Simon Harris Set to Be Youngest Ever Leader of Ireland After Taking Over as Fine Gael Head

Simon Harris was confirmed as the new leader of Ireland’s Fine Gael political party on Sunday and is now poised to become the country’s next Taoiseach (Prime Minister).

Fine Gael party confirmed Harris’ leadership following the resignation of party leader and Taoiseach Leo Varadkar on Wednesday. Harris was the only candidate to put his name forward in nominations. At 37, Harris is now set to be Ireland’s youngest Taoiseach, beating the record set by Varadkar, who was 38 when he assumed the role.

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Harris is expected to be installed by the Irish Parliament on April 9. The next election for Taoiseach must be held before March 2025.

Harris in his first speech as party leader paid tribute to his predecessor and pledged his commitment to his country, saying he believes “in the power of politics to make a difference and to make people’s lives better.”

“Thank you for your trust. I want to promise and pledge to you today that I will repay that trust with hard work. With blood, sweat and tears—day in and day out. With responsibility, with humility, and with civility,” he said.

Here’s what you need to know about Ireland’s leader-to-be and his policy objectives. 

Who is Simon Harris?

Harris grew up in the coastal town of Greystones in the county of Wicklow, south of Dublin. In Sunday’s speech, he thanked his parents, who he said “worked hard and raised their children to believe in the rewards of working hard.”

Harris in his speech said he has been involved with the Fine Gael party since he was 15 years old and mentioned his activism on behalf of his younger brother, Adam, who was diagnosed with autism. When he was 15, he gave an interview to Irish public broadcaster RTÉ about an autism awareness charity he had founded called Triple A Alliance.

Harris was elected as a member of Dáil, the lower house of Irish parliament, at the age of 24, representing Wicklow. He became a minister of state in 2014, with special responsibility for the Office of Public Works (OPW). In 2016, he was picked as the country’s youngest-ever health minister, a cabinet member, at the age of 29, RTÉ reported.

In that position, he oversaw Ireland’s vote to overturn its abortion ban. He also faced pressure for his handling of Ireland’s cervical cancer screening scandal, which found more women diagnosed with cancer should have received earlier intervention.

Harris also ran the response to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, although he was replaced as health minister under a new government in 2020.

Harris was temporarily minister for justice in late 2022. Most recently, he’s been minister for further and higher education, research, innovation, and science. 

He is married to cardiac nurse Caoimhe Wade, and has two children, whom he thanked in his speech: “I appreciate that I’m a very lucky man in every way.”

Join us for the announcement of the new leader of Fine Gael. https://t.co/FqRDBni8hB

— Fine Gael (@FineGael) March 24, 2024

What are Simon Harris’ policy objectives?

Harris outlined a slew of national and international priorities in Sunday’s speech. 

He said that under his leadership, Fine Gael stands for supporting small businesses, “making work pay, for making sure we value work and we value people who go to work,” and furthering educational pathways. He also pledged to support farmers and regional development in rural Ireland.  

Fine Gael’s new leader stressed the party stands “for law and order… for streets that are safe and crime that is never allowed to go unchecked.” He criticized that an Irish flag was draped over the coffin of a man convicted of murdering a member of the police in 1996 at his funeral this week, saying to applause from the room: “Take our flag back!”

Harris addressed immigration, a debate that spilled into the open in November when anti-immigrant sentiment fueled a night of riots in Dublin. He said the country must “move on from the emergency response to the migration crisis to a more planned and more sustainable model and to a fair and firm system when it comes to migration in this country.”

Harris also added to his previous criticism and joined his predecessor in being one of the most outspoken Western leaders calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war and addressing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

“This party has and under my leadership will remain a party that is unafraid to speak the truth to power about the humanitarian catastrophe we are witnessing in Gaza and to voice in no uncertain terms, the moral outrage of the Irish people,” Harris said. “I repeat my calls today for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the immediate, unconditional release of all hostages, an end to violence in the Middle East, and a political process to bring about a two-state solution. Let Ireland be a force on the globe for that.”  

Harris promised to fight against the dangers of populism and polarization, saying he would act decisively as well as “listen carefully about what you have to say about the values I’ve outlined.” 

“I love Ireland. We all love Ireland. Let’s work every moment of every day to keep it safe and to deliver for people,” he said.

source https://time.com/6960104/simon-harris-new-ireland-leader-fine-gael-head/

The Hidden History of Those Who Wrote the Christian Story

It is an unlikely success story. A first century religious leader named Jesus was brutally executed as a criminal in first century Jerusalem. His death should have ended the movement. He left behind him a ragtag group of poorly educated Aramaic-speaking fishermen and craftsmen; men with some street smarts who lacked resources, experience, or connections. And yet, tradition insists, this handful of men seeded the religion that would change the world.

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The improbability of Christianity’s success has always been part of its rhetorical power; how could this small group of misfits have succeeded against such odds? There is a lengthy intellectual tradition that attempts to explain the expansion, rise, and spread of Christianity from its beginnings in the Galilee to its ‘conquest’ of the Roman Empire. At least part of the answer, though neglected, is simple: The disciples had help.

An overlooked aspect of the famous Road to Damascus story is how dangerous it was. The Apostle Paul’s vision of Christ left him in a perilous situation: newly blind and stranded several miles away from sustenance and shelter. It was only with the assistance of those in his entourage that he made it into the city and avoided an unpleasant death from starvation and dehydration. These helpers are almost invisible in the story, but they are critical to Paul’s success.

The contributions of invisible assistants go much further than their underappreciated but essential roles as local guides and travelling companions. Paul tells us that the letters he wrote to his communities were dictated to others. The name of at least one—Tertius (meaning just “Third”), the coauthor of the Letter to the Romans—sounds distinctly “slavish.” There was nothing exceptional about Paul’s method; dictation to enslaved secretaries and scribes was one of the most common forms of writing in the Roman period. Paul’s secretaries, like those who took dictation from emperors and philosophers, recorded the notes and charters for members of professional clubs and associations, or the scribes helped illiterate people with legal paperwork took down his words and edited them, as their job dictated.

On the frequent occasions where Paul found himself confined underground in damp dark prisons, it was enslaved assistants who were loaned to him by wealthier members of his congregations who brought him sustenance and provided him with access to the outside world. While incarcerated, Paul would not have had the opportunity to review what had been written down for him, but this may not have mattered either. He notes in 2 Corinthians 10:10 that people found him more impressive in writing than in person. Perhaps he has his secretaries to thank for that.

What was true of Paul—the best educated of the Apostles—is true of all early Christian writers and leaders. Most early Christians used secretaries to transcribe and copy their writings. According to an early second century tradition, the Apostle Peter dictated his Gospel to his secretary Mark, a “translator” who had travelled with him helping him communicate with Greek-speakers and navigate local customs. Later sources would elevate Mark’s pedigree to religious aristocracy, but our earliest sources picture him as low status and hints that he was enslaved.

The legend of Peter and Mark might be apocryphal, but it captures a very real ancient dynamic: people who were illiterate, people who had visual impairments, people who suffered from arthritis or gout, and people who were elderly dictated almost everything they wrote. Those of means routinely dictated their opinions and delegated their correspondence to their enslaved workers simply because it was more comfortable. As anyone who recalls taking a handwritten exam knows, writing hurts. Florentius of Valeránica, a tenth century copyist, claimed that “the burden of writing…mists the eyes, it curves the back, it breaks the belly and ribs, [and] it fills the kidneys with pain.” It is because of this that, unlike later enslavers who had reading glasses and printing presses, elite Romans educated enslaved workers to do their paperwork.

The work of these secretaries was not, as some might assume, mindless. The reason we suppose that it was is because ancient enslavers tell us it was. They picture their enslaved workers as mere body parts or tools. As the “hands” or “tongues” of enslavers, literate workers who wrote letters and managed whole households and estates were seen as mere mouthpieces for the will of their enslavers. Even sidestepping the ethically problematic activity of accepting this dehumanizing view of enslaved people, there is another issue: it is historically inaccurate.

Ancient secretarial ghostwriting involved an ability to wrangle unwieldy expressions into grammatical compliance, and an adeptness at imitating both established models of elegant writing and the quirks and compositional tells of the dictator. It was imitative, but it was also creative and constructive. Ancient papyri reveal that secretaries improved upon the raw material with which they were provided. Sometimes scribes wrote private jokes into tax documents. In one ancient papyrus fragment I located in Berlin, a secretary inserted enslaved people back into a history text from which they had been erased, squeezing the name of captive engineers between the lines of the manuscript. Perhaps the secretary saw their insertion as a means of resisting power.

Studies of secretarial and clerical work from every other period, from medieval secretaries to mid-twentieth century data processing, shows that low status writers always make powerful and important decisions that affect the final product. In All the Livelong Day her classic study of the meaning of boredom-inducing repetitious work, Barbara Garson writes that an “amazing ingenuity goes into manufacturing goals and satisfactions on jobs where measurable achievement has been all but rationalized out.” Cognitive psychologists would argue that people cannot help but crave agency. It is bad history to dismiss secretaries as unimportant.

In the case of the Bible, even small tweaks and improvements in style have had an outsized impact. For almost two thousand years, readers of the New Testament have agonized over the interpretation of every detail of the Jesus story. Christians have excavated participles as if they were precious relics. Any modification, however small, has affected the course of Christian theology. An excellent secretary or copyist is usually undetectable, but they were always there, actively coauthoring and making decisions that affected the most important collection of books in human history.

The influence of enslaved people on the making of Christianity did not begin and end with inscription. Once an Apostle or Christian author had written their letter, gospel, or treatise, it was trusted unfree couriers like who undertook lengthy journeys to foreign cities and sometime inhospitable audiences that spread the Gospel abroad. Surely, they are as worthy of the title of “missionary” as anyone else. They facilitated connections between the budding congregations of believers, answered questions about the meaning of the texts they had delivered, and laid the groundwork for what would later be called the universal (that is, catholic) church.

It was the editorial eyes and cramping hands of copyists in bookstores and private homes that laboriously reproduced and corrected successive generations of Christian books. They made mistakes, to be sure, but they also made corrections, repaired damaged books, and added insecticide made from cedar oil to preserve the words of the past. Copyists have had a bad rap since the Protestant Reformer Martin Luther, whose negative view of scribes owned a great deal to his antisemitism and incipient anti-clericalism, but ancient copyists were not just corrupters of texts. They were curators and guardians of letters.

And when a Pauline letter, a life of Jesus, or an apocalyptic story about the end of the world was read aloud, it was servile readers, whose animated gestures and intonation brought the stories to life in Christian gatherings. That some Christian bishops worried about their delivery of scripture only demonstrates the influence of these readers in the lives of illiterate Christians. In making decisions about emphasis and tone of voice these enslaved people became the first interpreters of scripture and the faces of the Gospel.

The fact of servile collaborators is clear to students of Christian history. The prolific mid-third-century Christian theologian Origen, whose critical editions of the Hebrew Bible and theory of biblical interpretation have been foundational for Christian theology, could not have performed his work without the team of enslaved scribes and calligraphers “gifted” to him by his patron Ambrose. Though the men and women who assisted Origen are anonymous, the names of other literate workers—Fortunatus (Lucky), Onesimus (Useful), Epaphroditus (Charming), Epaphras (Lovely), and Tychicus (Fortunate), to name only a few—are preserved in early Christian texts. Though these names are typically servile, and they performed servile work, their social status is rarely discussed. They are remembered instead, and in keeping with much later apocryphal traditions that sought to elevate them, as volunteers and bishops. Thinking about their perspectives and experiences as marginalized member of society, however, would change how scholars and lay people alike read every part of the New Testament.

The success of the Christian proclamation, therefore, was not just the work and accomplishment of a dozen hand-picked freeborn disciples, but owes as much to the enslaved, often invisible, workers whose names have been erased and whose status has been obscured. At every step in this process—from the inscription of the books of the New Testament, to their movement to other parts of the Mediterranean and beyond, to their copying, and their performance and interpretation in Christian gatherings—enslaved people were present, playing a variety of essential roles not only in the writing of the New Testament but also in the rise of Christianity. In so doing, they have shaped the world we occupy today.

The influence of invisible coauthors and ghostwriters continues in the present. Many authors use ghostwriters, even in cases where the genre involves telling a personal story. It’s rare that, as recently happened with some evangelical pastors, there’s much controversy about the practice. Readers tend not to worry that the shape of a biography doesn’t always come from the “author” or that the convictions of a history-making speech often belonged to someone invisible. Often this is because those unseen contributors are buried under NDAs. Further down the publishing line fact checkers, editors, proof-readers, and editorial managers make critical interventions both for good and bad. They may not be authors, but they do important authorial work. The issue isn’t cooperation: whether in writing or running a business creative collaboration can be a boon to everyone. The problem is when the many hands that make light work and shape history are hidden from view.   

source https://time.com/6960036/hidden-history-christianity-candida-moss/

Blake Lively Leads Apologies For Kate Middleton Jokes After Cancer Diagnosis Reveal

Kate Middleton, Princess of Wales, announced her cancer diagnosis on Friday, ending weeks of scrutiny about her health and whereabouts and prompting some to express remorse about previously making jokes amid the media and public frenzy.

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In January, Kate was hospitalized for two weeks for a planned abdominal surgery, after which post-operative tests revealed cancer had been present. She began undergoing “preventative chemotherapy” in late February, but didn’t tell the world until March 22. In the interim, she edited a U.K. Mother’s Day photograph of herself and her three children which was posted on social media and later retracted by news agencies, inciting more speculation and prompting her to apologize “for any confusion” caused.

Actor Blake Lively was among many online who poked fun at the photo-editing saga while promoting new flavors for her Betty Buzz drinks line, by sharing an over-the-top edited photo of herself featuring her product. Kim Kardashian also posted a picture on Instagram of herself standing next to a car, with the caption, “On my way to go find Kate,” making reference to the “Where’s Kate?” trend.

After Kate’s cancer diagnosis reveal, some issued public apologies. Lively posted on her Instagram story that she had made a “silly post around the ‘photoshop fails’ frenzy, and oh man, that post has me mortified today. I’m sorry. Sending love and well wishes to all, always.”

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U.K. political commentator Owen Jones also expressed remorse, writing on X, formerly Twitter, after Kate’s announcement: “As someone who speculated on this without considering it could be a serious health condition, I’m very ashamed to be honest, and all the very best to her.”

Some on social media have urged apologies from other celebrities and online conspiracists who engaged with rumors about Kate during her public absence.  

Royal commentator and journalist Jennie Bond criticized conspiracy theorists and mainstream media for its part in the rumor mill in an interview with PBS NewsHour.

“I think we as a society should take a long look at ourselves, because the trolls on the internet have put about the most ridiculous conspiracy theories consistently, and we, the mass media, actually, have given some of those theories airtime, which I think is entirely wrong,” Bond said.

source https://time.com/6959996/kate-middleton-cancer-diagnosis-celebrities-apologize-speculation-jokes/

Biden Signs $1.2 Trillion Funding Package After Senate’s Passage Ends Shutdown Threat

WILMINGTON, Del. — President Joe Biden on Saturday signed a $1.2 trillion package of spending bills after Congress had passed the long overdue legislation just hours earlier, ending the threat of a partial government shutdown.

“This agreement represents a compromise, which means neither side got everything it wanted,” Biden said in a statement. “But it rejects extreme cuts from House Republicans and expands access to child care, invests in cancer research, funds mental health and substance use care, advances American leadership abroad, and provides resources to secure the border. … That’s good news for the American people.”

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It took lawmakers six months into the current budget year to get near the finish line on government funding, the process slowed by conservatives who pushed for more policy mandates and steeper spending cuts than a Democratic-led Senate or White House would consider. The impasse required several short-term spending bills to keep agencies funded.

The White House said Biden signed the legislation at his home in Wilmington, Delaware, where he was spending the weekend. It had cleared the Senate by a 74-24 vote shortly after funding had expired for the agencies at midnight.

But the White House had sent out a notice shortly after the deadline announcing that the Office of Management and Budget had ceased shutdown preparations because there was a high degree of confidence that Congress would pass the legislation and the Democratic president would sign it Saturday.

The first package of full-year spending bills, which funded the departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture and the Interior, among others, cleared Congress two weeks ago with just hours to spare before funding expired for those agencies. The second covered the departments of Defense, Homeland Security and State, as well as other aspects of general government.

When combining the two packages, discretionary spending for the budget year will come to about $1.66 trillion. That does not include programs such as Social Security and Medicare, or financing the country’s rising debt.

On Ukraine aid, which Biden and his administration have argued was critical and necessary to help stop Russia’s invasion, the package provided $300 million under the defense spending umbrella. That funding is separate from a large assistance package for Ukraine and Israel that is bogged down on Capitol Hill.

Biden, in his statement, again pressed Congress to pass additional aid.

“The House must pass the bipartisan national security supplemental to advance our national security interests. And Congress must pass the bipartisan border security agreement — the toughest and fairest reforms in decades — to ensure we have the policies and funding needed to secure the border. It’s time to get this done.”

A bipartisan border package collapsed last month when Republicans senators scuttled months of negotiations with Democrats on legislation intended to cut back record numbers of illegal border crossings.

To win over support from Republicans, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., pointed to some of the spending increases secured for about 8,000 more detention beds for migrants awaiting their immigration proceedings or removal from the country. That’s about a 24% increase from current levels. Also, GOP leadership highlighted more money to hire about 2,000 Border Patrol agents.

Democrats are boasting of a $1 billion increase for Head Start programs and new child care centers for military families. They also played up a $120 million increase in funding for cancer research and a $100 million increase for Alzheimer’s research.

The spending package largely tracks with an agreement that then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California worked out with the White House in May 2023, which restricted spending for two years and suspended the debt ceiling into January 2025 so the federal government could continue paying its bills.

Prospects for a short-term government shutdown had appeared to grow Friday evening after Republicans and Democrats battled over proposed amendments to the bill. But shortly before midnight, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., announced a breakthrough.

“It is good for the country that we have reached this bipartisan deal. It wasn’t easy, but tonight our persistence has been worth it,” Schumer said.

The House passed the legislation Friday morning by a vote of 286-134, narrowly gaining the two-thirds majority needed for approval.

The vote tally in the House reflected anger among Republicans over the content of the package and the speed with which it was brought to a vote. Johnson brought the measure to the floor even though a majority of Republicans ended up voting against it. He said afterward that the bill “represents the best achievable outcome in a divided government.”

In sign of the conservative frustration, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., initiated an effort to oust Johnson as the House began the vote but held off on further action until the House returns in two weeks. It’s the same tool that was used last year to remove McCarthy.

The vote breakdown showed 101 Republicans voting for the bill and 112 voting against it. Meanwhile, 185 Democrats voted for the bill and 22 against.

source https://time.com/6960004/biden-signs-funding-package-senate-ends-shutdown-threat/

Rain Helps Contain Still-Burning Virginia Wildfires as State Sends More Aid

RICHMOND, Va. — Crews who have been battling still-burning wildfires in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley this week have gotten an assist from rain and from the state government, which has deployed new resources to the area, officials said Saturday.

“Without a doubt the rain is helping” said Cory Swift, a spokesperson for the Virginia Department of Forestry, who said the agency had no reports of injuries or fatalities connected with the fires, which sprang up mid-week amid gusty winds and low relative humidity.

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The fires led to trail shutdowns in the Shenandoah National Park, a smattering of evacuation orders, school closures in at least one hard-hit county, and damage to structures, the full extent of which was not yet clear.

Containment increases had been reported as of 9 a.m. Saturday on the fires that are part of the so-called Luray Complex, which are burning on a mix of private and National Forest Service land in Page County, Swift said in a phone interview. The three larger fires that make up that complex range from 50 to 70% contained and are being managed by a joint command that includes the U.S. Forest Service, Virginia Department of Forestry and local agencies, according to Swift and an update from the agency posted on social media. One smaller 30-acre fire was 0% contained, the department said.

Progress was also being made — thanks in part to rain — to contain a separate blaze in the same area known as the Rocky Branch Fire, contained mostly within the Shenandoah National Park, according to an update the park shared on social media. Portions of trails and the scenic Skyline Drive have been closed this week due to the fire.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin said in a statement Saturday morning that fuel trucks had arrived in the area overnight as part of a regional emergency response effort his office initiated.

The state is also providing meals and provisions and bringing in additional volunteer firefighting capacity “to give our brave firefighters who have been working through the nights some respite,” the statement said.

The state’s emergency management department is deploying a logistics support team as well as recovery support teams to initiate damage assessments, according to Youngkin’s office.

“There continue to be heroic efforts by our firefighters and it’s a testament to their courage, commitment and service to their communities and all Virginians,” the governor said.

Youngkin’s statement came after Page County officials wrote to him a day earlier, asking for him to issue a state emergency declaration to help with efforts to prevent further loss of property, according to correspondence posted to the county’s social media pages. The letter from the chairman of the county’s board of supervisors said at least 10-20 structures “are now ash” and over 3,400 acres have burned.

source https://time.com/6959990/virginia-wildfires-update-aid-shenandoah-national-park/

‘It’s Not Just Misguided—It’s Unconscionable:’ Congress’ Spending Bill Could Ban Funding to U.N. Gaza Aid

The fate of the U.N. agency dedicated to Palestinian refugees hangs in the balance as U.S. lawmakers prepare to vote on a batch of spending bills that, if passed, would suspend direct funding to the agency for at least a year.

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The U.N. agency, known by its shorthand UNRWA, was first established in 1949 to serve Palestinians displaced from their homes and native villages amid the war that led to Israel’s creation the previous year. In the interim decades, the U.N. body has served as a quasi-state for the stateless, providing schooling, healthcare, and other social services for Palestinian refugees in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), Gaza, and across the region. Since Israel began its bombardment of the Strip in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, UNRWA’s role kicked into overdrive, providing not just vital food and medical aid, but emergency shelter for thousands of displaced Palestinians across the Strip.

Providing between $300 million and $400 million annually, Washington was the largest donor to UNRWA—at least until January, when the U.S. and more than a dozen other countries froze their funding amid Israeli allegations that 12 of the agency’s 13,000 employees participated in the Oct. 7 attack. Israel has yet to supply evidence to back its claims, according to the U.N., investigations into which remain ongoing. While several countries—including Canada, Australia, and Sweden—have since resumed funding, the U.S. is the only one that has moved to make its suspension of aid more permanent. The Congressional spending bill stipulates that a ban on U.S. funding for UNRWA will last “until March 25, 2025,” meaning the Biden administration will be unable to reverse the pause until that time.

However, should former President Trump secure victory in November’s presidential election, the decision on whether to reinstate funding would fall to his new administration. The prospects of such an outcome would bode poorly for UNRWA. During Trump’s first term, he cut all U.S. funding to the agency, which his State Department deemed “irredeemably flawed.”

President Biden has already pledged to sign the $1.2 trillion spending bill—which includes billions in funding for several federal agencies, including the Departments for Defense, Homeland Security, and Labor—voting on which must take place today in order to avert a government shutdown. Should it pass, it will leave a huge hole in the agency’s operating budget, which amounts to roughly $800 million a year, according to UNRWA spokeswoman Juliette Touma. “Such an outcome will make it harder for UNRWA to assist starving Gazans,” she tells TIME, “and potentially further weaken regional stability.”

It also stands to place further scrutiny on the Biden administration, which has faced mounting criticism at home and abroad over its unfettered support for Israel and its lackluster efforts to deliver vital food aid to Palestinians in Gaza. After all, it was only this week that the IPC, the international community’s authority on hunger crises, warned that famine may already be unfolding in Gaza. “Denying funding for UNRWA is tantamount to denying food to starving people and restricting medical supplies to injured civilians,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a leading Democratic lawmaker on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement. “To punish over 2 million innocent people in Gaza and UNRWA beneficiaries throughout the region for these actions is not just misguided—it’s unconscionable.”

In the House, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the sole Palestinian American in Congress, told her colleagues on Thursday that passing this bill would mean “contributing to the starvation of Palestinian families.”

What remains to be seen is whether the U.S.’s decision to withhold funding until 2025 prompts other countries to restore, or even increase, their own contributions. On Friday, Finland announced that it will resume its annual funding of 5 million euros ($5.4 million) to UNRWA, a portion of which will be earmarked for strengthening the agency’s risk management. In the U.K., the opposition Labour Party (which polls project will form the next government) has called for the British government to follow the E.U. and others in resuming its payments to UNRWA—which amounted to $21.2 million in 2022— alongside increased emergency funding to Gaza. 

But it may not be enough. According to Touma, UNRWA’s budget is based on contributions from member states that provide financial support to the Agency over and above their regular U.N. dues. In 2022, the agency received $1.17 billion in funding by governments. The U.S. was the single biggest donor, contributing more than a quarter of that amount. 

source https://time.com/6959630/palestinians-unrwa-congressional-spending-bill-gaza-aid/

Breaking Down the Ending of Netflix’s 3 Body Problem Adaptation

Warning: This post contains spoilers for 3 Body Problem.

The question of how humanity would react to the discovery of alien life is a pretty popular one in science fiction. From H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds to M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs to Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival, a slew of the genre’s biggest names have put their own spin on the so-called “first contact” trope, delving into how humans would handle extraterrestrial beings invading Earth.

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But in Season 1 of 3 Body Problem, now streaming on Netflix, all of the action takes place while the story’s aliens, known as the San-Ti, are still around 400 years away. Adapted from Chinese author Liu Cixin’s acclaimed Remembrance of Earth’s Past book trilogy, the eight-episode narrative jumps back and forth through time to explore how a fateful decision in 1960s China echoes across the decades to impact a group of scientists—and humankind as a whole—in 2024.

What is 3 Body Problem about?

Created by Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss and True Blood‘s Alexander Woo, the first season of 3 Body Problem largely draws on the first book in Cixin’s series, The Three-Body Problem (published as a novel in 2008 and translated into English by Ken Liu in 2014), while weaving in plot points and characters from the second and third books, The Dark Forest and Death’s End, and changing some details.

The show opens on the day astrophysics prodigy Ye Wenjie (played as a young woman by Zine Tseng and later in life by Rosalind Chao), is forced to watch as her professor father is beaten to death by a group of Red Guards during the first months of China’s Cultural Revolution. From there, it leaps nearly 60 years into the future to modern-day England, where Detective Da Shi (Benedict Wong) has been tasked with investigating the apparent suicides of a number of renowned scientists. As the story unfolds, we learn that after being recruited to work at a secret military base where China was attempting to establish contact with extraterrestrials, a disillusioned Ye chose to alert an alien civilization to Earth’s location despite being warned they were hostile.

In the present, with the technologically hyper-advanced San-Ti drawing ever closer to Earth, the lives of a tight-knit group of scientists known as the Oxford Five—Jin Cheng (Jess Hong), Saul Durand (Jovan Adepo), Auggie Salazar (Eiza González), Jack Rooney (John Bradley), and Will Downing (Alex Sharp)—become increasingly entwined with humanity’s struggle to survive.

Read More: Netflix’s 3 Body Problem Transforms a Dense Sci-Fi Novel Into a Smart, Gripping Thriller

How does 3 Body Problem end?

After Ye seeks out Saul to tell him her cryptic, “Never play with God,” joke prior to her death, the Season 1 finale of 3 Body Problem opens with an assassination attempt on Saul that sends him on a harrowing journey to the United Nations in New York. Once there, he learns that he has been unwillingly selected as one of three Wallfacers, the individuals chosen by the UN to formulate and direct defense strategies against the San-Ti. Due to the San-Ti’s ability to intercept all forms of human communication via the proton-sized supercomputers known as Sophons they sent ahead to Earth, the Wallfacers are instructed to secretly develop these plans entirely within their own minds, sharing them with no one until the time is right to execute.

Saul repeatedly attempts to refuse the assignment, but his protests are treated as though he may simply be trying to mislead the San-Ti by throwing them off his scent. The UN Secretary-General tells Saul that there is only an indirect reason he was chosen, and that he will know what that was when the time is right.

Eventually, given the power to demand basically anything he wants, Saul insists that he be taken to Cape Canaveral to watch the spy probe carrying Will’s cryogenically frozen brain be launched into space—an initiative of Jin’s dubbed the Staircase Project. Unfortunately, the launch doesn’t go as planned and Will’s probe goes careening far off course from the path that would have led it to the San-Ti fleet.

Despite the seemingly dire straits humanity is up against, the season ends on a hopeful note, with Da Shi reminding Jin and Saul how resilient insects have been against humans’ attempts to eradicate them in a callback to the San-Ti’s, “You are bugs,” message.

What’s next for 3 Body Problem?

Although Netflix has yet to officially renew 3 Body Problem, its showrunners have said they are already working on a second season that is set to pretty much follow the arc of Cixin’s second book.

“The second book is far better than the first, and the third book just completely blew my mind,” Benioff told the Hollywood Reporter. “So I feel if we survive to the second season, we’re going to be in a good place. Things wildly escalate and there’s one scene, if we get to it, we’re golden—like when we got to the Red Wedding on Thrones.”

In total, the creators have said they are hoping the show will run for three to four seasons. “The third book is massive. It’s twice as long, I think, as the other two books,” Benioff told Collider. “So maybe that’s one season, maybe it’s two. But I think we’d need at least three, maybe four seasons to tell the whole story.”

source https://time.com/6958215/3-body-problem-netflix-ending-explained/