Today’s News? – The Tarbabys Blog

Trump listens during a farming event in rural Pennsylvania, then threatens John Deere with tariffs

Associated Press

Trump listens during a farming event in rural Pennsylvania, then threatens John Deere with tariffs

Adriana Gomez Linconu – September 23, 2024

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event at a farm, Monday, Sept. 23, 2024, in Smithton, Pa, as from left, Richard Grenell, Lee Zeldin and Rep. Glenn Thompson, R-Pa., listen. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event at a farm, Monday, Sept. 23, 2024, in Smithton, Pa. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

SMITHTON, Pa. (AP) — Donald Trump sat in a large barn in rural Pennsylvania on Monday, asking questions of farmers and offering jokes but, in a rarity for his campaign events, mostly listening.

The bombastic former president was unusually restrained at an event about China’s influence on the U.S. economy, a roundtable during which farmers and manufacturers expressed concerns about losing their way of life. Behind Trump were large green tractors and a sign declaring “Protect our food from China.”

The event in Smithton, Pennsylvania, gave Trump a chance to drive his economic message against Vice President Kamala Harris, arguing that imposing tariffs and boosting energy production will lower costs. He highlighted Harris’ reversal of a previous vow to ban fracking, a method of producing natural gas key to Pennsylvania’s economy.

And he noted the tractors behind him were manufactured by John Deere, which announced in June it was moving skid steer and track loader manufacturing to Mexico and working to acquire land there for a new factory. Trump threatened the firm with a 200% tariff should he win back the presidency and it opted to export manufacturing to Mexico.

“If they want to build in the United States, there’s no tariff,” he added.

Trump opened the event with some of his usual themes. He declared that in 2020: “We had an election that didn’t exactly work out too good. And it was a disgrace.”

But he then did something unusual: He let others do most of the talking.

When one farmer said recent decades had seen scores of family farms shut down, Trump asked what that meant for overall production. The response was that, thanks to larger farms now operating, total production is actually up but “we are losing the small family farms.”

“I know that, yes,” Trump responded somberly. Later, he said, “I am not too worried about the people around this table” supporting him on Election Day, while jokingly adding, “But you never know.”

In response to another participant’s concerns about energy production, Trump said he didn’t know that farmers were so energy-dependent. Another farmer talked about Chinese-subsidized businesses, prompting Trump to respond, “That’s why we need tariffs.”

After the same farmer finished her comments by praising him profusely, he intoned: “Amen. I agree.”

Trump has embraced tariffs as he tries to appeal to working-class voters who oppose free-trade deals and the outsourcing of factories and jobs, and the event wasn’t all about showing a more personable side.

Later, the former president took questions from reporters and got more customarily combative when asked whether he was concerned that tariffs on manufacturers like John Deere would increase costs for farmers. He said of Harris, “She is not going to be good for Pennsylvania.”

Stopping at a neighborhood market prior to an evening rally in Indiana, Pennsylvania, Trump bought a bag of popcorn and quipped that, if elected, he may send for more from the Oval Office. He also gave a woman paying for groceries a $100 bill, declaring that her total “just went down a hundred bucks.”

The change didn’t last long. At his evening rally, Trump reverted to form, using an abrasive message to energize mostly conservative, white, working-class voters.

“She’s a one-woman economic wrecking ball and if she gets four more years, her radical agenda will smash the economy into rubble and grind your financial situation right into the dust,” Trump said of Harris. He claimed, “She wants to take your guns away” even as the vice president has stressed being a gun owner herself.

“She’s coming for your money. She’s coming for your pensions, and she’s coming for your savings,” he said.

The former president urged supporters to “get out and vote” but scoffed at the idea of casting early ballots, suggesting without evidence that it allowed more time to commit fraud. Citing unknown sources, he declared, “They said, if we don’t win this election, there may never be another election in this country.”

At one point, the former president caught a glimpse of himself on the big screen and joked about a ”handsome man over there” before concluding, “Oh, it’s Trump.”

He also got especially candid with the rally audience saying, “I don’t like anybody that doesn’t like me, I’ll be honest,” before adding, “sounds childish” but “that’s the way it is … call it a personality defect.”

It was a starkly different tone from Trump’s first event in Smithton, which was hosted by the Protecting America Initiative, led by Richard Grenell, Trump’s former acting director of national intelligence, and former New York congressman Lee Zeldin.

Grenell told the small group of attendees there, “China is getting into our farmlands, and we have to be able to see China very clearly.”

At the end of 2022, China held nearly 250,000 acres of U.S. land, which is slightly less than 1% of foreign-held acres, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. By comparison, Canada was the largest foreign owner of U.S. land, accounting for 32%, or 14.2 million acres.

Still, the National Agricultural Law Center estimates that 24 states ban or limit foreigners without residency and foreign businesses or governments from owning private farmland. The issue emerged after a Chinese billionaire bought more than 130,000 acres near a U.S. Air Force base in Texas and another Chinese company sought to build a corn plant near an Air Force base in North Dakota.

Rex Murphy, from a nearby rural community who raises cattle and grows corn and hay, said farmers support Trump in this area, and said he wanted fewer taxes and “more freedom.”

“I want him to do everything for the economy,” said Murphy, 48. “If he just becomes president, and he does what he does, he will do more.”

Harris is visiting Pennsylvania on Wednesday. Attending a New York fundraiser on Monday, Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, told a group of about 30 donors focused on climate change that Trump’s energy catchphrase of “drill, baby, drill” is “not a solution to things, and the public knows that it’s a cheap, easy thing.”

Walz, speaking at a midtown Manhattan hotel to an audience that included former presidential candidate Tom Steyer and Hollywood producer Jeffrey Katzenberg, called climate change an “existential threat” but also “an incredible opportunity to grow our economy.” He specifically cited farmers who use their land to generate wind energy in addition to growing crops.

Harris campaign spokesman Joseph Costello said that “despite all his lies and pandering, Donald Trump used the White House to give handouts to wealthy corporations and foreign companies.”

Costello said in a statement that those came “at the expense of family farmers, drive farm bankruptcies to record levels, and sacrifice small American farmers as pawns in his failed trade war with China.”

Colvin reported from Indiana, Pennsylvania. Weissert reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Didi Tang in Washington and Michelle L. Price in New York contributed to this report.

What is Putin holding over trump? Trump praises Russia’s military record in argument to stop funding Ukraine’s fight

Associated Press

Trump praises Russia’s military record in argument to stop funding Ukraine’s fight

Adriana Gomez Licon – September 24, 2024

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks about the tax code and manufacturing at the Johnny Mercer Theatre Civic Center, Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024, in Savannah, Ga. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrives for the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024, at UN headquarters. (AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah)

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — Donald Trump on Tuesday praised Russia’s military record in historical conflicts and derided U.S. aid to Ukraine as he again insisted he would quickly end the war launched by Moscow’s invasion if elected president.

Speaking in Savannah, Georgia, Trump mocked President Joe Biden’s frequent refrain that the U.S. would back the Ukrainian armed forces until Kyiv wins the war. He raised two long ago conflicts to suggest Moscow would not lose — the former Soviet Union’s role in defeating Adolf Hitler and the Nazis in World War II in the 1940s, and French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte’s failed invasion of Russia more than a century earlier.

Trump insisted that the U.S. had “to get out,” though he did not specify how he would negotiate an ending to U.S. involvement in the war.

“Biden says, ‘We will not leave until we win,’” Trump said, lowering his voice to mimic the Democratic president. “What happens if they win? That’s what they do, is they fight wars. As somebody told me the other day, they beat Hitler, they beat Napoleon. That’s what they do. They fight. And it’s not pleasant.”

An official on Trump’s campaign also said Tuesday that the Republican nominee will not meet this week with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is visiting the U.S. to attend the opening of the U.N. General Assembly.

No meeting had been scheduled between the two, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal planning, despite a statement from Ukrainian officials last week that said Zelenskyy had planned to see the former president.

Trump on Tuesday repeated his characterization of Zelenskyy as “the greatest salesman on Earth” for winning U.S. aid to help Ukraine.

“Every time Zelenskyy comes to the United States, he walks away with $100 billion,” Trump said, erroneously. The U.S. has provided more than $56 billion in security assistance since Russia invaded in 2022, according to the State Department.

Trump and Zelenskyy have a long history dating back to the former U.S. president’s time in the White House. The then-president pressured Zelenskyy to open investigations of Biden and his son Hunter as well as a cybersecurity firm Trump falsely linked to Ukraine. That call — and the hold placed by the White House on $400 million in military aid — led to Trump’s first impeachment.

Zelenskyy plans to meet with Biden and Harris in Washington.

Earlier this week, in an interview with The New Yorker, Zelenskyy implied Trump does not understand and oversimplifies the conflict, and said his running mate JD Vance is “too radical” and essentially advocates for Ukraine to “make a sacrifice” by “giving up its territories.”

On Monday, Trump’s son Donald Jr. criticized Zelenskyy on X, reminding his followers that the suspect in his father’s second assassination attempt had lambasted Trump’s approach to foreign policy, including the war in Ukraine.

“So a foreign leader who has received billions of dollars in funding from American taxpayers, comes to our country and has the nerve to attack the GOP ticket for President?” he posted.

Associated Press writer Michelle L. Price in New York contributed to this report.

Scientists looked deep beneath the Doomsday Glacier. What they found spells potential disaster for the planet

CNN

Scientists looked deep beneath the Doomsday Glacier. What they found spells potential disaster for the planet

Laura Paddison – September 20, 2024

Scientists using ice-breaking ships and underwater robots have found the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica is melting at an accelerating rate and could be on an irreversible path to collapse, spelling catastrophe for global sea level rise.

Since 2018, a team of scientists forming the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration, has been studying Thwaites — often dubbed the “Doomsday Glacier” — up close to better understand how and when it might collapse.

Their findings, set out across a collection of studies, provide the clearest picture yet of this complex, ever-changing glacier. The outlook is “grim,” the scientists said in a report published Thursday, revealing the key conclusions of their six years of research.

They found rapid ice loss is set to speed up this century. Thwaites’ retreat has accelerated considerably over the past 30 years, said Rob Larter, a marine geophysicist at the British Antarctic Survey and part of the ITGC team. “Our findings indicate it is set to retreat further and faster,” he said.

The scientists project Thwaites and the Antarctic Ice Sheet could collapse within 200 years, which would have devastating consequences.

Thwaites holds enough water to increase sea levels by more than 2 feet. But because it also acts like a cork, holding back the vast Antarctic ice sheet, its collapse could ultimately lead to around 10 feet of sea level rise, devastating coastal communities from Miami and London to Bangladesh and the Pacific Islands.

Photograph of the high cliffs of Thwaites Glacier taken from the British Antarctic Survey Twin Otter aircraft. - Rob Larter — Photograph of the high cliffs of Thwaites Glacier taken from the British Antarctic Survey Twin Otter aircraft. – Rob Larter

Scientists have long known Florida-sized Thwaites was vulnerable, in part because of its geography. The land on which it sits slopes downwards, meaning as it melts, more ice is exposed to relatively warm ocean water.

Yet previously, relatively little was understood about the mechanisms behind its retreat. “Antarctica remains the biggest wild card for understanding and forecasting future sea level rise,” ITGC scientists said in a statement.

Over the last six years, the scientists’ range of experiments sought to bring more clarity.

They sent a torpedo-shaped robot called Icefin to Thwaites’ grounding line, the point at which the ice rises up from the seabed and starts to float, a key point of vulnerability.

The first clip of Icefin swimming up to the grounding line was emotional, said Kiya Riverman, a glaciologist at the University of Portland. “For glaciologists, I think this had the emotional impact that perhaps the moon landing had on the rest of society,” she said at a new conference. “It was a big deal. We were seeing this place for the first time.”

Through images Icefin beamed back, they discovered the glacier is melting in unexpected ways, with warm ocean water able to funnel through deep cracks and “staircase” formations in the ice.

Image of Icefin under the sea ice near McMurdo Station. - Rob Robbins/ITGC — Image of Icefin under the sea ice near McMurdo Station. – Rob Robbins/ITGC

Another study used satellite and GPS data to look at the impacts of the tides and found seawater was able to push more than 6 miles beneath Thwaites, squeezing warm water under the ice and causing rapid melting.

Yet more scientists delved into Thwaites’ history. A team including Julia Wellner, a professor at the University of Houston, analyzed marine sediment cores to reconstruct the glacier’s past and found it started retreating rapidly in the 1940s, likely triggered by a very strong El Niño event — a natural climate fluctuation which tends to have a warming impact.

These results “teach us broadly about ice behavior, adding more detail than is available by just looking at the modern ice,” Wellner told CNN.

Among the gloom, there was also some good news about one process which scientists fear could cause rapid melting.

There is a concern that if Thwaites’ ice shelves collapse, it will leave towering cliffs of ice exposed to the ocean. These tall cliffs could easily become unstable and tumble into the ocean, exposing yet taller cliffs behind them, with the process repeating again and again.

Computer modeling, however, showed while this phenomenon is real, the chances of it happening are less likely than previously feared.

The Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica - NASA/Reuters — The Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica – NASA/Reuters

That’s not to say Thwaites is safe.

The scientists predict the whole of Thwaites and the Antarctic Ice Sheet behind it could be gone in the 23rd Century. Even if humans stop burning fossil fuels rapidly — which is not happening — it may be too late to save it.

While this stage of the ITGC project is wrapping up, the scientists say far more research is still needed to figure out this complex glacier and to understand if its retreat is now irreversible.

“While progress has been made, we still have deep uncertainty about the future,” said Eric Rignot, a glaciologist at the University of California, Irvine and part of ITGC. “I remain very worried that this sector of Antarctica is already in a state of collapse.”

‘They’re eating pets’ – another example of US politicians smearing Haiti and Haitian immigrants

Ohio Capitol Journal

‘They’re eating pets’ – another example of US politicians smearing Haiti and Haitian immigrants

Nathan Dize – September 19, 2024

Ohio Republican U.S. Sen. JD Vance. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images.)

Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance continues to defend the false claim that migrants in Springfield, Ohio, have been abducting and eating area cats and dogs.

That outlandish idea has been thoroughly debunked since former President Donald Trump repeatedly raised it as an anti-immigrant talking point in the Sept. 12, 2024, presidential debate. Trump never mentioned where the migrants allegedly “eating the pets” came from, but many viewers understood it as a reference to Haitians, a population that Trump has previously degraded.

As debate moderator David Muir stated in his real-time fact check, there is no evidence that any pets in Springfield have been taken or consumed. NPR and other media outlets have also declared the rumor, which began with local right-wing advocates and officials in Springfield decrying the city’s disorganized response to an influx of Haitian migrants in recent years, to be false.

The Republican ticket’s untrue rumors about Haitians in Springfield reflects a long history of prejudice toward Haitians in the United States. As a scholar of Haitian history and literature, I have identified three anti-Haitian ideas prevalent in the United States that will help put the Springfield story into context.

The unfitness of Haitians ‘to govern themselves’

In July 1915, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson invaded Haiti under the guise of restoring order and economic stability following the assassination of Haitian President Vilbrun Guillaume Sam.

Five years into what would become a 19-year military occupation, the American diplomat and civil rights leader James Weldon Johnson was sent by the NAACP to investigate the supposed benefits of the occupation. His resounding takeaway: “The United States has failed Haiti.”

In related pieces for The Nation and The Crisis, Johnson chronicled abuses ranging from extra-judicial killings of Haitian citizens – U.S forces killed 15,000 Haitians between 1915 and 1934 – to the harassment and rape of Haitian women. Johnson said the U.S. occupation amounted to nothing more than a belief in the “unfitness of the Haitian people to govern themselves.”

By undermining Haitian sovereignty, Wilson’s administration had successfully created a justification for seizing control of Haitian banks, rewriting its constitution and importing American Jim Crow-style segregation into the capital city of Port-au-Prince. This was a clearly racist presidential administration that hosted White House screenings of D.W. Griffiths’ anti-Black film “Birth of a Nation,” as historian Yveline Alexis demonstrates in her book “Haiti Fights Back: The Life and Legacy of Charlemagne Péralte.”

“Racism,” Alexis writes, “was at the core of the seizure of Haiti and all interactions with Haitians.”

The ‘4H disease’

In June 2017, Trump reportedly “stormed into a meeting” on immigration from Haiti and repeated a slanderous anti-Haitian claim: “They all have AIDS,” he said.

The account, from author Jake Johnston, a senior research associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, shows the then-president repeating a falsehood that has circulated since HIV erupted in the 1980s.

Ever since a number of Haitians fell ill while at a Florida immigrant detention center in June 1982, Haitians became part of what the late public health expert Paul Farmer called the “geography of blame” that linked this highly communicable disease to certain places and people.

The federal government turned a small disease cluster into a migration policy designed to keep Haitians out of the U.S.

Betweeen 1981 and 1991, more than 27,000 Haitian asylum-seekers fleeing Jean-Claude Duvalier’s dictatorship were intercepted off the coast of Florida and detained. The vast majority were repatriated, in part because of a deportation agreement with Duvalier and in part because stopping Haitians at sea was a “screening strategy” to prevent HIV/AIDS from spreading in the U.S.

The Reagan administration called the virus the “4H disease,” referring to Haitians, hemophiliacs, homosexuals and heroin users. This designation spread harmful lies about four groups, but Haitians were the only nationality singled out as an “at-risk” population for contracting HIV/AIDS.

By the time the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention removed Haitians from its list of highest-risk groups in 1985, the damage had been done. Haitians in the U.S. were effectively vilified as vectors of a deadly virus.

As a young Haitian man in Port-au-Prince remarked to writer Martha Cooley in 1983, “This 4H thing is just one more way to keep us out.”

Haiti’s problems are homegrown

Haiti’s occupation by foreign forces has continued on and off in different forms since the U.S. invasion of 1915.

United Nations troops were stationed there for nearly two decades following the the 2004 ouster of President Jean Bertrand Aristide. After the devastating 2010 earthquake, they were joined by the Red Cross and Oxfam. As all three organizations have since acknowledged, their humanitarian interventions left numerous crises in their wake, including cholera, chronic corruption in rebuilding projects and a market for sexually exploiting young girls.

Still, Haiti has long faced the accusation that its instability is homegrown. It is widely portrayed in the U.S. as a basket-case nation incapable of managing its own affairs. Trump, as president, once dismissed the entire country as a “shithole.”

At present, Haitians are coping with overlapping crises that have U.S. fingerprints.

After President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in July 2021, the Biden administration hand-picked Haiti’s interim prime minister, Ariel Henry, as its new leader. This undemocratic decision was such a resounding failure that in March 2024, Haitian gangs revolted against Henry’s administration, unleashing a wave of gruesome violence that ultimately forced Henry out of office.

So many catastrophes in Haiti over the past four decades have created an overwhelming sense of insecurity among its people. Many hundreds of thousands have fled the country for the U.S., Dominican Republic, Brazil and beyond.

In July 2024, the Biden administration granted temporary protected status to 500,000 Haitian migrants in the U.S., allowing them to stay in the country, in recognition of the life-threatening conditions back home.

The people Trump insists are “illegal aliens” are in fact authorized U.S. residents from a country buffeted by American meddling in its politics.

A very old pattern

In barking about cats and dogs in Springfield, Trump, Vance and their right-wing supporters are spreading the same kind of anti-Haitian rhetoric that has sown a harmful distrust of Haitian migrants for over a century.

“This is not the first time that we [Haitians] have been the victims of ‘yon kanpay manti,’” said the Ministry of Haitians Living Abroad in a press release following the debate, using the Haitian Creole phrase for “a campaign of lies.”

The result of such misinformation, it added, is “mistreatment, hatred, and misunderstanding in the interest of politics.”

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

America is a land of immigrants. Stop weaponizing false language about them.

The Oklahoman – Opinion

America is a land of immigrants. Stop weaponizing false language about them.

Alex Seojoon Kim – September 19, 2024

In the recent presidential debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, both sides traded jabs without much regard for the opposition. It made sense, as pulling punches now could spell disaster for the presidential hopefuls. With election day less than two months away, the national stage in Pennsylvania was the perfect opportunity to sway middle ground voters that often determine the result of an election. Yet, in the heat of lax factual statements, one claim made by Trump sparked immense outrage in a large community.

Trump claimed that Haitian immigrants were eating people’s pets, cats and dogs, in Springfield, Ohio. Not only are these comments harmful, but they are insensitive and dangerous. Assuming these stereotypes about immigrants, specifically those of Haitian descent, can be immensely damaging in the face of the plight and challenges these people face.

Springfield, Ohio, is reported to have “approximately 12,000 to 15,000 immigrants” from Haiti in their county. They are “legally [there] as part of a parole program” in the hopes that they can bring family members from Haiti into the United States. And yet Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, have both been targeting this minority community with a lack of reasonable decency behind their claims.

Several reputable leaders from the city, including Springfield’s mayor, police chief and even the state’s governor, have said that these claims are far from true. Troubled by bomb threats at schools since the Trump-Vance pet-eating allegations, at least one with anti-Haitian sentiment, Springfield continues to battle this antilogic.

A cat sits on the porch on a tree-lined street in Springfield, Ohio, Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024. The area has attracted national scrutiny after conservative figures, including former President Donald Trump and his running mate Sen. JD Vance, spread debunked claims that Haitians in the community were stealing and eating people’s pets.More

“We do not have any evidence that [this incident] has happened, and I’ve made it known in multiple interviews that this is absolutely not true,” Springfield Mayor Bob Rue said on BBC Newshour, wanting to make clear that “the weight of [politicians’] words … can negatively affect communities.”

Harsh rhetoric is not new in American politics. Immigrants have been falsely accused of bringing a multitude of undesirable ideas and practices into the United States for a long time ― from disease to overpopulation. For centuries, millions flocked from Europe at first, and later Asia, to the United States to escape harsh living conditions and in pursuit of a fair chance of achieving the “American Dream.” Yet nativist ideology spread rapidly through the states time and time again, leading to limitations such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Immigration Act of 1924. Demoralizing language and actions were key in spurring these laws.

Now, both Trump’s and Vance’s incendiary comments about Haitian immigrants seem to be nothing more than a weaponization of rumors for political gain. Similar tactics have been used by politicians in scapegoating other marginalized groups, such as Asians and Hispanics, as well. When prominent figures use their elevated platforms for statements viciously attacking minority groups, it only adds fuel to the fire by instigating hate crimes. Not only are the Haitians in Springfield at risk, but physical and verbal threats can harm all residents in the area.

More: JD Vance repeats baseless claims that Haitians in Ohio are eating pets: What we know

It’s important to remember that immigrants make up an important sector of this country’s workforce and contribute to their local communities. According to news reports, before Haitian immigrants arrived on the scene, Springfield had lost a quarter of its population over the past few decades, a startling decline for a once-booming agricultural economy. Now, Haitians are essential to the workforce, especially at Springfield’s Dole Fresh Vegetables, where they’re “hired to clean and package produce” and to work at automotive machining plants. Their businesses, cultural foods and identities have merged into the Ohio city, transforming it into a bustling place of diversity. And this is the main reason Trump’s and Vance’s threats of deporting these civilians is so detrimental.

A nation founded, in part, on the backs of immigrants should not use improper, falsified accusations as political leverage. This is not only offensive to Haitians but to all immigrants in the United States. The speeches talking about eating pets in Ohio are not just wrong but a sad distraction from more authentic issues at hand, such as the reformation of immigration laws. Empathy must come first to create a nation that includes and values its citizens and residents, regardless of their origin.

Alex Seojoon Kim is a high school student in Stillwater.

What to know about the two waves of deadly explosions that hit Lebanon and Syria

Associated Press

What to know about the two waves of deadly explosions that hit Lebanon and Syria

Wyatte Grantham-Philips, Michael Biesecker, Sarah El Deeb and Sarah Parvini – September 18, 2024

White House tight-lipped about exploding devices in Lebanon

NEW YORK (AP) — Just one day after pagers used by hundreds of members of the militant group Hezbollah exploded, more electronic devices detonated in Lebanon Wednesday in what appeared to be a second wave of sophisticated, deadly attacks that targeted an extraordinary number of people.

Both attacks, which are widely believed to be carried out by Israel, have hiked fears that the two sides’ simmering conflict could escalate into all-out war. This week’s explosions have also deepened concerns about the scope of potentially-compromised devices, particularly after such bombings have killed or injured so many civilians.

Here’s what we know so far.

What happened across these two waves of attacks?

On Tuesday, pagers used by hundreds of Hezbollah members exploded almost simultaneously in parts of Lebanon as well as Syria. The attack killed at least 12 people — including two young children — and wounded thousands more.

An American official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Israel briefed the U.S. on the operation — where small amounts of explosives hidden in the pagers were detonated. The Lebanese government and Iran-backed Hezbollah also blamed Israel for the deadly explosions. The Israeli military, which has a long history of sophisticated operations behind enemy lines, declined to comment.

A day after these deadly explosions, more detonations triggered in Beirut and parts of Lebanon Wednesday — including several blasts heard at a funeral in Beirut for three Hezbollah members and a child killed by Tuesday’s explosions, according to Associated Press journalists at the scene.

At least 20 people were killed and another 450 were wounded, the Health Ministry said, in this apparent second attack.

When speaking to troops on Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant made no mention of the explosions of electronic devices, but praised the work of Israel’s army and security agencies and said “we are at the start of a new phase in the war.”

What kinds of devices were used?

A Hezbollah official told the AP that walkie-talkies used by the group exploded on Wednesday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. Lebanon’s official news agency also reported that solar energy systems exploded in homes in several areas of Beirut and in southern Lebanon, wounding at least one girl.

While details are still emerging from Wednesday’s attack, the second wave of explosions targeted a country that is still reeling from Tuesday’s pager bombings. That attack appeared to be a complex Israeli operation targeting Hezbollah, but an enormous amount of civilian casualties were also reported, as the detonations occurred wherever members’ pagers happened to be — including homes, cars, grocery stores and cafes.

Hezbollah has used pagers as a way to communicate for years. And more recently, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned the group’s members not to carry cellphones, saying they could be used by Israel to track the group’s movements.

Pagers also run on a different wireless network than mobile phones, which usually makes them more resilient in times of emergency. And for a group like Hezbollah, the pagers provided a means to sidestep what’s believed to be intensive Israeli electronic surveillance on mobile phone networks in Lebanon — as pagers’ tech is simpler and carries lower risks for intercepted communications.

Elijah J. Magnier, a Brussels-based veteran and a senior political risk analyst who says he has had conversations with members of Hezbollah and survivors of the attack, said that the newer brand of pagers used in Tuesday’s explosions were procured more than six months ago. How they arrived in Lebanon remains unclear.

Taiwanese company Gold Apollo said Wednesday it had authorized use of its brand on the AR-924 pager model — but that a Budapest, Hungary-based company called BAC Consulting KFT produced and sold the pagers.

Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs said that it had no records of direct exports of Gold Apollo pagers to Lebanon. And Hungarian government spokesman later added that the pager devices had never been in Hungary, either, noting that BAC had merely acted as an intermediary.

Speculation around the origins of the devices that exploded Wednesday has also emerged. A sales executive at the U.S. subsidiary of Japanese walkie-talkie maker Icom told The Associated Press that the exploded radio devices in Lebanon appear to be a knock-off product and not made by Icom.

“I can guarantee you they were not our products,” said Ray Novak, a senior sales manager for Icom’s amateur radio division, in an interview Wednesday at a trade show in Providence, Rhode Island.

Novak said Icom introduced the V-82 model more than two decades ago and it has long since been discontinued. It was designed for amateur radio operators and for use in social or emergency communications, including by people tracking tornadoes or hurricanes, he said.

What kind of sabotage would cause these devices to explode?

Tuesday’s explosions were most likely the result of supply-chain interference, several experts told The Associated Press — noting that very small explosive devices may have been built into the pagers prior to their delivery to Hezbollah, and then all remotely triggered simultaneously, possibly with a radio signal. That corroborates information shared from the U.S. official.

A former British Army bomb disposal officer explained that an explosive device has five main components: A container, a battery, a triggering device, a detonator and an explosive charge.

“A pager has three of those already,” said the ex-officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he now works as a consultant with clients on the Middle East. “You would only need to add the detonator and the charge.”

This signals involvement of a state actor, said Sean Moorhouse, a former British Army officer and explosive ordinance disposal expert. He added that Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, the Mossad, was the most obvious suspect to have the resources to carry out such an attack. Israel has a long history of carrying out similar operations in the past.

The specifics of Wednesday’s explosions are still uncertain. But reports of more electronic devices exploding may suggest even greater infiltration of boobytrap-like interference in Lebanon’s supply chain. It also deepens concerns around the lack of certainty of who may be holding rigged devices.

How long was this operation ?

It would take a long time to plan an attack of this scale. The exact specifics are still unknown, but experts who spoke with the AP about Tuesday’s explosions shared estimates ranging anywhere between several months to two years.

The sophistication of the attack suggests that the culprit has been collecting intelligence for a long time, explained Nicholas Reese, adjunct instructor at the Center for Global Affairs in New York University’s School of Professional Studies. An attack of this caliber requires building the relationships needed to gain physical access to the pagers before they were sold; developing the technology that would be embedded in the devices; and developing sources who can confirm that the targets were carrying the pagers.

Citing conversations with Hezbollah contacts, Magnier said the group is currently investigating what type of explosives were used in the device, suspecting RDX or PETN, highly explosive materials that can cause significant damage with as little as 3-5 grams. They are also questioning whether the device had a GPS system allowing Israel to track movement of the group members.

N.R. Jenzen-Jones, an expert in military arms who is director of the Australian-based Armament Research Services, added that “such a large-scale operation also raises questions of targeting” — stressing the number of causalities and enormous impact reported so far.

“How can the party initiating the explosive be sure that a target’s child, for example, is not playing with the pager at the time it functions?” he said.

___

Associated Press journalists Johnson Lai in Taipei, Bassem Mroue in Beirut and Matt O’Brien in Providence, Rhode Island contributed to this report.

Superbug crisis could get worse, killing nearly 40 million people by 2050, study estimates

CNN

Superbug crisis could get worse, killing nearly 40 million people by 2050, study estimates

Jacqueline Howard – September 16, 2024

The number of lives lost around the world due to infections that are resistant to the medications intended to treat them could increase nearly 70% by 2050, a new study projects, further showing the burden of theongoing superbug crisis.

Cumulatively, from 2025 to 2050, the world could see more than 39 million deaths that are directly attributable to antimicrobial resistance or AMR, according to the study, which was published Monday in the journal The Lancet.

Antimicrobial resistance happens when pathogens like bacteria and fungi develop the ability to evade the medications used to kill them.

The World Health Organization has called AMR “one of the top global public health and development threats,” driven by the misuse and overuse of antimicrobial medications in humans, animals and plants, which can help pathogens develop a resistance to them.

The new study reveals that when it comes to the prevalence of AMR and its effects, “we expect it to get worse,” said lead author Dr. Chris Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.

“We need appropriate attention on new antibiotics and antibiotic stewardship so that we can address what is really quite a large problem,” he said.

Older adults bear the burden

The researchers – from the Global Research on Antimicrobial Resistance Project, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation and other institutions – estimated deaths and illnesses attributable to versus associated with antimicrobial resistance for 22 pathogens, 84 pathogen-drug combinations and 11 infections across 204 countries and territories from 1990 through 2021. A death attributable to antimicrobial resistance was directly caused by it, while a death associated with AMR may have another cause that was exacerbated by the antimicrobial resistance.

About 520 million individual records were part of the data to make those estimates.

The researchers found that from 1990 to 2021, deaths from AMR fell more than 50% among children younger than 5 but increased more than 80% among adults 70 and older – trends that are forecast to continue.

It was surprising to see those patterns emerge, Murray said.

“We had these two opposite trends going on: a decline in AMR deaths under age 15, mostly due to vaccination, water and sanitation programs, some treatment programs, and the success of those,” Murray said.

“And at the same time, there’s this steady increase in the number of deaths over age 50,” he said, as the world ages; older adults can be more susceptible to severe infection.

The researchers found that the pathogen-drug combination that had the largest increase in causing the most burden among all age groups was methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA. For this combination – the antibiotic methicillin and the bacteria S. aureus – the number of attributable deaths nearly doubled from 57,200 in 1990 to 130,000 in 2021.

Using statistical modeling, the researchers also produced estimates of deaths and illnesses attributable to AMR by 2050 in three scenarios: if the current climate continues, if new potent antibiotic drugs are developed to target resistant pathogens, and if the world has improved quality of health care for infections and better access to antibiotics.

The forecasts show that deaths from antimicrobial resistance will increase by 2050 if measures are not in place to improve access to quality care, powerful antibiotics and other resources to reduce and treat infections.

The researchers estimated that, in 2050, the number of global deaths attributable to antimicrobial resistance could reach 1.9 million, and those associated with antimicrobial resistance could reach 8.2 million.

According to the data, the regions of the world most affected by AMR and attributable deaths are South Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and sub-Saharan Africa – and many of these regions don’t have equitable access to quality care, Murray said.

“There are still, unfortunately, a lot of places in low-resource settings where people who need antibiotics are just not getting them, and so that’s a big part of it. But it’s not just the antibiotics. It’s when you’re sick, either as a kid or an adult, and you get sent to hospital, and you get a package of care, essentially, that includes things like oxygen,” Murray said.

“In low-resource settings, even basics like oxygen are often not available. And then, if you are very sick and you need an intensive care unit, well, there’s big parts of the low-resource world – most of them, actually – where you wouldn’t get access to that sort of care,” he said. “So there’s a spectrum of supportive care, plus the antibiotics, that really make a difference.”

But in a scenario where the world has better health care, 92 million cumulative deaths could be averted between 2025 and 2050, the researchers forecast. And in a scenario where the world has new, more potent drugs, about 11 million cumulative deaths could be avoided.

‘There is possible hope on the horizon’

The “innovative and collaborative” approach to this study provides a “comprehensive assessment” of antimicrobial resistance and its potential burden on the world, Samuel Kariuki, of the Kenya Medical Research Institute, wrote in a commentary that accompanied the new study in The Lancet.

Yet he warned that the forecast models do not consider the emergence of new superbugs “and might lead to underestimation if new pathogens arise.”

Overall, “these data should drive investments and targeted action” toward addressing the growing challenge of antimicrobial resistance in all regions of the world, Kariuki wrote.

The new paper represents decades of research on the global burden of antimicrobial resistance, said Dr. Steffanie Strathdee, associate dean of global health sciences and distinguished professor at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, who was not involved in the study.

Strathdee saw firsthand the effects that antimicrobial resistance can have on health when her husband nearly died from a superbug infection.

“I’m somebody who’s lived with antimicrobial resistance affecting my family for the last eight years. My husband nearly died from a superbug infection. It’s actually one of the infections that’s highlighted in this paper,” said Strathdee, who serves as co-director of the Center for Innovative Phage Applications and Therapeutics at UC San Diego.

During a Thanksgiving cruise on the Nile in 2015, Strathdee’s husband, Tom Patterson, suddenly developed severe stomach cramps. When a clinic in Egypt failed to help his worsening symptoms, Patterson was flown to Germany, where doctors discovered a grapefruit-size abdominal abscess filled with Acinetobacter baumannii, a virulent bacterium resistant to nearly all antibiotics.

The annual number of people dying from gram-negative bacteria, like A. baumannii, that are resistant to carbapenem – a class of last-resort antibiotics used to treat severe bacterial infections – rose 89,200 from 1990 to 2021, more than any antibiotic class over that period, according to the new study.

“That’s one of the urgent priority pathogens, which is one of these gram-negative bacteria,” Strathdee said. “And my husband, when he fell ill from this, he was 69. So he’s exactly at the age that this paper is highlighting, that older people are going to be affected by this more in the future, because our population is aging and people have comorbidities, like diabetes, like my husband has.”

Strathdee’s husband recovered after treatment with phages, viruses that selectively target and kill bacteria and that can be used as a treatment approach for antimicrobial-resistant bacterial infections.

“The most important alternative to antibiotics is phage therapy, or bacteriophage therapy, and that’s what saved my husband’s life,” Strathdee said. “Phage can be used very effectively with antibiotics, to reduce the amount of antibiotics that are needed, and they can even be used potentially in livestock and in farming.”

The new study gives Strathdee hope that the world can reduce the potential burden of antimicrobial resistance. That would require improving access to antibiotics and newer antimicrobial medications, vaccines, clean water and other aspects of quality health care around the world, she said, while reducing the use of antibiotics in livestock, food production and the environment, which can breed more resistance.

“There is possible hope on the horizon,” Strathdee said. “If we were to scale up these interventions, we could dramatically reduce the number of deaths in the future.”

CNN’s Sandee LaMotte contributed to this report.

How California Became a New Center of Political Corruption

The New York Times

How California Became a New Center of Political Corruption

Ralph Vartabedian – August 29, 2024

Over the last 10 years, 576 public officials in California have been convicted on federal corruption charges, according to Justice Department reports, exceeding the number of cases in states better known for public corruption, including New York, New Jersey and Illinois. (Getty Images)More

LOS ANGELES — Jose Huizar’s downfall at Los Angeles City Hall was as stunning as his rise to success, a political tragedy that, like many in the land of dreams, has become a familiar one.

Born to a large family in rural Mexico and raised in poverty near the towering high-rises of downtown Los Angeles, he overcame enormous odds to graduate from the University of California, Berkeley, Princeton University and UCLA law school.

He returned to his old neighborhood in East Los Angeles to run for the school board and eventually the City Council, where he gained control of the influential committee that approves multimillion-dollar commercial development projects across the city.

His spectacular fall — after FBI agents caught him accepting $1.8 million worth of casino chips, luxury hotel stays, a liquor box full of cash and prostitutes from Chinese developers — was cast by federal prosecutors as an epic Hollywood tale. They persuaded a judge in January to sentence him to 13 years in prison on charges of tax evasion and racketeering.

“He was the King Kong of LA City Hall for many, many years,” Mack E. Jenkins, chief of the criminal division at the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles, told the court. “And with his fall, a lot of devastation was left in his wake.”

This week, when Huizar is scheduled to report to prison, he will become the third recent Los Angeles City Council member to go down on charges of corruption, part of a much larger circle of staff aides, fundraisers, political consultants and real estate developers who have been charged in what federal authorities called an “extraordinary” recent wave of bribery and influence-peddling across California.

Two other members of the City Council, Mitchell Englander and Mark Ridley-Thomas, were convicted earlier on various corruption charges, as was the former head of the city’s Department of Water and Power. A fourth City Council member, Curren Price, is facing charges of embezzlement, perjury and conflict of interest.

Over the last 10 years, 576 public officials in California have been convicted on federal corruption charges, according to Justice Department reports, exceeding the number of cases in states better known for public corruption, including New York, New Jersey and Illinois.

California has a larger population than those states, but the recent wave of cases is attributable to much more than that, federal prosecutors say.

A heavy concentration of power at Los Angeles City Hall, the receding presence of local news media, a population that often tunes out local politics and a growing Democratic supermajority in state government have all helped insulate officeholders from damage, political analysts said.

In Los Angeles, Huizar’s influence was even greater than that of most other council members: Not only did his district include downtown Los Angeles, where billions of dollars of foreign investment was transforming the skyline, but he also controlled the Planning and Land Use Management Committee that approves major developments all over the city.

“When you have that kind of power, pay-to play schemes run amok,” said U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada, whose office has led many of the recent prosecutions in Los Angeles. “I wouldn’t call it ordinary what these folks did. It is extraordinary.”

Huizar, 55, pleaded guilty to racketeering, a charge often used in prosecuting organized crime or street-gang cases. The $1.8 million in bribes he received was twice the amount that recently convicted Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey was charged with accepting.

In March, a jury convicted Raymond Chan, a former Los Angeles deputy mayor whom prosecutors called the “architect” of the Huizar conspiracy, also on racketeering charges. In all, more than 50 key political figures and executives in Los Angeles and San Francisco have been convicted since 2019. Many more were investigated or resigned after allegations surfaced.

California also had cases of corruption in the days, now in the distant past, when Republicans held statewide office.

But political analysts say the Democrats’ present lock on political power leaves little opportunity for Republicans to effectively raise the issue of corruption as a campaign issue.

“When a political party enjoys that much uncontested power, there’s no penalty for stepping over ethical or legal lines,” said Dan Schnur, a former head of the state Fair Political Practices Commission and a former Republican who is now an independent.

A two-year-old reform effort to curb some of the extraordinary power conferred to individual council members in Los Angeles has foundered.

“When you talk about reducing individual council member discretion over land use, there is real pushback,” said Nithya Raman, a council member who sits on the city’s charter reform committee.

What happened in Los Angeles had been playing out on a smaller scale for years in the small industrial cities of Los Angeles County that have been described as a “corridor of corruption”: South Gate, Bell, Lynwood and Vernon, among others, where civic leaders were prosecuted for taking bribes or tapping into city funds.

“You have large immigrant populations, largely marginalized communities that do not have the resources to watch their politicians closely,” said Estrada, whose parents emigrated from Guatemala. “I think you have a pretty unique cauldron of factors in Los Angeles and the greater Los Angeles area that allow for these things to happen.”

The arrival of large-scale investments from China starting in 2011 heightened the risks.

Over the next half-dozen years, about $26 billion of direct investment from Chinese firms and their billionaire owners arrived in the state.

Downtown Los Angeles underwent a dramatic revival. New high-rise condos and hotels went up, abandoned warehouses were converted into loft apartments and galleries and expensive restaurants opened.

The 40-year-old Grand Hotel, a rundown eyesore used until recently by the city as a homeless shelter, was at the center of one investor’s grandiose plan.

The investor, Wei Huang, a billionaire owner of the development company Shen Zhen New World, bought the hotel in 2010 with plans to convert it into a 77-story tower, the highest in the western United States.

What he needed was help managing the byzantine political approval process. He found it, federal prosecutors said, with Huizar, who had been elected to the council in 2005.

Starting in 2013, federal prosecutors said, Huizar took the first of 20 all-expenses paid trips to Las Vegas with Huang, during which he was supplied with about $10,000 worth of casino chips each time.

Their involvement deepened just before a 2015 election, when Huizar faced allegations from his deputy chief of staff that he had sexually harassed her. Huang, prosecutors said, provided him with $600,000 of collateral for a loan to settle out of court.

But it was the free casino chips in Las Vegas that would ultimately unravel the arrangement. During one trip to the Cosmopolitan casino in 2016, its security chief, a former FBI agent, spotted Huizar playing a $16,000 pile of chips at a card table. When he asked his identity, he became flustered and walked away, leaving the chips.

“Who walks away from $16,000 of casino chips?” said Carlos Narro, who was then the chief of the FBI’s public corruption section in Los Angeles, who got a call from the security chief.

In short order, Narro had the casino’s video of the scene at the card table and flight records. With those, the FBI got court approval for wire taps and searches of Huizar’s text messages and emails.

Ultimately, the investigation found that Huang had paid roughly $1.8 million to Huizar, but that was only part of a much wider network of corruption, investigators found. The wide-ranging racketeering indictment to which Huizar pleaded guilty also targeted a City Hall aide, a deputy mayor, a lobbyist and a political fundraiser, all of whom were also convicted.

Huang was also indicted and is now a fugitive, believed to be in China. His company was fined $4 million.

Also included in the indictment were three other large development projects whose backers, prosecutors said, obtained Huizar’s help in exchange for bribes.

The scandal was almost inevitable, said Miguel Santana, the former top administrative officer of Los Angeles.

“The depth of power that a council member has around development in their own districts almost facilitates the level of corruption that took place,” Santana, now president of the California Community Foundation. “That level of power still exists today.”

San Francisco has had its own round of corruption cases, many of the recent ones surrounding the former Department of Public Works chief, Mohammed Nuru, who pleaded guilty in 2021 to accepting gifts, including a tractor for his ranch outside the city, a Rolex watch and millions of dollars, from various people with business before the city.

Florence Kong, the owner of a recycling company, pleaded guilty to offering some of the bribes in exchange for city contracts. Zhang Li, a Chinese developer also accused of offering bribes, signed a deferred prosecution agreement.

Now scheduled to surrender to prison by Saturday, Huizar made a public apology at his sentencing hearing, saying he had long been dedicated to his community. “Shiny things were dangled in front of me, and I could not resist the temptation,” he said in a letter to the judge asking for leniency. “The money, the fancy dinners, luxury flights. It was there for the taking, and I could not say no.”

Estrada, the U.S. attorney, said that Huizar’s corruption offended him as a Latino.

“It feels like a real betrayal,” Estrada said. “Because for those of us whose families came from Latin America, and know that system, there’s just rampant corruption there. You come to this country, you have more opportunities, you are offered to be part of a system that is theoretically supposed to operate cleanly.”

On the COVID ‘Off-Ramp’: No Tests, Isolation or Masks

The New York Times

On the COVID ‘Off-Ramp’: No Tests, Isolation or Masks

Emily Baumgaertner – August 27, 2024

Visitors on the Coney Island boardwalk on the Friday ahead of the Memorial Day weekend, May 24, 2024. (Karsten Moran/The New York Times)

Jason Moyer was days away from a family road trip to visit his parents when his 10-year-old son woke up with a fever and cough.

COVID-19?

The prospect threatened to upend the family’s plans.

“Six months ago, we would have tested for COVID,” said Moyer, 41, of Ohio. This time they did not.

Instead, they checked to make sure the boy’s cough was improving and his fever was gone — and then set off for New Jersey, not bothering to tell the grandparents about the incident.

In the fifth summer of COVID, cases are surging, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported “high” or “very high” levels of the virus in wastewater in almost every state. The rate of hospitalizations with COVID is nearly twice what it was at this time last summer, and deaths — despite being down almost 75% from what they were at the worst of the pandemic — are still double what they were this spring.

As children return to schools and Labor Day weekend travel swells, the potential for further spread abounds. But for many like Moyer, COVID has become so normalized that they no longer see it as a reason to disrupt social, work or travel routines. Test kit sales have plummeted. Isolation after an exposure is increasingly rare. Masks — once a ubiquitous symbol of a COVID surge — are sparse, even in crowded airports, train stations and subways.

Human behavior is, of course, the reason that infections are soaring. But at some point, many reason, we need to live.

“I no longer even know what the rules and recommendations are,” said Andrew Hoffman, 68, of Mission Viejo, California, who came down with respiratory symptoms a few weeks ago after his wife had tested positive for COVID. He skipped synagogue, but still went to the grocery store.

“And since I don’t test, I can’t follow them,” he said.

Epidemiologists said in interviews that they do not endorse a lackadaisical approach, particularly for those spending time around older people and those who are immunocompromised. They still recommend staying home for a couple of days after an exposure and getting the newly authorized boosters soon to become available (despite the poor turnout during last year’s round).

But they said that some elements of this newfound laissez faire attitude were warranted. While COVID cases are high, fewer hospitalizations and deaths during the surges are signs of increasing immunity — evidence that a combination of mild infections and vaccine boosters are ushering in a new era: not a post-COVID world, but a postcrisis one.

Epidemiologists have long predicted that COVID would eventually become an endemic disease, rather than a pandemic. “If you ask six epidemiologists what ‘endemic’ means, exactly, you’ll probably get about 12 answers,” said Bill Hanage, associate director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “But it certainly has a sort of social definition — a virus that’s around us all the time — and if you want to take that one, then we’re definitely there.”

Certain threats remain clear. For vulnerable groups, the coronavirus will always present a heightened risk of serious infection and even death. Long COVID, a multifaceted syndrome, has afflicted at least 400 million people worldwide, researchers recently estimated, and most of those who have suffered from it have said they still have not recovered.

But the CDC director, Dr. Mandy Cohen, called the disease endemic last week, and the agency decided this year to retire its five-day COVID isolation guidelines and instead include COVID in its guidance for other respiratory infections, instructing people with symptoms of COVID, RSV or the flu to stay home for 24 hours after their fever lifts. The updated guidelines were an indicator that, for most people, the landscape had changed.

Hanage defended the hard-line mandates from the early years of the pandemic as “not just appropriate, but absolutely necessary.”

“But,” he said, “it is just as important to help people onto an off-ramp — to be clear when we are no longer tied to the train tracks, staring at the headlights barreling down.”

The absence of stringent guidelines has left people to manage their own risks.

“I don’t bother testing myself or our kids for COVID,” said Sarah Bernath, 46, a librarian on Prince Edward Island in Canada. “My husband doesn’t test himself either. Knowing if it’s COVID wouldn’t change whether I stay home or not.”

In some social circles, diverging choices can make for uncomfortable dynamics.

Debra Cornelius, 73, of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, stayed home from a recent indoor party because she learned that several other guests — a family of five — had returned from vacation and tested positive for COVID three days before the gathering, but still planned to attend.

“They said, ‘Oh, it’s like a bad cold, we wouldn’t stay home for a cold,’” she said. “I think people’s attitudes have changed considerably.”

But for countless others, attitudes haven’t changed at all. Diane Deacon, 71, of Saginaw, Michigan, said she tested positive for COVID three days into a trip to Portugal with her two adult daughters. She isolated herself for five days before flying home wearing a mask.

“A number of people asked me, ‘Why did you test? You could have carried on with your vacation,’” she said.

For Deacon, it was about remembering the refrigerated morgue trucks of 2020 and anticipating the vulnerable people she might see on her flight home — people in wheelchairs, or people on oxygen, she said.

“I’m trying to avoid a moral judgment of people who make other choices,” she said. “To me, it was inconvenient and it was unfortunate, but it was not a tragedy.”

In a Gallup poll this spring, about 59% of respondents said they believed the pandemic was “over” in the United States, and the proportion of people who said they felt concerned about catching COVID has been generally declining for two years. Among people who rated their own health positively, almost 9 in 10 said they were not worried about getting infected.

That could be, at least partly, a result of personal experience: About 70% of people said they had been through a COVID infection already, suggesting that they believed they had some immunity or at least that they could muscle through it again if need be.

If the Olympics were any barometer, the rest of the world seems to have exhaled as well. In Tokyo in 2021, there were daily saliva samples, plexiglass dividers between cafeteria seats and absolutely no live spectators; the arenas were so empty that coaches’ voices echoed. In Beijing in 2022, under China’s zero-tolerance policy, conditions were much the same.

But in Paris last month, the organizing committee for the 2024 Olympics offered no testing requirements or processes for reporting infections, and so few countries issued rules to their athletes that the ones that did made news.

There were high-fives, group hugs, throngs of crowds and plenty of transmission to show for it. At least 40 athletes tested positive for the virus, including several who earned medals despite it — as well as an unknowable number of spectators, since French health officials (who had once enforced an eight-month-long nightly COVID curfew) did not even count.

In the United States, about 57% of people said their lives had not returned to prepandemic “normal” — and the majority said they believed it never would. But the current backdrop of American life tells a different story.

The years-old social-distancing signage is faded and peeling from the floors of an indoor market in Los Angeles. Hand-sanitizer dispensers at amusement parks have dried up. The summer camp hosted by Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo requires children to bring a face covering — not to protect other children, but the animals.

Michael Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said the newfound complacency can as much be attributed to confusion as to fatigue. The virus remains remarkably unpredictable: COVID variants are still evolving much faster than influenza variants, and officials who want to “pigeonhole” COVID into having a well-defined seasonality will be unnerved to discover that the 10 surges in the United States so far have been evenly distributed throughout all four seasons, he said.

Those factors, combined with waning immunity, point to a virus that still evades our collective understanding — in the context of a collective psychology that is ready to move on. Even at a meeting of 200 infectious disease experts in Washington this month — a number of whom were older than 65 and had not been vaccinated in four to six months — hardly anybody donned a mask.

“We’ve decided, ‘Well, the risk is OK.’ But nobody has defined ‘risk,’ and nobody has defined ‘OK,’” Osterholm said. “You can’t get much more informed than this group.”

Asked about how the perception of risk has evolved over time, Osterholm laughed.

Trump Picked Worst Possible Spot For New Border Wall Stunt

HuffPost

Trump Picked Worst Possible Spot For New Border Wall Stunt

Ed Mazza – August 26, 2024

Donald Trump boasted of building the “Rolls-Royce” of walls during a visit to a segment of border barrier in Montezuma Pass, Arizona, last week.

There was just one problem: That segment of wall was actually built by the administration of President Barack Obama, according to The Washington Post.

The Cochise County Sheriff’s Office confirmed that the portion where Trump spoke was built under the Obama administration, the Post added.

The newspaper said a nearby extension was started under the Trump administration ― at a cost of $35 million a mile ― but didn’t get very far, with much of the construction material left in piles at the site.

Trump in 2016 repeatedly vowed to build a “big beautiful wall” across the nearly 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border if elected.

He has claimed that he completed the task.

“I did finish the wall,” he said on CNN earlier this year. “I built a wall.”

He didn’t.

His administration replaced about 400 miles of existing wall and added about 52 miles of new wall.

Some of the wall built under Trump fell in a storm.

A 2022 report found the wall built under Trump was breached thousand of times using “inexpensive power tools.” Others reported the wall could be breached with a primitive ladder made from about $5 in material.

A report last year also found it did significant environmental and cultural damage to the region.

Trump also promised Mexico would pay for his wall.

It didn’t.