CUTTING NOSE TO SPITE FACE
Income-tax phaseout up for debate in long-poor Mississippi

By EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS

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FILE - House Speaker Philip Gunn, R-Clinton speaks to reporters following adjournment on the first day of the legislative session at the Capitol in Jackson, Miss., Jan. 4, 2022. Gunn favors the complete elimination of state personal income tax, reduction of the grocery tax and an increase of the state sales tax on most items.

 (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File)


JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi is accustomed to being first in worsts: It’s one of the poorest, unhealthiest states in the nation, with public schools that are chronically underfunded. Some Republican leaders say a good way to boost the state’s fortunes would be to phase out its income tax.

“There is no downside to putting money back into the pockets of Mississippians,” said Republican House Speaker Philip Gunn, one of the main sponsors of a tax cut bill advancing in the Legislature.

Opponents say erasing the income tax is a terrible idea because it would mean even less money for schools, health care, roads and other services, especially hurting poor and working-class residents. The Mississippi income tax accounts for 34% of state revenue. Wealthy people would see the biggest financial boost from eliminating the income tax, because they’re the ones paying the most now.

Democratic state Sen. Hob Bryan said people don’t choose where to live because of tax policy but because of family ties and quality of life. He said people live in high-tax New York, for example, because the city offers opportunities.

“The notion that if the people in Manhattan only found out that Mississippi did not have an income tax, they’d all ... get on a bus to Mississippi and move down here — it’s just laughable on its face,” Bryan said.

Mississippi’s population has dwindled in the past decade, even as other Sun Belt states are bustling with new residents. Tax-cut proposals are a direct effort to compete with states that don’t tax earnings, including Texas, Florida and Tennessee — places to which many young Mississippians are moving for fatter paychecks.

Married couple Les and Amanda Jordan live near the south Mississippi town of Summit. He’s a retired public school administrator and she’s a retired nurse practitioner. Both worked for the state. Amanda Jordan said tax rates could influence young people’s decisions about where to live. The couple has a grandson in Texas, one of the states without an income tax.

Les Jordan said he’s torn.

“On first hearing about it — oh, great, we’d have more money,” he said. “On the other hand, we’re such a poor state. How would it affect those who are less fortunate?”

A single person with no dependents in Mississippi currently pays no tax on the first $12,300 of income, and because of tax cuts approved years ago the tax-free amount will increase to $13,300 after this year. The state has a 4% tax on the next $5,000 of income and a 5% tax on all income above that.

Nine states don’t have an income tax and one more, New Hampshire, only taxes interest and dividends, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Opponents of repealing the Mississippi income tax point to Republican-led Kansas, which enacted big tax cuts in 2012 and 2013 but repealed many of them in 2017 after large and persistent budget shortfalls.

Mississippi Republican Gov. Tate Reeves is wholeheartedly behind the income-tax elimination.

“We can throw out the welcome mat for the dreamers and the visionaries,” Reeves said. “We can have more money circulating in our economy. And it can lead to more wealth for all Mississippians.”

Republicans control the Mississippi House and Senate by wide margins, but the income tax elimination is not guaranteed. A proposal died in 2021 because of Senate leaders’ concerns that it would undermine funding for schools and other services.

“People expect us to educate our children. That’s the future of Mississippi,” said Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who presides over the Senate, where he and other leaders are proposing a separate plan that would reduce the income tax but not eliminate it.

The House and Senate are both proposing a reduction in Mississippi’s 7% sales tax on groceries. The House would increase the sales tax on most items other than groceries, from 7% to 8.5%, while the Senate would not change the rate.

Increasing the sales tax would have a disproportionally larger impact on people with modest incomes. The poorest residents would see no gain from eliminating the income tax because they are not paying it now.

According to the Mississippi Department of Revenue, people with incomes of at least $100,000 a year make up 14% of those who pay state income tax, and their payments bring in 56% of the income tax revenue. The department says people with incomes below $30,000 make up 49% of those who pay Mississippi income tax, and their payments bring in 5% of the income tax revenue.

Mississippi is burdened by a history of racism that still shows up in disparities between thriving and struggling school districts. Legislators consistently shortchange the state’s school funding formula by hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

LaShauna Fortenberry, a former public school teacher, said eliminating the state income tax and increasing the sales tax are bad ideas.

Fortenberry, who is Black, said schools already have aging buildings and textbooks. She said a brother who is 18 years younger than her is using one of the very same textbooks she had. How does she know? Her signature appears inside it.

Fortenberry now works for an agency that provides in-home care for older people in Columbia, Mississippi. She said when she taught from 2005 to 2013, she routinely used her own money to buy classroom supplies “trying to make sure that the kids had everything that they needed to be able to learn.” She said teachers still do that.

“We need more money, if anything, in the schools,” Fortenberry said.

Grover Norquist is president of Americans For Tax Reform, a Washington-based group that labels many taxes as “socialist.” He said states that reduce tax rates are enjoying economic growth.

“Pretty soon, nobody is going to be more than a hop, skip and a jump away from a no-income-tax state,” Norquist told Mississippi lawmakers at a hearing. “The question for Mississippi and for all the other states is: Are you going to be an early adapter or are you going to be there afterward, catching up?”

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Follow Emily Wagster Pettus on Twitter: http://twitter.com/EWagsterPettus.

After $73M win, Sandy Hook families zero in on gun marketing

By DAVE COLLINS

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FILE - While families of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting look on, attorney Josh Koskoff speaks during a news conference in Trumbull, Conn., Tuesday, Feb. 15, 2022. After agreeing to a $73 million lawsuit settlement with gun-maker Remington, the families of nine Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims say they are shifting their focus to ending firearms advertising. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — After agreeing to a $73 million lawsuit settlement with gun-maker Remington, the families of nine Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims say they are shifting their focus to ending firearms advertising with macho, military themes that exploit young men’s insecurities, all in the hopes of preventing more mass shootings.

The families say Remington used those kinds of ads to promote its AR-15-style rifles like the one used to kill 20 young children and six educators inside the Newtown, Connecticut, school on Dec. 14, 2012.

Remington’s marketing strategies are expected to be unveiled when the families’ lawyers publicly release thousands of internal company documents obtained during the lawsuit. Lawyers for Remington and its insurers agreed to the disclosure as part of the settlement announced Tuesday.

“This is a case about creating change,” Nicole Hockley, whose 6-year-old son, Dylan, was killed in the shooting, said in an interview after the settlement was announced. “Right now, I’m only waiting really to have access to the documents and to figure out how to use that to help drive safety and better practices for the sales and marketing.”

Hockley, a plaintiff in the lawsuit, has been working with other victims’ relatives to stem gun violence through the Sandy Hook Promise organization.

The records could provide one of the most detailed looks yet at the push by firearms manufacturers to popularize AR-15s and similar rifles, gun industry watchers say, especially after a 10-year federal ban on such weapons expired in 2004.

Hockley and outside observers have compared the case to those that led tobacco companies to disclose damaging internal documents and later agree to billions of dollars in settlements over sickened smokers.

It’s not clear when the families’ lawyers will release the documents. A lawyer for the families, Joshua Koskoff, said the records are being organized for public consumption, a process expected to take weeks.

The documents include emails between employees, internal company presentations and business projections, Koskoff said. He declined to discuss the contents of the records.

“The information that may come out ... there may be features of the way that the gun industry does business that are not either widely known or not widely appreciated,” said Timothy D. Lytton, a law professor at Georgia State University. “This is going to shine a spotlight on the industry’s role in the issue of the problem of gun violence.”

Lawyers for Remington and its insurers did not return messages seeking comment. Remington, founded in 1816 and based in Madison, North Carolina, went bankrupt a second time in 2020, and its assets were later sold at auction to several other companies. Two new companies were created, Remington Firearms and Remington Ammunition.

A message seeking comment was left for Remington Firearms, which announced in November that it will establish headquarters in LaGrange, Georgia. A spokesperson for Remington Ammunition owner Vista Outdoor, based in Anoka, Minnesota, said the settlement involved the former Remington Outdoor Co., not Vista Outdoor or Remington Ammunition.

At the news conference announcing the settlement, Koskoff showed Remington ads that he said appealed to troubled youths like Adam Lanza, the 20-year-old man who carried out the Sandy Hook shooting. Lanza used a Remington-made Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle that was legally owned by his mother. He killed his mother in their Newtown home before going to the school.

The ads contained messages including “Consider Your Man Card Reissued” and “Clear the Room, Cover the Rooftop, Rescue the Hostage.”

Koskoff said Remington targeted younger, at-risk males in advertising and product placement in violent video games. The lawsuit said the company’s advertising played a role in the school shooting, but did not elaborate.

Lanza had severe and deteriorating mental health problems, which combined with his preoccupation with violence and access to his mother’s weapons “proved a recipe for mass murder,” a report by Connecticut’s child advocate said.

From the 10th grade, Lanza’s mother kept him at home, where he was surrounded by an arsenal of firearms and spent long hours playing violent video games, the report said. His medical and school records included references to diagnoses of autism spectrum disorder, anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder, although psychiatrists say those conditions are not indicative of future violence.

Robert Spitzer, a political science professor at the State University of New York at Cortland and the author of five books on gun policy, said the case will lead gun manufacturers to consider their marketing carefully. Spitzer, a member of both the National Rifle Association and the Brady gun control advocacy group, said his chief goal is to study all sides of the gun debate.

Spitzer said the Remington case presents a clear warning “to other gun companies that manufacture assault-type weapons to avoid pumping up or emphasizing the military history, the sort of Rambo-like qualities of the weapon. They would be insane to continue to market these weapons by emphasizing those values because they would obviously open themselves up to similar lawsuits.”

The National Shooting Sports Foundation, a gun industry group that happens to be based in Newtown, said the Sandy Hook families never produced evidence that Remington’s advertising had any effect on Lanza. The foundation estimates there have been more than 20 million AR-15-style rifles sold in the U.S. and asserts that few are used in crimes.

According to the latest FBI crimes statistics, of the 13,600 firearms used in homicides in 2020, about 450 were rifles; more than 8,000 handguns were used.

AR-15-style rifles, however, have been used in many notable mass shootings, including Sandy Hook, the 2017 Las Vegas massacre that killed 58 people and wounded hundreds, and the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, that killed 14 students and three staff members.

Remington’s marketing of its AR-15-style rifles before the Sandy Hook shooting contributed to surging sales of the weapon nationwide, Koskoff said. In the mid- to late 2000s, he said, only about 100,000 AR-15s were sold annually in the U.S. But by 2012, the number had skyrocketed to more than 2 million, he said.

He and the Sandy Hook families blamed a private equity firm, Cerberus Capital Management, which bought Remington in 2007, for being more concerned about profits than safety in seeking increased rifle sales. A message seeking comment was left for the firm.

Cerberus, as Remington’s owner, was responsible for shifting a lot of the company’s focus from traditional hunting rifles to AR-15-style rifles and for the resulting marketing campaigns, Koskoff said.

“They were using tactics of fear and toxic masculinity and appearing more powerful, and their documents talk about their target audience as military wannabes,” Hockley said. “It’s not saying that this (the settlement) is going to stop firearm manufacturers in any way. This is about being responsible in your marketing.”

Farmer anger will test Modi as India’s ‘grain bowl’ votes
By SHEIKH SAALIQtoday

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A group of village elders listen to the speech of one of the candidate contesting for the state assembly elections in village Derra Bassi, in Indian state of Punjab, Monday, Feb. 14, 2022. India's Punjab state will cast ballots on Sunday, in polls that are seen as a barometer of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's popularity ahead of general elections in 2024 and his party's Hindu nationalist reach. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)


FATEHGARH SAHIB, India (AP) — Amandeep Kaur Dholewal rose from a traditional Indian cot and began speaking to a small gathering of men and women who sat cross-legged in a park opposite a white-domed gurdwara, a place of worship for Sikhs.

The 37-year-old doctor was flanked by a dozen of supporters, mainly drawn from the protesters who last year hunkered on the edges of the Indian capital and demonstrated against farm laws pushed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which they feared would decimate their income.

“We have already defeated Modi once. Let’s defeat him again.” Her voice bellowed from a loudspeaker attached to an auto rickshaw, displaying none of the flamboyance of a seasoned politician but drawing bursting applause from the audience.

The scene underscored the changing electoral landscape in India’s Punjab state, where more than 21 million voters cast ballots on Sunday in polls that are seen as a barometer of Modi and his party’s popularity ahead of general elections in 2024. The polls will indicate whether riding the crest of the yearlong protests that forced Modi to make a rare retreat and repel the farm laws could be enough to prevent his party from making inroads in a state considered the “grain bowl” of India.

Political newbies like Dholewal are pinning their hopes on this very formula. They are vying to convert the farmers’ anger into votes, arguing that a new party is the only path to change.

“People are asking me, ‘Why are you late? We were waiting for you,’” said Dholewal, who ran a medical camp at one of the protest sites last year. She is now a candidate for Sanyukt Samaj Morcha, a newly minted political party that includes some of the farm unions that organized the protests.

“People know their rights now,” she said.

Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party rammed the farm laws through Parliament without consultation in September 2020, using its executive powers. His administration billed them as necessary reforms, but farmers feared the laws signaled the government was moving away from a system in which they sold their harvest only in government-sanctioned marketplaces. They worried this would leave them poorer and at the mercy of private corporations.

The laws triggered a year of protests as farmers — most of them Sikhs from Punjab state — camped on the outskirts of New Delhi through a harsh winter and devastating coronavirus surge. Modi withdrew the laws in November, just three months ahead of the crucial polls in Punjab and four other states. The election results will be announced on March 10.

Modi’s BJP has a relatively small footprint in Punjab but hopes to form a government there with a regional ally and strengthen its fledgling voter base among farmers, one of the largest voting blocs in India. Punjab, where people are deeply proud of their state’s religious syncretism, also represents a test for his party’s Hindu nationalist reach, which has flourished in most of northern India since 2014.

Meanwhile, the BJP is running its campaign by trying to frame the incumbent Congress party state government as corrupt. It is also making grand promises to create more jobs, provide farm subsidies and free electricity for farmers, and eradicate the drug menace that has ailed the state for years.

The anger against the government, however, runs deep.

More than 700 farmers died during the protests as they weathered brutal cold, record rains and sweltering heat, according to Samyukt Kisan Morcha, or the United Farmers Front, the umbrella group of farm unions that organized the agitation. Dozens also died by suicide.

But in December last year, Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar told Parliament that his government had no record of the farmers’ deaths. This caused widespread outrage among the families of the deceased, many of whom are small or landless farmers who constitute the lowest rung of India’s agricultural community.

“Where did those 700-750 farmers go then? The Modi government is responsible for their deaths,” said Amarjeet Singh, choking back tears in his family home in Kaler Ghuman village, some 40 kilometers (24 miles) from Amritsar, the state’s capital.

Singh’s father, Sudagar Singh, died on a sweltering September afternoon from cardiac arrest, according to his death certificate. At the time of his death, he was accompanied by his friend Charan Singh, the village head, who said the 72-year-old collapsed while returning home after spending weeks at the protests.

“Even though we won in the end, those laws only brought misery to our lives. Do you think we would forget that?” said Singh, pointing to a framed portrait of his friend.

Scarred by the death, Sudagar Singh’s younger brother fell into depression, the family said. He stopped eating and working on his farm. Three months later, he too died.

In some cases, the Punjab government has announced jobs and funds for the families of the deceased, but farmers say the elections are an opportunity to turn their anger into meaningful change.

“That’s why you don’t see flags of any political party flying atop our homes,” said Singh, the village head. “We don’t trust them anymore.”

Among those seeking to consolidate their political dominance through the election is the Aam Aadmi Party, which was formed in 2013 to eliminate corruption and has since ruled Delhi for two consecutive terms.

Its campaign plan in Punjab, however, is not limited to just the farmers’ anger. The party hopes to ride on reemerged fault lines that were blurred during the demonstrations.

At its peak, the protest drew support from Punjab’s rural and urban populations. Now, those protests find very little resonance among city voters who say the farmers’ issues should take a backseat since the laws have been withdrawn.

“The youth want education, health, employment and an end to corruption. That’s what people want. They want a change,” said Avinash Jolly, a businessman.

On a recent afternoon, Harbhajan Singh, one of the Aam Aadmi Party’s candidates, stopped near a public park and talked to supporters about chipping away at the entrenched political system. A band of young men followed him on motorbikes waving flags brandishing the party symbol — a broom to sweep out corruption.

To resounding applause, he ended his speech with a call to the crowd: “Will you teach a lesson to those leaders who have ruined this sacred land and humiliated our farmers?”

The young men, in unison, chanted “Yes!”

Some school systems pause diversity programs amid pushback

By CAROLYN THOMPSON and HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH

Alexis Knox-Miller, equity director for the Colorado Springs, Colo., school system, poses on Friday, Feb. 4, 2022 in the boardroom in the district's main office in Colorado Springs, Colo. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Conservative takeovers of local school boards have already altered lessons on race and social injustice in many classrooms. Now some districts are finding their broader efforts on diversity, equity and inclusion are also being challenged.

As her Colorado school district’s equity director, Alexis Knox-Miller thought the work she and a volunteer team were doing was on solid ground, especially with an audit in hand that detailed where the district was falling short in making sure all students had the same opportunities.

But in December, Knox-Miller reluctantly disbanded the equity leadership team after more than a year of meetings. New conservative members had won a majority on the school board after voicing doubts about the work, and she worried the efforts might not lead anywhere.

The new board says it will take up the issue in the spring.

“Around the time that the equity audit was being released, I realized that the tide had changed around diversity, equity and inclusion efforts,” Knox-Miller said. “People were conflating the definition of equity with critical race theory, and the absurd accusations that we were teaching critical race theory in classrooms to kindergartners began.”

Since issues of diversity, equity and inclusion can thread their way through every part of a school system — including recruitment, services and equipment — the debate carries implications for hiring and spending.

In some districts, proposals aimed at making schools more welcoming places for students from diverse backgrounds have been reversed as a result of turnover on school boards, while work elsewhere faces a chill from acrimonious debate around topics that have been mislabeled as critical race theory.

School administrators say critical race theory, a scholarly theory that centers on the idea that racism is systemic in the nation’s institutions, is not taught in K-12 schools. But that has done little to sway opponents who assert that school systems are misspending money, perpetuating divisions and shaming white children by pursuing initiatives they view as critical race theory in disguise.

In a fraught political climate that already had escalated fights about pandemic mask and vaccine requirements, divisions are taking a toll, said Dan Domenech, executive director of the School Superintendents Association.

“Even in districts that aren’t threatened as much, they’re thinking twice about what they say and what they do and how they go about doing it because it is having a chilling effect on the whole equity, diversity and inclusion movement,” Domenech said.

Colorado Springs School District 11, a large and diverse system of 26,000 students where Knox-Miller works, was the first in its area to adopt a formal equity policy, unanimously approving it May 27, 2020, two days after the killing of George Floyd in Minnesota sparked national reflection on race and social justice issues in and out of schools.

The policy acknowledged gaps in achievement and opportunities among marginalized student groups and recognized “the impact of systemic inequities on teaching and learning.”

Part of Knox-Miller’s work involved commissioning an audit by the American Institutes for Research. It found that schools with high concentrations of special education students, English language learners, students living in poverty and students of color were scoring measurably below other schools.

Critics questioned the findings and the way they were presented, at a series of public meetings called “equity cafes” that some said limited full discussions. Conservative candidates set their sights on the school board, with three winning seats in the November election.

Knox-Miller saw no choice but to stand down.

Board President Parth Melpakam said by email that the new board had yet to discuss the issue but plans to at a work session in the spring.

“The D11 BOE remains committed to assuring educational equity by providing the support and resources every child needs to develop their full academic potential,” he said.

In Pennridge, Pennsylvania, the school district’s diversity, equity and inclusion initiative was put on hold last year after it became a flashpoint in debates that touched also on COVID-19 safety protocols, including mask mandates.

Democrat Adrienne King, who helped design the plan, ran for a seat on the school board and lost in November. Five Republicans won after running against the initiative, which they had called divisive. The program’s future remains unclear while a new committee considers it.

The district’s diversity, equity and inclusion guidebook, no longer visible on the district’s website, proposed ways to recruit diverse job candidates and improve training for teachers, and encouraged lessons that invite students to reflect on their own culture and history.

The initiative could have helped prevent unnecessarily painful experiences, King said, like when a white second grader, without meaning to hurt anyone’s feelings, called King’s daughter, who is Black, a slave after learning about Frederick Douglass.

“In a second grade mind, it was just, ‘Oh, I learned this new fact. You’re Black, Frederick Douglass was Black. You must be a slave,’” she said.

Neither the board’s president nor school administrators responded to requests for comment.

The Arlington, Virginia-based group Parents Defending Education is critical of diversity, equity and inclusion programming, citing on its website a goal of “fighting indoctrination in the classroom.” It tracks examples of what it views as inappropriate activities, such as an educator training session in Missouri that included discussion of microagressions and implicit bias.

“What they have become are Trojan horses for all of these divisive programs that push really illiberal ideas like segregated groups based on race, privilege walks, privilege bingo,” said Asra Nomani, the organization’s vice president for strategy and investigations.

In Southlake, Texas, the newly elected conservative majority on the Carroll Independent School District’s board killed a proposed cultural competency action plan in December and disbanded the suburban Dallas district’s diversity council as part of a legal settlement.

The plan had been in the works since a 2018 video showed students in the mostly white district chanting a racial slur at a party after the school’s homecoming celebration. A second video of students using the slur emerged in 2019.

“We don’t have a racism problem in Southlake. If children behave improperly, then they should be disciplined,” Tim O’Hare, founder of a political action committee formed to fund conservative candidates and defeat the plan, told The Texan.

Still, many other initiatives continue as planned.

An equity program that schools in Clayton County, Georgia, undertook more than a year ago was designed to keep politics and emotions out of it, Superintendent Morcease Beasley said. A task force has undertaken a “deep dive” into the district’s programming that will use data to drive policy changes.

“Equity is not about emotions. Equity is about what the data tells us and ensuring that we allow the data to inform our decisions,” he said. “That’s what equity is about. Where are the needs? Who needs the resources? What do they need?”

After Beijing bubble bursts, can the IOC save the Olympics?
By EDDIE PELLS


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FILE - The Olympic flame burning in the center of the snowflake-shaped cauldron is on display near the National Stadium during the 2022 Winter Olympics, Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2022, in Beijing. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko, File)


BEIJING (AP) — Before he got out of town, the great Canadian snowboarder Mark McMorris called the Beijing Games a version of “sports prison.” He was joking — sort of — but his vision wasn’t that far off.

The cordoned-off Olympic bubble that folds up when the closing ceremony ends Sunday has produced its usual collage of amazing athletes doing great things. This 17-day journey, however, has been witnessed through a sealed-off looking glass — a lens warped and sterilized by Beijing’s organizing committee with underwriting from the Chinese government.

The ultimate sponsor: the International Olympic Committee, which has been under fire for producing Games that, to many, have felt soulless while also being tainted by scandal and political posturing.

“I think that sometimes it doesn’t seem like their heart is in the right place,” the outspoken freestyle skier Gus Kenworthy said. “It feels like it’s a greed game. I mean, the Olympics are so incredible. But it’s a TV show.”

As the IOC pulls up stakes from Beijing, it has 29 months to hit the reset button and hope for a different, COVID-free and much better vibe when the Summer Games go to Paris.

The lingering question is whether, even in a more-welcoming, democratic locale, the Olympic overseers can repair their reputations to the point that people — most notably, the dwindling TV audience and the increasingly alienated throng of athletes — start to enjoy this enterprise again.

Some images they’ll have to work to forget:

—Tennis player Peng Shuai and IOC President Thomas Bach hanging out together to watch freeskier Eileen Gu’s first gold medal.

—The thousands of testers, cloaked head to toe in personal protective gear, shoving swabs down athletes’ throats day after day for their mandatory COVID-19 screenings.

—A sobbing Belgian skeleton racer, Kim Meylemans, going to social media to beg for release from quarantine.

—And, of course, the Russian doping scandal, all perturbingly encapsulated by the image of 15-year-old figure skater Kamila Valieva crying after her disastrous long program while her coach asked: “Why did you stop fighting?”

“For all the wrong reasons,” said Syracuse pop culture professor Robert Thompson, Valieva’s performance last Thursday made for riveting television.

“Surprising, weird and hyper-dramatic,” Thompson said. “Yet today, I searched the hallways in vain to find anyone who had seen it, or even heard tell of it. I’ve been paying close attention to the Olympics for 40 years, and never have I seen one surrounded by so much silence, so little buzz.”

Through last Tuesday, the Nielsen Company said prime-time viewership on NBC ( which pays the lion’s share of the bills for these Games ) and its streaming service, Peacock, was down 42 percent from a 2018 Games that didn’t do all that well, either.

The simplest explanation is to point toward the ever-increasing menu of viewing options and the time difference; this was the third straight Winter Games held in Asia.

That the IOC had to turn to authoritarian Russia, then China, for two of its last three Winter Olympics speaks to a larger problem that underscores how much less people care. Cities willing to foot the bill for the Games, then share the heat with the IOC over a years-long buildup, are harder to find these days.

With only one other choice for 2022 — Kazakhstan — the IOC decision to hand over one of its crown jewels to China came with compromises.

Beijing’s organizing committee, and, in conjunction, the Chinese government, took extreme measures to keep the COVID-19 virus, which originated inside its borders two years ago, from spreading. It also made subtle but persistent suggestions that speaking out about any issue that makes for bad headlines in China — human rights, Uyghurs, Taiwan, Hong Kong, pollution — were not welcome.

Athletes were gently reminded that the IOC’s much-discussed and somewhat-liberalized Olympic demonstration rules were secondary to China’s own laws and customs, which do not encourage dissent. The penalty for violating? Nobody was sure. But these Games brought with them the looming threat of a positive test, maybe from out of the blue, that could end an athlete’s chance for glory before it even began.

Many countries advised their athletes to leave their cell phones at home, afraid of government cyberhacks and information harvesting.

“How does an environment where you know you’re being surveilled bring commonality?” asked Rob Koehler, of the advocacy group Global Athlete. “There’s no joy in any of that.”

There were some beautiful moments, too, along with some others that brought out the raw emotion in a way that only the Olympics can.

Shaun White’s farewell to snowboarding after five Olympics touched hearts. Mikaela Shiffrin’s willingness to unflinchingly face her setbacks was a reminder that there’s more to be gained from these games than trips to the medals stand.

China’s favorite story might have come from Gu. The 18-year-old freeskier made history by becoming the first winter action-sports athlete to win three medals in the same Olympics — two golds and a silver.

The fact that Gu is American and chose to compete for her mother’s homeland of China, however, made it clear that, her good intentions aside, there is no taking politics out of these Games.

When Bach brought the Chinese tennis champion Peng, whose safety has been in question for months, to the venue for Gu’s first contest, cynics ripped the IOC for using the teenager’s golden moment to help whitewash the perceived sins of its hosts.

At its core, the Olympics are supposed to be a celebration of sports where the world comes together for two weeks to forget its problems. They are not supposed to dabble in politics.

In many eyes, any remnants of that worldview disintegrated on Day 1, when Russian President Vladimir Putin, his country actively amassing troops along the Ukrainian border, joined Bach and China’s president, Xi Jinping, at the opening ceremony.

The facade crumbled and jumbled further when Bach denounced Russia — “It was chilling to see” Valieva berated by her coach, he said — then a Kremlin spokesman denounced Bach.

In the end, no athlete’s plight told the story of the Beijing Games more viscerally than that of the 15-year-old skater.

When the litany of Russian doping scandals started unfurling, shortly after the end of the 2014 Sochi Games, the IOC had the advantage of the knowing that the reports, the meetings, the terrible headlines and the chaos would largely take place outside of the Games themselves and out of the general public’s view.

The Valieva case can be fairly viewed as a byproduct of all the half-measures taken to sanction the Russians. But her drama played out while the party was in full swing;. It clouded virtually every aspect of a Games that already had issues.

“We are dissatisfied because what we love about sport is the authentic pioneering struggle to redefine the possible, or to compete head to head, pouring every measure of devotion into the effort,” Max Cobb, an outspoken leader in U.S. Olympic circles, wrote in an essay this weekend.

“It’s a great mix of awe and honest effort that inspires,” Cobb wrote, “except when it isn’t.”

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More AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/winter-olympics and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

Opinion: Are the Olympics becoming irrelevant?

What's worse than frustration or anger at a major sporting event? Indifference and resignation. But these are exactly what DW's Jens Krepela feels when he looks at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics

The 2022 Winter Olympics has played out amid environmental and political concerns

What is the legacy of these Winter Games?

Answering such a question might be easy enough when you've got a medal around your neck. Or when your imagination has been caught; you've been excited, anxious, disappointed or jubilant.

After all, emotion is sport's greatest attraction. Even with journalistic distance, it is this that can sometimes cover up everything else — the political background in the host country, for example, or the environmental damage. That's why "sportswashing" is seen as an effective strategy.

China's Winter Games could be a turning point in this respect, because the surge of emotion just didn't arrive. Instead, the spectacle, though well organized, looks like a veil that has been washed too often. It is pale and threadbare. Through it, the dubious structures of the Olympics are clearly visible.

Is it all normal?

Sure, these two weeks have also produced new stars, like Eileen Gu, a double Olympics champion at 18. There have also been glimpses into the abysses of top-class sport, particularly in the case of the young figure skater Kamila Valieva, from Russia. From a German perspective, there were sensational victories: cross-country gold for Katharina Hennig and Victoria Carl, for example, and an almost uncanny series of gold medals in sliding sports.

That venue in particular is a good example of why criticism won't die down. Those watching and who have seen the monstrosity in what was once a nature reserve know full well, even without in-depth research, that sustainability wasn't really a factor. It's the same old story.

Just as old is the dismay about the politics of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Cooperation with rulers like Vladimir Putin (Sochi 2014) and Xi Jinping is all too familiar. In order to have a smooth Winter Games, President Thomas Bach and his organization don't pay too much attention to respecting human rights or freedom of expression. So it's been this time around. Bach's statements on the tragedy of Valieva and the possible introduction of a minimum age at the Olympics are hypocritical; he could have managed the latter long ago. The IOC was also uninterested in the fact that the teams of several countries bought disposable mobile phones in fear of Chinese spying. 

China uses its platform

And China? The hosts used the Games for propaganda, as intended. The honor of carrying the Olympic flame was bestowed on cross-country skier Dinigeer Yilamujiang, among others. She is Uighur, the Muslim minority from which tens of thousands are interned in re-education camps by the government in Beijing. This fact was simply brushed aside as a "lie" by Yan Jiarong, the spokesperson for the Olympic organizing committee. Instead, in keeping with China's plan, she twisted the political context by calling the democratic island state of Taiwan "an inseparable part of China".

Dinigeer Yilamujiang (left) was a controversial choice to carry the Olympic torch

On top of all that, there was the pandemic, which meant the absence of most spectators while athletes, the media and officials all lived in a bubble for three weeks. Strictly shielded and constantly tested, the number of coronavirus cases was kept to a minimum.

Successful as it was, it had a negative impact on the mood of many involved. "Now everyone has had enough and is looking to get out of here," said Germany's Alpine Skiing Director Wolfgang Maier on the penultimate day of the competitions.

If athletes and sports officials feel this way, how can fans and observers feel any different? There was no sign of the magic that the Olympics often unleash which can even override the criticisms. Games like the one in Beijing run the risk of becoming one thing: irrelevant.

This article was adapted from German

Miss Germany: 'Greenfluencer' Domitila Barros wins title

Domitila Barros, the online campaigner of sustainable living who grew up in a Brazilian favela, has won this year's Miss Germany contest.

    

Domitila Barros celebrates after being named Miss Germany

Activist and actress Domitila Barros has been crowned the new Miss Germany on Saturday evening.

The 37-year-old, who is from Brazil and lives in Berlin, was competing for the title against ten other contestants during the event at the Europa-Park Arena in Rust, Baden. 

Barros grew up in a favela in northern Brazil, where she worked with street children from an early age, teaching them to read and write using acting and dancing.

She received a "Millennium Dreamer Award" from the United Nations in New York for the street children project.

Barros later moved to Berlin and got a master's degree in politics and social sciences.

Social entrepreneur and 'greenfluencer'

Barros' commitment to sustainability, environmental protection and social justice also played a role in earning her the title of Miss Germany.

In her work as a "social media greenfluencer," Barros has campaigned online for sustainable living.

"We all live on Mother Earth. And she needs us very much at the moment," she said on stage at Europa-Park.

She wants to make her cause "cooler, maybe even a little sexier," and she tries to do so through social media.

"The people I want to reach don't read all the newspaper articles — but they scroll," Barros said.

She is also a socially committed entrepreneur since 2017 as the founder of a swimwear brand that generates jobs for mothers in Brazil.

"Growing up in a less privileged part of this planet, I witnessed firsthand the effects of unsustainable, environmentally harmful and inhumane actions," Barros said, according to the Miss Germany website.

That's why the values of sustainability, environmental protection and social justice are so important to me."

Changes in 'Miss Germany'

The Miss Germany competition has sought to separate itself from the stereotypical objectification of women in the last two years.

Organizers have said that the contestants are no longer judged solely on their looks, but also on their character and "missions."

One of the participants advocated for victims of child sexual abuse, while another contestant urged women, in particular, to take care of their own finances.

The contest has also tried to have more diverse candidates and more

One of the finalists in this year's competition is active in the Black Lives Matter movement.

It was also the first time the pageant saw a transgender woman reaching the finals.

dvv/fb (AFP, dpa) 

The 4-day work week: Who is trialing it and does it work?

Belgium will now offer employees the opportunity to work a four-day week. Various countries and companies have experimented with the idea, which is gaining traction in many parts of the world.



Who doesn't dream of less time spent at work?

Four days working, three days relaxing with friends and family. And all this for the same money. What's not to like? Surely most employees would jump at the chance. Advocates for the four-day work week suggest that when it is implemented worker satisfaction increases, as does productivity.

Belgium will now be introducing four-day working weeks for those who want it. However, employees will not be working less. They will simply condense their hours into fewer days if they want to. They will be allowed to decide flexibly on whether to work four or five days a week.

Belgian Prime Minister Alexander de Croo hopes that the model will help to create a more dynamic economy and will make it easier for people to combine their family lives with their careers. But some full-time employees will be working very long days if they choose to condense their hours. Others, like shift workers, will simply not have the option of that flexibility.

DW explores which countries and companies have already experimented with the four-day working week.

Iceland: Fewer hours at full pay

Iceland tested a similar model from 2015 and 2019. However, it reduced the working week from 40 to 35 or 36 hours and maintained pay levels. Some 2,500 people took part in the test phase.

A study by the Icelandic non-profit Alda (Association for Democracy and Sustainability) and the British think tank Autonomy found that the well-being of participants had improved significantly, working processes had been optimized and there was closer collaboration between colleagues. Productivity either stayed the same or improved.

After the test phase, trade unions and associations negotiated permanent cuts in working hours. Some 86% of employees now have the right to a four-day week.

The shorter work week is a success in Iceland, whose prime minister is Katrín Jakobsdottir

Scotland and Wales: An expensive experiment

Scotland is also currently testing the four-day work week, with the state supporting participating companies with about £10 million (ca. $13.6 million). In Wales, Sophie Howe, the future generations commissioner, has also called on the government to introduce a similar four-day working week trial, at least in the public sector.
Mixed results in Sweden

In Sweden, a four-day working week with full pay was tested in 2015, with mixed results. Even left-wing parties thought that it would be too expensive to implement this on a large scale. But some companies chose to keep reduced hours for their workers. The car firm Toyota had already decided to do this for mechanics 10 years ago and has stuck with its decision.

Fake news from Finland

Finland also hit the international headlines for a brief moment, after reportedly cutting working hours dramatically. The northern European country allegedly wanted to introduce a four-day working week, as well as a six-hour day. But it turned out that this was fake news, which the government then had to put straight.

Spain struggles to start trial phase

In Spain, the four-day working week will also be tested at the request of the left-wing party Mas Pais. Some 6,000 employees of 200 small and medium-sized companies will be able to extend their weekend by one day, with full pay. The trial phase is due to run for at least one year, but it is not yet clear when it will begin.
From start-ups to corporate giants

In Germany, it is mainly smaller start-ups that are experimenting with a shorter working week. But in other countries, such as Japan, it is bigger companies that are venturing into this territory: For example, the tech giant Microsoft has experimented with the model by offering employees three-day weekends for a month.

In New Zealand, the consumer goods giant Unilever is currently trialing a four-day work-week at full pay. If the experiment turns out to be a success, it will reportedly be extended to other countries.

This article was originally written in German.

Film review: The Automat recalls a lost era in New York eateries

Chris Knight - Friday

If you could travel back in time to New York City in the 1950s, you would not find a single McDonald’s – the first one wouldn’t arrive until 1972. But you would come across dozens of Horn & Hardart eateries, more commonly known as Automats.


© Provided by National Post

Breakfast at Tiffany's, lunch at the Automat: Audrey Hepburn makes a selection.

Enter, and you’d find a gleaming, Machine Age self-serve restaurant, its nickel and brass, glass and marble construction not unlike a 19th-century time machine itself. For a handful of nickels, you could feed various slots and retrieve from tiny glass doors creamed spinach, meatloaf and apple pies. Dolphin-head spigots served some of the best coffee in America.

Director Lisa Hurwitz has crafted a loving history of the Automat, interviewing former executives and famous fans. Mel Brooks is so happy to participate that he writes and records a song, There Was Nothing Like The Coffee At the Automat.

In a whirlwind 78 minutes we learn the history of the Automat, its glory days through the 1930s and ’40s, and its eventual decline. (The last one closed in 1991.) It survives in songs, old cartoons and movies, including this wonderful documentary. The memories are so vivid you can almost taste them.

The Automat opens Feb. 18 in Vancouver and Ottawa; March 4 in Regina and Saskatoon; and March 16 in Toronto.

4.5 stars out of 5

'Amazement and happiness': Canadian sensor on James Webb telescope passes first tests

Far out in deep space, four times the distance between Earth and its moon, a piece of Canadian technology that could help reshape our understanding of the universe has passed its first crucial tests.


© Provided by The Canadian Press

'Amazement and happiness': Canadian sensor on James Webb telescope passes first tests

The systems that aim the massive James Webb Space telescope, designed and built through the Canadian Space Agency, have been used to lock on to a target star — a sign that the millions of dollars and thousands of hours spent on the signature project are going to work out just fine.

"It's extremely satisfactory seeing everything coming into place," said Jean Dupuis, a senior mission scientist with the agency. "It's a sense of amazement and happiness."

The James Webb, the result of $13 billion and more than two decades of work, is meant to be the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, the instrument that mesmerized stargazers with its stunning images of the heavens. Webb, however, will orbit much deeper in space — about 1.6 million kilometres out — and be anywhere from a hundred to a million times more sensitive.

Launched in late December, it is designed to study the nature of planets beyond our solar system and what the oldest galaxies around can tell us about the birth of the universe. Webb will be able to analyze exoplanetary atmospheres and gather data from so-called "First Light'' galaxies, formed 13.6 billion years ago.

But it all would have been a goofy-looking piece of space junk if the Fine Guidance Sensor had failed.

"(The sensor) is mission critical," said Dupuis, who was in the NASA control room Jan. 31 when operators flicked on its power switch after the long voyage from Earth.

"There was a lot of pressure on us," he said. "Everybody was very happy."

The sensor is now up and running, being used to align the telescope's 18 mirrors. It also needs to cool down to below -200 C. That's all likely to take until the summer.

Then, the sensor will be able to aim James Webb with stunning precision — down to a few milli-arcseconds.

"You would be able to point at a human hair from a couple kilometres away," Dupuis said. "It's pretty much pushing the limit of what can be done."

Things have been going well for the mission. NASA announced in December that the telescope slipped into its orbit so neatly that the fuel savings mean it could operate for significantly longer than the original 10-year planned lifespan.

It's not the only Canadian contribution to the James Webb. Its Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph, which will help analyze light the telescope observes, was also designed and built in Canada.

Canada has been part of the Webb project almost from the start. At least half of the 600 scientists in the Canadian Astronomical Society have been involved with it and dozens of scientists and engineers are part of its design team.

Canada has contributed almost $200 million since the project began in 1996. As a result, Canadian astronomers are entitled to five per cent of the telescope's observation time.

In addition to exoplanets and First Light galaxies, Canadian researchers will use Webb to study asteroids and comets close to home to the effect stars have on the space around them in distant regions of the galaxy where new stars are born.

And anticipation is building.

"I can't wait to see the data we'll get," said Dupuis.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 18, 2022.

Bob Weber, The Canadian Press