Why the Vance-Walz Debate Is Primed To Be Messy

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Tuesday night’s likely lone debate between the vice presidential nominees might seem like a Midwest-Off for the ages, with the junior Senator from Ohio offering his antagonistic vision for a new conservatism against the aw-shucks earnestness of Minnesota’s Governor. But in reality, the evening stands to be a high-stakes distillation of the culture wars largely defining this national contest, with nasty digs referencing “childless cat ladies,” tampons in boys’ bathrooms, and pet-hunting Haitians flying across the stage from the start.

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With voting already underway in some states—including Minnesota—and no more made-for-television events on the books before Nov. 5’s Election Day, this undercard debate takes on an importance unseen in the modern era. Both Vance and Walz remain blank slates to much of America; as much as a quarter of the electorate recently told pollsters they have literally heard of Trump’s and Harris’ running mates, according to surveys from the Pew Research Center. Vance was slightly better known than Walz, although Vance carried higher unfavorable numbers among those with an opinion. Tuesday’s event—hosted by CBS News with the other networks planning to simulcast it—stands to be the rare game-changing VP debate.

Polling heading into the 90-minute session shows a race that seems relatively stable. Vice President Kamala Harris, looking for an unexpected promotion after President Joe Biden decided to skip his in-progress re-election, seems to have stabilized the so-called Blue Wall of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Former President Donald Trump, looking for an almost unprecedented return to power, appears to have settled into the slightest of advantages in Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina, while Nevada—like all seven battleground states, if we’re being honest—remains anyone’s to snag.

Which is why both VP picks have been scrutinized in ways that haven’t seemed needed since Sarah Palin’s selection in 2008. Vance, elected to the Senate in 2022, has a relatively short dossier in public life; no one expects a first-term lawmaker in the minority party to have much of an impact. Walz, a former House member who moved home to run his state, has a bit more of a track record, but one not well known beyond the Upper Midwest.

Sure, Vance can point to his erstwhile populism and his advocacy for East Palestine, Ohio, after an epic train derailment just days into his arrival in Washington. His work in the tech sector has drawn impressed nods from Silicon Valley, although the child-online-safety legislation he co-sponsored passed the Senate with him missing the vote.

And Walz can cite his state’s universal free meals program for students and his success in passing universal background checks for guns and enshrining abortion rights in the state constitution. But he has yet to fully bat away attacks over his decision last year to sign into law a measure that all students from the fourth grade on must have access to menstrual products in school bathrooms. The bill drew little public objection at the time but conservatives pounced on it as soon as Harris tapped Walz, calling the Governor “Tampon Tim” and falsely arguing he had required public schools to put menstrual products in every boys bathroom.

That’s why, in keeping with the running mates’ tried role as attack machine, Vance and Walz each have been studying up on the rival’s record. For Vance, that means a whole lot of time mastering Walz’s voting history in the House and his time leading Minnesota, including the stretch that saw the confluence of the Covid-19 pandemic and the unrest in Minneapolis after George Floyd’s death at the hands of police. Audiences should expect Vance to accuse Walz of waiting too long to dispatch the National Guard to restore order. To help him get ready, Vance has deputized House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, a Minnesota Republican, to play the role of Walz during debate prep sessions.

And Walz has at the ready plenty of Vance’s previous comments, including many from before he was in office. Some of those were highly, highly critical of Trump, as TIME brought up during an interview with Vance back in 2021, prompting the most under-appreciated mea culpa in some time: “I’m not just a flip-flopper, I’m a flip-flop-flipper on Trump.” Vance has questioned why people without children get a say in schools, and his “childless cat ladies” dismissal has become a stand-in for the perceived disrespect for voters who haven’t given birth—Harris included. For his part, Walz has been practicing against Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, a former Mayor of South Bend, Ind.

The policy positions, the authenticity, the vibes even matter in this race. But the real reason debate prep sessions have been centering on this caliber of critique is because both campaigns see an opportunity to turn the other side into a parody of itself, a down-the-rabbit-hole example of a toxic culture war that neither side can truly win. Vance will rail against “wokeness”; Walz found the sweet spot as he was running the shadow campaign for Harris’ rose ceremony when he called the GOP ticket “weird.”

In a way, Vance and Walz are on a similar mission: make the other guy unpalatable. It’s not elegant. It’s far from high-minded or even approximating wonky. But it is what the strategists prepping them think is the most lethal play at this moment when voters are just starting to tune into the rest of the ticket. With five weeks until Election Day, this is not the time for petit niceties but rather petty needling. Voters say they hate the negativity—the ads, the rhetoric, the innuendo and its stronger cousin slander. But here’s the thing: it usually works. The culture wars spark fear, and fear puts people at voting centers. Both campaigns get it, and voters are just going to have to strap in for this final push.

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source https://time.com/7026398/walz-vance-debate-what-to-expect/

When It’s OK to Ghost Someone

One of the most frustratingly common experiences of modern dating is ghosting. It’s enough to keep people from staying in the dating pool—or jumping in at all. Ghosting involves cutting off communication with someone in whom you have had an interest or even dated. Common ghosting behaviors include unmatching in the apps, leaving text messages read with no response, and generally becoming impossible to contact. And for those doing the ghosting, there can be a tremendous amount of guilt as they leave behind a confused and upset person who was, up until getting ghosted, enjoying getting to know them.

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Part of what makes ghosting such a harrowing experience (on both sides) is that there isn’t a rigid set of terms that constitute the practice. It can happen at any time and typically comes about when things seem fine. People ghost after a bit of chatting on the apps, after a first date, after having sex or dating for a while. I’ve even heard of ghosting happening after years of dating, which is perhaps its most audacious form.

We could all be better communicators when it comes to letting others know how we feel, even if that means momentarily hurting someone’s feelings. But as much as ghosting can sting, there are times when it might just be the right thing to do.

People ghost for a number of reasons that they may feel are justified. They may not have time to communicate more with every single person they match and start chats with on dating apps. They may want to avoid any tension or confrontation that may result from stating that they are no longer interested in talking or continuing the relationship. In short, ghosting is convenient. It may stir up feelings of guilt and frustration for the ghoster, but it is lower effort compared to writing a text or having an awkward conversation. These are actually the times when it’s advisable not to ghost. Taking a couple minutes to draft a text that lets the other person know that you are no longer interested can be such a huge relief for both parties.

Read More: Stop Taking First Dates So Seriously

As much as people complain about how bad it feels to be ghosted, a surprisingly high number of people admit to ghosting someone. According to a 2023 survey conducted by Thriving Center for Psychology, 67% of those who had been ghosted had also ghosted other people, which points to a perpetual cycle where people who mean well turn into the very thing that is so upsetting to them. In fact, 84% of Millenial and Gen Z survey respondents say they had been ghosted. No wonder ghosting seems like a feature of dating—not a bug.

But not all ghosting is created equal. What about the times when someone is a complete jerk? What if you are struggling with mental health, family obligations, or the weight of the world and dating ceases to be a priority? And what if the other person has been giving you very little, won’t commit to a date, or just seems like they’re keeping you around as a text buddy? In these cases, ghosting may be necessary to reduce harm to yourself.

For instance, a recently published meta-analysis of studies examining sexual harassment on dating apps showed a prevalence between 57 to 88.8%. At the low end, that’s over half of dating app users. Women and sexual minorities experience sexual harassment in dating at higher rates. These experiences run the gamut between receiving harassing messages to being harassed in person on dates.

Even if you thought the person had potential, you don’t have to continue communicating with someone who crosses your boundaries. I have encouraged many clients to unmatch, stop communication, and even block and report people who have harassed them. Some have chosen to do so after letting the other person know what they did wasn’t okay. But others, shocked by being on the receiving end of harassment, have just ghosted. Ghosting is how they can protect themselves.

Sometimes we’re just not in a good headspace to date or feel it inappropriate to share personal details about our lives with relative strangers, and this may result in ghosting. In Season Two of the hit reality dating podcast, Hang Up, the star “Timo” was ghosted by one of the contestants only to then ghost the winner, “Salix”, when the show ended. In a painful follow-up episode, “Timo”, who identifies as Middle Eastern, later explained what led to their ghosting someone they were truly interested in. Between navigating a toxic work environment and the pain and grief they felt for Palestinians in Gaza, they just didn’t have anything to offer their date. In this instance, “Timo” was able to reconnect with “Salix”, owned up to how their behavior was hurtful, and also explained what had kept them from reaching out before. When dating becomes hard to emotionally invest in because of other life concerns, ghosting is a way to refocus on yourself. It’s important to attempt to repair any relationships that may have been impacted though.

Sometimes, it is the absence of momentum that spurs the need for ghosting. Countless times I’ve had clients engage with people who are comfortable chatting for hours on end, but never commit to solid plans to meet in person. They may flake out and say that when their schedule clears up “in a while,” they will have more time, but they never seem to get that schedule cleared. After giving these people several chances to move the relationship offline, ghosting and blocking might be good ways to protect your time and energy.

Ghosting is a hard experience to go through, whether you’re the one ghosting or being ghosted. It’s easy then to just say “never ghost someone.” But the realities of dating call for subtle distinctions between when ghosting is never okay and when it may be called for. Whether it’s to avoid future harm from a harasser or time-waster, or to give yourself an opportunity to focus on mental health or other priorities, sometimes ghosting is okay. But if it’s just a matter of letting someone know that you don’t want to pursue anything further with them, try to avoid being another ghost in the dating machine.

source https://time.com/7025888/its-ok-to-ghost-dating-essay/

How the Death of Hezbollah’s Nasrallah Brings a Renewed Opportunity for Mideast Peace

Just when the prospect of peace in the Middle East seemed further away than ever, the dramatic death of longtime Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah significantly alters the balance of power and offers a renewed opportunity for peace.

It is hard to overstate the significance of removing Nasrallah from the scene. He was a singular leader possessing a unique portfolio of charisma and strategic skills—in the words of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “He was not another terrorist, he was the terrorist.” His impact is a reminder that in an era where self-directed work teams, group leadership, and collective action are all the buzz, significant individuals can still have a profound impact on history. Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle said: “The history of the world is but the biography of great men.” It’s clear that by “great,” that would mean both virtuous and wicked.

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When Nasrallah assumed leadership of Hezbollah in 1992, at age 32, taking over from assassinated co-founder Abbas al-Musawi, Hezbollah was still largely relegated to the fringes of Lebanese society. Over the next thirty years, Nasrallah and his acolytes systemically dismantled and subsumed the sovereign Lebanese government, with even no President since 2022, and wrought havoc on the Lebanese people with little support from the population. As noted by President Biden in calling Nasrallah’s death “a measure of justice,” Nasrallah was responsible for the deaths of thousands of Lebanese, Israelis, Americans, and Syrians during his bloody rule, and enjoyed little support from Arab neighbors, with the Arab League joining the U.S. and the E.U. in designating Hezbollah a terrorist organization under his watch.

Under Hezbollah rule, Lebanon has arguably turned from prosperity into a failed state, but with Nasrallah and much of the leadership of Hezbollah now gone, there is an opportunity for what is left of the Lebanese government and military to reassert control and rebuild a functioning state, for the benefit of the people of Lebanon rather than Iran.

But the broader opportunity comes from what has accompanied Nasrallah’s death—the systematic degradation of Hezbollah’s capabilities over the last month.

Recent history shows that criminal and terrorist movements rarely collapse with the removal of the top leader alone. The resurgence of Boko Haram has continued despite the killing of its leader Abubakar Shekau in 2021. Similarly, the resilience of Al-Shabaab after the U.S. killed one of its top commanders Maalim Ayman last year, and the flourishing of Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel despite the imprisonment of leader El Chapo and his son, show that taking down one key figure does not always have a grave impact.

But what is far more effective is when the top leader’s removal is paired with the systemic hollowing out of a movement’s organizational capacity. Examples include the collapse of Al-Qaeda, culminating in the deaths of heads Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, the collapse of Russia’s Wagner Group after its forced integration with the Russian military culminating in the deaths of head Yevgeny Prigozhin and his top deputies, and the collapse of ISIS after years of military defeats culminating in the death of its already weakened leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

And that is what has happened in Lebanon over the last month. Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies exploded, making communications among Hezbollah operatives suspect. Strikes have eliminated Nasrallah’s presumptive heirs and leadership cohort, and with Hezbollah fighters focused on their own survival, they have been less capable of launching their missiles at Israel in numbers we were seeing previously. Israel has been under attack from what they estimate to be anywhere from 8,000 to 11,000 missiles fired by Hezbollah since Oct. 8, 2023.

The sudden, unanticipated degradation of Hezbollah has shattered tired, old assumptions that Iran’s most vaunted proxy was untouchable, catching the U.S.—and many others—by surprise, right as the global community was calling for a cease-fire. But even more importantly, it has exposed Iran and its proxies as paper tigers, tilting the regional power balance the furthest away from Iran and its allies in recent memory. One thing that is for sure: You can bet that Arab leaders will now be less fearful of Iran and its coercive abilities and will evaluate their options accordingly.

Of course, escalation remains possible, but Iran has always been wary of getting into a direct war with the U.S. Consider the reaction of Iran to the killing of Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani in 2020 and the strike on Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran earlier this year. The former produced a very limited retaliatory response, the latter still nothing. Deprived of its strongest proxy, the dramatically overestimated Hezbollah, Iran’s bluff has been called. Iran is left in deeper isolation in the Middle East, leaving the Ayatollah’s regime increasingly reliant on patronage from Russia and China. Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons remains a danger that requires Iran’s leaders to understand that they could risk its entire nuclear infrastructure if it continues. But the Iranian economy remains very weak and is being propped up by windfall oil production.

What does all this mean for the prospect of regional peace? Netanyahu needs to be able to translate Israel’s military achievements into political outcomes. He cannot let nationalists in his coalition define what is possible in Gaza and the West Bank. But now, given Israel’s actions against Hezbollah, Iran-backed proxy groups will no doubt be worrying about their own security, or lack thereof, with the myth of Iran’s protective shield irrevocably punctured. Israeli security insistences which may have previously seemed indigestible may not be as intolerable when measured against the humiliation inflicted upon Hezbollah, and by extension, Iran.

The last few years have been marked by roads to peace not taken, and while the opportunity for peace looms large, whether that opportunity is realized will largely come down to the regional participants themselves. After so many missed opportunities, it is hard to be hopeful. However, even without any official accord, the removal of Hezbollah’s Nasrallah, paired with the complete degradation of Hezbollah, promises a new day ahead for the Middle East.

source https://time.com/7026351/hezbollah-leader-hassan-nasrallah-death-opportunity-for-peace/

The Internet Can’t Get Over This Moment From Donald Trump’s Latest Speech

As the border continues to play an important policy role in the upcoming 2024 presidential election, former President and current Republican nominee Donald Trump criticized the government’s immigration process during a campaign speech on Saturday, Sept. 28, in Wisconsin.

He once again called out the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) app—a mobile application that hosts a single portal to multiple CBP services, including a space for immigrants to schedule appointments to present themselves at a port of entry and for carriers to request cargo inspections. 

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“They have a phone app so that people can come into our country… these are smart immigrants, I guess, because most people don’t have any idea what the hell a phone app is,” Trump said at the Prairie Du Chien Area Arts Center in Prairie Du Chien, a city of about 5,500 people along the Mississippi River.

The campaign for Vice President and Democratic nominee for President Kamala Harris posted a video of the moment on X (formerly Twitter), with a caption reciting Trump’s comments.

Trump: Most people don't have any idea what the hell a phone app is pic.twitter.com/indnzUDJ6S

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) September 28, 2024

Many users on X have reacted to Trump’s comment, showing surprise that Trump believes many don’t know what apps are.

“I feel like most people know what a phone app is,” former tennis star Andy Roddick wrote on X. “It’s not 2004 any more. It’s 2024,” another person wrote, pointing out that Trump owns his own social media platform, Truth Social, which has an app component. Meanwhile, one commenter claimed: “How out of touch with reality do you have to be to believe most people don’t know what a phone app is?”

The post from Kamala HQ mirrors the campaign’s recent strategy of simply posting clips from Trump’s speeches, and letting the Internet’s virality culture do the work. The campaign’s X account posted other clips from Trump’s speech in Wisconsin, including comments Trump made about a fly on stage.

“Oh, there’s a fly. Oh, I wonder where the fly came from,” Trump said. “See, two years ago, I wouldn’t have had a fly up here. But they’re changing rapidly. We can’t take it any longer.”

Trump didn’t elaborate on his comments regarding the insect, which were made during a section of his speech whereby he discussed immigration. Responding to the moment, some social media users called back to the viral instance in 2020 when a fly landed on Mike Pence’s head during the vice-presidential debate against Kamala Harris.

This is not the first time Trump has targeted the CBP One App. Earlier this month, Trump posted about it on his Truth Social account, calling the service the “Kamala phone app for smuggling illegals” and vowing to close it.

According to the CBP website, the CBP One App was launched on Oct. 28, 2020—when Trump was still President. In January 2023, the Biden Administration announced that it would expand use of the app, at which point migrants began requesting appointments using CBP One. The app became particularly prominent once the Biden Administration put in place new asylum rules after the expiration of Title 42.

If a person does not seek asylum in the country they moved through to get to the U.S. or didn’t use the CBP One app, any asylum claim they make in the U.S. will likely be rejected. Yet, there is much criticism from immigration rights advocates that the CBP One App has been unable to keep up with the demand from migrants.

Read More: Migrants Struggle to Make Asylum Claims Through CBP App

Trump’s Wisconsin speech, and its focus on immigration, follows Harris’ visit to  the U.S.-Mexico border. It was Harris’ first appearance there since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee. After visiting the border on Friday, she made remarks in Arizona, putting forth a more visible “tough on immigration” image.

“I reject the false choice that suggests we must choose either between securing our border and creating a system that is orderly, safe, and humane,” Harris said. “We can and we must do both.”

source https://time.com/7026339/donald-trump-speech-app-comment-public-reaction-kamala-harris-campaign/

Hezbollah Confirms Seventh Top Commander Was Killed in Israeli Strikes in Recent Days

JERUSALEM — The Israeli military said Sunday it has killed another high-ranking Hezbollah official in an airstrike as the Lebanese militant group was reeling from a string of devastating blows and the killing of its overall leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

The military said Nabil Kaouk, the deputy head of Hezbollah’s Central Council, was killed on Saturday. Hezbollah confirmed his death, making him the seventh senior Hezbollah leader slain in Israeli strikes in a little over a week. They include founding members who had evaded death or detention for decades.

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The Israeli military said it carried out another targeted strike on Beirut later on Sunday, with details to follow.

Hezbollah had earlier confirmed that Ali Karaki, another senior commander, died in Friday’s strike that killed Nasrallah. The Israeli military said earlier that Karaki was killed in the airstrike, which targeted an underground compound in Beirut where Nasrallah and other senior Hezbollah figures were meeting.

Israel said at least 20 other Hezbollah militants were killed in the strike, including two close associates of Nasrallah, one of whom was in charge of his security detail.

Wreckage from the strike was still smoldering more than two days later. On Sunday, Associated Press journalists saw smoke over the rubble as people flocked to the site, some to check on what’s left of their homes and others to pay respects, pray or simply to see the destruction.

Hezbollah has also been targeted by a sophisticated attack on its pagers and walkie-talkies that was widely blamed on Israel. A wave of Israeli airstrikes across large parts of Lebanon has killed at least 1,030 people — including 156 women and 87 children — in less than two weeks, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been driven from their homes in Lebanon by the latest strikes. The government estimates that around 250,000 are in shelters, with three to four times as many staying with friends or relatives, or camping out on the streets, Environment Minister Nasser Yassin told the AP.

Hezbollah has continued to fire rockets and missiles into northern Israel, but most have been intercepted or fallen in open areas. No Israelis have been killed since the latest wave of strikes targeting top Hezbollah leaders began on Sept. 20.

Kaouk was a veteran member of Hezbollah going back to the 1980s and served as Hezbollah’s military commander in southern Lebanon during the 2006 war with Israel. He often appeared in local media, where he would comment on politics and security developments, and he gave eulogies at the funerals of senior militants. The United States announced sanctions against him in 2020.

Hezbollah began firing rockets, missiles and drones into northern Israel after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack out of Gaza triggered the war there. Hezbollah and Hamas are allies that consider themselves part of an Iran-backed “Axis of Resistance” against Israel.

Israel has responded with waves of airstrikes, and the conflict has steadily ratcheted up to the brink of all-out war, raising fears of a region-wide conflagration.

Israel says it is determined to return some 60,000 of its citizens to communities in the north that were evacuated nearly a year ago. Hezbollah has said it will only halt its rocket fire if there is a cease-fire in Gaza, which has proven elusive despite months of indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas led by the United States, Qatar and Egypt.

source https://time.com/7026319/hezbollah-confirms-top-commanders-killed-in-israeli-strikes/

What to Know About the Leak at the International Space Station: ‘A Top Safety Risk’

A new report from NASA details how ongoing air leaks at the International Space Station (ISS) are “a top safety risk.”

The report, published from NASA’s Office of Inspector General on Sept. 26 and signed by Deputy Inspector General George A. Scott, states the leak is in a tunnel connecting the ISS’ Russian segment to a docking port. Per the report, NASA and Russia’s space agency Roscosmos are continuing to “work together to address structural issues with the Russian Service Module Transfer Tunnel.”

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“According to NASA, Roscosmos is confident they will be able to monitor and close the hatch to the Service Module prior to the leak rate reaching an untenable level,” the report reads. “However, NASA and Roscosmos have not reached an agreement on the point at which the leak rate is untenable.”

This leak—the root cause of which remains unknown—has been discussed in the public forum previously, with Russia acknowledging the issue back in February. However, they said it posed no safety hazard to the crew. Yet, the newly-released report states that in April 2024, NASA identified an “increase in the leak rate to its highest level to date.”

In May and June, ISS Program and Roscosmos officials met to discuss their heightened concerns over the increased leak rate. “As of August 2024, the Service Module Transfer Tunnel leak risk is scored as a 5 by 5,” the report states. NASA’s risk scorecard is based on both “risk likelihood,” meaning the probability of a potential risk happening, and “risk impact,” meaning the potential damage that could occur if a problem does arise. Five is considered to be “the most severe” on the five-point scale.

If the leaks continue, NASA and Roscosmos may be forced to permanently close the hatch to the affected tunnel, which would cut astronauts off from using one of the four docking ports for the Russian segment. Currently, the report states that they are monitoring the leaks constantly and temporarily sealing the hatch when it is not needed.

The ISS is only planned to be in operations with NASA through 2030, at which point they are planning to partner with SpaceX and deorbit the station in a controlled manner. In 2023, Russia committed to stay aboard until 2028, and are planning to create the core of a new space station by 2030.

NASA’s September Inspector General report offers some recommendations to NASA’s crew, including reexamining orbital debris tracking tools to “ensure crew safety,” and documenting “contingency plans” in case of emergency and if the air leaks do get worse from damage.

source https://time.com/7026281/international-space-station-leak-nasa-what-to-know/

Biden Calls the Israeli Strike Killing Hezbollah’s Nasrallah a ‘Measure of Justice’

REHOBOTH BEACH, Del. — President Joe Biden on Saturday called the Israeli strike that killed Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah a “measure of justice” for his four-decade reign of terror.

The comments came after Lebanon’s Hezbollah group confirmed earlier Saturday that Nasrallah, one of the group’s founders, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut the previous day.

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Biden noted that the operation to take out Nasrallah took place in the broader context of the conflict that began with Hamas’ massacre of Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023.

“Nasrallah, the next day, made the fateful decision to join hands with Hamas and open what he called a ‘northern front’ against Israel,” Biden said in a statement.

He also noted that Hezbollah under Nasrallah’s watch has been responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans.

Read More: Hezbollah Confirms Its Leader Hassan Nasrallah Was Killed In an Israeli Airstrike

The White House sees the death of Nasrallah as a huge blow to the group. At the same time, the administration has sought to tread carefully as it has tried to contain Israel ‘s war with Hamas, which, like Hezbollah, is backed by Iran, from exploding into an all-out regional conflict.

The White House and Pentagon were quick on Friday, shortly after the strike, to say publicly that Israel offered it no forewarning of the operation.

The confirmation of Nasrallah’s death comes during a week that began with Biden’s top national security aides working on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly to build support for a 21-day Israel-Hezbollah cease-fire that they hoped might also breathe new life into stalled efforts to secure a truce in Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a defiant speech Friday to the United Nations, vowing to keep up operations against Hezbollah until tens of thousands of Israeli citizens displaced by rocket attacks can return home. Shortly after, Israel carried out the strike killing Nasrallah.

Biden reiterated on Saturday that he wants to see cease-fires both in Gaza and between Israel and Hezbollah.

“It is time for these deals to close, for the threats to Israel to be removed, and for the broader Middle East region to gain greater stability,” Biden said.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian accused the United States of supporting the killing that took out Nasrallah and dozens of others.

“The world community will not forget that the order of the terrorist strike was issued from New York and the Americans cannot absolve themselves from complicity with the Zionists,” Pezeshkian was quoted as saying in a statement read on Iranian state television.

The State Department on Saturday ordered the departure of the families of U.S. diplomats who are not employed by the embassy in Beirut and authorized the departure of those who are, as well as nonessential employees because of “the volatile and unpredictable security situation” in Lebanon’s capital.

The move comes after an Israeli strike on Friday killed the leader of the Hezbollah militant group, intensifying the fighting along another front of war, this time between Israel and Hezbollah.

The State Department has previously advised American citizens to consider leaving Lebanon and reiterated its warning against all travel to the country.

“Due to the increased volatility following airstrikes within Beirut and the volatile and unpredictable security situation throughout Lebanon, the U.S. Embassy urges U.S. citizens to depart Lebanon while commercial options still remain available,” the department said in a statement Saturday.

The State Department routinely orders or authorizes the departure of nonessential embassy staffers and the families of diplomats when security conditions deteriorate in the country where they are posted.

An ordered departure is not technically an evacuation but does require those affected to leave. An authorized departure allows those affected to leave the country voluntarily at government expense.

source https://time.com/7026258/president-biden-statement-israeli-strike-killing-hezbollah-leader-hassan-nasrallah/

Watch: TV Reporter Stops Live Broadcast to Rescue Woman Trapped in Submerged Car

Tropical Storm Helene, which made landfall in Florida as a Category 4 hurricane on Thursday, has left a trail of devastation across the southeastern U.S., leaving millions without power and dozens dead.

As the media covers the catastrophic damage caused by Helene, one reporter took matters into his own hands on Friday, Sept. 27.

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Fox Weather meteorologist Bob Van Dillen broadcasted live, reporting on flash flooding in Atlanta, Georgia. Behind him, a woman whose car was submerged in floodwater shouted for help. Van Dillon called emergency services and yelled back to let her know help was on the way, but the woman continued to call out.

Read More: Dozens Dead and Millions Without Power After Helene’s Sweep Across Southeastern U.S.

Recognizing her panic, Van Dillen turned to the camera. “Oh man, it’s a situation,” he said, pausing his reporting. “We will get back to you in a little bit. I’m going to go see if I can help this lady out a little bit more, you guys.”

Van Dillen then ventured into the floodwater, approached the woman in the car, unbuckled her seatbelt, and carried her out of the water on his back. In the video, viewers can see the water reach up to Van Dillen’s chest at its highest point.

A later part of the broadcast showed the woman and her husband reunited, at which point her husband hugged and thanked Van Dillen for helping.

On Friday, Atlanta was placed on a Flash-Flood Emergency and Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens officially declared a State of Emergency for the city. Early that morning, the city reported 22,000 power outages, 25 downed power lines, and 15 downed trees. 

Read More: A Look at Damage From Hurricane Helene

After some time, Dillen returned to his live broadcast, telling the co-hosts of his mindset before saving the woman. It can often be dangerous to enter into floodwater due to potential exposure to chemicals and pathogens, as well as injury from objects swept under by rushing water.

“I was obviously worried about the water temperature. I was worried about the current, but as soon as I started going there, I was like, ‘Screw it, I’m getting her,” Van Dillen said. “Everything worked out fine.”

source https://time.com/7026223/tv-reporter-rescues-woman-trapped-in-submerged-car-helene-video/

Companies Are Ditching Big Climate Goals for ‘Pragmatic’ Solutions

(To get this story in your inbox, subscribe to the TIME CO2 Leadership Report newsletter here.)

This Climate Week, I did something crazy. In the middle of a packed week of panels, roundtables, and interviews in New York, I hopped on a plane across the country and spent a day at the MINExpo conference in Las Vegas for a forthcoming story. In the giant halls, alongside trucks the size of jet planes, companies gathered at the mining equipment conference promised to decrease their customers’ carbon footprints and allow them to operate their mines more sustainably.

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The public narrative around private sector climate action is one of deep skepticism. Many advocates have decried it as greenwashing, claiming that companies are using climate goals as a branding exercise. Many companies have pulled back their commitments, saying they no longer feel they are feasible. And businesses have grown reluctant to talk about their environmental work—fearful that it might cause backlash in conservative states and with a potential future Republican president.  

In Vegas, where the target audience was the sea of men in suits and company polo shirts who buy mining equipment, I couldn’t help but think something has shifted. For a variety of reasons, just outside of the public eye, the private sector continues to move forward on decarbonization. Corporate customers across sectors and geographies are demanding lower-carbon solutions, and the promise of continued regulatory pressure has not dissipated. Instead of focusing on splashy commitments, many companies are taking a grounded approach to chart an actual decarbonization roadmap.

Over the course of the week, I heard similar messages over and over again from executives. George Oliver, CEO of HVAC giant Johnson Controls, said that emissions reduction had “become a core initiative” for many of the company’s customers, advancing its business making buildings more energy efficient. Pedro Pizarro, the CEO of utility giant Edison International, touted demand for the company’s advisory business, which just ahead of Climate Week launched a partnership with auto giants to help decarbonize their supply chains. “They’re seeing a lot of continued client interest,” he said.   

And, over and over again, executives told me that the European Union’s climate disclosure rule—known in shorthand as CSRD—would act as a game changer. The regulation , which took effect this year for some firms already and will expand to more in the coming years, requires companies that do substantial business in Europe to disclose not only financially material information about how climate change affects their operations but also the ways that their operations materially affect the environment. While many remain up in arms over the various reporting demands, which require time and resources, they expressed a sense that the standards would create new momentum when the dust settles.

All of these conversations in New York contributed to the sense that the transition is indeed moving—no matter the public narrative. At a TIME100 panel I moderated on Monday, Fatih Birol, the head of the International Energy Agency, described that progress as “irreversible.”

To be clear, none of this is enough. Away from the corporate folks, inside the security perimeter of the United Nations, some government leaders pushed the need for countries to amp up their policy agendas. In the first days of Climate Week, which coincides with the United Nations General Assembly, countries agreed to a Pact for the Future which calls for continued efforts to phase out fossil fuels with the ambition of keeping global temperature rise well below 2°C. 

To get there, countries are supposed to create new climate action plans in the coming months to drive a climate policy step change. Movement in the private sector is heartening, but it could also use a step change. 

source https://time.com/7026187/climate-week-corporate-pragmatic-action/

The True Story Behind the War Photographer Biopic Lee

When Kate Winslet set out to try and make a film about the photographer Lee Miller, she knew it couldn’t show everything. 

“She lived such a vast life, it would have been impossible to make a film about all of it,” Winslet told TIME when speaking for a recent profile. 

So Winslet, who produced the film and stars in it, decided to home in on one era in particular for what would become Lee, which premiered at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival and is out in theaters Sept. 27. The movie, directed by Ellen Kuras, mainly takes place during World War II when Miller was on the front lines, taking some of the most iconic photos to emerge from the Blitz, the liberation of Paris, and the Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps. Winslet portrays Miller as an unapologetic force and pioneer in her field, who is specifically attuned to the suffering of those she captures in images. 

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The screenplay by Liz Hannah, John Collee, and Marion Hume has a flashback structure in which Miller, who was born in 1907 and died in 1977, is being interviewed later in life by a journalist, later revealed to be her son, Antony Penrose, played by Josh O’Connor. It’s an apt detail given that the film is based on a section of Penrose’s 1985 book The Lives of Lee Miller.

Penrose opens his biography by writing: “Lee Miller, fashion model. Lee Miller, photographer. Lee Miller, war correspondent. Lee Miller, writer. Lee Miller, aficionado of classical music. Lee Miller, haute cuisine cook. Lee Miller, traveler. In all her different worlds she moved with freedom. In all her roles she was her own bold self.” By the time we meet the eponymous subject of Lee, she has already lived some of those lives, and has embraced a life behind the camera. 

Hilary Roberts, who wrote a book and curated an exhibition on Miller, once told the New York Times: “She may have belonged to the first generation of women entitled to vote but was well aware she lived in a man’s world. Photography offered Miller an outlet for her personal frustration and a means of taking control.”

Before stepping behind the camera she had been a model for Vogue and a student of as well as muse for the surrealist photographer Man Ray. She had a friendship with Picasso. But the movie actively divorces Miller from some of the more famous men in her life. One of the opening scenes essentially recreates Miller’s photograph “Picnic, Île Saint-Marguerite, Cannes, France, 1937” of her friends on holiday, the women topless and free. But Ray, who is present in that photograph, does not appear as a character in the movie.

“[Kate] wanted to be true to the sensibility of women, that they had a certain kind of freedom, there was a certain laissez faire in their lives,” Kuras says of those early moments. “I also think in juxtaposition to later on you see how remarkably different it was and how everyone came to realize the difference between what was before and what was happening during the war.” 

For instance, we see Miller encounter one of her friends who was present at that party on screen—though not in the photo referenced above—Solange d’Ayen, played by Marion Cotillard, in Paris following the liberation. Solange, formerly glamorous, is now destitute and in despair. 

The movie doesn’t cover much of Miller’s life following the war, which included her marriage to Roland when she was pregnant with Antony. She also grappled with depression, but in her later years found a love of cooking. Penrose wrote that it “appealed directly to Lee’s curiosity about exotic things.”

In the eight years it took to get Lee off the ground, Winslet worked closely with Penrose, the real-life son of Miller and artist Roland Penrose, who followed in his mother’s footsteps to become a photographer. Additionally, she consulted with Miller’s surviving friends, including Bettina McNulty, who worked for Vogue and was a fashion publicist. “When I spoke to her it was very hard to decipher the things that she was saying,” Winslet says. “But she shared things with me that she just didn’t share and I knew that she was sharing it because she could feel that she didn’t have much time left and there were things that she wanted to say.” 

Beyond her eventual husband Roland, portrayed by Alexander Skarsgård, Kuras’ film focuses on two other key relationships during this time in Miller’s career: British Vogue editor Audrey Withers (Andrea Riseborough) and fellow photojournalist David Scherman (Andy Samberg). Also clear is her hatred for the Vogue photographer Cecil Beaton, played by Samuel Barnett, evident in Antony Penrose’s book and in the film. The catty words between them offer some of the movie’s lighter moments. (“Lee loathed him and found his conceit, his technical incompetence and the flaunting of his antisemitic feelings repugnant,” Penrose wrote.)

It’s with Scherman that Miller experienced the most devastating horrors of the war. He once said, “During the war, Lee and I were mostly inseparable. We were together at the linkup with the Russians, and we were together at Dachau. We moved into Hitler’s headquarters in Munich.” There, they worked together on one of the most indelible images of Miller’s career. At Hitler’s house, Miller stripped naked and got in the bathtub setting up a self-portrait of her washing. Scherman snapped the photo, which acts as a veritable middle finger to the dictator. 

Lee also links Miller’s personal trauma to the abuses she witnessed during the war. When Miller was 7, she was sent to stay with family friends in Brooklyn while her mother was ill. During that time she was sexually assaulted and contracted a venereal disease. In the film, before the extent of her own abuse is revealed, Miller is seen defending a young French girl from harassment and expressing sympathy to a woman whose head was shaved after being accused of collaboration with the Germans. Winslet and Kuras therefore make the case that Winslet’s devastating past made her a uniquely empathetic journalist and artist. 

“Lee’s extraordinary acceptance of self has inspired me,” Winslet says. “It inspired me every day I was playing her and has inspired me every single day since.” 

source https://time.com/7022783/lee-miller-movie-true-story/

Cities Are on the Front Line of the ‘Climate-Health Crisis.’ A New Report Provides a Framework for Tackling Its Effects

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that extreme heat kills almost half a million people each year—more than war, terrorism and malnutrition combined. That number is likely to rise as the climate becomes hotter and less predictable.

But the threats to public health posed by climate change go well beyond extreme heat. Historic rainfall and rising temperatures are driving malaria, cholera and dengue outbreaks, and expanding these diseases into new regions. Meanwhile, air pollution from wildfires has been linked to everything from cancer to heart disease. 

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These effects will be felt most acutely by city-dwellers, where concrete absorbs and re-emits heat, and higher population densities allow pathogens to spread more easily. Despite nearly 70% of city leaders recognizing climate-related health threats, and more than 90% reporting economic losses from such events, less than a third of cities have a resilience plan that integrates climate and health, according to a new report produced by the Rockefeller Foundation, shared exclusively with TIME.

Read More: How the Cement Industry Is Creating Carbon-Negative Building Materials

With the support of the Rockefeller Foundation, the Urban Pulse Initiative surveyed 191 city and civil society leaders from 118 cities across 52 countries,as part of a collaboration between Yale University and the Resilient Cities Network.

“While [cities] are particularly vulnerable, they’re also woefully underprepared for what is coming,” says Naveen Rao, senior vice president of the Rockefeller Foundation’s Health Initiative, which led the report’s development in partnership with thinktank Global Nation. The Foundation is committing $1 million to the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, a global network of nearly 100 mayors, to support the implementation of the three-pronged climate and health strategy it outlines in the report.

The report highlights individual cities using innovative approaches to minimize climate-driven health risks. These isolated success stories could show a path forward for other cities facing what the report calls a “climate-health crisis.”

“The first prong [of the strategy] is to collaborate the climate/meteorological data with the health data,” Rao says. “There are other agencies that live and die by meteorological data,” explains Rao, citing aviation and agriculture. And while the WHO and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) have collaborated closely for roughly a decade, integration at the local level is rare.

Read More: What Wildfire Smoke Does to the Human Body

One city making strides in this area is Rio de Janeiro. By integrating health and meteorological data, Rio developed an early warning system for dengue fever, a mosquito-borne viral disease, nicknamed “bone-break fever” for its debilitating aches. 

During Rio’s winter, when weather is generally cooler and dryer, dengue cases drop. But in 2023—one of Rio’s  mildest winters ever—cases of dengue remained unseasonably high. That September, the city’s Epidemiological Intelligence Center, a team established in 2022 with meteorological support from the city’s municipal government, alerted health authorities that the impendending wet season could create ideal conditions for an outbreak. 

“We were able to see where the number of cases was growing, where they were concentrated,” says Gislani Mateus, who is superintendent of health surveillance at Rio’s municipal health department. The epidemiological modeling, which used weather data, case numbers, and mosquito-population data from a network of over 2,500 traps, was used “to direct efforts to control both mosquitoes, and healthcare,” Mateus says. The strategy would evolve into the Dengue Emergency Operations Center last February, when the city declared a dengue epidemic. 

Though the team didn’t avert the epidemic, their models predicted a spike in dengue cases two months earlier than forecasted by traditional epidemiological models. Consequently, Rio fared better than other cities in Brazil’s southeast, and recorded its lowest ever death rate from a dengue epidemic. Mateus says they are now working with Brazil’s national health ministry to implement the strategy elsewhere.

Read more: Why Mosquitoes Are So Dangerous Right Now

Another city using predictive modeling against dengue is Bangalore, India, where a team used climate and health data to make AI-driven outbreak forecasts at the district level. But the vast majority, 77% of cities, do not use meteorological data in health surveillance systems, and replicating Rio’s success requires more than predictive modeling. 

“With climate change, it’s increasingly important that we have this union between weather and health in our epidemiological analysis,” Mateus says. “But it’s also critical we have public health services with sufficient numbers to attend to the population.”

The report outlines a second crucial prong to city preparedness: ensuring experts in areas such as climate change, health, urban planning, and transport are coordinating proactively before disaster strikes. “A smoke alarm going off makes no sense without a fire engine,” Rao says. Without this collaboration, even the best forecasts will not translate into timely, effective public health interventions.

Another city the report identifies as turning warnings into action is Dhaka, Bangladesh. In 2022, the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society (BDRCS) partnered with other organizations and government agencies to implement a data-driven early action protocol to respond to heatwaves. The protocol sets clear trigger points based on temperature thresholds.

The plan was approved by the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, giving the BDRCS access to pre-arranged funding to support rapid response efforts when those thresholds were crossed, says Shahjahan Saju, who is assistant director and project coordinator of the BDRCS’s forecast based financing initiative. 

In April, Dhaka was hit with its longest heatwave in recorded history. But temperature forecasting meant the city was prepared to respond before temperatures reached their peak, with efforts such as distributing 3,500 umbrellas, providing water to 30,000 recipients, and offering respite from the heat to 15,000 people through three dedicated cooling stations, Saju says. The WHO and WMO estimate that scaling a warning system like this could avert almost 100,000 deaths a year.

Read more: How to Know When High Temperatures Are Getting Dangerous.

Early warning systems are a case of “low hanging fruit,” says Celeste Saulo, secretary-general of the WMO, noting that many cities already collect the necessary health and weather information.

“It’s about linking those different sources of information in a way that you can put an early warning in place,” she says.

While Dhaka and Rio show how effective early action can be, a key question remains: How do you get millions of urban residents to heed public health advice? Enter the third prong of the report’s strategy: effective communication. The city of Lusaka, Zambia’s sprawling capital, found innovative ways to cut through the noise and deliver life-saving information and services when it mattered most.

In October, the Zambia National Public Health Institute reported an outbreak of cholera in Lusaka, which has been battered by both flooding and drought. By January, the casualty rate had hit 4%, four times the WHO’s threshold. Rachel James, interagency risk communication and community engagement coordinator for the Collective Service, a partnership between IFRC, UNICEF, and the WHO, recalls trudging through the streets in knee-high water. “That’s when it becomes very real.”

The high death rate was, in part, due to inaccurate risk perceptions, misinformation, and barriers to accessing health services. “To better understand what the community perceptions were,” the Collective Service visited communities, “talking to people who had survived cholera, talking to the families of people who died, and just people in the districts where there are a lot of cases,” James says. That information was shared with Zambia’s health ministry and partners to inform how they communicated, contributing to a 100% uptake of cholera vaccines, she adds.

Community engagement also revealed the barriers preventing people from accessing healthcare, such as lack of transport. In response, Zambia’s ministry of health and UNICEF jointly funded seven ambulances. Collection points were also established to provide oral rehydration solutions to those who did not require transport to a healthcare facility, James says.

Read more: How Cities Are Clamping Down on Traffic to Help Fight Emissions

Rather than waiting until the midst of an emergency, the Rockefeller Foundation report underscores the importance of developing “always-on” communication strategies. “It was because of our work that we were already doing with the Rockefeller Foundation in-country that we were able to respond immediately,” says Maureen Mckenna, who is global coordinator for the Collective Service. “We were already working in Zambia, setting up risk communication and community engagement mechanisms to be able to respond immediately to health emergencies.” 

Beyond providing a framework for city leaders and policymakers, the report says interventions that improve the resilience of healthcare systems to climate change carry “immense economic benefits.” Early estimates by research and data analytics consultancy Mathematica, commissioned by the Rockefeller Foundation, found that targeted heatwave prep in Dhaka could yield health benefits nearly seven times the cost in terms of lives saved. Yet less than 5% of climate financing goes towards adaptation, according to the Climate Policy Initiative. Rao says only a fraction of that goes to health-focused initiatives.

“We need to stay focused on mitigation, because we can’t adapt our way out of this problem,” Rao says, noting that those “that have done the least to cause this problem, climate change, are suffering the most.”

Last December, at COP28, governments and other stakeholders committed $1 billion to the climate-health crisis, including $100 million from the Rockefeller Foundation, at the conference’s first ever Health Day. But that is well short of the $11 billion each year Rao says is needed for low- and middle-income countries to adapt to climate and health impacts. “What needs to hold this whole thing together is more funding.”

source https://time.com/7024639/cities-climate-health/

Israel’s Netanyahu Appears to Downplay Hopes For a Cease-Fire as Deadly Strikes Continue in Lebanon

TEL AVIV, Israel — The Israeli prime minister on Thursday appeared to downplay hopes of an imminent truce with Hezbollah after the United States and its allies called for an immediate 21-day cease-fire to “provide space for diplomacy.”

In a statement released as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was en route to New York to attend the U.N. General Assembly, his office said there was only a proposal on the table and that he had not yet responded to it. The statement also denied that there had been any directive to ease up on fighting on the northern border with Lebanon.

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The comments raised questions about a new international initiative to halt increasingly heavy exchanges of fire that have killed hundreds of people in Lebanon and threatened to trigger an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah. The statement was issued as Israel threatens to launch a ground invasion into Lebanon to push the militant group away from the border and after an Israeli strike in Lebanon killed 20 people, most of them from Syria.

Soon after the statement was issued, the TV station of Lebanon’s Hezbollah group reported an Israeli airstrike in a suburb of Beirut. Al-Manar TV did not give details about the strike.

The Israeli military said it carried out a strike south of Beirut without elaborating. Military officials said details will would be released later.

The Israeli foreign minister, Israel Katz, previously said that the country would continue fighting “with all our might until victory and the safe return of the residents of the north to their homes.”

Hezbollah has not yet responded to the proposal for a pause in fighting. Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati has welcomed it, but his government has no sway over the group.

Hezbollah has insisted it would halt its strikes only if there is a cease-fire in Gaza, where Israel has been battling Hamas for nearly a year. That appears out of reach despite months of negotiations led by the United States, Egypt and Qatar.

In its statement, Netanyahu’s office said that “the fighting in Gaza will also continue until all the objectives of the war have been achieved.” Netanyahu is expected to meet with other world leaders on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.

In other developments, a far-right partner in Netanyahu’s government threatened to quit the coalition if a permanent cease-fire is reached with Hezbollah.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, head of the Jewish Power party, threatened to suspend cooperation with the coalition if a temporary deal is reached.

“If a temporary cease-fire becomes permanent, we will resign from the government,” he said.

It was the latest sign of displeasure from Netanyahu’s hard-line government toward international cease-fire efforts.

If Ben-Gvir leaves the coalition, Netanyahu would lose his parliamentary majority and could see his government come toppling down, though opposition leaders have said they would offer support for a cease-fire deal.

Israel launched a massive operation in Gaza after a Hamas-led attack into southern Israel on Oct. 7 in which some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed, and some 250 were taken hostage. More than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since then, according to local officials.

Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel one day after the Oct. 7 attack in support of its Hamas allies, and Hezbollah and Israel have traded fire ever since.

Israeli families of the hostages said they are pushing for a possible cease-fire deal for Lebanon to include provisions for the war in Gaza, especially securing release of the roughly 70 hostages still presumed to be alive and the bodies of some 30 others.

Gil Dickmann, whose cousin Carmel Gat was kidnapped and was one of six Israelis whose bodies were recovered from tunnels in Gaza in August, said the hostages’ families are feeling forgotten as attention shifts to the northern front.

“We know that these things are connected to each other, the northern part and the southern part. They’re all part of the same large situation which we are in from Oct. 7 on, and we’re very worried that if we don’t make the right decisions now, we will miss this amazing opportunity to get the hostages out,” Dickmann said on Tuesday, as hopes for cease-fire deal swelled.

He slammed Netanyahu for missing multiple opportunities to free his cousin and begged him not to miss another chance by agreeing to a truce with both Hezbollah and Hamas that would include provisions for the hostages. Dickmann’s sister-in-law, Yarden Roman-Gat, was released in a weeklong cease-fire deal last November, along with some 100 other hostages.

Israel has carried out days of heavy strikes across Lebanon, targeting what it says are Hezbollah rocket launchers and other military infrastructure. The militants have fired hundreds of rockets into Israel and on Wednesday targeted Tel Aviv for the first time with a longer-range missile that was intercepted.

On Thursday, an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon hit a building housing Syrian workers and their families, killing 19 Syrians and one Lebanese, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. It was one of the deadliest single strikes in the intensified air campaign against Hezbollah.

Lebanon’s National News Agency said the strike occurred near the ancient city of Baalbek in the Bekaa Valley, which runs along the Syrian border. The news agency initially reported that 23 people were dead.

Hussein Salloum, a local official in Younine, said most of the dead were women and children, and that rescue efforts lasted through the night and into Thursday morning.

“We dug through the rubble with our own hands” until a small bulldozer was brought in, Salloum told The Associated Press by telephone. “We had very limited capabilities.”

The Lebanese Red Cross said it recovered nine bodies, while others were recovered by Hezbollah’s paramedic service and the Lebanese Civil Defense.

Lebanon, with a population of around 6 million, hosts nearly 780,000 registered Syrian refugees and hundreds of thousands who are unregistered — the world’s highest refugee population per capita.

Israel struck 75 sites overnight across southern and eastern Lebanon, the military said. At least 45 projectiles were fired from Lebanon early Thursday, all of which were intercepted or fell in open areas, it said.

Israeli strikes since Monday have killed more than 630 people in Lebanon, according to local health authorities, who say around a quarter were women and children. Several people have been wounded by shrapnel in Israel.

The fighting has killed dozens of people in Israel and driven tens of thousands from their homes on both sides of the border.

Israel has vowed to do whatever is necessary to allow its citizens to return, and it has moved thousands of troops to the northern border in preparation for a possible ground operation.

source https://time.com/7024667/israel-netanyahu-cease-fire-hopes-strikes-lebanon/

Oklahoma Prepares For an Execution After Parole Board Recommended Sparing Man’s Life

OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma was preparing to execute a man Thursday while waiting for Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt to decide whether to spare the death row inmate’s life and accept a rare clemency recommendation from the state’s parole board.

Emmanuel Littlejohn, 52, was set to die by lethal injection for his role in the 1992 shooting death of a convenience store owner during a robbery.

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In six years as governor, Stitt has granted clemency only once and denied recommendations from the state’s Pardon and Parole Board in three other cases. On Wednesday, a spokeswoman for Stitt said the governor had met with prosecutors and Littlejohn’s attorneys but had not reached a decision.

The execution was scheduled for 10 a.m. at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. Littlejohn would be the 14th person executed in Oklahoma under Stitt’s administration.

Another execution was set for later Thursday in Alabama, and if both are carried out, it would be the first time in decades that five death row inmates were put to death in the U.S. within one week.

In Oklahoma, an appellate court on Wednesday denied a last-minute legal challenge to the constitutionality of the state’s lethal injection method of execution.

Littlejohn would be the third Oklahoma inmate put to death this year. He was 20 when prosecutors say he and co-defendant Glenn Bethany robbed the Root-N-Scoot convenience store in south Oklahoma City in June 1992. The store’s owner, Kenneth Meers, 31, was killed.

During video testimony to the Pardon and Parole Board last month, Littlejohn apologized to Meers’ family but denied firing the fatal shot. Littlejohn’s attorneys pointed out that the same prosecutor tried Bethany and Littlejohn in separate trials using a nearly identical theory, even though there was only one shooter and one bullet that killed Meers.

But prosecutors told the board that two teenage store employees who witnessed the robbery both said Littlejohn, not Bethany, fired the fatal shot. Bethany was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Littlejohn’s attorneys also argued that killings resulting from a robbery are rarely considered death penalty cases and that prosecutors today would not have pursued the ultimate punishment.

“It is evident that Emmanuel would not have been sentenced to death if he’d been tried in 2024 or even 2004,” attorney Caitlin Hoeberlein told the board.

Littlejohn was prosecuted by former Oklahoma County District Attorney Bob Macy, who was known for his zealous pursuit of the death penalty and secured 54 death sentences during more than 20 years in office.

Because of the board’s 3-2 recommendation, Stitt had the option of commuting Littlejohn’s sentence to life in prison without parole. The governor has appointed three of the board’s members.

In 2021, Stitt granted clemency to Julius Jones, commuting his sentence to life without parole just hours before Jones was scheduled to receive a lethal injection. He denied clemency recommendations from the board for Bigler Stouffer, James Coddington and Phillip Hancock, all of whom were executed.

The executions in Oklahoma and Alabama would make for 1,600 executions nationwide since the death penalty was reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

source https://time.com/7024657/oklahoma-prepares-execution-parole-board-recommended-sparing-life/

Former NFL Star Brett Favre Reveals He Has Parkinson’s. Here’s What to Know

Former Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre said that he has been recently diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.

The three-time NFL MVP made the revelation during his testimony before a House committee on federal welfare reform. Favre had previously been implicated for his connections to Mississippi’s welfare abuse scandal involving the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program and investments he made in a company that was researching treatments for concussions. The founder of that company pleaded guilty to wire fraud charges and was accused of misappropriating funds received through TANF for personal use. Favre allegedly received TANF money via Mississippi non profit groups for public appearances he did not make, but was not criminally charged. He has paid back some of the money he received, but state auditors say he still owes additional funds to the program.

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“I lost an investment in a company that I believed was developing a breakthrough concussion drug I thought would help others, and I’m sure you’ll understand why it’s too late for me, because I’ve recently been diagnosed with Parkinson’s,” he said in his testimony.

Here’s what to know about the disease.

What is Parkinson’s disease?

Parkinson’s is a brain disorder that results in uncontrolled muscle movements and tremors that can affect everything from the extremities to more core body functions such as swallowing and speaking. It generally occurs with age, but can also result from certain genetic changes that are passed down in families, as well as medications, exposure to toxins, and traumatic injuries to the brain. In an interview on Today in 2018, Favre estimated that he suffered from “hundreds, maybe thousands” of concussions during his decades-long NFL career, in which he once played nearly 300 consecutive games. Favre did not indicate whether his history of concussions was directly related to his condition, or provide any additional details about his diagnosis. But since his retirement from the NFL, he has spoken about his concerns about concussions and the dangers of chronic traumatic encephalopathy among football players, and his own experiences with worsening short term memory.

Are there treatments?

Currently, there is no effective treatment that reverses or slows down the progression of Parkinson’s—only medications or surgical interventions that can alleviate some of the motor symptoms by addressing changes in the brain chemical dopamine that contribute to the condition. Patients generally cycle through different medications, which often work for a while, but when the tremors or unpredictable muscle movements return or worsen, doctors can combine or add other medications. For those who no longer respond to available drugs, deep brain stimulation, in which surgeons implant an electrode in the brain to help control tremors, can help. But the implants only address tremors and involuntary muscles movements; they can’t slow other Parkinson’s symptoms, such as cognitive changes or balance issues.

The future of diagnosis and treatment

Researchers are working on novel treatment strategies and are developing new ways to detect Parkinson’s earlier. Most of these target alpha synuclein, a protein that accumulates in patients with the disease. Doctors currently rely primarily on clinical symptoms—like tremors, slow movements, or muscle rigidity—to diagnose the condition. But researchers are developing a new test that looks for alpha synuclein in the spinal fluid, which could be a sign of early Parkinson’s.

Until better treatments become available to address the root cause of Parkinson’s, however, even such tests might not be so useful. “The problem is that at this point, we don’t have any treatment to potentially slow the disease down,” says Dr. Rocco DiPaola, a neurologist at Hackensack Meridian Neuroscience Institute. “But down the road, should those treatments become available, then identifying people who are at risk earlier would be good to know, so we could potentially give them a medication that could either prevent or slow progression of the disease.”

source https://time.com/7024144/brett-favre-parkinsons-disease-explainer/

Biden in Farewell U.N. Address Says Peace Still Possible in Conflicts in Mideast and Ukraine

NEW YORK — President Joe Biden declared the U.S. must not retreat from the world, as he delivered his final address to the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday as Israel and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon edged toward all-out war and Israel’s bloody operation against Hamas in Gaza neared the one-year mark.

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Biden used his wide-ranging address to speak to a need to end the Middle East conflict and the 17-month-old civil war in Sudan and to highlight U.S. and Western allies’ support for Kyiv since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

His appearance before the international body also offered Biden one of his last high-profile opportunities as president to make the case to keep up robust support for Ukraine, which could be in doubt if former President Donald Trump, who has scoffed at the cost of the war, defeats Vice President Kamala Harris in November. Still, Biden insisted that despite global conflicts, he remains hopeful for the future.

“I’ve seen a remarkable sweep of history,” Biden said. “I know many look at the world today and see difficulties and react with despair but I do not.”

“We are stronger than we think” when world acts together, he added.

Biden came to office promising to rejuvenate U.S. relations around the world and to extract the U.S. from “forever wars” in Afghanistan and Iraq that consumed American foreign policy over the last 20 years.

“I was determined to end it, and I did,” Biden said of the Afghanistan exit, calling it a “hard decision but the right decision.” He acknowledged that it was “accompanied by tragedy” with the deaths of 13 American troops and hundreds of Afghans in a suicide bombing during the chaotic withdrawal.

But his foreign policy legacy may ultimately be shaped by his administration’s response to two of the biggest conflicts in Europe and the Middle East since World War II.

“There will always be forces that pull our countries apart,” Biden said, rejecting “a desire to retreat from the world and go it alone.” He said, “Our task, our test, is to make sure that the forces holding us together are stronger than the forces pulling us apart.”

The Pentagon announced Monday that it was sending a small number of additional U.S. troops to the Middle East to supplement the roughly 40,000 already in the region. All the while, the White House insists Israel and Hezbollah still have time to step back and de-escalate.

“Full scale war is not in anyone’s interest,” Biden said, and despite escalating violence, a diplomatic solution is the only path to peace.

Biden had a hopeful outlook for the Middle East when he addressed the U.N. just a year ago. In that speech, Biden spoke of a “sustainable, integrated Middle East” coming into view.

At the time, economic relations between Israel and some of its Arab neighbors were improving with implementation of the Abraham Accords that Israel signed with Bahrain, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates during the Trump administration.

Biden’s team helped resolve a long-running Israel-Lebanon maritime dispute that had held back gas exploration in the region. And Israel-Saudi normalization talks were progressing, a game-changing alignment for the region if a deal could be landed.

“I suffer from an oxymoron: Irish optimism,” Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when they met on the sidelines of last year’s U.N. gathering. He added, “If you and I, 10 years ago, were talking about normalization with Saudi Arabia … I think we’d look at each other like, ‘Who’s been drinking what?’”

Eighteen days later, Biden’s Middle East hopes came crashing down. Hamas militants stormed into Israel killing 1,200, taking some 250 hostage, and spurring a bloody war that has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians in Gaza and led the region into a complicated downward spiral.

Now, the conflict is threatening to metastasize into a multi-front war and leave a lasting scar on Biden’s presidential legacy.

Israel and Hezbollah traded strikes again Tuesday as the death toll from a massive Israeli bombardment climbed to nearly 560 people and thousands fled from southern Lebanon. It’s the deadliest barrage since the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war.

Israel has urged residents of southern Lebanon to evacuate from homes and other buildings where it claimed Hezbollah has stored weapons, saying the military would conduct “extensive strikes” against the militant group.

Hezbollah, meanwhile, has launched dozens of rockets, missiles and drones into northern Israel in retaliation for strikes last week that killed a top commander and dozens of fighters. Dozens were also killed last week and hundreds more wounded after hundreds of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah militants exploded, a sophisticated attack that was widely believed to have been carried out by Israel.

Israel’s leadership launched its counterattacks at a time of growing impatience with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah’s persistent launching of missiles and drones across the Israel-Lebanon border after Hamas started the war with its brazen attack on Oct. 7.

Biden has seemed more subdued in recent days about the prospects of Israel and Hamas agreeing to a temporary cease-fire and hostage deal. But he insists that he hasn’t given up.

Biden used his remarks to condemn the “horrors” of the Hamas attack on Oct. 7 and said hostages taken by the group are “are going through hell.” He added, “Innocent civilians in Gaza are also going through hell.” Biden also condemned settler violence against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank.

Biden reiterated his call on the parties to agree to a cease-fire and hostage release deal, saying it’s time to “end this war” — even as hopes for such a deal are fading as the conflict drags on.

Biden, in his address, called for the sustainment of Western support for Ukraine in its war with Russia. Biden helped galvanize an international coalition to back Ukraine with weapons and economic aid in response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s February 2022 assault on Ukraine.

“We cannot grow weary,” Biden said. “We cannot look away.”

Biden has managed to keep up American support in the face of rising skepticism from some Republican lawmakers — and Trump — about the cost of the conflict.

At the same time, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is pressing Biden to loosen restrictions on the use of Western-supplied long-range missiles so that Ukrainian forces can hit deeper in Russia.

So far Zelenskyy has not persuaded the Pentagon or White House to loosen those restrictions. The Defense Department has emphasized that Ukraine can already hit Moscow with Ukrainian-produced drones, and there is hesitation on the strategic implications of a U.S.-made missile potentially striking the Russian capital.

Putin has warned that Russia would be “at war” with the United States and its NATO allies if they allow Ukraine to use the long-range weapons.

Biden and Harris are scheduled to hold separate meetings with Zelenskyy in Washington on Thursday. Ukrainian officials were also trying to arrange a meeting for Zelenskyy with Trump this week.

In Sudan, where a humanitarian disaster has been created by a brutal civil war, Biden said “the world needs to stop arming the generals” and to tell them to “stop tearing this country apart.”

source https://time.com/7023958/biden-united-nations-general-assembly/