Prigozhin Listed as Passenger on Plane That Crashed, Killing All Aboard: Latest Updates and Video

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August 23, 2023

We hear it often—the weight of expensive and inaccessible childcare on working families with young children. What we haven’t discussed enough is the overall impact this challenge has on the U.S. economy… until now.

Without a doubt, affordable and available childcare is a critical component of a vibrant economy and researchers, economists, and policy leaders are currently working hard daily to unlock its potential.

Business and industry rely on employees and employees rely on childcare. “Work-Willing” parents of young children can only participate in the workforce and advance their careers when they have affordable, accessible, and high-quality childcare options for their young children. Unfortunately, those options are more limited than ever for parents eager to rejoin the workforce on a full-time basis.

This dilemma keeps a significant number of parents and caretakers out of the workforce altogether and creates a wide-reaching ripple effect—driving down household earnings, employer sales, regional GRP and ultimately the overall prosperity of cities, regions, states, and the American economy.

Childcare: A Broken System for Everyone Involved

The escalation of childcare costs has been felt most acutely by the working class, with swift and unrelenting increases driving down take-home pay and purchasing power. A 2022 study presented by the First Five Years Fund revealed that the average annual cost of childcare in America has increased 220% over the past three decades and considerably faster than any other essential family expense.

Annual costs of center-based childcare are in excess of $10,000 – a number that most families simply can’t afford, and multiplies for each additional child in a family unit. At the same time, the rate of pay for childcare workers remains low and the profit margins for childcare center operators slim, or in many cases, become negative. There is good reason why an overwhelming majority of centers are operated by non-profits or school districts: they can offset annual losses with grants, write-offs, or increased taxes levied at the district level.

In short, the childcare model in the United States is broken for everyone involved: staff can’t earn a living wage, operators can’t turn a profit, and parents can’t afford the fees associated with enrolling their children.

Childcare is Essential to the Success of Families

Although childcare costs have spiraled out of control, the need for it has remained constant. There are an estimated 15 million children in the U.S. under the age of six who have both parents in the household actively engaged in the workforce. Indeed, that means there are between 20 and 30 million workers in the United States whose ability to earn and contribute to our national economy is entirely dependent on a childcare model that is not functioning as it should.

For many parents, trying to juggle the steep cost of childcare, stay afloat with additional household expenses, all while advancing their careers is a difficult balancing act—that sadly never quite balances out.

Women Are Being Held Back from Career Goals

This problem is particularly acute among working mothers, or mothers attempting to rejoin the workforce. It’s no secret that women disproportionately take on unpaid caregiving responsibilities when their family cannot find or afford childcare. Too often, mothers find themselves making career decisions based on childcare considerations rather than their personal financial and career goals.

A recent survey conducted by the Center for American Progress revealed mothers were 40 percent more likely than fathers to report they personally felt the negative impact of childcare issues on their careers. Added to these challenges are the non-standard shifts, particularly in areas dependent on manufacturing or the service industry. Most childcare centers operate during normal (dayshift) business hours, Monday through Friday.

For families or individuals that work 2^nd shift, or non-traditional split shifts, even if childcare was affordable for them, there is virtually no availability during the hours they need.

Billions in Economic Damage Will Continue Without Action

Studies have shown that the annual economic damage of the childcare crisis in the United States is more than $120 billion, when accounting for lost earnings, productivity, and revenue. That’s an incredible number and one that has risen from an estimated $57 billion just a few years ago.

Add to this the series of well-publicized labor shortages facing almost every industry in the United States and the general population decline that will further exacerbate these shortages the years to come, and it becomes alarmingly apparent that we are staring off the edge of a cliff. This problem is only going to become worse unless immediate action is taken.

Lessons from Northeast Indiana

At TPMA, we use our 35 years of expertise to empower organizations and communities through strategic partnerships and informed solutions that create positive, sustainable change. Our team provides professional consulting services and delivers transparent insights to the complete workforce, education, and economic development ecosystem that allow them to move forward, together.

Recently, our Senior Strategic Advisor of Research and Impact, Brian Nottingham, created a methodology that allows us to estimate the financial benefits of communities when “work-willing” parents are able to return to the workforce thanks to accessible and affordable childcare. Applying this framework to the region of Northeast Indiana:

We estimated that 8,987 parents in the region could be counted as “work-willing”: ready and able to go back to work full-time, but cannot because they do not have access to reliable, affordable childcare.
Using conservative estimates and distributing these parents proportionally across existing industries in the region, returning ALL of these 8,987 “work willing” parents in Northeast Indiana back to the labor force will increase payroll taxes by just over $21 million ($9.8 million to the state, $10.3 million to local governments in the region), and sales/import taxes collected from the industries employing these workers by approximately $20.2 million.
Driving this bump in tax revenue would be an additional $571 million in earnings for these parents and an estimated increase of just under $1 billion in Gross Regional Product for their employers.

A Search for Solutions

So where do we go from here? Our work in northeast Indiana shows that should the state choose to invest in childcare- covering 1/3 of the annual cost for these “work willing” parents- they would turn a net profit on the investment by reaping the rewards of additional sales and income tax revenue.

Employers in the region as well are taking important, meaningful steps to also help share the burden with their employees because they too understand that at the end of the day, it is a profitable investment to fully staff their operations with work-willing parents. But the solutions to this challenge are myriad and there is no one-size fits all approach to any given community. As a starting point, we recommend:

Understand the economic impact. Whether it’s your city, state, or region—understanding the economic impact and the childcare landscape is critical to approaching the problem. Armed with knowledge and verifiable, independent estimates of impact based on a tested and respected, methodology, communities can start the conversation with elected officials, employers, and community organizations about how and why it is important to rally around solutions. Contact us to learn how we can support these efforts.

Federal funding and/or state investment. As our work has shown, there is a strong economic case to be made for more federal or state dollars to be driven into the childcare system across the country. As the principal beneficiaries of the tax dollars collected out of the paychecks of working parents, investing to ensure childcare workers can make a living wage and parents have money left over AFTER paying for childcare is a common-sense, cost/benefit approach. Governments should treat the childcare industry like they do infrastructure: it is a vital driver of business in the United States.

Develop childcare networks. The nature of the childcare industry is such that small businesses operating either independently or as part of a small group teeter on the edge of-but seldom reach- profitability. Developing economies of scale can reduce financial burdens on the businesses and allow them to adjust down prices AND turn a profit.

Incentivize workers. This crisis is not only about the cost of childcare, but also the availability. A lack of workers in this space makes it hard to find care even at higher prices, so creating programs and incentives for individuals to enter into the industry are essential. This might take the form of state-funded bonuses that boost overall income for childcare workers, or it could be that businesses themselves are able to offer a more competitive salary because they are receiving more support.
Mindful considerations about what these employees are earning and actively working to increase the salaries of the people we charge with the care of our children should be forefront in any conversation about expanding training opportunities/educational programming.

Overall, everyone wins when childcare is affordable and accessible. If parents can get the care they need for young children while they work, businesses can flourish, and families can re-invest their savings into every other purchase that drives the American economy.

These efforts will require a collaborative approach where employers, employees, parents, governments, and community organizations work together to address what may be one of the biggest challenges facing the American workforce today.

For more information, contact Steven Gause, Director of Strategy and Growth Initiatives, at sgause@tpma-inc.com

In the Heart of the Australian Outback, Safeguarding a Sacred Land

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August 23, 2023

Close to the geographical heart of Australia, Alice Springs feels like a true desert town. Red earth laps its edges. The ocher walls of the West MacDonnell Ranges crowd its southern fringe. Pink-chested galahs wheel and screech overhead, and, lining the streets, gum trees give off the faintest smell of eucalyptus.

Even by Aussie standards, Alice Springs is casual: People dress down, and many drive well-equipped four-wheel-drive trucks that are as much a part of the uniform as T-shirts, shorts and Akubra hats. It is a frontier town, one that likes a drink, a tall tale from the outback and a weekend spent camping, which is what I planned to do after a few days in town.

On a visit last May, I stayed at the DoubleTree by Hilton, and ate in the hotel’s elegant Hanuman Restaurant, with some of the best Indian dishes outside Australia’s major cities. By day, I visited Alice Springs Desert Park, with its extraordinary desert wildlife, and the city’s Aboriginal art galleries. Exploring the Araluen Art Centre and Papunya Tula gallery was like a crash course in the exquisite traditional dot paintings of Australia’s Western and Central Deserts. It was a reminder that Alice Springs — or Mparntwe to its traditional owners, the Arrernte people — is largely an Aboriginal town. Nearly one-fifth of the population is Indigenous.

Alice Nampitjinpa Henwood, a Warlpiri elder who is steeped in the traditional ways of her people, once told me that she seldom went to Alice Springs. “I go only when I have to. Out in the desert is better.”

I knew that Ms. Nampitjinpa Henwood, whom I had gotten to know over the years, was now working as an Indigenous ranger at Newhaven Wildlife Sanctuary, in the Great Sandy Desert, some 200 miles northwest of Alice Springs. Australia’s first Indigenous ranger program began back in 2007. Now, close to 200 such programs operate on protected areas overseen by local Indigenous communities or, in the case of Newhaven, in partnership with nonprofit conservation groups. Such reserves make up nearly half of Australia’s protected areas.

I had heard about Newhaven, of a desert reborn, of a partnership between Warlpiri rangers and a conservation nonprofit, Australian Wildlife Conservancy, to bring threatened wildlife back to the desert. Some of the species that were being returned, many of them from a captive breeding program at Alice Springs Desert Park, were central to the traditional creation stories told by elders such as Ms. Nampitjinpa Henwood.

Into the desert

Convinced that Ms. Nampitjinpa Henwood was right — that the desert was indeed better than town — I drove north from Alice Springs on a chilly morning.

The two-lane Stuart Highway wandered between low, bare hills. I shared it with the great “road trains” of Australia’s remote byways. Carrying everything from cotton to cattle, these three-trailered giant trucks were nearly 200 feet long.

After about 12 miles, I took the Tanami Track that branched to the northwest. One of the world’s longest shortcuts, the Tanami connects Australia’s Red Center with the tropics of its Top End, passing just one town, Yuendumu (population 759), in 600 miles of desert travel.

Soon the road narrowed to a single lane. Low tea-tree scrub, fire-scarred in places, lined the roadside as red sand and clusters of tumbleweed-like spinifex blew out of the desert. Wedge-tailed eagles, with their 7.5-foot wingspans, circled overhead. A flock of wild budgerigars swarmed the sky in a flash of green. There were no other vehicles.

Nearly 90 miles from Alice Springs, taking the turnoff for Newhaven Wildlife Sanctuary felt like casting off into the ocean from a deserted shore. Wide and well-graded, the red-sand Newhaven track was gun-barrel straight. Away to the south, the Stuart Bluff Range resembled waves frozen in the act of breaking. I saw one other vehicle, a man driving very slowly. We each kept our hands on the steering wheel and raised a single index finger: the outback salute.

After passing beneath an honor guard of desert oaks, the road narrowed, snaked through a rocky canyon, then emerged into another world. It was a first glimpse, but I was reminded why my destination, Newhaven Wildlife Sanctuary, was special: Here was the Great Sandy Desert as it once was: rich in wildlife, cared for by Indigenous custodians, and in thrall of a deep, desert silence. I knew of few other places where I could wake in a Hilton early one morning and find myself in a remote corner of the desert by lunchtime.

The center of the universe

Much like the American West, the Australian outback looms large in the popular imagination. European explorers tried to cross it. Settlers tried to tame it.

But there were people here long before the settlers came, and to them it was the center of the universe, not the outer reaches of some far-distant civilization.

First Nations people, who have lived here for tens of thousands of years, have a deeply spiritual connection to the land. “The land, our country, is central to everything that we are as a people,” Wanta Jampijinpa Pawu-Kurlpurlurnu, a Warlpiri elder, told me. “The law, our language, our ceremonies, even our kinship system — everything comes from the land.”

This is Luritja and Warlpiri Country. It is also the Great Sandy Desert, Australia’s second-largest desert, comparable in size to Nevada.

Passing through the narrow defile in the Siddeley Range was like entering some secret portal. West of the mountains, the earth was a deeper shade of red. In the shadow of desert massifs lay salt lakes fringed with spiny clumps of spinifex and desert oaks. White-trunked ghost gums clung to the steep rock walls.

I pulled over and got out. The wind roared through the desert oaks like a road train. The sand was alive, marked with runic inscriptions from the animals that call the desert home. I came upon a blue-tongued skink sunning itself on the sand, then a thorny devil. It struck me that this was how the land must once have appeared to those who lived here before the Europeans arrived. Until well into the 20th century, Warlpiri and Luritja people shared this land with an astonishing array of wildlife.

As the settlers moved in, Newhaven became a cattle station. In 2000, Birds Australia (now Birdlife Australia) purchased the property. Six years later, the Australian Wildlife Conservancy bought and took over Newhaven, which extends across 1,000 square miles. Four years later, the traditional ownership of the property by the Warlpiri and Luritja was officially recognized. Ever since, the traditional custodians and A.W.C. have worked together to restore Newhaven to its pre-settler past.

Already numerous small marsupial species — the burrowing bettong (which can turn over nearly 30 pounds of soil in a single night), the greater bilby (Australia’s Easter bunny) and the rufous hare-wallaby (known as the mala) have been returned to the sanctuary. Until their reintroduction, these animals hadn’t been seen here in more than half a century.

Every trail tells a story

It was getting late when I pulled into Newhaven’s shaded campground, close to the sanctuary’s headquarters and with its own showers and toilets. In the thin shade of acacias — far enough away from my neighbor’s campfire to maintain a sense of desert solitude, yet close enough to ward off the great emptiness when in need of company — I raised my vehicle’s rooftop tent. At sunset, I climbed a nearby hill and took in a view that stretched deep into the heart of Australia.

The next morning, and over the mornings that followed, I woke to a glow on the eastern horizon. Near the campground’s entrance, I stopped by an unstaffed post to pick up information sheets and self-drive itinerary instructions. Then, accompanied by the sound of songbirds, I set out.

Each day had its own discoveries, and every trail told a story.

One Newhaven path took me almost as far west as I could go in the reserve. There I wandered amid the faint traces of Mount Gurner Homestead, a former cattle station where the owners struggled through droughts until they bowed to the inevitable and fled. Ruins such as these haunt the Australian outback, forlorn monuments to the ill-fated dreams of its settlers.

Another route took in the salt lakes and spinifex plains that cut through the sanctuary’s interior. Trailside there were the still-intact burrows of bettongs. Popularly known as rat kangaroos, bettongs were once so prolific that 19th-century explorers were able to survive almost entirely on them. By the second half of the 20th century, the burrowing bettong was largely extinct. In 2022, A.W.C. reintroduced them into Newhaven, and there are signs that they may return to the same burrows that their ancestors dug.

One story above all others shadowed me wherever I went in Newhaven — that of the mala, which is rather like a kangaroo in miniature. In First Nations stories from Jukurrpa, or Dreamtime, the period when First Nations peoples believe that the world was created, the mala emerged from the earth here, on Luritja and Warlpiri country. The sacred sites remain, known only to Indigenous keepers of the story.

One of these is Stephen Connor, a Warlpiri elder whose family is among those responsible for keeping alive the mala’s songline, which is at once a story and the physical route traveled by the animals in First Nations creation stories. “The mala’s story begins at Newhaven,” he told me. “The songline follows where the mala went after it came out of the earth. One branch of the songline goes south, to Uluru. Another goes north, along the Tanami. That’s my country. My parents and grandparents used to see mala there all the time, but I’ve never seen a mala. Only in Alice Springs Desert Park, in the zoo. But we still look after the songline. We go to the sacred sites to carry out our ceremonies with our songs and our stories.”

Back at headquarters, I tracked down Ms. Nampitjinpa Henwood. “There were lots of mala out in the bush,” she told me as we sat in the shade and spoke about the animals that she remembered from her childhood. “There were so many that we used to hunt them.”

She explained that the mala disappeared from Newhaven, probably sometime around the 1970s, driven to extinction by dry-season fires, feral cats and the clearing of land for livestock. Only a tiny, fast-shrinking population hung on in the Tanami Desert.

In the 1980s, scientists captured what was believed to be the last wild mala, which then formed the basis for a captive-breeding program. The hope was that the mala, which was officially declared extinct in the wild in 1991, could one day be reintroduced into the wild.

Years later, the A.W.C. and others realized that Warlpiri people like Ms. Nampitjinpa Henwood, who grew up in the desert and knew how to read the country, were essential to the land’s renewal; they began to draw on their deep wells of knowledge.

In 2020, Ms. Nampitjinpa Henwood was among those who released captive-bred mala into Newhaven. For the first time in more than half a century, the animals were back where their journey across the earth had begun. “For a long time, we didn’t see any mala,” she told me. “They’re only here at Newhaven.”

It was a homecoming of sorts. The reintroduction of the mala by the Warlpiri was a circling back to the Dreamtime, to pre-European Australia.

On my final afternoon, I set off in search of Yukanjani, reputed to be one of the Great Sandy Desert’s most beautiful lakes and which European mapmakers called Lake Bennett. Where the vehicle track ended, I walked to a high sand dune and went no farther; the lake bed is considered sacred to the Warlpiri. There I sat overlooking the lake, surrounded by golden grasslands and red sand under a blue desert sky. Rising above the far horizon were the West MacDonnell Ranges with Mount Liebig, a shapely quartzite mountain, silhouetted purple against the darkening sky.

I sat, spellbound in the gathering moonlight, here in a land alive again with the songs of the past.

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.

In Several California Communities, Recovery Efforts Continue After the Storm

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August 23, 2023

Most regions of Southern California avoided significant damage this week from Tropical Storm Hilary, but authorities continued their rescue and cleanup efforts on Tuesday in several mountain and desert communities where homes were flooded and fast-moving mudslides had washed away sections of roadway and stranded residents.

In one desperate situation, crews were searching for a 75-year-old woman who has been missing for nearly two days in the mountains of the San Bernardino National Forest.

Christie Rockwood, who lived in a trailer home in a tiny community known as Seven Oaks, had not been heard from since Sunday evening, when she spoke to a friend by phone, according to her daughter Tracey Monteverde.

“I’m trying to hold out hope, but it’s really hard,” Ms. Monteverde, 56, said. “I just can’t imagine her being out there with no food and water, probably injured.”

Remote communities dot the San Bernardino Mountains, sought out for their idyllic setting and inexpensive housing about 90 miles east of Los Angeles. But the rustic surroundings can work against those living there, who often find themselves under the threat of fire or mud, or even snow. Thirteen people died in the San Bernardino Mountains in March after they were trapped by several feet of snow following intense storms.

Ms. Rockwood, a retired accountant for a Riverside County school district, had owned her trailer for several decades, using it as a weekend vacation spot until she moved in full time about 10 years ago, her daughter said. A local fixture known for her good-natured disposition, she often hosted people around the fire pit on her deck, playing cards and horseshoes late into the night. She was in good health, although her right knee troubled her. By Tuesday, residents reported no sign of Ms. Rockwood’s trailer.

The tropical storm had prompted the Santa Ana River to overflow, sending rocks and debris into Seven Oaks, a canyon that remains under an evacuation order, according to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department. After a bridge was wiped out, about 30 residents were stranded on a riverbank, cut off from access to a main road. They were ordered to shelter in place on Sunday.

“Boulders the size of a car were rolling down, taking trees and snapping them like toothpicks,” said Randy Foster, a Seven Oaks resident who was rescued by helicopter on Tuesday.

Several people who remained in Seven Oaks on Tuesday said they were unaware that the community was required to evacuate before the storm arrived. They said that authorities typically delivered evacuation orders to them in person because they were so remote, but that this time around that had not happened.

Officials with the San Bernardino County Fire Department said rescue teams determined on Monday that it was too hazardous to try to cross the rushing water that had cut off the community and they instead hoisted a woman with a lower leg injury into a hovering helicopter. Others declined to be rescued, wanting to wait until the waters receded.

On Tuesday, crews hiked in and cleared a path to create a landing zone for a helicopter that, by late afternoon, had lifted out nearly two dozen people in multiple trips. Some firefighters carried residents’ dogs, scrambling onto fallen trees as they forded the rushing river.

The most populous regions of Southern California closer to the coast — Los Angeles, Orange County and San Diego — suffered few serious problems from Tropical Storm Hilary beyond downed power lines, fallen trees and minor street flooding. State and local officials generally expressed relief this week that they had avoided a catastrophe after having feared the worst. There had been no reports of deaths related to the storm as of Tuesday afternoon.

About 70 miles southeast, in the Coachella Valley desert region, residents were struggling with a much different effect from the storm. In Cathedral City, home to about 50,000 people, mud choked the thoroughfares. Those who attempted to traverse the knee-high sludge found themselves sinking and becoming stuck. A blistering sun and temperatures that nearly reached triple digits only added to their frustration.

Dozens of cars and trucks that had once floated down driveways into streets were mired in a thick river of brown. Homeowners who had made every attempt to keep water from surging inside were now left to shovel out the muck. Outside one house, a telling scene: a boat that had been swept up onto the lawn.

Yared Nuguse, World Championship 1,500-Meter Contender, Runs for Fun

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August 23, 2023

Yared Nuguse is worried about the gap in his résumé.

It’s just that becoming one of the fastest 1,500-meter runners in the world has upended the timeline he set out for himself at age 12.

“I was going to go to university, and then go to dental school, and just be a great orthodontist,” he said, 24 hours after becoming the American national champion in the 1,500 meters in July. “Then running kind of comes along in high school and it’s like, ‘OK, it doesn’t interfere with my plan,’ and then in college it doesn’t interfere with my plan. And it’s just like, ‘Oh, you could go professional now.’ And I was like, ‘Well, that kind of interferes with my plan a little bit.’”

After a fair amount of convincing, Nuguse, 24, decided to take a detour. Dental school would always be there, he figured.

In his rookie year as a professional runner, Nuguse — who was on the bowling team in high school, who has a turtle named Tyro after his favorite amino acid (Tyrosine), whose running mantra is “go out there and have fun,” who calls going to Taylor Swift’s Eras tour “forever a highlight” — has landed here, at the world championships in Budapest, as a top podium contender in the 1,500 meters.

When Nuguse recounts all that, he’s prone to giggling.

“I was never really an athlete type,” he said a day after becoming the national champion in the 1,500 meters in Eugene, Ore. “I still even now don’t really feel like an athlete type.”

His results says otherwise. In January, he set a new American record in the indoor 3,000 meters, running 7:28.23. He ran the second-fastest indoor mile in history in February, finishing the Millrose Games Wanamaker Mile in 3:47.38. In May, at a Diamond League meet in Rabat, he set a new personal best in the 1,500, running 3:33.02.

None of this would have happened had he not tried to beat the crowd at McDonald’s during high school gym class in his hometown of Louisville, Ky.

Students were assessed on their mile times, and Nuguse, a self-described “big nerd,” wanted to get a good grade, sure. But after completing the race, the students were allowed to go to McDonald’s — and Nuguse did a quick calculation. A win meant a good grade, plus, “I’ll eat there first.”

The high school track coach was quickly on Nuguse’s heels. The coach was persuasive, and Nuguse decided to give the track team a “solid try” to boost his college application.

Mike Kuntz, one of Nuguse’s high school coaches, remembers his first races well.

“You know Urkel?” Kuntz asked in a recent conversation at a cafe in Budapest. He stood up to demonstrate. “Yared would run a few strides, and then push up his glasses. Run a few strides, then push up his glasses.”

“He’d run in one shoe more often than you’d think,” Kuntz added, explaining that one of Nuguse’s shoes would somehow slip off during track meets or get stuck in the mud during a cross-country race. “And then he’d win.”

Nuguse continued racing with the team, surprised by how much he was enjoying it. Teammates started calling him “the goose,” a play on his last name, and soon the phrase “the goose is loose” caught on. In his senior year, Nuguse won Kentucky state titles in the 800 meters, 1,600 meters and 3,200 meters.

Running in high school was so much fun, he said, that he considered doing so in college when recruiters came knocking. By the winter of his freshman year at the University of Notre Dame, he had become one of the best milers in the country.

The word “fun” punctuates nearly every sentence Nuguse utters when talking about the sport. If he’s not having fun, he’s describing something that was “super fun,” “really fun” or, at a bare minimum, “kind of fun.” He knows that it’s somewhat of a superpower in a high-pressure sport that has a tendency to spit out even the strongest athletes.

“My mentality is so good because my whole being isn’t tied to running,” Nuguse said. “Running is fun and I love to do it, but I love to do because it’s fun, not because I’m really good and I have to.

“It’s just something I really enjoy for now,” he added, “and when I’m done enjoying it, then I’ll be done.”

An hour before he was set to compete in the N.C.A.A. national championship in 2019, Nuguse took refuge from the Texas heat in an air-conditioned car. He fell asleep. Matt Sparks, the director of track and field and cross-country at Notre Dame, needed to wake him up in time for him to win the N.C.A.A. title in the 1,500 meters.

“He wasn’t sitting in the car listening to loud music,” Sparks said. “He fell asleep in the car getting ready for what most would say was the biggest race of his life.”

As a professional runner with the On Athletics Club, Nuguse lives with and trains with Mario García Romo of Spain, his teammate and a fellow 1,500-meter specialist. They couldn’t be more different, said Dathan Ritzenhein, the team’s coach. “Mario is a list maker; everything needs to be order. If Yared knows what day of the week it is, that’s a good start.”

Nuguse is known to eat two Eggo waffles and “a ton” of syrup five minutes before he has to leave their apartment in the morning. If the frozen waffles were easier to transport, he would bring them to his international meets, Nuguse said, deadpan.

But he doesn’t stress too much about pre-race fuel. “As long as there’s something in my belly, it’s fine,” he said. “What I eat really just determines if I throw up or if I don’t throw up.” He smiled, realizing he didn’t vomit after his last race. “I picked well yesterday.”

On Wednesday, Nuguse will have his first opportunity to bring home an international title. He qualified for the Tokyo Olympics in the 1,500, but he was injured and did not compete, and he did not qualify for last year’s world championships.

Asked about his race strategy for the final, a stacked field that will pit him against the domineering Jakob Ingebrigtsen of Norway, Nuguse said he plans to “keep doing what I’m doing.”

Most of all he’s hoping to have — you guessed it — fun. He said he only plans on running professionally until 2028 or 2029, which he figures should give him enough time to see what he can do in the sport. He has six more years of school ahead of him — four years of dental school, and two years specializing in orthodontics — and he’d like to get on with that.

Until then, the goose will stay loose. When Nuguse mentions the Paris Olympics, he says it could line up nicely with Swift’s Eras tour dates in Europe. That would be awfully fun, he said. And, after that, he can have a stateside Olympics to look forward to.

“Winning in L.A. would be a dream come true,” he said. “But if I don’t, I’m not going to be like, ‘Well, my career was a failure.’ My career is a failure if I don’t have fun.

“That’s why that’s really the overall goal,” he added. “The medals, all the great accolades and stuff, it’s just highly sprinkles on top.”

MrBeast’s Olympics video is a geopolitical nightmare

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August 23, 2023

MrBeast stumbled into the heated discourse of global affairs in his latest stunt.

The billionaire creator inadvertently stoked generations of geopolitical tension in his latest YouTube video, in which participants from “every country on Earth” competed in “Squid Game”-like elimination challenges for a chance to win $250,000.

“Behind me is one person from every country on Earth,” MrBeast said in the video posted on Saturday. “We’re gonna see which country’s the best. Because I flew all of them here to compete in the most extreme version of the Olympics ever created.”

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_z-W4UVHkw?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en-US&autohide=2&wmode=transparent&w=640&h=360]

Like most of MrBeast’s content, the scale of the production was staggering. The competition involved massive obstacle courses over foam pits, an extravagant cash prize and a hefty dose of product placement. Those are pillars of MrBeast’s channel, and at this point, aren’t novel enough to pique the attention of non-subscribers.

It was the countries that weren’t included in the competition, as well as the map featured in the video, that made the stunt ripe for discourse. After each round, the map highlighted the countries that remained in the competition. Certain borders are already sources of major global conflict, and MrBeast appeared to take some divisive stances by depicting them on the map.

X (formerly known as Twitter) users joked that the participants MrBeast flew out indicate the countries that he recognizes as sovereign.

The video included a participant from Hong Kong, for example, but not Taiwan and Tibet, which were included in China’s borders. MrBeast appears to recognize American Samoa, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Guam and Puerto Rico as independent states, rather than territories of the United States and the United Kingdom. Kosovo and Somalialand are also depicted as sovereign nations.

MrBeast recognizes Palestine, but only the West Bank.

The map affirms the Sahrawi Republic’s claim over the disputed territory of Western Sahara, but also draws Morocco up to the de facto border, which conflicts with both countries’ claim over the land.

MrBeast lumps Crimea in with Russia, which invaded and annexed the formerly Ukrainian peninsula in move that was vehemently condemned by the United Nations. The map also gave Canada claim over island territories that are currently part of Greenland and Norway.

Despite speculation that MrBeast supports Korean reunification, since only one participant was chosen to represent the peninsula, the map clearly depicts the border between North and South Korea.

The flag of the American state of Georgia was used to represent the country of Georgia, which is less of a diplomatic stance and more of a comically myopic American mistake.

The map also depicted Afghanistan using the black and white flag adopted by the Taliban in 2021, instead of the tricolor flag that was used until the Fall of Kabul. The United States and many other nations do not recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, and still use the tricolor flag to represent the country.

Most of the depictions on the map are probably the result of limited research and sloppy editing instead of genuine stances MrBeast takes on wildly divisive international conflicts. But some viewers were deeply offended by the video’s implications.

In an X post (formerly a tweet) about the video, Ukrainian influencer Igor Lachenkov, called on MrBeast to amend the map to show that he does not “support terrorism and war.”

“You’ve invited a Russian onto your show to represent Russia, whereas global sports officials at least make them take part under a neutral flag,” Lachenkov wrote. “Ukrainians are in a full-scale war with Russia and have been fighting with the aggressor for their rights, freedom and lives.”

MrBeast has not publicly responded to Lachenkov, or to any of the criticism of his apparent geopolitical takes. He has a habit of inciting heated debate over power and class with his content. Given his history of getting flamed for defending his videos — from pulling sweeping philanthropic stunts that do little to change systemic issues, to completely missing the point of the socioeconomic commentary in “Squid Game” — he’d be wise to keep quiet and avoid stumbling further into the thorny discourse.

The phrase “MrBeast does not recognize Taiwan,” however, will haunt me for years.

One in Five Women Feel Mistreated During Maternity Care, C.D.C. Reports

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August 22, 2023

Why It Matters: Many pregnant women are afraid to discuss their worries.

Almost half of the women surveyed said they had held back in talking with a maternity care provider about their questions or concerns, a particularly disturbing finding. The most common reason given was that patients thought that what they were experiencing was normal.

Other common reasons: Women said they didn’t want to “make a big deal” about a problem, or were embarrassed to talk about it; they’d been told by friends or family that the problem was “a normal part of pregnancy”; or they feared being seen as a difficult patient.

Some also said they held back because their provider seemed to be in a rush, and they weren’t sure their concern was important enough to merit additional attention, or they were scared to talk about it.

Background: Maternal mortality rates have soared in the U.S.

Maternal mortality rates in the United States are among the highest in the industrialized world. They have risen steadily in recent years, with a sharp but apparently temporary spike during the pandemic.

Black and Native American women are at particularly high risk. Maternal mortality rates are two to three times higher among these women than among white and Hispanic women.

Yet studies have found that the vast majority of the deaths — some 80 percent — are preventable.

The new survey, which was designed by the C.D.C. and carried out by the communications consultancy firm Porter Novelli, included some 2,400 mothers of children ages 5 or older, who answered questions online between April 24 and April 30 of this year.

The survey was not a nationally representative sample of the population giving birth, however, so its utility is somewhat limited. Nevertheless, the findings suggest serious flaws in the care provided to pregnant women and women giving birth.

A First Step: Hearing the patient.

Birthing women deserve respectful health care, which is strongly linked to positive outcomes, C.D.C. officials said.

“If you are consistently feeling like your concerns are not being heard and you’re experiencing mistreatment, you’re less likely to seek further treatment in the future,” said Dr. Wanda Barfield, director of the agency’s division of reproductive health.

“And for those women who may be at higher risk and have a concern that may be life-threatening — if they are reluctant to seek help, and this study suggests that almost half of them are, they may be at risk for a very adverse outcome.”

Many Air Travelers With Disabilities Encounter Hurdles to Verify Service Dogs

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August 22, 2023

Joanna Lubkin, a Unitarian Universalist minister, has chronic pain and fatigue and relies on her service dog, a 4-year-old black Labrador named Sully, to pick up items she drops, press elevator buttons and brace her when her body weakens. She never travels without him.

In June, when she and Sully arrived at the Pittsburgh International Airport to fly home to Boston after a conference, the agent at the JetBlue Airlines gate told her that there were no forms on file certifying Sully as a service dog, and refused to let her board.

Since 2021, the Department of Transportation has required travelers with disabilities to fill out a standard form before boarding an aircraft with their trained service animal, attesting to the dog’s health, behavior and training. Before her flight to Pittsburgh on Delta Air Lines, Ms. Lubkin, 37, had completed the D.O.T. form for both Delta and JetBlue and uploaded it to their websites. With Delta, she experienced no issues.

But a week later she found herself stranded in Pittsburgh, confused and frustrated. She did not know she was only one of many travelers with disabilities encountering hurdles with the verification process, and finding themselves stuck at the airport even after they had correctly verified their service dogs for air travel.

JetBlue is one of four airlines that uses a third-party — a small, Chicago-based company called Open Doors Organization — to review the new D.O.T. forms and issue approvals or denials on their behalf. And when Ms. Lubkin arrived at her gate for her return flight home, she was told Open Doors had not verified her form, and she would not be allowed to fly.

Angry and tired, Ms. Lubkin called a friend, who offered to drive her 570 miles back to Boston.

“Flying is physically painful for me and for a lot of people,” she said. “Making it that much harder for us to travel is just unjust, and it doesn’t feel right to me.”

A JetBlue spokesman acknowledged her concerns.

“We understand that we need to ensure better consistency in verifying paperwork during travel on all flights of a customer’s itinerary,” said Derek Dombrowski, the airline’s senior manager for corporate communications.

‘I consider that discrimination’

Before the coronavirus, air travelers looking to bring an animal into the cabin had to adhere to airlines’ individual rules for flying with pets, which sometimes required the purchase of a special ticket. Fully trained service animals were exempt from any charges.

Airlines say the 2021 regulations were needed after a pandemic-related uptick of pets on airplanes, many of them untrained and presenting a risk to travelers and legitimate service animals alike. There were also a number of incidents where passengers attempted to pass off pets or emotional-support animals as trained service animals. At the end of 2021, most major airlines had declared they would no longer accept emotional-support animals on board, and the Transportation Department put forth new rules for service animals.

Among the changes: Airlines can require users of service animals, which are defined as dogs trained to perform a task directly related to an owner’s disability, to submit a D.O.T. form attesting to the animal’s health, behavior and training.

JetBlue, Allegiant, Sun Valley and Alaska Airlines have partnered with Open Doors to process the forms. Travelers upload their forms to the airlines’ websites, and the airlines then pass them on to Open Doors, which verifies the legitimacy of the service dog by examining the form and sometimes calling the trainer, whose contacts are required on the form, with additional questions.

Other airlines, including American Airlines and United Airlines, review and approve the forms themselves.

Some dog trainers and disability advocates say the new rules may be illegal.

After Ms. Lubkin filled out her D.O.T. form and uploaded it to JetBlue’s website, more than a week before departure, she received an email from NEADS, the service dog organization that trained Sully, letting her know they had been contacted by Open Doors regarding her form and she was “all set.”

But in Pittsburgh, the gate agent couldn’t find any communication from Open Doors in her file.

“The fact that a corporation is making it so difficult for somebody to get accommodations for their disability — I consider that discrimination,” Ms. Lubkin said.

Travelers on other airlines have also faced issues. In June, Ashley O’Connor, a stay-at-home mother of three, was eager to fly home to Columbus, Ohio, from Myrtle Beach, S.C., with her son, Owen, and his new service dog.

Owen, 4, has CHARGE syndrome — an acronym for a genetic illness affecting the heart and airways — and Téa, a German shepherd, was trained to alert people around her when Owen is at risk of respiratory distress.

Three days before their return flight on Allegiant Airlines, Ms. O’Connor, 30, filled out the D.O.T. form on the Allegiant’s website, but was told her application was denied because she didn’t list the specific tasks for which the dog is trained. She filled it out again, resubmitted and then received a confirmation. An email from Open Doors came next, saying she could “request travel” from Allegiant. She did.

At the airport however, Ms. O’Connor was told there were no forms on file. She tried to submit them yet again with her phone, at one point pausing at the check-in counter to suction Owen’s tracheostomy tube. But she received a series of error messages, and was eventually told by the Allegiant gate agent that her application was denied.

She had to enlist the help of Owen’s great-grandparents, both in their late 70s, to drive Téa nearly 10 hours to Columbus. She flew home alone with Owen.

“My obviously disabled child was sitting in a stroller next to me,” she said of the incident at the check-in counter. “There was no compassion.”

Allegiant said that Ms. O’Connor’s application was held up due to incomplete information, and that she did not inform the airline she was traveling with a service animal until she arrived at the airport. She contests this.

“Open Doors Organization is a trusted nonprofit disability advocacy organization,” a spokesperson with the carrier said. “This strategic partnership has equipped Allegiant with better tools to serve the disability community, allowing us to streamline the service animal approval process while ensuring the safety of all passengers and crew members.”

Open Doors has admitted that communication with the airlines at times has gone awry. But the organization’s founder, Eric Lipp, said the issue mostly stemmed from airline workers who lacked proper training.

“We have had a couple of hiccups,” Mr. Lipp said. But when paperwork issues arise, he added, airline workers should allow customers with a clear disability to board, or reach out directly to Open Doors for guidance in that moment.

“JetBlue and Allegiant take up 90 percent of our time,” he said, adding that airlines should call the organization for input before issuing a denial. “Sometimes the people who work for the airlines just do stuff. And we don’t want the people at the airport to be the ones making the decisions.”

Passed off as service animals

The Air Carrier Access Act, passed in 1986, requires airlines to allow travelers with disabilities to board a flight with their service animals. And it limits the questions airlines can ask about a traveler’s disability as well.

“There are certain reasons an airline can deny a service animal, such as if it’s not a dog or if they see behavioral issues,” said Cait Malhiot, an attorney with Marko Law, a law firm in Detroit. But an airline can’t require passengers to show any specific training for a dog, or that a dog be trained only by an accredited source.

Ashley Townsend, a 32-year-old social worker, is blind and relies on Lolly, a 3-year-old black lab. In June, Ms. Townsend was invited to fly from her home in Denver to a fund-raiser in New York City for a guide-dog conference. The organization booked her ticket on JetBlue, and Ms. Townsend called the carrier two days before her flight to ensure she wouldn’t face issues boarding with Lolly. She was assured that she was all set to fly.

But the next day, Ms. Townsend used her screen reader to look at JetBlue’s website. Only then did she see that her D.O.T. form, which she was used to submitting, would have to be reviewed by Open Doors before flying. She had flown just two months earlier with Lolly on a Southwest Airlines flight and not encountered an Open Doors review. When she received an automated message that it would take 48 hours to receive a response, she panicked — her flight was in less than a day. She again called JetBlue, and after hours on hold, was informed that she had not completed the paperwork properly and would not be allowed to fly.

She canceled her ticket and purchased a new flight on United, which does not use Open Doors. She and Lolly flew without issue.

JetBlue said the Open Doors partnership had been put into place because of multiple incidents of dogs being passed off as service animals on flights, but then wreaking havoc in the air, including biting crew members and relieving themselves on the plane.

“We have developed a process to attempt to distinguish properly trained service dogs traveling with a qualified individual with a disability from other dogs,” said Mr. Dombrowski, the airline’s spokesman.

Ms. Townsend said she understood the rules have been tightened, but she feels that the disability community is bearing the brunt of the responsibility for an issue they did not cause.

“I’m faced with this burden of proving that my service animal is legitimate, instead of people being held accountable for intentionally blurring that line,” she said.

In May, Erin Brennan Wallner, a Jacksonville, Fla.-based communications associate, and her family were left stranded in Boston with their son’s service dog. Mason, 14, has autism and relies on Zoe, a 65-pound goldendoodle in moments of stress.

The family booked a vacation to Boston and was unaware of the change in the D.O.T. rules. So were the agents and crew on their outbound JetBlue flight — they flew with Zoe from Jacksonville to Boston with no issues. But when they arrived at the airport to return home, they were told they could not board without an approved D.O.T. form.

Frantic, Ms. Wallner attempted to fill out the form in the airport. The family watched their flight depart without them, and two hours later, while still hoping to be rebooked that day, Ms. Wallner received an email from Open Doors stating that Zoe, who was trained by a company called Off Leash K9 Training, did not qualify as a service animal.

Open Doors, when contacted about the situation, said that Zoe had been rejected because Ms. Wallner had used vague language to describe the dog’s training, rather than offering specifics on the tasks the dog performs. Mr. Lipp, Open Doors’ founder, said his company processes about 120 forms a day and in cases like Ms. Wallner’s, he always attempts to contact the trainer for more information.

But Zoe’s trainer, Matt Gregory, said he never received a call from Open Doors. The family ended up renting a car and driving 18 hours back to Jacksonville.

Ms. Wallner said that the fact her family was allowed to fly to Boston in the first place proved the system is not working.

“I understand that plenty of people take advantage of the situation,” she said. “But don’t you have a responsibility to at least get us home?”

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.

Japan to Release Treated Water From Fukushima Nuclear Plant

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August 22, 2023

Japan will begin releasing treated radioactive wastewater from the ruined Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant into the ocean this week, its government said on Tuesday, setting aside regional and domestic objections as it moves to eventually discharge over a million tons of the water into the sea.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida made the announcement after a meeting of his cabinet, saying the release would begin on Thursday if weather and ocean conditions allowed.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said in July that the government’s plan met the agency’s safety standards, and it has said that releasing the treated water is not likely to pose a serious health threat to humans.

But some scientists have raised questions about whether the Japanese government and the company that operated the plant, Tokyo Electric Power, have been sufficiently forthcoming about what radioactive material may remain in the holding tanks.

The Chinese government has strongly opposed the plan, and Chinese internet users responded angrily to the news on Tuesday, calling for boycotts of Japanese goods and posting racist comments. A large segment of the South Korean public also objects to the discharge, as do fishing groups and others in Japan.

Mr. Kishida visited the wrecked nuclear plant on Sunday and met with leaders of the Japanese fishery industry in Tokyo on Monday, vowing to ensure that fishermen can continue to make a living after the release.

Masanobu Sakamoto, head of the National Federation of Fisheries Cooperative Associations, said that while many of his group’s members had come to accept the government’s assurances on the safety of the discharge, it remained opposed because of the potential effects on fishermen’s livelihoods.

Since an earthquake and tsunami triggered a triple meltdown in Fukushima in 2011, the question of what to do with the accumulating tons of water used to cool nuclear fuel rods has been one of the biggest challenges facing both the government and Tokyo Electric.

For Japan, it is as much a political problem as it is an engineering or environmental one. Despite the determination by the international agency that it was safe to release the water, opponents at home and in neighboring countries have questioned both the government and the agency’s motives. When Japan’s cabinet approved the treated-water plan in 2021, it described the controlled ocean release as the best available disposal option.

People’s Daily, a state media organization owned by the Communist Party in China, has referred to the treated water as Japan’s “nuclear sewage.” And in South Korea, where seafood imports from waters near Fukushima are still banned, an opposition lawmaker warned that “no one can tell or predict for sure what the discharging of radioactive materials into the sea over an extended period of time will bring about.”

In Japan, both Fukushima and national fisheries associations have said they fear that once Tokyo Electric starts releasing the water, both domestic and international customers may be reluctant to eat fish from the region.

Although it has been a dozen years since the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl forced tens of thousands of people to flee the area around the ruined Fukushima plant, the cleanup is still in an early phase. The government says the water release is likely to take place over a period of 30 years.

The water is stored in more than 1,000 sky-blue tanks lined up on the site of the plant. Tokyo Electric — or Tepco, as it is known — pumps the water through the destroyed reactors to cool melted fuel that is still too hot and radioactive to remove.

As the water passes through the reactors, it accumulates radioactive nuclides. Tepco is putting the water through a powerful filtration system, in some cases repeatedly, that is designed to remove all the radioactive material except for tritium, a hydrogen isotope. Experts say tritium does not harm human health in small doses, and it is prohibitively expensive to remove in any case.

Other nuclear plants around the world, including in China, South Korea and the United States, use similar processes to treat cooling water, and also release water containing tritium into the oceans after such filtration.

Still, some scientists have questions. According to Tepco’s website, just 30 percent of the approximately 473,000 tons of water in the tanks have been fully treated to the point that only tritium remains.

“The idea is, ‘just trust us,’” said Ken Buesseler, a marine radiochemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who said he wanted to see more detailed analyses of what remains in the tanks, particularly those that have already undergone some treatment.

Dr. Buesseler said that while tritium is “one of the least dangerous” radioactive materials, others, like cesium or cobalt, could be more hazardous if they are released into the ocean.

He said the government had not investigated alternative options such as building more tanks or using the treated water to make cement. “I think they just want the cheapest, fastest solution, which is a pipe in the ocean,” Dr. Buesseler said.

Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry describes water treated in its filtration system as “purified” and has said any water that is released into the ocean will be “treated until it satisfies safety standards for all radioactive materials other than tritium.”

Kazuya Idemitsu, a professor of nuclear engineering at Tohoku University, said he was confident that the international agency would monitor the water release to ensure that only water containing tritium and no other radioactive material will be piped into the sea.

Dr. Idemitsu said that much of the public’s anxiety stemmed from the highly technical nature of the treatment process and the government’s difficulties in communicating the science.

“When it comes to this kind of scientific information, there are a lot of people who don’t understand or don’t know about it,” Dr. Idemitsu said. “And it may take more time to get to that understanding.”

Among fishermen who rely on the ocean waters off Fukushima for their daily catches, what matters is what would-be customers think.

“It’s a life-or-death issue for fishermen,” said Masatsugu Shibata, 67, who took his 40-foot fishing trawler out from a port at Iwaki in Fukushima before dawn on a recent morning and caught about a dozen large flounder. “I will be in trouble if they discharge” the water.

Mr. Shibata, who hopes to pass his fishing operation on to his son and grandson some day, said the fishing business had recovered only about 20 percent of its pre-disaster levels. When the water is released, he said, “there will definitely be reactions, for sure,” adding, “Many people would stop eating fish.”

“Now the government says it’s safe,” he said. “But safety and peace of mind are different.”

The government has already paid a total of 10 trillion yen ($68.4 billion) in compensation to fishermen, farmers and evacuated residents from Fukushima and other affected prefectures since 2011 to help make up for losses that resulted from the disaster.

Some countries have signaled their support for the government’s plan. Last week, before President Biden hosted Mr. Kishida and President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea at Camp David, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said that the United States was satisfied with Japan’s plan. In July, the European Union lifted all restrictions on fish and agricultural imports from Fukushima. The region had blocked shipments of products since the disaster.

While South Korea still bans seafood imports from waters off Fukushima, Mr. Yoon has endorsed the Japanese government plan amid recent warming relations between the two countries.

At a recent rally in downtown Seoul, protesters suggested that Japan use the treated water in farming or industry instead.

Opposition lawmakers have attacked Mr. Yoon for supporting the plan, with one accusing him of defending Japan “like a parrot.”

“We cannot let a government policy crucial for the people’s life and safety be decided by the president’s personal friendly feeling and intimacy toward Japan,” said Lee Byunghoon, an opposition lawmaker.

The Chinese government has been especially critical of Japan’s plan to release treated water at Fukushima, and has rejected the international agency’s report as insufficient proof that the release poses no undue risks.

On Monday, Wang Wenbin, a spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, called Japan’s decision “extremely selfish and irresponsible” and accused Tokyo of ignoring doubts about the safety of the contaminated water.

Tensions between China and Japan are running high following the signing late last week of a trilateral security agreement between Japan, South Korea and the United States.

Chinese internet users voiced vehement opposition. “Japan has started a new form of nuclear war. We should reject Japanese products and restaurants,” read one comment under an article about the planned release from Mengma News, a media property operated by the government of Henan Province.

“If Japanese people think it is not a problem, they should just drink the water,” read another comment under an article published by China News, a state media organization.

China itself operates nuclear reactors along its seacoast, using seawater instead of scarce freshwater to cool the steam from reactors.

Keith Bradsher contributed reporting from Beijing, Choe Sang-Hun from Seoul, and David Pierson from Singapore. Olivia Wang contributed research.

North Korea’s Kim blasts ‘irresponsible’ top officials for flood damage

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August 22, 2023