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As suicide rate keeps rising in Wisconsin, concentration in rural areas raises alarm

USA Today

As suicide rate keeps rising in Wisconsin, concentration in rural areas raises alarm

Natalie Eilbert – February 2, 2023

If you or someone you know is dealing with suicidal thoughts, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 or text “Hopeline” to the National Crisis Text Line at 741-741.

Karen Endres knows that farming involves stress unlike other occupations.

Its main variables — weather, livestock, crops, sales — are largely beyond control. Physical demands and time commitment never ease. Family relationships, management practices and work-life balance all overlap. In how many jobs, after all, might three generations of a family work, live and plan for the future together?

And if that business isn’t going well, who do they talk to?

“We don’t have a community to connect with others about mental health and stressors,” said Endres, who operates a dairy farm with her husband, and works as the farmer wellness coordinator at Wisconsin Farm Center’s Farmer Wellness Program, part of the state Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection. “It can lead us to very dangerous places.”

The most recent Suicide in Wisconsin report shows a 32% increase in suicides in Wisconsin from 2000 to 2020. Suicide is now the state’s 10th leading cause of death. Over the last three years combined, suicide rates were higher among rural residents than among urban residents. And overwhelmingly, the suicides were among men.

Some rural counties dwarf the state suicide rate.

According to the Wisconsin Violent Deaths Reporting System, Milwaukee County’s rate of suicide deaths was about 12 per every 100,000 people in 2018, the most recent year of comprehensive reporting. Nearly 300 miles north in Ashland County, the rate of suicide deaths was about 25 per every 100,000. Milwaukee County has a population of nearly 930,000. Ashland’s population: About 16,000.

“North of Green Bay, the population is very sparse and resources are very sparse. You have a high proportion of veterans living in those counties, higher proportions of firearm ownership in those counties, and so there’s just a number of factors that play into that,” said Sara Kohlbeck, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the Medical College of Wisconsin.

Kohlbeck conducts research in suicide and suicide prevention across different communities in Wisconsin. In 14 years, Kohlbeck has analyzed the deaths of nearly 200 Wisconsin farmers who died by suicide.

One farmer ended his life the day after receiving a change of address card in the mail from his wife, who’d recently left him. Another died a week after being “disgusted” over not being able to cut his own toenails, a result of new physical limitations. Yet another had just finished a phone call with a loan company. Another had a disappointing crop, the latest in a string of bad years. Still, others had blood alcohol content many, many times the legal limit.

Over 70% of farmer suicides involved firearms.

Kohlbeck and her team divided the hardships faced by farmers into five categories: acute interpersonal loss (a wife leaving), rugged individualism (a man facing new limitations), financial stress (a phone call from a loan company), the pressure of providing (struggling with the crops) and the lethal combination of alcohol and firearms.

“They’re just in an untenable scenario of inescapable pain,” Kohlbeck said. “Physical health issues, substance abuse, not having access to care, not being able to put food on the table — a lot of what I see is basic needs-related issues … that lead them to wanting to escape the situation they’re in.”

Chris Frakes is the group director of the Southwestern Wisconsin Community Action Program, an anti-poverty agency. Every three years, it does a community needs assessment for the five counties it oversees. In 2017, Frakes had heard so many stories of farmers struggling to get by, she expected them to reach out for help. But few did.

The silence and the growing farm crisis led to the program getting creative about upstream prevention. In 2021, it received nearly $1 million from the Wisconsin Partnership Program at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health to target farmers’ mental health over a five-year period.

But Frakes is the first to admit that assessing the needs of farmers involves face-to-face interactions, ability to crack coded language and, above all things, development of trust. To do so requires people to understand the culture.

“We’re trying to really empower community members to not only recognize when somebody’s in a crisis, or when somebody’s struggling with thoughts of suicide but also to notice when somebody’s really stressed or struggling,” Frakes said.

Karen Endres works as the farmer wellness coordinator at Wisconsin Farm Center's Farmer Wellness Program, part of the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection. She frequently pays visits to fellow farmers to learn about their specific mental health needs. — Karen Endres works as the farmer wellness coordinator at Wisconsin Farm Center’s Farmer Wellness Program, part of the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection. She frequently pays visits to fellow farmers to learn about their specific mental health needs.

Domino effects of self-blame in farmer culture

Brenda Statz, a cattle farmer in Loganville, lost her husband to suicide in 2018. Leon Statz had struggled with depression, and four months to the day after he made the decision to sell his dairy cows, he was rushed to the hospital following an overdose. It was his first suicide attempt.

But Statz found it hard to talk about his mental health. Instead, he talked about the torrential rainfall at the end of 2016 and throughout 2017 that left his hay perpetually damp. He talked about crops growing moldy, cows getting sick from mycotoxins in their feed, vet bills shooting through the roof, tractors running aground in the mud. He talked about corn left unharvested.

Something that will always stay with Brenda Statz is a conversation she had with a psychiatrist in Iowa who told her farmers are a specific breed of people who will “always find a way to blame themselves.” If milk price falls, they’ll berate themselves for not forward contracting. If the rainfall ruins the hay, they should have cut the hay earlier.

“They will always turn it around that it’s their fault that they did something wrong — whether this stuff is totally out of their control, they will still find a way to say they did something wrong, that they should have been paying attention,” Statz said. “That’s farming.”

Kohlbeck’s studies suggest that fewer than half of the people who die by suicide have a diagnosed mental health condition. In connection with self-blame and lost control, what has jumped out to her is a sense of having lost usefulness.

“When a farmer is stymied by physical health issues, an ability to care for the farm and for those relying on them is compromised—in fact, they may see themselves as ‘no good.’ Their identity as a strong, physically able hard worker may be shaken,” Kohlbeck wrote in a study published by The Journal of Rural Health.

Lethal combinations of firearms and substances

What makes Wisconsin’s farmer suicides stand out isn’t the number of deaths the state sees every year; those numbers are proportionate across Midwestern farmlands. It’s the fact that Wisconsin holds the troubling distinction of more binge drinkers than any other state in the United States, with 23.5% of its adult population drinking excessively, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“There’s a higher number of suicides here because we have three things: We’re readily accessible to guns, firearms, because people hunt; you can isolate out on your farm very easy and you don’t ever have to leave the farm; and another thing is, as a state, we’re known for drinking,” said Brenda Statz. “So, you mix those three things together and it could spell disaster for some.”

Brenda Statz, widow and the wife for 34 years to Leon Statz. Leon died by suicide after struggling to keep his farm solvent.

Kohlbeck noted that nearly 20% of the farmers who used a firearm in their suicides also had alcohol in their systems at the time of their death.

Statz knows all too well that farmers won’t go to doctors, even if they need to, partly because they’re “fixers, even when everything’s going wrong,” and partly because, she said, even if they’re on death’s door, “there’s always work to do on the farm,” she said.

“Many individuals use alcohol as a means for coping with the stress they encounter in their daily life,” Kohlbeck said. “And, unfortunately, alcohol alters your decision-making when you’re in a crisis.”

Self-medicating with alcohol and opioids, Endres said, is a big problem. Frakes, from Southwestern Wisconsin Community Action Program, said farmers keep what she calls a “rainy day” stock of opioids from previous injuries. At a time when opioids are reaching historic levels in the state, especially in rural areas, the combination leads to catastrophic outcomes for farmers, Frakes said.

In less than a decade, overdose deaths in Wisconsin have more than doubled, from 628 in 2014 to 1,427 in 2021, according to the state Department of Health Services. Hospitalizations for overdoses are rising as well, from 1,489 hospital visits in 2014 to 3,133 in 2021. It’s suspected that, in 2022, 8,622 ambulance runs within Wisconsin were the result of opioid overdose cases.

Largely rural counties — Menominee, Ashland, Forest, Douglas, Jackson and La Crosse counties — had suspected rates of opioid overdoses that far exceeded the state average, sometimes 100 times the state rate. Further, both deaths and misuse of opioids are higher in Wisconsin than the national average.

Finding a trustworthy doctor is a challenge

Since she lost her husband to suicide, Statz travels to churches across the state to promote mental health in farmers as part of her work with the Farmer Angel Network, a project out of the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation.

Part of the mindset for farmers is to work hard and work constantly. Farmers aren’t the type to ask for — or able to take even if they want it — time off and, instead, see it as a success when somebody works years without a break.

"Suicide doesn't just impact that one person; it impacts the whole family," says Brenda Statz, Sauk County Farm Bureau member who lost her husband Leon in 2018 following his third suicide attempt. — “Suicide doesn’t just impact that one person; it impacts the whole family,” says Brenda Statz, Sauk County Farm Bureau member who lost her husband Leon in 2018 following his third suicide attempt.

When she spoke as a representative of Farmer Angel Network with Reedsburg Area Medical Center, Statz explained to the staff there that farmers come to counseling because their spouses have “nagged them” or they’ve run out of other options.

That doesn’t mean they’re ready to talk, though.

“He’s going to come in your office and he’s going to talk about the weather, he’s going to talk about his dog, he’s going to talk about everything, except why he’s there,” Statz said. “You’re going need a little more time when a farmer comes in. They’re going to not be upfront right away, because they’re still checking you out to see how much they can trust you.”

Many farmers use small talk to gain trust, Frakes said. And they’re not prone to come out and say they’re struggling. Farmers can shoo terms like anxiety and depression away like flies, but when they start to talk about issues like crops failing, that’s the time to start paying attention, she said. Crop failure can mean livestock feed is short for the winter, which can interfere with farm operations.

“Instead of asking if a farmer is depressed, it’s better to ask them what’s keeping them up at night. Asking a slightly different set of questions to try and get at what’s really happening, plus small talk, is a way to build trust,” Frakes said.

The lack of access to counseling services — and an evergreen reluctance to seek care — means when a farmer does feel mental distress, it’s usually already an emergency. And for 21 Wisconsin counties, the closest option for residential crisis stabilization involves a trip across county lines.

Statz’s husband Leon attempted suicide three times in 2018. After Leon’s first attempt on April 21, it would be another six weeks before he could see a counselor. His second attempt happened in July.

He was dead by October.

Resources for farmers

Wisconsin Farm Center has a toll-free, 24/7 farmer wellness line for anyone experiencing depression or anxiety, or who just needs to talk, at (888) 901-2558.
The Farmer Wellness Program offers weekly support groups for farmers and farmer couples to share challenges and offer encouragement, comfort, and advice nine months out of the year (except between July and September). Zoom meetings take place either on the first Monday or the first Tuesday of every month at 8 p.m.
The Farmer Angel Network provides its members with access to mental health resources through educational programs, informational flyers and trained personnel. Summer months include all-expense paid ice cream socials, kid-friendly drive-in movies and more for over 50 farm families to enjoy a night off.
Farm Well Wisconsin partners with local experts to build on and connect existing community resources, gives community leaders the tools they need to support and intervene in crises, and improves knowledge of health providers serving rural populations.
Wisconsin Farmers Union is a member-driven organization committed to enhancing the quality of life for family farmers, rural communities and all people through educational opportunities, cooperative endeavors and civic engagement.

More: One mom’s journey: The (lack of) paint on the walls colors the stigma surrounding mental health

Natalie Eilbert covers mental health issues for USA TODAY NETWORK-Central Wisconsin. She welcomes story tips and feedback.

Here’s Exactly What a Blood Clot Feels Like, According to Doctors

Plus, how to know when you should call your doctor or go to the ER.

Leah Groth – February 3, 2023

Everyone bleeds, and in most cases, blood clotting, AKA coagulation, is a good thing. “A blood clot (also known as a thrombus) is a jello-like material that your body creates to stop bleeding when you suffer a cut, scrape or another injury,” explains Dr. Angelo Marino, DO, Yale Medicine interventional radiologist and assistant professor of clinical Radiology and Biomedical Imaging at Yale School of Medicine.

The clot, which consists of a mixture of several components found in blood including platelets, specialized protein clotting factors, and red blood cells, usually dissolves once completed or incorporates into its surrounding as scar tissue (collagen).

However, in some cases, blood clots form when they shouldn’t, and that might restrict or prevent blood flow to vital organs. In these cases, blood clots can also be a life-threatening condition.

What Is a Blood Clot?

Dr. Marino explains that clots can form in arteries, “a network of highways that transport blood that is rich in oxygen and nutrients from the heart to our organs and body parts,” and veins, “highways that bring used blood from the organs back to the heart.”

When a clot forms in a major vein (most commonly in the leg) it is called a deep vein thrombosis (DVT). “In some instances, the clot can detach from its point of origin and travel to the lungs, called a pulmonary embolism (PE). A blood clot in the arteries of the heart causes a heart attack, whereas in the brain it leads to a stroke,” he says.

How Common Are Blood Clots?

Dr. Darren Mareiniss, MD, Chairman, Department of Emergency Medicine, Trinitas Regional Medical Center RWJ Barnabas Health, explains that venous thromboembolism (VTE), defined as deep vein thrombosis (DVT), pulmonary embolism (PE), or both, affects an estimated 600,000 individuals in the U.S. each year. “Blood clots are extremely dangerous if not treated and as many as 100,000 people die each year of VTE,” he says.

He adds that PE is the leading cause of death in patients with cancer after cancer itself and is also a leading cause of death in pregnancy and the postpartum period.

What Are the Risk Factors for Blood Clots?

There are several well-known risk factors for venous thromboembolism, according to Dr. Mareiniss. These include a cancer diagnosis, immobility, recent surgery, pregnancy, estrogen therapy, old age, recent trauma and obesity.

“In addition, some individuals have genetic predispositions to form thrombus,” he says. These predispositions include factor V Leiden deficiency, Protein S deficiency and Protein C deficiency.

What Does a Blood Clot Feel Like?

Dr. Marino explains that the symptoms of a blood clot depend on what body part the clot is in and whether it is in an artery or vein. “In general, a clot in a vein will cause symptoms related to blood backing up, like a clogged drainage pipe in your house will lead to water backing up,” he says.

The most common symptom of DVT is swelling in the affected leg, usually in the calf, explains Dr. Hamid Mojibian, MD, Yale Medicine’s director of cardiac CT/MR imaging, Associate Professor of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging and Cardiology. “This swelling may be accompanied by redness and warmth in the area,” he says.

A person with DVT may experience pain or tenderness in the affected leg, especially when standing or walking. “This pain may feel like a cramp or ache and may be felt in the calf or thigh,” adds. Dr. Mojibian. “In some cases, the skin over the affected area may become discolored, appearing blue or red.”

The affected leg may feel warm to the touch, as compared to the other leg, indicating increased blood flow in the area, he continues. “People with DVT may describe a heavy or achy feeling in the affected leg as if they have been overworked or strained.”

PE occurs when a thrombus in the venous system breaks off and circulates through the right heart into the pulmonary arteries, effectively occluding blood flow and preventing oxygenation of venous blood, adds Dr. Mareiniss. The symptoms of PE include chest pain and shortness of breath. “The patient often complains of classic pleuritic chest pain in which pain increases with deep breathing,” he says.

Dr. Marino elaborates that the symptoms of PE are a result of your heart having to work harder to pump blood past the clots. “Unfortunately, sudden death is the first symptom in 25 percent of people that develop a PE,” he says.

A stroke occurs when a blood clot stops blood flow to the arteries of the brain, which can cause weakness on one side of the body, difficulty speaking, visual issues or disorientation. “A clot that stops the blood flow to the heart (heart attack) can cause chest tightness/pain, trouble breathing, sweating, and arm or shoulder discomfort,” says Dr. Marino.

What Should You Do If You Think You Have a Blood Clot?

If you believe you have a blood clot, you should immediately be evaluated by a doctor or advanced practice provider, instructs Dr. Mareiniss. “Individuals with symptoms of chest pain or shortness of breath should be acutely evaluated in the emergency department.”

How Are Blood Clots Treated?

In order to make a diagnosis, you may require diagnostic imaging or other testing. Once diagnosed, treatment will depend on the location of the clot as well as the severity and duration of symptoms.

“The go-to treatment for blood clots is anticoagulation, which are medicines commonly known as blood thinners,” explains Dr. Marino. “They work by preventing clots from forming and also can break down existing clots.” These include Coumadin, Heparin, Lovenox, Eliquis (apixaban) or Xarelto (rivaroxaban), adds Dr. Mareiniss.

If symptoms are severe, drugs called thrombolytics may be administered through an IV. “They act quickly to dissolve the clot, but only work when the clot is freshly formed,” Dr. Marino says.

There are also minimally invasive treatments that can be used to eliminate the clot. One treatment, catheter-directed thrombolysis, involves using a small tube (catheter), which is inserted under image guidance directly into the clot to deliver the clot-dissolving medicine. “This treatment also works best when the clot is fresh,” he says. However, given the risk of bleeding when these drugs are administered, a subset of patients will not be candidates for these treatments.

“Another minimally invasive treatment, which is newer, involves using a catheter to physically remove the blood clots. This procedure, known as catheter-directed thrombectomy, has revolutionized the care of patients with large strokes,” Dr. Marino continues. “At Yale, we were early adopters of using catheter-directed thrombectomy for the treatment of PE and DVT, and have seen remarkable results. Clinical trials looking at long-term outcomes are forthcoming, but early data from clinical registries are very promising.”

Lastly, some clots, particularly really chronic ones, may require more invasive surgical removal.

The Bottom Line

A blood clot in the leg veins is a medical condition that can have serious health consequences if not treated promptly and properly, emphasizes Dr. Mojibian. “Therefore, it is essential to be aware of the symptoms of DVT and seek medical attention right away to prevent severe complications from developing.”

Donald Trump and golf: Fancy resorts, A-List partners, cheating at highest level

Palm Beach Daily News

Donald Trump and golf: Fancy resorts, A-List partners, cheating at highest level

Tom D’Angelo, Palm Beach Post – February 3, 2023

Donald Trump has a long (creative) history with golf. He owns fancy resorts and lavish courses around the world. He has played with the biggest names. And he’s received endorsements from some of the most well-known golfers in the world. Even besides himself.

But above all, the former president’s dubious claims on the course have become legendary, and were the subject of a 2019 book by sportswriter Rick Reilly: Commander in Cheat.

“Trump doesn’t just cheat at golf,” Riley wrote. “He throws it, boots it, and moves it. He lies about his lies. He fudges and foozles and fluffs. At Winged Foot, where Trump is a member, the caddies got so used to seeing him kick his ball back onto the fairway they came up with a nickname for him: ‘Pele.’”

President Donald Trump tweeted this photo after golfing with local golf legends Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods on Saturday, Feb. 2, 2019

Trump a self-proclaimed champion:Trump declares himself the winner of his own club championship – in the Trumpiest way ever

Trump and LIV Golf:Trump spends LIV pro-am praising his game and proving Joe Biden is in his head | D’Angelo

Just ask members of Trump International West Palm Beach who arrived for the final round of their Senior Club Championship on Jan. 22 only to find Trump’s name at the top of the leaderboard … when he didn’t play the first round.

But he did play a round earlier that week, claimed he had a good day and decided to use that score for the first round of the Senior Club Championship. He then called it a “great honor” to have won the tournament on social media, adding, “he was hitting the ball long and straight.”

Those who know him certainly were not surprised.

Here is some of the history Trump, who lives in Palm Beach, has with golf:

Courses around the world

Trumpgolf.com lists 18 courses under the heading ‘Our Properties’, including 12 in the United States. Of those, three are in Florida: Jupiter, West Palm Beach, Doral.

Those courses have hosted many PGA and LPGA events, but Trump’s relationship with the PGA Tour soured in 2016 when the tour moved the World Golf Championship out of Trump National Doral and to Mexico City after losing its sponsor, Cadillac.

This angered Trump for so many reasons. His attitude toward Mexico was made clear as he prepared to run for president when he said of the country: “They are not our friend, believe me. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

That continued when learning the tour was dropping Doral for Mexico City. “They’re moving it to Mexico City which, by the way, I hope they have kidnapping insurance.”

That relationship fractured even more when the PGA of America took a major away from one of Trump’s courses four days after Trump supporters rioted at the United States Capitol. The organization moved the 2022 PGA Championship from Trump’s course in Bedminster, N.J., to Southern Hills in Tulsa, Okla.

All of this led to Trump’s support for LIV Golf, the startup league headed by Palm Beach Gardens’ Greg Norman and financed by the Saudis. LIV has become a rival of the PGA Tour and three LIV events this year will be held at Trump properties.

The old switcheroo

Ted Virtue, founder and CEO of MidOcean Partners, a New York-based alternative asset management firm, won the club championship at West Palm Beach when Trump was president. At the time, Trump was in Singapore and missed the event.

Here is the story Reilly told and also was reported in Golf.com.

Trump sees Virtue on the back nine of the course one day and tells him he didn’t really win the club championship, “because I was out of town.” So he tells Virtue they will start there and play to see who the real champion is. Virtue has no choice.

“Apparently, they get to a hole with a big pond in front of the green,” Reilly said. “Both Ted and his son hit the ball on the green, but Trump hits his in the water. By the time they get to the hole, though, Trump is lining up the son’s ball. Only now it’s his ball and the caddie has switched it.

“The son is like, ‘That’s my ball!’ But Trump’s caddie goes, ‘No, this is the president’s ball; your ball went in the water.’ … Trump makes that putt, and wins one up.”

Where’d that ball come from?

Trump was playing in a charity event at a prestigious South Florida course when he was part of a foursome that included an NFL quarterback and professional golfer, according to a participant who was at the event.

On a par-3 that was playing more than 200 yards, no one hit the green, including Trump, whose tee shot clearly was short.

Two of the golfers flew the green, the balls landing in a gully. As they walked back up the hill to check out the pin placement, they noticed a ball sitting feet from the hole.

Trump tells them it was his ball and they must have not seen his tee shot land on the green.

“This guy cheats like a Mafia accountant,” Reilly once told Vox.com.

Mark Cuban feud

Trump and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban had a legendary feud in 2013, with Trump attacking Cuban’s team and, of course, his golf.

By the end of a two day meltdown, and after Trump said he won yet another club championship at West Palm Beach, Trump pulled out the big guns:

“I’ve won 18 Club Championships including this weekend. @mcuban swings like a little girl with no power or talent. Mark’s a loser.”

Trump now has claimed to have won more than 20 club championships. Reilly once said the best player at that level he knows had won eight.

Reilly said in the Vox interview Trump told him whenever he opens a new golf course he plays the first club championship by himself and declares that the champion and puts his name on the wall.

“But it’s usually just him and Melania in the cart and nobody else,” Reilly said. “He just makes it up.”

Tiger tale

Soon after he became president Trump set up a foursome with Brad Faxon, Tiger Woods and Dustin Johnson. Trump and Faxon were partners.

Trump was allowed to hit from closer tees and was allowed to subtract a stroke on the eight hardest holes. On one hole, Trump hits his tee shot into the water and tells Faxon to throw him a ball. “They weren’t looking,” he said. His second tee shot goes into the water. So he drops where he should have after his first water ball, hits what was his fifth shot. After making what actually was a seven, the players were asked their scores.

When Trump was told Tiger made a three, he says he made “four for a three (with the stroke).”

‘Tough luck’

Trump invited football announcers/analysts Mike Tirico, Jon Gruden and Ron Jaworski to one of his courses. He chose Gruden as his partner.

Tirico hit a 3-wood about 230 yards onto the green on one hole. When he arrived the ball was in a bunker about 50 feet from the pin.

“Tough break,” Trump said.

Tirico later was told by Trump’s caddie that his shot was about 10 feet from the hole and Trump threw it into the bunker.

“I watched him do it,” the caddie said.

So how good is Trump at golf?

Depends who you ask. Hall of Famer Ernie Els witnessed a hole-in-one by Trump last year at West Palm Beach. I asked Els to assess Trump’s game.

“He can really strike the ball,” Els said. “He makes good contact. He’s got a good swing. Like any amateur, you got to do the short game practice. I keep talking to him about his chipping. He’s a pretty good putter. Back in his day, he had to be a 4- or 5-handicap. Today, he’s probably a 10, 12.”

If you praise Trump’s game, it’s definitely not fake news.

Trump has played with the best of the best. Jack Nicklaus, Els, Woods, Johnson, Rory McIlroy, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka among them.

“President Trump plays pretty well, not bad at all,” Nicklaus said in 2020.

Koepka played nine holes with Trump last year in the Pro-Am at Doral before the LIV event. When asked about Trump’s game he gave a lukewarm endorsement.

“I think he’s actually a pretty good putter,” Koepka said. “He had a lot of good putts today that just didn’t go in.”

Trump stopped several times to chat between holes during the Pro-Am at Doral. “Where are the golf writers?” he said at one point. “What do you think? Trump is pretty good, isn’t he?”

Later, when he was asked what he thought about his game, Trump said: “I hit it straight, I hit good drives, I hit good irons.”

Tom D’Angelo is the senior sports columnist for The Palm Beach Post.

Major Russian offensive will end by April and will not be successful ISW

Ukrayinska Pravda

Major Russian offensive will end by April and will not be successful ISW

Ukrainska Pravda – February 2, 2023

Russian President Vladimir Putin may have overestimated the Russian military’s own capabilities again, and therefore its major offensive in the east of Ukraine will end prematurely in the spring rainy season and will not be effective, analysts of the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) are convinced.

Source: ISW

Details: Andrii Cherniak, Representative of the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine, told the Kyiv Post on 1 February in an interview that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered the Russian military to capture all of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts by March 2023. Cherniak also stated that Russian forces are redeploying additional unspecified assault groups, units, weapons, and military equipment to unspecified areas in the east of Ukraine.

“Putin may have overestimated the Russian military’s own capabilities again. ISW has not observed any evidence that Russian forces have restored sufficient combat power to defeat Ukraine’s forces in east of Ukraine and capture over 11,300 square kilometres of unoccupied Donetsk Oblast (over 42 percent of Donetsk Oblast’s total area) before March as Putin reportedly ordered,” ISW emphasised.

According to the ISW’s preliminary assessments, a major Russian offensive before April 2023 would likely prematurely culminate during the April spring rain season before achieving operationally significant effects.

“Russian forces’ culmination could then generate favourable conditions for Ukrainian forces to exploit in their own late spring or summer 2023 counteroffensive after incorporating Western tank deliveries,” a report of ISW said.

Background:

Oleksii Reznikov, Minister of Defence of Ukraine, said that Russia may launch an offensive on two fronts on the anniversary of the 2022 invasion.
According to Bloomberg, despite enormous losses, Russian President Vladimir Putin is planning a new offensive in Ukraine, while at the same time preparing his country for years of confrontation with the US and its allies.

Journalists fight on their own frontline. Support Ukrainska Pravda or become our patron!

Russia’s Shadow Army Accused in Mysterious Teen Abductions

Daily Beast

Russia’s Shadow Army Accused in Mysterious Teen Abductions

Philip Obaji Jr. – February 2, 2023

Photo Illustration by Erin O’Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty Images

KENZOU, Cameroon—It was the middle of the night when armed men from the local wing of Russia’s Wagner Group, commonly referred to as “Black Russians,” allegedly arrived at Ali’s home.

“They looked straight into my eyes and said, ‘If you don’t come back to us, you and your family will be killed,’” Ali, who had spent close to a year working closely with the Wagner Group, told The Daily Beast. “They left without saying anything else.”

Ali’s wife, his three adolescent daughters and three adult brothers were allegedly at their three-bedroom home in the outskirts of Berbérati—a city in the southwest of the Central African Republic (CAR)—when the men arrived armed with machine guns. “As they stepped out of the house, one of them looked at me and said ‘Tell your husband to do what is right or else all of you will suffer,’” Fatou*, Ali’s wife, told The Daily Beast.

Minutes later, the armed men allegedly stormed the nearby home of Hassan* and issued him a similar warning, but with a more severe punishment for allegedly masterminding the exit of several Black Russians from the Wagner Group.

“They said if I don’t return to the [Black Russians] group they’ll seize me and my family and torture us for days before they eventually kill us,” Hassan, a former Black Russian who was living in a two-bedroom home with his mother and two teenage sons when the armed men arrived, told The Daily Beast. “They believe I have been the one encouraging other members to leave the group because I was among the first to quit.”

Russia’s Secret Recruits Allegedly Abandoned, Starving, and Missing in Action

The Wagner Group, which showed up in the war-torn Central African Republic around 2018, has relied heavily on local recruits since last year, after hundreds of its Russian mercenaries were pulled from Central Africa and sent to Ukraine to fight Vladimir Putin’s war. But poor welfare for Black Russians—and fear that they could be deployed to fight overseas without compensation or insurance—has forced many to abandon the group.

The threats to their families weren’t enough to force Ali and Hassan back to the group. Both men subsequently stayed away from their homes to avoid being captured and killed—the kind of punishment the Wagner Group is known to hand out to fighters who disobey orders or desert the organization.

“We didn’t take their threat of harming our families seriously because that is not how they [Wagner mercenaries and local recruits] are known to act,” said Ali, who—along with Hassan—had to squat in a faraway unfinished building, where construction work had long been abandoned, to hide from their former colleagues. “Throughout the time we worked with them, no one targeted anyone’s family. When you commit an offense, you face the consequences on your own.”

Ali and Hassan would later realize that they misjudged the group they had been part of—and that their refusal to rejoin the Black Russians could prove costly.

According to Hassan’s family, the same men who visited the previous week returned to his home and seized his two sons, who are 15 and 13 years old, vowing not to release them until their father returns to the Wagner unit to face discipline. Hassan and his mother, who was the only one at home with the boys when they were taken away, fled to Cameroon the following day as they feared their lives were in danger.

“They dragged my grandsons from the house and threw them into a [pickup] truck and then drove them away,” Hassan’s mother Bintou* told The Daily Beast in the Cameroonian border town of Kenzou, where she and her son live in a single-room mud house. “We don’t even know whether he is dead or alive.”

On the same day Hassan’s sons were seized, Ali’s three younger brothers, who are 27, 24, and 23 years old, left home in the morning to attend a music festival at a playground just outside Berbérati. But they never returned home and no one has seen them since then, according to family members who believe the Wagner Group is responsible for their disappearances.

“It must be the same people who came to our home to threaten us that kidnapped them,” said Ali, who also fled Berbérati to Kenzou along with his wife and daughters. “They want me to meet face to face with them, that’s why they are holding my brothers.”

Three years ago, Ali and Hassan joined the Union for Peace (UPC), a Central African rebel group fighting for control of the Ouaka central province, located at the border between the mainly Muslim north and the predominantly Christian south. Their involvement with the UPC, whose leader Ali Darassa was sanctioned over a year ago by the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) “for serious human rights abuses”, lasted only a few months. It was cut short by an enticing offer from Wagner Group, run by Putin’s close friend and ally Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Ali and Hassan were among hundreds of UPC rebels who surrendered to the CAR military in December 2021 after both men said they were promised a chance to work with the Wagner Group and earn a monthly pay of about $1,000.

But when Wagner stopped paying some Black Russians after a few months, and many local recruits mysteriously disappeared towards the end of 2022, both Ali and Hassan decided to leave the group and move away from their base in the capital Bangui to Berbérati.

“The main reason some of us left the [Black Russians] group is because we feared they could send us to war in Ukraine without giving us the chance to inform our families,” said Ali, who has been in touch with some of his colleagues deployed to Ukraine in the early months of Russia’s invasion and allegedly abandoned thereafter. “If we die on the battlefield, no one would know anything about it.”

Ali and Hassan believe the Wagner Group’s decision to not reveal the whereabouts of Black Russians deployed to Ukraine’s Donbas region is based on financial reasoning.

“They don’t want to pay the death benefit they promised they will pay to families of fighters who died while in active service,” said Hassan. “If families don’t know their sons are fighting in Ukraine, they won’t also know when they are killed in combat and can’t demand death benefit as a result.”

For years, and especially since a brutal civil war broke out in CAR in 2013, the Cameroonian border town of Kenzou has welcomed thousands of refugees fleeing the conflict in their country. Now, the commercial town has a new type of guests: ex-Wagner recruits running away from imminent attacks from their former employers.

“We know for sure that there are former CAR rebels now living in this town with us,” Vincent Olembe, a local chief in Kenzou, told The Daily Beast. “Luckily, they’ve assured us that they aren’t here for trouble but were forced from their country because their lives were in danger.”

Putin’s Prison Recruiting Scheme Takes a Big, Desperate Turn

The CAR government and Prigozhin did not respond to a series of requests for comment on the allegations made by Ali and Hassan. The Daily Beast sent emails to the spokesperson of the CAR government and to Concord Management, a company majority-owned by Prigozhin, but did not receive a reply.

In Kenzou, Ali and Hassan are confident that their family members wouldn’t be hurt by the Wagner Group or those working closely with them. They believe the Russians will use them as leverage.

“If they [the seized family members] were women, I would have been worried,” said Hassan, who—like Ali—turns 40 this year. “But from the way I know them to operate, anyone who is arrested or captured is offered a chance to join the Black Russians and be forgiven or punished if he refuses.”

One day, said Hassan, “I’ll reunite with my boys.”

*The names of these sources have been changed for fear of retribution.

Russian runaway officer reveals how Ukrainians are tortured in captivity

Ukrayinska Pravda

Russian runaway officer reveals how Ukrainians are tortured in captivity

Ukrainska Pravda – February 2, 2023

Konstantin Yefremov, former Russian military officer who fled Russia, has claimed that Ukrainian men were cruelly tortured in captivity; Russian soldiers shot at them and threatened to rape them.

Source: Yefremov in the interview with the Russian BBC News

Details: In April 2022, Yefremov’s unit guarded their “rear HQ” in Kamianka village in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Ukraine. The colonel was in charge of questioning Ukrainian captives there.

Quote from Yefremov: “Three Ukrainian military captives were brought there one day. One of them confessed he was a sniper. And the colonel’s eyes lit up when he heard it. He beat him up, pulled down his pants and asked if he was married. He [the captive] answered yes. The colonel told [us] to bring a mop: ‘We will make you a girl now and send the video to your wife.’

The colonel asked a captive once to name all nationalists that he knew in his regiment, his platoon. And the guy did not understand the question, he said: ‘We are marines of the Armed Forces of Ukraine’. The Colonel beat him up and knocked out a few teeth.

He put a gun to a guy’s head as he was blindfolded and told him: ‘I am counting to three, and then I will shoot you in the head.’ He counted, then shot close to the head. He shoots close to one ear and then keeps asking questions.”

Details: The officer has stated that these questioning and tortures “had been going on for a week – every day, or night, sometimes twice a day”.

He has also recollected that the captives were held in a garage. The Colonel forbade feeding them with normal food and only allowed us to give them water and rusks.

Moreover, according to Yefremov, the Colonel shot through the captive’s arm keeping the bone bone intact, and shot his right leg, breaking a bone, once during the questioning.

The BBC has pointed out that it cannot confirm Yefremov’s detailed statements, but it highlights that those statements correspond with other comments about torturing Ukrainian captives.

Photo: Russian BBC News

Background: Senior Lieutenant Yefremov was a commander in a mine clearance platoon of the 42nd Guards Motor Rifle Division, with its headquarters in Chechnya. Yefremov has said that he arrived in Dzhankoi, Crimea, on 10 February 2022, before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Yefremov has assured the press that even officers did not believe that there would be a war and thought they were going to military exercises.

He has claimed that he realised on the first day of the war that he did not want to fight and tried to abandon service. At first, the command refused, calling him a coward and a traitor, and threatened with prison for desertion, but they finally dismissed Yefremov, and he left Russia.

Yefremov has said that for the last three years, he was clearing mines in Chechnya that survived two wars – until the Russian war against Ukraine began; he loved his job and believed he was helpful.

“I am apologizing to the Ukrainian people that I came to their home armed and as an unwelcome guest. And I thank God that no one suffered from my hands, that I did not take anyone’s life on that land. And thank God I was not hurt. I do not even have a moral right to ask Ukrainians to forgive me,” Yefremov summed up.

Members of Russian 155th Marine Brigade surrender in Donbas

The New Voice of Ukraine

Members of Russian 155th Marine Brigade surrender in Donbas

February 2, 2023

Russian military 155th Brigade distinguished themselves by looting in Bucha and Irpen

Ten Russian servicemen surrendered in total, he said.

“The 155th Brigade is known from the Kyiv axis, when they were storming the city of Kyiv (in February and March 2022),” Dmytrashkivskyi said.

“They entered Irpin and Bucha. These fighters became ‘famous’ for looting and wreaking havoc. However, they were almost completely destroyed in that area.”

After being restored, this brigade reappeared on the Donetsk axis, where it was also defeated in November 2022.

“And today they have reappeared on the Vuhledar axis. Ten of their fighters have surrendered,” the spokesman said.

According to Ukrainian law enforcement agencies, more than 1,200 civilians were killed in Bucha area during the Russian occupation.

She Lost Her Childhood Home Over Taxes. Then It Erupted in Flames.

The New York Times

She Lost Her Childhood Home Over Taxes. Then It Erupted in Flames.

Tracey Tully – February 2, 2023

She lost home over taxes. Then it erupted in flames.
Eve Morawski waged an epic battle against real estate investors who bought her debt and seized her Maplewood, N.J., home, pushing her to the brink.
Owed more than $100K in unpaid taxes, fees

The Essex County Correctional Facility in Newark, N.J., on Jan. 13, 2023. (Bryan Anselm/The New York Times)

MAPLEWOOD, N.J. — It was dark by the time Eve Morawski managed to break into her home of 60 years.

The locks had been changed by sheriff’s deputies enforcing an eviction order. Movers hired by investors who took possession of the house after she fell behind on taxes had been inside most of the day, packing up photos and knickknacks her family had spent a lifetime accumulating.

She was infuriated to find the house in disarray.

Sometime before dawn, a police report shows, she located a book of matches and a knife.

“Jersey Girl Justice will hopefully prevail in the end,” Morawski wrote to friends on Facebook just before fire trucks began roaring down the pretty block in Maplewood, New Jersey.

“Aloha.”

To neighbors, the Dec. 7 fire that burst from second-floor windows and licked at the eaves of Morawski’s former home was a spectacularly sad end to an epic real estate battle that had played out publicly on social media and in state and federal courts. To her only sister, it was a tragic, avoidable coda to a 20-year family feud.

“There’s a lingering sense of: Is there something more as a community we could have done to help?” said John Guterman, a friend of Morawski who lives down the street and shared her love of animals, smoked barbecue and the New York Mets.

Well known and well liked, Morawski was a fixture in Maplewood, a commuter town 20 miles from Manhattan. Classmates recalled her as the smart kid in advanced placement classes who went on to earn an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania.

Returning home as an adult, she volunteered at area animal shelters and on the board of a preserved 18th-century house dedicated to sharing Maplewood’s history.

A longtime member of the local Interfaith Holocaust Remembrance Committee, she accepted a prestigious award in May for her dedication to keeping the lessons of the Holocaust alive. It was a passion fueled largely by devotion to her Polish immigrant parents, Roman Catholics who she has said were imprisoned by the Nazi and Soviet regimes during World War II. They went on to build a life in suburban New Jersey — a triumph that, to her, was embodied in the four-bedroom house they purchased at 60 Maplewood Avenue.

Privately, she was consumed by a cascade of debt and drawn-out legal battles that had pushed her to the emotional and financial brink.

Two acrimonious divorces. A three-year probate fight with her sister over their parents’ estate. A federal discrimination complaint against a former employer. Dueling lawsuits from a romance that ended badly. And, finally, bankruptcy.

Unable to afford a lawyer, she often represented herself. By her own telling, she was always the victim.

A cancer diagnosis in 2021 complicated everything.

By the time she lost the house, Morawski, 60, had accumulated more than $100,000 in unpaid taxes and fees, a burden that was further exacerbated by a state law heavily weighted toward real estate speculators. New Jersey is one of just a dozen states that permit investors to make huge profits on the debt of struggling homeowners, ultimately allowing them to foreclose on the property and keep all the profit.

“This has been an egregious travesty of justice,” she wrote in a letter to local officials shortly before the fire. “I need immediate help to stop the steal of my home.”

‘The house and legacy I need to save!’

Morawski’s childhood home on Maplewood Avenue sits three blocks from a commuter rail station and the quaint storefronts at the center of town, a pedestrian-friendly hub that residents call “the village.” Always considered a desirable community, Maplewood drew a flood of new buyers during the pandemic, and recent sales of renovated houses on the street have ranged from $755,000 to $1.6 million.

Long before the fire, the house was notable for its peeling buckskin-beige paint and tattered roof, outward signs of the difficulty Morawski had keeping up with repairs and household bills. But she was determined to hold on.

“The house and legacy I need to save!” she wrote on a GoFundMe page a friend created in 2019.

Details of Morawski’s fight to save the house are based on more than two dozen interviews with neighbors, friends, community leaders and lawyers, as well as tax documents, federal, state and county court records and her own social media posts.

After divorcing her first husband, who was in the Navy and stationed in Hawaii, she returned to Maplewood in 2000 to care for her ailing parents. She worked briefly for a management consulting firm and sometimes gave historical walking tours, but had trouble finding full-time work. An assortment of part-time jobs as a swim instructor ended with the onset of the pandemic.

But she had struggled to make ends meet since at least 2010. Desperate for money, she sold her burial plot, patched her leaky roof with tarps and, unable to buy a new water heater, took to showering at a YMCA.

“I have never said I do not owe back taxes + obscene interest,” she wrote to township leaders, “but the global pandemic impacted the intended course of action.”

She had been advised to sell the house rather than lose the accrued equity in a property that real estate sites valued at roughly $700,000 before the fire, friends, relatives and town officials said. The conversations never went far.

“She just wanted to stay in the home she grew up in,” said Andy Golebiowski, host of the Polish American Radio Program, who met Morawski on Facebook. “Those were her roots.”

Morawski spoke proudly of those roots when she accepted the Holocaust education award.

Her father, Michael (Szeliga) Morawski, earned Poland’s highest military honor, the Virtuti Militari. He had been imprisoned, she said, in concentration camps after trying to drive the Germans from the capital during the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, a rebellion that lasted 63 days and led to the deaths of more than 180,000 residents.

Wanda Morawski, a nurse born in what was then the Polish city of Borszczow (it is now part of Ukraine), ran field hospitals for the Allied forces during the war after being freed from a prison in Russia, according to her 2002 obituary.

After marrying in England and moving to Brooklyn, the couple spent 10 years “saving every penny” to buy “their American dream,” Morawski wrote.

Over the next four decades, their house in Maplewood was often filled with recent immigrants of various faiths. Her mother “would order, then pick up, kosher in Brooklyn,” Morawski said at the Holocaust remembrance event. “Everyone would speak Polish and feel comfortable for a few hours as they navigated a challenging new world.”

Morawski’s parents died within five months of each other, leaving a contested estate that led to a bitter fight between the two sisters for control of the house. In the end, Morawski was instructed to pay her sister $130,000 and was awarded the house. Her sister won title to another residential property that was in their parents’ name but was told by the court that she had “no right to enter the premises” at 60 Maplewood Avenue.

Morawski’s sister said she drove by the home each day for 15 years.

Mental health concerns

Morawski was often spotted on the block walking her dog, Hana, or tending to repairs of her 1992 Dodge Dakota. She was quick with a compliment and eagerly asked about neighbors’ children.

“Always seemed to be in the same mood — pleasant,” said Kevin Photiades, who lives down the street.

“She’s a wonderful, generous, amazing person,” said Kim Brown, a friend who remained close with Morawski after they worked together in the early 1990s at a consulting firm in Linden, New Jersey.

“I couldn’t imagine, emotionally, what she was going through.”

Morawski wrote about her financial trouble on social media as foreclosure loomed in 2019 and later discussed her battle with blood cancer.

Neighbors said that they had donated to the GoFundMe campaign or lent her money directly. Friends wrote to the township’s congresswoman to ask for help and dropped off soup and meals. A member of her historical book club regularly drove her to chemotherapy.

But as the date of her eviction neared in December, close friends grew increasingly worried about her mental health. She appeared to have no future plans other than lashing out publicly against the injustice she believed had caused her to lose the house.

A federal judge assigned to Morawski’s bankruptcy case, who had attended high school with her, was “heartless and biased,” she complained to the chief judge of U.S. Bankruptcy Court. “A smart, smug jock, the epitome of a privileged white male.”

A state judge who signed the eviction order was “ridiculously obsequious to the opposing attorney, who was mocking and mean to me.”

She publicly suggested that she was considering suicide. “I expect this is the last letter I will ever write,” she said in a letter to the bankruptcy judge three days before the fire. “Too bad, because I had a LOT left to offer.”

That same day, she dropped Hana at Brown’s house. The next night, she left several cherished family mementos on the back porch of her sister’s house and emailed a niece to let her know they were there.

A friend called the police and asked officers to conduct a wellness check. They arrived at the house around dinnertime, and Morawski was taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital, where she spent 25 hours under psychiatric evaluation, according to her lawyer and a message she posted on Facebook.

She was cleared to leave hours after the eviction order became final and the locks to the house were changed.

Tax liens as investments

Many of Morawski’s problems stemmed from the difficulty she had paying taxes on the house at 60 Maplewood, a home her parents purchased in 1962 and had long ago paid off.

New Jersey requires communities to auction off unpaid tax and sewer debts annually. The buyers — lien holders — can charge 18% interest on debt over $1,500 and are entitled to pay any future overdue taxes on the property, expanding their investment and its steep rate of return. Bidding is often aggressive, particularly for desirable properties in affluent or gentrifying towns.

After two years, if the debt is unpaid, investors can foreclose on the property.

Unlike most other states, New Jersey permits the lien holder to keep all resale profit. Former owners get back none of their accrued equity, no matter the size of the original debt.

“When people hear about it, they think, ‘This can’t be the whole story,’” said Christina Martin, a lawyer with the Pacific Legal Foundation, a libertarian-leaning nonprofit that tracks lien sale foreclosures nationwide. “But it is the whole story. Government thinks it can take a windfall at the expense of society’s most vulnerable people and either keep it for the public purse or give it away to private investors for their enrichment.

“Either way, it’s gross,” Martin said.

Lawyers for the foundation are preparing to argue that the practice — they call it “home equity theft” — violates the Constitution in a Minnesota case that the U.S. Supreme Court agreed in January to hear.

Between 2014 and 2021, in 31 of New Jersey’s largest communities, the owners of 661 residential properties lost homes after a foreclosure that resulted from tax or sewer debt, according to an analysis by the legal foundation. The owners forfeited roughly $115 million in equity, the group found.

The lien that led to the loss of Morawski’s house dated to 2016, when Effect Lake LLC, a Virginia-based company run by Peter Chinloy, a former Temple University professor, and his son, was the winning bidder at an October tax-certificate auction.

Three-quarters of Morawski’s unpaid taxes from 2015, $12,809, plus penalties, were put up for sale.

Competition was brisk. To win the right to buy the lien, Effect Lake not only agreed to charge zero-percent interest on the initial debt, but it paid Maplewood a $92,800 premium to do so — a routine practice used to outbid competitors.

Within weeks Effect Lake had also written checks for the $17,360.04 in taxes Morawski failed to pay in 2016, debt that would grow by the maximum 18% interest rate. The Chinloys’ company also paid all the taxes and sewer fees for the next three years.

Morawski would later say that Effect Lake deliberately mailed crucial legal notices too late for her to respond. “Real estate investors,” she wrote, “have aggressively and ruthlessly pursued foreclosure of my property so they can flip it.”

Her sister said she offered to pay the roughly $110,000 debt in exchange for the deed to the house — a deal Morawski found unfair and refused to accept.

In 2019, Effect Lake began foreclosure proceedings.

And on Jan. 30, 2020, after an investment of roughly $175,000, it held the deed to a home worth at least three times that much. Soon after, Morawski filed for bankruptcy, arguing that the property transfer had been fraudulent, a claim the judge rejected.

While fighting to save the house in bankruptcy court, she was also undergoing chemotherapy treatments that she said sapped her energy and left her unable to focus — conditions she believed should have led the court to slow the process down.

Chinloy, who earned a doctorate in economics from Harvard and was the director of real estate programs at Temple’s business school until 2020, has written extensively about investor real estate strategies and home foreclosures. He declined to comment for this article.

‘Over her dead body’

The day of the fire Morawski lit five matches at strategic points on the first, second and third floors of the house, according to a police report.

Then she walked to the basement, “laid down on a couch and proceeded to stab herself with a knife four times in the chest,” a detective wrote.

Neighbors watched as she was taken out on a stretcher and rushed to a hospital.

Three days later, charged with aggravated arson and burglary, she was transferred to a jail in Newark. A not-guilty plea was entered on her behalf for crimes that carried a maximum penalty of more than 10 years in prison.

Her lawyer, Lisa Lopata, a public defender, stressed that Morawski was “at a very low point,” and that she “deeply regrets what happened, especially the idea that anyone could have been put at risk.”

A prosecutor, Adam Wells, argued against her release from jail, in part because of her apparent determination to risk it all to make a defiant final point.

“She made a statement and apologized for her own cliché,” Wells told a judge on Jan. 13, “that over her dead body would anyone take the house.”

Ten hours later, after more than a month in custody, Morawski walked out of jail alone wearing borrowed, oversize clothes. She waited in the dark at a nearby New Jersey Transit bus stop and transferred at Newark Penn Station, en route to a friend’s apartment in South Orange, New Jersey, where she remains in home detention.

“These property tax lien holders have gotten away with everything,” Morawski said in an interview.

“If I start crying, I’m just afraid that I won’t stop.”

Weeks after the blaze, much of the first floor of the house appeared intact, largely untouched by flames. But out front, a haunting reminder of the saga’s explosive end remained etched into a sidewalk poured months ago.

“EVE M LIVED HERE 1962-2022,” Morawski had carved into the wet concrete. “LIVE. ALOHA.”

Republican-sponsored bill would fine teachers $5,000 for telling the truth

AZ Central – The Arizona Republic

Republican-sponsored bill would fine teachers $5,000 for telling the truth

EJ Montini, Arizona Republic – February 2, 2023

Yes, there’s a bill in the Arizona House that, if made into law, would allow confused, disgruntled, ignorant or just plain unhinged individuals to file a complaint that could lead to a teacher or professor receiving a $5,000 fine for the offense of telling the truth.

About race.

Republican-sponsored House Bill 2458 is one of many misguided pieces of legislation being pushed in state legislatures around the country to prevent “critical race theory” from being taught in schools.

In essence, it’s a way of trying to whitewash history, as if our children would be better served by ignorance than knowledge. Beyond that, the only education level at which the theory has been discussed is college or above, so banning it for lower levels is a solution for a problem that does not exist.

Republican lawmakers are playacting

Not that any of this matters. HB 2458 will not become law. The sponsor knows it. The Republicans attempting to push it through the House know it. The opposition knows it. Those members of the legislative staff who do all the work know it.

Still, it proceeds. Why?

Is CRT being taught?How the state’s new superintendent views it

Because right now, your tax dollars and mine are funding a very elaborate, very calculated, very expensive game of political make-believe being played by grown-ups in elected office who are trying to convince us their charade is real. But it is not.

It’s playacting. A fairy tale. A sham.

It is happening in Washington, D.C., in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, and it is happening here in the Republican-controlled Arizona Legislature.

It’s a performance that accomplishes nothing

The people behind HB 2458 know that if it makes it through the House and the Senate, both narrowly controlled by Republicans, it would not be signed by Gov. Katie Hobbs.

If they were interested in finding common ground about the issue and fashioning some form of legislation that would pass they would have contacted the governor’s office and tried to negotiate a compromise.

But bills like this are meant to promote fantasy, not serve reality.

They’re meant show constituents how vehement and committed the people they elected can be when they get into office. Even though it accomplishes … nothing.

And lawmakers here are simply mimicking their brothers and sisters in D.C.

Arizona House mimics the theater in D.C.

A while back, for example, Arizona Republican Rep. Andy Biggs tweeted, “Last night, my Republican colleagues and I defeated the Democrats’ 87,000-person IRS army. We are working quickly to reverse the Democrats’ negligent policies. This is already a very good start to the 118th Congress!”First, there is no “87,000-person IRS army.” Second, the Republicans who control the House defeated nothing.

Before becoming law, any legislation passed by the House must get through the Senate, and then be signed by the president.

Republican members of the House from all over the country are boasting to constituents about bills that will never become law. And that they know will never become law because they never bothered to find common ground about the issue and fashion some form of legislation that would pass.

Biggs also is among a group of House members who filed a resolution to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

There’s an adage about politics, show business

Again, pure show.

That we’re paying for.

Even if House members squeezed their impeachment through, Biggs knows the Constitution requires a two-thirds vote of the Senate to convict. And he knows that would never happen.

What’s going on within our divided government these days, here and in Washington, is not governing. It’s burlesque. It’s opera. It’s vaudeville.

It’s musical theater, melodrama, comedy, tragedy and farce, all rolled into one.

It’s proof of a political adage that’s been around for decades: Politics is show business for ugly people.

To Prevent Cancer, More Women Should Consider Removing Fallopian Tubes, Experts Say

The New York Times

To Prevent Cancer, More Women Should Consider Removing Fallopian Tubes, Experts Say

Roni Caryn Rabin – February 1, 2023

Monica Monfre Scantlebury, who discovered she had the BRCA1 genetic mutation in 2017, in St. Paul, Minn., on Jan. 27, 2022. (Jenn Ackerman/The New York Times)

There is no reliable screening test for ovarian cancer, so doctors urge women at high genetic risk for the disease to have their ovaries and fallopian tubes removed once they are done having children, usually around the age of 40.

On Wednesday, a leading research and advocacy organization broadened that recommendation in ways that may surprise many women.

Building on evidence that most of these cancers originate in the fallopian tubes, not the ovaries, the Ovarian Cancer Research Alliance is urging even women who do not have mutations — that is, most women — to have their fallopian tubes surgically removed if they are finished having children and are planning a gynecologic operation anyway.

“Ovarian cancer is a relatively rare disease, and typically, we don’t message to the general population,” said Audra Moran, president of the alliance. “We want everyone with ovaries to know their risk level and know the actions they can take to help prevent ovarian cancer.”

To that end, the group also has begun offering free at-home testing kits to qualifying women who want to find out if they carry BRCA1 and BRCA2 genetic mutations, which confer an elevated risk for developing both ovarian and breast cancer.

Younger carriers of the mutations might consider removing only the fallopian tubes as an interim step to protect against ovarian cancer, and to avoid abrupt early menopause, Moran said, even though the gold-standard treatment for carriers is to remove the ovaries, too.

While women with BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations have a very high risk for ovarian cancer, a majority of women with the disease do not carry the mutations.

The new advice is an acknowledgment that efforts to develop lifesaving screening tests for early detection of ovarian cancer have failed, and that women should consider more proactive measures.

Ever since a large clinical trial in Britain found that imaging scans and blood tests for early detection of ovarian cancer did not save lives, women have been told to heed vague symptoms, like bloating, that could indicate something amiss.

But experts say there is no evidence that vigilance about these symptoms prevents deaths.

The Society of Gynecologic Oncology, an organization of doctors who treat gynecologic cancers, has endorsed the new push to make genetic testing more accessible and to promote prophylactic removal of the fallopian tubes in women without genetic risks.

“It is considered experimental,” said Dr. Stephanie Blank, president of the society. But “it makes scientific sense and has a lot of appeal.”

“Removing the tubes is not as good as removing the tubes and the ovaries, but it’s better than screening, which doesn’t work,” she said.

Dr. Bill Dahut, chief scientific officer at the American Cancer Society, said, “There is a lot of good data behind what they’re suggesting, showing that for folks who had that surgery, the incidence rates of ovarian cancer are less.”

“If you look at the biology, maybe we should be calling it fallopian tube cancer and think of it differently, because that’s where it starts,” he said.

Ovarian cancer ranks fifth in cancer deaths among women, according to the American Cancer Society, and accounts for more deaths than any other cancer of the female reproductive system. Every year, some 19,710 women in the United States are diagnosed with ovarian cancer and about 13,000 women die of it.

The disease is a particularly stealthy malignancy, and it is often diagnosed at a very advanced stage as a result. Ovarian cancer is far less common than breast cancer, which is diagnosed in 264,000 women and 2,400 men each year in the U.S., but its survival rates are much lower.

In women with BRCA1 and BRCA2 genetic mutations, surgeons generally remove the ovaries as well as the fallopian tubes — at ages 35 to 40 in women with the BRCA1 mutation and ages 40 to 45 in women with the BRCA2 mutation, Blank said. Ideally, the women will have completed childbearing by then.

But women who don’t have a clear family history of ovarian or breast cancer may be unaware that they carry the mutations.

Monica Monfre Scantlebury, 45, of St. Paul, Minnesota, discovered she had the BRCA1 mutation in 2017, when her younger sister was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer at age 27.

Their mother did not have the mutation, which means they inherited it from their deceased father. His mother, Scantlebury’s grandmother, had died in her 40s of breast and ovarian cancer.

While heart disease was discussed in the family, the women’s cancers were only whispered about, she recalled in an interview. After her sister died in 2020, Scantlebury had her tubes removed, along with an ovary that appeared to contain a growth.

“I was in my early 40s, and my doctors were less concerned about me getting breast cancer at that point and more concerned about my high risk of ovarian cancer,” she said.

A few days later she received a call from the doctors saying that cells believed to be precursors to high-grade serous ovarian cancer were found in one of her removed fallopian tubes. Scantlebury decided to have her uterus and cervix taken out, along with the remaining right ovary.

Those decisions were not easy. “I made the choice not to have any biological children, which was hard,” she said. “And I am still at risk for breast cancer.” But, she added, “I am named after my grandmother, and I believe the surgery prevented me from having the same obituary as her.”

The practice of removing the fallopian tubes while a patient is already having another pelvic surgery, called opportunistic salpingectomy, is already standard care in British Columbia, said Dr. Dianne Miller, who, until recently, was the leader of gynecologic cancer services there.

“Fifteen years ago, it became apparent that the most lethal and most common kinds of high-grade cancers actually had their origin in the fallopian tube rather than the ovary, and then spread very quickly,” Miller said.

By the time women experience symptoms like bloating or abdominal pain, she said, it is too late to do anything to save lives.

“I remember the light-bulb-going-off moment that many of these cancers are likely preventable, because a lot of women have a surgery at some point for hysterectomy, or removal of fibroids, or tubal ligation,” Miller said.

For women at average risk for ovarian cancer, removing only the tubes is a “win-win” situation, she said, because there are benefits to retaining the ovaries, which even after menopause continue to make small amounts of hormones that help keep the brain and heart healthy.

“As oncologists, we have our eyes set on curing cancer,” she said. “But if there’s one thing that’s absolutely better than curing cancer, it’s not getting it in the first place.”