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Covid Closed the Nation’s Schools. Cleaner Air Can Keep Them Open.

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On a sunny afternoon in a cluttered music room at East High in Denver, two sophomores practiced violin while their music teacher, Keith Oxman, labored over a desk in an adjoining office.

The ceiling fans were off to prevent the sheet music from scattering. The windows were sealed shut. East High is Denver’s largest high school and among the oldest, and there is no modern ventilation system.

As the pandemic broke out, Mr. Oxman, 65 and a cancer survivor, feared getting sick or carrying the virus to his 101-year-old father. So he left the school when it first closed, in March 2020, and did not return for more than a year, staying home during later virus surges.

“We were supposed to have the windows open,” he said. “But the windows don’t open.”

Poorly ventilated spaces offer ideal transmission conditions for the coronavirus, and at the height of the pandemic, schools like East High were a searing point of controversy. An outbreak that began in November 2021 sickened more than 500 students — about one in five — and 65 staff members, one of whom died.

The pandemic led to repeated closures at tens of thousands of schools across the nation. The shutdowns sent educational achievement tumbling, disrupted the lives of millions of American families, and set off a wave of anger, particularly among conservatives, that has not subsided.

As the next presidential election gathers steam, extended school closures and remote learning have become a centerpiece of the Republican argument that the pandemic was mishandled, the subject of repeated hearings in the House of Representatives and a barrage of academic papers on learning loss and mental health disorders among children.

But scientists who study viral transmission see another lesson in the pandemic school closures: Had the indoor air been cleaner and safer, they may have been avoidable. The coronavirus is an airborne threat, and the incidence of Covid was about 40 percent lower in schools that improved air quality, one study found.

The average American school building is about 50 years old. According to a 2020 analysis by the Government Accountability Office, about 41 percent of school districts needed to update or replace the heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems in at least half of their schools, about 36,000 buildings in all.

There have never been more resources available for the task: nearly $200 billion, from an array of pandemic-related measures, including the American Rescue Plan Act. Another $350 billion was allotted to state and local governments, some of which could be used to improve ventilation in schools.

“It’s a once-in-a-generation opportunity to fix decades of neglect of our school building infrastructure,” said Joseph Allen, director of the Healthy Buildings program at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Schoolchildren are heading back to classrooms by the tens of millions now, yet much of the funding for such improvements is sitting untouched in most states.

Among the reasons: a lack of clear federal guidance on cleaning indoor air, no senior administration official designated to oversee such a campaign, few experts to help the schools spend the funds wisely, supply chain delays for new equipment, and insufficient staff to maintain improvements that are made.

Some school officials simply may not know that the funds are available. “I cannot believe the amount of money that is still unspent,” Dr. Allen said. “It’s really frustrating.”

The pandemic prompted the federal funding, but the problem is bigger than the coronavirus. Indoor air may be contaminated not just by pathogens, but also by a range of pollutants like carbon monoxide, radon and lead particles. Concentrations can be five times higher or more indoors than they are outdoors, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

And smoke is an increasing threat. A plume from Canadian wildfires closed schools across the Northeast in early June. Smoke closed 120 schools in California last September.

The air in Denver was so fouled by wildfire smoke in May that the city briefly ranked as the second most polluted worldwide. Schools remained open, though many outdoor events were postponed.

Nearly one in 13 American schoolchildren has asthma, which can be exacerbated by exposure to smoke; already it is the leading cause of absenteeism due to chronic illness. Asthma rates at several Denver public schools are higher than 20 percent, more than twice the national average.

Modern air-filtration systems can remove even the fine particulates that make smoke so unhealthy. And decades of research have suggested that improving air quality also can raise academic performance, increase test scores, bolster attention and memory, and decrease absences due to illness or other factors.

“We would not accept drinking water that is full of pathogens and looks dirty,” said Linsey Marr, an expert in airborne transmission of viruses at Virginia Tech. “But we’ve been living with air that is full of pathogens and dirty.”

Until recently, it wasn’t even clear to school officials how clean the air in school buildings should be. In May, however, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that there should be five so-called air changes — the equivalent of replacing all the air in a room — per hour.

In June, the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers, an influential standards-setting organization, published its first-ever requirements for “pathogen-free air flow” in buildings, including combinations of filtration and ventilation technologies that building managers can ratchet up during outbreaks.

“If I had to pick one place for pilot programs to invest money in layers for ventilation and filtration, school is the place to start,” said David Michaels, an epidemiologist at George Washington University who led the Occupational Safety and Health Administration during the Obama administration.

There are tentative signs of progress. A C.D.C. survey last year found that 70 percent of 420 schools nationwide had evaluated their ventilation systems, although many implemented only low-cost improvements, like opening doors or windows.

An agency survey published in April found that one in three school districts had completed or planned improvements in air quality, and that more than one-quarter had installed air cleaners or planned to do so. Several states are pursuing legislation intended to improve air quality in schools.

Researchers at the C.D.C. and the Georgia Department of Public Health surveyed 169 elementary schools in Georgia at the end of 2020, after in-person learning had resumed in the state.

Schools that improved ventilation had 39 percent fewer Covid cases, compared with schools that had not. Schools that combined better ventilation with filtration had 48 percent fewer cases.

A large study of schools in Italy estimated that students in classrooms equipped with ventilation systems or devices that deliver clean air had an at least 74 percent lower risk of infection than students in classrooms with open windows.

C.D.C. researchers have estimated that air purifiers may decrease the exposure to aerosols — tiny floating droplets that might contain virus — by up to 65 percent.

But with few trees, asphalt-covered yards and overcrowded buildings, many urban schools are struggling to cope with pathogens, pollution and climate change.

Rising temperatures alone are straining their resources. Already this summer, students in Philadelphia and Baltimore were sent home because a lack of air-conditioning made school buildings unbearable, even dangerous.

In the Denver district, 37 schools have no air-conditioning. Officials have installed new cooling systems in 11 schools over the past few years and plan to complete 13 more by the end of 2024.

“Before we had the air cooling system, it was getting to the high 90s, low 100s in our classrooms,” said Andrea Renteria, principal of Garden Place Elementary School, on Denver’s north side. The school was established in 1904, and 92 percent of the student body are children of color.

It still gets too hot in the school’s gym. With the floor-to-ceiling windows painted shut, the coach props open doors to let in air. But the school is barely a block away from the nexus of two major highways, so the outside air isn’t much healthier.

Students of color more often attend schools close to highways and factories that spew air pollution, and heat waves are becoming more intense across the country.

Several studies have found that hot classrooms result in a drop in test scores, which particularly affects students of color. That link alone accounts for roughly 5 percent of the racial achievement gap, according to a 2018 estimate by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Still, urban schools must juggle a host of competing priorities, including the safety, mental health and achievement of students. Air quality can seem less urgent.

“Even in the times of Covid, there were things that were higher on the list for people than that,” Terita Walker, the principal of East High, said.

In an effort to find solutions to the indoor-air problem, researchers at the University of Colorado, Boulder, installed air quality monitors in dozens of Denver schools, including East High, before and after introducing classroom air purifiers.

Mark Hernandez, an air quality expert at the university who leads the project, and his colleagues have found that in an average classroom with poor ventilation — about 1,000 square feet, a ceiling height of about eight feet and occupied by 25 students — two air purifiers can remove particulate matter that might trigger allergies and asthma, and double the air exchange rate.

The data have prompted state officials to offer air purifiers to schools that most need them. The researchers now have a grant to install 2,400 air quality monitors in schools throughout the state, and will assess whether the improvements make a meaningful difference in absenteeism.

Without guidance from experts like Dr. Hernandez, however, finding the right air filters — let alone overhauling an entire ventilation system — is daunting for school officials.

“You’re asking school districts and facilities that really don’t understand the sort of fundamentals and mechanical systems to make decisions,” said Richard Corsi, dean of the College of Engineering at University of California, Davis. “It’s difficult for them.”

In the absence of consistent federal guidance, school districts are cobbling together a patchwork of measures.

Los Angeles schools invested in 55,000 commercial-grade air cleaners, while Seattle schools opted for less costly hand-held sensors. In Westchester County, N.Y., officials distributed more than 5,600 air purifiers to district schools. Boston Public Schools set up a district-wide system to monitor air quality.

In many schools, however, spending on ventilation trails other priorities, like hiring staff, purchasing laptops and other equipment, or extra help for students who have fallen behind. Across the country, spending per school on air quality ranges widely, from just $67 to $2,675,000, according to a report in November.

For districts that make it a priority, cleaner air can yield big payoffs. Less than 30 miles from East High, Boulder High School has air purifiers and sensors in nearly every classroom that can alert technicians when the air quality drops below acceptable levels.

The Boulder schools made the improvements with a $576.5 million bond issued in 2014, long before the pandemic, and partnered with scientists to collect data before and after the installations.

The research wrapped up early last year, and the results so far indicate that the network produced a 44 percent drop in carbon dioxide levels, often used as a proxy for air quality. The school had a coronavirus outbreak during the Omicron wave — seven staff members and 237 students — but arguably fared better than the county as a whole.

In State College, Pa., many schools shut down for days or weeks during Covid-19 surges because too many students or teachers were sick with the virus.

But State College Friends School, a small Quaker institution, has remained open since the fall of 2020. The school identified just four cases of in-school transmission in the 2021-22 school year.

The school was built in the 1960s, and every classroom opens to the outside. Large classroom windows remain open on all but the most frigid days, and each room is outfitted with air filters and fans.

When the weather cooperates, students play outside on the lush grounds; when it doesn’t, they snack on camp chairs in covered patios outside their classrooms.

Friends is an unusual school by most measures. It’s tiny, with just 120 students. The staff members and students wore high-quality masks until the number of local Covid cases dropped below 50 per 100,000 people this spring. And the school has gotten assistance from air quality experts at Penn State University, practically in its backyard.

Not every school can look like Friends — nor is that necessary.

Dr. Hernandez estimates that spending $65 per student per classroom per year on air purifiers could significantly reduce pathogens and pollution in classrooms.

At East High in Denver, as in the rest of America, Covid is fast receding as a priority. Mr. Oxman, the music teacher, is back full time, but the pandemic doesn’t seem to have brought many lasting changes. East High is mostly the same.

“Things are kind of going back to the way they were,” he said.

Opinion | Putin Has His Revenge on Prigozhin

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That bargain held for years. But the war in Ukraine unsettled the balance. Mr. Prigozhin, sensing an opportunity to advance his career, began to challenge the military leadership. When the conflict between the two became untenable, Mr. Putin’s preference was plain: He unambiguously sided with the army. In January, he emphasized that the war ought to be fought in line with the general staff’s strategy, a clear hint that Wagner should be subordinate. By June, all Wagner fighters who wished to remain in Ukraine were expected to formalize contracts with the defense ministry and accept the supervision of its generals. It proved to be the final straw. Rebellion soon followed.

It was a humiliating blow to Mr. Putin’s regime. The pain came less from the betrayal by Mr. Prigozhin, who’d always been erratic, than from Mr. Putin’s personal responsibility for the disaster. On the state’s dime, the president had nurtured an entity that he didn’t keep in check. The mutiny, following Mr. Putin’s inability to manage the escalating tensions between the defense ministry and Wagner, was a direct result of this fundamental failure.

The political toll was considerable. In the fallout, Mr. Putin found himself yielding to Mr. Prigozhin, compromising his own stature and enduring public indignity. He was now confronted with a thorny dilemma: how to dismantle a private army without provoking political backlash or violence. In the rebellion’s aftermath, the Kremlin’s primary concern was to neutralize Wagner, both politically and militarily, with the aim of restoring the stability of the state.

The first step was to play for time. Under the agreement that quelled the mutiny, Mr. Prigozhin secured his freedom and Wagner members were protected from being charged for their participation, astonishingly enabling them to travel freely as if nothing had happened. This approach, in hindsight, appears logical: Mr. Putin aimed to mollify Mr. Prigozhin, giving him the sense that he was irreplaceable and that he enjoyed the state’s protection.

This was critical in ensuring Mr. Prigozhin’s exit from Russia. That allowed the clamping down on some of his Russian assets and the stripping back of access to lucrative contracts (even though his business did not collapse entirely). More important, Mr. Prigozhin’s departure was a prelude to the disbanding of Wagner. The most dedicated Wagner troops, a contingent of around 5,000, were coerced to relocate to Belarus under a new leader, the loyal and compliant Andrei Troshev; the group’s heavy artillery was returned to the defense ministry; and the hesitant were forced either to enlist with the military or to return home. In Africa and Syria, Wagner forces have been put under close oversight with a plan to gradually absorb their projects into the security services and defense ministry.

Tom Courtney, Runner Who Lunged to Grab Olympic Gold, Dies at 90

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Tom Courtney, a Fordham University graduate who with a homestretch surge and a lunge at the tape won a furious 800-meter run by inches in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, capturing the gold medal for the United States, died on Tuesday in Naples, Fla. He was 90.

The cause was amyloidosis, his son, Tom Jr., said.

Courtney, a 23-year-old Army private at the time, was not the favorite going into the 1956 Games; that distinction belonged to a fellow American, Arnie Sowell, a University of Pittsburgh senior who had repeatedly defeated Courtney throughout their college careers, even though Courtney had a string of triumphs of his own at Fordham.

But if Sowell was quicker, Courtney, at 6 feet 2 inches and 179 pounds, was recognized as the stronger of the two. Both made the United States Olympic team and advanced to the eight-man 800-meter final.

When the moment arrived, however, on a narrow and spongy dirt track, Courtney was overwhelmed.

“As I stepped onto the track,” he once wrote, “I felt my legs go rubbery. I saw over a hundred thousand people in the stands, and before I knew it I had collapsed onto the infield grass. ‘Can it be,’ I remember thinking, as I lay there gazing up at the sky, ‘that I am so nervous I’m not going to be able to run?’

“Then I realized how ridiculous I would look, flat on my back on the grass as they started the race,” he continued. “I guess the humor of that image made me lose my nervousness. I was able to recover, get up and jog to the starting line.”

At the final turn of the two-lap race, Sowell led and Courtney was second. Then Sowell started to sprint, and Courtney followed suit, swinging to the outside. He caught Sowell on the turn and passed him. But coming up from behind, Derek Johnson of Britain was also surging, and with only 40 meters to go he sneaked between the two Americans and seemed about to win.

“It was a new kind of agony for me,” Courtney said of that moment in an interview with Runner’s World magazine in 2001. “My head was exploding, my stomach ripping. Even the tips of my fingers ached. The only thought in my mind was, ‘If I live, I’ll never run again.’ I felt it all slipping away, but then I looked at the tape and realized that this was the only chance I would ever have.”

Courtney caught Johnson in the final strides and threw himself at the tape, winning the gold medal by one-tenth of a second, in 1 minute 47.7 seconds. (The record at the time, set in 1955, was 1:46.6. The record today, set in 2012 by David Rudisha of Kenya, is 1:40.91.)

Courtney collapsed after the finish, and when he came around, he asked Johnson, “Who won?”

“You did,” the Englishman said.

Courtney and Johnson were so exhausted that the medal ceremony was delayed for an hour. Courtney remembered it well. “As I listened to the national anthem,” he said, “all I could think of was how thankful I was that the year was right and the day was right and I was right.”

Five days after that race, Courtney won a second gold medal by anchoring the United States to victory in the 4×400-meter relay.

Thomas William Courtney was born on Aug. 17, 1933, in South Orange, N.J., and grew up nearby in Livingston. His father, Jim, played baseball for the Newark Bears, the top minor league team of the New York Yankees, before becoming a railroad worker. His wife, Dolores (Goerdes) Courtney, was a homemaker who was born into a German-speaking family.

Tom initially played baseball at Livingston High School, gave it up for tennis and then took up the pole vault. After the track coach had him try the half-mile, Courtney became state champion a year later.

Entering Fordham, he anchored its team to a world record in the two-mile relay in 1954. In college and after, he won national titles every year from 1954 to 1958. In 1957 alone, he set a world record of 1:46.8 for 880 yards outdoors and equaled the world record of 1:09.5 for 600 yards indoors. In May 1955, he appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated running in his Fordham reds.

That spring, Courtney graduated from Fordham with a bachelor’s degree, and that summer, he participated in track meets in Europe. In Germany, he sought out the family home of Rudolf Harbig, a German track athlete of the 1930s who was killed during World War II. He found Harbig’s mother there and asked to see her son’s training notebooks. Able to read in German thanks to his own mother, Courtney gleaned a crucial tip: Harbig had trained running downhill to increase his pace.

Courtney adopted the technique. He later considered it a crucial factor in his ability to beat Sowell and win the Olympic gold.

Drafted into the Army after his college graduation, Courtney was allowed to spend his time on duty focusing on track. He was honorably discharged in 1957.

He earned a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard in 1959. In later years he worked as an investor at firms in New York, Boston and Pittsburgh. He married Posy L’Hommedieu in 1963.

In addition to Tom Jr., he is survived by his wife; a brother, Kevin; two more sons, Peter and Frank; and nine grandchildren. He had a home in Sewickley, Pa., from 1975 until his death, and in 1993 he began splitting his time between Sewickley and Naples. He died in an assisted living facility in Naples.

When Courtney ended his racing career at age 25, he promised he would run a sub-5-minute mile every year. He succeeded through his 50th birthday, when he ran a 4:36 mile against high schoolers in Sewickley. Then he quit, saying, “I’ve done enough.”

In an interview for this obituary in 2013, he recalled that last mile:

“After the first lap, the coach said to his kids, ‘Don’t let that old guy beat you.’ After the second lap, he said, ‘Don’t let that old guy catch you.’ After the third lap, the coach screamed, ‘Catch that old guy!’”

Frank Litsky, a longtime Times sportswriter, died in 2018. Alex Traub contributed reporting.

Beloved wild horses that roam Theodore Roosevelt National Park may be removed. Many oppose the plan

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BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — The beloved wild horses that roam freely in North Dakota’s Theodore Roosevelt National Park could be removed under a National Park Service proposal that worries advocates who say the horses are a cultural link to the past.

Visitors who drive the scenic park road can often see bands of horses, a symbol of the West and sight that delights tourists. Advocates want to see the horses continue to roam the Badlands, and disagree with park officials who have branded the horses as “livestock.”

The Park Service is revising its livestock plans and writing an environmental assessment to examine the impacts of taking no new action — or to remove the horses altogether.

Removal would entail capturing horses and giving some of them first to tribes, and later auctioning the animals or giving them to other entities. Another approach would include techniques to prevent future reproduction and would allow those horses to live out the rest of their lives in the park.

The horses have allies in government leaders and advocacy groups. One advocate says the horses’ popularity won’t stop park officials from removing them from the landscape of North Dakota’s top tourist attraction.

“At the end of the day, that’s our national park paid for by our tax dollars, and those are our horses. We have a right to say what happens in our park and to the animals that live there,” Chasing Horses Wild Horse Advocates President Chris Kman told The Associated Press.

Last year, Park Superintendent Angie Richman told The Bismarck Tribune that the park has no law or requirement for the horses to be in the park. Regardless of what decision is ultimately made, the park will have to reduce its roughly 200 horses to 35-60 animals under a 1978 environmental assessment’s population objective, she previously said.

Kman said she would like the park “to use science” to “properly manage the horses,” including a minimum of 150-200 reproductive horses for genetic viability. Impacts of the park’s use of a contraceptive on mares are unclear, she added.

Ousting the horse population “would have a detrimental impact on the park as an ecosystem,” Kman said. The horses are a historical fixture, while the park reintroduced bison and elk, she said.

A couple bands of wild horses were accidentally fenced into the park after it was established in 1947, said Castle McLaughlin, who in the 1980s researched the history and origins of the horses while working as a graduate student for the Park Service in North Dakota.

Park officials in the early years sought to eradicate the horses, shooting them on sight and hiring local cowboys to round them up and remove them, she said. The park even sold horses to a local zoo at one point to be food for large cats.

Around 1970, a new superintendent discovered Roosevelt had written about the presence of wild horses in the Badlands during his time there. Park officials decided to retain the horses as a historic demonstration herd to interpret the open-range ranching era. “However, the Park Service still wasn’t thrilled about them,” McLaughlin told the AP.

“Basically they’re like cultural artifacts almost because they reflect several generations of western North Dakota ranchers and Native people. They were part of those communities,” and might have ties to Hunkpapa Lakota leader Sitting Bull, she said.

In the 1880s, Theodore Roosevelt hunted and ranched as a young man in the Badlands of what is now western North Dakota. The Western tourist town of Medora is at the gates of the national park that bears his name.

Roosevelt looms large in North Dakota, where a presidential library in his honor is under construction near the park — a legislative push in 2019 that was championed by Republican Gov. Doug Burgum.

Burgum has offered for the state to collaborate with the Park Service to manage the horses. Earlier this year, North Dakota’s Republican-controlled Legislature passed a resolution in support of preserving the horses.

Republican U.S. Sen. John Hoeven of North Dakota has included legislation in the U.S. Interior Department’s appropriations bill that he told the AP “would direct them to keep horses in the park in line with what was there at the time that Teddy Roosevelt was out in Medora.”

“Most all of the input we’ve got is that people want to retain horses. We’ve been clear we think (the park) should retain horses,” Hoeven said. He’s pressing the park to keep more than 35-60 horses for genetics reasons.

The senator said he expects the environmental review to be completed soon, which will provide an opportunity for public comment. Richman told the AP the park plans to release the assessment this summer. A timeline for a final decision is unclear.

The environmental review will look at the impact of each of the three proposals in a variety of areas, Maureen McGee-Ballinger, the park’s deputy superintendent, told the AP.

There were thousands of responses during the previous public comment period on the park’s proposals — the vast majority of which opposed “complete livestock removal.”

Kman’s group has been active in gathering support for the horses, including drafting government resolutions and contacting congressional offices, tribal leaders, similar advocacy groups and “pretty much anyone that would listen to me,” she said.

McLaughlin said the park’s effort carries “a stronger possibility that they’ll succeed this time than has ever been the case in the past. I mean, they have never been this determined and publicly open about their intentions, but I’ve also never seen the state fight for the horses like they are now.”

The park’s North Unit, about 70 miles (112.65 kilometers) from Medora, has about nine longhorn cattle. The proposals would affect the longhorns, too, though the horses are the greater concern. Hoeven said his legislation doesn’t address the longhorns. The cattle are managed under a 1970 plan.

Theodore Roosevelt National Park “is one of very few national parks that does have horses, and that sets it apart,” North Dakota Commerce Tourism and Marketing Director Sara Otte Coleman said in January at a press conference with Burgum and lawmakers.

Wild horses also roam in Assateague Island National Seashore in Maryland and Virginia.

The horses’ economic impact on tourism is impossible to delineate, but their popularity is high among media, photographers, travel writers and social media influencers who tout them, Otte Coleman said.

“Removal of the horses really eliminates a feature that our park guests are accustomed to seeing,” she said.

Russia Denies Killing Prigozhin, Calling the Idea Anti-Putin Propaganda

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The Kremlin on Friday heatedly denied blame for the presumed death of the mercenary chief Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, dismissing the idea that the Russian government had destroyed a business jet reportedly carrying Mr. Prigozhin as Western propaganda aimed at smearing President Vladimir V. Putin.

“An absolute lie,” said Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman.

The denials were repeated in various forms throughout the day by Russia’s foreign minister, state-controlled broadcasters and Mr. Putin’s closest foreign ally, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, president of Belarus. But they were bound to ring hollow to many people inside and outside Russia who know the Kremlin’s record of denying — or accusing others of — actions it later admitted to or was shown to have carried out.

Some European leaders, many Western news outlets and people close to Mr. Prigozhin’s Wagner paramilitary force have speculated that Mr. Putin had Mr. Prigozhin killed in retaliation for his brief mutiny against Russia’s military leadership in June. U.S. officials so far have been more cautious about assigning blame, but President Biden said on Thursday: “There’s not much that happens in Russia that Putin’s not behind. But I don’t know enough to know the answer.”

Speaking to reporters on Friday, Mr. Peskov rejected suggestions about the cause of the plane crash, on Wednesday northwest of Moscow, as mere Western speculation. But in the two months after the Wagner rebellion, many Russians as well as people abroad expressed surprise that Mr. Prigozhin was alive and free.

The Russian government has not confirmed the identities of those killed on Wednesday, but it has said that Mr. Prigozhin and Wagner’s top field commander, Dmitri Utkin, were among the 10 people listed on the jet’s manifest, that 10 bodies were recovered and that there were no survivors. Mr. Putin spoke of Mr. Prigozhin in the past tense on Thursday, saying, “This was a person with a complicated fate.”

U.S. and other Western officials have voiced growing confidence that Mr. Prigozhin is dead, and have said there is evidence that an explosion on the plane caused it to fall from the sky and crash northwest of Moscow.

Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, like Mr. Peskov, on Friday advised waiting for the results of Russia’s official inquiry into the incident. Investigators said they were analyzing the victims’ DNA for identification and that they had recovered the plane’s flight data recorders.

“I would suggest focusing on the facts and not what is being said by the Western media,” Mr. Lavrov told Russian state media.

Mr. Lukashenko, who relies heavily on political and economic support from his Russian counterpart, said, “Knowing Putin, how scrupulous, cautious, accurate he is, I do not believe that he would do this,” according to the Belarusian state news agency Belta.

But Mr. Lukashenko, who acted as an intermediary to end the June mutiny, said at the time that in their conversations, Mr. Putin had raised the possibility of having the mercenary boss killed. He said he had warned Mr. Prigozhin that the Russian leader intended to “squash him like a bug.”

On Russian state television, cheerleaders for Mr. Putin and his war against Ukraine have devoted less attention to the cause of the plane crash than to Western media reports about it. Vladimir Solovyov, a leading talk show host, suggested that Western countries were involved in the death of Mr. Prigozhin, “one way or another.”

As he spoke, images of the front pages of British tabloids flashed on the screen behind him, with headlines accusing Mr. Putin. Western media and their “agents,” Mr. Solovyov said, are “pushing an agenda that’s convenient for the West.”

Olga Skabeyeva, the host of another prominent show, similarly displayed a parade of British, French and Spanish newspapers on her talk show. “The plane crash with Prigozhin is on all the newspaper covers, though, for some reason, the headline on all of them is the same: ‘Putin’s Revenge,’” she said. “That’s how a free and democratic press looks. They don’t even alter the words — that’s how strict their training manual is.”

Western media outlets, wrote Sergei Markov, a former Kremlin adviser, “cannot rationally explain why Putin should remove Prigozhin, who by this point posed no political threat. That’s why they explain this as Putin’s irrational hatred of any enemies.”

In fact, many Western analysts have said that in an autocratic system ruled by fear and force, Mr. Putin looked weaker for not severely punishing Mr. Prigozhin. Mr. Putin himself has said that the one transgression he could not forgive was betrayal.

The Kremlin has denied links to assassinations and attempted assassinations of several other Putin enemies that Western governments have concluded were the work of Russian intelligence agencies. Russian media have trumpeted those denials — sometimes with pointed remarks about the misfortune that can befall “traitors” — while floating, without evidence, an array of theories about others being responsible.

In 2014, when Russian troops infiltrated and then seized the Ukrainian region of Crimea, Mr. Putin and his proxies at first insisted that Russian forces were not there, and then admitted it. Shortly after, pro-Moscow forces seized control of parts of the eastern Donbas region, starting a civil war; the Kremlin said they were just local separatists and denied any connection, but evidence soon emerged that Russia was instigating, arming and, to some extent, carrying out the rebellion.

For years the government denied the existence of the Wagner group and Mr. Prigozhin denied any ties to it, before both reversed their stories. They also denied a Russian disinformation campaign to influence American elections, until Mr. Prigozhin admitted to that, too.

And as Mr. Putin built up Russian forces on Ukraine’s border in 2021 and early 2022, he and others insisted there was no plan to go to war. Then he invaded, accused Ukraine of being the aggressor and claimed that the government in Kyiv — headed by a democratically elected, Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelensky — was run by Nazis.

In justifying the war, prominent Russians have made baseless claims about genocide against ethnic Russians, and about American missiles and bioweapons labs on Ukrainian soil, while denying the targeting of Ukrainian civilians.

Wagner, known for its brutality and effectiveness, had helped prop up Kremlin-aligned authoritarian governments in Syria, the Central African Republic and Mali, and then spearheaded Russia’s long, ultimately successful battle to capture the city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine.

But for months, Mr. Prigozhin complained to his large social media following that the Ministry of Defense and the military establishment were corrupt, inept and treacherously undercutting the war effort. He said the military leaders, jealous of his prominence and Wagner’s success, had withheld needed gear from the mercenary force.

Then came the government’s move to absorb mercenary forces into the Ministry of Defense, eliminating what independence Wagner had. Mr. Prigozhin protested, but Mr. Putin sided with the ministry.

The warlord stepped up his public complaints, unwilling to accept that he had lost the political power struggle, and edged dangerously close to criticizing Mr. Putin, himself. He even publicly rebutted the president’s rationale for war — which Russia has treated in other cases as a criminal offense — saying that Ukraine had posed no threat and was not controlled by fascists.

With time running out for Wagner fighters to either disband or sign on with the military, Mr. Prigozhin in late June mounted his mutiny, which he said was intended to topple the military leadership, not Mr. Putin.

Mr. Putin on Friday signed a decree requiring paramilitary fighters to swear an oath of loyalty to the nation, a step toward bringing them under Kremlin control.

To resolve the uprising two months ago without open warfare, Mr. Lukashenko offered to let Mr. Prigozhin and his fighters relocate to Belarus. Some of them apparently did go there, but Mr. Prigozhin was repeatedly seen in St. Petersburg, in Moscow and in Africa.

Mr. Lukashenko said on Friday that he was not responsible for guaranteeing the Wagner leader’s security.

Reporting was contributed by Victoria Kim, Shashank Bengali and Anton Troianovski.

Judge Allows Missouri’s Ban on Youth Gender Medicine to Take Effect

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A state judge in Missouri on Friday denied a request to temporarily block a state law passed this year that restricts gender-related medical treatments for minors. The ruling was issued by Missouri Circuit Court Judge Steven Ohmer, three days before the ban is set to go into effect. A legal challenge to the ban brought by civil rights groups is ongoing.

Under Missouri’s law, clinicians will not be allowed to treat any minor who is not already receiving gender transition care, which includes drugs that suppress puberty; hormone treatments with estrogen or testosterone; and, in rare cases, surgeries. Minors currently receiving care can continue to do so.

The law will also affect transgender adults, as it bans Medicaid coverage of gender transition care for people of all ages in the state. The law has a “sunset” provision and will be in effect for four years.

The legal challenge to Missouri’s ban has been particularly high-profile. A whistle-blower from a pediatric gender clinic in the state, Jamie Reed, said earlier this year that doctors at the clinic had hastily prescribed hormones with lasting effects to adolescents with psychiatric problems. Ms. Reed filed an affidavit about her experience in February and testified on Tuesday in favor of the ban.

Chloe Cole, a 19-year-old who has frequently testified to state legislatures about regretting gender treatments she received as a younger teenager in California, also testified on behalf of the state of Missouri against the injunction.

The plaintiffs in the legal challenge include three transgender minors who are seeking medical care to transition and will no longer be able to do so once the law is in effect. The plaintiffs also include doctors in the state and two national L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy organizations. Doctors who violate the new law could lose their medical licenses or be sued.

According to the Williams Institute, a research center at the U.C.L.A. School of Law, an estimated 2,900 minors in Missouri identify as transgender.

At least 20 states have banned or severely restricted transition care for transgender minors in a flurry of legislation, led by Republicans. Most of the bans were passed during this year’s legislative session.

Legal challenges have been brought by civil rights groups in at least 13 states. In June, a judge struck down a ban in Arkansas — the first such law to be passed in the United States — arguing that the law unfairly singled out transition care and transgender children. The ruling was a significant victory for transgender minors and their families. On Friday, a state district court judge in Texas temporarily blocked a law that would ban gender-related treatments for minors.

But a series of legal setbacks has clouded the picture. In August, a federal appellate panel ruled that a similar ban in Alabama could be enforced while the case proceeds. Other disagreements in the courts have signaled that these cases may ultimately be decided by the United States Supreme Court.

The American Academy of Pediatrics last month reaffirmed its position that these types of medical treatments are beneficial for many youth, and has vehemently opposed any government interference in medical decisions that it says are best made by parents and doctors. But the group also took the unusual step of commissioning a review of medical research on the treatments.

The law will restrict any new patients from receiving gender affirming treatments while the case is heard in state court over the next year. And it will continue to prevent Medicaid coverage for the estimated 12,400 transgender people in the state.

Judge Ohmer, who typically presides over juvenile cases, wrote that the science in support of gender-related medicine for youth was “conflicting and unclear,” adding that “the evidence raises more questions than answers.”

In response to the ruling, the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri said it would continue to fight to overturn the ban: “The case is not over and will go to a full trial on the merits.”

A Local’s Guide to Majorca

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T’s new monthly travel series, Flocking To, highlights places you might already have on your wish list, sharing tips from frequent visitors and locals alike. Sign up here to find us in your inbox once a month, as well as our weekly T List newsletter. And you can always reach us at tlist@nytimes.com.

Majorca, the largest of Spain’s Balearic Islands, has been a classic summer destination for Europeans and Brits for decades. But long before the big resorts sprung up along the coastline and villas came with helipads, the island’s hilltop villages attracted artists, musicians and writers in search of year-round sun and solitude. Among the best known of those early visitors were the Polish composer Frédéric Chopin and the French novelist George Sand, who spent the winter of 1838 in the town of Valldemossa, in the mountains above Majorca’s northwest coast. By 1929, when the British writer Robert Graves and the American poet Laura Riding arrived in the nearby village of Deià — at the recommendation of the American writer Gertrude Stein — and later built a home there, that picturesque hamlet of stone houses and olive groves was already a fledgling artists’ colony. In 1956, the Barcelona-born artist Joan Miró and his family moved to the outskirts of Palma. Plenty of artistic talent was homegrown, too, nurtured by generations of weavers, glassblowers and ceramists. One of Spain’s most prominent contemporary artists, Miquel Barceló, grew up on the island painting landscapes with his mother and her friends. Among the island’s many signature local crafts is the roba de llengües, or cloth of tongues, a style of ikat believed to have arrived from Asia centuries ago via the Silk Road. And it’s that deeply rooted artistic tradition combined with an extraordinary natural beauty that’s attracting the latest influx of creative types. In the last few years, a number of artists and designers have left larger cities in Europe and moved to Majorca. Some of these new arrivals are renovating old houses and farms in and around the country towns of Sóller and Deià or choosing to base themselves in Palma’s Old Town, where Gothic spires loom over the port, and there’s a fresh wave of contemporary art galleries and idiosyncratic shops dedicated to supporting local artisans. All over the island, new or newly revived hotels compete for the most impressive views.

For the first installment of our series of Flocking To travel guides, we asked four locals or frequent visitors to Majorca to share the places they love most. One word of advice for first-time visitors: Majorca sprawls across roughly 1,400 square miles (it’s about the size of Long Island), so if you’re planning on exploring, you might want to rent a car.

Stefania Borras, the designer and founder of the fashion line Datura and a native Majorcan, opened the Datura Studio Isla boutique in Deià, Majorca, in 2022.

Dalad Kambhu, originally from Bangkok, is the chef and co-owner of Kindee, a Michelin-starred Thai restaurant in Berlin. Since the year 2020, Kambhu has been spending several months a year on Majorca with her husband, the architectural designer Geoffrey Grunfeld.

Adriana Meunié, the textile artist, is a native Majorcan who moved back to the island in 2014 after working in Barcelona and Berlin.

Matthew Williamson, the fashion designer turned interior designer, moved from London to Majorca in 2016. His first home décor book, “Living Bright,” comes out in October.

“I was incredibly impressed with the newly reinvented Grand Hotel Son Net [about eight miles west of Palma] when I went to visit the other day. It’s a very special place: old-school but fresh and contemporary, and jasmine as far as the eye could see. It has all the bells and whistles but doesn’t feel too stuffy. I also recently found an especially cute little place in Palma called Palma Riad. It’s Moroccan inspired — there is in fact a lot of Islamic influence on Majorca because it was under Muslim rule for centuries — and feels very new for Palma. I would also go there for pre-dinner drinks.” (Rooms at Grand Hotel Son Net from about $650 a night; rooms at Palma Riad from about $600 a night) — Matthew Williamson

“For me, Antoni Esteva, the co-owner and architect of Es Racó d’Artà [in the island’s northeast], is a poet. I think he really understands space, light, materials and the beauty of simplicity so profoundly. All of his projects, from the gallery Sa Pleta Freda in Son Servera to the hotel Son Gener, are created with such a strong vision that connects the past with the future.” (Rooms from about $520 a night) — Adriana Meunié

“I am so excited about the new Hotel Corazón [in the northwest]. It was just opened by two friends of mine, the artists Kate Bellm and Edgar Lopez. One of my favorite chefs on the island, Grace Berrow, is cooking there.” (Rooms from about $380 a night) — Stefania Borras

“Maria Solivellas, the chef and owner of Ca na Toneta, in the rural village of Caimari, cooks traditional Majorcan food [seasonal options include coca, a flatbread topped with fresh roasted peppers or arroz brut, a savory rice casserole] but her own way, and [often] with vegetables she grows herself. Be sure to check out her shop where you can find locally made ceramics.” — A.M.

“The food at Sa Foradada is good — go for the paella — but the views of the sea and the cliffs are insane. It’s only accessible by boat or by a hike of almost an hour, and it’s essential to book in advance — tables are limited. When it comes to fish, Casa Manolo [in the southern village of Ses Salines] is one of my favorites on the island. I used to go there as a kid with my dad who always loved eating well. It’s a very traditional place not far from amazing beaches. For drinks in the evening, I love Bar La Sang in Palma. This homey natural wine bar is kind of the place to be at the moment because the island’s natural wine scene is getting really interesting. You can order small, delicious bites, and there are often different visiting chefs cooking here.” — S.B.

“Cati Ribot is a female winemaker based in the island’s northeast, in Santa Margalida. She’s doing beautiful natural wines made from indigenous grapes [such as prensal blanc and escursac]. Her natural wine tastings are on Saturdays only and you must email for appointments. I also love Ses Coves, a rustic restaurant in the north of the island at the foot of Puig de Sant Miquel, which specializes in Spanish meat and fish cooked over fire. Especially delicious are the grilled sweetbreads. Everything was so good; I was sucking on the bones. Afterward, I recommend going to the nearby caves that have the most incredible stalagmite and stalactite formations.” — Dalad Kambhu

“Inside Villa Rullan, in Deià, are a very charming bistro and a boutique. The shop, named Joy, sells a great mix of locally and sustainably made crafts, from baskets and bags handwoven with palm leaves or grass to whimsical hand-painted ceramic mugs.” — M.W.

“La Pecera is a great design store in Palma founded by Marlene Albaladejo, who’s an important sustainable design pioneer on the island. Look for chairs made partly with woven local bulrush grass and woven palm leaf pendant lamps.” — A.M.

“The fashion designer Rosa Esteva [of the Cortana brand and boutiques] is the definition of a Majorcan woman: so elegant, sophisticated and proud of her land and identity. Her new shop in Palma is stunning. It’s a maze of white rooms that feature her clothes: beautiful, practical and made from natural materials. She makes clothes for women who are active and the colors she uses perfectly reflect the hues of the island. Earth Core is a new gallery and boutique in the town of Sóller. It was opened by transplants from Berlin: Karin [Oender] and David [Mallon], the founders of Souvenir Official, a very cool T-shirt and hoodie brand. I appreciate it because it’s essentially a love letter to the island and pays tribute to local artisans, produce and plants. They serve up great fruit juices and use local plant dyes for their T-shirts, wraps and fabric bags.” — D.K.

“Cala Figuera is a charming fishing village in the southeast of the island that looks like Ibiza with its whitewashed buildings that descend into the bay.” — M.W.

“Valldemossa Sunday Market is the best spot to buy local delicacies like dried figs and peaches, honey, cheeses and charcuterie. Look for Joan and his tiny stall called Can Bernat. He is such a funny character and will make you try everything.” — S.B.

“The new La Bibi Gallery is adding some energy to the contemporary art scene in Palma, hosting progressive shows and also international artists through its residency program. Xtant is an excellent new textile and craft fair that takes place in May. It brings textile artisans here from around the world and offers lectures and events that are open to the public.” — A.M

Late Summer Getaways at 5 Country Hotels

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It’s late summer, when farm stands are bursting with color, piled with fruits and vegetables in the weeks before the season draws to a close. And where better to enjoy a summer harvest — or to try your hand at activities like beekeeping, foraging, even the art of ax-throwing — than at a farm or vineyard hotel?

Whether you want to escape to a working farm just outside of Nashville; a farm and vineyard with an inn and “yurt village” in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia; or a restored distillery and boutique hotel on a river in Cognac, France, these getaways for epicures and country-lovers await with fresh eggs, jams and food for the soul.

Wander this 450-acre farm and vineyard amid the Blue Ridge Mountains (its viognier, chardonnay and merlot have been winners of the Virginia Governor’s Cup competition) and you’ll find cattle, chickens, vegetable gardens — and a new 28 room-and-suite inn. Or you can stay in the “yurt village”: nine yurts made of cedar, making them feel more like cabins, situated between the inn and the winery’s tasting room. Book a yurt and you’ll have your own kitchenette and rainfall shower, as well as a porch and back deck from which to breathe in the mountain air. Each yurt can sleep two to six people; pets are welcome, too (for a fee).

As you might expect, meals at Nicewonder are farm-to-table affairs. Hickory, on the ground floor of the inn, serves seasonal, Appalachian-inspired dishes — like whipped Spam with house pickles, nori, yuzu hot sauce and fried saltines — and overlooks a lake and the vineyard. There’s also a bar and, of course, a wine cellar. And you can shop for flowers, vegetables, jams and jellies at the property’s produce market. In fact, you could spend an entire weekend just eating and imbibing. Yet there are miles of trails to tackle, leading you past trees, over hills and near a creek. You can go for a swim in the infinity pool and, come September, work out in a new “fitness yurt” with spin bikes and exercise equipment, or unwind with a spa treatment in the forthcoming “spa yurt village.” Prices from $335 a night in August and September, including breakfast.

A former stagecoach stop, this property, situated near the vineyards and farms of the Santa Ynez Valley, has been receiving guests since the late 1880s. Shuttered in 2018, it reopened this year after a renovation that included new buildings and a new name. You can choose from 67 rooms, four of which are restored cottages dating to the early 1900s. There are new guest rooms, each with a patio, terrace or sun porch, situated in structures called Guest Houses. Also new is the two-bedroom Courtyard cottage with a living room and private outdoor space where you can end the day beside an outdoor fireplace or in a hot tub. The Homestead cottage has two bedrooms and private outdoor space as well.

Beyond your sleeping quarters is the Tavern restaurant, where many of the ingredients come from an on-site garden and the menu focuses on grilled proteins and vegetables, served indoors or outside beneath a trellis. For dishes inspired by Chinese cuisine — think duck won tons, soy-braised Chinese eggplant, crispy pork belly, spicy peanuts, grilled shiitakes and shrimp toast — pop into Gin’s Tap Bar, named for the property’s former chef, Gin Lung Gin. Need a caffeine fix? Try Felix Feed & Coffee, where you can also order fresh baked goods and breakfast. For a cocktail or a glass of wine, head to the Bar. Or put on a bathing suit and visit the Shed, a poolside bar with casual Mediterranean-inspired fare. After a bite and a dip, hop on a bicycle and go for a ride past vineyards — or stay put and learn how to infuse your own olive oil with herbs from the garden. Prices from $950 a night.

While France is known for major wine regions like Bordeaux and Champagne, this restored distillery and boutique hotel aims to lure you to Cognac country in southwest France, home to leading producers such as Hennessy, Martell and Rémy Martin. The hotel opened in June in a belle epoque mansion by the Charente River and is part of the Almae Collection of hotels as well as a member of the hotel network Relais & Chateaux. Its 12 suites are set amid 12 acres of gardens rife with fruit trees, rose bushes and vegetables. Crack open a favorite novel, ease into the swimming pool, or follow the gardens toward the river. There, private canoes await. Or you can board the hotel’s boat and visit the town of Cognac. E-bikes are also available.

Meals can be had at Notes, a fine-dining restaurant with a four-course or seven-course tasting menu that makes use of herbs and vegetables from the property’s gardens, as well as ingredients from Cognac distilleries and local farms. Alternatively, head over to the old distillery building, which is now Brasserie des Flâneurs, where the French brasserie menu highlights seasonal produce like ceviche with citrus fruit from the property’s greenhouse. There’s also the Bar and Tea Room, connected to a terrace where you can have a pastry (or two) with your tea or coffee. Should you prefer something a bit stronger, you can order a cocktail, wine or — what else?— Cognac. Prices from 450 euros, or about $490, a night, including breakfast.

This storied Hudson Valley country estate about two hours north of Manhattan has attracted a long list of writers and thinkers, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes and W.E.B. Du Bois. In the early 1900s the property was bought from its original owners, the Benton family, by Amy and Joel E. Spingarn, one of the founders of the publisher Harcourt, Brace & Co. and a former president of the N.A.A.C.P. (he was the originator of the Spingarn Medal, awarded annually by the N.A.A.C.P.). Today the 250-acre property is a member of Design Hotels and has 37 rooms and suites. Recently, it opened Benton House along Webutuck Creek, where you’ll find 13 guest rooms, each with private outdoor space amid grasses and wildflowers. All look to nature for inspiration, with grass cloth wallpaper and beds by the Connecticut-based furniture maker Ian Ingersoll.

Head to the barns — which are covered in timber reclaimed from the old Tappan Zee Bridge Hudson River crossing — for a fitness or yoga class, or to use the gym and sauna. Outside you can play tennis, swim in the pool, stroll through a walled garden built in 1916, or take a private falconry session. You can hike and bike on the property, too. Or venture a little farther for a fly-fishing excursion, or a trip to nearby Maitri Farm, where you can browse produce and flowers (private tours are also available). Birders may want to check out the Ripley Waterfowl Conservancy. Other guests, in the tradition of Troutbeck, may simply want to sit back and converse over a meal. Settle into a booth in the Dining Room for seasonal dishes with local ingredients, like spelt ricotta cavatelli with chanterelles and garlic scapes. For bites on the go and late-night snacks, the Pantry offers temptations like salted chocolate chip cookies, coffee cake, brownies and blondies made in-house and available 24 hours. Prices from $400 a night.

Just 25 miles south of Nashville’s buzzing music scene, this nascent farm and inn offers a buzz of a different sort with seven apiaries that house millions of honeybees, along with some 1,300 apple trees, greenhouses (including an orangerie), formal kitchen gardens, crops and plenty of land for foraging fungi and berries. While the property calls to mind a historic farm, it has the comforts of a modern escape. You can choose from 62 rooms and suites, 16 cottages and many places to savor the land’s bounty. For casual meals, try Sojourner, where you can begin each day with pastries and eggs (lunch and dinner are also available). Even the cocktails are made with freshly harvested herbs and juices. Stop by the Farm Stand for produce, picnic baskets and preserves. And later this year, be on the lookout for January, a restaurant with a dining room and outdoor patio that plans to offer multicourse menus with ingredients grown at Southall.

If the pastoral views are not enough to shed your stress, head over to the 15,000-square-foot spa to decompress with treatments that use botanicals and ingredients, some from the farm. You can work out at the fitness center, float in the 104-degree mineral pool (there’s an outdoor pool, too), strike a pose at the property’s hilltop meditation and yoga spot, or challenge yourself on the ropes-and-obstacle course. Runners and hikers can take advantage of more than five miles of trails. And there’s no shortage of additional outdoor activities (some for a fee), including falconry, fishing, bee keeping, archery and ax-throwing. Prices from $559 a night in August, and from $839 beginning in September.

Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram and sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to get expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places to Go in 2023.

Empowering Nonprofits: Katriel Gayle Serion’s Socials Runway Marketing Consultancy – The Expert Digital Marketing Agency for Nonprofits

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Driving Impact, On Every Front: Socials Runway Marketing Consultancy – Pioneering Digital Marketing Agency for Nonprofits and Impact-Driven Brands

Guihulngan City, Philippines, August 25, 2023, In a landscape where action echoes louder than words, Katriel Gayle Serion widely known for “KatchmeDigital” emerges as the embodiment of a visionary marketer who walks the talk. Socials Runway Marketing Consultancy, under her guidance, stands as more than a digital marketing agency for nonprofits; it’s a beacon for brands yearning to make a tangible difference. With a resolute focus on impact, Katriel Gayle Serion is not only transforming nonprofits but also carving her path to inspire change through her own endeavors.

From her inception as a philanthropic trailblazer at the age of 12 to the luminary she is today, Katriel’s journey underscores her commitment to making a lasting difference. An annual tradition of celebrating birthdays through purposeful outreach is a testament to her philosophy of impactful actions.

Socials Runway Marketing Consultancy redefines marketing by amalgamating Katriel’s marketing genius with her unwavering dedication to causes. Acting as a conduit, the consultancy seamlessly integrates strategic marketing with the unique needs of nonprofits and brands seeking to forge an indelible impact. Amid the uphill battles nonprofits face, Katriel’s holistic solutions amplify missions and extend visibility.

Services offered by Socials Runway Marketing Consultancy encompass:

  • Strategic Branding: Constructing narratives that resonate, effectively conveying the essence of nonprofit missions and impactful brands.
  • Tailored Social Media Campaigns: Orchestrating strategies that empower nonprofits and brands to shine in the digital arena.
  • Engaging Website Design: Weaving intuitive, captivating websites that serve as captivating portals for nonprofit stories and brand visions.

Katriel Gayle Serion shared, “I’ve always believed in actions that create ripples of change. Socials Runway Marketing Consultancy epitomizes this, empowering nonprofits and brands to craft impact-driven narratives.”

Her sphere of influence extends beyond consultancy; she remains committed to personally making an impact. Focusing on U.S. nonprofits, Katriel’s expertise transcends borders, delivering transformative strategies that resonate globally.

For a comprehensive dive into Socials Runway Marketing Consultancy, the dynamic digital marketing agency for nonprofits and impactful brands, and Katriel’s journey of inspiring change, explore socialsrunway.com  or reach out via katch@socialsrunway.com

About Katriel Gayle Serion:

With a decade-long marketing journey, Katriel Gayle Serion seamlessly integrates her unwavering dedication to nonprofits and impactful brands.

Media Contact:

Katriel Gayle Serion
Founder & Marketing Strategist
Socials Runway Marketing Consultancy
katch@socialsrunway.com
WhatsApp +639171838722

3 Men Exonerated in New York, 30 Years After False Confessions

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In the fall of 1992, Earl Walters, then 17, was brought to a Queens police station and questioned as a witness in a carjacking and murder. Mr. Walters was then interrogated for 16 hours, without a lawyer present, about something else: the robberies, abductions and assaults of two women. Eventually, he confessed to being a “reluctant participant” in those crimes.

Two years later, two other young men sat in interrogation rooms in Queens. The men, Armond McCloud and Reginald Cameron, had been arrested in the fatal shooting of Kei Sunada, a 22-year-old Japanese immigrant, in the stairwell of his apartment building in LeFrak City. After being questioned through the night, Mr. McCloud, then 20, and Mr. Cameron, then 19, confessed.

All three would later recant, saying investigators had coerced them into taking responsibility for the crimes.

Mr. Walters was convicted and served 20 years in prison before he was paroled in 2013. Mr. McCloud served 29 years before his release in January; Mr. Cameron pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and served about nine years before his parole in 2003.

On Thursday, nearly three decades later, a large courtroom in State Supreme Court in Queens was filled with supporters of the three men as each took his turn before the judge, Michelle A. Johnson, who threw out the convictions.

“In 1994, people did not believe that there was such a thing as a false confession,” said Elizabeth Felber, supervising attorney of the Wrongful Conviction Unit at the Legal Aid Society and Mr. Cameron’s lawyer. “But unfortunately, today, we’re learning it was all too common.”

Earlier, prosecutors in Queens and the men’s lawyers had filed joint motions asking the judge to vacate their convictions, saying the men’s confessions were coerced and riddled with inconsistencies, including inaccuracies based on an interrogator’s misunderstanding of a case.

They pointed out that a detective who investigated two of the men, Carlos Gonzalez, was also connected to wrongful convictions in the Central Park Five case and a notorious murder in a Manhattan subway station in the early 1990s.

Mr. McCloud’s case was the first one Justice Johnson addressed. As the prosecutor, Bryce Benjet, spoke, Mr. McCloud, dressed in a gray suit and glasses, with his dreadlocks in a high bun, sat with his elbows on the table, watching a monitor in front of him intently.

When he stood to speak, Mr. McCloud became emotional.

“Ten thousand six hundred and seven days. That equates to 29 years and 15 days exactly,” Mr. McCloud said. “I’ll be the first to tell you that those 29 years were not kind to me.”

Sitting several rows behind him, Mr. Cameron began to cry.

When it was his turn to speak, Mr. Cameron, who had pleaded guilty to first-degree robbery in Mr. Sunada’s death in exchange for the dismissal of murder charges, told the court how the conviction irrevocably changed his life.

Although he is happy that his name has been cleared, “it doesn’t fix things,” he said. “It doesn’t fix this scar on my face,” he said, pointing to a thick line about four inches long across his right cheek — a wound he got in prison. “I suffer from depression because of it,” he told Justice Johnson.

Since 1989, about 400 of 3,361 total exonerations nationwide have involved false confessions, according to data maintained by the National Registry of Exonerations. The group lists at least 230 exonerations for New York City since 1989.

In recent years, prosecutors in the city have sought the dismissal of hundreds of convictions tied to police officers who have themselves been convicted of crimes related to their work. Since the Queens district attorney’s office launched a Conviction Integrity Unit in 2020, 102 convictions — including the three on Thursday — have been vacated, according to a news release. Eighty-six of the convictions were tied to police misconduct.

“Fairness in the criminal justice system means we must re-evaluate cases when credible new evidence of actual innocence or wrongful conviction emerges,” the district attorney, Melinda Katz, said in a statement.

The cases before Justice Johnson on Thursday both involved coerced confessions, prosecutors said.

During his interrogation, Mr. Walters recorded a video statement that included “assertions that were at odds with the accounts of the victims and with the other evidence in the case,” prosecutors said this week. Still, he was arrested, arraigned and indicted. Before his trial, he tried and failed to get his confession suppressed from evidence, saying it had been coerced.

In the weeks after his arrest, there had been three carjackings with similar circumstances to the ones he had been charged with. Three men had eventually been charged in those cases, and two of them were later linked, using fingerprint evidence, to the crimes for which Mr. Walters was imprisoned, according to court filings and prosecutors.

Justice Johnson said the facts of Mr. Walters’s case were “particularly troubling.”

“As I sit here, I’m really, honestly baffled,” she said. Detectives and prosecutors ignored “glaring red flags” in the investigation, she said, and she apologized to Mr. Walters.

“The 1994 district attorney’s office failed to honor its obligation, to honor its search for the truth, no matter where it leads,” she said, adding that the “carelessness and indifference” shown in the case “shocks the consciousness.”

In the killing of Mr. Sunada in 1994, Mr. McCloud and Mr. Cameron were brought in after a 16-year-old who was being questioned in an unrelated robbery told the police that he had heard that someone who fit Mr. McCloud’s description had committed the murder.

After more than eight hours of interrogation, they confessed. But their statements contained glaring inaccuracies about the circumstances of the shooting, prosecutors said in court. They said Mr. Sunada had been shot in a hallway, when he had been found in a stairwell. Mr. Cameron indicated that there had been two gunshots, when evidence showed only one.

Their descriptions echoed reports written by Mr. Gonzalez, a detective in the Sunada case. The same errors also appeared in the initial police paperwork, according to prosecutors, which was “evidence that these facts were supplied” by Detective Gonzalez.

“The crime scene that the confession described is an impossibility,” said Laura Nirider, a false confessions expert who is one of Mr. McCloud’s lawyers. “And now we know why. The confession was, in fact, so wrong, it was scripted by a team of officers.”

Both men later recanted. Mr. McCloud said in 2021 that he had confessed because he was thirsty and exhausted, and because he was convinced his innocence would become clear in court.

After his conviction was voided on Thursday — the day before his fourth wedding anniversary — Mr. Walters stood outside the courtroom with his family, wearing a blue suit he said he had kept pressed and ready for months in hopeful anticipation.

He felt confident, he said. He had known this day was coming for 30 years.

But it is rare for a judge to detail the failures in a case and to apologize the way Justice Johnson did to Mr. Walters, said his lawyers, Glenn Garber and Rebecca Freedman of the Exoneration Initiative, a nonprofit that represents convicted people who say they were wrongfully convicted.

For Mr. Walters, the judge’s apology was renewing.

“Now I can have, like, ground zero to start from,” he said.

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