Steven Soderbergh’s Black Bag Is a Satisfying Little Morsel of a Spy Drama

Familiarity breeds contempt, maybe especially in marriages. How do you keep a close partnership fresh? Perhaps married spies, like the ones in Steven Soderbergh’s silky spy caper Black Bag, have the answer.

George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender), an experienced operative at Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre, receives a list of five colleagues who are suspected of being moles, capable of activating a cyberworm designed to wreak nuclear havoc. No problem there—except his wife, fellow high-level spy Kathryn St. Jean (Cate Blanchett), to whom he’s devoted, is on the list. The trust between these two is unshakable; George isn’t too worried. His first move is to invite the other four suspects to the couple’s house for dinner, the better to ferret out the traitor. “Avoid the chana masala,” he casually informs his preternaturally self-possessed wife as she slips into a column of liquid charmeuse before the guests arrive. He’s dosed that particular dish with truth serum, the better to get tongues flapping around the dinner table.

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The potential traitors—played by Tom Burke, Naomie Harris, Regé-Jean Page, and Marisa Abela—also happen to be two sets of couples. Because, as one of them laments, who else can a spy really date? But if the party, a chic gathering around a low-lit table in the couple’s Architectural Digest–ready London abode, yields some juicy cyberspy gossip—this is a crowd who will tell you what they really think of Edward Snowden—it doesn’t tell George much about what his wife might be up to. The two talk about their work at home, but only up to a point. Any question too delicate to answer is met with a two-word code intended, politely, to get the other to back off: “Black Bag.” And that’s the response George gets when he asks Kathryn about some troubling evidence he finds, post-party, while emptying the trash. (This is a spy-spouse who not only does all the cooking, but also all the tidying up.) Meanwhile, Kathryn purrs an invitation from the bedroom. George may be wild about her, but his trust in her is shaken.

Read more: Steven Soderbergh on Sex, Stripping, and Consent in Magic Mike’s Last Dance

The great thing about the way Soderbergh makes movies—generally swiftly, and for relatively few pennies—is that he seems to have a great deal of fun doing it. The result is that his pictures don’t feel fussy or over-serious. That’s Black Bag in a satin-gold nutshell. The script is by David Koepp (writer of the best Mission: Impossible, the 1996 Brian De Palma iteration), and it’s filled with shimmery red herrings and liberal lashings of phony-baloney techno-spy stuff. (One agent compliments the work of another with buttery superlatives: “It’s a very sexy piece of code.”) The picture is sultry and understated, almost like a Sade song in movie form, though in some ways that’s a liability. Black Bag is over before you feel you’ve really gotten a hold of it; maybe it’s more of an amuse-bouche rather than a whole meal.

But then, would you rather have a well-crafted little morsel served up on a perfect porcelain square, or a heaping plateful of mashed nonsense that bores you before you’ve even finished it? Black Bag succeeds on its chilly wit, and on the cool, nervy appeal of its two stars. Blanchett strides through the movie with lioness grace; Fassbender makes George’s robotic use of logic seem like an aphrodisiac. Like all married couples, George and Kathryn have their things, those little daily annoyances, the occasional doubt about what the other may be thinking, or doing, in their private hours. But in the clinch, they’re a united front. What God hath joined let no man put asunder. That goes for pesky little cyberworms too.

source https://time.com/7264825/black-bag-review-steven-soderbergh/

What to Know About Jay Bhattacharya, Trump’s Pick to Lead the NIH

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is President Trump’s pick to lead the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which has traditionally been the largest funder of biomedical research in the world.

On March 5, the Stanford University professor of health policy will face questions from the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee as he attempts to get confirmed to lead one of the country’s most powerful health agencies.

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Here’s what to know about Bhattacharya.

He’s the son of immigrants

Bhattacharya was born in Kolkata, India and said in a podcast interview that his mother came from a slum, while his father, an electrical engineer, was part of the country’s middle class. In the 1970s, his family immigrated to the U.S., settling first in Massachusetts and then in California, outside of Los Angeles. When he was 18, Bhattacharya converted from Hinduism to become a Presbyterian.

He’s interested in health economics

Bhattacharya earned four degrees at Stanford: a bachelor’s degree, master’s, MD, and PhD. He worked as an economist at the RAND Corporation before returning to Stanford to join the faculty.

Bhattacharya has researched health economics and studied the the U.S.’s vulnerable populations, analyzing how the country’s health care system and government policies affect the health of these groups.

He holds controversial views on COVID-19

During the pandemic, Bhattacharya became a familiar and contrarian expert on the disease, conducting numerous interviews and publishing op-eds on what he felt was public health officials’ overreaction to the virus. Based on data he was seeing, he believed that COVID-19 was far milder than health experts—including those in the government—were making it out to be, and claimed that COVID-19 tests were only picking up severe cases and people who developed symptoms, while far more people were infected but didn’t have symptoms. “There are many people walking around with evidence of COVID infection that we’re not going to count because they don’t show up to the doctor; they have relatively mild infections,” he said in a 2020 podcast.

In March 2020, he co-authored a controversial op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that questioned lockdowns. “A universal quarantine may not be worth the costs it imposes on the economy, community and individual mental and physical health,” he wrote. “We should undertake immediate steps to evaluate the empirical basis of the current lockdowns.”

Read More: RFK Jr. Acknowledges the Measles Vaccine Amid a Worsening Outbreak

He also co-wrote the Great Barrington Declaration in October 2020, an open letter that argued to stop lockdowns. The letter instead favored allowing people at low risk of COVID-19 infection to go about their daily lives, on the assumption that if they became infected, they would experience mild disease and contribute to building the herd immunity that would eventually protect the population.

Critics of the policy pointed out that the strategy would still endanger those most vulnerable to developing complications from the disease, such as the elderly and those with weakened immune systems.

He also opposed mask mandates in schools. In 2021, he co-wrote an article arguing that “the benefits of masks in preventing serious illness of death from COVID-19 among children are infinitesimally small,” and that “COVID-19 is less of a threat to children than accidents or the common flu.” His views conflicted with those of many public health officials, and he said at the time he received death threats for voicing them.

His challenge at NIH

If confirmed, Bhattacharya will head an agency at a crossroads. Under the Trump Administration, the NIH has changed its policy in issuing research grants to institutions, capping the amount they’ll pay for overhead costs at just 15% of the grant total (as opposed to 30-70% or more). The new policy has been temporarily stayed by a federal judge, but Bhattacharya would be responsible for navigating any shifts in the agency’s grant-making policies and reforms (which many scientists agree are needed) to make the NIH more efficient.

His medical degree and understanding of health data should be a strength in leading the venerable research institute, some experts say, but, as STAT reports, some are concerned about his interpretation of that data, which they believe can lead to misleading conclusions. “ I would rather see him appointed than not, because I think if he is not appointed, then whoever else is appointed will probably be worse,” Jason Abaluck, professor of economics at Yale School of Management, told STAT.

source https://time.com/7264361/jay-bhattacharya-nih-trump-pick/

Breaking Down the Ending of Netflix’s Twisty Polish Thriller Just One Look

Netflix’s Polish thriller Just One Look is the latest adaptation of one of Harlan Coben’s gripping mystery novels—and the streamer’s second this year, following its January hit Missing You. Set in Warsaw, the series follows Greta (Maria Dębska), a seemingly happy wife, mother, and jewelry designer, whose world collapses after she finds an old photograph of her husband, Jacek (Cezary Łukaszewicz), with a stranger’s face ominously crossed out. Within hours, Jacek mysteriously disappears, and as Greta searches for him, she discovers that he has been kidnapped while her children are being threatened.

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As she digs deeper, Greta realizes that the answers to this mystery lie in her own past—one she thought she had left behind. The series weaves a suspenseful web of secrets, betrayals, and long-buried truths. Now, let’s break down the key twists and revelations from the show’s shocking finale.

Read more: Here’s What’s New on Netflix in March 2025

The fire that started it all

The central event of Just One Look, first published as a novel in 2004, takes place in 2009, when Greta survives a fire that destroys an old steel plant during a concert and results in several deaths. Though she makes it out alive, she is physically and psychologically marked by this tragedy, and throughout the story, her nightmares become a key to the greater mystery that is about to unfold. 

The photo arrives

On the 15th anniversary of the fire, Greta receives a mysterious photo, in which her husband, Jacek, is seen next to people she doesn’t know. In addition to trying to understand why she received the photo in the first place, her attention is drawn to the girl next to him, whose face is marked with a large red X.

The situation becomes further complicated when Greta asks Jacek if he is the man in the photo. He quickly denies it and suspiciously leaves the house, taking the photo with him.

The suspicion that Jacek might be involved in some sort of secret only stokes Greta’s curiosity to dig deeper into the mystery.

Read more: The True Story Behind Netflix’s Gripping Swedish Crime Drama The Breakthrough

Borys, the prosecutor, gets involved

Greta learns from a prosecutor named Borys Gajewicz that the person marked with an X in the photo was his daughter, a girl named Alex who died 15 years ago. Borys is determined to uncover the truth behind his daughter’s death, and finds Greta in the course of this search.

Borys receives a call out of the blue to visit a hitman named Marek, who is serving a life sentence in prison. There, he learns that his daughter’s murder was commissioned as a hit. Marek admits to being the perpetrator, but as he was only given the name “Alex,” he didn’t know that his target was a woman—an entire category of people he had previously refused to kill.

Borys believes there is much more to Alex’s death than meets the eye. As he investigates, he begins to suspect a connection between Jacek and Alex. And he’s right: it turns out that the two of them had been a part of the same band, called LAAD.

In a bid to find answers, Borys lies, telling Greta that Alex had been pregnant with Jacek’s child before her death. Borys hopes this will provoke  reactions from people with information who might lead to the truth about his daughter. And this lie casts doubt on everything Greta thought she knew about her husband.

Meanwhile, Jacek remains missing, and when he finally contacts Greta, he asks her not to search for him, saying he needs space. The tension heightens when the prosecutor reveals more details about the past of Alex’s boyfriend at the time of her death, Szymon Adamiuk, who was also in the central photograph and seems to have disappeared without a trace after the fire. Even as answers begin to pour in regarding Alex, the mystery surrounding Jacek’s disappearance grows increasingly complicated.

Read more: The Best Shows to Watch on Netflix

Sandra, the lawyer, stirs things up

Sandra, a lawyer whom Jacek contacted before he disappeared, soon reveals that she is more involved in the plot than we were originally led to believe. She has a connection to LAAD and also knew key secrets about Alex’s death and the fire. Her loyalty is called into question as the story unfolds. At first, she seems to be seeking the truth, but it soon becomes clear that she has her own agenda, manipulating the situation and hiding essential parts of the case to protect herself.

The photo, featuring Jacek, Alex, Szymon, and others, becomes a symbol of the multiple layers of mystery. Everyone in the photo is, in some way, linked to a secret. Each new detail Greta uncovers connects people and events in increasingly strange ways, and the truth begins to seem darker than she ever imagined.

The death of Jimmy 

Jimmy, the singer performing at the concert during the fire, becomes another character crucial to untangling the mystery—though he meets an untimely death, getting run over by a car not long after encountering Greta. Just before that, he gives Greta an important warning about the dangers surrounding her and the secrets she is about to uncover.

He claims to have been deceived by Sandra and asks her to watch a video he sent on a USB drive with proof behind this claim. But his death only throws the case deeper into confusion.

Revelations finally arrive

As the finale progresses, the truth begins to emerge in shocking ways. Jimmy had told Greta her that Jacek has actually been dead for 15 years. Consequently, she starts questioning who the man she has shared her life with all these years really is. The revelation that someone is killing all the people in the photo Greta received creates a sense of urgency and fear. When the police begin investigating Jacek’s disappearance, it further solidifies that the man Greta knows as her husband may be an imposter.

Jimmy’s presence in Greta’s life is also mysterious. He knew far more than he lets on, and his warnings—“Jacek is dead, and you were there, backstage”—cast doubt on the version of events Greta thinks she knows. Soon, imposter-Jacek’s kidnapper is revealed to be Robert, a hired killer working for Sandra. 

Memories return

When Greta begins to remember the events she had forgotten for 15 years, her mind is flooded with new information. She realizes that Szymon has actually been posing as Jacek, who died after a fight with Jimmy backstage at the concert in 2009. Jacek had accused Jimmy of stealing the song “Just One Look,” which Jimmy claimed was his. When they got into a physical fight, Jacek attempted to stab Jimmy but ended up getting hit with the sharp object and died.

Jimmy had been tricked into a conflict with Jacek. Sandra, who is revealed to be Jacek’s sister, and whose existence Greta was not even aware of, orchestrated their falling-out. After the incident, she made Jimmy transfer the rights to the song to her name so she could claim the royalties.

Sandra started the fire in order to keep the truth hidden about the real Jacek’s death. She convinced Szymonto take on her brother’s identity, offering him part of the song’s royalties so he could earn money he desperately needed to pay for his mother’s surgery.

Greta and Szymon

After being rescued, Greta’s husband—a.k.a. Szymon—is unconscious in the hospital, but when he wakes up, he apologizes to her. He hadn’t wanted to deceive her, but after falling in love with Greta before the fire, he thought they could be together when he found her again, after assuming Jacek’s identity.

Not long after his rescue, Szymon suffers a cardiac arrest and dies, leaving Greta devastated. Two months later, Borys reappears, revealing that he was the one who had sent the photo to Greta and marked his daughter’s face with an X. He thought that dragging her back into everything would help him to finally discover the truth of what happened to Alex after Marek admitted he had been hired to kill her.

Borys, it turned out, had known all along that Jacek was dead; Greta was just a pawn in his larger scheme for answers.

In a flash, the series ends with Greta remembering a key detail: she was the one who had taken the photo that kicked off this entire mystery in the first place.

source https://time.com/7264396/just-one-look-netflix-ending-explained/

What Apple Cider Vinegar Misses When It Comes to the World of Health Influencers

Watching Netflix’s Apple Cider Vinegar can feel like you’ve ventured into the pit of a misinformation cesspool and are oscillating between horror, disgust, and bewilderment the entire time.

The series tells the story of real-life health influencer Belle Gibson (played by Kaitlyn Dever), the Australian sensation who in 2015 confirmed that she had faked having brain cancer and that she had cured it through alternative medicine in order to achieve celebrity status. The true story is nightmarish, in part because Gibson’s practice of building a massive following based on lies that endangered everyone but herself is far from an anomaly, especially in the influencer space.

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Apple Cider Vinegar frustratingly elides some of the nuances that made Gibson’s ascension possible, including her whiteness, race- and gender-based inequities in medicine that can lead patients to mistrust doctors, and a frightening disinterest in the truth amid our social media age. There’s been a widespread rise in misinformation from health and wellness influencers. And Apple Cider Vinegar is far from the first instance of people turning to other remedies to try and cure cancer. Liana Werner-Gray, who advocates for “natural health” remedies, wrote a bestselling 2014 book titled The Earth Diet, about how she overcame cancer by going on “a massive detox plan.”

Fake truths like those are a particular source of concern for many medical professionals. Gail Cresci, a dietitian and researcher at Cleveland Clinic, says that people often come to her reciting whatever a health influencer has said with little regard for facts. Take, for instance, an apple cider vinegar antidote that’s portrayed in the Netflix series. While Cresci, who offers advice on product development as a member of Bragg’s Scientific Advisory Board, considers the benefits of apple cider vinegar “wonderfully diverse,” she quickly adds, “But can it cure cancer? No.”

“I teach medical students, and I hear how they’re even talking about things that are just on social media,” she says. “They listen to an influencer. I’m like, ‘There’s no evidence for that.’”

Why people are drawn to wellness influencers

Apple Cider Vinegar reflects the clout health influencers have and the stark medical reality facing many patients. In one episode, a sarcoma patient named Milla (played by Alycia Debnam-Carey and partly inspired by the real-life Jessica Ainscough) dismisses her doctors’ recommendations to amputate her arm in favor of so-called cures like apple cider vinegar that she learned about from Gibson’s popular social media account. 

It isn’t until Milla’s illness progresses that she desperately returns to her doctor seeking his help. But by then, it’s too late. She dies at age 30. 

“I think a lot of patients, when you get that early diagnosis, don’t feel pain,” says Cresci. “I deal with this all the time. People who have early pre-diabetes or hypertension, they don’t really feel it until it gets more progressed. And then they start to feel what’s going on.”

But Cresci says she understands why a patient might seek out advice from wellness influencers, particularly in the cancer space. They may be unvetted but they often offer solutions that are more recognizable to patients—at-home remedies like apple cider vinegar instead of an expensive medication, for example—and the temptation to believe it can work is hard for many to resist. “When you’re dealing with medicine, it’s prescribed to you and you may not fully understand it,” she says. Cresci adds that the severe side effects and uncertain success rates of cancer treatments can make people feel like “there’s nothing really left for them.” 

“So, they’re grabbing for anything. The person has control over what’s going on.”

That lack of information and familiarity feeds into a fundamental issue patients feel toward their doctors: a lack of trust. Even Cresci has experienced how difficult that can be. She recalls visiting a doctor after suffering an injury as an endurance athlete and not feeling heard. “They don’t understand someone who likes to run all the time and they say, ‘You can never run again,’” she said. “It’s like, ‘Well, that doesn’t fit my lifestyle.’ So, you’re going to go look for another opinion, someone who is going to tell you what you want to hear.” 

That second opinion is no longer always coming from another doctor or trusted professional, Cresci says. 

For one thing, some patients feel far too rushed at the doctor’s office. “Now, doctors don’t have as much time to spend with their patients,” she says. A backlog of patients sitting in a doctor’s waiting room has contributed to that issue. Understaffed medical offices are another.  “A lot of times patients are rushed through the system or the doctor doesn’t really know how to communicate to the level that the patient understands what they’re actually trying to convey to them.”

That’s a problem that’s only compounded by the racial and gender disparities that have long plagued women across the board, but particularly Black and brown people. A study just last year suggested that female patients are more likely to die when they have a male and not female doctor. Meanwhile, NPR reported that Black Americans typically receive inferior treatment than their counterparts. 

Apple Cider Vinegar doesn’t acknowledge any of this. The series centers a pervasively white online wellness community that includes both influencers and their followers, but that world is so much bigger and more complex. And considering the experiences of many women and other nonwhite people at the doctor’s office, it’s not hard to imagine that some might actually be choosing to heed the advice of influencers who look more like them and that they might be able to relate to. “I think that happens quite often,” says Cresci. She works to accommodate this reality by conducting outreach and talking about it with her students. “It’s part of the curriculum for medical students to learn about these different social determinants of health and how to communicate with patients and how to do good interviews with patients.”

But that has also come with challenges. For example, Cresci is the principal investigator for a study looking into why Black Americans have a higher rate of colon cancer. While it’s often wrongfully presumed that that’s due to not seeking access to preventative care, her study is looking into diet and microbiome as driving factors. But it doesn’t have enough Black enrollees.

“We had a couple women who enrolled come in that said, ‘Oh, you’re not going to get any men to enroll,’” said Cresci. “They said, ‘Unless it’s directly going to benefit them, they’re not going to participate.’ A lot of it is that trust issue and understanding.”

How influencers exploit a lack of trust—and how doctors can recoup it

Apple Cider Vinegar mirrors the reality that the wellness influencer space has several issues too when it comes to trust and understanding. The fact that Gibson was able to build such a large and dedicated following based on so many lies shows just how desperate people who believed her were for some kind of answer—and in some cases, how naive they were. 

“She just appealed to people,” Cresci said. “She was a good actress. Throughout the story, her mom was saying that she did it for attention. She was really good about being able to turn her tears on.”

Anyone who’s been paying even a little attention to how white female fragility has been weaponized throughout history knows that fake tears are crucial to garnering sympathy and, subsequently, belief. In a pivotal moment in Apple Cider Vinegar, Belle throws herself onto the floor at a party in her own home and pretends to have a seizure right before her cover is about to be blown. Manipulating people’s real concern and pity was critical to Belle’s game. For medical professionals, dealing with their patients being dangerously manipulated or knowing they are seeking the guidance of influencers is a tightrope situation. Cresci tries to assess each individual patient’s learning and communication style, understanding that they’ve come to her to see if improving their diet could help them manage a health issue.

“I see people with a lot of gastrointestinal issues. And diet is known to be one way to help manage that. So, they’ll tell me they’re doing something and then I’ll point out to them why this is probably not the best thing to do.” 

Cresci describes that as an evidence-based approach.

“Once they understand what’s going on with them,” she says, “then they can hopefully understand why what they’re doing is counterproductive.”

When patients bring up wellness influencers with her, Cresci advises they research the person offering health advice. “Look at their credentials,” Cresci suggests. “Anyone can call themselves a nutritionist. That’s not an official certified license.” Registered dietitians, on the other hand, require four years of undergraduate work, two years for a master’s degree program, one-plus year of an internship, months of preparing for and taking the CDR exam, and extra time on a coordinated degree program and obtaining a license in their state, if applicable. 

Cresci’s advice might sound basic, but, as she says, anybody could write a book and claim to be a nutritionist. “Even if someone says they’re a medical doctor, they may be trying to sell their agenda,” Cresci said. “It may not be evidence-based, or they take a bit of truth and expand upon it.”

The patient or individual is then trying to do the research of a medical professional, and largely on social media where there are no checks and balances—and all kinds of supplements are advertised and sold without actual proof that they work. The Food and Drug Administration regulates the safety of supplements as food, not as drugs. “A lot out there is not being monitored,” says Cresci. “People can just buy them off the shelf. There’s no gatekeeper there.”

She adds: “It’s scary because, what can you trust?”

That question could be asked of both influencers and doctors.

source https://time.com/7264028/apple-cider-vinegar-health-influencers/

3 Steps Leaders Should Take in the Face of DEI Rollbacks

For 25 years, I hid my limb difference—a disability that shaped my life—keeping it invisible and avoiding any conversation about it at work. This constant hiding drained my leadership and well-being, making me feel exhausted and isolated.

My experience isn’t unique; countless employees conceal essential parts of themselves, stifling innovation and undermining the inclusive cultures many organizations claim to champion.

The cost of this widespread hiding is profound. As DEI initiatives face major setbacks, with 11% of companies likely to eliminate these programs by 2025 according to a January 2025 report by Resume.org, the pressure to conform is intensifying. These rollbacks aren’t just small shifts—they are significant setbacks that undermine years of work toward creating strong cultures of belonging, leaving employees feeling even more excluded and less valued. When employees hide their authentic selves, they experience lower job satisfaction and are more likely to leave their positions within a year. As a result, DEI rollbacks create environments where employees feel disconnected, deepening their isolation and disengagement, which ultimately hampers team cohesion and productivity—the bottom line.

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Read More: Retreating From DEI Initiatives Could Cost Businesses Billions

Moreover, organizations lose out on the diversity of thought necessary to innovate. A 2023 McKinsey report revealed that companies with top-quartile ethnic and cultural diversity on executive teams were 39% more likely to have above-average profitability. This advantage vanishes if diverse employees don’t feel safe expressing their unique perspectives.

It begs the question: what should leaders do in the face of these rollbacks?

The antidote to this culture of concealment is what I call “unhiding”—creating an environment where employees feel safe to bring their best selves to work. When I chose to be open about my limb difference, it transformed my leadership. Trust increased, communication improved, and creative problem-solving surged among my colleagues. This personal experience is backed by research. Psychological safety—the belief that one won’t be punished for speaking up with ideas, questions, or mistakes—is one of the most critical factors in high-performing teams. When team members feel psychologically safe, they’re more likely to take risks, share innovative ideas, and learn from their mistakes.

But the truth is, it’s up to the leaders to go first. We set the tone for trust, openness, and vulnerability. Here are three powerful steps we can take:

Recognize silence

Look for signs that employees are holding back—whether it’s avoiding tough conversations, staying quiet in meetings, or withholding ideas. Silence signals broken trust. It’s time to rebuild coworking relationships by opening up communication channels.

Hold regular one-on-one check-ins where employees are encouraged to voice concerns and share feedback. Instead of just asking how’s everything going, try specific questions like “How can I best support you?” This sets the expectation that open communication is welcomed and valued.

Feedback isn’t just about performance—it’s about connection. By prioritizing consistent, thoughtful conversations, leaders create an environment where silence is replaced with trust, collaboration, and innovation. According to Gallup research, 80% of employees who say they receive meaningful feedback are more fully engaged. A meaningful conversation can last between 15 and 30 minutes—but only if it happens frequently.

Be vulnerable

Lead by example. Share your struggles, mistakes, and humanity. It takes courage and shows your team that imperfection is not only okay, but essential for growth.

When leaders embrace vulnerability, they create a culture where openness isn’t just encouraged—it’s expected. ATD (Association for Talent Development) reports that vulnerability fosters trust, encourages open communication, and builds stronger relationships within teams.

Share a personal story in your team meetings about a challenge you’ve faced and how you navigated it. For example, you might say, “I struggled with asking for help on a recent project because I didn’t want to seem weak, but I realized that it was the right thing to do. Here’s what I learned about the importance of teamwork.” By showing vulnerability, you encourage others to feel safe doing the same.

Create safety

When employees feel psychologically safe, they take risks, share ideas, and challenge the status quo—fueling innovation and driving business success. According to a study from the Center for Creative Leadership research, teams with consistent perceptions of psychological safety demonstrated higher performance and lower interpersonal conflict. In contrast, teams with varying levels of psychological safety among members were less effective. ​When

Let your team know they can speak up without fear of judgment. Set clear policies, provide regular feedback, and maintain open communication.

Implement a “no judgment” policy where every team member knows that their ideas, no matter how unconventional, will be treated with respect. Consider setting up a digital platform where employees can share feedback or ideas without fear of immediate judgment. Additionally, acknowledge and publicly thank employees for their input, which shows the team that their voices matter.

We can’t afford to ignore how important diversity is to workplace culture. Failing to address hiding not only leads to burnout and disengagement, but it also undermines the organization’s long-term competitiveness. Leaders who overlook these issues risk losing top talent and seeing their companies fall behind those who prioritize inclusivity and psychological safety. It’s time to create environments where everyone feels safe to show up fully and thrive.

Positive workplace cultures aren’t a luxury—they’re a necessity for success.

source https://time.com/7264226/dei-rollbacks-actions-leaders-should-take/

Powerful Storms Threaten U.S. with Blizzards, Tornadoes

NEW ORLEANS — Powerful storms were threatening communities across the country Tuesday with weather ranging from fire in the Southern High Plains to blizzards in the Midwest.

Forecasts also predicted dust storms in the southwest, tornadoes in the South and blizzard conditions in the Central Plains, and were forcing forcing some changes to Mardi Gras in New Orleans. The city moved up and shortened the celebration’s two biggest parades. Police were also expected to help keep the parades moving to the finish before winds picked up, authorities said.

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The weather wasn’t stopping Shalaska Jones and her 2-year-old daughter from waving at passing Mardi Gras floats Tuesday and hoping to catch one of the coveted coconuts thrown to the crowd.

“We was coming out rain, sleet or snow,” Jones said.

The alarming forecast was one of the first big tests for the National Weather Service after hundreds of forecasters were fired last week as part of President Donald Trump’s moves to slash the size of the federal government. Former employees said the firing of meteorologists who make crucial local forecasts across the U.S. could put lives at risk.

Country faces a number of weather threats

Dust storms brought near-zero visibility to parts of New Mexico and west Texas on Monday, prompting the National Weather Service to issue Dust Storm Warnings. “Widespread blowing dust” was expected Tuesday, said the weather service office covering Midland and Odessa, Texas.

Read More: Mass Layoffs at NOAA Spark Concerns Over Weather, Climate Research

The week’s strong weather system will bring “a threat of blizzard conditions, high winds, flash flooding, severe weather, dust storms, and critical to extreme fire weather conditions to the nation’s heartland,” according to a weather service update Monday.

The Central Plains and Midwest were bracing for blizzard conditions later Tuesday that forecasters warned could “make travel treacherous and potentially life-threatening.” The Nebraska Department of Transportation warned that conditions could mean low visibility and whiteout conditions across the state and urged travelers to adjust their plans for Tuesday afternoon and into the night.

On Tuesday, twisters, damaging winds and large hail were all possible as a strong storm system was set to move across the nation’s midsection into Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, the federal Storm Prediction Center warned. Tornado watches and warnings were issued Tuesday morning in Oklahoma, Texas and Arkansas.

The bullseye for a heightened risk of severe weather was an area stretching from east Texas to Alabama that’s home to more than 7 million people. Cities under threat included Baton Rouge and Shreveport in Louisiana; Jackson, Mississippi; and Mobile, Alabama.

Region braces for severe weather during Mardi Gras

New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick ordered parade-goers to not bring umbrellas, tents or “anything that could fly in the wind and cause mayhem.”

Just outside New Orleans in neighboring Jefferson Parish, officials canceled planned Mardi Gras Day parades due to anticipated high winds and thunderstorms.

“This is disappointing, but our top priority is ensuring the well-being of everyone in our community, and we must always prioritize safety above all else,” Jefferson Parish President Cynthia Lee Sheng said in a statement.

Mardi Gras floats “could become unstable” and heavy winds could “blow down trees and power lines,” the National Weather Service warned, adding gusts of up to 60 mph (97 kph) were expected Tuesday afternoon.

In Pointe Coupee Parish, near Louisiana’s capital city of Baton Rouge, the incoming weather forced drastic changes to one of the oldest Mardi Gras celebrations in the state. The parade there was scheduled to roll without any bands, marching teams or dance groups — a staple of Carnival Season parades.

Officials also moved up the start time and urged residents to immediately remove all tents and trash afterward “due to the dangers they can present during weather.”

Other cities with Mardi Gras parades watching forecasts

Elsewhere, large crowds were expected Tuesday for Mardi Gras celebrations in Mobile, Alabama. Police said they were monitoring the forecast and would announce any celebration changes.

Other cities hosting large events included Biloxi, Mississippi, where an annual parade was set for Tuesday afternoon.

In downtown Pensacola in the Florida Panhandle, organizers were planning a Big Easy-style festival that included food trucks, dancing, live entertainment and a low country seafood boil.

Martin reported from Atlanta. Associated Press writers Sara Cline in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Freida Frisaro in Miami and Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, New Mexico, contributed.

source https://time.com/7264232/powerful-storms-threaten-u-s-with-blizzards-tornadoes/

Her Small Business Helps Disabled Kids Learn. USAID Cuts Have Pushed It Toward Bankruptcy

As the U.S. government endeavors to trim its spending, no agency has been as pared back as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). On Feb. 26, after 30 days of what was purported to be a 90-day review, the Trump Administration announced that 90% of the international aid projects the agency was funding were going to be canceled, ending an era of outsize dominance and generosity by the U.S. in foreign aid.  

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

These cuts include funding for medical, nutrition, educational and democratic initiatives that were sustaining and protecting millions of people. While foreign aid represented about half a percentage of the U.S. budget, it also represented more than 40% of the world’s foreign aid. The size and speed of the cancellations have reverberated around the world, with many experts suggesting that America’s reputation as a reliable and trustworthy partner has taken a hit simply because of the abruptness of the process.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that all foreign-aid projects must make Americans safer, stronger, and more prosperous. Valerie Karr, who has been working in disability rights for two decades, understands that impulse but is aghast at the cost to the people her small business served: disabled children in impoverished countries. For the last six years, Inclusive Development Partners (IDP) has helped implement plans to get children with disabilities around the world into schools and keep them there.

Read More: Franklin Graham Thinks It’s ‘Very Good’ to Take a Pause on Foreign Aid

IDP was hired by other aid organizations to make sure the work they were doing included people with disabilities. In that way it was occasionally branded as a DEI project, but it was not one informed by identity. If an education program was being established, IDP helped train teachers on how to instruct disabled children. It also helped identify disabled children, who were often kept home, and provided them with the materials they needed to get to school, including wheelchairs and braille books. Now after the termination of its contracts, IDP is struggling to stave off bankruptcy.

Karr, who as well as being president of IDP is an associate professor at UMass Boston, spoke to TIME about how this will affect disabled children, what Americans got out of USAID, and what she learned in the weeks since the foreign-aid freeze was implemented.

What led you to found your organization?

I got to attend the negotiations for the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. I learned the value of the disability community having a voice and advocating for their rights at an international level. In 2018, my co-founder Anne Hayes and I realized that the task was no longer advocating for disability rights; it was, how do we achieve these rights? I’m an academic and she’s a practitioner. Academics aren’t good at practice, and development practitioners aren’t good at using evidence. So we were meeting in the middle: how do we do quality work, using the evidence base? How can we include kids with disabilities in education around the world? We had a really strong collaboration with USAID. As of Jan. 22 we had 17 programs to include children of all age ranges, from pre-primary all the way through workforce transition. 

What did your work actually look like?

In northern Nigeria, we were working with the International Rescue Committee on a USAID activity called Opportunities to Learn. These kids were out of school. We know that children with disabilities are eight to 10 times more likely to be out of school than a child without a disability. We train teachers how to be inclusive and use something called Universal Design for Learning (UDL), which has been found to not only help children with disabilities learn better, but children who are malnourished, children of minority status, and children who have issues with chronic absenteeism due to child labor or having to support farming communities. In Bangladesh, we work with parents and communities on how to reduce stigma towards kids with disabilities, because kids with disabilities don’t go to school for a variety of reasons. The classroom is not accessible. But also parents are scared to send their kids because their child is more likely to be hurt or harmed if they leave the household. We work with communities and schools to ensure kids ultimately get the access they need to an education.

Read More: They Were Promised Flights to the U.S. Now They’re Stuck and in Danger

What kind of disabilities are you dealing with? 

USAID started more with hearing and vision and physical disabilities, because those are obvious, but over time—because we’re using Universal Design for Learning, which meets the needs of all children—we realized we don’t need to know the specific disability a child has. There’s also something called a twin-track approach. You can’t just build more inclusive spaces; kids need braille, kids need sign-language literacy, they need glasses or hearing aids. So we were providing both. In Kenya, 70% of children with disabilities are undiagnosed and in the mainstream classroom. We went in with remediation and after-school programs to help, as well specific universal pedagogy. That program, the Kenya Primary Literacy Program, just got canceled. It was in its first year.

Teacher training sounds a bit amorphous. It’s hard to know whether the teachers were applying it or not. Do you have a success story that you can say, well, here is an impact that we had?

We worked a lot on the fact that there were no numbers, there were no resources, there was nothing in place at the time we started, so our progress is much more on intermediary goals. We’ve been working to build assessment instruments, so that this type of data would exist. It’s also what my guide for USAID—published in November and now removed from the web—was guiding other orgs to do: measure the impact of inclusion. Our data in Ghana showed that when you trained teachers in UDL, they implemented it and felt more prepared to include learners with disabilities.

What would you say to people who say that Nepal and Bangladesh and Nigeria need to look after their own and ask why America should look after the disabled kids of other countries?

I’d say we do it to develop ties with communities. If you’re a parent of a child with a disability, which my co-founder is, and you meet a parent of a child with a disability in a different country, you immediately have a very strong bond. That is a relationship that we have cultivated and really established. So we know that when we need to call on allies and friends, these countries are our friends. They are advocating for the American people as well. We also know that a more educated population has greater productivity. We know there’s better economic outcomes and that we reduce migration. These education programs build resilient communities, they build stable political communities, and they build allies with the United States. And honestly, it’s working. Nepal was graduating from a low-income country to a middle-income country in the next year or two, and that’s because the investment of USAID has helped stabilize and build a system. And that, to me, is success.

Read More: How Trump’s Foreign-Aid Freeze Is ‘Shaking the Whole System’

Did you see this as Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) work?

Disability rights have actually always been politically a left and a right issue. Republicans say if you support people with disabilities while they’re young, they can get a job, they can be income earners, and that helps the economy. The left has an equal-rights stance on disability inclusion. Honestly, we really became IDP under Trump’s first Administration. Over time, we’ve benefited from DEI, and we, at our hearts, support everybody being included. For example, in our Nepal equity and inclusion in education program, our role was called the DEIA advisor. So we’d seen DEIA have an influence on disability, but they were really pretty different for a very long time.

Have you heard from people who are asking where your service is? 

The harder, more pressing matter has actually been trying to pay people. So you know, we haven’t been paid for some of our December work, and we definitely haven’t been paid for most of our January work that we already paid out. So IDP had lost about $350,000 and we now are still owed over $250,000. We’re a woman-owned small business. We’ve never actually generated profits because we work on grants and contracts, there’s not actually profit in them. Every line item is accounted for. So we launched a GoFundMe and raised a little bit over $20,000 to avoid bankruptcy. I have employees with disabilities that need to be paid. We owe them money. But they’re like, What do you need? Can I write a letter? Can I call my congressman? So I try to look at it that way, that if USAID has collapsed, it’s catastrophic for my country and it’s catastrophic for my work, but we’re still going to all be pushing for inclusion.

How much of your revenue came from USAID?
Ninety percent. 

In hindsight, did you think, Oh, I really should have diversified my clients? 

Yeah. We were a group of consultants that decided it was better to work together, because when you’re a partner, you’re able to really build inclusive systems. When you’re just a consultant by yourself, it’s hard. It was a great business model to create the change we needed to see in these programs. But because the USAID programs went from one to two to four to 18, it was so much work for a very small staff—we’re only 14 staff and nine international. It was really hard to keep up that pace and grow our systems; we were just running to catch up. I don’t think anyone could see that a whole industry would fall. I kind of relate this to COVID, right, where we all went in the pandemic. In the first days, you just couldn’t believe what was happening, that the world would halt.

Is there one loss that keeps you awake at night?

I’m kept up at night mainly for some of our international team members, because I know people live day to day on their income, and that means that you’re very close to poverty immediately from this loss. I have been holding off the grief on what it means to the kids. I’ll get too emotional at the thought of 10,000 kids not being able to go to school. I have a moral sense of responsibility and failure that we won’t be able to do that. I know education isn’t as stark as AIDS medication being stopped, or people starving. To me, it is really striking that the American people are like, Oh, I didn’t know. There’s a lack of consciousness over the atrocity that is happening here.

I had a friend from college contact me after one of my posts about USAID, and the summary of that was that kids in New Hampshire need you too. We ended up having a really good conversation. Politically they want us to fight. They want us to think that because I was working for a child with a disability in Nepal, that I was somehow robbing an opportunity from a child in New Hampshire with a disability. But we all care about kids with disabilities being able to have access. I know that a child in New Hampshire is just as important as a child in Nepal. But the money that is saved from USAID is not going to be given to New Hampshire children. They’re cutting just as much out of education and Medicaid. This is not an either/or. This is not a red or blue. Everyone wants their kids to have an education and have opportunity.

What is your plan going forward? 

Our plan is to try and avoid bankruptcy and make sure we can pay out all the people who have to leave, so they have as much money as they can to stabilize their homes for a little bit longer while they search for new jobs. We do have a little bit of U.N. programming and World Bank programming, and if we go bankrupt, we will lose those programs along with it, and that will put those programs in a bind, right? If we can survive, which I think we will, we’ll be working on research and programs with other donors and continuing programs, which means we’ll have to be small. We’ll all go back to being consultants working small and part time and for limited hours, and we’ll try and rebuild. We have a hope that the American people will see that aid is valuable, and maybe someday it’ll come back, which would be great. 

source https://time.com/7263808/usaid-cuts-disability-inclusive-development-partners-interview/