The Full Belmonte, 1/18/2022
“The Supreme Court on Tuesday will hear arguments in a dispute centered around a group applying to hoist up a ‘Christian Flag’ on an 83-foot pole outside of the Boston City Hall . For years the city of Boston rotated dozens of flags to celebrate veterans, paramedics, sports teams and LGBTQ pride as part of what it describes as an effort to promote diversity and civic engagement. But when a group applied in 2017 to hoist the Christian flag up, city officials said it wouldn't fly. The blue-and-white flag, with a red Latin cross in one corner, would violate the long-held principle of separation of church and state, they said. This dispute leads to a fundamental First Amendment question: Who is conveying a message when a third-party group's flag flies on a government flagpole? The group or the government?” Read more at USA Today
A march in Washington yesterday.Kenny Holston for The New York Times
“The Senate will take up House-passed voting rights legislation Tuesday, breaking Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's initial deadline to vote on a rule change by the Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Schumer cited a weekend winter storm and Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz's positive COVID-19 diagnosis for the delay in the vote. Without Schatz, Democrats don't have the 50 votes needed for a simple majority vote. The passage of a voting rights bill remains stymied by Republican opposition and Democratic Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, who stand opposed to changing the Senate's rules to pass the law without GOP support. The upcoming vote comes after President Joe Biden's unsuccessful effort on Capitol Hill to persuade Senate Democrats to pass a voting rights bill.” Read more at USA Today
“Covid-19 cases are on the rise in the US due to the Omicron variant, but experts say it is still too early to determine if we’re approaching the endemic phase of the virus. According to data from Johns Hopkins University, 1 in 5 Americans have been infected with Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic,with just over 680,000 daily cases reported yesterday. Soaring infection rates are leading some people to seek a fourth dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna vaccine to increase their antibodies, but early studies show it still might not be enough to protect against breakthrough infections caused by the Omicron variant. Separately, China says tickets for the Winter Olympics in Beijing will not be sold to general public due to Covid-19.” Read more at CNN
“A fourth dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine does not prevent omicron infections, preliminary data from a trial in Israel shows.” Read more at Bloomberg
“Detainees at an Arkansas jail who had Covid-19 were unknowingly treated by the detention center’s doctor with ivermectin, a drug that health officials have continually said is dangerous and should not be used to treat or prevent a coronavirus infection, according to a federal lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of four detainees.
The four men — Dayman Blackburn, Julio Gonzales, Jeremiah Little and Edrick Floreal-Wooten — say in the lawsuit that after testing positive for the coronavirus in August, they were taken to the ‘quarantine block’ of the Washington County Detention Center and given a ‘cocktail of drugs’ twice a day by Dr. Robert Karas, who runs Karas Correctional Health, the jail’s health provider.
The complaint, filed this month in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas, says that the men took the drugs — which Dr. Karas told them consisted of vitamins, antibiotics and steroids — unaware that they were actually ingesting ivermectin, an antiparasitic drug commonly used for livestock that the Food and Drug Administration has warned should not be taken for Covid-19.
Dr. Karas, Sheriff Tim Helder and the Washington County Detention Center — all named as defendants in the lawsuit — did not immediately respond to calls and emails seeking comment on Monday.” Read more at New York Times
“A rabbi who endured a tense, 10-hour standoff at a Texas synagogue said Monday that he and the other hostages fled after he threw a chair at the assailant.” Read more at USA Today
“Top officials with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security warned in a letter yesterday that faith-based communities will likely remain targets for violence, urging state and local partners to evaluate their security measures for mass gathering events and at houses of worship. Online forums linked to domestic violent extremists have referenced Jewish targets tied to conspiracy theories about Covid-19, the outcome of the 2020 election and ‘even the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and resettlement of Afghans to the United States,’ according to the letter obtained by CNN. The warning comes just days after the Colleyville, Texas, hostage standoff at Congregation Beth Israel, which the FBI is investigating as a terrorist incident.” Read more at CNN
Antiabortion and abortion rights advocates protest outside the Supreme Court, which twice declined to block a Texas law banning abortion after about six weeks into pregnancy. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
“The nation’s most restrictive abortion law remains in effect in Texas after a federal appeals court on Monday rejected a request from abortion providers to immediately return their legal challenge to a trial court judge who had previously blocked the measure.
In a 2-to-1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit temporarily transferred the case to the Texas Supreme Court, a step requested by state officials that could leave the dispute in limbo for months.
The court’s majority said its decision was ‘consistent’ with the Supreme Court’s ruling last month and necessary to avoid ‘creating needless friction’ with the state court over interpretation of the Texas law.
Read the decision: Texas six-week abortion ban remains in effect after 5th Circuit ruling
Abortion providers had warned the 5th Circuit that any diversion from the district court in Austin would continue to restrict access to the procedure after about six weeks into pregnancy, when many women do not yet realize they are pregnant.
The latest development follows a U.S. Supreme Court decision that left the ban in place while allowing providers to challenge the law’s unusual enforcement structure. The high court has twice refused to block the Texas law, which makes no exception for rape or incest and is at odds with the landmark Roe v. Wade decision guaranteeing a right to abortion before viability, usually around 23 weeks.
In effect since Sept. 1, the law has forced Texans to cross state lines to terminate their pregnancies after the six-week mark.” Read more at Washington Post
“Executives from the nation's largest airlines are asking the Biden administration for ‘immediate intervention’ in the planned rollout of 5G technology near major airports. The rollout, which is scheduled for tomorrow, would present several transportation and economic consequences, the airlines said in a joint letter sent to the White House. The carriers are concerned that 5G signals will interfere with aviation technology, including the radar altimeter onboard planes. The Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement late yesterday that it ‘will continue to ensure that the traveling public is safe as wireless companies deploy 5G.’” Read more at CNN
“A group of seven US senators met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky yesterday in the capital of Kyiv to reaffirm the US' commitment to the country as the threat of a potential Russian invasion intensifies. The visit follows a series of diplomatic meetings last week that the US and its NATO allies hoped would lead Russia to pull back from Ukraine. But the talks failed to achieve any breakthroughs, as Russia would not commit to deescalating and American and NATO officials said Moscow's core demands -- including that NATO never admit Ukraine into the alliance -- were non-starters.” Read more at CNN
“Trust in governments around the world is collapsing, especially in democracies, Axios Media Trends author Sara Fischer writes from a new global survey.
Why it matters: People don't think government, business or the media are telling them the truth. This suspicion of societal institutions is pushing people into smaller, more insular circles of trust.
Government leaders and journalists are the least-trusted societal leaders, according to Edelman's 2022 global ‘Trust Barometer,’ a survey of 35,000 respondents in 28 countries.
A majority of people globally believe journalists (67%), government leaders (66%) and business executives (63%) are ‘purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations.’
Around the world, people fear the media is becoming more sensational for commercial gain and that government leaders continue to exploit divisions for political gain.” Read more at Axios
“Beijing has promised the world’s top athletes access to a partially unfettered internet during the Winter Olympics, dropping the Great Firewall that blocks services like Facebook and YouTube at official venues and hotels. But as Jamie Tarabay and Sarah Zheng report, with Chinese companies that specialize in data collection, surveillance and artificial intelligence among the official sponsors and suppliers for the games, there are reasons to exercise caution.” Read more at CNN
“PARIS — Éric Zemmour, the anti-immigrant far-right pundit who is running in France’s presidential elections, was convicted on Monday on charges of inciting racial hatred and making racially insulting comments after saying on television in 2020 that unaccompanied child migrants were ‘thieves,’ ‘rapists,’ and ‘murderers.’
Mr. Zemmour, who had stood by his comments and said courts should not police political speech, was fined 10,000 euros, or $11,400, by a criminal court in Paris.
The verdict represented the third conviction and fine for Mr. Zemmour, who has a long history of incendiary comments, mostly about immigration, over the past decade, though he has been acquitted on other occasions.
Mr. Zemmour has repeatedly run afoul of French laws that punish defamation or acts provoking hatred or violence on the basis of race, religion and other factors over the past decade, and he still faces several trials on similar charges.” Read on New York Times
“Hong Kong will cull about 2,000 small animals sold at pet stores after some hamsters tested positive for Covid.” Read more at Bloomberg
“Over the weekend, a British government minister tried to deal a death blow to the main source of funding for the BBC, a license fee charged each year to any household with a TV.
Nadine Dorries, who oversees the BBC in the cabinet, said on Twitter that an imminent announcement about the license fee ‘will be the last.’ But by Monday afternoon, standing in the House of Commons in Parliament, she walked back her contentious claim as she announced that the license fee would be frozen for the next two years — a move that could require substantial budget cuts at the public broadcaster just to keep up with fast inflation.
The funding freeze is ‘disappointing,’ Richard Sharp, the BBC’s chairman, and Tim Davie, the director-general, said in a statement, and will ‘necessitate tougher choices.’
For four years from April 2024, the fee will rise again in line with inflation, Ms. Dorries said. The BBC and the government have been in negotiations since late 2020 over the amount that TV owners must pay over the next five years. For the past five years, the fee has increased in line with inflation annually….
Three-quarters of the BBC’s income, about 3.75 billion pounds ($5.1 billion), comes from the license fee, which is currently £159 ($217) per household. The fee was introduced in 1923 to pay for radio. Now it funds eight national TV channels, 10 radio stations, local stations (including Welsh and Gaelic language services), educational content and on-demand services. Fourteen percent of the license fee funds non-BBC TV.
Ms. Dorries, who is the culture secretary, and fellow Conservatives have long argued that the BBC needs a big overhaul in how it is funded. They have also said it is too left-leaning and too London-centric.
The BBC’s funding through the license fee is guaranteed until the end of 2027, after which the BBC’s Royal Charter expires and its mission, public purpose and funding method need to be renewed. New terms will be decided with the government of the day. But before then there will be another general election, which will determine the fate of the license fee.
In Britain, inflation is at its highest level in a decade, and freezing the license fee could require the broadcaster to make even more cuts. Ms. Dorries said any increase couldn’t be justified while millions of households were squeezed by rising energy bills and consumer prices. The Conservative government is also raising taxes in April to fund more health services.
Since 2016, the BBC has been undertaking a vast cost-cutting plan, trying to save £800 million annually. This fiscal year, it expects the savings to rise above £950 million. Last year, it cut 1,200 jobs.
The changes have come amid an overhaul of the BBC’s leadership. Since late 2020, a new director-general and chairman have been installed. Deborah Turness, who was president of NBC News, will be the BBC’s next director of news.
After complaints about bias in its news coverage, the broadcaster announced a plan last year to spend an additional £700 million outside London by 2027 and relocate 400 jobs.
The broadcaster has been facing increasing pressure, and not just from the government. The BBC is trying to reach a more diverse and younger audience while cutting costs, as big-budget streaming companies such as Netflix and Spotify expand in Britain.” Read more at New York Times
“North Korea opens up. Land-based trade between North Korea and China appeared to resume on Monday, an indication that Pyongyang had opened borders for the first time since early 2020. China’s foreign ministry has yet to announce the border had reopened, although multiple news reports suggest trade has restarted in Chinese towns bordering North Korea.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“Davos online. The Davos Agenda, the virtual summit hosted by the World Economic Forum, continues today, with appearances from Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. The event kicked off on Monday with addresses from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping, who once again called on countries to ‘discard Cold War mentality.’” Read more at Foreign Policy
“Sweden’s suspicious drones. Swedish security services are investigating after unidentified drones were seen flying over the capital Stockholm and a number of nuclear plants over the weekend. The sightings come as Sweden seeks to bolster its defenses, recently deploying hundreds more troops to the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“The seven-year war in Yemen took a new turn on Monday after the country’s Houthis claimed responsibility for an attack on Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, in which three people were killed.
Although Saudi Arabia has seen hundreds of Houthi aerial assaults over the years, the United Arab Emirates has largely escaped bombardment.
The Houthis claimed to have used ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and several drones in the attack, which they said was in retaliation for recent battlefield losses against Emirati-backed forces.
Those forces, the Giants Brigades, recently dealt the Iran-backed Houthis a defeat in Shabwa, an oil-rich province only captured by the Houthis in September.
The attack has had the immediate effect of raising the possibility of placing the Houthis back on the U.S. list of global terrorist organizations, an option reportedly discussed by Foreign Minister Abdullah Bin Zayed and Secretary of State Antony Blinken in the wake of the attacks. The Biden administration removed the Houthis from the list in early 2021 in part to ease humanitarian access to areas under the group’s control.
Peter Salisbury, a Yemen expert with the International Crisis Group, said the United Arab Emirates had few good options if it wishes to mount a counterattack. ‘The UAE has said it reserves the right to respond. But it’s hard to see what it can do other than return directly to the frontlines of the anti-Houthi campaign or contribute to air strikes in Yemen, neither of which are really activities it wants to be associated with in Washington,’ Salisbury told Foreign Policy via email.
The episode underscores the fact that one year after the Biden administration pledged to end it, the war in Yemen is heating up rather than concluding. Caught in the middle are Yemeni civilians, who are experiencing what the United Nations has deemed the largest humanitarian crisis in the world, with 80 percent of the population in need of humanitarian aid and protection. Aid agencies have recorded a 60 percent increase in civilian casualties in the last quarter of 2021 compared to the three months that preceded it.
A signal from the United States that it no longer backs the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, such as halting all weapons sales to the kingdom, could speed a resolution, Annelle Sheline, a Middle East researcher at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft told Foreign Policy. The Biden administration’s decision to continue selling arms to the Saudis, Sheline said, has failed to change things on the ground.
‘I think the Biden administration had a notion that perhaps if they gave Saudi Arabia this support with these latest missile sales, that that would help the Saudis perhaps have a few wins and then maybe be able to withdraw with a bit more dignity,’ Sheline said. ‘But what we’ve seen for the past seven years of this war is when one side feels they’re winning, they want to keep going.’
As things stand, the Houthis have little incentive to consider peace talks, Salisbury wrote by email: ‘The Houthis think they are too close to winning the war to consider a deal to end it that isn’t overwhelmingly in their favour. And the [Yemeni] government is in such a weak position that a deal would almost certainly spell its demise.’
The latest round of fighting is unlikely to change attitudes on either side, Salisbury added. ‘If anything, the Houthis are likely to want to get the conflict back on their terms, and the government will be looking to gain an advantage, even if it is only tangentially involved in actual developments on the ground.’” Read more at Foreign Policy
“Turkey, the country, is set to differentiate itself with turkey, the bird, with an English-language name change, to become official with a United Nations registration in the coming weeks. The new name in English, Türkiye, is the same as its Turkish spelling and ‘represents and expresses the culture, civilization and values of the Turkish nation in the best way,’ the Turkish government said in a statement. Government websites and state-backed media already carry the new spelling.
Unal Cevikoz, a senior member of the opposition party CHP gave his assessment, in an interview with Middle East Eye. ‘I think it is a waste of time,’ Cevikoz said.
Only time will tell if Türkiye goes the way of other failed national rebrands like Czechia, better known as the Czech Republic, which has yet to gain widespread usage. On Wikipedia, for now at least, a search for ‘Türkiye’ automatically redirects to ‘Turkey.’” Read more at Foreign Policy
“Everything you think you know about Gen Z is probably wrong. They are stereotyped as entitled and immature, but this generation's coming of age has been marked by chaos and political turmoil. Veteran pollster John Della Volpe explores how it's affected Gen Z's political awakening.” Read more at NPR
“INGLEWOOD, Calif. (AP) — The Rams had a 20-point lead on Arizona with 4 1/2 minutes left at raucous SoFi Stadium. Matthew Stafford’s 13-year quest for his first playoff victory was all but complete after Los Angeles’ dominant performance on both sides of the ball.
The quarterback still took off running on third-and-long through the heart of the Cardinals’ defense on a gleeful, perilous scramble that ultimately ended short of a first down.
Even while shouldering enormous postseason pressure, Stafford never forgot to have fun. He was strong enough to carry it all — and the Rams are riding him on to Tampa Bay.
Stafford passed for 202 yards and two touchdowns and ran for another score in his first playoff win, and the Rams roared out of the wild-card round with a 34-11 victory over Arizona on Monday night.” Read more at AP News
“The Washington Post examined thousands of pages of census records and historical documents to create a database of 1,739 former congressmen who once enslaved Black people:
‘From the founding of the United States until long after the Civil War,’ The Post reports, ‘hundreds of the elected leaders writing the nation’s laws were current or former’ enslavers.
‘More than 1,700 people who served in the U.S. Congress in the 18th, 19th and even 20th centuries owned human beings at some point.’
The big picture: ‘The link between race and political power in early America echoes in complicated ways, from the racial inequities that persist to this day to the polarizing fights over voting rights and the way history is taught in schools,’ The Post writes.
The findings: ‘[E]nslavers in Congress represented 37 states, including not just the South but every state in New England, much of the Midwest, and many Western states.’ For the first 18 years of American lawmaking, from 1789 to 1807, more than half the men elected to Congress each session enslaved people.
Pictured on Monday, Jan. 17, 2022, an employee of Sotheby's Dubai holds the 555.55-carat black diamond known as ‘The Enigma,’ to be auctioned in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
“DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Auction house Sotheby’s Dubai has unveiled a diamond that’s literally from out of this world.
Sotheby’s calls the 555.55-carat black diamond — believed to have come from outer space — ‘The Enigma.’ The rare gem was shown off on Monday to journalists as part of a tour in Dubai and Los Angeles before it is due to be auctioned off in February in London.” Read more at Time
“The Cincinnati Zoo paid tribute to Betty White on what would have been the late actress' 100th birthday by naming its month-old little blue penguin ‘Rose’ after White's character on the NBC sitcom ‘Golden Girls.’” Read more at USA Today