The Full Belmonte, 10/9/2022
Ukraine: Russian strikes kill 17 following bridge attack
JUSTIN SPIKE and ADAM SCHRECK
“ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine (AP) — A Russian barrage pounded apartment buildings and other targets in the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, killing at least 17 people and wounding dozens, officials said Sunday.
The blasts in the city, which remains under Ukrainian control but sits in a region Moscow has claimed as its own, blew out windows in adjacent buildings and left at least one high-rise apartment building partially collapsed.
The multiple strikes came after an explosion Saturday caused the partial collapse of a bridge linking the Crimean Peninsula with Russia. The Kerch Bridge attack damaged an important supply route for the Kremlin’s faltering war effort in southern Ukraine, an artery that also is a towering symbol of Russia’s power in the region.
The rockets that pounded Zaporizhzhia overnight damaged at least 20 private homes and 50 apartment buildings, city council Secretary Anatoliy Kurtev said. At least 40 people were hospitalized, Kurtev said on Telegram.” Read more at AP News
New Florida records raise more questions about DeSantis’s migrant flights
The governor’s administration had been orchestrating the flights for several months
“In the request for bids to round up migrants to transport across the country, the administration of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) was unequivocal: The winning contractor needed to fly out unauthorized new arrivals found in the state.
The parameters, laid out by the Florida Department of Transportation and disclosed in public records released by the state late Friday, are raising new questions about whether the program violated state protocols when DeSantis officials chartered two planes to fly 48 migrants from San Antonio — far from Florida’s shores — to Massachusetts last month.
The widely criticized political maneuver appeared to operate outside the boundaries of the $12 million program Florida lawmakers authorized in their budget in June to ‘facilitate the transport of unauthorized aliens from this state.’
Vertol Systems, the Oregon-based charter airline company, flew the group of Venezuelans, some of whom said they were lured onto the flights with promises of work and housing, to Martha’s Vineyard, an island off the Massachusetts coast known as a politically liberal-leaning community.
The flights on Sept. 14 began in San Antonio and first landed in Crestview, Fla., a Panhandle city 36 miles north of Vertol’s Florida headquarters in Destin. After a brief stop, they proceeded to Martha’s Vineyard later that day.
Florida officials have not offered an official explanation for the stop in Crestview, which has raised speculation about whether it was intended to look like the mission had a plausible connection with the state, as the rules of the program had laid out.
The information released Friday does not include the full contract the DeSantis administration awarded to Vertol. But records show that the state paid the company $615,000 for the Texas flights on Sept. 8 and another $950,000 on Sept. 19, reportedly for another flight carrying migrants to President Biden’s home state of Delaware, which was canceled.” Read more at Washington Post
Republican Chuck Grassley vows to vote against a national abortion ban
The longest-tenured US senator joins a growing chorus of conservative lawmakers opposed to such a restriction
Sun 9 Oct 2022 03.00 EDT
“The longest-tenured Republican in the US Senate has pledged to vote against a national ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy which a prominent fellow party member and chamber colleague proposed last month, joining a growing chorus of conservative lawmakers opposed to that idea.
Chuck Grassley, who’s been one of Iowa’s senators since 1980 and is seeking an eighth term in his seat during November’s midterms, expressed his opposition to such a ban during a televised debate Thursday night with his Democratic challenger Mike Franken.
‘I would vote ‘no,’’ the 89-year-old lawmaker said in the verbal faceoff with Franken, a retired Navy admiral who’s thought to be more than 9 percentage points behind Grassley in the polls, according to the website FiveThirtyEight.” Read more at The Guardian
New Weinstein trial to begin in Los Angeles, five years after bombshell reports
Disgraced producer, already poised to spend life in prison, faces 11 additional sexual assault charges
Sun 9 Oct 2022 01.00 EDT
“Five years after the bombshell reports that ended his career, the disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein will go on trial in Los Angeles on Monday over a series of alleged sexual assaults involving five different women.
It’s the second trial of the former Hollywood titan, who has been incarcerated since February 2020 when he was convicted of sexual assault and rape in proceedings in New York.
Authorities extradited Weinstein to California last year to face 11 additional sexual assault charges for alleged attacks that took place between 2004 to 2013, including forcible rape, forcible oral copulation, sexual battery by restraint and sexual penetration by use of force.
While Weinstein is already likely to spend the rest of his life in prison, Jamie White, an attorney who has represented survivors of Larry Nassar, the USA Gymnastics doctor whose serial sexual abuse of girls and young women has shaken the gymnastics world, said it was important that there be accountability for all victims….
Weinstein’s trial in Los Angeles is taking place half a decade after the first reports of the extensive allegations against him sparked a movement, leading women around the world to come forward about the abuse they have faced at the hands of powerful men.
The #MeToo movement took off in 2017 after the New York Times and the New Yorker revealed Weinstein’s extensive history of sexual misconduct, with accounts from actors such as Ashley Judd, and how his powerful status in Hollywood allowed him to abuse women without consequence for decades.
There had long been whispers about the behavior of the movie mogul, whose company was behind films such as Pulp Fiction and Shakespeare in Love, but the stories shed a light on how Weinstein’s team of lawyers, private detectives and paid advisers helped silence accusers who ranged from actors to production assistants.
Within weeks of the first revelations, nearly 90 women had come forward accusing Weinstein of inappropriate behavior and sexual violence in incidents that date back to the 1970s.
Weinstein’s 2020 trial in New York on accusations of raping two women marked a landmark moment in the #MeToo movement that saw others testify about their experiences, including the Sopranos actor Annabella Sciorra, who said the producer raped her in the early 1990s.
The jury found Weinstein guilty of rape in the third degree and a criminal sex act in the first degree for forcing oral sex on Miriam Haley, a former Project Runway production assistant. A judge sentenced him to 23 years in prison.
Still, Weinstein, now 70, has long maintained his innocence. He recently sought to have his New York conviction overturned, but a five-judge panel upheld the ruling. The state’s highest court, however, has agreed to allow Weinstein to appeal the conviction.
Weinstein’s trial in Los Angeles comes at a critical juncture for the #MeToo movement. The case is one of several to play out across America this month, including trials against the actors Kevin Spacey and Danny Masterson and the director Paul Haggis.
It also follows the high-profile proceedings this year that saw a jury ordering actor Amber Heard to pay her ex-husband, Johnny Depp, $10m for defamation after she wrote about her experience speaking out against violence against women.
In the years since the Weinstein revelations, some people have argued that the movement has gone too far, White, the attorney, said. Weinstein should not benefit from that idea, he continued, adding that there had been crucial progress in the years since the movement began.
‘We’re seeing laws all over this country change. There’s already been an extraordinary amount of progress. There’s a lot more to go,’ said White. ‘We need to make sure these policies change and these temperaments and that we don’t go back to our old ways.’
Weinstein has denied the allegations against him. ‘All of the allegations against Mr Weinstein are either fabricated, or they result from consensual sexual relationships that his accusers now falsely characterize as sexual assaults,’ Weinstein’s lawyer, Mark Werksman, said.
The attorney added that Weinstein is unwell, unable to walk, and has several infected teeth because he is unable to receive proper dental treatment at the Los Angeles county jail.
Jury selection for Weinstein’s Los Angeles trial begins on Monday. If convicted on those charges, he faces up to 140 years in prison.” Read more at The Guardian
Pandemic exodus left Bay Area with largest drop in household income in U.S.
Twitter's San Francisco headquarters on Oct. 6. The company has allowed employees to work remotely full time. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg News)
“The San Francisco Bay area has long been known as the home of Big Tech — and the extreme wealth the industry has created. But during the pandemic, as workers and companies relocated elsewhere, San Francisco experienced the largest drop in median household income among top U.S. metropolitan areas, according to data from the Census Bureau.
The median household income in the metropolitan area that includes San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley fell from $121,551 in 2019 to $116,005 in 2021, according to a census report this month.
The drop of $5,546, or 4.6 percent, was the largest decline by both dollar amount and percentage among the 25 most populous metropolitan areas in the country. The second highest was in the New York City area, which experienced a 4.2 percent — $3,321 — decline in median household income. The D.C. region saw a 1.4 percent drop, from $111,974 in 2019 to $110,355 in 2021.” Read more at Washington Post
J.D. Vance’s First Attempt to Renew Ohio Crumbled Quickly
In 2017, the Republican candidate for Senate started a nonprofit group to tackle the social ills he had written about in his ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ memoir. It fell apart within two years.
Oct. 8, 2022
“J.D. Vance was not running for office. He said it irked him when people assumed that. Instead, in 2017, he said he had come back to Ohio to start a nonprofit organization.
Mr. Vance gave that organization a lofty name — Our Ohio Renewal — and an even loftier mission: to ‘make it easier for disadvantaged children to achieve their dreams.’ He said it would dispense with empty talk and get to work fighting Ohio’s toughest problems: opioids, joblessness and broken families.
‘I actually care about solving some of these things,’ Mr. Vance said.
Within two years, it had fizzled.
Mr. Vance’s nonprofit group raised only about $220,000, hired only a handful of staff members, shrank drastically in 2018 and died for good in 2021. It left only the faintest mark on the state it had been meant to change, leaving behind a pair of op-eds and two tweets. (Mr. Vance also started a sister charity, which paid for a psychiatrist to spend a year in a small-town Ohio clinic. Then it shuttered, too.)” Read more at New York Times
A Jan. 6 Defendant Coordinated Volunteers to Help Youngkin’s Campaign
By Neil Vigdor and Alan Feuer
Oct. 6, 2022
“In the election last fall that sent Glenn Youngkin to the Virginia governor’s office and propelled him to G.O.P. stardom, the state and local Republican Party tasked Joseph Brody with coordinating volunteers to knock on doors of potential Youngkin voters in the state’s strategically crucial northern suburbs.
But eight months earlier, Mr. Brody had been immersed in the Jan. 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol, according to the F.B.I., which said that he assaulted a police officer with a metal barricade and breached several restricted areas, including the Senate floor and the office of Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Now, Mr. Brody, 23, who the F.B.I. said was associated with the white nationalist group America First, is facing felony and misdemeanor charges for his role. The candidate he would go on to help, Mr. Youngkin, tried during his campaign to keep himself at arm’s length from former President Donald J. Trump, and he called the Jan. 6 riot a ‘blight on our democracy.’
Shortly after Mr. Brody’s arrest last month, an image scraped from the internet by online sleuths who call themselves ‘Sedition Hunters’ showed a man in a MAGA hat holding a high-powered rifle in front of a Nazi flag, with a bandanna concealing his face. The group, which has provided information that has helped law enforcement officials make hundreds of arrests related to Jan. 6, said the man in the photo was Mr. Brody.
A public defender listed for Mr. Brody did not respond to several requests for comment. Messages sent to an email account for Mr. Brody went unanswered. There was no answer at a phone number listed for him.
Mr. Youngkin’s office referred questions about Mr. Brody to Kristin Davison, a political consultant for the governor, who said in an email on Friday that Mr. Brody ‘did not work for or with the Youngkin campaign.’
The Fairfax County Republican Committee twice listed Mr. Brody, who is from Springfield, Va., in Fairfax, as helping to coordinate a volunteer effort to knock on doors for ‘Team Youngkin.’ When asked about those online listings, Ms. Davison said, ‘Those are not posts from the Youngkin campaign.’” Read more at New York Times
Animal Rights Activists Are Acquitted in Smithfield Piglet Case
The Utah trial highlighted what the defendants argued is a lack of transparency for the treatment of animals at large corporate farms.
Published Oct. 8, 2022Updated Oct. 9, 2022, 7:46 a.m. ET
“As a matter of dollars and cents, the theft of two piglets from a sprawling farm in rural Utah was not a huge loss for its owner, Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork producer.
But several weeks after a group of animal rights activists posted a video online of their nighttime incursion into the Circle Four Farms in Beaver County, local and federal law enforcement officials began a multistate investigation. F.B.I. agents raided animal sanctuaries in Utah and Colorado, and at one of them, government veterinarians sliced off part of a piglet’s ear in their search for DNA evidence of the crime.
The authorities never recovered the stolen piglets, and the federal government declined to press charges. But prosecutors in Utah pursued felony burglary and theft charges against the activists, who faced prison sentences if convicted.
On Saturday, a jury acquitted two of the activists on the charges, a somewhat unexpected verdict in a part of rural Utah whose economy is largely tied to the fortunes of agricultural giants like Smithfield.” Read more at New York Times
Frustrated and isolated, North Korea is conducting more missile tests thaer.
A North Korean missile test in 2017.Korean Central News Agency, via Associated Press
Porcupine vs. Tiger
“North Korea has for decades been testing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles in defiance of international demands to stop. North Korea’s authoritarian leader, Kim Jong-un, has picked up the pace this year, testing a record number of missiles so far. The North fired 12 in the past two weeks alone, including two early today. Last week, one flew over Japan, the first such launch since 2017, setting off alarms and panicking residents.
I called Choe Sang-Hun, The Times’s bureau chief in Seoul, who also covers the North, to learn more.
Count for 2022 is as of Oct. 8. | Sources: Center for Strategic and International Studies; The New York Times
Ian: Why is Kim escalating his country’s weapons program now?
Sang-Hun: North Korea is protesting recent military exercises by South Korea, Japan and the U.S. But more frequent weapons tests are also part of Kim’s long-term goal. He wants to expand his country’s nuclear and missile capabilities for self-defense. He may also want to use them as a bargaining chip to get diplomatic and economic concessions from the U.S. and its allies. Under American-led U.N. resolutions, North Korea has been banned since 2017 from exporting its major commodities — including coal, iron ore, seafood and textiles — which hurts its economy.
North Korea is frustrated, isolated and uncertain about its future. Kim sat down with President Donald Trump in 2018 and 2019 and tried to use North Korea’s nuclear capabilities as leverage to get the U.S. to lift or ease the sanctions. It didn’t work. So Kim has tried to force the Americans back to the negotiating table. To do that, he has to test weapons, ratcheting up the threat to the U.S. and its allies.
That’s a major reason for North Korea to build up its capabilities now; it has to have a deep arsenal to be able to negotiate some of it away. North Korea wants recognition as a nuclear power, but some analysts think it will eventually offer to arm itself only with short-range nuclear weapons, which can still serve as a deterrent, but give up its longer-range missile capabilities in exchange for economic concessions from Washington.
How do people in South Korea live with the nuclear threat from North Korea?
For South Korea, missile tests have become routine. The government condemns them as provocations, and North Korea policy is a perpetual political issue, but ordinary people don’t really pay attention to them. They’re more concerned about inflation and domestic political scandals. South Koreans like to say that when North Korea does something provocative, their relatives in the U.S. — who read American media — are more concerned than they are.
Tensions are not as high as in 2017, when Kim and Trump were exchanging insults and threats of nuclear holocaust. There was tangible fear then, even in South Korea.
How do North Koreans regard the tests?
While we don’t have independent journalists doing interviews in North Korea, we do know that state propaganda and totalitarian control work there. My only visit to Pyongyang was in 2005, shortly after I joined The Times. I remember seeing what are called the Arirang Mass Games. It’s a totalitarian spectacle. North Korea has one of the largest stadiums in the world, and it was crammed with thousands of young children who had trained for months to perform while holding colored signs, moving like robots in such perfect synchronization that they actually created moving pictures that flashed communist slogans. They were like human pixels.
I witnessed how ordinary people’s lives are affected by propaganda. It’s clear that many North Koreans consider the country’s nuclear weapons a matter of national pride, a symbol of dignity, independence and empowerment. The government tells its people that the U.S. wants to invade North Korea and that nuclear weapons will protect them from the evil, imperialist Americans and their lackeys in South Korea and Japan.
North Korea likes to compare itself to a porcupine bristling with needles, deterring the American tiger. That’s how it justifies spending resources on developing and testing weapons. You can go hungry, but you can’t give up your pride is a common theme in North Korean propaganda.
You’ve reported on North Korea for decades. How do you cover such a closed society?
I talk to analysts in South Korea and to North Korean defectors. But because it’s difficult to travel internally, defectors from one part of the country often don’t know what’s happening elsewhere.
For me, the best way to understand North Korea’s government is to follow its state media. You learn to screen out the propaganda and see what the government is really saying, and develop an understanding of the ideological, historical and diplomatic context of its actions. When the outside world began noticing North Korea’s nuclear weapons program decades ago, there were many theories about its motivations. If you look back on official statements, state media articles and speeches by leaders, it’s clear that it’s been the government’s aim to build nuclear weapons all along.
More about Sang-Hun: He grew up in a village in southeastern South Korea and went to graduate school in Seoul. He didn’t plan to become a journalist but followed a friend into the field and landed a job at the English-language Korea Herald. He joined The Times after 11 years with The Associated Press.” Read more at New York Times
A Distracted Russia Is Losing Its Grip on Its Old Soviet Sphere
Russia’s domination of Central Asia and the Caucasus region is unraveling as the Kremlin focuses on the war in Ukraine — and border violence is flaring.
Photographs by Sergey Ponomarev
Andrew Higgins, who has previously worked in Russia and surrounding countries, reported this story from the remote border region of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
Oct. 8, 2022
“With the Kremlin distracted by its flagging war more than 1,500 miles away in Ukraine, Russia’s dominium over its old Soviet empire shows signs of unraveling. Moscow has lost its aura and its grip, creating a disorderly vacuum that previously obedient former Soviet satraps, as well as China, are moving to fill.
On the mountain-flanked steppes of southwestern Kyrgyzstan, the result in just one remote village has been devastating: homes reduced to rubble, a burned-out school and a gut-wrenching stench emanating from the rotting carcasses of 24,000 dead chickens.
All fell victim last month to the worst violence to hit the area since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union — a brief but bloody border conflict between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, both members of a Russia-led military alliance dedicated to preserving peace but which did nothing to halt the mayhem.” Read more at New York Times
NFL’s concussion protocol modified after Tagovailoa review
By ALANIS THAMES
“MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. (AP) — The NFL and NFL Players Association have agreed to make changes to the league’s concussion protocol following a joint investigation into the procedures after Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa suffered what was described as a back injury against the Buffalo Bills last month.
The league and players’ union said in a joint statement Saturday that while the Dolphins followed protocol after the injury, the outcome of the Tagovailoa case ‘was not what was intended when the Protocol was drafted.’ As a result, language addressing abnormality of balance/stability was added to the league’s protocol list of symptoms that would keep a player from returning to the game.
In the first half Sept. 25 against Buffalo, Tagovailoa took a hit from Bills linebacker Matt Milano, which caused him to slam to the ground. He appeared disoriented afterward and stumbled as he tried to get to his feet.
Tagovailoa was immediately taken to the locker room and to go through the NFL’s concussion protocol, after which he was cleared of any head injury. He started the third quarter, drawing wide-spread criticism as to why he was allowed to return to the game.
The NFL and NFLPA said they reviewed video and jointly interviewed members of the Dolphins’ medical staff, the head athletic trainer, the Booth ATC Spotter, the now-terminated Unaffiliated Neurotrauma Consultant and Tagovailoa.
Tagovailoa did not show any signs or symptoms of a concussion during the locker room exam, the rest of the game, or throughout the following week, the league and union said. But immediately after he took the hit from Milano, gross motor instability was present as Tagovailoa was visibly disoriented.
After the game, Tagovailoa and Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel said the player had suffered a back injury earlier in the contest on a quarterback sneak.
The investigation found that Tagovailoa told the medical staff he aggravated his back injury when he was hit by Milano and that his back injury caused him to stumble. The review also said the medical staff determined that the gross motor instability was not due to a concussion.
In their statement Saturday, the NFL and players’ union said there was not an examination of the QB’s back during the check for a concussion, but medical personnel ‘instead relied on the earlier examination conducted by other members of the medical staff.’ The conclusion then was that the back injury was the cause of Tagovailoa’s instability.
As a result of the joint investigation, the league and union agreed to change the league’s concussion protocol to include the term “ataxia.” In the statement, ataxia is defined as “abnormality of balance/stability, motor coordination or dysfunctional speech caused by a neurological issue.”
Ataxia replaced the term “gross motor instability” and has been added to the list of symptoms that would prohibit a player from returning to the game. The other symptoms are confusion, amnesia and loss of consciousness.
‘The Protocol exists to establish a high standard of concussion care for each player,’ the league and union’s statement said, ‘whereby every medical professional engages in a meaningful and rigorous examination of the player-patent. To that end, the parties remain committed to continuing to evaluate our Protocol to ensure it reflects the intended conservative approach to evaluating player-patients for potential head injuries.’” Read more at AP News
Jalen Milroe, No. 1 Alabama escape Texas A&M, 24-20
By JOHN ZENOR
“TUSCALOOSA, Ala. (AP) — Alabama was plagued by turnovers and other mistakes and once again was pushed to the brink by Texas A&M, this time with Bryce Young watching from the sideline.
Things turned out differently this time.
Jalen Milroe threw for three touchdowns in his first start and No. 1 Alabama made a final goal-line stand to escape with a 24-20 victory over Texas A&M on Saturday night in a battle of backup quarterbacks.
Playing without the injured Heisman Trophy winner Young, the Crimson Tide (6-0, 3-0 Southeastern Conference) needed two late stops from Will Anderson Jr. and the defense. They got them, just barely, to survive four turnovers and two missed field goals against a team that beat the Tide 41-38 last season.
‘That was not our best football out there tonight,’ Alabama coach Nick Saban said. ‘When you don’t have your quarterback out there and the second-teamer has to play, everybody’s got to play better.’” Read more at AP News
David Geffen Hall Reopens, Hoping Its $550 Million Renovation Worked
Oct. 8, 2022
“When the New York Philharmonic opened its new home at Lincoln Center in 1962, it held a white-tie gala, broadcast live on national television, with tickets having sold for up to $250 apiece, or nearly $2,500 in today’s dollars.
It was a glittering affair, but the hall’s poor acoustics — a critical problem for an art form that relies on unamplified instruments — ushered in decades of difficulties. After the last major attempt to fix its sound, with a gut renovation in 1976, the hall reopened with a black-tie gala and a burst of optimism. But its acoustic woes persisted.
Now Lincoln Center and the Philharmonic are hoping that they have finally broken the acoustic curse of the hall, now called David Geffen Hall, which reopened on Saturday after a $550 million overhaul that preserved the building’s exterior but gutted and rebuilt its interior, making its auditorium more intimate and, they believe, better sounding.
But this time they are taking a different approach to inaugurating the new hall. Geffen reopened to the public for the first time not with a pricey formal gala, but with a choose-what-you-pay concert, with some free tickets distributed at the hall’s new welcome center.
And instead of opening with Beethoven (as the orchestra did in 1962) or Brahms (as in 1976), Geffen opened with the premiere of “San Juan Hill,” a work by the jazz trumpeter and composer Etienne Charles that pays tribute to the rich Afro-diasporic musical heritage of the neighborhood that was razed to clear the land for Lincoln Center. The work, commissioned by Lincoln Center, was performed by Charles and his group, Creole Soul, and the New York Philharmonic under the baton of its music director, Jaap van Zweden.” Read more at New York Times