tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15707121217699152802024-03-18T12:19:23.268-04:00Adamfoxie blog Int. What is Important to Us*Fresh*Current*ProvocativeAdam Gonzalezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16496084351493379743noreply@blogger.comBlogger24839125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1570712121769915280.post-61633868795610142972024-03-18T10:57:00.004-04:002024-03-18T11:01:55.617-04:00Kushner Follows Deal in Serbia Which Interested By Trump Very Much<div id="fb-root"></div>
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}(document, ‘script', 'facebook-jssdk'));</script><div><br /></div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiRNtngJehUNj2mQj7drTAWypvFTUa0gLrNq_NvRfX7dbqIxGd1QwXS9ha79Sxjoeehwz1LqPRoDgXlC84U5nEMfMzNbMntdvR81BicvIIPNww7_qUv4QnIovjuBnKME3FWl0VNnfSh_sNFIzVREKz8gtu3fDJq8Zx3RSN7RN2CJIIAckezeSS0Fwv3_BI" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img height="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiRNtngJehUNj2mQj7drTAWypvFTUa0gLrNq_NvRfX7dbqIxGd1QwXS9ha79Sxjoeehwz1LqPRoDgXlC84U5nEMfMzNbMntdvR81BicvIIPNww7_qUv4QnIovjuBnKME3FWl0VNnfSh_sNFIzVREKz8gtu3fDJq8Zx3RSN7RN2CJIIAckezeSS0Fwv3_BI=w400-h217" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr></tbody></table></div> <br /><div><div>By Eric Lipton, Maggie Haberman, and Jonathan Swan</div><div> The New York Times</div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div>The plan by Jared Kushner and his business partners to redevelop a prized location in Serbia’s capital, Belgrade, echoes interest from Donald J. Trump a decade ago in pursuing a deal for the site and a similar proposal pushed during his White House term by a top aide now working with Mr. Kushner, a review of the project shows.</div><div><br /></div><div>The tentative agreement between the Kushner team and the Serbian government would grant Mr. Kushner’s investment firm a 99-year lease, at no charge, and the right to build a luxury hotel and apartment complex and a museum on the site of the former headquarters of the Yugoslav Ministry of Defense in Belgrade, which was bombed by NATO in 1999. A draft outline of the agreement was provided to The New York Times by a Serbian official.</div><div><br /></div><div>In 2013, two years before he began running for president, Mr. Trump — Mr. Kushner’s father-in-law — told a top Serbian government official that he wanted to build a luxury hotel on the site. Associates of the Trump Organization traveled to Belgrade to inspect the location. The project did not come together before Mr. Trump’s election in 2016, and after being sworn in he vowed to not do any new foreign deals.</div><div><br /></div><div>But developing the site would again draw interest from Mr. Trump’s circle.</div><div><br /></div><div>Richard Grenell, whom Mr. Trump had appointed as a special envoy in the Balkans, pushed a related plan during the Trump administration that Serbia and the United States jointly work to rebuild the Defense Ministry site. He argued in favor of using American investments to transform the Belgrade site while he was still serving in his official capacity as an American diplomat in 2020, according to transcripts and a recording of remarks made during several government news conferences. </div><div><br /></div><div>Mr. Kushner said in an interview on Sunday that he had never discussed the Belgrade project with Mr. Trump and was not aware of his father-in-law’s prior interest in redeveloping the site.</div><div><br /></div><div>“I had no idea my father-in-law had been interested in that region, and I doubt he has any awareness of this deal we are working on,” Mr. Kushner said.</div><div><br /></div><div>Representatives of Mr. Trump did not respond to multiple requests for comment about either Mr. Kushner’s current effort or Mr. Trump’s prior interest in the Belgrade development.</div><div><br /></div><div>Mr. Grenell said he, too, had no knowledge of Mr. Trump’s interest in the site before his presidency. But he is now working with Mr. Kushner on the new development deal and, according to Mr. Kushner, was the main force in driving him to consider the Belgrade investment.</div><div><br /></div><div>In his role as special envoy during the last two years of the Trump administration, Mr. Grenell helped foster economic reconciliation talks between Serbia and Kosovo, two neighboring nations that have had tense relations since the end of the Bosnian war in 1995.</div><div> </div><div>The link between Mr. Grenell’s role in pushing for the redevelopment of the Belgrade site while both in and out of government and Mr. Kushner’s tentative agreement now to carry out the proposal for personal profit raises fresh questions about conflicts of interest between their public roles and private wealth as Mr. Trump again seeks the presidency, with foreign governments watching closely.</div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img height="267" src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/03/17/multimedia/17dc-kushner2-jtbk/17dc-kushner2-jtbk-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;">A heavily damaged multistory brick and stone building.</span></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div>The former military headquarters in the Serbian capital, Belgrade, in 2010. It had been destroyed during a U.S.-led NATO air campaign in 1999.Credit...Andrej Isakovic/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images</div><div><br /></div><div>Mr. Kushner confirmed on Friday that his investment firm was pursuing the deal in Serbia, as well as luxury real estate projects in Albania and that he expected to finalize agreements soon.</div><div><br /></div><div>The overlap between the official actions that Mr. Kushner and Mr. Grenell took while serving in government and the business deals they are pursuing in regions where they served carries echoes of deals struck by former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Mr. Kushner in the Middle East after leaving office.</div><div><br /></div><div>Mr. Mnuchin and Mr. Kushner, who both were active in Middle East diplomacy, each set up investment firms after leaving the Trump administration that then secured billions of dollars from the Saudi government and hundreds of millions of dollars from other Middle Eastern nations. </div><div><br /></div><div>Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis who specializes in government ethics, said the Kushner project in Serbia would create a conflict of interest if Mr. Trump was re-elected, even if it was not some long-running effort by the family to get access to the site.</div><div><br /></div><div>“The concern is the Serbia government may attempt to influence a future President Trump by enriching the president’s family,” she said. “Foreign policy toward Serbia should be influenced by what is in the United States’ interests, not any financial favors coming from the Serbian government.”</div><div><br /></div><div>The 2020 pitch by Mr. Grenell to reconsider rebuilding at the site of the bombed-out former military headquarters came, according to Serbian government officials, right after Mr. Trump had hosted Aleksandar Vucic, the president of Serbia, at the White House. During that visit, Mr. Vucic praised the progress Mr. Grenell had made in normalizing economic relations between Serbia and Kosovo.</div><div><br /></div><div>Mr. Trump also praised Mr. Grenell at the ceremony, where Mr. Grenell described the progress between the two sides as a clear result of the Trump presidency and one that could lead to a political breakthrough. Mr. Kushner was serving as a senior White House adviser to Mr. Trump at the time. </div><div><br /></div><div>“From the very beginning, what President Trump said is: Let’s give them a little taste of the Trump economy,” Mr. Grenell said, according to a transcript of the event. “Let’s show them how to develop economics, how to take industries and grow them.”</div><div><br /></div><div>In 2018 and 2019, while serving as ambassador to Germany in the Trump administration, Mr. Grenell, who has told confidants that he aspires to be secretary of state in a second Trump term, sought to expand his portfolio and deliver high-profile wins for his boss. He had alienated top officials in the German government through his caustic style of diplomacy but had begun to cultivate other relationships across Europe, including with Mr. Vucic.</div><div><br /></div><div>While still ambassador to Germany, Mr. Grenell pitched Mr. Trump on the idea of appointing him to mediate the longstanding conflict between Serbia and Kosovo, two former Trump administration officials said.</div><div><br /></div><div>Twenty-five years ago, the U.S.-led NATO forces intervened militarily to protect Muslims in Kosovo from ethnic cleansing by the Serbian government. The former Yugoslav army headquarters in the center of Belgrade, while largely unused at the time, were one target. The site has stood in its damaged state since then and is seen by Serbs as a symbol of their suffering during the NATO attacks.</div><div><br /></div><div>In 2008, Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence from Serbia, which does not officially recognize Kosovo as a sovereign country. </div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img height="304" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ESNWDGgXYAIVBsc?format=jpg&name=small" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">Robert O’Brien, Richard Grenell, and Jared Kushner in a room with a White House sign on the wall.</div><div style="text-align: left;">Richard Grenell, center, and Mr. Kushner, right, at a news conference in 2020 with Robert O’Brien, the national security adviser.Credit...Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></td></tr></tbody></table><div>In October 2019, Mr. Trump appointed Mr. Grenell as his “special presidential envoy for Serbia and Kosovo peace negotiations.” </div><div><br /></div><div>The State Department already had a team working on these issues, and Mr. Grenell had relatively little experience in the Balkans.</div><div><br /></div><div>Mr. Grenell was widely seen among European diplomats as favoring the Serbian side in the negotiations, and he was warmly received in Belgrade. He applied immense pressure on Prime Minister Albin Kurti of Kosovo to drop tariffs on Serbian products, and prominent Trump allies began publicly calling for the withdrawal of U.S. peacekeepers from Kosovo. Mr. Grenell did have one important ally in Kosovo: the president at the time, Hashim Thaci, who was later charged with war crimes.</div><div><br /></div><div>Mr. Grenell rejected any suggestion that he played favorites. He said he was ultimately honored by leaders from both nations — Mr. Vucic in Serbia and Mr. Thaci in Kosovo — for his role in helping broker an economic normalization agreement. </div><div><br /></div><div>But he acknowledged that he had in particular made progress under Mr. Trump in tightening economic ties between the United States and Serbia.</div><div><br /></div><div>“I had built up a lot of love for bringing the Serbian-American relations forward,” Mr. Grenell said in an interview with The Times on Sunday.</div><div><br /></div><div>During his time as envoy in the Balkans, Mr. Grenell developed friendships with top Serbian officials, including Mr. Vucic and Sinisa Mali, the Serbian finance minister, who officials in Belgrade said played a role in tentatively approving the Kushner hotel deal. Mr. Mali did not respond to requests for comment.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span face="nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(54, 54, 54); color: #363636;">Mr. Grenell posted on his </span><a class="css-yywogo" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CSBSEO8Ae2S/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=854c8df5-7ebe-485d-9d46-9e3d20e739f1" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="border: 0px; color: #326891; font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-color: var(--color-signal-editorial,#326891); text-decoration-style: solid; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank" title="">Instagram page a video</a><span face="nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(54, 54, 54); color: #363636;"> of him and Mr. Mali singing in 2021 inside a packed Belgrade club surrounded by others dancing to pulsating music while waving Serbian flags and holding up sparklers and torches.</span></div><div><br /></div><div>Mr. Grenell returned to Serbia and neighboring Albania shortly after Mr. Trump left the White House to begin pushing development projects that have since been adopted by Mr. Kushner’s company, including the Belgrade deal. </div><div><br /></div><div>The draft outline of the agreement provided to The Times by a Serbian government official also specifies the option of formally transferring ownership of the property to Mr. Kushner’s partnership free of charge, after the hotel complex and luxury residential units are built.</div><div><br /></div><div>Mr. Kushner, in an interview, did not dispute the veracity of the document obtained by The Times. He said the parties had tentatively agreed to give the Serbian government 22 percent of the profits generated by the approximately $500 million project.</div><div><br /></div><div>Mr. Kushner’s company, Affinity Partners, said in a statement that the Belgrade site would be “transformed into a world-class luxury hotel” but that it would also include a museum and memorial designed by Serbian architects, to pay tribute to the location’s importance in recent Serbian history.</div><div><br /></div><div>Mr. Kushner said Mr. Grenell had encouraged him to pursue the project.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Ric is a big advocate for investing in the Balkans and has been trying to get me to invest in this project since I launched my fund,” Mr. Kushner said, noting that an American company would be rebuilding a site that NATO had bombed. </div><div><br /></div><div>Representatives of the Serbian government did not immediately respond to questions and multiple requests for comment.</div><div><br /></div><div>Danijela Nestorovic, an opposition party member of Serbia’s Parliament, and other members of her party condemned the proposed Kushner deal in a statement to The Times, noting that several people were killed and 40 wounded during the period of the NATO attack when the building was struck.</div><div><br /></div><div>“The General Staff HQ building is a memorial for us,” she said in the statement, referring to the bombed-out military headquarters. “It initiates deep, hidden emotions to the victims of the NATO bombing. To build a hotel there — it would be a mockery to the citizens of Serbia.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Mr. Grenell, in an interview, said that the Kushner deal represented an opportunity to “turn a symbol of previous conflict into a bridge of friendship and renewal,” and that it “symbolizes the tremendous progress that has been made to heal the wounds from the past.”</div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img height="267" src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/04/16/multimedia/17dc-kushner4-hkwj/17dc-kushner4-hkwj-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;">Ivica Dacic, Serbia’s foreign minister, wearing a dark suit and red tie.</span></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div>Serbia’s foreign minister, Ivica Dacic, in September.Credit...Andrej Cukic/EPA, via Shutterstock </div><div><br /></div><div>In 2020, when Mr. Grenell had pushed Serbian officials to consider working with American investors to redevelop the Belgrade site, Ivica Dacic, who by then was serving as foreign minister in the Serbian government, recalled a visit he had made to Trump Tower in New York in 2013. It was then that Mr. Trump had first discussed the hotel project at the former defense headquarters site.</div><div><br /></div><div>“I don’t think he has forgotten that desire,” Mr. Dacic said at a news conference in 2020, referring to Mr. Trump.</div><div><br /></div><div>The proposed project in Serbia is only one of three deals that Mr. Kushner and Mr. Grenell are trying to develop in the Balkans.</div><div><br /></div><div>Mr. Kushner said on Friday that final contracts had not been signed, but that negotiations were far along and that he was hopeful they would be finalized. He disputed any suggestion that his company was getting special treatment.</div><div><br /></div><div>He also said that he knew how high-profile his position is — he is married to Mr. Trump’s elder daughter, Ivanka, and played a prominent role in the Trump White House — so he had no choice but to be careful to act within legal and ethical boundaries.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Everything has to be completely aboveboard,” he said. </div><div>Eric Lipton is an investigative reporter, who digs into a broad range of topics from Pentagon spending to toxic chemicals. More about Eric Lipton</div><div><br /></div><div>Maggie Haberman is a senior political correspondent reporting on the 2024 presidential campaign, down ballot races across the country and the investigations into former President Donald J. Trump. More about Maggie Haberman</div><div><br /></div><div>Jonathan Swan is a political reporter covering the 2024 presidential election and Donald Trump’s campaign. More about Jonathan Swan</div><div><br /></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><div id="amzn-assoc-ad-0cfeddde-5d3b-429d-9f85-25fe4aa5fce1"></div><script async src="//z-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/onejs?MarketPlace=US&adInstanceId=0cfeddde-5d3b-429d-9f85-25fe4aa5fce1"></script><!-- Google tag (gtag.js) -->
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</script></div>Adam Gonzalezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16496084351493379743noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1570712121769915280.post-7938069620830465732024-03-18T09:59:00.004-04:002024-03-18T09:59:50.407-04:00Medicaid Will Come After Your Family House After You Die<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img height="267" src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/03/19/science/17SCI-SPAN-01/17SCI-SPAN-01-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr></tbody></table><div id="fb-root"></div>
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<div> By Paula Span</div><div><div> </div><div>The letter came from the State Department of Human Services in July 2021. It expressed condolences for the loss of the recipient’s mother, who had died a few weeks earlier at 88.</div><div><br /></div><div>Then it explained that the deceased had incurred a Medicaid debt of more than $77,000 and provided instructions on how to repay the money. “I was stunned,” said the woman’s 62-year-old daughter.</div><div><br /></div><div>At first, she thought the letter might be some sort of scam. It wasn’t.</div><div><br /></div><div>She asked not to be identified because the case is unresolved and she doesn’t want to jeopardize her chances of getting the bill reduced. The New York Times has reviewed documentation substantiating her account.</div><div><br /></div><div>The daughter moved into the family’s Midwestern home years earlier, when her widowed mother, who had vascular dementia, began to need assistance. </div><div><br /></div><div>Her mother was well insured, with Medicare, a private supplemental “Medigap” policy and long-term care insurance. The only reason she enrolled in Medicaid was that she had signed up for a state program that allowed her daughter to receive modest payments for caregiving.</div><div><br /></div><div>But that triggered additional monthly charges through a Medicaid managed care organization, and now the state wants that money back.</div><div><br /></div><div>The practice dates to 1993 when Congress mandated that when Medicaid beneficiaries over age 55 have used long-term services, such as nursing homes or home care, states must try to recover those expenses from the beneficiaries’ estates after their deaths.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Medicaid requires beneficiaries to spend down almost all their assets” to qualify for benefits, explained Eric Carlson, a directing attorney at Justice in Aging.</div><div><br /></div><div>Most states allow those eligible for Medicaid to retain assets worth only $2,000. But if a beneficiary owns a home, it can be exempt.</div><div><br /></div><div>Still, if Medicaid has paid for long-term care and there’s money to be had after death, state agencies will come for the assets.</div><div><br /></div><div>“If there’s going to be tens of thousands of dollars available for recovery, in most cases, it’s the house,” Mr. Carlson said. Surviving family members may have to sell the house to repay Medicaid, as the Midwestern daughter may be forced to do, or the state may seize the property.</div><div><br /></div><div>Medicaid “is the only public benefit program from the United States of America that requires states to seek to get money back,” said Representative Jan Schakowsky, Democrat of Illinois. This month she reintroduced a bill, the Stop Unfair Medicaid Recoveries Act, to end the practice.</div><div><br /></div><div>Her staff has calculated that 17,000 families in Illinois alone have lost homes to Medicaid recovery since 2021. Comparable national figures aren’t available, but an independent agency that advises the federal government and states on Medicaid issues reported in 2021 that states collected $733 million through estate recovery in the fiscal year of 2019.</div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img height="267" src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/03/19/multimedia/17SCI-SPAN-02-vmgw/17SCI-SPAN-02-vmgw-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;">Jan Schakowsky wears a large maroon coat and speaks in front of a small crowd during a rally in wintertime in Washington D.C.</span><span style="text-align: left;">“This is a really harmful and cruel program,” said Representative Jan Schakowsky, Democrat of Illinois, who has reintroduced a bill to Congress to end Medicaid estate recovery. Credit...Michael A. McCoy for The New York Times<br /><br /></span></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div>That amounts to only about one-half of a percent of Medicaid’s long-term expenditures, according to the agency, MACPAC, the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission. Only eight states collected more than 1 percent of expenditures. </div><div><br /></div><div>“This is a really harmful and cruel program,” Ms. Schakowsky said. “And it’s not working. The cost of actually trying to get the money could exceed any money that would be returned.”</div><div><br /></div><div>When Congress established the mandate, proponents argued that estate recovery would save money and promote fairness, since some higher-income seniors hired lawyers to help shield their assets so that Medicaid would pay their nursing home bills.</div><div><br /></div><div>But for the most part, the states pursue claims against low-income families, many of them Black and Hispanic. Critics argue that the policy perpetuates poverty. The average wealth of deceased Medicaid recipients over age 65 is less than $45,000, the MACPAC report noted, and the average home equity is $27,364.</div><div><br /></div><div>“For a lot of these people, the home is a product of a lifetime’s worth of working and scrimping,” Mr. Carlson said. “It could be a foundation for their children and grandchildren. That’s pulled away from the family under these claims. It imposes recovery against the families and communities least able to pay it </div><div><br /></div><div>(A surviving spouse or minor or disabled child can continue to live in the house after a Medicaid beneficiary dies, but after the survivors die, or after a child turns 21, estate recovery can proceed.)</div><div><br /></div><div>Every state offers hardship waivers that reduce claims, but “the process tends to be difficult or futile,” Mr. Carlson said. “Depending on the state, the request is almost always unsuccessful.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“I don’t think estate recovery was a policy created primarily to impact low-income families, but that’s the impact it’s having,” said Natalie Kean, another directing attorney at Justice in Aging.</div><div><br /></div><div>Estate recovery can also affect middle-class families, however. Many turn to Medicaid because, given the cost of nursing homes (the median price last year was $8,669 a month), “your savings can disappear in a hurry,” Mr. Carlson said.</div><div><br /></div><div>Brian Snell, an elder law attorney in Marblehead, Mass., represents a family whose 93-year-old mother, who had dementia, died in 2022 at her condo in North Andover. Her daughter had cut back on her hours as a beautician to care for her at home, wanting to keep her out of a nursing home because “that was her mother’s wish,” Mr. Snell said. </div><div><br /></div><div>When the mother qualified for MassHealth, the state Medicaid program, it enrolled her in a state home care program that provided home health aides (though only sporadically, because the pandemic made workers and agencies hesitant to enter homes).</div><div><br /></div><div>After her death, MassHealth sought to recover $292,000 for the cost of home care and the program premiums. Because two of her children were low-income, including the caregiving daughter, a state waiver would allow those two to receive $50,000 each from the sale of the mother’s condo. But more than half of the $335,000 sales price will go to the state and federal governments.</div><div><br /></div><div>The prospect of such clawbacks prevents some low-income older adults from receiving necessary care, even if they’re eligible.</div><div><br /></div><div>“It’s not uncommon for people to simply decline to apply for Medicaid services once they learn about the recovery program,” said Matthew Portwood, an intake supervisor at the Atlanta Regional Commission, which serves as the local agency on aging, in an email. “Our counselors encounter this almost daily.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Some states are working to reduce the financial hit on low-income families. Massachusetts, Georgia, South Carolina, and Illinois, for instance, will not pursue recovery against estates valued below $25,000. Some states now provide applicants with fuller explanations of the consequences of signing up. </div><div><br /></div><div>California allows hardship waivers for a “homestead of modest value,” defined as a market value of up to half the average price of homes in the county. MACPAC recommended amending federal law to allow states to make recovery optional.</div><div><br /></div><div>Representative Schakowsky’s bill goes beyond that to prohibit Medicaid estate recovery altogether. “It’s just a terrible idea,” she said.</div><div><br /></div><div>Her bill faces an uphill battle in the Republican-controlled House — all its 13 co-sponsors to date are Democrats — and it went nowhere when she introduced it last session. But the congresswoman remains optimistic: People in red states need long-term care, too.</div><div><br /></div><div>Back in the Midwest, the daughter who was billed $77,000 still hopes to remain in the two-story house where she grew up, where her mother lived for more than 60 years and where “there’s a memory in every corner.” Now she is looking for a lawyer. “I have to fight this,” she said.</div></div><div><div><br /></div><div> The New York Times</div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><div id="amzn-assoc-ad-0cfeddde-5d3b-429d-9f85-25fe4aa5fce1"></div><script async src="//z-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/onejs?MarketPlace=US&adInstanceId=0cfeddde-5d3b-429d-9f85-25fe4aa5fce1"></script><!-- Google tag (gtag.js) -->
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<div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgRxZ6mJk2dyMU0pTA_ToSv3IR3AYKL2VkXmGe_AadxV9V-LxTtU0beZVGjopk-qqB30ocBQid98WplPlX-LuQV8BCCW4ZxTQ1u0IlRx4ROm_N15dvHEfeCPLfIMtBXhdOCBFXM50WX7rEbnqOvbqHSoeZlItJ5WxoujnNp7TYhyi55wms5EZ0_VbG_I0g" style="font-style: italic; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="369" data-original-width="369" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgRxZ6mJk2dyMU0pTA_ToSv3IR3AYKL2VkXmGe_AadxV9V-LxTtU0beZVGjopk-qqB30ocBQid98WplPlX-LuQV8BCCW4ZxTQ1u0IlRx4ROm_N15dvHEfeCPLfIMtBXhdOCBFXM50WX7rEbnqOvbqHSoeZlItJ5WxoujnNp7TYhyi55wms5EZ0_VbG_I0g" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr></tbody></table><div> </div><div><div>Chris Kerr was 12 when he first observed a deathbed vision. His memory of that summer in 1974 is blurred, but not the sense of mystery he felt at the bedside of his dying father. Throughout Kerr’s childhood in Toronto, his father, a surgeon, was too busy to spend much time with his son, except for an annual fishing trip they took, just the two of them, to the Canadian wilderness. Gaunt and weakened by cancer at 42, his father reached for the buttons on Kerr’s shirt, fiddled with them, and said something about getting ready to catch the plane to their cabin in the woods. “I knew intuitively, I knew wherever he was, must be a good place because we were going fishing,” Kerr told me. </div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div>As he moved to touch his father, Kerr felt a hand on his shoulder. A priest had followed him into the hospital room and was now leading him away, telling him his father was delusional. Kerr’s father died early the next morning. Kerr now calls what he witnessed an end-of-life vision. His father wasn’t delusional, he believes. His mind was taking him to a time and place where he and his son could be together, in the wilds of northern Canada. And the priest, he feels, made a mistake, one that many other caregivers make, of dismissing the moment as a break with reality, as something from which the boy required protection.</div><div><br /></div><div>It would be over 40 years before Kerr felt compelled to speak about that evening in the hospital room. He had followed his father, and three generations before him, into medicine and was working at Hospice & Palliative Care Buffalo, where he was the chief medical officer and conducted research on end-of-life visions. It wasn’t until he gave a TEDx Talk in 2015 that he shared the story of his father’s death. Pacing the stage in the sports coat he always wears, he told the audience: “My point here is, I didn’t choose this topic of dying. I feel it has chosen or followed me.” He went on: “When I was present at the bedside of the dying, I was confronted by what I had seen and tried so hard to forget from my childhood. I saw dying patients reaching and calling out to mothers, and to fathers, and to children, many of whom hadn’t been seen for many years. But what was remarkable was so many of them looked at peace.” <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></div><div> </div><div>The talk received millions of views and comments, many from nurses grateful that someone in the medical field validated what they have long understood. Others, too, posted personal stories of having witnessed loved ones’ visions in their final days. For them, Kerr’s message was a kind of confirmation of something they instinctively knew — that deathbed visions are real, can provide comfort, and even heal past trauma. That they can, in some cases, feel transcendent. That our minds are capable of conjuring images that help us, in the end, make sense of our lives.</div><div><br /></div><div>Nothing in Kerr’s medical training prepared him for his first shift at Hospice Buffalo one Saturday morning in the spring of 1999. He had earned a degree from the Medical College of Ohio while working on a Ph.D. in neurobiology. After a residency in internal medicine, Kerr started a fellowship in cardiology in Buffalo. To earn extra money to support his wife and two young daughters, he took a part-time job with Hospice Buffalo. Until then, Kerr had worked in the conventional medical system, focused on patients who were often tethered to machines or heavily medicated. If they recounted visions, he had no time to listen. But in the quiet of Hospice, Kerr found himself in the presence of something he hadn’t seen since his father’s death: patients who spoke of people and places visible only to them. “So just like with my father, there’s just this feeling of reverence, of something that wasn’t understood but certainly felt,” he says.</div><div><br /></div><div>During one of his shifts, Kerr was checking on a 70-year-old woman named Mary, whose grown children had gathered in her room, drinking wine to lighten the mood. Without warning, Kerr remembers, Mary sat up in her bed and crossed her arms at her chest. “Danny,” she cooed, kissing and cuddling a baby only she could see. At first, her children were confused. There was no Danny in the family, no baby in their mother’s arms. But they could sense that whatever their mother was experiencing brought her a sense of calm. Kerr later learned that long before her four children were born, Mary lost a baby in childbirth. She never spoke of it with her children, but now she was, through a vision, seemingly addressing that loss.</div><div><br /></div><div>In observing Mary’s final days at Hospice, Kerr found his calling. “I was disillusioned by the assembly-line nature of medicine,” Kerr told me. “This felt like a more humane and dignified model of care.” He quit cardiology to work full-time at the bedsides of dying patients. Many of them described visions that drew from their lives and seemed to hold meaning, unlike hallucinations resulting from medication, or delusional, incoherent thinking, which can also occur at the end of life. But Kerr couldn’t persuade other doctors, even young residents making the rounds with him at Hospice, of their value. They wanted scientific proof.</div><div><br /></div><div>At the time, only a handful of published medical studies had documented deathbed visions, and they largely relied on secondhand reports from doctors and other caregivers rather than accounts from patients themselves. On a flight home from a conference, Kerr outlined a study of his own, and in 2010, a research fellow, Anne Banas, signed on to conduct it with him. Like Kerr, Banas had a family member who, before his death, experienced visions — a grandfather who imagined himself in a train station with his brothers.</div><div><br /></div><div>The study wasn’t designed to answer how these visions differ neurologically from hallucinations or delusions. Rather, Kerr saw his role as a chronicler of his patients’ experiences. Borrowing from social science research methods, Kerr, Banas, and their colleagues based their study on daily interviews with patients in the 22-bed inpatient unit at the Hospice campus in the hope of capturing the frequency and varied subject matter of their visions. Patients were screened to ensure that they were lucid and not in a confused or delirious state. The research, published in 2014 in The Journal of Palliative Medicine, found that visions are far more common and frequent than other researchers had found, with an astonishing 88 percent of patients reporting at least one vision. (Later studies in Japan, India, Sweden and Australia confirm that visions are common. The percentages range from about 20 to 80 percent, though a majority of these studies rely on interviews with caregivers and not patients.)</div><div><br /></div><div>In the last 10 years, Kerr has hired a permanent research team that expanded the studies to include interviews with patients receiving hospice care at home and with their families, deepening the researchers’ understanding of the variety and profundity of these visions. They can occur while patients are asleep or fully conscious. Dead family members figure most prominently, and by contrast, visions involving religious themes are exceedingly rare. Patients often relive seminal moments from their lives, including joyful experiences of falling in love and painful ones of rejection. Some dream of the unresolved tasks of daily life, like paying bills or raising children. Visions also entail past or imagined journeys — whether long car trips or short walks to school. Regardless of the subject matter, the visions, patients say, feel real and entirely unique compared with anything else they’ve ever experienced. They can begin days, even weeks, before death. Most significantly, as people near the end of their lives, the frequency of visions increases, further centering on deceased people or pets. It is these final visions that provide patients, and their loved ones, with profound meaning and solace.</div><div><br /></div><div>Kerr’s latest research is focused on the emotional transformation he has often observed in patients who experience such visions. The first in this series of studies, published in 2019, measured psychological and spiritual growth among two groups of hospice patients: those who had visions and a control group of those who did not. Patients rated their agreement with statements including, “I changed my priorities about what is important in life,” or “I have a better understanding of spiritual matters.” Those who experienced end-of-life visions agreed more strongly with those statements, suggesting that the visions sparked inner change even at the end of life. “It’s the most remarkable of our studies,” Kerr told me. “It highlights the paradox of dying, that while there is physical deterioration, they are growing and finding meaning. It highlights what patients are telling us, that they are being put back together.”</div><div>ImageA photo illustration of two silhouettes: one person and one dog.</div><div><br /></div><div>Credit...Photo illustration by Amy Friend</div><div>In the many conversations Kerr and I have had over the past year, the contradiction between medicine’s demand for evidence and the ineffable quality of his patient’s experiences came up repeatedly. </div><div><br /></div><div>He was first struck by this tension about a year before the publication of his first study, during a visit with a World War II veteran named John who was tormented throughout his life by nightmares that took him back to the beaches of Normandy on D-Day. John had been part of a rescue mission to bring wounded soldiers to England by ship and leave those too far gone to die. The nightmares continued through his dying days until he dreamed of being discharged from the Army. In a second dream, a fallen soldier appeared to John to tell him that his comrades would soon come to “get” him. The nightmares ended after that. </div><div><br /></div><div>Kerr has been nagged ever since by the inadequacy of science, and of language, to fully capture the mysteries of the mind. “We were so caught up in trying to quantify and give structure to something so deeply spiritual, and really, we were just bystanders, witnesses to this,” he says. “It feels a little small to be filling in forms when you’re looking at a 90-something-year-old veteran who is back in time 70 years having an experience you can’t even understand.” When Kerr talks about his research at conferences, nurses tend to nod their heads in approval; doctors roll their eyes in disbelief. He finds that skeptics often understand the research best when they watch taped interviews with patients.</div><div><br /></div><div>What’s striking about this footage, which dates back to Kerr’s early work in 2008, is not so much the content of the visions but rather the patients’ demeanor. “There’s an absence of fear,” Kerr says. A teenage girl’s face lights up as she describes a dream in which she and her deceased aunt were in a castle playing with Barbie dolls. A man dying of cancer talks about his wife, who died several years earlier and who comes to him in his dreams, always in blue. She waves. She smiles. That’s it. But in the moment, he seems to be transported to another time or place.</div><div><br /></div><div>Kerr has often observed that in the very end, dying people lose interest in the activities that preoccupied them in life and turn toward those they love. As to why, Kerr can only speculate. In his 2020 book, “Death Is But a Dream,” he concludes that the love his patients find in dying often brings them to a place that some call enlightenment and others call God. “Time seems to vanish,” he told me. “The people who loved you well secured you and contributed to who you are are still accessible at a spiritual and psychological level.”</div><div><br /></div><div>That was the case with Connor O’Neil, who died at the age of 10 in 2022 and whose parents Kerr and I visited in their home. They told us that just two days before his death, their son called out the name of a family friend who, without the boy’s knowledge, had just died. “Do you know where you are?” Connor’s mother asked. “Heaven,” the boy replied. Connor had barely spoken in days or moved without help, but in that moment, he sat up under his own strength and threw his arms around her neck. “Mommy, I love you,” he said.</div><div><br /></div><div>Kerr’s research finds that such moments, which transcend the often-painful physical decline in the last days of life, help parents like the O’Neils and other relatives grieve even unfathomable loss. “I don’t know where I would be without that closure, or that gift that was given to us,” Connor’s father told us. “It’s hard enough with it.” As Kerr explains, “It’s the difference between being wounded and soothed.” </div><div><br /></div><div>In June, I visited the adult daughter of a patient who died at home just days earlier. We sat in her mother’s living room, looking out on the patio and bird feeders that had given the mother so much joy. Three days before her mother’s death, the daughter was straightening up the room when her mother began to speak more lucidly than she had in days. The daughter crawled into her mother’s bed, held her hand, and listened. Her mother first spoke to the daughter’s father, whom she could see in the far corner of the room, handsome as ever. She then started speaking with her second husband, visible only to her, yet real enough for the daughter to ask whether he was smoking his pipe. “Can’t you smell it?” her mother replied. Even in the retelling, the moment felt sacred. “I will never, ever forget it,” the daughter told me. “It was so beautiful.”</div><div><br /></div><div>I also met one of Banas’s patients, Peggy Haloski, who had enrolled in hospice for home care services just days earlier, after doctors at the cancer hospital in Buffalo found blood clots throughout her body, a sign that the yearlong treatment had stopped working. It was time for her husband, Stephen, to keep her comfortable at home, with their two greyhounds.</div><div><br /></div><div>Stephen led Banas and me to the family room, where Peggy lay on the couch. Banas knelt on the floor, checked her patient’s catheter, reduced her prescriptions so there were fewer pills for her to swallow every day, and ordered a numbing cream for pain in her tailbone. She also asked about her visions.</div><div><br /></div><div>The nurse on call that weekend witnessed Peggy speaking with her dead mother.</div><div><br /></div><div>“She was standing over here,” Peggy told Banas, gesturing toward the corner of the room.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Was that the only time you saw her?” Banas asked.</div><div><br /></div><div>“So far.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“Do you think you’ll be seeing her more?” </div><div>“I will. I will, considering what’s going on.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Peggy sank deeper into the couch and closed her eyes, recounting another visit from the dead, this time by the first greyhound she and Stephen adopted. “I’m at peace with everybody. I’m happy,” she said. “It’s not time yet. I know it’s not time, but it’s coming.”</div><div><br /></div><div>When my mother, Chloe Zerwick, was dying in 2018, I had never heard of end-of-life visions. I was acting on intuition when her caregivers started telling me about what we were then calling hallucinations. Mom was 95 and living in her Hudson Valley home under hospice care, with lung disease and congestive heart failure, barely able to leave her bed. The hospice doctor prescribed an opioid for pain and put her on antipsychotic and anti-anxiety medicines to tame the so-called hallucinations he worried were preventing her from sleeping. It is possible that some of these medications caused Mom’s visions, but as Kerr has explained, drug-induced hallucinations do not rule out naturally occurring visions. They can coexist.</div><div><br /></div><div>In my mother’s case, I inherently understood that her imaginary life was something to honor. I knew what medicine-induced hallucinations looked and felt like. About 10 years before her death, Mom fell and injured her spine. Doctors in the local hospital put her on an opioid to control the pain, which left her acting like a different person. Spiders were crawling on the hospital wall, she said. She mistook her roommate’s bed for a train platform. Worse, she denied that I loved her or ever did. Once we took her off the medicine, the hallucinations vanished.</div><div><br /></div><div>The visions she was having at the end of her life were entirely different; they were connected to the long life she had led and brought a deep sense of comfort and delight. “You know, for the first time in my life I have no worries,” she told me. I remember feeling a weight lift. After more than a decade of failing health, she seemed to have found a sense of peace.</div><div><br /></div><div>The day before her death, as her breathing became more labored, Mom made an announcement: “I have a new leader,” she said. </div><div><br /></div><div>“Who is that?” I asked.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Mark. He’s going to take me to the other side.”</div><div><br /></div><div>She was speaking of my husband, alive and well back home in North Carolina.</div><div><br /></div><div>“That’s great, Mom, except that I need him here with me,” I replied. “Do you think he can do both?”</div><div><br /></div><div>“Oh, yes. He’s very capable.”</div><div><br /></div><div>That evening, Mom was struggling again to breathe. “I’m thinking of the next world,” she said, and of my husband, who would lead her there. The caregiver on duty for the night and I sat at her bedside as Mom’s oxygen level fell from 68 to 63 to 52 and kept dropping until she died the next morning. My mother was not a brave person in the traditional sense of the word. She was afraid of snakes, the subway platform and any hint of pain. But she faced her death, confident that a man who loves her daughter would guide her to whatever lay ahead.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Do you think it will happen to you?” she asked me at one point about her dream life.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Maybe it’s genetic,” I replied, not knowing, as I do now, that these experiences are part of what may await us all.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>By <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br />Phoebe Zerwick, the author of “Beyond Innocence: The Life Sentence of Darryl Hunt,” is a North Carolina-based journalist. She teaches journalism and writing at Wake Forest University, where she directs the journalism program. Amy Friend is an artist in Canada whose work focuses on history, time, land memory, dust, oceans, and our connection to the universe. </i></div></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><div id="amzn-assoc-ad-0cfeddde-5d3b-429d-9f85-25fe4aa5fce1"></div><script async src="//z-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/onejs?MarketPlace=US&adInstanceId=0cfeddde-5d3b-429d-9f85-25fe4aa5fce1"></script><!-- Google tag (gtag.js) -->
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<div> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img height="400" src="https://www.azcentral.com/gcdn/-mm-/db7b8e7d9b0b57144cc2d65fde7feeb3e2c9012f/c=456-0-3486-3030/local/-/media/2015/08/11/Phoenix/Phoenix/635748498736306507-PRESTO-BensonCOLORAA--Trump-Blood-Eyes-Nose-Ears.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Trump's Words let the graphic artist reproduce his words</span></i></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div> </div><div><div>Former President Donald J. Trump, at an event on Saturday ostensibly meant to boost his preferred candidate in Ohio’s Republican Senate primary race, gave a freewheeling speech in which he used dehumanizing language to describe immigrants, maintained a steady stream of insults and vulgarities and predicted that the United States would never have another election if he did not win in November.</div><div><br /></div><div>With his general election matchup against President Biden in clear view, Mr. Trump once more doubled down on the doomsday vision of the country that has animated his third presidential campaign and energized his base during the Republican primary.</div><div><br /></div><div>The dark view resurfaced throughout his speech. While discussing the U.S. economy and its auto industry, Mr. Trump promised to place tariffs on cars manufactured abroad if he won in November. He added: “Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a blood bath for the whole — that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a blood bath for the country.”</div><div><br /></div><div>For nearly 90 minutes outside the Dayton International Airport in Vandalia, Ohio, Mr. Trump delivered a discursive speech, replete with attacks and caustic rhetoric. He noted several times that he was having difficulty reading the teleprompter. </div><div><br /></div><div>The former president opened his speech by praising the people serving sentences in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. Mr. Trump, who faces criminal charges tied to his efforts to overturn his election loss, called them “hostages” and “unbelievable patriots,” commended their spirit and vowed to help them if elected in November. He also repeated his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, which have been discredited by a mountain of evidence.</div><div><br /></div><div>If he did not win this year’s presidential election, Mr. Trump said, “I don’t think you’re going to have another election, or certainly not an election that’s meaningful.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Mr. Trump also stoked fears about the influx of migrants coming into the United States at the southern border. As he did during his successful campaign in 2016, Mr. Trump used incendiary and dehumanizing language to cast many migrants as threats to American citizens.</div><div><br /></div><div>He asserted, without evidence, that other countries were emptying their prisons of “young people” and sending them across the border. “I don’t know if you call them ‘people,’ in some cases,” he said. “They’re not people, in my opinion.” He later referred to them as “animals.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Border officials, including some who worked in the Trump administration, have said that most migrants who cross the border are members of vulnerable families fleeing violence and poverty, and available data does not support the idea that migrants are spurring increases in crime.</div><div> </div><div>Mr. Trump mentioned Bernie Moreno, his preferred Senate candidate in Ohio and a former car dealer from Cleveland, only sparingly. Though he has Mr. Trump’s endorsement, Mr. Moreno, whose super PAC hosted Saturday’s event, has struggled to separate himself in a heated Republican primary contest to face Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, this fall. Mr. Trump was redirected from a planned trip to Arizona to appear with Mr. Moreno as a last-minute push.</div><div><br /></div><div>Mr. Trump issued vulgar and derogatory remarks about several Democrats, including ones he often targets, like Mr. Biden and Fani Willis, the Atlanta prosecutor overseeing his criminal case in Georgia, as well as those widely viewed as prospective future presidential candidates, such as Gov. Gavin Newsom of California and Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois.</div><div><br /></div><div>Mr. Trump called Mr. Biden a “stupid president” several times and at one point referred to him as a “dumb son of a — ” before trailing off. He also compared Ms. Willis’s first name to a vulgarity, called Mr. Newsom “Gavin New-scum” and took jabs at Mr. Pritzker’s physical appearance.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Biden campaign issued a statement after the event claiming that Mr. Trump’s comments doubled “down on threats of political violence.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“He wants another January 6, but the American people are going to give him another electoral defeat this November because they continue to reject his extremism, his affection for violence, and his thirst for revenge,” said James Singer, a spokesman for the Biden campaign. </div><div><br /></div><div>Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, clarified that Mr. Trump was talking about the auto industry and the economy, not political violence, and wrote in a statement that “Crooked Joe Biden and his campaign are engaging in deceptively, out-of-context editing.”</div><div><br /></div><div> Mr. Trump’s sharp words were not reserved for national politicians: He briefly took aim at one of Mr. Moreno’s primary opponents, Matt Dolan, a wealthy Ohio state senator who has been surging in recent polls. Returning to his prepared remarks, Mr. Trump said he did not know Mr. Dolan but depicted him as “trying to become the next Mitt Romney.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“My attitude is anybody who changes the name from the Cleveland Indians to the Cleveland Guardians should not be a senator,” Mr. Trump said, referring to the professional baseball team that Mr. Dolan’s family holds a majority stake in.</div><div><br /></div><div>When Mr. Moreno was briefly called back onstage toward the end of Mr. Trump’s remarks, he praised the former president as a “good man.” But Mr. Moreno did not explicitly remind the crowd to support him in his Senate bid on Tuesday. Mr. Trump, for his part, said Mr. Moreno was a “fantastic guy.” </div><div><br /></div><div>Mr. Trump’s campaign speeches generally swing between scripted remarks and seemingly off-the-cuff digressions. On Saturday, he acknowledged struggling to read the teleprompter as he tried to quote statistics on inflation.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Everything is up: Chicken’s up, bread is up and I can’t read this damn teleprompter,” Mr. Trump said. “This sucker is moving around. It’s like reading a moving flag in a 35-mile-an-hour wind.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Then, Mr. Trump, who before his presidency was known in New York for refusing to pay his bills to a wide range of service providers, joked about not paying the teleprompter company.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Then they say Trump’s a bad guy because I’ll say this: Don’t pay the teleprompter company,” he said as the crowd laughed. “Don’t pay.”</div></div><div><br /></div><div>Writers:</div><div><div class="css-1jp38cr" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 1.5rem auto 1em; max-width: 600px; padding: 0px; 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font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0.75rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><span class="css-97bxx6" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a class="authorPageLinkClass overrideLinkStyles" href="https://www.nytimes.com/by/anjali-huynh" style="border: 0px; color: #121212; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-color: currentcolor; text-decoration-style: solid; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-underline-offset: 2px; vertical-align: baseline;">Anjali Huynh</a></span>, a member of the 2023-24 <a href="https://www.nytco.com/careers/newsroom/newsroom-fellowship/" style="border: 0px; color: #121212; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-color: currentcolor; text-decoration-style: solid; vertical-align: baseline;">Times Fellowship class</a> based in New York, covers national politics, the 2024 presidential campaign and other elections.<span class="css-kzd6pg" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <a class="authorPageLinkClass overrideLinkStyles" href="https://www.nytimes.com/by/anjali-huynh" style="border: 0px; color: #121212; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-color: currentcolor; text-decoration-style: solid; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-underline-offset: 2px; vertical-align: baseline;">More about Anjali Huynh</a></span></i></p></div></div><div class="css-cw8msf eqi4ubu0" style="border: 0px; color: #363636; font-family: nyt-franklin, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-size: 1rem; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.375rem; margin: 0.75rem 0px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="css-kzd6pg" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0.75rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><span class="css-97bxx6" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a class="authorPageLinkClass overrideLinkStyles" href="https://www.nytimes.com/by/michael-gold" style="border: 0px; color: #121212; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-color: currentcolor; text-decoration-style: solid; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-underline-offset: 2px; vertical-align: baseline;">Michael Gold</a></span> is a political correspondent for The Times covering the campaigns of Donald J. Trump and other candidates in the 2024 presidential elections.<span class="css-kzd6pg" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <a class="authorPageLinkClass overrideLinkStyles" href="https://www.nytimes.com/by/michael-gold" style="border: 0px; color: #121212; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-color: currentcolor; text-decoration-style: solid; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-underline-offset: 2px; vertical-align: baseline;">More about Michael Gold</a></span></i></p><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0.75rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>The New York Times sourcing</i></p></div></div></div><div aria-label="Social Media Share buttons, Save button, and Comments Panel with current comment count" class="css-wn12pn" data-testid="share-tools" role="toolbar" style="border: 0px; 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<div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img height="226" src="https://tvnz-1-news-prod.cdn.arcpublishing.com/resizer/v2/outgoing-labour-mp-grant-robertson-OTKOMDTTHFAAXEDHQGG2V56K6M.png?auth=c90998f82cb4185c642fd997f322c4fc8cb7fbcc35f52d549efba47690625333&quality=70&width=400&height=225&focal=1060%2C451" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> The outgoing MP put his name forward for the Labour leadership in 2013 and 2014 and was narrowly defeated. While he had won the majority of support from his caucus colleagues both times, he lost once other votes from the wider party membership and union affiliates were counted.</p><p></p><p class="body-paragraph articleLinkText lg mb-4" style="background-color: #fcfcfc; box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(33, 34, 38); color: #212226; font-family: blacksans, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: min(22px, 1.06rem); line-height: min(26px, 1.63rem); margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px;"></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">When asked whether his sexuality had affected the result, Robertson said it was a tough question to answer. </p><p></p><p class="body-paragraph articleLinkText lg mb-4" style="background-color: #fcfcfc; box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(33, 34, 38); color: #212226; font-family: blacksans, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: min(22px, 1.06rem); line-height: min(26px, 1.63rem); margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px;"></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">"It was a factor. I know that. But I'm not sure it was everything."</p><p></p><p class="body-paragraph articleLinkText lg mb-4" style="background-color: #fcfcfc; box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(33, 34, 38); color: #212226; font-family: blacksans, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: min(22px, 1.06rem); line-height: min(26px, 1.63rem); margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px;"></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">He said there were lots of other things that could have had an impact at the time.</p><p></p><p class="body-paragraph articleLinkText lg mb-4" style="background-color: #fcfcfc; box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(33, 34, 38); color: #212226; font-family: blacksans, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: min(22px, 1.06rem); line-height: min(26px, 1.63rem); margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px;"></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">"I think in 2013, that was an issue in the campaign internally within the Labour Party," he said. </p><p></p><p class="body-paragraph articleLinkText lg mb-4" style="background-color: #fcfcfc; box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(33, 34, 38); color: #212226; font-family: blacksans, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: min(22px, 1.06rem); line-height: min(26px, 1.63rem); margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px;"></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">"I do think it probably affected that. Although whether I would have been able to win, even without that [being gay], I'm not sure.</p><p></p><p class="body-paragraph articleLinkText lg mb-4" style="background-color: #fcfcfc; box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(33, 34, 38); color: #212226; font-family: blacksans, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: min(22px, 1.06rem); line-height: min(26px, 1.63rem); margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px;"></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">"By the time we got to 2014, it was less of an issue the second time around. But it continued to be there."</p><p></p><p class="body-paragraph articleLinkText lg mb-4" style="background-color: #fcfcfc; box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(33, 34, 38); color: #212226; font-family: blacksans, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: min(22px, 1.06rem); line-height: min(26px, 1.63rem); margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px;"></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Robertson said he didn't want to dwell on it. </p><p></p><p class="body-paragraph articleLinkText lg mb-4" style="background-color: #fcfcfc; box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(33, 34, 38); color: #212226; font-family: blacksans, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: min(22px, 1.06rem); line-height: min(26px, 1.63rem); margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px;"></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">"I think New Zealand's changed a lot in the decade since then, which is great. </p><p></p><p class="body-paragraph articleLinkText lg mb-4" style="background-color: #fcfcfc; box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(33, 34, 38); color: #212226; font-family: blacksans, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: min(22px, 1.06rem); line-height: min(26px, 1.63rem); margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px;"></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">"I still think there's some distance to go for us to get to a place where people can be who they want to be, live their lives freely, and be appreciated for who they are in New Zealand."</p><p></p><p class="body-paragraph articleLinkText lg mb-4" style="background-color: #fcfcfc; box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(33, 34, 38); color: #212226; font-family: blacksans, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: min(22px, 1.06rem); line-height: min(26px, 1.63rem); margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px;"></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">In his maiden speech in 2008, Robertson spoke about his sexuality. </p><p></p><p class="body-paragraph articleLinkText lg mb-4" style="background-color: #fcfcfc; box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(33, 34, 38); color: #212226; font-family: blacksans, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: min(22px, 1.06rem); line-height: min(26px, 1.63rem); margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px;"></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">"I am proud and comfortable with who I am. Being gay is part of who I am… my political view is defined by my sexuality only in as much as it has given me an insight into how people can be marginalized and discriminated against, and how much I abhor that. </p><p></p><p class="body-paragraph articleLinkText lg mb-4" style="background-color: #fcfcfc; box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(33, 34, 38); color: #212226; font-family: blacksans, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: min(22px, 1.06rem); line-height: min(26px, 1.63rem); margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px;"></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">"I am lucky that I have largely grown up in a generation that is not fixated on issues such as sexual orientation. I am not — and neither should others be," he said at the time.</p><p></p><p class="body-paragraph articleLinkText lg mb-4" style="background-color: #fcfcfc; box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(33, 34, 38); color: #212226; font-family: blacksans, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: min(22px, 1.06rem); line-height: min(26px, 1.63rem); margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px;"></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">After Robertson lost the second leadership race, he said he decided not to run again because he prioritized policy achievements over the position.</p><p></p><p class="body-paragraph articleLinkText lg mb-4" style="background-color: #fcfcfc; box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(33, 34, 38); color: #212226; font-family: blacksans, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: min(22px, 1.06rem); line-height: min(26px, 1.63rem); margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px;"></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Once he had the "amazing opportunity" to become the finance spokesperson, Robertson said he had "genuinely put it [becoming leader] out of my mind". </p><p></p><p class="body-paragraph articleLinkText lg mb-4" style="background-color: #fcfcfc; box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(33, 34, 38); color: #212226; font-family: blacksans, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: min(22px, 1.06rem); line-height: min(26px, 1.63rem); margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px;"></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">"When Jacinda [Ardern] took the leadership in 2017, I was able to be there and support my friend in doing that. That was all enormously fulfilling." </p><p></p><p class="body-paragraph articleLinkText lg mb-4" style="background-color: #fcfcfc; box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(33, 34, 38); color: #212226; font-family: blacksans, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: min(22px, 1.06rem); line-height: min(26px, 1.63rem); margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px;"></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">He said he did think about stepping up again when Ardern announced in early 2023 that she was stepping down as Prime Minister.</p><p></p><p class="body-paragraph articleLinkText lg mb-4" style="background-color: #fcfcfc; box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(33, 34, 38); color: #212226; font-family: blacksans, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: min(22px, 1.06rem); line-height: min(26px, 1.63rem); margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px;"></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">"I'd been up close to that job and I knew exactly what it took to do it. I knew I didn't have that. </p><p></p><p class="body-paragraph articleLinkText lg mb-4" style="background-color: #fcfcfc; box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(33, 34, 38); color: #212226; font-family: blacksans, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: min(22px, 1.06rem); line-height: min(26px, 1.63rem); margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px;"></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">"I wanted to contribute, still. But I knew what the job meant for me and my family, for the commitment that was required. I knew I didn't have it," Robertson said. </p><p></p><div class="
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table-layout: fixed; text-indent: 0px; width: 100%;"><tbody><tr><td height="100%" role="module-content" valign="top"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="align-items: flex-start; align-self: stretch; border-collapse: collapse; border-left-color: rgb(204, 209, 219); border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 4px; column-gap: 16px; display: flex; flex-direction: column; max-width: 536px; padding-left: 0px; row-gap: 16px; width: 536px;"><tbody><tr><td style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 20px;"><p style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #01ffff;"><span style="font-size: 24px; font-weight: 700; letter-spacing: -1px; line-height: 32px;">Most Americans like NATO and say the U.S. should defend NATO allies</span><br /><br /></span></p></td></tr><tr><td style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; padding: 0px 20px;"><span style="background-color: #01ffff;"><b>53% of Americans </b>have a very or somewhat favorable opinion of NATO, while 22% have an unfavorable opinion. <br /><br /><a href="http://url2298.members.yougov.com/ls/click?upn=u001.P2y4rPOtdxTlO-2FiO77ylP3sL7r9co4h-2BiWg1QnCwpGvHpkfi375TRD6uDlFaBdujrh9Bz1QIt8oDJqogCN8PHEMA9fHKvY5foIifuoM6OzKaZmEw95bLeCmXpbIoZWKfFnz145CvChoiRLq5XGNZTg-3D-3DrfDB_mUHlH9-2FvvO8W8jRT5kDrqwwTgHaWXwL8scCgBe-2BnAUOTJYSc4iEwS-2BR3qgolAZIK9Il47t9UHMDJFlHdJhGBxdUFhmjUTwhIPtfTLayD8g8IwZMfdRhWny68tCpK1lAeNL8M-2BV4bogEGDqLA3EuQzFEWcNQUYhqfHJWGzkpqEi68U9b-2BJvIkXbJwDygzUlVZwKKJxQB-2BWtMjatFRi8VJ6OoIaUJTSOffCxHAY6hUYMoFXS4qODE3H5GR2G9XW-2BfIQSi3MrAvfFtWHUwUTLFiKRWjPuT5TPZLtOZFu4YzlUQENjlXitMjuVp2z0xLU7kMnWacD5LOp3jChoNYHXlUoOS13RTJbq6YTqTbsLo1vMYF19wTMjlR6ehyXL5lp2JvXPY6WmKGq2VwTydJftD0GvpEGnhDq-2B5-2FdWA-2Bk-2BZXAKsio6CTPedgwbGvPcbpPN1VVNdkBJBsOm0BZ79Tut4-2FZs8-2BjJap3zwyCoTVnXafQIzHZgmKS1Qno3-2BbRRbSMubNc9i5u1HctoW-2F6Aevkn9AH3iUTJnBTWcAaGIl1AadGtwD7I4jx2tTwrXhA-2FxK8G0iBc5U8zCMBbEH5dskTIGep-2Bg0dL7QWVHklm3Cu9suHHJm3RVOigyOxizamEyb1PfSWqXr2Sz-2BmkccHpvuKSVZBwgaEJwOehITSr9ecUXO04FnSgHvIMyWZ-2FXyMFxLpvZO8-2B59kDZBUc8z5KW5PjlBOJMaFn1H4ZKfKmM1ChkIlP2W4BbK7kHhgwvyUkhcY1n5PWYaLff3-2BO9W-2BoLT9uEUHE-2FqVb0fZAhpP3AucwJFmD3A3QfY-2Fw7NJUCIdqUVYNcVXMwWZpRH1NmLoGMDJkwTkgvepNMXXBg5fbvQEajGqpJddUlkDk0BAK0mp-2BS-2FKzH9A0uFKh5caG6kA-2Fv8XWOc3Fmocfcvg91eVb1zjJdvSLZXl-2FS6-2FtTBujMMz7jyA3Cd" style="text-decoration: none;"><b>Read More</b> →</a></span></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="module" data-muid="66bb8f6f-221c-4ddb-a202-0bfe8b48be8d.1.1.2" data-type="spacer" role="module" style="color: black; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant-caps: normal; table-layout: fixed; text-indent: 0px; width: 100%;"><tbody><tr><td bgcolor="" role="module-content" style="padding: 0px 0px 40px;"></td></tr></tbody></table><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="module" data-muid="ff67053a-885a-4b9b-896d-881489acccfa.1.1" data-type="code" role="module" style="color: black; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant-caps: normal; table-layout: fixed; text-indent: 0px; width: 100%;"><tbody><tr><td height="100%" role="module-content" valign="top"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="align-items: flex-start; align-self: stretch; border-collapse: collapse; border-left-color: rgb(204, 209, 219); border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 4px; column-gap: 16px; display: flex; flex-direction: column; max-width: 536px; padding-left: 0px; row-gap: 16px; width: 536px;"><tbody><tr><td style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 20px;"><p style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #01ffff;"><span style="font-size: 24px; font-weight: 700; letter-spacing: -1px; line-height: 32px;">More Americans support than oppose a 16-week abortion ban </span><br /><br /></span></p></td></tr><tr><td style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; padding: 0px 20px;"><span style="background-color: #01ffff;"><b>48% of US adult citizens</b> strongly or somewhat support a 16-week abortion ban, while 36% strongly or somewhat oppose it. <br /><br /><a href="http://url2298.members.yougov.com/ls/click?upn=u001.P2y4rPOtdxTlO-2FiO77ylP3sL7r9co4h-2BiWg1QnCwpGvHpkfi375TRD6uDlFaBdujx8L8JjmwPdqq7dDRtR6orWx6WwiJXKJTSVvjsCdPLI5hw-2B-2F9JB7WrfnGtM-2BmpUxcJ2TPvTpVNQyREL73o4jNJA-3D-3DQi7t_mUHlH9-2FvvO8W8jRT5kDrqwwTgHaWXwL8scCgBe-2BnAUOTJYSc4iEwS-2BR3qgolAZIK9Il47t9UHMDJFlHdJhGBxdUFhmjUTwhIPtfTLayD8g8IwZMfdRhWny68tCpK1lAeNL8M-2BV4bogEGDqLA3EuQzFEWcNQUYhqfHJWGzkpqEi68U9b-2BJvIkXbJwDygzUlVZwKKJxQB-2BWtMjatFRi8VJ6OoIaUJTSOffCxHAY6hUYMoFXS4qODE3H5GR2G9XW-2BfIQSi3MrAvfFtWHUwUTLFiKRWjPuT5TPZLtOZFu4YzlUQENjlXitMjuVp2z0xLU7kMnWacD5LOp3jChoNYHXlUoOS13RTJbq6YTqTbsLo1vMYF19wTMjlR6ehyXL5lp2JvXPY6WmKGq2VwTydJftD0GvpEGnhDq-2B5-2FdWA-2Bk-2BZXAKsio6CTPedgwbGvPcbpPN1VVNdkBJBsOm0BZ79Tut4-2FZs8-2BjJap3zwyCoTVnXafQIzHZgmKS1Qno3-2BbRRbSMubNc9i5u1HctoW-2F6Aevkn9AH3iUTJnBTWcAaGIl1AadGtwD7I4jx2tTwrXhA-2FxK8G0iBc5U8zCMBbEH5dskTIGep-2Bg0dL7QWVHklm3Cu9suHHJm3RVOigyOxizamEyb1PfSWqXr2Sz-2BmkccHpvuKSVZBwgaEJwOehITSr9ecUXO04FnSgHvIMyWZ-2FXyMFxLpvZO8-2B59kDZBUc8z5KW5PjlBOJMaFn1H4ZKfKmM1ChkIlP0WjzlPLOg5rq-2B7uVpVV8RCVKcV9HW-2BcVfiBpS4KkaEkwqpz4IEDz76hxNOzX-2Bt5G7wLAnuAyN9wQ0xb03JI5HpNTceNkRlQgyLRNRiagA16S9-2F2LeRgSan3zyYrKXHykyxcd8zNRafe9317EoPyFmI-2BcdvjkmB97YI577EX86pvFQu2ya5Kx-2BUFxBgYQjqVYbbjql26-2BGSN7PjF75W01QR" style="text-decoration: none;"><b>Read More</b> →</a></span></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="module" data-mc-module-version="2019-10-22" data-muid="36d2f469-ad5c-4213-bec8-47982ba84a5f.1" data-type="text" role="module" style="color: black; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant-caps: normal; table-layout: fixed; text-indent: 0px; width: 100%;"><tbody><tr><td bgcolor="" height="100%" role="module-content" style="line-height: 48px; padding: 40px 0px 32px; text-align: inherit;" valign="top"><div style="font-family: arial; text-align: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 40px; letter-spacing: -2px; line-height: 48px;"><strong style="background-color: #01ffff;">YouGov in the news</strong></span></div><div></div></td></tr></tbody></table><table align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" data-distribution="1,1" data-type="columns" role="module" style="color: black; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant-caps: normal; padding: 0px 0px 40px; text-indent: 0px; width: 100%;"><tbody><tr role="module-content"><td height="100%" valign="top"><table align="left" bgcolor="" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="column column-0" style="border-collapse: collapse; border-spacing: 0px; margin: 0px 16px 0px 0px; width: 252px;"><tbody><tr><td style="border-spacing: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="module" data-mc-module-version="2019-10-22" data-muid="vLfMHRwijdTv6AyLRD6KTu.3" data-type="text" role="module" style="table-layout: fixed; width: 100%;"><tbody><tr><td bgcolor="" height="100%" role="module-content" style="line-height: 16px; padding: 0px 0px 8px; text-align: inherit;" valign="top"><div style="font-size: 16px;"><div style="font-family: Arial; text-align: inherit;"><span style="background-color: #01ffff; color: #808da5; font-size: 14px;">3 min read</span></div><div></div></div></td></tr></tbody></table><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="module" data-mc-module-version="2019-10-22" data-muid="vLfMHRwijdTv6AyLRD6KTu.2.1" data-type="text" role="module" style="table-layout: fixed; width: 100%;"><tbody><tr><td bgcolor="" height="100%" role="module-content" style="line-height: 32px; padding: 0px 0px 16px; text-align: inherit;" valign="top"><div style="font-size: 16px;"><div style="font-family: inherit; text-align: inherit;"><span style="background-color: #01ffff;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-size: 24px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 700; letter-spacing: -1px; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 16px; margin-top: 0px; text-decoration-thickness: initial;"><strong>"</strong></span><span style="font-size: 24px;"><strong>Sorry Elon, Americans don't want a brain chip: poll</strong></span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-size: 24px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 700; letter-spacing: -1px; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 16px; margin-top: 0px; text-decoration-thickness: initial;"><strong>"</strong></span><span style="font-size: 24px;"><strong> </strong></span></span></div><div></div></div></td></tr></tbody></table><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="module" data-mc-module-version="2019-10-22" data-muid="vLfMHRwijdTv6AyLRD6KTu.1.1" data-type="text" role="module" style="table-layout: fixed; width: 100%;"><tbody><tr><td bgcolor="" height="100%" role="module-content" style="line-height: 24px; padding: 0px 0px 16px; text-align: inherit;" valign="top"><div style="font-size: 16px;"><div style="font-family: inherit; text-align: inherit;"><span style="background-color: #01ffff;">Only 8% of respondents would consider getting a computer chip implanted in their brain. Interest from potential test subjects is rather slim, as is: just 2%<br />would "definitely" consider getting a computer chip implanted in their<br />brain "within the next year".</span></div><div></div></div></td></tr></tbody></table><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="module" data-muid="339f3ed5-f60b-41a7-af9a-218ab0c7e20b.1" data-type="code" role="module" style="table-layout: fixed; width: 100%;"><tbody><tr><td height="100%" role="module-content" valign="top"><a href="http://url2298.members.yougov.com/ls/click?upn=u001.P2y4rPOtdxTlO-2FiO77ylP5OS4BlecIEwn1-2BYAHGob9hrcZq9r-2Fr3xkmYtw4qENRba1C-2BJYuIhWzGG7-2BFtwaxDIL09DO6J0xzxp29iTEdjFxH-2FQj8nVkIF4OvW4P-2FnGT0We2dGTPXbdsft3iEnUHBnVEpSHzO4ILQAfK8GojJQgk-3D-fJE_mUHlH9-2FvvO8W8jRT5kDrqwwTgHaWXwL8scCgBe-2BnAUOTJYSc4iEwS-2BR3qgolAZIK9Il47t9UHMDJFlHdJhGBxdUFhmjUTwhIPtfTLayD8g8IwZMfdRhWny68tCpK1lAeNL8M-2BV4bogEGDqLA3EuQzFEWcNQUYhqfHJWGzkpqEi68U9b-2BJvIkXbJwDygzUlVZwKKJxQB-2BWtMjatFRi8VJ6OoIaUJTSOffCxHAY6hUYMoFXS4qODE3H5GR2G9XW-2BfIQSi3MrAvfFtWHUwUTLFiKRWjPuT5TPZLtOZFu4YzlUQENjlXitMjuVp2z0xLU7kMnWacD5LOp3jChoNYHXlUoOS13RTJbq6YTqTbsLo1vMYF19wTMjlR6ehyXL5lp2JvXPY6WmKGq2VwTydJftD0GvpEGnhDq-2B5-2FdWA-2Bk-2BZXAKsio6CTPedgwbGvPcbpPN1VVNdkBJBsOm0BZ79Tut4-2FZs8-2BjJap3zwyCoTVnXafQIzHZgmKS1Qno3-2BbRRbSMubNc9i5u1HctoW-2F6Aevkn9AH3iUTJnBTWcAaGIl1AadGtwD7I4jx2tTwrXhA-2FxK8G0iBc5U8zCMBbEH5dskTIGep-2Bg0dL7QWVHklm3Cu9suHHJm3RVOigyOxizamEyb1PfSWqXr2Sz-2BmkccHpvuKSVZBwgaEJwOehITSr9ecUXO04FnSgHvIMyWZ-2FXyMFxLpvZO8-2B59kDZBUc8z5KW5PjlBOJMaFn1H4ZKfKmM1ChkIlP1OQwD-2FqDgYGb3ww0aiZ7fW71RT7UM93-2F8lNRWTQTS-2B0zZZpFSUaUHWGZuAHGH1f6ecsSY2s3IzVio74tV6JTeUoBBT8zYbBCy1WLERFHuBdH23FyuQYdQ-2FGt-2FitUfUItKehVRX4cJ3dhDz9EKxeNrXsgfJwUagTwPMjhb7c3LzxdA0bupJW9TUxG3noqbfToWUMy5jBwR5D3u2i5DhR0tp" style="background-color: #01ffff; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">Source: Business Insider</a></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table><table align="left" bgcolor="" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="column column-1" style="border-collapse: collapse; border-spacing: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 0px 16px; width: 252px;"><tbody><tr><td style="border-spacing: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="wrapper" data-muid="vN7Me7MkusqKsVqHkjYdAp.1" data-type="image" role="module" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; table-layout: fixed; width: 100%;"><tbody><tr><td align="center" style="font-size: 6px; line-height: 10px; padding: 24px 0px 0px;" valign="top"><a href="http://url2298.members.yougov.com/ls/click?upn=u001.P2y4rPOtdxTlO-2FiO77ylP5OS4BlecIEwn1-2BYAHGob9hrcZq9r-2Fr3xkmYtw4qENRba1C-2BJYuIhWzGG7-2BFtwaxDIL09DO6J0xzxp29iTEdjFxH-2FQj8nVkIF4OvW4P-2FnGT0We2dGTPXbdsft3iEnUHBnVEpSHzO4ILQAfK8GojJQgk-3D-2eo_mUHlH9-2FvvO8W8jRT5kDrqwwTgHaWXwL8scCgBe-2BnAUOTJYSc4iEwS-2BR3qgolAZIK9Il47t9UHMDJFlHdJhGBxdUFhmjUTwhIPtfTLayD8g8IwZMfdRhWny68tCpK1lAeNL8M-2BV4bogEGDqLA3EuQzFEWcNQUYhqfHJWGzkpqEi68U9b-2BJvIkXbJwDygzUlVZwKKJxQB-2BWtMjatFRi8VJ6OoIaUJTSOffCxHAY6hUYMoFXS4qODE3H5GR2G9XW-2BfIQSi3MrAvfFtWHUwUTLFiKRWjPuT5TPZLtOZFu4YzlUQENjlXitMjuVp2z0xLU7kMnWacD5LOp3jChoNYHXlUoOS13RTJbq6YTqTbsLo1vMYF19wTMjlR6ehyXL5lp2JvXPY6WmKGq2VwTydJftD0GvpEGnhDq-2B5-2FdWA-2Bk-2BZXAKsio6CTPedgwbGvPcbpPN1VVNdkBJBsOm0BZ79Tut4-2FZs8-2BjJap3zwyCoTVnXafQIzHZgmKS1Qno3-2BbRRbSMubNc9i5u1HctoW-2F6Aevkn9AH3iUTJnBTWcAaGIl1AadGtwD7I4jx2tTwrXhA-2FxK8G0iBc5U8zCMBbEH5dskTIGep-2Bg0dL7QWVHklm3Cu9suHHJm3RVOigyOxizamEyb1PfSWqXr2Sz-2BmkccHpvuKSVZBwgaEJwOehITSr9ecUXO04FnSgHvIMyWZ-2FXyMFxLpvZO8-2B59kDZBUc8z5KW5PjlBOJMaFn1H4ZKfKmM1ChkIlP3bSNj8FA9UQFgpX6hBgVVBBVQ-2FDMC8ZEfr3WpLdCn5UXIFsJd7hbLeswdg40OgfqDAgJov9eu44zjsE5msHlg4oAbUJHPBPi4U9MEhKkN3xEIzFQpA2aEgp1aynxm42k1Z1EfIO9hdGnSGOTQa0ez3maaKkyNXaFFkqsfF2uwRTWatT3u1pEfnlnpK0zOSRhKuO-2FtzENrwATWP129ZinlX" style="background-color: #01ffff; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="Neuarlink" border="0" class="max-width" data-proportionally-constrained="true" data-responsive="true" src="http://cdn.mcauto-images-production.sendgrid.net/1c0e8758ec240494/7d8712a6-ccc5-487e-9593-32e6eafaf46e/553x553.png" style="border-radius: 25px; color: black; display: block; font-family: Helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; height: auto; max-width: 100%; width: 252px;" width="252" /></a></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table><table align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" data-distribution="1,1" data-type="columns" role="module" style="color: black; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant-caps: normal; padding: 0px 0px 40px; text-indent: 0px; width: 100%;"><tbody><tr role="module-content"><td height="100%" valign="top"><table align="left" bgcolor="" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="column column-0" style="border-collapse: collapse; border-spacing: 0px; margin: 0px 16px 0px 0px; width: 252px;"><tbody><tr><td style="border-spacing: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="module" data-mc-module-version="2019-10-22" data-muid="vLfMHRwijdTv6AyLRD6KTu.3.1" data-type="text" role="module" style="table-layout: fixed; width: 100%;"><tbody><tr><td bgcolor="" height="100%" role="module-content" style="line-height: 16px; padding: 0px 0px 8px; text-align: inherit;" valign="top"><div style="font-size: 16px;"><div style="font-family: Arial; text-align: inherit;"><span style="background-color: #01ffff;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Arial; text-align: inherit;"><span style="background-color: #01ffff; color: #808da5; font-size: 14px;">4 min read</span></div><div></div></div></td></tr></tbody></table><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="module" data-mc-module-version="2019-10-22" data-muid="vLfMHRwijdTv6AyLRD6KTu.2.1.1" data-type="text" role="module" style="table-layout: fixed; width: 100%;"><tbody><tr><td bgcolor="" height="100%" role="module-content" style="line-height: 32px; padding: 0px 0px 16px; text-align: inherit;" valign="top"><div style="font-size: 16px;"><div style="font-family: inherit; text-align: inherit;"><span style="background-color: #01ffff;"><span style="font-size: 24px;"><strong>"New Poll From YouGov Confirms Majority Support Death With Dignity</strong></span><span face="Arial, system-ui" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-size: 24px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 700; letter-spacing: -1px; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: 16px; margin-top: 0px; text-decoration-thickness: initial;">"</span></span></div><div></div></div></td></tr></tbody></table><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="module" data-mc-module-version="2019-10-22" data-muid="vLfMHRwijdTv6AyLRD6KTu.1.1.1" data-type="text" role="module" style="table-layout: fixed; width: 100%;"><tbody><tr><td bgcolor="" height="100%" role="module-content" style="line-height: 24px; padding: 0px 0px 16px; text-align: inherit;" valign="top"><div style="font-size: 16px;"><div style="font-family: inherit; text-align: inherit;"><span style="background-color: #01ffff;">Every single demographic tested, from age to religion to political<br />affiliation – and including every region of the state – supports the<br />proposed law to give terminally ill patients the right to request and<br />receive medication to peacefully end their life. </span></div><div></div></div></td></tr></tbody></table><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="module" data-muid="339f3ed5-f60b-41a7-af9a-218ab0c7e20b.1.1" data-type="code" role="module" style="table-layout: fixed; width: 100%;"><tbody><tr><td height="100%" role="module-content" valign="top"><a href="http://url2298.members.yougov.com/ls/click?upn=u001.P2y4rPOtdxTlO-2FiO77ylP1gAMCWzo11DMytmuGwyYuDRuWNYFDbsDONb-2Bvgv0uTFShYNsS-2FX2sh32KoluoddYJkYxUYaPS0KG0NskgZUTH2Luh7GD8Q2XZZlW6otgQtBUQpq_mUHlH9-2FvvO8W8jRT5kDrqwwTgHaWXwL8scCgBe-2BnAUOTJYSc4iEwS-2BR3qgolAZIK9Il47t9UHMDJFlHdJhGBxdUFhmjUTwhIPtfTLayD8g8IwZMfdRhWny68tCpK1lAeNL8M-2BV4bogEGDqLA3EuQzFEWcNQUYhqfHJWGzkpqEi68U9b-2BJvIkXbJwDygzUlVZwKKJxQB-2BWtMjatFRi8VJ6OoIaUJTSOffCxHAY6hUYMoFXS4qODE3H5GR2G9XW-2BfIQSi3MrAvfFtWHUwUTLFiKRWjPuT5TPZLtOZFu4YzlUQENjlXitMjuVp2z0xLU7kMnWacD5LOp3jChoNYHXlUoOS13RTJbq6YTqTbsLo1vMYF19wTMjlR6ehyXL5lp2JvXPY6WmKGq2VwTydJftD0GvpEGnhDq-2B5-2FdWA-2Bk-2BZXAKsio6CTPedgwbGvPcbpPN1VVNdkBJBsOm0BZ79Tut4-2FZs8-2BjJap3zwyCoTVnXafQIzHZgmKS1Qno3-2BbRRbSMubNc9i5u1HctoW-2F6Aevkn9AH3iUTJnBTWcAaGIl1AadGtwD7I4jx2tTwrXhA-2FxK8G0iBc5U8zCMBbEH5dskTIGep-2Bg0dL7QWVHklm3Cu9suHHJm3RVOigyOxizamEyb1PfSWqXr2Sz-2BmkccHpvuKSVZBwgaEJwOehITSr9ecUXO04FnSgHvIMyWZ-2FXyMFxLpvZO8-2B59kDZBUc8z5KW5PjlBOJMaFn1H4ZKfKmM1ChkIlP1uixeQMUd53RXYsue9SydGYK4VvZwkvIQpTVKju9Z16X817bw9-2BJgQ4BlmZQmokKl-2FpBO-2F7VPh7n-2F1SdUUbyzWrnTmiuiNEYS2HZ-2FwITidUJamX-2BRU4S9XmpHTEiTi26sPElMOXEzaEwIwyDZ8q82e-2FpTDM4s6uCsiskYeNb0a-2Fa86VwHRVqOiICy-2BNIzWHuz06836w2WTveNh1HakIji8" style="background-color: #01ffff; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px;">Source: Death with dignity</a></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table><table align="left" bgcolor="" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="column column-1" style="border-collapse: collapse; border-spacing: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 0px 16px; width: 252px;"><tbody><tr><td style="border-spacing: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="wrapper" data-muid="vN7Me7MkusqKsVqHkjYdAp.1.1" data-type="image" role="module" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; table-layout: fixed; width: 100%;"><tbody><tr><td align="center" style="font-size: 6px; line-height: 10px; padding: 24px 0px 0px;" valign="top"><a href="http://url2298.members.yougov.com/ls/click?upn=u001.P2y4rPOtdxTlO-2FiO77ylP1gAMCWzo11DMytmuGwyYuDRuWNYFDbsDONb-2Bvgv0uTFShYNsS-2FX2sh32KoluoddYJkYxUYaPS0KG0NskgZUTH2Luh7GD8Q2XZZlW6otgQtB0HtB_mUHlH9-2FvvO8W8jRT5kDrqwwTgHaWXwL8scCgBe-2BnAUOTJYSc4iEwS-2BR3qgolAZIK9Il47t9UHMDJFlHdJhGBxdUFhmjUTwhIPtfTLayD8g8IwZMfdRhWny68tCpK1lAeNL8M-2BV4bogEGDqLA3EuQzFEWcNQUYhqfHJWGzkpqEi68U9b-2BJvIkXbJwDygzUlVZwKKJxQB-2BWtMjatFRi8VJ6OoIaUJTSOffCxHAY6hUYMoFXS4qODE3H5GR2G9XW-2BfIQSi3MrAvfFtWHUwUTLFiKRWjPuT5TPZLtOZFu4YzlUQENjlXitMjuVp2z0xLU7kMnWacD5LOp3jChoNYHXlUoOS13RTJbq6YTqTbsLo1vMYF19wTMjlR6ehyXL5lp2JvXPY6WmKGq2VwTydJftD0GvpEGnhDq-2B5-2FdWA-2Bk-2BZXAKsio6CTPedgwbGvPcbpPN1VVNdkBJBsOm0BZ79Tut4-2FZs8-2BjJap3zwyCoTVnXafQIzHZgmKS1Qno3-2BbRRbSMubNc9i5u1HctoW-2F6Aevkn9AH3iUTJnBTWcAaGIl1AadGtwD7I4jx2tTwrXhA-2FxK8G0iBc5U8zCMBbEH5dskTIGep-2Bg0dL7QWVHklm3Cu9suHHJm3RVOigyOxizamEyb1PfSWqXr2Sz-2BmkccHpvuKSVZBwgaEJwOehITSr9ecUXO04FnSgHvIMyWZ-2FXyMFxLpvZO8-2B59kDZBUc8z5KW5PjlBOJMaFn1H4ZKfKmM1ChkIlP0wezcUkO0wbqDpCKLDKQIvAJqPuvUxbhTJsSSkwOpGijCPj4MN2nfQ6dr1FW3GDodxDEIJ8KAzYRbNm71IrTBlxVRI1ztLH2T5o3SurOAyqTZYN5BYM5nishbeWoktAqOTplujTZejBeB9-2F3-2BBY5DyxBYNBFz4OhzPV5802Z2KiegT0tZK-2Fdn8CfjDfDXCp1HP0cyfO8-2BN7daWOtm3Tddx" style="background-color: #01ffff; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="Supported dying" border="0" class="max-width" data-proportionally-constrained="true" data-responsive="true" src="http://cdn.mcauto-images-production.sendgrid.net/1c0e8758ec240494/de7a40b6-818f-4f1c-b738-20082e3716a0/553x553.png" style="border-radius: 25px; color: black; display: block; font-family: Helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; height: auto; max-width: 100%; width: 252px;" width="252" /></a></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="module" data-mc-module-version="2019-10-22" data-muid="2d8d3e12-3408-4f60-9a85-afd8d69557cc" data-type="text" role="module" style="color: black; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant-caps: normal; table-layout: fixed; text-indent: 0px; width: 100%;"><tbody><tr><td bgcolor="" height="100%" role="module-content" style="line-height: 24px; padding: 0px 0px 40px; text-align: inherit;" valign="top"><div style="font-family: arial; text-align: inherit;"><strong style="background-color: #01ffff;">Want more of your opinions to shape the world?</strong></div><div style="font-family: arial; text-align: inherit;"><span style="background-color: #01ffff;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: arial; text-align: inherit;"><span style="background-color: #01ffff; direction: ltr; line-height: 20.5042px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; visibility: visible;">Keep completing surveys to take part in our research. We’ll frequently let you know the results of polls you’ve participated in and email you if they’ve been featured in the news.</span></div><div></div></td></tr></tbody></table><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="module" data-mc-module-version="2019-10-22" data-muid="2d8d3e12-3408-4f60-9a85-afd8d69557cc.1" data-type="text" role="module" style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant-caps: normal; table-layout: fixed; text-indent: 0px; width: 100%;"><tbody><tr><td bgcolor="" height="100%" role="module-content" style="line-height: 24px; padding: 0px 0px 40px; text-align: inherit;" valign="top"><div style="font-family: arial; text-align: inherit;"><span style="background-color: #01ffff; direction: ltr; line-height: 20.5042px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; visibility: visible;">Thanks for shaping the world with us.</span></div><div style="font-family: arial; text-align: inherit;"><span style="background-color: #01ffff;"><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><strong>The YouGov team</strong></span></span></div><div style="font-family: arial; text-align: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><strong><br /></strong></span></div><div style="font-family: arial; text-align: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><strong>GALLO team:</strong></span></div><div style="font-family: arial; text-align: inherit;"><span><div class="dw-chart-header datawrapper-07y1Z-19jb70t" id="header" style="margin: 0px 0px 20px; min-height: 1px; overflow: auto; position: relative;"><h3 class="block headline-block datawrapper-07y1Z-1oyfd9l" style="line-height: 30px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; text-decoration-color: currentcolor; text-decoration-style: solid;"><span class="block-inner"><span style="font-size: small;">Do you think marriages between same-sex couples should or should not be recognized by the law as valid, with the same rights as traditional marriages?</span></span></h3></div><div class="sr-only svelte-crzbxb" style="height: 1px; left: -9999px; position: absolute;"><span style="font-size: small;">Line graph. Americans’ views on whether same-sex marriages should be legal, with the same rights as traditional marriages, 1996-2023 trend. In 2023, 71% (tied for the trend high with 2022) believe same-sex marriages should be legal, while 28% say they should not be. The current numbers are almost exactly the opposite of what they were at the beginning of the trend. In 1996, 68% of Americans said same-sex marriages should not be legally valid, and 27% said they should be. With a few exceptions, notably in 2005 and 2019 (when slightly more than the previous year said same-sex marriages should not be legally valid, and slightly less said they should be valid), the trend has moved steadily in the direction of legality for same-sex marriages. In May 2011, for the first time, a majority (53%) said such marriages should be legal, and since November 2012, this has been the majority view. Views in 2023 are unchanged for both responses from 2022.</span></div><div aria-hidden="true" class="dw-chart-body vis-height-fit datawrapper-07y1Z-1urdg49 svelte-so4qex content-below-chart" id="chart" slot="visBody" style="margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><div class="dw-chart-body-content svelte-so4qex datawrapper-07y1Z-1l35x83" style="position: relative; z-index: 0;"><span style="font-size: small;"><svg aria-label="Line chart with 2 lines" class="svg-main" height="294" role="graphics-datachart" width="800"><g><g transform="translate(24.578125,52.140625)"></g></g></svg><span style="background-color: #04ff00;"><rect class="bg" height="294" width="800"></rect><g><g class="x-grid" direction="ltr"></g><g class="y-grid" direction="ltr"><g class="y-grid-lines grid-y datawrapper-07y1Z-sepn1k"><line class="y-grid-line major datawrapper-07y1Z-sepn1k" transform="translate(0, 0)" x2="748.421875"></line><line class="y-grid-line major datawrapper-07y1Z-sepn1k" transform="translate(0, 54.078125)" x2="748.421875"></line><line class="y-grid-line major datawrapper-07y1Z-sepn1k" transform="translate(0, 108.15625)" x2="748.421875"></line><line class="y-grid-line major datawrapper-07y1Z-sepn1k" transform="translate(0, 162.234375)" x2="748.421875"></line></g></g></g><g><g class="lines"><g class="line" style="opacity: 1;"><path aria-dataproperty="x,y" aria-datascales="x-axis, y-axis" aria-datavaluearray="["1996-03-01", 27],["1999-02-01", 35],["2004-05-01", 42],["2005-08-01", 37],["2006-05-01", 42],["2007-05-01", 46],["2008-05-01", 40],["2009-05-01", 40],["2010-05-01", 44],["2011-05-01", 53],["2011-12-01", 48],["2012-05-01", 50],["2012-11-01", 53],["2013-05-01", 53],["2013-07-01", 54],["2014-05-01", 55],["2015-05-01", 60],["2015-07-01", 58],["2016-05-01", 61],["2017-05-01", 64],["2018-05-01", 67],["2019-05-01", 63],["2020-05-01", 67],["2021-05-01", 70],["2022-05-01", 71],["2023-05-01", 71]" aria-datavariables="X.1, % Should be valid" aria-label="Line showing 26 values for "% Should be 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aria-datatype="datetime" aria-label="Horizontal date axis, ranging from 1995 to 2023." aria-orientation="horizontal" aria-valuemax="Sun Sep 10 2023 13:43:17 GMT-0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)" aria-valuemin="Fri Oct 20 1995 11:16:42 GMT-0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)" class="x-tick-labels date-axis grid-x datawrapper-07y1Z-1l7kcfx" role="graphics-axis" transform="translate(0,221.3125)"><text aria-hidden="true" class="x-tick-label bottom first" transform="translate(5.3316705702677964,14)" y="0"><tspan dy="0" x="0">1996</tspan></text><text aria-hidden="true" class="x-tick-label bottom" transform="translate(59.036482953498826,14)" y="0"><tspan dy="0" x="0">1998</tspan></text><text aria-hidden="true" class="x-tick-label bottom" transform="translate(112.66782774113037,14)" y="0"><tspan dy="0" x="0">2000</tspan></text><text aria-hidden="true" class="x-tick-label bottom" transform="translate(166.3726401243614,14)" y="0"><tspan dy="0" x="0">2002</tspan></text><text aria-hidden="true" class="x-tick-label bottom" transform="translate(220.00398491199294,14)" y="0"><tspan dy="0" x="0">2004</tspan></text><text aria-hidden="true" class="x-tick-label bottom" transform="translate(273.708797295224,14)" y="0"><tspan dy="0" x="0">2006</tspan></text><text aria-hidden="true" class="x-tick-label bottom" transform="translate(327.3401420828555,14)" y="0"><tspan dy="0" x="0">2008</tspan></text><text aria-hidden="true" class="x-tick-label bottom" transform="translate(381.04495446608655,14)" y="0"><tspan dy="0" x="0">2010</tspan></text><text aria-hidden="true" class="x-tick-label bottom" transform="translate(434.6762992537181,14)" y="0"><tspan dy="0" x="0">2012</tspan></text><text aria-hidden="true" class="x-tick-label bottom" transform="translate(488.38111163694913,14)" y="0"><tspan dy="0" x="0">2014</tspan></text><text aria-hidden="true" class="x-tick-label bottom" transform="translate(542.0124564245807,14)" y="0"><tspan dy="0" x="0">2016</tspan></text><text aria-hidden="true" class="x-tick-label bottom" transform="translate(595.7172688078117,14)" y="0"><tspan dy="0" x="0">2018</tspan></text><text aria-hidden="true" class="x-tick-label bottom" transform="translate(649.3486135954432,14)" y="0"><tspan dy="0" x="0">2020</tspan></text><text aria-hidden="true" class="x-tick-label bottom last" transform="translate(703.0534259786742,14)" y="0"><tspan dy="0" x="0">2022</tspan></text></g></g><g class="y-grid" direction="ltr"><g aria-datatype="number" aria-label="Vertical axis, ranging from 0 to 80." aria-orientation="vertical" aria-valuemax="80" aria-valuemin="0" class="y-tick-labels number-axis grid-y datawrapper-07y1Z-nwf991" role="graphics-axis" transform="translate(-5,0)"><text aria-hidden="true" class="y-tick-label left is-zero last" transform="translate(0,221.3125)" x="0" y="0"><tspan dy="0" x="-1">0</tspan></text><text aria-hidden="true" class="y-tick-label left" transform="translate(0,167.234375)" x="0" y="0"><tspan dy="0" x="-1">20</tspan></text><text aria-hidden="true" class="y-tick-label left" transform="translate(0,113.15625)" x="0" y="0"><tspan dy="0" x="-1">40</tspan></text><text aria-hidden="true" class="y-tick-label left" transform="translate(0,59.078125)" x="0" y="0"><tspan dy="0" x="-1">60</tspan></text><text aria-hidden="true" class="y-tick-label left first" transform="translate(0,5)" x="0" y="0"><tspan dy="0" x="-1">80</tspan><tspan dy="0" style="text-align: inherit; text-anchor: start;" x="0">% Should not be valid</tspan><tspan dy="15" style="text-align: inherit; text-anchor: start;" x="0">1999 Feb</tspan><tspan dy="15" style="text-align: inherit; text-anchor: start;" x="0"></tspan></text></g></g></g></span><svg aria-hidden="true" class="tooltip-layer" height="294" width="800"><g><g transform="translate(24.578125,52.140625)"><g aria-hidden="true" class="tooltip" transform="translate(88.12965081089895,48.670312499999994)"><text class="tooltip bg" style="stroke: rgb(228, 242, 225);" transform="translate(-3,32)"></text></g></g></g></svg><br /><text class="tooltip fg" style="fill: rgb(43, 43, 43);" transform="translate(-3,32)"><tspan dy="0" style="fill: rgb(0, 33, 105); text-anchor: start;" x="0">% Should not be valid </tspan><tspan dy="15" style="text-anchor: start;" x="0">1999 Feb</tspan><tspan dy="15" style="text-anchor: start;" x="0">62</tspan></text><text class="tooltip fg" style="fill: rgb(43, 43, 43);" transform="translate(-3,32)"><tspan dy="15" style="text-anchor: start;" x="0"><br /></tspan></text><line style="stroke-width: 1; stroke: rgb(51, 51, 51);" y1="5" y2="18"></line><circle r="5" style="stroke: rgb(51, 51, 51);"></circle></span><div class="d3l-main" style="left: 24.578125px; position: absolute; top: 52.140625px;"><div class="d3l-color-key" style="left: -24.578125px; opacity: 1; position: absolute; top: -52.140625px; width: 800px;"><span style="font-size: small;"><div class="d3l-item" style="align-items: center; display: inline-flex; margin-right: 8px; opacity: 1;"><svg class="d3l-key legend-key" height="20" width="16"><path class="key-line line-style-width-0 line-style-dash-0" d="M1,10 L15,10" style="stroke: rgb(6, 135, 75);"></path></svg><span class="label legend-text" data-column="% Should be valid" data-row="-1"><span style="color: #2b2b2b; fill: rgb(43, 43, 43); text-shadow: rgb(228, 242, 225) 0px 0px 2px; vertical-align: middle;">% (71%-Green)Should be valid</span></span></div><div class="d3l-item" style="align-items: center; display: inline-flex; margin-right: 8px; opacity: 1;"><svg class="d3l-key legend-key" height="20" width="16"><path class="key-line line-style-width-0 line-style-dash-0" d="M1,10 L15,10" style="stroke: rgb(0, 33, 105);"></path></svg><span class="label legend-text" data-column="% Should not be valid" data-row="-1"><span style="color: #2b2b2b; fill: rgb(43, 43, 43); text-shadow: rgb(228, 242, 225) 0px 0px 2px; vertical-align: middle;">% (28%-Blue)Should not be valid</span></span></div></span></div><div class="d3l-line-labels last-value-labels"><div class="d3l-line-label connected-label label" data-column="% Should be valid" data-row="-1" style="left: 748.421875px; opacity: 1; position: absolute; top: 19.335156px; width: 16.575989px;"><span style="color: #2b2b2b; fill: rgb(43, 43, 43); text-shadow: rgb(228, 242, 225) 0px 0px 2px;"><span style="font-size: small;">71</span></span></div><div class="d3l-line-label connected-label label" data-column="% Should not be valid" data-row="-1" style="left: 748.421875px; opacity: 1; position: absolute; top: 135.603125px; width: 16.575989px;"><span style="color: #2b2b2b; fill: rgb(43, 43, 43); text-shadow: rgb(228, 242, 225) 0px 0px 2px;"><span style="font-size: small;">28</span></span></div></div></div></div></div><div class="dw-above-footer datawrapper-07y1Z-179vhby" style="margin: 0px 0px 20px; position: relative;"><div class="block notes-block datawrapper-07y1Z-ar2sym" style="position: relative; text-decoration-color: currentcolor; text-decoration-style: solid;"><span class="block-inner"><span style="font-size: small;">Trend for polls </span></span></div><div class="block notes-block datawrapper-07y1Z-ar2sym" style="position: relative; text-decoration-color: currentcolor; text-decoration-style: solid;"><span class="block-inner"><div aria-hidden="true" class="dw-chart-body vis-height-fit datawrapper-07y1Z-1urdg49 svelte-so4qex content-below-chart" id="chart" slot="visBody" style="margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><div class="dw-chart-body-content svelte-so4qex datawrapper-07y1Z-1l35x83" style="position: relative; z-index: 0;"><span style="font-size: small;"><svg aria-label="Line chart with 2 lines" class="svg-main" height="294" role="graphics-datachart" width="800"><g><g transform="translate(24.578125,52.140625)"><g><g class="x-grid" direction="ltr"><g aria-datatype="datetime" aria-label="Horizontal date axis, ranging from 1995 to 2023." aria-orientation="horizontal" aria-valuemax="Sun Sep 10 2023 13:43:17 GMT-0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)" aria-valuemin="Fri Oct 20 1995 11:16:42 GMT-0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)" class="x-tick-labels date-axis grid-x datawrapper-07y1Z-1l7kcfx" role="graphics-axis" transform="translate(0,221.3125)"><text aria-hidden="true" class="x-tick-label bottom first" transform="translate(5.3316705702677964,14)" y="0"><tspan dy="0" x="0">1996</tspan></text><text aria-hidden="true" class="x-tick-label bottom" transform="translate(59.036482953498826,14)" y="0"><tspan dy="0" x="0">1998</tspan></text><text aria-hidden="true" class="x-tick-label bottom" transform="translate(112.66782774113037,14)" y="0"><tspan dy="0" x="0">2000</tspan></text><text aria-hidden="true" class="x-tick-label bottom" transform="translate(166.3726401243614,14)" y="0"><tspan dy="0" x="0">2002</tspan></text><text aria-hidden="true" class="x-tick-label bottom" transform="translate(220.00398491199294,14)" y="0"><tspan dy="0" x="0">2004</tspan></text><text aria-hidden="true" class="x-tick-label bottom" transform="translate(273.708797295224,14)" y="0"><tspan dy="0" x="0">2006</tspan></text><text aria-hidden="true" class="x-tick-label bottom" transform="translate(327.3401420828555,14)" y="0"><tspan dy="0" x="0">2008</tspan></text><text aria-hidden="true" class="x-tick-label bottom" transform="translate(381.04495446608655,14)" y="0"><tspan dy="0" x="0">2010</tspan></text><text aria-hidden="true" class="x-tick-label bottom" transform="translate(434.6762992537181,14)" y="0"><tspan dy="0" x="0">2012</tspan></text><text aria-hidden="true" class="x-tick-label bottom" transform="translate(488.38111163694913,14)" y="0"><tspan dy="0" x="0">2014</tspan></text><text aria-hidden="true" class="x-tick-label bottom" transform="translate(542.0124564245807,14)" y="0"><tspan dy="0" x="0">2016</tspan></text><text aria-hidden="true" class="x-tick-label bottom" transform="translate(595.7172688078117,14)" y="0"><tspan dy="0" x="0">2018</tspan></text><text aria-hidden="true" class="x-tick-label bottom" transform="translate(649.3486135954432,14)" y="0"><tspan dy="0" x="0">2020</tspan></text><text aria-hidden="true" class="x-tick-label bottom last" transform="translate(703.0534259786742,14)" y="0"><tspan dy="0" x="0">2022</tspan></text></g></g><g class="y-grid" direction="ltr"><g aria-datatype="number" aria-label="Vertical axis, ranging from 0 to 80." aria-orientation="vertical" aria-valuemax="80" aria-valuemin="0" class="y-tick-labels number-axis grid-y datawrapper-07y1Z-nwf991" role="graphics-axis" transform="translate(-5,0)"><text aria-hidden="true" class="y-tick-label left is-zero last" transform="translate(0,221.3125)" x="0" y="0"><tspan dy="0" x="-1">0</tspan></text><text aria-hidden="true" class="y-tick-label left" transform="translate(0,167.234375)" x="0" y="0"><tspan dy="0" x="-1">20</tspan></text><text aria-hidden="true" class="y-tick-label left" transform="translate(0,113.15625)" x="0" y="0"><tspan dy="0" x="-1">40</tspan></text><text aria-hidden="true" class="y-tick-label left" transform="translate(0,59.078125)" x="0" y="0"><tspan dy="0" x="-1">60</tspan></text><text aria-hidden="true" class="y-tick-label left first" transform="translate(0,5)" x="0" y="0"><tspan dy="0" x="-1">80</tspan></text></g><g class="y-base-lines grid-y datawrapper-07y1Z-n2qvu0"><line transform="translate(0, 216.3125)" x1="748.421875"></line></g></g></g></g></g></svg><svg aria-hidden="true" class="tooltip-layer" height="294" width="800"><g><g transform="translate(24.578125,52.140625)"><g aria-hidden="true" class="tooltip" transform="translate(88.12965081089895,48.670312499999994)"></g></g></g></svg><span style="background-color: #04ff00;"><text class="tooltip bg" style="stroke: rgb(228, 242, 225);" transform="translate(-3,32)"><tspan dy="0" style="text-anchor: start;" x="0">% Should not be valid</tspan><tspan dy="15" style="text-anchor: start;" x="0">1999 Feb</tspan><tspan dy="15" style="text-anchor: start;" x="0">62</tspan></text><text class="tooltip fg" style="fill: rgb(43, 43, 43);" transform="translate(-3,32)"><tspan dy="0" style="fill: rgb(0, 33, 105); text-anchor: start;" x="0">% Should not be valid</tspan><tspan dy="15" style="text-anchor: start;" x="0">1999 Feb</tspan><tspan dy="15" style="text-anchor: start;" x="0">62</tspan></text><line style="stroke-width: 1; stroke: rgb(51, 51, 51);" y1="5" y2="18"></line><circle r="5" style="stroke: rgb(51, 51, 51);"></circle></span></span><div class="d3l-main" style="left: 24.578125px; position: absolute; top: 52.140625px;"><div class="d3l-color-key" style="left: -24.578125px; opacity: 1; position: absolute; top: -52.140625px; width: 800px;"><span style="font-size: small;"><div class="d3l-item" style="align-items: center; background-color: #04ff00; display: inline-flex; margin-right: 8px; opacity: 1;"><svg class="d3l-key legend-key" height="20" width="16"><path class="key-line line-style-width-0 line-style-dash-0" d="M1,10 L15,10" style="stroke: rgb(6, 135, 75);"></path></svg><span class="label legend-text" data-column="% Should be valid" data-row="-1"><span style="color: #2b2b2b; fill: rgb(43, 43, 43); text-shadow: rgb(228, 242, 225) 0px 0px 2px; vertical-align: middle;">% (71%-Green)Should be valid</span></span></div><div class="d3l-item" style="align-items: center; display: inline-flex; margin-right: 8px; opacity: 1;"><svg class="d3l-key legend-key" height="20" width="16"></svg><span style="background-color: #04ff00;"><path class="key-line line-style-width-0 line-style-dash-0" d="M1,10 L15,10" style="stroke: rgb(0, 33, 105);"></path></span><span class="label legend-text" data-column="% Should not be valid" data-row="-1"><span style="color: #2b2b2b; fill: rgb(43, 43, 43); text-shadow: rgb(228, 242, 225) 0px 0px 2px; vertical-align: middle;"><br /></span></span><span class="label legend-text" data-column="% Should not be valid" data-row="-1" style="background-color: #2b00fe;"><span style="color: #2b2b2b; fill: rgb(43, 43, 43); text-shadow: rgb(228, 242, 225) 0px 0px 2px; vertical-align: middle;">% (28%-Blue)Should not be valid</span></span></div></span></div><div class="d3l-line-labels last-value-labels"><div class="d3l-line-label connected-label label" data-column="% Should be valid" data-row="-1" style="left: 748.421875px; opacity: 1; position: absolute; top: 19.335156px; width: 16.575989px;"><span style="color: #2b2b2b; fill: rgb(43, 43, 43); text-shadow: rgb(228, 242, 225) 0px 0px 2px;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: #04ff00;">71</span></span></span></div><div class="d3l-line-label connected-label label" data-column="% Should not be valid" data-row="-1" style="left: 748.421875px; opacity: 1; position: absolute; top: 135.603125px; width: 16.575989px;"><span style="background-color: #2b00fe; color: #2b2b2b; fill: rgb(43, 43, 43); text-shadow: rgb(228, 242, 225) 0px 0px 2px;"><span style="font-size: small;">28</span></span></div></div></div></div></div><div class="dw-above-footer datawrapper-07y1Z-179vhby" style="margin: 0px 0px 20px; position: relative;"><div class="block notes-block datawrapper-07y1Z-ar2sym" style="position: relative; text-decoration-color: currentcolor; text-decoration-style: solid;"><span class="block-inner"><span style="font-size: small;">Trend for polls </span></span></div></div></span></div></div></span></div></td></tr></tbody></table><div id="fb-root"></div>
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<div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="330" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hbleOB0843A" width="487" youtube-src-id="hbleOB0843A"></iframe></div><br /><div><br /></div><div> </div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">WASHINGTON (TND) — The percentage of U.S. adults who do not identify as heterosexual has more than doubled since 2012, according to data from a recent Gallup poll.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">When Gallup began measuring survey respondents’ sexual identities in 2012, just 3.5% identified as part of the LGBT community. In 2023, this figure jumped to 7.6%.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Bisexual adults represented the largest subsection of this group, with 4.4% of U.S. adults and 57.3% of LGBT adults saying they are bisexual. Transgender individuals made up fewer than 1% of U.S. adults and about one in eight LGBT adults.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Young Americans led in terms of sexual diversity, with one in 10 millennials and one in five members of Gen Z identifying as part of the LGBT community. Bisexuality accounted for 15% of all Gen Z adults’ sexual identities.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Overall, each younger generation is about twice as likely as the generation that preceded it to identify as LGBTQ+,” pollsters wrote. “If current trends continue, it is likely that the proportion of LGBTQ+ identifiers will exceed 10% of U.S. adults at some point within the next three decades.”</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Women were two times more likely to identify as LGBT than men, with 28.5% of Gen Z women identifying as such compared to 10.6% of men of the same age group. Figures did not account for non-binary individuals, who make up less than 1% of the U.S. population.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Similar reports released in January showed a rise in diagnoses of gender dysphoria from 2018 to 2022. All but one U.S. state saw an increase in diagnoses from 2018-22. Diagnoses in minors increased to 20.4% from 17.5%, the report notes.</span></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><div id="amzn-assoc-ad-0cfeddde-5d3b-429d-9f85-25fe4aa5fce1"></div><script async src="//z-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/onejs?MarketPlace=US&adInstanceId=0cfeddde-5d3b-429d-9f85-25fe4aa5fce1"></script><!-- Google tag (gtag.js) -->
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box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Roboto, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 0.875rem; line-break: anywhere; line-height: 1.25rem; margin-top: 0.5rem; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-all;">2.52Min</article><article class="mt-2 break-words text-sm text-gray-600 break-all" style="border: 0px solid rgb(227, 227, 227); box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Roboto, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; line-break: anywhere; line-height: 1.25rem; margin-top: 0.5rem; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-all;"><span style="font-size: 14.000001px;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">First top-flight male soccer star to publicly identify as gay proposes to partner on the </span></article><article class="mt-2 break-words text-sm text-gray-600 break-all" style="border: 0px solid rgb(227, 227, 227); box-sizing: border-box; line-break: anywhere; line-height: 1.25rem; margin-top: 0.5rem; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-all;"><article class="mt-2 break-words text-sm text-gray-600 break-all" style="border: 0px solid rgb(227, 227, 227); box-sizing: border-box; line-break: anywhere; line-height: 1.25rem; margin-top: 0.5rem; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-all;"><span style="font-family: Roboto, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Segoe UI, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, Helvetica Neue, sans-serif, Apple Color Emoji, Segoe UI Emoji, Segoe UI Symbol; font-size: medium;">home pitch</span></article><article class="mt-2 break-words text-sm text-gray-600 break-all" style="border: 0px solid rgb(227, 227, 227); box-sizing: border-box; line-break: anywhere; line-height: 1.25rem; margin-top: 0.5rem; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-all;"><span style="font-family: Roboto, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Segoe UI, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, Helvetica Neue, sans-serif, Apple Color Emoji, Segoe UI Emoji, Segoe UI Symbol; font-size: medium;">(CNN) — Josh Cavallo, the first top-flight male professional soccer star to publicly identify as gay, has blazed a new trail by proposing to his partner on the pitch of his club.</span></article><article class="mt-2 break-words text-sm text-gray-600 break-all" style="border: 0px solid rgb(227, 227, 227); box-sizing: border-box; line-break: anywhere; line-height: 1.25rem; margin-top: 0.5rem; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-all;"><span style="font-family: Roboto, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Segoe UI, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, Helvetica Neue, sans-serif, Apple Color Emoji, Segoe UI Emoji, Segoe UI Symbol; font-size: medium;"> </span></article><article class="mt-2 break-words text-sm text-gray-600 break-all" style="border: 0px solid rgb(227, 227, 227); box-sizing: border-box; line-break: anywhere; line-height: 1.25rem; margin-top: 0.5rem; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-all;"><span style="font-family: Roboto, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Segoe UI, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, Helvetica Neue, sans-serif, Apple Color Emoji, Segoe UI Emoji, Segoe UI Symbol; font-size: medium;">By Chris Lau </span></article><article class="mt-2 break-words text-sm text-gray-600 break-all" style="border: 0px solid rgb(227, 227, 227); box-sizing: border-box; line-break: anywhere; line-height: 1.25rem; margin-top: 0.5rem; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-all;"><span style="font-family: Roboto, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Segoe UI, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, Helvetica Neue, sans-serif, Apple Color Emoji, Segoe UI Emoji, Segoe UI Symbol; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></article><article class="mt-2 break-words text-sm text-gray-600 break-all" style="border: 0px solid rgb(227, 227, 227); box-sizing: border-box; line-break: anywhere; line-height: 1.25rem; margin-top: 0.5rem; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-all;"><span style="font-family: Roboto, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Segoe UI, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, Helvetica Neue, sans-serif, Apple Color Emoji, Segoe UI Emoji, Segoe UI Symbol; font-size: medium;">(CNN) — Josh Cavallo, the first top-flight male professional soccer star to publicly identify as gay, has blazed a new trail by proposing to his partner on the pitch of his club.</span></article><article class="mt-2 break-words text-sm text-gray-600 break-all" style="border: 0px solid rgb(227, 227, 227); box-sizing: border-box; line-break: anywhere; line-height: 1.25rem; margin-top: 0.5rem; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-all;"><span style="font-family: Roboto, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Segoe UI, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, Helvetica Neue, sans-serif, Apple Color Emoji, Segoe UI Emoji, Segoe UI Symbol; font-size: medium;"> The Australian player made history in 2021 when he posted an emotional online video to talk about his sexuality and vowed to change the sport’s culture “to show that everyone is welcome in the game of football.”</span></article><article class="mt-2 break-words text-sm text-gray-600 break-all" style="border: 0px solid rgb(227, 227, 227); box-sizing: border-box; line-break: anywhere; line-height: 1.25rem; margin-top: 0.5rem; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-all;"><span style="font-family: Roboto, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Segoe UI, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, Helvetica Neue, sans-serif, Apple Color Emoji, Segoe UI Emoji, Segoe UI Symbol; font-size: medium;"> </span></article><article class="mt-2 break-words text-sm text-gray-600 break-all" style="border: 0px solid rgb(227, 227, 227); box-sizing: border-box; line-break: anywhere; line-height: 1.25rem; margin-top: 0.5rem; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-all;"><span style="font-family: Roboto, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Segoe UI, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, Helvetica Neue, sans-serif, Apple Color Emoji, Segoe UI Emoji, Segoe UI Symbol; font-size: medium;">His announcement was hailed as a watershed moment in a sport with a long and troubled history of entrenched homophobia, particularly in the men’s game.</span></article><article class="mt-2 break-words text-sm text-gray-600 break-all" style="border: 0px solid rgb(227, 227, 227); box-sizing: border-box; line-break: anywhere; line-height: 1.25rem; margin-top: 0.5rem; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-all;"><span style="font-family: Roboto, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Segoe UI, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, Helvetica Neue, sans-serif, Apple Color Emoji, Segoe UI Emoji, Segoe UI Symbol; font-size: medium;"> Since then, Cavallo, 24, has become one of the most recognizable faces in the sport and an outspoken advocate for greater equality for the LGBTQ community.</span></article><article class="mt-2 break-words text-sm text-gray-600 break-all" style="border: 0px solid rgb(227, 227, 227); box-sizing: border-box; line-break: anywhere; line-height: 1.25rem; margin-top: 0.5rem; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-all;"><span style="font-family: Roboto, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Segoe UI, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, Helvetica Neue, sans-serif, Apple Color Emoji, Segoe UI Emoji, Segoe UI Symbol; font-size: medium;"> On Thursday, he announced that he had proposed to his fiancée at Coopers Stadium, the home pitch of his Australian A-League team Adelaide United.</span></article><article class="mt-2 break-words text-sm text-gray-600 break-all" style="border: 0px solid rgb(227, 227, 227); box-sizing: border-box; line-break: anywhere; line-height: 1.25rem; margin-top: 0.5rem; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-all;"><span style="font-family: Roboto, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Segoe UI, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, Helvetica Neue, sans-serif, Apple Color Emoji, Segoe UI Emoji, Segoe UI Symbol; font-size: medium;"> Alongside a picture of him on one knee, holding out a ring, Cavallo declared in a post on X: “Starting this year with my fiancée.”</span></article><article class="mt-2 break-words text-sm text-gray-600 break-all" style="border: 0px solid rgb(227, 227, 227); box-sizing: border-box; line-break: anywhere; line-height: 1.25rem; margin-top: 0.5rem; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-all;"><span style="font-family: Roboto, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Segoe UI, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, Helvetica Neue, sans-serif, Apple Color Emoji, Segoe UI Emoji, Segoe UI Symbol; font-size: medium;">Other photos showed the player beaming while his partner covered his eyes and a close-up of the two holding hands.</span></article><article class="mt-2 break-words text-sm text-gray-600 break-all" style="border: 0px solid rgb(227, 227, 227); box-sizing: border-box; line-break: anywhere; line-height: 1.25rem; margin-top: 0.5rem; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-all;"><span style="font-family: Roboto, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Segoe UI, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, Helvetica Neue, sans-serif, Apple Color Emoji, Segoe UI Emoji, Segoe UI Symbol; font-size: medium;"> Cavallo thanked his team “for helping set up this surprise.”</span></article><article class="mt-2 break-words text-sm text-gray-600 break-all" style="border: 0px solid rgb(227, 227, 227); box-sizing: border-box; line-break: anywhere; line-height: 1.25rem; margin-top: 0.5rem; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-all;"><span style="font-family: Roboto, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Segoe UI, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, Helvetica Neue, sans-serif, Apple Color Emoji, Segoe UI Emoji, Segoe UI Symbol; font-size: medium;">“You have provided a safe space in football, one that I never in my dreams thought could ever be possible,” he wrote on X, adding that he wanted to “share this special moment on the pitch, where it all started.”</span></article><article class="mt-2 break-words text-sm text-gray-600 break-all" style="border: 0px solid rgb(227, 227, 227); box-sizing: border-box; line-break: anywhere; line-height: 1.25rem; margin-top: 0.5rem; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-all;"><span style="font-family: Roboto, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Segoe UI, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, Helvetica Neue, sans-serif, Apple Color Emoji, Segoe UI Emoji, Segoe UI Symbol; font-size: medium;">Subsequently, Cavallo has played in A-League Pride matches with the name and number on his jersey printed in rainbow colors to raise awareness. He has constantly posted encouraging messages on social media.</span></article><article class="mt-2 break-words text-sm text-gray-600 break-all" style="border: 0px solid rgb(227, 227, 227); box-sizing: border-box; line-break: anywhere; line-height: 1.25rem; margin-top: 0.5rem; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-all;"><span style="font-family: Roboto, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Segoe UI, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, Helvetica Neue, sans-serif, Apple Color Emoji, Segoe UI Emoji, Segoe UI Symbol; font-size: medium;"> He was named “Man of the Year” in 2022 at an awards ceremony hosted by Attitude Magazine, Europe’s largest LGBTQ magazine publication.</span></article><article class="mt-2 break-words text-sm text-gray-600 break-all" style="border: 0px solid rgb(227, 227, 227); box-sizing: border-box; line-break: anywhere; line-height: 1.25rem; margin-top: 0.5rem; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-all;"><span style="font-family: Roboto, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Segoe UI, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, Helvetica Neue, sans-serif, Apple Color Emoji, Segoe UI Emoji, Segoe UI Symbol; font-size: medium;"> Cavallo spoke out against FIFA’s decision two years ago to ban players from wearing “OneLove” armbands at the World Cup held in Qatar during an interview with CNN, saying that move made him feel “excluded.”</span></article><article class="mt-2 break-words text-sm text-gray-600 break-all" style="border: 0px solid rgb(227, 227, 227); box-sizing: border-box; line-break: anywhere; line-height: 1.25rem; margin-top: 0.5rem; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-all;"><span style="font-family: Roboto, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Segoe UI, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, Helvetica Neue, sans-serif, Apple Color Emoji, Segoe UI Emoji, Segoe UI Symbol; font-size: medium;">He didn’t make the Socceroo’s final squad, but at the time said he wished to see the Australian captain wear the armband in solidarity with the LGBTQ community.</span></article><article class="mt-2 break-words text-sm text-gray-600 break-all" style="border: 0px solid rgb(227, 227, 227); box-sizing: border-box; line-break: anywhere; line-height: 1.25rem; margin-top: 0.5rem; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-all;"><span style="font-family: Roboto, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Segoe UI, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, Helvetica Neue, sans-serif, Apple Color Emoji, Segoe UI Emoji, Segoe UI Symbol; font-size: medium;">“If I had been there and I had been the captain, yes, I would have worn the armband. I’m not ashamed to be who I am,” Cavallo told CNN in 2022.</span></article><article class="mt-2 break-words text-sm text-gray-600 break-all" style="border: 0px solid rgb(227, 227, 227); box-sizing: border-box; line-break: anywhere; line-height: 1.25rem; margin-top: 0.5rem; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-all;"><span style="font-family: Roboto, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Segoe UI, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, Helvetica Neue, sans-serif, Apple Color Emoji, Segoe UI Emoji, Segoe UI Symbol; font-size: medium;">“And it’s exactly the reason why I’ve come out and to be the person I am today,” he added.</span></article><article class="mt-2 break-words text-sm text-gray-600 break-all" style="border: 0px solid rgb(227, 227, 227); box-sizing: border-box; line-break: anywhere; line-height: 1.25rem; margin-top: 0.5rem; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-all;"><span style="font-family: Roboto, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Segoe UI, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, Helvetica Neue, sans-serif, Apple Color Emoji, Segoe UI Emoji, Segoe UI Symbol; font-size: medium;"> Professional soccer has made strong gains in tackling homophobia and racism in recent years and launched multiple campaigns but prejudice remains entrenched among some fans, clubs, and players.</span></article><article class="mt-2 break-words text-sm text-gray-600 break-all" style="border: 0px solid rgb(227, 227, 227); box-sizing: border-box; line-break: anywhere; line-height: 1.25rem; margin-top: 0.5rem; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-all;"><span style="font-family: Roboto, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Segoe UI, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, Helvetica Neue, sans-serif, Apple Color Emoji, Segoe UI Emoji, Segoe UI Symbol; font-size: medium;"> According to a 2022-23 season report released by Kick It Out, the English football anti-discrimination group said it received 1,007 reports of discriminatory behavior, a 65.1% rise on the previous season.</span></article><article class="mt-2 break-words text-sm text-gray-600 break-all" style="border: 0px solid rgb(227, 227, 227); box-sizing: border-box; line-break: anywhere; line-height: 1.25rem; margin-top: 0.5rem; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-all;"><span style="font-family: Roboto, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Segoe UI, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, Helvetica Neue, sans-serif, Apple Color Emoji, Segoe UI Emoji, Segoe UI Symbol; font-size: medium;"> While racism was the most prevalent form of discrimination, Kick It Out said research undertaken by Signify, which investigates online threat and disinformation, had identified “peaks of homophobic and misogynistic abuse targeting several high-profile WSL [Women’s Super League] players,” even as the game’s authorities continue to promote several campaigns tackling homophobia and promoting LGBTQ+ inclusion.</span></article><article class="mt-2 break-words text-sm text-gray-600 break-all" style="border: 0px solid rgb(227, 227, 227); box-sizing: border-box; line-break: anywhere; line-height: 1.25rem; margin-top: 0.5rem; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-all;"><span style="font-family: Roboto, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Segoe UI, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, Helvetica Neue, sans-serif, Apple Color Emoji, Segoe UI Emoji, Segoe UI Symbol; font-size: medium;"> To this day there are still very few professional male footballers who have publicly identified as gay.</span></article><article class="mt-2 break-words text-sm text-gray-600 break-all" style="border: 0px solid rgb(227, 227, 227); box-sizing: border-box; line-break: anywhere; line-height: 1.25rem; margin-top: 0.5rem; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-all;"><span style="font-family: Roboto, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Segoe UI, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, Helvetica Neue, sans-serif, Apple Color Emoji, Segoe UI Emoji, Segoe UI Symbol; font-size: medium;"> Earlier this week Austria’s national squad announced it had not selected three Rapid Vienna soccer players for duty after a video emerged of the players taking part in post-match celebrations shouting homophobic chants with a selection of the crowd.</span></article><article class="mt-2 break-words text-sm text-gray-600 break-all" style="border: 0px solid rgb(227, 227, 227); box-sizing: border-box; line-break: anywhere; line-height: 1.25rem; margin-top: 0.5rem; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-all;"><span style="font-family: Roboto, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Segoe UI, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, Helvetica Neue, sans-serif, Apple Color Emoji, Segoe UI Emoji, Segoe UI Symbol; font-size: medium;"> However, there have been high-profile comments and interventions by prominent footballers calling for more tolerance and diversity.</span></article><article class="mt-2 break-words text-sm text-gray-600 break-all" style="border: 0px solid rgb(227, 227, 227); box-sizing: border-box; line-break: anywhere; line-height: 1.25rem; margin-top: 0.5rem; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-all;"><span style="font-family: Roboto, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Segoe UI, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, Helvetica Neue, sans-serif, Apple Color Emoji, Segoe UI Emoji, Segoe UI Symbol; font-size: medium;"> Last year Arsenal goalkeeper Aaron Ramsdale said that he could no longer remain silent over homophobic abuse in football out of love and respect for his brother, who is gay.</span></article><article class="mt-2 break-words text-sm text-gray-600 break-all" style="border: 0px solid rgb(227, 227, 227); box-sizing: border-box; line-break: anywhere; line-height: 1.25rem; margin-top: 0.5rem; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-all;"><span style="font-family: Roboto, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Segoe UI, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, Helvetica Neue, sans-serif, Apple Color Emoji, Segoe UI Emoji, Segoe UI Symbol; font-size: medium;">“I want my brother… – or anyone of any sexuality, race, or religion – to come to games without having to fear abuse.”</span></article></article><article class="mt-2 break-words text-sm text-gray-600 break-all" style="border: 0px solid rgb(227, 227, 227); box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Roboto, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; line-break: anywhere; line-height: 1.25rem; margin-top: 0.5rem; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-all;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></article><article class="mt-2 break-words text-sm text-gray-600 break-all" style="border: 0px solid rgb(227, 227, 227); box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Roboto, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; line-break: anywhere; line-height: 1.25rem; margin-top: 0.5rem; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-all;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Below is something a source told me which I think might be part of the Private Investigator report who was retained to follow Trump. and find his connection to Putin:</i></span></article><article class="mt-2 break-words text-sm text-gray-600 break-all" style="border: 0px solid rgb(227, 227, 227); box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Roboto, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; line-break: anywhere; line-height: 1.25rem; margin-top: 0.5rem; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-all;"><span style="font-size: medium;">🇷🇺Trump has been cultivated as a Russian asset for over 40 years per a former KGB spy Yuri Shvets. Trump was on Russia's radar in 1977 when he married his first wife, Ivana Zelnickova. He became the target of a spying operation overseen by Czechoslovakia’s intelligence service in cooperation with the KGB. Trump & Ivana visited Moscow in 1987 for the 1st time. Shvets said he was fed KGB talking points & flattered by KGB operatives who floated the idea that he should go into politics noting that he was extremely vulnerable intellectually & psychologically, & he was prone to flattery. “This is what they exploited. They played the game as if they were immensely impressed by his personality and believed this was the guy who should be the president of the US one day: it is people like him who could change the world. They fed him these so-called active measures soundbites and it happened. So it was a big achievement for the KGB's active measures at the time.”</span></article><article class="mt-2 break-words text-sm text-gray-600 break-all" style="border: 0px solid rgb(227, 227, 227); box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Roboto, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 0.875rem; line-break: anywhere; line-height: 1.25rem; margin-top: 0.5rem; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-all;"><br /></article><div id="fb-root"></div>
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padding: 0px; transition: background 0.3s,border 0.3s,border-radius 0.3s,box-shadow 0.3s,transform var(--e-transform-transition-duration,0.4s);">03/14/2024</div></div><div class="elementor-element elementor-element-449b6378 elementor-widget__width-auto elementor-widget elementor-widget-text-editor" data-element_type="widget" data-id="449b6378" data-widget_type="text-editor.default" style="--align-content: initial; --align-items: initial; --align-self: initial; --flex-basis: initial; --flex-direction: initial; --flex-grow: initial; --flex-shrink: initial; --flex-wrap: initial; --gap: initial; --justify-content: initial; --order: initial; --swiper-navigation-size: 44px; --swiper-pagination-bullet-horizontal-gap: 6px; --swiper-pagination-bullet-size: 6px; --swiper-theme-color: #000; --widgets-spacing: 20px 20px; align-content: var(--align-content); align-items: var(--align-items); align-self: flex-start; box-sizing: border-box; flex-basis: var(--flex-basis); flex-direction: var(--flex-direction); 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flex-shrink: var(--flex-shrink); flex-wrap: var(--flex-wrap); font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 16px; gap: var(--gap); justify-content: var(--justify-content); margin-block-end: 20px; margin-bottom: 0px; order: var(--order); position: relative; width: 646.65625px;"><div class="elementor-widget-container" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 8px 0px 24px; transition: background 0.3s,border 0.3s,border-radius 0.3s,box-shadow 0.3s,transform var(--e-transform-transition-duration,0.4s);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-block: 0px 0.9rem;">Hundreds of gay couples in Taiwan rushed to get married on Friday – the first day a landmark decision that legalized same-sex marriage took effect. Taiwan became the first country in Asia to allow same-sex marriage last week in a legislative vote on a cause that the island’s LGBT rights activists have championed for two decades. A household registration office in central Taipei was packed as couples seized the earliest opportunity to tie the knot. Jubilant couples held bouquets of flowers and posed for photos, smiling and kissing. “The legalization of marriage is only the first step,” said a 48-year-old novelist who writes under the pen name Chen Hsue.</p></div></div><div class="elementor-element elementor-element-6e1427ab elementor-widget elementor-widget-button" data-element_type="widget" data-id="6e1427ab" data-widget_type="button.default" style="align-content: var(--align-content); align-items: var(--align-items); align-self: var(--align-self); box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(35, 35, 35); color: #232323; flex-basis: var(--flex-basis); flex-direction: var(--flex-direction); flex-grow: var(--flex-grow); flex-shrink: var(--flex-shrink); flex-wrap: var(--flex-wrap); font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 18px; gap: var(--gap); justify-content: var(--justify-content); margin-block-end: 20px; margin-bottom: 0px; order: var(--order); position: relative; width: 646.65625px;"><div class="elementor-widget-container" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 16px; transition: background 0.3s,border 0.3s,border-radius 0.3s,box-shadow 0.3s,transform var(--e-transform-transition-duration,0.4s);"><div class="elementor-button-wrapper" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a class="elementor-button elementor-button-link elementor-size-sm" href="https://uk.movies.yahoo.com/movies/taiwan-gay-marriage-hundreds-couples-tie-knot-historic-112200907.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAJLZ9L69tG0PyKXykW-n4qWU3Np8LUyO8CICwiKq2lbCHJcrl3IrfD3xRHAOJ-dHth7XlwXLQ3TQ1IrZn7jmzlPIHUnOrCuGEtkME6kjXQMOaAngxbCm4eV2Z5JHD_Am2_JskaXFnA6Ho6t6sKMbGifzzkkqcLVxco2CgfkGteFL" style="background-color: rgba(2, 1, 1, 0); border-radius: 20px; box-shadow: none; box-sizing: border-box; color: var( --e-global-color-5d1dea8 ); display: inline-block; fill: var( --e-global-color-5d1dea8 ); font-family: Montserrat, serif; font-size: 12px; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1; padding: 0px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s;" target="_blank"><span class="elementor-button-content-wrapper" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; justify-content: center; text-decoration: inherit;"><span class="elementor-button-icon elementor-align-icon-right" style="box-sizing: border-box; flex-grow: 0; margin-left: 5px; order: 15; text-decoration: inherit;"><span aria-hidden="true" class="fas fa-angle-double-right" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; font-family: "Font Awesome 5 Free"; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; line-height: 1; text-rendering: auto;"></span></span><span class="elementor-button-text" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; flex-grow: 1; order: 10; text-decoration: inherit;">FULL STORY</span></span></a></div></div></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><div id="amzn-assoc-ad-0cfeddde-5d3b-429d-9f85-25fe4aa5fce1"></div><script async src="//z-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/onejs?MarketPlace=US&adInstanceId=0cfeddde-5d3b-429d-9f85-25fe4aa5fce1"></script><!-- Google tag (gtag.js) -->
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<div><br /></div><div> </div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img height="210" src="https://www.thepinknews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/justice-minister-Eric-Dupond-Moretti-France.jpg?w=792&h=416&crop=1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">French Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti apologized to those who suffered under anti-gay laws. (Getty) Source: PinkNews</td></tr></tbody></table><br /></div><div><br /></div><div> </div><div><div class="elementor-element elementor-element-6ec44382 elementor-widget elementor-widget-theme-post-content" data-element_type="widget" data-id="6ec44382" data-widget_type="theme-post-content.default" style="align-content: var(--align-content); align-items: var(--align-items); align-self: var(--align-self); box-sizing: border-box; flex-basis: var(--flex-basis); flex-direction: var(--flex-direction); flex-grow: var(--flex-grow); flex-shrink: var(--flex-shrink); flex-wrap: var(--flex-wrap); font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 16px; gap: var(--gap); justify-content: var(--justify-content); margin-block-end: 20px; margin-bottom: 0px; order: var(--order); position: relative; width: 646.65625px;"><div class="elementor-widget-container" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 8px 0px 24px; transition: background 0.3s,border 0.3s,border-radius 0.3s,box-shadow 0.3s,transform var(--e-transform-transition-duration,0.4s);"><p data-beyondwords-marker="fd6e794c-f9db-4bea-9231-70df8b68c028" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-block: 0px 0.9rem;">Following the introduction of a bill that seeks to compensate the victims of past anti-gay laws, Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti issued an apology “on behalf of the French Republic”. “Sorry to the people – the homosexual people of France – who, for 40 years, suffered this totally unfair repression,” he said. Homosexuality was decriminalized in France in 1791 during the French Revolution. However, an unequal age of consent was introduced by the Nazi-backed Vichy government during World War Two, raising the age of consent to 21 for same-sex sexual activity. It was eventually equalized in 1982. LGBTQ+ people in France were also persecuted in the latter half of the 20th century under a public indecency law introduced in 1960.</p></div></div><div class="elementor-element elementor-element-6e1427ab elementor-widget elementor-widget-button" data-element_type="widget" data-id="6e1427ab" data-widget_type="button.default" style="align-content: var(--align-content); align-items: var(--align-items); align-self: var(--align-self); box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(35, 35, 35); color: #232323; flex-basis: var(--flex-basis); flex-direction: var(--flex-direction); flex-grow: var(--flex-grow); flex-shrink: var(--flex-shrink); flex-wrap: var(--flex-wrap); font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 18px; gap: var(--gap); justify-content: var(--justify-content); margin-block-end: 20px; margin-bottom: 0px; order: var(--order); position: relative; width: 646.65625px;"><div class="elementor-widget-container" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 16px; transition: background 0.3s,border 0.3s,border-radius 0.3s,box-shadow 0.3s,transform var(--e-transform-transition-duration,0.4s);"><div class="elementor-button-wrapper" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a class="elementor-button elementor-button-link elementor-size-sm" href="https://www.thepinknews.com/2024/03/13/french-minister-apologises-to-lgbtq-community-anti-gay-laws/" style="background-color: rgba(2, 1, 1, 0); border-radius: 20px; box-shadow: none; box-sizing: border-box; color: var( --e-global-color-5d1dea8 ); display: inline-block; fill: var( --e-global-color-5d1dea8 ); font-family: Montserrat, serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1; padding: 0px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s;" target="_blank"><span class="elementor-button-content-wrapper" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; justify-content: center; text-decoration: inherit;"><span class="elementor-button-icon elementor-align-icon-right" style="box-sizing: border-box; flex-grow: 0; font-weight: 700; margin-left: 5px; order: 15; text-decoration: inherit;"><span aria-hidden="true" class="fas fa-angle-double-right" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; font-family: "Font Awesome 5 Free"; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; line-height: 1; text-rendering: auto;"></span></span><span class="elementor-button-text" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; flex-grow: 1; order: 10; text-decoration: inherit;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><u>FULL STORY</u></span></span></span></a></div></div></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><div id="amzn-assoc-ad-0cfeddde-5d3b-429d-9f85-25fe4aa5fce1"></div><script async src="//z-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/onejs?MarketPlace=US&adInstanceId=0cfeddde-5d3b-429d-9f85-25fe4aa5fce1"></script><!-- Google tag (gtag.js) -->
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font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span class="byline-prefix" face="nyt-franklin, helvetica, arial, sans-serif" style="border: 0px; caret-color: rgb(54, 54, 54); color: #363636; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">By </span><span class="css-1baulvz" face="nyt-franklin, helvetica, arial, sans-serif" itemprop="name" style="border: 0px; caret-color: rgb(54, 54, 54); color: #363636; display: inline-block; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a class="css-n8ff4n e1jsehar0" href="https://www.nytimes.com/by/meaghan-tobin" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-color: var(--color-content-quaternary,#727272); text-decoration-style: solid; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-underline-offset: 1px; vertical-align: baseline;">Meaghan Tobin</a></span><span face="nyt-franklin, helvetica, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(54, 54, 54); color: #363636; font-weight: 700;"> and </span><span class="css-1baulvz last-byline" face="nyt-franklin, helvetica, arial, sans-serif" itemprop="name" style="border: 0px; caret-color: rgb(54, 54, 54); color: #363636; display: inline-block; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a class="css-n8ff4n e1jsehar0" href="https://www.nytimes.com/by/john-liu" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-color: var(--color-content-quaternary,#727272); text-decoration-style: solid; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-underline-offset: 1px; vertical-align: baseline;">John Liu</a></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">The New York Times</span></div><div><br /></div><div><b><i><a href="http://adamfoxie.blogspot.com">Adam Gonzalez</a></i></b>: I hope in the future after Ukraine has established Territorial integrity, they will work on something similar. We have already seen in a few instances in which Ukraine soldiers could not have the Starlink because The owner decided not to allow them to have it for that period. You can't fight a war when a cable operator/owner half a world away can decide which battles you should fight or not, regardless of reason.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><div>In Taiwan, the government is racing to do what no country or even company has been able to: build an alternative to Starlink, the satellite internet service operated by Elon Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX.</div><div><br /></div><div>Starlink has allowed militaries, power plants, and medical workers to maintain crucial online connections when primary infrastructure has failed in emergencies, such as an earthquake in Tonga and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.</div><div><br /></div><div>Officials in Taiwan face constant reminders that its communication infrastructure must be able to withstand a crisis. The island democracy sits 80 miles from China, where leaders have vowed to use force if needed to assert claims that Taiwan is part of its territory.</div><div><br /></div><div>Taiwan experiences regular cyberattacks and near-daily incursions into its waters and airspace by the People’s Liberation Army, which has been built up in recent years. </div><div><br /></div><div>And Taiwan’s infrastructure is fragile. Last year, the outlying Matsu islands, within view of the Chinese coast, endured patchy internet for months after two undersea internet cables broke. These fiber optic cables that connect Taiwan to the internet have suffered about 30 such breaks since 2017, mostly from anchors dragged by the many ships in the area.</div><div><br /></div><div>The war in Ukraine amplified the sense of vulnerability weighing on Taiwan’s leaders. With much of its telecommunications system knocked offline by Russian armaments and cyberattacks, Ukraine’s military has come to depend on a system controlled by Mr. Musk.</div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img height="267" src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/03/17/multimedia/00taiwan-starlink-02-cwpm/00taiwan-starlink-02-cwpm-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;">A mountain with grass and satellite equipment attached to a pole.</span></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div>Telecom equipment in Beigan, part of Matsu Islands, Taiwan. Last year, thousands of residents of Taiwan’s outlying islands endured painfully slow internet speeds for months. Credit...Huizhong Wu/Associated Press</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>“The Ukraine-Russia war gave us a profound reflection,” said Liao Jung-Huang, a director at the government-sponsored Industrial Technology Research Institute. “Even if the cost to build it is high, in a special scenario, the value of having our own constellation is unlimited.”</div><div><br /></div><div>SpaceX dominates the satellite internet industry, and Mr. Musk has long done business in China through his electric car company, Tesla, which has a big manufacturing operation in Shanghai. Officials in Taiwan decided it would be best to build a satellite network they could control. </div><div><br /></div><div>But building a network of satellites manufactured, launched, and navigated from Taiwan will require billions of dollars and years of research and testing.</div><div><br /></div><div>SpaceX has spent five years launching thousands of satellites into what’s known as low-Earth orbit, a zone far closer than where traditional communications satellites fly, beginning roughly 100 miles above Earth. The satellites send signals to terminals on the ground, and being in closer range makes the signal faster.</div><div><br /></div><div>Mr. Musk has repeatedly proclaimed that in a matter of years, his satellite network will blanket the entire globe with internet service as fast as any provided on land.</div><div><br /></div><div>He is not the only tech billionaire with this goal. The Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, has also announced plans for a network in low-Earth orbit. But while SpaceX is responsible for more than half of the active satellites orbiting the Earth, Amazon has launched only two.</div><div><br /></div><div>The British company OneWeb also sent a few hundred satellites to space. But the effort was so costly that it had to be bailed out by the British government before it merged with the European conglomerate Eutelsat into a company called Eutelsat OneWeb.</div><div><br /></div><div>In Taiwan, the government has said that it wanted to send its first communications satellite to orbit by 2026, with a second to follow within two years, while developing four more test satellites. President Tsai Ing-wen pledged $1.3 billion for Taiwan’s space program to develop the best of these tests into a satellite internet network entirely made and controlled by Taiwan.</div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img height="267" src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/03/17/multimedia/00taiwan-starlink-03-cwpm/00taiwan-starlink-03-cwpm-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;">People standing around a white screen with wires connected to it. </span></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div>Ukrainians lined up for satellite internet access using a Starlink connection in 2022. The network, operated by SpaceX, has kept internet service running in conflict zones and disaster areas around the world. Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>While the network is being developed, the Taiwan government has brokered deals for access to existing satellite networks. It has said it planned to deploy 700 terminals capable of receiving satellite signals. In August, it became a partner with the Luxembourg company SES, and in November, Chunghwa Telecom announced a partnership with Eutelsat OneWeb. The partnerships could provide layers of backup even after Taiwan gets its own network up and running.</div><div><br /></div><div>“We need to invest in more than one system,” said Yisuo Tzeng, a researcher at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, a think tank funded by Taiwan’s defense ministry. “We can’t put all our eggs in one basket.”</div><div><br /></div><div>More than 40 Taiwanese companies are making parts in the satellite supply chain, Mr. Liao of the Industrial Technology Research Institute said. </div><div><br /></div><div>A made-in-Taiwan satellite network could do more than give Taiwan an alternative communication system. It could establish Taiwan as a producer of key technology for years to come, just as it is the source of most of the world’s advanced semiconductors.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Right now we are strong in semiconductors and electronics manufacturing, but space is a new industry where we can leverage that,” said Yu-Jiu Wang, founder of Tron Future, a start-up making the payload for one of the satellites the government is testing.</div><div><br /></div><div>Among the challenges Taiwan faces is the expense of the rockets that launch the satellites. Most rockets can be used only once and require enormous amounts of fuel, making the cost too high for all but the wealthiest governments to experiment with.</div><div><br /></div><div>Every Taiwanese satellite that went to space from 2005 to 2016 was launched in the United States, said Yen-Sen Chen, founder of the rocket launch company TiSpace, who spent more than a decade at the predecessor to the Taiwan Space Agency. </div><div><br /></div><div>In the past year, Taiwanese research and weather satellites have been launched by the French company Arianespace, as well as SpaceX.</div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img height="267" src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/03/17/multimedia/00taiwan-starlink-ftml/00taiwan-starlink-ftml-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;">Two ferry station ticket machines are out of order, with sheets of white paper taped on their screens.</span></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div>At a ferry station on Beigan, one of Taiwan’s outlying islands, ticket machines were disabled when internet service was lost last year. Credit...Johnson Lai/Associated Press</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Perhaps no entity has devoted more resources to developing rockets than SpaceX.</div><div><br /></div><div>It has become so unavoidable that it even sends competitors’ payloads into space. In December, Mr. Bezos’s project said some of its satellites would go up on three future Falcon 9 launches.</div><div><br /></div><div>Taipei has been exploring ways to acquire satellite internet technology since 2018, including in talks with SpaceX. But Mr. Musk balked at a requirement that any foreign entity involved in communications infrastructure be a joint venture with a local partner that would hold a majority stake. Mr. Musk considered this “totally unacceptable,” said Hsu Chih-hsiang, a researcher at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research. SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment.</div><div><br /></div><div>The talks did not result in any partnership with SpaceX.</div><div><br /></div><div>Last month, Representative Mike Gallagher, Republican of Wisconsin, asserted that by not making Starlink available in Taiwan, SpaceX could be in breach of its contract to make the service accessible to the U.S. government worldwide, according to a letter reviewed by The New York Times.</div><div><br /></div><div>SpaceX is in compliance with all of its U.S. government contracts, the company responded in a post on X.</div><div> </div><div>When asked about the prospects of any collaboration with SpaceX, Taiwan’s Ministry of Digital Affairs said in an emailed statement that it would “evaluate the possibility of cooperation” with any satellite operator, as long as the operator was “in compliance with Taiwan’s national security and information security regulations.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Mr. Musk’s deep business links in China have also raised concerns in Taiwan. China is Tesla’s largest market outside of the United States.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Chinese government loosened longstanding curbs on foreign ownership of companies and doled out lucrative incentives ahead of Tesla setting up its Shanghai Gigafactory. And he has made comments endorsing the Chinese Communist Party’s stance on Taiwan.</div><div><br /></div><div>“What if we relied on Starlink and Musk decided to cut down because of pressure from China, because he has China’s market at stake?” asked Mr. Tzeng at the defense think tank. “We have to take that into consideration.”</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Meaghan Tobin is a technology correspondent for The Times based in Taipei, covering business and tech stories in Asia with a focus on China. More about Meaghan Tobin</i></div><div><i>John Liu covers China and technology for The Times, focusing primarily on the interplay between politics and technology supply chains. He is based in Seoul. More about John Liu</i></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><div id="amzn-assoc-ad-0cfeddde-5d3b-429d-9f85-25fe4aa5fce1"></div><script async src="//z-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/onejs?MarketPlace=US&adInstanceId=0cfeddde-5d3b-429d-9f85-25fe4aa5fce1"></script><!-- Google tag (gtag.js) -->
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<div><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="css-1baulvz" itemprop="name" style="border: 0px; caret-color: rgb(54, 54, 54); color: #363636; display: inline; font-family: nyt-franklin, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1rem; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a class="css-n8ff4n e1jsehar0" href="https://www.nytimes.com/by/richard-fausset" style="border: 0px; color: #363636; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-color: var(--color-content-quaternary,#727272); text-decoration-style: solid; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-underline-offset: 1px; vertical-align: baseline;">Richard Fausset</a></span><span style="background-color: #f8f8f8; caret-color: rgb(54, 54, 54); color: #363636; font-family: nyt-franklin, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"> and </span><span class="css-1baulvz last-byline" itemprop="name" style="border: 0px; caret-color: rgb(54, 54, 54); color: #363636; display: inline; font-family: nyt-franklin, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1rem; margin: 0px 0.25rem 0px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a class="css-n8ff4n e1jsehar0" href="https://www.nytimes.com/by/danny-hakim" style="border: 0px; color: #363636; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-color: var(--color-content-quaternary,#727272); text-decoration-style: solid; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-underline-offset: 1px; vertical-align: baseline;">Danny Hakim</a></span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">The New York Times</span></div><div><br /></div><div><p data-reader-unique-id="19" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: ui-serif; font-size: 18px; max-width: 100%;">An Atlanta judge on Friday ruled that Fani T. Willis, the Fulton Country district attorney, could continue leading the prosecution of former President Donald J. Trump and his allies in Georgia, but only if her former romantic partner, Nathan J. Wade, withdraws as the lead prosecutor of the case.</p><p data-reader-unique-id="20" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: ui-serif; font-size: 18px; max-width: 100%;">The ruling by Judge Scott McAfee of Fulton Superior Court cut a middle path between removing Ms. Willis for a conflict of interest, which defense lawyers had sought, and her full vindication, with the judge sharply criticizing her behavior. Still, with delays mounting, the case is now unlikely to come to trial before the 2024 presidential election, when Mr. Trump is almost certain to be the Republican nominee.</p><div data-reader-unique-id="21" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: ui-serif; font-size: 18px; max-width: 100%;"><p data-reader-unique-id="22" style="max-width: 100%;">Here are the details:</p><ul data-reader-unique-id="23" style="max-width: 100%;"><li data-reader-unique-id="24" style="max-width: 100%;"><p data-reader-unique-id="25" style="max-width: 100%;">Judge McAfee said that no “disqualification of a constitutional officer necessary when a less drastic and sufficiently remedial option is available.” But he concluded<span data-reader-unique-id="26" style="max-width: 100%;"> </span>“that the prosecution of this case cannot proceed until the State selects one of two options.”<span data-reader-unique-id="27" style="max-width: 100%;"> </span>Either “the District Attorney may choose to step aside, along with the whole of her office” or “Wade can withdraw” allowing the case to proceed without further distraction. </p></li><li data-reader-unique-id="28" style="max-width: 100%;"><p data-reader-unique-id="29" style="max-width: 100%;">Although the decision is a setback for Mr. Trump and his 14 co-defendants, leaving in place the district attorney who has been pursuing the case for more than three years, Ms. Willis emerges from weeks of embarrassing hearings and headlines with a <a data-reader-unique-id="30" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/16/us/fani-willis-case-trump.html" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;" title="">bruised reputation</a> that could color the views of a future jury, making convictions more difficult.</p></li><li data-reader-unique-id="31" style="max-width: 100%;"><p data-reader-unique-id="32" style="max-width: 100%;">Mr. Trump and his co-defendants could appeal the judge’s ruling, as could Ms. Willis, further delaying the proceedings and leaving the matter unresolved indefinitely. The state’s Republican-led Senate is also reviewing the conflict-of-interest accusations, and lawmakers have empowered a new oversight commission to investigate and potentially remove prosecutors.</p></li></ul><ul data-reader-unique-id="33" style="max-width: 100%;"><li data-reader-unique-id="34" style="max-width: 100%;"><p data-reader-unique-id="35" style="max-width: 100%;">Judge McAfee’s decision came two days after he <a data-reader-unique-id="36" href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/03/15/us/fani-willis-trump-georgia#donald-trump-charges-quashed-georgia-mcafee" style="color: #416ed2; max-width: 100%; text-decoration: none;" title="">quashed six charges</a> in the case against Mr. Trump and his 14 co-defendants, including one related to a call that Mr. Trump made to pressure Georgia’s secretary of state in early January 2021. But he left intact the rest of the racketeering indictment, which initially included 41 counts.</p></li></ul></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><div id="amzn-assoc-ad-0cfeddde-5d3b-429d-9f85-25fe4aa5fce1"></div><script async src="//z-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/onejs?MarketPlace=US&adInstanceId=0cfeddde-5d3b-429d-9f85-25fe4aa5fce1"></script><!-- Google tag (gtag.js) -->
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<div> On a subway platform in the Bronx recently, a girl in a puffer coat strolled past passengers with a basket of M&M’s, Kit Kats, and Trident gum slung across her shoulder. She looked to be 7 or 8.</div><div><div><br /></div><div>One rider captured her on a video posted on X, calling out, “No parent, no parent, where the parent at?” as she walked by.</div><div><br /></div><div>Of all the manifestations of human misery that the two-year-old migrant crisis has brought to New York City, few trouble the conscience more than the sight of children selling candy on the subway — sometimes during school hours, accompanied by parents, sometimes not.</div><div><br /></div><div>On trains and on social media, New Yorkers have asked: Isn’t this child labor? Is it illegal? Shouldn’t someone be doing something to help these children? </div><div><br /></div><div>Children between the ages of 6 and 17 are required to be in school. Children under 14 are not allowed to do most jobs. You can’t sell merchandise in the transit system without a permit.</div><div><br /></div><div>But whose job is it to do something? Recent queries to seven city and state agencies found the consensus to be “not mine.”</div><div><br /></div><div>More than 180,000 migrants have been processed by New York City agencies in the last two years, and about 65,000 are staying in homeless shelters. Many of the newcomers are desperate to find ways to survive in an expensive city but unable to work legally. Selling food is one of their main sources of income.</div><div><br /></div><div>A 16-year-old recently spotted selling candy on a downtown 1 train in Manhattan at 10:45 on a weekday morning said she was there “because I have to help my parents.” She refused to give her name.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Department of Education has “attendance teachers” who work to ensure families send their children to school, but they do not go out on patrol. “I think I’ll refer you to the N.Y.P.D. on this,” a spokeswoman wrote.</div><div> </div><div>The Police Department said that it issued more than 1,100 summonses last year for “unlawful vending and unlawful solicitation/panhandling” in the subways. But the department declined to say whether officers are instructed to do anything if they see school-age children selling candy during school hours.</div><div><br /></div><div>The State Labor Department said it was “difficult to determine” whether the practice of children selling candy in the subway would violate labor law, which generally “regulates employment relationships (i.e., between employers and employees).”</div><div><br /></div><div>The city’s child welfare agency, the Administration for Children’s Services, said that anyone who sees a child in a situation that seems unsafe can call the state child abuse hotline.</div><div><br /></div><div>But the State Office of Children and Family Services, which runs the hotline, said that a child selling merchandise or panhandling would not be considered maltreatment or neglect unless there was a specific concern about possible harm, like “children selling candy at a dangerous intersection.” (While crime has declined in the subways in recent years, the governor deployed the National Guard and the State Police to subway stations last week to allay persistent safety concerns.)</div><div><br /></div><div>There are logistical hurdles to addressing the issue. By the time someone called the state hotline and the report was evaluated and passed along to A.C.S., a candy seller could have already moved to a different location. The police can respond more quickly, but they typically are dispatched only in emergencies. </div><div><br /></div><div>The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the subways, cited its rule against unauthorized commercial activity, which carries a $50 fine, and referred further inquiries to the police and City Hall.</div><div><br /></div><div>Most of the candy sellers come from Ecuador, advocates for migrants say, and photos of children selling candy here have stirred concerns there. When Mayor Eric Adams visited Ecuador in October on a whirlwind tour of Latin America to discourage migrants from coming to New York, a local reporter confronted him at a news conference.</div><div><br /></div><div>“What’s going to happen to our Ecuadorean children, who we have seen selling candy in Times Square, in the subway?” she demanded.</div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img height="267" src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/03/12/multimedia/12migrants-acs--01-pwkm/12migrants-acs--01-pwkm-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;">A box of candy and gum was held by the arm of a young girl wearing pink. Her face is not visible.</span></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div>Some migrant children and their parents have said they have not gone to school because they lack necessary vaccinations. Credit...Andres Kudacki for The New York Times</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>The mayor responded obliquely. “I have noticed children selling candy on the streets of all my countries,” he said, adding, “In New York City, we do not allow our children to be in dangerous environments.”</div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div>Migrants are hesitant to talk about their work or where they buy the candy. New York Magazine reported last year that some get it from wholesalers or cheap stores.</div><div><br /></div><div>Monica Sibri, an Ecuadorean immigrant who advocates for migrants in New York, listed a number of reasons that she said newly arrived migrants had given her for bringing their children with them to sell on the trains.</div><div><br /></div><div>Some, she said, wrongly assume that their children can miss a semester of school and catch up easily. Some face delays in getting their children enrolled because of paperwork and vaccination records. Some, she said, sold candy with their children back in Ecuador and are simply doing the same thing here as a temporary measure.</div><div><br /></div><div>“The families are not saying they don’t want to put their kids in school,” Ms. Sibri said. “What they’re saying is they haven’t figured out the paperwork that they need to be able to put them in, and some of them aren’t trusting the system.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Ms. Sibri and other advocates are holding sessions this spring for migrant children and their families who have become candy sellers, to help provide resources for them to pursue an education and “live with dignity.”</div><div><br /></div><div>At 2:25 p.m. on Friday on the uptown A/B/C/D platform at Columbus Circle in Manhattan, a woman with a small girl and a smaller boy was selling Snickers and Welch’s Fruit Snacks.</div><div><br /></div><div>Kristina Voronaia, a 32-year-old caterer from Kazakhstan, was sitting near them on the bench and glanced over. “It would be better if they were at school,” she said.</div><div><br /></div><div>The girl went off by herself in search of customers. Josefina Vazquez, 50, a home health aide, asked where her mother was. Close by, the girl said.</div><div><br /></div><div>“That’s bad,” Ms. Vazquez said, “using kids.”</div><div><br /></div><div>The candy seller said she was 9 years old. She was not in school, she said in Spanish, because she hadn’t gone for a vaccine appointment.</div><div><br /></div><div>Further down the platform, she approached Sandra Acosta, 55, beseechingly. Ms. Acosta bought a bag of peanut M&M’s. “She should be in school,” said Ms. Acosta, who is also a home health aide. “And it’s dangerous — there’s a lot of crazy people.”</div><div><br /></div><div>She thought a little more and said she felt sympathy for the child’s mother. “Maybe she doesn’t have anyone to leave them with, to care for them,” she said. “We have to see the balance from both sides.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Liset Cruz and Annie Correal contributed reporting.</div></div><div><br /></div><div><div class="css-103l8m3" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; 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<div> </div><div><div>“The situation totally changed now, because the gangs are now working together,” a Haitian consultant said. Their unity forced the prime minister to resign. </div><div>People with their faces covered, holding long guns while sitting on a step and the sidewalk.</div><div>Gang members this week in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. It is unclear how strong the gangs’ alliance is or whether it will last. Credit...Ralph Tedy Erol/Reuters</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>By Maria Abi-Habib, Natalie Kitroeff and Frances Robles</div><div> </div><div>Want the latest stories related to Haiti? Sign up for the newsletter Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send them to your inbox.</div><div>Even as gangs terrorized Haiti, kidnapped civilians en masse, and killed at will, the country’s embattled prime minister held on to power for years.</div><div><br /></div><div>Then, in a matter of days, everything changed.</div><div><br /></div><div>Amid political upheaval not seen since the country’s president was assassinated in 2021, Haiti’s prime minister, Ariel Henry, agreed to step down. Now, neighboring countries are scrambling to create a transitional council to run the country and plot a course for elections, which once seemed a distant possibility.</div><div><br /></div><div>What made this moment different, experts say: The gangs united, forcing the country’s leader to relinquish power.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Prime Minister Ariel resigned not because of politics, not because of the massive street demonstrations against him over the years, but because of the violence gangs have carried out,” said Judes Jonathas, a Haitian consultant who has worked for years in aid delivery. “The situation totally changed now, because the gangs are now working together.” </div><div><br /></div><div>It is unclear how strong the alliance is or whether it will last. What is apparent is that the gangs are trying to capitalize on their control of Port-au-Prince, the capital, to become a legitimate political force in the negotiations being brokered by foreign governments including the United States, France, and Caribbean nations.</div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img height="267" src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/03/13/multimedia/00haiti-gangs-fkqh/00haiti-gangs-fkqh-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;">Police officers wearing camouflage, holding long guns, and walking near an armored vehicle. In the background, someone holds a wheelbarrow stacked high with cardboard boxes.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div>Haiti’s police force has been unable to control powerful gangs. Credit...Ralph Tedy Erol/Reuters</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>In early March, Mr. Henry traveled to Nairobi to finalize a deal for a Kenyan-led security force to deploy to Haiti. Criminal groups seized on the absence of Mr. Henry, who is highly unpopular. Within days, the gangs shut down the airport, looted seaports, attacked about a dozen police stations, and released about 4,600 prisoners from jail.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Understand the Turmoil in Haiti</b></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>A simmering crisis. For more than two years, Haiti has been mired in violence and political upheaval. Despite an international effort to help restore normalcy to the country, the security conditions appear to have further deteriorated in recent days, with gang members assaulting two prisons and vowing to oust Haiti’s prime minister. Here is what to know.</div><div><br /></div><div>Escalating violence. Gangs have long controlled Haiti’s poorest neighborhoods, but their influence and the level of violence they have unleashed has intensified since the country's last president, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated in his home in 2021 and replaced by Ariel Henry, an interim prime minister who is widely viewed as illegitimate. Since then, murders and kidnappings have soared.</div><div><br /></div><div>A new threat. Gangs have not been solely responsible for the turmoil. An armed environmental group allied with Guy Philippe, who was part of a 2004 coup that ousted a former Haitian president and who recently returned to Haiti after serving six years in a U.S. federal prison, has clashed with government forces and demanded Henry’s ouster.</div><div><br /></div><div>International intervention. Haiti’s government pleaded for months for international help. Last summer, Kenya offered to lead a multinational force to Haiti to help train and assist the Haitian police. After a court temporarily blocked the mission, which is largely financed by the United States, a formal agreement to proceed was signed in March.</div><div><br /></div><div>What is happening right now? Since traveling to Kenya to sign the deal, Henry has been unable to return to Haiti because of doubts over safely landing at the airport in Port-au-Prince. On March 11, the prime minister said that he would step down once a transitional council had been established, and Kenyan officials said that they were pausing their plans for the deployment of the police mission until a new government in Haiti was formed.</div><div><br /></div><div>They demanded that Mr. Henry resign, threatening to worsen the violence if he refused. Since he agreed to step down, the gangs seem to be largely focused on securing immunity from criminal prosecution and staying out of jail, analysts said.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Their biggest objective is amnesty,” Mr. Jonathas said.</div><div><br /></div><div>The criminals’ most prominent political ally is Guy Philippe, a former police commander and coup leader who served six years in U.S. federal prison for laundering drug money before being deported back to Haiti late last year. He has led the push for Mr. Henry to resign.</div><div> </div><div>Now Mr. Philippe is openly calling for the gangs to receive amnesty.</div><div><br /></div><div>“We have to tell them, ‘You will put down the weapons or you will face big consequences,’” Mr. Philippe told The New York Times in an interview in January, referring to the gangs. “If you put down the weapons,” he said, “you will have a second chance. You will have some kind of amnesty.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Mr. Philippe does not have a seat on the transitional council appointed to lead Haiti. But he is using his connections to the Pitit Desalin political party to bring those demands to the negotiating table in Jamaica, where Caribbean and international officials are meeting to forge a solution to the crisis in Haiti, according to three people familiar with the discussions.</div><div><br /></div><div>Gang leaders’ decision to unite was most likely motivated by a desire to consolidate power after Mr. Henry signed the agreement with Kenya to bring 1,000 police officers to Port-au-Prince, said William O’Neill, the United Nations expert on human rights in Haiti.</div><div><br /></div><div>Many gang members in Haiti are teenagers, he said, who are looking to be paid but who probably have little interest in going to war with a well-armed police force.</div><div> </div><div>The gangs respect “fear and force,” Mr. O’Neill said. “They fear a force stronger than they are.”</div><div><br /></div><div>While many doubt that the Kenyan force will bring lasting stability, its arrival would represent the biggest challenge to the gang’s territorial control in years.</div><div> </div><div>“The gangs have been hearing about this Kenyan-led force,” for years, said Louis-Henri Mars, the executive director of Lakou Lapè, an organization that works with Haitian gangs. “Then they saw that it was finally coming, so they launched a pre-emptive strike.”</div><div><br /></div><div>The violence unleashed by the gangs shut down much of the capital and prevented Mr. Henry from being able to return to his country.</div><div><br /></div><div>This was the tipping point: The United States and Caribbean leaders viewed Haiti’s situation as “untenable.” U.S. officials concluded Mr. Henry was no longer a viable partner and sharpened their calls for him to move quickly toward a transition of power, officials involved in the political negotiations said.</div><div><br /></div><div>Since then, gang leaders have been speaking to journalists, holding news conferences, promising peace, and demanding a seat at the table. </div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img height="262" src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/03/13/multimedia/00haiti-gangs-bbq-mztb/00haiti-gangs-bbq-mztb-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;">Jimmy Chérizier speaks before a tight crowd of people who are holding up cellphones to record him.</span></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div>Jimmy Chérizier, the gang leader also known as Barbecue, is in Port-au-Prince this month. His gang is accused of looting, rape, and random killings. Credit...Ralph Tedy Erol/Reuters</div><div><br /></div><div>Jimmy Chérizier, a powerful gang leader also known as Barbecue, has become one of the best-known faces of the new gang alliance, known as Living Together.</div><div><br /></div><div>The G-9, the gang of Mr. Chérizier, a former police officer known for his ruthlessness, controls downtown Port-au-Prince and has been accused of attacking neighborhoods allied with opposition political parties, looting houses, raping women, and killing people at random.</div><div><br /></div><div>Yet in his news conferences, Mr. Chérizier has apologized for the violence and blamed Haiti’s economic and political systems for the country’s destitution and inequality. Mr. Philippe has echoed that thinking.</div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img height="267" src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/03/13/multimedia/00haiti-gangs-top-zkqt/00haiti-gangs-top-zkqt-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">Guy Philippe standing on a step and listening to villagers, who are looking up at him.</div><div style="text-align: left;">Guy Philippe with villagers in his hometown, Pestel, in 2016. He is the most prominent political ally of Haiti’s gangs. Credit...Meridith Kohut for The New York Times</div></td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>“Those young girls, those young boys, they have no other opportunity — to die starving or to take weapons,” Mr. Philippe told The Times. “They chose to take weapons.”</div><div> </div><div><i>Andre Paultre contributed reporting from Port-au-Prince.</i></div><div><i>Maria Abi-Habib is an investigative correspondent based in Mexico City, covering Latin America. She previously reported from Afghanistan, across the Middle East, and in India, where she covered South Asia. More about Maria Abi-Habib</i></div><div><i>Natalie Kitroeff is The Times’s bureau chief for Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. More about Natalie Kitroeff</i></div><div><i>Frances Robles is an investigative reporter covering the United States and Latin America. She has been a journalist for more than 30 years. More about Frances Robles</i></div></div><div><b>The New York Times</b></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><div id="amzn-assoc-ad-0cfeddde-5d3b-429d-9f85-25fe4aa5fce1"></div><script async src="//z-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/onejs?MarketPlace=US&adInstanceId=0cfeddde-5d3b-429d-9f85-25fe4aa5fce1"></script><!-- Google tag (gtag.js) -->
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<div> </div><div>This man(Putin) seems to think only he has the cojones to use his storage of tactical and intercontinental nuclear arsenal. This little man thinks only he has the right to use them. But he is smarter than that, we'll hope. Knowing that using any type of nuclear weapons will leave the West, particularly the United States without a choice, they will retaliate. They would have to retaliate and the retaliation as mentioned by a few Pentagon officials as well as secretaries of defenses in different administrations even before there was a Ukraine War will depend on the initial attack or attempt to attack. Once Nukes are used if the other side does not respond then it will be fair to assume they will never respond which will place them in the category of a canon without a canon ball or the Canon Operator.</div><div><br /></div><div>Mr. Putin’s purported bomb move represents more bluster than a serious war plan. “Putin’s not stupid,” (?)</div><div><div> </div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img height="400" src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/03/06/multimedia/06sci-space-nukes-02-hzlb/06sci-space-nukes-02-hzlb-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="267" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;">Edward Teller, Ronald Reagan, and James A. Abrahamson stand behind a table on a stage in front of a sign that has a logo of an object orbiting a globe that says “SDI.”</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>The whole idea behind nuclear weapons, said David Wright, a nuclear expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is that “you’re self-deterred in part because the arms would cause significant collateral damage to yourself and other countries.” Such deterrence could apply to a space bomb as well, he added, unless an attacker were desperate and saw the risks as acceptable.</div><div> </div><div>President Ronald Reagan was flanked by the physicist Edward Teller, left, and Lt. Gen. James A. Abrahamson, the director of Strategic Defense Initiative, as he arrived to address a conference marking the first five years of his “Star Wars” missile defense program in 1988.Credit...Charles Tasnadi/Associated Press</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>“It would be dangerous for the Russians themselves,” said Richard L. Garwin, a physicist and longtime adviser to the federal government who helped design the world’s first hydrogen bomb.</div><div><br /></div><div>Ever since Mr. Putin invaded Ukraine, he has made atomic threats that analysts see as central to his strategy of deterring Western intervention. If he stationed an atom bomb in orbit, it would violate two bedrock treaties of the nuclear age — signed in 1963 and 1967 — and signal a major escalation.</div><div><br /></div><div>On Feb. 20, Mr. Putin denied that he intended to launch a nuclear weapon into orbit. “Our position is clear,” he said. “We have always been categorically against and are now against the deployment of nuclear weapons in space.” </div><div><br /></div><div>But days later, on Feb. 29, in his annual state-of-the-nation address, he reverted to his usual saber-rattling, warning that the West faced the risk of nuclear war. Mr. Putin singled out states that have helped Kyiv strike Russian territory. The West must understand, he declared, that such assistance risks “the destruction of civilization.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Nuclear arms in general, and space bombs in particular, are the antithesis of precision. They are indiscriminate — unlike conventional arms, typically characterized by pinpoint accuracy. In 1981, when I first wrote about orbital nuclear arms as a reporter for Science magazine, I referred to the mayhem from outer space as the “Chaos Factor.”</div><div><br /></div><div>The unexpected phenomenon flashed to life in July 1962 when the United States detonated a hydrogen bomb some 250 miles above the Pacific Ocean. Dark skies lit up. In Hawaii, streetlights went out. In orbit, satellites failed.</div><div><br /></div><div>President John F. Kennedy, unsettled by the technical surprises, worried that lingering radiation from nuclear blasts would endanger astronauts. In September 1962, he canceled a test code named Urraca. The hydrogen bomb was to have been detonated at an altitude of more than 800 miles — the highest of any test explosion, American or Soviet. The next year, Mr. Kennedy signed a treaty that banned experimental blasts in space.</div><div><br /></div><div>The scientific world was then making an important distinction about the space detonations that are absent in most current discussions. It is that the atomic blasts have immediate, as well as residual, effects. </div><div><br /></div><div>The initial repercussions are best known. A bomb’s rays speed across vast distances to produce lightning-like bolts of electricity in satellites and ground networks, frying electrical circuits. Experts call them electromagnetic pulses, or EMP. The pulses turned out the lights in Hawaii.</div><div><br /></div><div>But what caught Mr. Kennedy’s attention was a longer-term effect — how radioactive debris and charged particles from a nuclear blast pump up the natural, donut-like belts of radiation that encircle the Earth. These belts are intense, but nothing like what they become when amplified by a bomb’s radiation.</div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img height="333" src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/03/06/multimedia/06sci-space-nukes-03-hzlb/06sci-space-nukes-03-hzlb-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;">An old black and white picture of palms on a beach with dramatic clouds in the sky.</span></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div>What appears to be a sunset at Waikiki Beach in Honolulu, Hawaii, after the bomb exploded. Credit...Associated Press</div><div><br /></div><div>The five nuclear experts who authored the 2010 study linked such belt overloading not only to astronaut risks but also, after the July 1962 test, to major damage to at least eight satellites. The most famous casualty was Telstar, the world’s first communications satellite.</div><div><br /></div><div>Over the years, I grew concerned that the complicated topic was being oversimplified. Fringe groups and hawkish politicians sounded alarms over Russian EMP attacks on the nation’s electrical grid, though they seldom noted the risk to Moscow’s own spacecraft and astronauts. </div><div><br /></div><div>Peter Vincent Pry, a former C.I.A. officer, warned in a 2017 report that Moscow was prepared for surprise EMP attacks that would paralyze the United States and wipe out its satellites.</div><div><br /></div><div>In 2019, President Trump ordered the strengthening of the nation’s EMP defenses. Rick Perry, the energy secretary, said the order “sends a clear message to adversaries that the United States takes this threat seriously.”</div><div><br /></div><div>National security experts know how weapons of mass destruction become caught up in cycles of fear that come and go with the political winds. After decades of reflecting on the basics of nuclear blasts in space, I have come to see the risks as extremely low to nonexistent because of a detonation — as Drs. McDowell, Younger, Wright, Garwin, and others have argued that — would harm not only the attacked but also the attacker.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Maybe the Russians will decide their astronauts have to take one for the homeland,” Dr. McDowell said. “But I think that Putin, crazy as he is, is not going to do that.”</div></div><div><br /></div><div>Segments by <span class="byline-prefix" face="nyt-franklin, helvetica, arial, sans-serif" style="border: 0px; caret-color: rgb(54, 54, 54); color: #363636; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">By </span><span class="css-1baulvz last-byline" face="nyt-franklin, helvetica, arial, sans-serif" itemprop="name" style="border: 0px; caret-color: rgb(54, 54, 54); color: #363636; display: inline-block; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a class="css-n8ff4n e1jsehar0" href="https://www.nytimes.com/by/william-j-broad" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-color: var(--color-content-quaternary,#727272); text-decoration-style: solid; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-underline-offset: 1px; vertical-align: baseline;">William J. Broad</a>, The New York Times</span></div><div><span class="css-1baulvz last-byline" face="nyt-franklin, helvetica, arial, sans-serif" itemprop="name" style="border: 0px; caret-color: rgb(54, 54, 54); color: #363636; display: inline-block; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">and <a href="http://adamfoxie.blogspot.com">Adam Gonzalez,</a> Adamfoxie Blog International</span></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><div id="amzn-assoc-ad-0cfeddde-5d3b-429d-9f85-25fe4aa5fce1"></div><script async src="//z-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/onejs?MarketPlace=US&adInstanceId=0cfeddde-5d3b-429d-9f85-25fe4aa5fce1"></script><!-- Google tag (gtag.js) -->
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It is a form of manipulation a person may use to discredit a survivor’s experience.</div><div id="fb-root"><br /></div><div id="fb-root">Someone may use DARVO to make it seem as though the survivor of their abuse was actually the perpetrator.</div><div id="fb-root"><br /></div><div id="fb-root">A person who uses DARVO may deny that they have done anything wrong. They may also state that they are the ones who have experienced abuse rather than the actual survivors. This manipulation may make it difficult for other people to determine who is telling the truth.</div><div id="fb-root"><br /></div><div id="fb-root">Read on to learn more about DARVO, including how it can affect a person’s mental health and how someone may be able to protect themselves against it.</div><div id="fb-root"><br /></div><div id="fb-root">Content Warning. (contents have been medically researched) <a href="http://adamfoxie.blogspot.com">Adam</a></div><div id="fb-root"><br /></div><div id="fb-root">This feature mentions experiences of trauma and sexual abuse. Please read at your own discretion.</div><div id="fb-root">Was this helpful?</div><div id="fb-root"><br /></div><div id="fb-root"><b><br /></b></div><div id="fb-root"><b>What is DARVO?</b></div><div id="fb-root"> </div><div id="fb-root">DARVO is a technique a person may use to shift responsibility for an abusive incident onto the survivor of the abuse. It may also help the person who perpetrated the abuse deflect some of the responsibility and blame onto the survivor.</div><div id="fb-root"><br /></div><div id="fb-root">A person may use DARVO to avoid punishment or repercussions for their actions.</div><div id="fb-root"><br /></div><div id="fb-root">A study from 2022 looked into the experiences of 89 women who experienced sexual assault while at college. Researchers found that almost half of the participants experienced DARVO tactics from the person who abused them when they had further contact with them.</div><div id="fb-root"><br /></div><div id="fb-root">DARVO comprises three behaviors:</div><div id="fb-root"><br /></div><div id="fb-root">Deny</div><div id="fb-root"><br /></div><div id="fb-root">A perpetrator of abuse may deny that they have done anything wrong. They may minimize the feelings of the person they abused. For example, they may tell the person they have abused that they are:</div><div id="fb-root"><br /></div><div id="fb-root">overly sensitive</div><div id="fb-root">blowing things out of proportion</div><div id="fb-root">being ridiculous</div><div id="fb-root">Attack</div><div id="fb-root"><br /></div><div id="fb-root">When a perpetrator is accused of wrongdoing, they may attack the credibility and character of the survivor of their abuse. They may bring up incidents from a person’s past to discredit their accusations.</div><div id="fb-root"><br /></div><div id="fb-root">A perpetrator may state that the survivor of their abuse:</div><div id="fb-root"><br /></div><div id="fb-root">is a liar</div><div id="fb-root">has mental health issues</div><div id="fb-root">misuses drugs or alcohol</div><div id="fb-root">consented to what happened</div><div id="fb-root">has a history of making false accusations</div><div id="fb-root">They may also use gaslighting to confuse the survivor of their abuse. Gaslighting is when a person manipulates another person into doubting their own reality. It may cause a survivor of abuse to second-guess what happened.</div><div id="fb-root"><br /></div><div id="fb-root">Reverse victim and offender</div><div id="fb-root"><br /></div><div id="fb-root">A person may state that the survivor of their abuse is actually the one who perpetrated it. Their aim is to discredit the survivor while making it seem as though they are the ones who have been abused.</div><div id="fb-root"><br /></div><div id="fb-root">For example, the perpetrator may lie and state that the survivor of their abuse is:</div><div id="fb-root"><br /></div><div id="fb-root">out to get them</div><div id="fb-root">trying to make them look bad or ruin their life</div><div id="fb-root">trying to get custody of their children</div><div id="fb-root">trying to get money from them</div><div id="fb-root">jealous of them</div><div id="fb-root">angry that they rejected them</div><div id="fb-root">Help is available</div><div id="fb-root"><br /></div><div id="fb-root">If you or someone you know is in immediate danger of domestic violence, call 911 or otherwise seek emergency help. Anyone who needs advice or support can contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline 24/7 via:</div><div id="fb-root"><br /></div><div id="fb-root">phone, at 800-799-7233</div><div id="fb-root">live chat, at thehotline.org</div><div id="fb-root">text, by texting LOVEIS to 22522</div><div id="fb-root">Many other resources are available, including helplines, in-person support, and temporary housing. People can find local resources and others classified by demographics, such as support specifically for People of Color, here:</div><div id="fb-root"><br /></div><div id="fb-root">The Office on Women’s HealthTrusted Source</div><div id="fb-root">The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence</div><div id="fb-root">Was this helpful?</div><div id="fb-root"><br /></div><div id="fb-root">How can DARVO affect mental health?</div><div id="fb-root">DARVO can negatively affect the mental health of a person who has survived abuse. It can be difficult for a person to feel their trauma is being minimized or dismissed. Additionally, feeling like people do not believe them can be harmful.</div><div id="fb-root"><br /></div><div id="fb-root">Research from 2021Trusted Source investigated how female survivors of sexual assault felt if police did not believe them. Researchers found they felt:</div><div id="fb-root"><br /></div><div id="fb-root">a loss of trust in the police</div><div id="fb-root">victimized by the police and made to feel at fault for what happened</div><div id="fb-root">a loss of self-worth, self-image, self-confidence, or self-esteem</div><div id="fb-root">negative effects on their overall health and well-being</div><div id="fb-root">A 2017 study found that a perpetrator using DARVO could cause a survivor to feel like they were to blame for an abusive incident. Researchers noted that the more a person was exposed to DARVO, the more likely they were to blame themselves for the abuse they experienced.</div><div id="fb-root"><br /></div><div id="fb-root">DARVO can also affect how other people view the perpetrator and the survivor of their abuse.</div><div id="fb-root"><br /></div><div id="fb-root">A study from 2023 with undergraduate students looked into the effect of DARVO on their perception of perpetrators and survivors of sexual assault. Researchers found that study participants rated perpetrators who used DARVO as:</div><div id="fb-root"><br /></div><div id="fb-root">less abusive</div><div id="fb-root">less responsible for the sexual assault</div><div id="fb-root">more believable than perpetrators who did not use DARVO</div><div id="fb-root">Additionally, participants rated survivors of perpetrators who used DARVO as less believable and more abusive. They were also willing to punish the survivor and less willing to punish the perpetrator.</div><div id="fb-root"><br /></div><div id="fb-root">It is important for people who have survived abuse to understand that they are not to blame for what happened to them. The responsibility lies with the person who abused them.</div><div id="fb-root"><br /></div><div id="fb-root"></div>
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word-spacing: 0.001em;"><span id="more-50699" style="box-sizing: inherit;"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img height="285" src="https://76crimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Sarah-Opendi-nsightpostug.com_.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr></tbody></table><figure aria-describedby="caption-attachment-50717" class="wp-caption aligncenter" id="attachment_50717" style="box-sizing: inherit; clear: both; margin: 0px auto 20px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 505px;"><br /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text" id="caption-attachment-50717" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(233, 233, 233); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(10, 10, 10); color: #0a0a0a; font-family: Georgia, BlinkMacSystemFont, -apple-system, Roboto, "Lucida Sans"; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; padding: 13px 0px;">Ugandan legislator Sarah Opendi (Photo courtesy of insightpostug.com)</figcaption></figure><p style="box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(10, 10, 10); color: #0a0a0a; font-family: Georgia, BlinkMacSystemFont, -apple-system, Roboto, "Lucida Sans"; font-feature-settings: "kern"; font-kerning: normal; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; word-spacing: 0.001em;">The United States has expanded the number of Ugandan officials who are denied visas because of their anti-LGBTQ stance.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(10, 10, 10); color: #0a0a0a; font-family: Georgia, BlinkMacSystemFont, -apple-system, Roboto, "Lucida Sans"; font-feature-settings: "kern"; font-kerning: normal; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; word-spacing: 0.001em;"><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/mar/06/us-denies-visa-to-ugandan-mp-who-called-for-homosexual-castration" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; cursor: pointer; line-height: inherit; transition: all 0.25s cubic-bezier(0.25, 0.8, 0.25, 1) 0s;" target="_blank"><em style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: inherit;">The Guardian reported:</em></a></p><h2 style="box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(10, 10, 10); color: #0a0a0a; font-family: Georgia, BlinkMacSystemFont, -apple-system, Roboto, "Lucida Sans"; line-height: 1.4; margin: 0px 0px 0.5rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility;"><span style="font-size: small;">US denies visa to Ugandan MP who called for homosexual castration</span></h2><p style="box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(10, 10, 10); color: #0a0a0a; font-family: Georgia, BlinkMacSystemFont, -apple-system, Roboto, "Lucida Sans"; font-feature-settings: "kern"; font-kerning: normal; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; word-spacing: 0.001em;"><strong style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: inherit;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: inherit;">Activists welcome sanction on Sarah Achieng Opendi and other legislators against a backdrop of anti-LGBTQ+ oppression in Africa</em></strong></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(10, 10, 10); color: #0a0a0a; font-family: Georgia, BlinkMacSystemFont, -apple-system, Roboto, "Lucida Sans"; font-feature-settings: "kern"; font-kerning: normal; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; word-spacing: 0.001em;">The Ugandan MP Sarah Achieng Opendi, who called for homosexuals to be castrated during a parliamentary debate on the world’s harshest anti-LGBTQ+ laws has been denied a visa to attend a UN meeting in New York next week.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(10, 10, 10); color: #0a0a0a; font-family: Georgia, BlinkMacSystemFont, -apple-system, Roboto, "Lucida Sans"; font-feature-settings: "kern"; font-kerning: normal; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; word-spacing: 0.001em;">Opendi expressed “shock” after the US embassy in Kampala rejected her application to travel to the 68th session of the Commission on the Status of Women, pending “administrative” review.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(10, 10, 10); color: #0a0a0a; font-family: Georgia, BlinkMacSystemFont, -apple-system, Roboto, "Lucida Sans"; font-feature-settings: "kern"; font-kerning: normal; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; word-spacing: 0.001em;">“Ninety-six percent of MPs voted in favor of the bill and I am aware of a number of MPs that have gotten visas to the US yet they supported the bill,” said Opendi, the chair of Uganda Women's Parliamentary Association.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(10, 10, 10); color: #0a0a0a; font-family: Georgia, BlinkMacSystemFont, -apple-system, Roboto, "Lucida Sans"; font-feature-settings: "kern"; font-kerning: normal; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; word-spacing: 0.001em;">A US State Department spokesperson said they cannot discuss individual visa cases.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(10, 10, 10); color: #0a0a0a; font-family: Georgia, BlinkMacSystemFont, -apple-system, Roboto, "Lucida Sans"; font-feature-settings: "kern"; font-kerning: normal; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; word-spacing: 0.001em;">In December, the US imposed visa restrictions on hundreds of Ugandan lawmakers and their families over their involvement in the legislation, signed into law by President Yoweri Museveni, which imposes the death penalty or life imprisonment for certain same-sex acts and sentences of up to 20 years for “recruitment, promotion and funding” of same-sex “activities”.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img height="267" src="https://76crimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Anita-Among-NTV-e1677692315413-1024x684.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr></tbody></table><figure aria-describedby="caption-attachment-46726" class="wp-caption aligncenter" id="attachment_46726" style="box-sizing: inherit; clear: both; margin: 0px auto 20px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 1024px;"><br /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text" id="caption-attachment-46726" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(233, 233, 233); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(10, 10, 10); color: #0a0a0a; font-family: Georgia, BlinkMacSystemFont, -apple-system, Roboto, "Lucida Sans"; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; padding: 13px 0px;">Anita Among, Speaker of the Parliament of Uganda. (Photo courtesy of NTV)</figcaption></figure><p style="box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(10, 10, 10); color: #0a0a0a; font-family: Georgia, BlinkMacSystemFont, -apple-system, Roboto, "Lucida Sans"; font-feature-settings: "kern"; font-kerning: normal; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; word-spacing: 0.001em;">Last year, the US and UK denied visas to the parliamentary speaker Anita Among. Activists in Uganda have welcomed the actions.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(10, 10, 10); color: #0a0a0a; font-family: Georgia, BlinkMacSystemFont, -apple-system, Roboto, "Lucida Sans"; font-feature-settings: "kern"; font-kerning: normal; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; word-spacing: 0.001em;">“In the process of discussing the sweeping and repressive anti-homosexuality law, many Ugandan legislators stated they do not care about the concerns of development partners as they do not need to travel to their jurisdictions. It is the case of the chicken coming home to roost,” said the human rights lawyer Nicholas Opiyo.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(10, 10, 10); color: #0a0a0a; font-family: Georgia, BlinkMacSystemFont, -apple-system, Roboto, "Lucida Sans"; font-feature-settings: "kern"; font-kerning: normal; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; word-spacing: 0.001em;">“The denial of a visa is a strong statement against those spreading hatred. I hope it sends a firm message that such individuals have no place in civilized societies,” he added.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(10, 10, 10); color: #0a0a0a; font-family: Georgia, BlinkMacSystemFont, -apple-system, Roboto, "Lucida Sans"; font-feature-settings: "kern"; font-kerning: normal; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; word-spacing: 0.001em;">Steven Kabuye, a human rights activist in Kampala, said politicians were being held “accountable”.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(10, 10, 10); color: #0a0a0a; font-family: Georgia, BlinkMacSystemFont, -apple-system, Roboto, "Lucida Sans"; font-feature-settings: "kern"; font-kerning: normal; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; word-spacing: 0.001em;">“They can’t claim to hate homosexuality in their home countries and then go ahead and enjoy life in LGBTQ+ utopias,” he said. “I am glad the US visa ban on Ugandan politicians who violate human rights is working..” </p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(10, 10, 10); color: #0a0a0a; font-family: Georgia, BlinkMacSystemFont, -apple-system, Roboto, "Lucida Sans"; font-feature-settings: "kern"; font-kerning: normal; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; word-spacing: 0.001em;"></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(10, 10, 10); color: #0a0a0a; font-family: Georgia, BlinkMacSystemFont, -apple-system, Roboto, "Lucida Sans"; font-feature-settings: "kern"; font-kerning: normal; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; word-spacing: 0.001em;">In Africa, 33 of 55 countries have legislation against same-sex relations, much of it dating from colonial regimes. <a href="https://76crimes.com/76-countries-where-homosexuality-is-illegal/" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; cursor: pointer; line-height: inherit; transition: all 0.25s cubic-bezier(0.25, 0.8, 0.25, 1) 0s;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: inherit;">[Erasing 76 Crimes currently lists 31 African countries with anti-gay laws.]</em></a></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(10, 10, 10); color: #0a0a0a; font-family: Georgia, BlinkMacSystemFont, -apple-system, Roboto, "Lucida Sans"; font-feature-settings: "kern"; font-kerning: normal; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; word-spacing: 0.001em;">Kenya, Namibia, Niger, Tanzania, and Uganda have moved to tighten anti-gay laws. Last week Ghana passed a bill criminalising same-sex relationships. Namibia has recently legislated against same-sex marriages and Kenya has a bill before parliament seeking to outlaw same-sex unions.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(10, 10, 10); color: #0a0a0a; font-family: Georgia, BlinkMacSystemFont, -apple-system, Roboto, "Lucida Sans"; font-feature-settings: "kern"; font-kerning: normal; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; word-spacing: 0.001em;">On Monday, the <a href="https://76crimes.com/2024/03/04/upsurge-of-african-anti-gay-laws-risks-upsurge-of-aids/" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; cursor: pointer; line-height: inherit; transition: all 0.25s cubic-bezier(0.25, 0.8, 0.25, 1) 0s;">International Aids Society expressed concern</a> that a surge in anti-gay laws threatens the HIV response.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(10, 10, 10); color: #0a0a0a; font-family: Georgia, BlinkMacSystemFont, -apple-system, Roboto, "Lucida Sans"; font-feature-settings: "kern"; font-kerning: normal; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; word-spacing: 0.001em;">“There is an urgent need for the governments of these countries to work with, not against, communities most vulnerable to HIV,” the IAS president, Sharon Lewin, said.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(10, 10, 10); color: #0a0a0a; font-family: Georgia, BlinkMacSystemFont, -apple-system, Roboto, "Lucida Sans"; font-feature-settings: "kern"; font-kerning: normal; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; word-spacing: 0.001em;">“We call on the presidents of Ghana, Namibia, and Kenya to stand against these discriminatory bills. At the IAS, we urge you to put people first and follow the science: criminalizing any population fuels the HIV pandemic by excluding people from testing, treatment, and care.”</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(10, 10, 10); color: #0a0a0a; font-family: Georgia, BlinkMacSystemFont, -apple-system, Roboto, "Lucida Sans"; font-feature-settings: "kern"; font-kerning: normal; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; word-spacing: 0.001em;">Civil society groups are awaiting a ruling on a constitutional court appeal over the Ugandan legislation.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(10, 10, 10); color: #0a0a0a; font-family: Georgia, BlinkMacSystemFont, -apple-system, Roboto, "Lucida Sans"; font-feature-settings: "kern"; font-kerning: normal; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; word-spacing: 0.001em;"><b>76 Crimes, souce</b></p><div id="fb-root"></div>
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<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>(source):European Conservative</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><div>The trial of a Muslim immigrant accused of killing two and seriously injuring nine at a 2022 LGBT festival in Norway started on Tuesday in Oslo. According to prosecutors, Zaniar Matapour, a 44-year-old Iranian immigrant of Kurdish background, fired ten rounds with what police described as an automatic weapon and eight rounds with a handgun into crowds. If found guilty, he will face 30 years in prison.</div><div><br /></div><div>Matapour has consistently refused to cooperate with investigators and did not agree to have interviews taped unless recordings of his interviews were released in their entirety to the public “with no time delay so it won’t be censored or manipulated.”</div><div><br /></div><div>The trial opened with Matapour refusing to identify himself to the judge, instead interrupting by questioning why the trial was scheduled during Ramadan and was actively held on Fridays—the Muslim holy day—while taking a break “during Saturday and Sunday which are Christian and Jewish holy days, and for example Easter.” </div><div><br /></div><div>Before the attacks, Matapour recorded himself swearing an oath of allegiance to the Islamic State, a recording that was played in the courtroom. </div><div><br /></div><div>The accused was viewed as dangerous enough that he was not allowed a pen for note-taking during the trial—only the insert of a ballpoint pen. Witnesses also requested that Matapour be moved further away from the witness box in the courtroom. Support counsel for the witnesses Christian Lundin told NRK state radio that “even if he [Matapour] right now doesn’t constitute a threat, they find it uncomfortable to sit that close to a person who has caused them so much harm.”</div><div><br /></div><div>It was on June 25,, 2022, that the attacker struck Oslo’s nightlife quarters. The shooter targeted three different locations, all known to be frequented by members of the LGBT community. More than 20 people were harmed in the attack, and the following day’s Pride parade was canceled as police and organizers said they could not guarantee the safety of participants. </div><div><br /></div><div>Norwegian Police Security Service (PST) said they had kept Matapour on their radar since 2015, and witnessed him becoming increasingly radicalized. Roger Berg, PST’s acting chief said in 2022 that the suspect had “a long history of violence and threats” as well as mental health issues. At the time of the shooting, he had a criminal record that included narcotics and weapons offenses. PST had interviewed Matapour about a month before the shooting “because he had shown a certain interest in statements that were interpreted as insults to Islam.” In those interviews, PST said, “it was assessed that he had no intention of violence.”</div><div><br /></div><div>The trial continued Wednesday, with five witnesses called. In addition to Matapour, who is charged with aggravated terrorism, four others are charged with complicity. </div><div><br /></div><div>Markus Kvarving, one of the injured in the attack, told the court:</div><div>“I have at times been angry with him, afraid of him, sad. But when I look at him now, it’s not fear of him. I’m more afraid of what he supports.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Norway is a progressive country when it comes to LGBT rights, having legalized same-sex marriage in 2009 and being one of the first countries to allow people identifying as transgender to change their legal gender without intervention or documentation by a physician.</div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><div id="amzn-assoc-ad-0cfeddde-5d3b-429d-9f85-25fe4aa5fce1"></div><script async src="//z-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/onejs?MarketPlace=US&adInstanceId=0cfeddde-5d3b-429d-9f85-25fe4aa5fce1"></script><!-- Google tag (gtag.js) -->
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<div><div class="taboola bmjsw lZur" data-testid="prism-taboola" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: var(--spacing-lastChild-bottom); margin-top: var(--spacing-lastChild-top); position: relative; width: 679.5625px;"><div class="trc_related_container trc_spotlight_widget trc_elastic trc_elastic_thumbnails-a" data-placement-name="Below Article Thumbnails" id="taboola-below-article-thumbnails" observeid="tbl-observe-10" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both;"><div class="trc_rbox_container" style="box-sizing: border-box; direction: ltr;"><div style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="trc_rbox thumbnails-a trc-content-hybrid" id="trc_wrapper_11570" style="border-color: rgb(223, 223, 223); border-radius: 0px; border-style: solid; border-width: 0px; box-shadow: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; width: auto;"><div class="trc_rbox_header trc_rbox_border_elm" id="trc_header_11570" style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: border-box; background-image: none; background-origin: padding-box; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; background-size: auto; border: 0px darkgray; box-sizing: initial; font-weight: bold; height: auto; line-height: 1.2em; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: middle; width: auto;"><div class="trc_header_ext" style="box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; right: auto; top: auto;"><div class="logoDiv link-attribution" style="box-sizing: border-box; float: right; line-height: normal; white-space-collapse: collapse;"></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div><div class="taboola bmjsw lZur" data-testid="prism-taboola" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: var(--spacing-lastChild-bottom); margin-top: var(--spacing-lastChild-top); position: relative; width: 679.5625px;"><div class="trc_related_container trc_spotlight_widget trc_elastic trc_elastic_thumbnails-a" data-placement-name="Below Article Thumbnails" id="taboola-below-article-thumbnails" observeid="tbl-observe-10" style="box-sizing: border-box; clear: both;"><div class="trc_rbox_container" style="box-sizing: border-box; direction: ltr;"><div style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="trc_rbox thumbnails-a trc-content-hybrid" id="trc_wrapper_11570" style="border-color: rgb(223, 223, 223); border-radius: 0px; border-style: solid; border-width: 0px; box-shadow: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; width: auto;"><div class="trc_rbox_outer" id="outer_11570" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: -13.578125px;"><div class="trc_rbox_div trc_rbox_border_elm" id="rbox-t2m" style="border: 0px solid darkgray; box-sizing: border-box; direction: ltr; height: auto; margin: 0px 0px 3px; overflow: auto; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: auto;"><div id="internal_trc_11570" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img height="226" src="https://i.cbc.ca/1.6859801.1685483623!/fileImage/httpImage/image.JPG_gen/derivatives/16x9_780/usa-lgbt-florida.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> </td></tr></tbody></table></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div>A settlement has been reached in the challenge against Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Act, HB1557, known by LGBTQ+ advocates as the "Don’t Say Gay" bill. The settlement, announced Monday, clarifies the scope of the legislation, which prohibits any classroom curriculum about sexual orientation or gender identity for students in kindergarten through third grade. It also restricts such lessons for older students.</div><div><div><br /></div><div>"The point of yesterday's settlement was to have clarity when there was confusion, to have safety and dignity when there was fear, and to make sure that no kid in the state of Florida has to go to school worried about what they should say, what they can say, worried about their parents, etc.," Roberta Kaplan, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, told ABC News.</div><div><br /></div><div>The law remains in place, but the settlement clarifies that students and educators can discuss LGBTQ+ topics, given those conversations are not part of a formal curriculum. The clarifications also state that students can write about such topics in their academic work.</div><div><br /></div><div>Notably, the settlement includes clarification on library books, stating that library books with LGBTQ+ themes may not be banned under the legislation so long as they are not being used for instruction.</div><div><br /></div><div>Despite the clarifications, the office of Gov. Ron DeSantis - who signed the bill into law in 2022 - maintains that the bill will continue to be an effort to "keep radical gender and sexual ideology out of the classrooms of public school children."</div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>DeSantis and supporters of the legislation have argued that the bill is a necessary and reasonable measure to allow parents to have a say in when and how to introduce LGBTQ+ topics to children.</i></div><div><br /></div><div>MORE: Florida's controversial 'Don't Say Gay' bill: What's inside the proposed law</div><div>"As one of the many plaintiffs in this case, it is an exciting morning to wake up in Miami Dade County and know that my kids don't need to be afraid to show who they are and how they are with the family that they have," Amy Morrison told ABC News.</div><div><br /></div><div>Morrison and her partner, Cecile Houry, were two of 19 plaintiffs in the case. Morrison told ABC News the bill caused fear and confusion even in their own family. She said that because of the bill, their eldest son worried about the repercussions of saying that he has two moms.</div><div><br /></div><div>"This allows us to now go back into the classroom and have teachers and parents, educators and kids and families all know the language they absolutely can say," Morrison said. "We can speak about our families and we can speak about who we are and that the law is not going to put that at any risk."</div><div><br /></div><div>The 19 plaintiffs in the case included LGBTQ+ advocacy groups, parents, students and educators, who sued the state of Florida in 2022, the day after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the bill into law.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>The settlement also clarifies that the law does not apply to extracurricular activities, which allows for the reinstatement of Gay-Straight Alliances (GSAs) in schools that may have disbanded them. Kaplan said that these clarifications are vital to creating a safe, educational environment where students feel included.</div><div><br /></div><div>"People have been afraid for two years," Houry told ABC News. "All of those families, teachers that could no longer put a picture of their families in a classroom, all the safe place[s] that had been removed in different schools. The GSA, that it didn't feel safe that they could operate or couldn't find a faculty mentor to sponsor them."</div><div><br /></div><div>"This settlement puts a stop to all of this by saying that this is all OK. We can go back to having all those things without being afraid," she said.</div><div><br /></div><div>MORE: Florida governor signs controversial 'Don't Say Gay' bill into law</div><div>The lawsuit alleged that the bill was "impermissibly vague, was obviously motivated by hostility to LGBTQ+ persons and families, and created an enforcement system that enabled discrimination and discouraged efforts to fight it."</div><div><br /></div><div>Both the plaintiffs and the State of Florida claimed victory following the settlement.</div><div><br /></div><div>While the law remains in place, the plaintiffs and their representation still find solace in the effect the settlement’s clarifications will have in schools.</div><div><br /></div><div>"I'm hoping that yesterday's settlement will return us to the road toward sanity into understanding something that I think every American agrees with - that every kid in this country has a right to go to school every day, to not worry about being bullied, to not worry about being treated improperly or unequally because of who they are or who their parents are," Kaplan said. "That the point of public schools is for kids to be respected and to get a great education."</div><div>ABC News </div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><div id="amzn-assoc-ad-0cfeddde-5d3b-429d-9f85-25fe4aa5fce1"></div><script async src="//z-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/onejs?MarketPlace=US&adInstanceId=0cfeddde-5d3b-429d-9f85-25fe4aa5fce1"></script><!-- Google tag (gtag.js) -->
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What do you Think?<h1 class="title" data-reader-unique-id="titleElement" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: ui-serif; font-size: 1.95552em; hyphens: manual; line-height: 1.2141em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><br /></h1><div class="scrollable" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: ui-serif; font-size: 18px; max-width: 100%; overflow-wrap: normal; overflow-x: scroll;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" data-reader-unique-id="1" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 0.9em; max-width: none; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><tbody data-reader-unique-id="2" style="max-width: 100%;"><tr data-reader-unique-id="3" style="max-width: 100%;"><td data-reader-unique-id="4" style="border: 1px solid rgb(216, 216, 216); max-width: 100%; padding: 0.25em 0.5em;"><img data-reader-unique-id="5" height="267" src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/03/12/multimedia/12barnett-01-kfgc/12barnett-01-kfgc-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale" style="display: block; height: auto; margin: 0.5em auto; max-width: 100%;" width="400" /></td></tr><tr data-reader-unique-id="6" style="max-width: 100%;"><td data-reader-unique-id="7" style="border: 1px solid rgb(216, 216, 216); max-width: 100%; padding: 0.25em 0.5em;"><div data-reader-unique-id="8" data-testid="imageblock-wrapper" style="max-width: 100%;"><figure aria-label="media" data-reader-unique-id="9" role="group" style="color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.65); font-family: -apple-system-font; font-size: 0.75em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 1.4em 0px; max-width: 100%; width: calc(100% - 40px);"><figcaption data-reader-unique-id="10" data-testid="photoviewer-children-ImageCaption" style="margin-top: 0.8em; max-width: 100%; width: 657.546875px;"><span data-reader-unique-id="11" style="margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-top: 0.25em; max-width: 100%;">John Barnett, a former quality manager at Boeing who became a prominent whistle-blower, was found dead on Saturday.</span><span data-reader-unique-id="12" style="margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-top: 0.25em; max-width: 100%;"><span data-reader-unique-id="13" style="max-width: 100%;">Swikar Patel for The New York Times </span></span><span data-reader-unique-id="15" face="nyt-franklin, helvetica, arial, sans-serif" style="margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-top: 0.25em; max-width: 100%;">By </span><span data-reader-unique-id="16" face="nyt-franklin, helvetica, arial, sans-serif" itemprop="name" style="margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-top: 0.25em; max-width: 100%;"><span class="converted-anchor" data-reader-unique-id="17" style="max-width: 100%;">Sydney Ember</span> </span></figcaption><figcaption data-reader-unique-id="18" data-testid="photoviewer-children-ImageCaption" style="margin-top: 0.8em; max-width: 100%; width: 657.546875px;"><span data-reader-unique-id="19" face="nyt-franklin, helvetica, arial, sans-serif" itemprop="name" style="margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-top: 0.25em; max-width: 100%;"><br data-reader-unique-id="20" style="max-width: 100%;" /></span></figcaption><figcaption data-reader-unique-id="21" data-testid="photoviewer-children-ImageCaption" style="margin-top: 0.8em; max-width: 100%; width: 657.546875px;"><span data-reader-unique-id="22" style="margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-top: 0.25em; max-width: 100%;"><span data-reader-unique-id="23" face="nyt-franklin, helvetica, arial, sans-serif" style="max-width: 100%;"><b data-reader-unique-id="24" style="max-width: 100%;"> </b></span></span><span data-reader-unique-id="25" face="nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif" style="margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-top: 0.25em; max-width: 100%;">A prominent Boeing whistle-blower, a former quality manager who raised concerns about manufacturing practices at the company’s 787 Dreamliner factory in South Carolina, was found dead on Saturday with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to local officials. </span></figcaption><figcaption data-reader-unique-id="26" data-testid="photoviewer-children-ImageCaption" style="margin-top: 0.8em; max-width: 100%; width: 657.546875px;"><span data-reader-unique-id="27" face="nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif" style="margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-top: 0.25em; max-width: 100%;"><b data-reader-unique-id="28" style="max-width: 100%;">When Someone causes one of the biggest companies in the World $$$$causing them to lose billions and he shows up dead, WHAT do you THINK? Yes, I think the same thing. </b></span></figcaption><figcaption data-reader-unique-id="30" data-testid="photoviewer-children-ImageCaption" style="margin-top: 0.8em; max-width: 100%; width: 657.546875px;"><span data-reader-unique-id="31" face="nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif" style="margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-top: 0.25em; max-width: 100%;"><b data-reader-unique-id="32" style="max-width: 100%;"><span data-reader-unique-id="33" style="max-width: 100%;">This is the part of our government Democratic or Republican that we know are corrupt. In all fairness who has time for this when they are defending themselves against Trump's Thousand Crimes.</span><span class="converted-anchor" data-reader-unique-id="34" style="max-width: 100%;">Adam</span></b></span></figcaption></figure></div></td></tr></tbody></table></div><p data-reader-unique-id="35" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: ui-serif; font-size: 18px; max-width: 100%;"><span data-reader-unique-id="36" face="nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif" style="max-width: 100%;">The whistle-blower, John Barnett, was in Charleston for a deposition for a lawsuit in which he accused Boeing of retaliating against him for making complaints about quality and safety. </span></p><p data-reader-unique-id="37" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: ui-serif; font-size: 18px; max-width: 100%;"><span data-reader-unique-id="38" face="nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif" style="max-width: 100%;">Quality problems involving both design and manufacturing have plagued Boeing for years — most prominently after the crashes of two Boeing 737 Max jets in 2018 and 2019, and again since a fuselage panel blew out on a Max flight shortly after takeoff two months ago. </span></p><p data-reader-unique-id="39" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: ui-serif; font-size: 18px; max-width: 100%;"><span data-reader-unique-id="40" face="nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif" style="max-width: 100%;">Mr. Barnett filed the complaint against Boeing with the U.S. Labor Department in 2017 under the AIR21 Whistleblower Protection Program, which protects employees of plane manufacturers who report information pertaining to air carrier safety violations. He left the company that year.</span></p><p data-reader-unique-id="41" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: ui-serif; font-size: 18px; max-width: 100%;"><span data-reader-unique-id="42" face="nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif" style="max-width: 100%;"> Boeing’s lawyer deposed Mr. Barnett on Thursday and he was questioned by his own lawyers for half the day Friday. They were scheduled to complete the deposition on Saturday morning, said Robert Turkewitz, Mr. Barnett’s lawyer in the case.</span></p><p data-reader-unique-id="43" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: ui-serif; font-size: 18px; max-width: 100%;"><span data-reader-unique-id="44" face="nyt-imperial, georgia, times new roman, times, serif" style="max-width: 100%;"><br data-reader-unique-id="46" style="max-width: 100%;" /></span></p><p data-reader-unique-id="47" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: ui-serif; font-size: 18px; max-width: 100%;"><span data-reader-unique-id="48" face="nyt-imperial, georgia, times new roman, times, serif" style="max-width: 100%;">When Mr. Barnett, 62, did not show up on Saturday morning and did not answer phone calls, Mr. Turkewitz said he grew concerned and called Mr. Barnett’s hotel. Mr. Barnett was then found dead in his pickup truck in the hotel parking lot.</span></p><p data-reader-unique-id="50" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: ui-serif; font-size: 18px; max-width: 100%;"><span data-reader-unique-id="51" face="nyt-imperial, georgia, times new roman, times, serif" style="max-width: 100%;">The Charleston County Coroner’s office confirmed the death, which it said appeared to be “a result of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.”</span></p><p data-reader-unique-id="53" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: ui-serif; font-size: 18px; max-width: 100%;"><span data-reader-unique-id="54" face="nyt-imperial, georgia, times new roman, times, serif" style="max-width: 100%;">The Charleston Police Department noted the coroner’s finding in a statement and said it was conducting an investigation. “Detectives are actively investigating this case and are awaiting the formal cause of death, along with any additional findings that might shed further light on the circumstances surrounding the death of Mr. Barnett,” the department said.</span></p><p data-reader-unique-id="56" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: ui-serif; font-size: 18px; max-width: 100%;"><span data-reader-unique-id="57" face="nyt-imperial, georgia, times new roman, times, serif" style="max-width: 100%;">Mr. Turkewitz said Mr. Barnett’s experience at Boeing had deeply affected him.</span></p><p data-reader-unique-id="59" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: ui-serif; font-size: 18px; max-width: 100%;"><span data-reader-unique-id="60" face="nyt-imperial, georgia, times new roman, times, serif" style="max-width: 100%;">“It was really weighing on him, what was going on, and reliving all these things that had happened and the stress it had caused,” Mr. Turkewitz said.</span></p><p data-reader-unique-id="62" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: ui-serif; font-size: 18px; max-width: 100%;"><span data-reader-unique-id="63" face="nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif" style="max-width: 100%;">An administrative law judge with the Labor Department was hearing the whistle-blower case, which was in discovery. A trial had been set for June.</span></p><p data-reader-unique-id="64" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: ui-serif; font-size: 18px; max-width: 100%;"><span data-reader-unique-id="65" face="nyt-imperial, georgia, times new roman, times, serif" style="max-width: 100%;">Mr. Turkewitz said he planned to proceed with Mr. Barnett’s case, on behalf of Mr. Barnett’s family. “What John wanted was at least for it to make a difference,” he said.</span></p><p data-reader-unique-id="67" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: ui-serif; font-size: 18px; max-width: 100%;"><span data-reader-unique-id="68" face="nyt-imperial, georgia, times new roman, times, serif" style="max-width: 100%;"><br data-reader-unique-id="70" style="max-width: 100%;" /></span></p><p data-reader-unique-id="71" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: ui-serif; font-size: 18px; max-width: 100%;"><span data-reader-unique-id="72" face="nyt-imperial, georgia, times new roman, times, serif" style="max-width: 100%;">In a statement, Boeing said, “We are saddened by Mr. Barnett’s passing, and our thoughts are with his family and friends.”</span></p><p data-reader-unique-id="74" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: ui-serif; font-size: 18px; max-width: 100%;"><span data-reader-unique-id="75" face="nyt-imperial, georgia, times new roman, times, serif" style="max-width: 100%;"><br data-reader-unique-id="77" style="max-width: 100%;" /></span></p><p data-reader-unique-id="78" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: ui-serif; font-size: 18px; max-width: 100%;"><span data-reader-unique-id="79" face="nyt-imperial, georgia, times new roman, times, serif" style="max-width: 100%;">Known as Swampy because of his Louisiana roots, Mr. Barnett worked at Boeing for nearly three decades until he retired in 2017. He had worked at Boeing’s factory in Everett, Wash., before moving to a new factory in North Charleston, S.C., in 2010 to work on Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner, a wide-body jet that was the company’s most important new plane in a generation.</span></p><p data-reader-unique-id="81" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: ui-serif; font-size: 18px; max-width: 100%;"><span data-reader-unique-id="82" face="nyt-imperial, georgia, times new roman, times, serif" style="max-width: 100%;"><span data-reader-unique-id="83" style="max-width: 100%;"><b data-reader-unique-id="84" style="max-width: 100%;">Image</b></span></span></p><p data-reader-unique-id="85" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: ui-serif; font-size: 18px; max-width: 100%;"><span data-reader-unique-id="86" face="nyt-imperial, georgia, times new roman, times, serif" style="max-width: 100%;">A Boeing plant, with large pieces of planes in production.</span></p><p data-reader-unique-id="88" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: ui-serif; font-size: 18px; max-width: 100%;"><span data-reader-unique-id="89" face="nyt-imperial, georgia, times new roman, times, serif" style="max-width: 100%;">The Boeing plant that produces 787 Dreamliners in North Charleston, S.C. Mr. Barnett raised concerns about manufacturing practices at the facility.Credit...Pool photo by Gavin McIntyre</span></p><p data-reader-unique-id="91" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: ui-serif; font-size: 18px; max-width: 100%;"><span data-reader-unique-id="92" face="nyt-imperial, georgia, times new roman, times, serif" style="max-width: 100%;">After two of Boeing’s 737 Max planes crashed in 2018 and 2019, Mr. Barnett’s concerns about quality issues at Boeing were featured prominently in The New York Times and other news outlets, as examples of widespread problems with the company’s manufacturing.</span></p><p data-reader-unique-id="94" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: ui-serif; font-size: 18px; max-width: 100%;"><span data-reader-unique-id="95" face="nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif" style="max-width: 100%;"> Mr. Barnett told The Times in 2019 that he had discovered clusters of titanium slivers that were hanging over flight control wires in some planes. Those slivers were produced when fasteners were fitted into nuts.</span></p><p data-reader-unique-id="96" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: ui-serif; font-size: 18px; max-width: 100%;"><span data-reader-unique-id="97" face="nyt-imperial, georgia, times new roman, times, serif" style="max-width: 100%;">Mr. Barnett said in interviews that he had repeatedly urged his bosses to remove the slivers but that they had refused and moved him to another part of the plant.</span></p><p data-reader-unique-id="99" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: ui-serif; font-size: 18px; max-width: 100%;"><span data-reader-unique-id="100" face="nyt-imperial, georgia, times new roman, times, serif" style="max-width: 100%;">The Federal Aviation Administration in 2017 required that Dreamliners be cleared of shavings before they were delivered to airlines. Boeing said at the time that it was complying with that directive and was working with a supplier to improve the design of the nut. However, the company said that the issue did not present a flight safety issue.</span></p><p data-reader-unique-id="102" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: ui-serif; font-size: 18px; max-width: 100%;"><span data-reader-unique-id="103" face="nyt-imperial, georgia, times new roman, times, serif" style="max-width: 100%;">Mr. Barnett also told The Times in 2019 that he had reported to management that defective parts had gone missing, raising the possibility that they had been installed in planes.</span></p><p data-reader-unique-id="105" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: ui-serif; font-size: 18px; max-width: 100%;"><span data-reader-unique-id="106" face="nyt-imperial, georgia, times new roman, times, serif" style="max-width: 100%;">He said that his bosses told him to finish the paperwork on the missing parts without figuring out where they had gone.</span></p><p data-reader-unique-id="108" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: ui-serif; font-size: 18px; max-width: 100%;"><span data-reader-unique-id="109" face="nyt-imperial, georgia, times new roman, times, serif" style="max-width: 100%;">The FAA investigated and found that Boeing had lost some damaged parts. </span></p><p data-reader-unique-id="111" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: ui-serif; font-size: 18px; max-width: 100%;"><span data-reader-unique-id="112" face="nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif" style="max-width: 100%;">“As a quality manager at Boeing, you’re the last line of defense before a defect makes it out to the flying public,” Mr. Barnett told The Times in 2019. “And I haven’t seen a plane out of Charleston yet that I’d put my name on saying it’s safe and airworthy.”</span></p><p data-reader-unique-id="113" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: ui-serif; font-size: 18px; max-width: 100%;"><span data-reader-unique-id="114" face="nyt-imperial, georgia, times new roman, times, serif" style="max-width: 100%;">Mr. Barnett, who lived in Pineville, La., shared his concerns again in interviews with The Times this year as questions about quality issues at Boeing re-emerged after an incident on Jan. 5 in which a panel blew off a Boeing 737 Max 9 plane in midair during an Alaska Airlines flight.</span></p><p data-reader-unique-id="116" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: ui-serif; font-size: 18px; max-width: 100%;"><span data-reader-unique-id="117" face="nyt-imperial, georgia, times new roman, times, serif" style="max-width: 100%;">“Over the years, it’s just been a steady pecking away at quality” at Boeing, Mr. Barnett said, adding, “This is not a 737 problem. It’s a Boeing problem.”</span></p><p data-reader-unique-id="119" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: ui-serif; font-size: 18px; max-width: 100%;"><span data-reader-unique-id="120" face="nyt-imperial, georgia, times new roman, times, serif" style="max-width: 100%;">Boeing needs to “get back to basics,” he said. “They need to get back to airplane building 101.”</span></p><p data-reader-unique-id="122" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: ui-serif; font-size: 18px; max-width: 100%;"><span data-reader-unique-id="123" face="nyt-imperial, georgia, times new roman, times, serif" style="max-width: 100%;">Mr. Barnett’s mother, Vicky Stokes, said in an interview on Tuesday that her son’s experience with Boeing had taken a heavy toll, making him look older than his three brothers even though he was the youngest. “He just carried this on his shoulders for so many years,” she said. </span></p><p data-reader-unique-id="125" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: ui-serif; font-size: 18px; max-width: 100%;"><span data-reader-unique-id="126" face="nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif" style="max-width: 100%;">In an interview in January, Mr. Barnett said he no longer flew on planes because of what he’d seen during his time at Boeing.</span></p><p data-reader-unique-id="127" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: ui-serif; font-size: 18px; max-width: 100%;"><span data-reader-unique-id="128" face="nyt-imperial, georgia, times new roman, times, serif" style="max-width: 100%;">“I’m not going to set foot on an airplane today,” he said. “It’s sad. It breaks my heart. I love Boeing. I love what it used to stand for.”</span></p><p data-reader-unique-id="130" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: ui-serif; font-size: 18px; max-width: 100%;"><span data-reader-unique-id="131" face="nyt-imperial, georgia, times new roman, times, serif" style="max-width: 100%;">If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.</span></p><p data-reader-unique-id="133" style="caret-color: rgb(27, 27, 27); color: #1b1b1b; font-family: ui-serif; font-size: 18px; max-width: 100%;"><span data-reader-unique-id="134" face="nyt-imperial, georgia, times new roman, times, serif" style="max-width: 100%;"><span data-reader-unique-id="135" style="max-width: 100%;"><i data-reader-unique-id="136" style="max-width: 100%;">Sydney Ember is a Times business reporter, covering the U.S. economy and the labor market. More about Sydney Ember</i></span></span></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><div id="amzn-assoc-ad-0cfeddde-5d3b-429d-9f85-25fe4aa5fce1"></div><script async src="//z-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/onejs?MarketPlace=US&adInstanceId=0cfeddde-5d3b-429d-9f85-25fe4aa5fce1"></script><!-- Google tag (gtag.js) -->
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vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="g-block-width g-max-width-335px svelte-1jrfrvl" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: auto; max-width: 335px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="g-media" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"> For two million hungry Gazans, most days bring a difficult search for something to eat. Amany Mteir, 52, scours the streets north of Gaza City, where people sell or trade what food they have. This was the scene along Saftawy Street two weeks ago.</div></div></div></figure></div><div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img height="240" src="https://static01.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2024-03-06-gaza-hunger/_big_assets/aseel-carrot-soup_desktop.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><i>A pot of thin broth with pieces of carrot visible in a spoon.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Nizar Hammad, 30, is sheltering in a tent in Rafah with seven other adults and four children. They had not gotten aid in two weeks, and Nizar worked two days at a market to earn enough money to buy these bags of rice from a street vendor.</i></div></td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div>Farther north, in Beit Lahia, Aseel Mutair, 21, said she and her family of four split one pot of soup from an aid kitchen twice last week. One day they had nothing but tea. </div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img height="240" src="https://static01.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2024-03-06-gaza-hunger/_big_assets/nizar-rice-bag_desktop.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><i>Two packages of rice are placed side by side. On one, the words “Egyptian Fine Rice” are visible.</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div><i>As the war in Gaza enters its sixth month, the risk of famine and starvation is acute, according to the United Nations. Aid groups have warned that deaths from malnutrition-related causes have only just begun.</i></div><div><br /></div><div>The war, including Israel’s bombardment and siege, has choked food imports and destroyed agriculture, and nearly the entire population of Gaza relies on scant humanitarian aid to eat. The United States and others are looking for ways to deliver supplies by sea and air.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>The problems are especially worrisome in the north, where aid has been almost nonexistent. U.N. agencies have mostly suspended their aid operations there, citing Israeli restrictions on convoys, security issues, and poor conditions of roads.</div><div><br /></div><div>The New York Times asked three families to share photos and videos of their search for food over the past few weeks. They all said that food was getting harder to find, and that most days, they did not know whether they would eat at all.</div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img height="248" src="https://static01.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2024-03-06-gaza-hunger/_big_assets/amany-market-pan_pano.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr></tbody></table><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">One meal a day</span></b></div><div> </div><div>Humanitarian aid convoys do not reach Aseel and Amany’s homes in the north, and they have decided it is too dangerous to travel to seek them out. Instead, they head out early most mornings to survey informal street markets like this one.</div><div><br /></div><div>A few vendors stand behind tables displaying food and other supplies for sale on the side of the road. Several adults and children survey the items. Behind the tables is a heavily damaged building and a building riddled with bullet holes.</div><div><br /></div><div>Most food shops in northern Gaza are damaged or closed, so vendors set up informal street markets to sell food and other items.</div><div>Some vendors used to run grocery stores and are selling what stock they have left. Others buy and resell humanitarian aid. An average of just six commercial trucks carrying food and other supplies have been allowed to enter Gaza each day since early December.</div><div><br /></div><div>One of the cheapest foods Aseel’s family can find is ground barley, which before the war was used in animal feed. Corn flour is sometimes available but is more expensive.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>[My dear reader, if the below images fail to download, please just continue to read the posting. The images come from the best of The New York Times but to continue will be financially inhibited to try to post. I have been at it since early this morning but decided the words were in this case as important or more than the pics. Thank you, this is <a href="http://adamfoxie.blogspot.com">Adam</a>]</b></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Corn flour</div><div>$5.71/pound</div><div>Ground barley</div><div>$4.44/pound</div><div><br /></div><div>Aseel’s mother used these ingredients to make a piece of palm-sized pita bread for each of them. “I can’t even describe how awful it tastes,” Aseel said.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Pita bread</div><div>made from</div><div>animal feed</div><div><br /></div><div>Even when Aseel’s family finds food before the afternoon, they wait to eat their single meal until dinnertime so they can sleep better.</div><div><br /></div><div>On a recent day, her father found this small amount of rice at a street vendor’s table, and a day later found this portion of flour — after a five-hour search. The discovery made the family feel festive, but the inflated prices chipped away at their savings.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>White flour</div><div>$8.89/pound</div><div>now</div><div>$0.38/pound</div><div>before the war</div><div>Rice</div><div>$11.43/pound</div><div>now</div><div>$1.02/pound</div><div>before the war</div><div><br /></div><div>Aseel’s parents were unemployed before the war but received some social services support because her mother is a cancer patient.</div><div><br /></div><div>One night, Aseel, her parents, and her brother, Muhammad, split a can of mushrooms to go with the rice. Aseel said she tried to convince herself it tasted like chicken.</div><div><br /></div><div>With the flour, they made traditional pita bread, eating it with this soup from the leaves of a wild plant known as khubeiza.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Aseel’s family makes and eats soup from khubeiza leaves when there is nothing else to eat.</div><div>Last week, they had no luck at the markets. So on Monday, Muhammad, 16, stood in line for two hours at a tekeyah, a charity kitchen, at a nearby school. He brought home a bowl of rice soup for the family, but Aseel said he told her he did not like to be seen as begging.</div><div><br /></div><div>Aseel ate five dates from the family’s stash and had a cup from her last container of instant coffee, a reminder of her life as a university student before the war.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>A ration of</div><div>five dates</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>A cup of</div><div>instant coffee</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>The next day, Aseel’s father and brother spent hours on their feet searching for supplies. They visited Aseel’s aunt and reluctantly asked her for food. She shared a small amount of lentils. They ate them that evening and finished the dates they had planned to save.</div><div><br /></div><div>They were too weak the next day to check the markets again, and there was no food at the aid kitchen. Instead, they drank tea.</div><div><br /></div><div>What Aseel’s family of four ate each day from Feb. 28 to March 7</div><div>Wednesday<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>A pot of khubeiza leaf soup</div><div>Thursday<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>A pot of khubeiza leaf soup</div><div>Friday<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Rice and one can of mushrooms</div><div>Saturday<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>A pot of khubeiza leaf soup and pita bread made with white flour</div><div>Sunday<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>A pot of khubeiza leaf soup</div><div>Monday<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Rice soup from the tekeyah and a few dates</div><div>Tuesday<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Lentils and dates</div><div>Wednesday<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Tea</div><div>Thursday<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Carrot soup from the tekeyah</div><div>“Human beings are energy, and my energy is depleted,” Aseel said. “I can’t endure more than this.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Like Aseel, Amany’s family drinks tea to feel full. They used to fetch water from a nearby mosque, but since it was bombed, they have been buying water from trucks that pass by most days.</div><div><br /></div><div>A teapot sitting on top of a metal grate, placed on a stove made of a large can with a cutout for adding wood.</div><div>Amany boils water for tea over a fire made from scrap wood.</div><div>Her family — seven adults, including her three sons and their wives — has been surviving on a broth made with water and cubes of chicken bouillon.</div><div><br /></div><div>“When I can’t think and I don’t know what to do, I focus on the kids, but it’s especially hard when they tell you at night that there’s no food,” Amany said.</div><div><br /></div><div>Many to feed</div><div><br /></div><div>In Rafah, where Nizar is sheltering, there have been more aid deliveries than in the north. But the amount of food provided to each family — a bag of flour or a few cans of beans every few days — has not been enough, he said.</div><div><br /></div><div>Over the past two weeks, Nizar’s family has not gotten any aid at all. They have just one bag of flour left.</div><div><br /></div><div>The family used to draw on its savings to buy ingredients from street vendors, and Nizar’s mother would then prepare one meal to split among 12 people.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>One pot to fill 12 bowls</div><div><br /></div><div>But Nizar said his family’s situation was getting worse. The money he was saving for his wedding is gone, and the prices at street markets keep rising, he said.</div><div><br /></div><div>Nizar took this photograph of a street shop near the Rafah border crossing on Saturday where humanitarian supplies were being resold. “Everything you see here is mainly aid,” Nizar said, adding that most people could not afford the products on the shelves.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Canned beans</div><div>$1.68 now</div><div>$0.42 before the war</div><div>Pack of diapers</div><div>$53.18 now</div><div>$8.40 before the war</div><div>Halva sweets</div><div>$7.84 now</div><div>$1.12 before the war</div><div>Shelf-stable milk</div><div>$5.04 now</div><div>$1.40 before the war</div><div><br /></div><div>He explained that some people sold aid when they had more than they needed. It is harder for people without connections to aid organizations or shelters to get assistance, he added.</div><div><br /></div><div>“This is tiring and disgusting,” Nizar said.</div><div><br /></div><div>Whenever they can, the adults in his family save extra food for the children. The children also visit a tekeyah, shown in this photo that Nizar took in late February, where they wait hours for a container of soup or grains.</div><div><br /></div><div>An outdoor, walled enclosure contains rows of large pots filled with food and sitting on open fires. Children sit on a stretch of wall nearby or stand just behind it, hanging their arms over the wall. Many of them are barefoot, and each holds a small pot or container.</div><div>Children in Rafah carry pots to charity kitchens like this one to bring food home to their families.</div><div>On Saturday, with no other food available, the whole family ate their day’s meal from the tekeyah.</div><div><br /></div><div>For all three families, splitting limited food among so many people is a challenge. Amany, whose family of seven stays in an apartment with 23 others, said that life in close quarters was chaotic.</div><div><br /></div><div>“People start criticizing each other and keeping track of everything, trying to hide things for fear they’ll run out,” she said. “Some sneak out in the middle of the night to eat everything before anyone notices.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Makeshift kitchens</div><div><br /></div><div>At Amany’s home, each person takes turns in the morning to search the streets for wood to burn. The work keeps them busy, but it is tiring.</div><div><br /></div><div>They build a fire in a room where a wall was blown out, giving them a view of the ruined buildings outside.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Amany’s family burns wood scraps they find in the streets.</div><div>“We’ve regressed to the era of firewood and smoke,” said Amany, who worked as a school administrator before the war.</div><div><br /></div><div>Aseel moved back to her home in Beit Lahia in January after being displaced five times. Her family’s apartment has no power and their refrigerator and stove sit empty. But unlike many in Gaza, her family still has access to a water tank fed by a municipal source.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now they cook outside, making scrap-wood fires to brew tea and boil water for drinking and washing.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Pan for making</div><div>pita bread</div><div>Open fire for</div><div>heating water</div><div>and cooking</div><div>Tank connected</div><div>to municipal</div><div>water supply</div><div><br /></div><div>“This used to be our garden, it used to be filled with olive trees where our entire family would gather,” Aseel said. “But now it’s all been swept away.”</div><div><br /></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><div id="amzn-assoc-ad-0cfeddde-5d3b-429d-9f85-25fe4aa5fce1"></div><script async src="//z-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/onejs?MarketPlace=US&adInstanceId=0cfeddde-5d3b-429d-9f85-25fe4aa5fce1"></script><!-- Google tag (gtag.js) -->
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<div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img height="267" src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/03/11/multimedia/11pol-swiper-trump-entitlements-1-bctm/11pol-swiper-trump-entitlements-1-bctm-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The President and AirForce One</td></tr></tbody></table></div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div><span class="byline-prefix" face="nyt-franklin, helvetica, arial, sans-serif" style="border: 0px; caret-color: rgb(54, 54, 54); color: #363636; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">By </span><span class="css-1baulvz last-byline" face="nyt-franklin, helvetica, arial, sans-serif" itemprop="name" style="border: 0px; caret-color: rgb(54, 54, 54); color: #363636; display: inline-block; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a class="css-n8ff4n e1jsehar0" href="https://www.nytimes.com/by/kellen-browning" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-color: var(--color-content-quaternary,#727272); text-decoration-style: solid; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-underline-offset: 1px; vertical-align: baseline;">Kellen Browning</a></span></div><div>The New York Times</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><div>After former President Donald J. Trump appeared to suggest he was open to cutting federal entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, President Biden immediately seized on the comments, saying, “Not on my watch.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Mr. Biden, as he gears up for a general election rematch against Mr. Trump, has been eager to highlight his promise not to touch Social Security or Medicare. He has argued that Republicans, led by Mr. Trump, would strip away those benefits. But in a sign of the issue’s political potency, Mr. Trump’s campaign quickly sought to clarify that Americans who rely on the programs do not need to worry.</div><div><br /></div><div>In an interview that aired Monday on CNBC, Mr. Trump, when asked whether he had changed his stance on altering those programs in order to rein in the national debt, said that there was “a lot you can do in terms of entitlements in terms of cutting and in terms of also the theft and the bad management of entitlements, tremendous bad management of entitlements.”</div><div><br /></div><div>But he also appeared to disagree with the premise of the question, which posited that something had to be done about the programs’ drag on the national debt. </div><div><br /></div><div>“So I don’t necessarily agree with the statement,” Mr. Trump said.</div><div><br /></div><div>Still, the White House was quick to respond.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Cutting the Medicare and Social Security benefits that Americans have paid to earn their whole lives, only to make room for yet more unaffordable, trickle-down tax giveaways to the super-wealthy, is exactly backward,” Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, said.</div><div><br /></div><div>Mr. Trump’s campaign wasted no time in trying to clarify his remarks. In posts on X, campaign accounts insisted that Mr. Trump had been talking about “cutting waste,” and blasted Mr. Biden for past comments on Social Security, sharing a video in which Mr. Biden, as a senator in the 1990s, said he wanted to freeze federal spending, including on Social Security.</div><div><br /></div><div>“President Trump delivered on his promise to protect Social Security and Medicare in his first term, and President Trump will continue to strongly protect Social Security and Medicare in his second term,” Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump’s campaign, said.</div><div><br /></div><div>On Monday afternoon, Mr. Biden continued to hammer his rival on the issue at an event in Goffstown, N.H.. </div><div><br /></div><div>“Even this morning, Donald Trump said cuts to Social Security and Medicare are on the table,” he said. “I’m never going to allow that to happen. I won’t cut Social Security, I won’t cut Medicare.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Mr. Trump has had to adjust his position on entitlement reforms in the past. In 2020, as president, he told an interviewer that he would “at some point” look at making cuts to entitlement programs, prompting Democrats to jump on the comments. The president quickly said: “Democrats are going to destroy your Social Security. I have totally left it alone, as promised, and will save it!”</div><div><br /></div><div>In his time in office, Mr. Trump’s budget proposals tried to chip away at the social safety net by calling for cuts to Medicaid and other programs. He largely avoided proposing major slashes to Social Security’s retirement program or to Medicare. However, he did call for some cuts that experts said would not have had a significant effect on benefits. (The changes were not passed by Congress.)</div><div><br /></div><div>During the Republican primary, Mr. Trump attacked his opponents, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, by suggesting that they would cut entitlement benefits.</div><div><br /></div><div>Nicholas Nehamas contributed reporting.</div><div><br /></div><div>Kellen Browning writes about technology, the gig economy, and the video game industry. He is on temporary assignment covering 2024 political campaigns. More about Kellen Browning</div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><div id="amzn-assoc-ad-0cfeddde-5d3b-429d-9f85-25fe4aa5fce1"></div><script async src="//z-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/onejs?MarketPlace=US&adInstanceId=0cfeddde-5d3b-429d-9f85-25fe4aa5fce1"></script><!-- Google tag (gtag.js) -->
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}(document, ‘script', 'facebook-jssdk'));</script><br /><div> By Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Yurii Shyvala</div><div><div>Reporting from Ukraine’s Eastern Front</div><div><br /></div><div>March 12, 2024</div><div> </div><div>The Ukrainian soldier swore and tore off his headset. His video monitor had gone blurry at first, the landscape of shattered trees and shell craters barely visible, before blacking out completely. The Russians had jammed the signal of his drone as it was flying outside the town of Kreminna in eastern Ukraine.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Some days everything goes smoothly, other days the equipment breaks, the drones are fragile and there is jamming,” said the soldier, who goes by the call sign DJ and was speaking from his underground outpost a few miles from the front line.</div><div><br /></div><div>For a while, the Ukrainians enjoyed a honeymoon period with their self-detonating drones that were used like homemade missiles. The weapons seemed like an effective alternative to artillery shells for striking Russian forces.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now, the bad days are starting to outweigh the good ones: electronic countermeasures have become one of the Russian military’s most formidable weapons after years of honing their capabilities. </div><div><br /></div><div>Electronic warfare remains a hidden hand in much of the war, and like Ukraine’s disadvantage in troop numbers and ammunition supplies, Ukraine suffers in this area as well in comparison to Russia. Russia has more jamming equipment capable of overpowering Ukrainian signals by broadcasting on the same frequencies at higher power. It also exhibits better coordination among their units.</div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img height="267" src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/03/12/multimedia/12ukraine-electronic-warfare-02-qmcg/12ukraine-electronic-warfare-02-qmcg-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Members of a drone unit assembled the aircraft and armed them with rockets inside a destroyed house on the frontline.Credit...David Guttenfelder for The New York Times</td></tr></tbody></table></div><div><br /></div><div>With Western military aid looking far from certain and artillery ammunition running low, the pressure on Ukraine’s unmanned air capacity has only grown, leaving Kyiv’s forces in an increasingly perilous position.</div><div><br /></div><div>Interviews with Ukrainian soldiers, commanders, and military analysts say that Russia’s jamming capabilities are straining Ukraine’s limited supplies of off-the-shelf drones and threatening to sideline a key component of Ukraine’s arsenal as the Kremlin mass produces its own fleet of drones.</div><div><br /></div><div>Ukrainian troops describe a back-and-forth dance where one side makes technological changes — such as using different frequencies or jamming devices for drones — then the other side catches up in a matter of weeks or months, undercutting any short-lived advantage.</div><div> </div><div>“There is a constant arms race,” said Babay, a sergeant in charge of a drone platoon on Ukraine’s eastern front, who, like DJ and others interviewed for this article, went by his call sign, as is military protocol. “We are improving our technology to counter these new realities on the battlefield, and in a while, the Russians will again have to invent something new to be able to defend themselves against our attacks.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Small, cheap drones have been a staple of the conflict in Ukraine since 2014 when Russian-backed separatists attacked in the country’s east. But in 2022, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion, the use of unmanned vehicles over the battlefield ballooned.</div><div><br /></div><div>In 2023, Ukraine gained the upper hand in the drone war by deploying compact racing drones known as FPVs, for First Person Views, in large quantities.</div><div>Image</div><div><br /></div><div>Ukrainian soldiers from the 21st Brigade building drones at a small kitchen workshop in Ukraine’s Kreminna region.Credit...David Guttenfelder for The New York Times</div><div><br /></div><div>“FPVs play a critical role for us, as these toys are essentially mobile artillery that compensates for the lack of artillery ammunition,” said Dyadya, a drone operator with the 63rd Mechanized Brigade. “We work at the same distance as a mortar, but our accuracy is much higher.”</div><div> </div><div>Artillery’s strength often comes from its imprecision. By blanketing wide areas with high explosives and fragmentation, it can quickly disrupt battlefield operations by maiming troops and destroying vehicles. It’s a tactic that is nearly impossible to replicate with one or two drones.</div><div><br /></div><div>As Ukraine’s artillery ammunition dwindled last fall and into the winter, the FPVs, used as guided projectiles, were effective in suppressing and harassing Russian trenches and vehicles. Precious artillery ammo was reserved to push back Russian ground attacks.</div><div><br /></div><div>But the Russian military has since improved its jamming capabilities and also uses poor weather to its advantage, advancing in fog and rain when drones have difficulty flying.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Both sides have quickly picked up on their adversary’s key FPV developments and tactics,” said Samuel Bendett, an expert on Russian military drones at the Center for Naval Analyses, a research organization based in Virginia. “And now these technologies are maturing very rapidly for both sides.”</div><div> </div><div>Earlier this month, DJ’s small team, part of a national guard unit know as the Bureviy Brigade, set up their drone outpost among the ruins of a farmhouse near the frontline outside of Kreminna. They deployed the essentials needed to broadcast video and relay commands from the pilot to the cheap Chinese made FPV quadcopter: antennas, frequency relays, Starlink satellite internet and a laptop computer.</div><div> </div><div>On the first two missions, DJ’s monitor showed the Ukrainian steppe below as his drone catapulted through the wilderness at upward of 60 miles per hour, strapped with roughly three pounds of high explosives and aimed at destroying Russian vehicles. But soon, the signal was lost, jammed by the Russians.</div><div><br /></div><div>The third mission, targeting a grenade launcher in a Russian trench line, was partially successful: The 500-dollar drone detonated in a tree above the trench, but it had been jammed just a dozen or so yards away before it exploded.</div><div><br /></div><div>Though potent, the Russian military’s jamming capabilities are deployed unevenly across the more than 600 miles of frontline, and their armored vehicles are often easy targets because they usually don’t have jamming systems installed, Ukrainian soldiers said.</div><div><br /></div><div>Ukraine’s approach to drones and electronic warfare has been funded and supplied in part by disparate groups outside of the military, including the country’s well-known IT sector. Each drone unit on the battlefield serves as a sort of test lab for new technologies, procurement, and combat missions. </div><div><br /></div><div>Russia’s approach has been far more top-down, with heavy military oversight. This has made the country’s drone fleet more predictable, with less variation in tactics and type. But it has also allowed the Russian military to jam Ukrainian drones on the battlefield without having to jam their own, by coordinating between flight paths and the jammers.</div><div><br /></div><div>“There is nothing like that on the Ukrainian side,” said one drone operator flying for Ukraine.</div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img height="267" src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/03/12/multimedia/12ukraine-electronic-warfare-05-qmcg/12ukraine-electronic-warfare-05-qmcg-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">As Ukraine’s artillery ammunition dwindled, drones were effective in suppressing and harassing Russian trenches and vehicles.Credit...David Guttenfelder for The New York Times</td></tr></tbody></table></div><div><br /></div><div>The lack of a broader command structure capable of coordinating drone units across the frontline often translates to confusion among Ukrainian troops. Drone operators can sometimes lose connection with their craft and end up looking through the camera of another drone.</div><div><br /></div><div>FPV drones fly on an analog frequency, and since many are store-bought, they come out of the box set to the same frequency. Ukrainian drone units often need soldiers who are skilled in coding to change the frequency of a drone’s software.</div><div><br /></div><div>Dev, a Ukrainian drone technician, rated this issue second in significance to Russian jamming capabilities.</div><div> </div><div>“Many FPV groups are operating at the front. The front is saturated with FPV groups, and there are no more frequency channels,” he said.</div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img height="267" src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/03/12/multimedia/12ukraine-electronic-warfare-06-qmcg/12ukraine-electronic-warfare-06-qmcg-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A Ukrainian soldier from the 63rd Brigade flies a drone with an attached blue battery pack and dummy bomb at a testing site.Credit...David Guttenfelder for The New York Times<br /><br />Last month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky established the Unmanned Systems Forces, a new part of the armed forces that, among other things, should improve the interaction of FPV units with one another.</td></tr></tbody></table><div> </div><div><br /></div><div>But Russia’s ability to mass produce its drones on an industrial scale is also a pressing problem. Ukrainian troops said they are often forced to scrounge for their drones, despite pledges from the government to produce thousands of them.</div><div><br /></div><div>Chef, a drone company commander in Ukraine’s east, said his unit flies about 20-30 FPV missions a day, depending on their supply of drones, which comes almost entirely from volunteer donations. The government has barely supplied his unit, he said. Last July, they received a handful of them, and then again in December.</div><div><br /></div><div>“We launch as many as we produce,” he said. But “you can’t just use FPVs to win this war.”</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Dzvinka Pinchuk contributed reporting.</i></div><div><i>Thomas Gibbons-Neff is a Ukraine correspondent and a former Marine infantryman. More about Thomas Gibbons-Neff</i></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><div id="amzn-assoc-ad-0cfeddde-5d3b-429d-9f85-25fe4aa5fce1"></div><script async src="//z-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/onejs?MarketPlace=US&adInstanceId=0cfeddde-5d3b-429d-9f85-25fe4aa5fce1"></script><!-- Google tag (gtag.js) -->
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How sick would it make people? Would a single bout buy you protection from future cases?</div><div><br /></div><div>In the four years since scientists have unraveled some of the biggest mysteries about Covid. We now know far more about how it spreads (no, standing six feet apart isn’t surefire protection), why it doesn’t seem to make children as sick as adults, and what’s behind the strange symptoms it can cause, from brain fog to “Covid toe.” Here’s a look at what we’ve learned.</div><div><br /></div><div>Why do people’s experiences with COVID-19 vary so widely? And are super dodgers real?</div><div><br /></div><div>By now, most Americans have had Covid at least once. While the majority of those infected have been hit with flu-like symptoms, some have been hospitalized with serious respiratory issues, and others have had no symptoms at all.</div><div><br /></div><div>Part of this can be explained by the amount of virus we are exposed to, but our bodies also play a big role. People who are older or have existing health problems tend to have more severe symptoms because their immune systems are already weakened. In some cases, the body can fight off the virus before it replicates enough to cause symptoms or clear it so quickly that a person never tests positive. There’s also strong evidence that vaccination makes illness less severe. </div><div><br /></div><div>Experts said that most likely, people who have never been infected are fully vaccinated, very cautious about avoiding exposures (through masking and avoiding crowds) or work from home.</div><div><br /></div><div>Scientists have been trying to investigate if there’s something biologically unique about Covid super dodgers that gives them immunity to infection. But the closest they have come is finding that mutations in the human leukocyte antigen — which signals to the immune system that cells are infected — can help clear out the virus so quickly that a person might be completely asymptomatic.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>More on Covid-19</b></div><div>An Unusual Case: After months of studying a man in Germany who received 217 doses of different COVID-19 vaccine types, a team of doctors reported that the subject had a robust immunity response and no side effects.</div><div><br /></div><div>Isolation Rules: The C.D.C. said that Americans with COVID or other respiratory infections need not isolate for five days before returning to work or school, in a striking sign of changing attitudes toward the coronavirus.</div><div><br /></div><div>Long Covid: A large new study has found that long Covid may lead to measurable cognitive decline, especially in the ability to remember, reason, and plan.</div><div>Spring Shots: Americans ages 65 and older should receive an additional dose of the latest COVID-19 vaccine this spring, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.</div><div>Does Covid’s spread come down to coughs and sneezes?</div><div><br /></div><div>In the early days of the pandemic, we all thought Covid was some sort of surface-hopping ninja. We frantically wiped down groceries, washed our hands to the tune of “Happy Birthday” and tried to turn doorknobs with our elbows.</div><div><br /></div><div>However, studies have since shown that contaminated surfaces are rarely to blame for the spread of the virus. It’s more likely to spread through the air we breathe. Some of this may be through large droplets produced when someone coughs or sneezes, which is why public health officials advised early in the pandemic that we stay six feet away from fellow humans.</div><div><br /></div><div>But research then suggested that the virus could also be carried by aerosols, smaller particles that could infect people from farther away. “These particles kind of behave like cigarette smoke — they come out and float around, and they can drift in the air for a while,” said Linsey Marr, an environmental engineer at Virginia Tech. Dr. Marr and others have found that tiny particles as small as five microns may carry more infectious virus than larger droplets, partly because they are generated from deeper in the lungs.</div><div><br /></div><div>Other studies have shown that the virus is still evolving to become better at spreading through the air, said Vincent Munster, chief of the virus ecology section at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ Rocky Mountain Laboratories.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>How long do our defenses last?</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Generally speaking, an infection or vaccination protects you for several months, said Akiko Iwasaki, a virologist and immunologist at Yale University. But immunity depends on factors such as age, underlying health and whether the virus has picked up mutations that help it evade our defenses.</div><div><br /></div><div>There are many components of immune protection, including antibodies that circulate in the blood and help detect and neutralize the virus, B cells that make more antibodies as needed, and T cells that can learn to recognize and predict variations of the virus spike protein.</div><div><br /></div><div>Experts believe higher antibody levels are correlated with better protection. However, some studies have indicated that antibody levels drop significantly by three months after an infection or a vaccination. And it has been challenging to pinpoint exactly how many antibodies are needed to provide baseline protection, “as new variants are continuously arising,” Dr. Iwasaki said.</div><div><br /></div><div>T cells provide a different form of protection — reducing the severity of symptoms rather than blocking infection — and research now suggests that this immunity may last a year or longer.</div><div> </div><div><b>What’s behind the strange symptoms?</b></div><div><br /></div><div>While a robust immune response is needed to eliminate the virus, a dysfunctional one may be to blame for many of COVID-19’s unusual side effects. For example, researchers have found that in people who develop a warped sense of smell or lose it entirely, the virus latches onto ACE2 receptors in cells that support certain nerves in the nose. This sets off a rush of immune cells, which release proteins to clear the infection. In the process, they can inadvertently change the genetic activity of neighboring nerves, disrupting the sense of smell.</div><div><br /></div><div>Since the nose acts as an entry point to the brain and other parts of the central nervous system, this overly aggressive immune response and subsequent inflammation could also be the key to understanding other lingering neurological effects of COVID, like brain fog, headaches, ringing in the ears, tingling or numbness in the limbs and even depression, said Dr. Maria Elena Ruiz, an infectious-disease specialist at George Washington University.</div><div><br /></div><div>The painful swelling or discoloration some people develop in their fingers or toes remains more mysterious. But reports of those symptoms have also become less frequent, and past infections or vaccination may have made it less likely that people’s immune systems will go haywire, Dr. Ruiz said.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Is there any such thing as a seasonal break from Covid?</b></div><div><br /></div><div>When COVID first took off in the winter of 2020, many people hoped that the summer months (at least in some parts of the world) would bring a reprieve. It’s true that there are naturally more opportunities for aerosol transmission of COVID-19 in the colder months when people spend more time indoors. Buildings are also more tightly closed in the winter, leading to poorer ventilation and potentially higher levels of pathogens in the air. Some studies suggest that the virus also remains infectious for longer, and particles carrying it are able to stay in the air for a greater period of time when the relative humidity is low.</div><div><br /></div><div>But Covid doesn’t seem to be inherently seasonal — “we’ve clearly had surges in the summer as well,” Dr. Marr said.</div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div>But experts agreed they would not be surprised if Covid eventually settled into a predictable seasonal pattern, like other respiratory viruses. It’s just difficult to predict if that will take another few years or even decades, Dr. Munster said.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Do children have a secret weapon protecting them against COVID-19?</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Early in the pandemic, people feared that children, as notorious germ spreaders, would catch and spread the virus easily. They also worried that children would fall particularly ill, because they tend to experience some of the most severe outcomes with influenza and R.S.V.</div><div><br /></div><div>But with Covid, children seem to have largely been spared from severe illness. Only a small number are hospitalized or develop life-threatening conditions like multisystem inflammatory syndrome, or MIS-C.</div><div><br /></div><div>We now have a clearer idea why that’s the case: Children’s immune systems may be better primed against Covid precisely because they are frequently exposed to the benign coronaviruses that cause common colds, said Dr. Alpana Waghmare, an infectious disease specialist at Seattle Children’s Hospital. Additionally, studies have shown that another defense mechanism, known as the innate immune response, is stronger in children, helping alert their bodies to foreign pathogens such as the virus that causes COVID-19.</div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>How does the virus wreak havoc on a person for months?</b></div><div><br /></div><div>One theory is that, as with other rare side effects, the lingering symptoms or new complications that can occur in the months after an initial infection — known as long Covid — are caused in part by an immune reaction gone awry. People who develop long Covid may have an immune system that responds too aggressively, or not aggressively enough, to acute infection, said Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, the chief of research and development at the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Healthcare System. Studies have also found that the virus can hide in the body after the main infection is over, provoking a continuous, low-level immune response and inflammation.</div><div> </div><div>Other evidence suggests the virus can damage the lining of blood vessels, causing tiny clots that block circulation to various parts of the body. This may cause lingering achiness in the joints, brain fog, chronic fatigue, and dizziness after standing up too suddenly.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Dr. Al-Aly said that while many of Covid’s mysteries have been solved, he fears that the public has grown weary of the virus — when in reality, he said, it’s “not in our rearview mirror yet.”</i></div><div><i>Knvul Sheikh is a Times reporter covering chronic and infectious diseases and other aspects of personal health. More about Knvul Sheikh</i></div></div><div><i>The New York Times</i></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><div id="amzn-assoc-ad-0cfeddde-5d3b-429d-9f85-25fe4aa5fce1"></div><script async src="//z-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/onejs?MarketPlace=US&adInstanceId=0cfeddde-5d3b-429d-9f85-25fe4aa5fce1"></script><!-- Google tag (gtag.js) -->
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