.” Ramstein is an American military facility located in eastern Germany. | null | null | null | null | null |
Texans quarterback Deshaun Watson hasn't played since the 2020 season. (David J. Phillip/AP)
Eight women who filed criminal complaints of sexual misconduct against Houston Texans quarterback Deshaun Watson were subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury Friday, their attorney, Tony Buzbee, said Tuesday.
Last year, 10 women filed criminal complaints against Watson, alleging sexual harassment and assault during massage therapy sessions. The Harris County District Attorney’s Office opened an investigation and is expected to present at least one case to the grand jury, according to a person with direct knowledge of the situation.
The same day the grand jury convenes to weigh criminal charges, Watson will be deposed for civil lawsuits filed against him last spring. A total of 22 women, all represented by Buzbee, have sued Watson, accusing him of a range of behaviors that include making inappropriate comments, exposing himself and forcing his penis on the women’s hands, among others.
Watson has denied the allegations, and attorney Rusty Hardin has said any sex acts that occurred were consensual.
The 26-year-old quarterback was coming off a career season in 2020, when he led the NFL in passing yards. But his career came to a standstill with the emergence of the lawsuits. The Texans denied his trade request in January 2021, and the pending lawsuits kept him off the field for all of last season.
Watson has continued to be the subject of trade chatter this offseason. The Washington Commanders, according to multiple people with knowledge of the situation, still consider him an option, but with caveats — Washington probably would need clarity on his availability for 2022. Although the grand jury may decide not to charge Watson, the NFL is investigating him for possible violations of its personal conduct policy, meaning he could face a suspension and/or fine.
Acquiring Watson would be particularly complicated for the Commanders, who were fined $10 million by the NFL for fostering a culture of sexual harassment and bullying. The House Committee on Oversight and Reform opened an investigation of the team’s workplace culture; during a recent congressional panel, owner Daniel Snyder was accused by a former employee of sexual misconduct. The NFL appointed former U.S. attorney Mary Jo White to investigate those allegations. | null | null | null | null | null |
For more than a year, the Tour has been rattled by the inelegant attempts of the upstart Super Golf League to change the game. The SGL’s efforts had gained little notice beyond the golf media before last month, but they coincided with the Tour’s lucrative new media rights deal that began this year.
That discontent appeared to fuel momentum, at least briefly, for the SGL. Backed by Saudi Arabian money and fronted by golf legends with polarizing histories among their peers, the SGL threatened to poach some of the Tour’s top players not necessarily with greater financial rewards but guaranteed compensation via smaller fields. Only after incendiary remarks by Phil Mickelson, one of the SGL’s most vocal supporters, did several prominent players declare their allegiance — and essentially all of them, even those suspected of dalliances with the new entity, sided with the PGA Tour. | null | null | null | null | null |
Google to buy Mondiant; Petco earnings rise on strong sales
Google agrees to buy security firm Mondiant
Google agreed to purchase cybersecurity company Mandiant for $5.4 billion, adding Internet security products that will bolster the technology giant’s cloud-computing business as it takes on larger rivals Amazon Web Services and Microsoft.
The acquisition, Google’s second-biggest, signals that the Alphabet company has stepped off the sidelines of large dealmaking despite intense regulatory scrutiny. As it seeks to expand its third-place cloud-infrastructure unit, which sells computing power and storage via the Internet, buying Mandiant will give Google a fuller range of software tools to protect clients by responding quickly to online threats.
Google will pay $23 a share for Mandiant in the all-cash deal, the Mountain View, Calif.-based company said in a statement Tuesday. Mandiant will be organized under Google’s cloud business at the close of the acquisition, expected later this year.
Strong sales boost earnings for Petco
Petco Health and Wellness headed for the biggest advance since June after ringing up new sales gains and unveiling a better-than-expected outlook for this year.
Comparable sales jumped 14 percent in the fiscal fourth quarter, the seventh straight double-digit gain, Petco said in a statement Tuesday as it reported earnings.
Petco is benefiting from more purchases of premium food and supplies, while also expanding services in grooming and veterinarian care, Chief Executive Ron Coughlin said.
During the fiscal fourth quarter, which ended in late January, Petco’s adjusted earnings rose to 28 cents a share. Sales climbed 13 percent to $1.51 billion. For the current fiscal year, Petco forecast adjusted earnings of 97 cents to a dollar a share. Sales will be at least $6.15 billion, Petco said, while Wall Street was expecting $6.11 billion.
Dick's Sporting Goods on Tuesday reported fiscal fourth-quarter profit of $346.1 million. The Coraopolis, Pa.-based company said it had profit of $3.16 per share. Earnings, adjusted for nonrecurring costs, came to $3.64 per share. The results beat Wall Street expectations. The average estimate of 10 analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was for earnings of $3.54 per share. The sporting goods retailer posted revenue of $3.35 billion in the period.
10 a.m.: Labor Department releases job openings and labor turnover survey for January. | null | null | null | null | null |
The limits of performative symbolism
President Biden delivers remarks banning the import of oil and natural gas from Russia. He wears a blue and yellow tie — the colors of the Ukrainian flag. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
The geopolitics is blunt. Countries and companies from all segments of the marketplace have shunned Russia to protest its invasion of Ukraine and to create as much pain for the Russian economy as possible. Oil companies, car manufacturers, fast food, luxury fashion houses and a host of other business sectors have ceased dealing with Russia as a matter of international solidarity, offensive strategy and moral imperative. Today, President Biden announced that the United States would stop importing oil and natural gas from Russia. Sports organizations have banned Russian athletes from competition. And nonprofit organizations are lending a hand to Ukrainians who’ve had to flee their country.
But for the average citizen, what does it take to ease the whiplash that results from the shock of a war that for most remains geographically distant and yet feels perilously near? The existential uneasiness is real: Intellectual discussions of Russia’s possible use of nuclear weapons are afoot; conversations about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s mental state are on the table. That feeling of helplessness sweeping across the United States isn’t lessened by a recitation of historical facts or pithy tweets. It can’t be war-gamed away with a series of “If this; then that” scenarios laid out by Washington’s great men and lionized women.
Whether around the kitchen table or hunched over their smartphones, people are grasping for a symbol, a unifying gesture, a hashtag. The culture is searching for something that says that one cares about the deadly mayhem even as one clings to sweet, sweet normalcy — that nearly forgotten state that went missing during the height of the pandemic with which folks are just now getting reacquainted.
And so. We have the linguistic protest. Barkeepers have renamed classic cocktails to purge any commemorative or festive reference to Russia from the premises. At the gym, the name of those familiar abdomen-strengthening exercises have been edited so that they now are simply referred to as “twists” — hold the Russian modifier. Governors have halted the sale of Russian vodka at state-run liquor stores and some people have ceremoniously poured Russian vodka down street drains.
In digital chats, neighbors discuss planting blue and yellow pansies in celebration of the colors of the Ukrainian flag. They suggest landscaping with sunflowers, Ukraine’s national flower. First lady Jill Biden has worn a mask decorated with a sunflower and one was embroidered onto the sleeve of the indigo satin Sally LaPointe dress that she wore to the State of the Union. And Tuesday, President Biden accessorized his navy suit with a blue and yellow tie when he stood at a lectern in the Roosevelt Room and announced the ban on oil imports from Russia. Even the first couple have embraced the symbolism in a gesture. Or perhaps they have grasped at it just as so many of their constituents have.
Sometimes symbolism can be profoundly moving and other times it can ring hollow. The difference is often a matter of repetition or time or even the messenger. During the racial justice protests of summer 2020, every major company and mom-and-pop business seemed to post a black square on social media to express solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and to signal support for diversity and inclusivity. Those little squares were a potent symbol until there were so many of them that they meant nothing at all.
Only two days after Russia invaded Ukraine, “Saturday Night Live” opened with the Ukrainian Chorus Dumka of New York performing “Prayer for Ukraine” and it was beautiful and moving. It was an elegant gesture that asked nothing in return from viewers other than to listen and to care. Their song was a blessing in a time of despair.
A day later on the SAG awards red carpet, Lady Gaga expressed her delight in being able to do what she loves. She noted that her “heart goes out to Ukraine.” And then she added her hope that everyone would take advantage of the evening to “sit in the gratitude of this.” Social media, however, was apparently not wholly pleased with the celebratory nature of the evening — declaring Hollywood insensitive to the attack on Ukraine — but then, social media eventually hates everyone and everything.
There’s a lot to be said for sitting in gratitude. Actors will have ample opportunity to do that when the Oscars air later this month. It’s that time of year, for award shows and fashion shows and spring galas. It’s that time of year for all the things that can ring as shallow and silly, even if they also bring great joy, even if they lift the spirit.
Award shows always seem to burble up just when the world’s attention is turned to particularly dire concerns and celebrities are left to justify their very public form of self-congratulations. In the past, the response has been to litter the red carpet with as much symbolism as possible: a rainbow of colored ribbons, a solemn allegiance to black dresses, mini-monologues about the issue of the day. If it doesn’t ring hollow, it sounds vaguely flippant because what can one say in such a compressed moment in time, bookended by applause, dappled with spotlight and laden with glitter? All that performative symbolism falls victim to the setting and the timing.
The only thing reasonable and honest thing for a celebrity to say might well be, “I am counting my blessings,” and leave the tearful thank you to their manager for another time.
Gratitude. In large measure that’s what Balenciaga designer Demna Gvaslia, who now goes simply by Demna, offered with his runway show in Paris on Sunday. His presentations regularly confront the urgencies of climate change with clothes shown against a tableau that evokes a planet under assault. He was similarly motivated this season. But then the Russian invasion of Ukraine sent more than a million people fleeing the country in search of safety. His own memories resurfaced of fleeing Georgia in 1993 when he was a child; he considered how the trauma of becoming a “forever refugee,” full of fear and desperation, has stayed with him.
A presentation that had been built around the climate crisis and the end of predictable weather patterns was transformed into a show that elegantly symbolized the journey of refugees across an inhospitable landscape. The result were images that were deeply evocative but also disturbing. They spoke of the suffocating emotion of the moment even as the drumbeat of commerce rumbled in the background. Chaos and normalcy coexisted.
“This show needs no explanation,” Demna wrote in a letter to his audience. “It is a dedication to fearlessness, to resistance and to the victory of love and peace.” The designer was counting his blessings.
It may be the only gesture that meets this moment. | null | null | null | null | null |
Lift bans on women's activists, U.S. urges
U.S. Ambassador Michele Taylor called on Riyadh, a pivotal security partner of Washington against Iran in the Persian Gulf region, to resolve cases of “prisoners of conscience” — a term referring to political detainees, though she did not name any. Saudi authorities have detained senior royals, activists, intellectuals and clerics. Saudi officials deny that there are any political prisoners in the kingdom.
“We urge Saudi Arabia to fully resolve cases of prisoners of conscience and to lift travel bans and other restrictions on previously released women’s rights activists,” Taylor said at a meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva on International Women’s Day.
Construction sighted at nuclear test site
Satellite imagery shows construction at North Korea’s nuclear testing site for the first time since it was closed in 2018, analysts said Tuesday, as a U.S. intelligence report warned that the country could resume major weapons tests this year.
Images captured by commercial satellite showed very early signs of activity at the Punggye-ri site, including construction of a new building and repair of another building, specialists at the California-based James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies said.
North Korea tested a record number of missiles in January, including its largest since 2017. International monitors have also said the North’s main nuclear reactor facility at Yongbyon appears to be in full swing.
North Korea’s missile launches could be groundwork for a return to intercontinental ballistic missile and nuclear bomb tests this year, the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in its annual Worldwide Threat Assessment.
Turkish police fire pepper gas at Women's Day rally: Riot police set up barricades and fired pepper gas to block demonstrators from joining an International Women's Day march at the city's main square, Taksim. At least 38 women were detained, media reports said. Demonstrators in Turkey use the March 8 Women's Day events to press for strong measures to prevent violence against women by former partners or family members. At least 73 women have been killed in Turkey this year, according to the We Will Stop Femicide Platform.
Impeachment motion filed against Peru's president: Peruvian lawmakers introduced an impeachment motion against President Pedro Castillo, the second formal attempt to oust the leftist leader, on the same day that his latest cabinet sought a confirmation vote from the legislature. The motion says Castillo is morally unfit for office, citing 20 alleged violations, including an accusation of corruption made by a lobbyist. Public approval of Castillo hovers below 30 percent in opinion polls, though the former rural schoolteacher has gained some ground recently amid unprecedented turnover among his ministers.
Former crown prince sends Jordan's king an apology: Jordan's King Abdullah II received a letter of apology from former crown prince Hamzah pledging that he would never again act against the country's rulers, the royal palace said in a statement. The palace, which released the text of the letter, said it follows a meeting Sunday at Hamzah's request with the king, his half brother, to ask for "forgiveness." Hamzah was accused last April of conspiring to destabilize the monarchy and supplant the king in a foreign-inspired plot, details of which have never been made public.
Blaze in Rohingya camp leaves 2,000 homeless: A blaze swept a Rohingya refugee camp in southeast Bangladesh, killing a 6-year-old boy and leaving about 2,000 people homeless. The fire gutted parts of the Kutupalong camp in Cox's Bazar, a border district where a million mostly Muslim Rohingya refugees live, most having fled a military-led crackdown in neighboring Myanmar in 2017. | null | null | null | null | null |
When Trump took office in January 2017, Goffman left the EPA to become executive director of Harvard’s energy and environmental law program. As an academic, he wrote a number of pieces that were critical of the Trump administration’s rollbacks of environmental policies, including a 2019 paper that asserted that the Trump EPA had made “dubious arguments” to justify its weaker power plant regulation.
Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.) said in a statement that “with clear eyes, I acknowledge that his nomination will likely face opposition by some in the Senate, but I look forward to working with my colleagues, sharing Joe’s qualifications and getting him confirmed.”
At least one well-known conservative industry voice on environmental regulations has praised Goffman’s nomination. | null | null | null | null | null |
The actual results, according to Metzl, were an increase in White deaths because of poor health care, suicides by gun, and despair over being uneducated and unemployable.
“To realize how easily racism can be used to get people to vote against their best interest was an eye-opener,” Jacinth Green said. “Of course, it’s not just conservative White people who suffer. The Black people who live around them in Southern red states also fared poorly. So, ending racism is still in everybody’s best interest.”
While living in Dakar, the family had visited Gorée Island, just off the coast of Senegal. Millions of enslaved Africans had been sent to labor until death in the Americas between the 15th and 19th centuries. The Greens had stood in a doorway that looked out over the Atlantic, where many Africans had jumped to their death rather than be forced to live and die as enslaved people. | null | null | null | null | null |
Nations appear eager for this sort of American leadership, and passionate about the Ukraine fight — from the northernmost tip of NATO to the southern edge. Artis Pabriks, the defense minister of Latvia, told us proudly that his country was the first to send Stinger antiaircraft missiles to Ukraine. “They are fighting our fight for us,” he said. As for the Russians, he predicted, “many of them will end up as sunflowers, I am sorry to say,” meaning they will die. “We will make a second Afghanistan for Russia.”
Milley’s army is preparing for a war he hopes it will never have to fight. It’s eerie, traveling this NATO arc, to see U.S. and NATO forces arrayed like a picket line. NATO, once a seeming anachronism, is reenergized. Putin is cornered with his reckless adventure in Ukraine. | null | null | null | null | null |
Already, however, some firms have pulled away. Most alarmingly, Cogent Communications, a leading carrier of Internet data internationally, cut ties with its Russian clients, thereby crushing a bit of the Web’s backbone. (On Tuesday, a second major carrier, Lumen, did the same.) The move, Cogent says, was necessary to prevent its networks from being harnessed by Russia for cyberattacks and other nefariousness — but the decision nonetheless threatens to cut the citizenry off from the outside world. TikTok recently announced that it would suspend the posting of video from Russia in response to the nation’s “fake” news law, saying in a statement that it had “no choice.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Opinion: Republicans would be wise to follow Tom Cotton’s vision for the future
Sen Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) on Capitol Hill in February 2021. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
Tom Cotton staked a claim to the Reaganite lane of the 2024 presidential race on Monday night, only it’s not the lane you might think.
In a speech delivered at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., on the future of the Republican Party, the Arkansas senator laid out a vision that — much like Reagan’s — places human dignity and a strong American nation firmly ahead of free-market fundamentalism. And, yes, I mean much like Reagan’s — as an accurate review of the 40th president’s record makes clear.
More Republicans should follow Cotton’s lead.
Cotton, a possible 2024 presidential contender, began by noting that three consequential Republican presidents — Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump — all placed portraits of Andrew Jackson in the White House. That might seem odd, because Jackson founded the Democratic Party. But not when one realizes that Jackson’s robust sense of national unity and defense of the common man were the essence of the world views of all three Republicans. Cotton argued that as Democrats have all-but-canceled Jackson from their history, “the Republican Party has assumed the mantle of this proud, patriotic and populist tradition.”
Such a reordering must necessarily have consequences for party policy, and Cotton offered several possibilities for that, even as he endorsed Republican orthodoxy in other respects.
Reminding conservatives that “government is not the only threat to liberty,” Cotton called for regulating Big Tech and social media companies that deplatform people for expressing their views, a position sure to earn the ire of the party’s libertarian wing. He went further in his economic policy — “we are a nation with an economy, not an economy with a nation,” he said — arguing that the needs of the nation and the individual should take precedence over ideological calls for “open borders, unfettered trade and globalization.”
So on immigration, Cotton said, that means replacing a system that prioritizes extended family ties with one that promotes immigration from the highly skilled, as well as instituting mandatory use of the E-Verify program, which forces employers to hire only those legally able to work in this country. Republican business interests have long resisted E-Verify; Cotton challenged them to instead “invest more in American workers, pay them more and treat them better.”
On trade, Cotton said, it means decoupling the U.S. economy from China’s and ending China’s most-favored-nation trade status. He further argued that the government should ban U.S. investment in “strategic Chinese industries” and “encourage reshoring of U.S. factories and jobs.” Taken seriously that would entail a degree of subsidy, taxation and tariffs that Republicans have eschewed for generations.
And on entitlements, Cotton called on Republicans to defend Medicare and Social Security. “American workers deserve a secure retirement after a lifetime of working hard and paying taxes,” he told the conservative audience. Under this principle, there’s likely still ground to reduce spending, but Cotton’s reframing puts a greater emphasis on protecting individuals than recent GOP orthodoxy.
Some might think such views are contrary to Reagan’s, but really they’re not. Reagan raised taxes rather than cut Social Security benefits in 1983, and he often spoke of the need for a social safety net to protect the truly needy. Yes, he was a free trader, but he was also a fair trader, and he acted to impose quotas or otherwise protect American industry facing unfair foreign competition. In his autobiography, “An American Life,” Reagan said that he had always been most bothered by the usurpation of a person’s “democratic rights,” whether by government or an employer. No true market fundamentalist could ever envision an employer taking away someone’s rights, but Reagan could.
Reagan’s grave sits just a few hundred feet from where Cotton spoke on Monday night. His epitaph neatly encapsulates his vision: “I know in my heart that man is good, that what is right will always eventually triumph, and there is purpose and worth to each and every life.” The vision Cotton articulated Monday night is a worthy interpretation and extension of those words into our current moment. The party would be wise to take heed. | null | null | null | null | null |
IRPIN, Ukraine — As thousands flee the besieged Kyiv suburb Irpin, allegations are emerging of Russian forces looting, hiding military equipment in residential areas, deploying snipers and cutting water and power as they seek to use the area as a potential launchpad to invade the capital.
Andrii Kolesnyk, 45, who runs a guesthouse in Irpin, said about 15 troops entered their property on Sunday. Then they parked five military vehicles outside and stayed overnight, “using me and my guest as a [human] shield,” he said.
“There is nothing clearly to prohibit cutting water and power” in international law, he said in an email. But under the Rome statute, which governs the International Criminal Court, it is a crime to intentionally starve civilians or “cause conditions where they can’t survive,” according to Alex Whiting, an international law expert and visiting professor at Harvard Law School.
Whiting, who has prosecuted cases of war crimes committed during the Balkans conflict, said looting “is clearly a war crime” and has been prosecuted in several cases at international courts. | null | null | null | null | null |
Atholton, trying to recapture opportunity lost in 2020, falls short of state championship game
On other side of 3A boys’ bracket, Huntingtown advances in double-OT
Coach Jared Albert talks to his Atholton players during Tuesday's loss. (Kyle Melnick/TWP)
By the time introduction of the starting lineups in the Maryland 3A boys’ basketball semifinal began Tuesday night, the bleachers at Blair High in Silver Spring were packed. When the public address announcer yelled their names, Atholton’s players laughed as Oakdale students screamed “sucks” after each name. Atholton’s fans, wearing green, stood on their feet on the opposite side of the court.
For more than two years, Atholton’s players and coaches had craved competing on this stage. In March 2020, Atholton was a few hours from playing in the state semifinals at the University of Maryland’s Xfinity Center when the state athletic association postponed, and later canceled, the games because of the coronavirus.
When the Raiders played on that stage Tuesday night, they weren’t ready. They came out flat in their 66-50 loss to Oakdale.
In the other 3A semifinal, Huntingtown shocked Baltimore City College in double-overtime. The Hurricanes will face Oakdale in the championship game on Thursday night at Xfinity Center.
“We’ve been playing on the same team for 10 years,” Atholton guard Zach Callender said. “This was our dream. I’m sad it was cut short, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”
In 2020, Atholton Coach Jared Albert was retrieving pregame sandwiches for his players from Ledo Pizza when his athletic director called. Before rushing back to the Columbia school, Albert saw on a TV in the restaurant that college conference tournaments were being canceled. He knew what would come next.
As buses arrived at Atholton to drive the team to College Park, Albert told his teary-eyed athletes they wouldn’t play that night. The 2020-21 campaign was also canceled, but this season Albert dedicated a playoff run to the 2020 squad.
After beating Kenwood for a region title last week, the Raiders (16-4) were a win from their first state championship game appearance since 1971. But Atholton trailed 51-29 after three quarters Tuesday. The Raiders cut their deficit to 12 points with four minutes remaining before Oakdale (20-6) reaffirmed its superiority.
With about two minutes remaining, Atholton attempted a layup when Oakdale forward Dominic Nicholas swatted the ball out of bounds and let out a roar.
The stage Atholton dreamed of reaching was being controlled by Oakdale. With about a minute remaining, the Frederick County school’s students chanted “This is our house.”
“Our season’s not a disappointment,” Albert said. “Are we disappointed we didn’t make it to the state finals? Of course. But that doesn’t take away from how hard they worked to get to where they are.”
Huntingtown advances
In the other 3A semifinal, Huntingtown (21-3) was headed to a second overtime, in need of a boost if it was to upset City (15-3). That’s when guard Kyle Jones took over, scoring seven consecutive points to open the period at North Point High in Waldorf.
After City missed an open three-pointer at the buzzer, Huntingtown had qualified for its first state championship game appearance with a 63-61 victory.
“It’s definitely a surreal moment,” Coach Tobias Jenifer, who graduated from the Calvert County school in 2009, said in a phone interview. “That’s the best part about it: These kids are all from Huntingtown. They grew up in the community and they all stuck together. Some of them probably could’ve transferred out to private schools and they didn’t. They decided they wanted to put on for the community.”
The Hurricanes trailed 39-32 after three quarters but claimed a 48-47 lead with 1:20 remaining. The teams traded leads through the end of regulation and the first overtime period before Huntingtown players hugged at midcourt in celebration. | null | null | null | null | null |
CAA men’s title game: Blue Hens 59, Seahawks 55
Delaware's Kevin Anderson, left, and Ryan Allen admire the trophy after winning the CAA tournament Tuesday at Entertainment and Sports Arena. (Nick Wass/AP)
With just 11 seconds left Tuesday night, Delaware’s bench players grabbed one another’s warm-up shirts and jerseys in excitement, knowing they were moments away from doing something they had dreamed of when the season began.
After securing an offensive rebound, Ebby Asamoah went to the line with a chance to ice the win — and an NCAA tournament berth. He hit both foul shots and, a few seconds later, the fifth-seeded Blue Hens were scattered all over the court after a 59-55 victory over No. 2 seed North Carolina Wilmington in the Colonial Athletic Association men’s basketball tournament championship game at Entertainment and Sports Arena.
Delaware Coach Martin Ingelsby turned to the fans and put his fists in the air. Fifth-year guard Kevin Anderson was on the ground under the basket with the ball in his hands. And after a few moments with his teammates, the Blue Hens’ leading scorer, Jameer Nelson Jr., ran to the corner of the court, where he cried in the arms of his mom and dad, the former NBA all-star.
Delaware (22-12), which had knocked off top-seeded Towson a night earlier, was heading to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2014.
“We earned the title,” Ingelsby said. “We have so much parity in our league, great teams top to bottom, but the two teams we beat were regular season champions.”
It was only fitting that the game was tight until the end — the teams’ regular season matchups, both won by UNC Wilmington (23-9), were decided by a combined nine points. This time, Delaware won a tight contest; the Blue Hens’ largest lead came after Asamoah’s final free throws.
Delaware’s Jyare Davis, the tournament MVP, finished with 18 points, and fellow forward Andrew Carr added 17 points and 12 rebounds. Nelson finished with 10 points. Jaylen Sims paced the Seahawks with 18 points on 4-for-15 shooting.
Early on, the nerves of playing in a championship game showed. Neither team effectively executed its offense, relying on isolation ball that led to forced, contested jump shots deep in the shot clock for many players — but not Sims, the Seahawks’ leading scorer. Sims looked for his shot, taking four of his team’s first six attempts to score five points. But when he picked up his second foul with just over 10 minutes remaining in the half, the Seahawks had to find ways to score without him — and Delaware took advantage.
On the ensuing UNC Wilmington possession, Carr stole a pass and sprinted down the court for a breakaway slam, knotting the score at 17 and giving the Blue Hens momentum.
Delaware didn’t shoot the ball effectively in the first half (35.5 percent) but managed to keep itself in the game with 22 rebounds, including nine on the offensive glass. Still, the Seahawks led 34-30 at halftime after shooting 45 percent.
Ingelsby said playing physical defense was a focal point for his team heading into the tournament, especially after two straight losses to the end the regular season — including a loss to Charleston when his team gave up 99 points. So, in the second half, the Blue Hens turned up the heat. After jumping ahead by seven points early, UNC Wilmington went 1 for 9 from the field and Delaware eventually took a 44-43 lead with just over eight minutes remaining on an Anderson putback.
After another offensive rebound and a three-point play by Carr gave Delaware a 47-45 edge, the Blue Hens’ bench and their fans erupted.
“We feed off of energy as a team,” Carr said. “The bench was really into it at that point. ... I’m not as big of a guy as everyone else, but I love flexing like that.”
But like Sims in the first half, Carr got into foul trouble, picking up his fourth with his team up two and 4:32 remaining, forcing Ingelsby to make a decision. Ingelsby took out Carr, and Sims scored five points to put UNC Wilmington on top 55-53, compelling Ingelsby to call a timeout and put Carr back in with 2:30 left. The decision paid dividends — Carr blocked Sims’s shot on UNCW’s ensuing possession.
A minute later, Nelson found Davis, who after hitting a free throw made a turnaround layup for two of his 12 second-half points to give the Blue Hens a 56-55 lead with a minute left. The defense held serve from there, holding UNC Wilmington to 6-for-23 shooting (26.1 percent) in the half and forcing three missed shots in the final minute. Delaware gave up 56 points or fewer in all three tournament games.
“We had a chip on our shoulder,” Ingelsby said. “We were not happy with how we finished the season. But, boy, does this make this experience even more enjoyable for us — to be able to finish it and cut down nets and be champs.” | null | null | null | null | null |
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Kevin Durant simply began clapping when asked about teammate Kyrie Irving’s 50-point performance Tuesday night.
“It’s fine,” Irving said. “It makes for good stories, it makes for good narratives and good build up for our league. It’s never too personal, but we understand as competitors we want to win the game. ... But it’s not about us and any individual matchups, it’s about being a great team and building on what we set out to do.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Amy Bloom documents her heart-wrenching journey to help her husband end his life
By Simon Van Booy
In her deeply stirring memoir, “In Love,” Amy Bloom recounts the emotional journey she takes with her husband, Brian, who chooses to end his life after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. The story is told through an archipelago of relevant backstory and episodes that chart the brutal process of helping a loved one die in a way that is not painful, frightening, traumatic or illegal. The couple’s exhaustive and often desperate quest eventually leads them to Dignitas, “an organization based in Switzerland that empowers a person to end their own life with dignity and peace.”
To manage such hefty subject matter, Bloom artfully divides the book into manageable chunks of very short chapters that are titled with either a date and place, or something playful, such as “Birdseed” and “Ring the Bells.”
Bloom summarizes the early stages of her husband’s disease through scenes of marital disruption — “Suddenly, it seemed, we argued endlessly about everything” — and the more commonly known symptoms of Alzheimer’s, which in Brian’s case meant “names disappearing, repetition, information turned upside down, appointments and medications scrambled.”
There are also medical charts and illustrations (mostly related to how neurologists score a patient’s level of severity) but any scientific data is limited to that which enhances the reader’s experience of Bloom’s struggle to honor her husband’s wish.
“I don’t want to end my life,” Brian admits in one of the early telephone interviews with Dignitas, “but I’d rather end it while I am still myself, rather than become less and less of a person.”
Philosophical questions regarding the self and ethics orbit the largely secular narrative without dominating it. Wisely, Bloom remains in the trenches of daily life, where the juxtaposition of normalcy with what’s happening to her husband maintains emotional torque for the reader, who is never asked to “wait outside” — even for the 20 minutes after Brian has drunk the sodium pentobarbital that will end his life.
‘Lucky Us,’ by Amy Bloom, America’s Victor Hugo
That said, there are moments of humor. “A few months ago, [Brian] got me a very expensive and very odd present, a hooded marled sweatshirt with tulle trim for five hundred dollars,” Bloom writes. “I’m still surprised that I didn’t look at that sweatshirt and think, I see that you have Alzheimer’s.”
Bloom’s technical prowess is evident in her conscription of banal details to preface profound and sobering insights into love, marriage and death. En route to Switzerland, Bloom describes the couple’s experience at a steakhouse in JFK Airport. “At the Palm, Brian ordered onion rings and a rare rib eye with a side of hash browns and a Caesar salad and garlic toast and he would have ordered a shrimp cocktail, except that I whispered, like the circa-1953 stage Jewish wife I seem to have become, missing only my home perm and rickrack-trimmed apron: Really? Shrimp in a steak place, in an airport? Brian shrugged, to say: I’m not that excited about airport shrimp anyway and, also, what’s the worst that could happen?”
But the worst case is that he could get food poisoning and miss the flight to Zurich — where, after months of arduous paperwork, he is scheduled to die in four days’ time.
“At this, he folded the menu and looked at me the way he often did now, with resigned understanding, fatigue, a little worn humor.”
Perhaps the two most challenging issues for Bloom as a wife appear at opposite ends of the memoir. The first is, if denied assistance by Dignitas, what alternatives are available? The author recounts how she considered drowning, procuring fentanyl from a drug dealer, DIY suffocation, and VSED (voluntary suspension of eating and drinking), which in the case of her husband (a former Yale football player) could take as long as a month. “Right to die in America,” according to the author, “is about as meaningful as the right to eat or the right to decent housing; you’ve got the right, but it doesn’t mean you’re going to get the goods.”
The second dilemma is how they should inform children, siblings, grandchildren, even Brian’s elderly mother, who turns out to be an unexpected ally. Disclosures to friends and relatives lead to some unusual reactions.
“Brian’s dearest oldest friend, his fishing buddy since 1979, says to Brian, ‘If you think you don’t need to go right now, and you want to wait awhile, I can just shoot you myself, in a year or two, in a field.’ Brian hugs him.”
Is this a coping mechanism or a practical solution? Bloom consistently leaves enough room for readers to make up their own minds.
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The most powerful scenes occur, understandably, in the closing chapters. The reader knows the end is coming, but when it does, the fact that it still feels like a shock is a testament to Bloom’s clear, lyrical prose about a subject that would cripple many of her peers.
As with all great books about dying, “In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss” does not terrorize with grim statistics and forewarnings but rather destigmatizes euthanasia and enriches the reader’s life with urgency and gratitude. It renews those joys of being “In Love” with the people around us — despite the numbing effects of routine and familiarity which so often cause happiness to lapse in middle age.
Simon Van Booy’s latest novel is “Night Came With Many Stars.” His next book, “The Presence of Absence” is set for release in early fall.
A Memoir of Love and Loss
By Amy Bloom | null | null | null | null | null |
John Billings, who flew Allied spies behind Nazi lines, dies at 98
He piloted 39 missions for the OSS, the wartime precursor to the CIA
As a pilot with the Army Air Forces, John Billings flew 39 missions for the Office of Strategic Services, a wartime precursor to the CIA. (U.S. Army/AP)
Once there, the agents could infiltrate nearby towns and acquire crucial intelligence on the movement of Nazi troops and supplies through the Brenner Pass, along the border between Italy and Austria. Two of the spies were Jewish, increasing the risks they faced if the mission ended in capture. By some accounts, the flight itself was so dangerous that Britain’s Royal Air Force refused to go.
The mission, known as Operation Greenup, was considered one of the most successful OSS operations of the war; its operatives are sometimes described as “the real ‘inglourious basterds,’” after director Quentin Tarantino’s movie of the same name. Greenup was one of 39 OSS missions flown by Mr. Billings, who later worked as a commercial pilot and volunteered with the organization Mercy Medical Angels, flying patients who couldn’t afford to travel long distances for health care.
“John Billings is the prototype of an American aviator,” retired Air Force Gen. Norton A. Schwartz said last year, just before the publication of Mr. Billings’s autobiography. He was 98 when he died March 4 at his home in Woodstock, Va., four weeks after flying his single-engine Cessna Cutlass for the last time with help from a co-pilot. The cause was congestive heart failure and renal failure, said his wife, Barbara Billings.
Stationed in the southern city of Brindisi, about 70 miles from the spy agency’s headquarters in Bari, Mr. Billings flew a camouflaged B-24, painted gloss black to avoid being seen at night. He and his fellow aviators dropped supplies for partisans and undercover operatives, including 500-pound containers full of gold coins used to bribe Germans. They also dropped spies, notably in Operation Greenup.
Inside one of World War II’s most daring spy missions: The men who made OSS operations possible
In his autobiography, Mr. Billings wrote that he used emergency power to give the plane’s four engines more horsepower than they were designed to withstand, helping to slow the descent and stop the fall. The three spies soon parachuted successfully to the ground, landing in waist-high snow, and sledded downhill, heading toward Innsbruck.
The operatives included Frederick Mayer, a German-born Jew who posed as a Nazi service member separated from the rest of his unit; Hans Wynberg, a Dutch-born Jew whose parents and younger brother perished in the Holocaust; and Franz Weber, an Austrian officer who had defected from the German army.
Mayer “gathered vital intelligence that hastened the war’s end,” Charles Pinck, president of the OSS Society, a group that honors the wartime agency, said in an email. Even after he was captured and tortured by the Germans, Mayer persuaded the regional Nazi authority to surrender Innsbruck to approaching Allied forces, “saving untold thousands of lives,” Pinck added. “He was the only member of the OSS who was nominated for the Medal of Honor.”
Mr. Billings became good friends with Mayer, who died in 2016, two years before lawmakers awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to the OSS as a whole after a years-long campaign for recognition for the spy agency. “I’m happy that the OSS got recognized,” Mr. Billings told The Washington Post after an award ceremony he attended with about 20 other OSS veterans. But, he added, “So many people, deserving people, are not here anymore. It would have been nice to have them know about it as well.”
The oldest of three children, John Malcolm Billings was born in Winchester, Mass., on Aug. 7, 1923, and grew up in Scituate, a coastal town south of Boston. His mother was a homemaker, and his father was a millwright who took Mr. Billings for his first flight as a third birthday present.
The ride was “probably 10 to 15 minutes, but it seemed like the whole afternoon,” Mr. Billings told the Virginian-Pilot in 2018. “That really buried itself under my skin, and it’s still there.” He took his first flying lesson at 15 and entered aviation training after enlisting in the Army in 1942.
His first wife, Nancy Gardiner Billings, died in 1995. In addition to his wife of 24 years, the former Barbara Staley, survivors include three children from his first marriage, Susan Billings of Dumfries, Va., Leslie Billings of Alexandria, Va., and Lee Billings of Stafford, Va.; two stepdaughters, Lisa Oleskie and Lori Staley, both of Woodstock; a brother; six grandchildren; and 13 great-grandchildren.
“One time, an adorable little girl asked me, ‘If I’m going on an Angel Flight, does that mean I’m an angel?’ Naturally, I confirmed it,” Mr. Billings told the Patriot Ledger of Quincy, Mass., in November, when he retired from the volunteer flight program because of a recent heart attack. “By the end of the flight,” he continued, “both of us were absolutely convinced.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Tony Walton, stage designer who won Oscar, Emmy and Tony awards, dies at 87
Tony Walton in 1963 with his then-wife, actress Julie Andrews, and their daughter, Emma. (Anonymous/AP)
Tony Walton, an art director and scenic and costume designer who won an Oscar, an Emmy and three Tony Awards while working with top directors of musicals, comedies and dramas, died March 2 at his home in Manhattan. He was 87.
He had complications from a stroke, said Emma Walton Hamilton, his daughter from his first wife, stage and film star Julie Andrews.
Mr. Walton was born in England and spent most of his career in the United States and became a stalwart of the theater, with more than 50 Broadway credits to his name. He established his reputation in 1962 with his simple, almost abstract set designs for “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” one of Stephen Sondheim’s first musical comedies, directed by George Abbott. Mr. Walton devised a more realistic set for the 1966 film adaptation of “A Funny Thing Happened,” which, like the original Broadway production, starred Zero Mostel.
Stephen Sondheim, central figure in American musical theater, dies at 91
Another early triumph for Mr. Walton was “Mary Poppins,” a 1964 movie musical starring Andrews and Dick Van Dyke. Although Mr. Walton’s title was merely “design consultant,” he was widely credited with developing the distinctive Edwardian look of the movie’s costumes and sets and received the first of five Academy Award nominations.
“There is a definite attempt to heighten reality,” Mr. Walton told the New York Times in 1991, explaining his approach to “Mary Poppins,” “to fantasticate it, and try to make it a matter of delight.”
He won an Oscar for art direction for “All That Jazz” (1979), director Bob Fosse’s alternately grim and glossy self-portrait. Over the years, Mr. Walton worked on films directed by Sidney Lumet (“Murder on the Orient Express,” “Equus,” “The Wiz,” “Deathtrap”), François Truffaut (“Fahrenheit 451”), Mike Nichols (“Heartburn”), Ken Russell (“The Girlfriend”) and Paul Newman (“The Glass Menagerie”).
But “I really am a theater animal,” Mr. Walton said, and his work touched on virtually the full range of theatrical presentations, from revivals to dramas, comedies and blockbuster musicals. He created the scenic designs for Fosse’s original productions of “Pippin” (1972) and “Chicago” (1975), winning a Tony for the first.
He also received Tony Awards for a 1986 revival of John Guare’s dark comedy “The House of Blue Leaves” and for a 1992 version of “Guys and Dolls,” for which director Jerry Zaks told Mr. Walton, “I want to see you let loose with the paintbrush, to let it rip.”
He prepared by reading Damon Runyon’s stories, which formed the basis of the Frank Loesser musical about gamblers, gangsters and reform-minded members of the Salvation Army. The result was a color-splashed visual fantasia, with bold angles and a surreal feeling of inhabiting another world — in this case, a strangely alluring sewer.
Mr. Walton won an Emmy Award for a 1985 TV production of Arthur Miller’s “Death of Salesman,” starring Dustin Hoffman and John Malkovich.
His designs were in such demand that at one point in the early 1990s, Mr. Walton had six plays running simultaneously on Broadway — three musicals and three dramas. He had also designed a production of “Peter and the Wolf” then being performed by the American Ballet Theatre.
He approached a new script, he said in a 2008 interview with Playbill, “as if it were a radio show and [would] not allow myself to have a rush of imagery … I try to imagine what I see as if it were slowly being revealed by a pool of light … Generally, of course, it’s about how best to tell the tale.”
His design palette was so varied that there was no particular “Walton style.” New York Times drama critic Frank Rich described the understated set of the 1989 Broadway musical “Grand Hotel,” which earned Mr. Walton another Tony nomination:
“Mr. Walton creates the ambiance of nearly every public and private room of a grand hotel in Weimar Berlin by relying simply on three chandeliers, a proscenium-wide band platform, several dozen straight-backed chairs, a skeletal revolving door and four ghostly, translucent pillars in which evocative period bric-a-brac floats like the cultural detritus in a Joseph Cornell box. The constantly changing configurations of these simple fixtures is all that is needed to take the action from a bar to a bedroom to the lobby and back again. The audience’s eyes fill in what Mr. Walton leaves out.”
Anthony John Walton was born Oct. 24, 1934, in Walton-on-Thames, England. His father was an orthopedic surgeon, and his mother was a homemaker.
At first, Mr. Walton thought he would take up medicine, but he struggled with science and was queasy at the sight of blood. He became interested in theater after his parents returned from a London playhouse late one night and taught their children a new dance they had seen onstage, the Lambeth Walk.
Once, when called on to recite a Latin poem in school, Mr. Walton instead launched into a vaudeville skit he had learned, later noting, “I got booted out of that class.”
He staged plays and operas with marionettes and tried acting but “was hopelessly self-conscious in front of a paying audience.” He studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, part of University College London, where he found his niche in design and began his relationship with Andrews.
Mr. Walton was serving in the Royal Air Force in Canada in 1956 when Andrews was starring on Broadway in “My Fair Lady.” He often visited her in New York, attended other plays and settled in Manhattan after his military discharge. They were married in 1959, divorced nine years later but remained close friends.
In a statement, Andrews called Mr. Walton “my dearest and oldest friend. He taught me to see the world with fresh eyes and his talent was simply monumental.”
Mr. Walton was named to the Theater Hall of Fame in 1991, and his drawings and models for set designs were sometimes exhibited in museums. He illustrated more than a dozen children’s books that Andrews wrote with their daughter, Walton Hamilton.
In addition to his daughter, Mr. Walton’s survivors include his second wife, writer Genevieve “Gen” LeRoy; a stepdaughter, Bridget LeRoy; two sisters; a brother; and five grandchildren.
After concentrating on design, Mr. Walton turned late in his career to directing, leading productions of works by Noel Coward, George Bernard and Oscar Wilde at theaters in New York, Connecticut, Florida and California.
“I begin each project as though I’ve never done one before,” Mr. Walton said in 1991. Each new play or film, he added, is “a high dive into something yet unexplored.” | null | null | null | null | null |
Live updates:Russia-Ukraine live updates: West takes aim at Russian oil and gas while co...
At the least, this threat would seem helpful to what remains of the effort to deter Russia; to the extent that its invasion is pushing countries toward NATO rather than away from it, that’s the opposite of what Russian President Vladimir Putin had in mind. Sweden and Finland are the only two Nordic-Baltic countries that are not in NATO. And were Finland and Ukraine to ultimately join NATO, Russia’s western border above the Black Sea would be all NATO countries except one: Belarus.
Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson on Tuesday appeared to throw some cold water on the prospect, saying moving forward with an application for NATO membership right now would be “destabilizing.” That’s important because the party she leads, the center-left Social Democrats, is the biggest and most long-standing impediment to joining NATO. But it also seemed unlikely this would happen immediately, and Andersson’s comments don’t necessarily rule out looking at the issue in the future.
Sloan said that while the processes differ by country, he expected both would be approved relatively quickly.
Sean Monaghan, a Eurasian politics expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said it was “not unlikely” that either or both countries would wind up joining NATO. Finland’s moves are particularly interesting, Monaghan said, in that it tends not to be fickle about such things. He suggested its own experience with war against the Soviets informs what we’re seeing today.
“For the Finns, the 1939 Winter War — which is central to their national identify and strategic culture — may be weighing heavily on them,” Monaghan said. “They suffered the same fate as the Ukrainians are now, and resisted just as fiercely. As well as empathy and sympathy, there may be a sense of history repeating itself.”
With Finland and Sweden now trending in that direction, Biden has a real chance, if he wants it, to expand his “ring of freedom,” nearly a quarter-century hence — and indeed, to bring it close to Russia in a way Biden himself noted in 1998 wasn’t so imminent. For all involved, of course, that must be measured against Russia viewing it as the iron ring Biden’s colleagues warned of — a prospect that at least Sweden seems acutely concerned about. | null | null | null | null | null |
Oleksandr Zayarny, 68, pets one of the cats outside his home in Odessa on March 6. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)
She clasped her hands together picturing Kyiv and Kharkiv as the beautiful cities she remembers. Her eyes watered at the thought of what they must look like now, after more than a week of heavy shelling by Russian forces.
Across Ukraine, people are on the move seeking safety outside the country or in areas to the west, farther from Russian forces. Scenes at train stations around Ukraine have largely featured women and children tugging suitcases and toting whatever belongings they could bring. Men ages 18 to 60 are mostly prohibited from leaving.
Downtown Odessa is a maze of sandbags and anti-tank barriers, as the city waits for a Russian advance. But many of its oldest residents have no plans to leave. (Whitney Leaming, Erin Patrick O'Connor/The Washington Post)
And then there are the elderly. Evacuating can be too taxing emotionally and physically for many. For some, like 90-year-old Churilyana, it is so impractical that it is impossible.
Churilyana has scarcely left her apartment for the past five years. Every day she says out loud the landmarks around her downtown Odessa building, a way of making sure her world is not confined to just these walls. She asked her niece, who lives with her, to put cloth over the windows as protection in case of blasts. It has made Churilyana’s dark world even darker.
Two volunteers stopped by Churilyana’s apartment Sunday to bring her a bag of nonperishable foods — buckwheat, canned tuna and other items. These are the other people who are staying in Ukraine despite the risks: ordinary citizens now mobilizing to help the war and humanitarian effort in the country. The number of volunteers for anything and everything across Ukraine has spiked.
“There is nowhere to go, only Odessa,” he said. “My father died during World War II. My wife died. I’m alone now.”
His wife was downstairs, lying down in bed. She rarely walks anymore and has not left their home in years.
“Here we have these guys at least coming to help us, that’s the most important thing,” he said of the Park Kultury volunteers. “No one needs us anywhere else, although, of course, everyone’s worried about us.”
“It all seemed so far away, even though it had been taking place one year before I was born,” he said. “And now we have to see it with our own eyes.”
In Churilyana’s home, although she can’t see her brother’s photo portrait anymore, she remembers exactly where it is hanging. He is dressed in his military uniform in World War II. There is another photo of him on the same wall — also dressed in uniform, but older.
Churilyana was born in Russia’s Ural Mountains before she and her siblings eventually moved to Ukraine. She has outlived all of her siblings. Now her native country, and the one her father and brother fought for, is waging war against her current home. | null | null | null | null | null |
What to know from the Capitals’ 5-4 win at Calgary
Alex Ovechkin scored twice Tuesday night at Calgary. (Derek Leung/Getty Images)
Washington Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin watched as the puck sailed 79 feet, off his stick and into the empty Calgary net Tuesday night at the Saddledome. It not only was Ovechkin’s second goal of the night, sealing the Capitals’ 5-4 win over the host Flames, but it was goal No. 766 for the 36-year-old Russian.
That tied him with Jaromir Jagr for third in NHL history. Ovechkin nearly passed Jagr as time expired, but another empty-net attempt barely missed the net.
“Obviously a huge accomplishment,” Ovechkin told NBC Sports Washington after the game. “I always say without my teammates ... I would never reach those milestones and those numbers. So it’s teamwork. Thank you, guys.”
Ovechkin will try to pass Jagr on Wednesday night at Edmonton. With his two goals Tuesday, Ovechkin has 36 goals on the season, including four in the past three games. And while all eyes were on its captain Tuesday night, Washington’s overall effort against the Flames turned heads.
The Capitals were determined to continue their upward trajectory. They were just starting a three-game road trip through Western Canada, and they felt they were headed in the right direction after back-to-back home wins.
Tuesday was all about testing their recent rejuvenation — and the Capitals answered the bell to push their streak to three. The game was tight down the stretch, with the teams tied at 2 entering the final frame.
The Flames looked poised to win after Oliver Kylington scored at 3:45. Kylington’s point shot found its way past goalie Vitek Vanecek, who made multiple highlight-reel saves.
But Anthony Mantha tied the score at 3 with a short-side shot less than five minutes later to put the momentum back. The goal was his first in three games since returning from shoulder surgery.
Nic Dowd gave the Capitals a 4-3 lead with a top-shelf snipe at 11:50. Ovechkin’s empty-netter pushed the Capitals’ lead to 5-3 before Calgary’s Elias Lindholm scored his second goal of the night to produce the game’s final score.
The Flames were playing the second game of a back-to-back. They had beaten rival Edmonton, 3-1, on Monday night.
With his team down 2-0, Conor Sheary got Washington back in the game with a rebound goal at 10:27 of the second period. It was Sheary’s fourth goal in four games. Ovechkin tied the score at 2 only three minutes later.
Tuesday’s game also brought a significant milestone for Ovechkin and running mate Nicklas Backstrom. The duo played their 1,000th game together; they are the ninth in NHL history to reach that total.
“It was kind of special atmosphere in the locker room,” Ovechkin said. “Not many guys played 1,000 games. ... It’s a pretty cool moment. He is a tremendous leader, a tremendous friend and, you know, I’m lucky to play with him all those games.”
The Flames took a 1-0 lead after Lindholm scored on a three-on-one at 9:40 of the first period. The Flames opened a 2-0 lead after the Capitals turned the puck over in their own zone and Adam Ruzicka capitalized off a pretty passing sequence at 8:54 of the second.
Here’s what to know about the Capitals’ game win over the Flames:
Vanecek’s case
With Tuesday’s start, Vanecek continued to make his case to be Washington’s No. 1 goaltender. His poise and confidence in net have been apparent all season but has been shone through over his past three starts. He had 31 saves Tuesday.
Capitals condemn Russian invasion
The Capitals released a statement Tuesday that condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the “loss of innocent life.” It also said the organization stood in “full support” of its Russian players and their families overseas.
“We realize they are being put in a difficult situation and [we] stand by to offer our assistance to them and their families,” the Capitals said.
Washington’s comments were its first official statement since Russia began its invasion. Ovechkin spoke about the invasion Feb. 25. He has voiced support for Russian President Vladimir Putin in the past. In his recent comments, he did not sever ties with Putin, instead saying he hopes the war will be over soon and there will be “peace in the whole world.”
There was a smattering of boos when Ovechkin touched the puck early Tuesday night. The boos died down by the second period. There was also a small Ukraine flag visible in the crowd. Capitals Coach Peter Laviolette told reporters Tuesday morning in Calgary that the team was aware boos directed at Ovechkin were likely to happen. There were also multiple Ovechkin jerseys in the Calgary crowd.
“We support our players,” Laviolette said. “They’ve done so much good for the game. They’re athletes. They’re here playing hockey and they’ve done so much good for our organization and for the game. We can’t control what other people say. We support our players. Like I said, they’re hockey players.” | null | null | null | null | null |
But Hong Kong has been unable to match the mainland approach, lacking the resources to isolate everyone who tests positive or put the city under lockdown. The highly transmissible omicron variant crippled the city’s defenses, affecting the most vulnerable elderly population in particular. This January, fewer than 1 in 5 residents above the age of 80 had been fully vaccinated with two doses, and almost none had three.
That percentage has risen since then, but experts say it is still too little, too late, especially compared with Singapore, South Korea and Japan where the elderly were a priority for vaccinations.
The failure to vaccinate this group has now pushed hospitals, elderly care homes and morgues to breaking point. Kwok Hoi-bong, chairman of the Funeral Business Association, said that public mortuary refrigerators are so overwhelmed that temporary ones had to be installed outside the facilities. | null | null | null | null | null |
Marshall Thundering Herd (12-20, 4-14 C-USA) vs. Rice Owls (15-15, 7-11 C-USA)
Houston; Wednesday, 12 p.m. EST
BOTTOM LINE: Marshall visits the Rice Owls after Taevion Kinsey scored 23 points in Marshall’s 74-62 win against the Florida International Panthers.
The Owls have gone 10-5 in home games. Rice leads C-USA with 16.2 assists per game led by Max Fiedler averaging 3.4.
The Thundering Herd are 4-14 in C-USA play. Marshall allows 76.4 points to opponents and has been outscored by 2.2 points per game.
The teams meet for the second time this season. Rice won 87-77 in the last matchup on Jan. 16. Carl Pierre led Rice with 30 points, and Kinsey led Marshall with 31 points.
TOP PERFORMERS: Pierre is scoring 15.4 points per game and averaging 4.6 rebounds for the Owls. Travis Evee is averaging 2.1 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Rice.
Andrew Taylor is averaging 14.4 points, 5.2 rebounds, 4.4 assists and 1.8 steals for the Thundering Herd. Kinsey is averaging 13.1 points and 3.3 assists over the last 10 games for Marshall. | null | null | null | null | null |
Hospital emergency rooms are also overflowing. One doctor at a public hospital’s emergency ward said in an interview that beds are now crammed close to fit them all in the space. Doctors can barely access the patients, with no way to walk around the beds.
One patient, he said, died in the short time a nurse went off to the hospital pharmacy to pick up some medicine.
“It is impossible to stop,” the doctor said, speaking on a condition of anonymity, fearing repercussions from the Hospital Authority.
Elderly care homes have also turned into battlegrounds. Almost 90 percent of the facilities have covid cases, and about 4,700 care home workers have tested positive. Cases are also rising in disabled care homes and among the caretakers of that at-risk population.
At one nursing home, a nurse now has to tend to about 60 elderly residents. None of these facilities is adequately equipped with quarantine rooms, making it impossible to stop others from getting infected.
The crisis has made Hong Kong increasingly dependent on the mainland, which in recent weeks has sent thousands of doctors, nurses, construction workers and experts to the territory. But even they are finding that strategies that worked in cities like Wuhan cannot be immediately applied to Hong Kong at this stage in its outbreak.
Liang Wannian, a mainland Chinese covid expert sent to Hong Kong to help manage the crisis, said in an interview with state media that the city’s main target should be to cut the number of deaths. Carrie Lam, the territory’s chief executive, said Wednesday that while her government was still planning a recently announced mandatory testing exercise, it was not a “top priority.”
Social workers and nurses, meanwhile, find themselves consoling families unable to complete funeral rites and rituals for their elderly relatives. One social worker said an elderly resident died before an ambulance arrived to take him to a hospital, his family forced to watch as he took his last breath. Others can barely glimpse the faces of their loved ones before they are sent to the crematorium. | null | null | null | null | null |
Ukraine says Russia thwarting wider civilian evacuations as Sumy corridor opens, thousands flee
U.S. will deploy Patriot air defense missiles to Poland, Pentagon says
By Michael Laris, Jennifer Wadsworth, Mark Kreidler and Dan Simmons3:02 a.m.
By David L. Stern and Ellen Francis2:43 a.m.
MUKACHEVO, Ukraine — The desperate effort to secure safe passage for civilians trapped in Ukrainian cities under attack by Russian forces remained deeply precarious on Tuesday: A single evacuation route opened, allowing thousands to escape safely, while Ukraine accused Russia of shelling another proposed corridor.
Ukraine’s foreign ministry said the Russian military violated a cease fire by shelling an evacuation route out of the besieged city of Mariupol. It was the fourth day in a row that Ukraine has accused Moscow of firing on routes used by civilians to flee the fighting.
By Daniel Lamothe2:40 a.m.
The Pentagon will dispatch two Patriot missile units to Poland, U.S. military officials said Tuesday, moving its most advanced air defense systems and their powerful radar in response to the war in Ukraine and ongoing tension with Russia.
The deployment comes at the direction of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and at the invitation of the Polish government, the Pentagon said in a statement. The system is designed to search for incoming missiles and take them out.
“This defensive deployment is being conducted proactively to counter any potential threat to U.S. and Allied forces and NATO territory,” a U.S. military official said in a statement, saying the missiles “will in no way support any offensive operations.”
“Every step we take is intended to deter aggression and reassure our allies,” the statement said.
As of Tuesday, Russia has launched nearly 670 missiles at Ukraine since it invaded on Feb. 24, according to a senior U.S. defense official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. Some have the range to reach Poland.
Patriot missiles were used in combat during the Persian Gulf War to take out incoming Iraqi Scud missiles. More recently, they were deployed to Saudi Arabia during the Trump administration in response to ballistic missile attacks on its oil facilities that Iran was suspected of carrying out. | null | null | null | null | null |
Democrats and Republicans in Congress struck a deal on a long-delayed $1.5 trillion spending bill that would fund the U.S. government through the rest of the fiscal year and provide $13.6 billion to respond to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Lawmakers released the text of the 2,741-page measure early Wednesday, with the House planning to pass it later in the day. The House also is set to vote on another stopgap spending bill, continuing government funding at current levels through March 15 to give the Senate time to deal with the full-year legislation.
The legislation would provide $730 billion for non-defense discretionary spending, a 6.7% increase and a win for Democrats while Republicans were able to negotiate a 5.6% increase for defense spending over fiscal 2021, bringing it to $782 billion.
Democrats failed in their attempt to get rid of a decades-old provision that’s regularly attached to spending legislation. Known as the Hyde amendment, it bans federal money for abortion, except in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the woman. President Joe Biden had previously supported the restriction before changing his position in 2019 and calling for it to be repealed. | null | null | null | null | null |
Akron plays Buffalo in MAC Tournament
BOTTOM LINE: The Akron Zips and Buffalo Bulls play in the MAC Tournament.
The Bulls have gone 13-6 against MAC opponents. Buffalo ranks second in the MAC with 26.8 defensive rebounds per game led by Josh Mballa averaging 5.0.
The teams meet for the second time this season. The Zips won 88-76 in the last matchup on Jan. 1. Ali Ali led the Zips with 32 points, and Jeenathan Williams led the Bulls with 19 points.
TOP PERFORMERS: Ali is shooting 46.5% and averaging 14.1 points for the Zips. Xavier Castaneda is averaging 1.5 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Akron.
Williams is shooting 49.2% and averaging 19.2 points for the Bulls. Ronaldo Segu is averaging 13.2 points over the last 10 games for Buffalo.
Bulls: 8-2, averaging 78.8 points, 40.2 rebounds, 14.9 assists, 6.6 steals and four blocks per game while shooting 46.4% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 74.1 points. | null | null | null | null | null |
Alcorn State meets Prairie View A&M in SWAC Tournament
BOTTOM LINE: The Alcorn State Braves take on the Prairie View A&M Panthers in the SWAC Tournament.
The Braves have gone 6-3 at home. Alcorn State averages 13.1 turnovers per game and is 6-7 when it wins the turnover battle.
The Panthers are 8-8 against SWAC opponents. Prairie View A&M is 1-11 against opponents over .500.
The teams meet for the third time this season. The Braves won 72-69 in the last matchup on Feb. 26. Justin Thomas led the Braves with 26 points, and Jawaun Daniels led the Panthers with 23 points.
TOP PERFORMERS: Lenell Henry is averaging 8.4 points and 5.5 rebounds for the Braves. Thomas is averaging 12.5 points over the last 10 games for Alcorn State.
Jeremiah Gambrell is shooting 34.0% from beyond the arc with 2.2 made 3-pointers per game for the Panthers, while averaging 11.5 points. Daniels is shooting 44.6% and averaging 16.8 points over the past 10 games for Prairie View A&M. | null | null | null | null | null |
Cincinnati plays in AAC Tournament against the East Carolina
BOTTOM LINE: The Cincinnati Bearcats take on the East Carolina Pirates in the AAC Tournament.
The Bearcats are 12-6 in home games. Cincinnati is fifth in the AAC with 23.7 defensive rebounds per game led by Jeremiah Davenport averaging 3.8.
The Pirates are 6-11 in conference play. East Carolina has a 5-5 record in games decided by 10 or more points.
The teams square off for the third time this season. Cincinnati won the last meeting 60-59 on Jan. 30. Mika Adams-Woods scored 21 to help lead Cincinnati to the victory, and Vance Jackson scored 25 points for East Carolina.
TOP PERFORMERS: David Dejulius is scoring 14.5 points per game with 2.7 rebounds and 2.6 assists for the Bearcats. Davenport is averaging 9.1 points and 4.3 rebounds while shooting 40.0% over the last 10 games for Cincinnati. | null | null | null | null | null |
Colgate Raiders face the Navy Midshipmen in Patriot Championship
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: Colgate -6.5; over/under is 127.5
BOTTOM LINE: The Colgate Raiders take on the Navy Midshipmen in the Patriot Championship.
The Raiders are 14-1 in home games. Colgate averages 17.2 assists per game to lead the Patriot, paced by Tucker Richardson with 3.8.
The Midshipmen are 12-6 against Patriot opponents. Navy is fourth in the Patriot with 23.9 defensive rebounds per game led by John Carter Jr. averaging 3.3.
The teams meet for the third time this season. Colgate won 74-69 in the last matchup on Feb. 26. Richardson led Colgate with 23 points, and Carter led Navy with 17 points.
TOP PERFORMERS: Nelly Cummings is averaging 14.5 points and 3.4 assists for the Raiders. Richardson is averaging 10.4 points over the last 10 games for Colgate.
Carter is scoring 13.4 points per game with 4.4 rebounds and 1.4 assists for the Midshipmen. Tyler Nelson is averaging 6.8 points and 3.2 rebounds while shooting 41.5% over the last 10 games for Navy. | null | null | null | null | null |
Eastern Washington Eagles and Northern Arizona Lumberjacks play in Big Sky Tournament
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: Eastern Washington -7.5; over/under is 140.5
BOTTOM LINE: The Eastern Washington Eagles take on the Northern Arizona Lumberjacks in the Big Sky Tournament.
The Eagles have gone 9-3 in home games. Eastern Washington is ninth in the Big Sky in team defense, allowing 74.5 points while holding opponents to 42.9% shooting.
The Lumberjacks are 5-15 in conference games. Northern Arizona is eighth in the Big Sky allowing 73.2 points while holding opponents to 45.4% shooting.
The teams meet for the third time this season. Eastern Washington won 69-62 in the last matchup on March 4. Steele Venters led Eastern Washington with 18 points, and Keith Haymon led Northern Arizona with 24 points.
TOP PERFORMERS: Venters is shooting 43.5% from beyond the arc with 2.6 made 3-pointers per game for the Eagles, while averaging 16.4 points. Linton Acliese is averaging 17 points and 7.5 rebounds over the last 10 games for Eastern Washington.
Jalen Cole is scoring 18.8 points per game and averaging 2.9 rebounds for the Lumberjacks. Haymon is averaging 10.7 points and 4.0 rebounds over the last 10 games for Northern Arizona. | null | null | null | null | null |
Fordham Rams play in A-10 Tournament against the George Mason Patriots
George Mason Patriots (14-15, 7-9 A-10) vs. Fordham Rams (15-15, 8-10 A-10)
Washington; Thursday, 12 p.m. EST
BOTTOM LINE: The Fordham Rams play in the A-10 Tournament against the George Mason Patriots.
The Rams are 10-4 in home games. Fordham is 7-11 against opponents over .500.
The Patriots are 7-9 in A-10 play. George Mason scores 71.5 points while outscoring opponents by 2.5 points per game.
The teams meet for the second time this season. Fordham won 50-47 in the last matchup on Feb. 20. Chuba Ohams led Fordham with 17 points, and Xavier Johnson led George Mason with 19 points.
TOP PERFORMERS: Ohams is averaging 14.6 points, 11.5 rebounds and 1.8 blocks for the Rams. Josh Navarro is averaging 1.2 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Fordham.
Josh Oduro is shooting 52.8% and averaging 18.0 points for the Patriots. D’Shawn Schwartz is averaging 1.6 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for George Mason. | null | null | null | null | null |
Houston Baptist meets Incarnate Word in Southland Tournament
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: Houston Baptist -4.5; over/under is 140.5
BOTTOM LINE: The Houston Baptist Huskies take on the Incarnate Word Cardinals in the Southland Tournament.
The Huskies are 7-6 in home games. Houston Baptist is sixth in the Southland scoring 76.1 points while shooting 44.6% from the field.
The Cardinals are 3-11 against Southland opponents. Incarnate Word is 1-4 in one-possession games.
The teams square off for the fourth time this season. Houston Baptist won the last meeting 82-68 on Feb. 25. Khristion Courseault scored 19 to help lead Houston Baptist to the victory, and RJ Glasper scored 23 points for Incarnate Word.
TOP PERFORMERS: Darius Lee is averaging 18.3 points, 8.3 rebounds, 3.2 assists and 2.4 steals for the Huskies. Brycen Long is averaging 10.8 points over the past 10 games for Houston Baptist.
Drew Lutz is averaging 10.2 points and 3.7 assists for the Cardinals. Glasper is averaging 18.8 points over the last 10 games for Incarnate Word. | null | null | null | null | null |
Kansas State Wildcats and West Virginia Mountaineers play in Big 12 Tournament
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: Kansas State -1; over/under is 138.5
BOTTOM LINE: The Kansas State Wildcats take on the West Virginia Mountaineers in the Big 12 Tournament.
The Wildcats have gone 9-7 at home. Kansas State is ninth in the Big 12 with 12.6 assists per game led by Markquis Nowell averaging 5.1.
The Mountaineers are 4-14 in conference games. West Virginia ranks sixth in the Big 12 shooting 32.4% from 3-point range.
TOP PERFORMERS: Nijel Pack is shooting 45.7% and averaging 17.4 points for the Wildcats. Mike McGuirl is averaging 1.1 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for Kansas State.
Sherman is averaging 18.3 points for the Mountaineers. Sean McNeil is averaging 1.1 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games for West Virginia. | null | null | null | null | null |
CSU Bakersfield visits Long Beach State following Murray's 26-point outing
BOTTOM LINE: Long Beach State hosts the CSU Bakersfield Roadrunners after Joel Murray scored 26 points in Long Beach State’s 73-72 overtime win over the UC Riverside Highlanders.
The Beach have gone 11-3 at home. Long Beach State is third in the Big West in rebounding averaging 32.5 rebounds. Aboubacar Traore paces the Beach with 8.2 boards.
The Roadrunners are 2-12 against conference opponents. CSU Bakersfield allows 66.1 points to opponents while being outscored by 1.1 points per game.
The teams meet for the second time this season. The Beach won 74-65 in the last matchup on Feb. 4. Colin Slater led the Beach with 23 points, and Kaleb Higgins led the Roadrunners with 21 points.
TOP PERFORMERS: Slater is shooting 39.4% from beyond the arc with 2.2 made 3-pointers per game for the Beach, while averaging 13.9 points. Murray is averaging 16.8 points, 3.1 assists and 1.6 steals over the last 10 games for Long Beach State.
Justin McCall is scoring 10.8 points per game and averaging 4.4 rebounds for the Roadrunners. Higgins is averaging 9.1 points and 1.9 rebounds over the last 10 games for CSU Bakersfield.
Roadrunners: 2-8, averaging 62.9 points, 29.1 rebounds, 10.8 assists, 4.1 steals and three blocks per game while shooting 43.7% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 62.6 points. | null | null | null | null | null |
Nevada plays New Mexico in MWC Tournament
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK LINE: Nevada -5.5; over/under is 150
BOTTOM LINE: The Nevada Wolf Pack play in the MWC Tournament against the New Mexico Lobos.
The Wolf Pack are 7-7 on their home court. Nevada has a 7-11 record in games decided by 10 points or more.
The Lobos are 5-12 in MWC play. New Mexico ranks eighth in the MWC with 11.7 assists per game led by Jaelen House averaging 4.4.
The teams meet for the second time this season. Nevada won 79-70 in the last matchup on Jan. 2. Desmond Cambridge led Nevada with 18 points, and House led New Mexico with 18 points.
TOP PERFORMERS: Grant Sherfield is averaging 18.5 points and 6.5 assists for the Wolf Pack. Cambridge is averaging 11.9 points and 3.9 rebounds while shooting 47.5% over the last 10 games for Nevada.
Jamal Mashburn, Jr. is averaging 18.3 points for the Lobos. House is averaging 12.4 points over the last 10 games for New Mexico. | null | null | null | null | null |
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