NBA Champion Scot Pollard Receives Heart Transplant

NBA champion and “Survivor” contestant Scot Pollard has had a heart transplant, his wife said on social media on Friday night.

“Scot has a new heart!” Dawn Pollard posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Surgery went well and I’ve been told the heart is big, powerful and is a perfect fit! Now on to the crucial part of recovery. Thank you to everyone for the continued prayers and support, but most of all, deepest thanks to the donor, our hero.”

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Pollard, who turned 49 on Monday, needed a transplant because of damage to his heart from a virus he caught in 2021 that likely triggered a genetic condition he has known about since it killed his father at 54, when Scot was 16. Pollard’s size complicated efforts to find a donor with a heart big enough to fit his 6-foot-11, 260-pound body.

Earlier Friday, Dawn Pollard posted that a heart had been found.

“It’s go time!” she posted on X. “Please keep the prayers coming for Scot, the surgeons, for the donor and his family who lost their loved one. This donor gave the most amazing gift of life and we are forever grateful.”

Pollard was a 1997 first-round draft pick after helping Kansas reach the NCAA Sweet 16 in four straight seasons. He was a useful big man off the bench for much of an NBA career that stretched over 11 years and five teams. He played 55 seconds in the Cleveland Cavaliers’ trip to the NBA Finals in 2007, and won it all the following year with the Boston Celtics despite a season-ending ankle injury in February.

Pollard retired after that season, then dabbled in broadcasting and acting. He was a contestant on the 32nd season of “Survivor,” where he was voted out on Day 27 with eight castaways remaining.

Pollard went public with his condition last month and began the process of listing himself at transplant centers. He was admitted to intensive care at Vanderbilt University Medical Center on Feb. 7.

“I’m staying here until I get a heart,” he said in a text message to The Associated Press from his hospital room in Nashville, Tennessee. “My heart got weaker. (Doctors) agree this is my best shot at getting a heart quicker.”

source https://time.com/6696141/scot-pollard-heart-transplant-nba-survivor/

Virginia Home Explosion Kills One Firefighter and Injures Others

STERLING, Va. — One firefighter was killed and nine others were injured when an explosion in a Washington, D.C., suburb on Friday leveled a home where they were investigating a gas leak. Two other people were also injured.

The firefighters were called to the home in Sterling, Virginia, by a report of a gas smell shortly after 7:30 p.m. and a fiery explosion took place about 30 minutes later, fire officials said.

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The blast and fire occurred while firefighters were inside the building, James Williams, assistant chief of operations for Loudon County Fire and Rescue, said at a news conference.

“Soon after arrival, with firefighters inside, the house did explode,” Williams said.

One firefighter was killed, while nine firefighters and two others were taken to hospitals with injuries ranging from limited to severe, Williams said.

“We have all firefighters out of the building. The fire will continue to smolder,” Williams said.

He described damage to the home as “total devastation.”

“There’s a debris field well into the street and into the neighboring homes,” he said.

Williams said the cause of the fire was under investigation.

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, the Sterling Volunteer Fire Company said its crews had responded to a report of a gas leak before the blast.

A neighbor, John Padgett, told ABC7 News that he had smelled gas while walking his dog earlier.

The blast shook his home, he said.

“It looked like an inferno,” and insulation from the burning home fell like ash, he added. “It was horrific; it looked like something out of a war zone.”

Sterling is about 22 miles (35 kilometers) northwest of Washington, D.C.

source https://time.com/6696130/virginia-house-explosion-firefighters-injuries-death-toll/

The Tax Loophole That Helps Temu and Shein Keep Prices So Low

On Super Bowl Sunday, the e-commerce giant Temu flaunted their alluringly low prices in multiple ad spots during the game, encouraging customers to “shop like a billionaire.” Halsey Cook, the CEO of the South Carolina-based textile manufacturer Milliken & Company, was less than enthused. For the past couple years, he’s been watching as products similar to Milliken’s apparel lines have popped up on Temu and Shein for shockingly low prices. This incursion has had an outsized financial impact on the company: last fall, Milliken was forced to close two plants in the Southeast and laid off hundreds of workers, in part due to the newfound competition. “What we’re experiencing now in the domestic textile industry is another level of pain and plant closures compared to anything in our past,” Cook says. 

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Temu and Shein are among the fastest growing companies that do business in the U.S.: they now send almost a million packages a day to American consumers, frequently top the App Store, and are racking up billions of dollars of revenue every year. Temu and Shein ship packages straight from Chinese warehouses on the cheap, allowing American consumers to buy fast fashion, electronics and other products for astonishingly low prices. American small businesses argue that these e-commerce juggernauts are threatening their livelihoods—and tell TIME that if their rise continues unabated, many shops will close and American warehouses will shutter their doors and move abroad. 

In response to this worrying trend, several Congresspeople have drafted legislation that aims to reduce one of the main trading advantages Temu and Shein have: a trade rule known as de minimis that allows them to ship packages without paying duty and certain taxes as long as shipments are under the value of $800. “It is a huge loophole that particularly enables these two companies to send a gusher of product to the U.S and undercut American businesses that are literally being driven out of business by this competition,” Congressman Earl Blumenauer (D., Ore.) tells TIME. 

But lawmakers might not make time for a very wonky issue in this highly contentious congressional session. Meanwhile, fierce defenders of the provision argue that de minimis is now an inalterable part of how Americans buy things, and that this wave of e-commerce is here to stay, American brick-and-mortar retailers be damned. “This is the new model; this is the future,” says Steve Story, a business executive who helps companies ship goods under de minimis. “Why hold inventory in the states when you can let your supplier hold that inventory and ship? If American companies don’t get on board with this, they’ll be left behind.” 

From Souvenirs to Everyday Goods

De minimis is far from the only reason why Temu and Shein have thrived in the last couple years. Temu has found success with its gamified shopping experience, which encourages users to win discounts by sharing the app on social media. Some analysts argue that Temu is offering unsustainable prices in order to win market share: Goldman Sachs estimated Temu loses about $6 for every order in the U.S., while the financial company China Merchants Securities has calculated that Temu is losing between 4.15 billion RMB and 6.73 billion RMB ($580 million to $950 million) per year. (A Temu spokesperson disputed this claim in a statement to TIME, writing that such third-party analyses “do not reflect our actual financial situation and are far from reality.” The company declined to share its specific performance figures.) Many startups have endured years of losses in their paths to profitability, including Uber, which subsidized rides in order to reach new customers.

Read More: Designers Are Accusing Temu of Selling Copies of Their Work

But many experts say that de minimis, a century-old trade rule, is central to Temu’s success in the U.S. The de minimis provision allows companies to ship packages worth less than $800 to the U.S. without incurring duties and fees. The law’s primary purpose was to allow tourists who bought gifts abroad to avoid paying a fee when they returned home, and was previously capped at $200. 

For years, de minimis was a minor factor in the American retail landscape. But in 2016, the de minimis threshold was raised from $200 to $800, allowing pricier items to skip the formal customs process. Companies like Temu were able to ship products directly from warehouses to customers, sliding under this higher threshold and thus avoiding typical entry fees. By creating shopping apps for smartphones, they could operate under the branding of a single company while shipping products from a web of different warehouses and sellers across China. 

The number of de minimis packages coming into the U.S. has increased dramatically, and many of them are from Temu and Shein. Nearly a third (30%) of all small packages coming into the U.S. were ordered from those two websites, an interim report from the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party found. Experts say that American companies like Walmart and Amazon are now following their lead, using de minimis to ship products to Americans from overseas and keep their prices low.  

“Temu’s growth isn’t dependent on the de minimis policy,” a Temu spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement. “We are open to and supportive of any policy adjustments made by legislators that align with consumer interests. We believe that as long as these policies are fair, they won’t influence the outcomes of competitive business dynamics.” 

Last year, Shein published a statement acknowledging that de minimis disadvantages “American companies that can no longer compete on price,” and argued that the policy “needs a complete makeover.”  

Unlike foreign businesses, most small and mid-sized American businesses don’t benefit from the de minimis rule. Many of these companies receive products or materials in bulk from overseas, then assemble them in American warehouses. This mode of production requires paying hefty fees. Jim Marcum, the CEO of the dress retailer David’s Bridal, says that the company paid $100 million in fees over the last six years to U.S. customs, which forced it to charge higher prices for its dresses. “Our largest competitor sells about a million dresses a year in the U.S., and they come in duty free,” says Marcum. “That’s hard to compete with.” In April, the company filed for bankruptcy—and Marcum says that the proliferation of de minimis “had an enormous impact” in leading to that decision. 

“I’ve never seen a piece of legislation that has created more unintended consequences,” Marcum says. “And it’s largely being driven by the acceleration of tech.” 

The bicycle industry has been similarly impacted. Matt Moore, the policy council for the trade association People for Bikes, says that since the pandemic, hundreds of new eBike brands have come onto the market shipping directly from Asia, leaving local bike retailers in the lurch. “Sales have incrementally gone to the foreign online sellers that would have gone to domestic businesses,” Moore says. 

American entrepreneurs now worry that de minimis will result in warehouses moving out of the country. Some companies have already established warehouses to Mexico or Canada, where they can receive large shipments of composite parts, then assemble them into products and send them via de minimis to the U.S. “Most U.S. companies, if they haven’t started to avail themselves of the opportunity, are exploring or evaluating it,” says Marcum. He said that David’s Bridal was considering moving warehouses out of the U.S. “I do not want to export jobs out of the country,” he says. “But you have to be able to compete.” 

Even Steve Story, a pro-de minimis advocate whose Apex Logistics International helps retailers including Temu ship goods under de minimis, acknowledges that the law could lead to American warehouses being cut out of the supply chain. “I don’t want to take American jobs,” he says. “But for the right company and the right model, this fits very well.” 

Legislation

De minimis has clearly altered the e-commerce landscape. But what can legislators do about it? There’s some precedent here: for many years, Amazon used a loophole to avoid paying most state sales taxes for decades, giving it a competitive advantage. Eventually, states fought back by passing a slew of laws. “There are often these laws set up for another purpose—and people figure out how to leverage them,” says Douglas Schmidt, a computer science professor at Vanderbilt University who researches digital privacy. “And it takes a while for the legislative process to catch up.”

There are currently a few bipartisan de minimis bills floating around Congress. While they vary slightly in their implementation details, each of their main objectives is to stop allowing Chinese manufacturers from using the de minimis channel. One of them, the Import Security and Fairness Act, is a bipartisan project with supporters in both chambers of Congress: it was introduced by Representatives Blumenauer, Neal Dunn, a Florida Republican, and Senators Sherrod Brown, an Ohioan Democrat, and Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican. Blumenauer says that the bill’s bipartisan nature is proof of how worrisome the issue has become to a wide swath of Americans. “The case is stronger and stronger to prohibit access from people who cheat and cut corners to the American market,” he says. 

Crucially, politicians like Blumenauer and Wisconsin Republican Mike Gallagher believe that de minimis is facilitating the entry of products made by Uyghur people forced to labor against their will. The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party argued in an interim report this year that de minimis packages are much less likely to be screened for compliance with the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, and that Temu in particular does not have any system to track whether its products are in compliance with the act.  A 2022 Bloomberg article found that Shein products contained cotton from Xinjiang, which would be banned under that legislation. 

Blumenauer says there’s “no question” that products being made with forced labor are coming into the country via de minimis. He says that even if doing away with the provision raises prices for consumers, it will be well worth it. “We’re not going to have lower prices for American consumers by using slave labor or convict labor: That’s a nonstarter,” he says. 

The Temu spokesperson called allegations linking Temu products to forced labor “completely ungrounded.” “Our current standards and practices are no different from those of major U.S. e-commerce platforms, such as Amazon, eBay, and Etsy,” the spokesperson wrote.

Separately, Blumenauer and other critics also believe that de minimis has become a pipeline for fentanyl to enter the country. Christa Brzozowski, the acting assistant secretary for trade and economic security policy at the Department of Homeland Security, said in a recent House hearing that the rise of de minimis had created a “challenging environment for our folks at the border.” 

John Pickel, the National Foreign Trade Council’s senior director of international supply chain policy, argues that discarding de minimis would cost both the government and American consumers billions of dollars while doing little to prevent counterfeits or fentanyl being shipped into the country. “De minimis just works. If you buy something online and it shows up at your door two days later, you don’t necessarily know that de minimis was used,” he says. “Quite frankly, some of the businesses who are speaking out against it benefit from the use of de minimis in their supply chains.” 

Matt Moore, from People for Bikes, also acknowledges that changing de minimis rules might raise prices for consumers. But de minimis, he says, “simply sends that capital overseas” as opposed to keeping the money in the country. “If you take the broad view of what’s best for American consumers and jobs,” he says, “You want those industries to be based here.” 

One of the hardest-hit industries has been the textiles industry. Milliken’s plant closures were two of ten textile plant closures that have unfolded since September. Cook, Milliken’s CEO, says that the COVID pandemic—when Americans desperately needed masks and other personal protective equipment supplies—showed the importance of having local manufacturers. Now, he says, due to the influx of de minimis shipments, those producers are disappearing. “If there were ever times of emergencies when we needed our textile industry,” he says, “It simply won’t be there.” 

source https://time.com/6695469/temu-shein-de-minimis/

Why Bathroom Access Is a Public Health Issue

It’s not unusual to fast before a medical test to avoid skewing the results. But Dr. Zoë Gottlieb’s patients often skip meals for a different reason.

Gottlieb, a gastroenterologist and assistant professor of medicine at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine in New York City, specializes in treating inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), an umbrella term for conditions involving chronic inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract, specifically Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. People with IBD have “unreliable bowel habits,” meaning they may need to use the bathroom frequently or urgently, Gottlieb says. So when a patient doesn’t eat before their appointment, it can be a sign that they’re afraid they’ll be caught without a restroom when they need one, she says.

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That fear is warranted in the U.S., where there are just eight public toilets per 100,000 residents, according to a 2021 report from bathroom-supply company QS Supplies. That’s a public-health issue that acutely affects IBD patients but spares no one, says Michael Osso, CEO of the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation.

“Everyone needs bathrooms,” Osso says. “And, frankly, it feels fundamentally wrong that we can’t support people in our community when they leave their homes by meeting this obviously critical need.” 

The issue is serious enough that some people with IBD choose to stay home rather than risk ending up in a place with unreliable bathroom access, studies show. One 2012 review of previous research on IBD found that patients frequently reported a fear of incontinence that often led them to pull back from their work, social lives, or hobbies. “Actual episodes [of incontinence] were rare,” the authors wrote, “but the fear remained constant.”

That fear, and the lifestyle changes it prompts, can lead to or exacerbate feelings of isolation, loneliness, and depression, Osso says, which kicks off a vicious cycle. Mental-health issues can worsen IBD symptoms, since the gut and brain are closely connected, studies suggest. Some research even suggests IBD patients who are socially isolated are at an increased risk of premature death.

“A huge part of being able to heal,” Gottlieb says, “is having both their physical and mental health appropriately addressed.” 

But it’s not only people with IBD who suffer when there’s not a restroom in sight. People with a range of chronic conditions, as well as pregnant people, parents of young children, and elderly adults, may need bathrooms frequently or with little warning. (People with mobility issues or disabilities are at a particular disadvantage in their hunt for a usable toilet, as many public bathrooms aren’t designed with their needs in mind.) Unhoused people and those whose jobs require them to be out and about all day—like delivery and taxi drivers—often rely on public facilities. And no one, regardless of job or health status, is immune from the occasional urgent situation, as Theodora “Teddy” Siegel learned when a 2021 shopping trip turned into a frantic search for a bathroom.

Siegel averted disaster only after buying a bottle of water so she could use the bathroom at a McDonald’s in New York City’s Times Square. Shaken by the experience, Siegel began posting on social media about where to find restrooms around New York City. Her audience grew almost immediately, and followers began to submit their own bathroom hacks. Those crowdsourced submissions now live on a giant map, which Siegel says Google representatives told her is its most frequently used map in the world—an impressive feat, but one that also speaks to how difficult it is to locate a bathroom without insider knowledge or the disposable income to buy something from a shop with a customers-only restroom.

The U.S’ poor public-restroom infrastructure is a multi-pronged issue. As Bloomberg has reported, the reasons for it range from chronic under-funding (public facilities are costly to build and maintain) to discrimination (during the Jim Crow era, some cities refused to build “separate but equal” facilities). In the present day, some city officials are also hesitant to build bathroom complexes because they tend to become hubs for drug use and sex work, the New York Times adds.

But there is also research to show that public health and well-being improves when high-quality restrooms are available—not only by improving access for people who need to go, but also by cutting down on health hazards like public defecation and urination.

Some states have passed legislation meant to ensure that people with certain chronic conditions, including IBD, can use businesses’ employee-only bathrooms when necessary. But these laws often don’t work as well as intended because of lacking compliance and awareness, prompting the Crohns & Colitis Foundation to start its Open Restrooms Movement. The initiative calls on businesses to let the public use their facilities, and to publicize that stance by joining the listings on the Foundation’s We Can’t Wait app. “There is an opportunity for [businesses] to promote inclusivity within their community and be a good partner to the citizens around them,” Osso says.

Siegel became an accidental bathroom influencer by sharing tips about businesses with clean, accessible bathrooms. (Department stores, bookstores, and grocery stores are usually safe bets, as are churches, she says.) But she also feels it’s “unfair” for the entire burden to fall on private establishments, rather than local governments. It’s a “failure,” she says, that New York City has only about 1,000 public toilets to serve a population of more than 8 million, and she has advocated for local legislation that would identify New York City neighborhoods in need of more public facilities and boost the overall number of bathrooms available. Advocates in cities including Portland, Ore., Washington, D.C., and Cincinnati, Ohio, are pushing for similar outcomes.

“Bathroom access is a basic human right. It shouldn’t be a privilege,” Siegel says. “I hope that this is something we all look back on one day and are horrified by.”

source https://time.com/6695326/bathroom-access-public-health-issue/

How Denny Hamlin Became NASCAR’s Most Polarizing Driver

Denny Hamlin, the three-time Daytona 500 champion who is entering his 19th full season in the NASCAR Cup Series and has won 51 races in his standout career, has rightfully earned a reputation as a brash, outspoken driver who sparks the most boos on the circuit. “It doesn’t matter whether I’m playing basketball, pickleball, or whatever, if I can’t talk sh-t, then I just feel mortal,” Hamlin tells TIME in a phone interview a few days before the 66th running of the Daytona 500, the Great American Race, on February 18. “I feel vulnerable. So I use it to help get into the other competitors’ heads and make them believe I am the best and you’re not going to beat me. It’s my superpower. I do believe I have humility in certain situations. I just do not want to let anyone see that humility.” 

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So as an expert smack-talker, Hamlin—who famously is missing a championship season on his otherwise Hall of Fame-caliber resume—had to respect the dart thrown by his longtime girlfriend, Jordan Fish, on Instagram when the couple announced their engagement on January 1. (The couple have two daughters, 11 and 6, together.) Fish wrote, under a picture of the happy couple kissing in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico:

“Rings: DH 0, Jordan 1.”

Sick burn, right?  

“Listen, if you want to give her the credit, that’s fine,” says Hamlin. “But I actually came up with that caption. I love picking on myself. Nobody will make fun of me more than I’m willing to make fun of myself. I’m comfortable in my own skin. God, I’d love to have a championship. But I can promise you it’s not going to affect me one way or the other if it doesn’t happen.”

Read More: The Drive That Won the Chiefs the Super Bowl–and Proved Patrick Mahomes’ Greatness

Hamlin, 43, enters this NASCAR campaign with a higher profile than ever. Already the second-winningest active full-time driver, behind Kyle Bush (63 Cup victories), host of the podcast Actions Detrimental, and a team owner, along with Michael Jordan, of 23XI Racing (23 is Jordan’s number, and Hamlin drives the No. 11 car for Joe Gibbs Racing), he’s also the main character of a new Netflix series, Full Speed, which debuted on January 30 and spent its premiere week as Netflix’s ninth-most viewed TV show globally, attracting 1.5 million views. The show is NASCAR’s attempt at replicating the success of another Netflix series Drive to Survive, which gave Formula One an uptick in popularity and helped attract a younger generation of fans. Hamlin is already feeling Netflix’s reach. He has noticed, for example, a rise in social media followers from New Zealand.

All the while, Hamlin has gained notoriety as NASCAR’s most polarizing driver—and most prominent heel. It’s a characterization he embraces, full throttle. “While I’m not NASCAR’s most popular driver or probably even in the top five, you’re not going to argue that when they call my name this weekend, where does the most noise come from?” Hamlin says. “It could be good or bad, it doesn’t matter. It’s noise. It makes someone feel a certain way for a certain reason. So I’ve just embraced that. Hey, I’d love to have you on my bandwagon. But if not, I don’t care. Get the f-ck off it. I didn’t want you anyway.”

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Hamlin’s heel turn began in earnest last July, at the Highpoint.com 400 at Pocono Raceway. There, Hamlin dueled with Kyle Larson, the 2021 Cup Series champ and a popular driver. Larson felt that Hamlin, who won the race, forced him into the wall. He was furious with Hamlin afterward. Hamlin pointed out that his car never touched Larson’s. “After that, every time I would get intro’d, the boos just got louder,” Hamlin says. “Then all of a sudden, I’m waving the fans on. ‘That’s all you’ve got?’” After Hamlin won the night race at Bristol Motor Speedway in September, the jeers grew so loud he couldn’t hear himself think during the post-race interview. “Hey,” he said to the crowd. “I beat your favorite driver.” The interviewer asked, “Who would that be?”

“All of them,” he replied. 

“I’m, like, trying to get them to settle down,” Hamlin says. “And all I did was rile them up.” 

Hamlin anticipates that fans will shout obscenities at him on Sunday. “I appreciate it, because it’s fandom, it’s sports,” says Hamiln. “LeBron comes into a home area, people boo the sh-t out of him. He makes them feel a certain way. They may say he sucks, but they know better. I think that that’s the case with me.”

(Just pointing out, for the record, that, yes, Hamlin compared himself to LeBron James.)

Read More: Lionel Messi Is TIME’s 2023 Athlete of the Year

Full Speed presents a fuller portrait of Hamlin that moves beyond his tough talk and spats with other drivers. Viewers meet his mom and dad, Dennis and Mary Lou, who worked in a trailer shop and for AAA, respectively. Hamlin started racing go-kart when he was 7. They went into debt to support Hamlin’s racing career, taking out second and third mortgages on their Chesterfield, Va., home. They sold their classic cars so he could race on dirt tracks. The Hamlins were a few missed payments away from losing their house when Denny, then in his early 20s, decided he’d just work at his father’s shop. But a race-team owner overheard Hamlin talking about his plan and offered to sponsor him. He knew Hamlin had talent and often beat drivers who had better cars. Soon Joe Gibbs Racing discovered him. In 2005, when he was 24, he ran his first Cup series race in the No. 11 car.

“He made my whole life,” Dennis Hamlin says in the series. “He’s my heartbeat.” He holds up a cigar, encased in a box, that Michael Jordan gave him. “Break it when we win the championship,” Jordan wrote.

“I’d give you everything I own, every car in this garage, the house, whatever, if I can make that happen,” Dennis says. 

This scene made Hamlin emotional. “It got me,” he says. “I’ve probably made more calls and seen my dad more in the last few weeks than I have in the last few months.” Dennis suffers from COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease). He often calls his son in a panic these days, saying he feels like he’s drowning, that he has no air. “Knowing that he’s probably got a couple of years left at the best, it’s tough,” says Hamlin. “I want him to be able to have that moment. With Michael and me and the grandkids and all that. I want it for other people more than I want it for myself.”

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Hamlin approached Gibbs executives a few years back to inquire about an ownership stake in the team. They preferred to keep it a family business. Hamlin, a Charlotte Hornets season-ticket holder, had gotten to know Jordan during his ownership tenure with the Hornets. They started their own racing team, 23XI Racing, which made its debut in 2021 with Bubba Wallace driving the No. 23 car. But Hamlin continues to drive for Gibbs—a 23XI competitor, though both teams share the same manufacturer, Toyota. While the thought of, say, LeBron playing for the Los Angeles Lakers while having a financial interest in the Boston Celtics is absurd, this conflict of interest has happened in NASCAR before. Dale Earnhardt Sr., before his tragic death in a crash at the 2001 Daytona 500, raced for Richard Childress Racing while owning his own team, Dale Earnhardt, Inc.

The Netflix series shows Hamlin spending Monday of race week checking in on his competition at 23XI. Though it’s difficult to call 23XI competition when Hamlin owns the team, right? “It’s complicated,” Hamlin admits. While he wants 23XI drivers to do well, he’s not sharing too much insight with Wallace and the other 23XI driver, Tyler Reddick. “Most of my coaching happens in the offseason,” says Hamlin. “Once the season gets going, especially the playoffs, I kind of shut down to them a little bit. I don’t feed them all the information I’ve got. God knows, talk about a thorn in my side, is my team getting a championship before me. That would suck.”

Wallace and Reddick and Hamlin’s Joe Gibbs Racing teammates—including Ty Gibbs, the boss’ grandson, making things ever more complicated—shouldn’t expect much help on Sunday. Coming off a win at an exhibition race, The Clash, in Los Angeles a few weeks back, Hamlin’s feeling especially confident entering this year’s Daytona. Only two legendary drivers have won more than three Daytonas: Richard Petty, aka “The King” (7) and Cale Yarborough (4). 

Hamlin’s eager to join this pantheon. “Over the last few years, I’ve been instructed to push my teammates, push Toyota cars,” says Hamlin. “Teamwork wins. That’s bullsh-t, in my opinion. I’m just going to do whatever’s best for me. Because if Toyota wants to win, they just need to hop on and enjoy the show.”

source https://time.com/6695849/denny-hamlin-daytona-500-nascar-interview/

Palestine and the Power of Language

In today’s near-constant news cycle on Gaza, Palestinians seem to die at the hands of an invisible executioner. Palestinians are shot dead. Palestinians starve. Palestinian children are found dead. But where is there accountability? Palestinians die, they aren’t killed, as if their death is a fault of their own. 

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The obfuscation of responsibility is facilitated by a structure often overlooked since grade school: grammar. At this moment, grammar has the indelible power to become a tool of the oppressor, with the passive voice the most relied-upon weapon of all.

When I was young, teachers scolded me for using the passive voice—they wanted my writing to be precise and direct. Instead, my sentences always seemed to protect those who performed the actions. Back then, the fact that my sentence structure obscured accountability didn’t bother me. But I know better now. As a Palestinian American, with refugee grandparents who survived the Nakba, I’m confronting the occupation back home from the safety of my apartment in America. Over the years,  I’ve combed through headlines searching for the active voice in a sea of passivity. I need those who commit actions, those who hold agency, to be named. I need Israel and its occupational forces to be named.  

The passive voice often focused on the recipient of the event, not the doer. In the news today, I see only the passive voice: “A group of Palestinian men waving a white flag are shot at,” and I can’t help but hear the voices of my past English teachers ask, “But who ‘shot’ these men?” Accountability is not just vague; it’s altogether missing.

I learned most acutely about the power of language to silence and erase in graduate school while auditing an undergraduate course on Israel. In a class of 25 people, I was one of two Palestinians. The rest of the class consisted of students who either self-identified as proud Zionists or Zionists who felt confused.

The professor, a Jewish Israeli, reminded me of my grandfather with his bushy eyebrows and thick accent—a soothing familiarity at first.

But that familiarity didn’t last. By the end of the first month, the class was split on the definition of “ethnic cleansing”—not only how to define it but who, in terms of the subject doing the action, can be charged with this human rights violation. 

The professor called our attention to his use of the term “ethnic cleansing” in his own writing. He wrote that around 750,000 Palestinians were displaced in 1948, an act that today would be considered ethnic cleansing. At first read, this statement seemed bold—he may not have named the Nakba, but his writing gestured toward violence. Even so, his examination felt sanitized. Palestinians “were displaced,” he wrote. But there was no mention of who did the displacing.

After reading part of the article out loud, a girl who had been fidgeting in her seat said it couldn’t be. 

“What couldn’t be?” my professor asked. 

“Ethnic cleansing. Because it’s what happened in the Holocaust, so we can’t be charged with this,” she replied. Another student cut in. He qualified by referring to himself as a critic of Israel. “There’s a distinction between occupation and ethnic cleansing,” he announced. “It’s an issue of structural power and systematic violence—what happened in 1948 was not ethnic cleansing.”

“By whom?” I finally asked, interrupting the flow of conversation.

“By whom, what?” the professor said.

“Who displaced 750,000 Palestinians?” Silence.

A boy behind me got the last word. “Intent is what makes it ethnic cleansing,” he said. “It doesn’t sound like this was intentional. It might look like it, but it’s different.” The professor nodded, mumbling, “intent” to himself. 

In a 2023 interview with Palestinian scholar Rashid Khalidi published in The Intercept, Khalidi shared that although Israel’s recent military assault on Gaza may seem unprecedented it, unfortunately, aligns with Israel’s long-standing doctrine rooted in colonial, British counterinsurgency strategies. Khalidi said that this doctrine is characterized by an “absolute merciless attack on the enemy, delivering crushing blows.”

Read More: Hamas Built Tunnels Beneath My Family’s Home in Gaza. Now It Lies in Ruin

“This is how Britain ruled the world,” Khalidi went on to explain. “It was an empire of violence. And that strategy of overwhelming violence, when challenged, has been Israel’s strategy ever since.” This history of violence can easily be traced back to the foundation of the Zionist movement. The first Israeli prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, wrote to his son in 1937: “The Arabs will have to go, but one needs an opportune moment for making it happen, such as a war.” 

I saw intent in these words, but others in my class did not. So I kept searching, looking through the archive to help me piece together what parts of history I was missing. I found Joseph Weitz, director of the Jewish National Fund’s Lands Department, who wrote that there was no solution other than to transfer all Arabs from Palestine—who were the overwhelming majority in the region—into neighboring countries so that no Palestinian villages would remain. But when I shared these findings in class, they were brushed aside. “This isn’t intent,” a student said. “You can’t prove intent with a few peoples’ letters and actions.”

By the second month of class, I spent most of my time picking at my cuticles, fiddling with them until they drew blood, as students argued over when the words “Palestine” and “Palestinian” came into existence. Finally, the professor changed the subject, unable to convince some in class that “Palestine” was a place before Israel’s existence. He went on to discuss how Zionism could be considered a colonial project. A student behind me interrupted the lecture and said, “It’s not like they were coming in like other imperial powers and raping and killing immediately.”

My hand with its bloody cuticles shot up, eager to call out the absurdity of the comment. But my professor had started calling on me less and less, avoiding eye contact when possible and acknowledging me only in nods. My consistent stream of comments and questions perhaps disturbed the delicate balance of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that he so cautiously wanted to maintain. He had become passive; I had been forced into passivity in turn. 

“Who started it first?” another student asked in my row, ignoring my raised hand. 

“Which time did ‘who start what?’” The professor asked. 

“In 1947,” she said, “if Zionism really is a ‘colonial project,’ who started it first?” 

“In 1947, the Arabs were upset by the U.N. partition lines. There were Palestinian uprisings,” he said. 

“They retaliated,” I interjected, angry again at the empty spaces left in the professor’s response—as if Zionism and its goals had no role in why there were Palestinian uprisings. In a 2002 report completed by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), researchers found that during the Second Intifada the word “retaliation” was used 79% of the time to describe Israeli violence against Palestinians in American news outlets. Meanwhile, Palestinian violence was characterized as “retaliation” only 9% of the time. Palestinians “attacked” or “threw rocks” or, at best, there were Palestinian “uprisings” that seemed to spring from the ground without any explanation of the pressure that premeditated why the surface cracked in the first place. 

“Retaliation” suggests a need to defend oneself because safety is on the line. “Retaliation” empowers some in their violence while reprimanding others.

I wanted to say all this, but the professor put his palm in the air, a visible stop sign in my direction, and asked me to raise my hand if I wanted to engage. So I continued to raise my hand, which remained raised until the end of class. And I wondered, if there were a stone nearby, would I have thrown it?

Read More: The Power of Changing Your Mind

After class, the professor pulled me aside and told me, “As an auditor, it’s best you don’t participate. I sympathize with the Palestinians, but it’s necessary you don’t add to the discussion.” He followed up this conversation with an email, reaffirming his desire for me to remain silent. Perhaps he didn’t intend to silence me, one of two Palestinians in the course. Perhaps he intended only to follow university policy, a policy I later learned was up to the discretion of each professor. Perhaps intent didn’t imply here at all, just as it couldn’t be applied to those who ethnically cleansed Palestinians during the Nakba. 

While writing tedious essays in high school, I didn’t care that I used the passive voice. I didn’t care because our writing assignments were often divorced from broader socio-political contexts. The violence of protecting those accountable versus those left bearing the burden of the violence didn’t yet touch me or my body. A privilege, I know. The calculated use of language against Palestinians didn’t yet anger me, either, even though blatant anti-Arab racism happened in front of me with growing frequency after 9/11. It felt as though this version of racism was acceptable, even expected.

I learned history as if its problems were a thing of the past. This was purposeful. History preserved in textbooks relies on meticulous and insidious language to shape narratives. In the same month I sat in class and listened to students negotiate accountability and qualify their feelings toward ethnic cleansing, a seven-year-old Palestinian boy, Rayan, died in the West Bank. Did he die or was he killed? It depends on which headline you read—some headlines stated that he was simply “mourned” by his community.

As I searched for accountability for Rayan, I heard my teachers’ voices echo from the past: “Who did the action?” Paramedics say he had a heart attack though pediatric specialist, Dr. Mohamed Ismail, claimed Rayan had no previous medical conditions that would point to an early cardiac arrest. “The most probable scenario of what happened is that under stress, he had excess adrenaline secretion, which caused the increase of his heartbeat, ” Ismail said. 

We do know this: right before he died, Israeli occupation forces chased the boys home, banged on their door, and threatened to come back at night and arrest the boys, ages 7, 8, and 10. When Rayan saw the soldiers at his door, he tried to run away but, instead, dropped dead. Times of Israel published the headline, “Palestinian boy, 7, dies in disputed circumstances amid IDF activity near Bethlehem.”

“What are the disputed circumstances?” I hear my English teachers press on in my mind.  

There were rocks. No, stones. They say stones. They were being thrown. 

“Who did the action? Who started it?” 

One of Rayan’s older brothers threw a stone at a soldier. 

In the active voice, “A seven-year-old Palestinian boy’s heart killed him” is how the headlines could have read. 

“The heart is not to blame,” I hear my teachers say. 

What does it matter when language can minimize suffering at its best and erase it altogether at its worst?

As my graduate studies progressed, professors repeatedly told me that no one’s hands were clean in this “complicated” history. They felt my writing and my questions were too exacting in ways that perhaps made them uncomfortable. “This history is full of gray areas,” they’d say. They wanted my writing to be vague, passive. They wanted my writing to speak to the “complicated” nature of this conflict—but Palestine has never been that complicated to me. 

The word “complicated” is often used to describe the occupation in Palestine, a word that insists that occupation is untouchable—Palestine’s history is too complex, there are too many moving parts, it’s a puzzle that can never be solved. But this word is condescending—a distraction. It wants us to feel small, worthless, and petty in our investigation. It demands power structures remain in place, allowing some to speak while requiring others to stay quiet. But what’s happening today in Palestine against the Palestinian people is not complicated. It’s a revolting violation of human rights. It is active and precise. Palestinians are killed or, if they’re lucky, violently evicted from their homes. The question—by whom?—is often never raised. Palestinian schools, hospitals, community centers, historic holy spaces, safe zones are bombed; their resources depleted; people are starving—as if all of this happened devoid of context or responsibility for those who hold power.

So let me amend the above statements, as my former English teachers would have requested, and put them into the active voice: Israel bombs Palestinian schools that house sacred archives. Israel bombs hospitals with necessary aid. Israel bombs community centers and historic holy spaces that have stood for centuries. Israel depletes Palestinian resources. Israel bombs Rafah, housing over 1 million displaced Palestinians, after claiming it a safe zone. Israel is starving Gaza.

source https://time.com/6695499/palestine-power-of-language-essay/

Everything to Know About the New Fantastic Four Cast

In an unexpected Valentine’s Day announcement, Marvel Studios revealed the cast of its new The Fantastic Four movie set to come out next summer.

A Marvel Instagram post sharing the new movie poster shows Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards (or Mister Fantastic), Vanessa Kirby as Reed’s partner Sue Storm (also known as the Invisible Woman), Joseph Quinn as her younger brother Johnny Storm (the Human Torch), and Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm (or The Thing).

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The upcoming film—which is part of Phase Six of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and has a release date of July 25, 2025—is directed by WandaVision producer-director Matt Shakman with a script by Josh Friedman, Jeff Kaplan, and Ian Springer. Filming is set to start in the summer, according to Variety.

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The original 1961 comic was created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee and follows a family of astronauts who gain powers after they were exposed to cosmic rays while on a space mission.

There have already been three Fantastic Four films in 2005, 2007, and 2015, with two different casts. With a star-studded cast confirmed for the next installment, here’s what to know about the actors behind the latest Fantastic Four.

Pedro Pascal

The news of Pedro Pascal’s casting as Mister Fantastic first leaked in November. The character, also known as Reed Richards, is a scientist who gains the ability to stretch his body like rubber after exposure to gamma rays in outer space leaves him and the others permanently altered.

Pascal, a 48-year-old Chilean-American actor, has built a devoted fanbase in recent years from a series of strong television roles. He is known for portraying Prince Oberyn Martell across seven episodes of Game of Thrones, and the titular bounty hunter in Star Wars spin off show The Mandalorian. In 2023, Pascal bagged an Emmy nomination for his role as Joel in HBO’s post-Apocalyptic drama The Last of Us, which has been renewed for a second season.

Vanessa Kirby

British actress Vanessa Kirby is set to take on the role of Sue Storm, the Invisible Woman who can go unseen and create force fields. Sue Storm is Richards’ girlfriend, and later becomes his wife, and was a college student before she began exploring space and time as part of the Fantastic Four.

Kirby, 35, recently starred in Ridley Scott’s 2003 historic drama Napoleon alongside Joaquin Phoenix. She may be best known for her depiction of Princess Margaret in early seasons of Netflix’s royal drama The Crown. She has also starred in the two latest Mission: Impossible movies in 2018 and 2023, as well as the 2020 drama Pieces of a Woman.

Joseph Quinn 

Joseph Quinn will play Johnny Storm. Johnny, or the Human Torch, is Sue Storm’s younger brother. Before he was exposed to cosmic radiation, Johnny was a high school student. Radiation left him with the ability to become engulfed by flames and control fire sources around him.

British actor Quinn is not new to the supernatural after taking a prominent role in season 4 of Netflix’s Stranger Things. Quinn has been dubbed a breakout star in that show for his portrayal of beloved character Eddie Munson, leader of Hawkins High School’s Hellfire Club.

The 30-year-old also starred in Game of Thrones as Koner, a Stark soldier. He has appeared in a number of BBC productions such as a 2018 adaptation of Les Misérables, 2015 period drama Dickensian, and Mangrove, an anthology under Steve McQueen’s 2020 Small Axe series.

Quinn will also star in Ridley Scott’s upcoming Gladiator sequel which is scheduled for release in November.

Ebon Moss-Bachrach

Emmy-award winning American actor Ebon Moss-Bachrach will appear as Ben Grimm, or The Thing, Reed’s former college roommate. The Thing was a former astronaut and USAF test pilot before radiation turned him into a rock-hard monster with extreme strength and a “heart of gold,” according to Marvel.

Moss-Bachrach, 46, is most widely known for his role as Richie in Hulu’s hit drama series The Bear, about a struggling Chicago restaurant. Moss-Bachrach won the Emmy award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series, and Critics’ Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series in January for his role as Richie.

He was also nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role on Television, which was ultimately awarded to Succession’s Matthew Macfadyen in January. Moss-Bachrach has also starred in HBO’s show Girls, Marvel’s television series The Punisher, and the 2023 comedy film No Hard Feelings.

source https://time.com/6695351/fantastic-four-cast-marvel-actors/