The Tale of the Tuskegee Airmen Is Poignantly Told in a New Documentary

Frank Moody was prepared to give up his life over the battlefields of Europe. What he didn’t bargain for was giving up his life over Lake Huron, off the coast of Michigan. But on April 11, 1944, that’s what happened when Moody, a Black Tuskegee Airman, was flying a training run with three other pilots in his P-39 fighter and his plane suddenly augured in, crashing into the deep Huron waters. Fifty-four days later, his body washed ashore, but it was not until 70 years to the day after the crash—on April 11, 2014—that divers discovered the wreckage of the plane.

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The cause of the accident that claimed the young lieutenant was always a mystery. Ten years of salvage work and accident forensics, however, finally pinpointed the cause as a breakdown in the forward machine guns’ interruptor—a timing device that pauses the firing of the bullets in the fraction of a second when the propeller is spinning in front of the gun barrel. In the case of Moody’s plane, holes in the propeller proved that the interruptor failed, dooming him to a tragic end before he ever left to fight for his country.

Many other Black men made that journey and braved that fighting. From 1941 to 1946, close to 1,000 African American pilots were trained as Tuskegee airmen, back in the days before Jan. 26, 1948, when Pres. Harry Truman signed Executive Order 9981, desegregating the American armed forces. Now, Moody’s story, and that of the Tuskegee airmen as a whole, are being told in a National Geographic special, The Real Red Tails, which premiered May 31. Told with archival films, Lake Huron dive footage, and interviews with surviving airmen, the special is equal parts tribute, tone poem, and historical object lesson—one that tells the tale of what the airmen called their Double-V campaign: victory over facism abroad and victory over racism at home.

“I tried to enlist in the Army Air Corps, and they didn’t want me. I had to be drafted,” retired Lt. Col. James Harvey, who will turn 101 in July, told TIME. “The commanding general of the Air Force did not want us in his Air Corps.”

What the commander wanted and the country needed were two different things, however, and with the U.S. mobilizing for a massive, two-front war, the military could not afford to sideline the 9.8% of the population that was Black. Still, there were massive hurdles to overcome, beyond the officially sanctioned segregation of the armed forces. As the film shows, a 1925 document on the suitability of Blacks for military service was awful and unsparing in its racism.

“He is,” read the ostensibly learned analysis of African American males, “by nature subservient [and] mentally inferior.” He is “susceptible to crowd psychology,” “cannot control himself in the face of danger,” and does not have “the initiative, courage, and resourcefulness of the white man.”

It was Pres. Franklin Roosevelt who started the first Black fighter squadron, the 99th pursuit squadron, in January of 1941, in part as a bid for the Black vote in the 1944 election. It didn’t hurt either Roosevelt’s or Black Americans’ cause that First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt famously traveled to Tuskegee to be photographed in a plane with an African American airman.

Still, the fight was uphill for the men of the 99th. Harvey recalls that even after establishing himself as a qualified pilot, he had to practice twice in a training plane just to prove he could fly, while white servicemen were not made to jump through that same hoop. His white wing commander once asked him what he wanted to be called, and Harvey looked at the man with stupefaction. “I said, ‘I’m a first lieutenant, so how about Lieutenant Harvey?’” he told TIME.

In the documentary, Harvey also recalls training on the Tuskegee military base, which he describes as “a Jim Crow base in a Jim Crow city.” When he went into town one day, the sheriff made it clear just how welcome his presence was, telling him, “If I find you back in town I’ll blow your brains out.”

Still, Harvey flew and fought bravely for his country. He was at the dock preparing to ship out overseas when word came down that the war in Italy had ended and the rest of Europe was likely to follow, so the men of his detachment remained stateside. He did not see combat until the Korean War, when he flew 126 combat sorties in just 89 days, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross and numerous Air Medals. He came close to losing his life like Moody, during one mission when he was peeling off at a nearly vertical angle after strafing a town and a burst of anti-aircraft fire caught the fuel tank on the tip of his wing. 

“My wing man said he saw this big ball of fire about the size of a basketball hit my tank,” he says. “Lucky for me I was turning, or I wouldn’t be here today.”

But he is here today, and that is a gift to history. Ultimately, Harvey served 22 years in the military before retiring to work for the Oscar Mayer company. That, however, was not his first choice. He originally interviewed to be a commercial airline pilot, but was told that the company had an age cutoff of 35, and he was 42.

“I said OK, if that’s their policy, that’s their policy,” he says. As it turned out, it wasn’t their policy. Sixteen years later he spoke to a white pilot who was hired by the same airline at about the same time and was also over 35. 

“The light went on,” Harvey says. “They didn’t want passengers to get in the aircraft, gaze in the cockpit, and see a person of color behind the controls.”

Given his druthers, Harvey would still be at the controls. The Real Red Tails ends with him and another very elderly airman walking out of a hangar, shot from behind, laughing about the fact that they would take a nearby Cessna up today if they could. They can’t, of course. But while they may have flown their last, they have not spoken their last. The story they tell in the new documentary is one of a nation slowly, haltingly, imperfectly getting right with itself and its history—and honoring a thousand of its heroes in the process.

source https://time.com/6985609/tuskegee-airmen-real-red-tails-james-harvey-interview/

U.S. Cracks Down on Former ‘Top Gun’ Pilots Found to Be Training China’s Air Force

U.S. intelligence officials are issuing a stark warning to America’s former “Top Gun” pilots: Don’t help China. 

A new threat bulletin issued Wednesday warns that China’s People’s Liberation Army “continues to target” current and former Western fighter pilots to help teach Chinese pilots how to master one of the hardest maneuvers in aviation: taking off and landing on aircraft carriers. In some cases, the naval aviators may be unaware they are helping train pilots for China’s military.

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The notice was put out by the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence and its closest intelligence partners: Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the U.K. The group of English-speaking allies are collectively known as the “Five Eyes.”

The Chinese military had struggled for decades to deploy a fleet of aircraft carriers that can compete with the U.S. and project power across the world’s oceans. A major challenge has been training China’s jet pilots to take off and land on the short, floating runways. But in recent years, Chinese military leaders have set up a series of shell companies, some operating in South Africa, to recruit and pay American former F-18 jet pilots to teach more sophisticated maneuvers to Chinese pilots. Such instruction violates U.S. export laws, officials say.

By agreeing to train Chinese pilots, Western recruits “put their military colleagues at risk” and “may face legal peril,” the bulletin warns. China’s military has already improved the skills of its own fighter pilots and also learned about Western air tactics, techniques and procedures.

The bulletin says that the Chinese military has previously used personal acquaintances from the military to reach out to potential recruits and has tried to lure pilots with “lucrative contracts and the opportunity to fly exotic aircraft.” The offers sometimes obscure the fact that the Chinese military is the ultimate customer for their expertise, the bulletin says. Former fighter pilots from the U.S., Canada, France, Germany, the U.K. and Australia have all been hired to train Chinese pilots.

By sounding the alarm, the intelligence agencies are hoping to deter other Western fighter pilots from being seduced by the money and the chance to fly fighter jets again.

“To overcome their shortcomings, China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has been aggressively recruiting Western military talent to train their aviators, using private firms around the globe that conceal their PLA ties and offer recruits exorbitant salaries,” says Michael C Casey, the director of the U.S. National Counterintelligence and Security Center, which is part of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and works to prevent adversaries infiltrating American’s spy agencies.

One former U.S. Marine fighter pilot named Daniel Duggan was arrested in Australia in 2022 for allegedly violating export laws by training Chinese military pilots in South Africa on how to land on aircraft carriers. Duggan has denied the allegations. On May 24, an Australian magistrate ruled that Duggan can be extradited to the U.S. to face the charges.

source https://time.com/6985561/top-gun-pilots-china/

What Animals Studies Are Revealing About Their Minds—and Ours

Never underestimate the mind of a crow. Members of a family of birds that includes ravens, rooks, magpies, and jays, crows have been known to bend wire into hooks to retrieve food; drop nuts in a road so passing cars will crack them open; and recognize humans who have posed a threat, harassing them on-sight even months after their first encounter. But some of the smartest crows of all may be found in the animal physiology lab at the University of Tübingen in Germany. It’s there that the birds are mastering a skill you couldn’t manage until you were up to 4 years old: counting.

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In a new study published in Science, researchers trained three crows to emit one to four caws in response to seeing the numbers 1, 2, 3, or 4 projected on a screen. The birds also learned to count out the proper number of vocalizations when cued by sounds, with a guitar chord eliciting a single caw, a cash register eliciting two, a drum roll signaling three, and a frequency sweep calling for four. In doing so, the birds matched or beat the numeracy skills of human children who often don’t master rudimentary counting until kindergarten.

Says animal physiologist and study co-author Andreas Nieder: “When faced with a set of three objects and asked, ‘How many?’ toddlers recite the speech sounds ‘one, two, three’ or even ‘one, one, one.’ We show that crows have the ability to count vocally [too].”

And crows aren’t the only creatures that understand simple math. Similar skills have been observed in studies of comparatively intelligent animals including gorillas, dolphins, elephants, the rhesus macaque, and the squirrel and capuchin monkeys. Even the less-clever rat can fathom basic arithmetic, with a recent study in Science Advances showing that the animals can be trained to hear two or three tones and then press a button corresponding to one number or the other. The learning didn’t come easy: It took two months for the rats to make that distinction, but it was the fact that they could do it at all—not that they were slow on the uptake—that was the true news.

The last few months alone have been something of a boom time for research into the intelligence and behavior of animals. German researchers discovered a sort of pre-verbal stage in finches—similar to the babbling stage in humans—that leads to their becoming fluent in song. Studies in Sweden and Vienna explored the role of play among barnyard chicks and a species of falcon. French researchers studied advanced use of sticks as tools in chimps, and other work in the U.S. made similar findings among otters. And perhaps most remarkably, researchers in Indonesia published a study about a wild orangutan, nicknamed Rakus by the scientists, that was observed chewing the leaves of a plant with known medicinal and analgesic properties and applying the resulting pulp to a wound on its face.

“It may be that Rakus learned this behavior from other animals in his birth area,” says lead author and animal behaviorist Isabelle Laumer of the Max Planck Institute in Germany. It is also possible that he came upon the discovery on his own, she says, accidentally applying the plant juice to himself by touching his wound while feeding on the leaves. “Rakus may have felt immediate pain release, causing him to repeat the behavior several times and subsequently apply solid plant matter,” adds Laumer.

All of these studies and more have implications not just for our understanding of animals, but for our understanding of ourselves, as creatures with often-similar brain structures. In one European study, researchers pinpointed twin regions in the human brain that allow us to recognize emotions in other people’s faces, and found corresponding regions in the brains of mice, raising the possibility that one of our most sophisticated traits—our ability to read the minds and moods of others—might be distributed throughout the animal kingdom.

“These evolutionarily conserved mechanisms should be common in most mammals,” says Francesco Papaleo, senior researcher at the Instituto Italiano de Tecnologia in Genoa, Italy, and a co-author of the study. “Properly recognizing and appropriately responding to altered emotions in others is essential for survival.”

The play is the thing

Of all of the recent research, it is the studies that explore play that illustrate the most engagingly ingenuous side of animals. Domestic chickens may be nobody’s idea of a personable species, but a May study in Frontiers of Ethology observed extensive play behavior in young hatchlings, especially males. Investigators raised the chicks in relatively spartan cages and then periodically transferred them to playpen areas with other chicks, aged from 6 to 53 days. In the presence of the rest of the flock, the males engaged in a wide range of play behaviors—all in sight of females—including frolicking, wing-flapping, jumping, and sparring. When the researchers introduced a rubber worm into the pens, the nearest male would pick it up and scurry around with it. Known in the wild as worm-running or tidbitting, the behavior, which can involve other forms of food as well, is an apparent display for the benefit of the females—a means of impressing them with the male’s resource-gathering skills. 

“We still don’t know the adaptive function of play for any species,” said Per Jensen, professor of ethology at Linköping University in Sweden and a co-author of the study, in a statement. “However the present study indicates that a possible function is to prepare animals for specific challenges they may encounter later in life. In a species like the chicken, where only males compete for territories, it makes sense that they engage in more social play as young.”

Falcons display similar behavior for equally practical reasons. A February study in the Journal of Raptor Research documented the Falkland Islands species known as Striated Caracaras routinely engaging in play with sheets of plastic, sea cabbage, stones, and even sheep dung. To qualify as play, animal and human behavior has to meet several criteria, including being voluntary and repeatedly performed, appearing intrinsically rewarding, and lacking apparent purpose. But appearances notwithstanding, there may be decidedly practical functions to play.

In the case of the falcons, which live in a place in which food resources are more available in some seasons than in others, playing with objects might reveal an unexpected nutrient source. “The more caracaras interact with the world around them, the more opportunities they have to learn what is food and what isn’t,” said study co-author and behavioral ecologist Katie Harrington, of the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna, in a statement. 

Animals, including homo sapiens, also play to practice combat, hunting, mating, and territorial claims, all of which are needed later in life. “That we see play in so many different species—including humans—tells us that it’s a really important component of our behavioral repertoire,” adds Harrington in an email to TIME. “We tend to see age differences, where younger individuals play more than older individuals. Studying the diversity of play can help us learn how and why it developed to be so important.”

The canine mind

Far and away the most studied animal mind in the world may belong to the domestic dog, if only because, with 471 million pet dogs worldwide, every home becomes something of a real-time, real-world behavioral lab. Still, it is the formal, peer-reviewed research that produces the most rigorous findings, and there is no shortage of that work. In one May study published in Animal Behaviour, investigators from the University of Helsinki subjected 987 dogs to various tests of behavior and problem-solving skills, looking for the traits such as impulsiveness, persistence, independence, and willingness to turn to humans for assistance, which help dogs function better either as working animals, domestic animals, or both.

In one test, the dogs were shown a short, clear cylinder containing a treat that was accessible only by an opening at either end of the container rather than through its transparent but impenetrable middle. The fewer times a subject dog mouthed the closed part of the cylinder before turning to the open end, the higher it scored. Another, similar test placed a treat behind a clear, V-shaped wall that required the dog to detour around the barrier, rather than simply bumping up against it in an attempt to get at the reward. A third test placed a treat inside a clear, locked box that was impossible for the dog to open—measuring how persistent the animal would be before giving up and turning to a human for help. A little persistence is considered good. Too much suggests a lack of learning curve.

On the whole, says Saara Junttila, doctoral researcher with the university’s faculty of veterinary medicine and lead author of the paper, dogs with lower inhibitory control were good problem solvers and excelled in working roles and in canine sports, but were less tractable and trainable in the home.

“As an example, the Belgian shepherd Malinois was one of the fastest breeds at solving the V-detour task, and this breed spent a lot of time trying to solve a problem independently rather than looking at a human. [But it] is considered to be a more challenging breed [to train],” Juntilla says. “Other breeds such as the golden retriever may be more suitable for the role of pet dog, as they turn to humans during a problem-solving situation and have higher inhibitory control.”

The findings have implications not just for canine behavior but for humans, too. Some researchers have found parallels between attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in people and similar distractibility and impulsiveness in dogs. 

“Our results do seem to indicate that ADHD-type traits occur together,” says Junttila. “We found that dogs with low inhibitory control were more impulsive, less trainable, and had higher activity levels. People with ADHD [also] often have lower inhibitory control, impaired academic success, and higher impulsivity and hyperactivity.”

Dogs and people overlap in other ways, too. In one recent study published in Biologia Futura, investigators found that dogs that had been trained to imitate human behavior—such as turning or sitting or nodding their heads—do not need the cues to be delivered only in person, but could also obey them when simply seeing an image of a person on a computer screen. The dogs were better at imitating behavior when they saw the human from a perspective with which they were familiar—from the front or the side, for example, as opposed to from above. But either way, the investigators saw significance in the ability of the animals to make the leap that a two-dimensional image was effectively equivalent to a three-dimensional person.

Says lead author Claudia Fugazza, professor of ethology at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest: “In general, dogs seem to be able…to extract the relevant information from 2D projections and use it to act appropriately in the 3D, real life context.” The findings have meaning that go beyond canine parlor tricks, opening up the possibility of virtual human-dog communications, serving to entertain the animals and provide emotional support to human companions.

Tooling about

The ability to use even simple tools was once seen as a talent limited to humans. Research has long since upended that belief, with studies showing a range of tool use among animals, including orangutans, which create whistles out of leaves to chase away predators; dolphins, which use marine sponges to scour the seafloor and stir up prey; and even the degus, a chinchilla-like rodent, which can be taught to use small rakes to look for food. New research is now turning up insights into the talents of one of nature’s most prodigious tool-users—the otter—with findings suggesting that the female of the species outperforms the male in this sophisticated skill.

The otters’ most common tool is a rock, which the animals use to crack open abalone shells to get to the tender meat inside. In a new study in Science, researchers from the University of Texas, Austin, and elsewhere observed 196 radio-tagged sea otters off the coast of California and discovered that the animals were using other tools as well—including shells and hard trash—to break open their prey. Females generally employed a wider array of tools than males did, an innovation they arrived at by necessity, as their smaller size and somewhat weaker jaws make cracking or biting open prey harder. Not only does more sophisticated tool use spare them tooth damage that they might otherwise sustain by trying to bite prey, it also provides them greater energy needed to raise and feed pups.

Chimps too are even better at tool use than commonly understood. The animals are most famously known for their ability to use twigs stripped of leaves to fish into small openings in logs and extract termites as food. New research in PLOS Biology found that this is not a static talent, but rather one that the animals improve throughout their lives, learning to fish for the insects by age 2 or so, and steadily improving their grip and eye-hand coordination over the years.

“The most efficient grips and actions to hold and manipulate stick tools continue to develop at least until [age] 15 [and] well into adulthood,” says lead author Mathieu Malherbe, primatologist with the Max Planck Institute in Germany.

This means war

Not every new trait animals exhibit is a noble one—a fact that is borne out by a recent study of bonobos. Colloquially known as the hippie chimp, for their generally peaceable ways and their matriarchal social structure, the great ape species turns out to be a lot more aggressive than thought, at least when it comes to male-on-male violence. Writing in the journal Current Biology, researchers from Harvard University found that male bonobos actually engage in three times the amount of mano-a-mano combat than their more warlike cousin, the chimpanzee. But the reason for the difference is paradoxical.

On the whole, chimps are significantly more violent as a group than bonobos, with bands of males engaging in sometimes mortal combat with other bands over access to food, territory, and females. This makes it essential that bonds within each tribe remain close—ensuring that the group presents the most united front when facing other tribes. Bonobos, which do not engage in organized warfare, can afford more squabbling and friction within the group without making themselves vulnerable to outsiders.

“The most likely causes of male aggression [among bonobos] are over who gets to stay in a feeding tree or at a good feeding spot,” says Martin Surbeck, assistant professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard and a co-author of the study. “Chimpanzees depend on each other and thus have a lot of incentive not to make a fuss out of each potential conflict, while the individualistic nature of bonobo society makes aggression just way less costly and more frequent.”

The lovable scavenger

If the Striated Caracaras falcon is known for play, its cousin, the Chimango Caracaras, is developing a reputation for domestic bliss. In another study in the Journal of Raptor Research, investigators found elaborate co-parenting behavior between male and female pair-bonded birds. Among most species of raptors, the larger female incubates the eggs and defends the nest while the smaller male hunts for prey. Male and female Chimango Caracaras, however, which are scavengers, show little difference in size, and thus share responsibilities for gathering food as well as caring for the young.

A team led by PhD candidate Diego Gallego-Garcia of the Center for the Study and Conservation of Birds of Prey in Argentina studied 70 of the species’ nests and observed incubation, brooding, and food delivery responsibilities being evenly shared by both parents. The male and female alike also showed an understanding of the chicks’ needs throughout the day—brooding them more in the morning when temperatures were lower, for example. It is the species least lovely trait—its carrion diet—that contributes most to such an egalitarian household.

In raptors that kill live animals, says Gallego-Garcia, smaller males bring prey to the nest, but do not feed the chicks, relying on the larger female to “chunk the food” into bite-sized pieces. This, he says, “ties the female to the nest and prevents it from leaving to hunt. However in scavenger species, since carrion is usually brought as pieces of raw meat, it is more manageable for nestlings. This way the female is free to leave the nest and hunt, allowing for the biparental care that we observe.” 

The balanced home is an animal grace note—one of a great many across both the human and the non-human world. “The case of the Chimango Caracara is rare among raptors, but is a general rule in most other birds, and not uncommon in mammals,” says Gallego-Garcia. “This reinforces the idea that, in these cases, both members of the couple are necessary for the successful rearing of the offspring.” As it goes in animals, so it goes in us.

source https://time.com/6985448/animals-human-behavior-research/

What Nigel Farage Means for the U.K. Election

Far right British politician Nigel Farage has launched a campaign for his eighth attempt at a seat in the U.K. House of Commons, a move that could lure Conservative voters to a new political home.

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On Tuesday, Farage, 60, met with supporters at a rally in the beach town Clacton-on-Sea, where he is campaigning to become the Member of Parliament in the general election on July 4. Farage, it seemed, was not received well by some; locals were seeing holding a banner saying “Farage not welcome here,” while one woman threw a milkshake over him as he left the pub.

Best known for his staunch support of Brexit, as well as xenophobic campaigns, Farage, the former  U.K. Independence Party (UKIP) leader, announced Monday that he would return to frontline politics by heading up the right-wing party Reform U.K. 

The move marked a U-turn for the contentious figure, who previously said he would be focusing his attention on supporting Donald Trump in November’s U.S. presidential race.  

“I can’t turn my back on the people’s army,” Farage said of his change in decision. “I can’t turn my back on those millions of people who followed me, believed in me despite the horrendous things that were being said about me.” 

Experts say the move could present a final blow to the incumbent Conservative party, which is trailing behind Labour in the polls and on track to lose. “It could prove the proverbial nail in the coffin” for the Conservatives, says Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary, University of London.

Here’s what to know about Farage’s campaign, and how it will affect the general election. 

Why is Nigel Farage running in the U.K. election?

After stating that he had no intention to run in the general election, Farage said he felt he would be letting voters and supporters down if he did not represent them at the ballot box. Farage stands a strong chance of defeating Clacton’s Conservative incumbent MP, a role held by Giles Watling until Parliament was dissolved on May 30. 

It is thought that Farage could be foraying back into politics at a time where Labour is poised for victory, and there is a chance to form a strong opposition in the Commons. Bale says this pivot could be much more personally motivated. 

“If I were a cynic, I’d point out that the signs were that Farage wasn’t going to do as much business in America as he hoped he would during the Presidential campaign,” says Bale. “Less cynically, he’s looked more deeply at the polling, realized the Conservatives really are going to lose votes pretty much everywhere, which of course lowers the bar for him to win a seat.” 

After seven election defeats, an eighth time could be the charm for Farage, who is returning to an entirely changed battleground. 

“The key difference for Nigel Farage’s eighth attempt is that he is facing off against a Conservative Party that is polling at historic lows,” says Jac Larner, a professor of political science at Cardiff University in Wales. “This means his main competitors on the right are unable to put up the same level of resistance as in previous years.” 

What is Nigel Farage known for?

Farage has become synonymous with Brexit and wider Euroscepticism within the U.K. Once a member of the Conservative party, Farage resigned after the U.K. signed the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, which aimed to create closeness between European nations. 

“In Europe, he’s a bogey-man for mainstream politicians and something of an inspiration for the populist radical right,” says Bale of Farage. His divisive approach has earned him a reputation for being “motor-mouthed chancer with some nasty right-wing views” or a “hero” willing to challenge the political class, Bale adds.   

He has straddled media and politics, acting as a founding member of UKIP, a fringe right-wing populist political party, which he led from 2006 until 2009, and then in 2010 to 2016. 

In 1999, Farage was elected to represent South East England in the European Parliament, a role he held until 2020. In 2009, UKIP secured more votes than Labour and the Liberal Democrats in the European elections. 

As concerns over the U.K.’s position within the European Union (EU) grew and culminated in the 2016 EU referendum, Farage backed Catherine Blaiklock in launching the Brexit party in 2019. After the U.K. withdrew from the EU, the party rebranded to become Reform U.K. Farage left Reform in 2021 to focus on his media career. 

What is the Reform party?

Invoking former U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2016 election slogan, Reform touts itself as a party to “make Britain great again.” The party’s website says it is seeking to reform the economy, energy strategy, the public sector, and British institutions. It also places importance on having “a proper immigration policy” and protected borders. 

Before Farage returned to the helm, the party was steered by former Conservative party member Richard Tice. The party is home to a number of defecting Tories, such as former Conservative deputy chair Lee Anderson, the party’s first MP in the commons who was previously kicked out of the Conservative party for alleging that London Mayor Saqid Khan, who is Muslim, was controlled by Islamists.  

How will Nigel Farage’s decision to run impact the election?

The outcome of this summer’s election remains broadly unchanged, with Labour on course to surpass Tony Blair’s landslide majority in 1997, according to YouGov polling. In fact, Bale says, Farage’s return “could mean Labour wins even bigger than looked likely last week.” 

He adds that Reform voters are more likely to be defecting Conservative voters rather than former Labour voters. “That means Conservative candidates will gain fewer votes, which, in turn, means they stand even more chance of losing to their Labour and Liberal Democrat opponents than would have been the case had Farage not re-entered the fray.”

Larner echoes this sentiment, saying that even the safest Conservative seats are now facing “battles on two fronts,” one against Labour’s rising support, and “another to former Conservative voters jumping ship to Reform.” 

source https://time.com/6985435/nigel-farage-uk-election-campaign/

Biden to Sign Executive Order That Would Severely Limit Asylum at U.S.-Mexico Border

President Joe Biden is expected to sign an executive order Tuesday that would allow his Administration to halt asylum claims at the U.S.-Mexico border once apprehensions at the border reach 2,500 per day.

Because the current daily number of people encountered by the Border Patrol between ports of entry is well over 2,500, this order would effectively shut down most asylum applications at the border when it takes effect. In May, about 3,800 people were encountered per day, according to data obtained by CBS News. The asylum claim process would only be allowed to resume if the number of daily encounters drops below 1,500.

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The U.S. asylum system is heavily backlogged, with over 1.1 million asylum cases currently pending approval in immigration courts. The average asylum seeker waits around four years before receiving a hearing in immigration court, according to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a nonprofit research group at Syracuse University. While cases are pending, asylum seekers live in limbo, with limited rights to employment and public benefits. The number of asylum cases pending has grown seven-fold since 2012, according to TRAC.

Read More: ‘We Are the World Power.’ How Joe Biden Leads

The Biden Administration says that the executive order will help reduce the backlog and make the system more efficient. “President Biden believes we must secure our border. That is why today, he announced executive actions to bar migrants who cross our Southern border unlawfully from receiving asylum. These actions will be in effect when high levels of encounters at the Southern Border exceed our ability to deliver timely consequences, as is the case today,” a senior Administration official said in a statement. The order contains humanitarian exceptions for unaccompanied children and victims of trafficking.

Immigration is a top priority for voters, according to a recent poll by Pew Research Center. The executive order comes as Biden struggles in the polls against Donald Trump, whose hardline views on immigration can resonate with the American public. A poll conducted in January 2024 by CNN showed that nearly half of Americans would support the detainment and deportation of millions of immigrants.

The Biden Administration also blamed Republicans for blocking a congressional border control bill— which also included funding for Israel and Ukraine—that would have provided funding for an additional 1,500 new Customs and Border Protection personnel, 1,200 new Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel, fentanyl detection machines to be used at the border, and made it easier to remove migrants believed to pose a threat to public safety.

Former President Donald Trump called the bill a “gift to the radical left Democrats,” and the bill failed to pass the Senate.”Legislation is still the only way to permanently address border security and immigration reform,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a memo addressing Tuesday’s executive order. “Today we are again calling on congressional Republicans to stop choosing Donald Trump and fentanyl traffickers over the Border Patrol Union and the safety of their constituents.”

Biden was set to announce his plans in Washington D.C. and invited the mayors of two border towns, John Cowen of Brownsville, Texas and Ramiro Garza of Edinburg, Texas, to attend the event.
The number of crossings at the U.S. southern border has decreased since December as Mexican authorities have increased their enforcement efforts.

On Sunday, Mexico elected a new President, Claudia Sheinbaum. She comes from the same political party as Mexico’s current president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who was cooperative with the U.S. on border policy.

-With additional reporting by Brian Bennett/Washington

source https://time.com/6985347/biden-executive-order-border-immigration-asylum/

‘We Had to Meet.’ How Two Israeli-Palestinian Peace Groups Are Grieving Together

Spring and early summer are difficult times for both Israelis and Palestinians.

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For Israeli Jewish citizens, the times move intensely from Passover, the holiday of freedom; to tragic Holocaust Memorial Day; to Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terror; to the triumphant celebrations of Independence Day; to the anniversary of the Six Days War. In public and private observances, the days proceed through well-set rituals, intended to give us a shared meaning as a society and to inculcate and frame Israel’s official narrative: from slavery to freedom, from victimhood to victory, from powerlessness to sovereignty.

For Palestinian citizens of Israel and those living in the Occupied Territories, the season is marked by memories of the Naqba, the Palestinian Catastrophe of the displacement of the Palestinian people during Israel’s War of Independence, and the ongoing occupation and dispossession of their land and property. A set of observances and rituals marks their narrative of tragedy and victimization.

These narratives anchor us in our worlds. And like all ethnic narratives, these rituals are inherently political, intended to filter-out any inconvenient truth, to bind us to loyalty to our own, and to deny the humanity of the other. With almost surgical-precision, they cauterize pain and loss into divisions between us—and them.

There are Israelis and Palestinians who reach across the divides to mourn together and declare that war between their two peoples is not the inevitable cost of securing a Jewish state or creating a Palestinian one. For 19 years, Combatants for Peace—a non-profit volunteer organization of ex-combatant Israelis and Palestinians who have rejected all forms of violence in order to end the occupation and search for peaceful, equitable solutions to the conflict, in conjunction with the Parents’ Circle–Families Forum, which brings together Palestinian and Israeli families whose loved ones have been killed in the conflict, have organized a joint memorial ceremony on the day, according to the Hebrew calendar, that Israel observes National Memorial Day.

We had to meet.

Rana Salman, Palestinian director of Combatants for Peace

The first joint memorial ceremony was attended by less than 100 people and held at a private venue. Last year, more than 15,000 attended the ceremony, which was held in a public park, and many hundreds more were turned away for lack of space.

As the number of attendees has increased, so, too, have the public objections and attempts to derail the ceremony, from both sides. Last year, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, like many of his predecessors, refused to allow Palestinians from the West Bank, who are banned from entering Israel without special permits, to attend the ceremony. In response to petitions filed by the sponsors, the Supreme Court decided unanimously that Palestinians be allowed into the country, subject to security checks. In the Israeli media, pundits accused participants of treason to their people, and hecklers have tried to disrupt the events. Palestinian participants have been denounced in the Arabic press and some participants have been physically threatened.

Yet the ceremonies have proceeded as scheduled, including both Palestinian and Israeli speakers and performers.

But this year is different, says Rana Salman, 39, who is the Palestinian director of Combatants for Peace. A resident of Bethlehem, in the occupied West Bank, Salman says that for the first few months following the outbreak of the war, the coordinators could not even meet in person— partly because of Israeli military restrictions and partly because of their own feelings. Yet none of the members of the group, Palestinians and Israelis alike, considered cancelling the ceremony, she insisted.

“The events of October 7th and the new Naqba and humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza forced us to think how we could come together as a joint community and bring our message of shared humanity and hope for a political solution for both our societies,” Salman explains.

“Everything is so raw and painful. Israelis and Palestinians are traumatized and enraged. So many of us don’t even know if our loved ones are alive, or dying, or dead. But we knew that we had to meet, because otherwise, we would have no hope for a better future. We have to show both our societies that if we, people who fought each other in the past, can come together, then people who are fighting each other now can come together, too.”

The date of the event was also complicated, she noted. Usually, Memorial Day is in April and the Naqba Commemoration, which some Israeli Jews also choose to attend, is in May, so the two events are separate. This year, because of the Hebrew calendar, the dates were close. “But this also forced us to realize how truly connected the two events really are, because they both focus on pain, loss, and injustice,” she said.

Salman said that she is aware that some Palestinians and Palestinian-supporters, especially protestors abroad, may condemn the ceremony as what they refer to as a “normalization” of the occupation. “What we are doing is actually co-resisting both the occupation and the violence on all sides,” she insisted. “Both nations are totally in trauma now. I think that just the fact that our movements exist, despite everything, provides some hope.”

Avner Wishnitzer, a leader of Combatants for Peace who served in the Israeli military in an elite reconnaissance unit and is now a lecturer in history at Tel Aviv University, said, “I feel such sorrow—I feel it in my whole body, sorry for us all.” He quoted cited a verse by Israeli national poet laureate Haim Nachman Bialik, “’In their death, they willed us life.’ But for us to fulfill that, both sides must recognize that in order for us to live, we must all take responsibility to put an end to all this death.”

In fact, Wishnitzer acknowledged organizers were concerned, about security in such fraught times and about the safety of a large congregation of people, as Hamas from the Gaza and Hezbollah from Lebanon continue to fire missiles into Israel. They also doubted that even the Supreme Court would grant permits for Palestinians to come into Israel.

We are all here because we recognize that all of us
are both victims and perpetrators.

Avner Wishnitzer, a leader of Combatants for Peace

So this year, Combatants for Peace and the Parents’ Circle decided to do things differently. The ceremony was held at an undisclosed location, limited to tape the ceremony for 250 invited invitation-only participants, and recorded. Viewing groups in Israel, the West Bank, and throughout the world were encouraged to watch on Memorial Day. Eszter Korani, Israeli director of Combatants for Peace estimates that over 4,000 people watched the ceremony as it was streamed on Facebook, and an additional 40,000 have watched since on YouTube and Facebook.

In Beit Jalla, a suburb of Bethlehem, some 70 people, mostly Palestinians, watched the recording in the Palestinian offices of Combatants for Peace. The offices, with signs in Hebrew and Arabic, are located in a residential neighborhood high on a hill and provide a panoramic view of Jerusalem – only just over five miles away yet unreachable for the Palestinians due to the military restrictions.

Milling about, munching on cake and fruit, the atmosphere was friendly and easy until the viewing began, and the mood turned somber and sad. The program was seamlessly balanced between Israeli Hebrew and Palestinian Arabic speakers, with subtitles in both languages, plus English, on the screen. There were bereaved parents and former combatants from both sides, videos of children voicing their fears and hopes, and musical performances.

Ahmed Alhilo, a member of the Palestinian Authority’s planning office in Jericho and Palestinian member of Combatants for Peace, who lost 60 members of his extended family members in Gaza, spoke on a tape. He struggled to maintain his composure, his voice breaking several times as he described the killing of his family members who had been sheltering at the Al-Shifa Hospital when the Israeli army attacked.

“The Israeli army is still killing shamelessly. Everyone in Gaza is a terrorist in their eyes,” he said. “I personally understand the great fear and hurt that struck Israelis after the events of Oct. 7. But does killing tens of thousands of people, causing hunger, fear, terror and indescribable pain, promise security and peace for Israelis?”

Many in the crowd also teared up as Michal Halev spoke of her son Leor Abramov, who was murdered at the Nova music festival on October 7th. “In the few times that I am able to raise my head above my private pain at the loss of my most beloved son, from the endless void that was once my heart, I find only one goal to live for—to search for what I can do to help our wounded humanity to heal, so that no more mothers will be broken by the killing, the loss, the violence and the war.”

Jonathan Zeigen told of the murder of his mother, longtime peace activist, Vivian Silver. Silver had initially been presumed to have been taken hostage, but her charred remains were identified by forensic archeologists two months later. Some of the participants had known Silver through their shared peace activities. The crowd turned reverently silent when Zeigen said, “I am heartbroken as I look at my children and think that their father may also never have the opportunity to see peace.” There was a murmur of quiet agreement when Zeigen concluded that “the joint ceremony is the only appropriate way to honor his mother’s life’s work.”

After the screening, the audience dispersed somberly. As she left, Mai Shaheen, a Palestinian member of Combatants for Peace from the West Bank city of Jenin, and a therapist and practitioner of non-violent resistance and communication, was still wiping her tears. “I am a mother, and I listened to the Israeli mother talk about the murder of her beloved son. And I think of my daughter. I think about the rapes and murders of civilians in Israel, about the genocide in Gaza, about the hostages, about the killings in my home city. And I cry. Yet being here gives hope. Being here is the most loyal action I can take as a Palestinian and a Muslim—to try to listen to the other person above the noise of the war and the hatred.”

Wishnitzer listened. “I am here as an Israeli and a Jew. But no less importantly, we are all here because we recognize that all of us are both victims and perpetrators. Death and killing are not a force majeure. They are decisions we make, and therefore we can also make decisions not to kill and be killed.”

He acknowledged that groups like Combatants for Peace and the Parents’ Circle are a minority in both societies even before Oct. 7., but said, “Both nations are totally in trauma now. I think that just the fact that our movements exist, despite everything, provides some hope.”

source https://time.com/6985173/israeli-palestinian-peace-groups-grieving-essay/

How to Navigate Dating When You Have IBD

Anthony Andrews, a 34-year-old training manager at a bank in London, had been candid from the very beginning, when he directed Jessica Lockett, an art director, to his Instagram profile, @ibdlife. They had matched on Hinge in January 2020, and he wanted to ensure that she understood what life with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and an ostomy bag meant before they got too involved. “Do you still like what you see?” he messaged. Back then, Andrews had been suffering with ulcerative colitis (UC) for 11 years and was days away from a surgery that would require him to wear a bag for the rest of his life. Lockett, intrigued and compassionate, scrolled through his posts, learning quickly exactly what that meant.

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“A lot of us [IBD patients] will probably feel like they can’t necessarily open up, but I would openly tell people,” says Andrews, joking that it was his “unique sales pitch” on dating apps. Most women were supportive, he says, but “there were a number of times when people were just like, ‘What’s that? That sounds disgusting. I don’t really want to deal with that.’”

Lockett was different. She messaged back, “Oh wow, I love that the bag’s black, it looks cool.” That put him at ease before they even went on their first date.

IBD, which includes UC and Crohn’s disease, is an incurable autoimmune disease that affects the digestive system. It brings unpredictable symptoms like diarrhea (sometimes with blood), abdominal pain, fatigue, and weight loss—and often first shows up just as young adults are hitting the dating scene, which can make it even more daunting.

Treatments range from nutrition support and medications to more extreme procedures such as ostomy surgery, which typically involves creating an opening in the abdomen, known as a stoma, to allow waste to exit directly from the intestines into a bag outside the body. Surgeries are typically necessary when parts of the digestive system are diseased or damaged and need to be bypassed or removed. With or without surgery, IBD can alter body image and self-esteem, adding a layer of complexity to personal relationships, which can be hard enough without the added pressure of managing a stigmatized disease. 

“Everybody’s got challenges, but it feels that IBD can be more challenging on sexuality and intimacy because bloody diarrhea is typically not sexy,” says Marci Reiss, a licensed clinical social worker and the founder and president of the IBD Support Foundation, based in Los Angeles.

But there are many patients, advocates, and medical experts who say the disease can also just be part of your regular life, dating included. From figuring out the right time and way to share your IBD status, to smart planning for outings and sex, here are some tips to help make dating more comfortable for everyone involved.

Read More: How to Maintain Your Social Life When You Have IBD

Reveal your IBD when the time feels right 

Everyone with IBD feels differently about opening up about their condition. Some people, like Andrews, may want to get it out of the way before even meeting someone face-to-face. Others may take months to broach the topic. 

“It becomes so difficult for people to share, because it’s their deepest pain,” says Reiss. “People think to themselves, ‘Am I lovable with this?’”

Montreal-based content creator and model Sara Levitt, 29, would sometimes wait three or four months before sharing her medical condition with guys she dated, requiring stealthy ways to conceal her ostomy bag in the bedroom. To divert their attention, “I would just tell them, ‘I have Crohn’s disease, I have scars…I’m self conscious,’” says Levitt. This allowed her to tuck the bag under a sweater or tank top and keep her arm strategically wrapped around her waist. However, covering it up came with a price. “I would feel constricted and stressed out…and it held me back from developing emotional connections.”

Last year, however, she went public about her IBD, ostomy, and proctectomy (in which the diseased rectum and anus are removed and sewn closed permanently), a.k.a. “Barbie Butt” surgery—so-called by patients themselves because it reminds them of a doll’s bottom. Levitt, who had her first surgery at 13 and is known as “The Bag Bish” on Instagram, spent years learning how to accept her condition and turning it into a blessing. In January, she became the first “ostomate” featured in the monthly men’s magazine MAXIM Australia. “I just reached a point where I was mentally and physically exhausted from hiding the bag, and I realized that I’m living the life I’m living because of it.”

Prepare your elevator pitch

Even before you decide to share, it’s helpful to have a short “elevator pitch” ready, says Laurie Keefer, a gastropsychologist and professor of medicine at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Health System in New York City. One of her biggest pieces of advice: “Don’t make it a bigger deal than it has to be.” Her script goes something like this: “I have X condition; I was diagnosed X years ago; this is how it’s treated (medication and/or surgery), and this is how it affects me.” The last point, for example, may be a simple statement about needing to avoid certain foods or alcohol, or the possibility that you might need to get up suddenly to use the bathroom.

Keefer wants her patients to be able to deliver this pitch in their sleep, so they can stop being anxious about it. “Most people, if they don’t have a chronic GI disease, are pretty clueless about what the digestive tract does or is. So for better or for worse, you can use that to your advantage,” says Keefer. Don’t catastrophize every reveal. “Even when you tell people you have an ostomy, they’re like ‘Oh, OK, my grandma had one of those.’ It doesn’t occur to them that that means you’re going to the bathroom outside of your body…most people don’t have an appreciation enough of anatomy and physiology that they even really fully understand what you’re saying.”

Read More: Why Bathroom Access Is a Public Health Issue

Scout the menu and restroom facilities before a date

Before heading out on a date, do a little recon on the venue. Check out the menu online to make sure there are options that work for you. Investigate the restroom situation. Patients and experts agree that having a plan can ease any nerves and let you focus on enjoying the date. 

With an invisible disability like IBD, it also helps to know your rights in public and private places. The Restroom Access Act, or “Ally’s Law,” (named after Allyson Bain, a Crohn’s patient from Illinois, who was 14 when she was denied access to a restroom in a department store, leading to a humiliating accident) has been passed in 17 states in the U.S., giving you the right to access a business’s private restroom if you ask. The non-profit organization Girls With Guts has made exercising this right even easier, with its “I Gotta Go” cards. You can easily replicate these at home; they’re super handy to discreetly communicate your urgency to skip the line or ask for restroom access where it’s usually off-limits.

Talk to your GI doctor and other sexual health specialists

Certain IBD symptoms, including pain during sex, leakage, and fistulas (an unusual tunnel between organs, which can get infected) may significantly affect your love life. Regardless of gender or sexuality, surgeries can disrupt or halt certain sexual activities, such as making anal penetration impossible, which can be frustrating to some people.

Your IBD team can point you to specialists like OB-GYNs, urologists, pelvic floor therapists, and even sexual therapists such as psychologists and psychotherapists who understand and can support you. Plenty of people with IBD have vibrant, loving, and intimate relationships.

“There is a connection between the physical and the psychological and vice versa. But sometimes it’s just physical because of all the damage that has been done to the nerves in that area,” says Dr. Aline Charabaty, director of the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, D.C. Even your GI doctor may hesitate to discuss sensitive topics like emotional and sexual health, says Charabaty, but there should be questions like: How is this disease affecting your emotional health? How is it affecting your sexual health? Are you dating or in a relationship? If that’s not happening, bring it up yourself and ask for referrals.

A heads-up on contraception: If you’re using pills and your IBD causes you to vomit or have severe diarrhea, they might not work as well. Also, some symptoms of STIs can look a lot like IBD flare-ups, so if something feels off, it’s smart to check in at a sexual health clinic. And remember, condoms are your go-to for protecting against STIs while you navigate everything else.

Anticipate the unexpected during intimacy

Navigating intimacy with IBD can be daunting, but there are effective ways to manage leakage and incontinence without ruining a romantic mood. Cherabaty says medications such as Imodium can help patients gain better control over bowel movements, particularly before engaging in sexual activities. Those experiencing ongoing symptoms of diarrhea or incontinence despite managing their disease may need additional strategies: pelvic physical therapy for strength, fiber supplements to firm up stools, or bile acid sequestrants like cholestyramine for the bile acid diarrhea often seen in Crohn’s patients. Some of Cherabaty’s patients who engage in anal sex have reported success using enemas beforehand to ensure cleanliness and comfort. Integrating the job of changing an ostomy bag into your “freshening up” routine can also help manage concerns, allowing you to feel more secure and relaxed.

Also remember that sometimes accidents happen. How you and your date or partner respond to them could say a lot about the strength and understanding in your relationship. Alicia Aiello, 34, the president of Philadelphia-based Girls With Guts, recalls an embarrassing incident with her first serious girlfriend. “She kicked the ostomy bag off by accident in a hotel room with white sheets. And [the waste] went everywhere. It was all over her. It was all over me. It was one of the most mortifying experiences of my life, and I was only 20 then,” she recalls. Thankfully, Aiello and her girlfriend at the time had been dating long enough that they were able to take a pause and a deep breath before assessing the situation and cleaning up as best they could. (And avoid paying a $400 cleaning fee from the hotel.) “That was a positive moment where that was probably the worst thing that could have happened to me while dating someone. And while it was momentarily mortifying, looking back now, I can laugh about it.”

Read More: Should You Tell Your Boss You Have IBD? Plus More Tips for Coping at the Office

Explore ways you can make yourself feel sexy

Dr. Neilanjan Nandi, a gastroenterologist and associate professor of clinical medicine at the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, actively supports his IBD patients in gaining sexual confidence. “Feeling sexy is a mind game,” he explains, emphasizing the importance of open communication and helpful products. For those with an ostomy, for example, stylish stoma pouch covers and support belts, or specialized lingerie, such as high-waisted crotchless panties, can make intimacy more comfortable. If odor is a concern, oral ostomy deodorizer pills can be helpful, too.

Nandi also recommends letting your partner get up close and personal with your stoma, perhaps involving them in changing the ostomy bag, or making it part of a shared shower, a tip he got from one of his patients. “You have the water, you can get hot and steamy. You can play with the stoma; you can explore it together,” he says. “If there’s an accident, it’s a comfortable place to wash it off. I know that sounds crazy if you’re new to this, or even if you’re not, but it can make it a big difference.” This openness can not only boost your confidence, but deepens your connection, making intimate moments feel more natural and spontaneous.

Four years have now elapsed since Andrews met Lockett on Hinge—four years that included an amazing first date at a wine bar in London’s Borough Market, his ostomy surgery, and moving in together during the pandemic. Now, the two are planning to wed on the fifth anniversary of the day they met. Lockett has held his hand and cried with him in the hospital, cleaned up a messy stoma mishap, and walked around with an ostomy bag herself to understand what it’s like. Andrews admits that what started as casually scrolling the apps to distract himself from his surgery has blossomed into a love more real than he could have ever imagined. “She has been so unbelievably supportive…she’s my best friend,” says Andrews. To others still looking, he says, “Don’t lose hope.”

source https://time.com/6985349/dating-with-ibd/