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Tag Archives: grapple
Ukrainian Jews grapple with Israel’s tepid support as Iran aids Russia
But he fumed when asked about Israel, his home for more than two decades, and about its limited support for Ukraine — a stance that seems increasingly odd given the deepening alliance between Russia and Iran, whose leaders have repeatedly called for Israel’s destruction and are supporting Moscow’s war effort by supplying drones and missiles.
“Ukraine has the right to criticize the Israeli government about the lack of support,” said David, who requested that he be identified only by his first name to protect himself and his family, including relatives in Russia.
Israel’s position is ever more painful for some Ukrainian Jews as they prepare to celebrate Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, in intermittent darkness due to the blackouts brought on by Russia’s recurring airstrikes, which have knocked out the heat in the main sanctuary of the synagogue David attends in Kyiv.
Israeli leaders have declined to provide weapons or defense systems to Ukraine and refused to join Western economic sanctions for fear of jeopardizing its security relationship with Russia.
The Kremlin allows Israeli aircraft to target Iranian arms shipments over Russian-controlled airspace in Syria, which Israel regards as critical to its national defense.
Israel’s stance has drawn the ire of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who specifically requested Israel’s vaunted Iron Dome air defense system. Zelensky, who is Jewish, has invoked the Holocaust when asking for help — angering Israeli’s leaders, who rebuked him for the comparison.
This disagreement has drawn more scrutiny in recent weeks because of Russia’s increasing dependence on Iran for drones being used to attack Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure.
U.S. officials have said that “hundreds” of Iranian drones are being used by Russia to target Ukraine, with another round of strikes hitting the country this week. Western intelligence has also found that Moscow and Tehran have agreed on a plan to build weapons designed by Iran on Russian soil.
Analysts have speculated about what Russia may be providing to Iran in exchange for the drones, but the nature of their deal is not yet known. But there is little doubt that Russia’s needs are helping to develop Iran’s military production capabilities.
“What is Russia promising or implying to Iran as a quid pro quo,” said Dan Fried, a former security adviser to U.S. presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush. “Israel’s apparent short-term calculations don’t seem consistent with its long-term strategy of aligning itself with Europe and the United States,” Fried said. “What are they thinking?”
Israel has bristled at accusations that it is failing to do enough to assist Ukraine, and has disputed that the Iron Dome could help Ukraine protect itself.Israeli officials have complained that they do not receive enough credit for taking in roughly 50,000 refugees from Ukraine and Russia, and providing more than $30 million in humanitarian assistance, a figure they have calculated by combining the costs of generators, medical equipment, and a field hospital, as well as other “in-kind assistance.”
That support, however, is paltry even compared to some other countries. Estonia, for example, which has a bit more than 1/10th of Israel’s population, has sent $300 million in military aid to Ukraine.
Michael Brodsky, the Israeli ambassador to Kyiv, acknowledged he has heard the frustration of some Ukrainian Jews but stressed Israel’s security ties to Russia create limits that cannot be overcome. He said most Ukrainian Jews understand Israel is in a tough position.
“No government in Israel is going to jeopardize this interest for anybody else, including the Ukrainians,” Brodsky said in an interview. Unlike the United States and Europe, Brodsky pointed out, Israel is not part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. “Our situation is much more fragile.”
The United States has made clear it wants all of its allies, including Israel, to impose economic sanctions on Russia and to help Ukraine. U.S. officials familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private diplomatic conversations, said they never expected as much support from Israel as from NATO allies in Europe, but that they were still disappointed.
Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, the U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, declined to comment on Israel’s decisions. But she said that, as Hanukkah approaches, what’s happening in Ukraine “has a very strong resonance” within the Jewish community in the U.S. given that Russia’s reeducation policies in occupied territories and its “tropes” that Ukrainian leaders are “Nazis.”
“That message resonates in Jews’ historical DNA,” Lipstadt said.
Israel’s incoming leadership has sent mixed signals. Its next prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has called Putin a “friend,” but during his campaign hinted that he might revise Israel’s ban on providing weapons to Ukraine.
Israel’s previous prime minister, Naftali Bennett, privately warned Zelensky there would be consequences if he ever used his bully pulpit to pressure him again, according to other people familiar with this exchange, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.
The tension between the countries has reverberated through Ukraine’s Jewish community, which has seen a dramatic resurgence in the roughly 30 years since the Soviet Union collapsed.
Ahead of his family’s Shabbat dinner in Kyiv, Nachman Dyksztejn, 45, defended Israel’s actions while saying he understood Ukraine’s need to push for military support. Though now living in Israel, Dyksztejn had returned to his home in Ukraine to help with humanitarian relief efforts including in the southern Kherson region, much of which remains under Russian occupation.
It is not for lack of patriotism, or support for Ukraine, that Dyksztejn defended Israel’s motives. He said he sees his family’s future in Kyiv when the war ends.
Dyksztejn said he asked members of Israel’s government why they were not doing more to support Ukraine. But he also pointed out that Ukraine voted several times against Israel this year at the United Nations, including on a measure related to the Palestinian territories. Israel last month then abstained from a U.N. vote on whether Russia should pay war reparations.
“It’s not, ‘Every side has a point.’ It’s, ‘Every side has more than a point,’” said Dyksztejn, who is originally from Belgium. “Ukraine needs it because Ukraine needs it. But Israel cannot take the risk.”
Feelings were also mixed at Tiferet Matzah in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro, where roughly 70 Jews work at Europe’s biggest manufacturer of the unleavened bread eaten during Passover. Daniel Synchvkov, 31, typically works in IT, but Russian energy attacks had shut down his internet and electricity — forcing him to pick up a shift at the matzoh factory.
“It does not matter what you are — if you are Jew, Christian, Tartar, whatever — everyone here thinks every country on the planet, not just Israel, should do whatever they can to stop this war,” Synchvkov said, as he punched holes in the dough on the matzoh assembly line.
On a recent Shabbat, roughly two-dozen Ukrainian Jews gathered in a classroom behind the Great Choral Synagogue in Kyiv because of the impact of Russian missile attacks to heating in the main sanctuary.
Chanting the Hebrew prayer for peace, they bowed toward a knitted white-and-blue sign in Hebrew spelling “Jerusalem,” which pointed them in the direction of their holy land.
They also prayed for Ukraine’s defenders, Jews and non-Jews, and mourned the recent death of a Ukrainian Jewish soldier who had worn a Star of David with “Ukraine” written in Hebrew on his uniform.
At one point, Rabbi David Goldich uttered an obscenity about Putin while holding the Kiddush cup, containing ceremonial wine.
David, the soldier from Israel fighting for Ukraine, said he was compelled to do so in part because his grandfather volunteered in Ukraine’s army in 1941 to stop Hitler. Although born in Russia, he wore a patch of the Israeli flag on one sleeve — and a patch with Ukraine’s golden trident on the other.
He asked why the city of Kharkiv, home to some of the worst atrocities in the war, would not have benefited from Israeli’s Iron Dome system. “It would have been very helpful to prevent suffering cities, to prevent children from dying,” he said.
Lawmakers grapple with sheer size of FTX’s missing billions
The Justice Department, Securities and Exchange Commission, and Commodity Futures Trading Commission said Bankman-Fried, 30, used consumer deposits on his FTX platform to fund risky bets through his Alameda Research hedge fund.
Members of the Senate Banking Committee in a hearing Wednesday considered proposals to regulate crypto markets, including applying strict conditions like those over gambling, classifying crypto assets as securities, and pushing federal agencies to extend existing regulations for banks and brokerage houses into crypto markets.
Senate Banking Committee Chairman Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) accused crypto of being “easy, too easy” for corruption and assailed celebrity endorsers, saying they duped investors in glitzy Super Bowl commercials and online ads.
Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (Pa.), the top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee and a leading crypto booster in Congress, called for a more lenient response to the FTX crisis and cautioned against punishing the crypto industry for problems at one exchange.
He compared FTX’s meltdown to the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis. “Did we decide to ban mortgages?” asked Toomey, who will leave the Senate in two weeks after not seeking reelection. “Of course not.”
He suggested that cryptocurrencies could protect against inflation and allow for private financial transactions.
“Let’s remember to distinguish between human failure and the instrument with which the failure occurred,” Toomey said. “In this case, the instrument is software, and a code committed no crime.”
Before its collapse, FTX had been the third-largest crypto exchange by volume in the world. The firm’s tailspin began this past month, when Changpeng Zhao, chief executive of rival crypto exchange Binance, announced he would sell off $530 million worth of an FTX-issued crypto token. Bankman-Fried was leaning on the native token to secure his firms’ sizable debts.
The move sparked a panic, with FTX customers racing to pull $5 billion worth of deposits off the platform. In a last-minute bid to meet the demands, Bankman-Fried turned to Zhao for help, and the Binance chief executive agreed to buy FTX. But Zhao reneged the next day, saying that a review of FTX’s books revealed “mishandled customer funds.” Two days later, Bankman-Fried stepped down, and the company said it was filing for bankruptcy.
“One put the other out of business intentionally,” Kevin O’Leary — an entrepreneur and “Shark Tank” television personality who was paid $15 million to promote FTX — told the Senate panel.
FTX customers are pursuing a class-action lawsuit against O’Leary and 10 other FTX celebrity endorsers — including Tom Brady, Gisele Bündchen, Larry David and Naomi Osaka — arguing that such personalities should bear responsibility for luring consumers into a bad deal.
A spokesperson for O’Leary didn’t respond to a request for comment about the lawsuit. Representatives for the other 10 defendants either didn’t respond to requests for comment or declined to comment.
Other witnesses included Hillary Allen, an American University law professor of banking and securities regulation; Jennifer Schulp, who studies financial markets at the conservative Cato Institute; and Ben McKenzie Schenkkan, an actor and star of TV hits “The O.C.” and “Gotham.” McKenzie Schenkkan has become one of the crypto industry’s unlikely but most prominent critics, arguing that it is a bubble filled with malefactors. He is co–writing a book on the industry set to publish this summer.
When Brown asked the witnesses whether FTX-like “carelessness, misconduct or worse” was present at other crypto firms, McKenzie Schenkkan responded that it was “endemic.”
Brown said, “FTX and Alameda Research took advantage of the crypto industry’s appetite for speculation.”
The hearing came as Brown signaled a desire to work with top financial regulators to forge a federal rule book for the crypto industry. Other members of the panel have their own proposals, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is adding to them with a bill — co-sponsored by Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) — aimed at cracking down on national security risks posed by cryptocurrency. The measure seeks to more strictly apply anti-money-laundering standards already imposed on traditional financial institutions to crypto businesses.
“Crypto doesn’t get a pass to help the world’s worst criminals, no matter how many television ads they run or how many political contributions they make,” Warren said in the hearing.
If convicted, Bankman-Fried faces up to 115 years in prison related to the charges brought by regulators and prosecutors. He appeared to fight the United States’ extradition request during an appearance in a Bahamian court Tuesday. A judge ordered him held without bail after local prosecutors argued that he was a flight risk and could have money stashed in other countries.
Bankman-Fried’s lawyers countered that their client suffered from depression and had dietary restrictions that could not be met in prison. They also pledged that Bankman-Fried would appear at future proceedings.
Wednesday’s Senate proceedings came a day after the House Financial Services Committee held a hearing that included John J. Ray III, FTX’s new CEO, who was brought in to clean up the company’s finances. Ray called Bankman-Fried’s actions “plain old embezzlement.” Ray said it would take “months, not weeks” to claw back lost consumer deposits, noting that “we’re not going to be able to recover all the losses here.”
U.S. officials called Bankman-Fried’s actions “one of the biggest financial frauds in American history,” during a news conference Tuesday, and they hinted that more charges could be forthcoming against other FTX officials and Bankman-Fried’s associates.
The Justice Department indictment, filed in the Southern District of New York, implicates co-conspirators “known and unknown.” The SEC complaint includes details of real estate purchases and loans for Bankman-Fried, his parents and FTX executives worth at least $2 billion allegedly derived from ill-gotten gains.
“Neither the fact of the loans and purchases, nor the poor documentation of significant company liabilities and expenditures, was disclosed to investors,” the complaint states.
Before FTX’s collapse, Bankman-Fried pursued political and pop culture influence. He was the second-biggest Democratic donor in the 2022 midterm elections, fashioning himself as the crypto industry’s top surrogate in Washington. His mop of hair and pledges to philanthropy — an approach known as effective altruism — endeared him to legions of online followers.
But FTX also pursued major marketing ploys to boost consumers’ faith in the industry. It purchased advertising space on the uniforms of Major League Baseball umpires. The National Basketball Association’s Miami Heat said it would terminate its $135 million arena naming-rights deal with FTX in the wake of the company’s collapse. The agreement, signed in 2021, was intended to last 19 years.
Since FTX’s collapse, politicians have grappled with how to distance themselves from Bankman-Fried. In the two years leading up to November’s midterm elections, the crypto executive donated $40 million to federal candidates and campaign groups, according to federal records. Most of his money went to Democrats, though Bankman-Fried has alluded to additional, undisclosed contributions to Republicans.
Two of Bankman-Fried’s biggest beneficiaries in 2022 were the House Majority PAC and the Senate Majority PAC, which help elect Democrats to their respective chambers. Those organizations alone received about $7 million from him over the past two years, federal data shows.
Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, called Bankman-Fried’s donations “dirty money” used to attempt to influence policy decisions.
Two key lawmakers, Sens. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and John Boozman (R-Ark.), on Tuesday confirmed that their offices had donated or would donate the money they had received from Bankman-Fried to charity. The two had worked hand-in-hand with the now-disgraced crypto mogul on legislation seen as friendly to the industry.
Even before his arrest, though, some lawmakers had started trying to separate themselves from a man who once had been in their better graces.
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), who is set to become House minority leader in the next Congress, donated his contributions to the American Diabetes Association several weeks ago, according to an aide. Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) contributed his sums to a local food bank before Thanksgiving, the office said. And Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), a longtime crypto advocate, gave her donation this past month to a nonprofit fighting poverty, according to a spokesman.
Offset, Quavo, Drake and More Grapple With His ‘Senseless’ Death – Rolling Stone
The sky was gray with rain clouds as a crowd of mourners made their way into Atlanta’s State Farm Arena to celebrate the life of the rapper Takeoff, the cornerstone of the Migos who was shot dead on November 1. The showers, the mayor of Atlanta, Andre Dickens, would tell us later, were a good omen for a funeral, meaning Takeoff, born Kirsnik Khari Ball, had been heaven bound.
As we filtered into single file lines at the lip of the building, we were made to drop our phones in sealed pouches only staff could open, a reasonable request for presence and privacy, especially in light of the gruesome spectacle Takeoff’s death became as videos circulated online. That meant when Offset, his fellow Migo and cousin, took the stage well into the service and wept for the man that lay before him in a chrome casket, his grief was bound to the arena, and we were bound to it.
“Take,” is all he could utter at first, overcome with sorrow. “I love you,” he said. “I’m sorry.” For many minutes, we watched him cry, many in the crowd cheering and shouting encouraging words. Eventually calling the loss unbearable and saying his heart is shattered, he made a raw admission: “I don’t wanna question you, God, but I don’t get you sometimes.” Then, leading a prayer, he called for fellowship. “I need to be held,” he said so vulnerably.
Quavo and Takeoff had just released their first album as a duo, Unc & Phew, named for their family ties, on October 7. A flag based on the art for that record, Only Built for Infinity Links, was laid across Takeoff’s casket. While alluding to a rift between the pair and Offset on a podcast last month, Takeoff left room for resolution: “We don’t know all the answers. God knows. We pray a lot, so only time will tell. Ain’t nothing got to change.”
Takeoff’s deep faith in God was called upon again and again in a memorial where loved ones and leaders worked to process his death out loud. “This is a 28-year-old man whose life was ended senselessly,” said his pastor of 18 years, Jesse Curney, III. By every account, Takeoff all skill, heart, and brain. “Quavo and Offset, you might get mad at me,” warned Kevin “Coach K” Lee, co-founder of Migos’ label Quality Control, “but he was the wise one.” So how – why — could this have happened, and what are they to do now? Pop stars, gospel stars, friends, and family all wrestled with difficult questions about this tragedy, some finding possibility in their distress.
When Justin Bieber, a good friend of Quavo’s who has collaborated with Migos, appeared on stage for the first performance of the memorial, it seemed as if he would not – could not – sing. He sat uneasily on a stool while a pianist played intricately, at first, what felt like an intro, then what felt like a song. Bieber didn’t move. The words that finally escaped him were shaky — a rendition of “Ghost” from his album Justice. As he sang, he stood briefly before sitting again, eyes locked on the casket. His voice steadied, then solidified, then boomed. There was one last piano solo and one last solemn chorus before he left.
Bieber was followed by Drake, whose specific appearance, like all the others, was not listed on the simple program, printed on the back of a collage of Takeoff photos reminiscent of the Culture album artwork. He read his prepared remarks carefully; his typical charisma dampened but not disintegrated. He recalled two poems, one by Maya Angelou, but his own words held more weight. Before recounting his days on tour with Migos in 2018, how Takeoff was zen but came alive on stage and in sync with the group, he told a story about watching the Rat Pack – Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr, and Frank Sinatra – as a kid on an old TV. “I miss performing with my brothers,” said Drake. “After all these years watching Dean Martin, I realized I want to grow old with my friends. We should do that more.”
Drake had only begun to cry in his remembrance as he addressed Quality Control co-founder, Pierre “Pee” Thomas, thanking him for the leadership he provided and the family he created. But once he started to cry with a calm intensity, he didn’t stop. Pee and his partner Coach K took the stage next. Pee remembered a text he got from Takeoff that personified his spirit, one from June of last year that he revisited in recent days. “We came from nothing,” Takeoff wrote to Pee as he was getting his locs retwisted, just in a moment of gratitude. “We came through the storm,” he had said. “I love you.”
“I been asking God for the past 11 days. What’s the lesson in this?” Pee wondered out loud. He left the podium without an answer but asked the audience to keep looking.
Pee and Coach K’s remarks were followed by Offset’s heart-wrenching turn at the mic and a searing rendition of Beyonce’s “Heaven” by her mentee Chloe Bailey. The song, a pained but confident and accepting ode to the dead, was fitting to proceed with Takeoff’s mother’s turn to speak. Introduced as “Mama Take,” she seemed too proud of her son to be too troubled — how that voice, that passion for music, that faith in God had been with him since he was a baby. She only quivered for a minute when she told the crowd that she would never be the same without him, but she grew strong again when she thought about meeting him in heaven. “He can’t come back to me, but one day I will go to him,” she assured.
Takeoff’s mother was joined on stage by his younger brother and sister, as well as Quavo, whose address brought a surprising levity to the memorial. He clowned the extra-extra-large outfits they used to wear — some of which were displayed in a slideshow across arena screens. He teased Takeoff’s mom for admonishing their love of a vulgar Hot Boys CD and boasted about winning a talent show with Takeoff at the Boys & Girls Club performing “Get Your Roll On By” by the Big Timerz. Finally, he told an origin story that credited Takeoff with their path to stardom — rapping was his plan. Quavo would have perhaps played sports.
Takeoff’s obituary read, “Takeoff would want the world to see the light in what he created and keep lifting each other up and supporting the creations people put into the world. He’s now up with there with the stars he loved so much and remains in all our ethers on a daily basis living on through his music and the love he brought to so many.”
Like Offset did before him, he called him the innovator of their signature triplet flow, giving him the flowers he only seemed ready to receive right before his death. “He never worried about titles or credits or who got the most shine,” said Quavo. And like Takeoff’s mother before him, Quavo seemed to have found some clarity: “You’re not my nephew,” he said to Takeoff, “Not my brother, but my angel.”
‘You could hear the upset in their voices’ as students grapple with mass shooting | Education
How do you help children cope with the unfathomable violence and cascading emotions from the shooting deaths of 10 Black people in a grocery store on a sunny Saturday afternoon?
In Buffalo, administrators spent the following Sunday into the evening preparing resources for principals and teachers to address the massacre at the Tops Markets that hit close to home. Two employees of the district were among the victims.
Normal lesson plans were thrown out, and the past week was spent dealing with students’ feelings and trying to heal children from pre-K to 12th grade. Teachers will take time to listen to students this week, too.
Suburban schools also helped their students try to make sense of the senseless killings spawned by racial hate. There were moments of silence, announcements over the PA system and conversations in class.
But the trauma was particularly raw in Buffalo, where many knew or knew of someone who died.
“You could hear the upset in their voices: ‘I can’t believe he came all the way to our city, our community, to do this,’ ” said Ruyvette Townsend, an attendance teacher at Leonardo daVinci High School.
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Some students talked of having no mercy for the gunman, an 18-year-old who traveled from Broome County to carry out the shootings and who described himself as a white supremacist. Some said they felt sorry for him.
“We try to reassure the children that they’re safe, this is a safe place,” Townsend said.
Students outside the city also grappled with the tragedy.
West Seneca West High School teacher Joseph Cantafio always challenges his students by bringing up the other side to their positions. But not last week.
“This is one time where there are not two sides,” he said.
In Cantafio’s college-level sociology class taught in conjunction with Syracuse University, students talked about the mass shooting that occurred just a few miles away.
What really surprised student Abdullah Kamil was that the rest of the country was taking sides on guns and mental health issues in the wake of the shootings.
“And Buffalo, we were just really grieving,” he said. “We’re just all grieving instead of tearing each other apart, and kind of picking sides and intentionally creating animosity between each other.”
Catherine McDonnell was in Syracuse when the shootings occurred, and did not realize the enormity of it until she went to social media.
“I didn’t realize how close it was to my mom’s school, and her school was on his list in his notes,” she said of other potential targets Payton Gendron had listed in online postings. “And when we heard about the deaths, and knew some of them, it was just very personal.”
And it’s different when something like this happens here, she said.
“Coming to school like, it was very heavy, but it needed to be talked about for sure,” she said.
Gabriella Filipski was working at Chef’s on Seneca Street when her father texted her about the mass shooting. She said everyone was talking about it, with perspectives from city residents and others.
“It was a terrible thing that happened and it doesn’t matter where you live,” she said. “It’s something that needs to be talked about.”
There was a range of emotions, depending on the age of the students.
“A lot, for the little ones, was a little bit more shock and not knowing what to say and how to react,” said Buffalo Associate Superintendent of School Leadership John Gonzalez. “As the students got older, they were more willing to engage in conversation and bring up the incident themselves.”
“It’s not business as usual, it’s about more right now than reading, math and arithmetic,” Buffalo Interim Superintendent Tonja Williams said.
Administrators created a compendium of resources to help teachers in the district’s 60 schools reflect on the horrible events and to form lessons around them, said Associate Superintendent Fatima Morrell.
“In those lessons, we create opportunities for social emotional learning and healing, as well as deep dives into understanding racism and how systemic racism plays a role in perpetuating white supremacy, and what does white supremacy mean and how do we combat it,” Morrell said.
Students also had the chance to talk about what happened in healing circles, and through the arts.
“We know that many of our students process their emotions in different ways and may not be ready to discuss what they’re feeling. But we do know that students find an outlet through art and music and poetry and writing,” said Chief Academic Officer Anne Botticelli.
In Buffalo, some parents were afraid to send their children to school, and some kids were scared to go. And as bogus threats spread on social media throughout the week, some students left school early.
The threats “added a layer of extreme discomfort and worry that was obviously so unnecessary and added to the trauma that people were already experiencing,” Gonzalez said.
The Williamsville Central School District, like Buffalo, has done extensive work in trauma informed care.
“It is about the relationship we have with our students when a tragedy like this happens,” said Rosa D’Abate, coordinator of student services. “Like everybody, students were scared or fearful, some that understood it, some that didn’t.”
Peter Stuhlmiller teaches social studies to juniors and seniors at Kenmore West High School. His AP government students were starting public policy research papers, and pivoted their topics to the role gun control plays in the country.
After the shooting at Tops, “these are not just academic questions anymore,” he said.
The students also are looking into the role of social media and the responsibility of social media companies, and whether there should be more federal regulations on social media.
“They’re in shock that kids could be susceptible to this kind of stuff, to the point where this kid had so much premeditation based on hate. It’s mind boggling for them and they’re trying to wrap their heads around it just like the rest of us,” Stuhlmiller said.
Helping students does not rely on a one-size-fits-all approach but is tailored to their individual needs, said West Seneca Superintendent Matthew Bystrak.
West Seneca School Superintendent Matthew Bystrak at West Seneca West High School in West Seneca Friday, May 20, 2022.
“You’ve got nine buildings in this district and there are nine different ways of supporting kids,” Bystrak said. “It’s really up to the experts that work most closely with the kids: our principles, our teachers, the clerks in the office.”
And it’s not just students who were hurting. Teachers were having a difficult time, too. For some, it was too painful to talk about.
“A lot of teachers are saying it was hard to come back, but they were glad that they did,” said Buffalo Teachers Federation President Philip Rumore.
Treasury Yields & Mortgage Rates Spike: Markets Begin to Grapple with Quantitative Tightening
This is now moving fast.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
The two-year Treasury yield started rising in late September, from about 0.23%, and ended the year at 0.73%. In the five trading days since then, it jumped to 0.87%, the highest since February 28, 2020. Most of the jump occurred on Wednesday and Thursday, triggered by the hawkish Fed minutes on Wednesday.
Markets are finally and in baby steps starting to take the Fed seriously. And the most reckless Fed ever – it’s still printing money hand-over-fist and repressing short-term interest rates to near 0%, despite the worst inflation in 40 years – is finally and in baby steps, after some kind of come-to-Jesus moment late last year, starting to take inflation seriously. Treasury yields are now responding:
Jawboning about Quantitative Tightening.
Even though the Fed hasn’t actually done any hawkish thing, and is still printing money and repressing interest rates to near 0%, it is laying the groundwork with innumerable warnings all over the place, from the FOMC post-meeting presser on December 15, when Powell said everything would move faster, to hawkish speeches by Fed governors, to the very hawkish minutes of the FOMC meeting, which put Quantitative Tightening in black-and-white.
The Fed is now spelling out that it will make Quantitative Tightening – QT is the opposite of QE – its primary policy tool in battling inflation. It even spelled out in the minutes why QT won’t blow up the repo market, as it had done last time in September 2019, because last July, the Fed established the Standing Repo Facilities (SRFs) to calm the repo market while the balance sheet gets unwound sooner, faster, and by more than last time.
It is now clear to everyone that the Fed will hike interest rates sooner and by more than expected just a few months ago, and that it will reduce its balance sheet sooner, faster, and by a lot more.
This is a huge thing. And the Fed is communicating this shift to the markets so that markets can adjust to it gradually, more or less orderly, and not all at once. And the Treasury market is doing that.
10-year Treasury yield highest in nearly two years.
The 10-year Treasury yield has risen by 25 basis points since the end of the year, to 1.78% on Friday. It’s now at the highest point since January 21, 2020, before the pandemic was even a factor for the markets:
The jawboning will continue until morale improves.
Browbeaten by the worst and very un-temporary inflation in 40 years, even ultimate Fed doves, such as San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly on Friday, are now talking up rate hikes this year, and more importantly the arrival of Quantitative Tightening soon after liftoff.
“I would prefer to see us adjust the policy rate gradually and move into balance sheet reduction earlier than we did in the last cycle,” she said, echoing in harmony what the minutes of the December 15 FOMC meeting had revealed in detail on Wednesday.
Powell and the minutes called the balance sheet reduction the “runoff.” This Quantitative Tightening, or QT, is the opposite of QE.
QE was designed to push down long-term interest rates, and it did a marvelous job at that, and it triggered the biggest asset bubbles the US had ever seen, including the massive real estate bubble, with house prices spiking by 20% over a 12-month period, from already very lofty levels.
QT does the opposite: It allows long-term interest rates to drift higher, and markets will adjust to it, just like they adjusted to QE.
Markets are responding to the Fed’s jawboning, and long-term rates are already rising even though the Fed has just started to talk about QT, while it’s still doing QE, and while it’s still repressing short-term interest rates. Jawboning is an essential and official tool in the Fed’s toolbox.
Mortgage rates highest in two years and moving fast.
The surge in the 10-year Treasury yield has already translated into the highest mortgage rates in nearly two years. And those rates are moving higher fast.
According to Freddie Mac, the average 30-year fixed rate mortgage rate rose to 3.22%, the highest since May 2020. But that was based on surveys that most mortgage bankers filled out at the beginning of the week. And since then, mortgage rates have spiked.
Daily measures of average mortgage rates have jumped every day. The Average 30-Year Fixed-Rate Mortgage Rates index by Mortgage News Daily has jumped to around 3.50% on Thursday and Friday – rates not seen since the end of January 2020 (chart via Mortgage Daily News)
This rate of 3.50% is still very low, but it’s a lot higher than it was in 2020, when the average 30-year fixed rate dropped to 2.65%. And the Fed is still repressing long-term interest rates via QE. QT won’t even start for a few months. So the show hasn’t even stared yet. We’re watching the preview.
And these coming higher mortgage rates will have to be used to finance the home prices that have exploded by ridiculous amounts over the past 18 months from already ridiculously inflated prices, given the massive QE and interest rate repression for a big part of the past 13 years.
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Parents Grapple With How Long to Wait for Their Children’s Second Shots
When Dr. Joshua Ishal got his 5- and 7-year-old daughters their first doses of the Covid-19 vaccine last week in Queens, he joined millions of other parents in protecting their 5- to 11-year-old children since the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was authorized for this age group in late October.
Dr. Ishal, a dentist who lives in Great Neck, N.Y., never questioned whether he would get his children vaccinated, but he has been wavering over the timing of their second shots.
The clinical trials that tested the Pfizer vaccine separated the doses by three weeks, which is why the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that interval. But emerging data suggests that a longer wait bolsters the immune response in the long run. What’s more, the extra time may reduce the risk of myocarditis — heart inflammation — a rare but serious side effect of the mRNA vaccines in adolescents and younger adults.
Health authorities in Canada recommend that children wait at least eight weeks between doses. In Britain, kids wait 12 weeks for the second shot.
Still, the potential benefits of waiting for the second dose must be balanced against the real risks of catching and spreading Covid during the wait. With the United States on the cusp of another major wave of cases and the new Omicron variant spreading rapidly, delaying means leaving children vulnerable to infection and illness for longer.
“I think that’s a hard call,” said Aubree Gordon, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.
Is it more important for children to have good protection sooner? Or a better, more lasting protection later? The conundrum reminds Dr. Ishal of an episode of Seinfeld in which Jerry tells a story about picking a cold medicine from a wall of options at the drugstore. “This is quick acting, but this is long-lasting,” Jerry said. “When do I need to feel good, now or later?”
Trish Johnson, a financial adviser in Oakland, Calif., plans to push her son’s second dose back to six or even eight weeks. She has been swayed, she said, by the studies showing that a longer interval between doses leads to a better immune response.
“I’ve taken it upon myself, especially during this later part of the pandemic, to follow doctors on Twitter and do my own investigation,” she said. Almost two years into the pandemic, she feels that public health officials are taking too many precautions and failing to adapt to changing data. “That doesn’t work for me anymore,” she said.
Many experts agree that three weeks between doses is too short an interval for an optimal immune response.
“From an immunological standpoint, it makes more sense to wait,” said Deepta Bhattacharya, an immunologist at the University of Arizona. Pfizer didn’t choose three weeks between doses because it was the perfect interval. That decision, he said, “was more about public health and reducing community transmission, and completing this process quickly.” Dr. Bhattacharya plans to hold off on a second dose for his children until eight weeks.
The immune system needs time to ramp up after that first dose. Immune cells in the blood, known as B cells, can start producing antibodies within a week. But to generate really high-quality antibodies, those cells need to go through an intense kind of training camp inside the lymph nodes, and that process takes more than three weeks.
“You need them to sweat a little bit, those B cells,” said Andrés Finzi, an immunologist at the University of Montreal.
Much of the research on different dosing intervals comes from countries, like Canada and Britain, that opted to wait on the second shot for adults when vaccine doses were scarce last winter and spring. Dr. Finzi and his colleagues examined the immune response in 26 people who received their second shots three months or more after their first. They also looked at responses in 12 people who received their shots four weeks apart. The two groups produced roughly the same quantity of antibodies, but the group with a longer interval between doses produced stronger antibodies with a greater capacity to latch onto the virus and stay there.
In Britain, officials lengthened the dose interval for all vaccines to 12 weeks last December. Researchers at the University of Oxford studied hundreds of health workers who had received second doses before or after that policy took effect.
Their study found that people who waited 10 weeks between their first and second doses had antibodies levels about twice as high as those who only waited three or four weeks. Those antibodies are produced by B cells, which continue to develop over that long interval.
“It seems that giving the second dose at three to four weeks is just a bit too soon for your B cells to be ready to receive that boost,” said Susanna Dunachie, an immunologist at the University of Oxford, who led the study. What’s more, the longer dose interval also affected T cells, which help ramp up the body’s immune response. After the long interval, the T cells of study participants produced greater quantities of interleukin-2, a chemical signal that helps long-term immune memory.
“We were quite surprised,” Dr. Dunachie said.
She added, however, that a more robust immune response measured in the laboratory would not necessarily translate to better protection in the real world.
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On this issue, the results are mixed. Surveillance data from British Columbia and Quebec suggest that a longer dosing interval improves the effectiveness of the vaccine, according to a study that has not yet been peer-reviewed. That is, people who had a longer stretch between doses had a lower risk of becoming infected than those who opted for less time.
But studies from Britain haven’t been as clear-cut. One found a modest benefit of delaying the second dose. Two other studies didn’t find any effect.
The impact of dosing intervals on the risk of myocarditis is even less clear. In one study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, researchers examined Ontario’s vaccine safety surveillance data and identified 297 cases of inflammation of either the heart muscle or the outer lining of the heart after vaccination in people 12 and older. Of those, 207 occurred after the second dose. The rates were higher among people who separated their vaccines by a month or less compared with those who waited six weeks or more.
Whether the vaccine will trigger excess myocarditis in 5- to 11- year-olds remains to be seen. So far, more than seven million doses of the vaccine have been administered to this age group in the U.S. and only 14 possible cases of myocarditis have been reported to the government.
The risk of myocarditis is far higher among teenage boys and young men: about 11 cases for every 100,000 males between ages 16 and 29 receiving a second dose, according to one study.
That worries Lisa Rollins, a software trainer in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Her son turned 12 in early December after receiving his first dose. She plans to wait six weeks to get him his second shot. He’s doing virtual learning for now, she and her husband work from home, and the rest of the family is fully vaccinated. So “his risk is pretty low,” Ms. Rollins said. “I think waiting a little bit longer makes sense for us.”
Scott Hensley, an immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, points out that we also can’t yet quantify how much benefit children might get from waiting a few weeks. His children received their second doses four weeks after their first.
“If there was not a pandemic going on, the answer would be simple — longer duration would be better,” Dr. Hensley said. But “we are at a point in time in the United States where Omicron is going to sweep our nation and it’s going to probably sweep across the world. And so there has never been a better time to get vaccinated.”
It’s an argument that Dr. Ishal finds increasingly persuasive. Cases are surging in New York City. The city-run vaccination site in Queens where he took his daughters for their first shots booked second-dose appointments for three weeks out. Given what’s happening with Omicron, he may just keep that time slot.
“We’ll take all the protection we can get right now,” he said. “I think I just decided.”
Asian markets grapple with Evergrande fallout, eye China power crunch
A man stands in front of a screen displaying Nikkei share average and the world’s stock indexes outside a brokerage, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Tokyo, Japan December 30, 2020. REUTERS/Issei Kato//File Photo
HONG KONG, Sept 28 (Reuters) – Asian shares mainly drifted lower Tuesday as investors continued to fret over China Evergrande Group’s (3333.HK) unsolved debt crisis and eyed the potential impact of a widening power shortage in China.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan (.MIAPJ0000PUS) was 0.13% lower on Tuesday, following a mixed session on Wall Street
In early trade Tuesday, Australia’s benchmark S&P/ASX200 index (.AXJO) was down nearly 1%, while Japan’s Nikkei (.N225) was off 0.6%.
China’s blue chip index CSI300 (.CSI300) edged up 0.1% at the open, as Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index (.HSI) gained 0.44%.
The future of Evergrande, the world’s most indebted property developer, is being forensically scrutinised by investors after the company last Friday did not meet a deadline to make an interest payment to offshore bond holders. read more
Evergrande has 30 days to make the payment before it falls into default and Shenzen authorities are now investigating the company’s wealth management unit.
Without making reference to Evergrande, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) said Monday in a statement posted to its website that it would “safeguard the legitimate rights of housing consumers”.
Widening power shortages in China, meanwhile, halted production at a number of factories including suppliers to Apple Inc (AAPL.O) and Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) and are expected to hit the country’s manufacturing sector and associated supply chains.
Analysts cautioned the ongoing blackouts could affect the country’s listed industrial stocks.
“What we see in China with the developers and the blackouts is going to be a negative weight on the Asian markets,” Tai Hui, JPMorgan Asset Management’s Asian chief market strategist told Reuters.
“Most people are trying to work out the potential contagion effect with Evergrande and how far and wide it could go. We keep monitoring the policy response and we have started to see some shift towards supporting homebuyers which is what we have been expecting.”
On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI) rose 144.36 points, or 0.41%, to 34,942.36, the S&P 500 (.SPX) lost 4.57 points, or 0.10%, to 4,450.91 and the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC) dropped 68.29 points, or 0.45%, to 14,979.41.
Rising bond yields prompted a shift from growth to cyclical stocks in the United States, in a move that analysts expect could become more permanent after a prolonged period of supressed bond yields.
U.S. Treasury yields soared to a three-month high, touching 1.516% overnight following the Federal Reserve’s move last week to indicate fiscal stimulus could be tapered as early as November. read more
U.S. investors are looking ahead to speeches later this week from several senior Fed officials, as well as keeping an eye on any developments at China Evergrande, broker Ord Minnett said in a note.
In Asian trade, the dollar was up nearly 0.1% in line with its performance in the international session Monday after it rose alongside bond yields.
Gold was flat, while Brent crude oil was down 0.2%.
Reporting by Scott Murdoch; editing by Richard Pullin
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
EU leaders grapple with surge of infections, vaccine issues
BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union leaders failed to settle a fight about the distribution of COVID-19 shots among member states Thursday but pledged to strengthen vaccine export controls and production on EU soil amid a shortage of doses and spikes in new cases.
Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz criticized the allocation of shots in the EU, saying that some countries were receiving more than their fair share at the cost of others. As the leader of a coalition of six countries, he demanded a correction mechanism, raising tensions between capitals from where the leaders were holding their remote summit.
“When member states have a lot less vaccines available to them than others, then I think this is a big issue for Europe,” Kurz said. ”This could cause damage to the European Union like we haven’t seen in a long time.”
At the end of the summit, the EU’s 27 nations were still locked in a dispute over how an upcoming batch of 10 million doses could be allocated to narrow the vaccine gap between member states and the leaders decided to push the talks to a future meeting of their ambassadors.
Under the joint procurement program set up by the European Commission, doses are allocated on a pro rata basis, but some nations are taking less than their share. A large majority of EU members think the system is working well but said some nations made a mistake to focus on AstraZeneca shots instead of diversifying their vaccine portfolios. AstraZeneca shots are cheaper and easier to handle than vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna but the Anglo-Swedish company has been at loggerheads with the bloc over repeated failures to deliver doses agreed in their contract.
The spread of more contagious virus variants has pushed hospitals in some EU countries to their limit. That, combined with the lack of vaccines available in Europe, has pushed several EU nations to impose strict lockdown measures over the Easter holidays.
Three months after vaccination campaigns started, Our World In Data showed that only 14% of the EU’s 450 million residents has had a shot, while the figure stood at 46% in Britain.
An EU source said while the bloc had allowed 21 million vaccine doses to be exported to the U.K. since Dec. 1, while none had come to the EU from Britain.
“We can see clearly that British facilities are producing for Great Britain,” said German Chancellor Angela Merkel, yet she joined Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte in seeking to calm the choppy waters between both sides. “We also want to assume a win-win situation here, that is, we want to act in a politically sensible way, because it is in part somewhat more complicated than one thinks at first glance.”
Rutte said that talks with the UK on getting a more equitable share of vaccines would resume Saturday.
The German Chancellor and the other EU leaders also discussed the pandemic with President Joe Biden via video-link, the first such discussion with a U.S leader in 11 years, and von der Leyen said both sides “agreed that we have a strong interest in working together to keep global supply chains functioning.”
The accusations of EU protectionism came when EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen strengthened export controls for coronavirus shots this week. Even if the move is detrimental to non-EU nations, the European Commission’s goal is to force vaccine manufacturers, especially AstraZeneca, to deliver the doses they agreed to in their contracts. The commission also wants to make sure that export reciprocity is enforced with countries that are producing vaccines or the raw materials needed for them.
Italian Premier Mario Draghi said that EU countries cannot remain “helpless” in front of the failure of some pharmaceutical companies that are not honoring commitments. He said that European citizens feel like they are being “deceived” by some drug makers, according to an EU official who relayed the exchange on condition of anonymity.
Overall, von der Leyen said the EU had allowed exports totaling 77 million vaccine doses, proof that the bloc should not be accused of vaccine nationalism. Only 62 million of vaccine doses have been administered across the EU.
The commission’s proposal has been divisive. While some countries see it as an instrument of last resort that should not be allowed to undermine the EU’s reputation as an open trading bloc, others called it a crucial tool to guarantee that doses and vaccine ingredients reach the bloc.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said “it is important to leave this gun unloaded,” while French president Emmanuel Macron insisted the EU is “no longer naive” with its export controls tool.
Despite the delays in vaccine deliveries, the EU’s is still confident of having 70% of its adult population vaccinated by the end of summer. Based on the EU’s contracts with manufacturers, the commission expressed confidence that 360 million vaccine doses will be delivered during the second quarter of the year.
Macron said that after a slow start in the production of vaccines in Europe, the EU will be in the position to develop between 2 or 3 billion doses per year by mid-2021.
“It means we will not only able to fulfill our needs, but also to massively export, and on the long term,” he said. “By the end of the summer, Europe will be the continent producing the most doses in the world.”
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Lorne Cook in Brussels, David Rising in Berlin and Colleen Barry in Milan contributed to this report.
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Follow AP’s pandemic coverage at:
https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic
https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine
https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak