The Full Belmonte, 4/1/2023
Tornadoes, severe storms tear across South, Midwest, leaving at least 10 dead; theater roof collapses in Illinois
“Residents across the South and Midwest were picking up the pieces Saturday, after fierce tornadoes and storms ravaged multiple states, leaving at least 10 people dead, dozens injured and homes and businesses decimated.
There were at least 40 reports of tornadoes Friday across Arkansas, Iowa, Tennessee, Illinois Wisconsin and Mississippi, weather.com reported. And more than 28 million people were under a tornado watch at one point Friday, the National Weather Service said, which declared a level 5 ‘high risk’ outlook for severe storms in some areas.
A theater roof collapsed Friday evening in Belvidere, Illinois, about 70 miles northwest of Chicago, amid an intense storm, killing one person and injuring 28.
About 260 people were attending a heavy metal concert at the Apollo Theatre when the storm struck, Belvidere Fire Department Chief Shawn Schadle said….
At least one person was killed and more than two dozen were hurt, some critically, in the Little Rock area, officials said. Four people died in Wynne in northeastern Arkansas, which suffered heavy damage that left people trapped in debris.
Baptist Health Medical Center-Little Rock officials told KATV 21 people had checked in there with tornado-caused injuries, including five in critical condition. One woman was killed and three others were injured in Madison County, Alabama, according to WAFF-TV.
An intense storm caused three fatalities in Sullivan County, Indiana, Emergency Management Director Jim Pirtle said early Saturday. The storm destroyed homes, razing full neighborhoods, and some residents were missing in the county seat of Sullivan, about 95 miles southwest of Indianapolis. Sullivan County commissioners signed an emergency declaration early Saturday.
Five freight train cars overturned in Marshall county, Tennessee. Dozens of house were destroyed or damaged in central Tennessee and two people were rescued from a collapsed home, authorities said.
Wind gusts up to 54 mph also battered Oklahoma City, fanning the flames of several fires that led to widespread evacuations.
Saturday morning, over 200,000 households remained without power in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee and Georgia, according to poweroutage.us.” [USA Today]
“What now? Procedurally, the first former US president to face indictment is set to fly with his Secret Service detail to New York City early next week, be placed under arrest, fingerprinted and photographed. Donald Trump and the whole world will then finally learn the exact charges he faces. After that, everything (except perhaps a long, litigious road to trial) remains uncertain. Trump has previously predicted ‘death and destruction’ should he be indicted, but so far most of the scattered demonstrators who have shown up at the Manhattan courthouse were cheering his bad news. It is, however, very much early days. And this is just the first and least serious of what could potentially be four criminal proceedings against Trump, stretching to Washington and Georgia, should he be charged in connection with his handling of top secret files, efforts to block Joe Biden from the White House, and the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol.
Demonstrators outside the criminal courts building in lower Manhattan on March 24. A grand jury handed up an indictment of Donald Trump tied to the alleged hush-money payoff of adult film star Stormy Daniels. Photographer: Angus Mordant/Bloomberg
The precedent for violence set on that fateful day is why New York officials have assigned police to set up camp around Manhattan’s Foley Square, where most of its courts are located. Indeed, Trump’s New York prosecution could breathe new life into his campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, and his contention that he has long been the victim of a Democratic-run ‘deep state.’ Other GOP politicians, including his main rival, have rallied to his defense and called the grand jury indictment politically motivated, an allegation rejected by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Alvin Bragg Photographer: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images North America
Nevertheless, while this is a first for the US, former leaders of other democracies have been prosecuted, including in Italy, Brazil, and currently Israel—where Benjamin Netanyhu has been accused of trying to sidestep his prosecution by restricting the power of the judiciary. In a democracy, though, no one is supposed to be above the law, Timothy O’Brien writes in Bloomberg Opinion. Trump’s indictment and the reaction to it, O’Brien concludes, says as much about America at this fraught moment as it does about Trump.” [Bloomberg]
Donald Trump using antisemitic tropes to raise money after indictment
Within hours of news of his indictment, Donald Trump started asking for political donations. They include antisemitic tropes and nods to QAnon.
READ MORE at USA Today
Fox News Suffers Major Setback in Defamation Case
A judge said the suit would go to trial, for a jury to weigh whether the network knowingly spread false claims about Dominion Voting Systems, and to determine any damages.
By Jeremy W. Peters and Katie Robertson
March 31, 2023
“Fox News suffered a significant setback on Friday in its defense against a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit that claims it lied about voter fraud in the 2020 election.
A judge in Delaware Superior Court said the case, brought by Dominion Voting Systems, was strong enough to conclude that Fox hosts and guests had repeatedly made false claims about Dominion machines and their supposed role in a fictitious plot to steal the election from President Donald J. Trump.
‘The evidence developed in this civil proceeding,’ Judge Eric M. Davis wrote, demonstrates that it ‘is CRYSTAL clear that none of the statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true.’
Judge Davis said the case would proceed to trial, for a jury to weigh whether Fox spread false claims about Dominion while knowing that they were untrue, and to determine any damages. The trial is expected to begin April 17.
But he rejected much of the heart of Fox’s defense: that the First Amendment protected the statements made on its air alleging that the election had somehow been stolen. Fox has argued that it was merely reporting on allegations of voter fraud as inherently newsworthy and that any statements its hosts made about supposed fraud were covered under the Constitution as opinion.
‘It appears oxymoronic to call the statements ‘opinions' while also asserting the statements are newsworthy allegations and/or substantially accurate reports of official proceedings,’ Judge Davis said…” Read more at New York Times
Judge blocks law restricting drag shows in Tennessee
US district judge Thomas Parker grants temporary injunction, finding the law clashes with first amendment on free speech
Associated Press
“A federal judge has temporarily blocked a new Tennessee law that placed strict limits on drag shows just hours before it was set to go into effect, siding with a group that filed a lawsuit claiming the statute violates the first amendment.
The decision on Friday comes after Memphis-based LGBTQ+ theatre company Friends of George’s filed the lawsuit on Monday against the Shelby county district attorney, Steve Mulroy, and the state.
US district judge Thomas Parker issued the temporary injunction against the first such law in the US after hearing arguments on both sides on Thursday.
Parker wrote that the state has failed to make a compelling argument as to why Tennessee needed the new law, adding that the court also agrees the statute is vague and overly broad…” Read more at The Guardian
Sen. John Fetterman Leaves Hospital, Will Return to Senate April 17
The Pennsylvania Democrat was being treated for major depression
Sen. John Fetterman on Capitol Hill in February, before he sought treatment.PHOTO: EVELYN HOCKSTEIN/REUTERS
“Sen. John Fetterman was discharged on Friday from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where he checked himself in for depression, his office said.
The 53-years-old Democrat from Pennsylvania entered the hospital in mid-February after struggling with what an aide said was clinical depression that left him unable to take care of himself in basic ways, like eating or drinking. He had suffered a stroke on the campaign trail last year and had been left with speaking and auditory-processing difficulties. To understand what was being said, Mr. Fetterman had to rely mostly on a tablet to transcribe what people were saying….
Before he entered the hospital, his symptoms had worsened over the prior eight weeks to the point that Mr. Fetterman had stopped eating and taking fluids, according to the discharge summary, causing him to develop low blood pressure potentially affecting brain circulation.
Mr. Fetterman was fitted for hearing aids, according to the discharge summary, after doctors identified mild to moderate sensorineural hearing loss. At the same time, his cardiology team changed medications and reduced dosages, the summary said. He also worked with speech-language specialists, according to the summary. His speech improvement ‘was noticeable and we believe that significant continued improvement is likely with continued outpatient rehabilitation,’ according to the discharge briefing.
‘I am extremely grateful to the incredible team at Walter Reed,’ Mr. Fetterman said in a statement. ‘The care they provided changed my life.…This isn’t about politics—right now there are people who are suffering with depression in red counties and blue counties. If you need help, please get help.’
Doctors said there was no new stroke, according to the discharge briefing, and an echocardiogram showed no blood clots in the heart. Mr. Fetterman will pursue outpatient treatment, his office said….” Read more at Wall Street Journal
New fears about Russia reporting
Left: Evan Gershkovich of The Wall Street Journal in 2021. Right: Gershkovich is transferred from a court in Moscow on Thursday. Both: AFP via Getty Images
“The arrest of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich on espionage charges in Russia has news organizations weighing whether the risks of reporting there during wartime are too great, AP's David Bauder writes.
The latest: More than 30 press freedom groups and news organizations, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, signed a letter yesterday to Anatoly I. Antonov, Russia’s ambassador to the U.S.
‘Russia is sending the message that journalism within your borders is criminalized and that foreign correspondents seeking to report from Russia do not enjoy the benefits of the rule of law,’ they said.
What to watch: Diplomats and legal experts say it's unlikely Gershkovich will immediately be freed. Russian espionage trials are held in secret and almost always end in a conviction, The Journal reports.
‘His sole purpose in his work is to capture issues occurring around the world and to shed light on them so that the public can make informed decisions about how to navigate the future,’ Emma Tucker, The Journal's editor-in-chief, said in a statement.
‘We continue to call for his immediate release. The unjust arrest of one of our own sits heavy with all of us, and I know for many there are lingering questions about what the Russian government’s actions mean for freedom of the press in the region.’” [Axios]
Counting the Lives an AIDS Foreign Policy Helps Save
Researchers say a U.S. effort launched 20 years ago became a turning point in the global HIV fight
The U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief helped fund this Rwanda HIV clinic.PHOTO: SHASHANK BENGALI/MCT/TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE/GETTY IMAGES
“Often, retrospectives on U.S. foreign policy focus on the missteps and the boondoggles. A look at the number of lives saved in the war on AIDS points to a remarkable and under-celebrated policy success.
Twenty years ago this spring, the George W. Bush administration launched an all-out initiative for AIDS prevention, care and treatment in developing countries, especially in Africa. At the time it was the largest-ever initiative dedicated to a single disease.
Counting the lives saved from a disease is quite a bit trickier than counting lives lost. In the latter case there are death certificates but in the former no straightforward count of people who would have died and didn’t.
This was the challenge in assessing the impact of the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or Pepfar. For 2003, the year the plan was launched, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS estimated that two million people died of AIDS, a number that had been rising relentlessly since the disease’s emergence. The number peaked in 2005 and began to fall. For 2021, UNAIDS estimated the disease caused 650,000 deaths.
Lifespans plunged in the hardest-hit countries in sub-Saharan Africa. South Africa, Namibia and Botswana all had life expectancies of 63 years in the late 1980s or early 1990s. By the early 2000s, that had dropped to 54 in South Africa and 51 in the other two nations. Fifty years of progress and, for the victims, a decade of life, had disappeared.
Amanda Glassman, executive vice president at the Center for Global Development, whose research focuses on setting global health priorities, said those trends began to reverse after the AIDS initiative’s launch. ‘The effort to combat HIV/AIDS through making antiretrovirals more accessible, especially in low-income countries, has generated enormous economic and health returns,’ she said.
In retrospect, the inflection point in the international battle against AIDS coincided with Pepfar. But that alone doesn’t prove Pepfar caused the decline. To determine the link, researchers have used two methods, said Eran Bendavid, a professor of medicine at Stanford University who has studied the effectiveness of the AIDS policies.
President George W. Bush greeted AIDS orphans in Uganda in 2003, the year his administration launched the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.PHOTO: LUKE FRAZZA/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
The first method looks at all the interventions the program has funded over the years. In December the State Department, which oversees Pepfar, said the program helps fund antiretroviral drugs for 20.1 million women, men and children. It reports that 1.5 million people have enrolled to receive PrEP, a prophylactic medication that protects high-risk people from acquiring HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
The drug not only saves the lives of people with HIV, but reduces the chances of a person spreading the virus. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that PrEP reduces the risk of HIV from sex by 99% when taken as prescribed. Studies have found that male circumcision reduces the risk of acquiring HIV through heterosexual exposure by about 60%.
The State Department claims the program has saved 25 million lives, though it doesn’t explain how it arrived at that number. Indeed, the challenge with estimating lives saved from the number of people being treated is that not everyone takes medicine as prescribed. Especially early on, antiretrovirals were a complex regimen and not everyone could be assumed to take them as effectively as in trials. Potentially, efforts to fight one disease could subtract from efforts to save lives from another.
In a study published in 2012, Dr. Bendavid and co-authors took a different approach to estimating lives saved that is still considered the gold standard. They exploited the fact that while AIDS was spreading rapidly through much of the world, initially the program focused largely on 12 African countries, including South Africa, Namibia and Botswana, but not on similar countries, in many cases direct neighbors such as Zimbabwe, Lesotho or Eswatini (formerly Swaziland).
These countries were “all tracking the same way in the five to six years prior” to the launch of the U.S. AIDS initiative, Dr. Bendavid said. Then, as soon as the program begins in the focus countries, “you see the number of antiretrovirals goes way up, mortality goes way down”—but in the nonfocus countries mortality continues to rise.
The results allowed researchers to estimate a counterfactual: How many people would have died absent the programs? They estimated adult mortality was 20% lower in the focus countries. The program did expand to those other countries later, but the gap provides powerful evidence that Pepfar, rather than other changes in treatment of the epidemic, spurred the improvements.
A banner in Botswana in 1999 urged abstinence as a way to avoid AIDS. Pepfar initially stipulated that 7% of its spending be used for abstinence-until-marriage education. PHOTO: YOAV LEMMER/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
(Later research, such as a Kaiser Family Foundation study in 2021, and a series of studies, reaffirmed Dr. Bendavid’s finding.)
The different approaches don’t produce the exact same result, but they tell the same story. ‘It’s easy to back up the claim that many millions are alive today who otherwise wouldn’t have been,’ Dr. Bendavid said.
The program has had controversies. Its original authorization stipulated that 7% of overall spending had to be used for abstinence-until-marriage education. Advocates said the ABC Strategy—’Abstinence, Be faithful, use a Condom’—could help reduce the spread of AIDS, although critics saw this as intending to promote religious values rather than fight AIDS. The National Academy of Medicine, then known as the Institute of Medicine, faulted the 7% target as not based on evidence. In 2008, Congress removed the abstinence allocation.
Some researchers have noted that about 70% of U.S. assistance to Africa has gone to health programs, primarily HIV/AIDS, even though this is no longer the priority of African governments and citizens. Many are more concerned with job creation or security.
‘That in itself is a huge success,’ said Ms. Glassman of the Center for Global Development. AIDS/HIV is ‘no longer top of mind because it’s being managed,’ she added.” [Wall Street Journal]
An HIV testing site in Zambia. The Pepfar initiative offers AIDS prevention, care and treatment in developing countries, especially in Africa. PHOTO: GIDEON MENDEL FOR THE INTERNATIONAL HIV/AIDS ALLIANCE/CORBIS/GETTY IMAGES
“Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen visited the US this week, a trip China called ‘another provocation’ to which it ‘will definitely take measures to respond.’ But China Premier Li Qiang sought to calm fears of any looming war over Taiwan, telling business leaders in Asia that China is ‘an anchor for world peace and development’ and ‘will remain so in the future.’ It’s a difficult balancing act for US President Joe Biden’s team, which is determined to maintain support for Taiwan as a beacon of democracy and, more practically, as the source for the vast majority of the world’s most advanced microchips.” [Bloomberg]
Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen arrives at a hotel in New York. Photograph: AP Photo/John Minchillo
“India risks approaching the limit of human survival as it experiences more intense and frequent heat waves. Bhuma Shrivastava writes that while temperatures as high as 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) are unbearable in any condition, the damage is made worse for those of India’s 1.4 billion population who are stuck in tightly packed cities and don’t have access to well-ventilated housing or air-conditioning.” [Bloomberg]
A florist on a hot summer afternoon in New Delhi on April 30, 2022. Photographer: Anindito Mukherjee/Bloomberg
AI whisperer (salary up to $335,000)
Illustration: Shoshana Gordon/Axios
“The artificial intelligence job market is hot — offering salaries of up to $335,000 a year to help sharpen the technology of the future.
What's happening: Anthropic, an AI company backed by Alphabet, is advertising for the role of prompt engineer with sky-high pay.
But you don't necessarily need to be a coder to do the job.
Prompt engineers are like ‘AI whisperers,’ Albert Phelps, who's a prompt engineer himself, told Bloomberg.
‘You’ll often find [they] come from a history, philosophy, or English language background, because it’s wordplay. You're trying to distill the essence or meaning of something into a limited number of words.’
The AI whisperers are tasked with writing prompts to teach AI's like ChatGPT to produce smarter results. And they also help train companies on how to best use AI.
If you, like millions of others, have played around with ChatGPT, you're engaging in some prompt engineering yourself.” [Axios]
Iowa star Caitlin Clark steals the show with a performance for the ages
Caitlin Clark finished with 41 points and eight assists as Iowa snapped South Carolina's 42-game winning streak. The Hawkeyes will play LSU on Sunday.
READ MORE at USA Today
Caitlin Clark led Iowa to victory over South Carolina.Tony Gutierrez/Associated Press
“Women’s N.C.A.A. basketball championship: Iowa upset South Carolinalast night, 77-73, ending the Gamecocks’ perfect season behind yet another remarkable game from Caitlin Clark, who had 41 points. The Hawkeyes will play Louisiana State, which beat Virginia Tech. The Tigers have made a major turnaround in just two years under Coach Kim Mulkey. It helps to have Angel Reese, a star forward, whose 33 double-doubles this season tied an N.C.A.A. record. 3:30 p.m. Eastern tomorrow on ABC.” [New York Times]