The Full Belmonte, 5/2/2022
“The long-awaited evacuation of civilians from the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, Ukraine, is underway. Hundreds of people -- dozens of whom are injured -- are thought to be inside the complex, the last Ukrainian holdout in the city following weeks of heavy Russian bombardment. Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk called the situation a ‘humanitarian catastrophe,’ as people are running out of water, food and medicine. Nearly every building in the plant has been destroyed, new satellite images show. Separately, US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made an unannounced trip to the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv over the weekend, becoming the most senior US official to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky since the war broke out more than two months ago. Pelosi also met with Polish President Andrzej Duda in Poland today to discuss further support for Ukraine.” Read more at CNN
“The US should prepare for a predictable summer surge of Covid-19 cases across Southern states, former White House Coronavirus Response Task Force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx told CBS yesterday. Birx's warning comes as US cases are again rising with the spread of another Omicron strain, the BA.2 subvariant. The seven-day average of reported cases was almost 54,000 on Saturday, up from about 49,000 a week earlier -- and around 31,000 a month ago. Latest data from the CDC also shows nearly 60% of adults and 75% of children have antibodies indicating that they've been infected with Covid-19, but it is unclear what that means for protection against future infections.” Read more at CNN
“Jury selection will begin Monday in Fulton County, Georgia, for a special grand jury to weigh evidence and testimony concerning election interference by former president Donald Trump. A major focus of the inquiry, which began last year, has been Trump's Jan. 2, 2021, telephone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which the former president urged Raffensperger to tilt the 2020 statewide vote in his favor. In addition to the Georgia probe, the New York attorney general is continuing to develop a civil case over Trump's financial practices, and a special House committee is investigating Trump's links to the Jan. 6 insurrection and the bid to void President Joe Biden's election victory.” Read more at USA Today
“‘Do not come.’ Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas issued that stern warning to migrants yesterday, urging them not to attempt to enter the US through its southern border. Border officials have been preparing for multiple scenarios when a Trump-era pandemic restriction, known as Title 42, lifts on the US-Mexico border. The authority, invoked at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, allows officials to turn away migrants at the border because of the public health crisis. Mayorkas emphasized yesterday that if a record-breaking 18,000 migrants are encountered at border daily -- as anticipated by the department -- it would put a ‘strain on the system.’” Read more at CNN
“An experimental drug has enabled people with obesity or who are overweight to lose about 22.5 percent of their body weight, about 52 pounds on average, in a large trial, the drug’s maker announced on Thursday.
The company, Eli Lilly, has not yet submitted the data for publication in a peer-reviewed medical journal or presented them in a public setting. But the claims nonetheless amazed medical experts.” Read more at New York Times
“Three University of Oklahoma meteorology students died in a car crash in Oklahoma on Friday night on a return trip from Kansas, where they had been storm chasing, according to the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety.
The students were identified as Nicholas Nair, 20; Gavin Short, 19; and Drake Brooks, 22.
The three were traveling southbound on Interstate 35 in Tonkawa, Okla., near the Kansas border, when their Volkswagen Tiguan hydroplaned and became disabled, blocking the outside lane, according to the department of public safety. A truck struck the students’ car, pinning it for over five hours before their bodies were extricated by emergency responders. The students were pronounced dead at the scene. The truck driver was treated at a nearby hospital and released.
Just hours earlier, two of the students, Mr. Nair and Mr. Short, had posted videos on Twitter from Herington, Kan., about 150 miles north, of a tornado passing over the highway.
The students were part of a larger group of University of Oklahoma students who had traveled to Kansas to chase the storms, according to Phillip Ludwyck, a lieutenant with the Oklahoma Highway Patrol who helped recover the students from the vehicle. As the other carloads of students made their way back to Norman, Okla., they saw that Mr. Nair, Mr. Short and Mr. Brooks’s GPS location had frozen and called the Oklahoma Highway Patrol to report a possible accident, Mr. Ludwyck said.” Read more at New York Times
“Authorities in Alabama are searching for a corrections officer and an inmate charged with murder after they went missing on Friday. The pair vanished after Vicky White, assistant director of corrections for the Lauderdale County Sheriff's Office, said she was taking inmate Casey White for a mental health evaluation at the county courthouse. But the officer and inmate, who officials say are not related, never arrived at the courthouse and authorities later discovered there was no evaluation or hearing scheduled for Casey White that day. On Friday afternoon, concerned officers at the jail tried to call Vicky White but her phone went straight to voicemail. Authorities were considering multiple scenarios over the weekend, including whether Vicky White was overpowered and kidnapped by the 6-foot-9 inmate or whether she assisted him in escaping, through either coercion or her own willingness.” Read more at CNN
“Hearings for a lawsuit brought against the NFL for alleged racist hiring practices begins Monday. Brian Flores, who was fired from his role as head coach of the Miami Dolphins in January, brought forward the lawsuit, alleging that the league is ‘rife with racism’ despite publicly condemning it. Two other coaches — Steve Wilks and Ray Horton — joined Flores in the lawsuit in April. In a letter from the NFL released Thursday, the league asked a Manhattan federal judge to dismiss the coaches’ claims or force them into arbitration, saying the claims lack legal merit. In the same letter, lawyers for Flores and the other coaches said they will oppose the NFL's plans. The lawsuit comes as the NFL wraps up its annual draft ahead of the 2022-2023 season.” Read more at USA Today
“Job postings in New York City are about to get a lot more interesting:
Starting Nov. 1, employers will be required to post the maximum and minimum salary for a role — so you can know how much a job pays before you take that interview, Axios' Emily Peck reports.
Why it matters: This is quickly becoming a trend. Salary transparency is believed to be a way to diminish unfair gender and racial pay disparities, and more states and cities are adopting the practice.
Colorado's law went into effect last year. Washington State just passed its own legislation. About a dozen more states are mulling laws.
Since NYC is such a highly competitive labor market, what happens there will be influential.
The intrigue: New York's law was supposed to go into effect this month. But late last week, the date was pushed back after businesses objected.
Business groups had argued that this law couldn't come at a worse time, when the competition for workers is hot and they want maximum flexibility on pay. Plus, they said it would put small businesses that pay less at a disadvantage.
Advocates for equal pay argued that employers still have a lot of flexibility to post high maximums and low minimums.” Read more at Axios
“Up to a quarter million Ford Explorers have been recalled due to a rollaway risk. According to new documents from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a bolt in the rear axle mounting could fracture and cause the driveshaft to disconnect, increasing the risk of the vehicle accidentally rolling away while parked. Affected vehicles include various 2020-2022 Explorer models, including the Explorer Hybrid and Explorer Plug-In Hybrid. Some 2020-2021 Explorer Police Interceptor SUV and hybrid models are also affected by the recall. Dealers will replace any necessary parts or update the electronic parking brake software free of charge, the NHTSA said.” Read more at CNN
“Pelosi in Warsaw. U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is in Warsaw today where she is expected to meet with Polish President Andrzej Duda. Pelosi’s visit comes a day after she met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on an unannounced visit to Kyiv. Rep. Jason Crow, who travelled with Pelosi to Ukraine, said the trip’s focus was on: ‘Weapons, weapons, weapons,’ suggesting a smooth ride for President Joe Biden’s latest $33 billion funding request.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine—Every day, convoys of cars and minivans trickle to a processing center on the edge of Zaporizhzhia, packed with civilians fleeing the areas of southern Ukraine under Russian occupation while they still can.
A swath of southern Ukraine, including almost all of its Kherson region and the majority of its Zaporizhzhia region, have been under Russian military rule since early March.
Russian occupation authorities are swiftly integrating these areas into Russia, appointing collaborationist administrations and introducing Russian documents, education programs and currency. On Saturday, Russian authorities disconnected most of the occupied areas in southern Ukraine from Ukrainian cellphone service and internet providers by cutting fiber-optic cables and turning off power at base stations so as to hide ‘truthful information about the course of the war,’ the Ukrainian government said.
The biggest fear, especially among men, in areas under Russian control is that they will soon be forcibly drafted to fight other Ukrainians. That happened earlier this year to men up to the age of 65 in the parts of eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions that Moscow has controlled since 2014.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“EU energy policy. EU energy ministers meet in Brussels today to discuss responses to Russia’s decision to cut off gas exports to Poland and Bulgaria last week. The meeting comes as EU leaders are expected to sign off on a further Russian sanctions package later this week.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“South Africa’s COVID-19 wave. South Africa is likely experiencing a fifth wave of coronavirus cases, Health Minister Joe Phaahla said, as the number of reported infections increased sharply over the past two weeks. Sublineages of the omicron variant, called BA.4 and BA.5, are believed to be responsible for the latest surge. A recent South African study found that prior infection did not provide adequate protection against BA.4 and BA.5 compared to a vaccination, adding further risk for the 70 percent of South Africans who have not been fully vaccinated.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“Canadian astronauts will no longer be free ‘to rob and kill with abandon in space or on the moon,’ as the National Post put it, according to provisions buried in the country’s 2022 federal budget. The new rules close a loophole regarding the reach of Canadian law by extending it into the cosmos, applying it to space travel, the surface of the moon, and a new moon-orbiting space station helmed by NASA, Lunar Gateway.
The United States appears to be ahead of its northern neighbor in this area of the law, applying criminal law to Americans who commit crimes ‘outside the jurisdiction of any nation’ in 1984 after one U.S. citizen killed another at an Arctic Ocean research station years earlier.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“For the first time, farmers across the globe are testing the limits of how little chemical fertilizer they can apply without devastatingtheir yields. The outlook is bleak. Soaring prices for synthetic nutrients — due to a myriad of factors from rising natural gas prices and broken supply chains to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — will result in lower crop yields and higher grocery-store costs for everything from milk to beef to packaged foods for months or even years.” Read more at Bloomberg
“Few people in the U.S. know much Asian American history beyond Chinese migrants building railroads and Japanese American detention during World War II.
Advocates hope attention to an 1898 Supreme Court ruling changes that, Axios' Russell Contreras writes.
Why it matters: The Wong Kim Ark case affirmed that American-born people of Asian descent were U.S. citizens — giving protections to millions of Asian Americans, Latinos, and even Native Americans decades later. It's an overlooked example of how Asian American civil rights fights transformed the nation.
1619 is the year the first enslaved Africans arrived in the English colony of Virginia. The New York Times' 1619 Project sought to reframe that moment at the center of America's narrative.
As Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month begins today, historians and activists tell Axios the year 1898 — 124 years ago — could be a similar marker for Asian Americans, but as a way to show the nation's promise.
Between the lines: Groups including Make Us Visible and the Asian American Education Project are promoting Asian American history initiatives to fight a surge in anti-Asian violence.
The Wong Kim Ark story is regularly cited to show how vital Asian American history is to the nation's narrative.
Connecticut lawmakers are considering a bill to make Asian American history a requirement in public schools.
The proposal mirrors a bill passed last year in Illinois. New Jersey passed a similar measure this year.
The backstory: The San Francisco-born Wong Kim Ark returned to the city of his birth in November 1894 after visiting family in China, but was refused re-entry.
John Wise, an openly anti-Chinese bigot and the collector of customs in San Francisco who controlled immigration into the port, wanted a test case that would deny U.S. citizenship to ethnic Chinese residents.
But Wong fought his case all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled on March 28, 1898, that the 14th Amendment guaranteed U.S. citizenship to Wong and any other person born on U.S. soil.
The bottom line: The Wong Kim Ark case established the Birthright Citizenship clause and led to the dramatic demographic transformation of the U.S.” Read more at Axios
“Tonight will glitter as some of the world's most influential people dazzle on the steps of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art on Monday at this year’s Met Gala. It’s the first time since 2019 that the museum has seen the in-person event at its traditional berth on the first Monday in May. The gala is an annual fundraiser for the Met’s Costume Institute and calls on designers to adorn stars, models and other changemakers according to a selected theme to match a wing of the museum's exhibit. The latest exhibit — '‘In America: An Anthology of Fashion'‘ — has inspired the 2022 theme '‘Gilded Glamor,’ a reference to the late-1800s era defined by industrialization and innovation. Regina King, Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds and Lin-Manuel Miranda will serve as co-chairs of the event.” Read more at USA Today
Blake Lively attends The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute benefit gala celebrating the opening of the Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination exhibition on Monday, May 7, 2018, in New York.Charles Sykes, Charles Sykes/Invision/AP
“Lives Lived: When Régine opened her basement nightclub in Paris in 1957, she could not afford live music. To avoid awkward silences, she replaced her jukebox with two turntables, and so began the world’s first discothèque, which she expanded to a $500 million empire. Régine has died at 92.” Read more at New York Times
“Kathy Boudin, who as a member of the radical Weather Underground of the 1960s and ’70s took part in the murderous 1981 holdup of a Brink’s armored truck and then, in prison and after being freed two decades later, helped inmates struggling to get their lives on track, died on Sunday in New York. She was 78.” Read more at New York Times
Photo: Qantas
“Above is a rendering of the first-class cabin on flights that Qantas sayswill ‘conquer the final frontier of long-haul travel,’ beginning in 2025.
20-hour flights are planned from Sydney to New York and London, Bloomberg reports.
The "endurance flying" plan is code-named Project Sunrise.” Read more at Axios