Ukraine-Russia war: Russian officers mutiny after devastating tank battle
Arthur Scott-Geddes – March 7, 2023
Ukrainian servicemen fire a 2S5 Giatsint-S self-propelled howitzer towards Russian troops outside the frontline town of Bakhmut – Reuters
Senior Russian officers have reportedly refused to continue pressing the attack on Vugledar after suffering heavy losses in a failed assault on the eastern Ukrainian town.
Russia is believed to have lost around 130 tanks and armoured fighting vehicles in a recent disastrous attempt to take the town from Ukraine’s forces.
Ukrainian military officials told the Kyiv Post that the officers of the 155th Brigade, which is believed to have suffered 300 casualties per day during the three-week assault, were refusing orders to continue attacking.
“The leaders of the brigade and senior officers are refusing to proceed with a new senseless attack as demanded by their unskilled commanders – to storm well-defended Ukrainian positions with little protection or preparation,” the Ukrainian military said.
It comes as Russian forces continued their attempt to seize Bakhmut, the eastern salt-mining town at the center of some of the bloodiest fighting of the war.
07:33 AM
Mud hampers Ukraine’s Bakhmut resupply efforts
Muddy conditions around Bakhmut are likely hampering Ukraine’s efforts to resupply its troops, according to the Ministry of Defence.
In its daily intelligence briefing, the ministry said: “Muddy conditions are likely hampering Ukrainian resupply efforts as they increasingly resort to using unpaved tracks.”
Numerous reports have suggested that Ukrainian troops defending the eastern town are running seriously low on ammunition as they battle to hold back Russia’s advance.
“The Ukrainian defence of Bakhmut continues to degrade forces on both sides,” the ministry said. “Over the weekend, Ukrainian forces likely stabilised their defensive perimeter following previous Russian advances into the north of the town.
07:25 AM
China claims Ukraine crisis driven by ‘invisible hand’
The Ukraine crisis seems to be driven by an invisible hand pushing for the protraction and escalation of the conflict, China’s foreign minister Qin Gang has claimed.
The “invisible hand” is “using the Ukraine crisis to serve certain geopolitical agendas”, Mr Qin said on the sidelines of an annual parliament meeting in Beijing, calling for dialogue to begin as soon as possible.
The battle for Bakhmut is getting so close that ‘fistfights have been happening,’ Ukrainian soldier says
John Haltiwanger – March 7, 2023
Ukrainian soldiers on the outskirts of Bakhmut on January 14, 2023.Spencer Platt/Getty Images
A Ukrainian soldier told the Washington Post the fighting in Bakhmut is brutal and at close quarters.
The soldier said there have even been fistfights as they fight off waves of Russian mercenaries.
Bakhmut is widely expected to fall to Russian forces soon, but it will be a hollow victory.
Fighting in the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, which has been one of the primary battles in the war for months, has featured brutal, close quarters combat, according to a Ukrainian soldier.
In some cases, Ukrainian troops have searched house-to-house for the enemy and been forced to engage in hand-to-hand combat, Dmytro Vatagin, a 48-year-old Ukrainian soldier, told the Washington Post.
“Fistfights have been happening,” Vatagin said. “Everyone has their own fighting story.”
The infamous Wagner mercenary group has played a central role in the fight for Bakhmut. Vatagin told the Post that Wagner has thrown its forces — a mix of seasoned fighters and newly released convicts — “like meat” at the frontline in relentless waves that have exhausted Ukrainian defenders. Wagner has recruited Russian prisoners for the fight and treated them like “cannon fodder,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said last month.
Similarly, UK officials have claimed that some Russian reservists in the attacks were told to fight with shovels.
The mercenary group has suffered roughly 30,000 casualties in the war, Kirby said.
Russia’s extreme costs in assaulting Bakhmut, a city of roughly 70,000 before the war, are seen by most Western analysts as out of step with the strategic value of the gained territory, from which they could advance down two highways should they still have combat power.
“It is more of a symbolic value than it is strategic and operational value,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said of Bakhmut in comments to reporters on Monday, per Reuters.
“The fall of Bakhmut won’t necessarily mean that the Russians have changed the tide of this fight,” Austin added.
The city is seemingly on the verge of falling to Russian forces, but Ukraine is not giving up without a fight and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday said that his top generals have called for reinforcing Bakhmut’s defense. That said, top military experts have suggested that it might be time for Ukraine to cut its losses in Bakhmut.
“The tenacious defense of Bakhmut achieved a great deal, expending Russian manpower and ammunition. But strategies can reach points of diminishing returns,” Michael Kofman, an expert on the Russian military at the Center for Naval Analyses, said on Twitter.
“This fight doesn’t play to Ukraine’s advantages as a force,” Kofman said, warning that if Ukrainian forces continue to expend resources on Bakhmut “it could impede the success of a more important operation.”
Fighting chronic Lyme disease, healthcare policies in Indiana
Jayde Leary – March 6, 2023
Editor’s Note: The following is part of a class project originally initiated in the classroom of Ball State University professor Adam Kuban in fall 2021. Kuban continued the project this spring semester, challenging his students to find sustainability efforts in the Muncie area and pitch their ideas to Deanna Watson, editor of The Star Press, Journal & Courier and Pal-Item. Several such stories are being featured this spring.
MUNCIE, Ind. − Chronic Lyme disease patients in the state of Indiana and all over the United States have been struggling to find affordable treatment due to the disease itself not being covered by insurance past the 30-day treatment that is provided.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Lyme disease is transmitted to humans through being bit by infected blacklegged ticks. Patients who experience symptoms of pain, fatigue or difficulty thinking more than six months after they finish treatment have a condition called Post-Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome, also known as chronic Lyme disease.
Most cases of Lyme disease can be treated successfully with a two-to-four-week course of antibiotics. According to an article by Medical Bill Gurus, insurance companies are not required to cover treatment per the Infectious Disease Society of America guidelines. Therefore, insurance companies do not recognize chronic Lyme disease and use these guidelines to deny coverage for long-term treatment.
A majority of all Lyme Literate Medical Doctors are not in-network with any major insurance companies, and this leaves those patients who still experience symptoms after the provided few weeks of antibiotics with slim options.
Lyme disease patients who continue to have symptoms after that four-week mark may not be able to get the treatment they need due to the lack of financial help. According to a 2022 study by Samantha S. Ficon published in “Nursing Continuing Professional Development”, the disease can be harmful and deadly if it is not treated effectively early on, and 10% to 20% of patients previously treated for Lyme disease still experience symptoms for more than six months after finishing antibiotic treatment.
Kimberly Sharp, director of pain management for Community Health Network, has worked in the field of chronic pain management for over 20 years.
“There is currently no evidence supporting the long-term use of antibiotics, and the CDC does not officially recognize chronic Lyme. There are limited dollars for care, so insurance companies must draw the line somewhere on what is covered,” Sharp said.
Many insurance companies are not covering what chronic Lyme patients need.
Riley Sims, senior art major, working on her schoolwork in the L.A. Pittenger Student Center at Ball State University. According to Tick Check, there were 2,013 cases of Lyme disease confirmed in the state of Indiana from 2000 to 2020.
Riley Sims, senior at Ball State University, was diagnosed with Lyme disease in May 2020 and struggles with the chronic illness daily. She said she has to work twice as hard to keep up with her schoolwork and day-to-day tasks, and she has no choice but to seek treatment. Sims looks to her mother and father for financial help in order to cover her chronic Lyme expenses. Due to being a busy college student, she does not have enough money at this point in time to cover the costs of treatment and appointments.
[Insert photo of Riley Sims in front of Beneficence]
“I take supplements for my chronic Lyme disease that are suggested by my doctor, and I also have to get many blood tests, but none of it is covered by insurance, not even my doctor appointments,” Sims said.
According to Global Lyme Alliance, patients can suffer for years not only from the symptoms of chronic Lyme, but from the financial impact as well. Patients end up paying out-of-pocket costs and hope for reimbursement. This leaves patients who become too sick to work with large financial struggles.
Mitchell Goldman, MD, senior associate dean for Graduate Medical Education and professor of medicine for the Department of Medicine/Infectious Diseases at the University of Missouri School of Medicine, previously worked at the Indiana University Medical Center and has experience with Lyme disease patients.
“Insurance companies often require an approval process to provide therapies beyond usual guidelines, and this requires a physician or other provider to plead the case to the insurance company that may accept or deny a therapy beyond usual time,” Goldman said.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 34,945 reported cases of Lyme disease in the United States in 2019. Compared to other tickborne illnesses, this number is high. There were 5,655 Anaplasmosis cases, 5,207 Spotted Fever Rickettsiosis cases, 2,420 Babesiosis cases and 2,093 cases of Ehrlichia chaffeensis ehrlichiosis. Many patients suffer daily from chronic Lyme disease with no help from their insurance providers, and some of them may even be forced to quit treatment due to financial challenges.
[Insert picture of Riley Sims working on schoolwork]
Sims said the Lyme Treatment Foundation has helped her tremendously and that other patients seeking financial help should look more into other non-profit organizations like this.
“Lyme disease is like a rollercoaster. I just wish we had more help riding it,” Sims said.
‘I just found myself struggling to keep up’: Number of teachers quitting hits new high
Matt Barnum – March 6, 2023
Why some US school districts are seeing extreme teacher shortages
The data is in: More teachers than usual exited the classroom after last school year, confirming longstanding fears that pandemic-era stresses would prompt an outflow of educators. That’s according to a Chalkbeat analysis of data from eight states – the most comprehensive accounting of recent teacher turnover to date.
In Washington state, more teachers left the classroom after last school year than at any point in the last three decades. Maryland and Louisiana saw more teachers depart than any time in the last decade. And North Carolina saw a particularly alarming trend of more teachers leaving mid-school year.
The turnover increases were not massive. But they were meaningful, and the churn could affect schools’ ability to help students make up for learning loss in the wake of the pandemic. This data also suggests that spiking stress levels, student behavior challenges, and a harsh political spotlight have all taken their toll on many American teachers.
“Education had changed so dramatically since COVID. The issues were getting bigger and bigger,” said Rebecca Rojano, who last year left a job teaching high school Spanish in Connecticut. “I just found myself struggling to keep up.”
Across 8 states, more teachers left the classroom following last school year
Since the pandemic threw U.S. schools into disarray, many educators and experts warned that more teachers would flee the profession. But in 2020, turnover dipped in many places as the economy stalled, then in 2021 it ticked back up to normal or slightly above-average levels.
As this school year began, widespread reports of teacher shortages suggested that turnover had jumped more significantly.
Data was hard to come by, though. The federal government doesn’t regularly track teacher quit rates. Many states don’t either, with education officials in California, New Mexico, Ohio and Pennsylvania saying that they don’t know how many teachers leave each year.
But Chalkbeat was able to obtain the latest teacher turnover numbers from eight states: Hawaii, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Washington. These figures encompassed turnover between the 2021-22 year and this school year.
In all cases, turnover was at its highest point in at least five years – typically around 2 percentage points greater than before the pandemic. That implies that in a school with 50 teachers, one more than usual left after last school year.
“I am struck by just how consistent these patterns are looking at all of these different states,” said Melissa Diliberti, a researcher at RAND, which has monitored teacher attrition during the pandemic.
In Louisiana, for instance, nearly 7,000 teachers exited the classroom last school year, or about 1,000 more than usual. That’s a turnover rate of 14%, up from between 11% and 12% in a typical pre-pandemic year.
There was variation among the eight states. Mississippi’s teacher workforce was the most stable: Turnover was 13% this year, only slightly higher than the two years before the pandemic. North Carolina saw the largest spike: 16% of teachers left after last year, compared with less than 12% in the three years before the pandemic.
For Kimberly Biondi, who taught high school English for 21 years in a district outside Charlotte, her reasons for leaving were wrapped up in the politics of education. She advocated for remote instruction as well as in-school safety rules, such as masking, but faced personal criticism from a local group opposed to these measures, she said. Biondi was also worried that politics could eventually limit what she taught.
“I taught AP language where we were supposed to teach very controversial work. I taught Malcolm X. I taught all sorts of philosophers and speakers,” she said. “I could only imagine how I would be targeted for continuing to teach this.”
Other former teachers cited growing workloads and more difficulty managing student behavior.
Rojano said that student engagement plummeted as students returned to class in fall 2021, some for the first time in over a year. “A lot of these students are really hurting and suffering with intense emotional problems and high needs,” she said. “The needs just grew after the pandemic – I noticed a lot more emotional outbursts.”
It didn’t help, she said, that her class sizes were large, ranging from 25 to 30 students, making it hard to form close relationships with students. Plus, the school was short staffed and had many absences, forcing Rojano to constantly cover other teachers’ classes, losing her planning time.
She left in the middle of the last school year, something she never imagined doing because it was so disruptive for the school and her students. “It got so bad,” she said. “I was very overwhelmed and stressed. I was anxious and tired all the time.” Rojano ended up taking a job at an insurance company, where she is able to work remotely when she wants.
State reports hint that rising frustration has pushed more teachers out of the classroom. In Louisiana, the number of teachers who resigned due to dissatisfaction increased. In Hawaii, more teachers than usual identified their work environment as the reason for leaving. (In both states, personal reasons or retirement were still far more common explanations.)
A degree of staff turnover in schools is considered healthy. Some new teachers realize the profession just isn’t for them. Others take different jobs in public education, becoming, say, an assistant principal. But in general, research has found that teacher churn harms student learning – students lose relationships with trusted educators, inexperienced teachers are brought on as replacements, and in some cases classrooms are left with only long-term substitutes.
While the eight states where Chalkbeat obtained data may not be representative of the country as a whole, there are signs that higher attrition was widespread. In a recent nationally representative survey from RAND, school district leaders reported a 4 percentage point increase in teacher turnover. Data from a handful of districts show a similar trend. For instance, turnover among licensed staff, including teachers, spiked from 9% to 12% in Clark County, Nevada, the country’s fifth-largest district. In Austin, Texas, turnover jumped from 17% to 24%.
Other school staff appear to be leaving at higher rates, too.
Hawaii experienced a jump in aides and service staff who exited public schools. North Carolina saw over 17% of principals depart last school year, compared to an average of 13% in the three years before the pandemic. The RAND survey also found a sharp increase in principals leaving.
A degree of staff turnover in schools is considered healthy. Some new teachers realize the profession just isn’t for them. Others take different jobs in public education, becoming, say, an assistant principal. But in general, research has found that teacher churn harms student learning – students lose relationships with trusted educators, inexperienced teachers are brought on as replacements, and in some cases classrooms are left with only long-term substitutes.
“Teacher attrition can be destabilizing for schools,” said Kevin Bastian, a researcher at the University of North Carolina, where he calculated the state’s turnover rate.
He found that effective teachers were particularly likely to leave the state’s public schools last year. Mid-year turnover, which is especially disruptive, increased from under 4% in prior years to over 6% in the 2021-22 school year in North Carolina. The state also ended up hiring fewer teachers for this school year than it lost, suggesting that some positions were eliminated or left vacant.
Biondi is now seeing the effects on her own children, who attend school in the district where she taught. “My daughter lost her math teacher in December,” she said. “They don’t have a replacement teacher – she’s struggling very much in math.”
This year, schools may have been in a particularly fraught position. Teachers appear to be leaving at higher rates, and there’s been a longer-standing decline in people training to become teachers. At the same time, schools may have wanted to hire more teachers than usual because they remain flush with COVID relief money and want to address learning loss. That’s a recipe for a shortage.
Typically, shortages hit high-poverty schools the hardest. They also tend to be more severe in certain areas including special education, math, and science.
Benjamin Mosley, principal of Glenmount Elementary/Middle School in Baltimore, has been buffeted by these pressures. He’s had multiple teachers leave in the middle of this year, and has not been able to replace them or some others who left at the end of last year.
On a recent visit to the school, students in a math class listened to a teacher based in Florida teach a lesson virtually; the class was supervised by an intervention teacher who was originally meant to provide small group tutoring. A social studies class, whose teacher had recently resigned, was being overseen by a staff member who had been hired to serve as a student mentor.
Mosley is still actively trying to find teachers and is now considering candidates whom he might have passed over in years past.
“We can put a man on the moon, but yet we can’t find teachers,” he said.
Matt Barnum is a Spencer fellow in education journalism at Columbia University and a national reporter at Chalkbeat covering education policy, politics, and research.
Thousands of pro-Trump bots are attacking DeSantis, Haley
Avid Klepper – March 6, 2023
WASHINGTON (AP) — Over the past 11 months, someone created thousands of fake, automated Twitter accounts — perhaps hundreds of thousands of them — to offer a stream of praise for Donald Trump.
Besides posting adoring words about the former president, the fake accounts ridiculed Trump’s critics from both parties and attacked Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador who is challenging her onetime boss for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
When it came to Ron DeSantis, the bots aggressively suggested that the Florida governor couldn’t beat Trump, but would be a great running mate.
As Republican voters size up their candidates for 2024, whoever created the bot network is seeking to put a thumb on the scale, using online manipulation techniques pioneered by the Kremlin to sway the digital platform conversation about candidates while exploiting Twitter’s algorithms to maximize their reach.
The sprawling bot network was uncovered by researchers at Cyabra, an Israeli tech firm that shared its findings with The Associated Press. While the identity of those behind the network of fake accounts is unknown, Cyabra’s analysts determined that it was likely created within the U.S.
To identify a bot, researchers will look for patterns in an account’s profile, its follower list and the content it posts. Human users typically post about a variety of subjects, with a mix of original and reposted material, but bots often post repetitive content about the same topics.
That was true of many of the bots identified by Cyabra.
“One account will say, ‘Biden is trying to take our guns; Trump was the best,’ and another will say, ‘Jan. 6 was a lie and Trump was innocent,'” said Jules Gross, the Cyabra engineer who first discovered the network. “Those voices are not people. For the sake of democracy I want people to know this is happening.”
Bots, as they are commonly called, are fake, automated accounts that became notoriously well-known after Russia employed them in an effort to meddle in the 2016 election. While big tech companies have improved their detection of fake accounts, the network identified by Cyabra shows they remain a potent force in shaping online political discussion.
The new pro-Trump network is actually three different networks of Twitter accounts, all created in huge batches in April, October and November 2022. In all, researchers believe hundreds of thousands of accounts could be involved.
The accounts all feature personal photos of the alleged account holder as well as a name. Some of the accounts posted their own content, often in reply to real users, while others reposted content from real users, helping to amplify it further.
“McConnell… Traitor!” wrote one of the accounts, in response to an article in a conservative publication about GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell, one of several Republican critics of Trump targeted by the network.
One way of gauging the impact of bots is to measure the percentage of posts about any given topic generated by accounts that appear to be fake. The percentage for typical online debates is often in the low single digits. Twitter itself has said that less than 5% of its active daily users are fake or spam accounts.
When Cyabra researchers examined negative posts about specific Trump critics, however, they found far higher levels of inauthenticity. Nearly three-fourths of the negative posts about Haley, for example, were traced back to fake accounts.
The network also helped popularize a call for DeSantis to join Trump as his vice presidential running mate — an outcome that would serve Trump well and allow him to avoid a potentially bitter matchup if DeSantis enters the race.
The same network of accounts shared overwhelmingly positive content about Trump and contributed to an overall false picture of his support online, researchers found.
“Our understanding of what is mainstream Republican sentiment for 2024 is being manipulated by the prevalence of bots online,” the Cyabra researchers concluded.
The triple network was discovered after Gross analyzed Tweets about different national political figures and noticed that many of the accounts posting the content were created on the same day. Most of the accounts remain active, though they have relatively modest numbers of followers.
A message left with a spokesman for Trump’s campaign was not immediately returned.
Most bots aren’t designed to persuade people, but to amplify certain content so more people see it, according to Samuel Woolley, a professor and misinformation researcher at the University of Texas whose most recent book focuses on automated propaganda.
When a human user sees a hashtag or piece of content from a bot and reposts it, they’re doing the network’s job for it, and also sending a signal to Twitter’s algorithms to boost the spread of the content further.
Bots can also succeed in convincing people that a candidate or idea is more or less popular than the reality, he said. More pro-Trump bots can lead to people overstating his popularity overall, for example.
“Bots absolutely do impact the flow of information,” Woolley said. “They’re built to manufacture the illusion of popularity. Repetition is the core weapon of propaganda and bots are really good at repetition. They’re really good at getting information in front of people’s eyeballs.”
Until recently, most bots were easily identified thanks to their clumsy writing or account names that included nonsensical words or long strings of random numbers. As social media platforms got better at detecting these accounts, the bots became more sophisticated.
So-called cyborg accounts are one example: a bot that is periodically taken over by a human user who can post original content and respond to users in human-like ways, making them much harder to sniff out.
Bots could soon get much sneakier thanks to advances in artificial intelligence. New AI programs can create lifelike profile photos and posts that sound much more authentic. Bots that sound like a real person and deploy deepfake video technology may challenge platforms and users alike in new ways, according to Katie Harbath, a fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center and a former Facebook public policy director.
“The platforms have gotten so much better at combating bots since 2016,” Harbath said. “But the types that we’re starting to see now, with AI, they can create fake people. Fake videos.”
These technological advances likely ensure that bots have a long future in American politics — as digital foot soldiers in online campaigns, and as potential problems for both voters and candidates trying to defend themselves against anonymous online attacks.
“There’s never been more noise online,” said Tyler Brown, a political consultant and former digital director for the Republican National Committee. “How much of it is malicious or even unintentionally unfactual? It’s easy to imagine people being able to manipulate that.”
Lawmakers unveil plan to keep Americans from claiming Social Security too early
Ben Werschkul, Washington Correspondent – March 6, 2023
Why you should delay Social Security benefits
Yahoo Finance columnist Kerry Hannon makes the case for why retirees should delay their Social Security benefits to age 70.
A bipartisan group of senators launched a multi-pronged effort this week to help Americans make better decisions about when to claim their Social Security benefits.
A letter and legislation released Monday said that Americans are confused about their options and that the Social Security Administration (SSA) needs to do a better job at communication — including bringing back paper statements.
“We believe that SSA should take more proactive measures to provide Americans with the tools and resources to determine how best to set themselves and their families up for financial security in retirement,” wrote Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Chris Coons (D-DE), Susan Collins (R-ME), and Tim Kaine (D-VA) in the note.
Monday’s announcement comes after years of discussion on the issue. Groups like the Bipartisan Policy Center have pushed for reforms for years and were cited in Monday’s letter. In a 2020 report, the group said many people are hurting their long-term financial security by claiming Social Security too early.
Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Chris Coons (D-DE) are two of the authors of the new letter. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)
Americans are jumping in ‘at a financially sub-optimal time’
The Social Security program gives retirees an option of when to start getting their checks. They can begin as early as age 62, but with a trade-off: Those monthly benefits are locked in at a lower rate for the rest of their lives. The benefit amount gets bigger the longer you wait to claim, topping out with maximum benefits for Americans who wait until age 70.
That decision has far-reaching implications and experts say many Americans are getting it wrong by claiming too early.
A recent study from a group called United Income — also cited in Monday’s letter — estimates that retirees collectively lose $3.4 trillion because they claim Social Security “at a financially sub-optimal time” That works out to $111,000 per household.
The problem, experts say, is that Americans don’t fully understand the consequences of their choice even though more than half of 65-or-over households rely on Social Security for a majority of their income.
A central recommendation released Monday is around changing the nomenclature. Currently, seniors are presented with what these four senators say are a battery of confusing terms from “early eligibility age” to “full retirement age” to “delayed retirement credits.”
Instead, the lawmakers say, Americans should be given a choice among “minimum benefit age,” “standard benefit age,” and “maximum benefit age.”
The bill also includes a push to redesign and bring back paper statements to Americans.
After years of blasting out millions of letters each year, the agency cut back in the last decade and now largely only reaches out to Americans via the U.S. Postal Service when they are over 60 and not receiving benefits.
If the legislation is enacted, all Americans in the workforce would get updates of where they stand and an explanation of their options at least every five years with the frequency increasing to annual notes after age 60.
Why are Americans claiming so early?
The letter from Capitol Hill also asks the agency to analyze why so many Americans claim benefits early and to outline its plans to “educate the public about the trade-offs of early versus delayed claiming.”
A 2019 release from the SSA laid out how age 62 remains the most common age for Americans with nearly 35% of men and 40% of women jumping into the program then.
But some of the reasons that Americans are interested in getting money as early as possible may also have to do with the uncertain future of the Social Security program as is does with any lack of education. A recent government trustees report found that, with no action from Congress, Social Security only has the funds to continue paying out 100% of benefits through 2034. After that, benefits could be decreased by around 24%.
In addition, Social Security has been a central issue in the ongoing debt ceiling fight. Democrats have charged that Republicans are looking to cut benefits in return for raising the debt ceiling. Most in the GOP adamantly deny this claim.
Polling has shown again and again that Americans are keenly aware of the perilous state of the program. In just one example, an AP-NORC poll in 2019 found that only 24% of Americans were confident Social Security would be able to pay out at least the same benefits in five years that it was paying out then.
Also in Washington, bipartisan talks are underway to shore up the program and give Americans more confidence. In recent months, those talks have been led by Sen. Cassidy (one of the co-signers of Monday’s letter) and Sen. Angus King (I-ME). In a statement Friday, the senators offered an update on those talks, noting that a dozen of options remained under discussion.
They pledged that “what we are discussing, millions would immediately receive more, and no one would receive less.” They hope to have “a fully developed plan” that can be released and debated in the months ahead.
Ben Werschkul is Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.
Ukraine unyielding in Bakhmut as Russian troops close in
March 6, 2023
A Ukrainian soldier takes cover in a trench under Russian shelling on the frontline close to Bakhmut, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Sunday, March 5, 2023. (AP Photo/Libkos) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian military leaders are determined to hold onto Bakhmut, Kyiv officials said Monday, even as Russian forces continued to encroach on the devastated eastern Ukrainian city that they have sought to capture for six months at the cost of thousands of lives.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office said he chaired a meeting with military officials during which the country’s top brass advocated strengthening Ukrainian positions there.
Intense Russian shelling targeted the Donetsk region city and nearby villages as Moscow deployed more resources there in an apparent bid to finish off Bakhmut’s resistance, according to local officials.
“Civilians are fleeing the region to escape Russian shelling continuing round the clock as additional Russian troops and weapons are being deployed there,” Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said.
Russian forces that invaded Ukraine just over a year ago have been bearing down on Bakhmut for months, putting Kyiv’s troops on the defensive but unable to deliver a knockout blow.
More broadly, Russia continues to experience difficulty generating battlefield momentum. Moscow’s full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, soon stalled and then was pushed back by a Ukraine counteroffensive. Over the bitterly cold winter months, the fighting has largely been deadlocked.
Bakhmut doesn’t have any major strategic value, and analysts say its possible fall is unlikely to bring a turning point in the conflict.
Its importance has become psychological — for Russian President Vladimir Putin, prevailing there will finally deliver some good news from the battlefield, while for Kyiv the display of grit and defiance reinforces a message that Ukraine was holding on after a year of brutal attacks to cement support among its Western allies.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin endorsed that view Monday, saying during a visit to Jordan that Bakhmut has “more of a symbolic value than … strategic and operational value.”
He added that Moscow is “continuing to pour in a lot of ill-trained and ill-equipped troops” in Bakhmut, whereas Ukraine is patiently “building combat power” elsewhere with Western military support ahead of the launch of a possible spring offensive.
Even so, some analysts questioned the wisdom of the Ukrainian defenders holding out much longer, with others suggesting a tactical withdrawal may already be underway.
Michael Kofman, the director of Russia studies at the CAN think tank in Arlington, Virginia, said that Ukraine’s defense of Bakhmut has been effective because it has drained the Russian war effort, but that Kyiv should now look ahead.
“I think the tenacious defense of Bakhmut achieved a great deal, expending Russian manpower and ammunition,” Kofman tweeted late Sunday. “But strategies can reach points of diminishing returns, and given Ukraine is trying to husband resources for an offensive, it could impede the success of a more important operation.”
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, noted that urban warfare favors the defender but considered that the smartest option now for Kyiv may be to withdraw to positions that are easier to defend.
In recent days, Ukrainian units destroyed two key bridges just outside Bakhmut, including one linking it to the nearby hilltop town of Chasiv Yar along the last remaining Ukrainian resupply route, according to U.K. military intelligence officials and other Western analysts. Demolishing the bridges could be part of efforts to slow down the Russian offensive if Ukrainian forces start pulling back from the city.
“Ukrainian forces are unlikely to withdraw from Bakhmut all at once and may pursue a gradual fighting withdrawal to exhaust Russian forces through continued urban warfare,” the ISW said in an assessment published late Sunday.
The Bakhmut battle has also served to expose Russian military shortcomings and bitter divisions.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the millionaire owner of the Wagner Group military company that spearheaded the Bakhmut offensive, has been at loggerheads with the Russian Defense Ministry and repeatedly accused it of failing to provide his forces with ammunition. On Sunday, he again criticized top military brass for moving slowly to deliver the promised ammunition, questioning whether the delay was caused “by red tape or treason.”
Putin’s stated ambition is to seize full control of the four provinces, including Donetsk, that Moscow illegally annexed last fall. Russia controls about half of Donetsk province, and to take the remaining half of that province its forces must go through Bakhmut.
The city is the only approach to bigger Ukrainian-held cities since Ukrainian troops took back Izium in Kharkiv province during a counteroffensive last September.
But taking at least six months to conquer Bakhmut, which had a prewar population of 80,000 and was once a popular vacation destination, speaks poorly of the Russian military’s offensive capabilities and may not bode well for the rest of its campaign.
“Russian forces currently do not have the manpower and equipment necessary to sustain offensive operations at scale for a renewed offensive toward (the nearby cities of) Kramatorsk and Slovyansk, let alone for a years-long campaign to capture all of Donetsk Oblast,” the ISW said.
Bakhmut has taken on almost mythic importance to its defenders. It has become like Mariupol — the port city in the same province that Russia captured after an 82-day siege that eventually came down to a mammoth steel mill where determined Ukrainian fighters held out along with civilians.
Moscow looked to cement its rule in the areas it has occupied and annexed. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu traveled to Mariupol and toured some of the city’s rebuilt infrastructure, the Defense Ministry reported Monday.
Shoigu was shown a newly built hospital, a rescue center of the Emergency Ministry and residential buildings, the ministry said.
The North Idaho College Campus in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, on Feb. 22, 2023. (Margaret Albaugh/The New York Times)
COEUR D’ALENE, Idaho — The February meeting of the North Idaho College board of trustees was, by recent standards, civilized.
There were no shoving matches or speeches from far-right podcasters. Nobody pulled the fire alarm. The parade of community members who, under the wary eye of campus security officers, took turns at the microphone mostly kept their voices below shouting volume, until an hour or so before midnight, when a woman cried “Shame on you!” and stormed out of the room.
Mostly, people seemed stunned that it had actually come to this.
For most of the past two years, the college’s governing board has been a volatile experiment in turning grievances into governance. Trustees backed by the county Republican Party hold a majority on the board. They have denounced liberal “indoctrination” by the college faculty and vowed to bring the school administration’s “deep state” to heel and “Make NIC Great Again.”
The injection of such sweeping political aims into the routine administration of a community college of 4,600 students, one better known locally for its technical training programs than the politics of its faculty, has devolved into a full-blown crisis. The school has faced lawsuits from two of the five presidents it has had since the start of the previous school year. A district court judge ordered one of those presidents reinstated Friday in a ruling that castigated the trustees for “steering NIC toward an iceberg.” The college has lost professors and staff and had its debt downgraded by Moody’s, which cited the school’s “significant governance and management dysfunction.”
The troubles culminated last month in a letter from the regional higher education commission, which warned that the 90-year-old college could be stripped of its accreditation if changes were not made in a matter of weeks — an effective threat of closure and a potential catastrophe for Coeur d’Alene, a town of 56,000 in the Idaho Panhandle. The college is the sixth-largest employer in Kootenai County and a source of skilled labor for much of the local economy.
“As a businessperson here, it’s heartbreaking to me to be standing on the brink of the loss of this institution,” said Eve Knudtsen, owner of a Chevrolet dealership in the neighboring town of Post Falls. Knudtsen, a Republican, attended NIC, as have both of her daughters, and she said one-third of the technicians hired by her dealership came out of the school.
“It’s pretty much a dystopian farce,” said Kathleen Miller Green, an assistant professor of child development who attended the nearly six-hour, capacity-crowd meeting at the school’s student union building Feb. 22. “It’s laughable if you don’t have to live it.”
Rick MacLennan, a former president of the college who was ousted by the trustees in 2021, describes the school as “a canary in the coal mine” — a warning of what awaits local institutions across the country as fiercely partisan and disruptive cultural battles spread into new corners of public life. He and other critics of the trustees see parallels with Gov. Ron DeSantis’ efforts to remake New College, a state-run liberal arts school in Sarasota, Florida, as a conservative bastion.
What’s different about North Idaho College, however, is that local voters have more directly driven the change — and the results have been less ideological overhaul than organizational chaos.
In Kootenai County, a magnet for conservative retirees from other states where Donald Trump won 70% of the vote in 2020, most public institutions and services are overseen by directly elected trustees. That means that Republican activists and voters, who increasingly see even once-benign institutional authorities as a threat to their values, are in a position to do something about it.
The clash over the college began in 2020 when, after the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, the school’s diversity council issued a statement expressing support for social justice demonstrations, including Black Lives Matter protests. The statement caught the attention of the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee.
That year, the committee began vetting and endorsing candidates for county board positions in what are technically nonpartisan elections. In the Coeur d’Alene Press, a committee precinct-person accused the school of supporting a “radical, racist and Marxist organization” and “guilting white male students,” and urged county residents to vote for two candidates endorsed by the committee “to balance the NIC Board” in the November election.
Brent Regan, the committee’s chair, argues the endorsements are no different from those of the local Rotary Club or newspaper.
“The mission of the Republican Party in Kootenai County is to try to find people who will run for office — any office, from sewer districts to school boards to trustee boards — who embrace the policies of the Republican Party as outlined in our platform,” Regan said.
In the matter of the college’s imperiled accreditation, he said, “We’re a convenient scapegoat.”
The committee’s college trustee candidates both won. They formed an informal majority on the five-member board with a like-minded incumbent trustee, Todd Banducci, who had clashed on occasion with other trustees and the school’s administrators and staff.
In an email to a conservative student, Banducci wrote that he was “battling the NIC ‘deep state’ on an almost daily basis,” and complained that “the liberal progressives are quite deeply entrenched.”
In a conversation after the election, Banducci chided MacLennan, then the college president, for his wife’s support for Hillary Rodham Clinton and told him that he would give him “marching orders,” according to MacLennan.
“My perspective was, you can’t do that,” MacLennan recalled. “It’s not going to work like that.”
In January, he wrote a letter to the trustees expressing his concern over what he described as a pattern of behavior by Banducci, who had been privately censured by the board the year before following a report that a college staff member had felt “threatened and intimidated” by him. (Banducci did not respond to a request for comment regarding the incident.) In March, local human rights organizations filed a complaint with the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, the accreditation body, arguing that Banducci’s conduct had “severely violated” several criteria for accreditation.
“They were in the process of dismantling the institution,” said Tony Stewart, secretary of the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations, which drafted the complaint.
Regan argued that Stewart’s organization, which formed in the 1980s to combat white supremacists who were active in Kootenai County, had strayed far from its mission.
“Were there human rights violations going on?” he said. “No.” He called the accreditation review a “political” process, “started by people who didn’t like the results of the election.”
Banducci’s bloc of trustees eventually fired MacLennan without cause, installing the school’s wrestling coach as interim president. A power struggle ensued, with the state education board at one point appointing several interim trustees who hired a new president. In the November 2022 election, candidates backed by the GOP committee once again claimed a majority and replaced him, too.
The turnover has been cited by the accreditation body, along with several votes of no confidence in the trustees from the college faculty and student government, as a source of its concern. Sonny Ramaswamy, the commission president, declined to discuss the accreditation review, citing discussions with the school.
In November, Greg McKenzie, the current board chair, dismissed the prospect of losing accreditation as “Fake News” in a letter to constituents.
But at the February meeting, as that loss suddenly seemed like a very real possibility, the trustees appeared somewhat chastened. McKenzie reminded the crowd that members of the accrediting commission were watching via livestream and asked attendees to help avoid the circuslike atmosphere of recent meetings.
In December, Vincent James Foxx, a far-right antisemitic podcaster who lives in Kootenai County, took the microphone to offer the bloc of trustees his “100% support.” That meeting was interrupted twice by fire alarms.
The threat of losing accreditation — which would leave the school ineligible for federal financial aid and students’ credits worthless if they transfer — has drawn local business leaders off the sidelines.
At the meeting, Greg Green, a telecom entrepreneur and philanthropist, vowed to fund challenges to the committee-backed bloc of trustees in the next election, in particular Banducci. “I had no clue how bad things were,” said Green, a Republican.
But the bloc has withstood one such challenge already. In November, the local chamber of commerce and a new political action committee called Friends of NIC endorsed a slate of rival candidates for three open trustee seats. But a Republican committee-backed candidate won one of the three races, enough to recapture a majority.
In interviews, students said the imminent threat of losing accreditation had caught the attention of a student body that had mostly tuned out the years of confusing power struggles.
“It’s really sad,” said Madeleine Morgan, a second-year English and chemistry double major from California. Morgan said she had come to Idaho from California hoping for more political diversity. “It’s not like I really disagreed with the ideas down there,” she said. “It’s just that I wanted a place where, conservative or liberal, you could speak your mind.”
Still, she found herself siding with the faculty. “They have families to feed and bills to pay,” she said. “They’re not the problem here. The trustees are.”
Hazards of Gas Stoves Were Flagged by the Industry—and Hidden—50 Years Ago
Kate Yoder, Grist – March 6, 2023
Photo: Scott Olson (Getty Images)
Newly uncovered documents reveal that the gas industry understood that its stoves were polluting the air inside homes 50 years ago — and then moved to conceal that information. It stands in stark contrast to the industry’s denial of the health dangers posed by gas stoves today.
In a draft report on natural gas and the environment in January 1972, the American Gas Association included a section on “Indoor Air Quality Control” that detailed its concerns with pollution from gas appliances like carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides. The document showed that the trade group was in the process of researching solutions “for the purposes of limiting the levels of carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides in household air.” But all that information disappeared from the final text, according to reporting by the climate accountability site DeSmog on Thursday.
That draft report was sent to the National Industrial Pollution Control Council, what was then a government advisory council made up of 200 business executives representing industrial heavyweights, including utilities. When the council’s final report was published in August 1972, those utilities had removed the section on air pollution concerns, according to the DeSmog article. Arguing that the fuel should replace the coal used for power, heating, and cooking in homes, the report spotlighted the pollution problems of burning coal while downplaying the dangers of natural gas.
In response to DeSmog’s investigation, Karen Harbert, the CEO of the American Gas Association, pointed to “a 1982 review of the available research that found no causative link between gas stoves and asthma, a conclusion shared by regulatory agencies.”
The concerns about indoor air quality in the report’s deleted section foreshadowed those held by health experts today. In recent months, studies have found that gas-burning stoves are responsible for nearly 13 percent of childhood asthma cases in the United States, and that they leak methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and benzene, a cancer-causing chemical, even when they’re shut off. Earlier this week, the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission made a formal request for information on the hazards of gas stoves. This is often the first step toward creating a regulation — although the commission has said it doesn’t plan on banning gas stoves entirely, after the mention of it sparked heated backlash.
The gas industry has pushed back against the peer-reviewed research showing that gas stoves increase the risk of childhood asthma. In January, the American Gas Association argued that the findings were “not substantiated by sound science” and that even discussing the asthma allegations would be “reckless.”
But the newly unveiled documents show that the gas industry itself was once concerned about the pollution coming from gas stoves — which the National Industrial Pollution Control Council called “the NOx problem” in 1970, referring to nitrogen oxides, a family of poisonous gases. Gas companies were even aware of the problem decades before, with the president of the Natural Gas Association warning of the dangers of emissions from gas stoves as far back as the early 1900s.
This Is the Absolute Best Food for Fighting Inflammation, According to Registered Dietitians
Emily Laurence – March 6, 2023
Plus, easy ways to incorporate it into your diet.
While inflammation isn’t inherently bad and plays an important role as part of the body’s natural defense system, high levels of chronic inflammation can cause all sorts of health woes. “Chronic, low-grade inflammation can cause a host of symptoms across the whole body. Digestive issues, brain fog, cardiovascular disease, chronic aches and pains, weight gain, hormone imbalances and autoimmune disease are all signs that the body is struggling to manage inflammation,” says functional medicine nutritionist Barbara Sobel, MS, CNS, LND. She adds that what we eat is one of the greatest modifiers of inflammation.
There are many, manyfoods and drinks that are anti-inflammatory, helping to prevent chronic inflammation. Coffee, tea, fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, seeds, fish and herbs are all anti-inflammatory and it’s best to eat a wide variety of these foods to get a wide range of nutritional benefits. But if you want to focus on adding one incredible anti-inflammatory food to your diet, there’s one in particular that healthy eating experts recommend: berries.
Why Berries Are So Beneficial for Preventing Chronic Inflammation
Whether your favorite is blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries or cranberries, there are specific properties that berries have in common that are linked to preventing chronic inflammation. According to Sobel, this includes antioxidants, fiber, vitamins, minerals, and polyphenols (a specific type of antioxidant).
Kristen Yarker, MSc, RD, a registered dietitian who leads a team of dietitians in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, says that since most of the scientific studies surrounding berries and health have been done on animals and in labs, it’s difficult to know exactly why they’re so powerful in protecting against inflammation, but there is a lot of research supporting the benefits of antioxidants, including polyphenols. Scientific studies show that antioxidants protect tissues in the body from damage caused by free radicals, which in turn prevents an inflammatory response.
Yarker also says that fiber—which berries contain—is also linked with preventing chronic inflammation. One reason why this is particularly noteworthy is because a full 90 percent of Americans don’t eat the recommended daily amount, which is 25 grams a day. Incorporating berries into your diet is an easy (and yummy!) way to up your amount. “A diet rich in fiber, especially soluble fiber, has been shown to dampen this inflammatory process,” Sobel says. She adds that blackberries and raspberries each have eight grams of fiber per cup, while strawberries and blueberries have closer to three or 3.5 grams of fiber per cup.
Besides antioxidants and fiber, both experts say that berries have other vitamins and minerals that are linked to preventing chronic inflammation. The types and amounts of these vitamins and minerals vary slightly based on the type of berry. Their advice is to switch up which ones you eat. That way, you get a wide range of nutrients.
If you want to incorporate berries into your diet more, Sobel says that buying fresh or frozen are equally beneficial. The key, she says, is to avoid anything overly processed that contains added sugar, which can be found in some fruit cups, pre-made smoothies, or fruit juice. Also, it’s important to know that fruit juice doesn’t contain the beneficial fiber that makes berries so great for preventing inflammation.
There’s certainly no shortage of ways to incorporate berries into your diet. They can, of course, be eaten as is. Some breakfast ideas that include berries along with other anti-inflammatory foods include oatmeal, smoothies or Greek yogurt parfait. For lunch and dinner, berries can add an unexpected bit of sweetness to salads and grain bowls. And of course, there are plenty of dessert recipes that incorporate berries; just be mindful of the amount of sugar that’s used to keep it healthy.
While eating berries regularly can help prevent inflammation, both experts emphasize that it isn’t the only food to prioritize and that eating berries can’t cancel out a diet that is primarily full of foods that cause inflammation, such as simple refined carbohydrates, sugar and fried foods.
“Including a variety of different berries regularly in our diets along with a variety of other colorful plant foods, getting enough sleep, moving our bodies, managing stress, having close supportive connections with others, and addressing any microbiome imbalances all contribute to decreasing inflammation,” Sobel says.
To this point, consider upping your berry intake a starting point, not an end all be all. Through diet and lifestyle, you can work to prevent chronic inflammation, one healthy habit at a time.
